ARM84
Released: Friday 27th August 2021
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Fickle Public were a four-piece punk rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. They consisted of Alan Ferguson (Vocals/Guitar), Jim Butterly (Guitar), James Cameron (Bass) and Lewis Gale (Drums).

The group formed in 2005 and released their debut EP the same year, the ferocious ‘Kittens Got Claws’ on the much loved and missed, Smalltown America label. The EP was followed in 2006 by long-player, ‘Bucko’ and tongue-twister single, ‘Just Like I Got Used To Saying Courteney Cox Arquette’.

Fickle Public disbanded in 2007 and a compilation of unreleased recordings, entitled ‘Greatest Hits’ was released in 2010 via Smalltown America.

With the end of the great, Smalltown America Records, in 2020. Armellodie Records acquired the rights to the Fickle Public catalogue and are excited to release them back into the wild (i.e your digital/streaming platform of choice). All four releases are as they originally appeared with the exception of ‘Greatest Hits’ which now includes another unearthed gem, ‘Henry Kelly For Countdown’.

ARM83
Released: Friday 20th August 2021
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Fickle Public were a four-piece punk rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. They consisted of Alan Ferguson (Vocals/Guitar), Jim Butterly (Guitar), James Cameron (Bass) and Lewis Gale (Drums).

The group formed in 2005 and released their debut EP the same year, the ferocious ‘Kittens Got Claws’ on the much loved and missed, Smalltown America label. The EP was followed in 2006 by long-player, ‘Bucko’ and tongue-twister single, ‘Just Like I Got Used To Saying Courteney Cox Arquette’.

Fickle Public disbanded in 2007 and a compilation of unreleased recordings, entitled ‘Greatest Hits’ was released in 2010 via Smalltown America.

With the end of the great, Smalltown America Records, in 2020. Armellodie Records acquired the rights to the Fickle Public catalogue and are excited to release them back into the wild (i.e your digital/streaming platform of choice). All four releases are as they originally appeared with the exception of ‘Greatest Hits’ which now includes another unearthed gem, ‘Henry Kelly For Countdown’.

ARM82
Released: Friday 13th August 2021
DL

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Fickle Public were a four-piece punk rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. They consisted of Alan Ferguson (Vocals/Guitar), Jim Butterly (Guitar), James Cameron (Bass) and Lewis Gale (Drums).

The group formed in 2005 and released their debut EP the same year, the ferocious ‘Kittens Got Claws’ on the much loved and missed, Smalltown America label. The EP was followed in 2006 by long-player, ‘Bucko’ and tongue-twister single, ‘Just Like I Got Used To Saying Courteney Cox Arquette’.

Fickle Public disbanded in 2007 and a compilation of unreleased recordings, entitled ‘Greatest Hits’ was released in 2010 via Smalltown America.

With the end of the great, Smalltown America Records, in 2020. Armellodie Records acquired the rights to the Fickle Public catalogue and are excited to release them back into the wild (i.e your digital/streaming platform of choice). All four releases are as they originally appeared with the exception of ‘Greatest Hits’ which now includes another unearthed gem, ‘Henry Kelly For Countdown’.

ARM81
Released: Friday 6th August 2021
DL

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Fickle Public were a four-piece punk rock band from Glasgow, Scotland. They consisted of Alan Ferguson (Vocals/Guitar), Jim Butterly (Guitar), James Cameron (Bass) and Lewis Gale (Drums).

The group formed in 2005 and released their debut EP the same year, the ferocious ‘Kittens Got Claws’ on the much loved and missed, Smalltown America label. The EP was followed in 2006 by long-player, ‘Bucko’ and tongue-twister single, ‘Just Like I Got Used To Saying Courteney Cox Arquette’.

Fickle Public disbanded in 2007 and a compilation of unreleased recordings, entitled ‘Greatest Hits’ was released in 2010 via Smalltown America.

With the end of the great, Smalltown America Records, in 2020. Armellodie Records acquired the rights to the Fickle Public catalogue and are excited to release them back into the wild (i.e your digital/streaming platform of choice). All four releases are as they originally appeared with the exception of ‘Greatest Hits’ which now includes another unearthed gem, ‘Henry Kelly For Countdown’.

ARM80
Released: Friday 18th June 2021
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Tenth Planet is Leon Carter. Leon is a 44 years old, CIS male from Bristol, of mixed ethnicity (Brunei/ White), formerly of bands such as Porlock and Kill The Captains. He recorded Soft Verges in his home studio over a period of 5 years, playing most of the instruments, though enlisting former band mates and friends to help him out here and there. Tenth Planet is a kind of melancholic space rock - thoughtful, melodic, psychedelic, and occasionally flippant. Leon loves pan asian cuisine, and if he could have one super power, it would be the ability to knit a cardigan from the fabric of space/ time.

Notes on Soft Verges:

There on the outer fringes of the solar system, unloved, cold and yearning for company, lies Eris the unofficial “Tenth Planet”. No-one really knows Eris, because before it is Pluto, and that doesn’t count anymore. So there isn’t even a Ninth Planet as such. And that’s if you can call Eris a planet. It’s a dwarf planet to be precise. So just a giant rock really.

Eris is also the name of the goddess of chaos. And it was during a period of mild life disorder that Bristol musician and multi instrumentalist Leon Carter, under the alter ego of Tenth Planet, started recording the songs that would make the album Soft Verges. The record can be described as if from the perspective of a sardine poking out its head from the centre of a star gazey pie. Eyes pointed upwards to the heavens, decoding the celestial fog, wondering how it got here. A snapshot of contemplation to be imminently broken and served into portions. Born from this predicament are the songs that make Soft Verges. Themes of memory, loss, longing and love are woven into a “cosmic ballet” as the great Spock would have coined it. The album begins with a drone rock pop anthem that recalls an old significant address (“743”) that laid down the formative roots of Tenth Planet. The song swirls to a juddering conclusion, ready for orbit where the album is then catapulted with Space Car. Space Car is the kind of conversation that would have once filled the rooms of 743 in years past: pseudo profundity, bold conclusions, non-sequiturs. The car that silicon valley guy shot into space: what’s that all about? Where was it really going? What if it’s still out there? What if it was a business rival in the front seat and not some crash test dummy? The music throbs and swells as a mantra through a stoned confusion of backward vocals and klaxon like synthesizers, settling and eventually arriving into its singularity.

Next is Anthropocene, the first single from Soft Verges, a musical missive on the impending mass extinction of the human race. The words ponder things like whether if people stopped drinking tiger bones to remedy their erectile dysfunction, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess eh? Chimey guitars from frequent collaborator Ric Booth, run like rivers through its doom-parched, yet hook laden, landscape. Gregorian vocal chords close it out, similar, but different from where it started. This is a cue then for Eris - the album’s epicentre. The sardine in the pie. Here is the lonely fella, mouth full of cotton wool, incomprehensible as he tries to verbalise his predicament. We cannot understand him, so he instead lets us observe him as a building orchestral swell that builds and builds. Whether the listener is intended to be the recipient of a sliced pie is not clear. Though what should be akin to peering into the darkest murk of an unlit corner, becomes like staring at the sun. More choirs of sort emerge from this solar core.

The songs of Soft Verges share an underlying melancholy, like a dreamt of memory tantalisingly out of reach at the point of waking. Haunt Me stacks vocals on top of vocals, urging an absent figure to haunt them. Medicine and Magazines takes the sombre funereal march of the original Low composition and converts into a slice of spacey pop. The sense of pervading longing is present in both versions. Monolith is pitched from the centre of an inferno - ablaze, and angry for the casualties. Golden Fire remembers the story of a childhood neighbour - once the muse for a famous novel. That memory of who she was still burns bright, the solar core, inside whatever she is now. She is similar, but different from where she started. Alex follows. A stripped back song for an old friend lost, who the album is part dedicated to.

And then The Kuiper Belt. The ring of debris and rocks beyond Neptune. A source of comets, and home to our dwarf planets like Eris. The track is an instrumental representation of traversing a plane of organic clutter. A journey in search of a destination. The vehicle? Maybe it’s Musk’s car. The business rival at the wheel.

Pyramidion closes the album, plotting the stars from the capstone of the Egyptian pyramids, quantumly entangled with the far reaches of deep space. Guitars loop over one another like a pulse signal to to a far off civilisation. Disassociated atoms hum together. Connected, not by geography. Similar, but different.

ARM79
Released: Friday 12th March 2021
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ARM78
Released: Friday 29th January 2021
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Armellodie Records is proud to present ‘whence, the’, the new album from Thirty Pounds of Bone aka, Johny Lamb, released on Friday 26th March 2021.

‘whence, the’ is the sixth full-length album by Thirty Pounds of Bone and the third in a series of records that play deliberately with the affordances and problems of studio recording. 2015’s ‘The Taxidermist’ was awash with huge, constructed ensemble pieces, 2019’s critically-acclaimed, ‘Still Every Year They Went’ was recorded live, at sea, on a commercial fishing boat, and this last takes Johny Lamb’s fascination with analogue synths further than before using Eurorack modular synths as the bedrock for each song. The result of working in this way is of course, that many of the parts on the record are all but impossible to recreate; the nature of the patches being built in the moment, captured, and undocumented.

This time around Johny has focused on the tiny details of sadness, largely inspired by the events of ‘A Story of Long’ where the central moment of the song is observing a close friend pouring his husband a glass of water in a hospice, just some few hours before his death. This was an intimacy and time that Johny did not expect to be a part of (the album is dedicated to the couple in question). But this stirred a way of thinking about how huge events are often typified or defined by very small gestures or happenings, and each of the tracks here comes from that place. Be it the existential crisis brought on by stripping wallpaper in ‘Woodchip’, how a single day might signify the end of a long relationship (‘A Note to Myself’), or the miniature resignations to compromise we make in professional life which eventually overwhelm our very identity (‘The Cynical Start to a Jaded Career #1’).

Johny’s lyricism and composition remain oblique but touching, and these songs of little moments of sadness, regret and grief are built to remain small. They are paradoxically content in their sorrow and should perhaps be kept as companions to similar feelings.

ARM77
Released: Friday 8th January 2021
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Armellodie Records is proud to present Yip Man of Scotland aka Al Nero with new single, ‘What’s Your Secret?’ released across all streaming / download platforms from 8th January 2021. Heralded as, “a power-pop genius” by BBC Radio Scotland’s Vic Galloway, Yip Man’s enviable talent for hooks and ability to sculpt complex rhythm and harmony into digestible chunks of unashamed pop is his herculean strength.

On ‘What’s Your Secret?’ Nero finds himself with his “head in the clouds” searching for a splash of inspiration as “the well is dry and the rain won’t come”. A lyric in conflict with the music, given the song’s clever architecture, at once unstable yet completely sing-able, a collision of fuzzed up guitars, driving organ and inventive weaving vocal melodies. Scratch the surface and there’s more to it, “this song is about cutting yourself some slack. People really beat themselves up about not achieving, comparing themselves to others for this, that and the other. Myself included. At some point you have to let go, it’s ok to just do your thing, and get through, or just survive, that’s more than enough,” says Nero.

‘What’s Your Secret?’ is the second single to be taken from Yip Man’s third album, ‘Cock of the North’, released on Friday 26th March 2021.

ARM76
Released: Friday 30th October 2020
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Armellodie Records is proud to present Yip Man of Scotland aka Al Nero with new single, Evil Doppelganger, released across all streaming / download platforms from 30th October 2020.

“I’m going to stay young and beautiful but I’m going to play hard,” sings Nero, over a bed of scuzzy guitars, spacey-synths, down-tuned vocal harmonies and percussive rhythm. It’s an unashamed slice of guitar pop, deceptively simple and hook-laden.

The lyrics are an intriguing mix of juxtapositions as Nero explains, “it’s about that internal struggle that we all face, the good and evil that exist inside of every one of us.” The song builds to an emotional and revealing high before collapsing in a haze of white noise and digital distortion.

Evil Doppelganger is the first single to be taken from Yip Man’s forthcoming third album, ‘Cock of the North’, due for release in Spring 2021.

ARM70
Released: Friday 26th March 2021
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Armellodie Records is proud to present Cock of the North, the new album from Yip Man or as oft referred, Yip Man of Scotland, released on Friday 26th March 2021.

Yip Man is one Al Nero – a Scot living in China - and Cock of the North continues his escapades of joyful abandon, with the pervasive sense of fun that Nero has been channelling since his debut album, 2016’s Braw Power, and follow up, Pure, Zen Ken?, in 2019.

Heralded as, “a power-pop genius” by BBC Radio Scotland’s Vic Galloway, Yip Man’s talent for hooks and ability to sculpt complex rhythm and harmony into digestible chunks of unashamed pop is his herculean strength. Three albums in, he’s a well-seasoned songwriter and Cock of the North is further evidence that he is working at the top of his game; stuffed full of structural twists and turns, razor-sharp riffs, and deeply satisfying choruses. This could be Yip Man’s most personal collection to date. Lyrically, there’s something heavier, angrier and sadder woven through the record. Nero is less amiable than on previous offerings.

On 'Evil Doppleganger' (the lead single from the album) Nero sings "I'm going to stay young and beautiful but I'm going to play hard" over a bed of scuzzy guitars, spacey-synths, down-tuned vocal harmonies and percussive rhythm. The lyrics are an intriguing mix of wit and bitterness as Nero explains, “it’s about that internal struggle that we all face, the good and evil that exist inside of every one of us.” The song builds to a revealing climax before collapsing in a haze of white noise and digital distortion.

On the fierce and angular, ‘Bullshit Detector’, Nero sounds fighting fit, rallying against the fake news epidemic with scornful swipes of good humour, “I don’t mean no disrespect, I admire your intellect, but you’re wired to the moon, a fork in a world of soup” and later, “It doesn’t cost too much, check the ingredients, all you need is sustenance but you’ll swallow anything”. It’s a telling and thrilling 3 minutes.

Elsewhere Nero flexes his romantic muscles (‘Magic Potion’), shines a spotlight on the process of song-craft and the niggling doubts that accompany it (‘What’s Your Secret?’), bursts out the stereo with skin-tight indie precision (‘Dangling Carrots’) and laments on sidestepping or avoiding unresolved emotional issues and psychological wounds (‘Spiritual Bypass’). The lyrics are beautifully observed, the arrangements tight and all the better for it.

At his most reflective on, ‘To Piss or Not to Piss’, Nero ponders legacy and what remains, so fragile, at the end of a life performed through media and fleeting update culture. “In a digital frame, your towering achievements – is this how you want to be remembered?” Underscored with a yearning string arrangement, it conjures an imaginative but bleak visual of a future that is almost upon us.

If the lyrics to 'This is the Last One' are taken at face value, Cock of the North could be Yip Man's parting gift to the universe. We’d advise you relish this trip into Yip Man's world, a glorious mix of pathos, empathy, tragicomedy and, importantly, fun. As Nero proudly declares on the title-track, “this is the big one, you can’t ration fun, there is enough to go round!”

ARM74
Released: Friday 29th November 2019
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ARM73
Released: Friday 13th December 2019
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ARM72
Released: Friday 25th September 2019
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Veteran songwriter and misery enthusiast Johny Lamb (Thirty Pounds of Bone) returns with his second release under the moniker of J. Lynch. Three songs written and recorded between the 17th and 19th of September 2019 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Made in a hotel room using only Ableton Intro, the internal laptop microphone and field recordings made in Reykjavik on a mobile phone. "Skipholt 31 was made to document my short stay in Iceland working with the fine staff and students at the University for the Arts there" says Johny. The songs are reliably dense and as wonky as ever. Sad and uplifting in equal measure.

ARM71
Released: Friday 2nd August 2019
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Armellodie Records is proud to present Yip Man of Scotland aka singer-songwriter Al Nero – a Scot living in China - with new single, Here Comes The Feelings.

If previous single ‘Suffer More’ explored the act of suffering for one’s art, ‘Here Comes The Feelings’ is Yip Man answering his own questions through the unencumbered three-chord joy of punk rock, channeling the fuzzy majesty of a turn-of-the-century Sympathy For The Record Industry 7”. Proudly gnarled, at once unstable and completely singable, it creates a vibrant and fizzing energy. There’s a hard-won maturity in Nero’s vocal delivery too, a keening and straining power-rock rasp and it strikes right at the heart.

ARM70
Released: Friday 31st May 2019
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Yip Man is the alter-ego of Scottish songwriter Al Nero, the former frontman of blissful guitar slingers Le Reno Amps and the co-founder of Glasgow’s Armellodie Records. Suffer More is the second single to be lifted from his second album, 'Pure Zen, Ken?' released in Autumn 2019.

The somewhat mockingly titled, ‘Suffer More’ is riddled with riffs, life-affirming hooks and edge-of-the-seat angles. There is a world-ˇweary sarcasm in the lyrics, a black humour, with Nero claiming, “everything I write’s a joke” and professing that his craft comprises nothing more than “just three chords and a melody”. It’s classic Yip Man, riffs everywhere; bright, shiny horns; gleeful bittersweet chorus - answering the old Huxley question (as to whether a happy artist can truly create anything of merit or worth) in deed rather than in thought.

ARM69
Released: Friday 6th September 2019
LP / CD / DL

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Yip Man of Scotland aka singer-songwriter Al Nero – a Scot living in China - returns with another pulsating grab-bag of razor-sharp riffs, edge-of-the-seat angles, deeply satisfying choruses and endless melodic and harmonic invention. Advice, wisdom & acute observation is what’s on offer here on the excellently named, Pure Zen, Ken? - the follow up to the 2016 debut, Braw Power.

Kicking off with the mockingly titled, ‘Suffer More’ a song with more life-affirming hooks in its minute-long intro than most would consider sufficient for an entire album, yet Nero tells us “everything I write’s a joke” and feels his craft comprises nothing more than “just three chords and a melody”. It’s classic Yip Man, riffs everywhere; bright, shiny horns; gleeful bittersweet chorus - answering the old Huxley question (as to whether a happy artist can truly create anything of merit or worth) in deed rather than in thought. As a statement of intent, it provides a satirical cling film that seems to wrap the rest of the album tightly and with a sly coherence. The useful thing about cling film though, is that it is transparent. The sideways and critical glance of the album’s opening track never obscures or smothers that following music. That music is a smart, often fierce and highly angular set of pop songs. There is something of David Byrne here for sure, but with a more contemporary mathsy preoccupation.

‘A Lesson Learned’ is a clear example of the clever architecture in the song-writing. Proudly gnarled, at once unstable and completely singable, it creates a vibrant and fizzing energy. There’s a hard-won maturity in Nero’s vocal delivery too, a keening and straining power-rock rasp none more brilliant than on ‘Tremors’, an ode to restless leg syndrome and the St. Vitus Dance.

If opening song ‘Suffer More’ explored the act of suffering for one’s art, ‘Here Comes The Feelings’ is Yip Man answering his own questions through the unencumbered three-chord joy of punk rock, channeling the fuzzy majesty of a turn-of-the-century Sympathy For The Record Industry 7”.

By contrast, the atmosphere conjured up by title-track ‘Pure Zen, Ken?’ is new ground for Nero, seemingly borne of the hitherto unexplored musical triangulation of France Gall singing ‘Rolling Hills O’ The Borders’ in the Qinghui Gardens of the Guangdong Province. A satisfying excursion toward new pastures, pregnant with promise, bathed in pathos.

Pathos, empathy and tragicomedy is embedded in this record. It’s there in the nagging self-doubt of ‘Trying Not To Get Caught Out’ a song that sounds not unlike Elliot Smith if he scored a Sondheim musical. It’s there in the exquisitely arranged, ‘Weighing a Pig’, a freewheeling glide through the same hazy semi-acoustic skies as Television’s half-forgotten Adventure album. It’s there on the wonderfully poignant, ‘Aye Peckin’’ where the harmonies are pure Dundee Soul City, the gleeful drive-time guitar solo giving way to an impassioned plea for tranquility - before beautifully employing a particular insult that many outside Scotland only heard for the first time when Billy Connolly mercilessly dealt it to a heckler on his 1974 live album ‘Get Right Intae Him’. It’s even there on the Ween-like, seconds-long sliver of neurological fun that is ‘Disco Ball’. This is the currency of Yip Man.

‘Better Man’ again sees Yip Man vulnerable and regretful as he contemplates past misdemeanors and opportunities passed up. It’s an entirely solo acoustic performance, of a song written alone in Foshan, China, miles from Scotland, miles from home. You can hear again that depth of expression in the vocal delivery and it strikes right at the heart.

The album reaches its climax with the close-harmony courting of ‘My Lucky Stars’, which yearns like Sinatra’s ‘Rain In My Heart’ if he’d used The Breeders instead of Don Costa. Like huge swathes of this record, smoldering somewhere near its core is a perfectly measured contemporary new-wave classicism, rarely found among the dying embers of this decade before we enter the Twenties. Pure zen? You can rest assured.

ARM68
Released: Friday 15th February 2019
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Yip Man is the alter-ego of Scottish songwriter Al Nero, the former frontman of blissful guitar slingers Le Reno Amps and the co-founder of Glasgow’s Armellodie Records. Aye Peckin' is the first single to be lifted from his forthcoming second album, 'Pure Zen, Ken?' due out in Autumn 2019.

Aye Peckin' is a song about ploughing on, laced with a keen sense of fun and an irresistable marriage of riff and melody. The song takes its name from a doric saying that you may hear from time to time should you ever visit the North of Scotland. Aye Peckin' is the sound of life zipping on by relentlessly. People, places and dreams come and go, stuff gets thrown at you and you bat it off and bounce all over the shop. This is wide-screen Beatlesy pop of the highest order.

The single is backed by bonus song, 'The Little Black Foal' originally written by the late, great Jake Thackray.

ARM67
Released: Friday 22nd March 2019
LP / DL

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ARM66
Released: TBC
LTD. ED SPANNER / DL

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Mechanics is the second EP by Scotland's most sought after loft-insulation core band, Bloke Music. Born under Capricorn, Bloke Music are an unforgiving band of men who like nothing better than taking things apart and putting them back together again. The sound of the band is inspired by many facets of life – like the feeling a man gets when mixing Araldite, stroking one's own stubble or grouting. Cleaning music's gutters is a thankless task but someone has to do it.

“Everything On” is a spicy, saucy tale of the inevitable coming of The Singularity.

“Norse Code” is what happens to you if you think you’re better than everyone else; stressed, racist and alone.

“Void!”. You are entertaining in your front room and the fabric of time begins ripping the head right off you. On this occasion the colour of your collar cannot undo your fate.

“Womanhandled”. Connections between photons, twins and severed limbs are undeniable.

…and you will know their van by the paint smudges on the back doors.

ARM65
Released Friday 2nd November 2018
CD / DL

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'On The Surface' - the fourth album from Mason - was conceived, developed and rendered into life over eighteen months in his hometown of Derry, N. Ireland. In essence, it is an exploration living life with uncertainty; the highs and lows, curiosity and change, and significance, or insignificance, of humans in the universe - all told in his alluring, hushed lilting brogue. Understated and subtly refined, it is a record that doesn’t reveal all of its treasures at once, but with patience and repeated listens it will reveal itself to be beautiful, rich and assured album.

Mason is a master of hook, harmony and heart. At times fragile, tender and touching, his songs are paradoxically permeated by an air of richness and comforting warmth, yet shrouded in melancholy, and draped in Mason’s intuitive song writing and storytelling abilities. With three albums under his belt, and a fourth primed for release, Mason has now found his space on the musical landscape, conjuring the wistful wonderment of Elliott Smith, Grandaddy, Villagers and Matthew Jay.

With his album ‘On The Surface' set for release on November 2nd via Armellodie Records (Glasgow, Scotland), he is sharing new single ‘We Watched The Sky Rotate’; a perfect introduction to Mason’s delectable talents. A tender piano ballad, keys twinkle and waltz along a steady beat, as lush flowing melodies swell and swoon to illuminate his whispered introspective ponderings of the significance of our place in the universe.

Fragile, tender and touching, there’s a sense of awe, wonderment to ‘We Watched The Sky Rotate’, while the dripping melody and glowing immediacy of his voice will leave you with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

ARM64
Released Saturday 13th October 2018
International Cassette Store Day
CT / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to present the debut release from J. Lynch, the new alter ego of veteran songwriter and misery enthusiast Johny Lamb (Thirty Pounds of Bone). Here, he has lost the guitars in favour of modular and semi-modular synths, old Casios and phone apps, working with layer upon layer of barely controlled noises, drones, squeals and sequences which he has painstakingly shaped into concise and sort of neat and tidy art-pop songs. While the songs are made with synthesizers, it would be a stretch to call this synth-pop. The songs are dense, wonky, distorted, sometimes lo-fi, and always sad. J. Lynch reflects (through layered, vocodered and awkwardly pitch-shifted vocals) on his shortcomings as a husband and father, his political weaknesses, his tawdry addictions, Samuel Beckett, and the decline of non-human species. In doing so, he somehow finds both benign resignation and righteous anger, all wrapped up in a melodic, rich, ghostly and fuzzed noise that seems to owe as much to John Grant and Sparklehorse as it does to Wolfgang Reichmann and John Foxx (we also have it on good authority that a lot of Kanye was listened to while this record was made. Like, a lot). Truthfully, J. Lynch doesn’t really know what this music is, but it did get made, and there is something sincere, something broken and something new within it. Somewhere….

ARM63
Released on Friday 3rd August 2018
CD / CT / DL

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Hate Colours is J.Turgenev, from Aberdeen, Hong Kong, currently based in Berlin, Germany.

'Know Nothing' was recorded between 2015-2017 largely in London & Aberdeen, with samples recorded on iphone in Washington & Oregon, USA. The album is a collection of songs written with no particular themes at the time, but ultimately came together to be about unconscious personal + collective anxiety (and optimism) during the years in which it was recorded.

'Lantern Unplanned (Telegraph Hill)' was written after climbing Coit Tower, San Francisco, following a long night walk.

'House ii' was written on boxing day and is about unconscious communication, paranoia and recurring dreams.

'All Alarms' is about anxiety and the idea of premonitions.

'Know Nothing' is about wishing to unlearn everything you know.

'Skull Island' is about an island next to Orcas island, Washington, inspired by native american hunting stories.

'Shadows on deer harbor' is about a small town to the west side of Orcas island, Washington.

'Dream Lake Road' is about an imaginary experience inspired by a short story, but is also a road on Orcas island, Washington.

‘Burned' is about a recurring anxiety dream.

ARM63
Released on Friday 13th July 2018
CD / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to present the debut album from Admlithi, a mystery man cutting around the Northern shores of Scotland. Having abandoned making music many years ago, it came both as a surprise and by accident that Tyrants began to take shape.

It started with a very large 80s technics keyboard found in a skip, and the original intention was for Tyrants to be a feel-good party album as a tribute to the recently departed Prince. However, the sinister far-right political leanings of world politics coupled with the self-reflection that generally accompanies an adult autism diagnosis took the recordings down a different path. Tyrants is the sound of confusion and frustration. The music itself is hard to pigeonhole, a concoction of punk, funk and electro super-glued together with melancholy. It’s likely that some might find it as mind mincing as most current popular music is to the ears of Admlithi.

From the opening heart monitor bleeps of ‘Bats in Your Head’, the atmospheric and forlorn, ‘4UYET’, and the funk-riddled title-track, ‘Tyrants’, Admlithi tackles his terrors head-on, trying to make sense of the world he finds himself.

“For nearly two decades of my adult life I did not have a TV or radio and actively avoided listening to the news”, says Admlithi. “In 2017 I became a bit obsessed with it as I could barely believe what was unfolding. Had everything always been this bad? Had I somehow stumbled into an alternative satirical dimension? Probably yes on both counts,” he concedes.

Tyrants was recorded in a room measuring 8ft x 12ft except for field recordings which were made around Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. During attempts to record seagulls in Peterhead for ‘A Very Bad Day’ ironically one particularly bold seagull swooped down attempting to steal the microphone that, with its winds shield on, possibly resembled some kind of small furry appetiser. Thankfully the microphone was attached to a digital recorder at the time that served as a suitable anchor. The frustrated seagull then showed its appreciation by shitting on the microphone, recorder and artist from a great height before flying away. It was probably a metaphor for human existence.

ARM61
Released Friday 8th June 2018
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ARM60
Released on Friday 27th April 2018
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ARM59
Released on Friday 6th July 2018
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ARM58
Released on Friday 1st June 2018
CD / LP / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to present Potato Flower, the second album from Scotland’s most subterranean, rock band, The Scottish Enlightenment. Potato Flower is an honest record, mined from the seams of joy and pain that are threaded through the monolithic repetition of ordinary life. And it’s taken a while.

The Scottish Enlightenment has a glacial sound - defined by slow tempos and bright guitars smothered in reverb - matched only by their glacial work ethic. The band is built around the dense and persuasive songwriting of David Moyes. Potato Flower is the follow up to 2010’s St Thomas, the two long players surrounded by a smattering of EPs and a single. Scottish Enlightenment releases are not easy come, so you should be prepared for them to stay with you awhile.

During the 8 years since St Thomas, some people have died and some people have been born. Nobody lives in the same place anymore. A huge chunk of life has elapsed, ordinary life with the standard dramas, love, fear, grief, hope, all the beauty and ugliness draped over jobs, laundry, bills, breakfast, lunch and tea. Potato Flower refuses to pretend that the important things are found anywhere else.

The music is reverberant cathedral rock, slow and delicate on ‘Machinery’ and ‘Slightly’, hefty and dangerous on ‘The Last Howl’ and ‘Colour It In’. The songs’ protagonists are caught within systems bigger than they can hope to influence; be it life and death, economics, or the planet’s orbit.

The album’s opener ‘Keep The Cats Outside’ is face-to-face with a dying mother and doesn’t know how to cope - “She took three days, withered and blew life away”. If you don’t have a lump in your throat on hearing this then you may be missing the empathy gene, please seek medical assistance.

Following that, ‘Self-Made Man’ stacks its stanzas in reverse order, a past life regression to the primordial swamp. Each verse glistens like the sea, the surf guitars played with the tired resignation of Pavement's more chilled moments and buckets of reverb, and each separated by a Smithsy-Byrdsy guitar refrain that is bright, sweet and humble.

Elsewhere, ‘Blood Harmony’ is one of the darkest, most aggressive love songs you’re likely to hear, snapshotting the visceral romance of fighting parents madly in love and ready to kill for their kids. Its metallic baritone guitars pulse like a heart filled with love, fear, and blood.

In the final track ‘Wasps’, which is slow and quiet like breath on cold air, the changes of the year trace the lovers oscillation, a relationship like a double helix bent out of shape, each person a strand moving together and apart, winding round each other, closer with each turn.

ARM57
Released Friday 9th February 2018
LP / DL

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Ewan Cruickshanks may give the impression of being a carefree goofball - his often eccentric live show is an eclectic mix of song-writing, electronics, poetry, improvisation, rap and comedic theatrics – but his ear for harmony and melody is in no doubt, as a listen to his debut album A Glasgow Band will testify.

The first single to be taken from the album, ‘Dreams’ is a fine example of how a song can project lightweight breeziness whilst still resonating deeply within the listener. The song is described by the man himself as ‘a jangly pop song about friendship, youth and believing in yourself, kindly co-sung by my very good pal Siobhan Wilson.’ There’s an effortless charm to Ewan and Siobhan’s harmonising vocals complemented beautifully by Ewan’s twangy guitar tones and understated melodic phrasing.

Recorded in Glasgow at the Shady Lane studio by Chris McCrory (Catholic Action), Ewan delivers hook-laden, touching pop songs. Cases in point being ‘Superman’, ‘Cosmic Star’ and the sublime, ‘For a Girl’. 'For a Girl' is an essential and honest love song where Ewan has stripped away all the frills to expose the vulnerability of someone deeply in a new love. Cruickshanks' yearning feels earnest and genuine and as such is instantly relatable. It’s a fine treat that the extended axe-noodlings on these three cuts emphatically mirror Tom Verlaine's guitar triumphs in Television. A testament to Cruickshanks' guitar-chops.

Elsewhere you’ll find the tropical flavours of ‘Michael’ and ‘The Fly and Dog’, the glam-rock tinged ‘C.A.A.G.B’, and the comic horror storytelling of ‘Faster Than a Snake’, each delivered with Cruickshanks' sincere sense of joy, wit and charm.

An avid supporter of the grassroots music scene in Glasgow, Ewan hosts a radio show on SubCity (the student station affiliated with Glasgow University) and puts on a successful night under the banner New Stuff Always Sux. The spotlight now turns to Ewan with his debut album A Glasgow Band, released on vinyl and download from Friday 9h February 2018 on Armellodie Records.

ARM56
Released: Friday 8th December 2017
DL

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Described by the man himself as about, ‘the fear of what's lurking round the corner. The mysterious beast that may or may not be as dangerous as its reputation would suggest...'

The single includes b'sides, 'Poor Wee Jim' and 'Ross Kemp On Gangs'.

ARM55
Released: Friday 29th September 2017
DL

BUY NOW: iTunes // Amazon // Bandcamp

‘Dreams’ is described by the man himself as ‘a jangly pop song about friendship, youth and believing in yourself.' The single is complete with b'sides, 'Serial Killer' and 'Scones'.

ARM54
Released on Friday March 2017
CD / DL

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*** Fit Da Funk (T-Shirt) ***
*** I Still Havenae Foond Fit I'm Looking For (Tote Bag) ***
*** 20 Track compilation celebrating 10 years of Armellodie. (CD) ***

“Armellodie Records is one of those beautiful indie labels that realises music needs to be put out and made available, but without a commercial expectation.” - Drowned in Sound

“Glasgow’s Armellodie Records has an impressive pedigree when it comes to releasing original music that pushes the envelope.” - Scotland on Sunday

It has been ten years since Scotland’s Armellodie Records first began to showcase its eclectic, haphazard approach to popular music. This here compilation is a celebration of a decade of meaningfully carefree shenanigans lovingly shepherded by Scottish indie workhorses Al Nero and Scott Maple.

Armellodie is all of the things that a great indie label should be. It is first and foremost a project born of, and sustained by, the pleasure of creating something good. Maple and Nero never got into this for wealth or status, and as such they are willing to support and share the music that excites them over the music that has an obvious commercial appeal. This is good for us all. A fear of financial losses in the streaming age has the potential to take the wind out of many small labels’ sails and sees increasingly trend-led and conservative rosters. Fortunately for us, the world is full of such keen and unselfish people as our champions here and Armellodie alongside various likeminded collectives and DIY projects has become a home for the dishevelled and unusual. The unlikely pop eccentrics that form a partial antidote to the music that conforms more easily to today’s commercial sensibilities.

The Armellodie roster is a hydra of different heads, from the pristine indie of The Hazey Janes to the mathematically challenging musical prowess of Super Adventure Club. From the project and concept driven Dan Lyth, The Douglas Firs and Thirty Pounds of Bone to the pure unhinged madness of Galoshins and Kill the Captains. Many aesthetics are tolerated in this camp and rightly so. The label’s non-idiomatic approach allows every release to feel fresh, and allows the Armellodie camp to avoid the stale and moribund notions of a ‘brand’. It is a great thing to have a place that stables The Scottish Enlightenment in all their thoughtful, crystalline density, but at the same time introduces the country punk eccentricity of Cuddly Shark or the expensive, trend resistant, blue-eyed grooves of supergroup The Pure Conjecture.

With recent releases by the terminally popular Yip Man, and the post structural satirists Bloke Music, Armellodie shows no signs of slowing down. This can only be a wonderful thing. This celebratory compilation gives a fragment from throughout the history of the roster and evidences the immense and diverse talent within. Sit back and allow the landscape to shift under you from the clockwork flawlessness of Something Beginning With L one minute to the spiky energy of Saint Max and the Fanatics the next. Take in the charm of Conor Mason, and be unnerved by Gastric Band. At the end find the bouncing pop gem of a song that began it all, that 7” single by Le Reno Amps. From tiny acorns evidently peculiar and misshapen little oaks can grow; oaks that bear the most beautiful leaves. This is a label founded on friendship and collaboration, and on knowing something might be a risky idea, but doing it anyway, just because it feels good. We need the little projects, the home grown, miniature visionaries, maybe now more than ever, lest we be swallowed whole by the demographic assurance and banality of the dying embers of late capitalism. Long live all the indies and long live Armellodie. Here’s to another decade of beautiful outsiders. [Johny Lamb, January 2017]

ARM53
Released on Friday 2nd June 2017
LP / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to present No Ghosts the third album from the geographically scattered collective, The Pure Conjecture. No Ghosts is the sound of friendship. When the world around collapses, friendship remains that hopeful constant and No Ghosts is the sound of that constant.

To eschew the virtues of the individual band members is to forgo a long, deep involvement and affiliation with a number of immense bands. Marc Beatty (Brakes), Joel Gibson (The Tenderfoot) Rose Elinor Dougall, Johny Lamb (Thirty Pounds of Bone) and Matthew Twaites (Electric Soft Parade) are brought together around the writing efforts of front-men Matt Eaton and Darren Moon (a modern day Nanker Phelge without the wrinkles) and within an industry of tempestuous greed and merciless careerism a calm naturally emerges. Gathering across several London writing and recording sessions in 2016, the band kicked out the jams and found a series of songs that rested in the warmth of Teenage Fanclub and Big Star, sparkled with the hairspray of Hall & Oates and tipped collegiate Nineties cap to the R&B Heroes of the day (Boyz II Men, Blackstreet).

If that sounds disjointed, it’s not. This is as tight as a shiny new ship, anchored as it is by the Eaton-Moon vocal one-two that gracefully oscillates between falsetto and baritone, while the songs themselves are tightly inter-threaded by a deep understanding that two minor-seven chords played in sequence can set the world alight. Opener ‘We Can Only Ever Really Be Friends’ stomps with the workman-like grace of Sharon Jones; the chorus as big as the moon, the keyboard lines heart-breaking yet cheeky.

This is also an album with the intelligence to ask questions of itself. Who is the un-contactable ‘Mr Remote’ who seems to run from door-to-door to a pop groove in the realm of Ariel Pink's Haunted Style Council? Who in Jackanory is that singing on ‘Knock Four Times’ and why isn’t he the pastor at the Church of Incredible? Why does he feel inclined to knock four times, when he knocked three times on the band’s debut album, Courgettes?

In the title track, ‘No Ghosts’, the fanfare is summoned and the album burns blindingly bright; harmonies wash over the listener, the vocals glisten and you can hear the amp valves in the guitar solo. In an age of disposable pop personalities ‘No Ghosts’ is an antidote album that, like the works of the blue eyed soul singers and the Northern Soul artists of the past, will set a hundred first dances adrift and burn themselves into the core of your memory bank (and your record collection).

ARM52
Released Friday 8th December 2017
CD / DL

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'Hands Around The City - Live' offers the chance to hear The Hazey Janes play their fabled 'lost' album, in full, for the very first time. 

The one-off performance was recorded at a sold out Gardyne Theatre in the band's hometown of Dundee, and the album's eleven songs stand as an autumnal bridge between the innocent summer of the critically acclaimed debut LP, Hotel Radio, and their equally well-received 2011 release, The Winter That Was. 

The latter led to the quartet opening as guests for Wilco on the European leg of their world tour, while promotion for 2014's follow-up “Language Of Faint Theory” saw support slots with Belle & Sebastian and Deacon Blue, at London's Royal Albert Hall and Glasgow's SSE Hydro amongst other prestigious venues. 

The band's rigorous work ethic also birthed collaborative album releases with celebrated songwriter Michael Marra, and poet, author and previous Scots Makar Liz Lochhead, resulting in a sold out headline show at 2017's Celtic Connections festival. 

'Hands Around The City - Live' is a timely reminder of the power and presence of The Hazey Janes in live performance, as well as a unique document of an eclectic and rarely-heard collection of songs.

ARM51
Released: Friday 10th February 2017
LTD. ED TROWEL / DL

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Born under Capricorn, Bloke Music are an unforgiving band of men who like nothing better than taking things apart and putting them back together again. The sound of the band is inspired by many facets of life – like the feeling a man gets when mixing Araldite, stroking one's own stubble or grouting. Cleaning music's gutters is a thankless task but someone has to do it.

Frontman Chris Flynn, previously of wonk-pop trio Bo Deadly, weaves impossible vocal melodies through an overgrown allotment of sound made by drummer Ricki Thomson (ex-Jackie Treehorn/Gastric Band) and guitarists Kieran Savage (Elastic Leg Party) and Bruce Wallace (Super Adventure Club/Gastric Band). The band's debut, self-titled EP pays homage to music that has repelled ladies for generations, like prog-rock, contemporary classical, and Michael McDonald. It’s a 26-and-a-half minute sausage-fest that will make you pout and gyrate like a pissed uncle at a wedding.

Released on Friday 10th February 2017 on Armellodie Records, the EP is available from all major streaming/download service providers and on the manliest of gardening accessories, the trowel (complete with download code) for all you green-fingered goblins.

ARM50
Released: Friday 11th November 2016
LP / CD / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to present ‘Braw Power’, the debut album from Yip Man of Scotland, released on Friday 11th November 2016.

★★★★ – Scottish Daily Express   ★★★★ – The List
★★★★ – The Scotsman       ★★★★ – Is This Music?

Yip Man is the alter-ego of Scottish songwriter Al Nero, the former frontman of blissful guitar slingers Le Reno Amps and the co-founder of Glasgow’s Armellodie Records. Since Le Reno Amps bowed out in 2011 one might be forgiven for thinking that outside of co-running Armellodie Nero has been somewhat idle.  In truth he has been undergoing metamorphosis. He’s been away. Al Nero went to China… Yip Man came back.

You may choose to imagine Nero on his oriental adventure, squinting against the setting sun in sprawling dusty wastelands, or atop snow-capped peaks holding earnest conversation with stationary holy men, or perhaps brushing the Mongolian border astride a saddleless galloping horse.  Maybe that’s true, or maybe he was in a bar.  Whatever happened on our protagonist’s travels the resulting music displays Yip Man's ability to melt down a rainbow of musical possibilities into an irresistible marriage of riff & melody in the brightest of colours.  

"...top draw timeless indie faire, equal parts catchy and lyrically sharp"  - Dork

From the explosion of the lop-sided opener ‘Barnburner’ and the synth-riddled rocking of ‘Not That Easy’, to the Calypso carnival of ‘For Your Own Good’ and Pavement-esque brain-rockin' of ‘Skinny White Ghost’.  The songs on ‘Braw Power’ find Nero lyrically and poetically tackling his own existential ennui, whilst sounding like a man who just found the last Golden Ticket in his Wonka Bar. 

There is a world-weary sarcasm in the lyrics, a black humour, and sometimes a barely withheld anger. This creeps into the music as well, and we start to hear dissonance, unusual rhythms and chromatic melody upsetting and mutating the kind of songs that might otherwise have had something of the simplicity of the Ramones.  

"It's this contrast between the seemingly sunny disposition of the music and the apathetic tone of the lyrics that separates Nero from Yip Man in a way that highlights real creative progression." - The List

The best pop songs are beautiful feedback loops of empathy and pathos.  Yip Man realises and understands the power and purpose of the pop song.  They are for our hurt, our disappointment, our regret, our losses and our failures. Each tragic breakup song heals something in the listener.

Yip Man brings it all, inadequacy, lies, loss, bitterness, infidelity, empty beds and the horrible certainty that whatever he’s just got over, he’s doomed to live through again and again.  It’s no accident that ‘Stuck on Repeat’ reappears as the album’s ominous coda.  Nero’s metamorphosis into Yip Man might not have been a gruesome Kafkaesque shift in species, but it has produced a darker, smarter and completely unapologetic writer of intelligent pop songs, stuffed full of unusual ideas and fresh interpretations of trope. 

With grand ambitions tempered by a homely charm, you can be sure that whatever life throws at Yip Man, he’ll bat it straight back with his killer hooks.

"He just looks like he has a very thorough wash every day."
- God is in the TV Zine

ARM49
Released: Monday 23rd March 2015
LP / DL

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Where Johny Lamb’s first three albums - The Homesick Children of Migrant Mothers, Method, and I Cannot Sing You Here But For Songs of Where - all relate heavily to place and itinerancy, rooting themselves (sometimes unconventionally), in folksong, The Taxidermist marks a partial departure from Johny’s previous works. Retaining all the hallmarks that made those other records so special, The Taxidermist is still unmistakably a Thirty Pounds of Bone record, but this time round the ratios have shifted somewhat. 

There are love songs and death songs, as Johny mixes acoustic folk-like songs with distortion smothered Shoegaze, analogue synth, and Salvation Army type brass. It’d be a push to say this is Thirty Pounds of Bone gone pop, but musically there’s a change of focus, and on The Taxidermist we find Johny at his most wistfully romantic.

A brilliant LP - what you have here is a superb set of open-handed, ever so slightly bitter-sweet (maybe bitter) songs that with massive choruses and brilliant, classic alt-rock arrangements.' Incendiary Magazine

'An early contender for album of the year. - the music here is as accessible as it is cleverly constructed, sometimes reaching for those sonic bursts of sunshine that, like Spiritualized and The Flaming Lips at their most glorious, genuinely make your scalp tingle.' The Herald (Scotland) 

'The arrangements are hazy, draped in gauze, although the songs themselves are rock solid: it is a testament to the quality of writing that they can withstand being submerged in indie scuzz almost worthy of Kevin Shields. Beneath the distorted guitar, the choruses are anthemic, soaring; these are songs that get stuck in your head. The overall effect is a kind of shoegaze folk, at moments reminiscent of Creation Records in their heyday. - I liked it a lot on first listen, and I like it more every time I hear it.' The Quietus

'His journey has been like the move from black and white, to colour, to widescreen and transitioning into 3D, these songs are fully rounded expansive concentrated moments. - this is a fine record, emotionally direct and ranging musically from the complex to the simple, throughout you never lose sight of Lamb and his vision, excellent.' 8/10 Americana-UK 

'This is gorgeous, an odd record, not going to lie to you, bit strange in places but darkly beautiful. One to listen out for.' Lauren Laverne, BBC Radio 6

ARM48
Released: Monday 6th April 2015
CD / DL

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Two years on from their excellent debut album Winter Sun, - an album steeped in the chilly themes of longing, confusion, and a creeping sense of dread at the slow march of “progress” - the band return with Sacred to the Shades, an album that delves into historical allusions, stirred by the thought of living in the shadows of fallen empires, never quite learning from what has gone before. Ian Tilling explains; 

“I read a sheet of translations from the inscriptions found on Roman funerary monuments. They spoke of loved ones who had passed on, now “sacred to the shades”, to the spirits of the dead, and these centuries-old stories struck a chord with me, and reminded me of themes I was already exploring in my song-writing. I've been fascinated by the idea of history repeating itself, and when I read the sad tales and warm-hearted manifestos in the various epitaphs, written so long ago, they seemed so rich and vital, like they could have been written yesterday”. 

From the opening rumbles of ‘A Brief Introduction to Modern History’, with it’s pining guitar notes swooping above a rain-soaked serenade to some washed-up old circus performer down on his luck, Trapped Mice sound more assured than ever in their proclivity to all things atmospheric and mournful. 

On ‘The French Lieutenant's Woman’ - inspired by the novel of the same name – the band weaves textures and masterfully builds tension. Lucie Miller’s violin winding beautifully about the vocal melody creates a sound that is suitably empathetic to Tilling’s words of abandonment, waiting and desperation. 

The inscriptions that informed the writing surface throughout the album, but perhaps most prominently on the post-rock melancholy of ‘Slave Girl Song’ as Tilling explains; 

“There was one inscription in particular, entitled “on the death of a young slave girl”, which moved me immensely, and it was clear to me that whatever the young girl Erotion had been through, there would be countless examples of people still alive today with similar experiences, without a stone epitaph to remember them by: "Let her now play and frolic with her old patrons, and lispingly chatter my name. Not hard be the turf that covers her soft bones, be not heavy on her, earth; she was not heavy on you.” Perhaps the intentions of her “old patrons” weren't as sinister as I imagine, but the parallels with modern sex-slavery, exploitation and people-trafficking were too obvious and too raw for me not to at least try and put some of how I was feeling into this song.” 

Sacred to the Shades is arguably at its most striking on the two-part, ‘Shades’. Part one explores the idea of living in the shadows for a long time before eventually finding glory when you least expect it, and how that experience might make you feel about the person with whom you shared your life up to that point. Part two takes the idea of being two people together, in love, destined for something greater, and contrasts these grand historical ambitions with the absurdity of the pissed-up sex-addled reality of modern life.

ARM47
Released: Monday 2nd June 2014
CD / LP / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to welcome the return of The Hazey Janes with their new album, Language of Faint Theory, released on Monday 2nd June 2014.

It’s safe to say The Hazey Janes have undergone their fair share of globetrotting in their ten years together, all the while refining their zig-zag path from country to psych to power pop.

They’ve headlined throughout the UK, played in support to the likes of Elbow, Idlewild and Snow Patrol, made two trips to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas - where they showed their versatility by being able to open for both Susanna Hoffs and The Presidents of the United States of America.

Since 2011’s The Winter That Was, the group’s third album, the quartet have undertaken some of their most rigorous and prestigious tours to date, opening as guests for Wilco on the European leg of their world tour and, more recently, Deacon Blue - the latter culminating with a sold out performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Inspired and rejuvenated by their time in Spain, where their dates with Wilco concluded, the band ensconced themselves in the country’s South-west to record fourth album, Language of Faint Theory, returning to El Puerto De Santa Maria to collaborate with Paco Loco (The Posies, The Sadies, Josh Rouse) and John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady), the team that produced and mixed their debut, 2006’s critically lauded Hotel Radio.

“Engineering skills aside, one of the main the reasons we chose Paco’s studio is the vast array of vintage recording equipment and weird and wonderful guitars and keyboards he collects. The whole session went down to two-inch tape via an old 1970s Cadac console from Scorpion Studios in London which was previously used by Queen, T-Rex, Supertramp and goodness knows how many other bands that swanned in through their doors. John then mixed down to quarter-inch tape, completing the album’s warm analogue sound, which we had our hearts set on from the start” says front-man, Andrew Mitchell.

No matter how far the apple drops from the tree, home is where the heart is, and within lead single, ‘The Fathom Line’s chiming, saturated guitar-pop and euphoric vocals is a homage to their beloved hometown of Dundee. Mitchell explains;

“For many years Dundee’s long and illustrious, if somewhat tumultuous, past has been the source of much debate and deliberation in both song and literature. While ‘The Fathom Line’ continues that tradition, weaving through tragedy and triumph of the history that hangs in the air through the city by the Silvery Tay, it observes and celebrates the plight of the underdog.”

Bassist Matthew Marra elaborates, “While the recording of the album may have been geographically detached from the East coast of Scotland, there’s a strong narrative of our lives in Dundee running through Language of Faint Theory. The year leading up to the recording was a particularly emotional one for the four of us and that certainly infiltrated the writing process. All the songs depict events, people and places in and around the City of Dundee.”

ARM46
Released: Saturday 19th April 2014 [Record Store Day CD Exclusive]. Download released Monday 5th May 2014.
CD / DL

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Built-In Redundancy is a live album by Super Adventure Club released to coincide with Record Store Day 2014. Limited to 100 copies the CD comes in a luxurious 6-panel gatefold digipack with stunning artwork by Matt Sloe (depicting a decaying horse no less!).

Recorded live in Broadcast, Glasgow on Thursday 8th August 2013 Built-In Redundancy has been fully mixed and mastered by audio-guru, Scott Maple.  The album documents Super Adventure Club’s final outing.  The album is a great memento of what was a very special night.

"It’s hot in the city, hotter still in this subterranean sweatbox. Your sympathies then, for the poor git in the rubber horse mask expressing, via the medium of equine dance, an onslaught of giddy, brain-melting wrongpop. The behoofed Bez is Dr Horse, shape-throwing mascot of Super Adventure Club, Glasgow’s most deliriously imaginative trio. Theirs is a dazzling and addictive post-Cardiacs melange of tangleweed riffs, impossible time changes, frenetic tempos, shouty bits and intermittent bubblegum melodies. Yet despite the technical overload and furious complexity, tunes such as ‘Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle’ are warm and approachable – sweaty devotees yell back every lyric and lurch in perfect synch to every labyrinthine diversion. With drummer Waz off to study in Hong Kong for a year, this is the last SAC outing for a small eternity. Perhaps ever. So there’s a real sense of celebration, tinged with sadness and drunkenness. But tonight also sees the launch of new album Straight from the Stick – sold in innovative form; a drumstick, download code and crudely drawn genitals. Bet Thom Yorke wishes he’d thought of that."  - Matt Evans (The List)

ARM45
Released: Monday 2nd June 2014
CD / DL

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Chris Devotion & The Expectations - or CD/EX if urgency is your prerogative – are fond of a little savage rock’n'roll and a pert frolic with the classic pop song.  Coming together in perfect harmonious, lyrical and mathematical order for an average running time of 2 and a half minutes, these songs have the power to align planets.  Part swaggering hubris, part relationship-confessional, these songs remind you of the joyful existence of your reproductive organs, while at the same time the bitter knowledge that you’ve just been dumped…again. Yeah, you know the ones.

Armellodie Records is proud to welcome back Chris Devotion & The Expectations with their second album, Break Out, released on CD and download on Monday 2nd June 2014.

If you’re new to the band Chris Devotion’s story is as wired as his music and there’s a strong sense that there’s no such thing as glory for this man unless it is by the most riff-slaying of means.

Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Devotion cut his teeth executing riotous performances in such glamorous locations as a disused nunnery and a fetish club, garnering ringing endorsements from rock and roll peers - John Reiss of Rocket From The Crypt fame and Titus Andronicus have openly declared their admiration - along the way.

At the turn of the decade Devotion employed the illustrious expertise of The Expectations, a trio of suited-and-booted thrashers, to bolster the foundations of Devotion’s own high octane rock and roll template.

Since the release of their rapid-fire debut in 2012, Amalgamation & Capital, the band have taken to the road with such indie-rock pin-ups as Quasi, Social Distortion, Ultrasound and Hookworms as well as having brought their brand of no nonsense power-chord prowess to festivals up and down the country.

Returning to the studio with producer Andy Miller (Mogwai, Life Without Buildings, Arab Strap). Break Out retains all the showmanship and melodic charm that made the 4-piece so alluring in the first place. Devotion’s burly croon firmly fixed on love, jealousy and betrayal to the point where he describes the story of an entire marriage in the opening verse. 

"It started when we were still ravers, out on a Saturday night. It ended in lawyers and papers and a cold goodbye" Devotion sings in opener, ‘Saddest Thing’.

“If there’s a main theme to this record then it’s honesty, with one's self and others. Most of the characters in these songs are usually coming to a realisation about themselves and whatever situation they find themselves in. Those that are able to be honest with themselves can attempt to move on with their lives without repeating their mistakes – “break out” of their trappings one could say. There are also some songs about fucking. I’m nothing if not a renaissance man.” - Chris Devotion.

For all the vibrancy and lack of any musical pretension, Devotion and his clan never sound obtuse, evident by the contrasting vibes of the album’s two preceding singles, the fired up and bitter ‘Don’t You Call On Me’, and the more contemplative pop of ‘When The Girl Comes To Town’.

Sonically this is CD/EX’s big guitar album, An existentialist record you could play while driving a convertible in LA. So it’s somewhat perverse that the band will be taking to the M1 in a white van for the remainder of the year bringing Break Out to the people. 

ARM44
Released: Monday 12th May 2014
DELUXE BOOK CD / DELUXE BOOK DL

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Dan Lyth was born in the Middle East but has lived most of his life in Dunfermline, Fife. A sound designer by day, Lyth began work on Benthic Lines some five years ago, his intention to record an album entirely outdoors. On rooftops and rowing boats, in forests and high streets, mountains and quarries, ruined churches and beaches, car parks and peat bogs. Anywhere really, as long as it was outside!

Having first had the idea while on a trip to Sierra Leone, Lyth quickly realised that it's one thing to daydream of such a plan whilst in the tropics and quite another to actually attempt it back at home in Scotland.

“I think some part of me took perverse pleasure in the thought of having to undergo some real physical exertion to make this record. I have also always been drawn to creative work that has taken a considerable amount of effort, and recording an album outdoors whilst living in Scotland with its devious climate seemed to fit the bill.”

In an age when it seems anyone can produce an album in their bedroom, Benthic Lines attempts to re-explore the relationship between music and the environment in which it is created. What happens to a recording when you have no control over the surroundings? What anomalies and accidents may occur? And would it be possible to weave together the unpredictable sounds of these environments with more traditional performances to create a cohesive whole?

As Lyth’s fondness of field recording has grown more ambitious, so too has his talent as a songwriter. Album opener ‘All My Love’ is testament to this, merging the mythological with the reality of the uncertainties that are brought when becoming a father for the first time. The vivid imagery of ‘Four Creatures’, written from the perspective of someone living in Syria, draws upon Islamic and Christian eschatological imagery to startling effect.

The influence of Steve Reich is worth noting, from the repetitive female vocal sounds on ‘Standing Start’ to the cyclic piano and accordion patterns of ‘Super Nature’ and ‘Earth Broke Its Vow’, Lyth is the first to admit of his affection for Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.

“A big chunk of inspiration came from Steve Reich’s work and one of the main aims of the album in terms of the arrangements was to try and make music that sounds electronic or programmed but is actually all live acoustic instruments.” says Lyth.

Benthic Lines are the deep sea communication cables through which the world is now connected, and communication is a recurring theme throughout the record ("the cables installed along ocean floors is where we had lived too long for sure" sings Lyth on ‘How It Happened’). How our constant use of communication technology can affect our thought processes and relationships (“We shot some video, scenes that would not be shown, think what you will but the devil’s in the pixels on my phone”, sings Lyth on ‘Four Creatures’). With recording having taken place in locations as far afield as Morocco, Australia, Turkey and Uganda, Dan is also exploring the lines of human connection and lines of ancestry.

Designed with love by graphic artist Sarah Lyth, the album arrives in a beautifully bound 60-page book and includes photos from the array of recording locations. Cover art from celebrated New York artist Matthew Cusick and an accompanying short story, Already Here, by talented Fifer Craig Rennie complete the desirable artefact that is Benthic Lines. So what has Lyth got to say for himself now that his affair with the great outdoors is almost over.

“After travelling, listening, recording and being constantly surprised over the course of four years and across four continents, what will really stay with me is not only all the wonderful sounds we heard (during the recording of Benthic Lines) but also the many inquisitive, open-minded and generous people we met along the way. But it wasn’t all romantic. It’s quite hard work transporting a drum kit to a remote derelict church or dragging a piano out of a small flat. There were broken mic stands, bleeding fingers and failing batteries. And there was rain, a lot of rain.”

ARM43
Released: Sunday 30th March 2014
DL

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It’s safe to say The Hazey Janes have undergone their fair share of globetrotting in their ten years together, all the while refining their zig-zag path from country to psych to power pop.

They’ve headlined throughout the UK, played in support to the likes of Elbow, Idlewild and Snow Patrol, made two trips to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas - where they showed their versatility by being able to open for both Susanna Hoffs and The Presidents of the United States of America.

Since 2011’s The Winter That Was, the group’s third album to date, the quartet have undertaken some of their most rigorous and prestigious tours to date, opening as guests for Wilco on the European leg of their world tour and, more recently, Deacon Blue - the latter culminating with a sold out performance at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Inspired and rejuvenated by their time in Spain, where their dates with Wilco concluded, the band ensconced themselves in the country’s South-west to record new album, Language Of Faint Theory, returning to El Puerto De Santa Maria to collaborate with Paco Loco (The Posies, The Sadies, Josh Rouse) and John Agnello (Kurt Vile, Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady), the team that produced and mixed their debut, 2006’s critically lauded Hotel Radio.

No matter how far the apple drops from the tree, home is where the heart is, and within ‘The Fathom Line’s chiming, saturated guitar-pop and euphoric vocals is a homage to their beloved hometown of Dundee. Front-man Andrew Mitchell explains;

“For many years Dundee’s long and illustrious, if somewhat tumultuous, past has been the source of much debate and deliberation in both song and literature. While ‘The Fathom Line’ continues that tradition, weaving through tragedy and triumph of the history that hangs in the air through the city by the Silvery Tay, it observes and celebrates the plight of the underdog.”

‘The Fathom Line’ is available from all major download providers from Sunday 30th March 2014 on Armellodie Records.
 

ARM42
Released: Monday 10th March 2014
CD / LP / DL 

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Pierre Cristofari, Olivier Cancellieri and Nicolas Faou formed Appletop in Hyères, France in 2008. Since then they’ve released a clutch of EPs in their native land, and a well-received debut album, The City Can Wait via Parisien label Le Son du Maquis/Harmonia Mundi in 2010.

Hereafter the band took to the winding roads of Europe, clocking in hundreds of shows and notching up tour supports with such indie-stalwarts as The Thermals, Wild Flag and The Horrors.

The first single from the album, ‘Twenty-Five’, (released in France on shiny clear vinyl courtesy of A Quick One Records) whetted the public's aural taste-buds and set the tone for the long-player you now have in your possession. Two years in the making, Brave Mountains draws on British and American alt-rock traditions. Ten lean cuts of appetising indie rock meat!

‘Burning Land’, ‘Johnny’s Theme’ and ‘Madonna in Love’ are the sort of songs you would want to end a summer festival with, punching-the-air with the orange sun setting in the background. Cristofari’s charmingly curious phrasing – singing in his second language after all – echoing out from the stage.

Elsewhere, songs like the sparse ‘Nikolai’ and the dreamy in-no-rush guitar lines of ‘Portland’ show the band at their most tender. Though there’s no need to approach with caution, we’re a million miles away from emo-melodrama. There is minimal doom and gloom; instead the listener is treated to a warm and affecting scruffy pop conscious.

“It’s the same old story, told a hundred times” sings Cristofari on enticing opener, ‘Headstrong’. And maybe it is, but Appletop succeed by digging under the surface of their beloved idols – think Sebadoh, Pavement, Teenage Fanclub –  and hit you warm in the gut with fuzzed up guitars, pared back production values and stick-to-your-ribs melodies.

ARM41
Released: Monday 2nd December 2013
CD / LP / DL

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Third (and sadly final) studio album from “Glasgow’s most deliriously imaginative trio” (The List).

If you are one of those avid music lovers that feel so inclined to fit everything you hear into a neat little musical box, (possibly employing the use of hierarchical tree charts and Venn diagrams to find the exact classification of a band’s chosen genre), then Super Adventure Club may fry your brain. With brusque self-confidence and stupendous musical chops Super Adventure Club stand proudly in the revolutionary vanguard of contemporary experimental music. Into the breach they go, taking with them an ever-present sense of humour and sense of the absurd.

Since their conception in 2007, Super Adventure Club have toured their blistering live show from Inverness to Cork to Bordeaux, and many hotspots in between. The band is regularly joined onstage by the horse-headed Johny B (this is not a joke - the man really has a horse’s head) whose help, or hindrance, has ensured that with a clutch of well received shows and the release of two critically acclaimed albums (2009s Chalk Horror! and 2010s Avoid Zombies) the band have garnered a cult following all over the UK and into Europe.

"On their previous album, Super Adventure Club recommended avoiding zombies; now, alas, they’ve become one, with Straight From The Dick arriving posthumously following the trio’s decision to separate earlier in the year. But like a late reel hand grab from the grave, their third album delivers one final (and wholly enjoyable) shock to the system, ensuring that, should the hiatus prove definite, their twisted noise will be sorely missed. 4/5" - The Skinny

Straight From The Dick sees the triumvirate – Bruce Wallace, Mandy Clarke and Neil Warrack – maintain their zen-like focus on memorable hooks and surrealist lyrical imagery. From loungey hip-swinging tales of culture shock (‘Hablo Espanol’), freakish ear-drum workouts (‘Fuck The Pop’, ‘9 Times’), Zappa-esque spaz-jazz (‘Dog With Two Dicks)’, and giddy brain-melting wrong-pop (‘Turns Out My Brain Was My Other Brain’), the band parley with idiosyncratic pop, and parade their ninja-jazz-rock mojo with glee.

On album centrepiece, ‘Between a Sock and a Hard Place’, Wallace sings about people who have fallen in love with things that are not human. Selvi Kumar dedicated his life to a dog after killing another dog. Lee Jin married a pillow of an anime character. Eija-Riitta Berliner-Mauer, 54, whose surname means Berlin Wall in German, wed the concrete structure in 1979 after being diagnosed with a condition called Objectum Sexuality. This song is a perfect example of not only the band’s contagious and slightly deranged sense of humour, but also their enviable ability to pen a tune.

"…a tight collection of wondrously daft songs anchored by the kind of intricate math-rock rigour which normally comes with compulsory po-face. Songs about dogs with double appendages and men falling in love with pillows sit comfortably alongside methodical musicianship – a band worth celebrating 4/5". - The List

A celebratory record, tinged with sadness as Wallace sings on finale ‘Bossa Novice’, ”If I’d done half the things I’d planned to have done, there’d be a lot more done, and it wouldn’t make a difference to anyone.” A fitting sentiment, as on the eighth of August this year, Super Adventure Club played their final show to a sell-out crowd of sweaty devotees in their hometown of Glasgow. With Straight From The Dick the band is cementing their status - North of the border at least – as one of the most innovative and exciting bands to come from our shores. Being a posthumous release, Straight From The Dick is set to shroud the band in its own enigma. Here’s to the legacy!

"Having called time on their musical endeavours, at least in this guise, back in August, the group have managed to sign off in fine style and can rightly look back on the records and live shows of the last five years with a deserved sense of achievement. Hopefully their complex song structures, boundless energy and vitriol won’t be missing from the scene for too long." - Muso’s Guide

ARM40
Released: Monday 21st October 2013
CD / DL

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Saint Max is Missing and the Fanatics are Dead is the debut album from Saint Max and the Fanatics released on Monday 21st October 2013.

An adolescence spent in the depths of the South West Scottish countryside has left this particular prophet with countless songbooks bulging with wry observation, unfettered passion and pop melodies which refuse to be shaken off.  The sound is undeniably contemporary, with sprinklings of artful nostalgia.

Recorded at Glasgow’s all-analogue Green Door Studio only a few months after their formation in 2012, the self-released debut EP Saint Max and the Fanatics won support from luminaries including Steve Lamacq, Jim Gellatly and Vic Galloway (who included the band on his list of 25 bands for 2013). Landing unsolicited in our inbox, the EP immediately pricked the ears of Armellodie Records and we snapped up the young poet for a full-length player.

Returning to Green Door, Saint Max is Missing and the Fanatics are Dead was recorded by Emily MacLaren and Stuart Evans (Optimo, Domino, Creeping Bent).  Saint Max’s sound is born to an eclectic family of influences, harking back to artists as varied as Bowie, Madness and Morrissey. It is bound together, however, by a razor sharp delivery which simply cannot be ignored.

The rhythmic frenzy of album opener ‘Soul Surrender’ melds mariachi horns with molten adolescent angst, whilst the ruckus wails, screeches and yodels of ‘Afraid of Love’, march to the beat of sexual frustration. The defiant chorus line "Don't hold me down!" screams with the vital energy of youth, whilst paying homage to all species of angular pop music.

A cynical meditation on modern living, ‘A Life Worth Living’ is a catchy pop gem with a profound internal commentary. The Fanatics create the storm with angular guitar, trumpet and trombone.  In the eye of the storm stands Saint Max, underpinned by an airtight rhythm section there is no confusion in the chaos they create.

Having performed at a masked ball in a 14th century castle, a medieval fort (for the Doune the Rabbit Hole Festival), and flat parties up and down the country, The Fanatics have shown their brand of ADHD-Pop can be as surreal as it is accessible.

The punchy horn chops and rhythmic execution are ever a match for Saint Max’s lyrical finesse.  ‘Let ‘Em Have It Sunshine’, ‘Glasgow’, ‘Conduit’, and ‘T-Shirt’ hit the spot time and again like shots of musical serotonin.

Displaying a capacity in his songwriting for conveying genuine depth, ‘Sadsong’ and ‘She Sings a Lovely Lullaby’ provide the inevitable comedown to the frenetic mania of the preceding tracks; the former a mournful lament on unrequited romance, the latter, as wistful as it is wilful, an almost anthemic climax to an insidiously catchy album.

The kiss-off here is ‘Book Review’. A lilting critique of modern values, the band in an ephemeral, stripped back arrangement. It all serves as a pensive conclusion to an emotionally charged debut album: Saint Max - musing to an offbeat-groove.

ARM39
Released: Monday 7th October 2013
CD / DL

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Gendres is the second full-length album from Brighton’s indie super-hero fraternity, The Pure Conjecture.

The album was released on CD in die-cut sleeves. Limited to 100 copies.

The Pure Conjecture is fronted by the eloquent Matt Eaton – an award winning vintner from the west country - backed by an impressive squadron of musical sharp-shooters including Martin Noble (British Sea Power), Thomas and Alex White (Electric Soft Parade / Brakes), Johny Lamb (Thirty Pounds Of Bone), Marc Beatty (Brakes / The Tenderfoot), Darren Moon (The Tenderfoot), Steve Grainger (nada / Elevator Suite), Julian Baker (Notable Saxophonist) and rogue Scotsman Andrew Mitchell (The Hazey Janes).

In 2012 the band released their debut album, Courgettes, a none-more-trad soul record adorned with a picture of shrink-wrapped vegetables. It fused an arsenal of expensive chords with sly self-deprecation and lyrical left-turns.  With a focus on keeping it simple, the songs were held together by Matt Eaton's leathery timbre – it was lush.

Gendres largely sticks to this modus operandi. In Eaton's mind the year is 1973, the locus Philadelphia. Thus Gendres twinkles in the romantic glow of warm vibraphones, muted trumpets and sublime vocal harmonies.

That said, album opener, ‘Roadworks on Memory Lane’ sees the band employ wide-screen Big Star guitars with Eaton’s deadpan delivery leaving one unsure whether to laugh or cry as he sings;

“I was born at seven minutes past seven o'clock, on the seventh day of July, Nineteen seventy-seven / I weighed seven pounds, seven ounces, cos I was seven days premature / I spent the first seven hours of my life in an incubator”  

Followed by the hooky Dick Dale doting, ‘Surfin’ Sunset’, the poignant ‘Opinion Fatigue’, then the lounge-stylings of ‘Mr. Tong’, it’s clear The Pure Conjecture have a charming individuality which is both at odds with and wholly impervious to current musical trends.

Eaton’s voice compliments the introspective, melancholic and reflective nature of much of the material. Weighty songs like ‘Dictators’ wouldn't be the same without the vulnerable lived-in quality that his voice suffuses the words with.

‘I Just Want You To Love Me’ is about the simple pleasure of experiencing affection, whereas ‘Midnight Dancing’ addresses the experience of confused emotions aroused by confusing music – a rather more abstract pleasure for the songwriter.

Album closer, ‘Thought I’d Get Along With You’ is a sweet reminder that although the wonders of physical existence are gradually migrating towards the removed terrain of the Internet, a lot of the more worthwhile aspects of life will probably never change. Co-writer Martin Noble believes this song to be “the sound of i-date heartache” or as Darren Moon (the other co-writer) puts it “a tender examination of the alienating effects of technology when it acts as the primary mediator for human interaction”.

There is a concern that with today’s freedom to self-publish, the value in the art may have been degraded to near worthlessness by social media. The songs on Gendres are primarily concerned with finding a place in the constantly flowing passage of time, trying to comfortably marry personal emotional truths to a socio-political landscape littered with pithy, convenient sound-bites.

Reflected against this landscape, every shameless falsetto and soft-soul lament that Gendres has to offer is a most welcome one.

ARM38
Released: Monday 12th August 2013
LP / DL

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Sounds Mean is the second full-length album from Sheffield’s best kept secret, Kill The Captains.

Leon Carter (Vocals, Guitar), Ric Booth (Guitar, Vocals), Giles Robinson (Bass) and Paul Collins (Drums) are the honourable Captains. Sounds Mean sees the band ramp up their brand of new-wave pop and suspense-filled rock’n’roll with shout-along choruses, fizzing dual-guitars and propulsive rhythmic skulduggery.

Following on from 2010’s well received debut (Fun Anxiety), on Sounds Mean the band take to exploring such themes as dance floor puppet masters, sado-masochistic rumpy pumpy, corporate greed and - shrouded in geo-political metaphor - love.

The album bursts opens with a bee in its bonnet. Picture a glutinous rich man in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Let's say he’s an investment banker (they're evil aren't they?) stuffing his face on course after course of perfectly sculpted pan-continental cuisine.  He’s picking the bits caught in his teeth with the frail bones of a pensioner who lost their life savings as a result of the financial collapse he created. Throw in a smattering of Dick Dale and a pinch of Marr - that's ‘Umami’.

Hot on its heels is ‘Refutenic’, the album’s meanest slice of thrumming basslines, rumbling drums, thrashing guitars and spat out prose. There's a new guy in town, and Kill the Captains don't like the cut of his jib. Not one bit. Despite what everyone else thinks about this silver-tongued cavalier, the Captains won't be having any of his nonsense.

Fusing indie-laced XTC-ness with chugging krautrock-esque goodness, ‘The Trial’, demonstrates the band’s imaginative, left of centre intelligence and enviable way with a tune. Leon Carter wryly announcing;

“Your prescription is ready make your way to the waiting room. Your feedback is valuable we'll swipe your loyalty card.  It was tested on animals, with near matching DNA.  If you have a reaction, use the survey to have your say. See you next time, enjoy your medicine, it will cure your contempt if you do what you're told.”

A satirical musing on conveyor-belt consumerism, easily digestible products channelled straight to the mouths of sloth-minded consumers. Unchanging bass and driving drums reflect the relentlessness of the machine.

Progressive in nature, ‘Share the Load’ blends Leon Carter’s distinctive and piercing vocals with melodic guitar-lines to create a real sense of tension, before exploding with duelling guitars and spine-tingling bass lines. Ambiguous in its lyrics, it can be read as a devastating power struggle between superpowers, or as a love-song cloaked in a geo-political metaphor. Either way, the outcome is mutually assured destruction.

The album’s lead single, ‘Disco Nazi’, is a bass-driven stomper with an insistent beat that will get even the rhythmically challenged amongst us grooving. Sometimes whatever you do is never quite enough to satisfy the dance floor puppet masters, with their dance-floor dictatorships, sending out dictats to a room full of bodies who would happily dance without the extra encouragement.  As the beats pump and the grooves swell, the tail grows like a Nokia snake chomping an unending supply of pixels.

Elsewhere, ‘The Taking Of’ - a song about loss - provides the album with its most affecting piece - down-tempo and world weary.

‘Nowbiter’, however pummels home a fierce excursion in schizoid jangling power pop with svelte, progressive guitars married to a buzzing bass line.

Ending the album on a high note, ‘Safety Words’ puts the ‘’umph’ into triumph with a sensitive musing on the confusing politics of lusty, sado-masochistic rumpy-pumpy. Kill the Captains could never say no to the noose – so long as it’s not tied too tight!

Addictive and enthralling, Sounds Mean is the perfect accompaniment whatever your mood, whatever your circumstance. 

ARM37
Released: Monday 3rd June 2013
CD / DL

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Lugs at the ready? Brain initiated? Let’s get a sweat on…

Scotland’s Gastric Band is not for the faint-hearted and we here at Armellodie Records are proud release their debut album, Party Feel on Monday 3rd June 2013. Get wise to this serious noise dear fellows and fellettes.

Party Feel is joyfully peculiar, and Gastric Band is set to turn the world on its ear. The song-writing is dynamic, and the music is rich and diverse. Even at its dirtiest, heaviest points the hooks are memorable and the music is abundant with melody.

Bruce Wallace (Guitar, Synth, Loops), Cameron Cullen (Guitar, Samples, Keys, Loops), Jack Weir (Guitar) and Ross MacPherson (Drums, Percussion) formed Gastric Band in Edinburgh at the beginning of 2011. Bruce just happens to be the founding member of similarly off-kilter spazz-jazz rockers Super Adventure Club.

That four-piece soon blossomed into five with the addition of Ricki Thomson (Drums, Percussion) joining in 2012.

Citing the likes of Steve Reich, Robert Fripp, and Bill Bruford as influences, Gastric Band channel the taboo-breaking spirits of Frank Zappa and Karlheinz Stockhausen into their music.  There's no time to get settled, no time to relax and no time to wonder what it all means as melody butts heads with rhythm through unexpected arrangements.

Opening with the vaguely lounge-core noodlings of ‘It’s Good But It’s Not Right’, jouncing from B52s/Talking Heads post-punk guitar to electro pop to avant-rock within the confines of six minutes. Disruptive, challenging, unhinged? Undoubtedly.

‘Dustin Binman’ sees the quintet launch forth a gut-tightening onslaught of progrock-chamberjazz-electronica that paints a mind vision of Nels Cline and Autechre jamming soundtracks to futuristic underwater movies. It makes for one hell of an exciting listen, set to fry your mind faster than you can say, “ring modulation”.

‘Brad Shitt’ and ‘Sexy Grandad’ wreak more aural havoc and the tech-heads out there are sure to be floored by the blistering, top-shelf guitar work. Free-jazz aficionados and jam-band acolytes will be drawn in by the free-form sonic exploration. These tracks are intense, original, and anarchic with a bloody-minded coherence of purpose.

Album closer, ‘Under a Glass Table’ is the most subtle song, and perhaps the album’s pièce de résistance, with effortless innovation and musical destruction sharing the stage with childlike wonder at the oddness of the world.

Gastric Band is operating with one freakish mind, like a drug-addled 5-headed Cerberus of rock and roll. The five schizophrenic grooves that make up Party Feel provide a lasting warped cuddliness, an intoxicating and fearful mix of intricacy, subtlety, brutality, flippancy, and seriousness. Each song burrows its way under your skin and fires electrical impulses down the axons of your nervous system.

You will surrender. You will submit. You will shake your whole, entire body.

ARM36
Released: Monday 6th May 2013
CD / DL

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I Cannot Sing You Here, But For Songs Of Where is the third full-length album from Thirty Pounds Of Bone.

The record sees songwriter Johny Lamb further explore his continuing theme of place. Split into four separate locations; (past place, the place of heritage, present place and the in between), the record aims to articulate experiences of itinerancy and second-generation migrancy.

Throughout these songs, Johny adopts, appropriates and abuses forms of traditional music, with the hybridity that has previously gained him much praise from critics.

His take on a Veesik (a lost form of Shetland song), backed by a drone built from accordion and the machines used by boat builders (of Hays Dock in Lerwick), exemplifies this.

‘Mother This Land Won’t Hold Me’, begins as an unaccompanied Sean Nós Ballad that gradually abstracts to a dense, distortion-led climax.

Elsewhere we find him buckling under the relentless momentum of touring in ‘The Streets I Staggered Down’, with no end in sight, and nowhere meaningful to go back to when the end finally comes. In ‘The Snow in Kiel’, the flatlands of Western Europe flash past him as he goes from gig to gig, never quite catching up with himself.

Johny makes no claim on any of these territories, admitting his spurious involvement with each as the songs progress. In the true account of attempting to visit his mother’s childhood home in ‘The Ballad of Cootehill’, only to find it long since demolished, he sings, ‘But I am not the man to say that we are from Cootehill.’ This song furthers the sense of dislocation in the familiar folksong theme of Irish migration, from a sense of missing home, to the sense of never having seen it in the first place.

The album closes with ‘The Wolf on the Shelf’, set against the sound of a storm beating against the static caravan Johny lives and works in. This is a love song for home, which Lamb has decided is a state brought about by a proximity to cherished possessions, regardless of where they happen to be.

I Cannot Sing You Here, But For Songs of Where features several guests including Darren Hayman (Hefner), Al Nero and Scott Maple (Le Reno Amps), Jen Macro (Something Beginning With L), Irish box player Seamus Harahan, and Laurence Collyer (Diamond Family Archive). Thirty Pounds of Bone’s song-writing reflects Johny’s opinion that the folk song must change for its time, and his idea that the unreconstructed performance of heritage is at root, only that; an empty gesture towards a past that belongs to no one living.  All of the music that weaves through his life is allowed entry into his songs, and the result owes as much to various trends in popular music as it does to folk, giving him a sound that is at once highly contemporary and trans-historical.

“A Virgin train, then a bus to the Airport, the branded jet across the Irish Sea to the third home made studio of the week, as I tie down the loose and sparse collection of musicians I need to help me make these recordings. Reading on the train takes the form of hysterical dystopian Marxism, and violent rhetoric concerning postmodernism. How strong the disagreements of theorists as the trees and rivers remain, how furious the dialogical yells as the cliffs and hills I pass stand unswayed by any argument.

I lock eyes with an uncaring crow at Newton Abbot and neither he nor the town are worried about the great sadness of late capitalism. But the debris is everywhere. And there I am, so embedded in both worlds, the landscape of woodland and rock, of arable crop and marsh, and too the motorways and hyper-markets, I play gigs understanding their role in the selling of physical and digital product. I photograph a pastoral scene on a smart phone adding a digital filter that makes the image appear to be old and analogue. Embedded in, but not wholly a part of. How could anyone be?

I know more people in the city I am going to, where I have never made any kind of home, than I do in the village I live in. That seems strange to me. I have known only one person who lived and died in the place they were born. The people I know who are the most committed verbal Marxists, are the most successful networkers and sellers of cultural artefacts. We are surrounded by paradox, contradiction and isolation, but this is not new or frightening, but simply the culture in which I have grown up.

That artworks should be full of self-reference, mockery, irony, sarcasm is hardly surprising. I wonder if the disparate band of musicians playing in different rooms at different times might constitute some idea of collective or community, even a folk? I consider that the answers must lie somewhere between reconciling philosophy on a mountain and buying donuts in a Tesco metro.” - Johny Lamb, Oct 2011

ARM35
Released: Monday 4th February 2013
CD / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to introduce Scotland’s Galoshins with not one, but two brain-popping EPs for your aural pleasure.

This is EP2 released on the same day as EP1. Both EPs were released on separate vinyl-replica CDs in digipacks. Limited to 50 copies each.

Surely the finest trio of grizzly-cheeked rockers ever to roll their amps out of Gourock, Inverclyde. Mark Macphail (vocal/keys), James Eyland (vocals/guitar) and Ruraidh MacLeod (drums) are the impenetrable, Galoshins.

Together with Iain Macduff - unofficial fourth member and studio guru – the band has been following their own esoteric and single-minded path since their formation in 2009.

With their furiously buoyant whirlwind of psych, prog, freakbeat, aggro-pop, whatever-it-is, the band originally come to the attention of Armellodie Records in 2010 and were invited to perform at the label’s own ‘Barmellodie’ monthly residency club night in Glasgow. The ball was set in motion for Armellodie to release this double-whammy of EPs, documenting 11 of the group’s sonic adventures to date.

Recorded as separate entities in July 2011 and April 2012, EP1 and EP2 complement each other, whilst documenting the band’s many muso-tentacles.

Moving from wonderfully jarring dischordia to sublime poppiness - sometimes in the same song - Macphail’s whirring organ and stream of lyrical musings pepper the EPs like slippery eels, just eluding you but leaving traces of goo in your ears.

With Eyland’s spiky guitars and MacLeod’s bombastic drum-flurries, Galoshins can be a feral proposition. Yet no matter how frenzied or hectic things appear, each and every song is besieged with hooks so that even the most casual listener can keep swinging.

ARM34
Released: Monday 4th February 2013
CD / DL

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Armellodie Records is proud to introduce Scotland’s Galoshins with not one, but two brain-popping EPs for your aural pleasure.

This is EP1 released on the same day as EP2. Both EPs were released on separate vinyl-replica CDs in digipacks. Limited to 50 copies each.

Surely the finest trio of grizzly-cheeked rockers ever to roll their amps out of Gourock, Inverclyde. Mark Macphail (vocal/keys), James Eyland (vocals/guitar) and Ruraidh MacLeod (drums) are the impenetrable, Galoshins.

Together with Iain Macduff - unofficial fourth member and studio guru – the band has been following their own esoteric and single-minded path since their formation in 2009.

With their furiously buoyant whirlwind of psych, prog, freakbeat, aggro-pop, whatever-it-is, the band originally come to the attention of Armellodie Records in 2010 and were invited to perform at the label’s own ‘Barmellodie’ monthly residency club night in Glasgow. The ball was set in motion for Armellodie to release this double-whammy of EPs, documenting 11 of the group’s sonic adventures to date.

Recorded as separate entities in July 2011 and April 2012, EP1 and EP2 complement each other, whilst documenting the band’s many muso-tentacles.

Moving from wonderfully jarring dischordia to sublime poppiness - sometimes in the same song - Macphail’s whirring organ and stream of lyrical musings pepper the EPs like slippery eels, just eluding you but leaving traces of goo in your ears.

Whether he’s demonstrating the art of manliness as on ‘The 4th Chord’ (“What you been saying about ma burd!?”), or inquisitively attempting to re-assure the listener as on ‘Mink’ (“It seems to me like we’re having a good time?”), there’s an off-beat charm to Macphail’s often undistinguishable shriek.

With Eyland’s spiky guitars and MacLeod’s bombastic drum-flurries, Galoshins can be a feral proposition. Yet no matter how frenzied or hectic things appear, each and every song is besieged with hooks so that even the most casual listener can keep swinging.

ARM33
Released: Monday 28th January 2013
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The Road To Ugly is the second full-length album by Cuddly Shark. Initial copies of the album came with limited edition pocket mirrors so you could pop your plooks and/or apply your lippy on the move .

Cuddly Shark encapsulate a purist “plug in and play” ethos with a touch of ice cold rock’n’roll. Idiosyncratic lyricism and odd anti-melodies combine with foot down, pedal-to-the-metal performances.

Born and bred in the bonnie Highlands of Scotland, the band consists of Colin Reid on guitar and vocals, Jason Sinclair on drums and Ruth Forsyth on bass guitar and vocals.

In 2007 the band found themselves magnetically drawn to the rain-soaked musical hotspot that is Glasgow to hone their sound. In 2009 their eponymous debut album was met with a host of acclaim from the likes of Artrocker, BBC Radio 1 (Vic Galloway’s ‘Album of the Month’), and even celebrity endorsement from Kevin McKidd (Trainspotting, Grey’s Anatomy). 

Following on from October’s Body Mass Index EP, the band's second album The Road To Ugly brims with punk attitude and spills over with melodic brilliance.

From the opening salvo of ‘SPMG’ and ‘Overpriced’, complete with headlong thrashy guitars, low slung bass and shouty vocals shot through with pugnacious humour, Cuddly Shark reaffirm that they will never have an ounce of pretentious hip- fat on them.

‘Broken Arm’ is rock solid and swaggeringly cool; the band prove they have more hooks than a tackle-box with recent single, ‘Body Mass Index’ and the hillbilly punk of ‘Doodlebug’. Then there’s the Pixies-like donkey kick of ‘My iPod Made Me Do It’, and the feverish growler ‘Pull The Finger Out’, which is anarchic and free spirited.

In the sweet half hour experience that is The Road To Ugly, the band also serenade us with string-laden Celtic clatter (‘Fiddley Dee’), European-folky flair (‘The Devil In You’), falsetto-pop (‘Trigger Happy’), and country-tinged stompin’ (‘Out of Sight, Out Of Mind’).  The Shark bring proceedings to a close with the heart-on-sleeve balladry of ‘Local Hero’.

Effortlessly (un)cool, chock-full of deadpan lyrical quips, manic shrieking, offbeat chug-a-lug riffing, melodic oomph and much more, The Road To Ugly is a stupendous journey and definitely worth the trip, time and time again.

ARM32
Released: Monday 2nd December 2012
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The Furious Sound is the second full-length album by The Douglas Firs, loosely based around the East Lothian witch trials of 1590.

Seventy persons, mainly women, were tortured, tried and burned for their supposed involvement in witchcraft.

The album was released on CD and limited edition "creeptapes". Cassette tapes packaged in a handmade case, made from branches from Hawkhill wood - thanks to HUSERE GRAV's "SEPARATIONS".

The record became an investigation into outsiders, madness, extreme internal states, physical degradation and the brevity of human life. Many parts of the record were improvised, inspired by the locations used. No fortuitous sounds leaking onto the tracks were excluded.

"Sometimes I ain't so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he ain't. Sometimes I think none of us are pure crazy and ain't none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it." – Faulkner

"This Great Generation", "Fortress", "Black Forest", "The Possessed", "Backroads" and "Eulogy" were all recorded in South Leith Church, the parish of David Lindsay, who led the witch hunt on behalf of James I & IV.

"Devils" was recorded in the church at Old Kirk Green, North Berwick, from where the witches practised their sermons. It was also recorded from within the lower dungeons at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian where, in the latter days of religious persecution on those who performed witchcraft, women met for a similar purpose.

"Vastations" was recorded outdoors at Hawkhill Wood, Craigmillar, at night, at twilight.

"Monument" and "Apologia" were recorded outdoors in Blackford Hill forest.

The Douglas Firs live, work and play in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Furious Sound is their second record following last year’s Happy as a Windless Flag. It was released on CD, cassette and download on Monday 10th December 2012.

"The eerie choral arrangements and sparse instrumentation conjure up images of misty graveyards and shadowy spirituals, while the madrigal vocal styling is shaped from the Grizzly Bear blueprint, and sounds like something conceived and nurtured in the shadow of the Catskill Mountains rather than the Pentlands." - The Scotsman

ARM31
Released: Monday 5th November 2012
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Winter Sun is the debut album from Trapped Mice.

Scurrying in between the cracks of Edinburgh’s genteel high society and the stink of its sordid underbelly are Trapped Mice. A five piece made up of Lucie Miller, Barry Jackson, David Friend, Brian Pokora and front-man Ian Tilling.

Together they have crafted Winter Sun in living rooms and bedrooms across Scotland’s capital. A debut album steeped in the chilly themes of longing, confusion, and a creeping sense of dread at the slow march of “progress”, all tied up in one big melancholic noose.

From the opening accordion driven motif of ‘An Ending’ and into the brazen ‘Cancel Shift’, the songs on Winter Sun take in real life events and divine narrative concerning relationships, integrity and the good fight for artistic credibility.

There’s a sense of a slightly knowing smirk behind some of the tried-and-tested themes of the album, namely heartbreak and abandonment. Be it on the wonderfully exposed ‘Dance While Winter Cries’ or the masterful, ‘Mona Lisa’, it’s hard not to be drawn in by Ian Tilling’s heartfelt lyrical muses, each song unwinding with perfect precision as a prose poem, fantastic song-craft and bared-soul performance.

With elements of the rustic tones of Okkervil River, the humour of Morrissey and the angst of Bright Eyes, this album should appeal to anybody who loves powerful songs performed with abandon. The characters are illuminating, as on ‘Hermit Point’, inspired by a man in the North of Scotland who refused to sell his house to Donald Trump to make way for his coastal leisure development. He is imagined as an old man, in a crumbling cottage by the sea, pondering what may have happened had he sold up. In ‘Quiet Place’, a middle-aged couple embark on a sordid voyage of sexual rediscovery set to some kind of scuzzy avant-folk accompaniment.

As the album plays on, it becomes increasingly obvious that Winter Sun is a glorious anthology of short stories, each one memorable, meaningful and double-edged - that is, an occasionally rusty, serrated edge. When asked about ‘Cameraman’, Tilling drolly replies, “Yeah! A spoken word track with more death and misery! Fuck it, why not?”

At its most stirring on the likes of ‘Night of Broken Glass’ and album kiss-off ‘Demons’, Winter Sun is wistful, poetic, and intelligent, There is nothing clichéd or fake. It is direct from the heart, no bullshit. 'Tis a beautiful creation, but fragile; so tip-toe towards it, lest it shatters.

ARM30
Released: Monday 8th October 2012
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Cuddly Shark encapsulate a purist “plug in and play” ethos with a touch of ice cold rock’n’roll. Idiosyncratic lyricism and odd anti-melodies combined with foot down pedal-to-the-metal performances. 

The band consists of two boys and one girl, Colin Reid on guitar and vocals, Jason Sinclair on drums and vocals and Ruth Forsyth on bass guitar.

The Body Mass Index EP is the first new material from the band since said album, and continues to show the trio brimming with punk attitude and spilling over with melodic brilliance. Reaffirming that they will never have an ounce of pretentious hip- fat on them. The bands forthcoming album, The Road To Ugly is due for release in January next year.

Their live shows have seen comparisons made to Husker Du, Minor Threat, Ween, Fugazi and Weezer. Yet Cuddly Shark are unmistakably their own entity, a blistering romp of rock’n’roll carnage firing as loud as they can from a post-rock cannon.

ARM29
Released: Monday 9th July 2012.
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Courgettes is the debut album from The Pure Conjecture released on Monday 9th July 2012.

Fusing an arsenal of expensive chords with sly self-deprecation and unpredictable lyrical left-turns, The Pure Conjecture posses a charming individuality which is both at odds with and wholly impervious to current musical trends. There are not many groups - in the UK, at least - genuinely mining the same seam that gave us Solomon Burke's 'Don't Give Up On Me', and the Daptone label, for instance.

A 10-piece ensemble, The Pure Conjecture is fronted by the eloquent Matt Eaton – an award winning vintner from the west country - with an impressive squadron of musical sharp-shooters including Martin Noble (British Sea Power), Thomas and Alex White (Electric Soft Parade / Brakes), Andrew Mitchell (The Hazey Janes), Johny Lamb (Thirty Pounds Of Bone), Marc Beatty (Brakes / The Tenderfoot), Darren Moon (The Tenderfoot), Steve Grainger (nada / Elevator Suite) and Julian Baker (Notable Saxophonist). 

Eaton decided that, in the manner that many 'classic' sessions were committed to tape, the lush orchestral soul of his original demos should be captured as live recording performances in the studio. After a brief rehearsal the band decamped to Kemptown's Metway Studios in Brighton with Matthew Twaites (Restlesslist / Clowns) at the desk, cutting in two days the nine songs that make up Courgettes.

Candid but full of humour and perspective, the curiously named opener, ‘The Power Of The Notes Is Very Good’ concerns the responsibility that comes with self-publishing. The subject finds that as they engage with the world with an ever-decreasing recklessness, the motivation to communicate with the world in abstract terms is proportionately lessened. He or she grows reclusive, uninspired and ultimately disillusioned as they begin to realise that it's maybe enough to simply list the details of what they've had for breakfast on a social networking site. Indeed, the power of the notes is “very good”, flaunting the benefits of execution from a band that know when to show restraint and control, rather than to push their skill under your nose. Each member seeming to understand they are a piece of the puzzle.

“Broadly speaking, it seems increasingly obvious to me that the key to becoming a great player lies not in perfecting your own art, but finding your place in an ensemble and understanding instinctively the shifting dynamics within that. The musicians that make up The Pure Conjecture play in myriad different bands and projects, most of whom you'll have at least heard of, but what really shines through is the feeling that all that playing, all that experience, was simply prologue to these recordings.” – Thomas White

Displaying their soul-pop sensibilities on the track ‘The Throat’ - a song about the energy you waste grasping for excuses because the ultimate over-arching truth is too difficult to confront - there is a genuine sense of carefree exuberance and melodic chemistry. The guitars are nothing short of brilliant, there is a classic bass-line Donald "Duck" Dunn from Booker T and the MGs would be proud of. Eaton’s vocals – drolly mixing poignancy with levity - run right through the centre of the mix (“Didn’t think I owed you anything, turns out that I owe you quite a lot. I lied and told you I’d make time for you, can I pay you back in installments?”).

Elsewhere, ‘The Tumbler That Never Ran Out’ plays out like a dandelion that closes up at night and doesn’t open up its flower until mid-morning.  The understated musicianship leaves plenty of space for Eaton to wax nostalgic (“Don’t act like you’re lost, we’re none of us angels - or we ain’t been thus far, so show up and smile like you’ve been here all along”) before blossoming with swooning harmonies. Sentimental it may be, but it’s never in danger of becoming mired in sap.

Then there’s the marathon tracks - ‘This Car Of Mine’ with its classy musicianship and emotive power, and ‘All The Cherries Are Gone’, which brims with golden-honey guitars and lushly layered harmonies.  This track details the joyless stripping of cherries from a neighbour’s tree by local blackbirds in only two days.

The Pure Conjecture’s real strength is in the sincerity of Matt Eaton’s songs, sincere like those beautiful soft rock records of the seventies and eighties.  You know, the ones you're supposed to call a "guilty pleasure" as dictated by some joyless muso-hipster that can’t enjoy a Bee Gees record without doing it ironically.  The Todd Rundgren-esque ‘1st Time I Saw U’ and the smooth, infectious ‘Knock Three Times’ are both sublime and compelling, shamelessly dripping with falsetto backing vocals, vibraphones, saxophones and cornets, bells and handclaps. 

It’s with this spirit of sincerity that the band effortlessly covers Hall & Oates’, ‘Go Solo’.  It fits so seamlessly into the sequence that if you weren’t to know it, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a Pure Conjecture original. The same can be said for the band’s glorious version of ‘What’s Your Sign, Girl?’, a relatively obscure 'soft-soul' single originally recorded by Danny Pearson and produced by Barry White in 1978.  This song was more recently re-worked by Alex Chilton on his 1995 album A Man Called Destruction. The idea that the band is reaching out towards the soul music styles of Philadelphia is implicit and abundantly rewarding.

The point here is that as with some of the world’s most admired musicians and song-writers, a big heart beats beneath it all. The Pure Conjecture have crafted a collection that is often funny, often poignant, and beautiful. The Pure Conjecture display a limitless love for the human condition, with all its fantastic complexity and simplicity. 

Influences that are neither openly discussed nor slavishly embraced may be at play here, but on a listen to Courgettes we're sure you'll agree that the Pure Conjecture is the panacea to cynicism in a serious world. 

ARM28
Released: Monday 19th March 2012
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Born and raised in the old walled city on the banks of the River Foyle, Conor Mason has been brought up swimming in musical heritage with both his parents heavily involved in local choirs and music jamborees in his beloved hometown of Derry, N. Ireland.

“My da ran a choir (as his father did before him) and they used to rehearse in our home, my ma sang in the choir too and I used to listen in from the next room. Then around the age of 8, after my parents heard me playing by ear the music of an Irish mass my da had written, they dutifully sent me off for classical piano lessons. They were both music lovers, to the extent that even the small boat my da would take me and my brothers out fishing in was called ‘Iolanthe’, named after the Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.”

Standstill is in fact the third album from the Irish songwriter, with two previous offerings, Let It Unfold (2007) and When It’s Over (2009) suitably home-recorded and self-distributed freely through cyberspace, earning Mason a solid reputation in his native land with a host of television and radio support from BBC Northern Ireland. Standstill retains the mellow, home-grown, quality perfected on those records albeit with some new found scope, inherently familiar whilst always remaining fresh and extrinsic.

When the opening bars of ‘Misunderstood’ complete with muted trumpets and unhurried acoustic strumming make way for the driving rhythm and rumbling piano, there’s a glowing immediacy before the first lines leave Mason’s lips, “made more sense, behind closed eyes, we were making plans and not taking advice”, sang in an unashamedly colourful yet seductively subtle brogue, the song boasts an alluring punch-the-air quality without ever sounding forced.

‘Lights’ reinforces this plaintive but hopeful raison d’être, and on ‘Words’, Mason’s gorgeously nuanced vocals, fragile but beautifully phrased, are particularly well served by the production, sitting right in the centre of the mix, every subtle inflection clear to the listener.

“Standstill represents the big race up the hill of self-actualisation, some get to the top no sweat and some get so far and plateau, others are constantly going back down to begin the climb again”

With a crisp vision of beautifully arranged dynamic landscapes Mason excels on the album’s sparse title track – an acoustic version of which is available on vinyl from Never Records - lending a clarity to which his vocal hooks are delivered with sweet sincerity. He floats over simple and compelling melodies, intricate instrumentation and whimsical, but never trite choruses with an ease bordering on ambivalence.

It’s with this gentility that Mason comes over so charmingly genuine as on the harmonica led, ‘Out of the Blue’, an ode in itself to sincerity and what it means to people (“somewhere between the head and the heartache sincerity hides / somewhere between the heart and the headache sincerity hides”), and the breezy pace of ‘5AM’ where swirling synthesizers enter into the fray and delicate brass enrich the sonic template, complimenting Mason’s mellifluous vocal.

Lush flowing melodies continue to take flight on the introspective lullaby-like ‘Sundown’ and the startling ‘Last To Leave’ with it’s minimal but wonderfully transcendent sound leaving plenty of room for a melody so natural sounding, it glides along with a touch of class.

Understated and refined Standstill doesn’t reveal all of its treasures at once, the songs augmented with tastefully layered instrumentation and playful, inconspicuous production. Unperturbed it plays out in no rush, possessing a relaxed, pastoral feel comparative to that of The Shins or Badly Drawn Boy’s finest work.

The final two songs, the lilting waltz of ‘In The Doorway’ and the contemplative ‘A Picture of Farewell’ reiterate the themes that permeate the record. That of the cyclic humdrum that hypnotises so many, and the niggling insecurities and attachments - be it a lover, a family, a town or a job - that so often thwart people from seizing the day. 

“All this stillness, and all this steadiness, has left you here alone”, he sings before offering up some hope with the closing lines, “now we set out in search of a sign / we set out in search of an explanation” as the gorgeous harmonica coda-line takes over, the record befits it’s moniker and comes to a standstill, downbeat but affectionately uplifting.

It may seem somewhat foolish to be peddling a press release for an artist that proclaims, “I don’t need a stamp of approval from anyone, you can take it or leave it”, as Conor Mason does on opener ‘Misunderstood’. Yet despite this strident declaration, the quality and warmth of Mason’s voice and the obvious care taken in his song-writing serve only as a counter to his claim, instead revealing a tunesmith with a collection of songs so tender that they could turn even the most cold hearted cynic into a hopeless, desperate romantic.

ARM27
Released: Monday 30th January 2012
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Amalgamation & Capital is the debut album by Chris Devotion & The Expectations released on Monday 30th January 2012.

Chris Devotion’s story is as wired as his music, and there’s a strong sense that there’s no such thing as glory for this man unless it is by the most riff-slaying of means. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Devotion cut his teeth executing riotous performances in such glamorous locations as a disused nunnery and a fetish club, garnering ringing endorsements along the way from his rock’n’roll peers (both John Reiss of Rocket From The Crypt fame and Titus Andronicus have openly declared their admiration).

At the turn of the decade Devotion employed the illustrious talents of The Expectations, a trio of suited-and-booted thrashers, to bolster the foundations of Devotion’s own high octane template. Please God, please Allah, please Ricardo Montalban, stand aside and let these men swagger!

All the showmanship and melodic charm is here from the off on the alluring, aural explosion of ‘A Modest Refusal’, the title being a nod to Jonathan Swift’s brilliant piece of satire A Modest Proposal.  Devotion intimately frames a dwindling relationship (“lift a veil and the kindness is gone”) before ramping up the charge with some political lampooning (“Let me tell you that you should know better, when they say that we’re in this together”), a not so subtle dig at the current Conservative led UK coalition government.

What follows is an immaculate run of sharp-shooting, deeply confessional pop songs: ‘I Don’t Need You Anymore’ prompts one to ponder if break-ups are supposed to leave such catchy devastation in their wake, ‘Tell the Girl’ is chock full of pop-fuelled efforts to turn pining into loving (“we’ve all been a little obsessed, it’s only going to get you depressed”), and ‘I Need Your Touch’ perfectly captures the protagonist's feelings of desire and insecurity ("I know that I act real tough but I need your touch”).  As the protagonist in question is Chris Devotion, he can't resist throwing in some good ol’ fashioned braggadocio for good measure (”You know that I’ve got the good stuff, I need your touch”).

We have the fired up and bitter ‘Our Mistake’, and the more contemplative punch of ‘The Girl is Leaving'.  This track proves a broken heart can be a great leveller with Devotion announcing;

“You came with full faith and credit, you don’t regret it do you? Cause now you’re indebted, you learned a lesson though the lesson was cruel”

The economic and the interpersonal are the crux around which Amalgamation & Capital has been written. 

Devotion elaborates - 

“Relationships (amalgamation) on a subconscious level are a matter of what we want from the other person (their capital); what they offer us. But in a more literal sense there is the economic meaning of these words and to a large degree I still believe that your life choice/options and how you relate to people is still influenced by class.  So even relationship-y stuff still has an economic/power aspect“

Recorded and mixed with producer Andy Miller (Sons & Daughters, Life Without Buildings, The Delgados) at his own Gargleblast Studios in just ten days, Amalgamation & Capital was tracked at a furious pace, bringing about a whirlwind of sweltering performances.  The Expectations perform with sheer intensity on ‘You’ve Got It All’, show power-chord prowess on pro-immigration thrasher ‘I’m Already Home’, country-punk’ stompin’ on a version of Woody Guthrie’s ‘I Ain’t Got No Home’, and get their drive-time swagger on for album centrepiece, ‘Blister’.

Ruminating on love, jealousy and betrayal, Devotion’s vocal theatrics tackle infidelity from all angles, from his burly croon on ‘It’s Not A Secret’, to his throat-rippin’ holler on ‘Pinhole Suit’.  He doesn’t mince his words on the nouveau yuppie targeting, ‘Surveying the Young Professionals’ (“I hope you die like dogs, golf courses littered with corpses, let’s salute the good life”) , while his mouth is stuffed full of cheek on the oh so innocent ‘Laura Was Right’ (“She said it was big!”)

Devotion explains -

“I love those ‘50s songs where they sing something that sounds innocuous but it’s actually really dirty.  Well, this is a song that at the start sounds really dirty, but is actually about something innocuous.”

With all the vibrancy and lack of any musical pretension, Devotion and his clan never sound obtuse.  On the record’s shortest offering ‘Eyes Open’ (clocking in at a mere 54 seconds) and lengthiest, ‘Better Than This’ (just falling short of the 5-minute mark) the band strike a more desolate sound, be it through plucked acoustic lament on the former or hitting a big brash drawn-out stagger on the latter.

CD/EX are an effortless listen, from intense ballad to amped up rockers, from love songs to political point scoring, they never forget that all your favourite records are filled with memorable hooks and that there is always room for a new favourite band.

ARM26
Released: Monday 24th October 2011
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“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

The Winter That Was is the third album by The Hazey Janes released on Monday 24th October 2014. 

The Hazey Janes have undergone their fair share of globe-trotting since releasing their rightly praised eponymous mini-album some 8 years ago.

They escaped the Caledonian rain and absconded to Spain to record their debut long-player Hotel Radio at the studios of legendary Spanish producer Paco Loco (Josh Rouse / Jeff Tweedy) in Cadiz. The record was met with significant acclaim upon its release in February 2006 and the band set forth, playing shows both everywhere and anywhere.  They headlined  throughout the UK, and as well as playing in support to the likes of Elbow, Idlewild and Snow Patrol the band made two trips to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, where they showed their versatility by being able to open for both Susanna Hoffs and The Presidents of the United States of America.

With all guns blazing the band hopped Stateside again in 2007 to New Jersey, where they recorded a new album entitled Hands Around The City with esteemed producer John Agnello (The Hold Steady / The Walkmen / Sonic Youth). Unfortunately for the fan-base that the band amassed on their travels, the album has become stuck in limbo.  Somewhere between the cosmos of legality and the galaxy of small print it remains unreleased to this day, much to the band’s dismay.

In the words of Nietzsche, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, and so The Hazey Janes re-grouped in bonnie Dundee, chalked Hands Around The City up to experience and refined their zig-zag path from country to psych to power pop on The Winter That Was. After all, only the ideal synergy of chunky chords, wistful lyrics and lush-as harmonies can fill our sometimes depressing world with sunshine and exultation.  It is with this palette that The Hazey Janes continue to paint the big picture.

“From an early stage we made a conscious decision that this, our third record, was going to be a different experience from the last two. For a start, we would make it much closer to home than previously, but not necessarily restrict ourselves to the same room/studio. Secondly, we’d produce ourselves with our friend Robin Sutherland engineering. Having been fortunate enough to work with experienced, creative producers in the past it felt like the right time for us to be making an album on our own and bar the occasional power cut and a butterfly infestation, the process as a whole was pretty painless” - Andrew Mitchell.

Like a temporal vortex or dimensional doorway the ominous pitch-bending groan of opener ‘Cascade River Gardens’ pulls us, the listeners into Dr. Who’s famous TARDIS. Spinning us round before dropping us firmly in familiar Hazey Janes terrain, albeit with the band harnessing a new found vitality in their sound. 

The beefed up brash power pop of ‘Carmelite’ states the intentions of The Winter That Was with fervour, Liam Brennan’s unyielding rhythm augmented by Matthew Marra’s punchy, melodic bass-lines. A heady foundation on which to build, and Alice Marra’s vintage synthesizers coupled with Andrew Mitchell’s chunky guitars thrill the listener with every layer they add.  Deeply enchanting and surprisingly brisk, ‘Girl In The Night’, succinctly distils the band’s striking three-part harmonies with a healthy dollop of 80’s drive-time rock, stirring and infectious.

On consideration, Scotland has had a long-standing affinity with Stateside music and The Hazey Janes specialise in the West Coast variety not least on ‘Aspen’ - loosely based on a tale about the exploits of Hunter S Thomson - and the startling ‘You Only Stand To Lose If I Stay’ which sees Andrew delivering the most soaring of vocals.

Punching the epic button like never before, ‘Wake To Guide Love’ and ‘Southern Lawns’ find the band enriching their modus operandi with playful production and instrumentation, incorporating harps and pianos, and even bashing a mandolin with a rubber mallet - nothing like letting out some of that pent-up Dundonian aggression, even if it is on a poor, defenceless mandolin! There was further amusement whilst recording too as Matthew explains;

“The generous people at Vintage Strings of Dundee allowed us to sneak into their shop one evening to simultaneously record a few pianos for Southern Lawns. Unfortunately, a passing police car assumed we were ransacking the place. Once we explained the nature of a piano’s weight, however, they left us to it. If only we had left the tape rolling.”

The warm tones of Christopher Marra’s pedal steel guitar lends itself to the album’s most folksy country-lament, ‘The Darkness Ends’, when they are as delicate and wistful as this, the band are impossible to resist and with ‘Paperhearts’ they deliver their most affecting slice of dreamy melancholy to date with the skilled partnerships of Jenny Sutherland and Sophie Gowans on violin, viola and cello, whilst Jason and Tony Sellars on saxophone and trumpet broaden the sonic landscape with further finesse.

So more than capable of drawing out a moody atmosphere, the band turn on the Krautrock-vibes for album finale, ‘Everything Starts Again’, embracing the drone whole-heartedly with additional vocals courtesy of El Cor Duende performing their finest monastery impersonation.  Swooping and soaring with all the trademark Hazey Jane harmonies, throw in some ripping guitars and fizzed up synthesizer and you’ll want to step right back into that TARDIS and re-live the entire record again. 

Indeed it’s a timeless sound that The Hazey Janes are flaunting and so no matter how long it has taken to get here The Winter That Was shows a band that have grown immeasurably in stature during their somewhat enforced hiatus from the public eye.  Pumped full of pop vitamins like Big Star on steroids, the Hazey Janes are ready to take on the world again.

ARM25
Released: Monday 19th September 2011
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Armellodie Records is proud to present the new single from Chris Devotion & The Expectations with A Modest Refusal backed by 'Tell The Girl' released on Monday 19th September 2011.

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - or CD/EX if urgency is your prerogative – are fond of a little savage rock’n'roll and a pert frolic with the classic pop song.  Coming together in perfect harmonious, lyrical and mathematical order for an approximate running time of 2 and a half minutes, these songs have the power to align planets.  Part swaggering hubris, part relationship-confessional, these songs remind you of the joyful existence of your reproductive organs, while at the same time the bitter knowledge that you’ve been dumped.

Again.

Yeah, you know the ones.

Chris Devotion’s story is as wired as his music, and there’s a strong sense that there’s no such thing as glory for this man unless it is by the most riff-slaying of means. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Devotion cut his teeth executing riotous performances in such glamorous locations as a disused nunnery and a fetish club, garnering ringing endorsements along the way from his rock’n’roll peers (both John Reiss of Rocket From The Crypt fame and Titus Andronicus have openly declared their admiration).

At the turn of the decade Devotion employed the illustrious talents of The Expectations, a trio of suited-and-booted thrashers, to bolster the foundations of Devotion’s own high octane template. Please God, please Allah, please Ricardo Montalban, stand aside and let these men swagger!

All the showmanship and melodic charm is here from the off on the alluring, aural explosion of ‘A Modest Refusal’ intimately framing a dwindling relationship (“lift a veil and the kindness is gone”) before ramping up the charge with some political lampooning (“Let me tell you that you should know better, when they say that we’re in this together”), a not so subtle dig at the current Conservative led UK coalition government.

‘Tell the Girl’ is chock full of pop-fuelled efforts to turn pining into loving (“we’ve all been a little obsessed, it’s only going to get you depressed”). Let's face it, everybody loves a good I-wanna-fuck-you-so-bad song, Prince and the Buzzcocks made a career out of them and if it’s good enough for them…

Recorded and mixed with producer Andy Miller (Sons & Daughters, Life Without Buildings, The Delgados) at his own Gargleblast Studios, both tracks are taken from the forthcoming debut album, Amalgamation and Capital due for release in the New Year on Armellodie Records. The single is available on limited edition Vinyl-replica CD and digital download from all major stores.

ARM24
Released: Monday 11th July 2011
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Professing to make tracks "with all the fat cut off so you can savor their buttery goodness", Scotland's Le Reno Amps have been tugging at heartstrings and assaulting eardrums with their taut melodies, close harmonies and sharp sardonic lyrics for some time now and with their latest EP this 'brand development' looks set to continue. 

Originally available as a companion piece to Le Reno Amps’ recent long-player, Appetite – initial pre-orders of said album received the EP in a neat little package cunningly named, Appetite for Construction -   Armellodie Records is happy to announce the full release of the Construction EP on Monday 11th July 2011.

“Ok, there’s got to be some losers, but think of these songs as our “Buzz Aldrin” collection - Neil Armstrong may always usurp him, but for god's sake – he still walked on the fucking moon!” - Scott Maple.

The Construction EP is anything but the leftovers from the Appetite recording sessions and in its own right an unashamedly upbeat and melody-strewn rampage of aggressive guitar pop, with flecks of rockabilly, country, blues and punk glittering through. When asked to expand on the contents within Scott Maple clarifies;

"Imagine your favourite bands were pumped full of steroids before being cooped up together in a small zoo enclosure. Every day the zoo-keeper visits them and throws them cuts of high-quality steak which has been marinated in same-said steroids.  The bands go feral and fuck like bunnies until they produce offspring. Le Reno Amps sound like the music the zoo-keeper writes on her days off.  She volunteers once a week at the local Hospital's WRVS shop.  It isn't much but it gets her out of the house and things haven't been the same at home since her mother died.”

From the brash urgency of opener 'God Loves a Trier', popping like punk and reeking of the garage, Maple muses, “it happened once, it happened twice, I sometimes wonder when I’ll take my advice; the doctor’s in so let’s begin to get a handle on the state I am in”. It's a perfect attention-grabber, and Le Reno Amps knock out all its right angles with aplomb.

The band keeps the momentum up albeit with the dials turning to incorporate some lilting country on 'Had It Enough', 60s beat-pop on 'Cosmic Plane', and the drive-time rock of 'A Song About Loss'. The playfulness of the arrangements can’t help but raise a smile. Gifted with the wonderful ability to conduct their business within an assorted intricacy of genres, the band provide a cohesive strand throughout with strapping melodies, beefed up crash chords and occasional, and most welcome, forays into Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmony territory, it really is ear-tickling.

The EP draws to a close with 'When I’m 6/4' - a charmingly entitled instrumental in you guessed it, 6/4 timing - and the quaint acoustic pluck of North and South which Al Nero describes as, “Stagger Lee driving in the Australian outback, where he accidentally ran over the Littlest Hobo”. It all makes for a band unapologetically engaged in the joy of making music, literate and versatile, stuffed full of inventiveness with good humour and punk-rock-charm.

ARM23
Released: Monday 18th June 2011
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Armellodie Records presents Something Beginning With L, sweet purveyors of adorably understated pop; coated in chimes, whirrs and divine melodies on their debut album, Beautiful Ground released on Monday 18th June 2011.

Something Beginning With L are a bewitching trio made up of Lucy Parnell (Vocals, Guitar), Jen Macro (Vocals, Guitar) and Jon Clayton (Bass, Keys). The band juxtaposes scuzzy electric guitars and buzzing synthesizers with acoustic fragility and electro-beats, guided into the light by the salient crystalline vocals of Lucy Parnell and Jen Macro who offer bliss-out close harmonies, melancholy and absorbing over the band’s encapsulating dream-pop.

Opening with the zoned-out burr of ‘Poster Croc’, delicate and restrained but alluring with melodic goodness, the scene is set for Beautiful Ground, a quiet treasure of a record. Recorded in Jon’s own One Cat Studios - an old converted paper mill in Brixton – and produced by the band themselves, Something Beginning With L nurtured the songs through their many guises and transformations, experimenting with the natural reverbs on offer in the hidden nooks and crannies of the old building.

“The songs seemed to evolve and change from week to week as we found our feet as a trio and experimented with Jon’s toys. It was a bit of a journey, sometimes we were stuck in traffic on the M1, but mostly it was like a road trip across America” says Jen, and it’s a trip you’ll want to take again and again.

With the uncomplicated pop proficiency of ‘Last Night's Party’, a hopeless love song based on a wonderfully romantic connection - “loose-limbed in the back of a taxi, something in his heartache attracts me” sings Macro – but alas it cannot last as both protagonists are pretending to be someone they are not in order to win each other’s affections, and ultimately, they know it. The sweet synthesizers and playful rhythm do little to soften the sadness-tinged admission that the song bows out on, “this person is not the person that I wanted you to leave with, she’s a liar, she only said those things to catch you, and now she’s gone.”

That feeling of unease - especially in one’s own skin - spills over into ‘Hobby’, with Macro confessing, “I need some hope to replace this crippling fear, are you going to deny me or are you going to give in?”. It shows remarkable vulnerability and highlights the bands talent for arranging and tastefully layering instrumentation, to transport the listener from a simple picked lullaby to a widescreen shoegaze marathon. 

It’s not all sweetness and light however with ‘Sound’ acting as a bit of a hate crusade, borrowing from the famous line by Lauren Bacall in the classic 1944 film,  To Have and Have Not – “you know how to whistle don't you Steve? You just put your lips together and...blow” – but instead of whistling for a booty call, Macro is pleading for an individual to suck it up.

‘Sound’ is also the first of three tracks on Beautiful Ground to be augmented by the titanic talents of sticks-man, Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi) who also provides the backbone for ‘Say’ – a song of desire, angular but not clichéd, disenfranchised but not sloppy, apathetic but still fierce – and ‘Mean’, which layers up adventurously, and culminates with Ellis dominating the tank-rumbling outro like an eight-armed stick-wielding ogre, dead-set on causing a bowel-shaking earthquake.

Elsewhere ‘Elephant pt ii’ is a gorgeous slice of surreal melancholy - “me and my sisters at the edge of the world with our toes in blue” sings Lucy – leaving the listener in a trance-like state.

“Around 1994 my parents saved and saved and took my sisters and I to a beautiful beach in France, it could have been on the isle de ray but I can't be sure. As we arrived we parked our small red plimsolls and newly obtained, not quite fashionable hi-tech neon hi topped shoes on the sand, and we played all day in the water. But when the time came to put on our shoes and go home we discovered our shoes had been stolen by the tidal water. We will keep an eye out for our lost shoes forevermore. My uncle Roger and auntie Denise definitely kept an elephant next door.” - Lucy Parnell.

The latter stages of Beautiful Ground find that band at their most transfixing with the exquisite guitar work and effects on ‘One Knee Two Knee’ nothing short of sublime - listen close and you can hear a ticking clock in amongst the swirl of sonic jollies - all glued together by those irresistibly louche female vocals.

The intricate layering and perfectly structured quiet-loud-quiet sound the band possess are instilled in Overcoat, a song that manages to balance lyrical fragility with raucous musicianship, the choppy rhythms and squelch-blips providing a foundation for Lucy and Jen’s stunning close harmonies to rally, “I’m sat in this overcoat feeling very small, hope that I grow into it before I wear it out”, they sing as the song swells into a blissful cinematic crescendo.

“Overcoat Is about a coat I got from my nanna. She died on xmas day when I was 7, and all her presents to us were still under the tree. Mine was this burgundy and cream puffy jacket thingy. I cherished that coat, it was a bit too big but I wore it everywhere, and hoped that I’d grow into before it fell apart. So I guess it’s metaphorical as well, about becoming who I’m supposed to be before I… y’know… die ” - Jen Macro.

Not a troupe that could be accused of lethargy by any stretch of the imagination, Lucy, Jon and Jen are a diligent bunch of comrades, having all earned their stripes as part of South London noiseniks Stuffy/the Fuses, Lucy and Jen can also be found flaunting their considerable talents in The Graham Coxon Power Ensemble, the band that recorded and toured the Blur guitarist’s most recent solo offering, The Spinning Top. The pair have also lent their sweet tones in support of ex-Soft Boys front-man and esteemed solo artist Robyn Hitchcock, what’s more, Jon and Jen both performed in former Ash guitarist, Charlotte Hatherley’s touring band, and you thought you were busy…

The album draws to a close with ‘Unwittingly Beautiful’, the only song present to have featured on the band’s recently released Listed Building EP, dense and carefully constructed, the chords chime and shimmer with enduring resonance, allied to Jon’s pulsing bass line and intricate electronic percussion, abstract and eerie as a love song can be and all the more life-affirming for it.

Finishing on the largely improvised ‘73’ playing out like a dying ember with its trippy, zoned-out sounds reminiscent of those that opened the record capturing the essence of Something Beginning With L. As sweet as honey yet ominous and spooky. A pretty spine-tingling mess, a quietly shining treasure, ladies and gentlemen, Beautiful Ground.

ARM22
Released: Monday 16th May 2011
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Happy as a Windless Flag is the debut album by The Douglas Firs released on CD, Cassette Tape and Download on Monday 9th May 2011

From the northern gales of the Highlands to the peaks of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh, The Douglas Firs is the brainchild of Neil Insh, born and bred in Aberdeen before de-camping to Scotland’s capital. A gentleman on a journey of sonic discovery with steely determination and a resolute vision to produce Happy as a Windless Flag, a beatific triumph of a record, created not by technical skill, but from a synaesthetic love of pure sound. Nurturing the record throughout its 7 year gestation the results follow themes of delusion, loss of senses, blindness, loss of youth, death and rebirth channelled through the lush and complex arrangements with fervid imagery of flags, moths and sleep.

Happy as a Windless Flag tackles the melee of giving in to growing old, articulately dissecting and mournfully celebrating the different ways of dealing with the maxim that life’s apropos is coming to terms with death, whilst making every effort to avoid cliche of expression. From the opening I Will Kill Again, an account of an unknown soldier’s death, sound-tracked by galloping percussion and promenades of male and female harmony, to the brass-fuelled march of A Military Farewell, which finds Insh and his band of musical companions rejoicing in the refrain, “gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die”, to the tune of ‘John Brown's Body’, a traditional marching song celebrating the abolitionist John Brown. Later appropriated and used by American paratroopers during World War II as a song celebrating death by falling from a great height, as ‘Blood on the Risers’.

Central to the record is The Quickening, a fascinating mixture of intriguing field recordings, harmonious choral singing, rolling drums, ambient guitars, fiddle, accordion and piano, with Insh’s gentle croon nestling in amongst the festivities pondering the unquestioning, blind optimism inherent in youth until it diminishes and is replaced by fear. The simplicity of the craftsmanship belies the musical complexity, bursting with atmosphere and melancholy as Insh sings, “You know how the last sad rays of daylight die”.

Recorded in various churches, bedrooms, sheds and local halls over the last 7 years Insh humbly admits, “It only took so long to record the album because of bad luck with technology, in that I break most things I own.”

Abstraction, experimentation, and improvisation are sewn into the record, with a trio of instrumentals weaved throughout;  Sepulture, a funeral march to finally say farewell to the opening tracks, Future State, a representation of cyclic birth and rebirth, and Nature and Nurture, expressive of the passage of time, and experiences gathered.

The album embraces introspection whole-heartedly with The Shadow Line - a song in three stages centred around an invisible line of adulthood from whence it is difficult to look back without saccharine longing - and on Balance of Halves, a pathetic, romantic rosy vision of everything left behind in youth. Both songs float through musical hoops so deftly, unveiling twists and turns, crunching guitars, picked harmonics, bewitching organs, and gentle brass tied together in layers of avant-garde splendour and harmonious vocals.

Grow Old and Go Home acts as a pre-cursor to the album’s culmination, a resigned acknowledgement that we all will, one day, become languid and disheartened, and eventually give up on life. Minimal but effective piano chords and loosely but perfectly positioned horns are washed in a heartfelt landscape of dots and bleeps, used to create an extremely uplifting tapestry of sound.

The album finale, Soporific acts as an acceptance of the themes that pervade the record with Insh hushly singing, “In tender youth the dread was narrow, death was distant, copse wheelbarrow, took branched extensions to the bonfire: introspection”.

“It’s kind of a lulling cradlesong, but I wanted to represent the horrific anxiety dreams and nightmares I would have during the era that I was recording it. The first section of this song was recorded, literally, under covers, appropriate because it is a song about sleep and lethargy. But it was also so my flatmates wouldn’t hear me sing. The second section was recorded in three separate churches. One of these had a horrible, oppressive atmosphere, and I hope it comes across on the recording.” - Neil Insh.

At a time when every new second in the world spawns gigabytes of data, tweets and twats, blogs and blaggers, when people can carry their entire musical collections on electronic devices barely bigger than their IQ, when multi-tasking is the new relaxing, sometimes it’s hard to focus, to take the time and actually bask in the good stuff for fear of missing out on something else or God forbid not documenting the moment.

Happy as a Windless Flag is an album to savour, to stop and pay attention. Daring, lively and tender, anyone who has ever tried to dig their way through avant-garde, post-rock, experimental or improvised music will know that it can at times be a little dry – The Douglas Firs themselves claim they would be verging on prog-rock if they could play their instruments, and didn’t like Buddy Holly so much – this record is the perfect remedy for hard worked ears, showing us that whatever tickles your sonic palette, when executed with this much care, love and attention, music can be the most wonderfully inspiring art form.

ARM21
Released: Monday
DD

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Armellodie Records is charmed to present Something Beginning With L, sweet purveyors of beautifully maudlin pop coated in chimes, whirrs and divine melodies on their debut EP, The Listed Building, released on Monday 11th April 2011.

Something Beginning With L are a bewitching trio made up of Lucy Parnell (Vocals, Guitar), Jen Macro (Vocals, Guitar) and Jon Clayton (Bass, Keys). The band juxtaposes scuzzy electric guitars and acoustic fragility with electro beats and indie-rock ethics, guided into the light by the salient crystalline vocals of Lucy Parnell and Jen Macro who offer bliss-out close harmonies, melancholy and absorbing over the band’s encapsulating dream-pop.

As if to throw you off their sweet scent the band kick starts proceedings with ‘Angel Sized’, a bout of delightfully fuzzy pop-tones, the guitars sneer, the Philicorda burrs, and the drums are sprightly with Jen Macro’s rousing mantra-like vocal rushing forth with remarkable cohesion and unity, it’s an atypically buoyant introduction to an enormously talented ensemble.

‘Younger Thoughts’ is a different beast altogether, sparse and ominous and built around a delicate piano motif, deliberately tumbledown and nonetheless captivating for it. A song that Lucy casually describes as about “embarrassing young heartbreak silliness”, the lyrics become almost indecipherable as they get swept up in a sonic dreamscape, and the song quietly buries itself in your cranium.

The mesmeric draw of ‘Expansion Ride’ - a cover of former Chemikal Underground darlings Magoo - is impossible to resist, harsh and pure all at the same time with those oh so adorable harmonies declaring, “They’re installing meters in the trees, there’s no room to breathe, forget the time we had it for free”, remarkably poignant in the current, claustrophobic climate that this country finds itself.

Closing with ‘Unwittingly Beautiful’, the only song present to be lifted from the band’s forthcoming debut album, Beautiful Ground, dense and carefully constructed, the chords chime and shimmer with enduring resonance, allied to Jon’s pulsing bass line and intricate electronic percussion, abstract and eerie as a love song can be and all the more life-affirming for it. 

Not a troupe that could be accused of lethargy by any stretch of the imagination, Lucy, Jon and Jen are a diligent bunch of comrades, having all earned their stripes as part of South London noiseniks Stuffy/the Fuses, Lucy and Jen can also be found flaunting their considerable talents in The Graham Coxon Power Ensemble, the band that recorded and toured the Blur guitarist’s most recent solo offering, The Spinning Top. The pair have also lent their sweet tones in support of ex-Soft Boys front-man and esteemed solo artist Robyn Hitchcock, what’s more, Jon and Jen both performed in former Ash guitarist, Charlotte Hatherley’s touring band, and on top of all this moonlighting Jon runs his own recording studio, OneCat in Brixton, which is where The Listed Building EP and forthcoming long-player Beautiful Ground were dutifully committed to tape; and you thought you were busy...

Sometimes sexy, sometimes sweet as honey, sometimes spooky, but always spine tingling Something Beginning With L sweep you to a place of emotional ecstasy and will no doubt be clinging to your ears for a long time to come.

ARM20
Released: Monday 18th April 2011
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Armellodie Records is stoked to present the return of Scottish guitar slingers Le Reno Amps, with their simmering new album Appetite brought to the boil on Monday 18th April 2011.

Born of sorrow in the Highlands of Scotland, Le Reno Amps have been tugging at heartstrings and assaulting eardrums with their taut melodies, close harmonies and sharp sardonic lyrics for some time now. Always indifferent to the current musical fashion, Le Reno Amps don't buck trends, they aim to start them.

Following on from 2007s downbeat but (rightly) praised So For Your Thrills, and the energetic, hard-rocking glory of 2009s Tear It Open, Le Reno Amps aka Scott Maple and Al Nero have been gifted with the wonderful ability to conduct their business within an assorted intricacy of genres. A 'lazy-Sunday' reviewer's worst nightmare, their song-writing has always been impossible to pigeonhole, being an unashamedly upbeat and melody-strewn rampage of aggressive guitar pop, with flecks of rockabilly, country, mariachi, blues and punk glittering through. On Appetite it’s comforting to see they haven’t lost this aesthetic.

From the foot-down new wave of This One’s Not Waiting, exorcising old ghosts and long-standing grudges in a spiky and raucous fashion, Al Nero’s importunate vocal delivers in spades, “Who did what and what to whom, who stabbed you in the back and stitched you up too, who’s scared of the ghost that lost its spook?”. The knife-edge witticisms and heart-on-sleeve honesty continue with Bad Blood, with tremolo guitars, and muted trumpets telling the story of a love worn-out, the sincerity of the subject contrasts with some wry lyric-writing - “I’m fed up living in a shadow where my only appointment is my own disappointment” – which ensures the song stays well away from sugar-coated aloofness.

Le Reno Amps idiosyncratic sense of song, and their playful ideas about making lo-fi production come to life are none more apparent than on Never Be Alone.  A Tom Waits-meets-Tim Burton stramash, eerie piano and pounding drums lay the path for Scott Maple’s unhinged vocal and a musical-like choral accompaniment.  Unnerving as it is, there's goofiness in the air too with pizzicato guitars and ripples of harpsichord lending an ineffable magic to the aural landscape.

Erratic yet controlled, Saturation Day returns the modus operandi to the band’s punk-rock leanings, a glorious mess of twanging guitars and bellowed harmonies with an enviable knack for melody.

Somewhat paradoxically, this is a strangely angry wee record. It rocks, bangs, thumps and riffs with delight, but the songs strain themselves against barely contained fury, heartbreak, bitterness and sleaze.

There is sadness too, like on the Caledonian country swinging Sinners, a remarkably sincere articulation of hopes dashed on the rocks of circumstance.

But even in its bleakest lyric or saddest melody, the broad grin of catharsis is always apparent. “Why am I still alive?" pleads Scott Maple on I’m Alive with a knowing wink, a song that casts it’s daggers at the charlatans and lost sheep occupying our TV sets come a Saturday night, “if talent talks, bullshit amazes” Maple concedes.

As Le Reno Amps disregard fashion, they also have no time for the constraints of genre. The songs romp gleefully through the entire histories of rock, indie, metal and country. Cottonmouth Rock marries intelligent wordplay with an emotional heft, the balance between intensity and sensitivity is perfect, a vicious and raw holler through the drink addled thoughts of a man cuckolded. It’s as good a break up song as any with Al Nero’s frenzied vocal forcing the listener into the same cheated mindset as our protagonist, whilst generously acknowledging the frequency of its own story. When the rumbling drums make way for a punch-the-air guitar solo you know this band has absolutely no shame in their musical loves. There is as much Gainsbourg as there is Metallica, but always with Le Reno Amps own sense of playful joie de vivre and remarkable cohesion.

Having once been described as “the Everly Brothers teaming up with The Pixies, whilst Tom Waits and Weezer try and get a word in” (Vic Galloway, BBC Radio Scotland), it’s easy to see why Le Reno Amps music has such a broad appeal. The more you dig the more layers you unravel and the more dimensions you find to each song. The hidden melodies, the arrangements, the love-lorn, log cabin kitchen sink narratives. Le Reno Amps mix all of this real life observation into something that can at times, be sad, funny, relaxing and invigorating all at once. These contradictions are easily identifiable on the whimsical piano-driven Weight, with its curious circus-like drums and musical-box bridge complementing a tale of a marriage, an oath, a promise that can’t be reneged on. As Scott Maple sings, “to have and to hold forever hereafter, think that was the day she last heard my laughter, I don’t understand and I don’t have the answer but I don’t give up on a friend”.

The over-arching feeling is one of big tunes backing up an underlying melancholy that is cosseted, cherished and wallowed in until it is just beginning to turn to a new day. Songs are sadness-tinged explorations, picking at the scabs of old emotional wounds set to jaunty tunes, none more so than on the borderline sociopathic You Must Remember, and the barn-storming, Stuck In Your Throat. Both songs boast deceptively uncomplicated melodies, with lyrics that deal with ordinary situations and insecurities, sorrowful yet sweet, uplifting, humorous and soulful, with some art-rock weirdness thrown in with fervent enthusiasm. 

Self-confessed workaholics, on their previous record Tear It Open, Le Reno Amps crafted a video to accompany each song and were dutifully rewarded a Scottish Bafta nomination for their efforts. They also found the time to found rock’n’pop cavalry, Armellodie Records, which has quickly manifested into one of the most exciting independent labels in the UK.

On this occasion the guys set out to record Appetite alone, engineered and produced by Scott Maple, with some friends and label-mates dropping in to lend their enviable talents. Jason Sinclair (Cuddly Shark) played drums on several tracks, Mandy Clarke (Super Adventure Club) used her furious wee fingers to set down the bass-line to Cottonmouth Rock and Johny Lamb (Thirty Pounds of Bone) provided sprinkles of brass throughout.  Not to mention the considerable talents of Greg Barnes (First Charge of the Light Brigade) on keys and former Le Reno Amps bassist, Lindsey Scott providing the cello on Faded Star. Al Nero humbly quips, “We must stress that we’ve attempted to preserve, as closely as possible, the sound of the original recording but due to the high resolution of the Compact Disc and modern digital files, the limitations of the source musicians can at times be revealed”.

It all makes for a band un-apologetically engaged in the joy of making music. They are the wide-eyed nephew that tugs your arm, laughing as you head towards a rollercoaster. Joyful and exuberant, Appetite carries you along on its own idiosyncratic tidal wave of good feeling. The closing track Faded Star seems to succinctly condense, distil and spit back out every theme, style and story from the rest of the album in its own unique way.

A full body of work, a tour de force of the emotional psyche; this is a glowing songbook of utterly unique, witty vignettes. Literate and versatile, it is stuffed full of inventiveness and performed with a straight face. Appetite is a ‘proper’ album, and as such it is a journey to be taken time and again.

Le Reno Amps new album Appetite is released on Monday 18th April 2011. A limited version (cunningly named, Appetite for Construction) shall see the full album released alongside a free exclusive 6-track digital EP, Construction.  Construction is a collection of songs that were recorded during the album sessions but didn't make the final cut, Scott Maple explains, “Ok, there’s got to be some losers, but think of these songs as our “Buzz Aldrin” collection - Neil Armstrong may always usurp him, but for god's sake – he still walked on the fucking moon!”

ARM19
Released: Monday 7th February 2011
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CD/EX – Chris Devotion and The Expectations – are the latest brawny rockers to join the ranks of Scotland’s most delicious independent label, Armellodie Records. Fulfilling their rightful place as our resident rock and rollers, Armellodie is proud to present the band’s debut single, ‘I Need Your Touch’, released on Monday 7th February 2011.

Chris Devotion’s story is as wired as his music and there’s a strong sense that there’s no such thing as glory for this man unless it is by the most riff-slaying of means. Based in Glasgow, Scotland, Devotion cut his teeth executing riotous performances in such glamorous locations as a disused nunnery and a fetish club, garnering ringing endorsements from rock and roll peers - John Reiss of Rocket From The Crypt fame and Titus Andronicus have openly declared their admiration - along the way.

At the turn of the decade Devotion employed the illustrious expertise of The Expectations, a trio of suited-and-booted thrashers, to bolster the foundations of Devotion’s own high octane rock and roll template. Please God, please Allah, please Ricardo Montalban, stand aside and let these men swagger.

The debut single is a sharp-shooting package harnessing the power of the most succulent of those deadly sins, L-U-S-T. Recorded with renowned producer and engineer Andy Miller (Sons and Daughters, Mogwai, The Delgados) at his own Gargleblast Studios, I Need Your Touch perfectly encapsulates that mix of desire and insecurity –

"I know that I act real tough but I need your touch”

With some good ol’ fashioned braggadocio thrown in for good measure –

”You know that I’ve got the good stuff, I need your touch”

Let's face it, everybody loves a good I-wanna-fuck-you-so-bad song, Prince and the Buzzcocks made a career out of them and if it’s good enough for them…

The single is backed by the thrash-a-long jaunt Pinhole Suit, the story of a gentleman caught being unfaithful. We join him on the first day since his infidelity he has been allowed out to shindig with his friends without his spouse attached to his arm. The catch is he has to wear a suit filled with hundreds of pinhole cameras so his significant other can keep an eye on him. In his twisted psyche his wife has become an authority figure whose omnipresence is a punishment for his behaviour, and in remonstration he attempts to sleep with anything that moves in order for her to see who he really is:

“I’ll be the hound, you be the guru, I’ll beg for scraps and you’ll see the truth. Video: me in the mire, all the bodies coming done the wire”. 

You didn’t think it was just a 90-second blitzkrieg wall of sonic rage now did you?

Balls-out swagger, power-chord prowess and raw intensity fuse on the CD/EX debut single bringing about a whirlwind of sweltering energy with both I Need Your Touch and the supporting Pinhole Suit busting their furious pace with a whole lot of heart, booze, blood and spit firmly on their sleeves. The single is available on limited edition Vinyl-replica CD and digital download from all major stores.

ARM18
Released: Monday 6th December 2010
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Sailing gleefully under the radar and occupying his own trans-century time-period, Thirty Pounds Of Bone is one man, multi- instrumentalist Johny Lamb with a treasure-chest of storm-tossed laments and lullaby wig-outs to bedazzle.

Armellodie Records is proud to present Method; an album that seeks to explore the folksinger’s contradictory status as an outsider, often recording and touring alone, a situation seemingly at odds with folk’s suggestion of community. The result is a record fraught with geographic dissatisfaction, heartbreak, ghosts, isolation and drunkenness. Sitting uncomfortably somewhere between auto-biography and allegory the songs take in real life events and fantastical narrative concerning relationships, the dangers of being eaten by the dead and the difficulties of communicating when at sea.

The son of an ordained clergyman, Johny Lamb was initially raised on the Shetland island of Unst; he’s always been fascinated with the sea and the fisheries. His favourite books are Moby Dick and The Tin Drum. As a child he was once in hospital for so long that they made him go to school there, and as a result he now only has one functioning kidney. He has lived all over the British Isles, and has toured extensively throughout Europe. His life revolves around folk music and he believes strongly in innovation and change in traditional music rather than preservation of repertoire, as “a museum piece cannot be a ‘living’ tradition.”

The songs on Method engage in the folksong’s relationships to place, love, drink and localised mythology. From the opening pulsating rhythm of Crack Shandy In The Harbour, an absolutely true account of a time spent in Plymouth working for a racist café owner where narcotics anonymous had their meetings - 'Crack Shandy' was the family argot for heroin and crack smoked together – to the banjo-led How We Applaud The Unhappiness Of The Songwriter, which quite rightfully pokes fun at the peculiar exchange of the soul-bearer and the audience - “What can I sing? What tunes with poems in? And then take a bow for loving no one now”.

A melting pot of traditional influences is apparent and on All For Me Grogg, Lamb re-interprets a traditional forecastle song made famous by the Clancy Brothers amongst others, in this guise however it owes more to the dreaminess of Sparklehorse and the intimacy of Will Oldham.

Terrifically organic and intricately layered songs like The Fishery and Island’s Ode To Itinerant conjure themes of loneliness and geographic isolation with startling effect, the former with reference to the cod-fisheries of the 19th century explodes with face melting polyphonic harmonics and Spiritualized-esque distortion, the latter more delicately with a mournful cornet refrain accompanying a tale of leaving behind one’s past.

Lamb’s admiration of the ladies and partiality to the drink couldn’t be better eulogised than on A Lesson In Talking, a rousing accordion jaunt that amuses to no end with a proverbial tale; man meets whisky, man loves whisky, woman leaves man because of whisky, man learns lesson and tries to convince woman everything will be fine if she drinks as much whisky as he does. It’s a theme that surfaces once more on Darling with noble declarations of intent to do things properly “this time”, which of course doesn’t happen and the whole hideous cycle repeats until we expire with waves of distorted drunkenness.

Elsewhere Lamb takes us on a trip to the wilds of the Irish grasslands on Ghosts in the Grass, recounts the penitence at the bottom of the bottle on Crutches, and on the plaintive and beautiful kiss-off, Where I Used To Live, Lamb’s tender vocal resonates a story of a man leaving home for somewhere he hates and thus retreats into a delusional imaginary landscape excluding the wretchedness of his real life. There he meets a wonderful girl but in doing so has to reckon with his, her, and the land’s status as hallucination.

Method is Thirty Pounds of Bone’s second album. The first was cast onto our shores in 2006, the bold, innovative and beautiful, Homesick Children of Migrant Mothers. Met with great critical acclaim from the national press, Lamb has since spent his years travelling, playing, collaborating with other musicians and reading the works of James Herriot almost every day and once managed to get J Mascis to concede that All Creatures Great and Small was indeed, “pretty cool”. With the exception of a small collection of traditional and original sea shanties that appeared on Berlin-based label Woodland Recordings, Method is the first new material from Thirty Pounds Of Bone in almost half a decade.

Thirty Pounds of Bone draws equally from British and Irish traditional music and popular culture resulting in a sound at once as fascinated by distortion as it is by traditional instruments, seemingly appropriate to Lamb’s distain for the sterility of the studio, Method was recorded in four days in a bedroom in Harbertonford, South Devon. Johny Lamb plays all of the instruments on these recordings. For now he lives and writes by himself in a static van on the Lizard peninsular in West Cornwall. He can often be found in or on the sea. Although he is frequently accused of being unapproachable after performances if you do ever cross his path, make it a double.

ARM17
Released: Monday 15th November 2010
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Every mother is a teacher and every father is a preacher...from forth the loins of these two professions, a quartet of star-crossed musicians take their life, spread up and down the east coast of Scotland like marmite where they lay their scene. Armellodie Records is proud to introduce the arrival of St. Thomas, from Scotland’s most subterranean, ecclesiastical rock band, The Scottish Enlightenment.

The Scottish Enlightenment are quiet, but like a falling bomb is quiet, like an embryo is quiet, like the sibilant steam drifting ominously above a silent culdera. They hummmmmm melodiously like a microwave, slowly incubating their songs with the full time dedication and care of a placenta.  Having debuted in 2007 with the single ‘Eyes’ - the promo video for which was picked up by MTV and played across the world on VH1, MTV2 and MTV Europe - the band then retreated into the wilderness of the provincial Scottish town of Dunfermline, resurfacing earlier this year to light up our stereos with two glorious EPs, Pascal and Little Sleep, quite rightfully considered by The Big Issue as “clever, moody, literate pop for filing next to Slint and Low.”

The band is built around the dense and persuasive song-writing of David Moyes, we’ll let him explain the band’s chosen moniker, “I know all about the philosophy of The Scottish Enlightenment period through studying at Aberdeen University for 6 years and working for a Scottish philosophy history centre up there. But I really just chose it because I thought it sounded weird for a band. But I like to prance around gobbing off about it being a mix of the local and the universal, the corporeal and the conceptual, the blah and the blah. It’s just because it sounded weird.”

St. Thomas documents a crumbling faith, the change from believing in an omnipotent being to not believing at all, like a graph where one line traces the rising intellectual integrity and the other traces the plummeting sense of purpose and worth. Along the journey relationships between people, families, friends and lovers are pondered, how these morph and change, and how time, distance, and place can form the strongest of bonds as much as they can birth niggling insecurities. 

Gal Gal’s space-age arpeggios act like a post-rock estuary in preparation for the open seas of gargantuan songs about our place in the universe; Earth Angel reverberates with the sound of star-gazing guitars and sleepy rock hitting the crown of a big stone church. Named in tribute to Marvin Berry and the Starlighters – Marty Mcfly fans take heed - the song details groups of people encountering the unknown and greeting it with fear, not realising it’s the very thing they are there to seek, or celebrate, like a surprise party, when the guest of honour arrives and gets duly attacked as an intruder.

As Plato acknowledged “the unexamined life is not worth living” and The Scottish Enlightenment is only too happy to attest this on Taxidermy Of Love, where choral hums and the beautiful sounds of the Clarsach provide the foundations of a prayer song, authored by someone who feels unable to change themselves, looking for some divine stuffing with lines like, “Make what cuts you need, slit the torso side, like curtains part the skin, take out the crap inside, fashion lungs of steel, program the heart to care, a mind that will not wander, and paint it like I can bear.”

Mountainous crescendo-oeuvres unfurl with punch-the-air guitars and propulsive drumming on Little Sleep and Necromancer’s murky space-rock, a twisted love song in which the song’s persona loves someone despite everyone believing they are dead; they believe that they will awake. Are they the sole faith-keeper, resolute and sacrificial in their love? Or are they, like, mental?

At their most fragile on Pascal and The First Will Be Last, the band strip back to the bare essentials: slow tempos, conversational voices, powerful lyrics, and minimal instrumentation. The emotional heft is breathtaking with Moyes at his most confessional on the latter, a sad tale of the son of manse turned apostate, a mantra for struggling with personal demons - “Bible in hand, I changed my plans and it fell on the floor, I still went to church with anger and mirth, I taught Sunday school and my cup was full, my spirit is blackening fast”.

Elsewhere on The Soft Place living donor transplant surgery is pondered with characteristically understated melodies atop a mélange of tumbledown drums, subtle tremolo guitars, funerary cornet and heavenly glockenspiel, and on List Right, we are treated to a waltz of sorrow where low frequencies rumble and a menacing piano resonates with stirring effect like something out of a dark version of Death on the Nile.

Beautifully observed and unnervingly honest My Bible Is provides a triumphant conclusion to the record with ambient textures, eerie tension, and the organic build of genuine emotion when faced with believing something false, and doubting something true. Given the scarcity of genuinely affecting music nowadays it’s a milestone that should elevate The Scottish Enlightenment to the highest ranks of Scotland’s gifted breed of songwriters.

“On a human level the truth is that I saw Church to be filled with the best of things and the worst of things - just like any other group happening really. And the loving, compassionate, self-giving people I know from Church makes me wonder why it is they seem to have a different core to them than I do. And the small minded people make me wonder how they can be so long on the earth and not have learned better. But if anything, this song is supposed to be a level headed realistic account of what Churches are, and what religion is. As such, I don’t expect it to chime with either Richard Dawkins or Keith O'Brien. The main problem with writing songs about big ideas is you inevitably sound like a knob when asked to talk about them. You write the song so you don't have to talk about them. Scunner.” - David Moyes

St. Thomas is an intensely rewarding and poetic triumph from a band that has resolutely pursued its own unique vision and grown immeasurably in stature as a result.  It's a rare thing to have an album as lyrically provocative as it is musically intrepid; Lingering long after the ghostly instrumental coda Cogito has vacated the stereo. It’s delicate and it’s fractured. It has one foot in this world and one foot in some supernatural place. It’s heavy, powerful and evocative and for those of us who have lived any kind of life with all its misgivings, moral dilemmas, emotional crossroads, regrets, and loves it is a record that should be cherished.

ARM16
Released: Monday 18th October 2010
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Super Adventure Club have been a busy bunch since their second album Avoid Zombies was released to critical acclaim. They've taken their blistering live show from Inverness to Cork to Bordeaux, and many hotspots in between, and sticks-man Neil Warrack recently performed as part of the legendary Damo Suzuki’s ‘Network’. 

Regularly joined onstage by the horse-headed Johny B (this is not a joke – the man really has a horse’s head) Super Adventure Club have attracted such notable gig buddies as the likes of Future Of The Left, Dananananackroyd, and Japandroids. The triumvirate – Bruce Wallace, Mandy Clarke and Neil Warrack - parleys with idiosyncratic pop, and parades their ninja-jazz-rock mojo with glee.

A short while before the zombie epidemic the band self-released their intense sonic assault of a debut album, Chalk! Horror!, to a smattering of local praise. The release of the band’s second opus Avoid Zombies having whet all the right whistles and having hocked the family silver, Armellodie Records can now present the wider release of the band’s debut record which it so truly deserves and the public are beginning to demand.

Recorded live in one mammoth 48 hour session, the album is an unpredictable, genre-busting stream of off-kilter noise-terrorism and mind-manipulating media malarky. Opening with the anthemic Chuck Berry referencing `In the Wee Wee Hours’ (all his number ones maybe?) the band lay forth their mission to re-shape the world of math rock, which incidentally is the title of track two. Bruce Wallace tackling over-thought, joyless music head on, “Our lost musicality, is on the 'e' and 'and' of one, sing along? …but all your accents are wrongs, an incessant drone in D, 13 and one half beats too long, Call this a song? …you must be having me on”.

Twisting and turning like a shaolin monk, the album maintains a zen-like focus on memorable hooks and lyrically provides charming observations on life's little anomalies, like the life-expectancy of peripheral things, breaking down on you if you so much as look at them (‘Built-In Redundancy’), or fat camp frolics, "…like Jabba The Hutt phoning Pizza Hut, drinking cheap cider watching films with Rob Schneider” (‘Sloths On T.V.’).

Melodies and riffary continue to strike like deadly throwing stars, casually name-dropping Rupert Murdoch, Rik Waller, George Bush, Dave Sharkey, Dracula, Cerne-Abbes Giant, Uffington White Horse, and St George along the way. That’s not to mention the spectacular homage to Tommy Sheridan, which boasts the most spazz-jazz rock riff of the lot. 

With a brusque self confidence and stupendous musical chops Super Adventure Club display an ever present sense of humour (if not of the absurd) to overcome cheap comparisons and stand proudly in the vanguard of contemporary experimental music. 

ARM15
Released: Monday 27th September 2010
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Little Sleep is the second EP by Scotland’s most subterranean, ecclesiastical rock band, The Scottish Enlightenment.

A quartet of star-crossed musicians built around the dense and persuasive song-writing of David Moyes, The Scottish Enlightenment are quiet, but like a falling bomb is quiet, like an embryo is quiet, like the sibilant steam drifting ominously above a silent culdera. They hummmmmm melodiously like a microwave, slowly incubating their songs with the full time dedication and care of a placenta. Having debuted in 2007 with the single Eyes - the promo video for which was picked up by MTV and played across the world on VH1, MTV2 and MTV Europe - the band then retreated into the wilderness of the provincial Scottish town of Dunfermline, returning in Spring just past with the Pascal EP, a bold five song collection branded as, “clever, moody, literate pop for filing next to Slint and Low” (The Big Issue), it was a welcome return of a band that should be cherished.

If the Pascal EP dealt with a crumbling faith, like a graph where one line traces the rising intellectual integrity and the other traces the plummeting sense of purpose and worth, then the Little Sleep EP embarks upon relationships between people, families, friends and lovers, how these morph and change, and how time, distance, and place can form the strongest of bonds as much as they can birth niggling insecurities.

‘Little Sleep’ opens the proceedings with punch-the-air guitars, the story of a couple pulling together in the face of adversity - “hold the door and help me barricade, all we need’s a little sleep and we’ll be fine” - epic without ever trying to sound anthemic, the organic build of genuine emotion will bring about the desired crescendo every time. In contrast, the topical jaunt of ‘Get My Limousine’ weeps over the deluded lost sheep grunting out Mariah Carey songs as Louis Walsh sniggers behind his hand, as we all know the Victorian freak-show never went away, it got a nice big X rebranding. The song ends up as a globetrotting thriller careering towards a desperate demise in the briny drink of Pittenweem Harbour.

‘Drip Feed’ is an ode to the uncertainty and doubt in care homes across the land, an emotive centre-piece about trying to be honest about the horrible situations people can find themselves in. The notion of reliance and dependency spills over into ‘When You Hate Me’, the EPs heftiest song, but this time with a heavy heart of the doghouse, the loneliness of love withdrawn.

After such weighty matter a smile can be raised for closer, ‘St. Germain Is Thick Tonight’, a full frontal romantic serenade complete with star-gazing guitar lines and sprinkles of glockenspiel. A honeymoon midnight stroll through Paris no less, harnessing the power that new love has to diminish all other things around. The city becomes a hiding place, and somewhere that submits to the love threading its way through it, and somewhere full to the brim with the world. In all these ways, thick.

‘Little Sleep’ is taken from the forthcoming album, a trailer if you will, as we await the arrival of St. Thomas in November 2010.

ARM14 (PP19)
Released: Monday 9th April 2007
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Le Reno Amps were born of sorrow in the North East of Scotland.  In 2004 they moved south to Glasgow to spread their joyous word and record a new album.  Things were going just peachy until 50% of the duo took a midnight stroll to heartbreak in the Highlands of Fort William.  It looked like it was all over for the glamorous twosome.  The tall one stood by the loch and waved goodbye to the past as it helicoptered its way out of view across the horizon.  What would become of this solitary hero now…?

2007 – Le Reno Amps have concluded the recording of their fantastic new album.  The short one is back in the fold like yesterday never happened, and with a full band in tow the boys are playing shows to ecstatic audiences up and down the country.

Since their formation in 2003, Le Reno Amps have built up a great live reputation based around taut melodies, close harmonies and sharp sardonic lyrics. Now with an expanded line up, the band have had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Sons and Daughters, Arab Strap, The Rakes, King Creosote, Brakes and The Stranglers. Having once been described as “the Everly Brothers teaming up with The Pixies, whilst Tom Waits and Weezer try and get a word in”, it’s easy to see why Le Reno Amps music has such a broad appeal.

‘So For Your Thrills’ is an inspired, varied collection of witty vignettes; that perfectly encapsulates the fresh sound of Le Reno Amps. Not only does the album boast a whistle-along tunes but it can also be applauded for its heart-on-sleeve lyrics that conjure up images of times, places and feelings that anyone who’s ever been in a crumbling relationship can relate to, but with a little offbeat humour thrown in for good measure.

Le Reno Amps music can be bracketed as indie, some say power pop, others say alt-country, the important thing to remember is Le Reno Amps are not high brow, they are in fact the lowest brow. These men operate so far out of fashion they stand alone and shine with a majestic beauty.

On the journey since its inception this record has seen hard work and heartbreak, loss and repair, movement and passage. So, for your thrills, kick back and listen to the tale they have to tell…

ARM13
Released: Monday 21st June 2010
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Twisting and turning like a shaolin monk, throwing melodies and riffary like deadly throwing stars, matching each digression with zen-like focus on memorable hooks.  By day they are Bruce, Mandy and Neil. By night they are the deadly spazz-jazz ninjas known only as Super Adventure Club

Hot on the heels of their recent album release, Avoid Zombies, Armellodie Records is tickled to present the brand new single, 'Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle' released on Monday 21st June.

Opening with some fierce bass-chops, 'Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle' is a tale of endurance, quips and circumstance. When our lovable super club found themselves squatting in an over crowded flat that Kim and Aggie wouldn’t dare tread for fear of catching chronic-waster-disease (“Don’t wake and bake…”). There’s only really one question they could ask once the deluge of marijuana smoke had cleared, “What happened!?”

With their eccentric sound vacillating wildly between strung-out post-hardcore, psychedelic guitar noodling and beefed up bass grooves where do the threesome draw their unique powers?

 “I’m influenced a great deal by entertainers who put on a good show and who don’t just tear through their tunes,” proclaims Neil. “Guys like Freddie Mercury, Alex Harvey or Bowie.”

Bruce expands: ‘I’ve got just as much interest in stuff like Frank Zappa and King Crimson as I have in The Pixies and Pavement. We all listen to loads of different kinds of music and throw it into what we’re doing.”

Super Adventure Club have a brusque self confidence and display an ever present sense of humour (if not of the absurd) to overcome cheap comparisons and stand proudly in the vanguard of contemporary experimental music. The single is backed by two delightfully askew non-album tracks, the eloquently named '17th Century Ambassador of Strong Swimmers (Stripped)', and an ode to mnemonic terms, 'Built-In Redundancy (Defunkt)'. 

Since their conception in 2007, Super Adventure Club have taken their blistering live show from Inverness to Cork to Bordeaux, and many hotspots in between. The band are regularly joined onstage by the horse-headed Johny B (this is not a joke - the man really has a horse's head), whose help has ensured that a clutch of well received shows have garnered a cult following all over the UK and into Europe. The band released their new album, Avoid Zombies, in April 2010 to great acclaim from fans and critics alike.

ARM12
Released: Monday 10th May 2010
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Every mother is a teacher and every father is a preacher...from forth the loins of these two professions, a quartet of star-crossed musicians take their life, spread up and down the east coast of Scotland like marmite where they lay their scene. Armellodie is delighted to present the debut EP from Scotland’s most subterranean, ecclesiastical rock band, The Scottish Enlightenment.

The Scottish Enlightenment are quiet, but like a falling bomb is quiet, like an embryo is quiet, like the sibilant steam drifting ominously above a silent culdera. They hummmmmm melodiously like a microwave, slowly incubating their songs with the full time dedication and care of a placenta.  Having debuted in 2007 with the single ‘Eyes’ - the promo video for which was picked up by MTV and played across the world on VH1, MTV2 and MTV Europe - the band then retreated into the wilderness of the provincial Scottish town of Dunfermline and are only now returning to light up our stereos.

The band is built around the dense and persuasive song-writing of David Moyes, we’ll let him explain the band’s chosen moniker, “I know all about the philosophy of The Scottish Enlightenment period through studying at Aberdeen University for 6 years and working for a Scottish philosophy history centre up there. But I really just chose it because I thought it sounded weird for a band. But I like to prance around gobbing off about it being a mix of the local and the universal, the corporeal and the conceptual, the blah and the blah. It’s just because it sounded weird.”

‘Pascal’ opens the proceedings with a tender radiance. Moyes sings over a sparse and simple arrangement, “Though I came without I will raise you”, to illustrate a leap of faith taken at the end of the line, when you can’t see anything else to do. It’s delicate and it’s fractured. A comforting place to be - to know that there is nothing else that you could have done. Peddling a concoction of sleepy rock and star-gazing guitars Pascal is gentle, subtle, and fragile, epitomising what The Scottish Enlightenment are all about.

‘If You Would Just Try a Bit Harder’ continues in a similar understated fashion, with dreamy guitars and hypnotic rhythm. Depicting an argument between an atheist and a theist, both of whom believe that the other is being deliberately sloppy in their thinking. Moyes explains, “I like to talk with people who used to believe certain things, but aren’t so sure anymore. Those people know you can totally believe something false, and doubt something true”. This imagery spills over into ‘Riverbed’, with running piano arpeggios providing the backdrop for streams of guilt to flow.

Continuing to wield that repetitive and addictive guitar line trick, ‘All Homemade Things’ is the most buoyant effort on the EP. “I woke up and I looked outside, a new car in my drive, a big house and a hot wife” sings Moyes. Everyone gets to an age where they start making their own rule, and this song is a lament for all the parental inheritance that should never be lost.

‘To The Dogs’ closes the EP in all its downbeat glory. Arguments are so often settled by scurrilous means, and sometimes when that’s what’s happening you should just walk away. The song closes with clattering drums and the beautiful sound of the Clarsach, which is a little harp.

The Scottish Enlightenment is both Scottish, ie local, corporeal, and Enlightenment, ie universal, abstract. It unites those disparate elements only the union of which can bring a real new Scottish enlightenment. Epic without ever trying to sound anthemic, the organic build of genuine emotion will bring about the desired crescendo every time.  ‘Pascal’ is taken from the forthcoming album, a trailer if you will, as we await the arrival of ‘St. Thomas’.

ARM11
Released: Monday 14th June 2010
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Fun Anxiety – A condition known to afflict members of rock combination group Kill The Captains, born from a sense that everyone is having fun without them. Symptoms include leaving conversations hanging because your neighbour’s conversation sounds more interesting, a pathological refusal to go to bed despite the fact that everyone else went to bed days ago, a phobia of clowns. Related forms: Funmnesia

Armellodie is delighted to present the lip-smacking debut album from Sheffield’s finest wonky-pop albinos, Kill the Captains with Fun Anxiety.

Hailing from “the largest village in England” and brought up to work hard and play hard Kill the Captains are an industrious bunch of buxom comrades. By day the band runs its own recording studio and rehearsal facilities, ‘Red Cloud’ and by night they promote their own indie-tastic and very successful club-night, ‘Mutiny’.  Having debuted with their eponymous EP in 2008 and fresh from recent shows with Johnny Foreigner and Acoustic Ladyland, the band has developed into a ferocious live act with a burgeoning reputation for riotous performances.  Their debut long-player is steeped in elements of drone rock, new-wave pop, and suspense-filled Rock’n’Roll, with shout-along choruses, fizzing dual-guitars and propulsive rhythmic skulduggery.

Fun Anxiety opens with the bestial themed couplet of Santino and Spot the Leopard - the former a true story about a chimpanzee that briefly became a minor scientific phenomenon. It was observed that he gathered objects from within his enclosure in a Swedish zoo, and whittled them into missiles that he could direct at the daily crowds who gawped and pointed. Scientists who studied him professed that his ability to plan demonstrated distinctly human characteristics: he was methodical, he scheduled his attacks, he sought to maximise the deadly potential of his weapons of choice. He was castrated for his initiative.

The epic whirr of The Yellow Brush and Missing Canoeist, are seductively dangerous and clearly define the bands shared love of all things shoegaze and krautrock!  Where as Rope highlights Leon Carter’s intelligent and emotive lyrics accompanied by some beautiful arpeggio guitars -“Don’t act too smart, don’t have an opinion, and don’t lift your head above the parapet.”

Recent single Rummy, is a counter-kilter barn stomper which showcases the band’s quintessentially British sense of humour cutting bitter lyrical swathes against the slobbering uber-Neanderthal - “Came down from the treetops, knuckles still dragging” - the type who steals your wife whilst closing the deal on the insurance you never wanted - “Learnt a string of pleasantries and never stopped smiling”. Like all great rock stompers it perfectly pairs a classic and memorable melody with foot-tap-inducing scuzzy guitars.

Lebanese and Clovers provide a sonic shoulder to cry on, the audio equivalents of holding your hand and giving you a cuddle. The same could not be said for House Band At The Asylum, befitting it’s moniker in the nuttiest of fashions.

The album scales dizzying proportions on Cellar Dweller when a measured sermon in the opening verses soon spills into prophetic declaration and the band unleash the 4 horses of apocalypse, galloping and converging into a crescendos beneath layer upon layer of ever thickening blankets of sound, but what less would you expect from a song written from the perspective of a survivalist ensconced in his underground panic room, ruminating on the impending destruction of the world.

Closing with the stunning Harper’s Call, this is the kind of song you imagine couples coming together, gazing at each other adoringly. Management then turn the lights on but the DJ lets it play out. The couples dance. The music ends. Eyes are locked in their embrace.

Kill the Captains are Leon Carter, Paul Pickavance, Giles Robinson and Paul Andrew Collins Esquire. ‘Fun Anxiety’ is released on Glasgow’s ever-flourishing independent, Armellodie Records. You can’t ration fun.

ARM10
Released: Monday 24th May 2010
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Armellodie Records is thrillered(!) to present a ghoulish tune-wielding trio emanating from the bowels of central Scotland, Super Adventure Club, and their new album Avoid Zombies.

Twisting and turning like a shaolin monk, throwing melodies and riffary like deadly throwing stars, matching each digression with zen-like focus on memorable hooks.  By day they are Bruce, Mandy and Neil. By night they are the deadly spazz-jazz ninjas known only as Super Adventure Club.

If you are one of those avid music lovers that feel so inclined to fit everything you hear into a neat little musical box, possibly so you can employ the use of hierarchical tree charts and Venn diagrams to describe the exact specific classification of a bands chosen genre, then Super Adventure Club might fry your brain, just a bit. You can’t doubt the chops on these Zappa-esque wah-wobbling zombies.

From the opening ballistic post-hardcore attacks of Hip Hop Hot Pot Pot Noodle, a tale of endurance, quips and circumstance. When our lovable super club found themselves squatting in an over crowded flat that Kim and Aggie wouldn’t dare tread for fear of catching chronic-waster-disease. There’s only really one question they could ask once the deluge of marijuana smoke had cleared, “What happened!?”

Pick Up Sticks attempts to bring a touch of sanity to the proceedings with its hip-swinging groove gleefully referencing Steve MacQueen and Dustin Hoffman, “Papillon is building a raft!” The song is a call to all those who think their dead end job, or greyish expanse they call home is the be all end all. Hell bent on being grown ups, when a year turned into two years turned into ten years. Some who’ve never stopped dreaming, and some who have clearly forgotten all about life’s rich tapestry.

Lead vocalist Bruce Wallace is equally at home wailing like an unhinged lunatic, not least on Nosferatu where the band put the foot-down and provide their own unique critique of F.W Murnau’s 1922 film of the same name, Mark Kermode eat your heart out - “that’s a fake nose I can see it from here, and those joke-shop plastic fangs make you look like Alan Carr.” He’s also a master of the doleful Scottish croon on My Other Brain, arguably the most idiosyncratic song about thinking with your cock and the trouble it can get you in that you’re ever likely to hear.

Not ones to shy away from topical issues, Shiela’s Stabiliser Wheels, is a harmonious lament about sexism towards men in modern society, presented with a brief counter argument from a woman. Super Adventure Diplomacy.  Mandy Clarke takes the lead in the bands freeform-comic-book-romp SAC Attack, listing those chores one must not forget to do, like phoning your mum, making the tea, or feeding the cat but most importantly, one must always remember to avoid zombies!

Sticks-man Neil Warrack describes the albums pen-ultimate number and only instrumental, Think Like A Fish, as “an audio depiction of the dangers involved with ‘think-driving’.”  The band clearly revelling in following this ear-drum workout with a rhetoric warning on the pearls of Pointless Self Indulgence in all aspects of life.

Since their conception in 2007, Super Adventure Club have not only toured with Future of the Left, Danananakroyd and Japandroids but have also taken their blistering live show from Inverness to Cork to Bordeaux, and many hotspots in between. The band are regularly joined onstage by the horse-headed Johny B (this is not a joke - the man really has a horse's head), whose help has ensured that a clutch of well received shows have garnered a cult following all over the UK and into Europe. Not to mention ringing endorsements from Vivian Girls, Artrocker Magazine, and Vic Galloway (BBC Radio 1).

In George A. Romero’s 1968 film Night of the Living Dead the cause of the zombie epidemic is believed to be from high-level radiation brought to the Earth from the Explorer Venus probe. We can only assume that the Super Adventure Club with their unique brand of unconventional and intelligent pop were exposed to these deadly emissions as well, and my God why couldn’t we all have been!

ARM09
Released: Monday 8th March 2010
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Armellodie is delighted to present the scrumptious new single from Sheffield’s wonky-pop albinos, Kill the Captains.

'Rummy' is a quintessentially British counter-kilter barn stomper. With a skip in its step and dovetailing guitars it cuts bitter lyrical swathes against the slobbering uber-Neanderthal - “Came down from the treetops, knuckles still dragging” - the type who steals your wife whilst closing the deal on the insurance you never wanted - “Learnt a string of pleasantries and never stopped smiling”. Like all great rock stompers it perfectly pairs a classic and memorable melody with foot-tap-inducing scuzzy guitars. 

Kill the Captains, true to their Sheffield roots are an industrious bunch of buxom comrades. The band run their own studio, ‘Red Cloud’ – where this single was recorded – as well as promoting their own popular bi-monthly club night, ‘Mutiny’, which has seen them play host to a string of local and established acts.

Having debuted with their self-titled EP in 2008 the band has developed into a ferocious live act with a burgeoning reputation.  Favourable comparisons have been made to XTC, Television and Les Savy Fav, and the band cite Pavement, Pere Ubu and Can amongst their many influences. The band’s debut album, Fun Anxiety, is set to be released on Glasgow’s ever-flourishing independent label, Armellodie Records in May 2010.

The single is backed by two exclusive b’side’s, the simmering two-note repetition of Reverse Psychiatry, a song that builds on the image of a vulture surveying a becalmed battlefield, and then propelled into battle itself with ascending chord patterns and souring vocals in its arsenal.

Contrary to that we have the stripped-down yarn of Supermarket Sweep. Which the band describes as, “a feel-good ditty”, if it's possible to write feel-good about a security guard being trampled to death on the first morning of the Wallmart Black Friday sales!

ARM08
Released: Monday 1st February 2010 
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Armellodie Records is thrilled to present a ghoulish tune-wielding trio emanating from the bowels of central Scotland, Super Adventure Club, and their debut single Pick up Sticks / SAC Attack.

Twisting and turning like a shaolin monk, throwing melodies and riffary like deadly throwing stars, matching each digression with zen-like focus on memorable hooks.  By day they are Bruce, Mandy and Neil. By night they are the deadly spazz-jazz ninjas known only as Super Adventure Club.

Pick Up Sticks is a tale of when life gets in the way, “fed up being hung up on the things I need to give up”, gleefully referencing Steve MacQueen and Dustin Hoffman, “Papillon is building a raft!”. The song is a call to all those who think their dead end job is the be all end all, hell bent on being grown ups, when a year turned into two years turned into ten years. Some who’ve never stopped dreaming, and some who have clearly forgotten all about life’s rich tapestry. Super Adventure Club give clear instructions “Fight like marsupials!”

SAC Attack is a whole lot more comic-book, listing those chores one must not forget to do, like phoning your mum, making the tea, or feeding the cat but most importantly, one must always remember to avoid zombies!

With their eccentric sound vacillating wildly between strung-out post-hardcore, psychedelic guitar noodling and beefed up bass grooves where do the threesome draw their unique powers?

“I’m influenced a great deal by entertainers who put on a good show and who don’t just tear through their tunes,” proclaims Neil. “Guys like Freddie Mercury, Alex Harvey or Bowie.”

Bruce expands: ‘I’ve got just as much interest in stuff like Frank Zappa and King Crimson as I have in The Pixies and Pavement. We all listen to loads of different kinds of music and throw it into what we’re doing.”

Since their conception in 2007, Super Adventure Club have taken their blistering live show from Inverness to Cork to Bordeaux, and many hotspots in between. The band are regularly joined onstage by the horse-headed Johny B (this is not a joke - the man really has a horse's head), whose help has ensured that a clutch of well received shows have garnered a cult following all over the UK and into Europe.

Super Adventure Club’s spookily good long-player, Avoid Zombies, will be released on Armellodie Records in Spring 2010. For now though get your teeth into this single! Enjoy

ARM07
Released: Monday 16th November 2009 
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Cuddly Shark is the debut album by Glasgow’s finest art-school hillbilly rockers Cuddly Shark. 

Recorded by Ross McGowan (Dananananaykroyd, We Are the Physics), and mixed by Scott Maple (Le Reno Amps). Encapsulating the band’s purist “plug in and play” ethos with a touch of ice cold rock’n’roll. Idiosyncratic lyricism and odd anti-melodies combined with foot down pedal-to-the-metal performances prove deadly in this trios hands.

Cuddly Shark were born and bred in the bonnie highlands of Scotland. Two thirds masculine and one third feminine, the band consists of Colin Reid on guitar and vocals, Ruth Forsyth on bass guitar and vocals, and Jason Sinclair on drums and vocals. Magnetically drawn to the rain-soaked musical hotspot that is Glasgow things have been going swimmingly for the sharp-toothed threesome.

Rock solid with the minimum of fuss, Cuddly Shark songs are anarchic and free spirited. From the opening thrash of ‘Bowl of Cherries’, by all accounts a sonic fit of standing on your toes and singing right in your face, to the Pixies like donkey kick of ‘Woody Woodpecker’, an ode to all those people that peck at your head until you can’t take it anymore.  Proving they have more hooks than a tackle box the furious delivery and pace of ‘The Punisher of IV30’, referring to the Elgin post-code where the band members grew up, befits the contradictory nature of the band name as this lot can bark like a nutcase at a bus stop. Listen on and it’s clear linear songwriting isn’t on the menu with the dog-on-the-prowl nuttiness of ‘Mannybix’, and the epic 52 second ode to self-indulgence, ‘Jamie Foxx on Later With Jools Holland’.

Flexing their musical pecks the album centres around the downbeat travelling tune ‘Whiteoaks’, and the hillbilly punk of 70’s country standard ‘Boney Fingers’. Jason from the band enthuses, “How could we not cover this song when we found out it was by a guy called Hoyt Axeton, what kind of a name is Hoyt!?! Then to find out he was the dad in Gremlins I mean how cool can you get, the tunes nae bad either!”

Elsewhere the record boasts fat slabs of post punk grit with feverish rockers, ‘What Goes Around’, the Zeppelin baiting latest single, ‘The Sheriff of Aspen Bay’, and the crunching riffage of ‘12 Months’, where a year spent involuntary abstaining from sexual relations has never sounded so brutally demonic! The album draws to a close with the glorious ‘Instru-Mentalist’ and the Caledonian stomp of ‘Shakey Baby’ which wages war on political correctness with the shameless sing-along jaunt, “see the lady with the baby, grab the baby, hold the baby, shake the baby, jelly baby, got me a syndrome!”.

Brimming with punk attitude and spilling over with melodic brilliance Cuddly Shark will never have an ounce of pretentious hip fat on them. Their live shows have seen comparisons made to Husker Du, Minor Threat, Ween, Fugazi and Weezer. Yet Cuddly Shark are unmistakably their own entity, a blistering romp of rock’n’roll carnage firing as loud as they can from a post-rock cannon.

ARM06
Released: Monday 31st August 2009
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Armellodie is thrilled to present the brand new single from Glasgow’s finest art-school punks Cuddly Shark. Maintaining their “plug in and play” ethos with their own distinct combination of idiosyncratic lyrics and odd anti-melodies, ‘The Sheriff of Aspen Bay’ is a monstrous slab of Zeppelin-baiting rock’n’roll and dischord-inspired punk.

Cuddly Shark were born and bred in the bonnie highlands of Scotland. Two thirds masculine and one third feminine, the band consists of Colin Reid on guitar and vocals, Ruth Forsyth on bass guitar and vocals, and Jason Sinclair on drums and vocals. Magnetically drawn to the rain-soaked musical hotspot that is Glasgow, things have been going swimmingly for the sharp-toothed threesome. Last years debut single, ‘The Punisher of IV30’ - referring to the Elgin post-code where the band members grew up - was released to host of glowing reviews and national airplay. As was the funsize chunk of punk contained within ‘Woody Woodpecker’ and ‘Bowl of Cherries’, the double A-side single released at the start of 2009.  Now the band is readying themselves for the release of their summer blockbuster, ‘The Sheriff of Aspen Bay’ on Monday 31st August.

Recorded by Ross McGowan (Dananananaykroyd, We Are the Physics), and mixed by Scott Maple (Le Reno Amps), ‘The Sheriff of Aspen Bay’ is a foot down pedal-to-the-metal performance. Like a red rag to a bull the song details the descent of a man in pursuit of his trophy girlfriend. All the idle threats, the guilt trips and the hollow claims he makes in order to win her over. Inspired once more by their Elgin roots, and when the character portrayed in the song crosses the line of decency, ‘The Sheriff of Aspen Bay’ contains such beautiful colloquialism’s as “feckin’ dae summin’” [translation: please do something] and the response “I da ken!” [I don’t know].  

The single is backed by two exclusive b’side’s, the folksy ‘Cuddly Jim’, and live favourite ‘Cherry Cherry’ originally by Neil Diamond. Jason enthuses, “It’s an amazing song but at the same time just a minging song especially watching Neil Diamond sing it now, mucky old bugger!... that said his performance in the film Evil Woman is worthy of an oscar!”.

Cuddly Shark will never have an ounce of pretentious hip fat on them and their live shows have seen comparisons made to Husker Du, Minor Threat, Ween, Fugazi and Weezer. Yet Cuddly Shark are unmistakably their own entity, a blistering romp of rock’n’roll carnage firing as loud as they can from a post-rock cannon.

ARM05
Released: Monday 12th January 2009
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Peck! Peck! Peck! Peck! Peck! Armellodie is thrilled to present the brand new double A-side single from Glasgow’s finest art-school punks Cuddly Shark. Maintaining their “plug in and play” ethos with their own distinct combination of idiosyncratic lyrics and odd anti-melodies, the two songs on offer befit the contradictory nature of the bands name and bark like a nutcase at a bus stop!

Recorded earlier this year with Ross McGowan (Dananananaykroyd, We Are the Physics), Woody Woodpecker is a funsize slab of ice cold rock’n’roll. Clocking in at 1 minute 44 seconds there’s no chance of it ever out staying its welcome, unlike the songs subject matter. Let’s face it we’ve all had those people in our lives that just won’t shut up to the point of cracking up, the person that’s drank too much at the party and gets a little too loud for comfort, or a friend from school who you used to like that has grown up to be a complete dick, well Woody Woodpecker is an ode to all those people. The ones who are too stupid to realise they’re a fucking nuisance!

If Woody Woodpecker is the brewing of an argument then Bowl of Cherries is the full on fight. Hitting you right between the eyes with pounding rhythm and raucous vocals, there’s something so completely unhinged about it mere words are not enough, let’s call it some sort of sonic fit of rage.

Forming in early 2006 Cuddly Shark consists of two boys and one girl, Colin Reid on guitar and vocals, Jason Sinclair on drums and vocals and Ruth Forsyth on bass guitar. Born and bred in the bonnie highlands of Scotland the band found themselves magnetically drawn to the rain-soaked musical hotspot that is Glasgow to hone their sound. Things seemed to twitter along very quickly and last year Cuddly Shark released their debut single, ‘The Punisher of IV30’, referring to the Elgin post-code where the band members grew up and possibly the source of of their unruly aggression! If you’ve ever been there you’ll understand. The single picked up a host of glowing reviews and national airplay giving the band the premise to record their debut longplayer, due for release in the springtime.

Cuddly Shark will never have an ounce of pretentious hip fat on them and their live shows have seen comparisons made to Husker Du, Minor Threat, Ween, Fugazi and The Presidents of the USA. That said Cuddly Shark are unmistakably their own entity, a blistering romp of rock’n’roll carnage and dischord-inspired punk, firing as loud as they can from a post-rock cannon.

ARM04
Released: Monday 12th May 2009
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Armellodie is overjoyed to announce the release of Sheffield’s finest wonky riff-based pop albino’s, Kill the Captains, with their debut eponymous EP.

Kill the Captains came to be in 2006 as a rough-hewn psychedelic jam band, nasty by all accounts. However slowly but surely these four buxom comrades refined their drones into the energetic pop bullets on display here. These lean mean tunes are unique, and yet totally unforgiving for being steeped in the band’s shared love of 1990s American Alternative music, Shoegaze and Krautrock.

Recorded in October of last year with acclaimed producer Alan Smythe (Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Long Blondes, Reverend and the Makers), the EP is the perfect introduction to a band who believes that adventurous, noisy rock music can be fun and temper their most out-there moments with shout-along choruses and fizzing interplay between their dual-guitar attacks. 

From the opening feedback of lead track, ‘Bottom Lip’, with its preppy Buzzcocks-esque chugging guitars, to the breezy 12/8 pace of ‘Chrunt’ concerned with God complexes and mistaken identity no less. Then there’s the beautiful lullaby, ‘Long in the Tooth’, the closest the band are ever likely to breach ‘power-ballad’ territory. The closing track, and live favourite, ‘Fun Anxiety’ documents a very serious psychological condition suffered by many of Kill the Captains nearest and dearest. Everybody in the world is currently having more fun than you and you can't even remember the paltry amusements which do crop up from time to time. This is because you are also suffering from "Funmnesia".

Since forming, Kill the Captains have been relentlessly gigging in and around their native homeland and have such developed into a ferocious live act with a burgeoning reputation in Sheffield and beyond, they even host their own popular monthly club-night, ‘Mutiny’ in the city. Favourable comparisons have been made to Sonic Youth, Animal Collective and Les Savy Fav to name but a few, and the band cite Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, Slint, Pere Ubu, Television, Can and Neu amongst their many influences so hopefully you’ll get the gist of what it’s all about and get onboard.

Kill the Captains are Paul Pickavance, Leon Carter, Yoz and Paul Andrew Collins Esquire. They are having fun without you. Everyone is.

ARM03
Released: Monday 3rd March 2008
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'The Punisher of IV30' is the debut single from Cuddly Shark.

Forming in early 2006 the band consists of two boys and one girl, Colin Reid on guitar and vocals, Jason Sinclair on drums and vocals and Ruth Forsyth on bass guitar. Born and bred in the bonnie highlands of Scotland the band found themselves magnetically drawn to the rain-soaked musical hotspot that is Glasgow to hone their sound. Things seemed to twitter along very quickly and Cuddly Shark found themselves with a bunch of songs with winning names like ‘The Punisher of IV30’, referring to the Elgin post-code where the band members grew up and if pushed could tell you a horror story or two!

Cuddly Shark will never have an ounce of pretentious hip fat on them and their live shows have seen comparisons made to Husker Du, Minor Threat, Ween, Fugazi and The Presidents of the USA. This single is the first time the band have ever graced a studio and it only goes to demonstrate that Cuddly Shark is a blistering romp of rock’n’roll carnage and dischord-inspired punk, firing as loud as they can from a post-rock cannon.

‘The Punisher of IV30’ is backed by two other tracks, ‘Hails of Bay’, with its drug-laced lyrical humour accompanied by some sublime uber-slacker country riffage and, ‘Jamie Foxx on Later with Jools Holland’, let’s just say that song speaks for itself but for the record it’s clearly an ode to the inability to resist the gratification of one’s own self indulgent whims and desires, Mr. Foxx you have been found…guilty!

ARM02
Released: Monday 11th June 2007
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'Poison Letter' is the second single to be released by Le Reno Amps. 

Glasgow based Le Reno Amps follow up their impressive new long-player, So For Your Thrills… with this the second single to be taken from it.

‘Poison Letter’ is a healthy slice of bouncy infectious pop all be it with a venomous lyric to sink your teeth into. A lush arrangement with harmonies soaring and a horn blaring chorus this witty vignette perfectly encapsulates the ‘ins’ and more so the ‘outs’ of love.

Le Reno Amps music can be bracketed as indie, some say power pop, others say alt-country, the important thing to remember is Le Reno Amps are not high brow, they are in fact the lowest brow. They are often compared to Violent Femmes, They Might Be Giants, The Decemberists, Teenage Fanclub and The Lemonheads but consistently try to plough their own field.

“…they’re worthy of the Shins poignancy.” - Planet Sound, Channel 4 Teletext

“…a whimsical quality sure to appeal to lovers of fey indie types (that’s you Belle and Sebastian fans)” - The List

ARM01
Released: Monday 26th February 2007
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Le Reno Amps were born of sorrow in the North East of Scotland.  In 2004 they moved south to Glasgow to spread their joyous word, play lots of shows and write lots of songs. Nothing ever came so quickly that they could say it was easy, but here they are at the beginning of a new year about to release their debut single, ‘Wound Up’.

‘Wound Up’ is a high-energy; bounce along pop song if ever there was one. Clocking in at exactly 3 minutes it has all the right ingredients. Driving rhythm, chugging guitars, stabbing organ and harmonious vocals.

Scott Maple and Al Nero formed Le Reno Amps with the simple premise that every song they write should stand up to the test whether it played on an old beaten up acoustic guitar or with a full band behind them. “We try and write songs with all the fat cut off so you can savour their buttery goodness” says Scott.

Le Reno Amps music can be bracketed as indie, some say power pop, others say alt-country, the important thing to remember is Le Reno Amps are not high brow, they are in fact the lowest brow. These three men and a little lady operate so far out of fashion they stand-alone and shine with a majestic beauty.

By the way, ‘Le Reno Amp’ is nothing more than an anagram of ‘Maple’ and ‘Nero’, so don’t question the name too deeply.