Music
LITERARY/ MUSIC SALON TURNED RECORD LABEL NEU! REEKIE! Neu! Reekie! Records Unveiled, Scottish Book Trust, Edinburgh, Fri 27 Jul; Avalanche Records, Edinburgh, Sat 28 Jul; Mono, Glasgow, Sat 28 Jul
Over the past 18 months, Neu! Reekie!’s monthly Friday nights of what used to be called alternative entertainment have captured Edinburgh’s off-piste underground in a way not seen since Rebel Inc lit-zine first broke cover in the early 1990s. Now Neu! Reekie! ringmasters Michael Pedersen (pictured, far right) and Rebel Inc founder Kevin Williamson bring us Neu! Reekie! Records, an aural experience that spreads the night’s multimedia inclinations further. Their first release is a double A-side 7” single, with Pedersen and Williamson overseeing a side each. While on one side, Williamson performs the title poem from his collection, In a Room Darkened, for his contribution, a lovely ditty called ‘The Caterpillar Tango’, Pedersen has conjured an avant-indie-pop supergroup into being.
Jesus, Baby! are singer Davy Henderson (sometime driving force behind Fire Engines, Win, The Nectarine No 9 and now The Sexual Objects); former Futuristic Retro Champions keyboardist and current TeenCanteenist Carla J Easton; Belle & Sebastian associate Roy Moller and The Wellgreen/The Store Keys dynamo Marco Rea. Together, they gift-wrap Henderson’s lead drawl in some delicious harmonies on a lovely concoction mixed and mastered by former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder Jones.
The record’s cover art will be provided by visual artist Jim
Lambie, while its launch will be a three-pronged weekend, beginning with a Friday night Edinburgh show, followed by a Saturday afternoon instore at Avalanche. Saturday’s finale in Glasgow features Scotland’s original polymath Alasdair Gray, while each Jesus, Baby! member will then show off their individual band’s wares before regrouping in a glorious Jesus, Baby! huddle.
‘We’ve started a record company as a visceral representation of what we do in Neu! Reekie!,’ Pedersen says, ‘and now we’re turning that into a live event.’ (Neil Cooper)
EXPOSURE
SHOEGAZE/ ROCK SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS Stereo, Glasgow, Sun 22 Jul
‘I’m really proud of this record,’ says Alejandra Deheza of her band’s new album, Ghostory. ‘I think it’s the best one we’ve done. I’m proud of the way we came together and wrote it, because there were a lot of people wondering if the band was going to keep going.’ It would have been a fair question to ask, after all the departure of Deheza’s twin sister Claudia following the release of School of Seven Bells’ second album, Disconnect From Desire, in 2010 might have interrupted the dynamic between both women and former Secret Machines member Benjamin Curtis. ‘Everybody has to really want to be there,’ says Deheza of her sister’s departure to raise her family. ‘It’s hard to keep touring the way we do if you want to be doing something else, so yeah, she went off to do her own thing. She wanted a different life.’ Did Alejandra think her departure would bring the band to an end? ‘No. Never. It started out just Ben and I, so it meant that things had really just come full circle for me.’
We can be grateful that they kept going, because Ghostory is a gorgeous record which incorporates Deheza’s spectral melodies with Curtis’ growling, shoegaze-informed guitars. ‘People might have been expecting something different,’ says Deheza, ‘but we just kept writing the way we usually do from the same inspirations and the same ideas. We just fleshed them out differently this time.’ (David Pollock)
68 THE LIST 19 Jul–2 Aug 2012
CHURCHES
You’ve heard of CHURCHES, right? I mean, someone’s probably linked you their stunning, soaring slice of polychrome electronic pop, ‘Lies’, which hit YouTube with the stealth and devastation of a sonic exocet and instantly blew your mind, yeah? You probably caught the hype on the Guardian and NME. You may have been one of the lucky ones with tickets for their recent sold-out debut show at Glasgow School of Art. You were, right? Well if you weren’t, best brush up . . .
The Past Each one of the band has been kicking about the Scottish music scene for a while; Martin Doherty’s known for his work with the Twilight Sad, Iain Cook for Aereogramme/the Unwinding Hours and Lauren Mayberry for Blue Sky Archives. CHURCHES is, musically, an entirely new departure for the troika, eschewing indie and rock sentiment for earworm synth hooks.
The Present The band have chosen a ‘less is more’ ploy to grab attention, and it’s worked. Other than ‘Lies’, the free download track punted by Neon Gold blog, there are no other tunes available. They loathe to yap about themselves and prefer to hide away, plotting global domination. [Mayberry can also be found in her day job, sorting the LGBT and Around Town pages at The List – ed.] Naturally, this approach has served only to create a feverish frenzy for more music and info. The Future . . . is theirs, if they want it. Word is spreading, labels are agog. A single may be out in the autumn, with an album in 2013. CHURCHES could yet be our salvation. (Mark Keane) ■ CHURCHES support School of Seven Bells on Sun 22 Jul, Stereo, Glasgow. For more information, check out facebook.com/churchestheband