Scottish Fiction Shelter Christmas EP

A very merry Christmas one and all!

It's that special time of year, where amidst all the jam pies (we don't like mince pies here at Scottish Fiction), eggnog, tinsel and obligatory Cliff Richards songs it's very important to remember that Christmas a time for goodwill to all men.

Shelter are a charity who do an incredible amount of work, helping those who are unfortunate to be homeless at this time of year, and throughout the other 364 days of the year.  And you can do your bit to help too.

This month for the monthly Scottish Fiction EP we are asking for a minimum of £2 to download some fantastic seasonal music from a wide variety of talented Scottish musicians. £2 is not a lot to pay for seven tracks, but it will go a long way to helping Shelter continue their great work over Christmas and beyond. (Please note £2 is the minimum donation. By all means donate more should you wish to. Bandcamp let's you choose how much to pay.)

You can download the full EP here. Please also feel free to share this with as many people as possible.

So without further ado, let me introduce to you the participants in this month's EP:

Lonely And Lola - Cute pop influenced music with ear splittingly catchy harmonies, this duo take the essence of the '60's and twist it into a modern sound to behold. Lauren Reilly displays bewitching vocals on their take of 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town'.

Ed Muirhead - Ed is a man who takes great enjoyment in crafting his simple, honest, brand of folk infused music. Also running Tattie Records, Ed's hardwork and DIY ethos is conducive to producing music that warms the cockles. Here Ed has reworked a 150 year old Christmas carol, 'Midnight Clear'.

The Spook School - I love The Spook School. So much so I have dreams of them bursting out a giant present under my tree on Christmas morning. I've posted lots about the C86 twee coated alternative rock before so you really should just read that. Their track 'Bah Humbug!' is as good as anything they have ever done, but with bells!

Linzi Murphy - With her traditional Scottish folk style Linzi has drawn much critical acclaim amongst the traditional and folk music scene. And rightly so, her stripped back version of the classic 'Silent Night' showcases her vocal talent and natural guitar playing extremely well.

Evil Hand - Evil Hand, a.k.a. Derek Bates, has an incredible knack of producing music which is both pays homage to the ever popular alt-folk sound and experiments with ambient electronica aspects. His album 'Huldra' was one of this year's highlights and it's a pleasure to have his track 'Around The Tree' on the EP.

The Dirty Demographic - Unashamedly catchy pop, that brings new meaning to the phrase, 'all that glitters is gold'. The Dirty Demographic are all about having fun, and making music to dance like a drunk student to. Their track

Lovers Turn To Monsters - A.k.a. Kyle Wood. A very talented individual who has the work rate of a honey bee. A honey bee that makes lo-fi emotional music. He enlisted the help of producer and multi instrumentalist Walker Smith Jr. for their track 'Snowflake Frustration'.

So there you have it folks. Seven songs all yours for only £2 (download here). And that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from doing a good deed. Plus once on the Scottish Fiction Bandcamp page you can fill your boots with previous month's EPs which are absolutely free!

A huge thanks from me to all of you for your support to the blog and for purchasing this EP. A massive thanks to each and every one of the above artists who have donated their time and music offerings for free, whilst the main thing is to raise money for Shelter, it's also a big plus to be able to share such great music with you. Be sure to show them support and check out more of their material via the links provided. And also a big thanks to Andrew Wilson for his artwork (below) which I've tweeked slightly to give a rather amatuerish festive feel to.

Please feel free to stream the album below, but please please please download it and help us give Shelter a nice sum of money.

Thanks. Oh and merry Christmas!



Please note that due to the way Bandcamp works your £2 will go into my Paypal account, and will show on your statements as a payment to 'Neil Wilson'. I don't have anyway around this unfortunately, and whilst I hope I'm trustworthy enough to not have to, I'll happily provide sales details along with the final amount passed to Shelter. Let me be extremely clear, ALL proceeds from this EP will go to Shelter. Thanks again.

We're Only Here For The Banter - Lonely And Lola

Lonely And Lola are a musical duo made up of Sean Gilles and Lauren Reilly. Coming at your ear canals with melodic folk pop steeped in a deep sense of musical history, with influences such as Fleetwood Mac, Beach Boys and other '60's stalwarts. I was lucky enough to be joined by them on Pulse Community Radio recently, and extending their acts of generousity they have answered some questions. Have a gander.

Hello, how are you?

Sean. I'm very well thank you, just busy in studio trying to get our album finished

Lauren. Good, thank you :) Yeah, we're trying to get it completed as soon as possible so we can get it out there and hopefully spark some interest in the band.

Tell us a little bit about your music and your influences.

S. I'm majourly influenced mostly with 60's music. My biggest influence has got to be The Beatles. If it wasn't for hearing Sgt Pepper when I was 7 I would have never got into music. I also love Buddy Holly, The Doors, The Beach Boys, right up to Ryan Adams who I think is an incredible Singer/Songwriter.

L. I have quite a range of musical influences. When it comes to singing style, I adore some of the more old school artists like Judy Garland, Peggy Lee, Julie London; I just love that rich sound they make, so simple yet so effective, and it was The Andrews sisters that introduced me to harmonies and what an incredible sound they can produce. Of the artists still around today though, I have to mention people like Regina Spektor, Joni Mitchell, She & Him... I could go on forever though, right to my downright guilty pleasures; Taylor Swift, Michael Bublé. .. I can't help myself!

How did the partnership of Lonely And Lola come about?

S. It came about when I wrote a song that was a duet with a female voice. Lauren had done stuff with The Lonely boy before so I asked her to come along and see if the song would work....and it did. It worked so well in fact I thought I have to make a band with just the two of us. So I wrote more songs with two vocals in it and now here we are.

L. Sean just wanted to find a ploy to spend time alone with me... Haha I'm joking, no, he sent me a text one day to see if I'd be interested and it started off just as a small project we played around with for a few months. It was after our first gig at the Edinburgh Festival; we did a 15 minute kind of teaser set to test the water, and everyone responded so well to us, that we realised we could be onto something and decided to give it a real try.

What's your song writing process like?

S. Usually I will write the song and then take it to Lauren then the two of us will sit down and work out some arrangement for it and then Lauren will work out her vocals and harmonies. Lauren's really good at coming up with harmonies.

L. Yeah, we've settled into that kind of process now where Sean comes to me with a song and I'll throw out my ideas, let him sing it to me and I'll work out where I fit in and my own melody to complement his or sometimes we'll decide that a particular song is more suited to one of us in particular and the other just supports with back up vocals or guitar, and in my case a tambourine!

What would you say has been your greatest achievement so far?

L. I'd have to say our gig at the Troubadour Club down in London. We only had a couple of gigs under our belt as a duo at this point, Sean obviously has a lot of experience solo and with his band but I was still a newbie to the scene and it was quite daunting, I have to say; playing on the same stage that folk like Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin once performed. It ended up being an amazing gig though, there was a great atmosphere held throughout the night, the audience were really on our side and it's the gig where I think we really started to come into ourselves; relax into our own style and enjoy the performance, it was a great achievement for us so early on.

If you could battle one other musical duo who would it be?

S.The two of us have thought hard about this and I think we are gonna go for Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks....Lauren will explain why...

L. Although we realise that Stevie could have me for breakfast haha, we figure that all we'd need to do is light a spark and leave those two to battle each other to the death! You know... "So guys, what was Go Your Own Way about..?" Easy.

What have you got planned for 2012?

S. Gonna try get more gigs, hopefully get on some tours and get our album done and dusted.

L. Yeah, just get as much experience behind us as possible, gain more support and get our album to as many people as possible and hope that someone sees something in us and likes us enough to take us further.

Any live dates coming up for those who want to see you live?

L. We're performing with lots of other bands as part of a charity gig at Maggie May's on December 7th, and there will also be a Christmas themed gig hopefully, although the date and location of which is still to be arranged so keep an eye on our website lonelyandlola.com or 'like' us on Facebook where we keep everyone posted.

What other Scottish artists would you recommend to the Scottish Fiction readers?

S. We have played with a lot of really good scottish acts. I'm loving a band called "She's hit" also a band called "suspire" Everyone should go check them out.

L. I'm brand new to the scene so I'm still discovering them as I go along, the ones who have most impressed me so far, other than who Sean's already mentioned, are Lou Hickey and Tragic O'Hara, both really talented and unique acts that deserve some credit.

Thanks for speaking with us, would you care to share a joke with us?

S.Thank you...its been a pleasure. I will let Lauren tell a joke cause mines are either not funny or rude.

L. Thank you for having us! Jeeeez, a joke that's neither rude or offensive....
How many ears has Captain Kirk got? Three: the left ear, the right ear and the final front ear....

Check out more from Lonely And Lola on their website and Facebook.

Scottish Fiction Teaser

Guess who's back? Back again!

No not him. Me. Last week saw a rare break in the relentless drive to showcase great new Scottish music. So I'm back in style this week. Another guest live in the studio, joining me on Monday's show is Lonely And Lola who are picking the tracks for the first hour and talking about their music. Oh and some live songs to boot.

And here's a taste of what you might hear in the second hour of the show...

Tune in from 9pm tomorrow night, you know you want to...

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