Scottish BAMS Winner 2012

So a slightly belated BAMS 2012 announcement from ourselves, and I'm sure the majority of you who care will have seen the results on one of the other 41 blogs and music sites taking part.  However we always like to show our support and for those who've maybe missed it, here is the Scottish BAMS 2012.

If you are unfamiliar with the BAMS, then let me elucidate the possibilities. The BAMS stands for Bloggers And Music Sites, and each representative submits their favourite five albums of the year.  These results are then tallied, checked and collaborated in an intricate scoring system by head BAM Mr. Peenko to produce a final top 10 list.  In total there were had 41 different sites take part, which I guess just goes to demonstrate just healthy the Scottish music scene is at the moment.

As I am sure you will want to know who took part, here's a list of the sites/persons who voted in this years BAMS :

Scots Whay Hae!,  Jim Gellatly, Detour, Jock N Roll, Houdidontblog, Rave Child, Fusion New Music, Fish In A Sub, Manic Pop Thrills, Kowalskiy, 17 Seconds, Net Sounds, The Steinberg Principle, Songs Heard On Fast Trains, Peenko, Hercules Moments, Dauphin Mag, JockRock, Play That Song For Me, The Spill, The Tidal Wave of Indifference, HP, Inverness Gigs, Elba Sessions, Fresh Air, Scottish Fiction, Tenement TV, Marion Scott MFR, Last Years Girl, Dear Scotland, Blues Bunny, The Pop Cop, Vic Galloway, Ally McCrae, Glasgow PodcART, I Hate Fun, Avalanche, Edinburgh Man, Everything Flows, Nicola Meighan, Aye Tunes and Song, by Toad.


Here's the top ten BAMS albums of 2012

Joint 12-9th -
Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital /
Paul Buchanan - Mid Air /
The Twilight Sad - No One Can Ever Know /
We Are The Physics - Your Friend, The Atom

8th - Admiral Fallow - Tree Bursts In Snow

7th - Sharon Van Etten – Tramp

6th - Miaoux Miaoux - Light Of The North

5th - Errors - Have Some Faith In Magic

4th - RM Hubbert - Thirteen Lost & Found

3rd - PAWS - Cokefloat!

2nd - Django Django - Django Django

1st - Meursault - Something for the Weakened

 (courtesy of Mike from Manic Pop Thrills)

Head BAM Lloyd caught up with Meursault frontman Neil Pennycook.  Here's what he had to say:

"Congratulations Neil, you are this years' winners of the Scottish BAMS award, how do you feel?        

I feel like the chubby lad at school after being picked first for the football team. I fear that any minute now I'm going to be told it's all a joke and you're going to burn my shoes and flush my head down the toilet.       

It seems to have been a pretty exciting year for the band, what with European tours supporting Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to headlining the Queen's Hall back in July, aside from winning this years BAMS, what's been your personal highlight of 2012?   

My highlight is probably the QH gig. I've wanted to play that venue since I was 18. Feels nice to have ticked that one off.             

Last years the BAMS was won by Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells, who later went on to win the SAY Awards. Have you allowed yourself the thought that you might potentially be in with a shout at next years SAY Awards?   

What? I thought this was the SAY awards? You ARE still giving me £10000 though right?  (whip round anyone? - Peenko)

I noted that once again you've decided not to head over to Austin for next years SXSW, is not something that interests you or are you just keeping our friends on the other side of the pond waiting?   

It's not something that appeals to me to be honest. I get really tired of the competitive aspect of playing music and do my best to avoid it. I've no interest in travelling halfway round the world (at great expense) to pedal my music to pissed up strangers in laminates  . Playing in the states is something that I'm keen to pursue but not that way.      

       

How important do you feel that the support of music blogs has been to the band?   

It's been hugely important for us. After all it was a blogger (song, by toad) who put out our first 3 records.              

Seeing as we are on the subject of albums of the year, what have been your personal favourites of the last 12 months?        

I've not sure if all of these came out this year but I'm going with them anyway...  

Chad Vangaalen- Diaper Island 

Youth Lagoon- The Year of Hibernation 

Charles Latham- Fast Loans 

Grouper- alien observer 

Paws- Cokefloat   

Cheers!"

We're Only Here For The Banter - We Are The Physics

We Are The Physics, may not actually be masters of the molecule, but when it comes to crafting fun filled quirky pop songs they've got their PhD's hanging on the wall.  New album, 'Your Friend The Atom' serves as further proof of this, and contains plenty of great tracks alongside recent singles 'Goran Ivanisevic' and 'Applied Robotics'.  We caught up with Michael from the band (which one?  You'll have to guess!) for some Scottish Fiction style banter.


Hello, how are you?

Absolutely okay!

It's the question everyone hates, but could you tell us a little bit about your music and your influences?

We call our music 'mutant science punk rock', but that's actually just a way of making derivative music seem more exciting.  It's basically just fast, jerky, springy music.  We stole all our ideas from bands like Ex Models, Devo, Polysics, Brainiac, The Skids, Buddy Holly, Servotron, Mocket, A Flock Of Seagulls, Adam & The Ants and Del Shannon.

What's your song writing process like?

It's usually a case of someone having some wee embryo of an idea that we nurture until it sounds much much worse than it originally did, and that's how our songs are born.  We went through a phase of writing out formulae for each song.  None of us can read music or really know anything about the theory of music, so we'd phonetically write out noises and musical phrases that we wanted, then just follow the formula.  They would typically read like this: Boom, boom, TIIIIING *drawing of a mountain*, sloooooooow bit, BADDA DADA DOOF, etc. etc.

What could we expect to see from a live show?

Four grown men embarrassing themselves for little or no money.  We like to treat each gig as an event and our one basic rule is to never ignore the audience.  We used to see so many bands just dully and dutifully going through all their songs with a pointless 'thanks' after each one was met by a polite and expected applause.  Why are those gigs even happening?  Nobody's getting any pleasure from it!  It's like a horrible ritual where everybody knows what's expected of them and urgh.  We appreciate the fact people have turned up to see us, and we won't let them go home uninterested, even if they have to stay behind for a punishment exercise.

If it were all to end tomorrow, what would you say has been your greatest achievement?

What's ending?  Us, or Planet Earth?  I suppose getting to the end of time was pretty decent of us.  As a band, I think our greatest achievement, apart from this interview, has been managing to be so bad for so long with very few people trying to murder us.

What have you got planned for the second half of 2012?

Our UK tour to promote our new record starts tomorrow, we'll probably have a new 7" record out in November and we're off to do some Christmas gigs in December.  Then we will celebrate Christmas by eating and eating and eating, then I think we'll be off out on tour again across Europe and Russia and Japan in the new year.  It all depends on how much time Michaeldrum can get off work.  He's a commercial airline pilot.

At Scottish Fiction we focus on new Scottish music, how do you as a band view the Scottish music 'community'?

I think, in honesty, we've never really felt any part of any community, not even as a Scottish band.  Scotland produces some brilliant music and it's great to have that heritage, but we've never felt accepted by any musical scene or community and, in fairness, that's good - we don't really trust flag-wavers.  Scenes and communities are usually about spotting similarities between bands and people in bands and heralding that as a good thing, but we've always preferred bands who sat on the fringes.  The good thing about Scotland is that it does produce such diverse bands, it's a shame that there's got to be a 'scene' surrounding it for it to do well elsewhere.  Scottish bands pouncing on other Scottish bands for having any success is a bit of a shame, but I can understand that their nationality being the only thing that unites them isn't enough.  Although, we all know how tough it is to get out of Scotland to do gigs, so it feels like should applaud those who do rather than scorn them.  There's quite an insular attitude to some of the bands who'll do Scottish tours but rarely ever go south, whereas our whole shtick was to get out and play the rest of the world as soon as we could.  Scotland's our home, and it's an amazing place, but there's a whole world out there; there are a lot of bands who just stick touring Scotland, grow a huge loyal home fan base, but couldn't fill a toilet past Carlisle.  By all means, bring more tours to Scotland, tour Scotland more, but don't limit yourself to one country like a creepy tribe.  It's the first rule of good genetics - spread the musical genes across the world.  This is starting to sound like we're promoting invading countries aurally.  And we are.

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

I reckon every Scottish band is bigger than us in Scotland, so they should probably be recommending us.  There's the lovely We Were Promised Jetpacks, of course, PAWS, Ex Wives, Divorce, Hivver, Miss The Occupier.  I remember I heard a band a few years ago called The Videos on that thing called MySpace, and they were amazing - I think they'd split up by the time I found them.  But we shouldn't forget some of the bands who came and went who didn't get the recognition that they probably should have like Invisibles, Take A Worm For A Walk Week and Astral Planes.  Oh, and Bis.

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

We Are The Physics.  Biggest joke oot, mate.


Check out more from We Are The Physics

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Scottish Fiction Podcast - 15th August 2012

Last Wednesday's show was a good 'un, filled to the brim with new tracks from the likes of The Unwinding Hours, Crusades, Meursault, Cancel The Astronauts and more!  Our featured artist this week was Isobel Campbell and we had three tracks from her in her various musical guises.  And our Classic Scottish Album was KLF's 1991 album 'White Room'.  Listen back for all this, some Twitter banter, and more!

Crusades - Harelquin
The Unwinding Hours - I've Loved You For So Long
headachehat - Grino
Kill The Waves - Shadow
People, Places, Maps - 3

Classic Scottish Album - KLF - 3AM Eternal - White Room

Meursault - Lament For A Teenage Millionaire
The Second Hand Marching Band - A Dance To Half Death
PAWS - Miss American Bookworm
We Are The Physics - Goran Ivanisevic
Michael Cassidy - 15 Years
James Yorkston - Border Song
Quickbeam - Seven Hundred Birds
Rollor - Island / Jekyll
Cancel The Astronauts - Making Dynamite
Dave Hughes And The Renegade Folk Punk Band - As You Are
7of7 - These Days Are Our Last
Middleton Hall - First Bus Out Of Town
The Tide Inside - On My Way Back Down From The Edge

Featured Artist - Isobel Campbell
Belle & Sebastian - Is It Wicked Not To Care?
Isobel Campbell - The Breeze Whispered Your Name
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - Honey Child What Can I Do?

The State Broadcasters - Where I Belong
The Spook School - Here We Go

Scottish Fiction - 15th August 2012 by Scottish Fiction on Mixcloud

Battle Of The Bands - Round 4

If you follow either Kowalskiy or I on Twitter then this evening you may have seen your feed filled with school ground posturing and some numbers being flung around like a rag doll.  This can only mean it's Battle Of The Bands Round 4!

As always, a quick recap of round 3, in which Randolph's Leap aided me in a whitewash drubbing of David from Kowalskiy, who had on his side DOLFiNZ.  This levelled the scores off at a nail bitingly close 2-2 heading into round 4.  For a whole synopsis direct your eyes here.

As per our rules which have been carved into stone somewhere in a Glasgow cave, as I had first picks last time out, this week it's David's turns to take those all important first picks.  Here's how things transpired.

This week I've recruited Paisley crooner Michael Cassidy on board to help me try and secure a lead over David.  He is currently hitting all the right notes, with rave reviews of his first headline gig at King Tut's, an appearance at the Boardmasters festival over the weekend, and recently winning the Gerry Rafferty Songwriting Prize.  Kowalskiy's picks were, Twitter Follow Ratio, Band Name Scrabble Score and Years Since Formation.  As you can see from the above bandcard, I felt that gave us a fair shout at picking up some points.  Or so I thought...

Staying within his day time profession, David chose Glasgow four piece We Are The Physics to battle his corner.  (I don't know if the band are actually physicists.  In fact I suspect they are actually evil doctors).  Comparing the chosen statistics looks something like this:

Twitter Follow Ratio

Michael Cassidy - 1.15      vs.       We Are The Physics - 6.61

Band Name Scrabble Score

Michael Cassidy - 27       vs.       We Are The Physics - 31

Years Since Formation

Michael Cassidy - 5       vs.       We Are The Physics - 8

Which means, it's 0-3 to David for round 4, and 2-3 overall in the Battle Of The Bands.  Grrrr....

There's going to be an extended wait for round 5, due to other commitments for both David and I, however as the old saying goes, revenge is a dish best served cold.


Michael Cassidy's profile has never been higher.  He recently played a sell out headline show a King Tuts, and during the summer has played countless festivals.  His brand of songwriting has also seen him win the inagural Gerry Rafferty Songwriting Prize, a fitting tribute from one of Paisley's finest sons.  With his debut album edging closer and closer to a release date, his stock can only continue to rise.



We Are The Physics are a 4 piece alternative group from Glasgow, who have had two crackin' singles out recently, the fabulously catchy 'Goran Ivanisevic' and 'Applied Robotics'.  Check them out!

Scottish Fiction Podcast - 25th July 2012

On yesterday's show we had a very special guest in for Festival Focus, none other than Jamie Murray Festival Director of Doune The Rabbit Hole! Jamie was chatting about what makes their festival great, and played some music from three of the acts playing.

We also had our usual Peenko Friday Freebie track, our Featured Artist was Primal Scream, our Classic Scottish Album was Dananananaykroyd's 'Hey Everyone', and we had exclusive first plays of new tracks from Discopolis and Mitchell Museum. Phew!

We Are The Physics - Applied Robotics

PAWS - Jellyfish
Penfold - Before We Fall

Peenko Friday Freebie - KiDD - Who Would Believe

Shambles Miller - Confessions
Happy Particles - Black Verse (Demo)

King Creosote - I'll Fly By The Seat Of My Pants - As chosen by Jamie Murray of Doune The Rabbit Hole
Punch And The Apostles - Tie Me To The Mast - As chosen by Jamie Murry of Doune The Rabbit Hole
Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat - Let's Stop Here - As chosen by Jamie Murry of Doune The Rabbit Hole

Discopolis - Indiependance

Classic Scottish Album - Dananananaykroyd - Pink Sabbath - Hey Everyone

KOBI - Fight

Featured Artist
Primal Scream - Movin' On Up
Primal Scream - Rocks
Primal Scream - Swastika Eyes

Pronto Mama - Still Swimming
The Trade - Do You Want It
Dead Sea Souls - Punk B-Side
Mitchell Museum - The Closer We Got The Harder We Fell

Scottish Fiction - 25th July 2012 by Scottish Fiction on Mixcloud