Colin MacIntyre has a penchant for peculiar instruments. He tells me his new album The Water features a harmonium. “It’s a kind of keyboard which sounds similar to an accordion” he explains. “You use a pedal to pump wind through it, so it’s a great way of getting some exercise in the studio.” Apparently the model McIntyre owns is particularly old. “It’s probably got mice running around in it” he says. [...]

Spanning a network of vilages from Sussex to Devon, Drift Records formed at the end of 2005 following various ‘collective’ activities. They’ve evolved into a full recording releasing and touring machine, and its musician head honchos are set to head out across Scotland and the UK. Alan Souter spoke to co-founder The R.G. Morrison. [...]

The morning after playing the last show of The Mountain Goats’ tour at the Oran Mor in Glasgow, John Darnielle, the man behind the American lo-fi folk stalwarts, stands outside a travelodge smoking and wearing a pointy brown woolly hat. [...]

One of our favourite cliches round these here parts is “if you’ve not heard of them already, you will soon”. This applies nicely to Glasgow 5-piece Attic Lights, with the only caveat to this being that you will quite probably have heard of them already. Perhaps you heard them on the BMX Bandits’ most recent album My Chain. Or you spotted them on BBC2’s Culture show, or on BBC Scotland (The Music Show, and Rapal) or STV’s Nochd Gun Chadal’. And those are just the sightings, their stirring harmonies are well-kent on XFM London, Radio 2, and all the places that you’d expect to hear a band that, it seems, everyone is talking about. [...]

OK – so when is a ‘Riot Grrrl’ band not a ‘girl band?’ How about when it has a BLOKE playing drums!! Darlington based four-piece, We Start Fires have been attracting increased mainstream media attention in the build-up to their recently released eponymously entitled debut album. [...]

Help! is 43 years old and, truth be told, the old girl hasn’t aged particularly well. Some of those gags that seemed so witty back in the sixties are wearing a bit thin and at times, the dialogue is positively cringe-inducing. [...]

Scotland’s favourite indie music website was previously available in magazine format - and back issues are still available to purchase - and as a special limited offer we’re practically giving the mag away! [...]

I’m sitting on the train at Prestwick Airport, and on stomp the usual troop of backpacked, wide eyed travellers, who natter in distant tongues whilst gazing out to an otherwise dull and consistent landscape through their freshly primed eyes.

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2008. A New Year, new hope, a new band emerging from the toilet gig circuit ready for the masses. On Friday 28^th Dec, over 1300 music lovers hit

Even in these days of ‘disposable’ music, a ‘disposable’ band remains quite a novelty. Yet that is the way it seemed with Glasgow art-rockers, The Royal We. However, it was not always intended thus. [...]