Many, many years ago I wrote a sort-of-review of a Lambchop gig at The Fleece which I suppose was the beginning of the kind of inconsequential-wittering-leading-to-a-review style I seem to have adopted here. Having been involved with their very earliest UK releases - something I was fairly proud of, but never really thought about until then - I found myself getting riled by the audience as we waited to go into the venue. Later I got equally upset by someone who's girlfriend didn't like trombones. At least, looking back, I can say I've been a consistently - as I put it back then - "irksome little shit". Arriving at The Fleece tonight after watching a fairly glorious sunset in Bristol while the rest of the UK shivered in a cold snap, I find myself next to someone being just a touch overbearingly smug - perhaps, I pondered unrealistically as I regarded the gent concerned - it was even the same guy from 2002? As I waited I was treated to a hilariously inaccurate potted history of King Creosote's career. Various albums were mentioned, and concerns about being "too folk" quickly dismissed as there are comfortingly "very few duff songs". Apparently "they" insist on promoting Fife which is ironic and amusing because it's the "arse end of Scotland". Quite aside that Scotland goes on quite a bit beyond Fife, and that actually the East Neuk is one of the most beautiful places I've ever spent time I'm prepared to forgive them. They're here because of the Mercury nomination, and y'know "four stars in the Guardian and all that". It's wrong of me to judge, and I realise I'm drifting into the kind of elitism I claim to despise - but, if you're going to mess with the stuff which matters to me, which sustains me and keeps me sane in troubled times, please, please do get the geography right at least. That said, the fact that there are people here who don't share the almost fanatical devotion to the Fence cause which the label regularly inspires is testament to the power which the utterly remarkable "Diamond Mine" had over an unwary public last year. It was going to be an interesting night.

First up was Delifinger moonlighting in his solo guise tonight away from OLO Worm duties. Matthew Lacey takes the stage, a slight and rather quietly unassuming figure assisted by two silent assistants who manipulate all manner of technology to produce the various beeps, squeaks and shuddering basslines which shore up Lacey's delicate twist on casio-folk. On recordings Delifinger manages to create some truly unsettling tales, just odd enough to produce collar-loosening discomfort, but never outright disturbing. It's a neat trick which is in evidence on the first couple of tracks tonight, where he drifts from unnervingly off-kilter ballads to a sort of neo-Formby strum. Somewhere mid-set, it hits a bit of a strange slump where several of the songs are paced about the same and feel a bit pedestrian and listless sitting together. It's a shame, because I know there are Delifinger songs out there which this receptive, unusually welcoming Bristol crowd would respond warmly to. However, it all fits back together in time for the last track - a sinister, discordant beast which lumbers and thumps along while it builds in tension. It was never going to be easy facing a sell-out crowd, many of whom are here solely for the main act, but despite his visible unease Delifinger managed to get a fantastic reaction. Perhaps a more intimate setting and more time to explore a wider range of material would have made all the difference here?

From my usual apologetically out-of-the-way-at-the back vantage point, I surveyed the crowd between acts, only to see an equally apologetic Dan Willson struggling through the crowd, with his guitar in hand. Eventually he found his way onto the stage, assumed his position at the microphone and managed to create an ear-splitting explosion from it! This is Withered Hand, where what might seem ramshackle, a little uncoordinated and sometimes plain disorganised suddenly drifts into sharp focus to produce some of the most lyrically incisive, truly original guitar music you'll find right now. The set settled mainly on favourites from 2009's "Good News" album, including "Cornflake", "Providence" and "No Cigarettes". Hearteningly, there was some recognition for these tunes in the bit of the audience around me, and some genuinely smitten people as Dan's self-effacing stage presence and ability to suddenly launch into these wonderful songs kept them amazingly silent. That really almost never happens at The Fleece. Some new songs were in evidence too, including "It's A Wonderful Lie" where the middle-class angst must have struck more than a few chords in the audience tonight. For me, any human being who can somehow contrive a couplet which pairs "kids with degrees" with "fake bonhomie" is a candidate for sainthood. Throwing in two personal favourites in "For The Maudlin" and "New Dawn" before a rapturous closing take on "Religious Songs" and I'm beginning to think that this is something special which might just catapult Willson into the spotlight somewhat. Later, I hear someone whistling "Religious Songs" in the gents. That has to mean something significant - but I'm not sure quite what yet?

Finally King Creosote and Jon Hopkins take the stage to the gentle piano introduction of "First Watch". Hopkins alternates between harmonium and piano, with a little electrickery thrown in to create the lush, sometimes barely present shimmer of sounds which threads through "Diamond Mine". The plan is to play through the album with a minimum of fuss or interference, and despite a microphone hitch which would throw a less experienced performer off their stride, they do just that. The audience responds with genuine warmth and enthusiasm for this material - and it's good to hear the record played live once more, which gives it a fresh lease of life for me yet again. The strength of compositions like "Bats In The Attic" and "Running On Fumes" is reinforced by Kenny's remarkable voice which sounds even better than when I last heard it. The biggest reaction is reserved for "Bubble" which someone whispers beside me "just gets me every time" before adding "I hope I don't cry tonight". For the already established fan, the question is what delights will be slipped into the remaining part of the set by an ever mischievous King Creosote - and tonight we get a set which stays fairly faithful to his previous work with Jon Hopkins starting with a trio of "Bombshell" era tracks including "Cockleshell", "Spystick" and the utterly sublime "And The Racket They Made" which practically ends up with me in tears. I pretend it's an allergy as Kenny throws in a surprise cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" before another teary goodbye to the strains of "My Favourite Girl".

Once again, it was a privilege to hear King Creosote perform and an absolute joy to see an audience who in many cases had come with a single-minded wish to hear a specific set of songs go away having had just the briefest insight into the much wider, more intriguing and delightful world of Kenny Anderson. But, having finally seen him play a set of reasonable length, without being ill or experiencing technical troubles, I'd say that Withered Hand might just have stolen the show by a whisker tonight. In any case, it was a memorable evening - and I don't think I'll see The Fleece that busy again for quite a while.

It's always a little strange when the distant past resurfaces to invade the present. Somewhere in the cupboard behind me are hundreds of cassettes dating from the early 1990s, and buried in those boxes are more than a couple featuring Bügsküll. Back then they were part of a strange musical landscape which I found myself inhabiting after almost accidentally drifting into it via my own cassette-based exploits. I find this period of musical history cropping up quite a bit lately, and it was interesting to hear some of this explored on a recent Song, By Toad podcast. Quite why it should be this music, or why it should happen right now is open to interpretation, but part of it must relate to the accessibility of simple recording technology and the complete indifference of major labels to grassroots music making at present. The interest of big business is elsewhere, seeking quick returns on multimedia tie-ins, and so once again the bedroom musicians, the hard-working local indie acts and the one-man micro-industrialists are left to pursue things on their own terms. No-one is going to get rich from music just now, but culturally we all surely stand to gain? There's a quote attributed to Shrimper mastermind Dennis Callaci from the turn of the last century: "Music is always better when the powers that be are out of touch, and with the internet, the major labels are going to lose control." Once again, Dennis was on the button.

Of course Bügsküll never really went away, despite my years of completely missing the point - and you can find out more about their exploits here. But what about Bügsküll in 2012? Well, in some aspects reassuringly little has changed. Now focused on the originally Portland, Oregon based but now continent-spanning duo of Sean Byrne (Austin, TX) and Aaron Day (Berlin), there is a refreshing directness which harks right back to those days of cassette releases and home recording. Their basic premise remains intact as Byrne's often delicate, heartfelt nearly-folk songs collide with scraps of recovered sound, simmer in tumults of generated noise and are steeped in analogue hiss and crackle. However, listening back to some of those early cassettes on Shrimper and Eldest Son there has certainly been a distinct shift in fidelity, and a move away from the way songs from those early recordings would dissolve frustratingly but rather beautifully into fuzzy, noisy oblivion as recording artefacts and format limitations became features of the soundscape. I'm not sure I always really understood what the band were aiming for back then - but perhaps one's musical palette matures in the same way our tastes in cuisine develop, and listening now - particularly in the context of "Hidden Mountain", I've completely fallen for the approach all over again.

This blog isn't idly named, and I listened to this for the first time speeding east and watching the sun come up over a frozen landscape. It was an oddly and absolutely fitting way to experience this release. Opening with an extended instrumental introduction in "Old Town", the title track which follows is a curious epic of pastoral Americana, which I can't help but keep replaying in my mind. It's a simple proposition - a delicate guitar melody is plucked out against an atmospheric backdrop of stuttering electronics and layers of droning noise. Perhaps the key to how this gentle, but persistent song manages to worm its way into my consciousness is the new found discipline. The noise never threatens to overwhelm Byrne's calm if melancholy vocal. Continuing in a similarly laconic mood, "The Lights" is driven by a simple but effective vocal melody, which leads a drone of keyboard and the ever present understated, folk-inflected guitar. Then, rather unexpectedly a maudlin brass section joins briefly, lifting the song into new territory before it departs. It's a breathtakingly sudden interlude. The pace picks up a little on "Wolves" but it becomes clear that this isn't by any means going to provide lighter moments. The guitar line here repeats hypnotically and and mantra-like while Byrne manages to sound even more desolate than on the slower-paced opening tracks. Somewhere here I realise that this is just what I wanted from the last Bill Callahan record, but found I lost amongst all it's extravagant complications and overly clever staging.

The elaborately named "Early Winter, Hoping for an Early Spring" appears to have taken a leaf from The Twilight Sad approach to song nomenclature. Not unlike their often bleak and mournful recordings it too has a strange metallic edge to its melody, before startling multi-tracked and distorted electronic vocals eerily join in. The curious cyber-folk saga which follows is unsettling in it's oddly warped background sounds, but remains achingly, unerringly beautiful to hear. On "Lost Cause" Byrne pitches a more personal first-person lyric, together with a whirling electronic shimmer. His voice is at its most vulnerably and sonorous finest here, as he quietly intones the regret-laced verses. Finally "To Be The Head and Not The Tail" closes the record on a comparatively and defiantly upbeat note with what is perhaps the most immediately accessible track on the record. On the surface, it seems to be a distant cousin of George Harrison's "Isnt It A Pity?", but rebuilt from shards of odd sound effects, multi-layered vocals and a steady guitar strum. The lyrics appear to concern natural selection, with an unnamed creature slinking around ensuring it's own survival. Then, the record's only electric guitar solo enters - a majestically fuzzed-up delight of an outburst, if sadly all too brief. Taking a cue from this sudden squall the track builds towards its ending with a cacophony of whirling machinery, and appropriately drenched in hiss. In lots of ways, writing about music has brought me full circle, and to be listening to Bügsküll now connects me right back to some of my earliest experiments and projects, some of which have themselves been strangely re-energised of late. It's pretty certain in fact, that if some of those earliest cassette recordings hadn't found their way into my enthusiastic but clumsy hands back then, I'd be listening to some very different music right now. The lyrics and the music here both seem to deal throughout with a sense of pent-up natural process, and asserting some sort of understanding on a complicated world. Overall, this is a masterpiece of wonderfully intelligent songwriting, barely controlled noise, and simple but beautiful construction.

This release manages also to take the recent debate about legacy formats to a curious new conclusion - being released simultaneously on three labels, each handling a different format. The CD is available from Scratch, whilst Shrimper are providing an outlet for the cassette. Perhaps most exciting though is the vinyl release on Almost Halloween Time, each of the 110 limited copies coming with a painstakingly hand-drawn sleeve - an example being seen above - by the remarkably talented label owner, Luigi Falagario.

Bügsküll - Lost Cause

It's become something of a custom that before my jaunts to Scotland, I head south - if only for the personal satisfaction of having travelled almost the entire length of the country in a week or so. This week, I'd booked tickets through to Dover - a journey I'd done relatively recently, but I figured that some rambling around Kent might be an easy way to spend a Saturday before a bigger trip away. Quaggy had planned a visit to London too, and I met him at a ridiculous hour. Luckily, I'm not expected or required to be particularly communicative pre-coffee consumption.From the outset though, today promised to be rather odd. On getting our tickets checked we were told to stay on the unit to Temple Meads as the 06:24 off Weston was cancelled. So, this meant the 07:30 and time for plenty of sustenance at Temple Meads. This didn't alter the plan really, as I'd allowed a fair margin to get to St.Pancras - today wasn't about rushing around the place. On departing Bristol with no hot drinks in the buffet due to "The Catering Curse of Quaggy" all went smoothly until Thingley Junction, where we crossed over to the reversible Down Main. A frantic attempt by the driver to contact the Train Manager and an announcement that we'd be calling at the wrong side of the island platform at Chippenham. Finally back over to the Up Main at Wooton Bassett having only lost about five minutes - due to a properly signalled railway and a sparse early morning service no doubt.

Things got stranger though - approaching Reading an announcement was made that we'd be terminating due to a 'serious incident' between there and Paddington. The alternatives offered were the direct service to Waterloo, or a DMU to Guildford for a fast service in. Found a fairly quiet spot right at the front of an otherwise packed service and took the long, rather slower jaunt via Ascot and Staines into London Waterloo. On arrival, straight onto a 59 bus to St Pancras, arriving possibly in time for the 11:12 to Dover. However, a desire not to run around like a lunatic, plus the intriguing realisation that there was an engineering block near Ramsgate made me pause. Settled instead for a coffee and a chance to re-plan the morning. Some High Speed services were terminating at Minster, and a look at the departures list showed that Dover to Charing Cross units seemed to be doing the same via the PSUL curve at Minster. Decided to head for Ashford for starters and look at the possibilities.

After a very swift run along HS1, arrived at a chilly and windswept Ashford International. The plan had mutated somewhat from the original trip, and now meant we'd take the next unit to Dover for a lunch break. These units were then heading to Minster and back to Charing Cross - so we'd have a roughly hourly opportunity to do the curve. Soon off, passing the yard at Ashford where 66844 was lurking along with some interesting units. Hopped off at Dover to look for food, then realised that Quaggy wasn't there. Having a Standard Class ticket from London to Dover he'd slunk off into Coach B, while my First Advance permitted me to travel up front. Called him, and it seemed he'd misunderstood the instructions and was staying on to Minster! He opted to leap at Deal for lunch, and I hung around Dover for the next service. Took a brief wander into the outskirts of town but rain threatened so I stocked up on provisions and headed back to the station for a coffee and a chance to check the services from Minster. Seemed we'd have a roughly half-hour wait, at what I recalled was a pretty exposed spot!

Off to Minster on the 14:02, with a rather disgruntled Quaggy rejoining at Deal. The train duly took the unusual curve into the station, where things were surprisingly busy! With Rail Replacement coaches dumping ex-Ramsgate punters here for onward trips to London, there were a fair few folks around. Services from the west were using the crossover to call wrong line, then heading around the curve towards Dover, and some London trains were terminating here too. Noted 66086 edging it's way out of the possession too, but before it managed to escape our High Speed service arrived ready to head back into the city. Another fast run, with some alarming shuddering in the tunnel sections. Might perhaps have been related to a very strong wind whipping through and causing resistance perhaps? It was certainly pretty breezy! Time for a quick wander around Kings Cross, then a spin from Euston to Harrow and back to have a look at the depots, before taking a bus back to Paddington for the customary 19:00 home.

Today hadn't gone to plan, but I'd ended up doing an elusive bit of line and having a fairly interesting time in Kent once again. The county had always been a bit of a dull spot for me, but in recent times has produced some entertaining jaunts. It's always good to have a prejudice challenged.

It seemed strange to be waking up in Glasgow. Although I've paid several flying visits during this past twelve months, it's been a full year since I spent any amount of time up here. Once again I'd made the mistake of sharing the city with an unsympathetic soul, and as I gazed out of the window overlooking the burial ground of the Ramshorn Kirk, I reminded myself that it wasn't anyone else's fault that I had a such a strange attitude to the place. Resolved to have an interesting day pottering about the railways and revisiting some of the trips undertaken back in 2007, the inaugural year of these February excursions. My setting out was delayed by needing to get a little work done, but since the Strathclyde 'Daytripper' tickets don't start until 09:00 not much time was lost in the event. So the first move of the day was an Anniesland train via the North Suburban line from Queen Street. Little piles of snow were stacked neatly against the back of the platforms as we passed the stations on route to Anniesland. The train was quiet, and the sun was just breaking through. It promised to be an interesting day.

Without a plan as such, I played things by ear and decided to zig-zag around the city for fun. My travelling companion needed the majority of the track in the city, so there was no conflict of interests here. At Anniesland, onto a Motherwell train via the Argyle Line, which we saw through to it's conclusion - rounding the Hamilton Circle and into the furthest reaches of the odd station. Used the new footbridge to head over to the main concourse for a Cumbernauld service via Mossend Yard. I was feeling a little under the weather to be honest, and suspected missing breakfast wasn't the best idea. Finding the much respected snack bar at Cumbernauld open despite its barricaded appearance, I finally breakfasted - and regretted it for much of the day as the greasy but tasty local morsel sat heavily in my complaining stomach.

From Cumbernauld, back to Queen Street and a walk over to Central Station under slate grey skies which the sun gave a characteristic silver hint. I was happy just to be here, zipping back and forth on trains which I'd done before. Next plan was to head out to Newton and back, covering each side of the Cathcart Circle. A rather quiet trip out, soon arriving at the forlorn outpost at Newton. Found a spot at the end of the station and watched traffic on both the suburban and mainlines. Plenty happening, including the rare sight (nowadays at least) of a 325 unit moving under it's own power. I'd reassured my companion at arms that the wait at Newton would fly by, and sure enough it did and we were soon heading back via the other side of the circle. Time for one last trip before the evening peak began in earnest - a little earlier of course because it was Friday. This last turn of the day was an out and back jaunt to Paisley Canal, passing the depots at Shields and Corkerhill - though little was on them with the busy evening due to start shortly. Back into Central just as the crowds began to gather for the dash homeward.

Later, still feeling a little below par, headed out for Chinese at the Kings House and then walked over to the 13th Note - for me a sacred place of happy evenings just watching the world go by and listening to the best jukebox in all Scotland. Or lurking downstairs while bands, just formed and probably not far off breaking up, tried out their songs in front of a noisy crowd while minor local celebrities handled the door duties. To a fresh pair of southern eyes though, it was a bewildering place - neither pub, nor cafe, nor restaurant - it just did not compute. I asked my colleague what he thought of the place, and he mumbled something about the graffiti in the gents before dashing downstairs again.

That graffiti is of course a little bit of Glasgow history. I'm not sure it was appreciated though. Another strange night in Glasgow I pondered, as I trudged back to the hotel feeling very sluggish and still wishing I'd not bothered with breakfast.