Oooft! Hard to believe that these Kowalskiy EPs are 23 already. How time flies! Kowalskiy though, is a wee bit older than that unfortunately. More so today, for 'tis my birthday. Awww... look at him with his wee hat! So, with that in mind, I spent the last month hand-picking five of my favourite Scottish artists to make this EP all the more special. In one case, I had specialness thrust upon me as a band volunteered a belter of a track, and in another, my pestering led to me receiving a rare gem from one of Scottish music's gone-but-not-forgotten favourites.... 1. Northern Alliance - Casiopolis (...and here is said favourites. I'd urge anyone to hunt down their albums, as well as getting a hold of Doug Johnstone's own solo EP over here.)
"This is an old Northern Alliance instrumental that never seemed to fit on an album, but we kind of liked it. It's called 'Casiopolis' because it was recorded entirely using old Casiotone keyboards, putting them through guitar pedals and such like, I seem to recall. It sounds quite creepy and soundtracky, so when I came to make a trailer for my latest novel, Hit & Run, it was an obvious choice for the music. It was released on a Fence compilation as 'Xmas on the Ocean Floor', I think." - Doug Johnstone (Northern Alliance)
Speaking of Doug's new novel, you can download it over here on the Kindle Store.
2. Fiction Faction - Turquoise Noise (I was convinced I'd featured Fiction Faction before for some reason. So they got fed up waiting to be asked and sent me this brilliant taster from their upcoming album.)
"Turquoise Noise was recorded pretty quickly, everything was one take. It was only a b-side to our last single but already many folk have said its one of their favourite tracks of ours. Its picked up some radio play too by BBC Introducing and will be included on our debut album which is being recorded this summer. The song comes courtesy of Saraseto Records who released the some earlier in the year." - David Richards (Fiction Faction)
3. Letters - Older Motion Pictures (acoustic for Fresh Air) (Letters, I had featured before. But, since they're one of my favourite bands around, I managed to sweet talk them into parting with this acoustic version of the title track from their upcoming debut EP.)
"I chose this mainly so the rest of the band can laugh at me. We're
quite strict with each other in practice and I'm always the first to
throw my tuppence worth in when someone makes a mistake. As you'll note
from the second line here, I fluff the words, much to everyone's
amusement! We're not really into the acoustic
thing, but we think this sounds quite nice stripped down, it's a fairly
simple song anyway so it lends itself well to this setting. The people
at Fresh Air (Jude Dryden and Brian Pokora) were liking it so hopefully
everyone else does." - Mikey Ferguson (Letters)
Letters are busy bees gearing up for the release of their absolutely stunning, mind-blowingly brilliant, superlative-dripping EP on the 19th of May.
4. Foxhunting - Damocles (EP version) (Here's a unsettlingly-talented young 'un from Aberdeen with a track from his early EP. It was reworked for his brilliant debut album last year.)
"Damocles is probably the most consistently visceral song I've ever written. It's based on a hypothetical situation with young lovers not being able to express themselves for fear of persecution, but to be honest I wrote it because I liked the strumming patterns I came up with ;) It appears on Come On Sweetheart, Take My Hand, an album you can pour money onto over at foxhunting.bandcamp.com" - Joe Sutherland a.k.a. Foxhunting
"We've had this song for a while but we always keep coming back to it. Feels like the perfect song to close a gig, and we always seem to get completely lost in it whenever we play it live." - Paul Duncan (The Beautiful Lies)
5. The Beautiful Lies - For Far Too Long (Only
came across this Glasgow bunch recently, but already I'm finding it
hard to stop listening to their demos online. Here's one they
re-recorded last week for this EP.)
"We've had this song for a while but we always keep coming back to it. Feels like the perfect song to close a gig, and we always seem to get completely lost in it whenever we play it live." - Paul Duncan (The Beautiful Lies)
And
speaking of playing it live... The Beautiful Lies will be playing The
Berkeley Suite in Glasgow this very night, and The 13th Note on the 6th
of June.
Let me just say a huge thank you to all 5 for contributing this month. I really hope you all like it as much as I do. All you have to do to get your free copy is to click on the artwork above, or here for that matter. While you're there, help yourself to the other 22. The next KEP will be out one month today. As ever, if you wanna record a special version of something for me, or contribute something else you think might tickle my fancy, then you can send me a wee email (kowalskiy2@gmail.com) and we'll go from there. I shall be pestering bands in due course though!
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