Saturday 14 January | Peacock Visual Arts | 7.30pm | £11.10 (From One Up)
Steven Severin – Vampyr
Siouxsie & The Banshees’ founder member soundtracks a silent film. Info

Saturday 21 January | Cafe Drummonds | 8pm | £6  Tickets
The Xcerts, Flood of Red, Duke
“Xciled” (heh) Aberdonian indie band return home

Saturday 21 January | The Tunnels | 8pm | £12  Tickets 
The Black Daliah Murder, Skeletonwitch, Fleshgod Apocalypse
“Face-melting” death metal from Michigan 

Sunday 22 January | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £15  Tickets
The Maccabees, Trailer Trash Tracys
London indie types tour their new album 

Monday 23 January | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £5  Tickets
Tubelord, Olympians, Cameo Colours, You And What We Are
Synthy, poppy, mathy, rocky outfit from Kingston Upon Thames headline

Friday 27 January | Cafe Drummonds | 8pm | £4
Amy Sawers
Welcome headline show for local garage/country/rock/everything else-influenced singer & band

Saturday 28 January | The Tunnels | 9pm | £? (Tickets in One Up)
Skank
Nineties house night reunion with guest DJ/chef Michael Kilkie

Thursday 2 February | Cafe Drummonds | 8.30pm  | £5
Paws, DOLFiNZ, Min Diesel
Double header from two of Scotland’s most exciting new noisy indie bands

Friday 3 February | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £8  Tickets
Rachel Sermanni
Hotly-tipped Scottish folkster/singer-songwriter (pictured below)

Thursday 9 February | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £6  Tickets
Aerials Up, Stanley, Brown Bear & The Bandits, Margaret Finlayson
Melodic, string-laden Glasgow outfit & great support

Tuesday 14 February | The Tunnels | 8pm | £6  Tickets
Pulled Apart By Horses, The Computers
Raucous Leeds post-hardcore band headline

Tuesday 14 February | AECC | 7pm | £42.50 (!)  Tickets
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
That guy who used to be in that band tours his album 

Okay, okay, truth be told, this should have been up sooner, I’m blaming festive lethargy, anyway, it’s tonight…

APB took a rather incongruous journey from Ellon, via the John Peel show, to cult status in early 80s New York, they reunited for a 25th anniversary show a few years ago, and their brand of angular funk still sounds as fresh as ever.  This lot are proper legends in Aberdeen and far, far beyond.  Support comes from everyone’s favourite  Scott Walker-esque pop weirdos Stanley and recently-returned energetic indie types Marionettes.  An excellent excuse to wake up with a hangover on Hogmanay…

Like it or not, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and tradition dictates that Friday will see Union Street do its best Apocalypse Now impression as roaming office parties napalm the city centre with an alcohol-fuelled mix of testosterone, estrogen, casual violence and chips.  Great.  One way to avoid this annual nightmare is to hit Bedford Records‘ bash at The Lemon Tree however…

The line-up is a good ‘un, we’ve written about most of these bands before, and you should know these three by now at least;  IndianRedLopez use the show to celebrate the release of this, Stanley have been on form this year, putting out this and finally finishing off an album which we should (hopefully) see soon, and The Deportees are back gigging again after a few months off.

We’d also like to draw your attention to the other two bands on the bill however; Peterhead’s Velvet Audio have been turning heads of late with their brand of hard-to-pin-down, sometimes straight-out rocky, sometimes incredibly intricate stuff which bodes well for the future, and Bedford signings Maydays bring some poppiness from the far north (they formed all the way up in Caithness), check out a tune from them below.  See?  Told you it was a good line-up.

Maydays – By Appointment To… by Bedford Records 

This should be a rather special show.  Former Arab Strapper Moffat and composer Bill Wells’  ”Everything’s Getting Older” is easily one of the albums of this year, and a perfectly-pitched ode to the onset of middle-age.  To celebrate the tour, they’re also releasing the “Cruel Summer” EP which, yes, does indeed feature a cover of the Bananarama track of the same name (video below).  More excellent stuff from a songwriter who seems to have nailed the rather tricky act of mixing the melancholic with the hilarious…

Friday 14 October | Cafe Drummonds | 7.30pm | £6 | Tickets
Copy Haho, The Douglas Firs, Good Police
16 miles- from-hometown show by Stonehaven indie-popsters

Friday 14 October | Snafu | 11pm | £10 | Tickets
The 2 Bears, Joe Goddard, Raf Daddy
Joe Hot Chip’s housey side project

Saturday 15 October | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £13 | Tickets
Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells
Former Arab Strapper & friend tour one of the albums of the year (pic below)

Wednesday 19 October | The Tunnels | 8pm | £10 | Tickets
Sons & Daughters, Peggy Sue
Opening night of Clash magazine tour feat. the Glasgow indie outfit

Wednesday 19 October | Cafe Drummonds | 8pm | £5 | Tickets
French Wives
Excellent Glasgow indie-pop types

Saturday 22 October | Various venues | 7pm | £7 | Tickets
Oxjam Aberdeen
Annual multi-venue event feat. some superb local bands. More info here

Monday 24 October | Music Hall | 6.30pm | £14.85 | Tickets
Noah and the Whale
Folk-popsters play show to be broadcast live on BBC Radio 1

Wednesday 26 October | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £9 | Tickets
Scroobius Pip, B Dolan
Rapper tours his solo album

Friday 28-Sunday 30 October | Peacock Visual Arts | Various times | £22 weekend/£9 Fri/£10Sat/Sun | Tickets
IMP Present Sound@Peacock Visual Arts
Excellent-looking weekend of new music. More info here

Friday 28 October | The Tunnels | 7.30pm | £7.50 | Tickets
The Birthday Suit, Deportees, The Winter Tradition
Idlewild’s Rod Jones’ new band & great support

Saturday 29 October |The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £15.50 | Tickets
Roddy Woomble
More Idlewild-ery as Woomble stops-off on his UK tour

Monday 31 October | The Lemon Tree | 7.30pm | £14 | Tickets
King Creosote, Kid Canaveral
Mercury-nominated Fifer & superb support

(Don’t forget to pop into One Up Records, where there may well be cheaper tickets available for some of these shows)

…at which the London-based indie-folkster will play songs from her well-received second LP Virtue, a break-up album if ever there was one (it’s well documented that a split from her fiancé inspired much of it). She’s been known to throw in the odd cover of the likes of Pixies in her shows too.  Here’s the video for her new single Paper Forest (In the Afterglow of Rapture), which is released today (Monday 19 September).

A preview of a collaborative exhibition featuring new work from local artists in response to the excellent, weird electronica of Fiona Soe Paing. At 6pm on Wednesday Fiona will perform a piece featuring music, projections and live vocals, all of which which is guaranteed to make post-work/tea-time that wee bit more interesting. The exhibition itself then runs until Sunday 29 May.

Hello. Apologies for the lack of posts this week, the reasons for which are far too boring to go into here.  Anyway, we’re back, erm, baby…

Baby? Baby? WTF?

Aye, so this one’s been on our radar for a wee while now, we’ve told you about Steven before and we’re more than happy to tell you that his debut album ‘Chasing Phantoms’ on Bedford Records is very good indeed.  Like, really good.  A proper slice of delicate, poppy goodness which marks him out as a singer-songwriter of considerable aplomb (check out some tracks on Steven’s MySpace for confirmation of this), it’s out now and available here and in One Up/ iTunes/Amazon/All that guff.

Before Steven does his thing on Saturday however, the supports on the night are pretty damn good too, being as they are The Deportees, Three Blind Wolves, JJ Bull and Ashley Park, all of which doth a decent show make…

Doth? Doth? FFS…

The University of Aberdeen’s Word Festival celebrates its 10th edition this year. Having grown from somewhat humble beginnings into one of the most important literary events in the country, there’s a wide range of events taking place as usual, check out the full programme on the Word website.  Here are some picks from us (tickets still available through the Word site for all of these at time of writing):

Friday: Local journalist and historian Jack Webster (who knows this city as well as anyone), award-winning Spanish novelist and biographer of Kurt Cobain & Courtney Love Lucía Etxebarría and a very promising-looking clubnight from über-cool publishing house Canongate Books at The Lemon Tree.

Saturday: War correspondent-turned independent MP Martin Bell and novelist Pauline McLynn (AKA Mrs Doyle in Father Ted who’s also hosting a screening of Angela’s Ashes at The Belmont later in the day)

Sunday: Scottish Opera’s innovative Five:15 programme of short, Scottish-made operas continues after its world premiere on Saturday, the Sunday Herald Political Debate (should be particularly lively after recent events) and author of The Damned United David Peace.

Of course, you can always just head down to the uni and soak up the festival vibe in the cafes and bookshop tent where the air will be filled with the gentle hum of urbane sophistication…until we get there, obviously…

Glasgow instrumentalists Errors’ soon-to-be released second album ‘Come Down With Me’  sounds like that Channel 4 show you pretend you don’t watch if said in a clipped, 70s sitcom upper-class English accent:  Come Dine with me.  Let’s go Dine to my Hice. Hmmm. Kind of works.  I’ll leave it in anyway.  I’ll read it back later and wonder what the hell I was on about though.  Guaranteed.

Anyway, Errors are signed to Mogwai’s Rock Action label and their new stuff is a pretty glorious mix of synths, guitars and driving drums which draws on krautrock, house, funk and post-rock with some big, swirling sounsdcapery thrown in for good measure.  Check out their ace, bouncy, new single (out today, Mon 22nd) below.  F**k knows what’s going on in the video though…

Support comes from tight, melodic and energetic local indie types Marionettes and the mysterious Min Diesel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv1JLMbq6OQ]