We’ve got a pair of guestlist places to give away for this, read on…

Over the last three years Do It! have put on some great parties with great music and great visuals, unfortunately, this is their last-ever night.  Boo.  As you’d expect though, they’re going out with a bang…

There’s a live set from Parisian synth magician dÉbruit (Civil Music), now usually I’ll read a quote like “his music is a no holds-barred assault through dark Congolese sound systems, downtown L.A. block parties gone wrong, haze-filled Kingston recording studios and freaky Tunisian backstreet souks, all powered by a fat hip hop engine”  and think “aye, OK” , but on listening to the tune on the video below, there’s more than an element of truth in there.  He’s well-known for putting on a great live show too…

Also doing his live thing for the first time in the city is Auntie Flo, aka Glasgow DJ Brian d’Souza (who’ll be bringing along Sub Club resident ESA on percussion duties) and, as you’d expect, the usual Do It! residents will also be on hand.  There’s a warm-up session upstairs in The Athenaeum with the Tuff Wax-affiliated Aberdeen Truth crew too.

So, goodbye Do It! and thanks for the memories, although we’re reliably informed that co-founder Alexander Horne will be back in 2012 with a new record label venture…

OK, to stand a chance of winning a pair of guestlist places, simply answer this question (hint: click a link):

Name three previous Do It! guests

…and send it to info@thekiosque.com under the heading “Do It Comp” before noon on Friday 9 December.  We’ll be in touch with the winner as soon as we’ve picked one from our rather fetching electronic hat.

Good luck!

A confession:  I’ve  felt the need to give that little bit more to charity since the time I was given a ticket to a football match featuring some of the world’s best players a few years ago.  The game was to raise funds to help with the aftermath of a major disaster.  The ticket I was given was complimentary.  I mean, it’s pretty bad that there were even comps available for such a thing, but not nearly as bad as the fact that I accepted it and merrily went along, cursorily chucking a few coins into a bucket on the way in.  What a dick.  It still rankles. Ugh.

Anyway, here’s another chance for me to help try and offset this, and for us all to do something in the name of an incredibly good cause, with the added bonus being we get to run round some of the city’s music venues like a daftie.  Yup, it’s Oxjam time again.

This year’s event  kicks-off at 2pm in Kilau, with acoustic performances from Tim Courtney, Steven Milne, Craig Henderson and Lauren Hart & Paul.  This part’s free, but you’d never go to a charity thing without paying, right?  Ugh.

Which is why we”ll all be buying a wristband for the main part of the event, some cracking bands are on offer from 7pm, and some potentially difficult decisions will need to be made with regard to clashes, but hey, that’s always going to happen at these things.  Right, here’s what’s happening (deep breath):  The Tunnels has a hip-hop, erm, flava with the live debut from French-voiced, Aberdeen-based, 11-piece (!) Taco and The Sharpies (whom we’ve recently championed on these pages) and Edinburgh’s excellent, and distinctly Scottish Stanley Odd.

There’s a great, three-pronged noise attack at Snafu with the returning Katerwaul, alongside Carson Wells and Min Diesel, Drummonds has the ever-solid indie-pop sounds of The Little Kicks and Stanley, while The Blue Lamp goes down the folk and blues route with veterans The Lorelei and Gerry Jablonski.  Then, after all that, it’s everyone back to The Tunnels for an after-party.  Phew.  Full line-ups in the poster below.  Go.

Everything Else Sucks is 3.  Unsurprisingly, they’re having a party to celebrate.   Sought-after Belgian electro duo Sound of Stereo (mix below) guest, alongside Ado (Fake Blood).  There’s a pre-party with the Tuff Wax boys upstairs in The Athenaeum from 9pm too.  That’s pretty much all you need to know.

Switch Playground (September 2011) by Sound of Stereo 

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)

A bittersweet post this one as it marks the last-ever Dirty Hearts Club in its Thursday guise. Loads of great bands and many, many Friday hangovers are among the achievements of this legendary shindig, here’s what DHC’s Steven Milne has to say on the matter:

“We felt it was maybe the right time for it to stop and we had the chance to stop the night on a high. The night has been consistently great and were still getting great bookings and good crowds down but it takes a lot of work to keep a weekly night going – we’ve run the night for nearly 6 years so I think we’ve done pretty well.

Personally, I want to spend more time on my own music and my time is already split between a few things, so I felt I’d rather do DHC 100% or not at all. It feels like the right time to stop and the plan is to do the night on an occasional one-off basis at the weekend. We have quite an eclectic booking policy, so a weekend slot will open up what we can programme and I’m looking forward to making them special!”

So, all is not lost it seems. They certainly go out with a bang on Thursday as Edinburgh’s excellent 4AD-signed lush, string/piano-laden Broken Records and rising locals Velvet Audio play live before the usual DHC DJ shenanigans. A final one of those hangovers is on the horizon I reckon…

We’ve got a pair tickets for this to give away, details below…

Fridays at Snafu will now rotate between nights from the likes of Bigfoot’s Tea Party, Mixed Bizness, Snafu Live, All Neon Like, Liebe and more. Kicking off the new schedule however are Everything Else Sucks, who’ve moved across town from their previous home at Origin, and the line-up for their first night looks pretty darn good:

(Click artist names for their Soundcloud pages which feature tunes/mixes etc. galore)

Clouds are a young duo from Perthshire who already have EPs out on Fake Blood’s Blood Music label and Tiga’s Turbo Recordings. Techno-tinged electro is their game and you will be hearing a lot more about them over the next wee while.

Polymath creates everything from slick disco jams to acid-fuelled electro from his base in the Highlands, has an EP out on London label Mofo HiFi, and a heap of upcoming remixes for the likes of Arveene & Misk, Blende, Cornershop and Suxx on the horizon, as well as more of his own material. Add in Glasgow’s PMCQ and Everything Else Sucks’ own Eezma on warm-up duties and you’re looking at quite a party.

So, to win a pair of tickets for it, simply email your name to everythingelsesucks2008@hotmail.com with the heading ‘Kiosque Comp‘ before 5pm on Thursday 28 April when the winner will be picked at random.

Good luck!

Over in Scandinavia there’s a strange musical phenomenon afoot, and its name is Skweee. Analogue synths, drum machines and other old-skool equipment being used to make stripped-down r’n'b/80′s funk/electro kinda stuff is a (very) rough description.

Anyway, Do It! welcomes Norwegian label Dødpop to let us hear what it’s all about through live sets from Beatbully (who launches his album tonight), Melkevein and Sprutbass. It’s the artists’ UK debut ahead of shows in Brighton and Los Angeles, so it’s pretty cool that we get it first.

Support comes from Giles Walker, Uraki Riddim, Kid Bell & White Chocolate, alongside visuals by Uber AV. Oh yeah, note that this is an early-ish show which will be over by 1am. Sweet, or even Skweee-t…

So, there would have been a bigger preview of this, then it went and sold out. Rather than antagonise those who didn’t get a ticket, I’ll keep it short. It’s not as if you don’t know anything about the line-up of Scott from Frightened Rabbit, The Little Kicks and JJ Bull anyway, right?

Enjoy the night, congrats to the Dirty Hearts Club and Steven Milne for another year of bringing good stuff to the city. Here’s a video of Frightened Rabbit covering Elton John’s ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ with Craig Finn of The Hold Steady doing the Kiki Dee parts. Dirty Hearts Club, breaking hearts, see what’s happening here? Yup, there’s a lot of thought goes into these posts. A. Lot.

Quick heads-up time:  Glasgow-based Sparrow and the Workshop consist of a Welshman, a Scotsman and Chicago-raised vocalist Jill O’Sullivan. The sum of these parts is a trio who play some beautiful folk-tinged music with more than a little hint of darkness to it. Video below, check it.

Support comes from The John Knox Sex Club who, as well as having the best band name in the history of the world ever, play some excellent, atmospheric but hard to pin down loudquietloud stuff, and local singer songwriter Steven Winton.

Go see.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17XX2YfFey8]

A welcome return to the city from David Tattersall’s quirky, witty indiepop trio The Wave Pictures.  I don’t mean that in a patronising ‘oh, you’re so quirky and witty with your songs and stuff’ way, they’re genuinely good and one of the best bands of their ilk around.  Check the ace animated video below, the title track from their new EP ‘Sweetheart’ which is released on the same day as this show on Moshi Moshi.  Supports are Little Kicks frontman Steven Milne doing his excellent solo stuff (backed by a full band) and folk-pop weirdos Reverend Shepherd.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN6v3DVxrrE]