This just in from, erm, the internet:

Frightened Rabbit will play The Tunnels on Friday.  Ace.  They’ll be supported by The Little Kicks. Double ace.  No, there aren’t any advance tickets.  Yes, that means they’re available on the door only.  Yes, that means there’ll be a queue.  Yes, it’s just been announced, which is why you haven’t heard about it before.  Yes, I think that’s the whole point.  No, I don’t have any further information.  Cheers.

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 

Assuming you’re reading this today, this is tomorrow, unless you’re reading this tomorrow, which means this is today.  Glad to have cleared that up for you, I know time seems to go a bit weird at this time of year…

Anyway, you should all know the work Aberdeen Gig Promotions do in this town by now, and this is their Christmas show, so it’s only right you go along and say thanks for another year of good stuff.  Helping them celebrate are hook-laden Dundonian indie-rockers Make Sparks (cinematic-warehouse-violence-and-running-through-woods-video-below), fellow Taysiders The Barents Sea and a solo set from Ross Leighton of Fatherson (fresh from a headline show at The Arches in Glasgow).

As an aside, it’s worth noting that AGP are doing their access-all-shows pass again.  Just twenty quid gets you into their first six shows of 2012.  Bargain.  Get one here.

It’s about time I gave a nod to Aberdeen’s pop-punk/hardcore scene, which by all reports is one of the strongest in the country.  From what I can see, the likes of Daily Dischord consistently put on some of the best-attended gigs in the city, displaying a commendable DIY-ethic and level of online savviness which may fly under the radar of ageing indie snobs like me, but the fact they, and countless others, have quietly (OK, noisily) created a UK- wide network of like-minded souls which is pretty astonishing in its reach makes me want to take certain bands, venues and promoters aside and say: “See? That’s how you do it.”

One such band from round these here parts who are gaining attention on a national scale is Autumn In Disguise, they’ve already played festivals such as Download, Underage and T In The Park, toured the UK (and will do so again next year), and have a new mini-album out now (available here) ahead of a hometown show at The Tunnels on Saturday 17 December alongside Crashdown, Farewell Singapore & Fonik.  Stick that in yer indie-folk pipe and smoke it…

Some of you may have heard about this, but I’m guessing a lot of you won’t,  so here’s the deal:

As the title suggests, new(ish) initiative the Strategic Music Partnership presents a day of presentations, workshops, demonstrations and performances about the music industry.  It all kicks-off at 12pm in Aberdeen College’s ridiculously impressive music department (head to the Loch Street entrance, it’s worth it for a nosey round here alone) with some interesting-sounding demos and things, before moving over to The Lemon Tree at 4.30pm for a soundcheck workshop followed by a Question & Answer session with a panel featuring representatives from Hit The Road, the Musician’s Union, members of The Xcerts and more.

The day then finishes off with a gig (also at The Lemon Tree) by excellent Aberdeen-via-France funk/hip-hop outfit Taco and The Sharpies, The Brothers Reid, Andrew Brand & Jelly-Faced Women (free if you attend the day events/£3 otherwise).  See below for the full schedule…

This show seems to have flown in under the radar somewhat, so we’ll tell you about it, which is kinda the raison d’être of this site n’est-ce-pas?

Ou am I going with this?  Right;  they speak French in half of Belgium too, Django Reinhardt was from Belgium, and it’s a fair assumption that Django Django are named after him, rather than the open-source web framework.  See?  They’re all beautifully crafted these links, it’s not at all a case of me putting fingers to keys and seeing what shite spouts out.  Not at all.

Anyway, Edinburgh-formed and London-based, the Djangos have a nice take on sparse, lo-fi, electronic-tinged pop.  They’ve a new EP “Waveforms” out now too (video below).  Supporting local types IndianRedLopez should complement them perfectly;  they’ve a new single “Prometheus” out on 5 December, and headline the Bedford Records Christmas Party later that month.  We’ll probably do a bit about that nearer the time, as if I need to tell you that the Lopez boys are always worth catching anyway…

Fin.

The classic clichéd music critic diagnosis of  ”difficult second album syndrome” doesn’t seem to have affected Aberdeen indie-popsters The Little Kicks too much, for my money (whatever that’s worth), this forthcoming eponymously-titled effort is better than their debut.  While we’re on the subject of second albums and clichés by the way, I’d like to take this opportunity to call for every non-US passport-holding person who writes words about music to kindly desist calling them “sophomore albums” with immediate effect.  Seriously.  Make it stop.  Now.  OK, cheers.

Right, tangential rants aside, said album comes out on 28 November (but you can hear sneak previews of the whole thing below) and the band celebrate the wrapping-up of their UK tour with a show at The Tunnels on Saturday (19 November).  Support comes from Velvet Audio, Easy Tigers and JJ Bull, followed by DJ action from the DHC/Fiction lot until late.  Recommended.

  The Little Kicks – The Little Kicks (New Album) – Sample Tracks by THE LITTLE KICKS

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.

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)

As the title suggests, this is a stripped-back acoustic show by James and Andy from excellent Lanarkshire post-rock types The Twilight Sad (pictured below). They’ve recently done a similar thing in Edinburgh, and reports were very good indeed. If you’re not one for taking second-hand information as gospel however, scoot over to the band’s blog where you can download a free acoustic EP and check things out for yourselves (click on the box on the right-hand side). While you’re there you can also watch the superb recent BBC Scotland documentary on SXSW in its entirety, and see James almost die due to some misguided bravado in a hot sauce store…

Support comes from Steven Milne and local singer-songwriter Craig Davidson