Eden Festival, Leftfield, Gun Xmas Shows, Ten Walls, Possible Closures, New writers and more

Hello all, been a couple of weeks since we last spoke. Ive been very busy getting a restaurant off the ground, as some of you know hospitality is a cruel mistress! But hey summer has arrived and with the look of the sunshine, it may last for a few days. You never know we may have a halcyon 1995 summer!!

We will kick off things with the good news. Eden takes its bow this weekend as the festival season swings into action. Based in the rolling lowlands of Dumfries and Galloway, the festival is a fun packed smorgasbord of arts, crafts, music stages, hidden gardens, forest discos and much more. Ably headlined by The Cat Empire, Grandmaster Flash and Ms Dynamite, it has 100s of acts over 9 stages and promotes local up and comers and gives them the platform to showcase their wares, be it music or art. It runs from the 11th-15th June and I am reliably informed that there is still a few tickets available. I will be covering it and shall report back in due course

It may have been 16(!) years since they last dropped an album but Leftfield return to the music scene with Alternative Light Source. I have been waiting a long time for this album and am delighted to say its more than worth the wait. It does veer away from the Dub sound of which they are accustomed to but in their own words, it was a deliberate move to launch their own Techno assault. If you are sick of banal EDM like I am, then its a storming refreshment. They play Glasgow Barrowlands next Friday and if you have a ticket i shall see you there.

The Scottish Album of The Year awards take place at the o2 on Wednesday 17th June as we celebrate the cream of the crop of Scottish artists. Once again hosted by Janice Forsyth and Vic Galloway, with performances from Loki and the Kartel, Tuff Love and Golden Teacher it promises to be quite a blinder. With nominees such as Honeyblood, Slam , Young Fathers, Errors and many more it promotes the diversity and creativity of music and art in our country. I shall report back next week as to who won and the gossip from the night.

Gun are back with critically lauded album Frantic. It has captured a lot of attention and the band are embarking on a tour of the UK culminating with a Xmas Barrowlands show. Which leads us on to the bad news.....

Hearing through the grapevine that there is possible closures of music venues in Glasgow. Not much definite as of yet but ABC and the aforementioned iconoclastic Barrowlands have been touted. There will be much more on this next week and there is articles in the weekends press that shall shed more light on this. There are already prominent figures in the local music scene against this and hopefully their and the fans vitriol will save this from happening. Its one of the greatest cities for live music in the world and i would like to keep it that way.

Ten walls ended his career with a disgusting rant on homosexuality the other day. He unsurprisingly and pathetically took the post down but the damage had been done. Grovelling apologies made no difference as 5 major festivals took him off the bill and his PR agency dropped him like a hot pancake. There has been plenty said on the web I am sure you will have noticed so I wont add much more. What i will say is comparing homosexuality to animals and paedophilia when you produce Electronic music which has its roots in the gay black disco scenes of the 70s is contradictory to say the least. Enjoy working in the Lithuanian version of Tescos

We will finish with some better news. My recruitment campaign for new writers has been fairly successful and there should be plenty more reviews going up in the coming months. I still need more writers though, so if you can form a decent sentence, love your music as passionately as i do and can spare some time to write then drop me a mail at [email protected]. Besides its a pretty cool job innit.

See you next week .

This article has been viewed 22512 times