Over the past few months, we've been getting in touch with bands, celebrities and more to ask them to create eight-song-long mixtapes for YOU. So crack out your Walkman and enjoy...
Aberdeen trio Min Diesel make a glorious racket. Purveyors of "mindie rock", a genre that we suspect they invented themselves, their fuzzy, scuzzy, and anything-else-ending-with-zy, sound has won them an army of fans in the Granite City. Their second EP, Minage A Twa, was released earlier this year and it really is something to behold: four brilliant tracks that have been honed on the live scene for months. Now you know a bit about their music, let's see what they have to say about other people's...
Archers Of Loaf - Lowest Part is Free
Archers Of Loaf are quite simply one of the best rock
bands to ever come from the U.S.A.
One of those bands whose majesty you can't really explain, it's just
effortless. Min Diesel owe a massive debt to these guys musically as well as
their style or their no-style, it's just really good songs played by a bunch of
guys who were having a good time most of the time.
Owls - Anyone Can Have A Good Time
This track is
probably the reason why I started playing the drums: I wanted to learn the
guitar but as soon as I heard this track I realised there was no way I’d be as
talented as Owls’ Victor Villarreal. Listen to it: what
is he even playing?! The bass and drums seem to fall in and out of sync with
each other. It shouldn’t even work but somehow it does. Tim Kinsella’s lyrics
are typically oblique and delivered in such a weirdly detached way, it’s like
he’s haunting his own record. There are lots of bands that have taken individual
musical cues from the Owls’ self-titled LP but I can’t think of anyone who has
ever come up with anything that sounds quite like this.
Half Man Half Biscuit - National Shite Day
If you haven't heard Half Man Half Biscuit and you've got
a sense of humour then listen to this. The only song that I've heard which has
caused me to physically restrain myself from laughing. I was on a bus,
listening through headphones, when I heard the line "There's a man with a
mullet going mad with a mallet in Millet's" for the first time.
Pioneers Of Anaesthetic - Idiot Lantern
Quantity Control Pt 1 has barely been off my stereo since our bassist David sent me a link to it at
the beginning of the year. It’s my current go to
3am-cigarette-out-the-bedroom-window record (sorry Dad/landlords). It has that
sort of late-night feel to it, like a Red House Painters or early Elliott Smith
record. Many more interesting things going on with the guitars and drums
though, all wonky tunings and choppy breaks. Most songs don’t last more than a
couple of minutes. It’s all the work of one guy, he limits himself to spending
no more than an hour to composing and recording each track. Incredible,
considering the intricacy/quality of the output. He put a bunch of songs online
earlier this year then seemingly went quiet, I hope puts up more soon.
Lau - Wintermoon
I do love folk
music, the harmonies in the chorus are superb. It's a beautiful song and Kris
Drever is one of my favourite singers. They're playing Aberdeen soon I think so check them out.
(The) Lilys - Will My Lord Be Gardening
(The) Lilys are basically the project of Kurt Heasley, who over the past two decades has released a bunch of records
across a whole bunch of genres. Their best record is undoubtedly 1994’s A Brief History of Amazing Letdowns, which I
would’ve totally overlooked if it hadn’t been for Phillip from Paws. It’s a
mini-album of classic post-grunge alternative rock, five tracks with the
hallmarks of mid-90s American indie infused them with Heasley’s knack for a
sweet vocal melody. By contrast, the album Will My Lord Be Gardening is on
(Precollection) is terrible but Gardening is arguably the best thing
Heasley’s done. I have a massive soft spot for it, anyways. The drums make the
song sound much more complicated than it actually is, and the vocal arrangement is
pretty nuts, veering into falsetto like a drunk in the road. The whole thing is
just a perfect three-and-a-half minutes of bittersweet pop.
Dinosaur Jr. - Lung
I saw J Mascis in a Spar in Somerset once, buying Petit Filous. True
story. Surprised Zippy never picked any songs by these guys seeing how, like their
aforementioned frontman, he is also a drug-addled, endlessly-soloing
megalomaniac. Jk, lol. I think the dynamic between the instruments in Dinosaur Jr. and that of Min Diesel are pretty similar though. Pretty much any song from You’re Living All Over Me would fit on this list. I’m going with Lung because I’ve noticed most of the recordings Min Diesel have done, we tend to end the song playing at roughly 150% of the tempo we started at. Because we’re talentless bastards awesome dudes. Lung speeds up halfway through and sounds that much better for it. Cracking solo too.
Stapleton - Chez Chef
I remember taping this
off the radio when I was a lad at school and playing that tape to death,
re-winding it and playing it over and over - it's hard to get bored of something
that's so upbeat. There are two recorded versions of it but the only one that
really stands up to me is this one, the original off the 2002 E.P. The fuzzy
guitars make it great, as well as it being ridiculously catchy. A great
Scottish band!
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