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[Jamie]

The Pastels

The brightest, most enduring stars among Scotland’s lambent independent music mythology, The Pastels are the stuff of quiet legend: a congenial, sometimes ramshackle Glasgow-based music group, whose steadfast counter-cultural allegiance has inspirited grassroots and international artists since the 1980s.

The Pastels’ rough-hewn “almost-pop” has spanned myriad albums: not least their imperious 1987 debut, Up For A Bit With The Pastels (Glass); and their inaugural Domino epistles, Mobile Safari (1995) and Illumination (1997). Meanwhile their radiant Geographic imprint (Kama Aina, Bill Wells, Maher Shalal Hash Baz), continues to unveil untapped, wonderful music from around the world.

Most recently The Pastels completed new music for a theatre production by Glasgow based company, 12 Stars, and this rare live appearance at Triptych will premiere brand-new material from their forthcoming albums (one a collaboration with Tenniscoats) set for release on Domino later this year.

Tenniscoats

Tokyo’s auroral folk popsters Tenniscoats are fragile harbingers of dark, beguiling meditations and quietly joyous, psychedelic psalms. If their first music suggested a slightly gauche take on western pop, their second album, The Ending Theme (Noble, 2002) was a halcyon, spellbinding portent of forthcoming glories. We Are Everyone (Rover, 2004) and Live Wanderus (Chapter, 2005) truly disclosed Tenniscoats’ intense, brooding, improvised force: guitars like silver, pianos like thunder, rhythms like the wind, vocals like gauze. Avidly commanded by the enchanting Saya and Takashi Ueno, Tenniscoats are assured to entirely enamour with their empyrean arias and hair-raising charms.

The Royal We

Citing influences such as “limp wrists and tight fists; throwing knives and famous wives; chemistry sets and stuffing pets; ships in bottles and aeroplane models”, capricious pop musketeers The Royal We are Glasgow’s finest, fieriest, freshest proponents of siren electro, two-stepping screamo, pistol-whipped disco and string-addled glam-rock.

http://www.triptychfestival.com