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As part of SOUND Festival, interesting music promotions present an evening with CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND RECORDS, featuring...

THE PHANTOM BAND + EMMA POLLOCK + AIDAN MOFFAT & THE BEST-OFS + MARTIN JOHN HENRY

Friday 20th November 2009
The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen
Doors 7.30pm
Tickets £15 subject to booking fee
Available from Aberdeen Box Office (His Majesty's Theatre, Rosemount Viaduct or the Music Hall, Union Street) Phone 01224 641122 or http://www.boxofficeaberdeen.com

http://www.myspace.com/interestingmusic




CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND – is one of Scotland’s most successful independent record labels, established in 1995 by The Delgados, based in Glasgow and responsible for launching artists such as Mogwai, Interpol, Bis, Arab Strap, De Rosa and Aereogramme.

This very special show will feature latest signings The Phantom Band, co-founder and former Delgado Emma Pollock, ex-Arab Strap frontman Aidan Moffat, and Martin John Henry of the recently split De Rosa.

http://www.chemikal.co.uk


THE PHANTOM BAND – is a proto-robofolk sextet based in Glasgow who released their debut album Checkmate Savage to critical acclaim on Chemikal Underground in January 2009.

Folk, pop, techno with guitars, classic rock, metal, noise terrorism, gospel, soundscapes – The Phantom Band is a dionysiac of six people trying with all their might to pull in six very different directions. The end result however is truly special, bringing to mind the beat savvy of The Beta Band, the other-worldliness of Super Furry Animals and the mood of Hallowed Ground-era Violent Femmes.

“A nine track, nearly one hour long mash up of krautrock, swamp-rock and Beefheart-oddness.” (Chemikal Underground)

“I've been listening to The Phantom Band out of the UK. It's a combination of folk rock and kraut rock that is really great.” (Peter Buck, REM)

http://www.myspace.com/thephantombandpage
http://www.phantomband.co.uk


EMMA POLLOCK – is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and founding member of The Delgados, one of the most interesting and influential bands to emerge from the mid-90s Glasgow music scene.

One of the most bewitching singers and natural songwriters around, Emma released her debut solo album Watch The Fireworks on 4AD in 2007 and has a new release scheduled for early next year, which promises to be “a thing of dark, eclectic beauty.” As well as keeping busy with Chemikal Underground duties she is a member of the cross-genre musical collective The Burns Unit, who also counts Karine Polwart, King Creosote and Future Pilot AKA among its members.

“there was something very alluring in Pollock's blueberry voice; she has not forgotten the Delgados' ability to make small feelings seem very big.” (Pitchfork)

“constantly tuneful in settings from ringing folk-rock to piano-pumped music hall to breathy ballad.” (The New York Times)

http://www.myspace.com/emmapollock
http://www.emmapollock.com


AIDAN MOFFAT & THE BEST-OFS – is the new open-door club fronted by ex-Arab Strap musician, vocalist and all round miserablist Aidan Moffat, where anyone with a talent for something he likes the sound of is welcome.

With no traditional line-up and a rotating membership policy in place, the Best-Ofs released How To Get To Heaven From Scotland via Chemikal Undergeround on Valentine’s day 2009. All about love, this album is about as playful and cheerful as Aidan gets.

“I decided it was time that I attempted to write some positive love songs, which is incredibly difficult to do if you want to avoid cliché and repetition,” says Aidan. “You have to try to make them both personal and universal, which can be quite difficult; you have to try to forget other people are going to hear them while also making sure it will appeal to an audience. There’s a lot more sunshine and happy endings on this record, plus a song about my grandfather’s non-existent ghost and a lullaby about the terror of impending fatherhood. Hopefully I’ve managed to keep it at least diverting for the 37 minutes it lasts.”

“His disjointed pop vignettes and ruminative lullabies are underpinned, as ever, by excellent reflections on affairs of the head, hind quarters and heart.” (PLAN B)

“...a timely, very tuneful reminder that there’s more to Valentine’s Day than those tired Hallmark clichés.” (THE LIST, 4/5)

http://www.myspace.com/aidanmoffatmusic
http://www.aidanmoffat.co.uk


MARTIN JOHN HENRY – is one of Scotland’s finest songwriters and, until recently, the singer / guitarist in Lanarkshire outfit De Rosa, who released two albums, Mend and Prevention, on Chemikal Underground / Gargleblast.

Championed early on by the likes of John Peel and Steve Lamacq, De Rosa flitted effortlessly between thundering feedback, abstract rhythmic phrasings and the straightforward approach of traditional folk, all shot through with a lyrical narrative that was honest and inventive. With a strong ability to fashion unforgettable melodies from unconventional song structures, Henry’s contemplative, vivid lyrics tend to linger in the memory long after the music has faded.

Martin is currently writing for a solo record. He hopes it turns out good.

“De Rosa's music was as complex as it was melodic - it exercised the head as well as the heart and their live performances could be as thrilling as any we've ever seen. Great bands are hard to come by - especially ones as literate and engaging as De Rosa - so they will be sadly missed.” (Chemikal Underground)

http://www.myspace.com/martinjohnhenry

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Tickets onsale NOW to 'Friends of APA'
General sale 14th August

[cap'n euan]

Aidan Moffat! Sounds exciting!

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This gig is now on general sale.

THE LEMON TREE LOUNGE : Productions : An evening with Chemikal Underground Records

[cap'n euan]

I bought the Aidan Moffat & The Best-Ofs record mostly because of my interest in this gig, it happens to be really great. I will buy a ticket as soon as I rope others into buying one too.

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The Phantom Band: kindred spirits | Music | The Guardian

Did you know that half of The Phantom Band are from Aberdeenshire?

Support your local bands.

The Phantom Band ... the freshest, most consistent album of 2009.

'Somebody described the first gig we did with me in the band as sounding like a wardrobe full of coat hangers rolling around," says Andy Wake, keyboard player with the Phantom Band. "It wasn't a compliment," he adds with pride. That's nothing, apparently. "My uncle said we sounded like Czechoslovakian cartoon music," counters bass player Gerry Hart. "I asked him, 'Is that good?' He said, 'It depends if you like Czechoslovakian cartoon music.'" "My mum said it was desperate," chips in drummer Damien Tonner. Guitarist Duncan Marquiss concludes: "A lot of our music didn't work for a long time."

Two-thirds of the Scottish six-piece are nursing beer and coffee in the cafe of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, engaged in descriptive one-upmanship. It has become something of a band joke. Since the release in January of their debut album, Checkmate Savage, critics have had trouble pinning down the group's sound. Seven months on, it still sounds like the freshest, most consistently playable album of 2009. But how to define this manic tangle of folk, krautrock, doo-wop, postrock and electro?

"We're a rock band," says Marquiss. "I hear all those sounds in our music, but I don't think what we're doing is unusual. It's not a deliberate genre mashup." Any quirks in the band's DNA are, they insist, simply down to the fact that they have no recognised leader, no principal songwriter and no preconceptions about what they should be doing each time they rehearse. In other words, they're a good old-fashioned Scottish socialist collective.

The essence of the Phantom Band – all now in their late 20s and early 30s – is rooted in friendships that stretch back a decade or more. Marquiss and fellow guitarist Greg Sinclair went to school together in Aboyne, a village in north-east Scotland, while singer Rick Anthony was a "friend of a friend" from nearby Alford. Andy Wake met Marquiss in the late 1990s while both were studying art at Dundee University, where they in turn met Tonner, who was studying law. Tonner, meanwhile, met Hart at a party in Manchester, the pair bonding by "continually taking off whatever shite was on the stereo and putting on Exile on Main Street".

When all six found themselves living and working in Glasgow in the early noughties, they decided to pool their talents. They avoided any discussion about what kind of band they should be, and with levels of musicianship running from "beginner to advanced", they decided that having a laugh was the principal objective. "It was just part of a night out on a Friday or Saturday," says Tonner. "It was fun thing to do. We were friends playing for our own entertainment."

Changing their name for almost every performance, partly to wrong-foot any preconceptions and partly because they couldn't think of a good one (Los Crayzee Boyz, Wooden Trees, Robert Redford and Tower of Girls are some of those tried and discarded), they treated each gig as a public rehearsal. Anthony might wander off stage to hammer away at the pub piano, or the band would improvise around a G chord for half an hour. They used Mongolian throat music as their walk-on song.

Out of these chaotic gatherings a sound began to form that has developed into something far more compelling. But the ethos has remained the same. With no band hierarchy, they still write by hammering away in unison until some strange alchemy occurs. "Our songwriting has always been a case of playing and playing, refining it gradually," says Marquiss. "We'll go into the rehearsal studio and play one long jam for six hours, then something takes the music somewhere else."

The lyrics also emerge democratically. Often, when writing the songs on Checkmate Savage, Anthony would sing sounds that fitted the mood of the music; then he, Wake or another band member would go home and "find ways of making those sounds into words", while trying to preserve the original syntax and atmosphere. Says Marquiss, "writing the album took years, then there was a mad rush before we went into the studio". Even then, the songs were unruly. Recording at Chemikal Underground's Blantyre studios, the band credit producer Paul Savage, formerly of the Delgados, with making the tracks more "dynamic and economical".

It's apt that we meet in an art gallery. In many ways they're the quintessential art-rock group, more suited to Brooklyn than Blantyre. When they settled on calling themselves the Phantom Band in 2006, the idea was to adopt aliases and hide behind a collective facade. But they struggled with the practicalities of maintaining a Residents-style anonymity. "We thought it would be great to have this mystique, but then you have people saying, 'Will you go on The Culture Show?'" says Wake. "And we're like" – he shrugs – 'Oh, all right.'" Still, there's a contrivance behind what they do, an awareness of what people might imagine them to be, which Marquiss admits is an "interesting thing to play with". They remain committed to the idea of "the band as its own animal, something which isn't directly related to our personalities".

Marquiss and Wake are both successful artists. The former is a member of the LUX Associate Artists Programme in London, where he now lives, and recently held a solo show in Zurich, while Wake has also exhibited widely. But they're quick to play down the significance of their visual work in relation to the band.

"I'd never imply that anything the band does is derived in any way from what we do visually," says Wake, twirling his impressive handlebar moustache. "It's difficult to define where something stops and another thing starts, but I'd be worried about making too much of a connection." And while their skills are useful (Marquiss designed the album sleeve, while Wake oversees their posters and webpages), when it was time to make a video for The Howling, the group brought in two outside directors to prevent any conflict of interest.

Later we cross town in the band's van and Anthony and Sinclair join us in a bar. Extravagantly bearded, Anthony seems the most "folky" member of the band. Checkmate Savage broods with ancient myths, elemental imagery and shards of gothic horror, so it's fitting that the singer's mother, Gaye Anthony, turns out to have recorded several albums of old folk songs and sea shanties. "She gets paid better money than we do," he says. "We all like a lot of folk music, but I grew up with it being fed into my subconscious."

With all six members present, the group dynamic becomes clearer. The conversation ranges from Soul Jazz Records' New York Noise albums to Suicide, Kai Althoff to Wet Wet Wet's Angel Eyes, Gaelic plainsong to Garry Bushell. Hart and Tonner are the most naturally ebullient, yet Wake, the quietest member, speaks most frequently. As the music suggests, this is a band united by their differences.

They were all amazed by the positive critical reaction to Checkmate Savage. "It made us feel vindicated, like we're not completely insane to be doing it," says Anthony. "We play as a social thing, so for people to like the album makes us think we're right to continue to just keep ourselves satisfied." On their recent European tour, he admits he was wary of playing the same songs every night, of "getting too comfortable. But I don't think we have to worry too much about that. One of the few things we all agreed early on was to keep room for the random factor".

There's a lot of "exciting" new material "on the brew", which might end up as one long song or as an album of 1970s FM rock. Whatever emerges, it promises to upset any definitive notion of what the group is or should be. "We're not really the Phantom Band," concludes Wake. "We were just sent here on their behalf."

[kirkt]

Martin Henry provides, perhaps the best cover version (bar The Leisure Society) on Mojo's tribute to Abbey Road covermount CD this month. I'm very excited for this gig!

[chilli]

bump coz now less than two months to this event.....

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Here's some reviews of The Phantom Band's latest single - The Howling.

" the song tumbles in like a little ball of light in this month's otherwise uninspiring releases." ARTROCKER

"The lightness of touch that The Phantom Band display in combining styles will be familiar to any fans of The Beta Band, and like Steve Mason and co., TPB have a knack of making other bands look very ordinary indeed." CUTLUREDELUXE

"Unlikely but utterly triumphant and epic melding of Can and Stereolab with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy from the Peter Buck-endorsed Glaswegian sextet." TIMEOUT

"...there's a real poppy melody at work here too, and a riff reminiscent of the Velvets' 'What Goes On'...an oddly jaunty stroll through death fear" NME (10 tracks you have to hear)

[Richie]

Hey hey - cheers for the quote there! The new Phantom Band single is Throwing Bones which I think will be out by the time of this gig. It features...wait for it...a doo wop acapella section.