imp: Alasdair Roberts + Kiila @ The Tunnels, 18th March

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interesting music promotions present

ALASDAIR ROBERTS + KIILA

Thursday 18th March 2010

The Tunnels, Carnegies Brae, Aberdeen, AB10 1BF. Phone (01224) 211121

Doors 8pm

Tickets 8+bf in adv / 10 on door

Available from One-Up Records, Belmont Street, Aberdeen. Phone (01224) 642662 or http://www.ticketweb.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/interestingmusic

http://www.thetunnels.co.uk

ALASDAIR ROBERTS has now released 5 albums of tender yet driving folk music, since his discovery via Will Bonnie Prince Billy Oldhams advocacy on hearing a demo tape.

The last four of Roberts albums have been on the large American indie Drag City and he has shared stages with Joanna Newsom, Magnolia Electric Co, Smog and countless others.

Roberts repertoire is made up of his own compositions and jewels from the treasure trove of timeless Scottish folk songs he regularly plunders, delivering songs with his own deftly intricate guitar playing and a voice both bold and subject to fragility.

Scottish folk singer Alasdair Roberts is an anomaly. His appropriation of antique songs calls to mind the prospecting of Daniel Day-Lewis's oilman in There Will Be Blood: he performs the subterranean, hardscrabble toil of research, then plunges his drill down deep, coming back with black gold. (The Independent)

His most recent album Spoils is widely regarded as his artistically most successful yet, and appeared in several recent end-of-year polls. With an extraordinary vocabulary of deliberate archaisms and seductive, and beautifully artificial, metre, Roberts has found a new way to remake the traditions that are folks primary fuel. (The Wire)

Roberts is a songwriter who clearly has a very firm working knowledge of more traditional strands of the genre he occupies (his lyrics and guitar playing are, as ever, of considerable merit) but there's a free-roaming, ramshackle rawness to the recordings and presentation here that imbues a sense of intimacy and unconditionedness to proceedings. (www.boomkat.com)

Roberts takes his earthen craft on the road for this tour in the guise of the Alasdair Roberts Band, a 4-piece comprised of himself, members of his old band Appendix Out and members of Glasgow band Tatty Toes.

http://www.alasdairroberts.com

KIILA is a collective based in Turku, Finland, epitomising the exciting new wave of music coming out of Finland in recent years, typified by the output of the label Fonal. This will be their first ever UK tour.

Kiila released their 3rd album Tuota Tuota in June 2009 and, in the words of Dusted Magazine: Kiilas greatest coup is shoehorning genuine song craft into this mix without upsetting the balance. (For example) album opener, Viisi Hirvasta. For its first half its a hypnotizing instrumental built from plangent strings, stray percussion, and a recurring melody on the bass, until a half-chanted/half-sung passage emerges near its conclusion, making you wonder if it started life as a song, a poem or a jam. Tuota Tuota is full of moments like these, where you have to question how it is your listening, as all your usual hierarchies are upended and genres turned on their heads. That you at first dont quite realize Kiila is doing this is remarkable; that they make it seem so natural is even more so.

Though previous Kiila releases have featured tape collage, synths, turntables and more, its fair to say that Tuota Tuota comes across like their own skewed take on folk rock, albeit through psychedelic Finnish eyes. Kiila have been in existence for a decade or more now, and their various members are also active in other groundbreaking Finnish acts that have also achieved cult status in the UK and the US, including Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Avarus and Shogun Kunitoki.

When this sextet takes the stage, you may be taken aback by the driving rhythms, sublime vocal harmonies and casually virtuous multi-instrumentalism that follow. Often compared to like-minded US acts such as MV&EE and Espers, who have all found significant audiences in the UK and US, Killa are regarded by those who know them as at least as equally musically profound and influential but still to reap their much-deserved wider recognition.

http://www.kiila.com

http://www.myspace.com/kiilamusic

This tour is produced by Newcastle-based promoters No-Fi, with the support of the Scottish Arts Councils Tune Up programme, Finnsih organizations ESEK and LUSES, and AV10 Festival.

http://www.no-fi.org.uk

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This. Tonight.

[Alan Cynic]

Yes. Indeed!