Lone Pigeon + Lomond Campbell (FOUND) @ The Blue Lamp, 15th April

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interesting music promotions present

LONE PIGEON + LOMOND CAMPBELL

Friday, 15 April 2011

The Blue Lamp, 121 Gallowgate, Aberdeen, AB25 1BU. Phone (01224) 647472

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

LONE PIGEON, aka the elusive and enigmatic Gordon Anderson, landed sometime in 1996. A prolific multi-instrumentalist songwriter, LP has two albums released on Fence CDR and so far one worldwide critically acclaimed release. Alongside these releases he has amassed a multitude of homemade recordings, at one stage a reputed 300 tracks in one month. The LP played an integral role in the recording of the mythical five track demo which resulted in the signing to Regal / EMI of one of the most influential bands of recent times, The Beta Band. Following their demise, Gordon resurfaced in 2005 as frontman of The Aliens with ex-Betas John Maclean and Robin Jones, releasing two albums to date on EMI imprint Pet Rock Records.

Just before Christmas 2010, Domino quietly released Time Capsule, a massive 7 album box set which contains pretty much everything the man has ever made. Packaged in beautiful mini card LP sleeves with dizzyingly colourful artwork that looks like the inside of a childs distorted imagination has exploded into reality, Time Capsule, which will receive a wider release in April, contains tracks which may (or may not) have been released on CDr in the past, and provides a fascinating insight into the mind of an artist who has remained impossible to pin down.

Time Capsule also comes with some illuminating sleeve notes from King Creosote, who happens to be Lone Pigeons brother, and who readily admits he finds his brother to be as much of a puzzle as the rest of us. He seems to sum things up best in fittingly cryptic terms when he calls his brother, a wanderer, a pilgrim, a messianic jew, a dervish, a vandal, a prophet, but mainly a lost soul. Make of that what you will, but it makes a strange kind of sense to us, and probably will for anyone else who immerses themselves in this almost indescribable collection of songs.

The LP cuts an enigmatic figure, whilst his musical eccentricities funnily enough refuse to allow his style to be pigeonholed. Reviews name check familiar artists but in every essence they are wholly Pigeon. Beguiling, fragile and bereft of ego, vanity or spin LP crouches almost alone in a popular culture in which he has no interest and little understanding. Outside of his hometown, the LP live is a very rare bird, but in full flight there really is nothing more spellbinding as anyone lucky to have witnessed can attest. An artist, poet, musician, traveler and believer, the LP is a complicated character but with his music he creates sublime melodies that can elicit the simplest emotions; tunes that will make you smile with joy or alternately weep in shared sorrow. You would have to be wooden not to care.

http://www.dominorecordco.com/artists/lone-pigeon

http://www.myspace.com/lonepigeon

http://www.thealiens.co.uk

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Will advise when tickets go on sale...

[french_disko]

nice one.

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Tickets on sale now, from link in my signature below...

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Take that and party >> imp present: Lone Pigeon + The Pictish Trail | Facebook

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Tickets now in One Up.

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Tickets now in One Up.

...and selling quite well.

Now, who should we get to open up the evening?

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...and selling quite well.

Now, who should we get to open up the evening?

Opening the show, we are delighted to confirm, will be Lomond 'Ziggy' Campbell of the band FOUND.

Updated poster below...

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As per my post in the Gigs forum, Johnny Pictish Trail has unfortunately had to pull out of the show due to family reasons. More news when we have it...

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A wee bit about Ziggy...

LOMOND CAMPBELL, as christened recently by King Creosote, is the lo-fi solo guise of FOUND frontman Ziggy Campbell. Seeing as FOUND have previously played 4 imp shows, with Ziggy also having performed solo sets, he really needs no introduction.

Ach well do it anyway.

FOUND is the brainchild of art college buddies: Ziggy Campbell (lead vocals, guitar), Tommy Perman (bass guitar, synth) and Kev Sim (electronics, percussion). The band create an unusual mix of garage rock, melodic pop and glitchy electronica, which has just lead to them signing a publishing deal with the highly respected Domino Records and record deal with Chemikal Underground, who released the bands third long player factorycraft in March.

Well let Chemikal take up the story.

'A psychedelic explosion in the factory', explains FOUND frontman Ziggy Campbell when asked to explain the unifying theory that binds 'factorycraft' together and who are we to argue? It's been over two years since FOUND released an album's worth of material (in January 2009 they brought out 'Snarebrained', essentially a fund raising exercise to finance their impending trip to SXSW), so the anticipation for this, their third album - and first for Chemikal - has been slowly reaching boiling point.??At the risk of blatantly pilfering the tagline for a famous drink brand, it has been worth the wait though. 'factorycraft' (don't you dare capitalise the 'f') is a schizophrenic, kaleidoscopically inventive piece of work, flipping breathlessly from urgent, programmed drum machines to languid Joe Meek inspired 'space-pop' in the space of a few bars, nevermind a few tracks.??Having worked in a factory in the Borders, singer Ziggy observed that "the most exotic ideas are often FOUND lying amongst the swarf of the factory floor. We liked the idea of turning manual labour in to fine art, hence 'factorycraft'." Recorded at (you guessed it) Chem19 studios with Paul Savage manning the controls, 'factorycraft' is FOUND's first full-blown 'studio' album and manages to capture all the eccentricities and musical invention that set FOUND apart from many of their contemporaries. While the songs repeatedly reference industry and the process of manufacturing, you'd be wrong to think this was the limit of Ziggy's lyrical reach, as his bandmates point out: Typically he'll write about his provincial, low-life up bringing in the Scottish Borders or the extremes of relationships. Sometimes though, he'll write about gangs of giant seagull queens or wrestling granite saints in order to gain access to heaven.??OK then.

http://foundtheband.com

http://www.chemikal.co.uk

[french_disko]

I really like the new Found album.

Unfortunately, I can't manage on Friday

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Lone Pigeon speaks...

On a wing and a prayer - Herald Scotland | Arts & Ents | Music Features

On a wing and a prayer

On the verge of fame Gordon Anderson was struck down. Now, as Lone Pigeon, hes reclaiming his future and his past.

By Barry Didcock

10 Apr 2011

I can see the stars.

I can see where I am in the universe at any time. I can do art.

Im sitting outside a cafe in St Andrews with 39-year-old musician and songwriter Gordon Anderson. Hes actually talking about his iPhone but he could equally be describing the powers of his other-worldly alter ego: Lone Pigeon, the most fragile and mysterious member of the fraternity of Fife musicians which makes up the Fence Collective.

If Anstruther is Fences HQ, St Andrews is its spiritual home. It was here that Anderson grew up with twin brother Ian and older brother Kenny, who runs the Fence label and records as King Creosote, and where he formed the schoolyard friendships that birthed The Beta Band, of which he was a founder member. And it was to St Andrews he returned when he became too ill to function, just days after the band had signed to EMI. Or, as he puts it, when he suffered a demonic attack on my personality and on my soul. Whatever it was, it wiped out his twenties. But more of that later.

Right now the only thing being attacked is a large cappuccino. Notionally Im here because of Time Capsule, a seven-CD collection of Lone Pigeon recordings released this week by Domino, the label Arctic Monkeys call home. But there are other subjects to be covered, too. As well as The Beta Band itself, theres the Fence phenomenon and The Aliens, the group Anderson formed in 2005 out of the ashes of The Beta Band.

I was lying in bed, this thing was gnawing into me, creeping through my soul every day, taking over my thoughts. I changed to something else that I could not explain.

Time Capsule is a decades worth of Lone Pigeon recordings, mostly homespun and captured on an arsenal of devices which include cannibalised karaoke machines and high-end 16-track digital recorders. There are songs whose titles seem more like coded messages between lovers Sdlmnm (Organs), Lonely As Shxt and others, such as Summertyme Beeswing, Oceanairy and Heaventree, which conjure up the lanes, lairs and inlets of Andersons East Neuk stomping ground. One of the albums is simply called 28 Secret Tracks and, naturally, it has no track listing at all. One composition, Waterfall, may be the most beautiful song youve never heard.

Kenny Anderson thinks his brother has around 1000 recordings. The man himself isnt so sure. I think its far more than that. I should go back and count them. I have so much stuff there. He does know he has many computer hard drives and that most of them are full. Some he cant even access any more.

Given that, trying to unravel his songs provenance or impose timelines on them is a little difficult. We do know that, as Lone Pigeon, Anderson has released one previous album on Domino, 2002s Concubine Rice. Most of the other albums were issued by Kenny Anderson on the Fence imprint. There have also been EPs and even a B-side to a track by fellow Fence artist James Yorkston. A few of the songs in the Time Capsule collection also ended up on the first Aliens album, 2007s Astronomy For Dogs, though in very different versions.

You could say The Aliens was Gordon Andersons second chance at The Beta?Band. That group had originally come together in London in the mid-1990s as The Pigeons, formed around a nucleus of him, schoolfriend and fellow Edinburgh College of Art graduate John Maclean, Robin Jones and another St Andrews friend, Steve Mason. Maclean, Jones and later Mason lived in a squat in Shepherds Bush. Anderson lived nearby with a girlfriend. It was her, fatefully, who handed a tape of what would become The Beta Bands Champion Versions EP to a friend at EMI.

The group was signed almost immediately. Equally sudden was the onset of Andersons illness. Now a committed Christian who attends church regularly, he doesnt accept labels like schizophrenia. He did take drugs to excess, he admits, but doesnt think that was what caused the breakdown. Whatever it was, it hospitalised him and robbed him of six years of his life. The Beta Band were forced to continue without him.

I got 144 electric shocks to the head, he says. It was a horrible time. A time thats so dark that I barely go back there in my memory. Its like stepping into a pool of black oil.

He was also put on medication. It made him shake. At one point, he was paralysed down one side. I was lying in bed, this thing was gnawing into me, creeping through my soul every day, taking over my thoughts. I changed to something else that I could not explain. So I lost everything: I lost my band, I lost my girlfriend, I lost my future.

The lost band he made up for when he formed The Aliens, at least in part. And with a wry smile he tells me about the girlfriends galore he had in the years after he came out of hospital, when he was living in St Andrews, performing music and watching brother Kenny get the Fence label off the ground. I had a period when I just needed to be young, he says. He even wrote a lyric about it: I was a boy when they locked me away and strapped me to the empty chair.

Drug-free and healthy, he found a future, too, though its now become his past: a decades worth of strange, whimsical, psychedelic recordings. And what will the coming years bring Gordon Anderson? Hed like to write a classic album, he says, but beyond that, who knows? Not even his iPhone can answer that one.

Time Capsule is released tomorrow by Domino, priced 50. Lone Pigeon plays St Pauls Church Hall, Edinburgh on Thursday and The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen on Friday

[chilli]

gonna be great tonight......1UP tickets sold out, so its now tickets on the door

[Jim Stax]

Mr Lomond was tremendous. The pij was exhausting. And the turn out was amazing and extremely well behaved. Loving the Lamp as a venue theses days.

[Frosty Jack]

The pij was exhausting.

In what way?...

[Jim Stax]

In what way?...

He sa hard watch at times. I think his nerves transfer over to the audience and he is always on the verge of cracking completely on stage. That doesn't take away from the fact then when is hitting it it's goosebump stuff. Ziggy and me bailed for a catch up when he started playing the opening segment of his set again at the hour plus mark

[Frosty Jack]

He sa hard watch at times. I think his nerves transfer over to the audience and he is always on the verge of cracking completely on stage. That doesn't take away from the fact then when is hitting it it's goosebump stuff. Ziggy and me bailed for a catch up when he started playing the opening segment of his set again at the hour plus mark

Ah. Thought he might be a bit like that. Still, better than the last time then...

[Jim Stax]

Ah. Thought he might be a bit like that. Still, better than the last time then...

A carbon copy apart from the shit punters

[geo1903]

For what its worth I really enjoyed this, for one that's so used to seeing acts stick rigidly to a set list nowadays I genuinely enjoyed something a bit more random, but also genius-like in places. Well done imp. Also I thought the atmosphere in the BL was superb.

[Mothership]

A good night, some sublime moments from LP amidst the chaos. Looking forward to the promised Aliens reunion next year. Any chance they'll play Aberdeen I wonder??

[milners]

I found Lone Pigeon really hard to get into, i think he lost me after about 5 or 6 songs in which it looked like he was going to have a breakdown on stage. He did recover but by that time i lost interest . Shame as you can tell he is so talented artist. Decent turn out though

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A good night, some sublime moments from LP amidst the chaos. Looking forward to the promised Aliens reunion next year. Any chance they'll play Aberdeen I wonder??

I spoke to Gordon about The Aliens. They didn't play Aberdeen on the last tour due to what he perceived was a poor response at their previous show. I think that was their very first run of shows which included Moshulu and wasn't well attended at all.

[french_disko]

I spoke to Gordon about The Aliens. They didn't play Aberdeen on the last tour due to what he perceived was a poor response at their previous show. I think that was their very first run of shows which included Moshulu and wasn't well attended at all.

If memory serves me correct, it was only their 2nd ever live show. Would have been much better in The Tunnels.

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If memory serves me correct, it was only their 2nd ever live show. Would have been much better in The Tunnels.

It was (first was at The Venue if my memory serves me correctly - need to check my ticket stubs). And aye it would have been much better at The Tunnels.