It’s questionable now that you would in actuality never hear this Arthur Russell song on the radio. Not so long ago many an eyebrow would have been raised at the notion that you might, but in the time since I first knowingly heard him on 2008’s superlative Optimo (Espacio) mix Sleepwalk (never mind his death in 1992) his popularity seems to have grown exponentially. The song on the Optimo mix was ‘This Is How We Walk On The Moon’, and even on that strange, nocturnal, hypnagogic record (a record that I would happily call one of my favourites) it stood out as particularly otherworldly
Read Moreblog
'The Internationale' - Billy Bragg
At this risk of being cheesy or over-earnest, from our slightly advantaged position in Scotland, this is for our friends (old/new/yet-to-be) in the rest of the UK that have five years of horror ahead of them. To some degree or other we stand to be subjected to its travails too, and it will be difficult, whether through direct experience or by merely bearing witness to its effects.
Read MorePreview: Glasgow Film Festival 2015
The 2015 Glasgow Film Festival kicks in to action today, and what a treat it promises to be. For the next fortnight with films, gigs and events from Bergman to Burroughs, Casablanca to cat videos, The Tales of Hoffmann to Talking Heads, and (almost) everything in between.
Read MoreSongs They Never Play on the Radio: Dadamah
...aaaaand we’re back. And with the least conventional Songs They Never Play on the Radio yet, at that. Like many bands from the NZ ‘scene’ teetering on the fringes of the famous (yet still inadequately documented) Flying Nun, there isn’t much information on Dadamah, even in the sometimes seemingly comprehensive expanse of the internet.
Read MoreSongs They Never Play on the Radio: Fall of Saigon
So, after a bit of a break, another Song They Never Play on the Radio. This may be the most obscure entry yet, although there is some competition - a band formed in Montpellier that only released one EP on Atem in 1983 (although further tracks appeared on a CD compilation in 2011). Only six songs long, Untitled (as it's titled, or, er, not) is a fleeting but absorbing listen.
Read MoreSongs They Never Play on the Radio: Magazine
Over the last couple of years, Magazine’s debut Real Life has gradually crept from the fringes of my consciousness to become one of my favourite albums. I’ve owned it for three or four years (or maybe even longer) but other than ever-brilliant Shot By Both Sides, early listens failed to pierce my heart, mind or sou
Read MoreWelcome to the Cinema of Childhood
Edinburgh's Filmhouse and Blasted favourite's Mark Cousins have just announced a UK-wide film season that will launch April 11th at Filmhouse, BFI Southbank, and other key venues across the UK.
Cinema of Childhood, inspired by Cousins' own A Story of Children and Film, will include 17 films (mostly new to UK audiences) from China, Iran, Latvia and beyond. They aim to explore depictions of childhood that are universal, but also different from the Hollywood formula audiences have become so accustomed to.
The full list of films is available of the Filmhouse website.
Songs They Never Play on the Radio: The Happy Family
In 1981, a young Nicholas Currie handed a home-recorded demo cassette to Malcolm Ross at what would transpire to be Josef K's final Edinburgh gig. Ross was impressed enough to put a band together with Currie including Davy Weddell from Ross's former group. Ronnie Torrance, also late of Josef K, would eventually join on drums and so, although Ross left to join Orange Juice prior to any official recordings, comparisons to the Postcard band were and are inevitable. Their solitary album The Man on Your Street is a bit of a lost classic and the song above marks the point where the album really takes off. There's no denying the scratch and shuffle of Josef K is present, but there's a brightness of tone that renders The Happy Family somewhat less gloomy, despite a rather grand 'plot' centring around the son of an evangelical detergent salesman and the daughter of a fascist dictator set in Switzerland and the north of Italy. It wasn't to last long in any case and the band would split up shortly after 'in a spirit of apathy and aversion to the force of habit'.
Currie recommenced his university studies and would later transform into Momus. He will release a second collaborative album with former Orange Juice bass player David McClymont in the next few weeks and will also perform at Neu Reekie at Summerhall on 28 February.
Lou Reed: 2 March 1942 - 27 October 2013
Lewis Allan Reed died today, aged 71, in Long Island. Our thoughts go out to his friends and family. His music has been a source of inspiration to many (including us here at Blasted- to an absurd level, in fact) and will continue to be so for a very long time. If you don't have the The Velvet Underground & Nico, White Light/White Heat, The Velvet Underground, Loaded, VU, Transformer and Berlin, get them all tomorrow and learn them all back to front, you may well find some of your favourite records. R.I.P. Lou.
New Casual Sex video: 'Nothing on Earth'
The video for the brilliant Casual Sex's Nothing on Earth has just been unveiled. The track finds them channeling late-70s New York Mutant Disco to the backdrop of a nocturnal Glasgow. The song is taken from their forthcoming The Bastard Beat EP , to be released on We Can Still Picnic and launched on 22 November at Nice'N'Sleazy. Check. It. Out.