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EXPOSURE THE SWISS New recruits to the stable of electronic pop acts on Melbourne’s Modular Records, Adelaide trio The Swiss have just touched down in the UK for their first ever European tour when The List catches up with bassist Surahn ‘Sid’ Sidhu. ‘We [also drummer Tony Mitolo and keyboard player Luke Godson] were all at the same school, and we started playing out in bands together when we were fifteen, mainly as a way of getting cheap booze on the weekend. We all shared that Doors, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa phase growing up, but a lot of our own music consisted of Herbie Hancock style jams. The live set was pretty freeform and unrehearsed for a long time, but when Modular showed a bit of interest we started writing more proper songs.’ How did the label become interested in you? ‘The demo that did it for us was a limited 12-inch called ‘Movement 1, 2 & 3’, it was pretty spacey even before the space disco thing blew up. There was a kind of Pink Floyd jam in the middle, which we still do in amongst the more driving, uptempo stuff [see their last track ‘Bubble Bath’]. But on the whole, if we’re doing club gigs we want to keep the same energy a DJ might have in our set, rather than bring the crowd down.’ Do you still live in Adelaide? ‘Yeah, we live pretty well there and we don’t want to disrupt that, plus touring lets us get out and about. There’s a really healthy boutique cultural scene there, we had a good upbringing on French house, classic disco and Detroit techno. The city flies under the radar even in Australia, but Adelaidians had a pretty strong disco knowledge even before it came back into fashion.’ (David Pollock) ■ The Swiss play Death Disco at the Arches, Glasgow, Sat 19 Jun. www.myspace.com/theswisspage
REVIEW ROCK N ROLL DAN SARTAIN Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Wed 26 May ●●●●●
REVIEW DAY FESTIVAL STAG & DAGGER Various venues, Glasgow, Sat 22 May ●●●●● REVIEW FESTIVAL THE WEE CHILL Queen’s Park Glasshouses, Glasgow, Sat 29 May ●●●●●
Dan Sartain bounds onto the stage, guitar in hand, to whoops of delight from a mostly male crowd. He is not the kind of guy you bring home to mom – which is why all guys want to be him – he’s more like the one upon whom your mum secretly harbours a crush. But the facade – the shades in the
basement, stressed denim and cadaver cheekbones – is just packaging. Behind the thin frame and charisma is a genuine talent for songwriting and a punk-rockabilly aesthetic that translates best on the live stage, where the songs are let loose to breathe a little. It’s a bit shambolic at times, but the shambles are the best part. The brilliant single ‘Athiest Funeral’ from new album Dan Sartain Lives is full of bluesy swagger, with a chorus that is up there with the best use of extended ‘ohs’ in the history of popular music. There’s a mariachi charm to ‘Flight of the Finch’, which swings along like the soundtrack from a Tarantino movie. Old favourite ‘Replacement Man’ whips the audience into a near-frenzy. Sartain lives and he’s a cracking showman. (Rachel Devine)
Stag & Dagger is Glasgow’s other one-ticket, multi-venue festival, and it lands on what must be the hottest day of the year so far. Its rival Hinterland took place in April, but this is a decidedly more underground effort, lacking the big names and focusing more on the cult.
Despite the weather, bodies with pasty (soon to be scarlet red) limbs litter the seven venues on today’s bill, especially the cosy Captain’s Rest, which kicks off at 2pm in a haze of perspiration. A slow start picks up with Sky Larkin (●●●●●), the endearing Leeds indie-rock trio, whilst fellow Nice ‘n’ Sleazy inhabitants Kong (●●●●●) destroy with off-timed metal, inebriation and Y-fronts. Over at ABC2, Scotland’s hyped The Unwinding Hours (●●●●●) trudge, meaning that Fun (●●●●●), playing after in the bowels of the Art School, seem all the more quirky, with their gloriously crafted pop/ rock a relief after a languid day. Shame about the small crowd though, which probably left the US band (pictured) feeling a tad underwhelmed on their first visit to Scotland. They were probably all at home nursing heat- stroke, mind you. (Chris Cope)
Here’s a first: this is surely the only festival in the world that greets you on entry with a glass case of tarantula skins, with its own wishing pond and potting sheds as standard. This is The Wee Chill and, for the first time, the foliage-strewn bash under glass has a fully-fledged band stage outside as well. The local acts playing sit towards
the more interesting edge of mainstream, with Vigo Thieves (●●●●●) sounding like a small-scale U2, thanks to effect-strewn guitars, while The Ray Summers (●●●●●) dust off The Fratellis’ one trick and add renewed vigour and summertime ska. Ray Harris & The Fusion Experience (●●●●●), despite their bandleader wearing an affected cravat like a son of Paul Weller, satisfy most with their moddish, skilfully-played jazz-funk. Inside, it’s decks all the way, with local heroes from Subculture, Optimo, Wrong Island and more mashing up house, electro and disco. The Innervisions duo of Ame (●●●●●) (pictured) and Dixon (●●●●●) controlled the main room, with the former offering a more downbeat and minimal selection than his accomplice. (David Pollock)
REVIEW INSTALLATION/ SURREAL ROCK CARDBOARD Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Thu May 27 ●●●●● The Magic Orifice is a temporary architectural intervention designed by the Roxy’s resident handyman Tom Clowney. What this amounts to is a hive-shaped pod made of triangular panels. It looks like a miniature festival stage squeezed inside the Roxy’s stage with trippy projections beamed on top. Perfect, then, for the lounge- bar prog vehicle of keyboardist John Miller and drummer Ben Reed, who play 70s avant-rock rarities straight out of Canterbury. With a past playing with Van Morrison and folk-pop veterans Stackridge, Miller is well- versed in a leftfield canon of eccentric ditties which he sings in eloquent cut- glass tones. Augmented by kazoo solos, Miller’s keyboard captures the rinky-dink drawing room wiggyness of Henry Cow and Slapp Happy, but still manages to turn Brian Protheroe’s strung-out one-hit wonder, ‘Pinball’, into a funkalicious monster. In a closing take on Argent’s ‘Hold Your Head Up’, two Roxy-ites open one of the Magic Orifice’s panels and walk through. Without batting an eyelid, Miller places his shoe atop his keyboard. Now that’s magic. (Neil Cooper)
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10-24 Jun 2010 THE LIST 71