MUSIC | Previews
O D A Z U R C O R A M
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70 THE LIST 1 Sep–31 Oct 2017
RAP MC ALMOND MILK Full Day, Cool Times is out Fri 22 Sep via Save As Collective
MC Almond Milk’s Full Day, Cool Times definitely falls into the nostalgic category; the theme runs from track to track, unifying the album. ‘I think I wallowed in it a bit,’ he says, ‘but also how does what I look back on inform how I’m moving forward?’
Despite the record not being released yet, MC Almond Milk (or James Scott for the purists) has already moved on to his next album, which is nearly finished. He’s surprising friends with how much music he is creating and is pleased with his output just now. Formerly of CARBS (with Jonnie Common) and last year’s collaboration with Jay Rolex, Smell the Audi, he’s happy to have finally found his niche and doesn’t want to hang around.
‘In the opening track “Wet Wednesday Pt 2”, I’m addressing my collaborators directly,’ he says. ‘“I can’t wait for you” is literally me saying that I’ve got all these ideas ready to go and I need to work at my own pace to get them out there. I can’t lean on you any longer.’
Full Day, Cool Times blends hip hop with electronic
influences, smart, eccentric tracks dotted through with surprises that bring the themes back in on themselves. ‘Lost in Drakies’ with Gav Prentice of ULTRAS uses the Windows 95 start-up sound as a base, expanding out into patterns and loops as Scott raps about ‘white van speech that turns the air blue’. ‘One thing about rap,’ Scott says, ‘is that it is so often tied
to location and place and people’s specific slang and people’s specific accents. I like that about Scottish music.’ The references and dialect and vocal tics mean this is an album entirely of a place and specific time in Scott’s life, but he sums it up best: ‘I’m not going for one sound or one genre. I’m just trying to be me, which is a guy in Glasgow making some music.’ (Kirstyn Smith)
LIVE SCORE ELA ORLEANS CCA, Glasgow, Thu 21 Sep
The hope is that many more listeners have been turned onto the distinctive beauty of Ela Orleans’ music after her nomination for the Scottish Album of the Year Award this year. For anyone who wants to hear her play live, this gig will offer a unique environment in which to do so; as part of Matchbox Cineclub, she’s created a live score for Canadian director Guy Maddin’s brilliantly titled 2003 film Cowards Bend the Knee, an anthology of short and disturbingly odd pieces he created for an installation at Rotterdam Film Festival earlier that year.
‘Cowards is a cult classic by my favourite living director,’ says Orleans, who is based in Glasgow but originally from Auschwitz in Poland. ‘I’ve been voicing my desire to work with him and now it’s happening. Each of his movies feels like a perfect home for my music, so I had no choice but to accept the call to do this.’ It was Matchbox Cineclub who had the idea to pair film and singer, and who asked Maddin’s permission. ‘It was met with huge enthusiasm from Mr Maddin,’ says Orleans. ‘I became involved in a conversation with Guy, and I’m updating him on my progress.’
At the moment, she says, expect a solo performance with vocal, samples, violin and synthesiser, although that might change in future. ‘If this project gets any interest from funding bodies, then I’m open to having an orchestra on stage!’ says Orleans. ‘The film is a melodrama bomb, so there will be a lot of twisted love, murder and revenge in there.’ (David Pollock)
EXPERIMENTAL JONNIE COMMON Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 5 Oct; Tolbooth, Stirling, Fri 6 Oct; Hug and Pint, Glasgow, Sat 7 Oct
Jonnie Common has a healthy reputation for experimentalism. His last album, 2016’s unexpectedly beautiful Kitchen Sync, sampled found sounds from around his kitchen; the year before, his release with hip hop side-project CARBS (the excellent Joyous Material Failure) was built on a backdrop of malfunctioning electronic devices. It’s surprising, then, that his latest, still unreleased album originated with a more stripped-back approach to songwriting. ‘I wanted to be able to play all of the songs on guitar, unaccompanied, as a kind of measure of how good they were,’ says Common. Ever the deadpan, he waits a beat. ‘That hasn’t really happened.’ Following a few standalone gigs to workshop the material, he’s now embarking upon a short stint
of tour dates in early October – and Commonites should take note, as they’re the last guaranteed airings of the new tracks for a while. ‘It’s entirely written – I just don’t have time to record it, which is super-frustrating,’ says Common. ‘I don’t know, it might be another year before it’s out, which is horrible now that I’ve said it out loud.’ And the title? Jonnie’s got one, but he’s not sharing. ‘I don’t want to say in case it changes. I’m
pretty sure it’s not gonna change. I feel like it’s a good representation of the album, which is kind of reference to . . . not mood swings specifically, but emotional ups and downs, just because I felt like a bit of a basket case when I was making it.’ (Niki Boyle)