Monorail Music

Hairband

Hairband

Monorail Music

Bursting forth in a riot of colour, Hairband are a new five piece group from Glasgow who, on their debut recordings, have distilled the joy and bittersweet trials of youth into 5 songs that bend to no rules but the ones they make up as they go along. Deeply immersed in their local DIY scene and featuring members of groups Spinning Coin, Breakfast Muff, Lush Purr and Kaputt, Hairband’s take on pop music is their own, so natural yet odd-shaped, carefree but meticulously constructed that it feels like no one has quite made music quite like this before, celebratory and joyful. Recorded in Glasgow’s famed Green Door Studios, and played in the moment, Hairband are life-giving. Hairband formed in 2016, by Glasgow DIY standards that makes them veterans. Their instinctively intricate triple-guitar lines deftly weave counterpoint and melodies which interact with Sephi Lock and Emma Smith’s elastic, breathing rhythm section. The music here presents as streamlined pop but bubbling beneath the hooks is audacious instrumental work. Indeed, the tension at the heart of Hairband’s music is a group who can play without it sounding like a big deal. Is this a Glasgow thing, because Orange Juice were a bit like that, Sacred Paws too. Hairband even try on a little Marquee Moon-era Television on Sassy Moon and make it fit like the best charity shop find ever. They’re a band with five songwriters, each distinct with a uniqueness barely containable except within Hairband. The synergy of the group often means...

Cosmic Dead, The

Eccie Bam Yas, E?

Monorail Music

Formed in 2010, The Cosmic Dead are a quartet from Glasgow, Scotland who share their music through good vibes and better vibrations. Known for their improvised, chaos-strewn, Buckfast-smashedagainst-the-wall take on space music, they have roamed from Roadburn to Las Vegas, Dundee to Bangalore. Each album is a document of the time and space the group find themselves in, a tangible artefact hewn from a psychedelic continuum orchestrated by The Cosmic Dead. Eccie Bam Yas, E? began life as a more meditative piece than the rocket-fuelled out-rock the band are more associated with. Spliced and reformed by the band, taken from jams and improvised sets taken from the Rainbowhead recordings in Kyle of Lochalsh, a small village in the North of Scotland near the Isle of Skye. In this remote setting the band recorded a myriad of improvised pieces inspired by their rural surroundings and the material has been scattered across three albums; Easterfaust (2014), Rainbowhead (2016) and Eccie Bam, Yas E? (2017). Beginning with an eldritch drift that roams the stereo field, phasing in an out from another realm, "Smash The Sash" melts into an electronic rock piece powered by keyboardist Lewis Cook’s analog synth sequence and drummer Julian Dicken’s pummelling drum work. The cumulative effect reminds the listener of early Krautrock experiments, like first line-up Tangerine Dream playing Tanzmusik with early, rock-band Kraftwerk while epic show-stealer "Fleein’ From The Polis" brings the stringed instruments centre stage, Bassist Omar Aborida duets with James MacKay’s warped guitar playing to create weaves...