Live music listings: August 2008

Doors 8.00
£7 via WeGotTickets
£9 door

Alasdair Roberts is a Glasgow-based singer and guitarist raised in Callander, Central Scotland. His first releases consisted of home-made four-track recordings of his songs under the name Appendix Out. Over time Alasdair gradually became more immersed in the traditional song and balladry of the British Isles, resulting in the first release under his own name, the solo guitar-and-voice album of traditional songs The Crook of My Arm (Secretly Canadian, 2001). In 2001 Alasdair also found the time to collaborate with Jason Molina and Will Oldham; the result was the Amalgamated Sons of Rest EP (Galaxia), a brief collection of songs written by the three individuals, covers, traditional songs and one co-written track.

Alasdair has since released three further solo records including Farewell Sorrow (Drag City, 2003); No Earthly Man (Drag City, 2005), a collection of traditional British ballads of a tragic nature, this time accompanied by a large cast of players including Isobel Campbell, Alex Neilson and brothers Paul and Will Oldham amongst others; and his most recent album entitled The Amber Gatherers (Drag City, 2007).

Stephanie Hladowski recorded the four ballads on The High High Nest while a member of the Glaswegian ecstatic jazz and folk collective Scatter. Listening to her lean, vulnerable voice, alone or with sparse instrumental accompaniment of drones and shimmers, is a directly affecting experience … the communicative power of the human voice remains a current truth - delicate power in Hladowski’ s case, but nonetheless real.’ (Julian Cowley, The Wire)

More info on Spoono soon.

RSS