2022 In Music
Time for the annual and definitely prepared on time and rushed out end of the year look back at music after 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016.
Gigs
We were pretty much back into gigs being around again, woo. Everything is normal, no don’t ask any more questions or look behind the curtain.
Book Yer Ane Fest was back and it’s the final year for Derrick running it. Cheers to him from me and no doubt abody else for all the hard work he’s put in over the years to make this happen time and time again. He’s handed over the reigns to a new younger generation of people, woo. Good luck to them and hope it all goes well :). Guess we are all now officially OGs and can now moan about kids today and all that.
Also managed a smattering of shows in the basement but not much further than that. Tours being cancelled due to illness or the incompetent racist Brexit policies made it very difficult for most bands to tour here too. Thanks Tories. I bet you proved your ability to not shoot yourself in the foot this year though right. Right?
Music Shops
No major changes to Dundee but thankfully Thirteen, Assai and Le Freak are all still here.
New Releases
I had a season ticket for Specialist Subject again but as expected last year the release schedule was a trickle compared to previous ones. It’s fine though, RSD supplied us with for example 10,000 copies of Madonna – Everybody (discogs has 400+ of various versions starting at less than 2 bucks). Then prices, delays and, again, fucking Brexit all shat on getting stuff imported. Yay.
Seems like a perfect time to work through that music backlog and keep on top of it right? Ah fuck, I barely listened to much music at all this year never mind new music.
Albums
All Away Lou – Things Will Change – Pretty cool solo record, from Specialist. You know what to expect by now. Indie-ish, punk-ish, sparkly-ish.
Alldeepends – Throwing A Pit To Nothing – Sorry to all the losers and haters. Album of the year. Stop the lists now. Chaotic punk nonsense from the friendliest folks you can be in a pit with.
Alzo – Discoveries – Alan 2 finally released a second album in two years having been making music for 25 or so years and not releasing one before 2021. Atmospheric Ambient. Perfect to chill or read a book to.
Bob Vylan – The Price Of Life – When a band you’ve been raving about self-release an album and it gets into the top 20. Absolutely incredible scenes by the band giving 2 big middle fingers to genres. lets go dig up Maggies grave and ask here where the milk went
Cake – Fashion Nugget – Cake have started re-releasing stuff on vinyl! This is not a drill. Prolonging the Magic also coming out soon. This band I first heard through shitty mp3 rips and copied CDs. Justifiably given the only way to get CDs was imported copies at £25-£30 in the late 90s (Taking 1999 thats £43.92-£52.71 today!). But sure, copying killed the music industry and not some robbing distributor arseholes.
Don’t Worry – Remorseless Swing – Shame it’s a pretty missable album. They had a strong start but haven’t really been into their last couple of releases.
Eels – Extreme Witchcraft (See My Engine Gleam) – No particular stand outs from an album I spotted in a shop having not known it was coming out. If you like Eels it’s good, not missing out if you have the rest.
Fresh – Raise Hell – not content with a live EP they also brought out album number 3. Doesn’t reach the hits of their masterpiece debut but still worth getting nonetheless.
Frightened Rabbit – Pedestrian Verse – The re-release finally made it possible to complete the LPs without spending stupid amounts of money. Sadly missed always.
Guru – Jazzmatazz (Volume 1) – re-release of a classic. Always missed, never forgotten. Not my favourite of the series, but given the high quality of the series that is in no way criticism.
Malcolm Middleton – A Brighter Beat – 15th Anniversary Edition. Trying to pick up some random albums by him as I had one for years that I loved.
Pillow Queens – Leave The Light On – How can this band be so consistently good. This is great but you can’t go wrong with literally anything they have put out.
The Last Mile – Respect The Frequency – Pretty cool punk record getting a re-release from a bunch of labels around the world on CD including MTAT after previously coming out on vinyl.
The Sewer Cats – Cute Aggression – Great live, even better recorded. Go buy it, shitebag if ye dinnae.
Wrest – End All The Days – Second album by them came out and was great again. Most music I own by artist who lives this close who I haven’t seen live yet. Looks like they played here March and I hadn’t known :(.
Yndi Halda – Enjoy Eternal Bliss – 15th Anniversary remaster. I rarely buy a second copy of something in the same media. The record sleeve has interchangable art and is pretty cool, love when bands do something more interesting than a plain sleeve. This album is incredible and the remaster brings out some stuff I had never noticed before. One of my favourite records of all time. Cannot recommend highly enough. Get the physical version if you like fiddling with stuff, or digital if you don’t care. Either way – get it.
Various – 00’s Cover Comp – Lonely Ghosts compilation of 68 covers of songs from the 00’s. Some absolute crackers on it, the opener by Britney Spears is a pretty banging start.
EPs and other stuff
Bartees Strange – Heavy Heart – Got as a freebie in Assai I think. Thought would be fine cos on 4AD but wasn’t fussed by it. Still free is free. And a reminder there’s tons of music on bandcamp by people for free. Go hunting and find something you do like :).
Broken Stories – Forgotten Songs – After a delay we finally got more music from my favoured folk-punk duo. Misery In Happiness is exceptional.
David Delinquent & The I.O.U’S – Animal (Demo) – Demo track by Dave and “Arthur” from Warped.
David Delinquent & The I.O.U’S – Homegrown Singles Series II – They recorded and released a bunch of stuff this year. Two tracks on a new MTAT series.
David Delinquent & The I.O.U’S – Time Of My Life (Demo) – Still not caught them yet and they are chucking out songs faster than I can listen to them.
Fractal – Homegrown Singles Series III – Cool new psych rock band from Dundee with their first release.
David Delinquent & The I.O.U’S – Today’s A Drag – Single track with the best cover-image of anything in a while.
Fresh – Fresh Comes Alive! – Live tracks from the band I skipped on the weekend before the first lockdown due to *waves at 2020/2021* and still haven’t seen live yet.
Frightened Rabbit – A Frightened Rabbit EP – yes you heard that right. The holy grail of Frabbit vinyl had a long overdue re-release for RSD. Still some available in Assai at time of writing.
Frightened Rabbit – State Hospital – I already had this but picked up from RSD in this new format/colour as it’s so good.
Gossiper – Volume One – Great little emo EP from the band whos name is pronounced with a soft G, i.e. a J, it’s definitely Jossiper. 100%
Live, Do Nothing – Oso Jugoso – pretty cool trinkly indie pop from Specialist.
Lounar – Keemtak – MTAT with an occasional hip hop release. Free Palestine. Fuck Apartheid States.
Order Of The Wolf – A Plague On Conservative Houses – After a wee delay we got some more black metal from my favourite local anti-fash music project. Cool t-shirt also available. No gods! No masters! No Conservative wankers!
Portable Heads – Guck – Pretty cool post-rock stuff I stumbled across this year.
Portable Heads – Onme – Another release from the post-rock newbies.
Portable Heads – Venus – At less than 5minuts does this count as post-rock?
Tragical History Tour – Dead Sketches – Derrick hadn’t released anything for a while. Last track is definitely a departure from previous work. No spoilers, go listen.
Truth Ruiner – Demo – Demo by Dundees latest scene queens bringing a hardcore ruckus to the basement every chance they get.
Other stuff
Starting this year was a great zine called Juty City Hard Core or JCHC. Three zines so far and some record releases. A facebook group to try and get people to dig out old photos, gig tickets and memories etc. Get supporting it!
I also finally dusted off a domain-name I got and haven’t done anything yet. Aimed to have a music related project to supplement discogs for shit I care about. I.e. Discogs only cares about published music. So a band you saw play 4 gigs and then split gets completely ignored by it. So far I’ve made some tentative steps to try and work out the type of data I want on it and then work on templates etc. Current status: a github project with some preliminary info from a couple of artists on MTAT. Next steps are to figure out the templates and types of data, point a real domain or subdomain at it and then fill out more info. Might get to the point where others want to contribute too. But probly no.
If nothing else, the huffy billionaire trying to kill twitter shows us all the need to go branch out and not centralise info on in the internet right? Go Start a blog or anything just get away from your entire online existence being on centralised social media sites that want you to stay doomscrolling on them all day and night long.