Fringe specials in August, we were delighted to welcome Seafieldroad aka Andrew Eaton-Lewis into the studio to sing a few songs and tell a few tales. Lily and Andrew had an in depth discussion about songwriting, inspiration, and details of Seafieldroad’s upcoming concept album
Technical difficulties continue to plague this series of In Session as last week's sublime Hiva Oa session is further delayed due to recording issues in the studio. Fortunately, this was not a problem in the last show where Christian made his full return to the broadcasting team alongside Lily as In Session welcomed Stirling-based singer-songwriter and creative force End of Neil into the studio. Neil was an absolute pleasure to talk to as In Session explored the End of Neil persona, the creative processes which stem from his artwork, and his industriousness for keeping up a habit of writing a song every night for the last few years. End of Neil is a bit of a surprise package as this mustachioed (Neil's mospace) and exuberant young gent performs with a depth of character and passion which resonate from each of his songs, exposing a musician reaching maturity in their song-writing and performances. As Neil aims to play over 100 gigs in 2013, In Session recommends you keep an eye out for this self-professed “low-key, low-fi troubadour” appearing at open mics
Technical difficulties have riddled this series of In Session as guests have had to postpone and shows have had to be pre-recorded or scrapped altogether. However, these troubled times will not stop In Session marching forwards albeit with a few step backwards as we reach into our archives for some sessions that we’ve been holding back for such an occasion.
In May, In Session was delighted to welcome Neil Pennycook of Meursault into the studio to sing us a few songs, old and new, and tell us a few tales about his thought processes and completing Meursault’s first European tour. A month later they wowed us, along with a large cross-section of Edinburgh, at the Queen’s Hall for the launch of their new record “Something For The Weakened”. This album heralds a move away from electronica and reverb in favour of expanding the rich sound resonating from Meursault’s string section; drawing greater appreciation of Neil’s dynamic voice which effortlessly manages to convey the ferocity of his frustrations and the poignancy of his fears. It is a move towards accessibility, which is no bad thing, as tracks like Dull Spark, the first single from the album, are the most poppy the band have sounded in their career. Listen to these tracks in isolation and you’d be forgiven for gaily tapping away to melodies which conceal lyrical themes of abandonment, expectation, and loss. Listen to Something For The Weakened as a whole, however, and you’ll find these melodic joyrides are segued
by affecting laments on piano that make up the framework for the band’s most complete record to date. Having been the darlings of the Scottish music scene for the last 5 years, Meursault’s latest release may very well be a contender for next year’s SAY award as well as a giant leap towards the widespread adulation that many feel they deserve.
As the first guest of series 3, Northern Irish singer-songwriter Simon Herron, with the help of some willing friends on harmonium and glockenspiel, charmed us with a gorgeous session featuring tracks from his new EP which is available to purchase now at http://simonherron.bandcamp.com.
Edwin Starr once sang “War /Achooo/ Yeah/ What is it good for?” a valid question, his answer of “absolutely nothing” is completely wrong. I am at war ladies and gentlemen and it is both noble and in all likelihood good for lots of bloody stuff.
I must apologise for my French, which seamlessly brings me onto the key issue my passive aggressive war with a French stranger (which he is unaware of). Today as I pottered around campus, hackeying some sack, uking some lele, I overheard the following conversation from a French chap
“Yeah Glasgow has lots of great galleries and stuff”
So far so true France, Glasgow does have some great galleries and is indeed well endowed with stuff. Continue
“You could easily spend a week there doing culturally things and clubbing”
Also true, many people have spent a week in Glasgow in actual fact lots of people have spent their whole life there. Do go on monsieur
“It’s not as pretty as Edinburgh”
You flatter us, you charming French gent
“But Edinburgh only really needs a day; see the castle and the palace. Not much more to see culture wise”
Sorry what?
At this point my sweet pickup game of ultimate Frisbee was derailed. I was struck dumb, gob smacked and flabbergasted all at once. I roared with a rage so erotically charged I almost passed out. Who does he think he is? Who? One day? I’ll show him one day.
As I summoned my nerve to give him a piece of my mind I swiftly turned on my heal and wandered off. But if I had given him a piece of my mind, it would have sounded like this;
What I would be doing if I were in Edinburgh right now (or in the near future).
The National Museum of Scotland
Chambers Street
The recently reopened National Museum is treasured by all. You can’t go into the museum and not become giddy, there’s a plane on the wall. The exhibitions are now all state of the art and there is more of the Museums ludicrously large collection on show than ever before.
I love the museum upstairs are excellent far eastern and Egyptian exhibits, these are slightly calmer than the somewhat manic downstairs. I wouldn’t say this when I was selling it to the French fellow, but the museum is more kid friendly than ever and you may have some philistine parents launching there kid on every surface going. Sadly there has also been a dumbing down in some areas, but not all over and I only say that because I am nit-picking. Overall the museum is amazing; completely refurbished everything is exciting and state of the art, but more importantly the substance and size of the
overwhelming collection will keep you there for days.
Van Gogh to Kandinsky | Symbolist Landscape in Europe 1880-1910
Scottish National Gallery
Ends 14th October
An Exhibition I was thoroughly excited about but completely failed to go and see. If I was a French chap in Edinburgh I would be super jazzed to go to this highly acclaimed show. Frankly I have never been a big fan of Munch but on display were some Gauguin that I was rather keen on seeing.
Picasso & Modern British Art
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
4th August to 4th November
Somewhat of a coup for the gallery of modern art. Taking an extensive collection from a very various periods in Picasso’s career and tying them together with various British pieces. It is an interesting idea but more importantly the Gallery have secured some veritable masterpieces including the 1925 painting, “The Three Dancers”. A really interesting exhibition opened in August, which has been
The Scottish Colourist Series: SJ Peploe
Modern Art Two (Dean Gallery)
3rd November 2012- 23rd June 2013
The stranger made no reference to when he might be in Edinburgh so I would have recommended this show for the trips of the near future. I have been excited about this since last year’s Cadell exhibition in the same series. Peploe is arguably the most famous of the Scottish colourists and looking at his work there is scope for a really interesting exhibition. Fingers crossed the gallery manage to curate as comprehensive an exhibit as they have for each artist in this series so far. Personally I am a fan of the colourists I don’t know how popular they are with French men on my campus.
Now take that French stranger and get yourself to Edinburgh, because this is just the tip of the ice berg. I’m talking literally the tippy top of the ice berg, the bit you see and think hmm I wonder where the rest of that ice berg is.
War, what is it good for? Well in this case my victory I have won the war, I defeated a stranger in passive combat and wrote about him behind his back. I have proven him wrong and gained the upper hand with an evidence based argument I thought of after the fact. Now all I need to do is find him and give him this article.
[NB if you want to show a stranger whose boss, post some of your top Edinburgh cultural events and places in the comments]
The rise and fall of poker is a fascinating glimpse of an industry based on dreams and greed. Rank amateur Chris Moneymaker dared every Joe Normalton to believe miracles could happen when he made a legendary run to World Series of Poker Main Event victory in 2003. There’s a pivotal moment in the final one-on-one battle when Moneymaker stared Persian poker professional, and part-time Bond villain, Sam Farha in the eyes and pulled off an outrageous bluff that swung the momentum in Moneymaker’s favour.
It is not only a script that Hollywood would have spurned for encroaching on hyperbolic clichés but it caused an astonishing ‘boom’ in the poker industry that saw ‘America’s past-time’ spread across the world, inspiring the golden age of online poker. Poker phenoms and teenage millionaires have come and gone in the years that have passed, but none so astounding as an unknown twenty-something going by the name of Isildur1 who stunned and reignited the poker community by having epic duels with the best players of our generation. Not only did he beat the greats of our time, he destroyed them with a maniacal style
that won over $5 million dollars during a few nights in November. More astounding perhaps was that this 22 year old Swede wasn’t on suicide watch after losing that amount just as quickly as he’d won the sum. Isildur1 became something of a folk hero in the poker community for his love of the sport and willingness to shy away from nobody.
As we approach the new year, the clamour among the poker community for another catalyst like Chris Moneymaker or Isildur1 to arise has never been more apparent. On April 15th 2011, a day now dubbed ‘Black Friday’, the USA’s Department of Justice suspended the gaming licences of the three largest online poker companies in the industry for allegedly defrauding poker players of over $300 million. That brought the poker community to its knees as many professionals found their online bankroll frozen for the duration of the investigation meanwhile casual players have been turned off by Black Friday’s events. The upshot of which is pulling away the curtain of fame and fortune and witnessing a global community experience turmoil for the last 18 months.
Since Black Friday, there has been much unrest within poker community message-boards over the feeling that a new scandal was being broken week by week. Readers may recognise the name ‘Full Tilt Poker’ (FTP) and their tag-line “play with the pros” from associations with late night poker television shows as well as being the site of choice for Isildur1’s stunning run. Pre-Black Friday, FTP was the second largest poker company in the industry but behind the poker-face was a boardroom loaded with over-fuelled egos whose greed and incompetence revealed their grand ponzi schemes. The owners allowed poker players to withdraw money that the company simply didn’t have whilst making exorbitant ‘loans’ to the heralded pros that they sponsored. That inevitably brought the company to its knees and saw FTP become the major focus of the Department of Justice’s efforts to reclaim $300 million in funds.
The poker world has been under a microscope during this arduous process and that applies to the players as well as the corporations. One story in particular beggars belief in an altogether different fashion from Moneymaker’s rise to stardom. In August, a series of chat-logs were posted to internet message-boards which alleged Matt Marafioti, a high-stakes poker professional, had been conspiring with a well-connected Swedish IT expert named Samer Rahman to hack the poker accounts of other high-stakes professionals. It wasn’t long into their plotting that Marafioti discovered he was a pawn all-long after finding trojans and key-loggers on his computer which had been planted by Rahman. Then, revelation after revelation began to unfold from the story. Rahman was found to be linked to Mohammed Kowssarie, a notorious figure in the poker community after, allegedly, stealing millions from Scandinavian poker professionals, as well as being very open about his strong ties to the “Bandidos”, a violent biker gang based in Sweden. The Bandidos’ presence is overtly prominent, widely known to intimidate individuals and influencing aspects of online poker and the nation’s culture in the process. For instance, the day after the Marafioti scandal broke, the founder of poker news site PokerListings, Andreas Oscarsson, was found shot dead, the consensus being that the Bandidos had made the hit in order to prevent Oscarsson from giving testimony against a former business partner. What may have began with Matt Marafioti’s greed ended with the Swedish Hell’s Angels silencing a witness.
Fortunately, one of the stories from the last 18 months have had a somewhat happy ending as Full Tilt Poker was acquired by Pokerstars, the market leader, with the promise that every FTP player would be receiving their money back when the site re-opens on November 6th after nearly two years of doubt. Howard Lederer, former CEO of FTP, is currently doing a PR crawl, perfecting the art of saying “I don’t know” to interviewers who ask probing questions about how they could have possibly let things at the company get so out of hand.
Meanwhile, contenders for the void in the poker hero have started appearing. A Russian amateur under the guise of ‘maratik’ won over of $1,000,000 in the World Championship Of Online Poker’s $5200 buyin main event having entered through a series of qualifiers at the equivalent cost of 14p. Maratik’s winnings would be enough to enter himself into the ‘One Drop’ poker tournament which held its inaugural event this year and boasted a knee-trembling prize pool of $42,666,672.
Despite all the struggles poker has faced in the last year and a half, it is a sport that is in the ascendancy. The cries from the community to better police itself have rung out loudly throughout Summer and there is a buzz within the community that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow after all.
Hey, you”re listening to In Session live on FreshAir.org.uk with me, Christian Illingworth, and beside me, Lily Higham. Today we”re welcoming…
The usual introduction won”t cut it this time as In Session is leaving its nest in the airwaves and branching out into the densely populated world of blogging. One more vessel launching with fleeting fancies of being virally tumblogged or retrended at the risk of being snuffed out by overcrowding or dwindling enthusiasm. How will In Session fare in the blog jungle? Heck knows but it is without question that we”ll be passing questionable judgement on music and the arts whilst creating unique content with a lot of little help from the Scottish music scene.
See, In Session is a passion project which caters for the presenters” self-indulgence by inviting one of their favourite musicians to sing a few songs and tell a few tales to them in the studio each week. Over the last twelve months, since the show began broadcasting on Fresh Air Radio, In Session has been fortunate enough to meet the likes of The Twilight Sad, Meursault and Frightened Rabbit with gleeful expressions even if the subject matter of their songs encourage otherwise.
It was so much fun for the presenters that, in February, they did their bit to restore order in the universe by releasing the In Session Series 1 Mixtape which compiled session tracks from every musician that performed for the show. It was released for free back then and remains free now via insession.bandcamp.com so do check it out as it”s a great sampler of the Scottish music scene featuring session tracks from Endor, Broken Records, and long-awaited new material by There have taken care of immediately the Nj Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), and casinos Control Commission (CCC), responding towards the petition for participation which was filed through the American Gaming Association (AGA), with regards to the Rational Group’s application for Interim casinos Authorization (ICA). Will Be Fireworks. The mixtape also also boasts, through watery eyes, unique performances from Aerials Up and Loch Awe who sadly decided to call it day in the last six months.
In Session, however, has been going strong since February, scooping a Best Radio Show nomination at the Scottish New Music Awards, and continuing to record sessions on the road and in the studio. It won”t be long now, a fortnight perhaps, before the second mixtape drops and reminds everyone that, “hey, Scottish music is thriving right now, isn”t it?” You can look forward to an alarmingly eclectic compilation this time around as Scottish powerhouses Frightened Rabbit and Meursault will be alongside a plethora of the show”s favourite newcomers such as Kaiho, Zed Penguin, and Michael Cassidy. The release of the second mixtape will coincide with the announcement of In Session”s Winter broadcasting schedule on Fresh Air Radio which, to let you in on a little secret, may be our strongest guest booking run to date. That may look like PR hype 101 but, rest assured, the line-up is tremendously exciting.
And so ends this pseudo-third person introduction. Until the radio show resumes sometime in late October, In Session”s weekly updates on Nanu-Nanu will be discussing the week in gigs, if we go to any; or profiling bands new and old which have caught our attention. Between each post you can follow the show on Twitter @InSessionRadio for more updates plus myself @RadioBlagger and Lily @Lily_Higham for free-formed musings.
