Posts Tagged ‘radio’

Admiral Fallow In Session

Admiral Fallow

As part of a Record Store Day special on April 20th, we captured Louis, Kevin, and Sarah of Scottish folk-pop heavyweights Admiral Fallow for a session on the day that the band released a limited run of their acclaimed (longlisted for the 2013 SAY Award) second LP ‘Tree Bursts In Snow’ on vinyl for the first time to commemorate RSD 2013.

We chatted with the band about their formation, having to start the applause themselves at grim open mics, plus the evolution of their writing process and their eclectic assortment of instruments used in the past, present and future.

Admiral Fallow’s SAY Award long-listed LP ‘Tree Bursts In Snow’ is available to purchase from Nettwerk Records via their website.

To keep up to date on all things Admiral Fallow:
YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AdmiralFallowVEVO
Website: http://www.admiralfallow.com
Twitter: @AdmiralFallow

Full Session (including interview)

In Session – Admiral Fallow by Radioblagger on Mixcloud

 
Tracklisting:

1. Beetle In The Box (Live on In Session)

2. Oh, Oscar (Live on In Session)

3. Guest Of The Government (Live on In Session)
 


Admiral Fallow – Beetle In The Box (Live on In Session)
 

Admiral Fallow – Oh, Oscar (Live on In Session)
 

Admiral Fallow – Guest Of The Government (Live on In Session)
 
In Session broadcasts live on Freshair.org.uk every Saturday from 6-7pm featuring a plethora of the hottest new music from the Scottish scene, a roundup of recent and upcoming gigs, and, of course, a guest performing live in the studio.

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Download our free/charity mixtapes which compile every artist featured on In Session 2011 and 2012 here – http://insession.bandcamp.com

In Session’s Series Two Mixtape

In Session 500x333

Around this time last year, we released a charity compilation under the title of In Session’s Series One Mixtape. We had had a stormer of a rookie year in 2011, achieving far more than we thought possible for people with little to no contacts in a Scottish music scene that was showing signs of the revival it seems to experience every five or so years. Having gained so much from that experience, I thought it would be a nice thing to release a free mixtape for the benefit of the fans that had encouraged us and the fantastic musicians that had so generously offered their time to the show. At the time of release, there was some uncertainty as to whether we could continue to produce a show that may have fluked a decent first series. The thought of there being a series two mixtape was somewhat fanciful and, if so, who we would have on it would take some effort to match the first one. But here we are. I have written this little preamble to the main event as we, Lily and I at In Session, are in very much a similar position as to where we were last year. We have, again, surprised ourselves with what we have achieved in the last twelve months; and I must stress that ‘achieved’ is used liberally as essentially we just pestered our favourite bands enough and not too much until they agreed to have a chinwag and play some songs for us. What is different this year is that we are comfortable with the uncertainty that paves the future of the show. An in-joke Lily and I shared at the end of series one was that the ultimate aim of the show, a show that showcases Scottish music, would be to welcome Frightened Rabbit in session. Well we did that; so we had to reassess. There are no targets anymore, only people whose music we love

and whose brains we want to pick between songs like Sylar in his pomp. Scottish music is as rich and exciting as it has been for some time and I consider myself fortunate to be entrenched in that environment as a small platform for some terrific people to people showcase their talents. So, to everyone who has supported us by performing, listening, or saving the show when my technical guesswork doesn’t quite work for some reason, thank you. Now that the sop out of the way, we are immensely proud to present to you In Session’s Series Two Mixtape! Like the first mixtape, this is a completely free compilation for you to savour but there is the added option there for you to contribute some money that will all go towards the charity Shelter which would be greatly appreciated. Whatever you choose to pay, you will find the same 24 songs on the mixtape, a selection whittled down from a possible 40 with the self-imposed rule of there being no more than two songs per artist. Every artist that performed a song either in the studio or on location is featured in the compilation and I do believe that what we have ended up with is a bit of a belter. Tracklisting:

1. Michael Cassidy – 15 Years 03:29 2. Blue Sky Archives – Bitches 03:41 3. Dead Sea Souls – Charlie Brown (Coldplay cover) 02:40 4. Seafieldroad – Circle The Wagons 03:14 5. Blue Sky Archives – Dear Middle-Aged Ponytail 04:06 6. Quickbeam – Empty Space 02:46 7. Meursault – Fib 02:58 8. Seafieldroad – Findhorn 03:08 9. Zed Penguin – Heathens 02:29 10. Trapped Mice – I Don’t Want To Get Over You (The Magnetic Fields cover) 01:41 11. Loch Awe – I Will Drift Into 10,000 Streams 05:20 12. Kaiho – If Jesus Was My Swimming Instructor 02:50 13. Loch Awe – Little Tricks 04:12 14. Dead Sea Souls – New Vibe 03:08 15. Trapped Mice – Night of Broken Glass 04:37 16. Meursault – Pretty Good Day (Loudon Wainwright III cover) 03:50 17. People, Places, Maps – Sarah’s Song 03:11 18. Frightened Rabbit – State Hospital 03:54 19. Kaiho – The Knife (Grizzly Bear cover) 02:51 20. Frightened Rabbit – The Modern Leper 03:38 21. Sebastian Dangerfield – The Sycamore Tree 04:09 22. Zed Penguin – This Town 04:04 23. Michael Cassidy – Tonight You Belong To Me 01:10 24. Sebastian Dangerfield – untitled 03:46

You can download In Session’s Series Two Mixtape right now from http://insession.bandcamp.com   I was a bit flabbergasted whilst putting this together to see that we have recorded nearly five hours of session songs…. five hours! I’m not sure what we will do with the spare tracks yet but they are all available from the podcasts on our Mixcloud. Meanwhile, we’re already putting together the Series Three Mixtape following sessions with Simon Herron, Adam Stafford, Hiva Oa, and End of Neil. We’re going to keep pestering the people we love and we’re going to keep doing this for as long as we can. It’s bloody fun! Please follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for more regular updates as we’d be the first to admit that we are not the most reliable bloggers.   In Session broadcasts live on Freshair.org.uk every Saturday from 6-7pm featuring a plethora of the hottest new music from the Scottish scene, a roundup of recent and upcoming gigs, and, of course, a guest performing live in the studio.

The F-Word – "Whether you like it or not, you’re probably a feminist"

I-am-a-feminist

I've decided to do something slightly different with the blog this week as, although women in sport is a massive and really interesting topic, it's also a fairly fact/stat-based one where there's not a lot of debate to be had. So a huge thank you to Claire and Alex for talking through it so well last night, but I'm going to use this space this week to chat about something that's been bothering me a bit recently – why are people so reluctant to call themselves feminists?

I began The F-Word in the hope that talking about subjects relevant to most or all young women today in this way might make people stop and think “actually, this does affect me – I must be a feminist then!”. Yay, congrats, nice one etc. End of. But I've come to realise in recent weeks that it's not as easy as that. Yes, feminism is having a massive identity crisis

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and one that's leaving young women in their thousands alienated and intimidated, and that's a problem that I'll hopefully also touch on. But at an even more basic level, these same young women seem to be fundamentally misunderstanding feminism in the first place. Please don't get me wrong – I'm not for one minute pitying these women or tutting and shaking my head at them or whatever. I think that their views, rather than being born from ignorance, are a product of society and some branches of feminism itself – which is more than a bit disheartening when you consider some of the things I've heard recently.

I've heard someone adamantly declare that they're “definitely not a feminist”, while another said that she might be if she “read into it a bit more”. A girl in a tutorial I was in recently said, in all seriousness, that she thought “feminists [were] mostly just lesbians”, while another woman described her friend as being a “hardcore feminist” because she believed that her boyfriend should pay for everything on dates. Someone else told me that feminists were “scary and exclusive”. Aside from noting that I seem to be quizzing everyone in my life on feminism all the time, there's a bigger point to take from this. Yes, there's a spectrum here, and there might be some remarks there that most people would agree are missing the point. But others just make me a bit sad really; the idea that feminism is an academic position, or the idea that a movement fundamentally built on equality could come across as exclusive.

For me, feminism comes down to one thing and one thing only – do you want to be equal? If I sat down with each of the young women above and asked them whether they wanted to be paid less than a man for doing the same job, or whether they were happy to be called a slut if they wore a short skirt, or whether they were cool with being whistled and leered at on their way to the shops, I'm pretty sure the answer would be a resounding no. So something has definitely gone wrong somewhere along the line.

I think the ones that depressed me the most were the woman who said that she needed to read more books, and the one who described feminists as “scary and exclusive”. Sadly, I think these are really common misconceptions about feminism and, even more sadly, I think they come from somewhere far more real

than the collective 21st century woman's imagination. I personally think that the only qualification needed to be a feminist is that you're human – altough feel free to correct me if you think I'm doing the canine population an injustice – and believe in a good quality of life for everyone. Feminism is beneficial for men as well, not just women; gender stereotypes are damaging to all genders, and the economic empowerment of women can be nothing but helpful for the economy as a whole. I entirely reject the suggestion that men can't be feminists, and I think it's vitally important that they are for a whole host of reasons including economic, political and social ones. It's up to individual women if they want to engage in these more 'academic debates' or in activism in the traditional sense but, fundamentally, they should be respected for their decision, whichever one it is. I admire women who engage in activism and I believe that it often does have great results. But I also don't believe for one minute that marches, demonstrations and rallies are the only form of protest, and I don't believe that a woman is any less of a feminist because she chooses not to engage in these.

I think a basic premise of feminsim is that women should be able to make choices about their own lives and that these choices should be respected by other people and obviously other feminists. I fully agree (and argued about it in last week's blog) that women are a group of diverse and different people and we're never going to agree on everything all of the time. That's fine. But it's not fine, as far as I'm concerned, to attack a woman over a decision to wear pink, or high heels, or to stay at home and bake because, in this day and age, these are all decisions rather than requisites, and decisions that were only made possible by the feminist movement in the first place. Personally I'm quite partial to my high heels (in this sense I probably don't have much of a choice, but that's less to do with being a woman and more to do with being under five feet tall), sparkly jewellery and all the rest of it. But I still want to be equal and respected. There's no logical correlation between the two.

The main thing tying all the above quotes together is that these are all young women who don't seem to realise that sexism, and consequently feminism, affects them. I don't want to be depressing – “you thought your life was great? Well guess what, you're actually oppressed!” – but my point isn't that these women aren't experiencing these issues, it's that they aren't identifying them as being feminist issues. So for these women who are all Edinburgh students in their early 20s, maybe childcare and pay gaps aren't the most important problem for them right now. But I'm willing to bet they've all received unwanted attention in a club, or felt apprehensive walking home alone once, or felt that they couldn't speak out when laddy boys at pre-drinks made them feel uncomfortable. That's what my shows are all about; I've tried really hard to make sure that each one is about a topic that's big and broad enough to make women – and men – stop and think about whether it's affected them. And chances are, it has. So I'm sorry ladies, but whether you like it or not (and you should definitely like it), you're probably a feminist.

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The F-Word: Women’s Magazines

glossy-magazines

Women’s magazines. What a broad and far-reaching topic. My guests last night, FreshAir’s Head of News Elyse Jamieson and Edinburgh Labour Students Chair Anya O’Shea, did a fantastic job of talking through some of the reasons why these publications can be problematic for women in the 21st century, but I’ll be using these weekly blog posts to get across some of my own views on the issues raised in the previous night’s show.

My own relationship with women’s magazines is a complex one, and to be honest I’ve always struggled with feminists who direct their criticisms solely at these magazines – partly because I thought there were bigger battles to fight and partly because I still think that being a feminist by it’s very nature means I should be able to read whatever the hell I like, thank you very much. But I’ve grown older, and allegedly more mature, and I do find myself questioning the content of these magazines more and more as I stroke my chin and gaze out of the window, pondering the big questions…

Not really. But every now and again I’ll read something that will make me stop and think ‘what?’, and that’s exactly why I chose this topic for the very first episode of the F-Word.

I remember being 12 and tricking my dad into letting me buy Sugar magazine by telling him that my mum said it was okay (I think she’d want it on record that she definitely didn’t). I’ll never forget the front page of that magazine, now out of print but at this time aimed at 14-18 year olds – “I WAS FORCED INTO PROSTITUTION BY MY OWN BOYFRIEND”, next to a picture of a 15 year-old child primped and preened into a glossy cover girl, smiling and flashing her sparkly lipgloss underneath the horrific headline. I had to ask my dad what prostitution meant, and after much umm-ing and aah-ing, he diplomatically explained that it was “when a person sold their body”. Aged 12, this conjured up terrifying images of people chopping off arms and legs, trading kidneys and browsing through potential new eye colours, but I accepted his definition with a nod and never asked again. I tell this story to illustrate the ease of access that pre-pubescent girls have to this type of content and that, even worse, it’s actually targetted at them in the first place. That’s scary, and I haven’t even touched on the issues of body image, sex, or the reinforcing of institutional sexism through these magazines. There isn’t time here to go into all that but, basically, IT’S BAD. And this little anecdote shows just how early women are introduced to this potentially very damaging world of female media, and how it’s very possible that we consume without even realising the often horrific implications of what we’re reading on our own identity and sense-of-self.

Fast-forward 5 or 6 years in the life of a woman, and you find her confronted by an array of glossy magazines promising to make her sexier, better in bed, fitter, healthier, sparklier and “more glowing” – notably never just happier or ‘actually not anything -er because I’m quite happy the way I am, thanks’. My main problem with these magazines – and it’s a big one – is that these attempts to actively promote female empowerment are done in such a way that they manage to simultaneously be blatantly sexist. Quite the feat, really.

Take More magazine. During this summer’s Olympics, they did the honourable thing and dedicated a 4 page spread to some of Team GB’s ‘golden girls’. Great, you might think – but don’t celebrate just yet, because the feature title read: “Behind every golden girl is a great man supporting her”.

UUGHHH.

This title, emblazoned above pictures of Jessica Ennis hugging her fiancee and Victoria Pendleton on a romantic stroll in the park, does nothing for women’s liberation. I’d go as far as to say that it’s detrimental to the cause. Where are the pictures of Ennis willing herself through the final lap with determination in her eyes? Where is Pendleton on the podium, celebrating the reward for years of hard work and dedication? According to More, these women are not interesting until OMG! They totes have this season’s latest accessory; a super-hot, protective and strong boyfriend. SO. CUTE.

I didn’t think it was possible for sexism to be any less palatable, but if it is then it must be when packaged in a way that claims to be celebrating women. It’s sexism alright, but its coated in sugar, flowers and sequins – because otherwise it wouldn’t be inkeeping with the latest SS12 fashion week collections. Obviously.

Cosmopolitan is even more explicit in this sense, actively promoting a campaign – incidentally also called the F-Word – to celebrate the use of the word ‘feminism’ and encourage women to identify themselves accordingly.

But wait a minute. Isn’t this the same magazine that runs a regular feature called ‘Men vs Fashion’, asking a panel of (inevitably white, twenty-something and suitably attractive) men to discuss the outfits of female celebrities, many of whom feature in pictures that were taken while they nipped to Tesco for toilet roll, or took their children to school? These women are definitely not dressing for men, and the suggestion that they are – or that they ever should – is explicitly offensive. Coupled with Cosmo’s ‘Men On…’ column, fascination with “please your man” sex tips and their current ‘Bag A Boy’ article – “Why can’t you seem to get a boyfriend? Could you be coming across as desperate? Here’s how to get that ‘I need you’ tattoo permanently removed from your forehead” – there seems to be some decidedly mixed messages going on.

This topic is far too big and broad for me to ever be able to get all my thoughts across, which is a shame. But that also says something in itself – the influence of these numerous magazines shouldn’t be underestimated, and nor should their complex relationship with the contemporary young women they are targetting. I’m not adverse to gender-exclusive magazines and I like the idea of an empowered female community of readers – I’m just not convinced that it’s possible right now, with magazines being as they are; all feminist and proud one minute, all “male writer Joe Mott talks about the biggest mistakes girls can make when they’re out on the pull” the next. It seems to me that the female magazine industry is in the midst of an identity crisis. Poor them. But I’d feel a lot sorrier if they weren’t leaving large percentages of young women in the same position as a result.