Mark Robertson

The best Hogmanay holiday ideas

The best ways to bring in the New Year

Get on the farm Forget Carry on Camping, the crew at Comrie Croft in Perthshire know how to do camping in style, with this eco-friendly farmstead conversion. Located in Crieff, surrounded by gorgeous vistas, bring in the bells around a campfire…

Helmet - The Cathouse, Glasgow, Friday 17 Dec 2010

The weight and ingenuity of metal without the cheese and pretension

The outbreak of onstage mild hysteria at the Cathouse tonight can be attributed to a number of things – although the support band playing the first song of the American quartet’s encore is never entirely explained. Mostly, the technical gremlins along…

Five reasons to go see: Depeche Mode

1 Enjoy the Silence It’s been 22 years since Basildon’s finest have graced a stage in Scotland, so the faithful have had to be mighty patient to see them live again. That, or make good use of Ryanair to see them in Europe, where they are still…

Homecoming Final Fling - ditch cynical, think musical

You know the big speech by Renton in Trainspotting where he goes on about how it’s ‘shite being Scottish’? Well, he was only half right. His defeatist rant is a quintessential example of that under-a-dreich-cloud Scottish pessimism, rubbishing…

Slayer

In 2009 what do people really need from Slayer? This is a band who set the bar at a breathtaking high over 20 years ago, releasing intense, condensed concrete slabs for albums, if concrete slabs can be dripping in blood and goat entrails. The quartet’s…

Stereophonics - Keep Calm and Carry On

Kelly Jones’ predilection for all things both ‘classic’ and ‘rock’ has meant that, despite emerging in the early 90s, Stereophonics have never sounded particularly tied to any one era. This album, their seventh, is a more stripped back affair, tapping…

Music hitlist

Mark Eitzel and Franz Nicolay The yin and yang of acoustic troubadourism: former American Music Club man Eitzel (pictured) whose tortured and black comic musings are the antithesis of the ever chipper The Hold Steady keyboardist and resident dandy…

Weezer - Raditute

(Geffen) Who’d have thought one day Weezer and Slayer would be in the same spot? They’re both highly influential, having spawned several generations of bands single-handedly, but now struggling to find ways to push themselves musically. Both bands…

Slayer - World Painted Blood

(Mercury) Being pretty much the complete package when they started, California’s Slayer are attributed with inspiring an entire generation towards replicating their heads down, relentless thrash riffage. The problem with that is that over the years…

Cuddly Shark - Cuddly Shark

(Armelodie Records) Art school hillbillies is perhaps the finest description of a band we’ve heard all year and this vitriolic debut album from the Scottish trio live up to the claim, a disjointed mix of 50s rollers and 00s rockers barbed with…

Sharon King - Reckless Angels

(Birnam) The third album from King – whose intimate, affecting songs are set somewhere between the mountains of the highlands and the plains of the American mid-west – charges various members of the Scottish folk scene to provide instrumental…

Devendra Banhart - What Will Be

(Warner Bros) Less random and scattergun than his previous efforts, Banhart’s major label debut is a sun flecked collection of woozy acoustica; part Laurel Canyon dreaming, part psychedelic folly, part Latin jaunt.

Mr Hudson - Straight No Chaser

(Mercury) Enthusiastic endorsement from Kanye West and Jay-Z can’t stop this album of electropop slickness from feeling like the slightly underwhelming little brother to West’s 808s and Heartbreak.

The Flaming Lips - Born again

From narcotic haze to surreal crowd pleasers via drive-in musicals and sci-fi movies, The Flaming Lips are true musical originals, Mark Robertson explains why

The Social Services - It’s Nothing Personal, It’s National Security

(Stereo Test Kit) With tongue firmly in cheek and sandwiches in knapsack, The Social Services head out on a jaunt round Popland to confirm that their frisky style is something pretty special. Two thirds Glaswegian, one third Swedish, the trio throw…

Kats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio

(Universal) There’s been plenty released to celebrate DJ John Peel’s legacy and this expansive four-disc set tries to replicate the magic of the quintessential John Peel show. By that we mean throwing the tough techno of Dave Clarke up against the…

Miike Snow - Miike Snow

(Downtown Records) The men behind Miike Snow have got a rep: two of them, Pontus Winnberg and Christian Karlsson, are better known as Bloodshy and Avant, the producer/songwriters behind songs for the likes of Kylie, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Kelis and…

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

There’s always been something wistful and longing in the musical waywardness of Oklahoma’s finest ever export The Flaming Lips. Even at their most poptastic and goassamer there was an air of introspection. Nowhere is this more acutely illustrated than…

Various - Kats Karavan: The History of John Peel on the Radio

There has already been plenty released to celebrate John Peel’s legacy, and now this expansive four-disc set tries to replicate the magic of a quintessential John Peel show. By that we mean throwing the tough techno of Dave Clarke up against the…

Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions

And evolution too chaps?

It’s all making sense now with Biffy Clyro, since Muse showed that you didn’t need to follow the entirely conventional path and attain rock band enormodome status. And it’s not like with the demise of Oasis there will be a flood of rock geeks filling up…

Miike Snow - Miike Snow

The men behind Miike Snow have got a rep: two of them, Pontus Winnberg and Christian Karlsson, are better known as Bloodshy and Avant, the producer songwriters behind songs for the likes of Kylie, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Kelis and the mighty ‘Toxic…

Invasion - The Master Alchemist

Convinced (quite rightly) that the best metal is about ‘wizards and magic’, this London trio have both applied this logic and set about tearing up the metal rulebook with super short songs, one-take recordings, no bass, no solos, no bullshit – and the…

All Tomorrow's Parties: The Film

An onscreen celebration of the alternative music institution

A young man, at the head of a throng of people, kneels in front of a performing drummer, his hands either side of the drummer’s floor tom. The man is shouting, nay pleading with the drummer through a variety of emphatic hand gestures. Growing more…

Invasion and Jackie Treehorn - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Tue 13 Oct

The power of the press is something that can be overstated. Evidence of this is the glowing notices given to Invasion by both NME and Kerrang! of late which state them to be the finest new rock ensemble anywhere. Such fawning hasn’t made it out here in…

Music In The Digital Age

Technology's impact on the artform

To paraphrase the Creme Egg adverts, when it comes to music, how do you hear yours? Streaming over the internet? Nicking stuff from torrents on the web? A bag full of goodies from Fopp? Crates of obscure vinyl from your local specialist…