Mark Robertson

Speech Debelle: Speech Therapy

28 May 2009

Sister label Ninja Tunes has recently diversified out beyond the stoner electronica it’s been famed for with quality acts like Yppah and Fink, and now hip hop heavyweights Big Dada are proving they’re no slouches either. First came the post-Basement…

The xx - xx

10 Aug 2009

How many times have we heard the maxim ‘less is more’ rolled out for someone new just because they resist knocking everything up to 11? Too often, perhaps, but this bewitching debut starts barely there, and doesn’t get much more full on than that. A…

Charles M Schulz - Small world

15 Nov 2007

It’s the little things that make the difference. In the case of the Charles M Schulz cartoon strips, that could mean the smallest of pen strokes for a raised eyebrow, an extra crease on a forehead, the downward bend on the ends of a mouth. Schulz…

La Roux

9 Jul 2009

Good pop music is instant, but great pop music lasts forever. Elly ‘La Roux’ Jackson, with hair like a winsome gingerbread Mr Whippy, a voice like spun sugar and on the receiving end of more hyperbole than Cristiano Ronaldo, Kanye West and Susan Boyle…

Biffy Clyro - Only Revolution

And evolution too chaps?

16 Oct 2009

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…

Scotland The Great - Franz Ferdinand

22 Jan 2009

You’ve basically built an entire studio complex in the bowels of this beautiful old building in Govan? Bob Hardy, bass Yeah, its a great place. Nick [McCarthy, guitars and keyboards] found it. David MacKenzie the filmmaker has his office down here.

Joy Division

24 Apr 2008

DOCUMENTARY (15) 96mins After last year’s Control, Anton Corbijn’s considered and stylish dramatisation of Ian Curtis’ life, it would be easy to think that everything you need to know about the legend and legacy of English post-punk outfit Joy…

Chipmunk - I Am Chipmunk

2 Oct 2009

The British grime scene is defined by its fury and bravado and Chipmunk rolls out a debut album that suggests there’s scope for having some heart too. After demolishing the charts with the simpering proto-Kanye ‘Diamond Rings’ (which features Glasgow…

The Temper Trap - Conditions

29 Jul 2009

THE TEMPER TRAP Conditions (Infectious Records) As indie rock grows more splintered and contrived with every new self-consciously slick act to strap on a Strat too high on their chests and ponce about in front of their mate’s Super 8, it’s…

Siouxsie and the Banshees - At the BBC

11 Jun 2009

This magnificent three-CD set doesn’t really unearth anything brand new but gathers together huge hunks of the quartet’s varied career via radio sessions and live sets, starting with their John Peel debut in November 1977, filled with the poisoned…

New Scottish bands

15 Nov 2007

Over the last couple of years, it has sometimes seemed like the end of an era for Scottish indie music. Starting with the amicable split of the seminal Delgados, and, more recently, the demise of Falkirk’s Arab Strap and underrated noiseniks…

Idlewild - Post Electric Blues

16 Sep 2009

(Cooking Vinyl) With a bulky back catalogue soaked in boisterous, if melancholic, guitar rock the expectation for Idlewild was always for them to make their Automatic for the People: a weighty album which crystallised all their most extreme emotions.

Jeffree Star

5 Mar 2009

Model, fashion designer, MySpace superstar and singer, Jeffree Star is one of the new breed of web celebrities and self-styled ‘Queen of the internet’. A subversive and sometimes controversial figure famed for his transgressive ‘gender-bending…

Slayer - Carling Academy, Glasgow, Mon 3 Nov

7 Nov 2008

Relentless. That’s what Slayer are. Relentless in that they have been battering us with a music that they pretty much help invent in the early 80s -- they were original thrash metal pioneers alongside Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica -- and still revisit…

The Hot 100 2008

11 Dec 2008

It’s been a helluva year. 2008 has been a time of significant global change, socially, politically and culturally, with Scotland no exception. So here, for your delectation, is The List’s pick of the 100 people, places and things that rocked our world…

Steve Albini on Shellac, Big Black, All Tomorrow's Parties and loving your dayjob

Steve Albini interview transcript

30 Oct 2008

Shellac are a singular force in rock music. They have an aesthetic all their own and a attitude and vision which, while not unique, is a delight to behold. Three men making music for the sheer hell of it, with no financial or social imperative.

Camille: the Dark Angel

31 Jul 2008

Some festival veterans would appear to be gluttons for punishment, others just seem to return again and again only to grow in stature. Dublin’s Camille O’Sullivan is very much of the latter category and is among the most celebrated and cherished of…

Vanity Fair Portraits

5 Jun 2008

We didn’t need Princess Diana to die to know we live in a celebrity-obsessed age. The love/hate relationship between the people and the famous is now more fraught than ever. Fame has never been so easy to come by, but we seem to take even greater joy in…

The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath

31 Jan 2008

(Universal) ROCK Listening to the barrage emanating from the speakers for 78 minutes it’s hard to believe that Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala (for they are the heart, soul and hair of The Mars Volta) have reeled things in for album…

Music In The Digital Age

Technology's impact on the artform

2 Oct 2009

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…

Wil Anderson

Australian comedy striving to find the good in us all

11 Aug 2009

This sweet, excitable Aussie thirtysomething is driven to find the good in the world, no matter how cynical it gets. He definitely has his moments, but too often you can see the pay-off from miles away, and he deflates some of his sharpest ideas by…

Slipknot

8 Jan 2009

METAL For any rock band worth their salt, it’s all about the guitars. BIG. HEAVY. GUITARS. Slipknot have their fair share of shredding riffs and six string belligerence, although the first thing that hits us tonight, aside from the explosions and…

Those Dancing Days - In Our Space Hero Suits

13 Nov 2008

Appearances can be deceptive. And in our image-obsessed age it’s great to hear someone like Linnea Johnson, who looks a cherubic Swedish folk-singer, but has a voice like heavily polished mahogany. Coming off somewhere between Liz Frazer and Alison…

Popup - A Time and a Place

2 Oct 2008

INDIE If it has felt like a long time coming for Popup’s debut long player to land in our arms then maybe it’s because we’ve been aware of them being damn good from very early on. Furious early demos, bursting with barely contained energy, recorded…

Metallica - Death Magnetic

18 Sep 2008

METAL That Metallica have become metal’s answer to the Rolling Stones – an endlessly touring megalith who’s albums have be come increasingly irrelevant as their live shows have become greater spectacles – should not negate getting the most out of…