HOUSE MACHINE

I debuted a new live project at a couple of gigs earlier this year (for Countach at the Halt Bar, Glasgow and for the Radio Magnetic birthday party) - it's basically me dicking about with two Grooveboxes. The sound is stripped back classic old school house, with nods to jackin Chicago old school, acid house and Strictly Rhythm/New York house. It's meant to be more of a heads down club-grooves type of thing, but because I write so much of my music on the Gbox, I can ocassionally drop I Came or the Hots and do a live vocal over it. There's a recording of a set over at my Souncloud page, it's pretty jackin and it features no vocals at all. J-j-j-j-jack!

DJ Mag

Oh yeah - I also got a mention in DJ Mag, which was nice! (two in fact - a later article about Dissident mentioned the Hots 12") oh yeah and I was mentioned in a Vice article about recording pressings.

CROC v CROC

Another good gig I played in February was a full band set for local promoters/collective Croc Madame v Croc Monsieur (aka Croc v Croc). This was a full on mini-festival co-promoted by Croc with Nuts & Seeds and Winning Sperm Party, in the unusual and very charming Flying Duck. Check out the poster for all the acts (Ultimate Thrush played but we missed them as they clashed with us).



There is a circular dip in the middle of the floor where the bands play - I found it a bit weird as it made direct interaction with the punters pretty hard, but it was still fun. I also got to round off the night by playing some records, which was a lot of fun too!

"Discopia" on TEN TRACKS

In February I got asked to appear on the Scottish website Ten Tracks. Ten Tracks sell bundles of 10 download tracks for £1, each bundle being selected by a different channel "curator". There's tunes selected by Optimo, Soma and Fat Cat among others, and I appeared on the Open Ear channel, with Trippy Disco's "Robot Strut" and also as The Niallist with an exclusive extended edit of "Discopia" from the Lo-fi Gold LP.



Ten Tracks is here, and the direct link to the Open Ear channel featuring my tunes is here: http://www.tentracks.co.uk/channel/open-ear/open-ear-2

WRONG ISLAND Valentine's Day

I did a live vocal set at Wrong Island at Nice'n'Sleazy's on Saturday 14th of February, it was a lot of fun. I managed to get a fake rose and affix it to my buttonhole (for added romanticism), and I sang for the first time in public my version of John Martyn's "Don't Want To Know". It went down well, especially with the members of Divorce who made it down who were diggin my set. Maybe singing that song on that day will ensure some good luvin in the future?

BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD

I should also do a big up to the fab Ben Butler & Mousepad who I saw for the first time at the same gig as Ultimate Thrush. Ben Butler is Joe from Gay Against You in a new lo-fi synth-funk guise, and the music is amazing. Think a Casio Jan Hammer on crack and you're kinda there. Maybe not crack though - maybe lots and lots and lots of sugar! It's awesomely funky too. Joe now lives in Berlin where he's been gigging a lot with an added drummer which makes it sound even better.

BEN BUTLER & MOUSEPAD ft THE NIALLIST!

Very kindly, Joe let me sing a vocal for one of his Ben Butler tunes, which has become the track "INFINITE CAPACITY", which is one of my favourite tracks to have worked so far. Thanks Joe! I tried to get a bit of a Todd Rundgren thing going on with the falsetto. You can hear it in my Myspace player.