THE BELLS TOLL FOR THEE


Shindig! caught up with TREMBLING BELLS’ Alex Neilson on a busy day of recording to talk about the insignificance of mushrooms, the importance of folk and the appeal of “earlie musik”. RICHARD S JONES explains.


It’s can’t be easy for a band at the beginning of their musical career to achieve on a debut album the sound of uncompromising beauty, grandeur and unequivocal fun. An album that sounds beyond its years, the influence of its peers and most importantly of all, avoids that critical caveat about doing all of the above, simply “in places”. One band however that has done all this


and more, from initial chimes to its farewell fade out is Trembling Bells and it’s enigmatic bandleader, Alex Neilson. “Like every teenager of a certain


temperament, I experimented with magic mushrooms, listened to Love and read Terrance McKenna while conspicuously mincing around the school playground. But initially I wrote songs of heartbreak to be sung by the girl who broke my heart as a cathartic/sadistic/masochistic exercise.” After hearing the recently released (and


sublime) Carbeth, Shindig! can vouch for deeper compound ingredients. Turning our ears onto an overwhelming experience – a feeling which occurs quite naturally in anyone that listens to it with virgin ears – it never settles for simple three-minute standards of fuzz, punk or folk folly, but instead chooses to wears its sounds on its chest like service badges of military honour. As Neilson explains, “Gaining a familiarity with traditional music has helped me identify a rich heritage in Britain that can be very joyful and celebratory but also very dark and death defying.” The much-celebrated song ‘Willows of


Carbeth’ is a prime example. It may weave itself in and out of the local and historical mysticisms that have bloomed amidst the flowers of Scotland for centuries, but it’s the song’s key composite parts; lead singer Lavinia Blackwall’s ethereal voice, Neilson’s regimented drumming and the band’s unworldly swirls of orchestral and organ passages that raise it above those


KING KHAN & BBQ SHOW


A welcome hit, at any given time, place or frame of mind, the nonpareil King Khan & BBQ Show return this month with their third LP, Invisible Girl – unannounced, without warning and like most King Khan affiliated releases, in time for any non-descript party you may or may not be planning. Since Khan’s last UK release in August 2008 – the white-knuckle


ride that was The Supreme Genius Of King Khan And The Shrines – this time around, together with his long serving partner in crime Mark Sultan (returning under his alias BBQ Show), they entrepreneurially exploit the ’60s Northwest garage rock template and ’50s doo wop sound many a Shindig! reader will be familiar with. Boisterous and self-righteous showmen they may be, having


just ended their successful European tour in support of Invisible Girl, riotous new live favourites ‘Animal Party’ and ‘Spin The Bottle’ can finally be heard in context on record. Next to less unruly tracks such as the ‘Third Ave.’ with it’s moving touches of early Motown soul and The Sonics’ punk frenzy of ‘Tastebuds’, the LP spans an attractive spectrum and begs to be heard. In the same way that King Khan & BBQ show as performers, have to be seen, to be truly believed. Richard S Jones Invisible Girl is released through In The Red on 2nd November


10 TWINKRANES


Already hitting the ground running with the support of Manchester’s legendary Twisted Nerve, a string of high profile live appearances at European festivals and an association to the world of Harry Potter which would shatter the illusions of many a young “Pothead”, Twinkranes have really gone and caught our attention this past month. Hailing from Dublin, and part of the increasingly attractive/


distractive breed of bands that anchor themselves firmly in the realms of cosmic-psych by way of ’70s Krautrock and ’90s shoe-gaze, their debut LP Spektrumtheatresnakes displays all the hallmarks of an essential record. Fans of Krautrock and electronic dance will instantly recognise the controlled, seemingly unending mantras that pull you in like aggressive takes on Silver Apples or Neu! Their curiously named lead singer Blonde Fox, whose Syd Barrett fashioned lyrics serve for plenty of madcap laughs ring true but it’s album opener ‘High Tekk Train Wreck’ that holds the key to understanding their ultimate intentions. Mastering songs that each signal a call to arms, frenetically unsettling themselves between a panzer attack and Martian invasion, Twinkranes psyche-shifting psychedelic onslaught is never fanciful, just constantly informed by what works and what doesn’t from their enviable (I can only imagine) record collections. Richard S Jones Spektrumtheatresnakes is released on Twisted Nerve on 2nd November


exclusive feelings of national pride, and into, as Neilson points out, more affecting and emotional realms of liberty. “After a period of seven years I have slowly


weaned myself off of hardcore British traditional music, but the traditional music of my native terrain has become a natural part of how I perceive and interact with the world.” It’s hard to believe that Trembling Bells


played their first gig just this year and given that they lean passionately into the winds of their Scottish musical heritage, they are far from insular or parochial about the way they carry their music across boarders. Yet with recording now underway on a follow up how will these elemental influences, or what Neilson neatly describes as, “canonical rock, traditional folk and earlie musik” develop? Or change (potentially) if the band found themselves displacing the soil around those treasured Scottish roots? “The music of the 1450s and the 1950s has


been holding me captive at the moment and I am interested to see how the world has changed once I am released,” he explains frankly. “We have been playing together for about 18 months and I do very much feel like the music is in its infancy because song writing is new to me and I hope to experiment and develop further as my taste and understanding evolves.” Trembling Bells doesn’t just consign itself to


grand folk opulence either, but also takes on the romanticism of great ’60s and ’70s artists as diverse as The Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, the baroque psychedelic pop beat of The Byrds and into the “now” and fashionable complexities of contemporary artists such as Six Organs Of Admittance. And with album number two imminent, their star is most definitely in the ascension, but on which isle, landscape or location on Great Britain’s land mass it will eventually land is anyone’s guess.


King Khan


Twinkranes


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