[sonicl]

 

Various Artists
Kilt By Death: The Sound Of Old Scotland
No Label No Cat
3xCD-R

The next wad who walks up to me in public and hands me a CD-R of their current post-rock/indie-experimental/improv/hip ‘noise' project with the immortal words “it's happening on your own doorstep!” is gonna have to eat fist. The fact is that there has never been any real history of experimental music in Scotland and outside of the activities of a few scattered individuals that unfortunately remains pretty much the case today. What Scotland has always enjoyed is a fairly voluble DIY/underground rock scene, a scene that - despite the geographical distance - always seemed to have more in common with what was happening beneath the pavements of New York than anything that the media/fashion dictates of London might've encouraged. Kilt By Death, then, is a timely round-up of some of the best - and some of the most unlikely - DIY/punk sides to come out of Scotland in the period 1977-1984. Some of the stuff here is pretty common, some of it is faintly ridiculous (Andy Cameron's “I Wanna Be A Punk Rocker”) and some of it (killer sides like Fire Exit's “Time Wall”, previously comped on Volume 7 of the original Killed By Death series) is as rare as a clue in the putty-soft brain of the average Scottish music journalist. Listened to in one sitting it makes a pretty convincing case for Scotland's inclusion alongside New Zealand as one of the most consistently committed DIY outposts and one that drew sustenance and strength - as opposed to bitterness and poodle-peddling compromise - from a position of relative cultural and geographical isolation. Sometimes, you just gotta be reminded. Includes killer tracks by 35mm Dreams, Alleged, Alternative, Alternators, Another Pretty Face, Article 58, AVO-8, Aztec Camera, Basic Unit, Battery Boys, Beat Necessity, Bee Bee Cee, Boots for Dancing, Brills, Buba and the Shop Assistants, Andy Cameron, Cheetahs, Commercials, Crimedesk, Defiant Pose, Delmontes, DNV, Drive, Electric Personalities, Electrix, End Result, Exile, Exposure, External Menace, Fakes, Fegs, Fire Engines, Fire Exit, Flowers, Freeze, Fun 4, Jesus and Mary Chain, Johnny and the Self-Abusers, Jolt, Josef K, Laughing Apple, Mentol Errors, Metropak, Neon Barbs, Noise Annoys, One Takes, Orange Juice, Passionate Friends, Pastels, Prats, PVC2, Red Letters, Restricted Code, Rezillos, Scars, Scrotum Poles, Significant Zerøs, Simple Minds, Skids, Skroteez, Square Peg, Squibs, Story So Far, Strutz, Subs, Suede Crocodiles, T.P.I., Thermometers, Those Intrinsic Intellectuals, Threats, TV21, Twisted Nerve, Urban Enemies, Valves, Venigmas, Victims of What?, Visitors (Dundee/Edinburgh), Wake, Wayward Skylabs, X-S Discharge, Zips and Zones.