For the last four years Belladrum Festival has been supported by Tomatin Distillery. This year, to celebrate Bella’s 10th Birthday, the Distillery has kindly offered to donate up to 30 whisky casks to create a work of art to be displayed at the festival.

Over the previous years, Belladrum has showcased a variety of works by professional installation artists and this year with it being the 10th anniversary, it seemed the perfect opportunity to launch a public call to artists/sculptors/makers/designers to submit ideas/designs for the creation of a news piece of art to be installed at the festival.

They are looking for an artist or a collaboration of artists to design and build an artwork piece using the whisky casks, which will engage, inspire and amaze the public and create a lasting memory. Artists are being asked to register their interest in taking part using the on-line form which can be found here.

The deadline for submissions is 30th April 2013

Belladrum 2013 takes place on the 2nd and 3d of August in the beautiful Highland surroundings of Belladrum Estate, near Beauly in Inverness-shire. The independent festival has built a reputation for its eclectic line-ups, its off beat non-musical entertainments and its all-ages approach. The festival won a VisitScotland Thistle Award in 2009 and is a past winner of the Grassroots Festival Award at the UK Festival Awards, the festival industry’s ‘oscars’.

Advance adult weekend tickets are £95. They include parking and camping, except for campervans and caravans which will be charged £50 per vehicle or £130 to include electrical hook-up.. As in previous years, tickets for children 12 & under are free. Online e-tickets are available from Skiddle.

Having played King Tuts back in 2010 Vancouver duo Japandroids return to the UK this week for 2 dates at Glasgow’s O2 Academy supporting punk rockers The Gaslight Anthem. This follows on from their recent tour of Asia and Australia on top of touring the world throughout 2012 in support of the much-lauded album ‘Celebration Rock’. Get down early if your heading along, tickets still available below:

Sun 3/24 Glasgow Academy
Mon 3/25 Glasgow Academy

Peace release their debut In Love produced by Jim Abiss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele) via Columbia Records on March 25

Peace recently played on the NME tour and started the year in style with their biggest headline show to date, London’s Koko on New Years Eve. You could physically feel the excitement amongst the 1700 fans singing along. Their heady mix of great songs, great live shows and a whole bunch of swagger is fast winning them fans - they played sold out shows in New York and Los Angeles before Christmas and have just played SXSW Texas, with Summersonic Japan and Primavera Barcelona coming up in the summer.

Peace play

16th April @ The Arches Glasgow TICKETS
17th April @ Electric Circus Edinburgh TICKETS

After a low key gig at Oran Mor last summer Of Monsters and Men return to Glasgow for the first night of their Sold Out UK tour. Since they broke out of last years SXSW festival their has certainly been a buzz around the Icelandic sextet. Tonight and indeed this whole tour marks a huge step up for the band who’s rabble rousing folk is rightly starting to gain huge popularity around the globe. The set drew mostly from their triumphant debut album My Head Is An Animal, an addictive gem with absolutely no fillers.

Rite from opener ‘Dirty Paws‘ the chemistry between co vocalists Ragnar Þórhallsson and Nanna Bryndís is spell binding. Their stories of talking trees and mountains has the audience screaming along to every word, highlights include ‘Mountain Sound’, ‘King and Lionheart’ and ‘Six Weeks’. With his cowboy trousers drummer Arnar Rósenkranz Hilmarsson sits barefoot in the engine room firing on all cylinders; especially satisfying on ‘Little Talks‘ where guitars interchange and build constantly with swaying accordions. You’d think it would be hard to make it all coordinate and sound meaningful but held together by a luscious trumpet solo they make it look easy! There is also a surprise in the form of a cover of Yeah Yeah Yeahs tune ‘Skeletons‘, this is a brave move but the song is made completely their own and fits surprisingly well into the set.

Like the album the set draws to a close with ‘Yellow Light‘, a song packed with plenty of ‘La La La’s’ and heartwarming joy to send everyone out into the cold Glasgow evening full of energy. For a country producing such wonderful musicians as Sigur Rós and Björk it was initially a surprise to learn that Of Monsters of Men are the first Icelandic act to ever to top the US charts, on the evidance of tonight it is less surprising.

OFAM played:

Dirty Paws
From Finner
Slow and Steady
Mountain Sound
Your Bones
Skeletons
Love Love Love
King and Lionheart
Lakehouse
Little Talks
Six Weeks

Sloom
Numb Bears
Yellow Light

They release their new single ‘King and Lionheart’ on the 4th March 2013 through Island Records. The brand new video for ‘King and Lionheart’ by WeWereMonkeys is HERE!

Hotly tipped LA band HAIM have confirmed their rumoured upcoming Glasgow date will be on Monday May 27th at the cities SWG3 venue. Tickets go onsale this Wednesday 6th of March at 9am HERE.

They will release their new EP, ‘Falling’, through National Anthem/Polydor Records on the 1st April 2013 produced by Ariel Rechtshaid (Vampire Weekend, Major Lazer and Usher) in LA.

Tennent’s Lager’s nationwide search for Scotland’s freshest unsigned musical talent begins with the launch of T Break 2013. Since 1996 Tennent’s have given Scotland’s top unsigned acts the chance to play the legendary T Break Stage at T in the Park. As from today, bands and solo acts from across the country can submit their demos for the chance to take to the stage at T in the Park’s 20th year celebrations.

The T Break judging panel is made up of 14 of Scotland’s most influential music industry experts including promoters, bookers, artist managers, music business academics and members of the media. This team of music aficionados will listen to every demo before handpicking the acts to go on and play the T Break Stage over the 12th – 14th July.

Dave McGeachan from T in the Park festival organisers DF Concerts, sits on the judging panel. He said:

“Every year the other judges and I are bowled over by the amount of fantastic demos submitted to T Break and whittling it down to the final 16 is always a huge challenge. There is always a special buzz at the T Break Stage, a kind of anticipation in the air that you could be about to witness something really special. T Break is an invaluable asset to Scotland’s grassroots music scene and something I’m always extremely proud to be part of.”

T Break 2012 act Anderson, McGinty, Webster, Ward and Fisher,  said:

“The experience was invaluable. I suppose when people think you’re good enough to play among the biggest names in the industry you can’t help but feel good about what you’re doing. It’s wonderful to be sighted among the most exciting up and coming bands of the moment so keep it up T Break! There are plenty of up and coming Scottish acts deserving of their day on the T Break Stage.”

T Break is open to musicians of all genres and each year attracts talented acts from across the musical spectrum. To get involved entrants must be 18 or over, live in Scotland, and must be currently unsigned – full details on how to submit demos is available on www.facebook.com/TennentsTBreak; entries must be submitted before the deadline of midnight on Friday 29th March.

T Break 2013 – key dates

· March 1st – annual call for demos
· March 29th – demo entry closes at midnight
· Early May – judging sessions take place
· Mid May– 16 bands selected to play the T Break Stage at T in the Park are announced
· July 12th -14th – T Break Stage at T in the Park

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs who have recently been added to the T in the Park lineup have premiered their new single “Sacrilege,” from their their upcoming album Mosquito.

Mosquito (Polydor Records), is out April 15th and features 11 songs produced by Nick Launay, Dave Sitek, James Murphy and Sam Spiegel and is mixed by Craig Silvey. The bulk of it was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornilla, TX. Dr. Octagon (Kool Keith) appears on one track. The deluxe album includes 4 bonus acoustic/demo tracks recorded in New York City. If you pre-order ‘Mosquito’ on iTunes, you get ‘Sacrilege’ now!

“We would love for this music to make our fans feeeeel something, for it to stir some shit up inside of them, whatever that may be,” says singer Karen O. “SO much feeling went into this record, it was the rope ladder thrown down into the ditch for us to climb up and dust ourselves off. I hope others can climb up it too; we’re excited to share the good vibes.”

Mosquito track listing:
1. Sacrilege
2. Subway
3. Mosquito
4. Under The Earth
5. Slave
6. These Paths
7. Area 52
8. Buried Alive (Featuring Dr. Octagon)
9. Always
10. Despair
11. Wedding Song

It’s been an extraordinary journey for John Grant, from a point where he thought he would never make music again or escape a life of substance abuse to winning awards and accolades, collaborating with Sinead O’Connor, Rumer and Hercules & Love Affair and having his music featured in the award-winning film Weekend.

It’s a journey that’s taken him from his birthplace in Buchanan, Michigan to be raised in Parker, Colorado, studying languages in Germany and, after his band The Czars split up, basing himself in New York, London, Berlin and, most recently, Iceland, where the bulk of Pale Green Ghosts was recorded. It’s also been a journey from The Czars’ folk/country noir to the lush ’70s FM alchemy of to the astonishing fusion of sounds that lifts Pale Green Ghosts to giddier heights.

After recently announcing the upcoming release of his new LP Pale Green Ghosts for Bella Union, the followup to his critically acclaimed 2010 debut Queen Of Denmark , John Grant plays the Queens Hall in Edinburgh on Sunday the 12th of May.

Copenhagen’s Iceage who released their highly regarded new album You’re Nothing earlier this week have only added to the anxiety and tension that made their debut album, New Brigade, so compelling. But now, with two years of touring behind them, they’re challenging their raging emotions instead of simply expressing them.

When watching Iceage live you get the feeling the songs could be just about to fall apart before they miraculously recover, always rewarding you with a climax. It’s this menacing energy found in their shows that’s more forceful on the new record. The guitars flay violently and the vocals sound furious at times, but they’re also far more melodic and dynamic than on their debut.

Iceage play Broadcast on February 25th, tickets are available here.

Night Beds’ is the creation of 23-year-old Colorado Springs native Winston Yellen. In 2011, Yellen moved to a pre-civil war home on the outskirts of Nashville, previously owned by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Over the course of 10 months, he wrote and recorded ‘Country Sleep’ in the rented Hendersonville home and at Nashville’s Brown Owl studio. Their debut album, ‘Country Sleep‘, is out now on Dead Oceans and was recently BBC 6Music’s Album Of The Day.

Currently on tour in the US, Night Beds have just announced a series of European tour dates in April supporting Matthew E. White and Stornoway, as well as three headline shows in the UK.

They play Broadcast in Glasgow on 18th April tickets here!

Fresh from a handful of US shows and hot on the heels of the release of their second album Hummingbird, Local Natives arrived in Scotland for the second night of their Sold Out UK tour at Edinburgh’s Electric Circus.

The Los Angeles band might only have played a few shows this year but they charge straight  into opener ‘You and I’ fully formed out the blocks and bursting with energy. Their is no let up in momentum as the glorious pulsating drums of ‘Breakers’ burst into life.  While old favourites ‘Wide Eyes’ and ‘Airplanes’ draw the crowd into a frenzy it’s the new songs that appear to be all too much for group of American girls down front who go wild  at every breath. This is not unmerited and the uplifting ‘Heavy Feet’ is indeed a pleasure in such a small room.

It’s not all jumping around though. Shins esq ‘Mt Washington’ slows the pace perfectly for the haunting ‘Columbia’ to serve as the emotional highlight of the night. Touching lyrics ‘Am I loving enough?’ were written after the death of singer Kelcey Ayer’s mother last year. As you’d expect the set draws heavily from the new album. Recorded in the Brooklyn home studio of (The National’s) Aaron Dessner. The band actually lived in Aaron’s house during the recording, singer Taylor Rice said ‘it was a real family environment, we were all fast friends’ he also admitted they were amazed by the architecture of Edinburgh and that he is a big fan of Scotch whiskey, Laphroig in particular!

The encore finishes with the gloriously raucous ‘Sun Hands’ from 2009’s Gorilla Manor leaving the packed little venue desperate for more. Fortunately we wont have to wait to long as they are back for T in The Park and a newly announced date at Glasgow’s Arches on Monday 21st October, tickets HERE.

You can stream Hummingbird over on Soundcloud!

Over 12th – 14th July, 85,000 music fans per day will descend on the fields of Kinross to experience the 20th year of T in the Park. With an incredible line-up of seminal artists and the hottest chart topping and stadium filling acts from across the globe already confirmed for the 20th year bill, today (Monday 18th February) festival organisers DF Concerts and Tennent’s Lager have announced a stellar array of artists to the line-up.

After being crowned Pollstar’s ‘International Music Festival of the Year’ at a prestigious LA awards ceremony last week, T in the Park is back and celebrating its 20th year milestone in magnificent style over 12th – 14th July. Joining the line-up which already boasts Main Stage headliners Mumford & Sons, Rihanna and The Killers, plus electronic pioneers Kraftwerk alongside The Script, Richie Hawtin, alt-J, Azealia Banks and more are: FOALS, HAIM, Kendrick Lamar, Phoenix, Adam Beyer, Bastille, Ben Klock & Marcel Dettmann (b2b), British Sea Power, Chase and Status, CHVRCHES, Claude VonStroke, The Courteeners, Deacon Blue, Disclosure, Dizzee Rascal, DJ Sneak, Derrick Carter & Mark Farina (b2b), Eats Everything, Editors, Emeli Sandé, Everything Everything, Frank Turner, The Fratellis, Frightened Rabbit, The Heavy, Hot Natured, Imagine Dragons, Jackmaster, Jake Bugg, Joy Orbison, Labrinth, The Lumineers, Miles Kane, Modest Mouse, Modestep, Nina Kraviz, Nina Nesbitt, Noah and the Whale, Ocean Colour Scene, Of Monsters and Men, The Original Rudeboys, Palma Violets, Paloma Faith, Peace, The Proclaimers, Rudimental, Seth Troxler, Silicone Soul, Slam, Stereophonics, The Strypes, Tom Odell, Twin Atlantic, Two Door Cinema Club, The View, Villagers, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The 1975, with many more to be announced…

If you’re a Vodafone VIP Customer you can also buy tickets 48 hours before they go on general sale from 9am on Wednesday 20th February, simply go to Vodafone.co.uk/vip

TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM 9am on FRIDAY 22ND FEBRUARY FROM WWW.TINTHEPARK.COM

Pic: Mumford and Sons King Tuts Glasgow 2009 : Euan Anderson