Summer’s always a disappointment. Remember when you were a kid, and the school holidays went on forever…World Cups were great because you weren’t saturated with 24/7 football from every league on the planet on TV, so seeing players like Hagi or Maradona or Stoichkov or Platini or Gullit was a genuine thrill, watching these exotic masters of a football run rings round the opposition…fuck it, maybe I’m just old…

And being old, the disappointment’s more pointed. Watching Holland spend 120 minutes trying to kick the beautiful game back into the Stone Age sucked. So did T in The Park, with the worst bill in living memory (Kasabian as headliners?! Honestly, stay in the house, dig out some old Primal Scream b-sides and charge yourself a fiver for a can of beer that you put in the airing cupboard rather than the fridge for the same experience…at least you won’t get rained on…) Ditto Glastonbury where U2 cancelled and they missed an opportunity to do anything other than have a Damon All-Bran vanity project replace them….poor Bono and his dicky back…he should remember to lift from the knees when carrying all the world’s problems on His shoulders…cock….and bands don’t put out anything interesting because they’re all at festivals doing greatest hits sets so that a glut of witless goons – Yates, Cotton etc – on BBC3 can tell them that they ripped up the crowd (consisting of 80,000 people completely out of their trees). This situation is changing…keep your eyes on the reviews sections over the next wee while, as there’s some good stuff about to hit…

It is in this spirit that we’ve decided to give the summer the kick up the arse that it needs, and launch the event that’s going to DEFINE the summer. Nay, the year. Nay, this fucking generation. Ladies and gentlemen, Shout4Music.com is proud to launch the inaugural Shout4Music.com In My Pants World Cup.

If you don’t know the ‘In My Pants’ game, it basically runs that any song title can be improved by bolting the phrase ‘In My Pants’ onto the end of it. We want you to look at your record collections and send in the best to either twitter.com/shout4music, or visit the Facebook page, and send us a message containing your favourites to stick up on the newsfeed. By the time you read this, we should have stuck some up to give some inspiration; my personal favourites just now are Repeat Failure (In My Pants), by The Delgados, Jeffrey Lewis’ Bugs And Flowers In My Pants, or Mogwai’s all time classic Glasgow Mega-Snake In My Pants.

 Please send to the Twitter site as either Direct Messages, or as a reply (start the tweet with @shout4music) so we can keep an eye on them. Trend them as #inmypants, and we’ll stick all of it up, with anything that makes us laugh like a drain or physically sick (so death metal fans are in with a big shout) perhaps eligible to win some LPs or singles, or whatever we’ve got knocking round the office. Usual rules apply with employees, girlfriends/boyfriends or family of staff not allowed to enter / attempt to bribe judges / tell us not to be so juvenile.

Good luck, and remember kids, we’re all winners in our own special way!

Mogwai are proud to announce a series of UK dates for February 2011. A pre-sale for the shows is now live at http://mogwaitickets.sandbag.uk.com

Tickets will go on general sale this Saturday (31st July) at 9am.

The band release live album ‘Special Moves’ on 23rd August via Rock Action Records, with the album accompanied by the DVD of their live film ‘Burning’, which was shot over three nights in 2009 by Vincent Moon.

February

17 – Bournemouth, O2 Academy

18 – Cardiff, University

19 – Bristol, O2 Academy

20 – Leeds, O2 Academy

21 – Edinburgh, Picture House

23 – Oxford, Regal

24 – Birmingham, Institute

25 – London, Brixton O2 Academy

26 – Manchester, Academy
27 – Gateshead, The Sage

Tickets are £20 in advance for everywhere except London which are £22.50.

I stagger out into the night, feeling like I’ve been beaten up. Given that I’m in a nice part of Glasgow and still have my wallet, I don’t think I’ve been mugged. I remember going to see a band. They had fans called ’65 Kids’; to inspire such devotion in these days where via the internet, you’re saturated with infinite amounts of music, struck me as being pretty impressive. They were a diverse bunch; some metal kids in combat shorts, some backpacker looking guys, and one girl dressed as a 50’s preppy which I thought might have been an ironic statement.

They opened with ‘Go Complex’, a big squally electro intro giving way into thrashing guitars. There were 4 of them on stage, or I think there was..due to the constant strobing and fog on stage I could only see the drummer in fits and bursts..were the drums coming from outer space? Given that over the course of an 85 minute set they only dropped below 140bpm two tracks from the end, perhaps…the preppy girl looked terrified. Her boyfriend loved it. ‘Piano Fights’ followed and then ‘Await Rescue’; a monster of a track with guitars reminiscent of Mogwai at their most vitriolic: note to the indie bands – this is how you sound epic, not by resorting to sub-pseudo-stadium rock bollocks…the preppy girl likes this one. I think it was the only one she did.

Meanwhile there was a 50 or 60 strong mosh pit that I don’t recall stopping all night. ‘Dancedancedance’ as the name suggested, was a more standard ‘dance’ track, although it did strike me as a noise that Pendulum would give their right nut to make, while ‘Weak4’ was a more metal offering – militaristic tom-heavy drumming and a rumbling, threatening bassline fusing with cascading piano…perhaps if the Aphex Twin met Mogwai and The Cure in an underground bunker while the bombs were going off all around them, their coalition may result in something near what I was hearing…it struck me as apt that I’d read they’d soundtracked a radio adaptation of Slaughterhouse 5.

‘A Failsafe’ gave a bit of respite, plenty delay on the guitar and a slower beat taking us almost into Sigur Ros territory, however ‘Fix The Sky A Little’ cranked the agenda right back up; piano-led staggering staccato beats and a crunchy guitar loop reminiscing all The Prodigy’s best ideas honed into one track. They finished with ‘Tiger Girl’, and I can remember thinking that the amount of energy and constitution it took to watch that band was frightening, and if they weren’t much on between-song banter, I can only think it was as a way of conserving their own.

When they encored with ‘Debutant’, ‘The Last Home Recording’ and closed with the fantastic ‘Radio Protector’ the mosh pit was busy throwing its inhabitants over the barrier, and the rest of the venue was threatening to take the roof off….I remember reading in their biog that they were from Sheffield, and they all seemed like nice lads…I wasn’t prepared for this…I think their new record was called ‘We Were Exploding Anyway’…I’m pretty sure they exploded most of Oran Mor,and perhaps I got caught in it,  and I think that’s why I’m stumbling around outside….did I enjoy it?….it was fucking awesome.

The label, which has released records by artists including Propellerheads, Grace Jones, The Wiseguys, Mogwai, Shy Child,Reverend & The Makers, The Shortwave Set, Infadels and Royksopp, has come a long way since the first ’Give ‘Em Enough Dope’ compilations of 1994 and continues to go from strength to strength.  New signing Cosmo Jarvis is set to release his debut album ‘Cosmo Jarvis’ in November and in the new year Shy Child release their much anticipated follow up to 2007′s critically acclaimed ’Noise Won’t Stop’, as well as the debut album from new signings Ocelot and a very special new signing shortly to be announced….

The celebration of the label’s 15 historic years will be marked with the return of legendary Halloween club night and fancy dress one off Carry on Screaming at The Den (formerly The End) with artists old and new, featuring live performances from Mpho, who’ll be just back from touring with the Noisettes, plus DJs Jon Carter, Will White (Propellerheads), Infadels, Shy Child, Ocelot and Mark Jones alongside some very special guests, on Saturday 31st October. The event kicks off a roadblock week for the seminal label, with Royksopp and Reverend & the Makers both performing in London on 5 November as WoS artists including Mpho and Cosmo Jarvis create a sound clash of Wall of Sound tours across the UK.Head honcho Mark Jones will continue a series of special parties around the world with a Wall of Sound 15th Anniversary event in Hong Kong, on the 14th November. An exclusive ‘Where There’s A Wall…There’s a Way’ iTunes digital compilation is released in November, meanwhile a series of exclusive radio appearances for Mark Jones beckon, including a takeover of Eddie Temple-Morris’ The Remix show on XFM’s on 6 November. This follows a keynote at next week’s Amsterdam Dance Event on Fri 23rd October, which will see Mark playing his all-time favourite 15 records and explaining why they mean so much to him. There will also be a re-issue of the seminal Propellerheads album ‘Decksandrumsandrockandroll’ with added bonus tracks and videos early in the New Year alongside a limited edition special version of Grace Jones’ Hurricane album.

Much more is yet to be announced including Wall 2 Wall, a mouth watering magazine tie up featuring Wall of Sound’s roster covering their all-time favourite Wall of Sound tracks.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…