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The Scottish Enlightenment

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  2. The Scottish Enlightenment

    Just discovered the Pars game is on live BBC Alba - very grateful for the teuchters right now.

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General Info

  • Genre: Minimalist / Pop / Shoegaze

    Location Dunfermline & Aberdeen, Un

    Profile Views: 89220

    Last Login: 1/20/2012

    Member Since 9/17/2005

    Website www.thescottishenlightenment.com

    Record Label www.armellodie.com

    Type of Label Indie

  • Bio

    Every mother is a teacher and every father is a preacher...from forth the loins of these two professions, a quartet of star-crossed musicians take their life, spread up and down the east coast of Scotland like marmite where they lay their scene. Armellodie is delighted to present the debut Album from Scotland's most subterranean, ecclesiastical rock band, The Scottish Enlightenment. The Scottish Enlightenment are quiet, but like a falling bomb is quiet, like an embryo is quiet, like the sibilant steam drifting ominously above a silent culdera. They hummmmmm melodiously like a microwave, slowly incubating their songs with the full time dedication and care of a placenta. Having debuted in 2007 with the single 'Eyes' - the promo video for which was picked up by MTV and played across the world on VH1, MTV2 and MTV Europe - the band then retreated into the wilderness of the provincial Scottish town of Dunfermline and are only now returning to light up our stereos. The band is built around the dense and persuasive song-writing of David Moyes, we'll let him explain the band's chosen moniker, "I know all about the philosophy of The Scottish Enlightenment period through studying at Aberdeen University for 6 years and working for a Scottish philosophy history centre up there. But I really just chose it because I thought it sounded weird for a band. But I like to prance around gobbing off about it being a mix of the local and the universal, the corporeal and the conceptual, the blah and the blah. It's just because it sounded weird." The Scottish Enlightenment is both Scottish, ie local, corporeal, and Enlightenment, ie universal, abstract. It unites those disparate elements only the union of which can bring a real new Scottish enlightenment. Epic without ever trying to sound anthemic, the organic build of genuine emotion will bring about the desired crescendo every time. _____________________________________ The band released Pascal EP in May 2010, and Little Sleep EP in September, through Armellodie Records - two trailers if you please, for their debut long player, 'St. Thomas'. _____________________________________ The reception of St Thomas (Nov 2010) was good with reviews in Mojo, The Skinny, The Daily Record, Emusic and a plethora of online blogs saying things like "elegant beauty", "austere serenity", "soars into your heart and won't let you go", "every bit as awesome as I expected." So good, in fact, that the initial run sold out! Armellodie Records is currently getting more CDs pressed to feed the baying masses. _____________________________________ Much radio play followed the release of 'St. Thomas', with live sessions on Vic Galloway's Radio Scotland Christmas show, and Tom Ravenscroft on BBC6 Music. _____________________________________ The band are currently working on songs for their second full length album - the Mountaineering Album...

  • Members

    David, David, Michael, Angus

  • Influences

    Slow things, quiet things, things that bounce off cold stone walls, and things that are true.

  • Sounds Like

    Slow things, quiet things, things that bounce off cold stone walls, and things that are true.

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Albums/EPs

you should click on the sleeves to get hold of our wares on CD or Download...

St Thomas


Little Sleep EP


Pascal EP


Eyes



Armellodie Shop

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Praise for St Thomas:


It was in the albums of the year lists at Song by Toad, Is This Music, Peenko's BAMS, Sweeping the Nation, Indie Laundry, Bottle Rocket Glasgow, Scholars and Rogues, including a (joint) number 1 at Ayetunes blog.

"Will appeal to the intellectually rigorous and lovers of post rock." Mojo Magazine

"The Scottish Enlightenment echo winter well, with skeletal guitar lines as brittle and bare as tree braches and a settled pace as quietly insidious as snow fall." The Skinny Magazine

"St Thomas is a potent, magic debut." Emusic USA

"St Thomas is a sonic and spiritual delight that soars into your heart and won’t let you go." The Daily Record

"You can, and indeed should, buy The Scottish Enlightenment's album now." Aye Tunes

"I’ve been listening a fair bit to their new release St. Thomas... I even listened in the bath, which is a really positive place to listen to music - just BEWARE OF THE STEAM...‘Little Sleep’ blew me away, with it’s dark, reverb-drenched hooks and deeply un-sleepy sound." Camelglasses blog

"songs that are beautiful. Songs that are insistent but gentle." Tasty Fanzine

"In 'St. Thomas' The Scottish Enlightenment have created the one of the best albums to come out of Scotland this year." Have Fun at Dinner blog

"very, very good indeed." 17 Seconds blog

"The Scottish Enlightenment are quite simply a band to get excited about. A band for Scotland to be proud of." The Steinberg Principle blog

"This is not music designed for idiot dancing but rather a procession of grace and understatement, songs adorned by subtle shade and nuance, silence between notes of as much import as the notes themselves." Grounds for Appeal blog

"This, boys and girls, is every bit as awesome as I expected. Get in!" Song, by Toad


Praise for Pascal EP:


"The Scottish Enlightenment plough a gentle furrow, their ‘Pascal EP’ shuffling along in a dream, echoey and half-asleep, but disguising lyrical bite all the same." The List

"A bloody good EP...It depends a great deal on single guitar notes, which are now dropped into the songs without hurry, allowing the simple but infectious melodies to sink in at their own pace." Song, by Toad

"One of the best releases that I have heard all year. ‘All Homemade Things’ could possibly be my favourite song to come out this year, I can’t get enough of it." Peenko blog

"This is intellectually engaging and a poetic slice of ‘slacker rock’ and this EP deserves to be noticed. Impressive! 8/10" Rock City


Some interviews with the band:


The Skinny
Peenko
Kowalskiy


Other stuff people have said:


Euan McMeeken of The Kays Lavelle said on his blog The Steinberg Principle said "To say I was blown away by their performance would be an understatement. Absolutely brilliant as I am sure anyone who witnessed it would testify. They are without doubt one of my tips for 2010". What a nice man.

Previously, the List saw fit to bestow 5 stars upon The Scottish Enlightenment, saying of a Cabaret Voltaire knees-up: "The crowd are still filtering in when the openers take the stage, but are slowly drawn towards The Scottish Enlightenment - a Dunfermline four-piece with the menace of Joy Division and the slacker indie cool of Pavement. Whether it’s their engrossing hooks, guitar flurries, or the occasional brooding soundscape, the band set a high benchmark."

Also of note is the first ever email we received on myspace:
"Im sorry, i dont like your band".
Very polite.

Less polite, but a high class slagging...
"I wouldn't be caught dead anywhere near a mis-rooting, major/minor conforming, detuned guitar playing hitler like yourself."

If you remove all the bits where he (correctly) said we have no onstage charisma, a reviewer for skinny mag said "stargazing guitars...and wailing guitar harmonies...this is a band that could go somewhere". aw....

Michael McLennan said of us in the Glasgow Herald "it's a pleasure to come across a band like The Scottish Enlightenment, who temper their ramshackle indie clatter with existentialist thinking."

And what's more, “Authentic intelligent indie...with the sheer dancefloor-tempting melodies of songs like “Eyes” their tunes are sure to become lodged firmly in your head and on the music scene” said Karen Dorrat, in the legendary ..Is This Music. Quite...


Record Label:


www.armellodie.com


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