Scatter - 'The Mountain Announces'

Though Glasgow is today rocked by the ministrations of a hundred Franzes, there's another scene rising in parallel. Folk groups step timidly from their bed-sits and studios – not the strum of Nizlopi or Simon & Garfunkel, but a more chilling, verdant music. Groups like Nalle, Lucky Luke and The Pendulums take their cues from Fairport Convention or The Incredible String Band but so too do they draw from the contemporary avant-garde, from free-jazz and psych. Scatter is the place where many of these young Glasgow groups get tangled up: an extended gang of jazz-heads, traditionalists and big-eyed kids who simply love drone. All these things come together on their second LP: organ groan and free percussion; churning sitar and funereal horns; bouzouki, spoken word, and Hanna Tuulikki's keening folk-song. Though something's lost in all the atmospherics – something direct, modest and emotive, - it's almost irrelevant amidst the breathing, blooming sound. [Sean Michaels]