Blipfoto

One Scottish success story meets another. A few weeks ago we took a call from the office of the phenomenon that is Blipfoto. Back in November they launched a new project; Scotland – the world over. And, like everything connected with Blip it’s been a colossal success and the planned film is being previewed at Edinburgh’s New Year party and possibly Glasgow, before its proper launch. The reason for the call was they wanted to use the song Tu-Bardh for the piece.

This week the finished film was launched upon an expectant public and you can have a sneak-peek below.

The big news is that on Sunday the 5th of February at 2pm the film will be shown on the big BBC screen on Festival Square in Edinburgh and again on the side of Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow at 7pm that night. The even bigger news is Clanadonia will be performing with the film at the Edinburgh event so worth coming down, even if you’re not a Blipper. It also happily coincides with the Calcutta Cup weekend, the game being played the day before at Murrayfield, so there’s going to be a lot of (hopefully disappointed) English fans wandering about thinking we’re laying the old patriotism on a bit thick for their benefit. As if.

Scotland The World Over from Blipfoto on Vimeo.

Photographs kindly provided by Blipfoto user “Shine-a-Light“.

Well, what a year in the world of Clanadonia. The guys have played big gigs such as the Celtica Festival in Italy and opened the proceedings on the main stage at Scotland’s own T in the park; smaller events have included playing in a Gorbals park in Glasgow and the usual host of weddings, corporate events and the usual kilt fuelled mayhem that are their street performances. Other highlights of the year have included playing live with the great Alan McKim and even being asked to perform in his video for “Sumerian” and attempting to out-volume a rally of Harley-Davidsons at the thunder in the glen rally in Aviemore.

The band have become pretty popular on Youtube and especially Flickr as tourists all over the globe have stopped to film and shoot and my favourite description of them has to be the individual who described the guys as “scary Scots drummers“. Superb, and not inaccurate.

One other development this year is that the guys are now exclusively represented by Freak Music and the guys there are currently lining up a host of other festival gigs for next summer, both  home and abroad. If you want to be kept up to date with details of this, subscribe to the mailing list via the tab poking out of the right of the main page or get in touch with Freak.

Clanadonia would like wish all visitors to this page and anyone who has stopped by to watch them play, a mental Drumming Christmas and a Piping hot New Year. And don’t forget, the guys are playing at George Square in Glasgow at the New Year celebrations.

Slàinte and keep it tribal.

Glasgow’s Historic Pavilion Theatre has helped launch the international careers of many a young performer over the years including Edinburgh boy Harry Lauder, Jimmy Logan, Lulu, Charlie Chaplin and some guy called Billy Connolly. Don’t know what happened to him. Also putting in a raft of appearances many moons ago was someone called Jimmy Hill. On investigation it turns out it wasn’t the chisel-chinned football ‘pundit’, which is a shame as I reckon that had he been booked in after that comment about David Narey’s screamer against Brazil, he’d have had the Tartan army queuing round the block with armfuls of tomatoes. But I digress, it’s competition time in the Glaswegian.

The paper is running a competition where five lucky individuals can win a pair of tickets to the “Magic of Scotland” event at the Pavilion on the 17th to 19th of November. Other acts confirmed for this event are lone piper, Amber Ives, John Carmichael and the Alexander Brothers, amongst others. The Glaswegian, again the paper, used Freak Music’s Clanadonia front-man Tu-Bardh as selling point for this promo. I think the sub-text is supposed to be call this number or else…

Chris Mackinnon

Since the dust settled on the various festivals Edinburgh hosts every August, a very different breed of tourist has taken up residence on the streets of the city. See below:

Jungle City are keen to stress although they do look nice, they’re not there for decoration, they’re all for sale at a charity event on the 29th of September at the newly refurbished National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. They pride themselves on being the only art exhibition of its kind in the world today which is of animals, for animals and they are a whopping 100% charitable, which  means ALL the money they raise goes towards celebrating the magnificence of Asia’s endangered wildlife, generating mass awareness of their plight and making everyone smile at the same time. Among highlights of the event, you will find a herd of life-sized Asian elephants lead a community of brightly painted orangutans, hornbills, tigers and crocodiles through the streets, parks and buildings of the world’s most iconic cities with the aim of raising £50m over the next ten years for their survival.

Freak Music are proud be supplying the music for the event in the shape everyone’s favourite noisemakers: Clanadonia

The festival season may be over but over at our agent’s, Freak Music, they’re hard at work chasing up European festivals for us for 2012. There’s a vast number of festivals out there, some in the very specialised 10-15,000 attendees bracket up to the 50-70,000 crazy weekends. Watch this space.

Freak’s very own Clanadonia opened the proceedings at T in the Park this year. A 12:15 start on the main stage saw them lining up with the likes of Coldplay, Beyonce and the Manic Street Preachers!

Clanadonia are one of Freak Music’s most loved bands and they’re certainly no strangers to playing at such large events. Their dynamic sound and stage presence effortlessly won over the crowds. For those of you still unfamiliar with the band they are a traditional tribal drums and pipes band with an authentic highland look and sound. Take a look at their Freak Music profile to find out more about their unique and interesting past.