One of the most inspired collaborative projects in recent times has seen Glasgow art-pop fopps Franz Ferdinand team up with legendary Los Angeles glam rockers Sparks as the ingeniously monikered supergroup FFS. They’ll release their self-titled album next month – as led by the fantastically rude single ‘Piss Off’ (listen below) – ahead of dates at Glasgow Art School (Jun 16) and the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh (Aug 24). In honour of this arch union, we celebrate seven other outstanding partnerships between Scottish artists, and in particular non-Scottish artists, over recent years.
Rustie and Danny Brown
Promptly repaying the favour after Glaswegian beats-maker Russell ‘Rustie’ Whyte produced tracks on his 2013 album ‘Old’, Detroit rapper Danny Brown laid down a fierce (and fiercely NSFW) verse on the Scot’s 2014 track ‘Attak’. It’s one of the standout numbers on Rustie’s latest album ‘Green Language’.
King Creosote and Jon Hopkins
Earning them a well-deserved nomination for the 2011 Mercury Music Prize, ‘Diamond Mine’ was the product of a collaboration between Fife alt-folk singer-songwriter Kenny ‘King Creosote’ Anderson and English electronic musician Jon Hopkins. Silhouetting Anderson’s plaintive acoustic odes to place, time and memory against a backdrop of Hopkins’ ambient soundscapes and eerie field recordings, it’s a hauntingly beautiful thing.
Mogwai and Gruff Rhys
Arguably Glasgow post-rock titans Mogwai’s finest album, 2001’s ‘Rock Action’ saw them begin to eschew their establishing quiet-loud formula in favour of the spine-tinglingly expansive soundscapes they’re synonymous with today. Key to this change was use of synthesisers and electronics, and a couple of ghostly guest vocals – on ‘Dial: Revenge’ and the epic ‘2 Rights Make 1 Wrong’ – from Gruff Rhys, frontman with Welsh psychedelic rock weirdos Super Furry Animals. Open up the sleeve and, in tribute, you can even glimpse the logo from the Furries’ 2000 album ‘Mwng’ among the collage artwork.
TNGHT (Hudson Mohawke with Lunice)
Another hook-up featuring a hotshot Scottish electronic dance producer/DJ, TNGHT was a relatively short-lived (2011-2013) vehicle for the combined talents of Glaswegian Hudson Mohawke and Montreal Canadian Lunice. While they only ever released a handful of remixes, one single and one EP – featuring the slow-banging ‘Bugg’n’ – they had a major celebrity endorsee in Kanye West, for whom TNGHT produced the track ‘Blood on the Leaves’ on his 2013 album ‘Yeezus’.
Pastels/Tenniscoats
And now for something a lot more mellow. Glasgow met Tokyo on the heartwarming 2009 album ‘Two Sunsets’, as Scottish indie veterans The Pastels worked with Japanese avante-garde folk duo Tenniscoats. It took several years to record and you can feel it in the lush, unhurried thrum of songs like ‘Vivid Youth’, and indeed right across an album that blows in like the first warm breeze of spring.
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan
Mixing the rough (Mark Lanegan’s gravelly low growl) and the smooth (Isobel Campbell’s sweet, airy whisper) this unlikely match made in heaven paired former members of grunge godfathers Screaming Trees and Glasgow indie-pop cult heroes Belle & Sebastian respectively. All Hazelwood-and-Sinatra-esque dust-bowl ballads, their first album ‘Ballad of the Broken Seas’ earned the pair a Mercury Prize nomination in 2006. Two follow-ups, ‘Sunday at Devil Dirt’ (2008) and ‘Hawk’ (2010), were every bit as good.
Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells
To finish, an all-Scots affair. Ex-Arab Strap frontman, singer-songwriter, spoken-word artist and all round master of mucky mirth Aidan Moffat’s collaboration with maverick jazz musician, composer and fellow Falkirk native Bill Wells bore rich fruit in the shape of the deliciously sombre inaugural Scottish Album of the Year Award winning 2011 set ‘Everything’s Getting Older’. Their partnership continues to bear rich fruit – they released their second album, ‘The Most Important Place In The World’, earlier this year.
Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells headline the Oran Mor West End Festival All-Dayer, Oran Mor, Sun Jun 21.
