大象传媒

With the insouciant, strutting cool of their breakthrough hit Take Me Out, seemed to emerge fully-formed. In fact, they evolved from Glasgow’s fertile DIY music scene, with members recruited from the wreckage of several other bands, notably The Yummy Fur. Alex Kapranos and bassist Bob Hardy plotted their route to global rock domination while working in the kitchen of Glasgow club/restaurant Groucho Saint Judes, while their slinky single Michael was inspired by a night out at the (now defunct) warehouse club Soundhaus.

In the clip below, the band talk about their experiences of playing live in their hometown for the 大象传媒 6 Music documentary .

Early gigs were famous for ending abruptly, often in riots - a characteristic that felt like a natural adjunct to Glasgow’s hard-man reputation. Brothers Jim and William Reid were actually from nearby East Kilbride, but their trademark squall of scuzzed-up sound felt so of a piece with the din of Glasgow’s industrial past that following the release of their seminal debut Psychocandy they became synonymous with the city.

After a successful reformation, the band recently released a 30th anniversary live version Psychocandy album – recorded, naturally, at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom. Hear Jim Reid talk more about the Psychocandy gigs in the clip below.

The near-mythical debut album from Brit-winning indie romantics was very much a product of Glasgow, the result of a frantic five-day recording session funded by the city’s Stow College as part of a music business course. Bandleader Stuart Murdoch took inspiration from long bus journeys around his hometown, lifting lyrical nuggets like We Rule the School from bus stop graffiti. Meanwhile, the liner notes alluded to the old Grosvenor Cafe on Ashton Lane as the site of the band’s inception. Stuart talks more about his life and career to Mary Anne Hobbs in the interview below.

For many listeners, the widescreen pop-noir of evokes the glittering nocturnal cityscapes of Los Angeles or London. But the band’s debut album was actually conceived and recorded in Glasgow’s West End. On the title track, singer Paul Buchanan clambers out of the window of one of the city’s distinctive red sandstone houses to ruminate about love and loss, while the album’s cover shot depicts the trio in front of a derelict (and now demolished) tenement block on Cathcart Road. Another clue? Standout track Tinseltown in the Rain hints at one of Glasgow’s damply defining characteristics.

They may have taken sonic inspiration from lo-fi US alternative rock but the Mercury-nominated third album from is steeped in Glasgow lore. Its title references an iconic, now-demolished textile mill turned homeless hostel in the city’s East End, while the cover of the No Danger single features an empty bottle of tonic wine, a popular Glasgow tipple. The band’s contribution to Glasgow’s music culture includes the founding of the Chemikal Underground label in 1994, providing vital early support for bands like Bis and Mogwai as well as releasing recent acclaimed albums from troubadour RM Hubbert and synth-wrangler Miaoux Miaoux.

The prolific folk trio may have formed around a kitchen table in (whisper it) Edinburgh but the leaders of the current new folk boom have always had a roaming, internationalist outlook. Their most recent album takes its name from Glasgow’s coat of arms motto while its sprawling 17-minute title track was commissioned to celebrate the city in the year it hosted the Commonwealth Games, debuting at the roots festival in 2014. For guitarist Kris Drever, accordionist Martin Green and fiddler Aidan O’Rourke - longstanding regulars at the festival in various musical guises - it was the equivalent of a homecoming gig.

Orde Meikle and Stuart McMillan, AKA visionary techno duo , are mainstays of Glasgow's lively techno scene. They founded their own Soma imprint back in 1991 and have staged long-running residencies at the influential Sub Club and the legendary (and much-missed) Arches venue. 2001's Alien Radio was recorded at Glasgow’s Apollo Studios and includes perhaps the definitive mix of Slam’s signature track Positive Education.

Edwyn Collins’s band were so influential on the development of the city's music scene that a 2004 retrospective was called The Glasgow School. On their debut album proper (funded by major label Polydor after graduating from iconic Glasgow indie Postcard) they laid out a blueprint for future Glasgow bands to follow: quicksilver guitars, crisp production, lyrical sophistication and a reframing of the city as a place to explore dreamy, romantic notions. Without Orange Juice, there would be no Belle and Sebastian, and Glasgow would be a much less imaginative place.

Like their brooding, atmospheric, instrumental post-rock, it can sometimes be hard to locate geographically. But their transitional fifth album, Mr Beast, was the first product of the Castle of Doom studio they built in their home city, and features the deafening Glasgow Mega-Snake. Asked about the track’s genesis, Stuart Braithwaite jokingly told Kerrang: “We had this idea to promote Glasgow by genetically modifying a sea-creature and somehow making it into a rollercoaster. People will flock to Scotland when it's made.”

In the clip below, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite describes what it's like to be a Glasgow band playing at iconic local venue The Barrowlands.

A band so in love with their hometown that they borrowed one of its more affectionate nicknames, channelled the “romantic, wild and vibrant energy” of Glasgow into appropriately bombastic, heart-on-sleeve songwriting sung with unashamedly accented vigour. On their eponymous debut album, frontman James Allan also explored the darker side of the city: opener Flowers and Football Tops was inspired by an infamous local murder case, while the spoken-word Stabbed reflected Glasgow’s problems with knife crime, namechecking notorious North Side gang the Baltic Fleet.

’s droll duo Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton are technically from Falkirk but their breakthrough track The First Big Weekend is an almost anthropological study of a night out in Glasgow, from catching the train into town to raving at the Arches nightclub, before spilling out into a 24-hour cafe and crashing at a nearby flat. It set the tone for album, and indeed a whole career, of stark and funny Glasgow narratives as the band drew heavily on their own lives for material.

You can hear more about the making of The First Big Weekend below, in this clip taken from the 大象传媒 6 Music documentary