It’s amazing the stuff you see when you get out of the city for a day. Open spaces, for example; birds of prey, epic views, rolling hills and clearer skies; and Malcolm Middleton in the loft of the Fisheries Museum in Anstruther.

It was Matthew from Song, by Toad who asked us to pitch up with him to Homegame and record a couple of sessions. And why not? The annual festival run by Fence Records takes place in picturesque Anstruther, in Fife over 3 days, and features most of the artists involved with Fence, as well as other pals and guests.

We met up with Malcolm on the Saturday afternoon, and took him down to the uber-quaint Scottish Fisheries Museum. In the dark loft amongst old fishing baskets, stuffed bunnies and a frankly disconcerting model of a man in a hat, Mr. Middleton was nice enough to do two tracks for us – both of which have still to be released.

For the first track, we got a version of “Made Up Your Mind”, the last track on his new album Waxing Gibbous, which is due for a June 1st release. It’s (relatively for Malcolm, anyway) musically chirpy and sweet, with trademark Middleton lyrics full of lost love and depression. It’s great. The loft was pretty dark, and the somber mood suits the subject matter as you would expect.

We got something a bit different for the second track. An instrumental acoustic track, “Returning” is taken from a still-in-progress album of instrumentals – with the Waxing Gibbous album imminent and the touring and publicity which that entails, don’t expect this to see the light of day any time soon. But it’s as impressive a display of guitar virtuosity as you’ll ever realistically need to hear. Unfortunately our first camera malfunctioned after half a minute without us knowing, so you’ll have to put up with some less than amazing visuals. We still thinks it’s good though.

You can see an interview from the same session and some live footage at Song, by Toad.

Malcolm Middleton – Off The Beaten Facts

1. The new album, Waxing Gibbous, is released on 1st June on Full Time Hobby
2. Malcolm claims this is his last solo album for a while. He wants to try other things, and come back to the Malcolm Middleton material later.
3. He feels that if we wants to do something drastically different, he can’t really do it under his own name.
4. On his Myspace he recently claimed his new album was nowhere near as good as Def Leppard’s Hysteria. Then he changed his mind.
5. Malcolm would like to write songs for other people. We’d love to see him write for Girls Aloud. Really.
6. There’s a song on the new album with rapping. Yes, Malcolm Middleton raps.
7. He’s also been recording covers of girl band songs to combat the boredom of waiting around for his new album to come out. So far he’s released three of them and they’re all great. Download them free at his website.
8. He’s played at Homegame for the last three years, despite having no real ties to Fence. They obviously just love him, and why not?
9. The Malcolm Middleton tour bus hits the road at the end of June to promote the album, taking in, sporadically, a bunch of major UK cities as well as some festivals such as End Of The Road and Field Day.
10. Here’s the now familiar links to the Malcolm Middleton Myspace and website.