As ever, in 2024, thousands of tracks have been ploughed through and has been whittled down to a shortlist of 200 before going for this playlist of the essential 100 (or so) tracks to come out of Scotland that became the soundtrack for the year.
It incorporates the recognised, the little known to the downright obscure. The eclectic journey ploughs through through alternative rock, dance, hip-hop, trance, electronica, indie, choral, punk, post-grunge, nu-folk, the truly uncategorizable and much much more.
The 100-or-so were being published over four days with the final part dropping now, New Year’s Day. Included here is a Spotify and YouTube playlist covering the tracks covered here.
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 1 (100-76)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 2 (75-51)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 3 (50-26)
Part 4- 25-1
25 Saor – Amidst The Ruins
Hailing from the Highlands of Scotland, the band aim to breathe life into national history with their majestic blend of black metal intensity, orchestral grandeur and Celtic folk melodies. This title track from an album due in February, matches their huge ambitions with a 12-and-a-half epic, that employs complex compositional structures and multiple arrangements and change in mood. It succeeds in mixing together styles and tempos where it would be so easily to fail embarrassingly
The band’s PR says that the forthcoming album “is a tribute to the timeless landscapes and ancestral spirits, capturing the soul of a nation in every note”.
24 Spare Snare – Wi-Fi by Sci-Fi (Bis Remix)
The Dundonian outfit and John Peel favourites were celebrating 30 years doing their brand of post-punk and the John Peel favourites were reunited with legendary Pixies and Nirvana producer Steve Albini for The Brutal, their 12th album last year. In 2024 the band have sneaked out advance tracks of some radical remixes that take their their sound to a whole new sphere of inventiveness. This collaboration with Scots indie-pop legends bis adds electronic madness making the original crazy album track into a barking mad symphony.
23 Tiga & Hudson Mohawke – Silence of Love (Reznik Remix)
The remix EP featuring Glasgow producer genius HudMo and Canada’s Tiga has added new depths to their debut album. This standout weaves retro-futuristic acid house wizardry with Jesse Boykins’ slick soulful voice, the pulsating beats and mesmerising synths.
22 Slow Pilot and C Duncan – No Man Is An Island
The heavenly Glasgow bedroom musician and 2015 Mercury Music Prize forms a heavenly collaboration with the Belgian combo fronted by singer-songwriter Pieter Peirsman. This slice of laid-back art pop has all the melancholy and craftsmanship of Radiohead and just soars and soars. Peirsman describes C Duncan’s contribution to the tune as “magic dust”.
21 Dvne – Pleroma
The Edinburgh progressive post-metal band returned with a monster of a new album Voidkind three years after appearing on this list with the dramatic riff-pummelling Towers from second album Etemen Ænka. This new album standout does what the band so well, shapeshifting through different tempos and moods, and going from melodic singing to screamo metalcore antics. It quite simply rocks.
“Pleroma is a concept that has appeared in Gnosticism, Greek philosophy & Judeo-Christian religions. In Gnosticism, it is the spiritual universe as the abode of God and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations. It is also the ultimate source of transformation,” said Dvne’s Victor Vicart of this single.
“Plerõmā is a key moment of the album narrative where religious followers are consuming the essence of their deity and reach a new sense of awakened existence. It is the first step in their transformation. . Musically, it also represents something similar to us, as it is a song that is bringing new elements that we didn’t explore musically until that point.”
20 Scorpio Leisure – Running on the Spot
There is something discomforting about this skyscraping standout from the debut album of the Edinburgh supergroup featuring Russell Burn (Fire Engines/Win), Coco Whitson (Gin Goblins), Mungo Carswell and Hettie Noir.
It starts as if going on bizarre off kilter drone-y DIY experiment mixing psychedelic indie, industrial electro and goth that is about to go wrong but then it snaps out of its stupor as Noir’s playful, swaggering vocals purr and preen on the euphoric chorus hook and haunting coos which make it a soaring anthem.
19 Kami-O – Clash
The innovative and very sober underground 30-year-old Glasgow-based DJ and producer’s stunning second album Veiled, was one of my LPs of the 2022. In 2024, having signed with White Peach, he returned with the immaculately crafted mindbending Clash EP which further develops his grime vs dubstep twist and this standout, exquisitely weird title track. It builds from an ambient synthetic soundscape to a collage of noise, percussion and a nagging hypnotic synth part that plays like Burial was force fed Aphex Twin.
“I’m not particularly hype. I’m quite introverted,” he says. “I keep myself to myself a lot of the time. I definitely don’t do the scene. I don’t drink and can be a bit socially anxious. In any arts scene there’s always pressure to do drugs and drink, especially in Scotland, and you know, to be the guy sitting with a fizzy water… I wonder if this has held me back.”
18 Wrest – Another Black Hole
The Edinburgh combo uses a Coldplay vs Frightened Rabbit template and come out of the other end soaring on this upbeat but dark highlight from their impressive third and self-released Everything’s Nothing Forever Again. They may have no record label, no manager and no industry support but they sold-out the 2000-capacity Glasgow Barrowland Ballroom in August. They sound built for bigger.
17 Union of Knives – Salut Salut
Eighteen years after their debut album Violence & Birdsong, the Glasgow-based art rock outfit produced a mesmeric fusion of trip-hop, indie and dark electronic in this captivatingly ship-shifting sparkler from the utterly compelling Start from the Endless album that Foals would kill for. The lead single from the album, it has a quirky but more mainstream pop palate.
16 Milange – Psychosomatic
The exciting four piece from Glasgow blend punk, metal and jazz on this triumphant lead track propelled by insatiable riffing guitars, big beats, a thundering bass line and the vicious vocals of Honey from their debut EP. It could be their Killing in the Name.
15 An Dannsa Dub ft Paolo Baldini – Kick Up The Dub
The band’s name is Gaelic for The Dub Dance and formed in 2020, is the brainchild of dub vocalist & producer Tom Spirals and Scottish traditional musician Euan McLaughlin formed in 2020. On this, the Italian producer Paolo Baldini gives extra twist to this heady fusion of traditional Scottish folk, dub reggae and dance music. It is more than just Gaelic-spoken ceilidh music. It’s a riot.
14 Civil Elegies – No Life
Formed in early 2014, the Glasgow post-hardcore noise combo are almost a secret gem, and after an eight-year silence produced the pulverising No Life EP and this deliciously vicious, menacing R Rated title track which apparently lies somewhere in between Godflesh, Melvins, KEN Mode, Swans, Shellac and Lungfish (it says here).
The dual guitars produced monstrous pounding riffs as Hamish Black delivers a gut-wrenchingly bilious vocal and the earth appears to quake when he screams “no death, no life, no pain, no life, no art, no life, no sex, no life, no thrill, no life, no bliss, no life, no error, no life, no life…”
This ugly beautiful epic won’t hear this on mainstream radio. Play it loud, and annoy the kids.
13 Sega Bodega – Set Me Free, I’m An Animal
The Glasgow-raised producer – aka Salvador Navarrete – has come a long way from the early days of being on this list when the output had a definite dancefloor-facing purpose. This has evolved considerably on the third studio album and while that ear has not totally vanished, this mesmeric, almost ambient anthem with delicate guitars and enticingly weird instrumentation could be someone else entirely. He says it was produced when he became bored solely crafting club anthems.
12 Taahliah – Angel
The Glasgow black trans DJ, producer and groundbreaking hyperpopster dug deep into the tender side of her personal on the transcendent debut album Gramarye which revealed a side not seen through a series of bombastic boom-blip dancefloor monsters. This track, the first she ever made for the album uses processed vocals in a tender way not previously heard. Scotland’s 2024 answer to Prince, anyone?
“From the start, I knew this album would dive into emotional themes, like what it feels like to overcome challenges and regain your sense of self. I was really intentional about including those elements in the project,” says Taahliah. “It’s easier to create when you’re on the other side of it. I wasn’t going into the studio saying, ‘Oh my God, f*** this guy, he’s f***ing me up’. Instead, I could acknowledge, ‘Yeah, that was tough, but I’m fine now. Let’s make an album about it’.
“The phrase ‘the world is hard but I’m soft like an angel’ actually came to me one morning as I was waking up. I was scrolling through Instagram, thinking, ‘I really need a caption for this post’. And then it hit me, I just knew this phrase would perfectly sum up the entire record. It’s a very soft, light blue kind of song. The focal points of that phrase – the ‘hard’ and the ‘soft’ – are what the album’s journey explores. The intimate, pathetic, ‘soft’ moments really aid the more sassy, preposterous, ‘hard’ songs.”
=11 Jacob Alon – Confession
On first exposure the Scottish-born singer songwriter’s sound has a very familiar alt-folk pastoral feel explored by many artists including Sufjan Stevens. But this single does not devastate through the power of any instrumental experimentation or clever dynamics but from the sheer truth of the painful, eloquent words of unrequited love. “Oh how I loved you”, has probably never sounded so painfully crushing and had me in bits.
“This song, for me, is a shedding of shame,” said the songwriter. “It’s a soft hand tracing the stretch marks left behind by a once messy, awkward, painful, and frightening realisation of my queerness. It’s a memory of the unspoken ways in which my heart and body knew how to move; knew how to draw in close under a cloak of darkness to bridge canyons of hatred and fear with acts of love.
“Love to me then was silent. It grew from the shadows. Voiceless in a vacuum of denial and shame. But even without air, it moved on its own. Squeezing up through the smallest cracks. Chipping little stones at my window. Showing me how fast my heart could really go. And still somehow I couldn’t heed its call… because as queer people, we are taught to hate and fear the beautiful boundless colourful love that is in us. And it’s a tragic, paradoxical illness – to fear love.
“As queer people, we are always coming out – every single day. We have to continually justify our existence against the painful grain of the heteropatriarchy. I wrote this song the night after a party where my self-esteem had shattered into a million pieces. When, out of my face, I’d confessed to someone with my words, my precious words, how I had loved them all those years ago. I was half-expecting some big revelation or closure or acknowledgement, but it didn’t come. I would always be something they’d rather pretend didn’t happen.”
=11 Spare Snare – Bleached Out Rainbows (Remixed by White Label)
The Dundonian indie combo much loved by John Peel before he died released a remix oddity LP in October and so far only introduced some of the radical reworkings of tracks from their 12th album, The Brutal, for public consumption. This skyscraping standout (so far) pushes the band’s traditional sound through an aural blender, giving it a more eccentric but clean industrial/electro/noise pop flavour. One of the best things they have done.
The Mix Up release is strictly limited to 300 CD copies and the digital music is only available on Bandcamp. So zero Spotify.
10 Mha Iri – 3AM
There are some tracks that make you actually stop in your tracks. This second track from the Scottish-raised producer’s single Mind Bender does just that. Picking up pirate CDs from her local market, Mha Iri’s older brother indoctrinated her in the techno realm, giving her some DJ lessons in the process. But on this she has added huge slabs of early Prodigy acid-house, explosive percussion, sudden changes and twists, distorted morse code stutters, huge breakdowns and mighty drops. Magnificent.
9 Amateur Cult – Eyes
The solo project from Alastair Chivers from the Firth of Forth coast has been off and on but is definitely on with this bonkers thrill ride of a single that reminds me of a long lost but never remembered equally bonkers Norfolk band called Basti. It starts with an earworm sax riff and then switches half way through to build and build to aural oblivion taking in noise pop, emo, synthopop and krautrock and all bases in between. Sax is back. Maybe.
8 Outblinker – Techno Viking
The euphoric lead single and standout from the Glasgow-based combo’s absorbing and long awaited self-titled debut album is a heady fusion of krautrock, rave, post punk and more that has to be heard to be believed. Produced by the inspired dark lord of electro Blanck Mass – who appears elsewhere on this list and on past lists – during a recording session on Orkney, it’s a sonic blitz of stop-starts, changes of pace and mysterious vocals that never ceases to be compelling. The album’s artwork by Scottish painter Frank McFadden, is an disturbing swirl of overlapping faces.
7 Taahliah – 2018
The Glasgow black trans DJ, producer and groundbreaking hyperpopster has shown that she is carrying on the legacy of the late lamented Sophie in the stunning and diverse debut album Gramarye revealing a kaleidoscope of pop, club and indie. This is a beautiful modern synth hymn with processed vocals that in the wrong hands would just be annoying. Not here, sir. Co-written with long-time friend and collaborator Naafi while in Dundee, 2018 also includes contributions from Dev Hynes and rising electro-pop musician Tsatsamis.
“The song is about that relationship you happen to experience when you’re 19 that leaves you bruised and battered for a disproportionate amount of time afterwards,” Taahliah said. “The lyrics are so desperate and exposing. I needed a way to capture this very fervent but embryonic time in my life. It’s one of the oldest songs on my new record.”
6 Union of Knives – Elixir
Eighteen years after their debut, the irrepressibly original Glasgow-based art rock combo returned with a glorious third album in Start from the Endless and this one of many standouts that combines the darkest electronics, wild orchestral electronics, the clangiest of percussion, and a vision that fits in with the experimental side of a Radiohead or a Talk Talk. Yet its melody is so addictive, taking us on an unconventional joy ride moving from rugged dynamics to a swirl of gentle instrumentation and then back again.
Front man Chris Gordon and Dave McLean first met in the Glasgow bar Nice ‘n’ Sleazy where Dave, who is not now with the band, was working as a soundman in the venue downstairs and Chris was working at the bar in between producing and touring with other bands. Chris and Dave started working together as producers and engineers on recordings and remixes for the likes of Snow Patrol out of their own studio in Glasgow.
5 Jazz The Glass – Movie
The ingenious side-project of Dave Summersgill named after a 1981 track by Cabaret Voltaire is at his best when taking the unconventional route as revealed in Paradise Waves which featured in the top 20 of this list three years ago. In this avant garde, multi-layered, ethereal epic he has achieved just that and could almost have invented a genre called downtempo soultronic.
Having had a productive 2024, releasing a string of tracks and singles with different moods and offkilter slants on housing and dance music, this magnificent closing track from his Output 2024 album hits the buttons of being both creatively experimental but also with a towering earworm melody.
It sounds like some glitched subliminal dream memory of Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy and features a mysterious but killer soul sample.
He was one half of Flamingos, along with Edinburgh-based Cliff Peacock, released several singles on a label run by Rob Gretton – former manager of Joy Division and New Order.
4 Blanck Mass – Bloodhound
You’re a waste of my time, screams Edinburgh’s Benjamin John Power (seemingly), a former member of F*ck Buttons who flipped to the darkside and the mainstream indie pop of Editors. This is a skyscraping blend of black metal screamo, beautiful soundtrack-friendly synth swoops and classical that shows off the electro genius’s dark and light side and that Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has a true contemporary of dark experimental.
“The binary nature of this latest release almost compels it to reflect that oldest of all human dualities: love and hate,” says the PR. “Bloodhound deals with the latter, especially politically-charged injustices and the violence of ‘the hunt”-‘; that targeting of inhabitants on their own land with a level of cruelty which can seem at times to even cross into sport.”
3 Taahliah – Dawn
I’m looking for something new,” croons the Glasgow trans DJ and producer on the glorious penultimate track of debut album ‘Gramarye’ that is a shape-shifting, soft-loud-soft sucker punching forlorn meditation combining orchestral, dancefloor bounce, soul and daintiness in a five minute modern pop masterpiece within what is my Scots album of 2024 and a shoe-in for SAY Album of the Year. Nothing comes close. On this, her tender, yet philosophically heavy, vox glide over sparkling production and towering strings, before techno beats blast out.
“I wanted to single myself out as an artist and find the right type of creative language that I could consistently use. I was going through the same experiences with love and heartbreak,” she said on producing the album.
2 Mercy Girl – Heaven
This jawdropping debut self-produced and engineered single from the Glasgow-based electro outfit is an earthshattering slice of icily gothic and dense synthpop married to stark, alien hushed vocals like lost cave sounds. Put simply, it is like a lost addictive classic from Crystal Castles, or Chvrches after being forced to watch The Exorcist ten times.
Formed in 2023 by members Daisy Miles, Davey Purdie, Craig Harkness and Kylie MacNaughton-Wright, they say they explore themes of love, despair and the uncertainty of the human experience and describe themselves as “sensory euphoria and contemplation”. Taking inspiration from electronic body music, darkwave and electro-pop, they say the aim is to invoke “both the solace of a dark empty highway, and the surrender of a neon-hazed dancefloor”.
1 The Joy Hotel – Twenty Three (A Comedy) Parts 1 and 2
It has been two long years since the genre-defying Glasgow seven-piece caught my attention at Doune The Rabbit Hole in 2022 and finally they have released a sublimely and predictably confusing and ramshackle album (Ceremony) promised at that very festival. Now they have always made me feel disorientated – combining a complication of rock styles from prog rock and art pop to grunge and old skool metal that when you get it, really really hits home. This album highlight is actually two tracks that work together as one fantastic kaleidoscopic symphony rather than separately and reveals how dazzlingly, spectacularly inventive they are, taking a theme and then going off on sometimes laughable tangents. Call it their Bohemian Rhapsody.
Two minutes from the end it comes over as some uptempo Ukranian folk-style stomp and you half expect some hopak dancers to be paraded only for it to fade away to nothing and then a big something finale. This of course borrows from the past, as most bands do, but as a whole – as happens when at their best – still sounds like nothing you will have heard in your lifetime.
“It is another song that was written in two parts and grew arms and legs over time,” the band say. “In many ways the spirit of the band overall is built in to the music on this song. It’s packed with harmony, changes of pace and time signature… allowing the song to change as we wrote it. It contrasts [to] the more traditional structure of other songs on the record with a something more free-form. ”
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 1 (100-76)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 2 (75-51)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 3 (50-26)
This is the Top 100 Spotify playlist.
And this is the Top 100 YouTube playlist.
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 1 (100-76)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 2 (75-51)
Top 100 Tunes from Scotland in 2024 Part 3 (50-26)