Music review: Lost Map Hallowe’en all-dayer, Platform, Glasgow

From austere art-rock to solo piano symphonies, the this day-long mini-festival had something for just about everyone, writes Paul Whitelaw

Lost Map Hallowe’en all-dayer, Platform, Glasgow ****

Lost Map and PRAH are independent record labels in the truest, proudest, scrappiest sense. Separated at birth yet united in spirit, the former grew up on Eigg while the latter took root in London. To celebrate their joint tenth birthday, they staged this mini-festival at an estimable Glasgow arts centre.

Callum Easter anointed the occasion with his unique fusion of accordion, analogue synths and sing-a-longa-art-pop intensity. Attired in a Sweeney-brown suit, it was like watching a gangland fugitive leading a joyous pub knees-up.

Maranta PIC: John Mackie

The mood shifted – and how – with Tony Njoku, an immensely gifted British-Nigerian musician whose beautiful solo piano symphonies stunned the room into attentive silence. He also sang in a rich, expressive falsetto. He’s extraordinary. MF Tomlinson is a Brisbane/Meanjin-born artist with a panoramic baritone, a baroque country-soul singer prone to feedback freakouts while saxophones and flutes go jazz-wild. He’s pretty good.

Lost Map supergroup Weird Wave deserve full marks for turning up in Ninja Turtle fancy dress, but their moderately groovy indie-dance fare sounds like something you’d hear for 30 seconds on a Chart Show rundown circa 1990.

I preferred Maranta, an electro-pop duo who should be troubling the charts on a regular basis. Their hooks are instant. They’re accessible and eccentric, banging, odd and melancholy, just as the best pop should be. Imagine Vince Clarke in cahoots with Bjork.

The party wound down with The Umlauts, an austere motorik art-rock ensemble whose uncompromising resistance to melody – the singers chant in multilingual monotones – is borderline heroic. They make Nico’s The Marble Index sound like Agadoo. Warped fun, from a certain angle.