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.

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 songbytoad.com/2009/05/malcolm-middleton-interview-from-homegame-2009/

See more at offthebeatentracks.tv

More about Malcolm Middleton at malcolmmiddleton.co.uk