Life Without Buildings - XFM Sessions

£9.00 - £25.99

Life Without Buildings - XFM Sessions

£9.00 - £25.99

PRE-ORDER: Vinyl release Dec 4th 2026. (Vinyl includes digital download. All tracks will be delivered digitally on purchase)

Life Without Buildings were Robert, Chris and Will — a group of mostly Glasgow School of Art students who joined forces in the summer of 1999, with vocalist Sue Tompkins joining a little later in the year. They weren’t active for too long, eventually disbanding in 2002 after the release of their first and final record, Any Other City. Embarking on a tour with Belle and Sebastian and playing countless shows across the country, the band are surprisingly pretty undocumented; a few fuzzy live videos recorded at the now closed Beat Room in Glasgow resurfaced on YouTube a few years ago, but give or take a handful of interviews and a live recording from a show in Sydney (which was finally pressed to vinyl by Rough Trade for Record Store Day 2025), there’s not much out there.

This release coincides with a short run of reunion shows in November to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Rough Trade and features two acoustic radio sessions recorded in 2000 and 2001 for John Kennedy’s show on XFM. These stripped back versions of the songs retain all of their energy and intricacy while providing the perfect platform for Sue’s iconic delivery.

Speaking on the sessions, guitarist Robert Dallas Gray says: “I honestly can’t remember the specifics of them! I’m probably a bit thrown by there being video of us (by John Cheves)... We were in London quite a lot around that time, often staying with John and his partner Manami.

The only thing I can definitely remember is the engineer’s hat pretty much lifting off his head when Sue sang the first ‘Whiter!’ in Envoys. One of his dials slammed into a position it’d never been in before and he said ‘blimey’... and that the acoustic guitar I played or both those sessions belonged to Colin Hardie.

We did play a few acoustic things (prior to these sessions), including a full show at the 13th Note, which I have a recording of somewhere... we might have done an acoustic session for Radio Scotland before the XFM ones - they were just easier for the stations to do, they could have you in and chat to you and then you could play something quite informally. I think Will hated it, having to use brushes and tippy-tap away, ha ha.

(John Kennedy’s support of the band) was early and consistent, really. He organised the Twitter Listening Party for the reissue Any Other City n 2022 so he’s remained a supporter of the band all that time.

It’s nice to have the document, and I’m really pleased we managed to make something lasting out of John’s video, with the sleeve. I do slightly share Sue’s bemusement that people are still interested in these things, but yes, it’s nice.”