Tangles: 21st Century Schizoid Man

Since 2005 Ricky Egan has been making music and performing under the name Tangles. Entirely self-taught, Ricky makes music that is simplistic yet expansive, pushing beyond the conventions of the electric guitar to the point that it becomes almost unrecognisable.

Soon after posting his music online, he was picked up and used in BBC's Waterloo Road, before any of his music had even been released. "A director for the BBC messaged me and asked if they could use my music – I was pretty surprised as all I had at that point was a MySpace page".

Since then Ricky has released on cassette-only labels in the US, most recently Animal Image Search. Tangles makes perfect sense to be released on cassette; that is after all how he records his music: "I don't own a computer and I wouldn't really know where to start with that, I've always just used my 4-track as I find it easy to work with. My set-up is pretty basic and I've still to work out exactly what I'm doing."

Thanks to the popularity of MP3 blogs such as Friendship Bracelet which has posted Tangles music in the past, Ricky's music has been able to reach to people across the world, though he's still relatively unknown even in his hometown of Glasgow. Live performances of Tangles seem to differ from gig to gig, as the shows are largely improvised, but with every performance Tangles has the ability to hold an audience's attention with his delicate, tape-saturated, reverb-heavy, beautiful music. The sound of Tangles seemed to occur almost by accident: "The first amp that I had had a chorus setting on it – I really like the sound of it but didn't realise people regarded it as a cheesy effect."

This "cheesy effect" has now become Tangles' signature sound, calling to mind Discipline-era King Crimson and more recent bands like Ducktails and Pure X, the latter of which he supported at their last Glasgow show. For the minute it's support slots like this where you are likely to hear Tangles' music. Ricky assures me that for the time being he's happy to take such opportunities and doesn't intend to make a "career" out of it. He plans to go on tour in Europe later this year with fellow blog-friendly Glasgow solo act Sad City and is also busy playing in both Happy Particles and Neighbourhood Gout. "Neighbourhood Gout just released a 7" called Is That You Brother? on our own label Bossed Causes which folks can buy at our gigs," he offers. "And the Happy Particles album is up on Bandcamp." Prolific is the word.