The Skinny Scotland July 2015

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CULT U R A L

J O U R N A L I S M

July 2015 Scotland Issue 118

Music Man of Moon The SAY Award Kathryn Joseph Man of Moon The Sonics Failure

Theatre Bard in the Botanics Walking the Tightrope

Art GSA & ECA Degree Shows Mary Watson Photography: A Victorian Sensation The Only Way To Do It Is To Do It

Travel Malawi

Film Asif Kapadia Mia Hansen-Løve Bill Pohlad

Clubs Hidden Orchestra Nozinja

Fashion Edinburgh International Fashion Festival Books Simon Napier Bell Ernest Cline Unbound Edinburgh International Book Festival's late night events programme revealed

“It's fun to be the underdog in a mainstream world”

THE WAR ON DRUGS GET READY FOR T

MUSIC | FILM | CLUBS | THEATRE | TECH | ART | BOOKS | COMEDY | FASHION | TRAVEL | FOOD | DEVIANCE | LISTINGS

SUMMER NIGHTS GLASGOW, THE BANDSTAND KELVINGROVE PARK

KING CREOSOTE

FRIDAy 07 AUGUST

performing 'From Scotland With Love' + Special Guests Withered Hand

THURSDAy 13 AUGUST

SATURDAY 08 AUGUST

RODDY FRAME

GLASVEGAS

+ Special Guests

+ VERY Special Guests

Siobhan Wilson

Carl Barat & The Jackals Atom Tree

FRIDAy 14 AUGUST

SATURDAY 15 AUGUST

JOAN ARMATRADING

BEN FOLDS WITH yMUSIC

ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN

Richard Navarro

+ Special Guests

Dave McCabe (The Zutons)

+ Special Guests

P.52 Man of Moon

Credit: Euan Robertson

THURSDAy 06 AUGUST

P.19 Love & Mercy

+ Special Guests

SUNDAY 9TH AUGUST FEATURING WE WERE PROMISED JET PACKS, FATHERSON, WOODENBOX, YOUNG AVIATORS, FINN LEMARINEL, HARRY & THE HENDERSONS, MAYOR STUBBS. WITH SPECIAL GUEST COMPÈRE VIC GALLOWAY

EDINBURGH, THE ROSS BANDSTAND, PRINces Street Gardens WEDNESDAy 26 AUGUST

JAMES

THURSDAY 27 AUGUST

FRIDAY 28 AUGUST

THE FLAMING LIPS THE WATERBOYS + Special Guests

+ Special Guests

+ Special Guests

Dutch Uncles

Freddie Stevenson

GATES 6PM. VISIT THE MAGNERS VILLAGE, FANTASTIC FOOD & BARS A

SUBJECT TO LICENCE

PRESENTATION

P.57 Art Reviews

JOHN AND JACOB Plus Special Guests

A GOLDENVOICE & REGULAR MUSIC PRESENTATION

BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THIS IS NOW AGENCY

PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

+SUPPORT

TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER EDINBURGH QUEENS HALL

THURSDAY 08 OCTOBER

GLASGOW Stereo FRIDAY 09 OCTOBER

EDINBURGH Voodoo Rooms

GLASGOW ART SCHOOL S AT 10 T H O C T O B E R

0131 668 2019

NEW SINGLE “BOY GEORGE” OUT 3/8/15

PUBLICSERVICEBROADCASTING.NET

WWW.VUKOVI.CO.UK

NEW ALBUM ‘THE RACE FOR SPACE’ OUT NOW

THE

FELICE BROTHERS

MICK HARVEY SUN 02 AUGUST GLASGOW ORAN MOR

0844 844 0444

4

Contents

I N DEPEN DENT

CULTU R AL

JOU R NALI S M

Issue 118, July 2015 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk T: 0131 467 4630 P: The Skinny, 3 Coates Place, Edinburgh, EH3 7AA The Skinny is Scotland's largest independent entertainment & listings magazine, and offers a wide range of advertising packages and affordable ways to promote your business.

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E: sales@theskinny.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the printer or the publisher.

A Regular Music & Triple G presentation

In person from Ticket Scotland Glasgow/Edinburgh & Ripping Edinburgh and usual outlets

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July 2015

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Contents 06 Chat & Opinion: Last minute news with

Stop the Presses; midday culinary musings in What Are You Having For Lunch?; plus Spot the Difference, Shot of the Month and the eerie clairvoyance of Crystal Baws.

than you’d think, it turns out. Meanwhile Skinny Redhead shows us the ropes of Japanese Shibari.

42

Travel: Hippos, elephants, a music festival and a magic mountain – an account of a personal journey into Malawi, Africa’s warm heart.

43

Food & Drink: The Year of the Sandwich continues unabated in Phagomania, plus our Food editor’s handy foodie’s guide to surviving the summer, along with yer usual portion of Food News.

08 Heads Up: It’s like a calendar, entirely filled with the best cultural events happening across Scotland.

FEATURES

10

The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel grants us his first interview in many months to reflect on the runaway success of Lost in the Dream.

12

Ahead of Wickerman, garage rock overlords The Sonics give us the lowdown on reunions and the politeness of Seattle’s grunge fraternity.

15

Glasgow School of Art’s students channel American abstract expressionism with new exhibition The Only Way To Do It Is To Do It

16

Simon Napier Bell discusses his outstanding, new music biz tome Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.

18

With new documentary Amy, director Asif Kapadia approaches Winehouse's tragic star story from a different angle.

19

Mia Hansen-Løve tells us about new movie Eden and the Touch music scene. of the 90s, while Bill Pohlad probes the world of Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys with Love & Mercy.

21

Neil LaBute and Omar El-Khairy take a look at censorship in theatre with new play Walking the Tightrope.

22

It’s degree show season, sho’nuff, and at Edinburgh College of Art they’re not shy about incorporating new media in a critical and reflexive manner.

25 GSA’s Fine Art degree show took place

in the new Tontine Building for the first time, but students show no signs of their confidence taking a battering.

26

Popcorn and Prosecco: we report back on the sugar highs of this year’s SAY Award ceremony and speak to winner Kathryn Joseph.

28

Joe Acheson’s Hidden Orchestra head to Cross the Tracks at Edinburgh’s Summerhall this month. The man himself shares his thoughts on new offering Reorchestrations.

UNBOUND

33

REVIEW

47

show, shortly to be exhibiting in Hill St Design House as part of The Skinny Showcase EAF exhibition, Mary Watson shows us her prize-themed ceramics.

32

41

Fashion: Edinburgh International Fashion Festival is back, and co-founder Jonathan Freemantle’s on hand to provide some insight into their ethos, achievements and future plans.

Deviance: What do processed meat and amateur porn have in common? More

July 2015

Music: We’ve live reports from Faith No More, Mogwai’s 20th Anniversary and #untitledlive, plus new records from Tame Impala, Sleaford Mods and Trembling Bells in for review, while young motorik two-piece Man of Moon are our New Blood.

55 Clubs: Rejoice! The Slam tent makes its

annual return to T in the Park! Now who should you go and see? Well, everyone, obviously, but our Clubs editor provides some choice picks anyway, along with a rundown of the best events across Edinburgh and Glasgow this month.

57

Art: What’s going on in the world of art this month? Read our tips for the month here, plus reviews of Et Dieu Créa la Femme and They Had Four Years.

58 Film: Three great movies with a music

connection and two kickass animations make up this month’s top releases.

59 DVD: A few classics out on Blu-ray from

Sam Fuller’s brash western Forty Guns to little seen Orson Welles joint Chimes at Midnight. Books: Reviews of Don Winslow’s powerhouse crime novel The Cartel and John Darnielle’s first novel Wolf in White Van.

60 Theatre: Reviews of Torn and The Driver’s Seat.

61

LIFESTYLE

30 Showcase: Our pick of the Dundee degree

Jura Unbound special: The improper child of the Book Festival is upon us! We chat to director Roland Gulliver, plus profiles of authors Sean Michaels, Ryan Gattis and John Darnielle. Did we mention The Skinny turns 10 this year? Well, we do. And we’ve got exciting news...

Comedy: Jessie Cave tells us about new book Love Sick, new Fringe show I Loved Her, and why Lavender Brown was the best thing that ever happened to her.

62 Tech: Only his second novel, and Ernest

Cline’s already attracted the attention of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. We talk about Armada and fending off Adam Sandler.

63 Listings: Make sense of the cultural

melee with this incredibly useful guide to what’s going on around you this July

71

LA space rock trio Failure reveal the albums that make up their DNA in this month’s Under the Influence.

Contents

5

Editorial W

Awwwww shite! Hands up; we dropped the baw last month. The June edition of The Skinny contained a critical appraisal of the previous album

by Glasgow folk ensemble, Woodenbox, rather than its recent follow-up Foreign Organ (owing to a rare administrative mistake). Sincere apologies, folks. We hang our heads in shame and they’ll hate us forever, but you can find the correct review over on our website. Speaking of which...

TheSkinny.co.uk just had a facelift! We are all kinds of excited, so have a scan at the new design for extended event listings, all of our feature coverage and more. The new site is generally brighter, bolder, has better page loading times (especially useful when on your mobile), a more user-friendly layout and Editor’s picks to help you find the next best thing to read. Enjoy… and expect more significant changes to the site as the year progresses.

Down in Leeds, we’re pleased to be associated with a new stage at The Garden Party, programmed by the good people at Now Wave and Eat Your Own Ears. The bill features Dutch Uncles, Errors, Haelos, Whilk and Misky, Bambooman and Jack Straight Up, plus Now Wave and EYOE DJs. The Garden Party takes place at The Tetley, 29-30 Aug. See thegardenpartyleeds. com for tickets and a look at the full lineup. Don’t forget folks, we’ll also have the cider visor on at Electric Fields in Dumfries on 29 Aug, where the likes of Blanck Mass, Outblinker, Vessels, East India Youth and many more will be blowing minds at Drumlanrig Castle. Booze and be merry with caution, etc. electricfieldsfestival.com National artist development charity Sound and Music is seeking composer-curators to partner, as part of its 2015-16 programme and beyond. The Composer-Curator programme’s aim is to create a space for artists to make innovative new work, push boundaries and develop and understand music audiences like never before. If you’re a UK-based composer keen to curate and organise performance series, festivals or tours of new music, you’ve until 20 Jul to apply. Head to soundandmusic.org for more detail.

Deliveroo (the guys who deliver restaurant food to your home or office in 32 minutes) are creating a series of popup events over the Summer.

If you are lucky enough to have one of their

Spilled and the shock and awe of landing the prize. Rounding up our Music features, we meet Edinburgh new blood Man of Moon, and reactivated LA space rock trio Failure open their record collection to tell us the top ten albums that have truly formed them.

In Film, a strange confluence this month brings together three hotly-anticipated new releases on music. We speak to Asif Kapadia about controversial Winehouse biopic, Amy, find out more about Brian Wilson bio Love and Mercy from director Bill Pohlad, and sit down with Mia Hansen-Løve to hear about her intimate epic on the French Touch music scene, Eden.

The Art section has been very busy of late, what with the degree shows across the nation, and selecting artists for our sophomore EAF exhibition, on which much more next month. Our first selection, from Dundee, can be viewed in this month’s Showcase. Turn to p30 to view the prize-winning efforts of Mary Watson. We offer a comprehensive rundown of the Glasgow and Edinburgh fine art degree show highlights here, and you will find details of Aberdeen favourites on our new-look website: www.theskinny.co.uk.

Did I mention we relaunched the website? It looks very nice, and is functionally superior to the previous incarnation. You should definitely check it out. And let us know what you think! hello@theskinny.co.uk In our Lifestyle section, Phagomania turns out to have been deadly serious about that Year of the Sandwich proclamation, shoehorning in yet another sideways look at the dark art of sandwichery. Deviance indulges in some light bondage (as per), while Fashion looks forward to the uniquely acronymed Edinburgh International Fashion Festival and Travel features an account of a journey to Malawi by yours truly.

Finally, it is my pleasure to announce that The Skinny is moving to Summerhall. For the summer, yeah? You can reach us at 1.9 1st Floor Tower, Techcube, Summerhall, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL. [Rosamund West]

jockmooney.co.uk

e are now more than halfway into 2015, and a month away from the cultural D-Day of the Edinburgh Festivals. How’d that happen?

Why isn’t it any warmer? Why haven’t we all moved to somewhere sunnier, where a summer jacket doesn’t have to be waterproof and sitting on the grass incinerating meat for sport is not a ridiculous pipe dream?

Because of all the culture, that’s why.

We love our culture round here, and Scotland’s really good at it. In the centre of this magazine you will find, for the sixth annual edition, our exclusive launch of Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Unbound programme. You will learn all you need to know about late night speakeasy fun in Charlotte Square come August, including The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, a barrel of spoken word, and – perhaps most exciting of all – our very own night, featuring former Skinny contributor turned Giller Prize winning novelist Sean Michaels and probably some theremins.

On a completely unrelated note, if anyone knows a Scottish theremin player who theremins like a muthafuckin’ virtuoso, please send them our way.

On our cover this month is a very exciting exclusive. As the band prepare to return to Europe, The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel spared some time to offer us an insight into life in the middle of explosive success, music tabloid controversy and a relentless touring schedule.

Next up, as garage rock godfathers The Sonics drop their first album in over 40 years (yes, you read that right) and take to Wickerman, vocalist and keyboard player Gerry Roslie calls up from Tacoma, Washington to tell us about the experience of putting the influential band back together after such an epic hiatus.

Last month saw the fourth annual Scottish Album of the Year Award scooped by Aberdonian chanteuse Kathryn Joseph. We have a full match report from the night, including various quiltrelated tomfoolery, alongside some words with the (very humble) lady herself on recording her debut Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve

6

Chat

wristbands (distributed throughout the summer by their restaurants and promo team), you'll be able to get a whole range of great offers; a free ice-cream here, a free milkshake there, even a whole meal on us... basically it's a pretty damn good way to get some delicious food for free at some of the best restaurants in town. deliveroo.co.uk

Online Only Festival season is well and truly underway, and we've been indulging appropriately. Close to home, the Edinburgh International Film Festival has seen its usual array of premieres and events while our writers did their very best to cover as much of it as humanly possible. Check out their reviews at theskinny.co.uk/film – witty, erudite and insightful at all times, natch. We also attended the West Midlands' primary location for experimental music and forward-thinking art projects, which is to say we went to Supersonic Festival and it was sublime. Indulge in our review at theskinny.co.uk/festivals.

Over in the land of our sister paper, i.e. the Northwest of England, the tenth Manchester International Festival gets underway from 2 July.

We caught up with its founding director to reflect on the last decade and learn about his future plans – head to theskinny.co.uk/theatre for more.

Finally, there's the second part in our occasional A Brief History Of... series, where we look at the legacy of noteworthy clubs from days gone by.

This time round it's Manchester's jazz-funk Mecca Legend under the microscope, over at theskinny. co.uk/clubs. Nice.

JULY'S COVER ARTIST Phil is a portrait photographer living and working in Tottenham, London. Recent subjects include Anton Newcombe, Frank Carter and Ezra Furman.

If you see him, ask him about the time he accidentally spent 9 hours in a canoe, deep in the Honduran rain forest.

Our new look website

THE SKINNY

Crystal Baws

Spot the Difference

With Mystic Mark

ARIES The US announces plans to fit the moon with a giant googly eye to prove that God exists. It is hoped that centrifugal force will allow the googly eye to bounce around and judge humanity from on high.

TAURUS You’re an expert at the crossword maze, that shit is way too easy.

GEMINI Everyone always goes on about houses being haunted, but due to the amount of people who have died outside, the number of homeless ghosts is disproportionately huge and getting larger with each day of Tory rule. Street exorcists pushing homeless ghosts out of the town centre doesn’t solve the problem, and only leads to thousands of vagrant poltergeists taking shelter below the bridge you walk under on the way home from work. You complain to the council that the tunnel is so overhaunted it’s becoming a safety issue, with the tarmac increasingly slippy with ectoplasm and the whirling tornado of bemoaning howls and takeaway cartons blocking the path to your own cosy home.

CANCER As much as people love cat videos on the internet, they don’t seem to be too keen about the videos you made about the inside of their cats.

LEO Restless twitching Uranus arrives in your relationship quadrant.

VIRGO The police are clearly too realistic in this universe.

this month when, after a long ringing session, someone picks up on the other end.

LIBRA You have two phones. One for making calls with and the other which you jam up your arse on vibrate mode and call all the time. But your blood runs cold

SCORPIO JD Wetherspoons now conveniently stocks a little basket of Heinz Lube sachets on the table by the toilets, but there’s never enough in just one.

SAGITTARIUS As a Sagittarius you should never burn to death, because it will hurt.

CAPRICORN With house prices in the City of Dis having gone through the roof lately, increasing numbers of demon immigrants from hell begin flooding onto the surface of the planet to enter the booming human flesh rental market.

In response to the demand your soul gets evicted from your body due to your inability to look after the property. New tenants will be arriving on the first of the month, a family of twelve demons and their rottweiler, Baz. Having seen your earthly vessel advertised in a property shop window in the bowels of hell, the new occupants of your dead-eyed former body plan to renovate the place by pulling out a few supporting bones and putting in a second ribcage.

AQUARIUS sponsored by Take a Break This week in Take a Break: “I married a lizard by mistake�, “My tongue was so delicious I ATE IT�, “I’m ADDICTED to being interviewed by Take a Break�, “Exercise tips: Force your TITS through a letterbox�, “PUZZLES�, and much, much more.

TWO TEDDIES Famously created by scientists from the DNA of President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, Jr., the teddy bear has become a cultural icon. Hailing from deepest darkest Peru (although some species have been known to dwell in the Hundred Acre Wood) they survive mostly on marmalade sandwiches and human flesh. As we discovered in documentaries like Ted and Ted 2, teddy bears are incorrigible drug and booze fiends – and horribly racist. They are cuddly, though.

Teddy bears are notoriously difficult to tell apart using the human eye, but if you look really closely at the two teddies above you might be able to spot some differences. If you believe you can, you could be in with the chance of winning a copy of The Radleys by Matt Haig, courtesy of great Edinburgh publishing house Canongate.

Head across to theskinny/co.uk/competitions to take part.

Competition closes midnight Thursday 30 July. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within 48 hours or the prize will be offered to another entrant. The winner will receive the ticket by email. Our Ts&Cs can be found at theskinny.co.uk/about/terms-and-conditions

Shot Of The Month Young Fathers @ #UntitledLive, Central Hall Edinburgh, 9 June, by Mihaela Bodlovic

PISCES You invent the world’s first car which runs entirely on scabs. twitter.com/themysticmark facebook.com/themysticmark

The August Issue: Out 28 July It's our mega issue – Edinburgh Festivals roll into town and we run ragged trying to preview all of the exciting things happening over the course of the month. You'll find interviews with a metric fuck-tonne of our favourite comedians, authors and performers including one Brian Limond (above) and playwright Bryony Kimmond.

In Music we're checking in with East India Youth and Outblinker ahead of Electric Fields, and Art will be most looking forward to EAF's emergent artist strand PLUS the return of our Showcase exhibition of 2015 graduates.

July 2015

Opinion

7

Ahead of the August glut, July brings with it plenty goodies, including The Second Annual Champipunship, the return of King Tut's Summer Nights, a dip into the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, GSA's Phoenix Exhibition, and more. Plus sunshine. Please, please, some sunshine!

Thu 2 Jul

Director John Mackenzie's late 70s crime thriller, The Long Good Friday, gets a one-off airing at Glasgow Film Theatre, portraying the dawn of Thatcherite Britain and the greedy excess of the 80s via the world of a ruthlessly ambitious underworld boss (played by Bob Hoskins, in full-on gangsta mode) as he attempts to pull off the biggest deal of his life. Not to spoil owt, but bloody mayhem ensues. Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow, 6pm, £5

As a partnering venue of The ACTINIC Festival – giving a platform to emerging artists at the intersection of analogue and alternative photographic media – Edinburgh Printmakers opens its doors for a members-only exhibition of prints, showcasing various photo processes used in printmaking. The gallery will also host a one-off printmaking demonstration covering photo lithography and photo etching, 18 Jul. Edinburgh Printmakers, Edinburgh, 1-25 Jul, free

Glasgow's Street Level Photoworks unveils the fruits of the Glasgow 1955 + 55 project undertaken by local photography collective Queen's Park Camera Club in 2010, for which they busily recorded as many different aspects as possible depicting Glasgow that year, to be presented alongside a selection of archive images taken in 1955 by various then Glasgow camera clubs (of which QPCC is the only one still surviving).

Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, 2 Jul-2 Aug, free

The Long Good Friday

Paul Charlton, Skeletus

Tue 7 Jul

Wed 8 Jul

Departed Edinburgh venue Soundhouse continues its fundraising gig residency at the Trav – raising pennies for The Soundhouse Organisation, dedicated to founding a new music venue in Edinburgh offering a fair deal to musicians – this edition hosting an African special, featuring Senegalese singer Samba Sene, in collaboration with Diwan, plus West African-inspired Scottish troupe Baobab Gateway. Go support the cause. Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 8pm, £10

Following its election day debut in May, and a second instalment in June, Two Minute Manifesto returns to the Trav for a third outing.

Again following a bite-sized format, it'll see a duo of guests bring their own personal manifesto to the stage – whether serious or silly, told in a format of their choosing – condensed into two minutes flat, before being analysed by the residents and voted on by the audience. Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £8 (£6)

Glasgow's Ro Campbell and The Wee Man return for another bout of their concept comedy showdown, Comedian Rap Battles, where a select batch of Scottish comics will again go head-to-head with a selection of UK rap talent, battling it out to the death* in a bid to decide who's got the most swagger when it comes to hippity-hop wit.

P.S – *no one really dies.

Probably. The Stand, Glasgow, 8.30pm, £6 (£4)

Samba Sene

Two Minute Manifesto

Mon 13 Jul

Tue 14 Jul

On fine solo form in his postHarpoons years, American rock'n'roller Ezra Furman takes to the road with his live band of players, the Boy-Friends, out celebrating the release of his third LP Perpetual Motion People – recorded in his hometown of Chicago and taking inspiration from the currently restless nature of his life, both physically and internally. Broadcast, Glasgow, 7pm, £10

With that time of year very nearly nigh (and by that we of course mean EdinburghFestival-Everything), Canadian-born, UK-living comic Glenn Wool takes to a live setting to offer a sneak peak of his Fringe 2015 show – Creator, I Am But A Pawn – which finds him babbling about his various escapades around the world in his slow-build-to-the-biglaughs kinda way. The Stand, Glasgow, 8.30pm, £10

Directors Stephen Philip Jones and Rebecca Low return female playwright Linda McLean's Sex and God to the stage – a conceptual gem of a piece weaving together four monologues on faith, lust, and family, each from the perspective of a different woman – a kitchen maid, a wayward daughter, a victim of domestic abuse, and a disillusioned student – each speaking from a different moment in history.

Duke's Corner, Dundee, 14-16 Jul, free

Ezra Furman

Credit: Leah Henson

Sun 12 Jul

Glenn Wool

Sat 18 Jul

Sun 19 Jul

Director Shilpa T-Hyland brings A Stranger Walks into a Bar to Edinburgh's Scottish Storytelling Centre – a deceptively simple play based on the premise of a storyteller of a man walking into a bar to drink alone, with the intrigue coming from the fact that the piece changes with each location it visits, collecting new stories throughout the summer as it travels from pub to pub. Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £8.50

A perfect soother for your (probable) Sunday hangover, Edinburgh's Filmhouse host a one-off screening of Stephan Schesch's 2012 animated gem of a feature, Moon Man, based on Tomi Ungerer's worldwide bestselling kiddie's book of the same name, in which the man on the moon hitches a ride to Earth on the tails of a passing flying comet.

Filmhouse, Edinburgh, 11am, £4 A Stranger Walks into a Bar

Sat 25 Jul

Taking a last dip into King Tut's Summer Nights schedule (see also 16 & 21 Jul), Glasgow-based alternative indie foursome Made As Mannequins (formerly The Occupationists) play a headline set, with support from Broken Boy, Poor Frisco, and Saint Secaire. You can then catch the likes of Bwani (24 Jul), Perduramo (26 Jul), and more, before the festival draws to a close official on 30 Jul with a headline set from Kelvin. King Tut's, Glasgow, 8.30pm, £7

Following last month's graduate and MFA degree show outings, July finds the Glasgow School of Art still celebrating the fruits of their recent graduates' endeavours, with the Phoenix Exhibition showcasing new work by 90 artists who benefited from the Phoenix Bursary – a programme set up to help artists whose work was affected by last year's devastating Mackintosh fire.

Glasgow School of Art (Reid Building), Glasgow, 24 Jul-2 Aug, free

A sprawling highlight of this year's Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival, local DJ/promoter Chris Knight curates a weekend-long, jazz-inflected mini fest – Cross The Tracks – with Friday dedicated to African and Latin sounds (care of Hidden Orchestra, Falty DL, Fat-Suit, and more), while the likes of Romare, DJ Format, and United Vibrations delve into all things electronic on the Saturday (see listings for full line-up). Summerhall, Edinburgh, 24 & 25 Jul, £16

Chat

Credit: Solas Nicol

Fri 24 Jul

8

The Wee Man

Sex and God

Moon Man

Fri 23 Jul

Bwani

Credit: Simon Baker

Mon 6 Jul

Glasgow 1955 + 55

Credit: Archive image, CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

Compiled by: Anna Docherty

Wed 1 Jul

Ella Porter, Forget Me Not

Hidden Orchestra

THE SKINNY

Credit: Istvan Magyar

Heads Up

Tue 30 Jun

One of the more magical outdoor music fests (i.e. it's got a painted castle as its backdrop), Kelburn Garden Party returns for its annual boutique party weekender, with highlights including Warp Records veteran Nightmares on Wax, German electronic pioneer Ulrich Schnauss, folky songbird Rozi Plain, neon-pop livewire Miaoux Miaoux, and, er, some chumps called Masturbation Goes Cloud, which is nice. Kelburn Castle, Ayrshire, 3-5 Jul, from £69 weekend

In celebration of Elvis Shakespeare's 10th birthday, the beloved musiccum-book shop hosts a day of festivities – kicking off with a series of in-store sessions (2pm-6pm, free), before teaming up with the LeithLate crew for an after-bash at Pilrig Church (7.30pm), headlined by multi-limbed Edinburgh ensemble Broken Records, with support from My Two Dads, and The Fnords.

Elvis Shakespeare/Pilrig Church, Edinburgh, 2pm6pm/7.30pm, free/£5

The schmancy sounding Scottish artisan The Furniture Pop-Up alights at Glasgow's Briggait for a weekend-long takeover (4 & 5 Jul), providing a platform for a handpicked selection of Scottish designers and makers to showcase their wares under one roof, taking in furniture, textile, fashion, food, and more, with 'room-by-room' layouts grouping together artists' work as inspiration for your own home. The Briggait, Glasgow, 4 & 5 Jul, free

Ulrich Schnauss

Broken Records

Thu 9 Jul

Fri 10 Jul

Sat 11 Jul

CinemaAttic – a unique platform for Spanish, Iberian, and Latin American cinema in Scotland – takes to its regular home of the CCA for its monthly outing, this edition showcasing a selection of Spanish and Latin American short animation films, taking in stopmotion, moving 2D, 3D, pixilation, and more, and including Iria López's cutie of an animated short, Jamón, about a teenage pig coming to terms with who he is. CCA, Glasgow, 7.30pm, £5 (£4)

The Juice club Thursday night residents hole up in their regular lair of Sneaky Pete's – but this time in a one-off, party-ready Friday night slot! – to help host the venue's 7th birthday bash official, with special guest Numbers' Joy Orbison making the trip up from London to play a set of his electronic dubstep-garagehouse hybrid of a thing, with Juice's own Dan and Kami on support duties.

Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, 11pm, £10

Following last year's inaugural event, theatre-maker and pun-lover Gary McNair returns for a second bout of pun-worshipping – The Second Annual Champipunship – where eight handpicked contestants will battle it out to be crowned the 'Pundisputed Champion'. To indulge you, here's the poster pun: 'When I went to Greenland I kept walking into icebergs, but I guess I've always had poor glacial awareness'.

Boom. O2 ABC, Glasgow, 7pm, £10

Jamón

Joy Orbison

Fri 17 Jul

For the next instalment of Summerhall's Nothing Ever Happens Here curated series of gigs, Domini Records-signed Kendal pop foursome Wild Beasts pick up the torch – filling the 500-capacity Dissection Room with their velvety smooth, minimalist pop soundscapes, oxygenated by clean synths and carried

by Chris Talbot's rich percussive elements. Support comes from Lone Wolf.

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 8pm, £18.50

The day-by-day musical marathon that is King Tut's Summer Nights kicks off its 2015 programme with a headline set from hookladen Perthshire postrockers WeCameFrom Wolves, before taking in the likes of Bwani (formerly Bwani Junction), Made As Mannequins, Le Thug, Great Cop, and a too-manyto-name list of about 50 more acts across the twelveday schedule. See listings for full line-ups. King Tut's, Glasgow, 16-30 Jul, 8.30pm, £7

Glasgow and London-straddling record label and clubbing crew Numbers set sail for the celebratory Numbers 12 th Birthday Boat Party, marking their inaguraul event on the high seas (well, the Clyde), with special birthday DJ sets from Jackmaster, Spencer, and label artist Kool Clap, while Sub Club take care of the after-bash on dry land from 11pm.

Boat leaves from Glasgow Science Centre, Glasgow, 7pm, £22

WildBeasts Beasts Wild

WeCameFromWolves

Tue 21 Jul

Wed 22 Jul

As King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues its July gigathon, Glasgowbased electronic foursome AmatrArt (pronounced Amateur Art, obviously) take to the venue to play a headline set, following their appearance on T in the Park's unsigned bands’ T Break stage earlier in the month. Support on the night comes from Miracle Strip, Le Thug, and Apache Darling. King Tut's, Glasgow, 8.30pm, £7

This year sees Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival dip its toes into live theatre, with Tom Bancroft and his multi-national band trio, Trio Red, showcasing the world premiere of their collaboration with Scottish poet/playwright/theatre director and all-round talented bugger David Greig – who will be taking on the challenge of writing poetry, inspired by the trio's music, live on screen during the performance. Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 8pm, £15

Miracle Strip

Frankie Boyle

Sun 26 Jul

Mon 27 Jul

With parts one and two – The List and The Carousel – winning Fringe First awards, Dundee Rep preview the third in Quebecois writer Jennifer Tremblay's inspired trilogy, Deliverance, ahead of its Edinburgh Fringe run, in which our protagonist struggles to fulfil her dying mother's wish to see the son who was torn from her at a young age.

Also showing The List (24 Jul) and The Carousel (25 Jul). Dundee Rep, Dundee, 7.30pm, £14 (£11)

While we're still riding that giant wave of gloom following the general election result, messrs Vladimir McTavish, Mark Nelson, and Keir McAllister return with an all-new show in their pre/post-election series – So... That's How We Voted?

– offering satirical musings on the political state of the world following the election outcome, ahead of their Fringe 2015 appearances come August. Also at Edinburgh's The Stand earlier in the month. (22 Jul). The Stand, Glasgow, 7.30pm, £7 (£5)

July 2015

The Carousel

Credit: David P Scott

Mon 20 Jul That cantankerous bastard Frankie Boyle takes to a live setting to present a selection of work in progress snippets, ahead of a (also work in progress) stint at Edinburgh's Fringe come August, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album. Also at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre, 7-11 Jul. The Stand, Glasgow, 8.30pm, £15 (£12)

Credit: Beth Chalmers

Thu 16 Jul

Credit: Nick Bojdo

Wed 15 Jul

Julie Williamson Designs

Gary McNair

Jackmaster

Trio Red

So... That's How We Voted?

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Credit: TrioRed

Sun 5 Jul

Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

Sat 4 Jul

Credit: David P Scott

Fri 3 Jul

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AT U

Under the Pressure Ahead of their return to the UK this month, The War On Drug's founder Adam Granduciel breaks something of a silence to share his reaction to the phenomenal success of Lost In The Dream and what the next chapter might hold for the band Interview: Tom Johnson Photography: Phil Sharp

T

he perpetual struggle of a band on the periphery of mainstream success has been abundantly documented across popular music's lifespan; what's much more rare, however, is the true success story. Ask anyone what leads to crossover acceptance and you're more likely to hear murmurings of financial backing or privileged position than the quality of the music or simple hard work. And yet, there sit The War On Drugs.

With the release of 2014’s Lost In The Dream LP – their third since 2008’s debut album – the Philadelphia outfit, led by front man Adam Granduciel, rose suddenly from the shady fringes of the indie music world to the blinding limelight, thanks to the rarest of attributions; steady, honest, rock and roll songs.

And there they stayed for most of 2014 before something of a recoiling – if not from the stage then at least from the wide arms of the press. Instigated, perhaps, by an all-too public spat with Sun Kil Moon's Mark Kozelek, Granduciel's voice has seldom been heard from since, even as the ‘album of the year’ accolades came pouring his way.

And it's no real surprise. He mostly kept a dignified silence throughout Kozelek's very public string of bizarre antagonisms and it was clear how keen he was to put the whole escapade behind him, especially now as the band begin to turn their attention to the next chapter in an already triumphant story.

At odds with the period that informed the record, which included a year of well-documented depression for Granduciel, Lost In The Dream was the most unhurried snowball; a sprawling, monumental record which steadily grew into something far greater than even the band themselves could have imagined. “I remember the start of this journey like it was yesterday,” says Granduciel, when The Skinny catches up with him, mere hours before their return to Europe.

“When the record first came out, shows were selling really well and we were really surprised.

But you never think ‘Oh wow, this record is doing great!’ It's much more specific than that, like ‘Oh, it's cool that so many people came out on a Sunday!’ Then you open your eyes a year later and you're playing a sold-out show at Brixton Academy.”

The band's rise didn't quite happen in the blink of an eye though. The War On Drugs played over 175 shows in 2014, capitalising somewhat on the burgeoning success, but also simply thriving in the cloud that was billowing around them.

“I don't really know why it happened to us,” he says of their climb. ”Nor do I really want, or need, to know. It's just cool; it is what it is. It just felt like a record that kept growing as we kept playing shows and visiting everyone's city.”

Granduciel has a charming air of composure.

The War On Drugs is his project, built up over a decade, but their current standing certainly doesn't seem to faze him in the slightest. “Life is funny in many ways,” he says when pushed for his own reflections. “It's been a great eighteen months both for the band and for all of us individually. Success wasn't something I'd really thought about or even really wanted,” he adds. “Even the idea that a record I made would do what this one

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has just wasn't something I ever thought about.”

Whether it was a phenomenon he'd considered or not, the success came. With another summer of festivals ahead – including T in the Park and a whole lot more across Europe – are they at home on the big stage? “We definitely feel confident up there and that it's a place where we belong,” says Granduciel. “I think some of our songs are perfect for big festivals and it feels so great to get up in front of a big crowd and just play a bunch of rockers.” That being said, the band's elevated status can occasionally cast them as something of an anomaly in the field. At next week's T in the Park, for instance, they're sandwiched between David Guetta and Afrojack; not the kind of acts you would necessarily associate with the band's nuanced sun-kissed jams. “It's fun to be the underdog in a mainstream world!” Granduciel enthuses. “Sometimes it's where I feel most comfortable actually; to just get out there without too much hype and do your thing. It's just like being back in the club, like the old days!”

“Success wasn't something I'd really thought about or even really wanted” Adam Granduciel

With talk of the days gone-by, The Skinny asks Granduciel if he ever reflects on just how far the band have come. Debut record Wagonwheel Blues sold a little over 3000 copies, before Slave Ambient opened them up to something of a larger crowd. The goodwill generated by Lost In The Dream, however, has resulted in nearly two full years spent on the road. Has he even had time to miss the life he's left behind? “Well I've been used to the touring life for a long time, but now it is getting to a point where it's truly exhausting,” he admits. “But you know, that's the gig. That's the real life. I love touring more than anything. It's just what I do.”

That being said, Granduciel concedes that he misses aspects of home life: “I haven't been to a show for a while. I miss that. I miss that small town feeling, especially spending time with your friends and going to shows every night, or just hanging out at a bar. It's one of those things where we've been traveling for two years now and I feel completely out of the loop. I don't know what's going on in most people's lives and, while it is what it is, I'm just getting to that part of it where I notice it a lot more and it's having a greater effect on me.”

As the band begin to look at the next chapter, there have recently been murmurings of where they might go next; occasional mentions of studio time and sketches of new songs. While it would

THE SKINNY

“We just want to know that the next record will have a good home” On that note, Granduciel remains circumspect, unsure of how much to divulge at such an early stage. “I had some demos that I'd written here in New York; we've played them through and the band all seem to love them. I'm just not going to get too excited,” he adds. “I think you have to let it take its own shape. Wait for the songs to start talking together over time. In the moment I get very excited, and I really do love some of them, but I have to push them aside for a while as I can't offer them the necessary attention just now… like so many other things in life.”

For the first time in our conversation Granduciel sounds somewhat wary, and it's true to say that the weight of expectation now, naturally, lies upon his shoulders. Not only does he have to follow up the widescreen beauty of last year's irresistably euphoric masterpiece, but there was

also the recent announcement that the band has signed a two-album deal with major label heavyweights Atlantic Records.

“That was a really hard decision. It still is a hard decision,” he says of the new deal. “The most important thing to me is that I continue to have the creative freedom to do whatever I want to do with the music I make, and if a label is down with that then I'll listen to what they have to say.” There's an air of defiance in his voice when he says this, as if he has to justify why signing with one of the biggest names in the game is a good thing. There's always been some underhand snobbery about such issues but, in truth, it should be seen as the absolute cherry on the cake, the defining moment for the band thus far. “I'm really excited to work with them,” he notes. “I mean, all labels are trying to sell as many records as possible and find new ways to sell a record – and that's all we want too.

I don't think much will change; we're not going to be a band that sells a million records. Or maybe we will, I don't know, that would be pretty sweet…”

If anything sums up the band's journey over the past two years it's that moment right there; the sudden lightswitch of realisation that maybe they could now shift a million copies, happening in mid-sentence, in real time. “There might be a bit more exposure for us now, I guess.” he ponders.

“I think we just want to know that the next record will have a good home and that we'll be able to keep doing what we want to do, which is to make a living for these six people. That's always been the most important thing.”

If The War On Drugs were indeed lost in the dream for much of the past 18 months, then now they seem anything but. As the dust begins to settle on their success thus far, Granduciel seems fully alive to the possibilities of where this road might take his band of men next; flourishing in the face of it all, thriving in a business in which so many seem to fall by the wayside. A million records?

Don't bet against it.

Freedom of Choice The 22nd annual T in the Park is upon us, taking place at its new home of Strathallan Castle. Away from the limelight hogging chart sensations, we’ve picked out a handful of margin walkers from across the weekend that you simply shouldn’t miss

The War On Drugs play T in the Park's Radio 1 Stage, Strathallan Castle, Perthshire on 10 Jul thewarondrugs.net

The Twilight Sad

BDY_PRTS

Catholic Action

Pinact

St. Vincent

The Twilight Sad

Miaoux Miaoux

Sunday 12 Jul, BBC Introducing The Glasgow duo recently released their second single, Cold Shoulder, and it's every bit as dazzling as 2014’s debut. With a live show that takes in both elegant electro-pop and shimmering spandex suits, they're quickly becoming an unmissable proposition.

Saturday 11 Jul, BBC Introducing It's been a big year for the Glasgow duo thanks to a string of positive reviews for their debut record, released in May on Brooklyn's Kanine Records, and their showing here should be the cherry on the cake that their raucous, brilliantly unhinged, guitar pop so thoroughly deserves.

Friday 10 Jul, King Tuts Wah Wah Tent With the dust settling on album number four and following on from what might be their most accomplished year to-date, James Graham and co. will bring their phenomenally LOUD live setup to this year's T In The Park event, and deliver as much celebration as their brooding, tempered pop music will allow.

Wolf Alice

Sunday 12 Jul, Radio 1 Stage Finally releasing their long-awaited debut album this Summer, London quartet Wolf Alice are on the brink of breaking in to the big league thanks to their sumptuous and thoroughly addictive take on indie rock. Their live shows have a reputation as being one of the brightest and most thrilling on the circuit

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Saturday 11 Jul, T Break Stage The brightest spark in Fuzzkill Records current crop, Catholic Action combine unexpectedly sweet melodies with meaty slabs of guitar and infectious melodies that stick with you for days.

Their T in the Park outing will be their biggest show to-date and it can't come soon enough.

Saturday 11 Jul, King Tuts Wah Wah Tent One of the most electrifying live performers in the game, Annie Clarke is the epitome of artistic growth; rising from a member of Sufjan Steven's backing band to blossom in to a truly distinct and dynamic artist in her own right. A uniquely powerful proposition that simply shouldn't be missed.

Sunday 12 Jul, BBC Introducing Fresh off the back of his wonderful new LP, Julian Corrie heads to T in the Park with a whole batch of new songs to woo the masses. School of Velocity is a heady delight of luxurious electro-pop and you can expect a live show which is every bit as affectionate and danceable as you might expect. [Tom Johnson] T in the Park takes place in Strathallan Castle, Perthshire on 10-12 Jul tinthepark.com

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Credit: Euan Robertson

seem easy for the group to go down the classic ‘life on tour’ route, given that they've done little else in the time since ...Dream's release, Granduciel insists there'll be nothing of the sort. “I don't think anybody wants to hear what it's like to be on tour,” he says flatly.

“I don't really want to say too much more at this point but, you know, I just write about life, and it's all one life; different takes on the same thing.“ His reticence to fully discuss new material is understandable, though he does allude to a certain ambition for the next record. “There's still a lot of things I love about recording that I haven't taken, sonically, as far as I've either wanted to or been able to,” he says with excitement.

“That's where this band will really work well, I think…”

Prophets of Boom With the seminal garage outfit sounding as fiery now as in their 60s heyday, The Sonics’ Gerry Roslie explains why it’s just as sweet second time around

“O

h, yeah, we had so many worries. After forty years, you don’t know where everybody’s attitude is at. Have we forgotten more than we know? It’s a difficult situation. We had a lot of ‘ring rust,’ as they say in boxing!” Gerry Roslie is at home in Tacoma, Washington, the city where his band The Sonics formed in the early sixties. He’s talking about the recording of their recently released fourth album, This Is The Sonics.

With bands now reforming on an almost hourly basis, The Sonics’ return to recording puts it all into head-spinning perspective. Sleater-Kinney fans waited patiently for, huh, a decade. The Sonics’ new album, the band’s first since 1967’s Introducing The Sonics, ends a near-half century break from recording.

Recruited by founder member Larry Parypa to play keys in the second iteration of the band in 1964, keyboard player Roslie quickly became their lead singer and The Sonics’ scuzzed-up rhythm and blues quickly saw them establish a nationwide following despite the preferences of American radio for a cleaner, cleaner-living sound. Early breakout single The Witch – still a live set staple – led to them recording their 1965 debut album, Here Are The Sonics. A second album, Boom, appeared the following year. With label bosses keen to build on their success, they set about recording Introducing The Sonics in LA but the band’s own developing tastes and the label’s desire for a more polished sound led to them quickly drifting apart. A one-off live show in 1972 and an album of old material recorded by Roslie with a new lineup (1980’s Sinderella) was all their loyal and patient fan base had to keep their hopes alive. That, it seemed, was that.

But somehow, perhaps given impetus by the ubiquitous 2004 Land Rover ad that featured their version of Have Love, Will Travel, the offers just kept on coming. “We were all split up, you know, split up all over the place,” explains Roslie.

“It had been forty years. But we kept getting calls from this promoter in New York – a guy called John Weiss – he had this garage rock festival called Cavestomp and he kept asking us to play; year

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after year he’d ask us. So finally we thought we’d try and see whether we could, whether we were able to play together after all that time. So we gave it a go, we jammed it up, and it was still sounding good so we said we’d play. We played the Friday and the Sunday and that kicked everything off, the whole thing. We were worried, of course; people in New York, if they don’t like you, they let you know!”

The Sonics made their initial recordings in Seattle. Since their re-emergence, and the support of next-generation acts who’ve held them up as influences – the band has taken to the stage in recent years with the likes of Mudhoney and Eddie Vedder – the city is still revered as the birthplace of grunge. Roslie is flattered by the attention of the next generation (“They’re always so respectful and polite when they tell me how much our music meant. It’s kinda hard to get your head around – we were just these young punks!”) but paints a picture of an entirely different place in the early 60s: “Well it was different music, primarily, back then, of course – kinda rough and raw in those early days. There were bands all over the place, you know. But I think everything changed when The Beatles appeared. The moment they broke through, that led to even more bands getting going. So yeah, it was great, really busy and a whole lot going on.”

“We were just these young punks!”

Gerry Roslie

“We were really big fans of The Beatles,” continues Roslie. “We didn’t necessarily want to be them but we did admire the songs and the songwriting talent. We were developing our own style.

Actually, more importantly, they were much better musicians than we were!” Like The Beatles, who quickly cast off their beat group beginnings once they became comfortable with the recording pro-

Interview: Gary Kaill Photography: Beth Chalmers

cess, did The Sonics ever consider more left-field exploration? “Mmm. The main thing was that we all had the same attitude to the band and to the music. Everybody wanted to do the same driving music; we didn’t do many love songs. There were a lot of bands emerging who were clearly trying to second guess the whole thing, even trying to copy The Beatles; a lot of bands were trying to do that.

But that really wasn’t our thing. We were just too loud and whatever you wanna call it – just too reckless.”

It was perhaps this recklessness, and their desire to explore their growing capabilities – albeit within a chosen framework – that led to the group’s eventual falling apart around that ill-fated third album. Roslie is frank about the growing disconnection between band and label: “Well we went down to LA for a week or two to record and it started to become clear that the way we played, which is just loud and very direct, wasn’t what the engineer in the studio wanted. So he said to our guitarist, ‘Oh you don’t have to play like that.’ And he was referring to all the feedback we liked to use and the dark tones we had. So he said that they would add what they wanted back in the booth, post-recording, you know? So that was very frustrating because he wasn’t trying to get our sound; he was trying to get what he wanted. We went in there, these crazy kids from the Seattle area, and all of a sudden they were trying to mould us into something we weren’t, and we didn’t like that at all.” Was the band simply trying to capture its onstage sound? “Absolutely! I mean, you couldn’t see them doing that to Eric Clapton or someone!

He'd play his way and tell them to record it.”

With the band now back as a fully functioning concern, it's been a strange experience for them to try to pick up the pieces. With the return of Roslie, Parypa and original saxophonist Rob Lind, the addition of new members Freddie Dennis on bass and Dusty Watson on drums has helped spark the new line-up. Even so, four decades is a long time. “And I'm not kidding when I say we’d been forty years apart,” says Roslie. “We hadn’t called each other or anything. We all just went to

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back to our previous lives, if you will – normal occupations, you know?” Difficult to renew those old relationships? “Yeah. A little bit. But mostly, it’s about the music. It’s always the music. So when we got together, it was all about jamming – going back to the songs, trying on new ideas, just seeing what everybody’s attitude is. Fortunately, the attitude hadn’t changed one bit. Everybody wanted to rock ‘n’ roll and they wanted to rock hard, which is what we do. Nobody wanted to sit down and play!”

Their recent studio offering makes that much perfectly clear. Roslie may have just inched his way into his seventies but This Is The Sonics breathes fire in a way that leads you to suspect they’ve simply pulled it from the vaults. A cover of The Kinks’ The Hard Way is pure punk: “We were fans of The Kinks since they started out. We had a similar vibe in those early days.”

With attention turning to their most extensive run of touring since the sixties, Roslie is looking forward to getting back on the tour bus and has high hopes for their forthcoming UK dates. “Well, right after that New York thing, where we first came out of the cave so to speak, we were asked to go to England,” he says. “So we did that, and because that went so well, we proceeded to do some more. And you know the amazing thing? So many young people are coming out to the shows.

Plus, those early shows, after we came back, we had no idea what was going to happen. ‘Are they going to be throwing tomatoes at us or what?’ But it was a real shock, a really pleasant shock. It was déjà vu! It was like forty years ago all over again.

There were teens, early twenties – a real mix alongside the older fans. So, yeah, we love the UK. You guys over there always got it.” The whole experience of being in a band again, does it help keep you young? “Does it keep me young? Hell, yeah!

Yeah, it does. Different scenery, different people, different cultures. It makes you feel like everything is new.”

The Sonics play Wickerman, Dundrennan, on 25 Jul thesonicsboom.com

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DESIGN BY BRIGHTEYE

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Back to Black Mountain Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

T

he brief for the inaugural year of the MLitt Curatorial Practice at GSA was simple enough: American Abstract Expressionism. Yet, with the wit and guile expected of a contemporary art curator, they've managed to shoehorn their own interests into what might have been an otherwise straightforward exhibition of prints at the Hunterian Art Gallery.

It's little known that the Hunterian have an extensive collection of works on paper, with prints from the likes of De Kooning, Rauschenberg, Albers and Warhol. While impressive, the postgraduate students felt it necessary as students of contemporary art curation specifically to bring something new to the discussion. It was the experimental practices of the Black Mountain College and its relationship with Abstract Expressionism that provided the all-important convincing link to bring in contemporary artists: in their words, “Black Mountain College was not only a mythology on its own, but we started to see real echoes with Glasgow, both in working practices and the sense of community.”

“Don't look back, look forward and do stuff” It was with reference to avant-garde choreographer Merce Cunningham, that the curatorial group found their title, The Only Way To Do It Is To Do It. Though a bit longer than the average title, it manages to neatly sum up the working ethos that carries through the pieces on exhibition, both historically and contemporarily.

Selecting three artists, the emphasis was on a non-prescriptive reflection on the legacy of the Black Mountain College and associated art historical figures. From nine artists, the group decided to choose Ciara Phillips, Raydale Dower and Glasgow Open Dance School (G.O.D.S.).

Together, they're loosely grouped across print, dance and sound. It was important that something a bit motley was put together: “We didn't

just want to be saying, ‘Here's Josef Albers and here's a contemporary artist who is doing a similar thing.’ It was about doing something much more fluid. If there's any kind of ethos of Black Mountain College, it's ‘don't look back, look forward and do stuff’.”

Across the objects of the show, there are examples of the impressive collection of the Hunterian, combined with Phillips, Dower and G.O.D.S.. Cross-pollinating works both old and new, Phillips’ large screen print diptych New Things to Discuss intersects the space with De Kooning and Robert Motherwell. G.O.D.S. exhibit alongside John Cage's loose collection of recipes and scores for work, Roly Holy Mountain. In turn, G.O.D.S. present a kind of cumulative dance score where the audiences of their dance workshops are asked to add actions for future iterations. Dialogue continues, this time with John Cage, as Dower transmits the noise from outside the gallery into the space via a network of microphones and amplifiers.

It was with reference to the Albers quotation, “don't become an adding machine for dates and facts, produce actual facts,” that the curation students assembled a programme of ‘activations’. Open for a very healthy six months (until 4 October), it was important that the space and show were both kept alive somehow. They coined the term ‘activation’ to distinguish the events from workshops, as “they're not necessarily participatory.”

With Dower having delivered his workshop last month, in which he recreated some of the works of Steve Reich and John Cage, next month G.O.D.S. and Ciara Phillips respectively will deliver the second and third ‘activations’. For Phillips, this means reuniting with recently graduated students from 5-8 August and printmaking together with them, in an open and experimental way. One week later on Sunday 16 August, G.O.D.S. will deliver the second of their workshops (the first was in March), bookending the exhibition with a free workshop, open to all.

The Only Way To Do It Is To Do It is now on in the Hunterian Art Gallery, and continues until 4 Oct. Full details of the August "activations" will be published on the Hunterian's website soon

Niagara Falls from the American side, whole plate daguerreotype by Platt D Babbitt, c.1855

Anxious Ornament A Victorian Sensation displays a breathtaking number of photographic artefacts and information about the emergence of the medium during the 19th century Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

‘M

ore photos are taken now in two minutes than the entire 19th century.’ This factoid is writ large at the beginning of Photography: A Victorian Sensation, yet what the material (and there's lots) of the exhibit appends to this mathematical curiosity is the precious objecthood of photographs from the period.

It's as easily forgotten that the 90s didn't have Google as it is that there was a time when photographs were thought of not just as virtual files, to be shared and deleted at whim, but revered and prized possessions. In the National Museum exhibition, A.D. Morrison pays a due debt of gratitude to the collection of the late Bernard HowarthLoomes. It's Howarth-Loomes’ taste for the unusual objects that gives the edge to this historical exhibition. There is in one vitrine what can only be described as a shiny golden hand roller of framed postage sized portraits.

But it's not a case of quirk worship. With figures like Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes’ analyses of Victorian photography so often referenced, it's only proper to give this emergent period of the medium proper attention beyond cursory clichés of torturous exposure times, and variously sordid rumours of the content of the first photograph.

Cutting across the development of the medium is a Victorian obsession with technological advancement. Yet many of the blurred, dreamily hazy images of rural France that are exhibited in the show, the curator Morrison argues, acted as an antecedent for Impressionist painting. In an odd back and forth, the aesthetic potential of these ‘accidents’ for photography as an artistic medium was only fully realised in dialogue with the work of Impressionist painters. The show tacitly suggests links with Monet in its display of the work Gathering Water Lilies from the 1880s by Peter Henry Emerson.

One of the most interesting inclusions are the ‘stereoscopes’. Using a pair of lenses and coupled images, the illusion of 3D images they created generated a 19th century craze. Sales of these gadgets reached the hundreds of thousands at their height. In the exhibition, there's a selection

of the kinds of views popular at the time, including ancient ruins and epic architectural structures.

As well as the consumer high technology of the day, also displayed are the early tools of the burgeoning photographic sciences. There are some surprises, like the dinky domestic iron that would be used to apply wax to negatives, making them more transparent and reducing the printing time.

“An instinct to tame the strangeness of new technology” The exhibition looks towards the formation of photography as an artform, as well as the necessary accompanying scientific developments.

Nevertheless, it's the tremendous number of examples of the decoration that surrounded photographs that is its most dominant and interesting element. Perhaps some of the anxiety of presentation came from an instinct to tame the strangeness of the new technology of photography. Though now sounding like cheap tat, ‘photo jewellery’ was the height of fashion during the 19th century, with Queen Victoria at the avantgarde of the trend. Particularly poignant are the small oval brooches containing pictures of deceased loved ones, and decorated with a curled lock of their hair.

It's unlikely that some of the processes on show could experience a resurgence of popularity à la the enthusiasm for previously dead formats like vinyl. Yet with the proliferation of cheap disposable cameras, Photography: A Victorian Sensation taps into this nostalgia for pre-Cloud photography. Okay, some of the impressively in-depth details of the perfection of the Daguerreotype may prove too dry for all but the buffs.

But there's a wealth of unusual eye candy for those more interested in the decorative history of the photograph, and heaps upon heaps of weird Victorian faces.

Photography: A Victorian Sensation is now on in the National Museum of Scotland until 22 Nov 2015

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Credit: Howarth-Loomes Collection at National Museums Scotland

GSA Curatorial Practice students mount an exhibition that's intended as a sharp new contextualisation of American Abstract Expressionist prints

The Business The ultimate observer of the music business, Simon Napier-Bell talks us through its pharmaceutically fueled history as chronicled in his all-encompassing book Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay

“A

ny artist who comes into the music business is doing exactly that. They've decided they don't want to be an artist, they don't want to sing for the birds and find their inner soul. They want to do business, they want to make music to sell.”

It's an opinion to shatter naïve fan illusions of creative ideals. But in response to any naysayers or non believers, it's given credence by the fact the man who utters it has been perfectly placed throughout his professional life to understand that the most important line in mainstream music is the dotted one – a line of artistic compromise clearly drawn the moment a performer signs upon it.

Simon Napier-Bell, originally a keen jazz musician who, in his own words was neither talented nor black enough to make it, instead became enticed by what lay behind the music. “I realised, to be honest, it really wasn't the music I was interested in… it was stories, the business... it was the gossip.” So he entered this world, initially as manager of The Yardbirds, later to discover Marc Bolan and sign Wham! – conjuring their overnight international stardom as the first pop group to play Communist China. Preceding all this, Simon wrote the lyrics to Dusty Springfield's UK number one You Don't Have to Say You Love Me, abandoning this lyrical career once exposed to the 1960s

soulless battery hen method of hit-making (witnessing Carole King and Neil Sedaka grinding out eight-hour days, writing in sweatbox cells for United Artists). So he is both the ultimate instigator and observer, ideally positioned to write Ta-ra-ra-boomde-ay, a hugely informed and highly enjoyable history of the whole thing. “Not a history of music,” he's keen to stress. “A history of the music business.

It's very important, this difference, because I think George Martin is making a programme for the BBC called The History of Pop Music. I wasn't interested in that. I never have been.”

He guides the reader along a musical and mercantile journey from pre-Broadway and ragtime, through the amphetamine fuelled formation of rock ‘n’ roll, onto rap, disco, boybands and beyond. Introducing us to the monstrous moguls at the top of the tree, publishers, managers, A&R men and assorted hustlers, entrepreneurs and songwriters. Oh, and of course the stars, those most accidental and interchangeable commodities.

“Stars are people who come along at just the right moment and are prepared to compromise with how the industry works.” As opposed to simple musicians, who although often more technically talented, “are like plumbers, you call them in and they do the backing track.” Simon employs the same methods conversationally as in his written

work, sugar-coating facts with anecdote; juicy gossip flavouring any dry data. “The record company had this thing… they make 10,000% profit by taking vinyl and turning it into a record and to do that they need a label and a song and an artist, and the artist is just seen as one of the four or five things that are needed: ‘We'll use this one or that one.’” As Keith Richards once commented, “Record companies would love to get rid of musicians entirely, those bothersome things who talk back and want to do it better.”

So Simon became the bridge between rampant capitalism and his artist's fragile creativity.

“You do sit in the middle, you sympathise with both sides. The main thing is to draw them together. You know that you're going to have to pull your artists towards commercialism. A group like Japan [Simon's former charges] couldn't happen until they slowly edged towards something more commercial.”

But although Simon felt an enormous responsibility for his artists, parental guidance was an indulgence too far – especially when it came to the dangerous terrain of narcotics, which in his previous book Black Vinyl, White Powder are placed on an equal level of importance as the music itself.

“Well, I think it's always been a huge part of creativity... music always coalesced around parties and places where drink was,” he continues. “Alcohol from the very beginning was a part of how music was performed and where it was performed; popular music anyway.” As the world turned, booze was joined by powder and pills, with musicians always amongst the early adopters – a double edged sword of danger and creative opportunity.

“If you look at the three years when rock 'n' roll evolved it was a very quick evolution... pretty much amphetamine driven. Even Elvis admitted it” Simon Napier-Bell

“As a manager it's not your job to cure an artist of anything,” Simon states, with a hint of self-absolution from the Faustian pact performers enter into. “If an artist comes to me and they want to be more successful and that's what they commission me to do, and they're on heroin, probably the worst thing you can do is stop them taking heroin because whatever it is forcing or helping the creativity, that's going to be one of the parts.”

A young Simon was schooled while witnessing girls troop up to the hotel suites of a fellow manager's band in a conveyor belt of sex and drugs: “Groups don't hire managers to moralise about their private lives.” The hypocrisy being that many managers ‘looked after’ their charges in more unseemly ways than those words suggest. “For one thing, if they're on heroin you've got to make sure you can get it,” muses Simon in the third person (perhaps: he did of course manage Clapton and

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BOOKS

Interview: Alan Bett

Page), “or you end up with them in jail… You don't want them to go off to some awful den and passing out.” Then again, those on the business end often behaved no better, and Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay lists the names and indiscretions of moguls and managers enticed for all the wrong reasons into a business where bad behaviour is not only tolerated but encouraged. “It used to be thought that that's why the artists came into it,” Simon agrees. “They'll get sex and drugs and applause, but actually it's quite clear that's why most of the major figures on the business side come into it too.” It's a rogues’ roster; the book highlighting many lesser spotted industry characters alongside the more notorious: The Who's Kit Lambert, The Beatles’ Brian Epstein and Led Zeppelin's behemoth of bad behaviour Peter Grant – the latter described by promotor Bill Graham as “a dictator with this little army… They fucked with promoters… They surrounded themselves with physical might… They were ready to kill at the slightest provocation.” Simon suggests as their motivation that “they just decide they want to get drunk, live well and hang out with musicians. And how do they do it? Some become journalists. Rock journalists are usually just groupies with a flair for writing and these guys are groupies with a flair for business.”

But drugs played a far more influential cultural role than quelling a lead guitarist's ego, a vacant smile on his face and a needle in his arm.

Mind altering substances have always been catalysts for musical transformation. “After the war there were always amphetamines floating around.”

Simon says. “Truck drivers used it and it just went from the front to the back of the bus. If you look at the three years when rock ‘n’ roll evolved it was a very quick evolution. It was sort of 1949 to 1953 and was pretty much amphetamine driven. Even Elvis admitted it. It was just hyped up country music.”

“It [rock ‘n’ roll] was one of the musics created by drugs, as was electronica in the 80s, completely and totally created by ecstasy.” A statement supported by Altered State, Matthew Collins’ essential history of the chemical generation, arguing that although the scene's premier art was music (“a constantly changing sonic narrative conjuring a magic that is beyond language”), the movement was largely pharmacologically fuelled.

Towards the end of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, Simon contends that dance music's distancing (at least overtly) from this drug culture has resulted in its anodyne Disneyfication for the US mass market – where re-branded terminology has rendered rave a dirty word. Not only genres have been chemically influenced over time but the format and unit length in which music is consumed. Acid may have changed the way people viewed the world, but also, more practically, how often they were willing to get up off their arse. “It certainly created the need for the album.” Simon says. “If you take some LSD, three minutes was…” He pauses, perhaps nostalgically. “You didn't want to change the record.”

Yet focussing solely on these salacious tales of drugs and debauchery misrepresents the colossal achievement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, this unparalleled insight into the music business from its birth. As much as it is magical, it's often a business like any other, where commerce rules and what's created is not only art but product. Combined with Simon's self-deprecating allusions to his anecdotes and observations as simple gossip, it's possible to underplay his contribution to the music business – substantial while a part of it, incomparable when chronicling it.

Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay is out now in paperback, published

by Unbound, RRP £8.99 Black Vinyl, White Powder is also available in multiple formats

THE SKINNY

Chasing Amy Sharp-eyed director Asif Kapadia's latest documentary charts the rise and premature demise of controversial soul singer Amy Winehouse. We talk to him ahead of the film's EIFF screening about its genesis and challenges Interview: George Sully

A

sif Kapadia is a man fast becoming known for powerful documentaries, though to say that with only two under his belt is testament to his talent. Like his widely-feted F1 feature Senna before it, Amy, which tells the story of soul singer Amy Winehouse's life and career, is an unflinching and engrossing journey, delicately assembled and teeming with never-before-seen archive footage.

It's certainly a tough subject. As lauded as Winehouse's music was (five Grammys, three Ivor Novellos, a Mercury nod and a Brit award), her insalubrious persona rubbed people up the wrong way. “For me that's the big challenge,” Kapadia explains “To pick a subject that you think you're not interested in and try and get the audience to buy into it and find it interesting.”

Indeed, those who praised Senna often did so despite confessing a disinterest in the sport.

For Kapadia, this was partly the impetus. “The aim was to get people who don't like sport, or Formula One, who think the most boring thing on Earth is people going nreeoww round and round in circles for two hours, to watch the film.”

This mentality was especially relevant to Amy. The impression many have of the troubled star is one skewed by sensationalist tabloids. In the years leading up to her death, she was frequently caricatured by comedians and journalists alike, her bulimic frame (her brother has claimed the eating disorder was a contributing factor to her death) and substance abuse the butt of endless mockery. Her still-warm body was even lampooned as a halloween costume. Dehumanised by the media, she was rendered a guilt-free bullseye. “Everyone bought into it; everyone thought she was a waste of space,” explains Kapadia.

Without getting too preachy, the director suggests Amy is a kind of mirror. “The audience and journalists who have seen the film do think a little bit about how complicit they were in what happened,” he says. “People who watch it think it's about her, but then they realise, it's actually about us.”

So how did the film come about?

Senna quickly became the highest grossing UK documentary of all time, scooping BAFTAs for best documentary and best editing in 2012. “I got offered a lot of films about sports people,” he laughs. “I just thought, ‘I don't want to do another sports film.’ So it was a question of trying to find the right subject.”

The right subject, it turned out, was quite unexpected. “James [Gay-Rees], who produced Senna, had received a call from someone at Universal Music who said, ‘We really loved [Senna]. Would you be interested in doing a film like that about Amy?’” Gay-Rees called the director the next day: an instant yes.

Kapadia, a Londoner himself, was drawn to the star's background in the capital, especially since he was working on a film for the London Olympics at the time. “I happened to be thinking about the city, so the timing was kind of perfect.”

Reuniting his Senna dream team, Kapadia had no idea what shape the picture would take. “With Senna, I had a writer on the film – Manish [Pandey] – who knew everything; read every book, seen every race, had a photographic memory,” he recalls.

“On Amy, there wasn't an expert. Different people were there for different periods of her life.” There were gaps to fill, in other words. “The toughest thing was just figuring out: what is the story?

What are we saying? What is the movie about?”

The answers lay with her friends and colleagues, but winning them over would not be easy.

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Remarkably, help came partly in the edit of the film itself.

Senna, applauded for ditching the tired talking heads format seen in countless other documentaries, used purely audio interviews as a counterpoint to its wealth of vivid archive video.

This was Chris King's method, Kapadia's editor (also known for cutting the Banksy doc Exit Through the Gift Shop). Maintaining this characteristic approach for Amy was not only a stylistic choice, but pivotal in earning the trust of certain key players.

“Because everybody was so nervous about talking, or they'd never spoken publicly before...

I just wanted to make them feel comfortable,” explains the director. “Putting a camera up in front of people's faces doesn't make people particularly comfortable.” This interview is also being filmed; Kapadia cocks his head at The Skinny's cameras with a wry smile. “Especially if you've only just met them!”

He would meet them in a private studio in Soho, mic on the table, nothing else. “The lighting was particularly bad in this space, so I used to turn the lights off – pretty much dim them right down, almost to the point where we were sitting in the dark – and they'd open up. They just felt more comfortable. They'd speak about very personal things, and they'd cry, and it'd be quite heavy, quite intense.

“In the end I spoke to about a hundred people like that, and some people more than once,” he concludes. “Really, that's when we realised... this is what the movie's gonna be. It's all going to be constructed out of this audio, which to begin with was just research, but actually it became the film.”

Trust was key, and earning it came in gradual victories. “The film really comes out of the trust of most of these people, because they then supplied me with the photographs, the home movies, the videos, the phonecalls...”

Some of the most arresting footage comes at the beginning: candid tour videos courtesy of Nick Shymansky, Winehouse's first A&R manager. “Nick was really the first person to trust me, and that was like the opening of the door. That's when I thought, OK, maybe we've got a film.” It is often quite mundane snippets, just her being “silly, and playing pool, and hanging out, and doing her makeup in the loo... ordinary things,” but made all the more poignant knowing the hassled megastar she'll become. Thanks to Shymansky, similar breakthroughs eventually came with Winehouse's childhood friends Juliette Ashby and Lauren Gilbert, who provide clips from her youth and heart-wrenching anecdotes about her later decline.

Accumulating this trove of recordings, the next task was forming a coherent structure.

“On Senna it was very easy to track the narrative, because you have this guy's measurable journey [through the sport],” producer Gay-Rees comments at the Q&A that followed Amy's UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival. “This was a much more ephemeral story, because she was much more intangible.”

One visually engaging aspect of the film is the use of on-screen typography to bring her heartfelt, funny, and deeply personal writing to life. “It seemed quite clear, from very early on, that the songs were gonna be key; the spine of the film,” Kapadia explains. “The lyrics were Amy at her most eloquent.”

In a clip included in the film, Winehouse herself says, “I wouldn't write anything unless it was directly personal to me, just cos I wouldn't be

able to tell the story right.” Kapadia agrees: “[Her lyrics] really gives you the roadmap to her life. She had it all written down.”

“People who watch it think it's about her, but then they realise, it's actually about us” Asif Kapadia

The tragedy, when it comes, is a gut-punch, and though no outright responsibility is laid at anyone's door, culprits are there if you seek them out. Winehouse's father Mitch – as has been exhaustively documented in the press – doesn't come across well. Her turbulent relationship (and drug use) with ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil, and the media at large, both play clear roles. But when pushed on the question of heroes and villains, Kapadia stresses objectivity. “It's not about poin-

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ting the finger in one particular direction. It's much more complicated than that.”

To round up, we suggest a kinship between Senna and Amy's titular tragic figures. Is there something about these two otherwise very different people that drew him to commit them to celluloid? “I suppose I'm interested in the outsider or the underdog. I find those stories much more interesting than heroes. Classical heroes – boring.”

But the 43-year-old, whose work began in fiction and whose current project is the period romance Ali and Nino, doesn't want to be put in a box, saying that their thematic similarity was serendipitous. “I think it is a coincidence, they just sort of came along. There was something there that grabbed me, at that moment in time.”

So what's next? More documentaries or dramas? “I just like making films. I don't really worry about if it's a fiction, short film, feature film, whatever it might be,” he says. “I like the freedom of just wandering, tripping over a film – ‘Oh, I'll make that one.’ It's quite random. There's no masterplan.”

Amy had its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival and is released across the UK 2 Jul by Altitude amyfilm.co.uk

THE SKINNY

Arrested Development Mia Hansen-Løve discusses her brilliant new film, Eden, an intimate epic telling the history of the ‘French touch’ music scene through one DJ's bloodshot eyes Interview: Jamie Dunn

M

ia Hansen-Løve is sitting with legs folded Buddha-like on a straight-back chair in a London hotel conference room. In her hand she's unconsciously fiddling with a card of stickers covered in Disney princesses. She sees them catch The Skinny's eye. “My daughter was playing in here before,” she explains. “I should put them away, really.

People will think I'm weird.” She carries on playing. One gets the impression the 34-year-old filmmaker doesn't worry too much about what other people think of her.

You can see this strength of character in her small but exquisite body of work. Her first three features (All Is Forgiven, The Father of My Children and Goodbye First Love) reveal a filmmaker with a distinct voice all her own; one that is concerned with organic rhythm and gentle ironies rather than grand dramatics or convoluted scenarios.

Take her latest film, Eden, which charts the rise of French house music from the early 90s to the present day. A more conventional filmmaker might want to tell the story from the point-of-view of one of the scene's superstars, say Daft Punk.

That electronic duo do make an appearance as baby-faced house party wax-spinners, but HansenLøve's focus instead is Paul, a contemporary of Daft Punk's (he's at the party where they premiere Da Funk) who didn't quite make it.

Hansen-Løve based the character on her own brother, Sven Hansen-Løve, who was a DJ on the French touch scene and ended up left behind by the wave. “I'm much more inspired by people I know intimately than by fantasy stories,” she says when asked about her choice to base the film on her brother's experiences, “but also I thought it could be much more universal because, for every two Daft Punks, how many Pauls are there? A lot of people can connect with that music deeply, but as far as it has to do with their lives and their path, I think Paul's path is a very common one.

That's what would make [Eden's story] universal.”

The film is an intimate epic. It's set over two decades, has dozens of characters, and scenes on either sides of the Atlantic, but it never strays far from its lead protagonist's emotional imbroglios. “You'd think in twenty years you'd have lots of big events and dramatic moments, but – partly unconsciously – I avoid them and instead look at the aftermath or the moments that people don't care about – but they are crucial to me.”

Hansen-Løve is well aware this approach won't be to every filmgoer's taste. “Maybe I'm losing part of the public that need the more frontal storytelling,” she concedes, “but then I think about the other part of the public who can still connect with the film even more deeply from the fact that it is not conventional.”

“I'm much more inspired by people I know intimately than by fantasy stories” As the years role on, Paul's DJ regime leaves him in a kind of limbo, a world of euphoric, cokefuelled nights that prevent him joining his friends in a more adult and family orientated lifestyle. It's a pattern she's observed in her brother and her other DJ friends and acquaintances. “It's strange, actually, to see people who spend their lives in nightclubs, who don't sleep at night, take drugs and alcohol; some of them die, but some of them seem to stay as if they were 25 forever.” Like in all tales of eternal youth, this blessing eventually becomes a curse. “Girls come and go and leave again, people die, the music changes – everything changes except Paul. He's just like a vampire who stays young forever. At first you think it's a power, but then it gets quite sad at some point.”

Like in Hansen-Løve's previous film, Goodbye First Love, which takes place over eight years, there are no facile efforts to make Paul look older over the film's timespan, which serves to enhance his arrested development. “In all the films where you have these special effects to make the actors look older, for me they make the films look like cinema,” she says. “I was always more excited to make the films give a feeling of life. I'm not saying it's the perfect solution, because the perfect solution would have been to wait 20 years, like in Boyhood, but I am not patient enough.”

Eden is released on 24 Jul by Metrodome

July 2015

Pet Sights and Sounds

Mia Hansen-Løve

Love & Mercy tells the story of Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson without falling back on the many clichés of the music biopic. Director Bill Pohlad reveals how he brought the life of this troubled genius to the screen Interview: Josh Slater-Williams

“I

honestly grew up more as a Beatles guy than a Beach Boys guy, but I've admitted that to Brian, so he's aware,” says Bill Pohlad with a little smile.

We're speaking to Pohlad ahead of the UK premiere of his gorgeous and tragic Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and he begins by explaining how his musical alliances started to change. “As I got older, I think I started to appreciate The Beach Boys much more, and then, just spontaneously, about ten years ago, I got into Pet Sounds in a much deeper way. I mean, it's something I always appreciated, but I didn't really plumb the depths of it until more recently. And so when this project came along, I was kind of perfectly keyed up for it, I think.”

A producer on such acclaimed films as The Tree of Life and 12 Years a Slave, Pohlad's journey to becoming its director was a circuitous one. “It came [as] a script floating around Hollywood called Heroes and Villains that dealt with [Wilson's] life.

It was a good script, but it just didn't do it the way that I thought it should. And so I said, ‘this doesn't work for me, but if it doesn't work out, come back and we'll start over.’ So they did, and I started working on it as a producer and with Oren Moverman [Oscar-nominated for 2009’s The Messenger] as the writer, and we started playing with this concept of the two strands and where we would meet these two strands.”

In order to avoid the kind of music biopic tropes Pohlad describes as “being a slave to every beat of a person's story,” Love & Mercy offers a more formally bold narrative than the sort of films expertly parodied in spoof Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. One of its two interspersed strands concerns Wilson in the 1960s at the height of his powers, where he is played by Paul Dano. The other sees John Cusack play Wilson in the 1980s, postbreakdown, forming a romance that enrages his therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti), who's taken control of every aspect of Wilson's life.

“It was just part of that overall feeling of not being slaves to convention,” Pohlad says, “so we didn't wanna have prosthetics or something to

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make them look alike, or to make them look exactly like Brian. To me, it was more exciting just to let them find this kind of inner Brian, if you will, and find it in their own way. And then, hopefully, the harmony of those two kind of separate performances is what creates the ultimate picture. Obviously it could have gone wrong, it could have been bad.

But thankfully, with these two great actors, it came out like we'd hoped.”

“The things that Brian hears in his head are part of his genius” Bill Pohlad

Also key to capturing Brian's spirit is the film's sound and music, with Oscar-winner Atticus Ross (The Social Network) brought in to create some mesmerising soundscapes. “The things that Brian hears in his head, the harmonies and the orchestrations and the arrangements, are part of his genius. But he hears them all the time and he can't necessarily shut them off, so that's part of his madness too, if you will. We call them the mind trips: we had written into the script these times when you would go into Brian's head and hear this cacophony of sounds, and when I was thinking about how we'd realise those on screen I thought about The Beatles’ Revolution 9, which seemed like the kind of thing that I could imagine: dissonant and not a continuous melody but a collage in a way.”

The end result of Pohlad's efforts is an intimate and often astounding depiction of a genius.

One hopes it kicks off a revolution of its own within biopic cinema – wouldn't that be nice.

Love & Mercy is released 10 Jul by Sony pictures

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THE SKINNY

Treading the Line Playwrights Neil LaBute and Omar El-Khairy talk about Walking the Tightrope, censorship and the arts, and The Arches closure ahead of their short plays coming to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Interview: Emma Ainley-Walker

Hopefully a playful piece that unsettles our assumptions around the very poor national narrative we have around Islam and who gets to speak for it, who are the authentic talking heads we roll out. It's very much that narrative about ‘Good Muslim’ and ‘Bad Muslim’,” as well as the performative aspects that surround these narratives.

Although it is not a direct response to a specific incident within the arts, El-Khairy talks about the “false sense that liberal theatre makers and art makers assume; that there's an unspoken bond, a kind of shared moral compass. I think they kind of arrogantly occlude the power dynamics about who gets to speak for whom and the certain privileges for artists generally, but also within that who gets to speak for whom and by whom.”

This is what he hopes to challenge.

“Freedom of expression is an irreducible right” Omar El-Khairy

A

t last year's Edinburgh Fringe, Israeli theatre company Incubator Theatre had their Underbelly sho cancelled after demonstrations due to the situation in Gaza. This year, Underbelly are making a brave move with Walking the Tightrope, a production by Offstage Theatre and Underbelly Productions in association with Theatre Uncut.

Walking the Tightrope is a series of short, political plays exploring freedom of expression and censorship within theatre and the arts, examining the very issues that Underbelly themselves came into contact with last year. In addition to the short plays, each performance will be followed by a panel show, inviting the audience as well as the theatre makers and invited panellists to discuss the raised issues, from boycotts to social media to the political responsibility of the arts.

Neil LaBute, chatting with The Skinny from Canada, got involved with the project through his connections with Theatre Uncut and director Cressida Brown. “I liked the issue they were talking about so it was a natural thing to get involved with,” he says, and LaBute himself has not been unfamiliar to censorship. “Recently there was another censorship evening I wrote a piece for. The venue that was going to host it decided to cancel because of the piece that I wrote and a couple of the speeches that were going to be given.

July 2015

I eventually said I'm going to remove my piece because I would like to see this evening go on, at least somewhere else. They've since been given another venue and I think the speeches are going to take place but I did remove my piece from that evening. So that was ironically a kind of censorship during an anti-censorship rally.” LaBute talks of being much more open to the idea of someone not censoring work, but honestly stating, ‘I don't like your piece.’ In terms of exploring that within the bounds of Walking the Tightrope, writing for something tangible, he adds: “It's much easier to concentrate your thoughts, to say, ‘Here's something that has the potential to be controversial but hopefully I'm tackling it in a way that makes it of interest for people; thought provoking rather than just trying to provoke.’” It's very much about opening a discussion rather than straight censorship of someone's work.

Also writing for the project, Omar El-Khairy speaks similarly, stating: “I think freedom of expression is an irreducible right,” but talking further about the responsibilities that freedom of expression comes with. “Everyone has got the right to say and do and make what they choose, and I think that right should be defended, but I don't necessarily think that extends to supporting the content of whatever's being made. I think there's a

certain function that within liberal voices and the fetishisation of freedom of expression that extends to not criticising. I think there's a distinction to be made about someone's right to say or do, but that doesn't necessarily extend to me, or whoever, supporting what's being said. That's the kind of distinction I would personally make.”

El-Khairy got involved in the project after its first iteration, wanting to take the questions the project was already asking and “expand them somehow, make it more macro,” instead of focusing in on a very internal discussion taking place within the theatrical world: “There's a very assumed universalism about generalised liberal response to what we think can and can't be said. If I wanted to contribute it would be with the intention of trying to disrupt that liberal presumption about certain topics and certain issues.” Very specifically, he talks about the idea that art can change the world: “Being quite honest, I don't think it does.” Instead it raises questions and forms discussions, challenging if not changing society.

His piece evolved out of discussions of Charlie Hebdo and freedom of expression, exploring “who gets to speak for whom, and where are the lines for offence and what are the justified responses to that.” It examines “narratives around representations of Islam post-9/11 and particularly today.

THEATRE

LaBute's piece instead focuses in on a specific moment: namely Exhibit B, a controversial success at last year's fringe which was then cancelled after moving to the Barbican theatre in London.

“It uses the idea of where's the line in terms of art, what is art,” says LaBute who is “trying to push that boundary as far as I could,” with the piece.

“Most of us would say what I'm witnessing is an act of violence, but because the person is an accomplice, a willing assistant and is saying this is what's in the boundaries, this is my art, this is what I want to say we sit and watch. It then asks the question of how far can we go in the name of art and still be creating something that falls within the confines of that word. Or are there no confines to that word? Is art simply anything I say it is as long as it meets a couple of criteria?” These are interesting questions which may be impossible to answer, but that is what the panel discussions after the performance will aim to tackle.

Speaking of halted performance in a different sense, both LaBute and El-Khairy spoke of the recent closure of The Arches not as censorship in a traditional sense, but as the silencing of a voice.

“It doesn't seem like censorship to me so much as a kind of bullying or a political move to stop the voice of a place that perhaps they don't care for,” states LaBute, while El-Khairy talks of the “criminalisation of certain cultures and the way through bureaucracy that they're closed down.” He links the closure specifically to Form 696, issued to clubs in London asking “what is the music being played and what is the target audience?” and creating a discussion around the “criminalisation of certain black cultures and particular grime music,” similar to how The Arches was targeted for drug use.

However, in light of it all, he ends with a lighted hope: “Very much like the traditions of black-British cultural production; there's always a creative way around it. I'm not excusing what's happened but the light for me is that there's always been an imagination and an energy around disrupted cultures to find a way out, and a different way of presenting itself. Even though it's incredibly unfortunate in terms of the space I don't think that will prevent culture from flourishing.”

Walking The Tightrope, Underbelly Topside, 5-31 Aug (not 17) 3.35pm offstage.org.uk/shows/Walking-the-Tightrope.html

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Surface Tension In Edinburgh College of Art's degree show, the work is remarkable for being wrought with noticeable consideration.

Also trending amongst this year's graduates is a comfort in incorporating new media in a critical and reflexive way Words: Jessica Ramm

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s visitors flock through ECA's tiled neoclassical corridors, it is inevitable that they will at some point be confronted by a man in a nappy, exhibiting bare-pasty-legs, with a suit jacket and shirt on his top half. It's nice to know that students still dress up for their openings.

ECA's degree show is a highly saturated visual experience with the volume turned right up. With an increasing number of durational works, most noticeably spoken narrative and video, this year's cohort expects focus and undivided attention from viewers as they turn to question the politics of the frame itself, be it monitor, canvas, plinth or screen.

Catching hold of the Zeitgeist, many students have taken a very cerebral approach to the production process. Some deconstruct the material environment with the technological aid of the lens, while others incorporate ready-made objects and pre-processed industrial materials into their work. Unbridled, riotous exploration of materials is on the wane this year, superseded by a selfconscious and efficient modus operandi that keeps at bay the mess and unpredictability of processled material exploration. The overall result is a decisive and confidently minimal display of strong artistic voices that are eerily unanimous, and a new crop of artists working in complicity with the machine.

Standing in front of his plush red carpet, laid by sub contractors, Alan Kerr of ‘Nappy Man National’ talks about wanting to give a sense of satisfaction to visitors, which he has achieved by providing a cluster of donation boxes where coins can be deposited. He is clear that this money is not to repay his student loan, simply to provide gratification through a service well used; a statement that sounds hollow in its sincerity and sets up a sticky ambiguity about who's using whom.

This point is driven home by Nikolaos Karavellas’ giant cardboard cut-out figure with a grinning skull, leering from the next room.

The sculpture department, underpinned by technicians who embrace a fabrication challenge, is no stranger to ambitious scaled-up projects.

And with Alice Chandler's huge radiator drying rack hung with PVC, towelling and faux leather impeccably presented in a clammy airless room, this year's show does not disappoint.

While the works that shout loudest, tower over the crowd and demand the most space are definitely the first to be noted, a subtle strand of contemplative questioning is also visible. In the casting room, carefully orchestrated to provide a still, ossified atmosphere, Hamish Young tackles the subject-object dichotomy through spoken narrative that is presented in soliloquy. The disembodied voice of the artist is countered by a second voice belonging to the material, in this case clay, causing the work to become increasingly bifurcated since the voices cannot be reconciled. It is significant that these roles are cast as male and female respectively, picking up on the issue of gender; a topic that can be felt throughout the show, albeit in an understated way.

Solanne Bernard's installation left visitors visibly perturbed after witnessing her control experiment in which some Aloe Vera plants are nurtured via a water drip, while others suffer the fate of having their leaves scorched with bleach.

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This capriciously brutal work is paired with a second video installation presented in a disorientating dark tunnel in which the viewer must contort their body to view a small, orally fixated performance video. Cacti have their spines snipped off, their insides are scooped out and pomegranate seeds spew forth from a disembodied mouth in what appears to be a highly saturated form of torture. This work is echoed across the Sculpture Court in Joanna Baxter Wilson's saccharine video installation where the viewer must pass through a narrow crack to become complicit in viewing a wasp in the throes of death, backed by the sonorous rhythm of a washing machine. Clothes appearing on a drying rack hint at claustrophobic domesticity, this time on a much more intimate scale.

Upstairs in the painting corridor, Olivia Norris's ‘Femme Fatale’ is an erotically charged installation of assemblages that operate with a palpably sinister sense of gay abandon. Curvy, wobbly objects teeter and dangle, interspersed with figurative drawings and digital screens displaying further performance-assemblages with a bionic feel. A small group of middle-aged women stand mesmerised as a pair of dislocated feminine feet strut back and forth with lemons taped under the heel.

“While the works that shout loudest, tower over the crowd and demand the most space are definitely the first to be noted, a subtle strand of contemplative questioning is also visible” As a consequence of the use of technology, the human body is pushed towards centre stage.

In some cases viewers are directly presented with the body of the artist, mediated through video or performance, while other more ambient works facilitate a heightened awareness of one's own body. This year an increasing number of students have turned to explore the resonance of the spaces that they have been occupying, with those on the Intermedia course setting the lead. Frankie Burr narrates a Cartesian dialogue that resonates within the exhibition space while Helen Leigh uses projection and sound to subtly enhance the sensation of a blackout blind flapping against the open window; a minimally ambient installation that leaves viewers baffled as to where the work actually resides. Further on, a large purple-foiled nugget

Gosia Walton - Laser Erotic

by Ellen Spence hulks in the corner radiating a subtle pinkish glow, while a melodious, trickling drip sounds from the sink opposite, even though there is no running water.

This preoccupation with ambience also overspills into the painting department, with Douglas Allison's constructivist installation of painted surfaces emanating a faint neon glow. Downstairs in the MFA show, Gosia Walton describes her installation Laser Erotic as being born out of frustration with the way more traditional paintings are ‘so easy to walk past.’ Her walk-through environment is comprised of luminous acrylic sheets, etched with numerous automated incisions that divulge their maker as a compulsive laser user.

Some of her works provide slick opalescent surfaces in which viewers find themselves reflected.

This paves the way for a narcissistic relationship to develop between object and subject, while images of the work are unwittingly proliferated in the form of selfies; like an uncontrollable virus.

This year the preoccupation with image and surface is strong. Students are found basking in the reflection of their works, or alternatively in the craved-for attention that is finally being delivered by the public [Nappy Man National]. Can the mildly hedonistic quality of this year's show

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perhaps be correlated with the austerity narrative that is currently pervading the cultural sector?

After all, these students find themselves entering an economic system in which living is increasingly expensive, while cultural production is more or less unpaid.

A reserved functional aesthetic is widely visible in the form of unadorned laminate plywood and Sterling board, often breaking up spaces while leaving all structural supports on show. Installations are populated by composite materials and ready-made objects probably produced in China.

The reluctance to delve beneath the surface could be an acknowledgement of the political complexities of material production, a symptom of the disproportionate expenses that must be incurred in order to conduct raw-material investigations in a world where prefab is king.

It is clear that this year's students are exhibiting all the signs of being more than capable of holding their own within an unstable economic environment, and might even take a little bit of sadistic enjoyment in the noir perversity of it.

Come on out, we're ready for you. degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk/2015/

THE SKINNY

Admission Free

France-Lise McGurn 3am 11.07.15 – 30.08.15 Funded by:

Open: October - March April - September August

Tues – Sun 10am – 4pm 10am – 5pm Mon – Sun 10am – 6pm

Collective Gallery City Observatory & City Dome 38 Calton Hill, Edinburgh, EH7 5AA + 44 (0)131 556 1264 mail@collectivegallery.net www.collectivegallery.net

Part of:

www.collectivegallery.net

Image credit: France-Lise McGurn, acid face (girl) detail, oil on board, 37x 30mm, 2015.

July 2015

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The Skinny Showcase Four graduates from Scotland’s 2015 degree shows. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival 31 Jul-27 Aug Hill St Design House 3 Hill St, Edinburgh EH2 3JP Free

Mary Watson - Longest Fingernail

The UK’s largest annual festival of visual art 30 July–30 August 2015 Our programme presents work by over 100 artists from Scotland, the UK and beyond, in more than 30 galleries, museums and public spaces throughout the city. edinburghartfestival.com

Supported by the Scottish Government Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund

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@EdArtFest #EAF2015

THE SKINNY

East End Art School Glasgow School of Art exhibits its Fine Art degree show for the first time in its new Tontine Building, with students showing no sign of dinted confidence

Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

not detached enough to be judgmental or clinical.

With all of her own hashtags carefully indexed, printed and framed on the wall, McManus makes clear that while she makes attempts to explore the impact or consequences of social media, she's just as entrenched herself in these forms and technologies.

“Any potential caps-lock bravado is blunted and slid aside”

Sebastian Mary Tay

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ow that the Glasgow School of Art Degree Show takes place in part across the road from the Trongate 103 arts complex, there's been a fortuitous widening of this year's Fine Art exhibition audience. With an entrance between shopfronts (next door to Guitar Guitar), walk-ins tentatively ask how much it costs to come in, which is a fair question given the three-strong blacksuited security at the door. As well as the bouncers, there's a staffed welcome desk loaded with promo materials for halls-of-residence, posters for the show and maps aplenty – and even a copy of a special GSA-exclusive edition of The Skinny. Nevertheless, it's perhaps a mixed blessing that this generous giving of free paper comes to an abrupt end once the show begins on the third floor.

That's to say, the choice has been made by most exhibitors not to include artist statements or explanatory texts, and in Michael Barr's performance, a kind of loaded silence sensitively dominates his entire work. Visibly exhausted under the weight of the one-man-band suit on his back, he walks in uncomfortable steps, so as to avoid tugging the already-stretched cord that leads from his ankle to the beater of the bass drum. In small steps he makes his way around the exhibition and often in the streets immediately surrounding it, until finally lowering himself into a custom-made bed with a cylindrical hollow which fits exactly the drum on his back. In the context of the show, perhaps it's a complex metaphor of the exhaustion of being an artist (performance, one-man band or otherwise), and refusing to play the tune expected. Nevertheless, there's a heavy profundity to the entire performance and accompanying sculptural elements that carefully eludes the overdetermination of any single reading of the work.

Music and text rule the exhibited works of John Farrell, who – in a playful but significant turn – combines the lyrics of opposed sectarian songs.

In a simple colour coding, lines are coded green and blue, and in certain places the simple AABB rhyming easily becomes ABAB as the tone of each camp's rhetoric melds in shared dourness, violence and offence. There's a starkness across the textual work, which variously describes (all caps)

July 2015

‘A FALL OF MORE THAN A THOUSAND FEET’ and that ‘NOTHING EVER CHANGES’ yet ‘NOTHING STAYS THE SAME.’ At the same time, there's a record player that has stacked next to it Arab Strap, Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub and De Rosa. Acting as ‘the soundtrack to the work on show,’ as Aidan Moffat's sentimental monotone reverberates from a booming speaker, any potential caps-lock bravado is blunted and slid aside as a bald-faced lyricism takes hold.

While most individual shows across the Tontine involve several related elements, Josephine Sweeney's work trades on its singularity, as she includes a quite large cloud sculpture, nothing more.

With its materials perhaps alluding to the look of fresh concrete and its curves looking like sophisticated outdoor seating, it may perhaps be quoting, in form, the kind of ‘plop art’ that is dropped across public spaces in moments of decorative irrelevance. In a simple visual pun, the cloud itself is resolutely solid, heavy and has sharp edges.

Its overall presence is one of friendly bulkiness or a kind of fond awkwardness.

From the tact to the brightly verbal, Kerry McManus is one of the few students in her class catalogue to address the audience directly and in first person with her artist's statement. With flair and gusto, McManus writes her manifesto in which she situates herself ‘right now,’ dealing with the limits of self-presentation and forming that are defined by social media. Working across several media, McManus includes the physical trappings of social media in a bronze cast of her Macbook.

There's also a plinth mosaic, covered with multicoloured casts of smart phones. On top, there's a bust of herself making a trout pout. Pillows are heaped in the corner with various sexually explicit text messages, which McManus intends as an exploration of the performance and transformation of gender roles within electronic communication. With its pastel colourfulness, there's a perceptible lightness of aesthetic that permeates her quotation of texts and the forms of technological design. There's too much of a sense of selfawareness for the softness of the presentation to be straightforwardly inviting or uncritical, but

Literally working in ‘social media’ but taking the phrase much more literally, Jessica Higgins has made the physical works of her final degree submission with friends. ‘Matt and I made clocks together… Eilidh and I made tools from mulched up paper,’ Higgins describes on a conversational text on the wall, which finishes with a quote from feminist Marxist critic Kathi Weeks: ‘one cannot get something as big as a life on one's own.’ Lots of copies of a little red book punctuate the mainly blue and green elements in the space. It's here that Higgins writes in a loose, poetically tangential and chatty tone. For example, Wayne and Garth ‘feel the rush of a plane flying overhead closely’; there's mention of self-sufficient living and a questioning whether to ‘aspire to make large, burdensome things.’ In just the same chatty tone, the space is made inviting by domestic, handmade, crafty looking objects. In the little red book, Higgins uses conjunctions to set up a circle of text with no space for a question mark: ‘it is yours or is it my home and.’

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There's a different kind of accessibility at play in the work of Sebastian Mary Tay. Large photographs depicting pastel-hued smoky gradients are in the first of two connected spaces. They are then explained in the adjoining rooms by pictures of the flour and starch powder that Tay photographed under artificial lights. Though the explanatory works are smaller, they have been shot with an eye for the dramatic, with a sense of scale becoming indistinct as small studio lights begin to resemble helicopter or flood lights around the pile of disturbed powdery piles. There's an oddness to the amount of work expended to create these large images of what look like the product of a few easy Photoshop filters.

Flour is again put to creative use in Jude Hagan's installation of paintings and pottery, with little shrunken looking heads made from flour mixed with water. There's an undeniable attraction, ornamentation and decorativeness to the work, which Hagan deploys critically and self-consciously.

Painting to the very edges of the canvas, the paintings themselves become objects, mounted again onto sackcloth on conventional wood stretchers.

Between the two- and three-dimensional work Hagan is paradoxically the creator of a fictional space that, to achieve a coherence and continuity, implies a limitation of Hagan's artistic authority.

Someplace between megalomania and asceticism of the self, Hagan embarks on ambitious worldmaking.

There's a vulnerability for GSA students who might once have been able to bank on the impressiveness of the hallowed walls of the Mackintosh building. With this very specific immunity weakened, there's nevertheless a confident stride through the work of the Fine Art graduates. But maybe let's scrap the IKEA-inspired one-way system.

Jude Hagan, I am just going outside, and I may be some time.

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Young Fathers

Golden Teacher

Sweets and Heavy Bass: The Say Award 2015 Words: Chris McCall Photography: Rita Azevedo

We spent the evening at the 2015 Scottish Album of the Year Award in Glasgow eating popcorn, admiring quilts and chatting with excited prize winner Kathryn Joseph

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hen hosts Vic Galloway and Janice Forsyth take to the stage to officially open the fourth Scottish Album of the Year Award ceremony, few in the audience can hear a word they say.

Having gorged themselves on free ice-cream and popcorn for the previous half hour, the crowd are buzzing on sugar and excitedly jabbering away to whoever is standing next to them, like pupils on a school outing.

This highly charged atmosphere was further fuelled by a short but incendiary live set from Young Fathers moments earlier. “Awwww FOR FUCK'S SAKE!” hollers G Hastings into his mic, sounding momentarily like a teacher who has finally snapped at his unruly class. In fact, it's his usual intro to Old Rock n Roll, a song so energetic it should carry a health warning for those of a nervous disposition.

“Let's hear it for that amazing performance from last year's SAY Award winners,” says Galloway, ever the consummate pro, as the bass still echoes around the ABC. “Now in its fourth year The SAY Award is one of the UK's most lucrative music prizes, highlighting the strength and diversity of Scotland's recording artists and championing titles across a host of genres and styles.”

This variety of styles is reflected by the outfits of those in attendance. The official invites had stated the dress code was ‘smart’, a term so vague it could be interpreted however you like. One man opts for a bold combination of faded dark blue sweater and washed out jeans; resembling either a roadie coming straight off tour or a gatecrasher, or quite possibly both.

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Dress codes and sweeties aside, the reason several hundred folk have gathered in this former Sauchiehall Street cinema on a Wednesday evening is to celebrate the finest in Scottish music from the previous year. Musicians will earnestly tell you that awards are meaningless to them, but there's no doubting that this event plays a hugely important role in promoting the industry north of the border and fighting off the ever-present vampire squid that is London.

A total of 246 records were eligible for this year's prize, with no less than 146 of them picking up at least one vote from the 100 industry insiders chosen as nominators. These were eventually whittled down to a shortlist of 10, ranging from the smart Eurodisco of Happy Meals to acoustic pop superstars like Paolo Nutini. In a delightfully surreal twist to proceedings, each of the 10 nominated acts receives a handmade quilt as a token of their achievement. Created by Glasgow School of Art graduate Vanessa Hindshaw, and apparently reflecting the link between textiles and music, each individual quilt is handed over with respectful seriousness to the lucky artist by the evening's hosts. This also provides a welcome opportunity for them to say a few words to the assembled masses.

“Fuck knows how you're going to choose a winner,” states the ever-cheerful Nutini, who despite being easily the most famous person in the room, still seems genuinely thrilled to be nominated.

Meanwhile, Glasgow dance legends Slam raise one of the largest cheers of the evening by dedicating their nomination to the closure-threatened

Arches, a nightclub and performance space close to the hearts of most of those in attendance.

It takes two attempts to bring Young Fathers to the stage to receive their souvenir quilt. There is a slightly awkward moment first time around when the group fail to appear when their name is read out. They are finally located and arrive 15 minutes later. “They spend their lives embarrassing me, that band,” quips the unflappable Galloway, as a slightly sheepish-looking Hastings raises his quilt in thanks. “Sorry we were late,” he says. “It was a Spinal Tap moment.”

The ceremonial handing-over-of-the-quilts is broken up by three short live performances from bands who, although not shortlisted this year, will almost definitely be stick-ons at future events. Three-piece fuzz-rockers Tuff Love earn the biggest response from the audience. If there was a Scottish EP of the Year prize, Junk would surely be a racing certainty to claim it.

Glasgow's leading punk-funk-afro-sonic experimentalist party band, Golden Teacher, provide a 10-minute musical kaleidoscope that is respectfully observed in semi-awed silence, the audience's sugar rush having finally died away.

Scottish hip-hop maverick Loki, here tonight with his Kartel backing group, is the last act before the big announcement. “I don't want to interrupt your prosecco networking,” he sneers in typically provocative form. The tragedy is that the prosecco has long since run out.

It falls to Janice Forsyth to announce that Kathryn Joseph is the 2015 SAY Award winner, for her lyrically compelling Bones You Have Thrown Me

MUSIC

And Blood I've Spilled. It proves a popular choice in the room, with the whoops of delight lasting a full five minutes.

“I honestly can't believe it,” the Aberdonian songwriter tells The Skinny moments later, visibly shaking with excitement. “How am I going to spend the money? I don't know –I've never had that amount in my life before! Honestly, never. I can't believe – out of all these most amazing musicians in the actual fucking world – they have chosen our record! I know it's because of what Marcus (Mackay, percussionist) has done with it.

“Honestly, beautiful Young Fathers came over to me. It was the first time I had seen them live, and I was just like ‘give it to them again, give it to them again!’ There was no one better than them. They told me they saw me moving when they were singing… So that was the best moment of my night.”

Downstairs in the ABC2 the after party is beginning to kick off. Relaxing against the bar while the unlikely sound of Sean Paul reverberates through the room, G Hastings nods in approval at Joseph's victory. “It will give her music a massive lift,” he says. It's a boost that's likely to last far longer than the sugary high of this evening. sayaward.com

THE SKINNY

And The Winner Was… From truly sorrowful beginnings, Kathryn Joseph has crafted one of the year's most raw, unflinching and remarkable records. To celebrate her Scottish Album of the Year Award win, she reflects upon the album's success

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usic as escapism isn't a particularly uncommon occurrence; it's a much rarer event, however, to be transported not only out of your own world but deep in to that of another. The music of Kathryn Joseph undoubtedly holds such power.

Bare-boned and loose of tongue, to hear her poignant, tender songs isn't just to sense their weight but to fully live inside of them. They aren't reflections upon times of strife; they simply are them – one and the same.

Her staggering SAY Award winner, Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I've Spilled LP was finally released this year, though it was actually recorded back in 2011 when Joseph found herself living next door to her now musical-partner Marcus and his wife, Claire Mackay from Hits The Fan Records, who would end up releasing the album. “I knew they had a studio, and they knew I played, but we never spoke about it,“ she says of it now. “And then they came to the John Knox Sex Club show I played and it all started there.”

It wasn't quite as straightforward as that sounds, however. “The thought of recording made me feel sick,” she says, with a laugh. “Any time I've done it I've hated it – all of it is my worst nightmare.”

Which might leave you wondering why she did it at all. “Honestly, I don't know,” she admits. “I was pregnant and crazy!”It's hard to imagine a record as strikingly beautiful as the one we have now coming from such restrained beginnings, but Joseph insists there was no great plan for it. “I never felt like we were making something beautiful.

I just thought my songs were shit, and that this is all really embarrassing.”

The apparent disregard for her own work is at odds with her recent success, but then Kathryn Joseph isn't trying to be a pop star. If anything

July 2015

she's the anti-pop star: cripplingly self-deprecating and seemingly perplexed by the limelight she sits within. Which, to some extent, also explains why it took so long for this record to see the light of day. “There was just this huge amount of time that passed. Sometimes I liked it and then there were times I thought it was fucking terrible, and everyone just waited for me to decide that it was finished.”

Thankfully, however, lady luck got involved to help move the process along; Joseph bumping in to Marcus on the street one day, having now moved out of their adjoining house. “I told him that it was really hard for me because I'm extremely negative, and I think everything is pointless, and then I cried the whole way home, pushing my buggy. That was the first time I thought, ‘Fuck, maybe I care about this more than I realised.’”

Again, it's a further indication of her hesitancy that she needed a chance meeting to kick-start this whole thing, for to hear just a single breath of Joseph's voice in flight is to know just how much these songs matter. It's not hard, either, to understand where that reluctance came from. “The thing is, the truth of me is mental,” she says, reflectively. “The reason for me doing all of this is because I had a son who only lived for a week, but to have to say that out loud just seemed so humiliating. But then I also can't cope with lying or pretending, so I can't make up some nice bio to pretend otherwise. I'm just not able to do that.”

So much creativity is borne of anguish and loss but it rarely comes from such a raw place as it does for Joseph, and the songs on her record.

Fragile and understated, the words hit like a sucker-punch – which is why it's affected so many, so quickly.

Then there are her stunning live shows.

Joined by Marcus on percussion, they're dense and evocative, the kind of event that can split your day in two. “I'd never played with anyone before him and can't even imagine it differently now,” she says. “I just love it so much. It's like what I think drugs feel like.”

“The thought of recording made me feel sick. Any time I've done it I've hated it – all of it is my worst nightmare” Kathryn Joseph

With a high like that, it's no surprise to learn of a similarly brutal comedown. “Every time I play I'm pretty much wanting to kill myself the next day,” she confesses. “It's just how I feel. It's the blackness. I find myself thinking that it's so weird that I want to do this. It's my worst nightmare and yet I put myself there anyway.” Which again leads to the question of why she continues to do it. “Because at that time it feels like the greatest thing.,”

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Interview: Tom Johnson Photography: Rita Azevedo

she says. “Being in that moment is the only time that none of this feels weird at all.”

With just the interviews and songs, Joseph might come across as something of a sorrowful character, but in real life she's anything but. A spirited live wire, endlessly gracious and grateful for any interest in her work, it made her an extremely popular nominee for this year's Scottish Album of the Year Award. “I wasn't even nervous because I didn't think at any point they would say my name,” she says today of the win.

Whether or not Kathryn Joseph allows herself to reflect upon the recent adoration for her work isn't for anyone else to enforce, but there's no doubt that what she's created is a remarkable document. In an age of hype and showmanship it's quietly, organically, become one of the year's most talked about records. Does she still feel as uncomfortable now as she was when starting this journey? “It feels much less humiliating,” she says.

“There have been so many lovely things; one after the other. It doesn't even feel real.”

There aren't many albums that could come from such a desolate place as Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I've Spilled, to trump the major label likes of Paolo Nutini and Belle & Sebastian on a major award's short list, but then there simply aren't many artists quite like Kathryn Joseph; one of a kind, and so much more besides.

Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I've Spilled is out now on Hits the Fan Records. Kathryn Joseph launches new single The Bird / The Worm on 1 Aug at The Hug and Pint, Glasgow and plays Summerhall, Edinburgh on 12 Aug kathrynjoseph.co.uk

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Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Edinburgh native Joe Acheson discusses new album, Reorchestrations, ahead of his appearance with Hidden Orchestra for Cross The Tracks at Summerhall

Credit: Markus Werner

ver the past five years or so, Edinburgh composer and producer Joe Acheson's Hidden Orchestra project has established itself as one of the most interesting cross-discipline ventures around. Through a blend of live instrumentation, electronic programming and an increasingly rich bank of samples and source material, Acheson has helmed a project which feels just as at home in a club setting as it does in more traditional spaces.

Last month saw the release of Reorchestrations, the third Hidden Orchestra album to emerge since 2010, this time via Germany's Denovali imprint. It finds Acheson on typically imposing form, reworking tracks from artists across the spectrum of folk and classical through to more experimental material. Crucially, and as always, there's a rich ambience to the record, which is all his own.

On his return from a trip collecting field recordings, Acheson tells us via email that he's been keeping busy of late. “I just got back from a trip to the most southerly point of the UK – The Lizard in Cornwall – where I'm doing a sound-based residency with the National Trust, based in Marconi's radio hut, where the first long-distance wireless transmissions were made and received.”

Marconi's base is certainly a fitting spot for Joe to do his thing – much of his music marries lush instrumentation with fragments of sound, many of which sound like they could have been plucked straight from the airwaves. Other samples have a more natural feel and are the results of a particularly inquisitive methodology: “I often go out walking at different times of day or night with a small bag of different microphones and see what I come across. It's a bit like fishing for sound – you never know what you're going to find, and sometimes nothing bites.

“If I'm at a beach, I expect waves and seabirds, but the most interesting sound might turn out to be a rattling chain or a creaking board. Sometimes I just happen across things I like the sound of in everyday life, and record them too – a cooker timer or a faulty thermostat, the dawn chorus out of my hotel window on tour, or birds landing on a bird-table.”

Acheson's early forays into sampling followed a much more conventional approach, with much of his time spent tracking through records to find interesting loops of melodies and rhythms to use in his work. This soon progressed into using samples sourced from improvised instrumental

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recordings made with musicians in his studio.

“Now I listen back to field recordings waiting for the same rhythms and sounds to jump out,” he says.

The craft of making music is clearly all-important to Joe. When he last spoke to us in 2012, he explained the time he puts into collating material for his albums – the last offering, Archipelago, was around six years in the making. Yet it would seem that perhaps this process has quickened somewhat over the years. Has his approach changed much over time? “Since the last album I've spent a lot of time thinking about and experimenting with my working process,” he explains. “The tracks on this release were all partly made as experiments in different ways of putting a track together, with most of the actual ‘source material’ supplied in the form of beautiful pieces by other people. They were originally a by-product of my annual mixtape series, which feature many ‘reorchestrations’ of all kinds of different artists from all over the world.

“These are the ones which worked together most as a cohesive album release, which felt like it represented the development of the Hidden Orchestra sound. I hope I have found quicker ways of working – especially by experimenting with revolutionary music software such as Ableton, which is an extraordinary way of generating and developing ideas. I would really like to finish a full Hidden Orchestra album by the end of this year.”

“I've never had a very specific taste” Joe Acheson

As well as drawing inspiration from his walks in the wild and the music he uses as source material, Acheson has always had broad tastes to call upon. Yet he wears his influences lightly and there's a fluidity to his music which suggests no one genre has ever dominated his focus as a listener. “I've never had a very specific taste”, he confirms. “I am still buying both old and new music by all kinds of acoustic and electronic artists from around the world, and I go to see a variety of live music – re-

Credit: Markus Werner

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Interview: Ronan Martin

cently LAU and Nils Frahm were both great. My last acquisitions were Don Li, the new Long Arm, Derek Gripper's guitar transcriptions of Malian kora music, a new Tipper EP, Nils Landgren & Esbjorn Svensson.”

He also casually slips in recently rediscovering Jungle Mania 94 – “I wanted to get the mp3s of this classic jungle compilation I bought out of curiosity on cassette at a service station when I was really young.

“I think all the music that I've ever heard continually feeds into what I do – I think this is probably true of everyone. I often find the most original things even the best people are doing are the new ways they find of combining and reinterpreting their influences and pre-existing ideas. That's why it's easy to trace the gradual evolution of music over time, the roots and progressions of different styles.”

On first listening to the new record, some may find it hard to accept that Acheson is reworking music from various other artists – he manages to maintain a strong signature of his own, and there are clear echoes of his previous releases throughout: “I think it fits well with the first two albums, in that I was using the same compositional and production techniques, but using other people's material as the source material.

“I feel it sounds like a natural development of the Hidden project – I hope it comes across that way. I guess I have also worked with music that is drawing from similar sound palettes to my original Hidden Orchestra tracks – pianos, strings, double bass, metallophones, harps, drums, natural sound effects – so it is quite natural for me to apply my own techniques and textures to these kinds of sounds.”

In the accompanying press release for the album, Acheson's approach to interpreting others’ work is described as ‘sensitive and non-destructive’. Does he view it as remixing at all? The album's title provides an obvious answer which Acheson carefully clarifies. “I see these tracks as ‘reorchestrations’ rather than remixes. The individual tracks are named ‘remixes’ for industry convention – but when I actually do what I see as remixes they are often more ‘destructive’, taking a piece of music apart and completely rebuilding it in a different style.

CLUBS

“With most of these tracks, the original piece remains largely intact – I have essentially taken pieces of music I really like, and have expanded them with extra layers of textures, drums, harmonies and basslines, originally simply for my own enjoyment, as if I was the artist's overly-trusted producer with a ridiculously free rein on how to interpret their vision. It's a really inspiring process, and allows me to concentrate on different ways of developing material and combining it with new ideas, with the luxury of a wide selection of really interesting riffs, textures, patterns and phrases, all provided by someone else. I intend this release to be the first in a long-running series of Reorchestrations albums, consisting of similar Hidden Orchestra-style expanded arrangements of exceptional classical/folk/jazz/experimental musicians.”

Of course with a project such as this, Acheson and his counterparts really shine in a live environment, and in a way which many artists working in electronic music often fail to achieve. His upcoming appearance for Cross the Tracks in Edinburgh sees him relying on a trusted group of collaborators. “The live setup for that show will be the classic four-piece – myself on bass/electronics, Poppy Ackroyd on piano/violin, and Tim Lane and Jamie Graham on drums, with guest trumpeter Phil Cardwell from Glasgow.

“Our setup varies from show to show – we have several different AV setups for different venues and occasions, developed over a long collaboration with Bristol's Tom Lumen, as well as numerous different live guests, who are always musicians who have previously come in to record on the albums – the invisible musicians that make up the imaginary hidden orchestra.”

The remainder of the year is set to be busy for Joe – his coastal sounds residency with the National Trust continues, part of a campaign to create a sound-map of the entire coastline... He's also developing a new two-piece live show, and will embark on a European tour in November. His appearance at Summerhall this month will give an Edinburgh crowd a welcome glimpse of one of their most distinctive native sons.

Reorchestrations is released on 24 Jul via Denovali Cross the Tracks takes place at Summerhall, Edinburgh on 24 Jul

THE SKINNY

June 2015

Feature

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Longest Fingernail

Best Bitch

Mary Watson “M

y work explores the competitive nature of human beings. I am particularly interested in how we invent activities to express our obsessions and how we use objects to embody or to encapsulate our competiveness. The ‘Prize’ represents the driving force behind our behaviour; it is the end goal and represents success.

On a deeper level it is also a symbol of our selfconscious desire for validation and acceptance.

“Focused primarily on the more absurd competitions that capture people’s interest, my work highlights the arbitrary nature of these activities and the almost melancholy plight of

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the contestant. I am continually fascinated by how we distinguish what competitions are seen as culturally impressive and others that are seen as strange, almost pointless, highlighting the peculiar aspects of contestants’ personalities.”

Mary Watson graduated from Fine Art at DJCAD in 2015. Also becoming Lady Mary of Glencoe in February 2015, she then went on to found the ‘Lady Mary of Glencoe Awards Association,’ an organisation which acknowledges and gives merit to all talents that walk through life under-appreciated. marywatson.co.uk

SHOWCASE

THE SKINNY

The Milk Challenge

Gurning

July 2015

SHOWCASE

Prettiest Teeth

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LE Y ST

R

eturning for its fourth installment, the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival (EIFF) is back. Although growing constantly, the Scottish creative scene can lack the kind of grandiose events typical of our extremely London-centric fashion world – the kind of event that might display what we have all known to be true within Scotland for years: that we really are an exciting and innovative creative hub with talent rivaling any nation. In the extremely capable hands of its creators, husbandand-wife creative powerhouses Anna and Jonathan Freemantle, the 2015 theme is ‘sustainability and education’. Featuring runway shows, exhibitions, workshops and talks in some of the most beautiful venues in Edinburgh, with events like the EIFF Scotland can truly stand up and be recognised as one of Europe's top fashion destinations. The event will take place from 23-26 July in various locations in Edinburgh. We caught up with Jonathan Freemantle to hear more.

The Skinny: How would you sum up the fundamentals of the EIFF? Jonathan Freemantle: “We launched in 2012 and are heading into our fourth festival this July.

The Festival was conceived as a place where fashion engages with other art forms and its environment, as a place where they cross-pollinate and share ideas. We want to explore the original creative idea, the spark behind the creative impulse.

So the festival gives a platform for the industry's great contemporary thinkers, mavericks and innovators to have a voice outside of the commercial humdrum of the industry. We are a non-profit organisation that has been structured solely to cover costs and much of the ethos of the festival reflects this. We are not exclusive; the majority of our events are created with the intention of being accessible to all. To quote Coco Chanel,

Saskia de Brauw for EIFF

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Lifestyle

Interview: Mona Lisa MacLean

‘Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.’ So the festival is very much a changing, evolving creature. We want it to speak a truth that is universal and yet inspire a kind of creative brilliance that is rare and to be protected.”

“Behind even the biggest brands are artists and philosophers from whom all the best work comes” Jonathan Freemantle

The festival has come on leaps and bounds since its inception. What else would you like to achieve?

“This year marks the start of our deeper look at the issue of sustainability. The fashion industry is beginning to find a conscience, to look at issues of excessive waste, fast fashion, disposable culture and has shown signs that it wants to return to a more bespoke, conscious attitude. But this process is very much at the beginning and there is a long way to go. We would like to play a part in helping this evolution along. We can't go on as we are.”

It's been said that EIFF looks at fashion as art, prioritising the creative ideas rather than brands. How difficult is that to maintain in what can be an extremely commercial/brand focused industry?

“We look at the people behind the brands, the great thinkers and makers, the creatives. Behind even the biggest brands are artists and philosophers from whom all the best work comes, even if it ultimately ends up in a major fashion house or high street brand as a product. One of the fashion industry's greatest strengths actually lies in its commerciality. It is accessible on many levels to almost everyone – so we don't turn our back on this, just look behind the curtain to see who's actually behind it all and then create a platform for these people to speak, exhibit or share their knowledge.”

Your 2015 program is yet to be announced.

Can you give us an insight into what we can expect?

“This year's festival is heavily focused on looking for a sustainable future for the fashion industry. Our 2015 theme is ‘sustainability and education’. To this end we have partnered with Zero Waste Scotland on two key events, both looking deeply at the challenge of sustainability and working towards immediate and long-term solutions. Speakers from industry leaders (H&M, IKEA) as well as academics and mavericks. We also take a moment to celebrate the work of the late Louise Wilson with a conversation chaired by Sarah Mower, celebrating her significant contribution in shaping contemporary fashion. As one of the foremost educators of her generation her legacy continues

Anna Freemantle

through the many designers whose careers began under her visionary guidance. Her tough, no nonsense approach and sharp wit produced a generation of brilliant designers. What made her approach so effective? Former students (Jonathan Saunders) and colleagues at Central St Martins discuss the impact that she made on their lives and the ripple she caused throughout the industry.”

Anna once said that the EIFF aims to celebrate wonder and fearlessness within the industries of fashion and art. Is that an ethos you still subscribe to?

“Absolutely. This is our forever-mantra.”

The festival has events from talks to shows, exhibitions, symposiums and workshops – what was behind the decision to have such varied events?

“It's more about giving an open enough platform to show the full spectrum of creativity, to look in greater depth and from different angles.

We want to be accessible on many levels, and keep changing the format so it isn't predictable.”

Although it's growing all the time, what else would you like to see happen within the Scottish creative scene?

“I don't have an idea of what I'd like to see in particular – just for the expansion to continue.

There's always more potential for growth. I'd like to see more focus on Scotland being part of an international fashion market, in the same way that it is beginning to be seen in the global art community. I think there's too much focus on ‘branding’

FASHION

Scottish output and not enough focus on nurturing the actual content. We need more funding for venues, and for events (like us). This is crucial.

Ultimately it comes down to content – and that means talented young designers. In this sense there is lots to be excited about.”

Not that the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival isn't enough, but what else do you both have planned for the rest of the year?

“This is a massive year on many fronts. Anna is launching a big project in South Africa as well as developing the festival in Edinburgh. I have just launched my own gallery in Johannesburg, HAZARD, which is a natural extension of the festival. HAZARD is a contemporary art, fashion and lifestyle space that encompasses an art gallery and vibrant cultural hub in the heart of Johannesburg's CBD. I'll be bringing a small, curated selection of the gallery's best artists to the festival this year.”

For more information about attending events at the Edinburgh International Fashion Festival, keep an eye on their website for programme announcements very soon. Expect runway shows, exhibitions, gala parties, interactive workshops and talks in some of the most stunning venues in Edinburgh. @edinfashion facebook.com/EdinburghInternationalFashionFestival hzrd.co.za edinburghinternationalfashionfestival.com

THE SKINNY

Photo: Jonathan Freemantle

FE

As the other EIFF returns to showcase the best in Scottish and international fashion, cofounder Jonathan Freemantle discusses the festival's whys, wherefores and what nexts

Photo: Wojtek Kutyla

LI

Capital Style

16–31 AUG 2015

LATE NIGHTS AT THE

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL

BOOK FESTIVAL

From Cutting Teeth to Cutting Edge Six years ago, the improper child of the Book Festival proper was born.

So to celebrate an eventful journey and introduce 2015, we share some wine and words with Roland Gulliver, the man we must all thank and blame Interview: Alan Bett

S

o, you're in the Spiegeltent, sipping a cold beer on a warm summer's night as laughter ripples around you. You're watching a team of Britain's finest performance poets, dressed ridiculously in superhero outfits, locked in a threeway rap battle in a homemade wrestling ring. But while you're taking in this curious scene you suddenly notice the real show. A front row table of unsuspecting elderly ladies, trapped in place by the sheer force of the crowd, mouths forming exaggerated O's at the delicious vulgarity of the salty insults spit on stage. Scurrilous slurs aimed at girlfriends and mothers. Claims of indecent acts performed upon each other's… erm… pillow cases. This is most certainly not turning out to be the free Book Festival poetry event they expected it to be.

This is Jura Unbound you see, which each year bares its teeth in smile and snarl. The real fun in life always begins when the sun sets, as proven true in Edinburgh's Charlotte Square Gardens for sixteen eventful nights each August. This is where a glorious combination of words and melody meld as a gang of the world's top writers and musicians let their hair down for an audience's entertainment.

To 2015 then, and in vino veritas. So, in the bowels of the Book Festival HQ, wine is poured as Roland Gulliver explains himself and Jura Unbound, his baby, born six years ago to reflect Scotland's burgeoning live literature scene. Between then and now Unbound has grown into a strong and healthy (bastard) child of the festival proper. And uniquely for Edinburgh International Book Festival it places performance on the same high pedestal as word. “Offering the opportunity for authors to do different things,” Roland says. “Particularly musicians who have written novels or memoirs, giving them a space to be musical and perform.”

For example Nile Rodgers in 2012, treating a lucky audience to a rare acoustic show. It was an evening which added a skill set to Roland's CV. “It was quite bizarre becoming Nile Rodgers’ security to get him out of the Spiegeltent, and then two years ago having to do the same for Neil Gaiman.”

Gaiman simply popped up one evening as surprise judge for the Literary Deathmatch – these things happen at Jura Unbound. “Some of the nights are programmed in completion very early on, but with some others we deliberately leave space for people to be added in or for the audience not to know what they're going to come and see.” It just might be your favourite author or performer skulking at the back, swigging on a beer, perhaps even deciding to take to the stage. “Stewart Lee doing a little set was really good,” Roland says, adding with a smirk born of the memory, “He received the worst heckle ever.”

“It's quite funny the Book Festival being challenged by heckling,” he adds, neglecting to elaborate on what said heckle was. “It's so alien.

It's like ‘we don't do that here.’” There are many things Jura Unbound does that the main festival programme would never dream of. “There's a change from during the day,” Roland agrees, “when there are these quite intense and intellectual events, to where you can come and have some fun and enjoy storytelling and not have that stereotype of books being heavy and dull. You can be entertained,” a pause, “…and have a pint.”

“There's more performance, there's more storytelling, there's more music.” he continues.

“One of the things I've learned over the years is

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that although it's all about having storytellers it's always nice to finish with music.” A task made simpler by a natural convergence of word and song on the Scottish cultural scene. “That connection between the Scottish indie music scene and Scottish writing is so close. It's trying to get those audiences from King Creosote or who go to Born to be Wide nights to come and just flip over into Book Festival nights which have similar themes to those they're interested in.”

“One of the brilliant things is how musicians have responded to coming in and being part of the Book Festival, so people like Stanley Odd [the Edinburgh hip hop crew contributed to a notable 2014 Empire Café event, challenging Scotland's colonial past] came and discovered the Book Festival, and having Willy Vlautin perform last year.”

“It finished with everyone dancing around the Spiegeltent in a joyful celebration.

That for me encapsulated what Jura Unbound can do” Roland Gulliver

An essential ingredient to Jura Unbound is the setting itself, the majestic Spiegeltent. “People warm to being there and being part of it,” Roland suggests, “particularly at night – it has a quite magical atmosphere.” And it has hosted and witnessed many things, especially one fateful evening celebrating the life and work of a certain Scottish poet. “The Paul Reekie tribute night was a seminal moment, but I think that the lesson there was not to programme on the same day as a Hearts v Hibs derby match,” Roland says, remembering an evening of raucous revelry in a tent bursting at the seams. Also, “The James Yorkston, Vic Galloway, King Creosote granny joke has gone down in history.” He winces. “I think it's probably the rudest joke ever told on stage.” We can't possibly divulge the details in print, but Roland will happily relate it to you should you succeed in tracking him down come the Book Festival.

But for all this painting of Jura Unbound as an unruly child – challenging preconceptions of what a book festival event can be – it remains intrinsically linked to the valuable and vital subject matter discussed during daylight hours. “It's exploring the same themes but in a different way.”

Roland says. It holds a carnival mirror to the festival proper, distorting its concepts into delightful forms. A night of debauchery might be followed in the programme by one of quiet contemplation.

Some manage both. “One of my favourite events

was when we had Scottish and Iraqi poets reading each other's work. At the beginning it was personal and political and quite moving, really amazing poetry, and then it finished with everyone dancing around the Spiegeltent in a joyful celebration. That for me encapsulated what Jura Unbound can do.”

Come along day or night and you will also discover the lush green Charlotte Square Gardens, hidden in plain sight in the centre of this beautiful city; surrounded by cafés and bookshops.

A place to soak up the sun and atmosphere while you languidly turn a page or tip a glass. We really shouldn't neglect to mention that although the programme boasts talents of the very highest order, these performances won't cost you, the audience, a single penny. Jura Unbound is a gateway drug.

A free taste offered up to unsuspecting fans of music and verse – soon to have you hooked on £10 hits of hardcore literature in the full festival lineup, mainlining Martin Amis. “It's trying to break down that barrier of ‘Oh the Book Festival's not for me because it's formal events’ but actually you can come along and enjoy amazing international, Scottish and British writers and artists in a really informal setting, all for free.”

JURA UNBOUND

It's a parallel offering of international writing on a Scottish stage combined with Scottish writing on the international stage of Edinburgh in August, including our home-grown heroes seen elsewhere throughout the year “…grinding away in cold wet Novembers and doing brilliant stuff, like Neu! Reekie! and Rally & Broad… we as a Book Festival are really lucky because in August most of Britain is looking north and the rest of the world sees what's happening here.” But geography is irrelevant in the grand scheme; storytelling is a timeless and universal art form. “Storytelling is in everything,” Roland agrees. “It's in music, it's in film, it's in theatre, it's in The X Factor… quite an important part was showing that you can go out for a night and have a drink and be entertained but not lose that literary storytelling element.”

It's easy to wonder, with all its antics, just how Jura Unbound has been accepted by the main body of Edinburgh International Book Festival, being as it is that little bit dangerous, naughty and late night. Ask anyone at the Book Festival about Jura Unbound and they say “That's Roland's baby, it's his fault.” Roland looks up, takes a gulp of wine, slowly nods his confession. “It is all my fault.”

Jura Unbound, Charlotte Square Spiegeltent, 16-31 Aug, Free

THE SKINNY

Theremin Lies the Truth Over 10 years The Skinny has grown into Scotland's cultural barometer, so we will throw our hands in the air and throw a party. Author Sean Michaels witnessed our very beginnings so brings his magical and melodious new novel to our gathering

T

he Skinny is ten years old. Moving on towards teenage days of angst and acne, hormonefuelled drama and faces filled with broody disdain.

The Skinny is ten years old. We've spent a decade covering the artistic scene in Scotland and now in England too, shouting out for the next big thing, throwing spotlights on local artists of all descriptions and offering a one-stop guide to everything that's going down in the beautiful and bizarre cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Manchester and Liverpool.

The Skinny is ten years old and we'll do honour to the occasion at this year's Jura Unbound with a night just for us (and you). A night of words and music; laughs and libations. We shall assemble a harmonious crowd unto Edinburgh to hear tales and good tunes, drink and live a little. Testament to everything The Skinny stands for. Or leans drunkenly against the wall for. Or lies prone on the grass outside the Spiegeltent for. Whichever. You are invited.

Back in its earlier days, when it was young and crazy and not quite so wise as it is now, The Skinny had a writer named Sean Michaels. Sean mostly covered the music scene, dipping occasionally into the literary section too, and made a name for himself as one of the first journalists in the UK to write about the likes of Arcade Fire, Beirut and Feist. Sean's highly anticipated debut novel Us Conductors hits the UK this month: a freewheeling, fascinating tale from the 20s about the inventor of the theremin and his adventures across continents, skipping in and out of danger, prison and love. He sat down with us to discuss, in his syrupy convivial Canadian tones, his book, his time writing for The Skinny, his appearance at our upcoming Jura Unbound event and his general thoughts on music, life and art.

The Skinny: You sound much more Canadian than I was expecting.

Sean Michaels: Yes, alas my original accent was a fine Stirling brogue but I lost it upon moving as a wee lad to Canada.

July 2015

So your novel, Us Conductors, tells the tale of the inventor of the theremin – what drew you to tell his story?

I think I found myself drawn to it from a couple of different directions. One was just learning about the strange, tumultuous, catastrophic, inspiring story of the theremin's inventor Lev Sergeyevich Termen and seeing what a colourful and tragic and hopeful and odd tale that was. How it felt like a story that someone had to have made up. I've always liked true stories that sound as if they're fibs. And the more I learned about it, the more I found it intersected with the kind of story I'd been imagining in my mind. It was a story about true love and untrue love – maybe the idea of lying about true love – and also about the intersection of music and life and science and human beings.

And then there was an experience I had almost ten years ago. I knew about the theremin as this strange gizmo you hear in the background of weird psychedelic rock songs or indie rock gigs, but then one night I was out for a drive in my parents’ car listening to the radio and I heard this just gorgeous piece of music, this opera aria. This singer was just singing with this incredible voice, so fragile and perfect at the same time. And then at the end of the segment the presenter explained that we'd not been listening to a human singer but to someone playing on the theremin. That realisation that this really queer instrument that felt more science experiment than musical instrument, that this could produce sound and music as beautiful as that – that was something that stayed with me and kind of haunted me until I got down to putting pen to paper and writing.

As someone who has written about music and literature (for illustrious publications such as The Skinny), it makes sense that you would blend those two interests in your prose.

Yeah, though I think it was mostly happenstance. I've actually wanted to be a fiction writer longer than I've wanted to be a music journalist.

I'd been writing stories for years and then I landed

on a story that was very musical and that was the thing that sort of took off, so it feels like completing the circle of my work.

A lot of your work as a music journalist has focused on locality, on bands emerging from a specific place, and that relationship between place and music plays an important role in Us Conductors too.

When I started thinking about this novel, I really got excited about the idea of a novel that takes place in Russia and New York, the Soviet Union and the Jazz Age, that's about classical music and jazz but also about electricity and people falling in love and having a thrilling, electric time in a period that was so full of all these new discoveries and new types of music.

“... This incredible voice, so fragile and perfect at the same time... we'd not been listening to a human singer but to someone playing on the theremin” Sean Michaels

I felt a really strong connection between that and living in Montreal as the Indie Rock scene really exploded there, and then in Edinburgh and

JURA UNBOUND

Interview: Ross McIndoe Illustration: Marcus Oakley

having the same kind of experiences going to gigs there and in Glasgow while you're still so young and everything feels so new and exciting, and I was seeing bands like folk bands and indie rock bands, but also bands with this electric flame to them that was scary and exciting. I really wanted to capture that younger and newer experience I had had, a book set almost a hundred years ago that nodded to that very contemporary feeling.

I wanted to write a book that took place in the 20s but evoked some of the music of the 80s, so all the chapter titles are nods to the post-punk, new wave era of that kind of time. If the book were asleep, its dreams would be of Kate Bush and Joy Division.

So on to your upcoming Jura Unbound event. You'll be there to celebrate the 10th birthday of The Skinny, reading from your novel, perhaps accompanied by a theremin?

I'd love if we could do that, I did a book tour of the United States last summer where I read with thereminists all around the country. It's a really vivid rendering of the book and it's fun.

How did you get involved with The Skinny?

I saw a notice in a café, before it was The Skinny, during an earlier life as Noise. I went to one of the first meetings in a pub – just a whole whack of people – and there was such a hole in the cultural landscape in Scotland for this kind of alternative paper that was just concerned with grassroots and what was happening at the humblest levels.

And it was so exciting being there when people were trying to build this, I remember getting our first big name interviews, getting the chance to interview MIA when she was promoting her first record. It felt like we were kids pretending to be grown-ups, making this paper and putting it out.

I'm just so proud of the tens of thousands of words that have filled those pages now and how it's become such an institution in Scotland.

The Skinny & Sean Michaels party kicks off at 9pm Sun 23 Aug in the Spiegeltent, part of Jura Unbound

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Riots, Race and Reality Ryan Gattis hollers the sound of one famous city – LA – engulfed by fear and fire in ‘92. Here he discusses his novel All Involved and the visceral vignettes he will bring to Sounds of the City at Jura Unbound, alongside fellow authors Marlon James and Lisa McInerney Interview: Angus Sutherland Illustration: Marcus Oakley

A

ll Involved is already drawing comparisons with The Wire, not least by Ryan Gattis's publishers, who see common cause with the Baltimore-based HBO series about gangs, police, politicians and the civilians caught in their wake.

The author admits to us that he watched the show “a lot, over and over,” though insists that any echoes of it in his book are not deliberate, if indeed they exist. “I remember thinking very concretely that I will never write anything this good. So I hope, at the very least, that it planted a seed in my mind, subconsciously, to at least realise that this is what can be accomplished, with truly transcendent storytelling about an urban environment and crime and also the people who live in the margins.”

Gattis's work is set in early 90s Los Angeles County, a decade earlier than The Wire and three time zones away. And where the TV show concerned a predominately African-American urban area, All Involved focuses instead on the largely LatinoHispanic city of Lynwood. So the comparison is, on the surface, at least a little trite, a link made to tap into a demographic of potential book buyers more than anything else. Beyond the differences in subject matter, though, the show and the book share common ground in their authorship.

In the years since The Wire's last season in 2008, creator David Simon has become one of the most high profile critics of America's racial inequalities, and of the people and institutions that perpetuate them. This should come as something of a surprise given that, like Gattis, Simon is white and therefore not a direct victim of said inequalities. Still, Gattis, a self-described “white-boy writer from Colorado”, and Simon before him have endeavoured to tell stories on behalf of communities of which they are not part. Both have done so with every effort at honesty, sensitivity and nuance – and both with a degree of creative bravery. When white authors take on the voices of minority characters, hamfistedness is quickly and rightly ridiculed. Kathryn Stockett's bestseller The Help serves as a cautionary tale. Commercially popular, and adapted for the screen, some critics and viewers were less than enthu-siastic about its treatment of race relations and black subjectivity.

The Wire seems to have weathered these critical waters quite smoothly; whether All Involved will fare as well remains to be seen. Gattis is undoubtedly a deft storyteller though.

The book takes the 1992 Los Angeles race riots as its focal point. Over six days in April and May of that year, in response to the acquittal of the police officers videotaped beating Rodney King in March of 1991, Los Angeles erupted into one of the largest episodes of civil disturbance in US history. All Involved is a series of first-person vignettes spanning this period that brought race relations clattering back into focus. Similar to The Wire, the book is populated by both gangsters and the so called ‘uninvolved’ – those not affiliated with gangs – from nurses and firefighters to the homeless and, crucially, the police. In the Angeleno storytelling tradition, diverse character arcs interweave and collide throughout.

In this, the book shares a formal grounding with Paul Haggis's 2004 film Crash, itself an attempt at broaching the city's racial disparities, though one that met with a response even more iffy than

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The Help did (as it happens, Haggis is slated to direct David Simon's forthcoming HBO miniseries, Show Me a Hero). Gattis's story cycle is, mercifully, more carefully assembled than Haggis's effort.

All Involved opens with the murder of a young man on his way home from work. It's a heavy, unsparing introduction to Gattis's written world, and to LA violence. We bear witness to multiple stab wounds, a broken jaw and a ‘skull skidding over asphalt.’ The attack sparks, inevitably, a series of reprisals between rival Chicano ‘clicks’. Ernesto, the victim, though not a gangster himself, has relatives who are. They and their adversaries use the race riots as cover for exercises in retribution and conquest. With swathes of LA County caught up in the unrest, the very police that played such an important role in inflaming tensions are unable, or sometimes unwilling, to protect its inhabitants.

After countless killings and burned out buildings, following an encounter with a barely teenage pimp, one character on the fringes of the gang activity can only say that ‘LA has gone fucking crazy. All the way crazy.’ Though there's little attempt, here, to unpack the place and the time, he does get at the scarcely believable extremes to which the city succumbed during those six days in 1992.

“I think that people are awakening to the fact that not as much progress has been made as perhaps we'd like” Ryan Gattis

It's drug addicted Antonio ‘Lil Creeper’ Delgado, one of Gattis's most compelling characters, who is most direct in trying to make sense of the chaos. He wonders at the cyclical nature of unrest in LA's black and brown neighbourhoods.

After the violence between service personnel, predominately white, and Mexican-Americans in the Zoot Suit Riots of 1944, people – white people – were quick in forgetting. ‘They forget about it,’ he says, ‘and they forget they even thought it was bad, and for a while nothing happens, but nothing got fixed either, it's just getting drier, ready for another burn.’ Then came the Watts riots of 1965.

‘And shit hasn't changed since. So that's, what?

Twenty years apart for race riots? Enough time for everybody to forget again, right? Cuz it's nineteen-ninety-fucking-two, and this's what? Like, thirty? Probably a little less? Doesn't matter.

The way it's blowing up, this one's overdue.’

Gattis himself is of a similar mind. “I think that people are awakening to the fact that not as much progress has been made as perhaps we'd like. In ’92 camcorders were only recently commercially available and now every single person has a video camera in their pocket. I'd like to think that this will lead to change but I don't know

how hopeful I am, if only because a lot of the underlying issues that tend to lead to rioting: lack of education, lack of after school programmes, lack of healthcare and certainly a lack of jobs in some of these neighbourhoods, when you combine all of that with police brutality or injustice, it's unfortunately only a matter of time.”

And so on to the present day. Some 23 years after the Rodney King riots, minority communities across America are once again clamouring to be heard and to be treated fairly. The role of law and its enforcement is central, just as was the case in 1992. And in spite of the fact that there are ample spokespeople from within minority communities – indeed, it seems slightly absurd even to make the point – it is the David Simons of this world who seem best able to gain popular traction.

Ryan Gattis, in writing a book as ambitious as All Involved, has taken on this same mantle, acting as intermediary, flagging the inequity that many are so ready to ignore and forget. He'll doubtless be aware of how potentially fraught is the role he's

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assumed, and he hopes the next book from Lynwood is written by a local: “Certainly, in America, there are those who are given bullhorns and those who are not. There are an awful lot of obstacles that exist for the folks in Lynwood in order to be successful. One of the reasons why I wrote this book is because I'd really really love for the next book about Lynwood to be coming from an author who grew up in Lynwood and who knows it and saw it every day. So, I'd like to think that, if my book had anything to do with something like that happening, I would be really happy indeed.”

As would, no doubt, many of the city's residents.

Until such time as that book is published, and until such time as wider audiences are more willing to engage with the works of minority writers, there will be books like All Involved. And if the confidence of Gattis's prose is anything to go by, he may prove as prominent an advocate as Simon before him.

Sounds of the City is at 9pm Fri 28 Aug in the Spiegeltent, part of Jura Unbound

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White Van Man John Darnielle, the mind behind The Mountain Goats, graces Jura Unbound under his novelist guise – with Mull Historical Society's Colin MacIntyre adding melody. We ponder the gaps his work explores: between childhood and adult life; reality and fantasy

ohn Darnielle came to Glasgow in 2013 with The Mountain Goats. The dear departed Arches, its dim wide space and subterranean vibe, made the perfect setting for their strange folk rock stylings: a place to retreat from the real world and the city into the odd twilight zone beneath the bridge, to spend an hour or two lost in their dark Americana fairytales. To add to the oddness, the crowd arrived to find the room lined with fold-down chairs, school assembly style. A seated gig is usually in name only – the moment any half decent band hits its flow, no-one is staying on their ass – but being locked in knees-to-chair like that kept everyone packed in place and created a whole different tone: like worshippers at temple, everyone took their places and sat up straight while the man at the front spun out tales of hard times and strange occurrences, blurred collusions of fiction and reality. A lesser artist might have been thrown by this, might have struggled to energise a room so primly arranged. Darnielle thrived.

Bouncing between songs with an unrelenting energy, filling the gaps in between with jokes and fragmented anecdotes, he magnetised the crowd completely from the first word to an encore in which he dropped the microphone, descended from the stage and walked down through the passage between the pews to finish a cappella. With only the natural power of his voice and its reverberating echo rebounding off the Arches’ cavernous walls, the effect was spellbinding.

This same voice will fill the Spiegeltent this summer when Darnielle returns to Scotland. This time for Jura Unbound, this time as a novelist.

His debut novel, Wolf in White Van, was published last year to critical acclaim and a nomination for the National Book Award. In a way that will be deeply satisfying for fans of his work under The Mountain Goats moniker, it feels a lot like his music channelled into novel form. Specifically, it is a lot like the music's darkest undercurrents – often submerged under upbeat rhythms and a kind of manic gleeful irony – allowed to flow freely and spread across the pages of a book.

Like many of his songs, Wolf in White Van is largely a form of coming-of-age tale. It takes place in the same type of anonymous American smalltown, a place that feels suburban to everywhere, sitting quietly on the outskirts of the real world.

This recurring childhood home is never an entirely happy place: The Mountain Goats tell countless stories of its sleepy stillness being torn apart by alcoholism and abuse, an everyday maelstrom with a small child at its centre doing his best to escape.

This idea of escapism, of fleeing the harshness of the real world to hide within something else, is a central thread that runs through much of The Mountain Goats’ extensive discography and into Darnielle's novel. His songs tell tales of young men seeking freedom on the open road and security at the bottom of a bottle, making nods to videogames, horror films, heavy metal and Russian novels as they explore the myriad interests an oddball kid might use to veil themselves from the world around them. In his latest album Beat The Champ, it's the world of professional wrestling where he seeks shelter: a small child in a hard and unfair world gazing onto images of Herculean heroes willing to fight for good, able to restore the world to order by force of will and a well deployed steel chair. In Wolf in White Van, the hero Sean submerges himself in a fictional world of his own creation,

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drawing inspiration from the Conan books he loved as a child.

Sean, like the heroes of many of the Goats’ songs, is reminiscent of a Holden Caulfield raised in a different time and place. He's stuck in the same liminal zone between childhood and adult life, isolated by his inability to fully assimilate into either.

Even as teenagers, they both feel a kind of unspecified nostalgia for those even younger days when they were more free to live in imagination, before reality pressed in to colonise more and more of their world. As a kid, Sean could run around all by himself completely immersed in fantasies of Conan, happy enough in his own way and a bother to noone. As we get older, the expectation comes that we'll pull back from imaginary realms and move gradually into the real world. People like Sean find they don't quite fit in there, that they seem to be a little at odds with everything around them. And as they retreat into what they know – the worlds inside music, games and literature that make sense to them – those around them find them weirder still and the distance grows. For most people the intensity of their fandom is, as Sean's mother puts it after gesturing to the contents of his teenage room, “just too much.”

‘As we get older, the expectation comes that we'll pull back from imaginary realms and move gradually into the real world’ John Darnielle

The protagonists of many of Darnielle's songs are as tormented by abusive step-fathers as Holden Caulfield is haunted by past tragedy.

In both cases, their struggle can be more easily understood because it's anchored in a clear and tangible element of their lives, a horrible thing that has occurred or keeps occurring that makes life hard for them. Sean's disillusionment is harder to place. There's no clear root to his problem and even as the novel unfolds and we learn more about the actual circumstance of his ‘accident’, we almost understand less about how he feels and why he is the way he is; only that he is equally unsure. It's a vague, unplaceable, powerful sense of alienation, the simple sensation of not belonging.

In some ways, this makes his tale more universal.

The particular niches he picks to hide in are extremely obscure – Conan-inspired heavy metal and mail-based role-playing games – but Sean's story is essentially about the period growing up when nothing really makes sense. In his 40s now with kids of his own, Darnielle continues to come back to this alienated feeling in both his music and now prose. He dresses it in the scenery of his own childhood, fills it with the paraphernalia of the fandoms that coloured it, but it's this deeper, simply human thing dwelling underneath that his

John Darnielle

work looks to stir.

On the night, under the Spiegeltent's roof, Darnielle will appear in novelist form to read from Wolf in White Van alongside a talented and eclectic gathering of fellow scribes: Helle Helle and Etgar Keret. Colin MacIntyre of Mull Historical Society fame takes charge of all things musical, performing for all those packed into the tent on

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the night. With his melodies and Darnielle's words, together they'll take on the coming-of-age conundrum and see if they can't riddle it out. And if there are no answers to be found, a summer's night in Charlotte Square Gardens with whisky to hand and music in the air should be a pretty marvellous place to escape to.

There Was a Crazy Guy is at 9pm Mon 17 Aug in the Spiegeltent, part of Jura Unbound

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Credit: D.L. Anderson

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Interview: Ross McIndoe

Poetic Justice Find out how and where to get your word fix on these upcoming summer nights Interview: Alan Bett

ura Unbound offers a banquet of poetry and spoken word this summer across four separate events. These wonderful words will be delivered by those poets and programmers we are lucky enough to have on our Edinburgh doorstep, alongside nights featuring the finest wordsmiths from further afield, uniting under the banner of Babble On. We asked some principal practitioners of the form – poet and author Tim Clare, Neu! Reekie! helmsman Michael Pedersen, Jenny Lindsay and Rachel McCrum (aka Rally & Broad), and Eddie Argos, lead singer of the band Art Brut – to enlighten us a little about perceptions of poetry and whether or not it's connecting with an ever-broadening audience. We received a vivid and varied set of answers.

The Skinny: Do you feel that there remains a pretentious stereotype of poetry and a misunderstanding of what's currently happening on the scene?

Michael Pedersen: “Naw, aw cunt's writing poetry – good and bad – and rightly so. Spoken word is ever present in the stems of the country's top records; it's integrated into all the best festivals; and is throbbing and thriving under the banner of many regular salons, outfits and nights.

It's an enviable time to be a poetry fan or indeed a poet.”

Tim Clare: “Hmm... I think there's a stereotype of the public that they're hostile to poetry because they think it's pretentious. Actually most people are either indifferent – in the same way I don't have particularly strong views on regional motocross races or the best way to sheetrock a garage – or they think it's crap.

“Anyone can join in.

That is the scene's strength, and its terrible, terrible curse” Tim Clare

“The accusation isn't that the poet gives themselves airs – the accusation is that they're bad at what they do. And I think that second belief is not without foundation. Of course there are superb poets on page and stage who I admire immensely – but the bar to production is much lower than, say, live music, where you at least

Eddie Argos

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Credit: Bertrand

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need to spend some time learning the guitar.

The average quality across the poetry scene is several orders of magnitude lower than in live music.

Anyone can join in. That is the scene's strength, and its terrible, terrible curse.”

Eddie Argos: “Well, I'm not a poet and know very little about the scene so it's hard to tell. I just did a spoken word tour (I tell a long story about forming a band) and most of my supports were poets. I think I'm very fortunate that the first spoken word performers I was introduced to were Luke Wright (programming and performing at Babble On) and John Osbourne. It did give me the misapprehension that a lot of poetry was that good though. About 40% of the poets I saw on my tour had seen a bird's corpse in their front garden as a child, never got over it and wanted to bore on about it for 20 minutes in verse. So that pretentious stereotype is still out there alive and kicking.”

Rachel McCrum: [lights rollup, pushes aside paint spattered mug of red wine, adjusts trilby] “I don't know what you could possibly mean. All the poets I know are very young and very sexy.”

Well, for any pretentions which still remain, how are you conspiring to burst these bubbles?

MP: “With strong fingers and unclipped safety pins – pointy end first. Encouraging and catalysing cross-cultural collaborations, deliberating diversity, working with and alongside poets and performers of every ilk; being all ears when it comes to left-field or quite frankly bizarre suggestions. Plus being mobile and having an open door policy here at Neu! Reekie! HQ in Summerhall.

The kettle's on.”

EA: “I always think bubbles get burst when you see someone doing something and you think, ‘If that bloke can do it, so can I.’ The story I tell in my spoken word is very much about that. Maybe that will help.”

Performance poetry seems to be on the ascendancy. Why do you think it's resonating with younger audiences?

Jenny Lindsay: “I started performing in 2002 and was at the time one of the youngest performers on the scene, and one of very few women writing specifically for performance. I'm glad that has changed, and as soon as I fix the time machine, I'm going to go back to 2002 and tell my former self not to worry. But it would be several layers of awful to have performed poetry seen as purely a young ‘uns’ game. The reason I adore it is that there's no age limit, and while slams are most popular with younger audiences, there is more to the scene than slam.”

TC: “People have been saying this for the last decade. Performance poetry is on the rise, performance poetry is the new rock and roll. The scene hasn't significantly expanded in that time. I mean, I think it resonates with younger audiences because they're people...? And they can appreciate it just like anyone else. Maybe that accessibility thing again. But I don't know. It feels weird and a bit futile to start talking about overall trends. I don't care about those and I don't know any poets who do either. You just turn up and do the best gig you can on the night. It doesn't matter if the scene is hitting some kind of cultural zenith or deep in a nadir of irrelevancy – it's about what happens in that room, in that moment.”

EA: “Maybe with the internet it's easier to find.

When I was younger I liked things like John Hegley and John Cooper Clarke but had no one to talk to about it, and lots of it was impossible to track down. I spent years looking for John Cooper Clarke albums in second hand shops. Now you can download them in seconds.”

MP: “Social media making it more accessible; performance poetry crossing over into hip hop; young pups feeling empowered and being willing to voice their points and open themselves up to ridicule and humiliation – or, less commonly, great praise. 16-year-olds voting in the referendum, finding their political acumen and injecting some creative juice into that.”

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Rally & Broad

Humour and rhythm seem so prevalent in performances – do you feel there is a crossover between comedy/performance poetry and music?

RM: “Yeah, definitely. There are also some brilliantly, beautifully irreverent events being run at the moment dedicated wholly to taking the piss out of poetry: Paula Varjack and Dan Simpson's Never Mind The Fullstops and Anti-Slam: Edinburgh's Poets Against Humanity to name a few. Music-wise – I've done a couple of collaborations with bands in the last year (The Last September, Biff Smith & Caroline Evens from A New International) and I love where it's pushed my work, in terms of thinking about refrains, rhythm and also how the voice doesn't need to compete with the music. Plus you get to stand on a stage with people with guitars and pretend you're a rock star. Well, indie twat, anyway.”

MP: “Yup. But then not always. People like candour and candour is funny. That goes for all the above fields of play.”

Performers often love to shock as much as they delight. Do you enjoy provoking these reactions?

MP : “Yeah, of course, first and foremost myself and Kevin [Williamson, also of Neu! Reekie!] curate shows we'd like to attend and when you've a penchant for tempo changes – mixed in with a taste for the absurdist and the avant-garde – the floodgates are open for all sorts – that which coruscates and carousels come hither. With every serving of beauty comes a serving of sadness.”

TC: “I don't set out to horrify anyone – it's a pretty easy reaction to get. I think, if we're asking to be paid for what we do as artists, we have to try to offer something of value to the audience – even if we're challenging them, it has to come from a place of mutual humanity and love.”

There seems a real camaraderie between performers across the nation, even in slams and battles. Who do you respect and admire?

MP: “Aye, poets are always shouting out to other poets, lauding and licking each other's lollies; more so in the performative world than the written arenas I think; but then maybe that's just my shrouded experience. Hmmm – Hollie McNish; Kate Tempest; Kei Miller; Dave Hook; Kevin Cadwallender; Colin McGuire; Irvine Welsh; Alan Bissett; Jenni Fagan; heck, there's too many.

I'm ardently admiring them all.”

“When you've a penchant for tempo changes – mixed in with a taste for the absurdist and the avant-garde – the floodgates are open for all sorts”

– fellow Homework residents aside – poets I often find myself talking about are people like Anna Freeman, Francesca Beard, David Jay, Rob Auton and Harry Baker. I prefer personality and insight over American slickness. But then, I would, because I couldn't do slick if my life depended on it.”

EA: “I'm not really part of the poetry scene so I don't know. However I would like to go to slam poetry nights and pretend I've misunderstood the concept and challenge all the poets to a wrestling match.”

JL: “I agree that the scene overall is really supportive. There are a lot of egos, and nowhere near enough money which does lend a certain competitive edge, but people are generally having to make opportunities for themselves as they go.

It's been a full five years since it was last viewed as ‘the new rock and roll’, so it's not like there is a path of any kind in terms of what you are ‘supposed to do’ when you are a performance poet. We have to make it up as we go, create the path by walking it. So we have to be nice to each other.”

Bingo, Beats and Bigmouths (as part of Babble On): 9pm, Fri 21 Aug Fight for your Right (as part of Babble On): 9pm, Sat 22 Aug Neu! Reekie!: 9pm, Thu 27 Aug Rally & Broad: The Interpretation Edition: 9pm, Sun 30 Aug All events take place in the Spiegeltent as part of Jura Unbound

Michael Pedersen

TC: “I feel really lucky to be part of the spoken word scene. There are a lot of performers who I really like, and I've found almost everyone to be supportive, friendly, and interesting. I respect and admire most of my fellow poets, but I guess

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Editors: Rosamund West & Alan Bett Subeditor: Will Fitzpatrick Designer: Sigrid Schmeisser Production Manager & Picture Editor: Eve Sommerville Illustrator: Marcus Oakley

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What's On at Jura Unbound 2015 All events start at 9pm in the Spiegeltent, Charlotte Square Gardens. And they're free!

Italian immigrants in Edinburgh before World War II; Massimo Bocchiola is an acclaimed Italian writer and translator, who translates Irvine Welsh's works.

They are joined by Edinburgh-based Italian folk troop The Badwills to bring a little slice of Italy to Charlotte Square Gardens.

Tue 25 August

Happily Never After Once upon a time there was a family of story-tellers and spoken word performers who lived in a magical mirrored tent. One day, an audience descended on this peaceful, boozy home and demanded to be entertained. They tried poetry, but it was a little too sweet. They tried short stories but found them a little salty. Then, they tried Jura Unbound, featuring Illicit Ink, it was just right.

Mischievous, comedic, twisted fairytales you've been waiting for.

Wed 26 August

Vic Galloway and Friends

Sun 16 August

Wed 19 August

Jura Unbound 2015 takes flight with a night of seductive international short stories. Join us on our journey with Denmark's Dorthe Nors, author of Karate Chop; Ireland's Mary Costello reading from her debut collection, The China Factory, USA's Molly Antopol whose collection is The UnAmericans; and David Gates, whose A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me, is his first book for a decade.

After fantastic celebrations of writing from Iraq and Syria in past Jura Unbound editions, we leave the heat and sand of the Middle East behind and head north with Highlight Arts to the icy Arctic wilderness for literary explorations and translations. Join your intrepid expedition leader, Ryan Van Winkle, as he brings you work from Shetland, Finland and Iceland with Ragnar Jónasson, Jessie Kleemann, Niillas Holmberg and more.

Trading Stories

Mon 17 August

There Was a Crazy Guy Colin MacIntyre has long been beguiling us with his music as Mull Historical Society and this year he celebrates with a Best Of… album and the release of his debut novel, The Letters of Ivor Punch. In a lively evening of songs and stories, Colin teams up with author and musician John Darnielle, whose Wolf in White Van is hailed as a ‘meditation on monstrosity, escape and transformation’ and Etgar Keret, author of The Seven Good Years.

Head North, My Friend!

Thu 20 August

Squash and a Squeeze with The Donaldsons Julia and Malcolm Donaldson are legends of children's literature, well known for characters such as The Gruffalo. For one night only, they are escaping the Fringe to stay up late and play Jura Unbound. Discover their folk hits from when they busked on the streets of Bristol and get intimate in an audience game of Squash and a Squeeze. Destined to be a classic!

Tue 18 August

Fri 21 August

Famed for the chart-topping hit These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, musician Lee Hazlewood's comeback in 1999 is the focus of Wyndham Wallace's Lee, Myself and I. He makes his Jura Unbound debut alongside TV and radio journalist Stuart Cosgrove, author of Detroit 67, which describes an incredible period of social change and musical revolution.

Babble On co-producers, BIGMOUTH set the stage alight with some pulsating performances. There will be music from lo-fi punk superstars Art Brut plus an Edinburgh exclusive of Eddie Argos’ spoken word show, Formed A Band. Get your dabbers ready as Ringo: Music Bingo offers unbridled joy with the world's greatest comedy music game; plus show-stopping poetry from spoken word legends Jemima Foxtrot & host Luke Wright.

Born to be Wide

theme and tonight celebrates 800 years of the Magna Carta with Ross Sutherland, Molly Naylor and Joe Dunthorne. The results are often engagingly shambolic, but never short of fascinating.

Sun 23 August

The Skinny Night The Skinny magazine is Jura Unbound's longstanding media partner and has been documenting the Scottish cultural scene for nearly a decade. In celebration of their impending 10th birthday, they pitch up in the Spiegeltent with award-winning novelist (and former Skinny contributor) Sean Michaels, for a night of multidisciplinary madness, live readings and theremins.

Mon 24 August

A Little Slice of Italy

In the past Vic Galloway has given us Songs in the Key of Fife and shared rude jokes with King Creosote and James Yorkston but tonight the hardest working man in music brings together a heady mix of singer-songwriters and debut novelists to raise the roof on the Spiegeltent and celebrate the best of the Scottish indie scene.

Thu 27 August Neu! Reekie!

Welcome back to the devilishly dirty decadence of Neu! Reekie!. 2015 has been a killer year for hosts Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson: their first book was published, their show #UntitledLive was headlined by Young Fathers and gigs in Japan were followed by a whistle-stop tour around Scotland. They've created something extra naughty for Jura Unbound 2015; come and revel in it.

Fri 28 August

Sounds of the City Three writers with stunning novels read gritty stories of urban cities, streetfighting men and women, packing heat and punches. Marlon James’ atmospheric A Brief History of Seven Killings tells of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley; Ryan Gattis's visceral All Involved follows LA gangs after the ’92 riots; and Lisa McInerney's mischievous The Glorious Heresies sees a group of misfits mishandling a murder.

Sat 29 August

Stripped but not Bound Stripped is the Book Festival's strand celebrating graphic novels and comics.

Publisher No Brow have created a fresh little format for graphic novels in their 17x23 project – join graphic novelists William Exley, Andy Poyiadgi and Joe Sparrow as they lead an interactive Jura Unbound night. It's like colouring-in books for adults, with added edge.

Sun 30 August

Rally & Broad: The Interpretation Edition Rally & Broad creators Jenny Lindsay and Rachel McCrum present The Interpretation Edition. Artists explore translation, interpretation and communication and what happens when we don't understand each other. A mischievous creative investigation bringing together art forms and celebrating the wonder of words, all delivered in the inimitable Rally & Broad style.

Mon 31 August Bang Bang!

When the smoke has cleared and the last rocket popped above the castle, head to our Spiegeltent for the finale of Jura Unbound 2015. A little shorter but full of firecrackers, we'll be going down in a blaze of glory! Kicks off at 10.15pm.

Dan Gunn's The Emperor of Ice Cream explores the lives, loves and betrayal of

Bingo, Beats & Bigmouths

Sat 22 August

Fight for your Right HOMEWORK is a literary cabaret in Bethnal Green run by a formidable bratpack of writer-performers. Each month they produce new work on a different

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Listings

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THE SKINNY

Panic at the Porno What do processed meat and amateur porn have in common?

Liv McMahon examines the moral panic surrounding the amateur adult industry, and explains why she feels torn when it comes to porn. Contains graphic descriptions Illustration: Kim Thompson

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othing quite exemplifies the revolutionary impact of the internet like porn. No longer a spectator sport, porn is now bottom-up, nonexclusive and participatory. Google hosts a seemingly endless amount of sites catering to every sexual specialty imaginable, so much so that last year our coalition government took measures to ban facesitting, female ejaculation and fisting (to name a few).

Pornhub's ‘Amateur’ category boasts an everincreasing 34000 videos. What's odd is that despite huge advancements, porn remains a topic divided along the same lines of debate as decades ago; anti-porn or anti-censorship, with no apparent in-between. As a feminist, I feel torn when it comes porn, believing strongly that women should be free to opt into a career in porn or sex work of any kind. Yet the question lingers uncomfortably – is porn inherently misogynistic?

This confliction came to a head after seeing Hot Girls Wanted, a Netflix documentary produced

by Rashida Jones. Filmmakers followed teens who pursued careers in amateur porn after discovering ads on Craigslist. The documentary graphically portrays male producers “punishing” young porn actresses by combining hardcore sex with vomit inducing tactics. Certain parts – such as the snippets from horrific ‘facial abuse’ videos, regarded as a necessary evil in an American girl's amateur porn career – make for particularly difficult viewing.

As a type of porn, amateur comes closest to the idea of ‘realcore’. Lo-fi filming paints a picture

of authenticity, as does the impression that those involved are actually enjoying themselves and want to be there. Tressa, the documentary's protagonist, is presented as an innocent beacon of academic excellence, who lost all direction and integrity upon entering a corrupting sex industry.

“Pornography should be more than a medley of disembodied dicks being rammed into every orifice” She epitomises a timeless moral panic surrounding porn – that this sacrificial porno-lamb could very well be your daughter. Society's porn anxiety rarely prompts a concrete solution. Instead, we vilify and criticise young women for their choices, rather than the porn kings whose camera lenses and jumpcuts typify the male gaze.

Comparing amateur porn to Uber, The Washington Post warned that “breaking out of an old model means escaping regulations protecting workers.” California's enforcement of condoms in pornography prompted a mass migration of porn

production to locations like Miami, where producers aren't subject to health restrictions. Actors and actresses carry a hefty financial burden too, shelling out for lingerie, travel expenses, medical treatment – which is challenging, especially in America, due to expensive healthcare and the physically demanding nature of porn. “In the amateur world you're just processed meat,” Rachel dryly admits in the documentary, reminding us that the cheapness may please far-removed audiences seeking realism, but is felt first hand by the actresses featured.

What the future holds for porn is an interesting prospect; it'll no doubt continue to grow and diversify as technology does, but will its power dynamics ever change? I'd like to believe they will; feminist porn is now a realistic option, even if it is chronically overlooked. Pornography should be more than a medley of disembodied dicks being rammed into every orifice. And the sooner amateur porn reflects this, the sooner society can stop the scaremongering.

Artfully Bound Skinny Redhead talks bondage, Japanese Shibari and why she's keen to bring rope work out of the fetish world and into the mainstream during next month's Edinburgh Fringe

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ver heard of Japanese bondage? What about rope self-suspension? Well, for those of you who perhaps aren't a member of your local fetish club, chances are you've already seen it in one guise or another. If not, don't worry, Edinburgh based artist Skinny Redhead is about to make sure you have.

Forget any preconceptions you may have about bondage – that it's kinky or shocking or taboo. This is bondage in its purest, most beautiful form. And it's utterly captivating. Take a look at 50 Shades of Grey director Sam Taylor Johnson's photo exhibit from 2004, Self Portrait Suspended. Here she's tied up by a bondage expert, but as she digitally removes the ropes from the images, any immediate link to bondage is hidden. FKA Twigs’ Pendulum video, on the other hand, where she spends most of the song suspended in an intricate rig, gives a better idea of exactly what the art form entails.

The exact definitions and distinctions between the two Japanese forms of rope bondage, Kinbaku and Shibari, are constantly debated in the West, but in essence they involve being tied with ropes in complex and visually striking patterns. Kinbaku is performed by two people, a dominant (the rigger) and a submissive, while

July 2015

Shibari is one person doing their own rigging.

Until recently, it's been kept almost exclusively within the fetish community, but it's long been a favourite subject for fine art photographers too.

But in an almost pioneering move, Skinny Redhead is bringing Shibari out of the fetish world, off the gallery walls and performing it live.

Neither a redhead (currently blonde) nor skinny (more super fit gymnast), hers is not a stage name that'll help you find her in a crowd. So when we meet for a chat in a bar in Leith, it's lucky that I'd seen her perform a couple of weeks earlier; both myself and the audience held enraptured as she twirled and floated on the stage before us.

Skinny Redhead's path to Shibari came via modelling. At the end of one particular shoot, the photographer asked if she'd be interested in being tied up. “There was no intimacy to that shoot,” she explains, “but I remember seeing all the bits of rope in the air like dust. And I remember the smell of the rope.” A couple more shoots and she was hooked.

Although she started out performing at fetish clubs and events, Skinny Redhead is determined to bring rope work to wider audiences. “Why should it be limited to the world of fetish? Why not let others see it? Why think that some people might

think it's weird? It's like any art; people get different things from it.”

Exactly what I got from Shibari was curiously mystical. I mean, fetishists, sailors and Wonder Woman aside, the last time most people had anything to do with a bundle of rope was likely to be high school, when we were expected to shimmy up the length of one in sport class. I definitely didn't get any sensual pleasure from the rope back then, but I do remember the wonder of something so slight being able to hold my weight. So it surprised me to see Skinny Redhead perform and realise the power of the rope again, not just in holding her, but in the hold it had over me and the audience.

The perfect illustration of Shibari's almost hypnotic allure is a shot of the audience from that night, where every single person is staring at the stage in a kind of wonder. When I showed it to her, Skinny Redhead was amazed. “Oh wow, I've never seen the audience before.” My assumption – that this was due to the immense concentration needed while performing – was way off. “No, I'm just spinning too fast,” she laughed. “But I hear the music.

And I make up a little story in my head each night, just like I want the audience to. That's why I don't have a title for my performances. I want to give

Words: Natalie Dewinter

them the freedom to choose what they want to feel. I don't want to manipulate their thoughts.”

“I remember seeing all the bits of rope in the air like dust.

And I remember the smell of the rope” Skinny Redhead will be performing throughout the Fringe. Proving both she and Shibari are indeed something to behold, she'll then be appearing all over the UK and Europe. So get yourself along to a show during this year's Edinburgh Fringe and see for yourself where rope work takes your mind. If you can manage to pull your eyes away from the stage for a second, be sure to take a look at the audience for yourself.

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The Aid Paradox A personal journey to Warm Heart of Africa Malawi exposes a raft of questions

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A new friend connected by my parents meets us at the airport. She's driven across central Malawi to pick us up, a journey of four hours each way.

Acts like this, of almost ludicrous kindness, are frequent during our time in this country. As we cross the ridge of the rift valley, she stops on a lookout point, producing a bottle of fizz and some cups from the boot. “Welcome to Africa,” she says, as we survey the bush stretching as far as the eye can see under the baking African sun. It's an odd and beautiful thing, to gaze first upon land that has been so storied in family history.

Disoriented by two days of airports and a drive across the African bush, arriving at Lake of Stars festival after dark is a strange experience.

Friends who took an earlier flight greet us with beers. We sit on a wall and discuss the oddities of being in Africa, surrounded by Scottish voices, swimming in the Lake, the unaccustomed threat of crocodiles. The festival itself is on the beach, on the banks of the Lake. At night it thrums with life, the beats and buzz of music from across the globe – Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, London, Edinburgh… In the day we wander with the rest of the festival-goers, anaesthetised by the sun and the sparkling waters and the ever-present Carlsberg green label.

It is strange to be in a place we expected to be so other and to be among friends. It is strange that the Danes have chosen to form a monopoly on beer in this tiny African nation. The world is small and the air is warm and the music is loud. Baobabs, the most magical of trees, litter the grounds. And there are no crocodiles.

In a lodge on the slopes of Mount Mulanje, we sip sundowners on a wall and watch that magical African sunset spool out. A group nearby are English speakers, a mix of ages and ghostly pale in the way only we Scots and Irish can really achieve.

We eavesdrop – is that a Weegie accent? In the bar, we hear their story. A group of west coasters assemble each year in the Mulange area to do some good, bringing with them suitcases of sanitary towels and a few teenaged girls to help empower the Malawian girls through their example of independence and drive. The girls seem mainly interested in taking selfies and learning new dances from

YouTube. We privately wonder about the good of all this aid.

Mulange is the magic mountain, a massif sprouting from the surrounding flatlands, giddy vertical ascents topped with a vast and labyrinthine plateau. People get lost here, regularly. Legend says that the ghosts take the foreign spirits, a Hanging Rock-esque mythology that may be a convenient front, a creative narrative hook for tourism, or good old-fashioned ill-prepared walkers getting lost on a big mountain.

The side of Mulange is constantly smoking.

Our guide on a walk to Likhubula waterfall tells us that these fires are illegal charcoal production.

Deforestation in the country is a huge issue – the landscape is being reduced to desert, fertile soil replaced with dust and the omnipresent blue plastic bags given away with each and every purchase embedded in the dirt. Here on the Mulange hillside the trees are burned to provide direct income for people living hand to mouth. They can sell this charcoal and buy their children food. Elsewhere, they're burned to make bricks, a building material introduced by the Europeans and generally regarded to be much less efficient than the mud that they replaced.

It is a beautiful country, Malawi, warm both climatically and emotionally – few who visit escape with their hearts unscathed. But it is also a country of brutal, devastating poverty and a large-scale aid effort which, paradoxically, often manages to exacerbate existing problems. There are a million orphans, thanks in large part to HIV, and lack of female reproductive determination. Girls are forced into prostitution at a young age to pay to attend school, then are forced from school when they fall pregnant.

The missionaries want to help, but instead help to spread AIDS by preaching against either sex out of wedlock or condoms. An NGO sees the plight of women and creates a project to help only women; so the men, disenfranchised and excluded from the project, destroy its fruits. A slow growth project spends years in a community teaching about water sanitation, using a two bucket system so there is clean water for drinking and water for washing hands and dishes; a do-gooder with a saviour complex installs a filter on the village pump and tells the community they don't need to worry

anymore, there is clean water for everyone. The village stop using separate buckets, and water borne diseases rear their head again. And no one was taught how to clean the filter.

On the flipside, stories abound of projects that slowly create a difference, led by communities. A library is being built, slowly slowly, by local fundraising. The hospital constructed for a comparative pittance has reduced the local death rate by 70%. A mobile app that triages infants, such a basic thing to those used to European healthcare, has processed thousands of children and significantly reduced the mortality rate from meningitis. Outside Lilongwe, a model village is growing, resurrecting traditional mud building techniques.

Liwonde National Park is as close to the Garden of Eden as anything I have seen or imagined. Visitors stay in luxurious pitched tents across the hippo and crocodile-filled Shire river. A mother croc gestates her eggs on the bank opposite our verandah. It is simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. Thrice-daily safaris take us into the bush, onto the water, through the crocodiles and the hippos. At dusk, sipping the obligatory sundowners, we see our first elephant, a teen male making his way alone to the watering hole.

Our guide tells us how he, as a Malawian native, became a guide. There is little formal training in the country to assist in gaining the knowledge necessary to be the expert on the African flora and fauna required to show tourists around the bush. Most of the guides are westerners with an exhaustive understanding of the Latin names and genus from their textbooks. But he grew up here, and has observed the animals all his life.

On the water safari we see herds of elephants at the water hole, babies joyously rolling in the mud, each adult accompanied by its own personal egret to tend to its bugs. The Lonely Planet cameramen in our boat – who previously suggested tempting crocs by sticking their arms in the water – want us as close as possible to an enormous bull elephant on the shoreline, eyeing us warily.

We sit, awestruck, three metres from him, until he starts to stamp. lakeofstars.org

Credit: Fraser Douglas

ur first sight of Malawi is the sun-drenched, arid land I've been hearing about since birth.

A purple jacaranda blooms over the tiny airport terminal. A queue stretches outside the arrivals hall – ebola is rife in west Africa, and everyone must have their temperature checked before entering the country. The fact that the current outbreak's hot zone is closer to the UK than it is to Malawi, in southeastern Africa, is irrelevant – this country's health system is tiny, precarious, underfunded, and can't handle an epidemic, particularly one of such virulence.

My grandparents were married in Malawi, in Livingstonia in the north in the early 40s. Both from the East End of Glasgow, they met in a church choir before my grandfather came out here to manage a tobacco plantation. They were colonialists, a fact that is riddled with ambiguity; but the fact remains, they followed an opportunity and contributed to a country they grew to love.

My grandmother, an english teacher, came out during the Second World War, travelling by convoy through a U-boat-filled Atlantic followed by three weeks standing up in a truck. “And the whole time I was thinking,” she used to tell us, “if he's not there to meet me, I'm going to turn around and go back.” My mother was born here, and, thanks to her Malawian nanny, bilingual in Chinyanja and English until the family's return to Scotland when she was 5.

They lived on the banks of Lake Malawi – photos reveal a brick building, a rose garden, chickens, many dogs; views across the water and the rising cloud of the nkungo flies in the centre. Inherited fragments of their letters home reveal an ambiguous relationship with the country at this fractious point in history just prior to the end of British rule.

Supporters of the independence movement, they found themselves out of step with much of Malawi's European community.

Coming out in the late 90s to see my mother's birthplace, my parents found the mango grove grandma planted as seedlings and their old house, within a modern nation blighted by AIDS in whose history Scotland played a defining role. They came back and started projects which have had an astonishing impact. The relationship with Malawi is something which, oddly, defines my family.

Words: Rosamund West

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THE SKINNY

Eggs, Ovens and Automobiles Some seasonal culinary advice for the jet-setters amongst you, courtesy of a comedian making meals in kettles, a student cooking dinner on his engine, and some 21st century bushcraft

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ummer holidays are difficult beasts – ostensibly all about relaxing and enjoying new experiences, they often devolve into the kind of sun-drenched logistical nightmare that would make Werner Herzog blush. The blind panic to ‘do all of the stuff ’ puts everyone on the trip on edge, and the people around you seem to be talking in some kind of funny, almost foreign language.

Being an urbane sophisticate, you pretend to understand, but end up mumbling in broken English (even though that's the one language you can speak) and pointing at the air as though you're trying to work a giant invisible touchscreen. That's a summer holiday.

All that being said, chances are you'll go on one of these ‘holidays’ at some point, so we're here to help. You see, while diving headfirst into a new cuisine is one of the joys of travelling, there will be times when the fates conspire against you. Maybe the great little patisserie will be closed for the afternoon, or the seafood restaurant might have run out of razor clams, or perhaps you're trapped in an airport for nine hours and don't fancy paying six euros for a granola bar that appears to have been sat on or otherwise molested. Fear not, traveller, we are here, and we've brought back-up.

We'll start with hotels, where many a holiday has been sullied by a late-night argument over whether the desire for a ham sandwich justifies a double-digit outlay. Comedian George Egg has been there, but rather than biting the room service bullet he has taken a somewhat different tack – he makes his own meals “using the equip-

July 2015

ment that the hotel unwittingly provides me with – iron, kettle, trouser press and so on.”

Egg, a self-styled ‘anarchist cook’ who will bring his cooking styles to next month's Edinburgh Fringe, explains the thinking behind his guerilla gourmet skills like so: “It's a habit born of necessity as a touring comedian who's frequently finding himself in hotels. And being a passionately obsessed self-taught cook with a dyed-in-the-wool urge to bend the rules, some years ago I started experimenting.”

And experiment he did, producing all the meals of the day using the pieces of hotel kit most of us either ignore or try not to trip over. His tricks are ingenious in the extreme, from heating pitta bread with an iron – “set it at its hottest setting (‘linens’ usually)” – to cooking fresh fish in a sink full of hot water. Pancakes, mussels, a full English breakfast; if you can eat it, you can cook it using stuff you'd find in a hotel room, apparently.

Egg's tip for a recipe to try out in the comfort of someone else's room is a rather fitting scrambled egg, cooked in a kettle. He explains: “A stout freezer bag of beaten and seasoned eggs lowered carefully into the just-boiled kettle (careful on the heating element at the bottom) will poach with the most delicate and gentle heat producing the creamiest scrambled egg you could imagine. You'll not go back to the conventional method once you're back home, I assure you.”

So that's your hotel breakfast sorted, and now you're off out exploring your new surroundings. Some of you will be fine – if you're hanging

around in a big city, most of them tend to have food strewn about all over the place. If you can't find anything to eat in Berlin or Barcelona during the daytime in the height of summer, you are doing life wrong. However, if you're on some kind of ‘road trip’, pootling about the place in a car down windy coastal roads unsure of where your next snack is coming from, there is an easy solution to your problem. It's called engine cooking, it sounds mad, but, shockingly, it actually works.

The concept has been around for decades, and carries connotations of vast American freeways cracking in the sun, drivers who look like they belong in a ZZ Top tribute band, and bacon being fried on the pavement for some reason or another. In Carbecue, the engine cooking book by Edinburgh student Alfred Cary, things are different. More refined. In fact, let's call a spade a spade – they're a bit posher.

Carbecue's recipes include oriental seabass, cooked on the manifold of a Ford Ka, or a baked camembert that takes just 30 minutes wrapped in foil under the hood of your everyday family car.

The principle is fairly straightforward – take some food, wrap it tightly in tin foil, lay it on top of the really hot bit of the car you're going to be driving anyway, and you're literally on your way to a tasty lunch. Can't really get away with it on the bus, but then that's one of the benefits of having your own vehicle – baked cheese, any time you want.

Of course, some of you won't be so lucky as to see a hotel room-turned-breakfast bar, or a motorised oven. You'll face a darker, much more

FOOD AND DRINK

Words: Peter Simpson Illustration: Mica Warren

unsettling fate. This summer, you'll be camping.

The thrill of the outdoors! The smell of the wild!

Lying on the cold ground like a dog! While we can't totally turn around your holiday, we can do the next best thing, and give you some food-based craft projects to add some fun to camp life.

You could add some flavour to your meals by smoking some fish or meat in a portable smoker.

Just light some oak chips in a biscuit tin, put a grill rack inside and a lid on top, and you'll add a nice smoky note to whatever you put inside (please don't set yourself on fire). Alternatively, you could fashion a solar oven out of a reflective windshield shade, some wire racks, a pot and one of those baking bags from The Great British Bake-Off – point the contraption at the sun and you have a rudimentary oven that will genuinely cook stuff.

Your friends may think you're a witch, but who cares when you've just built a magical cooking device out of some shiny plastic and the awesome power of the sun.

So no matter where you end up this summer, keep your newfound box of tricks by your side, and you'll be ready to turn an unsuspecting piece of office equipment into a vital part of your cooking arsenal in no time. Alternatively, you could forego all this and just go out for dinner, but come on – you're on holiday. Live a little. Just try not to break anything...

George Egg: Anarchist Cook is at The Gilded Balloon, 5-31 Aug (not 17 & 24) at 2:45pm; Carbecue by Alfred Cary is out now via carbecue.co.uk

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Food News This month's round-up is almost entirely liquid, with beer launches and festivals before a dry run for next month's Fringe madness

Credit: Peter Sandground

Words: Peter Simpson

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society Ice Dream Drams

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irst up this month is some brand-new beer, courtesy of the students of Heriot-Watt's Brewing and Distilling course and the lovely folk over at Stewart Brewing. The annual Natural Selection project – work as team, create beer, party up big style – is now in its fifth year, with three unique beers on offer for one night only.

Plus, you get a souvenir glass, and not the kind of ‘souvenir’ you have to hide under a friend's scarf.

Stealing's wrong, kids. 2 Jul, from 7pm, Teviot Row House, Edinburgh, £10 Moving on from beer to spirits, the Scotch Malt Whisky Society's 12 Tub Cinema series continues this month with a series of whisky-related films screening at their central Edinburgh HQ. With a drink and some ice cream thrown in, it's a great chance to relive those childhood birthday parties at the cinema, although with more alcohol and films involving the Nazis this time around. We presume. Various dates, 28 Queen St, Edinburgh, £5, smws.co.uk Right, now that's out of the way let's ‘hop’ back to beer. Hop, beer… anyone? Suit yourselves.

While that pun may have fallen flat, the same won't be true of this month's evening of food and beer pairing devised by Edinburgh's Alechemy Brewing. One of the capital's top microbreweries, they'll be serving up a host of brews alongside foods that go well alongside said beers.

Sounds like a winning idea to us. 16 Jul, Canon's Gait, 232 Canongate, Edinburgh, £35 Next up, even more beer! This time it's off to Glasgow, with Cafe Source Too playing host to the West End Beer Festival in Hillhead. Expect beers from the usual suspects and some of the newcomers from across the Scottish brewing fraternity, a bottle shop courtesy of The Good Spirits Co, and the usual beer festival issue of there literally being too many lovely things to try. There are worse problems to have, we'll give you that.

31 Jul-1 Aug, Hillhead Sports Club, Hughenden Rd, £6 Finally this month, some actual food, with the Edinburgh Food Festival in the leafy surrounds of George Square Gardens. Taking up the site which will be the Assembly's home during that ‘Edinburgh Fringe’ they have nowadays, the Spiegeltent in the Gardens will be converted into a covered market for producers from far and wide while there'll also be a host of street food vendors, talks and other events to check out.

Plus, it'll be a great opportunity to do some onthe-ground reconnaissance ahead of the madness of August – you'll thank us later…

29 Jul-2 Aug, various times, George Sq. theskinny.co.uk/food

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Lifestyle

The A-to-Z of Sandwiches We catch up with Nick Chapman of Dude Foods – the man who brought us tacos woven from bacon – and discover he's planted his flag on sandwich mountain

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egular readers may think that we must have exhausted the possibilities of the sandwich by now. So far in 2015 we have made a giant sandwich out of the winners of this year's food survey, looked at sarnies fed through a flatbed scanner, and revealed that, shockingly, Elvis Presley was a fan of unhealthy food. But after our recent catch up with Nick Chapman from Dude Foods we can see that, in his hands, the journey may have only just begun.

When we last spoke to Chapman back in 2013, he was firing out all manner of stuff on his food blog, including his Inside Out Grilled Cheese Sandwich – that's cheese, bread and cheese – and the 100% Cheese Grilled Cheese Sandwich (cheese, cheese and cheese). So when he set to making a sandwich to span the entire alphabet, it felt like a logical next step.

After all, here's a man who already had most of the ingredients sitting in his fridge when he

set out to create a 26-item sandwich. Choosing one ingredient for each letter of the alphabet (yep, even ‘x’ – xylocarp if you're wondering), he swiftly constructed this heavyweight feast as the logical conclusion of the BLT sandwich.

The whole thing balances on the edge of feasibility, craftily held in place by bamboo skewers (cheating, surely) and careful distribution. But we know what you're thinking – did he actually manage to, you know, eat it?

“I ate maybe about 50% of it,” Nick states, “but after food is sitting out on your counter while you're putting a giant sandwich like that together, and then sitting around even longer while you take photographs, it doesn't really taste the best.”

But it's not all in the eating when your sandwich reaches impossible-to-eat status. As Nick points out, “it's not like some restaurant could just start serving this sandwich.” Just try ordering this at your local Greggs. Rather, this spectacle

FOOD AND DRINK

Words: Lewis MacDonald

is clearly for the internet to look and marvel at what a sandwich could be, if we were all as creative as Picasso but ate like Scooby-Doo. Reflecting on the rise of sandwiches over in the US, Nick offers that “it definitely seems like people are getting more creative with sandwiches.

The current big thing seems to be making buns out of things that you wouldn't normally use for a bun like ramen noodles, or spaghetti noodles or different types of stuff like that.”

Some mind-boggling new leads for all you sandwich makers out there, but where should the sandwich go next? We prompt the architect of this monument to the craft for a clue on the possible next move for the sarnie, but Nick shrugs. ”I'm not sure where it can go from here,” he says.

Well if he doesn't know, then nobody knows. Maybe we can add some new letters to the alphabet for a start... dudefoods.com

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Small Games, Big Stage With its theatrical press conferences, surprise announcements and celebrity cameos, E3 has long held a place in the heart of videogame fans. We offer a look at the independent strand of this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo Words: Andrew Gordon

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s many good reasons as there are to be cynical about E3, it's hard for anyone passionate about videogames not to get caught up in the excitement of the industry's biggest event. Held yearly at the LA Convention Centre, the Electronic Entertainment Expo is where the big name companies like Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft come to hawk their wares, staging elaborate variety shows billed as “press conferences” that have historically enlisted everyone from Paul McCartney to Steven Spielberg in helping promote the next supposed evolution in gaming.

In a lot of ways it's profoundly absurd – what value is there, you might ask, in salivating over painstakingly rehearsed snippets of games that are still a way off from being done? Game projects can mutate wildly over the course of development, meaning the demos that accompany E3’s notorious big reveals are usually speculative prototypes at best. Even if the game being exhibited is just a few months from release and thus almost guaranteed to perform as advertised, why not just wait and play it for yourself? Watching an E3 stage demo can sometimes feel like being shown a scene from a film as a set of stills; the unnatural display comes nowhere near approximating a first-hand experience with the genuine artifact but is nevertheless sure to undermine the initial impact of the finished work. And yet despite the silliness of it all, there remains a niggling promise that this could be the year you see something

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truly revolutionary, an idea so genuinely radical that it transcends all the marketing hype bullshit.

E3 after all, is where the world was introduced to the Nintendo Wii. While no such thunderclap shook this year's conference, there was still plenty to be optimistic about amid the usual monotony of sequels, shooters and smarmy executives. It was a tiny glimmer of respite, for instance, to see an improvement in female representation across the board – both within the games themselves and among their creators – following what's been a gruesome year of targeted hate campaigns against women in the industry. Japanese games also enjoyed their most significant showing this decade: Microsoft announced it'll be publishing a new game from Megaman director Keiji Inafune, while Sony will be instrumental in resuscitating the cult-favourite Shenmue series, both abating fears of a national industry in decline. And as much as an outlet like The Skinny might argue that many of the medium's best offerings aren't to be found at glitzy industry shindigs (much like you don't look to the Grammys for your music recommendations), unique and interesting games were far from scarce at E3 2015.

Though both previously announced, Firewatch and Tacoma were two of the most interesting smaller-scale projects to receive the big stage treatment, both first-person exploration games that stood out for their focus on dialogue and emphatic lack of violence. The former is the debut pro-

Firewatch

ject from Campo Santo, a small ensemble of industry veterans that includes talent from Telltale's The Walking Dead team. Set in a stylish brightly coloured approximation of Yellowstone National Park, players control a newly appointed forest lookout called Henry who finds himself implicated in the disappearance of two teenage girls. With the real culprit at large and seemingly always one step ahead, players must rely on Delilah, Henry's supervisor, for the vital intel needed to piece the mystery together.

Communication is just as important in Tacoma, which will see players interrogating an AI on board an abandoned space station with the goal of discovering the fate of its crew. Its gloomy, claustrophobic atmosphere brings to mind slowburn sci-fi classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Moon and is sure to draw upon the same knack for tension building that its creators Fullbright demonstrated with Gone Home. Neither games has a definitive release date, but Firewatch is expected to hit sometime before the end of the year while Tacoma will release “when it's done”.

It's definitely heartening to see smaller games

TECH

like these (including others like Super Hot, Relativity, Cuphead and Alone With You) get the mainstream media exposure that an event like E3 brings.

And the platform exclusivity deals that make it happen seem like a win-win situation, exposing the indie teams to a much wider audience than their budget would otherwise allow while giving Microsoft or Sony a chance to one up the competition. Yet when you get down to it, it's skeezy and ultimately unsustainable for the console manufacturers to continue offloading the financial risk of ambitious game design on self-employed indie studios, effectively outsourcing innovation while plucking up the most auspicious prospects for themselves.

As runaway budgets produce increasing homogeneity in mainstream console games, it's the work being done on the fringes that's keeping the medium alive and the industry in business: work that's becoming less and less possible to undertake. It seems tragically fitting, for instance, that the week of E3 was also the week that seminal indie studio Tale of Tales announced that it's getting out of the videogame business, saddled with various debts from unrecouped development costs.

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Credit: Ross Gilmore

Credit: Euan Robertson

Credit: David P Scott

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Ulrich Schnauss

Wild Beasts

St Vincent

Gig Highlights Words: Siobhan Smith hether you prefer to experience your live music in an open-air sea of MDMA-fuelled revellers, up to your chin in mud, or in the comfort of a sticky floored pub with a cold pint / G&T (delete as appropriate) in hand; there's a little something for the lot of you this July.

A gleaming jewel in the crown of the Scottish festival circuit, Kelburn Garden Party kicks off proceedings in enchanting fashion (3-5 Jul). Lose yourself in the interactive art, living theatre and colourful castle grounds, but don't get so caught up in the magic that you miss out on the wonders that the eclectic line-up has to offer (we've all done it…). Highlights include synth-shoegazer Ulrich Schnauss, instrumental hip-hoppers Monosapiens, alt.folk chanteuse Rozi Plain, Warp veterans Nightmares on Wax and Optimo legends DJ Twitch and Jonnie Wilkes. Whether you want to rave or behave, Kelburn caters to it all.

Edinburgh band of brothers Ded Rabbit bring their straight up indie-rock to Broadcast on 3 Jul, where they'll no doubt be showcasing material from their upcoming EP Moving In Slow Motion (due for release this month). In an apparent animal themed night, support comes from Dunfermline four piece Foreign Fox. Don't fancy taking your chances with the Scottish summer? Want the plethoric benefits of a festival line-up, but have it on your doorstep?

You're in luck. On 4 Jul, Glasgow has got the answer.

The Repeater lot host a live music all-dayer at veritable lo-fi institution The 13th Note, with sets from Great Cop, Lovers Turn To Monsters, Mauscripts, Lenin Death Mask and, formed from the ashes of Algernon Doll, WOMPS. Taking it back outside (look, it's July – the prevalence of outdoor festivals simply can't be glossed over), 10-12 Jul means T In The Park, arguably the biggest event in the Scottish music calendar – and after a shaky start, Strathallan is happening (those bloody ospreys; who do they think they are?!). But don't worry if you can't face yet another year of Kasabian and Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds; dig deep enough and there are plenty gems to be unearthed. Homegrown appearances include enigmatic duo Man of Moon, who will bring their maverick clatter to the monolithic festival's new stomping ground, Glasgow bright sparks Pinact and electronic duo Bdy_Prts.

Further up the bill, don't miss The War on Drugs,

July 2015

St Vincent or ever-awesome festival steamrollers The Prodigy.

While everyone else endures baby-wipe baths and tries to figure out how the bloody hell you actually use a ‘she-we’ without pissing all over your hands, life continues in the real world…

In their first European tour in almost decade, Harlem duo Cannibal Ox will infiltrate Broadcast with their latest gritty hip-hop offerings on 11 Jul. Whether they manage to get round to playing even half of the 19 songs on their new, sprawling LP Blade of the Ronin remains to be seen, but it's worth popping along to find out.

Edinburgh has been a bit quiet up until now hasn't it? Kendal art-rockers Wild Beasts make up for it on 15 Jul when they play Summerhall, supported by Lone Wolf aka Paul Marshall in one of his last ever live performances. Recently nominated for an Ivor Novello award for fourth album Present Tense, the affable dream-poppers are on great form at the moment and play this as one of two warm-up shows before making an appearance at Latitude Festival on 17 Jul. Glasgow's love affair with electro and synthpop continues to flourish. Get yourself along to Stereo on 17 Jul to see our new favourite indiedisco stormers White in action. Leaving behind The Low Miffs and Kassidy, White have burst onto the scene with their fair share of hype. So far, they haven't let us down. Not really an indie-disco kind of guy? Does moshing with Fat Goth sound more up your street (NB – Fat Goth = medium built indie rockers from Dundee)? Get back through to Edinburgh in that case, to see this power trio of self-deprecating underdogs play what they profess to be ‘metal in denial.’ Electric Circus, 18 Jul. 21 Jul is a big day in Glasgow. You've got the privileged choice between catching Fortuna POP!’s Evans the Death playing their 90s alt-rock/ weirdo pop in the Glad Cafe, or electro quintet Amatrart (pronounced Amateur Art, obviously) getting you dancing in King Tut's, as part of the annual Summer Nights extravaganza: 50 bands playing during 16-31 July, giving you plenty of reasons to tear yourself away from Orange Is the New Black. Undecided? Playing alongside Amatrart are upbeat synth pop duo Apache Darling, and lo-fi electro comes in the form of Miracle Strip and Le Thug.

One of Glasgow's most unique and exciting

artists, composer and musician C Duncan (it's Christopher, you nosey bastard) will be bringing his Royal Conservatoire repertoire to the CCA on 24 Jul. Debut album Architect is due for release on 17 July and delivers electro-tinged folk with haunting harmonies and choral compositions. He will also be making an appearance at Wickerman Festival the following day, if you're really keen.

Celebrating the release of their intriguing new album The Sovereign Shelf, which transcends genres and channels eclectic sounds ranging from the Far East, the sixteenth century, traditional Scotland and almost most anything else that you wouldn't particularly expect to see in this sentence; the quirky Trembling Bells are playing Sneaky Pete's on 25 Jul. As always, Lavinia Blackwall's captivating vocals promise to steal the show.

26 Jul sees the battle of the Brisbanites commence: Glasgow's Stereo plays host to powerpop duo Love Like Hate, whose combination of

electric guitar and free form piano melodies make for some intense listening. Temporarily escaping Brisbane, these gals are making a select few appearances in the UK with London blogger Fat Gay Vegan, as part of The Vegan Roadshow, in what is their second UK tour since forming in 2009. There'll be merchandise and information from activists Animal Equality – and lots of vegan food on offer.

Interesting. If all that dark, emotive pop and activism is too much for your fragile, end-of-month psyche to handle, you may want to cross over to the capital for some cheering up in the form of some very loud music. And yes, it's official – listening to punk music makes you happy. A recent study found that punk music “regulated sadness and enhanced positive emotions.” So, what more could you ask than to see Australian punk-pioneers The Saints play 1976 single (I'm) Stranded – one of the first ever punk records made? At full pelt, hopefully. Electric Circus, 26 Jul.

Do Not Miss Wickerman, 24-25 July If you're feeling a bit Goldilocks about the whole festival thing this month; Kelburn Garden Party maybe a little too low key but T in the Park that bit too chaotic, then Wickerman may be just right…

Now something of a stalwart of the Scottish summer, Wickerman celebrates its 14th birthday this year. Since a humble debut in 2001, the festival has steadily built up its reputation, influence and size. Laid back vibes and the bonus of manageable walking distances between stages make this family friendly affair an unmissable event. And we've not even got to the line-up yet.

This year's two-day offering sees the likes of resurrected garage rock kings The Sonics, Ela Orleans, Zyna Hel, rising post-rock experimentalists Outblinker and scuzz rock duo Tuff Love on the bill. Renaissance woman Neneh Cherry will be there as well, and while she's admittedly doing the festival rounds this summer, where better to catch her soulful vibes and strike a Buffalo Stance than prior to the burning of a huge straw man?

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Credit: SamHuddleston

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Neneh Cherry

Testament to its growing stature, this year welcomes the debut of the Phoenix Tent. Latest additions include NYC's The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, candid singer-song writer Anna B Savage, SAY winners old and new Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells and Kathryn Joseph; plus a rare outing for C86 veterans BMX Bandits headlining on the Saturday night. A prize for the best Lord Summerisle. [Siobhan Smith]

Preview

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Gig Reviews Faith No More

are on some new age crusade. Even the roadies are suited in angelic white; you picture the band pissing themselves behind the curtain before rrrrr showtime.

It's a strange billing on paper: Bristolian post-punk Strolling on to the melancholy waltz of John progenitors support San Franciscan metal maveBarry's Midnight Cowboy theme, Patton joins ricks – two bands that didn't simultaneously exist keyboardist Roddy Bottum in rasping the sinister the first time around. But like an anglicised refrain to their return single as if they're engaged Talking Heads coming apart at the seams, The Pop in a voodoo prayer ritual: “Get the motherfucker Group's politicised funk reaches through time and on the phone.” It's all unfinished business; rather space to jive surprisingly well with our hosts. than shirk away from the elephant in the room by “This is getting old and so are you,” Mike playing non-stop hits for cash, Faith No More have Patton intones midway through Faith No More's convincingly harpooned it with Sol Invictus – an first Glasgow gig in 18 years. Not some antagonistic unmistakably gothic and inventive record that observation as he looks around both sold-out tiers still knows when to let the light in. of the Academy, but a lyric from the group's original A testament to such innovation, time has 1997 ‘swansong’, Album of the Year – a work overbeen remarkably kind to the back catalogue; come by a sense of finality that seemed impossible Angel Dust's opening salvo ushers in a propulsive to come back from. They toured it as though dres- and ultimately exhilarating set that straddles sed for a funeral. Yet here they are, celebrating the their funk-twisting youth, avant-metal mid-career irony of their own resurrection. “You guys remem- and the mischievous, wilfully divergent streak that ber the Barrowlands?” he asks, recalling a four runs through it all. night residency at the spring-floored institution The galloping Land of Sunshine, paired with where the crowd can topple the speaker stacks on Caffeine's schizophrenic groove (enhanced by a good night. “I think we should try that again.” the undiminished power of Mike ‘Puffy’ Bordin) An overzealous florist framed the stage while showcase a stylistic restlessness that continhippy anthems from bygone generations rung out ues to characterise the barbed (but deceptively over the PA before they walked on to slay it – flitpoppy) attack of Superhero or Black Friday's Link ting from The 5th Dimension's cosmic sixties med- Wray conjuring proto rock'n'roll. “This is only a ley (Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In) to Primal Scream's test,” Patton whispers on the latter – perhaps a hedonistic beckoning (Loaded) in one easy cross- man learning to be more careful with a lyric. [Dave fade – anyone on the outside of this very particu- Kerr] lar blend of humour might believe Patton's men www.fnm.com

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

O2 Academy, 14 Jun

UntitledLive: Neu! Reekie!

Central Hall, 9 Jun

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Neu! Reekie!’s really outdone itself. Other than highlighting the Central Hall in Tollcross as one of the city's most unsung venues (stained glass, a gorgeous balcony, loos with actual bog roll) – the brains behind Edinburgh's most riotous avant-garde events crafted a line-up featuring political poets, dance music maestros and Edinburgh's loudest council botherers.

With poet Hollie McNish heading up the ‘words’ department, and long-serving producer/ DJ Andrew Weatherall who's probably had a hand in anything you've listened to and enjoyed in the last, like, twenty years, the party's already firmly started. The floor's full, people are swaying, cans in hand, on the upper levels and whoever's in charge of the lighting tonight is doing an ace job.

It's a shockingly sunny day, but inside feels like the belly of a under-ground club come 3am. Leith's experimental electronic leaders FiniTribe take to the stage, se-renaded by whoops and whistles.

Now operating as a duo, David Miller and John Vick are appropriately attired in ankle-length lab coats and their complicated set up – like an electronic Aladdin's cave – makes for some seriously arresting visuals, too.

We all reach whole new levels of sweat. After a quick break for fresh air, it's back in to crowd the floor before Young Fathers. The final night of a lengthy tour in honour of excellent second album White Men Are Black Men Too, welcoming the trio feels like a home-coming. The crowd is all-ages, word-perfect, and Alloysious Massoquoi, Kayus Bankole and G Hastings look rightfully triumphant. Mixing tracks from their earlier Tapes and the Mercury winning DEAD in with the new, the set is a masterclass in genre muddling, fire-starting.

Clinging to the same mic-stand, dropping eyewidening acapella, the three-piece look a symbol of strength, tenacity and unity. #UntitledLive is a celebration of words, music, booze and dancing – and tonight, of Edinburgh too. [Katie Hawthorne] neureekie.tumblr.com

Earl Sweatshirt

He tests his fans, a mix of greybeards and can't-grow-a-beards in ‘preme caps and bucket hats. “Like we drunk and we friends,” he says, rrr trying (unsuccessfully) to teach us the Grown Ups “Hands up, phones away,” Earl Sweatshirt chorus. “The best part is… it ain't real, but we can shouts as he takes the stage, late, unsoundchecdo it on the song.” Later, he coaxes the overwhelked. “We in this small-ass venue, let's have a intimingly white crowd into chant-mumbling the not mate show.” Most of the phones wink out, but many negligible n****s of the DNA chorus (featuring one are back up after a few songs. This is the 21 yeartriple-bypass verse from hypeman and friend Nakel). old's relationship with his audience, five years Earl seems disappointed with our imperfect élan. after attaining cult status as the gnomic and imHis brisk set ends in an hour, after a few new mensely talented “little brother” of LA-collective tracks featuring familiar themes, alienation with a Odd Future, with wit like a whip and rhymes spit dash of homicide – “Don't get too close to me, my like shuriken, known most for music he's disowned, heart fucking cold like the carrots in the grocery verses about mass rape and casual murder: legions store.” Earl cites Glasgow's “curfew or some shit, adore him, but one can't be sure they're listening. but we gonna turn this up till they kick us out.”

He starts in “Doris World,” with fan-favourite Actually, Earl means he'll diddle on the decks for tracks from his first full-length; plenty of late-teen exactly 8 minutes of bizarre detumescence before girls are happy to sing when he goads them into leaving, sending fans out into a still-baby-blue the chantable Molasses chorus, “I'll fuck the freck- night. les off your face, bitch.”

Some came to be shocked; some rap aestheThings get interesting when he asks “How many tes came just for the red wine rhymes; some were of y'all fuck wit I Don't Like Shit I Don't Go Outside?” drawn by IDLSIDGO's hints of maturity, its self(his sophomore full-length, even darker than awareness, its engrossing emotional slow-burn.

Doris, an ambivalent testament to loss, fame, Outside, two 23 year-old fans (who saw Chef Sweaty fans, full of marijuana nights and Hennessy morn- a year ago at Glasgow's Garage) aren't sure the ings). We scream, but Earl looks like he doesn't 21 year-old has “grown up” as much as some say, believe us. but they leave satisfied: “I just hope he keeps coming back.” [Aidan Ryan]

Photo: Les Ogilvie

O2 ABC, Glasgow, 8 Jun

earlsweatshirt.com

48

Review

MUSIC

THE SKINNY

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Loquacious they are not, but then the absolute power of Mogwai's music has always been visceral rather than verbal. The ferocious play rrrrr between light and dark engenders an emotive reMogwai have always been reticent, both in the sponse to the group's aural odysseys. When at full vocal-to-instrumental ratio of their output, and throttle, as in the crashing You Don't Know Jesus, also in their propensity towards onstage chitaugmented by exploding sheets of light, there's a chat. Yet tonight the group's pleasure in playing to hypnotic quality to their aggression – the tangible their home crowd is palpable. They modestly but body high of a sonic opiate. Yet tranquillity also profusely thank their audience and effuse over a abounds, in the celestial notes of Tracy, in Stuart long-time fondness for their chosen venue.

Braithwaite's impassioned guitar playing, and in A three-strong assemblage of support acts the heartbreakingly beautiful, dolorous notes that is the precursor to this 20th anniversary set, the signal Christmas Steps. second in this back-to-back Barrowland jubilee.

The aggregate of Mogwai's magnetism gathers Duo Sacred Paws, signed to Rock Action exhibit force through Remurdered's insidious synth and the influence of their beneficiaries in their skittish spitfire drumming, and peaking within the Arabesdrumbeats and intricate guitar arrangements, que-metal crescendos of My Father, My King. A while the dark majesty of Forest Swords complethree-song encore is the gentle antidote to the ments the headliner's complex soundscapes. In high, illuminated by the exuberant, crowd-satisfycontrast, the light folk-pop melodies of Glaswegian ing Mogwai Fear Satan. In a majestic set spanning stalwarts The Vaselines are a curious antithesis to the two-decade might of their work, they artfully Mogwai's distinctive post-proggish bent, but the walk the delicate tightrope between chaos and band are enthusiastically received, particularly by calm. [Claire Francis] the more senior members of the audience.

Barrowland, Glasgow, 21 Jun

FFS play Glasgow Barrowlands on 26 Aug ffsmusic.com

mogwai.co.uk

Photo: Derek Robertson

Unmistakably Maelian lyrics, Sparksian hooks and the simple keyboard melodies that inspired some of Franz Ferdinand's hits drive FFS. Russell Mael's glam falsetto and Alex Kapranos’ indie baritone don't blend so much as orbit – like binary stars, or like two accomplished tango dancers at their first ceilidh.

The effect is as endearingly, comfortably awkward as Kapronos’ low-key hip-stick stage presence (like one of your mates doing a David Bowie imitation in your kitchen). It's also sometimes brilliant. After almost two hours of thought-provoking if mostly undanceable mixes from DJ Hush (think introspective art student, deep vinyl library, spinning at a pre-concert flat party for acquaintances passively appreciative but still just waiting to leave) FFS take the stage with Police Encounters, and when the rocker's over someone shouts ‘It WORKS!’

Mogwai

And it does. Russell warms up and is soon soaring; Kapranos looks about as blissed as Mick Jagger playing with Muddy Waters, John Mayer with Clapton. And even notoriously stonefaced Sparks keyboardist Ron can't help but crack a smile.

Of course Collaborations Don't Work is ironic, but FFS makes the point more subtly with a liquid transition from Sparks’ 1994 hit When Do I Get To Sing “My Way” into the FFS single Call Girl. Sparks’ This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us gets the sticky floor shaking, right before the band delivers that dram of pure Noughties pop nectar, Take Me Out. After the closer Piss Off, two sides of the room chant ‘FFS’ in overlapping double- and half-time: Ron returns sans tie, wearing a ‘Borderline Attractive From Afar’ t-shirt, and thrills us with a choppy-flailing-arm-dance; the band rides massive plaudits through Sparks’ The Number One Song In Heaven and leaves us smiling, sweating, and oh so satisfied in Michaelinduced euphoria. [Aidan Ryan]

Waxahatchee

but it lends a new authority to older, quieter friends like Cerulean Salt's Lively, and amplifies the joy lurking beneath these subtly sophisticated hooks. rrrr Their infectiousness soon spreads to a delighted Something's changed. When Katie Crutchfield crowd. first brought Waxahatchee to the UK in 2013, there Katie's still not one for conversation, although was a tangible nervousness surrounding her con- that seems moot given the conspiratorially intimate fessional pop, with skeletal arrangements echoing nature of her delivery – curiously, her fine lyrics their fragile confidence. That's nowhere to be seen remain perfectly audible despite the three-guitar tonight; a five-piece line-up – replete with Katie's attack that underpins most of the set. A show-stoptwin sister Allison, also of the Swearin’ parish, ping encore sees her re-emerge with guitarist Keith on extra guitar and spine-tingling harmonies – has Spencer for a beautifully unadorned run through guts to go with the excellent songs from latest Grass Stain, with gentle chords framing the tale of album Ivy Tripp. a doomed and tragically unromantic encounter. “I They come roaring out of the traps with the can't give you what you want,” she sings matter-ofsurging pop of Under A Rock; unfussy, unhurried factly, gazing at the crowd as they stare adoringly and gloriously to-the-point. Where studio versions back. Tonight at least, the new-and-improved leave notes to hang heavy with anticipation, here Waxahatchee have already given Stereo so much the space is filled with a grungey fuzz and muscu- more than that. [Will Fitzpatrick] lar delivery – not such a sharp left turn, perhaps, Stereo, Glasgow, 15 Jun

Photo: Derek Robertson

The Glasgow School of Art, 16 Jun

Photo: Derek Robertson

Photo: Derek Robertson

FFS

Hanni El Khatib

Broadcast, Glasgow, 22 Jun

reggae insouciance of Nobody Move, the sweatsoaked bluesy swagger of You Rascal You and the frantic garage thunder of Family. At its bones it's Mondays may not be synonymous with drunken all still rock and roll, but with a point of difference debauchery, but Broadcast is alive and kicking to- enough to make it divergent rather than dull. night as LA-based Hanni El Khatib takes the stage It doesn't hurt that El Khatib is a charming for an evening of good old fashioned rock and roll. showman – by the end of the night he's even manThere's a definite sense in this day and age aged to get most of the basement crowd up on that there's not much room to move within the the stage dancing alongside him as he sings. Sure, genre; that modern-day takes are riddled with it's corny, but kudos for making that happen on a clichéd melodies and borrowed riffs. Support act school night. The set ends with what is surely El Theo Verney is a symptom of this – the longKhatib's most daring track to date, the glissading haired rocker's sound is solid, but slightly too disco ball that is Two Brothers. Shimmying along heavy on retro influences. on a nonchalant bass line and some insistent El Khatib and his band don't profess to reinhi-hat, it's perhaps even El Khatib's way of saying vent the wheel, but they make good picks from that when it comes to rock, it's important to break a three-album-strong output, showing off the the mould. [Claire Francis]

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hannielkhatib.com

waxahatcheemusic.com

July 2015

MUSIC

Review

49

Album of the Month Tame Impala

Currents [Fiction, 17 Jul]

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For the past few years Tame Impala, aka the one-man studio machine Keven Parker, have been steadily redefining psychedelic rock for a millennial audience. This third outing takes off with Let It Happen, a fanfare of driving drums and kaleidoscopic synths that is reassuringly Tame Impala of old, but as it gains altitude Currents soars to a new level of sophistication.

“Yes I’m older/yes I’m moving on,” Parker falsettos amongst a placid beat and soft blanket of synths. It’s a gentle Lennonesque introspection, maturity hard-earned through the kind of heartbreak and transition imparted by track titles including The

Lee Bannon

Sleaford Mods

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Pattern of Excel [Ninja Tune, 10 Jul] Turns out this’ll be the last album from the artist formerly known as Lee Bannon; from now on he’ll be working under the name “¬ b”, a characteristic move from a producer whose most persistent trait has been perpetual self-reinvention. At present, ambience is in and jungle is out, the dark atmospherics that haunted the edges of Alternate/Endings now taking centre stage in the form of solemn, largely beatless soundscapes.

Leaning heavy on the digital reverb, Bannon paints disconcerting, evocative scenes seemingly frozen in time. Trees rustling in the background, SDM brings to mind an eerie roadside at dusk, while Aga’s jaggy sci-fi synth and post-rock grandiose evoke the twirling wreckage of an abandoned space station. Disneµ Girls is especially intriguing, a pretty, pastoral tune that sounds so clinical and vacuous it’s uncanny – like a computer’s attempt to simulate an ‘ideal’ summer memory. Not all are keepers but Bannon’s strange, ceaseless ideas are fascinating. [Andrew Gordon] ninjatune.net/artist/lee-bannon

Less I Know The Better, Love Paranoia, Gossip, and New Person Same Old Mistakes.

But the self-reflection is assured rather than apologetic; instead of a contrite Jealous Guy olive-branch, Cause I’m A Man slinks with cool indifference, a raised eyebrow of smooth 80s soul that counters “cause I’m a man, woman/that’s the only answer I got for you.” The heady funk rhythms that propel that particular song permeate the record and resolutely form the basis of Currents, seeping into Tame Impala’s psychedelic forcefield and imbuing it with a stylistic gravitas that announces a band at the peak of its powers. [Claire Francis] Playing Glasgow Barrowland on 8 Sep tameimpala.com

Supermoon

Key Markets [Harbinger Sound, 10 Jul]

Oh, Supermoon! Song, [By Toad Records, Out Now]

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Jason Williamson: lyrical clusterbomb, full of bon mots – often expletives – and prescient observations deployed at dizzying speed. Check him out on Face To Faces, a caustic dismissal of the “daylight robbery” of modern politics.

Or there’s Bronx In A Six, which glowers witheringly at those who “pretend to be proud of [their] own culture,” and responds venomously (“FUCK CULTURE”). It feels like adrenaline injected straight into the heart.

With Andrew Fearn’s spindly grooves providing an abrasively stark backdrop, Sleaford Mods should be punk’s most exhilarating sons; Young Marble Giants reprocessed through The Fall and Public Enemy. But that backdrop is occasionally their downfall.

The sparsity of sound pushes focus onto Williamson, meaning the ears sometimes yearn for some additional texture; something to break the tension; to make them as sonically vital as they are lyrically. Maybe that tension’s the whole conceptual point, but it’s not unreasonable to want a little more from Key Markets. [Will Fitzpatrick]

Neil Pennycook has ditched the Meursault moniker. In its place: Supermoon. A threadbare step down from the intricate and skewed folk of his previous outlet, Oh, Supermoon is spare with its arrangements but generous to a fault with tunes and heart. Taking inspiration from the likes of David Thomas Broughton, this half hour intro’s DIY leanings shift the songs centre stage.

Minimal backing (delicately picked acoustic guitar, piano, clomping percussion) is all the likes of Supermoon vs Black Friday (“Lately I’ve been drinking on my own and facing down my ghosts”) and the pummeling title track need to breathe. Pennycook shifts from raging troubadour to whispered confessional with practised ease. A little bit of Elliott Smith, touches of Glen Hansard here and there, Oh, Supermoon surely has a legion of hearts waiting on its arrival. Plus, it’s released on Edinburgh’s marvellous Song, By Toad Records, who promise more beyond this volume, and soon. [Gary Kaill]

sleafordmods.com

iamsupermoon.bandcamp.com

Seven Davis Jr

Carlton Melton

C Duncan

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Universes [Ninja Tune, 24 Jul]

Out to Sea [Agitated, 4 Jul]

Universes’ lead single is called Sunday Morning, but like most of the debut record from long term limelight shirker Seven Davis Jr., its overriding feeling is more akin to saturday morning cartoons: exceedingly playful, deliriously upbeat and bursting with energy and colour.

From the aforementioned maniacal detuned synth to Be a Man’s frantic double bass or Freedom’s perpetually ascending lead, the record’s first half doesn’t so much aim to get you moving as it does work you into a hyperactive frenzy, often to the point that Davis himself seems to struggle fitting in his lines.

Fighters, though – a slower, suddenly serious track about reactionary violence – marks a jarring change in tone, its amorphous beat and meandering vocals initiating a late experimental turn that yields mixed results. Welcome Back, with its atonal shuffle, is as trippy as it is messy, yet even at its most off-kilter there’s an endearing optimism to Davis’ music. [Andrew Gordon]

Psychedelic jam band Carlton Melton’s latest cosmic voyage aims to open your mind, but you’ll first need to adjust your expectations. Most tracks surpass the 7 minute mark, churning over the same chord till each distorted wail or tom thud becomes as sure as a heartbeat. Melody’s out the window too, the Californian three-piece opting for free improvisation atop throbbing drones and simple riffs in place of memorable tunes.

They can be plenty tuneful though: Similarities is a blissful zephyr of chiming guitars that builds and repeats until it transcends its initial monotony, growing in beauty and intensity like an aerial shot of the countryside pulling further and further away.

“If something’s boring after two minutes, try it for four,” says John Cage, and while Melton often lean on blunt repetition, their carefully sculpted dynamic contours and deft layering frequently makes for compulsive, enveloping listening. Just lay off the bedroom guitar god stuff please guys. [Andrew Gordon]

ninjatune.net/artist/seven-davis-jr

carltonmeltonmusic.com

Failure

The Heart Is a Monster [INgrooves/Xtra Mile, 17 Jul]

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Architect [Fat Cat, 17 Jul] “I’ll take you everywhere I go,” C Duncan promises on Here To There. By this point, at the middle of his debut, he’s already taken us far: through dreampop, ethereal rock, and shimmering folk, drawing on influences as disparate as Fleet Foxes and Mozart – though songs like Garden are so delightfully various they fly in the face of genre and analogy – one might hear Miles Davis reinterpreting Last Shadow Puppets songs while Howard Shore directs Yes and ELO through muzak standards in the unsoundproofed room next door.

Every sound is perfectly placed, down to the last ride cymbal ping on Silence And Air – a cathedral arrangement, stunning, as the Conservatoire-trained multi-instrumentalist recorded this in his bedroom studio, layer by layer. Ending this journey with the folk lullaby I’ll Be Gone By Winter, Duncan has taken us everywhere – but he hasn’t exhausted his potential. [Aidan Ryan] Playing CCA, Glasgow on 24 Jul and Wickerman Festival, Dundrennan on 25 Jul fat-cat.co.uk/site/artists/c-duncan

Eleventh Day Dream

Haiku Salut

Works for Tomorrow [Thrill Jockey, 24 Jul]

Etch and Etch Deep [How Does It Feel To Be Loved?, 31 Jul]

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The fourth Failure album nobody expected calls in at the same spaceport the LA trio left us marooned on when they split with 1996’s Fantastic Planet, finding a familiar thematic frequency in Segue 4’s digital static. Where others might struggle to pen a decent sequel, The Heart Is a Monster marks a more graceful transition, encouraging awe for their evolving songwriting chops rather than relief that they can still write the odd riff.

And they are odd – a potent stew of dissonant chords and affecting harmonies that rise up by stealth. From Snow Angel’s careful metamorphosis into all-conquering rocker through I Can See Houses’ ghostly refrains, misdirection is what Ken Andrews, Greg Edwards and Kellii Scott do best on this sci-fi inflected epic.

Clocking in at 63 minutes, it’s a refreshingly bold and focused reprisal of the longform album format, masterfully treading that fine line between ambient atmosphere and proggy excess. Way to wake a sleeping giant. [John Langlands] [Dave Kerr]

More roadhouse rattle from veteran Chicago first-wavers Eleventh Day Dream. Now on long player #13, and augmented by additional guitar (courtesy of Illinoisbased Brit James Elkington), there’s certainly buzz and sweat behind Works for Tomorrow. Opener Vanishing Point – penned by covocalist Janet Bean – carries a prickly resolve that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Babes in Toyland setlist, whilst Cheap Gasoline’s duelling fretwork is all gumptious, bevelled momentum.

And yet such spikes are exception rather than rule, the majority of the ten tracks here (including those with Rick Rizzo at the mic) a little flat in how they reference their alt-rock Americanaisms. Stripped of onstage energy, the Pixies-flavoured power pop and bluesy, low-fi atonality suggest a perfunctory posture (also, best skip the cover of hippy anthem Snowblind, which turns up like a Jefferson Airplane tribute act shuttled in from some dodgy bierkeller). A fun record, for sure, but sometimes a listen needs a little more salt. [Duncan Harman]

Half-dreams – the hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleeping. That’s where Haiku Salut sneak up on you, playing on your fragile consciousness and weaving together subtle strands from your psyche. Their ethereal creations – by turns eldritch, sensual and beautiful – have been dubbed an ‘imaginary soundtrack’, with hints of Yann Tiersen’s luscious soundscapes bleeding into playful, rainbow-coloured Aphex Twin-isms, but they’re so much more than the sum of those parts.

The ten wordless songs here push on from the folksy beauty of 2013’s debut Tricolore, merging textures and time signatures with melliferous melodies that shift almost imperceptibly; the waltz that emerges during Bleak And Beautiful (All Things) is almost as perfect as the vocal harmonies that embolden Hearts Not Parts’ warm electronic delirium, like sunbeams bursting through the curtains. This is no mere soundtrack, it’s an imaginary world: to dwell there is a uniquely spiritual experience. [Will Fitzpatrick]

failureband.com

thrilljockey.com/thrill/Eleventh-Dream-Day/

haikusalut.com

50

Review

RECORDS

THE SKINNY

Qluster

Vetiver

Vinyl Williams

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Tasten [Bureau B, 10 Jul]

Complete Strangers [Easy Sound, 31 Jul]

Into [Company Records, 20 Jul]

Labels such as ‘neo-classical’ don’t always assist.

It doesn’t do justice to the stark, abstract, and at times ambient beauty a work such as Tasten (German for ‘feel,’ ‘to grope for’) exudes. Nine instrumental pieces played on three Steinway grand pianos, with Krautrock veteran Hans-Joachim Roedelius a professorial, slightly unhinged presence, the swirls of melody and motif here coalesce across a number of configurations, the spaces between each piece blurred, pleasantly ill-defined.

That said, the way tracks such as Brandung and Karussell dash themselves against the rocks as dénouement highlights the lack of immediacy or deviation in timbre behind the disc as a whole. Working with Onnen Bock and Armin Metz, this suburb of the Cluster/ Kluster/Qluster universe is a meditative one, which at times can leave the listener craving the occasional curveball. File under ‘subtle beauty,’ then. [Duncan Harman]

Ostensibly the trade name of San Francisco’s Andy Cabic, the sixth Vetiver album is a mishmash of sleepy grooves, tender ballads and conveyor folk rock.

That he’s still compared with the likes of Conor Oberst and Beck is mind-boggling because Complete Strangers is a sterile and lifeless bore, a smoothing out of trad shapes that makes Jason Mraz seem vaguely dangerous.

The drifting beats of Current Carry (“I think we’re on our way / Finally out to sea / Coasting on a wave, free”) are little more than lazyass jamming. But it gets worse; the likes of Time Flies By (“Blearlyeyed, years collide like clouds in the sky”) and Confiding (“In a maze lost without a trace / Every time I think I can escape”) typify a lyric sheet awkward and unaffecting. “I’m still figuring the album out,” claims Cabic. Seriously? Nah. If you prefer your singer songwriters possessed of an ounce of soul or wit, keep moving. [Gary Kaill]

The second long player from LA-based artist/ multi-instrumentalist Lionel Williams – grandson of film composer John Williams – and it certainly doesn’t want for ideas. Quirky electronic pop, buttressed by a mesh of discombobulated beats and slippery rhythms, the vocals so low in the mix they’re hardly there.

The dreamy sophistication behind tracks such as World Soul and Zero Wonder imply Francophile vibes, and feint allusions to the more stately moments of Air or Stereolab (Axiomatic Mind is an über-modern take on Bossa-nova sentiments, ideal over a lazy day cappuccino). Into does sometimes try to be too slick for its own good, the swash of voguish sentiment clean and shiny, the lack of hooks and edges somewhat frustrating. But then comes the electro fugue of Eter Wave Agreement, when Williams flexes his experimental chops, and all is right with the world. [Duncan Harman]

qluster.info | bureau-b.com/qluster

vetiverse.com

vinylwilliams.com

Gunship

Alessandro Cortini

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Gunship [Horsie In The Hedge, 24 Jul]

Ghostface Killah

Risveglio [Hospital Productions, 27Jul]

Adrian Younge presents: Twelve Reasons to Die II [Linear Labs, 10 Jul]

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Gunship’s album teaser promised a contemporary paean to the age when digital entertainment was in its metastasis: the 80s apogee of cinematic spectacle, the birth of videogames and skin on TV – enter a technotrance, timetravel back through some portal in an arcade machine’s shimmering CRT. Synthwave side project of Fightstar’s bassist Dan Haigh and guitarist Alex Westaway with drummer Alex Gingell, Gunship’s eponymous debut delivers exactly this.

Sure to please collectors of 80s movies soundtracks (Tech Noir features a John Carpenter voiceover) the sound is synesthetic, a collage in grit and neon, machine grease, nostalgia, synth arpeggios and unintelligibly harmonized moans; a weird marriage of 8-bit and HD; good fun. There is a formula – arpeggios aplenty, grinding engine chords behind, synth-strings shooting by, rocket trails or tracer rounds – and lyrics are basically meaningless, aimless yearning, nonspecific invitations. But that’s kind of the point: Gunship is unqualified, undemanding, unalloyed entertainment.

Insert Coin, and enjoy. [Aidan Ryan]

A sound that pulls at unnerving soundtrack textures, implies a dislocation from home and wears its analogue chops as if there’s no possible alternative.

Risveglio arrives exactly as advertised. The fourth album under Alessandro Cortini’s own moniker was written during the downtime whilst touring, recorded on a triptych of analogue synths, and pivots across sonic motifs vaguely suggestive of that Trent Reznor ambience (amongst many other endeavours, Cortini has been a steady member of Nine Inch Nails for some years).

This is far from the entire story. For Risveglio (‘Awakening’) is a bruising, complex burr of a proposition. Constructed using three 80’s Roland synths (the MC-202, TB-303, and TR-606 – melody, bass and percussion), each track is a mottled gauntlet dropped at the feet of the listener, the bass lines metronomic, delay pedals regularly tipping the material (Rispetto; Lotta) towards ecclesiastical drone. The type of record that John Carpenter would have made if plugged into medieval aesthetics – which is a recommendation.

[Duncan Harman]

Equal parts soulful and silly, II is as sonically satisfying as the first installment. With Meters-esque guitars that could have been lifted from Leo Nocentelli’s playbook and Modal jazz beats, all recorded live to analog tape, it teems with the same retro-soul Morricone/Mayfield/Hayes sound that producer and composer Adrian Younge brought to the Black Dynamite score. The rhymes are still vicious, but two years after introducing the duo’s original revenge-horror tale, his famous storytelling wears thin.

Of course, Ghostface is an entertaining tour guide to a murder spree, especially set to Younge’s soundtrack but the (literally, tortured) verses start to sound repetitive before the midway point. Guests Vince Staples and Raekwon impress but the real standouts are Scarub, Lyrics Born, and Chino XL on Death’s Invitation, delivering a rap avalanche, all plot and no braggadocio. If the crew delivered every track with this kind of momentum and inventiveness, the album would sail past five stars – but as is, it’s weighed down in stage blood. [Aidan Ryan]

facebook.com/GUNSHIPMusic

twitter.com/blindoldfreak

defjam.com/artists/ghostface-killah/

Mutoid Man

Strange Wilds

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Bleeder [Sargent House, 29 Jun] There’s a real dizzying effect when Bleeder first roars out of your speakers; a cyclone of gargantuan riffs and wailing solos that threaten to submerge you in chaos, with little to steady the nerves. Sift through Mutoid Man’s full-length debut, however, and gold emerges from the rubble.

Bridgeburner, for instance, is southern boogie caked in pulverising heaviosity, leaping from riff to riff with heroic abandon, while Soft Spot In My Skull questions how King Crimson might have turned out with a little advance exposure to Reign In Blood (‘kinda mighty’ is the answer).

Conceived as an excuse for Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky and Converge’s Ben Koller to indulge in their wildest metal excesses, there’s a frazzled joy to be found in Mutoid Man’s ‘throw everything at the wall’ schtick – a surfeit of ideas that dazzle before quickly going supernova. Essentially, Bleeder is brutally smart, and pretty damn thrilling with it. [Will Fitzpatrick]

More echoes of grunge from the label that started it all – between the squalling noise of METZ and this selection of jagged rifferama, you wonder where Jonathan Poneman gets off releasing photocopies of Sub Pop’s baby photos.

But just like their Canadian labelmates, Strange Wilds’ best moments feel so primally urgent that they’ll steal your enraptured focus from right under your nose.

Reference points? Try TAD, The Jesus Lizard and (duh!)

Nirvana, but when Subjective Concepts hits hardest, ticking names off a checklist won’t matter. The rollicking Oneirophobe drowns you in sludge; you’ll hear ‘em scream ‘I can’t think any louder’ just as your head drops below the surface. Disdain is even better, a post-hardcore slalom that scarcely goes over two minutes. They’re less fun on the rare occasions that their goofy sneers lurch into dull whines – the grungers’ curse – but for the most part this is a damn good racket. [Will Fitzpatrick]

mutoidman.bandcamp.com

strangewilds.bandcamp.com

Trembling Bells

Ratatat

The Sovereign Self [Tin Angel Records, Out Now]

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The reverberant, harrowing and cathartic vocals of Lavinia Blackwall stretch opener ’Tween the Womb and The Tomb to sheer fullness as she literally sings her soul out to heavy bass and guitar grooves. Eight minutes long, a full delay and distortion driven, immersive experience with humongous builds and sparsities; chant, improvisation, grubby riffs, and organ grinds; it feels like you’ve just listened to an entire album – what, there’s more!?

Three years since their concessive, power-run of hit releases and Trembling Bells are back in ever-perfect form with psychedelic, acid rock and hints of Americana defining the real essence of their name. Killing Time in London Fields’ incessant riff rips through electric guitar improvs and the energy is unbeatable. The Sovereign Self is drenched in originality and can’t escape a constant high – Trembling Bells have so much to give and they’re having so much fun here; this will no doubt be insane live. [Luisa Brown] Playing Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh on 25 Jul tremblingbells.com

June 2015

Prefuse 73

Subjective Concepts [Sub Pop, 24 Jul]

Magnifique [Because, 17 Jul]

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Magnifique, the fifth album from Brooklyn-based duo Ratatat, discontinues the naming convention set up with LP3 and LP4. But it could comfortably be called LP5, such is the rigidity of an established formula: old-school prog-guitar wolf in electro-funk’s clothing. Save for the odd outlier – the sedate track Drift is the band’s first ballad, of sorts – this is essentially another collection of instrumentals in that now inveterate mould.

You could reasonably find fault in this business-as-usual approach, or in the slightly repetitive, incidental nature of the album (it sometimes feels a bit like a soundtrack for an as-yet unmade film). An indulgent guitar solo in Pricks Of Brightness also veers perilously close to an early Mike Oldfield pastiche. But damn, if there isn’t something immensely satisfying about this stylish, carefully refined mesh; derivative as to be quite unique. This is a band existing in the then and the now, all at once, and somehow pulling it off. [John Nugent]

Every Colour Of Darkness [Temporary Residence, 10 Jul]

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Prefuse 73’s music is like an unscratched itch.

Guillermo S. Herren belongs to that small band of producers, including Flying Lotus, who take a hip-hop beat and de-construct it to the nth degree, broken and battered into a bewildering tornado of glitches. To call it hip-hop seems inadequate. The sheer density – count the blips and beeps stuffed into every second and enjoy your descent into madness – is overwhelming. He makes music for headphones, not dancefloors: tracks like The High Beam Of Modern Survival are so jaggedly off-centre that your ears will strain to gain purchase.

But in the shadow of FlyLo’s last record You’re Dead!, an embarrassment of riches bursting with ideas and influences, it feels like the experimental hip-hop template has more to offer. Herren is a glitch virtuoso, indisuptably, but there’s a nagging sense he’s capable of more than just hacking a time signature to pieces. [John Nugent] temporaryresidence.com

The Top Five 1

Tame Impala

2

Trembling Bells

3

Lee Bannon

4 5

Currents

The Sovereign Self

Pattern of Excel

Failure

The Heart Is a Monster

Haiku Salut

Etch and Etch Deep

ratatatmusic.com

RECORDS

Review

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Credit: Euan Robertson

An Asphalt Haunting Young Edinburgh two-piece Man of Moon have been enticing audiences for a while. But now, with their debut single The Road/ This World about to be released, lunar orbit beckons

A

merican Gothic is not a genre readily cited in an Edinburgh context. Auld Reekie does Rebus Noir, or subterranean Burke and Hare gimcrack for the tourists – not the widescreen vistas of a northern Texas nowhere, the sky brooding above the miles of empty blacktop.

Except, just occasionally, something arrives to challenge preconceptions. Call it gut feeling, or the labelling of mood. For there's nothing overtly American about young Edinburgh two-piece Man of Moon, and little that's gothic, at least in any literary sense. Yet to experience their textured, monochromatic sound – sonic structures that suggest they're far older than aged 19 apiece – and there's certainly something present. A sense of space, perhaps. Of place; room in which to close your eyes and sit back amidst rolling clouds, distant shadows, implied ghosts.

A number of high profile support slots for the likes of The Phantom Band and We Were Promised Jetpacks, and a UK tour with The Twilight Sad have seen the duo's profile on the rise over the last year and a half, and this summer – alongside a busy few months on the festival circuit – sees the release of debut single, the double A-sided The Road/ This World; the former not a reference to the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, but it very much could be, such are the stark, grinding contrails Chris Bainbridge (vox/guitar) and Mikey Reid (drums/harmonies) summon. “We wrote it in about two minutes,” laughs Reid as The Skinny catches up with them backstage at Glasgow's Art School, fresh from opening for Admiral Fallow. “It's one of the only tracks where, when we were in the

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Feature

Interview: Duncan Harman

studio together, we pretty much got the guitars and drums sounding in place at the exact same point,” Bainbridge continues.

Although, you'd suspect, both are being a little modest considering the detail a record such as The Road reveals. The implication of shape behind each verse morphs into the strident hooks of the dénouement, all underpinned by a resolute Motorik beat and a vocal hinting at skewed, lost agendas – as much through delivery as the lyrics themselves. It's not so much fun, fun, fun on ze Autobahn as an endless drive through disenfranchised territory.

Man of Moon were formed in 2012 after chance had paired them together on a college sound engineering course. “Not many people could play,” Reid explains. “They wanted some people just to go up and play bass or guitar.” Bainbridge recalls their initial sessions: “The class were really encouraging. And then we just skived. Mikey had an electronic drum kit and a shitty little amp, and we started skipping class, going to practice in his room.”

However serendipitous their origins, this period of trading and shaping ideas certainly proved fruitful. Bonding over a shared love of Mogwai, Can and post-rock Chicago trio Russian Circles, the emergent material eschewed immediacy or big riff statements for slow-burn intensity and a lyrical candour flavoured by Bainbridge's childhood. The name of the band itself is derived from his father's medication-induced hallucinations; the visions he'd describe lead Chris to see him as some sort of ‘Man of Moon’ figure.

“We were slowly moulding our sound,” Reid says of their early days working together. “When we started off it was really dark, just really dark music, sort of stone age, and we've brightened up a bit… We're just slowly carving our sound. I think it's good that we didn't release something two years ago because we wouldn't be happy with it now.”

“We wanted the first thing we released to be really powerful” Chris Bainbridge

Can they define their sound, or at least get us to the ballpark? “I don't think we've ever answered that question the same way,” Bainbridge admits.

“I genuinely don't know. Psychedelic? Alternative?”

Reid concludes: “It's quite stripped back.” The duo have an endearing way of running with each other's train of thought, occasionally even finishing each other's sentences. It suggests a close friendship over and above bandmate duties. “I don't want to say it's its own genre, but… well, it's a weird one. I've heard people say that it's quite weird music.”

MUSIC

Weird or not (spoiler: it isn't), they've no doubt put in the graft, building a word-of-mouth fanbase almost entirely on the back of grinding their way through the live circuit, first in the capital, then more further afield. In an era of immediate gratification and the opportunity for any old Herbert to stick their newly-recorded material online, it's a little unusual for a band to travel down the route they've taken, but it also demonstrates a maturity in how they've shaped – and continue to shape – their distinctive yet eerily familiar music. “That's one of the things I like about us over the past few years, that we've kept it really exclusive,” Bainbridge explains. “The only stuff people have heard is when they've seen us live. We realised what we wanted to sound like through playing live gigs. Some bands are much more studio based, but we love live shows. I guess that helped us develop that reverb kind of sound.”

All of which suggests a band that want to ensure they get things exactly the way they want, rather than rushing in feet first. “With the single, we attempted to record it two or three times,” Reid confesses. “We went into the studio but we just weren't happy; we'd taken that long to do it, it's like, ‘If we've waited this long let's do it right,’ especially if it was going to be our first release.”

“We wanted the first thing to be really powerful,” adds Bainbridge. “We wanted it exactly as we wanted it to sound. We actually spent £500 on it and we weren't happy. We couldn't be bothered releasing it.” And yet that £500 doesn't feel wasted. Not when you factor in the steadily growing interest around Man of Moon, which alongside supporting duties for a who's who of the Scottish alternative scene (The Road/This World also features a production credit from Andy Monaghan of Frightened Rabbit) has seen further flag-waving from the likes of Vic Galloway under the BBC Introducing banner. “Man of Moon immediately grabbed me after I heard a demo of The Road,” Uncle Vic told The Skinny. “Their sound is mature beyond their years, mixing psychedelia, Krautrock, and post-rock textures. It's simple, minimal, dynamic and direct, with strong melodies and nailed-down rhythms – I'm shocked that they're only 19.”

Of course, as a guitar and drums combination, there's going to be inevitable comparisons to The White Stripes and their kin – a trap one national music paper has already fallen into – but the stark and wistful nature of the duo's material makes such a link superfluous. “I like The White Stripes,” says Bainbridge. “But we're in no way influenced by them.” Is the comparison a frustration? “Not at all. You're going to get that though. You just think ‘two-piece’ and you think White Stripes.”

So yes; stop thinking that. If you need a comparison, Bainbridge mentions the drifty lo-fi ballads of She Keeps Bees as a particular influence: “The way they get the drums and guitars to sound so sweet together.” But even that's far from the whole story. Instead, think of a duo excited about the future, but also keeping their feet firmly planted, happy for events to follow their own course. New material is certainly in the offing, with the loose promise of future releases, but – as Bainbridge admits – “We don't have a real plan. We'll work through new stuff, then see what happens. We've dropped so many tracks since we started that we've kind of forgotten about them. But some of them are good tunes; we've just dropped them because we've found another track for the live set.”

It's a refreshing attitude that speaks of wise heads on young bodies. No forcing of issues here.

“It's starting to take shape, dynamically and sonically. I wouldn't say that we'll be playing exactly the same set in a year, but it will be the same kind of atmosphere.” And with that, both Bainbridge and Reid smile. The road beckons – quite literally (they play Inverness the next day), but also allegorically – in all kinds of ways; there's plenty of asphalt out there.

The Road/This World is released on 7 Jul via Melodic. Man of Moon play Wickerman, Dundrennan on 24 Jul; Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh on 30 Jul; Hug & Pint, Glasgow on 31 Jul and Electric Fields, Dumfries on 29 Aug. soundcloud.com/man-of-moon

THE SKINNY

Manic depression stopped me from playing to the point of getting rid of my guitar to pay for somewhere to live.

Help Musicians UK got me back on my feet. I dread to think where I would be without them.

We helped Matt when a crisis stopped him from performing. Can we help you? helpmusicians.org.uk 020 7239 9100

July 2015

Backing musicians throughout their careers.

Registered charity 228089.

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Illustration: Emer Tumilty

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THE SKINNY

Clubbing Highlights

Another Slam Dunk

July's schedule boasts the buoyant sounds of Den Haan in Glasgow, first rate techno from DJ Bone in the capital and Sven Weisemann's visit to Aberdeen

Surveying some of the must-sees at T in the Park

F

irst up this month, we look in the direction of the Sub Club and the return of Leisure System, the celebrated Berghain residency which first set up shop here at the Art School last February.

Returning on this occasion is Barker, an original resident of the German party and Clark, whose “monolithic” techno was perhaps at its purest on last year's eponymous offering for Warp. This time round, Hemlock head honcho Untold also makes an appearance. His most recent EP, Doff, was released at the beginning of this year, delivering echoing guitar licks and sci-fi tones, set against pounding kicks delivered in rapid machine-gun bursts. Phive, on the same record, used similar source material and adopts a similarly spaced out style, yet is more delicate and exemplifies the kind of range Untold has shown in his releases for the likes of Hessle Audio, Hot Flush and Numbers over the years (3 Jul, from £10).

Next up, if you're looking for all-out dancefloor carnage – and you're partial to the synthheavy retro sounds of Giorgio Moroder and Patrick Cowley – We Should Hang Out More is not to be missed. With the release of the Night Shift EP through Dissident in 2008, local duo Den Haan made their intentions perfectly clear. Pushing a sound steeped in the spirit of 80s Italo disco and Hi NRG, the Glaswegian pairing of Andrew Gardiner and Matthew Aldworth have produced a back catalogue replete with arpeggiated disco riffs, booming electronic toms and vocoder choruses that fall just on the right side of kitsch. Without doubt, this won't be one for fans of understatement or those with an aversion to unbridled joy, but we reckon this could be one of the best nights all month. Strictly no chin-stroking allowed, folks (4 Jul, Stereo, £7).

On the same night, across the M8, The Mash House is handed over to the Tweak_ team who have invited German producer Martin Buttrich along to work the capital crowd. A central figure in the explosion of tech house and minimal in the mid 2000s, the Desolat label boss has made his name with huge tracks released on the likes of Cocoon and Minus. His 2008 hit Stoned Autopilot, released through Carl Craig's Planet E, is a track which almost perfectly sums up the kind of sun-soaked ambience which dominated festivals and beach parties at that time. Performing live, Buttrich will give Edinburgh a rare glimpse of the kind of productions which have made him a global name (4 Jul, £10).

The following week La Cheetah hosts the maiden event from promoters Icy, who are joined for the occasion by Walton. Releasing music since 2012, the Manchester-bred producer's sound is distinctly UK in its bass-driven take on house, garage and grime. Initially very much included within the UK funky category, Walton's scope has broadened somewhat over time. His debut album, 2013’s Beyond on Hyperdub, was roundly praised

July 2015

by critics for its stylistic scope and the skill of its 22-year-old creator in managing to comfortably navigate between different influences.

Set to release a new record for yet another celebrated UK label, Tectonic, it will be interesting to see how Walton's sound has developed of late.

He is joined for the night by residents Corin and Cammy De Felice (10 Jul, £6).

We head in the direction of Aberdeen next, where Contact have secured the services of Berliner Sven Weisemann, a prolific and multi-faceted producer who has amassed 20-plus releases, including two albums, over the last decade. Whether putting out delicate and understated house tracks with a deeper sensibility, or more straightforward club-focused material, Weisemann's abilities as a self-taught musician clearly give his tracks a more refined edge than many of his contemporaries working in the same areas. This year's release for Delsin, Fall of Icarus, finds him incorporating elements of dub techno into his already richly layered house sound.

We suspect a trip to The Tunnels for this one will be well worth your while (17 Jul, £8-10).

The next night, we're back to Edinburgh for | a celebration of the Motor City as Jackhammer host the 30 Years of Detroit party. Joining them for the occasion is old favourite DJ Bone, a man whose three-deck style of mixing arguably rivals Jeff Mills in terms of pacing and technical flair. Heading up the Subject Detroit label, Bone is unashamedly devoted to the underground and has tirelessly promoted some of his hometown's lesser known talents throughout his career. Also in attendance is Edinburgh native and Subject Detroit signing Stephen Brown. Brown's live sets perfectly distil the raw and rugged vibe of Detroit techno, while allowing enough scope for his own interpretations of that sound to keep things fresh and exciting.

This one is a marathon 12-hour party, running from 5pm till 5am, with the earlier session taking place at the Annexe terrace. There's even a free BBQ if you turn up early enough – bit of a nobrainer, really (18 Jul, The Liquid Room, £8 adv).

Finally, the Sub Club gets another shout, with the long-running Subculture residency playing host to chameleonic German producer Roman Flügel. Adopting countless aliases over the years, Flügel has dipped his toes in everything from acid and straight up techno to glitzy electro house (see Alter Ego) and jacking Chicago workouts – the latter showcased in his excellent releases for Clone's Jack For Daze imprint. As he told us before the release of his most recent album Happiness is Happening last year, the Frankfurt native is now happy to release the majority of his work under his given name, though his DJ sets still reflect a wide-ranging passion for electronic music of all hues. Joining Roman, as ever, are local legends Harri & Domenic (25 Jul, from £10).

Jackmaster

F

or many across the country, July’s clubbing agenda revolves around one event. T in the Park has been the nation’s most celebrated music festival for many a year and for thousands of electronic music heads, it’s the imposing blue turrets of the Slam Tent that draw them in out of the sun (or more likely rain) to that darkened corner left in the capable hands of Scottish techno legends Slam. Orde Meikle and Stuart Macmillan feature as always, buoyed by the recent release of their Reverse Proceed album, and they’re joined by the likes of Annie Mac, Claude VonStroke, Maya Jane Coles, Adam Beyer and Joseph Capriati. The lineup is certainly strong all weekend, but we thought we’d share just a few choice highlights to help you plot your course.

Headlining the Friday night, German techno king Ben Klock brings the vibe of Berlin’s infamous Berghain club to proceedings. A resident at the celebrated venue from its earliest days, Klock serves up a muscular brand of techno for the most part and his sets seldom veer into the monotonous. His selection displays a respect for techno’s more musical past masters, though he also salvages much of the minimal scene’s hypnotic charm.

The meteoric rise of Glasgow native and Numbers co-founder Jackmaster shows no signs of abating – he appeared no less than six times, in some form or other, at last month’s Glastonbury festival and continues to headline clubs across the world. On Saturday he teams up with Joy Orbison for what we suspect will be one of the best party atmospheres all weekend. Expect straight up house and techno, with detours through bass music and perhaps the odd 80s disco tweaker. If you’re lucky, a track from Kornél Kovács’ recent Numbers release, Radio Koko, may get an airing for what would undoubtedly be a joyous moment under the Slam tent’s famous blue canopy.

CLUBS

Also on Saturday, there’s a prime space on the bill for one of house music’s longest serving ambassadors. Lil’ Louis made quite an impact with late 80s classic French Kiss and went on to become one of the most successful house producers of that era. Still reflecting the warmth and energy of the early house scene, Louis’ also often incorporates much more robust workouts into his sets and, of course, plenty of classic Chicago jams.

If you’re looking for a DJ with a particularly intuitive knack for finding the right vibe, you could do worse than popping in to catch Innervisions co-founder Dixon on Sunday. The German’s ability to span different genres and moods over the course of a set is one of the most appealing things about his work. Whether keeping crowds enthralled with deep and mesmerizing slow-burners, or unleashing full-on party tracks, Dixon is a master of keeping people moving. His knack for selection is analogous to his ability to pick out hidden gems for the Innervision outlet, so expect more than a few memorable moments and stumbling out of the tent with a head full of urgent track ID requests.

Finally, if you somehow missed the buzz surrounding a certain Lady Gaga support performance last year, you may want to get googling for a sneak preview of our last tip. Stunning many of his purist techno fans, Birmingham legend Surgeon joined new collaborator Lady Starlight in front of thousands of gawping pop fans and proceeded to deliver a full-on techno assault, manning a small modular unit while his counterpart handled percussion and keys. Yet far from being gimmicky, the resulting set pulsated with energy and hinted at a particularly fruitful chemistry which should go down a treat here. [Ronan Martin] T in the Park takes place at Strathallan Castle, Perthshire, 10-12 Jul

Feature

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Credit: Jassy Earl

Words: Ronan Martin Illustration: Rachel Davey

Warp Speed

CCA Event Highlights

Now signed to Warp, Soweto-based producer Nozinja is set to unleash the 180bpm sugar kick of Shangaan Electro on the UK once again

Words: Kate Pasola

Words: Simon Jay Catling Photography: Michael Sheerin

Allison Gibbs, Our Extra Sensory Selves, 2015

“C

ome on – let's just do it!” Richard Mthethwa urges me over the phone. Mthethwa, more widely hailed as Shangaan Electro pioneer Nozinja, is pacing around Johannesburg in his native South Africa sorting out a visa ahead of his forthcoming European tour (including a date in Manchester on 24 Jul). He's in a hurry, but anyone who's heard Shangaan Electro, the hyperactive strain of ADD pop music that draws influence from native Shangaan traditions but pushes it up to a pulse-testing 180bpm, shouldn't be surprised – working at pace seems to be Nozinja's modus operandi.

The Skinny last spoke to Nozinja two years ago when, riding high on the back of support from Damon Albarn's Honest Jon's label, and Shangaan remixes by the likes of Theo Parrish and Actress, he brought a high energy showcase to the UK. Things haven't slowed down, with his debut LP for Warp Records coming out last month; Nozinja Lodge is full of pitch-shifted vocal cutesiness, quick stick MIDI keyboards and hi-end rattle. The reputation of Warp needs no explanation within the UK, but for Nozinja it was just another avenue to continue spreading word of the Shangaan Electro phenomenon. “To be honest I didn't know much about Warp,” he admits, claiming the approach came from his UK management, Qu Junktions. However, time spent listening to the label's catalogue since signing last year quickly made him feel that his minders had made the right call. “They're very selective in the artists they pick, which is good.

They know what they're looking for.”

What they've found is something that, for much of the European dance scene, is highly refreshing, pulling sharply away from bass culture and pitching itself so far up the other end of the scale as to seem alien. It continues to catch on, and this time around Nozinja has added some major festival dates at Melt! in Germany and Belgium's Dour Festival, as well as a show at the Barbican Centre in London. “For me it was about bringing something new for Europe's ears and eyes,” he says.

“And I think Shangaan came at the right time. People were looking for something new.”

Within his native South Africa it's been a different story; the Soweto-based producer initially

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Review

experienced rejection from his homeland's music industry upon emerging towards the end of the last decade, subsequently taking on Shangaan Electro's distribution mantle for himself through his own Nozinja Music imprint. He feels that it's only been the spike in interest from outside his homeland that has moved things forward there: “It was appealing to the second culture of South Africa, through the other nations of people in the country,” he says, “but it didn't go to the mainstream, white South Africans. Not that much. But now it's starting to become a universal sound.

It's being incorporated into other people's music; we're even finding out that the radio stations, the people who never played our music, are now talking about Shangaan Electro. It's great for us.”

“You do music because you love it, not for money” Nozinja

As for his own ambitions, Nozinja aims to raise the profile for himself, the genre and subsequently the culture around Shangaan, although he shuts down a question about the financial sustainability of being an artist in South Africa by insisting “you do music because you love it, not for money” – not long after giggling that his dream is to be nominated for a Grammy. “I'm a man who always dreams, but I don't like just dreaming at night,” he adds. “You dream at night, you wake up and forget everything you've dreamed of. I want to remember every dream I have.”

Whether he gains that Grammy nod or not, there's a sense that Nozinja is already living out his dreams, which continue this summer. What can we expect of his return? “It's a surprise!” he laughs loudly. “I've got a surprise for you, UK, you tell people: ‘Nozinja is coming!’”

kay, deep breaths. We know you’ve just come back from a fortnight in Portugal and the thought of navigating Scotland’s mania of aestival arts has left you cupping a paper bag to your face. Let’s start with what’s going on over at CCA – you like it there, remember? Tell you what, here’s a wee pick’n’mix of our favourites from their latest programme – stick’em in your calendar and you’ll be back in the swing of it all in no time.

First up we’ve got fugue states, an exhibition marrying the artistic might of Lauren Gault and Allison Gibbs. Making an inquiry into sensory and extra-sensory experience, the collaboration is a ‘multitimbral’ affair which smudges the line between what’s tangible, what isn’t, and what could be on closer inspection. Gault explores thresholds, physical states and the moments of flux between; filling ‘invisible’ perspex containers, using towels to separate the wet from the dry, and exploring the moistness held in materials like silica. Gibbs darns newer elements of film and installation into her original work Our Extra-Sensory Selves. Check out the exhibition 25 Jul-6 Sep, join the discursive development circle on 26 Jul or participate in a Q&A on 20 Aug. Continuing the theme of multiple disciplines, we move onto The Festival of Ian Smith. Known widely for his 22 years as artistic director of Mischief La Bas, the late and chronically modest Smith was a self-proclaimed “jack of all trades, master of none.” We prefer the turn of phrase ‘fingers in many an artsy pie,’ but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. The festival will showcase a tasty medley of his film, art, performance, and music. You’ll also get a glimpse of his ‘pulptures’ (“like paintings or sculptures, but not as good.”

Again, Smith’s words, not ours). Get yourself down for a slice of those artsy pies immediately (peas not included).

And, to complete our hattrick of recommended genre-melanges, we’re all eyes and ears for Unfix festival. Taking place during the second weekend of July (10-12), the event is a fiesta of ecological and spiritual exploration. Think beyond environmental art; Unfix’s jams are politics, economics, spirituality, health and learning human value beyond productivity. In other words, artistically confronting the fact we’re a bunch of digi-nutters who get off on updating our LinkedIn profiles. If you’re feeling like a creaky cog in a broken machine, think of it as the aloe vera to your frazzled faith in humanity. Times and ticket prices vary, so check out CCA’s website for ticketing info.

If you’re not done soothing your soul, CCA also holds promise for those looking to gig their way to serenity. 24 July sees embroiderer of electrofolk C Duncan bringing a full band before his fattening fan-base. The event marks the release of his wildly anticipated debut album Architect. It’s a Fleet-Foxish sound, at times Pulp-esque, and with pleasing mille-feuille melodies that square up to the likes of Alt-J. Do the intricacy justice and catch it live. You’ll be left wide-eyed and trance-like on the train home. In a good way.

And finally, rugby-tackling us back down to earth is the screening of comic adaptation classic American Splendor. Critically exalted, the picture examines life’s quotidians and chores with both realist charm and an archer’s accuracy. To quote original series creator and star of the movie Harvey Pekar, “ordinary life is pretty complex stuff ” – and American Splendor pulls off the task with triumph. And for afters, Gareth K. Vile (our former Theatre Ed, no less) will host Issue 1, a comic creators’ mini-conference open to people of all skills and abilities. Stick around and you’ll get access to lecture workshops, discussion groups and informal drawing and collaboration (1 Jul). cca-glasgow.com

facebook.com/nozinjamusic Lauren Gault, Y.O.R.B, Atelier Am Eck, Dusseldorf 2014

CLUBS / ART

THE SKINNY

Credit: Achim Kukulies

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Birthdays, Catapults and Juvenile Delinquency Throughout July, there are celebrations, openings, discussion events and a kayak filled with 200 litres of whisky Sophie Will

Generator Dundee

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Entering They Had Four Years, Generator's pick of last year's degree shows, a loud mechanical thrumming emanates from a go-kart made from an old crate at the top of a revolving platform, connected to another at the top of a wall. Two racing helmets play recordings of the artist Lily Morris and her father in their carts. Functioning as a link between generations, the piece also subverts the gendered father/son tradition of building together.

Cameron Orr catches the viewer off guard with a lifelike face-down hooded body on the gallery floor. In his sculpture and paintings, he amasses occult symbols and neon squiggles, with childlike naïvety. The body ambiguously represents both the images’ maker and victim, illustrating the sense of mystery that pervades Orr's intuitive practice.

Also on the floor, a large screen displays Aaron McCarthy's GIF-like images of gymnasts

stuck spinning for eternity. “Can you imagine enduring centuries?” McCarthy asks in thick cut steel totemic letters. Read together, the works suggest unresolved frustration and longing.

In the second, darkened space is Alima Askew and Timothea Armour's Earnest Camouflage. This performance-cum-video work explores the Water of Leith via the avatars of a strange grey heron and an even stranger ‘Grey Smudge’. Travelling along Edinburgh's main waterway, they surreally dissect the city's social and economic history.

Also in this darker space, Sophie Will's ethereal offering comprises of a torch in a box.

Refracted through several glass lenses, its light is projected onto a large screen, and as a ghostly reflection on the floor. Wills also displays small nuggets of some unidentifiable, meteoric-looking metals. The result is a quiet and cosmic intervention in the space.

With Morris’s disorientating spinning platforms and Orr's occult cacophony on display alongside more succinctly lyrical work, Generator's ‘best of 2014’ exhibition maintains the degree show dynamic. [Kieran Milne]

Et Dieu Créa la Femme

Anne Hardy, Twin Fields

Good Press

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The black and white partial view of Venus that opens Et Dieu Crea La Femme, edited by Tine Bek, embodies the elusive and diverse nature of femininity that the journal studies.

A blasé image of coital flies accompanies the opening text on shrillness, femaleness and aggression. In the image the female is held down; the male's legs over her head. Passivity and the virginal image are also expressed in Susan Boyle's image of the faceless sculpture of the Madonna, all in white and unable to emote. Countering this, Paula Nimand Duvå's seductively offered peach has all the associations of forbidden fruit and the temptation that women embody.

Eye contact is particularly crucial in Jasmine Bakalarz's shots of adolescent dancers. With black high-thighed leotards and pulled-back hair, their gaze is nevertheless direct, accusatory and aggressive. Then turning from the camera, blemishes on a woman's back have been gridded off in blue pen, while the young girl in the image opposite wears pink tight tiger stripes and stares indifferently into the camera with a sardonic confidence.

Emphasis is also on changing perception of women's form and figure. In the legs photograOphed by Alexandra Giarraputo Pym, there is the expected smooth, slim elegance, with almost hyperbolic Grecian beauty. Contrastingly, Nina Bacos’ interior scenes and images of spread legs substitute idealism for comfortable intimacy and physicality.

Sarah Michelle Riisager's domesticated bird in a clenched fist raises ideas of confinement with beauty. There's an ambiguous juxtaposition of objectifications of female strength and beauty in Bek's notably gynomorphic tree, set aside flowers in bloom.

July 2015

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Dedicated to Brigitte Bardot's performance in the 1958 film of the same name, the heightened sensuality and intensity of the journal's photographs have embodied the work they cite, and collectively they create a sophisticated and empowered exemplification of contemporary muliebrity. [Isabella Shields] The next volume in The Photographic Earth Sagas, planned for publication in September, will be called Age Of Man.

pening the month's art events, on 4 July it's the finissage of David Dale Gallery's Finite Project Altered When Open. Marking its first five years, the current exhibition opened empty and over the course of its run invited participants (around 80) installed works as the show progres-sed. All participants have worked with the gallery before, making the project into a kind of summary of the gallery's existence so far. “On the 4th July we stop, call it an exhibition and have a party,” say the gallery. All invited.

Saturday 4 July also marks the opening of Roman Signer's Installations at Dundee Contemporary Arts. Playfulness takes priority over obvious concern for health and safety, as Signer plans to work with cannons and catapults.

Experiments with space, time and chance have been at the core of Signer's practice for four decades. In DCA, Signer will try to knock over a grid of standing wooden posts, launch a kayak (a recurring motif for Signer) into a wall, and fill a second kayak with 200 litres of whisky. There's more whisky as a steel cannon is pointed at an open tent, while electrical fans blow bottles of Scotland's golden nectar in circles. The exhibition will continue until 20 September.

Edinburgh Art Festival begins formally on 30 July, while elements of its programme start around the city throughout July. Collective Gallery's EAF offering is in the form of the Satellites Programme, with France-Lise McGurn's exhibition previewing on Friday 10 July, 6-8pm. Often working expediently in paint, her practice is wideranging and derived ‘from a non-indexical album of collected imagery and moving image files.’ This ‘improvised archive’ is variously the reference and surface of McGurn's works, and shares ‘themes such as identity construction, gender portrayal, juvenile delinquency, and the ephemera of social communion.’

ART

The Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art's Festival of the Moving Image Season closes with Phil Collins’ Tomorrow is Always Too Long. Beginning with a birth, the film presents an idiosyncratic and musical vision of Glasgow through the lens of different institutions, from the school to pub to prison. The work's soundtrack makes a rich blend of Glasgow band Golden Teacher, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Welsh pop songstress Cate Le Bon and Mogwai's Barry Burns. Originally presented last summer in a one-night only event in Glasgow Queen's Park, the film is on loop in the GoMA from 10 July until 17 August.

In Good Press, there's an opening event for a Slowly Built Burner on Saturday 18 July, from 3-6pm. Featuring 12 contributors, the project is touted as ‘a grouped effort of narrative endeavours.’ The emphasis is on how words, images and things found lying around might stitch together to make a kind of sense and/or be placed somewhere or in a specific context to unfurl and build new reasonings. With terminology and expression kept loose, Good Press plan a mixture including (but not limited to) drawing, comics, poetry, art writing and collage.

Throughout July, there will be a couple of events in The Common Guild to accompany Anne Hardy's exhibition Twin Fields. Across the spaces of the gallery, Hardy has created two large scale installations that respond to the specific structure of the rooms they inhabit, within the threeand-a-half storey Georgian townhouse. On Saturday 25 July Dominic Paterson will present his thoughts on the work and its relationship to mirroring and doubling. Then, at the end of the month on 30 July, the gallery will host a roundtable conversation with contributions from artist Sarah Forrest and Artistic Director of the Glasgow Sculpture Studios Kyla McDonald.

Review

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Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Maureen Paley, London Photographs by Anne Hardy and Angus Mill

They Had Four Years

Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

Film Event Highlights This month's highlights include a celebration of Orson Welles at Filmhouse, a weekend of films featuring The Who at DCA, and a geek's paradise at Comic Con at Glasgow's CCA Words: Jamie Dunn

Amy

Amy

Director: Asif Kapadia Starring: Amy Winehouse (archive footage) Released: 3 Jul Certificate: 15

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The Lady from Shanghai, 1948

The film world needs no excuse to celebrate the work of Orson Welles. But the filmmaker would have turned 100 this year, so there are more opportunities than usual to catch his films on the big screen, including Filmhouse's A Touch of Orson season. The mini-retrospective includes the recently re-released classics The Lady from Shanghai (28-30 Jul) and Touch of Evil (10-16 Jul), as well as the underseen Chimes at Midnight (31 Jul-3 Aug) and new documentary Magician: The Life And Work of Orson Welles (4-5 Jul), which sees the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese sing Welles' praises.

Rockumentary Lambert & Stamp (DCA, 12-13 Jul) centres on the management team Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who helped mould The Who into the guitar-smashing rock phenomenon we know today. The doc shows how the chalk-andcheese pair went from avant-garde filmmakers to fierce business men, and features contributions from Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey and actor Terence Stamp (Chris's older brother). As well as James D. Coopers’ doc, DCA have also programmed Ken Russell's rock opera Tommy (12 Jul) and Frank Roddam's mod teenpic Quadrophenia (14 Jul), creating a fun Who weekender.

If you're one of the many who had their face melted by action behemoth Mad Max: Fury Road a couple of months ago, you're probably keen to revisit George Miller's motorhead dystopian world.

Luckly, Filmhouse have you sorted, with an opportunity to see the more scuzzy first in the series, Mad Max (30 Jun), and its action-packed followup, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1 Jul). There's no love for Beyond Thunder Dome, the lame duck of the series, however.

Time to dry clean your Spider-Man outfit, ‘cause Comic Con is back at Glasgow CCA this month. The cinematic highlights include screenings of Ghost World (30 Jun), The Incredibles (3 Jul) and American Splendour (1 Jul). The latter will be followed by Issue 1, a one-day comic creators mini conference. Open to all skills and abilities, it will include a lecture workshop, discussion groups about using comics as basis for criticism and informal drawing/collaboration.

As you'll notice from the reviews to your right, this is a great month for music movies. GFT also throws a couple of classics into the mix with The Last Waltz (8 Jul), which captures The Band's farewell concert and is jam-packed with electric guest performances (our pick is Van Morrison's high kicking version of Caravan), and Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (29 Jul), which should be a nice palate cleanser for anyone who's caught the director's latest, Aloha. Talking of shit sandwiches, there's also a chance to (re)see the rockumantary to end them all, This Is Spinal Tap (15 Jul).

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Review

Prior interest in the life, music, and untimely passing of Amy Winehouse is not required for Asif Kapadia's second documentary to floor you completely.

Following the success of 2011’s Senna (itself no easy task), perhaps any subject in this director's hands can be transformed into compelling, uncompromising storytelling.

Kapadia again takes a step back, letting the images and recorded interviews do the talking. It is an emotionally exhausting flood of scenes (featuring a wealth of unseen candid footage), but the editing is selfless and understated, and any foreshadowing is natural, rather than hammy. The film's inherent tragedy resists perversion or sensationalism, and despite the sheer depth, intimacy and extent of the footage used, there is a delicacy and even-handedness with which her story is presented.

Some scenes are difficult to watch – Winehouse clearly inebriated on stage in Belgrade, in particular – and yet that selfsame difficulty hooks us.

There will be wet eyes for sure, either from tears, or from simply forgetting to blink. [George Sully]

The Wonders

Director: Alice Rohrwacher Starring: Maria Alexandra Lungu, Sam Louwyck, Alba Rohrwacher, Sabine Timoteo, Monica Bellucci Released: 17 Jul Certificate: 15

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Vivid and grainy 16mm photography evokes the notion of a family out of step in Alice Rohrwacher's sophomore feature, The Wonders. A beguiling and impressionistic coming-of-age sketch, it trades on atmosphere and intimacy as it tentatively explores the adolescence of the young Gelsomina, played with great restraint and subtlety by Maria Alexandra Lungu. Like in her 2011 debut, Corpo Celeste, Rohrwacher has once again cast an unknown actress as her lead and successfully coaxed a wonderfully intelligent performance.

Growing up in a hermetically sealed world that her belligerent beekeeping father has freed from the perceived corruption of wider society, her dawning independence is juxtaposed with the slow fade of his old-fashioned way of life. A young labourer catches her eye and she covets victory in a local TV show that would ironically reward their devotion to rustic tradition; her newfound wilfulness butts against the dominant hierarchy. Though perhaps less weighty than some might have hoped, it is beguiling to watch Gelsomina blossom into a future queen of the hive. [Ben Nicholson]

Song of the Sea

Song of the Sea

Director: Tomm Moore Starring: David Rawle, Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, Lisa Hannigan, Lucy O'Connell, Jon Kenny Released: 10 Jul Certificate: U

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Back in February, Song of the Sea was memorably described by one Oscar voter as “that obscure freakin’ Chinese fuckin’ thing that nobody ever freakin’ saw,” which must have come as a surprise to Kilkenny-based Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon. No matter: obscurity surely now short-lived, it richly deserved its Oscar nomination.

With a fairytale template and childlike sense of wonder, clumsy comparisons to Studio Ghibli are inevitable, but overstated; while Song of the Sea undoubtedly owes a debt to the Japanese studio, this is an Irish film through and through. The selkies, giants, and spirits of the story are rooted in centuries of Gaelic mythology, with themes of grief and loss weaved seamlessly into the tapestry. Folkloric storytelling on a lavish canvas, it also boasts some of the most astonishing animation in recent memory – every frame could be framed. Moore's film brims with charm, wit, emotion and magic, and should, by all measures, leave you utterly rapt. Go freakin’ see it. [John Nugent] Song of the Sea is released by StudioCanal

Love & Mercy

Director: Bill Pohlad Starring: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti Released: 10 Jul Certificate: 15

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Two pivotal periods in Brian Wilson's life collide in Bill Pohlad's dizzying study of the former Beach Boy. One concerns the creation of 1966‘s Pet Sounds, where Wilson swapped his band's fun, fun, fun surfer pop sound for his own idiosyncratic art rock vision. The other takes place two decades later, with Wilson a doped up child-man at the mercy of his machiavellian psychiatrist (Giamatti). The 60s Wilson is played by Dano, the 80s version by Cusack.

Both episodes are sharp mini-movies: the former a spry study in creativity, the latter a kind of emotional prison-break movie. But it's the way Pohlad knits them together, finding resonances between each Wilson to build a fine-grained tapestry of a lonely, troubled soul, that makes this such a poignant experience. Giamatti overdoes his dastardly shrink routine, but overall Love & Mercy is that rarest of things: a music biopic that doesn't just tell you about a tortured genius, it puts you in their head. God only knows how Pohlad pulled it off, but these are some good vibrations. [Jamie Dunn] Love & Mercy is released 10 Jul by Sony Pictures

The Wonders is released by Soda Pictures

Dear White People

Eden

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Director: Justin Simien Starring: Tessa Thompson, Tyler James Williams, Brandon P Bell Released: 10 Jul Certificate: 15 Arriving on UK shores 18 months after its Sundance debut, US comedy Dear White People is all too relevant in light of the increasingly publicised troubles of so-called ‘post-racial’ America right now. Writer-director Justin Simien's assured feature debut is a satire that follows the stories of four black students at an Ivy League college in the weeks leading up to a disturbance that breaks out over an “African-American-themed party” thrown by a predominantly white fraternity.

In scripting and presentation, Simien's film seems influenced by a curious blend of Godard, Spike Lee, Wes Anderson and Kubrick (with a number of audiovisual references to Barry Lyndon), but they're never superficial homages and always designed to produce actual resonant meaning. Dear White People is sharp, snappy and often scathing, with Simien balancing a fine line between pointed barbs and broader laughs. The cast is uniformly excellent, with the standouts being two TV veterans, Tessa Thompson (Veronica Mars) and Tyler James Williams (Everybody Hates Chris), who deserve major film star success. [Josh Slater-Williams]

Director: Mia Hansen-Løve Starring: Félix de Givry, Pauline Etienne, Greta Gerwig Released: 24 Jul Certificate: 15 Hansen-Løve is a master of party scenes – the standout moments from her two previous features (Goodbye First Love and The Father of My Children) involve characters lost in a celebratory throng. Eden is one long party following Paul (Félix De Givry), a lanky and likeable DJ, as he floats through two decades on the fringes of the French house music scene. Success is always in sight but remains out of reach. What sustains him in the milieu is a palpable love for the music and a close-to-functioning coke addiction.

Written by Hansen-Løve with her DJ brother, Eden's great strength is its lived-in authenticity. It's a kind of vampire movie, with our protagonist trapped in the crepuscular purgatory of his early 20s. His friends swap clubbing for kids and early nights; Paul stagnates. The outlook isn't wholly pessimistic though. When the soundtrack is pounding it's easy to see why he got lost in the music. At one point Paul describes the tracks he spins as halfway between melancholy and euphoria. Hanson-Løve plays a similar tune. [Jamie Dunn]

Dear White People is released 10 Jul by The New Black Film Collective

FILM

THE SKINNY

S.N.U.F.F.

The Cartel

Silma Hill

Wolf in White Van

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By Victor Pelevin

By Don Winslow

By Iain Maloney

By John Darnielle

In this farcical utopia, esoteric Russian writer Victor Pelevin fast-forwards our current culture – where the lines between fact and fiction are increasingly blurred – to create a world where the population have simply stopped needing to suspend disbelief: most people just believe everything as equally true. The central narrator Damilola Karpov is a ‘discourse monger’ working for Big Byz, a media conglomerate who manufacture war for entertainment purposes. He lives in Byzantion, an oligarchic city which floats above Urkaina, where the masses live and which functions as a sort of testing ground for newsworthy events.

When he is not trying to finely tune his bionic sex partner, Damilola uses a sort of advanced drone to incite and record combat in Urkaina. When Damilola is instructed to help two ‘Urks’ (or ‘Orks’), Grim and Chloe, their fate becomes bound up in his own. As can happen in the sci-fiction genre, S.N.U.F.F. is more of a thought experiment than a novel. Long unwieldy conversations are used to explain what Pelevin's invented etymologies mean, or what sort of skewed mysticism a character is in thrall to, and some of the farcical elements seem designed to show how all moral sanctioning is irrational, not just some. Nevertheless, some of the more absurdist passages are disturbingly prescient. [Nick Major]

Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog was an epic fictional dissection of the US/Mexican drug wars, rightly regarded as a modern classic of crime fiction. Now, ten years later, Winslow's sequel The Cartel has been unleashed upon the literary landscape.

Like its predecessor, The Cartel is justified in its scope and ambition: the ongoing conflict at its heart is among the most violent and senseless in the world today. Winslow, influenced by real life events and his deep, unflinching research, has created a fictional mirror image of the true situation, utilising the antagonism between DEA Agent Art Keller and patron of El Federación, Adán Barrera, as the emotional spine of his novel.

From this central narrative, Winslow spins tales of the soldiers, journalists and innocents caught up in events beyond their control. The Cartel is a brutal dissection of some of the most unjustly ignored events in the modern world. If you feel angry reading The Cartel, then that's as it should be. The injustices on the page are real. And when even the nominal heroes have blood on their hands, it is apparent that something is very wrong indeed.

This is a powerhouse of a novel from an author who understands the most subtle nuances of his subject matter, and may be one of the most essential crime fiction books of 2015. [Russel D. McLean]

Following the well received First Time Solo, Iain Maloney's second novel Silma Hill centres on a remote Scottish village during the 18th century. When a pagan icon is discovered by the dead body of a local farmer, suspicions and rumours grow until a witch hunt ensues. The vain Reverend Burnett has little time for his parishioner's superstitions, but his life is complicated when his daughter Fiona is accused of engaging in witchcraft too. This is familiar literary territory, with Arthur Miller's The Crucible being one of the most celebrated examples of the witch hunt narrative. However, while Miller's classic play used the real life events of the Salem witch trials to make a comment on McCarthyism, there is little commentary or insight in Silma Hill, either historical or political. It is a missed opportunity for genuine historical exploration of subjects such as the clergy, rural communities and witchcraft.

Silma Hill certainly does not appear to be the product of intense research, and the banal dialogue makes little attempt to interpret how rural Scottish people might have spoken at this time.

On the plus side, Maloney weaves a tight plot and is economical in his writing, making Silma Hill an enjoyable enough yarn for those seeking an undemanding page turner set in a vague past. Ultimately, however, Maloney's sophomore effort suffers from a lack of originality and ambition. [Lucy Christopher]

Out now, published by Gollancz, RRP £14.99

Out now, published by William Heinemann, RRP £18.99

Out now, published by Freight Books, RRP £8.99

Out now, published by Granta Books, RRP £7.99

Forty Guns

Chimes at Midnight

A Letter to Three Wives

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Director: Samuel Fuller Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Dean Jagger Released: Out now Certificate: PG

In one of Forty Guns’ standout scenes, gunslinger-turned-lawman Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan) and cattle baroness Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck) flee a tornado that's tearing across the Arizona plains. It's a technically impressive sequence, with resourceful camerawork and cuts belying the film's B-movie credentials and creating a palpable sense of jeopardy.

But more than that, the vortex acts as a conspicuous metaphor, signifying not only the passions and violence barely bottled inside its protagonists, but also the winds of change about to blow through the old West. “This is the last stop,” purrs Jessica as the pair shelter in a tumbledown shack. “The frontier is finished.” Such sentiments identify Samuel Fuller's undervalued western as an early example of genre revisionism, but the tone isn't always so serious thanks to some of the most overt innuendo ever put on screen. Watch how you handle Griff 's pistol, Jessica; it'll go off in your face. [Chris Buckle]

Director: Orson Welles Starring: Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Margaret Rutherford, John Gielgud, Marina Vlady Released: Out now Certificate: PG A widespread and misguided perception of Orson Welles' career – that it was all downhill from Citizen Kane – is turned on its head

by Chimes at Midnight. This rambunctious and freewheeling adaptation of various Shakespeare texts would stand as a singular achievement for many filmmakers, but for Welles it's simply one of many.

While the film may lack coherence at times, it's thrillingly alive in a way that so few screen versions of Shakespeare manage to be.

Hardly a scene goes by without giving the audience something to be dazzled by, from the director's dynamic camera and editing choices to the full-blooded performances. Some sequences are among the best Welles ever filmed, notably a sensational battle. But the film's biggest asset (in more ways than one) is Welles the actor, who appears to be having the time of his life as Falstaff: “This sanguine coward, this bed-presser, this horseback-breaker, this huge hill of flesh.”

[Philip Concannon]

Director: Joseph L Mankiewicz Starring: Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Ann Sothern, Kirk Douglas, Paul Douglas, Released: Out now Certificate: U Like the following year's All About Eve, this 1949 mega-hit was adapted from fiction published in the pages of Cosmopolitan. It too is a whip-smart melodrama, a so-called ‘woman's picture’ of mass appeal. Both saw writer-director Joseph L Mankiewicz clean up at the Oscars. But while Eve's relentless bitchiness was confined to a world of snake-like critics and acid-tongued thesps, A Letter to Three Wives is set in anonymous small-town America. “Any resemblance to you or me might be purely coincidental,” warns an introductory voiceover.

Audiences continue to delight in the emotional excesses of Eve's larger-than-life characters, but contemporary viewers will doubtless struggle to sympathise with the affluent housewives found here, each one fearing abandonment by her husband. The picture is a brilliantly handled exercise in building understanding of three highly strung characters and the men in their lives, yet time has rendered it unattractively conformist and materialistic. [Lewis Porteous]

Chappie

The Man with the Golden Arm

Story of My Death

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Director: Neil Blomkamp Starring: Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Sharlto Copely Released: 6 Jun Certificate: 15 Neil Blomkamp's career has, so far, been a lot like Tim Burton's, except played out over just three films rather than three decades.

Both begin life as blockbuster auteurs offering idiosyncratic spins on old traditions: Burton presents a suburbia-infused take on the macabre, Blomkamp re-vamps sci-fi with a junkyard style. But, in both cases, their greatest strength quickly becomes their fatal weakness as they entrench themselves so rigidly in the style that worked first time round. Burton's was a slow decline from the likes of Edward Scissorhands down to recent flops like Dark Shadows, while Blomkamp blew everyone away with District 9 but followed it up with two exercises in déjà vu and diminishing returns.

Chappie ticks over perfectly well and Chappie himself is an impressive creation, even if his child-like newcomer shtick has been old since E.T. It's simply watchable, never becoming either entirely offputting or genuinely entertaining. [Ross McIndoe]

July 2015

With his debut novel, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats fame takes the soft, melancholy lyricisim of his music and draws it out into a strange, sad novel. He portrays the kid who everyone thinks is a little off, who has long hair and likes weird music, who doesn't quite seem to fit – this figure also crops up throughout Darnielle's music.

The Goats’ latest album, Beat the Champ, hazily recalled his nights spent gazing through the looking glass of the TV screen into the world of professional wrestling, where gargantuan heroes fought for honour and justice, a world where good prevailed each week in spectacular somersaulting fashion. After a lonely childhood and an ‘accident’, the full horror of which is only gradually revealed, Wolf in White Van's own iteration of him channels that same need to escape reality towards a roleplaying game of his own creation called Trace Italian. When two young players try to live out the game in the real world, reality comes tearing into his imaginary hiding place to drag him back into the cold, hard light.

Dark humour wrapped around a soft human heart – the skills that have made Darnielle one of the most revered songwriters of his generation – now also announce him as a novelist to be reckoned with. [Ross McIndoe]

Director: Otto Preminger Starring: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang, Darren McGavin Released: Out Now Certificate: 15 The Nelson Algren novel on which this is based asks readers to relate to a philandering junkie card dealer whose ultimate ambition is to be a jazz drummer. The character of Frankie Machine was sanitised somewhat for 50s cinema audiences, but he remained no less of an outsider and it's a miracle this film was made at all. It counts itself among a slew of controversial masterpieces directed by Otto Preminger over the course of the decade and its release without certification from the Motion Picture Association of America brought about significant changes in Hollywood film censorship.

Like Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend, it's an unflinchingly humane work of enormous importance. When we meet Frankie he's fresh out of jail, clean and in possession of a new set of drums. It's predictable that strain and temptation will embroil him as he returns to his old life, but Frank Sinatra's sweaty-browed disintegration makes for truly compelling viewing. [Lewis Porteous]

DVD / BOOKS

Director: Albert Serra Starring: Montse Triola, Clara Visa, Clàudia Robert Released: Out Now Certificate: 15 Albert Serra's mischievous allegory for the death knell of the Enlightenment and the dawning of Romanticism is a truly singular work.

Serra expresses this cultural shift through an imagined encounter between Casanova (Vincenc Altaio) and Dracula (Eliseu Huertas).

It's an intriguing concept tempered by the director's fondness for laborious long takes and burlesque humour. Art's ability to reflect society's shifting values is the film's central theme, be it candlelit discussions over the influence of religion on literature or an extended sequence dedicated to our tragic Lothario's bowel movements.

An alchemist transforming faeces into gold is just one of the film's potent metaphors for the creative process.

The film's erotic charge of intellectualism is an acquired taste, but, Serra's approach isn't without its charm. While other artists seek order in chaos, Serra revels in the anarchy, and has crafted a fittingly facetious monument to the cyclical nature of art. [Patrick Gamble]

Review

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Bard in the Botanics Our run down of this year's Unlikely Wonders Bard in the Botanics season

Credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Words: Emma Ainley-Walker

The Driver's Seat Lyceum Theatre

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Is Lise a victim? This question haunts The Driver's Seat, with Laurie Sansom's superb rendering of the balance between power and vulnerability which drives the fate of Muriel Spark's protagonist.

The word ‘victim’ is scrawled across the evidence board early on – if some of the novel's subtlety is lost on stage to crime drama clichés, the ensemble cast that hovers as a team of detectives throughout provides equally gripping ambiguity and foreshadowing.

These six actors dart in and out of other characters, beginning as Lise's heartless colleagues, then constantly appearing from and vanishing into that group. As multi-roling it is effective, but as a means of creating a manipulative atmosphere it is thrilling, with the recurring actors lending each new character a familiar foreignness.

Out of this scheming bunch are a number of brilliant performances just shy of caricature,

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cotland may not seem the ideal choice for an outdoor theatre festival, even in the summer months, but Bard in the Botanics defies that notion year in, year out. Although they may face the odd weather cancellation – some enjoyment has to be taken in a production of The Tempest cancelled due to ‘adverse weather conditions’ – audiences keep coming back, whether with a picnic basket and sunglasses or extra thick jumpers and hot chocolates.

This year promises to be no different as the Botanics welcome the Unlikely Wonders season, kicking off with Love's Labour's Lost in its first production in Scotland in almost 50 years. One of Shakespeare's early plays, Love's Labour's Lost is seen as an untraditional comedy, which may speak for why it is so little performed, but it is a comedy nonetheless. However, Bard in the Botanics join an ever-growing list of famous names who've brought this play to a modern audience, including the RSC, Kenneth Branagh and Doctor Who. Bard in the Botanics can be trusted to put their own spin on the tale with this production taking promenade form and inviting the audience to take in some of the gardens alongside the theatre as they are led around the Botanics.

Also joining the Unlikely Wonders season is The Merchant Of Venice, which though more regularly performed has always been a controversial play thanks to the character of Shylock, and the still-unresolved critical debate about whether his presentation is antisemitic. It will be interesting to see how the Bard in the Botanics team tackle these issues within the bounds of the comedy. They haven't shied away in previous seasons from touching on the political with last year's incredibly comical The Comedy of Errors

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touching on Scotland and England in the leadup to the referendum.

Also following the success found last year with Henry IV Parts One and Two, they return with another history in the form of Richard II. Like last year's production, it will take place in the Kibble Palace glasshouse with a company of only four actors, although that is one up on the previous cast of three. Much drier than the comedies, its wonder might not be so easily seen, but the nuances of the power plays and the politics versus the personal, human relationships make the basis for strong and dynamic performances.

In Bard in the Botanic's first ever production of this play, we can hope to see these intricacies explored as tensions in the glasshouse rise.

Finally, A Midsummer Night's Dream will bring much of the wonder to the season. Although it is a much more commonly performed play than the rest of the season, its popularity and its magical touch is one that can always be felt. Presented as part of the Emerging Artists scheme, this version is adapted and directed by Emily Reutlinger, a Glasgow-based theatre director and graduate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She has previously worked with Theatre Uncut and the Traverse, and this will be her first time working alongside the Bard in the Botanics company.

With a season mixing irregularly performed comedies with a continuation of successful histories and magical worlds, there is likely to be something for all Shakespeare fans, those just looking for some entertainment on a sunny evening in the park, or those battling against the weather for love of the Bard.

Bard in the Botanics, 24 Jun–1 Aug, various performances bardinthebotanics.co.uk

Torn

Tron Theatre

rrrrr

Faux Theatre’s Torn has created a unique and imaginative way of portraying the intricacies of heartbreak. The 50-minute performance, which is entirely without dialogue, quickly overcomes any risk of being trite or uninteresting in its examination of such a timeless theme.

The visually stunning set displays the skill of the creative team. The interior of a woman’s house is covered in paper: crumpled and torn, it litters the floor, the surfaces, and overflows from a large bathtub. Silently, actress Francisca Morton interacts with these mounds of paper as she goes about the mundane activity of day-to-day life, and through convincing mime and live Foley effects, conveys both the oppressive and indulgent nature of an existence rooted in emotional debris.

As a metaphor for the inauthentic life that follows divorce or a bad break-up it is clever and

THEATRE

notably Sheila Reid's chillingly whimsical and transient Mrs Fiedke. The narrative hinges on her meeting with Lise, a sequence of theatrical ingenuity as the absurd department store is built with makeshift props and witty performances. Here as elsewhere, light and sound cues more than cover the episodic nature of the novel adaptation and the bold use of projected live video enhances the senses of confusion and voyeurism.

All eyes are on Morven Christie as Lise throughout, and she is astounding: seductive and vulnerable, composed one moment and lost the next. She creates Lise's various poorly-crafted identities effortlessly, with passion and terrific ennui in turns. Christie is definitely driving, but the roaring engine of the ensemble and Sansom's classy bodywork provide her with a beautiful machine.

[Charlie Hanks] The Driver's Seat, Tramway Theatre 2-4 Jul nationaltheatrescotland.com

compelling, but it also allows the audience to embrace the absurdity of this situation. Humour and despair are conveyed in equal measure by the subtle slapstick approach, and the result feels emotionally genuine.

The purpose of the live Foley artist, who uses an array of everyday objects to create the play’s various sound effects, is unclear. Nevertheless, his ambiguous presence onstage is intriguing in itself. Just as the visual and tactile quality of crumpled paper has a definite sensory appeal, so too does the intense scrutiny of familiar sounds prompted by the Foley technique, adding to the immersive quality of the performance.

All in all, Torn is refreshingly ambitious as a play, and the eagerness of its creators to experiment artistically pays off in the performance.

[Cat Acheson] Torn, Tron theatre and touring, run ended fauxtheatre.weebly.com/torn.html

THE SKINNY

The bunny-boiler's book Jessie Cave talks to The Skinny about her new book Love Sick and upcoming Fringe show I Loved Her

E

ndlessly perusing others’ social media profiles might now be so ubiquitous it's thought normal, though few would want their online voyeurism made public. Moreover, there can't be many who'd make a drawing of this kind of behaviour and post it on Twitter daily, but back in 2010, Jessie Cave began such an activity: “It's like a diary,” she says, “I can look back at the pictures and know what I did that day.”

Love Sick is the book of Cave's drawings.

The sketches within its pages are deliberately child-like, with Cave's characters in the midst of seemingly-innocent everyday exchanges.

They might be at the bus-stop, a cafe or meeting someone for the first time: ‘Hey! I've already stalked you extensively on Instagram. Nice to meet you,’ says one meeting another for the first time. Rendered in a nursery colour palette, the crayon style drawings wouldn't look out of place on a proud parent's fridge door. In reality though, these exchanges explore envy, anxiety and insecurity at all the stages of a relationship – in other words, they're about lovesickness.

Though it may be the love of aching, longing and confusion, it is still love Cave has on her mind. Especially in the way the drawings can relate to people: “The reason I do these drawings is so people know we're all in the same pool. We all have anxieties.”

Cave is, of course, still best known for her role in the final Harry Potter films. In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, she memorably owned the role of Lavender Brown, giving a

Interview: Ben Venables

ditzy character archetype something of a Fatal Attraction edge as she pursued Ron Weasley.

Despite the fact that she and Lavender seem to share similar obsessive characteristics, Cave finds the idea she developed anything of Lavender's personality into her own onstage persona somewhat amusing. In fact, cause and effect are the wrong way round. There was something already about Cave that suggested she was perfect for Lavender: “I was never meant to get the role,” she says, remembering that at the time of her audition she was 20, perhaps too old – relatively speaking – to play a 16 year old. However, on the day Cave had to do a little improv: “I made Rupert [Grint] laugh. I'm pretty sure that's why I got the part.” It was then Cave's comedic abilities then that went into Lavender, rather than Lavender's character influencing Cave's act.

“I've never pitched myself as the Harry Potter actor,” she says. Although she recalls in Bookworm, her 2012 debut Edinburgh show, “I did pretend I'd broken into Leavesden studios to get the role.”

Refreshingly, Cave never bores us with some monologue about wanting to be taken seriously or distance herself from Lavender: “It was the best thing to happen to me,” she says, and is cheerfully aware that, “even if I'm a politician people will always ask and comment, ‘where's Won-Won?’” Her new Fringe show I Loved Her sees Cave back at Underbelly for the first time since her debut. Bookworm was a popular show and, if comedy reviews are anything to go by, a well received one.

Yet twice in our conversation Cave sounds like

she has unfinished business, which she hopes her new show will take care of. She's hopeful I Loved Her will be something of a “mature version of the first show”; the end result of what she's been working towards.

Not that Cave hasn't returned to Edinburgh every year since 2012. In the following year she shared an hour with musical comedian Jenny Bede.

Then last year there was the sketch show Grawlix with talented TV actor and writer Emer Kenny – or at least, there was meant to be.

Unfortunately Kenny had to pull out of the Fringe at the last minute, leaving Cave to her own devices. Cave choose to keep the lunchtime slot at Espionage and try out some solo material. She decked out her corner of the bar like a children's play area and, in a characteristic move, made it easy for the unwary to believe this would be a fluffy Fringe hour to turn the brain to candy floss. Of course, the resulting show was no playschool.

Cave's creepy material – enveloped in her softly spoken delivery – settled uncomfortably under the skin.

One notable aspect about last year's show, and one which Cave continues to develop, is her use of rudimentary puppets for dialogue purposes, with faces drawn on paper plates and held up at her eye level with a stick.

“I'm most comfortable with dialogue,” she says, “and with puppets it's a way for me not to be alone on stage.” Cave also promises to enhance this aspect of her performance, “I'm also using a mirror this year and making it a little bit more severe.”

Her comments on dialogue between characters is interesting because it is Cave's ability as a writer of little scenes that stands out in both her book and in her performances. In a short sketch, either with a paper plate or drawn on a page, she has the ability to cut right to the nub of whatever drama is unfolding – exactly as a scene should.

As the action depicted is consistent with (and infiltrates) her dialogue and characterisation, it's possible to imagine the whole off-the-page story of the lives she portrays with ease.

If her new book and last year's try-out material is anything to go by, I Loved Her is doubtless one for any comedy fan's Fringe schedule this year.

Love Sick is released 2 Jul, hardback, Ebury Press.

Jessie Cave: I Loved Her runs at Underbelly, Cowgate, 5.30pm, 6-30 Aug, £9-10 edfringe.com | pindippy.com

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Feature

61

Ready Novel Two Ahead of his second novel Armada, we spoke to author Ernest Cline about back-slaps from George Lucas, competing with Adam Sandler and pissing off Steven Spielberg

I

f, as the bastardised saying goes, the geeks shall inherit the earth, then author Ernest Cline should be in line for a pretty sizeable chunk of real estate.

Previously, Cline was best known as screenwriter on the amiable Star Wars road movie Fanboys, an ultimately flawed endeavour that at least earned backing from George Lucas himself. However, when the Ohio-born writer turned his hand to his first novel, 2011’s Ready Player One, his geek cred went through the roof and garnered attention from another esteemed director, which resulted in more than just a thumbs-up.

“I didn't think anything would ever top having George Lucas give his blessing to my first screenplay,” marvels Cline at the top of our conversation.

“But having Steven Spielberg sign on to direct the adaptation of my first novel has managed to do it.

I think the only other novelist who can claim that same honour is Peter Benchley with Jaws. I'm still pinching myself – it's become a daily ritual.”

There were many schools of thought on why Spielberg was approached to direct Ready Player One, but chief among them was how embryonic his work is to the book itself. Set in a near-future plagued with overpopulation, poverty and environmental collapse, much of humanity finds solace in an all-encompassing virtual reality world called

the OASIS. When its chief creator James Halliday leaves behind an Easter-egg game hidden within the framework that will lead to his massive wealth, half the world tools up and logs on to find it. The catch is that all the clues and answers are ensconced within Halliday's obsession for the 1980s pop culture of his youth.

As such, thousands of hunters bone up on everything from early Atari lore to all 168 episodes of Family Ties in an attempt to uncover the riddles Halliday has left behind. In among the book's tsunami of such references sits the work of Spielberg, most of it coming with high praise from protagonist Wade Watts – but not all of it. “Oh no! Wade trash-talks Indy IV – he's going to hate the whole book!” laughs Cline. “That was my first thought when I was told he was interested in directing the film.

But that obviously wasn't the case. In the text, dismissing Crystal Skull is really just a snarky way for Wade to include the first three Indiana Jones films among his list of “holy trilogies” along with Star Wars and Back to the Future. So that little dig is buried amid high praise for his work.”

With that bullet dodged we decide to ask Cline a broader question about Spielberg's involvement. With the bearded one's name and influence threaded through the book like a stick of

rock, is he perhaps a bit too close to the subject matter, a little too perfect a choice to direct? “God no,” he states resolutely. “I think everyone involved – especially me – realised immediately that he's actually the perfect director for the material.

It's an homage to everything I loved about growing up in the 80s and it's going to be turned into a film by the greatest director of that decade. I never would have written Ready Player One if I hadn't grown up on a steady diet of Steven Spielberg films.”

It's a fairly common sentiment, one would imagine, but playing at least an equal part in Cline's influences is the world of videogames. Much of Ready Player One is a videogame of sorts (and some of it is a game within a game) whilst in between writing the book and the accompanying screenplay, Cline has finished his second novel, Armada, which also has its roots in digital entertainment. “Videogames are just a subject I'm naturally drawn to as a writer, in the way some novelists seem compelled to write about sports, detectives, zombies or vampires,” he rationalises.

“Videogames are as much a part of my life as books, movies and music and so it would be difficult for me to write a story that didn't reference them in some way.”

“Videogames are as much a part of my life as books, movies and music” Ernest Cline

Credit: Dan Winters

Both Ready Player One and Armada tap into slightly different fantasies that long-term game players are likely to have experienced. The former's immersive VR tale riffed on William Gibson's cult novel Neuromancer via the more accessible young adult fiction of Harry Potter and Star Wars. Armada meanwhile goes a step further with its premise; when alien invaders appear in spaceships over the sky, protagonist Zack Lightman (oh yes) can't help but notice the striking similarity between these real-life antagonists and the ones he fights every night in an online videogame called Armada.

“I think the feeling is a natural human reaction to playing a videogame,” explains Cline on the tendency of a gaming binge to seep into your real life thoughts. “Particularly with first-person perspective games, because many of them are simulators – they make you feel like you're really driving a car, flying a starship, or infiltrating a secret base alongside your best friends. It's a natural leap for our brains to make – what if this was real? I think gamers around the world have been having this fantasy since they first started dropping quarters into Space Invaders.”

However, though he's old enough to remember the arcade explosion that came with Taito's runaway success in 1978, it's the subsequent videogame home invasion of the early 80s that's symptomatic of Cline's own fantasies in this regard. “I grew up addicted to the early first-person space combat simulation games I was able to play on my Atari 2600,” he says. “I would build a cockpit in front of my TV with couch pillows, and then pull

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Feature

TECH / BOOKS

Interview: Darren Carle

the Atari inside to serve as my starship controls.”

We've all been there, yet despite Cline's affinity with the space genre, he cites a more grounded simulation as his main muse. “If there's one game that inspired Armada's story it would have to be Atari's Battlezone,” he reveals. As a realistic 3D tank combat simulator, for the time at least, Battlezone was subsequently converted by the US Army into a training tool. “I remember reading about it when I was a kid and being incredibly excited by that idea,” continues Cline. “That the United States Army was pursing the idea of using videogames to train real soldiers as early as 1981!”

Though he remains tight-lipped about the bigger story of Armada beyond the initial premise, it seems likely that this little nugget will play some kind of part overall. However, by a somewhat unfortunate coincidence, Armada will debut just ten days before Adam Sandler's summer juggernaut Pixels, a movie about an alien invasion of classic videogame characters. Though certainly a goofier take on the subject matter, and with the added hurdle of having to deal with Sandler's laconic delivery style, we have to wonder if Cline is at all bothered by the clash.

“I'm not really worried about Pixels,” he claims.

“I'm not sure that movie is aimed at people who buy or read books on a regular basis, and aside from a plot involving classic videogames and an alien invasion, the two stories don't seem to have anything in common. I'm glad that my novel is being published before the film comes out though, just so I don't have to spend my whole book tour answering questions about it. A lot of people ask me if I think they stole my idea, but the original French short film that Sandler's feature is based on was stolen from an old Futurama episode.”

It's a sign of how far Cline has come in such a short space of time, that his new book now faces such scrutiny and with it some weighty expectations. “Oh yes,” he exclaims when we ask if he felt the pressure with Armada. “Ridiculous, enormous pressure. I just did my best to ignore it and focus on telling my story, which wasn't always easy. I wrote my first novel in complete anonymity, with no deadline or expectations from anyone but myself. Armada was written in a much shorter period of time under the exact opposite circumstances.

It was on half-a-dozen ‘most anticipated books’ in 2014 and it wasn't even published that year because I was still writing it!”

With that job now done, Armada is ready for release and despite joking with us that he toyed with alternative titles such as Sophomore Slump and A Lacklustre Follow-Up, Cline is understandably happy with his latest work, even if his outlook is firmly grounded. “I'm proud of Armada and I think readers who enjoyed my first book will get a huge kick out of this one too,” he explains. “But even while I was writing it, it was clear to me that it would be impossible for anything to top the reception of my first novel. Everything you could ever want to happen when you publish your first book happened – and it continues to happen. All that being said though, I do have high hopes for Armada.”

Whether this is a case of false modesty or an accurate account of that old ‘difficult second album’ syndrome will be for readers to judge when Armada launches later this month.

Armada is due for release on 14 Jul, published by Century ernestcline.com

THE SKINNY

Glasgow Music Tue 30 Jun

EARTHS (CAVALCADES + THE STATIC FUTURE)

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

Borders-via-Glasgow punk and folk-influenced troupe.

HARRY BIRD AND THE RUBBER WELLIES

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £5

Travelling folksters known for their intimate cabaret of joyful sing-a-long choruses and general participatory fun.

JOHN LEGEND

THE SSE HYDRO, 19:30–22:00, FROM £37.50

The nine-time Grammy Award winner brings his velvet soft R'n'B to the UK. Thank God.

Wed 01 Jul BIG SEAN

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £23.50

Detroit-based rapper known to his mammy as Sean Michael Anderson (the yoof call him Big Sean).

SECTIONED (WINTERS + CIVIL ELEGIES + ATREIOES)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £5

The Edinburgh tech-metal unit play a headline set.

DMC93 (WEE D + SCOTT STEWART)

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

The young hip-hop locals play Bloc's wee lair.

Thu 02 Jul

STRUGGLE (TERRAFRAID + BOYS OF TERROR)

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

Monthly punk and post hardcore selection of bands from DIY collective Struggletown.

VAGABOND POETS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

Mod-styled band of scallywags hailing from the fiery musical furnace of, er, Cumbernauld.

AKELA (CHAINSAW TEA PARTY + LITTLE WAVES + THE GREAT ALBATROSS) KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £6.50

Alternative folk ensemble that began life as the solo project of Ben Gracie, out in live band form playing a selection of new material.

PSYCHIC SOVIETS (BREAKFAST MUFF + FIELDS OF MOULD)

MONO, 19:30–22:00, £4

The Glasgow-based lo-fi punkpopsters play Mono's diminutive lair.

Fri 03 Jul

DED RABBIT (FOREIGNFOX + CHARLEY HOUSTON)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

Band of brothers playing an eclectic mix of indie and sax funk.

MANTA (THE NORTHERN + LITTLE HANDS OF SILVER + SEMPER FI)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £6.50

Glasgow-based blues rockers who layer their sound with big grooves, soulful melodies and appropriate amounts of swagger.

SINISTER FLYNN (SAINTS + THE RANZAS)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–23:00, £6

Feisty Glasgow fivesome mixing rock, funk, ska and punk.

THE RAZORBILLS

STEREO, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

Modern folk'n'roll ensemble from Galloway.

Sat 04 Jul PETE MACLEOD

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 19:00–22:00, £8

The rock'n'roll singer/songwriter launches his new LP, playing the album live and in its entirety as well as DJing.

ALL KINGS AND QUEENS (IN THE DARK + SHONA BROWN + JONNY JACK)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £6.50

Live band project of Gabriella Cilmi and her younger brother, Joseph.

MISS LUCID (DEAR JOHN + CRAIG JOHN DAVIDSON)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–23:00, £TBC

Scottish rock troupe with punk and grunge undertones.

THE YAWNS + THE SHITHAWKS + YOUNGSTRR JOEY + ASIAN BABES

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £4

Fuzzkill Records present a night of Americana rock'n'roll, with Glasgow-based lo-fi lot The Yawns amongst the live acts.

July 2015

REPEATER ALL-DAYER (WOMPS + GREAT COP + MANUSCRIPTS + LENIN DEATH MASK + LOVERS TURN TO MONSTERS) 13TH NOTE, 14:00–23:00, £TBC

The Repeater troops host a live music all-dayer, taking in sets from WOMPS, Great Cop, Lovers Turn To Monsters, and more.

INSPECTOR TAPEHEAD + PANDA SU + GLAMOUR MUSCLE + JAY ROLEX DJ THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £5

The Glad Cafe and The Save As collective unite forces for an evening of new music and one-off collabs, including the return of Inspector Tapehead armed with their sophomore LP.

Sun 05 Jul

MERAUDER + DIVIDE + PROVIDENCE + WAR CHANGE + FRONTLINE BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £8

Noisy and sprawling bill, including the last ever live outing from Frontline.

CANNIBAL OX BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £13.50

13TH NOTE, 20:00–23:00, £4

THE VÉLONIÑOS

The Glasgow rock'n'rollers preview songs from their debut LP. LAURIE CAMERON

STEREO, 19:00–22:00, FREE

The Perth songstress launches her debut LP.

Sun 12 Jul WILLIWAW

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS , 18:00–22:00, FREE

Expect ukulele mayhem as Williwaw brings his merry cavalcade of melodious din to a live setting once more.

EZRA FURMAN

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £10

Mon 13 Jul

BEYOND PINK

BETTE MIDLER

THE SSE HYDRO, 18:30–22:00, FROM £50

The Grammy Award-winning singer/actress plays the hits.

Tue 14 Jul

The Swedish hardcore punk lot descend on Glasgow.

TESS PARKS + ANTON NEWCOMBE (THE LONELY WHALE)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

Tropical new wave kraut punk, with the bells'n'whistles of guitar, bass, violin, drums and more.

Co-headline set from London-viaToronto songstress Tess Parks and The Brian Jonestown Massacre founder Anton Newcombe.

Tue 07 Jul

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £14

MASSICOT

ALKALINE TRIO (LAGWAGON)

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £21.50

Classic-styled emo from the Chicagoan trio, fuelled on a steady diet of angst-ridden lyrics and adrenaline.

NEIL DIAMOND

THE SSE HYDRO, 20:00–22:00, FROM £65

The American singer/songwriter brings the schmaltz.

EVERYDAY SIDEKICKS

13TH NOTE, 20:00–23:00, £6 ADV. (£7 DOOR)

Bristol foursome of the post hardcore variety.

FIRSTBORN

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

The Swedish noisemakers play their brand of technical metallic hardcore.

Wed 08 Jul TARIBOWEST

BLOC+, 21:00–23:00, FREE

A selection of super-heavy live band sounds curated by Vasa's J Niblock and Detour's Ally McCrae.

LEON BRIDGES

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £12.50

Texas-hailing gospel and soul singer, out touring his debut LP Smooth Sailin.

Thu 09 Jul

SIX TIME CHAMPION (HOMEBOUND + CENTURY) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–23:00, £6 ADV. (£8 DOOR)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £13

HEAVY TRASH (BLOODSHOT BILL)

Special showcase concert ahead of the annual award ceremony.

Wed 15 Jul ANVIL (DENDERA)

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £17

The Canadian heavy metalers bring the racket.

Thu 16 Jul

MEGALOMATIC (TWIN HEART + MANTIS TOBOGGAN)

STEREO, 18:30–22:00, £5

The alternative metal unit mark their two year anniversary with a return set at Stereo, plying songs new, old and unexpected.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: WECAMEFROMWOLVES (ARMSTRONG + FAREWELL SINGAPORE + WE WERE HUNTED) KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

The day-by-day musical marathon that is King Tut's Summer Nights kicks off with a headline set from hook-laden harmonic Perthshire post-rockers, WeCameFromWolves.

PATTI SMITH: A NIGHT OF INTERPRETATION AND APPRECIATION

MONO, 19:30–22:00, £5

Fledgling event series for the performance of multichannel and surround sound work, and other work made specifically for loudspeakers.

Sat 11 Jul

BLOOD YOUTH (TRASH BOAT)

CLASSIC GRAND, 18:30–22:00, £7

Lincoln-based rock ensemble led by vocalist Kaya Tarsus.

DRUNK IN HELL

13TH NOTE, 20:00–23:00, £TBC

Five (sometimes six) man wrecking ball from Boro, adept at pulverising the stage with their dirged out noise-rock.

GRAND COLLAPSE

Welsh thrash punk foursome of the reliably noisy variety.

Fri 17 Jul

WHITE (ATOM TREE)

STEREO, 19:00–22:00, £8

The Glasgow pop newcomers air new material.

HOLY ESQUE

THE ART SCHOOL, 22:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

Much-hyped and reverb-drenched Glaswegian art-popsters, out launching their new EP, with Glasgow's own Brut DJs manning the after-show.

DAVE ARCARI (MICK HARGAN + PANIC ANCHOR + JOHN MACKAY)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £10

Talented blues rocker playing a mix of guitar-driven blues and trash country.

ROSWELL (CELLAR DOOR + THE MAMERTINES)

Aberdeen-based alternative grunge groovers.

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

Sun 26 Jul

POLARNECKS (GRAND PICKS)

Unsigned Glasgow experimentalists who describe their thing as ‘noise and jumpers’, as you do.

Wed 22 Jul

JAKE QUICKENDEN (CONCEPT + CHRIS BOURNE)

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £15

English singer and multi-time contestant on The X Factor. Joys.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: FELIX CHAMPION (TOY MOUNTAINS + BELLOW BELOW + NEMECYST)

STEREO, 19:00–22:00, £5

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

SKAM (MASSIVE WAGONS)

Leicester rock trio blending classic British rock sounds with elements of punk and heavy metal.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: COLONEL MUSTARD AND THE DIJON 5 (VICTORIAN TROUT CONSPIRACY + SEA BASS KID) KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from rock'n'roll and flamencotraversing locals Colonel Mustard and The Dijon 5.

STUCK IN SUMMERTIME FEST! (ZATOPEKS + GHOST ON TAPE + THE FUR COATS + RUBRICS + THE MURDERBURGERS + THE KIMBERLY STEAKS + THE LEMONAIDS + AUSTEROS + REVENGE OF THE PSYCHOTRONIC MAN + DON BLAKE + MUNTERS) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 14:30–23:00, £10

Day-long mini fest taking in the likes of The Murderburgers, The Kimberly Steaks and Munters.

MIDNIGHT WIRE

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

Leicester indie-rock foursome still riding the wave of their debut LP release.

MARK COPELAND (KAT HEALY + FLEW THE ARROW + RAE GARRITY)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £8

CHRONIXX (DRE ISLAND)

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £22.50

Recently ascended to reggae's front line, the son of the legendary Chronicle drops by for a hit-filled set.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: SATELLITE TEARS (HERCULEAN + NORTH ASSAULT + COASTLINES)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from fledgling Glasgow rock trio Satellite Tears.

BEST FRIENDS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £7

Sheffield garage popsters and presumably best buds.

Mon 20 Jul THE FELICE BROTHERS

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00, £17.50

NYC five-piece formed by brothers James and Ian Felice, ready to take you on a mud-stomping folk journey, as is their way.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: KEEPING DIRT CLEAN (PHASES + INUIT + GREAT COP)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from Glasgow indie-meets-grunge ensemble Keeping Dirt Clean.

CHRIS BARRON (LACH)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £8

The Spin Doctors chap plays a selection of hits.

Tue 21 Jul EVA PLAYS DEAD

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £6

Derby-based alternative rockers built on the powerful female vocals of Tiggy Dockerty, bolstered by feisty guitar riffs and a powerhouse rhythm section.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: AMATRART (MIRACLE STRIP + LE THUG + APACHE DARLING)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from Glasgow-based electronic foursome AmatrArt (pronounced Amateur Art, obviously).

EVANS THE DEATH

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £6

Chirpy indie-pop types from London signed to Fortuna Pop!

KIRSTEN ADAMSON NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–23:00, £6

The Gillyflowers’ lass in her new solo project guise, out debuting her new EP.

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–23:00, £4

Sat 18 Jul

Sun 19 Jul

SAMAS SHOWCASE

13TH NOTE, 20:00–23:00, £TBC

INTER- #1

Heavy melodic unit chock with big riffs.

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £TBC

STEREO, 19:00–22:00, £5

GLARUS (BIG MACHINE)

Up-tempo pop-meets-rock singer/songwriter from Ayrshire.

A selection of bands celebrate 40 years since Patti Smith's first LP Horses dropped.

Double headline set from a duo of local singer/songwriters.

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–23:00, £5

Jon Spencer and Matt Verta-Ray team up again to explosive effect, bringing their crazed rockabilly to the live stage.

Pop punk ensemble who've previously played with bands such as Bayside, Real Friends and Roam.

SCOTT MCDONALD + LITTLE FIRE

NO MATTER (DEMON SMILES + HELLO CREEPY SPIDER + PURE PARA)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £7.50

THE SSE HYDRO, 19:00–22:00, FROM £35

13TH NOTE, 20:00–23:00, £TBC

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from manic Glaswegian foursome Mickey 9s, most likely in ski masks.

Male and female-fronted foursome of the pop-punk variety.

Mon 06 Jul

Frankie Valli and his touring mainstays, The Four Seasons, play the hits.

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

NYC underground hip-hop duo composed of Vast Aire and Vordul Mega, sometimes accompanied by DJ Cip-One.

American singer/songwriter gaining increasing mileage on national radio.

FRANKIE VALLI AND THE FOUR SEASONS

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: MICKEY 9S (JAMIE AND SHOONY + MEMORY MAN + SCUNNER)

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: PERDURAMO (OCEAN HOUSE + SEAOFCROWNS + ABORIGINALS)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from guitar-based Glasgow rockers Perduramo.

ANGALEENA PRESLEY

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £12

The Kentucky coal miner's daughter tours in support of her debut country LP American Middle Class.

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from Cupar-based alternative rock trio Felix Champion.

Mon 27 Jul

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 20:00–23:00, £7 (£5)

KAWEHI (ELVIRA STITT + AMY SHIELDS)

FIZZY BLOOD

Leeds-based rock'n'rollers with a penchant for big riffs.

ALBERT SHAKESPEARE (WOJTEK + ELASTIC LEG PARTY)

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

Alternative math rock foursome from Perth.

Thu 23 Jul

JOE LYNN TURNER (RANK BERRY)

CLASSIC GRAND, 19:00–22:00, £15

The Ex-Rainbow, Deep Purple frontman plays a special acoustic set.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: MADE AS MANNEQUINS (BROKEN BOY + POOR FRISCO + SAINT SECAIRE)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

COLLEEN GREEN (MARTHA FFION)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:00, £6

More stoner pop sounds from the west LA-hailing lo-fi artist.

KING TUT'S, 20:00–23:00, £16

Hawaiian singer/songwriter big on the catchy hooks and soul-baring lyrics.

Edinburgh Music Wed 01 Jul

ELDER (MOS GENERATOR + HAIR OF THE DOG)

The heavy psych Boston trio make their Scottish debut.

13TH NOTE, 20:00–23:00, £5

THE HOLY GHOSTS (MIRACLE GLASS COMPANY + CARAVAN CLUB + WILLOW ROBINSON)

The Cantebury indie-popsters tour their new EP.

MY AIM TO FAREWELL (VICTOR VEGA + LIFELINES) BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

The Italian hardcore metal unit descent on Bloc.

Fri 24 Jul

PINACT (BREAKFAST MUFF)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:45–23:00, £5

Brash Glasgow duo playing hyperactive punk-rock rich with energy and catchy melodies.

JUNEBUG (DEADY RIDES + ANNA SWEENEY)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £5

Acoustic rock Glasgow quartet blending a mix of distortion with acoustic harmonies, out launching their new EP. EXPOSURE (DAN LEWIS + RYAN ROBINSON)

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £20

Yet. Another. Boy. Band.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: BWANI (WHISPERY CLUB + BARBARY COAST + CHARLOTTE BRIMNER) KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from world-referencing Edinburgh quartet Bwani (formerly Bwani Junction).

C DUNCAN

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:00–22:00, £7

Glasgow-based muso, composing e'er beautiful choral harmonies and acoustic instrumentation in his bedroom-studio set-up.

THE EARLIES (BEAM)

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:30–22:00, £10

Neo-psych lullabies produced on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sat 25 Jul

ENEMIES OF THE STATE (OUR LUCID REALITY + THE CHELSEAS + THE NAKED FEEDBACK)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

The indie-rock locals take to the stage to do their ever-energetic live thing.

TIM ‘RIPPER’ OWENS

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £15

The heavy metal singer formerly known for his work with The Judas Priest goes it alone.

KING TUT'S SUMMER NIGHTS: THE RAVELS (THE DESERT WILLOWS + THE DIRTY SUITS + OLD BOHEMIA)

KING TUT'S, 20:30–23:00, £7

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from rock'n'roll troupe The Ravels, born of the ashes of The River 68s.

Tue 14 Jul

CITRUS CLUB, 14:00–16:30, £5

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–23:00, £15

SKA SUNDAY

Mash-up ska locals Big Fat Panda host their monthly ska shenanigans, joined by a selection of live acts and DJs. A BIG SONG AND DANCE

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 14:30–18:00, £10

Charity concert raising funds for Walk the Walk.

Mon 06 Jul

SOUNDHOUSE @ TRAVERSE THEATRE: SAMBA SENE + DIWAN + BAOBAB GATEWAY

TRAVERSE THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £10

Continuing its weekly gig residency at Traverse Theatre, departed Edinburgh music venue Soundhouse hosts a special Africa night, raising funds for The Soundhouse Organisation.

Wed 08 Jul

THE ANGLES (FITZROY SOUL + THE GENES)

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, FREE

Edinburgh-based alternative rockers fronted by former ‘Vivian’ Damon DeVille.

CHRIS BARRON (LACH)

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £8

King Tut's Summer Nights schedule continues with a headline set from Glasgow-based alternative indie foursome Made As Mannequins (formerly The Occupationists).

HOLY PINTO (FLAKES)

Sun 05 Jul

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £12

Thu 02 Jul

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 20:00–01:00, £8

Edinburgh rock'n'rollers infusing their sound with a splash of country and blues.

BULLETPROOF ROSE + NEST OF VIPERS + GUTTERGODZ

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £3

Showcase night of a trio of fledgling rock acts.

Fri 03 Jul OK SOCIAL CLUB

The Spin Doctors chap plays a selection of hits.

Thu 09 Jul

DEFEATER (GRADER + RAINFALLS)

STUDIO 24, 18:30–22:00, £12

Massachusetts hardcore metal hellraisers known for actively taking creative liberties when crafting their songs.

OLD TOWN ACOUSTIC FESTIVAL (TOM COYNE + ANNIE BOOTH + EKOBIRDS + MAISIE HUTT + BLEYS DUNLOP) BANNERMANS, 15:00–23:00, £5 ADV. (£7 DOOR)

Day-long acoustic music fest, highlighting some of the best talent in and around Edinburgh.

Fri 10 Jul

DRUNK IN HELL (BAD AURA + SAMOGONKA)

BANNERMANS, 20:00–22:00, £7 ADV. (£8 DOOR)

Five (sometimes six) man wrecking ball from Boro, adept at pulverising the stage with their dirged out noise-rock.

BUTCH WALKER

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, £20

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £5

The American singer/songwriter and record producer tours his latest solo LP.

THE DIRTY VINYL EXPERIENCE

Sat 11 Jul

The genre-hopping Edinburgh trio play an intimate set.

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 20:15–23:00, £5

Vintage rock psychedelic soul trio from Edinburgh.

Sat 04 Jul DAVID DANIELS

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 19:30–22:00, FROM £15 (£12)

American countertenor David Daniels stars in a special concert celebrating the 180th anniversary of Andrew Carnegie's birth.

MAD GERALD + BLACK NEVADA + SHORTSIDE AVENUE + BOOGIE LOUSHOU BANNERMANS, 18:00–23:00, £5

Showcase night of all hues of rock.

ELVIS SHAKESPEARE: 10TH BIRTHDAY AFTER-PARTY (BROKEN RECORDS + MY TWO DADS + THE FNORDS)

PILRIG ST PAUL'S CHURCH, 19:30–22:00, £5

After a day of in-store sessions, Elvis Shakespeare teams up with the LeithLate crew for an afterbash at Pilrig Church, headlined my multi-limbed Edinburgh ensemble Broken Records, with support from My Two Dads and The Fnords.

ELVIS SHAKESPEARE: 10TH BIRTHDAY (LITTLE LOVE AND THE FRIENDLY VIBES + RODNEY RELAX + LITTLE PEBBLE + THE THEY THEY THEYS + BLUEFLINT + DOMINIC WAXING LYRICAL) ELVIS SHAKESPEARE, 14:00–18:00, FREE

10th birthday shindig for the beloved music-cum-book shop, hosting a day of festivities – kicking off with a series of in-store sessions (2pm-6pm), before teaming up with the LeithLate crew for an after-bash at Pilrig Church (7.30pm).

BRUNCHEON

OUT OF THE BLUE DRILL HALL, 11:30–15:00, FREE

Brunch and live music event in the Drill Hall cafe, featuring a selection of local musical talent. And cake!

CHAOS UK (THE FIEND + HAPPY SPASTICS + SUBVISION)

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £15 (£12)

The street punk specialists return to Bannermans.

BLACK CAT BONE (LO BIRD + THE DRAYNES + TRIPTYCH AND FLO)

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–23:00, £7

SALSA CELTICA

The Edinburgh-based ensemble play a trademark set of Scottish and Irish traditional music.

Wed 15 Jul JAMMIN’ AT VOODOO

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 21:00–23:00, FREE

Monthly live jam session with a selection of Scottish musicians playing lounge grooves from myriad genres.

BORN AND BRED

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, FREE

Showcase night featuring a selection of local acts.

PERFECT CRIMES (CONCRETE KINGDOMS)

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £5

More catchy rock riffage from the Kerrang featured Sheffield outfit.

WILD BEASTS

SUMMERHALL, 20:00–01:00, £18.50

The Kendal pop foursome man the next instalment in Summerhall's Nothing Ever Happens Here gig series, oxygenated by clean synths and carried by Chris Talbot's rich percussion.

Thu 16 Jul THE DARK JOKES

ST STEPHEN'S CENTRE, 19:30–22:00, FREE

The Edinburgh indie-rock trio play a special show of music, lights and live visuals to welcome their new single into the world.

DEATH TO INDIE

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £5

The Newcastle punk rock'n'rollers descend.

Fri 17 Jul

MORPHEUS RISING (HI ON MAIDEN)

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £10 (£8)

Classic-styled rock and metal from the twin guitar York quintet.

JUNEBUG (THE FUTURE CAPITAL + COUSIN KENNY)

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £4 EARLYBIRD (£6-£8 THEREAFTER)

Acoustic rock Glasgow quartet blending a mix of distortion with acoustic harmonies, out launching their new EP. ANTONIO SANCHEZ

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £20

Writer of the score for Birdman, Antonio Sanchez plays a special set with is live band crew – saxophonist Seamus Blake, pianist John Escreet and bassist Matt Brewer.

Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

BELLPARK SUMMER PARTY (VICTORIAN TROUT CONSPIRACY + SEA BASS KID + LIONEL) THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00, £6

BellPark present a showcase of the best in indie, ska and punk outfits.

In their eyes anyway.

BLACK DIAMOND EXPRESS (LAURENCE MURRAY PROJECT + MATT NORIS + THE MOON)

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £8 (£6)

The bluesy folk locals do their amalgamation of Celtic and American roots styles.

Sat 18 Jul

Edinburgh-based blues/swamp/ rock ensemble.

FAT GOTH (BLACK INTERNATIONAL + BRITNEY)

Sun 12 Jul

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, FREE

Hard hittin’ and visceral Dundee trio known for their heavy approach and sharp changes in direction.

DAD HORSE EXPERIENCE

The Edinburgh ensemble play a hometown set.

MIASMA (FRINK OUT + THE DRAYNES)

Edinburgh-based alternative pop-rockers made up of various local musos.

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, £6

CARAVAN CLUB

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £7 (£5)

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £7

ROYAL SOUTHERN BROTHERHOOD + MR SIPP

Mon 13 Jul

Louisiana soul quartet Royal Southern Brotherhood play a double bill with Mississippi guitarist/ vocalist Mr Sipp. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Unique solo artist incorporating bango, kazzo and drums into his merry mix.

JED POTTS AND THE HILLMAN HUNTERS

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, FREE

More intimate and electric blues from Potts and his merry band.

SOUNDHOUSE @ TRAVERSE THEATRE: AS THE CROW FLIES

TRAVERSE THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £10

Continuing its weekly gig residency at Traverse Theatre, departed Edinburgh music venue Soundhouse welcomes local hard rockers As The Crow Flies, raising funds for The Soundhouse Organisation.

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 20:00–22:00, FROM £20

PAUL MIRO

BANNERMANS, 18:00–23:00, £9

Former vocalist with 90s outfit Apes, Pigs and Spacemen, playing a rare unplugged Scottish set.

KIRSTEN ADAMSON

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £6

The Gillyflowers’ lass in her new solo project guise, out debuting her new EP.

MICHAEL SUTTHAKORN

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, £10

WeTalkTo showcase night, touring to five cities in the UK.

Listings

63

Edinburgh Music Sun 19 Jul

FEDERATION OF THE DISCO PIMP

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £TBC

High-energy disco-pop from the bouncy Glasgwegian seven-piece, providing unstoppable grooves since 2010.

EDINBURGH JAZZ FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA: ECHOES OF ELLINGTON

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 20:00–22:00, FROM £20

The Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra pay tribute to Duke Ellington, directed by Ellington specialist Pete Long. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

HSK TRIO + CORY HENRY

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £10

International keyboard mastermind Cory Henry (of Snarky Puppy) joins forces with the HSK Trio for an all-new collaboration. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Mon 20 Jul

JACE EVERETT (NO QUARTER + BLACK CAT BONE)

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £15 (£12.50)

Nashville singer/songwriter best known (by us, at least) for True Blood theme song, Bad Things.

MELISSA ALDANA AND CRASH TRIO

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £15

New York saxophonist Melissa Aldana – the first female instrumentalist to win the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition – plays a live band set. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

NOT JUST YET

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £5

The grunge pop newcomers showcase their wares.

Tue 21 Jul PERSON TO PERSON

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 20:00–22:00, FROM £20

DONNIE WILLOW SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £5

The tuneful Glasgow math rock trio do their thing.

DAVID PATRICK: THE RITE OF SPRING

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £12.50

Pianist/composer David Patrick unveils his new project taking Stavinsky's masterwork The Rite of Spring as the starting point for a five-movement suite. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

MISS COUNTRY BLUE

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £5

Unique mix of country, rock, blues and punk.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £10

THE BLUESBROKER EXPERIENCE

Edinburgh-based blues rockers playing a mixture of classic and original tunes.

ZOE RAHMAN TRIO

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £15

The contemporary jazz pianist and composer plays a special set.

Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

CROSS THE TRACKS (HIDDEN ORCHESTRA + FALTY DL + FOUR CORNERS + FAT-SUIT + SYNDICATE DJS)

SUMMERHALL, 21:00–03:00, £16 ADV. (£20 DOOR)

Weekend-long, jazz-infused mini fest curated by Astrojazz's Chris Knight, with Friday dedicated to African and Latin sounds, while Saturday delves into all things electronic. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £15

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £12

THUNKFISH

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £9 (£7)

Tight, yet unpredictable blend of jazz, punk, thrash, prog and funk.

Wed 22 Jul TRIO RED

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £15

Tom Bancroft and his multinational band trio showcase a world premiere collab, with poet/ playwright David Greig writing poetry, inspired by the music, live on screen during the performance.

Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

SIRENS IN THE DELTA

BANNERMANS, 20:00–23:00, £5

Scuzzy alternative rockers fresh from Download festival.

PATERSANI (THE MONA LISA'S + GRACE AND LEGEND)

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £5

Glasgow indie-rock unit led by vocalist and guitarist Craig Paterson.

NO QUARTER (STAR ROVER)

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, FREE

Self proclaimed ‘vagina fronted blues rock band’.

RICHARD HARROLD TRIO

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £9 (£7)

Musically deviant Scottish trio composed of Richard Harrold, Ant Law and Richard Kass.

Thu 23 Jul KING EIDER

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00, £7 (£5)

Edinburgh-based folk-blues quintet rich with alternative and oft-dark melodies.

IAIN HUNTER

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 20:00–22:00, FROM £15

The jazz crooner returns to the capital, with live band backing led

by Eliot Murray. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

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Listings

BUNNYGRUNT (EUREKA CALIFORNIA + NICE CHURCH)

The Banshee Labyrinth, 20:0023:00, £5 The Missouri pop ensemble tour the UK, with label mates Eureka California on support.

Dundee Music

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–23:00, FREE

Sat 25 Jul

BBC Big Band drummer and arranger Tom Gordon showcases his new seven-piece, playing new arrangements of Count Basie tunes. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Mon 27 Jul

BWANI JUNCTION

Three original Average White Band members – Hamish Stuart, Molly Duncan and Steve Ferrone – play 1976 LP Soul Searching in full, alongside a smattering of hits.

Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

TOM GORDON BASIE 7

STEFANO BOLLANO FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £20

The Italian piano virtuoso does his eclectic thing, moving from calypsos to blues to meditative muses. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Fri 24 Jul Edinburgh quartet imbued with world-traipsing influences, playing a special themed charity gig.

TREMBLING BELLS (LAINIE AND THE CROWS)

SNEAKY PETE'S, 19:00–22:00, £8

The kings and queens of modern folk do their rabble-rousing live thing.

HAFTOR MEDBØE

Scottish guitarist Haftor Medboe plays with Espen Eriksen (piano) and Gunna Halle (trumpet), bringing his transcendent epic new jazz to the masses. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

JOOLS HOLLAND AND HIS RHYTHM AND BLUES ORCHESTRA

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, FROM £36

The former Squeeze piano tinkler does his thing, accompanied by his live band ensemble and special guest Marc-bloody-Almond.

Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

CROSS THE TRACKS (ROMARE + CLAP!CLAP! + MELT YOURSELF DOWN + DJ FORMAT + UNITED VIBRATIONS + NOTSOSILENT + SAMEDIA SHEBEEN DJS)

SUMMERHALL, 21:00–03:00, £16 ADV. (£20 DOOR)

Weekend-long, jazz-infused mini fest curated by Astrojazz's Chris Knight, with Friday dedicated to African and Latin sounds, while Saturday delves into all things electronic. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

NEST OF VIPERS (A RITUAL SPIRIT)

BANNERMANS, 18:00–23:00, £5

The local metal rockers returns to destroy Bannermans.

Sun 26 Jul GEORGE BENSON

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 19:30–22:00, FROM £47.50

R'n'B and jazz-straddling musician whose career spans some five decades. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Glasgow Clubs

Fri 03 Jul

ALMOST BLUE (DAVE ARCARI + SHARPY AND THE FELT TIPS + THE BOSTON TEA PARTY + SIN CITY BLUES)

BUSKERS, 20:00–02:30, FREE

Weekend-long blues festival featuring headline sets from Dave Arcari, Krissy Matthews and The Hexmen across Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively.

SYANN + NICOLA MADILL + SUZY MAYNARD + NICOLE RITCHIE + PAULINE M HYND + SEONAID BIRSE + ALICE MARRA

THE GARDYNE THEATRE, 19:30–22:00, £10

Showcase of a selection of Dundeebased female singer/songwriters.

As part of Almost Blue festival.

Sat 04 Jul

ALMOST BLUE (KRISSY MATTHEWS + DIXIE FRIED + MAIN STREET BLUES + GND BLUES BAND + SNAPPIN’ TURTLES) BUSKERS, 20:00–02:30, FREE

Weekend-long blues festival featuring headline sets from Dave Arcari, Krissy Matthews and The Hexmen across Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Sun 05 Jul

ALMOST BLUE (THE HEXMEN + BLUES HAT BAND + SAFEHOUSE + LEFT AND FRIENDS)

BUSKERS, 20:00–02:30, FREE

PARTY FEARS

Tue 30 Jun KILLER KITSCH

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Eclectic midweeker playing the best in house, techno and electronic – or, in their words ‘casually ignoring shite requests since 2005’.

I AM

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (FREE VIA IAMCLUB.CO.UK)

SUMMERPUNKS MINI-FEST (THE MURDERBURGERS + REVENGE OF THE PSYCHOTRONIC MAN + THE FUR COATS + THE KIMBERLY STEAKS + MAXWELL'S DEAD + PANICBYFLARE)

BUSKERS, 18:00–23:00, FROM £5

Veritable cavalcade of international, domestic and local purveyors of DIY punk, joining forces to help raise funds for the Dundee food bank.

Sat 25 Jul GUTTERMOUTH

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 20:00–22:00, £10

The American punk rockers play their only Scottish date.

SUB ROSA

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Subbie's regular student night with residents Spittal and Nowicki at the helm.

BLEEP43 AV (ANTHONY CHILD + ALI WADE + KONX-OM-PAX)

THE ART SCHOOL, 19:30–23:00, £12 (£10)

The Bleep43 troops present an immersive audiovisual experiment featuring electronic music and digital imagery from Anthony Child (aka Surgeon), Ali Wade and Konx-Om-Pax.

Thu 02 Jul HIP HOP THURSDAYS

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Euan Neilson plays the best in classic r'n'b and hip-hop.

JELLY BABY

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £4

Thursday nighter of chart, disco and party tunes. Can't say fairer.

LEISURE SYSTEM GLASGOW (CLARK + UNTOLD + BARKER) SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £10

The legendary folk that make up Berlin label Leisure System bring the mayhem Glasgow-way for a second outing, this time joined by electronic innovator Clark, plus support from Hemlock Recordings boss Untold and Leisure System resident Barker.

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

Saturday night disco manned by your man Gerry Lyons and guests.

SINGLES NIGHT

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Andy Divine and Chris Geddes’ gem of a night dedicated to 7-inch singles from every genre imaginable.

THUNDER DISCO CLUB

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £TBC

The Thunder Disco Club residents churn out the 90s house, techno and disco hits, as is their merry way.

DEATHKILL 4000

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Industro-rock noise party with live players and bespoke visuals to boot.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT (SHANE + SUNSHOWER + CHESTER FACE)

THE ART SCHOOL, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)

Occasional club gathering pumpin’ out high energy disco tunes.

Frothy mix of guilty pleasures, old and new, for your Saturday night dancing needs.

Euan Neilson plays the best in classic r'n'b and hip-hop.

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£5)

Thursday nighter of chart, disco and party tunes. Can't say fairer.

The Cosmic Dead chaps trip out with an evening of rollin’ Krautrock DJing for your general aural pleasure.

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £6

LET'S GO BACK… WAY BACK

Residents-manned evening of the finest techno and house offerings from the MPC crew.

SUBCULTURE (JASPER JAMES + SENSU)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £8

Long-running house night, with residents Harri & Domenic this edition joined by bright young Glasgow house music talent Jasper James and club regulars Sensu (aka Junior and Barry Price).

Mon 06 Jul BURN

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3/FREE WITH TRADE WAGE SLIP)

Long-running trade night with Normski and Mash spinning the disco beats.

Tue 07 Jul KILLER KITSCH

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Eclectic midweeker playing the best in house, techno and electronic – or, in their words ‘casually ignoring shite requests since 2005’.

I AM (BLEAKER)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa play the usual fine mix of electronica and bass, this edition joined by rising Glasgow DJ Bleaker.

Wed 08 Jul SUB ROSA

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Subbie's regular student night with residents Spittal and Nowicki at the helm.

JELLY BABY

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £4

GOOD GRIEF'S GOOP SHOP

The DIY label and zine collective present their monthly clubmeets-gig outing and fresh zine launch combined.

FANCY

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £3

New weekly Thursday party playing pop and r'n'b tunes.

Fri 10 Jul OLD SKOOL

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

Connoisseur's mix of old-school jazz, funk and soul for your jivin’ pleasure.

PROPAGANDA

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

ENJOYABLE MOMENT

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

CLASSIC FRIDAYS

Two floors of rock, metal and industrial tunes with DJs Barry and Tailz (upstairs) and Gary and FoxisonFire (downstairs).

ICY (WALTON)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6

For their first night down't La Cheetah, ICY welcome heavyweight UK house and funky chappie Walton.

F.W.D.K.

THE ART SCHOOL, 23:00–03:00, £4 ADV. (£6 THEREAFTER)

Night of lo-fi 90s-era rap from Inkke, Bake and The Blessings.

Sat 11 Jul NU SKOOL

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £3

Nick Peacock spins a Saturdayready selection of vintage disco, soul and funk.

COMMON PEOPLE

CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £6

OSMIUM

Italo, disco, synthpop and funk with the e'er capable Osmium residents.

THE FLYING DUCK, 21:00–03:00, £5

Celebration of all things 90s, with hits a-plenty and a pre-club bingo session.

JAMMING FRIDAYS

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Indie rock'n'roll from the 60s to 00s with resident tune-picker DJ Jopez.

THE BIG CHEESE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, FREE (£6/£4 STUDENT AFTER 11)

Student-friendly Friday night party, playing – as one might expect – cheesy classics of every hue.

ABSOLUTION

Alternative blowout of metal, industrial, pop-punk, rock, emo and ska tunes.

SUBCULTURE

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £TBC

Long-running house night with residents Harri & Domenic manning the decks.

THE ROCK SHOP

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Rock, indie and golden indie classics with resident DJ Heather McCartney.

OLD SKOOL

PROPAGANDA

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

JAMMING FRIDAYS

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

THE BIG CHEESE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, FREE (£6/£4 STUDENT AFTER 11)

Student-friendly Friday night party, playing – as one might expect – cheesy classics of every hue.

HARSH TUG

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £3

Hip-hop and gangsta rap brought to you by the Notorious B.A.G and pals.

MISSING PERSONS CLUB

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£3 AFTER 12)

Residents-manned evening of the finest techno and house offerings from the MPC crew.

CLASSIC FRIDAYS

CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £6

Two floors of rock, metal and industrial tunes with DJs Barry and Tailz (upstairs) and Gary and FoxisonFire (downstairs).

TOO NICE: 1 MILLION DEGREES (JON L + DJ HECKTER + BESSA + DON G)

THE ART SCHOOL, 23:00–03:00, £5

THE FLYING DUCK, 20:00–03:00, £4 ADV. (£5 DOOR)

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 20:00–22:00, FROM £20

LOVE MUSIC

HIP HOP THURSDAYS

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Monthly night from Soma Records taking in popular techno offerings of all hues, this time hosting the official Slam Tent after-bash for T in the Park-weary bodies.

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

MAGGIE BELL + TIM ELLIOTT: A CELEBRATION OF WILLIE DIXON

Maggie Bell and Tim Elliott lead a cats of players paying tribute to blues icon Willie Dixon. Part of Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival.

Rock, indie and golden indie classics with resident DJ Heather McCartney.

Thu 09 Jul

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6 EARLYBIRD (£8 THEREAFTER)

Connoisseur's mix of old-school jazz, funk and soul for your jivin’ pleasure.

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 19:00–22:00, £15

On-and-off rock lot formed in 1976 in Australia, out touring their new LP.

THE ROCK SHOP

GUILTY PLEASURE SHED, 22:30–02:00, £7 (£5)

Alternative club fun night for all your, er, alternative clubbing needs.

RETURN TO MONO: SLAM TENT AFTER-PARTY

Fri 03 Jul

Inspired by their Art School debut party last July, ‘100 Degrees’, the Too Nice team take it up to 1 Million Degrees this time with a set of r'n'b, rap, trap, dancehall and more.

THE SAINTS

ABSOLUTION

CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £6

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Indie rock'n'roll from the 60s to 00s with resident tune-picker DJ Jopez.

Fri 17 Jul

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

Nick Peacock spins a Saturdayready selection of vintage disco, soul and funk.

Wed 01 Jul

Tue 07 Jul CAIRD HALL, 19:00–22:00, £4 (£2)

NU SKOOL

Alternative blowout of metal, industrial, pop-punk, rock, emo and ska tunes.

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

The virtuoso organist takes in a programme of Widor, Guilmant, Festing, and some of Alfred Hollins’ character pieces.

Sat 04 Jul

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa play the usual fine mix of electronica and bass, oft joined by a guest or two.

Weekend-long blues festival featuring headline sets from Dave Arcari, Krissy Matthews and The Hexmen across Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively.

D'ARCY TRINKWON

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Three-way girl-team electro DJ panic.

GONZO BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

CHANGING ROOMS (BASS CLEF)

The Duck reopens after its refurb closure, celebrating with a special guest set from London electronic pioneer Bass Clef.

THE SKINNY

LOVE MUSIC

SUGO

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Saturday night disco manned by your man Gerry Lyons and guests.

DANSE MACABRE

THE ART SCHOOL, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)

The Danse Macabre regulars unite those two happiest of bedfellows – er, that'd be goth rock and classic disco – in their new home of The Art School.

FANTASTIC MAN

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Messy Saturday night uberdisco armed with Erasure and Papa Roach discographies.

GUILTY PLEASURE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, £7 (£5)

Frothy mix of guilty pleasures, old and new, for your Saturday night dancing needs.

NITRIC ACID

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £3

Primitive rave noise, via selections of old school acid, new beat and ket gabber.

Mon 13 Jul BURN

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3/FREE WITH WAGE SLIP)

Long-running trade night with Normski and Mash spinning the disco beats.

Tue 14 Jul KILLER KITSCH

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Eclectic midweeker playing the best in house, techno and electronic – or, in their words ‘casually ignoring shite requests since 2005’.

The Italian trashy disco returns for another night of supremely danceable carnage.

CLASSIC FRIDAYS

CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £6

Two floors of rock, metal and industrial tunes with DJs Barry and Tailz (upstairs) and Gary and FoxisonFire (downstairs).

TRANSIT VS DSR SOUNDSYSTEM (WAYFARER) STEREO, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Transit and Dsr join forces for a night of bass-heavy tuneage.

NUMBERS 12TH BIRTHDAY BOAT PARTY: AFTER-PARTY

SUB CLUB, 19:00–23:00, £22

Official after-bash for Numbers’ boat party down't the Clyde, with guests Jackmaster, Spencer and Kool Clap joining them on land for s'more deck action.

NUMBERS 12TH BIRTHDAY BOAT PARTY (JACKMASTER + SPENCER + KOOL CLAP)

GLASGOW SCIENCE CENTRE, 23:00–03:00, £8

Numbers set sail for their inaugural event on the high seas (well, the Clyde), with DJ sets from Jackmaster, Spencer and label artist Kool Clap. Boat leaves from Glasgow Science Centre (6.30pm), with after-party action at Sub Club (11pm-3am).

Sat 18 Jul NU SKOOL

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

I AM

Nick Peacock spins a Saturdayready selection of vintage disco, soul and funk.

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (FREE VIA IAMCLUB.CO.UK)

CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £6

ABSOLUTION

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa play the usual fine mix of electronica and bass, oft joined by a guest or two.

Alternative blowout of metal, industrial, pop-punk, rock, emo and ska tunes.

Wed 15 Jul

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £TBC

SUB ROSA

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Subbie's regular student night with residents Spittal and Nowicki at the helm.

CHALK HOUSE

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

Eclectic new live monthly clubmeets-gig outing.

Thu 16 Jul HIP HOP THURSDAYS

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Euan Neilson plays the best in classic r'n'b and hip-hop.

JELLY BABY

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £4

Thursday nighter of chart, disco and party tunes. Can't say fairer.

REPEATER

BLOC+, 21:00–01:00, FREE

Post-hardcore DIY gig/club effort, with a selection of live acts dropping by.

FANCY

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £3

New weekly Thursday party playing pop and r'n'b tunes.

HIDE (IVAN KUTZ)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

The Hide residents welcome a guest set from Platform 18 coowner and resident DJ Ivan Kutz.

Fri 17 Jul OLD SKOOL

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

Connoisseur's mix of old-school jazz, funk and soul for your jivin’ pleasure.

PROPAGANDA

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

JAMMING FRIDAYS

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Indie rock'n'roll from the 60s to 00s with resident tune-picker DJ Jopez.

THE BIG CHEESE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, FREE (£6/£4 STUDENT AFTER 11)

Student-friendly Friday night party, playing – as one might expect – cheesy classics of every hue.

MAGIC WAVES

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £3

The Glasgow chapter of the MW Italo fiends story.

KUNST

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Team Kunst return to their La Cheetah lair, with guests being kept under wraps for now.

July 2015

SUBCULTURE

Long-running house night with residents Harri & Domenic manning the decks.

THE ROCK SHOP

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Rock, indie and golden indie classics with resident DJ Heather McCartney.

LOVE MUSIC

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

Saturday night disco manned by your man Gerry Lyons and guests.

STRANGE PARADISE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £3

Party night from floral-shirted Wild Combination man David Barbarossa, specializing in leftfield disco, post-punk and far-out pop.

GUILTY PLEASURE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, £7 (£5)

Frothy mix of guilty pleasures, old and new, for your Saturday night dancing needs.

MONSTER HOSPITAL

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Energetic club outing from DJ duo Beyvnce Nailz and C4lvin Malice.

STEREOTONE (BLEAKER VS WHEELMAN + TENEMENT VS HUNCH)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3

The Thursday night party invites back a selection of previous guests for a live versus special.

CODE (ADRIANA LOPEZ)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6 ADV. (£10 DOOR)

The Code techno specialists welcome DJ, producer and Grey Report label head Adriana Lopez for a guest set.

HYPERFUNK #2

THE ART SCHOOL, 23:00–03:00, £5

Fledgling night playing the best in hyperactive grime, junk, future bass and more.

GIMME SHELTER: 1ST BIRTHDAY (AL LOVER + KILL SURRRF + ELECTRIC GARDENS)

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £5

Varied night moving from the 50s to present day, via selections of rock'n'roll, soul, garage, psych and r'n'b, this edition celebrating turning the grand old age of one.

Mon 20 Jul BURN

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3/FREE WITH WAGE SLIP)

Long-running trade night with Normski and Mash spinning the disco beats.

Tue 21 Jul KILLER KITSCH

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Eclectic midweeker playing the best in house, techno and electronic – or, in their words ‘casually ignoring shite requests since 2005’.

I AM (DENIS SULTA)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa play the usual fine mix of electronica and bass, this edition joined by Denis Sulta.

Wed 22 Jul SUB ROSA

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Subbie's regular student night with residents Spittal and Nowicki at the helm.

Thu 23 Jul HIP HOP THURSDAYS

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)

Euan Neilson plays the best in classic r'n'b and hip-hop.

NOTSOSILENT LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3 (FIRST 50 FREE)

Belch and crew bring the best in underground house for a residents special.

GUILTY PLEASURE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, £7 (£5)

Frothy mix of guilty pleasures, old and new, for your Saturday night dancing needs.

DILF

THE FLYING DUCK, 22:00–03:00, £6

New gay night fresh from a sell out first outing at The Poetry Club.

HUNTLEYS AND PALMERS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £TBC

H+P's Andrew and pals play tunes across the board.

Mon 27 Jul BURN

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3/FREE WITH WAGE SLIP)

Long-running trade night with Normski and Mash spinning the disco beats.

JELLY BABY

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £4

Thursday nighter of chart, disco and party tunes. Can't say fairer.

FANCY

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £3

New weekly Thursday party playing pop and r'n'b tunes.

Fri 24 Jul OLD SKOOL

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

Connoisseur's mix of old-school jazz, funk and soul for your jivin’ pleasure.

PROPAGANDA

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

JAMMING FRIDAYS

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Indie rock'n'roll from the 60s to 00s with resident tune-picker DJ Jopez.

THE BIG CHEESE

SHED, 22:30–02:00, FREE (£6/£4 STUDENT AFTER 11)

Student-friendly Friday night party, playing – as one might expect – cheesy classics of every hue.

HEX

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Residents takeover from the Hex lot, returning to La Cheetah for a full-on house and techno session.

HAUS DIMENSION

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £TBC

Occasional night taking in a bit of disco, house, techno and acid, plus all manner of other wavy beats.

CLASSIC FRIDAYS

CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £6

Two floors of rock, metal and industrial tunes with DJs Barry and Tailz (upstairs) and Gary and FoxisonFire (downstairs).

POLYESTER

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £3

Mixed up fun night of queer performance, music and DJ vibes.

RINSE GLASGOW

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £TBC

The Rinse Glasgow lot disco down for their occasional Subbie residence.

Sat 25 Jul NU SKOOL

BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£6)

Nick Peacock spins a Saturdayready selection of vintage disco, soul and funk.

ABSOLUTION

CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £6

Alternative blowout of metal, industrial, pop-punk, rock, emo and ska tunes.

THE ROCK SHOP

MAGGIE MAY'S, 22:00–03:00, FREE (£5/£3 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Rock, indie and golden indie classics with resident DJ Heather McCartney.

LOVE MUSIC

O2 ABC, 23:00–03:00, £5

Saturday night disco manned by your man Gerry Lyons and guests.

SUBCULTURE (ROMAN FLÜGEL)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £10

Residents Harri & Domenic welcome German electronic chappie Roman Flügel down for a return set.

OLUM

BLOC+, 23:00–03:00, FREE

The legendary Glaswegian club institution lives again, back and in its indie stride.

Edinburgh Clubs

Edinburgh Clubs Tue 30 Jun SOUL JAM HOT

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Fresh mix of funk, soul and boogie from The Players Association team.

I LOVE HIP HOP

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £4

Weekly selection of hip-hop classics and brand-new classics to be.

TRASH

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Alternative anthems cherrypicked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

HECTOR'S HOUSE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4

PLANET EARTH CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Distinctly retro selections from 1960 to 1999, moving from Abba to ZZ Top. PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

FLY CLUB

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £7

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

REVOLVER

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)

Friday fun night manned by a rotating pool of residents, including Animal Hospital, Nightvision, Pulse, Notsosilent, Musika and Body.

IN DEEP: ONE NIGHT STAND

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5 (MEMBERS FREE)

Cheap Picasso and pals now in a bimonthly slot, playing everything good in house and beyond.

HEADSET

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11.30)

Fledgling night mixed up by a selection of Edinburgh DJs, including the chaps behind the Witness, Coalition and Big ‘n’ Bashy nights.

Sat 04 Jul TEASE AGE

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Long-running indie, rock and soul night, traversing the spectrum of classic and modern.

THE GO-GO

STUDIO 24, 23:00–03:00, £2 (£5/£4 STUDENT AFTER 12)

The HH crew serve up their usual fine mix of electronic basslines cooked up with house beats.

Long-running retro night with veteran DJs Tall Paul and Big Gus.

Wed 01 Jul

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

COOKIE

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Resident midweek student rammy of chart, club and electro hits.

WITNESS

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Sneaky's resident bass spectacular of house, garage and bass adventures with Blackwax and Faultlines.

TRIBE

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£4)

Weekly selection of dance bangers played by residents Khalid Count Clockwork and Craig Wilson.

THE GETTUP

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 21:00–03:00, FREE

Midweek party with DJs Thom and Pagowsky playing disco and deep house into the wee hours. In the cafe space.

Thu 02 Jul I AM EDINBURGH

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4 (FREE VIA IAMCLUB.CO.UK)

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa make their regular trip east, playing the usual fine mix of electronica and bass.

JUICE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Pumped Thursday nighter playing a mighty mix of everything from Hud Mo to Fly Mo. HULLABALOO

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3 (£2)

Mash-up of beats, breaks and hip-hop from Trendy Wendy and Steve Austin.

HI-SOCIETY

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Student-friendly chart anthems, bolstered by hip-hop, r'n'b and urban in the back room.

JIVE & DUTY

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£3 AFTER 12)

Danceable – nae, jiveable – tunes with DJ Cheers and Coconut Smoke.

Fri 03 Jul FUCK YEAH

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

Chart, indie and rock anthems spread over two rooms.

BUBBLEGUM

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

SOULSVILLE

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5

Swinging soul spanning a whole century, with DJs Tsatsu and Fryer.

VEGAS!

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 20:30–01:00, £6

50s-themed party fun night, with Frankie Sumatra, Bugsy Seagull, Dino Martini, Sam Jose and Nikki Nevada. Plus Vegas showgirls ago-go, natch.

HECTOR'S HOUSE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £TBC

The HH crew serve up a boutique mix of electronic basslines cooked up with house beats.

THE BORDELLO: SUMMERSLAM (CERTAIN DEATH + HERE'S LIES A WARNING +DISPOSABLE + LUCIFERS CORPUS + OSIRIS) STUDIO 24, 18:30–03:00, £5

The Bordello troops host an extended – eight and a half hours!

– Independence Day special, with a schedule of hardcore thrash and rock'n'roll bands kicking things off.

SPEAKER BITE ME: INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£6 AFTER 12)

Tue 07 Jul SOUL JAM HOT

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Fresh mix of funk, soul and boogie from The Players Association team.

I LOVE HIP HOP

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £4

Weekly selection of hip-hop classics and brand-new classics to be.

TRASH

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Alternative anthems cherrypicked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

HECTOR'S HOUSE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4

The HH crew serve up their usual fine mix of electronic basslines cooked up with house beats.

Wed 08 Jul COOKIE

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

SURE SHOT ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£3 AFTER 12)

Fledgling night spanning 80s-00s hip-hop and r'n'b, manned by The Skinny's own Peter Simpson and one half of Edinburgh's Kitchen Disco, Malcolm Storey.

ANYTHING GOES AT THE HARDCORE ARCADE

STUDIO 24, 23:00–03:00, £5

Eclectic night of techno and hard tek offerings, with a free prize for the first 100 down.

SNEAKY PETE'S 7TH BIRTHDAY (JOY ORBISON + JUICE DJS)

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £10

The Juice residents help host Sneaky Pete's official 7th birthday bash, welcoming gem-of-aguest Joy Orbison for a set of his electronic dubstep-garage-house hybrid of a thing.

Sneaky's resident bass spectacular of house, garage and bass adventures with Blackwax and Faultlines.

TRIBE

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£4)

Weekly selection of dance bangers played by residents Khalid Count Clockwork and Craig Wilson.

THE GETTUP

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 21:00–03:00, FREE

Midweek party with DJs Thom and Pagowsky playing disco and deep house into the wee hours. In the cafe space.

Thu 09 Jul I AM EDINBURGH

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4 (FREE VIA IAMCLUB.CO.UK)

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa make their regular trip east, playing the usual fine mix of electronica and bass.

HULLABALOO

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3 (£2)

Mash-up of beats, breaks and hip-hop from Trendy Wendy and Steve Austin.

HI-SOCIETY

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Student-friendly chart anthems, bolstered by hip-hop, r'n'b and urban in the back room.

IN DEEP (MEDLAR)

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5 (MEMBERS FREE)

The In Deep champs welcome UK-based DJ and producer Medlar, taking control of the decks for the full four hours.

VOLTAGE

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE

New night focused on classic and contemporary house, techno and electronica, with Alex Davidson at the reigns.

OLD TOWN ACOUSTIC MUSIC FESTIVAL: OFFICIAL AFTER-PARTY (TAKING BACK SATURDAY + DYNAMIC DUO) LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £2 (FREE WITH FESTIVAL WRISTBAND)

Official after-bash for the Old Town Acoustic Festival at Bannermans Bar.

Long-running indie, rock and soul night, traversing the spectrum of classic and modern.

BUBBLEGUM

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

BEEP BEEP, YEAH! (BEEP BEEP, YEAH!)

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£6 AFTER 12)

Retro pop stylings from the 50s to the 70s, via a disco tune or ten.

MESSENGER SOUND SYSTEM

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6 (£7 AFTER 12)

MIXED UP

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, r'n'b and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

NU FIRE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

DJ Fusion and Beef move from hip-hop to bass with a plethora of live MCs.

TRIBE

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£4)

Weekly selection of dance bangers played by residents Khalid Count Clockwork and Craig Wilson.

THE GETTUP

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 21:00–03:00, FREE

Midweek party with DJs Thom and Pagowsky playing disco and deep house into the wee hours. In the cafe space.

FUCK YEAH

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

PLANET EARTH

Distinctly retro selections from 1960 to 1999, moving from Abba to ZZ Top. PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

FLY CLUB

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £7

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

REVOLVER (ROTATING RESIDENT DJS)

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)

Friday fun night manned by a rotating pool of residents, including Animal Hospital, Nightvision, Pulse, Notsosilent, Musika and Body.

I AM EDINBURGH

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa make their regular trip east, playing the usual fine mix of electronica and bass.

JUICE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Pumped Thursday nighter playing a mighty mix of everything from Hud Mo to Fly Mo. HI-SOCIETY

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Student-friendly chart anthems, bolstered by hip-hop, r'n'b and urban in the back room.

VOLTAGE

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Conscious roots and dub reggae rockin’ from the usual beefy Messenger soundsystem.

New night focused on classic and contemporary house, techno and electronica, with Alex Davidson at the reigns.

STUDIO 24, 23:00–03:00, £3 (£5 AFTER 12)

Fri 17 Jul

TEESH (TELFORT)

Chart, indie and rock anthems spread over two rooms.

ASYLUM

Best of selection of techno, minimal and bass to get your Saturday night movin’.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5

DJ Cheers – frequent flyer at many a Sneaky's night – finally gets his own show on the road, this edition joined by Edinburgh producer Telfort.

CHEAP PICASSO

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£5)

FUCK YEAH

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

PLANET EARTH

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Distinctly retro selections from 1960 to 1999, moving from Abba to ZZ Top. PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)

All night long set from the Gasoline Dance Machine and One Night Stand promoters.

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

Sun 12 Jul

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

COALITION

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Weekly cross-genre of bass from a cast of Edinburgh's best underground DJs. THE CLUB

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/ handle.

Mon 13 Jul MIXED UP

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, r'n'b and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

Tue 14 Jul

Mon 06 Jul

Sneaky's resident bass spectacular of house, garage and bass adventures with Blackwax and Faultlines.

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4 (FREE VIA IAMCLUB.CO.UK)

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/ handle.

WITNESS

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Sun 05 Jul

THE CLUB

COOKIE

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Resident midweek student rammy of chart, club and electro hits.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Chart, indie and rock anthems spread over two rooms.

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Wed 15 Jul

Thu 16 Jul

TEASE AGE

DJ Fusion and Beef move from hip-hop to bass with a plethora of live MCs.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

The I Love Hip Hop funsters launch their new weekly Tuesday session at the newly-reinstated La Belle Angele.

Sat 11 Jul

WITNESS

Fri 10 Jul

Weekly cross-genre of bass from a cast of Edinburgh's best underground DJs.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£3 AFTER 12)

Resident midweek student rammy of chart, club and electro hits.

The Evol DJs worship at the alter of all kinds of indie-pop, this edition with an Independence Day special.

COALITION

I LOVE HIP HOP: SUMMER SERIES LAUNCH NIGHT

NU FIRE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

SOUL JAM HOT

FLY CLUB

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £7

REVOLVER

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)

Friday fun night manned by a rotating pool of residents, including Animal Hospital, Nightvision, Pulse, Notsosilent, Musika and Body.

THE SOLAR BOOGALOO

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£3 AFTER 12)

DJ Yves leads a disco-fuelled freestyle funk boogie freakout, of course!

IN DEEP: FIRECRACKER RECORDS (HOUSE OF TRAPS + BRIAN NOT BRIAN) SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5 (MEMBERS FREE)

The In Deep troops make merry for a Firecracker Records showcase special, with label boss House Of Traps going head-to-head with Brian Not Brian.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Sat 18 Jul

TRASH

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Fresh mix of funk, soul and boogie from The Players Association team.

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

TEASE AGE

Alternative anthems cherrypicked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

Long-running indie, rock and soul night, traversing the spectrum of classic and modern.

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4

WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00, £3 (£5 AFTER 12)

HECTOR'S HOUSE

The HH crew serve up their usual fine mix of electronic basslines cooked up with house beats.

THE EGG

Art School institution with DJs Chris and Jake playing the finest in indie, garage, soul and punk – now taking up a monthly Saturday slot, in what is their 20-somethingth year.

Listings

65

BUBBLEGUM THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

THE GREEN DOOR

STUDIO 24, 22:30–03:00, £2 (£5/£4 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Surf, blues and rockabilly from the 50s and early 60s, plus free cake.

Job done.

POP ROCKS

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£6 AFTER 12)

Pop and rock gems, taking in Motown, 80s classics and plenty danceable fare (well, the Beep Beep, Yeah! crew are on decks after all).

DECADE

STUDIO 24, 22:30–03:00, £2 (£5/£4 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Fresh playlists spanning metal, pop-punk and alternative soundscapes.

WASABI DISCO

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5 (MEMBERS FREE)

Heady bout of cosmic house, punk upside-down disco and, er, Fleetwood Mac with yer man Kris ‘Wasabi’ Walker.

AMPED

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £8 (£6)

Fledgling gig-meets-club fun night bringing together a fresh line-up of live acts and DJs each month.

JACKHAMMER: 30 YEARS OF TECHNO (DJ BONE + DJ SKULL + STEPHEN BROWN) THE LIQUID ROOM, 17:00–05:00, £10 EARLYBIRD

Sprawling twelve-hour party night from the techno-ready Jackhammer crew, taking in Chicago Vs Detroit DJ sets featuring DJ Bone, DJ Skull and Stephen Brown, plus free BBQ until midnight.

Sun 19 Jul COALITION

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Weekly cross-genre of bass from a cast of Edinburgh's best underground DJs. THE CLUB

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/ handle.

Mon 20 Jul MIXED UP

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, r'n'b and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

NU FIRE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

DJ Fusion and Beef move from hip-hop to bass with a plethora of live MCs.

Tue 21 Jul SOUL JAM HOT

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Fresh mix of funk, soul and boogie from The Players Association team.

TRASH

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Alternative anthems cherrypicked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

HECTOR'S HOUSE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4

Thu 23 Jul I AM EDINBURGH

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £4 (FREE VIA IAMCLUB.CO.UK)

Resident young guns Beta & Kappa make their regular trip east, playing the usual fine mix of electronica and bass.

JUICE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Pumped Thursday nighter playing a mighty mix of everything from Hud Mo to Fly Mo. HI-SOCIETY

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Student-friendly chart anthems, bolstered by hip-hop, r'n'b and urban in the back room.

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE

New night focused on classic and contemporary house, techno and electronica, with Alex Davidson at the reigns.

Fri 24 Jul FUCK YEAH

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

Chart, indie and rock anthems spread over two rooms.

PLANET EARTH

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Student-orientated night playing the best in new and classic indie.

STEPBACK

WEE RED BAR, 22:30–03:00, £5

Mixed bag of electronic bass from DJs Wolfjazz and Keyte, moving from Baltimore to dubstep.

FLY CLUB

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00, £7

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

REVOLVER

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)

Friday fun night manned by a rotating pool of residents, including Animal Hospital, Nightvision, Pulse, Notsosilent, Musika and Body.

Sat 25 Jul TEASE AGE

CITRUS CLUB, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 11)

Long-running indie, rock and soul night, traversing the spectrum of classic and modern.

BUBBLEGUM

THE HIVE, 21:00–03:00, FREE (£4 AFTER 10)

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

RIDE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5

The Ride girls play hip-hop and dance, all night long – now in their new party-ready Saturday night slot.

BETAMAX

STUDIO 24, 23:00–03:00, £2 (£5/£4 STUDENT AFTER 12)

Monthly offering of new wave, disco, post-punk and a bit o’ synthtastic 80s with your hosts Chris and Big Gus. KEEP IT STEEL

STUDIO 24, 23:00–03:00, £5

THE POP BINGO DISCO

The Ride girls play hip-hop and dance, all night long – now in their new party-ready Saturday night slot.

TRIBE

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£4)

Weekly selection of dance bangers played by residents Khalid Count Clockwork and Craig Wilson.

THE GETTUP

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 21:00–03:00, FREE

Midweek party with DJs Thom and Pagowsky playing disco and deep house into the wee hours. In the cafe space.

66

Listings

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

NU FIRE

DJ Fusion and Beef move from hip-hop to bass with a plethora of live MCs.

ASYLUM

Best of selection of rock, metal and alternative tunes to get your Saturday night movin’.

Thu 23 Jul

Dundee Clubs Thu 02 Jul

ROOMS THURSDAYS

READING ROOMS, 22:30–02:30, £4 (£5 AFTER 11.30)

Thursday nighter (as the name would suggest), with Dunc4an, Typewriter and guests playing anything and everything ‘good’.

ROOMS THURSDAYS

Fri 24 Jul

READING ROOMS, 22:30–02:30, £4 (£5 AFTER 11.30)

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

WARPED

Thursday nighter (as the name would suggest), with Dunc4an, Typewriter and guests playing anything and everything ‘good’.

Ska, screamo and pop-punk offerings now in a weekly Friday slot, moving from Alkaline Trio to Zebrahead as it goes.

Fri 03 Jul

Sat 25 Jul BOOK CLUB

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, £TBC

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, £TBC

ROOMS RESIDENTS

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

Wed 22 Jul

Sneaky's resident bass spectacular of house, garage and bass adventures with Blackwax and Faultlines.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

PROPAGANDA

The I Love Hip Hop funsters continue their new weekly Tuesday session at the newly-reinstated La Belle Angele.

WITNESS

Rockabilly, doo-wop, soul and all things golden age and danceable with the Locarno regulars.

THE LIQUID ROOM, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)

Clubbing-meets-bingo (finally, right?), with danceable beats and live bingo.

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, £TBC

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, r'n'b and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

The Good Stuff DJs spin all genres of disco house and techno, alongside anything else they damn well fancy.

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£8 AFTER 12)

Resident midweek student rammy of chart, club and electro hits.

LOCARNO

A selection of Reading Room residents hold the fort for the evening, playing good vibe tunes all night long.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, FREE (£3 AFTER 12)

COOKIE

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Sat 18 Jul

Distinctly retro selections from 1960 to 1999, moving from Abba to ZZ Top.

The Keep It Steel DJs play the best in heavy metal and hard rock.

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

MIXED UP

VOLTAGE

The HH crew serve up their usual fine mix of electronic basslines cooked up with house beats.

I LOVE HIP HOP SUMMER SERIES

Mon 27 Jul

RIDE

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, £5

Sun 26 Jul COALITION

SNEAKY PETE'S, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Weekly cross-genre of bass from a cast of Edinburgh's best underground DJs. THE CLUB

THE HIVE, 22:00–03:00, FREE

Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/ handle.

SUCH A DRAG

ELECTRIC CIRCUS, 23:00–03:00, FREE

New monthly drag club night with emphasis on all things risqué, with live burlesque and the like.

WARPED

Ska, screamo and pop-punk offerings now in a weekly Friday slot, moving from Alkaline Trio to Zebrahead as it goes.

ASYLUM

Best of selection of rock, metal and alternative tunes to get your Saturday night movin’.

COOKIN’ SESSIONS

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, £TBC

Best of selection of rock, metal and alternative tunes to get your Saturday night movin’.

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£8 AFTER 11.30)

Launch of a new Reading Rooms’ resident night, playing deep house and techno.

WARPED

RED RAW

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £2

CHRIS HENRY'S COMEDY CRECHE

Chris Henry hosts a line-up of new and existing comedy talent, all roadtesting new material.

Wed 01 Jul NEW MATERIAL NIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–22:00, £3

Resident host Julia Sutherland introduces a variety of stand-up comedians from the Scottish circuit delivering, yes, all new material.

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

FRINGE PREVIEW: GARY LITTLE + SUSIE MCCABE

Sat 11 Jul

Work-in-progress snippets from a duo of Fringe comedy favourites – Gary Little and Susie McCabe – before they head to Edinburgh Fringe come August.

Ska, screamo and pop-punk offerings now in a weekly Friday slot, moving from Alkaline Trio to Zebrahead as it goes.

JUTE CITY JAM

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, £TBC

Funk, soul, disco and Latin night, taking in vinyl selections from residents Max Galloway and Calvin Crichton.

ASYLUM

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

Best of selection of rock, metal and alternative tunes to get your Saturday night movin’.

Thu 16 Jul ROOMS THURSDAYS

READING ROOMS, 22:30–02:30, £4 (£5 AFTER 11.30)

Thursday nighter (as the name would suggest), with Dunc4an, Typewriter and guests playing anything and everything ‘good’.

Fri 17 Jul

HEADWAY: RESIDENTS’ PARTY

READING ROOMS, 22:30–03:00, FREE (£5 AFTER 12)

Summer-styled residents special with Andy Barton, Graeme Binnie, Neil Clark and Dyte hosting their usual house and techno carry on.

WARPED

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

Ska, screamo and pop-punk offerings now in a weekly Friday slot, moving from Alkaline Trio to Zebrahead as it goes.

Sat 04 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (JOHN LYNN + MARTIN BEARNE + KEIRON NICHOLSON + MC SUSAN MORRISON)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 21:00–23:00, £15

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £8 (£6)

Thu 02 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (JOHN LYNN + MARTIN BEARNE + KEIRON NICHOLSON + MC SUSAN MORRISON)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

YESPBAR VIRGINS

YESBAR, 21:00–22:30, £3

Graham Barrie introduces a selection of fledgling comedy talent handpicked fae Scotland.

LUISA OMIELAN: AM I RIGHT LADIES?

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00, £12.50

The Edinburgh Fringe sensation follows up her debut tour with her new “party with jokes” show, Am I Right Ladies?!

Fri 03 Jul

THE FRIDAY SHOW (IAN MOORE + JOHN LYNN + MARTIN BEARNE + KEIRON NICHOLSON + MC SUSAN MORRISON)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £12 (£10 STUDENTS/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

COMEDIAN RAP BATTLES THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£4)

Ro Cambell and The Wee Man's comedian rap battle-off, where a select batch of comics compete to see who's got the most swagger when it comes to hippity-hop wit.

Thu 09 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (ADDY VAN DER BORGH + PHIL WANG + MC MARTIN MOR)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS

CITIZENS THEATRE, 20:30–22:30, £15 (£12.50)

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

That cantankerous bastard Mr Boyle presents a series of work in progress snippets, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album.

TRON THEATRE, 19:00–20:00, £5 (£4)

YESBAR, 21:00–22:30, £3

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

LAUGHTER EIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

IMPROV GAMES

YESPBAR VIRGINS

A selection of Scottish improv comedy talent perform short-form games for laughter and points.

Graham Barrie introduces a selection of fledgling comedy talent handpicked fae Scotland.

Sun 05 Jul

Fri 10 Jul

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

GLASGOW KIDS COMEDY CLUB

THE STAND GLASGOW, 14:30–15:30, £4

DRAM!, 20:30–23:00, FREE

WAVES

Long-running comedy club the Gilded Balloon hits up Drygate for a new residency, combing the joys of a craft brewery setting with a rotating schedule of live comedy talent.

Comedy session suitable for little ears (i.e. no sweary words), for children aged 8-12 years-old.

ROOMS THURSDAYS

Fri 10 Jul

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 20:00–22:00, £12.50 (£11.50)

Tue 30 Jun

READING ROOMS, 22:30–02:30, £4 (£5 AFTER 11.30)

Thursday nighter (as the name would suggest), with Dunc4an, Typewriter and guests playing anything and everything ‘good’.

GILDED BALLOON COMEDY @ DRYGATE (SUSIE MCCABE + BEC HILL + MC RAYMOND MEARNS)

Glasgow Comedy

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

Thu 09 Jul

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

Chilled Sunday comedy showcase manned by resident Irish funnyman Michael Redmond and his guests.

ASYLUM

KAGE, 23:00–03:00, £4

LAUGHTER EIGHT YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

MICHAEL REDMOND'S SUNDAY SERVICE

Sat 04 Jul Special Reading Rooms sessions night catering for all your dance music needs, with bespoke visuals to boot.

Comedy

YESPBAR VIRGINS: COMEDY SUNDAY SCHOOL

THE FRIDAY SHOW (ADDY VAN DER BORGH + PHIL WANG + ELAINE MALCOLMSON + MARTIN MOR)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £12 (£10 STUDENTS/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS

CITIZENS THEATRE, 20:30–22:30, £15 (£12.50)

YESPBAR VIRGINS: COMEDY SUNDAY SCHOOL YESBAR, 19:30–21:30, £3

A selection of five fledgling comedians do their best to win over the audience and graduate Vespbar's ‘Comedy Sunday School’.

Mon 13 Jul

Mon 20 Jul

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £10

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £15 (£12)

FRINGE PREVIEW: GLENN WOOL – CREATOR, I AM BUT A PAWN

The Canadian-born, UK-living comic performs a sneak preview of his Edinburgh Fringe 2015 show.

EDINBURGH FRINGE PREVIEWS ELAINE MALCOLMSON + RICHARD BROWN

YESBAR, 20:00–22:00, £4

Comedians Elaine Malcolmson and Richard Brown preview their new shows ahead of this year's Edinburgh Fringe.

Tue 14 Jul RED RAW

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £2

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

Wed 15 Jul NEW MATERIAL NIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–22:00, £3

Resident host Julia Sutherland introduces a variety of stand-up comedians from the Scottish circuit delivering, yes, all new material.

FRINGE PREVIEW: IMAAN HADITCHI + SAMEENA ZEHRA + LOST VOICE GUY THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £8 (£6)

Work-in-progress snippets from a trio of Fringe comedy favourites – Imaan Haditchi, Sameena Zehra and Lost Voice Guy – before they head to Edinburgh Fringe come August.

Thu 16 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (JANEY GODLEY + KEIR MCALLISTER + DONAL VAUGHAN + RUTH COCKBURN + MC VLADIMIR MCTAVISH) THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

A selection of five fledgling comedians do their best to win over the audience and graduate Vespbar's ‘Comedy Sunday School’.

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 20:30–22:30, FREE

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

Fri 17 Jul

GARLICSEAMANCRUBS (REMY RENOIR + SALTY + TOBY WHEATCRUST )

A trio of Glasgow independent and outsider artists from the realms of poetry, performance art and alternative comedy unite forces for one-night only.

LAUGHTER EIGHT

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

Sat 11 Jul

Mon 06 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (ADDY VAN DER BORGH + PHIL WANG + MARTIN MOR)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £6

THE STAND GLASGOW, 21:00–23:00, £15

IMPROV WARS

More improvised comedy games and sketches, with an unpredictable anything-goes attitude – as indeed it should be.

Tue 07 Jul RED RAW

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £2

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS

CITIZENS THEATRE, 20:30–22:30, £15 (£12.50)

That cantankerous bastard Mr Boyle presents a series of work in progress snippets, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album.

Wed 08 Jul

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS

CITIZENS THEATRE, 20:30–22:30, £15 (£12.50)

That cantankerous bastard Mr Boyle presents a series of work in progress snippets, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album.

NEW MATERIAL NIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–22:00, £3

Resident host Julia Sutherland introduces a variety of stand-up comedians from the Scottish circuit delivering, yes, all new material.

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS

CITIZENS THEATRE, 20:30–22:30, £15 (£12.50)

That cantankerous bastard Mr Boyle presents a series of work in progress snippets, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album.

LAUGHTER EIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

THE SECOND ANNUAL CHAMPIPUNSHIP

O2 ABC, 19:00–22:00, £10

The return of the mighty pun contest where a selection of eight handpicked contestants battle it out in the quick-thinking word play stakes in an attempt to be crowned the ‘Pundisputed Champion’.

Sun 12 Jul

MICHAEL REDMOND'S SUNDAY SERVICE (PHIL WANG)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

Chilled Sunday comedy showcase manned by resident Irish funnyman Michael Redmond and his guests.

YESBAR, 19:30–21:30, £3

A selection of five fledgling comedians do their best to win over the audience and graduate Vespbar's ‘Comedy Sunday School’.

That cantankerous bastard Mr Boyle presents a series of work in progress snippets, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album.

YESBAR, 19:30–21:30, £3

YESPBAR VIRGINS: COMEDY SUNDAY SCHOOL

YESPBAR VIRGINS

YESBAR, 21:00–22:30, £3

Graham Barrie introduces a selection of fledgling comedy talent handpicked fae Scotland.

THE FRIDAY SHOW (JANEY GODLEY + KEIR MCALLISTER + DONAL VAUGHAN + RUTH COCKBURN + MC VLADIMIR MCTAVISH) THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £12 (£10 STUDENTS/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

LAUGHTER EIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

GILDED BALLOON COMEDY @ DRYGATE (GARY DELANEY + CHRIS FORBES + JIM SMITH + MC SCOTT AGNEW)

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 20:00–22:00, £12.50 (£11.50)

Long-running comedy club the Gilded Balloon hits up Drygate for a new residency, combing the joys of a craft brewery setting with a rotating schedule of live comedy talent.

Sat 18 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (JANEY GODLEY + KEIR MCALLISTER + DONAL VAUGHAN + MC VLADIMIR MCTAVISH)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 21:00–23:00, £15

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS

That cantankerous bastard Mr Boyle presents a series of work in progress snippets, limbering up for the September airing of his new stand-up show, Hurt Like You've Never Been Loved, a response to Compton hip-hopster Kendrick Lamar's last album.

Tue 21 Jul RED RAW

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £2

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

Wed 22 Jul NEW MATERIAL NIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–22:00, £3

Resident host Julia Sutherland introduces a variety of stand-up comedians from the Scottish circuit delivering, yes, all new material.

IMPACT ARTS BENEFIT

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £5

Comedy fundraiser in aid of Impact Arts.

Thu 23 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (OWEN O'NEILL + STEVEN DICK + DAVID TSONOS + MARC JENNINGS + MC JOJO SUTHERLAND)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

YESPBAR VIRGINS

YESBAR, 21:00–22:30, £3

Graham Barrie introduces a selection of fledgling comedy talent handpicked fae Scotland.

Fri 24 Jul

THE FRIDAY SHOW (OWEN O'NEILL + STEVEN DICK + DAVID TSONOS + MARC JENNINGS + MC JOJO SUTHERLAND) THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £12 (£10 STUDENTS/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

LAUGHTER EIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

Sat 25 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (OWEN O'NEILL + STEVEN DICK + DAVID TSONOS + MC JOJO SUTHERLAND)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 21:00–23:00, £15

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

LAUGHTER EIGHT

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

Sun 26 Jul

MICHAEL REDMOND'S SUNDAY SERVICE (DAVID TSONOS + JULIA SUTHERLAND)

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

Chilled Sunday comedy showcase manned by resident Irish funnyman Michael Redmond and his guests.

YESPBAR VIRGINS: COMEDY SUNDAY SCHOOL

YESBAR, 19:30–21:30, £3

YESBAR, 20:00–21:30, £8

A selection of five fledgling comedians do their best to win over the audience and graduate Vespbar's ‘Comedy Sunday School’.

Sun 19 Jul

SO... THAT'S HOW WE VOTED? (VLADIMIR MCTAVISH + MARK NELSON + KEIR MCALLISTER)

LAUGHTER EIGHT

Regular comedy slot kicking off at, aye, 8pm – manned by a selection of hot talent from the local circuit.

MICHAEL REDMOND'S SUNDAY SERVICE

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

Chilled Sunday comedy showcase manned by resident Irish funnyman Michael Redmond and his guests.

Mon 27 Jul

THE STAND GLASGOW, 20:30–22:30, £7 (£5)

Messrs McTavish, Nelson and McAllister return with a new show in their pre/post-election series – offering leftfield stand-up, chat and comment on the political state of the world following the election outcome.

THE SKINNY

12 ANGRY CHUNKS

STU & GARRY'S FREE IMPROV SHOW

THE GRIFFIN, 20:30–22:30, FREE

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 13:30–15:30, FREE

Live comedy mayhem comprised of variety acts, sketches, monologues, character bits, animations, contemporary dance, readings and anything else they damn well fancy.

Edinburgh Comedy

Long-running improvised comedy show with resident duo Stu & Garry weaving comedy magic from offthe-cuff audience suggestions.

JIMMY CARR: FUNNY BUSINESS

THE EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE, 20:00–22:00, £25

The hardworking comic tours his new solo show, packed with oneliners, stories and incisive musings on the human condition.

Mon 06 Jul RED RAW

Wed 01 Jul

ROB DELANEY: MEAT TOUR

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £15

The Catastrophe star goes out on tour around the UK, already dubbed the ‘Funniest Person on Twitter’ by Comedy Central.

Thu 02 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (JOHN GORDILLO + MALCOLM HEAD + STEPHEN BUCHANAN + BRUCE FUMMEY + MC JOJO SUTHERLAND)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

MONKEY BARREL: FRINGE WARM-UP

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £2

A selection of Edinburgh comedians offer a sneak preview of their Fringe shows.

Fri 03 Jul

THE FRIDAY SHOW (JOHN GORDILLO + MALCOLM HEAD + STEPHEN BUCHANAN + BRUCE FUMMEY + MC JOJO SUTHERLAND) THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £12 (£10 STUDENT/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

COMEDYDOO

THE WHITE HORSE, 20:00–22:00, £9

Fresh line-up of fledgling comedic talent, topped off with a national headline act and a jovial compere.

Sat 04 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (JOHN GORDILLO + MALCOLM HEAD + STEPHEN BUCHANAN + BRUCE FUMMEY + MC JOJO SUTHERLAND)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £15

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £2

Long-running comedy club the Gilded Balloon hits up the Festival Theatre for a new residency, combing the joys of a craft brewery setting with a rotating schedule of live comedy talent.

Sun 05 Jul

THE SUNDAY NIGHT LAUGH-IN (JOHN GORDILLO) THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

Chilled comedy showcase to cure your Sunday evening back-towork blues.

July 2015

Tue 14 Jul ELECTRIC TALES

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £5 (£4)

More in the way of stand-up comedy crossed with live storytelling, with the tease of a promise of robot badges for all (as in, we're there).

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £8 (£6)

RICHARD MELVIN PRESENTS... MORE RADIO RECORDINGS!

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:00–21:00, FREE (BUT TICKETED)

Funnyman Richard Melvin introduces an all-star cast of comedy stalwarts currently recording radio shows. And all for gratis!

Wed 08 Jul

THE BROKEN WINDOWS POLICY

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £5 (£4)

More fast-paced and anarchic skits and character comedy from The Stand's resident sketch comedy troupe and their special guests.

Thu 09 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (ROGER MONKHOUSE + NICK DIXON + JULIA SUTHERLAND + MC BRUCE DEVLIN)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

MONKEY BARREL: FRINGE WARM-UP

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £2

A selection of Edinburgh comedians offer a sneak preview of their Fringe shows.

Fri 10 Jul

THE FRIDAY SHOW (ROGER MONKHOUSE + NICK DIXON + JULIA SUTHERLAND + OWEN MCGUIRE+ MC BRUCE DEVLIN)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £12 (£10 STUDENT/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

Sat 11 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (ROGER MONKHOUSE + NICK DIXON + JULIA SUTHERLAND + MC BRUCE DEVLIN)

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00, £15

FESTIVAL THEATRE, 20:00–22:00, £12.50 (£10.50)

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

Tue 07 Jul

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

GILDED BALLOON COMEDY @ FESTIVAL THEATRE (KEITH FARNAN + SUSIE MCCABE + BEC HILL + MC RAYMOND MEARNS)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £2

Wed 15 Jul

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

The Father Ted-inspired cult Irish comedy fest alights in Edinburgh for the night.

RED RAW

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

TEDFEST

Mon 13 Jul

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £15

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

Sun 12 Jul

THE SUNDAY NIGHT LAUGH-IN (TONY LAW ) THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

VOLUNTARY SERVICES OVERSEAS BENEFIT

Mon 20 Jul RED RAW

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £2

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

Tue 21 Jul BRIGHT CLUB

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £5

A selection of comedic academics do a stint of stand-up for your entertainment and enlightenment.

Laughs and learning in one neat package = tick.

Sun 26 Jul

THE SUNDAY NIGHT LAUGH-IN (HAILEY BOYLE + TONY LAW) THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

STU & GARRY'S FREE IMPROV SHOW

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 13:30–15:30, FREE

Long-running improvised comedy show with resident duo Stu & Garry weaving comedy magic from offthe-cuff audience suggestions.

RED RAW

THE CAROUSEL

SO... THAT'S HOW WE VOTED? (VLADIMIR MCTAVISH + MARK NELSON + KEIR MCALLISTER)

Fri 03 Jul

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £7 (£5)

The chat show comic returns to his stand-up roots with a new show about life an’ that.

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

MONKEY BARREL: FRINGE WARM-UP

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £2

A selection of Edinburgh comedians offer a sneak preview of their Fringe shows.

IS THIS POETRY? (ROSS MCCLEARY + ANDREW BLAIR)

CANON'S GAIT, 20:00–22:00, FREE

Humourous spoken word show exploring poetry through the medium of Edinburgh.

Fri 17 Jul

THE FRIDAY SHOW (MARKUS BIRDMAN + CHRIS FORBES + CARLY SMALLMAN + EDDIE CASSIDY + MC RAYMOND MEARNS)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £12 (£10 STUDENT/£6 MEMBERS)

Messrs McTavish, Nelson and McAllister return with a new show in their pre/post-election series – offering leftfield stand-up, chat and comment on the political state of the world following the election outcome.

Thu 23 Jul

THE THURSDAY SHOW (HAILEY BOYLE + SIMON DONALD + MC BRUCE DEVLIN)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £10 (£7 STUDENTS/£5 MEMBERS)

Weekend-welcoming selection of handpicked headline acts and newcomers over a two-hour showcase.

A selection of Edinburgh comedians offer a sneak preview of their Fringe shows.

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

Fri 24 Jul

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

MICHAEL MCINTYRE: WARM UP

THE EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE, 20:00–22:00, £31

The English comic (of the Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow) takes to the road, trying our new material prior to his arena tour later in the year.

Sat 18 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (MARKUS BIRDMAN + CHRIS FORBES + CARLY SMALLMAN + EDDIE CASSIDY + MC RAYMOND MEARNS)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £15

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

MICHAEL MCINTYRE: WARM UP

THE EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE, 20:00–22:00, £31

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 13:30–15:30, FREE

Sun 19 Jul

THE SUNDAY NIGHT LAUGH-IN (CARLY SMALLMAN) THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £6 (£5 STUDENTS/£1 MEMBERS)

Chilled comedy showcase to cure your Sunday evening back-towork blues.

25 JUL, 7:30PM – 9:30PM, £14 (£11)

ALAN CARR: YAP, YAP, YAP!

CAIRD HALL, 20:00–22:00, £33

Sat 04 Jul

ALAN CARR: YAP, YAP, YAP!

CAIRD HALL, 20:00–22:00, £33

The chat show comic returns to his stand-up roots with a new show about life an’ that.

Fri 10 Jul

JUST LAUGH (GAV WEBSTER + LARRY DEAN + HARRY GARRISON + MC BRUCE FUMMEY)

DUNDEE REP, 20:00–22:00, £12

Monthly comedy showcase bringing a selection of UK stand-ups to Dundee.

MONKEY BARREL: FRINGE WARM-UP

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £2

THE FRIDAY SHOW (HAILEY BOYLE + SIMON DONALD + LIAM WITHNAIL + MIKEY ADAMS + MC BRUCE DEVLIN)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £12 (£10 STUDENT/£6 MEMBERS)

Prime stand-up from the Scottish and international circuit, hosted by a rotating selection of Stand stalwarts.

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

Sat 25 Jul

THE SATURDAY SHOW (HAILEY BOYLE + SIMON DONALD + LIAM WITHNAIL + MIKEY ADAMS + MC BRUCE DEVLIN)

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 21:00–23:00, £15

Saturday bill of stand-up headliners and resident comperes to jolly along your weekend.

THE BEEHIVE COMEDY CLUB

BEEHIVE INN, 20:30–22:30, £10

Regular weekend comedy showcase featuring a selection of up-and-coming acts from Scotland and beyond, topped with a guest headliner. See Facebook on the day for line-ups.

THE FLYING PIGS: THE SEAGULL HAS LANDED

KING'S THEATRE EDINBURGH, 19:30–22:00, £19.50

Aberdeen-based comedy troupe The Flying Pigs bring their sly brand of humour to Edinburgh for the first time.

Coming to Dundee Rep for the first time, London's award-winning Shakespeare's Globe company present their retelling of the great man's classic tale of star-crossed lovers. Matinee performances also available.

The first in Jennifer Tremblay's trilogy, telling the tale of an isolated woman in rural Quebec establishing order through obsessive list making. Also showing second in the series The Carousel (25 Jul) and previewing the third, The Deliverance (26 Jul).

THE STAND EDINBURGH, 20:30–22:30, £2

Dundee Comedy

Three comedic contestants attempt to tear poetry a new one in a live panel show variation on Cards Against Humanity.

ROMEO AND JULIET

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 14 AND 17 JUL, 7:30PM – 9:30PM, £19 (£15)

THE LIST

Open-mic style beginners showcase, plus some old hands dropping by to roadtest new material.

THE BANSHEE LABYRINTH, 20:00–22:00, FREE

THE THURSDAY SHOW (MARKUS BIRDMAN + CHRIS FORBES + CARLY SMALLMAN + MC RAYMOND MEARNS)

Dundee Rep

24 JUL, 7:30PM – 9:30PM, £14 (£11)

Mon 27 Jul

Thu 16 Jul

POETS AGAINST HUMANITY

Theatre

Chilled comedy showcase to cure your Sunday evening back-towork blues.

Wed 22 Jul

The English comic (of the Michael McIntyre Comedy Roadshow) takes to the road, trying our new material prior to his arena tour later in the year.

Long-running improvised comedy show with resident duo Stu & Garry weaving comedy magic from offthe-cuff audience suggestions.

Long-running improvised comedy show with resident duo Stu & Garry weaving comedy magic from offthe-cuff audience suggestions.

Comedy fundraiser in aid of Voluntary Services Overseas.

Chilled comedy showcase to cure your Sunday evening back-towork blues.

STU & GARRY'S FREE IMPROV SHOW

STU & GARRY'S FREE IMPROV SHOW THE STAND EDINBURGH, 13:30–15:30, FREE

Glasgow

The King's Theatre 8 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £25.50

Edinburgh Theatre

THE CHICAGO BLUES BROTHERS

Scottish Storytelling Centre

THE DREAMBOYS

Glamour show courtesy of loads of oiled-up blokes possessing the most chiselled abs since we last looked round The Skinny office.

Ahem.

10 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £20.50

All your favourite Blues Brothers classics and some, as the touring show continues its reign.

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS

23–30 JUN, NOT SUNDAYS, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £15.50

Two common swindlers attempt to con a millionaire heiress on the French Riviera; based on the classic comedy starring Sir Michael Caine and Steve Martin. Matinees performances also available (Wed & Sat, 2.30pm).

The Pavilion Theatre

THE REAL HOOSEWIVES FAE GLESGA

23 JUL – 1 AUG, NOT 26 JUL, 27 JUL, 28 JUL, 29 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £15

CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

Stuart Thomas's singalong caper of Glasgow housewives gone nuts. Matinee performances also available.

15 JUL, 8:00PM – 9:15PM, £7.50

BAT OUT OF HELL

THE HAPPY DECEPTION

Opera in one act by Gioachino Rossini, marking the opening night of its tour around the UK and Italy.

The SSE Hydro 5 JUL, 7:00PM – 10:00PM, £15

Candleriggs Square

Modern dance troupe Carrie's Dance Company – well kent for taking in myriad different forms of dance – take to the SECC to perform their new show.

25 AND 26 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Theatre Royal

FRAGILE

Unique fusion of performers and JCB diggers in which dancers and machinery interact in unexpectedly fragile and emotive ways. Part of Surge Festival.

Nice ‘n’ Sleazy

A STRANGER WALKS INTO A BAR

18 JUL, 26 JUL, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

Touring play based on the simple premise of a man walking into a bar to drink alone, with the play's content changing with each location it visits.

Oran Mor

DORIS AND DOLLY: A DD AND WEE BIT MOR

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 10 JUL AND 26 JUL, 7:00PM – 10:00PM, £20

Musical theatre piece from the producers of A Bottle of Wine and Patsy Cline, this time turning their attention to Doris Day and Dolly Parton.

The second in Jennifer Tremblay's inspired trilogy, in which our protagonist calls upon the spirit of her dead grandmother. Also showing first in the series The List (24 Jul) and previewing the third, The Deliverance (26 Jul).

INALA

16–18 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £15

South African choral troupe Ladysmith Black Mambazo join forces with choreographer Mark Baldwin for a unique touring collaboration, featuring current and former dancers from The Royal Ballet and Rambert.

Tramway

THE DRIVER'S SEAT

A STRANGER WALKS INTO A BAR

18 JUL, 26 JUL, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

Touring play based on the simple premise of a man walking into a bar to drink alone, with the play's content changing with each location it visits.

Emerging Scottish dance artist Charlotte Jarvis performs her unique form of poetic dance theatre, exploring the seasons and emotional landscapes of human life. Followed by a post-show Q&A.

The Edinburgh Playhouse INALA

14 & 15 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £20

South African choral troupe Ladysmith Black Mambazo join forces with choreographer Mark Baldwin for a unique touring collaboration, featuring current and former dancers from The Royal Ballet and Rambert.

LOVE ME TENDER

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 5 JUN AND 25 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £12

Feel-good musical featuring Elvis Presley's greatest hits, from the producers of Hairspray, Midnight Tango, West Side Story and The Rocky Horror Show. Matinees performances also available.

Church Hill Theatre

INTERNATIONAL FOLK DANCING GALA PERFORMANCE

24 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, £11 (£10)

Evening full of dance from around Europe, all accompanied by live music played on traditional instruments and in traditional costumes.

Dundee Theatre

Tron Theatre

Duke's Corner

Belfast's Lyric's former playwright-in-residence David Ireland brings his new play to Glasgow, about two people re-imagining their future and getting over the past. Oh, and some super-hero fantasy role-play.

THE DELIVERANCE

26 JUL, 7:30PM – 9:30PM, £14 (£11)

Preview of the third in Quebecious writer Jennifer Tremblay's trilogy, in which our protagonist struggles to fulfil her dying mother's wish.

Also showing the first two in the trilogy, The List (24 Jul) and The Carousel (25 Jul).

THIS IS MY RITE

Adapted for the stage for the first time, Laurie Sansom presents one of renowned novelist Muriel Spark's most gripping and disturbing books. Matinee performances also available.

CAN'T FORGET ABOUT YOU

New comedy about a diabolical 100-year-old granny who's literally eating her family out of house and home. Matinee performances also available (Thu & Sat, 2.30pm).

25 JUL, 7:00PM – 8:00PM, £8

2–4 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, £18 (£15)

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 1 JUL AND 25 JUL, 7:45PM – 10:00PM, FROM £8

YER GRANNY

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 26 MAY AND 4 JUL, 7:30PM – 10:00PM, FROM £19 (£16)

SEX AND GOD

4–16 JUL, 6:30PM – 8:30PM, FREE (BUT TICKETED)

Tale of four women – a kitchen maid, a wayward daughter, a victim of domestic abuse and a disillusioned student – speaking from different moments in history.

Glasgow Art CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

LUCY CLOUT + MARIANNA SIMNETT: WHAT WILL THEY SEE OF ME?

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 30 MAY AND 12 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Exhibition premiere of two significant new commissions by Lucy Clout and Marianna Simnett, winners of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2015, each taking inspiration from the pressures (and perils) of visibility in a digital world.

SARAH ROSE: THE PRINTER'S DEVIL

10–25 JUL, NOT 13, 20, TIMES VARY, FREE

New installation by artist Sarah Rose considering practices of information proliferation and the identity of destabilised materials, encompassing both audio and sculptural approaches.

David Dale Gallery and Studios

FINITE PROJECT ALTERED WHEN OPEN

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 6 JUN AND 4 JUL, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

Curated showcase serving as a summary of what David Dale Gallery do and have done, inviting contributions from 80+ folk they have worked with in the gallery's five years – including Nicolas Party, Ciara Phillips, Rachel Maclean and It's Our Playground.

Glasgow Print Studio

COMIC ART: MILLARWORLD AND BEYOND

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 3 JUL AND 30 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Showcase exhibition of work by some of the most important and influential comic book talent in the industry, as part GPS's participation in this year's Glasgow Comic Con.

Listings

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Art KATIE WARD 3 JUL – 2 AUG, NOT 6 JUL, 13 JUL, 20 JUL, 27 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Showcase of work from the printmaker/painter Katie Ward, currently investigating perceptions around being and becoming, laced with both abstract and figurative tensions.

Glasgow School of Art PHOENIX EXHIBITION

24 JUL – 2 AUG, NOT 27 JUL, 28 JUL, 29 JUL, 30 JUL, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Special group exhibition of new work by 100 artists who benefited from the Phoenix Bursary programme, set up to help artists whose work was affected by the fire in the Mackintosh Building in 2014.

Glasgow Sculpture Studios MARYSIA GACEK

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 11 JUL AND 5 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Showcase exhibition from Marysia Gacek, the recipient of Glasgow Sculpture Studio's 2014 MFA Graduate Fellowship, who creates structures and narratives using personal symbolism and different modes of representation.

GoMA

RIPPLES ON THE POND

27 MAR – 28 FEB, TIMES VARY, FREE

Glasgow Museums’ collection exhibition designed as a conversation between works by women on paper and moving image, taking as its starting point recent acquisitions from the Glasgow Women's Library 21 Revolutions series.

CLYDE REFLECTIONS

29 MAY – 5 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Collaborative new film installation by the art-science duo Hurrel and Brennan (aka artist Stephen Hurrel and Social Ecologist Ruth Brennan), building on their collaborative body of work to date.

DOUGLAS MORLAND: THE DEATH OF LADY MONDEGREEN

19 JUN – 20 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Solo show of sculptural and image-based works by Glasgowbased artist and musician Douglas Morland, taking its title from a 1954 essay in Harper's magazine in which the term ‘mondegreen’ was coined by the author's mishearing of a line in a Scots ballad.

Hunterian Art Gallery

THE ONLY WAY TO DO IT IS TO DO IT

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 27 MAR AND 4 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

Exhibition revisiting the experimental practices and legacy of progressive liberal art college Black Mountain College (1933-57), taking in Post-War American prints from The Hunterian's permanent collection alongside new work by contemporary practitioners.

DUNCAN SHANKS: THE POETRY OF PLACE

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 14 MAR AND 16 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Exhibition showcase of Duncan Shanks's gift to the University of Glasgow of his entire output of sketchbooks from the past 55 years, with over 30 sketchbooks on view – never previously exhibited.

Koppe Astner

PHILLIP ZACH: SHADE SHIFTERS

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 12 JUN AND 17 JUL, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, FREE

New body of work from the German artist currently based between Frankfurt and Istanbul, know for exploring mechanisms with which the human mind divides.

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Mary Mary ALIZA NISENBAUM

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 13 JUN AND 1 AUG, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, FREE

Solo showcase of paintings from the Brooklyn-based Mexican artist, known for her portraits of undocumented immigrant families from Mexico and Central America, painted over long visits with her subjects.

Project Ability ON THE SAME LATITUDE

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 5 JUN AND 18 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

A veritable expedition in photography exploring shared moments and collaborative action by two artists working in Scotland and Denmark: Ida Arentoft and Simon McAuley.

Project Room EVERYTHING SENSOR

26 JUN – 4 JUL, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Collaborative exhibition from a batch of artists one year out of art school, exploring mutual interests in object relations, display mechanisms and the potentiality of objects to convey meaning.

Queens Park Railway Club

MIMEI THOMPSON: FLIES IN MY EYES

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 19 JUN AND 11 JUL, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, FREE

Solo exhibition by London-based artist Mimei Thompson, whose work is a reflection of an internal world, using recurring motifs of landscape, vegetation, human and animal forms, and abstract paint marks and lines.

RGI Kelly Gallery SECONDS

3–11 JUL, NOT 5, 6, TIMES VARY, FREE

Showcase of work by a batch of 11 emerging art students who have recently completed the HND Art course at Glasgow Kelvin College.

Skypark 1

IPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY

8 JUN – 23 JUL, 9:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Scotland's first iPhone photography exhibition, compiled by GSA Fine Art graduate Riel Noir and featuring 24 framed fine art glicee prints and other iPhone artwork printed onto textiles.

MACMAG 40 9 JUN – 10 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Special exhibition showcase of the 40 Mackintosh School of Architecture MacMag's published since the magazine's beginning in 1974, timed in celebration of the release of the 40th edition.

The Modern Institute URS FISCHER

6 JUN – 29 AUG, NOT SUNDAYS, TIMES VARY, FREE

Solo showcase of new sculptures from the Swiss-born, New York-living contemporary artist, known for his diverse oeuvre across installations, sculpture and gestural paintings.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

LUKE FOWLER: TO THE EDITOR OF AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 30 MAY AND 4 JUL, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

New film by Luke Fowler and Mark Fell revolving around the testimonies and collected documents linked to the complex and often contested history of Pavilion in Leeds, the UK's first feminist photography centre.

TONY SWAIN: THE SHORTER ALPHABET

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 11 JUL AND 29 AUG, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

The Irish-born, GSA graduating artist – best known for his paintings depicting complex private worlds painted over newspaper pages – presents a new body of work.

Tramway

THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE

20 JUN – 26 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Panel curated exhibition of newly commissioned work by artist Fiona Jardine and designers Sophie Dyer and Maeve Redmond, exploring the dialogue between graphic design, visual art and historical and fictional writing.

scotlandart.com SUMMER CITYSCAPES

26 JUN – 14 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

OPEN FOR BUSINESS

Exhibition of artworks celebrating architectural cityscapes, showcasing original paintings capturing the beauty and ingenuity inherent in some of the most famous vistas not only in Scotland, but from around the world.

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 3 JUL AND 27 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

4–31 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Street Level Photoworks Exhibition document of the largely untold story of British manufacturing and industry, told through the lens of nine Magnum photographers.

QUEENS PARK CAMERA CLUB: GLASGOW 1955 + 55

TOMMY FITCHET

ScotlandArt this month put the spotlight on Scottish painter Tommy Fitchet, as part of the gallery's monthly Artist's Spotlight exhibition series showcasing a selection of latest work from their favourite artists.

2 JUL – 2 AUG, NOT 6 JUL, 13 JUL, 20 JUL, 27 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

The fruits of a project undertaken by the Queens Park Camera Club in 2010, recording as many aspects as possible depicting Glasgow, presented alongside archive images taken in 1955 by several Glasgow camera clubs, of which QPCC is the only surviving.

The Common Guild ANNE HARDY

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 6 JUN AND 8 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Solo showcase marking Anne Hardy's first exhibition in Scotland, spanning photography, sculptural installation and audio, as she constructs environments that hover between depiction and abstraction.

The Lighthouse HANDMADE BY MACHINES

19 JUN – 18 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Annual exhibition of modern jewellery design, now in its fourth year, incorporating the works of final year jewellery students and staff from colleges across Scotland.

Edinburgh Art City Art Centre

YOU CHOOSE: FAVOURITES FROM THE CITY ART CENTRE

13 DEC – 19 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Annual showcase exhibition drawing from the City Art Centre's permanent collection of historic and contemporary Scottish art – this year opening it up to the public to select their favourite works to make up the display.

SCOTTISH ART: PEOPLE, PLACES, IDEAS

23 MAY – 27 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Special exhibition based on a thematic framework exploring four key areas – people, landscape, still life and abstraction – drawing from art in Scotland over the last 250 years, returning following its inaugural 2011 showcase.

Coburg House Art Studios

Interview Room 11

Royal Botanic Garden

2 JUL, 6:00PM – 9:00PM, FREE

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 3 JUL AND 18 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

7 APR – 4 JUL, NOT SUNDAYS, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Inverleith House

Royal Scottish Academy (RSA)

THE CURIOSITY SHOP

Pop-up showcase of Creative Edinburgh members, taking in a range of illustration, jewellery, graphic design and digital marketing.

Collective Gallery

SLAVS AND TATARS: LEKTOR

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 25 APR AND 12 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

New body of work by art collective Slavs and Tatars exploring ‘Mirror for Princes’ – a medieval form of advice literature intended for future rulers, giving advice pertaining to good leadership on subjects such as grooming, speech, education and belief.

FRANCE-LISE MCGURN

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 11 JUL AND 30 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

BLUEPRINT

Double header exhibition bringing together the work of Luke Skiffington and Andy Jackson, playing with the layout of the venue by displaying paintings as wall mounted, as well as suspended within space and placed upon stands.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 25 JUL AND 4 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

First solo exhibition in a UK public gallery by late American artist, known for his vibrantly coloured, dynamic metal sculptures made from salvaged materials and car parts, taking in early and mid-

AMY SHELTON: HONEYSCRIBE

Artist Amy Shelton becomes a contemporary ‘honeyscribe’ – someone tasked with recording every drop of honey produced – mapped using 100s of pressed flowers, illuminated to create a vibrant colour palette. In the John Hope Gateway.

ALEXANDER FRASER

13 JUN – 19 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Showcase of new large-scale oil paintings by the former Head of Painting at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, inspired by memories, travel and recurring motifs from earlier works.

For the third exhibition of Satellites Programme 2015, artist France-Lise McGurn showcases a selection of her works exploring the potential connotations of gender and sexuality in the written word, letter or drawn line.

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

14 MAR – 10 JAN, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

A special three-room ‘Artist Rooms’ display dedicated to works by celebrated American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, bringing together a newly assembled group of works care of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation and the Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

Dovecot Studios GARRY FABIAN MILLER: DWELLING

15 MAY – 7 JUL, NOT SUNDAYS, 10:30AM – 5:30PM, FREE

Showcase exhibition marking the start of a collaborative relationship between experimental photographer Garry Fabian Miller and Dovecot Tapestry Studio, including two new gun-tufted hearth rugs created in collaboration with the artist.

THE AMAZING WORLD OF M.C. ESCHER

27 JUN – 27 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £9 (£7)

Retrospective exhibition of Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher, including nearly 100 prints and drawings stretching across his whole career, drawn entirely from the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

Edinburgh Printmakers

FAISAL ABDU'ALLAH: SQUAD

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 13 JUN AND 18 JUL, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Showcase as part of Faisal Abdu'Allah's ongoing The Squad Project, reflecting his engagement with the physical and metaphysical properties of material, through traditional printmaking techniques, explored through a range of unconventional print media.

EDINBURGH PRINTMAKERS @ THE ACTINIC FESTIVAL

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 1 JUL AND 25 JUL, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

As one of the partnering venues of The ACTINIC Festival, Edinburgh Printmakers host a special members’ exhibition of prints, showcasing different photo processes used in printmaking.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop CONCRETE ANTENNA

11 MAR – 1 SEP, 9:30AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Sound installation in the new ESW tower created by Tommy Perman, Simon Kirby and Rob St. John, sonically exploring the past, present and (potential) future of the workshop's site via sound gathered from audio archives and specially made field recordings.

Ingleby Gallery CRAIG MURRAY-ORR

30 MAY – 4 JUL, NOT SUNDAYS, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Exhibition of new paintings by New Zealand-born artist Craig Murray-Orr, who for the past three years has been working on a series of small oil paintings on identically sized wooden boards, 30 of which will make up the exhibition.

BEN CAUCHI

30 MAY – 4 JUL, NOT SUNDAYS, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Solo presentation of new and recent works by photographer Ben Cauchi, known for employing outmoded techniques to produce atmospheric photographs with a strange and spectral beauty to them.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

career works, as well as an outdoor display.

Jupiter Artland EDWIN BURDIS: THE THICKENING

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 16 MAY AND 18 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £8.50 (£4.50)

Solo showcase of London-based artist Edwin Burdis in the scenic surrounds of Jupiter Artland, exhibiting a selection of installations in the Steadings Gallery along with sculptures set throughout the Steadings Courtyard and woodland area.

MIKA ROTTENBERG

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 16 MAY AND 23 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

The Buenos Aires-born, Israelraised and New York-living artist presents several works spanning the variety of modes used in the presentation of her mind stretching installations.

Museum of Childhood

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE SOCIETY'S 2015 SCHOOLS POSTER COMPETITION

28 MAY – 31 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

35th annual year of the Schools Poster Competition, featuring thousands of colourful poster entries from schools across Scotland, with the winning entry becoming the official poster for the 2015 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Out of the Blue Drill Hall ALWAYS TALKING, MUST TRY HARDER

29 JUN – 8 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Showcase of Scott Drever's new artistic direction, featuring 15 pieces in the form of monochrome paintings inspired by his personal heroes including Tom Waits and Brian Blessed.

RETINA FESTIVAL EXHIBITION

14–24 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

The Retina Scottish Photography Festival showcase of the best in the world of photography, plus new and emerging talent from Scotland, featuring work by Luigi Giannetti (Italy), Douglas Corrance (Scotland) and Bartek Furdal (Poland).

THE WATER HEN: KANTOR, DEMARCO AND THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 25 JUL – 5 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Marking the centenary of his birth, the RSA show a newly digitised version of Polish theatre director Tadeusz Kantor's The Water Hen – a production which was a sensation at the 1972 Edinburgh Festival – alongside a selection of performance photographs.

Scottish National Gallery ROCKS AND RIVERS: THE LUNDE COLLECTION

3–30 APR, TIMES VARY, FREE

Long-term loan from one of the finest private collections of 19thCentury Norwegian and Swiss landscape paintings, American collector Asbjörn Lunde, taking in 13 works by artists including Johan Christian Dahl, Alexandre Calame and Thomas Fearnley.

THE OLYMPIAN GODS: EUROPEAN PRINTS OF THE RENAISSANCE

20 JUN – 18 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

Selection of Renaissance engravings, etchings and woodcuts depicting the pagan Gods, at a time when graphic print media was the vehicle for the diffusion of images representing secular subject matter.

JEAN-ETIENNE LIOTARD

4 JUL – 13 SEP, TIMES VARY, £9 (£7)

Rare exhibition of celebrated hyper-realist eighteenth century artist Jean-Etienne Liotard (170289), marking the first time his work will have been comprehensively shown in Britain.

BAILEY'S STARDUST

18 JUL – 18 OCT, TIMES VARY, £11 (£9)

The Stardust exhibition by the renowned photographer makes it was up to Scotland, following a run at the National Portrait Gallery in London, featuring over 300 portraits spanning half a century.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery REMEMBERING THE GREAT WAR

4 AUG – 5 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Marking the centenary of the outbreak of the WWI, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery display various portraits and related works in various media - including work by artists Sir James Gunn and Sir William Gillies, who were wounded in action.

COLLECTING NOW

9 MAY – 20 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Showcase exhibition of a number of the recent acquisitions that have entered the Portrait Gallery collection since 2010, including a double portrait by Cecile Walton from around 1911 and a group of silver gelatin prints by David Peat from the late 60s.

LEE MILLER AND PICASSO

23 MAY – 6 SEP, TIMES VARY, £9 (£7)

Revealing exhibition featuring approximately 100 photographs focusing on the relationship between Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and Pablo Picasso, featuring photographs by Miller and a painting and drawing by Picasso.

HEAD TO HEAD: PORTRAIT SCULPTURE – ANCIENT TO MODERN

6 JUN – 31 JAN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Exhibition of portrait sculpture from across the National Galleries of Scotland's collection, moving from ancient to modern and executed in a range of media, illustrating how sculptors continue to reference the illustrious tradition of the portrait bust.

St Margaret's House 14.15

27 JUN – 12 JUL, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Group show in which 14 former Edinburgh College of Art students attempt to figure out their place in the world through their individual practices.

ROBYN BENSON: FROM A HORIZONTAL LINE 27 JUN – 12 JUL, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

New works by artist Robyn Benson exploring the structural capabilities of the curve, aiming to ascertain founding rules of structural support resulting in temporal, self-sufficient structures that only exist at a single point of balance.

DOMINIC MCIVOR: 24

27 JUN – 12 JUL, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Collection of large-scale works created by repeating a colour sequence (of 24 small squares, hence the title) hundreds of times over, before peeling the canvas to see what remains.

Stills

ANNA ATKINS + MARGARET WATKINS

25 APR – 12 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Double-header exhibition showcasing historically important work

by Anna Atkins (1799-1871) and Margaret Watkins (1884-1969), two female artists who made pioneering photographic work in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively.

Summerhall MOTHS

4 JUN – 15 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Modern Edinburgh Film School brings together a selection of practitioners in visual art, poetry, performance and film to explore alternative approaches to the screen.

HENRY COOMBES: TWO DISCS AND A ZED

4 JUN – 15 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Looped screening of London-born, Glasgow-based artist Henry Coombes’ new film, Two Discs and a Zed, presenting two main sets: the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh and a mountainous landscape somewhere in the Highlands.

DAVID FAITHFULL: LEVIATHAN

4 JUN – 15 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

New body of work from artist, printmaker and curator David Faithfull, for which he spent time on the Isle of Mull, investigating and documenting both the whalebones and the family relics. …NOT MAN THE LESS, BUT NATURE MORE 4 JUN – 15 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Collective exhibition focusing on the dichotomy of exploring others’ worlds, with the artists reproducing the surroundings they inhabit, animating them with the people, creatures and spirits that belong to their personal mythologies.

CRAIG THOMSON: STRANGE ATTRACTOR

4 JUN – 15 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Artist Craig Thomson displays a selection of new work for Summerhall's public areas, taking inspiration from the rural landscape of his home county of Fife.

THE SKINNY

The Rock Trust showcases its fifth postcard art exhibition and auction, with featured artists including Kate Downie, Alasdair Gray and David Forster, raising money and awareness for youth homelessness in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

The Fruitmarket Gallery PHYLLIDA BARLOW

ROMAN SIGNER: INSTALLATIONS

Internationally renowned for his sculptural installations and video works, Swiss artist Roman Signer presents new work made specially for DCA – including a radical re-purposing of kayaks, a longstanding symbol and form in his work.

The Scottish Gallery

Generator Projects

3 JUL – 1 AUG, NOT SUNDAYS, TIMES VARY, FREE

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 4 JUL AND 26 JUL, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

DAVID CASS

3 JUL – 1 AUG, NOT SUNDAYS, TIMES VARY, FREE

Scottish painter David Cass returns to The Scottish Gallery with a body of new work from an 18 month research trip in Italy, France and Spain, taking as inspiration the floods which swept Florence in 1966, Paris in 1910 and Bilbao in 1983.

VICKY SHAW: PRINTED ABSTRACT

3 JUL – 1 AUG, NOT SUNDAYS, TIMES VARY, FREE

Internationally acclaimed ceramicist Vicky Shaw showcases a series of new compositions, including wall pieces and bowls.

Whitespace 25 Howe St THE GREEN-WOODS FREE

17–23 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Artistic collaboration of paintings, music, poetry and video, opening with composer/cellist Atzi Muramatsu performing against paintings by landscape artist Rose Strang (17 Jul, 7pm), with the exhibition continuing until 23 July.

Whitespace Gayfield Square DAVID FREDERICK AVERY: BEYOND THE VEIL

27 JUN – 2 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Mixed media exhibition from artist David Frederick Avery, exploring altered states of consciousness, mysticism and the nature of reality.

uthors will come from far and wide to this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival including many old favourites and plenty of upand-coming talent. From 15-31 August over 900 participants from across the world – including literary stars, debut writers, musicians, graphic novelists, thinkers, politicians, international award-winners and poets – will gather in the Book Festival’s magical tented village to take part in captivating interviews, rousing debates, enlightening workshops, lively spoken word performances and more. And you could be there.

For your chance to win two tickets to two events of your choice (subject to availability), simply answer the following question:

4 JUL – 20 SEP, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Major solo showcase of work by Newcastle artist Phyllida Barlow, known for her monumental and immersive sculptures made from simple materials such as plywood, cardboard, fabric, plaster, paint and plastic.

Marking 50 years since the death of Scottish painter Anne Redpath, The Scottish Gallery present a major exhibition of works spanning her entire career.

A

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts

27 JUN – 18 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

ANNE REDPATH: FIFTY

Win Book Festival tickets

Dundee Art

HOLD, SWAY

Wordsmith George the Poet will appear at the Book Festival on 21 August. What is his real name?

Group show from Scott Brotherton, Carla Scott Fullerton, Rosemary Hogarth, Hannah Lees and Laura McGlinchly, exploring the liminal space between sculpture and painting, and the use of medium as object.

a. Stephen Coles b. George Mpanga c. George Kamya

The McManus

CLASSICAL ART: THE LEGACY OF THE ANCIENTS

24 JAN – 21 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Showcase of works with a taste of the antique, illustrating the enduring influence of ancient Greek and Roman culture through paintings, sculpture and ceramics from Dundee's nationally significant collection of fine art.

EDUARDO PAOLOZZI: JEEPERS CREEPERS

30 MAY – 12 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Return display of Dundee Collections own collection of work by Scottish sculptor and artist Eduardo Paolozzi, including the major work Jeepers Creepers which he gifted to the city in 1972.

Credit: Thurstan Redding

THE ROCK TRUST POSTCARD ART EXHIBITION AND AUCTION 4 JUN – 2 JUL, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Competition closes midnight Thursday 30 July. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within 48 hours or the prize will be offered to another entrant. The winner will receive the tickets by email. Our Ts&Cs can be found at theskinny.co.uk/ about/terms-and-conditions. Tickets subject to availability, may not be resold and no cash alternative is available.

University of Dundee

TRANSMISSIONS: EXPLORING THE MICROBIAL WORLD

VARIOUS DATES BETWEEN 13 JUN AND 5 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Showcase of work by artists exploring the microbial world and the implications of human coexistence with microbial life, made during residency at the Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh. In the Lifespace Gallery.

Woodland Creatures

WASTING TIME IN CONVERSATION

9 JUN – 8 JUL, 12:00PM – 1:00AM, FREE

Dirty Negatives, the collaborative duo of UK based artists Elizaveta Maltseva and Tara Kathleen Stewart, host their first site-specific installation of new print work.

Win Tickets To Balletronic

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irect from Havana, unmistakably the world's most exotic city, stand by for the world premiere of this new, innovative and dynamic production, Balletronic. Taking place between 5-31 August at The Grand (Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh), this is a deconstructed and unique fusion of classical and contemporary music driven by a DJ and 12 of Cuba's finest musicians and singers.

Witness the sheer power, skill and effortless grace of 11 of Cuba’s finest classical and contemporary dancers, as they elegantly groove, pointe and pivot to super cool DJ loops, soundscapes and electronica – ensuring a sizzlingly hot-blooded evening of ferocious sensuality and athletic skill.

Balletronic will shake ballet and the Pleasance to its core, with music by Avicii, Daft Punk, Afrojack, Sam Smith, Paloma Faith... and a little Chopin!

July 2015

We've got five pairs of tickets to give away, thanks to the lovely people at the Pleasance. To be in with a chance of winning, just answer the following question: What is the capital of Cuba? a) Havana b) Madrid c) Albuquerque Competition closes midnight Thursday 30 July. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within 48 hours or the prize will be offered to another entrant. The winner will receive the tickets by email. Our Ts&Cs can be found at theskinny.co.uk/ about/terms-and-conditions. Tickets subject to availability, may not be resold and no cash alternative is available. There is no performance on 18 Aug.

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THE SKINNY

Under the Influence: Failure Returning from a 17 year break with a cosmic odyssey titled The Heart Is a Monster this month, the reactivated LA space rock trio reveal the albums that make up their DNA Interview: Dave Kerr

2. THE CURE – PORNOGRAPHY [1982] KA: The Cure were a massive influence on Failure forming in the first place. They were the first group I listed in my ad looking for a bass player and Greg answered because of it. This was a band he and I bonded over a lot; we listened to pretty much their entire body of work up to that point together. Pornography is the record of theirs that made the most impact on me as it relates to Failure. The sounds on that record and the focus it had – extremely dark, never lets up, there are no bright spots here – it's very intense. The mood was just so strong and evocative. They were kind of my first indie band – the first non-mainstream band I was exposed to that I really loved. They had such an intensity and individualism about them; very inspiring to me when I was writing the first five or six Failure songs, which we kind of based the whole album on.

3. MILES DAVIS – BITCHES BREW [1970] Greg Edwards: This is the first album that really changed the way I heard music – I was curious about jazz but didn't really know anybody that listened to it. So around this time I'm 21 years old – just at the beginning of Failure.

I read this list of important jazz records that was in LA Weekly and one of them was Bitches Brew. I went off and bought it, put it on and it really appealed to something in me – these long and lonely notes he was playing, that would just soar above this strange music that was being played with so much feel and precision but also sounded like it was about to fall apart at any moment.

The chaos and the structure went deep for me.

I must've listened to that record every day for a few months – it really seeped in. There's a lyric in Screen Man from the first Failure record, Comfort, that talks about a guy playing these ‘lonely hidden notes.’ That's what this is. His playing felt like this esoteric and magical thing.

July 2015

4. PIXIES – BOSSANOVA [1990] KA: After we did Comfort and started to establish our sound, another band from around the same period that made a big impact on me was The Pixies. It's a toss-up between Doolittle and Bossanova – both equally influential.

But I ended up listening to Bossanova more, because I felt that as an album it was so satisfying from start to finish, everything from the artwork to the way Black Francis was able to fuse punk with classic songwriting styles and pop arrangements. It sounded very fresh to me and I just loved it. One thing this did for me was educate me about the studio, and honed my ear. Like, ‘how many guitars are playing right now?’

“Neat pop gems, presented in chaotic form. To me, this is perfect” Greg Edwards on Big Star

5. AC/DC – HIGHWAY TO HELL [1979] Kellii Scott: I was given Highway to Hell by my older brother once upon a time and it more or less taught me how to play the drums.

I sat with it for months, playing it over, then playing over it. This is the basics of rock drumming.

Some years later I made my first record with this band called Liquid Jesus – we were working with Michael Beinhorn, who was just starting to become a big producer then. We were up in the Malibu mountains in this beautiful studio called Indigo Ranch where Neil Young made a lot of his records, so it had this big folklore around it. I was still only 18 and my inexperience was showing – I'd played live a lot but this was the first I'd recorded.

At one point Michael pulled me aside and tried to explain to me some fundamentals about the relationship of drums in music: ‘If you picture the finish line, the first thing that should cross over it is your kick drum – that's what makes people move.’

I'd never thought of that at all. So the band took the weekend off and he had some of the engineers put a drum set-up in my room then handed me Highway to Hell and said ‘this record will explain that whole relationship.’ AC/DC can be so simple yet so successful because of the way Phil Rudd performed on those records.

6. SONIC YOUTH – SISTER [1987] GE: The interplay between Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore's guitars, which were in these strange tunings, and the way Kim Gordon never really played bass in a conventional sense by taking the root note, was just exceptional. She was always playing some kind of a riff or hook while the guitars were creating these beautiful clanging harmonics.

Credit: R.Daly

1. THE CARS – THE CARS [1978] Ken Andrews: You can't really hear the final sound of The Cars in Failure, but they were really important to me. This was the first band I really sunk my teeth into as a fan; I bought their first album when I was 12 and just loved it. When I turned 18, I listened to it over and over and basically learned how to play guitar to that record. It's easy, except for the solos which are actually really difficult. Elliot Easton's playing was very session player quality. Ric Ocasek's touchstone was Buddy Holly, so the underlying chords are quite simple. But they really taught me about pop arrangement and the simplicity of classic rock chord progressions, plus the way you can interchange guitars and synthesizers, playing different hooks within the same song. That made an impact on me. I ended up loving some of their other songs on other records, but this was the one that taught me how to play.

Sister just sounded very rock'n'roll to me – it was very raw and innocent. Each element was unpredictable, even though it was also very refined and there was a lot of intellect in the music. It was progressive in the technique they were using and the overall effect, but it also had a truly punk rawness at the heart of it. I never liked a lot of the seminal punk stuff, it just didn't appeal to me. But the way Sonic Youth used it, I fell in love with.

7. LED ZEPPELIN – IN THROUGH THE OUTDOOR [1979] KS: Led Zeppelin records always seemed to be really simple but there's this kind of drama they create in the spaces between what they do and don't play. Like a good movie – there's always this element of suspense and this slow unfolding of what's to come that keeps you on the edge of your seat. A lot of their other records – beautiful in a completely opposite way – often seemed very experimental, in the moment and flying by the seat of their pants. In Through the Outdoor seems more like they meant everything as it was written on the page. I always try and bring that sense of purpose – especially working in Failure.

It's a perfect relationship, everyone gives and takes.

It's not even necessarily something we communicate through language – it's that musical bond you only get, at least in my case, once in a lifetime.

I've played with a lot of people who I've had great musical relationships with, but most of it was spoken. There's a certain beauty in Failure that I've never been able to achieve anywhere else.

8. BIG STAR – THIRD [LATER REISSUED AS SISTER LOVERS] [1978] GE: This album, in a way, shares a lot of the chaos I was talking about in Bitches Brew. It's these beautiful amazing pop songs that Alex Chilton wrote. No matter how weird it gets, even in a song like Big Black Car – to me, that's as influential a song as you could get.

There's a whole school of music that came out of the slow dirginess of that track. I guess, because of the mental state that the band and Alex were in, and the substances that were being used, it's just completely chaotic. As you listen, you can't understand how it even holds together sometimes. It could fall apart

MUSIC

but it never does. He was such a great pop song writer – the combination of having these neat pop gems with great, interesting lyrics, presented in that chaotic form. To me, this is perfect.

One thing I took from Sister Lovers was that great songs can still come through when their genesis is so subterranean, dark and damaged sounding.

9. THE POLICE – ZENYATT MONDATTA [1980] KA: Controversial choice, I know; their earliest stuff was a little too raw for me. Not that Zenyatta Mondatta's slick, but it's a little deeper in the production and certainly deeper in terms of guitar effects. I would say Andy Summers’ use of guitar effects on that record in particular was a big inspiration, in terms of just wanting to buy effects, use ‘em and experiment. But there was also the aspect of the trio sound, which I learned how to identify with and appreciate. I think that was an inspiration for us; how to arrange parts so we never felt like we were missing something. Having everyone's role in the band become this important; as soon as somebody drops out, it's not the band. Right through the whole existence of Failure in the 90s, they were a big influence on me and I'd listen to them all the time.

10. BLONDE REDHEAD – MISERY IS A BUTTERFLY [2004] KS: On Fantastic Planet there's a track called Another Space Song – where I just play this one hypnotic beat that never changes all the way through. This is a great achievement for me because I'm always naturally pulled towards playing more, accentuating and kicking things up a notch. It's always a delicate dance on a fine line.

I wanted to do more stuff like that, and one band that I really love, who I think do that really well are Blonde Redhead. I was listening to this particular record quite a bit in preparation for The Heart Is a Monster. Somebody turned me onto it around eight years ago and I was floored by how Simone [Pace, drummer] could just play this one simple hypnotic thing, and you forget that it's even there. It never changes, so it never pulls you away.

The Heart is a Monster is released via INgrooves/Xtra Mile on 17 Jul failureband.com

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