The Skinny October 2022

The Skinny's favourite disco tracks

Chic – Good Times

Candi Staton – Young Hearts Run Free

Daft Punk – Get Lucky

Beyoncé – Summer Renaissance

Thelma Houston – Don't Leave Me This Way

LCD Soundsystem – Disco Infiltrator

Mary Clark – Take Me I'm Yours

Kylie Minogue – Your Disco Needs You

Gwen McCrae – Keep The Fire Burning

Earth, Wind & Fire – September

Earth, Wind & Fire – Boogie Wonderland

Anita Ward – Ring My Bell

Boney M. – Rasputin

Kano – Can't Hold Back (Your Loving)

Boney M. – Rasputin

Donna Summer – I Feel Love

Madonna – Hung Up

Chat

Issue 201, October 2022 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk

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Championing creativity in Scotland

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor

"Just texted my friend: 'What was the theme of the bop where I was dressed as Russell Brand and you threw up in my room for 12 hours?'

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief

"I have only ever dressed as a cat."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "The Joker circa 2012 as the follow ing day I was to be an extra in Still Game, and got an absolute bollock ing because my hair was showing up green on camera."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor

"I am very bad at Halloween costumes but I did compère a gig once on Halloween dressed as Mr Blobby."

Lewis Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant

"Winona Ryder's character from Beetlejuice. Saved me a lot of money since I happened to dress like her anyway."

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "A ghost costume I kept on for so long that a few people at the party still have no idea who it was under there."

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor "Sellotape."

Rho Chung Theatre Editor "I went as a laundry bas ket when I was ten."

Heather McDaid Books Editor "N/A" Christian Gow Marketing & Commercial Assistant "Dressing up as Jon Snow for my bestie's joint 18th and Halloween Bonanza!"

Sandy Park Commercial Director "Has to be the old toilet roll and duct tape number at the primary school disco."

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager

"Our first family Halloween cos tume! My wife, my wfe, my threemonth-old twins and I all dressed as skeletons and it was ADORABLE."

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "The Invisible Man, school disco. I used bandages in the end, but I wish I'd committed to my original joke of just not turning up."

Heléna Stanton Clubs Editor

"I dressed up as a fried egg when I was 16, was a hideous foam outfit, very embarrassing upon reflection."

Harvey Dimond Art Editor "N/A"

Laurie Presswood General Manager

"One year my school insisted we dress up as non-fiction characters for world book day. As a ten-yearold non-reader of non-fiction I protested by coming in as Russell Brand (My Booky Wook, 2007)."

the team

asked

your most memorable Halloween costume?

Sales

Tallah Brash Music Editor

"An Oompa Loompa, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Napoleon Dynamite, Geri Halliwell, take your pick."

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager "Frida Kahlo, moustache and monobrow included!"

Phoebe Willison Designer

"I honestly don't think I have ever dressed as anything memorable because I am grumpy and lazy."

Editorial

Words: Rosamund West

This October, our theme celebrates the annual Black History Month, starting with a look at the programme of events drawn together by Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER). They take a collaborative approach, coordi nating a range of organisations, charities and community groups to reflect a multiplicity of narratives and experiences within Black Scottish history. Eilidh Akilade talks to CRER’s Nelson Cummins about returning to live events, expanding the pro gramme’s geographical reach and some of the challenges involved in reflecting this depth of history in just one month.

We’ve been working with David Livingstone Birthplace Museum in Blantyre to support a major weekend of events on 22 to 23 October. Entitled Our Stories Between the Myths and Memories, it has been curated by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and will explore storytelling through fiction, history, poetry, dance, and music, with workshops hosted by creative practitioners from the African Scottish diaspora. Her regular collaborator Tomiwa Folorunso interviews her about her vision for the weekend and the challenges of interrogating institutional histories and practices.

Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill have authored a new book Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland – they share something of the process of researching and archiving Black Scottish history. Art editor Harvey talks to Tanatsei Gambura and Briana Pegado, two local cultural practitioners, to discuss their experience of working in the Scottish creative industries. An exhibition in St Andrews, Re-collecting Empire, examines the legacy of empire within the museum’s collections – one writer visits and reports back.

In Music, we take a look back at the influence of disco, a genre which changed the face of music and the broader culture,

but rarely receives the respect it deserves, due at least in part to the prejudiced movement that eventually shut it down. As Björk releases her tenth studio album, Fossora, we take a walk through her ever-evolving back catalogue. We meet Gilla Band, formerly Girl Band, to talk about the ascendant Irish music scene and their new album Most Normal. And, as the Scottish Album of the Year Award heads to Stirling for the 2022 ceremo ny, we take a look at the longlist nominees.

Film shares its excitement about the return of the Cameo’s All Night Horror Madness with some words with the program mer, who offers an insight into the selection process and a run through this year’s lineup. As the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival returns, we meet director Icíar Bollaín to discuss Maixabel, her drama about victims of terrorism. As the UK’s longest-running film festival devoted to Japanese animation, Scotland Loves Anime returns to our screens, we pull out some highlights from trips into the future to a bombastic rock opera.

Speaking of opera, Theatre meets Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker and Alex Reedijk, Scottish Opera’s general director, to talk through their magical new season programme and the unique possibilities afforded by the art form. Comedy meets Olga Koch, who’s bringing her show Just Friends to at least one Scottish stage this month, to talk hoe culture and being a Cool Girl.

We close the magazine with a Q&A with filmmaker Bryan M Ferguson, whose work we’ll be screening this month in our CineSkinny film events in Summerhall (13 Oct) and CCA (25 Oct). He doesn’t like Christopher Nolan, cooking or making plans, but does like Sam Raimi.

Cover Artist

This month's cover is by Hermann, alias Saturn, a freelance illustrator and 2D animator. He first started using Adobe software to create digital illustrations before turning to watercolours, acrylics and printed media. After a computer graphics 2D animation degree, he immediately started freelanc ing. He now does a lot of silkscreen prints on textiles, murals, and some acrylics on canvas. He regards these techniques as complementary, and finds their constraints help him to develop his practice. His graphic universe is colourful, geomet ric, often abstract, and he likes to draw without expecting a particular result.

Love Bites: Over the Landline

Words: Hazel Peters

The sound rings through the house, and there is a moment of collective pause. Next, there is the usual yell: “Can you get that?”

Picking up the handset from its cradle is some what of a lucky dip. A short list of possible callers runs through my mind, but until that first hello, I never can be certain of who the caller will be.

I haven’t known a time before mobile phones. However, I do remember when people would give you their landline number before their mobile number. I remember as a child being given a cordless landline to carry in my coat pocket when I was out alone. Now, of the few numbers that still call upon our landline, there is one which always takes priority: my grandparents’, from the USA.

Whether I call them, or they call me, I speak to my grandparents a minimum of once a week. My grandpar ents know something is up if more than ten days pass without a call. It is the slightly crackly line that con nects my life in Scotland to theirs in Pennsylvania. Our phone calls consist of life updates, recipe exchanges, advice sessions, and shared laughter.

Every part of speaking to my grandparents re quires intentionality. From punching their number into the keypad, to calling at the right time of day, using the landline requires me to slow down. To sit down. The cord of the phone quite literally roots me to the spot. I can’t talk as I walk or make dinner. I can’t even put the phone on loudspeaker. In that moment, all I can do is listen and talk.

That glossy, beige landline is a vessel through which love between my grandparents and I is carried. And so, until my grandparents learn to WhatsApp call, our landline is going nowhere.

Heads Up

Cade and MacAskill:

The Making of Pinocchio

Tramway, Glasgow, 28 Oct, 7:30pm Metatheatre at its finest, The Making of Pinocchio is set in a fictional film studio and follows partnersin-theatre and partners-in-life Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill as they set about a new production of Pinocchio. Made alongside and in response to MacAskill’s gender transition, this careful navigation of the lines between authenticity and fantasy is an ode to the potential of the queer imagination.

Pop Mutations

There’s an impressive number of (indoor, thankfully) musical festivals this month, as well as some very artsy club nights, great exhibitions, and - we’re informed - Mr Darcy at the Lyceum.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Out of Sight Out of Mind

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 12-30 Oct Out of Sight Out of Mind, Scotland’s annual exhibi tion dedicated to exploring issues surrounding men tal health, celebrates its ten year anniversary this year with an even huger batch of new art than usual. Fea turing works by 200 artists, their pieces span across film, painting, sculpture, photography and installation, offering a vital insight into how we can open up and engage with sometimes difficult conversations.

Various venues, Glasgow, 13-16 Oct Founded during the, um, halcyon days of lockdown, Pop Mutations are building on their two digital festivals with their first in-person extravaganza. Spread out across Mono, Stereo, The Old Hairdress ers, The Flying Duck and The 78, there will be appearances from Sa cred Paws, Junglehussi, Roo Honeychild and more. There’s also an afterparty on the Saturday to keep the penultimate evening going as long as possible.

Fruitmarket x Sneaky’s Installations

Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 14-16 + 28-30 Oct, 7pm

A stunning collaboration between Fruitmarket and Sneaky Pete’s, this disarmingly named “installation” series is actually a series of early club nights (perfect for those of us on the sleepier side) tak ing place in Fruitmarket’s atmospheric Warehouse space. Some of the most exciting names in clubbing are taking to the decks, from Jacques Greene and Nabihah Iqbal to Skillis and Jyoty.

International Storytelling Festival

venues,

Scotland Loves Anime Glasgow Film Theatre, 21-23 Oct; Film house, Edinburgh, 24-30 Oct

One for die-hard fans and intrepid beginners alike, Scotland Loves Anime – the UK’s longest running film festival dedicated to the art of Japanese animation – is returning to our screens this month. There’s the usual mixture of hotly anticipated new features, in cluding Masaaki Yuasa’s wild rock opera Inu-Oh, and stone cold classics, including Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue Angel Olsen

Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 22 Oct, 7pm

Now on her sixth album, Angel Olsen is no stranger to putting a record togeth er, and certainly no stranger to success. It’s no wonder: her sometimes synthy, sometimes rock-y takes on dream pop over the years are crafted with as tonishingly vulnerable lyrical prowess. None more so than her most recent al bum Big Time, which tackles the grief of losing her parents last year.

Nov

Hannah Lim: Ornamental Mythologies

Fire

Photo:

Photo: Tiu Makkonen

Image: courtesy of Scotland Loves Anime_

Photo: Cameron McCool

Image: courtesy of Edinburgh

Spanish Film Festival

Photo: Chris Scott

Photo: Lockmars

Photo: Gaelle Beri

The Making of Pinocchio, Cade & MacAskill

INU OH

Angel Olsen

Out of Sight Out of Mind

JyotySacred Paws

Plastic: Remaking Our World

V&A Dundee, Dundee, 29 Oct-5 Feb 2023

Plastics, eh? Can’t live with them and…no actually, we really can’t live with them. Taking as its subject one of the inventions in mate riality that has most altered the future of our globe, this thought ful and ambitious exhibition explores the history of plastics, its shift from exciting new material to ecological crisis, and the new technol ogies that might pave the way to a new future.

Rina Sawayama

SWG3, Glasgow, 12-13 Oct, 7pm

Get ready to dance. Rina Sawayama, the future of UK pop and the people’s princess (it’s us, we’re the people) returns to our stages with two back-to-back performances at SWG3. Having made tsu nami-like waves with her debut album Sawayama, she returns with Hold the Girl, a just as wild genre meld that is musically impressive but also, quite simply, a great time.

TAQA with DIJA + NAMÄN

La Cheetah Club, Glasgow, 8 Oct, 11pm

It’s been a long time since La Cheetah Club has added a new resident to their roster - we’re talking pre-pandemic long time. It says marvellous things about DIJA, then, that they’re joining the La Cheetah family. As with all their resi dents, DIJA will have full control of the night, curating her trademark genre-flu id sound with friends and influencesthis week sees her joined by acclaimed Glasgow-based producer NAMÄN.

The SAY Award Ceremony 2022

The Albert Halls, Stirling, 20 Oct, 7pm

It’s that time of year again: the best of Scotland’s mu sicians battling it out to receive the coveted Scottish Album of the Year crown. Expect wrestling, a fight to the death and…oh, actually it’s just a very nice cere mony, held for the first time in Stirling. The shortlist has yet to be announced but the longlist is filled with the likes of Hen Hoose, Niteworks, and Bemz, so it’s guaranteed to be a banger.

Liz Larner:“______”

The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until mid-Nov

Taking over The Modern Institute’s Aird’s Lane space, Liz Larner’s large ceramic works take as their start ing point Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the blank identity of the Creature depicted in adaptations. Con sidering the gap between sign and signifier and the discomforting process of revolution, this exhibition explores through staggering, vivid objects the creative parallels between production, science and revulsion.

FEMMERGY

The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, 20 Oct, 11pm

Having DJed for the likes of Fruit Salad’s Queer Cab aret and EHFM, FEMMERGY offer a joyous intersec tional feminist space for dancing, vibing, and creat ing community. This month sees them take over both floors of The Bongo Club led by DJ Rianna, with sup port from the likes of NANI, Annafleur, DJ Rawzi and more. Get your glitter, get your dancing shoes, it’s time to party.

SCO

Photo:

Armitt,

Photo: Daniel Blake

Photo: Thurstan Redding

Photo: Tim Craig Photo: Charlotte Cullen

Courtesy the artist and The Modern Institute / Toby

Webster Ltd., Glasgow

Photo: Patrick Jameson

Photo: Peter Stackpole

Image: courtesy of Hen Hoose

Rina Sawayama

DIJA

Rianna at FEMMERGY

'Installation view, Liz Larner "______", The Modern Institute 2022

Staged to illustrate an article at LIFE magazine, Peter Stackpole

Hen Hoose

What's On

Music

October is overwhelmingly busy for gigs across Scotland. In Glasgow, two city festivals come early in the month with Tenement Trail taking over various venues in the east end (8 Oct), while Pop Mutations take over Mono, Stereo, The Old Hairdresser’s, The Flying Duck and The 78 (13-16 Oct).

An abundance of local talent can be found throughout the month too, starting early in Edinburgh with Lost Map signees Maranta celebrating the release of their Deux Pleasure EP at Edinburgh’s Voodoo Rooms (5 Oct), before labelmate and SAY Award nominee Callum Easter plays his biggest show to date at The Queen’s Hall (7 Oct), where he’ll be joined by the Leith Congregational Choir and Law Holt.  Fellow SAY Award nominees Kathryn Joseph and Rebecca Vasmant play shows this month too; on 15 October you’ll catch the former at Glasgow’s St Luke’s, while Vasmant and her ensemble play the Mackintosh Church, before heading east for a show at The Caves on the 16th, which is where you’ll find former SAY Award nominee Lizzie Reid later in the month (25 Oct). Edinburgh post-punks Bikini Body play Voodoo Rooms on the 21st, Carla J Easton and Simon Liddell celebrate the release of their debut album as Poster Paints at The Glad Cafe (22 Oct) and Savage Mansion play a run of shows in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow (26-28 Oct).

There are a whole host of big touring names passing through the main city hubs this month too. In Glasgow, party band !!! (Chk Chk Chk) play SWG3 (6 Oct) before popstar of the moment Rina Sawayama brings Hold the Girl to the same venue the following week for back-to-back nights (12 & 13 Oct). Beabadoobee brings Beatopia to the Barrowlands (15 OCt) before the kings of slacker-indie, Pavement, play the same venue a few nights later (18 Oct). Dubliners Gilla Band bring our Album of the Month to SWG3 on 19 October, while on the 22nd, Japanese Breakfast plays the Old Fruitmarket. Also in Glasgow, Hinako Omori plays The Glad Cafe (25 Oct), Sorry play Stereo (28 Oct), and PVA bring their debut album BLUSH to Broadcast on the spookiest of all days, Halloween.

In Edinburgh, Wu-Tang Clan rapper GZA finally brings his 25 years of Liquid Swords tour to The Queen’s Hall (13 Oct), Chester pop three-piece Peaness play Sneaky Pete’s (14 Oct), Angel Olsen brings her Big Time European Tour to Usher Hall, with the talented Tomberlin in tow, while back at The Queen’s Hall, legendary musician and founder of The Velvet Underground John Cale plays on the 23rd. [Tallah Brash]

Film

‘Tis the spooky season, so get set for scary movies of all stripes coming to Scottish cinemas in October. Summerhall will be serving up a series of horrors focused on teens like Jennifer’s Body (6 Oct), Scream (20 Oct) and Carrie (27 Oct). We at The Skinny get in on the act too with the return of our CineSkinny Film Club at Summerhall (13 Oct) with a retrospective of the transgressive short films of Bryan M Ferguson followed by a screening of the gorgeous chiller It Follows. We’ll also be bringing Ferguson’s retrospective to CCA in Glasgow on 25 October. Glasgow Film Theatre also get their creep on, with a Late Night showing of John Carpenter’s The Thing (28 Oct), a screening of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (still brilliant as it turns 100 years old) with a live score by David Allison (27 Oct) and a run in 4K of Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (15-20 Oct). That Nosferatu presentation also happens at Filmhouse on 19 October to kick off their Centenary! strand celebrating movies released in 1922. For the gorehound diehards, there’s All Night Horror Madness (8 Oct, Cameo), with a stellar marathon of horrors with some trailers and a raffle

Photo: Magdalena

Zehetmayr

Photo: John Mackie

Photo: Marilena Vlachopolou

Pavement

Maranta

Rina Sawayama

thrown in (more info p46). On Halloween itself, Filmhouse welcomes Kier-La Janisse, the writer of House of Psychotic Women, the iconic book on the female neurotic in cinema. Janisse will take part in a Q&A followed by a screening of The Brood

That screening is part of a wider season hosted by Matchbox Cineclub which is nestled inside Matchbox’s Weird Weekend (28-30 Oct). The eclectic lineup is teeming with weird, unheralded movies. The strand Squint looks particularly interesting. It’s composed of Frankenstein movies stitched togeth er from other works, like Soda_Kerk’s Terror Nullius, which remixes the history of Australian cinema, and Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez!, a remake of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain constructed from dog videos.

Elsewhere there’s GFT’s season dedicated to the genius costume designer Sandy Powell. The lineup includes Orlando (4&6 Oct), The Wings of the Dove (9-12 Oct), Velvet Goldmine (16-19 Oct) and The Favourite (26-26 Oct) – the first three all screen on 35mm. There’s also a whole mess of film festivals happening, including Scotland Loves Anime (21-30 Oct), Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival (1 Oct-4 Nov), Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh (15-20 Oct), Queer East Film Festival (1-6 Oct), and Edinburgh Short Film Festival (28 Oct-13 Nov).

We're also super excited to be partnering with one of our favourite film distributors, MUBI, for the release of their new film African Desperate. It's a wickedly funny satire of the art scene in New York. Channelling gonzo cinema and 1990s high-school movies, it follows an art school student navigating microaggressions and social dynamics that anyone familiar with the art world will recognise. Best of all, tickets are free. The screenings are at Cameo in Edinburgh on 18 October and at the CCA in Glasgow on 20 October. For tickets, head to theskinny.co.uk/tickets [Jamie Dunn]

Clubs

Kicking off this month in Edinburgh,', Shelflife storm The Mash House (5 Oct) with Dr Dubplate, and Miss World bring Radio 1Xtra DJ Jamz Supernova to Sneaky Pete’s on the 7th.

In Glasgow, The Berkeley Suite welcomes Rhythm Section boss Bradley Zero with support from Shakara (7 Oct) and bimonthly party Loose Joints (8 Oct) with NTS selector Lupini, joined by Parris. Bloodsport celebrate their second event there (13 Oct) with a gabber-inspired lineup including New York grind core artist Kilbourne. On 15 October, Shoot Your Shot host Dekmantel legend Job Jobse. Pop Mutations’ inaugural in-person festival (13-16 Oct) celebrates Scottish talent, bringing electric vocals, pop, and dance mania to multiple venues in Glasgow. powerpot host their second party at La Cheetah (19 Oct), with Fast Muzik royalty Joey Mousepads and DJ Fluffie making this paradise for those who like fast hardcore edits.

At Stereo on 24 Oct, Plant Bass’d celebrate the Scottish debut of Berlin’s DJ MELL G, of Juicy Gang Records. Things heat up there on 28 October with New York’s Shock Value cofounder Juliana Huxtable bringing hard pop edits, break, jungle and techno.

A big night for any electro fans, Sneaky Pete’s bring Australian producer and DJ Roza Terenzi on 20 Oct. Sneaky Pete’s also boast a huge lineup with the launch of their Installation series in the Fruitmarket Gallery (14-16, 28-30 Oct), featuring Batu, Giant Swan, AYA, TSHA, and a roster of over 20 acts. A rarity in past years, the legendary LuckyMe party closes the first weekend with Jacques Greene, Eclair Fifi, Cid Rim, and The Blessings.

Closing the month, NEED 4 SPEED present Parisian artist Lessss at Sub Club (28 Oct). [Heléna Stanton]

Art

In Glasgow, iota presents a body of new paintings by Richard Walker titled Thick (until 15 Oct), which are improvised from large-scale studio installations and projections, giving them a theatrical quality.  At David Dale, Canadabased Nadia Belerique’s first UK exhibition SLICE (until 29 Oct) features a new sculptural installation and a commissioned text by Tessa Lynch

Alongside the Norman Gilbert exhibition (until 5 Feb 2023), Tramway presents a self-titled exhibition by Poland-based Iza Tarasewicz (8 Oct-29 Jan), which draws on folk traditions and the social structures of rural communities.

South African visual activist Zanele Muholi’s ongoing photographic series Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness will be on display outside at The University of Glasgow until 6 November. At nearby Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights presents It Wisnae Us: The Truth About Glasgow and Slavery (until 31 Oct), which provides an insight into the connections between slavery and Glasgow’s built environment.

In Edinburgh’s Collective, Katie Schwab’s exhibition The Seeing

TERROR NULLIUS

Carrie

Bradley Zero

Photo: Daniel Adhami

Miss World

Subclub

Hellmouth, Richard Walker

Photo: Tiu Makkonen

Image: courtesy of the artist

Hands (8 Oct-5 Mar) features a large-scale interactive installation that encourages ‘tactile engagement and learning through play’. Over at Edinburgh Printmakers, Ornamental Mythologies by Hannah Lim undertakes an explora tion of the colonial relationship between Britain and South East Asia through the medium of printmaking. Also open this month at the gallery is Catherine Baker’s exhibition Held, which investigates the impact of medical diagnosis on individuals and communities, and how the clinical experience focuses on the biological body (until 20 Nov).

In St Andrews, Re-collecting Empire at the Wardlaw Museum examines the legacies of empire through the university’s historic collections, with new artistic responses by Alberta Whittle and Stephen McLaren (until 22 Oct)

In Dumfries and Galloway, Cample Line’s exciting programme continues with an exhibition by Yelena Popova, who has created an installation of paintings made from soil and rock collected in the local area (until 11 Dec).

[Harvey Dimond]

Theatre

October is a fantastic month to catch a show on tour. Theatres across Scotland are hosting a variety of compelling productions, as well as staging a few of their own. Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre kicks off the month with Rob Drummond’s Don’t. Make. Tea. (5-8 Oct), produced by Birds of Paradise, Scotland’s disability-led theatre company. The Traverse is also staging Martin McDonagh’s Tony Award-winning play The Beauty Queen of Leenane (19-22 Oct). Both shows fall under the Traverse’s £1 Ticket Scheme.

The Edinburgh Horror Festival (27-31 Oct) also takes the stage around Halloween time. Jen Macgregor’s Old Bones, a one-man show featuring Daniel Hird, follows James Napier as he tries anything and everything to escape his brother’s shadow.

Glasgow’s Platform continues to stage a variety of exciting productions, including Unbecoming (27 Oct), a multi-disciplinary solo show about mother hood, loss, and rage by Company of Wolves. Cutting Edge Theatre’s Downs with Love (15 Oct) follows a young girl with Down’s Syndrome as she tries to navigate love and relationships. Jordan and Skinner present their radical feminist work Time Machine (7-8 Oct), which runs at Platform before trans ferring to the Traverse in November.

Several other touring shows are worth noting: Stellar Quines’ Sister Radio (19 Oct) continues its tour this month at the Byre Theatre in St. Andrews, Glasgow’s Tron Theatre, and the Perth Theatre. The National Theatre of Scotland’s Enough of Him (from 28 Oct) will begin its tour at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Isobel McArthur’s Pride and Prejudice* (*Sort Of) will tour the country, landing at Edinburgh’s Lyceum on 18 October, and performer/songwriter Amy Duncan’s collaboration with writer/director Ben Harrison, Undertow Overflow, tours Scotland next month as well. Wonder Fools’ 549: Scots of the Spanish Civil War (until 5 Nov) also continues its tour while world-renowned choreographer Deborah Colker makes her directo rial debut with Scottish Opera’s Ainadamar. (29 Oct-12 Nov) [Rho Chung]

Poetry

This year, National Poetry Day takes place on 6 Oct with the theme of ‘the environment’ and there are plenty of events to choose from. As ever, the Forward Arts Foundation has produced an incredibly useful interactive map where you can find all sorts of events going on, from workshops and walks to performances and informal open mics.

In Dundee, on 13 Oct, poet Dan Simpson is hosting Science Poetry – workshop at the University of Dundee’s Botanic Gardens, part of a larger public engagement project, where sensory boxes were created by the School of Life Sciences staff and given to members of the public to interact with. From those interactions, Simpson has generated a poem called The Last Mill of Dundee, which he will read at this event. The sensory boxes will also be ready to see, touch, and smell at this event.

The Federation of Writers is partnering with Perth’s AK Bell Library to host two workshops on 8 Oct: Beth McDonough to lead one on writing poetry and Moira McPartlin on prose. Both will explore Scotland’s wide-ranging linguistic heritage, with the aim to create your own, personal creative lan guage for your works.

Kevin P. Gilday’s new collection, Anxiety Music, is about all sorts: a tumbling wave of words which sweeps through a marital breakdown, sexual liberation, and a life full of contemporary anxieties. Launches are taking place in both Glasgow (14 Oct, The Old Hairdressers) and Edinburgh (21 Oct, Scottish Poetry Library) this month. [Beth Cochrane]

Enough of Him

In myriads things cry out, Isa Tarasewicz

Sister Radio

Yelena Popova

The Old Hairdressers

Image: courtesy of the artist Photo: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Image: courtesy of the artist

Photo: Fraser Band

EAF LIVE – Scotland’s International Art Fair

Edinburgh Art Fair is returning to the O2 Academy Edinburgh, fka the Corn Exchange, from 17-20 Nov, after a two year hiatus

They’re bringing with them a roster of world class exhibitors alongside a programme of live music, talks and demonstrations offering an interactive and accessible visual arts experience. Over 50 gal leries from Scotland, the UK, Europe and beyond will present the work of more than 500 artists ranging from household names to emerging talent. Live events include a presentation from Prince’s official still photographer Afshin Shahidi, while the evenings will feature live music from well known local acts PORKPIE and Martin Metcalfe & The Fornicators. Refreshments from afternoon high tea to a glass of wine are provided on site with a restaurant, cafe and Art Bar in the centre of the exhibition space.

EAF LIVE: PORKPIE

Nine Piece ska band playing a mix of two-tone classics from Madness, The Specials, Bad Manners, The Beat and more.

18 Nov, 7.30pm, £15

Exhibiting galleries

Hidden Galleries, Brighton Artists exhibiting include Francis Bacon, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dali, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol. hiddengallery.co.uk

EAF LIVE: STILL-PRINCE

A presentation/talk with official still photographer to Prince, Afshin Shahidi. The American photographer will be flying in for this talk and to host an exhibition of photographs he took of the music legend.

19 Nov, 1.30pm, £7.50

a3Contemporary, Hampshire Artists exhibiting include David Cooke, Jody Craddock, Diane Haddon-Moore, Dawn Reader. a3contemporary.co.uk

Robertson Fine Art, Edinburgh

Artists exhibiting include JJ Adams, Katy Jade Dobson, Peter Howson, Gill Knight, Frank McFadden, Rebel Bear, Lynn Rodgie. robertsonfineart.com

EAF LIVE: Martin Metcalfe & The Fornicators

An acoustic set from the frontman of Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, Angelfish and The Filthy Tongues.

19 Nov, 7.30pm £15

Galerie Barrou Planquart, France

Artists exhibiting include Fred Alione, François Bel, Carole Discords, Stéphane Gautier, Sylvie Riou Marillaud, Gaspard Mitz, Mr. Cute. galeriebarrouplanquart.com

Powderhall Bronze Editions, Edinburgh

Artists exhibiting include Brian Cater, Lucy Caster, Kerry Hammond. powderhallbronzeeditions.co.uk

Arte in Europa, East Lothian

Artists exhibiting include Louise Giblin, Danielle Hewlett, Giampiero Malgioglio, Vincenzo Romeo, James Grossman, Norrie Harman, Miss AL Simpson, Marco Tamburro, Martin Metcalfe. arteineuropa.com

EAF LIVE – Scotland’s International Art Fair, O2 Academy Edinburgh, 17-20 Nov, tickets from £5 artedinburgh.com/tickets

Photo: Alan Wild

David Hockney, Pool hand drawn lithograph

Dawn Reader, The Breakthrough

Peter Howson, Plebs

Brian Caster, Medium Apple Bite

François Bel, Little box San Francisco

Vincenzo Romeo, Signs

Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) share the programme they’ve coor dinated for this year’s Black History Month

22 Curator Natasha Thembiso Ruwona talks storytelling, museum spaces and connecting communities.

25 We meet Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill, authors of the upcoming Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland.

Tanatsei Gambura and Briana Pegado discuss their experi ence of working in the Scottish creative industries.

30 How Disco revolutionised music (and doesn’t get the respect it deserves.)

34 Glasgow-based writer and editor Heather Parry introduc es her debut, Orpheus Builds a Girl

36 As Björk releases Fossora, her tenth studio album, we take a look across her back catalogue.

42 Gilla Band, fka Girl Band, on their experimental new album Most Normal

46 As All Night Horror Madness returns for its 15th edition we take a tour through its allstar lineup.

49 Icíar Bollaín discusses Maixa bel, her drama about a victim of terrorism, showing at Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival.

53 We talk to Scottish Opera about their magical new season.

54 A chat on hoe culture and Human Error with eternal cool girl comedian Olga Koch

On the website...

A bunch of album reviews we weren’t allowed to put in print (Arctic Monkeys, The 1975 et al), our weekly Spotlight On… features on new Scottish music, a gondolafull of reviews from Venice Film Festival, and all the latest on The SAY Award 2022 as and when it happens…

Black History Month

Illustrations: Saturn

This October we’re celebrating Black History Month. We start with an in-depth look at this year’s programme, courtesy of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, who offer an insight into their nuanced approach to drawing together events across the nation reflecting the depth of Black history in Scotland. Tomiwa Folorunso talks to curator Natasha Thembiso Ruwona about Our Stories Between the Myths and Memories, a weekend event in Blantyre’s David Livingstone Birthplace Museum platforming creative practitioners from the African Scottish diaspora in a series of performances, discussions and workshops.

Authors of the upcoming Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland, Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill, reflect on the act of recording Black Scottish history, and we meet cultural practitioners Tanatsei Gambura and Briana Pegado to learn about their experience of working in the country’s creative industries. Decolonisation is an essential conversation across artforms, particuarly within institutional contexts – we visit one exhibition engaging with the collections of St Andrews’ Wardlaw Museum, exploring the legacy of empire.

Poster Artist

Nico Utuk is a photographer based in Edinburgh, but with Nigerian roots. He is a keen photographer with the intention of capturing details, documenting moments, people and places he comes across in a manner that is true and honest.

nicoutuk.com

I: @nico_utuk

Programming History

We take a closer look at Scotland's Black History Month programme, and explore its museum spaces, accessibility, and nuanced approach to engaging with history

Interview: Eilidh Akilade

Illustrations: Saturn

There’s such depth to Black history. It is complex and joyful and oftentimes painful –but it is also so often buried by centuries of violent colonialism coupled with a particularly unhelpful strain of white guilt. Black History Month, taking place in October every year, pushes back against this erasure.

Since 2001, CRER (Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights) have coordinated Black History Month in Scotland. It’s a collaborative programme, with participation from multiple charities, community groups, and heritage organi sations. In this, Nelson Cummins, CRER’s Black History Month Coordinator, hopes “the programme reaches and involves as many people as possible.” Such collaboration also ensures that the month resists a hegemony upon history. There is no fixed narrative; rather, multiple voices and stories converge together, all speaking to Black history in their own distinct way.

But coming together is crucial in more ways than one. “It’s also quite a political month,” says Cummins. Whether platforming issues such as police brutality or the lack of Black history educa tion in schools, Black History Month is key for involving both the public and various organisations on anti-racist campaigning and action.

As part of the wider movement to improve how museums engage with Black history, October is essential, offering a focus through which direct change can be implemented. Cummins notes just how valuable

Scotland’s many free museums are to access to culture, and, specifically, to Black History Month itself. “I think it’s important to bear in mind that museums are really important spaces for telling stories of identity, for telling stories of Black history.” Museums are, of course, complex spaces, usually built upon a colonial slant. However, simultaneously, they’re also spaces where stories are granted a physicality and a presence that can aid the preservation of histories.

In a Scottish context, there’s much to think and rethink on our approach to museums and Black history. “It’s important to acknowledge the ways in which Black history in Scotland is unique... unique to Scotland as a place and [as a] history, whilst acknowledging there are lots of different ways in which the approach to Black history in Scotland can learn from the approach to Black history in other places,” says Cummins. As such, Museum of Empire and Slavery (4 Oct, 5.30pm) sees CRER joined by Liverpool’s International Museum of Slavery and Washington’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), providing a crucial discussion envi sioning a Scottish museum of slavery and empire.

“It’s not actually too hard for a lot of museum spaces in Scotland to find something in their collections or in their space that speaks to some thing in Black history,” says Cummins. “And I think that’s what’s been quite positive.” Crucially, there’s Black history within these collections that wasn’t stolen from African nations amid violent colonial exploits. Simply, Black history is a part of Scottish history. The notion that it’s not is a fallacy, prop ping up both white nationalist ideologies and the nation’s inclination towards a particularly

damaging exceptionalism.

There are, of course, areas of Black history that aren’t so well documented and mediums that rarely explore Blackness in a Scottish context. “We realised actually finding films that have a focus on Black Scottish history was very difficult. And even though there are some very good ones, it’s very difficult,” explains Cummins. This year, Glasgow Film Theatre’s Black History Month programme includes titles such as The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show (10 Oct, 6.15pm) and the much-loved Burning an Illusion (17 Oct, 5.30pm). Although the programme doesn’t feature films exploring specifically Black Scottish history, it’s crucial that Black stories are still being shared on the big screen. “It’s an important chance to be able to use those events to ask that question of why there aren’t more films about Black history in Scotland,” says Cummins.

Nelson Cummins, Black History Month Coordinator at CRER

“It's important to acknowledge the ways in which Black history in Scotland is unique...unique to Scotland as a place and [as a] history”

Noting gaps in past programmes has been key to approaching this year’s one. Scotland’s culture scene loves Glasgow and Edinburgh, almost obsessively so. While they may be the coun try’s biggest cities, this fixation contributes to a damaging exclusion. Participation in Black History Month – or any cultural event, for that matter –should not require an all-too-pricey ScotRail journey. Accessibility is always of the utmost importance. And, crucially, Scotland’s Black history existed and exists outwith that thin, horizontal strap of the Central Belt. Testament to this, community-based research group Woven Together Dundee share some of their findings on Dundee’s links to slavery for a special live event at the University of Dundee (12 Oct, 6.30pm). Meanwhile, events in smaller towns – such as the JOM Charity’s Black History Month exhibition in Kirkintilloch (1-31 Oct, excluding Sundays)  – are a reminder that Black history is not bound to city borders. For Cummins, the future must see their scope further widened still. “Even though it’s positive to see a lot of the events that we have outside of Glasgow and Edinburgh and outside of museums and university space, I think there’s probably still more work to do to reach more community organisations as well.”

It’s a programme that has very clearly been structured in tune with the realities of people’s lives in more ways than one. So many cultural events span weekends and weekdays, with talks and workshops scheduled at all hours. But, for many, weekdays are filled with emails and back-to-back meetings, with little time for a tea break, never mind a workshop on decolonisation. Instead of 11am panel discussions and 3pm walking tours, the programme caters to its audience with an emphasis on lunchtime and evening events on weekdays.

Like all events over the past two years, Black History Month had to adapt to COVID regulations.  “It was very Zoom-heavy,” says Cummins. This had its benefits, ensuring even those in the further corners of Scotland can participate. However, the return to in-person is highly welcome. Black History Month is as much rooted in our present connections as it is our past ones.

There’s a certain ritual to the aftermath of an event. Shuffling past a group of people, you catch a comment, someone’s throwaway thought that brings new meaning to the event. Offering a shy smile, an inaudible ‘thank you’, to a speaker who has guided you for the past hour. Whether in a bathroom queue or a congested doorway, small talk may slip into something more weighty, becom ing something to hold on to amid everything else. For the African diaspora in Scotland, these inci dental moments of connection are invaluable –there are, simply put, not all that many of us, and events such as these are not all that common. There’s a physicality that, although not always necessary, is certainly much desired; after all, there is only so much connection over the pixelat ed screen of a Zoom call. The importance of in-person events returning for Black History Month this year cannot be overstated. However, the programme still has many online-only or hybrid events. For instance, the African Caribbean Elders in Scotland society (ACES) will share extracts from their recent book project, celebrating the lives and experiences of African and Caribbean communi ties in Scotland, while also reflecting on racism within the same country. It’s truly a programme that looks to inclusion, rather than exclusion.

It’s crucial that all ages can engage too. For children aged five to 12, Josie Ko’s October Holiday Workshops explore Black histories and stories through art. “It is so important to educate the next generation of children about the importance of Black History Month and give them the knowledge to know the truth behind the city they are growing up in. This is an education that I lacked growing up and so many adults still continue to not be edu cated about,” says Ko. The workshops will see participants respond to imagery that links to Glasgow’s colonial past as well as tying in GOMA’s recent Revisiting the Work of Black Artists in Scotland Through New Collecting, which plat formed the work of Black artists who have lived or worked in Scotland. “Art allows us to think while making and inspires really interesting conversa tions, no matter how young you are.”

There is no one way to engage with Black history and this year’s programme truly reflects this. A walking tour of Dundee, Breaking the Chains (13 Oct, 11am; 19 Oct 2.30pm), explores the city’s economy in relation to slavery through visiting locations where enslaved people publicly spoke, sharing their experiences. Amid multiple walking tours in Glasgow, the programme also includes bike tours by Bike For Good (4 & 18 Oct, 5pm-6.30pm; 11 & 25 October, 1.30-3pm), exploring Glaswegian involvement and participation in transatlantic slavery. A little more grounded

roundtable discussion

Seeds of Change (28 Oct, 7-8pm) explores the impact of empire and transat lantic trade upon Scotland’s horticulture. Held at Beacon Arts Centre, Southern Fried (22 Oct, 11am-1pm) sees Dr Peggy Brunache lead a work shop celebrating the cooking of enslaved people in the Caribbean, the food facilitating new insight into their histories. Encouraging active participa tion, the programme ensures the fullness of Black history is truly understood, and not simply witnessed.

For CRER, the month is also a celebration, providing an opportunity to find joy in Black history and within Black communities. Particularly unmissable is Shades: Black and Queer Cabaret, performed in both Edinburgh (15 Oct, 6pm) and Stirling (13 Oct, 7.30pm) venues. The eclectic cabaret pulls together a range of performing arts, all in celebration of Black and queer stories. Expect something striking, joyful, and moving.

It’s set to be a month of coming together, reflecting together, and learning together. One month is never, and will never, be enough time to fully explore Black history. The hope, however, is that Black History Month will lay the groundwork for further much-needed anti-racist discussion and action in Scotland throughout the year. This October certainly seems to put such hope in good stead.

Find out more about this year’s programme at blackhistorymonthscotland.org

- in-person at Glasgow's Hudden Gardens, on online via Facebook - roundtable discussion...

Tell Us A Story

Interview: Tomiwa Folorunso

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona and I meet over Zoom – her from the living room of her Glasgow flat, me from my apartment in Brussels. It’s a set-up I know well. The two of us have worked closely together since 2020 and meet – virtually – at least once a week.

On Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 October, Natasha – a Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, research er, and creative programmer – has programmed Our Stories Between the Myths and Memories at the David Livingstone Birthplace Museum in Blantyre. The two-day programme, a partnership between the museum and The Skinny, will explore storytelling through fiction, history, poetry, dance, and music, with workshops hosted by creative practitioners from the African Scottish diaspora.

Located south-east of Glasgow, the David Livingstone Birthplace overlooks the River Clyde and is surrounded by sprawling grounds. Livingstone was born in a small tenement flat in Shuttle Row and this building is now the inde pendent museum dedicated to preserving and re-examining the legacy of the missionary, explor er, and abolitionist in a contemporary context.

“In my initial chats with David Livingstone Birthplace and The Skinny, we were thinking about how to bring communities into the space and what brings people together,” Natasha explains to me. Through reflecting on the stories that the David Livingstone Birthplace are telling, the stories artists of the African Scottish diaspora are telling, and how these can act as bridges between people, storytelling became the overall theme.

“Stories are often a mixture of myth or fact based on a truth that has been altered in different ways,” Natasha continues. “Often museums become storytellers themselves, selecting different parts of history and erasing others.” A museum is not a neutral space. And so, as a programmer, how does she navigate the challenges and difficulties of working with, and holding space for others in an institution that may have contributed to this erasure?

“I guess it is quite difficult,” she says. “I think I’m generally a bit wary about working with institutions, especially museums and galleries. But I have worked with the museum as a researcher for

most of this year. I really believe in the work they’re doing and their interrogation of David Livingstone’s legacy. The ways that they are approaching this history, answering questions, provoking alternative ways of thinking about how important figures are upheld, and their relationship to national identity feels genuine.”

Natasha and I often discuss the pressures and challenges of working with long-standing institutions. “I don’t think going into spaces with the intention of changing them is ever healthy,” says Natasha, during our chat. “I think it’s just looking at different institutions and institutional practices and thinking, what can be of benefit here? What can be left behind? And, what hap pens when you create a space for people and give them that space? What will they do with it, and what do they want to do with it?”

Interested in the opportunities to raise new questions and challenge narratives when bringing  contemporary storytellers into a historical environ ment, Natasha didn’t enter this role with a grand curatorial vision of what the weekend should look like. Rather, the weekend was approached with a certain openness:  “What does this mean now, and where do we go in the future with that? It’s interesting to have all these different points in time sit together. And I think the contributions will speak to that.”

It is also interesting to have multiple types of creative contributions sit together outside of the Central Belt, and in a space that is traditionally focused on consuming knowledge rather than artistic expressions.

On the Saturday, I will be hosting a panel discussion exploring storytelling across different

cultures and communities. Followed by a comic book workshop held by Glasgow-based filmmaker and writer Etienne Kubwabo, creator of Beats of War, a comic series featuring Scotland’s first Black superhero. Interwoven throughout the day will be readings from layla-roxanne hill and Inga Dale followed by a closing Dance Party hosted by Jambo! Radio.

Sunday’s focus is on decolonisation, featuring two ‘in-conversation’ events, the first with artist Adebusola Ramsay and the second between Natasha and Clementine Burnley, exploring Scottish and African connections through collabo rative writing. There will be live music from the Congolese Gig Group before the weekend will be closed with a performance by Ashanti Harris.

The range of art within the programme reflects Natasha’s feeling that the weekend should  not be over stimulating or too heavy for audiences. Conversations about decolonisation are neces sary – but so is having space to breathe and connect. “I think that, for me, a big part of being a curator is creating and holding that space for people to be with each other. Ultimately, I want people to relax and have a good time, listen to performances, be part of conversations and dance!” says Natasha. “Being able to bring togeth er so many different voices into one project that speak to the breadth of Scottish talent and the Black creative community really excites me.”

Our Stories Between the Myths and Memories, David Lingstone Birthplace, Blantyre, Sat 22 Oct & Sun 23 Oct

Tickets are free from eventbrite.co.uk

Looking to the upcoming event Our Stories Between the Myths and Memories, we speak to curator Natasha Thembiso Ruwona about storytelling, museum spaces, and connecting communities

“Often museums become storytellers themselves, selecting different parts of history and erasing others”

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona

Beats

Image: courtesy of the artist

Image: courtesy of the artist

Here and Now

How have Black people’s lives in Scotland changed over the years? Francesca Sobande and layla-roxanne hill, authors of the upcoming Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland, reflect on acknowledging and archiving Black Scottish history.

Scottish history has been the source of much media, political, and academic discussion. There are degree programmes dedicated to the study of it and institutions that focus on celebrating it. However, “Black Scottish history” are three words seldom said together in Scotland, let alone anywhere else.

And so, we wrote Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland. When researching and writing we learned about Black Scottish history from inter generational conversations, revelatory media, and the writing, creative work, and activism of Black people such as Mary Osei-Oppong, Charmaine Blaze, and Kubara Zamani.

Our time spent scouring archives in Scotland and online also saw us poring over papers and press clippings. The material that we came across painted a resonant but incomplete picture of Black Scottish life which left us thinking about how Black Scottish history has been treated by Scotland.

Although there is scarce acknowledgement of it in many public spheres, Black Scottish history is alive and kicking. Founded by Lisa Williams, the Edinburgh Caribbean Association has worked extensively to foreground Scotland’s Black history, particularly through insightful Black History Walks.

The legacy of individuals such as Sandra George, whose photography and community-oriented work enriched the lives of many people in Scotland, sheds light on Black Scottish history and the artistic practices that are part of it. So too does the contem porary photographic work of Najma Hussein Abukar, which features throughout the book.

Other crucial efforts to understand and document Black history in Scotland include the University of Edinburgh doctoral thesis of June Evans, who in 1995 wrote about African/ Caribbeans in Scotland: a socio-geographical study. Such research, writing, art, and action by

Black people in Scotland has paved a path that must be acknowledged. That path itself is Black Scottish history, forming one of its many parts.

Even though Black people’s presence in Scotland spans centuries, when growing up in the early 90s public recognition of this was lacking. A lot has changed since then. Still, acknowledgement of Black Scottish history needs to extend much further beyond Black History Month, traumatising media depictions, and tired tropes such as the archetypal ‘strong’ and ‘respectable’ Black person.

Whether it takes the form of much-loved family ephemera that is passed on to generations or curated public archives, Black history courses through the veins of Scotland. History is sometimes associated with documents that gather dust and events that are archaic, but history is also being made in this moment. It is found in the experiences of recent memory and forged through carefully cultivated archival practices in the here and now.

All too often, history is assumed to be old and the presence of Black people in Scotland is assumed to be new or temporary. Even well-mean ing statements in support of Black people can reinforce an image of Scottish history as being entirely white, betraying the reality of Scotland and Black people’s experience of it.

As Black Oot Here addresses, the complicat ed intersections of racial and national identity include the different ways that notions of nation hood, Scottishness, and Britishness are implicated in the lives of Black people in Scotland, and how such lives are (or are not) discussed in work on Scottish history and Black British history.

The fullness of Black Scottish history must be acknowledged and archived, and not just via a gawping white gaze. This means that chronicling Black Scottish history, without reinforcing classist and racist respectability politics, entails pushing against the notion of there being a single authority on what it means to be Black in Scotland.

There is no sole expert whose shoulders, alone, carry the weight or wisdom of Black Scottish history. Stating this does not diminish the work, labour, and expertise of those commit ted to challenging how Black Scottish history has been sidelined and treated as a spectacle. Rather, we understand Black Scottish history and the archiving of it as collective work that does not, and should not, belong to a single individual or institution.

An understanding of Black Scottish history that solely focuses on words said by those with power – social, political, economic, or otherwise – is a painfully partial understanding of it. Sure, Black Scottish history includes the history of people praised for how they contributed to the shape of Scotland, but it also includes the history of the

everyday lives of people who have not been celebrated by institu tions or tokenistically framed as ‘role models’.

Mindful of this, Black Oot Here includes accounts of life in Scotland by many different Black people, and not only public figures or individuals with institutional affiliations. We bring together interviews, survey responses, photography and analysis of media and archived material as part of how we reflect on Black Scottish history, while carefully considering the future that may lie ahead.

The pulse of Black Scottish history is found in the present – from how people are shaping Scotland’s activist and media landscape to the way that Black creativity in Scotland is gaining global attention. Such creativity includes the artwork of Fadzai Mwakutuya, a visual artivist based in the Scottish Highlands, who explores unconventional mark-making techniques. Through work such as this, art and archiving meet in dynamic ways that defy assumptions about both. Many activities like these are led and sustained by grassroots initiatives that rarely receive substan tial funding support, and whose work is often overlooked or obstructed by institutions that lay claim to Scotland and its history.

Put simply, Black Scottish history is not hidden in plain sight. Instead, the making, impact, and archiving of such history occurs in many spaces, and is happening right now. Will Scotland’s future involve more institutions converting their Black Lives Matter (BLM) statements of support into sustainable action? Will we see the day that Black Scottish history is consistently taught across all stages of education in Scotland? That remains to be determined, but what is undeniable is that Black people have been, and are, oot here.

Scotland still has much work to do if Black Scottish history is to be treated as more than a mere footnote. But make no mistake: regardless of whether such work happens, Black people in and from Scotland will continue to write about, crea tively document, and archive Black Scottish history – and for that, we are thankful.

Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland can be purchased from Bloomsbury

The following 30% discount code can be used at the check out: BOHFSLRH22

“Whether it takes the form of much-loved family ephemera that is passed on to generations or curated public archives, Black history courses through the veins of Scotland”

The Artist is Present

The Skinny meets Tanatsei Gambura and Briana Pegado, two of Scotland’s leading cultural practitioners, to discuss their experience of working in the Scottish creative industries

Interview: Harvey Dimond

Briana Pegado’s current body of work, titled The Artist is Mourning, has been evolving since the end of 2021. In this evocative work, she deals with the grief following the loss of her father two years ago, and how this experience of grief intersects with the role of technology in our lives. The work was first exhibited during a self-initiated residency at Sierra Metro (a gallery and co-working space in Leith led by Janine Matheson) and explores the human relationship to death using found footage from Canva. Pegado thinks through her father’s death and burial, which she experienced over Zoom – an experience that

will be familiar to many people who could not physically be with their loved ones due to the social restrictions during the pandemic. The work explores the morality of our relationship to tech nology in relation to sacred events or rituals, but for her it is also “a love letter to my father, my best friend, and a celebration of his life as well as the questions that his death unearths.”

As well as her practice as an artist, Glasgowbased Pegado is also a theta energy healer and

part of Shades: A Queer Black Cabaret show at the Macrobert in Stirling and Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh on the 13 and 15 of October respectively. The show accompanies the OMOS (Our Movements Our Stories) exhibition, which has been touring across Scotland for the last year and is currently on display at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Edinburgh and Harare-based Tanatsei Gambura also has an expansive and multi-faceted practice that draws attention to some of the most

Briana Pegado

The Artist Is Mourning

Briana Pegado

Image: courtesy of the artist

Image: courtesy of the artist

languages.” Her work is grounded in scholarly research, but as a social practitioner she also foregrounds collaboration and exchange. Her practice is concerned with issues of “land, settlercolonial logic, and indigeneity, striving to establish how decolonial artistic research figures as a radical methodology.” She also works as a pro grammer and producer in film exhibition, gallery programmes, and community arts.

In September, she was one of three artists selected to produce a commission for Art Walk Porty, as part of Natasha Ruwona’s residency for the festival titled Endless / Belly. Gambura’s work, titled When We Come Out of the Water, bears witness to the fatal and violent interactions of Black people with bodies of water in the wake of imperial violence, pulling focus to the bodies of enslaved African people in the Atlantic and the contemporary refugee crisis in the Mediterranean simultaneously. Over two days, the public was invited to leave flowers at the Portobello band stand, an act of communal grieving for the many Black lives lost at sea. The commission also draws attention to the vulnerability of Black and indig enous communities in the unfolding climate crisis.

Gambura is currently working on an exciting commission for the Managing Imperial Legacies project, in collaboration with The University of Edinburgh and other Scottish organisations. She is also leading a Wikipedia Editathon this month, in collaboration with Fruitmarket Gallery, Wikimedia UK and the National Galleries of Scotland, with the aim of “addressing barriers to access and visibility that groups of artists face whilst diversi fying Wikipedia’s online archive.”

Both artists are clear about their relationship with arts institutions in Scotland. Pegado

describes how, two years ago, she was bullied out of her job at a major arts organisation in Scotland because she reported an incidence of racism. Although this experience will be familiar to people of colour who work in the arts across the UK, it sets a frightening and alarming precedent for the job security and mental health of Black people employed in the creative industries in Scotland. She describes many institutions as still being reliant on “tokenism and placation”, instead of “redistributing power to disrupt existing systemic and structural barriers for Black people.” Despite her experiences, she continues to work as an anti-racism and governance consultant, but only with institutions that “approach me with respect for my time by way of payment and respect my challenge through fostering a culture of learning.”

The treatment of Black women in the UK’s creative industries was put under the spotlight this year with the case of Jade Montserrat, who made allegations of sexual abuse against the art dealer Anthony d’Offay in 2018. It was later revealed that Tate refused an artist’s request to work with Montserrat because of these allegations, with Tate’s director Maria Balshaw reported to have descibed her as “hostile” because of Montserrat’s public critique of d’Offay and Tate. Earlier this year, Tate paid a settlement to Montserrat and two other artists, who had filed a lawsuit against the institution for racial discrimination, harassment and victimisation. This case revealed the extent of institutional racism and abuse that is still business-as-usual and maintains the status quo – an art world that remains predominantly white and male.

Although deep-rooted problems of nepotism, privilege and whiteness remain in Scotland’s

creative industries, both artists see positive changes being made in the wake of the pandemic. Gambura notes how much kinder people have been since the onset of the pandemic, and how she’s “received so much understanding from others who are actively making space for people who have diverse needs and atypical rhythms of communicating.” Meanwhile, Pegado can see “more money, time, and resources being invested in supporting Black and POC led initiatives”, although this investment could go further. She notes the fantastic work of We Are Here Scotland (Pegado co-directed the organisation for a year with current director Ica Headlam), who ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to fund Black creatives and creatives of colour to produce work.

“Although deeprooted problems of nepotism, privilege and whiteness remain in Scotland’s creative industries, both artists see positive changes being made in the wake of the pandemic”

Hand wash only, Tanatsei Gambura

Tanatsei Gambura

Image: courtesy of the artist

Image: courtesy of Ellie Morag

Reimagining the Museum

Words: Beth James

Re-collecting Empire addresses the entan gled histories and implications of colonial ism using the historic collection at the Wardlaw Museum. A wide array of objects from the museum’s collection are displayed throughout the exhibition space, complemented by contempo rary voices, perspectives, and artistic responses that challenge the dominant history of colonialism that has often reduced the cultural importance of such objects. The exhibition is part of a wider project across the University of St. Andrews, with the aim of examining and critiquing the univer sity’s relationship to empire and colonialism in order to create a more equitable institution.

The exhibition aims to engage the public in important conversations surrounding colonial histories and their contemporary repercussions. Museum collections make for a rich starting point when it comes to acknowledging cultural institu tions as perpetrators of colonial ideologies throughout their history. The exhibition intends to address, explore, and hopefully rewrite the entan gled histories that connect the museum with the British Empire and the colonial project. While there is little information on the provenance of many of the objects in the Wardlaw’s collections, the intention to tackle the imbalance of historical and cultural accuracy is an important move.

Re-collecting Empire marks a move away from centering the dominant historical narrative, in a search to better understand and present

collections that are from different cultures and peoples. The exhibition demonstrates this by admitting that mistakes will be made in the curatorial process, and that this is an ongoing project intended to influence future collection and exhibition practices. Stations around the gallery ask the audience to either write an answer to the question ‘What does empire mean to you?’ to be displayed alongside the exhibition, or to write a new caption for one of the objects exhibited.

Alongside the objects on display are quotes by contemporary figures such as historian David Olusoga, who says: “The empire was an extractive, exploitative, racist and violent institution and the history of empire is one we need to confront and come to terms with, rather than celebrate.”

Meanwhile, political scientist Ariadne Collins says “Empire is about power – the power to take and the power to expand through violence and discipline, while repressing and marginalising that which is deemed unsuitable to its extremely imposed de mands.” These quotes are splashed across the walls of the exhibition, in stark contrast to the more rigid ways in which the museum’s objects have histori cally been recorded, archived, and displayed. Placing importance upon these voices emphasises the need for intervention in museum practice, especially when it comes to addressing colonial histories.

The active, open-ended nature of the project is evidenced in the display of an object that simply has the caption, ‘hand bell’ and is noted as being

from China. When the item came into the muse um’s possession, very little information accompa nied it. There was no information as to how it was acquired or where in China it had come from. However, after discussions with the wider public in an attempt to understand this object more, it was discovered that it was not a ‘hand bell’ as record ed, but rather part of a larger set of bells that would have been played with hammers during special ceremonies. Only through an outward, public discussion was the true cultural importance of this object understood and shared.  Artist, curator, and researcher Alberta Whittle, who is representing Scotland in the 59th Venice Biennale this year, was commissioned to create a new set of prints for the exhibition. Whittle’s work is motivated by a desire to battle anti-Blackness through acts of self-compassion and collective care. Through the lens of Whittle’s Barbadian-Scottish heritage, her work engages with the lasting effects of colonialism and empire in the diaspora. The new work commissioned for Re-collecting Empire was created in response to objects in the museum’s collection. The colours used in the prints, titled The Conjuror, are reminis cent of those used on signs in the Caribbean to advertise parties, with gradients of vivid pink and blue. This link to Caribbean society and hospitality highlights the exclusive nature of colonialism’s impact in a contemporary context – who is wel come and who is not? Whose voice can be heard and whose voice is silenced?

Re-collecting Empire continues until 22 Oct at the Wardlaw Museum, University of St. Andrews

Beth James reflects on the Wardlaw Museum’s current exhibition Re-collecting Empire, which focuses on the legacy of empire in the museum’s collections

“Re-collecting Empire marks a move away from centering the dominant historical narrative, in a search to better understand and present collections that are from different cultures and peoples”

Image: courtesy of the University of St. Andrews

Re-Collecting-Empire

A Disco Revolution

Disco revolutionised music, but often still doesn’t get the respect it deserves. We take a look back at the history of the genre and highlight some of the trailblazers who changed the face of music forever

Interview: Chlo Spinks

Illustration: Karin Söderquist

In 1979, disco dominated the music industry.

Saturday Night Fever won the Grammy for album of the year, Donna Summer’s Bad Girls album spent six weeks at number one, and only a quarter of the top 20 charting songs that year weren’t disco tracks. For the first time in a long time, a Black genre was being recognised as a majority, and other artists and genres were forced to make room.

Then came the ‘Disco Sucks’ movement, culminating in the inconceivable violence of Disco Demolition Night. Disco records were burned in flaming piles and barbaric riots broke out – all in the name of hatred of disco music. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh explained Disco Demolition Night soon after it occurred as follows: “White males, 18 to 34, are the most likely to see disco as the product of homosexuals, Blacks, and Latins, and therefore they’re the most likely to respond to appeals to wipe out such threats to their security. It goes almost without saying that such appeals are racist and sexist.”

This isn’t an ambitious stretch, considering

DJ Steve Dahl, who spearheaded the movement, said “Midwesterners didn’t want that intimidating [disco] style shoved down their throats,” about a genre largely focused on love, acceptance and celebration.

To put this into perspective, consider if the same happened to punk music – a more threaten ing, aggressive, political genre also rising in the late 70s, but claimed by white people. There would’ve been no chance for a second wave or diversification, no way to fix a ‘problematic’ genre, just one day it would’ve been destroyed, with fans threatened into silence. You couldn’t imagine it.

Of the top 20 singles each year following, there were four disco tracks in 1980, one in 1981, and none in 1982. Disco’s ashes were the bed for new growth, with genres as contrasting as yacht rock and old-school hip-hop borrowing from the genre’s traits. But in reality disco never died – it continued underground until the world was ready for it, and now the modern attitude towards it, while still tainted, is entirely different.

Disco has been experiencing its redemption arc in the past decade, with artists like Dua Lipa, Kylie Minogue and Lizzo catapulting what are essentially disco tracks back into the charts, supporting the triumphant return of acts such as Chic, Sister Sledge, and even Boney M as they share new releases. But there is still a prevalent bias against disco, with its impact largely unrecognised, and musical trailblazers not truly receiving the respect they deserve. Disco deserves more recognition.

What impact did the genre have?

Before disco music, social dancing was strictly heterosexual, with participants needing to bring

someone of the opposite sex to enter a club or dancefloor to perform structured dances. Disco dancing allowed individuals to join the floor for the first time, creating a free and expressive crowd, meaning non-heterosexual partners could dance together (something that was illegal in New York until 1971). This had massive implications for not only the future of social dancing, but for LGBT+ people.

Disco also popularised DJing, remixing and a substantial amount of technology and techniques that we still use today. Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer’s I Feel Love (sampled on Summer Renaissance on Beyoncé’s recent Renaissance al bum, fyi) was the first disco song with a purely synthesised instrumental, with Moroder’s synthe siser usage directly inspiring the EDM genre. Disco normalised intricate arrangements of as many as 64 tracks – at the time 16, 24 and 32 track record ers were studio standard – and introduced 10” and 12” singles, allowing for significantly longer songs instead of conforming to the three-minute stand ard. Disco even popularised hi-fi sound systems, allowing for bass and treble control, disciplining future DJing legends like Frankie Knuckles.

Nile Rodgers of the band Chic may possibly be the most influential figure in music history, but there’s a severe lack of knowledge or respect surrounding his legacy. Nile Rodgers introduced the ‘chucking’ style of guitar which permeated so far into disco that it became a defining characteristic of the genre. Chic’s Le Freak was Atlantic Records’ first triple platinum selling single, and Good Times has become one of the most sampled songs of all time, with the track’s bassline literally prompting the inception of hip-hop on Rapper’s Delight.

“Disco is one of the most joyful forms of music. It’s all about dancing and having a good time. You can’t kill that”

Tanya Tiet, Sister Sledge

Rodgers has written countless film and video game soundtracks, started numerous charities and philanthropic organisations, and yet only received his first Grammy in 2014 for his contribution to Daft Punk's Get Lucky Get Lucky, one of the UK’s biggest-selling singles of all time. He was first awarded ‘recognition’ for his contributions in 2005, joined the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, and was admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017… but only after 11 unsuccess ful nominations. It seems that only recently are we as a society recovering from the damage of Disco Demolition Night and recognising the genre’s importance.

Nile Rodgers wrote and produced for David Bowie, Madonna and Diana Ross, amongst many others. He was also a key figure in launching Sister Sledge, another pioneering act borne from disco.

While a taste of femininity was seen in the rise of glam rock, the music culture in the first half

of the 70s was extremely masculine, talent-fo cused, and serious. Groups like Led Zeppelin, Eagles and Pink Floyd were considered ‘real music’, with female acts being left to choose between accepting this masculine power or rejecting it to perform soft femininity. Sister Sledge were an early group to reject this ultima tum, suggesting people can actually be empow ered by their femininity.

This is immediately clear when faced with the group. In conversation with Sister Sledge, their majestic conduct makes it clear that they understand their worth, but their contagious joy and welcoming attitude offsets anything that could be misconstrued as conceit. “What we are trying to do is, well, not try but to actually be,” Debbie Sledge notes. “I am a woman, I’m feminine, and I don’t have to do anything about that, I just have to be.”

“We learn from our strengths, but we learn from our vulnerabilities too,” Tanya Tiet adds, “the joy is just as real, both on and off stage, we are just enjoying life.”

This unapologetically joyous attitude cuts to the core of disco – celebrating what otherwise may be (wrongly) shunned allows others to be uplifted too. “There is strength in unity,” Debbie explains. “Joy really does have a place in our music. It’s a

main part that we want to share.”

Hearing them speak, it feels almost ironic that a group so focused on joy, connection and celebration would have to face something as repressive and hateful as Disco Demolition Night. When the topic is brought up the room fills with dismissive laughter. “The people who tried to start that up… Where are they today?” Debbie asks, to which her daughter Camille responds: “They’re probably out dancing in the audience right now.”

“You can’t demolish disco!” Tiet laughs. “In my opinion, disco is one of the most joyful forms of music. It’s all about dancing and having a good time. You can’t kill that.”

It can be easy to dismiss Sister Sledge as “just another disco act”, but blooming as confi dently feminine, inclusive and celebratory in a hostile musical climate was a brave and trailblaz ing act. Even now, with their newest release Free, Sister Sledge still preach radical acceptance: “It’s about being yourself, about going all the way and going for it to find what’s inside of you, and to be happy with what you find.”

On the surface, disco has influenced the technical posibilities of music, but at its core disco brings light, comfort and hope. Its impact cannot be undermined – and without it, the world would be a very different place.

“There is strength in unity”

Debbie Sledge, Sister Sledge

Telling Stories

Words: Rho Chung

This month, the Scottish International Storytelling Festival is bringing over 240 events to Scotland. The festival sports a host of online and in-person events, centred in Edinburgh but also accessible throughout Scotland. This year’s festival falls in conjunction with Scotland’s Year of Stories, and it celebrates Scotland’s rich tradition of oral history and live storytelling. Keep It Lit, the theme for this year's edition, highlights the potential of Scottish culture as a ground for solidarity, community, and collective memory. SISF ‘invites everyone to the ceilidh’ – the festival promises to be a multicul tural feast of stories for all ages. But it isn’t just storytelling: SISF offers a programme of performances, screenings, music, workshops, and more to pique the interest of audiences throughout Scotland and beyond.

The 2022 edition builds upon the power of stories to traverse boundaries: their scope is ‘local, national, global’, and a rich programme of diverse events offers something for everyone. The festival opens with a concert on 14 October, titled Speak Out the Other. This concert will focus on the intersection of queer identities with Scottish folklore – their otherness, their mutability, and their capacity for belonging. This bold and interactive concert will be performed by members of the Young Edinburgh Storytellers (YES).

On the stage set by the opening concert, SISF will host a series of events following the theme Interpreting Scotland. These events invite artists to explore contemporary issues through the lens of stories and folklore. During a period of such rapid and unpredictable change, art and oral history are para mount in understanding and navigating our environment.

SISF is offering a wide variety of other events. On 16 October, SISF will host an event titled Fàilte Gu BSL | Welcome to BSL, a collaborative performance exploring the intersection between Gaelic and British Sign Language. On 18 October, audiences will be treated to Niall Moorjani’s A Faerie Tale, a queer, eerie story set to live instrumentals. Moorjani recently received glowing reviews for their rendition of the show during

the Edinburgh Fringe, making it a must-see for any storytelling enthusiasts with particular interests in queer and non-binary stories and multi-culturalism.

In addition to a rich programme of compelling performanc es, SISF is also offering a variety of events and workshops for participants of all ages. Scotia Botanica: Workshops and Seed Stories on 22 and 27 October, explores how we can reconnect with our natural environment while addressing climate change and celebrating diversity. Families can join SISF at the Botanics Halloween Trail to follow clues and find treats in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden.

Another thread of SISF, titled Tales, Tongues, and Trails, explores migration, identity, and, of course, stories. Highlights of the strand include Lost Stories by Hungarian storytellers Lily Asch and Csenge Virág Zalka. In this event, Asch and Zalka connect continents and traditions, following the thread of movement and transformation to who we are today. First Nations and Gaelic cultures come together in A’ lorg Sruthan Falaichte | Finding Hidden Streams, in which Mi’kmaq and Gaelic speakers examine how their cultures were passed down through oral tradition. In Female Powers: Fairy Queens and Witches, music duo Pictism and storyteller Stuart McHardy embark on a magical exploration of Halloween and its feminine themes.

Throughout the festival, Edinburgh’s Scottish Storytelling Centre will host Open Hearth, a relaxed evening of stories and music. Elsewhere in Edinburgh, When Mountains Meet | Jub Milain Pahaar (27 and 28 October) features a live band, story tellers, and singers as they celebrate diversity and difference 75 years on from the partition of India and foundation of Pakistan.

SISF runs from 14-31 October and offers a variety of ways to access events. The festival includes 145 free events, and also offers either tickets by event or an inclusive festival pass for those planning to attend more than one event. It is a vibrant celebration of difference and solidarity set against the backdrop of long-standing oral traditions in Scotland and beyond.

As the Scottish International Storytelling Festival returns, we take a deep dive into the programme

Donald Smith, Shona Cowie, Neil Sutcliffe, Daniel Abercrombie and Annemarie Froemke

Image: courtesy of Scottish Storytelling Fest

Women’s Bodies

Interview: Paula Lacey

Swallowing the reader into the disturbed world of Wilhelm von Tore, Orpheus Builds a Girl chronicles his experiments in postmortem preservation culminating in a final act of devotion to his young patient, Luciana, while her family are left powerless.

While Heather Parry drew from several historic instances of graverobbing and illicit mummification of women, she first stumbled across the primary inspiration for the plot in a segment of This American Life, a criminal case from 1950’s Florida. She tells me how the show presented the story as an oddity, a spooky tale, but as ultimately underpinned by love. “I vehemently disagreed with that, I don’t believe that’s what love is at all,” she says, “so I got to thinking, what is it about women’s bodies that socialises the men around them to desire to own them, to literally possess their corpse as an inanimate object?”

Spanning the stories of both a Nazi scientist concealing his identity with forged Polish docu ments, and Luciana’s Cuban family fleeing revolu tion, the novel takes place against a backdrop of the characters’ differing experiences as foreigners in 1950’s Florida. “What underpins the book is the

idea of the American dream,” Parry notes. “We’re told that it’s this land of opportunity, but that’s clearly not distributed equally, [...] I wanted to ask where the privilege lies; if people don’t get rich, can they get away with things? Maybe they are able to build a stable home, but at what cost?”

The plot, which unrelentingly drags its limp reader towards its inevitable yet nonetheless horrifying conclusion, is partially told from von Tore’s perspective, echoing the work of Nabokov and Yanagihara by forcing the reader to peer through the perpetrator’s eyes. You’re smothered by the cloying affections of a madman while the voice of Gabriela, Luciana’s mournful sister, gives you hope for a justice that never comes. “I wanted there to be a voice in opposition to his, not just so that you had to think about what he’d done,” explains Parry on interweaving the two perspectives, “but so you’d think about the way society excused it, something that plays out time and time again.”

When I was preparing for this interview, there was a nine hour queue snaking around central Edinburgh, as people lined up to view the casket of the late Queen Elizabeth. I was struck by the parallels between this national display of mourning, and the public spectacle made of poor Luciana’s body in the novel. I mention this to Parry. “God, what a time to bring out a book about the bizarre, fucked up and nonsensical things that can happen to a womans body after she dies!” she laughs. “In a way, they couldn’t be more different – we’ve got the entire state apparatus protecting one person’s body, and the exact opposite happens to Luciana.”

When asked how the process of writing the book had made her think about the social mecha nisms of death, she speaks about her research on different cultural death rituals, citing the work of Caitlin Doughty and Carla Valentine. “It’s also fascinating the way we treat people towards the end of their lives, what agency we give people over their own deaths – none, in this country,” she reflects. “It makes you think about your own death; how much of the process of you dying is for you, and how much of it is for other people.

“My mum once said to me; ‘Heather, why don’t you write anything nice?’” she laughs, as I ask her about the sinister themes that permeate her work. “I love the way gothic literature talks about the body,” she enthuses. “How it talks about social change, about what’s pushed to the edges, who’s considered an outsider and why.” When she comes across stories of extreme injustice, the twisted side of humanity which challenges her generally optimistic worldview, she writes to unpick her own reactions – to look directly at the darkness in order to understand it.

Our conversation draws to a close as we marvel over the grotesque, visceral aspects of having a body and leaving it behind; from the surprisingly yellow hue of fat beneath skin to all the post-mortem minutiae that she vividly de scribes in the book. It’s clear that Parry’s writing, for both herself and her reader, serves to fight against the human urge to turn away from the grotesque, to flinch when faced with things that disturb us. “The weekend after the book comes out, I’m going to see a live autopsy!” she tells me cheerfully – and I, for one, hope that it gives her the answers she’s looking for.

Glasgow-based writer and editor Heather Parry introduces Orpheus Builds a Girl, her hotly-anticipated debut, a chilling story of deranged infatuation, medical abuse, coercion and power

Orpheus Builds a Girl is out on 6 Oct via Belgravia Books

“What is it about women’s bodies that socialises the men around them to desire to own them, to literally possess their corpse as an inanimate object?”

Heather Parry

Photo: Dave Parry

Heather Parry

Army of Björk

Photo: Vidar Logi

The year is 1993: spring is giving way to the first rays of summer, and a 27-year-old Björk is being interviewed in her London flat. Fresh from a move from Reykjavík with her six-year-old son in tow, the following weeks will see her debut solo album make its entrance into the world. “I just had to do it,” she said in a 1993 interview with i-D of moving to London to record Debut. “I’d had these songs in me since I was a little kid, and I knew that I might submerse this creative impulse forever.”

Speaking in absolutes, for Björk, Debut’s release was about more than just the beginning of her solo career in earnest – a hugely significant event in and of itself. It was about making the conscious choice to honour the creative impulse that possessed her – of choosing to take her desire seriously and follow it wherever it may lead. It was her own existential makeor-break moment. It paid off.

Almost three decades later, Björk’s tenth album, Fossora, has been released into a radically changed musical landscape – one which Björk herself over the course of her career has played a large role in evolving. There are few artists that have had the longevity, influence, and creative evolutions Björk has had. Then again, there are few artists like Björk.

Debut, Post and Homogenic (1993-97)

In certain ways Debut was Björk’s most ‘orthodox’ album – yet even while her most accessible work, it broke boundaries, introducing new possibilities for what pop music could be. House music beats inspired by the clubs in Manchester she frequented acted as conduit throughout, while sitar, tabla and Bollywood-influenced string arrangements contrasted with raw vocals on tracks like Venus as a Boy.

Two years on, 1995 saw the release of Post, which was, in a lot of ways, Debut with more intensity: more overt, more brash, more loud: and saw Björk come into her own as an artist. “Maybe you could say that Debut was London but Post was more a little bit Manchester, a little bit Scotland, a little bit Bristol,” Björk reflected earlier this year. “It was not so slick.”

Post saw Björk begin to incorporate heavier techno influences alongside house, while the lyrical content reflected a deeper sense of agency. Where in Debut, Björk muses over Human Behaviour (the track itself was written in her teenage years) with bemusement, Post sees Björk open with a warning: ‘If you complain once more / You’ll meet an army of me’.

It’s this side of Björk that we see channelled in 1997’s Homogenic, which saw Björk take on her sharpest creative evolution thus far in her career: beginning her journey into more conceptual ways of working. “With Homogenic, I just decided not to please anybody except myself,” she said upon its release in an interview with Mojo. Despite this, Homogenic was criti cally acclaimed, credited for pioneering the blend of art-pop with electronica.

Aiming to capture her native Iceland – “Earthquakes, snowstorms, rain, ice, volcanic eruptions, geysers … But on the other hand, Iceland is incredibly modern; everything is hi-tech”, as she said in Oor magazine in 1997. “That contradiction is also on Homogenic” – the resulting sound was stark, dramatic, and poised in turn.

The conceptualism of this album also represented a new era of playing with a more conceptual visual identity for Björk – her music videos in this era range from her taking the form of

“Throughout her near 30-year solo career, Björk has covered much ground – defying genre, convention, and subverting expectation time and time again”

Photo: Santiago Felipe

Two years on, 1995 saw the release of Post, which was, in a lot of ways, Debut with more intensity: more overt, more brash, more loud: and saw Björk come into her own as an artist. “Maybe you could say that Debut was London but Post was more a little bit Manchester, a little bit Scotland, a little bit Bristol,” Björk reflected earlier this year. “It was not so slick.”

Post saw Björk begin to incorporate heavier techno influences alongside house, while the lyrical content reflected a deeper sense of agency. Where in Debut, Björk muses over Human Behaviour (the track itself was written in her teenage years) with bemuse ment, Post sees Björk open with a warning: ‘If you complain once more / You’ll meet an army of me’.

It’s this side of Björk that we see channelled in 1997’s Homogenic, which saw Björk take on her sharpest creative evolution thus far in her career: beginning her journey into more conceptual ways of working. “With Homogenic, I just decided not to please anybody except myself,” she said upon its release in an interview with Mojo. Despite this, Homogenic was critically acclaimed, credited for pioneering the blend of art-pop with electronica.

Aiming to capture her native Iceland –“Earthquakes, snowstorms, rain, ice, volcanic eruptions, geysers … But on the other hand, Iceland is incredibly modern; everything is hitech”, as she said in Oor magazine in 1997. “That contradiction is also on Homogenic” – the result ing sound was stark, dramatic, and poised in turn.

The conceptualism of this album also repre sented a new era of playing with a more concep tual visual identity for Björk – her music videos in this era range from her taking the form of a polar bear to channelling a robot humanism – an early nod to the avant-garde visuals which would form the latter basis of her career.

Vespertine, Medúlla and Volta (2001-07)

With 2001’s Vespertine, Björk shapeshifted once more, creating what she referred to as an “intro verted, quiet winter record” in contrast to the crashing drama of Homogenic past. It’s an accu rate evaluation. Incorporating electronica into haunting classical chamber music, once more Björk straddled the lines between genres, creating something deeply elemental and, at times, spiritu ally transcendent.

For Björk, the album represented a turn into the internal, as opposed to external world: “It’s about the universe inside every person,” she explained. “This time around, I wanted to make sure that the scenery of the songs is not like a mountain or a city or outside, it’s inside, so it’s very internal.” In many ways, Vespertine’s ‘introverted’ simplicity both sits neatly alongside, and com pletely contrasts with her 2004 offering, Medúlla

Where all of Björk’s previous albums were forthright in their utilisation of electronic sound production to evoke a range of sound – even the most ‘minimalist’ of songs in her catalogue to date featuring a diverse range of instrumentation – Medúlla strips this away entirely, with sound constructed almost entirely a capella through layered human vocals: Inuit throat singing, to London and Icelandic choirs, to even beatbox ing. The result is a flowingly intimate, rich tapestry of soundscapes. Though recorded across 18 locations – from Reykjavík to Marbella, New York to the Chateau Marmont – the album came togeth er in an organic way, with the majority recorded between bedrooms and hotel rooms, in stolen spaces of time.

Then, three years on from Medúlla, Björk took a sharp left turn with 2007’s Volta. In a break away from the ‘seriousness’ and minimalistic former two albums, with Volta Björk’s mission was to throw herself into something joyful: “All I wanted to do for this album was just to have fun and do something that was full-bodied,” she told Pitchfork in 2007. With bombastic, brassy instru mentation and drawing from a dizzyingly eclectic range of musical stylings from across the globe – Chinese music to Malian folk music; percussive tribal music to ambient and industrial stylings – the album leans into fun and chaos, yet every choice made was deliberate; Björk’s ability to pick out commonalities between seemingly disparate styles is on full display here.

Biophilia, Vulnicura, Utopia (2011-17)

Potentially her most experimental album to date, with 2011 came Biophilia. Minimalistic sonically and maximalist in visuals, scope and ambition, the electronic soundscapes of Biophilia explored inter connections between music, nature and technology.

Björk commissioned the creation of new musical instruments specifically for the album – a gravity pendulum harp provides harmonies on Solstice. Elsewhere, she innovated with form – breaking the typical 4/4 time signature, such as on track Moon, where she utilised a 17/8 time signature to mirror phases of the moon during the lunar cycle. This marked the beginning of an album as a multidimensional, immersive project for her.

Starkly contrasting the cerebrality of Biophilia, 2015’s Vulnicura dealt with the most universal emotion of all: heartbreak. Her most personal piece of work to date, this album emerged from what Björk at the time referred to as the “most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life” (the album chronicles the breakdown of her relationship

with ex-partner Matthew Barney). Describing the process of creating the album as “performing surgery on yourself”, complex, heart-pulling string arrangements (“I decided to become a violin nerd”) run throughout the album’s core, evoking pure, heartbreaking emotional depth.

Strings give way to flutes on 2017’s Utopia, which saw the artist team up with Arca to produce what was in some ways the reversal of Vulnicura: here healing is complete, with Utopia a celebration of blissful joy – of an imagined possible utopia in which nature sits alongside technology, co-exist ing harmoniously. In many ways it pulls together the themes that have run through Björk’s musical career: bringing together her love affair with electronic sound with the stark beauty of nature, showing that these need not sit poles apart. “This album is supposed to be like an idea, a suggestion, a proposal of the world we could live in,” she said in an interview with The New York Times

Fossora (2022)

If Utopia was about reimagining what could be, Fossora is about sinking into the soil of what already is. Continuing onwards into the ecological themes that have preoccupied her past three outputs, Fossora explores themes of survival, death and ecological meditation: it is a love letter to physicality and being. Sonically it draws closest to 2007’s Volta – clashing bass and clarinet pulsate, punctuated by raw vocal melodies.

It is clear throughout her near 30-year solo career, Björk has covered much ground – defying genre, convention, and subverting expectation time and time again. Yet through her constant creative evolution, one thing has remained unwa vering throughout: to this day, she continues to honour that same creative impulse that drove her all those years back.

In a recent interview with The Guardian she said: “As a singer-songwriter, my role is to express the journey of my body or my soul. Hopefully I’ll do that ‘til I’m 85.”

Fossora

“There are few artists that have had the longevity, influence, and creative evolutions Björk has had”

Photo: Santiago Felipe

Off the Wall

Gilla Band talk about their ‘experimental’ and ‘off the wall’ new album Most Normal, their first since changing their name from Girl Band

Interview: Max Pilley

Within the first few seconds of Gilla Band’s third album, listeners are thrown into panic. Opening track The Gum begins with eardrum-scraping guitar feedback, followed quickly by the clattering, industrial churn of what sounds like a prototype of a primitive robot stirring into life. It is incendiary, and the perfect introduction back into the Dublin band’s world. For all 35 minutes of Most Normal, the intensity, the strangeness and the joyful absurd ism of their music never relents once.

“I totally wouldn’t describe it as particularly accessible,” quips the band’s producer and bassist Daniel Fox. “In fact, it’s nuts. There are some bits that are genuinely experimental and off the wall. But we listen to stuff that’s way more leftfield than what we do, and we still think, ‘oh, that’s a great tune’. It’s hard to tell where anybody’s barometer is.”

The irony is that Most Normal might even be their most digestible record so far. The first release since the quartet changed their name from Girl Band in 2021, it does include tracks with identifi able hooks and familiar structures. Eight Fivers has a clear linear format, for example, with Dara Kiely’s vocals front and centre, singing about the list of places he goes hunting for ‘shit clothes’, while I Was Away is almost hummable, with a repeating guitar riff and a borderline-singalong chorus.

What sets Most Normal apart from its prede cessors is that this time around, the maverick touch that they have always applied to their songcraft is now extended to the recording and production process itself. “For this one, we wanted to refine it and make things very direct, as opposed to [2019’s] The Talkies, which is very indirect and is more of a washy head-trip,” says Fox. This new found desire for sonic tampering, accentuated by the endless free time offered up by pandemic lockdowns, results in a final record that is both tighter in discipline and more focused in execution. That is not to underestimate the sheer otherworldliness of the music. What Fox describes as “those heavy-handed, fucking-the-whole-trackfor-a-couple-of-seconds, really hard left-hand turns” that are the Gilla Band trademark are writ large across every track on the album; Gilla Band

dare you to relax while listening to their music. For inspiration in that regard, the band looked towards contemporary hip-hop as a guiding light. “Earl Sweatshirt is a good example,” says Fox. “The whole track gets mangled for a few seconds and it’s this head-trip. For our arrangements, we were into stuff like that. You don’t hear that kind of thing in rock bands too much. We were definitely pulling from some of that.”

Elsewhere, the band dipped much further into history for ideas. The track Capgras, for example, which finds Kiely issue a stream of consciousness spoken word diatribe over scuzzy, processed white noise, was inspired by Kiely’s interest in the 1950s American country singer Ray Price’s penchant for metatextually narrating his own songs. Indeed, it often feels like Kiely is a step or two removed from his own lyrics, adding a further layer of arch, situationist absurdity to an already surreal mix.

On Binliner Fashion, Kiely sings, ‘Full from swallowing a filling / Pritt Stick all my teeth back in / I’ll still be happy, but I might be gappy / Watching the pot boil and wearing tin foil’. It is typical of the self-deprecating, deadpan nature of

Kiely’s writing, although to ask him about it is to ask for trouble.

“There’s a hint of love songs in there some where, I think there is a bit of sincerity to it,” Kiely contends, barely suppressing a cheeky smirk. “It’s weird,” he continues, starting to make a bit more sense. “I just go on about mundane shit and then make it a bit weirder.”

Having now been together for over a decade, Gilla Band can be considered one of the elder statesmen of the now booming Irish guitar music scene. Many of the newest emerging groups, including Naked Lungs and Silverbacks, now turn to Fox when looking for a producer. It is a highly fertile and interconnected network of young musicians, something that the band love to see.

“Compared to when we were younger, people are more confident in themselves in terms of getting out of Ireland,” says Fox. “I think there’s always been the same amount of music, but I think people feel like it’s more accessible to tour and spread the word. Traditionally a lot of Irish bands would have to move to England, and not everyone wants to do that. But Dublin is a hard place to live in terms of the economy and trying to find hous ing, so I think people have plenty to shout about. And they do.”

With groups like Gilla Band leading the way, the future of Irish music is in pleasingly daring and dangerous hands.

Most Normal is released on 7 Oct via Rough Trade; Gilla Band play SWG3, Glasgow, 19 Oct

“I just go on about mundane shit and then make it a bit weirder”

Dara Kiely, Gilla Band

“I totally wouldn’t describe [Most Normal] as particularly accessible. In fact, it’s nuts” Daniel Fox, Gilla Band

Photo: Mark McGuiness

Gilla Band

Auld Spookie

Explore Edinburgh’s spooky, haunted and mysterious past, and check out some unique opportunities to delve into its darker stories

Words by: The Skinny

Island. The outcrop in the Firth of Forth is filled with military fortifications, after the island was taken over by the military during World War II. The result is an unnerving mixture of wild landscape and brutalist concrete bunkers – check the tide times before setting off.

If you’re looking for something more ominous than outright spooky, a trip along the Water of Leith pathway will introduce you to six bronze figures by artist Anthony Gormley. The standing figures pop up at locations between Stockbridge and Leith, making for a relaxing autumn walk with the occasion al eerie moment.

From a few slightly unexpected figures to hundreds of them, and the Samhuinn Fire Festival organised by the Beltane Fire Society. Taking place in Holyrood Park on Halloween night, it’s a mixture of drumming, acrobatics and immersive storytelling, sharing the pagan tale of the mythic battle between the Winter and Summer kings.

Spooky pubs and historic bars

Haunted Hotels and Attractions

Surgeons’ Hall Museums in Newington houses one of the UK’s biggest pathology collections – it’s a huge archive of artworks, artefacts and anatomi cal specimens. It’s not for the faint-hearted, but it is a museum with a genu ine surprise around each corner and a key part of the stories of anatomy lecturer, Robert Knox and notorious 19th century murderers, Burke & Hare.

Down the road at the National Museum of Scotland, the ten metre-tall Millennium Clock Tower is dedicated to some of the darker events of the 20th century, but with some hopeful touches and lighter elements. Its bells toll every hour, on the hour. Another monument to past horrors can be found at Edinburgh Castle esplanade – the Witches Well is dedicated to the Edinburgh women accused of witchcraft between the 15th and 18th centuries.

But to really dig into the city’s past, you need to head underground. The Real Mary King’s Close offers hour-long guided tours of the 17th century street beneath the modern-day Royal Mile. You’ll investigate the buildings, learn about the residents, and get a glimpse into life in one of the city’s most notorious streets. At the other side of the Mile, Mercat Tours explore Edinburgh’s underground history via the South Bridge Vaults. Their History Walks delve into day-to-day life, while Ghost Tours lean into the darker and spookier aspects of life in the 1700s.

For the full experience, you’ll want to check into a hotel with a spooky past. City centre options include the luxurious Scotsman Hotel on North Bridge (spectres from its former life as a newspaper office make occasional appearances) or the decadent glamour of The Witchery (said to be haunted by those accused of witchcraft). Alternatively, head out of the city to Dalhousie Castle – it’s a modern luxury hotel in a 13th century castle, with frequent reports of ghostly sightings around the building and grounds.

Out and About Princes Street Gardens – a lovely oasis of green in the heart of the city, right? Well, not always. The park was once the Nor Loch, a fetid manmade loch that served as a rubbish dump and execution site. The city’s many historic graveyards, from the Old Calton Cemetery to Greyfriars Kirkyard also hold endless stories from the past. Edinburgh is full of history, but leave the classically spooky spots of the Old Town and there are more obscure moments from the city’s history to seek out.

One grizzly reminder of the city’s past can be found, of all places, in leafy and residential Morningside. The Hanging Stanes, near the corner of Comiston Terrace and Braid Road, mark the spot where Henry O’R Neil and Thomas Kelly – the final highwaymen to be publicly hanged in Scotland – were executed. More recent Edinburgh history can be explored on Cramond

In a city as storied as Edinburgh, it’s no surprise that the city is home to a raft of ‘haunted’ pubs and bars. The White Hart Inn on Grassmarket, thought to be Auld Reekie’s oldest pub, is reportedly haunted by a shadowy figure who moves beer barrels around the basement and slams doors behind them. An apparition, or a grumpy barman? Who can say.

From one door to another, The Beehive Inn just down the street hosts a particularly dark memento from Edinburgh’s past. The door from the ‘Death Cell’ at the city’s infamous Calton Jail can be found on the second floor, with a brief inscription above. Complete your trio of spooky Grassmarket pubs with a trip to The Last Drop, an atmospheric and homely pub at the sight of the last public hanging in the city in 1864.

On the Lawnmarket, Deacon Brodies tells the story of the real-life inspiration behind Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde in economical fashion – their sign features Brodie’s upstanding daytime persona on one side, and his terrible nighttime mode on the other. Inside it’s a traditional pub with a surprisingly interesting ceiling.

Even some of Edinburgh’s more alternative pubs have spooky tales to tell. The Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street lays claim to the title of ‘Scotland’s Most Haunted Pub’, but it’s also a fun, atmospheric bar in its own right. It’s a warren of booths and nooks, with regular live music and film screenings. Hidden away in the New Town, the Star Bar is another unique pub with cool decor, a beer garden, a jukebox… and a human skull apparently not to be moved, on pain of something terrible happening to the person who moves it. Yikes.

Discover

haunted past

A performer at Samhuinn

Greyfriars Grave detail skull and faces

Digi Cult

Scotland Loves Anime, the UK’s longest running film festival dedicated to Japanese animation, is back with another sparkling lineup featuring trips into the future, a bombastic rock opera, a few coming-of-age numbers and a deep dive into digital realms

Words: Ross McIndoe

The term ‘Isekai’ refers to a type of anime in which the protagonist is suddenly trans ported out of our regular world and into a fantastical new one. Step through the doors of the Edinburgh Filmhouse or the Glasgow Film Theatre in time for this month’s Scotland Loves Anime festival, and you’ll get to know exactly what that feels like.

You’ll be able to take a trip into the future with Break of Dawn (23 Oct, GFT; 29 Oct, Filmhouse) and its tale of one boy and his robot. Or tumble back into the past for Inu-Oh (21 Oct, GFT) a psychedelic rock opera set in 14th-century Japan. Or explore how past and future connect with The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes (22 Oct, GFT; 29 Oct, Filmhouse) as a grieving student comes across a magical tunnel that can grant him his heart’s deepest desire but only if he’s willing to give up several years of his own life in return.

Of course, sometimes the real adventure is the friends we make along the way, and this year’s

festival has plenty of more grounded dramas as well. Goodbye, Don Glees! (23 Oct, GFT; 30 Oct, Filmhouse) sees a group of misfit boys heading into the woods for a Stand By Me-style coming-ofage adventure. While they lose each other among the trees, the girls of Hula Fulla Dance (28 Oct, Filmhouse) get more and more in step over the course of a life-changing hula dance campaign. In Blue Thermal (22 Oct, GFT; 30 Oct, Filmhouse), Tamaki explores the feminine urge to deal with a romantic disaster by developing an all-consuming passion for gliding while the rebellious youngsters of Seven Days War (30 Oct, Filmhouse) escape the grinding pressure of parental supervision by camping out in an abandoned factory.

For better or worse, the place that most of us disappear into is usually the strange world of the internet. Thanks to this year’s Digital Realms strand – put together by the festival’s inaugural guest curator and all-round animation aficionado Kambole Campbell – we’ll be taking a trip back to the early days of the net through a series of classic films including Perfect Blue (24 Oct, Filmhouse) from the legendary Satoshi Kon.

The strand will also feature the first three episodes of the late 90s cyberpunk series Serial Experiments Lain (25 Oct, Filmhouse) in which emails from the other side turn a young girl’s life upside down.

If you were lucky enough to see Belle in

all its whale-singing glory earlier this year then you know what it’s like to be hardwired into Mamoru Hosoda’s exhilarating imagination, and the Digital Realms strand will also give you a chance to check out one of his most celebrated trips into the weird, wide world of the web with Summer Wars (26 Oct, Filmhouse). Finally, Patlabor: The Movie (27 Oct, Filmhouse) paints an all-too-real picture of the future as the world is ravaged by environmental disasters, forcing them to resort to drastic, giant robot-based measures to survive.

And if giant robots are your thing then, natu rally, you’re in the right place. Mobile Suit Gundam: Cucuruz Doan’s Island (21 Oct, GFT; 29 Oct, Filmhouse) is here to provide all the bot-on-bot action you could ask for, though if you prefer your mechanical showdowns with a side-order of exis tential despair then there’s Evangelion 3.0 + 1.01 (23 Oct, GFT; 28 Oct, Filmhouse), which brings the iconic series to a spectacular, soul-shattering close.

And finally, this year’s mystery film has been revealed as the newest work from the brilliant Naoko Yamada, The Garden of Remembrance (29 Oct, Filmhouse). The film itself still seems pretty mysterious but with the director of A Silent Voice at the helm, the chance to catch this ahead of its full release next year is not to be missed.

Whatever you turn up for though, you’ll find that the 2022 edition of Scotland Loves Anime is ready and waiting to whisk you off to somewhere you’ve never seen before and that you’ll never quite forget.

Scotland

For full screening details and tickets, head to www.lovesanimation.com

The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes

Goodbye,

Saturday Night’s Alright (for Frighting)

The Cameo’s legendary horror extravaganza All Night Horror Madness returns for its 15th edition with an all-star lineup. Filmmaker and programmer Matt Palmer talks us through the origins of the night and this upcoming edition’s knockout lineup

Interview: Jamie Dunn

Since 2010, All Night Horror Madness has been delighting Scottish gorehounds with memorable marathon screenings of weird and wonderful horror films. The night harkens back to the 70s and 80s heyday of grindhouse theatres, those fleapits with sticky carpets and questionable clientele who would run debauched repertory screenings throughout the wee hours to night owl cinephiles. Matt Palmer, the man behind All Night Horror Madness, was coming of age at the fag end of this era.

“When I was 16, I read this book called The Deep Red Horror Handbook and got totally ob sessed with horror movies,” recalls Palmer. “At that time, all-night horror nights were quite prevalent.

There was Black Sunday in Manchester, and Shock Around the Clock at the Scala in London. Near where my friend lived in Manchester, the UCI, the old multiplex cinema, they did some all-night horrors. So that was the first one I went to. We were under 18 but we managed to get in and it was Nightbreed, Hardware, Maniac Cop II, Reanimator II – like a really great lineup.”

When Palmer found himself working in film exhibition at the Cameo in Edinburgh in the early 00s, the repertory cinema scene was in the doldrums. “I really missed those nights,” says Palmer. “And I thought, ‘surely, if we put one on at the Cameo, people would come.’” His boss wasn’t so sure there’d be an appetite in Edinburgh for

all-night gory carnage, though. “The guy who managed the cinema at the time, Ian Hoey, I repeatedly badgered him about this. And he said, ‘that won’t work’.” Those were words that would come back to haunt Hoey, however, as he’s now Palmer’s All Night Madness co-host. “When we did the first event it sold out. So Ian was on stage with me and had to fess up in front of 242 people and say he was wrong.”

When it comes to curating ANHM, Palmer has a few ground rules. The films are strictly from a specific era of horror film (roughly 1967-1992). The second is that at least some of the films will be screened on 35mm. “It’s funny with the 35mm thing, because when I first started the event, it was a choice between 35mm prints or very often DVD, because Blu-ray hadn’t really taken off and DCP didn’t exist,” recalls Palmer. “So initially I pushed for 35mm because the picture quality was so superior. But now it’s become woven into the fabric of the event and I think the 35mm element really helps to give that authentic feel, that sort of sense that you’re watching movies from a certain period. But the crazy thing, now that DCP has come in and you’re looking at crystal clear images all the time, the 35mm has started to look more and more interesting and more and more like a time capsule – the crackle and the grain, it’s just a more unique experience.”

The third rule is to do with the order of the lineup: Palmer punctuates the night with a prop erly gonzo movie. “The third movie needs to be crazy,” laughs Palmer, “because everything needs to have a peak, and also the third movie is when you’re starting to move later into the night for the first time. You’re moving towards 3-3.30am, and at that time in the morning people need something toNight of the Creeps

really wake them up. So all the particularly crazy movies, and probably the movies that All Night Horror has become most associated with, are the third-on-the-bill movies.”

This upcoming All Night Horror Madness will be an all-star special, featuring some of the films that have gone down a storm at previous editions. Palmer walks us through the lineup.

Film 1: Society (Brian Yuzna, 1989)

“Society was the first movie at the second All Night Horror Madness. The thing with Society... I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s something that happens in it that’s completely insane. I really like playing Society first because, when the credits roll, you really feel like you’ve been through something. There’s a section of it that’s just absolutely off the wall. So I feel like when you play Society first, people come out of it feeling like, ‘Wow, that was a lot!’ I like people coming out of the first movie and feeling like they’ve had an entire night out, and then realising that they’re only a fifth of the way through it. But I think Society has also stood up really well in terms of its politics. It’s ultimately a satire about aspira tion and a takedown of the rich, which, you know, is a timeless theme.”

Film 2: Night of the Creeps (Fred Dekker, 1986)

“I think Night of the Creeps is, in a lot of ways, one of the ultimate 80s party movies. Also, it’s a movie that plays exponentially better with a crowd. It played in the seventh or eighth All Night Horror lineup. It was in the first slot last time, and it’s just got that great Tom Atkins performance in the middle playing a completely crazy cop. It’s one of

those dream movies that you know you can put on and everyone’s gonna love it. I think after Society, Night of the Creeps is going to be the tonic people need to get back on an even keel again.”

Film 3: Sleepaway Camp (Robert Hiltzik, 1983)

“When I screened Sleepaway Camp I was still doing the Glasgow events. And when the final moments unfolded, one of the audience members just stood up and went ‘NO! NO! NO!’ and literally just walked away from the screen and out of the cinema while the rest of the audience went nuts. And I was just like, ‘I’m not gonna beat that!’

“Because it’s the best-of lineup, a lot of the audience this time are going to know the wild direction that Sleepaway Camp goes in. It’s a legendary ending. It might be one of the most infamous climaxes of all horror movies. But the great thing about Sleepaway Camp is, even when you know what’s coming, it really bears up to repeated watches. The ending is crazy, but the whole movie is mad as a bag of spiders. There are a lot of fantastic moments, and it also has one foot in the bad movie category, if that’s your thing. So as crazy third-in-the-lineup movies go, Sleepaway Camp is up there with the craziest.”

Film 4: The Hidden (Jack Sholder, 1987)

“The Hidden’s reputation has really been building up recently. It did get a small theatrical release in ‘87, but it was mainly known as a straight-to-video movie. It’s a sci-fi actioner with a bit of horror, which is the type of movie that I like to throw in to mix up the lineup. It involves aliens – I think it’s reasonable to say that without giving too much away – and it moves like a ten-tonne truck; it’s just

got so much momentum. And it’s just crazy and funny and out there.

“I think one of the chief reasons it’s stood up so well over time is that it’s got a funny and really excellent Kyle MacLachlan performance grounding it. It’s a proper genre-hopping hybrid, but it’s a film I’ve always loved and when we screened it at All Night Horror last time, it took the roof off.”

Film 5: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

“It’s a lot easier to gauge the response of a movie like Sleepaway Camp or Night of the Creeps, where you get a very active audience response. I think the audience response to Texas Chain Saw as it goes on is just a grinding down and complete flooring of everyone. It’s the oldest movie in the lineup, but the crazy thing about Texas Chain Saw Massacre is that if you made that movie as it is today and released it, it wouldn’t seem remotely dated.

“I was totally obsessed with it. I’d maybe seen it 20 or 30 times when I was younger, and I’d kind of worn it out. I hadn’t seen it for about eight years when I put it on at All Night Horror Madness the first time. I was like, ‘Oh, you know, it’d be fun to watch again,’ but by the end of it, I was just like, ‘Holy fuck!’ It just totally, totally slayed me. I mean, the power of it. If it’s not the best horror movie ever made, it’s very, very close. So basically this is a party lineup with a really horrible sting in the tail. So people can leave after four movies and go ‘Yeah, that was a laugh.’ Or they can leave after five, and then spend a couple of days getting over it.”

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Looking Violence in the Eye

Words: Fernando García

Political drama Maixabel, the latest film from Edinburgh-based Spanish director Icíar Bollaín, explores a dark episode in her nation’s recent history. In 2000, Juan María Jáuregui, a socialist politician, was assassinated by the Basque separatist group ETA. More than a decade later, his wife, Maixabel Lasa, accedes to take part in the restorative meetings, a controver sial short-lived government initiative where the victims sit down to talk with repentant members of that terrorist organisation.

“The producers suggested I make a film about Maixabel Lasa,” explains Bollaín. “I knew the story because years ago I read an interview with the victims who had met the perpetrators. I was startled.” She thought that making the film was a great opportunity to explore “the human complexity behind the idea of someone who is capable of sitting down and talking with the person who had hurt them the most.” She adds: “It was a very complicated film to make; it’s a very sensitive, painful subject. It’s still really controversial. There are so many people affected by ETA, and that pain is still there. Those meetings were debated at the time, and Lasa was criticised by some of the victims, who saw them as a betray al to the murdered. This is a real story about real people – you are talking about a lot of victims. We had to be very careful not to open more wounds because the victims already had enough with what they went through to cause them more harm.”

Maixabel is not only the story of the victims.

A significant part of the film is about the terrorists, who are deeply ashamed of their past actions.

Balancing this without minimising the victim’s pain is a challenge and something that worried Bollaín. “We know so little about the etarras [members of ETA] in general,” she says, “and specifically about those who distanced themselves from the band, which were very few. No one wants to know anything about the etarras and their world. They are people who have committed atrocious crimes, but Isa Campo [Bollaín’s co-writer] and I knew that we had to understand their story, know who they were and how they made the journey from ETA to talk to their victims. The film is about the delegiti mation of violence. Violence is useless and it only causes more violence. These men represent that.”

Maixabel is always completely respectful to the victims, despite giving a human dimension to the ex-terrorists. “When you give space to charac ters who are publicly considered to have no right to anything, and no one wants to know anything about them, you risk criticism,” says Bollaín. “But we had a very clear idea that it was important to hear their voices. This is something that Maixabel Lasa said – ‘they [the repentant ETA members] are the biggest delegitimisers of violence because we can say whatever and it has no impact, but it’s incredibly powerful when they say it.”

Watching the film, it feels almost inevitable to think that it’s about forgiveness, but Bollaín emphasises that “Maixabel doesn’t talk about forgiveness. If anything, she gives a second

Icíar Bollaín

chance. She said that these people are regretful, they’ve done a deep self-criticism exercise and she thinks everyone deserves a second chance. It’s something she believes is a human right. But she doesn’t talk about forgiveness.”

Lasa agreed to the making of the film after the producers became interested in her story. “[Maixabel] confessed to me that she did not know the exposure that this was going to have,” says Bollaín. “What convinced her [to do the movie] is that she is an activist for coexistence in the Basque Country and that she saw the film as an opportunity to publicise some meetings that she thought were very positive – not only for her but for our society, for them [the etarras], for the dialogue that must be done.” Bollaín also remembers when Lasa realised that the project was bigger than what she had in mind: “The first time she came to the set she heard the conversation that Maixabel has in the film with her friend at the beach. They gave her headphones to listen to it and she started crying. She got very emotional, it was so beautiful.”

For both Lasa and Bollaín, it’s vital to tell this story like it happened, without idealising ETA’s nationalist ideology. “I notice that among people closest to that ideology there is an idealisation of ETA, and there’s a certain surprise at how the etarras speak about ETA in the film. There’s an idea that they were like freedom fighters. There are people who think that what ETA did was somehow justified.” That’s why Maixabel is an important film: it reminds us to never forget the devastating consequences of terrorism.

Maixabel opens the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival on 1 Oct at Glasgow Film Theatre and screens again at Filmhouse, Edin burgh on 7 Oct; Icíar Bollaín will give a Q&A at both screenings

ESFF, 1 Oct-4 Nov, various venues in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling

Maixabel, Icíar Bollaín’s drama about a victim of terrorism, is showing at the Edinburgh Spanish Film Festival. We talk with her about the delegitimisation of violence and second chances

“The film is about the delegitimisation of violence. Violence is useless and it only causes more violence”

And the Nominees Are...

As the 2022 SAY Award gets ever closer, we take a look at this year’s longlist featuring nine newcomers and 11 returning names, including one past winner

Words: Tallah Brash

The eleventh annual Scottish Album of the Year Award (aka The SAY Award) is set to take place this autumn for the first time in Stirling, where it will take over the city’s beautiful Albert Halls on 20 October. On the night, one artist will be awarded the title of Scottish Album of the Year following a process that began on 1 July when album submissions opened.

With 369 eligible albums put forward for the award this year, 100 impartial music industry nominators have now helped whittle that list down to just 20 albums which make up the longlist. Covering everything from folk and trad to jazz, R’n’B, hip-hop, chamber pop and more, this year’s longlist also features a good mix of old and new names; nine newcomers are up for the award this year, with 11 returning artists, including one former winner, back in the running for the £20,000 prize.

Among the newcomers up for the 2022 award are Edinburgh singer-songwriter Annie Booth, for her stunning second album, Lazybody, released on the Last Night From Glasgow label on 19 November last year. Meanwhile, fellow Edinburgher Hamish Hawk has also been longlist ed for his most assured record to date, Heavy Elevator, which topped our The Skinny’s Scottish Albums of 2021 writers’ poll.

From solo singer-songwriters to a whole host of them, all-female and non-binary collective Hen Hoose are up for the award this year for their debut, Equaliser. The album includes contribu tions from the likes of Carla J. Easton, AMUNDA, MALKA, Karine Polwart, Emma Pollock, Elisabeth Elektra, Susan Bear and the late Beldina Odenyo Onassis. Welcoming their nomination, Hen Hoose say: “It is an absolute honour to have been long listed for The SAY Award this year. Equaliser has been a real labour of love. It has brought together likeminded individuals with a common goal, created a wonderful supportive community and it has given us an opportunity to showcase the talented women and non-binary writers and producers based here in Scotland.”

Stirling’s ambient neo-folk outfit Constant Follower have also landed a spot on the longlist for their debut album, Neither Is, Nor Ever Was, released last October via Shimmy-Disc and Joyful Noise Recordings, while Duncan Lyall’s Milestone – a record which has already received a nomina tion for the 2021 Scots Trad Music Awards – is up for The SAY Award too. Glasgow’s Walt Disco are nominated for their debut album Unlearning, which we described earlier this year as “gritty, melodramatic and a little bit batshit”, while

Edinburgh producer Proc Fiskal is in the running for his second album, Siren Spine Sysex; we cited “the scale and depth of emotion he wrings from” the album’s “wonky and chaotic rhythms” as the record’s greatest achievement.

A couple of jazz-focused records round out the list of newcomers for 2022. Seonaid Aitken is nominated for Chasing Sakura, a record originally commissioned by the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival in 2021, alongside Rebecca Vasmant’s With Love, From Glasgow. Vasmant says: “I have watched in awe, for many years, the artists who have come through The SAY each year, and always dreamed of one day, making my own album and it being considered, and now that it’s here, it feels absolutely crazy. This all feels like a wonderful dream, and I have the amazing musi cians who played on the album, who have now become family, to thank first and foremost. I’m wholeheartedly honoured, happy, and as I always say – BUZZING!”

Previous SAY Award nominees back in the running for 2022 include Aberdeen R’n’B singersongwriter AiiTee, Glasgow-based Ayrshire rapper Bemz, Edinburgh musical polymath Callum Easter, Glasgow’s politically-fuelled Declan Welsh and the Decadent West, Glasgow-based hip-hop artist and producer Kobi Onyame and the Isle of Skye’s trad-electro fusion outfit Niteworks, who all receive their second nominations. Scottish producer and composer Andrew Wasylyk, Mercury Prizenominated jazz pianist Fergus McCreadie, singersongwriter and self-professed witch Kathryn Joseph and Glasgow goth-pop outfit The Ninth Wave have all been nominated for a third time, while chamber-pop artist C Duncan’s latest album Alluvium sees him nominated for a fourth time.

The SAY Award 2022 Longlist

AiiTee – Better Days

Andrew Wasylyk – Balgay Hill: Morning In Magnolia

Annie Booth – Lazybody

Bemz – M4

C Duncan – Alluvium

Callum Easter – System

Constant Follower – Neither Is, Nor Ever Was Declan Welsh and the Decadent West –It’s Been a Year

Duncan Lyall – Milestone

Fergus McCreadie – Forest Floor

Hamish Hawk – Heavy Elevator

Hen Hoose – Equaliser

Kathryn Joseph – for you who are the wronged Kobi Onyame – Don’t Drink the Poison

The Ninth Wave – Heavy Like a Headache

Niteworks – A’Ghrian

Proc Fiskal – Siren Spine Sysex

Rebecca Vasmant – With Love, From Glasgow Seonaid Aitken – Chasing Sakura

Walt Disco – Unlearning

The SAY Award ceremony takes place at The Albert Halls, Stirling, 20 Oct

sayaward.com

L-R: Hamish Hawk courtesy by Lucy Hunter; Walt Disco by Lucy Hunter; Bemz by Allan Lewis; Kathryn Joseph by Roosa Paivansalo

Acts of Care

When we talk about live performance in Scotland, opera may take a back seat to other forms of theatre. However, Scottish Opera offers a rich, well-estab lished repertoire of productions and a long-standing commit ment to accessibility across Scotland. In their 2022/23 season, Scottish Opera welcomes old favourites like Puccini’s Il Trittico and Bizet’s Carmen alongside the electric and contempo rary Ainadamar by Osvaldo Golijov. Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker makes her directorial debut on Ainadamar, and she plans to bring her decades of movement experience into her work on the operatic stage.

Colker says, “Dance can bring dynamics; it can bring meaning, significance to the gesture. The movement, the choreography will serve the dramaturgy. The most important question is: ‘what do you want to say?’” With a libretto by David Henry Hwang, Ainadamar follows the life and death of Frederico García Lorca. It is a queer, heartfelt, and intense rendition of a life cut short by fascism. Even though she is an expert in creating movement, Colker has chosen to work with Antonio Najarro as the flamenco choreographer. She emphasises the importance of working with Spanish artists to tell a Spanish story: “I decided to invite a flamenco choreographer, because of course I can do flamenco movements, but this will be without blood. Without the history inside.” The story of Lorca’s life and death is acutely relevant to our lives today. Colker says, “His words are our words now. The dream that Margarita, Lorca had, it’s our dream. We are fighting against fascism. We are fighting for the right to choose our sexuality.”

Ainadamar is just one of many tantalising productions coming out of Scottish Opera this year. Alex Reedijk, Scottish Opera’s General Director, highlights the company’s commitment to serving as much of Scotland as it can reach. “Scottish Opera was a very early adopter and practitioner of work outside of the main cities,” he says. “Our education team, which is the oldest established education team of any opera company in Europe, have been working across Scotland for probably three genera tions now.” In 2021 alone, the company produced over 190 performances in 46 communities across Scotland. Because of their focus on mobility and accessibility, Scottish Opera was

better primed than many of its peers to face the COVID-19 pandemic. Reedijk holds that opera works perfectly well out doors. He says, “It’s a really robust art form. It’s tough as all hell.” This sentiment may seem counterintuitive to those unfa miliar with live opera, but the art form is surprisingly flexible when it comes to presentation.

“One of the things we all really, really love is good story telling,” Reedijk says. “If we’ve done our job properly, then the young people who come to the opera, and indeed everyone who comes to the opera, have been led down a road of good story telling. They’ve engaged with the characters, they’ve felt some thing for the story that we’re telling because we’ve told it well.”

Reedijk strikes at the heart of why we go to the theatre – what we really want, he argues, is a good story. And Scottish Opera is always prepared to provide. Reedijk’s comments are all underpinned by the same deep, almost religious commitment to the audience. For Reedijk, good storytelling is an act of care. He speaks of a covenant between artist and audience – one that Scottish Opera is mindful of upholding.

When asked what the opera can offer, especially to firsttime opera-goers, Reedjul suggests as a transportive experi ence. “Unlike sitting in front of a television, it’s a three-dimen sional, live thing with human beings sweating and straining and pushing themselves to their limits to tell their stories, to sing, and to perform, and to act. If we get our bit right, then the audience buys into that three-dimensionality in a way that the flat screen just simply can’t. It’s something about a shared human experience, isn’t it?” Reedijk calls this year’s season ‘dynamic, exciting, alive’ – hopefully, it’s enough to tempt even the most reticent viewer. Given the chance, opera has the power to reduce us to our most fundamental human experiences.

Reedijk says: “It’s not unknown for an opera to have 1500 people in the audience, 70 people in the pit, 50 people back stage, and one singer on stage holding all of us in the palm of his or her hand. And not a microphone in sight. If we get that right, then we’ve done something amazing that no other art form can do.”

For a full rundown of Scottish Opera's 2022/23 season, head to: scottishopera.org.uk

As a new season begins, we talk to to Deborah Colker and Alex Reedijk from Scottish Opera about the magic that only opera can provide

Interview: Rho Chung

Il Trittico

Image: courtesy of Scottish Opera

Image: courtesy of Scottish Opera

The Cool Girl Paradox

Interview: Laurie Presswood

Olga Koch has something of a mantra (and despite what you may have heard, it’s not Rosamund Pike’s ‘cool girl’ monologue from Gone Girl). “You can’t shame me if I’m not ashamed,” underpins her attitude towards sex, love and, of course, publically soiling herself. It’s a relatively recent addition to her psychological arsenal, adopted in the aftermath of the breakup that eclipsed her 29th birthday, but it’s been present in the pop culture she absorbed from a young age. Little Olga was drawn to the Samantha Joneses of the world, the Nessas and the Stifler’s moms, because they were openly sexually active, and felt no shame in it: “it was so appealing to see a woman that was just so completely unselfconscious.”

Just Friends is a thesis on this ‘hoe culture’, as Koch dubs it. “The thing that defines hoe culture isn’t what you want. It’s the fact that you’re not self conscious about it.” She points to the rock god desses that dominated her youth (Courtney Love, Gwen Stefani, Alannis Morissette), who seemed to have attained the elusive ‘cool girl’ status. Sonically and visually these women are hard-nosed and rebellious, but lyrically they’re actually incredibly vulnerable – and conventional. When Morissette sang about being unable to get over a breakup ('Would she go down on you in a [movie] theater?') or when Love admitted in an interview that the first time she laid eyes on Kurt Cobain she wanted to have his babies, they’re “saying all the forbidden things that cool girls aren’t allowed to say.” They’re saying things that, had you texted them to someone you were seeing, would have you branded clingy (the worst descriptor you could possibly receive in

high school; “the cool girl kiss of death”) but because they’re saying them to rock music and their hair is dyed, nobody notices.

With a background in computer science, Koch’s a bit of an anomaly in standup circles. The most traditionally comedic thing about her is her Oxford education, and even that was a masters in the Social Science of the Internet. The best project she’s ever worked on, she says, was the podcast Human Error, which combined the two. Koch made 20 episodes of Human Error last year with friend and part-time internet message board moderator Hussein Kesvani. He was a technology journalist, she was a vaguely tech-adjacent comedian – can I make it any more obvious?

The show’s mission statement is to examine and explain the unintended consequences of humankind’s adventures in technology – because while Koch and Kesvani are both clearly technol ogy lovers, that doesn’t mean they should be blind to problems the industry poses. “Having been in the tech world, and worked for two tech corpora tions and then done academia, it’s like both of these fields benefit from creating really convolut ed terms and ideas and keeping them as opaque as possible, because if they’re not opaque people won’t spend money on them. And so me and Hussein [...] will explain it to you because it’s actually very stupid.”

In episode four, Who Owns Your Face?, they hear from Matthias Marx, a security researcher who successfully lodged a GDPR complaint against facial recognition giant Clearview AI. He complained that Clearview were using his

biometric data without his consent, and eventually forced them to remove his face from their digital library. Koch asks him what’s to stop Clearview from simply reuploading it. The answer: nothing. The company is not exploiting some sort of legal loophole, they’re just operating in an area nobody has yet cared enough about to regulate. You can’t help but wonder if he’s still out there checking for its re-emergence – it’s been two years, more than enough time for the company to pick up where they left off.

And yet with everything she’s seen of the tech world Koch still finds reasons not to be pessimistic. Whenever she sees a headline pro claiming TikTok as the One True Social Medium, she remembers that just three years ago we were having the same conversation about Instagram

– you were dead if you weren’t on it – and Facebook before that. “The dot com boom hap pened, Lehman Brothers fucking got dismantled

[...] You’ve been saying ‘this is it’ about every corporation since the beginning of time”. Hope springs eternal – and for Olga Koch it springs from remembering the infrequency with which she now checks Facebook.

Olga Koch: Just Friends, The Stand Edinburgh, 12 Oct; The Stand Glasgow, 13 Oct

Human Error Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts

Follow Olga Koch on Twitter @rocknrolga and Instagram @kolga300

We chat hoe culture and Human Error with eternal cool girl comedian Olga Koch

Olga Koch

Photo: Rachel Sherlock

Switch It Up

Ahead of their forthcoming UN:TITLED series, we speak to co-curators Su-a Lee and Louise Goodwin from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra to find out more

Interview: Tony Inglis

The approach promotes cultural accessibility, as well as just logistical or financial accessi bility, blurring the borders be tween scenes and interests to bring audiences into the sphere of the SCO, much like how the Scottish Ballet’s recent modern ised production of Coppélia promoted a traditional artform in a thrilling and zeitgeisty way.

layered as a larger one on an intimate stage. Further complicating (in a good sense) the picture is the involvement of a DJ, producer Dolphin Boy, while Gemma Cairney, a familiar face and voice from BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music, will MC the nights, providing a conversational and populist tone to proceedings.

“I think it’s funny because we are an orches tra and we do what we do very well, and genuinely really enjoy the classics,” says Goodwin. “But at the same time, I also listen to pop music, I’m not a person who kind of lives as though I’m in the 1800s listening only to music of that time. So, I think the programme we’re presenting kind of bridges that gap.”

“I

’m all for taking classical music into places where it’s not usually played and present ing it live to a different type of audience,” says Su-a Lee, sub-principal cellist with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. “People from the non-classical music scene, new music lovers, who wouldn’t normally hear this type of thing. The idea of stepping away from the traditional concert hall setup – early evenings, with an overture followed by a concerto and an interval and then a sympho ny – switches it up a bit, presenting music without expectations and then taking you on a journey.”

This has been at the core of what the SCO has been pursuing since live performance became possible again post-lockdown, and it’s being driven by a diverse and forward-thinking group of players within the orchestra. The latest perfor mance to follow this ethos is UN:TITLED – follow ing on from the New York Counterpoint concerts, which were presented in collaboration with The Skinny and EHFM back in March – shows which have been thoughtfully put together by Lee and her co-curator Louise Goodwin, a percussionist and ace timpanist with the SCO.

“For years, classical music has made a mistake in thinking accessibility equates only to cheap ticket prices,” says Goodwin. “It should also be about doing stuff in places people are used to. Sometimes the silence of a concert hall is absolutely the right way to experience music, in the same way that in a cathedral you’re sitting silently and people are being really respectful of that space. That’s a beautiful thing. But not all music has to be ab sorbed like that.”

It works both ways – the players get as much out of the turn as the SCO hopes audiences will, says Goodwin. “I feel like it’s necessary to diversify what I’m doing as a musician. In the SCO, we have an amazing way of forming our core repertoire – our Mozarts and our Beethovens. But it’s really interesting when we get into this more challenging work and out of our comfort zones. Also, in classi cal music we need to get out of that box of just presenting the same stuff over and over and thinking people might start coming that aren’t already, hoping that if we keep pushing the same material they’ll change their minds. Actually, by showing something a bit different, maybe we can show people there is a pathway in.”

For UN:TITLED, the SCO will be pushed by the venues – St Luke’s in Glasgow and Summerhall in Edinburgh – which won’t allow for as many players as their usual settings and will “provide a tonal shift”, says Goodwin. And the pieces Lee and Goodwin have chosen span electronic and experimental work from varied composers like Gabriella Smith, Andy Akiho and Steve Reich. The Reich Double Sextet, which can include six players performing against a tape recording of themselves adroitly ties in with the limitations of the show, allowing for the smaller cohort to seem as expansive and

“We’ve always wanted to push the bounda ries of what we do in the classical world,” says Lee, whose work on cello and on the musical saw has seen her cross genres and perspectives. “Part of this new series was seeing what we could do with a wide-ranging combination of instruments under the constraints of a reduced group of players. The pieces we settled on are all very exciting, as is working with the performers to see how it all binds together.”

While classical and neoclassical music can feel siloed from popular music, Goodwin is enthu siastic about the potential for the form to become exciting to all. “We’re listening to these textures and sounds every day in pop music. It’s just kind of been in the background. But when it’s packaged in a way where people can have an emotional connection to the music – like in film score work, for example – there’s more of a reference point than it just being this abstract concept.”

UN:TITLED takes place at Summerhall, Edinburgh, 29 Oct; St Luke’s, Glasgow, 30 Oct sco.org.uk/events/untitled

Su-a Lee

Photo: by Stuart Armitt, edited by Christopher Bowen

“For years, classical music has made a mistake in thinking accessibility equates only to cheap ticket prices”

Louise Goodwin, Scottish Chamber Orchestra

Louise Goodwin

Photo: by Stuart Armitt, edited by Christopher Bowen

7 October by Rough Trade rrrr r

Listen to: The Gum, The Weirds, Post Ryan

Album of the Month Gilla Band — Most Normal

Gilla Band’s first album since their name change feels transformative in more than just this way, owing to the band’s move away from recording live and into the realm of studio editing. It leads to a record that is often superb without ever really nailing down a specific identity.

It’s a more sonically dense record for one; the cavernous industrial spaces that The Talkies conjured have been replaced, and in the early stages it’s with a feeling of hurtling claustropho bia. Where their previous records often sounded like planes falling out of the sky, the first half of Most Normal sounds more like being in the cockpit, trying to wrestle control as the ground gets closer, never more so than on the nerve shredding, mechanical storm of opener The Gum.

However, it’s the sonic variety in the album’s latter half that really surprises. The Weirds giddily clangs together periods of swelling ambience, breakneck noise and a coda that is, heaven forfend, a bit on the jazzy side, without ever stumbling. Pratfall by contrast isn’t far from the

digitally blown out ballads of latter-day Low, just looser, and melted on a radiator into a pleasingly troublesome miasma. That said, the overwhelming hit rate of these experiments means that when they seem to play it safe, as on I Was Away, the sense of treading water is particularly pronounced.

The experimentation extends beyond sonics. Dara Kiely’s lyrics are more immediately compre hensible than they have been in the past. This is of course relative, there’s still swathes of his trade mark ability to marry the harrowing and the daft in his imagery. This deadpan surrealism was a cornerstone of what made those previous records great, but he manages dipping his toe into clarity superbly, nowhere more so than on the brilliant meta-reflective closer Post Ryan.

The record ultimately comes across as a series of experiments compared to the steely focus of their previous offerings, and perhaps in future will feel like a stepping stone record, but their sheer ability of songcraft means it never drags in its exploration. [Joe Creely]

Album

the

Arctic Monkeys

Carly Rae Jepsen

The Loneliest

Loyle Carner Hugo Out 21 Oct via EMI

Frankie Cosmos Inner World Peace Out 21 Oct via

Listen to: My Arrhythmias, Clear, Simple but Strong Ideas

In her third studio album, jazz drummer Chloe Kim 김예지 expands her interest in improvisation and self-accompaniment. The mini-album is a sonic exaltation of playfulness and experimentation; pitched percus sion comes together in layers to create a loping, easy to listen to soundscape. Though the instrumen tals may feel unstructured at first, the diverse sounds come together in the evocative and immersive track Tiki-Taka on Drums.

Kim’s drumming is occasionally distilled into rhythms that are reminiscent of Korean samul nori, a genre of folk music that features varied percussion. These roots mix well with Kim’s jazz background. Technical precision gives Kim the freedom to find new and challenging ways to take the listener on a trancelike journey. Kim’s playing has a breath-like quality – the tempo ebbs and flows, and sounds swell as they are layered amid each other.

I Love and Embrace is a master class in versatility. It is equal parts frenetic, organic, and meditative. It takes the listener on a personal odyssey, honouring both the artist and the art form. Listen through the highest quality headphones you have: the album is a feast of percus sive minutiae, and every beat tells a critical part of the story. [Rho Chung]

When The Big Moon’s debut landed in 2017, many said the golden age of indie was over. But a new horizon of post-landfill indie dawned, and The Big Moon have always shone brighter than most. 2020’s Walking Like We Do was a masterclass in unadulter ated pop perfection. Propelled by its reception, the band was set to unleash something new the following year but we all know what happened next.

Here Is Everything marks an intense period of change but none more so than for principal songwriter Juliette Jackson who gave birth to her son last year. The muse is front and centre of the record sleeve with Jackson baring her bump to camera while seemingly figuring out 4 Down on the weekend crossword. Ever the multitasker, the record is jam-packed with beautiful analogies unpicking family dynamics (Sucker Punch) and tumbling Toto drums (Daydreaming) as Jackson reflects on unconditional love. But it’s recent single Trouble that wrenches at your heart bringing her new world to life so vividly.

Here Is Everything presents a band laid bare. And, like the Harvest Moon casting its welcome glow, it’s a beacon of endurance and survival. Celestial magic.

[Cheri Amour]

New Bill Callahan is a gift as the nights start drawing in. He conjures a particular melancholy that seems to sit well with the season. It’s an almost meditative experience to listen to Callahan’s music; becoming immersed in his deep baritone, his tender arrangements, the curious tales he weaves.

YTI⅃AƎЯ is the latest addition to the anthology of records that Callahan has collated in the past two decades, both under his own name and his former name, Smog. ‘We’re coming out of dreams as we’re coming back to dreams’, Callahan sings on the opening track, seeming to refer to an emergence from the pandemic that warped our reality. The new record is intended to “rouse” its listeners, Callahan reflected in a statement. It’s certainly an invigorat ing listen: the music mingles trium phant horns and six or seven voices alongside Callahan’s, so that it’s almost choral at times.

YTI⅃AƎЯ meanders through moods, from melancholic to tumultu ous to mellow and easy. Often, the songs take time to reveal their true nature: Naked Souls begins as a gentle jazz ballad over piano, gradu ally building as other instruments join to become explosive. But else where, it’s simply joyful listening from the first beat. [Katie Cutforth]

Pink Diamond Bezel, the opening track of multifaceted artist Mykki Blanco’s latest album, Stay Close to Music, is almost a rhapsody. A soothing wind pipe later tangles into a manic concoction of deep percus sion and layered vocals. Blanco’s thematic switch of genres is hypnot ic. Lucky begins with a trap rap, ad-libs galore. In an instance the track becomes an unexplainable bubble of sound, synths bouncing in line with the vocals.

Listen to: Your Feminism Is Not My Feminism, Pink Diamond Bezel, Steps

These shifts in sound correlate to the two sides of the album. Tracks like Ketamine convey a sense of unseriousness. The rap elements pepper in pop references to balance out more hard-hitting lyrics. Whereas tracks like French Lessons are more melodic, using a glistening call-andresponse with Kelsey Lu to portray feelings of love and loss. On Your Feminism Is Not My Feminism, a minimal backing of a western piano conjoins a rumble of cymbals and an emphatic saxophone, as the poignant lyrics absorb a listener’s attention.

Stay Close to Music is captivat ing. Unable just to play in the back ground, Mykki Blanco has created an album that needs your full attention. It constitutes a narrative that is not only guided through words, but also sounds. [Abbie Aitken]

Albums

Chloe Kim 김예지 I Love and Embrace Phantom Limb, 21 Oct rrrrr

Bill Callahan YTI⅃AƎЯ Drag City, 14 Oct rrrrr

Listen to: First Bird, Coyotes, Last One at the Party

The Big Moon Here Is Everything Fiction Records, 14 Oct rrrrr

Listen to: This Love, Sucker Punch, Trouble

Mykki Blanco Stay Close to Music Transgressive, 14 Oct rrrrr

Alvvays

Blue Rev

Transgressive, 7 Oct rrrrr

Listen to: Easy On Your Own?, After the Earthquake, Belinda Says

How did Alvvays become such a mythical band? Through absence, the heart grows fonder, and going away for five years can seem like an eternity. The truth is Alvvays just did one good thing exceptionally well. Their sugar sweet shoegaze has been much mimicked, never matched, in the interim. It wasn’t for lack of trying, falling victim to theft and flood on their way back. Blue Rev is a return that, in a strangely radical way, simply meets expectations.

It’s not like things haven’t changed, the Toronto band having welcomed a new drummer and bassist. But this Alvvays is ultimate ly the same and Molly Rankin’s voice still drifts in from a dream, still one that you could swear was real, singing of disaffection and uncertainty. Easy On Your Own? is peak Rankin, wondering aloud whether she is moving through life or life moves around her. And she manages to make a song called Very Online Guy funny rather than cringe with lines like ‘he laps up all domains’.

If you wanted to experience an etherealness that was anchored in experience, it was always Alvvays. And it still is. [Tony Inglis]

Dry Cleaning Stumpwork 4AD, 21 Oct rrrrr

Listen to: Anna Calls From the Arctic, Liberty Log, Icebergs

Stumpwork is a mellower outing than anything that’s come before it, step ping away from Dry Cleaning’s distinct weighty sound in multiple directions. Even Florence Shaw’s vocals, which have always had a detached edge, at times take on a dream-like quality as she drops in flashes of a gentle singing voice. Lyrically Shaw remains unparalleled – queen of the post-punk talkies. Somehow Stumpwork height ens everything that has always been special about her writing, the mix of humour, perceptive poignancy and relatability all delivered with a surgical precision.

The drop in pace seems to have opened up new possibilities in terms of the kinds of sounds being produced. There’s still the moody, propelling bass we’ve heard from Dry Cleaning elsewhere, but it co-exists with a groovy, syncopated rhythm section on Anna Calls From the Arctic, an almost grunge-like guitar as on Driver’s Story, and an intro to Don’t Press Me which wouldn’t sound out of place on Talking Heads’ Fear of Music. This is what makes the album such a finely-tuned success – each instru ment is put to use across multiple genres, experimenting with a collec tion of new sounds. The result is a moment of exciting expansion. [Laurie Presswood]

Dirt Femme is the fifth album from Swedish pop sensation Tove Lo. A pandemic baby, the album is a mixed bag as the singer explores new paths for herself. “I hadn’t played a show in two years, so I was back to writing in my bedroom,” she admits. “I treated it as my journal.”

Tove Lo Dirt Femme

Pretty Swede Records, 14 Oct rrrrr

Listen to: Pineapple Slice, Suburbia, 2 Die 4

This comes across in the earnestness of the lyrics, which are at times pleasingly dramatic, while achingly candid at others. Suburbia, a song about the singer’s recent marriage and lack of desire for children is a good example of this. ‘What if I change my mind and want one, then I can’t have one – would you leave me then?’ This lament on Stepford-y mediocrity slides effort lessly into 2 Die 4, the album’s lead single – an infectious nostalgic slice of dance-pop, sampling Hot Butter’s 1972 single Popcorn.

For much of her career Tove Lo has charted a path as an unashamed club kid, for whom almost nothing cannot be explored over seductive synth beats. That is true here too, but less so than on previous records.

On Dirt Femme we get to hear Tove Lo’s voice rawer and less produced than ever before. [Tara Hepburn]

Listen to: Enfield, Always, My Take, Black Excellence (Stay On It)

The much needed redressing of the undervaluing of Julius Eastman’s spectacular talent continues with Loraine James’s new record, a self-described homage to him and his works. However, as spectacular as both artists' respective works are, it’s in its direct replication that the album falters. James turns Stay On It and its giddy central riff into a muted little sigh of a song that never really builds in the way it tries to, while Choose To Be Gay (Feminine) reinter prets Feminine almost entirely but keeps its rolling xylophones that never quite gel with the rest of the instrumentation.

The album, however, fares far better the further it strays from replicating Eastman’s work. The build of the gorgeous Enfield, Always, from pulsing kicks to fizzing hi-hats and whirling arpeggios is a joy to behold, and the staccato fidgets of Black Excellence (Stay On It) are spritely and energised in a way the earlier tracks weren’t. Eastman’s influence feels more implicit in these tracks, and all the better for it.

The record ultimately feels like something of a minor work in James’s already imposing output, but remains a pointer to both her and Eastman’s sparkling talents. [Joe Creely]

Loraine James Building Something Beautiful For Me Phantom Limb, 7 Oct rrrrr

Music Now

Words: Tallah Brash

September was another busy month for Scottish releases, of which we missed a lot of in our actual September roundup last month. Our bad. To make up for it, here’s a quick rundown of some of that. Five artists who played our stage at Kelburn Garden Party this year put out new music: Russell Stewart released Align, Kapil Seshasayee released 370, taken from his forthcoming Laal album, Nova released The Cold, a collaborative EP with producer SENGA, Bemz released his Zidane EP, packed with remixes of his bouncy summer banger, and Edinburgh duo Maranta put out their Deux Pleasure EP via Lost Map Records. There were also lovely new sounds made throughout the month from the likes of Midnight Ambulance (Morlich), Disco Mary (Everything’s Normal, Everything’s Okay), Fuzzy (If you want to), Linburn (Red Carpet for the Clouds), Neev (Seawall), Humour (pure misery), Casual Worker (Mousetrap) and No Windows (Shout (Red Song)).

Looking forward to October releases, TeenCanteen’s Carla J Easton and Frightened Rabbit’s Simon Liddell met before the pandemic, almost by accident. Introduced by mutual friends Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee of The Vaselines, Liddell asked Easton if she would contribute some vocals to a piece he was writing for a short film; misunderstanding the brief, she ended up penning an entire song. Realising very quickly that the pair had musical chemistry, they continued writing through the multiple lockdowns granted by the pandemic, and so Poster Paints was born, with their debut single, the shimmering and supremely catchy Number One, arriving in May 2021. A year later, and with little notice, the pair put out their debut EP, Blood Orange, with their self-titled debut album due on 14 October via Ernest Jenning Record Co. and Olive Grove Records.

The record covers everything from not giving up and chasing dreams to teenage love, heartbreak and relationships that are doomed before they’ve even begun. Through thoughtful compositions, big choruses, perfect swells of instrumentation, the poetic nature of Easton’s lyrics, and the warm and fuzzy round the edges delivery of her vocals, the pair make everything sound romantic and hopeful. Poster Paints is a weighted blan ket to keep us warm on the coldest of autumn nights. Needless to say, but we’re thankful they met.

Twins Rachael and Paul Swinton, aka Glasgow duo Cloth, are set to release their brand new EP this month too. An exqui site evolution of the sound they honed on their self-titled debut

album, Low Sun arrives on 7 October via Mogwai’s Rock Action Records. More of the spacious compositions that we’ve come to love from the two can be found here, but there’s an unease across the EP, which feels like it’s teetering in the half light of dusk. When the driving bassline of opener Old Stories comes into view, a wave of catharsis is offered up. The same can be said of the paranoia-inducing Lucid being followed by the title track; a more upbeat song, Rachael’s vocals feel comforting here. There’s a masterful balance found across Low Sun, with bright but eerie and ominous guitars, pulsating basslines and Rachael’s signature breathy vocals combining to create an altogether alluring listen.

Landing a much-coveted slot as one of Lost Map Records’ V I S I T ▲T I O N S artists, Kyle Molleson, who records as Makeness, returns on 7 October with an exclusive four-track EP written and recorded on the Isle of Eigg, and oh man does it sound like he and bandmate Gus Beamish-Cook had a lot of fun. Featuring big euphoric dance beats, trance energy, acid techno and “happy-hardcore meets synth-bagpipe hedonism” (which is how label boss Johnny Lynch describes EP closer The Bin Police, and he is bang on the money), it’s hard not to fall for this. Also this month, Edinburgh-based instrumentalist, com poser and sound artist Daniel McGurty releases his second album, Megaliths (4 Oct); an ambient record at its core, it’s bolstered by breakbeat rhythms and satisfying spasmodic glitches, while a few days later Glasgow pop-punks VUKOVI release NULA (7 Oct). Lewis McLaughlin releases his new Rollin’ On EP (12 Oct) via Monohands Records, featuring new song Rollin’ On alongside new recordings of two tracks (You Tell Me and Summer) from his Feel the Ground You Walk Upon album.

With four of its five songs already out, Alex Amor releases her latest EP, The Art of Letting Go, on 14 October via Young Poet. On 22 October, poet, writer, filmmaker and musician Sean Lìonadh releases his debut EP, I Cannot Go On Reaching, while on 28 October, Amateur Cult’s The Mirrored Pattern comes out, as does In the Lives That Surround You from Ralph Kinsella, which sees the experimental guitarist distort and manipulate layers of guitar into gorgeous, sometimes gently ambient, sometimes scratchy and abrasive soundscapes.

There are also new singles from Declan Welsh & The Decadent West (Mercy, 4 Oct), Hailey Beavis (Anything That Shines, 6 Oct), Pinc Wafer (Fence, 7 Oct), Echo Machine (CAGE, 7 Oct), Whim (Scrolling, 14 Oct) and Linzi Clark (Without You, 19 Oct).

Cloth

Poster Paints

Photo: Justin Lockey

Photo: Craig McIntosh

Feet On the Ground

Following the release of his latest album at the end of July, Edinburgh rapper Oyakhire talks us through Feet On the Ground track-by-track

At the end of July we caught a live show at Sneaky Pete’s from Ratking rapper Wiki. On local support duty that night was Edinburgh’s Mark Johnson, aka Oyakhire, who you may well recognise as a featured artist on Bemz’s SAY Award-nominated record Saint of Lost Causes. In-between his vintage-tinged hip-hop beats, Johnson excitedly told us that he’d just released a brand new album – Feet On the Ground – the week before.

An accomplished record, more of the wavy hip-hop sounds we heard that night can be found in abundance across the record, buoyed by Johnson’s confident flow and captivating lyricism. We’re delighted, then, to present to you a belated track-by-track rundown of Feet On the Ground from the man himself.

Weight

This song is titled Weight based on the impact I felt when I was recording; we had no actual title for the song and everything felt so heavy during the [recording] process. We had already record ed five or six songs from the project and it just felt like a weight off my shoulders as I was rapping. ‘Graduated from blowing fat zoots to pushing weights / Now I salute to the absolute strength that I execute in the booth’ alludes to just feeling really heavy in the booth as I was rapping.

Balance

This is the lead single from Feet On the Ground. It’s covering a lot of issues on this record, but what I hope people resonate with most is the overall feeling of hope and happiness ex pressed. You can hear it on the chorus. You can hear it all through the song; I need balance. It’s really important for

everything we do in life and so when I say ‘Balance on my mind running from the sinners’, I really mean running from your toughest problems and finding peace at the end. This was the first thing I made when I originally conceived the whole idea for the project, so when it turned out like this in the studio from just a rough idea of loose notes, [that] was awesome.

Dig a Little Deeper

This track came about through a direct message with the collaborating artist [Directs]. I hadn’t ever featured with some one outside of my local pool of artists so when the opportunity arose I felt like I had a big responsibility. I mentioned Edinburgh in this track because I wanted to set the contrast in styles from Derby in England, where Directs resides, to where I’m from, and in the end it creates a blend exploring our lives we live on a regular basis.

Blind (Freestyle)

So this track really was odd, I wrote it in two parts. When I first started writing it came to me early one morning as soon as I woke up, hence the [line] ‘Maybe I’m blind as a bat, I just woke up and I had to figure out where I was at’. The fun thing about this record is it’s talking about keeping your eyes open and not being blind to everything. I enjoy the storytelling aspect of music and so finishing this off in the studio really felt special.

levels

This track I had to sit on for a long time. I didnt have a plan for the lyrics which originally were for another song which didn't make the project. I just felt like I was speaking with so much passion, and I ended up going for it when I say things like ‘Let me sketch silhouettes as I select the best vocab’, or just the beginning – ‘Blank page, been a while since I sat down’. The song came about really from nothing. My mind was blank and I kept listening to this beat on repeat until I eventually let loose. There’s ‘levels’ to this game.

MANIFEST

This track can’t describe me any better. If you want a clear picture of me then listen close as I take you on a trip of vulner ability, the road of not knowing what the future holds and eventually settling on just wanting to have a listener who can sympathise with what I am saying.

Bird’s Eyed

This is a song about seeing things from a bird’s eye view and the twists and turns from being conscious of that view.

All Gawd

This song symbolises a lot to do with having faith. It’s about feeling unstoppable when you really believe in God. The original versions had a feature from a female vocalist, but this was changed. I wanted the magic all to myself because ultimately it’s [me] that wants to feel unstoppable from my faith.

Around

I wrote this song originally as if I was travelling to some destina tion on holiday. At the time I wanted to wrap up the whole project but I didnt know how to do it, and then I came across this loop which became the chorus – ‘Baaahh, bad shit goes around, around, around’ – and so it became the theme to talk about wanting to flee from all the bad that’s around.

Photo: Andrew Martin

Film of the Month — The Banshees of Inisherin

Director: Martin McDonagh

Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, David Pearse, Sheila Flitton RRRRR

On Inisherin, acres of untouched fertile ground cover a tranquil island occupied by the few locals who covet the isolation. There’s a pub, naturally, and a busier town by the port, but it’s otherwise a peaceful place. It’s 1923, and the relative quiet is only occasionally disrupted by the sound of explosions and gunfire erupting from the mainland in the thick of a civil war.

There’s a very different war raging on Inisherin: one with smaller stakes but no less destructive. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri director Martin McDonagh stages a modest but thrilling tête-à-tête in his marvellous return to his roots.

Colin Farrell plays Pádraic, a simple man who waltzes up to the home of his best friend, Colm (Brendan Gleeson), to take him to the pub. But Colm seems uninterested. In the pub, he complete ly ignores Pádraic to the confusion of the patrons well-ac quainted with their odd kinship. When Pádraic confronts him, Colm puts it simply: he just doesn’t want to be his friend anymore.

In many ways, The Banshees of Inisherin finds McDonagh at his most sincere. This is a film, essentially, about the precipi tous disintegration of a friendship, and there’s a sombreness to the proceedings. Even within the story’s relatively small scope, it understands how quietly devastating losing a friend can be. It’s like losing the foundations that keep a whole structure standing up. Pádraic is a simple man, fragile and open-hearted. In fact, that’s the very reason Colm decides to cut ties with him:

he finds him rather dull, and he’d rather play the fiddle than listen to Pádraic drone on about donkey manure. The notion of cutting ties with Colm is so unfathomable to Pádraic that he foolishly refuses to let him go, but as his former buddy introduc es some bloody consequences, he loses not just a friend, but himself. A former friendship evolves into a mournful, bitter feud.

In that sense, melancholy also runs throughout the film, as the rivalry sets up existential quandaries. Colm wants to spend his final years “thinking and composing” in the hopes of having his work live on. Is the company you keep what makes life worth living? Is life meaningless if we fail to leave a mark on the world? As a restrained two-hander, McDonagh’s film keeps you enraptured just through the pair’s conversations. If it was up to Pádraic, all one needs is good chat and a trusted companion, but Colm has grander ambitions that Inisherin can’t meet.

This isn’t to say that The Banshees of Inisherin lacks in the dark humour for which McDonagh is so beloved. This may well be his funniest since In Bruges. Every interaction is laced with searing wit and prickly sharpness, and self-inflicted violence adds a thrilling edge. Farrell and Gleeson rise up to the intricacies of McDonagh’s verbose screenplay – Farrell, in particular, is astounding, as he carries Pádraic’s wounds and exhibits his desperation to not be alone. On an isolated island where taciturn men keep their feelings close to their chest, McDonagh’s moving film posits that this aversion to closeness and vulnerability is what ultimately breaks us. [Iana Murray]

Film

the Month

Scotland on Screen: Sean Lìonadh on Too Rough

Too Rough, the latest short film from 24-year-old Glasgow filmmaker, poet and musician Sean Lìonadh, is a smallscale juggernaut. Since its world premiere at Sydney’s Flickerfest in January, the film has toured dozens of festivals around the world, including SXSW in Austin, London’s Flare festival and a hometown screening at Glasgow Short Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award. Other prizes followed – 16 in total – including accolades at ASPAC International Social Film Festival in France, the Radio City International Short Film Festival in Spain and the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.

The film is a spiky but tender story following Nick, a young gay, closeted, working-class teen, who’s going through a morn ing of crisis. After a boozy night at a boujee house party in Glasgow’s West End where Nick “doesn’t feel gay enough” to be there, some Dutch courage compels him to invite his boyfriend, Charlie, who’s much more comfortable with his sexuality, back to his bedroom at his parents’ house. When the hungover pair wake up the next morning, they’re in Nick’s single bed, the sun is already blasting through the net curtains and his parents are up and about. Nick panics. The pair are trapped.

The film prickles with raw details, many of them taken from Lìonadh’s own life, including the delicious setup. “I had to sneak a boyfriend out of my bedroom once and it was quite farcical looking back. We were running up and down the stairs like some comedy movie because we kept almost getting caught. But at the time it was very stressful and I became very angry at my boyfriend. I just thought that scenario of that one bedroom would be such a rich limitation to inspire all of these crazy things that happen.”

Over its 16-minute runtime, Too Rough is full of surprises. The initial premise suggests Nick’s anxiety is that his same-sex overnight houseguest will become known to his parents. It transpires, however, that it’s not his sexuality that’s the source of Nick’s shame. His dysfunctional homelife is the chief secret he’s been keeping from the world, and Charlie being exposed to it is Nick’s biggest fear. “I wanted to write about a character that was trying to hide a part of themselves from their boyfriend because they felt it was in some way unlovable,” explains Lìonadh.

Shame is a driving theme too in Lìonadh’s earlier film Time for Love, a filmed poem exploring the kaleidoscope of calculations a gay man, played by Lionadh, has to make before kissing his boyfriend goodbye in public. “I just don’t feel like I have a choice,” says Lìonadh when I ask why he’s drawn to that subject. “I don’t really know how anyone else deals

with their shame but I have to just invert it, otherwise I think it would kill me. Honestly! When I see characters who have the same flaws, it makes those flaws completely acceptable to me, because when you see those things in other people, you can actually love them and accept them a lot easier than you can yourself.”

Flawed characters are also much more interesting, of course. “Oh totally,” says Lìonadh. “I love flawed people, and I love flawed characters. But for me, flaws, I’ve just always felt like I had to be perfect. That’s probably my Catholic upbringing and feeling like I have to be morally and academically perfect. So I never really allowed flaws in myself but in writing, flaws are actually what make the story compelling. So when I’m writing, I take the shit that I literally hate about myself, and that becomes the gold in this fictional world.”

The aesthetic of Too Rough recalls Andrew Haigh’s work, specifically his masterful Weekend, but the rough-hewn poetics and the intimate, hand-held camerawork also bring to mind filmmakers like Lynne Ramsay (whose name, incidentally, is emblazoned on the T-shirt Lìonadh is wearing when I speak to him over Zoom) and Andrea Arnold, whom he’s explicitly cited as a reference for Too Rough’s claustrophobic 4:3 framing. When I ask who he’s most influenced by, however, he doesn’t hesitate in naming Nick Cave, a fellow musician who’s also a filmmaker. “Nick Cave is probably my favourite artist because he walks that line between monstrosity and being an angel as well. He just vomits all of his deepest, darkest desires and thoughts into songs and I try to do the same.”

Lìonadh does something similar with Too Rough, which features its own monsters and angels. When we ask Lìonadh why he thinks it’s struck such a chord with people on its hugely successful festival run, he suggests it’s this balance that’s key. “I think the warmth of the relationship between Nick and Charlie, combined with the tension of the situation is what people are reacting to,” he says. “I think the tension cracks people open and makes them vulnerable, and then the warmth just comes in and holds them. That was the intention anyway.”

Too Rough screens

Film

Scottish short film Too Rough has been enjoying an enviable run on the international film festival circuit. We caught up with its talented writer-director, Sean Lìonadh, to explore why it’s struck such a chord with audiences around the world

“When I’m writing, I take the shit that I literally hate about myself, and that becomes the gold in this fictional world”

Sean Lìonadh

Film

Decision to Leave

Director: Park Chan-wook

Starring: Tang Wei, Park Hae-il, Go Kyung-pyo rrrrr

Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) is a hotshot detective, the youngest his department has ever seen. He works constantly, barely sleeping, seeing his wife only at the weekends. When he gets called out to investigate the death of a rockclimber, he meets a young woman named Seo-rae (Tang Wei) – the victim’s widow, the case’s chief suspect and the only person Hae-jun can think about from that moment on.

From here Decision to Leave plays out an elegant dance of crosscuts, reflected surfaces and clever symmetry as these two strangers find themselves drawn together by a strange, rhythmic force that neither can explain or resist. As their mutual

obsession grows and the evidence piles up, Hae-jun finds himself more and more painfully torn between his head’s desire for the truth and his heart’s desire for Seo-rae.

The further we get drawn into the mystery, the less sure we are of whether we’re watching a love story or a criminal conspiracy. It’s a tale told in yearning glances and whis pered half-truths, one where the words “I did it” and “I love you” always seem to be just out of reach.

Mostly, Decision to Leave confirms what we all knew already – Park Chan-wook is really, really good at this. Whether he’s using the camera to turn the climber’s corpse into a morbid sight gag, staging a scintillating rooftop knife fight or just basking in the sensual friction of his two leads eating sushi together, the film simply never misses a step.

[Ross McIndoe]

Released 21 Oct by MUBI; certificate 15

Triangle of Sadness

Director: Ruben Östlund

Starring: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Woody Harrelson rrrrr

After skewering the private view set with The Square, Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s deliciously vicious satire Triangle of Sadness goes after the 1%. Presented in three chapters, each more satisfying than the last, he takes a sledgehammer to the global elite.

Our entry into this world of the super wealthy is a pair of bickering models: beautiful Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean) and her bae Carl (Harris Dickinson), who’s equally gorgeous, but his days in the fashion industry look numbered. Probably not long for this world either is their relationship. Yaya proclaims that she needs some one who can take care of her finan cially when her looks go, and the jealous, needy, and crucially, poor, Carl doesn’t appear cut out for the job.

Yaya’s huge social media following gets the pair a free ride aboard a luxury cruise, where they find themselves rubbing shoulders with an obnoxious Russian oligarch, a lonely tech billionaire and a sweet old English couple taking a break from arms dealing. If that sounds like the cruise from hell, you’d be right, although the atmosphere gets alto gether more toxic during the after math of the Captain’s Dinner, which features a wry cameo by Woody Harrelson as a conflicted Marxist steering this yacht full of capitalists.

Some have suggested Östlund’s satire lacks nuance and his targets are so low hanging they’re already in the filth. And those critics are right. Triangle of Sadness is not particu larly sophisticated in its critique of late-stage capitalism. That doesn’t stop its gags from being deliriously funny. [Jamie Dunn]

Released 28 Oct by Curzon; certificate 15

Piggy Director: Carlota Pereda

Starring: Laura Galán, Claudia Salas, Carmen Machi, Camille Aguilar, José Pastor rrrrr

During a blazing hot summer in rural Extremadura, in Westen Spain, Sara (Laura Galán) spends her holidays between her parents’ butcher shop and secretly going to the local swimming pool. She is avoiding her classmates, who harass her and call her piggy because she is overweight. Sara’s family is oblivious to this bullying and don't understand her introverted behaviour.

One day after lunch, she goes to take her daily swim, but three girls from her school are there. They almost drown her while filming it on their phones, and when they finally leave, they take Sara’s clothes with them. On her way home, having a panic attack and wearing only her bikini, she sees a man kidnapping her bullies. They ask her for help,

but, scared and confused, she lets him abduct them.

Carlota Pereda’s ambitious debut asks morally defiant questions, and they all seem to come from a very personal place. It’s no accident that Piggy, out of all its set-up’s possibilities, morphs into a horror movie. Pereda establishes parallels between bullies and slasher villains and visualises the anxieties of being a teenager who experiences violence – explicit or implicit – every day.

Piggy’s ever-changing tone and twists don’t necessarily reach narrative excellence, but this brutal coming-of-age film is always playful and intriguing, and alongside the gore, Pereda makes space to grapple with societal issues. The result is a metaphor for how violence, even when invisible, is all around us – and we just have to fight it.

[Fernando García]

Released

After Blue (Dirty Paradise) Director: Bertrand Mandico

Starring: Paula Luna, Elina Löwensohn, Vimala Pons, Agata Buzek rrrrr

After Blue is a unique, psychedelic trip of seductive and colourfully filtered images that is captivating, electrifying and, frankly, a bit ex hausting too. The setting is the eponymous After Blue, a savage planet in a brand new galaxy where humans move to after Earth becomes uninhabitable. This new world has no screens, no technology, and no men – they were the first to die off when their hair started growing inside them.

At the centre of Bertrand Mandico’s post-apocalyptic fantasy is Roxy, a teenager who unearths the body of a Polish murderer who’s been buried alive. Her name is Katajena Bushowsky, but she goes by Kate Bush. Roxy regrets the rescue, though, when she and her mum get blamed for Kate Bush’s fresh crimes

and are forced to abandon their home and go on the run.

The storytelling is uneven, but Mandico’s always inventive visuals make up for it. Even when the plot lacks character development and starts to drag, it’s easy to get lost in After Blue’s illogical and hypnotic world full of beautiful and grotesque imagery. Through oversaturated landscapes and with the mission of killing Kate Bush, Roxy slowly learns both the rules of her planet and her own desires; for all its flights of fancy, this is a journey of self-discovery.

Mandico’s flawed but somewhat fascinating dirty paradise works as a pastiche of 70s sci-fi nostalgia and queer aesthetics that stands out for its dream-like atmosphere so bizarre that you just have to see it to believe it.

[Fernando García]

Released 7 Oct by Anti-Worlds Releasing; certificate

PiggyDecision to Leave After Blue (Dirty Paradise)Triangle of Sadness

JUNK, EDINBURGH

Ahead of their trip to the European Street Food Awards, we talk to award-winning Edinburgh street food pop-up Junk about making a splash in Scotland’s food scene

Our first run-in with the spectacular food from Junk came at one of their very first events at Company Bakery a few months back, and it turns out we aren’t alone in being blindsided by some incredibly inventive dishes seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Having transitioned from a website to a street food stall, in the course of just four months and 12 events Junk have managed to win prizes at both the Scottish Street Food Awards in Edinburgh and the British Street Food Awards in London.

Ahead of their spot at the European Street Food Awards in Munich this October – and the opening of a permanent restaurant in Edinburgh the following month – we catch up with the duo behind Junk, Cameron Laidlaw and Jade Watson.

How would you de scribe a typical dish from Junk?

Something a bit differ ent yet familiar?

Sounds wanky but quite true. Every dish we create we try to nail five main points – sweet, salty, sour, soft, crunchy. We’re not reinventing the wheel here, just trying to bring the absoulte best out of each ingredient we use and emphasise the flavour combinations.

Junk started off as a blog and website; why did you make the move into street food?

We made the move into street food for one to see if we could repli cate what we do on the

website for the general public, and to try and build up a bit of publicity for the website. Cam quit his job in January, we really wanted to spend more time together and grow our passion project. With two young kids we also had to do something to make an income – so boom, street food!

You say that Junk only started as a street food venture four months ago; what has been your experience of the Scottish street food scene so far?

Yeah, four months down the line and it’s been an absoutle blast! For one thing, the people are fantastic! Huge amount of great people on this side of the industry, very laid-back, helpful and really good natured! I think the Scottish street food scene is really about to kick off. We are a wee bit behind the Americas and Asia but we have a fantastic larder with so much opportunity to showcase what Scottish street food can be.

You’ve had a fair amount of success, winning the Scottish and British Street Food Awards. What’s your reaction to that – has it been a surprise, or were you always confi dent of making a bit of a splash? We knew we were going to make a splash but never expected us to end up British champions! It’s mental. We heard about the awards at our first ever gig and applied on a bit of a whim. Whatever point you are in your street food venture we recommend you apply. It gave us a fantastic platform to reach a wider audience and book a lot more gigs.

Overall we’re just really happy about winning. Never won anything in our lives and to win back-to-back competitions, it’s class!

You’re going to the European Street Food Awards in October – what do you have planned for Munich? Stressing. Mostly stressing. But really, we are doing four dishes which have proven our most popular over

the various events: soft shell crab kaarage, kimchi & BBQ gem lettuce with white crab meat from Port Seton; roast bockwurst wrapped in pomme puree and potato string with our take on chippy curry sauce; a tonkatsu chicken sando; and our potato dish, ‘The Spanish Armada.’ Crispy potatoes, black garlic, slow-roast pork belly and sobrasada espuma. Just going to get over there and show Europe what Scotland can offer!

Tell us a little bit about your plans for the new restaurant – what can people expect once you open? We are super excited to be opening Junk at a permanent location. We will be upping our food game – similar indulgent dishes but utilising our fine dining background with more intri cate plating. We really believe food is the heart of bringing people together so expect to have plentiful plates to share with friends and family and lots of quirky beverages to match. Music has taken up a great portion of our lives and we really want to integrate that into the scene. Good drinks, good food, good music – what more could you want?

Interview: Peter Simpson

Photo: Jade Watson

Photo: Jade Watson

Photo: Jade Watson

Photo: Jade Watson

Tonkatsu Sando

Spanish Armada

Monsieur Crab

Craft Culture

Crafthouse features work from ten Scotland-based designers and makers at The Briggait

Words: Stacey Hunter

Glasgow-based glass artist Cressa McLaren is the curator of Crafthouse, an exhibition celebrating contemporary craft for the home. From her studio at The Briggait, McLaren's produces a range of distinctive designs including tableware, lighting and a collection of work enti tled Glass Meadows. After years of exhibiting in galleries, solo shows and open studios, she decided to showcase her work alongside other Scottish designers in a domestic inspired setting that allows audiences to connect with individual pieces in an accessible format.

Presented in collaboration with Wasps, in two gallery showrooms, Crafthouse hosts a variety of work from decorative glassware to pottery, textiles, lighting and furniture from nine other makers based across Scotland. Each piece is bespoke and handmade and focuses on contemporary craft. In addition to McLaren's works in glass, inspired by a lifelong passion for flowers, are vibrant and colour ful pieces by furniture-makers Richard Owen, Gvido Bolsevics, Stuart Campbell and No Comply; lighting by Stephen Finch; hand-thrown vessels and planters by ceramicists Ceri White and Andy Priestman, homewares by textile designer Chantal Balmer and decorative and functional tufted works by Laura Derby of Rugaura.

Glass artist Cressa McLaren says, “I have a real passion, love and appreciation for high-end

craft. This exhibition will highlight and celebrate craft-makers from across Scotland. With Crafthouse I want to focus on contemporary makers and provide a platform to showcase the wide variety and high quality of current craft production. By presenting the works together I hope to raise awareness of this talent and create a vision of how contemporary craft can look in an interior setting.”

All of the work is for sale and many pieces can be viewed online at Wasps, including a table made from a salvaged elm tree by Gvido Bolsevics; a unique hand-tufted wool pile runner that has been

carved to enhance its surface texture by Laura Derby; a selection of objects by No Comply crafted from broken, disused skateboards; and heirloom quality throws handwoven by Warped Textiles.

Find Crafthouse at The Briggait, Glasgow until 18 Oct, MonFri, 9.30am-5.30pm.

For more information, visit waspsstudios.org.uk

@localheroesdesign

courtesy of Wasps and copyright of Alexander Hoyles

Crafthouse exhibition @ The Briggait

Book Reviews

By Davey Davis rrrrr

Lee, an amateur sadist, is on a mission to track down a mysterious and beautiful dominatrix named X. As Lee searches far and wide in the present, the novel jumps back and forth to the recent past and their childhood, revealing important moments that have shaped the person Lee has become – someone cocky and braggadocious on the surface but harbouring deeper secrets and trauma.

Davey Davis’ novel is part noir, part erotic thriller and completely captivating. This dark, sensuous page-turner brings to life queer subcultures against the backdrop of systemic oppression and a rise in fascism very much mirroring our current geopolitical climate. Anyone seen as deviant, a criminal or vagrant is under threat of exportation, essentially sent to foreign countries never to return to the United States. This puts most of the characters of X at continuous risk, and yet they continue to actively engage in their deviant practices.

For as dark and harrowing as certain passages are, Davis also employs loads of humour and acerbic wit throughout the novel, while giving space to queer communities so often kept in the shadows. X is a bold examination of the current political mood in much of the Global West while celebrating the dark and depraved. The novel leaves the reader questioning when pain is pleasure and when pain is a tool of the oppressor. [Andrés Ordorica]

HellSans

By Ever Dundas rrrrr

Readers have eagerly awaited the next novel from Ever Dundas, whose debut Goblin was not only critically acclaimed, it also won the Saltire First Book Award for good meas ure. HellSans – the dark dystopian science fiction – only confirms Dundas as a writer to treasure. HellSans is the government’s type face used in all public pronounce ments and publications, having a profound effect on individuals. Set in a world familiar enough to make what unfolds all the more powerful, its very existence keeps the populace in a heightened state of euphoria and, as a result, easily placated. Insurrection is mostly a thing of the past, however, the increasing number of HSAs (‘HellSans Allergic’, with devastating consequences) leads to increasing division and disharmony.

At the centre are scientist Dr Icho Smith and high-powered CEO Jane Ward whose lives are inextrica bly linked, so much so that you can read by starting with either’s story. They are complex, nuanced charac ters among the most memorable of recent times. Secondary characters are beautifully written, with even the robotic retainers, the ‘Inexes’ (like witches’ familiars crossed with Alexa), having their own personali ties. It does take a little time to fully understand the book’s nuances, but that is part of acclimatising to what is a fully immersive world. It is a visceral and vicious novel in places –a body horror with brains. Imagine Ray Bradbury meets David Cronenberg, and it’s as thought-pro voking and outrageous as that sounds. Ever Dundas has written a book which challenges, shocks, and enthrals. [Alistair Braidwood]

Angry Robot Books, 11 Oct

The Consequences

By Manuel Muñoz rrrrr

A visceral uprootedness entangles each of Manuel Muñoz’s characters in The Consequences. These short stories give a voice to the migrant farmers who sustain the American agriculture industry even as politi cians work to make their lives unnecessarily difficult. Set mostly in California’s Central Valley in the 1980s, his characters live in the shadow of the ‘migra’ who at any time might come to deport the undocumented back to Mexico. But it is their lives outside this fear that are so captivating, be it family ties coming undone or journeying across the United States to attend a funeral of a former lover.

The American Dream is a fraught endeavour which leaves many of these characters empty and broken. In the small towns that dot the sprawling highway cutting through the Central Valley, life is bleak, cruel and crushing, especially for the women and queer men at the centre of this collection. There is an overriding sense of isolation that mirrors the sparse landscape –Muñoz’s world is not a bountiful utopia, rather stark and barren.

Never concerned by clean or redemptive endings, Muñoz’s protag onists end up near enough to where they start out, but a little bit more aware of how society is working to stifle their aspirations and hopes. There is a deep melancholy in many of these stories which blocks out any allusions of brighter futures to come.

[Andrés Ordorica]

Motherthing

By Ainslie Hogarth rrrrr

Motherthing, a psychological drama of sorts, questions reality, sanity, morals, motherhood and more, with Abby’s mother-in-law at the core: dead, but refusing to leave the house. Abby and Ralph are ready to start a family and put the darkness from their respective childhoods to rest. The couple moves into his mother’s home as a support; she takes her life, their plans shift. The basement becomes consuming – he sees his dead mother, speaks to her, is losing himself to the fact. Abby won’t believe it – can’t let herself believe it.

As cruel in death as in life, readers see Abby mentally battle a woman whose spirit was always slowly sucking life from the pair in some form, and reckon with her shifting grasp on her own motherly aspirations, and the potential loss of those who offer that genuine maternal connection via her role as a caregiver.

Motherthing is bleak, darkly funny, gag-worthy at times, outright gross at others. The structure varies, the strength of the landing too. The high shocks and big laughs peek out often enough to keep you consumed, wondering: how far will she go? Abby will cling to her dreams by any means necessary, and similarly readers will cling to the pages of this domestic horror to see for themselves just how far that will be.  [Heather McDaid]

ICYMI

Ithink the reason I went 28 years of my life without watching When Harry Met Sally was because I’ve never been one for the genre I figured it must fall into – fantasy. I presumed it must be categorised as such or be the result of hiring a team of visually impaired casting directors given the pairing of Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.

What I knew about the film prior to watching was fairly limited but, of course, I knew of the famous “I’ll have what she’s having” scene, and, indeed, of the basic premise of the film. I knew that the film posed the age-old question “can men and women really just be friends?”, but upon finally watching it, I found that the question on my lips was “who on Earth would want even friendship with this utterly insufferable man?”

The film didn’t explore male-female friend ship and whether such a dynamic can ever be simply platonic; it couldn’t do because Harry faltered at the very first hurdle. He never actually acted as a friend to Sally. The only reason Harry is able to have a friend in Sally, despite not being one himself, is because she is incredibly patient and forgiving of his bullshit.

Throughout the film, Harry is consistently dismissive of Sally – of her personality, of her opinions and of her career. She writes for New York Magazine – as does a male friend of the pair – yet her career as a writer is dismissed as “writing about things that happen to other people” while his serves as a marker of intelligence.

Sally has everything going for her and is miles out of Harry’s league – yet despite the constant misogyny he barks at her (among count less other things, he offers up the sweeping generalisation “men don’t want to be friends with women. Men know they don’t understand women, and they don’t much care”), she responds to him with nothing but kindness – even at points when she clearly doesn’t care for him at all. The only time I disagreed with her throughout the film is

when she says to Harry “you make it impossible for me to hate you.” I, for one, found that impossi bly easy to do.

Harry is obnoxious and rude. He’s self-ab sorbed, speaking in nothing more than mono logues – suggesting Crystal went method and played a stand-up comedian. He belittles Sally for not seeing the world as he does and mansplains to her why he is right and she is wrong. He sees the world in an incredibly un-nuanced, sexist way –talking of the simplistic categories he believes women fit into and how he has the right to assign them. He calls Sally “high maintenance” – nothing more than a condescending indictment of a woman who knows what she wants. He fails to see women as multidimensional human beings and is com pletely dismissive of their agency. When asked “What if the woman doesn’t want to have sex with you?” he says “doesn’t matter”. And yet, despite holding many opinions about everything and everyone, he fails to look introspectively – as Sally herself notes, Harry dismisses anyone who doesn’t want to sleep with him as having a character flaw.

At the beginning of the film, when Harry does indeed meet Sally, he presents himself as a tortured soul who sees through everyone else’s naivety,

when in reality he is a pretentious narcissist. Harry dismisses Sally’s positive outlook while reveling in his own “dark side” – posturing himself as an incredibly deep person because he does things like skipping to the ending of a book so he knows how it ends before it starts.

I didn’t have to skip to the end to know exactly how this film ended. I knew the pair were going to end up together, and Harry was going to – after needlessly putting the person he sup posedly cares for most through a sprinkle of emotional turmoil – declare his “love” for Sally. But I was mistaken – this film was not a fantasy at all, but a tale as old as time, in which another beauti ful, kind, intelligent woman ends up with a medio cre man with an inflated ego. Instead of being a commentary on whether men and women can just be friends – maybe it should be seen as a com ment on misogynistic men, and why we shouldn’t put up with having what she’s having.

'Follow Hannah Fairweather on Twitter and TikTok @hanfair weather and on Instagram @hannahfairweather'

Fresh from her Fringe debut, Edinburgh local Hannah Fairweather takes on the Nora Ephron classic, When Harry Met Sally Illustration: Jack Murphy

“The only reason Harry is able to have a friend in Sally, despite not being one himself, is because she is incredibly patient and forgiving of his bullshit”

Listings

Glasgow Music

Tue 04 Oct

SNARKY PUPPY

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Jazz funk from New York.

SAMUEL JACK KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:00 Blues from the UK.

FALSE HEADS (KAMORA + THE MUSICIANS OF BREMEN)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Rock from London.

FALSE HEADS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Rock from London.

Wed 05 Oct LUKE SITAL-SINGH

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Folk from the UK.

CORY WELLS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Indie from California.

OSIAH (MONASTERIES)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Deathcore from the UK.

REMEMBER SPORTS THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Indie rock from Pennsyl vania.

Thu 06 Oct

VONDA SHEPARD

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the US.

AITCH

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rap from the UK.

THE CLOCKWORKS KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Alt indie from Galway.

GRACE PETRIE MONO, 19:30–22:30 Punk folk from the UK.

DELILAH BON NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30 Punk rap from the UK.

OVERMONO!!! (CHK CHK CHK)

SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Dance punk from the UK.

CLOTH SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Electro-rock from Glasgow.

AS DECEMBER FALLS (THE TYNE + LED BY LANTERNS)

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30 MONSTER TRUCK

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Canada.

PULLED APART BY HORSES

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Alt rock from Leeds.

THE MENZINGERS

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Punk rock from Pennsyl vania.

M!R!M! (SDH + MEMORABILIA)

THE FLYING DUCK, 20:00–00:00 Synth from the US.

ALI AFFLECK

THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Edinburgh.

MIC RIGHTEOUS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Rap from the UK.

LYLE WATT + ISAAC SUTHERLAND

THE BLUE ARROW, 19:00–22:30 Acoustic from Glasgow.

WHITE NOVELS (ROSANNA ELLIOTT + JESSICA ALLEN + MARTINA CORSINI) ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Eclectic lineup.

Fri 07 Oct

NEWTON FAULKNER

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

STUART MOXHAM MONO, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Wales.

BROOKE COMBE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Indie pop from Scotland.

WYNONA BLEACH (BITTER SUITE)

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Indie grunge from Belfast.

SKEGGS

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Surf rock from Wales. MADDS (PETER CAT + FRASER MACCALLUM)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30 Indie pop from Glasgow.

JJ GILMOUR

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

MAN AND THE ECHO (HOWLING HOME + BEGONA)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Art pop from the UK.

THOMAS ATLAS THE BLUE ARROW, 19:00–22:30 Funk from the UK.

Sat 08 Oct GODSMACK (THE RAVEN )

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the US.

PRATEEK KUHAD (VIOLET SKIES)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from India.

CORTO.ALTO

SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Jazz from Glasgow.

ELLIE DIXON SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Indie pop from the UK.

DARE THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

THIS FRIENDSHIP IS SAILING (HUMAN HEADS + ALI ROBERTSON)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 13:00–22:30 Indie from the UK.

SCRAG FIGHT (THE FARTING SUFFRAGETTES)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30

Punk from Glasgow.

MOTHER ALL MIGHTY THE BLUE ARROW, 23:00–22:30 Neo-soul from Edinburgh.

Sun 09 Oct

WE THREE (MATTHEW HALL)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30

Pop from the US.

ANGEL ROXY SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Pop from the UK.

COLD YEARS

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Aberdeen.

DEL WATER GAP

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from Brooklyn.

DIVORCE BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Alt country from the UK.

BAS ROTTEN (ENDLESS SWARM + GENDO IKARI + PISS BATH)

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Grindcore from Portugal.

TWELFTH DAY

THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:30

Folk jazz from Scotland.

COCO AND THE BUTTERFIELDS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Pop from the UK.

Mon 10 Oct

THE DRIVER ERA

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Siner-songwriters from the US.

SINEAD O’BRIEN (KRUSH PUPPIES)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Punk from Ireland.

SASHA ALEX SLOAN SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Pop from LA.

OCEAN GROVE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Nu metal from the US.

JIM GHEDI BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Alt folk from the UK.

COUSIN KULA

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Psych jazz from Bristol.

LOOP

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

Tue 11 Oct

DINOSAUR JR

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the US.

CASSIA SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Alt indie from the UK.

ORCHARDS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Alt pop from Brighton.

RACHEL LIGHTBODY

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Scotland.

DAITHI

THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:30 Electronica from Ireland.

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE (DRAGGED UP)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Alternative from Japan.

Wed 12 Oct

MATT ANDERSEN

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Americana from the US.

RINA SAWAYAMA

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Pop from the UK.

SPORTS TEAM

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from London.

CHINA BEARS BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Indie from London.

FLORENCE BLACK STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Wales.

PENELOPE TRAPPES +

SARAHSSON

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Experimental from the UK.

DESTROYER

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:30–22:30

Indie rock from Vancouver.

TONY WRIGHT (TERRORVISION) (DAVID LANCE CALLAHAN + SPREAD EAGLE)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Bradford.

Thu 13 Oct

PETE WYLIE & THE MIGHTY WAH! KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Rock from the UK.

RINA SAWAYAMA SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Pop from the UK.

THE VIRGINMARYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

MAXÏMO PARK BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from Newcastle. EYVE + VERONICA PETUKHOV CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 20:00–22:30

Rapper from Zimbabwe.

THE BURNING HELL (ADAM ROSS + RAVELOE)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Garage folk from Canada.

UNKLE BOB THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Folk pop from Glasgow.

THE DAVE BRISTO QUINTET

THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Instrumental from Paris.

Fri 14 Oct FAIRPORT

CONVENTION

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Folk rock from the UK.

COUNTING CROWS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from California.

HOLLIE COOK KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Reggae from the UK.

DADDY LONG LEGS BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Rock ‘n’ roll from New York.

RUSSELL DICKERSON ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Nashville.

THE BURNING HELL (ADAM ROSS + RAVELOE)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Garage folk from Canada.

BOB REYNOLDS

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:30 Instrumental from LA. C.A.L.I.E

THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Jazz fusion from Glasgow.

KAT BROOKS

THE BLUE ARROW, 23:00–22:30 Soul from Scotland.

Sat 15 Oct STONE FOUNDATION ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Soul from the UK.

OLIVER HELDENS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 House from the Nether lands.

WELSHLY ARMS KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Blues rock from Ohio.

ONLY THE POETS THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Alt indie from London.

BEABADOOBEE BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Indie pop from the Philippines.

KATHRYN JOSEPH ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Indie folk from Inverness.

DAVID FORD CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

THE ORCHIDS (GNAC) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Pop from Scotland.

JOSHUA BURNELL (BEN MHOR + THE WILLOWS)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Folk rock from the UK.

ASHLEY CAMPBELL AND THOR JENSEN THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Country from the UK.

THE NAKED FEEDBACK (ONLY YOU + SUB VIOLET)

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Scotland.

Sun 16 Oct INHALER

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Dublin.

THE AMAZONS

SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Reading.

PUP SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Punk rock from Toronto.

THE OBSCURE TOUR THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:00–22:30 Eclectic lineup.

UNDERTOW OVERFLOW (AMY DUNCAN + BEN HARRISON)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Experimental from the UK.

LUKE COMBS

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:30 Country from the US.

MIDWIFE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Dream pop from Colorado.

Mon 17 Oct

TENILLE TOWNES

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Canada.

ELLA HENDERSON SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Electro-pop from the UK.

THE HAPPY FITS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from the UK.

ALEXISONFIRE

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Post-hardcore from Canada.

WARM GRAVES (K.YALO)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Germany.

Tue 18 Oct

NATALIE IMBRUGLIA SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Pop from Australia.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Folk from Cornwall.

PAVEMENT BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Indie rock from California.

THE FEELING ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

BADO RETI GROUP (ROMY WYMER)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Folk from Europe.

THE PEOPLE VERSUS (PECQ + LOGICBOY)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Folk pop from the UK.

Wed 19 Oct

ALICE MERTON

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Alt rock from Canada.

GILLA BAND SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Post-punk from Dublin.

CAITLYN SMITH STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Country pop from the US.

NERINA PALLOT (T.I.G.Y)

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Pop rock from the UK.

ROMÉO POIRIER

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Producer from France.

HANYA

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Dream pop from Brighton.

Thu 20 Oct

THEA GILMORE

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

ANDREW CUSHIN (NEW TOWN + THE NOTIONS)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Newcastle.

WRAUCCES (THE EXHALES + L-PLATE)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30 Indie from Scotland.

FINN FOXELL SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Rap from the UK.

COHEED AND CAMBRIA (THRICE) SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Pop rock from the US.

WAGE WAR

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Metalcore from Florida.

ROYEL OTIS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Australia.

MATT STELL AND ELVIE SHANE STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Country from the US.

EVENTS RESEARCH PROGRAMME

THE FLYING DUCK, 20:30–01:00

Weirdo/experimental.

GO_A ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Electro-folk from Ukraine.

THE UNDERCOVER HIPPY

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Reggae from Bristol.

MATTHEW KILNER QUINTET THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Aberdeen.

LEO MIYAGEE (RAMZES II + MOON PAW PRINT) ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Rap from the UK.

Fri 21 Oct

SONG SUFFRAGETTES

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Country from Nashville.

MARLON WILLIAMS (REB FOUNTAIN) KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30

Alt indie from New Zealand. GABRIELS SWG3, 19:00–22:30 R’n’B from LA.

KATIE SPENCER + NICKY MURRAY SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Indie from the UK.

EVA LAZARUS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Hip-hop from Birmingham. HANGING STARS + GERRY LOVE STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Country folk from London.

SAMANTHA FISH ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Kansas.

OCEN JAMES + RIAN TREANOR (LUCY DUNCOMBE + FERONIA WENNBORG)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 20:00–22:30 Experimental from the UK. DROPKICK (STARRY SKIES)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Pop from Scotland.

BILLY IDOL THE OVO HYDRO, 18:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

NAIMA BOCK (JUNIOR BROTHER + GRACE MORTON)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Indie from London.

THE MODERN STANDARDS

THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Edinburgh.

BEN MONTEITH

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Glasgow.

Sat 22 Oct CARAVAN

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Prog rock from the UK.

WILDERADO

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Indie from Oklahoma.

THE UMBRELLAS (SEABLITE) MONO, 19:30–22:30 Indie pop from San Francisco.

THE HEDRONS SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Glasgow.

GLASVILLE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 18:30–22:30 Country from Glasgow.

OH ROMANCE BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Alt rock from Glasgow.

INFINITE BISOUS STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Psychedlia from London.

PC WORLD (LEROY SE MEURT)

THE FLYING DUCK, 20:00–23:00 EBM from London.

POSTER PAINTS (FLINCH. + SIMPLY THRILLED (DJ SET))

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie pop from Scotland.

DEEP PURPLE

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:00–22:30 Rock from London.

KYLA LA GRANGE (INDOOR FOXES)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Indie pop from the UK.

THE FOO BIRDS

THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Edinburgh.

Sun 23 Oct

SEAN MCCONNELL

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Folk from Boston.

BURY TOMORROW + AUGUST BURNS RED SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Metalcore from the UK.

DEIJUVHS SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Rap from London.

OCTOBER DRIFT

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Indie from Somerset.

CELLAR DARLING STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Prog metal from Switzer land.

Mon 24 Oct

DEAN LEWIS SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Wales.

WARGASM

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Electronic rock from London.

CHARLOTTE

CORNFIELD (LORKIN O’REILLY)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Folk rock from Canada.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

MELTS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Art rock from Dublin.

Tue 25 Oct

THE SNUTS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Indie from Scotland.

Looking for something to do? Well you’re in the right place! Find listings below for the month ahead across Music, Clubs, Theatre, Comedy and Art in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. To find out how to submit listings, head to theskinny.co.uk/listings

GRANDBROTHERS

MONO, 20:00–22:30 Experimental from Germany.

IAN MILES & BLEAK

SOUL

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

ARTSICK STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from California.

MURKAGE DAVE

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from London.

HINAKO OMORI

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Producer from London.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

HIDE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Electronica from Chicago.

Wed 26 Oct

STEVE NORMAN

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK.

CUD KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 Indie rock from Leeds.

KIEFER SUTHERLAND SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Country pop from the US.

WESTERMAN (LAURA MISCH)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Alt pop from London.

THE PRETTY RECKLESS

BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Rock from New York.

THE DAMN TRUTH STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Rock’n’roll from Canada.

CONSTANT FOLLOWER (ANDY AQUARIUS)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie folk from Stirling.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS THE OVO HYDRO, 18:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

BINGO FURY (ROBBIER & MONA)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Punk rock from Bristol.

Thu 27 Oct

PROLAPSE (EVERYDAY DUST)

MONO, 20:00–22:30 Indie rock from Leicester.

THE HUNNA SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Indie rock from the UK.

NEVILLE STAPLE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Ska from Jamaica.

WREN

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Kent.

TESS PARKS STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Folk pop from Canada.

BOOTBLACKS (SOFT RIOT)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Alt indie from New York.

THE EVES

THE BLUE ARROW, 19:30–22:30 Pop from the UK.

CAVE IN (STAKE) ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the US.

Fri 28 Oct

COLIN MACLEOD

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Indie from the Hebrides.

JACK SYMES (JACKSONPORT)

KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Brooklyn.

THE KAVES (THE LILACS + LEAVING BORDEAUX + OCEAN VIEWS)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Indie rock from Glasgow.

BAND OF HORSES BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Washington.

SORRY STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from London.

PORRIDGE RADIO

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Indie punk from Brighton.

PHILLIP JON TAYLOW (JANE BLANCHARD + LLOYD’S HOUSE)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Pop rock from Glasgow.

Sat 29 Oct

THE 502S

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Indie folk from Florida.

NIGHTBRIDGE (PETER CAT + TWO METRE MAN + MAYOR STUBBS)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30 Alt rock from the UK.

SARMEN ALMOND (UNA LEE + RACHEL NÍ CHUINN)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Eclectic lineup.

KOSHEEN DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:30–22:30 Electronica from Bristol.

SAMSON SOUNDS

THE RUM SHACK, 20:00–22:30 Afro-dub from Glasgow.

THE GILHOOLY’S (DIGNITY ROW + LONEHEAD)

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Indie rock from Glasgow.

Sun 30 Oct

CHARLEY CROCKETT ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30 Blues from Texas.

VUKOVI SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Scotland.

MILKY CHANCE SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Alt pop from Germany.

THE BELLRAYS BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Soul punk from the US.

THE YAHWAVE THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Hip hop from Scotland.

JON GOMM ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

JOHN CRAIGIE (MARYELAINE JENKINS)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the US.

MALACHY ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Australia.

Mon 31 Oct

SKID ROW O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the US.

JORDS KING TUT’S, 20:30–22:30 R&B from London. DYLAN SWG3, 19:00–22:30 Indie pop from the UK.

PVA BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30 Electronica from London.

DMA’S BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Seattle.

Edinburgh Music

Tue 04 Oct

CASEY MCQUILLEN

THE CAVES, 19:30–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Boston.

PUBLIC SERVICE

BROADCASTING

USHER HALL, 19:00–22:00

Alt indie from London.

10CC USHER HALL, 19:30–22:30

Art rock from the UK.

YOKO PWNO

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Folktronica from Scotland.

Wed 05 Oct

FRANK TURNER AND THE SLEEPING SOULS

USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Folk rock from the UK.

Thu 06 Oct

LUXORS GHOST BANNERMANS, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Edinburgh

Fri 07 Oct CALLUM EASTER

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

DUBINSKI (ALTER MODERNS + LITTLE QUIRKS)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Edinburgh.

Sat 08 Oct

EXDESTRIER (MASTIFF)

BANNERMANS, 20:00–22:30

Metal from Edinburgh.

NEWTON FAULKNER

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30

Acoustic from the UK.

BOYZLIFE USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30

Pop from the UK. DIVORCE (FRIGHT YEARS)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Alt country from the UK.

Sun 09 Oct

SLYDER SMITH & THE OBLIVION KIDS BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30

Glam rock from Bristol.

RUSS BALLARD THE CAVES, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the UK.

SARPA SALPA

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.

Mon 10 Oct SOAK

THE CAVES, 19:30–22:30 Indie folk from Derry.

NATURE TV (HECTOR GACHAN + JACK BROTHERHOOD)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from Brighton.

Tue 11 Oct

TONY WRIGHT (TERRORVISION) (SLYDER SMITH ) BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Bradford.

CHINA BEARS (STUFFED ANIMALS) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from London.

Wed 12 Oct

SASQUATCH (SLOMOSA)

BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Stoner metal from the US.

THE SKINNER BROTHERS

THE CAVES, 19:30–22:30 Rock from London.

DAITHI

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Ireland.

Thu 13 Oct GZA

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:30 Hip-hop from the US.

DADDY LONG LEGS

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30 Rock ‘n’ roll from New York.

ATO SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from Leeds.

Fri 14 Oct

THE CHRIS SLADE

TIMELINE BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Wales.

AL STEWART

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 18:30–22:30 Folk from Scotland.

PEANESS

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.

Sat 15 Oct

LEO SAYER

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30 Pop from England.

NIALL MCNAMEE

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Ireland.

THE SNUTS

USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Indie from Scotland.

SCRUFF OF THE NECK SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Manchester.

Sun 16 Oct

ANGEL NATION (CONTROL THE STORM) BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Metal from Finland.

OLIVER HELDENS

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30 House from the Nether lands.

REBECCA VASMANT ENSEMBLE

THE CAVES, 19:30–22:30 Producer from Glasgow.

EASY LIFE USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Indie from Leicester.

Mon 17 Oct

ALFIE TEMPLEMAN

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from the UK.

Tue 18 Oct

GINGER WILDHEART & THE SINNERS BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from the UK.

PICTURE THE SCENE SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK.

Wed 19 Oct

JACK J. HUTCHINSON

BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Blues from the UK.

SAMANTHA FISH THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Kansas.

PAVEMENT USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Indie rock from California.

INSIDER TRADING SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk from Edinburgh. LUBOMYR MELNYK SUMMERHALL, 19:00–22:30 Classical from Ukraine.

GO_A LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Electro-folk from Ukraine.

Thu 20 Oct

GYPSY PISTOLEROS BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from the UK.

EVA LAZARUS SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from Birmingham.

Regular Glasgow club nights

The Flying Duck

SUNDAYS

GOLDEN DAYS

Weekly house and techno night for losing yourself in the beats.

The Rum

Shack

SATURDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

MOJO WORKIN’

Soul party feat. 60s R&B, motown, northern soul and more!

SATURDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

LOOSEN UP

Afro, disco and funtimes with three of the best record collections in Glasgow and beyond.

Sub Club

SATURDAYS SUBCULTURE

Long-running house night with residents Harri & Domenic, oft' joined by a carousel of super fresh guests.

Cathouse

WEDNESDAYS

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

DJ Jonny soundtracks your Wednesday with all the best pop-punk, rock and Hip-hop.

THURSDAYS

UNHOLY

Cathouse's Thursday night rock, metal and punk mash-up.

FRIDAYS CATHOUSE FRIDAYS Screamy, shouty, posthardcore madness to help you shake off a week of stress in true punk style.

SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

Or Caturdays, if you will. Two levels of the loudest, maddest music the DJs can muster; metal, rock and alt on floor one, and punky screamo upstairs.

SUNDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

HELLBENT

From the fab fierce family that brought you Catty Pride comes Cathouse Rock Club’s new monthly alternative drag show.

SUNDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

FLASHBACK

Pop party anthems and classic cheese from DJ Nicola Walker.

SUNDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH) CHEERS FOR THIRD

SUNDAY

DJ Kelmosh takes you through Mid-Southwest ern emo, rock, new metal, nostalgia and 90s and 00s tunes.

SUNDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

SLIDE IT IN Classic rock through the ages from DJ Nicola Walker.

The Garage Glasgow MONDAYS

BARE MONDAYS

Lasers, bouncy castles and DJ Gav Somerville spinning out teasers and pleasers. Nice way to kick off the week, no?

TUESDAYS

#TAG TUESDAYS Indoor hot tubs, inflatables as far as the eye can see and a Twitter feed dedi cated to validating your drunk-eyed existence.

WEDNESDAYS

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

DJ Garry Garry Garry in G2 with chart remixes, along with beer pong competi tions all night.

THURSDAYS

ELEMENT

Ross MacMillan plays chart, house and anthems with giveaways, bouncy castles and, most impor tantly, air hockey.

FRIDAYS

FRESH BEAT Dance, chart and remixes in the main hall with Craig Guild, while DJ Nicola Walker keeps things nos talgic in G2 with flashback bangers galore.

SATURDAYS

I LOVE GARAGE Garage by name, but not by musical nature. DJ Darren Donnelly carousels through chart, dance and classics, the Desperados bar is filled with funk, G2 keeps things urban and the Attic gets all indie on you.

SUNDAYS

SESH

Twister, beer pong and DJ Ciar McKinley on the ones and twos, serving up chart and remixes through the night.

THE ROBINSON PANORAMIC QUARTET SUMMERHALL, 19:00–22:30 String chamber from the UK.

Fri 21 Oct

THE DUALERS

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30 Ska and reggae from London.

GOODBYE MR MACKENZIE USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Rock from Scotland.

MELLOR SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK.

Sat 22 Oct

ANGEL OLSEN USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the US.

Sun 23 Oct

WARNER E. HODGES (RYAN HAMILTON)

BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Nashville.

JOHN CALE THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Wales.

Mon 24 Oct

ROSALIE

CUNNINGHAM

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:30 Prog rock from the UK. BODEGA SUMMERHALL, 19:00–22:30 Punk pop from New York.

TUVABAND

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Shoegaze from Norway.

Tue 25 Oct

LIZZIE REID

THE CAVES, 19:30–22:30 Folk from Scotland.

CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Folk rock from Canada.

Wed 26 Oct

THE ROYAL BEGGARS (THE SUICIDE NOTES)

BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from Sweden.

COLIN MACLEOD THE CAVES, 19:30–22:30 Indie from the Hebrides.

HALA SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Alt indie from Detroit.

COUNTERPARTS

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Hardcore from Canada.

Thu 27 Oct

JANUS STARK BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30

Punk rock from Peterbor ough.

STEVE NORMAN AND THE SLEEVZ USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Rock from the UK. THREE OUT OF FOUR SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Alt punk from Scotland.

Fri 28 Oct

THE DARKER MY HORIZON (MEDUSA TOUCH) BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30

Hard rock from the UK.

WISHBONE ASH

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:30

Classic rock from England.

BLACK CAT BONE THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from the UK.

KOSHEEN SUMMERHALL, 19:30–22:30 Electronica from Bristol.

MASON HILL

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00

Hard rock from Glasgow.

RCMS THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Eclectic lineup.

Sat 29 Oct

HOWARD JONES

ACOUSTIC TRIO WITH NICK BEGGS & ROBIN BOULT

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 18:30–22:30 Pop from England.

NEVILLE STAPLE (BUSTER SHUFFLE)

USHER HALL, 19:00–22:30 Ska from Jamaica.

THE LILACS

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from the UK.

THE HUNNA LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from the UK.

MY BABY

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Alt dance from New Zea land/The Netherlands.

RCMS

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Eclectic lineup.

Sun 30 Oct

H8TEBALL (TANTRUM

+ THE GUNS FOR HIRE)

BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:30 Metal from Fife.

PETER BRUNTNELL

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30 Rock from the UK.

JACK SYMES (SAMUEL NICHOLSON)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Brooklyn.

Mon 31 Oct

PAOLO NUTINI

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30 Folk soul from Scotland.

THE BELLRAYS

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30 Soul punk from the US.

MIYA FOLICK

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Alt rock from the US.

Dundee Music

Thu 06 Oct

PEATBOG FAERIES

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:00–22:30 Folk from the Isle of Skye.

Sun 09 Oct SPYRES

THE HUNTER S. THOMP SON, 19:00–22:30 Indie from the UK.

Fri 14 Oct STONE FOUNDATION BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:00–22:30 Soul from the UK.

Sat 15 Oct

ANTI-NOWHERE LEAGUE

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 20:00–22:30 Punk rock from the UK. JOSHUA GRANT THE HUNTER S. THOMP SON, 19:00–22:30 Indie from Edinburgh.

Thu 20 Oct YUNGBLUD

DUCK SLATTERY’S, 19:00–22:30 Alt rock from the UK.

Sat 22 Oct

THIS FEELING SHOWCASE (USUAL AFFAIRS + RED VANILLA + ZEN DEN + CALLUM GIBSON)

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 18:30–22:30

Wed 26 Oct

SAVAGE MANSION BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:30–22:30 Indie rock from Scotland.

Glasgow Clubs

Tue 04 Oct

A DECADE OF DISCO

SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Disco.

Wed 05 Oct

IT’S NOT RADIO

PRESENT HANG TOUGH RECORDS (CLISHAM)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and electro.

Thu 06 Oct

FOUNDRY045MODĒM B2B GERMA (OUTFLIGHT) (CRAIGEM)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno. BÉTON BRUT AND THE BERKELEY SUITE PRESENTS JAMZ SUPERNOVA (PLANTAINCHIPPS)

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Beats and funk.

Fri 07 Oct TRYM SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.

THE DAVID

ATTENBOROUGH

JUNGLE RAVE

SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Jungle and rave.

HEADSET002 (BLUETOOF + SKILLIS + VAJ.POWER + XIVRO + PINBALLSPIDER + MESSENGER SOUND SYSTEM)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Breaks, footwork, dancehall and dubstep.

BASS INJECTION

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00 Bass.

LEZURE 062: JAY CARDER, SLOAN & CIVIC GRIEF

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and two-step. JAIVA (BUTHOTHEWARRIOR + JOSHUA DUBE + ELANDA)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00

Afro house, footwork and jungle.

SHAKARA + BRADLEY ZERO

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

Sat 08 Oct

SKREAMIZM

SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

SOILSE (AKUMU + CAPRICORN + MEMI)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Hard drum, trance and tribal house.

CRUINNIÚ GLASCHU

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Regular Edinburgh club nights

Sneaky Pete’s MONDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

HEADSET

Scottish rave label with a monthly, guest-filled night.

TUESDAYS

POPULAR MUSIC DJs playing music by bands to make you dance: Grace Jones to Neu!, Parquet Courts to Brian Eno, The Clash to Janelle Monáe.

WEDNESDAYS HEATERS

Heaters resident C-Shaman presents a month of ambiguous local showdowns, purveying the mul tifarious mischief that characterises Sneaky’s midweek party haven.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

VOLENS CHORUS Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook

FRIDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

MISS WORLD

All-female DJ collective with monthly guests

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

HOT MESS

A night for queer people and their friends.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

SOUL JAM Monthly no holds barred, down and dirty bikram disco.

SUNDAYS

POSTAL

Multi-genre beats every Sunday at Sneaky Pete's, showcasing the very best of local talent with some extra special guests.

The Liquid Room

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

REWIND

Monthly party night celebrating the best in soul, disco, rock and pop with music from the 70s, 80s, 90s and current bangers.

The Hive MONDAYS

MIXED UP MONDAY Monday-brighten ing mix of Hip-hop, R'n'B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

TUESDAYS

TRASH TUESDAY

Alternative Tuesday anthems cherry picked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

WEDNESDAYS

COOKIE WEDNES DAY 90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY Student anthems and bangerz.

FRIDAYS

FLIP FRIDAY

TAQA WITH DIJA

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Club.

LOOSE JOINTS: PARRIS + LUPINI + NURSE

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Club and techno.

Wed 12 Oct

EUTONY - FASTER HORSES (VXYX + LAMD4 (LA MAISON & D4N))

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Thu 13 Oct

KEEP IT ROLLINGDUB & BASS WITH ROODBOY

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Dub, bass and dancehall.

BLOODSPORT: KILBOURNE + KAVARI (POOG1RL + JOEY MOUSEPADS)

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Techno and terrorcore.

Fri 14 Oct

3-D

SWG3, 22:00–03:00 Prog house.

TAIKANO

SWG3, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

PLANT BASS’D: SWEATBOX WITH DJ MELL G (NYLA + KOPI.O)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Ghetto tech and hard dance.

RETURN TO MONO:

REBEKAH & KAAI

SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Techno and electro.

I LOVE ACID FEAT. DMX KREW (ELISA BEE + JON DASILVA)

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Acid and techno.

Sat 15 Oct

OBSESSION

SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Disco, pop and electro.

POP MUTATIONS IRL AFTERPARTY (MINA & BRYTE + BAKE + ROO HONEYCHILD + MAVEEN + MOJXMMA)

STEREO, 23:00–04:00

Afrobeats, bass and club.

GANZER TAKT

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Techno.

EVNY WITH NATALIE

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT PRESENTS JOB JOBSE + LEZZER QUEST

THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Club and techno.

Wed 19 Oct

POWERPOT

PRESENTS: RAVE 002 (INEZ + KOPI O + DJ FLUFFIE + NEEVA NINE + JOEY MOUSEPADS)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.

Fri 21 Oct

PEAK PRESENTS

ALIGNMENT (FRANCK AND FROLIC + TAZA) SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.

DENNIS BOVELL: THE DUB MASTER (DJ SET)

+ JD TWITCH (DUB SET)

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 22:00–02:00 Dub and reggae.

Sat 29 Oct

HALLOWEEN PRESSURE

SWG3, 21:00–03:00 Techno.

FAST MUZIK X STEREO STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Hard dance and hardcore.

OUTER ZONE WITH WARDY & DOM D’SYLVA

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

Mon 31 Oct

THE HAUNTED WAREHOUSE

SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.

BREATHE. & MICASA: HALLOWEEN

STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Deep house, disco and house.

SUB CLUB HALLOWEEN XL SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Club and house.

Edinburgh Clubs

Tue 04 Oct

TECHTONIC

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Wed 05 Oct

REVOLT

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and club.

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and novelty-stuffed. Perrrfect.

SATURDAYS

BUBBLEGUM Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

SUNDAYS SECRET SUNDAY Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/handle on a Sunday.

Subway Cowgate

MONDAYS

TRACKS Blow the cobwebs off the week with a weekly Monday night party with some of Scotland’s biggest and best drag queens.

TUESDAYS

TAMAGOTCHI Throwback Tuesdays with non-stop 80s, 90s, 00s tunes.

WEDNESDAYS

XO

SATURDAYS

SLICE SATURDAY

The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

SUNDAYS Sunday Service Atone for the week before and the week ahead with non-stop dancing.

The Mash House

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

Joyous global club sounds: think Afrobeat, Latin and Arabic dancehall on repeat.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

PULSE

The best techno DJs sit alongside The Mash House resident Darrell Pulse.

ROUND EARTH THEORY (BIOTA + FIG NEWTON + LARDO) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Techno, breaks, bass, house and dubstep.

ESOTERICA

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00 Trance.

Sat 22 Oct

SWIFTOGEDDON: THE TAYLOR SWIFT CLUB NIGHT

SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Pop and disco.

FUSE X INFINITE QUEST (AUCO + NEANA + DJ PAYPAL) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Bass, club and footwork. KILIMANJARO MUSIC LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 House.

Wed 26 Oct

A.D.S.R VI (KALOPSIA + MANU_FACTURER + BRASS TRAXX + YANT) LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Drum’n’bass, funk and techno.

Thu 27 Oct

SHELFLIFE

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Garage, break and bass.

Thu 06 Oct NIGHT TUBE

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and club.

Fri 07 Oct

ALL NIGHT CHAOS IN THE CBD

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00 House.

HOBBES MUSIC 9TH BIRTHDAY PARTY (RED RACK’EM + JACKSONVILLE + GAMING + GEORGE T) THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno, bass, breaks.

OPTIMO ESPACIO SUMMERHALL, 22:00–03:00 Techno and dance.

BACK TO THE 80’S

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 80s pop.

OVERGROUND

Regular Glasgow comedy nights

Drygate Brewing Co.

FIRST AND THIRD TUESDAY OF THE MONTH DRYGATE COMEDY LAB, 7PM

A new material comedy night hosted by Chris Thorburn.

The Stand

Glasgow FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

Host Billy Kirkwood and guests act entirely on your suggestions.

EDINTEKK

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

CLUB NACHT

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

Mon 10 Oct

PRONTO SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

Tue 11 Oct

TECHTONIC

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Thu 13 Oct

FLY: EWAN MCVICAR (EWAN MCVICAR)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House.

VIVA MEXICANO

PARTY

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Party and disco.

MIDNIGHT BASS THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Bass.

Fri 14 Oct

SNEAKY PETE’S INSTALLATION #002 (GIANT SWAN + AYA + 96 BACK (LIVE) + ALLIYAH ENYO + DANSA)

FRUITMARKET, 19:00–00:00 Techno.

STORYTIME 5TH BIRTHDAY: ROMARE

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 House and disco.

PRONTO COLLECTIVE

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

Afro, disco, italo and house.

Sat 15 Oct

TUESDAYS

RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to eight acts.

FRIDAYS

THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS

THE SATURDAY SHOW, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

The Glee Club

FRIDAYS

FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

The perfect way to end the working week, with four superb stand-up comedians.

SATURDAYS

SATURDAY NIGHT COM EDY, 19:00

An evening of awardwinning comedy, with four superb stand-up come dians that will keep you laughing until Monday.

Hip-hop and R'n'B grooves from regulars DJ Beef and DJ Cherry.

THURSDAYS

SLIC

More classic Hip-hop and R'n'B dance tunes for the almost end of the week.

FRIDAYS

FIT FRIDAYS

Chart-topping tunes perfect for an irresistible sing and dance-along.

SEROTONE SCARES (AISHA + KOPI O + ELANDA + PROGRESSIVE) SWG3, 23:00–03:00 House and techno. AFRICA IS NOWOPTIMISTIC SOUL + DIJA + NADIA SUMMER THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Afro and house.

Fri 28 Oct

GBX HALLOWEEN SWG3, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

STEREO PRESENTS: JULIANA HUXTABLE (JUNGLEHUSSI + ELANDA + JOE UNKNOWN + SOFAY) STEREO, 23:00–04:00 Techno, bass and club.

NEED 4 SPEED: LESSSS + QUAIL + AISHA + NEOMA SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Techno and house.

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno. PARABELLUM

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electronica.

Sat 08 Oct

CENTRAL EH1 - GENE

ON EARTH

CABARET VOLTAIRE, 19:00–03:00 House and techno.

REDSTONE PRESS & FRIENDS (PSEUDOPOLIS + LEWIS LOWE)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

WEE DUB CLUB: ABA SHANTI I WITH MIGHTY OAK SOUNDSYSTEM & NEM LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–04:00 Dub.

ADULT CAT THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–03:00 Punk, jazz and funk.

SNEAKY PETE’S INSTALLATION #003 (TSHA + LVRA (LIVE) + SEREN SEO)

FRUITMARKET, 19:00–00:00 House.

CLUB MEDITERRANEO (ANDREA MONTALTO)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Disco.

K-POP PARTY

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop.

FONN

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electronica.

Sun 16 Oct

SNEAKY PETE’S INSTALLATION #004 (JACQUES GREENE + ECLAIR FIFI + CID RIM (LIVE) + THE BLESSINGS) FRUITMARKET, 19:00–00:00 House.

Mon 17 Oct

START THE DANCE: CALLYT & ADAM DEVLIN (CALLYT & ADAM DEVLIN)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Rave.

Tue 18 Oct

TECHTONIC

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Thu 20 Oct

FEMMERGY

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Club and disco.

SIGNAL: ROZA TERENZI + AIDAN GIBSON SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

JUNGLE MAGIK PRESENTS KINGS OF THE JUNGLE

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Jungle.

BE WIDE

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Fri 21 Oct

FLY CLUB PRESENTS GAV MILLER X JEZZ SIMPSON CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

ATHENS OF THE NORTH (FRYER + LEL PAFREY) SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Disco. SWIFTOGEDDON LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop. EPIKA

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electro and techno.

MAIN INGREDIENT THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electronica and beats.

Sat 22 Oct

CLUB NACHT

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno. BAYO THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electronica.

Mon 24 Oct MORRISON

STREET PRESENTS: MATREFAKT SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House.

Tue 25 Oct

TECHTONIC

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Thu 27 Oct

PLANT BASS’D

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and breaks.

CLUB SYLKIE’S 1ST BIRTHDAY (MI-EL + MORAY LEISURE CENTRE)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Indie dance.

VIVA HALLOWEEN INTERNATIONAL PARTY

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Party and disco.

Fri 28 Oct

SNEAKY PETE’S INSTALLATION #005 (BATU + LCY + SKILLIS)

FRUITMARKET, 19:00–03:00 Techno.

DEFINITION

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House and techno.

TONTO

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–04:00 Techno.

INDUSTRIAL ESTATE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Sat 29 Oct

SNEAKY PETE’S INSTALLATION #006 (LEON VYNEHALL + PERCY MAIN + MORAY LEISURE CENTRE)

FRUITMARKET, 19:00–03:00 House.

HALLOWEEN MEGA PARTY! KEEP IT STEEL VS DECADE VS KICKSTART MY HEART VS WAIT AND BLEED.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–04:00 Metal and rock.

BOUND IN SOUND THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–04:00 Techno.

PULSE

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–04:00 Techno.

Sun 30 Oct

SNEAKY PETE’S INSTALLATION #007 (JYOTY + NABIHAH IQBAL + SOSI)

FRUITMARKET, 19:00–03:00 Global.

Mon 31 Oct

TAIS-TOI: YASMIN GARDEZISNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–03:00 Techno.

KINKY DISCO HALLOWEEN LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Disco.

CLUBS NACHT THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Dundee Clubs

Fri 14 Oct

REGGAETON PARTY

CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Reggae and funk.

Sat 15 Oct

CALL ME MAYBE2010S PARTY CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Pop.

Fri 21 Oct

CONEXION RESIDENTS

002 (SEB.R.NETIK + SAM WATERS + JOSH MCGLASHAN)

THE HUNTER S. THOMP

SON, 21:00–03:00 Techno and rave.

Sat 22 Oct

DUNDEMO VS DISTORTED

CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Emo and pop punk.

Fri 28 Oct

SO FETCH - 2000S

HALLOWEEN PARTY CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Pop and disco.

Sat 29 Oct

WE ARE STILL YOUNG: HALLOWEEN PARTY

CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Emo.

Glasgow Comedy

Oran Mor

COLIN GEDDIS: BOTH BARRELS

31 OCT, 7:00PM

Host of the popular The General Banter Podcast.

PADDY RAFF 11 OCT, 7:00PM

Often sold-out Irish comedian.

The Glee Club

FRANKIE BOYLE: WORK IN PROGRESS 3-12 OCT, 4:30PM New material from Scottish comedy legend.

CARL HUTCHINSON: LIVE 2022 20 OCT, 6:30PM After two consecutive sellout years, Carl Hutchinson returns with a brand new show.

SCOTT BENNETT: GREAT SCOTT

27 OCT, 7:00PM

Sharp observational hu mour from comedy veteran.

POLSKI STAND-UP W GLASGOW (KAROL MODZELEWSKI)

30 OCT, 5:00PM

Polish-language comedy.

SALAD FINGERS: EPISODES 1 - 12 (PLUS Q&A WITH CREATOR DAVID FIRTH)

31 OCT, 7:00PM

Bizarre comedy animation followed by a director Q&A.

The Stand

Glasgow

KIRI PRITCHARDMCLEAN: HOME TRUTHS

17 OCT, 8:30PM

Back by popular demand, multi-award winning stage & TV powerhouse extends her tour to the Autumn.

ELF LYONS: RAVEN

16 OCT, 8:30PM

Comedy it-girl Elf Lyons brings her new horrifying comedy show inspired by Stephen King.

SPONTANEOUS POTTER: THE UNOFFICIAL

IMPROVISED PARODY

10 OCT, 8:30PM

Grab your wands, don your house robes, and apparate yourselves to The Stand! A very magical improv show awaits.

OLGA KOCH: JUST FRIENDS

13 OCT, 8:30PM

Edinburgh Best Newcomer nominee, Olga Koch brings the rollercoaster romcom you aren’t tall enough to ride.

ISY SUTTIE: JACKPOT

12 OCT, 8:30PM

As seen as Dobby in Peep Show, Isy Suttie’s return to stand-up after six years follows her struggle to keep motherhood exciting.

DARREN CONNELL AND THE FUNNY BUNCH

23 OCT, 8:00PM

The best and more estab lished acts on the circuit trying out new material, hosted by Scot Squad’s Darren Connell.

JEN BRISTER: THE OPTIMIST

4-6 OCT, 8:30PM

An hour of new comedy on if the pandemic has changed Jen Brister, as seen on Live at The Apollo, for the better.

JAGS FOR GOOD FUNDRAISER

9 OCT, 1:00PM

Afternoon of comedy hosted by Ray Bradshaw, featuring special guests Fred Macaulay and more. Proceeds to their Energy Fund.

FRANKIE BOYLE: WIP

2-31 OCT, TIMES VARY

A work-in-progress show from the fantastic Frankie Boyle.

HENRY NORMAL - SIT

DOWN POETRY

20 OCT, 8:00PM

Armed only with a chair and a mic, stories, jokes and poetry, the BabyCow co-founder takes on the world looking for a win-win situation.

WHAT THE FEKETE

22 OCT, 4:30PM

US comedians Christine Fekete and Brian Patafie share the hour. She tackles motherhood and divorce; he chronicles his career in hockey.

THE BUGLE

30 OCT, 8:30PM

One of the longest-running and most successful pod casts celebrates its 15th anniversary with a series of live performances.

Edinburgh Comedy Monkey Barrel Comedy Club

ROAST BATTLE

10 OCT, 8:00PM

Comedians go head-tohead.

DATING CRAPP

7-21 OCT, 10:00PM

Improv comedy based on two audience members’ dating profiles.

STAMPTOWN

3-4 OCT, 8:00PM

A raunchy, full-on fringe experience, this late-night variety show features the best from the international scene.

IAN SMITH: WORK IN PROGRESS

19 OCT, 8:00PM

A new show from the multi award-winning comedian.

COLIN GEDDIS: BOTH BARRELS

30 OCT, 8:30PM

Host of the popular The General Banter Podcast.

The Stand

Edinburgh KIRI PRITCHARDMCLEAN: HOME TRUTHS

16 OCT, 8:30PM

Back by popular demand, multi-award winning stage & TV powerhouse extends her tour to the Autumn.

STU & GARRY’S IMPROV SHOW 11 OCT, 8:30PM

Our long-running improvised comedy show. Resident duo Stu & Garry weave comedy magic from audience suggestions.

ELF LYONS: RAVEN

15 OCT, 5:00PM Comedy it-girl Elf Lyons brings her new horrifying comedy show inspired by Stephen King.

JEN BRISTER: THE OPTIMIST

4-6 OCT, 4:00PM

An hour of new comedy on if the pandemic has changed Jen Brister, as seen on Live at The Apollo, for the better.

RISE UP: AN EVENING OF RADICAL MUSIC, SPOKEN WORD AND LIVE COMEDY

5 OCT, 8:30PM

Bringing together workers and artists from across the Fringe to decompress and mix with others wishing to improve conditions at the World's largest arts festival.

THE SATURDAY SHOW EARLY SHOW WITH EDINBURGH

COCKTAIL WEEK!

8 OCT, 5:00PM

A special additional Saturday show with a guest cocktail bar.

THE SUNDAY SHOW WITH EDINBURGH COCKTAIL WEEK!

9 OCT, 4:00PM

A special additional show with a guest cocktail bar.

ALUN COCHRANE: STUFF AND NONSENSE

9 OCT, 8:00PM

Stand-up (Stuff) and improv (Nonsense) from the Scottish comedian and TV veteran (Mock the Week, Never Mind the Buzzcocks).

CABARET OF DANGEROUS IDEAS

19 OCT, 8:00PM

A rapid-fire rundown from three of the country’s top academics, compered by one of the country’s top comics.

ROB NEWMAN LIVE ON STAGE

23 OCT, 8:30PM

Fresh from his BBC Radio 4 series, the award-winning comedian tells how new scientific discoveries may help us move to a life after oil.

Glasgow Theatre

The King’s

Theatre

DREAMGIRLS

10-22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

In 1960s America, three talented singers embark on a musical odyssey.

GLASGOW LIGHT OPERA CLUB (GLOC)

PRESENT GREASE 25-29 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Return to those summer nights with this classic musical.

Theatre Royal

SOUTH PACIFIC

4-8 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The classic musical about a lavish World War II romance.

JAMES IV: QUEEN OF THE FIGHT

11-15 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The court of James IV comes to life through the eyes of two Moorish women in this new addition to the celebrated James plays.

SCOTTISH OPERA: AINADAMAR 29 OCT-5 NOV, 7:15PM –10:00PM

A lavish opera reimagining the life of and works of Federico García Lorca.

Tramway

PHILIPPE QUESNE: FARM FATALE

7 OCT, 7:00PM –10:00PM

Five scarecrows take stock of their present in this posthuman, ecological parable.

CADE AND MACASKILL: THE MAKING OF PINOCCHIO 28 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Love and transition as told through the story of Pinocchio.

Tron Theatre

549: SCOTS OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR 6-15 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The true story of the Scot tish ranks that fought in the Spanish Civil War.

LA PERFORMANCE 12-22 OCT, 7:45PM –10:00PM

A surreal turn of visual theatre about the deceptive boundaries of performance.

SISTER RADIO 21-22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Two sisters from Iran confront their past in the confines of their Edinburgh flat.

THE TIME MACHINE: A RADICAL FEMINIST RETELLING 26-28 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

In a secret bunker, a group of feminists confront the doom of their future.

Edinburgh Theatre

Assembly Roxy

STUNTMAN

14-15 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

A tender, physical doublehander exploring masculin ity and the spectacle of violence.

THE SATYRICON

4-8 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Three down-and-out young men in the days of the Roman Empire live a series of bizarre tragicomic adventures.

DOING SHAKESPEARE 22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

An audacious Shakespeare mash-up.

WHEN MOUNTAINS MEET/JUB MILAIN

PAHAAR

27-28 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

76 years after Partition, sto rytellers and singers retell one person’s journey from Edinburgh to their father’s homeland of Pakistan.

Festival Theatre

SOUTH PACIFIC 25-29 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The classic musical about a lavish World War II romance.

JAMES IV: QUEEN OF THE FIGHT

1-8 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The court of James IV comes to life through the eyes of two Moorish women in this new addition to the celebrated James plays.

THE CHER SHOW

11-15 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Turn back time to the era of Cher in this addictive new musical.

HARRY HILL: PEDIGREE FUN!

9 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

A one-man singing spec tacular.

THE TROCKS: LES BALLETS TROCKADERO DE MONTE CARLO

21-22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Tongue-in-cheek yet me ticulously performed ballet from an all-male company.

Royal Lyceum Theatre

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE* (*SORT OF)

18 OCT-5 NOV, 7:30PM –10:00PM

An irreverent, spiky take on the enemies-to-lovers Austen classic.

The Edinburgh Playhouse

JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT

25-29 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Andrew Lloyd-Webber goes Biblical in this musical classic.

THE BOOK OF MORMON

1-8 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

A hit, outrageous musical comedy from the makers of South Park.

GIRL FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY 18-22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM Musical featuring the songs of Bob Dylan.

Traverse Theatre

549: SCOTS OF THE

SPANISH CIVIL WAR

14-15 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The true story of the Scot tish ranks that fought in the Spanish Civil War.

CROCODILE ROCK

25 OCT, TIMES VARY

A one-man musical about a young Scottish island boy discovering the world of drag.

A NEW LIFE 26 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

A new musical about the truths of parenting.

A PLAY, A PIE & A PINT: HE WHO OPENS THE

DOOR

4-8 OCT, 1:00PM –2:00PM

A black comedy reflecting on the limbo of those caught between opposing forces.

DON’T. MAKE. TEA 5-8 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

A dark new comedy about the welfare system pre sented by Birds of Paradise, Scotland’s disabled-led theatre company.

A PLAY, A PIE & A PINT: MADE IN CHINA 11-15 OCT, 1:00PM –2:00PM

A exploration of the West’s reliance on Eastern labour.

THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE

19-22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

Penned by the mind behind In Bruges, this blackly hilarious play dissects the sanctity of the family.

Dundee Theatre

Dundee Rep RAY 12 OCT, 8:00PM –10:00PM

Scottish Dance Theatre's latest creation by Brusselsbased choreographer Meytal Blanaru explores ideas of emergence and the quest for a deep, collective physical experience.

JAMES IV: QUEEN OF THE FIGHT

18-22 OCT, 7:30PM –10:00PM

The court of James IV comes to life through the eyes of two Moorish women in this new addition to the celebrated James plays.

Glasgow Art CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

MAJD ABDEL HAMID: MUSCLE MEMORY

1 OCT-5 NOV, TIMES

VARY

A new body of work drawing on the history of embroi dery in Palestine, created in the aftermath of the devastating 2020 explosion in Beirut.

Compass Gallery

DENNIS BUCHAN RSA: COASTAL CONNECTIONS

1-21 OCT, TIMES VARY

A retrospective solo exhibi tion of eminent Scottish landscapist.

David Dale Gallery and Studios

NADIA BELERIQUE:

SLICE

1-29 OCT, 12:00PM –5:00PM

Using dimensional collage methods, incorporating photography, sculpture and installation, Nadia Belerique’s works examine the fraught boundaries between public and private, inside and outside spaces.

Glasgow Print Studio

KEN CURRIE: CHUNNACAS NA

MAIRBH BEO (THE DEAD HAVE BEEN SEEN ALIVE)

7 OCT-26 NOV, TIMES

VARY

A series of prints respond ing to the history of the Clearances and the haunt ings of Scottish past and present.

GoMA TASTE!

1 OCT-31 DEC, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Featuring work by Andy Warhol, Sarah Forrest and David Shrigley, this exhibi tion looks at how taste is created and art archives are curated.

DOMESTIC BLISS

1 OCT-31 DEC, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Building on the gallery’s space as a former house and civic space, Domestic Bliss examines how artists develop practice alongside social and political change, and the ways in which public and domestic labour intersect with art.

CLARA URSITTI: AMIK

1 OCT-29 JAN 23, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Sculpture, film and scent installation consider ideas of trade and histories of human, animal and botanic migration.

Street Level

Photoworks

FRANK MCELHINNEY:

FLIGHT

1-23 OCT, TIMES VARY A striking photographic exhibition reflecting on the long history of migration between Ireland and Scotland.

Studio Pavilion at House for an Art Lover

ALISON HARLEY: OBJECTS IN COLOUR

1-30 OCT, 11:00AM –4:00PM

Explores ideas of colour and abstraction through a series of original prints that find their echoes in a small group of three-dimensional objects.

The Briggait

CRAFTHOUSE

1-18 OCT, TIMES VARY

Bringing together decora tive glassware and contem porary Scottish handmade crafts from a diverse range of designers.

The Modern Institute

WALTER PRICE: PEARL

LINES

1-31 OCT, TIMES VARY Paintings that bridge the gap between figuration and abstraction, drawing on familiar motifs and render ing them in new light.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

LIZ LARNER: “______”

1-31 OCT, TIMES VARY Clay-based sculptural works explore the parallels between creation, science, and revulsion.

Tramway

NORMAN GILBERT

1 OCT-5 FEB 23, TIMES VARY

A major exhibition of vibrant paintings by seminal Glasgow Southside artist.

IZA TARASEWICZ

8 OCT-29 JAN 23, TIMES VARY

Working from her farm in Poland, material artist Iza Tarasewicz co-opts rural systems of production to craft installations that entangle cellular, social, agricultural, and celestial interactions.

iota @ Unlimited Studios

RICHARD WALKER: THICK

1-15 OCT, 12:00PM –5:00PM

New works, painted from life and improvised from large scale studio instal lations, explore ideas of theatricality and meaningmaking.

Edinburgh Art &Gallery

IVAN DE MENIS: SILENZI/SILENCE

1-28 OCT, TIMES VARY

Stained works crafted from resin, exploring the layered nature of the creative process.

City Art Centre

NATIONAL TREASURE: THE SCOTTISH MODERN ARTS ASSOCIATION

1-16 OCT, TIMES VARY

Spotlighting work by the Glasgow Boys, Scottish Co lourists and artists such as William McTaggart and Joan Eardley, this is a celebration of Scottish art at the dawn of modernism.

Collective Gallery

STEPHANIE BLACKDANIELS: POSITION & ATTACHMENT

1 OCT-20 NOV, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

A series of performancebased works drawing on the artist’s experience of breastfeeding in public, and exploring ways of navigating motherhood in man-made spaces.

KATIE SCHWAB: THE SEEING HANDS

8 OCT-5 MAR 23, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

An interactive exhibition considering ways of explor ing and expressing tactility.

Dovecot Studios

FLAUNTING SZAFKI: A RETROSPECTIVE OF PAINTINGS BY YUSEF SZAFKI

1-29 OCT, 10:00AM –5:00PM

Retrospective of bold, phantasmagorical abstrac tionist Yusef Szafki.

Edinburgh Printmakers

HANNAH LIM: ORNAMENTAL MYTHOLOGIES

1 OCT-20 NOV, 11:00AM

– 4:00PM

The first solo Scottish exhibition by British-Singa porean artist Hannah Lim, whose works explore the colonial collisions between East and West.

Fruitmarket HEADS UP!

EXHIBITION

1-9 OCT, 10:00AM –7:00PM

Inspired by the Daniel Silver exhibition, this microengagement brings together works by the public created through a series of artistled workshops.

HAYLEY TOMPKINS

22 OCT-29 JAN 23, 10:00AM – 7:00PM

A vivid exhibition of new and existing work exploring the sensuous materiality of paint and colour.

Ingleby Gallery

PETER LIVERSIDGE: AN ECHO 8 OCT-17 DEC, 11:00AM

– 5:00PM

An uncanny exhibition exploring the theme of the double - its fragmentations and its possibilities.

Open Eye Gallery GLEN SCOULLER RSW RGI: ARCADIA

1-22 OCT, TIMES VARY

Pastoral landscapes inspired by the artist’s environments.

CALUM WALLIS: MAYBE A PLACE

1-22 OCT, TIMES VARY

Fictitious landscapes of impossible scale and balance.

Royal Scottish Academy RSA OUTSIDE EDGE

8 OCT-13 NOV, TIMES

VARY

The culmination of a col laboration between two British and two Chinese artists, featuring drawings, paintings, and ink work.

WILLIAM WILSON

8 OCT-13 NOV, TIMES

VARY Marking fifty years since the passing of one of Scot land’s most talented twenti eth century artists, this exhibition pulls together printmaking, watercolour and stained glass.

ADE ADESINA

8 OCT-13 NOV, TIMES

VARY Intricate, playful etchings that engage with climate crisis, industry, architec ture, deforestation and Scottish culture.

Scottish National Gallery

A TASTE FOR IMPRESSIONISM: MODERN FRENCH ART FROM MILLET TO MATISSE

1 OCT-13 NOV, TIMES

VARY

Exploring the fascination Scottish collectors had for Impressionist art, this exhibition features the likes of Degas, Van Gogh and Gaugin.

Stills ISHIUCHI MIYAKO

1-8 OCT, 12:00PM –5:00PM

This exhibition by renowned post-war Japanese pho tographer brings together an impressive collection of her work, including pieces created in the Frida Kahlo Museum and with victims of Hiroshima bomb.

Talbot Rice Gallery

QIU ZHIJIE

29 OCT-18 FEB 23,

TIMES VARY

Large-scale paintings and topographies exploring developing geopolitical landscapes.

NIRA PEREG 29 OCT-18 FEB 23, TIMES VARY

Video installations that explore ideas of ceremony, ritual, and contested po litical spaces across Israel and Palestine.

LARA FAVARETTO

29 OCT-18 FEB 23, TIMES VARY

Large-scale sculptures and installations that investigate the space between destruction and reconstruction, collapse and recovery.

The Scottish Gallery SCRATCHING THE SURFACE

1-29 OCT, TIMES VARY

Bringing together a diverse body of artists whose works reveal different ways of engaging curiously with the world.

Dundee Art

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts

MANUEL SOLANO

1 OCT-20 NOV, TIMES

VARY

Mixed-media work responding to ideas of iden tity, created through tactile mapping techniques after the artist’s loss of eyesight due to a HIV-related illness.

The McManus

THE STREET AT THE MCMANUS

1-22 OCT, 10:00AM –5:00PM, FREE Immersive exhibition look ing at Dundee’s historical architecture.

HIDDEN HISTORIES: EXPLORING EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN DUNDEE’S ART COLLECTION

1 OCT-30 DEC 23, 10:00AM – 5:00PM Exploring the McManus 20th-century collection through different position alities, to examine the re sponsibility of the museum as institution in responding to history.

CASTS AND COPIES

1 OCT-30 SEP 23, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Examining the artistic and historic significance of cop ies, fakes, and forgeries.

V&A Dundee SINCERELY, VALENTINES: FROM POSTCARDS TO GREETINGS CARDS

1 OCT-8 JAN 23, 10:00AM – 5:00PM Exhibiting an archive by J. Valentine & Sons, Scotland’s pioneering com mercial photographers who popularised the holiday postcard on a global scale.

CCA Highlights October 2022

It may be officially autumn but there are still plenty of bright spots on the horizon with CCA’s Glasgow’s stunning end-of-year pro gramme. This month sees everything from queer film festivals and (also very queer) out-there live performance to a stirring and essential exhibition response to residues of disaster.

Words: Anahit Behrooz

Queer East 2022: On the Road (7-8 Oct)

Queer East, the UK’s film festival dedicated to LGBTQ+ cinema from East and Southeast Asia, returns this month with a curated selection of the programme screening at the CCA. We’re especially excited by Love of Siam, a 2007 Thai classic now celebrating its 15th anniversary, which depicts the gentle, painfully loving relationship that erupts between two boys both in school and in the intervening years. There’s also two programmes of shorts, including Other Worlds: an exploration of how mythologies, cosmologies, and fantasies can disrupt normativity and act as bridges to a world beyond capitalist fixity.

Majd Abdel Hamid: Muscle Memory (24 Sep-5 Nov)

A new body of work created in the aftermath of the devastating industrial explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020, Majd Abdel Hamid’s Muscle Memory draws on the intimate practice of traditional Palestinian embroidery to consider how the affective resonances of disaster can be depicted. The exhibition traces the violent chain reaction of destruction that took place in Beirut’s various ecosystems, both private and public, investigat ing the temporality of cityscapes and how the future and potential of a city’s life can be grieved.

//BUZZCUT// Double Thrills with Rhubarb Festival (19-20 Oct)

BUZZCUT, Glasgow’s weird and wonderful organisation dedicated to platforming unique and challenging perfor mance, is back with Double Thrills, their monthly night of radical live art. This month sees them collaborate with Toronto-based Rhubarb Festival, Canada’s longest running new works festival. Expect strange, queered creatures, sensual and grotesque puppetry, and some appearances from some of Glasgow’s best and brightest, including Femme Castatrice’s sharp and provocative theatrical exploration of sex, gender, and power.

MAP Magazine: Bodies, Proximity and Place Pamphlet Launch (14 Oct)

A new pamphlet created by MAP Magazine and commis sioned by editor-in-residence Hatty Nestor, Bodies, Proximity and Place is a collection of eleven writers exploring questions and embodiment, connection, dislocation, and temporalities, considering how intima cies - both physical and thematic - are constructed and performed, and the ways in which bodies and situated and understood across time and space. The launch features readings from some of the pamphlet’s contribu tors, including Francis Jones, Anna Walsh, K Patrick and Wes Knowler, as well as a screening of moving image artist Sandra Lahire’s 1984 piece Arrows, which informs one of the commissioned pieces.

cca-glasgow.com

Muscle Memory, Majd Abdel Hamid

The

of Woolpit, Brawk Ward and Esther Splett

Watts

The Skinny On... Bryan M Ferguson

Given it’s the spooky season, we’ve invited our favourite maker of creepy films, Bryan M Ferguson, to take this month’s Skinny Q&A

It doesn’t take long to spot you’re watching a Bryan M Ferguson joint. Whether it’s one of his gnarly dramas featuring satanic rituals and amputation, one of his black comedies about parasites and heavy-handed barbers, or one of his inventive music videos for the likes of Arab Strap and Alice Glass, you can spot his visual motifs instantly. If you’re unfamiliar with this most original of filmmakers, we urge you to make it along to our CineSkinny Film Club at Summerhall and CCA this month where we’ll be showcasing some of Ferguson’s most recent short films and music videos along with a few of our favourites of his earlier work.

Ahead of the screenings we caught up with Ferguson to submit him to our regular Q&A, which this month features J.G. Ballard, the colour yellow and Vincent Gallo.

What’s your favourite place to visit?

Florida. It’s like a second home to me and I think it’s because there’s a lot of dark seedy shit going on and it’s painted over with a candy-coloured brush. There’s a real false sense of paradise that resonates with me.

Favourite colour?

Yellow. I guess it’s because it’s a colour you don’t generally see anywhere in Glasgow. Not even from the sun.

Who was your hero growing up?

Sam Raimi.

Whose work inspires you now?

I’m not really sure – I find Panos Cosmatos [Mandy, Beyond the Black Rainbow] to be one of the most exciting filmmakers in recent times. But I’m still more inspired by the work of filmmakers from when I grew up (Hitchcock, Godard, Carpenter, Raimi etc).

What’s your favourite food to cook?

For a guy that comes from an Italian family, I really can’t cook for shit. I’m good at doing steak but anything beyond a microwave bing, I’m pish.

What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?

Bill Hicks, Anthony Bourdain and Lydia Lunch. It doesn’t matter what I’m cooking because two of them are dead and I’ll likely cancel the plans anyway.

What’s your all-time favourite album?

I’ve never been an album guy. I usually like a handful of songs from an album but never the album in its entirety and even then I usually dig the B-sides more.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

There’s so much shite but off the top of my head... Joker was pish. Anything Christopher Nolan spews into the world.

What book would you take to a desert island?

Crash by J.G. Ballard.

Who’s the worst?

The Tories.

When did you last cry?

Inwardly crying all the time.

What are you most scared of? Anything hairy with too many legs.

When did you last vomit and why?

I made myself vomit after seeing Last Night in Soho just so I could feel something.

Tell us a secret?

They’re in the crawl space.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

Vincent Gallo.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be?

A raccoon.

Describe your filmmaking practice in three words… Never ask permission.

The CineSkinny Film Club presents the transgressive short films of Bryan M Ferguson

13 Oct, Summerhall, Edinburgh, 6.30pm; 25 Oct, CCA, Glasgow

Photo: Marilena Vlachopoulou