The Skinny May Issue 2025 by The Skinny

The Rule Breakers Issue with linder

Sounds Good

1st

2nd

SCO 24/25: Moza t Sinfonia Conce tante

Edinbu gh T adfest 2025: Ross Ainslie & the Sanctua y Band

3rd Clea wate C eedence Revival

5th Foivos Delivo ias T io

8th China C isis

9th Hanley and the Bai d, Sing In The City Aw Blacks

17th F ancis Rossi

18th Mugenkyo Taiko D umme s: In Time

19th

Levison Wood: Walking the Wo ld - A Life of Explo ation and Adventu e

20th The Music of Hans Zimme & othe s

24th Yale Conce t Band - ON TOUR!

27th Elkie B ooks - Fa ewell Tou

28th29th Mo gan Jay - The Goofy Guy Tou

30th A Night fo MAP

31st Malin Lewis P esents: F igg, Ma va a, Me Lost Me

4th Ma tha Wainw ight

5th Rastak; Tales of Ea th and Sun

12th Bôa

13th Emma Kenny’s – Kille Couples

26th Jac ui Dankwo th with Cha lie Wood

28th Kid C eole & The Coconuts

July

17th

Edinbu gh Jazz & Blues Festival: Cu tis Stige s

18th Edinbu gh Jazz & Blues Festival: Colin Steel: STRAMASH

19th

20th

Edinbu gh Jazz & Blues Festival: co to.alto + suppo t

Edinbu gh Jazz & Blues Festival: A Ve y Special Evening with Kenny Wayne Shephe d and the Legenda y Bobby Rush

KATHRYN JOSEPH

The Skinny's songs about rule breaking

Jane’s Addiction - Been Caught Stealing

Madonna - Human Nature

Alvvays - Pomeranian Spinster

Charli xcx - 365

Nadine Shah - Stealing Cars

Car Seat Headrest - Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales

International Teachers of Pop - I Stole Your Plimsoles

Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Cake - Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle

Fiona Apple - Criminal

Sharon Van Etten - A Crime

PJ Harvey - Sheela-Na-Gig

Deli Girls - no such thing as good and evil

Teejayx6 - Swipe Story

Amyl and the Sniffers - Me and the Girls

Listen to this playlist on Spotify — search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code

Issue 232, May 2025 © Radge Media C.I.C. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk

The Skinny is Scotland's largest independent entertainment & listings magazine, and offers a wide range of advertising packages and affordable ways to promote your business. Get in touch to find out more.

E: sales@theskinny.co.uk

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

by DC Thomson & Co. Ltd, Dundee

Meet the team

Championing creativity in Scotland

We asked: What's the most punk thing you've ever done?

Senior Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "idk this magazine maybe."

Peter Simpson Deputy Editor, Food & Drink Editor

"Unless you count ‘copious music piracy in the 2000s' as punk, I got nothing. Also, my apologies to Linkin Park et al."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor, Books Editor "Crime."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist

"When using the self-checkout at my local supermarket, I sometimes ‘accidentally’ put an 80p artisan sourdough roll through as a 40p morning roll. Take that, capitalism!"

Tallah Brash Music Editor

"Showing up to the archery club on my birthday wearing an 'I Am 8' badge. Dear reader: I had been a member for almost a year, eight was the minimum age."

Commissioning Editors

Cammy Gallagher Clubs Editor

"Susan Boyle hoodie at the club."

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor "How could you ask me this."

Rachel Ashenden Art Editor

"This is really poor timing, but I painted Jimmy Saville as the pope for my Fine Art GCSE ﬁnal piece."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor

"Batted some miniature Scotch E s into a crowd of people not listening to a comedy gig with a mannequin leg. Rock and/or roll."

Rho Chung Theatre Editor "[redacted]"

Business

Laurie Presswood General Manager

"My primary school insisted we come as non-ﬁction characters for World Book Day. A World Book Day purist, I protested by dressing as Russell Brand. The story has not aged well."

Sales

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist

"Probably this issue's crossword. The rotational symmetry has been compromised! I'm out of control!"

Production

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager

"Never bought train tickets in my youth. Accumulated £2k in ﬁnes. No regrets, just vibes."

Sandy Park Commercial Director

"[Re]piercing my ear with a cocktail stick at a bar."

Phoebe Willison Designer

"I think writing it down would sound quite un-punk so I will just have to keep it a secret."

Ema Smekalova Media Sales Executive "Watching Rebel Dykes with some of the original rebel dykes at the 2022 Lesbian Lives Conference in Cork."

Ellie Robertson Editorial Assistant "Being trans, apparently."

Emilie Roberts Media Sales Executive

"I rode on a Child Ticket my whole four years of college. Sticking it to the man and putting my babyface and immature personality to use at the same time."

Editorial

“Ijust thought of a really good way to break the rules,” Ros says in the group chat. “What if... someone else wrote my editorial.” In that moment – twenty-past-eleven on print day, posing a question with a full stop – I knew that we were all in for a wild ride in this bit of the magazine. And before any of you say ‘oh if I were in that situation I wOuLd jUsT uSe Chat Gee-Pee-Tee’, please take your loser behaviour off to [redacted], [redacted], and bring your [redacted] with you. OK, so we’ve revealed some behind-the-scenes admin, wildly shifted between tenses and disparaged the audience – what other rules can we break? It must be the spirit of all these amazing artistic rule-breakers coursing through my veins that’s encouraging this lawlessness. Linder Sterling has been punking the system for ﬁve decades; we spoke to the legendary artist ahead of an artistic tour this spring/summer that takes in Edinburgh and Bute. Glasgow-based art project Bank Street Media Labs are messing with the set-dressing in their own way, putting on cross-artform nights that are both free and good. Edinburgh DJ and producer Proc Fiskal’s new record is full of bangers, but then his new video features someone playing an iPad like a lute. You can’t make bangers with a lute, Mr Fiskal! This is anarchy! Rules, broken; precepts, disregarded.

Elsewhere in the rule-breaking zone, we look at the returning Falastin Film Festival, chat to US punks and 6 Music Dadscarers Mannequin Pussy, and chat about Mancunian indie auteurs WU LYF because they’re famously very aloof and hard to get hold of. We also talk to an author about their new book – but I’m not gonna tell you who they are! And down goes another of the rules of editorial-writing! OK, it’s Catherine Lacey

and she’s talking about her ﬁction-memoir hybrid The Möbius Book, turns out you’re only allowed to antagonise the audience once every 500 words, and because that’s an ‘unwritten rule’ it’s somehow more important?

Sorry, I should have explained earlier – the theme of this month’s mag is ‘Rule Breakers’. It was going to be ‘punk’, but then we couldn’t quite find enough things that were definitionally ‘punk’ to fill the space, and also we kept getting drawn into philosophical and semantic conversations about what ‘punk’ is. Is it ‘punk’ to write a book that’s in two halves, back-to-back? No, but it is interesting and it does open up new possibilities. Is it punk to put on a film festival? Maybe, but putting on a film festival that wholeheartedly centres the stories and hopes of Palestinians is a break with some of the established rules around whose stories get to be told. Is it punk to be in a band that mostly communicates in coded messages, like a guerilla group with good tunes and the backing of several hundred stout gig-goers across the Salford area? Not necessarily, but it is a repudiation of certain ideas about how you’re ‘supposed’ to do things.

Instead of forcing all that into the bounds of one idea, we’re celebrating some art that moves across those bounds. Oh and there’s also reviews and gig highlights and the Heads Up – oh, Listings! We redid the Listings spreadsheet this month and I tell ya, it did not take nearly as long to proofread as normal. Yeah there’s a bunch of stuff in here, read on, you’ll have a good time and that’s about 600 words so yeah if you pop that in that should be all good, cheers.

Yours sincerely, Rosamund West [dictated, not read]

The cover this month is a very special commission from the legendary feminist artist Linder Sterling, whose wide portfolio of work includes radical photomontage, confrontational performance and music. She's exhibiting across Scotland this summer, with her major retrospective Linder: Danger Came Smiling touring to Inverleith House from 23 May. A new commission, A kind of glamour about me, will debut at Mount Stuart on 14 June before travelling to the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh's mystical oak lawns to open Edinburgh Art Festival on 7 August.

Cover Artist

Photo: Hazel

Gaskin

Love Bites: A Pass on Pretty

This month’s columnist reﬂects on rejecting noughties’ media messaging and embracing body neutrality

Words: Emilie Roberts

When I first saw The Princess Diaries, I loved Mia Thermopolis. She had big curly hair and glasses and an Elliott Smith poster on her wall – in other words, she was just like me. I had decided it was my favourite movie; until, of course, I watched Mia receive her makeover. Hair sleeked, eyesight fixed, brows groomed and shoes replaced. It was the final nail in the coffin of a lesson I had begun learning: I was not pretty, and that mattered.

The lesson was simple – it should be your goal to be pretty (and later, when you grow up, sexy, hot, and, most importantly, available). I spent a lot of time agonising over this – burning hair with straighteners, practising what angles my face looked best from, cancelling plans because I couldn’t get make-up right. It was like an entire door of womanhood was closed to me and I didn’t know the right password to open it.

Sometime in the 2010s, body positivity got a lot of wind in its sails – everyone is hot, it told us. Everyone is pretty. But no matter what, I couldn’t get this lesson to make sense to me. It just made me feel worse. Was desirability all I was for? Was this what being a woman was?

Then I found a new lesson – body neutrality: the idea that how I look, how desirable I am, is the least interesting thing about me.

I am not pretty, sexy or hot. And that is totally fine, because I am a good storyteller, and a good friend and I can tell you more facts about The Beatles than you probably ever wanted to know. And that’s fine, because I can make people laugh. And that’s fine, because I’m a person, and that’s important enough on its own.

Heads Up

Dance International Glasgow

Various venues, Glasgow, 9-24 May

Biennial festival Dance International Glasgow returns with a stunning programme of international performers and companies showcasing the cutting edge of movement and choreography from the likes of Nigeria, Lebanon and Quebec. Highlights include the Scottish premiere of Richard Chappell’s response to the climate crisis Land Empathy, and Omar Rajeh and Maqamat’s powerful performance Dance is not for Us.

Maranta

Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 16 May, 7pm

To mark the release of their debut album, iconic Edinburgh synthpop duo Maranta are playing their last ever show before they part ways for good. Inspired by electronic dreamscapes and pulsating danceﬂoor rhythms, their album Day Long Dream sees the duo go out with a bang, their signature ethereal synths in tow.

Falastin Film Festival

Various venues, Glasgow + Edinburgh, 9-19 May

The second edition of the Falastin Film Festival expands to Glasgow this year, with a programme of features, shorts and documentaries exploring the rich depth of Palestinian cinema, both contemporary and historic. Highlights from the programme include Lina Soualem’s moving family documentary Bye Bye Tiberias, and a short ﬁlm strand called Longing For Palestine, examining the physical, emotional and psychological impact of borders.

Folk Film Gathering

Various venues, Edinburgh, 2-11 May

No rule-breaking to be seen here, just the usual gorgeous exhibitions, iconic gig nights, and incredible festivals to ﬁll your May calendar.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Garden Futures: Designing with Nature V&A Dundee, Dundee, 17 May-25 Jan

The history of garden design takes centre stage in this wide-ranging new exhibition from the V&A. Taking in the aesthetic and political nature (haha) of the garden space, Garden Futures brings together designs by the likes of Derek Jarman, William Morris, Céline Baumann and Jamaica Kincaid in order to explore the importance of outdoor spaces, and what the environmental and creative possibilities of the garden can be moving forward.

RARE: Hajar and Nara

Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, 20 May, 7pm

Sneaky’s regular Tuesday night slot RARE welcomes dynamic duo Hajar and Nara, aka DJ Shahrazadi, back to the decks for another non-stop night of SWANA-infused disco, funk and hiphop. Their previous nights at RARE have fully sold out, and are considered some of the best thrown by the night, so get your tickets quick before they’re gone.

various times

This choreographic adaptation of Arthur Miller’s seminal play dazzled audiences when it premiered at Edinburgh International Festival in 2019. Taking place during the 17th-century Salem witch trials, the original play was intended as an allegory for post-war McCarthyism, and has found new resonance in our age of misinformation and surveillance – dance might seem an unlikely vessel for these ideas, but Helen Pickett’s extraordinary choreography more than does the job.

Huntress & Miss Cabbage present: Mykki Blanco & ptk.bby Exit, Glasgow, 3 May, 10pm

Soccer Mommy

Image: courtesy of

Photo: Sophie Hur

Image: courtesy of the

Photo: James Bantone

Scottish Ballet: The Crucible Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 1-3 May,

Photo: Laura Meek

Photo: Céline Baumann

Photo: Dean Martin

Image: courtesy of artists

Image: courtesy of Falastin Film Festival

Photo: Jane Hobso

The Enchanted Desna

Soccer Mommy Mykki Blanco

Sarah Maple, I Hate Men Hajar and Nara

Maranta

Richard Chappell, Land Empathy

Céline Baumann, Parliament of Plants

Longing For Palestine

Constance Devernay and company in Scottish Ballet's The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Creatives of Colour Festival

Various venues, Glasgow, 8-10 May

Head to this three-day festival celebrating the creative contributions of people of colour – hosted across Civic House, The Glad Cafe and Glasgow Film Theatre – for a gig with Kapil Seshasayee with support from Yemeni artist Intibint, a performance of Farah Saleh’s anticolonial choreographic piece Balfour Reparations, and screenings of three ﬁlms by Razan Madhoon, Iman Tajik, and Umloda Ibrahim.

Rogér Fakhr + Charif Megarbane

The Mash House, Edinburgh, 9 May, 7pm

Two generations of Lebanese musicians come together in this extraordinary gig. Rogér Fakhr’s 1970s lost tapes were recently rediscovered and released by Habibi Funk’s label in 2021; that same label released polymath, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Charif Megarbane’s critically acclaimed Marzipan in 2023. Find the two of them playing their beautiful take on Arab funk, jazz and folk in Edinburgh.

Christian Noelle Charles: WAIT A MINUTE?!!

Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow, until 31 May

New York-born, Glasgow-based artist Christian Noelle Charles’ new exhibition explores the complexities of solitude in the Black female experience through a series of performances and self-portraiture. In this increasingly digital age, solitude has become a space both of retreat and loneliness; through her work, Charles charts how a relationship with the self evolves and shifts.

jasmine.4.T

King Tut’s, Glasgow, 21 May, 7:30pm

Civic House Party x baile/ baile

Civic House, Glasgow, 2 May, 5pm

Edinburgh College: GLOW Festival

Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival

Various venues, Hawick, 1-4 May

True to its name, Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival is the UK’s leading festival of experimental ﬁlm and moving image, exploring the strange and intriguing magic that can come from unexpected artistic encounters. This year’s programme includes strands on embodiment and borders, exhibitions, an EP launch from Miwa NagatoApthorp and a ceilidh.

Spring Awakening

Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 7-10 May, various times

Frank Wedekind’s explosive Modernist play about sexual coming-of-age is given a new lease of life in this staging by the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s BA Performance for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Actors, who perform the play in a mixture of BSL and English. Now largely known for its musical adaptation, the original play is thrillingly subversive and provocative.

LEYA

The Flying Duck, Glasgow, 23 May, 7pm Haunting avant-pop duo LEYA bring their beguling musical talent to The Flying Duck. Consisting of harpist Marilu Donovan and vocalist/violinist Adam Markiewicz, their work blends medieval-sounding melodies with modern folk rhythms and classical instrumentation to create a distinctively experimental and subversive sound. Support on the night comes from London-based French violinist and composer Vanessa Bedoret.

Various venues, Edinburgh, 28 Apr-18 Jun

Born To Be Wide presents Local Heroes: Celebrating 20 Years of The Skinny

Edinburgh Futures Institute, Edinburgh, 30 Apr, 7pm

Photo: Nikita Hossain

Photo:

Image: courtesy of The Flying Duck Image: courtesy of RCS

Photo: Christian Noelle Charles Image: courtesy of Sneaky Pete's Image: courtesy of Alchemy

Image: courtesy of artist

Performance for GLOW Festival

Hu-Sane

jasmine.4.T

On Weaving – a new Alchemy commission by Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn

Intibint for Creatives of Colour Festival

Rogér Fakhr + Charif Megarbane

Spring Awakening

LEYA

Patience

What's On

Music

At the top of the month, in Edinburgh, Wide Days host two New From Scotland showcase nights at La Belle Angele and Sneaky Pete’s on 1 and 2 May, with her picture, Indoor Foxes, Gurry Wurry, Theo Bleak and loads more set to play. Then, from 2 to 12 May, check out the jam-packed Edinburgh Tradfest programme; our top picks include For the Love of Trees and Fiona Soe Paing (5 May), Beth Malcolm’s Folkmosis (7 May) and Seckou Keita (8 May), all at the Traverse Theatre.

In Glasgow, check out the latest instalment of multi-venue festival Stag & Da er (3 May) featuring Big Special, Grayling, Saint Sappho, Water Machine and more. As part of the Creatives of Colour Festival (9 May), The Glad Cafe host live music from Kapil Seshasayee and Intibint, with a DJ set from Arusa Qureshi. Over at King Tut’s, The Road to The Great Escape (9 & 10 May) looks forward to the Brighton showcase festival with performances from Citizen Papes, Indoor Foxes and Bottle Rockets amongst others. Leaving the Central Belt brieﬂy to head for Dumfries and Galloway, this month also brings with it the ﬁrst big outdoor camping and family friendly festival of the season in the form of Knockengorroch (22-25 May), with music from Dub Pistols, Elephant Sessions, Kinnaris Quintet, Gasper Nali, Dara Dubh amongst others. Back in Glasgow at the end of the month, Clyde Chorus (29-31 May) celebrates 850 years of Glasgow with music from Lucia & The Best Boys, Nina Nesbitt, PAQUE and more, while across the same days in Dundee, SUBSTANCE vol. 2 invites you to discover your new favourite band across its three-night run, with Red Vanilla, National Playboys and more set to play.

Now, let’s talk locals celebrating new music. In Edinburgh, Buffet Lunch host their Perfect Hit! album launch at Settlement Projects (3 May), while waverley. launch Flail at Cabaret Voltaire (9 May). At Sneaky Pete’s, Rebecca Vasmant brings her ensemble to the capital to celebrate the release of Who We Are Becoming (14 May), while a couple of nights later Maranta celebrate their debut album Day Long Dream with what will be their ﬁnal ever show (Assembly Roxy, 16 May), a fact we’re feeling very sad about.

In Glasgow, Malin Lewis celebrates the one year anniversary of their beautiful small pipes-led debut album Halocline (The Rum Shack, 7 May), while Maz & The Phantasms launch their latest single Factory Hell with Phantasmagasm III at Stereo featuring live music from themselves, Dra ed Up and Lemon Drink, plus DJ sets from Miss Cabbage and Mairi ‘B’ Pots (10 May). A brief detour to Galashiels will treat your ears to Day Sleeper’s This House Won’t Fold EP launch at MacArts (16 May), while back in Glasgow, Mogwai play two nights at the Barrowlands (17 & 18 May). At the end of the month, seek out Quinie’s Forefowk, Mind Me album launch at Mono (29 May), for a night of experimental music.

Also this month, catch more local talent in the form of Cowboy Hunters (Leith Depot, 1 May), Tamzene (The Poetry Club, 16 May) and Humour (Sneaky Pete’s, 27 May), or head to Malin Lewis presents Fri , Marvara and Me Lost Me as part of an ongoing series at The Queen’s Hall (31 May). For touring artists, catch Alabaster DePlume (Mono, 2 May), Baths (The Poetry Club, 6 May), Panic Shack (King Tut’s, 13 May), Soccer Mommy (SWG3, 13 May), Still House Plants (Tolbooth, Stirling, 15 May), Mannequin Pussy (QMU, 19 May), jasmine.4.t (King Tut’s, 21 May), Gaelynn Lea (Wee Red Bar, 24 May; The Glad Cafe, 25 May) or Wet Leg (Usher Hall, 27 May). [Tallah Brash] Film

The Scottish weather continues to be unreliable, but luckily, with three great ﬁlm festivals coming up, you’ll be spending much of May in a cinema. First up, we recommend you journey to Hawick in the Scottish Borders for the 15th edition of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (1-4 May). You can explore the festival’s nine free moving image installations, get

Photo: Iris Luz

Photo: Kaya

Dobosz @kayaofﬁcial

Photo: Ren Faulkner

Panic Shack

immersed in the experimental cinema programme screening at the Heart of Hawick cinema or take part in the festival’s various events, which include a ﬁlm quiz, an EP launch, a ceilidh and daily ‘night caps’.

Next is Edinburgh’s Folk Film Gathering (2-11 May), a unique film fest devoted to folk cinema. The programme blends local filmmaking with cinema from Canada, Ireland, Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Ukraine and more. Some of the work is brand new, like Gerda Stevenson’s documentary Paper Portraits, telling the story of the paper-making industry in Penicuik, but much of the programme is made up of rarely-screened films about the lived experiences of communities worldwide. What makes Folk Film Gathering so special is that all of the screenings are accompanied by some sort of live music and storytelling element that complements the work.

The third festival that should be on your radar is Falastin Film Festival (9-19 May). The Edinburgh-based grassroots event expands to Glasgow this year and continues its aim to celebrate the rich cinema of Palestine while expressing solidarity with the communities that continue to be decimated by the war in Gaza. On offer is an eclectic selection of recent films (like Lina Soualem’s poignant documentary Bye Bye Tiberias) alongside some absolute classics (such as Elia Suleiman’s tragicomic masterpiece The Time That Remains). Also look out for workshops, short film screenings, and a concert at the CCA in Glasgow raising cash for the Masharawi Films Fund, which helps empower filmmakers in Gaza to continue to tell their stories.

Elsewhere, Glasgow Film Theatre celebrates its 51st birthday with a month-long programme of audience favourites. Highlights include the chance to see Alfred Hitchcock’s giddy wrong man drama North by Northwest on 70mm (2-8 May) and a celebration of the late, great David Lynch, with four of his ﬁnest ﬁlms (Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and The Straight Story) screening across the month.

The Lynch love continues in Edinburgh with the Cameo’s David Lynch’s Dream Theatre, a year-long season of double-bills pairing Lynch features alongside a ‘Lynchspiration’ (i.e. a ﬁlm that either inspired Lynch or is heavily indebted to him). Upcoming pairings include a double dose of Dune (Lynch’s and Denis Villeneuve’s respective takes, 18 May), and Blue Velvet is paired with another ﬁlm concerned with dangerous voyourism: Hitchcock’s Rear Window (7 Jun). [Jamie Dunn]

Blue Velvet

Paper Portraits

Bye Bye Tiberias

Clubs

Start your weekend swiftly with athletic ghettotech from Detroit In Effect at Paisley’s Club 69 on Friday 2 May. In Glasgow’s city centre, No Music No Life hosts the unofﬁcial Rainy Miller at The Flying Duck with Europa (Live), 500, and User2222 – expect everything from dancehall to trance. In Dundee, Coronation Street’s Craig Charles takes over the Livehouse with funk, disco, and support from All Night Passion (2 May). On Saturday 3 May, pushing deconstructed club and hard drum via London, LUSHB4BY lands at Sneaky Pete’s for Lucky Dip.

If you’re searching for something a little softer catch Messenger Sound System - Salute to the King of Sounds Jah Shaka at The Bongo Club (Sat 3 May). Rooted in tradition and powered by bass, on Sunday 4 May the Indian Electro Music Fest comes to Cab Vol from 2.30pm. On Friday 9 May, steeped in euphoric synthesis, Rival Consoles brings his live AV show to the SWG3 TV Studio in Glasgow. Later at The Berkeley Suite, celebrate ten years of healthy with DJ Python & dj table table + RAMZi (live). Otherwise, head to EXIT for scuffed house and techno with Marlon Clark at Curated Wax.

On Thursday 15 May, Sam Bangura returns to Edinburgh via Night Tube at Cab Vol with a healthy serving of slick house cuts. Beckoning edgelords across the country, on Friday 23 May, Scotland’s electronic bard Proc Fiskal plays Armour at The Poetry Club in Glasgow – support from bloody shield, zolf, and Akumu (23 May). On Saturday 24 May, The Berkeley Suite presents ‘GOO’ with Daniel Avery // Richard Fearless... need we say more. For something wonkier, wander on down to Stenny & Poly Chain at EXIT. Closing out the month at The Flying Duck, common room showcases a secret guest known for their productions on Hessle Audio, Timedance, Livity Sound, and Hemlock... something tells us it might be Bruce – £3 tix attow (Sat 31 May).

[Cammy Gallagher]

Art

Opening for the summer at Jupiter Artland, artist Jonathan Baldock exhibits new works in rebuttal to the homophobic argument that queerness is ‘unnatural’ at the art park’s Ballroom Gallery. Cast from Baldock and his partner’s bodies, fantastical hybrid creatures resemble sirens, harpies and cervitaurs in celebration of difference. WYRD opens 10 May.

In Glasgow, CCA’s beloved exhibition space reopens with The Ring in the Fish by Alia Syed on 17 May. Shot on 16mm ﬁlm and collaged together as a series of vignettes, The Ring in the Fish draws on the stories and psyches of migrant South Asian communities who arrived in Glasgow in the 1960s and 1970s. Inspired by Saint Mungo, the founder and patron saint of Glasgow, and the English fairytale, The Fish and the Ring, the artwork strives to explore the role of imagination in migrant experiences.

Punk-feminist artist Linder Sterling brings her provocative and political collages to Scotland for her ﬁrst-ever retrospective here. For ﬁve decades, Linder has been pulling apart patriarchal notions of femininity and sexuality. Starting with her early collages made during Manchester’s punk explosion, the exhibition brings us up to date on the artist’s current practice, which encompasses photography, performance and sculpture. Following resounding success at Hayward Gallery, London, Linder: Danger Came Smiling arrives in Inverleith House at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The exhibition opens on 23 May and continues until 19 October.

On 24 May, Jeremy Deller, a conceptual artist who revels in satire, invites you to gather in Dundee to ‘Meet the Gods.’ Conceived by Deller, ‘Meet the Gods’ is one of four nationwide performances known as The Triumph of Art. In Dundee, local art students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design lead a communal performance that promises a chance to connect with the Roman deity Bacchus and his mythical counterparts. Alongside, Fallope and the Tubes, a self-described “weirdo-punk performance band”, take to the stage. In true punk fashion, participants can also create their DIY merch under the creative guidance of kennardphillips, an artistic and activist duo who confront war across the globe. [Rachel Ashenden]

Theatre

Martyr Theatre opens the month with Ed and I at Glasgow’s Theatre 118 (30 Apr-2 May), a historical play set in 1307. Told through puppetry and original music, it tells the story of a newly crowned Edward II as he attempts to reconnect with his exiled lover. The production marries the historical with the surreal in an ambitious ode to queer histories and fairytale. Edinburgh-based collective Heads on Crooked puts up its new play, Mushroomiﬁcation: Legs, Legs, Legs at Augustine United Studio (2-4 May). The play follows a mushroom desperate to be an individual and a human desperate to ﬁnd a way to make all people truly equal.

Photo: Kat Gollock

Photo: Ryan Smith

Photo: Charlotte Cullen

Photo: Ryan Smith

Photo: Matthew Arthur Williams

Billboards by Jeremy Deller

The Berkeley Suite

Childrens Festival 2025 Launch

Daniel Avery

Linder Sterling

Outwith It, a newly minted Scottish theatre company, presents The Gray Plays, a concert reading of four short plays by Alasdair Gray, at Òran Mór in Glasgow on 4 May. Compered by Cora Bissett, the evening will feature readings of Goodbye Jimmy; Loss of the Golden Silence; Quiet People; and The Man Who Knew About Electricity. The project is presented in association with Alasdair Gray’s Estate.

Water Colour, written by St Andrews Playwriting Award winner Milly Sweeney, will premiere at Pitlochry Festival Theatre (9-17 May). The play follows two intertwining narratives about connection, mental illness, and self-discovery.

National Theatre of Scotland and Lepus Productions are touring KELI (10 May-14 Jun), a new show by accordion virtuoso Martin Green. The play marks 40 years since the Scottish miners’ strike and will tour through Stirling, Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth and Glasgow. Featuring a live brass band, KELI tells the story of a talented young brass player in a former mining town.

At the end of this month, Imaginate kicks off the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, which features 13 productions from seven different countries (24 May-1 Jun). Sporting offerings for adults and children of all ages, the programme promises an innovative, immersive experience for audiences. [Rho Chung]

Books

It’s a decidedly sexy time to be in books, as First Date, Edinburgh’s romance festival returns for its third year. This time, Lighthouse Bookshop are pairing up with Book Lovers Bookshop – Edinburgh’s dedicated romance bookshop – for two weeks' worth of events. Head there for everything from flash fiction workshops with Jj Fadaka and late night book markets to book launches with Jean Menzies and Sareeta Domingo. Also on at Lighthouse: Maria Sledmere and Ian Macartney launch their new poetry book Languishing, cute (11 May), Laura Bates launches The New Age of Sexism (12 May), and Paula Akpan launches their highly anticipated book When We Ruled: The Rise and Fall of Twelve African Queens and Warriors (14 May). Over at The Portobello Bookshop, Katie Goh launches their memoir Foreign Fruit (8 May) and Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen launches his debut novel Muckle Flu a (20 May). For some nature writing vibes, Scotlandbased author Dan Richards launches his new book Overnight (22 May) over at Mount Florida Books and David Farrier launches Nature’s Genius on 5 May at Waterstones Sauchiehall Street (5 May) and Toppings Edinburgh (9 May). And finally, Kirsty Strang-Roy is running her Write Like a Grrrl course from 1 May-5 Jun at Milk Café. [Anahit Behrooz]

Comedy

First up, Skinny fave Amanda Dwyer performs her debut hour to a hometown crowd (The Stand, Glasgow, 3 May, 4pm). What You Thinking About? is a deadpan exploration of various mental illnesses for the Glasgow girlypops. New Zealand mime maestro Trygve Wakenshaw drops into Assembly Roxy with the supreme Silly Little Things (7 May, 7.30pm). We gave it 5 stars at the Fringe and are thrilled to see this hapless magician return for an Edinburgh encore. Phil O’Shea’s Clown Extravaganza is the same week, with a cast of local clowns for our delectation (Banshee Labyrinth, Edinburgh, 9 May, 7.30pm). Join O’Shea plus Giulia Galastro, Donny Vostok, Rebecca Pewterbaw and Ross Foley for an evening that deep dives into the absurd. John-Luke Roberts graces Edinburgh and Glasgow that weekend (Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 10 May, 7.30pm; The Stand, Glasgow, 11 May, 4pm). He brings It Is Better, his rarely seen pandemic show, to the stage, alongside some of his very best bits. Here’s hoping his deluded Geoffrey Chaucer and Father-Monster personas make an appearance too.

If you’ve already got your tickets to The Plunge, the latest hour from Ed Night (Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 9 May, 8pm; The Stand, Glasgow, 10 May, 4pm) which we recommended last month, and you’re after something similar, we reckon Tom Lawrinson would ﬁt the bill (The Stand, Edinburgh, 18 May, 8.30pm; The Stand, Glasgow, 19 May, 8.30pm). Best known for his completely unpredictable viral sketches, Lawrinson’s stand-up feels more in tune with Sam Campbell’s demented observational comedy but with a mad-eyed sinister edge. We interview him in this issue (see p41).

And if you’re already looking ahead to next month, try to catch Jack Skipper’s Skint (The Stand, Glasgow, 4 Jun, 8pm). The debut hour from the So You Think You’re Funny alum was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Fringe and charts Skipper’s journey from carpet-ﬁtter to comedian and the challenges along the way. [Polly Glynn]

Image: courtesy of author

Image: courtesy Orphans PR

Photo: Michal

Photo: Steven Millar

Photo: Alice Meikle

Phil O'Shea

Jj Fadaka

Cora Bissett

Katie Goh

Trygve Wakenshaw

Concerts for a Summer’s Night

Words and music take fight with singer Héloïse Werner.

Mon 9 June

Rossie Byre, Perthshire

Tue 10 June

Strathpeffer Pavilion

Wed 11 June

Aberdeen Art Gallery

Features

22 We meet feminist punk and this issue’s cover artist Linder Sterling ahead of her summer of Scottish exhibition.

25 We explore the cult-like status of Manchester band WU LYF as they announce a surprise return.

26 Catherine Lacey on her ﬁction-memoir hybrid The Möbius Book.

28 We look forward to the second edition of the urgent Palestinian-platforming Falastin Film Festival

29 Director Karim Aïnouz introduces steamy neo-noir Motel Destino

30 Edinburgh’s Proc Fiskal on processing video in HDR and mashing medieval sounds with contemporary culture.

33 We meet Glasgow multimedia collective Bank Street Media Labs

34 Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa ‘Missy’ Dubice on being unapologetic.

40 Jenny Hval discusses her ninth studio album, Iris Silver Mist, and newfound passion for perfume.

41 Stand-up Tom Lawrinson talks tangents and self-sabotage ahead of his debut tour show.

45 We take a look at F-Bomb’s new feminist theatre project, Monumental, commemorating Edinburgh’s invisible women.

46 As DVDs turn 30 this year, we lament their scarceness in 2025’s hostile streaming environment.

On the website... Film chats to India Donaldson and Amalia Ulman about their new ﬁlms Good One and Magic Farm; Music has a new podcast series up its sleeve so keep your ears peeled; plus a bunch more gig, theatre, album and ﬁlm reviews

Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Charlotte Cullen; WU LYF; Willy Somma; From Ground Zero Hélène Louvart; Joe Powers and Finn Dove; Blair Kemp; Martyna Banister; Jenny Berger Myhre; Drew Forsyth; Kelsey Sullivan; Kasia Kozakiewicz

Shot of the month

(7)

Lab gear (anag) (7) 9. Uprising (9) 10. Screened (6) 11. Exterior (5) 12. Revolutionary (9) 13. Wooﬁng – chatting (7) 15. 24 hours ago (9) 17. Prohibited (7) 19. Activated – energised (5,2) 21. Ruse (9)

23. Nullify – contradict (6)

25. Unfortunately (5) 26. Unemployed (7,4) 27. Synthetic (9) 28. Figure out – become popular (5,2)

Solidarity – balance (7)

Automaton (5) 3. Getting bi er (9) 4. Hijacking – conﬁscating (7) 5. Reprieve – me antsy (anag) (7) 6. Philanthropist (5)

7. (Until the) last moment – bit tender (anag) (6,3) 8. Assisted – ate debt (anag) (7)

Narc with a bark (6,3) 16. Strict (9) 17. Unwell – unwilling (10)

Chill (4,4) 19. Zealot (7)

Criticise – euthanise (3,4)

Being nosy (6)

Bang! (7)

by George Sully

Lambrini Girls @ St Luke's, Glasgow, 9 April by Elliot Hetherton

In this month’s advice column, one reader wonders whether to trust in a ﬂame from the past

Sometimes I think about this guy from my past who I didn’t date, but had a weird romantic entanglement with. It feels like we are always brought back together in strange ways. How do I know whether I should trust this feeling or whether I’m being delusional?

Babygirl, all love is delusional! Like, really!! Not in a bitter, jaded way – although let me tell you, I have every right to be a real bitch about it – but in a genuine, Lauren Berlant, all-love-is-a-product-of-fantasy way. It’s impossible to separate out the desires we harbour within ourselves and those that occur towards a particular person. At a certain point, the distinctions collapse and they become a singularity: a person as a site of possibility. It’s beautiful, in a way – this fundamental act of optimism, that an entirely other person could be what you’ve always wanted. I mean, horriﬁcally stupid too, of course. Fantasy is fantasy, after all. But it’s inevitable that delusion enters into love somewhat – it’s what sustains the great improbable project of endurable attachment.

I, personally, love guys I didn’t date but had weird romantic entanglements with. That’s my sweet spot. I love telling their stories, like I’m recounting the events of a decade-long marriage, and not a handful of Instagram messages and a surreptitious nervous breakdown. I honestly think they say something far more signiﬁcant about our desires, what we want and what we are afraid of, than actual relationships. For me, my big resolution this year is not to let the fantasy overtake reality – this means I have to ask these weird romantic entanglements out instead of just imagining dating them in my head, and I am, so far, having a terrible time. But truthfully, the only way to know whether to trust your feeling is to act on it and see what happens. Not doing so is the delusion, the idea that you can keep the promise of the person alive within yourself with zero risk.

It can feel scary to make moves in unstructured relationships, because there is no narrative to keep us safe. But even that narrative is a fantasy. It’s all a risk. You just have to try and separate out what that person is, and what you want them to be, and see if there’s enough left at the end to make it worth it.

Do you have a problem Anahit could help with?

Get in touch by email on pettyshit@theskinny.co.uk, send us your quandaries with an almost-unhelpful level of anonymity via NGL, or look out for Ask Anahit callouts on our Instagram stories

TEXAS SUPERGRASS PAUL HEATON

NATASHA BEDINGFIELD THE PIGEON

KASSIDY

DETECTIVES

TORRIDON • GIMME ABBA (LATE NIGHT)

FANNY LUMSDEN • NATI. • HÒ-RÒ

DYLAN JAMES TIERNEY • TARTAN PAINT

CHRIS MANNING’S HIGHLAND

SWING & SOUL BAND

KILTEARN FIDDLERS WITH

DOUGIE BURNS & THE CADILLACS

SCHIEHALLION • TREMOLOCO

JOHN B’S DAUGHTER • IODYNES

ROSS ANDERSON • PARIAH • THE SHIRE

AMY HENDERSON & EWAN MACPHERSON

THE GREAT GLEN SWING BAND

CMAT SKIPINNISH GOK WAN DJ SET

KARINE POLWART BELUGA LAGOON ELLES BAILEY

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN THE KIFFNESS • KATIE GREGSON-MACLEOD

TOBY LEE • THE LAURETTES

CASEY LOWERY • CUMBIATONES

BEN WALKER • BOHEMIAN MONK MACHINE

THE LIBBY KOCH BAND • JAMES EMMANUEL

OCTOBER DRIFT • MOTEH PARROTT

THE CALOWAYS • THE DANGLEBERRIES

THE SPRINGSTEEN SESSIONS

JARAD ROWAN • IONA ZAJAC

FINN FORSTER • DANK MANGO

FIDDLE FORTE • THE RETROPHONES

FOLK’D UP • CLEAVERS • MULLIGAIN

MARYANN, BEV & THE SUPERDANDIES

SPACE VAN • LYNSEY DOLAN BAND

LAURA BOYD & THE CAPRI SONS

THE SHIRE • BAD ACTRESS • FREEPEACE TARTAN PAINT • KAY-LISA DAVIDSON

TOM WALKER TIDE LINES EXAMPLE

GABRIELLE APLIN THE HOOSIERS • DREADZONE PETER CAPALDI

COLONEL MUSTARD & THE DIJON 5 THE PRIMITIVES • PORK PIE

CALUM MACPHAIL•RUMAC•RIDDEMPTION

CHRIS MANNING’S SWING & SOUL BAND GO TO THE MOVIES

LUSA • MY DARLING CLEMENTINE • BLUAI THE JOY HOTEL • MACFLOYD • GUN GHAOL

DLÙ • LEWIS MCLAUGHLIN

BOHEMIAN MONK MACHINE

BECCA SLOAN • NORTH ATLAS • PAWS

THE DAZED DIGITAL AGE • MICHAEL LEWIS

RELIEVER • OVE OVE • THE COLLECTIVE THE DAVY COWAN BAND • THE IDIOTIX

DANCING WITH SHARKS • THE DIHYDRO

OXBOW STANDING • THE RETROPHONES

FEIS ROIS CEILDIH TRAIL THE GREAT GLEN SWING BAND ANDY DUNCAN BELLA SINGALONG

Rebel rebel

This month we celebrate rule breakers –opening with veteran punk artist Linder Sterling, arriving in Scotland with a major retrospective and new works to be performed at Mount Stuart on Bute and later as part of Edinburgh Art Festival. We celebrate the return of Manchester cult band WU LYF, talk to Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa ‘Missy’ Dubice about honouring the rebels of the past, and visit Glasgow collective Bank Street Media Labs to see how they’re breaking the rules of presenting art and music.

We talk to Catherine Lacey about her fictionmemoir hybrid The Möbius Book, look ahead at how Falastin Film Festival expands the scope of film festival presentation to foster a space of learning, solidarity and action, and meet Edinburgh bard Proc Fiskal whose new release features vape flutes and iPad lutes. Even the crossword has got in on the rule breaking, with a… wait for it… compromised rotational symmetry.

POSTER ARTIST (p36-37):

Jeremy Deller (b. 1966) is a British artist wellknown for his bold, multidisciplinary practice engaged with pop culture and social politics. Deller’s work spans performance, print, sound, and photography – amongst other mediums. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2004.

This month you can experience his work Meet the Gods in Dundee on 24 May as part of a nationwide tour, The Triumph of Art, celebrating the bicentennial of the National Gallery. Students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design have created performances, costumes, staging and activities inspired by classical mythology and taking the form of The Revels – a long-established student-led party that used to take place for the people of Dundee.

Photo:Charlotte

Motel Destino , p29

Linder Sterling, p22

Alternative Aristocracy

Ahead of her ﬁrst retrospective in Scotland, the feminist artist Linder Sterling reveals how she practises punk in a dead-end world

Words: Rachel Ashenden

At the time of writing this, the feministpunk artist Linder Sterling is taking a scalpel to her source material to conjure a photomontage for The Skinny’s May 2025 cover. In what is shaping up to be a Scottish summer for the artist, she is also preparing for her ﬁrst retrospective in Scotland, Linder: Danger Came Smiling, and a two-part performance specially commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) and Mount Stuart Trust. It may take her hours, days

even, to sift through the Playboy magazines of dead husbands donated to her by crafty widows, or the vintage photography books she rummages for in charity shops (the more aged the spine, the better). According to our brief, Linder is forbidden from cutting and pasting an image of a penis above a 45-degree angle, but otherwise, she doesn’t know, and we don’t know, what she’ll end up with.

The muse of her studio is there to guide her. This photomontage joins Linder’s revolutionary

body of work that spans five decades. Born to a working-class family in Liverpool in 1954, Linder experimented with art at the Manchester Polytechnic in the mid-1970s. She was the first in her family to continue school beyond the age of 14 and did so at a time of astronomical economic recession that saw working-class youth face mass unemployment. Worryingly, fascism (via the National Front) and, fortunately, feminism (via the Women’s Liberation Movement) were simultaneously on the rise, causing an intensity of political division that created a perfect storm for the punk explosion. Circa the year 1977, Linder became a punk – or rather, that was the title she was given. “Suddenly, [the tabloid media] was using this four-letter word to describe us all,” she reflects, urging me to look up the etymological root of the word. She is obsessed with language to an infectious degree. It’s a slur from North American English, meaning ‘a worthless person’. Instead, Linder understood her – and her contemporaries’ – actions as an expression of frustration with injustice and the government. “We were seen as freaks”, Linder reflects, adding that it wasn’t safe to dress as a punk, particularly for a woman, as a ressors actively targeted members of the alternative subculture.

Photo: Charlotte Cullen

It was in 1977 that Linder made the photomontage that she is perhaps best known for in popular visual culture. Gracing the vinyl front cover of the Buzzcocks’ single Orgasm Addict is a naked woman with gritted-teeth smiles for nipples and an iron for a head. All at once, the photocollage rips apart the cultural objectification of women and the patriarchal division of labour. That same year, punk’s frenetic energy and DIY ethos was catching on. X-Ray Spex, headed up by frontwoman Poly Styrene, released their debut single, Oh Bondage, Up Yours!, its lyrics a visceral protest of capitalist materialism. Meanwhile, writer Lucy Toothpaste published the first issue of JOLT, a fanzine dedicated to fighting racism and fascism. Photojournalist Caroline Coon captured the zeitgeist on camera, collaborating with the likes of the Sex Pistols, The Clash, the Damned and the Slits.

Through her anarchistic photomontage technique that evolved from Dada, Linder defies any clean-cut binaries as she annihilates, mocks, and transmogrifies her source material. No definitive answer to the perennial debate of whether pornography is empowering or disempowering for women can be found by searching through the layers of her photomontages. But she does offer cutting relief in the face of constrictive ideals of femininity and hetero-patriarchal boredom; in her mish-mashed world, women stab forks in their eyes as a man dotes on them, and wank about someone else he sleeps with his eyes wide open.

Through cut and paste, Linder disrupts the digital tools built for and by the patriarchy, creating an “alternative aristocracy”. For the ﬁrst leg of her 2025 touring exhibition, Linder: Danger Came Smiling, at London’s Hayward Gallery, she decided to “deep fake” herself before anyone else could. Stripping away the threat posed by incels and transforming the technique for feminist ends, she found inspiration in Salvador Dali’s Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939). Through collage, Dali turned Temple into a sphinx to satirise the sexualisation of child stars in Hollywood. To create The Most Sacred Monster of the Photomontage of Her Time (2025), Linder used a 1968 Playboy centrefold of Miss July for her sphinx’s body, and a self-portrait crowned with scissors, spikes, and a fork for the head. The red-hot photomontage is on ﬁre from anger; there is no messing with the Linder-sphinx.

Just as Linder activates the poised, sexual bodies of porn magazines with paradoxical objects, she is drawn to the medium of performance to provoke an emotive response in the beholder. This has been at the forefront of her mind as she gears up for the retrospective’s second stop at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). The exhibition is adapted to emphasise the ﬂora and fauna of Linder’s practice, where roses exa erate nipples, irises shield a lesbian threesome from the male gaze, and an orchid becomes a larger-thanlife phallus. “Visitors can experience Mother Nature in the round alongside my foregrounding of photographs of her blossoms,” Linder explains, adding that botanists have identiﬁed plants to feature in her photomontages on display. Alongside, Linder will premiere A kind of glamour about me at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute on 14 June before kicking off Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) with the performance at RBGE on 7 August. The performance is titled after a quote from

novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott’s diary: “There is a kind of glamour about me, which sometimes makes me read dates, etc, in the proof-sheets, not as they actually do stand, but as they ought to stand. I wonder if a pill of holy trefoil would dispel this fascination.” Scott acknowledges the ﬂaws of his editorial power, confessing that he is overcome by a “magical delusion” while too close to his own writing. Linder argues that Scott’s introduction of ‘glamour’ into the English language is more than skin deep; in Scotland, glamour is “far more rebellious, far more shocking than punk” because of its medieval occult meaning. For her, “glamour and punk [are] bedfellows”. She elaborates, describing her experience of presenting punk through central Manchester in the movement’s early days: “We didn’t look pretty, we didn’t look nice, we didn’t look glamorous… But we all felt deeply, deeply glamorous. Glamour had nothing to do with beauty.”

“After 70 years on the planet, this is the worst yet”

Linder Sterling

Under glamour’s magical spell, Linder was the frontwoman of Ludus, a punk band that inﬂuenced the likes of Morrissey. In 1982, at Manchester’s Haçienda club on a stage strewn with tampons, she performed in a dress made of raw meat and revealed a dildo, stunning the audience to silence in her wake. By contrast, A kind of glamour about me offers the audience “elegance, comfort, and community”. Given the daily shock of world events – genocides, the back-pedalling of human rights, Trump’s authoritarian populism – Linder’s approach to shock has shifted. While collaboratively and tenderly workshopping the performance, it dawned on her that practising empathy and kindness “felt as shocking now as wearing a meat dress did back in the day”. Through performance, she offers us a “salve for the soul”.

A kind of glamour about me, and its multitude of intriguing inﬂuences, are currently ticking away in Linder’s psyche. Transgressing the boundaries between ‘high’ (ancient mythology) and ‘low’ (social media) culture, Linder is particularly interested in the mythic resonance of human-totree transformation as an allegory for the state of the feminine psyche. Improvisation is key to her performances as she collaborates with a cohort of extraordinary creatives who are comfortable not knowing what will unfold on the day. Among the collaborators are a troupe of dancers led by boundary-pushing choreographer Holly Blakey, composer and musician Maxwell Sterling (Linder’s son), and fashion designer Ashish Gupta, known for his sequin and slogan-adorning pieces that blend glamour and political commentary. Both performances respond to the historical and natural context of their settings. At Mount Stuart, a Neo-Gothic mansion, the performance will take place in the Marble Hall, under the star-studded ceiling, as the sun refracts through stained glass depictions of the zodiac. By contrast, at RBGE, the performers and audience will gather

outside, on the Garden’s Oak Lawn. At present, bears from Scotland’s queer communities are being recruited to perform, wryly referencing the children’s song Teddy Bear’s Picnic, while foregrounding non-normative gender expressions of masculinity in LGBTQ+ culture.

Sometimes when I ask Linder a question, she laughs like Medusa. Other times, she dissects the current state of the world like she does her source material, ready to assemble a new order out of a fragmentary mess. “After 70 years on the planet, this is the worst yet,” she despairs, referencing the rallying cries of the far right and the toxic positivity of social media in the same breath. As we live through uncannily similar circumstances that made way for punk expression, Linder challenges us to “become the aristocrats of our own destiny,” even though “our nervous systems might be screaming at us” and we haven’t a penny in our pocket. Who knows – we might ﬁnd that punk impulse for change, community, and a collective voice through A kind of glamour about me.

Linder: Danger Came Smiling, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 23 May-19 Oct, free

A kind of glamour about me, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, 14 Jun; Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 7 Aug rbge.org.uk

Photo: Charlotte Cullen

Power Play

From historical ﬁgure to blockbuster anti-hero, Macbeth: An Exhibition at Perth Museum traces the many reincarnations of a Scottish king

Words by: Rachel Ashenden

Astone’s throw from Birnam Wood and Dunsinane Hill, Perth Museum became the permanent home of the Stone of Destiny in 2024. This ancient slab of red sandstone was used to crown Scottish monarchs until the 13th century. According to curator JP Reid, while its symbolic signi cance might seem arbitrary, the stone has become a “locus for political ideal and identity politics.” In its repeated journeys across the Scottish border to nd its rightful owner, the sandstone has accrued power. Its return to Scotland prompted Perth Museum to examine how power is enacted, a thread that now runs through its public exhibitions programme.

Enter Macbeth – one of 42 kings said to have been crowned on the Stone of Destiny While the historical record of the 11th-century king remains fragmentary, William Shakespeare mythologised the medieval gure into a household name. Themes of power, legitimacy, and tyranny abound in Macbeth, and the play’s enduring and captivating cultural resonance, along with its historical roots, has made it the focal point of Perth Museum’s latest exhibition.

Macbeth: An Exhibition brings together a diverse selection of rarely-seen material relating to both the historical king and the ctional character. It begins in 1040, with the Clach na Bratach stone once owned by Clan Donnachaidh. Clan Donnachaidh can be traced back to King Duncan I, who was killed during the Battle of Pitgaveny,

resulting in victory for Macbeth. Also on display is an 11th century sword, typical of those used throughout Europe during this time period. The sword is a remarkable piece, surviving from an age of warring kingdoms, family blood feuds and Viking settlers. This is the rst time it will be on public display.

The exhibition moves into the uncertain world in which Shakespeare ctionalised his Macbeth: the reign of James VI and I, which was dominated by a paranoia about witchcraft that had severe, fatalistic consequences, resulting in the deaths of approximately 2,500 people. Written texts on display capture the erce debate in early modern Britain over witchcraft’s legitimacy.

Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) argues against the belief in witchcraft, while the rst edition of Dæmonologie (1597) is a devastating rebuttal that endorses the persecution of witches. Authored by James VI and I himself, Dæmonologie acts as a guide to identifying and punishing witches. “This person in charge was profoundly delusional,” stresses Reid, “and he had power at his disposal to exercise that paranoia in a way that impacts the lives of thousands upon thousands of people.”

With an emphasis on written material gathered from northeast Scotland, the exhibition also features Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives’ itemised list of materials from the 1500s such as chains and rewood, for prosecuting witches. Elsewhere, testimonies from the accused in Perth and Kinross reveal desperate attempts to justify their actions and avoid execution. As Reid notes, the minutes from court sessions show how confessions grow increasingly unstable under physical or mental torture. Perth Museum illuminates the importance of showcasing these literary sources, as very little material evidence remains from the lives of the accused, given they were starved of all forms of dignity.

By contrast, Perth Museum platforms contemporary creatives who continue to reshape the Shakespearean character. Shedding light on the transformation of Macbeth according to drastic societal shifts, London-based artist Charlotte Rose applies Machiavellian branding techniques once

employed by cigarette companies. Her oil painting A Dagger of the Mind (2023) combines the unmistakable Marlboro branding with Shakespearean tragedy to expose the tactics of commodi cation. In a capitalist society saturated by visual codes, Macbeth is packaged up like a global brand. Further exciting contemporary loans include costumes and props from the 2015 epic historical drama Macbeth, directed by Justin Kurzel. There’s even an opportunity to get up close to the throne that Michael Fassbender sat on while starring as our titular anti-hero.

With great curatorial care, Macbeth: An Exhibition skilfully moves between extremities, encompassing the horri c realities of witch hunts to the spectacle of 21st century blockbusters. Macbeth’s multiple afterlives are brought to light: historical gure, tyrant, and ultimately, commodity.

Macbeth: An Exhibition is open until 31 August. Tickets available individually or as part of a discounted combination ticket with GLASS, Perth Art Gallery; visit perthmuseum.co.uk for more information

perthmuseum.co.uk/macbeth

Image: courtesy of Culture Perth & Kinross

Clach na Bratach stone from Clan Donnachaidh on display in Macbeth: An Exhibition

Macbeth and Banquo meet the three witches on a heath; scene from Shakespeare's Macbeth'

Image: courtesy of Culture Perth & Kinross / Painting after J.H.

All the Beauty and the Chaos

With a surprise return last month from Manchester outﬁt WU LYF, we explore their cult-like status with hope for the future

There are certain live TV performances that stay ingrained in your memory for eternity.

Morrissey swinging that bouquet of ﬂowers around and around and around on Top of the Pops; the iconic Madonna/Britney/Christina three-way kiss at the MTV VMAs; Glasvegas and Florence Welch’s absolutely bafﬂing cover of Suspicious Minds at the NME Awards.

Manchester four-piece WU LYF’s one, and only, live TV performance on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2012 could easily fall into this same category. In just four minutes, everything you needed to know about WU LYF became clear; all the beauty and the chaos. Performing Heavy Pop, the lead single from their debut album Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, the band exuded energy while giving very few fucks.

The drums come crashing in, with barely a pause after Letterman introduces them, and crashing out – a close-up in the exhilarating closing crescendo shows the cymbals nearly ﬂying off their hinges under the intensity of drummer Joe Manning’s playing. Frontman Ellery Roberts looks distantly towards the ceiling throughout – his almost indecipherable, roughly-delivered vocals a staple of the band’s sound – before coming alive at the end to yell “What’s up motherfuckers?” And, just like that, it’s over; the band walk off stage before Letterman can even properly close.

The performance is a ﬁtting metaphor for the band’s short-lived but highly impactful career. Appearing like a mirage in the early 2010s, WU LYF became one of the most whispered-about then talked-about bands in music, embracing and actively encouraging their cult-like status. Their name WU LYF stood for World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation and their symbol ‘the wuciﬁx’ resembled a religious cross. Lucifer Youth Foundation was the name of their membership scheme through which fan support was compensated with merch and singles. The money raised by the LYF funded the recording and release of Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, self-released on the band’s own label LYF Recordings in June 2011.

The album itself was brimming with religious undertones and is still considered by many, to this day, as one of the modern British greats. But when WU LYF ended, just over a year later, it was announced by Roberts in the description of a YouTube video accompanying the band’s last single, T R I U M P H – to the surprise of both the fans and his bandmates – in which he stated “WU LYF isn’t that important.” It might not have felt like

Words: Nadia Younes it to Roberts on the inside, but on the outside what WU LYF achieved felt massive.

‘Mystery is what WU LYF was born on, and so it still remains’

The band’s rapid success and culty energy also felt very of its time. In the early 2010s, blog culture was booming, and the energy garnered amongst fans towards their favourite bands online felt reminiscent to that of fanzine culture during the height of the punk movement in the 70s. But unlike fanzines, the globalised network the internet provided allowed online music fandoms and communities to form and spread like wildﬁre. And music blo ers were all in competition to stake their claim to the next big music discovery before the labels and major publications could get to them. So when WU LYF appeared, all underground and uninterested, the music blo ers went feral. Meanwhile, over in the US Odd Future were creating a similar movement – shunning usual music pathways with a heightened focus on community achieved by maintaining close relationships with their online fanbase and a distinct visual identity largely spread through merchandise. Both bands also ﬁrmly embraced and represented youth culture at the time. Their fanbases were largely made up by disillusioned youth (undeniably, lots of skaters), searching for community in a world that felt like it had none left.

So when WU LYF announced their surprise return in March with a poster featuring the infamous ‘wuciﬁx’ alongside the words ‘A New Life is Coming’ and the announcement of a string of reunion shows, that same community of disillusioned youth – now disillusioned adults – tuned back in. It was followed a few weeks later by the removal of their debut album from streaming platforms and the release of a new single with a chorus that treads the line of hopeless and hopeful declaring: ‘I pray for something / You do nothing / This is spirituality to me / Something comes from nothing’.

In typical WU LYF fashion, all announcements have remained sparse on information. Mystery is what WU LYF was born on, and so it still remains. But the timing feels perfect. When it feels like all hope is lost, we often turn to culture and community to save us – or at least to offer us the promise of something; so maybe, just maybe, WU LYF’s resurrection can be our saviour. Even if only for a brief, ﬂeeting, beautiful moment.

A New Life is Coming was released on 3 Apr worldunite.org

Breaking Up

Following a devastating break-up, acclaimed author Catherine Lacey wrote a hybrid ﬁction-memoir exploring its tumultuous aftermath. We chat with Lacey about breaking genre conventions and attachments to both love and narrative

“An object of rage” – this is how Catherine Lacey described her latest work, fiction-memoir hybrid The Möbius Book, on first delivering it to her editors. Or she did, until her editors gently pointed out that an object of rage is not necessarily a book. She laughs ruefully, wincing when I ask when in the editing process the anger was excised. “There’s still definitely some in there, right?” she says.

“The rage is doing a lot of things. I think it’s very normal to experience betrayal – like I trusted this person completely, or this situation or religion, and it betrayed me. I think that’s a foundational human experience.”

The betrayal that provides the basis for The Möbius Book, and the rage that catalysed it into being, took place in 2021, when Lacey’s partner of several years left her for another relationship through the means of a politely worded email. The resulting break-up left her devastated and unmoored from her practice as a published author, instead turning to diaristic scraps that she never intended to make public. “I had a year where I was like, I don’t know how to write,” she explains. “When I got to the end of that year, I realised I had forgotten to make money, I had just given myself time to do whatever. So even [at] the beginning, I didn’t think I was writing a book. At one point, I called the non-ﬁction half an inventory, because that’s what it felt like.”

The aftermath of the break-up, and the inventory of feeling that Lacey recorded, make up one half of The Möbius Book. Turn the book around though, and there is a new beginning (or a new ending); a novella about two friends meeting in the wake of their own relationship breakdowns. Affinities and parallels emerge between the two sections: male anger sits heavy across both halves; an incident with a dying animal creates a haunting interlude; and all the characters –Lacey’s fictional ones and herself – are deeply preoccupied by ideas of faith, and what it means to place hope inside an idea or a person. A seasoned fiction writer – she was named one of Granta’s

Best Young American Novelists – Lacey’s delve into non-ﬁction is a pivot away from her previous work, and its dialogue with her well-trodden landscape of ﬁction a fascinating generic subversion.

“There are much fewer rules about books than people think there are,” she says, when I ask if she considers this hybridity an act of disruption or generation. “Right now, marketing departments don’t know how to categorise this: should it be non-ﬁction or ﬁction? But that’s their problem. That’s not my problem.” She is deeply indebted to marketing departments, she adds, laughing, but the distinction between a book’s commercial and creative demands is, she says, a salient representation of the freedom that actually exists in writing, if you look beyond institutional boundaries. For Lacey, this generic experimentation is then less a concern with breaking rules and more an imperative to follow the needs of the work, and what is required to navigate particular aesthetic or narrative quandaries.

“When I started writing Biography of X, for instance,” she says of her antecedent work, a fictional biography of a fictional artist, “I wasn’t like, ‘Oh I know how this novel is going to be.’ I didn’t have a shape for it. I was first interested in what the voice of a woman grieving her wife would be like, and I just followed that thread until it gave me more options. Like, how do I get through this problem that I’ve created for myself. It’s not necessarily disruptive – that moment of finding a way through can feel revelatory.”

It may not be a work of deliberate disturbance, but Lacey’s dualistic approach allows for an interrogation not only into the ﬂuidity of generic boundaries, but also into how the organising principle of narrative can communicate moments of intense personal rupture. ‘Much has been written on the subject of crying in

Words: Anahit Behrooz

“I think part of a break-up is mourning a version of yourself that’s not going to exist, that you had become attached to and expected would be a stabilising presence in your life”

Catherine Lacey

Manhattan, as writers tend to cry in public,’ she writes in the memoir portion shortly after her seismic break-up. ‘[A]nd anyway, you could make the argument that half if not all of published writing is a form of crying in public.’ The Möbius Book’s relationship to vulnerability – the supposedly exposing nature of autobiography, the supposedly distancing nature of ﬁction – probes at the paradox of pain, its simultaneously unique and universal constitution.

“There’s a Deleuze line – I can’t ﬁnd where he said it – that life is not personal,” Lacey says. “Sometimes when things happen we’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t want this public, I’m very private.’ And it’s like, you’re private about what? There is nothing happening to you that isn’t happening to everybody else.”

The Möbius Book may defy categorisation, but in other ways it sits ﬁrmly within a now trending genre of writing: the divorce book, in which women dissect the aftermath of both their marriages and the institution at large. Lacey is sceptical about the veracity of this supposedly emerging genre (“I feel like people have always written about relationships?” she laughs), but she remains deeply interested in the granular affective conditions of relationships – both ongoing and ending – and what they say not only about our attachments to love, but to particular life narratives.

“I think part of a break-up is mourning a version of yourself that’s not going to exist, that you had become attached to and expected would be a stabilising presence in your life,” Lacey says. “Suddenly that person that you didn’t even realise

you were having a relationship with is severed. It’s a grief [that’s] hard to talk about, because why would you be attached to this future version of yourself when you’re not there yet? But I do think part of love is a relationship to a form of yourself that you think can only be reached through this person. And to some degree, it’s true: there are speciﬁc forms of ourselves that can only be reached in relationship with this friend or this lover.”

It is impossible, when it comes to love and desire, to entirely separate expectation from reality, or our investment in particular ideas from our investment in a particular person. Coming to terms with the paradox of relationships, Lacey argues, involves sitting with the duality of it all: the contradictions of pleasure and hurt, fantasy and reality that they contain. “There’s so many fantasies around love that are unhelpful. But there’s real shit there too,” she says. “I think sometimes when your heart gets broken, you want to be like, ‘Oh, it was all a lie.’ And it’s like, no, it was many things. Somebody can hurt you deeply and also have loved you deeply. That was a hard lesson for me to understand. I think I had gotten attached to the idea that somebody that loves you won’t hurt you.” It comes down, I su est, to the difference between love and security, and the ways in which their supposed synonymity is an illusion. “Yes,” Lacey laughs. “Like, they barely even know each other.”

‘Pessimism might be an insurance policy against disappointment, and optimism a total buying into a different fantasy, but maybe a love of fate could be both and neither,’ Lacey writes in The Möbius Book, drawing on Nietzsche’s concept of amor fati – a Stoic surrendering to both joy and loss. It is an invitation towards complexity – that an object can be one-dimensional and three-dimensional at the same time, that love can both nurture and undo us, that narrative can work as a tool of entrapment and liberation. “The narratives other people put on us, or the narratives that we’re attached to, can be very limiting,” Lacey says. “But if you’re able to grapple with your own narrative, see a version of your story and other people’s stories [and how these] change over time, then it’s our sense of narrative change that is redemptive.” It can seem strange to ﬁnd redemption in rupture but, as Lacey has come to learn, it is all a matter of perspective. “It’s a process of seeing how things aren’t stable,” she says of her writing, but also of life, “and how that’s a wonderful truth to keep learning.”

The Möbius Book is released on 19 Jun via Granta

Photo: WIlly

Somma

Centralise Gaza

Falastin Film Festival, the new and urgent Palestinian ﬁlm festival in Scotland, returns for its second edition with an expanded programme. We look at how the event goes beyond passive ﬁlm watching to foster a space of learning, solidarity and action

When we engage with cinema on a level above consumption, we engage with cinema as reality. Such is the main aim of the Falastin Film Festival, the annual event of Palestinian cinema, arts and culture, which returns to Edinburgh in May and expands to Glasgow for the ﬁrst time. Ahead of the festival’s second edition and in conversation with its co-founders, Nastassia Isawi and Gabrielle Kacha, I ﬁnd a small creative team who are proving unstoppable when artistic urgency is required.

Kacha and Isawi explain that Falastin Film Festival seeks to “equip audiences with the historical context that has led up to this point…” and “to better understand so that we can better act.” If you’re not already aware, Israel has relentlessly broken ceasefire agreements and escalated the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, having killed 92 Palestinians over the Easter weekend alone; on the land where Christ was born, there was no Good Friday to be felt. The airstrikes continue, and the targeted killing of Palestinian journalists, doctors, academics, fathers, mothers and infants persists in unspeakably horrific ways. But, we must speak. We must witness atrocity and demand the incarceration of the blood-soaked hands responsible and the dismantling of Western-supplied arms that enable it. Kacha and Isawi tell me that Falastin Film Festival wants to “foster a space for learning and unlearning”, through an updated curation of events spanning films, art, music, and even workshops for children this year.

A highlight of the lineup is the panel discussion between two esteemed Palestinian ﬁgures: Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta and Yara Eid. Sitta worked as a surgeon on the medical frontlines in Gaza for 43 consecutive days and has been the Rector of Glasgow University since April last year. Eid is a Palestinian journalist, a human rights advocate from Gaza and an alumnus of the University of Edinburgh. The panel will be moderated by Hazem Jamjoum, a Palestinian educator and an editor with publishing house Maqam Editions. On Falastin’s website, it states that the ‘conversation will provide an essential platform for those who have borne witness to the relentless violence and systemic destruction inﬂicted upon Gaza’. In my view, the prospective discussion promises what

is a critical part of our position as individuals in the West who must accept our complicity in genocide: the tool of accurate knowledge.

The Falastin team states their commitment to shaping their purpose beyond education and community, hoping the festival “inspires and generates [action]” to transcend the “passive experience” of ﬁlm-watching. This involves effectively engaging the audience through dialogue, which sets precedent for major discourse across communities, integral to social mobility and morale.

This year, the festival will showcase ﬁlms from Palestine, South Lebanon, and the Palestinian diaspora, with a consistent focus on Gaza. Kacha also explains that topics range from “diaspora’s inability to return to Palestine to the use of the manipulation of sound as a form of torture.”

What does it mean to centralise Gaza? You may have heard this notion before, but what does it truly mean to use art and cinema to focalise a city, society, and people under threat of total annihilation? This is where you come in. Team Falastin invites audiences to a series of screenings with a chance for discussion after each ﬁlm. The

Words: Maria Farsoon

festival holds a critical position here in expanding and utilising the communal openness that the people of Edinburgh and Glasgow have demonstrated since Israel’s war on Gaza began over 18 months ago.

When colonisation is being violently carried out as we speak, what should our response be as outsiders and how do we communicate the exact narrative and retell the genuine stories in alignment with what confronts Palestinians on the ground? Falastin Film Festival, with an array of promising screenings and events, holds the answer to that, and I encourage you to find out. Whether you’re interested in film, music, or simply want to hear an invaluable discussion between two distinguished Palestinian figures, Falastin Film Festival promises to deliver.

Falastin Film Festival takes place 9-10 May at CCA, Glasgow, and 15-19 May at Scottish Storytelling Centre and Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh

Full programme at falastinﬁlmfest.com

“We must witness atrocity and demand the incarceration of the blood-soaked hands responsible and the dismantling of Westernsupplied arms that enable it”

Love Shack

Motel Destino is a steamy neo-noir in which a young man hides out at a roadside motel, only to ﬁnd more danger when he gets romantically entangled with the woman who manages the establishment with her volatile husband. Director Karim Aïnouz tells us more

Motels – the scuzzier, sleazier siblings of the more opulent hotels – have long provided rich backdrops for cinema. They’ve served as ephemeral hideouts for various characters on the lam throughout ﬁlm history, from Marion Crane in Psycho to Thelma and Louise They’re also dens of lust, locations for torrid affairs, dirty weekends, and general sexual mischief. Fresh from making his English-language debut with the period drama Firebrand, Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz returns to his homeland to explore the many possibilities of these liminal spaces in Motel Destino, an erotic thriller set in the claustrophobic conﬁnes of a roadside sex motel.

“I love those places,” Aïnouz tells me enthusiastically over Zoom. “I’ve always loved going there, I’ve always appreciated the fact that these places exist.” He explains that he ﬁnds these inexpensive, roadside hotels rented by the hour to be both exciting locales for sexual wonder, and quite problematic. “Countries that need those places are countries that are critical about sexuality and sexual freedom,” he explains. “Obviously, being Brazilian, it’s a very common space, and I thought, How come this hasn’t been done before? This is such an incredible space to talk about sexuality, to talk about freedom, to talk about danger.”

He also viewed Motel Destino as a chance to make a genre ﬁlm after being pigeonholed as an arthouse ﬁlmmaker in Europe. “Coming from the South, you’re normally expected to do drama,” he says. “And I think working within the codes of genre has always been a dream of mine… so I thought the motel had a lot of elements that could be amazing food for a sexual thriller.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, the film is unabashed in its depictions of carnality. “Why not?” he asks when I ask about his film’s abundance of sex scenes. “Like, we shoot people having breakfast, we shoot people fucking, we shoot people walking by the sea. It’s life, you know what I mean?” It seems like Motel Destino was particularly freeing following Firebrand, his buttoned-up Tudor court drama starring Alicia Vikander and Jude Law. “I was just coming out of an experience where I was doing a film where everybody was covered,” he says. “Doing a period film like that, I was just thirsty for a filmic experience that was more visceral, that was less constrained within the clothes and the codes of the time.”

A relatively new phenomenon in the world of film is the intimacy coordinator, the person who ensures the filming of sex scenes is consensual and respectful for all those involved. Aïnouz took time to adjust to this new person on set, who in the case of Motel Destino was Roberta Serrado. “I think the first time I had an intimacy coordinator was in Firebrand,” he recalls. “And I was surprised. It felt very threatening to me because I would

Words: Nathaniel Ashley

“I thought the motel had a lot of elements that could be amazing food for a sexual thriller”

Karim Aïnouz

never in my entire life think of abusing a human being, let alone an actor who is in a vulnerable position. So for me, I took it as like, are people not trusting me?” He also stru led with the go-between nature of the role. “It’s like having a threesome without wanting to have a threesome. You have this person in the middle that you don’t know what to do with because what you want is the person on the other side.”

He’s clearly sceptical, but understands their importance, particularly post #MeToo. “It is 2025, and there has been so much abuse done within the ﬁlm industry, in the past and the present, so I felt like, why not? If this is a ﬁgure that’s going to create a safe space for the actors, more the better.” It sounds like he found a way to compromise on Motel Destino. “It was great,” he says of working with Serrado. “It was fantastic working with her because she did all the choreography for the sex scenes. And it’s not only doing sex scenes, they need to have a meaning in the story.”

And what a juicy story it is. On the run after a botched hit, young gangster Heraldo hides out in the titular motel, only to ﬁnd himself drawn into the tempestuous relationship between the married

couple, Dayana and Elias, who own the establishment. Though the ﬁlm begins with Heraldo threatening Dayana, their relationship later becomes more tender, despite the swa ering, overbearing presence of Elias, played with an easy malevolence by Fábio Assunção.

“They [Heraldo and Dayana] seem like they’re enemies,” Aïnouz explains. “What I was interested in is how that relationship starts with violence, but it becomes a relationship of solidarity. I mean, any love or sexual relationship involves solidarity.”

Given that Motel Destino is heavily inspired by ﬁlm noir, Dayana is very much a femme fatale ﬁgure whose motivations are complex. “Slowly, and this is very ambiguous, [Heraldo] becomes an ally for [Dayana’s] plan. In a way, she’s using him, but at the same time, I think there is a second level of that relationship, which is that they are in love. And I think they feel stronger together than they would feel separately. So I was very interested in how this initial contact, which is branded in the world of violence, could actually become love… it becomes the raison d’être of the movie.”

Motel Destino is released 9 May by Curzon

Photo: Hélène Louvart

Vape ﬂutes & iPad lutes

Mashing medieval sounds and contemporary culture via Edinburgh, Scotland’s electronic bard Proc Fiskal is back with a fresh project. Before taking the six-tracker to stage, we sit down over a drink to discuss the music video served alongside his EP

Fresh, fantastical and downright absurd feel appropriate in decoding Canticle Hardposte, the latest output of Edinburgh experimental artist Proc Fiskal, aka Joe Powers. From behind his pinte in the Stereo Cafe on Renfield Lane, the 28-year-old DJ and producer quickly demystifies the ‘e’ as purely performative. It’s a way to make the concept of ‘hard posting’ on social media a little more medieval. An hour out from taking his brand-new live set to the club downstairs, in between a steady flow of fans passing admiration, we pick the brains of the Hyperdub signee who just casually dropped one of the most mental videos of the year.

The Skinny: What’s the plan for the show tonight?

Proc Fiskal: I’m doing a ‘group chat’ show. I looked up the words ‘pint’ and ‘dream’ in my Facebook archive... you can ﬁnd some crazy shit from a 2014 group chat. So, I’ve used text-to-speech to turn the dialogue excerpts into a big story that I can use in a live setting on top of the EP and other clubbier stuff I have from the time.

How did the EP come about and why did you choose to drop it on your Shleekit Doss imprint? I was making a lot of tunes in a similar kind of style, and I just wanted to get them out there. I love Hyperdub as a label, but there are a lot of people involved, so it can take a while to get stuff released. The video was the longest part of it all for this... the tracks were done in December.

What was the thinking behind shooting the music video for uHazsh?

I think music videos are making a comeback, like that old thing of making a good video and getting it on MPV. There are a lot of tunes that are good in the club, but nothing outside of that. I think it’s good to have another context they can exist within.

Where did the narrative come from?

I had these visions of an old man playing vapes like a ﬂute, two wee guys zooming about on an e-scooter and one playing an iPad like a lute. It could have been the worst video in the world if we had done it in a certain way, but we just went into it with a buzz, you know, we’re not trying to make a philosophical point about vaping.

How did you get the video to look the way it does? Yeah, the ﬁdelity is fucked... it’s this HDR effect from this photo app on my phone called Snapseed. Finn Dove, who I worked with on the video, exported a big pack of every single frame from each shot and I would edit each one individually on my phone... it was the only way we could get it to look right.

I’ve never seen anything that looks quite like it. We spent ages working on it... there were about 8000 frames to go through, but this kind of ﬁlter looks really good to my eyes. You know how people do that old nostalgic video style where you’re meant to feel something because it looks like it was shot on VCR or whatever? It’s that kind of thing but hopefully applied in a non-nostalgic way.

Who are the characters based on?

I live in a ﬂat overlooking Leith Links, so I regularly see people ﬂying around on e-scooters clinging to each other, almost like they’re hu ing... it looks

Words: Cammy Gallagher

really fun. Like stealing a bike and rallying it probably feels amazing.

Would you steal one?

Eh... no, probably not. I’ve always been interested in how much of a buzz it would be, but I got the scooter from a shop that gave me a good deal when I told them about the video. They asked me to send it to them so they could put it on their page, but I hadn’t told them it was about people vaping ﬂutes and shit.

Where did you shoot it and why?

I didn’t want to make it into this hood video, so Finn had the idea that we should do it in the poshest area of Edinburgh. You know it’s such a little snow globe city. We went to Stockbridge, and I think it worked out well because the actors Jonny Brown, Sorley Macrae, and Andrew Smith had never seen that bit of town before, which already made it into this kind of magical journey for them.

What was the journey like for you on your directorial debut?

It was such a buzz. A few people told me their mum cried at the video, and I think mine liked it too. The visual side of music is a whole thing in itself, and right now, I think I’d prefer to do that than make tunes.

Canticle Hardposte is out now via Shleekit Doss

Proc Fiskal plays ARMOUR, The Poetry Club, Glasgow, 23 May IG @procﬁskal

Photo: Joe Powers & Finn Dove

uHazsh

QUEEN’S PARK 26TH - 29TH

Wed 11 - Sun 15 June Turnhouse Road, Edinburgh

Bikini Body

Erland Cooper

Katy J Pearson

MC Yallah & Debmaster

Isabella Strange No Windows Pearling

SISTER MADDS Mermaid Chunky

Smag På Dig Selv

Snapped Ankles Sprints

Moor Mother The Orielles Roller Disco Death Party

Tina Sandwich Witch Fever Tinderbox Orchestra

Ishmael Ensemble and many more

Outer Spaces presents BANK COMMISSIONS COMMISSIONS

Greer Pester

10th May - 11th May 2025

Jamie Fitzpatrick

31st May - 4th June 2025

Outer Spaces, 30 St Vincent Pl, Glasgow

Outer Spaces presents a bold programme of newly commissioned works by artists selected from our network, Sooun Kim (March/April ‘25), Greer Pester (May ‘25), and Jamie Fitzpatrick (May/June ‘25). Set within the former Clydesdale banking hall on St Vincent Place, Glasgow these works offer a dynamic exploration of the site’s rich history and its shifting role in the present.

Building an alternative infrastructure for the arts outerspaces.org @outerspaces.scotland

Blurred Lines

We head along to Glasgow collective Bank Street Media Labs’ latest live gig/exhibition to ﬁnd out how they’re breaking the rules of presenting music and art

Bank Street Media Labs, a Glasgow-based multimedia arts collective, have been putting on digital live streams as well as in-person live events since 2022. Ahead of hosting their second ever live gig-meets-exhibition at Stereo on 20 April – their most ambitious project to date – we sat down with the Bank Street committee to ﬁnd out a little bit more about what BSML is really all about.

“It’s supposed to be a network of artists that’s kind of straddled between the physical and digital spheres,” says co-founder Gavin Steven. “So doing the gig is a physical thing, and then we make it accessible digitally by the live streaming. Then the ﬁlms are a digital thing, and we make it accessible physically by showing it at the gig as well.”

BSML have been known for foregoing traditional modes of presenting artistic work and playing with different forms of presentation: screens-in-screens, video work embedded within live footage, and live streamed events that rely heavily on audience participation have all been part of their repertoire. They have found their identity in breaking the rules of how art has been traditionally presented, and experimenting with blurring the lines between ‘art’ and ‘content.’

“It’s also about digital aesthetics,” explains co-founder Vincent Rabas-Kolominsky. “We look at internet aesthetics and digital aesthetics in general, and also ways you can consume content online. And so we’re kind of connecting these different worlds of digital content to the real world in new, interesting ways.”

The gig at Stereo is part of their latest ‘season’ of events that stands under the theme of ‘Control’. Selkie, k.yalo and Proc Fiskal are on the

lineup, with live visuals provided by artist Slide Cancel, aka Bank Street member Stewart Lawson. The collective have been awarded funding by Creative Scotland, which has enabled them to put on an event at a much greater scale than they have before – and to make it free entry, a rarity in the Glasgow gig scene these days.

According to Steven, this was a very intentional choice: “One of the things that we focused on was that we wanted to make the barriers of access as low as possible. The event itself is free to go to, and the livestreaming aspects are free, too. So people can go to the event, but if someone can’t come physically, for one reason or the other, they can view it online, and hopefully experience just as much as people who join physically.”

While people are able to watch the gig from afar on the livestream, hosted by co-founder Conor McBride, there is an interactive element to the live event as well. While the three live acts provide a seamless sonic experience, headlined by Proc Fiskal whose set has an energised but almost trance-like quality to it, visitors are also able to engage with the digital installation pieces that are arranged to the left of the bar. Part of a piece by Barcelona-based contributor Othmane Mya involves a camera mirroring a distorted version of the onlooker back at themselves. While the music plays in the background, the audience in turn become a part of the show, breaking down traditional barriers between performer and observer and allowing everyone present to take an active role within the performance rather than remaining a mere spectator.

The theme of ‘Control’ for the event has inﬂuenced the organisation and promotion that

Words: Miriam Schlüter

“We wanted to make the barriers of access as low as possible”

Gavin Steven, Bank Street Media Labs

Bank Street have been working on as well. As part of the run-up to the event, they asked the performers to submit mixes that ﬁt the brief. “The idea was that if they had a video game based on them or their visual identity, how would that sound? What would the soundtrack be? So that was quite cool to hear what folk put together for that. I could really envision the sort of games their visual world would create,” explains Lawson.

While the event entails all the enjoyment of your typical Sunday night gig, every detail of the organisation has been thought through to the point where more and more layers reveal themselves the more time you spend in the space or speaking to the collective. This energy is clearly visible from the crowd as well, who are ﬂoating in and out of the space, always on the hunt for something else to discover while taking in the music. With their unique concept, Bank Street Media Labs have managed to really capture a moment in time and provide a unique multimedia sensory experience for everyone attending, deﬁnitely making it a night to remember. After tonight, the collective are planning to take a little bit of a break before tackling some new projects. Watch this space.

Photo: Blair Kemp

True Rebels

With their righteous live shows, Mannequin Pussy create a space for people to experiment with being who they are. But this simple act of self-acceptance is becoming increasingly rebellious, as Marisa ‘Missy’ Dubice explains

“It was important to honour the true rebels and renegades who came before us, who were so much braver than they should have been for that time.”

Marisa ‘Missy’ Dubice, founding member of full-throttle rockers Mannequin Pussy, is explaining the sigiﬁcance of featuring a certain Irish vocalist within their Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney performance earlier this year. “We made the photo of Sinéad O’Connor ripping up Pope [John Paul II on SNL in 1992] the image on the drumhead. She was viliﬁed for speaking out about abuse and turned into an outcast as an artist, for saying many of the same things that we are saying as artists today. The only difference is time.”

It’s been over a decade since Dubice formed the band alongside OG guitarist Thanasi Paul, who joined forces as part of Colorado’s underground punk scene. A few years prior, Dubice was diagnosed with a rare form of soft-tissue cancer at just 15 years old. Wrestling with her own mortality and wanting to “be the bad girl”, she was desperate to rack up as many experiences as this lifetime would allow. “Why not take the risk?” she insists. “It’s so fucked, but the same week that I was diagnosed with cancer, I tried my ﬁrst cigarette.”

“The same week I was diagnosed with cancer, I tried my ﬁrst cigarette”

Marisa

‘Missy’ Dubice, Mannequin Pussy

Out in the normative state of Colorado, Dubice admits ﬁnding like-minded folk felt like a momentous breakthrough for her. “Making those friendships was one of the most life-changing things that had ever happened to me. I had searched for so long for people who were creatively driven, rather than capitalist driven.” But in 2021, a couple of years after the band released Patience, Paul shared he would be leaving the band “to begin a new chapter of his life”. Other bands might’ve faltered at losing a founding member but the departure opened up even more possibilities for the band, completed by Colins “Bear” Regisford (bass) and Kaleen Reading (drums). “There was never a doubt in my mind that this would continue,” she confesses, still surrounded by cardboard boxes, having moved to the West Coast earlier this year. “It gave us a big opportunity to expand the group, our creative dynamics, in ways that would ultimately be inspiring for us.”

Words: Cheri Amour

Expanding the group meant welcoming long-time friend Maxine Steen on lead guitar, with whom Dubice already performed in alt-pop sideproject Rosie Thorne. For the remaining three group members, this new arrival felt like the stars aligning. “In the same way that there was never a question in my mind that we would continue to do this, there was never a question in my mind who I would want to be part of the collective," says Dubice. Steen brought her fretboard ﬁnesse but also a strong line in synths, opening up 2024’s I Got Heaven into further pop realms. But while the record might journey through the map sonically and stylistically, ﬁerce explosions like OK? OK! OK? OK! keeps their true blue hardcore credentials in check.

This genre-agnostic appreciation could also be propelled by producer John Congleton, famed for his credits with fellow rock and roll rulebreakers St. Vincent and Sleater-Kinney. “He’s someone who understands the full breadth of human emotion and the way that he approaches music is from this very sacred place,” says Dubice. For someone who has looked death in the face, this higher purpose resonates with Mannequin Pussy’s decade-long adventure so far. “We’ve always just really sought to represent the multitudes of what it means to be alive.”

The Philadelphia-formed outﬁt have always deﬁed conventions. From a ferocious debut that

rattled through ten songs in under 20 minutes with numbers like Clit Eastwood and Meatslave in the mix, to evolving from two childhood pals in the Colorado punk scene into an international touring outﬁt. For Dubice, being open-minded is the key to expanding into unexpected realms. “When you’re unapologetic about what you believe and the type of person you want to be, it’s a natural way to weed out the squares and the non-believers. By truly being ourselves, it allows people into that space to experiment with being who they are.”

Living in an increasingly divided country like America, the band is well aware of the price of such acceptance. As the US government continues to test its legal boundaries, left-thinking creatives are feeling a conﬂict of rights and representation. For Dubice, that means bridging the divide with their “loud and beautiful rock music”. “America is going to become heavily isolated from the rest of the world in the years to come in ways that we’ve never seen before,” she shares vehemently. “As an individual and as an American, I want to be part of the world, because I love the world, and we’ve been so privileged to see it with our own eyes.”

Mannequin Pussy play Saint Luke’s, Glasgow, 19 May I Got Heaven is out now via Epitaph Records mannequinpussy.com

Photo:

Jeremy Deller

The Category Is

The politics of classifications and LGBTQ lives are ever-complex – and marriage certificates are just the start. In Rainbow Trap, Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities in the UK is shaped – and constrained – by everyday classifications

Ihadn’t given much thought to the intersection of classifications and LGBTQ lives until my wedding day. In fact, I had never imagined the possibility of getting married. I grew up in the Scottish city of Aberdeen and coming out as gay in the late 2000s felt like putting myself in a box outside the system that sorted everyone else I knew. Gone were the expected milestones of wife, children and house in the suburbs. Nobody knew (myself included) what life-defining moments were now on my horizon. I went to university, my onramp for a queer life, and quickly realised that existing outside the main sorting system meant the parties were more fun, the relationships more intense and the outfits far more wild. So it was a peculiar afternoon to find myself in the back seat of a London Black Cab squeezed between my mum, dad and soon-to-be husband just seven months after same-sex marriage was legalised in England and Wales. As we pulled up to the side of the road, I slipped cash under the plastic guard and asked Andrés, “Are you ready?” He focused his dark eyes on me and replied, “Let’s go.” I swung open the door and excitedly stepped out into the leafy square. We felt hopeful that social attitudes towards men marrying men and women marrying

Words: Kevin Guyan

‘What possibilities (or new ‘way of life’) had [we] abandoned to gain access to a system that, just a few months prior, did not want us?’

women were moving in a more positive direction. Andrés and I were being invited into a system that had, until recently, kept people like us on the outside. On arrival, we were ushered into a woodpanelled back room to meet the Registrar for our ceremony. We could hear the excited chatter of friends and family as they took their seats in the room next door. Younger me had never rehearsed this moment but I felt ready and excited for the future that lay ahead. Yet, looking through the documents in front of us, something seemed wrong. The olive-green form that would become our marriage certiﬁcate asked us to write our names, ages and whether we were previously married – questions we had expected to answer. But, at the far edge of the document, were two boxes for the ‘Rank or profession’ of our fathers. Men marrying men writing about the employment history of men. It instantly became clear some archaic requirements of the system remained stubbornly in place.

In sharing vows and exchanging rings, we were about to embark on something that changed who we were as gay men – to ourselves, each other and the wider world. Although our ceremony meant something to us, I was unsure what our actions said about the political and social possibilities of queer lives. In 2012, the cultural historian Lisa Du an described marriage equality as “the singularly representative issue for the mainstream LGBT rights movement, often standing in for all the political aspirations of queer people.” In the late 1990s – when same-sex marriage remained an unlikely possibility among campaign groups in the UK and the United States – gay cultural critic Leo Bersani lambasted the pursuit of marriage and referenced Michel Foucault’s hope that homosexual love could bring about ‘new alliances’ and offer a blueprint for a new ‘way of life’. For Du an, Bersani and Foucault, rather than expanding our horizons, marriage impoverished our ability to imagine LGBTQ lives that depart too radically from the straight, status quo. With our friends and family waiting patiently for us to take our spots at the top of the aisle, what possibilities (or new ‘way of life’) had Andrés and I abandoned to gain access to a system that, just a few months prior, did not want us?

Andrés and I now live in Edinburgh, Scotland and – over the past decade – I have worked as a researcher investigating how UK organisations, businesses and workplaces respond to inequities associated with gender, sex and sexuality. You are likely familiar with DEI interventions such as unconscious bias training, staff networks, pronoun badges, celebration months, allyship schemes and rainbow lanyards. While it felt as if more people than ever were talking about DEI, I grew sceptical as to whether the volume of conversation was having a positive impact on LGBTQ communities suffering the most as a result of badly designed systems. Time and time again I encountered good-intentioned individuals who refused to consider how bi er questions of history, politics and power limited what inclusive interventions could actually achieve. Eyes rolled when I questioned whether ‘debate’ will resolve opposition between trans communities and anti-trans campaign groups or if we really need yet another staff survey to capture more data about the negative experiences of queer employees. My most heated arguments did not involve fascists on the far right or those burning the progress flag at a Pride parade. They were white, middle-class liberals – people like me. Yet, liberal faith in DEI fixes was not matched by evidence of the world around us: the UK has plummeted in international LGBTQ rankings, the number of reported hate crimes against queer communities has rocketed and the Council of Europe singled out the UK (alongside Hungary, Poland, Turkey and Russia) for specific condemnation in its report on attacks to LGBT rights. I also sensed an insidious thread running through calls for more of the same, an unsaid discomfort with the direction of change and su estion that the situation for queer people was ‘good enough’. What I saw among those working in the DEI industry was a dawning realisation that access to same-sex marriage, basic legal protections and improved visibility was the start rather than the end for this queer political project. Queer people wanted more. And well-meaning straight people stood in the way.

Rainbow Trap is out with Bloomsbury on 12 June

This is an edited extract from Kevin Guyan’s Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classiﬁcations and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025). Guyan is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Gender + Sexuality Data Lab.

bloomsbury.com

Hot Metal

Blowtorches at the ready. We chat to Slaghammers, the Glasgowbased feminist welding collective, about inclusivity in action, making mistakes, and ﬁnding your ﬂow state

Words: Ema Smekalova

It all started with a slaghammer: a welder’s tool used to chip away excess metal, also known as slag. This Christmas present was the ﬁrst (and for a little while, the only) tool of the women, trans and non-binary welding collective known as Slaghammers. Founded in 2016, the project evolved out of a back corridor in a mutual studio in Glasgow Autonomous Space and grew into a multi-room workshop in an old powerhouse in Glasgow’s Whiteinch. The original tools – slaghammer, helmet, and arc welder – are still around and in use, passed between gloved and smudged hands during regular community workshops and skillshares.

‘From stools and chains to apple presses and record sleeves, there’s no shortage of items the collective can make’

On a rainy Sunday, we visit the workshop and meet some of the Slaghammers. Ella, a founding member, gives us a tour of the current workshop, where they’ve been based since 2020. Arriving at the industrial site, we’re met with large doors and sleek steel window frames, which we’re soon informed are the product of the ﬁrst-ever metalwork project completed in the new space. The workshop was pretty barebones when the Slaghammers moved in, and it’s taken a lot of work, fundraising, and patience to get the collective to where it is now: having the resources and space to run external skillshares and organise workshops with local organisations like Rumpus Room and Maryhill Integration Network.

From stools and chains to apple presses and record sleeves, there’s seemingly no limit to the items the collective can make. One project they’re particularly proud of is a homemade ring roller, which is a tool used to produce perfect metal rings that, according to the Google Shopping tab, can go for thousands of pounds bought new. Using a car jack, some old castors, and a few bits of wood and welded scrap, Slaghammers ﬁgured out how to make the tool for themselves. It’s this thriftiness, this openness to giving things a go, and the desire

to simply learn and share knowledge, that seems to have grounded the collective over the years.

“The really nice thing about this group,” says Cam, a welder on-site, “is that it’s just a space to try something out. It’s okay to make mistakes. And we make a lot of them.” The group laughs goodnaturedly. The collective’s intention has always been to create a welcoming space for anyone who wants to learn or develop their skills in the welding trade. They’re keen to provide a point of access and a supportive workshop environment for people who might not be typically associated with or even welcomed in the metalworking industry.

That’s not to say Slaghammers aren’t backed by the wider welding community. Lots of their materials (which can be hard to access, especially for a self-funded workshop) are donations from metal fabrications around Glasgow. As Ella says: “They’re just really sound.”

There’s a real down-to-earth approach to Slaghammers, from their disinterested dismissal of institutions to the care they take in ensuring everyone feels comfortable lighting an industrial oxy-propane torch during the soft metal workshop. We chat to Ella about the collective in more depth in the staff room at the back of the workshop. “We are deﬁnitely inherently political,” Ella says. “We want to prioritise making it [the collective] an inclusive space for women, queer, trans and non-binary people, marginalised groups, and people experiencing barriers to workshop spaces –but also, like, we just do metal.” It’s a delicate balance of acknowledging these barriers while also not letting them detract from the real focus of the collective, that is, working with metal alongside others.

And metalwork is a tough graft: it’s hot, it’s sweaty, but it can also be a meditative, tender process. “You know the concept of ‘ﬂow state’? It’s like that,” says Martha, who is also a founding Slaghammer. For some, it is easy to spend hours and hours welding, engaging your mind and your body simultaneously.

“Strangely it’s both a relaxing and exhausting experience,” Ella adds. It’s about way more than just heating up some metal: there’s measurements, design stages, lots of trial and error, and Slaghammers have created an environment where all this can happen via mutual learning. And, undeniably, it’s pretty hot.

Slaghammers have been up and running for almost ten years, offering their local community an opportunity to be welcomed into the welding world, no matter who you are. If this is the sign you needed to get into your overalls and fuse some metal, trust us – Slaghammers are waiting for you with open arms and a good pair of safety go les.

@slaghammers on Instagram

heaven-scent

As Jenny Hval prepares to release her ninth studio album – Iris Silver Mist – we ask the Norwegian artist about her multidisciplinary approach and perfume passion

The Skinny: The concept of fragrance is integral to Iris Silver Mist. What sparked your interest in perfumes? How did the inﬂuence manifest during the development of the album?

Jenny Hval: I got into fragrance after the pandemic lockdowns, while the world was coming back to life. I didn’t think about it much at the time, I was just completely obsessed with smelling things after a band member took me to a niche perfume shop in Stockholm while we were on tour. I felt very embarrassed for a while – I couldn’t write music but was constantly reading about perfume, ingredients, perfumers, and press materials for old perfumes.

When I was a teenager I was very interested in perfume, but I never understood why... I think the 40-something me needed to come back to having a sensual experience that felt fresh and real. Smelling perfume is a very physical experience. That’s why people yell at each other on the bus for wearing “too much perfume” or “you smell disgusting.” Smells of other people bother us. I love that.

After smelling a ton of materials and perfumes over many months, I found that it was a good ritual for writing again. I wrote a bunch of demos while testing different rose perfumes – in that period I wrote To be a rose. Originally a lot of the songs were named after perfumes... It was a good way of rediscovering my senses, and challenging my ideas of sound.

Words: Lewis Wade

Scent played a role in last year’s performances too. What informed the choice of rice cookers? I think the rice cookers was the best scenography idea I’ve ever had, it just popped into my head. I love the smell of different types of rice, and I love the composition of cooking it – it gradually begins to simmer and disperse scent. Slowly noticing how rice is steaming gives me a feeling of being warm, clean and safe. We added some oils to the rice cookers as well, made it a little bit alien. I imagined it to be like a drone composition, something Sarah Davachi could have made. FYI: Rice has been trending in perfumes, so I guess I’m not the only one enjoying that smell.

“Music is a place to step closer to death I think, it’s a liminal space”

I’m that unique, I think a lot of people have interdisciplinary minds. It’s just that I’ve been able to use a variety of facets in my work. Music performance is an opportunity to collaborate with people from other art ﬁelds, it’s a social arena. And the writing part was always there for me. As a child I was writing mini novels long before I played instruments.

Jenny Hval

Images of death pervade the album, with recurring references to ash, smoke and burning which brings to mind a sense of ritual, cleansing and renewal. Were these considerations on your mind when you came to write the album, or did the themes only become explicit during the writing process?

You’re also known to use interesting and original visuals in performances, your lyrics have a literary bent and you’ve written novels. Now there’s the influence of fragrance. What is the interplay between these different disciplines as they relate to your music, and how do you refine these influences so as not to overwhelm?

I am always overwhelmed. I think maybe I need to be overwhelmed to start writing. Then I need to lessen the burden a bit and look up. I don’t think

I think as I’m getting older I need to get closer to death also in my music. Music is a place to step closer to death I think, it’s a liminal space. People around me are also getting older, and I spend more time worrying about them. Part of the focus on ritual also comes from this wish to reignite the feeling of music being physical. Post-pandemic and post-streaming era, and after much (most?) music journalism has been cut from the media, it’s sometimes impossible to think of music as sound coming from real human bodies, in a room with real listeners. Real work, real time, real cost.

As well as the melding and evoking of different senses, the album seeks to dissolve borders in the song to song ﬂow, and many of the lyrics consider the way we can disappear into our physical or mental surroundings. Do you view this as a positive in forging a connection with the world around us or is there a fear/risk of losing a part of our self/individuality in pursuing such a holistic approach?

I think at the time of writing it was very much a negative, self-losing agenda for me. I was writing a lot of those songs for [my stage] show I want to be a Machine, which was very much about the death of art and meaning. But then my optimist self came into the picture… the song The artist is absent ﬂows into a very wishy-washy ghostsoundscape and then goes directly into another track: The gift. Which is about how music is a gift. Even if no one hears it or wants it. There is a lot of hope there. You could say I’m celebrating the fact that when you die you ﬁnally nurture the Earth.

Iris Silver Mist is released on 2 May via 4AD jennyhval.com

Photo: Jenny Berger Myhre

Tangents and Self-Sabotage

Best known for his off-the-wall online sketches, we chat to stand-up Tom Lawrinson about his debut tour show

Words: Cameron Wright

With an Instagram following of nearly 100k, it is a fair possibility that you will already be familiar with the mind of Tom Lawrinson, or at least a fraction of it. It’s a mind that churns out content, blurring the line between the mundane and the abstract, grasping at universal experiences and warping them into hysterical worlds of madness and obscurity.

“I might lose jobs, but I make connections”

Tom Lawrinson

In a way, there are parallels between Lawrinson’s content and that of Tim Robinson, as both comics plant their skits in the pasture of the humdrum and allow their ideas to sprout into the absurd and lucid.

You can immediately see Lawrinson’s process at work. Seconds into our chat, the comic lurches into a ramble about clouds, before swiftly diverting to a conversation about his lengthy obsession with collecting shoe boxes, then ceilings and chocolate wrappers. Within 20 minutes, he’s expressed his opinions of TV remotes, tangerines and trousers (passionately vouching that they are unequivocally the worst item of clothing).

His ease to form such incisive opinions on anything is fascinating as he lunges from one rant to another. There’s a delightfully playful cynicism to each excursion. Be it the shelf-life of pears or advocating for ﬂat caps, Lawrinson picks up on life’s myriad of imperfections with a phenomenal perception, as if he were on stage.

“I always think that’s exactly how people bond – the funniest person in the room is always the person most pissed off. There’s something harmonious about meeting up with your friends and you all take turns just complaining.” This rings true in the bulk of his viral videos. Many stem from the most minute inconveniences in daily life. “You do get people who don’t complain,” confesses Lawrinson, “but they’re just not funny.”

His debut tour show, titled Buried Alive (And Loving It), comes to Edinburgh and Glasgow this month. Performed at last year’s Fringe, Lawrinson says it’s about ﬁnding a way to laugh at misfortune. “I reckon if that happened to me, I’d be able to see the funny side of it – it always makes me chuckle when something goes to shit.”

The show follows a young Lawrinson struggling through life. “Come and see it if you want – I’m

not arsed,” he says with a wry chuckle, scratching his head for a more sincere plug. “It’s about me growing up in Spain until chaos ensues.”

The absurdity in Lawrinson’s work, both online and on stage creeps up on you, until you are fully engulfed in his madness. “That’s how my conversations work. One moment we’ll be discussing a nice night’s sleep, the next we’re suddenly debating who’s wearing underwear on their head. I always think that’s the funniest part of hanging out with friends, watching it snowball and evolve.”

Applying that aptitude for observation, the comic’s keen to distil what he notices about people. “I reckon there’s maybe 20 people, maximum – and we all stem from them,” he tells us. “We all share those tricksy little moments of embarrassment or shame or whatever it is, and I enjoy exploring them. Those moments of self-sabotage that you can’t explain”.

And as our conversation continues, Lawrinson tiptoes ever-closer to absolute absurdity. With a confident swa er he’s goading the conversation to dive into the ludicrous at any moment. “I’ve definitely lost opportunities this way,” he gi les to himself. “It could be a very important business meeting, and if I get a whiff that someone in the room would rather discuss their favourite fish, I’ll be running down that road straight away! I might lose jobs, but I make connections.” Self-sabotage at its finest.

It’s a sentiment which extends to his comedy career in whichever medium he’s using. “A live gig people only see once, a video can get rewatched 100 times and people pick up on the minutiae. In

the room you judge it on the laugh in the moment, a fake laugh is far less rewarding than silence.”

Lawrinson goes on to say, “I think my favourite bit of feedback both on stage and in video is when people say ‘I liked the start but then it got stupid, or then you ruined it by getting weird!’ I get a kick out of pushing it to the brink.”

Tom Lawrinson: Buried Alive (And Loving It), The Stand Edinburgh, 18 May, 8.30pm and The Stand Glasgow, 19 May, 8.30pm, £15-16

@tomlawrinson on Instagram and Tiktok

Photo: Drew Forsyth

GLOW Up

Edinburgh College’s GLOW Festival is back; with a year’s worth of graduate projects open to the public this summer, here are our top picks

Words: Ellie Robertson

GLOW Festival is the annual exhibition of Edinburgh College graduates’ work across a spectrum of artistic disciplines. Every year, an emerging generation of artists display their work in venues across Edinburgh, and we couldn’t be more excited to see what 2025 has to bring. Students from the Schools of Art & Design, Media, Music & Sound Production, Performing Arts, Computing, and Photography are sharing their projects with the public, and everyone’s invited. If you want to soak up some creativity this summer, we’ve put together our top recs from the programme.

Art and Design Graduate Exhibition 2025

City Art Centre, 4-15 Jun, 10am-5pm, free If you’re a fan of the visual arts, GLOW has you covered. Graduates from Edinburgh College’s HND and BA courses in Graphic Design, Illustration, Textiles, 3D Animation and much more are displaying what they’ve been working on at the City Art Centre throughout June. This is a chance to see loads of innovative design, across a variety of mediums, from students who might one day be big names in the Scottish art scene.

Out The Box Festival

The Mash House, 12-15 May, 7-10pm, £5 Edinburgh College’s students have also been doing great work in Media, Music and Sound Production, with separate degree shows for contemporary and classical music taking place throughout the city. But be sure to stop by Out The Box Festival, a four-day slate of performances at The Mash House in Edinburgh’s Old Town featuring pop, rock, and a ton of great tunes that HNC and UAL graduates have been working on all year. The students are likely to be in a celebratory mood, so for those looking for a wild weekend in May, the Mash House is where it’s at.

Lysistrata PASS Theatre, 3-5 Jun, 2pm + 7pm, £9-12

A highlight from the School of Performing Arts is an adaptation of Lysistrata. The original comedy by Aristophanes sees the titular heroine lead a sex strike against the warring men of Ancient Greece, and students of the HN1 Acting and Performance course have adapted the script into a modern-day rock opera that’s sure to be a crowd-pleaser when it comes to the Performing Arts Studio Scotland (PASS) Theatre in June. If you’re a fan of historically inventive pop musicals like Six or Hamilton, then this is an event for you.

ECGX

Codebase, 5 Jun, 5.30-8pm, free

Want something a little more interactive? The Edinburgh College Games eXpo is an event for all you buttonmashers out there. You can play through the projects of HND students in courses like Computer Games Development and Digital Design, plus local indie game devs will be there to offer a serving of their unreleased titles. It’s a free, fun evening at Codebase on Castle Terrace, perfect for both casual gamers and high scorers curious about getting into game design.

Costume and Makeup Artistry Showcase 2025 PASS Theatre, 21 May, 6.30pm, £5-7 Two Edinburgh College HND programmes – Costume for Stage and Screen, and Makeup Artistry – are joining up for an end-of-year catwalk. The collaborative costuming, makeup artistry, wigs and accessories on display might transport you from the PASS Theatre to Paris Fashion Week, but also keep a keen eye out for the impressive staging and hard work of the students on the HND Technical Theatre course.

EXPOSED

Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 3-12 Jun (not 8), 10am-5pm, free EXPOSED 25 exhibits the work of Edinburgh College’s graduating photography students. Coming to Out of the Blue are some breathtaking prints of visual storytelling and compositional skill. Students in this course are often award-winning photographers, so don’t miss this opportunity to see what truly fascinating things have been snapped over the course of last year.

GLOW Festival runs in venues across Edinburgh across May and June

www.edinburghcollege.ac.uk/glow

Image: Sefton Rani (Cook Islands/ NZ) ‘Survey’ 2025

Out-of-Towners

Amalia Ulman’s visually striking culture clash comedy Magic Farm follows some inept journalists trying to make a film in a rural Argentine town. The artist and filmmaker discusses working with her idol (Chloë Sevigny) and finding beauty everywhere

Words: Katie Driscoll

Amalia Ulman is telling me about soy. The bright, vivid green of that bean crop being destroyed by glyphosates was the first visual image that came to her when creating her latest film, Magic Farm. She’s a visual thinker, she tells me, not wordy like Woody Allen or Hal Hartley, “whose scripts could be like a book,” she laughs. So, these fields of transgenic soy, ”which have a very particular look because they’re usually very green, against blue skies. It already gives you a very vibrant colour scheme,” like the Microsoft screensaver, I su est. She laughs: “Yes! And it’s from the 90s,” like many of her other inspirations. So Magic Farm is like if Microsoft Windows, Gen X music promos, Chris Cunningham and Bam Margera’s skateboarding videos had a baby, basically. And her sophomore feature does feel like a loose, zany throwback to 90s video art that doesn’t exist anymore. When “people were splurging. Those years were really expensive,” she says of filmmaking in the 90s. “There’s not that kind of money anymore… Back then, people would spend millions of dollars on music videos, with good directors. Like the Fatboy Slim videos, like the Michel Gondry videos…”

Ulman’s work is up there with her icons. From Argentina, she grew up in Spain, studied in London and now resides in New York. She’s multi-talented, having written, produced and acted in Magic Farm opposite her idol Chloë Sevigny (which she describes as “Terrifying!”).

Just like her first film, El Planeta from 2021, Ulman also did most of the pre-production – location scouting, writing the script – on her own, which suits her just fine. “I’m less drained if I do it alone. That’s one thing my autism gives me... I hate calling it a superpower,” she smiles. “What happens is I can do all this really intensive work on my own that most people would find stressful, but then I suffer with other things that are more social.”

Ulman has brought together a pair of Hollywood’s coolest stars (Alex Wolff and Chloë Sevigny play Jeff and Edna, two hip, dumb American journalists/tourists) with lesser-known Argentinian actors. The latter play the warm, eccentric and lovable locals – and they’re the heart of the ﬁlm. The hipster journalists meet them while trying to make their documentary in rural Argentina. Of course, everything goes wrong: the “journalists” (in the vein of Vice) are wholly unprepared and under-researched, and a series of sardonic vignettes show how their mistakes stem

from their own self-absorption. Ulman has a keen eye for dry humour (I wrote down many of the hilarious lines, like how Jeff compares synced menstrual cycles to like when “fruit is together in the bowl and rots faster”, or when Edna tells Jeff, “You should stop taking so much ketamine. You’re not a pony”).

I’ve never seen a film quite like Magic Farm. It’s as if Hunter S Thompson had a wacky, gonzo baby with a Zoomer. Or think Nathan Barley for the post-Vice, post-’08 recession, influencer/ ketamine/TikTok gen, for whom 34 is still young and exploiting people is a valid part of a job – grown-up, even! Colours are vivid, like an Instagram filter. The tone of the film is not one of cynicism, however. Ulman is a sincere artist, and she believes the arts are in trouble; the type of content-farming, clickbait culture she’s satirising in Magic Farm is troubling to her.

about making something daring. I’m always excited because I think talent is everywhere. But what’s sad, too, which wasn’t the case with the early internet, is that now we’re relying on likes more than ever. Popular doesn’t necessarily mean good.”

“Don’t underestimate people because of where they’re from”

Amalia Ulman

“Right now, I feel like there’s a lot of, like, fear,” she says. “We don’t want to spend any money on anything that is not crucial, and that primes a whole generation to not think art is important, and then that makes you more insecure

But despite this, Ulman is still hopeful for what art can do now – its possibilities. When I ask her what she wants audiences to take away from a viewing of Magic Farm, she offers a sincere and profound answer: “To know that there’s beauty everywhere. That there’s smarts and intelligence everywhere. Don’t underestimate people because of where they’re from. I think that’s something that I find very upsetting when films are made about either, you know, people with disabilities or people from poor backgrounds or whatever. And usually they’re directed by people from the upper classes, and there’s this sense of guilt and everyone’s so humble and subdued... It’s like, No! People from all backgrounds can be funny, creative, weird, bad. They can be everything! That’s something I try to reflect in my films.”

Magic Farm is released 16 May by MUBI

Invisible Women

“We want people to feel the city differently after Monumental” – we take a look at F-Bomb’s new feminist project

Words: Rho Chung

This year, the city of Edinburgh is celebrating its 900th(-ish) birthday with the Edinburgh 900. The programme includes dozens of varied events, from lectures to parades. F-Bomb, a feminist theatre company based in Edinburgh, is contributing a new project called Monumental. Monumental, written by Hannah Low, Jaïrus Obayomi, Rachel O’Regan, Kirin Saeed and Emery Schaffer, takes the form of a walking tour dedicated to the un-commemorated female ﬁgures from Edinburgh’s history. Playwright, producer and dramaturg O’Regan positions the project as an attempt to resist a “cultural canon” that routinely marginalises women.

O’Regan says that there are “eight statues of named women in Edinburgh, 14 of animals, and 79 of men.” I’ve heard this, too; O’Regan calls it a “clear disparity in stone and bronze.” It’s one comparably minor result, she says, of a broader landscape of inequity. “The historical marginalisation of women… continues today. Art, culture and history should be for everyone to shape, contribute to and experience.”

But F-Bomb isn’t about the glossy veneer of girlboss feminism. O’Regan says: “Since the First Wave, feminist movements have often centred the experiences of white, middle-class, ablebodied women – it’s important to acknowledge and challenge that legacy.” After the success of their Fringe hit, The Beatles Were A Boyband, F-Bomb has a lot of feminist momentum to carry forward. A walking tour is one innovative answer to the question of how theatremakers can invite audiences to engage in the story in a more active way. In a move toward making the experience more accessible, tickets in the small audiences for the tour will be pay-what-you-can , allocated via rafﬂe.

As a transplant to Edinburgh, I’ve been on my fair share of walking tours (voluntarily. I enjoy them). But most of them involve some sort of story about how a 50-year-old writer married his teenaged student, or how a surgeon murdered eight people to use

as cadavers. They often mention the horriﬁc violence done to women seen as “witches.”

Edinburgh is the perfect city for a walking tour; if you go on enough of them, you come to know Edinburgh as it wants to present itself – that is, as a place with a salacious history and a moderate to high volume of the macabre. As far as ‘things to do in Edinburgh’ go, the walking tour could be considered a staple. It makes perfect sense, then, to marry it with live theatre, another of this city’s beloved pastimes.

O’Regan says that the “walking tour format is key to the experience and we’re really excited! It invites the audience to physically move through this very old city, to visually and publicly occupy spaces where women’s stories have historically been absent.”

Among the many luminaries featured in Monumental, O’Regan continues, “Clara Marguerite Christian was the ﬁrst black woman to enrol at University of Edinburgh; Ma ie Dickson was a workingclass woman whose story touches on reproductive rights; and Saint Triduana was a visually impaired servant to the church. Each of the stories show womanhood not as a monolith, but a complex identity shaped by diverse lived experiences.”

In light of recent attempts by the Supreme Court and the UK Government to ‘deﬁne’ what a woman is, F-Bomb released a statement condemning the ruling. This chimes with the stated message of Monumental, a project that re-maps Edinburgh as a city that also belongs to marginalised people. There are roads for theatre companies to take big swings, so to speak – to stand consistently and unequivocally with the marginalised through their platforms and their work.

Monumental, central Edinburgh, 10 & 17 May, tickets via fbombtheatre.co.uk/monumental edinburgh.org

Discworld

As DVDs turn 30 this year, we lament their scarceness in 2025’s hostile streaming environment and the rich possibilities they held

Words: Lucy Fitzgerald

Illustration: Kasia Kozakiewicz

We’ve lost the value of ceremony in so many domains of modern life. From expedient food delivery to delegating email composition to robots, we have streamlined too close to the sun. And in the ﬁlm and TV landscape, this feels especially pronounced, as streaming has totally compromised something once very material and sacred: DVDs, the once ubiquitous consumer video format invented in Japan in 1995.

The issue is that the jam-packed interface of modern streaming services – with Netflix being the standard-bearer, having mutated from their original DVD rental mailing service system – proves overstimulating and stunting for the viewer. Disoriented by its topographical nightmare (that has been perverted even further in Netflix’s case with the recent, baffling addition of a mobile gaming tab), we experience decision paralysis. Facing off with five thousand titles, the malignant

Rolodex system steals entire hours of time while sanding down our conscious engagement. Addled and worn down to passive scrolling, it begets atrophied hands and indifferent minds. Brain cells are rendered hors de combat.

Comparatively, the DVD once gave movie night dignity and clear parameters. I reminisce about the easy process of elimination at a sleepover as a tween, from a maximum of four DVD options laid out in a single solitaire-like column.

I’ve felt the novel buzz of digital wanderlust maybe once in 2014 but since then it’s been pure numbing. This is the fallout of the lost ceremony of DVD shopping or renting; a whole weekend could pivot on such an acquisition. I nostalgically recall The Sopranos’ Christopher Moltisanti, a thwarted ﬁlmmaker himself, asserting, “I love movies. That smell in Blockbuster, that candy and carpet smell. I get high off it.” That the soul-draining digital scroll offers no such multi-sensory trip reveals streaming’s most sinister consequence:

‘The jam-packed interface of modern streaming services proves overstimulating and stunting for the viewer’

you cannot build memories from it. Convenience arrives at the death of meaning, as easy access precludes intention.

As a kid, the absorbing browse of the supermarket DVD gallery involved the following: studying the blurbs (the truncated review quotes, the ﬁne print at the bottom, and doing the juvenile

mental arithmetic exercise of converting run times from minutes into hours); getting to know actors’ faces (Eugene Levy gradually became something of a second father); and apprehensively rubbernecking at the explicit (the cover of Bad Santa is perennially burned in my mind – it may as well have been a snuff ﬁlm for all the alarm the lascivious, divorced da grin of Billy Bob Thornton stirred in my ten-year-old self). Of course, the social contract between a wandering child and the ﬁgurative lasso of the supermarket tannoy was eventually enforced after having disappeared for half an hour. Finally summoned to the customer service muster point, I was quietly empowered by new creative insight.

We are living through a loveless age and DVDs exist on an axis of love, much like the snug VHS before them. A lodestone for family, friends and lovers, DVDs were a tangible vehicle for real intimacy (I’ve always considered ‘Netflix and chill’ a psy-op). They conjure a vector of ownership: becoming part of a home’s furniture, a thoughtful gift, something you have to actively maintain – remember the pantomime home remedy of hot-breath-and-wipe when disc scratches interrupted play? That the DVD could be damaged alerted you to its preciousness, its life. The threat of losing the story was a grave personal thing. Contrast this to Netflix’s regular jettisoning of film titles. Do you ever fondly remember a movie’s listing, later eagerly search it, and discover it has since been removed? Such non-consensual excisions are constant. Your illusory personalised profile icon gestures control, but the suits and server rooms are the real occupiers.

A ramification of streaming is that, en masse, we have been socialised out of spending meaningful time submerged in a story: the average young person now admits to having such a short attention span they cannot watch a full movie without regular phone checks; any film longer than 90 minutes is decried. Recall the prelapsarian days of DVD menu screens inviting us to dig even deeper, to watch trailers, bloopers, deleted scenes and featurettes of cast and crew commentaries (enjoy one hall of famer: Ben Affleck’s damning narration of Armageddon in which he savagely decoupled the plot from any logical sense). At the beginning of many American films you’ll see Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s trademarked logo in Latin: ‘ars gratia artis,’ which means ‘art for art’s sake.’ Before the streaming setup, we used to have a wellspring of meaningful extra trimmings created just for the sake of it, for the love of the game.

Consider the charm of each such aspect: the menu screen acted as a portal, a maitre d’ of sorts, a stained glass vestibule with colours and light so vivid you could sit in its glow for some time before crossing beyond. I recall the compelling primer to the DVD for Pedro Almodóvar’s 2006 melodrama Volver, specifically experienced on Saturday mornings in childhood. As my mum finished hoovering, its jingle – a sonorous flamenco thrum (‘Volveeeeer’) – played on loop over the intriguingly severe expression of its star, Penelope Cruz. Also notable was Shrek 2’s DVD menu, which had its character ensemble configured like Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych while exchanging meta banter.

‘A ramiﬁcation of streaming is that, en masse, we have been socialised out of spending meaningful time submerged in a story’

Then, of course, the slate of trailers that played before the film start sensitively worked to recreate the paced conditions of the in-cinema viewing experience, and as time lapsed, served as a sweet time capsule forever tied to the epoch of the film’s release (that might’ve meant over-distinguishing the most mediocre comedy of 2007, but so be it). And you can’t forget the gritty, cautionary anti-piracy PSA, the iron-fisted moralising that freaked out a whole generation.

On offer, too, were the bloopers in which scene partners were captured in a well-disposed ﬂow of guffaws and line fuck-ups – mistakes that demonstrated their humanity. In science schooling, you are taught to ‘show all of your working’ – these were such purposeful roadmaps to comedy solutions. Equally, the deleted scenes, the giblets to the movie’s Christmas turkey, gifted offbeat shavings and alternative endings that allowed the audience to understand the director’s broader schema and editing instincts.

Finally, there were the inexplicable extra vignettes of the ﬁlmic cosmos, fecund narrative tangents rendered for the thrill of it, like The Dark Knight’s generous, worldbuilding roster of Gotham Tonight news interviews or the musical short Shrek in the Swamp Karaoke Dance Party

But not only does the defanged streaming interface deprive us of these extra bursts of movie passion, we barely get to experience the film itself in its full primary form. Another poisoned arrow in Netflix’s quiver is the brusque, violent autoplay, which ensures you barely get to read the director’s name, let alone the full credit roll, once the film finishes before being launched into a new show or movie. It’s forced eviction rather than good-faith transition; a framework of pure evanescence, posing as expansive. MUBI and The Criterion Channel are the rare streamers with integrity, dissolving the borders of world cinema and not actively hijacking the audience’s experience of the art. HMV, with its busy shelves of physical media, is also fighting the good fight, if at slightly inflated prices (the Blu-ray of Madame Web for £20, anyone?).

But the unceremonious cuts and library extractions crystallise a fatal company contempt for both the consumer and the craft. Everyman cinema offers the velvet sofa; Vue, the leather recliner; and Netﬂix, the military-grade ejector seat. Viva la DVD.

Released 30 May by

Album of the Month

Jacob Alon — In Limerence

Jacob Alon’s passion for music started with the discovery of an acoustic guitar that had been stowed away in their grandmother’s dusty cupboard. But Alon’s route to recording their debut album was more circuitous than it might have been. A commitment to music was preceded by unrewarding stints at medical school and the study of theoretical physics. Ventures pursued, Alon later reﬂected, to the beneﬁt of others rather than themselves.

In Limerence then is the product of deliberate action and agency. Alon’s ﬁngerpicked playing sounds like busy spiders scuttling up and down the guitar’s neck in search of a new home, as if Alon were still playing the instrument they found in their grandmother’s cupboard and had just swiped away the cobwebs. Their playing, honed from show after show on Edinburgh’s folk circuit, is backed by twitching drums, rhythms and clicks that bring all the warmth of an episode of Detectorists. But the contentment and reconciliation of these songs is hard fought for.

Confessions, for example, is ultimately about acceptance. Alon says they wrote it for a younger version of themselves who was just beginning to understand their queerness. But Alon describes

scenes with a narrator still despairing: ‘Snorting cocaine and bleeding out the truth’. They end the song repeating ‘I loved you’ in the rawest way towards someone who presumably didn’t love them back. Don’t Fall Asleep is written from the perspective of Alon’s cousin who tragically drowned before Alon was born. Despite the song’s tragic kernel, its message is to believe in the real world and to not get lost in a dream one. The way they usher in the chorus with encouragement to ‘Stay awake and watch the ﬂowers grow / Green and indigo’, you’d trust Alon no matter what they told you.

Alon’s voice is the central weight that everything else orbits around. Like Thom Yorke, they stretch their vowels out until they’re thin, laid over us in a high tenor. Other times they’re hazed and weary, like on August Moon and Sertraline. Sometimes Alon's voice wobbles in the way that Orlando Weeks’ or Adrianne Lenker’s might. That is perhaps inevitable given the honesty of this record. In Limerence is a debut album that is at once conﬁdent and vulnerable. That interchange and trade-off is presented most clearly in the lyrics of Sertraline: ‘You’re tired / Well who isn’t, babe / It’s the price for being awake’. [Adam Clarke]

Listen to: Don’t Fall Asleep, Elijah, August Moon

Sleep Token Even In Arcadia Out 9 May via RCA Records These New Puritans Crooked Wing Out 23 May via Domino

Aesop Rock Black Hole Superette Out 30 May via Epitaph

Rough Trade

Plu ing away in the underground for over two decades, billy woods has emerged as the primary abstract hip-hop act over the last five years. His 2023 collaboration with Kenny Segal, Maps, fully established woods as one of the genre’s most intriguing voices, detailing the world-weariness of constant travel. His overlapping rhymes and observations invite you into a fascinating world that is familiar but with a constant feeling of uneasiness. His latest work, GOLLIWOG, is perhaps the best distillation of this conflict, where woods takes the listener’s hand through a dark and disturbing dystopia, reflecting on race and class through surrealist, horrorinspired soundscapes.

Despite being an unnerving, disorienting listen, where samples of screams or phone calls clash with blank verse lines weaving in and out of consciousness, GOLLIWOG is hugely rewarding. Blending an immense array of collaborators on the mic and behind the desk, it somehow manages to string them together cohesively in impressive fashion. Trusted muse Kenny Segal produces two of the album’s standout tracks, Misery and Born Alone, while EL-P lends his signature style perfectly to Corinthians. Of course, like all of woods’ work, GOLLIWOG is designed to be “enjoyed” as a whole, just make sure you survive. [Adam Turner-Heffer]

Theo Bleak (aka Katie Lynch) is one of Dundee’s foremost musical talents. Her mesmeric vocals are enchanting. Her often melancholic observations on life and shared experiences are starkly honest. But there is also room for light among her most sombre moments, which is what makes her music special.

Bleak’s latest work features ﬁve new songs on the imaginings of one of her friends’ inner life. Peach Sky immediately sets the EP’s warm and fuzzy tone, brimming with Mazzy Star-esque reverbs and guitars, alongside tender reﬂections on the impermanence of emotions. Said Like A Poet is more pop leaning in arrangement, with its hooky mantra (‘Man, I could’ve been someone’) illustrating Bleak’s contrasting feelings on idealising intellect, despite being emotionally driven.

Katie You’re A Liar is scathing in its peripheral perspective on self-reﬂection. Look Out the Window shines with soaring vocal melodies and resonances of hope amongst Bleak’s lyrics of unwavering longing, while closing track You Don’t Want Me only needs 90 seconds to get its message of gut-wrenching sadness across. As Theo Bleak’s music catalogue becomes richer, so too does the world that she invites listeners into. This latest chapter comfortably proves this. [Jamie Wilde]

Model/Actriz

Pirouette

Panther / Dirty Hit, 2 May rrrrr

Listen to: Vespers, Departures

The followup to Model/Actriz’s 2023 debut, Pirouette makes explicit the wide constellation of their influences. Flirting into the melodicism of chart pop, without quite going there, it keeps a firm foot in the dark. Hurtling in with Vespers, like Junior Boys jamming on a bed of hot coals, the first half thunders through with the relentlessness we’d expect – the carnal shrapnel of Cinderella, the menacing Diva. But then comes Headlights, a confession akin to the interludes on The Hotelier’s Goodness, which leads to a surprise: the patient Acid Rain, a guitar ballad, with Thom Yorke-style wails to boot. Cole Haden’s vocal acrobatics throughout the record, between tongue-in-cheek liturgical spoken word and falsetto crooning, are also reminiscent of Owen Pallett, Jamie Stewart and Perfume Genius. They keep the thundering post-punk with a centre – the searing eye of Model/ Actriz’s own storm. Pirouette is an overwhelm – especially in its latter half, where the album’s most atonal tracks Audience and Ring Road sit – but it works. On Pirouette Model/ Actriz continue their tightrope walk over chaos and introspection, desire and vulnerability, with camp aplomb. Another vital record from a trailblazing band. [Ian Macartney]

Past love, the kids at school who never understood, an unreliable narrator; who is The Great Traitor? No Windows share the highs and lows of love for others and oneself, accompanied by lush horns, crashing drum outros, and gentle guitar arrangements that place Morgan Morris and Verity Slangen’s gorgeous vocals at the centre.

The chilling standout track Return gives anger and introspection: ‘Tell me I’m a monster, then I become her’; shards of frosty guitar interspersed with uplifting, nostalgic shufﬂe, the loud-quiet-loud patterns recalling Pixies. Slangen’s voice beautifully traverses dark and light across the record. Brown Bear and Tricky are sweet love songs for rain or shine, whilst Sugarcoat and Old Chain Pier release tension. The closing duet Easter Island sees the pair, as they have noted, “becoming more intertwined as songwriters”, and even features a callback bird sample from 2022’s debut, Fish Boy The record is ambitious and there’s a lot going on; easygoing Americana, soaring post-rock crescendos, alt-folk à la Regina Spektor, slowcore. It’s hard not to miss the fuzzy urgency of their debut. Yet with such talent and so much still ahead, it’s exciting to hear the expansion of the duo’s musical palette.

[Vicky Kavanagh]

billy woods GOLLIWOG

Backwoodz Studioz, 9 May rrrrr

Listen to: Misery, Corinthians, BLK ZMBY

No Windows The Great Traitor EP Fat Possum Records, 9 May rrrrr

Listen to: Return, Tricky, Old Chain Pier

Theo Bleak

Bad Luck Is Two Yellow Flowers EP Polymoon, 15 May rrrrr

Listen to: Peach Sky, Said Like A Poet

Kara-Lis Coverdale

From Where You Came

Smalltown Supersound, 9 May rrrrr

Listen to: Daze, Coming Around, Freedom

Kara-Lis Coverdale is a composer in constant conversation with the world around her. On her extraordinary new record, she creates rich, electroacoustic compositions that capture the ever-shifting currents of existence. ‘Everything you know is real / I’m sorry, life is beautiful’, she chants on opener Eternity; a mournful prelude to a record that otherwise teems with life. Inspired by 19th-century programmatic music – where compositions evoked moods, stories, or sensations – the album’s tone is largely uniform, but its mood is mercurial.

Flickers in the Air of Night seethes and crackles with a primordial energy, whilst on Daze, ﬂurries of processed woodwinds and waves of euphoria-inducing synths soar. Freedom is both the album’s centerpiece and climax: a song that revels in the space between spontaneity and impermanence, it balances Coverdale’s love for improvisation and spiritual jazz, with a classical sense of beauty and grandeur. Elsewhere, there’s a deeply charged technophilia to Offroad Flip’s glacial beats, which steer Coverdale’s sound towards unfamiliar territory. Closing composition The Ceremonial Entrance of Colour guides us gently back home, completing the album’s cycle of transformation. [Patrick Gamble]

Earcandy

Transgressive, 16 May rrrrr

Listen to: Earcandy, Love Train, POP

The indie catch-22 is as follows: you want your favorite artist’s favorite artist to chase the bag to artistic heaven, yet in doing so, they jeopardise the quality of the art that drew them acclaim to begin with. This paradox is only true for morons, get a grip; if Lingua Ignota released a corporate blockbuster Re aeton album tomorrow, but she got a million dollar check, I’d raise a cheers to that abomination. Re: Miso Extra. EP after EP of shimmering, jubilant art pop, spanning years of artistic growth, and now she’s ready for someone’s radio.

Earcandy as a debut is an anti-introduction; part of the joy of this project is tracing her more experimental edges into the gleefully watered down portions of it we’re served. You like that idea she had on that one track? There’s an EP of it in her back catalogue, go fetch. Given that “artistically uncompromised” and “big-budget” usually mix like saltwater and compound fractures, I will accept a world in which Miso Extra isn’t necessarily making the music I’d envisioned from her, but is allowed to make music in a larger capacity nonetheless. Sticking to your artistic guns? In this economy?

[Noah Barker]

Kathryn Joseph WE WERE MADE PREY. Rock Action, 30 May rrrrr

Listen to: BEFORE., ROADKILL., DARK.

It’s been ten years since Kathryn Joseph won The SAY Award and now WE WERE MADE PREY. is here. The evolution in Joseph’s work is restless and searching. This release is no different as it serves us another intuitive and unexpected turn in her style, instrumentation and vocals. The keyboard sounds like a lost Rhodes piano smothered in gentle distortion; it swirls and silences throughout the album and by the end comes out clean, shed of texture. Working alongside Lomond Campbell, the expansion into electronics and textures is a welcome backdrop to Joseph’s almost ﬁckle voice.

The album’s ﬁrst single HARBOUR. shows this new distorted rage, at in-betweens, longings, shortcomings. BEL (II). sits like a memory of Joseph’s past with the piano setting the stage for BEFORE., the track that binds the album in its direct, angry refrains – ‘Before your God…’ – while HOLD. is a hopeful, freeing ballad. A deep range of styles emerge. The animalistic spaces Joseph occupies are tethered to her original mix: the incongruence of tragedy told in gentle, softer tones. WE WERE MADE PREY. forgets this and conjures, eerily, even more delicate ways to doubt, rage and come to terms with being. [Tommy Pearson]

LUCKYME, 2 May rrrrr

Listen to: When I Sleep, Speak For Me, Stay

Voices on Eli Keszler’s latest selftitled record are rarely plainspoken. It begins with a gasp, and gives way to words whispered, uttered and beamed from another place. The composer and percussionist doesn’t so much centre vocals on this album as he does allow them to mill about and live in the gaps of these songs’ walls. That can be a comfort and a jump scare.

The album is unmistakably indebted to the imagination and soundscapes of David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. The sultry Soﬁe Royer-sung numbers open the curtain to the red room of Twin Peaks, while the jittery, noirish avant-jazz elsewhere conjures the unseen extended lineup at Mulholland Drive’s Club Silencio. It’s no surprise that the record’s rhythms move unpredictably, such is Keszler’s skill as a percussion player, particularly on When I Sleep’s ﬁdgety snares. Speak For Me has a trip-hop swa er that provides a welcome dose of sex appeal.

Artists often lean into the darkness of Lynch’s art when drawing from it, missing the abundant humour, emotion and sincerity. Keszler falls into these same traps until the ﬁnal track, built from his father’s last words and smokey Roadhouse guitars, ﬁnding heart in the surreal. [Tony Inglis]

Miso Extra

Eli Keszler Eli Keszler

Music Now

The release schedule in Scotland continues to overwhelm. We celebrate new music from Maranta, Faith Eliott, Rebecca Vasmant, Quinie and more

Words: Tallah Brash

As appears to be the case for most months now, in April we were spoiled for choice. Amongst it all, we missed Proc Fiskal’s latest EP Canticle Hardposte as well as singles from Azamiah (Two Lands), Goodnight Louisa (Jennifer Aniston), Saint Sappho (Floating), Rudi Zygadlo (Finasteride), Barry Can’t Swim (Kimpton), Brìghde Chaimbeul (She Went Astray), Uninvited (SNAKE CHARMER) and Possibly Jamie (Drug Metaphor).

When it comes to new releases for May, it’s already stacked. Unconventionally, starting in the middle of the month you’ll find Maranta’s Day Long Dream via Paradise Palms. The long-awaited debut album from Edinburgh’s Gloria Black and Callum Govan, the pair first caught our attention around 2019 with their exquisite single Radiate. Since then they’ve put out a steady(ish) stream of bangers, released an EP via Lost Map, and have tirelessly worked on their evolution as artists, creating the inclusive, immersive world of club night Microsteria. It’s bittersweet then that this, their debut album, will also be their last. Going out with a bang, Maranta’s final voyage is the kind of dream you won’t want to wake up from, an intoxicating mix of icy synths and warm wubbing electronics, with brimming phantasmagorical sounds and imagery – caterpillars, mycelium, blankets made of moss, coral, twisted tree roots, creepy yet alluring spiders. With pop hooks for days, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. But at least with Day Long Dream, from 16 May it will be yours to enjoy for a lifetime. What a parting gift.

From one magical world to another, at the end of the month Faith Eliott invites you to enter Dryas. Due on 30 May via Lost Map, Dryas further exemplifies Eliott’s ineffable abilities in storytelling and songwriting. Working closely alongside producer Robyn Dawson, every thought, every word, every sound feels meticulously placed, the weight or softness of a song’s words emulated to perfection by the instrumentation; found sounds, fingerpicked guitars, lush strings, brass, shuffling drums, droning and distorted or ominous static electronics all add extra emotional depth. Whether delicately soaring and bright or deep, despairing and mournful, there’s something so utterly captivating about Eliott as they meander through daily observations and poetic ruminations on life and existence.

Earlier in the month, Glasgow DJ-producer Rebecca Vasmant releases Who We Are, Becoming via New Soil (9 May). Featuring an impressive cast of contributors, her latest LP of contemporary jazz combines stumbling drums, slinky piano lines, celestial chimes, brass and sax ﬂourishes galore, with soulful vocals that bob and ﬂoat in and out of songs in unexpected ways that gives the record an overall delightfully trippy and dreamlike qualilty. Wrapped up in personal growth, spirituality, the importance of her friends and family, this one feels particularly personal to Vasmant and deserves to be listened to in its entirety.

On 16 May, Glasgow-based violinist Emma Jane Lloyd releases mue via Scottish contemporary classical label TNW Music, showcasing her impressive bow skills across 13 tracks that truly push the boundaries of her instrument. On 24 May, in a style inspired by Scottish travelling singers, Quinie releases Forefowk, Mind Me via Upset the Rhythm. With research for the record undertaken by Quinie on her travels across Argyll with

her horse Maisie, there’s an incredibly rich and transportative nature to the record that feels more rooted in a 19th century crofting community than in 21st century Glasgow.

Meanwhile, on 2 May in the Scottish Borders, Hawickbased artist and musician Miwa Nagato-Apthorp releases her debut EP via Alchemy Film & Arts. Named after a type of Japanese divider doorway curtain, Noren looks to NagatoApthorp’s dual Japanese and Scottish heritage for inspiration. Exploring histories speciﬁc to the Scottish Borders and beyond, across the record’s beautifully thoughtful instrumentation, Nagato-Apthorp questions land, gender and cultural identity, while her beautiful rendition of the Japanese folk song of resistance Takeda no Komoriuta, brings us a little closer to her Japanese culture. On the same day, enjoy a touch of old Hollywood glamour from Alice Faye, albeit with the occasional potty mouth, as she explores the complexities of relationships, self-worth and empathy on her latest EP, Silly Little Fool Channelling artists like Doris Day, Pe y Lee and Martha Wainwright, across the EP’s ﬁve tracks, Faye’s vulnerability, honesty and voice are the stars of the show.

Turn back the pages to ﬁnd full reviews of records from Jacob Alon, Kathryn Joseph, Theo Bleak and No Windows. Also this month, you’ll ﬁnd more new albums from The Twistettes (Red Door Open, 2 May), Slam (Dark Channel, 9 May), The Mary Column (Very Sparrow, 23 May), Garbage (Let All That We Imagine Be the Light, 30 May), Life Coach (A Love Letter to Your Yearning Heart, 30 May) and Cwfen (Sorrow, 30 May), EPs from waverley. (Flail, 2 May), Magnus Kramers (Pilot Light, 16 May) and Day Sleeper (This House Won’t Fold, 13 May), plus singles from Pleasure Trail (Spartanism, 2 May), Aylee (Good Enough, 7 May), M. John Henry (Heart of Coal, 9 May), Maz & The Phantasms (Factory Hell, 9 May), Thundermoon (You. Me. (ft. Megan Black), 23 May) and loads more. And breathe.

Scan the QR code to follow and like our Music Now: New Scottish Music playlist on Spotify, updated on Fridays

Photo: Flannery O'Kafka

Photo: Sanne Gault for Alchemy Film & Arts

Miwa Nagato-Apthorp

Faith Eliott

North by Northwest (PG) 2 - 8 May

Singin’ in the Rain (U) 3 & 5 May

Mulholland Drive (15) 4 & 9 May

Blue Velvet (18) 8 & 10 May

The Elephant Man (12A) 10 & 13 May

La Haine (15) 11 & 12 May

Brief Encounter (PG) 16 & 18 May

Inglourious Basterds (18) 17 May

Nine Queens (15) 19 May

Beau Travail (15) 21 May

The Big Lebowski (18) 23 & 26 May

The Straight Story (U) 26 & 27 May

The Room + Greg Sestero Q&A (N/C 18+) 30 May

Film of the Month — Good One

Director: India Donaldson

Starring: Lily Collias, James Le Gros, Danny McCarthy, Sumaya Bouhbal, Diana Irvine, Sam Lanier, Peter McNally, Eric Yates

RRRR R

Released 16 May by CONIC

Certiﬁcate 15 theskinny.co.uk/ﬁlm

How do children know when they’ve outgrown their parents? In Good One, writer and debut director India Donaldson shows this realisation compounded by heteronormative gender roles. The ﬁlm centres around Sam (Lily Collias), a young queer woman who agrees to go on a weekend camping trip with her father, Chris (James Le Gros), and his newly divorced friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy). Matt’s son Dylan (Julian Grady) is scheduled to go along as a youthful companion, but – still reeling from his parents’ separation – he refuses, leaving Sam the odd one out among the older bros. In the woods, she ﬁnds herself less a third wheel to the guys’ getaway and more of a crutch to their dysfunction, having to sort out directions, ba age, tent issues, encroachment of other campers on their route, and her own health almost single-handedly. Boys will be boys, after all.

The title of Good One takes on two meanings as the ﬁlm progresses. On the one hand, Sam becomes the ‘good one’, the person responsible for the mundane administration that ensures the camping trip goes as planned; it’s not a stretch to imagine this is a role she has been cast in her whole young life. On the other hand, it’s a constant refrain to half-acknowledged anecdotes and jokes made by the two middle-aged men – ‘good one’ being a way to close an awkward or off-colour exchange without escalation or encouragement.

Collias astutely conveys Sam’s awkward, bitter awareness of being treated as both a child to be coddled and a burgeoning

sexual being; making matters worse, she fully comprehends the immaturity of the adults in her life from the ﬁlm’s opening to its conclusion (the implication being, as a queer woman, she has had to grow up much faster than those with greater privilege in the world). Sam’s journey is not that her eyes are opened to this immaturity and the failings of the adults in charge, it is that she cannot muster the power and camaraderie to change it. Collias’s eyes are enough to capture a myriad emotions, leaving Donaldson’s elegantly simple, realistic script to shine.

The semi-wilderness setting, ﬁlling the less experienced with foolhardy bravado and a desire to (pretend to) return to the basics, highlights the absurdity of outdated nature versus nurture theories. It is ridiculous to su est people grow from experience, Donaldson seems to say, if they are never aware that they can change. Nature and nurture cancel each other out when unchallenged.

Good One is seeped in the cinematic language of American indies of the 2010s, and the quasi-mumblecore package may not work for everyone. Tonally, the lack of variety and one big moment of confrontation can be puzzling and underwhelming. This throwback approach, however, does not occlude the bitter modernity and relevance of its themes. At times a gentle character study and exercise in human foibles, at others a scathing indictment of petty cruelties and gender violence, Good One burrows into the skin like a tick picked up on the trail, deepening almost imperceptibly over time. [Carmen Paddock]

Scotland on Screen: Corin Sworn

As part of their residency at Alchemy Film and Arts, artists Luke Fowler and Corin Sworn have made On Weaving, a ﬁlm considering the legacies of textile artists Bernat and Margaret Klein through the lens of their modernist home. Sworn tells us more

Words: Eilidh Akilade

Filmography (selected)

On Weaving (2025, with Luke Fowler), The Zombie Diaries (2017), The Coat (2015, with Tony Romano), The Foxes (2013), HDHB (2011, with Charlie Prodger), Lens Prism (2010), After School Special (2009), Faktura (2008)

“Textiles move in and around things – or, even in making them, you have to move in and around things,” says Glasgow-based artist and ﬁlmmaker Corin Sworn. Such spatial dexterity is present within On Weaving, a directorial collaboration between Sworn and Luke Fowler, who are both currently artists in residence at Alchemy Film and Arts. Interweaving past and present, the ﬁlm, which has its world premiere at the 15th edition of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, responds to the legacies of the late textile artists Bernat and Margaret Klein via High Sunderland, their modernist home in the Scottish Borders. A richly intimate study of labour, gender and migration, On Weaving brings a distinctly grounded yet dreamlike lens to Scottish design.

History is primarily told through prominent ﬁgures, and the Kleins’ lives are fairly well-documented, particularly Bernat’s. “But the house has outlasted those people’s lives, and yet it’s hosted their lives, and now it’s hosting new lives,” explains Sworn. As such, she and Fowler were drawn to the Kleins’ home as a focal point from which to disentangle multiple intersecting narratives.

High Sunderland, designed by architect Peter Womersley and completed in 1958, lends itself well to 35mm: clear and coloured glass meets an array of woods, richly accompanied by Klein textiles. Interviews with the current owners, Juliet Kinchin and Paul Stirton – both architecture and design historians – are threaded throughout On Weaving. Certainly, it’s a ﬁlm bound up with collaborative pairs: Fowler and Sworn; Kinchin and Stirton; Klein and Klein. “We were really lucky because they [Kinchin and Stirton] were so generous and open with us,” says Sworn. Through interviews for On Weaving, Corin and Fowler found that Kinchin and Stirton instinctively connected multiple spaces – and the narratives which run throughout them – together: the house, the landscape, the factories.

The house, Sworn notes, is “porous”. Such permeability threads its way throughout the ﬁlm in terms of its soundtrack: factory machines – heavy, thudding – are heard over wide shots of the house’s smooth surfaces; softly spoken conversations

play over close-ups of the nearby river and the surrounding trees. “We couldn’t deny that they are sonically, radically different and even used differently, I think, in terms of what they ask bodies to do inside them, or what they ask materials to do inside them,” says Sworn of the difference between the Kleins’ home and the factory. But, simultaneously, the ﬁlm rejects spatial dichotomies. The house has its own mechanics – sonically, visually – and the factory has its own domestic concerns. “In moving between the house and the factory, it could too easily look like there are these separate worlds, like there’s the home life and then the work life,” Sworn continues. “We wanted to break that down, because that dichotomy has never quite been true, especially around discussions of reproductive or gendered labour.”

The fraught politics of the textile industry weave themselves throughout the ﬁlm. While women were refused jobs in architecture, they were able to work in textiles. Although this largely women-led work was fairly uncelebrated, it undoubtedly ﬂourished in tandem with architecture. “They were still engaging in the same innovative questioning of what architecture and what design could do for our way of living,” says Sworn. Soft furnishings – curtains, cushions, blankets, rugs – constitute a necessary architecture. “All of these hard surfaces, in the end, are not particularly inhabitable.”

Conceived before the pandemic, the gestation of On Weaving took its time. “During COVID, everyone’s professional lives got turned upside down, which put a lot more space into them,” says Sworn. While raising questions surrounding home working, the pandemic also gave the duo the time to pull together seemingly disparate threads across their respective practices and research interests. Filmed during visits to the house over a year and a half, the 26-minute work rejects a linear chronology. Seasons jump and jut; in this disorientation, Sworn and Fowler delight in an atemporality, which opens up new modes through which to consider history and its spaces. “We’re inhabiting many times at once,” says Sworn.

Certainly, there’s a multiplicity of form, narrative and meaning running through On Weaving. “The title refers to the house as a loom and the way that it is able to braid a set of different discussions,” notes Sworn. “And so, in a way, the film uses the house as a form of weaving.” Sworn and Fowler’s film shares its title with Anni Albers’ 1965 textiles-based publication, the spine of which features in a momentary close-up. In this, a subtle intertextuality binds On Weaving, and as such, the film is undoubtedly a textile of its own, threading together not too disparate stories and spaces. Indeed, for Sworn, formal similarities bind textiles and cinema. “[Film is] a long celluloid thread that then goes through its own machine and is then projected,” she notes. Consider a film as a textile, a house as a loom; in On Weaving, Sworn and Fowler ask us to consider and reconsider the forms and histories we think we know.

On Weaving has its world premiere at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival on 3 May

Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival takes place in Hawick, 1-4 May. More info at alchemyﬁlmandarts.org.uk

On Weaving

The Surfer

Director: Lorcan Finnegan

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Finn Little, Nic Cassim rrrrr

Sun kissed and cursed, Nicolas Cage’s reality is steadily rended in this Lynchian-cum-Baywatch chamber piece.

The ever-protean Cage is a dad playing hooky with his distant teenage son: catching a wave while trying to secure the purchase of a speciﬁc beachfront property – his old childhood home – in an effort to stitch his family back together (his wife, now remarrying and expecting, wants to ﬁnalise a divorce) and to supplant childhood trauma (his own father met his demise on this very celadon shore). But, accidentally stumbling into a territorial war (“Don’t live here? Don’t surf here!”) with a local frat-come-terrorist group, braying with MAGA-esque masculinity, Cage’s obstacles only distend in the taunting environs of Luna Bay

Magic Farm

Director: Amalia Ulman

Starring: Chloë Sevigny, Alex Wolff, Joe Apollonio, Camila del Campo, Simon Rex, Amalia Ulman rrrrr

Amalia Ulman’s Magic Farm follows a group of NYC hipster media brats – Jeff (Alex Wolff), Justin (Joe Apollonio), Elena (Ulman herself) – and the face of their brand, Edna (It girl superstar Sevigny), as they travel to rural Argentina to make a hardhitting documentary. It turns out, however, that they’re more interested in chasing clout than the reality of the country.

After getting a tip-off about a musician and a bunny-ears-wearing trend in Argentina that proves to be a dead end, they don’t pivot, say, to a doc about the issues around them – protests about the abortion ban instigated by the president of Argentina or the issue of toxic a ro-chemicals used on village

(Julian McMahon is a scene-stealing addition, sonning intruders with just a steely gaze). Cage’s bad luck omnibus sees him bloody, mu ed and extorted as The Surfer torques its torture from mild agita to agonising gaslighting.

Stylish with an undercurrent of malice, the ﬁlm’s heightened B-movie ﬂourishes (melodramatic closeups and campy musical cues) are wickedly disconcerting, washing over the audience a harmonious paranoia. Heat is a character in itself, but does its febrile grip warp and distort or simply illuminate as an impartial constant? Were the conditions of our hero’s perceived reality ever so certain to begin with as he dances in dislocation and peripheral grief?

The Surfer is a primal, elusive, maddening chase; a breakdown movie that plumbs selfhood, family, vagrancy and fate. In the punishing sun, a man comes undone. [Lucy Fitzgerald]

Released 9 May by Vertigo; certiﬁcate 15

crops – but decide to just… make something up and stage it.

Watching their farcical attempts is a real joy. Absurd zingers abound, and much comedy comes from the smartly observed characters they come across, like Popa, the rural woman who never has any water, only bottles of Coca-Cola, and randomly bursts into a monologue about her brief romance with Gérard Depardieu.

A scene where the ﬁlmmakers hold a dance contest in an old community hall feels like something from a Miloš Forman ﬁlm – deadpan and hilarious. “This feels wrong,” Sevigny says, as they watch a young girl in a bikini with HONEY tattooed on her chest dance. The Argentinian characters are comic, but Ulman treats them with a feeling of tender pride. The dumb Americans abroad trope may be well-worn, but here, it feels fresh. [Katie Driscoll]

Released 16 May by MUBI; certiﬁcate 15

Riefenstahl

Director: Andres Veiel rrrrr

Leni Riefenstahl remains perhaps the most extreme example of the difficulties of sublime art made by awful people. On the one hand, you have one of cinema’s all time formal geniuses, a filmmaker of such dazzling invention that it would take decades for her contemporaries to catch up. And on the other impossibly big hand, you’ve got the fact that her films were made for, and endorsed, the Nazis and their ideology.

Collaging together decades of footage from Riefenstahl’s archives and TV interviews, this Andres Veiel documentary eschews the tired portrait-of-an-artist format. Instead, the ﬁlm is more interested in Riefenstahl’s life post-ﬁlmmaking and her lifelong obsession with clearing her name.

Those familiar with Riefenstahl will see her pull out all her usual excuses: that she’s an artist, not a

Motel Destino

Director: Karim Aïnouz

Starring: Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, Fábio Assunção, Fabíola Líper rrrrr

The establishment that gives Karim Aïnouz’s new ﬁlm its title is a seedy beachside resort in Ceará, on Brazil’s northeastern coast. For horny holidaymakers, it’s a convenient spot with rooms that can be rented by the hour, but for petty criminal Heraldo (Xavier), it’s a refuge. He’s hiding out there after a botched heist and earning his keep as a handyman, all under the watchful eye of owner Dayana (Rocha), who ﬁnds this young buck a much more attractive proposition than her boorish husband Elias (Assunção). Anyone who has seen The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity will soon guess where this is all heading. Motel Destino is at its best when plu ing us into the world of its characters’ pulsating desire. The

politician; she didn’t know about the atrocities that were ongoing; and even if she had known, what was she to do? Veiel shows her making these points countless times, but it has a remarkable cumulative effect. Her combination of deluded self-pity and control freak’s need to manage her own narrative becomes increasingly clear; this is as much a portrait of the morals of artists as a study on the mental tricks people play to tell themselves they’re doing the right thing.

By Riefenstahl’s conclusion, you’re left with a potent ﬁlm that has much in common with Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s recent Cloud or indeed Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest in its study of the power that compartmentalisation and self-manipulation have over the human psyche. [Joe Creely]

16mm cinematography from the great cinematographer Hélène Louvart creates a feverish atmosphere, both in the neon-lit interiors and the sun-bleached exteriors, while the constant moans of ecstasy on the soundtrack hilariously add to the mood. When it’s in this groove, Motel Destino is an intoxicating and lusty blast, but it’s a shame the plot keeps getting in the way. Aïnouz’s screenplay lacks the clockwork narrative mechanics and fatalism of the great noirs, and the increasingly vague and arbitrary plotting leaves it feeling frustratingly anticlimactic.

This is a ﬁlm with sex on its mind and only half an interest in anything else. In perhaps the most representative scene, Heraldo and Elias stand in the motel’s backyard and watch as a pair of donkeys rut vigorously. “If only life was that simple,” Elias remarks. [Philip Concannon]

Released 9 May by Curzon; certiﬁcate 18

Magic Farm

The Surfer Motel Destino

Riefenstahl

Released 9 May by Dogwoof; certiﬁcate 15

PROJECT CANELÉ, EDINBURGH

Cake fans rejoice – Project Canelé’s home in Edinburgh’s New Town is turning out some excellent French baking

IWed-Sun 9am-3pm

@projectcanele on Instagram

f you’ve been out and about in Edinburgh’s cafes in the last wee while, you’ll have seen them. Maybe they’re front and centre on the counter, or maybe they’ve been on a little plate sat next to someone’s coffee. They tend to move in packs, geometrically arranged and always catching the light. This is the canelé; a squat, ridged little cake with a varnished mahogany exterior and a powerful aura.

Can a small, brown cake have an aura? They do seem to have a way of drawing you in; it must be the fact that they usually turn up in perfect uniform rows, all the same but each one unique in its cra ly, shiny way. They look hefty, like they have their own very faint gravitational ﬁeld. They look well-crafted, like a set of caramelised Lewis Chessmen. They look, and we mean this as a compliment, like they would be really fun to throw.

Those Edinburgh canelés are the project of the aptly-named Project Canelé, but the cake itself comes from the French tradition of finding ever-more-interesting ways to combine fat, flour, sugar and e s together. Big bags of flour and sugar are among the main ornamentations at PC’s new cafe at the foot of Dundas Street. It’s a very minimal look and a very restrained colour palette, save for the glinting racks of copper canelé tins which lurk behind the till. There was a giant, sculpted wooden canelé on our first visit, but not on our second, and the phrase ‘did we imagine a giant wooden canelé?’ is the kind of question that just raises more questions so let’s assume it’s through the back for a fresh coat of varnish.

The exterior of the canelé (£3.25) is that dark, crunchy crust we mentioned earlier, but inside is a different story. It’s a soft, custard-like centre with a light chewiness and a very faint gooeyness. Not too sweet, but with plenty of vanilla to balance out the caramelised outer; soft without veering into ﬂoppy. It’s all very, very well-balanced. The cra ly crust, the soft lumpen inner, the richness, the lightness; these canelés are genuinely delicious. It’s no wonder they’re turning up everywhere.

For the canelé agnostics who’ve somehow ended up in a cafe with that name above the door, there are other choices. If you want to keep it sweet, try the chouqettes (£3.25) – a small pile of soft, airy choux pastry nu ets flecked with chunks of sugar, these lads will not put up a fight. If you’re feeling decadent, get a slice of flan patisier (£4.95), the canelé’s rambunctious older cousin who kicks in the door and starts wobbling around all over the place. It’s a sweet, squishy, smooth e custard tart, and the slices are frankly enormous. Lovely shine on the lad as well; can’t quite see your reflection in the lightly burnished top, but you’ll get closer than you’d expect.

The savoury options are solid as well. A ham and mustard sandwich

Words: Peter Simpson

(£8) is very nicely balanced – the focaccia-like bread is great, there are many, many pickles to pick your way through, and it avoids the surprisingly-easy-to-fall-into sarnie trap of ‘putting the wrong amount of stuff in the sandwich’. There is a good number of complementary ingredients in here, but they all stay inside the ride at all times.

The coffee is great – a ﬂat white (£3.60) made with beans from Artisan Roast is smooth and solid, as is its delightful ceramic cup. What’s that on the underside of the cup? Oh you know that it’s a little drawing of a canelé. Because at the end of the day, this place is all about the canelé: a scrappy, sweet, chewy, gooey handheld treat that combines loads of the elements that make cake great into one tennis ball-sized block. Trust us, you haven’t seen the last of these little guys.

150 Dundas St, Edinburgh, EH3 5DQ

Image: courtesy of Project Canelé

Design in Bloom

This month we meet Old School Fabrications to explore their special commission ‘the hug’ which travels to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, an international showcase of horticultural design excellence

Old School Fabrications is a specialist design and build workshop based in rural Midlothian. It was founded by Neville Rae and Scott Laverie who trained in Environmental and Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art and Edinburgh College of Art respectively. The team they have assembled is a unique blend of disciplines, where artists collaborate with architects, product designers work alongside furniture makers, and interior, exhibition, and textile designers contribute their distinct perspectives. Together, they tackle projects that blur traditional disciplinary boundaries and redeﬁne creative collaboration.

This year Old School Fabrications (OSF) celebrates 15 years of creativity, craftsmanship, and innovation with an exciting new commission that will be showcased to over 140,000 visitors this May at the prestigious RHS Chelsea Flower Show. It’s a timber structure that forms part of a show garden for Down’s Syndrome Scotland created by Duncan Hall and Nick Burton of Burton Hall Garden Design. The duo drew their inspiration for the garden from Hall's seven-year-old nephew, Liam, who has Down’s syndrome and the project is supported by Down’s Syndrome Scotland.

Their brief to OSF was to design a building that represented an embrace. “Empathy, sensitivity and compassion are all qualities that people with Down’s syndrome have in abundance, and this building perfectly encapsulates that,” says Rae. “Our design has now become affectionately known as 'the hug'.”

Throughout the design process, the OSF team felt it was important to make the structure feel playful, welcoming and approachable, in a way that

evokes the feeling of a child’s den. The design features eight generously sized seats, each positioned between the vertical spines of the structure to make the visitor feel as though they are being comfortably held, in a similar way to a wingback chair. The ergonomic design of the seating was carefully considered to offer a relaxed and gently reclined position.

When seen from above, the hug is based on a decagon with the ten cladded faces of the structure all feeding into a robust central component, comprised of ten interlocking ‘tetris blocks’ explains Laverie. “This core shape enabled us to avoid sharp and angular forms, instead bringing a softness and welcoming feel to the spherical structure. The top opening drew inspiration from a traditional yurt, allowing for a large circular skylight to illuminate the interior of the shelter and provide views of the moving clouds and trees above.”

Words: Stacey Hunter

angles to be cut into them. In this instance, having a team of both designers and makers allowed for design issues to be quickly ironed out and alterations made in an ad-hoc way with a strong feedback loop between studio and workshop.

Consisting of around 2,500 plants, the garden has a number of specimen trees, including a large Scots Pine. It also has a number of structural features including water pools, bespoke benches, and artisan ceramic tiles designed by Scottishbased makers and creatives including Angie Lewin, Frances Priest Studio, and Laurence McIntosh. For the ﬁnal shelter OSF chose a native larch for outdoor use that would silver and age naturally over time. Each piece of carefully selected timber was dressed down, before a range of sawing and milling techniques were used to create the component parts for the structure. The build involved an array of both contemporary and traditional processes, from cutting edge CNC milling and table sawing, to hand chiselling and joinery.

“Reusing waste material, we created a full-sized prototype segment of the structure in the earlier stages of the design process to test ergonomics and the robustness of the structure,” says Rae. The complexities of making a spherical structure from straight pieces of wood meant that each piece of cladding on the ten sides of the structure required different

“It’s a close and communicative way of working that is vital for the successful fabrication of the intricate design elements of a structure like the hug,” explains Laverie. Rae describes how a special visit from Down’s Syndrome Scotland informed the process of the project: “We had the pleasure of welcoming a fantastic group of teenagers from Down’s Syndrome Scotland to our workshop for an inspiring afternoon. They got a tour and a behind-the-scenes look at the progress of ‘the hug’, and learned about its role in Burton Hall’s garden at RHS Chelsea. The group joined us for a specially designed workshop, where they sanded and oiled wood samples using various water-based stains – exploring how simple techniques can dramatically transform natural materials.

“Using some of the leftover timber from the construction of ‘the hug’, they also learned how to craft coffee coasters, so each member had a memorable and useful piece of the garden building to take home.”

The hug will sit within a green, calm area of the garden at RHS Chelsea, which accentuates the sensitive expression of the building. This intention reﬂects the future relocation site of the garden at Watch US Grow in Palaceri Country Park, North Lanarkshire where it will provide a welcome opportunity for people to sit within its calm surroundings. Several members of Down’s Syndrome Scotland will also be involved in the construction of the garden when it returns to Scotland.

The project has been made possible thanks to the generous sponsorship of Project Giving Back, a grant-making charity that supports gardens for good causes at RHS Chelsea before relocating them to sites across the UK.

@oldschoolfabrications @localheroesdesign

Photo: WIll Scott

Old School Fabrications Team

Down’s Syndrome Scotland at the workshop

CIARA PHILLIPS, UNDOING IT

Canadian-Irish artist Ciara Phillips impresses with her dynamic large-scale prints that transform Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art

The term ‘immersive’ has grown a little tired with overuse. Too often, it is used as a synonym for the pairing of visual works with audio works. Although such approaches certainly have immersive potential, they’re not immersive by default. Ciara Phillips’ Undoing It at GoMA, however, generously presents visuals alone as a potential immersive experience.

With a Turner Prize nomination and the 2020 Queen Sonja Print Award under her belt, Phillips’ Undoing It brings excitement, particularly given the Canadian-Irish artist previously lived and worked in Glasgow for almost two decades. In woodcuts, etchings, and screenprints, Phillips scrutinises and celebrates the creative process with an undeniable dynamism.

Such immersive brilliance is largely owing to the body-printed monoprint across each and every wall of the show. The ﬁrst room is dark and heavy, while the second, corridor-like room lifts in tone as we pass through it. In the third room, the walls brighten and the monoprint’s dynamism is fully realised in offwhite. Occasionally, a ﬁngerprint or footprint appears within the curves, dots, and lines. This physicality is palpable, Phillips’ body carrying the audience through the three rooms. The body – Phillips’ body, any body – is inseparable from the art, its making, or its response.

Aside from a couple of conservatively sized works, Phillips’ prints rightfully enjoy a large-scale canvas.

‘Phillips’ prints reject a certain stagnancy and take pleasure in the push and pull of creation’

A single-coloured woodcut – purple, magenta, green, orange – is screen printed across each paper and canvas expanse; we’re invited to lose ourselves between the curves of each wood marking.

Undeniably, some instances hold a clichéd air – a crescent moon, a noted “*Silence*” in the work of the same name. Despite this, the show largely lacks pretence, welcoming any and all audiences to its warm embrace.

In Gradient and ANNO 2020, Phillips’ sketches and notes gain centre stage. In this, the show goes beyond the sole act of thinkingthrough-making, promised by the exhibition copy; rather, Phillips offers thinking-as-making, coupling mental and physical labour as equals. A repetition rings, quietly, throughout: the same plait, note, or strip of paper angled just-so, return and re-return within the show. The obsessive cycles of the creative process come

into full force. Alongside this, instances of Phillips’ previous work –such as the fringed paper print of It Starts Here and Goes All the Way (2018) featuring in ‘Any time there is a surface [...]’ – re-appear intermittently. With Phillips, making is a continuous act, ever unmaking and remaking itself.

The two largest woodcut works within the show – ‘Any time there is a surface [...]’ and I tell my students –contain a handful of images abstracted, whether through an intimately close shot, the technique of collage, or, seemingly, an X-ray lens. The works are in dialogue with each other not merely in their form but also, in ideology. An image upon the former depicts a woman wearing a t-shirt reading ‘APATHY KILLS’; an image upon the latter depicts a hand holding an image with a sign reading ‘EMPATHY IS A POLITICAL ISSUE.’ Indeed, a certain pathos permeates

the show; sharp, papered edges are met with broad, rushed strokes and must-said utterances. Undoing It asks for – and demands – an emotional response.

In their communion with one another, Phillips’ prints reject a certain stagnancy and take pleasure in the push and pull of creation. This intimacy is critical in the show’s success. Likewise, the audience’s movement is encouraged. From within a silver rectangle in I tell my students, Phillips’ face emerges, in/ visible from certain standing points. Her prints refuse a singularity; rather, they move, shape, and appear as we do. To participate in this is truly an immersive act. [Eilidh Akilade]

Undoing It, Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Glasgow until 26 Oct, open daily glasgowlife.org.uk

Image: Courtesy GoMA.

Ciara Phillips

Love

Languages

By James Albon rrrrr

Two women’s nascent romantic feelings for one another elude description in James Albon’s Love Languages, a graphic novel set in Paris and painted in his signature mix of watercolour and gouache.

High-powered Londoner Sarah’s chance meeting with Ping, an au pair from Hong Kong, shakes her from the grind of her impenetrable corporate job. The pair meet up in parks and cafés under the guise of language learning: a chance to practise their French, English and Cantonese. Gradually, though, Sarah realises that, even as she improves, none of the languages feel sufﬁcient for describing her unexpected bond with Ping.

Through sprawling double-page spreads that seem to owe as much to the old masters as they do classic New Yorker covers, we follow Sarah as she discovers sides of Paris and herself for the first time. As the dual confines of the office and her mother tongue fall away, so too do her preconceptions about herself.

But squaring these newfound realisations with the life she has spent years building proves another challenge entirely.

With 2021’s The Delicacy, about two brothers in self-destructive pursuit of culinary renown, Albon showed his knack for contrasting bustling scenes with interpersonal drama. But where his previous work hinged on deeply buried secrets, Love Languages pares back the melodrama in search of something more grounded. Albon’s quietly innovative graphic novel manages to turn a trilingual queer romance into a universal story of self-discovery.

[Louis Cammell]

Top Shelf Comix, 6 May

By Michael Pedersen rrrrr

Best known as a poet – the current Edinburgh Makar, no less – Michael Pedersen has brought out his highly anticipated debut novel, and it is a thing of magic and enchantment, with a deep humanity. Set mostly on the remote island of Muckle Flu a, it centres on the lives of three individuals. The Father is the lighthouse keeper who is near paralysed with grief since the death of The Mother, the repetition of work and the isolation allowing him to exist in crisis. His son Ouse is both a comfort and an agonising reminder of their shared loss. A gentle artistic soul, Ouse proves to be fragile yet ﬁerce, and not the naif people believe him to be. The charismatic Firth is the cuckoo in the nest. A troubled and tormented person, he comes to the island with one thing on his mind, but soon imagines an arresting alternative future. Through their unfolding relationships, with each other and with the natural and supernatural, mortality and morality are explored.

The writer’s love of language is joyful – the descriptions of ﬂora and fauna bring the island to life, becoming a character in its own right. Sitting in the long and lauded literary tradition of the Scottish Gothic, Muckle Flu a is, at its heart, a treatise on grief, but it’s also a celebration of life and what it means to be human; often ﬂawed but with the potential to be fantastic.

[Alistair Braidwood]

By Dalia Al-Dujaili rrrrr

Babylon, Albion is an essayistic meditation on what it means to be native to a land. Dalia Al-Dujaili examines her personal relationship to the physical landscapes of Iraq, the country of her parents, and Britain, where she was born and raised. She deftly traverses between memoir, history, religion and mythology to construct a work that feels at once both deeply personal and also captures the existential questions that generations of immigrant children grapple with: where is my home? Can I lay claim to an adoptive country?

Babylon, Albion is undergirded by rigorous research, personal wisdom and descriptive prose, although it does at times feel like a premature work. Al-Dujaili invokes the seasons of her personal life, from childhood into early adulthood, but there is a sense that this might have been a deeper work with the twin gifts of experience and retrospect. Yet her writing is lyrical, and she brings a variety of landscapes to life. The most poignant descriptions are the intimate moments between Al-Dujaili and her parents. Al-Dujaili describes her family’s garden as a ‘little Eden here in Surrey’s suburbia’ where her mother has miraculously nurtured an Iraqi ﬁg tree into existence from a small cutting. She does this because it ‘reminds me of home’ in Iraq. There are, she tells us, many profound ways in which home is preserved and reconstructed in foreign lands. [Laila Ghaffar]

Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange

By Katie Goh rrrrr

Katie Goh’s debut memoir examines the decades and centuries of migration that have blown both the orange and their family across the globe, exploring the effects of capitalism on an everyday table item, forced to grow plump and colourful in metric tonnes to meet global demands.

Goh traces the lineage of the orange – a once great signiﬁer of wealth, reduced to a supermarket staple – alongside their own family tree, following their ChineseMalaysian and Irish roots and the ways it parallels their relationship with the orange. Foreign Fruit unpacks themes of colonialism and AAPI violence, and how their experience growing up queer and ethnically diverse in the north of Ireland alienated them from their peers. Goh uses the repercussions of these seismic events across the globe to examine their own feelings of otherness and confusion, differences exacerbated by language, time and culture within a single family.

This hybrid memoir blends familial, personal and national histories, pulling apart segments of the past and small bursts of information; facts about the diaspora of the orange are sprinkled in, such as the ways in which Victorian women were expected to retire to private rooms when consuming oranges due to their perceived impropriety. Goh’s writing is careful and sharp. Like themselves, they argue, oranges are the byproduct of generations of adjustment and displacement. Foreign Fruit is a bold work which dissects topical issues from a thoughtful and personal space. [Josephine Jay]

22 May

Saqi Books, 8 May

Canongate, 8 May

Babylon, Albion

Muckle Flu a

Stand-up and writer Kathleen Hughes talks to us about The Humour Mill, a fantastic initiative for comedians and comedy writers in Glasgow, Edinburgh and online

Words: Polly Glynn

Tell me about The Humour Mill.

The Humour Mill is a community network for comedy creatives –that’s comedians, writers, ﬁlmmakers, clowns, improvisers, drag acts, from complete beginners to seasoned pros – anyone at all who’s making anything funny is welcome to join in. We started off in Glasgow, but we now also run sessions in Edinburgh and occasionally online, too.

How did it come about?

When I was new to comedy, I got a lot of help and advice from more experienced comics. As I became more experienced myself, I wanted to create a space where we normalised and encouraged a collaborative spirit for making comedy. I also wanted to acknowledge all the work that goes into comedy and to dispel that feeling creative people sometimes get – that everyone else is effortlessly smashing it while you’re at home alone, staring at a blank page.

We now have a team of volunteers from the Scottish comedy circuit who help to run events in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and we run workshops where pros can share their expertise.

What was the ﬁrst Humour Mill event like?

We ran our very ﬁrst Material Mill – something between a writing session and a social – in February 2023. We book a big table in a pub and everyone gets a turn to share whatever they’re working on and get feedback from the group. It went exactly as expected – a bit weird and awkward at ﬁrst, and then a lot of fun. It was clear right away how keen comics were for something like The Humour Mill. We still run these now, monthly in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

What would be your dream Humour Mill event and why?

The su estion from our Glasgow events coordinator, comedian and all-round belter, Rory M. Spence, is a Q&A with Billy Connolly. I don’t think any of us could top that, unless there was also a free bar and scran.

What’s been your best bit of advice from running The Humour Mill?

One thing that keeps coming up is the fact that an imperfect thing – a joke, a sketch, a script – being put on the page or out in the world is better than the perfect version staying in your head. We had a writing Q&A with the exceptional Elaine Malcolmson earlier this year. I hear her say “shit is fertiliser” in my head fairly often when I’m writing.

What should we look out for on the Scottish comedy scene?

If you’re a comedy fan looking for something new and different, I’d really recommend trying out some new material or more experimental nights. The energy is buzzy and there’s a feeling of stuff being created live in the room that you might not get at big weekend shows. Open Comedy in Leith, Hot Comedy in Edinburgh, and Open Sauce and Gnash in Glasgow are all fun nights.

Who’s the funniest comedian you’ve seen and why?

This is almost impossible to answer so I’ll give one of the funniest moments I’ve seen recently: Jack Traynor being picked up and powered through a table by Glaswegian wrestler Logan Smith during his Glasgow Comedy Festival quiz with Paddy Linton. It was properly mad laugh-out-loud nonsense. That’s the kind of (safely choreographed) experimental stuff we like to see!

How do we make the Scottish comedy scene better?

We do well in Scotland helping each other out and sharing tips and advice – there’s a sense of collaboration and comics are always keen to help out newer acts. We need to make sure there are always friendly and inviting spaces to try new stuff (and fall on your arse without judgement).

And there’s a tendency to think that someone has ‘made it’ when they get big down south, but Scottish comedy is its own vibrant and brilliant scene full of variety and really exciting acts. We need to recognise our own success and shout about it, to let the public and the wider industry know, then ideally, the wider industry will listen.

What’s next for The Humour Mill?

Now that we have a bi er team we’re keen to host more regular events and drop-ins in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We’re currently making plans for a scratch night so that performers can test out new material in front of an audience and get live feedback –keep an eye out for that!

Get in touch with/follow The Humour Mill on Instagram at @humourmill

Material Mill writing sessions take place monthly (second Monday of the month in Edinburgh, third Monday of the month in Glasgow, venues vary) with other workshops announced on The Humour Mill’s socials

Follow Kathleen Hughes on Instagram at @kathleenwho_

Listings

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

Glasgow Music

Mon 28 Apr

CHUCK RAGAN (NATE

BERGMAN)

KING TUT'S Folk pop.

Tue 29 Apr

TOOTS AND THE MAYTALS (LEBA HIBBERT) THE GARAGE Reggae from Jamaica.

CHASE & STATUS THE OVO HYDRO Electronica from the UK.

GREENTEA PENG QUEEN MARGARET UNION Neo-soul from London. BENEFITS (HANG LINTON) THE RUM SHACK Punk from the UK.

JACKSON DEAN SWG3 Singer-songwriter from Nashville.

Wed 30 Apr

CHASE ATLANTIC THE OVO HYDRO R'n'B from Australia.

SILVERTONE (DAN PARKS + MEEP + TIDAL END) KING TUT'S Alternative. OCEXNS + ZETTAFLARE + ANDREW BORTHWICK THE HUG AND PINT Eclectic lineup.

PISTOL DAISIES + THE PAINTING + BRENDA

ST LUKE'S Eclectic lineup. PLANT SCIENCE (STANLEY WELCH + COME OUTSIDE) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Alt rock from Glasgow.

KATIE TUPPER SWG3 Singer-songwriter from Canada.

Thu 1 May

DVNE CATHOUSE Metal from Edinburgh. LAURIE WRIGHT THE GARAGE Singer-songwriter from the UK.

CHARLIE CUNNINGHAM ORAN MOR Indie from the UK.

BROWN HORSE THE HUG AND PINT Country rock from Norwich.

SHACK

ST LUKE'S Alt rock from Liverpool.

TEEN WARFARE PRESENTS: GO DOWN FIGHTING + REEFER MADNESS + USELESS COWBOYS + PROOF OF FAILURE + PEROXIDE NICE 'N' SLEAZY DIY punk from Glasgow.

RYAN DAVIS & THE ROADHOUSE BAND (CURTIS MILES) THE GLAD CAFE Americana-noir. SEBASTIAN SCHUB STEREO Singer & songwriter

Fri 2 May

ALABASTER DEPLUME MONO Jazz from Manchester.

SCOWL CATHOUSE Hard rock from California.

OLLY MURS (BLUE) THE OVO HYDRO Pop from the UK.

VRAELL KING TUT'S Indie from London. AMBER RUN ST LUKE'S Rock from the UK.

JOHNNY DRILLE SWG3 Singer-songwriter from Nigeria.

MANTEL (DOT PIXIS + PORTLAND)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie rock from Glasgow.

THE RAGMAN (LAWRIE MORAN + BUDDY ELLE) BEECH AVENUE SOCIAL CLUB Country lineup.

ULTRAMARINE (THE SHELL + GEORGINA PENSTKART) THE GLAD CAFE Electronica.

RAINY MILLER (BLOODY SHIELD + KUTE) THE FLYING DUCK Pop and drill.

Sat 3 May

GNOME CATHOUSE Stoner rock from Antwerp. GAO THE ARSONIST THE HUG AND PINT Hip-hop from the UK.

GUN ST LUKE'S Hard rock from Scotland.

HARTWIN TRIO (DUNCAN RITCHIE) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Folk.

LEWIS MCLAUGHLIN THE RUM SHACK Indie from Glasgow.

LOKI + SOLAREYE + ERIN FRIEL + DJ SHELLTOE MEL ROOM 2 Hip-hop from Scotland.

JEFFREY MARTIN THE FLYING DUCK Folk. THE SPITFIRES STEREO Punk and reggae.

Sun 4 May

SWISS PORTRAIT THE GARAGE Dream pop from Scotland. YT. THE GARAGE Rap from the UK.

DEAN JOHNSON (PIPPA BLUNDELL + BEN DE LA COUR) THE HUG AND PINT Americana from Seattle. RIVAL SCHOOLS ST LUKE'S Post-hardcore from the US.

THE CHOSEN LONELY

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Indie from the Highlands.

BOLDY JAMES QUEEN MARGARET UNION Rap from Georgia.

Mon 5 May

TWENTY ONE PILOTS

THE OVO HYDRO Rock from the US. VIAGRA BOYS

BARROWLANDS Punk from Sweden.

ASHLEY HENRY THE HUG AND PINT Jazz from the UK. THE ARMY, THE NAVY SWG3 Pop from California.

YOSSARI BABY (COMFORT)

BEECH AVENUE SOCIAL CLUB

Electronica from Manchester and Glasgow.

Tue 6 May

JESHI THE GARAGE Hip-hop from London.

SORRY KING TUT'S Indie rock from London. THE POGUES BARROWLANDS Punk from London.

PAURIC O'MEARA THE HUG AND PINT Indie from Ireland.

BATHS SWG3

Electronica from LA. AUSTIN STAMBAUGH THE GLAD CAFE Country from the US.

Wed 7 May

BETH MCCARTHY

THE GARAGE Pop from York.

THE DEADLIANS

KING TUT'S Psych rock from Dublin.

UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH

THE HUG AND PINT Rock from the UK.

MALIN LEWIS

THE RUM SHACK Folk from Scotland.

RAZORLIGHT

SWG3 Indie from the UK.

CHARLIE PITTMAN SWG3 Alt pop.

HACHIKU (TOWN CENTRE + BRENDA) THE GLAD CAFE Alt pop.

DAWUNA THE FLYING DUCK Experimental R'n'B.

Thu 8 May

ACID MOTHERS

TEMPLE MONO Rock from Japan.

DICE THE GARAGE Indie rock from Perth.

JOSH PYKE

KING TUT'S Singer-songwriter from Australia.

SUPERGRASS

BARROWLANDS Rock from the UK. KEMPES (TRADE) THE RUM SHACK Indie from Portsmouth.

HALF TIME (DREAM JOURNAL + LANDSLIDE)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Nu-gaze from Glasgow. MONDE UFO (THE CHOP) THE GLAD CAFE Space rock from LA.

Fri 9 May

ROAD TO THE GREAT ESCAPE: GRACE

GACHOT + CITIZEN

PAPER + NADIA

KADEK + JAMES

EMMANUEL

KING TUT’S Pop from the UK. Supergrass

BARROWLANDS Rock from the UK. THE DAWN BROTHERS THE HUG AND PINT Folk rock from Rotterdam.

FRED FRITH + GLASGOW IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Composer. RIVAL CONSOLES SWG3 Electronica from London. THE TAKEBACKS (MIDNIGHT ALLEYS + RIVIERA) SWG3 Local lineup.

NAMELESS FRINDS (TOO RED + KB AND THE RASCALS) NICE 'N' SLEAZY Alt rock from Canada. CREATIVES OF COLOUR FESTIVAL (KAPIL SESHASAYEE + INTIBINT) THE GLAD CAFE Indie from Glasgow. NORTHERN UNFEST PRE-SHOW STEREO Hardcore.

Sat 10 May

GREEN JELLY THE GARAGE Rock from the US. ROAD TO THE GREAT ESCAPE: ANNIE DIRUSSO + BOTTLE ROCKETS + CLIFFORDS + INDOOR FOXES + WESTSIDE COWBOY + YES AND MAYBE + PICTURE PARLOUR + MÊN AN TOL KING TUT’S Indie from across the UK. ARMLOCK THE HUG AND PINT Indie rock from Australia. BUBBLE LOVE (ROSS FROM FRIENDS) SWG3 Electronica from the UK. LOWKEY SWG3 Hip-hop from the UK. HIDDEN MOTHERS (CODESPEAKER) NICE 'N' SLEAZY Ethereal post-hardcore/ screamo from Sheffield.

GOOD SAD HAPPY BAD (FINE) THE GLAD CAFE Art pop from London. NORTHERN UNFEST AFTERSHOW THE FLYING DUCK Hardcore. MAZ & THE PHANTASMS STEREO Alt psych rock from Glasgow.

Sun 11 May

LUCA FOGALE MONO Pop from Canada. TOPHOUSE THE GARAGE Folk from Montana. ROBBEN FORD ORAN MOR Blues from the US. ZIMMER90 KING TUT'S Indie. THE POGUES BARROWLANDS Punk from London. PATRICK WOLF ST LUKE'S Electro-pop from London. ALEX CORNISH THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Folk from Edinburgh. JEFFREY LEWIS & THE VOLTAGE ROOM 2 Indie rock. BRADLEY SIMPSON SWG3 Indie from the UK. PUP SWG3 Punk from Toronto. AMELIA COBURN THE GLAD CAFE Folk. MEKONS STEREO Post-punk from Leeds.

Mon 12 May

JACK KAYS (TOMMY RAGEN) KING TUT'S Alt rock. TOUCAN THE HUG AND PINT Pop funk from Ireland.

POGO TIL' YOU DROP THE FLYING DUCK Glasgow lineup.

Tue 13 May

MICHAEL SCHENKER THE GARAGE Rock from Germany. BRYAN ADAMS THE OVO HYDRO Pop from Canada. JERRON PAXTON ORAN MOR Jazz from LA. PANIC SHACK KING TUT'S Alt from the UK. NAP EYES THE HUG AND PINT Indie rock from California. SOCCER MOMMY SWG3 Indie rock from the US. CLARA LA SAN SWG3 Producer from the UK. LUCY KRUGER AND THE LOST BOYS NICE 'N' SLEAZY Art pop from Berlin. ELIJAH FOX THE GLAD CAFE Instrumental from LA. ELECTRONIC EXPERIMENTATIONS THE FLYING DUCK Minimal.

Wed 14 May

HYPHEN THE GARAGE Hip-hop from the UK. TAKUYA NAKAMURA KING TUT'S Electronica from Tokyo.

ADAM BEATTIE + FIONA BEVAN THE HUG AND PINT Folk. BOYCE AVENUE ST LUKE'S Rock from Florida. HARRY GÓRSKIBROWN (ISA GORDON + NORMAN WILLMORE) THE GLAD CAFE Experimental from Scotland. ROSE CITY BAND STEREO Country rock from Portland.

Thu 15 May

ROBIN TROWER

ORAN MOR Blues rock from the UK.

FREAK SLUG

KING TUT'S Indie rock from Manchester.

NØRSTADT (MICHAEL CASSIDY )

THE RUM SHACK Indie from Glasgow. CHARLES WESLEY

GODWIN SWG3

Singer-songwriter from West Virginia.

BANANAGUN

THE GLAD CAFE Alt jazz from Australia.

AKU AKI (DARREN GALLACHER + ALEXANDRA SHRINIVAS)

THE FLYING DUCK Electronica.

Fri 16 May

KYLIE

THE OVO HYDRO Pop from Australia.

YOUNG GUN SILVER FOX

KING TUT'S Soft rock from London.

DEAFDEAFDEAF

THE HUG AND PINT Indie from Manchester.

TAMZENE SWG3 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

FRASER MCCALLUM (SALT SHAKER + OBJECT ASH)

BEECH AVENUE SOCIAL CLUB Indie from Glasgow.

QUADE (MILKWEED)

THE GLAD CAFE Alt folk from Bristol.

MAKESHIFT SWAHILI (SHAG NASTY + SMIRK + FOREVER MACHINE + TRILL)

THE FLYING DUCK Punk.

KANEKOAYANO STEREO J-pop from Japan.

Sat 17 May

ALAIN JOHANNES CATHOUSE Rock from the US.

BRENNAN SAVAGE THE GARAGE Rap from LA. SCISSOR SISTERS THE OVO HYDRO Pop rock from the US. THE SHOWHAWK DUO ORAN MOR Rock from the UK.

MOGWAI

BARROWLANDS Post-rock from Scotland.

COLLAPSED LUNG

THE HUG AND PINT Rock from the UK.

CORNFIELD CHASE (PELIKAN ROGUE + MILKMAID MERCHANT + STATIC SKY ) ROOM 2 Alt rock from Fife. HOT PROPERTY (KINGSTON + MARY OF SILENCE)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Rock from London. THE LONELY OATCAKE THE GLAD CAFE Indie folk from Scotland.

THE LONELY SOULS STEREO Americana from Scotland.

Sun 18 May

SAM AMIDON MONO Folk from the US.

MOGWAI BARROWLANDS Post-rock from Scotland. THE RHEINGANS SISTERS

THE HUG AND PINT Folk.

THE CHRISTIANS ST LUKE'S Rock from Liverpool.

GLEN MATLOCK (NEAL X + JIM LOWE + CHRIS MUSTO)

THE RUM SHACK Punk rock from the UK.

PREOCCUPATIONS ROOM 2

Post-punk from Calgary. SEAFRET SWG3 Indie from Yorkshire. BOAB (LAURA ST.JUDE + LEFAUX CHAT) BEECH AVENUE SOCIAL CLUB Folk from Glasgow. GUY DAVIS THE GLAD CAFE Blues.

CAROLINA DURANTE STEREO Indie rock from Madrid.

Mon 19 May

MANNEQUIN PUSSY QUEEN MARGARET UNION Punk from Philadelphia. BIIG TIME ROOM 2 Indie from Australia. SIMEON HAMMOND DALLAS SWG3 Singer-songwriter from London.

NEGATIVE VIBE MERCHANT & IN VENERANCE PRESENT: PARASITE NURSE + DISTRAXI + PALE WORLD + SWORD OF DAMOCLES NICE 'N' SLEAZY Noise from the UK. ESTHER ROSE THE GLAD CAFE Country from the US. Tue 20 May THROWING MUSES THE GARAGE Alt rock from the US. CASSIA ORAN MOR Indie pop.

DRAX PROJECT (JUNO) KING TUT'S Pop from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

DINOSAUR JR BARROWLANDS Rock from Massachusetts. YNG MARTYR SWG3

Hip-hop from Canberra. CONOR MCLAIN NICE 'N' SLEAZY Folk from Ireland. NEV CLAY (HOWIE REEVE + COD O’DONNELL) THE GLAD CAFE

Singer-songwriter from Newcastle. CRAWL OF TIME (NATURAL CAUSES + KLEFT + HOLY AUSTIN) THE FLYING DUCK Electronica.

BELLA WHITE STEREO Country folk from Calgary.

Wed 21 May

JASMINE.4.T (LIZZIE REID) KING TUT'S Alt indie. BEDDY RAYS THE HUG AND PINT Rock from Brisbane. RICH(ARD) DAWSON ST LUKE'S Prog folk from Newcastle. EARTH (MAUD THE MOTH) ROOM 2 Drone metal from the US. EMBRYECTOMY (CHAINSAW CASTRATION + HACKED UP + SCALPED TO DEATH + BACKBONE)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Death metal from Athens. HARRY NYE THE GLAD CAFE

Singer-songwriter from the UK.

MURO (BLEAKS + SEER + KNOME) THE FLYING DUCK Hardcore punk.

Thu 22 May

CRASH TEST

DUMMIES THE GARAGE Rock from Canada.

OLLY MURS (BLUE) THE OVO HYDRO Pop from the UK.

BASHT.

KING TUT'S Indie rock from Ireland. A DAY TO REMEMBER O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Post-hardcore from the US. THE SELECTER QUEEN MARGARET UNION Ska from Coventry. SORRY GIRLS

THE GLAD CAFE Dream pop from Montreal.

Fri 23 May

INHUMAN NATURE THE GARAGE Thrash metal.

TATE MCRAE (BENEE) THE OVO HYDRO Pop from Canada. WHEN RIVERS MEET ORAN MOR Blues rock.

JAGGED BAPTIST

CLUB

SWG3 Indie from LA.

VANDERLYE (RYAN HARLEY )

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie rock from Glasgow.

FELIPE BALDOMIR

THE GLAD CAFE

Indie folk from Uruguay.

LEYA (VANESSA BEDORET) THE FLYING DUCK Pop from New York.

Sat 24 May

KRS ONE THE GARAGE Rap from the Bronx.

AMISTAT ORAN MOR Indie from Germany.

JON GOMM THE HUG AND PINT Singer-songwriter from the UK.

THE EAST POINTERS ST LUKE'S Folk from Canada.

BUFFET LUNCH THE GLAD CAFE Indie pop from Scotland.

Sun 25 May

JC STEWART THE GARAGE Singer-songwriter Northern Ireland.

ANDREW CUSHIN

ORAN MOR Indie from Newcastle.

SCOTTY MCCREERY BARROWLANDS Country from the US.

MAMA’S BROKE THE HUG AND PINT Folk from Canada.

GAELYNN LEA (EVIE WADDELL) THE GLAD CAFE Singer-songwriter from the US.

Edinburgh

Music

Mon 28 Apr

CONNOLLY HAYES (LIZ JONES) THE VOODOO ROOMS Blues from the UK.

Tue 29 Apr

MARGO CILKER THE VOODOO ROOMS Country from the US. ONCE AWAKE (VISHA) BANNERMANS Metal from Norway.

Wed 30 Apr

BROWN HORSE THE VOODOO ROOMS Country rock from Norwich. DOM MARTIN THE CAVES Blues rock from Ireland.

ROGER DALTREY USHER HALL Rock. NEW ISSUE

LEITH DEPOT Rock from the US.

Thu 1 May

CLARA MANN THE VOODOO ROOMS Alt folk from the UK.

IST IST (OLIVER MARSON) THE CAVES Post-punk from Manchester. THE FLAMING LIPS USHER HALL Psych rock from Oklahoma. COWBOY HUNTERS (FRANTIC LOVE + KULLNES)

LEITH DEPOT Punk rock from Scotland. WIDE DAYS LA BELLE ANGELE Scotland showcase.

Fri 2 May

AN DANNSA DUB THE BONGO CLUB Trad dub from Scotland. AGL & THE ALCHEMISTS THE VOODOO ROOMS Indie.

RATTLESNAKES BANNERMANS Heavy metal from the UK.

EDINBURGH TRADFEST 2025: ROSS AINSLIE & THE SANCTUARY BAND THE QUEEN'S HALL Folk and roots from Scotland.

HEAVY WEATHER THE MASH HOUSE Indie.

WIDE DAYS PRESENTS: NEW FROM SCOTLAND (EYVE + IONA FYFE + TWST)

SNEAKY PETE'S Multi-genre from Scotland.

Sat 3 May

DEAN JOHNSON (HOLLY POWERS) THE VOODOO ROOMS Country from the US. THE EVES THE LIQUID ROOM Pop. MEAT BAGS THE MASH HOUSE Punk.

BOLDY JAMES LA BELLE ANGELE Rap from Detroit.

ULTRAMARINE (OTHER LANDS)

SNEAKY PETE'S Electronic from London.

Sun 4 May

FARGO RAILROAD CO. (THE OTHER SIDE) BANNERMANS Rock from Sheffield.

LENE LOVICH BAND LA BELLE ANGELE Post-punk. EVERY WAVE (MICHAEL CERA PALIN + ITOLDYOUIWOULDEAT YOU)

SNEAKY PETE'S Emo indie from Atlanta.

Mon 5 May

FOIVOS DELIVORIAS TRIO THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock and pop from Greece.

Tue 6 May

AFFECTION PLACE (DAVE FORMULA) THE VOODOO ROOMS Rock from Lyon.

Wed 7 May

OI POLLOI (COLLISION COURSE + BURNING THE FILTH) BANNERMANS Punk rock from Scotland. LOVE MUSIC HATE

RACISM (AKI REMALLY, KOUK, BEAU & ISAAC)

SNEAKY PETE'S Multi-genre from Edinburgh.

Thu 8 May

THE DEADLIANS THE VOODOO ROOMS Psych rock from Dublin. NAMELESS FRIENDS (TRAMSURFER + ROSA & THE LAMB)

BANNERMANS Rock from Canada. CHINA CRISIS THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock and pop from the UK.

THE ROOKS SNEAKY PETE'S Rock from Glasgow.

Fri 9 May

DEATH VALLEY GIRLS (BELLA AND THE BIZARRE) THE BONGO CLUB Rock from LA. FOXBAM INC RECORD LABEL LAUNCH PARTY THE VOODOO ROOMS Acid. TIDE LINES THE CAVES Folk pop from Scotland. HANLEY AND THE BAIRD + SING IN THE CITY AW BLACKS THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock and pop from Scotland. ROGÉR FAKHR + CHARIF MEGARBANE THE MASH HOUSE Folk rock from Lebanon. SHAMBOL!CA (FREE MANTLE HYPOTHESIS + FERRI & THE FEVERS)

SNEAKY PETE'S Alt rock from Edinburgh.

Sat 10 May

CHARLIE & THE BHOYS THE LIQUID ROOM Folk from Glasgow. SEARCH RESULTS

SNEAKY PETE'S Indie rock from Dublin.

Sun 11 May

DAWN BROTHERS

THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk rock.

PETER BRUNTNELL

THE VOODOO ROOMS Singer-songwriter from the UK.

JOHN HACKETT BAND BANNERMANS Prog rock.

Mon 12 May

ELECTRIC EEL SHOCK

BANNERMANS Garage rock from Tokyo. TRAMHAUS (HONK + BÜTTER)

SNEAKY PETE'S Post-punk from Rotterdam.

Tue 13 May

FRANCK CARDUCCI + MARY REYNAUD SNEAKY PETE'S Folk rock from France.

Wed 14 May

PIXIES

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH Rock from Boston. THE FUZZYTONES BANNERMANS Garage rock from the US. REBECCA VASMANT ENSEMBLE SNEAKY PETE'S Jazz from Glasgow.

Thu 15 May

KICKIN VALENTINA (SISTERS DOLL) BANNERMANS Rock from Atlanta. HUEY MORGAN THE LIQUID ROOM Rock from the US.

OH ROMANCE (MOONLIGHT ACADEMY + THE FROOBZ + FOG BANDITS)

SNEAKY PETE'S Alt rock from Edinburgh. CIARA FARRELLY WEE RED BAR Indie folk.

Fri 16 May

SAM AMIDON THE VOODOO ROOMS Singer-songwriter from the UK.

DAN SEALEY THE VOODOO ROOMS Rock from the UK.

LITTLE SPARROW + XAN TYLER

O2 ACADEMY EDINBIRGH Eclectic lineup. THE BATTLE IV: ROCK N BLUES NIGHT (WARM REEKIN' RICH + PAPERCUTPEACH + KATY LIKES VELVET + STONE DEAD JOHN)

SNEAKY PETE'S Blues from Scotland.

AULD SPELLS WEE RED BAR Art rock.

Sat 17 May

SCARRED LIP (PUPPY TEETH) THE BONGO CLUB Indie from Edinburgh. BIG WOLF BAND (BEST DRESSED BLUES BAND) THE VOODOO ROOMS Blues from Birmingham.

BAD SKIN BANNERMANS Rock.

CAPERCAILLIE USHER HALL Pop from Scotland.

FRANCIS ROSSI THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock and pop from the UK.

SEAFRET THE MASH HOUSE Acoustic.

SERAPHIC EYES THE MASH HOUSE Indie. THE CHRISTIANS LA BELLE ANGELE Soul. PETER CAT (THE RAEBURN BROTHERS) SNEAKY PETE'S Art pop from Glasgow. THE TENEMENTALS (XAN TYLER) WEE RED BAR Indie folk.

Sun 18 May

SPELL SONGS USHER HALL Folk from the UK.

MUGENKYO TAIKO DRUMMERS: IN TIME THE QUEEN'S HALL Folk and roots from Japan.

DONNY BENET LA BELLE ANGELE Indie from Australia.

Tue 20 May

GLEN MATLOCK (NEAL X + JIM LOWE + CHRIS MUSTO) THE VOODOO ROOMS Punk rock from the UK.

SEX MASK (BANDIT) SNEAKY PETE'S Post-punk from Melbourne.

Wed 21 May

CONOR MCLAIN THE MASH HOUSE Folk pop.

W.I.T.C.H. LA BELLE ANGELE Afrobeat and psych.

Thu 22 May

DANIEL KIMBRO THE VOODOO ROOMS Roots from the US. GASPER NALI (LUHANGAH) THE VOODOO ROOMS Roots from Lake Malawi. LAST CASE SCENARIO (STAY FOR TOMORROW) BANNERMANS Punk rock from the UK.

GRACE PETRIE THE CAVES Folk from the UK. WE ARE SCIENTISTS LA BELLE ANGELE Rock.

Fri 23 May

WILLE EDWARDS DUO THE VOODOO ROOMS Rock from the UK.

IODYNES (THE SHOREZ + THE BEDLAM HOUSE BAND) BANNERMANS Indie rock. CRASH TEST DUMMIES

LA BELLE ANGELE Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm CHRIS REEVE (DAVID LUXIMON) SNEAKY PETE'S Psych pop from Edinburgh. THE BURGERS WEE RED BAR Post-punk.

Sat 24 May

NO CIGAR THE BONGO CLUB Indie from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

FLORAL IMAGE (GELATINE) THE VOODOO ROOMS Psych from Norwich. BLACK CAT BONE THE MASH HOUSE Rock from Edinburgh. THE SELECTER LA BELLE ANGELE Ska. RAY KENNY (DENNIS KENNEDY + POINTLESS DREAMS) SNEAKY PETE'S Singer-songwriter from Ireland.

GAELYNN LEE (EVIE WADDELL) WEE RED BAR Bluegrass.

Sun 25 May

NATIONAL PLAYBOYS THE CAVES Post-punk from Scotland.

Tue 27 May

ELKIE BROOKS THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock from the UK.

Dundee

Music

Sat 3 May THE HUNNA CHURCH Rock from the UK. MIDNIGHT ALLEYS BEAT GENERATOR LIVE! Psych rock from Dundee.

Sun 25 May THE REDSTARTS CHURCH Soul.

Glasgow Clubs

Thu 1 May

BREATHE : FUNK THE SYSTEM SUB CLUB House and electro. CO:CLEAR (TIBSLC + NICK MALKIN + CARNAC + MEMORY CAIRN) THE FLYING DUCK Ambient.

Fri 2 May

JAIVA • AWESOME TAPES FROM AFRICA, WORLD OF TWIST & BUTHOTHEWARRIOR SUB CLUB Jazz and kwaito.

CO -ACCUSED WITH FEAR-E + LIAM CAPPELLO THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno and acid.

THUDLINE: COFFINTEXTS + EFFUA + ROY DON LA CHEETAH CLUB Latin bass. UNWIND X HAVOX: D|K|OXY ALL NIGHT LONG ROOM 2 Techno and hardcore. SWIFTOGGEDON SWG3 Pop.

TANUM SOUND SYSTEM: CREASE + BIRTHQUAKE + JUNGLEHUSSI + KAIRI + KLAUS + MELLOWDRAMATICS EXIT Dub and jungle.

CIVIC HOUSE PARTY X BAILE/ BAILE: SOF SOF + HU-SANE + LUCKYBABE + AMINABONTHEBEAT + BAILE/ BAILE RESIDENTS CIVIC HOUSE House and disco.

BITROT X STEREO: REAL TEARS (DJ FLUFFIE + NETGF + ZOLF) STEREO Trance and grime.

NO MUSIC NO LIFE (EUROPA (LIVE) + AKUMU + OPHERINGS & 500 + USER2222 + MM + BOOSTERHOOCH + STRAWB.BBY + HERE & NOT YET) THE FLYING DUCK Bass and experimental.

Sat 3 May

SHOOT YOUR SHOT X PRISM OF PLEASURE: ELKKA + LEZZER QUEST THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno. HUNTRESS & MISS CABBAGE PRESENT: MYKKI BLANCO + PTK. BBY EXIT Techno. ACT NATURAL NICE 'N' SLEAZY House and Italo disco. REFUWEEGEE X RADIO BUENA VIDA FUNDRASIER: THE SOUND OF COLLECTIVE ACTION (HIBA + CARMEN BAÍA (FEMMEDM) + KTAB + LEAHGTE) STEREO Funk, soul, Baile funk. VI PRES. (REMCO BEEKWILDER + MASON + JOSH HUNTER + JOW) THE FLYING DUCK Techno.

Wed 7 May SOLUS PRESENTS: JOSEPH CAPRIATI

Fri 9 May JAZZY SWG3 Techno. INK TANK: TEODOR, LOOSE E, M DALINO & JOAB STEREO Breakbeat and bass. DIVERGENCE (LEWIS ROBERTSON + MÁS ALLÁ + SHEDCAT + NATUS + AIOLOS) THE FLYING DUCK UKG, bass, techno and house.

Sat 10 May

LOOSE JOINTS: LUXE + DJ_2BUTTON B2B PIGEON STEVE THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno and bass. PHANTASMAGASM 3 (MAZ AND THE PHANTASMS + BRAT COVEN + LEMON DRINK + MISS CABAGGE, MAIRI 'B' POTS) STEREO Techno.

Fri 16 May

OPTIMISTIC EVENTS AT ROOM 2 ROOM 2 House and techno. CL!CK X STEREO: TOCCORORO (HUNTRESS + MISS CABBAGE + DAN(NA) + ELLEN DEGENERATE + DILL) STEREO Techno. NEW SHAPES (FRED ALEXANDER + GLOSS + KENWAT) THE FLYING DUCK House, disco, bass and techno.

Sat 17 May Y U QT SWG3 Garage. DON'T FORGET TO EXIT EXIT Industrial and noise.

Regular Glasgow club nights

The Rum Shack

SATURDAYS (LAST OF EVERY OTHER MONTH)

VOCAL OR VERSION, 21:00

Vintage Jamaican music on original vinyl by resident DJs and guests.

Sub Club

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH) RETURN TO MONO SLAM’s monthly Subbie residency sees them joined by some of the biggest names in international techno.

Cabaret

Voltaire

FRIDAYS

FLY CLUB, 23:00

Edinburgh and Glasgowstraddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

SATURDAYS

PLEASURE, 23:00

Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.

The Bongo Club

TUESDAYS

MIDNIGHT BASS, 23:00

Big basslines and small prices form the ethos behind this weekly Tuesday night, with drum’n’bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage aplenty.

FRIDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

ELECTRIKAL, 23 00

Sound system and crew, part of a music and art collective specialising in BASS music.

FRIDAYS (MONTHLY, WEEK CHANGES)

SOUND SYSTEM LEGACIES, 23 00

Exploring the legacy of dub, reggae and roots music and sound system culture in the contemporary club landscape.

FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

DISCO MAKOSSA, 23 00

Disco Makossa takes the dancefloor on a funk-filled trip through the sounds of African disco, boogie and house – strictly for the dancers.

FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

OVERGROUND, 23 00

A safe space to appreciate all things rave, jungle, breakbeat and techno.

DILATE (HIROBBIE + SMOKEYLEGATTA + KACPER + ETHAN) STEREO Garage. DANSE MACABRE THE FLYING DUCK Goth and synthwave.

Thu 22 May

RARE CLUB: 5 YEARS OF EC2A WITH DR

DUBPLATE + MILEY

SERIOUS SUB CLUB House and garage.

STAATSEINDE LIVE (MEDICAL RECORDS, WAVE TENSION)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Electro pop.

Fri 23 May

DISFUNCTION VI SWG3 Hard techno. ROKI NICE 'N' SLEAZY Club.

SATURDAYS

SUBCULTURE, 23:00

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

SATURDAYS (FIRST OR SECOND OF THE MONTH)

MESSENGER, 23 00

Roots reggae rocking since 1987 – foundation tune, fresh dubs, vibes alive, rockers, steppers, rub-a-dub.

SATURDAYS (MONTHLY )

CHROMATIC, 23 00

Championing all things UKG, grime, dubstep, bass and more, with disco, funk and soul from Mumbo Jumbo upstairs.

SATURDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

PULSE, 23 00

Techno night started in 2009 hosting regular special guests from the international scene.

SATURDAYS (MONTHLY )

HOBBES MUSIC X CLUB NACHT, 23:00

A collaboration between longrunning club night and Edinburgh record label ft. house, techno, electro, UKG and bass.

Sneaky Pete’s

MONDAYS

RIDE N BOUNCE, 23:00

R‘n’B, pop, rap and hip-hop bangers every Monday.

TUESDAYS

RARE, 23:00

House, UKG and occasional techno from special guest DJs and rising locals.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

VOLENS CHORUS, 23:00

Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook.

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

HOT MESS, 23:00

A night for queer people and their friends.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

SOUL JAM, 23:00

Monthly no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty disco.

SUNDAYS POSTAL, 23:00

Bass, breaks, grime and more from a selection of Cowgate all stars.

The Liquid Room

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

REWIND, 22:30

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 POPTASTIC, 22:00

Pop, requests and throwbacks to get your week off to an energetic start.

TUESDAYS TRASH TUESDAY, 22:00

Alternative Tuesday anthems cherry picked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

WEDNESDAYS COOKIE WEDNESDAY, 22:00 90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY, 22:00 Student anthems and bangerz.

FRIDAYS FLIP FRIDAY, 22:00

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and noveltystuffed. Perrrfect.

SATURDAYS BUBBLEGUM, 22:00 Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

SUNDAYS

SECRET SUNDAY, 22:00 Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/handle on a Sunday.

Subway Cowgate

MONDAYS

TRACKS, 21:00

Blow the cobwebs off the week with a weekly Monday night party with some of Scotland’s biggest and best drag queens.

TUESDAYS TAMAGOTCHI, 22:00

Throwback Tuesdays with non-stop 80s, 90s, 00s tunes.

WEDNESDAYS TWISTA, 22:00

Banger after banger all night long.

THURSDAYS FLIRTY, 22:00 Pop, cheese and chart.

FRIDAYS FIT FRIDAYS, 22:00

Chart-topping tunes perfect for an irresistible sing and dance-along.

SATURDAYS SLICE SATURDAY, 22:00 The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

SUNDAYS SUNDAY SERVICE, 22:00

Atone for the week before and the week ahead with non-stop dancing. The Mash House

TUESDAYS MOVEMENT, 20:00

House, techno, drum ‘n’ bass and garage.

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN, 23:00

Joyous global club sounds: think Afrobeat, Latin and Arabic dancehall on repeat.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) PULSE, 23:00

The best techno DJs sit alongside The Mash House resident Darrell Pulse.

Thu 8 May

MANGO LOUNGE: GEORGE IV & REFRACTA SNEAKY PETE'S Bass.

Fri 9 May

PALIDRONE SNEAKY PETE'S Bass. LIKE THIS: LEE MARVIN + JIMMY JAMMIN' + MARTI TIME WEE RED BAR House and techno.

Sat 10 May

MR WORLDWIDE

PARTY: A PITBULL RAVE LA BELLE ANGELE 2000s dance. TO THE RHYTHM: EROL ALKAN SNEAKY PETE'S House.

ASCENSION WEE RED BAR Goth and industrial.

Wed 14 May

KATALYSIS SNEAKY PETE'S Techno.

Thu 15 May

NIGHT

TUBE: SAM BANGURA CABARET VOLTAIRE House and techno.

IMPORT: DJ FLUFFIE, SICKBOY, BUCKFAST BARBIE SNEAKY PETE'S Club.

Fri 16 May

INKOHERENT THE MASH HOUSE Techno. REGGAETON PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE Reggae.

HEADSET SNEAKY PETE'S UK techno.

Sat 17 May

EPIKA: IONA VIOLET THE BONGO CLUB Techno and electro. COSMIC THE MASH HOUSE Psych. OUR GAFF: THE HOUSEWARMING THE MASH HOUSE Pop.

EDINTEKK THE MASH HOUSE Hardtek.

HEYDAY: PROSUMER + KETIOV SNEAKY PETE'S House.

Wed 21 May

MEMBRANE: DAKSH SNEAKY PETE'S Leftfield.

Thu 22 May

UPLANDS ROAST PRESENTS: MUNGO'S HIFI + VALTOS THE BONGO CLUB Bass

Glasgow Comedy

The Glee Club

KIELL SMITH-BYNOE & FRIENDS: KOOL STORY

BRO

WED 7 MAY

Star of Taskmaster, Ghosts and The Great British Sewing Bee, Kiell Smith-Bynoe is heading out on tour with an all–star cast of comedians to turn audience stories into improvised comedy scenes.

DIRTBIRDS: GIRLS

WORLD TOUR

THU 8 MAY

Ireland's Queens of Comedy are back with their brand-new show, bringing their highly relatable and spot on observational comedy back to the stage.

RAVI GUPTA: KAL KI

CHINTA NAHI KARTA

SUN 11 MAY

Mic and Couch Entertainment is happy to present Ravi Gupta live in UK & Ireland. Ravi is known for his witty one liners and observational jokes.

SASHA DOLGOPOLOV: NEW STAND UP IN ENGLISH

MON 12 MAY

A queer alternative political comedian from Russia who immigrated when the war in Ukraine started, Sasha has spent a decade honing her stand-up craft.

LAURA BELBIN: TOO MUCH

WED 14 MAY

She's loud, she swears, she's inappropriate, and she's the comedian behind the social media antics of Knee Deep In Life.

KERRY GODLIMAN: BANDWIDTH

THU 15 MAY

While parenting teenagers, bogged down with knicker admin and considering dealing HRT on the black market, Kerry's lost her mum bag but can’t remember what was in it .

The Old Hairdressers

HAROLD NIGHT

TUE 6 MAY

Two Glasgow Improv Theatre house teams performing The Harold. Featuring F.L.U.S.H. and Raintown!

PERFECT IMPROV

TUE 13 MAY

Glasgow Improv Theatre presents their flagship improv show with a special guest monologist and an all-star improv cast.

Edinburgh

Comedy

HORATIO GOULD: RETURN OF THE SPACE COWBOY

SAT 3 MAY

Following his sell-out debut show, viral sensation Horatio Gould brings his muchanticipated sophomore show, Return of the Space Cowboy, on the road.

CAMPFIRE IMPROV

MON 5 MAY

Gather round the campfire to watch Scotland's top improvisers create hilarious scenes based on stories from a special guest monologist.

IMPROV JAM

MON 5 MAY

Whether you're a seasoned improviser or looking to jump on stage for the first time, this is your chance to join a welcoming, low-pressure environment where everyone is welcome.

MARISE GAUGHAN: WORK IN PROGRESS

TUE 6 MAY

A show about addiction, but not the serious Ted talk kind. Rehab, sleeping with old men for money, AA, the boring mundanity of sobriety.

ABIGOLIAH SCHAMAUN: LEGALLY

CHEEKY WED 7 MAY

Legally Cheeky charts

Abigoliah Schamaun’s journey in a heart-warming tale of highs, lows, twists & turns as she recounts the year that shook her and her partner Tom to the core.

MATT PRICE: RAGING BILL THU 8 MAY

This is a very funny show about getting back up when life has hit you hard.

ED NIGHT: THE PLUNGE FRI 9 MAY

Ed Night returns to Monkey Barrel Comedy. As seen and heard on Comedy Central, ITV2, and BBC Radio 4.

CHRISTOPHER MACARTHUR-BOYD: WORK IN PROGRESS SAT 10 MAY

An hour of work-in-progress not-quite-there-yet stand-up comedy from Christopher MacarthurBoyd.

JOHN-LUKE ROBERTS: IT IS BETTER + BEST OF SAT 10 MAY

John-Luke Roberts is taking a compilation of some of his favourite bits on tour, alongside the whole of his 2020 show It Is Better.

AMY ANNETTE: THICK SKIN SUN 11 MAY

ROB COPLAND: GIMME (ONE WITH EVERYTHING)

SUN 18 MAY

Gimme the thrills, gimme the spills, gimme a man with a microphone in his hand and careless abandon in his heart.

ALANA JACKSON: WORK IN PROGRESS

WED 21 MAY

Join Alana Jackson, winner of So You Think You’re Funny? 2024, as she tries out some new material in preparation for Edinburgh Fringe 2025.

PIERRE NOVELLIE: WORK IN PROGRESS FRI 23 MAY Pierre Novellie is one of the best up-and-coming comedians in the UK.

ROB DEERING: TIME MACHINE SAT 24 MAY

Erstwhile Fringe favourite and sometime local resident Rob Deering returns to Edinburgh with his new show Time Machine.

STUART MITCHELL: TESTING TESTING SUN 25 MAY

Join the longest running panellist from BBC Scotland’s Breaking The News and star of BBC Radio 4 as he runs through new material.

HARRY STACHINI: GRENADE

SUN 25 MAY

Stachini serves up an hour of relatable, honest, and hilarious stand-up.

LAUREN PATTISON: BIG GIRL PANTS

SUN 25 MAY

Two-time Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Lauren Pattison is back with a brand-new show.

Glasgow Theatre

CCA:

Centre for Contemporary Art

DIG 2025: DOUBLE THRILLS: HARALD BEHARIE / PIK KEI WONG TUE 20 MAY -THU 22 MAY A double bill choreographic feature presented in collaboration with BUZZCUT and Dance International.

Oran Mor A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: THE BROWN DOLL

THUDLINE'S 3RD BIRTHDAY STEREO House and bass. FORTIFIED (HORSEPOWER PROD + ELECTRIC ELIMINATORS) THE FLYING DUCK Dubstep, breaks and bass.

Sat 24 May

THE BERKELEY SUITE PRESENTS 'GOO' WITH DANIEL AVERY + RICHARD FEARLESS THE BERKELEY SUITE House and techno. THROUGH THE ROOF BASEMENT SERIES 001: JOSS DEAN LA CHEETAH CLUB Tech house. SYMMETRIK SWG3 House and trance.

Y2K: QUEER RAVE (SPUNBYANDREA + HOLTZ + EUROKELS) STEREO Pop and techno. BARE MAX (3-LIX + BIG PHARMA + LOOSE E + PATRICE + EMILIOOO) THE FLYING DUCK Bass, techno and house.

Edinburgh Clubs

Fri 2 May

INDUSTRY OF SOUND THE MASH HOUSE Hard techno. QUALITY EVENTS THE MASH HOUSE Trance. EVOL LA BELLE ANGELE Pop and indie.

Sat 3 May

COMPRESSION

PRESENTS:RYAN MURRAY OTC THE MASH HOUSE Techno.

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN - CINCO DE MAYO ESPECIAL WITH DJ SANTA LETICIA THE MASH HOUSE Tropical.

LUCKY DIP SNEAKY PETE'S Experimental.

Sun 4 May

RESIDENTS ONLY THE BONGO CLUB House and techno.

FAERIE CIRCLE X POSTAL SNEAKY PETE'S Nightcore.

Wed 7 May

HAPTIC: ESC SNEAKY PETE'S UK garage.

POTPOURRI: SWEET PHILLY SNEAKY PETE'S Club.

Fri 23 May

ATTITUDE ERA CLUB NIGHT LA BELLE ANGELE Metal.

Sat 24 May

DBT. PRESENTS THOMAS MELCHIOR (PERLON) CABARET VOLTAIRE House and techno. UNTITLED THE MASH HOUSE Techno. SWIFTOGEDDON LA BELLE ANGELE Pop.

ATHENS OF THE NORTH: EUAN FRYER + LEL PALFREY SNEAKY PETE'S Disco.

Monkey Barrel

Comedy Club

MARC JENNINGS: MARC'SISM

THU 1 MAY

Scottish Comedian of the Year winner and host of the Some Laugh podcast, Marc Jennings is on his first tour of the UK and Ireland following a sold-out Edinburgh Fringe run in 2024.

HUGE DAVIES: ALBUM FOR MY ANCESTORS

FRI 2 MAY

Huge will be performing a series of songs, but not songs he’s written – these are songs passed down from his family members and ancestors (dead).

Fresh from a sold out run at the Edinburgh Fringe, Amy Annette’s debut show is on tour.

LORNA ROSE TREEN: WORK IN PROGRESS THU 15 MAY

Award-winning, comedykilling (The Sun), formerCadbury World-working character comedian Lorna Rose Treen is trying out a bunch of new bits.

CONNOR BURNS: NEW STUFF (WIP) SAT 17 MAY

Join Connor Burns for a loose, fun hour of new jokes and shouty ranting while he gets his new show Gallus into shape.

ARASH ROWSHAN SAT 17 MAY The Persian comedian visits Monkey Barrel Comedy Club.

A revealing drama exploring the lives of three intertwined women, and the personal journey of the daughter that connects them all.

A PIE AND A

: MISTERO

A pulsating and anarchic storytelling rollercoaster that questions history, mocks the elite and speaks truth to power.

Regular Edinburgh club nights

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

MODERN BALLET ANNUAL PERFORMANCE

THU 15 MAY -SAT 17 MAY

The annual dance showcase by BA Modern Ballet students.

The King's

Theatre ...EARNEST?

FRI 9 MAY -SAT 10 MAY

When the lead actor in a traditional production of Oscar Wilde’s classic play fails to arrive on cue, an actual audience member is chosen to star in the show.

THE BOOK OF MORMON

TUE 13 MAY -SAT 31 MAY

A hit, outrageous musical comedy from the makers of South Park.

Theatre Royal

SCOTTISH OPERA: THE MERRY WIDOW

WED 30 APR -SAT 17 MAY

Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow is an intoxicating whirl of elegant ladies, eligible bachelors, Maxim’s can-can dancers, and everflowing champagne.

SCOTTISH OPERA: TRIAL BY JURY

WED 14 MAY -FRI 16 MAY

An unforgettable night of Gilbert and Sullivan comedy.

SCOTTISH BALLET: THE CRUCIBLE

THU 22 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

Arthur Miller's famous Tony Award-winning re-telling of the 1692 Salem witch trial hysteria, performed by the Scottish Ballet.

Tramway

DIG 2025: CLAIRE CUNNINGHAMSONGS OF THE WAYFARER

FRI 9 MAY -SAT 10 MAY

Traversing landscapes of nature, stage and Gustav Mahler’s song cycle, disabled choreographer and singer Claire Cunningham navigates both known and unfamiliar landscapes.

DIG 2025: RICHARD CHAPPELL DANCELAND EMPATHY SAT 10 MAY

Inspired by the challenges of the climate crisis, choreography, sculptures and an electronic score explore how culture can enhance our spiritual connection to the natural world.

DIG 2025 | EMILYN CLAID - THE TREMBLING FOREST: A LIVE ART BALLET

SAT 10 MAY

Staged amidst a forest of queer people, this piece evokes a macabre, surreal, grotesque and beautiful world, where life force and death drive intertwine.

DIG 2025: TWO DESTINATION LANGUAGEBOTTOMS

WED 14 MAY -THU 15 MAY

Five dancers seek refuge from modernity in moments of wild dance forged in the Industrial Revolution.

DIG 2025: OMAR RAJEH AND MAQAMAT - DANCE IS NOT FOR US WED 14 MAY

A dance delving into an autobiographical universe, and reckons with the fading image of a past that no longer exists.

DIG 2025: MELE BROOMESTHROUGH WARM TEMPERATURES

FRI 16 MAY -SAT 17 MAY

Blending vocals and dance, this choreographic piece examines castor oil's legacy as a natural remedy, an elixir, and a historic source.

DIG 2025: PROJECT X DANCE - ARTIST VOICE 2025

TUE 20 MAY

New work developed by the residency artists in the Artist Voice programme.

DIG 2025: COLETTE SADLER - THE VIOLET HOUR

WED 21 MAY

Inspired by TS Eliot's The Wasteland, moments of temporal transition are reimagined as the merging of real and digital realities.

DIG 2025: THE UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP OF FEATHER BOY AND TENTACLE GIRL

FRI 23 MAY

A family aerial show exploring the power of friendship.

DIG 2025: STARCATCHERS / KERRY CLELAND AND COMPANY - FLOAT

FRI 23 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

A beautiful immersive world for babies and their grown ups, featuring a sensory, interactive performance.

DIG 2025: VINCE VIRR - THEN WHAT FRI 23 MAY

A dynamic and captivating dance duet exploring the infinite possibilities of a first face to face encounter.

DIG 2025: THE Q DANCE COMPANYRE:INCARNATION SAT 17 MAY

Nigeria's celebrated QDance Company explode onto the stage with their exuberant Re:INCARNATION.

Tron Theatre

STUDIO3 SEASON:

ALRIGHT SUNSHINE

26 APR-17 MAY

A policewoman tries to break up a brawl on the Meadows in this exploration of gender, power, and the politics of public space.

FLEG

26 APR-17 MAY

Taking place in Belfast the day the Queen died, this absurdist comedy explores the romanticised notion of the Union.

FRUITCAKE

26 APR-17 MAY

A new romantic comedy for the existentially doomed.

SPRING AWAKENING

WED 7 MAY -SAT 10 MAY

Frank Wedekind's explosive Modernist play about sexual coming-of-age is given a new lease of life in this adaptation.

PENGUIN

THU 22 MAY -FRI 23 MAY

A humanistic autobiographical tale of displacement and belonging.

JONNY & THE BAPTISTS: THE HAPPINESS INDEX

SAT 24 MAY

A new personal and political show about our desire, and the country's struggle, to just be happy.

Edinburgh

Theatre

Festival

Theatre

SCOTTISH BALLET: THE CRUCIBLE

THU 1 MAY -SAT 3 MAY

SOUTHERN LIGHT: JESUS CHRIST

SUPERSTAR

WED 7 MAY -SAT 10 MAY

The gospel of Andrew Lloyd Webber offers a dazzling view into the last week of Jesus' life.

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

TUE 13 MAY -SAT 17 MAY

The West End production of C S Lewis' classic, set in a magical world of talking animals and eternal winter.

BALLET BLACK: SHADOWS

WED 21 MAY

Ballet Black returns with a double bill, including a darkly comic adaptation of Oyinkan Braithwaite's international bestselling novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer.

BALLET BC (BRITISH COLUMBIA)

FRI 23 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

A double bill of choreography by Johan Inger and Crystal Pite.

PASS Theatre

GLOW FESTIVAL: THE WICKED LADY

TUE 13 MAY -WED 14 MAY

An adaptation of the original novel The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton by Magdalen King-Hall.

Royal Lyceum

Theatre

KELI

TUE 13 MAY -SAT 17 MAY

Marking 40 years since the miner's strike, this warming, witty tale of community follows a teenager's adventures in a brass band in a mining town.

Summerhall

MY MUSES TAKE CARE OF ME

THU 1 MAY -SAT 3 MAY

A collection of poetic scenes exploring feminine power through sculpture, movement, and music, devised by world-renowned Fife-based choreographer Fleur Darkin.

The Edinburgh Playhouse

MOULIN ROUGE!

22 APR-14 JUN, Baz Luhrmann’s decadent classic gets the theatre treatment in this lavish new musical adaptation.

The Studio IN OTHER WORDS

FRI 2 MAY -SAT 3 MAY

Connected by the music of Frank Sinatra, this intimate, humorous and deeply moving love story explores the effects of Alzheimer’s disease and the transformative power of music in our lives.

LIFE

WED 7 MAY

A life model finds her relationship with an artist triggers a sudden revelation in this immersive play.

BARROWLAND

BALLET: WEE MAN

FRI 16 MAY -SAT 17 MAY

A new choreographic performance looking at the shifting rules of masculinity across generations, with text by Kevin P. Gilday.

Traverse Theatre

FAILURE PROJECT

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

WED 21 MAY

Two temporally intersecting stories of labour and climate change, set in 1982 and far in the future.

Dundee Theatre

Dundee Rep

BORN IN THE USA

WED 14 MAY

A moving, often humorous play taking place in the modern-day Midwest, exploring how populist politics can seduce the disillusioned and the disaffected.

KELI

THU 22 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

Marking 40 years since the miner's strike, this warming, witty tale of community follows a teenager's adventures in a brass band in a mining town.

Glasgow Art

CCA:

Centre for Contemporary Art

ALIA SYED: THE RING IN THE FISH

SAT 17 MAY -SAT 26 JUL

A multi-part exhibition featuring a new experimental 16mm film work presented as a series of moving image vignettes, exploring what role the imagination holds in migration.

Compass

Gallery

JAMES MCDONALD

RSW: SOLO

EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS & PRINTS

SAT 3 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

New solo exhibition by well-known Scottish contemporary artist.

Glasgow Print

Studio

CHRISTIAN NOELLE

CHARLES: WAIT A MINUTE?!!

FRI 4 APR -SAT 31 MAY

A new exhibition by New York-born, Glasgow-based printmaker exploring the complexities of solitude in the Black female experience.

GoMA

JOHN AKOMFRAH: MIMESIS: AFRICAN SOLDIER

1 APR-31 AUG

A film installation from acclaimed artist exploring the significant contribution of over six million African, Caribbean and South Asian people from across former colonies who fought and died in World War I.

CIARA PHILLIPS: UNDOING IT

1 APR-26 OCT

An exhibition of woodcuts, etchings and screen prints by Canadian-Irish artist exploring ways of capturing the creative process.

Patricia

Fleming

ELISABETH MOLIN + KATE V ROBERTSON:

S C U L P T U R E

Regular Glasgow comedy nights

The Stand

Glasgow

FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH

MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

Host Billy Kirkwood & guests act entirely on your suggestions.

TUESDAYS

RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.

FRIDAYS THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

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 COMEDY, 19:00

An evening of awardwinning comedy, with four superb stand-up comedians that will keep you laughing until Monday.

Regular Edinburgh comedy nights

The Stand

Edinburgh

MONDAYS RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.

TUESDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

STU & GARRY’S IMPROV SHOW, 20:30

The Stand’s very own Stu & Garry’s make comedy cold from suggestions.

THURSDAYS THE BEST OF SCOTTISH COMEDY, 20:30

Simply the best comics on the contemporary Scottish circuit.

FRIDAYS THE FRIDAY SHOW, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW (THE EARLY SHOW), 17:00

A slightly earlier performance of the big weekend show with four comedians.

Street Level Photoworks

DEPTH OF FIELD

SAT 12 APR -SUN 29 JUN

A group exhibition featuring photographers from the Glasgow Photography Group between 1987-1989, whose work led to the establishment of Street Level Photoworks.

The Modern Institute

ANNE COLLIER

1 APR-21 MAY

A juxtaposition of selfportraiture and pop culture interrogating the shifting depiction of female subjects in photography.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

JULIA CHIANG: SECRET SMILE

1 APR-3 MAY

Abstract paintings caught in a state of transformation, exploring momentary interactions through colour and shape.

YUICHI HIRAKO: NUMBER OF TREES

1 APR-21 MAY

Large-scale installations of acrylic paintings and wooden sculptures pose a reconsideration of our relationship with nature.

Tramway

SOLANGE PESSOA

SATURDAYS

THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

Monkey Barrel

Comedy Club

SECOND AND THIRD TUESDAY OF EVERY MONTH

THE EDINBURGH REVUE, 19:00

The University of Edinburgh’s Comedy Society, who put on sketch and stand-up comedy shows every two weeks.

WEDNESDAYS TOP BANANA, 19:00

Catch the stars of tomorrow today in Monkey Barrel’s new act night every Wednesday.

THURSDAYS SNEAK PEAK, 19:00 + 21:00

Four acts every Thursday take to the stage to try out new material.

Edinburgh Art

&Gallery

KATHARINE LE HARDY

SAT 3 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

A debut solo exhibition of paintings.

City Art Centre

OUT OF CHAOS: POSTWAR SCOTTISH ART

1945-2000 SAT 17 MAY -SUN 12 OCT

A survey of work looking at the diversity and ambition of work that came out of the tumult of the Second World War.

INKED UP: PRINTMAKING IN SCOTLAND

1 APR-1 JUN, TIMES

VARY

A survey of the historic versatility and experimentation in Scottish printmaking practices.

Collective

Gallery

JERWOOD SURVEY III

1 APR-4 MAY, 10:00AM

5:00PM

A major biennial touring exhibition presenting new commissions by 10 earlycareer artists from across the UK, coming to Scotland for the first time.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

CAMILA OSPINA GAITÁN: UNCONQUERED NATURES –TROPICALISM

SAT 5 APR -TUE 17 JUN

Colombian artist examining the legacies of colonialism through the lens of orchid collection.

Fruitmarket

PORTIA ZVAVAHERA: ZVAKAZARURWA

1 APR-25 MAY

An exhibition of remarkable paintings by Zimbabwean artist that deploy a unique combination of techniques to construct a visually beguiling cosmology.

FRIDAYS MONKEY BARREL COMEDY’S BIG FRIDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel’s flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

FRIDAYS DATING CRAPP, 22:00 Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, Farmers Only...Come and laugh as some of Scotland’s best improvisers join forces to perform based off two audience members dating profiles.

SATURDAYS MONKEY BARREL COMEDY’S BIG SATURDAY SHOW, 17:00/19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel’s flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

SUNDAYS MONKEY BARREL COMEDY’S BIG SUNDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel’s flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

Dovecot

Studios

THE SCOTTISH COLOURISTS: RADICAL PERSPECTIVES

1 APR-28 JUN

A groundbreaking exhibition placing the landmark work of the Scottish Colourists in conversation with their wider European context for the first time.

DOUG COCKER: THREADS SAT 24 MAY -SAT 19 JUL

One of Scotland's leading sculptors unveils a new series of work drawing inspiration from the landscape surrounding his Angus studio.

Edinburgh

Printmakers

STORY: SELECTED WORKS FROM EDINBURGH PRINTMAKERS

COLLECTION

4 APR-29 JUN

A showcase of works by a range of artists including John Byrne, David Shrigley, Victoria Crowe, Rachel Maclean and Callum Innes spanning five decades of Edinburgh printmaking.

IMPRESSIONS: SELECTED WORKS FROM THE JERWOOD COLLECTION

4 APR-29 JUN

Ingleby Gallery

IAN HAMILTON

FINLAY: FRAGMENTS

SAT 3 MAY -SAT 14 JUN

Part of a series of exhibitions marking the centenary of Ian Hamilton Finlay's birth, focusing on a group of sculptural installations in stone dating from the 1980s and 90s.

Jupiter Artland

IAN HAMILTON FINLAY + ANDY GOLDSWORTHY: WORK BEGAT WORK

11 APR-28 SEP

This exhibition brings together work by Ian Hamilton Finlay and Andy Goldsworthy – two significant artists who have been foundational to the development of Jupiter Artland.

JONATHAN BALDOCK: WYRD

SAT 10 MAY -SUN 28 SEP

A zoo of hybrid animals formed from textile and clay exploring ideas of myth-making, queerness and hybridity.

Open Eye

Gallery

ELAINE PAMPHILON: PAINTINGS

SAT 3 MAY -SUN 25 MAY

An exhibition of new and recent works, Elaine Pamphilon's colourful paintings are inspired comes from the things she loves.

CHRISTOPHER

MARVELL: SCULPTURE

SAT 3 MAY -SUN 25 MAY

In an exhibition of new paintings, Alasdair Wallace creates works that are characterised by very controlled composition combined with an unusual density and richness of colour.

MARIANNE

HAZLEWOOD: EMERGE - NATURAL DESIGN SAT 3 MAY -SUN 25 MAY Marianne Hazlewood's new and recent botanical work focusses on emergent growth, pattern and plant architecture.

Out of the Blue Drill Hall

GRETNA 110 MON 19 MAY -SAT 24 MAY

THU 15 MAY -FRI 16 MAY

SAT 12 APR -SAT 24 MAY

SAT 10 MAY -MON 22 SEP

Arthur Miller's famous Tony Award-winning re-telling of the 1692 Salem witch trial hysteria, performed by the Scottish Ballet.

Having premiered at Summerhall during the 2024 Fringe, this hilarious, sharp play explores a writer's life which starts to unravel.

Various sculptures interrogate the traditions of the form and the dimensionality of sculpture in an increasingly screen-based world.

One of Brazil's most preeminent living sculptors brings together large-scale constellations of organic materials referencing landscapes, archaeology and historical narratives from both Brazil and Scotland.

Predominantly featuring etching as well as other printmaking techniques, this impressive survey features 20 works by artists such as Tracey Emin and Lucian Freud.

New exhibition and series of events commemorating the Gretna train disaster, which left over 200 men from the 1/7th Royal Scots dead.

RSA: Royal

Scottish Academy

199TH RSA ANNUAL EXHIBITION

SAT 3 MAY -SUN 8 JUN

The largest and longestrunning annual exhibition of contemporary art and architecture in Scotland, featuring everything from painting and installation to photography and printmaking.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

EVERLYN NICODEMUS

1 APR-25 MAY

The first ever retrospective exhibition by landmark Edinburgh artist, whose joyful artworks explore and resist the global oppression of women and the profound impact of racism.

IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

1 APR-26 MAY

A free display of the celebrated Scottish artist’s work to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

YOUR ART WORLD SAT 10 MAY -SUN 2 NOV

Artworks by young people across Scotland created specifically for this exhibition, supported by a team of freelance artists.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

THE WORLD OF KING

JAMES VI AND I

26 APR-14 SEP

Marking the 400-year anniversary of King James’s death, this exhibition charts one of the most fascinating periods of British history through stories of friendship, family, feuds and ambition.

Stills AFTER THE END OF HISTORY: BRITISH WORKING CLASS PHOTOGRAPHY 19892024

1 APR-28 JUN

A survey of working class photography, exploring how the end of the fierce countercultural period of the 1980s shifted radical practices.

Summerhall

FLEUR DARKIN + HENRI MEADOWS: FEELING YOU

THU 8 MAY -SUN 18 MAY

Explores the relationship between visual arts, performances and dance, focusing on directly affecting the movement of visitors.

Talbot Rice

Gallery

TRADING ZONE 2025

1 APR-31 MAY

Talbot Rice Gallery’s interdisciplinary student exhibition featuring moving image, painting, creative writing and design responding to a broad variety of global, local and diverse issues concerning creative practitioners today.

ZOE WALKER + NEIL BROMWICH: SEARCHING FOR A CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

1 APR-31 MAY

Large-scale inflatable sculptures and immense costumes act as totems for exploring issues surrounding climate change and social justice.

Dundee Art

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts

ACTS OF CREATION: ON ART AND MOTHERHOOD

19 APR-13 JUL,

This major group exhibition collates together the joys, heartaches, myths, mess and mishaps of motherhood as told through over 100 artworks spanning from the feminist avantgarde movement to the present day.

Generator Projects

THEY HAD FOUR YEARS 2025 SAT 17 MAY -SUN 22 JUN

Generator Projects present their annual graduate show , featuring new work by five recent graduates from various art colleges across Scotland.

V&A Dundee

GARDEN FUTURES: DESIGNING WITH NATURE

SAT 17 MAY -SAT 25 JAN

Bringing together artists and thinkers such as Derek Jarman and Jamaica Kincaid, this exhibition looks at the politics and aesthetics of the modern garden.

The Skinny On... Jeremy Deller

Jeremy Deller, a conceptual artist with a sharp political edge, has been getting ready to ‘Meet the Gods’. Ahead of this collaborative performance in Dundee on 24 May, he took on our questions that not even University Challenge could prepare him for

What’s your favourite place to visit and why? Dundee – you can meet the gods there.

Favourite food and why?

Marmite on toast, no explanation needed.

Favourite colour? Pink, it’s manly.

Who was your hero growing up? Worzel Gummidge.

Whose work inspires you now? The ancients.

What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?

Worzel Gummidge, William Morris and Andrew Weatherall; Marmite on toast.

What’s your all-time favourite album? The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

What’s the worst ﬁlm you’ve ever seen? Of late, The Brutalist

What book would you take to a desert island? Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth by Gitta Sereny.

Image: courtesy of the artist.

Who’s the worst? Too many to say.

When did you last cry?

Motörhead playing at the Astoria in 1999.

What are you most scared of? Paperwork.

Tell us a secret? Nice try.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be? A chameleon.

What’s your favourite plant? Robert Plant.

What’s the most punk thing you’ve ever done?

In 1975 I was a student at St Martins College studying painting and I was also the events secretary. Some friends I’d been to school with said they were in a band and could they have a go at playing a gig... I agreed as I was always looking for things to put on. They didn’t have a name at this point and we sat around at a rehearsal and threw some names over cans of Special Brew, suddenly the words ‘Sex Pistols’ were mentioned by someone and we all erupted – the gig a week later was a glorious mess, no one had seen anything like it before. I was only nine years old but I knew it was something special even at that age.

Jeremy Deller, 'Meet the Gods', Dundee, 24 May, part of nationwide project

The Triumph of Art, marking the bicentenary of the National Gallery

'Meet the Gods' offers a chance to collectively revel with the Roman deity, Bacchus (the patron of the arts and protector of the theatre) and his mythical friends. Art students will demonstrate the power of the Art School to produce collective joy with a showcase taking place in Dundee City Square and Maryatt Hall

Jeremy Deller on University Challenge