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PLUS: ST VINCENT T IN THE PARK EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL AMY GLASGOW COMIC CON MOGWAI GLASGOW SCHOOL OF ART BURNISTOUN
BUM SUM PER ISSUMER E
ROBER CARLY T LE
4 JUN—3 SEP 2015 | ISSUE 734
FREE
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CONTENTS
FRONT Best of June, July and August Taylor Swift
FEATURES
I
t’s summertime again and Edinburgh gets ready to roll out the red carpet as the Edinburgh International Film Festival returns for its 69th edition. Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut opens the festival (page 16); plus the Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy (page 20), gets its UK debut, Ewan McGregor will chat in person about playing Jesus and Back to the Future gets a live orchestral score courtesy of the RSNO – though that event’s already sold out. Of course, summertime also means T time, and we’ve rounded up the best T in the Park action from the festival’s new location at Strathallan Castle. We chat to the awesome St Vincent (page 26), preview what’s on at the Slam Tent and mark the 20th anniversary of the T Break stage. It’s a great time to celebrate Scottish music too, with the SAY Award announced in June (page 33) and Mogwai’s 20th anniversary gigs at Barrowlands (page 80). And the wait’s finally over for ex-Beta Band man John Maclean’s first feature film: Slow West is out in June and it’s a real gem (page 71). Looking for the best events to celebrate summer in the city? The West End Festival, Magners’ Summer Nights and Glasgow Summer Sessions have you covered (page 41). And Edinburgh Festival season’s just around the corner, too. Look out for our annual Edinburgh Festival Guide, out Wed 8 Jul, and our weekly issues in August which review all the very best of the fest.
FOOD & DRINK The Dundee Larder El Cartel
COVER STORY
Editor
EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL With a new boss on board, the EIFF continues to flex its wings as a genuinely international event, but staying true to Scotland’s movie heritage is clearly a big deal for Mark Adams. Alongside The Legend of Barney Thomson, our cover star Robert Carlyle’s pulse-racing directorial debut, the full bill also includes credits for Ewan McGregor, Karen Gillan, Bill Drummond, Emma Thompson, Douglas Henshall and a documentary about the 70s / 80s Scottish music scene.
41 SUMMER EVENTS
GREAT OFFERS
Win tickets to Where’s Jack? at the Edinburgh Dungeon
Whether the weather decides to behave or not, there’s a banquet of events to keep us all happy. Magners’ Summer Nights, LeithLate and the Glasgow Mela are among the joys.
8
Win a Royal Day Out at the Royal Yacht Britannia
9
8
Win VIP passes for Moretti Gran Tour Edinburgh
9
Win a weekend pass to Perth’s Southern Fried Festival
8
Win tickets to Edinburgh International Festival’s Opening Night
9
Win tickets to Magners’ Summer Nights concerts
8
Win a course at Dance Base
43 43 44
57
Merchant City Festival Highlights
57 58
BOOKS Neu! Reekie! Neil Broadfoot Highlights
60 60 61 62
CLUBS
63
The Arches Highlights
63 64
COMEDY
65
Rob Delaney Luisa Omielan Highlights
65 67 68
Amy Inside Out Spy Highlights
KIDS
69 69 70 73 75
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MagicFest Highlights
77 78
MUSIC
79
FFS Mogwai FiniTribe Highlights Cottier Chamber Project
THEATRE
Taking place at a shiny new venue, the Scottish music scene’s powerhouse weekender features St Vincent (pictured), Noel Gallagher and Slam as well as all tomorrow’s stars on their T Break.
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AROUND TOWN
FILM
T IN THE PARK
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Edinburgh International Film Festival 15 T in the Park 25 Burnistoun 37 Glasgow Comic Con 38
4 JUN – 3 SEP 2015 | LIST.CO.UK
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Can’t Forget About You The Driver’s Seat Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man Highlights
VISUAL ART Ripples on the Pond Lee Miller and Picasso Highlights
TV Sense8 Stonemouth
FIRST & LAST Pauline McLynn
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92 92 93 95 96
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GRAPHIC CONTENT
CONTRIBUTORS Publisher & General Editor Robin Hodge Director Simon Dessain
What we’ve been talking about HEADLINE It’s Scotland. It’s June. The rain is hammering against the window but, if you’re lucky, some sleet might be along in a minute. And if the sun does actually make an appearance, there’s a fair chance that midges will soon be destroying your flesh. There is literally nothing quite like a classic Scottish summer. Still, we can but dream of balmy hot evenings and the perfect aid to those cruel mirages are the songs of summer. So, what tunes get people digging out past-itsuse-by-date sunblock and imagining those heady youthful days of being buried in quasi-asphyxiating sand?
HEINZ MEIER & JOHNNY MERCER’S SUMMER WIND AS SUNG BY FRANK SINATRA Happiness is only a whisky sour away
NOW IS THE MONTH OF MAYING BY THOMAS MORLEY Because ‘barley-break’ ain’t nothin’ to do with harvesting, right?
SUMMER NIGHTS Was there anything hotter than a prescientology Travolta?
DJ JAZZY JEFF & THE FRESH PRINCE’S SUMMERTIME Say no more
RIDE WIT ME BY NELLY Every time
BJ THOMAS’ RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD Sums up a Scottish summer for moi!
DON HENLEY’S BOYS OF SUMMER It had boys. And it had summer. And that jangly guitar intro which immediately evokes ice-cream in Largs
2 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
RAMMSTEIN BY RAMMSTEIN Not sure why a catastrophic air show disaster makes me think of summer, but there you go
MELANIE’S GARDEN IN THE CITY ALBUM The smell of summer in case that was not obvious
PORCELAIN BY MOBY It was played round the pool constantly on my first ever trip to Greece where it was a boiling 40 degrees every day. As soon as I hear it I long for the sun and Mythos!
ELLA FITZGERALD’S VERSION OF THE GEORGE GERSHWIN CLASSIC SUMMERTIME You can almost feel the oppressive heat of the southern states bleeding through as her lazy drawl wraps around the lyrics. Quite why I associate heat with Scottish summers is another question
EDITORIAL Editor Yasmin Sulaiman Research Manager Kirstyn Smith Senior Researcher Murray Robertson Research Alex Johnston, Rowena McIntosh, Rebecca Monks, Henry Northmore Subeditors Brian Donaldson, Paul McLean Editorial Assistant Carolina Morais SALES & MARKETING Media Sales Manager Chris Knox Senior Media Sales Executives Nicky Carter Debbie Thomson Sales Support Executive Jessica Rodgers Promotions Executive Jade Regulski Digital Business Development Director Brendan Miles Partnership Director Sheri Friers ! PRODUCTION Production Director Simon Armin Senior Designer Lucy Munro Designer Jen Devonshire DIGITAL Web Editor Hamish Brown Senior Writer and Content Editor Scott Henderson Senior Developer Andy Carmichael Senior Designer Bruce Combe Software Developer Iain McCusker Senior DBA Andy Bowles Digital Design Associate Jen Devonshire ADMINISTRATION Accounts Manager Sarah Reddie SECTION EDITORS Around Town Kirstyn Smith Books / Film Scotland Yasmin Sulaiman Clubs Rosie Davies Comedy / Front Brian Donaldson Dance / Kids Kelly Apter Film Reviews Emma Simmonds Food & Drink Donald Reid Music Claire Sawers Music (Classical) Carol Main News David Kettle Theatre Gareth K Vile TV Henry Northmore Visual Art Rachael Cloughton
Published by The List Ltd HEAD OFFICE: 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE Tel: 0131 550 3050, Fax: 0131 557 8500, list.co.uk, email editor@list.co.uk GLASGOW OFFICE: at the CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD Tel: 0141 332 9929, glasgow@list.co.uk ISSN: 0959 - 1915 © 2015 The List Ltd. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden without the written permission of the publishers. The List does not accept responsibility for unsolicited material. The List provides this content in good faith but no guarantee or representation is given that the content is accurate, complete or up-to-date. Use of magazine content is at your own risk. Printed by Acorn Web Offset Ltd, W.Yorkshire.
The
REALIST E N U J PHOTO © ALEX WOODWARD AT CRIMSON GLOW PHOTOGRAPHY
2 Mogwai MUSIC
Marking two decades of post-rock epicness, the Glasgow-Berlin fivesome will assuredly knock merry hell out of their recent and back catalogues with a pair of gigs at their spiritual East End home. We can’t wait for ‘Remurdered’ but would blow the roof off the place should the Cowdenbeath Brass Band make a cameo appearance. See feature, page 80. Barrowlands, Glasgow, Sat 20 & Sun 21 Jun.
PHOTO © GARETH VAN NIEKERK
1 Edinburgh International Film Festival
3 Glasgow Science Festival
Another year and another capital film festival. The event has gone through several upheavals in recent times, but we hope that with new man Mark Adams in charge, things will settle down. And he’s given us quite an opening salvo with everything from The Little Shop of Horrors Live Live Cinema night (pictured) to directorial debuts from Karen Gillan and Bobby Carlyle. Oh, and Ewan McGregor is playing Jesus. See feature, page 15. Various venues, Edinburgh, Wed 17–Sun 28 Jun.
An array of events for both kids and adults include a celebration of James Watt, a science pub quiz, a paranormal exploration, and screenings of Moon and The Matrix. See preview, page 77. Various venues, Glasgow, Thu 4–Sun 14 Jun.
FILM
4 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
AROUND TOWN / KIDS
So much culture, so little time. We boil it down to 20 of the best events
4 Slow West
5 West End Festival
Having made promo videos when he was in the Beta Band, it’s no real surprise to see John Maclean creating lots of waves in the movie world now. With Slow West, he delivers an offbeat western starring Michael Fassbender as a hired hand. See review, page 71. General release from Fri 26 Jun.
Marking 20 years of West End Festivals, here’s another top programme of events with highlights including Peggy Seeger, the Viper Roller Disco, Zombie Science, Sarah Cracknell, Elaine C Smith and Julia Donaldson (pictured). See feature, page 41. Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 5–Sun 28 Jun.
FILM
AROUND TOWN
PHOTO © IDIL SUKAN FOR DRAW HQ
PHOTO © KAT GOLLOCK
6 Neu! Reekie!
7 MagicFest
With a new anthology just launched, those worker bees at Neu! Reekie! are certainly witnessing the fruits of their labours. And they’re also putting on their biggest live show to date, with Young Fathers headlining #UntitledLive. See preview, page 60. Central Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 9 Jun.
Here’s a festival with plenty up its sleeve such as a Magic Village in Summerhall and the Late Night Horror Magic Show. Plus, there’s Colin Cloud (pictured) and Ali Cook pulling wool over your eyes. See preview, page 77. Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 26 Jun–Sat 4 Jul.
BOOKS / MUSIC
AROUND TOWN / KIDS
8 The Matthew Bourne’s Car Man DANCE
Bourne’s version of Carmen will provide enough heat to power the summer. This sensual work transports the 19th-century opera to a 1960s diner in smalltown USA. See preview, page 95. Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Tue 9–Thu 11 Jun.
9 Reginald D Hunter COMEDY
One of British comedy’s most vibrant stand-ups just so happens to be a man from the Deep South. But Reg has been here for the best part of two decades, so it’s safe to claim this preacher-scientist-comedian as one of our own. See preview, page 67. SECC, Glasgow, Fri 12 Jun.
10 Edinburgh International Film Festival CHOSEN BY SCOTTISH NATIONAL JAZZ ORCHESTRA ARTISTIC DIRECTOR TOMMY SMITH
After hours of composing, teaching or performing, I find that often the best way to unwind and relax is to watch a film. Offering the whole range from new and experimental to old classic films, I just wish I had time to immerse myself in the entire Edinburgh International Film Festival. The amazing selection of worldclass films from every genre is exciting, inspiring and offers something for everyone; in particular this year, the hair-raising opening night film, The Legend of Barney Thomson (pictured) which is Robert Carlyle’s debut film as director. And there’s Bill Drummond’s documentary, Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow and All Music Has Disappeared. Both sound truly fascinating and thought-provoking. I hope to make at least one of them in between touring. EIFF, various venues, Wed 17–Sun 28 Jun; SNJO’S Alba: Songs of Scotland is on tour, Wed 10–Fri 26 Jun, and at Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 10 Aug. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 5
T S U G U JULY/A
1 T in the Park MUSIC
With a shiny new venue in place (and wildlife concerns having been allayed for now), the country’s most renowned music festival gets a chance to re-energise, if not totally reinvent itself. On top of a very busy bill are the likes of Kasabian, Noel Gallagher with his High Flying Birds, the Prodigy and the Libertines, while other treats include St Vincent (left), the Twilight Sad, Seasick Steve, Marina & the Diamonds and Admiral Fallow. See feature, page 25. Strathallan Castle, Auchterarder, Fri 10–Sun 12 Jul.
2 LeithLate
3 Bard in the Botanics
LeithLate expands to become a four-month rolling programme of art, gigs, events, tours and parties. Plus, there will be a number of new mural artworks springing up as part of the festival, while Blueflint and Broken Records (pictured) play the tenth birthday celebrations of Elvis Shakespeare. See feature, page 41. Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 12 Jun–Sun 27 Sep.
This annual bonanza of alfresco Shakespeare may be at the mercy of the conditions, but Bard in the Botanics remains a sure-fire success when it comes to innovatively staging Will’s work. This year, we have Love’s Labour’s Lost, Richard II, The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. See preview, page 93. Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Wed 24 Jun–Sat 1 Aug.
AROUND TOWN
6 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
THEATRE
The
REALIST
4 Magners’ Summer Nights
5 Glasgow Summer Sessions
6 Glasgow Comic Con
The bandstands of the world (well, the central belt ones, anyway) unite as King Creosote’s From Scotland with Love (pictured) kicks things off while later acts include Roddy Frame, Joan Armatrading and James. See feature, page 41. Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow, Thu 6–Sat 15 Aug; Ross Bandstand, Edinburgh, Wed 26–Fri 28 Aug.
A late-summer explosion of excitement in Bellahouston Park with top billing going to Scottish chaps Paolo Nutini (representing Paisley) and the pictured Calvin Harris (straight outta Dumfries) while stellar support arrives from Ellie Goulding and Grace Jones. See feature, page 41. Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, Sat 29 & Sun 30 Aug.
BHP have gathered up another excellent bill of artists and writers for Glasgow Comic Con. Among their number are Mark Millar, Nigel Parkinson and Hunt Emerson while the Big Comic Draw gives budding strippers the chance to shine. See features, pages 38 and 104. Various venues, Glasgow, Sat 4 & Sun 5 Jul.
7 Burnistoun
8 Inside Out
9 Phoenix Bursaries
Having made their return to the public arena in March, messrs Florence and Connell plunge back into live performance at the posh Theatre Royal. Jolly Boy John and the ‘quality polis’ might seem out of place in such surroundings, but a classy sketch act is assured. See feature, page 37. Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Thu 27–Sat 29 Aug.
They may have hit a couple of bumps recently, but it looks like Pixar are back on top form with this story of a troubled girl whose brain is populated by various emotions: Mindy Kaling is Disgust while Amy Poehler is Joy. Packed with jokes and rammed full of feeling. See review, page 70. General release from Fri 24 Jul.
The memory of the Glasgow School of Art blaze will never disappear, but since then, hope has been provided for the students most affected. The Phoenix Bursary project has helped some artists and a late-summer exhibition platforms their fresh endeavours. See feature, page 40. Glasgow School of Art, Fri 24 Jul–Sun 2 Aug.
MUSIC
MUSIC
BOOKS
PHOTO © ALAN MCATEER
COMEDY
FILM
VISUAL ART
10 A Little Night Music
CHOSEN BY MUSICAL DIRECTOR HILARY BROOKS
With the excitement building locally for the West End Festival, I’d like to give a shout out for one of my favourite musicals, Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. This wonderful show launched Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s summer season in May and runs in rep until October. The score is a delight and the story is a deliciously funny exploration of love lost, love found and love rediscovered. Matinee performances are a great excuse for a day trip to a welcoming theatre with the most beautiful setting ever. A Little Night Music, Pitlochry Festival Theatre, until Sat 17 Oct; Doris & Dolly: A Double D and a Wee Bit Mor (musical direction by Hilary Brooks who also appears), Òran Mór, Glasgow, Fri 10–Sun 26 Jul; PianoPiano (performed by Hilary Brooks and Karen MacIver), Broughton High, Edinburgh, Sat 22 & Sun 23 Aug. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 7
READER OFFERS WIN TICKETS TO WHERE’S JACK? AT THE EDINBURGH DUNGEON
One of the world’s most infamous and fascinating serial killers – Jack the Ripper - is coming to The Edinburgh Dungeon this summer in a NEW spinechillingly fun show – Where’s Jack? Where did he go and where will he strike next? Will The Edinburgh Dungeon finally unravel the mystery? Visitors will get the latest from the Newspaper Boy and from a local ‘Working Girl’ as they try to solve one of the ghastliest murder sprees of all time. The Edinburgh Dungeon is giving away two pairs of tickets to see Where’s Jack? To be in with a chance of winning just log on to list.co.uk/offers Where’s Jack? Edinburgh Dungeon 31 Market Street, Edinburgh 3 Jul - 31 Aug 2015
thedungeons.com/Edinburgh
WIN A COURSE AT DANCE BASE
Dance Base is on a mission to get more people dancing! They exist to encourage and celebrate the potential for dance in everyone. The List are giving away a 13-week course of your choice at Dance Base. Autumn term runs from 5 Sep to 4 Dec 2015, and courses are available in a variety of levels and styles, including: ballet, tap, jazz, aerial, hip hop, acrobalance flamenco, tango, cuban salsa and many more. To be in with a chance of winning just log on to list.co.uk/offers and complete this famous dancing duo:
Fred Astaire and ... ? Dance Base 14 - 16 Grassmarket Edinburgh, EH1 2JU 5 Sept - 4 Dec 2015
dancebase.co.uk
TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES FRI 31 JUL 2015. TICKETS MUST BE USED BY 31 AUG 2015. VISIT THEDUNGEONS.COM/EDINBURGH FOR FULL T&C’S. USUAL LIST RULES APPLY.
TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES MON 3 AUG. SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY. NON-TRANSFERABLE AND NO CASH ALTERNATIVE. USUAL LIST RULES APPLY.
WIN A WEEKEND PASS TO SOUTHERN FRIED FESTIVAL IN PERTH
WIN TICKETS TO MAGNERS SUMMER NIGHTS CONCERTS 2015
Thanks to our good friends Magners and Regular Music we have an incredible three pairs of tickets for every show in this year’s Magners Summer Nights Concerts this August. Scotland’s festival of American roots music returns to Perth from Thu 30 Jul until Sun 2 Aug. Punch Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, McCrary Sisters and The Fairfield Four headline and the festival will also feature an all-women celebration of the songs of Dolly Parton. An open mic night, film festival, fringe gigs and outdoor stage complete the musical picture and festival goers can fill their boots with authentic Southern Fried soul food. The List are giving away a pair of Festival Passes to Perth’s Southern Fried Festival. To be in with a chance of winning just log on to list.co.uk/offers and tell us:
In which Scottish city does Southern Fried take place? Southern Fried Festival Perth Concert Hall, Mill Street, Perth PH1 5HZ Thu 30 Jul - Sun 2 Aug
horsecross.co.uk/season/southern-fried-2015 TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES WED 10 JULY 2015. THERE IS NO CASH ALTERNATIVE AND PRIZE DOES NOT INCLUDE TRAVEL. THE LIST’S USUAL RULES APPLY.
8 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
The line-up for Glasgow is King Creosote performing to the film From Scotland With Love, Roddy Frame, Glasvegas, Electric Honey Sessions, Joan Armatrading, Ben Folds & yMusic and Echo & the Bunnymen. In Edinburgh James, The Flaming Lips and The Waterboys play the magnificent setting of The Ross Bandstand below the castle. To be in with a chance of winning just log on to list.co.uk/offers and tell us:
Which concert would you like tickets for? Magners Summer Nights Concerts 2015 Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow 6-8 &13-15 Aug 2015 Princes Street Gardens Edinburgh 26-28 Aug 2015 visit magnerssummernights.com Open to over 18s only. TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES FRI 31 JULY 2015. WINNERS TICKETS CAN ONLY BE COLLECTED FROM THE VENUE BOX OFFICE ON THE NIGHT OF EACH CONCERT. USUAL LIST RULES APPLY.
READER OFFERS WIN A ROYAL DAY OUT AT THE ROYAL YACHT BRITANNIA
WIN TICKETS TO OPENING NIGHT AT EIFF 2015
For over 40 years, The Queen’s floating palace, the Royal Yacht Britannia sailed one million miles around the world. A royal residence, an ambassador for Great Britain and a home for the royal family, Britannia is now one of the country’s top attractions. Highlights include the magnificent State Apartments, the Honeymoon Suite, the Crew’s Quarters and the gleaming Engine Room. You can also enjoy a delicious lunch in the Royal Deck Tea Room. The List are giving away two pairs of tickets to visit this most special of Royal residences. To be in with a chance of winning just log on to list.co.uk/offers and tell us:
How many miles did Britannia travel around the world while in royal service? The Royal Yacht Britannia Ocean Drive Edinburgh EH6 6JJ
royalyachtbritannia.co.uk TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES FRI 31 JULY, TWO PAIRS OF TICKETS ARE ON OFFER. LUNCH NOT INCLUDED. TICKETS VALID UNTIL AUG 2016. USUAL LIST RULES APPLY.
WIN VIP PASSES TO THE MORETTI GRAN TOUR EDINBURGH Edinburgh International Film Festival 2015 opens on 17 Jun with Robert Carlyle’s black comedy, The Legend of Barney Thomson. Carlyle stars in his directorial debut alongside a stellar cast, including Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Tom Courtenay, James Cosmo and Martin Compston. The List and EIFF are offering you an exclusive chance to win a pair of tickets for the VIP World Premiere screening at Festival Theatre Edinburgh, along with passes for the Opening Party at the National Museum of Scotland. This screening is by invite only and will play host to a number of famous faces, including many of the film’s cast – and the after-party is your opportunity to mingle with the stars and enjoy some EIFF hospitality. To be in win a chance of winning just log on to list.co.uk/offers and tell us:
We are delighted to announce that the Moretti Gran Tour will be coming to Edinburgh for first time on Thu 9 Jul–Sun 12 Jul. The Moretti Gran Tour is an event created by the Italian premium beer brand, Birra Moretti, to take you on a culinary journey across the regions of Italy with dishes from a selection of the UK’s leading Italian street food vendors that perfectly compliment the beer.
Who wrote the ‘The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson’ - the book on which Carlyle’s film is based?
Summerhall will be transformed into an authentic street food market where you can experience authentic Italy in a great atmosphere with music provided by top local DJs. Winners will be given a golden wristband and tokens entitling them to complementary food and beer.
The Legend of Barney Thomson Festival Theatre Edinburgh 3-29 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9FT 17 Jun 2015, 6pm
To be in with a chance of winning VIP passes to Moretti Gran Tour Edinburgh just log on to list.co.uk/offers and tell us:
What cuisine does the Moretti Gran Tour celebrate? Moretti Gran Tour Edinburgh 1 Summerhall Edinburgh, EH9 1PL Thu 9 Jul 2015–Sun 12 Jul, 7pm - 11pm
moretti-gran-tour.designmynight.com TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES TUE 30 JUN 2015. OVER 18s ONLY. NO CASH ALTERNATIVE. USUAL LIST RULES APPLY.
edtheatres.com
EIFF Opening Party National Museum of Scotland, Chambers Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF 17 Jun 2015
nms.ac.uk
TERMS & CONDITIONS: COMPETITION CLOSES WED 10 JUNE 2015. ONLY ONE ENTRY PER PERSON IS PERMITTED. ENTRY IS OPEN TO UK RESIDENTS ONLY. WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY TELEPHONE OR EMAIL. NO CASH ALTERNATIVE. USUAL LIST RULES APPLY.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 9
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PHOTO © SOREN SOLKAER
Belle and Sebastian have been shortlisted for a Scottish Album of the Year Award
U NCERTAIN F U T U R E FO R T HE A RCHES At the time of going to print, more than 400 of Scotland’s cultural figures have signed a letter criticising the move by the Glasgow Licensing Board to impose a midnight closure on the city’s Arches venue following police complaints about drug and alcohol incidents. An online petition has also attracted close to 40,000 names. Police attempted in April to have the club closed entirely following 26 reported drug and alcohol-related incidents. For more, see page 12.
T UR NER PRIZE SHO RT L I ST ANNOUNCE D The shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize has been unveiled at Glasgow’s Tramway, where the winner of the £25,000 award will be announced on 7 December. The four nominees, none of them Scottish, are London artist Bonnie Camplin, German-born Nicole Wermers, Janice Kerbel and London-based architecture collective Assemble. Tramway’s exhibition of the four nominees’ work runs from 1 October to 17 January.
LYCEUM BOSS TO STAND DOWN Mark Thomson is to stand down as artistic director of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre at the end of its 50th anniversary season in May 2016. The announcement follows the surprise 17.5% cut in its three-year funding from Creative Scotland last November, as well as the theatre’s 17 nominations in the 2014–15 Critics’ Awards for Theatre in
Scotland. Thomson will have been in the role for 13 years, and the theatre hopes to have a new artistic director in place by the autumn.
THE STAND FOUNDER ELECTED MP Tommy Sheppard, founder and owner of The Stand comedy clubs in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle, has been elected SNP MP for Edinburgh East with a majority of 9106. He overturned a Labour majority of over 9000 with a swing of 21%. He was a Labour councillor in the 1980s and 90s, as well as assistant general secretary of Scottish Labour under John Smith, but defected to the SNP following the 2014 independence referendum.
N EW F RI N G E C I RCUS VE N U E A new Circus Hub for the Meadows is among the innovations for 2015 from the ‘big four’ Fringe venues, announced recently. The new venue will showcase circus shows from the Czech Republic, Australia, Belgium, Palestine and the UK across two spaces. Among the announcements in the Made in Scotland 2015 Fringe programme, celebrating work made and produced in Scotland, is a new production from Glasgow’s Vanishing Point theatre company and a multimedia Requiem for Edward Snowden.
SAY AWARD S H ORT LI ST ANNOUNCED The shortlist for this year’s Scottish Album of the Year Award has been revealed. The ten-
strong list includes: Belle and Sebastian’s Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, Happy Meals’ Apèro, Errors’ Lease of Life and Honeyblood’s self-titled debut. Paolo Nutini’s Caustic Love won the public vote, and last year’s winners Young Fathers are also shortlisted for their 2014 album DEAD. The Amazing Snakeheads, PAWS, Kathryn Joseph and SLAM round off the nominees for the prize. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 17 June at the O2 ABC in Glasgow. For more details, see feature, page 33.
N EW C I RCUS S C H OOL FOR E D I N B U RG H Edinburgh has a brand new full-time circus school. Full Cirqle, situated in a former warehouse in Portobello, opened in early May after having successfully raised community funds via a crowdfunding campaign, and aims to combine workshops, classes, training for circus artists and office spaces for creative businesses.
KAT I E PATE RS ON S H ORT LI ST E D FOR ART PR IZE Glasgow-born visual artist Katie Paterson has been nominated for the €40,000 Prix International d’Art Contemporain, awarded by the Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco, for her work Campo del Cielo, Field of the Sky, which recasts a meteorite into a new version of itself. The prize will be awarded on 6 October in Monaco.
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NEWS The Arches faces clubless future With Glasgow’s iconic venue losing its clubbing wing, key figures on the scene share their concerns with Rosie Davies
COMING UP
• There’s plenty of it out there already, but the full Edinburgh Fringe programme for 2015 is released on Thu 4 Jun. Don’t forget The List festival guide is out Wed 8 Jul, giving you a heads-up on the best of the various fests. Look out too for our free weekly festival issues throughout August as well as extensive coverage online at list.co.uk/festival • The Edinburgh International Book Festival programme is announced on Wed 10 Jun, with the festival running 15–31 Aug.
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he Arches is one of Europe’s most respected and revered cultural venues – and the news that its clubbing wing may have been forced to close permanently, due to the restriction of licensing hours following two well-publicised incidents relating to drugs and alcohol, comes as a massive shock to the city. On Friday 15 May, Glasgow Licensing Board restricted the venue’s licensing hours, compelling it to close at midnight with immediate effect. The result is the unavoidable closure of the space as a club venue – and the knock-on and very real concern as to whether the organisation’s internationally renowned contemporary live performance strand, which receives 80% of its funding from club events’ revenue, will be able to survive. The public have responded with a mixture of outrage and genuine sadness: 400 cultural figures from Scotland have signed an open letter criticising the move, and an online petition has attracted nearly 40,000 names. We asked some of the key people in Glasgow’s clubbing scene to share their thoughts on the decision, and their fears for the future.
Keith McIvor (Optimo Espacio) This seems to
be an ill-advised, ill-thought-out and regressive decision. I am fully aware that the Arches has faced drug-related problems but it has worked harder than anywhere to address these issues, and closing it as a club venue is not going to stop the problem but rather make it less visible and less easy to address. 12 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
Alan Miller (aka DJ Hushpuppy) The police seem to have subjected the Arches to an inordinate amount of scrutiny, and despite some Herculean efforts on the part of the venue to react positively, look pretty determined to be satisfied with nothing but the closure of the club arm. It’s shocking because the Arches is not just a nightclub – it’s a key venue in the remarkable story of Glasgow’s artistic renaissance of the past 25 years, an internationally respected venue, and a unique venue in the UK. Dave Clarke (Manager, Slam) I sincerely hope that common sense and justice will prevail in the near future. Already the public have made their voice heard. The Arches should not be made a scapegoat and a pariah for society’s shortcomings because the venue is the safest and strictest in the city – a role model of how a licensed premises should be run. Ben Coghill (Elastic Artists, Glasgow club promoter) I am not at all surprised that the powers
that be continue to stick their fingers in their ears when it comes to progressive and sustainable drug policies. Regardless of my own or anyone else’s opinion on illegal drug use and how we manage it as a society, it’s so sad for the vibrant, thriving cultural scene that the Arches sits at the heart of in Glasgow. Jobs will be lost and a massive hole will be ripped from the city’s creative community. For a longer version of this article, visit list.co.uk
• The Scottish Album of the Year Award is announced on Wed 17 Jun. See feature, page 33. • The UK’s first major retrospective of the work of Dutch graphic artist MC Escher runs at Edinburgh’s Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) from Sat 27 Jun to Sun 27 Sep. • The Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival runs from Fri 17 to Sun 26 Jul, with performers including George Benson and Jools Holland with his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra featuring special guest Marc Almond. • Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden hosts three nights of outdoor film screenings in September: The Grand Budapest Hotel (Fri 4 Sep); Mamma Mia! (Sat 5 Sep) and Back to the Future (Sun 6 Sep). • Glasgow’s Sonica festival of ‘sonic art for the visually minded’ runs Thu 29 Oct–Sun 8 Nov, with new work by Indonesian artist Jompet Kuswidananto at Govanhill Baths among 12 days of performances. • The Turner Prize 2015 exhibition will be held at Tramway, Glasgow, Thu 1 Oct–Sun 17 Jan. See page 11 for the Turner shortlist.
BIG PICTURE
TAYLOR SWIFT
It’s been a good couple of months for country pixie turned pop behemoth Taylor Swift. She scooped a mere eight gongs at the Billboard music awards and followed that by being the youngest person to make the Forbes List of 100 Most Powerful Women. This 25-year-old’s reach is so wide that one smitten male teacher in Montana promised his students that if they could somehow convince Swift to give him a call, they wouldn’t have to sit a particular exam. She might be a little busy to ring, what with some gigs to be getting on with during her globetrotting 1989 tour which rolls our way soon. The SSE Hydro, Glasgow, Tue 23 Jun.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 13
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While the EIF F wears its In ternational b the cream o adge with pr f Scottish tale ide, n t a r e rolling up t Robert Carly his year: le, Karen Gil lan, Ashley J McGregor an ensen, Ewan d Douglas H enshall are a work on sho mong those w. Across the with film fo ll owing pages some highlig , we take a lo hts including ok at T h e L e g e Amy and Liv nd of Barney e Live Cinem Thomson, a. Let the cin e-fun begin . ..
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G N I T T U C Robert Carlyle directs Emma Thompson (right) and Ray Winstone (above)
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n omso h T y Barne first shot f o d egen yle’s The L obert Carl in Glasgow sR Set . r urgh o t b mark c n i e r d i E a lm d t the a g Emm as a fi n , i l r a e v i i is rem Fest out h b and p ional Film a at o him t n r d e e t k n l I nds ta h debut o m Sim cottis S y l e uniqu
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etting out his stall in mischievous, blackly comic style, The Legend of Barney Thomson is Robert Carlyle’s directorial debut. This home-grown effort, helmed by an iconic Scottish actor best known for his roles in Trainspotting and Hamish Macbeth, is a lovingly lensed tale of murder on the barbershop floor, and it’s getting its world premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. Over the last 25 years, Carlyle’s acting career has touched social realism (Angela’s Ashes), comedy (The Full Monty), Bond (The World is Not Enough) and fairytales (the US TV series, Once Upon a Time, in which he currently stars), so the subject of his first film as director could have been anyone’s guess. But he’s plumped for crime, with this movie based on Douglas Lindsay’s 2008 novel The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, the first in a series of books about the barber-cum-killer. Set in Carlyle’s native Glasgow, it tells the story of the titular barber (played by Carlyle) whose dour existence is disrupted when he accidentally kills his boss. The story combines familial strife and serial murder, with the film’s classy cast including Emma Thompson, Ray Winstone, Ashley Jensen and Martin Compston. ‘It was first offered to me as an actor several years ago and it kept on reappearing at the wrong time over the next four or five years,’ Carlyle tells me over the phone, as we chat ahead of the EIFF premiere. Eventually the project came back to him through friend and collaborator John G Lenic in the form of Canadian writer Richard Cowan’s script. Feeling that it needed a more authentic Glaswegian voice, Carlyle brought fellow Scot Colin McLaren onboard and the two worked closely together as he took the helm. Carlyle says his background in theatre direction gave him confidence directing actors, while he picked up tricks of the filmmaking trade from the best in the business. ‘It was my experience with Ken Loach [on Riff-
Raff / Carla’s Song] and Danny Boyle [on Trainspotting / The Beach] that I was leaning on most,’ he explains. ‘I learned to be delicate, as encouraging as possible. You’ve got to love your collaborators and they’ll love you. Danny is absolutely brilliant at that. Years ago I thought, if I ever direct, that’s the guy I’ll emulate.’ He got around the logistical difficulties of needing to be both behind and in front of the camera by ingeniously employing an on-set double, in the form of recent drama graduate Mark Barrett. ‘He’s a terrific young actor,’ Carlyle says. ‘I thought the only way to do this is to get someone in there, not just a stand-in but someone who’s actually going to be Barney. He would rehearse with the actors and then at the last minute I would step in.’ Despite being just two years his senior, Carlyle made the bold decision to cast Emma Thompson as Barney’s larger-than-life mother, Cemolina. Thanks to some impressive prosthetics (courtesy of The Grand Budapest Hotel’s Oscar-winning make-up artist Mark Coulier), she’s almost unrecognisable in the role. ‘Cemolina is such a monstrous character,’ he says, ‘it was going to take someone really brave to do that, to expose themselves in that way. I’ve always loved Emma and she’s not vain. She said yes within a day, she found the fun in it and understood it right away. It’s not often actresses get a chance to let rip like that.’ Alongside them playing the fish-out-of-water detective making Barney squirm is Carlyle’s buddy Ray Winstone. ‘I just love Ray. He gives you 1000% in every single scene.’ Carlyle hasn’t been afraid to put his own stamp on the story either; so fans of Lindsay’s novels should beware, there are deviations from the book. ‘I didn’t have any hesitancy in changing stuff,’ Carlyle admits. Most noticeably, despite its grim subject matter, the film is infused with affection for Glasgow. Carlyle wanted the film to ‘show the city the way I see it’. Also, although it’s set in the modern day, it boasts a retro aesthetic
‘Years ago I thought, if I ever direct, Danny Boyle’s the guy I’ll emulate’
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which pulls together influences from various eras. Carlyle explains that this reflects the way ‘Barney limps through his present; he could have existed in any time.’ As well as the pressure of making his first film as a director, Carlyle was set the challenge of turning a misanthropic killer into a sympathetic protagonist: a feat he pulls off. ‘A lot of Barney is my dad,’ he reveals. ‘Especially with the jacket, you never see him take it off; my dad had a terrible habit of permanently keeping his jacket on. I wanted to make this guy in some way likeable; there’s no real malice in Barney.’ The prospect of premiering the film at other festivals was mooted but, although he’s surprised and ‘absolutely delighted’ for the film to have been chosen to kick off the EIFF, Carlyle always had his sights set on Edinburgh. ‘It’s a Scottish film, and the Edinburgh Festival has played such a huge part in my career.’ He’ll shortly be returning to Vancouver to shoot the fifth season of Once Upon a Time and is fortunate enough to be able to select his next directorial project from a number of possibilities. And with the glitz and prestige of EIFF’s opening night on the horizon, as he puts it himself: ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world.’ The Legend of Barney Thomson, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Wed 17 Jun, 9pm. General release from Fri 24 Jul.
ISLAND ESCAPE The Closing Gala at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival will be Iona, the second feature from Scottish director Scott Graham, which stars Ruth Negga (Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD) and Douglas Henshall (Shetland, Primeval). Yasmin Sulaiman caught up with Graham ahead of its screening to find out more What happens in Iona? It’s about a young woman who returns to the island of her birth so that she and her teenage son can hide from a crime they’ve committed; but her reasons for leaving the island as a teenager come back to haunt her. So it’s all about old wounds, old pain. You filmed on location in Iona: it must have been amazing filming in such a beautiful location? It was, but it can be hard
to soak in all that the island has to offer when you’re filming. In the right frame of mind, the island can have a profound effect on you. I’d like to go back now the film is finished and 18 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
just wander about, camp, do all the things I did when I was a kid. I think a few of us will be doing that. One amazing thing about shooting there is the incredible support we got from the islanders. We couldn’t have made the film without them. Does it feel good to be screening this at Edinburgh where Shell and Native Son screened, too? What does the festival mean to you? Edinburgh was my home
when I was trying to become a filmmaker and the festival is where I learned the value of films and filmmaking. It’s really very, very exciting.
There’s a strong empahsis on Scottish film at this year’s festival: what’s it like being a Scottish filmmaker right now? It’s
pretty exciting being Scottish full stop at the moment. I think it ties in with that sense of having a voice and trying to be heard; that’s something you’re always struggling with as a filmmaker. You’ve got to have something to say that’s worth listening to, of course, but right now it feels like a lot of us are speaking and being heard and that’s a wonderful thing to be part of.
Iona, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Sun 28 Jun, 5pm.
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O T K BAC K C A BL
er nt stopped in h le ta l a ic s u m e s ug apadia who ha ry is one of a h K to if s s e A s u to o s h e lk in ta nce The Amy W ry on. Will Lawre ti ic d d a ak documenta d n le a b ly ry g e is in ll m e p y b m a co tracks nd death into a fe li r e h d e turn
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irector Asif Kapadia likes to play the outsider. From his very first feature, the critically acclaimed 2001 drama The Warrior, to his current production, an adaptation of the novel Ali and Nino, he’s travelled to far-flung corners of the globe. The Warrior took him to northern India and the Himalayas; Ali and Nino sees him filming in Azerbaijan. Even when working on the BAFTA-winning documentary Senna, which charted the life and death of the celebrated Brazilian F1 driver, he was immersed in a world he didn’t know. The team behind Senna have now turned their talents to another documentary, this time on Amy Winehouse. Simply entitled Amy, the film has already caused a stir at the Cannes Film Festival and finally brings Kapadia home to North London where he grew up. ‘I have made a lot of movies,’ begins the 43-year-old director. ‘But while I live in London, I usually make films abroad, far away from home, and I almost use that as a way to be an outsider looking into another world. I haven’t really made films in the UK. I feel very much a Londoner, though, and when [Senna producer] James Gay-Rees called me about an Amy Winehouse documentary, he caught me at the right time. I wanted to make a film that would explore not only a fascinating talent, but also the world in which she was raised.’ Amy Winehouse was born in Enfield and grew up in North London’s Southgate, going on to become one of the most widely lauded singersongwriters of the early 21st century (she won five Grammys) before 20 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sept 2015
drink and drugs brought her life to an early end. She died in 2011 aged just 27. As Kapadia’s film shows, Winehouse was undoubtedly a prodigiously talented musician, though her complicated personal life led her down a dark and harrowing path where she became tabloid fodder and, in certain media circles, a source of ridicule. ‘It was so easy and it was a cheap gag,’ he remarks. ‘Every country in the world was making fun of a girl who, essentially, had a mental illness.’ The film follows a similar format to Senna, relying solely on footage and eschewing ‘talking heads’ with interview content playing out over the pictures. But while the F1 film was full of love and light and – despite the tragedy that ended Senna’s life – positivity and hope, Amy is a darker and much more intense experience. ‘Senna’s life was very positive and he was surrounded by love,’ explains Kapadia. ‘But Amy’s story isn’t a happy one. There is a lot of darkness and that comes out in her and the way in which she expresses herself. You have to be honest to the subject, so this is a heavier film. Senna was treated like a god but Amy was treated as something from the gutter.’ Throughout the process, the filmmakers had to ensure that their documentary did not simply regurgitate the controversy and pain that dogged Winehouse’s later life. ‘We didn’t want to make misery porn,’ says producer Gay-Rees, insisting that they had to find the light to contrast with the dark. Indeed, one of the film’s greatest successes is the joy it finds during Winehouse’s early life, which is shown via
FEATURE
THE REAL THING Scott Henderson picks five must-see documentaries displaying their wares at the Edinburgh International Film Festival
BIG GOLD DREAM: SCOTTISH POST-PUNK AND INFILTRATING THE MAINSTREAM
Filmhouse, Fri 19 Jun, 8pm; Belmont, Tue 23 Jun, 8.25pm; Odeon, Sat 27 Jun, 6.10pm The late 70s / early 80s was a period of major upheaval in social, cultural and economic terms. This tackles an iconic period of the Scottish music scene. Among those offering reflections are Norman Blake, Edwyn Collins and Bobby Bluebell. Director: Grant McPhee
DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON
‘Amy was treated as something from the gutter’ footage from her two closest childhood friends, Juliette Ashby and Lauren Gilbert, and also her first-ever manager, Nick Shymansky. Acquiring this footage was far from easy and it took Kapadia many months to win these people’s trust. ‘It all became a journey that was different from Senna because I had to get people to trust me,’ he says. ‘It was all quite recent and painful for a lot of people, and there was a lot of guilt and mistrust. There was a lot of baggage.’ It was clearly a journey worth pursuing as the early footage is revelatory. Here we see Winehouse before fame, alcohol, drugs and an eating disorder took their toll. ‘There’s laughter at the start where Amy is funny and she’s witty,’ the director says. ‘Then it gets heavier as it goes along.’ The filmmakers, while never judging Winehouse or those around her, suggest that the problems which afflicted her later life were perhaps born during childhood. ‘She was funny and talented, and what happens later on is because of something earlier in her life,’ adds Kapadia. ‘It all goes back to youth and childhood and growing up. She was a product of her experiences. The art came out of that, but so did the darkness and the loneliness. I think it is a film about a person who wants to be loved, someone who needs that and doesn’t always get it. For me, Amy is a very dark film about love.’ Amy, Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Thu 18, Sat 20 Jun. Selected release from Fri 3 Jul. See review, page 69.
Cineworld, Sat 20 Jun, 8.40pm; Sun 21 Jun, 1.15pm National Lampoon fans will need no convincing, while anyone familiar with the 80s comedic work of John Belushi, Bill Murray, John Landis, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner will be fascinated by this film charting its rise from satirical magazine to comedy institution. Director: Douglas Tirola
MISERY LOVES COMEDY
Cineworld, Thu 25 Jun, 8.40pm; Sat 27 Jun, 3.50pm Do you really need to be unhappy to be excellent at comedy? Actor and comic Kevin Pollak steps behind the camera to interview some of the biggest names in the business (Larry David, Lisa Kudrow and Steve Coogan for three), investigating how to make it in the laughter industry and why on earth they all do it. Director: Kevin Pollak
PRECINCT SEVEN FIVE
Filmhouse, Sun 21 Jun, 8.15pm; Cineworld, Mon 22 Jun, 8.35pm Corrupt NYPD cops, brutal gangs and Dominican drug barons: it might sound like a new Martin Scorsese flick, but this is the riveting real-life tale of Brooklyn’s 75th precinct in the 1980s. You may never look at a police uniform the same way again, as it follows one rookie cop who eventually became a hardened criminal. Director: Tiller Russell
THAT SUGAR FILM
Cineworld, Sun 21 Jun, 6.05pm; Tue 23 Jun, 8.30pm Australian actor Damon Gameau (Balibo) launches his debut documentary which tackles sugar in much the same way Morgan Spurlock took on the might of McDonald’s in Super Size Me. Designed as an entertaining exploration of a very serious health issue, it features impressive talking heads such as Hugh Jackman and Stephen Fry. Director: Damon Gameau
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TALKING MOVIES Live Live Cinema brings Roger Corman’s classic The Little Shop of Horrors to madcap life at the EIFF. Scott Henderson caught up with director Leon Radojkovic
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hot for $30,000 in two days on a set left over from another film and featuring a talking plant, Roger Corman’s 1960 horror comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors, has always been unique. Its cult following has slowly morphed into an Off-Broadway musical, a 1986 remake and a further Broadway revival. Now it’s getting the live cinema treatment at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, courtesy of New Zealand outfit Live Live Cinema. As high-octane cinematic experiences go, there’s nothing quite like a film with four artists providing voice, music and sound effects up there on stage. Having tackled Carnival of Souls and Dementia 13 with larger ensembles, director Leon Radojkovic explains why The Little Shop of Horrors was perfect for something altogether more dangerous . . .
What was the motivation to go smaller?
There were two reasons, really; the first was that we wanted to create a show where we amped up the danger. We wanted to create something that was pretty much impossible and that had the audience on the edge of its seat and pushed our group of performers almost to breaking point. Four performers trying to do all the music, dialogue and sound effects is really ridiculously difficult and that makes for exciting, dangerous theatre. The other reason, if we are to be totally honest, is a financial one. We want people to see our work, and so four people and two suitcases is way easier to tour than 17 people and a container of stuff. How were the cast brought together?
What was the inspiration for Live Live Cinema?
The main inspiration actually came from the fairly common format, particularly within film festivals, of a musical ensemble performing a new score to an old silent film. Live Live Cinema pushes this basic concept much further however, by working with films from the sound era. So not only do we have a band performing new music, we have actors performing all the dialogue, and a madcap Foley artist working furiously to produce the sound of everything from the clinking of cutlery to an axe through the head. This immediately introduces all sorts of new layers and complexity, and also allows us to really interact with the film and reshape it quite significantly, simply with the power of audio.
We needed performers who were both funny, skilful character actors and musical chameleons; we needed very clever humans. We were all fans of Hayley Sproull and thought she would be a superb Audrey, which she is. Oliver [Driver, Live Live Cinema’s director] and I had both just worked with Laughton Kora on Jesus Christ Superstar and we loved his energy and on-stage personality. Byron Coll is a comedic genius and Barnie Duncan is one of my favourite performers. Ultimately these four shone in the auditions. We wanted a cast of naughty clowns, each with a different personality and style. We honestly couldn’t be happier with them, as they are all truly astonishing. How big a challenge has it been?
The EIFF programme describes The Little Shop of Horrors as ‘Corman at his most bizarre’. Why did you choose this film?
Where Dementia 13 and Carnival of Souls both trade on atmosphere and tension, which can really be exploited by a large ensemble of performers aiming to produce an all-encompassing, thrilling live cinema experience, The Little Shop of Horrors is much more dialogue and character driven. It’s talky and fast-paced, which makes it perfect for a smaller ensemble of just four actor-musicians being forced to work like maniacs to essentially fulfil three separate roles each simultaneously. 22 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
The biggest challenge is that it is simply impossible, but that’s what makes it such an exciting performance to watch; you know they must at times fail, and indeed they do. It’s hilarious when it happens. Our first two productions were beautiful presentations of classic cinema while The Little Shop of Horrors is a chaotic trip; it’s mad, funny and totally insane. Live Live Cinema’s The Little Shop of Horrors, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Wed 24 Jun, 7.30pm.
Ewan McGregor might be among the biggest names attending this year’s Edinburgh film festival, but there’s so much more to discover in the 2015 programme. Eddie Harrison picks out a selection of festival films from EIFF director Mark Adams’ first programme
2015
DISCOVERY POINTS
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13 MINUTES
EVERY SECRET THING
Downfall director Oliver Hirschbiegel came a cropper with his attempts at English-language cross-over (The Invasion, Diana) but he wowed the Berlin Film Festival with this historical drama about Georg Elser, who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Thu 18, Sat 20 Jun.
Directing the late James Gandolfini opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Enough Said has propelled Nicole Holofcener to global acclaim; here, she provides the script for Amy Berg’s look at the aftermath of infanticide with Diane Lane and Dakota Fanning. Fri 19 & Sat 20 Jun.
THE OBSCURE SPRING
WELCOME TO ME
CUT SNAKE
MANGLEHORN
Best known for his role in Pedro Almodovar’s I’m So Excited, Jose Maria Yazpik makes sparks fly with co-star Irene Azuela as star-crossed lovers in this erotic drama from Ernesto Contreras, director of festival-circuit favourite Blue Eyelids. Sat 20, Sun 28 Jun.
Kristen Wiig became a queen of indiedrama with last year’s The Skeleton Twins and Hateship Loveship. Shira Piven’s comedy/drama casts her as a lottery winner who creates a TV show just about herself. James Marsden and Wes Bentley support. Sun 21, Tue 23 Jun.
Sullivan Stapleton has gained leadingman status in Hollywood with 300: Rise of an Empire; director Tony Ayres (The Slap) brings him back to Australia for a terse Brisbane-set thriller about two ex-cons who find themselves tempted back to their old, violent ways. Tue 23, Thu 25 Jun.
Outside of his mainstream hit Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green has made thoughtful low-key drama his thing. A career-resurgent Al Pacino plays the Texan locksmith of the title, with Holly Hunter the subject of his tentative romantic overtures. Tue 23, Sun 28 Jun.
THE FIRST FILM
CHUCK NORRIS VS COMMUNISM
Distributor, publisher, producer and occasional actor David Wilkinson is one of the great characters of British cinema; his latest documentary looks at the forgotten figure of Louis Le Prince, who kickstarted the medium of film in Leeds circa 1888. Tue 23, Thu 25 Jun.
Romanian writer/director Ilinca Calugareanu’s provocatively titled documentary looks at how the wave of VHS action movies in the 1980s may (or may not) have influenced the Romanian Revolution. Wed 24 & Thu 25 Jun.
NIGHT SHIFT
SCOTTISH MUSSEL
A national treasure in Iran, Niki Karimi’s career as an actress spans several decades since her breakthrough with The Bride in 1991. For her fourth film as director, Karimi has forged an intense drama about a couple’s marriage under threat from within. Thu 25 Jun.
Actress-turned-writer/director Talulah Riley pulls together some disparate talents including Martin Compston, Harry Enfield and Paul Brannigan for this conservation-based local comedy, shot in beautiful locations on Scotland’s west coast. Fri 26 & Sat 27 Jun. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 23
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24 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
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IN THE PARK FRI 10–SU N
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12 JUL
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T in the Park is back and it’s moved house. Kirstyn Smith gives you the lowdown on the new location for Scotland’s biggest music festival
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trathallan Castle is the new setting for that behemoth of Scottish festivals, T in the Park. Uprooted from its regular home at Balado after concerns about the Forties oil pipeline, T has experienced months of confusion, controversy and near-homelessness thanks to fears over wildlife safety. A unanimous vote by Perth and Kinross council at the beginning of May allayed these worries and the festival will run from Fri 10–Sun 12 Jul. Won’t somebody think of the osprey? They have.
A video showing osprey returning to their nests at Strathallan was passed on to RSPB Scotland and, since osprey are a protected species, they cannot by law be disturbed while nesting. The move was approved after a series of council meetings, with organiser Geoff Ellis saying: ‘It is our intention to continue to work with the relevant authorities and organisations to ensure the long-term protection and safeguarding of the local environment surrounding Strathallan.’
But is it easier to get to? Expect the same heady highs of T travel. One hour from Glasgow and Edinburgh, road links are handy and the usual shuttle buses will be operating from various locations across the UK. So what’s the vibe this year? An attempt to cater to the more discerning T goer. Ellis has been promoting the Residence camping site a lot more this year, with its hot showers, hair dryers and fresh towels. He also claims the new site will be more appreciated by an older demographic. This nod to a more mature audience can also be seen in the lineup. Is that shade you’re throwing? Not at all. The lineup is pretty steady and is likely to appeal to a wide audience. The headliners across the three nights are Kasabian, the Libertines and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. Also playing are St Vincent, Sam Smith, Jessie Ware, the Proclaimers, Idlewild, the War on Drugs, Hot Chip and the Twilight Sad: to name but a small selection.
Strathallan Castle? Sounds fancy It is.
In the heart of Perthshire, the festival is set within 1000 acres of woodland with the 19th-century castle as a backdrop to the music. That’s 400 acres larger than Balado, you know?
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 25
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E IN TH K R A P
‘We were the goofballs in the robes backstage’
26 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
ST VINCENT
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tinthepark.com
St Vincent is back in Scotland for T in the Park, trying to bring together more disparate souls. She talks to Fiona Shepherd about dancing, festivals and being missing in action
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op music is a richer place for having St Vincent in it. The same could be said of a number of musicians, from Janelle Monae to our own Phantom Band, who treat pop music as an adventure playground. But the artist also known as Annie Clark has been riding particularly high since the release of her eponymous fourth album last year. She has attracted admiring notices for her idiosyncratic songs and aesthetic and also some less welcome gossipy attention for her relationship with model Cara Delevingne, who is strictly ooff-limits as an interview topic. New music, however, is safe ground. Her latest r release, ‘Teenage Talk’, was recently featured on a episode of Girls and celebrates the peculiar, an iintense bonds of adolescence. ‘It’s a rrumination on the teenage years and how tthe music you listen to becomes your iidentity and your shield and a means oof communicating your self-hurt to oothers,’ says Clark. ‘I was lucky eenough to have a ragtag group of m misfits that I was friends with. They ccalled me Missing in Action because II’d make plans to go out and drink at tthe warehouses with everybody but I w would get lost in playing the guitar and stay in my room all day and night to do that instead.’ Clark has talked before about her obsessive streak when it comes to mastering a skill: she’s a dab hand at keepie-uppie too, apparently. Her lean, superfuzz guitar sound is instantly recognisable, a product of her interest in the technical side of playing which was encouraged when she studied at the Berklee College of Music but also of her renegade spirit; she dropped out of the course after three years and began work on St Vincent, a handle she adopted as ‘a portal through which I’m creative’. Over the ensuing years, Clark has developed a highly stylised stage show to complement her distinctive music. In 2013, she toured her Love This Giant collaboration with David Byrne, partial himself to quirky performance and shaking a leg onstage. Together they worked with choreographer Annie-B Parson on movement and interaction with their bandmates – a troupe of brass players – marking a first outing for the St Vincent dainty doll-like shuffle which is now a signature part of her show. ‘I’m silly about dancing in that I will dance for thousands of people or I will dance alone in my room but I don’t dance at parties,’ says Clark. ‘But Annie-B really has this angular but beautiful way of helping position the body.’
While her mainstream pop peers pour their ample budgets into allsinging, all-dancing extravaganzas, Clark has honed a more modest but no less theatrical act, using hand gestures which are a bit like Zen semaphore and scripted third-person addresses to the audience which are bizarrely arresting. ‘I figure if we’re all in the same room together we’ve already gathered around the fire as it were. So how do we talk about things that are really intimate but at the same time really universal? Like the fact that you sometimes mistake children for tiny adults on the subway [maybe that’s just her?] or you’re really terrified of heights: the unique universal as it were. If I can talk in third person then I can say really intimate things about myself or I can make things up that aren’t really me but can seem like they can apply to everyone. It’s a roundabout way of connecting with people. It may seem stilted or strange but the ultimate goal of it is even more coalescing of disparate souls.’ Yeah, yeah, but how’s that going to play out in front of the mad-fer-it T in the Park massive? ‘I’m going to put some twists and turns in it for fun,’ says Clark, who is no stranger to the radge character of the festival crowd, having chalked up plenty of experience when she joined the Polyphonic Spree as their guitarist. ‘We were the goofballs in the robes backstage,’ she recalls. ‘We were always on a bill with Jet, Franz Ferdinand or the Hives and then we’d be like these dirty, scraggly Texans, superdrunk on Jägermeister, on stage after these cool bands in leather jackets.’ Now that St Vincent’s solo career has truly taken off, she’s back in festival land with a vengeance. ‘You just have to put an exclamation point behind everything,’ she says of a festival set. ‘There’s a certain amount of intimacy that goes out the window and a cacophony that enters so you just ride the crowd’s energy. They’re always kind of rabid and manic because they’ve been standing up for 72 hours or whatever.’ Despite having never attended, Clark appears to have captured the T in the Park ‘experience’ in a nutshell. ‘Oh yes, I believe it!’ she laughs. St Vincent performs at T in the Park on Sat 11 Jul. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 27
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WINGING IT
tinthepark.com
With T in the Park now at the third location in its history, Kirstyn Smith takes a look at the only artist to play all three sites: Mr Noel Gallagher
T
he Rain, Oasis, Smokin’ Mojo Filters, High Flying Birds: Noel G Gallagher’s aliases over the years are set to match the frequency of hi high-profile spats with brother Liam if he’s not careful. Still, have band wil will travel; and he has, having appeared at innumerable festivals across th the world. In fact, Gallagher will soon be able to boast that he is the on only person to have played at all three T in the Park locations: Strathcly Strathclyde Country Park, Balado and Strathallan Castle. We take a look back at how his T in the Park life has fared against his broader career. 1994
At the v very first T in the Park, Noel performed with Oasis on the T King Tut’s Sunday lineup. Fifth on the bill, they appeared below House of Pain, Greenock’s Whiteout and the future egghead du jour, P Professor Brian Cox performing with ‘Things Can Only Get Better poppers, D:Ream who headlined the night. In the charts, Better’ Oasis’ first single ‘Supersonic’ had peaked at number 31 earlier in ye quickly followed by debut album Definitely Maybe which the year, fared significantly better, crashing the charts at number one: the fastes fastest-selling British album at that time. 2002
Oasi returned to T in the Park eight years later, this time as Oasis head headliners of the main stage on Saturday night. Up against Base Basement Jaxx on the BBC Radio 1 / NME stage, they followed Prim Scream, Gomez and No Doubt. Gallagher was having Primal pr a pretty good couple of years: Oasis were soaring, with Hea Heathen Chemistry, released in July, becoming the group’s fifth consecutive number one album. Single ‘The Hindu Times’ rea reached number one while ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’ and ‘Li ‘Little by Little / She is Love’ both peaked at number two. 2012 20
W a difference ten years makes. Sibling quibbles came to a What he in 2009, leading to the break-up of Oasis. Gallagher’s first head T appearance sans Liam et al was with Noel Gallagher’s High F Flying Birds in 2012, second on the bill to fellow swaggering M Manc the Stone Roses on the Saturday night main stage. Back in the real world, Gallagher had been touring since October 2 2011 with Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds after the r release of their self-titled album. ‘Dream On’ reached number t three in the UK indie charts, followed by ‘Everybody’s on the Run’ hitting number two later in the year. It’s not Oasis-level success, but at least it wasn’t Beady Eye (who failed to chart anywhere after 2011). 2015
Gallagher will be headlining once again on Sunday night, up against the Prodigy and Stereophonics in what looks like a battle of nostalgia acts. NGHFB are still rolling on, and Gallagher has turned into a bit of an award collector: most recently receiving a Q Icon award in both 2011 and 2013 from Q magazine, as well as NME’s Godlike Genius Award in 2012 and the somewhat more credible Ivor Novello for Outstanding Song Collection in 2012. In March this year, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ Chasing Yesterday topped the charts.
28 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
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t Scottish music’s biggest talent contes having is 20 years old, with Tennent’s T Break Snow Clyro, helped kickstart the careers of Biffy aks to some Patrol and the View. David Pollock spe the years acts who have graced that stage down
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30 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
COLLET
s Broken Record
PHOTO © SOLEN
t was the gig which made our career,’ says Broken Records’ Jamie Sutherland. Their 2007 appearance on T in the Park’s T Break stage opened the floodgates for his Edinburgh-based band, whose career continues to this day. It’s the ultimate compliment that any of the many musicians who have appeared as part of this showcase of Scotland’s best unsigned artists could pay. While some don’t take advantage of the springboard offered and others are already well on their way by the time their slot arrives, it’s the ones like Broken Records who launch themselves from T Break which surely represent the scheme’s greatest success. Since it began in 1996, Tennent’s T Break’s success stories have been many: Snow Patrol played as Polar Bear in 1997 and again under their new name in 1999, returning as main stage co-headliners in 2009 and headliners in 2012. Biffy Clyro played in 2000 and headlined the main stage in 2014. The View appeared in 2006 and made it to the main stage seven years later. Elsewhere, names like PAWS, Hector Bizerk, Honeyblood, Discopolis and Conquering Animal Sound have appeared on recent bills. ‘The tent was packed,’ says Sutherland. ‘It was two o’clock on a Sunday, maybe we just caught the weather, but we managed to keep the crowd. We headlined T Break showcase at the Liquid Room in August where we met a lot of agents, and the gig was written about in the press so it steamrollered from there. But even just having the rush of playing to a festival crowd that day was brilliant.’ While that August showcase gig and the live heats in spring are no more, there’s still the kudos of being selected by a panel of Scottish music industry insiders who hear enough new music to recognise your group are standing out from the crowd. For some the experience just doesn’t click, like Julie Eisenstein of Glasgow’s Tuff Love, who played in 2014 and are forging their own success regardless. ‘We applied on a whim and were surprised to be accepted,’ she recalls. ‘There were about five people there for us, which we thought was pretty good, considering we were on at the same time as the Pixies. I think we gained exposure from the press surrounding the event, though.’ Yet for others, just being on the bill is an ambition held since youth. ‘I was at the first T in the Park at Strathclyde Park in 1994 and saw Rage Against the Machine on stage with Cypress Hill,’ says Dave Hook
of Stanley Odd, who played in 2010. ‘It was one of the first gigs I’d ever been to and it made such an impact on me, so the opportunity to play there was something I’d aspired to for a long time. We were the first act on the Saturday, so we went on Friday with a whole bunch of flyers and a team of folks that got involved in promoting it. Thankfully it paid off and the tent was full; the reaction we got from the crowd was excellent and the experience was amazing.’ ‘It’s a glorified battle of the bands,’ says Sutherland. ‘But it’s exciting to do it, and musicians are very good at pretending they’re not competitive about things like that. When we started off in St Andrews we knew nothing about the music industry; we put in our demo to T Break and before we knew it, Vic Galloway was playing us on BBC radio and we had a manager. It was the point that everything changed.’ T Break Stage at T in the Park, Strathallan Castle, Fri 10–Sun 12 Jul.
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tinthepark.com
Crash Club
If you want a glimpse into the future of Scottish music, look no further than this year’s lineup of 16 emerging acts
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With Chvrches and Prides putting Scot tish electro pop on the map, this year’s selection of upand-coming talent features synth-wi elding acts aplenty. Reminiscent of Two Door Cine ma Club, AmatrArt’s hooky electro will sound great in a festival setting. Our Future Glory, Othe r Humans and Apache Darling are sure to light up the tent with their bright electro pop, complete with huge festival-worthy choruses. For somethin g a little darker, Crash Club expertly fuse EDM with rock, while The Claramassa create heavy electro rock with haunting layered vocals. SchnarffSchnarff will be dishing up some good old alternative rock, with soaring chor uses and great hooks to boot, whilst DIVIDES ’ angst-fuelled numbers are bound to inspire a mos h pit or two. Tijuana Bibles are sure to steal a few festivalgoers from the main stage when they dest roy the T Break tent with their stadium-sized soun d, à la Queens of the Stone Age. It wouldn’t be T Break without a sprin kling of guitary indie bands, and this year is no exception. With their no-fuss indie rock, Dead Man W Fall have garnered fans such as US talk show g host Craig Ferguson, while Catholic Action are being hotly tipped for their smooth-yet-edgy appr oach. Enjoy a bit of nostalgia? Ded Rabbit take us back to the indie uprising of the mid-00s as The Van Ts provide, in their own words, ‘everythin g you ever wanted from a 90s dream’. For fans of acoustic singer-songwriter s, don’t miss Gerry Cinnamon and Be Charlott e. Both amazing lyricists, Cinnamon’s music is political at heart, whilst the latter Dundonian deliv ers some vocal truths with her wordy acoustic pop ditties. Finally, Spring Break’s music isn’t as easily categorised. Playing folk, funk and hip hop, with dolphin sounds thrown in for good mea sure, they’re sure to bring something diffe rent to the T Break table. (Nina Glencross) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 31
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DANCE BASE
tinthepark.com Packed some glow sticks? st of this year’s David Pollock rounds up the be thallan S Slam Tent offerings at Stra T in the Park might have a shiny new location but, as ever, the Slam Tent
is hosted and programmed by Glasgow house and techno duo Slam, also ho the people behind The Arches’ (RIP, for the moment) highly-regarded residency Pressure. They’ll be kicking things off on Friday evening res alongside Sub Club regular Telford, with an international alliance of alo house DJs and producers to follow. The Bristolian Eats Everything, ho German duo Ame, Berghain regular Ben Klock and a Drumcode Ge coalition featuring the Swedish label’s boss Adam Beyer and his Italian co labelmate Joseph Capriati close the evening off with a b2b set. la On Saturday, Annie Mac, Radio 1’s ambassador for all things bass, will w be one of the key figures to take to the decks. For the first time, Radio 1 will be broadcasting sets from this weekend in their Essential R Mix slot, so hopefully this might mean we hear Glasgow’s golden boy Jackmaster going b2b with his old mate Joy Orbison or even Chicago house icon Lil Louis again afterwards. Also on Saturday, Berlin’s architect-turned-techno DJ Rødhåd makes his T debut (see interview, below). Finally, an eclectic Sunday sees the dense techno flavour of Surgeon joined by frequent Lady Gaga collaborator Lady Starlight. Also listen out for Maya Jane Coles, the young auteur who fuses dubstep, garage and more typical house styles.
BUILDING S
omeone once said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture and where techno is concerned, this analogy has some currency. Great techno sets are defined by a sense of structure, the outlines of which rise up and fall down in flowing contours and, sometimes, sharp spikes. It’s tempting to consider Rødhåd’s style as a product of his former profession – he was working at an architecture firm until last year – and it’s a comparison he’s acknowledged in the past, though these days the process is more intuitive. ‘The good thing about a DJ is that he needs to read the crowd,’ he says. ‘So I just react on what energy level is possible and try to bring my own view on the music and sound to the people. That’s the secret.’ As Rødhåd’s profile has grown in his native Berlin through residencies in Golden Gate and Zementgarten in the mid-to-late noughties, he has spent more time closing parties than opening them, and these days his typical schedule includes regular slots at Berghain and his own party and label, Dystopian, as well as a glut of festival bookings. The Dystopian sound mingles with familiar tropes of the genre: science fiction, industrial landscapes, melancholy sounds and greyscale artwork. It is, however, an authentic reflection of the label’s mindset. But, he tells me: ‘we are not 32 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
PHOTO © MAT THI
Berlin’s Rødhåd makes his T in the Park debut this year. Ray Philp caught up with him ahead of the festival
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only interested in making music for the dancefloor; [we make it] with all atmospheres we love, like melancholy, darker grooves and so on. But, we also want to be open minded; not always doing techno music.’ Rødhåd’s T in the Park debut this summer underscores a meteoric rise for someone who still seems genuinely surprised at the idea of being a full-time DJ and producer. ‘To be honest,’ he says, ‘I still need some time to realise the changes in my life. To be independent and live from what you love is satisfying.’ His present profile as an artist is thanks to his music, which blends the machinistic grooves of modern Berlin techno with a high-spec minimalism; ‘Newspeak’, a track from one of his earliest EPs, the George Orwell-referencing 1984, feels like an earnest nod to Robert Hood. That he’s now jostling for space with Detroit legends of that calibre on festival flyers is apt when you consider the stratospheric climes his music inhabits: only Rødhåd himself still seems to be adjusting to the altitude. Rødhåd plays the Slam Tent at T in the Park on Sat 11 Jul.
SAY AWARD
THE SAY AWARD 2015 SHORTLIST: BELLE AND SEBASTIAN Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance
ERRORS Lease of Life
SAY ANYTHING This year’s Scottish Album of the Year Award shortlist puts some of Scotland’s lesser known musical treasures in the spotlight. Stewart Smith assesses the ten contenders
HAPPY MEALS Apéro
HONEYBLOOD Honeyblood
KATHRYN JOSEPH Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood I’ve Spilled
PAOLO NUTINI Caustic Love
PAWS Youth Culture Forever
SLAM Reverse Proceed
THE AMAZING SNAKEHEADS Amphetamine Ballads
YOUNG FATHERS DEAD
T
his year’s shortlist for the Scottish Album of the Year award is a canny mixture of household names and under-the-radar talent. 2014’s winners Young Fathers are in there with the Mercury Prize-winning DEAD, while Caledonian soul superstar Paolo Nutini makes it in having won the public vote for his massive hit Caustic Love. Neither is likely to take home the top prize, but their presence will help boost SAY’s profile and shine a light on the lesser-known acts. SAY’s openness is one of its strengths. There’s no entrance fee and self-released albums are welcomed. 100 nominators are invited to rank their five favourite albums, with the top 20 making the longlist (I was a nominator, although none of my picks made the longlist). From that, the judges choose the shortlist of ten, with a guaranteed place going to the winner of the public vote. The 147-strong longer list (available to read at sayaward.com/longerlist) shows just how varied the initial nominations were, with everything from jazz orchestras and traditional folk groups to baroque ensembles and bone-crushing doom-metal bands. It might be worth considering ways in which the longlist could be made more representative, but SAY has clearly made the effort to seek out specialist opinion. At last year’s awards ceremony, Lauren Mayberry of Chvrches rightly criticised the relative lack of women on the shortlist. Whether by accident or design, this year’s shortlist goes some way to redressing the balance, with half of the acts being female-led or featuring female members and collaborators. So it’s out with the ubiquitous heart-on-beard indie and in with the dreamy fuzz-pop of Honeyblood and the creepy-beautiful balladry of Kathryn Joseph: undoubtedly a good thing. Some might be surprised that big names such as Idlewild, Mogwai, King Creosote and the Twilight Sad haven’t made the shortlist, but SAY have done the right thing in favouring emergent and marginal artists over established acts. That said, few would begrudge twee pop icons Belle and Sebastian or techno legends Slam their debuts on a SAY shortlist. Timely recognition for Green Door Studios’ contribution to Glasgow pop-life comes with the inclusion of albums from garage-rockers the Amazing Snakeheads and Francophile disco-pop duo Happy Meals. The former have already disbanded, making it unlikely that they’ll take the prize, but Happy Meals are definitely real contenders. Released on the excellent Night School Records, their debut Apéro is an underground pop gem, characterised by Suzanne Rodden’s charming French-language vocals and Lewis Cook’s psychedelic synth-pop production. The smart money, however, is probably on Errors, whose fourth album Lease of Life is their best yet. Graced by the vocals of Cecilia Stamp and Bek Oliva, it takes their ‘post-electro’ into euphoric new territory, all gleaming cityscapes and tropical dance parties. With its past winners, SAY has shown good judgement in rewarding up-and-coming talent (Young Fathers in 2014) and beloved cult figures (RM Hubbert in 2013, Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat in 2012). The time seems right for Errors to join that pantheon. The winner of the Scottish Album of the Year Award is announced on Wed 17 Jun. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 33
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS
PHOTO © DONALD LEE
‘We’ve forgotten how we fit into the world’
34 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
JOHN LUTHER ADAMS
NATURE BOY Environmental composer John Luther Adams chats to David Kettle as he gets ready to debut a new outdoor work at the East Neuk Festival this summer
‘F
or me, music is not what I do: music is how I understand the world. At a personal level, I think I’m trying to compose home.’ US composer John Luther Adams isn’t talking about some self-absorbed, new-age longing for security through sound. This environmental activist-turned-composer is instead describing his conception of a profound melding of music and place; of music defining, and being defined by, the natural world. It’s a relationship he’s explored many times before in his uncategorisable music, such as the huge orchestral swells of his 2014 Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning ‘Become Ocean’ or his 2009 ‘Inuksuit’ for percussionists scattered across a landscape, which received a magical UK premiere at Fife’s East Neuk Festival in 2013. Adams is back at East Neuk with a brand new outdoor work – ‘Across the Distance’ – in which music and landscape are again intimately linked. ‘I imagined that the music would arise and come out of the earth and would slowly rise up the harmonic series,’ he explains. ‘And as the music rises, the players walk out into the distance. So the music rises and goes out, and never comes back: it just dissolves into the air.’ He’s a composer in the experimental, John Cage mould, happy to accept that his music is sometimes open-ended, and that its specific outcomes can often not be predicted. But his focus on the natural world brings a sharp, pertinent context to what otherwise might seem overly conceptual. And it’s borne out of Adams’ political viewpoint: he’s lived in Alaska since the 1970s, where for several years he worked full-time as an environmental activist before devoting himself to music. Unsurprisingly, he’s happy with the ‘environmental composer’ label. ‘If my music doesn’t work as music, then any other associations or labels that might be put on it are meaningless,’ he explains. ‘But I want to have it both ways, really. And I believe there’s no reason I can’t, in composing music that is a world of its own, and yet ultimately derives from the world in which we live: the only home we know.’ ‘Across the Distance’ will bring together music and nature intimately, even down to the very notes that dozens of horns will play, all based on the instrument’s natural acoustic properties. ‘For me, music is many things and one of them is audible physics,’ he continues. ‘The harmonic series is a basic property of musical physics and acoustics; tubes or strings or other resonating bodies all want to vibrate in particular proportions. It’s a very organic, natural thing that exists in the air and the music of the world around us, and I wanted to tap into that in this piece.’
Taking the nature connections still further, every one of the piece’s musical phrases is intended to last a single breath – which will unavoidably vary from player to player, thereby creating a rich and unpredictable texture. Scottish Chamber Orchestra principal horn Alec Frank-Gemmill is in charge of co-ordinating the performance itself. ‘I’ve been really impressed working with John, both by his character and his insights,’ he says. ‘He’s a very open person, incredibly creative as well as intellectually rigorous about it all.’ Using amateur musicians and kids alongside professionals has been fundamental to the piece right from the start, and Frank-Gemmill is in charge of sourcing local players: ‘The amazing thing is that there’s a horn club right in Fife, called the Fife Horn Union, and we’re talking to them about being involved.’ How important is the Fife landscape in Adams’ conception? ‘I love Scotland and I have an idealised image of the Scottish countryside, with the Highlands and the lakes and the mountains,’ he elaborates. ‘In a sense this is a very Scottish piece, simply because the Scottish landscape will form part of the performance.’ As for what the performance will all mean, Adams is keen not to dictate. ‘As a composer, I’m not really interested in telling the listener what to think or how to feel or what to experience. All I want is for you to have your own authentic personal experience.’ This ties in closely with the practicalities of an open-ended, outdoor, promenade performance: ‘There is no best seat in the house. Every listener has the opportunity to create their own mix or listening experience. One person may decide that they’re going to sit right in the middle of the space and let the piece radiate out into the distance. Another may become intrigued by following the path of a certain horn player, and may follow that person out into the countryside.’ It’s all part of a bigger plan not only to take inspiration from nature, or even use nature as part of performance, but to rediscover our environment. ‘We’ve become a culture that’s so fragmented that we’ve kind of forgotten how we fit into the world in which we live,’ says Adams. ‘I understand music as a way to reconnect, and to reintegrate our awareness, our listening, ourselves with the larger, older world that we inhabit.’ Across the Distance, Cambo Gardens, Fife, Sun 5 Jul. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 35
LIST CO-PROMOTION
Where singing the blues can be a musical musical abou about p pornographyÖ g p
TO P T I P S FO R George Kyle, Head of Sponsorship at Tennent’s Lager, reveals his top tips for T in the Park 2015 Are you looking forward to the festival’s first year at its new home at Strathallan Castle?
Yes, very much so, it’s a beautiful site. We had a fantastic 18 years at Balado, and we’re looking forward to settling in at Strathallan Castle. Can fans expect anything new on site this year?
To celebrate the first year at Strathallan Castle we have a brand new bar at the festival. Located in the heart of the Arena, it has a terrace balcony offering stunning vistas of Strathallan Castle estate as well as an undercover bar area with top DJs spinning the finest tunes so it’s the perfect spot to enjoy a pint in the sun then continue the party when the sun goes down. You can also sample one of our delicious Tennent’s Lager-based cocktails too, specially concocted to celebrate our first year at Strathallan Castle. What advice can you give fans for this year?
Find out whoí s performing this year 07-31 August 2015
36 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
edfringe.com
The T in the Park campsite is legendary – there’s nothing quite like pitching your tent and soaking up that famous atmosphere. Be Chilled, our pre-order service, is a great way to ensure you’ve got some chilled cans waiting for you once you’re settled in the campsite. You can order Tennent’s Lager or Magners Original Cider via the website and we’ll have ice cold cans waiting for you when you arrive at the campsite. We’re also celebrating 20 years of T Break this year, our unsigned talent initiative that supports Scotland’s grassroots music scene and gives artists the chance to showcase their material on the T Break Stage. It’s the place to go to discover your new favourite act! Get your T in the Park tickets now from www.tinthepark.com. If you’re aged 18 or over and camping at T in the Park, make sure you preorder your Tennent’s Lager or Magners Original Cider for the festival weekend from Tennent’s Lager’s Be Chilled: www.tennents.com/ bechilled. Check out this year’s acts at www.tennents.com/tbreak. For the facts about alcohol : drinkaware.co.uk
BURNISTOUN
TV GO HOME Burnistoun boys Robert Florence and Iain Connell are back with characters both old and new. Jay Richardson grabbed them to find out more
R
obert Florence and Iain Connell are picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and licking their wounds when I speak to them. Two of their new Burnistoun characters are a pair of clubbing survivors in their late 30s. ‘They’re about mine and Iain’s age and paranoid about it,’ Florence explains. ‘A bit sensitive to the fact they’re going bald and they don’t know if they’ve still got enough energy for a night out.’ The Burnistoun creators have just left the set of their TV special, a one-off episode without laughter track, set on a Saturday night in their whimsically oddball town. It features the familiar faces of the ‘For Real!’-exhorting Jolly Boy John, ‘quality polis’ Toshan and McGregor and the incredulous ‘Up Eh Road’ guys, as well as plenty other new characters besides. ‘I’m always covered in bruises!’ Florence reveals. ‘Even if there’s a sketch where we’re just sitting at a table, having some dialogue, I always come away bashed. But there’s always a bit of pratfalling with the polis sketches. I was feeling it more this time as I’m older and definitely get up more slowly.’ Few things in entertainment are more physically demanding than a live sketch show, especially with all the costume changes when
you play most of the roles. Yet following their triumphant debut at the Glasgow Comedy Festival, Burnistoun: Live and for Real is back for three more dates in August. Florence admits to being ‘taken a wee bit by surprise’ by the reception their first stage outing received: ‘having done one, we can make a few tweaks to make it even better’. Connell remembers ‘entering at the back early on, through the stalls, and we could sense the buzz before we actually did anything. The crowd were definitely up for it!’ They had assumed rightly that their more expressive characters, such as the irrepressible Jolly Boy John, would go down well. ‘It was odd because there were certain sketches where we thought this is maybe a quieter one,’ admits Florence. ‘Yet it doesn’t work out that way. If you have a slightly slower or quiet one, the crowd is so responsive that you can have a bit of back and forth with them. And the great thing about doing things live is that if you ever feel the pace is dropping, you can always speed it up.’ Such was their enjoyment of the experience that they’ve been asking themselves why they took so long to actually do it. ‘I don’t know what we were waiting for,’ adds Connell. Reaction to these latest live dates and the TV special will
dictate if this is Burnistoun’s swansong. ‘It definitely doesn’t feel like a farewell episode or anything like that,’ Florence admits. ‘The new characters make it feel quite fresh again.’ Regardless, one of their next projects will be a comic play on stage. ‘It’ll be nice to do something a bit longer form where we can focus more on our performances, without worrying about how quickly we can get our jackets off,’ states Florence. Before that, Florence is making his second micro-budget film, a vampire comedy-horror. Featuring Burnistoun’s supporting cast, he wants to premiere it at next year’s Glasgow Film Festival. Unfortunately, his chosen leading man, one Iain Connell, has yet to confirm his participation. ‘We’re still in negotiations,’ Florence explains. ‘It’s complicated by the fact that we’ve both got the same agent and we’re asking them to choose between us.’ ‘He thinks he’s Terrence Malick and I’m just going to jump,’ Connell sighs. ‘I’m a Glasgow Woody Allen!’ Florence counters. ‘I think everyone wants to work with me!’ Burnistoun: Live and for Real, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Thu 27–Sat 29 Aug. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 37
GLASGOW COMIC CON
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Now in its fifth year, Glasgow Comic Con brings together artists, authors, publishers and sellers in a celebratory showcase of graphic novels, comic art and writing. Rowena McIntosh caught up with festival director Sha Nazir to pore over some must-see artists and events NIGEL PARKINSON AND NIKA NARTOVA
Parkinson is the artist responsible for drawing iconic Beano characters Dennis the Menace, Gnasher and Minnie the Minx, while Nartova is their colourist. The pair will be hosting an all-ages comic talk as well as ‘how to draw’ sessions on Dennis, Gnasher and Minnie. SHA SAYS: ‘It’s really good to get them because it’s only the fourth ever convention they’ve done, and he’s been drawing Dennis and Gnasher for 25 years now.’
JOHN WAGNER
Wagner is the co-creator of Judge Dredd, who celebrated his 35th birthday in 2012. As well as nearly four decades in print, the 2000 AD character has appeared twice on the big screen portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in 1995 and Karl Urban in 2012. Wagner’s list of creations also include Strontium Dog, Button Man, Robo-Hunter and Chopper. SHA SAYS: ‘John is a legend of comics, a game changer with his contribution to British comics. We’re very pleased to have John reunite with Alan Grant to work on a new book for BHP Comics.’
HUNT EMERSON
A veteran of the comic art scene, Emerson has drawn for titles including The Adventures of Mr Spoonbiscuit, Thunderdogs and Firkin. He currently draws Little Plum for the Beano. SHA SAYS: ‘He’s a really amazing cartoonist. Coming from an indie background, he’s produced a broad range of work from adult comics in the early years of his career to making amazing graphic novels.’
MARK MILLAR
A local writer from Coatbridge, Millar is in the higher echelons of the comics industry. This is in part due to the fact that several of his creations have made the leap from page to big screen with feature film adaptations including Kick-Ass, Wanted and The Kingsman: The Secret Service. His success has earned him the very prestigious-sounding role of Fox Movies Superhero Consultant. Millar visits Glasgow for a talk. SHA SAYS: ‘Mark is also working with us on his Millar World exhibition at the Glasgow Print Studio. It’s called Comic Art: Millar World and Beyond, and some of the top artists in the world have contributed to it.’
THE BIG COMIC DRAW
Glasgow Comic Con, various venues, Sat 4 & Sun 5 Jul.
38 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
ARTWORK BY NEIL SLORANCE
Held in the CCA Intermedia Gallery (Wed 1–Sun 5 Jul), Glasgow Comic Con invites you to create your own strip, comic page or poster art using the alphabet as inspiration. Illustrator Clare Forrest hosts the space, and over the weekend, 14 artists (including Karrie Fransman and Iain Laurie) will draw with people in slots. SHA SAYS: ‘As people start contributing and making their art, we’ll start pinning it to the wall in alphabetical order, adding to what will be a giant comic book.’
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4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 39
GSA: PHOENIX BURSARIES
RISING STARS
PHOTO © ALAN MCATEER
One year on from the fire which devastated Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building, David Pollock catches up with some of the graduating students finally getting to show their work
‘I
was in the building when the fire happened, but I didn’t hang about for long.’ Artist Frank McElhinney wryly remembers the day last May when Glasgow School of Art’s Mackintosh building was engulfed by flames. In some ways he was lucky, because much of the photography and film work he’d gathered for a graduate show piece on Bannockburn’s 700th anniversary that summer was saved elsewhere. Tess Vaughan, however, was hit much harder: ‘I lost all of the work, lots of equipment, a TV monitor, everything.’ They and the other near-100 frustrated Masters of Fine Art students whose work was destroyed were pitied in the days that followed, prompting the Scottish government and private donors to act quickly in establishing the Phoenix Bursary scheme. This gave those involved an extra 15 weeks of creative space later in the year to make some new work. ‘I think the fact the government moved so quickly, within a week or so, was impressive,’ says Sam De Santis, coordinator of the Phoenix Bursary project, which resulted in new studio space being set up in the Whisky Bond and students using the money to continue their work abroad. ‘It was a way of trying to keep the momentum going from the buildup to their degree show,’ De Santis continues. ‘We had 46 students in Glasgow, while the rest of the 100 went around the world to places like New York, Zurich, Berlin and elsewhere in the UK, even in the Mongolian State School of Art and Culture. Institutions around the world opened their doors to the students and gave them studio space and teaching support; they knew what had happened and were keen to help. As a student at GSA you always hear how high a regard the place is held in internationally, but this was an acid test. It’s testament to Glasgow’s position that they agreed.’ 40 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
While many of those involved chose to recreate their degree show work as best they could, others moved on to other projects. ‘I still had the work, but the Bannockburn anniversary had passed so there didn’t seem much point,’ said McElhinney. Instead, he responded to the Scottish independence referendum result with another piece about national identity, placing 45 pinhole cameras – homemade from crisp tubes – around Scotland’s largest towns to create images of them. Vaughan, whose original show blended elements of sculpture and dance, also came up with new work. ‘The really difficult thing for anyone coming out of art school is to keep that momentum going,’ she says. ‘You’ve done so much work and you understand your practice better than ever, then you have to do low-paid work or work for free to get on the ladder. For all of us, the Phoenix Bursaries were an amazing opportunity to take some breathing space to set ourselves up professionally.’ The works which will be exhibited in the show are being decided upon at the moment, and of course the Art School has two regularly scheduled degree shows to get through first. ‘Life goes on, you have to get back to business as usual,’ says Mick McGraw, programme leader of this year’s MFA show at the Tontine Building. ‘Bar the difference in location, there shouldn’t be too many differences for the students.’ ‘If the show is a success, then it becomes meaningful,’ says McElhinney. ‘As an artist you create things, that’s what you’re about. Being connected to that difficult and tragic event isn’t really how you want to see yourself contributing to the cultural history of your country. You want to make a positive contribution by creating something meaningful and memorable.’ The Glasgow School of Art Degree Show, Sat 13–Sat 20 Jun; Phoenix Bursaries exhibition, Fri 24 Jul–Sun 2 Aug.
SUMMER EVENTS
SUMMER IN THE CITY
Whether or not the sun comes out to play, there’s plenty of great summer fun to be had across Glasgow and Edinburgh this season. Rebecca Monks picks out some of the best outdoor and indoor highlights
GLASGOW SUMMER SESSIONS
OUTDOOR CINEMA
The Scottish Album of the Year-shortlisted Paolo Nutini, chat show-host scrapping Grace Jones, Dumfries clubbing legend Calvin Harris and the Elton John-covering Ellie Goulding. No, it’s not Now That’s What I Call a Music Festival, it’s the rather excellent Glasgow Summer Sessions lineup. Taking place at Bellahouston Park, other confirmed acts include John Newman, Disciples and Burns. ■ Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, Sat 29 & Sun 30 Aug, glasgowsummersessions.com
EIFF initiative Film in the City has outdoor screenings in the Grassmarket (musicals) and in St Andrew Square (classic blockbusters), while Luna Cinema shows modern classics at the capital’s Botanic Garden in September. In Glasgow, Moonlight Cinemas screen a selection of outdoor movies. ■ Film in the City, Grassmarket, Edinburgh, Sat 6 & Sun 7 Jun; St Andrew Square Garden, Edinburgh, Fri 12–Sun 14 Jun, edfilmfest.org.uk; Luna Cinema, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Fri 4–Sun 6 Sep, thelunacinema.com; Moonlight Cinemas, Glasgow, date tbc, themoonlightcinemas.co.uk
MAGNERS’ SUMMER NIGHTS
LEITHLATE
Contrary to popular belief, Scotland’s summer lasts longer than one weekend, and this live music event runs across three. In Glasgow, King Creosote, Glasvegas, Joan Armatrading and Echo & The Bunnymen take to Kelvingrove Bandstand, while James, the Flaming Lips and the Waterboys play Edinburgh’s Ross Bandstand. There’s cider and street food, too, if you need more persuasion. ■ Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow, Thu 6–Sat 8 Aug, Thu 13–Sat 15 Aug; Ross Bandstand, Edinburgh, Wed 26 Aug–Fri 28 Aug, magnerssummernights.com
This arts extraganza should keep you busy all summer long, with events taking place across Leith (the sun shines on it, remember) all the way from June through to September. Highlights include Kirsty Whiten’s exhibition Wronger Rites, a joint event with books and record store Elvis Shakespeare (which is celebrating its tenth birthday) featuring live performances from the likes of Blueflint and Broken Records, and an artist exchange between Edinburgh and Copenhagen at The Biscuit Factory. ■ Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 12 Jun–Sun 27 Sep, leithlate.co.uk
COMMUNITY FESTIVALS
EDINBURGH FOOD FESTIVAL
In Glasgow, the West End Festival is back for its 20th year. Highlights include the spectacular annual Sunday parade (Sun 7 Jun) and the Glasgow Mela (Sun 14 Jun). Over in Edinburgh, the volunteer-run Meadows Festival hosts several live outdoor gigs with confirmed acts including Eliza Carthy, Sea Bass Kid, Urvanovic, and the Mermaids. ■ West End Festival, Glasgow, Fri 5–Sun 28 Jun, westendfestival.co.uk; Meadows Festival, Edinburgh, Sat 6 & Sun 7 Jun, meadowsfestival.org
Celebrating the best in Scottish produce during this Year of Food and Drink, the Edinburgh Food Festival features a series of talks, live cooking demonstrations and entertainment as well as some enticing stalls, food vendors and a dedicated market for producers. It’s a lot better than your neighbour’s backyard barbecue, that’s for sure. ■ George Square Gardens, Edinburgh, Wed 29 Jul–Sun 2 Aug, edfoodfest.com
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 41
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FOOD & DRINK
For the latest news, listi n reviews, ggs and o list.co.uk to /food&dr ink
THE DUNDEE LARDER New guide celebrates the rise of good food across the Tay
PHOTO © CRAIG STEPHEN
Edinburgh has its Michelin stars and progressive local food agenda, while Glasgow has its glitz, energy and Finnieston. Yet if you’re tuning into the rise of good food in Scotland, keep an eye on what’s happening in Dundee. The last few years have seen a surge in the quality and identity of food and drink in and around Dundee, led in the most part by independent, locally based operators. Restaurants such as Castlehill, The D’Arcy Thompson, Sol Y Sombra and The Playwright, cafés including The Parlour, Folk Café and T Ann Cake, bars from BrewDog and the Dundee-founded Fuller Thomson group, along with food shops including Heart Space Whole Foods, The Cheesery and Clementine of Broughty Ferry are firmly at the centre of a dynamic and mutually encouraging new spirit on Tayside. In June, The List is publishing a brandnew guide to this food and drink scene, The Dundee Larder, with comprehensive coverage of all the best places to eat, drink and shop as well as local producers and the individuals inspiring the creative new approach. Look out for the print version being distributed around Dundee, while it’ll all be available online too at food.list.co.uk, with features, handy listings and round-ups of all the places worth checking out.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 43
FOOD & DRINK
DRINKS NEWS
NEWS & REVIEWS
RISEN FROM THE ASHES
From June onwards, the previously members-only Scotch Malt Whisky Society at 28 Queen Street is to be fully open to the public on a permanent basis. They’re announcing the news along with details of a month-long 12 Tub Cinema Club, which will screen whisky-related films while serving specially created whisky ice-creams and accompanying drams. Films being screened between 19 June and 11 July include Angel’s Share and Inglourious Basterds, while the ice-creams developed by Musselburgh’s S. Luca include Maple Bacon Crunch (with peated whisky) and Snowball Seduction (featuring an oak and vanilla whisky). The SMWS bar is open daily except Sundays. Tickets for the screenings cost £5 including ice-cream and a dram.
El Cartel is back from the dead, following a disastrous kitchen fire and lengthy refurb. Claire Ritchie went to see if it lives up to the hype
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Concise taco menu; expansive tequila list
-
You can’t book – but you can always have a drink in The Bon Vivant while you wait
EL CARTEL 64 Thistle Street, Edinburgh, 0131 226 7171, elcartelmexicana.co.uk Ave. price of a two-course meal: £12 (lunch/dinner) 44 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
RECOMMENDS . . .
LA FAVORITA DELIVERED GIBSON ST, GLASGOW
Enjoy the authentic taste of an Italian pizzeria in contemporary surroundings. Try their award-winning logfired pizzas and a Birra Moretti as the perfect accompaniment. lafavoritadelivered.com
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FOOD & DRINK
SIDE DISHES
News to nibble on There has been a great response to our Eating & Drinking Guide, published last month and still available from bookshops and newsagents around town as well as from our own online shop (shop. list.co.uk). Frustratingly, a few errors crept into the print version, which we’d like to correct here— the information has already been updated online at food.list.co.uk.
The latest attempt to grasp the Edinburgh Food Festival mantle comes via Assembly, who will run a different style of food fest from 29 July–2 August at George Square Gardens. With a less commercially driven emphasis, they aim to create an event that uses a focus on good Scottish produce to provide a platform for discussion and debate about
food, as well as the tasting and eating of it. They plan a mix of street food, producer stalls and a range of talks in the 400-capacity Spiegeltent. Participants will include Slow Food Edinburgh, Common Good Food, Bread Matters, Craft Beer Rising and local chefs including Roy Brett and Andrew Radford in conversation.
HOPPIN’ AROUND As the sun starts to warm up Scotland, it’s taps aff for beer bottles. Jay Thundercliffe finds out what’s bubbling up on the festival front
A
fter a successful 2014 event, Craft Beer Rising (craftbeerrising. co.uk, 4–5 Sep) returns to Glasgow’s favourite hipster brewery Drygate with lots of brewers and street fooders setting up stall to musical accompaniment. Glasgow and Edinburgh also host more traditional ale-centred festivals including the Scottish Real Ale Festival (sraf.org.uk, 9–12 July) at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange with a selection of over 150 Scottish real ales, while the Briggait hosts the Glasgow Real Ale Festival (glasgowrealalefestival.co.uk, 25–27 June) with over 100 ales from Scotland and beyond. Beyond the central belt cities, Argyll brewery Fyne Ales sets out their stall for FyneFest (fynefest.com, 12–14 June), with brews from around the UK, music and food from local producers. North Hop (northhop. co.uk, 21–22 Aug) in Inverness is a hip Highland happening, with craft beers, live music and food. As the sun starts to wane in early September, there’s Black Isle Brewery’s Jocktoberfest (jocktoberfest.com, 4–5 Sep), featuring two days of ‘beer, bands and burgers’. A new festival this year is the Eaglesham Beer Fest (eagleshambeerfest. wordpress.com, 6 Jun). This free event is a first for the Renfewshire village and for organiser Fraser Wilson, a Glasgow-based journalist, food writer and reviewer for our Eating & Drinking Guide. Wilson explains some of the challenges of setting up from scratch: ‘You need a strong idea of what you want to achieve – and keeping that in mind throughout is important because it is a difficult process. ‘The goal was to highlight great, small producers, so costings are crucial as too big a price tag would be an obstacle for some. And being able to explain to people what you are doing and why they should take a risk with you is crucial. Now we’re close and plans are in place, I can’t wait to bring this free-entry community event to a beautiful village – and I’m looking forward to some sleep, regular blood pressure and calm.’ 46 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
• The write-up published for Glasgow’s Café Wander was the wrong one—a cut and paste error. The correct version can be found online, reminding us, among other things, of the venue’s ‘unfussy and reliable approach to carefully prepared food’ including lunchtime options such as a bacon and brie panini that ‘oozes savoury goodness’. Café Wander is at 110a West George Street and is open Monday to Friday 7.30am–5pm and Saturday 9am–5pm. • Cail Bruaich on Great Western Road does not offer BYOB. • Since going to press, Enjoy at 393–395 Great Western Road has
become Turnip & Enjoy, while Central Market at 51 Bell Street is now trading as Isleña, serving a Spanish-style menu. • In Edinburgh, the entry for The Roseleaf bar in Leith indicates that it has a no-kids policy after 5pm. This is only true for the bar; kids are welcome up to 10pm in the restaurant section. Also, in our preview of Colonnades (the new café opening in early June in the Signet Library), we mistakenly indicated that they’d be serving teas grown in Perthshire by the Wee Tea Company—in fact the choices at the new venue will just be teas blended in Perthshire by the same company. Finally, long-term Eating & Drinking Guide sponsors Birra Moretti are back up in Edinburgh from 9-12 July, bringing their Gran Tour to Summerhall each evening from 7–11pm. The sociable event features casual street food from various regions of Italy, DJs and Moretti masterclasses. The £10 entry covers a couple of beers, some street eats and a gelato.
10 Gillespie Place Edinburgh, 0131 281 0526 Open Tuesday ≠ S unday
!"
harajukukitchen.co.uk
A unique and exciting Japanese eating experience in the heart of Edinburgh. Authentic, traditional, home-cooked hot dishes and sushi made with fresh, local ingredients. Outside catering also available!
Kurdish & Middle East Restaurant Located in Edinburgh city centre (next to the University) we are open every day from 12noon until late, offering unique homecooked kurdish and middle eastern cuisine.
- Two course lunch menu from 12-3pm every day - £7 - Pre-theatre menu from 3pm to 6pm - Shisha in different Ø avours is available -£10 - We can accommodate a large party up to 60 people - See our website for special offers on kurdish feast - Bring your own bottle to make a cheaper dinner out
Tel. : 0131 667 2299 26-30 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT contact@nawrozrestaurant.com www.nawrozrestaurant.com
!" 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 47
SUPPORTED BY
FOOD & DRINK
VITAL ITAL
RECENT OPENINGS
Caribbean food, long absent from Glasgow’s dining scene, is currently bringing West Indian vibes to town. Jay Thundercliffe checks out a mobile crew that have laid down some roots.
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FIRE IN BABYLON 213 Hope Street, City Centre, Glasgow, G2 2UW 07981 753192, fireinbabylon.squarespace.com Average price two-course meal: £12 (lunch/dinner)
The best of the new restaurant, café and bar openings in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Prices shown are for an average two-course meal for one.
Glasgow
LA FAVORITA PIZZA BAR & TAKEAWAY 23–25 Gibson Street, West End, 0141 212 6070, lafavoritadelivered.com, £12 (lunch/dinner) La Favorita have taken the trip along the M8 from their home in Edinburgh where they have been impressing pizza fans for nearly a decade. Recently their successful formula of authentic Italian ingredients, two-day-matured dough and a range of tempting toppings, fired up over wood in their Italian-built ovens has expanded, encompassing more branches in Edinburgh, a mobile set-up for street pizza and now their first Glasgow shop on Gibson Street. Special dieters are looked after too, with gluten-free and vegan versions available on top of the roughly 20 or so topping varieties.
GESSO TEA & COFFEE LOUNGE 20-22 St Georges Road, City Centre, 0141 258 3540, fb.com/gessolounge, £8 (lunch) Rubbing shoulders (or standing toe to toe) with global giant Starbucks, Gesso is housed in the A-listed mansions at Charing Cross. Stretching far back from the small frontage, it’s a large, attractive spot with arty touches (exhibitions may be on). There’s a good line in local deli supplies including bread from Kember & Jones or coffee from Dear Green. Food includes healthy brekkie options alongside standard bacon
and sausage rolls (on artisan bread), DIY boards with charcuterie or cheeses, Asian-influenced banh mi as well as the more standard soups, sandwiches and cakes. It’s an enticing, comprehensive and muchneeded independent café-deli in this part of town.
RIVERHILL RESTAURANT & BAR 3 West Nile Street, City Centre, 0141 248 3495, riverhillcafe.com, £15 (lunch) / £25 (dinner) Lovers of Riverhill’s nearby Coffee Bar will not be surprised by the excellence of its sister restaurant, but there is more sophistication to proceedings at the new place. The menu is peppered with exciting, globally inspired choices – which occasionally need explanation. There are Mediterranean and Thai influences and a stunning starter of horse whelk fritters with cho cho (squash family, cucumbery in character) and scotch bonnet is apparently adapted from a Caribbean dish. The onglet steak with walnut pesto is another winner and good value at £15. The foot stays on the gas for puds too – dark chocolate sorbet . . . who would have even thought of that? Riverhill just keeps getting better.
Edinburgh
LA PETITE MORT BISTRO 32 Valleyfield Street, Tollcross, 0131 229 3693, lapetitemortedinburgh.co.uk, £19 (dinner) This cosy space in Tollcross has been spruced up to bring inventive bistro cooking to an area heaving with cafés and Asian restaurants. When opened in April, the risqué name (Google it if needs) lured in curious locals, yet they found nothing more salacious than a welcoming dining room. Service is enthusiastic, especially when it comes to championing the food: crisp black pudding and goat’s cheese bonbons, delicious smoked halloumi and scallops, a trio of pork. The star is sea bass, cooked perfectly, with
accompanying earthy and piquant celeriac and apple purée. A large drinks menu focuses on excellent and inventive cocktails – almost orgasmic, you might say.
PORTOBELLO PALM TREE CARIBBEAN BAR & GRILL Portobello High Street, 0131 657 5669, fb.com/ portypalmtree, £9.50 (lunch/dinner) Even at its best, Portobello’s breezy beach doesn’t conjure up a tropical idyll. Yet this addition to the fast-developing bar and café scene can claim one of the city’s best beer gardens, with its decked area containing an inventive year-round food cabin run by the City of Avalon street food company. The Caribbean, Mediterranean and North Africaninfluenced food isn’t extensive, but it’s well-designed, with mango and chilli-marinated pork, Jamaican jerk chicken and Mediterranean grilled veg served from the shack.
TWELVE TRIANGLES COFFEE, BREAD & CAKE SHOP 90 Brunswick Street, Leith, 0131 629 4664, twelvetriangles.co.uk, £5 (lunch) In many ways there isn’t much to Twelve Triangles or the wedgeshaped former antique shop it has taken over. A contemporary refit with a glossy finish, a few sit-in seats and a small selection of drinks and cakes is all they’ve got to work with, but from this they produce wonders – particularly a daily changing selection of doughnuts which is set to make them a destination visit. It’s little surprise these and breads, croissants and daily focaccia are so good, given this is the sister café to West Port’s highly regarded Lovecrumbs, but Twelve Triangles is set to forge its own reputation.
Independent write-ups on all the restaurants worth knowing about in Glasgow and Edinburgh are available on our online Eating & Drinking Guide at list.co.uk/food-and-drink 48 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
HITLISTED RESTAURANTS FEATURE
HITLISTS 2015
In association with
EDINBURGH & GLASGOW
EATING & DRINKING Guide
The 22nd annual edition of The List’s Eating & Drinking Guide to Edinburgh and Glasgow was published in April this year, containing entries on over 950 cafés, bars, bistros, diners and restaurants across the two cities. The vast majority of these venues were visited and eaten in anonymously by a member of The List’s reviewing team in the first few months of this year, ensuring that our coverage is not just independent and honest, but up-to-date as well. Every write-up in the guide not only provides useful practical information about each venue, but an informed, balanced and well-written description of the place and what you might expect if you visit yourself. £5.95
list.co.uk
22nd Edition 2015/16
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Perhaps the most enduring and most important feature within each year’s guide, however, are the Hitlist selections we make in each section. Here, based on our recent review visits and after a thorough selection process involving our reviewing team and experienced editors, we choose the current standouts within each style of cuisine or type of restaurant in Edinburgh and Glasgow. For the course of the year, they’re the places we’re first recommending to readers, friends, visitors and discerning food lovers. We’re aware that the Hitlists are a big deal for many venues, some of which don’t get visited by newspaper reviewers or guidebooks from one year to the next. The independence of our approach is important: no venue pays to be included in the guide and none can pay to be Hitlisted. With the most comprehensive reviewing process around and a free choice based on merit, we believe our Hitlists are the most reliable way of highlighting the best there is in the local dining scene.
WWW.CONTINI.COM
16 4May–13 Jun–3 Sep Jun 2013 2015 THE LIST 49
HITLISTED RESTAURANTS
AWARDS WINNERS
“Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside...”
Each year, we honour the best and brightest new openings. Here’s 2015’s winners plus those that have scooped the accolade in recent years. In association with
EDINBURGH & GLASGOW
NNEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR EDINBURGH Aizle, Victor & Carina Contini Cannonball Ai
EATIN Guide
G 2015DRINKIN&G BBEST E NEW BAR, EDINBURGH
Fabulous artisan ice creams, mouth watering cakes and pastries, great salads, paninis and sandwiches, fairtrade coffee, special kids menu (no nuggets!) and all with a beautiful view - outside and in.
Spit/Fire Sp
NNEWCOMERS E OF THE YEAR, GLASGOW Ox and Finch, Hutchesons
£5.95
list.co.uk
22nd Edition 2015/16
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BBEST E NEW BAR, GLASGOW The Vintage at Drygate
Find us on the Portobello Promenade at the foot of Bath Street.
NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, EDINBURGH The Atelier, Ting Thai Caravan EATING & BEST NEW BAR, EDINBURGH 14 0 D 2 RINKING Guide Blackfriars NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, GLASGOW The Gannet, Singl-End BEST NEW BAR, GLASGOW Meat Bar
57 Bath Street, EH15 1HE Tel 0131 657 2636
In association with
EDINBURGH & GLASGOW
£5.95
21st Edition 2014/15
list.co.uk
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N NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, EDINBURGH EATING& 13 0 2 DRINKING The Guide Th Gardener’s Cottage, The Vintage 20 NE NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, GLASGOW Th Fish People Café, The Th Hanoi Bike Shop The EATING& DRINKING NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, EDINBURGH Guide 2012 Mithas, Kanpai NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, GLASGOW Martha’s, La Famiglia In association with
EDINBURGH & GLASGOW
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£5.95
list.co.uk
950+ INDEPENDENT RESTAURANT
REVIEWS
La
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Proud to be Hitlisted in
The List Eating and Drinking Guide 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 & 2015
“Great food, great service, great coffee too - bravo La Brava” The List La Brava 679a Clarkston Road, Glasgow East Renfrewshire G44 3SE 0141 569 6257 www.la-brava.co.uk
140+ NEW ENTRIES 160+ HITLIST RECOMMENDATIONS
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900+ INDEPENDENT RESTAURANT REVIEWS
130+ NEW ENTRIES
160+ RELIABLE HITLIST CHOICES
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list.co.uk
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EATING& NEWCOMERS N OF THE DRINKING Gu EDINBURGH & GLASGOW
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INDEPENDENT RESTAURANT REVIEWS
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HITLIST PICKS
130
NEW ENTRIES FULLY REVISED FOR
2011/12 £5.95 9 771359 069086
list.co.uk
In association with
18
Ca Terrace, Bia Bistrot Castle NE NEWCOMERS OF THE YEAR, GLASGOW Cr Criterion, The Pelican Café
50 THE LIST 4 JJun–3 3S Sep 2015
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HUTCHESONS BAR & BRASSERIE Serving only the best dry-aged Scottish steak and fresh seafood. Whether it’s cocktails in The 158 Café Bar, dinner in our Grand Brasserie or a special occasion in The Glenfarclas Private Dining Room; we always guarantee the warmest of welcomes at Hutchesons. Voted Scotland’s Best New Restaurant Scottish Variety Awards 2015 158 INGRAM STREET GLASGOW G1 1EJ 0141 552 4050
OPEN: MON-FRI 9AM—12AM
WWW.HUTCHESONSGLASGOW.COM INFO@HUTCHESONSGLASGOW.COM
SAT & SUN 10AM—12AM
!"#$%&'()!*+,!$*!$,&-.#/!, The award winning Butchershop Bar & Grill is proud to source and serve only the very best of dry-aged, grass fed Scotch beef; whiskies; world wines and signature cocktails. By working closely with our fourth generation butchers we have a second to none selection of cuts both on and off the bone to suit everyones palate. Located in the heart of Glasgow' s west end, combining the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, superb Scottish beef, excellent service and a high energy atmosphere, The Butchershop is the ultimate dining experience.
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EDINBURGHÃ S KURDISH & MIDDLE EASTERN RESTAURANT
â&#x20AC;¢ Open 7 days 12 noon to late â&#x20AC;¢ Private dining area â&#x20AC;¢ Outdoor terraced seating â&#x20AC;¢ Dedicated Shisha area â&#x20AC;¢ Regular special events
â&#x20AC;¢ Fixed price lunch deal â&#x20AC;¢ Loyalty card scheme â&#x20AC;¢ Bedouin tent party room â&#x20AC;¢ Extensive Dry Bar and BYOB policy
3 Johnston Terrace, Edinburgh, EH1 2PW (just beside Edinburgh Castle) T: 0131 225 1329 or 07888 677 613 2015 2013 & wards , 2 1 0 2 E: hanams@hotmail.co.uk , 2011, New Comer a 9, 2010 t 200 Bes g Guide ment Guide in rantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; k in r &D rtain t restau g s e t a in n t E E a le E h idd ttis List top 5 M d: The the Sco Hitliste Runner up at ne of Britainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s e Telegraph Th â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;O
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63 COCKBURN STREET, EH1 1BS WWW.LAILASBISTRO.COM TEL: 0131 22 6 5097
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK FROM 10AM - 10PM BREAKFAST, SN ACKS, LUNCH & DINN
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HITLISTED RESTAURANTS
WATCH THIS SPACE FOR NEW TOUR DATES!
Hitlisted in the 2015/16 Eating & Drinking Guide
55 EASTWOODM AIN S RD G L A S G O W G46 6PW 0141 6 3 8 8 4 2 2 I A N B R O W N R E S T A U R A N T.C O .U K
Open from 12pm 7 days a week La Garrigue 31 Jeffrey St. Edinburgh EH1 1DH 0131 557 3032
lagarrigue.co.uk
The Valvona & Crolla CaffË Bar has been hit-listed 4 times in the last 6 years and 11 times in 19 years since 1996. If we have not yet had the pleasure of your company please come and visit Edinburgh' s original CaffË Bar.
19 Elm Row, Edinburgh, EH7 4AA 0131 556 6066 - sales@valvonacrolla.co.uk Shop online at www.valvonacrolla.co.uk for mainland UK free delivery
EDINBURGH LARDER The Edinburgh Larder team work closely with local suppliers and producers to bring you the best of the Scottish landscape on a plate.
CAFE
BISTRO
15 Blackfriars Street, EH1 1NB 0131 556 6922 info@edinburghlarder.co.uk
1a Alva Street, EH2 4PH 0131 225 4599 bistro@edinburghlarder.co.uk 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 53
HITLISTED RESTAURANTS
TIPLISTS
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While Hitlists remain our most prestigious recommendations each year, there are, of course, many other restaurants and places to eat which have particular strengths, features or attributes that make them worthwhile places to know about when considering where to head out. To help out, we also offer Tiplists, useful round-ups of notable venues within a series of useful categories, from Budget Dining and BYOB to Pre-Theatre or Late Dining. Our Tiplists also cover perennial favourites such as good spots for Breakfast or Brunch around the cities, the best coffee spots or places to take the dog.
A full rundown of all this years Hitlist and Tiplist selections can be found in the print version of the Eating & Drinking Guide and online at food.list.co.uk In each entry online, you can find our review of the venue along with full details including opening hours, links to relevant websites and social media, individual locator maps and information on linked events. On the site, you can search for venues by proximity, style, type and various other attributes. list.co.uk is optimised for use on all devices including smart phones. 54 THE LIST 4 Junâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;3 Sep 2015
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4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 55
FEATURE
EATING & DRINKING GUIDE AWARDS EVENTS 2015
Hosted by The Scottish Café and Restaurant in Edinburgh and The Vintage at Drygate in Glasgow, the 22nd edition of the Eating & Drinking Guide was launched at events sponsored by Birra Moretti. The winner of this year’s Judges’ Special Award was Monir Mohammed, founder of the Mother India group of restaurants, cafés and takeaways. Previous Special Award Winners 2014: Frederick Berkmiller 2013: Tapa 2012: Henderson’s 2011: Brian Maule 2010: Tim and Fran James
56 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
AWARD-WINNING CHINESE RESTAURANT (Formerly Indian Cavalry Club)
‘Quality Chinese cuisine and a pleasantly tranquil ambience’ ≠ The List 3 Atholl Place, Edinburgh EH3 8HP
0131 228 3333 (Restaurant Bookings) 0131 228 8883 (Takeaway)
www.chinatownedinburgh.com CERTIFICATE OF EXCELLENCE 2013, 2014 & 2015
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IN THE LIST EATING & DRINKING GUIDE 2013, 2014 & 2015
Porto & Fi 47 Newhaven Main Street Edinburgh EH6 4NQ
t: 0131 551 1900 e: enquiries@portofi.com
AROUND TOWN
F the latesotr listings annews, reviews, g d list.c .uko to /aroundoto wn
MERCHANT CITY FESTIVAL
PHOTO © ALAN MCATEER
Nine days of music, theatre and dance in the heart of Glasgow Edinburgh may like to pretend it has the biggest, brashest and best summer arts festival this side of the apocalypse, but Glasgow doesn’t take it lying down. To mark the Commonwealth Games last year, the bold and glossy annual Merchant City Festival (going strong for 14 years) was bumped up from its standard four-day affair to an 11-day whopper. This year they’ve scaled back a tad and the festival comes in at a slightly more restrained, but still juicy, nine whole days of outlandish, arty community fun. Probably the highlight of the action will be Fragile, the world premiere of a large-scale street performance collaboration between Motionhouse, Conflux, Merchant City Festival itself and Gulbenkian theatre at the University of Kent. The combined efforts of these arts world luminaries is a piece in which over 25 performers (a combination of locals and international pros) interact with ‘a host of machine-dancing JCB diggers’, according to Conflux director Alan Richardson. Clearly Edinburgh’s tram fiasco isn’t the only project
in Scotland taking the concept of roadworks to dizzyingly extensive new heights. As well as pirouetting construction vehicles, visitors can enjoy plenty more outdoor events at SURGE, the festivalwithin-a-festival exploring street arts, dance, physical theatre and circus performance, this year focusing on the themes of friendship, fame, ecology and the absurdity of war. If the street art extravaganza all gets a bit too overwhelmingly conceptual, little ones and their guardians can shelter at the family zone in Merchant Square, while more adventurous souls enjoy a full programme of fashion and design events, dance, comedy, live music, guided walks, crafts and food and drink stalls. The aim, as always, is to make Glasgow feel as vibrant, diverse and international as possible. The Edinburgh Festival may kick off immediately afterwards, but the Merchant City extravaganza is an increasingly tough act to follow. (Charlotte Runcie) ■ Various venues, Glasgow, Sat 25 Jul–Sun 2 Aug.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 57
AROUND TOWN | Highlights
HITLIST
REFUGEE FESTIVAL Various venues, Scotland-wide, until Sun 21 Jun, refugeeweekscotland. com This annual festival celebrates the contribution of refugees to our communities and promotes better understanding of why people seek sanctuary.
its format with events running over a four-month period including a host of arts happenings alongside new public artworks.
LEITHLATE Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 12 Jun– Sun 27 Sep, leithlate. co.uk LeithLate expands
WEST END FESTIVAL Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 5–Sun 28 Jun, westendfestival. co.uk Taking over the West End each year, the festival treats the ears to a
great musical line-up and tantalises all the senses witn a joyous carnival. MAGICFEST Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 26 Jun– Sat 4 Jul, magicfest. co.uk MagicFest pulls yet another rabbit out of the hat with a programme of close-up conundrums, mindboggling illusions,
comic cabaret and other feats of the impossible. See previews, page 77 and 94. MERCHANT CITY FESTIVAL Various venues, Glasgow, Sat 25 Jul–Sun 2 Aug, merchantcityfestival. com See preview, page 57.
AROUND TOWN HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
GLASGOW
GLASGOW MELA Kelvingrove Park, Sun 14 Jun, glasgowmela.com Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Glasgow Mela marks the occasion with a feast of fun including music from the Dhol Foundation and Red Hot Chilli Pipers, and dance from Abhinaya and Dance Ihayami. ESCAPE GLASGOW Baltic Chambers, escapeglasgow.co.uk Do you fancy being locked in a room and given 60 minutes to escape? It might sound terrifying but it’s great for your brain and excellent for team building / family reconciliations etc. See preview at list. co.uk.
GLASGOW SCIENCE FESTIVAL Various venues, Fri 5–Mon 15 Jun, glasgowsciencefestival.org.uk Workshops, shows, films, discussions, exhibitions and art collaborations allow budding scientists to learn something new. 2015 is the Year of Light, so expect fun with lasers and optics. GLASGOW TIGERS SPEEDWAY Ashfield Stadium, Sun 7, 14, & 21 Jun, Tue 7, Sun 12, 19 & 26 Jul, Sun 9, 16 & 23 Aug, glasgowtigers.co Watch fast-paced motorbike action on bikes that have no brakes. Yes, that sounds very dangerous to us, too.
CO≠P ROMOTION
EDINBURGH MEADOWS FESTIVAL The Meadows, Sat 6 & Sun 7 Jun, meadowsfestival.org An annual event since 1974, this year features a programme with music from a plethora of local bands plus headliner Eliza Carthy, and stalls filled with curios. LEITH FESTIVAL Various venues, Sat 13–Sun 21 Jun, leithfestival.com The vibrant community of Leith shows off its festival skills with a fun-packed
Fri 19–Sun 21: Midsummer weekend in Joseph Pearce’s Thur 26: Victoria NikNaks Dino Heavy, 9pm
military jets. There are also family activities, fairground rides and a chance to chat with pilots.
THE ROYAL HIGHLAND SHOW Royal Highland Centre, Thu 18– Sun 21 Jun, royalhighlandshow. org Part agricultural show, part food festival, part family fun day out, with everything from motor, equine and craft programmes to food and drink and children’s activities.
EDINBURGH FOOD FESTIVAL George Square Gardens, Wed 29 Jul–Sun 2 Aug, edfoodfest. com Our nation’s larder gets heavily promoted here with a showcase of all things foodie and drinkie, featuring street food vendors, market stalls and live cooking demonstrations.
SCOTLAND’S NATIONAL AIRSHOW National Museum of Flight, Sat 25 Jul, nms.ac.uk/national-museumof-flight Over two hours of highoctane aerial displays ranging from historic warbirds to contemporary
EDINBURGH MELA Leith Links, Sat 29 & Sun 30 Aug, edinburgh-mela.co.uk A fun-filled weekend at the end of the summer festival season with its Bollywood Love Story a clear highlight. See Festival Guide out on 8 Jul for more.
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programme headed by the Leith Festival Gala Day (Sat 13) and topped by the closing Tattoo (Sun 21).
Mon 22–Sun 28: Sofi’s 10 Year Anniversary Week. Wed 25: Sofi’s Birthday ‘This is your life!’
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Sat 11: Singles Night in Victoria, 8pm
New Summer Menu in Hemma.
Fri 24–Sun 26: Fun Food Weekend in Joseph Pearce’s
Opening of Akva in mid June.
Mon 22–28: Sofi’s 10th Birthday Week
Reunion Canal Day on Sat 27 June at Akva.
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Season Tickets available now lyceum.org.uk 0131 248 4848 Royal Lyceum Theatre Company Ltd. is a Registered Company No. SC062065 Scottish Charity No. SC010509
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 59
BOOKS
Fo the latestr n listings a ews, reviews, g nd o list.co.uk to /books
#UNTITLEDONE Edinburgh literary and musical collective Neu! Reekie! celebrate their first anthology
60 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
physical representation of what these bashes have captured over the past while and this seemed like the perfect anecdote. It serves as a reminder to our audiences and us, whilst showcasing what we’ve billed to those that missed it.’ So what does #UntitledOne tell us about the state of Scottish literature? ‘That it’s randy and ready for a roasting,’ Pedersen says. ‘That there’s left-field and working-class voices with plenty to say and that the avant-garde can be gnarly too. Whatever you want it to say, that’s tickety-boo by us.’ (David Pollock) ■ #UntitledOne is out now, published by Polygon. Neu! Reekie!’s next event is #UntitledLive, headlined by Young Fathers, at Central Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 9 Jun. For a longer version of this interview, go to list.co.uk/books
PHOTO © KAT GOLLOCK
It’s a big year for Neu! Reekie!. Founded by Michael Pedersen (pictured) and Kevin Williamson, this counter-cultural collision of prose, poetry, live music and art goes from strength to strength following the launch of poetry anthology #UntitledOne in May. #UntitledOne features work from established writers like Irvine Welsh, Liz Lochhead and Jenni Fagan, as well as pieces from Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat (who recently released a children’s book), Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison and emerging authors like Kirsty Logan. It also comes with a downloadable 20-track compilation album, including songs from Young Fathers and TeenCanteen. ‘#UntitledOne stands testament to fourplus years of programming Neu! Reekie! events,’ says Pedersen. ‘We wanted a
Reviews | BOOKS
list.co.uk/books CRIME
NEIL BROADFOOT
The Storm (Saraband) ●●●●● Since the release of Falling Fast, the debut novel which earned him a nomination for Deanston Scottish Crime Book of the Year, Neil Broadfoot has established himself as something of a heavyweight newcomer in the world of Tartan Noir. His second novel, The Storm, picks up where the first left off: telling the rapid, frantic story of crime reporter Doug McGregor and Detective Sergeant Susie Drummond as they attempt to solve an Edinburgh-wide mass murder case. Both characters have connections to the killings: Doug sees his editor shot in front of him, and Susie is witness to the death of a prominent lawyer. Their professional obligations are undercut by their personal feelings towards the case, a conflict that Broadfoot handles well and takes care not to overplay. Through a highly-stylised narrative technique, in which the killer’s point of view is interspersed with Doug’s, Susie’s and others, the plot is given a deal more meat and grit than you would expect from a standard thriller. The story’s resolution is solid, though a little predictable, and while the characters’ investigative instincts are impressive, at times it is frustrating to watch them progress seamlessly towards an inevitable conclusion. There are no red herrings to follow or unexpected plot developments: Broadfoot sets the mystery up and unravels it systematically and clearly. That said, well-formed characters and an intelligent use of mixed narrative makes this novel a swift, clean-cut thriller, and while it may not keep you guessing, it will almost certainly keep you reading. (Rebecca Monks) Out now.
SHORT STORIES
NON-FICTION
FICTION
DEBUT
The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space (Freight) ●●●●●
60 Degrees North (Polygon)
The Seed Collectors (Canongate)
PIPPA GOLDSCHMIDT
Pippa Goldschmidt – the author of Falling Sky, who has a PhD in astronomy – presents a collection of scientific short fiction, depicting a lesser visited world of observatories and laboratories. We enter the thoughts of history’s heavyweights of science; Einstein is confronted by an imagining of his illegitimate daughter as he rides the lift to his mistress' flat; Turing finds himself trapped in his own imitation test; and Oppenheimer, inventor of the atomic bomb, is a socially awkward student at Cambridge with murderous intent. Most characters are isolated, unable or unwilling to bond with colleagues or partners. They use science to understand their personal worlds, as well as the world at large. The narrative tone is factual, analytical and honest. Goldschmidt’s prose is endlessly inventive, exploring the experience of women in a male dominated profession, of the descendents of Jews who survived the war and, as the title suggests, the lack of regulation regarding outer space. (Rowena McIntosh) Out now.
MALACHY TALLACK
SCARLETT THOMAS
COLIN MACINTYRE
●●●●●
●●●●●
The Letters of Ivor Punch (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) ●●●●●
A writer loses their father suddenly and later dives headlong into a project with nature. No, it’s not Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, it’s Malachy Tallack’s 60 Degrees North, a mystical meditation on the parallel line which cuts across Shetland, Scandinavia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. As an adopted Shetlander who has always felt conflicted about his homeland, the restless Tallack chose to write about his feelings by heading off on a global adventure. Written with a real feeling for place, Tallack certainly packs in plenty of history and notes his encounters with local characters never less than sympathetically. He also paints some lovely imagery: arctic terns ‘pinned like little crucifixes against the sky’ and a sea otter ‘as sleek as a polished walnut’. While Macdonald’s loss felt like a profound trigger to launch herself into other worlds, you don’t fully get that sense here. And Tallack's assertion that the north has been uniquely unfair to its estranged indigenous peoples might come as a surprise to many quarters in the Americas and Australia. (Brian Donaldson) Out Mon 13 Jul.
In The Seed Collectors, Scarlett Thomas uses the private life of killer plants to tell a very human story. Following the death of Aunt Oleander, we meet the very tangled Gardener family, including ‘paleo wanker’ Charlie, filmmaker Clematis, secret sister Fleur and yummy-mummy Bryony. Fleur inherits Oleander’s retreat, Namaste House, but the others are given only a seed pod. These look innocuous enough and could be a shortcut to enlightenment if ingested properly, but they could also kill you. Will anyone dare to find out? Big ideas about enlightenment, reincarnation and the ego carry the book forward, but at its heart it’s about messy human lives. Thomas juggles the narratives of multiple characters – each more self-obsessed than the last – with bitingly funny prose, but the overwhelmingly awful people make the book hard to digest at times. Despite the difficult concepts and unlikeable characters, Thomas’ sharp writing and sharper wit provide enough to keep the book going. (Sasha de Buyl) Out Thu 2 Jul.
Ivor Punch is a former policeman from an unnamed Scottish island, prone to scribbling letters to public figures, most notably Barack Obama. This novel isn’t just about Ivor though; as the debut of musician Colin MacIntyre (Mull Historical Society), it’s perhaps unsurprising to find the island itself in the role of main protagonist. Numerous plot strands flit back and forth over a century and a half through a dizzying array of the island’s inhabitants from the fictional to people who actually existed. Charles Darwin even puts in an appearance. Ivor himself shifts from unlikeable to enlightening, but ultimately he is compelling enough to act as the link that holds everything together. The shadow of death looms large and is a striking theme, though a brief flirtation with the supernatural falls flat. At times disjointed, the novel makes the reader work and actually delivers more on second reading. MacIntyre is a storyteller with a unique imagination though, and has created a heartfelt novel with some standout elements of dark comedy. (Kevin Scott) Out now. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 61
BOOKS | Highlights
HITLIST
NEU! REEKIE! #UNTITLEDLIVE Central Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 9 Jun, centralvenues.org A night of live performance,
with music courtesy of Young Fathers, Andrew Weatherall and FiniTribe, spoken word star Hollie McNish (pictured) and a short film showcase. See preview, page 60.
edbookfest.co.uk Bibliophiles get excited as the 2015 Edinburgh International Book Festival programme is announced. The event runs from Sat 15–Mon 31 Aug.
EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL PROGRAMME LAUNCH Wed 10 Jun,
BORDERS BOOK FESTIVAL Harmony Garden, Melrose, Thu 11–Sun 14 Jun,
bordersbookfestival. org This year’s lineup features the likes of Patricia Hodge, Celia Imrie, Andrew Marr, Jonathan Miller and Dom Joly. GLASGOW COMIC CON CCA, Glasgow, Sat 4 Jul, cca-glasgow. com Indulge your love of all things graphic at this fiesta of films, comics and
fandoms. See feature, page 40. GO SET A WATCHMAN Out Tue 14 Jul, published by William Heinemann Recovered from the shock yet? The unexpected sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird was written before that 1960 classic, but finally gets a release all these decades later.
BOOKS HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
GLASGOW JOHN COOPER CLARKE Platform, Fri 5 Jun, platform-online. co.uk The legendary Mancunian punk poet, who is a spiritual godfather to the likes of Mike Skinner and Plan B, hauls his insatiable laconic wit on tour.
SEX BETWEEN THE COVERS Glasgow Women’s Library, Mon 8 Jun–Fri 31 Jul, womenslibrary.org. uk A capsule exhibition, featuring a series of objects and texts on sex that have made social, cultural and political waves PATTI SMITH & TONY SHANAHAN: AN EVENING OF WORDS & MUSIC Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Tue 9 Jun, glasgowconcerthalls.com The redoubtable New York punk diva is joined by accompanist Tony Shanahan to perform stripped-back renditions of classics from her back catalogue and share some free-flowing spoken word. CAFE SCI: LOOKING FOR LIGHT Mono, Wed 10 Jun, monocafebar. com Professor Martin Hendry of the University of Glasgow and author Pippa Goldschmidt discuss how astronomy and astrophysics have inspired some intriguing contemporary literary fiction.
62 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
GAELIC VOICES WITH CATRIONA LEXY CAMPBELL AND ALISON LANG CCA, Tue 23 Jun, cca-glasgow. com An evening with two Gaelic writers, Catriona Lexy Campbell and Alison Lang. RALLY & BROAD: EV’RY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE . . . END OF SEASON SHOW
PHOTO © KEVIN LOW
THE BIG GLASGOW COMIC & CRAFT FAIR The Arches Café Bar & Restaurant, Sat 6 Jun, thearches. co.uk & Walkabout, Sat 18 Jul, walkaboutbars.co.uk The Big Glasgow Comic Page presents a day of assorted geekery complete with 17 vendors selling back issues, graphic novels, original art, fan art, toys, t-shirts, jewellery, crafts, cupcakes and loads more. Cosplay / fancy dress encouraged with a competition for under and over 16s.
CHRIS DOLAN: ALIYYAH CCA, Fri 19 Jun, cca-glasgow.com A launch event, featuring readings from Chris Dolan and Peter Arnott, songs from Maeve Mackinnon and a Gaelic choir, as well as a short play based on Chris Dolan’s Aliyyah.
Stereo, Sun 28 Jun, stereocafebar. com A literary-flavoured cabaret night, boasting spoken word, ‘live literature’, new music and dancing into the wee small hours. Hosted by Jenny Lindsay and Rachel McCrum, with AL Kennedy (pictured above), Findlay Napier, Michael Pedersen, Kirsty Logan and Maud The Moth. IN PROCESS MASTERCLASS WITH ALASDAIR GRAY CCA, Tue 7 Jul, cca-glasgow.com A session on the work of Alasdair Gray, author of the famous Lanark. JOE ABERCROMBIE: HALF A WAR Waterstones Newton Mearns, Sun 12 Jul, joeabercrombie.com The fantasy author discusses his latest book, Half a War. It’s free, and a chance to buy the book a full four days before it’s released.
EDINBURGH AN EVENING WITH DAVID SEDARIS
Usher Hall, Mon 15 Jun, usherhall. co.uk Spend some time with the writer, humorist and wit (pictured above), who will no doubt be brimming with sardonic social observations. ALY SIDGWICK: LULLABY GIRL Looking Glass Books, Tue 16 Jun, lookingglassbooks.com Author Ali Sidgwick launches her new novel, a psychological thriller about a mysterious girl who is taken to a psychiatric home in the Highlands. RALLY & BROAD: EV’RY TIME WE SAY GOODBYE . . . END OF SEASON SHOW Bongo Club, Fri 19 Jun, thebongoclub.co.uk A literaryflavoured cabaret night, boasting spoken word, ‘live literature’, new music and dancing into the wee small hours. Hosted by Jenny Lindsay
and Rachel McCrum, with Ross Sutherland, Dan Willson (Withered Hand), Hannah Silva, Ryan Van Winkle and Caro Bridges. SPOKEN AND SUNG: LIZ LOCHEAD WITH RUDSAMBEE St Mark’s Unitarian Church, Fri 19 Jun, rundambee.org.uk An evening of poetry and song with Rudsambee Company of Singers, poet Liz Lochhead, Christine de Luca and Ron Butlin to raise money for the Scottish Poetry Library. POETS AGAINST HUMANITY The Banshee Labyrinth, Wed 22 Jul & Fri 21 Aug as part of PBH Free Fringe, thebansheelabyrinth. com A poetry session inspired by the game ‘Cards Against Humanity’. If you’ve ever played it, you’ll know what to expect. If not, read up.
CLUBS
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THE ARCHES There goes Europe’s best club venue. Rosie Davies mourns the demise of The Arches’ clubbing wing Controversy. There’s an argument that all art should be shrouded in it. If you’re not offending someone, somewhere, is it really art? Electronic music – or, more specifically, the pastime of dancing to electronic music in public spaces – has always terrified the authorities. And yet the news on Friday 15 May that Scotland’s biggest nightclub has been forced to close, due to the restriction of licensing hours following two well-publicised incidents relating firstly to drugs, and then to alcohol, seems to have come as a shock. What is undeniable is that since the Arches started putting on club nights, back in 1991 when it started up as a space to host the sort of weird arts events no one else wanted to touch and Health and Safety was a more muted nightmare, it has become a staple of Glasgow’s
after-dark playground. The electronic music programme has changed and morphed with the times. It’s a case study in how clubbing has progressed over the past 25 years, from DJs standing atop turntables with their arms in the air, looking for adoration, to . . . DJs standing atop turntables with their arms in the air, looking for adoration. The only thing setting them apart in these pre / post EDM times is quality, really. A controversial statement, perhaps – but clubbing should be controversial. Turn to page 12 for responses from those involved. And go to list.co.uk for more on the personal, political and cultural ramifications, updates on the decision (which, as of late May, is being appealed) and, of course, a celebration of some of the best things to happen beneath those industrial brick vaults.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 63
CLUBS | Highlights
SUBCULTURE BOAT PARTY ON THE CLYDE
HITLIST
Sub Club, Glasgow, Sat 13 Jun, subclub.co.uk Harri and Domenic’s Subculture party on board a boat. What could be better? Setting sail from the Glasgow Science Centre, all boat party tickets include post-party shore leave at the Sub Club until 3am. TREAD
Govanhill Baths, Glasgow, Sat 13 Jun, govanhillbaths. com Party in a disused swimming pool? Yup, we’re up for that. Optimo’s JG Wilkes performs, alongside Hal Ashby.
co.uk Scotland’s largest 1920s-themed cabaret and club night returns for another evening of music hall variety, cabaret acts, live band and 1920s nightclub. This time, it’s a masquerade ball.
THE GATSBY CLUB MASQUERADE BALL Glasgow University Union, Sat 20 Jun, guu.
VITALIC La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, Fri 26 Jun, facebook.com/
LaBelleAngele Electro from the Dijon-based artist, presented by Karnival and Pulse. JACKHAMMER Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Sat 8 Aug, liquidroom.com A festival special from the techno clubnight, featuring Ben Sims, Altern8 (live) and Radioactive Man (live).
CLUBS HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
GLASGOW SLAM Sub Club, Fri 12 Jun, subclub. co.uk Glasgow's techno kings Orde Meikle and Stuart MacMillan launch their Transmissions album, plus sets from Liam (Clouds), Petrichor, Deepbass and Puddledub.
WAX FACTORY 69 Below, Fri 14 Aug, 69below. co.uk Authentic techno clubnight showcasing Neil Landstrumm (live), Kenny Mulligan and Nomad. SUPERMAX Berkeley Suite, Saturdays, berkeleysuite.com A night of disco mayhem from DJ Billy Woods. WALK N SKANK WITH MUNGO’S HI-FI Berkeley Suite, Thursdays, berkeleysuite.com Scotland’s only
weekly reggae and dancehall session with residents Mungo's Hi Fi and guests. SUGO ITALIAN TRASH DISCO Bloc+, every third Saturday, bloc. ru The best and worst of vintage Italian music with 70s continental horrormovie chic and German electroporn. SUBCULTURE Sub Club, Saturdays, subclub. co.uk Glasgow's well-established house institution continues to reign supreme, with residents Harri and Domenic and occasional big-name guests. John Talabot performs Sat 20 Jun.
EDINBURGH PROPAGANDA Liquid Room, Fridays, liquidroom. com Indie, electro, pop, dance and Slam
64 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
drum'n'bass from the UK's biggest indie clubnight. IN DEEP Sneaky Pete's, Fridays, sneakypetes.co.uk A selection informed by Bill Brewster's three and a half decades of writing about dance music. WASABI DISCO Sneaky Pete's, every third Saturday, sneakypetes.co.uk Another dose of disco, new wave, punk and New York grooves at this 'no holds barred disco death match'. REVOLVER La Belle Angele, Fridays, facebook.com/LaBelleAngele Each week features a selection from the resident pool, taking you on a journey of stripped down house through to the edgier sounds of techno.
COMEDY
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ROB DELANEY Catastrophe star drops into Scotland for a rare if meaty appearance A sticker plastered across his poster in The Stand heralding Rob Delaney’s only Scottish date this year says it all: ‘this show sold out even before we put this poster up’. Some people just don’t need much publicity to get the crowds rolling in. At this point, Delaney is known for several things: giving up drinking after being involved in a car accident which left him with two broken arms and in prison; continually being called ‘the funniest person on Twitter’; not being related to fellow comics Steve Delaney (aka Count Arthur Strong) or the one-line gag merchant Gary Delaney; and starring opposite Sharon Horgan in Channel 4’s Catastrophe, a filth-laden relationship comedy-drama.
And he’s also written a book with one of the catchiest titles in literary history: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage. His Meat tour features Delaney’s first date in Edinburgh since his Scottish debut at the 2013 Fringe. Many reviews suggested that he was following strongly in the footsteps of Louis CK for performance style and subject matter (what with him also being the father of two small children) but Delaney is now a true force to be reckoned with in his own right. Even if he does admit to having joined Twitter solely on the basis that if it was good enough for Louis, it was good enough for him. (Brian Donaldson) ■ The Stand, Edinburgh, Wed 1 Jul.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 65
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| 66 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
Previews | COMEDY
list.co.uk/comedy
PHOTO © KASH YUSAF
STAND-UP
STAND-UP
SECC, Glasgow, Fri 12 Jun; Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, Wed 5–Sun 30 Aug
Òran Mór, Glasgow, Thu 2 Jul; Assembly George Square Theatre, Edinburgh, Thu 13–Sat 15 Aug
REGINALD D HUNTER
While there are many excellent comedians out there, you often wonder if some of them actually like doing what they do or whether it’s more of a compulsion. For Reginald D Hunter, the appeal of performing live comedy is multi-faceted. ‘I love stand-up. Every time something new works on stage, it’s definitely a great high. It’s really satisfying. And it makes me smarter. I spend a lot of time alone in hotels and airports, so when you’re locked away you do a lot of thinking and come back smarter.’ Intelligent (if sometimes highly contentious) comedy has been the UK-based American’s calling card ever since he relocated here in the late 90s. Soon enough, popular and critical acclaim followed (as well as two nominations for the Perrier Award) and he’s now one of the most vibrant and exciting perfomers on the circuit. As he brings us a new show, The Man Who Attempted to Do as Much as Such, Hunter insists that he’s adopting a new mellower stance (though the title of his Fringe show in August, Bitchproof, suggests something altogether different). ‘It’s bad to be angry. Anger is very powerful, but it’s toxic. It’ll burn you out if you fly on it for too long. All your emotions are your children, so if you leave them in the basement, eventually they’re going to grow up and hate you.’ (Brian Donaldson)
LUISA OMIELAN
Londoner Luisa Omielan is a bit like the Greggs-loving, New Look-clad, standup comedy answer to Lena Dunham. She will definitely not be shamed for eating three courses (she’ll gladly shame restaurants that make patronising, gender-specific remarks on their menus, though: see Omielan’s Instagram for evidence), has zero tolerance for slut shaming, classism or girls trolling on other girls. And in times of self-doubt, she'll refer back to her mantra, ‘what would Beyoncé do?!’ That was the title of her debut solo show, a smash hit of the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe, which led to five-star reviews, a world tour, an Australian Barry award nomination, and a spin-off book deal, signed earlier this year. The follow-up show, Am I Right Ladies?!, deals with issues always close to her push-up bra, including self-esteem, career dilemmas, relationship woes and Mariah Carey appreciation. If she experienced occasional diva wobbles during her last Edinburgh Fringe run, have no fear: she appears to have returned to her tough-cookie default setting, and is back with bells on, plus Spanx and oversized hoop earrings, too. Endearing, ridiculous and smart, she brings brass-necked, balls-out wisdom to all who join her for one of her shows, or as she’s taken to calling them, ‘parties with jokes in’. (Claire Sawers)
PANEL SHOW
I’M SORRY I HAVEN’T A CLUE Edinburgh Playhouse, Sun 9 Aug
‘In an age when what used to be called “bad language” is widely used to raise an easy laugh, I think it’s vitally important that innuendo is kept alive and kicking.’ On the idea that innuendo is a dying art, Graeme Garden, founder and regular offender on I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, is matter of fact. ‘Good innuendo is clever and witty and just a great way to get an honest laugh.’ Although a key element of the Radio 4 panel show, the use of double entendre has seen the team receive something of a slapped wrist on a couple of occasions, most recently last year when a listener got confused with the concept of Samantha. ‘The complaint was that Samantha is a humble assistant, sexually exploited by an all-male show,’ explains Garden. ‘In fact, Samantha is a) fictional, and b) almost always the instigator of her saucy exploits. Typically she is “looking forward to” or “can’t wait until” and so on.’ Garden and the rest of the ISIHAC team (Tim BrookeTaylor, Jack Dee, Barry Cryer and Jeremy Hardy) are bringing the show to the Edinburgh Playhouse for a onenight stand. Although it’s been running for 43 years, there are no signs of giving it a rest. Even if the team’s combined age is 332. ‘We’re like an old rock band now,’ says Barry Cryer. ‘The audience who are our age will be dropping off, but we get students who say they grew up with us because their mum and dad used to listen.’ On why the self-styled ‘antidote to panel games’ has endured for so long, Cryer doesn’t hesitate. ‘The company. It’s telepathic; we know what each other is thinking and I hope that comes over. We really are having a genuinely good time.’ (Kirstyn Smith) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 67
COMEDY | Highlights
HITLIST
PHOTO © STEVE ULLATHORNE
Stand’s weekend crowd.
NISH KUMAR The Stand, Thu 4–Sun 6 Jun, thestand.co.uk Nish Kumar (above) takes on The
REGINALD D HUNTER: THE MAN WHO ATTEMPTED TO DO AS MUCH AS SUCH SECC, Fri 12 Jun, secc. co.uk The self-proclaimed ‘comedian, swashbuckler and scientist’ takes his latest on the road. See preview, page 67.
AN EVENING WITH DAVID SEDARIS Usher Hall, Mon 15 Jun, usherhall.co.uk Writer and wit (below), brims with sardonic observations.
ROB DELANEY: MEAT TOUR The Stand, Wed 1 Jul, thestand.co.uk Startlingly funny Delaney began to take off thanks to his Twitter account, which got him voted ‘Funniest Person on Twitter’ by Comedy Central. Sold this date out in mere seconds, incredibly. See preview, page 65.
LUISA OMIELAN: AM I RIGHT LADIES?! Òran Mór, Thu 2 Jul, oran-mor.co.uk The ballsy comedian gets her Spanx on and prepares to demolish preconceptions with a follow-up to her What Would Beyoncé Do? show. If you miss her now, she’s in Edinburgh come August. See preview, page 67. SEE OUR GUIDE (OUT FESTIVAL WED 8 JUL), WEEKLY AUGU ST IS OR GO TO SUES
COMEDY HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
SPAMALOT King’s Theatre, Wed 3–Sat 6 Jun, atgtickets.com The Knights of the Round Table-spoofing musical from Monty Python, written by Eric Idle and John Du Prez.
JIMMY CARR: FUNNY BUSINESS Edinburgh Playhouse, Sun 5 Jul, atgtickets.com Acerbic wit and dark, deadpan one-liners from familiar telly face Carr. Also SECC, Glasgow, Sat 8 Aug.
JOHN COOPER CLARKE Platform, Fri 5 Jun, platformonline.co.uk The legendary Mancunian punk poet, who is a spiritual godfather to the likes of Mike Skinner and Plan B hauls his insatiable laconic wit on tour. Also Tolbooth, Stirling, Sat 6 Jun; The Ironworks, Inverness, Sun 7 Jun; Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Wed 10 Jun.
DAVID KAY The Rum Shack, Fri 12 Jun, facebook.com/ thrumshackglasgow Ramblings from the star of Radio 4’s Mordrin McDonald: 21st Century Wizard whose last few shows have alluded to scones. But not this one. Which is disappointing. SO THAT WAS JUNE . . . ? The Stand, Mon 22 Jun, thestand. co.uk Satirical comedy for a radical Scotland featuring stand-up, chat and comment from Mark Nelson, Vladimir McTavish and Keir McAllister. Also The Stand, Edinburgh, Wed 17 Jun. JOHN HASTINGS AND CHRIS BETTS Yesbar, Mon 22 Jun, yesbar.scot Stories and gags from 2010 Canadian Comedy Awards Best Newcomer nominee John Hastings, and offbeat humour with social observations from Chris Betts. 68 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
FOR FULL CO OF THE EDINVERAGE FESTIVALS SEBURGH ASON
TEDFEST The Liquid Room, Sat 4 Jul, liquidroom.com A Father Tedthemed evening, featuring The Lovely Girls Contest, live music, Human Buckaroo, a quiz and Ted’s Got Talent.
GLASGOW
MARK NELSON Jongleurs, Fri 5 & Sat 6 Jun, jongleurs.com Alongside Johnny Candon and Geoff Boyz, Mr N takes on the Jongleurs’ weekend crowd.
LIST.CO.U K/ FESTIVAL
MICHAEL MCINTYRE: HAPPY AND GLORIOUS Edinburgh Playhouse, Fri 17 & Sat 18 Jul, atgtickets.com McIntyre performs to even more gigantic audiences following his stint as host on Michael McIntyre’s Chat Show. Hard to believe he started off in Fringe sweat boxes not that long ago.
KEN DODD Pavilion, Sat 27 Jun, paviliontheatre.co.uk Stand-up and songs with Mr Dodd. Strap yourself in, he could be going for one of his three hour-plus sets. BURNISTOUN: LIVE AND FOR REAL Theatre Royal, Thu 27–Sat 29 Aug, atgtickets.com The whole gang heads to the city centre including McGregor and Toshan the quality polis, Jolly Boy John, deceased ice cream brothers Paul and Walter and even the stubborn voice recognition lift who doesn’t understand Scottish. For Real. See feature, page 37.
EDINBURGH TOM ALLEN The Stand, Thu 11–Sat 13 Jun, thestand.co.uk Raconteur extraordinaire Tom Allen gives you a full weekend of his charm, alongside Rob Rouse, Ashley Storrie and Billy Kirkwood.
SCIENCE FICTION DOUBLE FEATURE Banshee Labyrinth, Thu 18 Jun, thebansheelabyrinth.com Comedy double bill here with Des O’Gorman presenting his Fringe show Still Ready to Believe You while comedy compadre Ross Hepburn claims that Ross Hepburn is Beetlejuice’d. We’ll have to see about that. Also The Admiral, Glasgow, Sat 27 Jun. LORETTA MAINE The Stand, Thu 18–Sun 20 Jun, thestand.co.uk Country rock diva Loretta Maine does The Stand’s weekend shows, alongside comedy pals Ben Norris, Jamali Maddix and Susan Morrison. JOKE THIEVES The Stand, Tue 23 Jun, thestand. co.uk In this show of two halves, comedians perform their own sets and then attempt to mimic each other. If previous encounters are anything to go by, you can expect fireworks and faux bittterness aplenty.
I’M SORRY I HAVEN’T A CLUE The Edinburgh Playhouse, Sun 9 Aug, atgtickets.com The BBC Radio panel show, featuring Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Jeremy Hardy and host Jack Dee bringing puns, innuendo and swannee whistles to the world for nigh on 40 years. See preview, page 67.
EAST KILBRIDE GARY LITTLE East Kilbride Arts Centre, Thu 25 Jun, sllcboxoffice.co.uk Little talks death, love and dyeing hair in his new show. See review at list.co.uk.
PERTH KEVIN BRIDGES: A WHOLE DIFFERENT STORY Perth Concert Hall, Wed 5–Sat 8 Aug, horsecross.co.uk The biggest name in Scottish stand-up (pictured above) continues his reign with another show rammed head to toe in astute observations and deathly funny gags. Also Alhambra, Dunfermline, Thu 13–Sun 16 Aug; Caird Hall, Dundee, Sun 30 Aug–Thu 3 Sep.
FILM
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AMY Stunning documentary told through archive-only footage and audio interviews Asif Kapadia rightly won a lot of admirers for Formula One documentary Senna. Even that film pales next to his latest real-life study, an emotive look at the late singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning in 2011, aged just 27. The way the tabloids presented it, she cut an increasingly tragic figure as she seemingly frittered away her talent by succumbing to her addictions. Kapadia doesn’t shy away from her fall, employing some shocking stills, but he digs beneath the scandals. As in Senna, he marries audio interviews and archive footage to paint an intimate picture of the Jewish girl from North London, who loved singers like Tony Bennett, took to writing her own
material and became a superstar. And it’s in the context of clips showing her lighter side that the gravity of her loss really hits home. From eerie aerial shots of Winehouse’s beloved Camden Town to the way her lyrics appear on screen, Kapadia’s artistic decisions chime, while his use of her songs is never less than haunting. Punchy, provocative and just plain sad, whether you’re a fan of Winehouse’s music or not, Amy is a film you’ll be thinking about for days after. (James Mottram) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Thu 18, Sat 20 Jun, part of Edinburgh International Film Festival. See feature, page 20. Selected release from Fri 3 Jul. ●●●●●
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 69
FILM | Reviews
HORROR
MAGGIE
(TBC) 95min ●●●●●
ANIMATION
INSIDE OUT
(TBC) 102min ●●●●● Pixar deliver the goods yet again with a delightful, poignant and hysterically funny animation taking us inside the mind of a troubled girl named Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias). Her brain is imagined as a well-oiled factory hub, commanded by personified emotions: Joy, Fear, Sadness, Disgust and Anger – who appear as scrappy mini beings. This sharply observed, utterly magical coming-of-ager has a beautiful message for everyone, not just kids. In a similar manner to Up, Riley’s first 11 years hurtle by in a matter of minutes. We meet her again in a transitional period as things in the brain hub start to go awry prompted by a house move, leading Joy and Sadness to embark on a perilous mission to save the day. Amy Poehler assumes her Parks and Recreation persona as she voices the super positive and organised head of the group, Joy. When Riley’s mother (Diane Lane) asks her daughter to keep her chin up, Joy does not want to let her down, but in her determination forgets that each emotion is just as important as the others; something that Sadness (a perfectly cast Phyllis Smith, channelling Beetlejuice’s Lydia Deetz) constantly attempts to communicate. Elsewhere, Mindy Kaling as Disgust is straight outta Mean Girls, and hilarious to boot. Highlights include the introduction of imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) who is part elephant, cat and dolphin, and an abstract sequence which skips between modern art movements in a gloriously manic fashion. Co-director and writer Pete Docter has said he was inspired to make Inside Out after he witnessed his daughter going through a tough time. You can tell; every gag and sentiment rings entirely true. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ General release from Fri 24 Jul.
A zombie film that trades scares for sorrow, Maggie is the sensitively captured tale of a strong-oak father standing watch over his dying child. The casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger may indicate otherwise but it’s anything but action-packed, with the directorial debut of Henry Hobson playing like the anti World War Z. It’s set in an America learning to adjust after an outbreak of the ‘necroambulist’ virus. Stoic farmer Wade (Schwarzenegger) chooses to keep his infected daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) beside him, a helpless bystander to her grisly demise. The march of the disease is slow enough to prove agonising, yet gives them mere weeks to say goodbye. We’ve seen zombie movies of all shades – from satires to splatterfests to rom-zom-coms – but rarely one which lingers so mournfully on the haemorrhaging of humanity. Arnie is stately in his heroism and heartache, while Breslin has a nice line in quiet terror. Those looking for traditional frights will be disappointed as this moody indie plays on our fears in a more subtle, sometimes chilling way. It doesn’t need outside aggressors because, as the film astutely observes, a family’s worst nightmare is a threat from within. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 17 Jul.
ROMANTIC DRAMA
THE LONGEST RIDE (12A) 128min ●●●●●
SCREWBALL COMEDY
SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY (12A) 94min ●●●●●
Veteran director Peter Bogdanovich makes a welcome return to cinemas, some 14 years after his last narrative feature, The Cat’s Meow. Modern-day setting aside, his latest harks back to a bygone era and an almost forgotten sub-genre: the screwball comedy. It’s a breakneck style Bogdanovich has employed before, and no one can accuse him of getting rusty. Co-written with his ex-wife Louise Stratten, the dialogue flies by, with gags feeling organic and, almost entirely, sophisticated. Leading the story is Owen Wilson’s married Broadway director Arnold. The night before the casting of his new play he calls up an escort agency. Arriving at his door is the lovely Izzy (Imogen Poots). Rather than have sex, he wines and dines her, offering her $30,000 to ditch the day job and follow her dream of becoming an actress. That’s just the beginning of an increasingly frenetic story that’s breathtaking and brilliantly cast – particularly Poots, who grounds the film emotionally, and Jennifer Aniston who plays a foultempered shrink and has rarely been funnier. It seems they can still make ’em like they used to. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 26 Jun. 70 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
Spurred on by the success of 2004’s The Notebook, the writings of Nicholas Sparks have spawned a string of drippy romances, with George Tillman Jr’s blandly photographed, unexceptionally acted film marking the tenth entry in the Sparks production line. Scott Eastwood plays Luke, a bull rider whose bravado hides his fragile physical health. His rugged good looks attract Sophia (Britt Robertson), an arts graduate about to take up a prestigious gallery position in New York. Pulled in different directions, Luke and Sophia’s chance rescue of Ira (Alan Alda) from a burning car leads Sophia to read through a box of the old man’s love letters. Ira’s advice, that ‘love requires sacrifice’, is awarded a transformative power that strains credulity. Taking this revelatory philosophy on board, Sophia rejects both her own ambitions and the lure of the city. The sexual symbolism, notably Luke coaching Sophia to ride his mechanical bull, is truly risible, and the WWII flashbacks to Ira’s past feel like a welcome relief from the couple’s torrid lovemaking. Conventional, painfully slow and carrying some confusingly mixed messages about relationships, Tillman Jr’s film constitutes the worst kind of artificial bull. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 19 Jun.
Reviews | FILM
list.co.uk/film
DOCUMENTARY
MUSICAL
DRAMA
(15) 103min ●●●●●
(15) 92min ●●●●●
(15) 131min ●●●●●
THE LOOK OF SILENCE Documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer follows the award-winning The Act of Killing with another tremendous achievement. The location is still Indonesia but this time the focus is on optometrist Adi as he confronts death squad leaders about their brutal execution of his brother in 1965. Many of these men live close by and are still in positions of power. Adi’s road to the truth is a dignified one. He begins with a gentle questioning session as he carries out an eye exam on a frail old man who we find out is responsible for genocide. But the deeper Adi gets, the more fearless he becomes and, in turn, the more frightening the film becomes. On more than one occasion his life is threatened. Born after the death of his brother, Adi has always lived in the shadow of carnage, and we meet his ageing mother and father who, to this very day, cannot shake the impact of the atrocities they have lived through. However Oppenheimer is mindful to not only document Adi’s struggle but to also relay his hopes for the future. Years of filming, research and gaining trust pay off impressively in this terrifying, tense and essential documentary. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ Selected release from Fri 12 Jun.
LONDON ROAD
EDEN
Taking a remarkable approach to a real-life tragedy, the setting of stage-to-screen adaptation London Road, from director Rufus Norris, is the titular Ipswich street on which five prostitutes fell victim to serial killer Steve Wright in 2006. In the aftermath, writer Alecky Blythe interviewed the road’s residents and, with composer Adam Cork, turned the resulting verbatim dialogue – hesitation, repetition and all – into an astonishing musical screenplay. Far from being a gimmick, the method feels fitting for the deep-rooted social issues being explored. Visually, too, the framing and cuts replicate the organic rhythm of speech that so effectively informs the music, while the exceptional cast – including Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy – shoulder the controversial material with essential plausibility. The integrity extends to the compassionate treatment of the prostitutes themselves. Their predominant silence speaks volumes about their social exclusion and when they are finally given voice it is a sucker punch reminder of their ongoing fight for survival. A bold and inspired piece of British cinema, London Road is absolutely unmissable. (Nikki Baughan) ■ General release from Fri 12 Jun.
Mia Hansen-Løve’s fourth feature is an insightful and involving cinematic experience, focusing on the rise and fall of a French house DJ from the 1990s to the 2000s. She collaborates with her brother Sven on this perceptive journey into the electronic dance music scene that captures the highs of blissed-out club nights and the lows of come-downs. Sven’s memories of his time as a DJ struggling to achieve his dream add layers of credibility and honesty; he’s both nostalgic for times past and critical of his generation and their refusal to grow up, adapt and take responsibility. Félix de Givry turns in an excellent performance as the ambitious and talented Paul Vallée whose love of music leads him to make some bad life choices. His emotions are mirrored in HansenLøve’s commanding and euphoric club scenes, which eventually morph into desperately sad reminders of the good times. Although a fling early on doesn’t quite ring true, this beautifully observed slice of life glides effortlessly through the years, providing wonderful snapshots of an era of partying and youthful misdeeds. Eden is celebratory, cautionary and intoxicating. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ Selected release from Fri 24 Jul.
WESTERN
SLOW WEST
(15) 83min ●●●●● This whimsical western from John Maclean – formerly of the Beta Band – follows a wide-eyed dreamer and his gruff chaperone during the tail end of the Wild West. Episodically structured, it documents the close shaves and strange encounters of young Celtic nobleman Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and his hired gun Silas (Michael Fassbender). They’re on the trail of the object of Jay’s affection Rose (Caren Pistorius) who has fled Scotland after a catastrophic accident. Trussed up like a 19th-century pimp, Ben Mendelsohn is the brute in pursuit. Fassbender makes for a wonderfully laissez-faire gunslinger; cigar permanently clamped betwixt his teeth, he combines coarse ways, easy charm and discernable bemusement. And, although it offers its share of awe-inspiring Colorado vistas, Slow West largely rejects the sweep and swagger of traditional westerns, favouring the more intimate eccentricity of an odd couple road movie. As well as pricking Jay’s love bubble, Maclean’s accomplished directorial debut humorously disabuses us of any and all romantic notions regarding the Wild West: a man’s un-wiped arse is exposed when he’s shot with his trousers around his ankles; an inexperienced tree-feller is flattened out; and our heroes strip to their long-johns, a washing line slung between their horses, after a disastrous drinking session results in sodden clothes. Slow West is too irreverent to be instantly iconic or truly heartbreaking, undermining its most potentially poignant moment in enjoyably emphatic style. That’s not to say that it isn’t striking or stirring. Poetically penned, and gorgeously shot by Robbie Ryan, it delivers ragged, rugged beauty as it gives life’s cruel ironies a welcome lick of wit. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 26 Jun. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 71
FILM | Reviews
DRAMA
QUEEN AND COUNTRY (15) 115min ●●●●●
MYSTERY DRAMA
MR HOLMES
(PG) 104min ●●●●● Seventeen years after they made the Oscar-winning James Whale biopic Gods and Monsters, director Bill Condon and star Ian McKellen reunite for this unique spin on Sherlock Holmes. Certainly, the two films bear comparison, with the esteemed thespian again playing a figure looking back on his life with regret. This, though, takes a more slippery tack. Based on Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of the Mind – adapted by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher – and set in 1947, Mr Holmes finds Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation aged 93, living in a Sussex retreat with his stern housekeeper Mrs Munro (Laura Linney) and her 14-year-old son Roger (Milo Parker). Holmes spends his days tending to his beloved bees, desperately clinging to fading memories. One in particular keeps troubling him – that of his final case, some 30 years earlier, a sinister affair involving a husband and wife, Thomas and Ann Kelmot (Patrick Kennedy and Hattie Morahan) that caused Holmes to make a career-ending mistake. Hatcher’s script drifts back and forth through time quite elegantly, creating a mosaiclike structure that also fits in Holmes’ recent trip to Japan and his burgeoning friendship with Roger, who takes an interest in the bees. McKellen is superb, giving a nuanced performance, while Linney is also on form and young Parker is a find. It’s a huge advancement on Condon’s recent efforts like The Fifth Estate. Granted, the unhurried pace will frustrate some, while those looking for a really brain-teasing mystery will also be disappointed. But if you want a meditative, melancholic Holmes, this is for you. (James Mottram) ■ General release from Fri 19 Jun.
Hope and Glory remains one of the great achievements of director John Boorman’s 50-year career. A loving evocation of his wartime childhood, it saw social conventions being eagerly abandoned and a young boy having the time of his life. Queen and Country is a belated sequel set in 1952, as the now teenage Bill (Callum Turner) is called up for national service. It is a tale of army high-jinks and valuable life lessons, infused with a fond nostalgia for a lost corner of national life. Lacking the focus of its predecessor, Queen and Country is nonetheless still welcome and engaging. Boorman’s sense of the past never succumbs to easy sentimentality and it’s both clear-eyed and surefooted in the friendship Bill develops with reckless rebel Percy (Caleb Landry Jones) and the follies of army rules and regulations. Boorman brings out the best in his cast, with David Thewlis going beyond the stereotypical sergeant-major martinet. The ageless David Hayman returns as Bill’s dad, but John Standing as his grandfather only confirms how much we still miss the late Ian Bannen. It’s a modest pleasure of a film that leaves you hoping it is not the last word from the octogenarian Boorman. (Allan Hunter) ■ Selected release from Fri 5 Jun.
COMEDY DRAMA
LES COMBATTANTS (15) 98min ●●●●●
ANIMATION
SONG OF THE SEA (TBC) 93min ●●●●●
A beloved wife and mother disappears into the sea the night her baby girl is born. The bereft father and his son cannot heal their grief. But when old powers awaken and little Saoirse’s selkie kindred call to her, big brother Ben steps in. The children fight magic with magic to save the spirit world and their fractured family. Besides looking charming and sporting a delightful score, the English-language version of this enchanting, hand-drawn animation boasts the voices of Brendan Gleeson and Fionnula Flanagan. Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon are giving Hollywood’s animation big boys a run for their money. Like director Tomm Moore’s debut The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea was up for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars and is similarly shaped from a love of Irish folklore, nature and culture. Selkies (seal at sea, human on land), deities and fairies mingle with the modern world, alongside accessible themes of family, love and jealousy. Artistically, too, classical Irish design motifs, the influence of Studio Ghibli, and contributions of European collaborators make for a beguiling blend of the unfamiliar and culturally specific with the universally appealing. (Angie Errigo) ■ General release from Fri 10 Jul. 72 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
Les Combattants is the knockout first feature from French writer-director Thomas Cailley. Buoyed by charismatic leads and renegade spirit, it’s the story of two small-town outsiders and their wild adventure which takes a lead from Britain’s own survivalist loon Bear Grylls (briefly seen stuffing himself into the carcass of a camel). Madeleine (Adèle Haenel) is a cross between Grylls and The Bridge’s socially inept Saga; apocalypse-obsessed and determined to make life as difficult as possible, she meets the affable Arnaud (Kévin Azaïs) when she wrestles him humiliatingly to the ground during a selfdefence demo. He’s instantly smitten: a loyal puppy to her sulky, hissing cat. Arnaud lets his responsibility to the family business slide when he follows Madeleine to an army training camp. Flanked by a fun electro score from Hit ‘n’ Run that whizzes and races, Cailley’s debut is an ace of a calling card. It might feature romance and comedy but categorically rejects the rom-com template. The askew humour is deftly judged, never overwhelming the story. Although rather slight, this is a film with a fighter’s spunk and a lover’s heart that refuses to surrender to sentimentality. (Emma Simmonds) ■ Selected release from Fri 19 Jun.
Reviews | FILM
list.co.uk/film
COMEDY DRAMA
COMEDY
SATIRE
(PG) 91min ●●●●●
(15) 109min ●●●●●
(TBC) 108min ●●●●●
SHOOTING FOR SOCRATES James Erskine’s endearing film plays out against the tumultuous backdrop of mid-80s Northern Ireland. But its focus is the real-life journey of the national football team to the 1986 World Cup, where they face the might of Brazil and star player Sócrates de Souza in a tense decider. While the narrative makes astute observations about the difficulty of living a normal life during the Troubles, it’s Erskine’s subtle approach that most impresses, as he shows the strength of spirit that can bring communities together. Through the sweat, tears and dedication of the team, their optimistic, and opportunistic, manager Billy Bingham (John Hannah) and the legions of fans back home – including Art Parkinson’s Tommy – we see how a love of football can heal divisions and be as transformative as religious faith. The result is well-known but that does nothing to diminish the enjoyment of watching this colourful group of men strive for glory. Add in a light-hearted tone, keen eye for period detail and great performances – Conleth Hill’s turn as commentator Jackie Fullerton is a highlight – and it makes for a charming celebration of the beautiful game. (Nikki Baughan) ■ Selected release from Fri 5 Jun.
LISTEN UP PHILIP
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE
The life of a misanthropic novelist is scrutinised in Alex Ross Perry’s latest. We meet Philip (Jason Schwartzman, on fine form) as he marches around NYC venomously setting the world to rights. It’s hilarious, particularly because he’s voicing an inner contempt not many would have the gall to whisper, even though we may be thinking the same. There’s probably a little bit of Philip in all of us. Philip’s second novel is about to be published and he’s going through a crisis. You may feel like you’ve seen this before, but Perry upends the usual formula by delving into the reactions of Philip’s long-suffering partner Ashley (a disarming Elisabeth Moss). When Philip is invited to stay with an author he idolises, Ike (Jonathan Pryce), he learns that arrogance, selfishness and solitude may not lead to happiness. Perry has fashioned an astute and layered screenplay. His attention to detail is impressive and the 70s aesthetic gives it left-field appeal, while the dialogue recalls the best of Wes Anderson. It’s a rare filmmaker who can effortlessly glide between so many different psyches in such an insightful and witty way. (Katherine McLaughlin) ■ Selected release from Fri 5 Jun.
Justin Simien’s canny satire may make you squirm but it paints a complex picture of racial politics and identity in the US. With an edge that belies its sophisticated setting and a welcome shot of compassion, Dear White People introduces us to the prestigious, self-segregated Winchester University; a nest of users, closet racists, entitled assholes and shit-starters. It follows a white-girl wannabe (Teyonah Parris), troubled shock-jock (Tessa Thompson), faction-less gay nerd (Tyler James Williams) and smart stud (Brandon P Bell) as they negotiate the nastiness. Fuelled by a provocative radio show, campus tensions build to a truly horrible Halloween party. Executed with class and performed to perfection, Simien’s debut uncovers the insecurity behind the carefully manufactured fronts, offering great insight into the contradictions and concerns of young black culture. And he provides thoughtful, witty commentary on the dog-eat-dog world of ambitious hopefuls of any skin colour, whose opinions are played back and preserved for posterity before they’ve even graduated, and who stumble in their haste to make a mark. (Emma Simmonds) ■ Selected release from Fri 10 Jul.
ACTION SPOOF
SPY
(15) 120min ●●●●● With the Bond franchise reverting to a male M and Moneypenny back behind a desk, the timing’s right for a female-fronted spy spoof. Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, The Heat) reteams with muse Melissa McCarthy for a funny, exciting, genuinely ambitious film that fells its targets with deceptive ease. McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, the indispensable office support to CIA superspy Bradley Fine (Jude Law), who’s sent into the field when the unthinkable happens. Susan’s identities are dowdy and her gadgets are crap but her initiative drives her into the heart of an arms deal. Although it begins with a takedown of Bond, Spy also sets its sights on the more gung-ho, muscle-heavy actioner; Jason Statham sends himself up as a pigheaded rogue agent with a much-boasted-about history of unbelievable exploits. McCarthy delivers physical gusto and so much sweetness and sincerity you’ll have her back through every triumph and corresponding moment of indignity, while Rose Byrne is exceptional as the big-haired, exuberantly outfitted, nuclear weapon-touting Raina; the scenes where this arrogant villainess verbally spars with the insecure Susan are the film’s finest. By sidelining archetypal alpha-males and challenging their sexist assumptions, Spy waves a flag for awkward, underappreciated women in any workplace, wearing its feminism as a badge of honour. Set-pieces are pulled off with aplomb, yet Feig’s film simultaneously introduces a degree of sense to proceedings, drawing attention to violence that’s often skirted around. Spy is a hugely likeable, perfectly judged parody that provides empowering action and embarrassing incidents in equal measure. (Emma Simmonds) ■ General release from Fri 5 Jun. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 73
BOOKS | Highlights
HITLIST
!"#$%&'()*#$+!'$,+#-$,. /#.0*/!1+#2,.*3456 Here are some highlights from EIFF 2015, as chosen by our editor Yasmin Sulaiman. Read more about the festival on page 15. For full listings go to list.co.uk
BOOKS HIGHLIGHTS
OPENING GALA: THE LEGEND OF BARNEY THOMSON Festival Theatre, Wed 17 Jun, 9pm Scotland’s own Carlyle Events are listed by Robert city, then date. makes directorial debut with at this Submithis listings for your event delightful jet-black comedy about a list.co.uk/add downtrodden barber whose mundane life is turned upside down when he accidentally turns killer. See feature, page 16. AMY Filmhouse, Thu 18 Jun, 8.35pm & Sat 20 Jun, 2.30pm An absorbing, moving, insightful and powerful documentary from Asif Kapadia (who directed the Oscar-winning documentary Senna) that charts the amazing highs and terrible lows in the life of the wonderfully talented but terribly troubled Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011. See feature, page 20.
HECTOR Cineworld, Thu 18 Jun, 8.35pm & Sat 20 Jun, 1.45pm Typically, Peter Mullan delivers a perfectly pitched performance as affable homeless pensioner Hector McAdam, in this captivating study of a man with a tragic past. BIG GOLD DREAM: SCOTTISH POST-PUNK AND INFILTRATING THE MAINSTREAM Filmhouse, Fri 19 Jun, 8pm; Belmont, Tue 23 Jun, 8.25pm & Odeon, Sat 27 Jun, 6.10pm A predecessor to Rough Trade and Factory Records, Fast Product quickly became the hub for a group of groundbreakingly talented musicians. This documentary is the previously untold story of a post-punk/indie music scene that reverberated from Edinburgh, throughout the UK and beyond. DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD: THE STORY OF THE NATIONAL LAMPOON Cineworld, Sat 20 Jun, 8.40pm & Sun 21 Jun, 1.15pm Featuring archive appearances and contributions from such luminaries as John Belushi, Gilda
57839*:&$! 74 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep Sept2015 2015
Radner, Bill Murray, Judd Apatow, Kevin Bacon, John Landis, Chevy Chase, Billy Bob Thornton and John Goodman.
OUR FAMILY (BOKUTACHI NO KAZOKU) Odeon, Sat 20 Jun, 5.55pm & Filmhouse, Sun 21 Jun, 6pm Yûya Ishii (who made The Great Passage and Sawako Decides) presents an ordinary suburban family dealing with the illness of matriarch Reiko (Mieko Harada) . . . but her sudden illness is really a catalyst to other financial issues, family relationships and longhidden secrets. THE OVERNIGHT Cineworld, Sat 20 Jun, 6.40pm & Mon 22 Jun, 8.45pm Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling play a couple who have just moved to LA and are befriended by a sophisticated couple (played with real relish by Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche). THE DRIVER Filmhouse, Sat 20 Jun, 12.20pm An expert getaway driver (Ryan O’Neal) plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an arrogant detective (Bruce Dern) who will go to any lengths to catch him. Part of the strand, Walter Hill: The Early Years. LAST DAYS IN THE DESERT Festival Theatre, Sun 21 Jun, 8.30pm Returning from his 40 days in the desert, Jesus (Ewan McGregor) encounters a father and son (Ciarán Hinds and Tye Sheridan) in distress, and intervenes in their fate. McGregor will also appear at an In Person event at the Lyceum Theatre, Sun 21 Jun, 3pm. THAT SUGAR FILM Cineworld, Sun 21 Jun, 6.05pm & Tue 23 Jun, 8.30pm The debut film from Australian actor Damon Gameau, who sets out to expose (in true Morgan Spurlock style) how much sugar we consume without even realising it.
EXILED Filmhouse, Wed 24 Jun, 6.05pm Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Portuguese colony of Macau, just before it is set to begin a new era under Chinese rule, a team of jaded hitmen from Hong Kong are sent to kill one of their former colleagues who is trying to start a life away from crime. A spectacular Hong Kong crime film packed with stylised action, all beautifully orchestrated by director Johnnie To. To will also appear at an In Person event following this screening. LIVE LIVE CINEMA: THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS Festival Theatre, Wed 24 Jun, 7.30pm Forced to work at breakneck pace to re-voice multiple characters in perfect lip-sync while playing a new, original musical score and creative live sound effects, this is Live Live Cinema’s most dangerous 4D movie yet. See feature, page 22. MELBOURNE Cineworld, Thu 25 Jun, 8.45pm & Filmhouse, Sat 27 Jun, 8.40pm The influence of Oscar-nominated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is clear to be seen in Nima Javidi’s debut film, which stars Peyman Moaadi (who featured in Farhadi’s award- winning A Separation) as a husband about to head to Australia – hence the film’s title – with his wife Sara (Negar Javaherian), when unexpected drama strikes after she agrees to babysit a neighbour’s newborn child. MISERY LOVES COMEDY Cineworld, Thu 25 Jun, 8.40pm & Sat 27 Jun, 3.50pm Actor Kevin Pollack steps behind the camera to ask a few simple questions of folks he knows in the comedy game. The roster includes the likes of Tom Hanks, Penn Jillette, Jimmy Fallon, Judd Apatow, Steve Coogan and Larry David. SCOTTISH MUSSEL Cineworld, Fri 26 Jun, 8.50pm
& Sat 27 Jun, 3.40pm Actress Talulah Riley makes her debut as writer/director with the breezy and enjoyable comedy Scottish Mussel, an old-fashioned romp that relishes its wonderful locations and frothy sense of humour. BACK TO THE FUTURE PRESENTED BY EIFF AND RSNO Festival Theatre, Sat 27 Jun, 7.30pm In 1985, EIFF premiered Back to the Future, the story of 17-year-old Marty McFly, who accidentally travels back in time to 1955 and must restore harmony to history in order to save the future. In order to celebrate this exciting anniversary, EIFF presents a very special screening with live accompaniment from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. This event is sold out! SANTA SANGRE Filmhouse, Sat 27 Jun, 11.10pm Sixteen years after scaling the psychedelic heights of cult classic The Holy Mountain, ‘El Topo’ himself, maverick, and visionary Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, returned to the ring with this spectacular and surreal Mexican fantasy about a family of travelling circus performers. THE LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) Filmhouse, Sat 27 Jun, 3.45pm Ralph Bakshi undertook the enormous challenge of bringing JRR Tolkien’s book to the screen as faithfully as he could, with hand-drawn animation and extensive use of rotoscoping (the translation of live-action footage into illustrative form). CLOSING GALA: IONA Festival Theatre, Sun 28 Jun, 5pm A striking and enthralling drama set against the stunning backdrop of the Inner Hebrides island of Iona, director Scott Graham’s follow-up to his award-winning debut feature Shell is a real delight. See preview, page 18.
Highlights | FILM
SPY
HITLIST
General release from Fri 5 Jun Melissa McCarthy is Susan Cooper, a CIA analyst who enters the
field as an agent in this pitch-perfect action movie spoof from Paul Feig. See review, page 73. LONDON ROAD General release from Fri 12 Jun Stage-to-screen musical about the Ipswich street on which five prostitutes were killed. See review, page 71.
THE LOOK OF SILENCE Selected release from Fri 12 Jun A terrifying and essential documentary from Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing). See review, page 71. SLOW WEST General release from Fri 26 Jun A young boy travels across 19thcentury frontier America
looking for the woman he loves in this directorial debut from the Beta Band’s John Maclean. See review, page 71. EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Various venues, Edinburgh, Wed 17– Sun 28 Jun The oldest continually running film
festival in the world returns for its 69th year. See feature, page 15. AMY Selected release from Fri 3 Jul Haunting documentary about the late Amy Winehouse from Senna director Asif Kapadia. See feature, page 20, and review, page 69.
FILM HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add MOON
years before. See review, page 72. MINIONS General release from Fri 26 Jun Those minions are everywhere, including on the big screen. Follow Stuart, Kevin and Bob on their journey, as they are recruited by a super-villain with a plot to take over the world. TERMINATOR: GENISYS General release from Fri 26 Jun Schwarzenegger returns for the fifth instalment in the sci-fi mega-franchise.
Glasgow Film Theatre, Tue 9 Jun Old-school science fiction piece delivering a cerebral adventure that’s as thought-provoking as it is thrilling. JURASSIC WORLD
MAGIC MIKE XXL General release from Fri 3 Jul Sequel to the 2012 male stripper drama, which was based in part on the real life experiences of its star, Channing Tatum.
Arnold Schwarzenegger as a doting father who won’t leave his infected daughter’s side during a zombie virus outbreak. See review, page 70. ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Selected release from Wed 22 Jul Shakespeare’s controversial tale of greed, justice and mercy. INSIDE OUT General release from Fri 24 Jul Pixar’s latest turns emotions into
characters voiced by actors including Amy Poehler and Bill Hader. See review, page 70. FANTASTIC FOUR General release from Thu 6 Aug Marvel reboot about four scientists who gain superpowers when a teleportation experiment goes wrong. ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY: OTHELLO Selected release from Fri 21 Aug Hugh Quarshie plays the Moorish general in the RSC production.
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DEAR WHITE PEOPLE Selected release from Fri 10 July Film set at an Ivy League college, which follows the lives of four black students. See review, page 73.
General release from Fri 12 Jun 22 years on and the park is now open for business. Unfortunately a man-made hybrid dinosaur goes on the rampage. LONDON ROAD General release from Fri 12 Jun Olivia Colman and Tom Hardy star in this verbatim drama about the real-life Ipswich Street where five prostitutes were killed. See review, page 71.
NATIONAL THEATRE LIVE: EVERYMAN Selected release from Thu 16 Jul Chiwetel Ejiofor plays the titular, well, Everyman, in this adaptation of one of the classics of English drama.
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ECA ANIMATION DEGREE SHOW Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Mon 15 Jun A collection of work from Edinburgh College of Art’s graduating students. ENTOURAGE General release from Fri 19 Jun Movie star Vince Chase and his pals take on Hollywood. MR HOLMES General release from Fri 19 Jun Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen), now 93, is still haunted by a case from 30
General release from Fri 17 Jul Paul Rudd takes on the role of conman Scott Lang, who dons a suit and shrinks in size to become Ant-Man. The latest instalment in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.
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| edtheatres.com 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 75
KIDS
Fo the latestr n listings a ews, reviews, g nd o list.co.uk to /kids
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BEN & HOLLY’S LITTLE KINGDOM
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PHOTO © DAN TSANTILIS
Bringing a small screen fave to the big stage
76 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 76
Previews | KIDS
list.co.uk/kids
MUSIC
FESTIVAL
Glasgow Green, Fri 14 & Sat 15 Aug
Various venues, Glasgow, Thu 4–Sun 14 Jun
WORLD PIPE BAND CHAMPIONSHIPS Some go for the drums, some for the Kids Zone, some just for the kilts. But whatever you go to the World Pipe Band Championships for, you’ll have plenty of company. Each year, over 200 bands from around the world converge on Glasgow Green for the highlight in the piping calendar, plus over 30,000 visitors. ‘The Worlds attract a wide range of audiences,’ says Ian Embelton, chief executive of the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association. ‘There are those who come to appreciate the enormous skill and dedication of world-class musicians competing for prizes, to visitors to Scotland and to the family audiences who make a whole day of it.’ As well as the music workshops, activities and entertainment in the Kids Zone, young people are very much at the heart of the championships themselves, and have been for generations. ‘The majority of the bands have younger members and very young supporters whose families are already steeped in the traditions of pipe bands,’ says Embelton. ‘They will be the lifeblood of those bands for generations to come. We want the Worlds to be accessible to every age group in the hope that we will continue to grow audiences and encourage participation, ensuring pipe bands continue to thrive wherever there is interest.’ (Kelly Apter)
GLASGOW SCIENCE FESTIVAL
Think you could survive in the wild? There’s only one (civilised) way to find out: join the RSPB in Kelvingrove Park and try building your own den, cooking outdoors and finding out how the rest of the animal kingdom manages it on a daily basis, while we’re all cosy indoors. ‘The Science of Survival’ is just one of several fun events taking place at a free drop-in weekend for all ages at Kelvingrove during Glasgow Science Festival. Many of the events tie in with the festival’s main aim since launching in 2007: to highlight the work of cutting-edge scientists on our doorstep. To that end, Kelvingrove will be playing host to leading researchers who will help visitors explore the journey seafood makes from the ocean to your stomach, talk enthusiastically about their search for prehistoric beasts in Scotland, and take you inside the surprisingly beautiful workings of a nerve cell. ‘Our weekend at Kelvingrove is a fantastic opportunity to get hands-on and discover some of the amazing science happening right here in Glasgow, straight from the mouths of the scientists doing the research,’ says Glasgow Science Festival director, Dr Deborah McNeill. ‘Families can try yoga and learn the science behind those stretches, meet a dinosaur hunter, compare themselves to athletes at the sports science roadshow and build a map of where they live with citizen science mapping. From the weans to your granny, there really is something for everyone.’ (Kelly Apter)
FESTIVAL
MAGICFEST
Summerhall, Edinburgh, Fri 26 Jun–Sat 4 Jul We all love a good trick or mindblowing feat of illusionism. There are even some of you who can’t get enough of people appearing to hammer nails through their own heads. But what does MagicFest have up its sleeve for kids and families this year? A fair bit, as it happens, with a family adventure called Magic Quest and a friendly competition entitled War of the Wizards taking centre stage. ‘The children’s programme at MagicFest has grown each year, and in 2014 the children’s workshops all sold out, so there’s definitely a lot of kids out there who want to learn magic,’ states Kevin McMahon (pictured), one third of Edinburgh’s Colour Ham comedy-magic gang and the founder of MagicFest. ‘Generally, magic is always popular with kids, from Roald Dahl to Dynamo to Harry Potter. Dreaming of having special powers is just what kids do and that’s what magic is all about.’ Magic Quest and War of the Wizards might be very different events but both aim to be positive experiences for the kids involved. War of the Wizards will give young people the chance to show off their magic skills in front of a warm and friendly audience. And while there is an element of competition involved, all participants receive some kind of reward as well as feedback after their performance. ‘In Magic Quest, you have to work together to solve problems, overcome obstacles, even fight a dragon!’ explains McMahon who has his own show, Quantum Magic, at the festival. ‘It was inspired by the event we had last year at Camera Obscura, called Tower of Illusion. We wanted to make an event that places you inside a magical adventure and this is what we came up with. It’s fun and fast moving with a few surprises along the way.’ (Brian Donaldson) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 77
KIDS | Highlights
HITLIST
GLASGOW SCIENCE FESTIVAL Various venues, Fri 5–Mon 15 Jun, glasgowsciencefestival. org.uk A packed programme of workshops, shows, films and exhibitions that might make the grown-ups wish they’d stuck into science more at school. See preview, page 77.
ROYAL HIGHLAND SHOW Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, Thu 18–Sun 21 Jun, royalhighlandcentre. co.uk Part agricultural show, part food festival, part family fun day out, with everything from motor, equine and crafts to food ‘n’ drink and children’s activities.
MAGICFEST Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 26 Jun– Sat 4 Jul, magicfest. co.uk MagicFest pulls a rabbit out of the hat with close-up conundrums, mindboggling illusions and other near-impossible feats. Kids bits include Magic Quest and War of the Wizards. See preview, page 77.
BEN & HOLLY’S LITTLE KINGDOM LIVE King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 11 Jul; King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 15 & Thu 16 Jul, benandhollylive. com A hotly-anticipated stage adaptation of the award-winning television animation. Take care of the thorny brambles. See preview, page 76.
WORLD PIPE BAND CHAMPIONSHIPS Glasgow Green, Fri 14 & Sat 15 Aug, theworlds. co.uk See preview, page 77.
KIDS HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
GLASGOW GOVANHILL FESTIVAL FUN DAY Langside College, Sat 6 Jun, scottishrefugeecouncil.org.uk A community fun day with bouncy castles, a carousel, face painting, arts and crafts, dance, henna hand painting and gardening. Part of Refugee Festival Scotland.
CHILDREN’S WOOD GREAT FOOD GALA The Children’s Wood, Sun 7 Jun, thechildrenswood.com A fruit and vegetable-inspired fun family day out in The Children’s Wood. Why not take part in the runner bean race, join workshops on how to grow your own produce and watch the West End Festival annual dog show? Not enough fun? Well, there is also music by Little House and some bug-themed activities from the very good people over at Knit Wild. Part of West End Festival.
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GLASGOW MELA Kelvingrove Park, Sun 14 Jun, glasgowmela.com For 25 years this huge outdoor festival has been celebrating the traditions of Glasgow’s many and varied immigrant communities with a mix of international music, dance, activities and stalls. Part of West End Festival. POP LOCK-IN Hummingbird, Glasgow, Sun 14 Jun, babylovesdisco.co.uk An afternoon lock-in for 4–11 year olds. Resident DJs spin the very latest chart tunes and there’s a streetdance instructor, karaoke, jewellery making, plus a relaxing parents room and licensed bar. Also Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Sun 21 Jun. FAMILY CEILIDH WITH GLASGOW FIDDLE WORKSHOP Glasgow University Union, Fri 19 Jun, guu.co.uk Glasgow Fiddle Workshop host a night of jigs and reels with performances from Glasgow Fiddle Workshop Juniors and members. Part of West End Festival. HOGGANFIELD LOCH FAMILY FUN DAY Hogganfield Park, Sun 16 Aug, glasgow.gov.uk/parks Celebrate
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the wonders of nature at Glasgow’s Local Nature Reserve. Activities include wildlife walks, stalls, wildflower planting and Clydesdale horse dray rides. MERCHANT CITY FESTIVAL Merchant City, Sat 25 Jul–Sun 2 Aug, merchantcityfestival. com Glasgow’s cultural quarter is transformed into a bustling market with a variety of outdoor performances including acrobatics, children’s theatre and interactive installations.
EDINBURGH MEADOWS FESTIVAL Sat 6 & Sun 7 Jun, The Meadows, meadowsfestival.org A muchbeloved festival hosting local bands and dance groups amid lots of family-friendly activities, including quirky performances, workshops and storytelling. CAKE FEST Sun 21 Jun, Royal Botanic Garden, edinburgh.cakefest.org.uk A quirky wee one-dayer where all you budding Bake Off-ers can create a map of Edinburgh made entirely out of cake. Educational and delicious.
MUSIC
Fo the latestr n listings a ews, reviews, g nd o list.co.uk to /music
FFS Art rock explosion with a collaboration made in pop heaven ‘We thought “Take Me Out” was very cool, and wouldn’t it be nice to say hello when they came to Los Angeles?’ Russell Mael is casting his mind back to roughly the moment when he first heard that Glasgow’s art rockers Franz Ferdinand were big fans of Sparks, the art pop band he formed with his brother Ron in the late 60s. That was around the time of Franz Ferdinand’s debut album, and it took a decade before they actually ran into each other, when both bands played Coachella. ‘We met and decided then that it would be great to do something together,’ says Mael. ‘We put forward a couple demos: one was “Piss Off”. But they got swept up by everything, and it didn’t happen at that time.’ Later, it would end up as the closing track on their new album. ‘We had the songs first, rehearsed them and
then recorded it all together in a room. So no hanging around or fannying about,’ says Franz Ferdinand lead singer Alex Kapranos, talking about the intensive 15-day session in 2014 where they finally recorded the whole album. The result? Energetic, jubilant arch pop, with those signature, naggingly dramatic pianos you’ll recognise from Sparks, piss-takey lyrics typical of both groups, almost pantomime levels of theatricality, and clearly camp fun being had on both sides. Expect a vaudevillian night of art pop and mutual-respect-rock when they perform together at the Art School in Glasgow in June, followed by an appearance at the Edinburgh Festival in late August. (Claire Sawers) ■ The Art School, Glasgow, Tue 16 Jun; Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Mon 24 Aug. See album review, page 84.
4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 79
20 THINGS WE LOVE ABOUT MOGWAI
1. SONG TITLES Here are five corkers: ‘A Cheery Wave from Stranded Youngsters’, ‘Oh! How the Dogs Stack Up’, ‘I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead’, ‘I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School’ and ‘How to Be a Werewolf’.
2. BAND BAITING Stuart Braithwaite may have cooled off on tearing strips from other acts these days, but who can ever forget his slating of Blur (‘absolute garbage masquerading as the people’s band’), Coldplay (‘spineless music, shite songs’) and Air (‘a band I hate for any number of stupid reasons’). Yes, but what do you really think of them?
3. THATCHER DEATH PARTY By some curious piece of Nostradamus-like forethought, Mogwai predicted the gathering of a Thatcher death party in George Square. How? Well, by writing a song in 2011 entitled ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’, two years before she exeunted stage right (well, it wouldn’t be stage left, would it?).
4. COLLABORATIONS How’s this for a line-up of partnerships: Douglas Gordon, Gruff Rhys, Clint Mansell, Faust, Aidan Moffat and the Cowdenbeath Brass Band.
5. SOUNDTRACKS
As Stuart Braithwaite and co gear up for their 20th anniversary gigs, Brian Donaldson picks out a score of titbits about the post-rock legends
That collaboration with the Turner Prize-winning Scotsman Douglas Gordon was a soundtrack for the suitably existentialist movie about French footballl genius Zinedine Zidane. Carrying on the Gallic theme, they brought a suitably haunting vibe to zombie-ish television drama Les Revenants (The Returned).
6. IGGY POP One of the band’s heroes, his voice can be heard at the start of second album, Come On Die Young, sampled from a tetchy interview on Canadian TV in which he denounces the term ‘punk rock’.
7. BARBRA STREISAND Possibly the only thing Mogwai have in common with the singer-actress is their own personal take on Jewish prayer ‘Avinu Malkeinu’. Compare and contrast her version with their epic instrumental ‘My Father, My King’. 80 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
MOGWAI PHOTO © STE
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8. LIONEL RICHIE Legend has it that the final track from Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will was named after the very words spoken by Stuart Braithwaite to Lionel Richie upon a chance meeting at an airport: ‘you’re Lionel Richie’. Well, what else was he to say: ‘hello, is it me you’re looking for?’
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10. ROCK ACTION Their own label has given us the likes of Errors, Remember Remember, Sacred Paws and the James Orr Complex as well as, obviously, some classic Moggers.
11. SICK ANCHORS
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They’re just normal guys who like their team, right? And occasionally, a fondness for the green and white part of Glasgow will creep into their work. Such as ‘Scotland’s Shame’ which gently mocked the red, white and blue element of the city, and ‘Hugh Dallas’, a ‘tribute’ to the one of the most controversial Scottish referees of our time.
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12. VIDEOS We’ll all have our own favourites, but how about the skydiving of ‘Simon Ferocious’, the scratchy animation of ‘Batcat’ or ‘Stanley Kubrick’, as directed by Brian Griffin? Not the Family Guy dog, we’re pretty sure.
13. SCARY ALBUM COVERS There’s 1999’s Come On Die Young with band member Dominic Aitchison looking a bit demonic (is it a coincidence that Blair Witch Project came out that same year?), while The Hawk is Howling actually features a non-verbalising eagle. As for Mr Beast: we don’t even want to think about what might be going on in that collage of weirdness.
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16. WHISKY Sophisticated chaps that they are, the band released their own brand of scotch called RockAct81w, limited to 324 bottles.
17. CELEB FANS Robert Smith of the Cure and Frank Black of the Pixies are two, and Ian Rankin is another. Maybe Lionel Richie? That remains unconfirmed.
18. BERLIN Mogwai are officially now a Glasgow-Berlin band with Barry Burns having moved out there to co-run a bar which he has compared to Glasgow’s The Doublet. Continuing the Germanic feel, Stuart Braithwaite nominated Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ as having the finest guitar solo in music history.
19. VOCODER The voice encoder synthesis system has had a mixed musical history, previously utilised by everyone from Phil Collins to ELO and Kraftwerk to the Clockwork Orange soundtrack. Mogwai gave it a new lease of life on 2001’s Rock Action.
20. PLAYING LIVE The band may be doing two shows as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations at their spiritual home of Barrowlands, but Mogwai’s mighty sound has also filled such grand UK auditoria as the Usher Hall and the Royal Albert Hall.
Barrowlands, Glasgow, Sat 20 (support from Loop, Prolapse and Pye Corner Audio) & Sun 21 Jun (support from the Vaselines, Forest Swords and Sacred Paws).
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15. RAVE TAPES Nominated for the Scottish Album of the Year Award, Rave Tapes received almost universal four out of five reviews (or 7/10 if you’re the NME) and if you can listen to the moment in ‘Remurdered’ where it picks up the pace without involuntarily nodding your head in a repetitive and rhythmic fashion, you may well have no soul.
MICK HARVEY
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14. IT’S NOT ALL LOUD-QUIET-LOUD Their longstanding reputation is of a band who blast our senses with a wall of sound before gently lulling us into a false sense of calm before pummeling our ears again, all within the one track. But more recently things have gone a little bit electronica in the ‘Gwai camp with their most recent album cementing them as an altogether different post-rock beast.
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Suzzy Roche & Lucy Wainwright Roche IN CONCERT WEDNESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER
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regularmusicuk 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 81
MUSIC | Previews ROCK
FAITH NO MORE
O2 Academy, Glasgow, Sun 14 Jun Faith No More were always an odd proposition. They took a few years to really hit their groove (Courtney Love and Chuck Mosley fronted the band in the early years) but it was the addition of vocalist Mike Patton that sent FNM into the mainstream. Their fusion of funk, metal and hardcore on ‘Epic’ and ‘From Out of Nowhere’ saw them transformed into unlikely MTV stars. Follow-up Angel Dust was even more frantic and eclectic ranging from the death metal screams of ‘Jizzlobber’ to an easy listening cover of John Barry’s ‘Midnight Cowboy’. Two more albums followed but Patton quit the band in 1998. Then in 2009, Faith No More announced their return. The Second Coming tour looked like it would be a final victory lap. ‘When we split up, we explored what we could do on our own,’ explains bassist and founding member Billy Gould. ‘During that time, we each developed what was a natural part of ourselves. Now, coming back, we have a wider perspective so we can do things we didn’t even think of back in the day.’ The band have defied expectations with an incendiary and inventive new album, Sol Invictus, in which they have explored new-found freedom by producing themselves in Gould’s studio. ‘When we were kids, there was a producer in the room with us, but now it’s just us doing it. We don’t need anybody else: it’s empowering. Hypnotic and gothic, we’re coming back to where we were with our first album: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Roxy Music. Then Patton being Patton, there’s crooning, screaming, with a bit of soul underneath it all. We’ve always taken strange influences and smashed them together.’ This mini-tour will be the first chance to hear Sol Invictus live. ‘We have chaotic shows,’ says Gould. ‘We invite chaos, it actually becomes normal after a while. Your threshold for insanity goes up a little.’ (Henry Northmore)
HIP HOP
EARL SWEATSHIRT
O2 ABC, Glasgow, Mon 8 Jun It’s hard to believe that five years have passed since Earl Sweatshirt rhymed about sticking trumpets up girls’ butts on his debut mixtape ‘EARL’. Then, he was just 16 and his own cheeky bottom was about to be packed up and sent off to military school in Samoa. It was like some sort of Bill and Ted gag, but for real. Unlike the wacky and at times tedious hi-jinks of Odd Future’s head honcho Tyler, the Creator and co, Earl (real name Thebe Neruda Kgositsile) has always been an anomaly within the camp. This cherub-like dark horse in a pack of dayglo-hooded wolves is usually armed with the darkest lyrical themes and the most complex rhyming schemes of the bunch. With his long-awaited and acclaimed debut of Doris back in 2013, featuring heavy hitters such as the Neptunes on the desk, the mystery of Earl was unravelled with an accomplished and welladjusted record overall. Slightly matured, it was still snotty enough and straight-up bizarre when it had to be. Two years on and he’s dropped perhaps his most minimal and retrospective set of tracks to date, aptly titled I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Here, he is grappling with fame and subversion at still a pretty tender age. Earl Sweatshirt does have stuff on his mind though: he’s a thinking kid's rapper without falling into the backpack multi-syllable gibberish that a lot of ‘alternative’ rap still wallows in. (Nick Herd) ELECTRONIC
FINITRIBE
Poetry Club, Glasgow, Fri 5 Jun; Central Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 9 Jun When Edinburgh’s electronic dance pioneers FiniTribe returned to active duty in 2014 with a set of remixes of their 1980s acid anthem ‘DeTestimony’, it marked the low-key resurgence of one of the most eclectic operations to ever emerge from a club culture. FiniTribe emerged from Edinburgh’s post-punk scene in 1984 to release material through Wax Trax, One Little Indian and FFFR, also subverting the nursery rhyme ‘Old MacDonald’ to wind up the ubiquitous hamburger joint en route. Irvine Welsh declared himself a fan: ‘more than any other act, FiniTribe defined my love of dance music and provided the soundtrack to my social life. These weren’t the songs I grew up to, they were far more important than that; they were the songs that I refused to grow up to.’ Since their 1998 album, the more downbeat Sleazy Listening, former member Philip Pinsky has become a successful composer for theatre, and the current lineup of fellow originals Davie Miller and John Vick is now known as FiniTribe With A Finiflex Production in a nod to their old studio base. Upon their return, they've played with fellow clubland auteurs 808 State, and are steadily becoming key players in an underground scene personified both by Glasgow’s Poetry Club and by Edinburgh’s mixed-media night, Neu! Reekie!, where they'll share a bill with Young Fathers and Andrew Weatherall. Like Weatherall, Miller and Vick are constantly reinventing themselves to remain a vital pan-generational force of experimental beats produced to seduce to. (Neil Cooper) 82 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
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MUSIC | Records
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
DANCE COSMIC POP
JAMIE XX
This Life is But a Passing Dream (Static Caravan)
Jamie xx’s paean to dance music is the soundtrack to the summer (as Limmy might put it), possibly whether you like it or not. His judicious debut album has an effortless charm that is both elegant and clever, with nods to different genres without being too overbearing, and a studious but heartfelt attempt to pinpoint what dance music means to him. As a bellwether, what In Colour lacks in daring it makes up for in accessibility, beauty and smarts. In essence, In Colour is like something made by Burial’s optimistic twin. It has a similar appreciation of bass music and culture – including snippets of mixtape dialogue – but looks at the world with a more upbeat slant. Instead of the ornate isolation and ethereal gloom of Burial, Jamie xx – aka Jamie Smith – delivers the flip side, a positive, twinkling togetherness that is neither cloying nor sentimental, but a kind of measured millennial euphoria. This is perfectly evinced in ‘Loud Places’, the album’s beguiling lead-off single featuring The xx bandmate Romy on vocals, an unabashed festival anthem with its delightfully ecstatic singalong chorus. Equally buoyant is its successor ‘I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)’, a lollygagging slice of sunkissed R&B. There is a clear striving for authenticity here on Smith’s part. The charged low-end rumble of opener ‘Gosh’ with its air-raid siren synths and sampled MCs is the kind of conscious yet finely spun hat-tip to his predecessors that Smith has excelled in, as is the melodious thrill of ‘Sleep Sound’. Elsewhere, ‘Stranger in a Room’, with bandmate Oliver Sims, and ‘Obvs’, with its hypnotic steel drums, acknowledge Smith’s role in somnambulant pop makers The xx. There is a hint that In Colour might just be too refined, a studied exercise in musical gladhanding that will cause some listeners to bristle. But even with this considered approach Jamie xx has shown that he can simultaneously pay homage and find his own path. (Mark Keane)
ART OF THE MEMORY PALACE ●●●●●
Beautiful Silvery Tay, with your landscapes so lovely and gay, and your uncanny knack for producing pop music that’s cosmic and thrilling. Witness Django Django, the Phantom Band and the Beta Band, all of whom have central protagonists raised a stone’s throw from Dundee. And now the city’s musical riches are further embellished by local duo Art of the Memory Palace. The band, it must be said, has form. Art of the Memory Palace comprises Andrew Mitchell (Hazey Janes, Idlewild) and Raz Ullah (often spotted touring in Jane Weaver’s band). The harmonic synthbrandishing duo bonded over a love of Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Popol Vuh and cassette technology. They recorded hours of freeform music and created the album layer-upon-layer from reel-to-reel tapes, in order to instil it with what they call ‘an analogue vapour quality’. The duo’s meticulous approach pays off. The record launches with an evocatively-titled space jam (they all are) called ‘Sun-Blinded Capsule Memory Haze’, all shimmering electro, choral disco and sonic laser beams. If that wasn’t a fine enough portent for things to come, it’s followed-up by a brilliant celestial suite in ‘The Ghost of Benno Ohnesorg (Parts 1 and 2)’. There’s a lot of interplanetary intervention on the album – it shines throughout the stellar waltz of ‘La Lumiere’ – but there are myriad earthly wonders, too. ‘The Ancient Mariner’s Burden’ is awash with seafaring reverie, from seabird cries and briny splashes to undulating cymbals and dirgy guitars: a tech-psych shanty haunted by mermaids past. Life is a passing dream, and death is eternal, but it sure does sound beautiful. (Nicola Meighan)
In Colour (Young Turks) ●●●●●
SYNTH POP
ART POP
Magic Milk (Simply Thrilled) ●●●●●
FFS (Domino) ●●●●●
MIRACLE STRIP
The Miracle Strip was a popular amusement park in Florida which enjoyed an extended heyday from its opening in 1963 and throughout the rest of the 20th century. It eventually closed in a dilapidated state in 2006 when they flogged off all the rides to other parks across the States. We introduce this information here because, well, this band are called Miracle Strip, and listening to them gives us a strong sense of faded Cold War-era glamour too. They sound like the 1980s, albeit a misty-eyed reflection on a childhood spent in that decade, rather than a facile contemporary spin on what the period was meant to have sounded like. When we say the 80s, by the way, we mean the semi-skilled, DIY, full-of-heartand-charm 80s of recording John Peel’s show onto well-worn TDK cassettes, rather than the era of yuppies and cocaine and Soho and New Romance. Fife-raised brothers Fergus Christie Jack and Malcolm Jack (the former a onetime member of Dirty Summer; the latter a writer for this magazine and one of the collective who help run Pictish Trail’s Eigg-based Lost Map imprint) are fully skilled at what they do, which is producing sonorous, affecting synth-pop anthems with a tropical bent and clanging guitar lines reminiscent of mid-period New Order. Yoshi Nakamoto of the Aislers Set and Still Flyin’ features on drums. Singer Fergus has a distinctive voice whose rolling baritone depths are offset by the occasional slip out of key when he reaches higher, an imperfection which is charming rather than off-putting on the glistening pocket epic ‘Take Running Jump’ and the blissedout Madchester swoon of ‘Daydreams of Crashing’ (‘why stay alone / when it’s easier with you?’ he croons with a lazily contented sentiment). There are shades of Scott Walker to ‘Flying Chances’ and early Pulp to the eight-minute ‘Two Silhouettes’, although with a brief instrumental title track which takes the song count up to seven, it feels like they’ve settled on introducing themselves with an extended EP rather than a full album. (David Pollock) 84 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
FFS
FFS, indeed. Following much in-secret collaboration, this fusion of Glasgow’s own Franz Ferdinand and Los Angeles’ arch pop classicists Sparks sees both bands blend together perfectly. The gaps in their respective personae are filled in with a shared love of bombastic guitar riffs and the similarly expressive, almost melodramatic qualities of both Alex Kapranos’ and Russell Mael’s voices. They lend each other youth, urgency and a sense of dignified gravitas, and each transfer doesn’t always go in the direction you might expect. The opener, ‘Johnny Delusional’, lopes in on ringing, typically Sparksian piano, Kapranos’ signature breathy croon lamenting its inability to find the right words to use. It feels as though the grounds of this collaboration are being tested for firmness, but very quickly find their footing. The song builds into a quick, boisterous crescendo on the theme of yearning love as a metaphor for this teamup: ‘wouldn’t it be terrible if there’s no music there? / wouldn’t it be terrible if she don’t want you here?’. Once the group have found the confidence that what they’re doing is working, it doesn’t leave. ‘Call Girl’ is a jittery, suggestive groove in the vein of Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Michael’, while ‘Dictator’s Son’ belongs very much to the Maels with its dramatic, symphonic sweeps carried along on Bob Hardy and Paul Thomson’s typically meaty and hard to resist rhythm section. ‘Little Guy from the Suburbs’ is a soft, murderous, duetted ballad in the vein of Scott Walker and ‘Police Encounters’ is taut, edgy synthrock. ‘The Man Without a Tan’ surges on one of those punky FF riffs which gulps up everything before it while containing a most Sparksian musical reference to Liszt. Not every piece here is essential, but every one bears plenty for lovers of assuredly eccentric pop and a skewed, playful sense of humour. Most notable are the joyously selfreferential ‘Collaborations Don’t Work’ and ‘Piss Off’s careening, sweary verve. (David Pollock)
Records | MUSIC
list.co.uk/music EDM / R&B
GRUNGE DOOM / ROCK
Lantern (Warp) ●●●●●
Jimmy Shan (Know Your Enemy) ●●●●●
HUDSON MOHAWKE
SHAREHOLDER
Hudson Mohawke’s debut album, Butter, was made by an up-and-coming 23-year-old producer from Glasgow. As this follow-up arrives six years later, it’s remarkable to reflect on the pace and scale of change in Ross Birchard’s career. In the intervening years, he’s released a handful of EPs for Warp, but it’s his work with others – as one half of TNGHT and as a producer for the likes of Kanye West and Drake – that has taken him to where he is now. Lantern is, in parts, a gleaming reflection of his experience as a producer for rappers who mostly mingle behind thick rope cordons, and its tone is often not dissimilar. The choruses are outsized; the synths squeal in ever-escalating registers; the drums land like boulders off a cliff. It’s a big record, a monument to the physicality of Hudson Mohawke’s music. His sound has certainly matured – there’s much less of the fun, hyperactive funk of Butter here – but Lantern isn’t without its pimples. Irfane’s diabetes-inducing vocal on ‘Very First Breath’ isn’t a good start; ‘Warriors’, a truculent ‘fuck the haters’ anthem, is the ill-advised rendering of a passive-aggressive Facebook status. After this rocky start, things improve considerably. Where its predecessor orbited a world that felt like a teenager’s bedroom (R&B, funk, computer games, garish Photoshop gags), Lantern’s touchstones are more adult. ‘Indian Steps’, featuring Antony Hegarty, fares surprisingly well as a tender love song, and Miguel’s heartfelt vocal for ‘Deepspace’ stretches over streaky organs and a sparing drum track, proving that Birchard can do pop music well, and on his terms. Some of the album’s surest moments recall tropes of Birchard’s solo work – anthemic synths, helium vocals and frenzied drops: two out of three of these appear on the bright ‘System’. While Birchard’s versatility isn’t in doubt, Lantern only shows the best of itself when it sidesteps the champagne bar for a more familiar space. (Ray Philp)
I’m looking at a cassette with a picture of a skull and some clouds loitering over a silhouette of Edinburgh with a clock tower. On the side of the inlay card it reads ‘Jimmy Shan by Shareholder’. Inside are some titles and an unattributed quote about singing songs, and on the front is a logo of a 4x4 with ‘Know Your Enemy’ series. This much I know. Correction: this is all I know. Reviewing can throw you curveballs and this is certainly one. Like that WuTang album which only ever existed on a hard drive in an art gallery, I’m not sure if anyone else will get to hear this tape of dirgey dirtpool jams by these ‘three people from Scotland’ who have previously supported Magik Markers. It’s also not that clear how you would even go about it (unless it’s by West Bromwich Albion’s current under-21 coach, Jimmy Shan, which really would be something of a curveball). Instead, I like to think of this whole thing being an elaborate situationist prank: let’s make a tape of no-fi, guitar scuzz with vocals that sound like they were recorded by a cement mixer and get it reviewed even though it will never actually exist outside this realm. If a cassette of feedback-drenched sloth rock only exists in my old Walkman alone, does it really exist? Deep. The tape is blank, incidentally, apart from ‘Know 14’ written with a Sharpie. There have been 13 others before this one. Have they all been hurtled into the same void? No idea. In many ways it’s not relevant as stuff on the outer limits does have a habit of finding listeners, and fate will see that this will meander its way into the tape decks of those seeking out an atrophied lump of swamp noise. And this inelegance really is something to behold. Shareholder’s sludgy guitar barf and desiccated vocals won’t chime with many, but if you get it, you will get it. That’s if you can actually find the thing. (Mark Keane) ■ The album is now available to stream and download at shareholder.bandcamp.com
NOISE ROCK / HARDCORE
ELECTRONIC / SPOKEN WORD
Success (Season of Mist) ●●●●●
Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine . . . I’m Your Biggest Fan (Without Consent) ●●●●●
KEN MODE
On their sixth outing, Winnipeg’s KEN Mode boldly step away from the brutal, complex metallic style they’ve been plying since 1999. Instead, they opt for a stripped-back post-hardcore lean and lanky noise-rock sound that references the likes of Dischord and Touch & Go. Naturally, this requires the hiring of Steve Albini, whose presence guarantees raw, powerful and direct sonics. From barbed feedback is born ‘Blessed’, an astoundingly monstrous opener and the album’s strongest track, based on a colossal, monomaniacal two-note riff, charred around the edges and barely holding itself together. Wiry, louche twin basses cycle beneath sardonic spoken word from Jesse Matthewson, while churning noise from Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker and horrifying howls from Oxbow’s Eugene Robinson further exacerbate the oppressive fury. The frantic riffs of ‘These Tight Jeans’ nod vigorously in the direction of old-school Fugazi as Matthewson hollers: ‘I would like to kill the nicest man in the world’. Another nigh-spoken piece, ‘The Owl’, rides a louche bass rumble topped with jazzy, surf-gone-wrong guitar sprinkles, detouring into a mournful cello section before reaching a big, bouncy climax. Manic, punky, scratchy, fidgety, ‘I Just Liked Fire’ finds Matthewson becoming increasingly feral as he worryingly informs an unidentified object of his affection (or possibly homicidal intentions) that he ‘can’t stop thinking about your skin’. And ‘Management Control’, a forceful stomp with a heavy post-punk feel that brings to mind early Killing Joke, forms a solid central pillar. The second half of the album is almost as fiery and furious, but somehow lacks the character of its predecessor, becoming increasingly indistinct. As a closer, ‘Dead Actors’ is predictable, almost obligatory in its mid-paced build from wounded whisper to climactic roar. At its best, Success is potent, fresh and thrillingly noisy, but it’s also heavily frontloaded, making it a victim of its own . . . well, you know. (Matt Evans)!
ECCENTRONIC RESEARCH COUNCIL
This approximately Sheffield-based synth trio, comprising Dean Honer (of All Seeing I), wordsmith Adrian Flanagan and actress Maxine Peake on droll, dramatic dictation, take all the po-faced pain out of concept albums. Admittedly, a spoken-word suite inspired by the Pendle witch trials might not be everyone’s idea of a sonic treat but 1612 Underture, released in 2012, was an audacious introduction to their blend of spoken word and vintage analogue electronica. This latest offering is a first person account of an obsessive fan’s pursuit of her rock star quarry. Johnny Rocket is the lederhosen-wearing frontman of the Moonlandingz, the local big noise in Valhalla Dale, a degraded northern town where ‘jugglers were not welcome’. The story is sinister, the comedy is coal black, like Eminem’s ‘Stan’ as adapted by the League of Gentlemen. Peake enunciates with relish her character’s increasingly stalkerish encounters with the irascible Rocket over a series of florid, deluded, one-way online communications, eventually revealing the horrifically humorous justification for her actions, which add a whole new socio-political twist to the story as it pitches towards its hysterical conclusion. Flanagan has nailed the stalker’s warped logic, and that thin line between love and hate; as well he might, given that the album was inspired by his own experience of a persistent fan and the enabling effect of social media. The music is suitably distorted. Iggy Pop’s ‘Nightclubbing’ soundtracks a scene in a trendy northern club and its disorientated lurch is echoed across a couple of bad-trip tracks. Meanwhile, Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski of Fat White Family are on hand to play the Moonlandingz, providing snatches of off-kilter vaudevillesque electronica, the most complete of which is the space rockabilly of ‘Sweet Saturn Mine’, though ‘Psyche Ersatz’ deserves a nod for its Fall-like title alone. (Fiona Shepherd) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 85
MUSIC | Records – Jazz & World
JAZZ & WORLD
ALSO RELEASED
JAZZ
KAMASI WASHINGTON The Epic (Brainfeeder) ●●●●●
Nozinja
This triple album arrives on the back of collaborations with Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus, but there's no hip hop here. Washington’s own style is rooted in 60s jazz, with a touch of cosmic funk courtesy of electric bassist Thundercat. ‘Changing of the Guard’ acts as an overture, a flourish of McCoy Tyner-esque piano announcing the soulful theme. Like the gargantuan album it leads, not everything works, but there’s no doubting Washington’s talent or ambition. JAZZ
KEITH JARRETT
Creation (ECM) ●●●●●
NOZINJA
URVANOVIC
A first official solo album from Nozinja, king of shangaan electro (think South African folk on disco-charged steroids). Tincan production, garish synthetic marimba and superfast rhythms can make for difficult listening, but listening is beside the point: nothing less than furious ass-shaking is the intention. (Laura Ennor)
If Idlewild hadn’t reconvened this year, Edinburgh's Urvanovic could stake a claim to a chunk of their ‘young Celtic folkies meet angstful rockers’ territory. They incorporate fuzzy alt.rock on opener ‘Open Ground’, although there’s more of an orchestral element throughout, and lovely interplay between male and female vocals. (David Pollock)
ROBYN STAPLETON
LAU
Nozinja Lodge (Warp) ●●●●●
Fickle Fortune (Laverock) ●●●●● This Stranraer native builds on her 2014 BBC Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year award with her first album. The songs and arrangements may be traditional but the selections reveal a liking for feisty, modern-feeling characters, in jaunty, humorous ballads and wistful laments. (LE)
NUMBERS ARE FUTILE
Sunlight on Black Horizon (Song, by Toad) ●●●●●
Amateurs (Survivalist) ●●●●●
The Bell That Never Rang (Reveal Records) ●●●●● Recorded with Joan ‘Joan As Police Woman’ Wasser in the producer’s chair, Scots folk-rock trio Lau have managed to avoid going full New York here. There’s something of the Wild West as well as the glens to the reedy, crooned ‘First Homecoming’ and the pounding folk train song ‘Tiger Hill (Armoured Man)’, however. (DP)
CHEMICAL BROTHERS Born in the Echoes (Virgin EMI)
The current vogue for all things psychedelic continues with this debut from a Greco-Portuguese, Edinburgh-based duo. ‘Monster’ has already attracted national radio play with its combination of dreamy shoegaze and spooky lyre. Here it’s surrounded by fuzzy electronica, full of cascading synths, tribal drums and faraway vocals singing of fire and oblivion. (LE)
This eighth Chemical Brothers album leads on the disco falsettovoiced rave grind of ‘Sometimes I Feel So Deserted’, taking in a guest roster including Q-Tip on the smooth electro of ‘Go’, St Vincent floating over ‘Under Neon Lights’ and Beck on blissed-out finale ‘Wide Open’. (DP)
FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
EVERYTHING EVERYTHING
How big, how bland, how bloody loud. Florence ‘why-sing-whenyou-can-bellow’ Welch continues to ply her trade with all the subtlety of a technicolour foghorn. No change to previous releases’ formula of stompy, angsty, indie pop (although there’s a bit of brass thrown in here) and no change either to Flo & Co’s tendency to beat you round the head with every song. A fan pleaser and no more. (LE)
On this third album’s evidence, Manchester’s Everything Everything will only launch their stock even further as post-post-modern channelers of rock’s already convoluted web of cross-genre contaminations, throwing R&B, math rock, classic house, UK garage, tropicalia and industrial into the mix. Delivered with an arched eyebrow, no question, but it’s a masterful extended piece of pop invention. (DP)
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (Island) ●●●●●
86 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
●●●●●
Get to Heaven (RCA) ●●●●●
Jarrett’s melodic improvisation, with one foot in jazz and the other in the European classical tradition, can be affecting, but the piano solos of Creation, recorded on a 2014 concert tour, are rhythmically inert and light on harmonic invention. Without his crack rhythm section of Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette to rouse him, Jarrett maintains the same moderate pace throughout, building to pompous crescendos of lush nothingness. JAZZ
STAN TRACEY
Alone & Together with Mike Osborne (Cadillac) ●●●●● The late British pianist Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood, released in 1965, was an instant classic, but by the 1970s he was considering packing it all in. Meeting alto saxophonist Mike Osborne revitalised him. The 42 minutes of 1974's Alone crackle with invention, as bright melodies, stumbling Monk-ish tone clusters and avant-garde abstractions fly from Tracey’s graceful fingers. The previously unreleased duo set sees chemistry turn to magic. WORLD
TERAKAFT
Alone (Tenere) (Outthere Records) ●●●●● Terakaft’s fifth album Alone is one of the most powerful Tuareg rock statements in some time. ‘Anabayou’ is a bold opener, reimagining the traditional camel train rhythm as a bouncy Schaffel beat. The guitars flicker and burn, as snaking leads interlock with clipped rhythm parts and driving riffs. Baritone surf guitar and a whomping kick drum drive ‘Karambani’, while ‘Amidminin Senta Aneflas’ skips to an infectious Cajun rhythm. WORLD
FADIMOUTOU WALLET INAMOUD Isswat (Sahel Sounds) ●●●●●
Fadimoutou Wallet Inamoud’s debut recording presents traditional Azawad folk, her rich, poetic vocals striding over hypnotic vocal drones, handclaps and calabash rhythms. These songs of folk history, revolution and longing are mesmeric and completely transporting. WORLD
SUPREME TALENT SHOW Danbe (Sahel Sounds) ●●●●●
Featured on last year’s glorious Balani Show Super Hits compilation, Bamako street party kings Supreme Talent Show get their own release in Danbe. It’s a ridiculously exciting sound: frenetic djembe rhythms, balaphone samples, klaxon-like synths and infectious rapping over bass-heavy beats. Taps aff! WORLD
VARIOUS
Peru Boom: Bass, Bleeps & Bumps from Peru’s Electronic Underground (Tiger’s Milk) ●●●●● The beats of Peru Boom are less party oriented, with the producers dialling down the BPMs to fuse indigenous sounds with electronica. There’s some generic EDM and techno here, but tracks like Chakruna’s ‘Cumbia Achorada’ and Tribilin Sound’s ‘El Carmen’ offer intriguingly cosmic takes on Peruvian rhythms. ■ All reviews by Stewart Smith.
Records – Singles | MUSIC
list.co.uk/music
SINGLES
Before we dive headlong into this summer's new singles and downloads, let us address the Elliphant in the room. She's a Swedish singer / rapper also known as Ellinor Olovsdotter, and her new single 'Love Me Badder' (●●●●● TEN Music, out now) is part Robyn-esque machine ballad, part Shabba Ranksevoking 'Mr Loverman' tussle, with a clear nod to MIA thrown in for good measure. It makes for an excellent urban pop dirge. Years and Years' latest is a rather more gleaming pop affair. 'Shine' (●●●●● Polydor, out Sun 5 Jul) is less jarring and self-consciously banging than their all-conquering previous single 'King', and sees the London electro trio bring down the tempo and ramp up the longing (and Vangelis / Climie Fisher echoes) to fine effect. Edinburgh duo Man of Moon's debut 7” 'The Road' (●●●●● Melodic, out now) is a heady psychedelic jam that lives up to the myriad whispers of greatness surrounding the enigmatic pair, and the new offering from Glasgow's disco postpunk renegades WHITE is similarly promising: 'Future Pleasures' (●●●●● RCA, out now) is a glittering, glam-strutting, Postcard-toting non-stop thrill. Or, if you prefer your Scottish pop replete with vaudevillian post-punk kicks, then look no further than 'Johnny Delusional' (●●●●● Domino, out Mon 8 Jun),
which comes courtesy of Franz Ferdinand and Sparks (FFS) and is every bit as arch, dramatic and rock-operatic as such a dream alliance might suggest. Jenny Hval's new single is more suited to the bedroom hour. 'That Battle is Over' (●●●●● Sacred Bones, out now) sees the Norwegian artist take on socialism, consumerism and war, via the medium of exquisite alt-pop. Similarly swoon-inducing is the new short-player from Natalie Prass, whose skipping, flute-toting 'Bird of Prey' (●●●●● Spacebomb, out Fri 31 Jul) is an upbeat highlight from her lovely recent self-titled album. This month's Single of the Issue garland will have to stretch that bit further, so as to accommodate the combined brilliance of the Twilight Sad (pictured, second right) and Bdy_Prts (right). The Twilight Sad's hauntedpop masterpiece 'It Never Was the Same' (●●●●● Fat Cat, out Mon 15 Jun) comes replete with a cover of 'There's a Girl in the Corner' by the Cure's gothic-pop kingpin himself, Robert Smith. Meanwhile, Bdy_Prts' 'Cold Shoulder' (●●●●● self-released, out Mon 15 Jun) is a kick-ass indie R&B classic from Glasgow's Jill O'Sullivan and Jenny Reeve. Think synths and violins; think spandex and unicorns; think Sons and Daughters duelling with Destiny's Child. They're better than that. (Nicola Meighan)
EXPOSURE ZYNA HEL The name may not ring a bell, but it might soon. By the way, it’s pronounced like Xena, her teen idol, the princess warrior, and that’s Hel, as in the Norse goddess of the Underworld. Occult-loving, dark electronic pop artist Zyna Hel aka Elisabeth Oswell, has an upcoming single produced by Blanck Mass and shows at Stereo and Wickerman. We interrupted her unpacking (she’s just moved to Glasgow to live with partner, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite) to talk new music, the current government and female heroes. On her music I like the occult and disco. Friends call me a disco witch, which seems to fit. My music sounds spooky, a bit ethereal, with futuristic, cosmic sounds. I’ve got hardly anything online; I didn’t want to share too much too soon. I’m a massive perfectionist. I’ve been working on tons of stuff [with John Fryer of This Mortal Coil; Andrew Liles of Nurse With Wound, and Ben Powers of Fuck Buttons, amongst others] but I really want my first album to be as good as I can get it. On the No Wave scene I’m pretty fascinated by these people all sharing this impulse to create. Kids that just did what the fuck they wanted, even if they couldn’t even play an instrument. And in Britain, good music was still being made under the Thatcher regime. That’s exciting to me. On the recent election I’m so disappointed that this government is in power. They show no signs of supporting the arts. I cried all weekend after that result. On her favourite female musicians I love artists with a strong sense of identity. Patti Smith, who I hope to see in Glasgow soon, and Glasgow’s Sharp Tooth are amazing too; I played with them and Tuff Love at a TYCI night not long ago. On co-habiting Less than a week of us living together and Stuart was wearing my 101 Dalmatians pajama bottoms. They’re blue: he really suits them. (Claire Sawers)
■ Zyna Hel supports Outblinker at Stereo, Sat 13 Jun, and plays the Solus Tent at Wickerman Festival, Sat 25 Jul. For a longer version of this interview, go to list.co.uk 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 87
MUSIC | Highlights
HITLIST
EARL SWEATSHIRT O2 ABC, Glasgow, Mon 8 Jun, O2abcglasgow. co.uk American rapper, alt. hip hop artist, and member of LA-based hip hop collective Odd Future. See preview, page 82. UMBERTO & ANTONI MAIOVVI The Glad Café, Glasgow, Tue 9 Jun, thegladcafe.
co.uk Retro-electronic horrorscapes from this new collaboration between Antoni Maiovvi and Umberto. YOUNG FATHERS Central Hall, Edinburgh, Tue 9 Jun, summerhall. co.uk Bass and electroheavy hip hop from Edinburgh trio who won both the 2014 SAY award
and the Mercury Prize. Neu! Reekie! #UntitledLive night with a DJ set from Andrew Weatherall, FiniTribe, short film showcase and Hollie McNish. See interview at list.co.uk
wickermanfestival.co.uk Scotland’s ‘alternative music festival’ with plenty new Scottish bands, plus the household likes of the Waterboys, Squeeze and Lulu.
THE WICKERMAN FESTIVAL East Kirkcarswell, Dundrennan Abbey, Fri 25 & Sat 26 Jul, the
T IN THE PARK Strathallan Castle, Perthshire, Fri 10–Sun 12 Jul, tinthepark.com The huge rock, indie, pop
and DJ line-up includes the Prodigy, St Vincent, the Libertines, Charli XCX (pictured), Paloma Faith and Rødhåd. See feature, page 25.
MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
GLASGOW JOHN COOPER CLARKE Platform, Fri 5 Jun, platformonline.co.uk The legendary Salford punk poet, spiritual godfather to the likes of Mike Skinner and Plan B hauls his laconic wit on tour. FINITRIBE The Poetry Club, Fri 5 Jun, thepoetryclub.net Scottish dance music pioneers mixing post-punk and Krautrock influences with Balearic house beats. See preview, page 82. WOVEN SKULL The Old Hairdressers, Sat 6 Jun, theoldhairdressers.com Minimal psych-drones and ethereal folk from Ireland. Also Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Sun 7 Jun, henryscellarbar.com BLUR Barrowland, Tue 9 Jun, glasgowbarrowland.com Seminal Britpop outfit with an enviable and eclectic back catalogue of indie hits including ‘Country House’, ‘Parklife’, ‘Song 2’ and ‘There’s No Other Way’. This date follows the release of their new album, The Magic Whip. See album review at list.co.uk PATTI SMITH Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Tue 9 Jun, glasgowconcerthalls.com The venerable punk poet icon (pictured above) returns to rocking, performing her iconic Horses album in its entirety. BDY_PRTS Stereo, Fri 12 Jun, stereocafebar. com Female electro-pop pairing (Jenny Reeve and Jill O’Sullivan) from Glasgow whose latest self-released single, ‘Cold Shoulder’ has been described (by us) as ‘a kick-ass indie R&B classic’. See reviews, page 87. 88 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
ELKIN & GUMMY STUMPS The Old Hairdressers, Sun 14 Jun, theoldhairdressers.com Collaboration between Belfast video artists Kathryn Elkin and angular alt. rockers Gummy Stumps. An afternoon of video art meets music as part of Sunday Salon Matinees. SELVHENTER The Glad Café, Sun 14 Jun, thegladcafe.co.uk The all-female outfit plays extreme noise, free jazz and creative rock. L7 The Garage, Mon 15 Jun, garageglasgow.co.uk Grunge from the recently reformed American band. ARIEL PINK
CCA, Mon 15 Jun, cca-glasgow. com Experimental psych pop straight outta sunny LA. FFS The Art School, Tue 16 Jun, theartschool.co.uk There’s a new supergroup in town, people. Beloved Glasgow indie art-pop rockers Franz Ferdinand have teamed up with alt. rock group sibling duo Sparks whose uber-quirky 1974 hit ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us’ remains a classic. See preview, page 79 and album review, page 84. Also Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Mon 24 Aug, eif.co.uk FLEETWOOD MAC SSE Hydro, Tue 16 & Wed 17 Jun; Wed 8 Jul, thessehydro.com Following the success of their 2013 return, the 1970s MOR behemoths are back on the road with their ‘On With the Show’ tour. The group will be joined by singer Christine McVie following a 16-year absence. See preview at list.co.uk LEFTFIELD Barrowland, Fri 19 Jun, glasgowbarrowland.com The original trip
hop and progressive house stalwarts are back. Well, half of them anyway. Neil Barnes is still rocking away behind the decks following the departure of Paul Daley. To some, they’re still the embodiment of an innovative drinks ad with horses surfing the waves. JAMES BLACKSHAW The Old Hairdressers, Fri 19 Jun, theoldhairdressers.com London-based avant-folk fingerpicking guitarist. Also, Summerhall, Edinburgh, Sat 13 Jun, summerhall.co.uk. MOGWAI Barrowland, Sat 20 & Sun 21 Jun, glasgow-barrowland.com Glaswegian post-rock instrumental heroes celebrating their 20th anniversary. See feature, page 80. WEST END FESTIVAL ALL DAYER Òran Mór, Sun 21 Jun, oran-mor. co.uk Headliners Stanley Odd are joined by RM Hubbert, Kathryn Joseph, Yusuf Azak, Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat, the Phantom Band, Remember Remember, Tuff Love, De Rosa, the Dirty Beggars and more.
Highlights | MUSIC
MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS TAYLOR SWIFT SSE Hydro, Mon 22 Jun, thessehydro.com The country pop starlet takes her incredibly catchy songs of love and loss on her 1989 tour in support of album of the same name. See Big Picture, page 13.
esteemed Fence Records will be performing the truly wonderful From Scotland with Love which will leave barely a dry eye in the house. Part of Magners’ Summer Nights. TREMBLING BELLS
NATALIE PRASS Mono, Mon 22 Jun, monocafebar. com American singer-songwriter. See reviews, page 87. Also Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Wed 2 Sep, theelectriccircus.biz GLASGOW JAZZ FESTIVAL Various venues, Wed 24–Sun 28 Jun, jazzfest.co.uk Five days of jazz music, discussions and club nights featuring Gladys Knight, Evan Parker and Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, James Taylor Quartet, The Family Stone and more. ELA ORLEANS CCA, Sat 27 Jun, cca-glasgow. com The Polish born singersongwriter performs experimental pop with psychedelic elements, often with accompanying projections of her own homemade films. AC/DC Hampden Park, Sun 28 Jun, hampdenpark.co.uk The world’s greatest rock band, with an enviable back catalogue featuring ‘Back in Black’, ‘For Those About to Rock’ and the booming ‘Thunderstruck’, are ‘Rock or Bust’ on their latest world tour. ANVIL O2 ABC, Wed 15 Jul, o2abcglasgow.co.uk Old school metal believers who have reached a new cult audience following the release of the Spinal Tap-like (except it’s actually for real) documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil. MERCHANT CITY FESTIVAL Various venues, Sat 25 Jul–Sun 2 Aug, merchantcityfestival. com Glasgow’s swanky part of town continues to round together all manner of cultural doings in its diverse festival. Expect comedy, theatre and art events cramming themselves into the area’s fashionable buildings, while street performers add to the festival atmosphere. Music-wise, it all takes place on the Blackfriars, Emerging Talent and Brunswick Street stages. See preview, page 57. KING CREOSOTE Kelvingrove Bandstand and Amphitheatre, Thu 6 Aug, magnerssummernights.com Eclectic indie-folk musician, plaintive troubadour and founder of the
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EDINBURGH JAMES YORKSTON / JON THORNE / SUHAIL YUSUF KHAN Summerhall, Thu 4 Jun, summerhall.co.uk Largely improvised set based on traditional material from the UK and India. BWANI Sneaky Pete’s, Fri 12 Jun, sneakypetes.co.uk Rock and Afrobeat from this Edinburgh outfit. Performing Paul Simon’s Graceland in full. FOO FIGHTERS Murrayfield Stadium, Tue 23 Jun, murrayfieldexperience.com Big boisterous fun-packed rock from Dave Grohl aka the sticksman from
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MUSIC | Highlights
MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS the legendary Nirvana, who would unofficially top the ‘nicest man in music’ polls every year. Were such things to even actually exist. Solid support comes from grisly rock duo Royal Blood. ELVIS SHAKESPEARE 10TH BIRTHDAY
AVIEMORE INSIDER’S STRATHSPEY SAFARI Strathspey Railway, Sat 22 Aug, insiderfestival.com The intimate Scottish music festival boards a train with on-board gigs and stops for live music in unusual locations. Full lineup to be confirmed.
BLACKRUTHVEN SOLAS FESTIVAL The Bield, Fri 19—Sun 21 Jun, solasfestival.co.uk An age-free arts festival with music, literature and spoken word, visual art and crafts, film and theatre as well as a programme of talks and debates. The music lineup includes the Vaselines, Honeyblood, RM Hubbert, Tuff Love, Hector Bizerk and Bill Wells (without his buddy Aidan but with his jazz trio).
LARGS Elvis Shakespeare; Pilrig Church, Sat 4 Jul, elvisshakespeare.com The venerable secondhand records and books store celebrates its tenth birthday with a day (and a night) of music. Little Pebble, Blueflint and Dominic Waxing Lyrical, alongside spoken word from Rodney Relax (plus some more yet to be confirmed), will be performing instore from the 2pm mark. The Afterparty takes place across the road at 7pm and will host an eclectic bill of folk who have played in the shop over the intervening years. Among their number will be Broken Records and My Two Dads (pictured), which comprises Wounded Knee and Dylan from PET. WILD BEASTS Summerhall, Wed 15 Jul, summerhall.co.uk Flamboyant Weimar cabaret-like sounds and mellower, broodier material from touted Lake District quartet Wild Beasts. EDINBURGH JAZZ & BLUES FESTIVAL Various venues, Fri 17–Sun 26 Jul, edinburghjazzfestival.com A celebration of jazz with a heavy emphasis on blues and trad. Highlights include the BBC Big Band, New Orleans Swamp Donkeys, Songhoy Blues, Mud Morganfield, Jools Holland and the annual Mardi Gras. See more in our Festival Guide out on Wed 8 Jul. FLAMING LIPS Ross Theatre Bandstand, Thu 27 Aug, magnerssummernights.com The Flaming Lips bring their cosmic eccentric live show, furry animals and fake blood back to the UK. Part of Magners’ Summer Nights. 90 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
KELBURN GARDEN PARTY
Kelburn Castle and Country Centre, Fri 3–Sun 5 Jul, kelburngardenparty.com Kelburn Castle provides the almost fairytale setting for this quite eccentric music extravaganza. Four stages and various pop-up nooks host the musical programme which is effectively an eclectic mix of Scottish talent from the avant garde and experimental all the way across to the accessible. There’s also a whole host of events for the little ones among your clan including a Kids Zone, Lazer Quest and Adventure Playground. 2015’s lineup includes Nightmares on Wax, Gentleman’s Dub Club, Optimo, Romare, Ulrich Schnauss, DJ Vadim, Auntie Flo (pictured), Orkestra del Sol and more.
STIRLINGSHIRE DOUNE THE RABBIT HOLE Cardross Estate, Fri 21–Sun 23 Aug, dounetherabbithole.co.uk A boutique music festival with a lovely lineup of music, theatre, comedy and spoken word performances. Headliners Deerhoof are joined by Shooglenifty, the Phantom Band, Them Beatles, Fatherson and plenty more besides.
Classical | MUSIC
list.co.uk/music
L A C I S AS
CL
FESTIVAL
COTTIER CHAMBER PROJECT
Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 5–Fri 26 Jun It’s difficult to believe that there used to be summers in Glasgow without the Cottier Chamber Project. Hardly a project any more, it’s now a full-blown festival in its fifth year with at least 60 events over almost the whole month of June. While there is now a newer dance strand to the festival (see preview, page 95), chamber music remains its core activity. Built up around Scotland’s own top-quality chamber ensembles, a whole host of familiar names return with everinventive programming. Andy Saunders is artistic director, and finds it difficult to pick out particular highlights from such an eclectic mix, with concerts organised into different strands of series within the overall festival frame. ‘Shostakovich is going to be exciting,’ he says, ‘with some interesting pairings of pieces.’ The Maxwell Quartet, for instance, pair up the ‘String Quartet No 10’ with Carl Nielsen’s first quartet in celebration of his 150th birthday year. There is also a Lunchtime Lieder series at the Hunterian Museum with just one song cycle to digest in each concert. ‘There are ten completely different programmes, all are free, and each is about 20 minutes long,’ says Saunders. Plenty time left for more usual lunchtime fare then. Even more imaginative is the intriguing contribution from violinist extraordinaire, Alexander Janiczek. ‘He’ll be appearing with shadow puppets,’ explains Saunders. ‘It will be bizarre. He’d read a book about a Russian violinist who worked with an Italian puppeteer and has wanted to do something similar with puppets for years, but no one had let him.’ Saunders granted that permission, and Janiczek is delighted to fulfil his dream by being part of a puppet show, playing his violin, but unusually lit from behind in Bach, Biber and Berio by the puppet masters of Vision Mechanics. (Carol Main)
CLASSICAL HIGHLIGHTS HITLIST BBC SSO: PANUFNIK – A CELEBRATION: CONCERT 1 City Halls, Glasgow, Sat 20 Jun, glasgowconcerthalls. com Originally written for the celebrated violinist Yehudi Menuhin, the all-too-neglected Polish composer Andrzej Panuknik’s Violin Concerto is a piece which reflects Menuhin’s own personality. This is the first of a weekend of events celebrating one of the 20th century’s greatest composers. DAVID DANIELS Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 4 Jul, thequeenshall. net Scotland and America come together in this special one-off concert to mark the 180th anniversary of the birth of the world’s greatest philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. It’s a rare chance to hear Daniels, one of the most acclaimed countertenors around, in recital.
GLASGOW CONCERTO CALEDONIA Cottiers Theatre, Fri 19 Jun, cottierchamberproject.com Early music ensemble, with an eclectic repertoire ranging from Renaissance music to Zappa, becomes Nathaniel Gow’s dance band. Part of the Cottier Chamber Project, see preview above. NYOS SENIOR ORCHESTRA City Halls, Glasgow, Thu 16 July, glasgowconcerthalls.com Top young players from all over Scotland come together under the inspirational baton of James Lowe for a well-varied programme with Sibelius monumental Symphony No 1 at its core. More unusual is Bloch’s Schelomo with guest solo cellist Leonard Elschenbroich. BBC SSO: THE SOUND OF HITCHCOCK City Halls, Sat 25 Jul, glasgowconcerthalls.com A celebration of Hitch’s composers, including Franz Waxman, Dmitri Tiomkin, Miklós Rózsa and Bernard Herrmann. Matthew Sweet presents, Timothy Brock conducts.
EDINBURGH EDINBURGH QUARTET The Queen’s Hall, Sun 7 Jun, thequeenshall.net Scotland’s premier string quartet is joined by Glasgow Chamber Choir for a programme of music for voices and strings by Hans Gál. SIMON NIEMINSKI: REQUEST RECITAL St Mary’s RC Cathedral, Tue 9 Jun, nieminski.com The cathedral organist plays a request recital.
ANSTRUTHER CALIDORE STRING QUARTET Kilrenny Church, Thu 2 Jul, eastneukfestival.com Top US quartet plays works by Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven.
DUNFERMLINE ONLY MEN ALOUD Carnegie Hall, Thu 18 Jun, onfife. com/venues/carnegie-hall The Welsh male voice choir who were the deserving winners of the BBC’s Last Choir Standing competition present a repertoire ranging from 17th-century works to 21st-century pop.
PAXTON NATALIE CLEIN AND HÅVARD GIMSE Paxton House and Country Park, Sun 19 Jul, musicatpaxton.co.uk The great Natalie Clein (cello) in recital with Norwegian pianist Gimse play works by Debussy, Kurtag, Britten and Rachmaninov.
PERTH PERTH PIANO SUNDAYS: ALASDAIR BEATSON Perth Concert Hall, Sun 28 Jun, horsecross.co.uk/perth-concerthall One of Scotland’s finest pianists plays works by Schubert, Beethoven and Kurtág.
ST ANDREWS EAST NEUK FESTIVAL FINALE Cambo Estate, Cambo House, Sun 5 Jul, eastneukfestival.com An open-air promenade concert featuring the world premiere of a specially commissioned work by one of the USA's best composers: ‘Across the Distance’ by John Luther Adams, featuring multiple horns sounding throughout the woodlands. See feature, page 34. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 91
THEATRE
CAN’T FORGET ABOUT YOU Sex, religion and adult humour across the divide David Ireland, former writer-in-residence at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and most recently seen scaring audiences as the titular anti-hero in Kill Johnny Glendenning, brings a critically lauded, taboo-tickling sex comedy to Scotland. A new co-production with the Tron Theatre, Can’t Forget About You explores an unlikely couple and the consequences of their union. When young Irishman Stevie (Ashes to Ashes’ Declan Rodgers, pictured) and middleaged Scots widow Martha (Karen Dunbar) get together after a chance meeting in a cafe, they have a fight on their hands, in the shape of Stevie’s uptight Ulster family, who are not best pleased with Stevie’s potential new girlfriend. Also featuring Abigail McGibbon as Stevie’s
92 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
sister Rebecca, Naomi Rocke as ex-girlfriend Ciara and Carol Moore as mother Dorothy, it’s directed by Conleth Hill, who enjoyed great success with the original Lyric production of Stones In His Pockets, and now plays Lord Varys in Game of Thrones. Not for the easily offended, this promises riffs on sex, religion ‘and badly pronounced UlsterScots accents’. Can love combat prejudice, or will the budding relationship be as popular as the Pope at a Rangers game? Following two sell-out runs in Belfast, Ireland’s audaciously adult humour and witty observations should chime with the Glasgow audience, whether old – or firm. (Lorna Irvine) ■ Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 1–Sat 25 Jul.
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Previews | THEATRE
list.co.uk/theatre METAPHYSICAL THRILLER
THE DRIVER’S SEAT
Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 13–Sat 27 Jun; Tramway, Glasgow, Thu 2–Sat 4 Jul National Theatre Of Scotland artistic director Laurie Sansom follows up his successful run of Rona Munro’s The James Plays in Edinburgh and London with an adaptation of work by another critically acclaimed Scottish voice, Muriel Spark. Her classic short novel from 1970, The Driver’s Seat, is a psychological thriller: not so much a whodunnit as a whydunnit. The protagonist Lise’s detached nature is the antithesis of conventional female narrators, and Spark conjures a world of confusion and doubt, where the narrator reveals that they are about to be murdered, her wanderings tracing a nihilistic path across Europe. For Sansom, Spark's ambiguous tale was perfect for adaptation. ‘It combines her razor sharp wit and crisp narrative voice with an enigmatic central figure,’ he explains, ‘that slips in and out of focus until its final shocking conclusion.’ An impressive cast includes Morven Christie in the title role as Lise, with support from Michael Thomson, Gabriel Quigley and Ryan Fletcher. With a set design by 2013 Linbury Prize winner Ana Inés Jabares, Sansom should bring a skin-prickling new aesthetic to a whole new audience with this challenging and provocative study of one woman’s alienation in an uncertain and terrifying terrain. (Lorna Irvine)
PHOTO © EOIN CAREY
NEW FESTIVAL
SHAKESPEARE ALFRESCO
CLASSIC COMEDY
CCA, Glasgow, Fri 10–Sun 12 Jul
Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Wed 24 Jun–Sat 1 Aug, bardinthebotanics.co.uk
Touring Scotland until Sat 4 Jul
UNFIX
‘UNFIX is essentially a brand new festival,’ explains artistic director Paul Michael Henry. ‘It has its roots in my work with Butoh internationally, and specifically the “Moving Bodies” Butoh tour that happened at the CCA last year.’ Henry is a prime mover within Butoh, a form of Japanese dance theatre, and his interests in spirituality and performance have led him to develop a festival that celebrates ecology and renewal. ‘UNFIX is conceived as an act of love, a bear hug to the world, a prayer of sorts,’ he adds. ‘UNFIX is welcoming film, live art, visual and contemporary art, political and climate activists, philosophical and spiritual thinkers to go at this whole issue in a communal stab at enlightenment!’ Ecology is not merely a matter of environment: UNFIX recognises a wider definition that sees social activity, even the body’s behaviour, as ecology. The festival’s vision is not just about presenting performance, but working towards a discussion of how the individual can be part of a greater whole. As Henry concludes: ‘To lapse into tagline speak, UNFIX conceives individual human lives as a microcosm of the whole: climate change and ecological transformation are happening inside your body, RIGHT NOW!’ (Gareth K Vile)
BARD IN THE BOTANICS
A fixture of the Glasgow summer, Bard in the Botanics is bringing what artistic director Gordon Barr calls ‘Lesser Spotted Shakespeare’ to the city's West End for 2015. His direction of Love’s Labour’s Lost is the first production of the play in Scotland for half a century, while Jennifer Dick directs the first Scottish professional version of Richard II. Alongside an adaptation of A Midsummer’s Night Dream and an updating of The Merchant of Venice, this year’s season shows the breadth of the company’s dynamism. In recent years, BITB has been expanding – its shows now often tour beyond the Gardens – and take an increasingly imaginative approach to the scripts. The Merchant of Venice has been relocated to 1930s Germany, while Love’s Labour’s Lost's promenade format uses the Botanics ‘not just as a backdrop but almost as another character’. ‘We like to mix it up with new takes on popular titles,’ says Barr, ‘so a more “obscure” play like Love’s Labour’s Lost will play opposite Emily Reutlinger’s new feminist reimagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Creating a programme which has something for everyone . . . is really the core of our work.’ (Gareth K Vile)
YER GRANNY
‘I’m ashamed to say that I’d never heard of it,’ says adapting writer Douglas Maxwell of Roberto Cossa’s 1977 play La Nona, the most successful Argentinian stage show ever and the recipient of an all-star BBC adaptation in 1991 (starring Les Dawson, Liz Smith and Timothy Spall). Despite his reservations about doing the translation justice, director Graham McLaren’s suggestion that they shift it to a Scottish setting eventually persuaded him to take it on. ‘He talked about those Borderline Dario Fo’s, Davie Kane’s Dumbstruck and Joe Orton,’ says Maxwell, ‘and I certainly knew what they were. Those are the plays I grew up on.’ The result is is an out-and-out comedy, says Maxwell, albeit one which gets pretty dark, about a 100-year-old grandmother (Gregor Fisher) who eats the family fish and chip shop out of business and is set to start on the family home. ‘It seemed very now,’ he says. ‘It’s about austerity, poverty, greed, pride, family, ideals and the extremes of all those things. In the rehearsal room we talked a lot about hunger, the hunger for more that can become uncontrollable. It’s in everyone, everywhere, from chip shops to Buckingham Palace. Nana is a physical manifestation of that hunger run amuck.’ (David Pollock) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 93
THEATRE | Previews & Reviews REVIEW WEST END TOUR
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME King’s Theatre, Glasgow, Tue 18–Sat 22 Aug. Reviewed at Edinburgh Festival Theatre ●●●●●
Since its publication 12 years ago, Mark Haddon’s debut novel has become one of the best-loved modern works in publishing. And Simon Stephens’ stage adaptation – which first premiered at London’s National Theatre in 2012 – is reverent towards its source material, creating a play that, with the help of Marianne Elliott’s exquisite direction, sparks and soars in its telling. Christopher Boone – here played delightfully by Joshua Jenkins – discovers Wellington, his neighbour’s dog, dead with a garden fork stuck in his body. He sets out to find out who killed Wellington; but since Christopher is on the autistic spectrum, conducting his investigation and talking to strangers proves difficult. Yet, he handles it with aplomb – and uncovers some startling secrets on the way. Stephens has said that he wanted to recreate the feeling of being in Christopher’s mind, and the show certainly succeeds at that. That’s partly due to Jenkins’ wonderful performance; but Bunny Christie and Finn Ross’ set and video design almost steals the limelight. The stage is boxed in by tall grid-patterned walls that illuminate spectacularly. In part, it resembles graph paper brought to life; but it also looks like synapses in the nervous system. Both are appropriate, given Christopher’s love of maths and his struggle to deal with his disorder. The ensemble cast are uniformly great; Stuart Laing is particularly impressive as Christopher’s father. There’s a blissful fluidity to their movements too, espcially Jenkins. A couple of moments don’t quite hit the mark; the framing of the performance as a play based on Christopher’s writings, for example, feels jarring. But overall The Curious Incident is a wonderful show, with a positive energy that will charm theatregoers young and old. (Yasmin Sulaiman)
PHOTO © BRINKHOFF MÖGENBERG
PREVIEW SITE-SPECIFIC THEATRE
DRIFT
Touring Scotland, Fri 26 Jun–Sun 9 Aug Vision Mechanics, under the leadership of Symon MacIntyre, have a dynamic approach to theatre. Variously responding to specific sites – they have toured Scotland’s botanic gardens – and balancing between theatre and visual art, their performances incorporate a wide range of styles, from film through aerial to lectures. For Drift, MacIntyre was inspired, however, by the story of a shipwrecked Shetland crofter. ‘I heard the story of Betty Mouat and was inspired by her courage and fortitude,’ he says. ‘In January 1886, in a sudden storm, the captain and the crew of the Columbine were washed overboard. This left 60-year-old Betty, who was on a routine two-hour trip to Lerwick to sell her knitting, drifting off to Norway.’ Responding to the tale with a simple line drawn in a sketch book, MacIntyre quickly developed a concept for the performance. ‘This was my vision of Betty, on a line suspended between the sky and the seabed.’ The audience move through a series of sculptures, ‘isolated by headphones’, listening to the specially composed music that follows Betty’s journey. Drift is a typically ambitious Vision Mechanics’ project: intimate, firmly based in location, yet finding a way to combine the epic and the personal – and to cross simplistic boundaries between theatre, art and nature. (Gareth K Vile)
PREVIEW MAGIC SHOW
ROBERT JÄGERHORN: WAITING FOR HITCHCOCK Summerhall, Edinburgh, Sat 27 Jun–Fri 3 Jul
Robert Jägerhorn admits that luck played a part in the development of his latest magic show. ‘My grandfather was an enthusiastic collector of movies,’ he says. ‘And somehow, by chance, I stumbled upon this lost film while going through his archive.’ The film in question, Alfred Hitchcock’s long-lost silent Number 8, can’t be shown as part of the performance, forcing Jägerhorn to use his own brand of theatrical magic to tell the story. ‘Admittedly, this is my version only of the story,’ he continues. ‘You really need to come see the show to be able to discover your own truth.’ Jägerhorn, part of a small number of Finnish magicians, has developed ‘situational magic’, a fusion of tricks and theatricality, that move him away from the predictable conjurer. He explains: ‘It’s a concept within my magic where the magical sequences are part of the situation that’s happening on the stage. In my situational magic, the magical sequences could, for example, be necessary to make the situation move forward. Or maybe the magic is just born out of the situation at hand. The magic becomes kind of more organic.’ Unlike more routine-based magic, situational magic is ideal for storytelling. And with the promise of Hitchcock’s plot, and Jägerhorn’s attempts to woo the audience with clarinet playing, tea-making and emotional honesty, the only predictable feature will be the entertainment. (Gareth K Vile) 94 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
Previews | DANCE
list.co.uk/dance
CLASSIC ADAPTATION
CONTEMPORARY
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Tue 9–Sat 13 Jun
Tramway, Glasgow, Sat 6 Jun
MATTHEW BOURNE’S THE CAR MAN The title, era and location may have changed but three things in Matthew Bourne’s version of Bizet’s Carmen remain the same: sex, violence and heat. First performed in 2000, Bourne’s gritty and sensual work ‘re-imagines’ Bizet’s 1875 opera, with a few tweaks. The original was set in a 19th-century cigarette factory, while Bourne’s The Car Man takes place at a garage / diner in 1960s small-town America. Both, however, capture humanity and its various desires. Dominic North, who joined Bourne’s New Adventures company in 2004, is one of only two performers who have danced in the show before. He’s been helping the cast prepare for life in the fictional town of Harmony, USA. ‘The Car Man is different to other New Adventures productions,’ says North. ‘It’s not a fairytale family show, it’s more real and grounded: these are normal people.’ In Bourne’s version, the arrival of a handsome stranger sends the ItalianAmerican community of Harmony into heat-drenched debauchery, including more than a few punch-ups. To capture the right atmosphere and attitude, Bourne gave his dancers a list of films to watch during rehearsals, such as Rebel Without a Cause, Fight Club and both the 1946 and 1981 versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice. ‘The town is very hot, sticky and sweaty, and the violence is quite real,’ says North. ‘We have to practise hard and make sure we’re very much in tune with each other, because it’s full-on brawling.’ (Kelly Apter)
YDANCE – CROSS OVER For budding young dancers in Scotland, YDance’s summer training camp, Project Y, has long been a great way to up your game. But what about the rest of the year? Loath to see talent head back home once it’s over, YDance’s artistic director, Anna Kenrick, launched the National Youth Dance Company of Scotland four years ago. Since then, the group has gone from strength to strength, and will be the headline company at Cross Over, a new showcase of contemporary dance, performed by final year dance students. ‘Originally we only took applications to join the National Youth Dance Company of Scotland from dancers who had gone through Project Y,’ explains Kenrick. ‘But last year I opened it up to the whole of Scotland. We had 60 young dancers at the auditions this year, and I should have chosen 12 of them; but I took 13 because I couldn’t resist.’ That lucky 13 will be joined at Tramway by students from the Scottish School of Contemporary Dance, and Anniesland, Reid Kerr and Telford Colleges, as part of Dance International Glasgow (DIG). ‘My aim was to bring together the next generation of dancers,’ says Kenrick, who programmed Cross Over. ‘There’s a gap in the market in terms of young emerging dancers and choreographers having a space to perform their work, especially in venues like Tramway. It’s an exciting programme of dance, and the only thing of its kind on the DIG programme.’ (Kelly Apter)
FESTIVAL
COTTIER DANCE PROJECT
Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 19–Fri 26 Jun Few dance fans would dispute the importance of music in a performance, yet so often it’s relegated to an orchestra pit or pair of speakers. So it’s refreshing to see both genres receive equal billing at the Cottier Dance Project. As festival curator Freya Jeffs explains, introducing dance to the Cottier Chamber Project (see preview, page 91) has benefited the musicians, too. ‘Being able to dance to live music of any kind adds an extra layer of energy to a performance, but it also gives audiences a heightened appreciation of the musician’s skill,’ she says. ‘It’s great that this festival actively encourages dancers and musicians to go into a studio together and get creative, and that both parties are recognised as equal. So often, one art overshadows the other in a performance.’ Not so here, where audiences can enjoy collaborative work from High Heart Dance Company and Daniel’s Beard, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s traditional music and ballet departments, and Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre with the Gavin Bryars Ensemble. As well as the cinema screening of a 1960s TV ballet, and programme of short dance films, the festival is also giving emerging choreographers a chance to shine. Jeffs has programmed a showcase evening of excerpts and works in progress, and creations by dancers from Scottish Ballet. ‘There is so much choreographic talent in Scotland and it’s important to showcase their work,’ says Jeffs. ‘The “Watch This Space” evening is a perfect platform for this, and Independent:BALLET will give dancers from Scottish Ballet an opportunity to create their own work as artists in their own right, as well as giving audiences the chance to see these fantastic dancers up close in an unusual venue.’ (Kelly Apter) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 95
THEATRE | Highlights
HITLIST
choreographer presents this reimagining of Bizet’s Carmen, set in a garage / diner in 1960s small-town America. See preview, page 95. CAN’T FORGET ABOUT YOU Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 1–Sat 25 Jul, tron. co.uk Adult comedy by David Ireland about an
MATTHEW BOURNE’S THE CAR MAN Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Tue 9–Sat 13 Jun, edtheatres.com/ festival The legendary
unlikely romance across the religoius divide. See preview, page 92. THE DRIVER’S SEAT Tramway, Glasgow, Thu 2–Sat 4 Jul, tramway. org Muriel Spark’s 1970 psychological thriller is adapted and directed by the National Theatre of Scotland’s artistic director Laurie Sansom. See
preview, page 93. UNFIX CCA, Glasgow, Fri 10– Sun 12 Jul, cca-glasgow. com A new festival of performance art that mixes live art, films, workshops and installations that centre around a central theme: ecology. See preview, page 93.
THEATRE HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
A BENCH AT THE EDGE Govanhill Baths, Thu 11–Sat 13 Jun, govanhillbaths.com Comic drama from Cross/Fade Theatre. BLOOD Tron Theatre, Thu 11–Sat 13 Jun, tron.co.uk Emteaz Hussain’s heartfelt new play about romance at a college canteen. Directed by Esther Richardson. THE SIEGE Tron Theatre, Wed 17–Sat 20 Jun, tron.co.uk A story based on the events of the second intifada in 2002 and the Palestinian fighters who took refuge in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. INDEPENDENT:BALLET Cottiers Theatre, Fri 19 Jun, cottiers.com/the-theatre Dancers from Scottish Ballet perform their own choreographic creations. See preview, page 95. 96 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
PHOTO © BRINKHOFF MÖGENBERG
CROSS OVER – YDANCE PRESENTS SCOTLAND’S NEXT DANCE GENERATION Tramway, Sat 6 Jun, tramway.org Contemporary dance programme featuring the next generation of homegrown dancers from the National Youth Dance Company of Scotland and final year students from colleges across Scotland. See preview, page 95.
LIST.CO.U K/ FESTIVAL FOR FULL CO OF THE EDINVERAGE FESTIVALS SEBURGH ASON
EDINBURGH YER GRANNY King’s Theatre, Tue 2–Sat 6 Jun, then touring, atgtickets.com/ venues/kings-theatre Riotous comedy about a restaurateur family and their granny’s proclivity for food. Adapted from Roberto Cossa’s La Nona, featuring Jonathan Watson, Paul Riley, Maureen Beattie and Gregor Fisher. See preview, page 93.
GLASGOW COTTIER DANCE PROJECT Various venues, Fri 5–Fri 26 Jun, cottierchamberproject. com This programme from the Chamber Project champions Scottish-based choreographers and dancers. Featuring contemporary, commissioned work, with a focus on archival dance footage and arts film. See preview, page 95.
SCOTTISH BALLET: ROMEO AND JULIET Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Tue 4–Sat 8 Aug, atgtickets.com/ venues/theatre-royalglasgow Scottish Ballet’s contemporary take on the Prokofiev ballet with Polish choreographer Krzysztof Pastor bringing a fresh twist to the classic tragedy. SEE OUR GUIDE (OUT FESTIVAL WED 8 JUL), WEEKLY AUGU ST IS OR GO TO SUES
CRAZY JANE Summerhall, Tue 9 & Wed 10 Jun, summerhall.co.uk Jane Avril, star of the Moulin Rouge and immortalised in Toulouse Lautrec’s iconic posters, cordially invites you to the Salpêtrière Asylum.
STEPHEN PELTON DANCE THEATRE Cottiers Theatre, Sun 21 Jun, cottiers.com/the-theatre Performance to live music from the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, tenor John Potter and soprano Peyee Chen.
preview, page 93.
THREE’S A CROWD
INALA
Western Baths Club, Mon 22 Jun, thewesternbaths.co.uk All Or Nothing aerial dance theatre present an aerial dance/theatre piece based on the idea of a reunion between friends. BARD IN THE BOTANICS Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Wed 24 Jun–Sat 1 Aug, glasgowbotanicgardens.com Shakespearean comedy in an outdoor setting. Performances include Love’s Labour’s Lost (Wed 24 Jun–Thu 11 Jul), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Tue 2–Thu 11 Jul), Richard II (Tue 21 Jul–Sat 1 Aug) and The Merchant of Venice (Thu 16 Jul–Sat 1 Aug). See
HERO WORSHIP CCA, Wed 1 Jul, cca-glasgow.com Kenny Boyle plays Anachronism, a superhero who’s just not sure what his powers are.
Theatre Royal, Thu 16–Sat 18 Jul, atgtickets.com/venues/theatreroyal-glasgow A mix of Western ballet and traditional Zulu song and dance with live music from Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Also Edinburgh Playhouse, Tue 14 & Wed 15 Jul. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME King’s Theatre, Tue 18–Sat 22 Aug, atgtickets.com/venues/kingstheatre Simon Stephens’ adaptation of the darkly humorous book by Mark Haddon, presented by National Theatre. See review, page 94.
LORD OF THE DANCE Edinburgh Playhouse, Fri 12–Sun 14 Jun, atgtickets.com/venues/ edinburgh-playhouse Irish dance phenomenon returns. See preview, list.co.uk ANYTHING GOES Edinburgh Playhouse, Tue 23–Sat 27 Jun, atgtickets.com/ venues/edinburgh-playhouse Cole Porter’s uplifting masterpiece of song, dance and romance, featuring ‘You’re the Top’ and ‘It’s De-Lovely’. ROBERT JÄGERHORN: WAITING FOR HITCHCOCK Summerhall, Sat 27 Jun–Fri 3 Jul, summerhall.co.uk Robert has found Hitchcock’s long lost film, Number 8. He can’t show the film, so he communicates the story through silent movies, slapstick and magic. See preview, page 94.
MUSSELBURGH DANCE FOR ALL SHOWCASE Brunton Theatre, Thu 25–Sat 27 Jun, thebrunton.co.uk The talented students from Dance for All present their end of year showcase.
!"#$ %&'(#&)* *#+! ,-$./0123$*4506
Adapted and directed by Laurie Sansom (Director of The James Plays) World Premiere
!"#$%#&'%"'&%$"()*"$+,%!"(%-#.%$'//, Adapted for the stage for the Æ rst time, The Driver' s Seat is one of renowned novelist Muriel Spark' s most gripping and disturbing books.
Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh Sat 13 - Sat 27 June 2015 Box ofÆ ce: 0131 248 4848 Lyceum.org.uk
Cast includes: Ivan Castiglione, Morven Christie, Ryan Fletcher, Gabriel Quigley, Sheila Reid, Michael Thomson and Andrea Volpetti
Tramway, Glasgow Thu 2 - Sat 4 July 2015 Box ofÆ ce: 0845 330 3501 Tramway.org
The National Theatre of Scotland reserves the right to alter casts, performances, seating or ticket arrangements and latecomers may not be admitted. National Theatre of Scotland, a company limited by guarantee and registered in Scotland (SC234270) is a registered Scottish charity (SC033377). Photograph of Muriel Spark - self portrait.
Age guide: 14+ is suggested Join the conversation: #driversseat National Theatre of Scotland is core funded by
Supported by The Linbury Prize for Stage Design which is funded by The Linbury Trust, one of the Sainsbury charitable trusts. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 97
VISUAL ART
RIPPLES ON THE POND Glasgow’s female artists are explored through this new group exhibition
98 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
and political topics, as well as more personal and poetic stories. ‘This was the inspiration for the show’s title,’ she says. ‘I wanted something that would relate to the exhibition’s feminist theme, but also open up the conversations around the women artists in the collection, their work and their relationships.’ Visitors to the gallery are invited to be part of a conversation, with the exhibition being seen as an essay to be read, critiqued and rethought. ‘Themes of play, landscape, feminism, place and visibility emerge,’ says Bruce. ‘And as the exhibition is coming into being, we’re learning more about the works in the collection and understanding the genealogy of practice, both locally and
internationally, of women artists living and working in Glasgow.’ (David Pollock) ■ Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 3 Apr 2016.
PHOTO © HELEN DE MAIN, FROM 21 SPARE RIBS, 2012
An exhibition of work from the Glasgow Museums collection, Ripples on the Pond takes as its starting point 11 works purchased from Glasgow Women’s Library’s ‘21 Revolutions’ project. ‘The project germinated from a desire to promote and celebrate 20 years of Scotland’s sole women’s library archive and museum,’ says Katie Bruce, the show’s curator. ‘And also to showcase the best of women’s contemporary visual art and writing, and highlight the unique museum, library and archive resources at Glasgow Women’s Library.’ From works by artists including Sam Ainsley, Claire Barclay, Kate Davis, Shauna McMullan, Jacki Parry, Ciara Phillips, Lucy Skaer and Amanda Thomson, Bruce picks out pieces from Helen de Main’s ‘21 Spare Ribs’ series. Based on the January issues of Spare Rib magazine, her prints cover a range of feminist
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Previews | VISUAL ART
list.co.uk/visualart PHOTOGRAPHY
LEE MILLER AND PICASSO
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Sep
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
PHOTO COURTESY OF CITY ART CENTRE
PABLO PICASSO AND LEE MILLER AFTER THE LIBERATION OF PARIS, RUE DE GRAND AUGUSTINS, PARIS, FRANCE, 1944. PHOTOGRAPHER: LEE MILLER
When Lee Miller met Pablo Picasso in 1937, it was a meeting of minds that lasted more than three decades up until Picasso’s death in 1973. Somewhere along the line, the pair became mutual muses, with Miller photographing Picasso more than a thousand times, while Lee was painted by Pablo on numerous occasions. The bond between these two major artists is made clear in Lee Miller and Picasso, a major new exhibition in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s Robert Mapplethorpe Gallery, and which forms part of the gallery’s 2015 Season of Photography. More than 100 images and objects selected from the Lee Miller Archive highlight the pair’s friendship during turbulent times, and will include the wedding photograph of Miller and English surrealist Roland Penrose. ‘Miller and Picasso’s legacy is still very much with us,’ explains the show’s curator Annie Lyden. ‘And their enduring friendship shows what it was like to be around at that time in history through these very intimate photographs. There are lots of images taken of Picasso and his friends and colleagues, but very few of Miller and him together.’ The two of these that stand out for Lyden show off how Miller and Picasso’s friendship was sustained despite long periods apart. ‘One is from 1944 when Lee was working with the armed forces during the liberation of Paris, and realises she’s just round the corner from Picasso’s studio so she goes and sees him,’ says Lyden. ‘There’s a very tender look between them, and you can see the joy and relief of them finding one another again. The second is from 1970, and there’s this look that’s shared; after everything they’ve been through, you can see the passing of time.’ (Neil Cooper)
COMPILATION
INSTALLATION
VIDEO
City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 27 Sep
The Common Guild, Glasgow, Sat 6 Jun–Sun 9 Aug
CCA, Glasgow, until Sun 12 Jul
The art collection held by the City Art Centre is one of Edinburgh’s better kept secrets. As well as hosting exhibitions by visiting artists, the council-run building has, in recent years, been looking for ways to showcase its treasure trove of Scottish art. This summer’s show, which displays work in four classic genre categories (portraiture, landscape, still life and abstraction), might seem like a predictable way of doing things. But with the finest of ingredients, who needs a fancy recipe? There is nothing dull about the portraits of Ramsay and Raeburn, Joan Eardley’s Glasgow street kids, or landscapes by Nasmyth or the Glasgow Boys. Nor is there anything predictable about the 20th-century Scottish artists who have taken those genres in new directions, from William Gillies to Victoria Crowe, the abstracts of American-born Jon Schueler who settled on the Sound of Sleat, or Elizabeth Blackadder’s Japanese-influenced still lifes. If they sound like crowd-pleasers, that might be because they are popular, and rightly so. But there is nothing to lose and everything to be gained from seeing some of the masterworks of Scottish art being taken out of the vaults and allowed to shine for audiences old and new. (Susan Mansfield)
With its multiple grand Victorian domestic interiors, The Common Guild in Glasgow's West End will provide interesting possibilities for artist Anne Hardy’s work, which is often receptive to its surroundings. The artist best known for her photographs made in response to staged environments will build a bespoke installation made in situ for Twin Fields. ‘The work will be specific to the architecture of this gallery,’ says Hardy. ‘The stacking of one exhibition space over another, and the way one space may host or hide other realities inside it.’ This is Hardy’s first exhibition in Scotland and will be her most ambitious project to date in the UK. Twin Fields is a development of two other sculptural installations: ‘Two Joined Fields’ and ‘Fieldworks’ made in 2013 and 2014 respectively. According to The Common Guild curator Kitty Anderson, these titles come from Hardy’s interest in the idea of a ‘field’ as a zone of interest, a terrain or an open-ended psychological space. ‘The exhibition relates to Anne’s photographic work through the construction of physical and psychological spaces that conjure images in the mind’s eye.’ (Laura Campbell)
SCOTTISH ART: PEOPLE, PLACES, IDEAS
ANNE HARDY: TWIN FIELDS
LUCY CLOUT & MARIANNA SIMNETT: WHAT WILL THEY SEE OF ME? This exhibition sees the culmination of an ambitious year-long project by the winners of the Jerwood / FVU Awards 2015. Lucy Clout and Marianna Simnett were each awarded £20,000 to develop their very different moving-image works in response to this award brief: ‘What Will They See of Me?’ Winning the award has allowed the artists to explore the boundaries of their practices. ‘I took risks which would have been impossible to achieve alone,’ Simnett explains. Her new work ‘Blood’ is set in the Albanian highlands with main protagonist Isabel, a young girl who must navigate the difficulties of childhood. ‘It’s my most ambitious work to date and develops my interest in working with non-actors and warping existing realities.’ Clout’s video is also fantastical, with some ambiguity about what is real / performed. Set in homogenous-looking hotel rooms, the protagonists are writers, bloggers and other media figures. Of her work, ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, Clout says: ‘During an interview, the interviewer and subject play the roles of performer and audience at various times within the exchange, and this power dynamic interests me.’ (Laura Campbell) 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 99
VISUAL ART | Previews & Reviews PREVIEW SCULPTURE
MARYSIA GACEK: PLEASANT SETTING
Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Sat 11 Jul–Sat 5 Sep
PHOTO © STEVEN ANDERSON, THE SEA AND GROWING, 2015. PERFORMANCE WITH ALISTAIR QUIETSCH
On leaving Glasgow School of Art in 2014, artist Marysia Gacek received Glasgow Sculpture Studios’ one-year MFA Graduate Fellowship. The new work on display in Pleasant Setting will reveal the fruits of Gacek’s labour throughout the fellowship, which she has used to further develop her interest in the relationship between visual forms and cultural references. ‘This exhibition will feature a set of paintings on white muslin curtains which run along the walls and windows of the gallery,’ she says of the display’s unlikely starting point, which provides a suitable backdrop for the whole show. ‘Magritte-style trompe l’oeil landscapes and one-to-one renderings will portray what lies directly behind the curtains.’ Gacek will also use GSS’ exhibition space as a platform for further exploring her fascination with the body’s relationship to space and the ways which
artforms can distort that dialogue. ‘Heightening awareness of the body’s traversal of a space, the curtains muffle the potential of architecture,’ she explains. ‘The works propose a simulation that draws one nearer to nature through a process of pointedly obscurantist representation.’ (Rosie Lesso)
PRIVATE VIEW
STEVEN ANDERSON
What interested you about TRG3? TRG3 has a fluid format allowing artists time and resources to develop their work in ways particular to their own methods of working. For me, the project will involve developing my current performance and painting work, based on subjects including mortality and healing. In particular, I’m interested in the transformation of bodies and materials and how they can be loaded with meaning as they move from one state to another. Participants will have access to the university’s collections and academics across departments: how will you make the most of this? Having that access is an excellent resource within the project. I’m beginning with three lines of research; firstly, I’ve made contact with Dr Graeme Wilson who is leading research on the links between music and health through the Scottish Music and Health Network; I’ve booked a place on two anatomy workshops, which are rarely open to non-medics; and I’m going to spend some time with the 1st-century Gandharan figure sculptures in the university art collection. They seem quite disparate areas of enquiry but come together as extensions of my interest in the performativity surrounding perceptions of fragmented bodies. Can you tell us about the type of work you intend to make as a result of this research? I’m aiming to create new performance material and a series of paintings. Throughout June I’ll be working on developing a new performance to be shown at the Talbot Rice Gallery during the Edinburgh Art Festival. (Rachael Cloughton) 100 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
PHOTO © MICHAEL WOLCHOVER
The Talbot Rice Gallery celebrated its 40th anniversary in May. To mark the occasion, it launched TRG3, a new project designed to showcase innovative, experimental projects from emerging artists, hosted in the gallery’s iconic Round Room. Scottish painter and performance artist Steven Anderson has been selected as the first artist to participate on the project.
REVIEW MIXED MEDIA
GARRY FABIAN MILLER: DWELLING
Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, until Sat 4 Jul ●●●●● What’s an artist to do when his core materials are suddenly no longer available? Garry Fabian Miller has built his career making camera-less photographic images using light on Cibachrome paper, but the materials have now been discontinued by their Swiss manufacturer and his stock is due to run out next year. Miller has responded with a two-pronged approach: re-examining the roots of his practice while at the same time pushing out in intriguing new directions. One result of this has been his collaboration with Dovecot Studios to make two tufted rugs, inspired by his prints, which form the centrepiece of this exhibition. Shown with classic Miller works around them, they are extraordinary in the way they convey a similar intensity of light, and he hopes now to extend the collaboration to a large-scale tapestry. In the beautifully soft lighting of Dovecot’s exhibition space, his classic abstract images seem to glow as if backlit. But there are no lightboxes here: this is light captured on paper, passed through materials such as oil or water using long exposures to create images which suggest planets and galaxies or, equally, microbes and cells. The exhibition also brings together Miller’s work with impressionistic paintings by 20th-century artist Winifred Nicholson, whom he considers to be a major influence. While her painterly works appear, on the surface at least, to be very different from the almost clinical sharpness of Miller’s captured light, putting them side-by-side teases out the similarities. Two late semi-abstract works by Nicholson – ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Accord’ – reveal a little-known side to her practice. The two artists also share an interest in rugs (several belonging to Nicholson are included in the show), which in turn explains why Miller, looking for a new direction, found himself turning to hearth and home, and came to see his own work in a new light. (Susan Mansfield)
Highlights | VISUAL ART
HITLIST
RIPPLES ON THE POND Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until 3 Apr 2016, glasgowlife.org. uk/museums/goma A selection curated by Katie Bruce from the gallery’s collection, designed as a conversation between works on paper by women and the moving image. See preview, page 98.
LEE MILLER AND PICASSO Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 6 Sep, nationalgalleries. org/portraitgallery. Images of Picasso his family and friends by photographer and sometime model Lee Miller, exploring the long friendship between a great
artist and an extraordinary photographer. See preview, page 99. JERWOOD / FVU AWARDS 2015: ‘WHAT WILL THEY SEE OF ME?’ CCA, Glasgow, until Sun 12 Jul, cca-glasgow. com New commissions from the Jerwood Awardwinning artists Lucy Clout
and Marianna Simnett, marking the culmination of an ambitious year-long project. See preview, page 99. PHOENIX BURSARIES Reid Building, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Fri 4 Jul–Sun 2 Aug, gsa.ac.uk Work by GSA final year students from 2014 whose degree show
work was destroyed in the Glasgow School of Art fire. See feature, page 40. ANNUALE Various venues, Edinburgh, Fri 12–Sun 28 Jun, annuale.org A festival celebrating independent grassroots creative projects in Edinburgh, curated by the Embassy gallery.
VISUAL ART HIGHLIGHTS Events are listed by city, then date. Submit listings for your event at list.co.uk/add
GLASGOW URS FISCHER: ∞ The Modern Institute, Sat 6 Jun– Sat 29 Aug, themoderninstitute. com Work by Swiss-born artist, noted for his dark sense of humour and expansive, decaying installations. MARYSIA GACEK Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Sat 11 Jul–Sat 5 Sep, glasgowsculpturestudios.org Sculptural work from Polish-born artist, using personal symbolism and different modes of representation. See preview, page 100. THE PERSISTENCE OF TYPE Tramway, Sat 20 Jun–Sun 26 Jul, tramway.org Work by artist Fiona Jardine and designers Sophie Dyer and Maeve Redmond, exploring the dialogue between graphic design, visual art and historical and fictional writing. Curated by Panel. OPEN FOR BUSINESS Street Level Photoworks, Fri 3 Jul–Thu 27 Aug, streetlevelphotoworks.org Britain’s manufacturing industry as depicted by nine Magnum photographers: Martin Parr, Mark Power, Bruce Gilden, Jonas Bendiksen, David Hurn, Peter Marlow, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Chris SteelePerkins, and Stuart Franklin. ANNE HARDY: TWIN FIELDS The Common Guild, Sat 6 Jun–Sun 9 Aug, thecommonguild.org.uk Photographed sculptural installations from the English artist. See preview, page 99. FINITE PROJECT ALTERED WHEN OPEN David Dale Gallery and Studios, Sat 6 Jun–Sat 4 Jul, daviddalegallery.co.uk The gallery
invites 100 artists, writers and curators that it’s worked with over the past five years to contribute work to this constantly changing show; works are installed, exhibited and removed in the course of the show, leaving it in a state of flux. DUNCAN SHANKS: THE POETRY OF PLACE Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery, until Sun 16 Aug, gla.ac.uk/ hunterian A selection from the collection of sketchbooks bequeathed to the Hunterian by the distinguished landscape artist.
EDINBURGH ARTIST ROOMS: ROY LICHTENSTEIN Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One, until Jan 2016, 75 Belford Road, nationalgalleries.
SLAVS AND TATARS: LEKTOR Collective Gallery, City Observatory & Dome, until Sun 12 Jul, collectivegallery.net New work from the art collective, exploring the Mirrors for Princes: handbooks of medieval advice for rulers, advising them on etiquette, leadership and other important subjects. It takes the form of a multi-channel audio installation. org A three-room display of the work of the wittiest of the pop artists. GARRY FABIAN MILLER: DWELLING Dovecot Studios, until Sat 4 Jul, 10 Infirmary Street, dovecotstudios. com Rugs and other work created as part of a collaboration between Dovecot Studios and the photographic artist. See review, page 100.
MC ESCHER Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Two, Sat 27 Jun–Sun 27 Sep, nationalgalleries.org The first major UK exhibition of the work of the Dutch artist responsible for some of the most astonishing images in 20th century art, informed by his profound intuitive understanding of mathematics and a razor-sharp technique. MOTHS Summerhall, until Wed 15 Jul, summerhall.co.uk New work from artists brought together by Modern Edinburgh Film School: Zoë Fothergill, Anne McGuire, Lucy Skaer, Katrina Vallé, Amy Pickles, Mairi Lafferty, Anna Lucas, Allison Gibbs, Jenny Brady and Bobby Niven. HENRY COOMBES: TWO DISCS AND A ZED Summerhall, until Wed 15 Jul, summerhall.co.uk New film work from the ever-intriguing artist. PHOTOGRAPHY: A VICTORIAN SENSATION National Museum of Scotland, until Fri 31 Jul, nms.ac.uk Learn all about the Victorian craze for photography. LEITHLATE Various venues, Fri 12 Jun–Sun 27 Sep, leithlate.co.uk LeithLate has expanded its format for 2015 with a programme of events running over a four month period across the Leith area, including public artworks such as The Shutter Project on Great Junction Street and The Mural Project with Kirsty Whiten (pictured left). 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 101
TV SENSE8 Sprawling global sci-fi as the Wachowskis make their TV debut Hollywood directors working on TV are no longer an anomaly. And now the Wachowskis are joining the migration from big to small screen with Sense8. Cocreated with J Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5), it’s a sprawling sci-fi drama that spans the globe – from London to Nairobi via Chicago, Berlin and Mumbai – as Angel (Daryl Hannah) mysteriously appears before eight people around the world. Their experiences start to filter into each other’s reality, their thoughts merging as visual and auditory hallucinations. For example, Icelandic DJ Riley’s (Tuppence Middleton) techno set starts to bleed into Chicago cop Will’s (Brian J Smith) life during the opening episode. Is this the onset of mental illness or the beginning of something far grander? Meanwhile Jonas (Naveen Andrews) pops up from time to time doling out enigmatic advice to our new ‘Sensates’ about sharing skills, knowledge and abilities. Sense8 struggles to balance its ensemble cast. It’s a common problem on TV and splitting our time between so many distinct characters in different locations makes it hard to build any early connections. However, while the characterisations might feel simplistic, they are incredibly diverse and hint at wider discussions on sexuality, gender and race in the future. As they proved so effortlessly with The Matrix, the Wachowskis know how to film sensational action sequences but we’re only drip fed minor action beats (a short shoot out, a scuffle and a quick car chase) until the very end of episode three when Sense8 finally shows its potential as Kenyan bus driver Capheus (Aml Ameen) draws on Sun’s (Bae Doona) martial arts and taps Will’s shooting skills as he confronts a gang of armed robbers. Many sci-fi shows are deliberately mysterious but Sense8 takes too long to iron out its premise. Like all of the Wachowskis’ post-Matrix projects, there are flashes of brilliance. There’s a kernel of a great idea at the heart of Sense8 but it takes too long to get going. Even by the end of episode three, it still feels like we’re in set-up mode. And with so many quality viewing options on offer these days, will anyone be willing to put in the hours to get to the good stuff? (Henry Northmore) ■ Sense8 premieres on Netflix, Fri 5 Jun ●●●●●
102 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
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Previews | TV
HIGHLIGHTS SENSE8 Fri 5 Jun, Netflix The Wachowskis (The Matrix) head to TV with this mind-bending sci-fi as eight strangers in eight cities find themselves telepathically linked. See review, page 102. STONEMOUTH Mon 8 Jun, BBC One Scotland, 9pm Two part crime drama adapted from Iain Banks' penultimate novel. See preview, left.
ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK Fri 12 Jun, Netflix Third season of the superb comedy drama following the life of Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) as she adjusts to her new life in prison. TV PREVIEW
STONEMOUTH
BBC One Scotland, Mon 8 Jun, 9pm Stonemouth was Iain Banks penultimate novel and this BBC Scotland production is the first adaptation of his work since his untimely death in 2013. In fact, with such a rich canon of work, it's surprising we haven't seen even more of Banks' novels brought to life on both the big and small screen. However, after the BBC's fantastic version of The Crow Road back in 1996 (has it really been that long?), we should be in safe hands. It's set in the fictional Aberdeenshire town of Stonemouth (filmed in Macduff), a town that hides a dark secret. ‘Stonemouth is about a guy called Stewart Gilmour,’ explains Christian Cooke who takes the lead as Gilmour, ‘who comes back to his home town for the funeral of his best friend Callum Murston, son of Don Murston [Peter Mullan], a much feared and respected figure in the town. Callum is believed to have committed suicide. However, once Stewart returns, he starts to investigate the possibility that perhaps Callum's death isn’t what it seems, and that perhaps he was murdered.’ After several years down south, Gilmour's return stirs up the locals. It's a gritty Scottish drama that puts a criminal gang at the heart of this Scottish coastal town, but alongside the murder mystery there's also a tense romance. ‘The other narrative thread is that Stewart used to be engaged to Don Murston's daughter, Ellie Murston [Charlotte Spencer],’ adds Cooke, ‘but after a moment of infidelity, was forced to go on the run and leave Stonemouth for good. He's been given a free pass by Don to return for the funeral and hopes that he can possibly patch things up with her.’ Stonemouth captures the feeling of claustrophobia and isolation that can be inherent in isolated communities. ‘Stewart is an intelligent, thoughtful person who always had dreams far beyond the confines of the small town he grew up in,’ says Cooke. ‘He and Ellie were very much soul mates and shared ambitions to travel and see the world. Stewart has a certain wit and cynicism about him that colours his view of the world. He also has a sound moral compass and a very determined nature.’ Cooke particularly relished the opportunity to work with Mullan: ‘Loved it. Bit of a dream come true. I believe he's one of the greatest screen actors of all time and it was amazing learning from him.’ You might recognise Cooke from ITV's short-lived supernatural action adventure series Demons; two episodes of Doctor Who, alongside David Tennant, and criminally overlooked meta-comedy Moving Wallpaper / Echo Beach or films including Love, Rosie and Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Cemetery Junction. He's also had success over in the States with recurring roles in Magic City and Witches of East End. And he's currently in Montreal filming Sony's first original series for their online video distribution service Crackle, under the working title of The Art of More, with Dennis Quaid and Kate Bosworth. ‘It's about a blue collar guy called Graham Connor, who I play, who gets a job working for one of the top auction houses in New York and who leverages his way into this exclusive existence by exploiting his connections to antiquities, smuggling rings he was exposed to as a soldier in Iraq.’ (Henry Northmore)
HUMANS Sun 14 Jun (tbc), Channel 4 Intriguing drama, from the team behind Utopia and Broadchurch, in a world where life-like synthetic robots are a common household appliance. Starring William Hurt, Rebecca Front, Gemma Chan and Neil Maskell. TRUE DETECTIVE Mon 22 Jun, Sky Atlantic Can the best new show of 2014 keep up the quality with a new cast and director? Nic Pizzolatto continues to write with Justin Lin (of Fast & Furious fame) stepping up to direct, while Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch take the lead in this dark crime drama. FALLING SKIES Tue 30 Jun, FOX, 9pm The fifth and final season of alien invasion action thriller Falling Skies produced by Steven Spielberg. Can Tom Mason (Noah Wyle) free the world from the evil alien invaders? EXTANT Thu 2 Jul, Amazon Prime Instant Video Halle Berry returns for season two of this brooding sci-fi produced by Spielberg (again). THE SPOILS BEFORE DYING Thu 16 Jul, Fox, 10.30pm Bonkers follow up to the demented genius of spoof melodrama The Spoils of Babylon, starring Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig and Haley Joel Osment. THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE-OFF Aug (tbc), BBC One The nation's favourite comfort foodie TV show continues its winning whimsical mix of cookery, cakes and innuendo. 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015 THE LIST 103
BACK PAGE FIRST!LAST
Last great meal you cooked
PAULINE MCLYNN
First crush
Best known as Father Ted’s tea-obsessed Mrs Doyle, the Irish actress is now touring with East is East. Here she discusses bogs, loos and Waterloo First thing you do when you’ve got time off work
Potter about in the garden, talking to myself and weeding. Last time you cried
May 23rd 2015, when the Irish public voted yes for marriage equality. I didn’t just cry, I bawled with happiness.
I do a good selection of curries when called upon. Sidney Poitier. Last book you read
Bog Bodies. I am interested in writing something that has bogs in it, and all that they contain. First great piece of advice you were given
From my mum: never grow up. Last time you were starstruck
Each time I enter the East is East rehearsal room: it’s full of stars! I also tend to dribble when starstruck and that ain’t a pretty sight. First thing you’d do if you ran the country
Last time you exploited your position to get something
Tickets for my niece and her mates (and me!) to see One Direction play EastEnders’ Albert Square for Children in Need. First time you realised you were famous
What? I’m famous? News to me. Last time someone criticised your work
Happens on a daily basis but it goes with the job. First three words your friends would use to describe you
Laughing, generous, eejit. I hope! Last time you bought flowers
I bought myself some this week. Yes, it has come to that.
Put an end to cruelt cruelty.
First object you’d save from your burning home
Last meal on eart earth: what would it be
After checking that the cats have escaped, I’d grab a fabulous triptych I have by Hughie O’Donoghue.
I am vvery ery fond of a mushroom stroganoff. So that w with lashings of red wine. First film you saw that really moved you
Ring of Bright Wate Water.
COMING SOON
Last funny thing you saw online
Sean Hayes doing a lip sync video. He knocks these out of the park any time he does one.
The next few months are very exciting for both the world of culture and the history of this magazine. We celebrate our 30th anniversary (issue out Wed 2 Sep) while students receive the lowdown on making the most of their learning (and partying) experience (Student Guide out Wed 30 Sep). And before we know it, the planet will be going Edinburgh Festival crazy. We look at the acts who are set to light up the capital across the summer (Festival Guide out Wed 8 Jul, festival issues out Wed 5, 12, 19 Aug).
First book you read twice Last lie you to told
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I only ha had two glasses of wine wine!
104 THE LIST 4 Jun–3 Sep 2015
Firs song you’ll First sing at karaoke sin
‘W ‘Waterloo’. One of my favourite E Eurovision w winners. I love E Eurovision!
This is only a recent thing, as I don’t normally read any book twice (unless I’m editing one of my own). It was On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks.
First thing you think of when you wake up in the morning
Last song at your funeral
So, did I go to the loo enough today?
Haven’t fully decided yet as I don’t really fancy dying, but probably ‘Tonight We Fly’ by the Divine Comedy.
The loo: it’s an age thing. Last thing you think of before you go to sleep
East is East, Theatre Royal, Glasgow, Mon 10–Sat 15 Aug.
Glasgow Comic Con is on Sat 4–Sun 5 Jul. See feature, page 40.
GRAMMY® AWARD-WINNING SOUTH AFRICAN CHORAL LEGENDS
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