The Skinny August 2022

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August 2022 Issue 199

THEY'RE BACK!

Edinburgh festivals are go!

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June 2022 - Chat

THE SKINNY

The Skinny's favourite tracks by someone performing at the Edinburgh festivals Withered Hand — Religious Songs Princess Nokia — Tomboy Flo and Joan — Drank Too Much Arab Strap — The First Big Weekend Sons of Kemet — My Queen is Albertina Sisulu Lucy Dacus — Night Shift Run the Jewels — Close Your Eyes (and Count to Fuck) Sacred Paws — Everyday Jeff Mills — The Bells Squarepusher — Come On My Selector Sons of Kemet — For the Culture The National — Carin at the Liquor Store Garbage — When I Grow Up Run the Jewels — Blockbuster Night, Pt. 1 Ibeyi — River Nova Twins — Antagonist Listen to this playlist on Spotify — search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code

Issue 199, August 2022 © Radge Media Ltd. August 2022 - Chat

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Championing creativity in Scotland Meet the team We asked – Tell us a joke!

Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "The Tory leadership election amiright?!"

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "Why did the chicken cross the road? Crimes."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "Two fish are in a tank. One turns to the other and asks, ‘who’s driving this thing?’ :)))))))))"

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "I just watched a documentary about beavers. It's the best dam film I've seen all year."

Tallah Brash Music Editor "What did the pirate say when he turned 80? Aye matey!"

Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "I don't do jokes. I do sarcasm and self-deprecation and pass it off as humour."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "Why can't lions cook? Cos they eat ROAR meat. (My fave when I was seven and I'm sticking by it)."

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor 'go piss girl'– sorry but it hits every time."

Rho Chung Theatre Editor "I only read polyamorous fanfiction: They/Them."

Heather McDaid Books Editor "My two-year-old's fave because it's her wee cousin: Knock Knock.

Who's there? Isobel.

Isobel who? Isobel on a bike."

Business

Production

Laurie Presswood General Manager "Why are there no painkillers in the jungle? The parrots ate 'em all."

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager "Pineapple on a pizza."

Christian Gow Marketing & Commercial Assistant "What would the name of Michael Jackson's phone company be?

HEE HEE!"

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting."

Harvey Dimond Art Editor "What did Jay-Z call his girlfriend before they got married? Feyoncé."

Lewis Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant "What sort of music do wind turbines listen to? Well, they're big metal fans."

Sales

Sandy Park Commercial Director "My friend said to me, 'the Tory party is just cuts after cuts!' I said, 'you're one letter off...'"

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill? To get to the bottom."

Phoebe Willison Designer "I licked her tit or whatever (IYKYK)"

THE SKINNY

Editorial Words: Rosamund West

W

elcome to The Skinny’s biggest issue ever! At 112 pages it’s actually bigger than the capacity of our old printers’ staples. Luckily the new guys have… bigger staples I guess? So here we are, a biblically-proportioned guide to Scottish culture in August with particular focus on the Edinburgh festivals.

Those festivals are back in full-ish force for the first time since 2019. The hoardings are up, the venues are assembled, the tourists are here – are you ready? Excited? Terrified? Largely ambivalent? We have, as every year from 2006-2019, scoured the programmes of the many many festivals (Fringe, International, Book, Art, Film, everything besides) to bring you our top recommendations of exciting, engaging, enlightening things to see in the coming weeks.

First up, comedy! Excited to be back in darkened rooms laughing with strangers, we’ve got a rundown of some of the acts making their Fringe debut this year. It’s a longer list than usual because, well, there’s been two years of comedy acts unable to do a first Fringe. We also talk to immigration lawyer and stand-up Sikisa, convince Erika Ehler to watch Jackass, orchestrate a Vogue-style interview between Tessa Coates and Liz Kingsman and provide extensive highlights from the paywhat-you-can programme.

Theatre! Our new Theatre Editor Rho has had a very exciting first month planning preview and review coverage of the world’s biggest arts festival. And what a job they have done! We have a fascinating interview with storyteller Niall Moorjani, who brings three performances to the Edinburgh stage this month. Mohan: A Partition story weaves the memories of Moorjani’s grandfather with their own and is particularly timely as the 75th anniversary of Partition is in mid-August. We also explore the Horizon

showcase, and meet playwright Sami Ibrahim and choreographer Tess Letham to learn more about their respective shows.

In Art, we talk to one half of Pester & Rossi, Ruby Pester, about their new commission Finding Buoyancy, set around the Union Canal. We also meet Emmie McLuskey, this year’s Associate Artist, to learn more about her collaborative programme Channels.

Clubs talks to the legendary Jeff Mills, who’s bringing the current iteration of Tomorrow Comes the Harvest to Leith Theatre as part of Edinburgh International Festival. Books meets Lola Olufemi and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, each appearing at the Book Festival, and looks forward to the announcement of this year’s Edwin Morgan poetry prize.

In our centre pages you’ll find a special supplement dedicated to the Edinburgh International Film Festival. They’ve moved back to August this year, to be with all their other festival pals, and our Film Editor Jamie has put together an insightful guide to the programme’s highlights, including words with Amanda Kramer, Kim Knowles, Peter Strickland, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson.

Music talks to SHHE aka Su Shaw about her immersive sound installation D Ý R A taking place at Summerhall this month.

We meet The Weather Station, also playing Summerhall, synthpop duo Sylvan Esso and Brooklyn-based Pakistani musician Arooj Aftab, who’s performing as part of the EIF programme.

Finally, we are looking forward to our return to the live events fray, with a series entitled Peripheral Visions. Taking place in our Codebase home, we have three events, each dedicated to a different artform we’re passionate about. Art on 5 August, Film on 15 August and Books on 19 August – find out more about these free-to-attend nights (inc. free gin) on p49.

August 2022 — Chat

Cover Artist Darren Shaddick is an illustrator based out in the sticks of North Devon, UK. His work is often playful, combining quick lines, bold colours and humorous wit. darrenshaddick.co.uk I: @darren.shaddick

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THE SKINNY

Love Bites

Love Bites: To Friendships That Stay This month’s columnist reflects on old friends, changing relationships, and sharing a past and a future Words: Josephine Jay

D

August 2022 — Chat

ivergence of friendships in one’s 20's is a weird thing. I look at my friends and wonder whether, if we met now, we’d still become friends? I have friendships which have spanned decades and continents and these are the ones I value most. It’s funny to see photos of us at 14, squashed into the same garish uniform, and then to look at the different women we have become. Some are getting married with mortgages and some are feeling things out as they go.

I hate making friends as an adult; I feel as though I’ve forgotten how to connect. It feels awkward – like dating; an awful lot of leg-work to reach a place where you can both be comfortable in silence. The intimacy of time actively spent not talking comes through an accumulation of years: hard won and difficult to replicate.

My friend, Hester, once said something along the lines of, “Friends are just people in the same place at the same time,” and I remember feeling hurt at the idea that our friendship had grown merely from forced proximity. In some instances, this is true – quite often people come and go. However, many of the friendships I’ve carried from childhood have withstood these tests of time and distance.

The comfort and familiarity of placing someone in the context of their upbringing and childhood is a wonderful thing. I know all the quirks of my childhood friends’ families, what the inside of their house looks like and what red streaks they wore in their hair aged 12.

I also know I plan to be a feature in their lives for the foreseeable future. Indeed, good luck getting rid of me: I plan to grow old with them, cheating at bingo with them at 90 and growing old disgracefully.

Crossword Solutions Across 1. STAMPEDE 5. EQUUS 9. BASIL 10. OPENINGS 12. EMPTY 13. ABOUT-FACE 14. RACE AGAINST TIME 16. NIGHT AFTER NIGHT 21. ALIENATES 22.

CHAFF 24. MITIGATE 25. GO OFF 26. INANE 27. ENTRENCH Down 1. SUBTERRANEAN 2. AESOP 3. PALMYRA 4. DIORAMA 6. QUINTET 7. UPGRADING 8. RENOWN 11. SEVENTY-FIFTH 15. COGNITION 17. TENSION 18.

FAT CAT 19. EASTERN 20. NO CIGAR 23. ADORN

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THE SKINNY

Heads Up

In a The Skinny first, this month’s heads up is a whole Four Pages Long, because there was just too much good stuff to choose from. Find gigs, exhibitions, club nights, and our favourite picks from the festivals.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Heads Up

Photo: Marilena Vlachopoulou

Jupiter Rising Jupiter Artland, nr. Edinburgh, 26-28 Aug A veritable wonderland of quirky art and stunning sculpted grounds, Jupiter Artland is the place to be at any time, but especially when they throw their annual music festival Jupiter Rising. With a stunning programme curated by Young Fathers’ Alloysious Massaquoi, Hen Hoose, Auntie Flo and Shoot Your Shot - including MALKA, Poster Paints, and Susan Bear it’s the perfect bookend to a (hopefully) magical sum-

Jupiter Rising

Photo: Camille Vivier

Mark Handforth: A Scarlet Forest The Modern Institute @ Aird's Lane, Glasgow, until 3 Sep Step into The Modern Institute’s Aird’s Lane gallery space this month and you’ll be met with a kind of post-industrial forest of orange piping, with strange tubular sculptures emerging from the floors and ceilings. Mark Handforth’s enigmatic and enchanting new exhibition creates an immersive space where viewers can wander between his sculptures, considering the tension between built and natural environments.

Perfume Genius

Perfume Genius St Luke’s, Glasgow, 22 Aug, 7pm Perfume Genius’ latest album Ugly Season has only been out a few weeks but it’s already one of the defining sounds of the year. Dreamy, yearning, and otherworldly, Ugly Season — and Perfume Genius’ music broadly — transforms pop into something both euphoric and pain-ridden, finding queer joy and healing through the act of musical expres-

Edinburgh International Book Festival Edinburgh College of Art, 13-29 Aug There’s a strong thread of optimism running through this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, with a wonderfully rich and cutting edge programme themed around “All Together Now”. Highlights include the likes of Monica Ali, Ottessa Moshfegh (pictured) and Torrey Peters, as well as appearances from giants of the non-book world: think Succession’s Logan Roy (wait, no, we mean Brian Cox) and PJ Harvey.

Photo: Jake Belcher

Photo: Stella Chen

Photo: Keith Hunter Mark Handforth: A Scarlet Forest

August 2022 — Chat

Tomato Summerhall, Edinburgh, 3-28 Aug, 3:10pm Never has a single fruit been so horny. Performed as part of the Fringe’s broader Taiwan Season, Tomato is a playful and provocative exploration of lust and desire, told through intricate, sensual choreography and a very tongue-in-cheek attitude. Created by Chou Kuan-Jou and performed alongside two other artists, Tomato will have you never looking at a salad in the same way again.

Chloe Petts: Transience

Photo: Robin Mair

Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 3-28 Aug, 6:30pm

Ottessa Moshfegh for Edinburgh International Book Festival

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 3-28 Aug, 6pm

Photo: Jason Stang Photography

Photo: Matt Crockett

Photo: Alessandro Marini

Famous Puppet Death Scenes

Tomato, White House Dance Studio

Mara Storyteller in Blood and Gold Pleasure Pool for A Cut Above

Famous Puppet Death Scenes

A Cut Above

Blood and Gold Chloe Petts

Stereo, Glasgow, 13 Aug, 11pm — 8 —

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, 11-28 Aug, 6pm

THE SKINNY

Photo: Andy Hollingworth

So You Think You’re Funny?

The Pulse The Edinburgh Playhouse, Edinburgh, 8-9 Aug, various times Australian circus and physical theatre company Gravity & Other Myths made a towering impression (geddit?) at the 2019 Fringe with the physics-defying Backbone. They’re back this year — this time at the Edinburgh International Festival — with The Pulse: a mesmerising work of immense scale that turns dozens of acrobats into a single, organic body.

Image:Carnival Cinema

Gilded Balloon Teviot, Edinburgh, 3-29 Aug, various times We promise this is not the set-up to a bad joke, but… what do Aisling Bea, Peter Kay, Lee Mack, and Romesh Ranganathan all have in common? They’re all previous winners of Gilded Balloon’s So You Think You’re Funny?, the seminal comedy competition that has nurtured some of the country’s best comedians!

Ft. seven heats, one grand finale, and appearances from previous winners throughout the Fringe.

Book Fringe

Heads Up

Lighthouse Bookshop, Edinburgh, 5-12 Aug Bibliophiles: there’s more than one festival for you this month. Put on by beloved indie bookshop Lighthouse Bookshop, Book Fringe is a series of lunchtime conversations taking place in the idyll of the bookshop garden. We’re excited about Said the Dove to the Olive Tree, a short film and discussion about Palestinian belonging, and a talk on sustainability and creativity with Rebecca Tamás, Adrienne Buller and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson.

The Pulse

Romesh Ranganathan, previous So You Think You're Funny? winner

Photo: Robin Christian

Photo: Johan Pijpops

Rebecca Tamas for Book Fringe

Farah Saleh and Oğuz Kaplangi: A Wee Journey Nutcrusher by Sung Im Her for Horizons Showcase

Various venues, Edinburgh, 22-28 Aug Performing arts showcase Horizon focuses on cuttingedge performances that push the boundaries both of artistic expression and the type of performers typically given a platform at the Fringe. These ten carefully curated shows are genre-defying and entirely innovative, with stunning choreography and sharp writing that speak to the radical possibilities of the Fringe.

A Wee Journey by Farah Saleh and Oğuz Kaplangi

All details were correct at the time of writing, but are subject to change. Please check organisers’ websites for up to date information.

Image: courtesy of artist and iota Up Crown, Rowena Comrie

Photo: Leena Nammari

Iota @ Unlimited Studios, Glasgow, 6-20 Aug

Hobbes Music Summer Party Summerhall, Edinburgh, 19 Aug, 11pm Photo: Paul Maguire

Image: courtesy of mandla rae and EIF

Rowena Comrie: Radicalitionists’ New Abstract Paintings

as british as a watermelon

It Will Live

as british as a watermelon

It Will Live

The Studio, Edinburgh, 23-26 Aug, 8pm

Suzi Cunningham Sotto

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The Studio, Edinburgh, 12-27 Aug

August 2022 — Chat

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Horizon Showcase 2022

Tramway, Glasgow, 12-13 Aug, 7pm Blending choreography from Palestinian artist Farah Saleh and stunning music compositions from Oğuz Kaplangi, A Wee Journey is a dynamic and probing exploration of migration and belonging, reflecting on a world where the instability of borders and states can turn anyone into a migrant. Catch its preview performances in Glasgow’s Tramway before it travels to the Edinburgh International Festival later in the month.

THE SKINNY

Image: courtesy of Traverse Theatre

Liz Kingsman: One-Woman Show

Liz Kingsman: One-Woman Show

Image: courtesy of artist

Heads Up

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, 27 Aug-20 Nov The first solo UK exhibition by Berlin-based Mexican artist Manuel Solano, The Top of Each Ripple is a tender excavation of identity and the affective moments that shape our lives. The works in the exhibition span across sculpture, film, and painting, the latter formed in collaboration with studio assistants after Solano lost his eyesight due to an HIV-related illness.

Image: courtesy of Peres Projects, Berlin

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 16-28 Aug, 10pm A head-spinning meta take on the rise of the solo, confessional show (as popularised by the likes of Fleabag), Liz Kingsman’s One-Woman Show created waves (mostly of hilarity) when it showed at London last year. It’s coming to the Fringe for a limited run: expect a genre-breaking, entirely ludicrous mediation on the gendered ways women are allowed to be funny.

Manuel Solano: The Top of Each Ripple

The Berkeley Suite and Hang Tough presents ASQUITH The Berkeley Suite, Glasgow, 6 Aug, 11pm Jimmy Asquith, head of London-based techno label Lobster Theremin and newly launched label Higher Power, heads to Glasgow for a night of deliriously fastpaced techno mixed with old school jungle, rave, and the best of breakbeat from the UK. The support acts are equally unmissable, with sets from local talent H3L3NA and PLANTAINCHIPPS.

Plantainchipps for Berkeley Suite and Hang Tough presents ASQUITH

Image: courtesy of Glasgow Film Theatre High Noon, part of When Europe Made Hollywood

Manuel Solano, Bangles, 2020. Acrylic on canvas

Photo: Tangle Photography

When Europe Made Hollywood: From Sunrise to High Noon Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow, until 25 Aug Hollywood may be as American as, well, Hollywood, but its early days were indelibly shaped by European filmmakers. This season at Glasgow Film Theatre spotlights some of the most crucial meeting points between Europe and America – some of our favourites include Double Indemnity, a 35mm print of Queen Christina, and 4K restorations of Shanghai Express and High Noon.

August 2022 — Chat

This Is Not a Show About Hong Kong

This is Not a Show about Hong Kong

Monkey Barrel Comedy (Carnivore), Edinburgh, 1-28 Aug, 9:40pm

Taraka

Photo: Amy Sinead

Photo: Tony Pletts

Erika Ehler: Femcel

Underbelly Cowgate, Edinburgh, 4-28 Aug, 2pm A heartstopping exploration of censorship and state violence, This Is Not a Show About Hong Kong is, supposedly, not many things. It is not a vital performance about the suffocating effects of the Chinese government’s National Security Bill, nor a mediation on the helpless feeling of state oppression, nor a consideration of the violent legacies of colonialism. But it is, we can state with confidence, essential viewing.

The Flying Duck, Glasgow, 27 Aug, 7pm Image: ourtesy of The Flying Duck

Photo: Rebecca Need-Menear

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas: Black and White Erika Ehler

Strawboys by Rob Heaslip

Strawboys

The Stand Edinburgh, 4-28 Aug, 1:30pm

Taraka

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Dance Base, Edinburgh, 18 Aug, 12:30pm

THE SKINNY

Image: courtesy of Otherlands Music Festival

Otherlands Music & Arts Festival Scone Palace, Perth, 19-21 Aug A new music festival in August? In this economy??

Turns out Scotland’s summer of festivals has made it to Perthshire, with the inaugural edition of Otherlands in the stunning grounds of Scone Palace. The lineup is equally stunning, with live performances from Alewya, Joesef, Elkka, and Walt Disco, and DJ sets from Jamie xx, TAAHLIAH, and Folamour.

Image: courtesy of Assembly

Alewya at Otherlands Music Festival

Aftersun at Edinburgh International Film Festival

Heads Up

Image: courtesy of Edinburgh International Film Festival

(Le) PAIN

Edinburgh International Film Festival Various venues, Edinburgh, 12-20 Aug With a new director at the helm, this edition of Edinburgh International Film Festival feels like a whole new rodeo, in the best possible way. There are the usual big names involved, with opening and closing galas for Aftersun and After Yang, as well as some real undiscovered gems of international cinema (turn to pages 56-57 for our favourites).

Photo: courtesy of Jani Lang

(Le) PAIN Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 4-28 Aug, 4pm A man plays the accordion, singing old Béarnaise folk songs as bread bakes in an oven behind him. In (Le) PAIN, identity and belonging are formed like dough rising in a bowl: alchemical and messy all at once. This non-stop delightful piece of physical theatre from Jean-Daniel Broussé examines what it means to grow up queer in a small town: warm, witty, and sincere, it’s like communion for the soul.

Ando Glaso Roma Cultural Festival

Photo: Erin Soorenko

Ando Glaso Roma Cultural Festival

Lucy Dacus

Lucy Dacus Leith Theatre, Edinburgh, 25 Aug, 8pm There’s something devastating about Lucy Dacus’ songwriting, but in a strangely pleasurable way. The American indie singer, having come up with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker (with whom she plays in the band boygenius), writes about queerness, longing and loss with poetic precision and a lowkey rock vibe that is especially intoxicating in her live performance. Find her at Edinburgh International Festival this month.

All details were correct at the time of writing, but are subject to change. Please check organisers’ websites for up to date information.

Blunderland Underbelly Circus Hub, Edinburgh, 5-27 Aug, 9:55pm

Photo: Ali Wright

Ashanti Harris: Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille

Ashanti Harris: Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille Godot is a Woman

Photo: Jeffrey Delannoy

Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, 3-28 Aug, 12:50pm

Image: ourtesy of artist and Underbelly

Image: ourtesy of the artist

Godot is a Woman

Irvine Welsh for Beyond Borders Festival

Beyond Borders Festival

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, until 27 Aug — 11 —

Blunderland

Traquair House, Traquair, 27-28 Aug

August 2022 — Chat

CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow, 27-28 Aug Established in 2016 to explore the cultural heritage of the various Roma communities around Scotland, art and culture collective Ando Glaso are ending the month with this weekend-long festival at Glasgow’s CCA. Highlights from the programme include workshops on traditional Gypsy dancing and music, and a storytelling performance from Jess Smith in collaboration with musicians Ciaran Ryan, Kevin Whyte and Ian MacGregor.

August 2022

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

All details correct at the time of writing

Photo: Tal Imam Bee Asha

Billy Got Waves

August 2022 — Events Guide

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Ezra Furman

Photo: Lunch Concept Store

Photo: Nwaka Okparaeke Little Simz

Music Starting in the capital, the Edinburgh International Festival is bringing some of the biggest names in music to Leith Theatre this month; our top picks include Shabaka Hutchings’ jazz outfit Sons of Kemet (14 Aug), New York rapper and songwriter Princess Nokia (17 Aug), France-based Cuban/ Venezuelan twin sisters Ibeyi (18 Aug), Scottish indie-rock royalty Arab Strap (19 Aug), Pakistani singer, composer and producer Arooj Aftab (21 Aug) and queer Chicagoan singer-songwriter Ezra Furman (23 Aug).

In the Southside, Summerhall has got a packed music programme too featuring Glasgow’s premier purveyors of Afrobeat-infused indie-pop Sacred Paws, with the Carla J. Easton-fronted Poster Paints on support (6 Aug).

Other Scots playing include Honeyblood (11 Aug), Withered Hand (12 Aug) and James Yorkston and the Second Hand Orchestra (19 Aug), with names from further afield including Cate Le Bon (17 Aug), Jenny Hval (18 Aug), Tune-Yards (24 Aug), Deerhoof (28 Aug) and The Weather Station (31 Aug).

For something a little less conventional, head to the Pianodrome at the Old Royal High School on Calton Hill, recently brought back to life by Hidden Door. They have free lunchtime concerts every day from 1-2pm featuring the likes of Queen of Harps (5 Aug) and Bee Asha (11 Aug); Tinderbox Orchestra take over the space most nights between 5-21 August from 8pm, while a run of Pianodrome Live concerts can be found from 9pm with Hailey Beavis and Faith Eliott (12 Aug), Noushy 4tet (16 Aug) and Lizabett Russo (18 Aug) all playing.

Outwith the Edinburgh festivals, Sneaky Pete’s Central Belters shows continue with Swiss Portrait (11 Aug), Billy Got Waves (12 Aug) and The Wife Guys of Reddit (19 Aug) among others. You’ll also find big shows in every corner of the city as The Libertines (8 Aug) play the O2 Academy, Michael Kiwanuka plays Princes Street Gardens (8 Aug), Mdou Moctar (16 Aug) and Alex G (23 Aug) play The Liquid Room, while Rage Against the Machine, Run the Jewels and Nova Twins all play The Royal Highland Centre (24 Aug).

Also taking place at The Royal Highland Centre, the almost mythical Connect festival (26-28 Aug) returns. Its gargantuan lineup features everyone from Jon Hopkins, The National, Self Esteem and John Grant to The Chemical Brothers, Mogwai, Little Simz and Caribou, while a 15 minute drive away Jupiter Rising returns to Jupiter Artland (26-27 Aug), this year programmed by guest curators Alloysious Massaquoi (Young Fathers), Tamara Schlesinger (Hen Hoose, MALKA), Auntie Flo and Shoot Your Shot.

Festivals in Glasgow this month are a little less in abundance, but The Hug & Pint’s Endless Summer and King Tut’s Summer Nights both continue with shows from the likes of Alex Rex (10 Aug) and NANI (21 Aug) at the former, and Scotland in Colour (11 Aug), Memes (19 Aug) and Pizza Crunch (27 Aug) all worth checking out at the latter. Summer Nights at the Bandstand (no relation to King Tut’s) continues into August at Kelvingrove Park, with highlights including Pixies (4 Aug), King Creosote (11 Aug) and Edwyn Collins (13 Aug). On the smaller end of the scale, the inaugural Glas-Goes-Pop, an “indie pop happening”, takes place from 5-6 August at the Glasgow University Union Debate Chambers, with live music from bands like Close Lobsters and The Orchids, DJ sets from Chris Geddes (Belle and Sebastian) and Gerry Love (formerly of Teenage Fanclub) and a screening of Paul Kelly’s Take Three Girls: The Dolly Mixture Story.

Photo: Tonje Thilesen

What's On

THE SKINNY

Photo: Matilda Hill-Jenkins Hot Chip

August 2022 — Events Guide

Shanghai Express

Honey Dijon

Elsewhere in Glasgow, Rex Orange County play two massive outdoor shows at SWG3’s Galvanizer’s Yard (2 & 3 Aug), followed shortly thereafter with an outdoor show from Hot Chip, Little Dragon and Pictish Trail (5 Aug) at the newly opened Junction 1 venue. Torres plays Mono (17 Aug), Perfume Genius plays St Luke’s (22 Aug), King Wine launch their debut album at The Hug & Pint (27 Aug), Kurt Vile & The Violators plays QMU (29 Aug), and on 31 August Fleet Foxes play O2 Academy and Laura Mvula plays Òran Mór. Also in music this month, Pitch (fka HANG), Scotland’s international, multi-venue conference of hip-hop and underground culture, sees live discussions, showcase performances and more take over four venues in the East End (27 Aug). [Tallah Brash] Film Edinburgh International Film Festival officially returns to August this year – read about the great films coming to EIFF (12-20 Aug) in our CineSkinny special at the centre of this magazine.

Outwith EIFF, you’ll find plenty of work at the Fringe with a cinematic bent. There’s Psychodrama (Traverse), for example, a revenge tale featuring the murder of an auteur theatre director, set against the backdrop of a stage production of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Or what about What Broke David Lynch?

(Greenside), in which Mr Twonkey plays Lynch in a yarn about the making of The Elephant Man. And who could resist Never Let Go: An Unauthorised Retelling of James Cameron’s Titanic (Assembly George Sq), a one-actorshow condensing that three-and-a-half-hour epic romance into an easy-todigest 60 minutes?

There’s plenty happening in Glasgow this month too. Nice N Sleazy’s new Rebel Queers Film Club continues on 9 August with another ‘grubby queer cult movie’: namely, Time Square. This punky fairytale sees two teen runaways come to the gritty streets of New York and become rock stars, thanks to a lot of attitude, plenty of hairspray and a little help from a supportive DJ played by Tim Curry.

Glasgow Film Theatre, meanwhile, crown the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray this month’s CineMaster. Alongside Ray’s monumental Apu Trilogy in 4K (various screenings, 30 Jul-17 Aug), there’s also a couple rare showings of The Lonely Wife (20&24 Aug), a tender study of marital loneliness that Ray considered the very best film of his storied career.

Also run to GFT for their Europe Made Hollywood retrospective celebrating the great European filmmakers (Billy Wilder, Michael Curtiz, Fritz Lang) and actors (Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo) who found success in Hollywood during its Golden Age. The season offers masterpiece upon masterpiece: Shanghai Express (4 Aug), Queen Christina (7 Aug; on 35mm), Fury (11 Aug; on 35mm), Casablanca (14 Aug), Double Indemnity (18 Aug) and The Killers (21 Aug). The season closes with a 70th-anniversary screening of Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (24 Aug).

You’re likely to be skint after all that, but luckily Queen’s Park’s free outdoor screenings continue, with cult classics like Big Trouble in Little China (29 Aug) and Battle Royale (30 Aug) on offer. [Jamie Dunn] Clubs The Edinburgh festivals are back! 5am closes are back! Turning up hungover with little to no sleep to everything for a whole month is back! And we obviously can’t wait!

Beloved Edinburgh club The Mash House has seen many guises over the years but its current iteration celebrates its 9th birthday this month, and Midnight Bass are throwing a party on 2 August to mark the occasion.

Meanwhile, Glasgow record shop and all-round Scottish institution Rubadub turn 30 this year, and they’re going one step further with a day and night party on 13 August, starting in the shop and ending at Club 69 in Paisley.

On 5 August Miss World revive their annual festival party at Sneaky Pete’s with sets from Lizzzur, Annafleur and residents. Then, a few days later, Heaters and The Mirror Dance team up to bring NTS and Balamii resident Shy One to Sneaky’s on 10 August, with support from local rising talent Alliyah Enyo.

First on August’s ‘festivals that aren’t the Edinburgh festivals’ calendar is Out East Festival, taking place at Dalkeith Country Park on 6 August. Later in the month, there’s also the debut of Otherlands at Scone Palace in Perth from 19-21 August, with live sets from the likes of Bicep and Elkka and DJ sets from Honey Dijon, Ricardo Villalobos and many more.

Edinburgh International Festival’s contemporary music programme brings two legends of the electronic music scene to Leith Theatre this month,

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Psychodrama

Big Trouble in Little China

THE SKINNY

Photo: Katja Ruge Helena Hauff

Image: courtesy of Peres Projects, Berlin Manuel Solano, Bangles, 2020. Acrylic on canvas

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ALOK

August 2022 — Events Guide

Photo: Robyn Nisbet Nial Moorjani

Theatre At the Edinburgh International Festival, National Theatre of Scotland’s Medea (10-28 Aug) retells Euripides’ drama utilising Scots-inflected language for an interrogation of the heart under intolerable pressure. There’s more than fiction though: The Book of Life (13-16 Aug) sees Rwandan writer and activist Kiki Katese share stories of those affected by the Rwandan genocide alongside her all-female drumming group. There’s also Detention Dialogues (21 Aug), a series of verbatim scripts that shares the experiences of refugees being held in immigration removal facilities across the UK. Travfest will occupy the Traverse, highlighting a range of vibrant new work. The world premiere of Tabby Lamb’s Happy Meal (4-28 Aug) promises a queer rom-com that’s a funny, moving and nostalgic story of transition.

Psychodrama (4-28 Aug), starring Emily Bruni, delves into the dark heart of show business for a hilariously gripping revenge tale. Mixing comedy and poetry, acclaimed writer and performer ALOK (9-21 Aug) discusses themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition in their show.

Summerhall will host a number of unique shows. For circus fans there’s The Chosen Haram (3-27 Aug) by Sadiq Ali which tells the story of two gay men and the barriers they must overcome, while Twa (4-28 Aug) blends Annie George’s theatrical storytelling with Flore Gardner’s animated and live (onstage) drawings to create a twisted fairytale.

Storyteller Niall Moorjani is bringing several pieces to venues throughout the city. The thought-provoking Mohan: A Partition Story (4-16 Aug not 10th and 15th) retells the experiences of Moorjani’s Grampa during

Squarepusher

Courtesy of the Artist

Art Edinburgh Art Festival continues throughout August, with five core commissions and a plethora of exhibitions and events taking place as part of the partner programme. Highlights include Platform: 2022, a group exhibition of four emerging Scotland-based artists, and Pester & Rossi’s sited installation Finding Buoyancy at Bridge 8 Hub at Wester Hailes.

At Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, the collectives Cooking Sections and Sakiya present In the Eddy of the Stream, a collaborative endeavour that draws attention to the breakdown of ecosystems through the destruction of plant life and the subsequent harm caused to human and animal life. The exhibition continues until 18 September.

At Glasgow’s iota, Rowena Comrie presents RADICALITIONISTS, where she channels forgotten or dismissed social revolutionaries through the medium of abstract painting. Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions present ROOM, a graduate exhibition led by thirteen students from the 2020 cohort of the school’s MLitt Fine Art Practice course. Until 10 September, CCA Glasgow holds We Are Compost / Composting the We, an exhibition by a trio of artists: Alexandra Toland, Asad Raza and Désirée Coral. The three artists create separate works entangled with one another by an identification with the cyclical nature of the composting process.

At Dundee Contemporary Arts, Manuel Solano opens their first solo show in the UK on 27 August. The Berlin-based artist uses painting to recall and celebrate the formative moments of youth and how family and popular culture influence them.

In partnership with Street Level Photoworks, The Rockfield Centre in Oban is exhibiting Fishing the Minch, a series of photographs documenting everyday life in Stornoway by David Gordon, shown in their entirety for the first time since 1980. The exhibition continues until 13 August. [Harvey Dimond]

Photo: Donald Milne

and they’re definitely shows to get excited about. Bonafide legend Jeff Mills brings his Tomorrow Comes The Harvest show to the capital on 11 August then, just two nights later, Squarepusher follows.

First Edition put on two big parties this month. The first is with Edinburgh festivals regular Helena Hauff at The Liquid Room on 12 August and the second is at The Mash House on 20 August with one third of Hessle Audio, Pearson Sound. Wedged in between, Edinburgh record label Hobbes Music showcase some of their artists at a summer party, featuring live AV sets from Exterior and Gaming, at Summerhall on 19 August.

Outside of Edinburgh this month, new queer club night Gloss launches at King’s Dundee on 13 August, promising performances from Anne Spank, Stefani Banks and Angel Beads, as well as DJ sets from L.X.N.X and MELTEO. On the same night in Glasgow, Loose Joints celebrate local talent with DJ sets from H3L3NA, Lewis Lowe and Dilly Joints, alongside a live set from WomanSaid. [Nadia Younes]

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Photo: Alley Scott Temping

Photo: Johan Pijpops

Photo: Rebecca Need Menear A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain

the partition of India. In The Girl and the Dragon (4-21 Aug not 10th, 17th, 18th and 19th) they and Minnie Wilkinson tell a story about a young girl on a quest to fight a great and terrible dragon. And Lighthouse Books will host Moorjani’s brand-new piece A Fairie Tale (18-21 Aug), which explores Scottish race and gender identities through a medieval fairie-inspired landscape.

Fairy tales and gothic horror are a recurrent theme across the Fringe this year. Becquer’s Legends (5-13 Aug) promises other-worldly temptations inspired by Spanish gothic author Gustavo Adolfo Becquér’s short stories in a fusion of theatre, storytelling and choreography. Some Kind of Theatre’s The Grandmothers Grimm (15-27 Aug not 21st) laces the macabre with comedy in its depiction of women’s role in the creation of the Grimm’s famous tales. The Changeling Girl (15-27 Aug not 21st) explores neurodivergent experiences through the captivating story of an autistic girl living in medieval England accused of being a fairy changeling.

The Horizon Showcase brings several unique collaborations to the Fringe: Sonia Hughes’ I Am From Reykjavik (22-26 Aug not 25th) will craft a ritual about claiming and curating physical space for an audience. He’s Dead (23-28 Aug) by Malik Nashad Sharpe uses movement, theatre, and sound to create an experimental atmosphere seeking to unearth the dehumanisation of marginalised people. Nutcrusher (23-28 Aug) sees Sung Im Her use movement to explore misogyny and our relationship with our body.

The Fringe also offers a number of interactive pieces pushing the boundaries of traditional storytelling. New York’s Dutch Kills Theater presents Temping (9-28 Aug), in which the audience is invited to fill in for Sarah Jane at her job, explore her cubicle, send emails, and allow the story to unfold around them. Work.txt (3-14, 16-21, 23-28 Aug) similarly explores the gig economy in a piece performed entirely by the audience.

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain (3-27 Aug not 7th, 9th, 14th, 16th, 21st and 23rd) crafts a poetic fable of an impregnable immigration not dissimilar to our own in a new piece by award-winning playwright Sami Ibrahim. Those interested in music through storytelling should check out Oedipus Electronica (3-26 Aug) which sees Pecho Mama bring their sublime soundscape back to Edinburgh for a radical reinvention of the ultimate love triangle. [Nico Marrone]

Nutcrusher

Comedy With 1192 comedy shows (according to the Fringe’s website) and counting, The Fringe is back with a BANG baby!

There are so many acts this year who are making their first appearance at the Festival. Home grown acts Amy Matthews (4-28 Aug, not 15th, 2.35pm, Monkey Barrel: Carnivore 1) and Krystal Evans (4-28 Aug, not 16th, 3.10pm, Monkey Barrel: The Studio) have honed their hours on the Scottish comedy scene and beyond. Sikisa is a red-hot debut ticket for us (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 8.25pm, Pleasance Courtyard: Below). She’s rocketed up the comedy ranks at lightning speed and we’re so keen to sit down to an act who calls Fern Brady a fan (interview p29). Likewise, Erika Ehler (this month’s ICYMI, p32) is sure to garner fans with her divisive, deadpan, anti-comedy (3-28 Aug, 9.40pm,

Image: courtesy of Glasgow International Comedy Festival

John Hegley

Amy Matthews

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August 2022 — Events Guide

Photo: Polly Hancock

Poetry Livia Kojo Alour is making her first solo Edinburgh Fringe debut with her show Black Sheep (4-27 Aug, not 15th). It’s got something for everyone, whether you’re interested in spoken word, physical theatre, or – arguably most exciting – sword swallowing. On a serious note, Black Sheep is about a queer Black woman finding love. It’s a story of overcoming institutional racism and radical vulnerability, and will be extended in Alour’s debut poetry collection, Rising of the Black Sheep, to be published with Polari Press mid-September.

Summerhall has an outstanding programme of enticing spoken word.

John Hegley’s Biscuit of Destiny (Cairns Lecture Theatre, 3-28 Aug, not 15th, 22nd) sets the scene with our hero, John Keats, meeting a woman in Ireland and recognising that the poor woman is suffering from a lack of biscuits.

Hegley’s usual muddle of comedy and music ensue. Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Cristian Ceresoli’s Le Merda will also take to the Summerhall Dissection Room (16-28 Aug) with Silvia Gallerano reprising her blistering, unsettling performance in the internationally award-winning production.

And finally, who doesn’t love a spoken word cabaret? Luckily, Ayrshire’s own Jim Monaghan is bringing one right to your Fringe door. Word Up (The Stand’s New Town Theatre, 20-21, 27-28 Aug) will feature some of the best poets from the UK and further afield, and will be joined on stage by comedians and musicians for a bit of cross-artform fun. [Beth Cochrane]

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Photo: Miranda Holms Photo: Ad Zyne

August 2022 — Events Guide

Photo: Michael C Hunter SWG3

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Ruth Hunter

Photo: Sally Price

Rob Auton

Food It’s the Fringe! And that means, among other things (mad landlordism, £6 pints, clowns accosting you outside Sainsburys), you’ll find Fun Things In Unexpected Places. Over in Haymarket, there are a couple of pop-ups to recommend. The lovely folk at Company Bakery welcome Scottish Street Food Award winners Junk to their weekend market from 12-14 Aug. Get up early, pick up some nice bread, grab a decadent brunch while you’re at it (5 Devon Pl, from 9am). At the other end of the day, it’s burger time! Nice Times Bakery sits on the site of a former all-night bakery on Morrison Street; they’re channelling that spirit during the Fringe with a late-night burger pop-up every Friday and Saturday in August (147 Morrison St, 9.30pm-2.30am).

If you’re looking for something more family-friendly than a 1am cheeseburger, take a trip to Cove Park near Helensburgh. Their Unexpected Picnic event combines art workshops, installations, food tastings, a community recipe board and a host of activities. (6 Aug, 1-5pm, free, info and RSVP at covepark.org) Over in Glasgow, SWG3 are opening up their garden terrace for a run of Friday night barbecues. The food is by Nomad, who also have a pizza residency in the Acid Bar round the corner; the music comes from a selection of local DJs; the garden itself is round the back of the warehouse. Look for the umbrellas (Fridays until 26 Aug, swg3.tv) Indie Beer Scotland is a new beer festival taking the somewhat bold move of holding their first event at Murrayfield Stadium. Seems like they’ll have more than enough beer to go around – the lineup features more than thirty Scottish breweries, with independent cider and spirit producers thrown in for good measure (19 Aug, 5pm; 20 Aug, 11.30am and 5pm; tickets £5 via siba.thundertix.com) In Leith, the Lind and Lime Distillery host a series of August supper clubs with restaurants from across the city. Nights with pasta aces Æmilia and the fantastic Nordic-inflected Heron look like standouts (various dates, tickets £40-65 via buytickets.at/lindandlime) Lastly, a grand finale mentioned elsewhere in this month’s magazine, but we wouldn’t want anyone to miss it. After seven years, the groundbreaking street food market at The Pitt closes its doors this month. Head down for one last hurrah ahead of their move to Granton in 2023, and turn to page 81 for some reflections on The Pitt’s role in Scotland’s food scene. Saturdays and Sundays from midday, thepitt.co.uk [Peter Simpson]

Image: Shedinburgh

Ali Brice

Monkey Barrel: Carnivore 1). Other folk we can’t wait to see (and couldn’t quite squeeze into our debuts roundup) include Funny Women 2021 Winner Lara Ricote (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 3.20pm, Monkey Barrel: Hive 2), political Twitter wind-up merchant Rosie Holt (3-29 Aug, not 16th, 6pm, Pleasance Courtyard: Attic) and genre-defying Leo Reich (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 9.35pm, Pleasance Courtyard: Baby Grand).

For wallet-conscious audiences wanting more established comics, we recommend queueing early for Ali Brice (6-28 Aug, 4.50pm, Banshee Labyrinth: Chamber Room) as part of PBH’s Free Fringe. Previously described by us as “a hidden gem”, this year sees Ali return to Fringe with a more earnest show but still crammed with the silliness we expect from this alternative act. In the same venue, you’re guaranteed an hour of spooky, subversive humour from Ruth Hunter (6-28 Aug, not 9th, 16th, 23rd, 7pm, Banshee Labyrinth: Banquet Hall). As well as shows with PBH and Laughing Horse, this is a PSA that the majority of shows with Monkey Barrel and Just the Tonic are Pay What You Can, meaning if you’re up for a wee wait and a gamble, you might get to sneak into some excellent shows without needing to have bought a ticket first; shows like Mat Ewins (4-28 Aug, not 15th, 10.30pm, Just the Tonic at The Caves: Big Room), Mark Silcox (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 5.45pm, Monkey Barrel: The Studio) and Stuart McPherson (3-28 Aug, not 15th, 4.55pm, Monkey Barrel: Carnivore 2). Make sure to tap your card or drop some cash in the bucket on your way out of the show though!

As for the other big venues, you’re not short of brilliant acts. The latest Taskmaster champion, Sophie Duker (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 7.30pm, Pleasance Courtyard: Beside) returns for her sophomore hour while Tom Walker (3-28 Aug, not 17th, Assembly George Sq: The Box), one of our favourite acts of 2019, clowns lyrical about javelins. Rob Auton (3-29 Aug, not 16th, 2.50pm, Assembly George Sq: The Blue Room) has penned a show about crowds which is bound to be smart, eloquent and thoughtful while sketch acts Sheeps (4-14 Aug, 7pm, Pleasance Courtyard: Forth) and Tarot (3-28 Aug, 10pm, Pleasance Courtyard: Beside) present sketch comedy with more than just a slice of danger, with weirdness to boot. [Polly Glynn]

Nice Times Bakery

The Pitt

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August 2022 — Events Guide

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July 2022

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5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Love Bites — 8 Heads Up 13 What’s On — 22 Crossword — 68 Intersections — 85 Music 91 Film & TV — 96 Design — 98 Food & Drink — 101 Books 102 Listings — 110 The Skinny On… Hanna Tuulikki

Features 26 As the Edinburgh Fringe returns, we take a look at our Comedy highlights including Erika Ehler and the best of the year’s debutantes.

29 Life of the party Sikisa on her plans to bring the vibes to the Edinburgh Fringe.

35 Theatre highlights from across the festivals programmes with Niall Moorjani, Tess Letham and Horizon showcase.

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39 Award-winning playwright Sami Ibrahim talks about migration and his new Fringe show A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain.

43 Edinburgh Art Festival with Pester & Rossi and Emmie McLuskey.

49 The Skinny presents…

Peripheral Visions, a series of free events celebrating art, books and film.

50 Jeff Mills on bringing Tomorrow Comes the Harvest to Edinburgh International Festival.

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53 Your guide to Edinburgh International Film Festival ft. Amanda Kramer, Peter Strickland and Antonia Campbell-Hughes.

63 We talk to Lola Olufemi and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson ahead of their Edinburgh International Book Festival events.

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76 We catch up with Brooklyn-based Pakistani musician Arooj Aftab ahead of her Edinburgh International Festival performance.

78 Synth-pop duo Sylvan Esso discuss new album No Rules Sandy.

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Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Rebecca Need-Menear; Swiss Chocolate Pictures Adrian Tauss; Sasha Malik; Sami Ibrahim; Julie Howden; Sally Price; Onassis Foundation; Give Me Pity!; Lola Olufemi; Auntie Flo; @alxmvh; Bobby Strickland

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On the website...

For many, many reviews of comedy, theatre, music and film in the Fringe, Edinburgh International Festival and beyond, as well as our usual weekly Spotlight On… new music features, Spotify playlists with our favourite new tracks, and The Cineskinny film podcast every fortnight.

August 2022 — Contents

70 As Jupiter Rising returns, we talk to curators Alloysious Massaquoi, MALKA, Bonzai Bonner of Shoot Your Shot and Auntie Flo.

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Shot of the month Self Esteem @ TRNSMT, Glasgow Green, 9 Jul by Allan Lewis

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Across

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August 2022 — Chat

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Panicked rush (8)

Down 1.

Hidden – best run arena (anag) (12)

5. Horse play (5)

2. Greek fabulist (5)

9. ___ Brush, fox puppet from children's TV, returns to the Fringe this year (5)

3. Beloved Edinburgh kebab joint – ancient Syrian city (7)

10. Entrances – launches (8)

4. Model scene (7)

12. Vacant (5)

6. Group of musicians (7)

13. Turn around (5-4)

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14. Versus the clock – a gastric matinee (anag) (4,7,4)

8. Fame (6)

Improving (9)

16. Every evening for an extended period (5,5,5)

11. Anniversary celebrated by both the Fringe and the International Festival this year – hefty TV fines (anag) (7-5)

21. Estranges (9)

15. Thinking (9)

22. Separated from the wheat (5)

17. Friction – strain (7)

24. Alleviate (8)

18. Rich person – tubby tabby (3,3)

25. Explode – expire (2,3)

19. Nearest (anag) (7)

26. Witless (5)

20. Close, but ___ ___ (2,5)

27. Establish – dig in (8)

23. Embellish (5)

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Compiled by George Sully

Turn to page 7 for the solutions

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Access All Areas From natural beauty to much-loved city attractions via some one-of-a-kind locations, we take a tour around Edinburgh’s neighbourhoods Advertising Feature

Bakehouse Close

Stockbridge Clock

Image: courtesy of Forever Edinburgh Portobello Beach

around the world make it something of a foodie haven. You’ll find excellent family-run restaurants serving Korean, Thai, Indian and Chinese dishes at incredible prices; head over to the Meadows for a lie-down on the grass afterwards.

Our neighbourhood trail finishes in the heart of the Old Town. For a more continental feel, go to the Grassmarket with its buzzy outdoor bars, independent boutiques and excellent ice cream at Mary’s Milk Bar, all in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. For a closer view of some of the city’s most iconic buildings, spend some time on the Royal Mile. The street takes you from the Castle and St Giles’ Cathedral to the Scottish Parliament and Holyrood Park. At the foot of the Mile discover the natural beauty of the Crags and Arthur’s Seat.

Climb to the top and you’ll be met with an incredible view across Edinburgh… ideal for planning where to go next.

Explore 13 of Edinburgh’s unique neighbourhood areas. Plan your visit at edinburgh.org/neighbourhoods

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Image: courtesy of Forever Edinburgh

Image: courtesy of Forever Edinburgh

Wild West Street, Morningside

Bruntsfield Place

Image: courtesy of Forever Edinburgh

Image: courtesy of Forever Edinburgh

dinburgh is a city of contrasts – old and new, columns, and the King’s urban and leafy, lively and tranquil. Luckily, it Theatre, open since manages to pack this diversity into an extremely 1905 and now features a walkable format, allowing you to flit between its John Byrne artwork in various faces fairly easily. With that in mind, we’ve its domed ceiling. The put together a whistle-stop trail across the city to West End strikes a nice highlight what makes its neighbourhoods stand out. balance between We’ll start in Corstorphine in the west of the bucolic scenery and city city, where a woodland walk up Corstorphine Hill centre action. The Dean – one of seven across Edinburgh – offers an Village is a photograexcellent vantage point across the city. Back on pher’s dream, and a ground level, head to Edinburgh Zoo for an enorwalk down the Water of mous range of wildlife and educational exhibits.

Leith will lead you to Check out the recently-welcomed giraffes, then the excellent Scottish look out for the Giraffe About Town art trail as you National Gallery of continue through the city.

Modern Art; Cairngorm Heading towards town, Gorgie and Dalry Coffee on Melville Place offer a mix of much-loved local institutions and will sort you out with new favourites. There’s a thriving food scene on an excellent flat white, Dalry Road, with organic supermarket Locavore and some of the city’s handling the produce and Pizzeria 1926 serving the finest tacos can be city’s best pizza. Love Gorgie Farm – free, and open found at Taco Libre on 7 days a week – offers the chance to get up close Shandwick Place. and personal with some farmyard critters, and the The New Town and Stockbridge are two Union Canal celebrates its 200th birthday with neighbourhoods which work excellently as a pair.

Edinburgh Art Festival activity throughout August. Explore the cobbled streets and Georgian architecOn the other side of the canal you’ll find ture of the New Town, heading downhill from Bruntsfield and Morningside, areas with a Princes Street until you’re rewarded with the cafes, community feel and some pleasingly strange bars and boutiques of Stockbridge. Visit on touches. There’s nothing else in the city quite like Sundays and you’ll find Stockbridge Market, with a the Wild West Street, a set of cowboy-inspired huge range of artisan food and drink to peruse; façades off Morningside Road that look like Inverleith Park nearby is a great place to chill out, they’ve fallen out of a Sergio Leone western. and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh across Bruntsfield offers some great independent shopthe road is full of incredible plantlife. ping and eating – Thorne Records offer a huge Keep heading north and you’ll arrive in Leith, selection of vinyl and a hugely diverse neighbourhood with Artisan Roast brews enough activity to fill an article all by excellent coffee. itself, but a couple of highlights sum Tollcross borders up its enduring appeal. Leith Theatre the Old Town, but it has opened its doors 90 years ago, and a character all of its after community action and work by own. A pair of Hidden Door Festival and the Edinburgh institutions Edinburgh International Festival, it’s anchor the area – the now one of the crown jewels of the century-old Cameo city’s music scene. Down the street, Circus Place, Stockbridge Cinema with its ornate Alby’s has established itself as one of Edinburgh’s best lunch spots in recent years – their doorstop-esque hot sandwiches are ideal fuel for exploring.

At this point you have a choice – head left and you can check out South Queensferry, home to the iconic UNESCO heritage site Forth Bridge and the new Queensferry Crossing, stopping for an excellent burger at Canadian diner Down The Hatch at Port Edgar. Go right from Leith and you’ll reach Portobello. The seaside suburb has an excellent beach with a reinvigorated promenade and a thriving artistic community. Returning to the city, the Southside’s mix of communities from

Image: courtesy of Forever Edinburgh

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June 2022

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Theme Intro

I

t’s been a while – three years in fact – since we had a full-on, in-person, August Edinburgh Festivals programme.

Are you ready?

Celebrating the return, we’ve got a mega special with our picks from the Edinburgh: Fringe, International Festival, International Book Festival and Art Festival. The Edinburgh International Film Festival has also moved back to August, and we’re marking the occasion with a special supplement in our centre pages.

Turn the page to immerse yourself in this tiny microcosm of the August chaos featuring (deep breath) debutante comics, Sikisa, Pay What You Can highlights, Erika Ehler, Tessa Coates and Liz Kingsman, Niall Moorjani, Horizons showcase, Sami Ibrahim, Tess Letham, Pester & Rossi, Emmie McLuskey, Jeff Mills, Amanda Kramer, Kim Knowles, Peter Strickland, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson, Lola Olufemi, Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, SHHE, The Weather Station and Arooj Aftab. And more!

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August 2022 – Edinburgh Festivals

THEY'RE BACK

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Comedy

Debutante’s Ball New comedy? One ticket please! Here’s our top picks from the hunners of acts making their debuts at Fringe 2022 Words: Polly Glynn Illustration: Darren Shaddick

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August 2022 – Feature

ew comedy means new voices, new perspectives and new ways of making us laugh. There’s something electrifying about discovering a brand new act that you can’t wait to brag about to your pals, and this year we’ve got a bumper crop. Plenty of these comics have been queuing round the corner (socially distanced of course) for Edinburgh since 2020, with even more

honing their acts online and in pub basements down to August’s wire.

Scott(ish) Acts Working their way up and down the country, these acts have been raising the roof amongst local crowds and we’re so excited that visitors to the Fringe will get to see them here first. Over at Monkey Barrel, a venue adept at championing both Scotland-based acts and the lion’s share of brilliant alternative comedians, are Amy Matthews (4-28 Aug, not 15th, 2.35pm, Carnivore 1) and Krystal Evans (4-28 Aug, not 16th, 3.10pm, The Studio).

Matthews details her fight with maincharacter-syndrome, while straight-talking, sardonic Evans finds the humour in tragic events, including losing everything in a house fire.

Piano man Chris Iskander (4-28 Aug, 8.40pm, Laughing Horse @ City Cafe) will regale you with lyrical delights about being a manly man, swans and Jeffrey Epstein. Edinburghborn ex-pro golfer Hannah Fairweather also makes her debut (4-28 Aug, not 15th, 2.25pm, Just the Tonic at The Caves) and new local Sam Lake, who moved to Edinburgh over lockdown, presents his first hour all about his recent nuptials (3-28 Aug, not 16th, 9.50pm, Pleasance Courtyard). Liam Farrelly (4-28 Aug, not 15th or 22nd, 7.10pm, Just the Tonic Nucleus) also makes his first much anticipated hour-long appearance at the Fringe.

The young Glaswegian seems to get better and better with each gig. If you like no-nonsense, gutsy punchlines, Farrelly’s for you.

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“There’s something electrifying about discovering a brand new act that you can’t wait to brag about to your pals” High Praise There’s a huge number of acts making their way to Edinburgh who’ve already had a little attention by making the finals of some of the most prestigious UK comedy competitions. Out of this pocket of comedians, there’s four we think you need to see.

Erika Ehler (3-28 Aug, 9.40pm, Monkey Barrel: Carnivore 1), this month’s ICYMI, won the Chortle Student Comedy Award in 2019, and a week later took part in the So You Think You’re Funny Grand Final. Her style is boundary-pushing anti-comedy and we can’t wait to see how she turns it into her first hour. So You Think You’re Funny also brought Danielle Walker (3-18 Aug, not 15th, 3.35pm, Assembly George Square Studios) and Morgan Rees (3-28 Aug, 6.10pm, Pleasance Courtyard) to our attention. The former is a sweet and disarming Australian who came runner-up when Heidi Regan won the title in 2016, while Rees followed hot on the heels of Maisie Adam when she won in 2017. In the same August, Rees also played the final of the BBC New Comedy Awards and has honed his skill with writing credits on Mock the Week, 8 Out of 10 Cats and the Uncle Roger vids with Nigel Ng. A mention should also go to Ali Woods (3-28 Aug, not 15th, 5.25pm, Underbelly Bristo Sq) who surely has big things ahead with his energetic club comedy which won him Hackney Empire New Comedian of the Year.

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two of the biggest Drag Acts on the planet.

Gracing us with their presence are Jinkx Monsoon (6-21 Aug, not 10th or 15th, 8.10pm, Assembly George Sq Gardens) and Bianca Del Rio (18-26 Aug, not 22nd, 9.30pm, Pleasance at EICC). Expect outrageous stories and songs from Ms. Monsoon whilst Del Rio stuns with her exclusive brand of insult comedy.

It would also be neglectful to not include the fleeting Fringe visits from two surreal US gals.

Patti Harrison (3-15, 8.30pm, Pleasance Courtyard) is guaranteed to bring armfuls of offbeat charm to the Courtyard cobbles, as well as some real big deal hype. And in the weirdest, dreamiest relay team, Sarah Sherman (15-21 Aug, 10.30pm, Gilded Balloon Teviot) is passed the baton the day Harrison finishes her run. Expect grotesquely, screamingly funny stuff from the current SNL cast member who seems to have given the longtime sketch show a real rocket up the arse.

August 2022 – Feature

An Alternative We’re delighted to have a swathe of non-stand-ups join the Fringe for the first time. Over lockdown Nic Sampson (3-28 Aug, not 15th, 4.40pm, Pleasance Courtyard) became obsessed with the 1904 Olympic Marathon (bit niche, but no-one can be blamed for what they did over a global pandemic) and re-enacts the event in his debut hour. The eagle-eyed amongst you may recognise Sampson’s name from his co-writer credit on Rose Matefeo’s Starstruck, so we have very high hopes. Kylie Brakeman (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 7pm, Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose), who’s already found success on socials @deadeyebrakeman, arrives in Edinburgh as Linda Hollywood, Hollywood Agent (think Bibi from Frasier or Jane Plough from Matt Berry’s Toast) and a cavalcade of hopeful wannabes. We also have viral sketch stars BriTANick (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 7.45pm, Assembly George Sq) making their first appearance at the Fringe, alongside Sami Abu Wardeh (4-18 Aug, not 15th, 8.10pm, Underbelly Cowgate) who has already made several ‘one-to-watch’ lists with his high-energy clowning.

How haven’t they debuted yet?

Thanks to the pandemic, there’s been a backlog of THREE YEARS’ worth of debut shows including a fair few names which might make you think “I’m sure they’ve already done Edinburgh?” One of these is our big interview guest, Sikisa (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 8.25pm, Pleasance Courtyard). She’s been on the London circuit for a while and already counts Fern Brady as a top fan. Likewise, Celya AB (3-29 Aug, not 16th, 7.15pm, Pleasance Courtyard) has made a huge impact on the scene already.

From appearances on the Guilty Feminist Podcast and being tour support for the incomparable Maria Bamford and, strangely enough, ethereal indie starlet St. Vincent, her debut hour focuses on her move from Paris to the next best city of romance, Birmingham.

Thanyia Moore (3-28 Aug. not 17th, 6.50pm, Monkey Barrel: Carnivore 1) promises us simply an hour of straight-up stand-up after the stress of the last few years in Just Being Funny, while Chloe Petts (3-28 Aug, not 15th, 6pm, Pleasance Coutyard), is fresh from her first UK tour and supporting Ed Gamble nationwide. Finally, Emmanuel Sonubi (3-29 Aug, not 15th, 6.10pm, Underbelly Bristo Sq) who’s already headlined Live at the Apollo with his effortless storytelling and anecdotes from his previous life as a London bouncer.

We also have raucous comedy-cabaret from

Comedy

Breaking Out You might recognise the next few acts from their previous successes at the Fringe, but this time they’re going it alone. Liz Kingsman (16-28 Aug, not 22nd, 10pm, Traverse Theatre) has already wowed London crowds with her meta show-abouta-show. It’s a little more theatrical than her Massive Dad days and far removed from the stand-up of her sketchmates Tessa Coates and Stevie Martin – we can’t wait to see it. Swinging into the absurd is Julia Masli in her first solo outing. Previously seen in word-of-mouth wonder, Legs, her show CHOOSH! Is set to be all sorts of clowny goodness from The Malcolm Hardee Award for Comic Originality winner. Finally, those two mucky pups from The Delightful Sausage both make a break for it this year: Amy Gledhill (4-28 Aug, not 17th, 3.30pm, Monkey Barrel: Carnivore 2) aims to give us a feel-good hour about dancing and resilience whilst Chris Cantril (3-28 Aug, not 17th, 4.20pm, Monkey Barrel: The Studio) explores the tender relationship between him and his young son.

“Thanks to the pandemic, there’s been a backlog of THREE YEARS' worth of debut shows including a fair few names which might make you think "I’m sure they’ve already done Edinburgh?"”

August 2022

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Life and Soul Immigration lawyer by day, stand-up comedian by night, Sikisa Bostwick-Barnes plans on bringing the vibes to the Fringe Interview: Yasmin Hackett

Comedy

Photo: Swiss Chocolate Pictures, Adrian Tauss Sikisa

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done in my career, like being in the BBC [New Comedy Award] final, and then to work with producers, and then to be on TV shows and end up on podcasts, that never really was something I envisioned was going to happen.”

So much has her life as a comic spiralled beyond her imagination that she’s starting to get recognised. At a recent rock gig, she had someone say to her, “I know you! You were just on Off Menu!” Unsurprisingly, she’s still getting used to being spotted: “I was just like, ‘This is weird’”.

To be able to fall into a successful comedy career could be a point of envy for many, but it’s not been an easy ride getting to where she is today. And recent times are no different – balancing previews for her first hour at the Fringe alongside a full-time job is no joke.

“Currently we are balancing,” she laughs. “It is tiring.

Especially now we’re reaching up to the Fringe. But I’ve always had multiple jobs, so my mentality has just always been like ‘work, work, work, work, work’.”

That mentality comes from a place of having to work hard from the get-go. “When you grow up on a council estate in south London, and you grow up with basically nothing – everything I have, I’ve worked for. And people hear about me being a lawyer, and make an assumption about me that what I have is a highpaying job, and I’m earning a certain amount of money.” But being a lawyer is a point of pride for her, because she knows how hard she’s had to “work” her “arse off” to get there – and it’s a similar story with her career in comedy.

“I’m gonna be tired. Dead, by the end of the Fringe,” she laughs, but you get the sense she’ll still be ready to party when the debut she’s waited so long to perform arrives in Edinburgh.

Sikisa: Life of the Party, Pleasance Courtyard (Below), 3-28 Aug (not 17), 8.25pm

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August 2022 – Feature

ikisa really is the life of the party. Coming off the back of a hectic week of previews and a day job as an immigration lawyer, she’s still brimming with energy and smiles as we chat about her Edinburgh Fringe debut – which she’s busy getting all the feels for.

“Excited, anxious… all the emotions in the world? Looking forward to it, not looking forward to it. There’s so much emotion around it.”

Her debut, Life of the Party, tackles difficult subjects but makes sure it’s not a heavy hour. She says:“The Edinburgh show’s a vibe... But I talk about issues within it, like racism, discrimination, stereotypes, immigration, conversations that you have as a woman.

“I don’t want it to be a sad, ‘boo-hoo’ kind of show – it’s a very uplifting, positive show. And it is a party. Even though I’m talking about subjects that are tricky to talk about, and people may not want to talk about, I’m still trying to show you that we’re having fun.”

Sikisa’s route into comedy started out seven years ago, behind the scenes. “I worked in a pub that does stand up comedy, it’s called The Cavendish Arms in Stockwell, which runs Comedy Virgins. And I was working behind a bar, and my boss said to me, ‘You’re slightly funny, why don’t you give stand up a go?’” The rest is history, though she’s kept close ties with the pub; she still MCs the Comedy Virgins gigs.

Being on the scene for a while, Sikisa’s name has blown up over the last few years. But comedy isn’t necessarily something she saw herself falling into. She tells us that she “wasn’t particularly good at public speaking” to start with. But stand up taught her that it’s fine for people to laugh at her – or better yet, with her, at her own jokes.

“It’s something that I obviously enjoy doing because otherwise I wouldn’t still be doing it. And so everything that I’ve

THE SKINNY

On the Financial Fringes Comedy

The Fringe is costly – ever more so in 2022. Here’s our guide to enjoying comedy shows on a budget this August Interview: Polly Glynn

P

August 2022 – Feature

Photo: Miranda Holms Ali Brice

Photo: Debbie McCall / Galactic Carnival Amelia Bayler

Buckley Hill. Established in 1996, the collective now programmes free shows in 26 venues across the city. “PBH is completely free and that makes it so much easier to come to the Fringe. And ‘free’ doesn’t mean ‘lower quality’, it just means more choice and more acts. Sometimes it feels like comedy is a conveyor belt and if you’re not on it and not at the Big Four you aren’t part of it. The Free Fringe changes that!”

It also keeps the traditional ‘take a punt’ approach to Fringe alive: read a flyer or check if a show’s about to start and see what you find. “The PWYC model just reduces a bit of the friction involved in going to a show – you don’t need to type in any card details or go to a box office, you can just be wandering the streets and see something starting in a few minutes and make a snap decision,” says Sunil Patel (3-28 Aug, 1.55pm, Monkey Barrel: Monkey Barrel 1), who’s been bringing solo shows to the Fringe since 2016. If you like what you’ve taken a chance on, brilliant! Tell someone you really enjoyed it. If you don’t, you’ve seen something a bit different that you wouldn’t have otherwise. “I’m just happy people would choose to spend an hour of their lives watching a show,” says Patel.

For acts like Heidi Regan (6-28 Aug, not 20th, 21st, 5.55pm, Voodoo Rooms: French Quarter), it’s the notion of audience choice which elevates the show and makes it a joy to perform in a PWYC space: “When they get to decide at the end how much to pay then I feel so much more playful on stage, like I’m earning their goodwill with each joke rather than trying to justify the set amount of money they’ve already had to pay to get in. That playfulness in turn makes the show better and more fun for all of us.” Brice agrees, saying audience members who’ve gambled on a show “are friendly and up for taking a chance on things and also open to lesser known stuff.”

Alongside Regan, Patel and Brice, here are a few of our top PWYC recommendations: high energy beat-fanatic Amelia Bayler (3-28 Aug, not 15th, 2pm, Monkey Barrel: The Studio), Midlandsbased silly sketch duo Good Kids (4-28 Aug, not 15th, 6.25pm, Just the Tonic @ Mash House: Just — 30 —

Sooz Kempner

the Cask Room), heavy wokeflake irony from Sam Nicoresti (6-28 Aug, not 17th, 8.55pm, Banshee Labyrinth: Cinema Room), professional Nadine Dorries impersonator Sooz Kempner (6-28 Aug, not 17th, 2.20pm, Banshee Labyrinth: Chamber Room), fiery feminist Jessica Fostekew (3-28 Aug, not 15th, 4.45pm, Monkey Barrel: Monkey Barrel 1) and the best in working class comedians at Best In Class (428 Aug, 8.45pm, The Counting House: The Lounge).

NB: It’s good Fringe etiquette to act like Louis Theroux (his money don’t jiggle, Heidi Regan jiggle – it folds) when you pass the bucket on the way out, and most folk now have a card machine with pre-set amounts (£5, £10) to take the guess-work out of donations. But above all, lots of acts are simply chuffed you’ve come. If you’ve seen a brilliant show and you’re skint, don’t worry too much about making a donation even though we know how awkward it can feel leaving the performer empty-handed. Instead, make a racket about what you’ve seen and tell people to go to it – social media, your pals, people in the queue ahead of you.

Photo: Karla Gowlett

urse strings are tight for both performers and audiences. With your average Fringe comedy shows this year costing between £10-14 (at the big venues at least) and a show setting performers back about £20k (if you factor in accommodation for non-locals, PR, venue costs, flyerers etc), the festival isn’t accessible for lots of people.

However, thanks to a wave of Free Fringe shows (PBH and Laughing Horse) as well as some venues having a pay-what-you-can (PWYC) model where audiences can buy a ticket to reserve a seat or queue and chance it (Monkey Barrel, Just the Tonic, some Laughing Horse shows), getting to see your favourite comedians is made more affordable.

Ali Brice (6-28 Aug, 4.50pm, Banshee Labyrinth: Chamber Room) says “I love the Free Fringe. I love that it levels the playing field to a certain extent.”

His show this year is with the longest-running Free Fringe collective, PBH, named after founder Peter

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August 2022 – Feature

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ICYMI

Award-winning deadpan comic Erika Ehler watches the final feature-length Jackass instalment for the sake of art as she embarks on her first Fringe hour

Comedy

Illustration: Jonny Mowat

August 2022 – Feature

I

have always been aware of the Jackass franchise. The boys in my elementary school would try to recreate their stunts on our school’s jungle gym to our teachers’ dismay. And to be honest I thought if those idiot boys like that show then I won’t have anything to do with it. Plus I think at the time Totally Spies! or That’s So Raven were a bit more my speed and I didn’t have any older siblings to expose me to MTV’s programming.

Cut to maybe middle school or my first two years of high school where I would come home and see reruns on TV and watch grown men hurt themselves for my amusement. I saw the appeal.

The Jackass franchise started out as a TV show and then expanded into movies that have come out sporadically over the years. Many people fail to go from TV show to movie but the Jackass team did not struggle with this. All their movies have been wildly popular.

And this may sound insane but (hear me out) I think it’s one of the few comedies that you can sit down with your family and watch and it won’t feel awkward even though in Jackass Forever (spoiler alert?) pranks include the consumption of pig semen, a naked – but with a semi – man getting his ding dong stung by bees, and a grown man shitting himself. I think Bridesmaids is a great comedy, but watching it in theatres with my mum and it opening with a scene where Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig are boning is awkward. I wouldn’t feel that way watching a movie with my mum where a man gets pig semen dumped on him by his peers. I just wouldn’t! I mean that’s just pure lolz.

The highest compliment I can give a comedy is when it’s so good you forget about the world for just a little bit. Jackass Forever achieves that. Even if it’s not your cup of tea there are things to admire about the film and the people who made it. All the pranks or stunts are extremely creative. They have to outdo their past selves. And then there’s the added, I suppose, drama of it all which is: these dudes are OLD. They aren’t boyish skater

dudes who do these insane stunts anymore. They got white hair and back issues doing these stunts and you have to commend them for that. The commitment to their craft is inspiring.

They brought in some newbies, I think, to showcase new talent but also because their old, old (mid 40s/50s) bodies can’t take certain stunts any longer. Wee Man said out of all the four Jackass movies, “this one hurt the most.” Zach Holmes made a huge impression out of all of the fresh jackass-ees.

Very charismatic.

There were also a few celebrity cameos, one being Eric André, who seemed right at home. He was not at all afraid to get involved – he really seemed in his element. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackass was an inspiration to him creatively. Bruce Dern wanted to make a guest appearance in Jackass Forever, but filming had already wrapped by the time they got his request. I would have loved to see what that would have been.

Because they didn’t hold back on Tyler, the Creator. I just think it would have been funny to see what they would do to push Bruce’s buttons.

Not to toot my own horn but I am an incredibly strong joke writer, however nothing I write – or anyone will write – will top watching dudes get hit in the balls. It just can’t compete. One thing I like about this style of comedy is that language is not a barrier. You could not know a lick of English, turn it on and still have an amazing 90 mins of entertainment. That’s the beauty of Jackass Forever.

In an interview, Johnny Knoxville said that Jackass Forever will be his final contribution to Jackass. And he sticks with that. I think it’s a perfect send-off to his beloved franchise and his legacy.

I won’t mince words here. If you don’t see the humour in Jackass Forever, you are just a dense loser.

Erika Ehler: Femcel, Monkey Barrel Comedy (Carnivore), 1-28 Aug, 9.40pm

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Coates on Kingsman: Kingsman on Coates Breakthrough Artist Award I’ve just won, but Tessa won’t engage as she says the profile has become all about me, and she’s right, I say, using it to crowbar in the award again and how it must have gone to my head. We both agree that I should mention how glowing her skin looks, which it always does, but there’s no need to be a prick about it.

Tessa: Narcissa Malfoy has a sort of black mullet with white hair underneath. Is it possible that you’ve got confused and you think the celebrity I most look like is… Lucius Malfoy?

Liz: That’s a character not a celebrity.

Tessa: Let’s move on.

Photo: Will Bremridge

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***

Photo: Rachel Sherlock

We spend the first 45 minutes of what we’re calling ‘the interview’ in the loosest sense of the word, discussing how good we would be on Celebrity Hunted. Not good entertainment value you understand, good at the show. Just two almost entirely unknown women, going completely to ground in the Scottish Highlands and never being found.

Our plan, if you’re interested, involves body doubles and the CCTV blindspot of the Chieveley services. Not really of course, because we wouldn’t be stupid enough to give our game away in an article. If you want to know how we’d really do it, you’ll have to wait until we’re invited onto the show, which you can encourage by writing in to Channel 4.

Tessa: I’m going to do more profile work.

Liz: Can I get the vongole please?

Niccolo the Waiter: Certainly.

Tessa: Between mouthfuls of spaghetti, Ms Kingsman, who insists I call her Ms Kingsman Times Breakthrough Artist of the Year colon the second coming of Stormzy [he’s a previous winner she barks while flinging shell debris at me – make sure you get that in].

Liz: Accurate so far, but we do need to talk about sketch vs solo.

Tessa: Let me finish. Ms Kingsman elegantly twirls her fork [“I never get to eat pasta!” she exhales, breathlessly] and recalls how she met me: at uni, when we both went, in secret, to audition for The Producers. Well, well, well, our eyes Tessa Coates — 33 —

Liz Kingsman

said as they met across a room of earnest girls in leotards – Liz: It’s like 600 words.

Tessa: Fast forward to London, mid-2010s, and along with Stevie Martin (she of the 12 million views on her online sketches. 12 million! That’s more than the population of Belarus!) they started sketch group [write “cult sketch group”, Liz spits at me through slurps] Massive Dad. Now 2022 brings them both back to the Fringe. Tessa for her third solo show, and Liz for her first.

Liz: So, Tessa [Liz adopts a kooky journo persona she’s never tried before] how does performing at the Fringe in a sketch group compare to doing it solo?

Tessa: We’ve run out of space.

Tessa Coates: Get Your Tessa Coates You've Pulled, Pleasance Courtyard, 6.05pm, 3-28 Aug Liz Kingsman: One-Woman Show, Traverse Theatre, 10pm, 16-28 Aug (not 22)

August 2022 – Feature

essa: I want to start it off by describing you like I’m profiling you for Vogue.

Liz: Is that an original idea?

Tessa: When I first meet Liz, she’s early to our dinner reservation. Hair pulled back, a simple crisp top [“I try to mix high street with designer!” she laughs in my face later] and no make-up, it’s hard to believe she’s fresh from winning The Times Breakthrough Artist at the Sky Arts South Bank Awards. I tell her she looks very tired in order to keep her humble. I’m late because we were supposed to meet at Nando's, which is equidistant between our houses, but she started walking and then got bored and just sat down in the first restaurant she saw so I had to do the lion’s share of the travel. To be fair to her, the restaurant has excellent ambience which I prize above all other things. She knows this will soften the blow, but for safety has ordered me a burrata which I immediately drop on myself.

Now you do me.

Liz: We have to ask each other questions about the Fringe.

Tessa: Please.

Liz: When I clock Tessa pulling up on a Lime bike, her long Narcissa Malfoy hair blowing in the wind (an effect conjured by taking the last corner at breakneck speed), I am both genuinely impressed by her athleticism and profoundly nervous to hear her verdict on the ambience of the Italian restaurant I’ve chosen out of laziness. She compliments my choice, and I flamboyantly wave at the waiter (a gesture myself and Niccolo agreed on 10 minutes prior) to signal the apology burrata. I wait at least 25 seconds before mentioning the

Comedy

Tessa Coates and Liz Kingsman have performed as two thirds of sketch group Massive Dad. They sit down at an exclusive restaurant to discuss sketch comedy, their Edinburgh resolutions, and what it’s like going solo

August 2022

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Hope and Joy We meet storyteller Niall Moorjani to learn more about the three plays – The Girls and the Dragon, Mohan: A Partition Story and A Fairie Tale – they’re bringing to the Edinburgh stage this August Interview: Rho Chung

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Niall Moorjani

“The reason I’m nonbinary is that when I worked that out, the main overriding thing was joy” Niall Moorjani Even Mohan: A Partition Story invites audiences to laugh at the dark absurdity of it all.

Moorjani says, “Both Mohan and A Fairie Tale are actually looking at some of the more difficult stuff, but definitely not without the joy. Mohan very deliberately has moments of comedy in it that were very hard to find. There is genuine absurdity in how it happened, and it’s kind of funny. It’s not funny, it’s awful, but it’s so wildly absurd.”

Finding ways to temper tragedy with joy was crucial to Moorjani while they were adapting Mohan for the Fringe Festival.

“I rightly get accused of being quite optimistic and hopeful in most of my work, Mohan being a contrast to that, I think. But it’s more hopeful now, which I’m happier with. To me, in these fantastical or fictionalised spaces where you’re choosing to imagine, I’m gonna imagine the hopeful one.

Because that’s the world I’ve got to live in – that I hopefully get to live in one day.”

Mohan: A Partition Story, Scottish Storytelling Centre, 4-16 Aug (not 10, 11, 15), 3pm The Girl and the Dragon, Scottish Storytelling Centre, 4-21 Aug (not 10, 17, 18, 19) , 10am A Fairie Tale, Lighthouse Bookshop, 18-21 Aug, 8pm

August 2022 – Feature

The Girl and the Dragon

Theatre

Photo: Harry Elletson

Partition on 15 August, making this piece all too timely. The show is a sardonically witty and deeply heartfelt account of a period of history that, especially in its 75th anniversary year, deserves our attention.

Moorjani’s third and final Fringe offering is A Fairie Tale, showing at Lighthouse Bookshop. The piece explores gender and race in Scotland through the lens of a whimsical and weird fairy world. Moorjani describes the show as a “deeply queer space for people of colour” – one that both teaches and offers empathy.

“Growing up in Dundee, in particular, we didn’t even know that we could talk to each other about the racism we were experiencing,” Moorjani says, “That’s how gaslit we were. We genuinely didn’t realise that that’s something we had a shared experience of. It wasn’t even something we knew we were going through. Racism in Scotland is such an interesting thing in how silent it is and how quiet it is. It loves to pretend that its English relations are so much worse, and therefore it has nothing to look at. And there’s a real danger in that, so to be part of creating work that challenges that space and hopefully, as cliché as it is, that a younger version of me would love to have seen. A current version of me is often writing in the hope that one day I’ll get there.”

For Moorjani, representing the breadth and depth of queer experience must include euphoria.

“Being queer isn’t just about suffering. The reason I’m non-binary is that when I worked that out, the main overriding thing was joy. When I put on a dress, the main overriding thing I feel is joy. The world makes that hard, but the core of it is joy – is me feeling much closer to myself. I want to explore [difficult moments], but I don’t want the end result to be, ‘The world’s terrible and it’s all awful and it’ll never be good,’ because I’ve got to live in that! If you’re gonna use your imagination, you might as well imagine a happier version of reality for yourself. And I think this is where stories are so powerful; there is such power in the lessons that can come from them, because they’re so simple. They’re so direct. There is so much that can be learned from them, and I think they provide examples of what the world could be.”

Photo: Sasha Malik

“Q

ueer people aren’t just their struggle,” Niall Moorjani tells me over video chat, “There’s so much joy in being, like, ‘This person is queer. Their problem is that they don’t have enough beans.’” It’s this sort of queer whimsy that surfaces in varying degrees in each of Moorjani’s three Edinburgh Fringe Festival offerings this year. Moorjani, a mixed South Asian and Scottish storyteller and theatremaker, is hoping to bring a taste of their own personal brand of playfulness to conversations about queerness and race.

I first encountered Moorjani’s work through their Fringe of Colour submission, Selkie. The short poetry film was a breathtaking introduction to the auspicious marriage between fairytale and queer self-discovery. Moorjani’s work since then has always embraced the melancholic aspects of whatever it addresses while showing audiences that play is still possible.

This year, Moorjani brings a children’s show to the Scottish Storytelling Centre. The Girl and the Dragon is a delightfully fun fairytale about just what it promises. In it, a young girl embarks on a legendary quest to defeat a great and terrible dragon, only to discover that not everything is as it seems.

Simultaneously, Moorjani returns to their storytelling roots with Mohan: A Partition Story.

The show is performed by Moorjani and two live musicians. Together, they weave together stories from Moorjani’s own memories with the story of their grandfather, Mohan, who lived through the Partition of India in 1947. We will cross the 75th anniversary of

THE SKINNY

Pushing Boundaries Horizon brings its first in-person showcase of genre-defying and radical performance to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this month

A

fter two years of accessing our entertaininterrogates the conditions and Created by Sung ment primarily through the internet, constraints of our physical belonging.

Im Her, Nutcrusher Horizon is also bringing visiting an in-person festival can be uses the body to Common Wealth’s Peaceophobia to overwhelming. Thankfully, Horizon have you explore its own objectiSummerhall at Q Park, Omni. covered – their upcoming showcase of 10 genrefication. Hailing from Described as ‘part car-meet, part defying, global, and multi1disciplinary shows is a the Republic of Korea, theatre’, the piece uses aspects of a highly anticipated follow-on from their entirely Sung positions her work car-rally (cars included) to address virtual showcase in 2021. Horizon is a programme in a cultural context, RashDash, Look At Me Don't Look At Me of global artists based in England, curated specifi- rising Islamophobia. Complete with interrogating the gaze an original electronic score, cally for the Edinburgh festivals. The Horizon not just as a phenomPeaceophobia promises to be consortium is delivered by the Battersea Arts enon in and of itself, completely unique and unapologetic Centre, FABRIC, Fierce, GIFT, MAYK and but also as a social in its confrontation of racism, prejuTransform, who emphasise their focus on underproduct that produces dice, and hostility. represented and experimental artists who may not and reproduces culturLetman also highlights The normally have the opportunity to show work at the ally-specific modes of Edinburgh Fringe and beyond. Horizon’s showcase Vacuum Cleaner’s Exposure, an oppression. Sung’s interview-based exhibition featuring is targeted primarily at an international audience, energetic, repetitive the personal and professional stories making it distinctly appropriate for the Edinburgh choreography makes of healthcare workers in the early festival environment. the piece both electrifymonths of the pandemic. “It’s a really Amy Letman, the Creative Director of ing and beautiful, tender, very intimate Transform, says: “What those partners have in thought-provoking.

Nutcrusher, Sung Im Her common is a desire to support a new generation of performance, but it also invites you These five shows, into conversation with The Vacuum performing arts – to create, promote, and present along with Aidan performance that really pushes our understanding Cleaner about those stories.” Two years on from Moesby’s I was Naked, Smelling of Rain; Dan of what performance can look like, and what it can the initiation of the piece, Exposure is an opportuDaw’s The Dan Daw Show; Jaz Woodcocknity to engage in the lasting effects of working as a Stewart’s Civilisation; Marikiscrycrycry’s He’s be. [We have] a real commitment to explore healthcare provider through a global health crisis. international collaborations. We’re not only Dead; and RashDash’s Look at Me Don’t Look at If you’re searching for a strong queer aesthet- Me, promise to make this year’s Horizon Showcase thinking about the specific shows we can present, ic among Horizon’s programme, Eve Stainton’s but how a programme in Edinburgh is framed and a supremely diverse, engaging, and genre-defying Dykegeist is a good place to start. The piece is cares for artists and audiences, and what a programme. “It’s an opportunity to engage with a rooted in the sounds of Speed Garage, which journey through a showcase could look like.” really extraordinary range of artists based across originated from Manchester’s club scene.

Letman highlights the site-specific nature of England, working across different forms, from Dykegeist uses performance art and live sound to Horizon’s pieces. Many of the programme’s shows personal storytelling to dance to live art to siteinterrogate “what kind of performance can happen explore lesbian stereotypes and consent. While the specific work,” Letman says. “It’s really about a audience will be asked to participate, it will be in Edinburgh itself. Where can work happen, how different kind of conversation around what perforeasy to decline, making this piece particularly long can it last, and how do we really invite audimance can look like in our geographic context, and suitable for audience members who are interested ences to travel beyond those blackbox spaces?” a connection with the international, whether that’s One such work is Sonia Hughes’ I Am From in experimental theatre but still apprehensive about the themes that Sonia’s exploring in I am Reykjavík, which is a roaming, outdoor work of about participation. Letman says, “It’s sort of from Reykjavík, or Common Wealth, who are performance art and grotesque and surreal, and should looking at Islamophobia, but also about the form sculpture. “It’s really be a really interesting, more immerand the aesthetic, and a kind of boldness.” about those conversasive experience for audiences to Horizon is serious about opening a two-way tions that Sonia has engage with.” channel between artist and audience. They plan to with passersby,” Letman host a series of online and in-person says, “exploring if it’s conversations centred around possible to place fostering a new kind of showcase: yourself anywhere, to “We’re wanting to really reimagine set up house anywhere, what a showcase can be, and move Civilisation, Jaz Woodcock-Stewart or, in fact, if there are away from the more transactional borders that prevent us buy-sell mentality of showcases,” from moving.” Letman adds that, with Letman says. With this robust the closures of international borders programme, Horizon hopes to “think during the pandemic, demographics more creatively about how we can from the global North who may not connect with our colleagues around normally think about their own the world through a deeper dialogue.” freedom of movement have had to Horizon 2022 runs from 22-28 Aug in venues confront the possibility that spaces across Edinburgh may be closed to them, and that their access to those spaces is beyond horizonshowcase.uk their control. Hughes’ work Amy Letman, Transform Photo: Sebastian Hinds

Theatre

Interview: Rho Chung

August 2022 – Feature

Photo: Johan Pijpops

Photo: Alex Brenner Photo: Hugo Glendinning

“We're not only thinking about the specific shows we can present, but how a programme in Edinburgh is framed and cares for artists and audiences”

The Dan Daw Show

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August 2022

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August 2022 – Feature

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A Migrant Fable Award-winning playwright Sami Ibrahim talks about migration, fairytale, and hostile environments in his upcoming Fringe show, A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain Interview: Rho Chung

Sami Ibrahim

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, Sami Ibrahim

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain deals most broadly about “handing things down from one generation to the next… The questions I did have were about worth and sacrifice, about what has to be given in order to become a citizen, and what that means. What is worth it?” Ibrahim talks about the “assumptions you make about what you’re losing out on in order to pass something on to the next generation. What if that next generation doesn’t want the thing you’re passing on?”

Ibrahim frames migration as a family issue, in addition to a geopolitical one. He says that family “became the crux of the story, and the heart of it is these two characters, a mum and daughter, having two different experiences of the same journey and not being able to sit on the same page.”

In an environment where it can feel complicated to address the issues that affect us, Ibrahim stresses the importance of making these stories feel personal. “I always enjoy using day-to-day politics as a jumping off point. Then the exciting bit for me is trying to heighten that or find an unusual way in, a back door into those stories that can sometimes be jarring or exciting, or sometimes just a bit odd or whimsical or magical.

And it feels like a way of shifting an audience – a) telling an unexpected story and b) getting an audience to engage in a different way.” In asking the audience to think of this story of migration not just as a sweeping political commentary, but as an intimate, heartfelt, and imaginative interaction between a mother and her daughter, Ibrahim illuminates how a hostile environment has lasting, intergenerational effects.

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain is a reminder of the lengths some of us must go to just to live a ‘normal life’ – and how the aftershocks of those efforts affect our communities.

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, ROUNDABOUT @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, 3-27 Aug (not 7, 14, 16, 17)

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August 2022 – Feature

“The questions I did have were about worth and sacrifice, about what has to be given in order to become a citizen, and what that means. What is worth it?”

Theatre

Photo: Rebecca Need Menear

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ami Ibrahim isn’t looking for answers. “In terms of why I write,” he says, “I don’t think I’m interested in writing stories where I have a clear answer. I’m always drawn to stories where there’s a question or some sort of knot at the centre of it that I can’t quite unpick.” In his upcoming Edinburgh Fringe Festival offering with Paines Plough, A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, Ibrahim foregoes realism in favour of fable to tell the story of a mother and daughter experiencing the same journey in vastly different ways.

Ibrahim says: “It’s hard not to think about, especially with the Shamima Begum case, and the cases of people being stripped of citizenship, and stories about the hostile environment. It’s hard not to think about our immigration system and citizenship.”

While immigration and hostile environments make up the subject matter of A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain, the story is, at its heart, a fairytale about family. Ibrahim says, “I just started working out the idea and starting out in this fairytale world felt like a really fun way – a strange or unusual way – into telling a story about migration that is normally told in quite a down-toearth, realist way. It felt exciting to try to get into it from a different angle and try and explore things that I didn’t feel were normally explored in those kinds of stories.” In the play, a mother must attempt to explain what it means to live as a migrant in a hostile environment to her daughter.

“At its heart, it’s about a mum. The fairytale element comes from the main character trying to explain the situation that she’s stuck in to her daughter. That fairytale becomes a means of speaking to her daughter and trying to explain things to her. And the play is about the daughter believing and unravelling that story, and that felt like the way in – the little snapshot to tell a bigger story about citizenship and nation.”

Ibrahim isn’t interested in suffering for its own sake. As international borders become even more difficult to traverse and one’s right to citizenship becomes increasingly tenuous, Ibrahim is looking more and more for play and imagination. “I think the whimsy was there from the off,” he says “It felt built into the story. As the play goes on, you end up kind of stripping back those fairytale layers. It’s sort of a narrated fairytale that dips into naturalism for some moments and then goes back to this fairytale-like world. The fairytale world felt like the starting point, and it felt like the best way in.”

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Feminist Utopia Choreographer Tess Letham talks about her interdisciplinary Fringe offering, Remedy for Memory: a joyful, comedic, and surreal celebration of feminine fantasy

August 2022 – Feature

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ess Letham is hoping to bring some joy (back) into the unknown. In an environment full of what she calls “unjoyful behaviour”, Letham hopes to bring audiences into the whimsical, fun, and bitingly witty world of Remedy for Memory, produced by Stories Untold Productions and showing at Dance Base this august. The show begins as a live talk show, complete with a live videographer, eccentric guests, and a host you love to hate. However, as the show progresses, guests and hosts alike are forced to confront a cosmic level of uncertainty. Remedy for Memory is part dance, part theatre, and part multimedia performance art – it is a delightfully immersive and engaging work made by and for women and non-binary people.

Letham says: “It’s bold, it’s wild at times. It’s a realm of feminine fantasy, which travels through a journey of depicting these characters that are like alter egos. They depict mainstream characters playfully that then begin to break down and dissolve and reveal more intimate parts of themselves. It’s really vibrant, it’s really comedic, and then it kind of goes into these darker places. At the end, it’s joyful and searching for a different realm, a different feminist utopia where we can all live peacefully.”

But Remedy for Memory is not without conflict: “What I wanted to do was create an uplifting time for people. So it’s fun and it’s multi-dimensional, and it’s vibrant, including all the design elements. It looks at harder subjects, like how the patriarchy and capitalism affect women and non-binary people all the time and have done for so long. It’s kind of playfully twisting that so that we can all laugh at it.”

Since its conception, Remedy for Memory has always been an exploration of “fantasies and intimacy and what you show to the world and what you keep in.” The show has been in some sort of development since 2014, but Remedy for Memory in its current iteration was developed during the pandemic in a five-week research and development workshop. Letham emphasises that the show’s entire team, down to the crew and designers, is comprised of women and non-binary people. “It was really collaboratively built,” Letham says. “All of the performers were very non-hierarchical in the way that I wanted to make the room work.

So everyone definitely gave all their ideas and love to the show.”

One of the show’s more unique features is its use of live videography, provided by Glasgow-based artist A. Ponce Hardy.

Ponce Hardy’s videography plays an essential role in creating what Letham calls an “abstracted form” of daytime talk show.

The talk show’s three guests are equally eccentric. Letham describes them as an astrologer-psychic hybrid, a raw-food ambassador, and a dating influencer. These three characters, together with the smarmy presenter (Skye Reynolds), try and fail to put their best foot forward before unravelling into the fantastical unknown.

“At the end, it’s joyful and searching for a different realm, a different feminist utopia where we can all live peacefully” Tess Letham

Photo: Kristin McEwan

Theatre

Interview: Rho Chung

“Because of the themes and because of the way I wanted to make it, it felt really important to include just women and non-binary people. It felt very easy with everyone involved.”

Letham describes the team behind Remedy for Memory as highly diverse and international. She says, “It’s geared towards the audience that the show is made from, but I want everyone to see it. It’s for all of us. It travels through personal stories to come to this idea that there is possibly another way.”

This “other way” is elusive – Remedy for Memory makes no promises of sweeping, magical solutions. What it does offer is a look at creativity divorced from patriarchal hierarchy, at movement and fantasy that celebrate, rather than obscure, the joy of the feminine. At its heart, Remedy for Memory is an invitation into a rich, immersive world of play. Letham calls it “loud performance mode”. It is unapologetically expansive – how far does it go? The possibilities are infinite.

Remedy for Memory runs at Dance Base, Studio 1, 23-28 Aug

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Staying afloat in uncertain times The Skinny speaks to Ruby Pester, one half of Pester & Rossi, about their Edinburgh Art Festival commission Finding Buoyancy Art

Words: Harvey Dimond

Photo: Julie Howden Artist Sarah Kenchington working on Pester & Rossi’s A Float for the Future at Bridge 8 Hub, 2022

questions, prompts and activities which centered on the environment in and around the canal. This worksheet was sent to several schools, as well as WHALE Arts in Wester Hailes (a social enterprise and community-led arts charity founded by local residents in 1992), with respondents being asked to reply to these prompts with writing, drawings and photographs. This would come together as a collection of visual and written responses to the canal, with the aim of making a collaborative artwork with the material. However, lockdown restrictions and social distancing continued to create barriers for the artist’s community-orientated plans. They then tried to figure out a method of working that was more effective at engaging people despite the distance, which took the form of a guided audio journey to connect people to the environment during times of isolation. Local residents who attended Whale Arts were encouraged to listen to the audio track outdoors, on a walk alongside the canal, and to produce creative responses to parts of the audio track and locations along the Union Canal.

Out of this material, the artists have created a three-part commission for this year’s festival.

This is formed of a celebration song about the — 43 —

canal, ‘A Float for the Future’ community raft and an installation of sail banners on the canal, designed by the artists themselves. On 31 July, the song was performed by Pester & Rossi, the Rhubaba Choir and WHALE Arts participants aboard the Panacea canal boat (which local charity The Sorted Project uses to help local people managing recovery related to substance abuse and mental health) alongside the launch of the community raft, with the sail banners installed and flying at Bridge 8 Hub. As well as these local community organisations, Pester & Rossi also worked with artist Sarah Kenchington on the commission. Kenchington led a series of raftbuilding sessions with WHALE Arts and the local community to construct the A Float for the Future raft, which will sail from Bridge 8 Hub to the Lochrin Basin. Meanwhile, the Rhubaba Choir led a series of song-making sessions with WHALE Arts to craft the celebration song, using meditations and writing from community responses to the canal.

Finding Buoyancy can be viewed at Bridge 8 Hub, Wester Hailes, for the furation of Edinburgh Art Festival, until 28 Aug

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F

inding Buoyancy was first initiated by Ruby Pester, Nadia Rossi, and Edinburgh Art Festival, with the pandemic forcing an abrupt halt to the important in-person work the artists wanted to undertake, which centred on local community groups that live alongside Edinburgh’s Union Canal (which is the focus of this year’s festival programme). The meandering Union Canal provides an important place of respite and rest for residents of Wester Hailes amid the fast pace of the busy city, and is vital to the health and wellbeing of communities across Edinburgh. The Bridge 8 Hub has made the canal a focal point of the area and its people, transforming derelict land adjacent to the canal into a hub for activities such as water sports and cycling.

With this important in-person work unable to take place, the two Glasgow-based artists (who have been collaborating since 2008) instead started a visual conversation with drawings and words which centered around “sensory responses to water, nature and the outdoor environment”, Ruby Pester tells me. She describes this conversational process as being meditative and cathartic in a time of great uncertainty, grief and disruption.

The artists created a visual worksheet containing

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Image: Courtesy of the artist Hannan Jones, Union Canal, 2022

Regeneration August 2022 – Feature

We meet Emmie McLuskey, this year’s Associate Artist at Edinburgh Art Festival, to discuss her collaborative, multi-disciplinary programme Channels Interview: Lottie Whalen

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he programme looks fantastic! What was the starting point and how did it come together?

It’s the second year of the festival’s Associate Artist Programme and they invited me to respond to the context of the Union Canal, which is a huge piece of infrastructure running between Edinburgh and Falkirk. I found the space really compelling and came to it without knowing much about the history of canals in the UK. People often think of canals as natural structures but they’re industrial, man-made sites. The Union Canal was built off the back of the labour of Highland folk and Irish people, who were brought in to dig it. It made the movement of people possible, but it became redundant after just 20 years due to the railway and then fell into disrepair. The Union Canal’s history is a cycle of industry and

regeneration, which speaks to the difficult contemporary condition we find ourselves in today.

Before taking on this project, I was working with Atlas Arts on the Isle of Skye, as part of a project that explored intersections between local and global environmental issues and social justice.

Leading Edinburgh Art Festival’s Associate Artist Programme allowed me to think about how that operates in an urban context. I sought out artists who were engaged with social and political contexts and wanted to work in a collective, collaborative way, not in isolation. It’s been a great process of learning together. We’ve ended up with four new commissions (by Hannan Jones, Maeve Redmond, Amanda Thomson, and Janice Parker) and a radio station. The talks and radio shows happening around the artwork are integral parts of the programme.

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Canal-side developments are often part of hyper-capitalist regeneration, in places like Manchester or East London. The programme makes an interesting, provocative intervention in a post-industrial site that seems to have so far largely resisted gentrification. Was the commodification and gentrification of public space something you and the artists thought a lot about during the planning and research stage?

Art has a lot to answer for in terms of gentrification. I really wanted to walk into that conversation and hear about what locals are doing, and what they think. The artists are engaging with these questions too. Janice Parker is really interested in the ungentrified movement and the politics of being a moving body in public; Amanda Thomson is thinking about why certain plants ended up by

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Channels, featuring the work of Hannan Jones, Janice Parker, Maeve Redmond and Amanda Thomson, can be found at various sites along the Union Canal for the duration of Edinburgh Art Festival, until 28 Aug'

Amanda Thomson, lightly, tendrils, 2021. Installation view of exhibition at CCA, Glasgow

Janice Parker, research image for Edinburgh Art Festival 2022

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You’ve put together such a wide-reaching programme that connects to so many issues and different groups, it’s clearly been a huge undertaking. What were some of the key learning curves during the process?

I’ve not had much experience with public art before, so that’s been a huge learning curve. I’m excited to see what happens when we hand the work over to the community and visitors. I was taken aback by how receptive and positive the local community was, they really did want to engage with us. They’re an incredible group of people – they really understand the value of engaging with the canal’s heritage and its uses.

People were really willing to share their

The Union Canal is an ambitious site for your first experience of programming public art!

How challenging was it to work with such a vast public space?

Installing work in a public space is totally different to installing work in a gallery. The practicalities and limitations of the situation have to inform the work – none of the pieces in this programme would have been made for a gallery context. You give the work over to the public and that raises some very interesting questions. What happens if work gets graffitied on?

Whose artwork is more precious in that instance? In terms of sound, what level can we go to and when should we turn it off, to respect the people that live around the canal?

What traces will the artists leave on the environment, if any? I congratulate all the artists for engaging with the challenges of public art head-on and being flexible with their process. I encourage audiences to think about those questions as well: where we place value and how it’s been constellated in these works. That’s another thing that’s interesting about public art, everyone has an opinion!

Photo: Sally Jubb Photography

Amanda Thomson and Hannan Jones are both exploring the non-human worlds that coexist within our environment, worlds we don’t always pay attention to. Was the climate catastrophe at the forefront of your programming, or did those issues emerge organically?

These issues should be at the forefront of any responsible person’s mind. We won’t have a world if we don’t think about these things. Listening to the local environment and engaging with it is at the heart of the programme. Some of the inspiration comes directly from my work with Atlas Arts’ School of Plural Futures, on Skye, but I also chose to work with these four artists because issues of sustainability, social justice and the environment are at the forefront of their art. In different ways, they all thought carefully about the sustainability and long-term impact of their work around the canal.

experiences and that’s led to some inspiring engagement. There’s a tendency to think that people will say no but I’ve found that they’re usually quite willing to engage if you’re clear and honest about your intentions. I found being in dialogue with the four artists and Edinburgh Art Festival such an interesting process. Each of the artists work in incredibly interdisciplinary ways so I’ve learned a lot about how people in different fields approach ideas, think about timescales, and collaborate across disciplines. I’m hugely appreciative of the fact that the festival and the community welcomed us in, that’s been a real privilege. The festival has been very open, really accommodating of our needs and encouraging of the kinds of questions we wanted to raise through this year’s programme.

Photo: Alan Dimmick

the canal. A lot of her work also deals with what’s termed in botany an ‘immigrant plant’ – why do we still use these forms of categorisation? What is ‘native’? We’re all products of so many different things. That comes through in Hannan Jones’ art too, the idea that we all inhabit multiple identities. The artists and I didn’t see this as an opportunity to put some nice artwork by the canal. It was important that we engaged with questions of class, space, labour, challenging harmful capitalist structures – and make others question them as well. That’s what art’s about, questioning the status quo. Background Noise, the radio station, will engage with that sort of political debate. It’s a place for members of the local community, who’ve witnessed so many changes along the canal, to talk about how they’re responding to this evershifting landscape.

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City Arts This year’s Edinburgh Art Festival negotiates the course of the city’s Union Canal, marking the 200th anniversary of its opening. From the Lochrin Basin to Wester Hailes, exhibitions this year reflect on the canal’s cultural and social significance

Art

Words: Harvey Dimond

August 2022 – Feature

Image: Courtesy of the artist Emelia Kerr Beale, CITY OF FRIENDS, 2020

Your Waters – Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? Working across print, performance and sound, Myre explores geographies spanning Scotland and Canada, referencing Indigenous storytelling and histories of migration. The exhibition takes place both along the Union Canal and at Edinburgh Printmakers.

Platform: 2022 presents the work of four emerging Scotland-based artists – Saoirse Amira Anis, Emelia Kerr Beale, Lynsey MacKenzie and Jonny Walker. The exhibition reflects on the bodily experience and mythologies of care and interdependence.

Taking place at Edinburgh Art Festival’s home L’institut Français d’Ecosse, it promises to be an expansive and multifaceted exhibition of some of the Edinburgh, Union Canal. General view of Hopetoun warehouse, c.1900 to 1930. Digital image of ED 7623. nation’s most exciting artists.

Glasgow-based artist Emmie Venice Biennale, Ishiuchi Miyako presents her McLuskey is this year’s festival’s Associate Artist, first solo show of photography in Scotland at and she presents four new commissions centred on the environment, translation and gentrification. Stills, which continues until 8 October. In Talbot Rice, you’ll find the first survey exhibition of Hannah Jones presents a multi-disciplinary Céline Condorelli, including a major new installaexploration of language, rhythm and origin in tion expanding upon her Zanzibar series (2018-onresponse to cultural and social migration. Janice going), informed by the Brazilian modernist Parker works with choreography and dance as architect Lina Bo Bardi. Fruitmarket present part of her socially engaged practice, while Amanda Thomson works with notions of home Daniel Silver’s Looking, a major solo exhibition of and movement in relation to landscape. Designer large-scale ceramic works from this protegé of Maeve Redmond’s research-led practice unpacks Phyllida Barlow. Collective have three new artist how the context of a site informs our aesthetic commissions considering the hidden histories and sense of place. untold stories relating to their City Observatory A multitude of exhibitions form the Festival’s site and wider cultural history. Explore work from partner program. Ashanti Harris presents an Camara Taylor, Ruth Ewan and Annette Kraus in exciting new commission at Edinburgh Sculpture their Calton Hill space and online.

Workshop, titled Dancing A Peripheral Quadrille.

Closing this year’s festival, the Endnote The commission takes the form of a series of Lecture will be delivered by artist Hew Locke at sculptural and performance works that entangle St Cecilia’s Hall. He will be in conversation with ideas around grassroots cultural production Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani from the with Harris’s research and experience of West Department of Art History at the University of Indian Carnivals. Meanwhile, at Edinburgh Edinburgh on 26 August.

Printmakers, Tessa Lynch considers feminist readings of the city in ‘expanded print’, promoting Edinburgh Art Festival, until 28 Aug alternative building techniques inspired by play and the natural environment. The show continues edinburghartfestival.com until 18 September.

At Sierra Metro In Leith, Margate-based artist Studio Lenca presents a series of new works confronting the complex cultural history of El Salvador. Japan’s representative at the 2005

Image: Courtesy of HES (Francis M Chrystal Collection)

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he Community Wellbeing Collective (C.W.C), a group of residents from Wester Hailes and surrounding areas, presents Watch this Space, initiated by the visual artist Jeanne van Heeswijk. Throughout the festival the space will host an array of events and gatherings led by C.W.C members, alongside weekend events by guest practitioners to expand upon themes of community wellbeing and social care. Activities will take place in Westside Plaza and online at watchthisspace.online (live from 28 July).

Finding Buoyancy is produced in collaboration with groups and individuals in Wester Hailes, alongside Glasgow-based artists Pester and Rossi. The commission consists of three elements – a set of publicly sited sails at Bridge 8 Hub and Paddle Café; a community raft called Float For The Future made collaboratively with artist Sarah Kenchington and a canal-based performance produced with local people in collaboration with Rhubaba Choir.

Co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Printmakers, Montreal-based artist Nadia Myre presents Tell Me of Your Boats and

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The Skinny’s Peripheral Visions This August, we’re getting into the festival spirit with a trio of events offering an alternative perspective on Art, Film and Books

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WHALE group 2022

through the cultural touchstones around us, and will be released in March 2023. Jay’s Whatever Next? On Adult Adoptive Identities looking at mainstream narratives of adoption in the media and the damage that has caused to the adoptive community. It’s scheduled for release this September.

Tickets to all events are free, subject to venue capacity Arrive in good time for your event and please return your tickets to the Eventbrite waiting list if you aren’t able to make it Peripheral Visions is sponsored by Edinburgh Gin and Bounce Back Drinks

August 2022 – Feature

FILM: The Cineskinny Podcast LIVE! Codebase, 15 August, 6-9pm FREE The Skinny’s film podcast team – Jamie Dunn, Anahit Behrooz, Peter Simpson and Lewis Robertson – break out of their regular pod booth to record a live episode dedicated to the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

The gang will be reviewing their favourite films from the EIFF programme including opener Aftersun. They’ll be joined by award-winning animator Will Anderson, whose debut feature film A Cat Called Dom premieres at the festival, and discussing curation with Xuanlin Tham, with more guests yet to be announced.

This event is sponsored by Curate-It, a new course delivered in app form that provides participants with all they need to know for implementing their own screening event.

As part of this year’s festival, EIFF and Curate-It offered seven fellowships to Scotlandbased early career curators. Over the last ten

BOOKS: 404 Ink’s Inklings, Codebase, 19 August, 6-9pm FREE 404 Ink is an award-winning publisher established in Edinburgh in 2016

by Heather McDaid and Laura Jones, best known for publishing the acclaimed Nasty Women and most recently the Inklings series.

The groundbreaking Inklings series of non-fiction books has produced some incredibly exciting writing, from reflections on apocalyptic fiction to explorations of women in hip-hop. Subtitled 'Big Ideas to Carry in your Pocket', the pitches for the small format books are sourced from an open call, and released in annual commissions series.

Ahead of a new series of Inklings later this year, join us for a discussion chaired by Anahit Behrooz, with authors Katie Goh, Arusa Qureshi and Josephine Jay. Goh’s The End: Imagining the World Through Imagined Disasters was a 2021 release, as was Qureshi’s Flip the Script: How Women Came to Rule Hip Hop. Both have been widely acclaimed.

Behrooz and Jay are each part of the 2022 commissions cohort. Behrooz’s BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship examines female friendship as a site of radical intimacy, as told

Art

ART: Make / Break / Create, Codebase, 5 August, 6-9pm FREE Join artist and facilitator Sally Price and explore the possibilities of everyday objects and materials.

Price specialises in material and process exploration through sculpture, drawing and craft. She is interested in how we interact with, react and relate to the physicality of everyday objects and materials via intuitive making and manipulation. The playful and cathartic nature of explorative making, and the impact of this personally, socially and environmentally, are ideas she explores in her personal work and socially engaged practice.

As Price told us: “Often as adults we shy away from playful, intuitive creating as the habitat of children, but it is so beneficial for [adults] to make space for it and allow ourselves to spend time being curious. These events, and the festivals they reflect, are a great opportunity to step out of the audience and take part in the creative process.”

weeks, Camila Arriaga Torres, Chloe Charlton, Indigo Korres, Jennifer Pert, Joanne Lee, Maria Wrang-Rasmussen and Wacera Kamonji have undertaken the Curate-It course and curated a broad range of bold and engaging film events responding to the 50th anniversary of the Women’s Film Festival Their events will be available to watch online during the festival on the Curate-It VoD platform app.curate-it.co.uk/watch

Image: Sally Price

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ur Peripheral Visions season of free events at our new home in Codebase offer a chance to interact, explore and engage with the arts as the Edinburgh Festivals return in their full form for the first time since 2019. The events aren’t part of any official programmes, but instead aim to provide a fresh approach to three cultural genres in complement to their international festivals, celebrating what we love in an engaging, accessible way. It’s sort of like an IRL presentation of the magazine, but with free gin. To reserve your ticket, head to theskinny.co.uk/tickets

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Harvesting Beats As Detroit techno wizard Jeff Mills returns to Edinburgh with his latest innovation in sound, we speak to him about the show and pushing the boundaries of live electronic music

Clubs

Interview: Peter Walker

August 2022 – Feature

Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou, Onassis Foundation

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t’s fair to say that Jeff Mills is a pioneer. From his fledgling radio show as The Wizard in the 80s to helping form Underground Resistance, then breaking off to live in New York and Berlin before settling in Chicago and setting up Axis Records, his legendary status is more than justified.

Rather than settling into the well-worn groove of touring techno jocks and lazing label bosses, though, Mills kept on innovating; turning DJing into an artform and manipulating a drum machine to achieve funk beyond its intended function.

Branching out from the club, he collaborated with the Montpelier Philharmonic Orchestra in 2005 – a set which became the Blue Potential album – then continued his French love affair with Critical Arrangements, a multi-media installation which exhibited at the Pompidou Centre in 2008.

A love of space became reflected in works like 2013’s Where Light Ends – an album inspired by the Japanese astronaut Dr. Mamoru Mohri’s first trip to space – and a four-turntable soundtracking of Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent film Woman in the Moon.

In 2016 Mills began collaborating with acclaimed afro-jazz drummer Tony Allen – who sadly died in 2020 – with the performance captured for a live EP, Tomorrow Comes the Harvest.

Mills was so inspired by the shows that he invited Tabla drum virtuoso Prabhu Edouard to join him and keyboardist Jean-Philippe Dary on stage, and the trio are now bringing the current iteration of Tomorrow Comes the Harvest to Leith Theatre this month for the Edinburgh International Festival.

“It’s not new, but it’s very unique; the concept is that musicians show up and play together – no rehearsal, just a very spontaneous performance,” Mills explains, describing it as a conversation in music. “Bands usually practise and know which direction they’re going in, but this is just a jam session – it’s really flexible.”

As anyone who’s seen him at work in front of multiple turntables and a mixer, or just in a white room armed only with a Roland 909, it’s fair to say the audience gets a shift. But Mills says that it wasn’t until he started working with Allen that he was inspired to push further into live shows, breaking free from the booth and out from behind the decks.

“Watching how he was able to manipulate the drums, some of the rhythms were so complex,” he says. “That really gave me pause and made me think about how much in electronic music we’re lacking in terms of the musician’s expression.”

Tomorrow Comes the Harvest

While the show’s stage setup is quite basic, Mills says the layout is designed so the trio can keep eye contact and create a connection. “In this way, the audience gets to know the musician better; there isn’t software or hardware getting in the way,” he says.

“DJs let us know that they want to be the soloist – they want the attention – but we don’t have the tools to make that happen. The equipment is still designed to be sat on a table top,” he continues. “It’s a shame there are very few things that enable movement around the stage. It’s still a production mindset that hasn’t convincingly moved into more of a live type of presentation.”

Tracing his insistence on innovation back to its roots, Mills says it really started when, fresh out of high school, he was given a slot on Detroit radio station WDRQ. “There was very little instruction, so I made up this character, The Wizard, and in a way that’s how I learned to be in the music industry,” he says.

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artists really respected the craft. It was all about making very complex compositions sound simple,” he continues. “It’s not something you learn overnight by buying software; anyone can put together tracks, but knowing how to strip it down is really an artform.”

The other big theme running through his career is looking to the future and up to the stars.

Born in 1963, he grew up in the Apollo years, where even for a black kid in Motor City, being an astronaut seemed like an option. “Kraftwerk and Juan Atkins can be thanked for pushing forward this kind of concept music, instilling a certain type of mindset, creating such detailed compositions of the future,” he says.

In terms of his own future, he’s got no plans to retire any time soon. “This is the one that will last until the end,” he says of Tomorrow Comes the Harvest. “When you see 85 year-old Jeff Mills, I’ll be on stage with this project for sure.”

Tomorrow Comes the Harvest, Leith Theatre, Edinburgh, 11 Aug, part of Edinburgh International Festival

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EIFF Special

Please Baby Please

Aiming for Iconic W

hen we sit down with American musician and filmmaker Amanda Kramer, she’s preparing for an LA screening of Please Baby Please – one of two films of hers (alongside Give Me Pity!) showing at the 2022 Edinburgh International Film Festival. The former sees a respectable bohemian couple’s identities upended (or liberated?) by flamboyant gangsters.

In the latter, a star’s TV special is threatened by sinister forces. The spectre of Americana looms over the stylings of Please Baby Please and the jaw-dropping rendition of You're a Grand Old Flag near the beginning of Give Me Pity!

“It’s a bit mean-spirited,” Kramer admits of this montage. “I have a strange anti-nationalist flair.

I am a pastiche filmmaker. I want what I make to be

a love letter between the films and filmmakers that inspire me and in the current conversation of contemporary cinema.” Give Me Pity! further draws on music videos and diva-dom. “Almost all female pop stars have moments of incorporating America into their act. You’ll see an American flag bikini music video or fireworks shooting out of a bra. I cannot tell you how turned off I am. But I have to go through it because I have to understand it.”

Please Baby Please is rooted in the dark heart of 1950s cinema. “I find [1950s American films] incredibly claustrophobic and bizarre,” she says. “There was this idea that we had come home from the war, we were happy, our men were back, we were creating babies – we were in the best time, right? But those films are depressing, bizarre — 53 —

Interview: Carmen Paddock and perverse – very unhappy and ill at ease. They have secret histories inside of them. Many people see the 1950s as this idyllic time, and 1950s men and women as models of white heteronormative values. I want to have a conversation with that and destroy that.”

This goes much further than worrying about elements of 1950s cinema that haven’t aged well.

“It’s obvious to say, ‘that’s sexist, that’s racist,’ but that’s a very easy relationship,” Kramer elaborates.

“I’m talking about a deeper and more entrenched depression, sadness, and loneliness from seeing that war, even when you come out triumphant. There was something lost in the American spirit. Men are drinking and sad and smoking and yearning and lonely and cannot ever find satisfaction.” This

August 2022 – Feature

We kick off this CineSkinny supplement dedicated to the Edinburgh International Film Festival by speaking to kickass American filmmaker Amanda Kramer, who brings two wild works to the festival: Please Baby Please and Give Me Pity! She talks to us about embracing theatricality, bringing an art school cool back to cinema and the iconic awesomeness of Terminator 2

EIFF Special

THE SKINNY

August 2022 – Feature

Give Me Pity!

melancholy of man still echoes today. “Normally as a feminist I would say ‘who cares?’,” she says with a laugh. “But I like watching those movies and thinking about how that codified a way of thinking throughout the century, a reason why [men] feel they deserve ownership over the world.”

Kramer considers herself a writer first, but Please Baby Please and Give Me Pity! are kaleidoscopic, vibrant experiences – surreal nightmares you don’t want to leave. She credits those around her with the realisation of her vision. “You have to have good taste,” she says of filmmaking. “With great taste, you can create amazing things when nothing exists before you. I want to be in someone’s memory.” She cites two of her favourite figures – Freddie Krueger and the Terminator – as examples of icons. “They will never leave the imagination.

Why is that? Those films don’t mean anything. They have themes we could talk about, but that’s not it. T2 is flawless. That’s a commercial Hollywood movie, so that makes me feel like everyone’s not doing a good job now! I don’t think coolness is in filmmaking anymore. A lot of the cool people have left and are doing something else.”

Kramer’s films don’t exist in the realms of realism. Theatricality on screen is very much a positive, she reckons. “There’s no such thing as over the top,” says Kramer. “People don’t pay for under the top! When I have the opportunity to guide an actor, I don’t think there’s too much theatricality. Style is substance. It’s as hard to have style as it is to have substance. I hire people with incredible fine arts tastes to help my vision.”

In Give Me Pity!, Sophie von Haselberg plays Sissy St. Claire, the young performer whose TV special goes awry. Before the film’s shoot, Haselberg would rehearse relentlessly, with Kramer running out of notes to give. “Every day I would feel so exhausted on her behalf. She’d be in hair and makeup for hours and then she’s singing, doing monologues, dancing.

She’s a consummate performer. It reminds me of the specials where Cher is in eight wigs and running across the stage with costume changes and balloons coming out everywhere.”

Surely not all TV specials are as haunted as Sissy St. Claire’s? “No, they all are. I promise. It’s a deranged format,” insists Kramer, citing the “subterranean rumble” to Lady Gaga’s Thanksgiving special and the “incredibly eerie” Carpenters specials. “I watched hundreds of hours of specials before we made Give Me Pity!

Everything I would see I would think, ‘this is so strange, am I the only one seeing this?’ Sometimes it feels like you’re picking up on a current or station but only for you.”

The performances in Please Baby Please are similarly heightened and inspired. It’s electrified

by Andrea Riseborough’s Suze and Harry Melling’s Arthur. “I exist, I think, in a large part, to write great parts for women of all ages,” Kramer says.

“Actresses deserve to have as complex, bizarre, and difficult parts as their male co-stars. When you write for Andrea, you know her capacity and understand the lengths she will go to and the level she can reach. You should be unafraid because she will be unafraid. When you have those experiences with actresses, you’re inspired to turn the volume up on those characters. There’s a myth that there’s a lot of vanity in Hollywood and acting.

There are women who truly want to eschew that and be a disgusting version of a character. I’m the filmmaker to bring that out. I’m lucky they exist and I hope they feel lucky that I exist too.”

And of Riseborough’s co-star? “Harry is one of the best,” she says. “He’s a very tender and thoughtful actor. The character of Arthur is more irritating on the page because he’s frustrated, closeted, but also uncommunicative. Harry wanted it to be a love story. He wanted him and Andrea to be sweethearts, as well as him and Karl [Glusman, who plays Teddy, the pretty boy gangster who both halves of the coupe fall for], so he had to have chemistry with both. I’m very lucky that he gave the performance he did. He is the tender heart of the film.

“When I cast someone, I’m upfront with them,” Kramer adds. “I am not interested in ‘good acting’. I need someone to build a character that feels iconic and singular.”

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“I don’t think coolness is in filmmaking anymore.

A lot of the cool people have left and are doing something else” Amanda Kramer Kramer’s ethos seems at odds with current blockbusters, but she doesn’t feel alone.

“Everyone sees a Marvel movie and thinks ‘what are we doing?’,” she says. “We’re making money.

The people who are working really hard to infuse art back into [film] are the heroes of the industry.”

To her, trying something new is paramount. “I used to think it was trite to say I’m amusing myself, but I don’t feel that way anymore. I take filmmaking seriously but I don’t make serious work. I allow myself the opportunity to be surreal and experimental. Imagine wasting brain space hoping to get an Oscar.”

While it’s been a big festival year for Kramer, she remains focused on what she calls her “true love”: writing. Hot on the heels of Please Baby Please and Give Me Pity!, she has two films in the pipeline. Both sound unmissable: “a 70s thriller and a really fucked-up feminist action film. I hope I can do T2 justice! My god! I don’t want to let T2 down!”

Please Baby Please: Everyman, 18 Aug, 8pm; Filmhouse, 19 Aug, 4.45pm Give Me Pity!: Filmhouse, 15 Aug, 9.30pm; 19 Aug, 2.30pm Tickets at edfilmfest.org.uk

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Remake/Reframe Kim Knowles introduces EIFF’s Reframing the Gaze retrospective which responds to the 50th anniversary of the festival’s legendary 1972 Women’s Event EIFF Special

Interview: Xuanlin Tham

F

ifty years ago, in 1972, Edinburgh International Film Festival held its highly influential Women’s Event. Organised by revolutionary film theorists Laura Mulvey and Claire Johnston alongside EIFF programmer and future Artistic Director Lynda Myles, it was the first major celebration of work by women filmmakers by a European film festival. EIFF is marking this anniversary by theming this year’s edition around that Women’s Event, and that includes the retrospective Reframing the Gaze: Experiments in Women’s Filmmaking, 1972 to Now. Curated by Kim Knowles, this retrospective gazes backwards – and forwards – at the intertwined evolution of feminist filmmaking, experimental filmmaking, and the festival itself. Groundbreaking films by Chantal Akerman, Barbara Hammer and Mulvey herself are among those included, while the most recent work is the 2019 feature So Pretty from American trans filmmaker Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli.

We speak to Knowles about her approach to curating this programme, and the transformative power of experimental film.

What guided your curatorial approach to the retrospective?

Although my programme looks back to 1972, it hops across numerous events I’ve been interested in: the 1972 Women’s Event, the 1976 International Forum on Avant-Garde Film where many female experimental filmmakers were present, and the Psychoanalysis and Cinema Symposium that same year. It’s quite a tricky retrospective because it takes a fairly unconventional approach.

During the 1970s, Lynda Myles had quite a close relationship with the London Filmmakers’ Co-op, a centre of experimental filmmaking, so I was asking myself: what films might appear in the programme if Lynda Myles was directing the festival in the 1990s, for example? I’m hopping through the decades, but those decisions aren’t arbitrary – I’m asking myself different questions.

Did you discover any patterns of experimentation connecting the 1970s to now?

While in the 70s, there was a certain withdrawing of the self, one can see in the 80s-90s that subjectivity is much more directly interrogated.

Moving into the 2010s to a film like So Pretty, we have a more playful, self-reflexive questioning of the body, of representation, of identity politics.

What I love about the programme is it takes us from this question of “what is women’s film?” to “what is film?” to “what is woman?”

So Pretty picks up the language of Riddles of the Sphinx with this panning movement of the camera – a non-objectifying gaze – to represent a domestic space that’s more fluid in terms of identity. Those films mirror each other, and use essentially the same language: one that doesn’t fix, control, or objectify, allowing experience to be constantly in process.

Riddles of the Sphinx

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So Pretty

What makes experimental film form such a powerful terrain for resistance?

Some feminist film critics quite militantly argued that one can be radical within mainstream film form. However, I’ve always felt that it’s by showing us things differently that we come to think differently: it’s only when we don’t necessarily know what we’re looking at that we have our preconceptions challenged. [Academic] Scott MacDonald says in relation to experimental film that it “retrains perception”, and that can apply to the representation of women, of race, sexuality, and ecology – it all comes back to the same mechanisms. What I want is for these films to draw attention to what it is to “look”, to be aware of the cinematic gaze.

What are the responsibilities curators have in charting towards a more feminist film exhibition space?

Curators have a massive responsibility in that respect. I’m constantly asking myself if I’m doing enough. We need a more just, more ethical society – we need it desperately, and that means curators seeking out filmmakers and themes that question damaging patterns of behaviour. Film is a wonderful form of self-expression, of community, but I think increasingly, we’re going to have to question what role it plays in creating the world we want to live in.

Reframing the Gaze: Experiments in Women’s Filmmaking, 1972 to Now runs 14-18 Aug at Edinburgh International Film Festival Full programme and tickets at edfilmfest.org.uk

August 2022 – Feature

What has been the legacy of the 1972 Women’s Event?

The women that came together in the 1972 Women’s Event were crucial in shifting the debates about what form feminist filmmaking should take. You had Laura Mulvey, who put forward that feminist filmmaking should counter the patriarchal film form, and you had Claire Johnston, who argued that mainstream filmmaking created the potential for female filmmakers to come at a method of resistance from the inside. There were multiple positions on the history of feminist filmmaking, how to think about the present, and how to stimulate the future.

And as you know, Laura Mulvey has been the most incredible force in feminist film – for that reason, my programme starts with Riddles of the Sphinx, the film she made with Peter Wollen, as a springboard. It’s an incredibly exciting viewing experience, and I hope putting it on at the festival will break through the difficulty the film’s been associated with.

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EIFF Heads Up

We recommend you seek out all the films featured in this special EIFF supplement as well as the closing gala After Yang, although tickets for the latter are currently like gold dust. Here are 12 other must-see titles from EIFF’s programme Compiled by Jamie Dunn

Aftersun Dir. Charlotte Wells

Nude Tuesday Dir. Armağan Ballantyne

EIFF Special

Vue Omni, 12 Aug, 6.50pm and 7pm; Filmhouse, 15 Aug, 1.30pm

Everyman, 16 Aug, 8.40pm

This achingly sad feature debut from Scottish director Charlotte Wells sees a young woman looking back at a life-altering holiday she took with her father to a low-rent Turkish resort when she was 11 and he was 30. What makes Aftersun such a revelatory work is the way in which the characters’ swirling inner emotions are never spelt out in dialogue, and instead are wholly expressed visually or through the nuanced and deeply emotional performances by Frankie Corio and Paul Mescal.

Jemaine Clement plays a sexual healing guru in this ‘gibberish comedy’ about a middle-aged couple trying to rekindle their moribund marriage – much self-discovery and full frontal nudity ensues. If the nudity hasn’t already piqued your interest, then the fact that dark comic genius Julia Davis (Nighty Night, Sally4Ever) provides the subtitles to the gibberish should.

Juniper Dir. Matthew J. Saville Everyman, 17 Aug, 6pm; Filmhouse, 20 Aug, 11am Aftersun

Leonor Will Never Die Dir. Martika Ramirez Escobar Filmhouse, 16 Aug, 8.35pm; Vue Omni, 18 Aug, 3.30pm

Fiction and reality blur in this surreal comedy from the Philippines. The Leonor of the title is an ageing director famed for her action movies. Her retirement is interrupted, however, after a neighbour accidentally drops a TV on her noggin, hurtling her into one of her own films where she interacts with some of the macho characters she wrote. A love letter to the wild invention and exuberance of Filipino cinema.

Charlotte Rampling is said to be at her majestic best in New Zealand drama Juniper. In it, she plays a heavy-drinking grandmother who terrorises then eventually bonds with her estranged 17-year-old grandson, who’s charged with her care as punishment after being expelled from boarding school.

Pass the G&T as well as the hankies!

Nude Tuesday

August 2022 — Chat

Juniper

Phantom Project Dir. Roberto Doveris Vue Omni, 14 Aug, 2.15pm; Cameo, 15 Aug, 9.20pm

Special Delivery

Leonor Will Never Die

This delightfully leftfield comedy from Chile follows a queer aspiring actor hipster who’s being haunted – and perhaps seduced – by his ex-flatmate’s vintage cardigan. On the surface, this is a whimsical meta ghost story but Phantom Project also has plenty to say about the precarious lives of poor young creatives trying to hold their shit together in modern-day Santiago.

Special Delivery Dir. Park Dae-min Vue Omni, 18 Aug, 9.35pm; 19 Aug, 4.20pm

Love vehicular thrillers like Drive and The Driver but sick of them being boys’ clubs where the female leads are stuck playing passengers? Special Delivery breaks the mould with a female petrol-head – Parasite’s Park So-dam – behind the wheel. By day, she works in a scrapyard; by night, she’s a slick getaway driver taking Seoul gangsters wherever they want to go in a hurry.

We’re told to expect high-octane car chases and a pulsing electronic score.

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Phantom Project

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LOLA Dir. Andrew Legge Everyman, 15 Aug, 9pm; Vue Omni, 19 Aug, 4pm

How neat is the premise for Andrew Legge’s WWII-set debut feature, LOLA? It concerns two sisters who build a machine that can intercept TV and radio broadcasts from the future. They initially use their time-travelling tech to discover pop bangers that won’t be penned for decades and gamble on upcoming sporting events, Back to the Future-style, before putting it to more heroic uses.

Millie Lies Low Dir. Michelle Savill Vue Omni, 15 Aug, 4.05pm; Filmhouse, 18 Aug, 1.45pm

EIFF Special

Be prepared to cringe hard with Kiwi comedy Millie Lies Low. When anxious architecture graduate Millie has a panic attack before a flight to New York, forcing her to stay in her hometown of Wellington instead, she does the obvious thing. Go home and have a cup of tea? See a therapist? No, Millie instead fakes her trip to the ‘Big Apple’ using creative licence on her Instagram.

Millie Lies Low

Goodbye, DonGlees!

Dir. Atsuko Ishizuka Vue Omni, 16 Aug, 2pm; 19 Aug, 9.15pm

We love the sound of coming-of-age Japanese animation Goodbye, DonGlees! It follows three teen pals – Roma, Toto and Drop – who spend their summer cooking up backyard adventures, but when they’re blamed for starting a nearby forest fire, they set off into the wilderness to try and clear their names. Basically, it’s giving us Stand By Me vibes, but, you know… anime.

LOLA

Goodbye, DonGlees!

Photo: Kelly Green

The Plains

The Plains Dir. David Easteal Filmhouse, 13 Aug, 6.30pm

Full Time

Full Time Dir. Eric Gravel Vue Omni, 17 Aug, 6.15pm; Filmhouse, 18 Aug, 4pm

Anyone who’s ever had to deal with a hellish commute will appreciate Full Time. After getting an interview for a job that will enable her to be financially stable and spend more time with her kids, Julie’s dreams hang by a thread thanks to a Paris transit strike. A nail-biting thriller dressed as a social realist drama, we’ve seen Full Time described, quite delightfully, as Uncut Gems for single mums.

We’ve heard great things about David Easteal’s docu/fiction hybrid The Plains, which takes us along for the ride with Melbourne lawyer Andrew on his humdrum daily commute.

Through conversations on the phone and with his occasional car-share passenger, we get a compelling picture of Andrew’s rich, complex and often hilarious life. File alongside other great car movies like Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and the ultimate midlife crisis on wheels movie, Locke.

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Social Studies: Six Films by Kinuyo Tanaka Filmhouse, various dates and times

With roles in over 250 films, Kinuyo Tanaka was one of the most popular actors in Japan in her day. Less well known are the six features she directed between 1953 and 1962. Shot through with a vivid sense of freedom, these films put women’s stories at the forefront. EIFF shines a welcome light on these works that are just beginning to be discovered and taken seriously in the West.

August 2022 — Chat

The Wandering Princess part of Kinuyo Tanaka

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Cooking with Gas EIFF Special

Avant-garde sonic caterers? Nipple-twisting kinks? The melancholy of flatulence?

You’ll find all and more in Flux Gourmet from Peter Strickland, one of the most visionary voices in British cinema Interview: Jamie Dunn

August 2022 – Feature

W

hile watching Flux Gourmet, the latest film from Peter Strickland, British cinema’s premier chronicler of kink, fetish and general weirdness, I’ve a feeling of déjà vu. The film features an avant-garde musical trio who create freaky soundscapes and performanceart pieces using foodstuff. The chopping of vegetables, the whirl of food processors or the sizzle from a frying pan are their notes and chords.

I think to myself, “I’ve seen an outfit like this before.” It’s only as the credits roll that it hits me.

It was Peter Strickland’s own band! Aptly called The Sonic Catering Band, I saw them perform in 2015 as part of Manchester International Festival.

“Oh, that was one of our worst gigs,” Strickland says with a grimace when I bring up that MIF performance. “It was terrible, terrible, terrible. After that, we just said ‘never again’, we just kind of stopped.”

The Sonic Catering Band may be no more, but their legacy lives on in Flux Gourmet. Initially, Strickland’s concept of making a film inspired by their obscure project was an inside joke. “I liked the idea because it’s perverse to make a film about a band that nobody’s heard of. Usually, that status is reserved for, you know, Queen or someone on that kind of level. We did a gig once and only one person turned up.”

The film may have begun as a gimmick but that quickly wore off as interesting threads crept

in. “Some people might consider the approach unusual, but to me, it’s no different from, say, Joanna Hogg looking back on her life with The Souvenir films,” says Strickland. “OK, the result is different. With our film, you don’t quite know what’s fiction and what’s real, whereas I gather Hogg’s films are much more straightforwardly autobiographical. But we’re also looking back at a mass of creativity; we’re looking back at egos and the creative process.”

Another key thread is the struggle between financiers and artists. The trio – who can’t even decide on a name – take up a “culinary and alimentary performance” residency at an art institution based in a country manor. The institute’s director (played by a wild-eyed Gwendoline Christie) insists on providing notes on each performance, much to the annoyance of the band’s frontwoman, Elle (Strickland regular Fatma Mohamed). It’s a dynamic that Strickland knows well. “Oh, it’s very relevant to filmmaking. Much more relevant to filmmaking than it is to music. I mean, [The Sonic Catering Band] never had anyone telling us what to do.”

Can we assume Elle is Strickland’s surrogate in the film, then? “Oh, I see myself in all the characters,” says Strickland. What? Even Dr Glock, the institute’s gleefully sadistic medic? “Oh definitely,” he says without missing a beat. “A filmmaker’s job is to be a devious bastard, and that’s Dr Glock.”

Flux Gourmet

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“A filmmaker’s job is to be a devious bastard” Peter Strickland The centre of the film is not the band, the financier or the malevolent MD, however. Our gateway into this strange world is Stones, played by the perennially downcast Greek actor Makis Papadimitriou.

Stones is a self-confessed “hack writer” whose job at the institute is to interview the band and keep a record of their process. Strickland clearly has a soft spot for his sadsack protagonist. “Stones is a hack but I’m a hack too,” he says. “Most of my work in between films is for other people. Which I’m fine with.

Hack is a dirty word in the creative industries and I wanted to have a more sympathetic view of being a hack. Only rich people use hack as a pejorative.”

Stones’ job is to blend into the background and simply document; he’s not the most obvious of focal points. “I always find people who tried to be invisible really fascinating, and I like the idea of this unassuming character unwittingly getting pushed to the forefront of the whole film.” Another reason why Stones is struggling to blend in is that he’s suffering from a severe case of flatulence, the pain, discomfort and embarrassment of which he tells us about in great detail in voiceover. When Elle gets wind (sorry!) of Stones’ incredibly private issues, she hijacks it for the performance and incorporates Stones into her art.

While Flux Gourmet is often laugh-out-loud hilarious, Stones’ flatus is never the butt (sorry! again) of the joke. Instead, the melancholic sincerity with which Strickland approaches his condition recalls Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, two other great films about protagonists with tummy troubles.

“What was interesting for me was to take something you traditionally find funny, both in real life and in films, flatulence, and to see if it’s possible to give it a different tone – give it a solemn tone, even,” says Strickland. “It’s one hell of a risk. What if the audience just laughs at this character? But it was something I wanted to try and I just felt it probably hadn’t been done before.”

Flux Gourmet screens at Filmhouse, 14 Aug, 8.20pm; Vue Omni, 15 Aug, 1.30pm; tickets at edfilmfest.org.uk

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The Weird and Eerie We delve into the dark psychological thriller It Is in Us All with Irish filmmaker Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who directed, wrote, and acted in the film EIFF Special

Interview: Rory Doherty

It Is In Us All

She tries again to define it: “There’s a writer called Mark Fisher, he wrote a book called The Weird and the Eerie. I actually only picked it up after the film. I feel like he was writing what I was communicating but just more fluently. We don’t have a section for it in the video store (sorry to be 1990s about it), but ‘the weird and eerie’ is a genre that’s not quite science fiction and not quite drama; it’s like a tonality that we understand – like if we don’t sleep for four days, everything takes on a different tone. I think it’s an exceptional space to be in.”

Body horror also comes to mind, as Hamish’s “cracked open” self pushes him out of his own body and into a new, uncomfortable state of being.

Hamish mends his post-accident injuries (including a nasty open fracture) in a constrictive, amateurish fashion, repressing his woundedness out of sight. “Body horror sounds so negative,” CampbellHughes says, again struggling with the inaptitude of genre descriptors. “It’s sort of like body horror… poetry? I find that when we see the injury, when we see the illness, when we see the destruction, it’s an analogy for a deep, profound vulnerability.”

Vulnerability isn’t something CampbellHughes shies away from, and not just in terms of putting her own experiences on screen. “I was — 59 —

It Is in Us All screens at Everyman, 15 Aug, 6.30pm; Filmhouse, 16 Aug, 12pm Tickets at edfilmfest.org.uk

August 2022 – Feature

A

ntonia Campbell-Hughes, writer-director of the Irish psychological drama It Is in Us All, has no difficulty talking about her film, but she’s less keen on defining it. Her feature debut details the unravelling of Hamish (Cosmo Jarvis), a tightly-wound Londoner, who suffers a car crash in rural Donegal while visiting a home left to him by his late aunt. Physical wounds soon trigger emotional ones. “I saw it like he is cracked open, and that crack suddenly buys him time outside of himself,” says Campbell-Hughes. ”So his time then is bought time where he can actually tiptoe outside of his own locked shell.”

Soon Hamish is questioning his heritage, his masculinity, and his relationship with life and death, in a film that is not just hard to define but one that questions the necessity of definition itself. In terms of reference points – aside from the multitude of painters and photographers that influenced the film’s austere, heavy mood – Campbell-Hughes initially pitched It Is in Us All as science fiction in a pastoral setting, but found her vision being misunderstood. “I think I was trying to push an understanding of what I was trying to do. Of course, people go, ‘So are there aliens?’ And it’s like, well no, because science fiction is not the word.”

born in Donegal, and we left when I was two; I grew up in Switzerland and Germany, and so I had this removed idea of where I came from,” she explains. “I’ve always been really interested in people who feel dislocated from their heritage or roots.” But beyond that, Hamish pushing against the boundaries of his myopic, gendered self-perception isn’t a foreign emotional state for Campbell-Hughes.

“At the end it says ‘For Peter’, and that is my father, but it’s not this very emotional thing,” she explains. “It was more that he was a very complex man, and he died many years ago, but I spent that time after his passing trying to understand him.

When you’re a child or a teenager and your parent passes, you’ve only got a very simple relationship.

But after that, you try to really understand who the person was and how they operated, and he was quite like how Hamish is. Hamish was a construct of many things, but the story was about trying to excavate and understand those nuances where there is a complexity with the male.”

It’s not a discovery that can happen in isolation. Hamish’s journey is defined by a burgeoning connection with Evan (Rhys Mannion), the 17-yearold driver who collided with him, as well as the grieving mother (played by Campbell-Hughes) of the boy who lost his life in the crash. The three performances define the film in nuanced ways, always independently disoriented, but making unexpected connections that feel fittingly nebulous and confused. Early reactions to the script affected the execution of Campbell-Hughes’s vision.

“Initially, Evan’s character was 14, so that didn’t go down very well. People really baulked at that. They were instantly like, ‘No, he has to be older.’”

But Campbell-Hughes wouldn’t alter the intimate nature of Hamish and Evan’s relationship.

“Yeah it is sensual, I’m not going to back down on that,” she says. “It is really sensual. I want this to have a very common appeal. It is about the common ground of experience. That is a sensuality that can happen that is ageless, and genderless, and placeless. And it is about just the connectivity of being seen and sharing, and something that happens when you’re compromised.”

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Feline Friends Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson, whether as a duo or going solo, have long been two of the most exciting filmmakers working in Scotland. They make their feature debut with A Cat Called Dom, a thrilling blend of animation, doc and meta-fiction

EIFF Special

Interview: Jamie Dunn

A Cat Called Dom still

August 2022 – Feature

I

n the year that Edinburgh International Film Festival’s annual Michael Powell Award is retooled to become the Powell and Pressburger Award, there’s something fitting about Scotland’s most innovative filmmaking partnership earning a place in the competition with their debut feature. Animators Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson have been working together since they were students at Edinburgh College of Art in the early 2010s. They both have fruitful solo careers but there is an undeniable alchemy when the pair put their heads together, like on award-winning projects The Making of Longbird (2011) and Monkey Love Experiments (2014). Their latest collab, A Cat Called Dom, has been eight years in the making. The cute title suggests something lighthearted but the incident that incited its inception is as serious as it gets: Anderson’s mother had just been diagnosed with mouth cancer.

Will Anderson: “We had both just made our first professional film [Monkey Love Experiments] and we had done some student work that had done all right [they won a bloody BAFTA!], so we were feeling gung-ho about making films and this thing happened. It shook me pretty hard and it felt like the only thing I could really do to deal with it was to make a film about it.”

The pair are no strangers to mining their own lives for inspiration. Anderson’s recent short Betty was a heart-on-sleeve analogy for a messy breakup and the debut film from Henderson, I Am Tom Moody, about a musician going through an existential crisis, was partly inspired by his short career as a pop star. Was there any trepidation, though, in exploring this taboo subject?

WA: “It was a little awkward. But this is the way Ainslie and I communicate with the world. I quite genuinely didn’t know how else to react to the fear of losing my mum. So in my head, we were just kinda doing our job, and I was trying to express how I felt as best I could. But that got muddy.”

It’s not just emotions that got muddy. The form of the film is also dizzyingly complex, blending fiction, documentary and animation.

Ainslie Henderson: “I think it started out as more of a fiction film. I remember at the beginning, Will and I had a lot of conversations about how to span that gap between how

contrived and written it is, and how much we follow a kind of an improvisational style, where you react to what you’re exposed to, like you would in documentary.”

Watching The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer’s extraordinary documentary about the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, was a major inspiration.

AH: “It’s an amazing film and ended up being quite a reference because that too is a documentary about making films about something that was very, very real. I think we tried to script Dom a lot more at the beginning. We talked about it being scripted scenes that we were going to do with Will and his family, and then we were going to also just capture what came out of those scripted scenes not working. But then, as time went on, I think it became more of a doc.”

The animated element of A Cat Called Dom, meanwhile, is the title character: a small black cat who grows from a single malfunctioning pixel in the bottom corner of Anderson’s laptop.

Is he an analogy for the cancerous cells growing in Anderson’s mum? Or simply Anderson’s alter-ego?

WA: “I started to think of him as a bit like the elephant in the room. He’s asking me the obvious questions. ‘Well, why aren’t you just there? Why don’t you go and spend time with your mum? Why don’t you tell her how much you love her?’

AH: “He’s a few things, wasn’t he? He was that, and he was – and I hesitate to say this because it’s a contentious and possible offensive idea – the embodiment of what’s good about cancer. But if there is something good that comes out of cancer, that’s what we wanted Dom to symbolise.”

The ‘good thing’ Henderson is alluding to is how this devastating illness can be a wake-up call to appreciate your loved ones while you can. And we’re pleased to hear Anderson’s mum, who’s in remission, will be with him for a good time longer.

WA: “I certainly thought she was leaving us and then she fought through it. She’s tough. I’m just very thankful to be in this situation where I can still communicate with my mother and have maybe grown even closer through a little scare like this. I feel very lucky.”

A Cat Called Dom screens at Cameo, 13 Aug, 5.30pm; Filmhouse, 19 Aug, 7pm; tickets at edfilmfest.org.uk

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EIFF Special

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August 2022

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THE SKINNY

Reimagining History London-based academic writer Lola Olufemi’s work spans interdisciplinary research, curation, and a deep commitment to community organising and political action Interview: Paula Lacey

Lola Olufemi

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Lola Olufemi

rooms with other people where possible.

I cherish it. Mostly I think about the joy I get from being with others alongside the mass death we have just lived through and continue to live through. I always end up back in the same place: we could live differently, how could we live differently?”

Lola Olufemi will be taking part in two events at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival: Be the Change, a discussion of her own work (Sat 27 Aug, 2.15-3.15pm), and a close reading of the work of Preti Taneja and Hannah Black (Fri 26 Aug, 5-6pm) Experiments in Imagining Otherwise is out now from Hajar Press Read an extended version of this interview at theskinny.co.uk/books

August 2022 – Feature

“We want the same thing: a world free from violence, one not premised on our extinction, dispossession, extraction via the machineries of capital and colonialism”

The text repeatedly touches on reimagining our conceptions of history and archives. When asked about how her work approaches the history of radical action, she explains: “I do believe that history, fundamentally, is a contest over power between classes in which radical action has been taken in the forms of strikes, revolutions, uprisings by dispossessed working class people in order to secure resources that would make dignified existence possible. My own relationship with that kind of radical action in a global context is that, by letting go of the idea that the past, present and future are fixed and distinct temporal regimes, I refuse to see that past as isolated from the present or from a collective future.

“In Experiments, I was trying to find a way not to discipline time: to go against the idea that time moves via a metrical arrow of progress: it might also be a spiral, a circle, a shape, or pattern or intensity that I am not able to articulate. In relation to radical action, freeing ourselves from the timeline means we free ourselves from the idea that we are what comes after ‘the radical past’ or ‘the revolutionary heyday’ – we might also be in that moment now, we’ve just not yet been historicised.”

Early on in Experiments, Olufemi writes that she has ‘already outgrown everything I have ever written.’ What is her advice, particularly to those writing about politics, on grappling with beliefs and understandings changing over time?

“Maintaining flexibility is crucial for any writer,” she says, “not just those writing politically. It is okay to change your mind and then to change it again. That for me is the definition of a dialectical approach, to work through tensions, oppositions, to find commonality in the things that seem irreconcilable. We want the same thing: a world free from violence, one not premised on our extinction, dispossession, extraction via the machineries of capital and colonialism. Remain attentive to those fights, try not to get tired. Stay nimble, the future can never be finished.”

Ahead of her events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival which dive more into this new work, it feels a fine time to ask her how she has found returning to live events and talking about her work in person again? “Relation is extremely important to me, it is nice to be back in

Books

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ola Olufemi’s second book, Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, tenderly but ferociously champions Black feminist, anticapitalist and anticolonial thought, by challenging the reader to imagine the possibility of living differently.

Although Olufemi’s two books grapple with overlapping ideas, Experiments in Imagining Otherwise is a divergence, stylistically, to Feminism Interrupted. “Experiments In Imagining Otherwise tries to make the case that there is a connection between the landscape of our political and affective desires and our capacity for resistant action,” says Olufemi on choosing this more experimental approach to political writing. “It’s a creative form of consciousness raising; I wanted to write something that tried to recreate the feeling of being moved. Experiments asks: ‘how might we take this subjective experience called “Imagining” and turn it into collective phenomena that can be applied to our political organising or, at the very least, help to shore up resistant desire?’

“The writing process for Feminism Interrupted felt quite formal and structured – I had a plan, I had arguments I wanted to make and I understood the necessity of doing that in a critical but accessible way,” she continues. “Experiments allowed me to pick up and put down different genres, to mix what shouldn’t be mixed, to express ideas in fragmentary and non-linear ways. There is a way that fiction can colour political questions – I could add texture by not only stating what the worlds we seek to build will require from us (struggle, revolution, seizing the means of production) but by trying to imagine and describe what walking through the city in the aftermath of that might feel like, who would be there, what the air could taste like.”

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Readers United As Edinburgh International Book Festival returns with a programme of in-person and streamed events, we pull out a few highlights Words: Heather McDaid

Books

Image: courtesy EIBF Oona Dooks, The Gruffalo, Bemz and Festival director Nick Barley

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‘A

ll Together Now’ is the rallying cry of 2022’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. It’s a testament to where we are in our quote unquote return to normal, bringing authors from the world over back to the capital, and inviting readers to join in person and via their streamed events. We know by now what the last two years has taken from us, what has irreversibly changed, so in the spirit of getting together once more, here’s as many highlights we can squeeze in to do just that.

The festival wastes no time: day one, two icons of Scottish fiction – Ali Smith and Val McDermid – delve into the former’s seasonal quartet (13 Aug, 5.30pm), while David Keenan, author of ambitious This Is Memorial Device, discusses his new novel set in that same hallucinatory world (13 Aug, 8.30pm). Mieko Kawakami beams in remotely to traverse her work, including Breasts and Eggs and All the Lovers in the Night (16 Aug, 2.15pm). A literary wonder.

We turn from translation to climate change’s personal and political nature with Jessica Gaitán Johannesson and Amanda Thomson (16 Aug, 2.15pm), before the inimitable Marlon James invites us into his Dark Star trilogy (16 Aug, 7.30pm), following the witch Sogolon, who bows to no man.

The pandemic saw many turn their hand to something new – knitting, baking bread – but comedians Kevin Bridges and Frankie Boyle traded jokes for fiction. A double whammy sees Bridges on The Black Dog, following an aspiring

writer hoping to escape ever-darkening thoughts (17 Aug, 5.30pm), while Boyle’s thriller Meantime tracks a man trying to find justice for his murdered friend (17 Aug, 8.30pm).

From comedy to music, Britpop legend Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker will revisit his life’s greatest hits so far in Good Pop, Bad Pop (18 Aug, 8.30pm), as acclaimed essayist Sinéad Gleeson, who co-created This Woman's Work - on women who changed the face of music - with Kim Gordon, will be joined by contributor Ottessa Moshfegh (24, 8.15pm). PJ Harvey has turned her attention from writing music to penning a long form poem, Orlam, six years in the making, and will be appearing in Central Hall (20 Aug, 9.15pm) in an event supported by The Skinny.

Some of Scotland’s most exciting authors of the last few years will descend: Jenni Fagan talks on witchy historical novella Hex (18 Aug, 4pm), Graeme Macrae Burnet moves from Bookershortlisted His Bloody Project to the psychoanalytical 1960s in Case Study to question truth itself (19 Aug, 1pm), while Chitra Ramaswamy’s Homelands documents the life and friendship of Henry Wuga, who fled Nazi Germany in 1939 (21 Aug, 1pm). Booker winner Douglas Stuart returns to talk Young Mungo, the tale of two boys on opposite sides of the sectarian divide in 1990s Glasgow (28 Aug, 5.30pm).

Star Alan Cumming will regale audiences with his most recent book Baggage (21 Aug, 5pm), while Torrey Peters will grace the festival with her — 64 —

presence after last year’s remote event (sponsored

by The Skinny), to talk about the sensation Detransition, Baby with Josie Giles (22 Aug, 8pm).

Peters also joins Imogen Binnie of the groundbreaking Nevada and Lote’s Shola von Reinhold to discuss a golden age of trans fiction (24 Aug, 8pm).

Contemporary powerhouse Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, will transport readers to the feudalist village beset by natural disasters in Lapvona (23 Aug, 5pm). Another sparkling event will be the celebration of Michael Pedersen’s prose debut Boy Friends, a love letter to male friendship, alongside Garbage’s Shirley Manson, and Charlotte Church (24 Aug, 7pm).

Poetry is there in abundance too with some linguistic brilliance: Jazz Money and Andrés N Ordorica (13 Aug, 6.15pm), Alycia Pirmohamed and Jay Gao (13 Aug, 6.30pm), Raymond Antrobus (19 Aug, 12.15pm), Ada Limón (23 Aug, 5.30pm), Hollie McNish and Joelle Taylor (23 Aug, 7pm), and Hannah Lavery (26 Aug, 12.15pm), to name but a few.

With more opportunities to get all together again - whether in-person at their new College of Art venue, or digitally tuning in to catch something special - there’s plenty to choose from at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival. Let’s celebrate.

Edinburgh International Book Festival 2022 runs 13-29 Aug edbookfest.co.uk

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Crisis of Connection Jessica Gaitán Johannesson discusses the complexities of the climate emergency ahead of the release of her new essay collection The Nerves and Their Endings

Books

Words: Katie Goh

J

essica Gaitán Johannesson has a problem with the word ‘we’. “When it comes to speaking about global crises, like climate collapse, humanity is often placed on one side and the non-human on the other side,” the writer and climate activist explains from her home in Edinburgh. “Suddenly humanity’s like this one unified thing, but environmental collapse is not the cause of ‘human nature’ – it’s the cause of colonialism built on racism.”

Gaitán Johannesson’s latest book – a collection of essays titled The Nerves and Their Endings – seeks to pull apart the homogeneous ‘we’ of climate crisis discourse. Through a series of bold and deeply affecting essays, what many of us think of as binaries – the internal and the external, the human and the non-human, the crisis and the response – all collapse in on themselves to occupy a single space, often on a single page.

Also a fiction writer (her novel How We Are Translated was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize) and a poet, Gaitán Johannesson’s turn to essays has been relatively recent in her career. “I thought I was going to write more fiction!” she says with a laugh. “It was the situation itself and reality which re-routed me. Writing any of these essays’ ideas as fiction would have felt like avoiding something. I think if something presents itself as this real, then write about it as it is – write it as reality.”

This reality is as political as it is personal in the book. Essays on Gaitán Johannesson’s experience of anorexia, her time as a member of BirthStrike and a climate activist, all exemplify the multiple levels through which we experience, and respond to, the climate crisis – in the body and in the world around us. “I think the idea of responding to a crisis is really key because the [climate] crisis is so intangible for so many people. I think we can only start with our own reactions.

We’re all forced to respond in some way, even if we don’t think we are, because not doing anything is also a response in itself.”

In writing this collection, it was essential to very specifically describe the context in which the essays were written – some even have postscripts of exact years. “I didn’t want to write a collection of personal essays that were just sort of political by default or could be interpreted as political,” she explains.

“I wanted to always name the political and the collective context in which these personal things happened and then ask: Where does that leave us? What bigger questions does this raise? How does that relate to this person or that person?”

The climate crisis, according to Gaitan Johannesson, is a “crisis of connection”,

“I’m frustrated with the idea that writing about the climate crisis is somehow enough or activism in itself”

August 2022 – Feature

Photo: Nicholas Herrmann

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson

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and bridging gaps between people, places and ideas is woven into the very fabric of The Nerves’ structure.

Between each of the essays are short fragmented pieces of writing that are partpoetry, part-lyrical essay. “I call those bits the nerves,” she says.

“The fact that we feel disconnected to nonhuman environments and people who we deem different, is the very core of why we are where we are. So, the book starts with that feeling, the places in the body where we feel: the nerves. Those “nerves” became a way to feel without figuring out what I was trying to say.”

When we are speaking, it is July and we are a week away from Scotland hitting its highest ever temperature on record. The urgency of the climate crisis has never felt more claustrophobically demanding, and yet the book industry is still failing to reckon with the emergency we’re in.

“I’m frustrated with the idea that writing about the climate crisis is somehow enough or activism in itself,” Gaitán Johannesson says. “For me, writing is not enough and, because there is such a thing as a book industry, with the privileges involved and the money-making of it all, I think viewing books as activism to the extent that you idolise can be detrimental. Of course there are brilliant people doing good things, but you need to look at the context in which books are produced.

There’s a reason, after all, that the book industry says that books are going to save the world!”

This shared tendency to place people up on pedestals is a deeply troubling part of both climate activism and the book industry for Gaitán Johannesson. “If you were constantly waiting for the perfect thing or person to 'save' us, then you wouldn’t do anything,” she says. “This idea that you can create perfect things, or you should sacrifice yourself for your art, or you should sacrifice yourself to save the world is a toxic notion that’s tied to patriarchy and capitalism. Embracing things that are imperfect but are really present, that are really truthful… Well, that’s sort of how I got over the fear and finished writing this book.”

Jessica Gaitán Johannesson & Amanda Thomson: Climate Change is Personal and Political, Edinburgh International Book Festival Northside Theatre, 16 Aug, 2.15pm The Nerves and Their Endings is published by Scribe, 11 Aug

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Poets Win Prizes The Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, a cornerstone for discovering and supporting emerging poetry talent, will be announced at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival Interview: Heather McDaid Books

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Bibi June Schwithal

Alyson Kissner

Roshni Gallagher

historically underrepresented in the EMPA. This, combined with an ‘open call’ which was reviewed by peers meant that poets who may not have had the time or confidence to submit to EMPA were encouraged and validated by people they respect and poets who responded to the open call were read by their contemporaries with an understanding of lived experience.”

Each award is announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, centring both Edwin Morgan and these up-andcoming poets. Combining the prize with a celebration of the work that the Edwin Morgan Trust has supported, this year’s event will be a poetry explosion including performances from Sekai Machache, Esther Swift, Ellen Renton and Niall O’Gallagher. More so, it will bring together the astounding shortlist for 2022: Nasim Rebecca Asl, Titilayo Farukuoye, Roshni Gallagher, Jay Gao, Alyson Kissner, Iona Lee, Michael Mullen and Bibi June Schwithal.

Morgan’s legacy speaks for itself, and the award is a continued passing of the baton onto the next generations of poets. What are McIntyre and Kinloch’s personal highlights of working with such an esteemed prize? “It has been incredible to work with the EMPA review panel: Vahni (Anthony Ezekiel) Capildeo, Maria Fusco, Gillebride MacMillan, Alycia Pirmohamed, Nadine Aisha Jassat, together with Jeda Pearl Lewis and Kelly Kanayama from Scottish BIPOC Writers Network and Drew Taylor-Wilson from Sanctuary Queer Arts,” says McIntyre. “We have an incredible community of mentors in Scotland who are very generous with their time and knowledge and are invested in seeing Scottish poetry thrive.

And of course – the amazing emerging poets!”

“Just seeing the smiles of joy on the faces of awardees and their families is an enormous reward for me personally,” says Kinloch. “This is a prize that can really transform the lives and work of the recipients. I get to see the enormous range of new and experimental work being done in Scotland just now. This is uplifting and encouraging to me at a time of great challenge for us all and it is exciting to know that the decisions we make as Trustees will help bring vibrant new work into the world. That was what Morgan was all about: new work, new life.”

The Edwin Morgan Poetry Award will be announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 22 Aug, 7.15pm. edbookfest.co.uk

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Michael Mullen

August 2022 – Feature

he first ever Makar, Scotland’s poet laureate, Edwin Morgan made a bequest in his will that centred young Scottish poets of the future not facing quite as much difficulty as he did as a young man looking to get his work out into the world. The award, named in his honour, was set up after his death in 2010 at the age of 90.

“Edwin was deeply engaged with the matter of Scottish culture but he was also an outward looking internationalist who believed that an openness to what was going on in other countries was healthy and invigorating,” explains David Kinloch, Chair of the Edwin Morgan Trust. “Edwin’s legacy is also particularly important because he was a gay man who wrote for much of his life at a time when homosexual acts were illegal and expressions of queer desire were deeply frowned upon. His love poetry is particularly interesting because of the way it evolves and takes account of the changing attitudes towards expressions of identity. He was and remains a towering force in Scottish culture and beyond.”

There are many awards out there celebrating books already published, but the EMPA focuses on the promise of what is to come. “Significantly, EMPA acknowledges the different barriers of access that are experienced when carving out a poetry practice,” notes Siân McIntyre, Programme Manager. “There is an understanding that the journey from ‘potential’ to ‘success’ is often bolstered by privilege.

Conversely, conditions of ‘opportunity’ are often blocked by structural inequalities.”

This is baked into the award itself and has Jay Gao undergone further evolution recently. Previously, they offered £20,000 to a single poet every two years – runner-up prizes were also awarded. “When we sat down to look back at 2020 and at the current cultural landscape in Scotland we felt that we could not go on quite as before,” recalls Kinloch. “We were exhilarated by the way we had managed to celebrate Edwin Morgan’s legacy through the creation of new initiatives but we were also deeply struck by how much the cultural sectors in Scotland had suffered during the worst stages of the pandemic.”

“The crucial thing with any prize or award is understanding that an ‘open call’ is not always ‘open’,” continues McIntyre. “People have different access to time, support – different levels of confidence and different experiences of identity, institutions and bureaucracy. We Nasim Rebecca Asl thought collectively about what could be done to (as Edwin Morgan says) ‘Open The Doors’ of the prize. This involved reducing the required poems for submission, changing our definitions of ‘Scottish’, providing a free masterclass for accessible tips, moving away from a one winner format and also creating a fairly complex nomination and open call process.”

This process asks “a panel to directly nominate promising young poets who have been

THE SKINNY

Where Numbers Fail For institutions, the diversity tick box is all the rage – but it really shouldn’t be. Kevin Guyan, author of Queer Data, reflects on the problem with upholding numerical diversity as a fix-all to inequality and oppression

August 2022 – Feature

Intersections

Illustration: Megan Drysdale

‘Y

ou can’t be what you can’t see’, so the saying goes. This perspective elevates the status of ‘numerical diversity’, a concept that jars like glass in my throat as I can no longer see this diversity without thinking of its dangers.

Many institutions – whether it is arts organisations, police forces, universities, health care providers or governments – have belatedly identified their role in building a fairer, more equitable society. But, too often, institutions respond to this challenge with an insufficient solution: numerical diversity. As an approach, numerical diversity imagines identity characteristics (woman, Black, disabled, gay, trans etc.) as something quantifiable that individuals bring to their roles, like a LinkedIn badge or an entry on a CV. Our brains are hardwired to assume that when something is measurable it becomes easier to understand and therefore solve. For institutions, mirroring the wider world seems like a sensible solution: if 5% of the population identifies as LGBT+ then it feels logical that 5% of their workforce should identify as LGBT+. Yet, if an institution only intends to mirror the world around them, it is not doing enough to change structural factors that perpetuate the status quo. As an ambition, numerical diversity is low stakes and unlikely to change institutional structures in ways that improve the experiences of those most disadvantaged by current ways of working.

The most racially diverse leadership race in UK political history My remaining embers of faith in numerical diversity were extinguished this summer during the jostling to become the next Prime Minister of the UK. A number of Black and Asian politicians announced their candidacy (Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch, to name a couple) making it the most racially diverse leadership contest in UK political history. The roster of leadership candidates was reflective of Boris Johnson’s Cabinet and ministerial appointments, which were far more racially diverse than the UK electorate but hindered rather than helped efforts to address racial injustice (most notably, the 2021 Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

“There is a broken link in the chain that joins numerical diversity and building a better society”

report, which challenged the existence of institutional racism). The leadership race quickly descended into an ugly exhibition of anti-immigrant and anti-trans talking points, a distraction from the more pressing cost of living crisis, climate emergency, and COVID-19 pandemic.

We see a similar story when we consider the numerical diversity of LGBT+ Conservative MPs. 7.3% of Conservative MPs openly identify as LGBT+ (a higher figure than the estimated proportion of LGBT+ people in the UK population) but this ‘over-representation’ did not prevent the party from abandoning reform of the Gender Recognition Act, hollowing-out proposals to ban conversion therapy practices and reneging on many of its promises in the 2018 LGBT Equality Action Plan.

Institutional intersectionality Numerical diversity sits uncomfortably with intersectional lives, those where a person’s experiences are shaped by multiple, overlapping identity strands. When quantified, intersectional experiences tend to produce numbers that are ‘too small’ or are unpublishable because they risk disclosing sensitive information about individuals.

For instance, if you are the only Pakistani bisexual in your workplace, the problem of ‘small numbers’ means your employer cannot present quantitative data on your experiences without revealing to others that the data is about you.

More worryingly, when compared with

population-level data, your presence might mirror (or even exceed) what one would expect to find in an institution of that size. When working with small numbers, the addition or removal of a single individual can make percentages jump up and down, painting an overly positive picture of the institution under investigation. In some sectors and industries, minoritised communities are numerically ‘over-represented’, such as LGBT+ communities (most often, gay men) in the arts. The nightmarish, though logical, next step for proponents of numerical diversity is a reduction of LGBT+ people in the arts or reduced funding for projects that target homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

Numerical diversity is not enough My research and writing focus on LGBTQ lives in the UK. But I don’t want more gay male faces in high places when those in power are a pawn to heteronormative and patriarchal interests. There is a broken link in the chain that joins numerical diversity and building a better society: someone who is a Person of Colour is not always an anti-racist, just as someone who is LGBT+ is not always opposed to homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.

One solution is a more intersectional approach to numerical diversity. If institutions look beyond mirroring the world and dedicate more attention to the intersecting forces of gender, race, sexuality and social class – for example, adopting methods that embrace messy categories – we might see less celebration of ‘diverse’ individuals who champion political ideas that inflict harm on their communities. Numerical diversity is not enough. The contingent and contextual concept of ‘diversity’ is not an endpoint – it is only a stepping stone to something bigger.

Kevin Guyan (@kevin_guyan) is a researcher and writer who investigates the intersection of data and identity. He is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (Bloomsbury Academic), which explores data about LGBTQ+ people in the UK and is published in paperback.

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United as One Summer is nearly done – but solidarity’s forever. We speak to queer activist groups about how they’re working towards collective political goals and why that means liberation for all of us.

Words: Paula Lacey Illustration: Viki Mladenovski

Steff Cave, founding member of Fossil Free Pride

These connections can be found everywhere: Prides collaborating with the police, flagrantly dismissing the persistent police brutality inflicted upon queer and PoC communities: the Conservative party’s barbaric refugee policy endangering queer asylum seekers; attacks on reproductive rights and restrictions on bodily autonomy affecting not only cis women but trans healthcare too. As put by a member of the Edinburgh branch of the International Workers of the World (IWW), which also took part in the protest, “The people who profit from the oppression of migrants, and queer people, and workers, who profit from the reproductive labour of women and the violence of the prison system, are all the same.” This understanding of intersectionality allows us to see the similarities between seemingly unrelated issues, and to organise against a common threat.

On the day of the march, the Bloc was a vibrant celebration of resistance, led by banners referencing the 1984-85 Lesbian and Gays Support the Miners movement, continuing the long history of queer solidarity with labour movements. In recognising the connected struggle of workers and queer people, and rejecting anti-strike comments made by Edinburgh Pride organisers, the Radical Bloc was able to honour what Steff described as “the real values of our liberation movement.”

Chloé, a protestor who suddenly joined the Radical Bloc after seeing what they stood for, says, “The overall sentiment of the group was one — 69 —

of camaraderie, and a different kind of Pride; a resistant Pride. One that felt all the anger and frustration at the world and was channeling it into a beautiful thing.” Others described the collective energy, anger and power they felt among the crowd, empowering people like Chloé to abandon the mainstream parade. Creating an open movement, which acknowledges intersectional issues and does not alienate potential allies, allows for these moments of spontaneous resistance. As said by a member of the GAF, “It shows that we don’t need some big organisation to tell us how to organise – we can do it ourselves.”

This collective empowerment is what stands to be gained by organising around a common enemy; when movements are united by what they share, their long-term political potential grows.

Steff explained: “We see a lot of fast-paced, fast-reacting movements to single issues [...] But when these campaigns end, there’s no sustainability afterwards, because the issue has been tackled, but not its roots. It’s the roots of the problems that link all of our struggles together.” It’s the way to effect lasting change.

Solidarity is more than a gesture, it’s coming together and celebrating the political strength that comes in choosing unity over division. It’s seeing ourselves in others, and understanding that our liberation cannot occur in isolation. As put by one member of the IWW, “When we understand that we’re all fighting for the same thing, we’ll be unstoppable.”

August 2022 – Feature

“It’s the roots of the problems that link all of our struggles together ”

Intersections

O

n 25 June, in one of many worrying heatwaves this summer, thousands descended on the capital to join Edinburgh’s annual LGBT+ Pride parade. This year, the crowd splintered – rather than marching from Holyrood to Bristo Square, a few hundred protestors diverted to Waverley Station to join striking railway workers on the picket line.

This breakaway group grew from the Radical Bloc, a collaboration between local activist groups who reject the hypocrisy of corporate pride. One member of Edinburgh’s Green Anti-Capitalist Front (GAF), a group involved in the Bloc, said “Pride marches have become parades, sponsored by businesses who only care about LGBT+ people as a way to make profit [...] A lot of us do not feel represented, and are angry about the capitalist co-option of people’s struggles.” These groups take an intersectional approach to queer organising – one which acknowledges the interconnectedness of queer liberation with other social justice causes, such as anti-racism, anti-capitalism, migrant justice, and disabled liberation – and they advocate for solidarity between activists campaigning on these issues.

There’s a growing distrust of mainstream, corporate-sponsored Pride celebrations within the queer community; the term ‘pinkwashing’ has emerged to describe the misappropriation of symbols of LGBT+ acceptance as an advertising vehicle, or a superficial gesture. This distrust extends to collaboration with fossil fuel companies, such as Edinburgh Pride’s acceptance of sponsorship from ExxonMobil, which was viewed by many as yet another betrayal.

Fossil Free Pride (FFP) is a collective of queer climate organisers campaigning against UK Prides accepting sponsorships from fossil fuel companies, or banks which invest in the industry. Steff Cave, a founding member, points out that the root causes of climate change (namely, a drive for profit and maintenance of the political status quo) also contribute to queer oppression. Steff says, “Queer folk are more likely to be poor, more likely to have precarious living situations, so just like other marginalised groups, we are more at threat of our lives being destabilised by the impacts of climate change.”

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Music

Connect Four We talk to the four curators behind this year’s Jupiter Rising, a festival that leads the way in showcasing new talent and inclusivity Interview: Maeve Hannigan

Curation is the key word here – every detail has been carefully thought through, and every artist chosen for a reason, all to create a refreshing and welcoming atmosphere with Scotland’s finest musicians. So who are the curators?

Alloysious Massaquoi Meet Guest curator and one third of Young Fathers, Alloysious Massaquoi. Massaquoi’s Saturday lineup blurs the often restrictive and exclusive lines of genre and spins artists from threads of dance, spoken word, performance, soul and house music. “I’m excited for the crowd to experience the creative work of the artists I’ve chosen,” he says. “My advice to them is: come ready, be open and take a chance.”

From the Glasgow African Balafon Orchestra, Mychelle, and Chizu Nnamdi, to Distruction Boyz and The Dylema Collective, this space is taken up by those not necessarily similar but united in spirit. “I think it’s evident that the acts that I’ve picked are quite varied. There’s a reason for that – it’s unexpected but it also makes things more exciting.

“I wanted to set the tone and keep within the spirit of the festival, whose uniqueness lies on its boutique scale against the backdrop of an incredibly unique landscape.

For me, the acts I curated accentuate the singularity of that space.”

Photo: Andrew Cawley

August 2022 – Feature

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here are plenty of small festivals across Scotland that gather the magic of wandering Scots, woodland trips, and singing rain.

Yet, not all are set against art installations that emerge from the land and lean onto the clouds.

With an audience capacity of just 1000 people, Jupiter Rising offers itself as a moment waiting in the midst for all ages.

It separates itself from the bigguns, by leading in the healthiest way yet. The lineup doesn’t feel top-heavy for a start. It isn’t there to ensure you buy tickets because of one act, but is curated as a balanced offering. You may know all of the artists, you may know none, but the beauty of it is that it doesn’t matter. There is fun to be had for those who wish to find it.

With Tracey Emin’s latest installation, I Lay Here For You, nestled in the woodland, and a lake stretching its body over the delicate hills, Jupiter Rising brings forth the artistic programming that Jupiter Artland has installed throughout the year.

Artists from the festival have been asked to submit their own artistic contributions – amongst those are the Arts Foundation award-winner Tanoa Sasraku, interdisciplinary artist Rosa-Johan Uddoh and a new commission from Young Fathers’ Alloysious Massaquoi.

Auntie Flo

Auntie Flo Alongside Shoot Your Shot, producer, DJ and sound designer Brian d’Souza, aka Auntie Flo, will be curating the late-night stage, where ravers will breathe life into the sculpture park and dance across conceptual lines. Festivals

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are what d’Souza describes as the making of his DJing career. “I’ve been going to festivals since I was 15,” he says. “T in the Park was my baptism of fire, three years in a row in the late 90s and as a 15-year-old the first time I heard techno on a proper [sound] system.”

Huntleys & Palmers’ Andrew Thomson and ChileanGerman techno producer Matias Aguayo are joining Auntie Flo on the Friday night. But the party is what d’Souza insists is first and foremost: “The parties I enjoy most are all about unpredictability, whether that’s in the music or performances or stage design.

That’s why Matias Aguayo was the perfect choice for me – he’s an entertainer, who’s always done things his way. He pushes the boundaries of what an electronic live show can be, often jumping off the stage and performing/dancing his way around the crowd. He’s a true original.

“The only way a party works is with the crowd and artists becoming in sync with each other – one doesn’t work without the other. Too often the DJs are on a big stage and totally disconnected from

“We’re here, we’re queer and we’re gonna bring ye a beltin’ party!”

Bonzai Bonner, Shoot Your Shot

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Photo: Tiu Makkonen

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Bonzai Bonner

Photo: Rianne White Alloysious Massaquoi

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Jupiter Rising takes place at Jupiter Artland, nr. Edinburgh, 26-28 Aug jupiterrising.art

“The only way a party works is with the crowd and artists becoming in sync with each other” Auntie Flo Photo: Curse These Eyes

Hen Hoose All female and non-binary songwriting collective Hen Hoose was founded by Tamara Schlesinger (who also performs under the moniker MALKA), the guest curator of music on Friday. The Hen Hoose’s lineup consists of female and non-binary artists, headlined by Kathryn Joseph and featuring Poster Paints, Kaputt and AMUNDA. “For me, festivals as an artist are all about finding new fans and having the opportunity to play to people that wouldn’t have heard your music before,” Schlesinger says.

Hen Hoose’s growth as a gender non-conforming collective, inspiring talent and community, has translated into Schlesinger’s carefully selected curation – a platform for lesser known artists to feel welcomed and appreciated. “As a punter, festivals are about escapism and sheer enjoyment and to kind of be in the moment,” she says. “We know the issue of gender inequality with festival

Shoot Your Shot Renowned Glasgow night Shoot Your Shot take over the stage for Saturday’s late-night dwellers.

The lineup is not to be missed with intoxicating energy from gender non-conforming artists including FRAN.K, ISO YSO, Mi$$ Co$mix, Purina Alpha, Spent, SHREK 666 and Shoot Your Shot founder Bonzai Bonner. But what makes a night one to remember for Glasgow’s favourite party host? “My favourite festivals are ones that can connect with local communities and crews,” Bonner says.

“Grassroots festivals have so much more heart, depth and meaning than commercially-clad dross.”

What is it that these experienced party throwers hope to achieve with their lineup? “Showcasing world-class players we have right here on our doorstep.” Why Jupiter Rising? “The festival is a perfect size along with being placed in one of the most unique settings for a weekend party. We are really excited to be part of it and connect with the other crews and artists who are involved.”

What makes Shoot Your Shot’s programme special? “Everyone involved resides here in Scotland and it’s a true testament to the brilliant queer and local grassroots scene that is thriving and continuously growing despite the difficult political climate our community is experiencing in this country.”

As a connection that is key for every curator here, what is it that Shoot Your Shot want to capture in the relationship between the artists and the crowd? “We’re here, we’re queer and we’re gonna bring ye a beltin’ party!”

MALKA

August 2022 – Feature

the crowd. So, I’m expecting a really friendly, communal atmosphere with no barriers and a load of fun.”

lineups, and it’s been really amazing for me to have the opportunity to try and get a balanced lineup. In fact, this is more than balanced I think in terms of the lineup and curation.

“I suppose what I want to achieve in my programme is visibility for the talent we have. This is kind of a platform for these artists who are just incredible. I think I really wanted to be able to offer them an opportunity to be seen.” She continues: “Something like Jupiter Rising where [they] already stand for diversity and equality means that programming a lineup such as this has been easy and accepted. And I wonder how accepted it would have been with other festivals, to be honest.”

Music

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Deeper Listening With her immersive sound installation D Ý R A taking place at Summerhall this August, we catch up with Su Shaw, aka SHHE, to find out more Interview: Tony Inglis

August 2022 – Feature

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he longer you listen to certain sounds, you start to pick up these subtle intricacies, different rhythms and changes in the environment. It’s about making a plan but – like fishing – sometimes you go out and it’s incredibly active, and you hear exciting things, and then other times you’re there for hours and don’t get anything back. There’s something powerful about letting go of control and being open to what you might find.”

Dundee-based multihyphenate artist Su Shaw, who makes music under the moniker SHHE, is talking about her practice of collecting found sounds. Field recordings, if recent explorations into the technique are to be followed, are music, material and method. But what is missing from that assessment is experience, something more metaphysical and personal. That’s what imbues Shaw’s latest work, D Ý R A, an immersive sound installation at Summerhall throughout this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, part of this year’s Made In Scotland programme.

Locating, harvesting and collecting field recordings has become a daily routine, says Shaw, but D Ý R A is a site-specific recreation of her trips to the Dýrafjörður fjord in the chilly Westfjords of Iceland, a place Shaw has returned to multiple times over the last few years to develop her artistic practice. It’s a place that evidently means a lot to her, and her relationship with the fjord has continued as her musical work has become increasingly honed and minimalist, from the more traditional structures of her work as Panda Su to the stripped-back electronica of her self-titled LP. D Ý R A – a spiritual companion to another sound installation that envelopes the outer strictures of the V&A in Dundee – deals in ambient soundscapes and musique concrète, and is inspired by sound spatialisation, the sonorous fjords, and Shaw’s time absorbing Pauline

Oliveros’ writings on “deep listening” and reading Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s observations on how “listening begins with being silent.”

“The project was always about exploring a slightly different approach to making music and recording,” says Shaw. “And Iceland was perfect for that. I remember the first time I was sitting there with this place’s silence, feeling nervous initially because it was the first time I’d spent so much time somewhere it was so quiet, and it really got me thinking about how we perceive sound and the difference between hearing and listening. I became interested in exploring ways to sonically map the fjord.”

The uncertain atmosphere created by lockdown also contributed to D Ý R A’s current form.

“Everything had a question mark over it. How did you tour a record now? I wasn’t sure how to answer those questions. I started thinking about how I can feel part of a performance without physically being there. Installation has been a useful way of doing that.

“I think my ears became quite sensitive. You perceived sounds so much more easily when traffic was removed, and suddenly cities were a lot quieter. I found where I would go for a walk along the riverside, I used to quite easily be able to have a conversation with someone, and now I find it quite overwhelming. My listening became much more attuned to the sounds around us and how to use them, and that fed its way into this work.”

Shaw looked to make music from sounds closer to home too, informing the work now playing in the tunnels and archways of the exterior of the V&A, which uses hydrophonic recordings and other found sounds from the surrounding waterways and the nearby River Tay. The work is programmed to respond to changing conditions in real time. Inside the museum, compositions from — 72 —

legendary ambient musician Midori Takada play.

Both works are the first time the institution has commissioned bespoke sound art for the space.

“There’s so many other things happening in the city, sometimes it’s hard to hear the sounds that are right there,” says Shaw. “And [at the V&A], there are already so many – this is just a way to bring those out, to encourage deeper listening to open up to what isn’t so obvious. And because it’s environmentally responsive, what you’re hearing, and how, is different every time you’re in the space. It’s a bit of a collaboration with the wind.”

Going back to D Ý R A, its appearance at the Fringe – which Shaw hopes will be a respite from the frenzied atmosphere of the festival – will be the second time in front of an audience, after being presented as an outdoor installation in a disused oil tank in the Icelandic village of Þingeyri.

It isn’t an exclusively sonic experience – as with much of Shaw’s work, numerous collaborators have worked with her to create a visually stimulating component. But, along with her piece at the V&A, it is a continued extension of her investigation into the practicalities of the listening experience. “I wonder now if I’ll think about this for all projects: what are the spaces we hadn’t in the past considered to be suitable for performance, and why there’s a prescribed idea of how sound should sound and where and how we listen to or perceive it. That’s what’s excited me most.”

D Ý R A runs at Summerhall, Edinburgh, 3-28 Aug, times vary SHHE’s V&A installation runs in the archway beneath the V&A Dundee, until 26 Sep, daily between 1-11pm madeinscotlandshowcase.com vam.ac.uk/dundee

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THE SKINNY

The Complete Picture Following the release of two brilliant records, and ahead of their appearance at Summerhall this August, we catch up with The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman

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“Any time anyone likes a record, it’s like, ‘Oh no, do I have to keep doing that to please these people?’

You have to say no to those impulses” Tamara Lindeman, The Weather Station

August 2022 – Feature

The songs on How Is It... are so treasured by Lindeman that she briefly considered making them a highly limited, vinyl-only release, before finally deciding that they deserved the same exposure as their siblings on Ignorance. “Ignorance is so forward, and this is the retreat,” is how Lindeman frames it. “There are songs on How Is It... that complete the picture that was started on Ignorance.”

Recorded largely in a live setting, with Lindeman and band performing in the moment, the goal was to tinker with the recording process as little as possible. “There is a sense from some records, a sensation of floating, or of being untethered from everything, this eeriness. I was thinking a lot about air and water and this sensation of floating, that was why I didn’t want drums to ground it. Even though it was a challenge and scary, I really tried to capture something of that live moment. That record to me feels so complete, it’s very much itself, which I really like.”

Lindeman’s willingness to embrace unconventional production choices and leftfield song arrangements is no doubt linked to her association with the experimental music scene in Toronto, to which she remains affectionately tied. Largely focused around the legendary DIY space Tranzac Club and names such as Sandro Perri and Jennifer Castle, the city remains home to a broad range of underground artistic styles and Lindeman continues to draw her band members from the city.

“It’s a big, complex scene,” she says. “There are virtuosic musicians, and it’s not really about pursuing success. There is a lot of avant-garde, very strange music happening. I feel really lucky that the scene has been so nurturing, it’s very collaborative and open. It’s the reason I’m still in Toronto.”

For now, Lindeman remains committed to following her own instincts, bolstered by the fact that there is now a long-term payoff to her years of hard work. “Any time anyone likes a record, it’s like, ‘Oh no, do I have to keep doing that to please these people?’ But you have to say no to all of those impulses, because they will just lead you astray. What I do next has to have its own purpose to exist. I think both of these records really had a purpose, and that’s why they’re good.”

Photo: Brendan Ko

very music fan is familiar with the plight of the great underappreciated artist that releases record after record of beautifully expressive, personal music, only for the outside world to perennially look the other way. For a number of years, it appeared that this might have been the fate of Tamara Lindeman, the Toronto singer-songwriter known professionally as The Weather Station. Across four albums from 2009 to 2017, her idiosyncratic and experimental folk, although celebrated locally, was largely overlooked beyond a small, select band of loyal followers. And then, in early 2021, it all changed.

Ignorance, Lindeman’s fifth full-length studio release, took off. Received with rapturous acclaim across the board, it finally saw The Weather Station elevated to a new platform. Its rich, luscious, woodwind-adorned arrangements, paired with Lindeman’s lyrics – on the one hand intimately personal, on the other flying a brazenly political and ecological flag – hit a nerve with audiences.

“It’s what you hope for, right?!” says Lindeman, unable to contain the broadest of smiles as we speak over Zoom. “You work hard and try to make the best work and [hope] that people will care. But it was much beyond what I was expecting. I’m still absorbing it, honestly. It all happened so fast, I have to take time to think back and remember that happened and to be grateful.”

Lindeman moved quickly in the light of this newfound success, releasing follow-up album How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars just a year later. The newer album, made up of songs written and developed at the same time as those on Ignorance, is a very different animal, however.

Where its predecessor revelled in a maximalist sheen, this album is as delicate as porcelain, its gentle, drum-free arrangements lending it a precious, personal closeness.

It would, at first glance, appear to be a ballsy move, with Lindeman deliberately resisting the temptation to reach for the pop spotlight at the moment that it finally shone upon her, but she insists that the plan for the two albums was in place before she learned of the reception that Ignorance was to earn. “It wasn’t intentional,” she explains. “I had no idea what would happen with Ignorance when I made How Is It..., I just wanted to record those songs in that way. I really don’t think that I had any strategy in how it would come across, it was just a very pure desire to make that record that way.”

Music

Interview: Max Pilley

The Weather Station play Summerhall, Edinburgh, 31 Aug theweatherstation.net

The Weather Station

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THE SKINNY

Push and Pull Ahead of her show at the Edinburgh International Festival this August, we catch up with Brooklyn-based Pakistani musician Arooj Aftab Interview: Anita Bhadani

August 2022 – Feature

Music

Photo: @alxmvh

“the year’s biggest musical revelation”, with many noting her skilful and idiosyncratic blending of influences spanning from jazz fusion to neo-Sufi; electronica to Hindustani classical.

“There are threads, intangible threads that you see between these genres, like jazz modals and Pakistani classical music, and North Indian classical music. Same with folk harp, or classical guitar. The threads are there and I can hear them. I’m not like writing a paper about their ethnography,” she laughs. “But what I am doing with my music is holding up, pointing towards those threads. I think that’s what people subconsciously recognise, and it surprises them, and it makes them feel like they are listening to something new, but Arooj Aftab something that’s familiar. And I don’t know – I just feel like that’s a magical thing.”

Indeed, Aftab’s work has connected with audiences across the world. In a lot of ways she sees her craft as a musician as knowing how to “translate life into song, in the same way that perfumers can translate certain things, feelings, emotions into perfume.” She adds: “My music is kind of nostalgic and has a quality – like a light – not by weight, but actual light itself. It has these qualities that are kind of airy and circular.

Nostalgic but also melancholic. And that’s kind of the way I view the world, you know? There’s a beautiful sadness inside of it. I try to put all of those things into my music.”

This year, Spotify approached Aftab to cover a song as part of a ‘Spotify Singles’ selection which saw all the Best New Artist Grammy nominees cover a song by the previous nominees. Aftab opted for a haunting cover of Rosalía’s DI MI NOMBRE. “As I was looking at all the best new artist nominees since the 50s, I saw that Rosalía is the only woman who was nominated, who is not singing in English. That felt really powerful,” she

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rooj Aftab’s music holds you spellbound.

Stillness melds with poetry; dreamy electronic trance encircles jazz arrangements. Throughout, honeyed, poised vocals draw the listener deeper into the tapestry of her compositions as they slowly unfold. This August sees Aftab bring her live show to the Edinburgh International Festival. Living in New York in different communities of live music, and with a background in jazz, playing live is one of her favourite things to do, she tells us. “I am very excited – that definitely goes without saying. I think that the record translates really beautifully live. We’ve been playing together for a long time and have a great ensemble of musicians who are really world class live performers.”

It comes as little surprise that Aftab’s distinctive sound has been met with universal acclaim. 2021 saw her nominated for two Grammy Awards, scooping up the Best Global Music Performance award for her song Mohabbat.

Meanwhile, her third album Vulture Prince, released in the same year, was dubbed by critics as

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“Urdu is a romantic language, it is a minimalist language – it tells a lot without being too wordy” Arooj Aftab says. “I also saw all the legends of the world nominated – like Mariah Carey... I was like, I don’t know if I’m about to just cover a song in English suddenly, that’s really American – that just feels really strange.”

Aftab professes to being a fan of Rosalía and a “huge flamenco head... I’ve spent a lot of time listening to flamenco music like Silvia Pérez Cruz, Estrella Morente, Lole Montoya. Given that Rosalía isn’t doing purely flamenco but has studied it, and it’s really prominent in some of her earlier works, it just felt like, let me do that. Let me challenge myself and see if we can make this sound good.” (It does) In her own music Aftab sings in Urdu, apart from on Last Night where she sings: ‘Last night my beloved was like the moon / So beautiful / So beautiful like the moon... / Even brighter than the sun’. Reflecting on the role of language in her own work, she says there’s a “push and pull” between languages for her. “It’s hard to be between two languages where one is English, which I speak very proficiently and all the time, and can really express my complex thoughts and emotions in my life.

“Then there’s Urdu, which is so poetic and so deep, and so capable of being the language of the songs. I am not as proficient at Urdu, because I just am not around it that much living [in Brooklyn]. But Urdu is a romantic language, it is a minimalist language – it tells a lot without being too wordy.”

As for future projects in the works, Aftab tells us that early next year she has a jazz trio record coming out with collaborators Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily. With recording having wrapped up in 2019, Aftab laughs: “I’m just like – can we do a listening session because I don’t even remember what it sounds like! But no, I think it’s good.”

In the meantime, Scottish audiences can look forward to seeing Aftab take the stage in Edinburgh this August. “I think they should just come and have some wine with us… There’s going to be jokes and there will be sad, sexy, sad music.

It’s going to be a good time.”

Arooj Aftab plays Leith Theatre, Edinburgh, 21 Aug, as part of Edinburgh International Festival aroojaftabmusic.com

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Rule Breakers Synth-pop duo Sylvan Esso are turning over a new leaf. Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn discuss collaboration, creativity, independence, and new album No Rules Sandy Music

Interview: Peter Simpson

That desire to work quickly and reflect themselves without second-guessing comes through on an album that constantly twists and turns, and sees Sylvan Esso draw on a wider sonic palette than ever. Opening track Moving is an abrasive slice of glitch-pop, Echo Party leans on a bouncy UK Garage beat, Alarm throws in some extremely wubby acid techno flourishes. There’s also room for fluttery jazz, danceable house riffs and some harsh industrial crunches, as well as the big melodies and pop sensibilities that have become the band’s hallmark.

“I think it’s just a confidence thing,” Sanborn says. “Maybe before I would have masked those things, worrying that they were too referential.

Now it feels like, ‘No, I want those reference points’. These feel like we’re pointing at things that speak to our experience, and the idea of getting to recontextualise those sounds that we all know is really exciting to me.

“It’s cool that we could get more referential sonically while it also feels like the weirdest thing we’ve ever made. You know what I mean? That’s a weird polar opposite thing.”

Lyrically, No Rules Sandy is a more direct record than before. Meath’s vocals are filled with references to shaking heads, the rules of life, the desire to be seen and taken care of, crafted with an intention to be more open and truthful. “In a lot of ways,” she says, “the lyrics are embarrassingly honest and more exposing than I normally let myself show other people. But I’m very proud of them.”

Yet for such a direct and immediate album, No Rules Sandy still feels remarkably grounded and situated within the duo’s trademark sound.

Part of that comes from a series of interludes laced through the album with snippets of voicemails, vocal warm-ups, ambient noise and conversations between friends.

“The process was so collagey and intimate,” Sanborn tells us.

“The more songs we wrote, the more we realised, ‘Oh, we’re not going to hand this mix off to anyone’. This is Photo: Bobby Strickland

August 2022 – Feature

“W

e’re on vacation,” Amelia Meath beams as she and Nick Sanborn, her partner in Sylvan Esso, swivel their laptop to show off a lovely Cape Cod view.

“Working, obviously…” adds Sanborn, somewhat underselling the situation.

Before autumn’s end, the Durham, North Carolina synth-pop duo will have three new releases out between them. They also have a record label and recording studio to tend to, and a host of festivals and outdoor gigs lined up across their various projects. As Meath says: “I think next time, we should just do one thing, and only do that. For a year.”

Yet No Rules Sandy, their fourth studio album, emerged somewhat unexpectedly from a January road trip to Los Angeles. Meath and Sanborn had a packed schedule lined up before COVID made a reappearance, so with a house in LA and time on their hands, they started writing.

Meath says: “The more songs we wrote, the more we realised that we were making an album, and it was going to be done so quickly and without half of the hand-wringing and worrying that we’d been doing. It was as if we gave ourselves permission, kind of, but also the songs were just appearing. We realised, ‘Why slow down? Why say no when we could just say yes and have more fun?’”

“It felt like we were finally reaping the rewards of all this work we’ve been doing,” Sanborn says. “I was like, ‘Oh, let’s just sit down and have fun together.’” “For me, the big lesson was just ‘chill out’,” Meath says, as the pair share a chuckle. “Calm down, just have fun. You literally have the most fun job ever, just do it and stop being all sad about it!”

Sulvan Esso

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“We shouldn’t only be allowed to make the things that are going to make a lot of money. I hate that shit” Nick Sanborn, Sylvan Esso going to be kind of raw and feel kind of taped together. We wanted that feeling because that was the emotional feeling we were getting from the songs.”

“There’s a particular moment on the record,” Meath says, referring to (Betty’s, May 4, 2022), “and that is from the night that we finished it.

It was the last thing that we put in and it was right before we listened to it for the last time and sent it away.” Sanborn adds: “We literally time-stamped it.”

The other element that pulls the record together is its use of recurring Sylvan Esso collaborators like composer Gabriel Kahane and jazz musician Sam Gendel. The ability to, as Meath puts it, think about which person can make the sound they want rather than the instrument they need, was solidified on the band’s WITH tour in 2019. Sylvan Esso expanded to a ten-person band including the members of Mountain Man, Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak, and Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughan. “A big lesson there,” Sanborn says, “was that the more people we bring in, the more it feels like us.”

That big tent approach is perhaps most noticeable in two recent projects. Psychic Hotline is the band’s own record label, releasing new material and reissues from its artists and aiming to work differently from the extractive industry norm.

Betty’s, the duo’s studio, is set in North Carolina woodlands and aims to be a hub for the community of artists in Meath and Sanborn’s orbit.

Meath is reflective but passionate about the need for bands in Sylvan Esso’s position to make steps towards change. “When you’re in a band in general, your job becomes your life – it’s a 24/7 enterprise,” she says. “I started realising, particularly during the pandemic, that because we in some ways are the authors and creators of our own life in this situation, you need to create the

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Photo: Bobby Strickland

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Sulvan Esso

are going to make a lot of money. I hate that shit.”

“Yeah, and it’s trash,” Meath adds. “All of my favourite things didn’t make any money,” she says, to a loud ‘YES’ from Sanborn. “They make money now, now that a lot of people know about them.”

Sanborn continues: “There are entire genres that don’t work in the current industry model, you know what I mean? That doesn’t mean that work doesn’t deserve to exist, it doesn’t mean there aren’t people who love it. It comes back to that thing – the more rope you give someone, the more they’re going to do with it.”

As for those other projects we mentioned at the start, Meath has just released a “stunt yodelling record” with fellow Mountain Man member Alexandra Sauser-Monnig as their new band, The A’s (“it’s all folk traditionals but the world is so whimsical and silly, and slightly menacing”).

Sanborn, on the other hand is putting out “fucking heaters”, as Meath describes them, under his Made Of Oak moniker. His new collaboration with North Carolina producer GRRL has resulted in one track so far, Inertia, which he describes as “big time, aggressive bass music”.

The traditional folk and the foundation-crushing beats, the intimate moment-in-time album and the big picture planning – Sylvan Esso are covering — 79 —

“I want to feel good as much as I can” Amelia Meath, Sylvan Esso a lot of bases, and having fun while they’re at it.

For Meath, No Rules Sandy harks back to the band’s early days, when the pair first teamed up to rework a Mountain Man track. “It was just us,” she says, “being like, ‘Well, what can we do? What does it look like when we make music?”

Sanborn adds: “It was all about that feeling of ecstatic delight that comes from that situation where you’re ping-ponging an idea back and forth…”

“Instead of plotting and planning,” says Meath.

Sanborn laughs: “Yeah, even when the song is about, like, horribly sad shit…”

“Oh…” Meath says, “they’re always sad!”

No Rules Sandy is out on 12 Aug via Loma Vista Fruit by The A’s and Inertia by GRRL x Made of Oak are out now via Psychic Hotline sylvanesso.com

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environment that’s a place that you would be proud of within your work and in your life.

“This industry can be incredibly isolating, particularly when you’re turning the artistic pursuit into capitalism and then trying to win at it. It’s really easy to accidentally be like that, and I’m not interested in that anymore. It’s not a way to spread joy, or to feel good, and I want to feel good as much as I can.” In the same vein, Meath describes Sylvan Esso’s expansion into the label and studio as expressions of a desire to be “truly independent”.

“By truly independent,” she says, “I mean supported by a community that we are members of and are constantly creating. That meant creating infrastructure that was able to sustain itself, and also able to foster the kind of creativity outside of striving to win. Creativity that was for exploration, as opposed to monetary gain.

“That being said, it’s all an experiment… and those are two businesses that have their own LLCs [Limited Liability Company]. We can talk about it as much as we want to, like this is us trying to reach beyond capitalism. And at the same time, we’re like, ‘Oh no, money! What do we do?’”

Sanborn adds: “It’s so hard and expensive to make things, it should just be easier. And we shouldn’t only be allowed to make the things that

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THE SKINNY

Pitt’s A Knockout As the pioneering Leith street food market closes its doors before a move to Granton, our Food editor celebrates the life and times of The Pitt Food

Words: Peter Simpson

Image: courtesy of The Pitt

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‘The atmosphere, the conviviality, the *vibe* has always been one of The Pitt’s secret weapons’ up with a handful of kegs and sold out of beer by mid-afternoon. “I was amazed from the start how it had immediate appeal,” he tells us over email.

That appeal is built on an excellent range of food and drink, and on a homespun, grassroots charm. Is The Pitt the most polished place in the world? No. For a long time it was completely open-air with really basic facilities and not very much room to mill about – you haven’t lived until you’ve tried to eat a taco with someone else’s elbow halfway up your jumper.

Yet the atmosphere, the conviviality, the *vibe* has always been one of The Pitt’s secret weapons. You’ll spot regulars who turn up every weekend, you’ll see someone from your new favourite band working the bar, you’ll get a knowing nod from a guy who’s probably sold you a bit — 81 —

The Pitt, 125 Pitt St, Leith, Thu-Sun until 28 Aug The Pitt reopens at 20 W Shore Rd, Granton, in spring 2023 thepitt.co.uk

August 2022 – Feature

t’s a wintery night in February 2019, and The Skinny has just invented a new sport – snowball racing. Basically, you stand around in the snow at The Pitt, keeping warm by the fire in the courtyard with your buddies. You challenge a pal to make a snowball, then you place them on the grate.

The last snowball remaining wins, the only interruptions coming when staff tend the fire and ask, with a mixture of confusion and what we’ll assume is begrudging respect, what the hell you’re up to.

Since opening in an old car repair yard on Pitt Street in 2015, The Pitt has been a hub for a street food movement that was, at the time, still in its ‘yearning to be a real thing’ phase. Local government bureaucracy, niggling tech issues and the weather would be enough to give any trader cause for pause, but The Pitt came along with solutions to those problems. Running from a fixed location with the basic infrastructure to enable vans to sell their wares, from a position within a community of peers eager to learn and collaborate, The Pitt was able to build a critical mass of people interested in this kind of food and corral them into a garage forecourt off Ferry Road.

And those people came quickly. Andrew ‘Barney’ Barnett of Barney’s Beer has been involved with The Pitt from literally day one, when he turned

too much fried chicken in recent weeks. The Pitt soon became the place to go if you wanted a fun time and some interesting food, each visit giving a new van to look out for on your travels.

In her book Street Food Scotland, Ailidh Forlan begins by describing The Pitt as the “gateway drug” of Scotland’s street food scene, “an addictive, stimulative atmosphere I just couldn’t, and still can’t, get enough of.” The Pitt was able to bring everyone together, show them a good time, and open their eyes to the possibilities of street food in Scotland. And those possibilities kept expanding – The Pitt moved into the adjoining warehouse in 2019 which added loads more space and quality of life improvements (more toilets! A proper front door!). When the Scottish Street Food Awards rolled up in the same year, the event sprawled all the way out into Pitt Street in a real carnival atmosphere. “It was amazing to see what could be achieved from modest means,” Andrew Barnett tells us. “All those involved were small businesses, artists and amazing staff collaborating to make it happen.”

When The Pitt returns in 2023, it will do so in a completely different guise from its forecourt origins.

Part of the redevelopment of the waterfront at Granton, the new space will be, to put it bluntly, fucking massive. There’ll be room for over 20 vendors, space for 1200 visitors at a time, and an events space that’s basically the same size as The Liquid Room. That’s all for the future, but the legacy of Pitt Street can be seen across Scotland right now.

That legacy is visible in every Scottish festival field this summer, where street food vans are throwing out inventive and exciting food that would have blown your mind ten years ago. It’s in grassroots street food markets and events across the country, inspired by The Pitt’s success and with a host of great vans to call up and work alongside; it’s in big money developments trying to copy the vibe of The Pitt and generally missing the point but still having a nice time.

The Pitt’s initial run may be coming to an end, but we reckon they have more than a snowball’s chance of doing something great once again

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Over the Borderline Travel

Beyond Borders is back for its tenth year of literary and political talks against a backdrop of rolling Peeblesshire hills Words: Laurie Presswood

August 2022 — Feature

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fter a two year absence, it’s time for the return of Beyond Borders – Traquair House’s yearly assemblage dedicated to small-nation dialogue and cultural exchange. The festival follows the model that has seen such popularity in Ireland (the likes of Donegal’s MacGill Summer School, or Wexford’s Kennedy Summer School spring to mind), of a couple of days filled with panels and interviews on the political and the literary.

Traquair House is thought to be Scotland’s oldest continuously inhabited house, built on the site of hunting grounds used by medieval Scottish kings (of more interest to modern-day visitors might be the Traquair House Brewery, which is located directly beneath the estate chapel, and specialises in rich dark ales). Traquair itself is a small village nestled in the rolling glens of Peeblesshire, and the festival’s programmers juxtapose conversations about the nature of global politics and modern-day conflict with activities that capitalise on the calming scenery and natural surroundings, such as storytelling walks in the woods, tea-making from the wild herbs and plants growing in the grounds, and a meditation session led by Rajesh Rai (meditation expert by day, human rights barrister also by day).

On day one alone, the programme features discussions on the Scottish years of Mary Queen of Scots (the ill-fated monarch spent a short stay in

Traquair House in 1566), the rise of the festival, and what’s next the leadership of the US and the United Nations in a world dominated by conflict – for this, the BBC’s Razia Iqbal will be interviewing Salman Ahmed, Assistant Secretary of State for the US Department of State, and David Harland, Executive Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue.

Later, in what is set to be a highlight of the festival programme, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera will interview Irvine Welsh about his new book The Long Knives – a detective novel of sorts that is the sequel to 2008’s Crime (itself a sequel to 1998’s Filth). Though anyone reading this will be well acquainted with Welsh’s work, Guardiola-Rivera is by no means a less interesting figure – nowadays an author, philosopher and lecturer in international law at Birkbeck, in the 90s he led a Colombian student movement that precipitated a wave of constitutional reform across Latin America.

Following Detective Ray Lennox as he works the case of an MP murdered in a Leith Warehouse, The Long Knives touches on corruption, politics and the media – all topics these two are sure to dive into at length.

Then, Colin Grant will be giving a talk on WritersMosaic, a new website and initiative launched by the Royal Literary Fund that serves as a showcase of the work of writers from a variety of voices and cultures across the UK (hence the — 82 —

mosaic). He’ll also be talking about his upcoming book, I’m Black So You Don’t Have to Be, a memoir that germinated from his 2018 essay of the same name. This expanded work promises to be a powerful intergenerational family portrait, examining the evolution of racial politics and the Black British experience.

Day two will delve further into current affairs, with Alistair Campbell appearing to talk about the Blair years and Brexit, discussions on the legacy of COP26, and a panel of 1325 Beyond Borders Women Peacemaking fellows, who will talk about their experiences as women on the frontline of conflict prevention and resolution. What’s been a long intermission in the run-up to the festival’s tenth iteration is finally at an end, and it’s returning better than ever.

Beyond Borders takes place in Traquair House 2728 Aug. To reach Traquair House from Edinburgh in 2 hours, get to train to Galashiels followed by the X62 bus to Innerleithen, or alternatively hitch the X62 all the way there – either way you’ll have a walk of about 20 minutes at the other end. If you’re travelling from Glasgow, Dundee, or further afield, your best bet is to travel first to Edinburgh and then catch the bus or train. If you’re coming for the weekend, there are many hotels and B&Bs that can act as a base camp during your stay.

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Food

August 2022 – Feature

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Marchw 2020

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Album of the Month

Album of the Month Julia Jacklin — PRE PLEASURE Released 26 August

by Transgressive Records rrrrr Listen to: Ignore Tenderness, End of a Friendship

willing to be saved / Ignore the tenderness you crave / Be naughty, but don’t misbehave’.

Lead single I Was Neon is the grittiest of the album’s tracks. Distorted guitars lead the way in what is the most upbeat juncture of the record and shades of Brian Jonestown Massacre peek through its uber cool lead guitar riff and solos. The brilliantly titled Too In Love To Die brings back Jacklin’s intimacy once more and it continues into Less of a Stranger, where she confides in wishing that her own mother felt like less of a stranger.

Echoes of The Velvet Underground track Heroin can be heard in Magic, where spattered guitars and folky undertones balance on a progression of two chords that evokes a slightly psychedelic tinge to the album. Be Careful With Yourself brings things back to the present with its polished sonics and empathetic aura before 60s style tremolo guitars and delicate strings on album closer End of a Friendship round off proceedings in fine style.

This is a delight to listen to on a sunny Sunday afternoon catching the last remnants of summer. Authentic, intricate and wholeheartedly personal, Julia Jacklin brims with poise at every turn on PRE PLEASURE. [Jamie Wilde]

Read more online: theskinny.co.uk/music/reviews/albums

Sylvan Esso No Rules Sandy

Pale Waves Unwanted

Hot Chip Freakout/Release

RRRrr “an enjoyable and affecting listen”

RRRRr “unapologetically punk-rock”

RRRrr “doesn’t quite deliver”

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August 2022 — Review

Bringing her notable brand of direct lyricism and playful nature into her third album is the beautifully talented Melbourne-via-Blue Mountains artist, Julia Jacklin. She describes the recording process of PRE PLEASURE as frantic in a press release – but its end result is anything but.

Floating between tenderness and indie looseness, Jacklin’s all-round abilities as a singer-songwriter come to the fore here. Her lyrical patterns rarely follow expected routes, her minimal arrangements bring you to the heart of every breath and, overall, her music exudes maturity, making for a poignant progression from her previous work.

Themes of religion, sexual consent and relationships are explored in Jacklin’s lyrics while sonically, a purposeful step away from her familiar guitar sounds lets keys take centre stage on a lot of the tracks, Love, Try Not to Let Go being one of them. But the star of the show is Ignore Tenderness where deeply vulnerable lyrics contrast with blissful strings and vocal harmonies for a song that encapsulates Jacklin’s musical aesthetic (and the album’s theme of pleasure) in a nutshell: ‘Leave no room for doubt that you are brave / A little leaf catching a wave / Strong but

Albums

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Cass McCombs Heartmind ANTI-, 19 Aug rrrrr

August 2022 — Review

Listen to: Karaoke, Unproud Warrior

The Chats Get Fucked Bargain Bin Records, 19 Aug rrrrr Listen to: 6L GTR, Ticket Inspector, The Price of Smokes

Heartmind melds seemingly opposing forces right from its very title, something continually seen throughout the album. Inspired partly from the loss of close friends, the mood is rarely sombre. More it seems to have galvanised McCombs’ focus, adding a heft of sincerity to his occasionally flippant style.

However, the above point is not well supported by either of the album’s bookending songs: Music Is Blue starts the album practically in media res, adding to a lineage of effortless shaggy-dog storytelling, while Heartmind finishes things on slow, stinging guitar stabs, percussive tinkering and languorous uilleann pipes which leaves things to peter out in a loose fashion that doesn’t really fit.

But between those two songs is some of McCombs’ best work yet: Karaoke has gorgeous shimmery, staccato guitar invoking late 80s Cure, New Earth could be a modern (Nothing But) Flowers and Belong to Heaven gets its Fleetwood Mac vibes thanks to a turn from Danielle Haim.

Unproud Warrior, a rare look at the American military complex in the indie world that is neither sneering nor moralistic, is a real gem. Cass McCombs honed his craft years ago, but still has the ability to surprise on his tenth album. [Lewis Wade] Punk rock has seen something of a renaissance of late, displayed most vividly by the unexpected crossover success of Turnstile, and, closer to home, by the likes of Chubby and The Gang. Similarly, the Australian music scene has been flourishing of late, thanks to acts such as King Gizzard, Amyl and The Sniffers and Courtney Barnett, so this appears to be an opportune time for Queensland’s The Chats.

After becoming an overnight viral sensation on debut single Smoko, and the relative success of their first album High Risk Behaviour, The Chats have been going from strength to strength over the past couple of years. On their second effort, Get Fucked, however, The Chats look primed to step up on the higher echelons of modern punk and Australian exports with a collection of 13 tightly packed, inventive yet snotty tracks.

Lead singer and bassist Eamon Sandwith has mentioned how much Green Day’s Dookie influenced him as a young musician, and Get Fucked shares a similar energy for a new generation. Witty, uniquely Australian observational songs such as 6L GTR, Ticket Inspector, and the particularly ferocious The Price of Smokes are testament to the trio’s power-poppunk. [Adam Turner-Heffer]

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith Let’s Turn It Into Sound Ghostly International, 26 Aug rrrrr Listen to: Locate, Check Your Translation, Pivot Signal

KOKOROKO Could We Be More Brownswood Recordings, 5 Aug rrrrr Listen to: Age of Ascent, War Dance, Interlude

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has set her mind to seeking a physical response to our modern quandaries. She once aimed to create solace, a meditative state. Perhaps the permacrisis has caused her approach to become misshapen in ways mimicked by the figures populating the visuals accompanying her new album Let’s Turn It Into Sound – this is a kind of polyrhythmically controlled mania.

Closer to instigating dancefloor acrobatics than blissed out reverie, it’s a chewed up laminated dough of synthesizer sounds resembling the dramatic stomps of Anna Meredith.

The back half of Pivot Signal marches like a brass band possessed.

Processed vocals give life to titles that seem to have come from a knackered chatbot that’s been installed on a spaceship’s mainframe. Is it Me or is it You? plays the radio station concept album trick, but instead of the intermittent hiss, there’s an extraterrestrial hacking the waveforms. Smith’s music is expected to move to the beat of yogic breathing, but nothing here is relaxed or relaxing.

Kinetic and unpredictable, whatever has instigated such an about turn, this idea-packed collection provides an evolution from the ambient, new age music Smith has become known for. [Tony Inglis] If the name KOKOROKO sounds familiar to you, chances are you’ve heard Abusey Junction, the band’s contribution to the 2018 Brownswood Recordings compilation of up-andcomers from the London jazz scene.

Creating a standout track that took off overnight could easily push an emerging act into rushing a debut album, but KOKOROKO were patient, and the results are rewarding.

Could We Be More is a finely crafted unit that takes KOKOROKO’s span of influences (highlife and afrobeat; a solid education in jazz; the City of London) and spins them through a dream machine of sorts. Otherworldly sirens on opener Tojo give way to astral reverb that ripples across the album – it feels as though ideas and motifs move fluidly throughout the record, such is the power of a coherent album.

In the brass there’s a tendency to begin phrases with short bursts of repetitive refrains, which is a fine pattern if used sparingly, but when relied upon too much starts to feel a bit like a page of writing made up only of four-word sentences. Though not too distracting, we feel the full benefit of the sound when they let rip and intersect one another.

[Laurie Presswood]

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SRSQ Ever Crashing Dais , 19 Aug rrrrr Listen to: Dead Loss, Used to Love, Ever Crashing

While the sonic touchstones remain the same as on her solo debut (late 80s post-punk and the immediate shoegaze progenitors), the scale of SRSQ’s second solo LP has been sent skyward. When the album hits its stride and indulges in its poppier inclinations it really works. The swooping choruses at the end of Dead Loss sound like they’re being sung from the centre of a hurricane, and Ever Crashing grows into an absolute behemoth that has no right to not feel faintly ludicrous, but the quality of her songwriting and voice carries it all – always powerful, it never for a second feels disingenuous.

However, the rest of the album operates at this same scale, but wrapped around songs that don’t carry it as well, and by its latter stages it begins to have little impact.

Once you’re no longer being swept along by the songwriting, flaws begin to show, mainly that several songs feel overlong, and the repeated seasonal imagery begins to feel less like a thematic core and more like a paucity of imagination. It’s a record that at its best is truly superb but that can’t help but tire as the record goes on. [Joe Creely]

Listen to: Murmur, Fwtt Fwtt Fwtt, Warmth Ageing

Stella Donnelly Flood Secretly Canadian, 26 Aug rrrrr Listen to: Lungs, Underwater, This Week

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When Australian songwriter Stella Donnelly began making waves in 2017, she did so as the #metoo movement crescendoed. Her single Boys Will Be Boys addressed the culture of victim blaming as she sang in honour of a friend who had been sexually abused.

This knack for calling out tough topics against tender guitar strings followed through in 2019’s Beware of the Dogs with tracks that rallied against abusers and that racist Uncle at the family’s festive table.

By contrast, its follow-up Flood is far more melancholy. Lead single Lungs tempts us with a Mitski-esque transition from trusted electric guitar to snappy synths. But while Mitski revelled in theatrics, Donnelly tends to keep things bare-boned, like the huge space present in vocal and one-handed chord-led Underwater, or the bitesize brass of Restricted Account.

Flood was written during Donnelly’s time in the rainforests of Australia vowing to reconnect her to the “small self”. And perhaps that’s part of the problem. Flood doesn’t feel very rooted. The shift into timid keys away from beefier guitar tones makes everything appear ephemeral. While her captivating vocals remain, Donnelly’s lack of bark and bite means this record, as the name suggests, mostly washes over you. [Cheri Amour]

August 2022 — Review

Listen to: Rain Shadow, Tincture

Li Yilei Secondary Self LTR Records, 26 Aug rrrrr

Stepping away from the warm tones and twinkling arpeggio of last year’s 之 / OF and into the abstractions of their live work, there’s a more improvisational feel to Li Yilei’s latest record Secondary Self. Take Fwtt, Fwtt, Fwtt, a sputtering maelstrom of a piece, where squelched bass and jagged, glitched feedback wrestle each other into a crushing weight of claustrophobic noise. This unpredictable looseness gives the work a natural quality, less like something composed than something forming out of thin air before you. It works tremendously.

Despite this approach there’s never the sense that feeling is being forgone in the name of meandering improvisation. It at no point feels like someone aimlessly fiddling with their switches, but rather, something more akin to the live experience; watching someone actively pursuing very specific atmosphere in real time. It makes the moments when everything coalesces, like the howling desolation at Murmur’s mid-point or the mechanical juddering of Mosquito Alarm, all the more impactful.

It’s sonically a faintly scattershot collection, mainly owing to its contents stemming from various projects across the last few years, but Secondary Self is another example of Li Yilei’s inarguable talent for evocative soundscapes.

[Joe Creely]

Albums

Hudson Mohawke Cry Sugar Warp Records, 12 Aug rrrrr

When Ross Birchard, aka Hudson Mohawke, released his debut album, Butter, in 2009 he was a little-known but well-respected producer from Glasgow making mind-bending sounds and co-running local record label LuckyMe. Since then he has gone on to produce some of the biggest records of the last decade and played an undeniably influential role in shaping the sound of hip-hop in the 2010s. On his third album, Cry Sugar, Birchard doesn’t shy away from his ties to hip-hop, and to Kanye West in particular, using various soul samples throughout and running to a lengthy 19 tracks.

But Cry Sugar is really a celebration of dance music across the years. Intentions features a house vocal that proves Beyoncé isn’t the only one bringing house back and Is It Supposed takes us straight to Ibiza with its Balearic influence. There are nods to footwork in Bicstan and to hyperpop on Dance Forever and Come a Little Closer, while Tincture takes cues from garage.

At the very least, Cry Sugar acts as a reminder of Birchard’s originality but, at the most, it’s a broad and diverse exploration of the many faces of electronic music past and present. [Nadia Younes]

THE SKINNY

Music Now This month we look forward to new music from Lizzie Reid, King Wine, Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman, Joell. and more

August 2022 – Review

B

efore we get into August releases, here’s a by no means exhaustive list of some of the stuff we missed in July. The start of the month was met with the self-titled debut EP from Glasgow six-piece Memorabilia (featuring members of Kaputt), while the middle of the month welcomed Escapology, the first album in seven years from Scottish producer, and founder of the Hyperdub label – Kode9. It's part one of a wider project entitled Astro-Darien, part two is due in October. There were also wonderful debut EPs in July – CLEAR from the excellently named Glasgow hardcore two-piece Moni Jitchell, and West Road from producer, singer-songwriter, artist and creator Rpizy, as well as the debut mixtape, Feet On the Ground, from Edinburgh rapper Oyakhire.

Singles came out in abundance too across a multitude of genres, with new tunes from Alex Amor (Bad Tattoo), Clair (Body Blossom), Bemz (Zidane), SHEARS (Carbon Copy), AROMA (Sundial ft. Praize 4G & Ringu), AMUNDA (You Walked Away), Joesef (East End Coast), 4Tune (Where U @), and the mighty Young Fathers, who surprised us in the middle of the month with their first new music in four years, the incredible Geronimo.

Back to August. Amid the chaos of the Edinburgh festivals, there’s tonnes of new Scottish music coming out. On 5 August, the latest from Edinburgh label Blackford Hill comes in the form of Music for the Moon and Trees, the collaborative (and mostly instrumental) record from Mexico-based classical guitarist Morgan Szymanski and Perthshire-based musician Tommy Perman, and there’s something really quite romantic about it.

It’s in the long-distance friendship the pair have held onto since the mid-90s, finally coming together to make a record despite living on different continents; it’s in the meditative nature and arc of the music, and in the poetic name of the album itself.

Playing out like a night out for the moon and the trees, it starts and ends delicately with a focus on Szymanski’s guitarplaying, becoming bolder and brighter in the middle by way of Perman’s beats as the album takes us on a journey from moonrise to moonset. It’s like an exclusive club night of sort for the moon and the trees, as they dance to their own private soundtrack - an intimate and deeply comforting record of real beauty.

On 24 August, Glasgow singer-songwriter Lizzie Reid returns with Mooching. Where her 2021 SAY Award-shortlisted record Cubicle explored her first same sex relationships, on Mooching, Reid is confronting her mental health struggles for Photo: Connor MacDonald

King Wine

Photo: Tommy Perman

Local Music

Words: Tallah Brash

Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman

the first time, addressing OCD, anxiety and panic attacks, but all still very much through the lens of love, longing and heartbreak. On the opening track, Love of Her Life, she sings: ‘She told me I’m the love of her life / She told me even when she changed her mind’, and it stings.

By the EP’s closer, Warpaint, Reid’s stripped-back acoustics are replaced for a fuller band sound, mirroring Reid’s growing confidence as she chooses not to dwell on a frustrating situation. Opening with: ‘Some kind of chest pain / Slipped into my drink last night’, she later acknowledges that ‘truth hurts’ and chooses to simply get on with life. Co-written with Frightened Rabbit’s Andy Monaghan, it’s the most carefree song from Reid yet, still beautifully showcasing the strength of her songwriting and lyricism. Heartbreak may suit Lizzie Reid, but it’s nice to hear her sounding more upbeat here.

For more upbeat tunes this month, may we direct you towards the chewy 8-bit beats of King Wine, who we recently described as “Glasgow’s best kept secret”. Hopefully that won’t be the case for much longer as the Game Boy duo release their self-titled debut album on 27 August. A non-stop joy-filled party from its opening bleeps to its closing bloops, get ready to dance yourself happy this month with tongue-in-cheek songs about puberty, riding bikes in the summer, hot broadcasters, nonsense and sad dance parties, making for a wholly uplifting listen.

Also this month, rising R’n’B talent Joell. releases his latest EP, 60 in a 20 (11 Aug). Filled with lazy elastic hip-hop beats and ethereal Autotuned vocals which melt beautifully into the music, on 60 in a 20, Joell. explores the feeling of isolation for someone who is rarely in one place for long. Where the first half focuses on chasing the highs and lows of music-making, the second is more buoyant, bouncy and confident sounding, and hopefully a sign of more good things to come.

Elsewhere, Altered Images release Mascara Streakz, their first album in almost 40 years (26 Aug), while producer extraordinaire Hudson Mohwake’s Cry Sugar arrives on 12 August (full review on p87). On the same day, Scottish-Egyptian duo The Ayoub Sisters release Arabesque, while Becca Starr’s Speak No Evil arrives on the 19th. There’s also a psyched-out new single from Amateur Cult (The Ritual), dreampop from Community Swimming Pool (all the time), indie-rock from Midnight Ambulance (Smoke & Sweets), quirky pop from Maxwell Weaver (The Disconnect Between) and sugar-coated pop from Rachel White (Crush).

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August 2022

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THE SKINNY

Advertising Feature

On The Spree Paisley's music and comedy festival The Spree returns for its tenth outing this September to the iconic Spiegeltent – we take a closer look at its programme

The Spree runs in the Spiegeltent, Bridge St, Paisley, 1-10 Sep thespree.co.uk — 90 —

August 2022

Altered Images

Tide Lines Photo: Thomas Dorn

brand new record Mascara Streakz due on 26 August – their first in almost 40 years – you’ll have plenty of time ahead of the show to learn all the lyrics to go alongside hits like Happy Birthday and I Can Be Happy that made them stand-outs the first time round.

Also at The Spree this year you’ll find The Bootleg Beatles, undeniably one of the best cover bands of one of the UK’s most loved bands of all time. Covering The Beatles is no mean feat, but The Bootleg Beatles do it with such energy, style and attention to detail, it’s hard to separate them from the original Fab Four. On 6 September, expect to be taken on a journey documenting The Beatles’ romp through the 60s with the rock’n’roll bangers and huge singalong hits that made them famous, the costumes, onstage witticisms and more.

In addition to all of this, The Spree will welcome Modstuff events on 3 September, with the afternoon show featuring Paisley’s own Gerry McGuire on DJ duty as well as The Absolute Jam tribute band, while the evening show will belong to Emily Capell and The Electric Stars. The Sunday Jazz Brunch on, well, Sunday 4 September, presented in association with The Glasgow Jazz Festival, will welcome Scottish Jazz Award-winners Rose Room to the Spiegeltent.

Later, friends since they were 17, Barbara Dickson & Rab Noakes will perform together (7 Sep), Horse Macdonald performs a special acoustic-style show (8 Sep), and award-winning Scottish comedian Susie McCabe, who has supported the likes of John Bishop and Jason Manford, will get everyone laughing on the final afternoon (10 Sep), before Manchester indie-rock four-piece The Slow Readers Club bring things to a close that evening.

So whether you want heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriters, indie-rockers, desert blues, new wave, jazz, classic covers or just a good old laugh, or even a bit of everything, because why not, then Paisley’s The Spree has got you covered.

Photo: Jamie Noise

ften referred to as Scotland’s largest town, Paisley has a lot going for it. Known for the iconic Paisley pattern, it’s home to the stunning 12th century Paisley Abbey and has birthed some very famous faces over the years such as actor Gerard Butler and musicians including Gerry Rafferty and Paolo Nutini, who recently found himself back at the top of the UK charts having released his first album in eight years. What’s more, the town hosted the Scottish Album of the Year award ceremony for three years running; music runs through the very veins of Paisley.

It’s a joy, then, to see The Spree returning this autumn for its tenth edition, organised by Renfrewshire Council and programmed by gig promotion stalwarts Regular Music. Taking place from 1-10 September, The Spree returns once again to the iconic Spiegeltent on the town’s Bridge Street, in the stunning surrounds of Paisley Abbey and Paisley Town Hall, and the lineup is as eclectic as the town itself, with all manner of Scottish and international artists set to play the ten-day festival.

This milestone year kicks off with Highlands fourpiece Tide Lines (1 Sep), followed quickly by two of the founding members of Ocean Colour Scene, Simon & Oscar (2 Sep), who have been performing together now for more than 30 years; expect acoustic versions of big hits such as The River Boat Song and The Day We Caught the Train.

While the first two nights are already sold out, as the week unwinds, you’ll unearth some more gems, like Malian collective Tinariwen, who arrive in town on 4 September. Given that this band have been going since the late 70s, and are cited as one of the pioneers of the desert blues genre, it’s quite the get for The Spree. With eight albums under their belt, it’s in the live setting where Tinariwen truly come alive, so this one is not to be missed.

Closer to home, on 5 September Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake heads up a bill which includes fellow Scot James Grant alongside Suede’s Bernard Butler, where the three talented musicians will perform a selection of each other’s songs, fronting their own, of course. With a beautiful camaraderie apparent between the three, this is set to be quite a special and unique night.

One of Scotland’s premier new wave acts Altered Images are set to play later in the festival’s run too, taking over the Spiegeltent on 9 September. With

Photo: David Scheinnman

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Tinariwen

THE SKINNY

Film of the Month

Film of the Month — My Old School Director: Jono McLeod Starring: Alan Cumming, Lulu, Clare Grogan, Joe McFadden

Released 19 August

by Dogwoof theskinny.co.uk/film

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Zelig-like figure the oddball Lee becomes at Bearsden Academy.

We hear how he took some of the school outcasts under his wing and helped shape the music tastes of others. One classmate gushes about how Lee convinced him to swap his 2 Unlimited tapes for Joy Division and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry records. This seemingly prodigious student became equally popular with the teachers – who come across as even more guileless than the teens. When Lee lands the lead in the school’s production of South Pacific, despite sounding like an injured goose and looking like… well, you’ll find out, your jaw will be on the floor and you might start to believe, as Lee does, that he possesses Jedi mind control.

Lee gives his side of the story too, but only in audio form.

Alan Cumming, who was once tapped to play Lee in a feature film, puts a face to his pre-recorded testimony. It’s an uncanny performance that manages to feel simultaneously camp and sincere all at once. A comic book-style animation modelled on 90s fave Daria and a voice cast that includes Clare Grogan and Lulu help bring the conflicting stories about Lee to life.

By the end of this playful, Rashomon-style investigation of Lee’s story from everyone’s angle, there are still plenty of unanswered questions and holes to unpick. The film wryly reveals high school memories to be a curious thing: slippery, subjective and perhaps a little rose-tinted, given how warmly 5C recall their encounter with Lee. [Jamie Dunn] GFT host a preview of My Old School on 16 Aug, followed by a Q&A with Alan Cumming and Jono McLeod

August 2022 — Review

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ono McLeod’s wildly entertaining documentary My Old School has the feeling of an uproarious class reunion. Three decades have passed since Bearsden Academy’s 5C class – who count the director among their number – were embroiled in the mind-boggling shenanigans at the heart of the film, but when these talking heads get going, the memories, the old jokes and the deep-buried heartbreak all come flooding back.

The year is 1993, and a new, slightly strange kid named Brandon Lee has just arrived at this well-heeled suburb to the northwest of Glasgow, and is greeted with much suspicion from his classmates. It’s the setup for countless high school movies, from Heathers to Clueless, but there’s more to 5C’s reluctance to embrace the misfit newbie than simple clique culture.

McLeod keeps his cards close to his chest as he lays out this stranger-than-fiction tale, taking his time to tease out every twist and turn in Lee’s story while also playing along with Lee’s version of events for the majority of the runtime. Documentaries that withhold well-publicised and easily searchable information can be incredibly frustrating, and certainly anyone around in Scotland in the mid-90s will know some of what’s to follow.

McLeod gets away with the subterfuge, however, by successfully making us feel like one of the gang. Like us, 5C know how their story ends but seem to be having such a whale of a time travelling back to their halcyon days that it would be churlish to be piqued by their faux naivety.

That’s not to suggest that this story, as notorious and fabled as it is, doesn’t still have a few bombshells up its sleeve.

Even those in the know might be surprised at just what a

THE SKINNY

Scotland on Screen

Scotland on Screen: Jono McLeod and Alan Cumming Jono McLeod’s My Old School takes us back to the 90s for the stranger-than-fiction story of how Bearsden Academy student Brandon Lee became the most notorious schoolboy in Britain. Alan Cumming lip-syncs to Lee’s testimony

Jono McLeod’s filmography: My Old School (2022) I: @myoldschoolfilm Alan Cumming’s filmography (selected): My Old School (2022), Battle of the Sexes (2017), Any Day Now (2012), X2 (2003), Spy Kids (2001) Josie and the Pussycats (2001), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997), GoldenEye (1995)

August 2022 — Review

I: @alancummingreally alancumming.com

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o you have a wild story from your school days that you love to roll out whenever you get together with your old classmates? However outlandish your anecdote, we guarantee it can’t top the tale in the jaw-dropping documentary My Old School, as retold by filmmaker Jono McLeod and his fellow Bearsden Academy 5C classmates.

Taking us back to 1993, the story starts with a new kid from Canada named Brandon Lee arriving in town, and there’s something off about him. First, he has the same moniker as a recently deceased movie star – Brandon Lee was accidentally shot on the set of The Crow a few months earlier. Second, he arrive on day one with a leather briefcase by his side and a face that didn’t quite fit; rumours of a car accident and plastic surgery abounded.

Lee stood out, but as McLeod’s film shows, he started to integrate. More than integrate! He thrived. The first ace Lee had up his sleeve was access to a car (teens learn to drive early in Canada, apparently). He also had great taste in music, and impressed his peers with a surprising knowledge of early-80s indie rock. Students also warmed to his compassion for his fellow underdogs, like classmate Stefen, who was the target of racist bullies. Lee was soon one of the popular kids, and was an ace in the classroom too. He even got cast as the lead in the school’s production of South Pacific, despite little ability to hold a tune, as evident in the grainy home video that’s one of the few archive images we see of Lee while attending Bearsden Academy.

But Lee wasn’t all he claimed. If you were around in Scotland in the early-90s, you’re sure to remember the uproar caused by his long con. The story was so huge that a Hollywood movie starring Alan Cumming was planned. That feature never came to pass, but Cumming does get his opportunity to play Lee in McLeod’s documentary, providing a lip-synch to his audio testimony.

“I think Scotland was sideswiped by the audacity of it,” Cumming says of Lee’s escapades when I sit down to speak to him and McLeod ahead of My Old School’s European premiere at Glasgow Film Festival. “We think of ourselves as being canny people and that makes the story all the more unbelievable.” It’s hard to think of a more mischievous and playful actor than Cumming. Back in the mid-90s, he was perfect casting to play this audacious conman, and he’s clearly full of admiration. “I love the idea of what he did, and the detail and the planning,” he beams. “You know, when I’m doing my work, I’m completely focused, so I really admire his commitment… and just his balls of steel, basically.”

It wasn’t just the opportunity to step into a juicy role he prepared for decades ago that appealed to Cumming. The fact that McLeod was actually in 5C to witness it all was hugely enticing too. “The idea that I was getting the story directly from the horse’s mouth, that made it really exciting,” says the actor. “I think this is a much better film than mine would have been because it’s by the people who were actually there, you know?

It’s authentic in a way that mine wouldn’t have been.”

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Photo: Eoin Carey

Interview: Jamie Dunn

Lulu, Jono McLeod and Alan Cumming at Glasgow Film Festival

“I think Scotland was sort of sideswiped by the audacity of it” Alan Cumming Cumming is spot on. It’s the feeling of being inside the story rather than an observer casting an eye over the evidence that makes My Old School so compelling. “I knew that the film would be very different if it was made by a filmmaker who wasn’t in the class,” says McLeod. “And, well, nobody else in class became a documentary filmmaker, so it was kinda down to me. But I really view it as an ensemble film. I just stitched it together but it’s really about the classmates.”

Cumming isn’t the only famous Scottish voice on the soundtrack. Many of Lee and his classmates’ recollections are brought to life through poppy animated flashbacks that call to mind 90s fave Daria, with Clare Grogan, Dawn Steele and Joe McFadden giving voice to some of the key players who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) take part. Lulu is fun too as the school’s ferocious deputy teacher. It’s the charisma and chemistry of the former 5C students that really makes the film sing, though.

McLeod agrees: “People are really responding to the 5C classmates and the connection they have with the camera. And I guess that the connection they have with the camera, is that the camera is me.

“I wanted the audience to kind of feel like they were a member of class 5C, basically,” he continues. “And that’s really what we all wanted, I guess, as a class, for the film to be told in a sensitive way. That’s what I’ve agonised over for years, and hopefully I’ve managed to achieve that.”

Released on 19 Aug by Dogwoof; certificate 15 GFT host a preview of My Old School on 16 Aug, followed by a Q&A with Alan Cumming and Jono McLeod

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Film Anaïs in Love Director: Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet

Starring: Anaïs Demoustier, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi

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Anaïs in Love

Mr Malcolm’s List Director: Emma Holly Jones

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Suzanne Allain’s popular self-published novel Mr Malcolm’s List owes a huge debt to Jane Austen. Those familiar with self-published fiction will recognise the boldness with which these books often wear their influences, where authors’ literary passion translates into them penning a story they themselves would love to read. Now it’s adapted to film, it’s a joy that’s convincingly shared to a broader audience, as Mr Malcolm’s List gets a great deal right about what makes Austen’s work likeable.

Employed in a scheme to embarrass the titular wealthy bachelor who dismisses potential suitresses if they don’t meet an inflexible list of qualifications, Selina (Freida Pinto) tries to play the game of courtship from a cool distance, egged on by her slighted

Director: Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn

Starring: Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas

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In an age when the world’s one percent seem obsessed with hoarding wealth and depleting the Earth’s natural resources, there’s something strangely sweet – and then immediately hilariously cynical – at the start of this film about a film. Humberto Suárez wants to leave a legacy, and in a classically out-of-touch move, he buys the rights to a novel he has not read and finds the most artistic (read: eccentric) director his money can buy to adapt it. Lola Cuevas (Cruz) immediately brings in two actors with opposing sensibilities: beloved star Félix Rivero (Banderas) and master craftsman Iván Torres (Oscar Martínez). Rehearsals start, and start, and start – but will this grand film, an artistic swansong, ever be made?

Mr. Malcolm’s List

childhood friend Julia (an amusingly vengeful Zawe Ashton). But the compassion she discovers in Mr Malcolm (Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù) inevitably gets in the way. It’s this conventional plotting that threatens to undermine the film, as writer Allain’s script often feels less modern spin, more faithful recreation.

The main difference between Mr Malcolm’s List and its influences is the characterisation; Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot’s inner worlds burn brighter in a society where emotions are smothered by haughty manners and snide witticisms. By contrast, Mr Malcolm’s List’s ensemble – despite being well-drawn – never shake a certain constructed quality. Everyone feels, to an extent, like they exist to fill an expected role. Still, it’s undeniably satisfying to watch a fantastic cast hitting all the right notes, fresh enough to keep you hooked on the regency romance. [Rory Doherty]

Official Competition

Where Is Anne Frank Director: Ari Folman

Starring: Ruby Stokes, Emily Carey, Sebastian Croft

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On a stormy night in Amsterdam, the air crackles to life inside the Anne Frank Museum and the figure of a young girl emerges from the pages of that famous diary: Kitty (Ruby Stokes), the imaginary friend to whom Frank addressed all of her writing.

As Kitty reads through her friend’s recollections, Ari Folman’s film paints a full, vibrant portrait of who Anne Frank was – not just a tragic figure but a teenage girl who crushed hard on celebrities and got mad at her mother. In Kitty’s own half of the story, she wanders the streets of modern-day Amsterdam, striking up a romantic connection with a young pickpocket and learning about the legacy her friend left behind.

Released 26 Aug by Vertigo; certificate PG — 95 —

Official Competition is – like the film-within-a-film it focuses on – overwhelmingly an actor’s picture.

Duprat and Cohn trust their actors to carry the ridiculous and the mundane, and Cruz, Banderas and Martínez are at ease in this understated, fast-talking satire. Banderas in particular relishes undercutting the idea of celebrity in what could be a bombastic role; one scene at a turning point, with one camera on his face and another playing a simultaneous wide shot, proves him at the top of his game while losing none of Rivero’s own particular charm.

While Official Competition takes half its length to feel fully comfortable in a largely static presentation, its decided uncinematic air and droll observation on art, filmmaking and the tiny ways people compromise each other – or themselves – ultimately pays off. [Carmen Paddock] Released 26 Aug by Curzon; certificate TBC

Where Is Anne Frank

Magic realism has long been used as a way to give history a human feel and make sense of the senseless, and while Where Is Anne Frank sometimes gets a little knotted up in the specifics of its magical devices, it still provides an imaginative way to retell a story so well worn that we risk losing our sense of its real meaning.

This is no doubt also why the film works so hard to connect the Frank family’s plight to the struggles of today’s refugees. At times, the ways in which it does so can feel a little didactic – something which isn’t helped by how oddly flat much of the dialogue and voice acting is – but there’s no denying the urgency of the film’s message or the earnestness of its conviction. [Ross McIndoe]

Released 12 Aug by Altitude; certificate PG

August 2022 — Review

Starring: Freida Pinto, Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù, Zawe Ashton

Released 19 Aug by Peccadillo Pictures; certificate TBC

Official Competition

Film

Of the canonical brown-fringe-andsundress variety, Anaïs (Demoustier) is always running. Between the hurried, shuffling steps of Anaïs in Love, she wonders if something is wrong with her; why her love never seems to sit quite right; why she doesn’t like to sleep next to her partner. She is restless. Yet, she is played by Demoustier with a particular patience, taking Anaïs through late rent, a breakup, her mother’s ill health, and relations with a taken older man, Daniel (Denis Podalydès).

The first half of the film is spent running after Anaïs’s (perhaps slightly tiresome) trail of people, seemingly of little interest to her. But then, the second half slows when

Anaïs meets Daniel’s partner, Emilie (Bruni Tedeschi).

There’s a grace to how debut director Bourgeois-Tacquet navigates Anaïs and Emilie’s relationship: Anaïs’s pivotal first sight of Emilie is simply a painting of the back of her head; in the looks they come to exchange, they hold this rested desire; and, later, their arms folding in and out of each other, touchless, as they dance. It would be easy for this film – with its love triangle consisting of a young woman and a middle-aged heterosexual couple – to stumble into cliché or fetish. Instead, Bourgeois-Tacquet opts for nuance, focusing on Anaïs’s simultaneous admiration and desire for Emilie. It’s a much-needed study in passion, exploring love as an assertion of the self, as much as it is an act of care and respect for another. Wherever Anaïs is running, we ought to follow. [Eilidh Akilade]

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August 2022 – Review

Local Heroes

Photo: Paul Marr

Picnics Local Heroes returns to V&A Dundee with more joyful design commissions as part of Daytrippers! The project supports designers by commissioning limited edition, collectable design products Words: Stacey Hunter — 96 —

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his year, the Daytrippers! collection launched with four furoshikis and one very special picnic blanket by Aberdeen’s Camban Studio. The studio is led by designer Fiona Hall who is increasingly known for her commitment to sustainability and circularity. She explains, “These have become strong values within my work practice and I strongly feel the links between my craft, personal social and environmental wellbeing, and equality.”

Hall has designed Playtime, a large picnic blanket in organic Panama cotton with a water resistant backing and handmade leather strap by Fernweh. Every item in the Daytrippers! collection is designed to be the perfect souvenir to remember a great day out and also a high quality item to treasure for a lifetime. Playtime is inspired by childhood picnics in village parks, playing picnic games and making daisy chains. Hall founded Camban Studio in 2018, and focuses predominantly on hand stitch, printed textiles, and print design from her base at Deemouth Artist Studios.

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Photo: Paul Marr

Local Heroes

Playtime blanket by Canba Studio

about picnics I’ve had to create the print design. It was also great to work with the wider project team and collaborate with other makers and designers on the creation of the perfect finishing touches on the finished item. I hope this picnic blanket will be a backdrop for many more memorable picnics!”

Special events This year Local Heroes and V&A Dundee have organised a variety of in-person and online events where audiences can come along to see the collection, enjoy a summery cocktail with Heather Street Food and even have their nails painted in Daytrippers colours. The listings are online at V&A Dundee under What’s On and these include a talk with Fiona Hall and her recent collaborator Laura Sheriffs of Fernweh plus a discussion about manufacturing in Scotland with Kalopsia Collective and CAT Digital.

Check the Local Heroes instagram feed for updated dates and times for events and talks.

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@cambanstudio @fernwehuk @localheroesdesign @vadundee @kalopsiac @catdigital

August 2022 – Review

Photo: Paul Marr

“I enjoy working with the colours and textures of our local ecology and natural environments of Aberdeenshire. I examine methods to translate natural forms into designs, using the local plant life as both material and inspiration for Eco-Printing, Mono-Printing, BlockPrinting, Screen-Printing, Digital Print and hand stitch and embroidery. I also work with local natural dyes and have knowledge of various dyeing techniques.

“2021 saw the launch of my range of online courses for the general public to pass on my hand stitch, craft and design skills, supporting people in their creativity, and with a focus on how being in and around nature, linked with craft, can improve feelings of wellbeing.”

A picnic blanket had been on Hall’s wish list of products to make, so the invitation to create a bespoke design for V&A Dundee came at the right time.

“I love a good picnic, so it’s been a dream commission!” she says. “It was lovely to reminisce

PORTY VAULT, EDINBURGH Words: Peter Simpson

Food

Vault City’s new spot in Portobello is a hive of maximalist beer and super-smoky barbecue

Sun-Thu, midday-10pm; FriSat, midday-1am

Image: Story Shop PR

August 2022 – Review

vaultcity.co.uk

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heir first bar has more draught beers than seats to drink them in, and the opening of their second saw them launching a bunch of fireworks off the roof in broad daylight. If there’s one thing to expect from Vault City – the Portobello sour beer brewery whose fruity, experimental sours have been an unexpected but welcome crossover hit – it’s maximalism. Big flavours, big combinations, and lots of them.

The Porty Vault is Vault City’s newest outpost, sitting pretty on Portobello High Street with a wood and iron aesthetic that’s equal parts post-industrial bar and particularly cool gate showroom. By the bar is a typically outlandish chalkboard full of incredibly exciting and delicious flavour combos – the P.O.G.’s mix of passion fruit, orange and guava comes across like a boozy Rubicon, the Cloudy Lemonade hits like a turbo-powered turbo-shandy, and the Strawberry Sundae tastes remarkably similar to ice cream. Could be witchcraft, may simply be lactose, either way it works for us.

So what food pairs well with incredibly over-the-top and flavourful beer? The Porty Vault have gone for low-and-slow smoky barbecue, with a kitchen helmed by Darren Lim (eagle-eyed Edinburgh barbecue

watchers may remember Darren from a stint at the imperious Smiddy in Canonmills). In the evening, it’s all big piles of smokey meat, but on our lunchtime trip things are a bit more refined and manageable.

Take the Texas chilli dog (£11), for example. It’s an incredibly juicy beef hotdog topped with some nicely-spiced bean chilli and white onion, and that’s it. The flavours are excellently smoky and unctuous, and while there could definitely be more chilli on this chilli dog (lay it on lads, this is supposed to be maximal!), it’s a tasty bit of lunch.

The chicken wings (£7.50) are also excellent – sweet spice and smoke all nicely balanced, and bags of flavour from the marinade and the white barbecue sauce on the side which clashes in the best way possible. Portion-wise it’s on the small side (they have amended this since we visited, so fair play), but the wings themselves are great. What’s not so great is the vegetarian pulled pork sandwich (£11.50), which tastes exactly like the coagulation of mustard, ketchup and pickles on top of a McDonald’s cheeseburger. It also just feels a bit too… healthy? It doesn’t really do it for us, but while there are some minor missteps on the big dishes, the sides are a great success.

The mac and cheese (£5.50) is a fantastic shade of orange, so it’s a surprise when the result is a mild and refined mac that’s all gooey, stringy cheese and pleasantly al dente pasta. The green chilli hominy (£4.50) provides a fine counterpoint to the rich meaty flavours elsewhere.

Sharp tomatillos, a nice gnaw from the corn, and a flavour that cuts through the rest of the table.

The collard greens (£4.50) are the standout, though – they’re supremely savoury and absolutely packed with flavour. Granted, that flavour is in large part down to the

Porty Vault

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Image: Story Shop PR

243 Portobello High St, EH15 2AW

Porty Vault

big chunks of ham hock flecked through the juicy greens, but this is an excellent dish. It is excellent in no small part because of how much it packs in, and that’s the overall vibe from Porty Vault. If you’re ever feeling uninspired by food and drink, a brief stop off here will reset your taste buds by drowning them in as many flavours as possible. Your challenge is to pick the right ones from the seemingly endless list – bonne chance…

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Book Reviews

Books

Belonging: Natural histories of place, identity and home

Reclaiming: Essays on finding yourself one piece at a time

By Amanda Thomson

By Yewande Biala

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Delphi

By Clare Pollard

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Morbid Obsessions: On trans and sex worker bodies and writing fiction from the margins

By Frankie Miren and Alison Rumfitt

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Reclaiming begins with Say My Name, an essay on the constant mispronunciation of her beautiful Nigerian name, Yewande Biala, and Colourism, on the ‘prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their colour’. The reader, whether fully aware of UK-based racial issues or not, is knowledgably and immediately brought into that discourse and takes their new understanding into the reading experience. This is perfectly done by Biala, whose experiences are so informed by these two issues, and her essay collection continues in this vein.

Biala’s piercing honesty about social media’s impact on her body image, on her friendships, and on her careers(s), is a refreshing insight. It feels as though Biala is a sisterly voice on the readers’ shoulder, dishing out empathy and advice, using her own experiences to inform her words. She is not telling you that social media ‘is bad’, but that it’s a bumpy terrain to navigate and that she is here to help.

Reclaiming is a must read book not only for Gen Z, but for anyone who has ever been on social media; indeed, anyone who lives in a society where racial injustices are still prevalent – so, all of us. The personal, coupled with her supporting investigations, works together to create a voice which is both authentic and authoritative. This is Biala’s first book, and her readers will absolutely hope it’s not her last.

[Beth Cochrane]

‘I am sick of the future,’ begins Delphi’s narrator. ‘I don’t want anything to do with it.’ Everything is uncertain, and so divination may be the way to go – hand that feeling to a greater power.

Capturing 2020 as a sharply realised microcosm – home-schooling, tensions in relationships, grief, struggling – it is set against a backdrop of global impact; pandemics, movements, political upheaval. In zooming in on how we in isolation deal with, well, isolation, as the world keeps moving, working (or attempting to) in chaos, Pollard navigates the expected perseverance as everything shifts and stalls.

Tied to ancient prophecies and how they filter into the narrator’s life, these are vignettes – some of tarot, disappointing sexual encounters and less disappointing Zeus fantasies – that vary in significance. Moments of plot grab the reader, a visceral feeling or panic seep from the page; elsewhere, it feels random, reminiscent of the year itself: how much did many get to truly live, so much as experience things in some sort of order that we can vaguely remember?

Lyrical and ambitious, humorous and disturbing at points, Delphi is a relatable tale. The question is whether you’re keen to return to the black hole of the past two years or try to forget it existed where possible. If you do, Delphi gets to the heart of what we might not see coming when the future isn’t on our radar. [Heather McDaid]

“There’s a war on, but only some of us know it’s happening,” says Morgan M. Page in the introduction of Morbid Obsessions. “Frankie Miren and Alison Rumfitt are writing from the trenches.”

The duo of writers, of The Service and Tell Me I’m Worthless respectively, come together in this slim volume to consider what it means to write as part of communities under attack: trans people and sex workers. Where, in fiction, is the line between exploring the harmful and humanising it? How do you balance a desire to examine, to explore honestly, but protect yourself from the stratospheric potential onslaught that often awaits?

Mother, Miren’s tale of sex work is one of choice, power, anger, and control, from lonely flats to protests, drawing much from online forums; Rumfitt’s A Unique Case of British Disease literalises anti-trans sentiment through deft and unsettling horror sprung from mundanity. What follows is a full and unfiltered conversation between the two about their work and lives, the connections between them, while underlining they cannot speak to the others’ experience. It’s an open format, long-form that allows for questioning, inviting the reader in – to find hope, anger, humour, rage, and be galvanized all at once.

The blurb proposes it is a vital conversation about making art a collective struggle. The commonalities that stretch from both sides of Morbid Obsessions are of community, solidarity – they sit at the heart of the project, ready to be taken forward. [Heather McDaid]

Canongate Books, 4 Aug

Coronet, 14 Jul

Fig Tree, 28 Jul

Cipher Press, all profits donated to Babeworld

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August 2022 — Review

Belonging is a thoughtful and intricate meditation on many things: Scotland’s settlements and how those intertwine with the country’s natural landscape, the connections and disconnections between family and home, and the fine line between what is nature and what is art.

Thomson’s writing is assured and accomplished, with a clarity of voice that is a pleasure to read. The text itself is at once intimate and authoritative, with research into the histories of Scotland’s places, its animals, and its plants centred within Thomson’s personal narratives. She uses images and short chapters of Scots words and their definitions to break up the main text; the images in particular are a welcome addition – they are a wonderful illustration of her stories, whether sharing maps of walks she has taken, old family pictures, or photographs of birds which she has taken herself.

These photographs – particularly those from her family archive – add a layer of intimacy to the reading experience.

At times, the list of Scots words (mainly about nature and how it is interpreted and defined in language) and their definitions becomes a little challenging to read thoroughly. However, the experience of making your way through them in a wandering way is enjoyable.

It feels akin to meandering through the forest, taking the path of most appeal, which is something Thomson has spent much time doing.

[Beth Cochrane]

THE SKINNY

Listings Looking for something to do? Well you’re in the right place! Find listings below for the month ahead across Music, Clubs, Theatre, Comedy and Art in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.

To find out how to submit listings, head to theskinny.co.uk/listings

Glasgow Music

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

Tue 02 Aug

Rock from Scotland.

SWG3, 18:00–22:00

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

REX ORANGE COUNTY

Indie pop from England.

Wed 03 Aug

ORCHESTRA BAOBAB

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Afro-latin from Senegal.

CORTO.ALTO (TERRA KIN) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Jazz from Glasgow. Part of Endless Summer.

REX ORANGE COUNTY SWG3, 18:00–22:00

Indie pop from England.

Thu 04 Aug

ANDREW DICKSON (LEWIS MCLAUGHLIN + LEWIS ROSS + MEGAN BLACK) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Singer-songwriter from Glasgow. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

ITHACA

Hardcore from the UK.

SURYA SEN (MILVUS MILVUS + CYRANO)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Hip-hop from London. Part of Central Belters.

HEAVENLY FEST (I FEEL FINE + BRUTALLIGATORS + SLASH FICTION + SPANK HAIR + FLINCH. + GOSSIPER + FROG COSTUME + EVERYDAY PHARAOHS) STEREO, 19:00–22:30

Eclectic emo lineup.

BRAT COVEN (BRENDA + DUSK AMADEUS) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Punk from Glasgow. Part of Endless Summer.

THE EVES (JOHN RUSH)

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30

CODY FEECHAN (LACUNA + REBEKAH KIRK)

Pop from Scotland.

Singer-songwriter from Fife.

Part of Central Belters.

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

RHONA STEVENS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Indie from Scotland. Part of Endless Summer.

Fri 05 Aug

DEAN FRIEDMAN

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from the US.

MIRACLE GLASS COMPANY (CHERRY + CHARLIE) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Rock from the UK. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

SLIM JIM PHANTOM TRIO

August 2022 — Listings

UNFINISHED BUSINESS (EXPLODING ONIONS + THE INSOMNIACS)

MONO, 19:30–22:30

Rockabilly from the UK.

THE SENSITIVE SOULS (NON APPLICABLE + WE CRY WOLF + TEX & THE BLACK CATS) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

Indie rock from Lanarkshire.

ALEC BENJAMIN

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from the US.

QUIET HOUSES (BERTA KENNEDY + AMIE HUCKSTEP) BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from Edinburgh.

Part of Central Belters.

NICK SHANE (PETE SMITH + FELIX SAUNDERS)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 20:00–22:30

Mod punk from Dundee.

Sat 06 Aug

NOISE (NEWTOWN + CLOAKS + PEDALO) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Alt indie from Glasgow.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

Sun 07 Aug BOB VYLAN

Rap from London.

Thu 11 Aug HEATHEN

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Thrash from the Bay Area.

JAWN LADDER (STEVEN YOUNG)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Glasgow. Part of Central Belters.

Blues rock from Livingston.

Lo-fi from London. Part of Central Belters.

THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:30

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

THE LOOSE CUT

IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Alt rock from Leeds. Part of Endless Summer.

Fri 12 Aug

MOY (AMUR + PENNY MOB + THE THAW) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Indie rock from Glasgow.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

Psych garage from Glasgow.

Part of Central Belters.

OCEAN COLOUR SCENE

Pop from Glasgow. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

Rock from Solihull.

THE SWEETHEART REVUE

Eclectic lineup.

BANDIT COUNTRY (HARDLY WORKING’ + MILANGE)

CAHILL//COSTELLO

Americana from the UK. Part of Central Belters.

PRESSURE RETREAT (POLLY + BLIP)

MARC REBILLET

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Electronica from Dallas.

LARS FREDERIKSEN

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from California.

CEOL NUA

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30

World music.

Tue 09 Aug EADES

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Art rock from Leeds. Part of Central Belters.

WHEN CHAI MET TOAST

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30

Experimental from Glasgow.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Indie from Scotland. Part of Endless Summer.

Sat 13 Aug

BOOTLACE (STRAWBEY + PHOEBE HALL + KUBA) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Indie rock from Dundee.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

THE BALUGAS (VERSINIO + THE JUNGLE CATS + CATS CRADLE) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

Rock from Falkirk.

ROY AYERS UBIQUITY

MATT GOUGH QUINTET

Indie folk from the UK. Part of Endless Summer.

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 21:00–22:30

Mon 15 Aug

NORMAN WILLMORE

COVET

Math rock from the US. THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Heavy metal from Virginia.

FUTURE HUMANS THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Indie from London. Part of Endless Summer.

TORRES

MONO, 20:00–22:30

Indie from the US.

POST IRONIC STATE (SAD BOYS CLUB + PINC WAFER + HINTERVELTER)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Post-punk from Perth. Part of Central Belters.

BEN CAPLAN (TERRA SPENCER) CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 20:00–22:30

Indie from Birmingham. Part of Central Belters.

ALEX REX (DONNA + LUTHIA) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

MORRELL (COLA + ARCADE STATE + THE NOTIONS) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Rock from Glasgow. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

BECCA STARR

MONO, 20:00–22:30

THE GATHERING: PART 2 (CRASHKID + THE ALMONDS + PETTY CASSETTES + CHERUB) THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Eclectic lineup.

BEIGE BANQUET (BOTTLE ROCKETS + SCUNNURT + THE WIFE GUYS OF REDDIT)

Post-punk from London.

Part of Central Belters.

Folk from Halifax.

FIDDLEHEAD

PORCHLIGHT

STEREO, 19:00–22:30

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Post-hardcore from the US.

Indie from Brighton. Part of Endless Summer.

Thu 18 Aug

STRANGE DIMENSIONS (NO WINDOWS + THE WITS + GLASS RASPBERRY) KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

Indie rock from Greenrock.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

KATE LINDSAY & BAND (LEO SWALLOW + LOVEORDEATH)

Deathgrind from San Diego.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Jazz from the Shetlands.

Part of Endless Summer.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Dark pop from Edinburgh.

Part of Central Belters.

CHARTREUSE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Hip-hop from Scotland.

Wed 17 Aug

Wed 10 Aug

Producer from Jamaica.

Jazz from Scotland.

Sat 20 Aug

GWAR

Indie from the UK.

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Glasgow. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

GOODNIGHT LOUISA (RAZZ MATTREEZY + KATIE NICOL)

DAMIAN “JR. GONG” MARLEY

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

GENTLEMEN OF FEW

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Funk from LA.

MEMES (ISABELLA STRANGE + THE EXHALES + KILGOUR)

Post-punk from Glasgow.

Part of Central Belters.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Indie folk from Kochi. Part of Endless Summer.

Fri 19 Aug

Experimental metal from New York.

Tue 16 Aug

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Glasgow. Part of Endless Summer.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Metal from the US.

GELATINE (SAM AKPRO + DEAFDEAFDEAF + THE TROPICANAS)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

STEREO, 19:00–22:30

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

MIMA MERROW

BLUSH CLUB (TEOSE + OH ROMANCE)

COMBICHRIST

STEREO, 19:00–22:30

Mon 08 Aug

Singer-songwriter from Scotland. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

MEGAN BLACK (FULL FAT BAND)

ARCHIE (ROBYN RED + SARA RAE + BECKI RUTHERFORD)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

GRETEL HANLYN (GGLUM)

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

GREG PEARSON (JAMIE RAFFERTY + TOMMY MCGUIRE + CHRISTIE OLIVER)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

POSSESSION RECORDS PRESENTS

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 20:00–22:30

Eclectic lineup.

Sun 21 Aug

SILVI (MAJESTY PALM + JENNIFER STEWART + DEL PREZ) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Pop from Scotland. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

WAR ON WOMEN

ROMACALEO

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 21:00–22:30

PEAL (BIG GIRL’S BLOUSE + HUMAN INTEREST + EAT THE FRIEK)

Sun 14 Aug

Indie from Scotland. Part of Central Belters.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Pop from the US.

THE UTOPIA STRONG STEREO, 19:00–22:30

BOY HITS CAR

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

THE HONEY POT

Psych pop rock from the UK. NANI

Indie from Edinburgh. Part of Endless Summer.

Psych rock from the UK.

Art pop from the US.

Indie pop from London. Part of Central Belters.

ICHIKO AOBA

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Folk from Japan. Part of Endless Summer.

Tue 23 Aug

CAROLESDAUGHTER KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

Alt pop from California.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

MINAMI DEUTSCH

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

SYMPHONIX

BARROWLANDS, 18:30– 22:30

Prog trance from Germany.

PINK POUND (R.AGGS + COME OUTSIDE) THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–23:00

Bedroom pop from Glasgow.

DAVE ARCHIBALD

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Edinburgh.

STEREO, 19:00–22:30

CO:CLEAR (PERILA + SOMEWHERE BETWEEN TAPES)

PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS

Electronica from Berlin.

Krautrock from Japan.

INDIGO DE SOUZA

Indie rock from Asheville.

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Psych rock from Australia.

NATALIE BERGMAN (LAURA-MARY CARTER + ALI SHA SHA) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Singer-songwriter from LA. Part of Endless Summer.

Wed 24 Aug

BUFFALO NICHOLS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:00–22:30

ADAM ROSS (MAN OF THE MINCH + KING RIB) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Indie from the US. Part of Endless Summer.

Sat 27 Aug

PIZZA CRUNCH (VANSLEEP + TINA SANDWCH + STATIC) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

STEREO, 19:00–22:30

Alt indie from Glasgow.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

APOLLO GHOSTS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Jangle punk from Canada.

Part of Endless Summer.

TARAKA

Blues from Texas.

NASTY NESTO

Rock from Glasgow.

MAGPIE BLUE (SULKA)

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Indie pop from London. Part of Central Belters.

Thu 25 Aug CHRIS YOUNG (SEAFORTH)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Country from Tennessee.

CALUM BOWIE (BLAIR DAVIE) KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

Indie from Aberdeenshire.

Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

KATIE GREGSONMACLEOD (LINZI CLARK + GRAYLING)

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Inverness. Part of Central Belters.

STEREO, 19:00–22:30

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Punk from New York.

KING WINE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Pop from Glasgow. Part of Endless Summer.

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Southern rock from Tennessee.

SIXPEACE (FRIGHT YEARS + CHERRY RED + BEN WALKER)

Edinburgh Music Tue 02 Aug

ORCHESTRA BAOBAB THE QUEEN’S HALL, 20:00–22:30

Afro-latin from Senegal.

EASY LIFE

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

Alt indie from Leicester.

Wed 03 Aug MOSCOW DEATH BRIGADE

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Punk rock from Russia.

PIXIES

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from Boston.

Thu 04 Aug THE SOAPGIRLS

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Rock’n’roll from Cape Town.

QUIET HOUSES (EVE SIMPSON + CYRANO) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Indie pop from Edinburgh.

Part of Central Belters.

Fri 05 Aug

RXPTRS (WAVES)

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Rock from Bristol.

JAMIE T

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

Indie from London.

SURYA SEN (PEARLING)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Hip-hop from London. Part of Central Belters.

Electronica from Germany.

Alt rock from Scotland.

ROBOCOBRA QUARTET

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Jazz from Belfast.

BASIL PANAGOP XAVIER LACROIX + CHIZU NNAMDI + PHILOMENAH THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Mon 29 Aug

THE CADILLAC THREE (LINDSAY ELL)

Synth pop from Chicago.

Part of Endless Summer.

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Fri 26 Aug

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

CHRISTIAN LÖFFLER

LAST BOY

Indie rock from Glasgow.

Post-punk from the US. Part of Endless Summer.

ADVANCE BASE (KARIMA WALKER + RAVELOE)

Sun 28 Aug

Singer-songwriter from Berlin. Part of Endless Summer.

Indie from the UK. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

— 102 —

Rock from LA. STRABE

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Rock from Leeds. Part of Endless Summer.

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

PERFUME GENIUS

SARAH SHOOK

Jazz funk from Australia.

Part of Central Belters.

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

NOAH CYRUS

Rock from Germany.

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 18:00–22:30

Country pop from the US. Part of King Tut’s Summer Nights.

SURPRISE CHEF

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

THE SQUINTS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Jazz from Edinburgh.

MICHAEL SCHENKER

PRISCILLA BLOCK

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Punk from Maryland.

CATTLE DECAPITATION

Mon 22 Aug

KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:30

Alt indie from the US. DOPE LEMON

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Indie from Australia.

SUMMERHALL, 20:00– 22:30

Sat 06 Aug

ERIC MARTIN’S (MR BIG) BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Rock from New York.

THE DUALERS

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30

Ska from London.

DEEMA (RANDOMBROWNKID. + NIKHITA) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Hip-hop from London. Part of Central Belters.

SACRED PAWS (POSTER PAINTS)

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Indie rock from Edinburgh.

RYLEY WALKER

Sun 07 Aug

Singer-songwriter from the US.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

CLAMM

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Punk from Melbourne.

BABY DAVE

Electro punk from London.

Part of Central Belters.

THE SKINNY

Venues

July 2022 — Listings

— 103 —

August 2022

THE SKINNY

— 104 —

THE SKINNY

Mon 08 Aug EADES

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Art rock from Leeds. Part of Central Belters.

Tue 09 Aug SUEDE RAZORS

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Rock’n’roll from San Francisco.

CULTDREAMS

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Lo-fi punk from Leeds. Part of Central Belters.

Wed 10 Aug

BOUCHARD BROS

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Mon 15 Aug

KAE TEMPEST

TALISK

Folk from Scotland.

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Spoken word from London.

Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

TYLA N’MATTY FROM DOGAS D’AMOUR (PAUL MORRICONE)

Rock from the UK.

GRETEL HANLYN (GGLUM) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

Sun 21 Aug

ROLE MODELS + BILLY LIAR + POWDERKEG + THE EMPTY PAGE

Lo-fi from London. Part of Central Belters.

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Tue 16 Aug

Thu 11 Aug AVATAR

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

SATURDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Folk pop from New York.

AROOJ AFTAB

LOS BITCHOS

GRACE & THE FLATBOYS (HUMAN INTEREST + INDOOR FOXES) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Jazz fusion from Edinburgh.

Part of Central Belters.

CATE LE BON

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Indie folk from Wales.

LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

SURPRISE CHEF SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Jazz funk from Australia.

Part of Central Belters.

Tue 23 Aug

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN OF ROCK: TEMPERANCE + EDGE OF PARADISE BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Heavy rock from Scotland.

CHAMELEON LADY SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Folk pop from Edinburgh.

Dundee Music Sat 06 Aug

EIGHTEEN YEARS PRESENTS: SAMH CHARITY GIG

CHURCH, 18:30–22:30

Eclectic lineup.

BUFFALO NICHOLS

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

HONEYBLOOD

Indie pop from Scotland.

JEFF MILLS: TOMORROW COMES THE HARVEST

LEITH THEATRE, 20:0022:30

ELKAPATH (GOTHZILLA + JEANICE LEE)

Goth metal from Gloucester.

JACK BOTTS (BEN CAMDEN) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Blues from Texas.

KAKATSITSI MASTER DRUMMERS SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Percussion from Ghana.

EZRA FURMAN LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

Art pop from Chicago. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Afrofunk-electro-jazz from the US. Part of Edinburgh International Festival

Surf folk from Australia.

Fri 12 Aug

Indie from Norway.

Wed 24 Aug

LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

THE WOMBATS

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30

Indie rock from Liverpool.

BILLY GOT WAVES (BLOODY SHIELD + KOMBO) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Rap from Edinburgh. Part of Central Belters.

Sat 13 Aug

JENNY HVAL

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

IBEYI

R’n’B from France. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Composer from Oakland.

Fri 19 Aug

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

BEIGE BANQUET (THE WIFE GUYS OF REDDIT + THE THAW) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Post-punk from London.

Part of Central Belters.

Eclectic punk lineup.

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

GELATINE (SAM AKPRO) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Psych garage from Glasgow.

Part of Central Belters.

SQUAREPUSHER

LEITH THEATRE, 20:0022:30

Dance/electronica from the UK. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Sun 14 Aug

SPACE (THE HUSHTONES + BICYCLE DALIGHT) BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Britpop from Liverpool.

LINDISFARNE

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 20:00–22:30

Folk rock from Newcastle.

SON OF KEMET LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

Jazz from the UK. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

JAMES YORKSTON & THE SECOND HAND ORCHESTRA + NINA PERSSON

Singer-songwriter from Fife.

ARAB STRAP

LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

Indie rock from Falkirk. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Sat 20 Aug THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30

Rock from New Jersey.

DUTCH WINE (SAD BOYS CLUB + THE TROPICANAS) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from Glasgow.

Part of Central Belters.

MCLUSKY

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Post-hardcore from Wales.

Thu 25 Aug LILLIAN AXE

Hard rock from New Orleans.

EFTERKLANG

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Chamber pop from Denmark.

LUCY DACUS

LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

Indie folk from Virginia. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Fri 26 Aug

MADDS (WAVERLEY.) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Indie from Edinburgh. Part of Central Belters.

MEDITERRANEO

SUMMERHALL, 20:00– 22:30

World music from Edinburgh.

THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA LEITH THEATRE, 20:00–22:30

Electronica from London.

Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Sat 27 Aug STRABE

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Indie pop from London. Part of Central Belters.

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

Or Caturdays, if you will.

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

SUNDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) HELLBENT

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

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

SUNDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) SLIDE IT IN

Classic rock through the ages from DJ Nicola Walker.

The Garage Glasgow MONDAYS

BARE MONDAYS

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

TUESDAYS

#TAG TUESDAYS

CHURCH, 19:00–22:30

Punk folk from Sydney.

Glasgow Clubs

Wed 17 Aug

POWER POT PRESENTS: RAVE 001 (MISS CABBAGE + FRANKIE ELYSE + KOPI 0 + ESFI) LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Techno and electro.

Thu 18 Aug

Thu 04 Aug

FOUNDRY043 (KANE + AHARI) LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

HAPPY HARDCORE THURSDAY (COY HIRN + JOEY MOUSEPADS + HARDCORE LEGEND SECRET GUEST) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Electro and breaks.

Hardcore from Glasgow.

Fri 05 Aug

LEZURE 061: REPTANT (SLOAN) LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Acid and breaks.

JAIVA (BUTHOTHEWARRIOR + OPTIMISTIC SOUL + JOSHUA DUBE)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Afro house.

Fri 19 Aug

HOUSE OF REVLON [UK] X STEREO PRESENT: MIKEQ (JUNGLEHUSSI B2B PLANTAINCHIPPS + MOJXMMA + MC EYVE) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Ballrom, Jersey club and R’n’B from New Jersey and Glasgow.

Sat 20 Aug

Sat 06 Aug

ASQUITH (PLANTAINCHIPPS + H3L3NA) THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Jungle, rave and breaks.

STREETRAVE ALL DAYER

SWG3, 14:00–23:00

Rave and techno.

HEADSET (SKILLIS B2B VAJ.POWER + LWS + KAMUS + GREENMAN) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Fri 12 Aug

STEREO PRESENTS: EHUA & NYKSAN (MAVEEN)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Breaks, dembow and jungle from London and Glasgow.

TNNLSYSTM

UK Garage, dancehall, jungle, and techno.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT: CORMAC (BONZAI BONNER) THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00

Dance and Italo-house.

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

Hardcore and hard dance.

RETURN TO MONO: SLAM & FELICIE (LISALOOF)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

Sat 13 Aug

A CUT ABOVE (MAG + PLEASURE POOL (LIVE) + DJ ELIOT + LIZZIE URQUHART + MOVENTIA) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Bass, disco and weirdo club from Glasgow.

Thu 25 Aug CLUB LATE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 23:00–03:00

House and dance.

Fri 26 Aug

STEREO PRESENTS: FINN (BOOSTERHOOCH + ROO HONEYCHILD) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Bass and garage from Manchester.

ANIMAL FARM: SOMEWHEN (QUAIL + AISHA)

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

— 105 —

Sat 27 Aug PLANTBASS’D

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Hard drum ‘n’ bass from Glasgow.

Edinburgh Clubs Tue 02 Aug MIDNIGHT BASS THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Drum ‘n’ bass.

Wed 03 Aug

THE FRINGE REGGAE CLUB 2022

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

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

THURSDAYS ELEMENT

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

FRIDAYS

FRESH BEAT

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

SATURDAYS

I LOVE GARAGE

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

Indoor hot tubs, inflatables as far as the eye can see and a Twitter feed dedicated to validating your drunk-eyed existence.

SUNDAYS

Wed 10 Aug

Thu 18 Aug

Country folk from Dundee.

THE RUMJACKS + SHANGHAI TREASON + THE CUNDEEZ

WEDNESDAYS

THE FRINGE REGGAE CLUB 2022 LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Reggae.

ELYSIUM (DJ HYPERDRIVE + WHITLEY)

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Hard dance.

Thu 11 Aug

TO THE POINT X MILKIT

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Drum ‘n’ bass.

OVERGROUND

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Rave and techno.

BE WIDE (MRS MAGOO + SKILLIS)

HEADSET PRESENTS SUMMERSET (SKILLIS)

Electronica.

Garage, breaks, and bass.

SESH

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

TO THE POINT

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Drum ‘n’ bass.

OVERGROUND

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Rave and techno.

Fri 19 Aug

HOBBES MUSIC SUMMER PARTY

SUMMERHALL, 23:00– 03:00

Electro and experimental.

DISCO MAKOSSA LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Afro house, disco, boogie and funk.

PALIDRONE (PARRIS + TIM REAPER + SOSI) THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Reggae.

Fri 12 Aug

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

SUMMERHALL, 23:00– 03:00

Thu 04 Aug OVERGROUND

BALKANARAMA FRINGE EDITION FEAT. SMASH KAFANA

Rave and techno.

Balkan beats.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

FIRST EDITION (PEARSON SOUND)

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Fri 05 Aug

CALIFORNIA LOVE LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

DNB ON THE FRINGE

Drum ‘n’ bass.

90s and 00s hip-hop and R’n’B.

Sat 13 Aug

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

SUMMERHALL, 23:00– 03:00

Eclectic lineup.

Sat 20 Aug REVOLT

SUMMERHALL, 23:00– 03:00

Techno and house.

DECADE - DISNEY PARTY

Pop and dance.

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

House and dance.

EPIKA (DARKALI)

AUNTI FLO (BRIAN D’SOUZA)

Techno.

World music.

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Wed 24 Aug

Sat 06 Aug

WE ARE STILL YOUNG: THE CLUB NIGHT LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Emo pop.

SWIFTOGEDDON

Pop and dance.

CLUB NACHT (MARCEL VOGEL)

Tue 23 Aug MIDNIGHT BASS

Drum ‘n’ bass.

THE FRINGE REGGAE CLUB 2022 LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Tropical.

Tue 16 Aug

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Thu 25 Aug

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Eclectic lineup.

EDINTEKK (GORESHIT)

MIDNIGHT BASS

Hardtek.

Drum ‘n’ bass.

Tue 09 Aug

Wed 17 Aug

MIDNIGHT BASS THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Drum ‘n’ bass.

THE FRINGE REGGAE CLUB 2022 LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Reggae.

Reggae.

BE WIDE

Electronica.

TO THE POINT X MANGO LOUNGE LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Drum ‘n’ bass.

OVERGROUND

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Rave and techno.

August 2022 — Listings

FILHOS DE INACIO (UTTIN EDGE + TOM MOODY & GHBAND + UME + GNASHER) BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

TUNE-YARDS

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

TRAGICAL HISTORY TOUR

Thu 18 Aug

Singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania.

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

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

Dream-pop from Edinburgh. Part of Central Belters.

ALEX G

LOOSEN UP

SUBCULTURE

Thu 11 Aug

LEITH THEATRE, 20:0022:30

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

SATURDAYS

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

PRINCESS NOKIA

SATURDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

Sub Club

Rapper from New York. Part of Edinburgh Internationa Festival.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

UNHOLY

CHEERS FOR THIRD SUNDAY

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

DINOSAUR 94 (NANI + ELOI)

RAD APPLES, 16:00– 22:30

SWISS PORTRAIT (CHARTREUSE + JESHUA)

SUNDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

FRIDAYS

TWENTY GUAGE (BURNING BRIDGES)

Metal from Italy.

Metal from Sweden.

THURSDAYS

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

Pop party anthems and classic cheese from DJ Nicola Walker.

MOJO WORKIN’

Mon 22 Aug

Folk from Scotland.

LEITH THEATRE, 20:0022:30

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

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

Mon 29 Aug

CASSANDRA JENKINS

Wed 17 Aug

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

NITEWORKS: COMANN

GOLDEN DAYS

SUNDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH) FLASHBACK

Anthemic rock from Fife.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Psych pop from London.

RURA

Indie from San Francisco.

SUNDAYS

WEDNESDAYS

Rock from Niger.

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

Funk from LA.

Garage rock from Edinburgh/Leeds. Part of Central Belters.

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

Cathouse

MDOU MOCTAR

Composer from Pakistan.

Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

The Flying Duck

DEERHOOF

DANCING ON TABLES (NAOMI MUNN)

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

CHEAP TEETH (HYPOTHETICS)

Sun 28 Aug

The Rum Shack

ROY AYERS UBIQUITY THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

Regular Glasgow club nights

Trad-electronica from the Isle of Skye. Part of Edinburgh International Festival.

Eclectic rock lineup.

Indie jazz from Edinburgh.

Part of Central Belters.

Rock from New York.

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

THE SKINNY

Fri 26 Aug SSL XL

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Bass and sound system.

Dundee Clubs

FONN

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Electronica.

Sat 27 Aug

MESSENGER SOUND SYSTEM SUMMERHALL, 23:00– 03:00

Roots and dub.

TIME WARP!

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–05:00

Pop and dance.

Sat 20 Aug

EXPERIENCE HOUSE PRESENTS ILLYUS & BARRIENTOS CHURCH, 23:00–03:00

House and dance.

Fri 26 Aug CONEXION

THE HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 22:00–03:00

Techno and rave.

PULSE

Glasgow Comedy The King’s Theatre

JACK DEE: OFF THE TELLY

EDINTEKK

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Hardtek.

Sun 28 Aug THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Tramway

UNCLES: ONE FOR THE ROAD 25-27 AUG, 8:00PM – 10:00PM

FOOTLOOSE

House and techno.

1-6 AUG, 7:30PM – 10:00PM

A city boy moves to the sticks where dancing is banned in this classic dance musical.

SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN 8-13 AUG, 7:30PM – 10:00PM

Joyful, high-concept choreography in this stage adaptation of the beloved film.

MONDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) HEADSET

Scottish rave label with a monthly, guest-filled night.

TUESDAYS

POPULAR MUSIC

DJs playing music by bands to make you dance: Grace Jones to Neu!, Parquet Courts to Brian Eno, The Clash to Janelle Monáe.

WEDNESDAYS

August 2022 — Listings

HEATERS

Heaters resident C-Shaman presents a month of ambiguous local showdowns, purveying the multifarious mischief that characterises Sneaky’s midweek party haven.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) VOLENS CHORUS

Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook FRIDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) MISS WORLD

All-female DJ collective with monthly guests

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH) HOT MESS

A night for queer people and their friends.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) SOUL JAM

Monthly no holds barred, down and dirty bikram disco.

SUNDAYS

FRIDAYS

SATURDAYS

Multi-genre beats every Sunday at Sneaky Pete's, showcasing the very best of local talent with some extra special guests.

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and novelty-stuffed.

Perrrfect.

The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

POSTAL

The Liquid Room SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) REWIND

Monthly party night celebrating the best in soul, disco, rock and pop with music from the 70s, 80s, 90s and current bangers.

The Hive MONDAYS

MIXED UP MONDAY

Monday-brightening mix of Hip-hop, R'n'B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

TUESDAYS

TRASH TUESDAY

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

WEDNESDAYS

COOKIE WEDNESDAY

90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY

Student anthems and bangerz.

FLIP FRIDAY

SATURDAYS BUBBLEGUM

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

SUNDAYS

SECRET SUNDAY

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

Subway Cowgate MONDAYS TRACKS

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

TUESDAYS TAMAGOTCHI

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

WEDNESDAYS XO

Hip-hop and R'n'B grooves from regulars DJ Beef and DJ Cherry.

THURSDAYS SLIC

More classic Hip-hop and R'n'B dance tunes for the almost end of the week.

FRIDAYS

FIT FRIDAYS

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

SLICE SATURDAY

SUNDAYS

Sunday Service Atone for the week before and the week ahead with non-stop dancing.

The Mash House

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

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

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) PULSE

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

1 AUG-29 JAN 23, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Street Level Photoworks

STREET LEVEL OPEN 2022 2-7 AUG, TIMES VARY

THE STEAMIE

13 AUG-10 SEP, 7:30PM – 10:00PM

Warm and witty classic Scottish play about three Glasgow women on the laundry line.

Glasgow Art CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

ALEXANDRA TOLAND + ASAD RAZA + DÉSIRÉE CORAL: WE ARE COMPOST/ COMPOSTING THE WE

2 AUG-10 SEP, TIMES VARY

Three separate but entangled works, from film to installation, that examine the cyclical nature of composting to ask what new kinds of transformation are possible.

David Dale Gallery and Studios

SARAH PICHLKOSTNER: FILL O

Regular Edinburgh club nights Sneaky Pete’s

A choreographed musical journey about migration and the permeability of borders.

Dundee Rep

The King’s Theatre

PROTOCOL

12-13 AUG, 7:00PM – 10:00PM

Sculpture, film and scent installation consider ideas of trade and histories of human, animal and botanic migration.

Dundee Theatre

Glasgow Theatre

Techno.

CLARA URSITTI: AMIK

FARAH SALEH + OĞUZ KAPLANGI: A WEE JOURNEY

New comedy from national treasure.

27 AUG, 8:00PM – 10:00PM

Comedy from Rab Florence and Iain Connell.

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–05:00

Tramway

6-20 AUG, 12:00PM – 5:00PM

Sculptural environments

by Austrian artist Sarah Pichlkostner that visualise invisible processes of energy, time, and psychological response.

Glasgow Print Studio

WILHELMINA BARNSGRAHAM: PAINTING & PRINTING, 1990-2004 5 AUG-1 OCT, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

Prints exploring abstract representation from one of Scotland’s most seminal 20th-century artists.

LIN CHAU: MOVING LANDSCAPES

5-27 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

A series of seascapes transformed from in-situ sketches to intricate print works.

Glasgow Women’s Library

WILHELMINA BARNSGRAHAM: COLOUR IN MOTION 1-6 AUG, TIMES VARY

A showcase of prints and catalogues by one of the UK’s most important abstract artists.

GoMA TASTE!

1 AUG-31 DEC, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Featuring work by Andy Warhol, Sarah Forrest and David Shrigley, this exhibition looks at how taste is created and art archives are curated.

DOMESTIC BLISS

1 AUG-31 DEC, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Building on the gallery’s space as a former house and civic space, Domestic Bliss examines how artists develop practice alongside social and political change, and the ways in which public and domestic labour intersect with art.

Featuring numerous Scottish lens-based artists pulled from an open call, this exhibition is a celebration of the diversity of photography in Scotland.

The Briggait

ADAM BOYD: CAUSAL THREAD 1-8 AUG, TIMES VARY

Strange, material installations engaging with art historical and pop culture tropes.

RSA WASPS AWARD WINNER EXHIBITION 11 AUG-2 SEP, TIMES VARY

Regular Glasgow comedy nights Drygate Brewing Co.

FIRST AND THIRD TUESDAY OF THE MONTH DRYGATE COMEDY LAB, 7PM

A new material comedy night hosted by Chris Thorburn.

The Stand Glasgow

FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH

Edinburgh Art

The Modern Institute

2-31 AUG, TIMES VARY

A site-responsive exhibition of intricately crafted stained glass and works on paper exploring ideas of structure and space.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

MARK HANDFORTH 1 AUG-1 SEP, TIMES VARY

A forest of orange pipes and tubes create an immersive post-industrial landscape.

SHEELAGH BOYCE + ANNABELLE HARTY: ARRANGE WHATEVER PIECES COME YOUR WAY 1 AUG-1 SEP, TIMES VARY

Handsewn quilts and reconstructed fabrics craft new and surprising architectural spaces.

Tramway

HUMAN THREADS

2-28 AUG, TIMES VARY

Curated by Artlink and informed by individuals with profound and multiple learning disabilities, this exhibition crafts a interactive landscape through creatively sensory encounters.

CHRISTELLE OYIRI: GENTLE BATTLE

2-14 AUG, TIMES VARY

Exploring the symbolic political potency of objects and music, this exhibition examines how warfare and colonialism continue to make themselves felt.

iota @ Unlimited Studios

ROWENA COMRIE: RADICALITIONISTS’ NEW ABSTRACT PAINTINGS 6-20 AUG, 12:00PM – 5:00PM

A stunning series of abstract paintings inspired by social revolutionaries, radical in their time, now forgotten or dismissed.

— 106 —

Legendary new material night with up to eight acts.

FRIDAYS

THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS

THE SATURDAY SHOW, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

The Glee Club FRIDAYS

FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

The perfect way to end the working week, with four superb stand-up comedians.

SATURDAYS

SATURDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

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

Host Billy Kirkwood and guests act entirely on your suggestions.

&Gallery

1 AUG-3 SEP, TIMES VARY

RED RAW, 20:30

MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

Featuring works by Lynsey Mackenzie, recipient of the RSA Wasps Award.

RICHARD WRIGHT

TUESDAYS

JFK TURNER: THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Exploring ideas of imagemaking, and the materiality of art as object.

Arusha Gallery

ROSA LEE + BARBARA LEVITTOUXŚWIDERSKA + SHELAGH WAKELY: WEATHERING IS WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO DO WELL 1-29 AUG, TIMES VARY

Bringing together paintings, textiles and installations by three artists with distinct visual sensibilities. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

City Art Centre NATIONAL TREASURE: THE SCOTTISH MODERN ARTS ASSOCIATION 1 AUG-16 OCT, TIMES VARY

Spotlighting work by the Glasgow Boys, Scottish Colourists and artists such as William McTaggart and Joan Eardley, this is a celebration of Scottish art at the dawn of modernism. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

WILL MACLEAN: POINTS OF DEPARTURE

1 AUG-2 SEP, TIMES VARY

This major retrospective spans construction, drawings, prints, sculptures, and video productions to examine the history, archaeology, and literature of the Scottish Highlands. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Collective Gallery

RUTH EWAN: THE BEAST

2 AUG-18 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

A surreal animated morality tale exploring intersecting ideas of power, capitalism and exploitation through a playful subversion of Scottish-American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

CAMARA TAYLOR: BACKWASH

2 AUG-4 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Mixed media work responding to the social and political significances of Scotland’s waterways. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

ANNETTE KRAUSS: A MATTER OF PRECEDENTS

2 AUG-4 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Exploring the concept of the “common good”, this exhibition responds to ideas of public space and institutional responsibility in Edinburgh and throughout Scotland. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Dovecot Studios

ALAN DAVIE: BEGINNING OF A FAROFF WORLD 1 AUG-24 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Celebrating the centenary of Scottish artist and tapestry-worker Alan Davie. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

RAPHAEL: MAGISTER RAFFAELLO

1 AUG-24 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

An exhibition celebrating the famed Renaissance painter’s career through digital projections and a large-scale contemporary tapestry interpreting a section of Raphael’s Sistine Chapel. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

THE MODERN INSTITUTE: SPACE FORGETS YOU

1 AUG-17 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Curated by The Modern Institute, this exhibition brings together various international artists working across tapestry and textiles. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

DAZZLE 2022

5-27 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Dovecot Studio’s annual contemporary jewellery showcase.

Edinburgh College of Art SUMMER AT ECA

19-26 AUG, TIMES VARY

A showcase of work by graduating students from the Schools of Art, Design and Architecture. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Edinburgh Printmakers TESSA LYNCH: HOUSES FIT FOR PEOPLE

2 AUG-18 SEP, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

A series of prints by Glasgow-based artist exploring feminist readings of the city and issues of social reproduction often at odds with contemporary art and life. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

NADIA MYRE: TELL ME OF YOUR BOATS AND YOUR WATERS WHERE DO YOU COME FROM, WHERE DO THEY GO? 2-18 AUG, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Responding to the 200th anniversary of the Union Canal, this exhibition explores migratory routes embedded in the canal and indigenous forms of storytelling. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

CALUM CRAIK: PSYCHO CAPITAL

1-27 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

An interpretation of the neoliberal capitalist landscape told through construction debris, Airbnb rentals and defensive architecture. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

ASHANTI HARRIS: DANCING A PERIPHERAL QUADRILLE

1-27 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

Melding forms of communal and grassroots cultural production with the artist’s longstanding interest in West Indian carnivals. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Fruitmarket DANIEL SILVER: LOOKING

1 AUG-25 SEP, 10:00AM – 7:00PM

Organic, roughly hewn clay sculptures that explore acts of looking and being looked at. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Good Vibes Neighbourhood Store & Studios

DAVID LEMM: TRACKS 4-13 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

An exploration of process, object and the built environment using materials harvested from the tramline construction on Constitution Street

Ingleby Gallery LORNA ROBERTSON: THOUGHTS, MEALS, DAYS

3 AUG-17 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

Glasgow-based artist plays with notions of scale and expression through expressive, figurative canvasses.

Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

July 2022 — Listings

Venues

THE SKINNY

— 108 —

THE SKINNY

Institut français d’Ecosse

PLATFORM: 2022

1-27 AUG, TIMES VARY

Jupiter Artland TRACEY EMIN: I LAY HERE FOR YOU

1 AUG-2 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

BARBARA HEPWORTH: ART & LIFE 1 AUG-2 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

The largest exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s work since her death in 1975, this ambitious retrospective examines the personal and political in her groundbreaking art. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Scottish Tracey Emin’s first Scottish show since 2008 takes the National form of a larger-than-life yet Portrait strangely intimate bronze Gallery sculpture reflecting on the possibilities of love after hardship. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Open Eye Gallery

BARBARA RAE CBE RA: LAMMERMUIR

2-27 AUG, TIMES VARY

Focusing on the changing environment of the Lammermuirs Hills, this exhibition explores the ways in which the landscape can shift and adapt. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Out of the Blue Drill Hall 16 AUG-3 SEP, 10:00AM – 4:00PM

Through film, photography, installation and poetry, this exhibition explores the humanitarian and environmental costs of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the history of nuclear warfare on this planet.

Royal Botanic Garden

COOKING SECTIONS AND SAKIYA: IN THE EDDY OF THE STREAM 1 AUG-17 SEP, 10:00AM – 6:00PM

Installations and performances stemming from the history of land struggles in Scotland and Palestine.

Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

YAN WANG PRESTON: WITH LOVE. FROM AN INVADER. 1-27 AUG, 10:00AM – 6:00PM

LEON MORROCCO: LONG ROAD HOME

1-28 AUG, TIMES VARY

An incisive look at one of Scotland’s most celebrated international painters, timed to coincide with his 80th birthday.

Scottish National Gallery

A TASTE FOR IMPRESSIONISM: MODERN FRENCH ART FROM MILLET TO MATISSE 1 AUG-13 NOV, TIMES VARY

Exploring the fascination Scottish collectors had for Impressionist art, this exhibition features the likes of Degas, Van Gogh and Gaugin. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Sierra Metro

STUDIO LENCA: THE INVISIBLES 1-28 AUG, 10:00AM – 2:00PM

Portrait photography exploring the complex colonial legacies in El Salvador and erasures of diasporic Latinx identity. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Stills

ISHIUCHI MIYAKO

2 AUG-8 OCT, 12:00PM – 5:00PM

This exhibition by renowned post-war Japanese photographer brings together an impressive collection of her work, including pieces created in the Frida Kahlo Museum and with victims of Hiroshima bomb. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Summerhall

FARRUKH ADDNAN + MICHELE MARCOUX: ECOLOGIES OF DISPLACEMENT

1 AUG-25 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

Created through a series of Zoom workshops, this exhibition engages with urgent themes of exile and displacement.

NOTHING’S GUARANTEED: EXHIBITION OF BOSNO-FUTURISM

1 AUG-25 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts

A series of abstract, geometric paintings using colour in striking ways. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

The Scottish Gallery

KIRSTEN COELHO: UNCERTAIN CADENCE 2-27 AUG, TIMES VARY

Functional ceramic vessels melding innovative forms with abstraction. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

DUNCAN SHANKS: THE RIVERBANK – A LANDSCAPE OF SORROW AND HOPE

2-27 AUG, TIMES VARY

One of Scotland’s most eminent living painters presents a new collection of work exploring cycles of loss and renewal in nature.

Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Torrance Gallery

FESTIVAL SHOW

2 AUG-3 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:30PM

Annual festival show celebrating contemporary British and Scottish artists including featured artist Julie Dumbarton.

Edinburgh Venues

DOUGLAS GORDON: K364

Just in time for the festivals, we profile the hottest new venues springing up in Scotland’s capital Words: Izzy Gray

1-7 AUG, TIMES VARY

A major film installation that offers a powerful mediation on trauma and recovery.

MANUEL SOLANO

27 AUG-20 NOV, TIMES VARY

Mixed-media work responding to ideas of identity, created through tactile mapping techniques after the artist’s loss of eyesight due to a HIV-related illness.

The McManus THE STREET AT THE MCMANUS

2 AUG-22 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Immersive exhibition looking at Dundee’s historical architecture.

TROY: BEAUTY AND HEROISM

2-13 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Depicting the story of Helen and Paris, an Etruscan urn on loan from the British Museum is complemented by other mythic items from the McManus and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design collections.

DISPOSITION COFFEE

29 ROSEBURN TERR, EH12 5NQ

Fancy a floral fix alongside your coffee? In need of time away from the swell of the city centre? Saunter westwards down the Water of Leith to leafy Roseburn, where you can finish your stroll with a well-earned brew. Disposition Coffee have teamed up with the new Hordeum Botanical Studio to create a haven of Hygge-inspired calm. The Scandi decor and earthy tones set the vibe just right for their flower-shop-come-coffee-place hybrid. The store comes nicely decked out with preserved flowers, curious plants and gorgeous pots that you just know belong on your kitchen shelf. Better still: the coffee’s a triumph and dog’s are not only welcome but actively encouraged.

V&A Dundee MICHAEL CLARK: COSMIC DANCER

1 AUG-4 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

A groundbreaking exhibition exploring the life and works of acclaimed Scottish choreographer and dancer Michael Clark.

SINCERELY, VALENTINES: FROM POSTCARDS TO GREETINGS CARDS 1 AUG-8 JAN 2023, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Exhibiting an archive

by J. Valentine & Sons, Scotland’s pioneering commercial photographers who popularised the holiday postcard on a global scale.

Verdant Works

ANDREW CRONSHAW: MEET THE LAST TAY SPINNERS

3 AUG-9 OCT, 12:00AM – 12:00AM

BITTERSWEET

24 HENDERSON ST, EH6 6BS

You know that hankering that often kicks in, early evening? You’re not quite in the zone for a big feed yet, but the snack bowl keeps a’calling? And see how those snacks taste so much better washed down with a drink? The Italians have a word for that: aperitivo.

This is the tradition the crew behind Bittersweet want us Scots to get acquainted with. Bittersweet is a cocktail bar with more than just a twist of lime. Centred around the concept of aperitvo, the newest addition to Leith’s nightlife is receiving a rightful share of praise for its menu, which wouldn’t look out of place on the marbled streets of Milan. Homemade gnocchi, arancini and delicious strips of montanara pizza prove to be perfect complements to their tempting tipples. Our choice? The house spritz, made on-site in their own distillery.

Photographic and art series looking at the last days of jute spinning in Dundee.

Drawing on the rich aesthetic of Afrofuturism, this collection of mixed media looks at how cutting edge European arts depicts ideas of Balkan futurism.

DIANA ZWIBACH: NO CALLBACK

1 AUG-25 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

Collage-like works on paper exploring themes of personal loss and mental trauma post-pandemic.

Talbot Rice Gallery

CÉLINE CONDORELLI: AFTER WORK 1 AUG-1 OCT, TIMES VARY

A groundbreaking survey of design and installation exploring the ethics of labour and production. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

TIPSY MIDGIE

67 ST LEONARDS HILL, EH8 9SB

It’s a little known fact that The Pleasance is officially the only corner of Scotland where the word midgie is looked upon with favour. It might have a little something to do with this place. Like its namesake, the Tipsy Midgie may be wee in stature (30 seats proud) but it’s gathering big love in the Old Town for its impressive collection of rare whiskies and gins. Particular perks include its ‘Can and a Dram’ set-up (a new take on the Scottish ‘hauf and hauf’), its hybrid Hyballs and its promising of regular tasting events which, rather conveniently, include chocolate pairing Tuesdays. Sign. Us. Up.

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August 2022 — Listings

Royal Scottish Academy RSA

Inspired by the 2022 census, photographs old and new come together to consider complex notions of identity formation and performance. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

1-27 AUG, TIMES VARY

JOHN MCLEAN: FLARE

Image: courtesy of the venue

Using rhododenron as a cipher for colonisation, this exhibition investigates the complex connections between landscape representation, identity, migration and the environment. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

1 AUG-25 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Dundee Art

Image: courtesy of the venue

CONSEQUENCES: ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

COUNTED: SCOTLAND’S CENSUS 2022

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

Image: courtesy of the venue

Four early career artists Saoirse Amira Anis, Emelia Kerr Beale, Lynsey MacKenzie, Jonny Walker - exhibit a cutting-edge programme.

Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

THE SKINNY

The Skinny On...

Hanna Tuuliki What’s your favourite place to visit and why?

I enjoy visiting islands and archipelagos – places surrounded by water, with expansive horizons. Also, island ecologies tend to be very unique.

Photo: Laurence Winram

The Skinny On...

We quiz British-Finnish artist, composer and performer Hanna Tuulikki as she brings her new sound composition and touring outdoor rave featuring collected bat echolocation sounds to Arbroath’s Hospitalfield

Favourite food and why?

Finnish rye bread, because it tastes of childhood.

What book would you take to a desert island?

A book to identify edible plants.

What’s your all-time favourite artwork?

Probably Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet, an audio installation reworking the sixteenth century choral work Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis, where forty separately recorded voices are played back through forty speakers. It is sublime, intimate and playful all at once.

Favourite colour and why?

Black. Or white. Or black and white together – I do enjoy a monochrome pattern. In the studio, I like to make drawings with indian ink on paper.

Outside, I love all the blues, greens, browns and greys of the Scottish hills, woodlands and sea.

Who’s the worst?

The worst human? Sadly, there’s quite a few eh... Boris and Putin for a start...

Who was your hero growing up?

David Attenborough.

Whose work inspires you now?

Right now, I feel pretty inspired by the work of Timothy Morton – they write sentences about ecological awareness. I’m also inspired by contemporary electronic music composers such as Laurel Halo, Holly Herndon, Gazelle Twin and Caterina Barbieri.

August 2022 — Chat

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

James Bond. All of them.

When did you last cry?

This morning, when I was thinking about a friend who passed away this time last year.

What are you most scared of?

All the multiple overlapping crises that are happening in the world right now.

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

Derek Jarman, Pauline Oliveros and Ursula Le Guinn for a vegan pot luck in Dungeness.

Tell us a secret?

If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.

Which artist could you take in a fight?

The art world is already way too competitive and I don’t really like fighting. Also I’m 5ft 2.

What’s your all time favourite album?

That’s a hard one, but Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love is probably up there.

“The art world is already way too competitive and I don’t really like fighting. Also I’m 5ft 2”

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

At the moment, because I’m spending so much time listening to recordings of bat echolocation calls, maybe a bat? Specifically, I’d choose the Greater Horseshoe Bat, because their calls are amazing, and their faces are magnificent.

Echo in the Dark bat rave, 8, 9 & 10 Sep, Hospitalfield, Arbroath — 110 —

THE SKINNY

August 2022

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August 2022 — Chat

The Skinny On...

THE SKINNY

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