The Skinny August 2021 by The Skinny

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August 2021 Issue 187

January 2020

Books

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

Art January 2020

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THE SKINNY

The Skinny's songs we would come on to in our one-person Fringe shows Daphne & Celeste — Ooh Stick You! Blue Öyster Cult — Don't Fear the Reaper (Happy Hardcore Remix) SHINee — Don't Call Me Eminem — The Real Slim Shady Stan Bush — Dare Berlin — Take My Breath Away Doris Wilson — Big Flame (Is Gonna Break My Heart in Two) The White Stripes — Blue Orchid Lana Del Rey — Born to Die Dr. Dog — Where'd All the Time Go? Britney Spears — Oops!...I Did It Again Jake Bugg — Seen It All The Greatest Bits — Wii Sports Theme (From 'Nintendo Wii') Hellfish — Guerillas On the Piss Wham! — Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?) Britney Spears — Work Bitch Bo Burnham — All Eyes on Me Listen to this playlist on Spotify — search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code

Issue 187, August 2021 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk August 2021

The Skinny is Scotland's largest independent entertainment & listings magazine, and offers a wide range of advertising packages and affordable ways to promote your business. Get in touch to find out more. E: sales@theskinny.co.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the explicit permission of the publisher. The views and opinions expressed within this publication do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the printer or the publisher. Printed by DC Thomson & Co. Ltd, Dundee ABC verified Jan – Dec 2019: 28,197

printed on 100% recycled paper

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Championing creativity in Scotland

Meet the team We asked – What would your Fringe show be called? Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "Celeste Liked My Post on Instagram"

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "Peter Simpson: He Thinks You Should Leave"

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "Nice Boys"

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "Top Dunn: I feel the need... the need to feed"

Tallah Brash Music Editor "Tallah Brash: I Blue Myself. One woman's journey of self-discovery via hair dye"

Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "The Real Nadine Jones"

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "My show would be called 'No apollygees' (classic), and I would walk out (very quickly) to the wailing guitar intro to Dare from The Transformers Movie"

Katie Goh Intersections Editor "Katie Goh: Hates Puns"

Eliza Gearty Theatre Editor "Liza Del Yay: Born to Cry"

Heather McDaid Books Editor "Ugh"

Sales & Business

Production

Rachael Hood Art Director, Production Manager "Doggy Day Care – Not a show but I'll look after your dogs and you can watch if you want"

Adam Benmakhlouf Art Editor "Type A Hippie: Free Loving in a Capitalist Nightmare"

Phoebe Willison Designer "Come Fight With Me: How to ruin family dinners with your political opinions"

Sandy Park Commercial Director "Sandy Park: Through the Looking Glass (of Tennent's)"

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "A Severe Lack of Proprioception: An Evening with Tom K McCarthy"

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "George Sully: Make Crappy. He's really joking at a time like this"

Laurie Presswood General Manager "Go Get How Happy Yourself"

THE SKINNY

Editorial Words: Rosamund West

he August 2021 issue isn’t quite the 100+ page megamagazine we are used to making at this time of year – but we have music listings back (for the first time since March 2020) and it marks a full 12 months of resumed publishing for us, so it’s a momentous occasion nonetheless. The Edinburgh festivals have returned, with varying degrees of certainty over their programmes. Edinburgh Art Festival had theirs nailed down well ahead of time, with exhibitions popping up all over the city and a new strand curated by Associate Artist Tako Taal which we are all very excited to explore. We speak to some of the artists included in it, as well as meeting this year’s Platform cohort of emergent talent. Edinburgh International Festival similarly had its programme ready to go by planning for three new performance spaces allowing for high levels of ventilation and social distancing. We talk to Inua Ellams about his night with Saul Williams, part of the new spoken word strand A Toast to the People. The Book Festival has moved site from its former home in Charlotte Square to Edinburgh College of Art on Lauriston Place. We speak to Torrey Peters (whose event we are sponsoring) about Detransition, Baby, and meet Nina Mingya Powles whose Small Bodies of Water challenges preconceptions of nature writing. The Fringe is back, albeit a little subdued. The lack of opportunity for rehearsal during this last year of lingering lockdowns has had the knock-on effect of very little comedy being ready for a Fringe run. The lack of rehearsal PLUS the total uncertainty hanging over everything at all times due to wildly unpredictable government policy, obviously. But comedy is coming nonetheless, as is some theatre, and some LIVE MUSIC. We look forward to all of that, as well as announcing

August 2021 — Chat

Kirsty Russell (b. 1990) grew up in the Scottish Borders and lives in Aberdeen. She graduated from Grays School of Art in 2013. Recent Projects include A Spoon is the Safest Vessel, Glasgow Women’s Library and Common Positions for the Jerwood Staging Series. Part of Platform.

Photo: Grant Anderson

Cover Artists

the triumphant return of Fringe Dog’s Terrier awards. On the live music front, we meet Kapil Seshasayee who will be performing at Jupiter Rising, an actual music festival that is actually happening (subject to government guidelines). Music also talks to Indigo de Souza and CHVRCHES, celebrating the release of their fourth album Screen Violence. Edinburgh International Film Festival has moved back to its original home among the August festivals. We meet pop duo Sparks to discuss their debut film, Annette, making its UK premiere at EIFF, and talk to Sheffield-based filmmaker Ryan Braund about his first feature film, Absolute Denial, animated during lockdown. In non-festival film coverage, we meet Edgar Wright to talk some more about Sparks, and our Film editor finally gets to write up his 2018 visit to the set of Alan Warner’s Our Ladies, which reaches the screen this month. In the final part of our EIF-supported series platforming emergent writers, we celebrate one of the areas of culture that still hasn’t managed to stage a return – clubs. We take a journey through Scottish clubbing history with a closer look at the evolution of posters and flyers from the 1980s to now. Alongside this, our Clubs editor has amassed some first hand accounts of Scotland’s clubbing scene from DJs and promoters across the ages. As we possibly, maybe, reach the end, or at least the beginning of the end of this extended hiatus in the cultural sector, Intersections asks – have we learned anything from this opportunity for reflection? Are we, as promised last year, building back better with a festivals landscape providing a fair, safe working environment, increasing diversity in programming and championing increased accessibility? The answer is resounding – not yet. Follow-up question: when?

Camara Taylor (b.1627, London) is an artist and - - - based in Glasgow. Solo shows include Cubitt Gallery, London (2021) and The Gallow Gate, Glasgow (2017). Currently, they are a participant in Satellites 2021, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. Part of the Associate Artist programme.

Threshold(s), 2019 , Kirsty Russell (3m x 1m / hand tufted yarn, tufting cloth, rug backing glue) Look Again Festival, Aberdeen

Holus Bolus Research Sketch, Camara Taylor

Photo: Iain Stott

Chizu Anucha (b. 1995, Edinburgh) is a musician and filmmaker who lives and works in Glasgow. Exhibitions of his moving image work have been presented at Tramway, Glasgow (2020); The Royal Glasgow Institute, Glasgow (2020); McLellan Galleries, Glasgow (2019). Part of the Associate Artist programme. Left: Untitled, 2021, Chizu Anucha 35mm film

Matthew Arthur Williams (b. 1989, London) is a visual and sound artist, freelance photographer and DJ who lives and works in Glasgow.  Their work takes a multidisciplinary approach and is primarily interested in the documentation of black existence and resistance. Part of the Associate Artist programme.

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in guise of the land, self-portrait, 2021, Matthew Arthur Williams

THE SKINNY

Love Bites

Love Bites: On Coffee Shop Tables This month’s columnist explores the role of coffee shop tables in their professional, creative and personal life Words: Xandra Robinson-Burns

August 2021 — Chat

dress up for a table. I pack my bag with care. Here at this distinguished surface, I put my best pen to paper to write this love letter. In the messy mind of an artist, cluttered with idea fragments, this table is a steady symbol of support – even if its legs happen to be wobbly. Any table in a coffee shop will do, although I have my favourite seats in my favourite cafes. Some are even barstools, evoking a trendy standing desk. At one particular barstool, I set the career goal I keep to this day. Having just finished exams, I enjoyed my first table of pure creative freedom. At last, I could write whatever I wanted. There in the window, I defined my simple definition of success: to write about what I love, in coffee shops. Ever since, I’ve prioritised the coffee, the table and the writing. Even on vacation, I’d drag my family out for morning pages or I’d get up early for a solo cafe fix. At one cup a day, I’m less of a caffeine addict, more of a… table enthusiast? It wasn’t the plan, but last year, I assessed what I missed most about coffee shop tables. I spruced my own space, learned to make pour-over, lit candles on our one table that doubles as a dining room, put music on shuffle to manufacture surprise. Cafes fulfil my social needs in a similar way that being in a theatre audience does. Little borrowed islands of personal space in public, these tables are my introverted form of community. They buffer my presence from society at my preferred, busy distance. Because of them, I feel comfortable showing up at all. When I do, I bring my most purposeful self. Thanks, table.

Crossword Solutions Across 1. CELEBRATE 6. POSSE 9. AVAIL 10. REV 11. UMAMI 12. LONDONER 13. APLOMB 14. THE STAND 16. APPEAR 18. EXPECT 20. MISHMASH 22. QUEUES 23. BAGPIPER 26. ALIBI 27. UNI 28. EAT IN 29. EVENT 30. PLEASANCE Down 1. CHARLOTTE SQUARE 2. LEARN 3. BELT OUT 4. AGREEING 5. ENVY 6. PLUMP UP 7. SOAP OPERA 8. EDINBURGH FRINGE 15. EXPLETIVE 17. FINALISE 19. COEXIST 21. HAPPENS 24. PUT ON 25. QUIP

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THE SKINNY

Heads Up

We can't quite believe it either but the Edinburgh Festivals are back. From comedy to circus to theatre to gigs (!!!), here are some of the best events in Scotland's busiest and most exciting month. Compiled by Anahit Behrooz Image: courtesy of EIFF

Edinburgh International Film Festival

Edinburgh International Film Festival is joining the other festivals this year with a week-long in-person and digital run in August. Kicking off with the bizarre Pig starring a promisingly chaotic Nicolas Cage, there’s plenty to get stuck in with, from a special preview of the hotly anticipated Everybody’s Talking About Jamie to a series of open air screenings of beloved classics in St Andrew Square.

Everybody's Talking About Jamie

Nish Kumar: Control Monkey Barrel Comedy Club, Edinburgh, 16-22 Aug Signalling a somewhat return to normalcy, Monkey Barrel have a jam-packed Fringe programme of beloved and up-and-coming comics alike. Joining the likes of Sofie Hagen, Alfie Brown, and Josie Long is host of The Mash Report Nish Kumar, with a new work-in-progress show tackling the absurdity of the past year. Tickets are near sold out, but keep an eye on returns!

Image: courtesy of Njambi McGrath

Photo: Ivy Tzai, Courtesy the artist and Chi-Wen Gallery

Heads Up

Various venues + Online, Edinburgh, 18-25 Aug

Photo: Idil Sukan

Still from performance by Sin Wai Kin fka Victoria Sin

Njambi McGrath

Njambi McGrath: Accidental Coconut Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 16-18 Aug With numerous prizes and four comedy specials under her belt, Kenyan-born, UK-based Njambi McGrath just about guarantees a rip-roaring time. Her new show Accidental Coconut turns a subversively funny eye onto the disturbed annals of British history, exploring her identity and sense of place in this country from the other side of the Empire.

Journey to the East Festival Various venues, Glasgow, 27-29 Aug The first live performance festival to be held in Glasgow in over a year, Journey to the East expands on ideas of Eastern mysticism to explore the unconscious mind. Highlights from the programme include the Scottish premiere of Yingmei Duan’s Happy Yingmei, previously staged at Hayward Gallery London and Cheerleader of Europe, which showcases mesmerising dance by Singapore-based choreographer Daniel Kok. Image: courtesy of Alix Harris and Jules Laville and Fringe of Colour

Image: courtesy of Bogha-Frois and Summerhall

The Elephant in the Room Nish Kumar

Bogha-Frois — Man of the Minch

Online, 1-15 Aug

NEHH Presents...Bogha-frois: Queer Voices of Folk August 2021 — Chat

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 6 Aug, 7pm

Starting life as a spreadsheet of festival shows created by and featuring performers of colour, Fringe of Colour has branched out into its very own festival, with a programme of curated performing arts and comedy films that subvert the all-white line-ups that many festivals still tend towards. Passes start at as little as £5 for the entire two weeks – a small price to pay for the sheer talent on offer.

The return of Nothing Ever Happens Here, Summerhall’s eclectic live music programme, is heralded by an evening of folk music by Bogha-frois. The collective of queer musicians have been featured at Celtic Connections and on BBC Radio 6 Music, and are now taking the Fringe by storm with performances by Man of the Minch, Malin Lewis, Marit Falt, and more.

Assembly George Square, Edinburgh, 3-29 Aug

Bromance

Taiwan Season @ Summerhall Online, 6-29 Aug Image: courtesy of Incandescence Dance and Summerhall

Tramway, Glasgow, 7 Aug-4 Oct

Photo: Rory Barnes

Flo Brooks: Angletwitch

Bromance

Image: courtesy of Barely Methodical Troupe

Image: courtesy of the artist and Project Native Informant, London Business As Usual, Flo Brooks

Fringe of Colour

swim school

Fringe by the Sea Various venues, North Berwick, 6-15 Aug

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Touchdown Taiwan Season

THE SKINNY

Image: courtesy of the artist

Leif Coffield The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, 28 Aug, 7pm Part of The Hug & Pint’s Endless Summer programme – a series of intimate gigs platforming the very best new music in Scotland, from Heir of the Cursed to Bikini Body and more – this summer session sees local lad Leif Coffield brings his moody, James Blake-esque electro-pop to the beloved Glasgow venue’s stage.

Niqabi Ninja The Lyceum, Edinburgh, 12-28 Aug There’s an embarrassment of riches at the Edinburgh International Festival this year, and cream of the crop is Glasgow-based playwright Sara Shaarawi’s Niqabi Ninja (also touring through Scotland later in the month). Combining street artwork, audio performance, and a walk through Edinburgh’s city centre, this immersive, darkly funny piece follows a young Cairene woman turning to vigilantism against the male violence that surrounds her.

Lucy Wayman: Clovehitch Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Newhaven Bringing ambitious, large-scale installation to public spaces, Lucy Wayman’s unique, tactile outdoor sculpture Clovehitch engages with the industrial and military history of rope, using traditional craft techniques of weaving, knotting, and macrame to explore ideas of networks, control, and release. Presented by Edinburgh Festival of Art as part of their month-long programme.

Leif Coffield

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, 21 Aug-21 Nov A major new exhibition that brings Japanese artist Chikako Yamashiro to Scotland for the first time, this intersection between photography, filmmaking, and performance explores neocolonialism in the Pacific Islands and how collective memory can be recuperated. At the centre of the exhibition is the eponymously named Chinbin Western, a gorgeously imagined allegorical tale that draws on Japanese theatre and themes of domesticity. Photo: Natasha Gornik / Women's Prize for Fiction

Chinbin Western — Representation of the Family, 2019, Chikako Yamashiro

Niqabi Ninja, Sara Shaarawi

Photo: Aly Wight

Jupiter Rising Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, 27-29 Aug Taking place in the iconic sculptural grounds of Jupiter Artland, Jupiter Rising perfectly caps off Edinburgh’s month of non-stop festivities with a long weekend of music, performance, and art. Highlights from the programme include sets by Callum Easter, Free Love, and Kapil Seshasayee, comedy by Josie Long, and a major new art installation taking over the galleries and grounds by Alberta Whittle.

Heads Up

Photo: Graeme Yule

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic Lucy Wayman: Clovehitch

Chikako Yamashiro: Chinbin Western

Torrey Peters

Edinburgh International Book Festival Edinburgh College of Art + Online, Edinburgh, 14-30 Aug

Jupiter Rising

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

The Comet is Coming

Rituel

Matsena Productions: Rituel MultiStory, Edinburgh, 14-21 Aug

TAAHLIAH King Tut's, Glasgow, 14 Aug, 8:30pm Image: courtesy of artist and King Tut's

Photo: Fabrice Bourgelle

theSpaceTriplex, Edinburgh, 8-28 Aug Image: Rachel Duncan, New Celts Productions and F-Bomb Theatre

Photo: Mona Lisa Godfrey

Afterparty

The Comet Is Coming Afterparty

Edinburgh Park, Edinburgh, 25 Aug, 8:30pm

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TAAHLIAH

August 2021 — Chat

This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival is going hybrid, with cherry-picked in-person events at their new digs at the Edinburgh College of Art and an exciting digital programme that offers a pay-whatyou-can model. Big names include Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, anti-racism activist and author Emma Dabiri, and rising star Torrey Peters in a special The Skinny-sponsored event.

August 2021

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

What's On Photo: Sean Patrick Campbell Kapil Seshasayee

Rain or such-and-such impressions, 2020, Alison Scott

August 2021 — Events Guide

Okra, Alaya Ang

Image: Courtesy of the artist

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Jupiter Rising

Image: Courtesy of the artist

Image: Courtesy of the artist The Divine Sky, 2020, Sekai Machache

Art The events column is making an optimistic return. After a few months of galleries tentatively reopening, August brings a roster of new shows and events. Grab a fresh face covering and get in, we’re going gallery hopping. Edinburgh Art Festival is the big one this month, and we’ve covered parts of it elsewhere in the issue. It’s happening across the city, featuring a cluster of works in Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, including Andrew Gannon’s Eccentric Limbs, in which the artist substitutes his arm prosthesis with different alternatives, including coloured pool noodles. In the Sound Tower, artists Alaya Ang and Hussein Mitha present a new commission that takes as its beginning radical ideas of gardening practices. In Stills gallery, Sekai Machache presents a new body of work developed over the previous year. During times of restrictions on movement, the studio has had to stand in for landscape and landscape has been reconstituted. In the new photographs, Machache has used automatic drawing techniques to create illustrious surfaces which she wears, holds and which form an immersive backdrop. In Collective, Alison Scott presents a cross-media installation coming from her expansive research project around weather, and includes new writing, sound, custom wallpaper, moving image and sculpture. One contrast Scott draws is between the diaristic stability of weather reporting and the historic climate crisis it belies. Also throughout August, Generator Projects in Dundee celebrate their 25th birthday, an all the more poignant milestone given the Edinburgh studio and gallery building Rhubaba’s recent unhousing the month after its 10th anniversary. In Dundee, Generator are having a show through August looking at their archive and all the amazing work they’ve hosted in the past, along with events and new commissions. Keep an eye on their website for dates and more news as it comes. Also in Dundee, a set of new solo shows open in DCA from 21 August. Japanese artist Chikako Yamashiro debuts a richly imagined film work that promises to weave together comic satire, mining landscapes, opera, traditional Japanese theatre and domestic lives, and emerges from the artist’s research into her geopolitically fraught homeland, Okinawa. Next door, Irish artist Mary McIntyre debuts a new body of work

Photo: Aly Wight

Photo: Cian McKenzie HYYTS

Music The live music industry completely shut down overnight back in March 2020 and it was a complete shock to the system. We all thought the lockdown was temporary, so after countless postponements and cancellations, 17 months later, live music is finally back on the menu, and so is our monthly What’s On guide! Starting in Edinburgh, on 8 August Kathryn Joseph kicks off the International Festival’s contemporary programme at their Edinburgh Park pop-up marquee in the west of the city. Others set to grace its stage include Erland Cooper (15 Aug), Nadine Shah (18 Aug), and Anna Meredith (20 Aug) as well as a trio of 2021 Mercury Prize shortlisted artists: Floating Points (14 Aug), Black Country, New Road (23 Aug), and Laura Mvula (29 Aug), nominated for her recent 80s-indebted album Pink Noise. Summerhall reopens this month, too, where a slew of local talent will be gracing the stage of their brand new Secret Courtyard venue as part of their Edinburgh Festival Fringe schedule. Running from 6 to 28 August, expect everyone from Meursault (7 Aug) and Siobhan Wilson (26 Aug) to past SAY Award winners Sacred Paws (13 Aug), Steve Lamacq favourite Hamish Hawk (17 Aug) and Kapil Seshasayee (15 Aug). Glasgow dwellers will also find Seshasayee at King Tut’s this month (24 Aug), where he’s set to play his brand new, yet to be released, album in full as part of their Summer Nights festival. Running from 9 to 31 August, the local talent on offer across the month is outstanding, with one to watch Brooke Combe opening proceedings. Our other top shouts include TAAHLIAH (14 Aug), Scarlet Randle (16 Aug), Swim School (21 Aug), HYYTS (26 Aug), Dead Pony (28 Aug), and Kitti (29 Aug). The Hug & Pint also have their own festival this month – Endless Summer. Running until 9 September, quirky Edinburgh four-piece Bikini Body headline the opening night on 10 August. Another pair of Edinburgh acts, Maranta and Super Inuit play two days later (12 Aug), while towards the end of the month you can catch the inimitable Heir of the Cursed (26 Aug), and Chizu Nnamdi (29 Aug). The Jupiter Rising festival is also back at Edinburgh sculpture park Jupiter Artland (27-29 Aug) this month, with co-curation from Lost Map Records, Night School Records and OH141. HWFG! [Tallah Brash]

THE SKINNY Photo: Sandie McIver. Artwork by Brian Hartley

Move, Julia Taudevin

Comedy The Edinburgh Fringe is rolling back into town. Although it won’t be the same merry chaos at the same scale as previous years, we’re very pleased that we’ll get to sit in the dark and chuckle with some strangers as the inevitable consequences of the night before catch up with us. Here are our top comedy recs for the festival. As always, the Big 4 (Pleasance, Underbelly, Assembly and Gilded Balloon) have a selection of comedy treats. First up, Spontaneous Potter. Look, we know old J.K’s no longer flavour of the month, but the Spon Pot gang certainly are. Featuring the likes of Mara Joy, M.C. Hammersmith (aka Will Naameh) and the silliest of Snape impressions, indulge in a bit of charming improv with Spontaneous Potter (Gilded Balloon Teviot, Wine Bar, 22-29 Aug, 5pm). We’d also suggest bagging a ticket to Paul Black: Worst Case Scenario, the Glaswegian actor, comedian and social media star’s Fringe debut. After his sketch show Pity Party, first shown on BBC Scotland in 2019, was particularly well-received we’re very excited to see Black’s first stage sketch outing at Gilded’s inventive MultiStory venue (MultiStory Main Room, 18 & 19 Aug, 9pm). However, Monkey Barrel Comedy has the lion’s share of stuff we’re desperate to see. It’s packed full of work-in-progress shows from big names like Ed Gamble (Monkey Barrel, 20-26 Aug, 5pm) and Nish Kumar (Monkey Barrel, 16-22 Aug, 7.15pm) alongside Fringe standouts like Josie Long (Monkey Barrel, 4-6, 23-29 Aug, 8.30pm) and Ahir Shah (Monkey Barrel, 10-15 Aug, 5pm). We also want to shout out local faves Krystal Evans and Amy Matthews sharing an hour (Monkey Barrel, 18-21 Aug, 7.45pm) as well as the most chaotic and pound-for-pound best value late-night show going, ACMS, or the Alternative Comedy Memorial Society to those not in the know (Monkey Barrel, 5 & 12 Aug, 10.15pm). And although we’re relieved that live comedy is back in-person, there’s still a bunch of online shows we think you’ll like. Pick of the bunch comes from one half of Fringe 2019’s hidden-gem The Living Room. Clowning comic Gemma Soldati comes to the virtual festival with The Adventures of Sleepyhead, a dreamy comedy for all ages (Assembly Showcatcher, from 6-30 Aug, £8). Because of the panny-d, more show announcements will be coming thick and fast over the next wee while. Keep an eye on our socials for more top picks. [Polly Glynn] — 12 —

Mele Broomes

Photo: Idil Sukan

August 2021

Theatre The Fringe is returning and so is our theatre highlights column! Got to love a serendipitous moment like that. Shows are still being announced as we go to print, but so far, these are our ones-to-watch (mostly off-screen – hurrah). Sweet F.A. at Tynecastle Park, 5-12, 17-19 & 24-29 Aug If you’re still buzzing after the Euros and looking for a football fix, this show could be the one for you – though you don’t have to be a fan of the beautiful game to enjoy it. Set in 1916 and based on a true story, Sweet F.A. charts the rise of womens football during WWI and follows an Edinburgh factory football team as they fight for their right to play. Featuring original music by Matthew Brown and taking place at Tynecastle Park football stadium. Move at Silverknowes Beach, 3-7 Aug We’re really excited about this one: Move is the debut show of Disaster Plan, a new company formed by acclaimed artists Julia Taudevin and Kieran Hurley, the minds behind sensational shows Beats and Chalk Farm (Hurley is also the writer of Mouthpiece). Produced in association with the Traverse Theatre and Slung Low, one of the most exciting and refreshing companies working in the UK at the moment, Move shares stories that span generations about ‘migration, loss and communal healing’. Weaving together aspects of song, sound and storytelling on the shores of Silverknowes Beach, it sounds like a vital and quietly epic production. It’s also pay-what-you-can. Wrapped Up In This (Summerhall Online), 6-29 Aug Wrapped Up In This received rave reviews earlier this year when it premiered at Take Me Somewhere, proving that online shows can – when done this well – be just as visceral, powerful and affecting as their live counterparts. Choreographer, director and performer Mele Broomes intersects vocal melodies, spoken word, videography and dance to tell a story of ‘rebirth through a life built to care’ in this stirring show, putting a spotlight on the caring roles placed upon Black womxn, both in the workplace and at home. Doppler at Newhailes House and Gardens, 6-9, 11-16, 18, 20-23 Aug This world premiere has been a long time in the making: back in 2020, The Skinny spoke to the show’s stage designer, Becky Minto, about reconfiguring the piece for a digital medium. A year after it was meant to make its live debut, it’s great to hear that Doppler – based on Erlend Loe’s novel of the same name about existence, consumerism and trying to live your life without people bothering you – is finally getting its spot in the limelight. Staged in a forest by multi-award winning sitespecific company Grid Iron, it’s about a guy who retreats from modern life to live in isolation (by choice). The irony isn’t lost on us either. [Eliza Gearty]

Photo: Marios Ento Engkolo

Photo: Kevin Krieger The Living Room

developing her interest in the psychological charge of space, whether shown in photographs, constructed as part of an installation or in the mixing and layering of synthesised music. All of these elements come together at scale in the upcoming exhibition. [Adam Benmakhlouf]

Nish Kumar

THE SKINNY

A NEW FESTIVAL HUB FROM:

Z COMEDY & CABARET ALICE RABBIT’S AYE-CONS FRED MACAULAY & FRIENDS JASON BYRNE: AUDIENCE PRECIPITATION LEAH MACRAE: MY BIG, FAT, FABULOUS DIARY - THE BEST BITS! PAUL BLACK: WORST CASE SCENARIO

CLASS ACT 2020 SHOWCASE DIRTY PROTEST: DOUBLE DROP A PLAY, A PIE & A PINT - AYE, ELVIS A PLAY, A PIE & A PINT - CHIC MURRAY: A FUNNY PLACE FOR A WINDOW SUNSHINE ON LEITH DANCE, MUSIC & SPOKEN WORD CAROL ANN DUFFY & JOHN SAMPSON CELEBRATING OKOE ÉOWYN EMERALD & DANCERS - YOUR TOMORROW MATSENA PRODUCTIONS: RITUEL SHIVA'S CAMINO SHOOGLENIFTY STARTING FROM FIRST POSITION FAMILY BICYCLE BOY FUNBOX: BACK TO THE FRINGE RAPUNZEL

BOOK TICKETS: MULTISTORY.SCOT 0131 622 6554 — 13 —

August 2021 — Events Guide

THEATRE

July 2021

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

Film Cinema is back, baby! Just don’t stand so close and please wear a mask! As Edinburgh International Film Festival (18-25 Aug) becomes the first large in-person film festival gathering on the UK calendar since... checks notes... March 2020, it’s time to get really excited about watching films in physical spaces again. Among the most eye-catching titles of the 32 new features in the line-up are Leos Carax’s Sparks-scripted musical Annette (21 Aug, Filmhouse – read our interview with Sparks interview on p. 35), the meditative Nicolas Cage revenge drama Pig (18 Aug, Filmhouse) and the feature film version of much-loved musical Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (20 Aug, Festival Theatre). We’re also looking forward to the world premiere of Prince of Muck, an intimate portrait of life on the tiny Inner Hebridean island of the title (19 August, Filmhouse). If you’re in Dundee and looking on enviously at the EIFF line-up, fear not. Both Pig and Prince of Muck will be screening simultaneously at the DCA. Another DCA film to make time for is American indie CODA, which centres on the life of a highschool girl from a small town in Massachusetts who’s the only hearing person in her family. The title stands for Children of Deaf Adults, and reports from its festival run suggest there won’t be a dry eye in the house by CODA’s coda. The film scene is beginning to hot up in Glasgow too. Glasgow Film Theatre’s unmissable season The World of Wong Kar Wai continues into August with some of the finest features by this great Hong Kong director. Sensual masterpieces Chungking Express (3 Aug) and In the Mood for Love (22 & 24 Aug) are always worth rewatching, of course, but snap up the opportunity to see deeper cuts Fallen Angels (9 & 10 Aug), Happy Together (15 & 17 Aug) and 2046 (29 Aug) on the big screen too. One of the buzziest British films of the year is Censor, an ingenious horror set during the moral panic of the video nasty era (read our review on p. 52). Censor’s director, Prano Bailey-Bond, comes to GFT to present the film on 16 August and to take part in a Q&A. Also look out for a couple of Bette Davis classics gracing GFT’s screens: Now, Voyager, which is newly rereleased, and The Letter. We’re told GFF co-director Allan Hunter will be doing one of his famous in-person intros, discussing Davis’s life and career, ahead of one of the screenings. Keep an eye on GFT’s website for more info. [Jamie Dunn]

Everybody's Talking About Jamie

Happy Together

Fallen Angels

Crossword 1

16 17

25 26

Across 1. Party – toast (9) 6. Crew – gang (5) 9. Help – benefit (5) 10. ___ up – become more active or energetic (3) 11. Savory taste (5) 12. Someone from the capital of the UK (8) 13. Confidence (6) 14. Comedy venue found in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle (3,5) 16. Materialise (6) 18. Anticipate (6) 20. Incoherent mixture (8) 22. Lines (6) 23. Person playing an iconic Scottish instrument (8) 26. Excuse (5) 27. Higher education establishment (abbrev.) (3) 28. Dine at home (3,2) 29. Occasion – function (5) 30. One of the 'big four' festival venues in the capital (9)

Compiled by George Sully — 15 —

Down 1. Former home of the Edinburgh International Book Festival – astral croquet, eh (anag) (9,6) 2. Grasp – hear about (5) 3. Sing loudly (4,3) 4. Concurring (8) 5. That green-eyed feeling (4) 6. Make softer – become rounder (5,2) 7. Serialised TV drama (4,5) 8. World's biggest arts festival (well, normally, anyway) (9,6) 15. E.g. fuck, shit, darn (9) 17. Cement – if aliens (anag) (8) 19. Live together (7) 21. Takes place (7) 24. Stage (3,2) 25. Witticism (4)

Turn to page 7 for the solutions

August 2021

THE SKINNY

August 2021 — Contents

Features

20 As Edinburgh Art Festival returns, we talk to some of the artists in Associate Artist Tako Taal’s programme, and meet the emergent talent exhibiting in Platform. 23 A new exhibition in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Ruined, invites young people to create new work from the national collections. 24 Artist and director Jian Yi on new performance art and contemporary dance festival, Journey to the East. 26 Poet and playwright Inua Ellams on politics, performing and working with Saul Williams. 27 Nina Mingya Powles discusses Small Bodies of Water, periods, nature writing and colonialism. 29 Ahead of her appearance at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Torrey Peters discusses Detransition, Baby. 30 We meet political polymath Kapil Seshasayee ahead of his appearance at Jupiter Rising. 33 Fringe Dog returns, nature is healing. Celebrating five glorious years of the Terrier awards. 34 Ryan Braund introduces his indie animation Absolute Denial, created in lockdown. 35 Pop duo Sparks bring their recent shift to a more operatic sound to its natural conclusion with Annette, screening at EIFF. 38 A deep dive into the history of Scottish clubbing, explored through the evolution of poster design. 46 We chat to CHVRCHES ahead of the release of their fourth studio album, Screen Violence.

5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Love Bites — 8 Heads Up 11 What’s On — 15 Crossword — 36 Intersections — 49 Albums 52 Film & TV — 54 Design — 55 Food and Drink — 56 Books — 57 Comedy 59 Listings — 62 The Skinny On… Carla J. Easton

On the website... Details on how you could WORK WITH US as our new Production Manager; a full breakdown of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival programme; Food visits Silk Road Deli in Glasgow’s Southside; reviews from the Edinburgh Festivals! Some of them, at least!

Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Francis Dosoo and Kamilya Kuspanova; Ready for the Past; Courtesy of the artist and Chi-Wen Gallery; Courtesy of Inua Ellams; Sophie Davidson; Courtesy of Torrey Peters; Sean Patrick Campbell; Rachel Tunstall; Ryan Braund; Annette; Kris Walker; Sebastian Mlynarski & Kevin J Thomson

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THE SKINNY

August 2021

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July 2021

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

Festival Special

ave all the restrictions been lifted? Is social distancing still in place? Are clubs

is going to happen, but we do know that the Edinburgh festivals are back, and we’re so pleased to see them. Join us on a journey through Art, Books, Film, the Fringe and the International Festival.

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August 2021 — Feature

reopening? Who can possibly predict what

THE SKINNY

What happens to desire ... For Edinburgh Art Festival 2021, Associate Artist Tako Taal has brought together six of the most interesting artists working currently to respond to a work by Isaac Julien, which pivots on the history of American abolitionist Frederick Douglass Art

Interviews: Adam Benmakhlouf

August 2021 — Feature

Image: Courtesy of artist

from each other. Two, it is holding a moment for generational exchange and knowledge. A crossgenerational relationship, and knowledge exchange makes for a kind of anchoring force through times of very active and aggressive systemic oppression. The work with all these subtexts is still saying tenderness.” In contrast, Francis Dosoo’s works are installed as billboards on Calton Road. In collaboration with the artist and fashion photographer Kamilya Kuspanova, Dosoo has created a triptych of photographic works accompanied by text. “I’m interested in people’s relationships with themselves through religion,” as Dosoo carefully phrases it. The poses and composition of these works draw from images of saints in classical paintings. Dosoo is committed to the transformative potential of images as a way of deepening how people see and understand the world around them, which Dosoo tracks a common line of interest with Frederick Douglass’ use of photography. The Associate Artist programme also includes a new film work by Camara Taylor, holusbolus. This work furthers Taylor’s research into the life and death of William Davidson (1781-1820), the son of a Scotsman, the Attorney General of Jamaica and a Black woman. “He has mobility, even if he is poor throughout his life. He comes from what could be retrospectively understood as – not necessarily a Black elite – but a Black mobile class.” The film work centres on the speech Davidson gave in which he pleads his innocence, claiming to have been mistaken for another man of colour when he is tried for his alleged involvement in a radical plot to assassinate cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister. The work that has emerged Taylor describes as “very complicated” and “very strange”, coming from a collaboration with artists Nima Séne, Sulaïman Majali, 皚桐 and writer Shola von Reinhold. For artist Thulani Rachia, their work arose from an anecdote about Frederick Douglass buying a violin in Edinburgh, and which he played as part of a self-healing practice. This sparked some recognition, as Rachia records melodies while travelling and adjusting to new cities and locations. “[In doing so], I’m creating a safe space for myself in not-so-welcoming built up environments.” These have been transcribed into scores for cellists Simone Seales, Justyna Jablonska, Iain McHugh, Joanna Stark and Dr Claire Garabedian. The scores incorporate long moments of rest for the musicians as a subversion of the usual extractive relationship of audience and performer, as

Holus Bolus research sketch, CamaraTaylor

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Image: Francis Dosoo and Kamilya Kuspanova

or this Edinburgh Art Festival, Tako Taal has assembled six artists with diverse practices to respond to a film by the artist Isaac Julien, Lessons of the Hour (2019). In this work, Julien’s subject is the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. What caught the attention of scholar and creative Sequoia Barnes was Douglass’ trip to Naples with the sculptor Edmonia Lewis. “I don’t know why [they went], all I know is they went to Naples. Two Black people, not necessarily postslavery are just travelling around Europe... it’s this weird parallel universe to the transatlantic slave trade.” In response, Barnes draws on the artistic lineages of where she grew up in Alabama, particularly the quiltmaking practices of Gee’s Bend. For Barnes, this medium allows a mixing of the radical historical-critical approach of hauntology and Black historical studies. “The quilt is like a portal, set amongst a shrine.” Artists Francis Dosoo and Matthew Arthur Williams’ respective responses take the form of self-portraiture. This jumps off from Douglass’ push to photograph himself as much as possible, ensuring his own agency in his representation as a Black man. “The work albeit about how we are seen and what narrative that is, is really about two things,” explains Williams. “One, erasure. Physical erasure from records and accounts, and erasure

Pastoral Scene 001 from the series What is behind the Saint's eyes, when they look through tears to the altar?, FrancisDosoo

well as including parts written in Rachia’s mother tongue isiZulu alongside conventional Western Italian music notations. Music and sound come to the fore again in Chizu Anucha’s work, in which he sonically imagines the future that would have been imagined by the abolitionists that visitied Edinbugh in the 19th century. He specifically takes a cue from Ellen and William Craft, who disguised themselves, she as a white male slaveholder and William as an enslaved servant. He let those stories sit while recording in the old Georgian building, “to occupy the space and be present with all that in mind.... [in] an old Georgian building made using funds that were acquired by the oppression of people.” The question that Anucha came back to: “If people were doing a gig or show two hundred years ago, if they were imagining utopian futures, what would they be? I’m thinking about now and gigs and how Black people occupy white institutions now, versus hundreds of years from now. In a utopian sense, what would be imagined and how could we try to embody that?” For sites and information on the work above, see the Edinburgh Art Festival website. All free and open throughout August edinburghartfestival.com

THE SKINNY

Young Team Platform is always one of the most exciting parts of Edinburgh Art Festival, offering up four emerging artists’ practices with lightly curated themes between them, with this year’s looking at care and support structures Interview: Adam Benmakhlouf Art

ach year, Edinburgh Art Festival saves a spot for some of the most exciting emerging practices in Scotland right now, in the Platform exhibition. This year’s no exception and the 2021 edition brings together four artists working with ideas of history, literature, trauma, identity, debt and using the tools of sculpture, artist film, drawing and installation to do so. For artist Isabella Widger, the Platform exhibition meant being able to delve deeper into a novella by the ‘Dickens of France’ Gustave Flaubert, called A Simple Heart. “It was written in 1877 and spans a chunk of the middle of the 19th century. It follows the housemaid Felicité and is almost divided in three between her young years, middle age, then later her death. Throughout, she suffers losses and betrayals and slowly becomes more and more isolated, losing her eyesight. She’s given a parrot at some point and her attachment to it is really strong, it replaces all the lost relationships she had, with a romantic and maternal element... It’s an idealisation of simplicity and purity… critiquing it as well as simulating it.” This forms the context and basis for Widger’s installations of drawings and sculptures. One of these includes an imagined portrait of Felicité with her bird, and is loosely a self-portrait by the artist, too. A large photograph is also pasted across a freestanding wall, and shows an image of a small set of Felicité’s room blown-up to full scale. Speaking of the imagination involved in creating these versions of what is described in the book,

Widger says they aren’t scenes that are necessarily described: “At some point you have to realise, you can say something [back to these reference materials]. The not-saying is too reifying.” Continuing ideas of care and maintenance work, Kirsty Russell’s new textile artworks extend in part from time spent in the archive of Glasgow Women’s Library, specifically looking at “the sewing papers… The shapes of the work are informed by the parts of garments like the gussets and yokes, bits of the shoulder that hold the other parts of the pattern.” These elements struck Russell as relevant to the broader themes in her practice. “All the women in my family are in care settings, so I’m always thinking of that and the weight of that work you often don’t really see, the repetitive nature of maintenance work.” Translating to the works Russell is showing, she says, “I like that they could be used, I want to make a rug that people will sit on. I like the idea of people having that relationship with them.” Artist Jessica Higgins continues the theme of support work, setting an imaginative story in the ear infection of a debt advisor. This affliction causes the protagonist Denise’s hearing to become distorted by an echo. For Higgins, the echo comes with broad associations, ranging from Greek mythology to the listening and mirroring of active listening that forms part of advisory work. So it is that in the video a series of performers act as the Ear, “who repeats a lot of phrases and lines throughout,” explains Higgins. “Then there’s the compère, the narrator, host and colleague, who

“All the women in my family are in care settings, so I’m always thinking of that and the weight of that work” Kirsty Russell

Platform: 2021, Institut français d’Ecosse, until 29 Aug, open daily 10am-5pm, free read the dictionary to know your heart, 2020, Danny Pagarani

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edinburghartfestival.com/event/platform-2021

August 2021 — Feature

Image: courtesy of the artist

co-composes Denise as the character, and Meanwhile who is a time-based figure, played by a dancer who made choreographic scores based on the original version of the script. The Ear then mirrors these through the film. Then there’s the chorus who are meant to be the voices on the film, sometimes as part of the dialogue of the film, then other times in the theatrical tradition of summarising and reflecting.” Summing up the film-performance, Higgins describes all the research, forms and ideas as “pickling around this weird thing.” Also working with experimental forms of filmmaking, Danny Pagarani’s Platform work takes a philosophical angle towards identity formation. In the process of forming the work, Pagarani says, “I was engaged in a certain kind of self-fetishisation. Instead of fleeing that or pretending it’s not happening I went more for it.” Images of the artist’s own arms pressing into one another are included alongside the grinding together of two ceramic phallus forms the length of Pagarani’s forearm, as they loudly make a metallic ceramic sound. These form the setting too for footage of Pagarani’s father reading the Krio words for “hurt, heart and place”, homophones of one another. Thinking of the ways these words differ but reach out to one another in a way, Pagarani suggests a notion of a less rigid or prescribed identity formation that can include difference, where identities seemingly distinct from one another can find aspects of themselves in one another. As an example, Pagarani mentions “English is a creole language, with Italian, French, Greek, African and Hindi words… To be blunt about it, it’s our only political hope if we can hold that contradiction within us, what I am is also what I’m not.”

August 2021 — Feature

Art

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THE SKINNY

Youths Ruined Museums

Showcasing four years worth of young people experimenting and pulling apart the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, the exhibition Ruined: Reinventing Scottish History comes from the work of the Image Liberation Force project Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

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“They want to use the creative experience to cope with serious issues they’re all facing” Robin Baillie that hasn’t been heard in the National Galleries, particularly as a representative of a fiercely intelligent and poetically talented working-class identity. For Baillie, the secret is giving the work made by the young people the same level of care and consideration in showing it as would be given to “artist accredited art”. One example of this is the professional mixing and mastering of Mercurius’ music, or having the videos edited to industry standards. “You can’t match the authenticity of the images the young people make. They can produce better work than contemporary art. We never ask them just to copy an artist that’s already out there, they go beyond that. “I would hope that nobody who sees this stuff can dismiss it. Even if they don’t like it, it’s coming straight at you. It’s about now and it’s about wanting something done. These young people have made this work. The politicians out there should be made to look at it. If they’re out there saying they want to hear young people’s voices, they need to make sure they know how to find it.” Ruined: Reinventing Scottish History, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, until 14 Nov, Thu-Sat, 10am-5pm, free, booking required nationalgalleries.org

August 2021 — Feature

is reflected in the exhibition itself. “You’ve got to be really sensitive about the stories that they tell, these are real things. The feedback we’ve got from [the young people] is that they want to use the creative experience to cope with serious issues they’re all facing.” A few years ago, one of the groups in the Borders went to Dryburgh Abbey. “I had a job lot of hessian sacks from B&Q, so they wore them as costumes and made up their own weird rituals. They spotted this conformity in the history there that reminded them of what they were living under as young people. In one of the films in the exhibition called The Sackening, they made drawings of the sack figure they made up.” Some of these showed hanging and suicide. The sensitivity of the subject matter started a conversation with the young people about whether it was right to publicise this kind of imagery widely. “I asked them: ‘Do we put this in the exhibition?’ And they were clear that it’s already out there. It’s in young people’s lives and they want to raise awareness that it’s something they’re struggling with. They know people that are in these situations.” One of the biggest turning points of the project in the last few months came with the arrival of a new collaborator, Matt Tulloch, also known as Mercurius. Over the last six months, the young people worked closely with Mercurius, cutting together short videos of the work they’d made responding to the National Galleries’ collections. In turn, Mercurius would add in his own lyrics and music over the top. “We’re getting better and working with the real voice of the young folk. Matt’s voice on top is their banner carrier, their herald, because he’s talented in his ability to make language gripping and on the point. He’s thrown up a lot of his own images as well.” For Bailie, Mercurius’ voice is one

Art

Image: courtesy of the Image Liberation Force project

or four years, young people have been putting their own spin on Scottish history, using the National Galleries of Scotland as a jumping-off point. The changing group came together once a week as the Image Liberation Force, swapping in and out as they went into employment or aged out. Now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, their work’s been brought together for the first time in the exhibition Ruined: Reinventing Scottish History. Facilitating this outreach work for the last twenty years, Senior Outreach Officer Robin Baillie leads efforts in trying to change the habits of Scotland’s major national museums in attracting the interest of audiences beyond their usual Edinburgh middle and upper class base. But it’s been a long battle. “We were given a corridor, then we made it into a gallery. Still, we rivalled what the rest of the National Galleries were doing, so we were given a bigger space, and we were filling out amazing comments books. Higher up, they started to get it and realise that we need these audiences in.” Week on week, the outreach programme would open out the National Galleries and its collections to young people on employability programmes in nearby areas. “There’s not much around for these young people. They’re burdened with the poverty they’ve experienced, along with a lack of support or encouragement around them.” Baillie also talks about many of them coming along have had “negative experiences of school and the law”. When the young people came together to meet, the vibe was anarchic. “I want that and encourage that. It changes the balance of power.” For Baillie, there’s a playful atmosphere. “That’s democratic. No one can play better than anyone else.” But play doesn’t mean that there wasn’t room for addressing heavier themes and topics. And this

THE SKINNY

Collective Rituals Artist and director Jian Yi tells The Skinny about new performance art and contemporary dance festival Journey to the East

August 2021 — Feature

“I

t’s been a difficult period and a transformative time,” ponders performance artist and artistic director Jian Yi. “The last year or so has been a period of reflection, a time to slow down and reassess where we are as a society, as individuals, as artists… It feels like, now, we’re ready to start being creative and connect with each other again.” Yi’s desire to connect – with audiences and artists – will manifest as a new performance art and contemporary dance festival, Journey to the East, coming to both the CCA and Tramway in Glasgow at the end of August. International artists, such as Singapore-based choreographer Daniel Kok, Chinese avant-garde artist Yingmei Duan and Indonesian performance group, Breathing Forest Dance Theatre, will perform new and established works through live performances and film screenings. Journey to the East will also mark Glasgow’s first performance festival in over a year, as well as Yi’s first major curatorial project. “I’ve always been interested in artist-led organising,” explains Yi about why they decided to take the plunge into festival programming and curating. “Especially for queer artists of colour, being able to make events with other artists and create new opportunities, spaces and contexts for performance art is so important as a way for us to take back the means of production of our own work.” Collectivism is at the heart of Journey to the East, practically as well as thematically. “We’re bringing back the idea of collective experiences and ritual in order to make art central again to society, rather than just as a commodity or something to be consumed,” explains Yi. “In Journey to the East, eastern mysticism is the basis for exploring these themes of art and social intervention. Throughout history, artists have always gathered together to create movements. That’s a bit lost today with our very institutionally based culture. We’re wanting to refind that direct relationship between artists and audiences.” Yi hopes that Journey to the East will open up a space for exploring spiritual and transformative artistic practice outside of capitalist institutions. Performance art is at the centre of the festival as the artform itself tends to be found on the margins of commercial theatre and dance. “We’re interested in carving out a space outside of normative practices and exploring the idea of internal wildernesses in both ourselves and society,” says Yi. “The festival is about opening up a space for embodied transformation as queer artists of colour and artists with marginalised identities.” Contemporary dance is typically geared towards a Eurocentric gaze and so, by programming artists with backgrounds in eastern performance practice and dance, Journey to the East seeks to shift that gaze. As Yi explains, “On the basis of pure racism and exclusion we don’t often include these creative practices or traditions in our museums and performing arts festivals. This project wants to reclaim these ‘other’ practices.” But Journey to the East also aims to deconstruct binary logic – the idea of east and west, self and other, mind and body, male and female as polar opposites – by taking the audience into the liminal spaces between these notions. “Perhaps this comes

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Chi-Wen Gallery

Theatre

Interview: Katie Goh

Still from performance by Sin Wai Kin fka Victoria Sin, Ivy Tzai

from my background as an Asian person who grew up in Australia,” says Yi. “But I experienced the hybridity of growing up as second or third generation and being between cultures. Binary logic works by claiming that one side is rational and the other side is irrational. With Journey to the East, we’re interested in deconstructing this logic about gender, selves and geography.” Journey to the East is therefore as much a spiritual journey as a geographical one. “There’s a western way of viewing art in which we can forget about interior space,” says Yi. “With the festival, we’re interested in finding that space in performance art. A lot of non-western approaches to dance, like my practice of Japanese butoh, is about connecting to an internal self, ritual and collective practice. For us, the ‘east’ is not just a geographical or historical description but also a journey to a true self.” After a trying year, Journey to the East hopes to rebuild connections between audiences and artists. In the light of Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, queer people of colour occupying physical, creative spaces on their own terms feels truly artistically radical. “As artists, activists and organisers, a lot of us have been doing this kind of work for a long time, not just since these recent movements happened, but now it does feel like it’s come to a head,” says Yi. “Rather than go through the handful of white gatekeepers who decide what contemporary culture looks like, we, the artists, get to share directly with audiences, create a sense of community and rekindle a relationship between artists and society.” Journey to the East, CCA and Tramway, Glasgow, 27-29 Aug; find out more by visiting jttefest.com

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THE SKINNY

Books

August 2021 — Feature

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THE SKINNY

A Celebration of Emergence Interview: Eliza Gearty

nua Ellams is looking forward to visiting mind but it isn’t what I address in the poem.” He doesn’t let on what topics he will be Edinburgh again. “You guys seem to have addressing – you’ll have to be there to find out controlled the pandemic far better than we – but does hint at a night filled with magic. Each A have,” he says wryly. “So I’m looking forward to escaping the madness of this part of the country.” Toast to the People event brings together two Ellams, a Nigerian-born, London-based poet, spoken-word artists and Ellams is partnering with playwright and performer, first came to Edinburgh the legendary poet, musician and activist Saul for the festival season in 2009 with his debut Williams – one of his earliest influences. “I think play, The 14th Tale: it won a Fringe First. Since then Saul is an incredibly talented metaphysical poet at he’s been back and forth various times with various heart,” he says. “He’s also a musician. He’s also an projects – and he’s been busy. Over the past African American. He’s illuminative and vast. John decade, he’s released two poetry books (CandyKeats said that poets are the midwives of reality. I Coated Unicorns and Converse All Stars, The feel as if Saul fell off the edge of reality and keeps Wire-Headed Heathen), written numerous plays on dragging what he found back to Earth, bringing (including the sensational Barber Shop it back to us.” Chronicles, set in Black barber shops in six cities Artistically, Ellams thinks of himself as being over the course of one day), organised and thrown “more grounded in reality” out of the pair – which R.A.P parties and seen his dusk-to-dawn cultural he describes as a “compliment” to Williams – but walking tour The Midnight Run (inspired by slow adds that they “echo and support and contrast night-bus frustration) grow into an internationally each-other in gorgeous ways.” He says, “Saul is an celebrated event. Now, he’s returning to Scotland’s old friend, an old acquaintance, an old inspiration capital to take part in A Toast to the People, of mine. I hope that this event will be vast and Edinburgh International Festival’s five-night series beautiful and emotive and explosive but also of poetry, discussion and story-telling, performed human and humane. Yeah, it’ll be fun,” he adds by ten acclaimed spoken word artists. with a glint of mischief. “If I wasn’t performing Each poet participating in the series has myself I’d want to be there and just listen and try written a poem inspired by the phrase A Toast to to leave with some of the jewels.” A Toast to the People is billed as ‘a celebrathe People, taken from the Gill Scott-Heron song of tion of emergence, of the kind of world we might the same name. What does the expression mean to find and of a new world Ellams? To him it’s all order that we might about “respect, giving imagine and make credit where it’s due.” possible.’ With every“The ‘people’ could be thing that has happened NHS workers or nurses over the past few years or doctors, or other – the stark reality of people who survived the inequality exposed by pandemic,” he says, “or COVID-19, the hurtling even those who passed dread of climate change away because of the and the movements to pandemic. It’s about counter it, the global rise recognising your comof Black Lives Matter munity and raising them and resistance against up.” Having said that, the police brutality and poetry he’s written for racism – does Ellams the series is not explicitthink that a new world ly about COVID-19. could be on the horizon? “When I sat down to “I’d like to think we write this, I didn’t write are on the brink of about the pandemic. change but I just don’t Trying to create art about know,” he replies after a it feels a little premature pause. “There have been seeing as we are still in so many revolutions at so it,” he notes. “The Inua Ellams many times in so many pandemic was in my

“There have been so many revolutions at so many times in so many ways... and the cycle just perpetuates itself where voices get louder against an establishment that finds ways to silence those voices or ignore them”

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Image: Courtesy of Inua Ellams

August 2021 — Feature

Theatre

Poet and playwright Inua Ellams chats to The Skinny about politics, performing and working with Saul Williams for Edinburgh International Festival’s new spoken word series, A Toast to the People

ways... and the cycle just perpetuates itself where voices get louder against an establishment that finds ways to silence those voices or ignore them.” He speaks about rulers “doubling down” when they sense dissent, referencing Priti Patel’s “draconian” anti-immigration policies – “the deep irony being that Britain colonised half the world by crossing vast bodies of water and arriving illegally and shooting down whoever spoke out or tried to stop them from doing so.” While not blindly idealistic, however, he is hopeful. “It’s been great to see young people on the streets protesting – seeing that global support against tyranny, sparked by Americans but echoed right across the world,” he says. “Even in Nigeria there were Black Lives Matter protests – because a lot of the police force and the soldiers committing extreme violence there are trained by western powers.” The poet’s challenge, Ellams reasons, is to ride the tide of change: trying in the meantime to “digest” the most complex aspects of “all this” and release them back into the world, as articulations that are simple, clear and true. “It’s about holding a mirror to the world and saying: this is what you guys did,” he reflects. “Not even to ask, what are you going to do next? But just to hold it there and see what happens.” A Toast to the People: Inua Ellams & Saul Williams, Edinburgh International Festival, Old College Quad, 24 Aug, 8pm, £14 eif.co.uk

THE SKINNY

Nature Writing Winner of the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize, Nina Mingya Powles discusses Small Bodies of Water, periods, nature writing and colonialism Interview: Katie Goh Books

“W

hen it comes to nature writing, we tend to imagine people traipsing through fields, not so much teenage girls going to the beach at the weekend,” says Nina Mingya Powles with a laugh. “But that’s changing – and for the better!” Powles is discussing Small Bodies of Water, her new collection of essays and winner of the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize. The book covers a range of subjects, including orcas, the climate crisis, earthquakes, the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, Studio Ghibli movies, cycling through the streets of Shanghai, wandering the rainforests of Borneo and, yes, crucially, the lives of teenage girls. “I love writing about adolescence and I was thinking about teenage experiences of swimming,” says Powles. “For me – and others might relate – periods are so tied to that and such a source of anxiety.” One of Powles’ essays explores the limited canon of periods in nature writing. “When I was initially writing that piece I could hardly find any references to periods. But now that’s changing and there are some amazing works of nature

Photo: Sophie Davidson

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frequently appear in Powles’ essays. “I was really encouraged to include Mandarin and Hakka after reading Mary Jean Chan’s poems,” says Powles. “She said she deliberately didn’t want to translate herself for the reader – including adding an italics or glossary – because you’re making an assumption about your readers. It made me think that I could write in a combination of languages and they could co-exist together.” Language is an important factor in how we understand nature, particularly how we understand the history of nature and colonialism which Powles explores in her book. “While researching, I would come up against the Latin name for a species as the ‘real’ name for it,” she says. “I was interested in finding the Mandarin name or the Māori name and that brought up big questions about empire, colonialism and white supremacy which are deeply connected to our relationship with nature.” Nature and travel writing has a history of ignoring or glossing over these questions. “I got really fed up with the genre of writing which is: white person goes abroad and reports back on their experience of finding themselves. Of course travel writing can be personal, but it’s also political. For me, writing about nature and colonialism is inseparable because I’m literally a product of the colonialism of different places.” Nature writing, as a genre, is also being forced to reckon with the climate crisis which, again, is also intrinsically connected to colonial histories. In one essay, Powles references a classmate who once asked in a creative writing class: “How do you write about nature without it being an elegy?” “I didn’t feel like I had much to add to writing about the crisis,” says Powles. “I just couldn’t avoid writing about it. I had to find a way to record the grief and the slow changes that I was beginning to perceive around me. It’s a small action to record what’s happening in the world but something that I could do in a world where we often feel powerless. But the book is also about joy and reclamation. I hope it’s not all an elegy, but explores all different aspects of our relationship to nature.” Small Bodies of Water is published by Canongate on 5 Aug canongate.co.uk Nina Mingya Powles appears at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh College of Art, 15 Aug, 2.15pm edbookfest.co.uk

August 2021 — Feature

writing by women and non-binary people who are starting to explore these things. I love that that essay could be in a book that’s broadly being labelled as nature writing.” As Powles notes, the Nan Shepherd Prize was launched to broaden definitions of what nature writing can be. Best known as a poet, Powles’ essays swim between travel writing, memoir, cultural criticism, food writing and historical research. “I don’t know if I can claim being called a nature writer because it’s only one part of what I do, but that’s okay! I love that the book is able to hold all these different things but also sit on a nature writing table in a bookshop. I also think it’s becoming increasingly impossible to avoid writing about the way the natural world is changing due to the climate crisis, so maybe a lot of us who didn’t previously think of ourselves as nature writers are becoming them.” Although Small Bodies of Water covers a range of subjects, what connects the essays is the titular water. “As I was writing the proposal for the Nan Shepherd Prize, I realised that I wanted to write more about swimming and climate change which to me is intimately connected to coastal environments,” explains Powles. “Water is a rich, connective force and such a broad theme. I loved that it took me to different, sometimes unexpected places, like rainforests and islands. The language we use to speak about water pulls me in. The idea of a body of water: what are the edges of a body of water, where does it stop and where does it begin?” Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Powles partly grew up in China, first learned to swim in Borneo and now lives in London. The time Powles spent living between these places is explored throughout Small Bodies of Water, as are the languages and sounds of different places. Chinese characters, or Hanzi,

THE SKINNY

Onwards and Upwards As the Edinburgh International Book Festival returns for 2021 in a new location with a new hybrid set-up, we dive into the highlights of their programme, which looks to celebrate the ideas and stories for a changing world Books

Words: Heather McDaid

Nina Mingya Powles

Photo: David Chukwujekwu

August 2021 — Feature

Photo: Courtesy of Caleb Femi

Elsewhere, Harry Josephine Giles describes Deep Wheel Orcadia – the first full-length novel written in Orcadian dialect in over half a century – as ‘a gay space communist fantasy written in a small language and about the small peace of small things’. Ely Percy’s Duck Feet sits firmly in Renfrew, following the coming-ofage tale of Kirsty Campbell, and the duo will discuss their brilliant novels and put the joy of writing in their dialect under the microscope (18 Aug, 4pm). Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House navigates the complexities of abuse in queer relationships, and her own experience of the highs of love and desire to the torment, both overt and insidious. Archiving, she says, is political, and about power: who gets to shape the narrative of histories. One not to miss (18 Aug, 7pm). Raven Leilani’s Luster has stolen the show for many readers this year, a sharp tale on contemporary life, and she joins Patricia Lockwood, whose genre-defying No One Is Talking About This was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize (19 Aug, 7.15pm), while Tice Cin (25 Aug, 1pm) showcases Keeping the House, which follows Damla, a Turkish-Cypriot girl growing up in North London, and the lives of three generations of women in the aftermath of Cyprus’ conflict. While Unbound has been shelved for the time being, we’ll always have time for a Post-Apocalyptic Cabaret (28 Aug, 8.30pm). Curated by Hysteria’s Mae Diansangu and Hanna Louise, they will host an electrifying mix of performers from song, spoken word and drag, for an unmissable Manifesto for a New World Order. The Good Grief! Salon is where grief comes glittered, gritty, and gutsy, according to Michael Pedersen (29 Aug, 8.30pm). After the past year, the evening will feature a brilliant line-up of writers and musicians to celebrate the love in the things we’ve lost or are missing. A light in the dark. And, if we’re talking books and Scotland, Shuggie Bain would always be there. Douglas Stuart will be beaming in from New York to talk to the First Minister about the novel that changed his life, winning the Booker Prize. Based on his own upbringing in a family facing addiction, he recounts his own coming-of-age in Glasgow and beyond (30 Aug, 8:30pm). The world is changing, and here’s just a handful of events to lead you on the way.

Photo: David Marshall

ptly focusing on ideas and stories for a changing world for 2021, the Edinburgh International Book Festival sees many alterations for this new iteration. First, its location, moving from Charlotte Square to a new home at Edinburgh College of Art; second, it’s reshaping accessibility by offering a fully hybrid experience, with all events able to be attended in-person and virtually, the latter pay what you can. Its heart is in Edinburgh, but it’s open to the world. After a year that has simultaneously kept people apart and brought many closer than ever, the festival is hosting a string of brilliant events in this new experimental year. Graeme Armstrong, Jenni Fagan and Caleb Femi join forces (14 Aug, 1pm) to discuss what home and community mean in a post-pandemic world. Femi also joins novelist Tice Cin to discuss his incredible debut collection Poor (15 Aug, 2.30pm) and ‘the art of the people’ – poetry. The Skinny is sponsoring Torrey Peters’ event as she discusses Detransition, Baby with Extra Teeth co-founder Heather Parry (14 Aug, 5.30pm). A tale of motherhood, relationships and chosen family, the book circles Reese, a trans woman in her 30s; Ames, her former lover who has detransitioned; and the unplanned pregnancy of Ames’ cis girlfriend, Katrina. A brilliant novel on the complexities of flawed people wrestling with concepts of family in a flawed world. The inaugural winner of the Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing, Nina Caleb Femi Mingya Powles will appear alongside Julian Aguon (15 Aug, 2.15pm), who witnessed first-hand the impact of globalisation and colonialism on the island of Guam; they will discuss Small Bodies of Water and The Properties of Perpetual Lights respectively and the intersections of the personal and political. On debuts, Caleb Azumah Nelson will discuss Open Water (16 Aug, 1pm), where he explores culture, masculinity, art and identity in a tale of falling in and out of love, vulnerability, and being seen – of feelings that words cannot articulate. An entrancing and lyrical book, it aches to read, and will – it’s safe to say – be one to watch. Another is Shola von Reinhold (17 Aug, 2.30pm), whose novel LOTE – following Mathilda, who does not see herself represented in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery, and her subsequent discovery of the ‘forgotten’ Black Scottish poet Hermia Drumm – won the Republic of Consciousness Prize. They will join Jamie Crewe who has created a new short film based on the novel, where the duo will discuss the exquisite world from the pages. Salena Godden’s debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death (17 Aug, 4pm) reimagines death not as a faceless grim reaper, but as a shapeshifting, working class Black woman. Exhausted, she wants to unload her stories and write her memoirs. Death is all around at present, but in Godden’s hands it is both darkly funny and deeply moving in one sweep.

Edinburgh International Book Festival, Edinburgh College of Art and online, 14-30 Aug View the full programme at edbookfest.co.uk Shola von Reinhold

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THE SKINNY

Between Before and After Ahead of her Skinny-sponsored event at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Torrey Peters discusses Detransition, Baby Interview: Eris Young Books

“ If you get a new job, you don’t just forget a previous part of your life. Trans people would be like the Don Drapers, who adopt a new identity and pretend that they had never been as they were before” Torrey Peters

“There’s the old saying that humour is tragedy plus time. There are things that enrage me. I will write the enraged version of that, and a year later I’ll go back and, without the wound being quite so fresh, it seems hilarious. “Oftentimes things that hurt you also reveal the hilarity of the world, its stupidness or absurdity. Part of this book started out in a place of rage, but novels take so long to write that after three years I couldn’t sustain rage. The things that seemed rage-worthy when I began it struck me as hilarious by the time it was over, including things that are very intra-trans. There’s an idea that the primary antagonisms in a trans person’s life come from cis people, but actually trans people antagonise each other all the time, along particularly trans lines. So a lot of the humour is like, in what ways have other trans people antagonised me? In what ways am I making fun of them or settling scores or admitting to the absurdity of fighting over this tiny, tiny fiefdom?” Peters will be appearing virtually at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August to talk about her work. When asked about her — 29 —

experience launching a book during a pandemic, she muses, “You know, it’s been good for me, which is not what you’re supposed to say. But, most of my writing previous to this has been hyperlocal – I do my readings in bars in Brooklyn, and there’s something beautiful about having to see face-to-face everybody who hears my work. But on the other hand, I get to do things like events in Edinburgh. I’ve found an audience that I think I wouldn’t have found in a circumstance outside lockdown. People in the UK were coming to my events, hearing what I said. When there was the Women’s Prize, they showed up and they asked me questions. And so this was a beautiful moment to speak to people who I was never expecting to speak to. It’s kind of special that I got this international wave – I have the rest of my life for it to be local.” Detransition, Baby is available now from Serpent’s Tail. Torrey Peters will be appearing virtually at Edinburgh International Book Festival on 14 Aug edbookfest.co.uk

August 2021 — Feature

ore than anything, Reese wants to be a mother. After her relationship with Amy – who detransitioned to live as Ames – collapsed, Reese fell into a spiral of self-destructive affairs with married men. Ames, now in a relationship with Katrina who is pregnant, calls with a surprising proposal, that the three co-parent, leaving Reese sceptical but intrigued. Told through the eyes of three women whose lives are inextricably, sometimes unwillingly, entwined, Detransition, Baby is an interrogation of motherhood, family, and how far we’ll go to get what we want. Transformation is a big theme throughout: we see three iterations of Amy, for one, and Reese and her married boyfriend’s shared fantasy, likening PrEP to birth control, which feels almost like a terrifying magic trick. “One of the things I wanted to do was in shifting the moments of transformation,” explains Torrey Peters. “In trans stories it’s usually around transition, but in this book it’s around small moments of imagination. When Amy is James, and the world is using he-pronouns, James gets she-pronouns, and gets ‘Amy’ – that’s not the moment in which everything shifts. It’s detransition around which the grammatical syntax of the book shifts. It’s when Amy detransitions that she begins to imagine herself differently, so I’m emphasising moments of imagination over predetermined narratives of transition.” As trans writers – and people – there’s a certain amount of pressure: we can’t be seen to exist in a pre- or de-transitional state. “A lot of what I’m trying to do is create a bridge, between states of before and states of after,” Peter notes. “That’s partly because the idea is, you transition and then you pull up the drawbridge after – I just have to lose a whole portion of my life when I transition? I don’t think that should be the price of entry. To anything. “If you get a new job, you don’t just forget a previous part of your life. Trans people would be like the Don Drapers, who adopt a new identity and pretend that they had never been as they were before. You know, the whole point of Mad Men is that that’s disingenuous. So why should trans people have to be disingenuous in order to exist? And why, if they aren’t, does the world judge them for it? “Writing about it, reclaiming it, is a way to overcome shame, and not have a false standard for how trans people have to deal with their past vs everybody else.” Detransition, Baby is also incredibly funny, in a distinctly trans way: Peters is able to deftly balance trans rage and grief with trans humour.

THE SKINNY

The Political Polymath On his scintillating debut, Kapil Seshasayee confronted the horrors of India’s caste system. Now, he’s turning his fire on Bollywood bigotry

August 2021 — Feature

“I

t felt like people took the political message to heart more when I played with a live band.” For Kapil Seshasayee, the message might be more important than the music. That isn’t to dismiss the highly inventive sound he’s spent the past few years cultivating, a beguiling blend of classical Indian influences and contemporary western ones. Rather it’s to admire the hyper-focused urgency of the manner in which his songs address problems that, while rooted in his ancestral home of India and south Asia more generally, actually affect the diaspora the world over, with parallels in the western world – and particularly, in his hometown of Glasgow – not difficult to find. Seshasayee’s powerful 2018 debut album, A Sacred Bore, took stinging aim at the atrocities committed in the name of India’s caste system, a social stratum that has been in place for centuries but that, as Seshasayee vitally points out, remains a brutal obstacle to social progress today. Tracks on the record referenced honour killings that have taken place in the modern world, such as the horrific 2000 murder of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu in Canada, killed by her own family for marrying in secret. “It’s a bigotry that’s travelled around the world,” he says over Zoom. “It’s almost inescapable, in a sense.” Now, Seshasayee is readying a second album, Laal, which looks set only to further the mission he set out on with A Sacred Bore. He’s expanding sonically, with a full band involved and an already ambitious sonic palette being expanded to incorporate R’n’B, psychedelia and hyperpop, and thematically, as he zeroes in on what he sees as one of the major culprits for India’s lack of social equality – Bollywood, and the negative stereotypes it perpetuates. Eager to avoid making sweeping but ultimately vague statements, Seshasayee has singled out particular films to help make his case. “There isn’t openness to interpretation. For me, all too often now, a band can present a really bland message that you can project any nuance onto – I’m not interested in that. I want to be very steadfast and concise.” Accordingly, he’s carefully chosen examples to reinforce his argument. Laal won’t be released until early next year, but we’ve already had a clutch of singles from it, including driving rocker The Gharial, named after a type of crocodile considered sacred in traditional Hindu mythology. In the 2020 Bollywood film Tanhaji there's a scene that appears tailor-made to stoke division between religious groups; a gharial is sacrilegiously grilled and eaten by a Muslim in the offending sequence. “It’s about encouraging nationalism and

Photo: Sean Patrick Campbell

Music

Words: Joe Goggins

“For me, all too often now, a band can present a really bland message that you can project any nuance onto – I’m not interested in that” Kapil Seshasayee

turning people against each other,” Seshasayee explains, “and this is a film that made billions of pounds, essentially. When you point to specific examples, it stops people from straw-manning you, from dismissing the problem as one that isn’t contemporary. Well, this film is barely two years old. It is still happening, all the time.” Another single from last year, The Pink Mirror, takes its title from a 2003 film by queer director Sridhar Rangayan, which remains banned in India. Again, for Seshasayee, the explicitness of his message is key. “If you were to say, ‘censorship of LGBTQ voices is a bad thing’, or, ‘it’s a problem that parts are being written for minorities by people with no lived experience’, that seems agreeable enough in a pub conversation, but you put it into a song and it seems vague, and inane, and like virtue signalling. So, if I can point to something like the banning of The Pink Mirror, I can start a conversation about why trans people only ever show up in Bollywood as comic relief or — 30 —

as demonic antagonists. There’s a long history of really tone deaf caricatures of trans people, and those solidify in the mind of the public, so is it really a surprise that transphobia is rife in India?” He understands, too, that these problems are widespread; they do not exist in a vacuum. Even outwith the south Asian diaspora, nationalism and transphobia are steeply on the rise in Britain, too. “There are so many parallels,” he agrees. “A good example over here is how sanitised the view of Pride has become, especially as corporations and brands have co-opted it; it’s seen as a party, rather than a protest. In India, there’s a similar issue with three-dimensional human beings, with their own struggles, wants and needs, not being seen as such because of the way they’re dehumanised in popular media.” For Seshasayee, then, it’s crucial to combat negative media with positive, and the bigger the platform the better, as he found back in May when a back-and-forth on casteism within his Twitter DMs with rapper Lil B led to the searing collaboration Hill Street Reprise. “At the end of the day, I write pop songs, and there’s a finite amount they can achieve. But we have to at least challenge these issues. The more we can normalise discussion of them, the more we can get people to engage with them.” Kapil Seshasayee plays Summerhall, Edinburgh, 15 Aug; Jupiter Rising, Jupiter Artland, Wilkieston, 27-29 Aug Seshasayee will also debut his forthcoming new record, Laal, in full ahead of release with a full live band and conceptual light show at King Tut’s, Glasgow, 24 Aug Laal is set for release early 2022 kapilseshasayee.bandcamp.com

THE SKINNY

Music

July 2021 — Feature

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July 2021 — Feature

Intersections

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THE SKINNY

raise the woof Comedy

hallo and hooray !!! fringe dog is here to celebrate five whole years of the terrier awards at the 2021 edimburgh fringe festival Illustration: Rachel Tunstall

the best muzzle award this award goes to the most decorative face mask worn over a wet nose in august the best wet nose this prize is for the person who has the most covid tests during the month. the best super spreader this one is for the venue who has made a real dog’s breakfast of responsible distancing, and the place is as safe to enter as a plague pit. the smells like mean spirit award this dishonour will go to the venue who brings down the mood of the fringe by treating people

as dogsbodies with dickensian labour practices. *** please note: i hope not to have to award the above two prizes the best doggy bag award i think it was philosopher socrates who said “one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” this award is for the best place to find grub in august *** please note: i reserve right to award this to a city bin if that bin contains exemplary leftovers of needless food waste. the best water bowl this is for the venue that makes outdoors a pleasure for fringe-goers and dogs alike to meet and play !!! the best lapping tongue from a car window this is for the most brilliant drive-through swab test available at clinics and hospitals in edimburgh. the best leader of the pack this is reserved for anyone involved with the fringe who shows calm leadership in whatever role big or small, setting an example we rarely see from our frisky political masters. — 33 —

the best winston churchill award for mental health this award goes to the show with a strong mental health theme (the award is named after winston churchill for his tireless work studying depression in his black dog) the best spirit of nice happiness this is for the nicest person in edimbrugh the separation-anxiety award this is for the artist who isn’t in edimburgh this year and who we miss terribly. we will make sure to do a commemorative howl at the castle fireworks every night for them. *** please note: i may award this to everyone who isn’t in edimburgh i can’t wait to go walkies with you on edimbrugh’s cobbled streets, o boy o boy o boy !!! love from fringe dog. Follow Fringedog on Twitter @fringedog Winners will be announced on The Skinny website and on Twitter on Thursday 26 Aug (we hope)

August 2021 — Feature

h my edimburgh, i have missed you. it has bin so long i think re-introductions are in order !!! my name is fringe dog and my life calling is reviewin’ comedy and i am also founder of the terrier awards this year will be five years since the terrier awards started o boy which means 35 annums in terrier time !!! i am very wise fringe dog i am proud to have earned a reputation as an unbiased critic in edimburgh. my method is free for any critic who wish to follow it: i give everyone 5stars and everyone is my favourite. unfortunately with pandemic i was forced to apply for FURlough like many others. but my application was rejected because i insisted reviewing comedians makes me key worker. her majesty’s treasury disagreed and told me i must re-train as covid sniffer dog !!! i assumed it would have been a job in cybark !!! because i have 300 million olfactory receptors up my nose, sniffin’ out these dastardly germs hasn’t bin too ruff work. although, i did keep makin’ mistake of giving patients 5stars instead of their covid test results. now my local nhs clinic tells me it’ll be delighted to let me return to comedy reviewing ~ just in time for this little return of the fringe !!! hurrah and hooray !!! it is with great pleasure i can also bring back the terrier awards. the categories for the 2021 awards are below and the winners will be announced in august on the skinny website

THE SKINNY

OK, Computer Film

Sheffield-based filmmaker Ryan Braund had a busy lockdown. While you were making banana bread, he animated his first feature film, Absolute Denial, an inventive man v computer sci-fi that makes its UK bow at the Edinburgh International Film Festival Interview: Josh Slater-Williams

August 2021 — Feature

ome filmmakers have been very productive during the COVID era. Ben Wheatley (In the Earth) and Doug Liman (Locked Down), to name just two, have directed and already released films that first came to screenplay fruition relatively early on during the pandemic. But few can claim to have knocked out an entire feature-length animation, the majority of which was made after the UK went into its first lockdown period. And probably even fewer can say they not only directed and wrote such a film, but that they were also the sole animator. And that it was their debut feature. Sheffield-based filmmaker Ryan Braund can, though. Absolute Denial, which receives its UK premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, is a vaguely cyberpunk, black-andwhite independent animation he was loosely working on in late 2019 in terms of scripting and general feelers, before properly throwing himself into its making in January 2020. The journey to Absolute Denial goes back further than that, though. “I started making films when I was around 16,” Braund says over Zoom. “These would just be animations in my bedroom, using whatever I could find. But they actually defied the odds a bit and had a little bit of success at international festivals. I love the magic of the cinema and I’d always wanted to make a feature. And it was something that I attempted many, many times over the last decade. Sometimes the projects didn’t feel quite right. Sometimes I just didn’t have the resources or the budget because I was always producing it on my own. “I was very close to giving up, basically, until the back end of 2019. I thought, if I don’t commit

and just see something through, I’m always going to regret it. So, I quit the job I had at the time. And my family actually gave me a room to stay in, which became my studio for nine months. My original plan was to focus on it for a few months and then maybe get a part-time job just to keep myself afloat. But obviously, the lockdown rules came into effect and I literally couldn’t go anywhere. The first three months was working ten hours a day, seven days a week solid. And then the last six months was about the same, ten hours a day but just six days a week.” Absolute Denial’s narrative centres on two characters: David (voiced by Nick Eriksen), a programmer, and Al (Jeremy J. Smith-Sebasto), a supercomputer he builds in a warehouse, which eventually proves to be so powerful as to reshape David’s concept of reality. As Al’s motivations become more complex, so too does the film’s lo-fi visual and aural language. “I’d come across a social experiment online,” Braund says of the story’s inception, “and it was trying to prove that any sufficiently intelligent person or machine could socially engineer their way out of their confinements, or some sort of prison, as long as they had some interaction with another person. I thought that was really fascinating. I loved the idea that a human mind could be hackable. And I started thinking about how that might unfold – this battle of two powerful minds, almost like a game of chess.” Braund cites Darren Aronofsky’s breakthrough Pi as an aesthetic and thematic influence on his own debut feature, alongside Mamoru Oshii’s landmark anime Ghost in the Shell, with — 34 —

which it broadly shares notions of corruption of the human mind through interactions with technology and artificial intelligence. “That was the first animated feature film I had seen that was aimed at a mature audience,” says Braund. “I must’ve been 16 or 17 when I saw it and it just blew me away, because I didn’t realise that animation could be used in that way. It wasn’t a family film and it wasn’t for children, and that has stuck with me ever since. “I think there’s a real lack of mature animated features coming out of America and the UK. [Netflix’s] Love, Death & Robots is as close as we’re getting at the moment. I watched a Q&A with David Fincher recently and he said the exact same thing. He said the reason why he produced this anthology series was because they wanted to test the waters and see what the demand was like for mature animated films [that aren’t comedies]. And it’s obviously incredibly successful, so hopefully there’ll be some.” Braund also cites Fincher as an influence on the film’s fast-paced narration: “When I cast David, I gave [Nick Eriksen] clips of The Social Network as reference. There’s loads of technical jargon, but you’re not really supposed to understand every word or all the minutia of what he’s talking about. It’s just a way of getting across that he’s an intelligent person and knows this topic very well, knows what he’s doing.”

Absolute Denial has its UK premiere on 21 Aug at the Edinburgh International Film Festival

THE SKINNY

Super Aria Brothers Pop duo Sparks bring their recent shift to a more operatic sound to its natural conclusion with Annette, a baroque musical they wrote for French director Leos Carax, which arrives at Edinburgh International Film Festival this month

dgar Wright’s recent The Sparks Brothers, a loving opus to the duo, has kickstarted an international Sparks love-in, but Ron and Russell Mael remain true to their reputation as forward-looking artists. Just a few weeks before the UK release of Wright’s film (read our interview with Edgar Wright on p. 43), the brothers opened the Cannes Film Festival with Annette, the screen collaboration between them and oddball French director Leos Carax. The musical, which focuses on the relationship between a stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and an opera singer (Marion Cotillard), has since won Carax the Best Director award at Cannes and spawned a critically acclaimed album of soundtrack selections. With their screenwriting debut a resounding triumph, the Maels meet with us over Zoom to discuss it.

You’re known to have tried to get film projects off the ground for decades. The lack of spoken dialogue in Annette plays to your compositional strengths, but was this always your intended approach? Have you worked on ‘straight’ screenplays over the years? Ron: I don’t think writing a non-musical screenplay is something we’d be strong at. Also, we don’t feel comfortable doing just a soundtrack either – there are so many people who are skilled at that sort of thing. Our strength is being able to engage with a story in musical terms. In the original version of Annette, there was even less spoken dialogue, but Leos felt it needed some breathing areas for the audience. We thought ‘they can breathe after the movie’s done!’ We’re really big fans of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which uses a similar kind of approach.

So was Ron responsible for the band’s shift to a more operatic style, of which Annette seems to be the logical conclusion? Ron: My knowledge of opera is not as great as it might appear from the film, but I have a love of soprano singing, so I think that fed into [Marion Cotillard’s] character. We wanted to come up with two very separate and very distinct characters, and an opera singer was something I felt very comfortable writing for in a musical setting, even if the music is not truly operatic, but in the style of someone who’s coming from pop and imposing an operatic style on that form. The other thing was having a stand-up comedian, how to convert what a comedian does into musical terms. It was fun to try and figure that one out. — 35 —

“Our strength is being able to engage with a story in musical terms” Ron Mael You run your own record label through which you can present music directly to a dedicated fanbase. Given the self-sufficiency you enjoy as musicians, what’s the appeal of the film industry with its headache-inducing barriers? Russell: We’re masochists, that’s the appeal basically! We’re wanting to find different ways to channel the music we can do. We love doing Sparks albums and we’re three-quarters of the way through a new one and we won’t ever abandon that, but it’s a different way of working and at this point it’s more interesting for us to have a variety of different ways to do music. Ron: We’ve always been such lovers of film that to be able to be a participant in that kind of essential way in a film is just a dream for us. It’s a little boy’s dream. Annette has its UK premiere on 21 Aug as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival Annette is released in UK cinemas on 3 Sep, and streaming from 26 Nov, via MUBI

August 2021 — Feature

You seem to be in sync regarding music. Is this also the case when it comes to taste in cinema? Are there any areas of art and culture in which your sensibilities really differ? Ron: I might have more outside-pop-music interests than Russell in as far as digging deep into jazz and some esoteric classical pieces, but in general we share the same feelings about things. It’s the basic reason we’ve been able to continue for so long. Even as brothers, if we’d had different ideas about what constitutes the ideal pop song or film musical, there’s no way we could have gotten this far. Russell: One of the things Edgar wanted to stress in his documentary is how our situation is kind of different from just about every other brother act in pop music. It’s unusual for us to not only be getting along as brothers at this stage, but to be doing work that’s as progressive and provocative in this day and age.

Are the film’s two main characters representative of you both in some respects? Ron as the acerbic comedian, and Russell the open-hearted interpreter of songs? Is the movie about your relationship? Ron: Both revolting characters! Russell: We’re going to have to steal that as a motive, because we’ve been asked it more than once. We never saw that at all. But it’s like with Sparks songs, people sometimes ask if they’re autobiographical in any way. In most cases we say they’re not literally autobiographical, but they were written by Ron or maybe me, so they came from somewhere within us. Maybe those elements are there, unbeknownst to us.

Film

Interview: Lewis Porteous

August 2021 — Feature

Intersections

THE SKINNY

A Fairer Future

As the Edinburgh Festival Fringe returns to in-person venues for the first time in two years, we assess the festival’s past problems, whether anything has changed, and what a fairer Fringe could look like in the future Words: Rosie Priest Illustration: Sarah Wilson — 36 —

he fact that Edinburgh – a tiny, old, beautiful, ramshackle and cobblestoned city – hosts the world’s largest arts festival is incredible to me. Every August the streets hum with the opportunity to experience something brilliant at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with an estimated five million attendees taking in shows across the city. The economic boom to Edinburgh businesses, as well as Scotland as a whole, is huge. But this festival was not without its problems, long before COVID-19 forced the Fringe and Edinburgh’s other August arts festivals to screech to a halt. In 2017 an organisation called Fair Fringe was founded, which sought to tackle exploitative and illegal working practices at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For three years running they unearthed major Fringe venues hiring unpaid staff and housing them in unsafe buildings, crammed into tiny rooms. These unpaid workers were expected to put in gruelling hours of work all in the name of

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festival. Of course, this does nothing to tackle the issues facing the festival’s workers, sustainability, BIPOC+ representation and women and people of marginalised genders’ safety. In fact, bringing more and more acts to the festival will only continue to add strain on the city. There is no strategy here, other than “onwards and upwards”.

“Those campaigning for a fairer Fringe are campaigning to organisations who pass the buck back and forth” But fear not, all need not be lost. One of the overriding themes among all of these exhausting and upsetting issues is a lack of accountability. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe itself is just a collection of venues, promoters, artists and workers. It is often confused with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, which cannot and do not regulate venues operating during August. There is no one who can actually ensure representation is considered, that workers’ rights aren’t exploited, that women and people of marginalised genders are safe and that the city isn’t lost to a pile of flyers and Airbnb-ers. Those campaigning for a fairer Fringe are campaigning to organisations who pass the buck back and forth, from the Fringe Society to Edinburgh City Council to landlords to venues. There is no one organisation ensuring accountability for any of this. We need a captain for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe ship. In order to genuinely “build back better”, a steering group of artists, venues, members of the Fringe Society, MSPs and Edinburgh City Council should develop a clear and sustainable plan for the city’s Fringe, ensuring ethical practices are centred and not sidelined. A Fringe Festival Council, to whom venues, programmers and employers are accountable; a group that could steer the festival into a more equitable and ethical place. This may be a pie in the sky dream of mine, but, until the Edinburgh Festival Fringe changes dramatically to put workers’ rights, women and people of marginalised genders’ safety, BIPOC+ representation and sustainability on the agenda, then I would urge us all to demand better. If the Fringe won’t improve itself, then we need to cut it off from the only thing that feeds it: us, the audience, the artists and workers. We have the power to demand better and boycott those unwilling to adhere to ethical, sustainable, responsible practices. Until the Edinburgh Festival Fringe improves, we can also support the incredible creative work that is being promoted and programmed ethically by some organisations. By taking action and demanding better we are paving the way for a fairer Edinburgh Festival Fringe in the future.

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of those plastic cups, the energy needed for temporary streetlights, bar fridges and sound systems as well as an increased number of cars and taxis – the list is endless and it all adds up. The strain the city feels, not just from the pollution, but from having to house literally millions of temporary visitors every year is felt by everyone in the city. One in six homes in the centre of Edinburgh is an Airbnb, with thousands of empty flats in the city only used for short term holiday lets. The city has almost 3,000 families (and 12,000 individuals) waiting for appropriate council houses which are simply not available despite almost twice that number of homes sitting empty most of the year. Rent has increased by a breathtaking 42% in just eight years, almost double that of the UK average. Affordable housing in the capital has been described by the Edinburgh Poverty Commission as “the single most important factor in reducing poverty.” It’s desperately needed. In their manifesto Edinburgh Reimagined: The Future Will Be Localised, inspired by conversations with Edinburgh’s cultural sector and published in April 2021, Morvern Cunningham notes how the mantra “build back better” prevailed during lockdown. Over the last year, cultural leaders have been forced to examine their own privilege as Black Lives Matter publicly exposed the institutional racism looming within organisations, stories of gender-based violence unfolded as the trial of Scottish actor Kevin Guthrie reignited discussions around women’s safety within the performing arts, and the brunt of a global pandemic was felt most by BIPOC+ people, women, people with disabilities and those from low-income households. Inequalities were growing and much of the dialogue around the arts, including the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, was to “build back better.” But, two years on from the last “normal” Fringe, and as the August festivals return to in-person venues for 2021, has anything changed? Has it built back better? In short: no. Fringe of Colour’s concern for better representation of BIPOC+ work at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has not been addressed. Despite the “build back better” mantra ringing in organisations’ ears when adapted versions of the August festivals took place online last year, Fringe of Colour “noticed that many organisations gladly fell back on the “safe”; read: white, straight, cis, able-bodied, neurotypical, wealthy or middle class, for online content.” At the time of writing, 2021’s Fringe programme has a similar percentage of work by BIPOC+ artists as 2018 and big, temporary venues are currently hiring for staff, with several advertising positions listed as unpaid. It feels like the “build back better” mantra has been long forgotten and the festival seems determined to forge forward into 2021 blindly. The work being done to encourage a fairer Fringe by large organisations is, at best, tokenistic: a recent promotion for a gin, the profits of which would be used to bring new and emerging artists to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, suggests it is an attempt to level the uneven playing field at the

Intersections

‘gaining experience’. If venues did pay staff, it was often below the minimum living wage despite Edinburgh being one of the most expensive cities in the UK to live in. Workers talked about feeling unsafe, exhausted and about how their experiences of the festival damaged both their mental and physical health. Of course, these jobs perpetuate inequalities within the arts as only those who are financially stable enough to take up unpaid work can comfortably take these positions. Those from low-income households – particularly women, disabled people and BIPOC+ people – are left behind, unless of course they are just so desperate they take up any work that they can get. It’s not just workers’ rights that have been continuously ignored at the festival. BIPOC+ representation has remained a largely ignored subject. Travis Alabanza wrote about their time at Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019 saying: “Spending a month in Edinburgh with the trials of doing daily shows, press, reviews, late nights, it wasn’t my work that exhausted me, rather the elongated feeling of not seeing others that look like you occupy public space.” Alabanza isn’t alone in recognising the paucity of BIPOC+ representation at the festival. In 2018 Fringe of Colour was founded in response to the lack of shows by Black people and people of colour programmed at the Fringe. During the last “normal” Fringe in 2019, accounts emerged from women claiming they had experienced sexual harassment during the festival. From flyering for their shows, working front of house for a temporary venue, or even on stage, women were experiencing rampant sexual harassment. Most worrying of all perhaps were accounts of women living in temporary accommodation housed by their “employers” with tens of other people, feeling unsafe to even climb into bed at the end of an exhausting shift. What happens at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is a concentrated version of the performing arts; the opportunities to see and experience incredible things are more intense, but so too are the racism and sexism which thrive within the performing arts sector. Take ten years’ worth of shows and cram them all into one tiny city over just four weeks and of course these extreme circumstances will breed extreme inequalities. Sustainability, too, is something that the August festivals have largely failed to account for. Due to the sheer number of people attending the Fringe, Edinburgh International Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival and Edinburgh Art Festival, Edinburgh’s carbon footprint in August is immeasurably large. If you’ve ever wandered the streets of Edinburgh in August you’ll have experienced just how overwhelming the sheer volume of abandoned, littered stuff is. Performers are often encouraged to print around 4,000 paper flyers for a month-long show at the festival. If all 3,800 shows registered with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2019 took that advice, over 15 million flyers would have been produced, distributed and tossed away. Waste from food trucks, posters, all

THE SKINNY

Sketching a Scene Clubs

From early Slam events to pre-pandemic parties, we delve into the visual history of Scottish club culture with help from some notable club flyer and poster designers in the final part of our series platforming emergent writers, produced in partnership with Edinburgh International Festival Interview: Chiara Wilkinson

Slam Splashdown

Haçienda in Manchester, and the queues were enormous,” Helliwell recalls. “We only got in by the skin of our teeth. There was a bit of ticket fraud meaning that some of the genuine ticket holders were refused entry.” Another standout from Helliwell’s collection is an early Sub Club poster for the only Scottish date on acid house icon Adamski’s 1989 tour. It has a strikingly bright turquoise background, juxtaposed with an abstract splattering of gold paint. “Adamski wasn’t massively known at the time,” Helliwell says. “The night was just a complete sweatbox. You left and you were soaked to the skin.” Playing with Pop Culture “At the start of the 90s, people were really into ripping off movie posters,” says Paul Hagan, a 46-year-old flyer collector from Aberdeen, who set up a Facebook community group called Scottish Classic Club Culture just over a year ago. He references a poster from a 1991 Friday the 13th house and techno party in Inverness, featuring a typical horror movie graphic complete with an 18 film certificate. Hagan’s collection reveals that there was a lot of pop culture referencing going on in poster design at the time – be that logos, labels, or famous records – often because they were so easy to alter. “People did things like scan a videotape cover and manipulate it using some really primitive Microsoft Office thing,” he says. “Some of my friends would cut words out and stick them to flyers then photocopy them millions of times.” One of his posters – from a Disco Frenzy 90s night in Aberdeen’s Cotton Club – plays on the classic album cover for Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols. Meanwhile, the poster for a 10,000-capacity Hogmanay party at Edinburgh’s Royal Highland Centre in 1998 is based on a whisky bottle. Famed for being the home of Bass Generator’s happy hardcore, the poster depicts a frightening cartoon version of Father Christmas underneath the name of the event series, The Rezerection. Sci-fi Stereotype Memories of early rave flyers will more than likely conjure up images of aliens, UFOs, and loved-up robots. Dance music’s wholehearted embrace of the sci-fi aesthetic was in part due to design trends at the time, but also because of the futuristic event experience that promoters were determined to sell. “In the

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Image: Courtesy of the artist and Paul Hagan

Back to Basics The house and techno explosion that was born in the United States made its way over to Scotland in the mid-1980s, back when posters disguised as adverts for car MOTs disclosed vital details for illegal raves. By the end of the decade, the underground electronic dance scene had fully infiltrated the commercial world. Block colours, geometric shapes, and simple motifs were popular in posters, and balancing a huge amount of event information with an eye-catching design was essential. Wendy Helliwell is a mixed-media artist from Edinburgh with a vast collection of original flyers from late 80s and early 90s club nights. She references a poster for a 1989 Slam Splashdown all-nighter at Tramway in Glasgow. “I’m pretty certain that was one of Scotland’s first legally organised raves,” she says. The poster is dense with information, packed with every ticket vendor in the country, coach departures, line-up listings, as well as promises of candy floss, a juice bar, and a ‘NASA weightless simulator’. “There were bus loads coming up from the Image: Courtesy of the artist and Wendy Helliwell

August 2021 — Feature

ometimes we are transported back to a particular night without warning. It might be spurred on by a dog-eared ticket found down the back of the sofa, or the remains of a poster peeking through a papier-mâchéd wall on the Cowgate. It could be an illustration you see while scrolling through Instagram, or the face of a stranger who once handed you a soggy flyer on Sauchiehall Street. Providing visual references for nights that may otherwise feel hazy with memory, graphic designers form an integral part of the clubbing ecosystem. Gone are the primitive days of posters made exclusively with felt tip pens and a photocopier; as digital design software has become more accessible, club artwork has grown increasingly varied and innovative.

The Rezerection

THE SKINNY Image: Courtesy of the artist

Clubs

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Paul Hagan

early 90s, you would go to raves and there would be massive laser shows and people dancing on stage dressed as robots,” says Hagan. “So the sci-fi imagery was carried on in that way.” He nods to a droid on the poster for a huge Technodrome rave held on an Ayrshire farm in 1991, and the mysterious alien egg taking centre stage on the design for the Sweatbox opening night at Dundee’s The Venue II. Sweatbox Fast forward a couple of decades and the futuristic, tech-heavy imagery was still around, although in more modern, subtle iterations. The design for the opening night of Inner City Acid – a night run by David Fleming between 2004 and 2009 in Glasgow – spells out the line-up in a digital-style font with an anaglyph image of the city’s skyline. Come the late 2010s, Paddy Hughes’ designs for Hilltown Disco – a record label and party collective born in Dundee – used textural layering and illustrations of transmitters to emulate a scene from inside a spaceship. Even an uber-sleek design by Russ Sealey, of Para Creative, for Terminal V’s 2019 The Rising event at the Royal Highland Centre plays on the cyberspace theme, with a neon globular cluster framing the event’s flashy line-up.

“I wouldn’t be interested in making something look like a typical deep tech night, instead I’d make it really arty” Caterina Bianchini Caterina Bianchini

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Cut and [cmd: V] Paste Modernising the old school cutand-stick technique, graphic generalist Connor MacDonald – also known as Sensory Works – usually works via digital collage. He started out making posters for his own club night, Contour, at The Reading Rooms in Dundee, before moving to Glasgow around 2018 and working for the likes of La Cheetah Club and The Berkeley Suite. Despite using the same Photoshop collage technique, many of MacDonald’s designs look dramatically different. One might be hyper-realistic, while another resembles a children’s cartoon.

August 2021 — Feature

Inspired by anything from household packaging to contemporary artists like John Baldessari and Alan Fletcher, Bianchini would usually try to resist the urge to visually interpret the ‘sound’ of a night. “I wouldn’t be interested in making something look like a typical deep tech night, instead I’d make it really arty,” she says. Bianchini’s designs would always undergo a final edit to ensure the human alterations were obvious. “I liked adding little details that you won’t necessarily see firsthand,” she says. “But when you come up close and really interact, you can see that maybe one of the As is upside down, or one letter is more squished than the others.” Originally from Edinburgh, Bianchini landed a design role at Boiler Room in 2016 before going freelance for a variety of clients in electronic music. “I think that I kept doing posters for so long because of how expressive the work was,” she says. “It really allowed me to explore typography and my style came over time.” Bianchini now runs her own creative consultancy and branding agency in London, Studio Nari, and although no longer designing for clubs, she credits her grounding in posters for her fluid approach to current projects. Image: Courtesy of the artist

Talking with Typography Although classic rave culture was famed for its maximalist flyer designs, the 2010s ushered in a new generation of designers who weren’t afraid to strip it right back to keep things fresh. Caterina Bianchini made a name for herself carving out the aesthetic for Sub Club Soundsystem by playing with the most basic of poster components – the text itself.

Paddy Hughes

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Image: Courtesy of the artist

Ryan Marinello

Clubs

Image: Courtesy of the artist Ryan Marinello

A poster for a Ribeka show at La Cheetah Club in 2018 shows a floating 3D rendering of names on the line-up, all moulded into a huge smoker’s lung. “[Ribeka] was talking about the texture and tone of the music and I just took it in a very material way,” MacDonald says. “Everyone’s names bloomed into weird organs, blown up and squashed together. There’s very few rules in this space, which makes it really fun to play around in.” One of MacDonald’s personal favourites is a design for a Bufiman show at The Berkeley Suite in January 2020, which was made using a cut-out of a flower painting from the Met Museum’s online collection. “There are hundreds of things that you can use for free, completely in the public domain,” he says. “No one’s ever really doing much with them; they just sort of sit

August 2021 — Feature

Image: Courtesy of the artist Connor MacDonald

there being old bits of art. The whole thing is about referencing different things so that people have a really good idea when they see the poster of what the night is about just by the vibe.” A Photoshop Affair Edinburgh-based DJ, promoter and self-taught graphic designer Ryan Marinello is another artist using Photoshop to create his poster artwork. Prior to the pandemic he regularly produced posters for club nights at Sneaky Pete’s, including his own TEESH party series. Although his work may not always follow a concurrent theme or aesthetic, his designs somehow always manage to look distinctly his own. “I got into poster design because I started playing around with Photoshop in my spare time, making collage-type stuff just for fun,” he says. “I’ve been asked by other designers where I went to art school or how I do things, but I don’t have any way to explain it apart from I’ve spent hours playing around with a program.” From rainbow colour fields to darker, graffiti-inspired type, many of his designs look so well-rendered and nuanced that it’s difficult to believe they were made digitally; but it’s all about building up components. Marinello approaches concepts in different ways, sometimes starting by placing a new font in the middle of a blank page and putting text and visuals around it, other times by recreating a vision in his head. “It’s hard to say when to stop adding to a design,” he says. “Sometimes I can spend over ten hours on one, sometimes it can be finished in an hour or two. You need all the necessary information there, then it’s sort of like getting dressed. You just know instinctively.” Creating Characters Derby-born Jacob Tomlinson has been designing posters in his signature style since 2011. Illustration heavy with numerous narratives and characters in conversation, Tomlinson describes his style as a weird blend of Keith Haring meets Where’s Wally meets Jamie Hewlett meets the Beano. He made his start drawing flyers for indie bands before picking up poster work in 2017 for Dundee house and disco night, Jute City Jam. Tomlinson says that he is inspired just as much by peoplewatching in clubs as the music itself. “I get into a lot of characters and their interactions with one another,” he says. “I like making something that somebody can stare at, so that if you did have it on your bedroom wall you could look at it every day and maybe spot something new.” A quick glance at his design for a Crazy P Soundsystem event at Kings in Dundee, which was cancelled just before the pandemic in March 2020, depicts a club scene with the infamous acid house smiley drawn into the middle of the speakers and a chaotic dancefloor of geometric

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Image: Courtesy of the artist

Clubs

Image: Courtesy of the artist

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This article is the final part of our series platforming emergent writers, produced in partnership with Edinburgh International Festival Follow Chiara Wilkinson on Twitter @chiarawilkinson

Al White

Gabriella Marcella

Oliver McKenzie

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Image: Courtesy of the artist

Let’s Get Physical For all of the advanced software out there, though, it’s impossible to recreate the effects of tangible media. Some contemporary Jacob Tomlinson poster designers still work solely in the physical sphere, or more than likely will manipulate original artwork using technology. Glasgow-based artist Gabriella Marcella is best known as the founder and director of design studio RISOTTO, specialising in risograph printing. Marcella’s signature style can be seen on a 2015 poster for RIDE, a popular hip-hop and R’n’B night at Sneaky Pete’s which came to an end in 2019. The poster was made using risograph and a stencil print, achieving a soft overlayering of tones that just couldn’t be replicated using a printer. Meanwhile, Edinburgh-based photographer Oliver McKenzie used ink, acrylic and collage to make the bold design for a 2020 Gramrcy set at intimate St Andrews party series, Wax Rooms. Unlike the text-heavy posters of earlier eras, the ability to disseminate event information separately online meant that it could focus on being an interpretation of Gramrcy’s headspace music using solely tangible media, before being photographed and transported into the digital realm. And then there’s Al White’s mindblowingly complex designs for the 12th Isle parties. “I use a lot of drawing and

analogue techniques, especially in the first half of the poster-making process,” says White, who started off making posters in Glasgow in 2014. “I also use Photoshop, so for me it’s about finding interesting ways to take things in and out of the computer and make something that sits somewhere in between. I screenprint a lot of the posters too, which adds another layer to the whole process.” One of his posters for Concrete Cabin – a record label and club night playing drum‘n’bass, grime, jungle, and hardcore – was made using spray paint and digital type, while his two-tone design of organic twisting structures for the last 12th Isle party at The Art School was made by working on top of a previous poster. “I then re-drew the isles to be decayed and demented from the hell we had put them through in that basement,” he says. The prevailing urge to tamper with perfection, and to intrude on Adobe’s symmetry and sleekness with the human hand, is a recurring theme in the evolution of club poster design. It is art that is raw, colourful, loud, and chaotic. It’s gloriously imperfect, and one of the most accurate visual reflections of nightlife that we have.

Image: Courtesy of the artist

cartoon clubbers. Each design can take around 12 hours to make, and they are always born out of daydream-doodling. “It starts in the sketchbook, which is just a translation of my brain onto the page,” Tomlinson says. “Sometimes the promoter will ask me to include specific things, like the bouncers, then I usually draw it with a pencil roughly or draw directly into Photoshop before adding the colours digitally.”

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Clubs

A (very) Brief History of Scottish Clubbing To coincide with the ongoing Night Fever exhibition at V&A Dundee, we asked some prominent members of the Scottish club circuit to share their clubbing memories Interviews: Nadia Younes Photo: Kris Walker

Image: courtesy of Grrrl Crush Grrrl Crush at Mash House

Photo: Niall Walker

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Death Disco

“T

he Riverside Club was such a fabulous place to put a club on – an old ceilidh hall with a sprung floor, one disco ball with a light, candles on the tables and a killer soundsystem. It was the perfect down ‘n’ dirty club venue and even though we eventually moved to The Art School, which was also brilliant, the Riverside days were my favourite… All the nights I shared the stage in The Art School with my fellow resident, and my best friend, Paul ‘TheeMrMister’ Nicholls still fills me with joy all these years later. Paul passed away in 2010 leaving a huge hole in Glasgow clubland. He was a one-off; a true Glasgow legend.” – Sandra Marron, aka Madame S, on Utter Gutter at The Riverside Club, Glasgow “I think I might have been 15 the first time I went to Pure, no more than 16 anyway. It was utterly insane and felt like the energy of a 12-hour all-nighter condensed into four hours. It was friendly but really intense, and the music was unreal. Although there were other techno/house clubs about, nobody did it like Pure. Pure was, is, and will always be the daddy!” – Kris Walker on Pure at The Venue, Edinburgh

Pure

“For me, [The Arches] was where the magic happened: Uncle John & Whitelock’s debut gig inside a shack in a makeshift garden at VAULT; Jonny Woo and team lip-synching, fighting and stripping each other at Horse Meat Disco; Bar Art flash-mobbing wearing mirrorball heads, the lycra-clad, bearded baritone Le Gateau Chocolat singing Nessun Dorma, and Ann Liv Young shouting ‘you bunch of A-holes!’ while wetting herself onstage – all at seminal club Death Disco.” – Niall Walker on Death Disco at The Arches, Glasgow “We promoted the Scissor Sisters’ first live gig in Scotland… [and] it was insanely busy. They were blown away, and said the next time they came back to play, they ONLY wanted to play for us. Their next show came about five months later, and we booked them for Abnormals Anonymous at The Art School, but by then they were in the UK top ten. We met a whole new generation of queer kids who had never been to clubs, and didn’t know that they even existed outside of the Polo and Bennets, and whose first “gay” music experience was seeing the Scissor Sisters on Top of the Pops. That was an amazing night.” – Alan Miller on Record Playerz at The Art School, Glasgow — 42 —

“I used to get so stressed before every Grrrl Crush event that I wondered why I started throwing parties. But once we were in the swing of things, I’d always take a moment to stand back and look at what we’d created and I realised what we were doing was important. Bringing the queer community together, providing a safe space for women, non-binary and LGBTQ+ people and championing them both on stage and off. I’d wake up the next day with my faith in humanity restored. That’s what clubbing has always been about for me – finding love on the dancefloor.” – Roberta Pia on Grrrl Crush at The Mash House, Edinburgh “The Reading Rooms was the club the Hilltown Disco collective met at, and were introduced to underground music. This was our home, and the first time we’d been able to curate a full night from start to finish and let Dundee hear what we were about. It was a sell-out crowd that really danced the full night and set the tone for all our nights after.” – Ben Rothes on Hilltown Disco at The Reading Rooms, Dundee Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, V&A Dundee, until 9 Jan 2022

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Wright Sparks Edgar Wright likes Sparks a fair bit. If The Sparks Brothers, his exuberant 140-minute documentary celebrating the genius pop duo doesn’t convince you of that, then our chat with the Shaun of the Dead director surely will Interview: Lewis Porteous

myself not watching the scene but listening to Sparks.” With mock defensiveness, he adds: “I feel like I’ve atoned for my sin of not putting Sparks in Hot Fuzz by making a movie that has maybe 80 Sparks songs in it!”

Edgar Wright These songs variously cover glam rock, baroque pop, primitive hair metal, American MOR, Eurodisco, new wave, synth-pop, opera and Hollywood musicals (Annette, their screen collaboration with Leos Carax has just opened Cannes to great acclaim). However, it’s the brothers’ use of visuals that proves most likely to captivate the average moviegoer. “Once you start to delve into their aspirations pre-music, with Ron studying graphic design at UCLA and Russell studying film, that makes a lot of sense in terms of how they continue,” Wright observes. “Even before they started trying to make movies, Sparks themselves were very cinematic. A lot of the songs conjure up visuals for you because they’re mini-operas about unusual scenes. “On top of that, you’ve got the music videos, the album covers which all feel like they’re snapshots from films, and the stagecraft,” says Wright. “There’s a well thought-out choreography to how — 43 —

The Sparks Brothers is out now via Universal

August 2021 — Feature

“I started to feel that Sparks were the most interesting and influential band who don’t have a documentary about them”

they appear, especially on TV. Sparks were really helped by a show like Top of the Pops being quite intimate with a band, with the [exuberant, camp] lead singer and [deadpan] keyboard player beaming into living rooms in closeup.” Understanding the importance of their telegenic qualities, Wright has sourced and cleared the rights to a treasure trove of archive footage, though he ultimately allows these clips to do too much heavy lifting for him. “I watch a lot of music documentaries and I enjoy ones that are about artists I don’t really care for that much,” he explains. “In fact, sometimes they’re more interesting. But I started to feel that Sparks were the most interesting and influential band who don’t have a documentary about them. I felt that even within their fans, there was a lot of connecting of the dots to do. There was a period pre-internet where Sparks would have these little spikes of success, but never in the same territory at the same time.” Wright’s approach to ‘connecting the dots’ in The Sparks Brothers was to cover everything in chronological order, a move that might be considered unusually thorough if not especially ingenious. The result lacks a satisfying narrative and offers little insight into the notoriously private musicians. By Wright’s own admission, “the big drama is on the records,” though he assures us that the reclusive pair are “almost monastic in their pursuit of being Sparks… what’s in the movie is not a million miles away from what they’re like.” He concludes: “I think sometimes people wrongly take their sense of humour as insincerity… when the truth of the matter is that they’re dead serious about making music and incredibly passionate about what they do. They don’t see making three- or four-minute songs as beneath them; they have fun with the form.”

Film

Photo: Jake Polonsky

he brilliance of evergreen pop eccentrics Sparks cannot be overstated. Edgar Wright makes a good go of it, however, in his latest feature. The Sparks Brothers may well be the most effusive music documentary ever made, with not one of its 140 minutes given to even the mildest criticism of its subjects. Yet it’s easy to share the director’s affection for the band. Since the early 70s, brothers Ron and Russell Mael have proven Zeligs of global pop culture, responding shrewdly to the defining moods of time and place without losing sight of their own idiosyncrasies and distinctive branding. Their quality control has rarely dipped over a 50-year career, and they steadfastly refuse to play the part of a nostalgia act. After working on this project over a period of two years, Wright’s enthusiasm for the Maels hasn’t dimmed. During our chat with him, we find the director wide-eyed and engaging, approaching his promotional duties as though performing a public service. “If in a nutshell I could say what my aims were for this documentary,” considers the director, “I guess I decided to do it because I thought Sparks should be more famous than they currently are.” Given Wright’s skill for using music to compelling effect within his films, it’s surprising how long it’s taken for him to champion his heroes. “The reason I haven’t used Sparks’ music in my movies is really a credit to them,” he explains. “There’s not many Sparks songs that sit comfortably in the background. They demand your undivided attention and most of the songs have very specific lyrics that will make you think about the subject of the song rather than what’s in the scene. I know because I tried it once, with Hot Fuzz. “I tried to put [1974’s near-chart-topper] This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us in that, in the scene where Simon Pegg fights Timothy Dalton in a model village. Obviously, the title of the song fit perfectly, but when I tried to put it in there, I found

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Ladies’ Man Back in 2018, the film adaptation of Alan Warner’s The Sopranos was filming in Edinburgh. Three years later, the feature – now titled Our Ladies – finally reaches Scottish cinemas. Here’s our on-set chat with the author, over a bracingly expensive whisky

t’s a bitterly cold November morning in Edinburgh and two young actors – Rona Morison and Marli Siu – are wearing mini-skirts and chewing on ice cubes on Victoria Street. However, this isn’t the act of masochism it first appears. Rather, it’s an old trick of the movie trade that allows actors to perform outside on freezing days like this one without leaving puffs of misty breath with every line of dialogue. The film in question is Michael CatonJones’s Our Ladies, although no one is referring to it as such today. The working title is The Sopranos, same as the 1998 book on which the film is based. It’s a rambunctious comic yarn about female friendship and small-town life, and centres on five catholic school girls from a working-class port town getting up to mischief in Auld Reekie while visiting the city for a school choir competition. But, for obvious reasons, the original title had to be 86ed, save film bros confusing it for a gangster flick. The Skinny aren’t the only visitors on set today. Alan Warner, the author of The Sopranos, has flown in from his home in Spain to see how

this long-in-the-works adaptation is progressing. Caton-Jones needn’t worry about writer interference, however. Warner is keener to grab a whisky at one of his old haunts – The Bow Bar, a few doors down from where the film is shooting – than look over the director’s shoulder. When we sit down to join the Scottish author with a couple of the bracingly expensive Orkney single malts he suggests we buy for our round, Warner explains that in the early days of the project (Caton-Jones bought the film rights in 1998, just as it was publishing), he had planned to write the script himself, but struggled with its structure. “I found it very difficult,” he admits. Veteran Scottish screenwriter Alan Sharp, whose credits include masterpieces like Night Moves and The Hired Hand as well as Caton-Jones’s Rob Roy, took over and whipped the screenplay into shape, but it still wasn’t right. “Alan’s script had a great sense of how to do it visually, but the dialogue maybe wasn’t that crisp.” Another spanner in the works was studio interference. “The studio had different ideas about

August 2021 — Feature

Film

Interview: Jamie Dunn

“People like Michael Caton-Jones and Lynne Ramsay, they want to tell stories in images. So you’ve got to just let them run with it” Alan Warner — 44 —

how the film should be done,” he explains. “There was a lot of money flying about in those days and big star names were mentioned to come into the film. I think Penélope Cruz was mentioned at some point.” Warner could have lived with any changes apart from one: the setting. “And that was the first thing that happened in Hollywood, of course,” he says. “They said, ‘Oh, what if it was set in Santa Barbara or Miami?’ But Michael, being Scottish, knew it couldn’t go that way. And he stuck by it for 20 years.” Warner has been pretty hands-off during this final pass of the script by Caton-Jones, and he’s happy with that. Perhaps this relaxed attitude is because this isn’t Warner’s first rodeo. His 1995 debut, Morvern Callar, was made into a movie in 2002 by Lynne Ramsay. “I’ve always been of the position you’ve got to let these film dudes do what they want,” says Warner. “People like Michael and Lynne, they’re dreamers; they want to tell stories in images. So you’ve got to just let them run with it.” It’s interesting that of Warner’s nine novels to date, it’s these two focused on young women that have attracted filmmakers. Warner doesn’t put the success of these two books down to any innate talent for writing women characters, however. “After I wrote Morvern Callar, there was a lot of ‘Oh, you do women characters so well.’ But it’s a bit like being told you’re better kicking with your left foot than your right foot. You just go, “Oh, right.” You just accept it. You just hope whoever the character is, male or female, they’re convincing.” He reckons this is mostly down to graft: “It’s crafting and reworking that does it, it’s not as if I have some amazing insight into female psychology. It takes a lot of work.” With Morvern Callar and now The Sopranos immortalised on film, Warner can lay claim to being one of Scotland’s most filmed living novelists (behind Irvine Welsh and, of course, J.K. Rowling). It’s a fact that has him a bit miffed. “In any normal European culture, be it Sweden, France, Spain... if they have famous writers, they make films out of their books. In Scotland, we don’t do that for some reason.” We’re starting to get the impression this topic is something of a hobby horse for Warner. “Maybe I’m an arty moaner,” he says, “but you’d think it would just be natural to have a few of the famous novels made into films – I’m talking work by George Douglas Brown, James Kelman, Janice Galloway – but then they shoot my shit. Why two of my books and not one by those masters? You can’t explain it really.” Our Ladies is released in UK cinemas by Sony on 27 Aug Alan Warner appears at Edinburgh International Book Festival, 19 Aug, 11.30am, tickets £12-14

THE SKINNY

Saddle Up New Saddle Creek signee Indigo De Souza tells us about crowdsourcing screams for her new album, Any Shape You Take, and recording at Sylvan Esso’s studio Interview: Nadia Younes Music Photo: Charlie Boss

17 – the opening track on Any Shape You Take – seemingly suggesting a transitional period from her teenage years into adulthood. “It feels like everything I’m doing with music is never super intentional, but more natural,” says De Souza. “So they’re companion albums in that way, because they really kind of carry on from each other, but there are also newer songs on this album, too, that I wrote more recently… To me, they’re just narratives of my life, and they all feel very connected, and all of the old parts of myself feel very close to me now still, and always will.” Having recorded I Love My Mom at home in Asheville, North Carolina between her living room and bedroom, De Souza made the jump from home studio to professional recording studio for the new album. Any Shape You Take was recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and produced alongside executive producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee). “[I Love My Mom] was kind of like before I knew anything about anything,” says De Souza. “I was just like a little baby, starting to play music with a — 45 —

band for the first time, and all these songs that I had been singing by myself for years, I suddenly was singing with a band. “[Any Shape You Take] was a very different experience, having the resources that I had and being able to explore every avenue that I wanted to,” she continues. “I love feeling really cozy and comfortable, and like I have a lot of resources in a nice studio… but I also miss a lot of the aspects of the DIY feeling and I think next time I want to do a little bit of both, so I have the best of both worlds.” As we leave De Souza to return to the shooting of the music video for Hold U – the latest single to be taken from Any Shape You Take – it feels an apt way to end our conversation. Perhaps her brightest, most hook-laden track to date, Hold U sounds like De Souza coming out the other side of that difficult period of her life and simply declaring ‘It’s gonna be alright’. Any Shape You Take is released on 27 Aug via Saddle Creek indigodesouza.com

August 2021 — Feature

he centrepiece of Indigo De Souza’s second album, Any Shape You Take, features over a minute of screaming, nestled in the middle of a track called Real Pain. Being an incredibly physical expelling of emotion, there is something deeply overwhelming about the expression of screaming, and De Souza captures that intensity so well that it’s almost difficult to listen to at times. The screams were entirely crowdsourced, gathered by De Souza through an online call-out for “screams, yells and anything else”, and all 60 of the soundbites that were submitted to her were included within the final version of the track. “It was painful to listen to some of the recordings,” says De Souza. “It was definitely a catharsis to hear them all together, and to add my own voice in with theirs. It was kind of like a collective pain that felt good to express at the time of the pandemic. “Pain is always there; everyone is always in some kind of pain,” she continues. “And there was something really special about when the pandemic was happening, there truly – and I guess there still is in ways – there is a more collective pain than usual. I [often] feel more separated from people and more alienated in my brain, but at that point it was like, ‘we’re all going through something together for the first time, we’re all collectively feeling a similar thing’.” Born into a creative family – her father is a bossa nova guitarist and singer, and her mother an art teacher – De Souza’s musical journey began at nine years old when she first started playing guitar. She was encouraged to do so by her mum as a means of bringing her out of her shell and combatting her shyness, so to name her debut album I Love My Mom, then, feels like a fitting homage. Originally released in 2018, I Love My Mom was reissued in June this year, following De Souza’s signing to Saddle Creek and just a couple of months ahead of the release of her new album, Any Shape You Take. Both albums were written around and document a particular time period in De Souza’s life, during and in the aftermath of a tumultuous relationship. From the Day of the Dead-style artwork – designed by De Souza’s mother – to track titles like How I Get Myself Killed, Die/Cry and Kill Me, death looms fairly heavily on both records. Instead of a literal death, though, it feels more metaphorical. ‘Now that the baby’s gone,’ sings De Souza on

THE SKINNY

Music

From LA to Scotland, we chat to CHVRCHES ahead of the release of their fourth studio album, Screen Violence

August 2021 — Feature

Interview: Sam Moore

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Photo: Sebastian Mlynarski & Kevin J Thomson

As Seen On Screen

THE SKINNY

Lauren Mayberry, CHVRCHES

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“I can’t imagine trying to make a fucking upbeat dance pop record in summer 2020” Lauren Mayberry, CHVRCHES lyrics and ideas that ended up on the album had their origin at an earlier stage, though she admits that the nature of 2020 “enhanced” the violent imagery somewhat. Mayberry concludes: “I can’t imagine trying to make a fucking upbeat dance pop record in summer 2020.” Even though the album is scored with twisted lyrics, there are moments of triumphant euphoria and stadium pop. The Prodigy-inspired Violent Delights is going to have Mayberry air drumming its explosive breakdown when they eventually get to perform the songs live; Final Girl is about finding hope and getting through tough times, which are themes that certainly resonate in contemporary society; He Said She Said is a rally of female empowerment without ever falling into the trap of being didactic. Through it all, Mayberry’s thorny, unmistakably Glaswegian twang is the star. Her accent hasn’t wilted since moving to LA, and her bandmates even insist that it’s gotten stronger – Mayberry jokes: “I don’t talk to any Americans anyway.” Sounding as powerful as ever, it’s easily one of the most interesting voices in modern pop music. Although that voice may, on the surface, sound sweet – it’s often been lazily described as ‘angelic’ – dig a little deeper and you’ll find it’s remarkably powerful, particularly on tracks like Violent Delights where it’s pushed to its raw limits. CHVRCHES couldn’t be returning at a better time with Screen Violence, its cinematic influences like Brian De Palma and David Cronenberg making for cathartic music you can have a sob to, dance to and play loud while you’re pounding a punch bag. It perfectly captures the duality of rage and relief. How Not to Drown and Violent Delights, while not being overtly political, are the anthems of a defiant generation, for those who protest racism, misogyny and corruption. Latest single Good Girls “could be viewed as political, because of what it’s talking about,” Mayberry says, “but it’s being talked about from a personal standpoint, you know? We’re not trying to write big message songs.” She concludes: “This album is more political than the last one, the songs weren’t intended to be, but the personal is the political.” Screen Violence is released on 27 Aug via Virgin EMI chvrch.es

August 2021 — Feature

“This album is more political than the last one, the songs weren’t intended to be, but the personal is the political”

Doherty continues: “You’re not going to a studio every day, you’re not going to the pub afterwards, you’re not, like... you don’t go anywhere, you don’t really leave your house. So I feel like most of my day was spent doing something to do with the record.” And the record is a big one. Dark and twisted, full of gothic delights and fatalistic agony, CHVRCHES have pushed their aesthetic further than ever before, openly embracing guitars and thumping, harsh drum beats. A notable guest also joins the band on the anxiety-inspired anthem, How Not to Drown. The legendary Robert Smith of The Cure shares his unmistakable vocals with Mayberry as they sing about battling for survival on what will surely become a staple of the festival circuit once touring resumes. Mayberry, who describes working with Smith as “insane”, details how the collaboration came about: “Our manager knew someone in common with Robert Smith and passed on our email because he only has email, no manager. And then we got this message, saying ‘Aloha’.” She continues: “We sent him a bunch of demos we’d been working on not knowing what to expect. It was all worked on remotely, just through email, no Zoom or anything.” That the song was created with such distance between the artists is not at all noticeable, in fact it’s a sublimely cohesive song. How Not to Drown perfectly encapsulates the best of the band and what they do. It’s a song you can dance to and cry to, its extreme emotion familiar to anybody that has felt wronged, slighted or kicked down. What is remarkable is how such a singular artist like Smith can effortlessly fit into the CHVRCHES ouevre; they don’t alter their sound to accommodate his mournful voice that, to many, was the voice of a generation. The trio are deeply in awe of Smith and forever indebted to the music of The Cure with Mayberry commenting on the collaboration: “If everything ended tomorrow, we’d be beyond happy.” Though put together during the perils of lockdown, the band are insistent they did not want to make a “pandemic record”. As Doherty bluntly puts it, “I can’t be any less interested in this, in the sound of people’s boredom.” Lyrically and sonically this shines through. Screen Violence isn’t a rumination on the purgatory of pandemic life, it’s not like Taylor Swift’s Folklore or Charli XCX’s How I’m Feeling Now which are born out of and obsessed with the introspection that comes with being cut off from the rest of the world. Instead, Screen Violence is thrillingly visceral, shamelessly big, and features ten cohesively arranged gothic fairy tales which their idol Smith would be proud of penning. Despite the last year-and-a-half being a complete mess in terms of politics, health and the fight for equality, Mayberry says that many of the

Music

t’s been over three years since the third album by CHVRCHES, Love is Dead, hit the shelves. In the time since, the world has undergone a seismic shift. Boris Johnson is prime minister, across the pond Joe Biden has replaced Donald Trump as president, and the world has been ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, hitting the creative arts industries particularly hard. As a result of social distancing and travel restrictions, the vast majority of CHVRCHES’ new album, Screen Violence, was recorded with the three members completely separate from each other. It was only at the end of the production that Lauren Mayberry, Iain Cook and Martin Doherty came together for a “couple of weeks” to put the finishing touches to the album. Talking over Zoom, they’re split geographically between sunny Los Angeles and not-quite-as-sunny Scotland. The genesis for Screen Violence was established before the pandemic hit, in February 2020. Mayberry explains: “We got a lot of the initial ideas and concepts going. So we kind of had a blueprint to work off and some demos there.” There were “technical hurdles” to start with but Mayberry found the pandemic recording experience “interesting”, going on to say the creation of Screen Violence was like “making the record in a vacuum again, because the outside world ceased to exist, for the most part, in terms of what you could and couldn’t do.” The circumstances that dictated the recording of the album made it feel “more akin to the first record,” she continues, “because you make your first record in a vacuum because nobody knows who your band is.” On whether she’d want to repeat the experience of making an album in this way, she affirms: “I wouldn’t want to do it again.” For Doherty, having that extra time on his own in the studio gave room to be more experimental with sounds and instruments. “In the past, if I was making an album, I would have one eye on the clock or one eye on the tour schedule,” he says. “And I’d be like, ‘Well, this is great. Sounds great. Next. Move on.’ Whereas on this album, I was like, ‘Oh, what’s inside the guitar pedal?’ Let me open that up.’ It was a very immersive experience for me, from my perspective of things.”

THE SKINNY

Start Making Sense Edinburgh four-piece swim school talk new beginnings, mental health and finding the lyrical sweet spot between cryptic and candid

dinburgh band swim school are ready for the future to begin. Resolute in the face of adversity, there’s a sense of exuberance in speaking to them via Zoom on a foggy Monday morning. At the time of our call they haven’t played a live show in almost 18 months, frequently unable to even play in the same room and have been waiting patiently to release new music. But despite their decidedly dark lyrical bent (of which more, later), they’re practically giddy in their excitement to get out and make good on the initial waves of promise they rode upon their arrival on the scene. “This does feel like the start of swim school – we had an amazing first year, but so much has changed over lockdown that it does feel like the start of a new band,” frontperson Alice Johnson beams, laser-focused. One of the most prominent changes is the introduction of Billy McMahon on drums, adding a more bombastic edge to their sound. His first show with the band is just over a week after our chat, at Latitude Festival no less: “first English festival, first show with Billy, first time playing a lot of songs live... to go from no live music for 18 months, to seeing so much live music; it’s gonna be incredible.” The band first gained prominence with Sway; a track full of Cure-esque vocal tics, often described as “floaty”, earning likenesses to dream and indie-pop, and bands like Pale Waves, Foals and Wolf Alice. The latter is the real clue to what you’re likely to find with swim school – the band

are big fans, with Johnson admitting to poring over new lyrics, looking for meaning like an amateur sleuth – especially in the heavier sound of their new EP, making sense of it all. Everything You Wanted is the only one that’s survived from the band’s early period, the EP’s other four all being recorded post-lockdown. Each song is gleaned from a particular event and its resultant fallout on the mental health of those involved, states Johnson. Though these supposedly include “sad, happy and angry” songs, the middle quality is most often lacking. Outside, a peak on an EP that’s exclusively constructed of them, “is definitely the happiest of the lot...but there’s an angry aspect to it, especially the guitar parts,” admits Johnson when pushed to find a happy song. It deals with toxic people and how they can wear down your mental resilience, but also the catharsis that comes when you can shake free of them and focus on yourself. As the final track on the EP, it brings things to a neat moment of closure – “it’s actually the last song we play live, so the closure aspect totally makes sense (I just realised that)”. McMahon laughs, while Johnson gives a good-natured eye roll. Elsewhere, lyrical pick-me-ups are less abundant; Let Me Inside Your Head basks in moody, reverby guitars, with a touch of Karen O about the vocals, but there’s more desperation than detachment amid this 80s-imbued sonic palette. Not being able to understand or take away Photo: Rory Barnes

August 2021 — Feature

Music

Interview: Lewis Wade

“We never got educated on mental health in high school, for me it was always music and lyrics that helped” Alice Johnson, swim school another’s pain is the theme here, with all the associated helplessness. Everything You Wanted is one of the darkest songs, trapped in the mire of blaming yourself after a loss, and the cyclical self-flagellation that comes with your own unwitting self-importance in such a situation. Needless to say, this isn’t a surface-level exploration, but a deep dive into the psyche, a call to tell you that you aren’t alone, which Johnson views as the shining beacon it can be: “We never got educated on mental health in high school, for me it was always music and lyrics that helped. Not to sound totally cringey, but music’s always been there for me.” Anyway is the most well-formed distillation of the band’s musical and lyrical interests, hence its special place in the band’s heart, as Johnson explains. “Even though it’s a sad song, lyrically, it’s quite upbeat, sonically – which describes mental health really nicely as it’s showing how the exterior can show one thing, while something totally different is happening inside.” With a driving guitar line and commanding drums, the song presents a confident front – something for more passive fans – but there’s a vulnerability underneath in the lyrical intrigue; something for the obsessives. McMahon remembers “thinking that this’ll be a song for people chanting at a festival, hugging each other. I’ve never thought about it being dark. I’m thinking it’s gonna be a great time and poor Alice is onstage breaking her heart.” The confidence to be playing to chanting festival crowds is certainly not misplaced, and if you weren’t lucky enough to see them at Latitude, there will, fingers crossed, be ample opportunities in the coming months. making sense of it all is self-released on 13 Aug swim school play Fringe by the Sea, North Berwick, 8 Aug; King Tut’s, Glasgow, 21 Aug; Hidden Door, Granton Gasworks, Edinburgh, 16 Sep weareswimschool.bandcamp.com

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THE SKINNY

Music Now With live gigs firmly in our sights, this month brings new music from Andrew Wasylyk, Post Coal Prom Queen, wor_kspace, Nun Habit and more Words: Tallah Brash

Photo: Armadillo Media Photo: Fraser Simpson

Andrew Wasylyk

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before, and it works exceptionally well. Still steeped in the world of sci-fi and humour that Post Coal Prom Queen love, Music for Hypercapitalists sees the pair manage to stay musically true to themselves, albeit with a hip-hop twist, on this exciting new record, which you can access via a QR code on a packet of noodles, with all proceeds going to Glasgow’s Refuweegee charity. Previously a member of both Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits, Finlay MacDonald’s new ext_ended play EP (6 Aug) under his wor_kspace moniker has a touch of science fiction about it too, not only in its glitchy compositions and bending synths but also in the fact it samples voices and electromagnetic noise from archive recordings of people who are no longer with us: “musique concrète collaborations with the dead”, as the press release so perfectly sums it up. Despite mining its samples from a multitude of places, and working across both analogue and digital technologies, there’s a lightness of touch and comforting familiarity across ext_ended play’s five tracks that effortlessly binds it all together. And imbolc’s upbeat Dan Deacon-esque throb makes us want to run around in a frenzy hugging people (we obviously won’t, not yet anyway), perhaps as MacDonald had intended: “I felt this track had that cautiously optimistic feel [...] It is also relevant that it comes out at this point in history when we are hopefully seeing the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.” With one member firmly based in Glasgow while the others are in London – “I’m working on them!” bandmember Greg tells us via email – we’re also excited about queer five-piece Nun Habit’s debut album, hedge fun, this month (2 Aug). Produced by Ric James (Yassassin, Foals), the band list everyone from Chastity Belt and Fleetwood Mac to Dry Cleaning and Art Brut as influences, but listen closely and you’ll hear snatches of Franz Ferdinand, Moloko, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Teleman and Interpol in their delightful brand of fuzzy garage rock. The mundane storytelling found over the jangly instrumental plod of album midpoint, Jeremy’s Horses, is an unexpected and hilarious left-turn, while the ‘Shall we go for a drink’ refrain on TinderHingeHer, and indiedisco bop Soap and Cigarettes both have us longing for the dancefloor. Elsewhere, the first Hen Hoose release proper arrives on 11 August in the form of Monochrome, a collaborative single between Emma Pollock and Pippa Murphy; Berta Kennedy releases FreeSwimming (13 Aug), and SHEARS releases her brand new pop banger Afterthought (4 Aug), mixed by Matty Green (Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga).

August 2021 — Review

Award-nominated record, The Paralian. Taking inspiration from early morning walks around Dundee’s 19th-century Balgay Park, listening to the album makes you feel as if you’re almost floating through beautiful leafy greenery on low-lit mornings, not quite awake, birds twittering as you go, the shuffling of other early risers. For Mitchell, Balgay Park acted as a safe space when the world was in disarray, somewhere to escape. While hopeful and leaning on the optimism found at the start of a new day, there’s still an element of unease to be found in sombre instrumentation and subtle chord changes on tracks like Through the Rose Window, Sun Caught Cloud Like the Belly of a Cat and Western Necropolis Twilight. Such is the dreamlike quality of Balgay Hill: Morning in Magnolia, you’ll have to pinch yourself when listening to make sure you’re not asleep. Pinching yourself when listening to Music for Hypercapitalists (12 Aug), the brand new concept album from Post Coal Prom Queen is a must, too, just to make 100 percent certain you’re not in an episode of Black Mirror. The opening skit, What Brought You Here Today?, invites you to interview for a job at PCPQ Industries for the unpaid position of Junior Intern Assistant Hypercapitalist, the preliminary stage of a seven-stage process that side-eyes the Nun Habit outrageous expectations employers have in this day and age; Blade Runner’s Voight-Kampff test also gets a nod so replicants beware! Concept aside, connected by a series of automated questions, responses come in the form of collaborative songs featuring a slew of talented rappers (Conscious Route, Empress, Jackal Trades, Somnia, Miles Better, Texture), taking PCPQ down a path they’ve not – not knowingly to us anyway – explored

Music

t’s August! The Edinburgh festivals are here, and music festivals across the country are underway. It’s a hard thing to get our heads around, but it’s exciting nonetheless. In the world of Scottish new music releases, well, they are still coming in thick and fast, the possibility to play new music in a live context drawing ever-nearer for most. At two ends of the spectrum you’ll find CHVRCHES and swim school, the former releasing Screen Violence (27 Aug), their excellent fourth album, ten years into their career, while the latter release their exceptional debut EP, making sense of it all (13 Aug), hoping for a long and fruitful future in the industry. Read our full reviews on the next page. Andrew Mitchell, who performs as Andrew Wasylyk, is also releasing a brand new record this month (20 Aug). Balgay Hill: Morning in Magnolia will be the fifth solo record from the Idlewild bassist, and second since his 2019 SAY

Albums

THE SKINNY

CHVRCHES Screen Violence Virgin EMI Records, 27 Aug rrrrr

August 2021 — Review

Listen to: Asking for a Friend, Good Girls, How Not To Drown

swim school making sense of it all self-release, 13 Aug rrrrr isten to: Let Me Inside Your Head, L Anyway

Born in lockdown where one third of the band was 5000 miles away for the writing and recording, Screen Violence’s creation existed largely through screens. For vocalist Lauren Mayberry, that digital world has become a burden, a place of fan over-adulation and toxic trolls, and contrastingly, the only means of connection to those important. As such, Screen Violence explores how we live on screens, by screens, and through screens in their signature sparkling synth-pop style. Mayberry’s performance is fierce, snapping at online hyper-criticism of the female existence and the double-standards that exist for male artists. The cathartic, big fuck you to misogny lives in defiance, but it’s twinned with a sad realism that the online world we all inhabit often feels like living in a futuristic horror film. Screen Violence is arguably CHVRCHES’ most analog album yet, with The Cure-inspired How Not To Drown (ft. Robert Smith), Final Girl’s snappy 00s goth-pop, and the crunchy, grungy guitar on closer Better If You Don’t feeling like new territory. Despite the daring newness, Screen Violence still feels unmistakably CHVRCHES, and one of their strongest records at that. [Dylan Tuck]

Edinburgh four-piece swim school make their broad range of influences known on their new EP, making sense of it all, flitting from abrasive grunge to wistful shoegaze and plenty more in between. Across the EP’s five tracks, the band – made up of vocalist and guitarist Alice Johnson, guitarist Lewis Bunting, bassist Matt Mitchell and drummer Billy McMahon – demonstrate their ability to craft catchy pop hooks and big singalong choruses fit for festival crowds. And it’s come at the right time, just ahead of the return of the much-anticipated festival season we’ve been longing for. Thundering opener Let Me Inside Your Head is three-and-a-halfminutes of thrashing drums and bellowing vocals, while recent single Anyway showcases a more delicate side to the band. The softest moment, though, comes on Everything You Wanted, where Johnson recalls a particularly difficult loss. Closing track, Outside, is about as 90s as a track can come; a glamrock-meets-Britpop banger with a riff that Suede would be proud of. It finds Johnson in a place of strength and clarity lyrically, too, singing ‘Now there’s nothing left to prove / You see I’m doing better without you’. [Nadia Younes]

Angel Olsen Aisles EP somethingscosmic, 20 Aug rrrrr Listen to: Gloria, If You Leave

Deafheaven Infinite Granite Sargent House, 20 Aug rrrrr Listen to: Great Mass of Color, Lament For Wasps, Mombasa

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In August 2020, amid the struggles of lockdown and getting to grips with live-streamed performance, Angel Olsen decided to record covers of songs from the 80s. Made alongside engineer and producer Adam McDaniel, the resulting EP was part of an effort for Olsen to bring joy back to making music – a need, she says, to “laugh and have fun and be a little less serious about the recording process in general.” The first release on Olsen’s new Jagjaguwar imprint, somethingscosmic, Aisles is a simple concept, executed spectacularly. The carefully selected tracks are a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar; songs she’s overheard at family gatherings or while wandering in a supermarket. In addition to Laura Branigan’s Gloria, Olsen takes on hits like Billy Idol’s Eyes Without a Face, OMD’s If You Leave and Alphaville’s Forever Young. Some are close renditions while others have been entirely reimagined, but all are imbued with Olsen’s unique brand of heartbreak. Gloria is slowed down and dressed in ambient synths, augmenting Branigan’s lyrics to take on a sombre new significance. Without grand purpose or intent, Olsen has taken the opportunity to create something spontaneous – if only to prove that she can. [Katie Cutforth]

Deafheaven have always been an odd paradox. On paper, they’re too shoegaze for the metalheads, too heavy for indie kids, and yet they’ve managed to carve quite a respectable niche for themselves over the past decade. On the San Franciscans’ fifth album Infinite Granite, however, Deafheaven have leaned more into their atmospheric side, favouring softer tones and catchier melodies. Lead vocalist George Clarke has largely jettisoned his trademark scream, savouring it only for the album’s most dramatic moments, along with drummer Daniel Tracy’s thrashy blast-beats, bar closing track Mombasa. Infinite Granite sees the band’s metallic edges rounded off, but it still twists and turns in trademark Deafheaven fashion, exercising restraint and leading to some gorgeous moments. It’s fascinating to witness a metal band take on indiepop, but on lead single Great Mass of Color, they display their ear for captivating melody with aplomb. While Deafheaven’s change in direction isn’t an unwelcome one, there isn’t quite the same rush as their previous best efforts, as they adapt to their new surroundings. Minor gripes aside, Infinite Granite proves Deafheaven’s mettle and shows you don’t always have to shout loud to hit hard. [Adam Turner-Heffer]

THE SKINNY

isten to: Real Pain, Bad Dream, L Hold U

isten to: Keep Moving, Bonnie L Hill, What D’You Know About Me?

isten to: So Simpatico, Full Faith L In Providence

Liars The Apple Drop Mute, 6 Aug rrrrr isten to: Sekwar, Slow and Turn L Inward

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When your whole shtick is exploring the boundaries of electronica and post-punk with a bevy of outré conceptual ideas, it’s inevitably going to get a bit hit-and-miss after 20 years. To that end, Liars’ tenth album is a spotty affair with showy highs (Sekwar, The Start), pulpy mediocrity (From What the Never Was, My Pulse to Ponder) and enigmatic experiments (Acid Crop, Leisure War). The Start is slightly cracked and phasered, sounding like Beck circa Sea Change trapped in a wormhole, while Sekwar is King Krule by way of Alex Cameron. Angus Andrew’s low droning vocals have taken on a doomy Michael Gira-esque lilt, adding to the solemnity of songs like Slow and Turn Inward, and the touchingly sentimental Star Search. Andrew has spoken of an “embrace of collaboration” when it comes to the arrangements, and also embracing psilocybin recently. Both of these factors fit with the album’s ‘no bad ideas’ feel, as well as its otherworldliness. Most fittingly, Andrews also admits “I’m realising my trajectory is more akin to a spiral” – a perfect summation of his ability to simultaneously progress and go round in circles. [Lewis Wade]

August 2021 — Review

Jungle Loving In Stereo Caiola Records, 13 Aug rrrrr

Few artists have arrived so fully formed as Jungle did with their 2014 debut. Their breezy, featherlight production was elevated by their infatuation with hardcore pop melodies, producing multiple tracks that now serve as perfect time capsules of their period. Seven summers on, this third album finds Jungle still exploring the same soul-mining, vocal-sampling, post-Avalanches dreamspace. Doors seem to fling themselves open and beams of sunlight sprout from nowhere at the outset of tracks like All of the Time and What D’You Know About Me?, but the indelible earworms that established Jungle’s reputation prove a little harder to replicate. Keep Moving is the closest that Loving in Stereo gets to its own calling card, but too often the album gets mired in mid-tempo fare that allows the adrenaline to wane. Lifting You and Romeo drift in and out of focus and the listening gets a little too easy. Bonnie Hill rescues the momentum, finding enough depth of sentiment in its smoky saxophone and steel drum-like synths to justify the ambling pace, but subsequent tracks struggle. The Jungle signature is still just as distinctive, but the enthusiasm may be in danger of starting to seep away. [Max Pilley]

Villagers Fever Dreams Domino, 20 Aug rrrrr

Vulnerability has always been Conor O’Brien’s strength. Villagers exist in the space that measures the distance between the Ivor Novello Award-winning songwriter’s confidence and his uncertainty. The moments of pleasure born in the gaps between this unknowing knowing are the times when Villagers’ best music kisses the sky. From the edgy acoustic delivery of Becoming a Jackal on Later... with Jools Holland ten years ago, to the Marvin Gaye-fronts-The-FlamingLips vibe of So Simpatico from new record, Fever Dreams. That’s what great artists do: get better. Like recent collaborator Paul Weller, O’Brien is like a shark swimming among a shoal of songs: he’ll bite at whatever he sees first, take a chunk and move onto the next thing. In truth, that’s led Villagers’ records away from the mainstream and into the reflections of some deep, dark and truthful mirrors. But, when said shadows bring forth songs as strong as Song In Seven or Full Faith In Providence, the rewards are clear to hear. ‘May the road rise to meet you’, he sings in the latter and it’s a touching moment that brings together a record imbued with full faith in the minor masterpieces that dominate Villagers’ fifth studio album. [Alan O’Hare]

Albums

Indigo De Souza Any Shape You Take Saddle Creek, 27 Aug rrrrr

In American artist Sharon Hayes’ work May 1st, comprised of the text of a letter to an unnamed lover, she writes: ‘My favorite color is your favorite color. My favorite meal, yours. Why does this make you so angry? I have my own mind but my desire is not a thinking; it’s an echo, a reverberating shock. I am so much yours, I am no longer myself. Is that so wrong?’ These are the same unfilter-ed emotions, the complete giving over of oneself to a feeling, that Indigo De Souza deals in, especially when it comes to someone she loves. I Love My Mom, Die/Cry, Kill Me – De Souza goes hard or goes home when it comes to living and loving. And so, 17, the opening track of Any Shape You Take seems like a bit of a fake out – an Auto-Tuned veil, totally indirect. But this is just another signifier of that total commitment. The album spans TikTok pop to grunge and lots in between. De Souza commits to them all. On Real Pain, an extended interlude of horror movie wailing and screaming is bookended by hooky guitars. What pain could be real-er than a gory Friday the 13th bloodbath? [Tony Inglis]

THE SKINNY

Censor Director: Prano Bailey-Bond Starring: Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns

Film

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Here’s an idea for a horror film so brilliant in its simplicity that you wonder why nobody’s done it before. If the video nasties of the 1980s had such potential to corrupt, why didn’t those professional arbiters of what was and wasn’t appropriate for the British public to view become murderous lunatics themselves? This conundrum provides the axis around which Prano Bailey-Bond’s riveting debut feature revolves. The Welsh director has adapted it from her own short, Nasty. Niamh Algar plays Enid, the only film classifier who takes her job to heart among a clutch of supine men. Eventually, the steady stream of cheaply-shot exploitation flicks, awash with brutal violence that disproportionately targets women, both aggravates past traumas for Enid and

August 2021 — Review

Censor

Our Ladies Director: Michael Caton-Jones Starring: Tallulah Greive, Abigail Lawrie, Sally Messham, Rona Morison, Marli Siu, Kate Dickie

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Our Ladies’ opening image evokes the legend of The Five Sisters of Kintail, the rather misogynistic Scottish folk yarn about five virtuous young women who were transformed into mountains so they could wait for eternity on their betrothed. It’s fair to say the catholic school girls at the heart of Michael Caton-Jones’ film – set in Fort William in 1996 and adapted from Alan Warner’s cult novel The Sopranos – aren’t so patient. One of them, Orla, has recently recovered from leukaemia after a spell at Lourdes, but there’s one more miracle she’d like her Lord and Saviour to perform: get her laid, preferably while tied to a tree. Orla’s pals are similarly headstrong and boy-daft (a couple are

unmoors her from reality. The film follows suit; perhaps Bailey-Bond’s greatest achievement is how gradually she controls Enid’s psychological unspooling and still cleaves to a taut 84-minute run time. Bailey-Bond’s influences are palpable, both classic and contemporary. A scholarly understanding of under-the-counter 80s fare is self-evident, and there are also nods to more recent material – everything from Ringu to the more avowedly horrific entries in Ben Wheatley’s catalogue. More important, though, is how powerfully Censor announces another young British woman as a scintillating new voice in horror. Bailey-Bond converts her intellectual mastery of the genre into a viscerally thrilling nightmare. [Joe Goggins]

Released 20 Aug by Vertigo; certificate 15

I’m Your Man Director: Maria Schrader Starring: Maren Eggert, Dan Stevens, Sandra Hüller

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Maria Schrader’s funny and touching I’m Your Man is a German romantic dramedy with light sci-fi touches that purposefully draws attention to its own artificiality and the (arguable) artificiality of many romantic customs. The reason? It concerns the growing bond between a sceptical woman and an artificial intelligence, as hosted in the body of a prospective humanoid partner. In order to score research funds for her studies, scientist Alma (Maren Eggert, winner of the lead acting award at the 2021 Berlinale) takes part in an experiment whereby she must live with a robot, Tom, for three weeks and report back her findings. Through all sorts of surveys and data mining, Tom has been designed and created to meet her ideal

Our Ladies

girl-daft too), and the film’s chief selling point is the rambunctious chemistry between the ensemble and their authentically crude banter. These young women have a particularly exciting day ahead of them: they’re travelling down to Edinburgh for the day for a choir competition. Caton-Jones fairly moves the film along and has some inventive tactics for filling us in on the girls’ rich inner lives. The narrative only goes slack when boys are introduced. It makes sense that these potential suitors (sleazebags, ne’er-do-wells and weirdoes all) are a drag but it’s a shame they suck some of the energy from our protagonists too, who become split up once they hit the cobbles of Edinburgh (these are the days before mobile phones, of course). When they’re together, though, Our Ladies is a raunchy riot. [Jamie Dunn] Released 27 Aug by Sony; certificate 15

romantic specifications and make her happy. The researchers’ main correspondent we see is a liaison known only as ‘Employee’, played by Sandra Hüller (Toni Erdmann) like a combination of an ultra-rehearsed restaurant waiter and an ineffectual couples’ therapist. The designers even determined that Alma would like a vaguely foreign man, though not too exotic, so Tom speaks German with an English accent. Character-wise, Tom brings to mind Steven Spielberg’s A.I., in that he is essentially a combination of that film’s two lead machines: Gigolo Joe, made primarily for pleasure and desire, and David, a robot innocent assigned to love a specific person, and subsequently undergoing an existential crisis. Joe is played by Dan Stevens, giving a quite remarkable performance that’s both frequently hilarious and genuinely moving in equal measure. [Josh Slater-Williams] Released 13 Aug by Curzon; certificate TBC

Wildland

I'm Your Man

Wildland Director: Jeanette Nordahl Starring: Sandra Guldberg Kampp

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Wildland tells a familiar mobster story, yet it makes up for its lack of originality thanks to its gripping character study navigating a disheartened, doomed coming-of-age. Following her mother’s death, 17-year-old Ida (Kampp) moves in with her aunt Bodil, a matriarchal, almost religious figure who would do anything for her three grown sons. As the grief-stricken teen is welcomed into this seemingly warm family environment, she realises there is something sinister lurking beneath the surface. Ambivalent about the family’s criminal affairs, Ida finds a kindred spirit in Anna, her cousin’s girlfriend. Just like the protagonist, Anna is an outsider tiptoeing around the family’s secrets and who rarely follows their problematic etiquette. There is a price to pay for this

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sin, as Bodil reminds them both. In Wildland, familial roles have a performative element to them. This ritualistic component raises some necessary questions about toxic masculinity and women trapped in the mother/wife or whore dichotomy. Kampp carries this uneven movie with a beautifully restrained performance that gives Ida’s struggle room to shine. Torn between being part of the pack and wanting to become her own person, she learns there’s no escape when the familial ties wrapped around you turn into a chokehold. In such a female-fronted crime drama, however, it is a shame that the cautious bond between Ida and Anna isn’t explored further. Their brief, silly, intimate exchanges are a beacon of hope in the face of the ineluctability of fate and it would have been nice to see more of those. [Stefania Sarrubba] Released 13 Aug by Picturehouse Entertainment; certificate 15

THE SKINNY

Food & Drink

July 2021 — Review

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THE SKINNY

Daytrippers! Part 2 The latest Local Heroes project and a collaboration with V&A Dundee continues to bring contemporary design to the museum’s outdoor space during a very sunny Scottish summer

Katie Smith, Lauren Morsley and Kate Scarlet Harvey with their towel designs

Photo: Gabriela Silveira

aytrippers! is an ongoing project developed to support designers by commissioning high quality, collectable, limited editions. The first product range includes three distinctive beach towels and three bespoke wildflower seed mixes illustrated by emerging designers based in Dundee, Edinburgh, Fife, and Glasgow. This range of vibrant beach towels and wildflower seed mixes are available to buy from two carefully crafted cargo bikes situated near the V&A Dundee, with the bikes acting as mobile design displays, cruising through the museum’s plaza. Visitors to Dundee’s waterfront have wholeheartedly demonstrated their enthusiasm for the project by snapping up these specially commissioned Daytrippers! souvenirs. Fiona Moon – a designer based in Edinburgh who blends simplicity with bold colour palettes across stationery, prints and homeware at Fiuts Printed Goods – illustrated the Moonlight Garden, a selection of Scottish seaside wildflowers including night-scented flowers that attract moths and other pollinators that visit after dark. Klara Sormark’s illustration for Big Bee Seaside mix includes tall Scottish seaside wildflowers that attract bumblebees and other pollinators – something that resonated with her fond memories of gardening with her late grandmother. “I’ve really enjoyed sketching, researching and drawing the seed packaging. The selection of four seeds are all wildflowers that my late grandmother used to grow and care for in her seaside garden, in the south of Sweden. I’ve spent every summer there since the day I was born so that made me feel even more connected to this project. It’s also been really lovely working with Local Heroes and V&A Dundee and I can’t wait to see the museum in person again this summer.” Shweta Mistry employed her expertise in rare heritage art techniques and pigments to depict the flowers in the Little Butterflies mix which includes low growing Scottish seaside wildflowers loved by two of Scotland’s tiniest butterfly species, bees, and other wildlife. These bespoke seed mixes have been specially created for Daytrippers! by Scotia Seeds who grow native wildflowers at their farm in nearby Angus. So as well as supporting designers, purchases also support local wildlife. Each of the colourful beach towel designs has been a hit with the creative community – Kate Scarlet Harvey, Lauren Morsley and Katie Smith have all been tagged in photos of their towels at picnics, wild swimming locations and beaches all over Scotland. Whizzing About, Daydreamers and The Swimmers are all extra-large, soft cotton terry

Photo: Gabriela Silveira

August 2021 – Review

Photo: Julie Howden

Local Heroes

Words: Stacey Hunter

Big Bee Seaside design by Klara Sormark

Moonlight Garden design by Fiona Moon

towels and each design has been produced as a limited edition of 500, making them a special souvenir from a great day out. Together with the two bikes co-designed by furniture designer Aymeric Renoud of Draff Studio and Martin Baillie, the project has benefited from the combination of a summer heatwave and the complementary presence of Heather Street Food. We know how much audiences in Scotland love to — 54 —

support contemporary design and the response to this special series has demonstrated that. To see Daytrippers! for yourself, visit V&A Dundee’s plaza Thursday to Sunday between 12pm and 5pm (weather permitting). You can find out more about the designers and purchase your own collectable souvenir online at vam.ac.uk/dundee localheroes.design

THE SKINNY

Photo: Peter Simpson

Food

KING OF FEASTS @ POLWARTH TAVERN

Words: Peter Simpson

The new residency from King of Feasts brings outlandish levels of flavour to a neighbourhood pub in Polwarth Polwarth Tavern, 35 Polwarth Cres, Edinburgh, EH11 1HR i: @king.of.feasts kitchen open Wed-Sat, 3-9pm

is a great little neighbourhood pub – light and breezy space, helpful and chatty staff and extremely reasonable pints of Tennents (£3.80). And what goes better with a pint than a Scotch Egg (£5)? This is a delightful example – a jammy yolk; fatty, chunky and lightly spiced sausage; a crunchy exoskeleton that stays shatteringly crisp to the very end. There’s a really subtle mayo on top, and a side of piccalilli that will blow your head clean off. Seriously, this stuff is immense; it’s sharp, fruity, tangy, spicy, and you’ll be wishing it was in your fridge every time you go to make a sandwich from now on. Those two condiments are instructive of the general King of Feasts vibe, where really high quality cooking runs straight at you, screaming, throwing big flavours around with abandon. Imagine the lad with the flaming guitar from Mad Max, if he were playing the clarinet or bassoon, and you’re most of the way there. It’s a similar story with the Galley Boy cheeseburger (£5), which is really more of a sauce sandwich — 55 —

featuring a special guest appearance from ‘burger’. It’s enormously savoury and punchy, and impossible to eat with any dignity. Tartare and barbecue sauce everywhere, spice and acidity all over the shop. It’s a lot to pack into a small sandwich, both in terms of flavour and physically getting it to hold together, and it’s just on the right side of overkill. It also feels like a truly absurd amount of flavour to get for a fiver, and its mix of umami and sharpness is ideal with those extremely reasonable pints on hand. There’s more than a touch of Willy Wonka about King of Feasts. The inventive takes on classics, the slightly excessive but well-honed flavours, and the legion of loyal fans waiting for the King’s next move. There have been plenty of changes in food in recent times – in fact, the King of Feasts menu has been rewritten completely at least twice between us planning this review and writing it – but if our trip is anything to go by, this King will live on for a while yet.

August 2021 – Review

fter 18 months of stop-start lockdowns and constant rule changes, it seems like the Edinburgh dining public have got their sea legs back. It’s ten to seven on a Thursday evening, in the middle of a punishing heatwave. Yet the Polwarth Tavern is chock-full of folk waiting for some decadent and wild Instagram-famous food from Rob Casson, aka King of Feasts. But first, a word for the Polwarth, which this writer lived about 100 yards away from for several years, yet never once stuck his head in the door. As we’re coming out of lockdown and looking for places to go, the temptation is to head for the shiny, fancy venues or the hot new places on the scene. Those are good, and you should check them out, but here’s a challenge: next time you have a free evening, or want a takeaway, or a quick pint, try somewhere within ten minutes of your house that you’ve never been before. Who knows, you might surprise yourself. For my part, I was clearly An Idiot, as the Polwarth

Books

THE SKINNY

Monument Maker

Girl One

The Roles We Play

The Turnout

By David Keenan

By Sara Flannery Murphy

By Sabba Khan

By Megan Abbott

Many acclaimed novels challenge the format itself, but few tear up the rulebook in the manner of David Keenan’s latest, Monument Maker. It is a book of many books. Book One begins with a romance defined by desire, lust and obsession – summer loving detailed like never before. Book Two whisks us off to Khartoum where each day brings new experiences and life-threatening situations. From there we move to Africa, to Edinburgh… and this is only the beginning. Monument Maker is an artistic testament to writing but also to the writer himself. Stories, themes, styles, and characters are interwoven, and there are nods to other artists and their works. There are also references to, and characters from, Keenan’s previous novels, with call-backs and literary Easter eggs to delight regular readers. Despite initial impressions Monument Maker is not an exercise in world building, but one of exploration – of the past, present and future, of the internal and the external, and of art and writing itself. The prose often reads like a stream of consciousness with a dreamlike quality that can be deceptive, and Keenan’s uncommon way with grammar and punctuation are an important part of the process. Great care has clearly been taken with every single comma and clause as it takes great skill to make writing seem this effortless. David Keenan is pushing boundaries and pushing readers, but no more than he pushes himself. A towering achievement. [Alistair Braidwood]

What if women didn’t need men to reproduce? That’s exactly the question Sara Flannery Murphy’s Girl One asks. Josephine Morrow is Girl One, the first of nine human babies successfully born via parthenogenesis on the commune-like Homestead. When her mother goes missing one day, she undertakes a cross-country road trip to find her, visiting the other mother-daughter pairs who scattered after the destruction of the Homestead 17 years prior and uncovering the hidden details of their murky past along the way. Combining mystery, sci-fi and social commentary, the book tries to do a lot in a short space and proves mostly successful – the questions over scientific ethics, reproductive rights, and female independence that it raises give its supernatural elements a much-needed feminist edge that make it difficult to put down. It could have benefited, however, from more space to flesh out all of its characters and plot points more fully, with the ending leaving some loose ends for the reader. Yet the novel’s main strength lies in the attention it pays to relationships and their effects on the individuals involved. As the story moves on there’s a clear shift within Josephine from defining herself by her relationships to the men in her life and past, to the women she finds herself around and the one she’s searching for – her mother. Girl One is a testament to the emotional and empowering importance of these defining female relationships. [Emily Hay]

There is an almost therapeutic quality to The Roles We Play, Sabba Khan’s tenderly sketched memoir of personal and collective displacement. Spanning the history of Partition to her own coming-of-age in the diverse boroughs of East London, Khan’s autobiographical graphic novel is a startlingly vulnerable exercise in introspection, an investigation into how self-identity can be cultivated amid encompassing metanarratives of diaspora and intergenerational trauma. The prose occasionally forays into didacticism but is at its strongest when lingering in questions rather than answers. Khan brings a cultural specificity that is sadly still missing from much of the British canon, honing in on the nuances of the Kashmiri immigrant experience and the legacy of liminality inherited by the second generation: the tension between collectivity and individualism, the experience of religion as both anchor and weight. Khan’s creative approach is markedly loose, abandoning the rigid bounds of traditional comic panels for hand-drawn storyboards and striking whole page illustrations that stress her constant, determined quest for self-expression. Khan’s background lies in architecture and perhaps unsurprisingly, her art achieves a depth that her writing doesn’t quite match: figures fragment across the page and surreal dreamscapes sit alongside intimate portraits of a complex family life. The beautiful production doesn’t stop at the pages either: with poignant endpapers and a curated playlist to accompany each chapter, The Roles We Play is an unequivocal labour of love. [Anahit Behrooz]

Every girl wants to be a ballerina. That’s the notion that underpins the Durant family’s dance school, now run by Dara and Marie, dancers home schooled and trained by their mother in a very claustrophobic upbringing. It’s also a notion that at one glance sets up a soft and simple idea – one of aspiration and dance, of craft, of the annual crown jewel of The Nutcracker. At another, it’s one of competition, strenuous work, anxiety and routine, of a facade hiding the reality behind a shiny veneer. The sisters, together with Charlie – Dara’s husband – run the company; all was well, until one day it wasn’t. A fire not only shakes the studio, but the foundations of their repetitive lives as contractor Derek enters and throws everything off-balance for the trio. But it’s not as cut and dry – as with the motto itself, what appears true on the surface is often hiding ugliness beneath. What begins as a question of motive and how Derek will disrupt the core trio becomes an unravelling of what secrets already lurk where they stand. The Turnout is a dance that begins slowly and lures the reader in – Abbott’s writing is razor sharp, offering a precise dissection of complex relationships, sheltered family, sexuality and secrets. Within the beauty of these dancers’ lives is a darkness left to be peeled, layer by layer, until the dying pages. Ominous and unsettling, The Turnout drives the reader to seek answers. [Heather McDaid]

White Rabbit Books, 5 Aug, £25

Raven Books, 5 Aug, £14.99

Myriad Editions, out now, £18.99

Virago, 3 Aug, £14.99

whiterabbitbooks.co.uk

bloomsbury.com

myriadeditions.com

virago.co.uk

August 2021 — Review

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THE SKINNY

ICYMI

We catch up with Joshua Garrett, Director of long-running Edinburghbased improvised comedy group The Improverts, as he encounters Kristen Wiig’s semi-improvised Bridesmaids for the first time Illustration: Chiara Celini Comedy

There’s two moments which I’m sure made the film for many, or alternatively, convinced them to switch off the TV and participate in a more respectable activity. First, the scene in which the bridesmaids attend a dress fitting at a hoity-toity bridal shop, only to have their venture explosively interrupted by the Brazilian food which they so willingly enjoyed for lunch; “It’s coming out of me like lava” is not something I want to have to quote in context. The second is Annie’s airplane freak-out. The interaction between air-scared Annie (the wonderful Kristen Wiig) and her just-as-nervous counterpart (played by the film’s co-writer Annie Mumolo), as well as the interaction between Megan (Melissa McCarthy) and air marshal Jon (Ben Falcone, McCarthy’s reallife partner) were beautifully sculpted, and utterly hilarious. Wiig’s improv talent (showcased with LA troupe The Groundlings and the 135 episodes of SNL to her name) proves that anything can be made funnier by improvising, and that’s definitely the case with Bridesmaids. As an improviser too, I often find myself analysing comedy, even everyday life, as if it were an improv scene. How would it fair on stage? What aspects of that interaction can be heightened? Made more humorous? It’s a good thing too – knowing that my brain is still astutely wired when we, the Improverts, have a 22-day Edinburgh Fringe run coming up is quite encouraging. In fact, if you wish to pop along and watch myself and many far far more talented, engaging and just downright hilarious individuals on stage during the month of August, then you are more than welcome. I can’t promise there won’t have been any Brazillian food near our mouths though.

The Improverts, TheSpace @ Symposium Hall, Edinburgh, 6-28 Aug, 9:05pm

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August 2021 — Review

hough the Fringe director of a long-running improvised comedy group (whose previous members include the incredible Maria Bamford, Miles Jupp and Keith from The Office), I shamefully engage with very little comedy myself. I don’t watch any stand-up comedians, I rarely watch films or series that fall under the category of ‘comedy’, and I certainly do not watch any improvised comedy other than that which I see when participating in it. Whether that’s a case of me avoiding ‘too much of a good thing’, or simply not enjoying comedy unless I am part of it – I do not know. What I do know is that I often tend to avoid comedy. The classics at least. I’ve not seen Airplane, Groundhog Day or Some Like It Hot. I’ve not enjoyed the stand-up comedy of George Carlin, Victoria Wood or Richard Pryor. And I’ve never sat down to watch The Simpsons, The Office or Friends at any point in my life. The classics, those notorious pieces of comedy which have shaped our culture as we know it today, have on the whole gone unwatched and unnoticed by me. So naturally, when I was asked to engage in a piece of comedy which I had not yet seen but always meant to, I chose to watch Bridesmaids. My presumptions were that the comedy would be fast-paced, farcical and rather crude. I was not at all disappointed. It pains me to admit, but this is exactly the kind of comedy that I am drawn to – quick, easy comedy which in all honesty requires rather little intellectual engagement. I can just sit back, relax, and enjoy. It is no surprise then, that perhaps my favourite comedy films are Nacho Libre, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan or, when I was very young, Just Go With It. I do not suggest that these are cinematic masterpieces, or one-of-a-kind films (in fact they are all very similar to one another to some degree). But they do make me laugh. And Bridesmaids did the same. Even in the moments in which it did attempt to offer some type of poignance or seriousness, I could not help but fall for the vulgar respite which inevitably followed.

August 2021 — Listings

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THE SKINNY

Listings Looking for something to do? Well you’re in the right place! Here's a rundown of what's happening in music and art across Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee this month. To find out how to submit listings, head to theskinny.co.uk/listings

Glasgow Music Thu 05 Aug GOD DAMN

BROADCAST, 19:00– 22:00, £9.20

Compared to the likes of Nirvana and Pixies, God Damn are a fresh take on alternative rock, putting on a show that is equal parts exhilarating and cathartic.

Mon 09 Aug

BROOKE COMBE (LAMAYA + BERTA KENNEDY + JULIA)

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:00, £8.80

With influences ranging from 90s R'n'B and Amy Winehouse to Motown and Fleetwood Mac, Brooke Combe’s sensitive lyrics and powerful voice are a mesmerising addition to Scotland’s music scene.

Tue 10 Aug

CLOUD HOUSE (THE RAIN EXPERIMENT + AMUR + BIRTHDAY CAKE) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:00, £8.80

Alternative indie rock band Cloud House spotlight songs from their new EP Day’s Changed. BIKINI BODY (HOUND + BUG + COUNT FLORIDA) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Edinburgh-based postpunk group Bikini Body’s acerbic take on classism, the patriarchy, and our modern day crisis is the perfect show for our 2021 mood.

Wed 11 Aug

ANOTHER SKY (AILSA TULLY) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £9.90

IVYNITES

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Featuring Callum Govan and Gloria Black on live synths and vocals, electronic duo Maranta combine atmospheric electronica with upbeat synth-pop to create eclectic danceable vibrations.

Fri 13 Aug

NOVA (PSWEATPANTS + JAYDA & HOUSEPLANTS + HANNYMOON) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

An unmissable live show from 2020’s SAY Award winner NOVA, whose razor sharp rap has made her one of Scotland’s fastest rising stars. KENDAMA (AINAKO + TWIST HELIX) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Ayrshire duo Kendama offer a vibrant synth-pop sound filled with the nostalgia of youth and summer with support from Ainako and Twist Helix.

BROADCAST, 19:00– 22:00, £9.20

Manchester post-punk band Document celebrate the release of their debut EP last year with a live show.

LAVENDER LANE (DEV GREEN + INDOOR FOXES + RILEY) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

This three-piece Scottish pop band take the stage at King Tut’s for the first time. CAOILFHIONN ROSE (RAE LENA + DJANA GABRIELLE + KIRSTEEN HARVEY) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Emerging from a diverse music scene, Caoilfhionn Rose ties together Manchester’s musical past with its evolving present, effortlessly interweaving jazz, folk, and electronica for a vibrant musical tapestry.

Thu 19 Aug

Spyres’ first two singles were quickly picked up by Radio One, placing them immediately on the one-towatch map. Blending addictive pop with relentless melodies, this is music at its most intoxicating.

Sun 15 Aug

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

VANIVES (BECKY SIKASA + MORNING MIDNIGHT + SACUL) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Childhood friends Stuart Ramage and Roan Ballantine make up Vanives, whose ethereal, intimate sound offers a radical play with genre.

Mon 16 Aug

SCARLETT RANDLE (LVRA + TALKER + NANI)

FUZZY LOP (PEPLO + YELLOW HELLEN)

DOCUMENT

Wed 18 Aug

Having made waves in the underground queer music scene in Berlin and Glasgow as a DJ, acclaimed artist TAAHLIAH is now at the centre of a new generation of electronic producers revitalising dance and pop music.

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Thu 12 Aug

Scottish hip-hop artist Billy Got Waves’ blistering songwriting and performance speaks to issues of identity, youth culture, and the personal and political.

This Leith-based trio effortlessly blend psych, soul, hip-hop and dub for an energetic-filled night.

TAAHLIAH (BOBBIE + KAVARI + SPIT)

Glasgow-based promoter Ivynites takes over The Hug and Pint for one night only, platforming rising star bands Nu Cros, Sexual Mortgage and Moskow Mule.

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

SPYRES (MOONRUNNERS + PIZZA CRUNCH + BRONTES)

Sat 14 Aug

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

BILLY GOT WAVES (ROSS CARTER + WASHINGTON & GILLIESON + SAM BRODIE)

CHECK MASSES (NOISE + DUSK AMADEUS + BIGHT)

Scarlett Randle’s dreamy pop sounds experiment with genre and songwriting, crafting a sweet, spiky set that is perfect for summer nights. THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Glasgow-based band Fuzzy Lop’s eclectic soundscapes draw from a range of influences, from classic British indie to post-punk and gentle folk for an always surprising, never boring show.

Tue 17 Aug

CIRCA WAVES (RED RUM CLUB)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30, TBC

Liverpudlian indie rock group Circa Waves make their way up to Glasgow-tickets are currently sold out but keep an eye out for returns.

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

JESHUA

TIDE LINES

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Scottish Highlands folk rock band Tide Lines guarantee a whirling, irresistibly energetic show

SWIM SCHOOL (BONNIE KEMPLAY + HAPPY TEARS + SAINT CLEMENTS)

Fresh from Latitude Festival, Edinburgh-based band Swim School bring their authentic indie sound to King Tut’s. LIQUORICE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Headlined by Liquorice and supported by Lo Rays, Brat Coven and Bight, this is local music at its best. Part of The Hug and Pint’s Endless Summer.

Sun 22 Aug

FAUNA (ST DUKES + JUPITER STRANGE + GNASHERS) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Four-piece ambient rock band Fauna are joined by support acts St Dukes, Jupiter Strange and Gnashers. JOSH O’KEEFE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30, £8.50

Josh O’Keefe’s tongue-incheek salutes to classic folk sit alongside unexpectedly poignant, complex songwriting that makes this Nashville-based Derby singer one to watch.

Mon 23 Aug

SEAMUS FOGARTY THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30, £8

Irish singer-songwriter known for his propensity for disrupting his own meticulously crafted songs with synth and found sounds.

Glasgow-based Jeshua comes together with Japan Review, Swiss Portrait and Infinite Cloud Turtle for an eclectic summer session.

Tue 24 Aug

Fri 20 Aug

Bringing together Indian classical music, R'n'B and art rock, Kapil Seshasayee’s music is as groundbreaking as it gets.

ROY AYERS

ORAN MOR, 19:00– 22:00, £27.50

One of the most foundational musicians of the 70s and 80s takes to Òran Mór’s stage to celebrate the 45th anniversary of seminal hip-hop album Mystic Voyage, considered an influence on the likes of Pharrell Williams and Erykah Badu. THE ROLY MO (SLIX + SCHOOL OF PARIS + BOOK KLUB) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Indie rock that is played fast and loud, The Roly Mo’s gigs are wonderfully cathartic, buoyed by complex lyrics and mesmerising stage presence. JANE BLANCHARD (FLINCH. + MOONSOUP + AORTAROTA) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Edinburghian by way of New Brunswick, Jane Blanchard makes music full of unabashed feeling, grappling with the visceral and the difficult in every song.

KAPIL SESHASAYEE (YANA + KARDO + NATHAN SOMEVI) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

NEGATIVE HOPE (SULKA + TEOSE + DUTCH WINE + KILGOUR)

Thu 26 Aug

TWO DOOR CINEMA CLUB

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00, £40.15£47.75

Widely acknowledged as one of the best indie rock performers out there, a Two Door Cinema Club show is all but guaranteed to be an intoxicating time. If you’ve been missing the energy of live gigs, this is the one for you. HYYTS (ALEX AMOR + RORY JAMES) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £11

Weaving through soft synth soundscapes and highenergy pop beats, HYYTS are one of Glasgow’s most iconic up-and-coming bands. I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

SWG3, 19:00–22:00, £15

Salt Lake duo renowned for their glam retro riffs and unabashed emphasis on fun live performance stop off in Glasgow in between slots at Leeds and Reading. INTERNATIONAL TEACHERS OF POP BROADCAST, 19:00– 22:00, £14.20

Labelled “ones to watch” in the Guardian in 2019, this Sheffield trio have one foot in the past and the other firmly in the present, with a nostalgic synthpop sound belied by sharp, witty lyrics. HEIR OF THE CURSED (BEFORE BREAKFAST + AMIE HUCKSTEP) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Acclaimed Glasgow-based musician Heir of the Cursed is appropriately named, crafting music that is equal parts haunted and fierce.

Fri 27 Aug

MEDICINE CABINET (HUMOUR + ISABELLA STRANGE + STOCK MANAGER) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Independent record label and collective Negative Hope bring together four of their best artists: Sulka, Teose, Dutch Wine and Kilgour.

Wed 25 Aug

New Wave, New Romanticism at its best, Medicine Cabinet’s music inhabits an intoxicating world filled with madcap characters and dreamy stories.

THE FAMILY RAIN (THE TROPICANAS) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30, £10

THE DUNTS

ORAN MOR, 19:00– 22:00, £12

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Storming the Glaswegian scene and beyond, The Dunts are quickly becoming one of Scotland’s hottest exports. Forming in late 2016, the young quartet are demanding attention with their unique ‘council punk’branded sound.

After briefly disbanding five years ago, British blues band The Family Rain are back together and on tour this summer.

Sat 28 Aug

DEAD PONY (MEMES + UNINVITED + SHE) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Youthful post-punk band Dead Pony released their first single in the midst of the pandemic, a high-octane song perfect for live performance.

— 59 —

LEIF COFFIELD (KATHERINE ALY + DAHLIA + V.C.O)

ELEANOR KANE (QUIET HOUSES + HECTOR SHAW)

Glasgow-based electro-pop artist Leif Coffield has a distinctively subversive sound, blending discordant touches with darkly immersive melodies.

Fresh off a stint at the Old Vic’s Fun Home, Glasgow singer-songwriter Eleanor Kane is returning to her roots with an intimate show.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Sun 29 Aug

KITTI (LAZY MONEY + MILHOUSE COLLECTIVE + WHO’S OLIVIA?) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Compared to the likes of Jorja Smith and Alicia Keys, Glaswegian singersongwriter’s unique soaring vocals make her one to watch-both literally and figuratively.

CHIZU NNAMDI (DAISY MILES + MANIATRIX) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Igbo Nigerian-Scottish audiovisual artist Chizu Nnamdi produces work right at the cutting edge of music composition and moving image.

Mon 30 Aug WATERPUNKS

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 23:00, £8.80

Influenced by bands like blink-182, Fall Out Boy, and Saves the Day, this next-gen pop-punk Texan group are the perfect blend of cutting edge and nostalgic.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Tue 31 Aug BLOSSOMS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00, £36.50

Beloved indie band Blossoms bring their chart-topping recent album Foolish Loving Spaces to the stage for an unmissable live performance. CARA ROSE (HANNAH SLAVIN + BRODIE BARCLAY + LEWIS ROSS) KING TUT’S, 20:30– 23:30, £8.80

Soulful melodies and incisive lyrics come together to create a compelling musical portrait of being young in the world today. 432 PRESENTS: CRACK CLOUD

MONO, 20:00–23:00, £11

Vancouver-based multimedia collective Crack Cloud are known for their uniquely radical, subversive approach to music, blending the personal and the political with each new album.

DECLAN MCKENNA

SWG3,19:00–22:00,TBC

Only 22 years old, pop prodigy Declan McKenna has been radically altering the face of British music for several years thanks to an ambitious play with genre and subversive, politically astute writing. BASIA BULAT

BROADCAST, 19:00– 22:00, £12.10

Basia Bulat’s sweeping harmonies draw from influences as wide as contemporary folk and R&B songwriting. Glasgow is the first stop on the Canadian singer-songwriter’s long awaited European tour. PASSENGER

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 23:00, £29

Indie singer-songwriter darling Mike Rosenberg, aka Passenger, brings his gentle, soulful lyrics and sound to the stage in celebration of his latest melancholy album Songs For The Drunk And Broken Hearted. SARA ‘N’ JUNBUG (PSYCHADELICACY + DEAR CINDER) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00, £7

Lying at the intersection of folk and pop, Glasgow four piece Sara ‘N’ Junbug’s compelling sound is as fun as it is piercing.

Edinburgh Music Fri 06 Aug THE SORRIES

NEHH PRESENTS... MEURSAULT

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run.

Eclectic layering and haunting vocalisations make Meursault one of the most dynamic live bands out there.

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 18:30–19:30, £7

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £16.50

INTERSTELLAR DUO

DUNCAN CHISHOLM

Drawing on music for film, tv and audiobooks, sisters Charlotte and Heather Sterland create a sound which is totally original.

Fiddle player Duncan Chisholm brings the sound of the Highlands to Edinburgh, accompanied by a selection of Scottish artists.

NEHH PRESENTS... BOGHA-FROIS: QUEER VOICES IN FOLK

SUMMERHALL, 19:00–22:00, £14

An evening of music by queer folk collective exploring the LGBTQ+ experience through folk and trad music.

Sat 07 Aug

Sun 08 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run.

THE SORRIES

INTERSTELLAR DUO

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run.

Drawing on music for film, tv and audiobooks, sisters Charlotte and Heather Sterland create a sound which is totally original.

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 18:30–18:30, £13-£15

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 18:30–19:30, £13-£15

INTERSTELLAR DUO

KATHRYN JOSEPH

Drawing on music for film, tv and audiobooks, sisters Charlotte and Heather Sterland create a sound which is totally original.

Ethereal folk melodies abound in this unmissable performance.

Mon 09 Aug

INTERSTELLAR DUO

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 18:30–19:30, £11-£13

Drawing on music for film, tv and audiobooks, sisters Charlotte and Heather Sterland create a sound which is totally original. RURA

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Instrumental group known for their raw yet polished sound. TIDE LINES

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Scottish Highlands folk rock band Tide Lines guarantee a whirling, irresistibly energetic show

Tue 10 Aug

INTERSTELLAR DUO

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 18:30–19:30, £11-£13

Drawing on music for film, tv and audiobooks, sisters Charlotte and Heather Sterland create a sound which is totally original. TALISK

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Contemporary ceilidhinspired music played at an almost impossibly fast, intoxicating pace.

August 2021 — Listings

Frontlined by lead singer Catrin Vincent, known for their uniquely haunting, androgynous voice, Another Sky are fast becoming one of the UK music scene’s most hotly watched bands.

MARANTA (SUPER INUIT)

Sat 21 Aug

THE SKINNY THE STAVES

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Known for their haunting, heart wrenching harmonies, sisters The Staves return to Scotland’s stage with their most recent album.

Wed 11 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. PASHYANTI ON GUITAR

SUMMERHALL, 20:00– 21:00, £14

Blending Punjabi folk songs, acoustic guitar, and flamenco-inspired music, Payshanti’s music is a joyful celebration of culture. DÀIMH

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Gaelic supergroup put a contemporary spin on traditional Celtic bagpipes and Gaelic singing. THE SNUTS

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Indie up-and-comers bring their much adored debut album to the live stage.

Thu 12 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. KINNARIS QUINTET OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Celtic folk meets bluegrass and classical influences in this unique performance.

Fri 13 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... SACRED PAWS

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £16.50

Known for their tonguein-cheek music and jovial stage presence, Sacred Paws are the perfect palette cleanser after a year bereft of gigs. RICHARD DAWSON

August 2021 — Listings

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Sun 15 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... KAPIL SESHASAYEE SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £14

Blurring electronica with classical Indian music, Kapil Seshasayee’s genre-bending music is an exhilarating journey. PASHYANTI ON GUITAR

SUMMERHALL, 15:00– 16:00, £14

Blending Punjabi folk songs, acoustic guitar, and flamenco-inspired music, Payshanti’s music is a joyful celebration of culture. ERLAND COOPER

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Acclaimed Orkney musician draws from the Nordic roots of his homeland to create atmospheric soundscapes.

Mon 16 Aug BREABACH

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Breabach’s five multiinstrumentalist members combine tradition and innovation in their imaginative and highly skilled performances. CHINEKE! CHAMBER ENSEMBLE OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 12:00–13:00; 14:30– 15:30 £32

A classical ensemble platforming Black and ethnically diverse musicians, this concert sees the ensemble take on rarely heard pieces by Coleridge-Taylor and Vaughan Williams. SHONA THE MUSICAL CHOIR EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £13-£18

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... STANLEY ODD

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £16.50

Creating music that is acutely contemporary, Stanley Odd fuses rap and instrumentalisation for a snapshot of Scotland’s counter-cultures today. FLOATING POINTS

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Composer and electronic musician Floating Points creates immersive, largerthan-life live performances.

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Four-piece Orkney folk group combine traditional Scottish tunes with original compositions. NADINE SHAH

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Indie vibes with a hint of punk, Nadine Shah’s music is politically and emotionally charged.

Thu 19 Aug

DREVER, MCCUSKER, WOOMBLE THE BRUNTON, 19:30– 22:30, £18-£20

10th anniversary celebration of Before the Ruin, the collaborative album between John McCusker, Kris Drever and Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble. THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. EHFM AND NEHH PRESENT... EHFM’S 3RD BIRTHDAY

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:00, £12

Edinburgh community radio station EHFM put on a special live show featuring beloved local act Other Lands to commemorate three years on the airwaves. JENNA REID + HARRIS PLAYFAIR WITH MR MCFALL’S CHAMBER OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Shetland fiddler and pianist put an entirely new spin on chamber music.

Fri 20 Aug

NEHH PRESENTS... HAMISH HAWK

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £14

Frontman of The New Outfit known for his heartfelt, gritty songwriting.

Kora player Ballaké Sissoko and cellist Vincent Ségal draw from West African troubadour songs and Baroque music for a truly unique sound.

THE SORRIES

FARA

Tue 17 Aug

Sat 14 Aug

Folk-inspired music by eminent Scottish singer-songwriter Doudie MacLean.

Iconic Soviet pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja takes on beloved classical favourites.

BLACK MIDI

Folk musician brings his signature brand of dark humour and storytelling.

THE BRUNTON, 19:30– 22:30, £21-£23

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 12:00–13:00; 14:3015:30 £32

Scottish-African choir present songs from Shona the Musical, a cross-cultural love story inspired by the socio-political turmoil of Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe’s rule.

BALLAKÉ SISSOKO + VINCENT SÉGAL

DOUGIE MACLEAN IN CONCERT

ELISABETH LEONSKAJA

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

MOSES BOYD

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Multi-award-winning jazz artist brings his genrecrossing fusion of jazz improvisation and dancefloor beats to Edinburgh.

Wed 18 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... CARLA J EASTON

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £14

SAY Award-shortlisted artist with an indie punk sensibility plays music from her four critically acclaimed albums.

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Post-punk, jazz and prog rock come together in a blistering performance from Mercury nominees black midi. THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... JAMES YORKSTON

SUMMERHALL, 17:00– 19:00; 20:00-22:00 £18.50

Beautiful lyrics and delicate melodies abound from Fifebased singer-songwriter James Yorkston. PASHYANTI ON GUITAR

SUMMERHALL, 15:00– 16:00, £14

Blending Punjabi folk songs, acoustic guitar, and flamenco-inspired music, Payshanti’s music is a joyful celebration of culture. LONELY HOUSE

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 21:30–22:30, £26

Barrie Kosky and Katharine Mehrling sing the biting social satires and sweeping musical scores of Kurt Weill.

Sat 21 Aug

Wed 25 Aug

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30, £34.50

THE SORRIES

CHRISSIE HYNDE

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. LONELY HOUSE

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 21:30–22:30, £26

Barrie Kosky and Katharine Mehrling sing the biting social satires and sweeping musical scores of Kurt Weill.

Sun 22 Aug

CHRISSIE HYNDE

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30, £34.50

Two icons meet in this stripped back show, as The Pretenders legend Chrissie Hynde takes on Bob Dylan through a series of haunting covers created in the depths of lockdown and featured on her most recent album. THE SORRIES

MAXÏMO PARK

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00, £16

Mercury Prize-nominated indie rock band Maxïmo Park head to The Liquid Room for a belated intimate launch for their acclaimed new album Nature Always Wins. THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. PASHYANTI ON GUITAR

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. PASHYANTI ON GUITAR

SUMMERHALL, 15:00– 16:00, £14

Blending Punjabi folk songs, acoustic guitar, and flamenco-inspired music, Payshanti’s music is a joyful celebration of culture. KARINE POLWART + DAVE MILLIGAN OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 15:00–17:00, £26

Iconic singer song-writer is Karine Polwart is joined for a special one-off performance by jazz pianist David Milligan. SIOBHAN MILLER

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 20:00–22:00, £26

Traditional, contemporary, and original songs performed in a uniquely soulful, folk style. THE UNTHANKS

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Eclectic folk collective know for their stirring harmonies and genre-bending style.

Mon 23 Aug CHRISSIE HYNDE

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30, £34.50

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:00, £21-£26

One of Britain’s rising new bands put on a fiercely energetic show.

Tue 24 Aug

CHRISSIE HYNDE

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30, £34.50

ANNA MEREDITH

DAMON ALBARN

International Festival favourite Anna Meredith returns to Edinburgh to perform her second album accompanied by her live band.

A new solo show from Blur and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn.

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:00–22:00, £21-£26

EDINBURGH PARK, 17:00–18:30; 20:30– 22:00 £21-£26

SUMMERHALL, 20:00– 21:00, £14

Blending Punjabi folk songs, acoustic guitar, and flamenco-inspired music, Payshanti’s music is a joyful celebration of culture. THE COMET IS COMING

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

London-based jazz group incorporating rock and psychedelica for a euphoric show. SHOOGLENIFTY

MULTISTORY, 21:00– 22:00, £17.50

One of Scotland’s best loved bands, Shooglenifty have been on the folk scene for over 30 years.

Thu 26 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... SIOBHAN WILSON

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £15

Siobhan Wilson’s ethereal, dreamy voice belies sharp, deeply perceptive songwriting that is as haunting as it is beautiful.

FATOUMATA DIAWARA EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Malian actress, musician and activist Fatoumata Diawara blends ancient and modern African styles on her latest album FENFO.

Sat 28 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... ANDREW WASYLYK

Jazz improvisations and Afrobeats come together to create the perfect mellow summer sound.

Dreamy, trance-like pop tunes from Canadian musician Caribou.

Sun 29 Aug THE SORRIES

PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. PASHYANTI ON GUITAR

SUMMERHALL, 15:00– 16:00, £14

Blending Punjabi folk songs, acoustic guitar, and flamenco-inspired music, Payshanti’s music is a joyful celebration of culture. LAURA MVULA

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

Jazz icon Laura Mvula celebrates the release of her new album with this soulful show.

Mon 30 Aug PASSENGER

USHER HALL, 19:00– 22:00, £28.60

Indie singer-songwriter darling Mike Rosenberg, AKA Passenger, brings his gentle, soulful lyrics and sound to the stage in celebration of his latest melancholy album Songs For The Drunk And Broken Hearted.

Art

Fri 27 Aug PLEASANCE @ EICC, 16:30–17:30, £11£12.50

1-14 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

A warm, energetic take on traditional Scottish music from The Sorries, whose last show saw a sold-out run. NEHH PRESENTS... WITHERED HAND

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 21:00, £16.50

Songwriting from Edinburgh-based acclaimed musician Dan Wilson. FATMA SAID + MALCOLM MARTINEAU

OLD COLLEGE QUAD, 12:00–13:00; 14:3015:30 £32

Egyptian soprano Fatma Said and Egyptian-born pianist Malcolm Martineau present their own takes on Mozart and Lorca.

— 60 —

James Lumsden’s work is primarily concerned with the material process of creation, building translucent glazes of paint to evoke a mesmerising illusion of light and depth.

GoMA

Tramway

NEP SIDHU: AN IMMEASURABLE MELODY, MEDICINE FOR A NIGHTMARE

1 AUG-5 SEP, 11:00AM –4:00PM, FREE

1 AUG-23 JAN 22, 11:00AM – 4:00PM,FREE

CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

THE SORRIES

Amsterdam artist David Walwin explores embodiment, subjectivity and the relationship between the internal and external in this arresting new show.

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:00, £21-£26

CARIBOU

Glasgow Art

One of Scotland’s best loved bands, Shooglenifty have been on the folk scene for over 30 years.

12:00PM – 5:00PM, TBC

DAN WALWIN: LIKE CLOCK

Scottish composer and producer brings his experimental electronic sound to Summerhall’s Secret Courtyard.

MULTISTORY, 21:00– 22:00, £17.50

SHOOGLENIFTY

The Briggait

Canadian artist Nep Sidhu’s work is embedded in Sikh metaphysics and histories, exploring relationships between memory, memorial and the divine in his very first European show.

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:00, £15

KOKOROKO

EDINBURGH PARK, 20:30–22:30, £21-£26

David Dale Gallery and Studios

GWENAN DAVIES: TÔN GRON

An exhibition of new paintings by Glasgow-based artist Gwenan Davies that explores ideas of “in-between” time and the ways in which we perform and record leisure and unscheduled time. WINNIE HERBSTEIN: DAMPBUSTERS

6 AUG-4 SEP, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

The third in a triptych of films that explore the past, present and future of community organising in Glasgow, Dampbusters centres on the work of housing activist Cathy McCormack and the ways in which urban space can be claimed and reclaimed.

DRINK IN THE BEAUTY

Inspired by Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental treatise Silent Spring, this exhibition features artists engaging with our connection to the nonhuman, and thinking through the ethics and aesthetics of how we record nature.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum FRANCE-LISE MCGURN: ALOUD

1 AUG-1 JUN 22, 11:00AM–4:00PM, FREE

France-Lise McGurn’s newly commissioned installation draws on her personal experiences of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, creating bewitching, almost sculptural forms that fill the museum’s gallery.

RGI Kelly Gallery

JUNE CAREY: THE ROB ROY DRAWINGS

3-14 AUG, TIMES VARY, TBC

An exhibition of original pastel drawings by artist June Carey to accompany the new Folio Society edition of Sir Walter Scott’s classic Rob Roy.

South Block

NICK DOMMINNEY: FUTURES ONE

NO UPCOMING DATES, 9:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

The inaugural solo show by Glasgow-based architect Nick Domminney, this exhibition is a study in the ever-shifting nature of the horizon and our creative impulse to capture it.

Street Level Photoworks

MANDY BARKER: OUR PLASTIC OCEAN 7 AUG-10 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

A photography series that traces the legacy of plastic pollution in our oceans, Mandy Barker's images of found debris are eerily alive and suffocating.

Studio Pavilion at House for an Art Lover IRENE MCCANN: EARLY MORNING SONG

1 AUG-31 OCT, 11:00AM –4:00PM, FREE

An exhibition of Glasgowbased artist Irene McCann’s dreamy, collage-like still lifes.

JAMES LUMSDEN: SHIFT

1-16 AUG, TIMES VARY, TBC

PAUL PURGAS: WE FOUND OUR OWN REALITY

21 AUG-3 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

An expansive mixedmedia installation spanning architecture, textiles, and soundscapes, We Found Our Own Reality explores the rich musical and technological history of India’s very first electronic music studio. FLO BROOKS: ANGLETWICH

7 AUG-3 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

A narrative of queer and trans experience in the UK, this semi-autobiographical exhibition draws on the isolation and familiarity of rural environments to explore how marginalised communities can imagine themselves in public spaces.

Edinburgh Art &Gallery

ELFYN LEWIS: MÔR A MYNYDD

3-4 AUG, TIMES VARY, TBC

Translating to Sea and Mountains, Môr a Mynydd is an evocation of Elfyn Lewis’ native Welsh landscape. Made up of explosive layers and jagged shapes, her paintings bring a rare physicality to the traditional genre. JAMES LUMSDEN: SLOW LIGHT

7 AUG-1 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

James Lumsden’s paintings are dense with colour, interrogating representations of landscape and the natural world through a play with abstraction and light.

Arusha Gallery BATHING NERVOUS LIMBS

UNTIL 29 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

This group show draws from the Balneum Book, a 15th-century Western manuscript illustrated with the folkloric healing legends of freshwater bodies. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

City Art Centre CHARLES H. MACKIE: COLOUR AND LIGHT UNTIL 10 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

This major retrospective of Scottish painter and printmaker Charles H. Mackie explores his dynamic experimentation with French Symbolism, Japanese art, and the Celtic Revival movement. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

THE SKINNY DONALD SMITH: ISLANDER

UNTIL 26 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Drawing on international artistic movements while remaining dedicated to Lewis’ local fishing communities, these intense, lyrical images celebrate the indomitable human spirit of Scottish island life. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. IAN HAMILTON FINLAY: MARINE

UNTIL 3 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

Exploring maritime themes in renowned Scottish artist Ian Hamilton Finlay’s oeuvre, this exhibition pulls work across decades and media, from stone, wood and neon sculptures to tapestry and postcards. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Collective

CHRISTIAN NEWBY: BOREDOM> MISCHIEF>FANTASY> RADICALISM> FANTASY

UNTIL 29 AUG, 10:00AM – 4:00PM, TBC

Featuring a tapestry commission responding to Collective’s unique astronomical history, this exhibition explores how textile making straddles art and craft, interrogating ideas of labour and materiality. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. ALISON SCOTT: DITTO DITTO DITTO

UNTIL 19 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

These integrated sound and print works explore the space and possibilities of ‘meteor-ontology’: an exploration of how climate and weather are entangled in the nature of our being. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Dovecot Studios

ARCHIE BRENNAN: TAPESTRY GOES POP!

UNTIL 30 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £8.50-£9.50

Centring on pop artist, weaver, and former Mr Scotland Archie Brennan, this exhibition shines a light on one of Scotland’s most neglected artists, bringing decades of vibrant tapestry to the fore. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. JOCK MCFADYEN: LOST BOAT PARTY

These enigmatic, almost print-like works explore the magnificence of Scotland’s landscape, juxtaposed and complemented by the artists’s signature urban dystopia. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. DAZZLE 2021

6-28 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Dovecot’s annual major jewellery exhibition returns for its tenth year, showcasing over 50 established and up-and-coming jewellery makers, whose pieces range from the impossibly delicate to the unexpected and subversive.

DAVY MACDONALD: STORIES IN THE STONE 20-30 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Inspired by the ancient standing stones of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis, Edinburgh-based artist Davy Macdonald’s spectacular paintings are an ode to sites of ritual, exploring humanity’s capacity for the mythic and symbolic.

Edinburgh Printmakers

SONIA MEHRA CHAWLA: ENTANGLEMENTS OF TIME & TIDE

4 AUG-21 NOV, 11:00AM – 4:00PM, FREE

A merging of visual arts and science, this exhibition explores the ecosystems of the North Sea, striving for an empathetic understanding of the oceans and the relationship between the human and nonhuman. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. GOBSCURE: WRITING LIBERTÉ WITH LIPS 4-28 AUG, 11:00AM – 4:00PM, FREE

A series of prints by artistin-residence gobscure explore ideas of playful dissent and creative resistance. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

SEAN LYNCH: TAK TENT O’ TIME ERE TIME BE TINT

UNTIL 28 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

This timely project casts a spotlight on Edinburgh’s public monuments and sculptures, and the ways in which the legacies of their history can be reassessed. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

ALAYA ANG + HUSSEIN MITHA: PLOTTING (AGAINST) THE GARDEN UNTIL 24 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

The work explores the politics of gardens as ambivalent spaces of work and leisure; private property and public shared space; cultivation and growth. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. LUCY WAYMAN: CLOVEHITCH

UNTIL 28 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Lucy Wayman’s work, created from marine rope, follows her interest in the industrial and historic uses of rope, connecting ideas of system, control and release. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. ANDREW GANNON: ECCENTRIC LIMBS

UNTIL 25 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Using plaster casts to create surreal, subversive prosthetics, this exhibition interrogates the ways in which disabilities are conceptualised in our society. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Embassy Gallery

Open Eye Gallery

UNTIL 8 AUG, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, TBC

3-28 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

WELCOME TO BABEWORLD

An unabashedly pink, unabashedly garish exhibition, Welcome to Babeworld is a collaborative effort led by artist Ashleigh Williams that explores the precarity of sex work, and the dystopian realities that may already exist.

French Institute

PLATFORM: 2021

UNTIL 29 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Platform, the festival’s annual showcase of early career artists, features Scotland-based artists Jessica Higgins, Danny Pagarani, Kirsty Russell and Isabella Widger. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Fruitmarket

KARLA BLACK: SCULPTURES (20012021)

UNTIL 21 NOV, 10:00AM – 7:00PM, FREE

Combining traditional sculptural material with found objects such as cleaning products and cosmetics, Karla Black’s embodied sculptures fill the walls, ceilings, and floors of Fruitmarket. The exhibition, subtitled details for a retrospective, reopens Fruitmarket after a major refurb and expansion into the former Electric Circus space next door. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Ingleby Gallery FRANK WALTER (19262009): MUSIC OF THE SPHERES

4 AUG-25 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, TBC

Overlooked in his lifetime but now considered one of the most important Caribbean artists of the 20th century, Frank Walter’s striking circular paintings are assembled in this long-awaited exhibition. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Jupiter Artland ALBERTA WHITTLE: RESET

UNTIL 31 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £0-£10

A powerful response to the pandemic, climate emergency, and Black Lives Matter movement, RESET is a mesmerising challenge to our society’s various hostile environments. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. RESET (GROUP SHOW)

UNTIL 31 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £0-£10

A group exhibition accompanying Alberta Whittle’s solo show, featuring Sekai Machache, Mele Broomes, Basharat Khan and more. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

National Museum of Scotland

THE GALLOWAY HOARD: VIKING-AGE TREASURE

UNTIL 12 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

This treasure-filled exhibition brings together the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

LEON MORROCCO RSA RGI: APRÉS-MIDI

The exhibition features new paintings and works on paper as the artist goes on a journey from the cold harbours of the East Coast of Scotland to the warm beaches, terraces and streets of the Mediterranean. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Royal Botanic Garden

CHRISTINE BORLAND: IN RELATION TO LINUM UNTIL 2 OCT, 10:00AM – 4:30PM, FREE

This multidisciplinary project, featuring watercolours, prints and sculptural pieces, explores the lifecycle of flax, evolving RBGE’s 350-year relationship with the plant. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Royal Scottish Academy RSA FRANCES WALKER: TRAVELLING ON

UNTIL 5 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

A retrospective in honour of prolific Scottish artist Frances Walker’s 90th birthday last year, Travelling On showcases a significant body of the artist’s evocative landscapes captured over her travels. BILL SCOTT

UNTIL 5 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

This major retrospective of the work of past RSA President Bill Scott reintroduces Scott’s work for contemporary audiences.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

RAY HARRYHAUSEN: TITAN OF CINEMA UNTIL 20 FEB 22, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £5-£14

This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition brings together the life work of a giant of cinematic history and the grandfather of modern special effects, showcasing some of his most iconic designs and achievements. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021. ISAAC JULIEN: LESSONS OF THE HOUR

UNTIL 10 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

This major ten-screen film installation from renowned British artist Isaac Julien offers a poetic mediation on the life and work of 19thcentury African-American writer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival. JOAN EARDLEY: CATTERLINE

UNTIL 9 JAN 22, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

RUINED: REINVENTING SCOTTISH HISTORY

5 AUG-13 NOV, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, TBC

Four young Scots reinvent the bloody complexity of Scottish history, drawing on and subverting works from the National Portrait Gallery to pull visitors into an immersive, disorienting, and radical reimagination of our collective past. ALISON WATT: A PORTRAIT WITHOUT LIKENESS 5 AUG-8 JAN 22, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

A body of new work created in response to celebrated eighteenth-century portraitist Allan Ramsay, Alison Watt’s paintings play with detail and ideas of femininity, exploring the art of portraiture beyond the subject. THOMAS JOSHUA COOPER: THE WORLD’S EDGE

5 AUG-22 JAN 22, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

The only artist to have ever taken photographs of the two poles, Thomas Joshua Cooper is known for working in the extremes, pushing the boundaries of both creative practice and human endurance.

Scottish Storytelling Centre

DIANA SAVOVA: THISTLES, SUNFLOWERS AND DREAMSCAPES

3-30 AUG, 10:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Diana Savova’s ink, oil and acrylic paintings offer a vibrant, surreal perspective that perfectly matches our equally surreal times, reflecting on themes of home, migration, and roots through symbolic, fantastic tableaux.

Shillinghill Studios

ALISON KINNAIRD: ART IN GLASS

UNTIL 30 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

This open studio exhibition features work by acclaimed glass artist and practitioner Alison Kinnaird, whose striking, delicately wrought pieces offer a deeply moving examination of the human condition.

Stills

UNTIL 12 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM, TBC

Talbot Rice Gallery

EMMA-LOUISE GRADY: WANDERINGS

THE NORMAL

UNTIL 28 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

This group exhibition responds to the global event of the pandemic, exploring how we can rethink our relationship to community and the environment, and affirming the urgent need for whole scale change. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh

WILL MACLEAN + SHAUN FRASER: OWNERS OF THE SOIL UNTIL 28 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

This exhibition examines ties between land, identity and ownership through the early Scottish diaspora’s dual identity of colonised and coloniser. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

The Queen’s Gallery

VICTORIA & ALBERT: OUR LIVES IN WATERCOLOUR

UNTIL 3 OCT, 9:30AM – 5:00PM, £0-£7.80

Featuring 80 watercolours collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, this exhibition celebrates Scottish watercolour painting in the post-Romantic, industrial age. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

The Scottish Gallery JOAN EARDLEY: CENTENARY

3-28 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Centenary includes acclaimed artist Joan Eardley’s most celebrated subjects: the lost Glasgow, the streets and children of Townhead and her wild, spiritual home at Catterline on the Kincardineshire coast. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

Featuring work from Sekai Machache’s The Divine Sky, these porcelain-like photographs were created during the pandemic, exploring new ways of structuring artistic output. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

J.G. Scott’s diverse and prodigious collection of paintings and prints offers a unique glimpse into the breadth of 20thcentury Scottish art, from responses to the New Wave Glasgow artists to contemporary takes on landscape paintings.

BEVERLEY HOOD: WE BEGAN AS PART OF THE BODY

UNTIL 12 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM, FREE

This immersive series of video projections, 3D prints, and virtual reality explores existential and ethical questions on the relationship between bodies and technology. Presented as part of this year’s Edinburgh Science Festival.

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FESTIVAL SHOW

3 AUG-11 SEP, 11:00AM – 5:30PM, FREE

THE J.G. SCOTT COLLECTION

3 AUG-18 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, TBC

Torrance Gallery

Using soundscapes and sonification of data in a unique, haunting way, Victoria Evans’ work engages with the way invisible forces in the universe tangibly affect our lives. Presented as part of this year’s Edinburgh Science Festival.

SEKAI MACHACHE: PROJECTS 20

Summerhall

Celebrating the life and work of the artist Joan Eardley, this exhibition focuses on her post-war works created in Catterline. Presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2021.

VICTORIA EVANS: OSCILLATIONS

3-28 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

MALCOLM APPLEBY & FRIENDS

3-28 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Marking the 75th birthday of world class engraver, jeweller and silversmith Malcolm Appleby, this exhibition brings together Appleby’s fellow collaborators and artists as a joyful celebration of craftsmanship.

Torrance Gallery’s annual festival show returns, bringing together regular favourite artists with exciting new names for a perfect snapshot of contemporary art.

Upright Gallery

4-20 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Drawing upon the artist’s Irish roots, this exhibition engages with and subverts the intricacy of traditional Celtic patterns through the use of Emma-Louise Grady’s trademark vivid colours and intense details.

Dundee Art

V&A Dundee NIGHT FEVER: DESIGNING CLUB CULTURE

UNTIL 9 JAN 22, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £5-£10

The perfect exhibition in the light of the last year, Night Fever explores the relationship between vibrant global club culture and fashion, architecture, and graphic design, giving an intoxicating glimpse into the art that informs our nights out.

WHAT IF…?/SCOTLAND UNTIL 21 NOV, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Designed to be staged at the Venice Biennale, this exhibition responds to the festival’s theme “How will we live together?” by collaborating with and involving local communities, highlighting and seeking to return to the civic responsibility of design.

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts

EMMA TALBOT: GHOST CALLS UNTIL 8 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

This major new exhibition brings together a series of works created specifically for the DCA by renowned British artist Emma Talbot, whose artistic practice spans the breadth of the visual arts, from drawing and painting to animation and modelling.

CHIKAKO YAMASHIRO: CHINBIN WESTERN 21 AUG-21 NOV, TIMES VARY, FREE

Drawing on influences as diverse as industrial landscapes and traditional Japanese theatre, Chikako Yamashiro’s filmmaking and photography practice explores themes of neocolonialism and collective memory.

MARY MCINTYRE: PLACES WE THINK WE KNOW 21 AUG-21 NOV, TIMES VARY, FREE

Engaging with ideas of spatiality and psychogeography, Mary McIntyre’s quiet interior photographs are presented in a uniquely sculptural way that pulls the gallery space into her work.

The McManus

A LOVE LETTER TO DUNDEE: JOSEPH MCKENZIE PHOTOGRAPHS 19641987 3 AUG-1 MAR 22, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Turning to black and white photography from the 1960s-1980s, this exhibition charts the changing landscape of Dundee’s waterfront and the evolution of the City’s fortunes and its people.

TIME AND TIDE: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE TAY 3 AUG-2 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

This exhibition looks at the influence the Tay has had on the city of Dundee, and the ways in which its various faces, from early settlement to industrial giant, continue to reinvent its iconic waterfront.

August 2021 — Listings

UNTIL 25 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, TBC

Dundas Street Gallery

THE SKINNY

The Skinny On... Carla J. Easton The Skinny On...

Ahead of her upcoming live performance at Summerhall this month, Carla J. Easton tells us why she’ll never forgive George Lucas, and what made her vomit on 27 June What’s your favourite place to visit? Paris. It’s a good place to get lost [...] I like going places where taste is a big part of the experience – Paris has lots of flavours. What’s your favourite colour? Yellow. It’s happy. Who was your hero growing up? My Great Aunt Kath. She was my best friend. She was both glamourous and homely. Fierce, independent, stubborn but incredibly loving and kind. She chose a different life and path from her sisters which made me realise, from a young age, that was perfectly okay to do. Whose work inspires you now? I took part in a writing residency (via Zoom) in March, organised by Howard Bilerman [...] We got to have lectures from Sharon Van Etten, Tamara Lindeman, Beverly Glenn Copeland, Basia Bulat and loads more songwriters. The one that stood out for me was Mary Margaret O’Hara [...] I can’t remember most of what Mary was saying, I just remember how I felt while she was talking: completely and utterly inspired to be myself.

What three people would you invite to your virtual dinner party? Yoko Ono, Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kusama. They are three incredible human beings who have never compromised themselves or their work. The conversation would be insightful, inspiring and fun. Which album by another artist have you loved this year? I really love Clair’s album Earth Mothers. It’s a wonderful and comprehensive piece of work that reminds me a bit of Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, but instead of English country gardens we’re thrown into the urban extremity of Glasgow... It’s a really exciting album. What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen? I’m a huge Star Wars fan... But I will never forgive George Lucas for Episode III. Darth Vader is one of the most dangerous villains in cinema history. As a child he is the stuff of nightmares. The scene where he breaks free of his shackles screaming ‘noooooooo’ at the point where

he transforms from Anakin to Darth reduced the character to pantomine depths of danger. It was – and still is – unforgivable. How have you stayed inspired during the multiple lockdowns and various restrictions of the past 17 months? My initial reaction was ‘adapt’ rather than ‘accept’ in terms of music-making [...] I love collaborating and that has been hard but doable; Poster Paints [Easton’s new project with Simon Liddell] became a bit of a lifeline [...] But it was also simple things I found inspiration in. I fell back in love with my record collection. Walks [...] Coffees in parks with friends. Looking after and helping my mum – she’s had two strokes during the last ten months which has been hard. Gardening. Falling in love. Trying to learn the guitar. And also learning how to do nothing and being okay with that. What books would you read if you had to self-isolate for the next ten days? The Elegance of The Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery and Tales of The City by Armistead Maupin. I’ve read The Elegance... about five times and every time I discover new details. It’s a really beautiful book exploring language and philosophy. I read the Tales... series a couple of years ago and got immersed in the world. I wanted the characters to be real so I could be their friend. Photo: Austin Temby

August 2021 — Chat

What’s your favourite meal to cook at home?

I like the ceremony of cooking steak. I like sealing in all the juices and having to time everything perfectly.

Who’s the worst? People with hidden agendas/liars. When did you last cry? This morning during therapy. What are you most scared of? My mum having another stroke because it would be awful and the — 62 —

outcome would be full of uncertainty. When did you last vomit? 27 June. It was my niece’s 10th birthday. That morning I had my second vaccine, although it’s probably more to do with running around after four nieces and playing with them on the trampoline all day in blistering sunshine and not the vaccine. Tell us a secret? During lockdown I started a Certificate in Floristry as a means to keep creative and learn something new and am taking part in the World Skills UK competition. I made it through to the second heat and am awaiting my results. Which celebrity could you take in a fight? I don’t know. I’m pretty short and small. I think most people would take me. If you could be reincarnated as an animal which animal would it be? A cat. I like to be left alone but will seek out company when I feel like/ need it. But I also really like otters. You’re playing Summerhall in August! What are you most looking forward to about the return of live music this year? Drums! I never thought I would say I miss the sound of a snare drum soundchecking but I really do. I can’t wait to finally play WEIRDO live – a whole year after release! I am looking forward to sub bass synths blasting out a PA and rehearsing with my band and the elation after performing and loading in and soundchecking and ALL OF IT [...] I can’t wait for a live performance to be this one snapshot in time of people being in the same place at the same time and it existing only in memories. I can’t wait to sing. I have forgotten how much I love singing. Carla J. Easton plays Summerhall, Edinburgh, 18 Aug carlajennifereaston.com posterpaints.com

THE SKINNY

October 2020

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August 2021 — Chat

The Skinny On...

THE SKINNY

— 64 —

The Skinny August 2021

Articles inside

We chat to CHVRCHES ahead of the release of their fourth

A deep dive into the history

Pop duo Sparks bring their recent shift to a more operatic sound to its natu- ral conclusion with Annette, screening at EIFF.

Ryan Braund introduces his indie animation Absolute Denial, created in lockdown.

Ahead of her appearance at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Torrey Peters dis-

Poet and playwright Inua Ellams on politics, performing and working with Saul Williams.

Fringe Dog returns, nature is healing. Celebrating five glorious years of the

As Edinburgh Art Festival

A new exhibition in the Scot tish National Portrait Gallery, Ruined, invites young people to create new work from the national collections.

Nina Mingya Powles

We meet political

Artist and director Jian Yi on new performance art and contemporary dance festival, Journey to the East.