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RY U I C H I S A K A M O T O : P L AY I N G T H E P I A N O
WHAT do we mean by sticking ‘formless future’ on the front of the mag in big letters? When we’ve got interviews with Amanda Palmer, Ong Keng Sen – Director of Theatreworks Singapore, David Simon – creator of The Wire, and all sorts of Edinburgh Festivals action to look forward to (let alone superstar DJ Carl Cox, or ‘greatest songwriter on earth’ Daniel Johnston)? Throughout the mag we’re looking forward to a month of high-calibre culture this month, but sometimes it’s worth taking that half-step back and trying to take in what it’s all about. Of course, everyone will have their opinions. Richard Holloway, for instance, who has stepped in as Director of the Book Festival, gives his sagacious take on the big hitters in Charlotte Square in the Reading section. But what about our overview? The Skinny has an explicit remit to cover the cutting-edge – we like to think that’s what keeps you coming back to read – and it can be particularly tricky to look for trends in the brand new without being underwhelming (most conceptual art criticism), plain wrong (Roni Size’s New Forms did not herald the dawn of drum ‘n’ bass as the primary form of UK music, despite what many were predicting), or self-serving (remember the NME’s ‘New Rock Revolution’ caper of a few years back?). Still, it is a fascinating question, that applies to more than just the arts: is it possible to identify trends in the unexpected? In advance of the cultural melee that is August in Scotland, we’re taking this question on wholeheartedly with our own event. Titled Enlightenment Now, we’re pulling together a top panel of experts to look at what connects the most exciting work being done today. Featuring Jonathan Mills (Director, Edinburgh International Festival), Jackie Wylie (Artistic Director, The Arches), and Fiona Bradley (Director, Fruitmarket Gallery), it takes place in the evening of 29 July (6.30pm, Edinburgh Festival Theatre); if you’ve picked up this issue early, you may still be able to get a – free
– ticket by emailing enlightenment@theskinny.co.uk. If not, rest assured we’ll be reporting on the event, ensuring that the arguments are given the widest public presence we can provide. Given that we’re expecting these leaders-in their-field to give some kind of definitive statement on what they value, it only feels right that we should make a similar commitment ourselves. And in doing so here I’ll also try to give a further clue as to what will be most exciting amongst the vast array of shows on this month. More than ever, the most exciting current work is that which is playing with form (you’ll see frequent references to things like cross-form art, even ‘bastard theatre’, throughout this issue). This has always been true to an extent - from making flint arrowheads to contemporary live art - but now (looking to our ‘formless future’) this playing needs to become more radical. It is no longer about a sense of progress, but a sense of exploring the multiple forms things take of their own accord. I’d go so far as to tie this new radicalism to two distinct cultural shifts that have taken place over the last twenty years, that everyone is at some level aware of. I’ll describe these as shortly as possible, as I’d far rather you took these away as ideas to consider than fully-formed statements of ‘fact’: - the study of global warming has alerted people to the scientific possibility that humans could end up responsible for the destruction of life on earth, and this awareness has affected, among a host of other things, our awareness of how time works - the increased confidence we have in our ability to process information with computers has led to the sense that at some point we can expect to read the universe as data; this in turn gives a strong impression that things are always other, and more, than they seem, not in a loose metaphorical way, but actually and practically I appreciate phrased this way these postulations are a bit vague. But if they can serve as a useful pointer towards the kind of factors that could be steering our collective half-conscious understanding, and in turn this can imply the sort of things that will be most exciting, most relevant, during this festival month, then I’ll be satisfied to have taken the punt. Of course, you may disagree entirely. Either way, please write. rupert@theskinny.co.uk
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4 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
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Sophie Kyle Rupert Thomson Dave Kerr Chris Duncan Nine Gareth K. Vile Gail Tolley Michael Gillespie Lizzie Cass-Maran Keir Hind Alex Cole Josh Wilson Rosamund West Ruth Marsh Jenny Wallace Jaco Justice
Matt MacLeod David Lemm Mike Sterry Rosamund West Euan Ferguson Michael Gillespie Paul Mitchell Gillian Watson Felice Howden Lara Moloney Steven Scott
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Illustration: Alasdair Boyce (a.boyce@dundee.ac.uk), Additional photography (winged girl): Tas Kyprianov
Contents
THE EDGE FESTIVAL IN ASSOCIATION WITH PCL PRESENT
WEDNESDAY 19TH AUGUST
COVER FEATURE
Edinburgh Festivals
FRIDAY 7TH AUGUST
Âť8
FRIDAY 7TH AUGUST
THURSDAY 20TH AUGUST
SATURDAY 8TH AUGUST
FRIDAY 21ST AUGUST
An insider's overview of theatre and comedy at the biggest performance party on earth.
6 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 32 33 34 36 56 61
Heads Up
Our guest panelists lift the lid on their anticipated Fringe highlights and we bid fond farewell to the Woodside Social.
SUNDAY 9TH AUGUST
Food and Drink
A look at some of the haute cuisine you'll be chowing down on of an evening at the Edinburgh Festival.
Fashion
Beads 'n' bunnets: it's urban chic to wear your granny's hat. Word.
Deviance
Lauren Mayberry takes a look at alternative culture's place in mainstream pornography. Mind the testicle clamps.
Showcase
FOUND present the all seeing, all feeling, music making Cybraphon. It's like an immobile Johnny 5 in an old cabinet with a wee keyboard, see.
Digital
SATURDAY 22ND AUGUST TUESDAY 11TH AUGUST WEDNESDAY 12TH AUGUST THURSDAY 13TH AUGUST
SUNDAY 23RD AUGUST TUESDAY 25TH AUGUST
FRIDAY 14TH AUGUST
WEDNESDAY 26TH AUGUST
SATURDAY 15TH AUGUST
THURSDAY 27TH AUGUST
Piracy hits stormy seas but that won't stop The Punisher from getting out his bazooka.
Reading Up close and political with David Simon, creator of The Wire. Sheeeeeeeeeyit.
FRIDAY 28TH AUGUST SUNDAY 16TH AUGUST SATURDAY 29TH AUGUST
Film
Why direct your own documentary when you can petition Al Gore? Plus, post blockbuster fatigue, it's indie film a-go-go with verdicts on Mesrine, Adam and Pedro Almodovar's latest flick.
MONDAY 17TH AUGUST
SUNDAY 30TH AUGUST
TUESDAY 18TH AUGUST
MONDAY 31ST AUGUST
Theatre
Beyond the Fringe: Gareth Vile looks to promising new shows in Aberdeen and Glasgow for theatrical respite away from the festival throng.
Comedy A look inside Bratchy and the Wee Man's Comedy Pub Quiz.
Art
Art, August and Auld Reekie: A nosey at the Rough Cut Nation collective, the scuplture of Eva Hesse and the Enlightenments show.
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In the hot tub with Amanda Palmer, Daniel Johnston, Metric and Wild Beasts (left). Kinky, like. Plus previews of Tartan Heart Festival, David Byrne, Mitchell Museum and Thank You Frankley.
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Clubs
Musika bring the curtain down on a month of late night comedy spectating and flyer dodging with Felix Da Housecat, Slam and Japanese Popstars. Plus a Carl Cox exclusive.
Listings
Festi-what? Join the tourists or get the hell out of Dodge. We'll show you the way.
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 5
Lifestyle
HEADS YOUR
UPMONTH AHEAD The Big One: Faust When Tim Crouch wowed the Edinburgh Festivals with his new conceptual play England two years ago, all it consisted of in terms of production was Crouch and Hannah Wringham, dressed as themselves, in the Fruitmarket Gallery. Nothing wrong with that. But when theatre can go epic, highentertainment, frightening and grand, all within the bounds of appropriateness to subject matter, then fuck it, why not? Some level of cavalier confidence has undoubtedly gone into Silviu Purcarete’s free adaptation of Goethe’s Faust, which features a cast of over 100, far-out costumes, fire, blood, and more suffering than you can shake a strobe light at. If you will go and sell your soul in pursuit of infinite knowledge, you can at least be assured it won’t be small-time. And if you get out to Ingliston this August, you can be sure of a appropriately massive experience. Faust, Lowland Hall, Ingliston, 18-22 Aug (22nd sold out), 7.30pm, £20. www.eif.co.uk
Heads Down:
A Eulogy For the Woodside Social Club The dusk sky above Glasgow’s West End was last month bisected by a dark, funereal streak: Superfly, erstwhile ‘epicentre of bohemian psyche-cool’, revved up its soul-powered engines and took flight, once and for all, from the Woodside Social Club in Glasgow. For one hundred Saturday nights, the Woody has opened its doors and its ever-welcoming arms to embrace an eclectic mix of glistening revellers. Playing a mix of soul, funk, classic rock and indie, Superfly has always been a party night with its heart firmly in the right place: the dancefloor. And although the night itself is set for a wee flit across Hillhead to the Hetherington Research Club, it leaves its spiritual home to a familiar fate. Accordingly, as the developers circle like vultures, it seems only fitting to dedicate a ‘heads down’ homage to this singular, irreplaceable venue. Eulogies are always difficult – they should be. Partly, this comes from the impossibility of pointing a finger at just exactly what it is that makes a person, or place, unique and worthy of adoration. And partly, it is this pointing process in itself which is fraught, bound up as it is with the revisiting of memories, of stories, of people. It is with mixed emotions, then, that I jab my finger in the direction of a few of the qualities that endeared the Woody so warmly to me. To talk of the Woodside’s warm endearments seems apt. For the collective sensory memory of nights held there must surely be of that sweltering heat, product of the pulsating dancefloor and the frenetic bob of its crowd. I loved the noble uselessness of the solitary floor fan to the right of the wee stage – an ineffectual underdog in a venue embroiled in its own losing battle. The throb of the heat, the volume of the music, the bustle of the floor: all these combined, at their best, to give an impression of bacchanalian chaos. Yet underpinning this was always a quiet, dignified civility. The bouncer presence was always minimal: often one specific gent, a smile peeking perpetually through his
6 THE SKINNY August 2009
Photo: Tom Manley, tinyurl.com/tommanley. This image won a social documentary award, by the Glasgow Institute of Architects. for more info contact: tfmphotographics@yahoo.co.uk.
beard. The bar arrangement, too, seemed somehow democratic – a partition between the body of the club and the bar encouraged the crowd seamlessly into a serpentine queue. One-behind-the-other, no shoving here, please. Not for our Woodside Social. A social club is nowt, naturally, without the folk that socialise. Because of its location, tucked away from the main after-hour hubs of the city, the Woody welcomed a discerning, deliberate crowd, intent on a specific type of club experience. It is perhaps this commonality that I’ll miss the most – on certain nights you could believe that this place was here for you, and you for it. The perception of belonging, of shared purpose, manifested itself in the care with which the nights were put on; whether it was the wall projections and
the flyers of Superfly, or the pamphlets, badges and playlists of the National Pop League, the labour, love and nurture behind the club nights inspired a loyal devotion and following, typified by NPL’s active web community (tinyurl.com/m2bume). My fond, residual memory of the last Superfly will be of a specific 2am tableau: a trio of ‘one-more-tune’ stragglers, shining with sweat and genuflecting at that solitary floor fan on the stage, putting the ‘messy’ in ‘messianic’. MJ’s Earth Song sprung grubbily into mind, entirely unwelcomed yet somehow fitting. Michael Jackson and Glasgow’s Woodside Social Club. Two icons of their time, two lives affected by factors outwith their control, two untimely demises. Still: I know which passing I’ll mourn more personally. [Roddy Wallace]
Pic ‘n’ Mix
There's so much on this month, we're like kids in a sweetie shop... As the Fringe eclipses the Scottish events scene, it’s just plain wrong to forget about all the other quality offerings for August. Rock at the Racecourse (Kelso Racecourse, Saturday 29 August) is an exciting new live music event which include top bands, modern bagpiping and merry singalongs that is a welcome and diverse alternative to the summer festival calendar. Another festival with a twist on the same day that has caught our eye is the Auchentoshan Whisky Festival (The Auchentoshan Whisky Distillery, Dalmuir, Saturday 29 August), promising tours, tastings, live music and a farmers’ market (to ensure you’ve got some food to line your stomach for the drams). Not by any means fading into the Fringe background, The Edinburgh Mela (7-9 August, Pilrig Park) celebrates Scotland’s cultural diversity with two days of performance and celebration. Attracting over 20,000 people a year, it’s definitely doing something right… On the subject of diversity, The Glasgow Film Theatre continues its delightfully eclectic programming with the eagerly anticipated film accompaniment to the second album from Noah And The Whale (GFT, 1 September). Keep your eyes peeled for a guest performance from the band themselves. The Aberdeen International Youth Festival (30 July until 8 August) gives those sullen teenagers on their school holidays a cultural kick up the backside with a huge range of varied performances. With such a unique platform for youth talent, it’s only a matter of time before we find our next Susan Boyle… [Jenny Wallace] [Jenny Wallace is Director of Ventures at Dada]
Lifestyle
The (Fringe) Panel
We ask the experts for their top festival recommendations
Last month, we kicked off the Skinny’s first Heads Up Panel which brought experts in their given sector of the Scottish events scene together to give us their top tips for the upcoming month. This month, we present a special guest panel, with a selection of the leading lights from the Fringe. Here they are for your social consumption with their lovingly chosen recommendations for August… (Naturally, they all took the opportunity to recommend one of their own shows) [Compiled by Jenny Wallace]
The Skinny will be covering the Edinburgh Festivals throughout August. Get online at
theskinny.co.uk
for hudreds of reviews and features, or grab a copy of our sister magazine Fest, available from venues across Edinburgh throughout August. theskinny.co.uk/ edinburghfestival
rufus t fahrenheit director, bongo club cabaret Reminiscent of the crooners of the 40s and 50s, Rufus is like the forgotten son of a three-way tryst between Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland and is also producer and director of the Bongo Club Cabaret – The Fringe’s longest running and most notorious cabaret show. The Bongo Club Cabaret Bongo Club, 37 Holyrood Road. 7-30 Aug (not 15 & 21) at 10.15pm. Tickets £8 (£7)
Of course I had to recommend this. The longest running cabaret show at the Fringe, the Bongo Club Cabaret mixes it up every night with a brand-new selection of Fringe stars. In the absence of the Spiegelgarden, it’s the late-night venue of choice at this year’s Fringe. Does this Piano make My Ass Look Big The Bongo Club, 37 Holyrood Road. 7-29 Aug (not 10, 17 & 24) at 7.20pm Tickets £8 (£6)
A legend in her own right, this international cabaret songbird has toured with The Damned, written music with Courtney Love and wowed cabaret audiences across the world, and now she is telling her epic story in this one-woman musical. Frisky and Mannish’s School of Pop
jayne gross communications, assembly festival Jayne Gross heads up Communications for the Assembly Festival which is the largest producing venue on the Fringe, celebrating its 29th birthday at the 2009 Fringe. The Assembly has 90 shows this year spread across two main venues on George Street and at Assembly Hall. Prime of Miss Jean Brodie/ Girls of Slender Means Assembly Theatre 6-31 Aug midday (Jean Brodie) and 2.50pm (Girls of Slender Means) Tickets from £10.
In this year of Homecoming, Assembly is delighted to be presenting two largescale productions from the literary genius of Muriel Spark. One is her classic Edinburgh tale of Jean Brodie, and the second is a production of Muriel Spark’s own favourite novel The Girls of Slender Means. Really powerful stuff.
Traverse Theatre, 18-30 Aug at various times. Tickets from £11.
Spectrum
A brilliant piece of theatre from Hoi Polloi presented at the Traverse as part of the British Council Showcase 2009. There’s so much going on at the Fringe that it’s easy to overlook amazing theatre; I recommend that you really try to catch this one.
(not 18) at 9.00pm Tickets £10.50 (£9.50)
Jamie Kilstein: Revenge of the Serfs Assembly 6-31 Aug at 9pm Tickets from £5.
Sharp and engaging political comedy from one of America’s brightest young comics. With tickets at a fiver, it’s not going to break the bank and it will definitely feed your mind…
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The Doubtful Guest
My personal favourite act ever! Impossible to describe and just as difficult to believe. Frisky & Mannish’s twisted take on popular music will leave you wondering how you can ever listen to songs again without hearing the real truth of those lyrics! The best thing you’ll see at the Fringe this year.
EDINBURGH
Castle Rocks Breakdance Championships
With some of the best breakdancing crews in the world invited to battle it out for the coveted title, it’s no surprise that Castle Rocks has been sell out for the past ten years and tickets are already selling fast for this year. Scottish crews will vie to beat off the international competitors and take the title for the first time!
Underbelly, 56 Cowgate. 6-30 Aug
ENTS 3D/2D PRES
paul wan and peter maniam founders, castle rocks breakdance championship Paul Wan and Peter Maniam from Castle Rocks Paul Wan aka DJ P-Stylz and Peter Maniam aka Bboy Dhalsim are both members of Random Aspekts Crew and jointly are founders of the Castle Rocks Breakdance Championships, putting the blossoming Scottish bboy scene on the world map.
C Venue Aug 5–31 Tickets from £4.50-9.50
James MacKenzie programming director, Zoo Venues James Mackenzie is the programming director and co-founder of Zoo Venues, which has run the award-winning Zoo Southside and The Zoo at the Edinburgh Fringe since 2002. Tim: Against All Odds Underbelly 6-30 Aug at 15:00 Tickets £6-£10
The Roaring Boys impressed with their show about Cliff Richard and cannibalism last year and I’ve already heard a good buzz about their 2009 offering… Raw Dance Base Out of the Blue, Drill Hall 14-27 Aug at14:00 and 21:00 Tickets £10-12
I’m really interested in what Dance Base are putting on out at the Drill Hall and this nightlife-themed, largely aerial piece looks spectacular. Inventing the Sky Zoo Southside 7-31 Aug at 22:30 Tickets £8-£10
It’s hard to pick just one show from our own programme, but this emerging Russian company deserve attention for their beautiful UK debut.
East London Dance Associates companies Avant Garde Dance present an electrifying televisual piece of dance all throughout August. These guys are amazing, and have performed at the MTV Europe Awards, Top of The Pops and on MTV Base. Street Jam Underbelly’s Pasture, Bristo Square AuG 6-31 Tickets from £10 - £14.50
This show has been really hyped. Including a cast of free-runners and a pumping soundtrack, it’s totally unmissable.
More festival recommendations
online theskinny.co.uk
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August 2009
THE SKINNY 7
EDINBURGH FESTIVALS THE SKINNY ON THE THEATRE THAT MATTERS WELCOME FEARLESS FESTIVAL FROTTAGERS And so begins another festival. Our team of dedicated writers have been frantically seeking out the pearls among the swine: finding the best dance, the best venues and the thrilling performers, from opera through to cabaret.
Close Encounters
Gareth K Vile takes a closer look at the highlights of the International Festival
The International Festival (see right) is a rare chance to see work that regularly sells out around the world, but is sadly absent from the monthly listings in Scotland. Ong Keng Sen speaks about his work, Diaspora, a thoroughly contemporary piece in both form and content. Since the Fringe is often called an invasionby-southerners, we've taken the time to look out the best Scottish artists in the Fringe; although some are supported by the Scottish Parliament’s programme, none of them are parochial. From comedy dance to dark classics, Scottish artists aim to make the Homecoming year a triumph for the homegrown artist.
DIASPORA
KARIN SCHAUPP
The Skinny’s commitment to the radical is reflected in our coverage of both dance and cabaret. Dance has been at the forefront of experimentation since Martha Graham flung off her pointe shoes, while cabaret, through the likes of Cat Aclysmic, The Creative Martyrs and Dusty Limits, is evolving from a form steeped in tradition to something complex and expressive. The horror of the Fringe is what we miss: our website (www.theskinny.co.uk) offers interviews and previews that we didn’t have room to feature. Look out for Lotte’s Gift, which presents classical guitar superstar Karin Schaupp as an actress in a show about her grandmother’s thwarted ambitions and personal resilience. Also worth a look is 2Faced Dance, who are back again at Zoo to astound, and Helix - their artistic director makes a compelling case for a necessary revolution in dance’s public perception. There is life beyond the Fringe too - a few companies are braving Glasgow and Aberdeen this month - and even life beyond theatre (!). Comedy coverage starts on page 12, with an overview of free fringe events: sketch shows, feel-good comedies and serious humour. [Gareth K Vile]
8 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
THE International Festival is often lost during the Fringe coverage, regarded as little more than a series of more expensive, more traditional events that happen to overlap with the smaller performances. Yet the programming for the International Festival has strong thematic connections and is both challenging and popular, creating the elusive new audiences for difficult hybrids of dance, opera and drama. Aside from Michael Clark, the former enfant terrible of dance who is settling into a middle-age that retains his punk bite while acknowledging the ballet tradition, and Scottish Ballet’s triple bill, Christian Spuck is bringing the Royal Ballet of Flanders to Edinburgh. The Return of Ulysses updates the Homeric myth, homing in on the often ignored character of Ulysses’ wife. “I’m more fascinated by Penelope, her decision to wait twenty years for her husband,” he says. “There are people constantly attacking her, telling her to give up – not to be nice, but to get power.” By shifting the emphasis from Ulysses’ heroism, and updating the costumes to the modern era – with some ironic twists, such as the sea-god Poseidon in flippers, Spuck attempts to emphasise the timelessness of the myth without simply stressing its iconic status. “I like to find a story and try to transform it,” he admits. “It’s very modern. It has no connection to the myth, just the basic story.” Re-imagining Penelope as the central character has been done before – most notably by Margaret Atwood in her Penelopiad. Spuck, however, is not working from an explicitly feminist sensibility, unlike Atwood. He is discovering a theme in the Odyssey that resonates with modern culture, and it is best exposed in the wife’s waiting. “It’s about boredom,” a subject that has preoccupied theatre since Beckett – not least because it offers a challenge to the performers in expressing boredom without simply being dull. Spuck also enjoys the irony of Penelope’s reunion with her husband. “When he returns, she doesn’t
recognise him. The ballet goes on to the moment of the return.” In the original, Ulysses then fights and defeats his enemies, before being re-united with Penelope in one of the most sensual passages in Greek literature. “The killing happens at the start of our story,” Spuck concludes. “Then the action happens backwards.” Since Montiverdi’s Il Rittorno d’Ulisse is also running in the festival, it seems clear that there is life in this particular epic. Spuck’s modernisation of the tale is a noble attempt to use an archetypal myth for contemporary issues. His style, which owes much to musical theatre and jazz as much as ballet, boasts a score of both Purcell and Doris Day, matching kitsch with intensity. If the Homecoming year is a political ploy to attract tourists, Ong Keng Sen’s Diaspora brings a more nuanced reading to ideas of migration and homeland. “I am interested in the bastard.” Ong Keng Sen lives in Singapore, from a Chinese family and, educated at a protestant school, embodies the complex modern ideas of cultural identity. “I didn’t set out to make anything autobiographical,” he adds, although his own background must heavily inform his own take on migrancy. “In my early days of research, it was always about the classical, the traditional. Suddenly I was encountering young people who, like me, were mixtures. I’d been concentrating on the traditional, but my life is contemporary and urban – why not make a piece from that?” Diaspora is a multimedia work, incorporating two thousand years of Asian music with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, and specially commissioned video stories. It grapples with notions of identity and nationhood, withut offering the simple slogans that often stand in for debate. “Identity,” laughs Ong Keng Sen. “This word is looking haggard around the eyes. Identity is constantly evolving.” In particular, Diaspora has a distinctive take on the ideas that hoover around the Homecoming year.
When Scottishness is so often reduced to Braveheart sentimentality – and some unpleasant anti-English racism – Diaspora brings in some much needed complexity. “It’s not really a homecoming to just come to Scotland. I have a resistance against the natural order of thinking that just because your grandparents came from here you are also from here. It’s much more complex than that.” By chasing the experience of “The Asian Scot”, Diaspora offers a fragment of the migration story – an approach which is suited to the Eastern school of theatre which Ong Keng Sen calls “similar to MTV – little bubbles, you don’t have long expositions on a theme. It’s more like a mosaic.” And despite his grounding in indigenous theatre in Singapore, his work has an internationalist’s flair and a positive engagement with the modern world and other media. “It’s very natural in Singapore to work with other art forms. Theatre in Asia is not necessarily text based – movement and dance is typical, a music theatre. It is moving away from purity and authenticity to a bastard situation.” Diaspora has that synthesis of content and form that is so often lacking: here is a a performance that talks of fragmentation and integration in a theatrical experience that mirrors the subject. Works of this scale could only really be part of the International Festival, in terms of scale and financing. Not only does the Festival feed the culture of Scotland, it is adding subtlety to a debate that is often confined to tabloids and party-politics, and offers the sort of challenging perspective on nationhood that is art’s responsibilty. This time, not only are the ideas present, they are set to reach an audience that might actually be challenged by them. DIASPORA (THEATRE WORKS) 8PM 15-16 AUG, PLAYHOUSE RETURN OF ULYSSES (ROYAL BALLET OF FLANDERS) 21-24 AUG, PLAYHOUSE WWW.EIF.CO.UK
Homebrew Homecoming Michael Cox and Clare Sinclair investigate the impact of the Made in Scotland project on this year's festival theatre “THERE are between 1,000 and 1,200 promoters and scouts who come to the Edinburgh festivals every year. And the aim of Made in Scotland is to raise the profile of Scottish theatre and dance to those visiting promoters and scouts and to nurture and encourage an international creative dialogue.” So says Owen O’Leary, arts publicist for this ambitious project. Made in Scotland was a cornerstone in the SNP’s manifesto: a three-year project with over £1 million in funding, it hopes to give Scottish theatre and dance a serious platform on the Fringe, allowing international eyes to see the best of Scottish work. Initially, there were over 40 applications for Made in Scotland’s inaugural year. Of these, 14 made the shortlist, each ranging in artistic stature and style. “It’s a celebration of drinking and sex, which are two things that happen quite a lot in Edinburgh during the Festival,” says Ben Harrison, director of Grid Iron’s latest and one of the Made in Scotland productions: Barflies. Barflies marks Grid Iron’s return to the Festival after a three year absence due to international touring. Based on the writings of American Charles Bukowski, the play is a site-responsive production set in the Barony Bar. “Judith Doherty and I were in New York a few years ago, wandering around, and this woman fell out of this bar. And I said to Jude, ‘There’s a classic barfly’. And it reminded us of the film Barfly, which in itself was based on Bukowski’s stories. It led us to think, ‘Oh, wow, we could stage a piece in our local pub’. By the end of the night, we’d dreamed up the production.” Harrison studied Bukowski’s stories before writing an adaptation, focusing on three short stories. Of Bukowski, Harrison said, “He’s a man who understands about drinking culture.” Though originally set in Los Angeles, Barflies has been “transposed into a Scottish context”. As for the film, Harrison states that it assisted with creating mood and tone, helped Mickey Rourke’s convincing performance as a drunk. Showcasing two performances this August is writer and director David Leddy, with Susurrus and White Tea. Susurrus has been rewritten for the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens for its return, cited by Leddy himself as “such an exciting, remarkable place to go to work: the most beautiful place in Edinburgh, I think”. The drama takes the audience member individually through the gardens, guided by a story through a headset by actors Paul Thomas Hickey, Wendy Seager, Karen Ramsey and Stewart Ennis. “Lots of the events have moved location and make reference to places in the garden, and to Edinburgh. Jenners even gets a mention.” White Tea, in association with the Tron is even more intimate: “The show’s a multi-media spectacular that normally would be done on a huge stage, but I wanted to make something close and intimate where you get that same visual and sonic spectacle, but you can still see the hairs standing up on the back of the actors’ necks.” Gabriel Quigley and Alisa Anderson lead the performance involving audiences wearing white paper kimonos and drinking white tea. Comparatively, these two performances seem to be worlds apart from each other; however Leddy describes the two pieces of work as “companion pieces, sort of like a set of salt and pepper shakers. Whilst they’re definitely separate, they compliment each other. Susurrus is completely sound-based and White Tea is very visual and highly technical with an amazing
There’s a more relaxed atmosphere with it. I think people enjoy that breaking of the fourth wall and not seeing a straight play as such. There’s a slightly cabaretish element to it.” On the audience reactions to Midsummer, Bissett says, “It’s a breath of fresh air that’s very enjoyable without, being fluff y or vacuous. It’s got incredible heart and honesty and incredible insight. People who don’t usually like theatre come away loving it.” Even beyond the Made in Scotland programme, Scottish acts look set to dominate the Fringe: the Traverse offers new work from Rona Munro, and the Stand is recreating Gregory Burke’s
"IT’S A CELEBRATION OF DRINKING AND SEX, WHICH ARE TWO THINGS THAT HAPPEN QUITE A LOT IN EDINBURGH DURING THE FESTIVAL" Gargarin Way, an earlier work from the writer of Blackwatch. And Edinburgh’s dynamic Magnetic North are presenting Walden, a personal journey through the American mystic Henry David Thoreau's experiences in self-sufficiency. “As soon as I started reading the book, I knew that I wanted to make a performance from it – I think it was because of the directness of Thoreau’s voice,” comments artistic director Nicholas Bone. Walden is a journal, part philosophy, part memoir and the production is a simple one man show. The nature of the book helped to define the nature of the production: “It seemed essential to make the simplest piece of theatre possible – this was about someone simplifying their life after all – that the idea of performing in a white space with no theatrical paraphernalia like lanterns and blackouts seemed perfect.” If the Fringe can feel like an imposition on the North, a holiday for London bohemians and a confusing plethora of uncertain qualities, Scottish theatre is ready to astound the international community, with work of beauty, complexity, precision and direct expression of profound emotions. WHITE TEA
installation, projection on all four walls and even the ceiling, sound coming from eight different directions, lasers and LED projections” – all made possible by working with production team Becky Minto, Tim Reid, Nich Smith and Graham Sutherland, who have won countless awards. “People who come to both shows will see lots of deliberate links and quotations from one piece to the other. They’re very detailed pieces. Whilst the stories are completely separate, the characters in each story do know the characters in the other story and do influence the events in the narrative.” Whether it’s something site-specific or something visually spectacular to see this Festival, Leddy can provide. “I think it’s a piece of theatre for people who
hate theatre,” says Cora Bissett, speaking about another Made in Scotland entry: Midsummer. Midsummer is a remount of a last year’s vastly successful production. Written by playwright David Greig with music by Gordon McIntyre, the play follows the lives of two thirty-somethings trying to make sense of their present life in Edinburgh. Speaking about the play’s appeal, Bissett said, “David’s writing wins people over because it’s very human, it’s very real, it’s very vulnerable and naked. And there’s a moment for everyone in the play where they go ‘Oh God, that’s me!’” Matthew Pidgeon, Bissett’s co-star, says, “I think really what it is, is that it’s a beautiful script and I think people like the connection we have with the audience.
BARFLIES (GRID IRON) TRAVERSE @ THE BARONY * VENUE 311 7 – 13, 16 – 20, 23 – 27, 30 – 31 AUG 15:00; 24 – 25 AUG 12:00. £16 MIDSUMMER (TRAVERSE THEATRE COMPANY) TRAVERSE THEATRE * VENUE 15 6 – 30 AUG (EXCEPT MONDAYS). PERFORMANCE TIMES VARY. £16 (£11) SUSURRUS (FIRE EXIT/DAVID LEDDY) ASSEMBLY @ ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN EDINBURGH (JOHN HOPE GATEWAY) * VENUE 240 4 AUG – 6 SEPT DAILY EVERY 30 MINUTES FROM 10.00 – 17.00 £8 (£7) WHITE TEA (FIRE EXIT/DAVID LEDDY AND TRON THEATRE COMPANY) ASSEMBLY @ GEORGE STREET – SCOTT ROOM * VENUE 3 6 AUG 14.00 & 17.00; 10, 12 – 13, 17, 19 – 20, 24, 26 – 27, 31 AUG 14.00 & 17.00 £9.00 7 – 9, 14 – 16, 21 – 23, 28 – 30 AUG 14.00 & 17.00 £10 WALDEN (MAGNETIC NORTH) DOVECOT GALLERY 17 – 29 AUG, 15.00 £10 WWW.SCOTTISHTHEATRE.ORG/MADEINSCOTLAND
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 9
EDINBURGH FESTIVALS THE SKINNY ON THE THEATRE THAT MATTERS
High Flying Dance
Animal House Seth Ewin and Gareth K Vile get involved with the award-winning Zoo venues
Gareth K Vile and Susannah Radford discuss the upcoming dance treats at the Fringe
LUXURIA
NOT only are there dedicated venues for dance and physical theatre - like Dance Base and Zoo - every festival, but a host of disparate international companies also hurry to Edinburgh to compete for our love. This year The Skinny has teamed up with Dance Base to create a daily publication throughout the Fringe, and an early preview reveals another year crammed with stunning work. Dance Base is leading the charge with their Give Dance A Chance programme. As Morag Deyes, Artistic Director says: “Our festivalling manifesto thumps the tub in favour of original work, fresh ideas, uncompromising vision. And, because we believe in radical, there’s some really reckless, bold, wild spirits.” These restless spirits include master of butoh Lindsay John, and Iona Kewney, who has worked with Les Ballets C de la B. There is even space for Ian Smith, the live art agent provocateur. The Dance Base programme is inspired by the spirit of freedom heralded by Obama’s election and Morag’s own sabbatical. From the child-friendly Dilly Dilly by Tabula Rasa, through to Shamita Ray’s updating of traditional Indian dance, Give Dance a Chance captures the full range of modern activity - and then some. Al Seed’s association with physical theatre is broadened by his collaboration with David Hughes. “After seeing my show The Factory, David offered me a commission for his company with him taking charge of the choreography,” Al explains. “The calibre and daring of the dancers has provided an incredible opportunity to explore how plastic the boundaries between physical theatre and dance really are.” The Red Room is classic Seed. Abandoning a simple narrative, Hughes and Seed use expressionist sequences to uncover a mood of foreboding and terror. “A series of extremely potent images that together provide a visceral sensation of horror: the story has this wonderful hallucinogenic quality that felt perfect for a visual and musical re-working.” This year sees the welcome return of the Scottish Dance Theatre to Zoo venues. Building on last year’s success, SDT’s new season contains the sweet balance
10 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
of something old and something new with the return of Liv Lorent’s Luxuria, and A Visitation, a new commission from Norwegian choreographer Ina Christel Johannessen. SDT’s Artistic Director Janet Smith has been following Johannessen’s work since the company saw a performance of It’s Only a Rehearsal at a recent Fringe. It was a “very intriguing duet that drew contemporary life and Greek mythology together.” Inspired by Polish writer Bruno Schultz’s work, A Visitation looks set to be a ghostly tale. The award winning Luxuria was first performed by SDT in 2005. It’s a treat for both audience and dancer that this piece is being remounted. “Companies often throw away dance and theatre pieces all too soon in a working pattern of creating and touring in a limited national touring circuit,” says Smith. “Returning to work allows dancers to further invest and discover and gives value to an art that can be all too transitory and throw-away.” Both shows promise a haunting, vivid journey as the innately theatrical SDT evoke strong emotional states through powerful imagery. For Smith, “dance is the first thing. It connects us to ourselves, to each other and to something else it’s the whole body singing.” Back at Dance Base, the last word has to go to Ian Smith. “The punters are invited to read my personal memories out to me as bedtime stories. It should hopefully feel quite intimate, vulnerable and dreamy. I’m hoping that is entertaining in itself, but more importantly it might spark some intimate reverie within the punters too. Mind you, we’re in a toilet, so we have our work cut out!” DANCE BASE: WWW.DANCE BASE.CO.UK/FESTIVAL-2009 THE RED ROOM (DAVID HUGHES DANCE) TRAVERSE THEATRE, AUG 8-16 VARIOUS TIMES £16 WWW. TRAVERSE.CO.UK LUXURIA (SCOTTISH DANCE THEATRE) ZOO SOUTHSIDE * VENUE 82 18-19, 22-23, 27-28 AUG 19.00 * £10 A VISITATION (SCOTTISH DANCE THEATRE) ZOO SOUTHSIDE * VENUE 82 AUG 20 - 21, 25 - 26, 29 - 30 AUG 19.00 * £10 FRINGE BOX OFFICE: 0131 226 0000 WWW.DANCE BASE.CO.UK/FESTIVAL-2009.HTML
ONE UP ONE DOWN
ZOO venues will be an ideal place to escape to during the Fringe if the zombie apocalypse were to begin. “Zoo is the best of all venues due to the dance productions. Dancers are extremely useful due to their increased stamina, and their very tight clothing means that bites are easy to spot, so you know if they’ve been infected,” said Dr Dale, expert on all things zombie. Dr Dale and his fellow academics from The School of Survival will be delivering their seminar How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse every day at 7.45pm. Zoo Southside, an old church, could possibly become a panic zone in the apocalypse, attracting too many people looking for sanctuary. That it is now a venue will be an advantage, however, said Dr Dale. “Performance venues are highly sought after as survival spaces, because of their lack of windows, limited access and supply of tubs of ice cream with wooden spoons (that can be whittled down to make very small spears).” Dr Dale is not the only one drawn to Zoo. Tangram Theatre have found the place ideal for their claustrophobic thriller Art House: “A space that could give us a real sense of four walls, of a man made cage,” as director Daniel Goodman describes it. Art House has been devised by Tangram with playwright Rachael Coopes over five years, with Rachael coming across from Australia specially to work with the cast. Also from Australia, Melbourne-based Outcast will be performing a Steven Dawson play at the Fringe after the success of his Butt Boy And Tigger last year. While Butt Boy involved dialogue across the internet, this year’s Jane Austen’s Guide To Pornography will involve dialogue across the centuries, as a smutty present-day writer exchanges ideas on plots, characters and sex with Austen. Dawson said they chose the Zoo Southside because they “are going very intimate, and the Zoo studio seems perfect”. For dance, Zoo remains a prime mover. Glasgow’s Natasha Gilmore joins the acrobatic 2faced Dance and
the politics of Tilted’s Trapped in a line-up that spans contemporary, ballet and jazz. In One Up One Down, Natasha takes on consumerism, as three women struggle to reconcile flawless beauty and professional success. “It’s about the constraints that we all feel - about the moulds that we are trying to squeeze into that we can’t always fulfil,” Gilmore explains. Through a series of pointed questions, she challenges the promises of materialism. “Even simple things like - are you able to stay in the house and look after the kids and be sexy? What pressure does it put on you to do it all? “There is still humour, and references to popular culture,” she adds. “These women being forced into these places just look funny.” The seriousness is sweetened by wit and by Gilmore’s fusion of styles. Where she has dealt in the past with the personal, she now observes the political dimension. An even more political take comes from Maresa von Stockert’s Trapped. “I am amazed by the amount of CCTV in the UK. Often we are not even aware that we are being watched,” she says. This encouraged her to compare our society to the former East Germany, all set to a driving motorik score. “Trapped is not literally about the GDR: set in an imaginary state, it tells fictional stories of five characters,” she says. Yet it is inspired by the GDR’s surveillance. “Germany after the war can by no means be compared with the UK today. The surveillance in the UK is meant to be completely different to that in the GDR – but is it always? Trapped is full of dark humour as well being thought-provoking,” she concludes, “tragicomedy alongside charged drama; people’s stories told through spoken text merged with dance.” A programme of dance, drama, pornography and politics. Just don’t feed the zombies. SEE WWW.ZOOVENUES.CO.UK FOR INFORMATION AND TICKETS
Shockhead Theatre
Erin McElhinney gets to grips with the sexy, salacious and shocking side of the festival, the cabaret
des o'connor
Hmm, let’s see. You’ll have, no doubt, read numerous articles over recent years about the ‘resurgence’ of burlesque, the ‘rediscovery’ of vaudeville, the ‘revival’ of music hall. Here at The Skinny we reckon that our readers - given their tendency to have not merely their finger, but both feet firmly planted on the cultural pulse – have grasped the fact that cabaret is back, and intend to proceed straight to dishing the dirt on the highlights said genre offers this festival. A quick word search in the electronic version of the Fringe programme throws up no less than 81 usages of the word ‘cabaret’, and, needless to say, some of them are sorely misused. To be clear, we’re strictly talking about the type of show that contains some combination of sequins, eyeliner, smoky voices and mesmerising feats; the unusual, the downright bizarre, a tease and a satire in equal measure. If you’re looking for variety, the first port of call should always be The Bongo Club Cabaret; running in a variety of guises for a number of years, it trawls through every show in town, picking out the weird, wonderful and scintillatingly saucy to appear in a constantly changing nightly line-up (hosted by the inimitable Dusty Limits), and is one of the best-value tickets in town. Slightly more on the rich side, but upping the glamour stakes, is the Ministry of Burlesque’s High Tease at the Voodoo Rooms; with a wealth of experience and contacts, you can expect the crème de la crème to appear here. Or check out the newer, more avant garde Kabarett’s Kleine Komedie, part of PBH’s Free Fringe: you may not always like the acts, but you won’t be able to look away…
The Fringe is, as ever, unique in bringing numerous ‘must see’ acts in one place, and cabaret-wise, darlink, this year you’re spoilt for choice. In the ‘lucky-if-you-get-a-ticket’ category is Camille O’Sullivan: Dark Angel at Assembly (a seductive siren) and The Tiger Lilies with their Olivier Award-winning Shockheaded Peter, while longtime Fringers Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen are appearing in no less than two venues (Assembly and The Queen’s Hall) and are always worth a look. Debut shows that are bound to produce a buzz this year include the completely bonkers Kitten on the Keys, who performs her own unique material on mental illness, addiction and rock ‘n’ roll, and Desmorphia, a long overdue musical comedy showcase, fronted by the delectable Des O’Connor – ‘Cheap, Shite, White Wine’ is worth the ticket price alone. And then there’s the UK debut of the Controlled Falling Project – currently touring Australia – at the Underbelly, a show pretty much guaranteed to leave you gasping at the acrobatic skill of the human body. With the Spiegeltent taking a well-earned break this year, there were concerns that absence of the Fringe’s natural home of all things cabaret would mean a programme lacking in sparkly avant garde; but with a wealth of headliners and even more unknowns to discover, it’s time to break out the feather boas. And, er, there’s always the Lady Boys, of course. Cough... www.theskinny.co.uk/edinburghfestival
August 2009
THE SKINNY 11
EDINBURGH FESTIVALS THE SKINNY ON COMEDY WITH AN EDGE WELCOME TO EDINBURGH So where do you start? There’s the Fringe brochure. There’s the Free Fringe brochure. There’s the Free Festival brochure. There’s the Edinburgh Comedy Festival brochure. There’s the Five Pound Fringe brochure. There are the venue brochures. There are the websites. There are hundreds of different comedy shows telling you that they are THE most exciting, innovative, thought provoking, side splitting show that you’ll see, not only at the Fringe but in your entire life. It’s hard to know where to start. So we’ll let you in on a couple of secrets: 1) A lot of these shows are shit. Someone whose Mum thinks they’re just hilarious; topical, edgy material about the second world war; yet another clichéd Jackson gag; awards given out by deaf pigeons... the list goes on. It’s a minefield out there. We’re here to try and
help you sidestep these shows and experience the funniest Edinburgh possible. 2) A great deal of these shows are massively overpriced. I’m not saying there aren’t comedians worth paying for; I would happily sell my wife to see some acts, but let’s face it, we’re in a credit crunch. If you’re going to pay 15 or 20 quid on a show, you want to know that it’s worth it. 3)A lot of shows might be technically and critically very good, but you just won’t like them. That’s ok. If political humour, offensive diatribes or improv are just not your thing, you don’t have to feel dispirited or turned off comedy for life. Just try something else. We’ve split the Fringe up into manageable self-defined categories with recommendations under each, so there’s something for everyone no matter how you like your comedy. Don’t forget you can also log on to www.theskinny.co.uk for the latest reviews and more previews. Happy Edinburgh! Lizzie
THE FREE FRINGE AND FREE FESTIVAL: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE THERE’S this elitist view that if something is free, it’s not worth paying for. But the Laughing Horse Free Festival and the PBH Free Fringe are every bit as good as the stuff you pay for. In the same way you can pay £25 for 45 minutes of something that makes you want to eat your own face, you can spend a whole evening for free and enjoy some top class comedy. So why on earth would brilliant comedians such as Graeme Thomas, Mark Nelson and Ro Campbell not charge? Well, it boils down to the fact that they don’t charge because they don’t pay. They don’t pay the venue (which makes its reven ue from the hearty amount of money people spend on alcohol during the Fringe). They don’t have expensive ticketing systems and levies to pay. They just have to work damned hard on putting a good show together. So, my recommendation
is to see as much free stuff as you possibly can, observing just two simple rules: If you enjoyed it, pay into the hat at the end. This means that the good folk get more money and will live to gig another day; genuinely fair pricing for the arts. After all, they do still need to pay for a roof over their heads. If you’re not enjoying it, don’t decide it’s ok to be rude just because you didn’t pay. Don’t wander in and out, talk loudly and heckle meanly; just because you haven’t paid is no excuse to ruin what for some people might be an enjoyable performance. One man’s Connolly is another man’s...Connolly. [Lizzie Cass-Maran] WWW.LAUGHINGHORSECOMEDY.CO.UK WWW.FREEFRINGE.ORG.UK
I Like My Comedy...
To Be Something A Bit New
Lizzie Cass-Maran suggests you see these comedians first and claim your festival bragging rights early. #1 PHIL NICHOL
PHIL Nichol described his style hitherto as ‘stupid, rude, puerile, fast and silly’. “But maybe you hated me for being loud and obnoxious?” he tells us (politely alluding to a scathing review The Skinny gave him in March). “Maybe now you won’t.” Nichol’s been around the circuit for donkey’s years but he’s in our ‘something new’ category because he’s moving away from his normal style to a selection of quiet songs and deadpan one liners. “It’s something that’s been brewing since 2002” he told us. “I used to live with Carey Marx and he dared me to do 20 minutes of deadpan material. It went quite well but since then I’ve had a more storytelling style. I’ve always wanted to develop it into an hour’s show, though.” On top of his experiments in deadpan, Nichol is engaging in some theatre this year, featuring in Gagarin Way, along with Bruce Morton, Jim Muir and Will Andrews and School for Scandal, with Stephen K Amos, Marcus Brigstocke and others. PHIL NICHOL: A DEADPAN POET SINGS QUIET SONGS QUIETLY .., STAND II, 7-30 AUGUST (NOT 17), 9PM.
#2 SEANN WALSH
THIS young lad certainly does seem to be getting a reputation for himself. Winner of the Leicester Comedy Festival comedian of the year competition 2009, and runner-up in the So You Think You’re Funny? New Act contest 2008, he’s not only a competition favourite, but a hot tip amongst the bigger name acts we’ve interviewed. Phil Nichol calls him “one of those naturals…lovely whimsical observations.” Stephen K Amos told us “I’ve seen him three times, he’s very young, very confident”. Other comics are harsh critics so that’s a pretty damned good recommendation.
#3 UNIVERSAL COMEDY
UNIVERSAL Comedy was set up in 2004 to use comedy to help people with health difficulties - both physical and mental. They teach comedy skills at training courses, working with established names like Raymond Mearns, Vladimir McTavish and JoJo Sutherland. For the first time these top acts are hosting showcases from the course graduates at ‘The Clinic’ on 18 August. Support the fantastic work this company do by enjoying an afternoon of great comedy. THE CLINIC, THE DINING ROOM AT THE GILDED BALLOON, TEVIOT ROW, RECPETION AT 3PM, SHOW FROM 3:30, £5/£4
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PHIL NICHOL
I Like My Comedy...
To Give Me Something To Think About Want to see a show that tackles some philosophical ideas? Erin McElhinney & Lizzie Cass-Maran suggest you take a look at these #1 LUCY PORTER
So where do you try out your new material? Is there anywhere in particular locally that you like to perform at? I guess my favourite is probably The Comedy Camp; I seem to be quite popular with gay men, I have an element of tragedy to me that I think they appreciate.
First of all, let me congratulate you on not being naked on your Fringe poster this year. Well, I think it’s a tragedy, but there you go. I thought maybe I was getting to that age where I should really cover up a bit, you know, something more tasteful. Although I don’t know how tasteful it turned out, actually, I mean, its called Fool’s Gold. And I’m dressed in a fairy costume on the back, for no apparent reason. I’m very pleased with the font, though; we nicked it from the U.S. TV classic The Price is Right! so it’s all very tacky and game show.
Anyone up and coming that you think we should keep our eye out for? There’s one guy in particular who’s my top tip for this year: Charlie Baker. We met filming a pilot, and he’s just lovely. I went to see his show thinking “God, I hope it’s good, cos he’s so nice!” and he was brilliant. His debut show at Edinburgh this year, go see him.
And, er, it’s about gold? Yes! My shows tend to be about whatever particular theme I’m interested in at the point when I have to make a decision about what I’m going to do, and I kept on getting these spam emails saying ‘turn your gold into cash!’. I thought “But I don’t have any gold!” and then grew really obsessed and starting reading all about gold and the show grew from that. It’s about the subject of value, precious metals, alchemy, the concept of taste… It sounds very deep... Doesn’t it? It won’t be. I start off with grand, philosophical ideas, but there’s a full on QVC moment in there as well.
LUCY PORTER: FOOL’S GOLD PLEASANCE COURTYARD, 8-31 AUGUST (NOT 12 AND 19), 8:20PM
#2 ROSIE WILBY: THE SCIENCE OF SEX
Funny Women finalist Rosie Wilby takes a look at what makes us love and lust - and why. Looking at pheromones, aphrodisiacs and the origins of kissing, Wilby brings a refreshing element to the Fringe - a show about sex that isn’t just a pile of knob gags. SWEET GRASSMARKET, 7-30 AUGUST (NOT 17), 6:15PM WWW.LUCYPORTER.CO.UK
LUCY PORTER
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ROSIEWILBYCOMEDY
I Like My Comedy...
With Sketches
If you like comedy with a bit of a narrative, there's loads to choose from. Bronwyn Davies picks three of the best. #1 THE PENNY DREADFULS
THE Fringe is awash with sketch shows, but few as unique as the mighty Penny Dreadfuls (pictured). This troupe, made of Thom Tuck, Humphrey Ker and David Reed, celebrate narrative in their shows and this year appears to be no exception. In The Never Man, we are led through the tale of a man waking up in a mysterious theme park with no memories, a conceit which will no doubt accomodate the brutal imagination shown in their other work. The critically acclaimed trio of shows Aeneas Faversham, all set in Victorian times, firmly established them as a Fringe favourite and led to a Radio 4 show. If you like your sketches thoughtfully bizarre, then we cordially invite you to step through the curtain to the world of the Penny Dreadfuls. THE PENNY DREADFULS PRESENT...THE NEVER MAN 8-31 AUGUST (NOT 15 AND 22), PLEASANCE COURTYARD
#2 FREE AND EASY
THIS is what weekends were made for: delicious, freshly-prepared food with delicious, freshly-prepared comedy. Stu and Garry have been doing this show every Sunday for years, but it never gets tired. Taking audience suggestions, they weave them into scenes of genuine hilarity, with moments of pure inspired genius. If this were on television, you’d swear it was rehearsed. They throw out the obvious in favour of the unique and it is remarkable that, after so long, they can still come up with original ideas. With ticket giveaways and guest stars throughout the Fringe, this is an Edinburgh must at any time of year. FREE AND EASY SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS, 12:30, STAND I
THE PENNY DREADFULS
#3 WILLIAM ANDREWS
LIKE some kind of Japanese puzzle, Will Andrews seems to be joining smaller and smaller teams every year. First up we had the phenomenal foursome of Ugly Kid (presented on our telly screens as Blowout). While the ladies of the troupe went on to shine in The Stand’s Angry Puppy last year, he buddied up with Greg ‘Gary: Tank Commander’ McHugh for the acclaimed, if unimaginatively titled, Will & Greg. And
then, after all that hype, there was one. This year Andrews stands solo with his new show Nitwit. This is the brain that brought the world the lovable Tony Carter, along with countless vividly imagined sketches, so hopes are held high. He promises to weave his comedy with the multi-media which has always featured heavily in his comedy, from the song-snippets of his stand-up to the numerous, oddly beautiful, videos which have prettified YouTube.
This could be weird. It could be brilliant. It’ll probably be both. WILLIAM ANDREWS:NITWIT 9-31 AUGUST, 6:50PM, PLEASANCE DOME WWW.THESTAND.CO.UK WWW.PENNYDREADFULS.CO.UK WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MONOTONYCARTER
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 13
EDINBURGH FESTIVALS THE SKINNY ON COMEDY WITH AN EDGE I Like My Comedy...
agreed, but I had no idea how intense it was going to be. Someone from the foodie festival saw that and so invited me along.
To Make Me Feel Good
Bored of cynicism and the recession? Edward Whelan & Lizzie Cass-Maran bring the fun in. #1 STEPHEN K AMOS
STEPHEN K Amos can be found all over the place at this year’s Fringe. He talks to Edward Whelan about his solo show The Feelgood Factor, eighteenth century farce School for Scandal and his live cookery demonstration.
Are you going to be popping up elsewhere? I expect so. This is the first year I’m not hosting a chat show, but I expect I’ll be hosting Late ‘n’ Live and the Amnesty International Benefit maybe. So I’ll be popping up in different places. I think this is going to be my last Edinburgh Festival though. I’ve been coming to Edinburgh for nine or ten years now, I’ve been there consistently. All the comics are so young, that’s why I’m desperate to get off the circuit! I’d like to go into TV writing or have a TV show. STEPHEN K AMOS: THE FEELGOOD FACTOR
So your show this year is called The Feelgood Factor – what’s that all about? I think since the world imploded with the credit crunch and swine flu and everything else, people need to feel good about something. I can’t change the world but I can make people laugh and I can remind them to pay attention to the little moments of happiness.
PLEASANCE COURTYARD, 8-31 AUGUST (NOT 12 AND 18), 9:40PM
#2 ELAINE MALCOLMSON AND NIALL BROWNE
YES, Irish folk in our Scottish category. Well, they may be from ‘the land of the giants and pixies’, but they live right here in the central belt now and the Scottish comedy circuit claims them as one of their own. The Skinny loved this show’s premiere at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival this year, calling them ‘full of cheeky playfulness’. One to make you feel good about the world.
You’re also doing The School for Scandal – are you looking forward to it? It’s pretty daunting, not something I’ve ever done before. I’ve been on stage but this is entirely different; an eighteenth century farce with the wigs and the high camp. And it’s that thing about being in a cast - you’re relying on other people and they are relying on you, when you’re on your own you only have to worry about yourself but with other people around you can’t let them down. And of course you’re also doing a live cookery demonstration for the Foodie Festival – are you a big foodie? Absolutely not! I can cook a bit but I’m not a connoisseur myself. It came about because I did Masterchef – I was invited to do it and my mum likes the show so I
ELAINE MALCOLMSON & NIALL BROWNE: ALL KINDS OF EVERYTHING 7-30 AUGUST (NOT 17), 12:30, STAND II
FOR MORE SHOWS THAT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD INSIDE, CHECK OUT: ADAM HILLS: INFLATABLE, ASSEMBLY @ GEORGE STREET SIÂN WOULD LIKE YOU TO BE HAPPY (BUT KNOWS YOU PROBABLY WON’T BE), ESPIONAGE STEPHEN K AMOS
WWW.THESTAND.CO.UK
I Like My Comedy...
To Have A Veteran Bringing The Laughs Like to see folk that have been round the block and know their stuff? Lizzie Cass-Maran & Edward Whelan have plenty to recommend. #1 JASON BYRNE
being the 13th I’m probably going end up with my arm half off and my leg hanging off. But the Edinburgh shows are a really important time for me; they are where it all comes together.
Hi Jason! I don’t know if you can hear, there are a lot of sheep in the background. The farmer just did something to them and fucked off and they’re all making this weird noise now.
Is the sawing in half going to be the big finale this year? No the sawing in half is going to be about half way through. But we will have a finale. In Australia I was rolling people across the stage, I don’t know how that will work with my shoulder injury.
Are they your sheep? No, they’re just in the field by the house. So the show’s called The Byrne Supremacy Yeah, I’ll tell you why I called it that, because I went to see the first film, the Bourne Identity and when Yanks pronounce my name, that’s what it sounds like: ‘Jason Bourne’ so I thought I had to call the show that. I was going to call it something else; usually my shows have animals in the title, so I was going to call it 2 eyebrows and a fish. I found that from Googling - you know when you’re googling something and you see the different things come up; I was googling for different diagnoses and I saw that – two eyebrows and a fish – so I had to have it.
Rolling people? Yeah, even as I was about to walk on stage I thought ‘What am I doing?’ but it just turned out to be the funniest thing. There was this big muscley bloke on the front row, and me, and we got wrapped around these people and then rolled across the stage. You can see it on YouTube.
14 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
9-30 AUGUST (NOT 18), 9:45PM, PLEASANCE COURTYARD
#2 TEDDY
WE wanted to put Teddy in the ‘bitter’ category but somehow couldn’t find anyone else to match up to his levels. He tells us he ‘hates the Fringe and is happy to be quoted on that’. Nevertheless he’s been doing it for ten years. Perhaps that explains his bitterness, and perhaps his show title - David, Mark and Teddy: How to Fake Basic Human Emotions. A finalist in Ha Ha Comedy’s Scottish Comedian of the Year competition for the last two years, he appears here with the contest’s inaugural winner Mark Nelson and fellow old hand David Heffron. Teddy might not want to be here, but he’s good at it. DAVID, MARK AND TEDDY: HOW TO FAKE BASIC HUMAN EMOTIONS LAUGHING HORSE @ THE HIVE, 6-30 AUGUST, 5:45PM
Didn’t you get crushed? Well yeah. But it was all for the art. I like to do a finale. What do most comedians do for a finale? They go ‘Thanks very much, good night’. But I’ll tell you why I work so hard on the shows. I’m still an ordinary person, I used to go to work and go and see comedy shows and I wanted to see some effort. So now I think: what would I want to see for the ticket price? I’d want to see some effort go into it.
Tell us what the show is about this year. Well I’m quite nervous this year because the show is all related to a lot of different injuries I’ve had recently. Last year I was on stage and I ripped the cartilage in my knee, so that’s in there, my version of how that happened. And then I was in Australia, I do a lot of shows there, and I thought it would be nice to go swimming before the show, in the sea, and I dislocated my arm! I dislocated my arm swimming! So I’m quite nervous. So this is going to be your 13th Fringe show… I know! I was going to mention that. And I might be sawing someone in half during the show so with it
LLOYD LANGFORD: EVERY DAY I HAVE THE BLUES
Do you still get to see other comedians? Oh, now, who did I see? Lloyd Langford, is that his name? I saw him and he was very good. I think he would be my recommendation for the Fringe. This is his second year. JASON BYRNE
JASON BYRNE: THE BYRNE SUPREMACY 21-22 AND 28-29 AUGUST, 11:30PMVENUE 150 @ EICC
TEDDY
August 2009
THE SKINNY 15
Lifestyle
FoodPOSH NOSH AND CHEAP EATS
& Drink
reviews - edinburgh festival special The Guilty Lily
Amore Dogs 104 Hanover St, Edinburgh EH2 1DR
284 Bonnington Road, Edinburgh
0131 220 5155
0131 554 5824
No-one would argue with the need for The Dogs to spread its wings. The perpetually-packed Hanover Street eatery, where punters happily bump elbows on rickety chairs in exchange for top value, nose-to-tail style grub, has such a dedicated fanbase that (A)more Dogs is just what the vet ordered. Rather than simply replicating the same tried-andtested formula, next door’s little sister has decided to mark its own territory. So it’s in with bright walls and an airy open-plan, spilt level space; functional furniture and Granny trinkets kept to a bare minimum and a kitchen churning out platefuls of Italian staples, not mod British. Think pizza and polenta, not pig trotter and pie. Kicking things off, my dinner buddy’s stuffed mushrooms with gorgonzola were a little ‘meh’, but my vitello tonnato perked up the tastebuds a treat, with chilled, thinly sliced veal perfectly mopping up salty tuna sauce. A veggie main of ricotta and aubergine lasagne was a hearty, obviously homemade slab of lush cheese and
slow cooked veggies just on the right side of rich, whilst my whole stuffed pigeon was a carnivore’s wet dream, rare-roast and swimming on a sea of carrot and celerybraised lentils – a big, butch dish that meant business and for under a tenner, too. Puddings saw the starter situation reversed, with my tiramisu a little ‘so what?’ but torrone semi freddo (Italian nougat) a real bobby dazzler; winningly described by the affably irreverent waiter as a ‘yummy frozen thing with lots of nice things stirred into it’, it was just that – chilly, creamy, chewy, choccy perfection. Does Edinburgh really need another Italian restaurant? Some may lament that the new Dogs practices new tricks, but with food this tasty and pricing this keen (particularly for the location) we shouldn’t whine. [Ruth Marsh] Three courses exc drinks, around £18 Amore Dogs, www.amoredogs.com
Walking into The Guilty Lily is a calming experience: the central area is a large, airy, open space, perfectly cool in summer, but with huge, comfy sofas and solid tables that no doubt provide cosyness in the winter. The long bar flows the length of the two rooms, and the choice is suitably fun; stretching from bellinis to real ale, it’s all there and if it’s not they seem happy to oblige – our request for Bucks Fizz (we were having a retro day) was quickly fulfilled. It is a shame, then, that the food menu isn’t quite as accommodating; what at first seems to be a wide choice, ranging from standard pub fare – burgers ahoy – through to the more unusual – pumpkin risotto – becomes shortened as it appears several options are only available on weekends, and disappointment is palpable when all puddings are announced to be ‘off’ apart from ice cream. The quality of the food served is high overall, however; the vegetarian nachos – always a good test – come in a mammoth portion, with chunky fresh salsa and cheese that bites back. The more modest sized lemon and chilli chicken starter is more than adequate, packed full of subtle flavour and zest that lingers. Burgers are obviously freshly handmade, juicy and bulky, served with whatever toppings and sides you like – the wedges of camembert and sticky onion confit were particularly mouthwatering. All washed down with large complimentary jugs of water filled with chunks of watermelon, chilli and mint. For the price, the Guilty’s food is good value, with the board games, unhurried atmosphere, free wi-fi and muted music making up for service that’s a little lacklustre at times. Flexibility and originality are the name of the game – several different music and quiz nights are held there – and if they can pin down a reliable menu the Lily will be an excellent location to while away an afternoon. [Erin McElhinney] Three courses around £18 exc drinks www.guiltylily.com
Espy
Redwood
62-64 Bath St, Edinburgh, EH15 1HF
33a St Stephen St, Edinburgh EH3 5AZ Tel: 0131 225 2342
0131 669 0082
Espy is short for esplanade and that’s where you’ll find it; a cheery wee place perched on the Portobello promenade which greets with jugs of fruit-filled water and cosy surroundings. The array of vegetarian options is impressive, with my guest and I both selecting veggie dishes even though we’re not. A starter of celery and stilton soup was the surprising highlight of the meal. Sweet and not too overpowering, it would have made a satisfying lunch all by itself. Their main menu is fairly minimal, but well supplemented by an exciting array of specials, tonight including a filling but healthy-feeling stuffed aubergine dish. From the permanent menu, the veggie burger is something of a house speciality of which they are rightly proud. While soft centred, it avoids the mushy
trap so many fall into and certainly holds its own in the burger category. I’m dubious as to their claim that it could convert hardy carnivores, but fortunately there are beef and chicken burgers on the menu, too. Main dishes come with a fantastic amount of good salad (although a little overdressed for some tastes) and the chips are chunky, tasty and plentiful. The desserts are their weaker point – the chocolate mousse was too thick and heavy and the trio of summer jelly, while cutely presented, not anything to write home about. Coming in at just under £20 each for three hefty courses and wine for two, this is the sort of place you could take your Mum or a hot date to and have a great night either way. [Lizzie Cass-Maran] www.the-espy.com
Tucked into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, cosy basement space in lovely, lovely Stockbridge, Redwood offers a novel take on fusion food. Owner/chef Annette Sprague takes the cream of seasonal Scottish produce and throws a real curveball, cooking it up with vibrant, innovative Californian twists. The scarlet den of Redwood’s dining room is small but perfectly formed; with only 22 covers it has a pleasantly informal, dinner party vibe. The laidback, unfussy atmosphere is mirrored in the set menu which reassuringly offers just three choices per course (never trust a kitchen that churns out green Thai curry, Lancashire hotpot, risotto et al). That American-Caledonian, healthy-hearty influence is at play right from the start, thanks to Brandonrost hot smoked salmon with a light avocado mousse and goats cheese bound with nectarine, spiced pecan and orange blossom dressing in a frankly awesome mound of a first course. Mains of seabass and meltingly-marinated leg of lamb are paired up with lentils, lemon gremolata and saffron broth and coriander-mint pesto, chickpeas and chilli respectively; over the table, the veggie addition to our threesome wolfed down his cauliflower and halloumi fritters with lime yoghurt dressing so quickly it was a wonder the plate survived. Stomachs suitably stretched, we had to say yes to pud, where the vivid creativity meets spoonlicking contentment continued with rhurbarb and blackberry tart with a deliciously herby basil semi-freddo and the best slice of anything I’ve had all year – if pecan cake with coconut cream filling, chocolate glaze and caramel sauce doesn’t make you feel glad to be alive, then you’re a lost cause. A brief wine list is on offer, but most punters take advantage of the BYOB with nominal corkage to continue the homely feel. All in all, it’s enough to keep you a shiny, happy person – even as you walk home through the harr. [Ruth Marsh] Three courses exc drinks £25.95 www.redwood-restaurant.co.uk
16 THE SKINNY August 2009
The Skinny Whisky Guide By Ruth Marsh THIS MONTH:
anCnoc
What Is It?
anCnoc 12 Year Old Single Malt Where’s It From?
A very modern Highland malt (it even has its own podcast!) courtesy of the Knockdhu distillery in Huntly, Aberdeenshire. Taking the unusual decision not to name itself after its maker, that seemingly wayward capitalisation is in fact the Gaelic name for the mysterious Knock Hills that loom over the 117 year-old distillery. Familiar to anyone who's propped up the bar at Arches Live over the last few years, anCnoc is a big supporter of the arts and encourage their single malt to be used as the key ingredient (purists! Look away now!) in a variety of anCnoctails, including Apple Mac (mixed with ginger wine and topped with pressed apples) and Black Hill Breakfast (add marmalade and grapefruit juice). What Does It Look Like?
Bright buttercup in colour, it's a friendlylooking, cheery glassful. How Does It Taste?
Deliberately accessible, it's buttery and sweet to start, with a smoothness that lingers pleasantly and uncomplicatedly. Easygoing in the nicest possible way, it has a slightly giddy 'raiding the corner shop' feel, giving out hints of licquorice and barley sugar. A little splash of water is welcome, but don't feel embarassed about dusting off the cocktail shaker. Where Can I Get It?
Available at all main whisky shops in Scotland, including Peckhams (branches in Edinburgh and Glasgow) and Royal Mile Whiskies in Edinburgh. Around £22 for 12 Year Old 70cl
THE SKINNY WHISKEY GUIDE IS SPONSORED BY:
Orlagh McCarron seeks out the tastiest treats Edinburgh has to offer festival goers this August.
Fewer things on this earth are more reassuring than the thoughts, smells and memories of the simple yet hearty wholesome meals of your childhood. And never before has the smell of Mum’s Sunday roast, or the comfortable stodge of a shepherd’s pie been more in demand than in these turbulent economic times. At this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival, Sunday Times food columnist Sue Lawrence talks about her book Taste Ye Back: Great Scots And The Food That Made Them, the stories of seventy Scottish celebrities about their families, childhood and their relationship with food and how it helped shape them into what and who they are today. The Caledonian great and good are all included: Ewan McGregor (who wrote the foreword for the book), Andy Murray (whose first memory is having a bowl of custard thrown over his head) and Gordon Ramsay (who began life with rather simpler tastes, citing porridge as his favourite childhood food.) This leading food writer promises to deliver an hour of pure food nostalgia, offering up a unique insight into growing up in twentieth century Scotland and the influences that helped mould some of Scotland’s most prominent personalities. You can’t help but be inspired to strip mealtimes back to the simple basics and make it like Granny use to. The Book Festival’s laidback tented village (run there
Lifestyle
Festival Bites
for a G&T if the weather’s good) also plays host to other delicious highlights, including Tristram Stuart offering up food for thought by posing the question of how to feed the world while simultaneously reducing the 30 – 50% of food wastage caused by Western greed, Masterchef finalist Fiona Bird on healthy eating for kids, and Nel Nelson offering up innovative ideas on improving your emotional and physical well-being by relating daily diet to daily routine. Turning to the Fringe, runner up of Celebrity Masterchef, author of Independent Book Award-nominated Indian Takeaway (depicting his attempts to cook his way around Britain), occasional Question Time panellist and multi-tasking man of many words Hardeep Singh Kohli will be making his stand-up debut with culinary flair. The Nearly Naked Chef (you can thank the frying pan for that) will highlight the huge impact growing up with Sikh parents had on his cooking, mixing them up with top food tips and anecdotes aplenty. Injecting a little novelty into the Festival is performance art prankster Richard Dedomenici with his Plane Food Café. Part café, part installation, part performance, Dedomenici will be serving up genuine airline cuisine in plastic trays as the audience discover just how and why inflight meals taste different on the ground. Richard’s previous performances have included pointing all the guns on HMS Belfast onto his mum’s house in Watford, so chow down with caution. With such a diverse selection of dynamic, innovative food writers and experts, this August you are sure to rediscover your passion and understanding of the food you eat, making mealtime less about necessity and more about creative fun. Tickets and info from: www.edfringe.com www.edbookfest.com
August 2009
THE SKINNY 17
STYLIST IAN TOD - IANTOD.COM PHOTOGRAPHY HAMISH CAMPBELL HCAMPBELLPHOTOGRAPHY.CO.UK MAKE UP LYNSEY C REILLY TINYURL.COM/LY5X95 MODELS CERISE@THE MODEL TEAM, VICTOR@STOLEN MODEL AGENCY THANKS TO WWW.STATEOFMINDBOUTIQUE.COM
LIFESTYLE
FASHION
COUTURE FOR THE FUTURE
1. CERISE WEARS:
2. VICTOR WEARS:
CORAL VEST FROM H&M, £10
HIGH POST ACAPULCO GOLD POST DEMIN JEANS FROM STATE OF MIND, ALL PRICES ON REQUEST
JERSEY DEMIN STYLE JACKET FROM TOPSHOP, £30 PURPLE LEGGINGS FROM RIVER ISLAND, £12 KISS SHADES FROM ARMSTRONG'S, £10 PINK VINTAGE HAT WITH NET FROM ARMSTRONG'S, £16
LIGHT BLUE BASEBALL HAT BY MNWKA @ STATE OF MIND
GOLD CHAINS FROM TOPSHOP, £9-£10
ORANGE CHECKED SHIRT BY MNWKA @ STATE OF MIND
GOLD HEELS FROM TOPSHOP, £70
SCOTTISH SCARF FROM ARMSTRONG'S, £4.00
SQUARED SOCKS FROM H&M, £6 MIXTURE OF CHAINS AND BEADS FROM ARMSTRONG'S AND BARNARDO'S VINTAGE
18 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
CROOKS AND CASTLES WHITE BLACK PRINT SNAKE HEAD DESIGN T-SHIRT FROM STATE OF MIND
USA COWBOY BELT FROM MR BEN, £24.00 WATCH, MODEL'S OWN
3. CERISE WEARS: PINK HAT FROM MR BEN, £20 CROWN FROM COSTUME HAHA, £10 BLACK ZIP FRONT PRINTED VEST DRESS FROM TOPSHOP, £22 BLEACHED HIGH WAISTED SKINNY JEANS FROM TOPSHOP, £40
4. VICTOR WEARS: BROWN BELT FROM H&M, £10.00 TRUST THE LABEL BASE BALL EYE BALL STYLE JACKET BY MNWKA @ STATE OF MIND HIGH POST ACAPULCO GOLD POST DEMIN JEANS FROM STATE OF MIND CROOKS AND CASTLES WHITE BLACK PRINT SNAKE HEAD DESIGN T-SHIRT FROM STATE OF MIND NECKLACE, MODEL'S OWN
5. CERISE WEARS: LIGHT BLUE BASEBALL HAT BY MNWKA @ STATE OF MIND SEQUENCE CROPPED JACKET FROM MR BEN, £30 RED AND BLACK POLKA DOT SCARF (WORN AS BELT) FROM ARMSTRONG'S, £8 ALL-IN-ONE DENIM-STYLE BODY SUIT FROM TOPSHOP, £25 PINK TAPERED TROUSERS FROM TOPSHOP, £30
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 19
SEX, TRUTH AND POLITICS
From Barbie Doll to Razor Doll:
The Sexual Shift in Porn
Lauren Mayberry discusses the growing move towards alternative cultures in mainstream pornography. Fishnets, pigtails, lapdancing and lip-licking: porn stalwarts. Knives, nipple rings, blue hair and decapitation of a large stuffed bear? Not so much. Yet, these are all ingredients of Kill the Bear, an early video by rising (porn) star, Stoya. Born in North Carolina, this actress-cum-model of Serbian/Scottish descent is not your typical American porn fodder. Dubbed the first alt-porn contract girl, Stoya represents the gothic girl next door. In pornography, more so than anything else, there is no such thing as ‘normal’. Yet, this is the most surprising thing about seeing Stoya on-screen: how apparently normal she looks. Pale skin and modest, natural breasts, the 23-year-old is eerily familiar, reminiscent of an image which haunts one thousand MySpace friends lists, posed at arm’s length. The former design student was drawn into mainstream hetero pornographic acting following stints as a fetish model and a series of lesbian pictures for alt-erotic websites. Following two releases with Razordolls, Stoya was propositioned by Digital Playground in 2007, and subsequently signed to their stable for a considerable fee, having released almost a dozen films under their banner to date. The Californiabased company, widely regarded as one of the five biggest porn studios in existence, has progressed to complete domination of the US porn market, according to Reuters. Its release Virtual Sex with Jenna Jameson ranks among the highest-selling adult DVDs of all time, warranting the company’s tagline: “Hotter girls, higher quality: porn worth paying for”. And now, apparently, this extends beyond the traditionally tacky, sleazy female image depicted in hetero pornography of yore. The influx of alternative culture, be it queer, straight, gothic or whatever else, into the pornographic sphere has arguably increased in recent years. Suicide Girls, GodsGirls, Supercult and Deviant Nation are among the most successful in the soft-porn emo-goth-rock Pin-Up stakes, seemingly priding themselves on having ‘realistic’ models, making content appeal to an entirely new audience. Back in 2005, Suicide Girls removed a number of images, allegedly depicting bondage and knife use, in order to comply with US obscenity laws. Since then, those images and others of that ilk have been reinstated and multiplied. The fact that such images and artists now move freely amongst the highest ranks of America’s pornographic
illustration: Nick Cocozza
Lifestyle
DEVIANCE
elite is significant, to say the least. Reasons for this infiltration are numerous, but no firm conclusions can be drawn. Perhaps the ‘fake and bake’ aesthetic of traditional pornography, with its fake blondes, fake tits and fake orgasms, began failing to attract models. Or perhaps the cross-over was inevitable, due to increasingly post-modern, liberal views of sexual culture and
When the alternative is the mainstream The likes of Suicide Girls have come under fire in the past for their failure to present a real alternative to mainstream beauty standards, beyond the inclusion of some tattoos, piercings and funny-coloured hair. Certainly, models like Stoya (see main feature), being thin, conventionally pretty, and white, don’t seem like a giant departure from business as usual – but business practices, too, are significant, and it’s positive if models like her have greater autonomy, aren’t obliged to do scenes they don’t enjoy, and don’t feel pressure to have surgery in order to conform to impossible expectations. As such, hopefully their crossover into the mainstream is a step in the right direction.
20 THE SKINNY August 2009
Although mainstream porn often presents unimaginative, if not downright obnoxious, assumptions of what people (namely straight men) find desirable, it’s worth considering that what Hollywood shows us often isn’t a whole lot better. In both cases, there’s frequently a distinct lack of fat people, people of colour, and so forth; when they do make an appearance, they’re often reduced to stereotyping and/ or exotification. The porn industry occupies a unique and controversial position, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum: if people are to be exposed to healthier, positive, and more realistic messages about desire and sexuality, we’re talking complete cultural overhaul. [Nine]
audiences craving something a little... different. Feminist fragmentation in recent decades is complex. Female attitudes to pornography seem to be divided into two camps – those who view it as degrading and those who consider it liberating. Sex undeniably exemplifies the most vulnerable and raw elements of the human condition. The animalistic part of a person
experiences the desire to look upon a beautiful naked form, compounded by the sense of voyeurism. The tricky part is presenting this natural desire for visual stimulation in a way that does not dehumanise or alienate – and alt-porn appears to have a more sex-positive and less slippery grip on this angle than its predominately male-driven, mainstream counterparts. Suicide Girls’ president Sean Suhl claims that over half of their subscribers are female. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent these new models and actresses are really breaking the mould, other than in a visual sense. The question remains as to whether this ‘alternative’, feminist-friendly porn is as truly legitimate as it suggests, or simply another misrepresentation in this increasingly over-sexualised culture. Anyone familiar with Ariel Levy’s Raunch Culture concept could contest the idea that the infiltration is due to social factors rather than commercial. The more cynical could view such ventures as contrived methods of making hipsters and Joe Not-Your-Typical-Porn-Fan part with his cash. Most notably, critics of Suicide Girls are plentiful, and its reputation for providing porn even the most rampant feminist could love has been somewhat tarnished. Former models have alleged that the website mistreated its subjects, exercising heavy censorship over content in their designated blogs and failing to fulfil the company’s apparently pro-feminist stance. The website, originally so appealing due to the models’ ability to control how their sexuality is presented, allegedly warns their contracted women against talking to the press, requiring all enquiries be dealt with by a complex PR team. Alarm bells sounded when a corporation claiming to be women-owned and female-run was, in fact, co-founded by a man now at the centre of numerous misogyny allegations, accused of verbally abusing models. So, to Stoya: the Avril Lavigne of porn, another commercial entity designed by the big boys in suits? Not quite, if her current popularity as the most delectable newbie is anything to go by. Bombs have yet to be dropped on Digital Playground, its ethics or treatment of any of its actors. But, if porn really does shape adolescent male attitudes towards the allegedly fairer sex and sexuality itself, then I sleep, and do whatever else at night, more soundly knowing that they are being fed more realistic and healthy imagery on which they’ll base their ideas. Now that is porn worth paying for.
preview Trilogy St Stephen's Centre, 9-31 Aug (noT Tuesdays)
How would you feel getting your kit off at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival? It’s certainly not the most usual of requests, but in search of celebrating the female form, Nic Green, in partnership with The Arches, is asking just that … of 150 women. She has put out a request, following on from the success of Part One of Trilogy, for women to join her on stage in a naked dance. Trilogy is a series of three performances looking at the female body in an “alternative, powerful way”. Green concentrates on this premise and the empowerment of women throughout many of her projects. Part Two of the triptych is almost a re-enactment of the 1971 feminist panel Town Bloody Hall, and the sister project Makeyourownherstory.org is featured as Part Three – a website full of ‘chapters’ where Green asks for women across the globe to send in their contributions, all pertaining to life for them as a woman.
Green has said, “Through the work I attempt to understand my position as a young woman in a contemporary society. The joys and dissatisfactions, confusions and difficulties. I try to make happen what I would like to see, and attempt to create what is missing, or lacking.” The volunteer-based collaboration with everyday women of Part One is described as “a big ensemble dance with lots of women which is wild […], I wouldn’t say it’s feral and animalistic but certainly wild.” So ladies, are you going to make your own herstory? [Clare Sinclair] Tickets available from www.edfringe.com. www.makeyourownherstory.org
Love Squirts
illustration: www.tom-marshall.com
Phoebe Henderson continues her sexual quest by turning her attentions to female ejaculation.
Female ejaculation: probably more elusive than the g-spot according to some people. I’d witnessed the phenomenon in porn films, where it basically looks like the woman is urinating, nay, gushing over some poor sod and passing it off as an explosive, screaming orgasm. But the more I read about it and watched it with a look of bewilderment, the more curious I became. I’m willing to try most things on my carnal voyage; however, if it did indeed turn out to be nothing more than watersports, I’d be drawing a line with a big black magic marker. Despite my better judgement, I turned to my friends for advice. “It’s not wee. Honestly,” Lucy protested. “It’s a different colour and everything.” “Making a woman squirt is probably the horniest thing you’ll ever do,” said my mate Paul, before admitting he’s never actually managed it – it’s just top of his to-do list. Even though my g-spot has managed to elude many men in the past, I knew it was there and I was willing to become best friends. And so, I Googled everything I could think of on female ejaculation, from where it actually comes from to how to successfully do it. In theory, it’s all about pressure, build up and release – simple enough. Right? Two months later and still no cigar. I’d bought new vibrators, read yet more information, watched videos,
and was in danger of ending up with a slightly crampy, claw-like hand and not even a dribble to show for my efforts. My g-spot wasn’t giving up the goods and I began to wonder if my initial ‘bullshit’ theory was correct. There should have been a formula for it (like shampooing your hair: lather, rinse, repeat), but even though it was a relatively simple act, it wasn’t happening. Some websites simply advised that some women can do it and some can’t. I wasn’t having any of that. One piece of advice that made me slightly dubious about the whole thing was “you may feel the urge to pee, but just keep going”, and realised that the only thing I might successfully accomplish was adult bedwetting. Then one evening while playing with a new toy (blue, curved and as noisy as a fucking aircraft), it happened. I looked down and my vibrator appeared like it had been run under a tap: the wet patch was rather impressive. I don’t recall any pressure-washer-like spray, but the orgasm was just as anticipated: astounding. I also felt like I’d been punched in the face with a narcolepsy fist, and I fell asleep in record time. Right in the wet patch. Despite the countless studies passing it off as ‘stress incontinence’ or merely excess lubrication, for me, the change in both fluids and orgasm was very noticeable, and the urge to ‘release’, perhaps like male ejaculation, was undeniable. So am I convinced? You betcha.
August 2009
THE SKINNY 21
Lifestyle
SHOWCASE
THIS MONTH: CYBRAPHON For their latest trick, Edinburgh-based artist collective FOUND have created a robot band called Cybraphon. Inspired by early 19th-century automatic bands such as the orchestrion and the player piano, Cybraphon is an interactive, mechanical band in a box. Cybraphon consists of a number of acoustic instruments, antique machinery, and found objects from junk shops, played by over 60 robotic beaters and motors, all housed in an antique wooden display case. But unlike the orchestrion and player piano, Cybraphon is emotional. Cybraphon’s repertoire has been composed especially by FOUND and spans a range of emotional states. Just like FOUND, Cybraphon is image-conscious and moody, and the music it performs depends on what state of mind it's in. Cybraphon wants to be popular. Just by going to its website you will affect its mood and the kind of music it plays. Cybraphon regularly checks its MySpace page, worries about how many fans it has on Facebook, looks up its website stats and obsessively Googles itself to see what people are saying about it. For example, this article in The Skinny will almost certainly cheer up Cybraphon and encourage it to play happier songs. However, Cybraphon is an insecure, egotistical band: a good review will cheer it up for a while, but once the initial excitement dies down it will soon become disillusioned if its fame does not continue to rise. So why not feed Cybraphon’s ego? Visit its website www.cybraphon.com and then come and see it live as part of New Media Scotland’s Reset/Reveal exhibition in the Inspace gallery on Crichton Street. The exhibition is free and open from Wednesday – Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm, throughout the Edinburgh Arts Festival from 5 August – 5 September. On 13 August from 8 pm, there will be a special Skinny supported event at the gallery where FOUND will talk about the making of Cybraphon and then perform live in a head-to-head battle of the bands with their creation. To book your free place go to cybraphon.eventbrite.com
22 THE SKINNY August 2009
Lifestyle
August 2009
THE SKINNY 23
Digital
upload: piracy hits stormy seas
download: Game on Dare ProtoPlay Edinburgh International Conference Centre, 14-16 Aug
Sometimes the best thing to do after a hard day of heckling Fringe comics and squeezing past street jugglers is to kick back with a video game and let your button-mashing do the talking. It’s a good job the Fringe has an event for that, too – and you won’t be playing the same old Halo re-runs all your mates are. Dundee’s Abertay University is hosting the Dare to be Digital: ProtoPlay competition at the Edinburgh Fringe, showcasing 14 new games developed by an international squad of wunderkinds. Watched by industry experts and slacker gamers alike, Dare to be Digital is a multinational competition to design innovative, home-brewed games in teams of five, over a reality-show-style 10 week period. All comers at the final show in Edinburgh need your vote to compete for the prize, a much-coveted BAFTA Video Games Award One to Watch prize. They had to invest all their ingenuity, coding prowess and design mastery into this project, and all you have to do is avoid a thumb cramp.
It seemed like it would raid and pillage forever. Wherever you stand on software piracy (and music, and movies, and 'gentlemen’s literature'), The Pirate Bay was the titular flagship of the digital pirate movement. If it was of even marginal interest and could be stuffed into a torrent file, the trackers at the Bay could find it and hand-deliver it to your Downloads folder, along with the occasional spyware and only the faintest whiff of guilt from The Man. But all that floundered on the rocks after the Swedish court ruled the founders were guilty of assisting copyright infringement this April, and despite shaky evidence, numerous appeals and allegations of bias (as well as hackers legally changing the name of an industry litigator), the ruling stands. That includes a fine to the tune of £2,385,000. In spite of this, the website has remained largely unaffected and is still pillaging its merry way, but things were thrown for another loop last month, when ad firm Global Gaming Factory X announced it intended to buy the entire site for just over £4.7 million. Vague plans were floated about turning the site into some kind of pay-for-play scheme, but nothing has yet materialized. Worse yet, while the company’s stock price doubled immediately following the announcement, the euphoria has quickly worn off
the feed
and made things a zero-sum share price game. With even luminaries like Stephen Fry admitting they use the site, the many copyright organizations spearheaded by the MPAA and RIAA in the States have taken on an infamous, steal-your children-whileyou-sleep menace. At the same time, torrentfreak. com reports that EU Commissioner for Telecoms and Media Viviane Reding feels that piracy is seen by many as increasingly sexy. As courts have a limited reach when it comes to hunting down ne’er-do-wells on the internet, the duel between piracy and the Establishment is increasingly one of public opinion, one the Establishment has trouble winning by litigating 12 year olds. And it may all come to naught in the end. A recent study by The Guardian reveals that the newest generation of consumers is downloading a little over half as much as they were just a year ago, opting instead for hassle-free (and money-free) streaming options like YouTube, last.fm and Spotify. As your files become increasingly stashed somewhere on the internet for access anywhere, we may be moving towards a society unconcerned with digital ownership, so long as there’s a common streaming library to draw from. And no annoying CD packaging to tear through. [Alex Cole]
by Alex Cole
-The Queen hops on the (gilded) Twitter bandwagon at @BritishMonarchy, hires Royal Twitterer -Cyber-attacks on 4 July may not be North Korea’s fault after all -Google announces plans for a competitor to Windows, wants to own your very soul -BT announces plans to wire 40% of British homes to fibre-optic broadband by 2012 -Microsoft unveils 24-style movie trailer for upcoming version of Office, intentionally funny -Dundee grads win prestigious iGiveADamn award for charity website
reviews The Punisher: No Mercy out now on psn
rrr The Punisher: No Mercy is a first-person shooter with an emphasis on multiplayer akin to the Quake series, ability-enhancing powerups and announcers included. There are numerous game variations, each involving you racking up your score by killing as many opponents as you can. Using preselected weapons chosen before matches and between respawns, control is solid, if a little cumbersome, and pulling off kills is satisfying. Doing well to any degree online is a challenge, as every match seems to haemorrhage with lag, making proceedings far more hit-and-miss than they ought to be.
24 THE SKINNY August 2009
Things run more smoothly offline, and it’s here where most of the fun can be found. The motion comics loading screens providing the narrative are the most intriguing parts of the title, the Mike Deodato-drawn panels being as captivating onscreen as they would be on paper, with uncensored expletives helping to capture the mood perfectly. They’ll keep you interested, even if the climax is something of a gyp. The offline bots are a hell of a lot easier to dispatch than online opponents, not just because you can actually hit them, but also because they’re not very bright. These guys will make a bee-line for you no matter which weapon you’re wielding. It’s good fun mowing them all down, but those looking for something a bit more challenging may find this a walk in the blood-stained park. [Michael Slevin]
Circuit_Strike.One. out now on iphone
rrrr All you need to know about CS.One is in the game’s tagline: “Kill everything. Touch nothing.” Gameplay can be likened to the arcade classic Asteroids, while fans of Geometry Wars will be pleased by the neon graphical style. A top down view of the arena presents a 2.5D map for you to control your ship’s direction and cannon trajectory. Chaotic hordes of bad ass geometrical shapes swarm towards you as you weave your way around the screen in a bid to destroy each level’s data core. The game’s music, sound effects and voice samples are mixed in real time and triggered in sync with the gameplay. The seamless shift from one slick beat to the next compliments each tactical play, explosion and victory and the overall audio presentation has set a new bar for iPhone gaming. The game demands you put in the time beforehand to acclimatise to the controls and raw speed before you’ll manage a satisfying session of any kind. There’s still plenty of rewards to reap from getting stuck right in, but those with short attention spans might want to think twice. Speed, haste and frantic deathdefying manoevers: you’re going to be needing them all for circuit_strike.one. [Tony Maguire]
The teams are already posting early previews of their games over at the website, www.daretobedigital.com, as well as tweeting about their experience in the industry pressure-cooker (likely a very caffeinated one). Experts will also be on hand teaching workshops in Football Manager 2008, using a graphics tablet to make music, and how you can actually get a job doing this kind of thing. For those who were there for the original NES Super Mario Bros, this is a sobering reminder that a few clever friends can far outpace what an entire company could do just a few years ago. The Dare ProtoPlay will be at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (Venue 150) from Friday 14 August through Sunday 16, 10:00-18:00. Admission is free, so there’s no need to sneak in like Solid Snake. [Alex Cole] www.daretobedigital.com
Digital
New media scotland this month New Media Scotland's Director, Mark Daniels, introduces an exhibition presenting Scotland's new media artists
Reveal/Reset Digital culture is pervasive and ever evolving. The rules are broken and remade every day. In Scotland, the Alt-w Fund has supported experimentation with new media as both artistic subject and creative tool since 2000. Initiated by Scottish Screen, the fund is now managed by New Media Scotland. Alt-w: New Directions in Scottish Digital Culture at the CCA in Glasgow last summer kick-started a new era. Work produced by Alt-w supported artists was shown together for the first time. The impact was felt immediately, raising the bar for new applications. We loved the palpable sense of excitement created about the fund. Our focus was to support projects that would dynamically engage audiences beyond the traditional screen, through the development of new artworks, devices and creative applications. We got eight crackers in response. The web of screens is becoming the web of things, and New Media Scotland has become increasingly interested in smart spaces where the parameters of connection can be explored. The University of Edinburgh’s new Inspace will be home to our research through a joint partnership with the School of Informatics. Launching at the Edinburgh Art Festival with the Alt-w exhibition Reveal/ Reset, nine artists will reflect our information-rich world where attention is a commodity. Inspace is where we’ll explore the cultural significance of informatics and new media practice. As consumers we filter, as creators we share. In response, we forge new paths. These artworks engage with these accelerated times and their dispersed networks of communication. Alex Hetherington’s performance will explore cultural forms that employ fakery and deliberate misinformation.
© wendy mcmurdo
Inspace, Edinburgh, 5 Aug - 5 Sept
FOUND Electronics have created Cybraphon, a robotic band, image conscious and emotional, its performance affected by online community opinion (as featured in this month’s Showcase). Emma Tolmie has subverted the experience and aesthetics of 3D film with a retro vibe. Thomson & Craighead will take you on a whirlwind tour of the
world’s war zones (and the Magic Kingdom) in ten minutes using Google Earth and the photostreams of Flickr. Wendy McMurdo and Paul Holmes were inspired by digitised avatar figure skaters at once real, manipulated and now delightfully mimicked. Benjamin Dembroski’s delicate sensor-driven devices will seduce as they sway.
750 author events + one leafy garden + all the buzz of the festival
= pure pleasure
The Alt-w alumni artists are a force to be reckoned with. We want to ensure that their practice can continue to flourish in a time of great change in the funding of creativity in Scotland. Let’s not close the window.
www.alt-w.com
in association with
15 –31 August
Charlotte Square Gardens, Edinburgh
Book tickets now at www.edbookfest.co.uk
August 2009
THE SKINNY 25
end-
w e of nd
nch-
pular
od
REading
Tipped for the top
Author, broadcaster and former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway on his highlights for the 2009 Book Festival
Journalism's Loss, Television's Gain The Skinny is sponsoring The Wire creator David Simon's event at the Edinburgh international Book festival. Peter Geoghegan spoke to him about his books, his TV shows, and his views on drugs, politics, and America. He didn't disappoint.
“It’s wonderful to have this big concentration of intellectual firepower from all over the globe, descending – parachuting – into Charlotte Square. Richard Dawkins has got a big, big stonking new book coming out and again we’ve got the privilege of launching it - called The Greatest Show on Earth - and it’s about evolution. And that’s important. I think Dawkins is probably one of the most trenchantly exciting writers working today. I don’t totally agree with him, but he’s been an astonishingly popular writer of science, and he has – in a very combative way – challenged what I think of as bad religion. I think there’s some religion that’s actually quite good for the human species, but a lot of it isn’t. And he has challenged it, and, in a way, has single-handedly put it on the map. He and I have debated very warmly in public several times – we don’t exactly see eye to eye, but I do respect what he’s doing, and he’s a wonderful public performer, so of course his events sell out. Margaret Atwood, one of the most important novelists in the world, is actually launching her new novel in two ways. She’s launching it at St John’s, Princes Street, because it’s a novel about religion, about the end of the world. It’s an extraordinary piece of work, I’m halfway through it at the moment. She’s written hymns as part of the text, and so she wanted to launch it in a church, so we’ve provided that. And there will also be a major evening event the same day. So that’s going to be a thrill. She is a different kettle of fish to Dawkins. Atwood is a supreme artist and her versatility is quite astonishing. And this new book is a way of looking at the current human situation, and the kind of tragic impact the human species is having on the planet. So I think it’s both great literature and also a prophetic moral challenge. But of course, almost anything you put your finger on will be wonderful. The poetry itself is always astonishingly good. We’ve got Don Paterson; we’ve got John Burnside… they’re all people writing at the peak of their powers as well. I’m sounding a bit Pollyanna-ish here, but I really do think there’s an astonishing feast of people at this Festival." www.edbookfest.co.uk
26 THE SKINNY August 2009
America does not have, and never has had, a fair system – or so says David Simon, daylight illuminating his swanky hotel room: “So much of what ails the US is systemic. It has been engrained from the very beginning, from the constitution.” Like many of The Wire’s central characters, Simon never shies away from life’s less palatable side. It was this commitment to veracity that made his critically acclaimed series a dazzling, almost Dostoyevskian tale of law and disorder on the streets of his native Baltimore, one of the most compelling dramas in television history. That a show about police and thieves in a relatively peripheral American city has garnered a significant cult following on this side of the Atlantic is testament to the realism of Simon’s writing, much of it based on personal experience. On graduating from the University of Maryland, where he edited the college’s daily paper, Simon became a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, covering the crime beat with almost religious zeal for over a decade. While still a reporter, he spent an entire year with the police department’s murders unit. The result was Simon’s first book, Homicide, published in 1991. Two years later he took a second sabbatical to research The Corner, a forensic dissection of one year in the inner city, written in collaboration with former Baltimore police detective Ed Burns and told through the prism of a single street corner, and the addicts and dealers struggling to survive on it. Simon is currently promoting The Corner’s release in the UK and Ireland – some twelve years after it first appeared in the States. “Homicide didn’t sell well at all over here. Then when it came to The Corner I just couldn’t get it published.” It is hard to understand why it wanted for a backer. The book is a remarkably in-depth account of the lives of rich, complex characters such as Gary McCullough, a once prosperous businessman lost to heroin addiction, and his son DeAndre, a dealer who starts taking drugs himself. It’s almost academic in its rigour and attention to detail but written with a novelist’s eye for scene and characterisation. “I was interested in telling a story, in narrative as a journalistic tool,” Simon explains. Irnoically, Homicide and The Corner spelled the end of his career as a reporter. “I imagined that I would write books and work for the paper. I imagined one thing informing the other, not writing myself off the paper. But by the time I came back from doing The Corner bad things were happening. The paper had been taken over and the things I valued as a newspaper man the newspaper stopped valuing. So I knew my time there was over.” What he calls the ‘prize culture’, clearly still aggrieves him. Discussing The Baltimore Sun’s decline Simon sits bolt upright, looking less than relaxed for the first time: “These guys came in from another city. They were going to be in Baltimore for three, four, maybe five years. They were going to try and win a couple of prizes and then get to a better newspaper. It was all a pyramid of ambition but it totally lost the community. If you really love journalism that’s pretty disappointing.” he says. But journalism’s loss was television’s gain, as Simon could draw on his extensive research to create The Wire’s intricate, absorbing world. “The power of The Wire is that you get to tell a story with a proper beginning, middle and end. But while The Wire is drama it is also rooted in a journalist’s impulse,” he says of the relationship between the two. “The writers working on [The Wire] were more interested in issues than in sustaining a television drama.” Certainly Simon has never shied away from the day’s big political issues. His last HBO series Generation Kill was based on a Rolling Stone journalist’s account of being embedded with the US marines during the 2003 invasion of Iraq;
"Obama is a great man who I've a lot of respect for. But all he will do is slow down things getting worse” currently he is working on a television show about a group of musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans entitled Treme. The Wire and The Corner both make compelling cases for drug legalisation, a cause Simon firmly supports. “The war on drugs has been a total failure,” he replies without hesitation when asked about US narcotics policy. “But there are some positive changes happening now. The new drugs czar appointed by Obama [Gil Kerlikowske] has just come out and said we need to lose the title war – well that’s the first
intelligent thing that’s been said about drugs in more than 30 years.” Praise for politicians coming from David Simon is rare. So is the 44th President of America just another deceitful public representative? “No, Obama is a great man who I’ve a lot of respect for. But all he will do is slow down things getting worse,” he laughs. And although he admits to volunteering for the Democrats in Pennsylvania during the presidential campaign, knocking on doors for Barack has not made him an optimist: “The great man theory of history says you elect the right guy and all the systemic forces arrayed against progress somehow fold their cards. Well, that doesn’t happen.” Nothing, it seems, surprises Simon – except, perhaps, the sudden interest in his books and their rather stark message. “It’s really funny. When I was an expert and I did all the reporting no-one took any notice. But when I’m not an expert and the books’ material is over 15 years old, people are sitting up and paying attention.” The world is certainly listening to David Simon now – when it comes to laying bare the uncomfortable reality of modern America, he remains the authority. David Simon will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Saturday 29 Aug at 8pm. Tickets are officially sold out. HOWEVER, at the time of going to print, they can still be obtained exclusively via the Skinny’s website! check out the site for instructions.
Now in it's second year, the West Port Book Festival is packed with nimble and nifty events: Keir Hind finds there's something for everyone.
Edinburgh’s
Music and Audio Library a festival of music … Answer the following and you could win £15 vouchers for Monorail Music in Glasgow: 1. Lightning Seed acoustic front man at the Edge? 2. Kind of Blue tribute to whom at venue C-central? 3. Ain’t that a kick in the head crooner at Valvona? 4. One night only – golden brown? 5. Actress singing with the Licks?
YOU may not know this, but the Edinburgh International Book Festival has its own little fringe festival, the West Port Book Festival. Taking place in bookshops, cafes pubs and church halls, West Port positions itself as the ‘roguish’ younger sibling of the main book festival. It’s only in its second year, and given the current financial situation the organisers have done a hell of a job keeping it going. With the financial situation in mind, it’s well worth noting that all events are completely free. In fact, it’s well worth repeating in block capitals that: ALL EVENTS ARE COMPLETELY FREE! All events (which are free, by the way) take place from Thursday 13 to Sunday 16 August. The first day has something of a poetic flavour, with Professor Douglas Dunn kicking off the festival, at 3pm on the 13th. At 5pm on the same day poet J. O. Morgan will be reading from his book-length poem Natural Mechanical, and at 7.30 pm poet Mike Stocks will be appearing with novelist Gregory Norminton. On the same day there’s also the tempting prospect of hearing dramatic recitations from the work of Oscar Wilde by the splendidly eccentric literary historian Owen Dudley Edwards – who’ll be taking male and female parts. And the first day wraps up with Tea Tales, an open event involving recitations, with a prize for the funniest – care to try your hand? For anyone who wants to try a hand at something more practical, there are bookbinding workshops every day, and a book repair workshop on the 16th. Day Two begins at 2pm with Jim Haynes in conversation with Ryan Van Winkle (of Golden Hour fame) about his life as a writer, publisher and dinner-giver. Then at 3pm, a spot of Magic, as Gordon Bruce of the Scotland’s Magic History archive will be giving a talk along with Sharon Whyte, who’ll be telling an audience about animal performers who gained fame on stage. There’s more magic on at other stages of the festival – but while mentioning events on the 14th, we’d be remiss to ignore the event at 4pm, a talk on (ahem) the history of crisps. Which has to be crazy enough to be worth a look – after all, it is free. The 14th
closes with a world first (probably; if you know any different, write in), a Literary ‘Twestival’. Yes, Twitter has made its way to West Port where a series of games and exercises will take place in the Tea Tree Tea Cafe, all using it as a good excuse to get people writing. Saturday the 15th starts off a little more sedately with Angus Peter Campbell talking about his Kafkaesque novel in Gaelic, Tilleadh Dhachaigh (Homecoming). Poet Jack Underwood will be teaming up with the always-popular novelist Alan Bissett for an event at 3pm. Innes Keighren will be talking about his research into travel writer Maria Graham at 5pm, and Stuart Kelly will be telling us all about lost masterpieces with a preview of his book, The Book of Lost Books at 6pm. And the day is rounded off with The Irish Catullus, at 8pm. This event, for linguists or classicists, especially, will have readings from the works of Roman Poet Catullus translated into Irish, English, Ulster-Scots and Scots Gaelic. Catullus’ works are described as political fun-poking – which can only really gain in relevance. Oh, and during the 15th there’ll be magic again (told you) as magicians will mingle with customers at various bookshops in West Port. They’ll astonish you – if you can find them. On the Final Day, the 16th, you can see Eleanor Thom talking about her debt novel The Tin-Kiln with Elaine Di Rollo, talking about her debut novel, A Proper Education For Girls, at 2pm. Also at 2pm there’s the texualities.net Concise Ceilidh. Nobody seems to know what that’s about, but there’s a promised ‘Who Looks Most Like Samuel Beckett?’ competition. The fest finishes off in poetic style with an event at 6pm featuring poetry from Anon, the anonymous submissions poetry magazine, and the closing event will be at 8pm. It’s John Hegley and Tim Turnbull, both cult performance poets who you should already know about. If you don’t, go along and see – after all, it is free!
All answers are in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Programme, available from all city libraries and on our blog at: http://talesofonecity.wordpress.com. Email your answers and contact details to: central. music.library@edinburgh.gov.uk by 24th August. Edinburgh Music and Audio Library 9 George IV Bridge Edinburgh www.edinburgh.gov.uk/libraries Check out our massive and superb Fringe archive – 60 years of Fringe brochures/posters/leaflets in the Central Library. Largest music library in Scotland • Order and collect music via any library • Diverse • Specialist • Knowledgeable staff
DID WE MENTION THAT ALL EVENTS ARE FREE? THEY CAN BE BOOKED IN ADVANCE, BY EMAILING TICKETS@ WESTPORTBOOKFESTIVAL.ORG, BUT PLEASE ONLY BOOK IF YOU ARE SURE TO ATTEND, AS SPACES CAN BE LIMITED. WWW.WESTPORTBOOKFESTIVAL.ORG
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 27
READING
The Book Festival's Own Wee Fringe
Film
What's Up Doc? Following on from the release of several critically acclaimed political documentaries in recent months, Gail Tolley explores the role of such films in what many regard as apathetic times.
august Events Coming to a cinema near you
war requiem
Edinburgh is awash with choices for film events in August. If peace is what you seek, head to the Filmhouse on 21 and 28 August, when the Festival of Spirituality and Peace celebrates human relationships and the desire for inner calm with two films selected by Scotland’s very own Mark Cousins. The first of these is the recently restored War Requiem by Britain’s cult filmmaker Derek Jarman, based on Benjamin Britten’s opera about shell-shocked soldiers who were treated at Craiglockhart’s War Hospital. It is hoped that Tilda Swinton and producer Dan Boyd will attend the screening too. The selection of films on 28 August brought together under the title Scottish Shorts includes Norman MacLaren’s 1952 pacifist work Neighbours which Picasso reportedly called ‘the best film ever made’ and shorts by Lynne Ramsay and Margaret Tait.
the toxic avenger
the yes men fix the world
It’s been a few years since Michael Moore first appeared on our cinema screens. In 2002, Bowling for Columbine, brought the world’s attention to a baseball-cap clad American who surprised viewers with his frank exposure of the lunacies and injustices of his own society. The film marked a new type of political documentary which used humour and the occasional prank to bring a liberal message to the masses. And to prove their popular status, three of Moore’s documentaries (Bowling for Columbine, Sicko and Fahrenheit 9/11) have made it into the top ten highest grossing documentaries of recent times. However, Moore has not been without his critics; even those who agreed with what he was saying often struggled with the way he was saying it. His last film Sicko, which revealed the tragedies of America’s health care system, was criticised for verging towards the sanctimonious. And, in 2007 Moore was the subject of a documentary entitled Manufacturing Dissent which revealed the misleading tactics that the director used during his filmmaking. Michael Moore may not be quite the golden boy he once was, yet that’s not to suggest the demise of the popular political documentary. Over the last few months several films on a variety of political issues have received excellent critical and public reaction.
The Age of Stupid, which starred Pete Postlethwaite, looked at climate change through the eyes of an old man living alone in 2055 looking back at footage from 2008. The End of the Line examined the global problem of overfishing and just last month Burma VJ intelligently explored the restriction of freedom of speech in Burma. All these films have been distributed and promoted by one small, independent company called Dogwoof, one of the few film companies who are driven by an ethical manifesto. In it they state that “the price of inaction is far greater than the cost of a mistake”. It seems that in a small corner of the film industry (and it’s an industry hardly known for its morality) is a company that appears to be practising what it preaches. Dogwoof’s next release is The Yes Men Fix the World. It follows two guerrilla political activists who, donned in charity shop suits, try to infiltrate large corporations in order to smuggle out stories to reveal the unethical side of big business. They impersonate top CEOs on television and at conferences and present ludicrous ideas (no doubt impacting the share prices of the companies in question in the process). They’ve been hailed by some as the next generation of activists. In a world which is often flagged as increasingly apathetic, political documentaries may have an important
film: Twitter vs. the 90s This month I decided to source ideas for this editorial through Twitter suggestions. If Charlie Brooker can do it for his Guardian column, then so can I, I thought. The fact that Mr Brooker has 55,000 followers and I have nearer…erm…well, 55, wouldn’t get in the way, I decided. I received a total of two suggestions; the first was quite simply ‘Why Nic Cage?’ I hadn’t realised until quite recently how reviled Nicolas Cage is by so many people. But to be honest I’m pretty indifferent to the chap and so the thought of writing a few hundred words on him wasn’t so attractive, which led me to the second suggestion, ‘Romy and Michelle’. Oh boy, what a blast from the past, a sleepover staple of the nineties.
28 THE SKINNY August 2009
Which nicely leads me onto a sneaking suspicion I’ve been having: despite the joy of all things new in the last decade (tweeting perhaps being one of them) the nineties were actually pretty cool. It was a time when the American indie film scene was kicking off, Angela Chase in My So-Called Life was looking all angsty whilst wearing dungarees and on the stereo there was grunge, Britpop and riot grrl. They say hindsight’s a wonderful thing and maybe in 10 years time we’ll see the noughties as equally exciting but for now I’ll dig out my copy of Slacker, put Bikini Kill on the record player and enjoy a bit of 90s nostalgia (and maybe put Twitter on the backburner). [Gail Tolley]
role to play. They can stir debate and draw attention to causes that would otherwise be overlooked. Really effective films can sometimes lead to direct change; for example, shortly after Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (about the horror of a fast food diet) showed at the Sundance Film Festival, MacDonalds removed the super size option from their menus. As a testament to just how influential a film can be, this week what should come through the post at Skinny HQ but an expensive looking media pack from the charity Action Against Hunger. The mail out, designed to look like a launch pack for an upcoming film, came with the tagline “with your help, this could be Al Gore’s new movie”. Further reading revealed that the charity’s aim is to get supporters to lobby Al Gore and encourage him to make a film about what they believe to be the greatest tragedy of the 21st Century: acute malnutrition. This surely must be a first: the promotion not of a film but of an idea for a film and ultimately the promotion of the publicity that such a film would bring to the cause. Whilst the campaign itself will create a buzz (and this must surely be one, if not the main intention of the charity), the idea of putting pressure on a public figure to make a film about a given topic raises interesting questions about the role of documentary filmmaking. Few would doubt that world hunger is a devastating problem that needs to be addressed, however is it the role of a charity to initiate the making of a film on such an issue? And if they were successful would audiences approach the film differently, knowing its genesis? The recent releases from Dogwoof show a variety of filmmakers engaging with topics that audiences and critics are keen to hear about; it’s a small trend that should be encouraged. Yet, as Michael Moore’s adversaries have shown, even the slightest whiff of cards not being played straight can lead to cynicism, even where intentions are good, which highlights the thin line that these films tread. As a comic book hero was once told ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ and many documentary makers will surely testify there’s a moral responsibility not just in what you say but in how you go about saying it. The Yes Men Fix the World is out on 7 Aug. You can find out more about Dogwoof Pictures at dogwoof.com and Action Against Hunger’s campaign at askalgore.org
Also in Edinburgh, the Cameo has invited a whole host of interesting people for you to meet. Scottish jazz musician Freddie King is performing live on 1 August to celebrate From The Heart, a highly personal project about the singer’s life. Phill Jupitus (of Never Mind the Buzzcocks fame) and Phil Wilding are appearing on 18 August to host The Perfect Ten podcast, a night which includes Blazing Saddles on the big screen, while 13 August sees cult legend and epitome of Troma entertainment Lloyd Kaufman here to answer your many questions following screenings of The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High – uncut! If you can’t get to the capital but jazz tickles your fancy, there is a chance to see Soul Power at the DCA in Dundee from 7-13 August, and also opportunities to catch Jean Luc Godard’s bizarre noir Alphaville 2-3 August. Amongst the wide selection of retrospectives, even David Cronenberg’s cerebral horror Scanners can be seen on 20 August.
scanners
Meanwhile, the GFT in Glasgow celebrates fifty years of revolution in film with the minifestival, Cine Cuba. A rare chance to see some of the art to emerge from Cuba, the season, screening throughout August includes Diary of Maurico, an emotional revisiting of an old man’s life through a series of flashbacks that give viewers a frank insight into the social and political history of the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union. And finally, make sure you’re in Glasgow on 2 August to see the final in the GFT’s selection of lunar-themed films. Celebrating the release of Duncan Jones’ excellent retro sci-fi Moon, this date marks the screening of The Right Stuff, a satire about America’s attempt to conquer space. You don’t need to be outside to explore this month. [Becky Bartlett]
Isabelle Huppert stars in Ursula Meier’s latest film, Home, a work which subtly explores a family’s relationship between the environment and society around them. Gail Tolley finds out more.
FILM
Home Truths
Caught between the decadence of 1940’s burlesque and the comfort of your local watering hole, Guilty Lily welcomes you with subtle old fashioned class and seats you on some of the comfiest & squishiest sofas in Leith. Relaxed and pleasantly scruffy with an indulgent edge. Cafe by day, bar and venue by night. Come for breakfast, stay for lunch and relax into dinner. Homemade grub, fresh ground coffee from Pat the coffee man, fresh baked cakes & love muffins, free wifi, live music, cocktails, fine beers and ales, lovely wines and a smile.
HOME, the feature debut by Swiss-French director Ursula Meier, begins in a bohemian idyll. Marthe (Isabelle Huppert), Michel (Olivier Gourmet) and their three children Judith, Marion and Julien (Adelaide Leroux, Madeleine Budd, Kacey Mottet Klein) live in an isolated house next to a motorway that has remained unopened for over 10 years. The children cycle their bicycles up and down the empty tarmac, Michel plans to finish the swimming pool in the garden and for miles around there is no-one, just empty fields and the peaceful countryside. Until one day when the inevitable happens and the family are brought face to face with an outside world they had tried to escape. Home is unusual in the space that it explores. Whilst many films have used the road as a setting for their story, in Home the motorway is a unique space that suddenly intrudes onto this family’s home life. It is a space which feels sterile, soulless and in many ways incompatible with human life due to the constant motion and speed that it exists in. Meier saw the film in many ways as the “inverted image” of a road movie. She says: “I had seen houses on the verge of the highway and I told myself it would be interesting to reverse that look.” While most of the film is made up of stationary and hand-held shots, at the very end we see the house and family in one fluid, motion shot taken from the very road that has been the focal point of the film. Suddenly, we see the family from a different perspective, in a broader context which hints at wider-reaching themes.
The opening of the motorway not only brings noise and pollution, it also brings the family face to face with a world that they had been trying to ignore, that they were desperate to not be a part of. This is a film about people’s relationship to society and the world around them and with several mentions of pollution it would be possible to interpret the film, on one level at least, as being a warning about future climate change. Meier, of Swiss-French descent also sees the film in another way, “[The motorway] is a mirror of the world – violent, aggressive, and polluted – which enters the homes of people who thought they would be able to live alone, set apart from society. In this sense, it is a film about Switzerland.” As the impact of the road takes a greater hold on the family, the sense of freedom and warmth that is there at the start of the film is gradually replaced with a feeling of claustrophobia. And as the film progresses to its dramatic conclusion, we are unsure just how far Marthe and Michel will go to preserve their former lives. “There is in Home a singular manner of observing…with offbeat black humour, to what point the human being is capable of bearing a situation, of coping with reality, of being able to adapt” Meier says. It is this concept of ‘coping with reality’ and specifically what happens when we struggle with that Home really seems to be exploring.
Guilty Lily 284 Bonnington Rd Edinburgh EH6 5BE (0131) 554 5824 www.myspace.com/472205848
guiltylily@yahoo.co.uk
Seaside, Sand and Sunshine....sometimes! Relaxed, Bright, Cosy, and Vivacious All round good old fashioned fun ‘shits n giggles’ FOOD FOR THE SOUL • Catch of the Day specials & Fresh Homemade Specials • Fantastic Burgers – 8 inches ...oops 8oz of Prime Scottish Meat to get ‘the sweats’ over • VSD (you don’t have to be bad to get it) Delicious Veggie Specials Daily
FROM THE BAR • Cocktails, Cask Ales and
Wines of the World • Loose leaf teas and a caffeine injection to remember
A LITTLE BIT ON THE SIDE? • Book our PPP (Private Pyjama Party) • Open Fire (fake but cosy) • Fat, squishy sofas • Movie madness of your choice on the big screen • Fancy a poke? Book your own FREE Poker Party Tables of 6 booked get free VB beer and Nacho chips!! • Sunday Night Quest The Quiz with a difference with Si-er • MMM – Monday Movie Madness Blazing Saddles to Blue Velvet • Cheesy Tuesday Classic movie cheese Pretty Woman to Gold Finger
HOME IS ON SELECTED RELEASE FROM 7TH AUGUST 2009.
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 29
Film
FILM Reviews Adam Director: Max Mayer Starring: Hugh Dancy, Rose Byrne, Peter Gallagher, Amy Irving, Frankie Faison Released: 31 Jul Certificate: PG-13
rrrr Relationships are hard. Everybody knows that. But when one half of the couple has Asperger’s Syndrome, you enter unfamiliar territory. Adam struggles with all but the most straight forward of social interactions, missing many of the unspoken cues and signals that make up communication between the majority of our species. He’s patently bright, generous and disarmingly honest, and as a burgeoning connection forms between him and new neighbour Beth, we are treated to a gentle, sympathetic and clever exploration of the problems – and positives – of loving someone who is almost incapable of expressing themselves emotionally. Writer/director Max Mayer (The West Wing) never lets the humour become crass exploitation or the portrayal of Adam a study in alienness, and leads Hugh Dancy (Evening) and Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later) both avoid the acting clichés that are all too tempting for those enacting a relationship drama. With some beautiful visual moments and dialogue that easily charms, Adam is that rarest of beasts; a romantic comedy with quiet depth. [Erin McElhinney]
Three Miles North of Molkom Director: Robert Cannan, Corinna McFarlane Starring: Released: 28 Aug 2009 Certificate: 15
rrr Every year, Three Miles North of Molkom, a flurry of Timoteifresh No Mind Festival goers tribally gather to unleash their power animals, chant their mutual acceptance, fondle innocent trees and spontaneously convulse out bad energy into nearby shrubbery. In this documentary we encounter an amusing mix of characters; a misunderstood hulk puzzled by women's myopia towards his unconscious sexual energy; a compulsive over-sharer whose anxiety manifests in the inability to produce saliva (you’d be forgiven for worrying that this is due to most of her bodily reserves being cried out); and the yardstick realist Nick, who has an epiphany while adjusting his tolerance threshold as warm fuzzies are shot around the forest like paintballs. A narrative of fragmented editing, beautifully lit wilderness and meditative music softly swings the subject from the evocative to the comical, pierced starkly by welcome cuts to Nick and his mumblings about ‘touchyfeely crap’. Refreshingly balanced, even the most committed misanthrope could struggle to stay cynical. [Juliet Buchan]
Mesrine: Killer Instinct / Public Enemy No. 1 Director: Jean-François Richet Starring: Vincent Cassel, Cécile De France, Gérard Depardieu, Mathieu Amalric, Released: 7 Aug / 28 Aug Certificate: 15
rrrr Jean-François Richet returns to the director’s chair for the first time since his so-so 2005 remake of Assault on Precinct 13 with this timely antidote to Michael Mann’s distant and subdued take on the latter days of John Dillinger. Trading the streets of Chicago for those of Paris, the bandit of the hour (or four, but who’s counting) is Jacques Mesrine, another real life gangster whose life shares various parallels with Dillinger’s. Following his monosyllabic passage aboard Pitt and Clooney’s Oceans showboat, Vincent Cassel reinforces the menace of the ‘bad man’ typecast he owns with a spellbinding turn as the eponymous villain in this two-part thriller. Part One (Killer Instinct) sees a young Mesrine resolving to embark on a life of crime under the sleazy wing of Guido (played with relish by Gérard Depardieu), having soldiered in the Algerian war and grappled with domesticity in the aftermath. However, Mesrine’s increasingly ambitious stick-ups soon draw too much unwanted attention to Guido’s doorstep, spelling a lengthy vacation in Canada where he finds himself in league with the Quebec Liberation Front and ultimately a new niche as a daring escape artist. Part Two (Public Enemy No 1) sees Mesrine – now as the flamboyant anti-hero – on home soil and elevated to the upper echelons of the most wanted list in 1970s Paris. While our protagonist reclines into his status as people’s champion, Richet drip-feeds the audience as Jacques pulls heists, mocks police, escapes prisons and publicly shrouds himself in antagonistic political sloganeering as the narrative ominously slow-burns towards an end you knew was in the post the minute your bum touched the seat. Much like Dillinger’s story, there already exist a number of attempts to tell Mesrine’s definitively, though with this much grit, sass and suspense - as well as Mesrine’s memoir as source material – on tap, you’re advised to call off the search in the case of this villain. [Dave Kerr]
Broken Embraces Director: Pedro Almodovar Starring: Penelope Cruz, Lluis Homar, Blanca Portillo, José Luis Gómez Released: 28 AuG 2009 Certificate: 15
rrrr Throughout his career, Spanish director Pedro Almodovar has enthralled his audiences with unusual tales of human relationships. In his trademark palette of red, pink and orange his films have been defined by their occasional humour and heartfelt sincerity and his latest work is no exception. Teaming up again with Penelope Cruz, Broken Embraces incorporates elements of film noir and classic Hollywood (look out for the dramatic staircase sequence) to tell the story of a former film director who is forced to recall an old love affair when a figure from the past unexpectedly knocks on his door. For all its strengths there’s a sense that the complexity of the plot, which jumps back and forth between the past and the present, at times detracts a little from experiencing the characters emotional turmoil. As a result Broken Embraces doesn’t quite have the emotive punch of Almodovar’s best (for example All About Your Mother or Talk to Her) but it is still an immensely enjoyable work from one of the world’s most distinguished directors. [Gail Tolley]
30 THE SKINNY August 2009
BOYS ON FILM 2: IN TOO DEEP
CRADLE WILL FALL
HIGH HEELS
DIRECTOR: VARIOUS STARRING: VARIOUS RELEASED: AUGUST 17 2009 CERTIFICATE: 18
DIRECTOR: LARS JACOBSON, AMARDEEP KALEKA STARRING: COLLEEN PORCH, RIDGE CANIPE, KALI MAJORS RELEASED: AUGUST 10 2009 CERTIFICATE: 18
DIRECTOR: PEDRO ALMODÓVAR STARRING: VICTORIA ABRIL, MARISA PAREDES, MIGUEL BOSÉ RELEASED: AUGUST 17 2009 CERTIFICATE: 18
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Peccadillo Pictures’ latest compilation of the best short films about gay men from around the world has a lot to live up to after the first instalment, and it’s rather a case of that difficult second album. With nine shorts in total there are more hits than misses, but the connecting theme is more elusive this time and the lack of real-life stories makes it less interesting than its predecessor. The general high production values and sheer variety of genres to choose from, however, keep things worthwhile. The best shorts include the award winning Kali Ma, in which an Indian mother takes slapstick revenge on her son’s school bully, Futures (and derivatives) where a temp’s creativity and positive outlook impacts the lives of tired office drones, and Trevor Anderson’s The Island, which explores the theme of societal integration through an inspired fusion of film and animation. Despite the variable success with this more eclectic volume, The Boys on Film series remains an exciting and hugely relevant showcase for gay filmmakers.[Scotty McKellar]
From Medea to tabloid headlines, stories of mothers who murder their children have always fascinated and revolted us. Cradle Will Fall, supposedly based on real events, features a young mum suffering from post-natal depression in an isolated farming community, who one night snaps and decides to kill her children. It’s an original horror premise served well by slick production values and unusually decent child actors. Violence against children is one of the last big horror taboos, but once the initial shock is out the way, the underwritten script struggles to find interesting ways to frame standard stalker chases and resorts to familiar horror clichés. In spite of the dark subject matter, there is not much in the way of genuine tension or scares and in the end it could be almost any other slasher. For genre fans looking for something a little different this is a perfectly good timewaster, but it’s sad to see what could have been a serious attempt to break new ground settle for merely routine.[Scotty McKellar]
High Heels is a film about women: conventional, criminal, matriarchal, murderous, loved, loathed, and impersonated. More specifically, it’s about the passion and frustration of one woman, Rebeca (Abril), living in the shadow of her absent mother – actress, singer and Castilian drag idol, Becky del Páramo (Paredes). Abandoned as a child, Rebeca grows up desperate for her mother’s attention, going so far as to despatch her stepfather, and marry the selfish old harridan’s ex. When Becky finally returns from Mexico with designs on her old flame, however, tragedy and dance sequences ensue. Almodóvar pulls out the expected stops with his trademark juxtaposition of melodrama and high camp. The sheer velocity of rapid-fire Spanish and the non-native speaker’s reliance on subtitles, however, means it can be difficult to actually watch the action, let alone follow it. By no means up there with the classic Almodóvars, this is still instantly recognisable and satisfyingly silly. A chick flick with hidden dicks.[Cara McGuigan]
OASIS
SLACKER UPRISING
THE DAMNED UNITED
DIRECTOR: LEE CHANG-DONG STARRING: KYUNG-GU SOL, MOON SO-RI, NAE-SANG AHN RELEASED: AUGUST 10 2009 CERTIFICATE: 15
DIRECTOR: MICHAEL MOORE STARRING: MICHAEL MOORE, MICHAEL STIPE, VIGGO MORTENSEN RELEASED: AUGUST 17 2009 CERTIFICATE: 15
DIRECTOR: TOM HOOPER STARRING: MICHAEL SHEEN, TIMOTHY SPALL, COLM MEANEY RELEASED: AUGUST 31 2009 CERTIFICATE: 15
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Just released from prison for manslaughter, socially inept outcast Jong-du (Kyunggu Sol) finds himself falling in love with the seriously disabled daughter of the man he was jailed for killing. Finding solace in each other’s company, the two try and carry on their romance in spite of their families’ lack of support and understanding. Moon So-ri excels in capturing the physical and mental anomalies of Gong-ju – going so far as being hospitalized shortly after filming due to contorting her body for such lengthy periods – and as her relationship with Jong-du flourishes, so does her imagination: with day trips out being expertly conveyed by both the actress and director Lee Chang-dong as fantasy sequences in which Gong-ju sees herself as a healthy young woman. Lee Chang’s portrayal of the relationship is an uneasy one to watch – somewhat inevitable given the social and physical awkwardness of the couple – but there is an underlying innocence between the two that is oddly captivating, and at times comic to behold.[Zaineb Al Hassani]
Slacker Uprising documents Michael Moore’s tour of key battleground states during 2004’s US elections, his intention to get America’s young non-voters to take a stand against the Bush administration. Although unsuccessful, Moore’s message is clear: for democracy to flourish, the public must be informed of everything, something which surely impacted on the students who came out in their forces to vote for Kerry after attending one of the lectures shown in this documentary. Moreover, Slacker refrains from the usual one-sidedness of Moore’s previous work, the outspoken filmmaker’s point coming across in a relatively non-partisan manner. Naturally, there are certain parts in which Moore’s unmitigated hatred for the Republican Party burst forth from the screen, but these moments are few and far between. It’s almost heartbreaking to watch given the eventual outcome, but with last year’s epic election one does hope there will be no more government screw-ups (please take note Obama) for Moore to document.[Zaineb Al Hassani]
Cloughie might have been a more appropriate title for this 'adaptation' of David Peace’s baleful take on the arrogant but charismatic Brian Clough’s 44 day folly as manager of Leeds United. The novel was a fiction based on fact” and an “English fairy story”, but that didn’t stop Johnny Giles from suing or Peace voicing some regret about writing the “damned” thing. Screenwriter Peter Morgan takes a more affectionate approach to proceedings, wittily dramatising Clough’s rivalry with Don Revie (an astonishingly bewigged Meaney) and his “bromance” with Peter Taylor (Spall). Although a conventional drama, the film’s gloriously drab imagery positively burns with 70s atmosphere: reconstructions of Clough’s media appearances are spot-on (Sheen’s impersonation in three dimensions is typically outstanding); and the scent of Scotch Pies, mud, sweat and bad aftershave reeks from every frame. Add to that an endearingly uncool soundtrack, and you’ve a pitch-perfect (sorry) footie flick, the best since… Escape To Victory, anyone?[Michael Gillespie]
The Edinburgh Festival
'ANDEY
sell-out show 2008
7ORLDæ#LASS 0RODUCTIONS
7th Aug to 5th Sep Studio Big Top, The Meadows
EDINBURGH
See website or call for further information
VENUE 189
0131 667 0202 Fringe Box Office: 0131 226 0000 www.ladyboysofbangkok.co.uk
Box office on site from Tuesday 4th August 9.30am to 9.30pm daily
th
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Su Sponsored by:
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da www.festival-inns.co.uk
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 31
FILM
DVD REVIEWS
Theatre
Beyond the Fringe Gareth K Vile proves there are plenty of other options for entertainment in Scotland outside out of Edinburgh this summer. Although the International Festival and the Fringe dominate this month’s issue, and August is traditionally “dark” in the theatre across the rest of Scotland, there are still sparks of life flaring. Dundee Rep features a couple of musicals, while Glasgow has a selection of preview shows that are testing out audiences before striking Edinburgh. Many of the Glasgow theatres are taking their work over to the Fringe – the Citizens’ has The Sound of My Voice, an award-winning look at domestic brutality. And in spite of a strong Fringe presence, The Arches is still offering Contact Jam, a space for dancers to come along and explore the possibilities of working together in free-form experiment. Contact Jam is open to dancers of all abilities, and brings an improvisation ethos to contemporary dance. Not so much a performance or lesson, it invites participation and runs monthly throughout the year. At Gilmorehill, Solar Bear are presenting Gone, a comedy that looks at reality television gone wild. Solar Bear, here in association with the Deaf Youth Theatre, are one of the few companies willing to use radical stagecraft in productions for all ages. Alongside their extensive outreach, Solar Bear are a force for modern, entertaining children’s theatre, and they actively engage with controversial topics. In Aberdeen, the International Youth Festival dominates the first weeks of August. PACE from Paisley bring their updated and condensed Romeo and Juliet, and the Umkhathi Theatre company travel from Zimbabwe to offer African tales. While it is not dedicated to theatre alone, the breadth of performance
32 THE SKINNY August 2009
on show here does make it a sharp antidote to the anodyne quality of what usually passes for youth drama. There is one major new production in Aberdeen this month – an adaptation of Neil M Gunn’s The Silver Darlings. From the same company that staged the classic Lewis Grassic Gibbon novel Sunset Song, it is directed by Kenny Ireland.
The Silver Darlings studies the impact of the Highland clearances, with the heroine forced to confront a life by the sea as her husband is stolen away by a press-gang. This explicitly Scottish piece of theatre is another appropriate choice for the Homecoming year with its historical context and implicit political concerns. It is a stuggle to find Scottish theatre outside of the
Fringe this month, but between the previews and the regular events, it still presents typical, if minaturised variety. Contact Jam The Arches 9 August £4 Gone (Solar Bear) Gilmorehill 31 Jul-1 Aug £3 Aberdeen International Youth Festival Various venues 31 July-8 August The Silver Darlings His Majesty’s, Aberdeen 28 August-5 September
BRATCHY AND THE WEE MAN’S COMEDY PUB QUIZ THE ARCHES, 6 AUG, 8PM
Bratchy and The Wee Man are running a quiz and this one looks like it might actually be fun. You are actively encouraged to boo, hiss, harangue and look smug. No traditional pub quiz, this contains obscure subjects among the usual science and nature rounds, such as ‘Guess the Schwarzenegger quote’ and ‘A tribute to the life and declining career of Steve Guttenberg, Hollywood’s forgotten Jew.’ You may have seen The Wee Man online or onstage. Strutting pugnaciously, clad in Burberry and snarling
in fluent ned, he’s something of a YouTube legend (2 million hits and counting) and has been a finalist in every single year of the Scottish Comedian of the Year competition. His brother Bratchy, finalist in the contest in 2007, is on our team for The Dullest Blog, our weekly comedy blog (published on Tuesdays). With veggie and meat ‘share pots’ available, you can feed two folk for a tenner and entry to the quiz is free. Be prepared for WWF wrestling and cake eating competitions to the theme of Jaws. And don’t worry
about the fierce competition: you may have to sit in the dunce’s corner, but booby prizes are awarded to the total losers and the drinks are cheap. Otherwise, heckle away your preconceived notions of polite pub quizzage in madcap, interactive tomfoolery.[Ariadne Cass-Maran] READ BRATCHY’S LATEST ‘THE DULLEST BLOG’ SEE THE WEE MAN ON YOUTUBE WWW.THEARCHES.CO.UK
TOP FIVE: NON-FRINGE COMEDY 1) BRATCHY AND THE WEE MAN’S COMEDY PUB QUIZ THE ARCHES, GLASGOW, 6 AUG See preview. www.thearches.co.uk
2) BILL BAILEY: LIVE TOUR THEATRE ROYAL, GLASGOW, 17 - 22 AUG Catch everyone’s favourite beardy musical genius-cum-comedian at his only Scottish dates in this tour. www.ambassadortickets.com
3) SNAFU SNAFU, ABERDEEN,THROUGHOUT AUG Every Tuesday throughout August and beyond you can see a terrific lineup of top comics including Stu Who?, Keir McAllister and Carly Baker. www.clubsnafu.com
4) SIDESPLITTERS COMEDY CLUB HARBOUR ARTS CENTRE, IRVINE, 15 AUG Quentin Reynolds Rob Kane and Graham Mackie join Skinny blogger Billy Kirkwood in the latest installment of this monthly club. www.harbourarts.org.uk
5) DAM FINE COMEDY GRAMOFON, GLASGOW, THROUGHOUT AUG Weekly night with a host of different comedians, hosted by the lovely Viv Gee. [Lizzie Cass-Maran]
LIVE STONECARVING AND EXHIBITION AT EDINBURGH COLLEGE OF ART 1 - 30 August 2009 Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 4pm FREE ENTRY w w w. e c a . a c . u k / f e s t i v a l
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 33
COMEDY
PREVIEWS
It’s time for sensory overload for Edinburgh residents as the festivals descend on the city bringing along their screaming hordes and peerless art work. The Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) once again presents a programme of local talent and international art stars, in venues temporary and permanent ranging across the city. The few we have chosen to highlight here represent a small selection of the many and varied events and exhibitions which will be happening this month under the EAF umbrella. From the big-shot master shows (The Discovery of Spain, National Galleries Complex) to the quirky artist - led exhibits (the Embassy’s granny-themed Grandmother Waits For You, possibly featuring a photo of my very own grandmother), from live stone carving (Milestone, ECA) to modern masters (Peter Blake, Venice, Edinburgh Printmakers) the programme blends the traditional and the innovative, catering to all tastes while continuing to provide work that will challenge our preconceptions. It finishes again this year with the late night extravaganza of Art Late (27 Aug), an evening of events, music and performance in galleries across the city. Details are as yet to be confirmed, but last year’s Withered Hand gig, jogging tour of EAF highlights and incendiary set by Paul Vickers and the Leg in the pristine Ingleby Gallery, remain seared into the memory of many a gallery-goer, suggesting this year’s event will be well worth checking out. Go to www.edinburghartfestival.com to keep abreast of developments. [Rosamund West]
Bob & Roberta Smith The Grey Gallery, 6 Aug - 5 Sep
Firstly, Bob and Roberta Smith is one man, and not, as the dual name suggests, a twee husband and wife combo. The pseudonym, he tells me, is a playful critique of the artist as mythical persona. He arrived at the name around the time he was making work about being an unsuccessful artist – an “art loser”, as he calls it. Having been included in the Tate triennial exhibition, Altermodern, earlier this year, failure can no longer be said to define his work. Asked how he felt about being included in this innovative show at Tate Britain, he expressed his outrage at the British media’s typically anti-intellectual reaction to the curator’s courageous efforts to “define a moment”. For his upcoming show at The Grey Gallery during this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, Bob and Roberta Smith will be responding directly to the media’s coverage of contemporary art. Using his trademark sign-writing techniques, he has recreated in full an art review by the Guardian tennis correspondent, Steve Bierley. Covering 9 panels and measuring 11 metres in total, the painting is a homage to Bierley’s ability to portray enthusiasm and excitement about his subject matter – qualities, according to the artist, too often lacking in art writing today. A review of Louise Bourgeois’ exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, Bierley’s piece focuses on the inherent differences between tennis and art. Bob and Roberta Smith first read the article when it was published a year ago in the Guardian’s G2 supplement. He was enthused by how it evoked a sense of child-like discovery. “It really spooked him,” he says of the exhibition’s effect on the startled Bierley. “He thought it should come with a health warning”. Whether Bob and Roberta Smith should come with a health warning remains to be seen. Nonetheless, I look forward to reading the reviews. Perhaps one of them will be good enough to become art.[Andrew Cattanach]
Photo: Miyako Narita
introduction
Eva Hesse
Rough Cut Nation
Fruitmarket Gallery, 5 aug - 25 oct
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 7 - 30 Aug
Fruitmarket’s contribution to the EAF programme promises, as ever, to be one of the most subtly challenging of the festival. In conjunction with a major new body of research, Briony Fer and Barry Rosen are presenting a collection of predominantly unseen pieces from the post-war grande dame of sculpture, Eva Hesse. The examination of the re-named ‘studioworks’ is set to re-configure Hesse’s wider oeuvre, throwing light upon an aspect of her practice that has, until now, been viewed as subordinate. Fer’s exploration of Hesse’s smaller sculptural works doesn’t seek to present a definitive definition, presentation or conceptual position for these so-called ‘testpieces’; rather, it sets out to highlight the intrinsic value in their categorical uncertainty. The new accompanying publication expounds arguments for these multifarious latex, wire, cheesecloth and papier-mâché forms as visceral examples of the primordial act of making, set
against the complexities, as Fer explains, of having "no end in sight". The majority of the works are unnamed, conceived up until now by many as practice models or prototypes for the larger, ‘proper’ works. The exhibition looks poised to re-address them on their own terms: acknowledging the pieces within the loaded context of ‘art-waste’; as occupants of the studio space as a zone of fetishisation; as dynamic tenants of the expanse between ‘object’ and ‘thing’; as tentatively balanced amid the primordial and residual, the conceptual and handmade. For first-timers and Hesse-veterans, Studiowork should hopefully provide both an unparalleled point of access and a pivotal re-imagining, not only of Hesse’s practice, but of the rest of the sculpture on show across the city this month. [Becca Pottinger] www.fruitmarket.co.uk
In an art world constantly chasing the new and the unexpected, perhaps the biggest surprise of the EAF comes from that most unexpected of venues, the Scottish Portrait Gallery. Currently closed for renovations, the 120 year old institution is being reopened for three weeks over the festival to host an exhibition by local urban and graffiti artists. Yes, graffiti artists. Who are being allowed to paint on the walls. In the Portrait Gallery. Taking Sir William Hole’s existing decorative murals (figures from Scottish history stand in a line on a gold background) as a starting point, the various artists, including Fraser Gray, Elph, Kirsty Whiten and Jason Nelson, are spraying, stencilling and pasting onto the gallery walls to create a contemporary vision of Scotland and its history. With accompanying events including weekly gig nights courtesy of Avalanche records, Rough Cut Nation flies in the face of all we would expect from the traditional Portrait Gallery, neatly sidestepping common perceptions of a Scottish visual culture swimming in tartan and Landseer to showcase work from the contemporary city. Who knew the National Galleries had it in them? [Rosamund West] www.roughcutnation.co.uk
Photo: Abby Robinson; Courtesy of Mr and Mrs Ronald B. Lynn
Art
edinburgh art festival: A skinny guide
34 THE SKINNY August 2009
Fraser Gray
top 5 art events in august 1. SUSANNE NIELSON, GANGHUT AND ROB HUNTER & JOHN LOUDEN TILL 30 AUG, DCA
Three separate exhibitions that touch on similar themes and all emerge from the art scene of Dundee. Worth a look for the extreme collaborative processes of the GANGHUT collective alone.
2. THE LAST DAYS OF JACK SHEPPARD 6 AUG – 26 SEP, CCA
A newly commissioned film and installation by Anja Kirschner and David Pano based on ‘inferred’ encounters between 18th century criminal Jack Shepperd and the writer Daniel Defoe.
3. ART IS NOT A MIRROR, IT’S A HAMMER! TIL 5 SEP, CHANGING ROOM, STIRLING
A unique collaborative project with artefacts from the archives of celebrated filmmakers on display.
4. COLOUR PLAY ADAM BARKER-MILLER 8 AUG – 19 SEP, PEACOCK VISUAL ARTS
Gradually unfolding installations experimenting with light and time.
5. DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM 31 JUL – 14 AUG, SOUTHSIDE STUDIOS
GSA graduates curates a series of exhibitions in an attempt to stave off the post graduate malaise.
Jane and Louise Wilson Talbot Rice, 7 Aug - 26 Sep, Free.
while in the upstairs galleries of the Dean Lee Mingwei, Joshua Mosley and Nathan Coley have a room each to present bespoke works. The portfolio of exhibits interacts with the themes of the International Festival, and with Edinburgh itself: a city inextricably linked both architecturally and historically with the Enlightenment of the 18th Century. It is a city and a philosophy grounded in the past, yet Engberg has sought to broaden the scope beyond the Age of Reason, to introduce contemporary issues and international thinking. She says, “The enlightenments that I’m gathering have multiple destinations: some of them are spiritual; some of them philosophical; some of them are technological; some of them superstitious.“ The artists themselves look set to present work that is both witty and innovative, carefully avoiding the pitfalls of the annual blockbuster exhibition to create something fresh, entertaining and thought-provoking. [Rosamund West]
During the Edinburgh Art Festival, Talbot Rice Gallery will be showing the work of London based video artists Jane and Louise Wilson. The exhibition will draw on the sisters’ extensive research into the archive of film maker Stanley Kubrick, focusing on his unmade film, Aryan Papers. Unfolding the Aryan Papers is a video installation centered around actress Johanna ter Steege who was originally cast as leading role in Kubrick’s film. The Wilsons mix contemporary footage of the actress with original stills taken by Kubrick as part of his rigorous
preproduction process – as much a portrait of the actress as a study of Kubrick’s infamous method. Alongside the video work will be a series of bronze replicas of yard sticks commonly used in film production, as evidenced in Kubrick’s original stills. Also on show will be a sequence of photographs taken in an antiquarian book shop in London, dedicated to esoteric and incomplete volumes – a direct reference to Kubrick’s archive and the unfinished film. [Andrew Cattanach] www.trg.ed.ac.uk photo courtesy bfi london
Weaving its way through the city from the Georgian Library of Talbot Rice, through the Collective gallery and on to the Dean is The Enlightenments, an exhibition exploring the theme of (you’ve guessed it) Enlightenment. Australian curator Juliana Engberg has brought together a host of international artists to present works that deal in enlightenments ranging from the sublime (Susan Norrie’s video work Shot, following a Japanese ecological research satellite) to the mundane (Tacita Dean’s Presentation Sisters, a video documenting the daily lives of an order of Irish nuns). In between lie comedy of errors-style stories transmitted via Bluetooth, courtesy of Juan Cruz; a vast panoramic drawing of Edinburgh histories, stories and architecture by Australian Greg Creek; and a daily choral performance of news-inspired songs on the portico of the Dean, Gabrielle de Vietri’s Hark! In Talbot Rice, conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth has explored the historical associations of a library in which Charles Darwin mulled over The Origin of the Species,
Art
The Enlightenments Dean Gallery, Talbot Rice, Collective, 7 aug-26 sept
Nashashibi / Skaer Our Magnolia, doggerfisher, 1 Aug - 26 Sept
With one of this year’s Turner nominees under their roof, doggerfisher can do no wrong. Shimmying up to the plate for the EAF is a newly commissioned film work by collaborative tour de force Nashashibi / Skaer. Our Magnolia, takes Paul Nash’s 1944 painting Flight of The Magnolia as its literal and conceptual starting point, launching into, what will be, the duo’s fourth exploration of the transformative potential of film. Concentrating on Nash’s visual devices of analogy, the work looks positioned to develop Nashashibi / Skaer’s shared interest in films construction of mass cultural codes and the loaded signification borne from narrative structures. [Becca Pottinger] greg creek
www.doggerfisher.com
Skinny-AD.indd 1
26/6/09 14:12:20
August 2009
THE SKINNY 35
MUSIC
Sexy Beasts With a new record packed with carnal energy to promote, Wild Beasts frontman Hayden Thorpe wants to celebrate Britain's sensuous side, he tells Duncan Forgan. “IT’S what this country was built on,” laughs Hayden Thorpe as he reveals the fuel driving his band Wild Beasts’ remarkable new opus Two Dancers. Thankfully the record is not replete with chestbeating references to monarchy, inverted snobbery and the glory days of the British Empire. Instead it taps into a seam of sexual energy and carnality unharnessed by a young British guitar band since the days when Brett Anderson bestrode the indie scene like a bum-slapping behemoth. “We were aiming for an illicit kind of feel – kind of tender and erotic, but with an underlying sense of sexual aggression,” continues Thorpe in quiet Cumbrian tones that are more dormouse than alpha-male lover-man. “Sex is a universal subject. Everyone loves talking about it and everyone loves doing it. It made it easy for us to immerse ourselves fully into the record because we knew we would be touching on something that everyone can relate to. “We approached Two Dancers in a classically pop sense in terms of that boy/girl dynamic. The songs are about lust and love, heartbreak and ecstasy. Those are the typical kind of pop calling cards.” Yet while they might be reiterating themes that have been a staple of mainstream pop fare since Elvis started having problems keeping his hips in check, Wild Beasts are a long way from your standard chart proposition. First of all, there’s Thorpe’s sky-scraping voice. Flamboyant and unmistakable, the singer’s oscillating tones are, for better or for worse, the first thing you notice about the band. Then there are the bookish lyrics which may already have been consecrated as poetry by true believers, but will strike others as irredeemably pretentious. It’s safe to say that this is not a band that will fail to move fence-sitters. Having grown up in the Lake District town of Kendal, the band relocated to Leeds and released their debut single, the interestingly-title Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants on a local independent. They were snapped up by Domino in 2007 and their debut album Limbo, Panto was released last year to a host of critical garlands. Thorpe himself doesn’t seem to be unduly bothered by his voice’s divisive potential – “It’s not our selling point, it’s not our downfall, it’s just what we do,” he says – and reveals that the passionate reactions to their
debut album provided the band with more licence to heed their own instincts with the follow up. “It reaffirmed our own belief in ourselves,” he says. “When you meet people who openly admit to loving and adoring your music for its individuality, it gives you impetus. On the other side of the coin we were met with some fairly aggressive cynicism from certain quarters which meant that we had to develop a thick skin. But you build yourself some armour and with this album what we wanted to do was to ensure that we created something that we could stand by 100 per cent.” If Thorpe sounds confident, that’s because he is. It’s not, however, the cockiness of someone who has emerged on a wave of nostril-clogging hype. It’s the quiet assurance of someone who has had time to take stock. “We’ve always had the freedom to do whatever we wanted,” he explains. “Growing up in Kendal, there was no slipstream, no scene, for us to fall into. We just hunkered down and formed our own little club.”
"SEX IS A UNIVERSAL SUBJECT. EVERYONE LOVES TALKING ABOUT IT AND EVERYONE LOVES DOING IT" HAYDEN THORPE
With an album freshly in the can, the last thing many bands want is repeated exposure to the songs they have been toiling over for months. Thorpe, however, is relishing the prospect of taking Two Dancers to the masses over the coming months. “It’s been great playing them live and buzzing off the reaction that we are getting to the songs from audiences. The songs are strong and there’s a depth to the album that we are still discovering ourselves. “There aren’t a lot of things that have come out like our first album. Surprises are very few and far between these days. So in that sense, we did create a bit of space for ourselves for this one. People wouldn’t know what to expect of us next. So we gave ourselves the opportunity to surprise people in a positive way.” And a sensuous way? “Yeah, that as well...” TWO DANCERS IS RELEASED VIA DOMINO ON 3 AUG. WILD BEASTS PLAY CABARET VOLTAIRE, EDINBURGH ON 30 SEP. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/WILDBEASTS
DON'T YOU (FORGET ABOUT DRE)
A MUSO’S TOP 10: THE TWILIGHT SAD
BACK at the start of 2009, a gaggle of us Music dweebs stroked our chin in childlike wonder as we previewed the records that might blow our minds and soundtrack the world as it slowly goes mental. After holding an impromptu summit (read: boozed up, jabbering mince, listening to Thriller on the way back from T in the Park), the half-time consensus says that Animal Collective are a safe-as-houses shoe-in for the year-end's top 10 (shock!), Eminem's Relapse was a turkey
SINCE the first record, some of the things we've been doing are: playing gajillions of gigs round the UK, Europe, America and Canada, drinking too much, not sleeping, living in vans, locking keys in vans, putting out invisible fires in hotels with fire extinguishers, getting fined, fighting with people that throw glasses, meeting our alter-egos, losing shoes and spewing in them, losing band members, sleepwalking in showers, getting vans searched by sniffer dogs, losing suitcases, passing out on stage, blowing up amps, getting married to Guns N' Roses songs, recording a new album and a million
36 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
(bam!) and suddenly it's OK again to enjoy the Manics (ahem). But there's certainly a few aces left in the hole. Contenders? Well, kicking our ass sideways on the decks at the minute are new releases from Part Chimp, Antipop Consortium and The Twilight Sad. But there's another wild card that keeps niggling me, one man who might stand to trump the lot with a stone cold G-Funk classic. WHERE THE FUCK IS DR DRE? /DK
other things that have fallen out of my head at this point in time. - Andy MacFarlane, July 2009 1. The Birthday Party - The Friend Catcher 2. Neu! - Negativland 3. Deerhoof - Jagged Fruit 4. Black Sabbath - Into the Void 5. ESG - Dance 6. Pavement - Harness Your Hopes 7. Shellac - Shoe Song 8. Liars - Broken Witch 9. Toots & The Maytals - 54-46 10. Guns n' Roses - Coma FORGET THE NIGHT AHEAD IS RELEASED 5 OCT.
Before the sun sets on the summer of 2009, Ryan Drever finds another reason to crack out the tins and a tent for Tartan Heart 2009.
Observing their emergence during Creation Records's halcyon days of the Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, Melody Maker once surmised that the Telescopes were "like mad cultural terrorists, they've taken the norm and fed it through a psychedelic blender". Here, frontman Stephen Lawrie explains that many of the his early influences were far from pedestrian
1. Neil Young
He has a feel for coming up with melodies that sound absolutely definitive, like there could be no other. I grew up hearing his music, so it was totally absorbed. I can hear myself working against this on lots of Telescopes music. 2. Can (with Damo Suzuki)
When they hit on a merge there was no stopping them. They would let the tapes roll and splice all the best bits together afterwards with incredible results. Even their more introverted pieces sound propelled by something indescribably magical between them. Very intuitive music. devotchka
Belladrum’s a welcome respite from the chaos: a refreshing cocktail of scenery, music and more than a little Highland charm.
doubt leave an indelible mark on the turf, as will Edinburgh’s Broken Records - irrespective of the hoo-ha surrounding their debut LP - certain to provide a fitting soundtrack to the lush Highland surroundings. And don’t dare miss the inspired dustbowl-Americana of Sparrow & the Workshop – one of Glasgow’s most promising new bands. Then there’s our February cover stars The Phantom Band, bolstering an already strong Scottish contingent with the aid of fellow Glaswegians Sons and Daughters. Rounded out by established Belladrum favourites such as Kid Carpet and Seth Lakeman, as well as newer faces like Denver’s frankly awe-inspiring gypsy troupe DeVotchKa, here’s a truly diverse family-friendly festival for any punter craving an experience a little less hectic. [Ryan Drever]
3. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators
I discovered them after hearing You’re Gonna Miss Me by The Spades. I love everything about the group, but most of all I love Roky Erikson’s immense creativity. Just listen to the words, the man is a genius, and that voice! I used Roky’s lyrics to send early Telescopes sets into a mass of chaos. 4. The Velvet Underground
Hearing Black Angel Death Song for the first time just made total sense, I was beginning to think I wasn’t right in the head, but the Velvets reassured me that it didn’t matter. Sister Ray is very dear to me now.
Tartan Heart Festival, Belladrum, 7-8 Aug £80 (Weekend Camping Ticket) www.tartanheartfestival.co.uk
credit: Jim Cummins
If you’re tired of being swept up in the whirlwind of mainstream festivals and looking for a more chilled out affair this summer, Belladrum’s a welcome respite from the chaos: a refreshing cocktail of scenery, music and more than a little Highland charm. With RockNess fast biting at the heels of T, in terms of festival size, it may be easy to forget about another highland festival that quite happily makes the most of it’s smaller grounds. Sitting on the Belladrum estate near Beauly, just outside of Inverness, the Tartan Heart Festival has won several awards for its comfortable-yet-modest approach, not to mention its fair share of none-tooshabby entertainers. Though fully embracing traditional/folk music as well as avant-garde dance and theatre productions, previous years have seen the likes of The Lemonheads, Biffy Clyro, and Echo And The Bunnymen grace with their presence. This year sees Editors and Ocean Colour Scene taking their place as headliners, yet some of the strongest prospects are the more indigenous talents: the notoriously sublime Dananananaykroyd will no
The Road to Belladrum Few festivals are in such scenic locations as Belladrum Tartan Heart, which has been described as 'camping in the woods, with bands.' Dylan Reed suggests you make a trip of it 1. Falls of Foyers Foyers, Inverness-shire
The road along the south east side of Loch Ness winds up over the plateau of the Monadhliath Mountains, and is spectacular in its own right. Take a turn towards Foyers, and stop at the top of a (clearly-signed) short walk to one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the country. Burns even wrote a poem about the place.
2. Findhorn Ecovillage Near Forres, Morayshire In summer the visitor centre is open 10am-5pm Mon-Fri, 1pm-4pm Sat-Sun.
Formed in 1972, this spiritual community is a great example of the hippie ideal working long-term. A good festival will always inspire feelings of common love (and this one has ‘Heart’ in the name); why not investigate the sustainability of this with a tour of The Park, or over a slice of ‘heaven on earth’ gooseberry cake?
This hostel is part of a quaint wee cluster including a café, pottery shop and hostel. In summer it’s guaranteed to have some other young folks hanging around; it’s ideally placed for the whole of the Highlands and the Belladrum drive in particular; and they’ve an outdoor hot-tub with quality views. If extended travel sounds like a hoot but you’re stuck for wheels or pals with wheels, have a look at Liftshare.org - their Belladrum page will get you on the right track, and a roadtrip with fun new folk could be a brilliant frame to the whole shindig. www.ecovillagefindhorn.com
3. Pottery Bunkhouse Laggan Bridge, Inverness-shire
potterybunkhouse.co.uk
5. Suicide
As teenagers we used to switch off the lights and pound Frankie Teardrop into our skulls. It was a kind of initiation into our little circle of friends. There’s a throbbing intensity on this first album that I don’t think they ever really hit upon again. Girl is a total classic.[Stephen Lawrie] The Telescopes and St Deluxe play Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, on 15 Aug and Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, on 17 Aug. www.myspace.com/thetelescopes
www.liftshare.org
August 2009
THE SKINNY 37
Music
A Heart of Class
The Bands that Built The Telescopes
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iva r P / ub
l C / e r / Liv
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The Electric Circus has come to town! It’s the hottest new bar and music venue with great live acts on all through the week and special boutique club nights. Come in for a relaxing drink after work, rock out later on to some great bands and DJs or indulge your inner soul diva or rock god in the eight lavishly created private karaoke rooms - the only ones available in Scotland! The Electric Circus promises a truly unique smorgasbord of choices for the ultimate musical experience.
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Former Dresden Doll Amanda Palmer returns to Edinburgh this month with her solo punk cabaret. Before she does, Nine Nowoczesna bends her ear on matters of the art. “I’M pretty fond of Neil Gaiman at the moment,” offers Amanda Palmer when I ask if there are any topics she’s particularly keen to discuss. You got the memo, right? Amanda Fucking Palmer, formerly of the Dresden Dolls, is going out with the much-celebrated creator of The Sandman. With their prolific careers and respective cult followings, that’s a pretty big deal. “I’m just madly in love with the guy and I’m really excited,” she says. “We first spent a chunk of time together last August [collaborating on the book, Who Killed Amanda Palmer?]. But we were both sort of seeing people at the time, and then my relationship fell apart over the fall when I was on tour. And Neil stayed in touch with me and we really hit it off. We just kept finding we had more and more in common, and then by January, it seemed like I woke up to the inevitable one day: ‘Maybe I should be dating this guy!’ And so we did what jetsetting travelling people do, which is we started going on dates in different cities. He would show up in LA when I had a show and we would go on a date, and then I would show up at his place in Wisconsin and we would go on a date… and when we finally had a collection of dates and it was really obvious that we were falling in love, we just made the dates longer. And I’ve never been in a relationship with someone that I just felt so incredibly comfortable with – he understands me and my life upside down and inside out.” While her personal life is overwhelmingly positive, professionally there’s a thorn in her side: Palmer says her relationship with Roadrunner Records “had already gone to shit” before her live performance of Please Drop Me appeared on YouTube. "I don’t fit on your roster," she explained, to the tune of Moon River. "I’m tired of all this pointless shit." The song concluded with a list of their other artists: Slipknot, Annihilator, Machine Head, illustrating how out of place she is on the label. “I was just continually sending them explosive cheesecakes in the mail, saying ‘I’m really serious, and if you don’t let me go, I can make myself a royal pain in the ass, and I definitely will.’ And I have the entire internet behind me, so that’s awkward!” Palmer adds, referring to her loyal online fan base. “It’s such a powerful tool, and I just don’t think the major labels understand how to reconcile commerce and art, and that was my main problem with them. They actually did a wonderful job promoting the Dresden Dolls through commercial radio and traditional old-school press. But when I was making angry phone calls because they needed to pay my internet marketing team back in 2003 and 2004, and support and feed our online presence, they didn’t understand. It was, ‘oh, that internet thing, maybe there’s something to that.’ And I was tearing my hair out, saying, ‘Oh, you don’t get it, this is it, this is everything.’” This is everything. Thousands of fans are poised to have “a giant party on the internet” once she’s free from the label. Through her blog and Twitter feed, she engages with fans directly and frequently, giving them a connection that many other celebrities avoid. This fits the 1,000 True Fans model put forward by Kevin Kelly of Wired magazine: Palmer may not be making any money through Roadrunner, but all she needs is a thousand people who are dedicated enough to travel to see her, to pick up any and all merchandise available, to attend impromptu events, to follow her online – and that’s enough for her to make a living. Certainly, her creative personalised marketing takes unexpected directions. Recently, at home on a Friday night, she posted a flippant comment on Twitter: “i hereby call THE LOSERS OF FRIDAY NIGHT ON THEIR COMPUTERS to ORDER, motherfucker.” The subsequent throng was described as a “virtual flash mob” by cellist Zoe Keating, and within a few days, Palmer had grossed over $11,000 selling commemorative t-shirts. Contrast this with the anti-climax of Oasis, a track which she says Roadrunner never really promoted as a single. An upbeat, two-minute tale of rape and
abortion against a backdrop of high-school gossip and teenage fandom, its accompanying video is both delightfully kitsch and darkly hilarious. It was promptly banned by every radio station and TV channel in the UK. “But,” Palmer says, “it started a really great discussion online about art and censorship and where lines are crossed. That’s the sort of thing that turns me on more than selling records or getting my video played. It’s been a fantastic discussion with people about the nature of writing and art and how much of a creative filter the artist should have – offhand, I would argue none. It evolved into a really interesting discussion between women who had been raped and hadn’t been raped and how they felt about it, and how they thought that it could be depicted and portrayed in art. And it’s kind of like what happened with the Leeds United video [Roadrunner wanted to cut some scenes because they thought she looked too fat]: because of something obnoxious happening, I’ve actually grown as an artist because I’ve been forced to
"BECAUSE OF SOMETHING OBNOXIOUS HAPPENING, I’VE ACTUALLY GROWN AS AN ARTIST BECAUSE I’VE BEEN FORCED TO TAKE A STANCE"
take a stance, define myself, and really explain myself. I appreciated the opportunity to stop and take the time to do that in my life, because otherwise you’re clawing blindly, half-assuming you know what you’re doing, but sometimes it takes something like that for you to stop and centre yourself and say, ‘No, really I mean that, and really I believe this.’” With Gaiman appearing at the Book Festival and Palmer playing the Picture House, the couple plan to spend ten days at the Fringe. “My guess is that I’ll wind up performing a lot spontaneously and you’ll have to be following me on Twitter to find out what bar I’ll wind up playing in that night. I can drop a hint at ten o’clock that I’m gonna wind up somewhere by midnight and people can come over if they want.” AMANDA PALMER PLAYS THE PICTURE HOUSE, EDINBURGH AS PART OF THE EDGE FESTIVAL ON 22 AUG. WWW.AMANDAPALMER.NET
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 39
MUSIC
Amanda Fucking Palmer
nine black alps
A New System Canadian synth-rockers Metric recently broke a four year silence with an assured fourth album, Fantasies, earlier this year. Ryan Drever sits down with guitarist James Shaw to find out what the hell took them so long.
It’s the last day on our stay at Beethoven Street studios in London. We’ve spent four days here and ten days in a remote farm studio in North Wales recording what will hopefully be our third album. It’s the first album that we’ve actually recorded on British soil and also our first album with the producer Dave Eringa, who has previously worked with the likes of Idlewild and Manic Street Preachers. The whole process has been very fast and very enjoyable. Where previous recording sessions for other albums have been more laboured and definitely more expensive, this one has been breezy, focused and nothing less than fun from the onset. All of the tracking apart from vocals has been live, to retain the feel of the live performances. And being couped up in a ramshackle studio in the middle of the Welsh countryside with no outside involvement from labels, management or press has proved to be a blessing, with sessions going on late into the night and often through to the next morning. What’s coming through the studio speakers in front of me sounds great. Very heavy, weird and menacing. We really wanted to make this our heaviest album yet, something very unapologetic, unfussy and extreme. So rather than overanalysing each drum take or each guitar tone, it’s pretty much been the four of us plus Dave hunting for the most extreme guitar noise and then moving quickly on, so that we can get to the local Spar before closing time for supplies of beer, tea and cigarettes to take us through to the early hours of the morning. It’s hard to describe an average day at the studio, as it seems like a blur with no coherent pattern or schedule. Mostly we wake around eleven, consume as much caffeine as possible, grab a piece of toast and then walk across to the studio, where we talk crap with Dave for a bit and then plough on with the next song. Then we talk crap with Dave a bit more, somebody takes their turn to cook dinner, and then we start another song, and finish up with thousand-yard stares at about five or six in the morning. We’re roughly doing about two or three songs a day at the moment which is incredibly fast compared to our first two albums – it’s amazing what paying for your own record does to your work rate. After finishing the basic tracking in Wales, we came down to London for four days to add some vocal harmonies and a few more weird guitar noises, and now I find myself typing in these words with our finished third album playing through the speakers. Voila.[Sam Forrest, June 2009] Locked out from the inside is due for release in october. www.nineblackalps.com
40 THE SKINNY August 2009
photo: norman wong
Music
in the studio:
It’s been four years since the release of Metric’s last album Live It Out finally earned the band their stripes and a reputation as one of the more forward-thinking, and frankly, more talented groups to twist the realms of synth-driven pop and indie rock music together. The resulting fallout saw their popularity scale new heights, bolstered by the band’s will to knuckle down to hardcore worldwide touring. However, as a result of commitments to various other projects - both guitarist James Shaw and vocalist Emily Haines are part of sprawling Canadian collective Broken Social Scene, to name just one - as well as individual desires to escape for a while, the band’s follow up took its sweet time to surface. Thankfully though, after what seems to have been a time of important reflection and re-energising, Metric finally materialised somewhat out of the ether to deliver Fantasies earlier this year. Taking time to talk in the unusually regal surroundings of the dressing room upstairs at Òran Mór - complete with a piano and ornate furniture - Shaw discusses some of the thoughts, changes and inspirations behind their latest album. “I feel like what has changed more than anything else is that we’ve made a conscious effort to embody the idea of the reconstruction of a new world in a sense," he explains. In reaction to the appointment of Barack Obama as US President (even though the band are Canadian), as well as other significant global events as of late, Metric have taken inspiration from the accompanying idea of change and rejuvenation when putting Fantasies together. “It seems like there’s a renewed sense of hope in a lot of places all of a sudden,” says Shaw, suitably enthused. “There are a lot of old structures beginning to crumble and fall, and a lot of new structures are now required, so I feel like the record we made is attempting to be a part of the dreaming stage of a new idea. It’s the idea that anything that’s ever come to fruition has started with a fantasy.” This new effort sees Metric embracing the synth-led direction of previous albums, but offers a surprising new depth to the songwriting, seemingly bolstered by the band’s - and in particular, singer Emily
"There were definitely moments when it felt like if we ever stopped pushing the ball up the hill it would just roll all the way back down again. Right now it doesn't feel like we have to push at all" james Shaw
Haines’s - personal excursions. Prior to the writing and recording of Fantasies, Haines travelled to Argentina, returning wide-eyed, inspired, and with a head full of ideas. One of the most significant tracks on the record is the song Help, I’m Alive, an autobiographical track based on that very trip. After being leaked prematurely, not only did the track usher in a new wave of popularity for the band thanks to an unexpected wealth of radio play, but it also earned the quartet their first ever Canadian number one as well as a spot in the US Top 40, much to their own surprise. “It took on a complete life of it’s own,” says Shaw. “I mean, we never really would’ve considered putting that out as a single until we started hearing all these radio stations play it in countries as far-reaching as Australia, Germany and Ireland. Then we thought, maybe this is a rare opportunity to release, as a single, the song we all kinda loved the most but never thought was viable on those terms.” With this recent foray into a more intense spotlight, it would seem that any previous doubts - or indeed, gasps for air - have now been quelled by a newly revitalised attitude and a bright, collective energy, as Shaw explains: “All four of us took the time to work out a lot of our own personal shit about taking this on as a career and I think we’re all in a really healthy place to be doing it. For the first few years - from touring Old World Underground going right into touring Live It Out - without really stopping, there were definitely moments when it felt like if we ever stopped pushing the ball up the hill it would just roll all the way back down again. Right now it doesn’t feel like we have to push at all.” It would seem then that this shift in momentum may very well assist in sustaining the longevity of Metric. “We’ve never really been in this to get out,” offers Shaw. “The idea has always been, ‘How can we build this so we can do it for the rest of our lives?’ There’s nothing else we want to do more than this, Sonic Youth style!” Metric play Picture House, Edinburgh on 25 Aug. www.ilovemetric.com
eDen the
festival
LEVELLERS Finley Quaye
System 7 Eatstatic Banco De Gaia Nucleus Roots Bombskare Shooglenifty
Orkestra Del Sol The Baghdaddies Zuba Bassa Beat The Destroyers Samba Ya Bamba The Apples Black Cat
Diddley Squat Suns of Arqa Zub Zub The Shakes The John Langan Band The Unstoppable Flying Raincoats The Meat Men The Dambuskers Pikey Beatz Miyagi Moonbuggy King Arthurs Men Steve Hillage - DJ set Lucas Man at the Window Trancient Dreams Aka Hum Mirror System flutatious
Champignon Wobbly Squadron Frog Pocket Greenheart Dan Arborise United Beats Collective Tetradrone Galipaygos Vid Warren Katus Jumblesale Spartan Tartan Emma Gillespie
Open Air Devergilla Stage Fir Chillus Musical Boutique Ghillie Dhu Dance Tent Rabbies Tavern Drumtroddan Performance Arena Shellycoat Kids Tent Rheged Fair Workshops
ÂŁ55 weekend tickets www.edenfestival.co.uk 4th-6th September 2009 AE Forest, DUmfries & Galloway Scotland
MUSIC
Red Alert
THERE’S a famous communist slogan ‘Workers Unite’. Thus it’s fitting for a band so well versed in the global communist movement that Vcheka’s birthplace was also their workplace. As guitarist/vocalist Graham Cameron explains, “Yeah, we met each other through our jobs (referring to bassist Ryan Murray and nowdeparted founding drummer Malcolm Shields). At one point we all worked on the same floor, all slightly disillusioned with what we were doing – or not doing – musically. So for a year we jammed enthusiastically and aimlessly before getting Ross (Galloway, keys/ synth) on board. Previously we had tried loops, samplers, effects, harmonies. Always there was a musical void. It always sounded good but directionless and in danger of sounding like just another post rock trio. Ross filled all the gaps.” Quizzed about the vision and musical glue that binds the left-field quartet, Graham continues “Oooft! We’re into anything from Jeff Mills to Boards Of Canada to the Mary Chain but if you want to sum us up then, bizarrely enough, we congregate round classic pop like Prefab Sprout.” Pausing to let that bombshell sink in, he continues: “The obvious ambition is to reach as many people as possible. We feel we’re doing something quite original, progressive” (NOT prog-rock, he’s quick to correct) “and even informative but each player has a specific sound that doesn’t really change. We’re really a pop format. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Usually within five minutes.” Despite that modest simplification of their sound,
rarely does a band appear that is as genuinely hard to categorise and even harder to pinpoint in terms of apparent influences. It’s a testament to their spirit of adventure that Vcheka seem to have embarked on a journey purely of their own devising, with only the loosest comparisons (hints of Battles, snippets of Primal Scream perhaps) coming even close to what has grown into an idiosyncratic alt-pop animal with an unstoppable live reputation. Shifting the discussion to their lyrical content and artwork, to say Vcheka romanticise communism, like so many naïve punk and hardcore groups of recent years, would be unfair. Their imagery and references astutely reflect both sides of the red coin. Their name for example is taken from the sinister Soviet security force charged with protecting the interests of the Bolshevik ruling party in early 20th century Russia. A task which involved the “liquidation” of opponents, the running of the notorious gulags and the suppression of workers’ uprisings in the most brutal of circumstances. Yet track titles like 1919 recount the Clydeside strike of that year in which workers across Scotland exemplified the positives of the communist cause and joined arms in solidarity over the plight of Glasgow’s dock workers, only to have the protests brutally quashed by an edgy domestic police force in our very own George Square. Political indoctrination is not the objective, rather Vcheka encourage us to examine our own history and reflect on its relevance today. As Graham attests: “The imagery of the 1919 strikes in
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PHOTO: HEIDI KUISMA
Courting the imagery and spirit of solidarity inherent in Communism, Chris Cusack finds that Glasgow's Vcheka finally deliver on behalf of the Reds.
Glasgow is used because of the lyrical subject. as well as being interesting and powerful. The lyrics are more philosophical than political.” In true leftist spirit, he goes on: “Transmitting these ideas to an audience, albeit a generally underground one, definitely qualifies as success. The arts/music scene in Scotland can be great at times. We feel a lot of the best work goes unrecognised but that’s not always a bad thing. There are always gigs and club
nights popping up, and there’s a lot of visual artists we respect. It’s good to know something that other people don’t. Whatever field of the scene you attach yourself to, you’ll always be surprised!” It goes without saying that, for fans of inspiring, inventive alternative music, Vcheka are one of the things on the Scottish scene you need to know about right now. VCHEKA PLAY CAPTAIN’S REST ON 29 JUL.
MUSIC
Spinning the Wheel of Fortune QUIETLY supping beer on a sun-drenched Edinburgh afternoon, Ted Koterwas is curiously relaxed company. Elegantly spoken, his courteous demeanour makes it almost impossible to believe he’s the creative force behind The Foundling Wheel’s decibel-notching racket. In fact, so stark is the contrast between this daytime persona and his writhing stage-bound contractions, The Skinny’s beginning to question whether he suffers from an unchecked strain of rock star bi-polarity. “Having an outlet for rage is something I need,” explains Koterwas with a flash of gnashers that belies the sentiment. “It’s a Jekyll and Hyde thing. I need an outlet, but I put it into something that’s productive rather than destructive. Being aggressive is satisfying and I want that chaos around me in music, so it’s going to happen regardless.” Born in Arizona, Koterwas spent his youth shadowing his military engineer father; hopscotching around New York, Kansas, Panama, Virginia, and Colorado before eventually settling in San Francisco. As a privately trained percussionist, his schoolboy heart was sold on the concrete career path of a life in the studio but, boys being boys, those good intentions were quickly swayed by punk’s lurid advances and Koterwas’s incurable appetite for noise. “There were a lot of experimental bands in San Francisco and that stirred my interest,” he says. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of bands who were, at one time, very much on the edge and are now considered mainstream. There’s a real desire on my part to be noisier than what is acceptable. I want to be pushing harder than what’s out there.” After relocating to Edinburgh three years ago, Koterwas immediately sought out the periphery he craved, scouring
PHOTO: PETE DUNLOP
Sonically nihilistic, The Foundling Wheel is Edinburgh’s premier one-man octave cranker. But, during a chat with the amiable Ted Koterwas, Billy Hamilton discovers appearances can be a lot more than just deceptive.
Auld Reekie’s dank hovels for like-minded souls. But, as a one man blister of bit-crushed bass, candy-wrapped melody and merciless drumbeat, The Foundling Wheel eased into the city’s feather quilted alt-folk scene with the subtlety of a torpedo to the anus. Unsurprisingly, the settling-in period was far from smooth: “Looking back on it I could have done more research into the scene, but instead I just went out a lot to try and
find music I could relate to,” he concedes. “I found that there was a fairly hardcore experimental/improvisational noise scene and there was an indie scene but there wasn’t much that crossed over. I think that’s changed quite a bit now; there’s more margin-walking between the two.” Being caught between the noise sect’s rock and the (not so) hard place of the folky hoards weighed heavy on Koterwas’s shoulders, almost inciting a premature
disbandment during what he describes as a “winter of discontent” last year. But the two factions’ strengthening coalition has developed an attentive audience looking to expand its risk-based approach to sound consumption. Today, The Foundling Wheel’s fare has never been higher. “I think the surroundings have become more accommodating,” explains Koterwas. “I’m probably on the very harsh edge of an experimentalism that’s becoming more mainstream in Edinburgh. There are people who really like what I do, then there are people who clearly don’t, or just don’t know what to make of it, and where they stand is apparent on their faces when I play. In some ways that’s deliberate, that’s the way I approach music - trying to mix extremes.” By actualising the sound of urban decay and smashing it deadweight into unprepared lugs, The Foundling Wheel’s 2008 debut LP was an agitated, abrasive clang that screamed ‘acquired taste’. Now hip with the in-crowd - he’s part of Edinburgh music collective Bear Scotland, has recorded local wailers Dead Boy Robotics and organises collaborative shows under the VERSUS tagline - Koterwas is determined to ensure his future endeavours won’t succumb to the mainstream bear-trap. “I would love to be adored by millions of people but I’m not willing to pander to make that happen,” he declares. “I don’t want it to pull me in a direction that I don’t consider authentic. I’m interested in music as an art form and I want to make music that pushes the edge. The best definition of success I can think of is gaining the respect of my peers.” THE FOUNDLING WHEEL PLAYS PIVO PIVO, GLASGOW ON 18 AUG. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEFOUNDLINGWHEEL
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 43
Of course we play religious music. (Genesis, Nazareth, Judas Priest.)
On air: Glasgow on 96.3fm, Scotland on DAB Listen Online: www.rockradio.co.uk
A Conversation with Daniel Johnston
Danny, Champion of the World
Kurt Cobain described him as "the best songwriter on earth." But there's much more to the story than that. Finbarr Bermingham speaks to Daniel Johnston and finds that he still has his demons, but hope keeps him going. Daniel Johnston’s childlike singing voice and propensity for using amateurish recording methods and basic instrumentation puts many people off his music. It’s no coincidence though, that so many artists have taken his songs and covered them. At the heart of each one is an overwhelming melody, and when delivered in a more conventional method, they can be enjoyed by millions of others. This month, we’ve tracked down our five favourite Johnston covers that you can listen to for free. But believe us, this handful of tracks is really only scratching the surface. Eddie Vedder – Walking the Cow
Kurt Cobain may have been the grunge superstar who propelled Johnston to fame by donning one of his idiosyncratic designs on a t-shirt, but his influence extended to another giant of the Seattle scene in Eddie Vedder. His solo cover of Walking the Cow is a fragile beauty. The Pastels – Speeding Motorcycle
The protocol for an interview with outsider artist Daniel Johnston is unlike any other. For a start, and for obvious reasons, he is reluctant to open up to the press. His demons are more unembellished than most and thus, an interview is hard to come by. When The Skinny secures some time with him, we have to call his father and have a conversation with him first. Bill Johnston is an 85-year-old, old-fashioned, deeply religious gentleman, who still handles his son’s affairs. This is despite the fact that Daniel nearly killed them both in the 1990s. The pair were flying back from a performance at SxSW in Bill’s light aircraft when Daniel – who had stopped taking his medication – seized the controls and threw the keys out the window, sending the vessel into an uncontrollable freefall. The plane landed in a forest. Father and son were lucky to survive. Fifteen years on, Bill tells me off for calling at an inconvenient time as he goes “to get Daniel from the other room” (it later emerges that he has been oversleeping: his manic depression returns sporadically). But there’s a reason why The Skinny, and almost any other magazine, will go through such rigmarole to speak for 30 minutes with a middle-aged, overweight, chain-smoking, bi-polar, narcissistic, schizophrenic, manic depressive American. It’s because Daniel Johnston is one of the most remarkable individual talents living today. Strangely, though, there seems to be only one way to start a conversation with him and one which delves right to the root of his work’s simplicity. I succumb to the temptation: “Hi, how are you?” It turns out he’s okay, but I wonder if he’s sick of people asking him that same question. “Not really. You know, when I was growing up everyone would say “Hi, how are you?” Before I ever put it in a drawing or on a t-shirt, it was in a song of mine that said: ‘I saw you at the funeral / You were standing like a temple / I said “Hi how are you? Hello” / And pulled up a coffin and crawled in.’” “But the drawing came about 10 years later, when I worked at Astroworld in Houston. I found a Weber Frog Box that said “Hi, how are you?” and I thought: “Hey that’s cool.”” Daniel’s conversation is childlike, optimistic and
innocent: many of the adjectives attributed to his music. He still dreams of having a Number One hit: “Well, I’m gonna keep on practising and writing until one day I can, that’s what I want.” He holds out hope that Matt Groening will act on his promise to do some work together, having been impressed by his comic portrayals of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Captain America: “I love comic books, that’s what I want to do, and if we could do something together… Oh boy!” Whilst institutionalised in the early 90s, he wrote a letter to his agent requesting that The Beatles reform as his backing band. When reminded of this, he skirts round the question, but still fantasises of the collaboration: “It might have to wait ‘til we all get to Heaven, but if they walked in now and said they wanted to play with me, I’d drop dead with shock!” He beams with pride when we talk about Kurt Cobain (who described him as “the greatest songwriter on earth”) wearing his t-shirt: “Somebody gave me a Xerox copy of the picture and I had it hanging on the wall. It was a big deal because it was the MTV Awards!” He still can’t believe how many popular artists have covered his songs, but struggles to keep track of who has sung what. “It’s great that I get all these tapes, and they all sound really cool. I hope that one day, someone will popularise a song so much that I can get to Number One. Oh boy, that would be great.” In fact, Johnston is much more at home when talking about achievements and aspirations. He says his new material with Danny and the Nightmares is “the best I’ve ever done” and is happy the extensive remastering of his back catalogue is continuing, with Welcome to my World, Yip Jump Music and Continued Story / Hi, How Are You all scheduled for reissue this month. All of this means more work, and for Johnston, it’s imperative that he keeps busy. “I try to write everyday. When I feel good and nothing is wrong I write all the time, and that’s what I’m trying to do now.” The award-winning documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, rummaged through Johnston’s past with a fine-toothed comb and held all the worst bits up to the light for the world to see. It’s fascinating stuff, but makes for uncomfortable viewing.
“I like it. At first I didn’t know what to think. But I’ve only seen it about 15 times you know?” he says when asked for his opinion on it. But he dodges questions about the issues addressed within the movie: his health, his time in mental institutions and his current state of mind. The only time he subsides is when I quote him a line from his song Go: ‘Here I am on this planet taking everything for granted’, before asking if he’s learned to appreciate his own life. “I try to enjoy my own life, despite my manic depression. When I get depressed… even today I was sleeping in… I just sleep. I can hibernate for four months at a time. Once I get going, especially if I am recording, it inspires me to write songs. It’s good therapy.” The only area of the movie he discusses openly is Laurie Allen, who he fell in love with as a student and wrote hundreds of songs about. She was none-the-wiser until the film-makers contacted her. They were reunited at the premiere, and Johnston’s voice perks up when describing the moment. “I couldn’t believe it when she came. My heart just broke – I didn’t know what to do. When I saw her at the party after, I flipped out. I could hardly talk – I was out of my mind. I couldn’t think of anything to say. She was every bit as beautiful as I remembered, and I love her. She’s probably married,” he says softly. “We’ve lost contact since, but I hope I’ll see her again.” For Johnston, these fragments of hope are what keep him going. He is still a prolific illustrator and songwriter, and whilst much of his harrowing past is addressed within his art, he finds it difficult to talk about. A conversation with him is a crude snapshot of his rollercoaster life. He can make you frustrated and sad, but by the end of the next sentence, have you laughing along with him again. What truly emerges from a conversation with Daniel Johnston is that he is a gentleman – a rare breed amongst the music fraternity of today. Welcome to my World, Yip Jump Music and Continued Story / Hi, How Are You will be reissued via Feraltone on 31 Aug. Daniel Johnston plays The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh on 4 Nov.
This one has been covered by everyone from Yo La Tengo to Mary Lou Lord, but it’s The Pastels’ version from 1991 that stands out for us. Simple, tuneful and easy to hum along to – all traits the Glasgow band shares with Johnston, so it’s no surprise that their take on one of his best tracks works so well. The Twilight Sad – Some Things Last a Long Time
Beck, Built to Spill and Beach House have all tried their hands at this one, but The Twilight Sad’s take on a Johnston classic is untouchable. As the ominous drone wells up throughout, James Graham bellowing: “I still think about you…” is nigh on heartbreaking. Johnston has since requested a copy of this particular cover from us. Sparklehorse – My Yoke is Heavy
Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous is a close friend of Johnston’s and has toured extensively with him in the past. This camaraderie is unsurprising, considering the pair have more in common than music, having both experienced severe depression. Linkous has covered more than one Johnston track, but this is our favourite: the yoke in question, being the burden of melancholy shared by both men. Beck – True Love Will Find You in the End
This is perhaps Johnston’s most famous song and Beck’s harmonica-led reworking gives it more polish and force. For many Johnston fans, the beauty of his music lies in its lo-fi simplistic quality. Whilst few of these covers replicate this, they provide a worthy tribute to a man who otherwise may well have flown under the radar. see this article online at theskinny.co.uk for links to the free tracks
www.hihowareyou.com
August 2009
THE SKINNY 45
Music
Hi, How Are You?
Rinse FM's crown jewel Alexander Nut speaks to Colin Chapman about kindred spirits and the power of pirate radio.
© shaun bloodworth / ammunition
Music
Sweet as the Nut
Currently one of the UK’s most forward-thinking DJs, Alexander Nut plays at LuckyMe’s club offshoot, ‘Baller’s Social’ this month. Hailing from Wolverhampton but now based in London, his weekly Mixed Nuts show on Rinse FM is one of the station’s most popular, with listeners tuning in across not only the city but also the world via the internet. His mix CD for the Rinse series released earlier this year received widespread praise, while his digital effort for FACT Magazine has become one of their most popular downloads. Both have acted as the perfect primers for a sound he describes as ‘hip-hop’, but, thanks to the myriad styles he drops, surely only in its broadest sense. “I’ve been DJing since I was seventeen, but up until about four years ago never considered doing it professionally”, admits the 26-year old. “When I first moved to London, I actually left my records and turntables back in Wolves but going out to club nights, I met like-minded people and friends who were doing stuff and this encouraged me to start mixing again”. Work placements in the music industry and a job at Fabric helped draw Alex into the business and he also began being asked to play clubs and spots on radio. “Things just started to build up to the point where the penny eventually dropped. I was so immersed in music, it seemed a natural progression to go full time with it”. In an effort to raise his profile further, he also produced a series of mix tapes, and it was probably these that had the biggest impact on kick-starting his professional DJing career, though he found it challenging trying to create something representative of his sound. “It was hard for me, I didn’t know how to present it to people because I was into so many different styles, and things were quite separate back then. Dubstep, grime, hip-hop, there wasn’t the melting pot of styles that there is now. I did one called We Love Radio, with hip-hop and soul stuff and another, called Something In The Shape Of with dubstep and grime on it. I gave them out to everybody; friends, people I met at clubs, pretty girls, DJs. They became really popular and I ended up doing three volumes of each.” It was these mixes that helped him get more slots at clubs and, ultimately, the attention of Nomad, the host of
46 THE SKINNY August 2009
Plastician’s show on Rinse FM. “He pushed me toward Geenius and Sarah Lockhart who run the station,” explains Alex. “I was a regular listener and also went to FWD, the night where most of their DJs play at. They asked me to do a show, though initially I don’t think they really understood the sort of stuff I was playing… it was before Flying Lotus’ experimental style became so influential; people weren’t really familiar with what I was playing, but there was definitely a small scene bubbling under. I did a Saturday afternoon, returned the following week and now I’ve been doing it for over two years.” With his eclectic show pretty much embraced by Rinse listeners from the off, the station seems like the perfect home for him. “It really reflects the current sounds of underground Britain, particularly what’s going on in London. Broadcasting online, it goes on to influence not only the rest of the UK but also the world, though it’s still a pirate on FM in London. The people running it make sure the DJs they recruit are the pioneers of the sounds they represent.” As, the only ‘hip-hop’ DJ on Rinse, he’s got the freedom to go beyond this style, which he particularly enjoys. “As much as I call it hip-hop, people wouldn’t necessarily say that’s what I play solely. I do feel that the roots of my music always come from that style, whether it’s grime, funky or dubstep. It might seem a strange outlook but for me, like hip-hop, it’s all street music, regardless of BPM. As a result, I’ve definitely got the most eclectic and leftfield show on Rinse. If I play a house track, then a dubstep track followed by a grime record, nobody will question it and I really appreciate that.” Aside from DJing on Rinse and regularly at clubs such as FWD, Cargo, Deviation, Fabric and Plastic People, Alex also runs his own music promotions company, All Young Kings, which has helped develop his understanding of the industry and also means he’s always switched to hearing new sounds and artists. “I’m looking out for new music every day, it’s literally non-stop. When I get home I’m constantly online looking for stuff…I dig through second hand record shops; if a CD’s in a bin, I’ll take it out and see what it is…Anywhere I can acquire new music I will. I also get sent a lot of music by
"We’ve a good level of control, we want to make sure that everything associated with Floating Points and other artists on the label is handled properly. We want to support friends and our peers making music; we want sustainability, longevity…to develop artists’ careers. "
close friends who have a similar taste.” Alex actually deleted his MySpace page as he was getting sent too much stuff, but puts a positive spin on this, arguing that now only artists and producers truly determined to reach him, will. As well as plugging new artists, he manages producer Sam Shepherd, AKA Floating Points and the pair run the Eglo record label. “I’d supported one of his tracks on the radio, but only first met him properly at CDR, a club night promoting new music by unsigned artists. We chatted, got on really well and a friendship developed. He kept giving me music which I really liked, but no-one was putting it out. Initially, I thought I could help him get signed but because of my promotions work, decided I was in a good position to release it myself and that’s how Eglo came about.” Alex admits their main focus isn’t the label due to other commitments (Sam’s currently working on a PHD, Alex is busy with All Young Kings), but their handful of releases have been well received and all sold out. “We’ve a good level of control, we want to make sure that everything associated with Floating Points and other artists on the label is handled properly. We want to support friends and our peers making music; we want sustainability, longevity…to develop artists’ careers.” So, what does he think of LuckyMe, a collective who seem to share a similar musical mindset and approach to Eglo? “Hearing their output, what Dom and the whole crew are doing, it’s like finding kindred spirits. It’s exactly the music I want to hear and they’re making it. Once I spoke to Dom, I realised we were on a similar level with our way of thinking. They’ve been a huge influence on my sound and I think what they’re doing is brilliant; I can’t wait to hear the Hudson Mohawke album when it’s finished. Basically, they’re at the forefront of the scene, trying to stay one step ahead, but also keeping true to themselves, I’m really looking forward to playing at their night and catching up with everyone.” www.rinse.fm Alexander Nut plays Baller’s Social Club at Stereo on Fri 14 Aug, 11pm – 3am, £7/£5 www.thisisluckyme.com
Music
Suck My Deck After leaving a trail of crumbling dancefloors and swooning females across the globe, Brodinski takes a brief break from touring to chat with Chris Duncan about his new mix for the Suck My Deck series It is rare for a DJ or producer to make a name for themself with the same speed that Brodinski has. Even in an age where it seems the music blog reigns supreme, creating the ‘next big thing’ one day an demolishing them the next, Brodinski’s rise to fame on the electro and house circuit has been particuarly swift. Speaking on the phone from his apartment in Reims, he expalins how it all began. “I was in the studio back in 2006 with my friend Yuksek. He helped me to produce my first track: Bad Runner. Thanks to him it turned out very well.” It was with this debut track that Brodinski became known to some of the most influential people in the dance music scene. “A-Trak, Busy P, Erol Alkan, Stephen and David Dewaele from 2manydjs, they all really supported me right from the beginning. Once I met them the gigs and festivals followed. Bad Runner came out on Mental Groove in October 2007. Since then, I’ve played at Wax:On in Leeds, Ibiza and Sonar in Barcelona. Sonar was amazing, a dream come true. I’ve been there the past four or five years as a tourist, but this year was my first time there as a DJ. The crowd were great, I really enjoyed it. I hope they invite me back.” Following Bad Runner, Brodinski remixed the likes of Bonde de Role, Klaxons, Das Pop, Shoes, D.I.M, Heart Revolutions and Adam Sky. After extensive touring and a stint behind the production desk at Tiga’s label, Turbo, Brodinski was asked to create the latest mix for the Suck My Deck series. “I didn’t include my own material in the mix. There was no
"Sonar was amazing, a dream come true. I've been there the past four or five years as a tourist, but this year was my first time as a DJ."
obligation to include my own tracks so I decided to only use my favourite records and the ones I was listening to most at the moment. One of my favourite songs of the moment is Sticky by Frankie House. It isn’t on the mix, but it is just such a great record - listen out for it.” Brodinski’s mix manages to blend heavier tracks from the likes of Duke Dumont and Popof before introducing lighter techno offerings from Iron Curtis. It is something of a departure from the previous mixes in the series which were curated by Simian Mobile Disco and Boys Noize. Does Brodinski feel satisfied with the finished product? “Everyone has been very kind. People seem to love it, I’m happy with the mix and the reaction to it. Now that it’s out there and finished I’m going to spend some time at home before going away on tour again.” Electromind in Montpellier; Champion Mind in Bangkok; Reclaim the Dancefloor in Ibiza; Pukkelpop festival; Matter in London. This is just the tip of the iceberg for Brodinski’s hectic tour schedule that lasts well into the last few months of 2009. “I’ve played Scotland before. I was at Death Disco in Glasgow and I have also DJed in Edinburgh. I really like Scottish crowds, they are always very friendly and seem to go wild very easily. I like that.” Bugged Out Presents: Suck My Deck Mixed by Brodinski is out now.
Stand up‘09
for freedom
Presented by Amnesty International, producers of the Secret Policeman’s Ball
Simon Amstell Sarah Millican Phil Nichol Kristen Schaal and Kurt Braunohler John Bishop Andrew Maxwell Colin & Fergus Rob Rouse When: 12 & 19 August, midnight Where: Assembly Hall, Mound Place Tickets: £18.50/£16.50 conc Book: 0131 623 3030/assemblyfestival.com For latest line-up visit amnesty.org.uk/edinburghfestivals
Sell out show 12 years running. Don’t miss out protect the human
August 2009
THE SKINNY 47
This month's CD stack runs the gamut from East Neuk folk to South London hip-hop. Nick Mitchell packs his earphones for the journey
HAVING exorcised his inner crooner with The Last Shadow Puppets, Alex Turner returns to the day job as Arctic Monkeys frontman with Crying Lightning (***, 17 Aug). But while this Josh Homme-produced track is built on meaty guitars and a lolloping beat, Turner’s voice still clings to the smooth glamour of the Puppets when some of his former snarl would have done the trick. One band who thrive in smooth mode are London soul kids The xx, who make a return to this column after their debut single was praised in April. The follow-up, Basic Space (***, 3 Aug), is another distinctively lo-fi R’n’B jam, although this time their languid singing style is an inch too close to posturing apathy. The reissued single rears its head again, and this month’s déjà-vu moment comes from Team Waterpolo. Over a year ago they received a generous three stars in this column for Letting Go (**, 18 Aug). One less this time, because it hasn’t aged well. 6 Day Riot, the London folk-pop act fronted by Glaswegian Tamara Schlesinger, have been attracting some hype lately. While the trumpet-led O Those Kids (**, 3 Aug) is a breezy toe-tapper, its appeal is fleeting at best, so that by its end you’ve almost forgotten what it sounds like. James Yorkston takes a more scholarly approach to folk with his new collaborators The Big Eyes Family Players. The two songs chosen for the double A-side Martinmas Time / I Went to Visit the Roses (***, 3 Aug) are both trad standards that Yorkston adopts in his own understated but mellifluous way. Underlining the Fence Collective’s experimental abilities, Yorkston’s old mate King Creosote does something very different with his own single. He was so impressed by London DJ Bullion’s funky remix of No One Had It Better
PHOTO: JULIETTE DALTON
RECORDS
THE DIRTY DOZEN
SPEECH DEBELLE
(****, 17 Aug) that he’s released it as a single, and covered the remix of his own song for the B-side. A preposterous idea that, like most preposterous ideas, actually works. It’s difficult to know what to make of English band The Heavy. On the one hand, their swaggering rock take on 1970s American funk is hardly groundbreaking. On the other, new single How You Like Me Now? (**, 31 Aug) is undeniably good. But for me the lack of fresh ideas is a real drawback. In contrast to The Heavy’s full-fat sound, Lovvers aim for unrefined minimalism on OCD Go Go Girls (***, 3 Aug). This no-frills punk clatter sounds like it was recorded in a cold, cramped garage, and it’s probably just a bit too lo-fi for its own good. If you wiped away some of the synth gloss of Little Boots’ latest chartbound single Remedy (**, 17 Aug) and gave it a nastily cheesy beat, it would sound like late-80s Kylie Minogue. It really is just brainless, bubblegum sentiment coated in glitter, but then I suppose that’s what pop music is. At least she doesn’t have to deal with the kind of shuddering typo that graces the press notes that accompany the new Metric CD. I quote: “the latest, sleekest electro poop gem from the Canadian band”. While Gimme Sympathy (**, 3 Aug) isn’t exactly faecal, it certainly is sleek. Whether that means they’ve managed to do the impossible and polish a turd is anyone’s guess. This month’s Dozen is rounded off in true urban style. London DJ/remix duo The Nextmen have recruited long-term accomplice Ms Dynamite to rap in her finest Jamaican Patois over Lion’s Den (***, 3 Aug), a taut, brutal electro-dub track. Whether it has much currency north of the M25 is another matter. But move over Dy-na-mit-ee, because there’s a new, female conscious rap star on the block. Speech Debelle is a 25-year-old South Londoner who combines her slick rhymes with a sinister ambience on Better Days (****, 10 Aug). A guest vocal from Micachu only adds to the track’s dark allure, edging it across the Single of the Month finishing line.
SINGLE REVIEWS ELECTRICITY IN OUR HOMES
WE AGREE COMPLETELY EP OUT NOW, PARLOUR
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KASMS
ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE/MURMUR 10 AUG , TOUBLE RECORDS
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MALCOLM ROSS AND THE LOW MIFFS
THE MAN WHO TOOK ON LOVE (AND WON) 3 AUG, RE-ACTION RECORDINGS
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You may not know Electricity In Our Homes yet, but their new EP is sure to grab your attention. It’s edgy art-rock of the Can and Captain Beefheart variety, with an added pop sensibility that shines through sporadically like a flickering light bulb. Songs range from the zingy post-punk of Message of Joy, to the tantalising musique concrete of Are They Wearing Thin?, but it’s the satirical bite of Don’t You Want To? (Follow) that reveals the wit behind the band’s supposedly artless charm. The economic tracks of We Agree Completely effortlessly display the potential and talent of this London three-piece; Electricity In Our Homes are a band bound to cause a buzz (shit pun intended). [Joe Barton]
Since releasing debut album Spayed earlier this year, London quartet Kasms have gained a reputation for erratic and often unpredictably violent live shows. That sense of danger envelops both tracks on this double A-side brilliantly. Absent Without Leave springs to life with immediate similarity to the burgeoning collection of latter-day female-fronted punk groups, but as it pounds through its three short minutes, a dark energy all of it own unfolds, boosted by a suitably raw production and topped with bittersweet harmonies. Murmur, on the other hand, sounds like a more terrifying Franz Ferdinand building up and breaking all the way back down again, combining heavy dance grooves with sheer anguish to thrilling effect.[Ryan Drever]
For those who’ve whiled away nanoseconds pondering just how Scott Walker and David Bowie might have sounded had they formed a surf guitar band, The Low Miffs and erstwhile Josef K guitarist Malcom Ross have the answer. The Man Who Took On Love (And Won) opens with a restrained, dry-as-sand guitar riff, before gradually flourishing into a monster chorus. Leo Condie sings his little heart over trembling surf-guitars, his voice evoking Roy Orbison (if only he’d been into Hawaiian shirts and a sixties pop falsetto). Malcolm and The Miffs took on love and won; seizing our affections was a breeze.[Ewen Millar]
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ELECTRICTYINOURHOMES
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/KASMS
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THELOWMIFFS
HOLY MOUNTAIN
THE TWILIGHT SAD
MARIACHI EL BRONX
HOLY MOUNTAIN EP
I BECAME A PROSTITUTE
CELL MATES
OUT NOW, SELF-RELEASED
3 AUG, FAT CAT
10 AUG, WICHITA
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For the uninitiated, this doom ‘n’ roll two-piece have been shaking loose light fixtures and teeth to fervent reactions for the last four months. Stories of multiple shows in one night and performances in vans winding through city centres are already passing into folklore. Though this EP doesn’t quite capture the thunderous spectacle, it provides useful insight into the nature of Holy Mountain. Walls of guitar collapse onto the scattered rubble of drums, both frantic and precise. Tempos undulate from treacle slow to torrential. With a bit of production behind them, there’s a monster here just waiting to get out. [Austin Tasseltine]
Anyone worried that The Twilight Sad might have lost some of their feral power in the two years since Fourteen Autumns would have been partly reassured by the climactic yet controlled bombast of comeback single Reflection of the Television. On I Became A Prostitute, however, they let their bilious aggression out of its cage to roam free. While guitarist Andy MacFarlane is still bashing his tremolo arm to discordant effect, his flattened tuning gives the song a weird, unsettling sensation, and James Graham doesn’t lighten matters by calmly offering to “bleed you dry”. Dark, brilliant and still very much untamed. [Nick Mitchell]
Unless The Jonas Brothers are anonymously working on a double album of folk-inspired death metal, this is undoubtedly the most unusual musical alter-ego of 2009. A world away from the noisy hardcore sound for which they’re known, LA punks The Bronx have transmogrified into Central American doppelgangers Mariachi El Bronx, swapping crunchy detuned guitars for chirpy brass, frantic bass-drum rhythms for a summery latino sway and rock-n-roll howls for sweetly sung jail-based pining over absent sweethearts. Such a major stylistic shift might have an air of novelty were it not for Cell Mates straight-faced sincerity and wonderfully upbeat flourishes. Even if the Bronx have thus far left you cold, the summery warmth of the Mariachis may change your mind.[Chris Buckle]
MYSPACE.COM/THETWILIGHTSAD
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEBRONX
PLAYING CAPTAIN’S REST ON 6 SEP. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MOUNTAINHOLY
ESBEN AND THE WITCH
THE PASTELS / TENNISCOATS
HUMANZI
ESBEN AND THE WITCH EP
VIVID YOUTH / ABOUT YOU
BASS BALLS
OUT NOW, SELF-RELEASED
3 AUG, GEOGRAPHIC
24 AUG, KICK IN THE EYE
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Ethereal romanticist folksters Esben and the Witch take their moniker from a Danish fairytale and fully live up to their literary flights of fancy, playing dark, twinkling, songs pregnant with menace and brooding, evoked by spooky guitars and dour female vocals. Whilst the twee constituency is often understood to consist of educated middle-class types who readily partake in melancholic treehugging whilst wishing they’d lived next door to Shelley and Byron 200 years ago, Esben engage more than the niche listener and kick everybody’s ass by being, well, really good. Their witchery conjures up Bjork walking a more introspective path, or Beth Orton singing about her secret passion for live-action role playing; Richard Dawkins might not approve, but it’s enchanting nonetheless.[Ewen Millar]
The pairing of Glasgow indie darlings The Pastels with Japanese avant-gardists Tenniscoats might seem like an oddly exotic match-up. But in actual fact Stephen McRobbie and Aggi Wright have forged close ties with the far eastern underground pop scene through their Geographic imprint. Vivid Youth, the first half of this double A-side, is a dream-pop gem; a lazily melodic 60s-sounding backing to breathy, sensuous female vocals, seemingly scored for poolside parties or cocktail bars. About You is also beguiling but lacks its predecessor’s direction and style, allowing for your attention to quickly fade. [Nick Mitchell]
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ESBENANDTHEWITCH
MYSPACE .COM/THEPASTELS
48 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
Given past musical associations, it’s not massively surprising when Bass Balls comes thundering out of your speakers with all the hedonistic momentum of QOTSA’s narcotic-fuelled Feel Good Hit Of The Summer. A massive fuzzy bass tone provides just what this single says on the tin and a quirky, minimalist guitar refrain marks this Irish quartet out from the alternative rock pack. The vocals carry more than a faint whiff of White Zombie, but the music is thankfully unencumbered by the connotative baggage that might imply. For such big noise Bass Balls doesn’t overstay it’s welcome and invites real interest in Humanzi’s next move.[Chris Cusack]
THE PASTELS PLAY STEREO, GLASGOW ON 2 SEP. WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HUMANZI
Through his tenure at the helm of hip-hop collective Jurassic 5, Chali 2na established himself as a talented and instantly recognisable MC. Ryan Drever talks to the man himself on the eve of his solo debut.
Fans of Jurassic 5 - the Los Angeles hip-hop crew that kept everybody’s feet stuck to the dancefloor with cuts like Conrete Schoolyard at the turn of the millennium – will already be well acquainted with the rumbling baritone of the towering Charlie Stewart, better known as Chali 2na. Having achieved respectable critical and commercial success with the group, building a solid fanbase that encompassed everyone from skaters and rock crowds to the familiar throng of the hip-hop community, tussles with their label, Interscope, as well as interpersonal difficulties, eventually saw J5 meet an untimely end. However, the group’s implosion appears to be a blessing in disguise for Chali, having allowed the MC a better opportunity to flex his unique verbal muscle. Though each individual member of J5 possessed their own respectable talent and unique style, Chali’s juxtaposition of a rapid-fire flow with a smooth, low-end groove was always one of the more difficult elements to ignore. Having taken some time to formulate his solo debut, Chali relates that Fish Outta Water exists in various guises. “This is the third version of the album. I had my own personal versions just to try and keep everything fresh until the day that it actually hit the stores,” he explains, in an expectedly deep, yet friendly voice. “A couple of people had problems with me wanting to step out on my own, you know, let’s be perfectly frank. But, I’ve never had any bad intentions towards any of the members, or anybody for that matter, I’m just a passionate artist, I like to work. So, if an opportunity presents itself, I try to deal with it, and an opportunity presented itself. I’m such a loyalist at the same time, so I set the album aside a couple of times to work hard and dilligently on Jurassic stuff. But I think it’s just one of those things where this came out when it was supposed to.” Now free from any glaring obstacles and spurred on by the urge to assert himself as a prominent and diverse solo artist, Fish Outta Water sees Chali dive headlong into areas of music that many would genuinely never have expected, drawing at times
from ragga and dancehall – even enlisting the help of Beenie Man and brothers Damian and Steven Marley to bolster the authenticity - to soul, funk, and even incorporating more modern, synth-driven hip-hop beats as opposed to a stricly traditional approach. “I wanted to display all of these things that inspire me musically as well as tell a story, so I was able to use the Carribean influence, I was able to use the electronic house influence and soul... I’m like a mosaic of all that music, so I wanted to display that,” he explains, before demonstrating his point the way he knows best. “The line from the song Comin’ Thru encompasses what I tried to do with this album: ‘You’re learnin’, while the turntable’s turnin’ / But people should know me more, than for just the verbal Herman Munster’. That’s the theme of this whole album, I want you to know me for more than just what you see." Of course, even in the few short years since the demise of J5, countless trends and advances in the digital musical environment have seen the face of modern music change significantly. It’s a daunting factor for any musician to consider, let alone one whose roots lie in traditional styles seldom heard today. However, seemingly undeterred, though understandably bewildered by some of today’s most popular music, 2na seems intent on working this to his advantage. “I always try and seek out the good and find out what makes a musician tick. I know I’ve got to be able to pull in people’s ears, even though some of these styles may not have been my first choice as a listener or a fan. I had to keep in mind that there’s a lot of new people who’ll be listening. I wanted to bring that old-school skill-set on top of some new shit so that you’re able to digest it like a sandwich, so to speak.” With the aid of hip-hop royalty, Chali fires home the point with style. “Big Daddy Kane told me one time, ‘I listen to these new dudes, and I’m not like, fuck them dudes, I’m more like, damn! this is what kids like? OK, well if you like that, then watch this!” Fish Outta Water is released via Decon on 24 August.
Going local With such top-notch acts as David Byrne and Jeffrey Lewis, this year’s Edge Festival in Edinburgh is not to be sniffed at. However, if you look beyond such high-profile events you’ll also find a whole host of unmissable local talent this August, finds Milo McLaughlin
This month in Edinburgh local DIY promoters Tracer Trails, The Gentle Invasion and Trampoline (as well as local independent music retailers Avalanche Records), are stoically ploughing on with what they do best, regardless of the invading festival circus. Amongst others, these committed souls have played a key part in the rejuvenation of the capital’s music scene over the last couple of years, putting on atmospheric gigs in unusual places and cherry-picking the most interesting and unique acts from both the city itself and further afield. Now the invading hordes from around the globe have a first hand opportunity to see for themselves that Scotland’s East Coast music scene is on a par with any of the UK’s larger and more celebrated spots. To the delight of those who attended the inaugural, critically lauded Retreat! mini-fest last year, Tracer Trails and The Gentle Invasion have again teamed up for another generous helping of ‘locally sourced DIY pop and urban folk’. This year, Retreat! takes the form of a free all-dayer at Bristo Hall (16 Aug) and if you’re from around Auld Reekie you’ll be well aware of how good the line-up is, with such imaginatively-monikered local luminaries as Withered Hand, Wounded Knee, Enfant Bastard & Meursault as well as cult US band Viking Moses, the hilariously twee Allo, Darlin’ and London-based dafties Moustache of Insanity (clearly the best band name ever). Local gig/club night Trampoline has also consistently attracted great music to the city at the Edinburgh College of Art’s Wee Red Bar. Over five nights in August they’ll be unearthing some lesser known gems, including a rare showcase from Y’all is Fantasy Island frontman Adam Stafford’s Wiseblood Industries label (7 Aug), the winning combo of FOUND’s Ziggy Campbell and distinctive vocalist/guitarist Yusuf Azak (both 14 Aug), the ethereal Animal
Magic Tricks (8 & 9 Aug) and the mariachi stomp of Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers (18 Aug). Also of note at the Wee Red this month is The Final Vinyl, a 10th birthday celebration showcase for Benbecula Records which sadly doubles as a closing party for the cult label. Sets from Christ., Araya and newcomer Plum will drop the curtain on one of the finest and most consistent stables of ambient electronica we’ve ever known (21 Aug). Finally, thanks to the combined efforts of Scottish street art collective Rough Cut Nation and Avalanche Records – one of the few independent music retailers left in the land – a number of cracking gigs are scheduled to take place at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery throughout August. Both Withered Hand and Meursault (both 28 Aug) make another welcome appearance, as well as sublime folksters Rob St John and Emily Scott (both 8 Aug), synth maestro X-Lion Tamer (21 Aug), moody troubadours St Jude’s Infirmary and Glasgow’s premier folk-popsters Zoey van Goey (both 22 Aug). Third time’s a charm as the ‘sault once again return with Eagleowl and FOUND in tow for an encore performance of Playing with the Past – a unique dovetailing of original music and silent short films from a bygone age – over at the Filmhouse on Saturday 22 August. Thankfully then, the onslaught of the more monolithic festivals no longer means death to the local scene for the summer. If you’re uninitiated with the above acts, this is a wonderful opportunity to get yourself acquainted with the true beating heart of Auld Reekie. See listings for full information on all performances. Tracks from FOUND, Araya, Yusuf Azak, Eagleowl, Rob St John, Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers and Y’all is Fantasy Island are available now on TenTracks.co.uk.
www.myspace.com/chali2na
August 2009
THE SKINNY 49
Records
Catch of the Day
www.tentracks.co.uk
RECORDS
ALBUM OF THE MONTH: THE CAVE SINGERS
WELCOME JOY 17 AUG, MATADOR
rrrr The word may carry all sorts of unsavoury connotations, but a makeover isn’t always such a bad thing. Once members of various underachieving Seattle post-punk acts, singer Pete Quirk, bassist Derek Fudesco and drummer Marty Lund are these days mining a much more productive seam of stripped-down Americana in their new guise. An accomplished debut, Invitation Songs, was a promising start and Welcome Joy builds on these febrile beginnings to emerge as something of a low-key classic. Several touchstones – most notably Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bruce Springsteen and Led Zeppelin’s folk excursions – are summoned up over the course of the album, but the overriding atmosphere of sparse intensity makes
this much more than an exercise in skillfully purveyed nostalgia. Opener Summer Light nails it immediately with a tapestry of picked acoustics and a bass drum heartbeat providing the perfect backdrop for the appealingly nasal Quirk to intone an instantly uplifting melody line. Nothing else quite matches that for instant kicks – although the knockabout cowboy-punk of In the Cut comes close. The others keep a polite distance before nestling into the psyche, with the the eastern-influenced Shrine, the shimmering Hen of The Woods and the haunting closer Bramble in particular offering flawless testimony for their creators’ change of tack.[Duncan Forgan] WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THECAVESINGERS
ALBUM REVIEWS LIGHTNING DUST
JAY REATARD
WILD BEASTS
INFINITE LIGHT
WATCH ME FALL
TWO DANCERS
24 AUG, JAGJAGUWAR
17 AUG, MATADOR
3 AUG, DOMINO
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Last year, Black Mountain’s In The Future was rightly hailed as a masterclass in stubbornly retro psych-rock. Who’d have thought that emerging from its colossal hash cloud of a shadow would be albums of stripped-back prog / folk? Stephen McBean wowed us with his Pink Mountaintops earlier this year, and now as Lightning Dust, two more Black Mountaineers swap their axes for penny whistles and go all mellow on our asses. If In The Future was a juggernaut, then this here’s a rickshaw: comfortable, sometimes fun, but ultimately underwhelming. Opening track, Antonia Jane, is brilliant. Catchy as a bout of the swine and emotive as Jacko’s memorial service. But with the bar set so high, the rest of the album struggles. I Knew is mildly irritating, but The Times is another terrific effort. Herein lies the problem: Infinite Light lacks the consistency that would elevate it from a good album to a great one.[Finbarr Bermingham]
Despite spending his teens in lo-fi garage-punk bands, Jay Reatard’s solo work is unashamedly pop. There are no attempts to undermine the hooks running through Watch Me Fall with noisy outbursts: Reatard instead offers up twelve no-nonsense, instantly memorable slices of power-pop which shimmy, shake, rattle and roll through a hit-parade of influences. Past comparisons to Guided By Voices and Supergrass don’t quite convey the enthusiastic brio with which Watch Me Fall crackles - imagine instead if Andrew W.K. chose to emulate Ash and Weezer rather than soft-metal and motivational speakers. So why the subdued score? Because, for all their individual charms, many songs lose their sheen over the course of several listens; chord changes start to sound overly obvious and there’s only so many way/away-type rhymes one can take before craving something a little more ambitious than a three-minute earworm. In moderation, however, Reatard is a happy, catchy treat.[Chris Buckle]
WWW.LIGHTNINGDUST.COM
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/JAYREATARD
Wild Beasts are patently unafraid of provoking ridicule. Their lyrics are full of tangled and poetically inclined couplets and, as if that weren’t flamboyant enough, are intoned by vocalist Hayden Thorpe in the kind of oscillating falsetto minted most recently by Justin Hawkins of Darkness infamy. While this refusal to kowtow to the accepted mores of indie drudgery is eternally commendable, there are too many times on Two Dancers where hollowness takes precedence over heart. It’s hard to quibble with the driving pulse of single Hooting & Howling, but the repetitious refrain becomes boring and then infuriating all too quickly. Two Dancers is much more appealing when it goes easier on the histrionics. The Fun Powder Plot eases in gently on an irresistible wave of chiming guitars and minor-key sadness while All The King’s Men and the title track benefit from the contribution of bassist Tom Fleming, whose sonorous tones provide an appealing counterpoint to Thorpe’s more singular approach.[Duncan Forgan] PLAYING CABARET VOLTAIRE, EDINBURGH ON 30 SEP.
ARCTIC MONKEYS
PLUM
WWW.WILD-BEASTS.CO.UK
PISSED JEANS
HUMBUG
DIFFERENT SKIN
KING OF JEANS
24 AUG, DOMINO
24 AUG, BENBECULA RECORDS
17 AUG, SUB POP
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Anyone who has paid close attention to the utterances and activities of Alex Turner over the past couple of years won’t be taken aback by Humbug. The Arctic Monkeys mainman has made no secret of his admiration for Scouse psychedelicists The Coral, while his affection for 1960s stylings were laid bare on the creatively rich Last Shadow Puppets diversion. Thus it comes as no huge surprise that the pithy kitchen-sink punk drama of yore has been largely discarded in favour of deeper, richer and more lysergic textures. Recorded in America with QOTSA singer Josh Homme and Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford, the album showcases a band at the top of their game. On opener, My Propeller, Turner’s menacing croon makes clear his progression from Sheffield sixth-form poet to fully formed singer. The record is equally confident elsewhere whether on the elegiac and wistful Cornerstone or the Doorsy closer The Jewellers Hands. Humbug proves that it’s possible for a phenomenon to grow older gracefully.[Duncan Forgan] WWW.ARCTICMONKEYS.COM
THE BOOKHOUSE BOYS
Benbecula Records [sadly closing its doors in November - ed] can always be relied upon to deliver the offbeat, the oddball and the out-of-the-ordinary, and the great Scottish label certainly doesn’t disappoint here. Different Skin is the first album proper from the peculiarly named Plum, more conventionally known as Shona Maguire, with input from Plum chum Ben Phaze. With a meld of echoing, processed drums, eerie synths and plaintive acoustic guitar, Plum transcends the typical female singer/songwriter template to create a desolate, lonely and at times lovely sound. Portishead is a clear influence, especially evident in opener Goosebumps, which pairs a dark trip-hop beat with themes of rejection and longing; the looping vocals and minor chords of Connor nod to recent Radiohead. Plum’s haunting voice floats somewhere between KT Tunstall and Bat For Lashes, and affects most on the title track where she harmonises with several apparitionlike tracks of herself. A Plum jam, if you will.[Euan Ferguson]
Pissed Jeans are pissed off. Pissed off that they’re becoming the white collar drones they swore to Tyler Durden they’d never be. Pissed off about having to wear “plastic smiles” whilst they do it. And if singer Matt Korvett’s bawling, throaty growl has been deciphered correctly by these ears, pissed off by the seemingly unrelenting hype over, er, Harry Potter? The only solution for these four, white, middle-class men from Pennsylvania seems to be to distill their unabashed appetite for 80s hardcore punk into King of Jeans, their third record for the pivotal Sub Pop label. But it’s not all Fugazi-style haughty sloganeering. Mid-set breather Request for Masseuse bristles with Black Sabbath bass rumblings whilst Korvett adopts a drawling Nick Cave soliloquy on his ever-increasing bodily aches and pains. You have to hand it to a band whose response to impending middle-age is to end an album with a song called Goodbye (Hair).[Darren Carle]
PLUM PLAY BENBECULA RECORDS - THE FINAL VINYL ALONGSIDE CHRIST AND ARAYA AT WEE RED BAR, EDINBURGH ON 21 AUG.
WWW.WHITEDENIM.COM/PISSEDJEANS
NEBULA
NODZZZ
THE BOOKHOUSE BOYS
HEAVY PSYCH
NODZZZ
17 AUG, BLACK RECORDS
3 AUG, TEE PEE RECORDS
24 AUG, WHAT’S YOUR RUPTURE RECORDS
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“A soundtrack for a film that doesn’t exist” is up there with “voice of a generation” in the big book of irksome review clichés. But in this case, it’s so apt I’ll not only use it, I’ll go one better and specify the feigned film - with its Morricone crescendos, surf-guitar riffs and, on Tonight, an introduction identical to Urge Overkill’s Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon. The first half appears specially commissioned to save Tarantino the hassle of hunting through 7”s for Kill Bill Vol. 3. Nick Cave is a clear non-cinematic influence, with I Can’t Help Myself sounding awfully like The Curse of Millhaven with less interesting lyrics (which isn’t an insult – most songs have less interesting lyrics than Cave’s blood-drenched ditty). Unfortunately the standard later dips, with too many lulls killing momentum and leaving the Bookhouse Boys an intriguing prospect, but not yet a fully-formed one.[Chris Buckle]
One of the leading lights of the 90s stoner movement, this latest opus from Nebula is a bit on the patchy side. Pulse is a slow-burning opener that initially suggests the seminal trio may be getting passed it. Have the years of weed and booze finally caught up, hastening in an era of mid-paced, swirling psychedelia, where open-legged guitar posturing is replaced by idly footering with increasingly more elaborate effects pedals? Thankfully “NO” is the answer positively screamed by the following two numbers. Both The Dagger and Aphrodite are vintage, guitar-smitten Nebula calling-cards. The sound on this record is roomier overall, more retro than normal, their sense of nostalgia clearly having waned none in the last decade. Other notable highlights include the fiery Crown Of Thorns and Lead Sky. Elsewhere however, the slower numbers are too pedestrian. Neither entirely seductive nor lulling, Heavy Psych occasionally ambles by in a way that Nebula never should.[Chris Cusack]
For some, music is a very serious subject. Just ask your average self-harming, old-school Nine Inch Nails fan or the straight-edge guys that tossed coffee on Ian Mackaye. Not so for Nodzzz. Comparisons with Pavement abound in the media. Certainly they share a similar belief in music as an excuse to have fun, not churn through the depths of humanity’s folly. It’s something of a flattering reference from thereon in however. Nodzzz are not blessed with the brilliant, subtle wit of Stephen Malkmus, nor the outstanding hooks of his cult band. Nodzzz’s is a more flippant, throwaway sound. Despite the reliance on guitar, this will almost certainly appeal to fans of quirky synth-pop, if only thanks to the carefree attitude permeating both. There’s also something very 60s garage about the unfussy production and the fact that the longest track, In The City, clocks an epic 2 mins 15. Forgettable but fun indie pop.[Chris Cusack]
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/THEBOOKHOUSEBOYSOFFICIAL
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/NEBULAMUSIC
NODZZZ.BLOGSPOT.COM
50 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
JAMES YORKSTON & THE BIG EYES FAMILY PLAYERS
FOLK SONGS 10 AUG, DOMINO
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JULIAN PLENTI
CRUISER
IS SKYSCAPER
HAPPYROBOTS: PROGRAMMEDTOLOVEYOU
3 AUG , MATADOR
3 AUG, KFM RECORDS
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A deliberate reaction to recent folk-mutations, Folk Songs sees James Yorkston take time out from his work with The Athletes to record eleven traditional tracks with James Green’s Big Eyes Family Players. The concept may suggest a staid and old-fashioned affair, but the song choices are more varied and unusual than might be expected, ranging from sixteenth-century England to more recent Galician Spain. The execution is similarly innovative: poacher’s ballad Thorneymoor Woods pitches its conventional melody over eerily minimal rippling cymbal rolls, while Lay Down In The Broom rattles along at a whip-crack pace, laden with danger and drama. But the album’s no-nonsense title possibly makes this review superfluous – if you want to hear James Yorkston sing folk songs, then James Yorkston’s Folk Songs is probably already on your to-buy list. But on the off-chance that you’re on the fence, may I suggest going ahead and putting it there?[Chris Buckle]
The press sheet for Is Skyscraper notes that mysterious singer-songwriter Julian Plenti took a sabbatical between 2001 and 2006, but doesn’t explain why. Actually, it was because he was busy being Paul Banks, moody Interpol singer and unintentionally funny lyricist responsible for such classic face-smacking lines as “She says brief things, her love’s a pony, my love’s subliminal”, and “the subway, she is a porno”. He’s grown a moustache too; are we sure this isn’t actually Brandon Flowers? Thankfully, no such lyrical duds intrude on Is Skyscraper, an ambitious and accomplished record that uses unsettling string arrangements and snippets of film dialogue and found sound as often as guitar riffs or heavy drums. Third song Skyscraper is more like a classical mood suite than a rock song, Madrid Song is clearly inspired by Boards of Canada, and On The Esplanade’s finger-picked bed is overwhelmed by a array of dramatic string sweeps.[Ally Brown]
There’s something very appealing about remix albums: they’re bursting with the ideas and talents of dozens of collaborators, but, unlike compilations, have the running thread of the remixed band to hold things together nicely. This version of Fife five piece Cruiser’s HAPPYROBOTS:smilingpeople is one such example, although a group of great minds doesn’t necessary guarantee consistency. Dedo’s Retrogamer is a standout track; a bouncy hip-hop number, complete with Stephen Hawking-style vocals, as are Ribside’s beautiful version of Sunshine Warrior and Tiger Tiger’s wooshy interpretation of A Key That Hurts. That said, it’s not all great: videogame music maestros Laugh & Peace’s contributions are a little uneventful, and there unfortunately seems to be a dull moment for every euphoric one. To be fair, remixing an acclaimed album is no easy task, and, if anything, it leaves the listener hungry for some new material from Cruiser, which is, luckily, due out this winter.[Joe Barton]
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/JAMESYORKSTON
WWW.JULIANPLENTI.COM
SUPPORTING KID CARPET AT ELECTRIC CIRCUS, EDINBURGH ON 4 AUG AND PLAYING BELLADRUM TARTAN HEART FESTIVAL ON 8 AUG.
BROADWAY CALLS
YIM YAMES
MOS DEF
GOOD VIEWS, BAD NEWS
A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE HARRISON
THE ECSTATIC
17 AUG, SIDE ONE DUMMY RECORDS
3 AUG, ROUGH TRADE
24 AUG, DOWNTOWN
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Finally the worldwide drought of pop-punk is over. God knows it’s literally been hours since our last fix of pseudo-snot-spitting, major-chord-playing, longshort-wearing, faux-Orange County poppery could be seen crudely smearing concealer over their acne on the cover of Kerrang. As we are all too aware, for every Blink 182 and Green Day there are 100,000 three-piece sound-a-likes, dying their hair and trying to look enthused across the world at any one moment. In fairness to Broadway Calls, this album is 100% what fans of the genre will be looking for. The songs are concise and peppered with singable choruses and the production is thick and lively. Recording with Descendents drummer Bill Stevenson must have been a thrill for these guys too and the glee certainly shines through on this capable affair, yet it’s just so numbingly familiar and passé – another drop in the ocean, albeit one worthy of its intended audience’s attention.[Chris Cusack]
It may appeal most to devoted My Morning Jacket fans, but this six song requiem for George Harrison deserves a wider audience. Recorded solo and acoustically by MMJ’s tremulous mainman Jim James just after the Beatle’s untimely demise from cancer in 2001, these understated takes on some of Harrison’s greatest songs are delicate and suitably reverential. James’s song selection is predictable enough – there’s four from Harrison’s solo masterpiece All Things Must Pass including the title track and the hit My Sweet Lord and two from his time with that other mob – but there’s little that’s perfunctory about his delivery. Versions of All Things Must Pass and Behind That Locked Door are vulnerable but honeyed. Best of all, however, is James’ reading of the Fabs-era Long Long Long – his reverb-swathed vocals injecting the unsung track with an additional dose of ethereal moodiness. Lovely stuff.[Duncan Forgan]
From Red and Meth to Cube and Common, Hollywood has sanded the edges away from too many MCs who’ve dared to court her over the years. Proving a rare exception to the rule, seasoned actor Mos Def takes us back to the source with The Ecstatic, a record that doesn’t depend on Scott Storch and auto-tune when rhymes go bad. Instead, Mos stays close to the source by layering his polemics over Neptunes-crafted boom bap and brass-led symphonies while selfless sermons are rasped atop vibrant soul-jazz numbers. Whether it’s the thrill of sharing the silver screen with Bill Bailey and Bruce Willis or the studio with Slick Rick (killing us softly as ‘The Ruler’ on Auditorium) and Madlib (better synchronising cuts from his Beat Konducta in India volumes with that nasal flow), not since his Rawkus days of Black on Both Sides has Mos Def sounded quite this hungry.[Dave Kerr]
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/BROADWAYCALLS
WWW.YIMYAMES.COM
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MOSDEF
DAVE CLOUD AND THE GOSPEL OF POWER
FEVER
24 AUG, FIRE RECORDS
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NURSES
MISTY ROSES
APPLE’S ACRE
VILLAINESS
24 AUG, JAGJAGUWAR
24 AUG, FROG MAN JAKE
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Dave Cloud might now resemble an off-season Santa Claus, but his sound is anything but festive. The portly, bearded Nashville veteran is in the vein of mysterious and idiosyncratic American singer/songwriters: Steve Earle, Tom Waits, Gram Parsons. This, his fourth album, comes across like a gruff Beefheart duetting with an even gruffer version of himself. He’s been described as “shamanic” in the past, almost suggesting he doesn’t so much write this music, it flows through him: the tradition of musician as conduit to an underworld of blues, country and rock n’ roll. Fever takes this sound and imagines the Deep South through psychedelic eyes: along endless, dusty highways, through forgotten towns and into smoky basements. Like Beefheart, it might be a bit visionary for some, but more accessible is a cover of The Citadel, which takes the Stones’ sordid drawl to undiscovered depths. [Euan Ferguson]
Over the past couple of years, Skinny readers might have picked up on an ever-so-slight admiration for New York’s Yeasayer and Baltimore’s Animal Collective. Imagine our delight, then, when we got our grubby mitts on this, because Nurses’ debut album is a brilliant blend of both. It mixes the experimental, dreamy pop tones of the latter, with the cacophonic mish-mash of tribal beats and reverb soaked bliss of the former. Simply put: it’s a match made in heaven. Nurses’ ‘kitchen sink’ approach to music making isn’t a new thing, bands have been throwing everything at the wall for years. But it’s rare that it sticks in the exciting, consistent and mellifluous manner that it does here. There are many highlights on Apple’s Acre, including the title track, Manatarms and Mile After Mile, but it exists best as a single piece, filled with progressive harmonies, radical production techniques and damn fine tunes. This comes highly recommended.[Finbarr Bermingham]
Phil Spector’s influence lives on in this swooping 60s-style orchestral pop that fans of Richard Hawley or the Last Shadow Puppets will lap up. It’s the transatlantic duo’s second outing together, and follows similar grand themes of romance, heartbreak and heartfelt emotion. Like all the best music of that decade, there’s a dark undercurrent behind the polish and harmony, and singer Robert Conroy’s rich voice follows in the tradition of singers like Marc Almond and Billy McKenzie, channelling both light and shade to be simultaneously melancholic and optimistic. The lush arrangements and wide-open production bears unavoidable comparison to Scott Walker, especially on the epic, rolling Nicht Plus Ultra, but it’s not a wholly derivative package. Tracks like the glorious Mario and Dario or the swooning Clouded Sulphur embody the fact that we’ll never tire of the classic combination of great songwriting and a jaded touch of faded glamour. [Euan Ferguson]
WWW.DAVECLOUD.COM
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/NURSES
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MISTYROSES
LOVVERS
OCD GO GO GO GIRLS 10 AUG, WICHITA
rrrr The plot of Dan Brown’s forthcoming crime-against-literature/bestseller is top secret, but I reckon I’ve figured out the subject of investigation: the origins and meaning of the mysterious double ‘V’. While it hasn’t reached the ubiquity of ‘Crystal’, Lovvers are the second band (after Wavves) to debut lately with an elongated middle, and it seems an awfully big coincidence that both peddle a similar brand of fuzzy guitar-pop. What connects ‘VV’ and broken-amp-core? No idea. What I do know is that a) Lovvers beat Wavves into a cocked hat, sounding more vibrant, ferocious and tuneful and b) OCD Go Go Girls (that’s one less ‘Go’ than the album title - a clue??) is an ace summer sing-a-long, or at least would be if the mumbled lyrics were audible. So, conspiracy theories aside, Lovvers’ debut rocks – though if a re-branded Times New VViking emerge anytime soon, we’re declaring this an epidemic.[Chris Buckle] PLAYING CAPTAIN’S REST, GLASGOW ON 20 AUG AND SNEAKY PETE’S, EDINBURGH ON 21 AUG.
TOP FIVE ALBUMS
REVIEWS ONLINE
1) THE CAVE SINGERS WELCOME JOY
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BAP KENNEDY HOWL ON
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CHALI 2NA FISH OUTTA WATER
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CHARLIE PARR ROUSTABOUT
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CUTAWAYS EARTH AND EARTHLY THINGS
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DOLORES O'RIORDAN NO BAGGAGE
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THE DEAD WEATHER HOREHOUND
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THE DRUG MODELS LOVE SLOW HOPE PARADE
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INME HERALD MOTH
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IST TOOTHPICK BRIDGE
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PATRICK KELLEHER YOU LOOK COLD
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STREET SWEEPER SOCIAL CLUB STREET SWEEPER SOCAL CLUB
2) MOS DEF THE ECSTATIC 3) NURSES APPLE'S ACRE 4) ARCTIC MONKEYS HUMBUG 5) JULIAN PLENTI IS SKYSCRAPER
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 51
RECORDS
ALBUM REVIEWS
Music
Live reviews Lord Cut-Glass King Tut’s, 27 Jun
AC/DC
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Hampden Park, 30 Jun
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photo: claire taylor
With a combined age of 285, it seems miraculous that AC/DC should make it back to Hampden Park in the year of Homecoming, the legendary quintet literally crashing on stage to the backdrop of an animation depicting a hedonistic train trip that ends in inevitable derailment. Ever the band to play a theme out to its logical conclusion, the wreck appears on stage flanked by two gigantic ‘A’ (see ‘Angus’) caps before the original monsters of rock launch into a few select cuts from the blindsiding success that was last year’s Black Ice. Reassuringly, Brian Johnson screeches at his banshee-best to the tune of Back in Black while an energised Angus Young plays with abandon in his trademark attire. The clear highlight arrives midway when a colossal AC/DC emblazoned bell is winched down on stage, tasking Johnson to dart down the catwalk and make a lunge without coming a cropper. He succeeds, of course, and 80,000 revellers lose their shit. However, amid the celebratory nature of the night, there’s something sadly elegiac about all this. Free from the occupational complexities that dog most modern bands who look for an un-ironic niche to sustain the public’s short attention span, AC/DC are a dying breed. And when a 70ft high inflatable dame by the name of Rosie wobbles out and starts straddling a train, it’s a clear matter of fact that we’ll never see their like again. [Johny Langlands] www.acdc.com
Temporarily shorn of The Phantom Band’s tendency to marry Krautrock with avantfolk, frontman Rick Redbeard (***) is stripped down to his essence tonight, evoking Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at his most haunting and doe-eyed. Though Redbeard’s vocal style an indigenous brogue occasionally abetted by the wistful harmonising of his sister is unique and sincere, subtle echoes of modern Americana continually bubble to the surface when the duo aren’t drowned out by the drunken Jackson patter at the back. Having already dished out the fruits of his long-incubated eponymous debut to audiences in Japan and (of course) Dunfermline, Alun Woodward as Lord Cut-Glass (****) is welcomed home by a faithful crowd flecked with members of Belle and Sebastian, the sadly defunct De Rosa and former Delgados associates. No pressure, then. Lending an understated charm to proceedings, the omnipresent brass section augments the deadpan delivery of Woodward’s frosty lines on Even Jesus Couldn’t Love You as much as it ensures the galloping melodrama of the Midwestern-tinged You Know or the mariachi waltz of Monster Face. But Look After Your Wife proves to be the the clincher: the nebulous tempo changes and bluntly instructional lyricism proving that, in Lord Cut-Glass’s empire at least, misery and ambition can merrily co-exist. [Dave Kerr]
Lucky Number Nine Showcase
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Glasgow’s Peter Parker (****), supergroup by name as well as nature, are picking up rave reviews before their debut 7-inch has even hit the shelves. As they open Clydeside label Lucky Number Nine’s West End Festival showcase, it’s clear why. The four-piece, fronted by Miss The Occupier’s Roz Davies and Jane McKeown of Lungleg, fire off an energising round of rough’n’ready punk-pop gems. They’re dripping in star quality, and it’s a near-dazzling performance, albeit in front of a crowd which remains for the most part jarringly static to the end. With limbs comprehensively loosened, there’s an eagerness to discover how Lucky Number Nine can top our newfound heroes. The answer: with Rags & Feathers (**), a folk-pop troupe with little of the sweat and dynamism required of, oh, you know, any half-decent band. Nevertheless, the audience gets down to a group who, live, are boringly retro in a way that only beard-poppers The Magic Numbers could replicate, and it’s hard not to wonder when pleasant tunes and forcedly quirky lyrics replaced good art at the cutting edge. Disappointing, but inevitably so – like following a Nick Nairn starter with a haggis supper out of the Blue Lagoon.
The organisers have made a real effort for tonight’s All Tomorrow’s Parties film premiere, appropriately hosted in a gig venue converted from an old cinema. In honour of ATP’s Butlins setting, there’s dancing girls and donkeys entertaining the queue outside (for the retro British seaside holidays theme y’see), while inside there’s a traditional ice cream stand and other decorations and Hi-Di-Hi references. The 75 minute film itself is a captivating composite of amateur footage shot across several ATPs, interspersed with more old-fashioned holiday scenes, that surely tempted everyone present to go straight home and buy a ticket. The shows by Battles, Grinderman and Boredoms looked great, but the most interesting parts are the outdoors scenes: Daniel Johnston sitting on the grass outside his room with his guitar and a small crowd; fans climbing into trees to get a better view of Lightning Bolt in a similar location; and Grizzly Bear wandering down to the beach at sunrise with guitars and a small troupe of disciples. I’ve never been, but ATP looks truly unique. To nobody’s surprise, the surprise guests tonight are Mogwai. Kudos to the sound guy, because they’re both absolutely clear and extremely loud, and very moving in a way that’s impossible to pinpoint. What is it about a chord change or a shift in volume or an added texture that feels so meaningful despite being, on the face of it, utterly meaningless? Mogwai give nothing away easily, so every second is like a slowly unravelling epiphany that never fully exposes itself. My Father My King is a jaw-dropping closer, seeming to crack the atmosphere around us like My Bloody Valentine’s famous live Holocaust, except with structure, with purpose, as part of a song. Like a rainstorm purifying humid air, its effect is therapeutic; a spectacular end to a memorable evening. [Ally Brown]
photo: stephen robinson
Captain’s Rest, 26 Jun
Future Cinema Presents: All Tomorrow’s Parties Premiere
Making up for such a disappointment would be a tall order for much better bands than headliners Wake The President (***), but they make a good fist of it, taking a while to win us over but managing eventually. The quartet have an awkwardly attractive anti-stage presence, and their Postcard-y noise displays the kind of ragged potential that forces you to sit up and take notice. Obama may not be having sleepless nights over this lot quite yet, but kudos to them for rousing us from our dejected slumber anyhow, and, moreover, for rescuing this little label’s big night. Maybe they’re the real heroes after all.[Gillian Watson] www.myspace.com/luckynumberninerecords
52 THE SKINNY August 2009
For more information of Future Cinemas events like this go to www.futurecinema.co.uk The next All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals will be held in December. see www.atpfestival.com
More live reviews
online theskinny.co.uk
photo: Katerina giakoumakis
www.myspace.com/lordcutglass
Silversun Pickups Òran Mór, 1 July
rrr It’s not surprising that Silversun Pickups haven’t quite managed to graduate to the mainstream in the UK, despite a repertoire of radio-friendly tunes. Most of their songs safely conform to an early nineties alternative rock blueprint, though squint your ears and certain tracks aren’t a million miles away from a grungier Offspring (see Sort Of’s sweeping chorus – thrillingly distorted on record, rote pop-rock live). Elsewhere the oft-repeated Smashing Pumpkins comparisons are more pronounced – as well as an acronym, Silversun Pickups share with Corgan’s
circus a divisive vocalist, Brian Aubert’s faint sigh sounding unfortunately apathetic. For many, bassist Nikki Monninger is the star – elegantly untouched by the heat (Aubert’s sweaty visage is somewhat less composed), almost every rumbling bass-note sparks cheers. But despite stretches of mediocrity, tonight is salvaged by a handful of standout numbers, with Panic Switch particularly impressive: fierce and uplifting, it has in spades what much of their anemic set otherwise lacks. [Chris Buckle] www.myspace.com/silversunpickups
MUSIC
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 53
Highlights by Mark Shukla
PHOTO: COLIN MACDONALD
MUSIC
Live Music
PREVIEWS
OVER THE WALL
THANK YOU FRANKLEY CAPTAIN’S REST, GLASGOW, 23 AUG
In a collision of Glaswegian indie-pop, supergroup Piano Bar Fight return from a near 18 month hiatus to collide with new cult duo Over The Wall and Glaswegian kings of the baritone anthem Gdansk. What with members of Frightened Rabbit and Union Of Knives (amongst others) flitting on and off stage, the bill is an A&R agent’s dream, not to mention a hot ticket for fans of intelligent and
affecting guitar pop. The clever pseudo-electro of Over The Wall headlines the show, more than ably supported by the Smiths-infused colours of PBF and Gdansk’s dark but alluring post-punkish interpretations. [Austin Tasseltine] 7.30PM, £4 WWW.MYSPACE.COM/INVESTIGATINGBOOGALOO
DAVID BYRNE
MÚM
PLAYHOUSE, EDINBURGH, 8 AUG
ÒRAN MÓR, GLASGOW, 15 AUG
The tenuous homecoming feel of Dumbarton-born David Byrne’s recent Glasgow show can’t feasibly be extended to Edinburgh. This month the naturalized American takes his Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno world tour to the festival city, and while casual Talking Heads fans might mourn the absence of non-Eno hits like Psycho Killer, avid Byrne-ites can get down to the primal beats of tracks from My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, three of the Heads’ greatest LPs, and last year’s reunion album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. At the end of this choreographed show, you may also get so see Byrne wearing a tutu. Well, at least it’s not a kilt. [Nick Mitchell]
Unless you’re a sneaky downloader, the title of Múm’s forthcoming album could prove entirely apt for their Edge festival appearance this month. One week before it’s actual release, the Icelandic experimentalists (is there any other kind of Icelandic band?) will be encouraging fans to Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know. This could prove an onerous task even at the best of times with Múm, given that they dabble in glitch electronics and whispered ethereal vocals rather than anything a passing Robbie Williams fan would consider ‘music’. But hey, it’s a rare appearance by the burgeoning collective, so we’re up for the challenge. [Darren Carle]
Art rock weirdos Victorian English Gentlemen’s Club impressed the pants off us with their punchy, unpredictable 2006 debut but they never really got the attention they deserved. Now expanded to a four-piece and with a new record on the way, they bring their beautiful bluster to Edinburgh Cabaret Voltaire on 4 Aug and Glasgow King Tut’s on 5 Aug. We are the Physics support on both nights. Final Fantasy has to be one of the most singular artists operating in the indie mainstream right now: Using just voice, violin and and a few looping pedals, Canadian prodigy Owen Pallett creates compelling, multi-layered song structures of rare beauty. The lad has quite a following so move now if you want to catch what will be one of August’s best shows. Glasgow Classic Grand 5 Aug. Lobster, foie gras and deep-fried lizard are all well and good, but sometimes you just feel like beans on toast. Enter The Holloways: their no-frills indie will fill your hole (fnar) in a predictably satisfying way, but if you’re looking for a dish with a little more spice or originality then you may be disappointed. Everyone else who’s up for a dance and a good time, we’ll see you at Dundee Doghouse on 6 Aug and Glasgow QMU on 7 Aug. NYC hipster-magnets Telepathe beam into Glasgow on 13 Aug for a set at King Tut’s. Known for their minimalistic live shows which feature little more than a laptop and a couple of mics, Telepathe deploy spacey synth moves and repeating vocal motifs to create a deep, hypnotic sound. Open minded fans of arty electro-pop will lap it up. Amongst the US’s burgeoning psych scene Crystal Stilts have managed to forge a strong reputation on the back of their white-hot live performances and hook-laden songwriting. More than just another jam band with too many reverb pedals, Crystal Stilts inject real verve and majesty into the psychedelic rock formula - see them at Glasgow Stereo on 18 Aug. Following on from an impressive, lengthy set in a heatwave-stricken Glasgow at the end of June, Malcolm Middleton heads over to Edinburgh for a set at Cabaret Voltaire on 27 Aug. Having just released possibly his best collection of solo songs - accompanied by murmurs that it may well be his last - now
VICTORIAN ENGLISH GENTLEMEN’S CLUB IMPRESSED THE PANTS OFF US WITH THEIR PUNCHY, UNPREDICTABLE 2006 DEBUT. ODDS ON, THEY'LL DO IT AGAIN... could be a wise time to catch this local hero ply his self-reflective blend of folk and pop. Now in its third year, Wizard Festival takes place in New Deer, Aberdeenshire on Fri 28 and Sat 29 Aug. Featuring arena acts and family entertainment, the main draw is the music, with the Levellers and Idlewild heading up the Friday bill, while the Charlatans and the Buzzcocks head a varied line-up on the Saturday. See wizardfestival.com for more info. With the doom drone scene currently experiencing an unexpected rennaisance thanks to the likes of Boris, Grails, Sunn O))) et al., Canadian duo Nadja are likely to attract a sizeable throng of scene kids when they play the V Club in Glasgow on 28 Aug. The uninitiated should track down The Bungled and the Botched from their intimidating back catalogue - pure sonic bliss. Manchester post-punk legends Magazine played together for the first time in 28 years earlier this year, and on 30 Aug they’ll play Edinburgh’s HMV Picture House - a must see gig for anyone who’s aware of the impact that Howard Devoto has had on modern music.
7PM, £15 7PM, £35/£30 WWW.DAVIDBYRNE.COM
SING ALONG TO SONGS YOU DON’T KNOW IS RELEASED VIA MORR MUSIC ON 24 AUG.
MITCHELL MUSEUM CABARET VOLTAIRE, EDINBURGH, 23 AUG
Quite aside from the fact that their brilliant, infectious new single Tiger Heartbeat is due to be released on multi-coloured cassette, there is something wonderfully nostalgic and childish about Mitchell Museum. In every three minute burst of eccentric, jubilant pop they epitomise that period of your life before you were even aware of the need for employment and you could wear anything you damn well pleased – be it your mum’s shoes, your dad’s wellies or your dinner – because it
wasn’t all about trying to impress the opposite sex or look presentable. Surely every right-thinking person pines for that. What better way then to once again, albeit fleetingly, surrender yourself to childish abandon and go see these guys work their magic. [Chris Cusack] 8.30PM, £5 ALSO PLAYING KING TUT'S, GLASGOW ON 1 AUG WWW.MYSPACE.COM/MITCHELLMUSEUM
VICTORIAN ENGLISH GENTLEMEN’S CLUB, CABARET VOLTAIRE, 4 AUG
54 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
Music
Within launching their album Humanity at Ivory Black’s (1 Aug). Those guys also play a part in The Classic Grand’s Metalfest 2009 (15 Aug) alongside It Prevails and Sylosis. Sympathy please for Aberdeen, whose meagre monthly pickings include the camp, fashion-metal witterings of England’s Cure The Disaster at The Tunnels (2 Aug). Stardom doubtlessly beckons, much to the disgust of the men in Slayer shirts. It’s good name versus bad name at Dundee’s Balcony Bar when Worksop’s And So Their Eyes Were Bloodshot get a lesson in nomenclature from locals Decapitate Your Date (5 Aug) who also make an appearance at Kage, in that same city, supporting We Stare At Mirrors (16 Aug). Punk die-hards take note as The Adolescents (yes that’s THE Adolescents of 80s US fame) pay a visit to a newly invigorated Capitol in Glasgow (5 Aug) whilst notorious German extreme hardcore monsters Ding Dong Dead! kick seven shades of shit out of Captain’s Rest five minutes across town (5 Aug) with support from the highly regarded Corpses. Another band surfing a wave of word-of-mouth hubbub is Glaswegian newborn Holy Mountain, who bring their deafeningly heavy, doom meets jazz meets rock ‘n’ roll to Captain’s Rest (12 Aug). by Austin Tasseltine The 13th Note hosts brilliant Scottish metallic noise-bastards Vom who launch their album (14 Aug) OK, so this is just a metal column, but these are com- before supporting the equally belligerent Black Sun plicated times. Boundaries are blurred. Man or woman (29 Aug) at the same location. (Lady Gaga)? Straight or gay (Sufjan Stevens)? Black Israeli hype-magnets Monotonix bring their manic or white (Michael Jackson)? Good or evil (Michael and mobile racket to Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s (Aug Jackson)? Dead or alive (Michael Jackson)? 19) and Glasgow’s Stereo (20 Aug) which, last time Yet perhaps the most crushingly pertinent question around, culminated in the entire band being carried facing us, in this context, is: what qualifies as metal in from their venue out into Edinburgh’s Morrison this mixed up, shades-of-grey world? Street, still playing. All I’m going to say is that would Well, August has it all: Old school, Nu-school, never have happened to Dave Lombardo, but aspiring Pre-school, Special school... photographers could do worse than attend. The 13th Edinburgh residents, get your ears around The Note meanwhile plays host to another hugely hyped Ark’s Highland Fire Folk Metal Festival (1 Aug) outfit in the form of Luxembourg’s post-hardcore featuring Waylander, Ravenage and Northern Oak great-white-hopes Mutiny On The Bounty, touring and showcasing ‘some of your all-time favourite folk with Metal-press darlings Blakfish (19 Aug). metal tunes’. “About bloody time” you bellow, one Leeds band-cum-steamroller Omerta (not to be gauntleted fist raised toAugust Valhalla. Glasgow simultanethe Belgian and American acts of same Cathouse 256x155 Skinny PRINT.pdf confused 20/7/09with09:32:21 ously sees youthful native exports Bleed From name) pay a visit to The Captain’s Rest (22 Aug) and
faith no more, edinburgh, 25 aug
Aberdeen’s Drummond’s (23 Aug) with tour support from aforementioned hardcore pitbulls Corpses. Ireland’s riffingly atmospheric post-rock touringmachine And So I Watch You From Afar stop off at Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s (23 Aug) before August’s main event sees Faith No More, almost unbelievably, return to our shores and wheel out some Jim Martin-less classics at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange (25 Aug). Shame then that Sounds of Swami, the impressive alt-punk outfit from down south who ripped their Scottish audience a
collective new arsehole on their last trip, find themselves competing against Patton’s world-beaters, albeit nearly 50 miles away in Glasgow’s Bar Bloc. Lastly, though it may be but a token gesture, classic and thoroughly authentic 80s thrash outfit Onslaught raise an almighty V sign to the emo movement before wind-milling the shit out of Ivory Black’s (27 Aug). Expect a circle pit populated almost exclusively by irate but thankful old-schoolers, basking in nostalgia and the blood of strangers. What fun.
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August 2009
THE SKINNY 55
PHOTO: ANDREAS NEUMANN
CLUBS
Picture This
The Edinburgh Festival comes to a close with an excellent line-up at Musika, thanks to Felix Da Housecat and Japanese Popstars. Nicol Craig investigates.
IT’S that time of year again when Auld Reekie teems with tourists, students distributing flyers and general arty-farty types. The Edinburgh Festival continues to draw performers of all persuasions, and promoters are increasingly capitalising on the added influx of artistic life in the city, providing bigger and better night-time events. Adding to the developing club scene is the re-opening of the Picture House. If you’re a regular around Edinburgh you’ve probably noticed the seemingly continual opening and shutting down of what was previously called Gig. Beset by licensing problems and multiple owners, the venue has never fully realised its potential as one of the best spots in Edinburgh. With a capacity of 1500, it may help alleviate the city’s reliance on Cabaret Voltaire or the Corn Exchange for music events. Under new management, it’s been revamped into a plush, retro-styled theatre/ dancehall. Musika have been given the challenge of being the first to use the new surroundings in a club vein. The idea is to put on a night that no one can ignore, and it should work. With guests The Japanese Popstars,
Smokin’ Jo, Slam and Felix Da Housecat all confirmed, it’s shaping up to be a Fringe closing party to remember. Residents Derek Martin and Jamie McKenzie will be on warm-up duties. Derek has been an integral part of Musika since its birth early 2007. He’s likely to mix progressive house and techno; his club’s past bookings have ranged from Booka Shade and M.A.N.D.Y to Deadmau5, D Ramirez and Dubfire. Jamie is the newest member of the Musika crew, keeping in line with their tech house manifesto. He’s recently started producing his own tunes with partner Ryan McKay. The Japanese Popstars are an Irish trio gaining maximum respect for their no-nonsense, straight-up, big-room sound. They’ll be presenting their live show, which is currently doing the festival circuit to much media praise. Expect a vigourous performance with stabbing rhythms. And for them to drop ‘Face Melter’. 'Nuff said. Smokin’ Jo has been invited back for another Festival performance. Last year she made quite the impression on the Progression/Musika crew. Having lived in Ibiza for seven years, she’s been busy back in the UK
ON THE FRINGES THE limited space within these pages is struggling to contain the vast range of club events happening across the central belt this month. As Edinburgh becomes awash with all manner of performers and round the clock revelry, various venues are boasting a 5am licence in order to ensure that you don’t have a chance of being a functioning member of society. Making use of the freshly reclaimed wee hours is the Substance Festival Party. Taking place on 8 Aug it runs from 11pm to 5am and boasts sets from Legowelt, Housemeister, Robbie Dylan and Sleepless Crew. Elsewhere, Boys Noize appears at City Club on
56 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
27 Aug, carrying the casualties of one man shows and student burlesque performances into the emerging light of the morn’. Full coverage simply cannot fit into the dying medium of print, but our bottomless servers will ensure that the website is updated with ongoing reviews and previews throughout the month. I for one welcome our robot overlords. [Chris Duncan]
making tunes with Steve Lawler’s Viva record label. Her guise lately has been TRNSSTR (pronounced Transistor), producing with friend Pete Gleadall. Her set promises to be an education into the freshest tech house beats around. Continuing the positive education of tech house is none other than Scotland’s finest, Slam. Things just keep getting busier and busier for the Glaswegian pair, and they’re riding high off the back of shows at the Slam tent at T in the Park, the Extrema festival in Holland and the Big Chill festival. They’re also showcasing lots of their new material off the new label Paragraph; Edinburgh awaits the drop of ‘City Destroyer’. Headlining the occasion is Chicago house cat Felix Stallings. Back after a well overdue break from
releasing tunes, He Was King is his new album and brings more than a hint of 80s synth-pop nostalgia. The latest single We All Wanna Be Prince is the selfexplanatory tribute to his hero and is a lighter, more fun-orientated stab at electronic pop. Saying that, Elvis off the album covers more familiar territory and is getting blasted by the likes of 2manydjs, Erol Alkan and Justice. This year is a big one for Felix, as he comes back to the DJ circuit with new vitality after a turbulent personal spell. The return to form is welcomed; he hasn’t played a Saturday night in Edinburgh in over ten years. Kudos to the Musika crew for this scoop! FELIX DA HOUSE CAT AND JAPANESE POPSTARS PLAY THE PICTUREHOUSE, EDINBURGH ON 29 AUG VISIT WWW.MAMAGROUP.CO.UK/PICTUREHOUSE FOR A 360° VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE PICTURE HOUSE.
DJ CHART MILTON JACKSON 1. Plasmik - Night Bell "Love this for the deep dark chords near the end."
6. Jackpot - Uno Dos Tres (Runaway Remix) "I just love all the elements dropping in and out."
2. Kris Wadsworth - Deep Heat "Very bumpy and warm. Kris’s productions don’t mess about."
7. Sygaire - The Time is Now (Shur-i-kan Mix) "Shur-i-kan again proves his mastery of all things deep with this excellent remix."
3. STL - Silent State "This is a genius record, the sounds and vibe are so dreamy, definitely in the 'I wish I made this one' category."
8. Karol XVII and MB Valence - Gone Too Far (Milton Jackson remix) "Me remixing the amazing producers Karol and MB."
4. Agnes - Love Tempo "I buy everything he does without listening to it."
9. Milton Jackson - 1998 (Hiro remix) "Elusive Japanese artist Hiro remixes my old Rhodes workout track 1998."
5. Markus Homm - Channel by Channel " Just a great chordy groover for playing out. Never get tired of these."
10. Commix - Bear Music "My token D&B chart inclusion." [Interview by Emma Kilday]
Clubs
Back To Their Roots Italian comic book lovers Bloody Beetroots pull on masks, don't keep their identities secret, refuse to fight crime and become the darlings of the blogs. Same old story then, says Chris Duncan.
Italian duo Bloody Beetroots consist of Bobby Rifo and Tommy Tea, falling neatly into the mysterious musical genre that is ‘fidget house’. From humble beginnings in the Italian hamlet of Bassano del Grappa, the pair have quickly risen to a level of infamy on the global club circuit. Donning lawsuit baiting masks and leaping from the mixer into the crowd in a single bound, Bloody Beetroots are an attention grabbing duo. While the pair come together for DJ sets the production work is done solely by Rifo. His music and remixes have become the staple of music blogs and several of his tracks have appeared in video games this year. Rifo’s background is rooted firmly in classical and punk music with a strong interest in comic book artists. In January 2007 Rifo created the Bloody Beetroots alter ego for the creation of his electronic music. After remixing the likes of Etienne De Crecy and Alex Gopher and embarking on an extensive world tour, things show no signs of slowing down. In 2007, Bloody Beetroots were signed to the U.S. label, Dim Mak, created by sickening hipster twat Steve Aoki. Both EPs Rombo and Cornelius were released in 2008, shortly followed this year by Warp.
Both Warp and Cornelius made it into the iTunes Top Ten Albums Chart, with Bobby seeing his die hard blogger fanbase following him through to the next stage of his success. Cornelius is an unusual project which manages to combine fashion, cinema and literature into a tribute to British science fiction writer Michael Moorcock and his antihero character Jerry Cornelius. The video, conceived by Rufo and directed by Mathieu Danet became a minor viral hit. Not wanting to be pigeon-holed, Bobby Rifo and Steve Aoki have recently gone on to form a hardcore punk band under the banner Rifoki. Their debut release is produced by Giulio Favero of Teatro Degli Orrori and is expected next year. As for future plans, Rufo will be continuing his world tour, joining up with Tommy Tea for the club appearances. The debut LP Romborama is released this month and features collaborations with The Cool Kids, Vicarious Bliss, Justin Pearson from The Locust and others. Staying true to his life long love of comic books, the album artwork has been designed by graphic novel artist Tanino Liberatore. Bloody Beetroots play Death Disco on 15 Aug. 10.30pm-3am, £12/£6
253 Argyle Street, Glasgow 0141 565 1000 www.deathdisco.info
August 2009
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CLUBS
PREVIEWS BIGFOOT’S TEA PARTY
KREEP’S FIRST BIRTHDAY
THE COURTYARD, GLASGOW, 1 AUG
PIVO PIVO, GLASGOW, 7 AUG
The audiovisual treat that is Bigfoot’s returns this month having relocated to The Courtyard, following the successes of their Bon Bon pre-parties (Alfrisko) at the same venue. This month Bigfoot’s manifests itself as a 13-hour techno spectacle, boasting an impressive line up to support residents Marmalade Man and Faux Pas. Returning the favour for the boy’s hard work with Alfrisko is Bon Bon resident Kage alongside home-grown talent including Terry Whyte and Gregor Cunningham. Topping the bill are Bigfoot favourites Simon Stokes and Mr Copy and another past guest in the form of Hans Bouffmyhre. Expect a summer party of epic proportions as your audio and visual receptors are stimulated by the quality techno beats washing over the sunkissed terraces of The Courtyard with resident VJ the Reduxer’s visuals draped across the walls. And if all this still isn’t enough, you can catch Marmalade Man and Faux Pas at the Soundhaus later on with cut-price entry to Off The Record with your Big Foot’s ticket. Oh, and there’s a barbecue too.[Joe Wilson]
Staying afloat through the first year is a tough task for any fledgling club night. In a city like Glagsow, where event listings are chock-a-block with nights of an electronic persuasion, it can seem nearly impossible. Kreep has defied the odds and has already made its mark as an essential part of the clubber’s diary, and it’s not difficult to see why. Throughout the last twelve months the brilliant atmosphere and great music have gained the night an incredibly loyal following. Not content with their once-a-month shindigs, the Kreep crew has also brought us special one-off events like Kreep’s Boutique Halloween Party and all-dayer Kreep Saturday Social, which have been equally well received. The birthday celebrations will see residents Monty, Euan and Dunc joined by local hero Milton Jackson who released his hotly anticipated debut album “Crash” earlier this year. Many Glasgow clubbers will already be familiar with his DJing, but those keen to do their homework can check out this month’s Skinny DJ Chart, which has been provided by the man Milton himself. The phrase “many happy returns” may be a bit of a birthday card cliché, but we really do hope Kreep celebrates many more birthdays for years to come.[Emma Kilday]
3PM-11PM (LAST ENTRY 7PM), £4
DJ ZINC @ EVERYTHING ELSE SUCKS KOROVA BAR, ABERDEEN, 1 AUG
You know that when someone’s been spoon-fed on acid house, stumbled through rave and hardcore, established themselves in jungle and breaks then truly rinsed the drum and bass world, when they then start to dabble in house, they’re going to do it well. DJ Zinc started out turning underground tunes into chart hits. His latest remix of La Roux’s Bulletproof, quickly gathering an impressive amount of hype, does the opposite, reclaiming the pop hit from Radio One with hedonistic, bass-laden drops and house hooks. For all his latest fidgety fun, though, you can still see why the emergent Aberdeen night has paired the drum and bass obsessive with Solid Steel’s latest protege Boom Monk Ben, nabbing him between international dates in Cape Town and Toronto to ensure not a corner of the three-storey club is left unpenetrated by his trademark wobbling, threatening bass. Run on ‘an electro/ fidget/bmore/house tip’ for the past year, Everything Else Sucks has done everything in its power not to fall into the possible new-club-night manholes of either overambition or dullness by mixing local talent with hot names. Watch out for Shadow Dancer in October.[Rosie Davies] 10PM-3AM, £7
DUMONT & SINDEN @ HYP? SUB CLUB, GLASGOW, 28 AUG
1000s of Vinyl Records, CDs & DJ Accessories
When HYP? announce they’re hosting a three-hour soundclash to end a summer’s partying, it’s no surprise to hear they’ve invited two of Dubsided’s strongest forces. One’s a Sub Club veteran whose bugged - out, bass-heavy house has been a welcome, party-starting presence on every vaguely reputable dancefloor this past year – step forward Sinden. The other is a fresh-faced producer and HYP? virgin – Duke Dumont, your time is now. Dumont’s doing two very right things just now. Firstly, he classes himself as ‘emotronic’, one of the official words of the moment, among other equally hip sounds (‘acousmatic’, anyone?). Secondly, he’s taking radio fluff – Lily Allen’s The Fear and Bat For Lashes’s Daniel – and, with the most delicate of remixing fingers, shaping it a backbone. An emotronic backbone. Sinden’s remixes and productions are equally as impressive, going down the unashamed route of taking dancefloor hits by A-Trak and Crystal Castles and letting rip with summer synth hooks, but it’s probably his bounce-heavy sets as one half of The Count & Sinden which justify his live reputation, recreating the warehouse scene in under-and over-ground clubs across the nation. Playing back-to-back pretty much guarantees it: twice the energy, and twice the fun.[Rosie Davies] 11PM - 3AM, £10
Comprehensive Selection of Sound Equipment & Technology
• Music Specialist & Audio Emporium •
9 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh EH1 1BP 0131-226-2242 info@undergroundsolushn.com www.undergroundsolushn.com
58 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
11PM-3AM, £6
SETH TROXLER & ANDREW DORAN @ TIC TAC TOE STEREO, GLASGOW, 7 AUG
According to his biography, Seth was borne from “a crystal, beaming with red embers shat out from Satan’s leaking bodily cavity” which matured into a “weeping foetus”, thus giving him a “magnetic channelling power” and the ability to “create some of the world’s finest and most intuitive dance cuts”. The reality may be a little more mundane; but the Kalamazooborn, Berlin-based producer’s percussive tech-house output has definitely grabbed the attention over the past year, with releases and remixes on the Wagon Repair, Crosstown Rebel, Circus Company, Raum…Musik and FXHE labels. Starting his DJing career aged only 16 in Detroit, Seth’s early musical education was assisted by a behind-the-counter job at the city’s famous Melodies and Memories record store. These days his skills are very much in demand internationally, earning him gigs at Fabric, Panorama Bar, Robert Johnson, DEMF, The Rex and Fuse, as well as residencies at New York’s Save The Cannibals night and Berlin’s Weekend club.[Colin Chapman] 11PM - 3AM, £10 WWW.MYSPACE.COM/SETHTROXLER
UNIT MOEBIUS (LIVE) & DASHA RUSH @ MONOX SUB CLUB, GLASGOW, 7 AUG
Dutch purveyors of lo-fi acid and techno Unit Moebius have been described as “Europe’s only true answer to Underground Resistance”, with a sound that’s been described as ‘’diverse in style, but always holding a twisted, paranoid and fucked-up drive”’. Merging “lo-fi elements with acid house and raw, jack trax” and also serving up “hard, pounding, dark, industrial, freaky techno, funk, pop and mean, minimalistic machine music’’ (according to Discogs), their recent Golden Years compilation offered a snapshot of their more accessible, 90s dancefloor tracks. Well-travelled Muscovite Dasha Rush has spent time in Paris, London and Japan, combining her music with work in fashion to create multi-artistic collaborations alongside artists and dancers. Her first live performances formed part of gallery exhibitions, using sound installations and theatre performances to explore the emotional and technological aspects of electronic music. She now runs her own Fullpanda label and released her debut album in 2006.[Colin Chapman] 11PM - 3AM, £10
FUSE FIRST BIRTHDAY @ CLUB BERLIN STEREOTYPE, EDINBURGH, 7 AUG
MORE CLUB PREVIEWS AND REVIEWS
ONLINE THESKINNY.CO.UK
Just back from playing Ibiza Rocks and Reclaim the Dancefloor over in Ibiza, it’s been an impressive couple of months for the Edinburgh student promoters. Not only that, but when they get back they’ve got their first birthday to look forward to. Cue special guests: Joe and Will Ask? and Doorly. Both very much in the ‘up-and-coming-fast’ quarter, it’s a real scoop for the capital. Doorly is fast becoming Soulwax’s standard support DJ, emulating their famed mash-up sound. Joe and Will Ask? cover similar territory, appealing to crossover indie-electro kids as much as your techno connoisseurs. Festival licences means it’s going to a late one; the guests mean it’s going to be a big one; and the crowd will determine whether it’s a great one. Up for it?[Nicol J Craig] 11PM-4AM (TBC), £6
It’s not an unusual question to ask someone during the course of an interview, ‘Where did it all begin for you?’. However, there is something rather odd about putting the question forward to Carl Cox. After all, he seems to have been around forever; he’s a good, reliable foundation to which a large part of dance music owes debt too. So, how did it all begin for the acid house and techno veteran? “When I was eight or nine, I remember my dad buying records and that was my introduction to DJing. I would select the songs to play and loved watching my family dance around, I enjoyed the control. It meant that during any parties I wasn’t running amok. At the time I just thought it was another chore for me to do but I quickly caught the bug and started going to record shops with my dad. I started following artists such as Aretha Franklin and collecting a lot of records from the late 60s to 70s. Once I got my first set of turntables, I began DJing at a lot of parties.” As someone who has not only been around to witness many eras in the culture of dance music, but has been an essential part of it, what changes has he seen take place over the years? “It was a mystery twenty years ago. Hard trance and acid house was never on MTV or the radio, you only ever heard it in the clubs. I don’t think the next generation grew up with the same ethos of partying, but where we are now is exciting too.” Carl was famed for using three turntables simultaneously during his sets, earning him the title of ‘The Three Deck Wizard’. How does he feel about digital DJs who shun the use of records entirely? “I stopped using records back in 2005, it just simply
Touching Bass Basslines, breaks, beats and bass. If there's one thing the Edinburgh club circuit specialises in, it's innovative nights that showcase the freshest talent in these genres. Chris Duncan investigates.
A casual glance over the clubs listings for Edinburgh at any time of the year, festival or no festival, and one thing becomes apparent quite quickly. The drum and bass, breaks and bassline scene in Edinburgh is thriving in a way unlike anywhere else in Scotland. Actually, on paper, it seems huge. “I wouldn’t call it huge,” says George MacDonald, creator of the Bass Syndicate night. “I’d describe it as consistent. I think one of the reasons it is successful is that there are a lot of English students here and they have always
supported it.” Bass Syndicate’s third birthday takes place at Faith on 22 August, featuring appearances from Cyantific and DJ Zinc. Cyantific will be performing his drum and bass set across three decks, living up to his reputation as one of the hardest working DJs around. Meanwhile, DJ Zinc will be headlining with a house set. “He’s never played a house set in Edinburgh before, it should be pretty interesting”. Elsewhere this month, Xplicit presents Commix and Noisia to the capital, combining
it is both surprising and brilliant that the Edinburgh drum and bass circuit is not only surviving but growing
photo: robin sellick
Carl Cox reflects on his beginnings in acid house and techno and tells Chris Duncan why he swapped his records for MP3s isn’t effective any more. Each record costs around £5000 for a test pressing, so it isn’t an option for most people to let me hear their music on. We’re in the 21st century now, so it’s only natural that we move on to the new. It’s like the mobile phone, people never had them, then everyone had one for calls and now you can listen to music, call, text, email and take pictures all on one phone. I previously used three turntables and when I made the switch to digital DJing everyone said ‘you can’t go to using a laptop, it won’t be the same’. But I’ve been using a laptop for a while now, and people are still really into what I do. I think at this time we have become digitised, it’s simply the next natural step.” This month sees Carl return to Scotland for EH1 festival, where he will appear alongside Altern8, Fabio & Grooverider and Orbital, who will be fufiling their contract to appear at every single festival this year. “I haven’t played Edinburgh in a long time. I used to do the Rezerection parties in Ingliston years ago. Unfortunately I won’t see any other artists whilst I’m at EH1, I’d love to but I just don’t have the time. I’ll be 110% focused on my arena. “I’m doing a strictly old-school set when I come up to Ingliston. I think a lot of people at EH1 won’t have been around twenty years ago, but apparently there will also be a lot of people attending the weekend who were there all those years back. I’m looking forward to it a lot, it’ll be a chance to bring the old days back in and have a bit of reflection.” Carl Cox will play the EH1 Festival on 15 Aug at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston.
a strong line up with an excellent sound system and the festival special 5am license. Taking place at the Bongo Club on the 14 August, it is the first of two Xplicit festival parties, the second happening on 28 August. There they will hijack The Picturehouse and make full use of the 1400 capacity for the night which has London Elektricity, DJ Yoda, Herve and The Scratch Perverts all lined up. Whilst undeniably in the shadows of the bigger nights that specialise in the genre, the smaller events still have plenty to offer in terms of resident DJ talent, if not big name guests. Coalition takes place at Sneaky Pete’s and fuses breaks, bassline, electro and drum and bass on a weekly basis. Split is another weekly party, run by Shadowskills and the Edinburgh:Bassed collective who oversee the main room of the Cabaret Voltaire, rinsing out the heaviest in drum and bass and breaks alongside guests from hip-hop labels such as Local Product. Things switch up in the back room as Split founder Pyz plays techno and electro alongside fellow DJs Ingen and The Retard Playboy. In spite of being a tremendously successful evening, the night has never switched to a weekend slot and to this day still keeps its policy of free entry. Barely any venue is Edinburgh is left untouched by the genre, with The Wee Red Bar hosting Touch Bass, the GRV opening its doors for Hybrid, an evening dedicated to dubstep, jungle and basslines. Finally Jungledub presents the finest in Scottish dub and jungle music at The Bongo Club. At a time when more and more club nights would be expected to be feeling the pinch, it is both surprising and brilliant that the Edinburgh drum and bass circuit, with all its various offshoots, is not only surviving but growing. Diamond Dollar launches on 8 August at Faith, stirring a melting pot of dubstep, bassline, fidget, electro, baltimore bass, jungle, house and drum and bass. Refusing to rest on its laurels, their second event on 13 August features Rico Tubbs before their end of festival party on 27 August.
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Clubs
Looking to the Phuture
60 THE SKINNY August 2009
Glasgow music Sat 01 Aug U18 Glasgow Presents: School’s Out For Summer... (Unicorn Kid, Paper Planes) ABC, 16:00–18:30, £7
An Under-18s club for the musically savvy
Neverland presents: The Apple Scruffs (The Merchants, The Rudiments) ABC, 19:00–22:30, £6
Indie punk
Eclectiv (Forward Play, Edward Shallow) Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Wed 05 Aug BBC Switch Road Trip 2009 (Calvin Harris, Radio 1’s Annie Mac & Nick Grimshaw ) ABC, 18:00–21:30, Tickets and information www.nrgu18s.co.uk
Summer exam results party for ages 13-17
Flowers in the Dustbin presents: Seditionaries (Das Filth, Mummy Short Arms, Fridge Magnets, Tragic Cit Thieves)
Live Jazz
Das who? Das band dat was on Radio One? Yes, yes I believe so ...
The Cathouse, 19:00–23:00, £11
Martin Taylor & Alison Burns
FIRESTORM PROMOTIONS PRESENTS: ADOLESCENTS, THE MURDER BURGERS, WOLVES AT HEART
13th Note, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Òran Mór, 19:30–22:00, £12
Jazz
the retrofrets, the fatalists, chinaskis, sonic templars
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 19:30–23:00, £tbc
Rock and garage
Mitchel Museum
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £5
Teetering on the knife edge between genius and madness
The Strands, The Vals, The Influence Box, 21:00–23:00, £tbc
Rock and grunge
Huntleys And Palmers Audio Club (Krikor (Kill The DJ/Tigersushi), Linkwood (Firecracker Recordings), Dollskabeat (Optimo Music)) Stereo, 23:00–03:00, £7
Sun 02 Aug cry parrot presents: cleckhuddersfax, beards, divorce
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 19:30–23:00, £tbc
Prog. new wave
Illegal Eagles
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Fortnightly residents
Adolescents Punk rock
Capitol, 19:00–23:00, £10
Pop punk
Ding Dong Dead, Silent Front
Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Pop punk players
Final Fantasy
Classic Grand, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Skewed, looped, electro string-pop from Canadian wunderkid Owen Pallett
Mono Jazz
Mono, 20:00–23:00, Free
Weekly jazz night with the resident house four-piece, plus guests.
The Victorian English Gentlemans Club
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £8
Not all gentlemen and not all English either
Revelations (Eat Dr Ape, Ekrano)
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £3
The BibleCodeSundays O’neills, 21:30–23:00, FREE
Irish folk rock
Thu 06 Aug
The Pavilion Theatre, 19:30–23:00, £22.50
Dave Dominey
DUELLING WINOS, WEE SPIES, JOHNATHAN CARR, TOM LAIRD
Funked up bass loops with laptop, electric bass and a guest soloist
Eagles tribute
Capitol, 20:00–23:00, Free
Indie rock
Lacuna Coil
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £15
Italian rock
TRIBUTE TAKEOVER (Gallus Coope) Box, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
The wreckin’ pit presents: THE RABBLE Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Punk rock
Brel, 20:00–23:00, Free
MAPLE FIRES, ANOTHER BROKEN RECORD, CAST IRON ALIBI, INNER LOGIC Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £5
Pop punk and rock
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
My Tiger My Timing
Acoustic Aid (The Magic Lantern Show, Nick Bruce, Rallion and Kat Healy)
Seemlessly constructed space-out pop
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, Free
Tue 04 Aug
Classic Grand, 20:00–23:30, £6.00
Power-pop for over 14s
Rodan/Hidden Masters/ Daddy and the good girl 13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Retro Psychadelic Rock
Annie Stevenson, Johnathon Carr, Jaded Playboy, Paris To Prison, Cosmonauts Box, 21:00–23:00, £tbc
Alt. rock and tropical
Sat 08 Aug The Gazettas, The Zonules Of Zinn, The Skinny Villains ABC, 19:00–22:30, £5
J-pop and rock
Li’l Ze, Able Soul
Stereo, 19:00–23:00, Free
Electro
SUPERPOWERLESS
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £5
Shut Up and Eat Your Music Pivo Pivo, 20:00–23:00, £3
Three bands of common influence/ genre take you on a weekly romp
Heavy Light Dark Bright Presents...
Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Line-up to be confirmed
Just Tourist, Kochka
Classic Grand, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Indie rock
Information Libre: The Lonely Fires, San Toy, The Dirty Suits Pivo Pivo, 20:00–02:00, £5
Once a month indie rock n’ roll riot. You have been warned.
Psychedelic indie
Sun 09 Aug The Ferry, 19:00–01:00, £18.50
GLASGOW LIVE PRESENTS: NOT ADVISED, UP FOR THE LET DOWN, THE AUTUER Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Powerpop punk
No Tribe (Always Until Victory, 11:11 and Preacher) Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Mon 10 Aug Michael Simons
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Folky blues
Annotations Of An Autopsy The Cathouse, 19:00–23:00, £10
Definitely in the running for ‘most perverse band name of the month’
American rapper, AKA Louis Freese
Hanzel und Gertyl, Tor Marrock
Franklins Kite, Sol
Industrial and hardcore
The World/Inferno Friendship Society, Joey Terrifying, The Dirty Demographic, Dave Hughes
The BibleCodeSundays
Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Irish folk rock
Acoustic Aid (Swan Lee, Wee Spies, Fiona Crawford, James Stanhope)
All The Young Nudes - Life Drawing
The Flying Duck, 20:00–22:00, £4
GLASGOW LIVE PRESENTS: THE EYES OF A TRAITOR, CARCER CITY, LOST PERSONA Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Alt. rock
O’Neill’s, 21:30–23:00, FREE
Fri 07 Aug 4 Day Weekend, Shimmer, Year Zero, The Random Guy ABC, 19:00–22:30, £6
Hanzel Und Gretyl, Tor Marrock
Alt. indie
Rock
Country pop
Classic Grand, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Bad Bad Men
Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Charity No. SC022512
Box, 21:00–23:00, £tbc
Anti-folk
Alt. folk rock
Venue 22 Grassmarket Venue 195 Dance Base @ Out of the Blue Drill Hall
Colour Cells, Stowaways, James Connor, The Hype
Traditional Scottish
Box, 21:00–23:00, £tbc
.co.uk e s a b e danc
13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Classic Grand, 19:00–23:00, £10
e c n a d e giv ance a ch
Woodland Creatures Records presents THE ECLECTIC HARVEST
B-Real (Cypress Hill)
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Vote-winning dance & physical theatre from Scotland and beyond
Retro nintendo rock
The Foghorns, Benni Hemm Hemm
Allan Y McDougall
TICKETS FROM £3
O2 Academy, 19:00–23:00, £5
Backed by Rude Rich & The High Notes, part of the End of summer Sunsplash.
Acoustic session
Indian classical
MyNameIsHero, Acrylic Iqon
Of Cream fame
Concrete Campfire
Yaman
London-based singer/ songwriter
THE HEPTONES
O2 Academy, 19:00–23:00, £24
No Tribe (Purpose:Failed and Battle A Dinosaur)
Mon 03 Aug
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £7
JACK BRUCE, ROBIN TROWER, GARY HUSBAND
In aid of Nordoff-Robbins Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Jill Jackson, Holly Ogilvie, Chris Gorman
Edinburgh Festival Fringe 4 – 30 August 2009
Ivory Blacks, 19:00–23:00, £17.50
Cabaret, ska, punk
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, Free
Tue 11 Aug Andy Miller
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Acoustic
August 2009
THE SKINNY 61
Glasgow music Lovvers, Divorce, Elvis Suicide
Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Punk pop
Shut Up and Eat Your Reggae: Aye n Aye, The Spectres, Los Sticks del Boom Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £3
Another bout of the weekly genrespecific knees-up. Ya’ man
Motherfucking
GLASGOW ÒRAN MÓR, TOP OF BYRES RD LIVE AT THE MILL
SEE GIG LISTINGS
13th Note, 00:00–23:30, £3/4
French Noise Experimentalists
Fri 21 Aug Katy Perry
Barrowlands, 19:00–23:00, sold out
The media-savvy Californian party lesbian
SONNY MARVELLO
Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Pop rock
THURSDAY 13TH AUGUST 2009 Eclectiv (Andripov, Stick 430)
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Wed 12 Aug Mono Jazz
Mono, 20:00–23:00, Free
THE MILL IS AN 18+ VENUE. DRINK SENSIBLY
Rumours of Fleetwood Mac
Alt. rock
No Tribe (Out of Samsara, Always Read the Label, .Scores)
SPEARBRAVE
O2 Academy, 19:00–23:00, £6
Weekly jazz night with the resident house four-piece, plus guests.
Indie rock five-piece or another 5-aside football squad who should never have been displaced from their astro turf
Vagabond, Oswald
Tiger on Vaseline
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £5
Glasgow indie pop
Revelations (The Scruffs, Aames)
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £3
Call Me Ishmael/The Yooks 13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Heavy yet melodic powerpop rock
Thu 13 Aug Bandwaggin
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Eclectic music collective
The Detours
ABC, 19:00–22:30, £6
Prog rock
Carpathian
Ivory Blacks, 19:00–23:00, £8.50
Hardcore punk
Live at The Mill (Maple Leaves, Panda Su)
The Mill Glasgow @ Òran Mór, 20:00–22:30, Free
Showcase double-bills for the best up-and-coming acts. For more information on these gigs go to: http://www.themill-live.com/gigguide. aspx
BLACK VELVETEENS, ACUTE RIOT, THE TOI
Capitol, 20:00–23:00, Free
Alt. rock and funk
Concrete Campfire Brel, 20:00–23:00, Free
Acoustic session
Telepathe
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £7.50
Brooklyn synth duo
Òran Mór, 19:30–22:30, £8
Rock
BORTHWICKS, NOXX, BECCI WALLACE, EMMA FORMAN Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £3
Indie acoustic with metal affiliations
Meursault, Les Cox (Sportifs), Lyons Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
The soaring East coast holler of Mr Pennycook against an art school backdrop of bango and electric joy
The Ray Summers
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £6
Singe launch
The Vespas
Classic Grand, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
The Arches, 19:30–23:00, £15
Tributey stuff
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Mon 17 Aug Yaman
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Indian classical
CJ Ramone, Mike TV
Ivory Blacks, 19:00–23:00, £13.50
Punk
Acoustic Aid (Pamela Quinn, Acoustic Del, Weekend Tears, Tegan) Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, Free
Tue 18 Aug James Lindsay
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Monthly jazz session
Acoustic rock
Leftover Crack
Kalbakken
Punk, ska, death ... in no particular order
13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Scandinavian Folk Melodies
Sat 15 Aug
Ivory Blacks, 19:00–23:00, £11.50
Synergy Concerts Presents: Crystal Stilts Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £8.50
Metalfest: Your Demise, It Prevails, Bleed From Within, Evita, Lower Than Atlantis
Skewed, ethereal dream pop from the Brooklyn zeitgeist
Metal, innit’
Sonic Boom Six
Classic Grand, 13:00–23:00, £10
Boycotts, French Wives, Kalla Heartshake ABC, 19:00–23:00, £5
All The Young Nudes - Life Drawing
The Flying Duck, 20:00–22:00, £4 King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £8
Indie pop
Ironed hoodies ahoy. An eloquent stab at urban terrorism
Vile Vile Creatures, Trash Kit, Bloody Knees, Scragfight
Eclectiv (Enfant Bastard, The Foundling Wheel, Asthmatic Astronaut)
The Flying Duck, 19:00–23:00, £5
Scottish debut of alt. post punk outfit
Whole Lotta Led
The Arches, 19:00–23:00, £12
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Live Jazz
Fortnightly residents
A psyche racket, surprisingly
Indievous Presents: INDIE ROCKS (The Digzys, The 4/5s, Timebomb Soldiers, The Stagger Rats)
Evangenitals//Scunner
Maggie Mays, 19:30–23:00, £5/4
Indie
Barn burning, crowd pleasing, cow punk rockabily
Humanzi
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £3
13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Mono Jazz
Mono, 20:00–23:00, Free
Weekly jazz night with the resident house four-piece, plus guests.
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £5
Revelations (Mickey 9’s, Eat Dr Ape, No Love Lost)
Box, 21:00–23:00, £tbc
The Telescopes, St. Deluxe
The Offbeat #002 (Federation of the Disco Pimp, The 27 Club)
Alt. rock
Mutiny on the Bounty/Blakfish
The Other Side, Casino, The Talent, Sol Indie rock and shoegaze
Blackfriars Basement, 21:00–01:00, £tbc
Hip hop, funk & soul.
Fri 14 Aug Attic Lights, The Seers, The Invisible Republic Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £9
Indie rock
Dublin-based four-piece
Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Second Hand Marching Band/Over The Wall 13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Folk and Indie
Sun 16 Aug Duckstock
The Flying Duck, 13:00–01:00, Free
All day festival celebrating the 40 year (to the day) anniversary of the original Woodstock
62 THE SKINNY August 2009
The Strike Nineteens, Playtone, the Killing Time ABC, 19:00–23:00, £6
Indie rock and pop
Be A Familiar, Tango in the Attic, Vendor Defender Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Indie pop
NAPOLEON IN RAGS, PART TIME SIGNALS, MIDDLEMAN Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £5
Indie punk
Mutant Music (Jacob Yates & The Pearly Gate Lock Pickers, The Wildhouse, El Mentiroso) The Flying Duck, 21:00–02:00, £4
Alt. everything
Sat 22 Aug Fnords, Doves of Disorder, Scragfight, The Zorras Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Punk, garage and surf
Classic Grand, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Alt. powerpop
Sun 23 Aug Bill Callahan
Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £14
Progressive
synergy concerts presents: BILL CALLAHAN Stereo, 20:00–23:00, £12.50
Promoting his new album, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Tom Hingley, Kim Edgar
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £6
Mon 24 Aug Michael Simons
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Folky blues
Acoustic Aid (Roger Emmerson, Trochrague, The Last Ones Left) Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, Free
Tue 25 Aug Magic Carpet Cabaret
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
The Boy Orchestra
Classic Grand, 19:00–23:30, £5.00
Dundee’s The Boy Orchestra play anthemic power pop
Subscene Records present: Ducksoup
The Flying Duck, 19:30–23:00, £5
Alt. indie
Nacional, Strays
King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, 20:00–23:00, £5
Pop punk
All The Young Nudes - Life Drawing
The Flying Duck, 20:00–22:00, £4
Eclectiv (Tronic Tuesday) Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Wed 26 Aug Mono, 20:00–23:00, Free
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £3
Thu 27 Aug Cake Free Bake Sale
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
KMR Promotions presents: Proud Mary (John Rush, Majestic Dandelion, The Scuffers) ABC, 19:00–23:00, £10
Alt. rock
Reggae punk
The Cathouse, 19:00–23:00, £13.50
Onslaught
Ivory Blacks, 19:00–23:00, £9
SATELIGHT UNDERGROUND, THE MOSCOW CLUB, CASINO CITY, SOVIETS
Thrash metal
Indie alt. pop
In aid of the JOHN JOHN trust
Soul Remover, Perfect Violation Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
THE BEST IN LIVE EMERGING MUSIC
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £3
13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Instrumental Math Rock
Thu 20 Aug
FOR FREE TICKETS VISIT themill-live.com
Doghouse Roses
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Intricate folk
stereo presents: MONOTONIX
Stereo, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Jungle
Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £4/5
Indie punk
the Latecomers
Lauries Bar, 20:15–23:00, Free
13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Old school rock n rooooooooll!
Sat 29 Aug The Raw Kings, The Merchants, Canary Warfare ABC, 19:00–23:00, £10
Alt. rock
Under the Paving Stones: The Vicounts, Helicon, Psycho Candy Pivo Pivo, 20:00–01:00, £5
Punk, postpunk, new wave and shoegaze
Black Sun/Vom/They are cowards THE SHED LIVE: The Five Aces, The Privates with The Friday Street Residents
The Garage, 19:00–23:00, £16.50
Mad Caddies
Capitol, 20:00–23:00, £5
DEFINE POP PROMOTIONS PRESENTS: KORPS, DAISUKE, POOCH
New Found Glory
Omerta, Corpses, More than a Joke Alt. indie
Blues
13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Glasgow-based alt. indie rock
Captain’s Rest, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
A mix of singer/songwriters and local bands
Revelations (Cairnhill Trading Estate)
Raw rock
Wing and a Prayer
The Fighting 69th/Hand Dog/Stomphouse Sauce
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Squeeky mini-indie O2 Academy, 19:00–23:00, £6
Acoustic singerwriter/ songwriter
No Tribe (Corruption, Pandora and The Number)
Mono Jazz (Andy Mears)
UNCLE BIG BAD
Òran Mór, 19:00–22:00, £5
Experimental acoustic Glasgow-based outfit
Little Yellow Ukuleles ABC, 19:00–23:00, £6
Fri 28 Aug Maeve O’Boyle
Indie pop and rock
Wed 19 Aug
Zep tribute
Shut Up and Eat Your Psyche: Galoshins, The Skymangle, The Sundancer
O2 Academy, 19:00–23:00, £6
Glasgow electro collective
Hells Kitchen (Jousting With Dracula, Midnight Lycan Party)
The Flying Duck, 19:00–23:00, £4
THE AFTER AFFECTS
The Boy Orchestra
THE MILL IS AN 18+ VENUE. DRINK SENSIBLY
Heavy as fuck industrial droners
The Shed, 20:30–00:30, £5
R&B, soul and jazz
Sun 30 Aug Shut Up and Eat Your Throatwrench Pivo Pivo, 20:00–02:00, £tbc
Violent, violent noise
No Tribe
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, £3
Throw rocks against your ear drums. Weekly.
The Sunday Social with Rumble in the Jumble (flea market in the afternoon), cocktails, board games, Twilight Sad DJs, with The Dirty Cuts playing live 13th Note, 20:30–23:30, £3/4
Day of fun, with sleazy synth pop darlings ‘The Dirty Cuts’, playing in the evening
Mon 31 Aug Yaman
Tchai-Ovna House of Tea, 19:00–22:00, £2
Indian classical
Jacks Mannequin QMU, 20:00–23:00, £12.50
Rock
Acoustic Aid (Kris Tennant, Kudo)
Pivo Pivo, 20:00–03:00, Free
Edinburgh music Sat 01 Aug The Ged Hanley Trio, Blackjack Blues Band, Oil on Canvas, Day of Days, The Skababs
Whistlebinkies, 16:30–02:30, Free
Indie alt. rock and country
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Gap presents: Bedlam Survivors Club, The Hot Lips and The 10.04’s Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Indie alt. rock
Caledonia presents: Salsa Cubana!
Mon 03 Aug
Thu 06 Aug
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
EJBF: Jacques Loussier Trio
Queen’s Hall, 20:00–22:30, £27.50/£22.50
French pianist
Tue 04 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
MUSICHESS
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:30, Free
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Ancient Fool, The Other Side, Iain Raeper, Easy Kings The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
Rock, blues and country
Live at The Mill (The Ray Summers, The King Hats) Showcase double-bills for the best up-and-coming acts. For more information on these gigs go to: http://www.themill-live.com/gigguide. aspx
Live acoustic performances and a chess game free-for-all. Jolly show chappy
EJBF: Moishe’s Bagel
Joint alt. folk headliners
THE VICTORIAN ENGLISH GENTLEMEN’S CLUB
Folkmetal Festival
Pop and rock. And they’re Welsh
Sea Bass Kid, The Remnant Kings, San Toy, The Nature Boys
The Picture House, 19:00–23:00, £15
FOUND, DENT MAY AND HIS MAGNIFICENT UKELELE
The Electric Circus, 19:00–23:00, £8
The Ark, 19:00–03:00, £4
Folk and, uh, metal in a festival-ish context
EJBF: Eric Burdon and The Animals
Queen’s Hall, 20:30–23:00, £26.50/£22.50
Blues rock
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:00, £6
Jakil, Dirty Modern Hero, Carrie Mac, Andy Knox, Michael Smith, Run Lucky Free The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
An alt. rock, punk medley
Blackheart, Rosie Nimmo The Village, 19:30–22:30, £6
Jam The Box (Rebel Waltz)
Nu-folk
Disco, soul, electrofunk, hiphop, house, techno.
The Electric Circus, 20:00–03:00, £4/ Free after 11pm
The GRV, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
Sun 02 Aug WE HEART TAPES
The Electric Circus, 16:00–19:00, £6
A weekly Unders night featuring a melange of fine bands hosted by the Puppytooth DJs. Pip pip young sir
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Ninecircles, Moya, Aces High The Ark, 19:30–23:00, £4
White Noise (Kid Carpet)
A weekly array of up and coming Scottish acts, followed up by DJ sets from Tanya Mellotte and Gavin Glove
The Levings, The Seven Deadly Sins, What the Dead Know, Mexico
Whistlebinkies, 21:00–03:00, Free
Indie pop and rock
Wed 05 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Solo saxophonist
The Jazz Bar, 21:00–23:00, £4/3
Weekly vocalist showcase
Confusion is Sex
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, £7 [£6 in advance]
Where David Lynch fantasy becomes reality.
Fri 07 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Media Whores, Montana, The Diversions
Whistlebinkies, 18:30–02:30, Free
Blues, rock and prog. funk
Tut Vu Vu and A La fu
National Portrait Gallery, 19:00–21:00, Free
Cinematic anti-jazz
Trampoline presents: The Radiation Line, The Kays Lavelle and Adam Stafford Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Wiseblood Industries showcase
Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Showcase
Sat 08 Aug The Ged Hanley Trio, The Gary Johnston Trio, Lee Patterson, The Demons Eye
Whistlebinkies, 16:46–02:30, Free
Cover versions, and acoustic blues
Emily Scott, Rob St John National Portrait Gallery, 17:00–19:00, Free
Alt. folk and country
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Radio Forth presents: Forth on the Fringe (The Proclaimers, Adam Hills, The Magnets, Stephen K Amos, The Chippendales, Craig Hill, Lucy Porter, Carrie Macdonald)
From the Marling, Noah & his whale camp
Glam rock
EJBF: Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra Plays Duke Ellington
Queen’s Hall, 20:00–23:00, £19.50/£16
Directed by Joe Temperley
The Foghorns, Benni Hemm Hemm
Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £8
Shell Suit Massacre, My Electric Love Affair, We are Jawbone The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
I like electro, I like techno ... I like folk-oh.
Henry’s Cellar Bar, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Jackhammer, Ben Sims
Blanco Diablo
EJBF: Jack Bruce, Robin Trower & Gary Husband
Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Classic rock
The Granary, 19:00–01:00, £10
Metal
Queen’s Hall, 20:00–23:00, £30/£25
Simon Kempston, Oatbeanie
The Planes, Maple Fire, The Simple Touch
The voice of Cream
Blues, celtic and folk
Country folk rock
Soul trio
Whistlebinkies, 21:30–02:30, Free
Hijack Records Night
Glam Scarlet, The Bagatelles
The Ark, 19:30–23:00, £4
Whistlebinkies, 22:45–02:30, Free
UPCOMING GIGS THE MILL GLASGOW • 30TH JULY • 13TH AUGUST • 27TH AUGUST THE MILL EDINBURGH • 6TH AUGUST • 20TH AUGUST • 3RD SEPTEMBER SEE GIG LISTINGS
Hanley Hunter Trio
The Village, 21:00–22:30, £3.00
The Ark, 19:00–21:30, £4
Sebastian Dangerfield, Foxgang, The Stormy Seas Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:30, £4
The Edge Festival presents: Mumford & Sons
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £8
126 Records and Events Present: Postcode, El Rey, JT+LRG, Caragh Nugent Wee Red Bar, 19:00–23:00, £4
Acoustic
The Electric Circus, 20:00–23:00, Free
Acoustic sets, with pull-out folk features and the occasional witty jazz column
Singers Night
The Jazz Bar, 21:00–23:00, £4/3
Weekly vocalist showcase
Wee Red Bar, 19:30–22:00, £5
Fritz, No Album Reviews
Whistlebinkies, 21:30–01:15, Free
Garage, powerpop and prog. rock
Thu 13 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Rock metal
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
Whistlebinkies, 00:30–01:15, Free
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Mon 10 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Edge Festival presents: Calvin Harris
The Picture House, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Scottish electro popper
Dub Syndicate
The Voodoo Rooms, 20:00–23:00, £15
Massive dub collective
Doubts Cast Shadows Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Hardcore metal
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
The Dyad
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Afrobeat and jazz, man
Laptop Lounge (Festival Special)
The Voodoo Rooms, 20:00–01:00, Free
Cutting-edge international and UK electronic music and video artists perform live in the venue and into the venue via the net
The Offenders, The Colin Clyne Band
Tue 11 Aug
Whistlebinkies, 21:30–01:15, Free
Blues, funk and indie rock
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Trampoline presents: Jonnie Common, Conquering Animal Sound
Alt. roots
4 Day Weekend
David Byrne
The Talking Heads frontman’s first Edinburugh date for five years
Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc Brooklyn-bred, synthed-up geometric hipsters Bannerman’s, 20:00–23:00, £4
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
Edinburgh Playhouse, 19:00–23:00, £38.50
TELEPATHE, DOLLSKABEAT
L-MO
ACOUSTIC SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT
From the Marling, Noah & his whale camp
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
MUSIC FROM THE PENGUIN CAFÉ
Queen’s Hall, 22:00–23:30, £tbc
MUSICHESS
Folk, bluegrass, avant garde classical music and pop
Live acoustic performances and a chess game free-for-all. Jolly show chappy
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:30, Free
Tricity Vogue presents: Ukelele Cabaret
Fri 14 Aug The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Rieser
Cabaret for tiny people who like strings
Alt. rock
Andrea Glass
National Portrait Gallery, 18:00–19:30, FREE
The Subhumans
Americana acoustic
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
Western swing with a slap of indie charm The GRV, 20:00–22:30, £6
Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Punk
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
Sun 09 Aug WE HEART TAPES
The Electric Circus, 16:00–19:00, £6
A weekly Unders night featuring a melange of fine bands hosted by the Puppytooth DJs. Pip pip young sir
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Cosmo
The Ark, 18:00–18:50, £tbc
Hardcore
THE MILL IS AN 18+ VENUE. DRINK SENSIBLY
THE MILL IS AN 18+ VENUE. DRINK SENSIBLY
Indie pop, reggae and punk
The Edge Festival presents: Mumford & Sons
Anti-folk
Singers Night
Whistlebinkies, 21:30–02:30, Free
Irish singer songwriter Powerpop
Queen’s Hall, 20:00–23:00, £19.50/£16
THURSDAY 20TH AUGUST 2009
Eight-piece folk flock
ACOUSTIC SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT
EJBF: Courtney Pine – Tradition In Transition
Jazz-inflected Klezmer
The Picture House, 18:00–23:00, sold out
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:00, £10
SEE GIG LISTINGS
Queen’s Hall, 20:00–23:00, £15/£12.50
WOODPIGEON
Over The Skyline
Acoustic sets, with pull-out folk features and the occasional witty jazz column
LIVE AT THE MILL
JULIET TURNER, RYAN DONN, YVONNE LYON
Alt. rock
The Electric Circus, 20:00–23:00, Free
EDINBURGH CABARET VOLTAIRE, 36 BLAIR STREET
The Mill Edinburgh @ Cabaret Voltaire, 19:30–22:30, Free
Postcode, Carah Nugent Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Alt. indie
Unicorn Kid
The Village, 19:30–22:30, £6
A.K.A wunderkid Oliver Sabin
White Noise (Jesus h Foxx, DJ Christo)
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
The Electric Circus, 20:00–03:00, £4/ Free after 11pm
The Idles, The Blacklisted, Roadway, Autonomy, Mexico
Whistlebinkies, 21:00–03:00, Free
Indie punk and covers
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Trampoline presents: Ziggy Campbell, Yusef Aszak and Golden Ghost Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Ziggy, you know, from FOUND like
Wed 12 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
Come (The Brand New Ritual)
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Bands, performances, visuals, electro, art, dance party.
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Forest Cafe, 19:00–03:00, Free
PARTY FEARS THREE
Citrus Club, 19:30–22:30, £6/8
Alt. indie
Lisa Scott
The Ark, 20:00–22:00, £4
As in Lee? Probably not. But potentially still poptastic
August 2009
THE SKINNY 63
Edinburgh music Lord Bishop Rocks, White Trash Circus
Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Metal and funk
ACOUSTIC SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT
The Electric Circus, 20:00–23:00, Free
Annie Stevenson, The Cavorters
Acoustic sets, with pull-out folk features and the occasional witty jazz column
Alt. rock and lyrical ska
The McCalmans
MUSIC FROM THE PENGUIN CAFÉ
The penultimate Fringe concert
Whistlebinkies, 21:45–23:30, Free
Queen’s Hall, 22:00–23:30, £tbc
Folk, bluegrass, avant garde classical music and pop
Club For Heroes (Moggieboy (Ripped In Glasgow)) Wee Red Bar, 23:00–15:00, £5 (£4)
Psychedelic disco music from beyond the stars.
Sat 15 Aug Denghis
Elvis Shakespeare, 14:00–15:00, Free
Blue-collar country rock band make their debut.
Immortal Krypt, An Echo, The John Knox Sex Club National Portrait Gallery, 16:00–19:00, Free
Indie indie
The Ged Hanley Trio, The Midnight Blues Band, Modus, Dignan Dowell and White
Whistlebinkies, 16:45–02:30, Free
Covers, blues, indie pop and jam rock
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Time Mondays
The Ark, 19:00–21:00, £4
Alt. rock
BIG HAND
The Electric Circus, 19:00–22:00, £5
Sweaty ska funk
Trampoline presents: Lovers Turn To Monsters, Shenandoa Davis Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Acoustic emo
The Edge Festival presents: M?m
Studio 24, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Icelandic instrumentalists
The Edge Festival presents: The Streets
The Picture House, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
The golden voice of the British yoof, innit’
The Edge Festival presents: Young Fathers, Unicorn Kid
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £7
Indie pop
Queen’s Hall, 20:00–23:00, £12
Retreat! (Rob St. John, Meursault, Withered Hand, Viking Moses, Pineapple Chunks, Tisso Lake, the Leg) Bristo Hall, 11:30–23:00, Free
WE HEART TAPES
The Electric Circus, 16:00–19:00, £6
A weekly Unders night featuring a melange of fine bands hosted by the Puppytooth DJs. Pip pip young sir
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
The Peatbog Faeries
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
Queen’s Hall, 22:00–23:30, £16
Contemp. traditional
Mon 17 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
THE TELESCOPES, ST DELUXE Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Regimental, elemental noise
Who Framed Terra Surfa? Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
The Edge Festival presents: Broken Records Queen’s Hall, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Edinburgh indie folk
The Edge Festival presents: The Juan MacLean
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £8.50
American electronic must-see
Juli Crockett and The Evangenitals
The Voodoo Rooms, 19:30–22:30, £5
Eclectic country genre bashing
Tue 18 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
SPARROW AND THE WORKSHOP, IVAN CAMPO, ROSS CLARK AND THE SCARVES Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Scottish alt. folk three piece wonders, with support from the ebullient Ross Clark
Theoretical Records presents...
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Bands still to be confirmed at time of print, hopefully it’s not all in the name
Blind Assassins, Two Carved Stones The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
Alt. rock and metal
Live at The Mill (Little Buddha, The Boycotts) The Mill Edinburgh @ Cabaret Voltaire, 19:30–22:30, Free
Showcase double-bills for the best up-and-coming acts. For more information on these gigs go to: http://www.themill-live.com
Fri 21 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
MUSICHESS
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Live acoustic performances and a chess game free-for-all. Jolly show chappy
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Longhorn, Skyless The Ark, 19:00–20:45, £4
Rock
Bainbridge presents ... Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
4 bands to be announced
STRICKEN CITY, DUPEC, THE MARVELS
Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
London pop four-piece
The Edge Festival presents: Amanda Palmer
The Picture House, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Of Dresden Doll fame
BIG FAT PANDA, CASH FROM CHAOS, SAD SOCIETY Citrus Club, 19:30–22:30, £6/8
Pop punk and alt. rock
SOSfest (Xcerts ) The GRV, 20:00–23:00, £11
Pop rock
Man of the Hour, The Tyrant Lizard Kings Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Metal
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
Sun 23 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Psychoattractive
Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
Punk
Tue 25 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
MUSICHESS
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:30, Free
Live acoustic performances and a chess game free-for-all. Jolly show chappy
The Edge Festival presents: Ian Broudie
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:00, £12.50
Alt. acoustic
Who Framed Terra Surfa? Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
The Village, 19:30–22:30, £6
Rootsy blues
White Noise (Trembling Bells, Ben Reynolds )
The Electric Circus, 20:00–03:00, £4
A weekly array of up and coming Scottish acts, followed up by DJ sets from Tanya Mellotte and Gavin Glove
Wed 26 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
Contemp. soul
Nobody Else
If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
The Edge Festival presents: Foy Vance
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £9
Alt. acoustic
The Edge Festival presents: Frightened Rabbit Queen’s Hall, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Benbecula presents: The Final Vinyl with Christ, Frogpocket, Araya, Plum
Spanish boys, break-ups and sweaty ceilidhs galore. Again.
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Nick Keir
LOVVERS, ELVIS SUICIDE, DIVORCE
The Village, 19:30–22:30, £6
Scottish folk singer/songwriter
The Street, 19:30–01:00, £3
POL Arida
Electronica
Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Disillusioned, enightened deviant pop for the thinking man
Biffy Clyro
Corn Exchange, 19:00–23:00, £18.50
Ayshire rock
Little Miss Function
If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
The Edge Festival presents: Andrew Bird Studio 24, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Looped fiddles and sombre canadian lyricism. Flock to it.
Electro
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:00, £12.50
Alt. acoustic
Vertis, Ancient Fool, Ugly Baby, Havana Fayre The Ark, 19:00–01:00, £4
Folk, rock, and alt. punk
The Edge Festival Presents: Red Hot Chilli Pipers The Picture House, 19:30–22:30, £17.50
The soundtrack to every underage party you ever went to
Thu 27 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Edge Festival presents: Your Sound Showcase
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
New talent
THE CHRISTIANS
ACOUSTIC SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT (Lee Patterson, Chris Bradley)
Contemp. soul
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £6
The Electric Circus, 20:00–23:00, Free
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
The Jam House, 18:00–00:00, £10
SMOKE
The Electric Circus, 18:00–03:00, Free before 11pm
The Ark, 20:00–22:00, £4
The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
Alt. acoustic
Minimalist lounging
SOSfest (Tommy Reilly ) The GRV, 19:00–23:00, £11
Acoustic sets, with pull-out folk features and the occasional witty jazz column
The Dyad
White Noise (The Vivians, Fangs, The Hot Lips, Popscure DJ)
Acoustic singer/ songwriter
SOSfest (Sergeant )
The Edge Festival: NDubz (Mz Bratt, Stevie Hoang, Addictive)
Indie pop
The Edge Festival presents: Enter Shikari
Singers Night
British hard-core
The Electric Circus, 20:00–03:00, £4/ Free after 11pm
Wed 19 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
The Picture House, 19:00–23:00, £19.50
MOBO lauded hip hop
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Ads, The Raw Kings
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
Rock
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
The Devil Disco Club (Hobbes & Erik d’Viking (Trouble DJs), Nick Yuill (Solescience, Shoot The Pump), Kris Wasabi (Wasbi Disco), Horse Meat Disco (DJ set), Molly Wagger (Tirk), )
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Who Framed Terra Surfa? If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
Naked, coarsing, raw performance
Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
THE PHANTOM BAND
The Electric Circus, 19:00–22:00, £8
Skinny favourites
64 THE SKINNY August 2009
Bannerman’s, 21:00–23:00, £4
The Bongo Club, 23:00–05:00, £7 (£5)
Soul, rap, disco, boogie, electro-funk & proto-house: re-edits, remixes & extended versions.
The GRV, 20:00–23:00, £11
The Jazz Bar, 21:00–23:00, £4/3
Weekly vocalist showcase
Mon 24 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Who Framed Terra Surfa? Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Afrobeat and jazz, man
The Picture House, 19:00–22:30, £tbc
Boys Noize
City Nightclub, 22:30–05:00, £18
German electro from Alexander Ridha
Neoviolet, Hannah O’Reilly, Jym Ponter, Come In Tokyo The Ark, 19:00–01:00, £4
Rock and folk
Fri 28 Aug
If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
Meursault, Withered Hand
The Edge Festival presents: Malcolm Middleton
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £tbc Arab Strap gone solo
Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £10
Folk punk
DARK CITY
The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
Metal gothic
Xplicit Events presents: Dj Yoda
The Picture House, 19:00–23:00, £tbc
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
Sat 29 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
The Laymanites, Brittle Head Girl
The Jam House, 18:00–00:00, £10
Shiny Edinburgh-based synth electro pop
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
The Edge Festival presents: Frank Turner
THE CHRISTIANS
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
Who Framed Terra Surfa?
Who Framed Terra Surfa?
Folk electro
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, Free
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
The Edge Festival presents: Ian Broudie
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Randan Discotheque, Snide Rhythms, The Young Spooks
Bands, performances, visuals, electro, art, dance party.
Moe Prevencher & Aimee Zoe Tubbs
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Resident musicians whip you through a range of modern jazz. Dress code: smart/ casual.
Rock
The Picture House, 19:00–22:30, £10
X-Liontamer
National Portrait Gallery, 18:00–19:30, Free
The Jam House, 18:30–03:00, Free before 8pm, £5.50 before 11pm, £7.50 after
Come (Casino) (DJs GET MESSY)
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:30, Free
JAM HOUSE EXPERIENCE
The Edge Festival Presents: Metric
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
MONOTONIX, INDOMITOS
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
Album launch for SJI
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Jazz Bar, 21:00–23:00, £4/3
Monthly queer and trans night of dance, film, poetry and music
Sun 16 Aug
Thu 20 Aug
National Portrait Gallery, 17:00–19:00, Free
Weekly vocalist showcase
Singers Night
Folk, bluegrass, avant garde classical music and pop The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
Zoey Van Goey, St Jude’s Infirmary
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
MUSIC FROM THE PENGUIN CAFÉ
Saturday Night Fish Fry
Sat 22 Aug
If you believe their myspace, Terra Surfa are “a bishop, a Mexican wrestler, a country gent, an Italian mobster, a chef, and a karate master”
Wee Red Bar, 19:00–22:00, £5
TEATIME ACOUSTIC
Cachín Cachán Cachunga! (Zorras, Lily, Kristi Taylor & Ariadna Battich )
Queen’s Hall, 22:00–23:30, £tbc
Who Framed Terra Surfa?
National Portrait Gallery, 17:00–19:00, Free
Album launch for Withered Hand The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
Rock
Rockin’ at the Web
The Spiders Web, 20:00–01:00, £5
Rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, rhythm & blues
Sun 30 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
ACOUSTIC SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT
The Electric Circus, 20:00–23:00, Free
Acoustic sets, with pull-out folk features and the occasional witty jazz column
Singers Night
The Jazz Bar, 21:00–23:00, £4/3
Weekly vocalist showcase
Regular Music presents: Eddi Reader
Queen’s Hall, 21:30–23:00, £25
Promoting her ninth album, Love is the Way
Mon 31 Aug TEATIME ACOUSTIC
The Jazz Bar, 17:00–20:00, Free
Daily sessions featuring eastablished singer/ songwriters and bands
AMAZING BABY
Sneaky Pete’s, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Brooklyn four-piece, riding on the back of their debut, Rewild
The Edge Festival presents: Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard, Withered Hand Cabaret Voltaire, 19:00–22:30, £9
Anti-folk and New Yawk 80’s punk poetry
Andy Knox, Richard Cobb The Ark, 19:00–23:00, £4
Acoustic pop
Dead Good Villains, Tam’s Railways, Vegas Nights The Bongo Club, 19:00–23:00, £5
Indie rock
Glasgow Clubs Sat 01 Aug Bigfoot’s Tea Party (Mr Copy & Simon Stokes (Soma/ Minibus), Marmalade Man & Faux Pas (Residents), Hans Bouffmyhre (Sleaze/Perc Trax), Terry Whyte (Optik), Kage (BonBon), Gregor Cunningham (Click @ Snafu)) The Courtyard, 15:00–23:00, £4
House & techno.
U18 Glasgow Presents: School’s Out For Summer... (Unicorn Kid, Paper Planes) ABC, 16:00–18:30, £7
An Under-18s club for the musically savvy
This Is...
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £7/£5 after
Electro indie
Kinetic Blue
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free entry before 10.30pm
Indie, house and urban
Pandemic
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 21:00–03:00, £3
Indie, 60’s garage, soul, rock n roll.
Elements of Soul
Basura Blanca, 22:00–14:00, £5
Deep & soulful house music.
Absolution
Classic Grand, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
Burn
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £5(3)
Tue 04 Aug All The Young Nudes - Life Drawing
The Flying Duck, 20:00–22:00, £4
Revolution
Queen Margaret Union, 22:00–02:00, £2/£3
Weekly does of rock/emo/metal. Drinks from £1! Non students welcome
3Some
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm. £4/3 after
Lewd posing, with prizes
Killer Kitsch
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £4(3)
Wed 05 Aug BBC Switch Road Trip 2009 (Calvin Harris, Radio 1’s Annie Mac & Nick Grimshaw ) ABC, 18:00–21:30, Tickets and information www.nrgu18s.co.uk
Nu Skool
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £6
Slabs Of The Tabernacle (Mark du Mosch, David Vunk, Andrew Ingram, Brian d’Souza, jwins) The Twisted Wheel, 23:00–03:00, £7
Disco, italo, techno, electro.
SOLUTe (Boris Brejcha (Harthouse & Autist)) The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £8
House & techno.
Subculture
Sub Club, 23:00–03:00, £8
Weekly snapshot of the ever-evolving house blueprint.
Queen Margaret Union, 22:00–03:00, £2/£3
Glasgows longest running and best student night
Damnation
Classic Grand, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
Blink (Alex Smoke)
The Club (69), 23:00–03:00, £8
Tech house & techno.
Monox
Sub Club, 23:00–03:00, £10
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Mainstream chart-ish
Dysfunktional Indie and electro
Remote Control Alt. indie and disco
Octopussy (Bouncycastle, pool, hot tub, ball pool.) The Arches, 23:00–03:00, £5
Watchamacallit
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Punk Flavor Funk. Caramel. Milk Psychoclate.
Thu 06 Aug Common Room
Common, 19:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 (students) after
Weekly hotpot of punters on the pull to a backdrop of commercial, house, pop and R&B
Bazodee
The Halt Bar, 20:00–02:00, Free
Reggae and dancehall
Student Night
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £6
Tic Tac Toe (Seth Troxler, Andrew Doran) Stereo, 23:00–03:00, £10
House & techno.
Ad Lib, 23:00–03:40, £5 (£4)
The Basement (2Manky DJs, Elliot Castro, Rebecca Vasmant) Soundhaus, 23:00–04:00, £7 (£5)
Techno, electro and house from residents 2mankyDJs, dirty basement, evil ean & elliot castro and guests.
Sat 08 Aug
Garage indie pop
Kinetic Blue
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free entry before 10.30pm
Indie, house and urban
Absolution
Classic Grand, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
A heavy alternative concoction involving styles from metal to emo, punk to industrial. Drinks offers all night to keep you absolved. The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £6
Wrong Island
Black Sparrow, 15:00–01:00, Free
All day disco terror.
Snakebite Sundays
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free before 10:30pm. £5/3 after
All manner of sins, from pop to back alley funk
Liquid Cool
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 after
House: past, present and future
Optimo
Sub Club, 23:00–03:00, £7/6
Unabashed genre bending with JD Twitch and JG Wilkes
Cheap&Nasty
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 23:30–03:00, £4 (£3students)
Fri 07 Aug Audiofilth
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 after
Heat
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Trade night
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £4/£3 after
Indie and electro
Remote Control
The V Club, 22:30–03:00, £3/1
Alt. indie and disco
Octopussy (Bouncycastle, pool, hot tub, ball pool.) The Arches, 23:00–03:00, £5
Watchamacallit
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Punk Flavor Funk. Caramel. Milk Psychoclate.
Thu 13 Aug
Sun 09 Aug The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free before 10:30pm. £5/3 after
Liquid Cool
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 after
House: past, present and future
Optimo
Sub Club, 23:00–03:00, £7/6
Unabashed genre bending with JD Twitch and JG Wilkes
Common, 19:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 (students) after
The Halt Bar, 20:00–02:00, Free
Reggae and dancehall
The Offbeat #002 (Federation of the Disco Pimp, The 27 Club)
Blackfriars Basement, 21:00–01:00, £tbc
Hip hop, funk & soul.
Student Night
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Indie anthems and skewed pop
EQd
The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Techno and electro with Bobby Wilson, Alexander Technique and Truman Data.
FunkyMilk (Cheesy)
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)
Rolling funk, soul and classics.
Mixed Bizness (Jackmaster & Point To C)
The Vic Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA Hip hop, house, drum & bass, funk, dance hall, electro, garage, break beat and disco.
RPZ
The Vic Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA students
Fri 14 Aug Audiofilth
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 after
The sluttiest mixes this side of the Clyde
‘My mum told me I could DJ’
Cheesy Pop
Punk, noise, pop, disco, funk, rock n roll.
66 THE SKINNY August 2009
This Is...
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £7/£5 after
Electro indie
Kinetic Blue
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free entry before 10.30pm
Indie, house and urban
Shapes (AQUILAGANJA & DAVEY HAMPTON)
Basura Blanca, 21:00–02:00, £6 (£5)
Techno, Electro and Tech House.
Classic Grand, 23:00–03:00, £3
The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
With Craig Loosejoints and Stevie Elements
Mon 10 Aug Heat
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Trade night
Classic Grand, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
Alibi (Jonny F, Rebecca Vasmant, The Messenger) The Admiral, 23:00–03:00, £5
Nu Skool
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £6
Numbers (Joker)
Stereo, 23:00–03:00, £10
Subculture
Sub Club, 23:00–03:00, £8 Weekly snapshot of the ever-evolving house blueprint. Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 23:30–03:00, £3
Sun 16 Aug Snakebite Sundays
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free before 10:30pm. £5/3 after
All manner of sins, from pop to back alley funk
Disco to stroke your ego to
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 21:00–03:00, £3
Queen Margaret Union, 22:00–03:00, £2/£3
Glasgows longest running and best student night
Damnation
Classic Grand, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
Distortion (Sewelley)
Basura Blanca, 23:00–02:00, £5
Minimal, techno, house.
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £4(3)
Wed 19 Aug The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Mainstream chart-ish
Dysfunktional
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £4/£3 after
Indie and electro
Remote Control
The V Club, 22:30–03:00, £3/1
Alt. indie and disco
Octopussy (Bouncycastle, pool, hot tub, ball pool.) The Arches, 23:00–03:00, £5
Watchamacallit
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Punk Flavor Funk. Caramel. Milk Psychoclate.
Thu 20 Aug Common Room
Common, 19:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 (students) after
Weekly hotpot of punters on the pull to a backdrop of commercial, house, pop and R&B
Bazodee
The Halt Bar, 20:00–02:00, Free
Reggae and dancehall
Student Night
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Indie anthems and skewed pop
Alternative Nation
Classic Grand, 23:00–03:00, £3 Rock, industrial, metal, punk and electro
EQd
The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Techno and electro with Bobby Wilson, Alexander Technique and Truman Data.
FunkyMilk (Cheesy)
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)
Rolling funk, soul and classics.
Mixed Bizness (Jackmaster & Point To C)
The Vic Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA Hip hop, house, drum & bass, funk, dance hall, electro, garage, break beat and disco.
RPZ
The Vic Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA students
The Soul Skattitude
The Twisted Wheel, 23:00–03:00, Free before 12, £3/1 with a flyer
60’s ska and soul; Jamaica’s Studio One meets Detroit and Chicago Motown sounds
Cheap&Nasty
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 23:30–03:00, £4 (£3students)
Fri 21 Aug
Liquid Cool
Audiofilth
House: past, present and future
The sluttiest mixes this side of the Clyde
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 after
Ritual
Classic Grand, 23:00–03:00, £3
Rock, metal, punk and industrial tunes
Sunday Session
Sunday Session
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 21:00–03:00, £3
Techno.
Indie, Pop, Punk, Funk, Rock, Dreampop and Garage classics.
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 23:30–03:00, Free
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Damaged Goods
Black Sparrow, 15:00–01:00, Free
Sheek
Velvet
Disco to stroke your ego to
Hotbox
Go Wonder!
New Wave, Krautrock, Spiky pop & Freakbeat, with visuals.
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Sat 15 Aug
A night for dancing to indie-pop, postpunk, motown, twee and anything else that gets feet tapping.
Sheek
‘My mum told me I could DJ’
Bass, dubstep.
Rock, industrial, metal, punk and electro
Classic Grand, 23:00–03:00, £3
The Halt Bar, 20:00–00:00, Free
House & techno.
Pivo Pivo, 23:00–05:00, £tbc
Bottle Rocket
Kino Fist
O’Couture, 20:01–03:02, £5 (£3)
Fortified (Geiom (Berkane Sol, Skam, Wigflex), Brackles (Berkane Sol, Applepips, Planet Mu, Pollen, Blunted Robots), Spamchop (Berkane Sol, Wigflex), Electric Eliminators, Jongerre )
Alternative Nation
Rock, metal, punk and industrial tunes
Disco, house, italo, electro.
Mon 03 Aug
Dysfunktional
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Sheek
With Craig Loosejoints and Stevie Elements
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Ritual
Countach (Rosko)
The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Techno, beats, electronica.  
All manner of sins, from pop to back alley funk
Rock, metal, punk and industrial tunes
Sunday Session
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, 23:30–03:00, £3
RPZ
The sluttiest mixes this side of the Clyde
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Soundhaus, 23:00–04:00, £10/8
Snakebite Sundays
Ritual
Classic Grand, 23:00–03:00, £3
Sub Club, 23:00–03:00, £8
Hip hop, house, drum & bass, funk, dance hall, electro, garage, break beat and disco.
The Vic Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA students
Wed 12 Aug
Experimental
Bazodee
QMU, 19:00–22:00, £tbc
Techno and electro with Bobby Wilson, Alexander Technique and Truman Data.
The Vic Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £4(3)
Soundhaus, 23:00–04:00, £5/7
Tango in the Attic
House & techno.
Mixed Bizness (Benny Boom)
Killer Kitsch
The Kitchen Sessions
Electro indie
Re-Locate
Rolling funk, soul and classics.
Lewd posing, with prizes
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £6
A heavy alternative concoction involving styles from metal to emo, punk to industrial. Drinks offers all night to keep you absolved.
EQd
The Battle of Cannae (Moustache Records, Slabs of the Tabernacle, Meschi, Joe Hart, Basic Aly)
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm. £4/3 after
Clubhouse Wednesdays
Old Skool
Weekly hotpot of punters on the pull to a backdrop of commercial, house, pop and R&B
Weekly snapshot of the ever-evolving house blueprint.
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)
3Some
Techno, electronica, hip hop.
Stereo, 23:00–03:00, £7 (£5)
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £7/£5 after
This Is...
Rock, industrial, metal, punk and electro
FunkyMilk (Cheesy)
Weekly does of rock/emo/metal. Drinks from £1! Non students welcome
Killer Kitsch
Absolution
Alternative Nation
Sun 02 Aug
Queen Margaret Union, 22:00–02:00, £2/£3
Ballers Social Club (Alexander Nut (Rinse FM/Mixed Nuts), Lukid live (Werk Discs) )
Common Room
Off The Record (Alexoraldo, Bigfoot’s Tea Party, Kreep Boutique, Lamb, Ronin, Rufus Fook, Simon Stokes, Siren, Why Eleven?)
The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
Revolution
Mainstream chart-ish
Subculture
Soundhaus, 23:00–16:00, £7 (£6)
Tue 11 Aug
Old Skool
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Classic Grand, 23:00–03:00, £3
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £5(3)
Clubhouse Wednesdays
Nu Skool
Indie anthems and skewed pop
Burn
With Unit Moebius, Dasha Rush and Smartie
Minimal to techno.
The V Club, 22:30–03:00, £3/1
Disco.
Cheesy Pop
Clubhouse Wednesdays
Huntleys And Palmers Audio Club (Krikor (Kill The DJ/Tigersushi), Linkwood (Firecracker Recordings), Dollskabeat (Optimo Music)) The Admiral, 23:00–03:00, £10
House & techno.
Minimize (Sasha Von Thulen)
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £4/£3 after
Melting Pot (MARK SEVEN)
Black Sparrow, 22:00–01:00, Free
Summer exam results party for ages 13-17
A heavy alternative concoction involving styles from metal to emo, punk to industrial. Drinks offers all night to keep you absolved.
Stereo, 23:00–03:00, £7
Limitless (Matthew One More Tune)
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £3 The V Club, 23:00–03:00, £3
With Craig Loosejoints and Stevie Elements
Mon 17 Aug Heat
The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Trade night
Burn
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £5(3)
Tue 18 Aug All The Young Nudes - Life Drawing
The Flying Duck, 20:00–22:00, £4
Revolution
Queen Margaret Union, 22:00–02:00, £2/£3
Weekly does of rock/emo/metal. Drinks from £1! Non students welcome
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £5/£3 after
‘My mum told me I could DJ’ The Viper, 21:00–02:00, Free
Disco to stroke your ego to
Limitless (Matthew One More Tune)
Black Sparrow, 22:00–01:00, Free
House & techno.
Cheesy Pop
Queen Margaret Union, 22:00–03:00, £2/£3
Glasgows longest running and best student night
Damnation
Classic Grand, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
Hotbox (Paco Osuna) Pivo Pivo, 23:00–03:00, £10
Techno.
Old Skool
The Buff Club, 23:00–03:00, £6
Sat 22 Aug Tronicsole (Hiro, Ronnie Muirhead (Sunday Circus), See T (Bon Bon), Euan S (Kreep Boutique)) The Admiral, 11:00–03:00, £7 (£5)
Deep house and techno.
3Some
This Is...
Lewd posing, with prizes
Electro indie
Common, 22:00–03:00, Free before 11pm. £4/3 after
Common, 17:00–03:00, Free before 11pm, £7/£5 after
KINETIC BLUE
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE ENTRY BEFORE 10.30PM
Indie, house and urban
ABSOLUTION
CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
A heavy alternative concoction involving styles from metal to emo, punk to industrial. Drinks offers all night to keep you absolved.
DEATH DISCO
OCTOPUSSY (BOUNCYCASTLE, POOL, HOT TUB, BALL POOL.)
OLD SKOOL
WATCHAMACALLIT
SCRABBLE SOUNDSYSTEM (AGT RAVE CRU)
THE ARCHES, 23:00–03:00, £5
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3
Punk Flavor Funk. Caramel. Milk Psychoclate.
edinburgh corn PRESENTS exchange
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6
PIVO PIVO, 23:30–05:00, £TBC
Techno, electro.
bar / live music / club / private karaoke rooms
.. . party with
7pm, £8** diy folk, hints of beta band & tunng
SAT 29 AUG
THU 27 AUG
August gig & Club HigHligHts Sat 1: Found & dent May and hiS MagniFicent ukelele tue 4: White noiSe - kid carpet, cuiSer & dJS
WHITE LABEL
THE ARCHES, 11:00–03:00, £5
10pm, £4 electro disco punk made with kids toys & casio keyboards from rob da bank’s label
NU SKOOL
THIS IS...
Sun 9: acouStic Sunday SuppleMent Flora cook & robin adaMS
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6
Weekly hotpot of punters on the pull to a backdrop of commercial, house, pop and R&B
SEASONS (IVAN SMAGGHE)
BAZODEE
Electro indie
House & techno.
Reggae and dancehall
THE ARCHES, 23:00–03:00, £14
With Bloody Beetroots and His Majesty Andre
THE CLUB (69), 23:00–03:00, £12
SUBCULTURE
SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £8
Weekly snapshot of the ever-evolving house blueprint.
EXPOSURE
SOUNDHAUS, 23:00–04:00, £TBC
With Stuart Trainer and Andy Raeside
THE HOT CLUB
NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £3
Garage, punk, psych.  
SUN 23 AUG SNAKEBITE SUNDAYS
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE BEFORE 10:30PM. £5/3 AFTER
All manner of sins, from pop to back alley funk
LIQUID COOL
COMMON, 22:00–03:00, FREE BEFORE 11PM, £5/£3 AFTER
COMMON ROOM
COMMON, 19:00–03:00, FREE BEFORE 11PM, £5/£3 (STUDENTS) AFTER
THE HALT BAR, 20:00–02:00, FREE
STUDENT NIGHT
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE
Indie anthems and skewed pop
ALTERNATIVE NATION
CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £3
Rock, industrial, metal, punk and electro
BONBON
SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
House & techno.
EQD
THE V CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3
Techno and electro with Bobby Wilson, Alexander Technique and Truman Data.
FUNKYMILK (CHEESY)
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£3)
Rolling funk, soul and classics.
MIXED BIZNESS (A LA FU & POINT TO C)
THE VIC BAR, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA
RITUAL
Hip hop, house, drum & bass, funk, dance hall, electro, garage, break beat and disco.
Rock, metal, punk and industrial tunes
RPZ
House: past, present and future CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £3
SHEEK
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3
SUNDAY SESSION
THE V CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3
With Craig Loosejoints and Stevie Elements
MON 24 AUG HEAT
THE VIC BAR, 23:00–03:00, £4 (£3), £1 GSA STUDENTS
THE PUMP CLUB
NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:30–03:00, £2
FRI 28 AUG AUDIOFILTH
COMMON, 17:00–03:00, 11PM, £5/£3 AFTER
BURN
SOULSVILLE
TUE 25 AUG ALL THE YOUNG NUDES - LIFE DRAWING
THE FLYING DUCK, 20:00–22:00, £4
REVOLUTION
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 22:00–02:00, £2/£3
Weekly does of rock/emo/metal. Non students welcome
3SOME
COMMON, 22:00–03:00, FREE BEFORE 11PM. £4/3 AFTER
Lewd posing, with prizes
KILLER KITSCH
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £4(3)
WED 26 AUG CLUBHOUSE WEDNESDAYS THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE
Mainstream chart-ish
DYSFUNKTIONAL
MONO, 19:00–01:00, FREE
Classic 60s and 70s soul, the last Friday of every month
‘MY MUM TOLD ME I COULD DJ’ THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE
Disco to stroke your ego to
BLACK TENT
NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 21:00–03:00, £3
PINUP NIGHTS (THE PIN UPS CIRCUS)
THE FLYING DUCK, 21:00–03:00, £TBC
CHEESY POP
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 22:00–03:00, £2/£3
Glasgows longest running and best student night
Techno.
STEREO, 23:00–03:00, £10
tue 11: White noiSe - JeSuS h Foxx, art Fag & i Fly SpitFireS dJS 10pm, £4 “undeniably good band” skinny
supported by
BEDLAM
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 22:00–03:00, £4
Sun 16: acouStic Sunday SuppleMent JenniFer concannon, lindSay Sugden & the StorM, the Weeping SonS
Monthly goth/industrial/EMB night. Non students welcome
ABSOLUTION
7pm, free for Fans of Joni Mitchell, nick drake, Joan baez, bob dylan, leonard cohen & neil young
CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
MODERN LOVERS (SPECIAL GUEST JOHN MCLEAN) THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £3
All things soul, motown, psychedelic funk, garage punk & ska.
MOUNT HEART ATTACK (JEROME HILL)
STEREO, 23:00–03:00, £TBC
Disco, electro, wonky techno and booty.
SUBCULTURE
SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £8
Weekly snapshot of the ever-evolving house blueprint.
SAT 3rd OCT DOOrS 7pm - 1Am
£12.50 FRIDAY 28TH AUGUST DIRECT FROM THE USA
SUN 30 AUG
Wed 19: the phantoM band 7pm, £8** “crashing psychedlic blues- rock, sits next to tightly disciplined beats, with its perfectly placed guitar slashes and wistful melody, is as moody and entrancing as Midlake’s instant classic roscoe.” the times
thu 20: loVeFoxxx (cSS) dJ Set 10pm, £6** brazilian lead singer of indie-electro band cansei de Ser Sexy(cSS), lovefoxxx makes a festival visit to our decks + more surprises in store!
Sun 23: acoutic Sunday SuppleMent lee patterSon, chriS bradley
10pm, £4 “bewitching & beguiling glasgow folk band” the list
thu 27: SMoke
All manner of sins, from pop to back alley funk
LIVE WITH HIS ORCHESTRA
House: past, present and future
FEaTuRINg FEaTuRINg TOP TOP ElvIS ElvIS SuPPORT SuPPORT
RITUAL
ONly SCOTTISh gIg
CLASSIC GRAND, 23:00–03:00, £3
10pm, £4 “punk rockin’ genius” Vic galloway radio 1 Scotland
tue 25: White noiSe - treMbling bellS, ben reynoldS
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE BEFORE 10:30PM. £5/3 AFTER
COMMON, 22:00–03:00, FREE BEFORE 11PM, £5/£3 AFTER
tue 18: White noiSe - the ViVianS (Single launch), FangS, the hot lipS & popScure dJS
7pm, free impassioned delivery & driving guitar, has been described as “acoustic stomp blues”
SNAKEBITE SUNDAYS
LIQUID COOL
7pm, £5** “Would form the perfect musical backdrop to a tarantino soundtrack” Virgin radio 11pm, £12** With sets performed by Scotland’s most creative hip hop / electronic collective: the blessings, rustie, Éclair Fifi, hudson and Mohawke and resident craig Jamieson
Indie, house and urban
A heavy alternative concoction involving styles from metal to emo, punk to industrial. Drinks offers all night to keep you absolved.
Sat 15: big hand Sat 15: Wire – luckyMe FaMily
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE ENTRY BEFORE 10.30PM
6pm (performance 9.30pm), free before 11pm - Smoke is part exhibition, part play, part club night, featuring locals artists plus live music from punch & the apostles, dj sets from Men and Machines & huntleys and palmers
Sat 29: Va Va VooM
SHEEK
11pm, £8** glamorous evening of burlesque, vaudeville and decandanc-ing featuring an edinburgh debut of beatrix Von bourbon and Wild card kitty.
SUNDAY SESSION
regular Free entry eVentS:
Rock, metal, punk and industrial tunes
THE V CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3
SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £10
7pm, free entry upbeat, dynamic style influenced by the beach boys, Wilco & the Shins
KINETIC BLUE
HOW’S YOUR PARTY? (SINDEN (DUBSIDED), DUKE DUMONT (TURBO/DUBSIDED), A LA FU (RADIO SKOOL/VA VA))
Alt. indie and disco
THE V CLUB, 22:30–03:00, £3/1
Techno, electronica, hip hop.
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £3
CLASSIC GRAND, 22:30–03:00, £5(4)
REMOTE CONTROL
Indie and electro
THE IVY BAR, 20:00–00:00, £5
DAMNATION
NOISE POLLUTION (MARCEL DETTMANN (OSTGUT TON, MDR, BERLIN), FORWARD STRATEGY GROUP (FSG, GLASGOW), SEAN MATTHEWS (NOISE POLLUTION))
COMMON, 22:00–03:00, FREE BEFORE 11PM, £4/£3 AFTER
BALLERS SOCIAL CLUB (LIMONIOUS (FLOGSTA DANSHALL), CHIKUMA (H.T.C))
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £6 FREE BEFORE
The sluttiest mixes this side of the Clyde
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5(3)
COMMON, 17:00–03:00, FREE BEFORE 11PM, £7/£5 AFTER
NU SKOOL
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE
Trade night
Techno, electro, minimal, house.
With Craig Loosejoints and Stevie Elements
MON 31 AUG HEAT
THE VIPER, 21:00–02:00, FREE
Trade night
BURN
THE BUFF CLUB, 23:00–03:00, £5(3)
GET YER LISTINGS
ONLINE THESKINNY.CO.UK
TICKETS FROM £20
SEATED, STANDING & VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE BOX OFFICE: 0131 443 0404
www.ece.uk.com
tueSdayS – FridayS 5pM - 8pM: happineSS hourS – drinks promos to help you relax and unwind. extra special happiness comes on Fridays when we ramp up the offers to start your weekend with a bang! tueSdayS at 8pM: pop Quiz! Music + pop culture questions, awesome prizes + free entry to White noise thurSdayS at 7pM: We can be heroeS! dJ blonde Flash plays a mish mash of funk to start your weekend early. FridayS at 10pM: liVe band karaoke – sing onstage with our house band, the bearded ladies! chose from over 100 song lyrics or ask if they know your favourite ** onsale with ticketweb.co.uk 08444 77 1000, ripping records (south bridge) 0131 226 7010, tickets scotland (rose street) 0131 220 3234
theelectriccircus.biz 36-39 Market Street, edinburgh eh1 1dF 0131 226 4224
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 67
Edinburgh Clubs Sat 01 Aug Saturday’s at Opal
Opal Lounge, 21:00–03:00, £tbc
Glamorous vocal house, accessible electro, past and present club classics with a hint of R&B.
Big N Bashy
The Bongo Club, 23:00–03:00, £7 [£5 before 12am]
A 4-deck mix of dubstep, reggae, dancehall + jungle
Bubblegum
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
A chewed up, spat out mix of electro. pop, chart, indie and retro floor fillers.
Jam The Box (Rebel Waltz) The GRV, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Disco, soul, electrofunk, hiphop, house, techno.
Nu-Fire (DJ Fusion, P-Stylz, Madhat, Deezy, King Response, The Dialektiks)
Kitsch
Hip hop, drum & bass, dubstep, electro.
Sick Note
Karnival
From indie and new wave to fidget house, Baltimore booty bass to nurave.
House & techno.
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
Trade Union (DJ Beefy & Wolfjazz )
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
Tue 04 Aug Missbehave (Gino & Fryer) Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5,4,3
Antics
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Hybrid
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Indie / 60’s Garage / Northern Soul / Ska / 70’s / Punk / New Wave. www.eggsite.co.uk
Every week will see different genres and artists from different clubs in Edinburgh: Noizteez, Volume, Ghantin, Mutiny, Dirt, Big n Bashy, Jakn, Synthetic, Coalition, Riddim Tuffa, Pangea. Techno, dubstep, drum and bass, hip hop.
Ultragroove (Fudge Fingas, The Blesings)
K-I
House music, disco.
The Egg (Chris & Paul)
Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5, £2.50 b4 11.30pm
A weekly Unders night featuring a melange of fine bands hosted by the Puppytooth DJs. Pip pip young sir
Rise (John Hutchinson)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £4 (£3)
Electrohouse and cherished club classics.
Coalition
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
Drum and bass, breaks, bassline and electro
Sections
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free 2 rooms of Metal/Rock, Punk/PopPunk, EBM/Industrial, Goth/Grunge and Eighties.
Killer Kitsch
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Dance music.
New Idols
The Speakeasy @ Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
New Idols is Edinburgh’s new monthly Sunday night party night, featuring club classics, dance-notdance and, yes, of course, New Idols being played on the wheels of steel.
Taste
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £6 (£5)
Gay friendly night. House music from Fischer and Price.
Mon 03 Aug Dirty Stop Out (DJ Andrew Taylor)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Funk, R&B, classics.
Mixed Up Mondays
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Hip Hop, RNB, Pop, Chart.
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, £7 [£6 in advance]
Where David Lynch fantasy becomes reality.
Fri 07 Aug OVERTIME (DJ B BURG )
The Electric Circus, 19:00–03:00, Free
Chart
Friday’s at Opal (Jez Hill) Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £tbc
Mix of electro-pop, classic beats and disco.
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £10, £8 b4 12am
Substance (Legowelt, Housemeister) The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £10
Techno, electro.
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
Sun 09 Aug WE HEART TAPES
The Electric Circus, 16:00–19:00, £6
A weekly Unders night featuring a melange of fine bands hosted by the Puppytooth DJs. Pip pip young sir
Rise (John Hutchinson)
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
JungleDub
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
Wed 12 Aug Chambles (Jez Hill)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Guilty (Johnny Frenetic (aka John hutchison)) Lulu, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
5 decades of classic pop.
DELIQUENTS
The Electric Circus, 22:30–03:00, £5
Two rooms of anthems and chart from residents
JungleDub
The Bongo Club, 23:00–03:00, Free
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
The Pit
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Electrohouse and cherished club classics.
Citrus Club, 23:00–05:00, £4 (£2)
Drum & bass.
Coalition
Split
Misfits
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
Drum and bass, breaks, bassline and electro
Spanish and Latin Grooves from Juan Car.Techno, electro, breaks and minimal from various rotating guests including INGEN, Jealous Kid, C.L.B, AMELDRUM and Bruno FK.
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Electric Circus, 16:00–19:00, £6
Confusion is Sex
House, techno, electro.
Split
Touch Bass
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
WE HEART TAPES
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
Subtext
Indie, electro, punk, ska.
Sun 02 Aug
Cheese.
Fake (SOLO (ITALY, DIRTY BIRD/DEADFISH/SKINT))
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £4 (£3)
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £7 (£5)
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £2, free b4 11.30pm
Wed 05 Aug Chambles (Jez Hill)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Guilty (Johnny Frenetic (aka John hutchison)) Lulu, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
5 decades of classic pop.
DELIQUENTS
The Electric Circus, 22:30–03:00, £5
Two rooms of anthems and chart from residents
JungleDub
The Bongo Club, 23:00–03:00, Free
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
The Pit
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Subtext
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Spanish and Latin Grooves from Juan Car.Techno, electro, breaks and minimal from various rotating guests including INGEN, Jealous Kid, C.L.B, AMELDRUM and Bruno FK.
We Are Electric
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
The city’s leading punk-funk electrodisco party with resident electro-punk Gary Mac playing the sounds of Berlin & beyond.
Thu 06 Aug WE CAN BE HEROES!
Wee Red Bar, 22:30–03:00, £4
Hybrid
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Every week will see different genres and artists from different clubs in Edinburgh: Noizteez, Volume, Ghantin, Mutiny, Dirt, Big n Bashy, Jakn, Synthetic, Coalition, Riddim Tuffa, Pangea. Techno, dubstep, drum and bass, hip hop.
Tokyoblu
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £10
House night with skilled house house band
Sat 08 Aug Saturday’s at Opal
Opal Lounge, 21:00–03:00, £tbc
Glamorous vocal house, accessible electro, past and present club classics with a hint of R&B.
VEGAS! - ‘A Night Of A Thousand Stars’
HMV Picture House, 22:30–03:00, £12
Vintage, dandy, film star, theatrically dangerous, hipsters, hepcats & kitsch kittens.
Bubblegum
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
Po Na Na, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)
Funky house, electro anthems, hip shaking urban jams, dirty sexy mashups and reinvented club classics.
Killer Kitsch
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Dance music.
Mon 10 Aug Dub Syndicate
The Voodoo Rooms, 20:00–23:00, £15
Massive dub collective
Dirty Stop Out (DJ Andrew Taylor)
The city’s leading punk-funk electrodisco party with resident electro-punk Gary Mac playing the sounds of Berlin & beyond.
Audacious
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Breakcore, gabba, jungle, dubstep.
The Go-Go (Les Bof!)
Gilded Balloon Teviot, 00:30–05:00, £7.50
Thu 13 Aug
Beep Beep, Yeah!
The Speakeasy @ Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £3
Tunes from the rockin’ 50s through to the groovy 60s and the psychadelic 70s.
Friday’s at Opal (Jez Hill) Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £tbc
Mix of electro-pop, classic beats and disco.
Furburger
GHQ, 23:00–03:00, £4/ Free passes available at Planet
“For girls who like girls who like music”. With aural stimulation from the funki diva, dejaybird, boy toy and debi t.
Misfits
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
The Edge Festival presents: SOMA Night
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–03:00, £tbc
Dirt
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £4, £2 b4 12am
Techno, Electro, Dubstep, B-more, Ghetto
Soma Records Night (The Black Dog, Mr. Copy, Master H, Edit Select) Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £8
Soma Records Techno.
Xplicit
The Bongo Club, 23:00–05:00, £12 in adv
Drum & bass.
Club For Heroes (Moggieboy (Ripped In Glasgow)) Wee Red Bar, 23:00–15:00, £5 (£4)
Psychedelic disco music from beyond the stars.
Sat 15 Aug Saturday’s at Opal
Opal Lounge, 21:00–03:00, £tbc
Mixed Up Mondays
A kitschy intergalactic audio adventure
Hip Hop, RNB, Pop, Chart.
Vanity
Basics (Festival special with Brian Scott and David Stone)
Nu-Fire
R&B, electro and funky house.
50’s and 60’s r’n’b
Funk, R&B, classics.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
Hip hop, drum & bass, dubstep, electro.
Trade Union (DJ Beefy & Wolfjazz )
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
Tue 11 Aug
The Electric Circus, 19:00–01:00, Free
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Henry’s Cellar Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5
Rude
Bubblegum
Funky house, electro anthems, hip shaking urban jams, dirty sexy mashups and reinvented club classics.
A chewed up, spat out mix of electro. pop, chart, indie and retro floor fillers.
Po Na Na, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)
Kitsch
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £2, free b4 11.30pm
Cheese.
From indie and new wave to fidget house, Baltimore booty bass to nurave.
Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5, £2.50 b4 11.30pm
Chart
Glamorous vocal house, accessible electro, past and present club classics with a hint of R&B.
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Antics
The Bongo Club, 23:00–03:00, £8, £5 b4 12am
The Electric Circus, 19:00–03:00, Free
WE CAN BE HEROES!
Headspin
Indie / 60’s Garage / Northern Soul / Ska / 70’s / Punk / New Wave. www.eggsite.co.uk
Rude
2 rooms of Metal/Rock, Punk/PopPunk, EBM/Industrial, Goth/Grunge and Eighties.
Sick Note
Vanity
R&B, electro and funky house.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
Missbehave (Gino & Fryer)
The Egg (Chris & Paul)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Sections
We Are Electric
A chewed up, spat out mix of electro. pop, chart, indie and retro floor fillers.
The Electric Circus, 19:00–01:00, Free
A kitschy intergalactic audio adventure
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
OVERTIME (DJ B BURG )
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5,4,3 The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Hybrid
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Every week will see different genres and artists from different clubs in Edinburgh: Noizteez, Volume, Ghantin, Mutiny, Dirt, Big n Bashy, Jakn, Synthetic, Coalition, Riddim Tuffa, Pangea. Techno, dubstep, drum and bass, hip hop.
K-I
Citrus Club, 23:00–05:00, £4 (£2)
Indie, electro, punk, ska.
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Les Bof! Live! (Tall Paul Robinson, Holly & Sarah)
Gilded Balloon Teviot, 00:30–05:00, £7.50
French 60’s garage and beat pop
Fri 14 Aug Come (The Brand New Ritual)
Forest Cafe, 19:00–03:00, Free
Bands, performances, visuals, electro, art, dance party.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
The Egg (Chris & Paul)
Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5, £2.50 b4 11.30pm
Indie / 60’s Garage / Northern Soul / Ska / 70’s / Punk / New Wave. www.eggsite.co.uk
Foundation
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £7, £5 b4 12am
House, hip hop, funk, disco.
Ultragroove (Nick Watson)
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £7 (£5)
House music, disco.
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
StrangeBrew
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Rockabilly, surf, Italian ‘rocanroll’, mod, ska, reggae, mestizaje & soul.
are you Looking for edinburgh festival listings? 68 THE SKINNY August 2009
Sun 16 Aug
Wed 19 Aug
Misfits
Killer Kitsch
Chambles (Jez Hill)
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
A weekly Unders night featuring a melange of fine bands hosted by the Puppytooth DJs. Pip pip young sir
Guilty (Johnny Frenetic (aka John hutchison))
Riddim Tuffa Soundsystems (Benny Page and Mungos Hifi)
Rise (John Hutchinson)
5 decades of classic pop.
Reggae, dubstep, jungle.
Dirty Stop Out (DJ Andrew Taylor)
Electrohouse and cherished club classics.
DELIQUENTS
Telefunken
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
The Electric Circus, 22:30–03:00, £5
Funk, R&B, classics.
Two rooms of anthems and chart from residents
House.
Mixed Up Mondays
WE HEART TAPES
The Electric Circus, 16:00–19:00, £6
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £4 (£3)
Coalition
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
Drum and bass, breaks, bassline and electro
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Lulu, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Hark!
Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £4
Indie Pop, Indie Rock.
Sections
JungleDub
2 rooms of Metal/Rock, Punk/PopPunk, EBM/Industrial, Goth/Grunge and Eighties.
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
Doghouse
Subtext
Killer Kitsch
Spanish and Latin Grooves from Juan Car.Techno, electro, breaks and minimal from various rotating guests including INGEN, Jealous Kid, C.L.B, AMELDRUM and Bruno FK.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free Rock and metal. Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Dance music.
Mon 17 Aug Dirty Stop Out (DJ Andrew Taylor)
The Bongo Club, 23:00–03:00, Free
The Pit
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £tbc
The Devil Disco Club (Hobbes & Erik d’Viking (Trouble DJs), Nick Yuill (Solescience, Shoot The Pump), Kris Wasabi (Wasbi Disco), Horse Meat Disco (DJ set), Molly Wagger (Tirk), )
The Bongo Club, 23:00–05:00, £7 (£5)
Soul, rap, disco, boogie, electro-funk & proto-house: re-edits, remixes & extended versions.
Mumbo Jumbo
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, £7/£6
Funk, soul, electro & house.
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Funk, R&B, classics.
Mixed Up Mondays
Audacious
Tue 18 Aug Cachín Cachán Cachunga! (Zorras, Lily, Kristi Taylor & Ariadna Battich ) The Street, 19:30–01:00, £3
Monthly queer and trans night of dance, film, poetry and music
Missbehave (Gino & Fryer) Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5,4,3
Antics
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Hybrid
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Every week will see different genres and artists from different clubs in Edinburgh: Noizteez, Volume, Ghantin, Mutiny, Dirt, Big n Bashy, Jakn, Synthetic, Coalition, Riddim Tuffa, Pangea. Techno, dubstep, drum and bass, hip hop.
K-I
Vintage Violence (Christopher & Anastaziya Violence) Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5
Garage, girl groups, RnB, dirty soul, junk shop glam, punk, psych, rockabilly.
Sick Note
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
From indie and new wave to fidget house, Baltimore booty bass to nurave.
Citrus Club, 23:00–05:00, £4 (£2)
Friday’s at Opal (Jez Hill)
Split
Mix of electro-pop, classic beats and disco.
Indie, electro, punk, ska.
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
JungleDub
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £tbc
Dialektiks
The Speakeasy @ Cabaret Voltaire, 22:00–05:00, £3
Hip hop.
R&B, electro and funky house.
The Egg (Chris & Paul) Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5, £2.50 b4 11.30pm
Rude
Po Na Na, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3)
Funky house, electro anthems, hip shaking urban jams, dirty sexy mashups and reinvented club classics.
Indie / 60’s Garage / Northern Soul / Ska / 70’s / Punk / New Wave. www.eggsite.co.uk
Kitsch
Optimo (Alter Ego)
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £2, free b4 11.30pm
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £tbc
Diverse music policy.
Every week will see different genres and artists from different clubs in Edinburgh: Noizteez, Volume, Ghantin, Mutiny, Dirt, Big n Bashy, Jakn, Synthetic, Coalition, Riddim Tuffa, Pangea. Techno, dubstep, drum and bass, hip hop.
Cabaret Voltaire, 22:30–05:00, £15
Bass Syndicate (DJ Zinc (House Set), Cyantific) Faith, 23:00–03:00, £10
Wee Red Bar, 23:00–03:00, £5, £2.50 b4 11.30pm
Indie / 60’s Garage / Northern Soul / Ska / 70’s / Punk / New Wave. www.eggsite.co.uk
Noiseteez
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £tbc
Hip hop, soul, funk, drum & bass, jungle, breaks.
Saturday Night Fish Fry
The Jazz Bar, 23:30–03:00, £5/3 (before 11pm)
StrangeBrew
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Rockabilly, surf, Italian ‘rocanroll’, mod, ska, reggae, mestizaje & soul.
Sun 23 Aug Rise (John Hutchinson)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £4 (£3)
Electrohouse and cherished club classics.
Fri 21 Aug
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Glamorous vocal house, accessible electro, past and present club classics with a hint of R&B.
Rude
Cheese.
Vanity
Hybrid
Opal Lounge, 21:00–03:00, £tbc
The Egg (Chris & Paul)
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £2, free b4 11.30pm
Dub, dubstep, reggae.
11.30pm
A chewed up, spat out mix of electro. pop, chart, indie and retro floor fillers.
Saturday’s at Opal
A chewed up, spat out mix of electro. pop, chart, indie and retro floor fillers.
Kitsch
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, Free
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4
City Café, 21:00–03:00, £2, free b4 11pm
Rockabilly, surf, Italian ‘rocanroll’, mod, ska, reggae, mestizaje & soul.
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Po Na Na, 22:30–03:00, £5 (£3) Funky house, electro anthems, hip shaking urban jams, dirty sexy mashups and reinvented club classics.
Tue 25 Aug Missbehave (Gino & Fryer)
Bubblegum
Sick Note
Electronic, industrial and goth.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
R&B, electro and funky house.
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
I-tal Faya Sound meets Mungo’s HiFi
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Bubblegum
Vanity
Trade Union (DJ Beefy & Wolfjazz )
Steven and Stewart’s electric kneesup
The Electric Circus, 18:00–03:00, Free before 11pm
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
Antics
Breakcore, gabba, jungle, dubstep.
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
Hip hop, drum & bass, dubstep, electro.
SMOKE
Cruz, 20:00–03:00, £7
Audacious
Thu 20 Aug
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
Playdate
Reggae, dub, dubstep.
StrangeBrew
Hip hop, drum & bass, dubstep, electro.
Trade Union (DJ Beefy & Wolfjazz )
Nu-Fire
Festival party
Smart City Hostels, 14:00–18:00, Free
House music.
Electro, breaks.
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Hip Hop, RNB, Pop, Chart.
The Voodoo Rooms, 22:00–03:00, £10
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £3
Nu-Fire
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
VEGAS!
Four By Four
Axis (Adam Freeland)
Breakcore, gabba, jungle, dubstep.
Mon 24 Aug
Thu 27 Aug I-tal Faya Sound (“SIR” DJ ROBIGAN, BBQ)
Weekly themed debauchery, addled in bespoke visuals, installation and video
Sat 22 Aug
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Hip Hop, RNB, Pop, Chart.
Dance music.
Cheese.
Absynth
We Are Electric
The city’s leading punk-funk electrodisco party with resident electro-punk Gary Mac playing the sounds of Berlin & beyond.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, £10
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Coalition
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
Drum and bass, breaks, bassline and electro
Sections
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
2 rooms of Metal/Rock, Punk/PopPunk, EBM/Industrial, Goth/Grunge and Eighties.
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
From indie and new wave to fidget house, Baltimore booty bass to nurave.
Four Corners
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, £5
Fri 28 Aug
Sun 30 Aug Rise (John Hutchinson) Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £4 (£3)
Electrohouse and cherished club classics.
Friday’s at Opal (Jez Hill)
Coalition
Indie, electro, punk, ska.
Mix of electro-pop, classic beats and disco.
Split
Big Toe’s Hi-Fi
Drum and bass, breaks, bassline and electro
JungleDub
Reggae, dub, dancehall, dubstep.
K-I
Citrus Club, 23:00–05:00, £4 (£2)
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
Wed 26 Aug Chambles (Jez Hill)
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £tbc
Wee Red Bar, 22:30–03:00, £5
Sugarbeat (Krafty Kuts and A-Skillz) Misfits
Doghouse
Guilty (Johnny Frenetic (aka John hutchison))
Modern Lovers (Special guest John McLean)
5 decades of classic pop.
All things soul, motown, psychedelic funk, garage punk & ska.
The Bongo Club, 23:00–03:00, Free
Dub, dubstep and jungle.
The Pit
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Subtext
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Spanish and Latin Grooves from Juan Car.Techno, electro, breaks and minimal from various rotating guests including INGEN, Jealous Kid, C.L.B, AMELDRUM and Bruno FK.
We Are Electric
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Breaks, beats, bootlegs.
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
JungleDub
Sections 2 rooms of Metal/Rock, Punk/PopPunk, EBM/Industrial, Goth/Grunge and Eighties.
Cabaret Voltaire, 22:30–05:00, £12
The Hive, 23:00–03:00, £4, free b4 11.30pm
Lulu, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–03:00, Free
The GRV, 23:00–03:00, £6
Come (Casino) (DJs GET MESSY)
The GRV, 23:00–05:00, Free
Rock and metal.
Killer Kitsch Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, Free
Dance music.
Mon 31 Aug
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
Bands, performances, visuals, electro, art, dance party.
Dirty Stop Out (DJ Andrew Taylor)
Big N Bashy
Opal Lounge, 22:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
A 4-deck mix of dubstep, reggae, dancehall + jungle
Mixed Up Mondays
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, £7 [£5 before 1am]
Funk, R&B, classics. The Hive, 23:00–03:00, Free
Hip Hop, RNB, Pop, Chart.
Sat 29 Aug
Nu-Fire
Rockin’ at the Web
The Spiders Web, 20:00–01:00, £5
Sneaky Pete’s, 23:00–05:00, Free
The city’s leading punk-funk electrodisco party with resident electro-punk Gary Mac playing the sounds of Berlin & beyond.
Rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, rhythm & blues
Hip hop, drum & bass, dubstep, electro.
Saturday’s at Opal
Audacious
Glamorous vocal house, accessible electro, past and present club classics with a hint of R&B.
Trade Union (DJ Beefy & Wolfjazz )
The Bongo Club, 00:00–05:00, Free
Breakcore, gabba, jungle, dubstep.
Opal Lounge, 21:00–03:00, £tbc
Cabaret Voltaire, 23:00–05:00, £2, free b4 12am
Find out what's on at the world's biggest and best arts festival by Picking up our sister magazine fest across edinburgh, or visiting
theskinny.co.uk/edinburghfestival August 2009
THE SKINNY 69
GLASGOW ART
GLASGOW COMEDY SAT 01 AUG THE SATURDAY SHOW (IAN COPPINGER, TOM ALLEN AND BRODERICK CHOW. HOSTED BY JOE HEENAN) THE STAND, 21:00–22:14, £13
Top acts. Hot food. An altogether great night out.
THE SATURDAY SHOW (MICHAEL SMILEY, JOHN ROSS, SIMON O’KEEFFE AND SIÂN BEVAN. HOSTED BY BRUCE DEVLIN) THE STAND, 21:00–22:55, £13
Top acts. Hot food. An altogether great night out.
THE STATE BAR THE STATE BAR, 21:00–23:16, £6
SUN 02 AUG MICHAEL REDMOND’S SUNDAY SERVICE (KEIR MCALLISTER, PATRICK ROLINK, ALAN SHARP AND BEN VERTH) THE STAND, 20:30–22:10, £5/£4
THE IVORY IVORY BAR & RESTAURANT, 20:30–23:00, FREE
New talent show with professional headliner
MON 03 AUG ISMA ALMAS BOMBS / WILLIAM ANDREWS: NITWIT (ISMA ALMAS, WILL ANDREWS) THE STAND, 20:30–22:01, £5/4
Fringe previews
TUE 04 AUG RED RAW (BILLY KIRKWOOD) THE STAND, 20:30–22:04, £2/1
New acts, new material from old acts; a classic lucky dip of comedy.
WED 05 AUG BILLY KIRKWOOD’S MIDWEEK FRINGE (REBUS MCTAGGART, ELAINE MALCOLMSON AND MARK NELSON) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £4
THU 06 AUG BRATCHY AND THE WEE MAN’S COMEDY PUB QUIZ THE ARCHES, 20:00–22:40, FREE
Teams of up to five people
BRUCE MORTON’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (JOHNNY CANDON, JAMES DOWDESWELL AND NIALL BROWNE) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £9/£8
FRI 07 AUG DAM FINE COMEDY GRAMOFON, 20:30–22:45, £5/£3
BRUCE MORTON’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (JASON COOK, ALASTAIR BARRIE AND JOE ROUNDTREE) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £11/£10
SAT 08 AUG BRUCE MORTON’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (CAREY MARX, ALAN FRANCIS, HENNING WHEN AND JEFF O’BOYLE) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £13
THE STATE BAR THE STATE BAR, 21:00–23:16, £6
SUN 09 AUG THE IVORY IVORY BAR & RESTAURANT, 20:30–23:00, FREE
New talent show with professional headliner
MICHAEL REDMOND’S FRINGE SUNDAY (PADDY LENNOX AND ISMA ALMAS) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £6/£5
MON 10 AUG FRINGE PREVIEWS (LINE UP TBC) THE STAND, 20:30–23:00, £TBC
WED 12 AUG BILLY KIRKWOOD’S MIDWEEK FRINGE (KEVIN HAYES, CARL HUTCHINSON AND DIANE MORGAN) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £4
THU 13 AUG JOE HEENAN’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (JASON JOHN WHITEHEAD, TOM ALLEN AND ELAINE MALCOLMSON) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £9/8
FRI 14 AUG DAM FINE COMEDY GRAMOFON, 20:30–22:45, £5/£3
JOE HEENAN’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (ANDRE VINCENT, JACK WHITEHALL, MICHAEL LEGGE AND BRODERICK CHOW) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £11/10
SAT 15 AUG JOE HEENAN’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (SARAH MILLICAN, SIMON BRODKIN, MIKE WOZNIAK AND IAIN STIRLING) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £13
THE STATE BAR THE STATE BAR, 21:00–23:16, £6
SUN 16 AUG THE IVORY IVORY BAR & RESTAURANT, 20:30–23:00, FREE
New talent show with professional headliner
MICHAEL REDMOND’S FRINGE SUNDAY (IVAN BRAKENBURY, KEITH FARNAN AND PIPPA EVANS) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £6/£5
FRI 21 AUG
CCA
GOMA
THE LAST DAYS OF JACK SHEPPERD
BILL BAILEY THEATRE ROYAL, 19:30–22:35, £28.75
SH[OUT] 10:00, 01 AUG—30 AUG, FREE
11:00, SAT 8TH–SUN 30TH, FREE
DAM FINE COMEDY GRAMOFON, 20:30–22:45, £5/£3
SUSAN MORRISON’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (ANDRE VINCENT, DALISO CHAPONDA, STEVE SHANYASKI AND GRAINNE MAGUIRE) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £11/9
New film installation based on the inferred enounters between the 18th century criminal and writer Daniel Defoe.
EMERGENT ARTISTS
COLLINS GALLERY
MULTIPLE TIMES, 21 AUG—30 AUG, FREE
CYCLING UP THE HILL WITH MY DAD
MULTIPLE TIMES, 01 AUG—15 AUG, NOT 2ND, 9TH, FREE
celebrates a love of drawing shared by a father and daughter
SAT 22 AUG BILL BAILEY
GSA
THE fourth year of new work produced for the Emergent Artists programme by graduates of the Glasgow School of Art
SOUTHSIDE STUDIOS DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM
12:00, SAT 1ST–FRI 14TH, FREE
SELF-ELECTED committee of GSA graduates curate a series of exhibitions in an attempt to stave off the post graduate malaise
MODERN INSTITUTE TONITE
MULTIPLE TIMES, SAT 1ST–SAT 22ND, FREE
GROUP show starring a who’s who of Glasgow art
GLASGOW THEATRE
THEATRE ROYAL, 19:30–22:52, £28.75
SUSAN MORRISON’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (STEWART LEE, JONATHAN MAYOR AND GARRY DOBSON)
GILMOREHILL G12
THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £13
THE STATE BAR THE STATE BAR, 21:00–23:16, £6
SUN 23 AUG
KIBBLE PALACE
GONE
RICHARD III
19:30, 01 AUG, £3
19:45, 01 AUG, £10
Reality TV goes bad..
The bad king of England
BOTANIC GARDENS
THE IVORY IVORY BAR & RESTAURANT, 20:30–23:00, FREE
MACBETH
FUNNY
19:45, 01 AUG, 126x155_skinnyJuly09.pdf £10 12:30, 01 AUG, TBC 20/7/09 8:15:34 pm
J. Dick takes on the old warhorse
New talent show with professional headliner
PLATFORM
A sideways look at humour
CHRONICLES OF IRANIA 12:30, 03 AUG, TBC
A study of exoticism and cultural misunderstandings
TRON THEATRE WHITE TEA 19:30, 01 AUG, £8
Green tea and a forest of origami: it must be David Leddy’s latest charming yet tough work.
MICHAEL REDMOND’S FRINGE SUNDAY (JAMES DOWDESWELL, RON HEENEY AND JOE WILKINSON) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £6/£5
MON 24 AUG JOHN HEGLEY & FRIEND THE STAND, 20:30–22:03, £TBC
WED 26 AUG BILLY KIRKWOOD’S MIDWEEK FRINGE (DEL STRAIN, SONYA KELLY AND JEFF O’BOYLE) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £4 C
THU 27 AUG RAYMOND MEARNS’ PICK OF THE FRINGE (MRS BARBARA NICE, MATT GREEN AND TARA FLYNN) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £9/£8
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FRI 28 AUG DAM FINE COMEDY
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THEATRE ROYAL, 19:30–22:35, £28.75
GRAMOFON, 20:30–22:45, £5/£3
FRINGE PREVIEWS (LINE UP TBC)
RAYMOND MEARNS’ PICK OF THE FRINGE (SARAH MILLICAN AND JEFF KREISLER)
THE STAND, 20:30–23:00, £TBC
TUE 18 AUG BILL BAILEY THEATRE ROYAL, 19:30–22:35, £28.75
WED 19 AUG BILL BAILEY THEATRE ROYAL, 19:30–22:36, £28.75
BILLY KIRKWOOD’S MIDWEEK FRINGE (WILL ANDREWS, DONNCHADH O’CONAILL AND NIALL BROWNE) THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £4
THU 20 AUG
THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £9/£8
SAT 29 AUG RAYMOND MEARNS’ PICK OF THE FRINGE (DES CLARKE, WILSON DIXON, JASON COOK AND SONYA KELLY)
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THE STATE BAR THE STATE BAR, 21:00–23:16, £6
SUN 30 AUG THE IVORY IVORY BAR & RESTAURANT, 20:30–23:00, FREE
THEATRE ROYAL, 19:30–22:36, £28.75
SUSAN MORRISON’S PICK OF THE FRINGE (SIMON MUNNERY, NEIL MACFARLANE, TOM BASDEN AND JEFF O’BOYLE)
MICHAEL REDMOND’S FRINGE SUNDAY (STEPHEN CARLIN, MICK SERGEANT AND JOJO SUTHERLAND)
THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £9/8
THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £6/£5
70 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
Vibe Wickerman Music Festival
7th–9th Aug
THE STAND, 21:00–23:00, £9/£8
New talent show with professional headliner
BILL BAILEY
23–26th July
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THESKINNY.CO.UK/EDINBURGHFESTIVAL
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 71
Aberdeen Music Sat 01 Aug
Wed 12 Aug
Aberdeen clubs Fri 21 Aug
SC&TURDAY LIVE
Lloyd Cole
Shell Friday Live
Los Acousticos Banditos
Forest Fire anyone? Seriously, get youtubing
Weekly sessions with local blues and folk singers
The Lemon Tree, 12:30–16:00, FREE MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Latin and jazz guitar duo
Sun 02 Aug Belhaven Sunday Jazz
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
John Coletta
Beach Ballroom, 13:00–16:00, Free
Weekly sessions with local bands
Wed 05 Aug Lau
The Lemon Tree, 19:30–22:30, £tbc
Folk
Thu 06 Aug Chemical Callum MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Solo piano
Jamie Safiruddin Quartet and Stavanger University Jazz Ensemble The Lemon Tree, 20:30–23:00, £tbc
Contemporary jazz
The Dirty Hearts Club (DHC DJs) Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne. http://www.myspace.com/dirtyheartsclubsnafu
Fri 07 Aug Shell Friday Live
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Weekly sessions with local blues and folk singers
Martin McDonald MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Spanish and classical guitar
Sat 08 Aug SC&TURDAY LIVE
The Lemon Tree, 12:30–16:00, FREE
The Lemon Tree, 20:00–22:30, £tbc
Thu 13 Aug Joanna Redman
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Classical piano
The Dirty Hearts Club (DHC DJs) Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne. http://www.myspace.com/dirtyheartsclubsnafu
Fri 14 Aug Shell Friday Live
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Weekly sessions with local blues and folk singers
Nick Pride and the Pimptones (Super Six Funk Machine )
The Tunnels, 19:30–23:00, £tbc
Jazz driven guitar with inflections of hip hop, soul and breakbeat funk
Sat 15 Aug SC&TURDAY LIVE
The Lemon Tree, 12:30–16:00, FREE
Beach Ballroom, 19:30–23:00, £6
Showcase of four local bands
Michael Janetta, Laura Henry
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Piano and saxaphone
Sun 23 Aug Belhaven Sunday Jazz
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Thu 27 Aug
Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne. http://www.myspace.com/dirtyheartsclubsnafu
Electric Institute (Krazzy Martin and Talcolm X )
Guitar
Fri 28 Aug Shell Friday Live
Solo piano
Weekly sessions with local blues and folk singers
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Sun 16 Aug Belhaven Sunday Jazz
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Tue 18 Aug The Lemon Tree, 19:30–22:30, £tbc
Thu 20 Aug MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
The Dirty Hearts Club (DHC DJs) Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne.
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Pete Lowit Trio
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Jazz trio
Sat 29 Aug Felicity Laing
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Singer songwriter
Who’s Who
The Lemon Tree, 20:30–23:00, £tbc
Who tribute
Sun 30 Aug Belhaven Sunday Jazz
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Mon 31 Aug Average White Band
The Lemon Tree, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Soul
Tiger Tiger, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Fri 31 Jul The Tunnels, 22:00–03:00, £3
Snafu, 22:00–03:00, £variable
Rock Night
Korova, 22:00–03:00, free (£2 after midnight)
Classic rock, punk, metal, hardcore and the likes in recent addition to the nocturnal club circuit.
Kamikazi (DJ Adam) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Aberdeens longest standing rock clubnight does what it says on the tin, and more.
Sat 01 Aug Adventures in Stereo (Steven Milne) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Classic indie, 60s, 70s, new wave, rock + the latest hipster dance anthems all smuthered under one big rammy.
The Deep End (Funky Transport, Mr Green) Snafu, 23:01–03:00, £6/5
Fours to the floor with house, techhouse, nu-disco + knowledgable beats all round.
Mon 03 Aug Offshore
The Rig, 19:00–02:00, Free
Alt. indie and oil rig punter puns
Aberdeen art Art Gallery A Collection of Dresses by David Allan Mostly from Nature
Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
18th century album of watercolours by Scottish artist David Allan
Chick Chalmers Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
The Tartan Lens
Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
A selection of prints by George Washington Wilson
Maritime Museum Crossing Cultures
Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
A series of American images by Scottish photographer, Chick Chalmers (1948-1998).
Harbour Views
FORMED: What Makes Applied Art
Recently gifted paintings of Aberdeen by George Mackie from the 1970s.
Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
A selection of objects shows how makers apply design and decoration to functional items.
Green Drops and Moonsquirters
10:00, Sat 1st,–Sat 15th, FREE
James Giles Watercolours
Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
A new display from the permanent collection of watercolours.
Multiple times, Sat 1st–Sun 30th, FREE
Lunchtime Talk: Recent Archaeological Work at Marischal College 12:30, 05 Aug, FREE
Alison Cameron, Assistant Archaeologist - Booking essential
Bar 99 The Salon
12:00, 01 Aug—05 Aug, free
99 hosts a fortnight of art work donated by some of Aberdeen’s finest talents.
72 THE SKINNY August 2009
Wed 05 Aug Electrique Boutique
Junction art & gifts The Graduates - New Art Exhibition 10:00, 07 Aug—26 Aug, Free
A collection of design, jewellery, textiles, painting and priniting by 8 new Duncan of Jordanstone graduates
Kilau Nicole Niven
Multiple times, 01 Aug—15 Aug, free
Recent graduate with prints and computer manipulated designs
Provost Skene’s Crombie: Story of a Textile Mill
10:00, 15 Aug—29 Aug, not 16th, 23rd, FREE
The Tolbooth Coming to Aberdeen
13:30, 12 Aug—30 Aug, not 18th, 25th, FREE
Tying in with the 2009 Year of Homecoming, this display explores the fascinating and varied guides to Aberdeen that have been issued since the 19th century.
Kamikazi (DJ Adam) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Aberdeens longest standing rock clubnight does what it says on the tin, and more.
Sat 08 Aug
Snafu, 22:00–02:00, £3 (free passes upstairs)
Wonky weekly electronic sounds. Rotating DJs include Giles Walker, Mini Klaus, Krazzy Martin, Bones & Money + more
Thu 06 Aug The Dirty Hearts Club (DHC DJs) Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne. http://www.myspace.com/dirtyheartsclubsnafu
Electric Institute (Krazzy Martin and Talcolm X ) Korova, 23:00–02:00, Free
Weekly electro, house and techno to keep Aberdeen sweaty
Octopussy
Tiger Tiger, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Fri 07 Aug Indo Silver Club
The Tunnels, 22:00–03:00, £3
Electro, disco and indie visuals
Mixtape
Snafu, 22:00–03:00, £variable
Big sounds from the techno, house + electro world.
Thu 20 Aug The Dirty Hearts Club (DHC DJs) Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne.
Octopussy
Tiger Tiger, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Fri 21 Aug Indo Silver Club
Adventures in Stereo (Steven Milne)
The Tunnels, 22:00–03:00, £3
Classic indie, 60s, 70s, new wave, rock + the latest hipster dance anthems all smuthered under one big rammy.
Snafu, 22:00–03:00, £variable
Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Octopussy
Electro, disco and indie visuals
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Classic rock, punk, metal, hardcore and the likes in recent addition to the nocturnal club circuit.
Fours to the floor with house, techhouse, nu-disco + knowledgable beats all round.
Weekly electro, house and techno to keep Aberdeen sweaty
Argentinian Queen tribute act The Lemon Tree, 20:00–23:00, £tbc
Korova, 22:00–03:00, free (£2 after midnight)
Korova, 23:00–02:00, Free
Indo Silver Club
The Forum, 19:00–22:00, £10
Rock Night
The Deep End (Funky Transport, Mr Green)
Dios Salve A La Reina
Kathryn Sawyers
Jani Lang Band
Tex Mex Blues
Live at the Beach (Kashmir Red, The Locals, The Tijuana Sun, Marionettes)
The Dirty Hearts Club (CAST OF THE CAPITAL CALLEL DHC DJs)
Peter Katona
Solo piano
The Lemon Tree, 20:00–22:30, £tbc
The Lemon Tree, 12:30–16:00, FREE
Folk guitar and fiddle
Chemical Callum
Lightnin’ Willie and The Poorboys
SC&TURDAY LIVE
Thu 30 Jul
Big sounds from the techno, house + electro world.
Belhaven Sunday Jazz
Weekly sessions with local bands
Sat 22 Aug
Mixtape
New Jersey-bred singer/ music whizz
Beach Ballroom, 13:00–16:00, Free
Scottish folk duo
Politically infused folk
Jazz trio
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Wonky weekly electronic sounds. Rotating DJs include Giles Walker, Mini Klaus, Krazzy Martin, Bones & Money + more
Eric Bogle and John Munro
MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
Dean Friedman
Sun 09 Aug
Blyde Lassies
Snafu, 22:00–02:00, £3 (free passes upstairs)
John Coletta, Carol Anderson
Michael Campbell Trio MUSA, 20:15–22:15, Free
The Lemon Tree, 12:00–14:00, Free
Wed 29 Jul Electrique Boutique
Snafu, 23:01–03:00, £6/5
Mon 10 Aug Offshore
The Rig, 19:00–02:00, Free
Alt. indie and oil rig punter puns
Wed 12 Aug Electrique Boutique
Snafu, 22:00–02:00, £3 (free passes upstairs)
Wonky weekly electronic sounds. Rotating DJs include Giles Walker, Mini Klaus, Krazzy Martin, Bones & Money + more
Thu 13 Aug The Dirty Hearts Club (DHC DJs) Snafu, 21:00–02:00, £3/2
Indie-rocking social with live performances from local + national bands on the up. Hosted by Steven DHC Milne.
Octopussy
Tiger Tiger, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Fri 14 Aug Indo Silver Club
The Tunnels, 22:00–03:00, £3
Electro, disco and indie visuals
Electro, disco and indie visuals
Mixtape
Big sounds from the techno, house + electro world.
Rock Night
Korova, 22:00–03:00, free (£2 after midnight)
Classic rock, punk, metal, hardcore and the likes in recent addition to the nocturnal club circuit.
Kamikazi (DJ Adam) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Aberdeens longest standing rock clubnight does what it says on the tin, and more.
Sat 22 Aug Adventures in Stereo (Steven Milne) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Classic indie, 60s, 70s, new wave, rock + the latest hipster dance anthems all smuthered under one big rammy.
The Deep End (Funky Transport, Mr Green) Snafu, 23:01–03:00, £6/5
Fours to the floor with house, techhouse, nu-disco + knowledgable beats all round.
Mon 24 Aug Offshore
The Rig, 19:00–02:00, Free
Alt. indie and oil rig punter puns
Thu 27 Aug Octopussy
Tiger Tiger, 23:00–03:00, £5 (£4)
Fri 28 Aug
Mixtape (edit-select MARK BROOM (2020 VISION) TONY SCOTT (EDIT-SELECT))
Indo Silver Club
Big sounds from the techno, house + electro world.
Mon 31 Aug
Snafu, 22:00–03:00, £variable
Rock Night
Korova, 22:00–03:00, free (£2 after midnight)
Classic rock, punk, metal, hardcore and the likes in recent addition to the nocturnal club circuit.
Kamikazi (DJ Adam) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Aberdeens longest standing rock clubnight does what it says on the tin, and more.
Sat 15 Aug Adventures in Stereo (Steven Milne) Moshulu, 22:30–03:00, £3
Classic indie, 60s, 70s, new wave, rock + the latest hipster dance anthems all smuthered under one big rammy.
The Deep End (Funky Transport, Mr Green)
Snafu, 23:01–03:00, £6/5 Fours to the floor with house, techhouse, nu-disco + knowledgable beats all round.
Mon 17 Aug Offshore
The Rig, 19:00–02:00, Free
Alt. indie and oil rig punter puns
Wed 19 Aug Electrique Boutique
Snafu, 22:00–02:00, £3 (free passes upstairs)
Wonky weekly electronic sounds. Rotating DJs include Giles Walker, Mini Klaus, Krazzy Martin, Bones & Money + more
The Tunnels, 22:00–03:00, £3
Electro, disco and indie visuals
Offshore
The Rig, 19:00–02:00, Free
Alt. indie and oil rig punter puns
comedy Tue 04 Aug Snafu Comedy Club (Graham Mackie, Chris Forbes, John Purves, MC Viv Gee) Snafu, 20:00–22:30, £4
Tue 11 Aug Snafu Comedy Club (Keir McAllister Duncan Guthrie Ailsa Johnston, MC Andrew Learmonth) Snafu, 20:00–22:30, £4
Tue 18 Aug Snafu Comedy Club (Stu Who?, Rob Kane, Stephen Rose, MC Andrew Learmonth) Snafu, 20:00–22:30, £4
Tue 25 Aug Snafu Comedy Club (Chris Broomfield, Carly Baker, Rab Brown, Jason C Murphy) Snafu, 20:00–22:30, £4
Dundee Music Sat 01 Aug
Sat 15 Aug
Fri 28 Aug The Average White Band
Ray Summers with Cha Cha Heels
Transmission The Doghouse, 20:00–22:30, £8
Fat Sam’s, 20:00–23:00, £22
Soul and funk
The Doghouse, 20:00–22:30, £tbc
Joy Division tribute
Pop
Sat 29 Aug
Fri 21 Aug
Thu 06 Aug
Dios Salve A La Reina Fat Sam’s, 19:00–22:00, £10
The Cundeez , The Daze, The McGonagalls
The Holloways The Doghouse, 20:00–22:30, £10
Argentinian Queen tribute act
Queen Tribute
Fat Sam’s, 20:00–23:00, £5
Indie punk
Fat Sam’s, 20:00–23:00, £10
The “United Centenary Bash”
Pretty self-explanatory
Stirling Music Fri 31 Jul
Tue 11 Aug
The Summer Sessions
Sat 22 Aug The Dark Holler II (MARTHA SCANLAN, POKEY LAFARGE, THE HOT SEATS, THE SHED INSPECTORS)
Dub Syndicate
The Tolbooth , 19:00–22:00, Free
The Tolbooth , 20:00–23:00, £12/10
A showcase of traditional music
Adrian Sherwood
Upbeat Beatles
The Albert Halls, 19:30–22:00, £12/10
Fri 14 Aug
Tribute act
Thu 06 Aug
The Tolbooth , 12:00–00:00, Day Pass £18/£16
The Summer Sessions
A full day of music celebrating American roots. For more info and individual event times visit: www.stirling.gov.uk/ tolbooth
The Tolbooth , 19:00–22:00, Free
Reloaded
A showcase of traditional music
The Tolbooth , 19:00–23:00, £6
The Tolbooth’s platform for emerging acts
Fri 07 Aug
Thu 20 Aug
Tue 25 Aug
Reloaded
The Summer Sessions
The Tolbooth , 19:00–22:00, Free
A showcase of traditional music
The Tolbooth , 19:00–23:00, £6
Phil Cunningham & Aly Bain
The Tolbooth’s platform for emerging acts
Albert Halls, 19:30–23:00, £16,14,12
Sat 08 Aug
Traditional fiddles
Fri 21 Aug
Fri 28 Aug
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset
The Summer Sessions
The Summer Sessions
The Tolbooth , 19:00–22:00, Free
The Tolbooth , 19:00–22:00, Free
Contemporary folk
A showcase of traditional music
A showcase of traditional music
The Tolbooth , 20:00–23:00, £12/10
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5th/12th August • Doors open 7pm
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winners of best reviews and best features at 2008 Allen Wright Awards for Excellence in Fringe Journalism
www.festmag.co.uk August 2009
THE SKINNY 73
Edinburgh Art festival 2009 3/3 Antigua Street PALIMPSEST - Sandy Hutton, Maggie Mowbray, Valerie Norris & Drew Wright 11:00, 07 Aug—09 Aug, Free
Palimpsest is a one-weekend exhibition in an empty flat in Edinburgh City Centre, and will present new work by Sandy Hutton, Maggie Mowbray, Valerie Norris and Drew Wright. The starting point for the exhibition is the notion of the palimpsest, a concept which is evident in the work of each artist. Processes of layering, appropriation, collage and assemblage are utilised, resulting in complex and cumulative meanings and relationships in and between the works. The use of an empty flat as the venue also resonates with this dialogue; as the function of the space is overwritten by the actions of the artists and the audience, so it also belies traces of its former occupants. As part of the exhibition there will be impromptu live performances by Drew (aka Wounded Knee) over the course of the weekend.
Atticsalt Passing 14:00, 01 Aug—29 Aug, not 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, Free
American photographer Kate Pollard created this highly evocative project that illustrates the aftermath of her father’s death on 22 October, 2007. The series of images chronicles the days and months after his passing and is a remarkably emotional documentation of a journey through her family’s grieving process. Pollard describes the work as ‘photographs taken from what I believe to be my father’s perspective as he looks in on us’. Although tragic in its circumstance, it sensitively portrays her family’s vulnerability and resulting strength as they come to terms with his departure. She is able to show domestic life in a manner that is neither intrusive nor voyeuristic. Passing is being shown for the first time in the UK and for the first time in the world as a complete work.
Bourne Fine Art 200 Years of Scottish Painting 10:00, 01 Aug—29 Aug, not 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd, Free
For a small country, and one whose national school was late in developing, the history of Scotland’s visual arts is particularly rich and diverse. Each generation produced artists from the front rank, from the 17th century Scottish artist William Gouw Ferguson, domiciled in the Low Countries and Sir Henry Raeburn, Scotland’s national portraitist to the first Scot with an international reputation, Sir David Wilkie. Examples from Scottish Impressionism with William McTaggart and the Kirkcudbright School artist Charles Oppenheimer are included. Colourists Hunter and Cadell and the Edinburgh School artist Anne Redpath take us into the 20th century and Callum Innes and the Boyle Family lead to the Scottish art of today.
Coburg House Art Studios Coburg House Art Studios Open Event 11:00, 07 Aug—09 Aug, Free
Coburg House Art Studios is a hub of creativity housing upwards of 60 local and international professional fine and applied artists producing original work. This open studio day is a special opportunity to explore the working spaces and minds of artists and to purchase beautifully handcrafted pieces. The array of work on offer includes ceramics, jewellery, mosaics, painting, photography, silversmithing, and textiles. Recently extended, the building includes three floors of studios and a splitlevel gallery space.
Corn Exchange Gallery Andrew Ranville 11:00, Sat 1st, Tue 4th, Wed 5th, Thu 6th, Fri 7th, Sat 8th, Tue 11th, Wed 12th, Thu 13th, Fri 14th, Sat 15th, Tue 18th, Wed 19th, Thu 20th, Fri 21st, Sat 22nd, Tue 25th, Wed 26th, Thu 27th, Fri 28th, Sat 29th, Free
Showing for the first time in Scotland, Andrew’s work is a mix of large scale sculpture crafted from reclaimed timber, prints and film. New work has also been commissioned and Andrew’s latest piece will be in Gayfield Square Gardens for the duration of the Festival. Andrew’s installations, sculptures and films explore ideas related to sitespecificity as well as the viewers’ interaction with the work. They describe a personal form of psychogeographic study or the relation of one’s own body to the space they inhabit, interact with, and navigate. Andrew wants his artwork and its space to exist not to be consumed by the viewer, but to be engaged with, triggering ideas of a new path, a new vantage point for seeing, a potential movement, or the acknowledgment of something as simple as their feet touching the ground. Andrew is originally from the United States. He graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2008 and his work has been exhibited internationally. His large outdoor installations are located in various countries including Australia, the United States, Finland and Spain.
Edinburgh College of Art Milestone 10:00, 01 Aug—30 Aug, not 3rd, Free
Milestone is a unique arts event for the Festival. Ten international sculptors will each carve a new sculpture in a 1 to 2 tonne block of stone of their choosing in the ArtCollege quadrangle. This event offers the public a rare opportunity to watch stone sculptors in the process of creating their work. In addition to the Milestone carve, visitors can learn more about stone-carving practices all over the world from the accompanying exhibition of films, photographs, interviews, tools, books and sculptors’ maquettes. From the magnificent examples of quarrying the earth’s matrix to the documented craft skills of stone artisans and toolmakers, these enlightening films and other collected data force a reassessment of how we think about ‘stone’ and the sculptors that work it. The Milestone carve and exhibition form part of the wider STONE project, a three-year Edinburgh College of Art initiative,funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
Edinburgh Printmakers Peter Blake: ‘Venice’ 10:00, Sat 1st, Tue 4th, Wed 5th, Thu 6th, Fri 7th, Sat 8th, Tue 11th, Wed 12th, Thu 13th, Fri 14th, Sat 15th, Tue 18th, Wed 19th, Thu 20th, Fri 21st, Sat 22nd, Tue 25th, Wed 26th, Thu 27th, Fri 28th, Sat 29th, Free
Edinburgh Printmakers presents the Scottish premiere of The Venice Suite and other works by Peter Blake in association with the Paul Stolper Gallery, London. Peter Blake is one of Britain’s most renowned international artists and, to many, the father of British Pop Art. The Venice Suite comprises 20 new screen prints inspired by his 2007 visit to the Venice Art Biennale. They depict an imagined, fairy-tale visionof the city against backgrounds of blues, greys, greens and muted yellows, evoking the magical atmosphere of a place enshrouded in myth and romance. The artist’s trademark collage style incorporates images culled from postcards, photographs and second-hand books, including details from familiar old masters alongside illustrations from vintage children’s books. The Venice Suite is the first part of a series that will see Blake embark on a world tour of iconic cities.
74 THE SKINNY August 2009
Sculpture Workshop MAGAZINE 09: Creative Spaces
11:00, 15 Aug—30 Aug, Free
This year’s MAGAZINE exhibition is the first of a two-part project inspired by the planned development of Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s new international centre for contemporary sculpture. This first stage will examine notions of creative space as being formed by the relationships between individuals, objects and activities, an active participant rather than a passive container. The show will consist of the responses of three artists to the public spaces within the current building as they investigate, alter, subvert or reinterpret their uses, form and function.
Fruitmarket Gallery Eva Hesse Studiowork 10:00, 05 Aug—30 Aug, Free
This exhibition is a rare chance to see the work of German-born, American artist Eva Hesse (1936– 70), a major figure in post-war art. The exhibition is the result of new research by renowned Hesse scholar Briony Fer, and focuses on the small, experimental works Hesse produced throughout her career, alongside her large-scale sculpture. These small objects, the so-called ‘test-pieces’, were made in a wide range of materials, including latex, wire-mesh, sculpmetal, wax, and cheesecloth. Fer renames them ‘studioworks’ and argues that, rather than being simply technical explorations, these objects radically put in question conventional notions of what sculpture is. This exhibition addresses the visceral sensuality of the small pieces in the light of what it means for an artist to make work and how the processes of making translates to the viewing encounter. It brings together around 50 sculptures drawn from major public and private collections around the world. Hesse’s sculptures are extremely fragile, and rarely travel. Many of these works have never left the collections to which they belong, and several have never been exhibited before. Although previously the test-pieces and small works were considered peripheral to the major work, this exhibition argues that, as well as being beautiful and meaningful objects in their own right, they force us to ask fundamental and pressing questions, not just about what an artwork is, but about the work that art does in our culture.
Ingleby Gallery Bilboard for Edinburgh - Tacita Dean
00:00, 05 Aug—31 Aug, Free
Ingleby’s public art project on the outside wall of the gallery continues with a newly commissioned billboard from Tacita Dean, co-inciding with the showing of her film Presentation Sisters as part of The Enlightenments programme.
CALLUM INNES
10:00, 05 Aug—30 Aug, Free
Over the past 20 years Edinburgh born Callum Innes has emerged as one of the leading abstract painters of his generation making work which stands defiantly against the tide of the quick fix that has dominated the sensibility of so many of his contemporaries. Instead, his quietly seductive paintings have continued to nudge the possibilities of painting forward, with each new work building on those that have gone before in a subtle but constant progression. Innes was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 1995, won the prestigious NatWest Prize for Painting in 1998, and in 2002 was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Painting. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally and his work is held in public collections worldwide including the Guggenheim, New York; National Gallery of Australia; TATE, London, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. His exhibition for the Edinburgh Art festival will include new paintings and works on paper.
Inspace Reveal/Reset 10:00, 05 Aug—29 Aug, not 11th, 17th, 18th, 24th, 25th, Free
Digital culture is pervasive and everevolving. The Alt-w Fund supports experimentation with new media, as both artistic subject and as creative tool. The focus for 2008/09 was to support projects which dynamically engage audiences beyond the traditional screen. The exhibition Reveal/ Reset reflects our information-rich world where attention is a commodity. As consumers we filter, as creators we share. In response, we forge new paths. The featured artworks by Benjamin Dembroski, Distance Lab, FOUND Electronics, Alex Hetherington, ~ in the fields, Sarah Kettley, Wendy McMurdo and Paul Holmes, Thomson & Craighead and Emma Tolmie engage with these accelerated times and their dispersed networks of communication. The distribution of Alt-w Fund awards is managed by New Media Scotland and funded by Scottish Screen and the Scottish Arts Council.
Inverleith House John McCracken
10:00, 06 Aug—30 Aug, Free
This is the first museum exhibition in the UK by John McCracken, one of the great living American artists whose use of colour and form continues to influence artists across generations, in a career spanning 45 years. It features major sculptures dating from 1966 and drawings by the artist - being shown together for the first time. Born in Berkeley, California, in 1934, McCracken rose to prominence during the early 1960s. From the outset his work was associated with Minimalism and his contemporaries include Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre. He is probably best known for his 'planks' - elegant lengths of highly polished, brightly coloured plywood which lean against a wall and have been described as the perfect resolution between painting and sculpture. McCracken was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1968 and his work is represented in many public and private collections worldwide.
Institut Francais d’Ecosse
Jupiter Artland Year 1
10:00, Sat 1st, Sun 2nd, Thu 6th, Fri 7th, Sat 8th, Sun 9th, Thu 13th, Fri 14th, Sat 15th, Sun 16th, Fri 21st, Sat 22nd, Sun 23rd, Thu 27th, Fri 28th, Sat 29th, Sun 30th, Multiple prices
Jupiter Artland houses a private collection of world-class sculpture by some of the most highly regarded contemporary artists as well as exciting British newcomers. In the 90 acres of stunning woodland and parkland ten miles from Edinburgh's city centre there are a series of site-specific works by Andy Goldsworthy, a large-scale figure by Antony Gormley, a fouracre landform by Charles Jencks, an enormous orchid by Marc Quinn which was created for the Artland, Anish Kapoor's amazing Suck, a series of works by Ian Hamilton Finlay and site-specific pieces by Cornelia Parker, Alec Finlay, Peter Liversidge, Laura Ford and Shane Waltener.Nicky and Robert Wilson have also set up the Jupiter Artland Foundation, which runs an education programme for local schools and colleges as well as an ongoing residency.
Lauriston Castle
Paul Nougé, Subversion of the images
Hot Box
12:00, 21 Aug—29 Aug, Free
09:30, 13 Aug—29 Aug, not 16th, 23rd, Free
Paul Nougé (1895–1967) was a Belgian poet, instigator and theorist of the Surrealism movement in Belgium. Between December 1929 and February 1930 he produced 19 photographs that were published in 1968 with the title Subversion of the images. The original photographs and documents, which belong to the Archives & Musée de la Littérature of the French Community of Belgium, will be exhibited.
Jupiter Artland
You want fringe listings...
The Hot Box exhibition at the Lauriston Castle Glasshouse is organised by a committee of three postgraduate students from the Sculpture and Glass departments of Edinburgh College of Art in collaboration with the Learning and Access department of the City of Edinburgh Museum and Galleries. Selected work by 15 postgraduates and artists in residence from the College is presented. Work includes sculpture, glass, site-specific installations and new media.
Miracles Gallery Alexandria Light 14:00, Wed 5th, Thu 6th, Fri 7th, Sat 8th, Wed 12th, Thu 13th, Fri 14th, Sat 15th, Wed 19th, Thu 20th, Fri 21st, Sat 22nd, Wed 26th, Thu 27th, Fri 28th, Sat 29th, Free
Alexandria Light is an installation referencing the social and political environment of Alexandria, Egypt at ‘This Time in History’. The title refers to the old Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the vanished wonders of the ancient world. Exhibition elements include two and three-dimensional objects and a bookwork. Concurrently, related works will be exhibited in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the new Library of Alexandria) where Rose Frain was artist in residence during November 2008
Modern Art Galleries Artist Rooms 10:00, 01 Aug—30 Aug, Free
At the heart of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists, so that their work can be seen and appreciated in depth.
National Galleries The Discovery of Spain 10:00, 01 Aug—30 Aug, £8 (£6)
FROM Goya to Picasso. A celebration of Spanish culture, as seen through the eyes of British artists and art collectors, the highlight of the National Galleries of Scotland exhibition programme during the 2009 Edinburgh Festival.
National Gallery of Modern Art Artist Rooms 10:00, 01 Aug—30 Aug, Free
At the heart of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists, so that their work can be seen and appreciated in depth.
National Museum of Scotland Ballast: Bringing the Stones Home 10:00, Wed 5th, Thu 6th, Fri 7th, Sat 8th, Thu 20th, Fri 21st, Sat 22nd, Sun 23rd, Mon 24th, Tue 25th, Wed 26th, Thu 27th, Fri 28th, Sat 29th, Sun 30th, Free
John Edgar’s stone sculptures explore the experience of the emigrant: leaving the homeland, the voyage through unknown seas and the arrival in a new land. Ballast kept them afloat on the journey and brought them safely to a new shore half a world away. Using stone that he collected in 2005 from various historic quarries in Scotland, the New Zealand artist has made sculptures based on the land and the flag, the compass, trig stations and survey markers, mapping voyages and journeys, arrivals and departures. In this Year of Homecoming, John Edgar’s ballast finds its way back home. The exhibition celebrates in stone the
Nekojuice Change - an international Art Project
11:00, 07 Aug—30 Aug, £1 for charity
‘Change’ seems to be the word for 2009, thrown into public awareness by the clever advertisers working for President Obama’s campaign, promising a new, not really graspable but certainly very different future. Change can be painful for its unexpectedness and the loss that usually comes prior to the change – the loss of the old, the current. Change means something different between things that were, and the things yet to come. It is a word provoking hope and the prospect of ‘something better’. Change means letting go of something old and opening up for the new, the unknown. It presupposes a spirit of adventurism and daring. Nekojuice have invited 22 young international artists to create work on the theme of ‘Change’. Combining drawing, photography, painting, sculpture, mixed media, installation, illustration, animation and textile design the show reflects a broad spectrum of contemporary art practice.
Open Eye Gallery El Arte De España
10:00, 07 Aug—29 Aug, not 10th, 16th, 23rd, Free
El Arte De Espa_a (the art of Spain) includes prints by the great Spanish masters of the 20th century from Picasso to Dali.
John Bellany 'A Celtic Voyage'
10:00, 07 Aug—29 Aug, not 10th, 16th, 23rd, Free
John Bellany is one of the most influential Scottish artists of his time. He was born and raised in the east coast town of Port Seton, where fishing was a way of life and Calvinism bred a community commanded by fear and superstition. The sea and the personal iconography of his tumultuous life experience is ever-present in his angst-ridden paintings of the 1960s, when he studied at Edinburgh College of Art and then the Royal College of Art, through to the vibrant portrayals of people and places from a Scottish perspective produced in the past decade. The body of work showing at the Open Eye Gallery tracks a journey of artistic reflection, demonstrating this devoted Celt's great technical diversity and depth of subject matter.
Patriothall Gallery “This is Now: From Drawing to Contexture” Multiple times, 01 Aug—28 Aug, Free
This ambitious, visually exciting exhibition aims to reveal the artistic process from initial ideas to the completed work of art. The final structures and drawings will be supplemented by individual artists’ showcases/boxes revealing the journeys from concept to concrete conclusion. The members of this recently formed exhibition group (S.T.A.R.*) are all graduates of the Tapestry Department of Edinburgh College of Art, where the work pushed the boundaries of definition, moving from current fibre practice to electronic media and installation, underpinned by a strong emphasis on drawing. This is Now will show these crossovers and explore the links between media. Some of the artists work together; others remain determinedly solo. Gallery tours by the artists and a series of short videos will increase the audience’s understanding of the working process, and will allow visitors to enter into a dialogue about the individual creative impetus, interpretation and presentation of the final artworks and installations.
REWIND REWIND at Stills 11:00, 06 Aug—26 Aug, Free
REWIND at Stills is a specially curated exhibition of seminal works from the formative years of British video art. Digitally remastered and archived by REWIND, this showcase of pioneering artworks from the 1970’s and 1980’s is organised in partnership with Stills and exhibited in Stills’ public resource area. The videotechstyle exhibition provides a unique opportunity to view the early years of a medium that has become a cultural mainstay in museums and galleries alike. In addition to the video collection, visitors will be able to access information on all the artists and their work from an online resource, which includes interviews with the artists, critical texts, reviews and ephemera. REWIND| Artists’ Video in the 70s and 80s is a research project based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee.
... they are all Available online at
theskinny.co.uk/edinburghfestival
Royal Scottish Academy
Photos of Bob and Roberta Smith "This Artist Is Deeply Dangerous" Photos by Miyako Narita
Gennadii Gogoliuk: Recent Work
Allison and Bray: Homeland 2009
Multiple times, 06 Aug—29 Aug, not 9th, 10th, 16th, 17th, 23rd, 24th, Free
Multiple times, 02 Aug—30 Aug, not 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th, Free
Elaine Allison and Patricia Bray present development of the work ‘HOMELAND’. Visitors to the RSA have been invited to suggest imagery relating to Edinburgh, which the artists could use to develop ideas for a new HOMELAND wallpaper.
I Would Like You To Know That I Am Not Her Zdarzaja sie przeciez wypadki oblakania na takich izolowanych placowkach (quote from “Solaris” by Stanislaw Lem)
Multiple times, 06 Aug—30 Aug, not 8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th, Free
I Would Like You To Know That I Am Not Her (Zdarzaja sie przeciez wypadki oblakania na takich izolowanych placowkach (quote from “Solaris” by Stanislaw Lem). A presentation of contemporary Polish fine-art film, curated by Lokal_30, Warsaw, featuring the artists Jozef Robakowski, Tomasz Kozak, Norman Leto, Anna Baumgart, Zuzanna Janin, Karol Radziszewski, Jasmina Wojcik and Elodie Pong. A part of Polska! Year www.PolskaYear.pl
Scotland-Russia Institute
Schop ‘Making Ends Meet’ An exhibition by Nigel Peake 10:00, 03 Aug—29 Aug, not 9th, 16th, 23rd, Free
Making Ends Meet is a collection of drawings and prints from Irish-born artist Nigel Peake. His work focuses on imagined sheds, forgotten homes and maps for small-time adventures. ‘SCHOP’ is an initiative by Oliver Chapman Architects and previous exhibitors include Bridget Steed and Donald Urquhart. The curatorial policy is to invite artists who have a real engagement in architecture and the built environment. Artists are encouraged to challenge expectations and develop new ideas about the city and the representation of contemporary living.
A new arts venue in central Edinburgh presents the first major Scottish exhibition of oil paintings by the remarkable Russian painter Gennadii Gogoliuk. The poet Gennady Aygi wrote of Gogoliuk’s work that it ‘creates the eternally-simple simplicity of the worldas-miracle’, being an ‘example of the new return to reality which, precisely because it is new, possesses elements of fairy tale and theatricality’. In the words of Henry Walton, ‘he invents constantly, without straining after originality’. His richly worked paintings concentrate on the human form and face, enigmatic and evocative figures from myth, legend, childhood and transfigured actuality. Born in southern Russia in 1960, Gogoliuk studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Art. His work has been shown in Russia, Finland, Denmark and Germany. In 1998 he married and moved to Edinburgh. As well as exhibiting at the Society of Scottish Artists and the Royal Scottish Academy (Maud Gemmell Hutchinson Prize 2000), he has had several solo shows at the John Martin Gallery, Albemarle Street, London.
August 2009
THE SKINNY 75
EAF 2009 the green room venue
SIERRA METRO ‘HOW LONG IS NOW?’
13:00, SUN 9TH, THU 13TH, FRI 14TH, SAT 15TH, SUN 16TH, THU 20TH, FRI 21ST, SAT 22ND, SUN 23RD, THU 27TH, FRI 28TH, SAT 29TH, SUN 30TH, FREE
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11pm-3am
calli mojo nochE sin tREgua•night non stop
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SAT 8Th SUBSTANce:
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FRI 14Th SAT 15Th & SUN 16Th:
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FRI 14Th DIRT:
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76 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
Aileen M Stackhouse creates sitespecific works that respond to their surroundings. The drawing process is key to Aileen’s practice, and in this exhibition her drawings will be transformed into sculptures. Incorporating a performative element, the artist will work in the space before and during the show, allowing visitors to witness the evolution of new works. Aileen studied sculpture at the School of Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and completed her PhD in fine art in 2006. Her research and practice uses drawing as its backbone in order to question and explore our perception and understanding of our existence. She is interested in the relationship between the human thought process and drawing’s ability to enter into conversation with the artist, the work, and its others. For Aileen, an understanding of the processes involved in a work’s creation, is only ever begun upon its completion.
STILLS JOACHIM KOESTER - POISON PROTOCOLS AND OTHER HISTORIES 11:00, 06 AUG—30 AUG, FREE
Joachim Koester uses strategies of montage, archiving and storytelling to illuminate and complicate historical events that form a collective mythical construction of the recent past. His works explore the legacies and mine the fictions that form around movements and experiments – be they in the systems of art, mind-altering substances or the occult. Poison Protocols and Other Histories pays attention to Koester’s exploration of invisible and forgotten histories of transgression, tracing a line through the artist’s films and photographs in this, his first UK solo exhibition. Each piece addresses how history has the ability not simply to reflect experience, but also to construct and create experience. This is a process that folds the past into the future, and the known into the imagined.
STUDIO 11 BLUE FLORA CELTICA
11:00, 08 AUG—22 AUG, FREE
The Blue Flora Celtica exhibition was first shown at the renowned Foksal Gallery, Poland, in July 2008. The work is inspired by Alexander Hamilton’s reflections on his relationship to artist Joseph Beuys, developed during Beuys’s visit to Edinburgh in 1970, and his own 40- year career in the visual arts. One of the three works shown by Beuys in the exhibition Strategy: Get Arts, held during the Edinburgh Festival in 1970, was Arena (1970– 72), a montage of photographs and images documenting his art as it shifted between the realms of drawing, sculpture, installation and action. By capturing specific moments and placing them on the floor and wall, Beuys gave form to the dynamic creative processes that mark out the artist’s conceptual journey. This process provided the model for the method of display used in Hamilton’s Blue Flora Celtica, an exhibition of cyanotypes in which he makes concrete the key points from his own artistic journey. It is the mapping of principles and realizations that makes Blue Flora Celtica, to an extent, a retrospective. The Blue Flora Celtica exhibition was first shown at the renowned Foksal Gallery Poland, July 2008. The work is inspired by Alexander Hamilton’s reflections on his relationship to artist Joseph Beuys, developed during Beuys’ visit to Edinburgh in 1970 and his own 40 year journey in the visual arts.
TALBOT RICE GALLERY
TENT GALLERY CAMERA INFINITA - A DISTANCE BETWEEN THE WORLD AND HOME 14:00, 05 AUG—19 AUG, NOT 8TH, 9TH, 15TH, 16TH, FREE
This exhibition suggests an analogy between a camera, and the human black box of eye, body and mind. A camera is a mysterious object, endowed with an air of self-containment and introversion. Its internal images, obscurely captured from rays of light, remain invisible until they are developed externally - perhaps losing, perhaps gaining in the process. The capacity to capture, process and store infinite numbers of visual impressions makes the human “camera” both the producer and container of expansive realms of imagination. But by collecting and inhabiting worlds of internal images without speaking through them, one remains locked inside the camera – the “small chamber” – of the individual mind. Camera Infinita - A Distance between the World and Home engages with the challenge of communicating internal images to an outside world. The translation process occurs within the undefined distance between external and internal spaces, between the other and the self. The contributors to this group exhibition are young artists from Japan and Europe. Their works explore the inhabitation and expansion of internal spaces, sensory limitations, spatial confinement, miniaturisation and architectural manipulation, visual and nonvisual translation, and travel as contextual displacement. Works include drawings, prints, photographs, videos and small objects. This project, organised by artist Julia Martin, has received support from The Daiwa Anglo- Japanese Foundation and Edinburgh College of Art. Following its pilot exhibition at Art Institute Shibukawa, the exhibition includes new works responding to a journey through Japan in June/July 2009.
THE GREY GALLERY BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH THIS ARTIST IS DEEPLY DANGEROUS 11:00, 06 AUG—30 AUG, FREE
This Artist is Deeply Dangerous is an 11-metre painting which breaks down into nine panels and is one of Bob and Roberta Smith’s largest works to date. Last year the Guardian asked its arts and sports writers to swap places for a day, resulting in a review of a Louise Bourgeois exhibition by tennis correspondentSteve Bierley. The title and text of the painting are taken from this review. Bierley’s article caught the imagination of Bob and Roberta Smith because of its incisive clarity and enthusiasm, along with its mission to inform – three elements which rarely exist in the world of professional art criticism. Bob and Roberta Smith say ‘There should be no artists, just people making art, and by the same token there should be no art critics, just people writing about art’. The Grey Gallery is nomadic and works with artists on a project-byproject basis. Last year’s Festival found it in a derelict warehouse; this year it takes up residence in the opulent surroundings of the five-storey Georgian house that is Hawke & Hunter.
THE HENDERSON GALLERY
JANE AND LOUISE WILSON
‘THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY’ – PAUL MARTIN
Talbot Rice Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of film and photography by Jane and Louise Wilson. This will be their first solo exhibition in Edinburgh. It will include a new film and recent photographs alongside a new sculptural commission.
Layers and textures build up to create a subtle narrative with exquisite mark making in the works of artist Paul Martin. This exhibition illustrates the continually developing thought and art of this remarkable contemporary figure.
MULTIPLE TIMES, 07 AUG—30 AUG, FREE
11:00, 21 AUG—29 AUG, NOT 23RD, FREE
THE SCOTTISH GALLERY JAMES MORRISON – NEW PAINTINGS
10:00, 07 AUG—29 AUG, NOT 9TH, 16TH, 23RD, FREE
Morrison is one of the country’s most popular and most highly-regarded landscape painters. This exhibition of work from the past two years captures the rich diversity of the Scottish landscape in its many manifestations and dramatically changing weather conditions. Familiar subjects include the highly-cultivated fields and the Montrose basin in his native Angus and sees a return to the rugged North Coast but there are also work from areas new to the artist including Traquair house in the Scottish Borders as well as the island of Skye and Morar on the West Coast.
PHILIP EGLIN - NEW CERAMICS 10:00, 07 AUG—29 AUG, NOT 9TH, 16TH, 23RD, FREE
Sculptures and vessels by Jerwood Applied Arts Prizewinner which draw on a ceramic and sculptural tradition but often imbued with modern sensibilities and contemporary comment.
DOGGERFISHER NASHASHIBI / SKAER
10:00, 01 AUG—29 AUG, NOT 2ND, 3RD, 9TH, 16TH, 23RD, FREE
Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer have been collaborating since 2005. For their first solo exhibition in Scotland they will exhibit a new 16mm film, specially commissioned by doggerfisher. The film takes as its starting point the paintings of the early 20th century British artist, Paul Nash and in particular his landscape painting, Flight of the Magnolia of 1944. Nashashibi/Skaer have a fascination with Nash’s use of visual analogies, surrealism and natural phenomena to suggest something much more temporal and haunting. Nashashibi will have a solo show at the ICA, London in September. Skaer has been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize. The Turner exhibition opens at Tate Britain in October.
GALLERA1 @ THE LIGHTHOUSE JUMP 2 DE-LIGHT
10:00, 08 AUG—30 AUG, FREE
JUMP 2 DE-Light, by artist Shaeron Averbuch, is based on proactive research and analysis. JUMP, the acronym for Joined Up Master Planning, sets the exhibition theme - a contextual response to the Edinburgh waterfront regeneration. A flea with 'catalytic' strengths is set to fight the 'Plague on Architecture' and empower the communities that survive the effects of developer-led regeneration. The show includes temporary exhibitions around the Granton building
CORRECTION!
The website for the photographer responsible for last month's 'Pure Morning' fashion shoot was misattributed. Andrew Moore's website should have read: www. andrewrmoore.com. We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to him.
AUGUST 2009
THE SKINNY 77
WIN A MONTH-LONG MEDIA INTERNSHIP! KICKSTART YOUR CAREER WITH THE SKINNY ROLODEX
The Skinny keeps its ear to the ground, its finger on the pulse, and the arts close to its heart. By fostering close-knit contacts within the arts and media industry with an emphasis on collaboration, inclusion, and innovation, we've been able to grow from strength to strength as a respected journalistic resource for local and international music and culture. The Skinny is part of a wider Scottish media industry that is thriving with opportunity for talented and enthusiastic people, and to celebrate the continued success of our industry, we're proud to announce that we're offering readers the chance to gain valuable work experience and beef up their rolodex of contacts via a four week internship programme, constructed in collaboration with three of our closest media partners: The Drum, The Glasgow Film Theatre, and Radio Magnetic.
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
During this month long programme, you'll acquire hands-on experience in marketing, public relations, digital content generation, audience development, radio production, writing copy, conducting interviews, and even writing an article for us! Suitable candidates will have basic ICT skills and may have a desire to attain further experience or education in a relevant discipline, but above all we're looking for someone with bundles of enthusiasm and a positive attitude - in other words, an all-round good egg.
To enter, simply describe to us why the intern programme is of interest to you, as well as your suggestions for a project that you would undertake within our internship, in no more than 150 words.
VISIT THESKINNY.CO.UK/COMPETITIONS BEFORE 21 AUGUST FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN! Terms and Conditions: Please refer to www.theskinny.co.uk/terms for details.
WIN EXCLUSIVE TICKETS TO THE MILL'S ANNIVERSARY! Since it began in August '08, The Mill, created by Miller Genuine Draft, has developed an exciting reputation for offering music fans in Glasgow and Edinburgh the best of what the emerging scene has to offer. Many of the acts who have performed at The Milll have since forged a name for themselves in the industry with record deals, album launches, headline tours in the pipeline and ever growing fan bases. After a hugely successful first year, a selection of bands will return with their chosen acts to celebrate a year at The Mill. To this end, The Mill has teamed up with The Skinny to offer exclusive tickets for two very special events. So far confirmed bands playing include: We Were Promised Jetpacks, Broken Records, and Found. Ten pairs of tickets are up for grabs for the 27th August at Oran Mor, and the other ten are available for 3rd September at Cabaret Voltaire. Tickets to these events are limited to the general public; all the more reason to enter for your chance to win a ticket to one of these events, what promises to be a rare treat indeed.
To enter just answer this question :
Which venue is home to The Mill Glasgow on Thursdays? VISIT THESKINNY.CO.UK/COMPETITIONS BEFORE 20 AUGUST FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN! Terms and Conditions: Please refer to www.theskinny.co.uk/terms for details.
78 THE SKINNY AUGUST 2009
WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS TO FELIX DA HOUSECAT & FRIENDS AT HMV PICTURE HOUSE COURTESY OF MUSIKA! Following the huge success of the NYE Groove Armada afterparty at the HMV Picture House, Musika are returning to the venue to host the Edinburgh Fringe Closing Party on Saturday 29th August, welcoming Chicago dancefloor pioneer Felix Da Housecat, his first Edinburgh date in well over 10 years, as well as exciting new prospects Japanese Popstars, Scottish legends Slam and Smokin' Jo. The Skinny have teamed up with Musika to offer you the chance to win a pair of VIP tickets to this very special event. For more information, visit www.mamagroup.co.uk/picturehouse/ index. Early bird tickets are available at ÂŁ16.50 until 31st July, which you can purchase by calling 0844 847 1740 or by purchasing them in person at the HMV Picture House box office.
To enter just answer this question :
Which US city is Felix Da Housecat from? VISIT THESKINNY.CO.UK/COMPETITIONS BEFORE 20 AUGUST FOR YOUR CHANCE TO WIN! Terms and Conditions: Please refer to www.theskinny.co.uk/terms for details.
NOW ON SALE THE GIRLS OF
SLENDER
MEANS By MURIEL SPARK Adapted by
by MURIEL SPARK adapted by JAY PRESSON ALLAN
JUDITH ADAMS
Directed by
MURIEL ROMANES
Featuring
MAUREEN BEATTIE
“SCENES OF SHEER BRILLIANCE AND EXTRAORDINARY MAGNETISM”
12PM
“…THE GREATEST SCOTTISH NOVELIST OF MODERN TIMES.”
The Stage
Ian Rankin
6-31 AUG
2.50PM 6-31 AUG
The Stage
5.05PM
6-31 AUG
(not 10, 17, 24 Aug)
(no show 17 & 24 Aug)
“POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPRESSIVE WRITER/PERFORMER, I HAVE SEEN ALL YEAR.”
“RANDOM AND UNREHEARSED. THERE IS NO GUARANTEEING WHAT YOU WILL GET BUT YOU WILL CRY WITH LAUGHTER”
Circa
(no show 17 & 24 Aug)
“PERFORMERS DAZZLE WITH THEIR BEAUTY AND GRACE - THIS IS A JAW DROPPING EXPLOSION OF A PERFORMANCE”
“REDRAWS THE LIMITS TO WHICH CIRCUS CAN ASPIRE” The Age, Melbourne
Kate Copstick, The Scotsman
4.30pm
6-31 AUG
(no show 10, 17 & 24 Aug)
For full programme details or to book go to:
9pm
6-31 AUG
(no show 17 & 24 Aug)
Edinburgh Evening News
MIDNIGHT
13, 14, 15, 16 AUG (4 SHOWS ONLY)
assemblyfestival.com or phone 0131 623 3030 August 2009 THE SKINNY 79