The Skinny March 2022

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January2022 March 2022Issue Issue194 192

January 2020

Books

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Art January 2020

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The Skinny's favourite songs from a movie Phil Oakey & Giorgio Moroder – Together in Electric Dreams Jean Grae – U & Me & Everyone We Know My Bloody Valentine – Sometimes Skeeter Davis – The End of the World Boy Meets Girl – Waiting for a Star to Fall Quincy Jones & His Orchestra – Soul Bossa Nova Wreckless Eric – Whole Wide World Mark Mothersbaugh – Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op Pixies – Where Is My Mind Rob Dougan – Clubbed to Death Quindon Tarver – Everybody's Free (to Feel Good) T. Rex – I Love to Boogie Ray Parker Jr. – Ghostbusters The Soggy Bottom Boys – I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow Marisol – Estando Contigo The Mamas & The Papas – California Dreamin'

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

Issue 194, March 2022 © Radge Media Ltd. March 2022 - Chat

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BRAND NEW STAND UP SHOW

Printed by DC Thomson & Co. Ltd, Dundee ABC verified Jan – Dec 2019: 28,197

March 2022 Mon 07 Glasgow Kings Theatre Sun 13 Edinburgh Festival Theatre printed on 100% recycled paper

myticket.co.uk - hannahgadsby.com.au — 4 —

Championing creativity in Scotland

Meet the team We asked – What's your most memorable cinema experience?

Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "A full-blown panic attack watching Amores Perros way too close to the screen. "

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "Walking in on Vince Vaughn’s Christmas movie Fred Claus playing upside down and back-to-front, and telling the customer who pointed it out that, yes, it *shouldn’t* look like that."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "Went to see The Fellowship of the Ring when it first came out, not knowing it was a trilogy, and cried because they never reached Mount Doom."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "Standing on my seat cheering wildly at the closing credits of Under the Skin at Venice Film Festival in a vain attempt to drown out all the booing. I have never been more on the side of the angels."

Tallah Brash Music Editor "There are so many from when I worked at the Odeon. Watching Christian Slater watch I, Robot was fun/creepy (delete as appropriate), and being a mere two metres away from Kate Winslet at the premiere of Enigma in 2001 was thrill-

Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "Being horrified by the toilet scene in Jurassic Park."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "Back home there's a 1920s cinema in the middle of the woods. We went to see Elf on Christmas Eve and out pops a man on a magic organ doing an impromptu carol concert in the interval.

Truly magic."

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor "The rush of seeing The Hunger Games (12a) aged 11 without an adult – very much thought I was taking on the law."

Eliza Gearty Theatre Editor "Going to see Hereditary on my birthday with a bottle of prosecco, a born again Christian and a horror hater. It was an experience."

Heather McDaid Books Editor "Being quite pregnant and somehow the only one not crying at Endgame and the whole 3000 thing, despite being overemotional about everything else."

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "Queuing round the block to get into Ghostbusters at the ABC (now Odeon) on Edinburgh's Lothian road.

The film was more than worth the wait!"

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "The Dark Knight, IMAX, Disneyland Paris, 2008.

First time ever watching a film in IMAX and it felt like I was IN that opening bank heist scene."

Sales & Business

Production

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager "My friend spewing into my pop-corn box 30 minutes into Alice in Wonderland 3D"

Adam Benmakhlouf Art Editor "Last year's screening of artist Thulani Rachia's Ukhumbula Khuphi (Where Do You Remember?) and Ukhumbula Kanjani (How Do You Remember?). They're silent films and the audience didn't move or make a noise the entire 22 minutes. Total enchantment."

Phoebe Willison Designer "When I was a student me and my housemate would go every Monday cause it was cheap £3 tickets or something, and one time we saw a rat run across the front right under the screen :)))"

Sandy Park Commercial Director "Going to see Shrooms after consuming our very own happy tablets. Very interesting experience."

Laurie Presswood General Manager "Me. 200 empty seats.

My Little Pony: The Movie. One disappointed ten year-old who left halfway through."

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Editorial Words: Rosamund West

I

Franz Ferdinand mark their 20th birthday with their first greatest hits album release, Music editor Tallah grills Alex Kapranos with a series of 20 questions which he described as “a very entertaining 49 minutes!”

Two years after the last RSA New Contemporaries exhibition, the 2020 cohort finally have their chance to shine.

We present a selection of work from the graduating class who didn’t get to have a degree show, and devote our centre spread to a beautiful poster of photography by exhibitor Sherry Trimon.

Clubs meets Belfast-born audiovisual artist Max Cooper to learn about the multifaceted project around his new album Unspoken Words. Books talks to Julia Armfield about her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, the story of a deep-sea research expedition gone horribly. Comedy celebrates the small screen arrival of Fringe darlings Max & Ivan (they of The Wrestling fame) with a chat about – what else – pro wrestling, and the joy of an underdog story. Theatre meets Company of Wolves’ Ewan Downie to learn more about his laboratory theatre-influenced adaptation of Julius Caesar, which is set to tour Scotland.

This month we welcome our new Intersections editor, Eilidh Akilade, to the team. She’s commissioned a thoughtful selection of opinion pieces to reflect this moment in time. One writer reflects on their journey of understanding their own non-binary identity as we approach the two-year mark of the pandemic, while another examines how the notion of failure in activism can be more complex, and hopeful, than it may appear.

Concluding this month’s film theme, we close with a Q&A with Glasgow’s very own Armando Iannucci, who will be in conversation at GFF. He shares some little-known insights into his character, from crying at Gogglebox to loving Douglas Adams via his top Glasgow restaurant.

March 2022 — Chat

t’s March! There’s more daylight! It’s slightly warmer or else possibly snowing! Let’s head inside a dark room and watch some films.

As Film editor Jamie Dunn points out, Scottish film festivals come in waves and we are now approaching the spring high tide.

To celebrate the arrival of Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival, and Bo’Ness’s HippFest (and the return of in-person programmes!), Jamie has assembled a carefully curated film special. To start, we meet Sean Baker whose latest feature, Red Rocket, follows the tale of a washed-up porn star returning to his Texas hometown and introduces a little-known archetype, the ‘suitcase pimp’. Next, we meet Renate Reinsve, star of Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s latest, The Worst Person in the World, a phrase which I am personally delighted to learn is a commonplace Norwegian response to minor transgressions.

We meet Glasgow-based documentary filmmaker Martyn Robertson, whose debut feature Ride the Wave, about a young surf prodigy on the island of Tiree, premieres at Glasgow Film Festival this month. In our Scotland on Screen regular column we talk to another Scottish documentarian, Lizzie MacKenzie, whose sensitive study of a man living off-grid in the Highland wilderness, The Hermit of Treig, also screens at GFF. March also marks the return of Sonica, Glasgow’s inspiring festival melding art and music. We meet Penelope Trappes, whose performance Mother’s Blood will form part of the programme. One half of the curatorial team behind new gig series AMPLIFI, Arusa Qureshi, tells us what we can expect and asks why Black and POC artists still do not have a significant presence on bills and main stages. We meet former session musician Hinako Omori to hear about taking centre stage with the release of her debut album, a journey… Finally in Music, as

Cover Artist This month's cover is by Hermann, alias Saturn, a freelance illustrator and 2D animator. He first started using Adobe software to create digital illustrations before turning to watercolours, acrylics and printed media. After a computer graphics 2D animation degree, he immediately started freelancing. He now does a lot of silkscreen prints on textiles, murals, and some acrylics on canvas.

He regards these techniques as complementary, and finds their constraints help him to develop his practice. His graphic universe is colourful, geometric, often abstract, and he likes to draw without expecting a particular result.

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Love Bites

Love Bites: Navigating Memories in Heartbreak This month’s columnist reflects on the memory of a partner following a break-up Words: Laura Menéndez

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March 2022 — Chat

suddenly found myself in the aftermath of love. I sat on a bench facing the ocean, with now only the memory of him. All those special moments passed through my head, sequences in a movie. But it didn’t all hit me at first, sitting on that bench. I knew he was gone, but it is only when day after day, all the little moments are taken away from you that you realise what it means to really miss someone. That came later.

I didn’t know what to do without his presence.

Everything brought me back to him: the bars we went to, the beers we drank, the music we sent each other. I read a cool line in a book, I wanted to tell him. I found a funny meme, I wanted to share it with him. But I couldn’t do any of those things. In those moments, I realised he wasn’t coming back and that I was alone now.

I found the aftermath of love to be as meaningful and as important as love itself. I gave my feelings a place to stay. Made them all a cup of tea. Let them stay a while. Listened to their grievances. I learned to live with the sadness and the loneliness of lacking what used to be an important part of my life.

As time went by I started to realise that memories can be whatever you make of them. It was sad to see him go, it was sad to be without him, but that sadness only explained why he had been important.

Details became less clear. I stopped seeing his face in every stranger’s and hearing his voice around every corner. In the silence, I came to reconcile with an introverted and reflective part of me I had forgotten existed, and welcomed it with love.

Crossword Solutions Across 1. NO WAY HOME 6. FOPP 9. OCEANIC 10. VERTIGO 11. OBSCENE 12. SAMURAI 13. ORCAS 15. ALGORITHM 17. INTRIGUED 19. U-BOAT 20. LEGIBLE 22. DYNAMIC 24. SAN JOSE 25. MURDOCH 26. TEAM 27. TANGERINE Down 1. NEOCOLONIALISM 2. WEEPS 3. YANKEES 4. ON CUE 5. ENVISAGED 6. FARAMIR 7. PRIOR 8. KODI SMIT-MCPHEE 14. CUT 15.

AMUSEMENT 16. TWO 18. IN BLOOM 19. UNNERVE 21. GENRE 22. DEMON 23. MAORI

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Heads Up

In honour of this month’s screen special, we have approximately a bajillion film festivals for you, as well as some excellent live theatre, music and art for when your eyes need a rest.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Various venues, Glasgow, 23-27 Mar Glasgow Short Film Festival is returning to venues for the first time since 2019, just in time for the festival’s fifteenth edition. The programme kicks off with the UK premiere of The Timekeepers of Eternity, an eerie collage remix of a 90s Stephen King TV series, and continues with competition, horror, and comedy strands and a special series of disaster shorts programmed by author and film critic Katie Goh. Image: courtesy of Glasgow Short Film Festival

Heads Up

Photo: Sebastian Mlynarski & Kevin J Thomson

Glasgow Short Film Festival

CHVRCHES Fat Sam’s, Dundee, 10 Mar, 7pm Internationally adored Scottish artists CHVRCHES are on tour, and that includes a wee stop at Dundee. Having made their name almost ten years ago with The Bones of What You Believe, the synth-pop trio returned last year with their fourth studio album Screen Violence: a moody, horror-tinged mediation on the fear and loneliness of modernity, shot through with their signature bright electric tone.

CHVRCHES

Image: courtesy of Sonica

The Timekeepers of Eternity Photo: Marc Brenner

Maotik and MaartenVos in Erratic Weather

Sonica Festival Various venues, Glasgow, 10-20 Mar A unique festival dedicated to visual sonic art, Sonica’s live shows are unlike any other music festival, perfectly blending experimental music with beautiful, immersive videos and installations.

Don’t miss Erratic Weather, which uses meteorological data sets to generate a typhoon examining our current ecological instability, or Bloom, a ten-day interactive exhibition about our symbiotic relationship with nature.

James McAvoy in Cyrano de Bergerac

Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 18-26 Mar Sexy Cyrano de Bergerac is heading to Glasgow (just in time for a neat compare and contrast with its Peter Dinklage cinematic counterpart). Starring Glasgow’s own James McAvoy, this touring National Theatre production re-imagines Cyrano for the fast-moving age, as longing letters are transformed into quick-witted spoken-word and chemistry sizzles all over the stage.

Photo: Matthew Hickman

Image: courtesy artist and Arusha Gallery

Cyrano de Bergerac

brownbear for AMPLIFI

March 2022 — Chat

Catherine Ross: Phantoms Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh, 17 Mar-17 Apr Catherine Ross’ evocative pieces, a dreamlike meld of colours and bold, waxy textures, are inspired by Italo Calvino’s writing and the idea of made and unmade spaces. Interrogating the idea of the North and its cultural landscapes, her paintings and sculptures seeks connections between imagined and real places to discover a new, “reinvented north”.

AMPLIFI

Yellow Sand, Catherine Ross

The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 6 Mar, 3pm

Photo: courtesy of SANDS International Film Festval

Image: courtesy of SCO

The Byre Theatre, St Andrews, 25-27 Mar

New York Counterpoint

Photo: Molly Daniel

Photo: Lucas Kao

SANDS International Film Festival

The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 16 Mar, 8pm A series of three intimate, dynamic shows spotlighting modern Scottish music, AMPLIFI is curated by author of Flip the Script Arusa Qureshi and podcast producer and writer Halina Rifai. The first of the three takes place this month, featuring three hand-picked artists at the cutting edge of hip-hop, R&B, and alternative: Ayrshire’s Brownbear, Scottish Alternative Music Award winner Bee Asha, and Paix.

PAST-inuous, Dance International Glasgow

Queen of Glory

Dance International Glasgow Tramway, Glasgow, 1 Mar-3 Apr — 8 —

Nilüfer Yanya

New York Counterpoint

Nilüfer Yanya St Luke’s, Glasgow, 10 Mar, 7pm

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Image: courtesy Japanese Breakfast / Dead Oceans

Photo: Humans of Leeds

StAnza Various venues, St Andrews, 7-13 Mar This year’s StAnza, St Andrews’ acclaimed poetry festival, takes as its theme for 2022 “Stories Like Starting Points”, considering how we might rebuild, reconsider, or even start anew in all aspects of life – very apropos in this pandemic world. Headlining the programme is Scotland’s next Makar Kathleen Jamie, alongside performances by rapper Testament and author Harry Josephine Giles.

Japanese Breakfast

Japanese Breakfast

Image: courtesy of Sneaky Pete's

Headset: UNiiQU3 Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, 7 Mar, 11pm The queen of the Jersey club movement makes her electric Scottish debut at Sneaky Pete’s this month. An effortless blend of hardcore bass, the smoothness of R&B and the giddy energy of hip hop, UNiiQU3 is setting the standard for club music everywhere: very listenable, very danceable, and an unforgettable night.

Hannah Gadsby Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 13 Mar, 7:30pm The rule-breaking, genre-bending star of Nanette and Douglas returns with another stand-out stand-up show. Where Nanette grappled with the very capacity of comedy to tell stories about queer experience, Body of Work is a sweeter, smaller affair – though happily still replete with Gadsby’s trademark caustic wit – looking back on a strange couple of years complete with pandemic and Gadsby’s new marriage.

UNIIQU3

Glasgow Film Festival Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow, 2-13 Mar Glasgow Film Festival’s programme is always excellent but this year has reached new heights of brilliance: expect some of the biggest names and most notable prize-winners of the cinematic year brought right to the heart of Glasgow. Highlights from the lineup include the European premiere of Alan Cumming film My Old School, Golden Lion winner Happening, and the gloriously intimate The Worst Person in the World.

Image: courtesy MUBI and Glasgow Film Festival

Photo: Richard Haughton

Image: courtesy of Hannah Gadsby and Capital Theatres

The Worst Person in the World

Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer

Michael Clark in Because We Must

V&A Dundee, Dundee, 5 Mar-4 Sep The first major exhibition on the renowned Scottish choreographer and dancer, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer takes an expansive look at Clark’s impressive creative process, delving into the collaborations with artists, designers, musicians and performers that so defined his dynamic, fearless output. Featuring everything from costumes to video installations, this is Scottish dance at its most innovative and punk.

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

Courtesy of The Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow Photo: Patrick Jameson

Image: courtesy of Glasgow International Comedy Festival

The Modern Institute, Glasgow, Until 19 Mar

FUSE w/ Gracie T & DJ Priya Stereo, Glasgow, 11 Mar, 11pm Image: courtesy of Stereo

Image: courtesy of Park Circus-The Cohen Film Collection, I LLC

Suzanne Jackson: In Nature’s Way…

Sherlock Jr. (1924) at HippFest

Amy Matthews

Hippodrome Silent Film Festival

Glasgow International Comedy Festival

Hippodrome Cinema, Bo’Ness, 16-20 Mar

Gracie T and DJ Priya

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Various venues, Glasgow, 8-27 Mar

March 2022 — Chat

Body of Work, Hannah Gadsby

Suzanne Jackson

Heads Up

Testament, StAnza

Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, 27 Mar, 7pm Before she was the best-selling author of memoir Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner was – and is – Japanese Breakfast, one of our dreamiest and most feeling indie pop artists. Her latest album Jubilee, released last year after many pandemic delays, is an ode to joy, connection, and change, with lyrics that might just break your heart, and tunes that are perfect for a dance.

March 2022

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All details correct at the time of writing

Photo: Molly Daniel Nilüfer Yanya

Mark Thomas

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March 2022 — Events Guide

Warmduscher

Photo: Jane Hobson

Film March is the start of a spring film fest tsunami – joining a crowded calendar that includes Glasgow Film Festival, Glasgow Short Film Festival and HippFest is newcomer Sands. Set over three days (25-27 Mar) at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, Sands’ inaugural nine-film programme will bring filmmakers from around the world to the university town.

GFT are hosting a brace of Peter Greenaway-directed, Michael Nymanscored films as part of the Sonica programme – A Zed and Two Noughts (16 Mar) and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (20 Mar). Mark Thomas arrives in Edinburgh’s Filmhouse on 10 March to show some of his favourite clips from The Mark Thomas Product, one of the most explosive comedy shows of the 1990s.

Jpegmafia

Photo: Felipe Pagani

Photo: Harrison Reid Paix

Music OK, March is overwhelmingly busy with non-stop high calibre shows. In Glasgow, things get underway with what is sure to be a highly emotional, not to mention empowering, set from Self Esteem as Rebecca Lucy Taylor and co bring last year’s incredible Prioritise Pleasure to Glasgow’s QMU (1 Mar). The days that follow are set to be similarly life-giving with Shygirl (St Luke’s, 2 Mar), Yard Act (Mono, 3 Mar), Emma-Jean Thackray (Broadcast, 4 Mar), Laura Mvula (Oran Mor, 5 Mar) and Yves Tumor (Stereo, 6 Mar).

As the month rolls on, there’s no slowing down. Nilüfer Yanya brings her exciting new record Painless to St Luke’s on 10 March before Dream Wife swing by on 22 March with Lucia & The Best Boys in tow, followed by Walt Disco later in the month (30 Mar). SWG3 boasts a staggering array of world class shows too, with Glasgow synth-pop trio CHVRCHES kicking off the onslaught on 12 March ahead of shows from Tirzah (13 Mar), Cate Le Bon (17 Mar), the hopefully upright-by-then Lucy Dacus (20 Mar), Griff (28 Mar) and Warmduscher (31 Mar).

Elsewhere in Glasgow, catch MF DOOM collaborator Bishop Nehru at Broadcast (16 Mar), The Ninth Wave and Japanese Breakfast at QMU on 27 and 29 March respectively, Michael Timmons at King Tut’s (26 Mar), and back-to-back wonderment at the Barrowlands at the end of the month from Thundercat (29 Mar) and JPEGMAFIA (30 Mar). Two festivals of note can also be found in the weej this month in the form of Sonica (10-22 Mar) and Counterflows (31 Mar-4 Apr). The biennial Sonica boasts music this year from Penelope Trappes, Solareye (Stanley Odd) and Ela Orleans, while you’ll find the likes of Still House Plants, Brìghde Chaimbeul and MC Yallah and Debmaster at Counterflows at the end of the month.

CHVRCHES can also be found in Dundee (Fat Sams, 10 Mar) and Edinburgh (O2 Academy, 14 Mar); Bishop Nehru also swings by Sneaky’s (17 Mar), while Yard Act and Shygirl can be found in The Caves (2 and 4 March).

The Queen’s Hall play host to some beauts too with Villagers (7 Mar) and the incomparable Nitin Sawhney (20 Mar) found either side of the brand new AMPLIFI series which shines a spotlight on Scotland’s Black and POC artists.

Brownbear, Paix and Bee Asha play the first night on 16 March. Rounding things out in Edinburgh, The Maccabees’ frontman Orlando Weeks brings his latest solo LP Hop Up to The Mash House on 11 March, while Seattle’s experimental hip-hop outfit Shabazz Palaces set phasers to stun at the Voodoo Rooms on the 24th. [Tallah Brash]

Photo: Marilena Vlachopoulou

What's On

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My Old School

March 2022 — Events Guide

Photo: Gregor Horne

Art The Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries exhibition showcases their selection of the 2020 graduates until 3 April. See this month’s feature on p31 for interviews with some of the exhibitors.

Until 14 May, BLOODSOUND in Transmission showcases dancer-filmmaker Zinzi Minott’s immersive work, utilising sound system, prints, film and sound to urge visitors to consider racism as experienced through the span of a Black life.

The Modern Institute has a new exhibition of work by Savannah-based artist Suzanne Jackson (until 19 Mar) in Osborne Street, while their Aird’s Lane space hosts Henrik Håkansson’s high-tech video installation focused on the flight of butterflies.

From 4 March, 16 Nicholson Street presents Needs and Freedoms, bringing together artists Moira Salt and Fiona McGurk to pose critical and creative inquiries into the operation and effects of structural racism.

Getting away from the usual Scottish art haunts, from 19-27 March, artist Stuart Middleton’s site-specific exhibition takes place in the Paisley Liberal Club, which was set up in 1886 for wealthy land owners to network. Middleton’s sculpture, film and drawing work takes on themes of class, gentrification and animal husbandry.

From 8-19 March, Ediburgh’s Stills shows the work of graduates of Stills School: a free alternative photography school set up in 2018 for 16-25 year olds who face barriers to participating in the arts.

Opening on 21 March, Cooper Gallery in Dundee hosts the prestigious Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, featuring 114 drawings by 99 drawing practitioners – whittled down from the 3300 entries received in response to their open call.

Finally, from 26 March Talbot Rice Gallery shows the works of the Talbot Rice Residents, a group of ten artists who have received two years of financial and mentorial support from the gallery. [Adam Benmakhlouf] Poetry New monthly venture Rock the Boat open mic arrives in Summerhall’s Gallery Bar on Wednesday 9 March (7-9pm, free) – if you’re keen to read a poem, you can register on their site.

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Shiva Baby

Mechatok

Image: courtesy the artist

Stuart Middleton

Clubs In Glasgow, Missing Persons Club celebrate their birthday at La Cheetah Club on 4 March, bringing along Istanbul-born, Berlin-based DJ and producer Nene H for the festivities. Over in Dundee on the same night, FLOOR ABOVE turn three at Beat Generator Live! with all four residents in tow for the first time ever.

With recent collaborators including Evian Christ and Charli XCX, Mechatok should definitely be on your radar and, luckily, Hawkchild DIY bring him to Stereo on 5 March, with support from French artist Malibu. As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one night in Glasgow, Shoot Your Shot will also be bringing the quite frankly ridiculous pairing of UNIIQU3 and Jasmine Infiniti to Room 2. If you miss that, UNIIQU3 will also play in Edinburgh for Headset at Sneaky Pete’s on 7 March.

Also at Stereo this month, FUSE return for their first party of the year on 11 March with a B2B from Sheffield-based, Hope Works resident Gracie T and Brighton-based DJ Priya. Then, in Edinburgh the Manny crew come through for two days, as hypnotikk invite Shotta Tapes boss and White Hotel regular Tom Boogizm to Sneaky Pete’s on 16 March, and Nocturnal Rhythms have Interplanetary Criminal and Bluetoof going B2B at The Bongo Club on 17 March.

The RA x Intervention free beginner DJ workshop tour heads to The Mash House in Edinburgh on 25 March, teaming up with Palidrone, before travelling to Glasgow’s Civic House the following night and teaming up with Stereotone. [Nadia Younes]

Photo: Hendrick Schenider

Gracie T and DJ Priya

We Are Parable, who focus on bringing Black Cinema to the big screen, are in Glasgow this month with two events. On 1 March they screen the documentary The Black Cop at Glasgow School of Art followed by a Q&A with director Cherish Oteka. Then on 4 March at GFT, We Are Parable host Rebel Dread, which tells the story of film director, DJ and Big Audio Dynamite co-founder Don Letts, who’ll be in Glasgow for a Q&A after the film.

Finally, the mighty Summerhall Cinema have a spiffing season in celebration of International Women’s Day running 8-12 March. The line-up features some of the best women-helmed films from the last 12 months, from Janicza Bravo’s Zola to Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby. The season kicks off, however, with a 90s classic: witchy teen horror The Craft. [Jamie Dunn]

code2, Fiona McGurk, 2022

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Val McDermid

Theatre 2022 spring seasons are packed with fantastic sounding shows, and it’s all taking off in March. In Edinburgh, new writing haven Traverse Theatre present Fringe hit The Gardener (1-2 Mar), Ryan Calais Cameron’s Human Nurture (17-19 Mar) and Tonderai Munyeva’s music-infused one man show Mugabe, My Dad & Me (23-26 Mar). The Traverse also hosts five A Play, A Pie And A Pint shows this month: stand-outs include DC Jackson’s I’m Dissolving My Love In A Bath Of Acid (15-19 Mar), and Rob Drummond’s Milkshake (22-26 Mar).

In Glasgow, Tramway’s DIG Spring Season will definitely get you tapping along. Suzi Cunningham pays homage to both Mark E. Smith and her beloved grandmother in a visceral double bill described as ‘slinky yet ferocious’ (Rules To Live By / EIDOS, 1-2 Mar). On the 5 Mar, Pancha Dala will tell five stories told through the Bharatanatyam classical dance style from South Asia.

Theatre nerds would be mad to miss Vanishing Point’s Metamorphosis at the Tron (16-26 Mar). Matthew Lenton’s interpretation of Kafka’s insecty classic created ‘quite the buzz’ in 2020 – only to be shut down due to a different sort of bug. Tron have two more great-sounding shows lined up, Me and My Sister Tell Each Other Everything (23 Mar-2 Apr) and Julius Caesar (31 Mar-2 Apr).

The latter is a highly physical interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy from Company of Wolves – you can read our interview with director Ewan Downie on p44.

Dundee Rep is kicking off the spring with the Scottish Premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s award-nominated play The Children, an eco-thriller bound to have you on the edge of your seat. On the 25th, Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre are presenting a brand new show from the Dundee Rep Young Company called Optimism, about confronting a bleak future (25-26 Mar).

[Eliza Gearty]

Glasgow Comedy Festival runs throughout March at venues across the city. More shows are being added daily. Check glasgowcomedyfestival.com for the latest lineup.

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Amy Matthews

March 2022 — Events Guide

Jamie MacDonald

Traverse Theatre

Photo: Matt Crockett

Comedy Having initially been cancelled way back in October 2021, we’re very pleased to see the Glasgow International Comedy Festival back on its feet. A highlight of the year for many, the festival will jumpstart the work-in-progress season for comics, with many shows’ journeys culminating in the Fringe.

As always, the Glasgow Stand have a super roster to shout about with a mix of tour shows and nascent hours. Nathan Caton (8 Mar, 8pm, £12) brings Let’s Talk about Vex to Glasgow, Amy Matthews builds up her second hour of stand-up (20 Mar, 8.30pm, £8), while Edinburgh-based clowns Soup Group create chaos with their family-friendly silliness (also 20 Mar, 3pm, £5).

Van Winkle - West End have captured the lion’s share of local, and often alternative, talent. Alongside CHUNKS of the Year(s) (19 Mar, 9pm, £5/ PWYW), Jamie Macdonald (17/18 Mar, 7.45pm/9pm, £8), Chris Thorburn (19 Mar, 4pm, £5) and Ross Leslie (19 Mar, 7.45pm, £7.50) also appear in the cosy downstairs venue.

Elsewhere in the city, an addition to the GICF scene, Sloans, presents a handful of split bills from the cream of new(ish) acts on the London circuit.

Catch Sophie Duker and Sara Barron (16 Mar, 7pm, £8) among others here, head to The Old Hairdresser’s for this month’s ICYMI star David Callaghan (9 Mar, 8pm, £4), or stop off at the King’s Theatre to catch touring shows from big-hitters like Stewart Lee (14 & 15 Mar, 7.30pm, £SOLD OUT). [Polly Glynn]

Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic

Photo: Neil Nisbet Suzi Cunningham

Queer poet Peter Scalpello releases his debut collection, Limbic, with Cipher Press on 24 March. Based in Glasgow, he has been published widely, so it’s exciting to see his work in one collection. Limbic is a ‘glittering ode to sex, intimacy, and queer discovery’.

Taproot Press launch a brilliant anthology on 4 March to celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Rock Trust – a youth-specific charity battling homelessness. The anthology, All the Way Home, features many of Scotland’s best known contemporary poets and writers, including James Robertson, Val McDermid, Jenni Fagan. 50% of the profits go directly to funding The Rock Trust, so by buying poetry, you are actively helping them continue their journey to end youth homelessness.

It wouldn’t be a March poetry column without mentioning the alwayswonderful and ever-vibrant StAnza International Poetry Festival. Taking place in St Andrews in person and digitally from 7-13 March, there’s a whole host of talks, performances, and workshops to attend. Book as soon as you can, tickets will likely sell out for many events. [Beth Cochrane]

March 2022

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5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Love Bites — 8 Heads Up 11 What’s On — 16 Crossword — 32 Poster — 46 Intersections 49 Music — 52 Film & TV — 54 Comedy — 55 Food & Drink 56 Books — 57 Listings — 62 The Skinny On… Armando Iannucci

Features 20 Film Special! Sean Baker introduces us to his new feature Red Rocket and the concept of the ‘suitcase pimp’.

21 We meet rising star Renate Reinsve to discuss Joachim Trier’s latest, The Worst Person in the World.

22 Glasgow-based documentarian Martyn Robertson discusses life with the surfers as he brings his debut feature, Ride the Wave, to Glasgow Film Festival.

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24 We inspect the programmes of two of the spring festivals, Glasgow Short Film Festival and silent film extravaganza, HippFest.

26 We talk to Penelope Trappes about bringing her audiovisual presentation, Mother’s Blood, to Glasgow’s Sonica festival.

28 Introducing AMPLIFI, a new series emphasising the achievements of Black and POC musicians in Scotland.

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31 It’s finally happening – RSA New Contemporaries return with their pick of the 2020 Scottish art graduates.

37 Hinako Omori on her debut album, a journey…

38 To celebrate 20 Years of Franz Ferdinand, we ask Alex Kapranos 20 questions 41 We meet audiovisual artist Max Cooper to discuss his latest album Unspoken Words.

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42 Julia Armfield discusses bodily horror and her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea. 43 Fringe darlings Max & Ivan on Deep Heat, their sitcom set in the world of British Pro Wrestling.

On the website...

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42 Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Drew Daniels; The Worst Person in the World; Marti Larg; Michaela Pointon; Agnew Haus; Beth Chalmers; Hannah Lim; Annie Lai; David Edwards; Enda Bowe; Sophie Davidson; Matt Crockett

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Chats with Count Florida, Maranta, philomenah and others in our weekly Spotlight On… music column; fortnightly film chat in The Cineskinny podcast; lineup news from Kelburn Garden Party, The Great Eastern and Connect music festivals

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Shot of the month Los Bitchos at Stereo, Glasgow, 18 Feb by Serena Milesi

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Across

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Spider-Man threequel film – whoa, money! (anag) (2,3,4)

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2. Cries (5)

9. Relating to the sea (7)

3. One of New York's baseball teams (7)

10. UK independent film distributor – 1958 film by Hitchcock (7)

4. At the appropriate moment (2,3)

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The Last ___ (2003), aka Tom Cruise in 19th century Japan (7) 13. Killer whales (5)

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15. That which determines what appears in your feeds – mirth goal (anag) (9)

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17. Curious (9) 20

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Compiled by George Sully

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1. Economic and cultural imperialism – solo cinema lion (anag) (14)

6. UK music, books and film store chain (4)

11. Salacious (7) 13

Down

19. Type of naval submarine seen in the 1981 film Das Boot (1-4)

5. Imagined (9) 6. Boromir's brother in The Lord of the Rings (7) 7. Former – previous conviction (5) 8. Nominated for Best Supporting Actor in The Power of the Dog (2021) – timid poems, heck (anag) (4,4-6) 14. Shouted to signal the end of filming a scene (3) 15. Fun (9)

20. Clear (7)

16. Company (as opposed to a crowd) (3)

22. Spirited (7)

18. Flowering (2,5)

24. City in California seen as the capital of Silicon Valley (3,4)

19. Disturb (7)

25. The closest thing we have to Succession's Logan Roy (7) 26. Squad (4) 27. Sean Baker's 2015 film known for being shot entirely on iPhones (9)

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21. Category (5) 22. T he Neon ___, 2016 fashion horror by Nicolas Winding Refn (5) 23. Indigenous people of New Zealand (5) Turn to page 7 for the solutions

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January 2022

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March 2022

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In-pers n is back Illustration: Saturn

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oss aside that laptop and put on your outdoor clothing, fellow cinephiles, because film events are once again in-person. This month we get excited about three of our favourite film festivals welcoming audiences back into the dark of their auditoriums after two years of running online.

Glasgow Film Festival returns with an expansive programme celebrating the best of contemporary world cinema alongside the most exciting work from homegrown filmmakers. We represent both in this issue by chatting to one of the most vital voices on the American indie scene (Sean Baker) and the breakout star of Norway’s Oscar

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entry (Renate Reinsve), and also take a look inside two films from Scotland’s lively documentary scene (Ride the Wave and The Hermit of Treig).

Glasgow Short Film Festival and HippFest, meanwhile, are engaged in some cinematic time travel. The former recontextualises century-old newsreel from Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda (translated as ‘film truth’) series with the help of a live score from Scottish musician Gerard Black, while the latter are also utilising live music to help revive a classic horror from the silent era: Jean Epstein’s hallucinatory The Fall of the House of Usher.

We dig into both events.

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Fringe Benefits With Red Rocket, Sean Baker has once again turned his camera on a corner of the US rarely represented in American cinema. Baker introduces us to the concept of the ‘suitcase pimp’ and explains why he’s happy working outside the Hollywood mainstream

March 2022 – Film Special

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Interview: Philip Concannon

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hen Sean Baker was researching the porn industry for his 2012 film Starlet, he kept running into the same type of man. In the adult film world, there are shady male figures who latch onto younger female talent and feed off their success, and such a man is commonly known as a ‘suitcase pimp.’ “Their persona, their behaviour and their general way of thinking fascinated me on many levels,” Baker recalls. “I really wanted to tackle a character study of one of these men because we might have seen men like this in cinema before, but nothing this specific.”

For many viewers, Red Rocket will be their introduction to this archetype, and it’s one they are unlikely to forget. Arriving to the strains of *NSYNC’s Bye Bye Bye, Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) is a washed-up porn star who returns to his Texas hometown after almost two decades in Los Angeles, broke and desperate. The motor-mouthed Mikey is obnoxious, arrogant and a magnet for trouble, but he also possesses an endearing quality and a knack for coercion that enables him to inveigle himself back into the life of his estranged wife and former co-star Lexi (Bree Elrod).

Mikey is also an opportunist, always looking for the next situation he can turn to his advantage.

When he spots 17-year-old Strawberry (vibrant newcomer Suzanna Son) in a donut shop, he believes he has discovered the next big porn star and plans to exploit her potential to suitcase pimp his way back into the industry.

Baker makes films about people living on the margins of American society, and sex work has been a recurring thread in his films. But while Starlet, Tangerine and The Florida Project had a female perspective, Red Rocket shifts to a predatory male point-of-view. “I actually had to lean into the male gaze, which is a dangerous thing to do,” Baker says. “The attitude is that we’ve had male gaze for a hundred years in cinema, we don’t need it anymore. Alright, but I am tackling a film about that and I am a heterosexual male, so I’m going to have to use my POV to a certain degree to make this film honest and authentic. I did something knowing that

“I’m not scared of making polarising films because those are the films that I love” Sean Baker it might not be for everybody, but it was something that I ultimately felt was the most honest approach.”

That sense of honesty is at the heart of everything for Baker. His films present us with abrasive characters stuck in messy situations, but over the course of the films we always come to empathise with these people to a remarkable degree. In Red Rocket, Baker challenges us in a different way by revealing the initially amusing and charming Mikey to be an unrepentantly toxic and destructive figure.

One antecedent who comes to mind for Mikey is Johnny, from Mike Leigh’s provocative masterpiece Naked. When that film comes up in our conversation, Baker admits that he adores Leigh’s work and was subconsciously inspired by him here.

The concern for Baker is that few modern American filmmakers are willing to really challenge audiences in the same way. “Sometimes I talk to filmmakers and they’re going to a test screening, and I’m like, ‘What? Why? What do you do? I don’t understand,’” he says. “I’m trying to make a film that I’m happy with, where I feel like I’ve communicated what I want to communicate, and too bad if you don’t like it. I’m not scared of [making] polarising films because those are the films that I love.

Those are the films that have an impact and actually demand opinions; they’re not just something that vanishes from your head the minute you walk out of the theatre.”

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The budget for Red Rocket was a shade over $1 million, which is a fraction of what The Florida Project cost. Part of that was due to the lack of funds available during the pandemic, but Baker knows that his subject matter and his desire for independence imposes limitations on the budgets available to him. “I’ve had to just sort of accept it,” he says. “I’m living in this low budget world and I’m fine with that. I always thought I might break out and make larger films, and maybe someday I will, but the type of subject matter that I cover obviously is not mainstream. There’s also the fact that I want to own my own IP – which is extremely important – and I want to get final cut, so I’m asking for a lot. All those things combined kind of limits me.

“But, you know, I don’t want to ever come across as ungrateful. This is what I’ve always wanted to do, so every time I have a little bit of a pity party, I kick myself and say, ‘At least I’m making a feature!’ And now there is a certain group of people who want to see my movies, which is an incredible thing.”

Red Rocket has its Scottish premiere at Glasgow Film Festival on 6 & 7 Mar and is released in cinemas 11 Mar by Universal glasgowfilm.org

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Becoming In Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s latest, The Worst Person in the World, a star is born with Renate Reinsve, who plays a woman about to turn 30 and drifting between careers and relationships in Oslo. We chat to Reinsve about her rapturous performance FIlm

Interview: Anahit Behrooz

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The Worst Person in the World

“Comedy is about taking life seriously because you need comedy to laugh about how messy and hard life is” Renate Reinsve to the act of becoming rather than having already become. In the very first ten minutes of Trier’s film, Julie tries on identities and lifestyles like worn denim jackets and thrifted gowns, attempting to find one that might suit her; previous lives as a medical student and artsy, pink-haired photographer are abandoned by the wayside. Joining the ranks of Fleabag, Queenie and Licorice Pizza, The Worst Person in the World pulls the coming-of-age story away from the teenage sphere and toward the realm of young womanhood, giving weight to the idea that growing up is a Sisyphean task we never quite complete.

What all of these works share is an interest in what it means to grow and craft female selfhood both in relation to and beyond male validation.

Two men, the logical and intelligent Aksel and the sweetly romantic Eivind, come into Julie’s orbit, yet the collision of their paths is not just an ode to the — 21 —

life-changing, worlds-ruining electricity of love, but also the easy danger of shaping yourself around someone else’s gaze. “I feel like a spectator in my own life,” Julie says tearfully to Aksel. “Like I’m playing a supporting role.”

“Julie is in such a desperate search to find herself and her identity that she falls a little in love with the way that they see her,” Reinsve says.

“She needs to be seen and to be defined to feel like she is something, and that’s why she also leaves relationships. Because she doesn’t want to be defined. She realises that she can’t find her identity or accept herself through someone else’s eyes.”

Ultimately, it is this examination of all the difficult, incomplete, vulnerable ways we love ourselves and others that makes The Worst Person in the World so arrestingly honest: in love, we can be both the best and worst person in the world, sometimes all at once. 'It’s a beam, it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a hope,' Art Garfunkel sings over the end credits. 'It’s the end of the strain, it’s the joy in your heart.' Life, as Reinsve’s Julie reminds us, is merely a series of things and people and moments and sharp feelings, happening one after the other.

And amid the chaos, we can only muddle through – trying desperately, for better or worse, to become ourselves.

The Worst Person in the World has its Scottish premiere at Glasgow Film Festival on 4 & 5 Mar, and is released in cinemas 25 Mar by MUBI

March 2022 – Film Special

erdens verste menneske – the worst person in the world – is a commonplace Norwegian expression that implies a rueful sort of culpability. Accidentally stood someone up?

Verdens verste menneske. Disappointed a close friend with a thoughtless remark? Verdens verste menneske. A useful little phrase, it speaks to both a self-deprecating strain in Norwegian culture as well as a universal, often quietly buried fear we all share: that it is our fuckups, more than our best efforts, that will ultimately define who we are.

Premiering at Cannes in 2021 amid the hubbub of much louder and wilder films, Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is a deceptively quiet and aptly-titled affair. Following the eponymous Julie, played by the captivating Renate Reinsve, as she slips between jobs and relationships in an ever-tumbling quest toward self-identity, the acclaimed Norwegian director’s subversive half-romantic comedy, half-coming-of-age tale is delicately crafted and unashamedly quotidian – brimming with the small devastation of everyday people trying to craft everyday magic in their lives.

It was this generous attention to the earnest, incidental ways in which we try and piece together our lives and selves that drew Reinsve to Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt’s script, and to Julie. With her own whirlwind 20s just behind her and close to giving up acting following a rough career patch, the open-hearted and muddled character of Julie was precisely the kind of authentic role Reinsve had been craving – even if she didn’t realise quite what a life it would take on.

“I didn’t actually know that Joachim was trying to make a perverted romantic comedy with a lot of deep existential themes,” she laughs. “But I knew he wanted both the Bergman tragedy sphere and levity. For me, comedy is about taking life seriously because you need comedy to laugh about how messy and hard life is: the confusion between being a human being with needs and raw emotion and trying to be in a society.

“I feel Julie is in between,” Reinsve adds.

“She doesn’t know how to belong or how to fit in yet. She’s very vulnerable and very seeking, and she’s letting herself be in that position where everything is chaotic. But I really wanted that to be a strong place to be. People now need to have opinions all the time, and they need to shout the loudest to be heard. And you lose so much nuance, so much ambiguity by that.”

In the past few years, there has been a spate of female-centred art trying to claim back this ambiguity, giving space and forensic consideration

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Surf’s Up Glasgow-based documentarian Martyn Robertson brings his first feature film, Ride the Wave, to Glasgow Film Festival this month. We talked to him about life among the surfers and what it means to bring Scottish stories to a wider audience Film

Interview: Nathaniel Ashley Photo: Marti Larg Ben Larg

March 2022 – Film Special

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en Larg grew up surfing the great west swells near his home in the Isle of Tiree. When he was 12 years old, he was crowned Scotland’s Under-18 Surfing Champion. Martyn Robertson’s Ride the Wave follows this boy wonder into his early teenage years as he attempts to break into the big leagues of international surfing. The project sprang from a personal connection. “Ben’s father, Marti, one of his brothers was at school with me and I kept in touch with the family,” Robertson tells us when we meet him a few days after screening his film at London Film Festival. “Alongside that, I was watching lots of the press about Ben’s rise to success as a young surfer.” Robertson was particularly struck by an anecdote Marti had told him about Ben’s mother lying on the beach and staring at the sky, unable to watch her son risking his life on 12-foot waves.

Robertson began following Ben and his family to surfing competitions around the world, as well as filming him during training on Tiree. The result was a level of intimacy that helped Ben and his family to feel comfortable baring their souls to the camera. “We just became part of his squad.

You get to know each other very quickly, and we became great friends ultimately, and still are. At the end of the process, when we stopped following them, we would get phone calls from Ben saying ‘Oh we’re really missing you, it seems a bit odd that you’re not in the team anymore.’ Where all these other teams had dietitians and physios, Ben had a film crew and nothing else.”

That closeness extended to Ben’s family. One of Ride the Wave’s most compelling aspects is the

pride and concern Ben’s parents show for their son.

The relationships between the family make the film about more than surfing; it’s about the joy of seeing a child grow up, and the pain of letting them go.

Filming wasn’t always without challenges, however. Having followed Ben to Japan for a major surfing competition, Robertson found that his cameras had arrived… but none of his other bags.

“We’d done a press thing leaving Edinburgh for a sponsor, where we’d all have kilts on, like the Scottish team,” he recalls. “So, we got to Japan and in the end, we had to wear kilts for like 8 days!

We looked absolutely ridiculous as this film crew kicking about on the beach with all these tanned, fit, beautiful people and us rolling around in Scotland t-shirts and kilts feeling a bit smelly.”

Nevertheless, there were some upsides. “The mayor of the town showed us around on behalf of the surfing competition, he hosted a meal and treated us to local delicacies.”

The surfing scenes themselves also proved challenging. “Surfing’s not like a tap, you can’t turn it on and off. You can be filming for four days, 12 hours a day and get nothing. And we did. You need patience, you need a packed lunch, and you need to keep wrapped up and warm.”

Unfortunately, the unpredictable nature of the sport meant that filming could be both expensive and ineffective. Robertson spent the lion’s share of the budget on filming Ben’s first attempt at one of Ireland’s notoriously dangerous big waves, hiring jet skis, cameras in the air and in the water, only for Ben to decide that it would be unsafe. The — 22 —

finale itself was filmed on two handheld cameras from land, and yet it still lands as effectively as any big-budget blockbuster.

“Seeing it for the first time in front of an audience at the London Film Festival, it was magic to hear how a 200-strong audience reacted to the film. I was just a little surprised about just how warm the audience was to the story. Marti has quite a thick Dundonian accent and sometimes can be a little tricky to understand, but most people in the audience said it wasn’t a problem for them, they really understood the essence of what the story was and connected with them as a family.”

Robertson’s second feature, which is currently in development with Sky, will follow a former British champion show-jumper who came from a troubled background and now saves horses’ lives.

However, he’d love to return to Ben’s story at some point in the future. “Already, Ben’s life has changed from when we finished filming til now. I think that’s partly the pandemic, but he’s also taking an interest in girls, doing all the things that young people start to do, so I think he’s a slightly different character now. His life will be quite interesting in a few years’ time.” For now, Robertson’s still on the film festival circuit, riding his own wave of success, wherever it may take him.

Ride the Wave screens 10 & 11 Mar at Glasgow Film Festival glasgowfilm.org/shows/ride-the-wave-nc-8

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If you think it sounds good in the cinema, wait ‘til you hear this iconic music played live by the RSNO. The Force is strong with this one!

USHER HALL, EDINBURGH Fri 6 May GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL Sat 7 May CAIRD HALL, DUNDEE Sun 8 May

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Back in the News Glasgow Short Film Festival present three episodes from Dziga Vertov’s avant-garde newsreel series Kino-Pravda at this year’s edition. We ask the series' curator, Matevž Jerman, why he wanted to contextualise this centuryold news for a modern audience

Film

Interview: Ben Nicholson Illustrations: Michaela Pointon Images: Courtesy collection de La cinémathèque française

March 2022 – Film Special

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he contemporary world is awash with a consistent torrent of video news. From terrestrial television broadcasts to YouTube and social media, from the MSM to ‘fake news’, the way that we consume our informational images is a constant source of discussion and debate in the present day. It can be difficult to remember that just a century ago the notion of moving image news was effectively a conceit of the avant-garde.

Between 1922 and 1925, the legendary Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov – director of the famous Man with a Movie Camera – helmed a groundbreaking newsreel series called Kino-Pravda.

The event Kino-Pravda 100 at this year’s Glasgow Short Film Festival celebrates the centenary of the series by bringing together three episodes along with musical accompaniment from musician and Babe frontman Gerard Black.

Images: Courtesy collection de La cinémathèque française

Across the course of its original three-year run, Vertov clocked up 23 episodes of Kino-Pravda (the title approximately translating to ‘Film-Truth’) which he intended to be the equivalent of a newspaper up on the big screen. The 22 surviving episodes – which range in duration from just over five minutes to more than half an hour – were recently restored and digitised by the Vienna Filmmuseum. This caught the attention of the Slovenian curator Matevž Jerman, who first programmed a selection of the films at the FeKK Ljubljana Short Film Festival where he is programme director. He now brings them to Glasgow.

“I was instantly fascinated by the idea of being able to present the programme at FeKK,” Jerman explains. He was thrilled at the idea of “equipping the screening of Vertov’s exactly-a-century-old newsreels with live contemporary music” and the additional interpretative layers that such a suggestion gives rise to.

“I was familiar with the famous Kino-Pravda newsreels,” Jerman continues, “but must admit that – like many other cinephiles or scholars – I had never actually seen the whole series. So, I engaged in a six-hour binge-watch.” Jerman was struck immediately by the extent to which the principles employed by Vertov a century ago still define our concept of what a documentary film entails. This brought Jerman to perhaps the most interesting part of putting together a screening like this. What does it mean to present and view century-old news footage as a modern viewer?

“An important element during the selection process was the audience’s affinities and a dialogue with the present social condition.

The episodes I settled on – No.7, No.10, and No.19 – are operating with a variety of topics that may indeed sound progressive even today, ranging from covering the trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, streetcar incidents, and the All-Russian Olympiad, to the praising of Soviet working women."

While such topics can seem broadly relatable to a modern audience, there are also likely to be a range of subjects less easy to comprehend, particularly for viewers living far from — 24 —

“In order to understand the present and shape the future, we first need to understand the past” Matevž Jerman Russia. Jerman agrees that it is essential to provide requisite historical context to viewers in situations such as this. “In order for the contemporary viewer to be able to embrace glimpses of Kino-Pravda’s urgent complexity – and establish a subjective but valid perspective – one must look at it from a different point of view compared to how we watch contemporary films.” Whether it is via accompanying articles on the festival website or through inviting knowledgeable speakers to introduce the films, there must be some attempt to offer a route through the material. Only by providing a framework to identify and acknowledge the ideological tendencies at play in this work can a viewer fully appreciate the power and poetry of what Vertov is doing and its place in a political landscape.

Perhaps this connects with why screenings such as Kino-Pravda 100 capture the imagination of contemporary audiences in the way they do: “In order to understand the present and shape the future, we first need to understand the past.

On one side we have the subversive and empowering potential of Dziga Vertov’s or Santiago Álvarez’s newsreels, which is highly contagious. On the other side we have an insight into the apparatus of political propaganda, through the use of the moving image, giving insight into our own age flooded with visual content and fake news.”

Glasgow Short Film Festival, 23-27 Mar Glasgow Short Film Festival presents Kino-Pravda No.7, No.10 and No.19 with a live score from Babe frontman Gerard Black, CCA Theatre, 25 Mar, 8.45pm Junglehussi will be DJing after the screening, Saramago Terrace Bar, 10pm

Images: Courtesy Collection Dziga Vertov-Austrian Film Museum, Vienna

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Cinema Time Travel Film

Ahead of them premiering a new score to Jean Epstein’s The Fall of the House of Usher at HippFest, we chat to musicians Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne about the art of breathing life into cinema from the silent era Interview: Lewis Porteous Illustrations: Michaela Pointon

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“I like to say that we’re musical mediums”

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– the duo are more open to doing so. In Horne’s words, “those are factors in the process – certainly it’s quite nice to include inflections of the nationality if it’s appropriate to the film. But it’s not always appropriate. House of Usher’s a very avant-garde film and for me that’s foregrounded rather than its nationality… With this one, it’s more about creating atmosphere. There’s no single approach that works for every film. We take each on its own terms and don’t have a pre-ordained philosophy of how we should do it.”

However, Baldry notes the film’s place in the canon of French cinema and its influence on some of the country’s most celebrated work.

“House of Usher is amazing. I actually felt weak after watching it because some of the imagery is so strong. You couldn’t get away with it in the 21st century; it’s so gothic and fantastic. I absolutely adore it. These amazing shots of the veiling, with the corpse just drifting across the marshes... great, cavernous corridors with leaves blowing along them and these fluttering curtains. It reminded me a bit of Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête and I wonder if Cocteau had actually watched Epstein’s film.”

For Horne, these evocative images influenced the score itself. “It’s absolutely a silent film, but paradoxically, part of that is how much it suggests sound and music. The whole film is full of images that imply sound – like wind, a guitar playing and strings breaking, bells ringing – very specific references to sound. It’s an absolute gift for musicians in that respect.”

HippFest, The Hippodrome, Bo’ness, 16-20 Mar The Fall of the House of Usher screens with a live score by Elizabeth-Jane Baldry and Stephen Horne, 19 Mar, 8.45pm, the performance will be reprised at the Barbican, London in Apr hippodromecinema.co.uk

March 2022 – Film Special

ead a preview of an arts festival this year hand. “We’ve all seen silent films where the musiand chances are it will begin by stating how cians have chosen to play up some of those oldstarved live audiences have been over the fashioned looking elements,” Baldry notes. “I think course of the pandemin many ways this is disrespectful to ic, suggesting that after the original creators. You want to two years of isolation, make the music exciting for a modern performer and consumaudience, but you also have to er are recharged and respect the intention of the film… ready to move forward People go to silent films wanting with a renewed sense to see a silent film, not a parody.”

Her musical partner concurs. of purpose.

“One way you can help the audience This sentiment is as Stephen Horne acclimatise to the lost language of true of the Hippodrome silent film is by making the best Silent Film Festival as music you can,” says Horne. “You can see a great any other festival event, but it overlooks the eerie film with a bad score and objectively recognise sense of time travel that tends to characterise that it’s a great film, but the event won’t be enjoysilent film exhibition. While blue-balled writers, able. We’re at the service of the film, so it’s quite dancers, dramatists and musicians are ready to a sense of responsibility. We can’t make or break share a backlog of new ideas, the UK’s silent film the film, but rather people’s evenings.” accompanists will soon get to work exhuming Readers may recall a 2015 Glasgow Film corpses roughly a century old.

One of the most anticipated events planned Festival screening of the same film in Pollokshaws for HippFest's return this year is a new score to Burgh Hall with a score built around Wurlitzer Jean Epstein’s brilliant The organ from Irene Buckley. The beauty of silent Fall of the House of Usher cinema, of course, is that the picture will take on from harpist Elizabeth-Jane new life in Baldry and Horne’s hands, and inevitaBaldry and piano man Stephen bly surprise Central Belt enthusiasts already well Horne. “I like to say that we’re acquainted with it. musical mediums, and that the “We like to approach the music pretty much film belongs to the spirit realm with our own themes and ideas, which are someand the audience have come times quite different to those of other people,” to try and get into contact with says Baldry. “It’s what can make the same film it,” declares Horne. “We’re completely different, because a different musician trying to connect the two.” will bring their own emotional response to it.

The duo’s personalities This will usually be unique to that person’s perare as complementary as their sonality. One of the reasons why I love working respective instruments, with Stephen so much is because we tend to both Baldry’s otherworldly warmth have a similar emotional response.” balanced by Horne’s thought“I’m very suggestible,” adds Horne. “I’d be ful, academic manner. While very affected by listening to other scores and in a both are upbeat and effusive way it’s not helpful. We both start with a blank as they discuss their latest page, really.” project, a fundamental seriousWhen asked if they consider a film’s wider ness underpins the task at context – such as its nationality or source material

THE SKINNY

A Womb With a View Ahead of her audiovisual performance of Mother’s Blood at Glasgow’s Sonica festival this month, we catch up with Penelope Trappes Interview: Tony Inglis

Music

Photo: Agnes Haus

March 2022 – Feature

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edro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers, Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, Michelle Zauner’s book Crying in H Mart – the subject of motherhood and the portrayal of mother-daughter relationships seem unusually prevalent. On Penelope Three, the third album in a trilogy from Australia-born, Brighton-based musician Penelope Trappes, released last year, explored a personal account of matriarchal lineage. Pairing dramatic vocals with gothic, often doom-laden pop, Trappes later deconstructed and reformed the record into Mother’s Blood, an audio visual retelling that recalibrated the focus away from Trappes’ personal experience to something more universal. This month, she brings a performance of Mother’s Blood to Glasgow’s Tramway as part of the Sonica festival, a series of shows centering the ‘visual sonic arts’. Trappes is pleased that her work may be part of an unspoken “cultural sine wave”.

“There’s definitely this strange global consciousness that we’re all sort of following and I’m more than happy to be one of the many that are embracing it,” says Trappes. “I think it’s something potentially to do with the idea of nurturing, maybe because the world is getting so manic – the patriarchal sense of things is starting to crumble and it’s becoming obvious to some, and subliminal to

“We all come from the womb, no matter how you identify in your adult life, and I think society has neglected that for too long”

filmmaker Agnes Haus, with whom Trappes says she has a symbiotic and trusting collaborative relationship. The accompanying film was born out of a strong and consistent visual element running through all of Trappes’ work to that point.

“We’d been doing these photography Penelope Trappes sessions exploring the concept of female others, that it’s not identity as a mature woman, the concept of a nude working out. And, and that shocking quality, showing the more real because of that, we’re or slightly ugly, in that sense of non-conventional all trying to embrace beauty,” she says. “I’m very inspired by specific somehow, through our female artists, from Cindy Sherman through to own personal stories, or Louise Bourgeois and Francesca Woodman, these through a movie or a women that were basically challenging identity song, where we come and female perceptions. So those have always sort from or what our experiof been going on in my work. And as we kept ence of nurturing has exploring this, eventually we’re sitting over a been. We all come from coffee and going ‘alright, let’s make a movie.’” the womb, no matter This will be the focal point of Trappes’ how you identify in your performance at Sonica, the film playing as she Penelope Trappes adult life, and I think improvises with drone and samples. If Mother’s society has neglected Blood is an evolution from Penelope Three, this that for too long. I think it’s really cool that the live application of it will be a further evolution unto creative world is holding the mirror up to it.” itself. “It’s exciting me because it will even surprise If we all come from the womb, the sound me. I’m getting into that meditative headspace and produced by Trappes on Mother’s Blood attempts finding frequencies. I feel like I might have to turn to recreate that. Gone are the lyrical plots of the my back to the audience.” songs’ counterparts on Penelope Three, replaced Trappes is committed to the ethos of Sonica by expansive ambient soundscapes that are either in particular – the idea that music can be experiwordless or filled with elongated howls. Often enced in non-classical ways, in non-traditional the music seems to be coming from behind a spaces. “It ties into this idea of shifting social and membrane, muted but bubbling up from beyond, cultural waves,” she says. “Now you don’t just have still irrepressible. to go see a rock band in a normal concert venue.

“Penelope Three was more autobiographical The thought that someone could walk into my and very specific to me,” says Trappes about the show and have an experience that they’re not used differences between these connected works, to because they’re more into visual arts and then which she describes as “sisters”. “It had been this get to have this whole other aural experience is ongoing story which I have put a full stop on for very cool and could be really touching for them. now. It was that moment of me going, I’m just “Changing environments for live music is so gonna come out and tell it like it is, my version, my important, as they create safe spaces. But ultivision, what it means to come from my matriarchal mately, I’ll play anywhere, whether it’s a gallery or lineage, my mother, my daughter, that story and all a forest.” its complexities, and try to convey those and hope that it would resonate. When that was all out on the table, I’d purged it, then I felt somewhat liberated and freer to explore the leftover resonance of that story, and that became less about Penelope Trappes - Mother’s Blood, Tramway, 10 Mar, 9pm, having to be so verbose and obvious about it.” £14 (£7) Further separating Mother’s Blood from Penelope Three is its companion film, created with Part of Sonica sonic-a.co.uk — 26 —

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Music

THE SKINNY

The Sounds of Modern Scotland One half of the curation team behind AMPLIFI tells us what we can expect from this new series, and asks why do Black and POC artists still not have a significant presence on bills and main stages?

Interview: Arusa Qureshi

I

March 2022 – Feature

Photo: Beth Chalmers

n recent years, there has been a considerable increase in been felt by many who understand that it shouldn’t be the battle discussions in the music industry around gender parity and of a select few but one for absolutely everyone that engages in representation on lineups and festival bills. PRS Foundation’s activity around music. This is partly where the thinking behind Keychange initiative, which pushes festivals to commit to lineups AMPLIFI began.

Working with The Queen’s Hall with support from Creative featuring 50% women and gender minorities, has contributed Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council, Halina Rifai and I massively to these conversations and, in turn, to meaningful change in this area. But when the pandemic brought the industry have curated a series of gigs, with the intention of placing emphasis on the achievements of to a halt, there appeared to be greater Black and POC musicians in enthusiasm for a permanent shift in Scotland. AMPLIFI features three proceedings. There was widespread dates across March, April and May hope that the forced pause would with Brownbear, Paix, Bee Asha, encourage the industry to dig deeper Bemz, Washington, AiiTee, Clarissa on issues of diversity and representaWoods, AMUNDA, jayda and Djana tion – providing the time and space Gabrielle all on the bill. needed to make good on the many “First and foremost, it’s the pledges previously uttered.

Certainly, those promises of music,” Rifai tells me when we speak change were in abundance in 2020 about the thinking behind the artists during the protests around Black we’ve chosen. “I recognise that the Lives Matter, with people quite rightly people we have selected are creating feeling emboldened to stand up fantastic music and their potential as against systemic racism and white they move forward, not only in their privilege. So why, a mere two years own right but also as people of later, does it feel as though the furore influence, is notable.” has died down? Why do Black and The tagline for the series – “the POC artists still not have a signifisounds of modern Scotland” – was AMUNDA cant presence on bills and on main our way of highlighting that these stages? And similarly, why, as Laura voices not only exist but are thriving Snapes wrote in The Guardian last and are representative of the incredyear, has the issue of gender equality ible level of talent that exists in this on lineups “fallen by the wayside”? country. Each gig has been curated I don’t have the answers to with musicians of varying genres and these questions, other than the tired disciplines in mind, with each night argument that the industry is bouncpurposely promising a different ing back from the pandemic and experience to the one before. therefore can’t afford (read: doesn’t “I think Scotland is often want) to think about diversity. I know stereotyped when it comes to music,” Amandah Wilkinson, aka AMUNDA that in Scotland the frustration has Rifai says. “While there is a legacy

“The argument of ‘it’s what’s popular, it’s what sells tickets’ just can’t be the excuse anymore” — 28 —

THE SKINNY Photo: Michael Ozmond Djana Gabrielle

“The sound of modern Scotland is eclectic and genrebending”

AMPLIFI takes place at The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh with Brownbear, Paix and Bee Asha (16 Mar); Bemz, Washington, AiiTee and Clarissa Woods (6 Apr); AMUNDA, jayda and Djana Gabrielle (25 May)

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March 2022 – Feature

Photo: Paul Jennings Brownbear

Wilkinson, who will be performing alongside Djana Gabrielle and fellow Hen Hoose member jayda on 25 May, feels strongly that balanced lineups are vital for the whole ecosystem of the music industry. “The argument of ‘it’s what’s popular, it’s what sells tickets’ just can’t be the excuse anymore. With streaming services we are exposed everyday to thousands of amazing, diverse artists that we maybe had never heard of before, that end up attaining a huge following, but it’s not being reflected in live shows, festivals and events.”

“Music is a business based on songs and stories,” Hickman continues.

“We all have different ones and everyone Djana Gabrielle should be able to see themselves within those stories or the artists portraying them on stage.”

Gabrielle adds that we should be considering younger generations of musicians coming up in the industry and how diversity in lineups affects them. “I think we should pay more attention to the range or lack of voices included in bills because we’re sending a message to those who are underrepresented; we are telling them that they also matter and they have their place in these lineups.”

With this notion in mind, Rifai reminds me of the phrase “we can be who we can see”. And this really lies at the heart of what AMPLIFI is all about. Homogenous experiences and prescriptive power structures are no longer satisfactory, especially in any society with tolerance at its core. As Rifai argues, “There are fundamental issues that need to be addressed and in order to help progress them we need more people of colour, more women and gender minorities, more people who identify as disabled, more people who have lived experience with mental health and more in management positions, in booking positions.”

We acknowledge that putting on a few gigs is by no means a radical act. But it’s an opportunity for us to share and applaud some of our very favourites in Scotland, while also hopefully fostering further discussion and subsequent action around how the music industry chooses to engage with minoritised communities. It’s not about just a few gigs, it’s about making a longterm commitment in programming, curating and booking. The time is over for cop-outs and excuses.

Music

that is important to a lot of people, there is a regurgitation and people don’t look beyond a certain pool. ‘Sounds of modern Scotland’ for me shows a different side of Scotland that may not be recognised but a side that is helping lead the way.” Djana Gabrielle agrees with this sentiment. “I have been living in Scotland for seven years now,” she says, “and to me the sound of modern Scotland is eclectic and genre-bending.”

For Matt Hickman (Brownbear), the AMPLIFI shows are an example of what is possible, but also a signal to those that should be paying closer attention. “Hopefully bookers and festivals look at this as an opportunity to introduce themselves further to diverse artists rather than passing around a list of folk they think may be Black or Brown to book for their quota,” he explains.

“Artists like Bemz are trailblazing right now, flying the flag for Ayrshire, for Scotland and the BIPOC community. That is the beauty of the Scottish sound; it is and always has been diverse.”

Hickman has been active in the Scottish music scene for years and has witnessed a general shift in attitudes. However, like me, he still feels that there hasn’t been a significant enough change in the foundation of lineups, especially as we move through the pandemic. “I don’t feel that many of the lineups have really changed,” he says, “but perhaps in the defence of some festivals and shows, we are still seeing the backlog of reschedules from pre- and early pandemic times. Often when we do see line-up changes, it is one act or it feels tokenistic. I really hope that I am wrong but it doesn’t feel like we are quite there yet.”

Rifai is of the same opinion, commenting: “I still feel a lot of work has to be done. I totally sympathise that income and livelihood have been put into question but there has been time for reflection and opportunity to research. A number of UK festival announcements are still predominantly white men.”

Likewise, Amandah Wilkinson (AMUNDA) doesn’t believe that there has been a discernible change when it comes to the lineups of more established festivals and events. However, like Rifai and I, she is quietly hopeful that the work being done on a more grassroots level will gradually filter through to those large-scale events.

“We are seeing those who are disappointed in the lack of diversity actively doing something about it,” Wilkinson explains.

“We are seeing more independent festivals pop up, we are seeing creators and curators longing for representation starting to create their own opportunities and in turn involving and giving a hand up to those in the music community who don’t have the visibility they deserve. Now is the time that people are taking the power into their own hands, which is hopefully only going to grow and encourage others that are feeling the same to get involved.”

THE SKINNY

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If you're a young carer, apply for the

Young Carer Grant Young carers play a hugely important role in society but their work often goes overlooked – even by their friends and teachers. The Young Carer Grant can help these carers access some of the life opportunities their peers take for granted Words: Jamie Dunn

March 2022

B

eing a teenager isn’t easy. There’s the constant pressure of school and homework, and the dreaded exams at the end of it all that could end up defining your future. On top of getting your head around algebra and mastering composition, you’ve also to do the hard work of starting to figure out who you are and the type of person you want to be. And that’s all while there are a whole bunch of hormones coursing around your body affecting your mood, mind and physical appearance. In short, growing up can be tricky. But some young people have to grow up a bit faster than others if they’re among the estimated 29,000 young carers in Scotland.

The Carers Trust defines a young carer as someone aged 18 or under who cares for a family member or friend who cannot cope without their support. This relative – usually a parent or sibling – might have a disability or illness that requires daily care, a mental health condition or drug or alcohol problems. As well as providing physical, mental and emotional support for that person, the young carer might have to learn the type of skills expected of a nurse or home help to make sure the person they care for has their needs met. And young carers often have many more household responsibilities than your average teen, from laundry and housework to cooking, shopping, picking up prescriptions and making sure bills get paid.

Many young carers may not even consider themselves young carers. Children as young as five might start helping out around the house, taking on extra responsibilities without realising these aren’t expected of other children. And the people around young carers – like neighbours, teachers and friends – might not realise they’re carers either. The Children’s Society estimates that 39% of young carers keep their caring responsibilities secret, despite the fact they often have to miss school or cancel plans with their friends to take care of their loved ones.

The pressure on young carers, then, can be immense.

And this pressure was only exacerbated by the pandemic, which kept young carers at home 24/7 and meant they weren’t able to take a break. Many young people in this position are burnt out, exhausted and denied many of the freedoms their friends take for granted. This is why the Young Carer Grant – the first benefit of its kind in the UK – has been introduced in Scotland: to go some way towards helping young carers access the life opportunities that are the norm for many of their peers.

The Young Carer Grant is a yearly payment of £308.15 (this figure is due to increase on 1 April) that you can apply for if you’re aged 16 to 18 years-old and if you have acted as a carer for an average of 16 hours a week for at least the last three months.

And if you care for more than one person, you can combine the hours of the people you care for to reach that average 16 hours.

How you spend your Young Carer Grant is not prescribed. It might help you take a break from caring and be put towards a holiday. Equally, it could be used to freshen up your wardrobe, get yourself some driving lessons or have a few nice nights out with friends. It’s completely up to you, but the aim is to give you some of the opportunities you may have had to sacrifice by being a young carer.

The person you care for will need to be recieving a qualifying benefit, but don’t worry if you don’t know, Social Security Scotland can check for you. Otherwise, the grant isn’t means tested – you can apply whatever your household income – and you don't need to be in education to qualify. And don’t worry, accepting the grant has no bearing on any other benefits you or the people in your household receive.

Young Carers play a hugely important role in society.

Their responsibilities are often huge and their dedication to helping other people is remarkable and should be better rewarded. It is also vital that young carers get the opportunity to take a break from time to time and are supported to look after their mental health. While many young carers suffer in silence, they should be encouraged to speak out at school and at work about the huge burden they have taken on.

We'd encourage all young carers aged 16 to 18 to apply for the Young Carer Grant, which they can claim each year for up to three consecutive years.

If you think you or someone you know could be eligible, please visit mygov.scot/young-carer-grant/how-to-apply for more information.

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THE SKINNY

Good Things Come Unlike any other New Contemporaries cohort, this year’s exhibitors arrive in the RSA two years after art school having skipped the big degree show moment Art

Words: Adam Benmakhlouf Image: courtesy Hannah Lim

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ach year, the Royal Scottish Academy picks a selection of their favourite graduates. But the pandemic means that (unlike any other New Contemporaries) even if students are presenting their degree show work, chances are the work hasn’t had a proper public outing before now. This might be the closest we come to a delayed degree show presentation for the Scottish 2020 graduates, even if what we see is just a selection of the students who finished as the pandemic descended.

Image: courtesy Cat and Eimear McClay

The Glow Worm, Film still, Alice Pool

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Artist Stella Rooney has made a film that is structured around four different women in industry in Dundee. One woman worked in the jute industry, one worked in the Timex watch factory. They are included along with two women who work now in hospitality and care.

Rooney says. “Workingclass women’s history is Mary, 2021, Film photograph, Stella Rooney not collected or recorded with the merit it deserves. It was important for me… to represent the women in dignified, strong ways.”

March 2022 – Feature

Image: courtesy Alice Pool

Graduating in Sculpture and Environmental Art, Alice Pool is also making the most of the seemingly lockdown-proof possibilities of digital animation to create imaginary new worlds. “A lot of my films are from direct experiences… there’s no beginning or an end. [The film holds] the potential of a story that isn’t told, so it’s up to the audience to take what they want from it or not,” Pool explains.

Image: courtesy Stella Rooney

Artist duo Cat McClay and Éiméar McClay combine their exquisitely crafted computer generated visuals of Christian reliquaries with research into the Magdalene laundries in Film still, Cat and Eimear McClay Ireland, where single pregnant women and their babies would be incarcerated and subjected to torturous conditions. Éiméar describes their parsimonious use of the copious horrific details in reports they read. They carefully avoided being needlessly "shocking", acknowledging the risk of work that "desensitises people, or creates some kind of distance."

Hannah Lim makes work that critically engages with Chinoiserie, the 18thcentury European market’s appropriation of Chinese art and design. Lim is exhibiting some small clay works inspired by the snuff bottles that Lim has observed in the Six Legged Lion Footed Snuff Bottle, 2021, East Asian sections of Polymer Clay and Jesmonite, Hannah Lim_ many museums. Lim is also showing ‘flatpacked’ works. These are built up by slotting flat parts together; they are ornamental but also functional. Lim’s flamboyant and playful works tackle the colonial history of the historical trend, while critically reflecting on her mixed Singaporean and British heritage.

March 2022

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Image: courtesy Sherry Trimon

THE SKINNY

March 2022

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Untitled 1, 2020, photography, Sherry Trimon

THE SKINNY

“Some part of my brain among everything had been filtering ... hanging onto little pieces that I could make work about”

Tayo Adekunle’s body of work Reclamation of the Exposition “explores the commodification, fetishisation and sexualisation of the black female body, specifically through the human displays in ethnographic expositions in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The work is influenced by ethnographic photographs which were circulated as pornography.”

Adekunle’s collages combine her own image literally or stylistically with the historical photography that she directly references.

Image: courtesy Tayo Adekunle

Heather McDonald

Art

Image: courtesy Heather MacDonald

Heather McDonald’s work will take the form of large scale sculptures, with interwoven fabric, metal, glass and wooden elements. She takes inspiration from the period when she was a full-time carer for her mum and dad, who were simultaneously diagnosed with cancer. “Some part of my brain among everything had been filtering all the information and all things I was seeing and trying to transform it in some way, hanging onto little pieces that I could make work about.”

Reclamation of the Exposition, Tayo Adekunle

Image: courtesy Lauren Ferguson

Untitled, leather, glass, mild steel, 2021, Heather MacDonald

Dylan Esposito is drawn towards the ideas behind architecture and design and more recently his work has been about failed utopian visions. “I’ve always drawn parallels between that and my own experiences as someone who is autistic, and not fitting in exactly as you’d like to… One of the works I’m putting in is called Carpet Carpet Burn, Wood, Paint Coir Matting, 2021, Dylan Esposito Burn and it’s a big slide, and it obviously doesn’t work: there’s a rug that’s draped down it.” Esposito says he’s “more interested in presenting [parts of his lived experience of autism] in a more humorous and human way than as something pitiable.”

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From an unknown shore III, graphite on paper, 2021, Lauren Ferguson

Image: courtesy Marie-Chantal Hamrock

Image: courtesy Dylan Esposito

March 2022 – Feature

Image: courtesy Aki Hassan

Aki Hassan describes the pandemic meaning they found themselves suddenly back in Singapore, where they lived before attending A Tired Holder, Held and Holding, powder-coated Glasgow School of Art. steel metal and found objects, 2021, Aki Hassan Here, they realised “the act of making work is what is important in my practice and the activity in the workshop is just as important as the final product.” Their small scale metal sculptures are about “writing through lines and creating forms to respond to certain activities and actions.” And in RSA, this body of work arises from “being held or holding.”

One of the most traditionally technique-based contributions comes from Lauren Ferguson, who has generated a new body of carefully detailed drawings based around the Highland village Killin. Ferguson spends extended periods of time deeply researching the places her drawings depict, slowly whittling down to one single image. “In one of my pieces, I’ve hand-written all the times that I’ve spent on the drawings… it’s about that time and process, about being immersed in a piece of work.”

Marie ChantalHamrock’s work combines film, sculpture and painting. Her film BUOY takes the form of a strange documentary, building a critical framework to reflect on the social oppression she observed while growing up in Ireland. Archival images of the choppy The Sea Speculum, Marie-Chantal Hamrock North Sea open the film, and as some way along the telling of stories about undersea moths and historical tales of women deep-sea diving in the North Sea, the film itself seems to change in mood from placid to something more difficult to map out with any certainty.

RSA: New Contemporaries continues until 3 Apr, £6(£4)

THE SKINNY

March 2022

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March 2022

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

A Change of Pace After working as a session musician for a who’s who of pop talent, Hinako Omori is ready to take centre stage with the release of her debut album, a journey...

Interview: Michael Lawson

“Recently I’ve felt the need for calming music more than ever”

“I’ve had the nickname ‘Grandma’ ever since I was a kid, I think I operate at an average of about 20 BPM!” Hinako Omori

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Hinako Omori

a journey… is released on 18 Mar via Houndstooth hinakoomori.com

March 2022 – Feature

Photo: Annie Lai

music more than ever,” she agrees. “I’m sure lockdown and the general situation of the last couple of years have contributed to that. It’s something that can help nurture a gentler environment and I feel like it’s become more prominent with everyone’s pace of life slowing down during this period.”

So how does one stand out in the increasingly oversaturated ambient music market?

Particularly when the product, according to one of its founding fathers, must be “as ignorable as it is interesting”? In the case of her new album, Omori went above and beyond, making 360° field recordings of the surrounding woodlands using a binaural head she borrowed from Real World – a technique that enables the listener to feel immersed within nature.

Playing out as one continuous stream of consciousness, it’s a project partly inspired by the cognitive distortions that occur when delving into old memories. “I wanted to revisit those memories and make peace with them,” she expands. “Sound as a healing process.”

Looking ahead, Omori expresses equal parts excitement and nervousness at the prospect of a headline show at the Southbank Centre on 19 March. In collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, the landmark performance will see a journey... reimagined from a live perspective, with the aim of “blurring the lines between organic instrumentation and the electronic side of things.”

Staying firmly on brand, she intends to conduct a guided meditation prior to performing, as a means of eliciting a sense of calm among the audience. It’s the creative approach of an artist who communicates every inch of her blissful being through her music – from the therapeutic frequencies to her own soothing vocal tones.

“I didn’t necessarily think I’d end up making music,” she reflects. “I didn’t set out to become a performer or anything like that, but I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to make a living doing something I enjoy.

I can’t call it a job because I love it too much.”

Music

H

inako Omori’s debut album is, in her own university,” she stresses. “Particularly my lecturer words, a “happy accident.” Its formation Lloyd and classmates at Reigate – we all inspired stemmed from the musician, producer and each other to make our own music and that helped sound engineer being asked to contribute to convince me to take the path that I did.”

WOMAD at HOME, an online series inviting artists That said, she is quick to dismiss the notion to use the world-class recording facilities of Real that an academic background is essential for a World Studios and live streaming the results. successful career in music. “It’s definitely useful “I had all of these demos that I’d accumulated but I don’t necessarily think you need it,” she over the years,” Omori recalls. “They were basically explains. “There’s no right or wrong way to do just recordings of me experimenting with my things and, if anything, I think people with no synthesisers. Rather than musical training have a creating an entirely new wonderful advantage in composition, I thought terms of finding their own that I’d try and string them unique path. It all boils together to create one down to choosing what’s continuous piece of work. right for you.”

Tapping into a Somehow it all seemed to passion for synthesisers fit quite naturally.”

Suddenly Omori found during her university years, Hinako Omori herself in possession of a Omori immediately found fully-formed LP: a stunning work as a session musicollection of lucid ambient soundscapes interwocian upon graduating, working with the likes of KT ven with enchanting field recordings. Aptly-titled Tunstall, James Bay and Ellie Goulding, and later a journey…, the ten-track release offers a vivid lending her synth and keyboard expertise to the live snapshot of an artist who has spent much of her shows of Kae Tempest and Radiohead’s Ed adult life immersed in music.

O’Brien. Despite this fruitful foray into the pop Born in Yokohama, Japan and raised in world, Omori soon found herself gravitating towards London, her musical journey can be traced back slower tempos and altogether more meditative Zto learning the piano for the first time as a child. sounds – a shift reflective of her general outlook After receiving a recommendation from a friend, and pace of life. “It’s funny, I’ve had the nickname she then decided to take things further by enroll‘Grandma’ ever since I was a kid,” she laughs. ing in a music technology course at Reigate “I think I operate at an average of about 20 BPM!” By the time she released the hazy, explorative College, which blossomed into a sound engineersonics of her debut EP Auraelia in 2019, she was ing degree from the University of Surrey. “I really well on her way to ambient nirvana – a journey that owe a lot to my lecturers at both college and was subsequently expedited by the isolation of multiple COVID-19 lockdowns.

“Recently I’ve felt the need for calming

Music

THE SKINNY

Hits to the Head March 2022 – Feature

We delve into Franz Ferdinand’s Hits to the Head tracklist and ask Alex Kapranos 20 questions relating to each track, some more tenuous than others...

Interview: Tallah Brash

T

he Skinny: On the same day Darts of Pleasure was released, Black Eyed Peas topped the charts. You performed with them at the 2005 Grammys. Were you a fan?

Alex Kapranos: Well, I really liked that song, Let’s Get It Started. They were coming from a totally different universe from us, but a good song is a good song. will.i.am was a very friendly guy. I remember him saying, “I want to sample Take Me Out”. I think he gave me his email address but I never wrote to him because I don’t think I wanted to be sampled.

Take Me Out has appeared on countless ‘greatest of all time’ lists. What song would be on your ‘greatest of all time’ list?

I am going to choose just one at random – He’s Frank by The Monochrome Set. I always loved The Monochrome Set, particularly that era. Just really smart lyrics, unusual guitar lines, great delivery.

On The Dark of the Matinée you were dreaming of telling Terry Wogan how you’d made it. Did you ever meet Sir Terry? And how did you deal with your success at the time?

I never did meet Terry Wogan. When we made the video there was an image of him that we used, so we had to ask his permission. Apparently initially he was a bit pissed off because I said “So I’m on BBC Two now, telling Terry Wogan how”, and he said he was never on BBC Two, he was on BBC One and Radio Two. And I was like... a bit of poetic licence.

I tried to ignore [fame] for a long time, I tried to laugh at it and I tried to hide from it. I remember Christmas 2004 having to get Christmas presents for my family. I went into Argyle Street wearing a pair of glasses that had fake lenses in and combed my hair back and wore a big blue puffer jacket thinking nobody would see me. I just got people coming up to me going, “you’re that guy fae Franz Ferdinand, how come you’re wearing they specs?”

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Who’s your favourite famous Michael?

He’s not necessarily my favourite Michael, but it’s Michael Knight from Knight Rider. I just have a distinct memory of [the way] KITT the car [said] “Michael”. Amazing theme tune as well.

What are your thoughts on the recent fires at the Glasgow School of Art? The Art School fires were an absolute catastrophe. The Art School was essential for us as a band when we were starting out. Bob was studying at the Art School, Paul was a life model, Nick and I both had girlfriends [there], so it was central to our social lives. When I was on the dole, I used to go to my girlfriend’s lectures, so I knew the place really well. Yeah, I was devastated, it’s a terrible loss.

The video for Do You Want To aired every hour on MTV2 the day it came out – the way we consume

Photo: David Edwards

THE SKINNY

Shortly after the release of Walk Away, Boris Johnson became the Shadow Minister for Higher Education.

Do you think he’s doing a good job as PM? What a thought, eh?

Fucking hell! A malevolent comedy is how I would describe it because he plays the role of buffoon, like Satan wearing a clown’s mask. Boris Johnson has managed to hoodwink ordinary people in the United Kingdom into believing that he represents them when he doesn’t care for them at all. He purely wants to exploit them and line the pockets of himself and his pals.

I saw you at the SECC in 2005 but missed Outsiders as I had to catch a train. At that show I bought a pair of Franz Ferdinand knickers – how did you end up selling underwear as merch?

I can’t remember whose idea that was, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. I do

You’ve worked with some amazing producers over the years, including Dan Carey who produced Lucid Dreams. You’re also known for your production work – what was it like working on the recent Los Bitchos record?

When I first saw them, I loved what they did because they immediately referenced a lot of music that I like. Serra [Petale], the main songwriter in the band [is] really drawn to Turkish psychedelia, and there’s a big crossover with the Greek music I grew up with. Also, they were really good fun to hang out with.

In the same year Ulysses was released, the Ulysses space probe did its final scan of the sun.

What do you think of Elon Musk’s plans for space travel?

I don’t really care to be totally honest. It’s just obscenely rich people indulging their fantasies and I don’t consider it in any way advancing the human cause to any degree. I think if that was his real motivation, there are better things he could be doing.

You played the last ever T in the Park at Balado, opening with No You Girls. How did TRNSMT compare when you played in 2018?

It’s funny, TRNSMT actually reminded me more of how T in the Park was when it was in Strathclyde Park. I’ve got very, very good memories of Balado and T in the Park and playing there and just going there as well, so obviously my view of TRNSMT is going to be a little bit coloured by that. They’re both really good festivals in their respective environments.

You played several festivals in 2012, debuting Right Action. You also paid homage to Donna Summer, covering I Feel Love. What’s your favourite cover?

Oh yeah! My favourite cover is Tainted Love, what an amazing song. Maybe because it’s my favourite song to sing at karaoke, I just love it. I’ve loved it since I was a kid and I’ve never stopped loving it.

The video for Evil Eye is filled with gruesome B-movie horror imagery. What’s your favourite scary movie?

Visually, it’s Suspiria, the original [Dario] Argento version, just in terms of the vividness of the colours and the inventiveness of the imagery.

But my favourite scariest movie is probably American Werewolf in London. I remember seeing it when I was a kid and it gave me nightmares for months afterwards.

A month before you released Love Illumination, Daft Punk returned with Random Access Memories. Were you a fan?

I always liked the whole French touch movement... and Daft Punk never disappointed me. Good record, sound of the summer, right?

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A couple of months after Stand on the Horizon was released, the Scottish independence referendum took place. What are your thoughts on a possible indyref2?

The last few years have been a real deflation, there were so many negative results: the indy ref, then Brexit, then Trump, Boris Johnson, it just seemed like one after the other of disappointments. But Trump got kicked out, I remain an optimist and I still remain an optimist for Scotland’s future.

Always Ascending was your first single with Dino Bardot (1990s) and Julian Corrie (Miaoux Miaoux) – who are some of your new favourite Scottish artists?

There’s one in my mind at the moment just because I saw them/him play recently, and that’s Broken Chanter – really beautiful songs and a great band. And Medicine Cabinet, I think there’s something very exciting going on there. I’m looking forward to see what happens with them.

Glimpse of Love is essentially an anti-misogyny song, with lyrics lifted from sidebar tabloid headlines. Are tabloids getting any better?

Oh, possibly worse. I accidentally stumbled on a disgusting website recently and it’s exactly the same, the grotesque objectification of women in that context is still happening, it’s still rife... it feels very disparate at the moment. There are the people who are switched on and know how to stand up for people’s rights etc, and then there are people who just don’t really care, and the gulf between them just seems to be getting wider. I find that extremely depressing.

The music video for Curious is loads of fun. Why was now the time for a proper choreographed video?

It’s something that we wanted to do for a long time... Paul [Thomson, ex-drummer] always hated dancing and so I think me and Bob went wild. We did it with our friend Andy [Knowles], we literally just sat around talking about what we’d love to see in a video and we made a video that looked like that... Rather than being lame about it, or not putting any effort in, everybody totally embraced it.

Does this greatest hits album and other new single Billy Goodbye hint at the end for Franz Ferdinand?

Oh, no, no, now we’re starting work on volume two!

We’ve been talking about doing [this] for a while, but I was speaking to Laurence [Bell] who runs Domino and he kept on saying, you know you can only really fit about 20 songs on a double LP. So there’s always been this thing, “well if we don’t do it now...” I’m happy to get it out and we’re working on the next record already!

Hits to the Head is released on 11 Mar via Domino Franz Ferdinand play the OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 10 Nov franzferdinand.com

March 2022 – Feature

What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you on stage in 20 years of performing – have you ever fallen?

Aaaah, The Fallen, I’ve got you, I love these questions! We were headlining this festival in Korea, the stage was sodden wet and I went to do a high kick and ended up flat on my back. But the most embarrassing thing was [when] we were opening up for PJ Harvey in Nice, I jumped up and did the splits in the air. As I did so the tight trousers, which Hedi Slimane had made for me, well the seams weren’t as well sewn as they could have been, and I hadn’t had access to a washing machine for a while so wasn’t wearing any underwear. Everything fell out, shall we say?

remember going on Frank Skinner’s show and being interviewed à la Terry Wogan style and towards the end of the interview him standing up and pulling his trousers down – he was wearing a pair! He must have been suffering the whole time he was wearing them.

Music

music has changed a lot since then. What do you think of Spotify?

I have mixed thoughts. I love how instantaneously music is available.

I think that’s wonderful, and as a consumer that’s revolutionary. But the quality’s pretty terrible... [it’s like] the difference between looking at a photograph from an inkjet printer and looking through a telescope at the real thing. But worst of all, musicians need to get paid. Daniel Ek [CEO of Spotify] is a multi-billionaire and there are musicians starting out who can’t afford to pay their rent. It’s an extremely fucked up and wrong situation.

March 2022

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

Language Barrier On his latest album, Unspoken Words, Max Cooper pushes himself further than he ever has before. We meet the Belfast-born audiovisual artist to discuss the multifaceted project and the limitations of language Interview: Nadia Younes

“The real nature of our internal conditions is a lot more nuanced and complex… where words tend to categorise things into this positive or negative valence” Max Cooper

Photo: Enda Bowe

Cooper’s explorations of language extended into technological realms too. For the visual presentation of Symphony in Acid, Cooper enlisted code artist Ksawery Komputery to build a system which reacted to two of Wittgenstein’s writings – Tractatus and Philisophical Investigations – and for Exotic Contents, he worked with machine learning researcher Xander Steenbrugge to convert Wittgenstein’s texts into moving images.

“We were able to take the Wittgenstein text where he’s battling with the problems with words, and the problems of trying to find our place in the world using words to describe our internal states,” he says. “All these issues he’s battling with in this really intense written manner, we were able to convert that into a visual… and that was another way of exploring the idea of the album in a slightly less personal way.”

Not content with the huge scale of the project visually, however, Cooper also took its production to another level and recorded the album using Dolby Atmos at London’s String and Tins studio. “You take every piece of sound – every element of every piece of music – and you decide how big it is, where it sits in a three-dimensional space around the listener, how it moves in time,” he says. “You do that with every piece of audio… and turn each piece of music into a dynamic, three-dimensional living organism.”

Unspoken Words feels like just that; a living thing that exists not only as an album and visual project but as a complete experience. It’s there to be explored in various ways and across multiple formats, providing a unique experience for each person.

Unspoken Words is released on 25 Mar via Mesh

Max Cooper

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Max Cooper plays SWG3, Glasgow, 14 Apr

March 2022 – Feature

what it was, and then I would link that emotional idea to a visual structure,” he says.

“For example, Spectrum, on the album… was beautiful and happy, at the same time as being sad and reflective, so it was a combination of things that words don’t combine naturally,” he continues.

“The real nature of our internal conditions is a lot more nuanced and complex… where words tend to categorise things into this positive or negative valence, and I think that doesn’t fully capture the internal state.”

With the limitations of language very much at the centre of Unspoken Words, Cooper took inspiration from the works of probably the most comprehensive explorer of language in history, the late philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Notoriously unpredictable and inconsistent, Wittgenstein was well-known for frequently shifting his viewpoints and questioning his own thinking. But this seemingly chaotic approach did fit with his overall theory that language, and the ways in which we use it, is inherently flawed.

“I was thinking about where to turn to; people that have battled with this idea previously, and I remembered Wittgenstein, who was famous for saying that the problems of philosophy are problems of language,” he says. “Essentially, a lot of philosophers were arguing about all these things… [but] he broke it down and said a lot of this is just because the language we use is imperfect and people use it differently, and there are a lot of problems with language. So I turned to his writings, which are famously dense and incomprehensible, and used them as source material for several of the video projects.”

Clubs

W

hen Max Cooper came up with the concept for his new album, Unspoken Words, he didn’t fully think through the promotional aspect. “Now comes the time when I have to try and put into words this thing where the whole idea is that I’m trying to express things I can’t put into words, so there’s a bit of a paradox there,” he laughs.

Throughout his career, Cooper has established himself as one of the most interesting audiovisual artists working in electronic music, exploring the intersection between music, film, art and science. His previous five studio albums and varied collaborative works have all proven him to be a meticulous and deeply thoughtful artist, crafting carefully-curated worlds for each project and very much throwing the listener, or viewer, into them headfirst.

But his latest studio album, Unspoken Words, feels like his most ambitious work to date, with each of its 13 tracks written and produced as audiovisual works and culminating in an accompanying full-length Blu-ray film to be released alongside the album. Cooper worked with various visual artists – some of whom are frequent collaborators of his – for each of the 13 short films to convey a range of feelings and emotions that can often be difficult to articulate through words.

But, with the benefit of additional time for reflection and expression brought about by lockdown, Cooper was able to challenge himself a bit more and switched up his usual creative process. “It was the most intuitive approach to an album by far,” he says. “I would write the music and I would have a very clear emotional idea of

THE SKINNY

Body Horror We meet Julia Armfield to learn about her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea

March 2022 – Feature

W

hen Julia Armfield saw Roald Dahl’s The Witches as a child, she was, she says, “disgusted and thrilled” by the moment where a little boy is turned into a mouse.

“It was so gross how they did it,” she laughs. “It’s almost puppet-y, you can’t quite tell whether it’s special effects.” A similar odd-couple response comes up when she mentions Titane, Julia Ducournau’s mechanophilic body horror which won big at Cannes last year. “Everything that is so horrific and violent about that movie,” Armfield says, “is also kind of tender and liberating.”

Disgusting and thrilling, horrific and tender: this is horror as Armfield sees it – and writes it.

Her first book Salt Slow was a collection of uncanny, bloody, haunting short stories where girls turn to wolves and shadowed ghosts of sleep leave an entire city insomniac. With her debut novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, the story of a deep-sea research expedition gone horribly and mysteriously wrong is similarly steeped in this strange enmeshing of fear and yearning. Marine biologist Leah returns to her wife Miri eerily altered, unable to find purchase either on dry land or in their once-swelling romance. Flitting between Leah’s travelogue of the doomed voyage and Miri’s grief-tinged present-day narrative, reading Armfield’s book feels like the first gasp of breaking surface in salted water, half-drowned and heavy-limbed.

It’s an oddly bodily reading experience but this is nothing less than apropos; in Armfield’s fiction, the body is a crucible of anxiety and possibility, pregnant with the potential of violent transformation. “The horror that has always worked for me is bodily,” she explains, “because I think the body is the baffle between us and the world.” Inspired heavily by film rather than literature – Armfield fluently reels off The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Suspiria, and The Exorcist as familiar touchstones – Our Wives Under the Sea was initially a short story idea but really began as an image in Armfield’s head, of a woman’s body dissolving.

“We think of the place that we live as the real world, but actually far more creatures live under the sea” Julia Armfield

“There was the sense of her in the bath, but melting,” she says.

“So much horror that is successful to me usually turns on transformation or possession or mutilation.” In her novel, this bodily precarity is scored through with ecological instability, the boundaries between human and nonhuman made porous as Leah increasingly slips through Miri’s grasp. The easy fragility of these bodies that we believe to be so defined, so realised become a sign of our insignificance within wilder, indifferent worlds. “I think,” Leah says blankly midway through the novel, “that there was too much water. I think we let it get in.”

“We think of the place that we live as the real world, but actually far more creatures live under the sea,” Armfield says. “The guy who is in charge of [Leah’s expedition] was always intended to be Elon Musk-y: that idea of doing something just because they can and the people and places they go to are incidental.

But why do they need to be there?

Why are they necessarily the good guys just because they happen to be human? I’m interested in the idea of us as entirely incidental.”

For Armfield, there is release as well as fear to be found in the unbounded nature of this decentring and transformation, in the radical possibilities of flouting categorisation.

Her fiction is often a reconsideration of the monstrous, a realisation that the horrific is very often the unveiling of a realer self. “I think there are often queer elements to that,” Armfield adds. “Claiming what is considered monstrous and that actually being liberating.”

This queerness, of course, winds its way throughout her novel, trickling and soaking into every available crevice and pore. Leah and Miri’s love story – told through fragmented flashbacks and aching reminiscences as Leah’s ship sinks beneath the ocean and Miri witnesses her subsequent deterioration – is deliriously romantic because it feels so utterly, tangibly everyday, a longed-for normal in the midst of haunting change.

Leah and Miri duck into cinemas, eat dinners lazily on the floor and make out in bars. Miri’s hunger for the return of this natural intimacy becomes the novel’s anchor, the strong beat of its battered, tender heart.

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Photo: Sophie Davidson

Books

Interview: Anahit Behrooz

Julia Armfield

“I think you can read Salt Slow in retrospect as a coming out book, and this is the next thing,” Armfield says. “It’s about the dailiness of living in a world in which you’re not necessarily the norm, but have carved out something resembling normality. And that was important in the very specific ways that you have to approach difficulty and grief and trauma. I’ve had a lot of people say to me: ‘Oh, it’s really universal’, which is lovely.” Armfield laughs, “But it is also about lesbians.”

It is, ultimately, this specificity that makes Our Wives Under the Sea so dizzying: the vulnerability of love when it is rendered invisible, the out-of-your-mind terror of this vulnerability in the face of disinterest. This is a love – and a world – that pulls you under.

Picador, 3 Mar, £16.99

THE SKINNY

Smackdown Fringe darling sketch duo Max & Ivan make the leap to the small screen with Deep Heat, a sitcom set in the world of British Pro Wrestling Interview: Polly Glynn

Deep Heat will be on ITV2 and ITV Hub later this month

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March 2022 – Feature

“It isn’t about hurting each other, it’s about making each other look amazing”

properly train our actors and they really threw themselves in.

Literally.” The team were soon engrossed: “Once you’re in a wrestling ring, bouncing off ropes and leaping off the top and slamming onto the mat, it infuses you with excitement, so they were all incredibly keen to go and see live wrestling which is still a kind of school trip that’s on the agenda.”

The six-part series is a classic underdog tale of a downon-its-luck wrestling company in the northwest, spurned by its top performers for a newer, flashier opportunity. The duo created and wrote the series (alongside Detectorists and Chewing Gum’s script editor Andrew Ellard), as well as playing Jack and Woodhouse, two of Boss Pro Wrestling’s most hapless trainees. Jack is “incredibly uptight and neurotic and nervous.

He has the athletic ability and potential to wrestle very well but is far too highly strung to even step into the ring because he can’t bear to be looked at,” while Gonzalez describes Woodhouse as “the roadie that’s just stuck around forever.

He’s not even trusted to sell the merch, he’s just about trusted to unload it without fucking it up hopefully.” Unluckily for the show’s protagonist Holly (actor and presenter Jahannah James), Jack and Woodhouse are the “closest allies that Holly has in her quest to keep the company alive.”

“I’m just a massive fan of the underdog story,” Gonzalez explains. “It doesn’t even have to be an underdog sports story although there are plenty of those around.” Pitch Perfect is about a group of underdog a capella singers who are trying to show the people what they’re made of, and Deep Heat has a similar trajectory ahead of it. But it’s not just the fictional world of Boss which follows this path. Real world pro wrestling is the same, Olesker points out: “It genuinely does attract an array of eccentrics, outsiders. From the people who follow it to the people within it, it’s a welcoming space for people who often don’t find what they’re looking for elsewhere in the world.” Akin to the comedy sphere, wrestling, he concludes, is “an alternative universe populated by people who are able to come up with their own alter-egos and superheroes, and to a certain extent tell their own story.”

Comedy

Photo: Matt Crockett

“L

ive comedy and live wrestling have so much in common. There’s so much overlap that we’ve found that wrestlers and comedians almost always understood each other on a very deep level," says Max Olesker, one half of the duo behind Fringe-famous The Wrestling. For those new to The Wrestling, it’s the definition of event comedy – training a bunch of rag-tag comedians to jump in the ring with the stars of the British professional wrestling scene, replete with behind-the-scenes storylines, villains and champions.

Despite Olesker once being the UK’s youngest pro wrestler, wrestling was never previously a thought for Ivan Gonzalez.

“Was I interested or even aware of it before I met Max? No. In university, Max put on a wrestling show at the Union. Just a straight-up wrestling show for non-wrestling fans and it was amazing.” Since then, Gonzales has performed with some of the greats of the wrestling world and has duly become enamoured.

“You can’t help but admire how spectacular professional wrestlers are once you actually know how difficult it is to make one move look decent-ish. It’s almost like you pick up a guitar and you have one guitar lesson and then you see a virtuoso playing and you can’t help but admire it, even if you’re not necessarily into the music.”

Since their university days, the pair have myriad successes to their name, including winning the Edinburgh Fringe Comedy Panel Prize for the first round of The Wrestling in 2011, and a Best Show nomination in 2013 for The Reunion, a multi-character narrative comedy about a high school reunion.

Now they return to the ring, bringing Deep Heat, a sitcom set in the lycra-clad world of pro wrestling, to our screens. From day one of production, the cast and series director, Matt Lipsey (Inside No. 9, Ted Lasso), stepped behind the ropes to get into the wrestling mindset. “It isn’t about hurting each other, it’s about making each other look amazing and it’s just as much ‘the sell’ as it is the action. Once that clicked, we were allowed to

THE SKINNY

Mob Mentality We chat to Ewan Downie about mob mentality, laboratory theatre and directing Shakespeare in a different way

Theatre

Interview: Eliza Gearty

W

hen it comes to Shakespeare, Julius Caesar is about as action-packed as it gets. Featuring a murderous conspiracy plot, political assassination, violent public retaliation and possibly one of the most quotable (and memeable) betrayals of all time (roughly translatable as: really, Brutus?), it’s hard to imagine a more fast-paced plot. But the history play is not regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most exciting works. If anything, it’s known for being a bit on the dense side – a rhetoric-heavy tragedy that takes a sombre approach to themes of politics, power and ethics.

But could this reputation be mainly down to how the play has been interpreted? Ewan Downie – Co-Artistic Director of Glasgow-based venture Company of Wolves – believes that when it comes to staging Julius Caesar, theatre practitioners have been missing a trick.

“I’ve seen a lot of productions [of Julius Caesar] and I’ve never seen any that I thought actually unearthed what’s in the play,” he admits, speaking to The Skinny about his adaptation of the tragedy, due to start touring Scotland in

March 2022 – Feature

Photo: Louise Mather

March. “Mostly it becomes this play about slow, serious men doing slow, serious things. People make Caesar’s death this ponderous, important thing – but I think what’s happening in that moment is almost giddy.”

Downie makes a good point. The play – which starts with the rumblings of a conspiracy to kill Caesar, lest the Roman General becomes a tyrant – does have a fair amount of deliberation and discussion in it. But it’s also characterised by a specific sort of irrationality; the kind of frenzy of righteousness that can lead people to utterly convince themselves of things without substantial evidence. In some ways, it’s a sharp assessment of our instinctive, pack-like tendencies, shining a spotlight on how quickly we can be swayed by the emotional charge of a political moment.

“The people who are killing Caesar don’t really think about the fact they are killing Caesar at all,” says Downie. “They’re really excited to be doing something they didn’t think they would be able to do.” He likens the frantic mood of the scene to something out of A Clockwork Orange and says that the crowd scene in the play, when the Roman public turn against the conspirators, has a similar, primal energy. “We are thinking of the crowd as like extreme Caesar fans,” Downie explains. “Ones that can go from ‘oh my god, I love him’ to ‘we have to kill that guy!'” The crowd is more like an “internet mob embodied as people” than individual members of a collective group – something that Downie says makes the scene “much more frightening and actually quite recognisable.”

Before co-founding Company of Wolves, Downie spent eight years immersed in the Polish laboratory theatre tradition. He says that the practise, most commonly associated with the experimental Grotowski method, is distinguished by a desire to “smash the whole thing up and make it into a concentrated dream version. Generally, people working in [lab theatre] don’t care about the story of a play much.” With one foot in this practice, and the other in the more traditional type of theatre that he saw at the Citizens growing up, Downie wanted to apply aspects of lab theatre to Julius Caesar while still telling the story. “[Lab theatre] involves trying to dig below a realistic portrayal, [to find out] what’s underneath the play,” he says. “You go into things like dream and nightmare and Julius Caesar

— 44 —

“People make Caesar’s death this ponderous, important thing – but I think what’s happening in that moment is almost giddy” see what happens when you do that.”

Applying this method to the process in the Julius Caesar rehearsal room proved revelatory. “It wasn’t an idea I had in advance, but through working on the crowd scene... we realised that it is kind of a nightmare, and it isn’t meant to make sense,” Downie says. His training in laboratory theatre, which centres on tapping into human “irrationality, trance, madness”, helped him figure out how to direct it. “If you look at these crowd scenes, they’re kind of like music. Most of the crowds’ responses have a kind of rhythmic structure to them,” he reasons. “Shakespeare has the crowd speaking in unison a lot, but they say things that people wouldn’t really be able to say in unison – long sentences of quite crazy stuff. As we started to play with that, that told me they needed to be much more extreme. They’re sort of like a really frightening pantomime crowd that can flip against you or flip for you.”

Mob mentality, pedestal-knocking and post-truth politics – thematically, there’s a lot in Julius Caesar that rings true today. Downie agrees: “It’s very much about a society in a moment of change, and the destabilising, very frightening moment where nobody’s really sure of what the rules are anymore.” He resisted the common decision to portray Caesar as a contemporary public figure, however. “There was a point when we were working on it when we asked, is Caesar Trump?” he recalls. “But fairly quickly we rejected that idea. We don’t tend to go, ‘ah, we need to write things that comment on this present moment.’

Because the present is always moving.” By digging deeper, however, Company of Wolves may have tapped into the instinctive impulses in Julius Caesar that explain why politics so often plays out in the way it does. “The way we work,” says Downie, a smile coming through from the other end of the telephone, “is by following our noses. We usually discover why our noses led us that way.”

Julius Caesar tours Scotland, 17 Mar-20 May companyofwolves.org/projects/julius-caesar/

THE SKINNY

Contemporary Craft Words: Stacey Hunter Photo: Jasmine Linington

F

Manutex, Jasmine Linington

Image: courtesy of artist

his studio in the north east of Scotland. Duke plays with light and texture to create unique pieces that remind us of our elemental and emotional bond with the natural environment.

Steven and Ffion Blench of CHALK have designed and made pieces crafted using the scagliola technique which feature pigments sourced from the Fife coastline.

Returning artists include Daniel Freyne, a blacksmith with an in-depth knowledge of iron and forge work who is pushing the limitations of his material, and Naomi Mcintosh whose work in wood draws from an architectural practice and showcases pieces from her Quiet Garden series at last year’s London Design Biennale.

The platform offered by Collect is perhaps unparalleled for designers and makers, especially in a time when they have been facing unprecedented challenges around display and trade.

Craft Scotland’s Director, Irene Kernan explains, “It will be our first major in person exhibition since the pandemic so the opportunity to see beautiful tactile pieces up close will allow visitors to appreciate the value of design-led Scottish contemporary craft and understand the master craftsmanship that goes into creating these objects. Showcasing work on an international platform is incredibly important for Scotland whose global reputation as a destination for high quality craft needs to be maintained despite the challenges of Brexit and the impact of the pandemic on international markets.”

The 11 makers selected were: CHALK, Daniel Freyne, Duke Christie, Eileen Gatt, Heather Woof, Jasmine Linington, Lara Scobie, Lynne MacLachlan Studio, Naomi Mcintosh, Susan Cross and Susan O’Byrne

Artefact or Relic, Duke Christie

craftscotland.org/about/projects/collect-2022

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March 2022 – Feature

luid forms and sustainable processes lie at the heart of Craft Scotland’s latest showcase for Collect. Eleven designers and makers were selected to represent Scotland in London at one of the world’s most important art fairs – the collection of contemporary craft and design from established and new makers included furniture, textiles, ceramics, jewellery and works in silver and gold.

Craft Scotland presented this cohort within its own dedicated gallery space, giving Scottish designers a valuable platform during Collect 2022, which took place from 23-27 Feb. Covetable artworks in silver and gold sat side by side with pieces made using wood and recycled plaster making this year’s exhibition one of the most diverse to date. Held at Somerset House just off The Strand in central London, Collect is the craft sector’s premier showcase, bringing together galleries, artists and collectors from around the world, positioning Scotland-based makers and their work in front of global curators, collectors and buyers from world-renowned institutions.

Jasmine Linington is a textile artist whose work with foraged seaweed from the Scottish coastline introduces this sustainable material in surprising new ways. Experimenting with a variety of seaweed species hand harvested, under licence, from beaches close to Edinburgh, she uses the material as a natural dye and as unique embellishments for her SeaCell fibre textiles. Susan Cross has designed and made contemporary jewellery for over 30 years. Inspirations come from plant forms, and from her deeply-rooted interest in textiles, both in terms of borrowed techniques and a range of visual references. Precious metals are central to the making process. Silver is oxidised black, emulating a drawn graphite or inky line. In recent pieces, Cross has begun to use pearls and semi-precious stones, integrated into a metalwork matrix.

Duke Christie, a Moray-based furniture maker, makes work in wood inspired by the natural environment surrounding

Local Heroes

We take a closer look at some of the Scottish designers and makers who presented at last month's international contemporary craft and design fair, Collect

THE SKINNY

Failure in Activism In activist movements, failings are difficult to come to terms with. But failure may be more complex – and a little more hopeful – than we thought Words: Funmi Lijadu Illustration: Nänni-pää

March 2022 – Feature

F

ailure in activism is disappointing.

It can be devastating to witness social change occurring at a snail’s pace, or worse, to see significant social justice reform reversed by politicians and lobbyists alike. It is frustrating: the cycle of collective will bubbles up towards a promising sense of action, only for regressive politics to have the final say.

Activism itself is a term that is understood vaguely as participation in or support for campaigns towards a political aim or social change. The shifting priorities and goalposts in politics and social justice means that it is not a straightforward, or even stable, path.

Currently, climate justice is a top priority. A report by Climate Action Tracker found that countries are not doing enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees by 2030. Meanwhile, as governments flounder with policy, the net profits of fossil fuel companies including Shell and Exxon Mobil soared to $174bn in 2021, as reported by the Guardian. With rising living costs and energy bills in the UK, energy company profits reveal that private, corporate interests are prioritised over human life and social justice. Last year, Glasgow’s COP26 dominated public consciousness; however, the event left young activists disillusioned by corporate greenwashing. Despite the event’s promise of change, dodgy companies were given platforms to preach their hollow promises and young activists were banned from certain talks.

The ‘failure’ of COP26, therefore, is an infrastructural one: the event was seemingly designed with

“The binary of failure and success is unhelpful when examining the ambivalent, unpredictable results of activism”

the intent to suppress. Failure is somewhat inevitable in such cases.

The #StopCambo campaign opposes the opening of new oil and gas fields in the UK. The movement recently had a huge win after spotlighting the damage that plans to build an oil field in Cambo, west of Shetland, would cause to the environment. This incredible work saw Shell and partner company Siccar Point Energy pull out of the development project in December 2021.

However, the UK government has since been open to fossil fuel exploration in the North Sea, meaning that #StopCambo’s victory is not a permanent win, but rather a victory within a continual fight. Cases like this suggest that the binary of failure and success is unhelpful when examining the ambivalent, unpredictable results of activism.

But failings in activism are not always about the cause itself. In activist circles, we all too often find ourselves tangled up in hero worship. We unconsciously embrace the idea of a single, decisive political leader that mobilises the masses.

Because crises leave many individuals feeling powerless, the idea of a hero’s actions inspiring hope and saving the day is attractive. Meanwhile, putting pressure on activists to act in a certain way and to fix the world creates burnout and unhappiness, failing the individual while also limiting the movement. Movements require a multitude of skills, talents, and voices to be successful.

This is evident in changes within activism itself. The rise of internet culture means that activism looks very different from the days where physically interactive, live community building was crucial to movements. In-person contact and organising is no longer completely necessary in activism and many regret this collective shift.

Specifically, many worry that the move towards — 46 —

digital activism undermines the participation and active culture that makes movements powerful.

Terms like ‘slacktivism’ denote an emerging reality where individuals can gesture at social justice they approve of via signing online petitions, or sending emails to their MP. The term seeks to criticise this online participation, which differs greatly to the traditional idea of an activist as a courageous protester that tirelessly takes to the streets. Indeed, in-person organising can lead to big wins, such as the success of the campaign to get private airline TUI to stop running deportation flights for the government. However, the shift to online activism is not a failure of activism, but the refusal of some to utilise and appreciate the benefits of online activism most certainly is.

Such gatekeeping is a recurring theme in certain movements, for instance, this subtle but insidious idea that climate justice is a cause for benevolent white people and not Black people, or other People of Colour. Racism in the climate justice movement holds everyone back because creating a hostile environment for non-white demographics means the movement will automatically be less effective. The hard lines drawn around who is allowed to get involved is ultimately a failure of activism; rather, community should be fostered by striving for shared goals.

Failure in activism is not necessarily a cause for despair – it is also a call to action. Failure is a litmus test: it sheds light on what still needs to be done, who is preventing such action, and what social attitudes are caught up in all this. Collective power may not always manage to overturn longstanding dominant powers and this might mean that activist movements ‘fail’. But failure in activism is not always a permanent failure of activism – and there is much hope in that.

THE SKINNY

Two Years of Queerantines As we approach two years since the UK’s first lockdown, one writer explores their non-binary identity during the pandemic

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s a baby gay who managed to escape the clutches of my biological family and isolate with my flatmate, the beginning of the pandemic was in some ways a blessing in disguise for me. Being from a family who swears they’re not homophobic, but constantly produces bigotry and microaggressions, I learned to ignore and repress my queerness from a young age. Before the pandemic I had never been to a gay bar, and it took me years to recognise that I was pansexual.

During the initial lockdown of March 2020, I had for the first time, time and space to look at myself. I was reading about trauma (as queers do) and reflecting upon my conditioning. For a while, I’d had a subconscious hunch that I wasn’t cisgender, but I had repressed questioning it.

However, when the second lockdown came, I started to experience something weird: when people would refer to me as she or her it made me viscerally uncomfortable. This came out of the blue and I had no ‘rational’ explanation for why it made me feel this way, it just did.

When I would see she/her pronouns written in chats to refer to me, it felt like the words she/ her would grow bigger and consume all other text around. I realized that this issue is probably something cis people don’t experience, so I trialled

using they/them pronouns with my closest friends.

At first, I didn’t feel comfortable with any pronoun and asked my friends to just refer to me using my name, but as society requires a pronoun for us, I decided to use they/them. To me, ‘they’ is the closest word in the English language that can signify how I feel about my gender.

I’ve realised that gender is fluid and the reason we fear it changing is because we live in a binary society that conditions us to be one stable thing. Once discovering I was non-binary, I was resolute that I was agender, meaning I felt I had no gender at all, but when I started to feel masculine, this scared me. I thought I had ‘figured out’ who I was and now it was changing again. For me to appreciate and not fear my fluidity is an ongoing challenge.

I’ve also realised that the reason I was able to achieve my gender revelations in the first place was because of the pandemic. Lockdown literally stripped me of the feminine norms I was pressured to abide by as an AFAB (assigned female at birth) person. I stopped wearing bras, makeup, and skirts. As the gender binary is embedded in our social interactions, less social interaction meant less pressure to conform. The traditional idea of queer visibility was turned on its head for me:

I became more visible to myself by becoming less visible to others.

For me, the easing of lockdown came with pros and cons. As I bumped into more and more people, I’d get misgendered as they didn’t know I had changed my pronouns. This made me uncomfortable, but I was also uncomfortable ‘revealing’ that I was now a ‘they/them’. Eventually I’d had enough of being misgendered and announced my pronoun change to the world via Instagram story.

However, the misgendering didn’t stop. I’ve realised that I need to be, what I call, ‘actively queer’.

As the dominant ideology is to assume that people are heterosexual and cisgender, I need to actively assert that I am non-binary. This is exhausting.

I don’t want to compromise myself and let people misgendering me slide, but I just don’t have the energy. And often the conversation doesn’t end with me sharing my pronouns; it evolves into me justifying my existence by recounting the entire history of non-binary people.

Coming out of lockdown allowed me to seek out queer people and spaces; in particular, Glasgow’s newest gay bar Bonjour and legendary club night Shoot Your Shot. These spaces are more than just places to hook up. They are homes we built for ourselves so that queer people can connect, receive identity affirmation, and feel safe in numbers. Constantly closing and reopening these spaces can put into flux people’s whole life trajectories.

It is safe to say my queerness has been inextricably tied to the pandemic. The past two years have given me the confidence to dive headfirst into who I truly am and the community I was always meant to be a part of, while also teaching me never to take them for granted. They can be here today and gone tomorrow. Reintegrating into society as a now non-binary person, I am holding my head up high and resisting the cis-het agenda the world is constantly trying to press.

March 2022 – Feature

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“The traditional idea of queer visibility was turned on its head for me: I became more visible to myself by becoming less visible to others”

Intersections

Words: Lynsay Holmes Illustration: Megan Drysdale

March 2022

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

Music Now It's as overwhelmingly busy for releases this month as it is for, well, everything, but we'll do our best to highlight some of the best music coming out of Scotland Words: Tallah Brash Music

Pictish Trail

piano on Above, An Abandoned Piano I and II, to Sood’s rich spoken word entries and the eerie quality of fractured conversations found across the record which offer glimpses of what life was once like on the island, Searching Erskine is a powerful body of work, deftly blurring the boundaries between ambient, folk and classical. Playing out almost like a film, Searching Erskine comes to a beautiful conclusion with Crossing (featuring Rachel Sermanni), which acts as a sort of ‘closing credits’ number, the kind that keeps you in your seat at the cinema long after the lights have come up.

Another intriguing release this month comes from Istanbul-born, Glasgow-based Isik Kural, whose latest album in february arrives on 25 March via RVNG Intl. The album’s 12 tracks float by like a lullaby, each of its compositions made up from chance loops and found sounds which include everything from the flapping of pigeon’s wings to the tinkling of bicycles; the addition of Kural’s childlike vocal delivery across some of the tracks only adds to the soothing lullaby-nature of this gorgeous record.

Known for his work in The Phantom Band, Duncan Marquiss releases Wires Turned Sideways In Time on 4 March via Basin Rock. On this, his debut solo record, Marquiss places the guitar front and centre, combining powerful manipulations of electronic guitar with acoustic ambience, making for a satisfyingly filmic experience that you’ll want to delve into again and again.

Elsewhere, Happy Particles return this month with Every Room In My House Is In Darkness; Lomond Campbell is back with Lost Loops (25 Mar), made up of cuts from LŪP that would’ve otherwise been lost to the cutting room floor; Blanck Mass releases his Ted K OST (18 Mar); Peter Cat releases The Magus EP (18 Mar) and Arab Strap release their Aphelion/ Flutter 7” (4 Mar). The Ninth Wave’s latest – and final – record Heavy Like a Headache arrives on 11 March (read our full review overleaf), and Franz Ferdinand release their greatest hits record (turn to p38 for our chat with Alex Kapranos). Finally, celebrating International Women’s Day on 8 March, Hen Hoose pairing MALKA and AMUNDA release the gloriously bouncy and vibrant On the Up. [Tallah Brash]

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March 2022 — Review

Image: Lunch Concept Store

Billy Got Waves

Photo: Fiona Hunter

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hen we spoke to Johnny Lynch during the height of the pandemic he told us he’d been listening to a lot of early records and had in turn been working on some new “quite aggressive”, “quite uptempo” music. It’s been almost a year since that chat and so now exists Island Family (18 Mar, Fire Records/Lost Map), his fifth album as Pictish Trail, and it certainly lives up to Lynch’s promise.

There’s so much going on in the titular opening track alone, from Beta Band weirdness to meaty programmed drums and ice cream van twinkles, but somehow it all works. You can practically picture Lynch roaming aimlessly around the Isle of Eigg in search of “the new sound”, and we’re delighted to report we think he might have found it; glitchy beats, unconventional song structures and thick riffs abound.

Mining from his love of artists like Fever Ray, The Flaming Lips and Liars, fans of Animal Collective and Deerhoof will also find something to like on Island Family. Pictish Trail’s fifth record has truly allowed Lynch to fully explore the sort of sounds he loves to play around with making for his weirdest, most experimental and most exciting record yet.

Following a collaborative appearance alongside Joell. at Wide Days in 2020, Edinburgh artist Billy Got Waves returns this month in his own right with Rocket Boy Act 1, the first in a three-part album release. Featuring the undeniable pipes of Young Fathers’ Alloysius Massaquoi on B.O.A.W., it’s a strong opening gambit from Billy Got Waves which doesn’t let up across its four tracks. Due on 4 March, the level of vulnerability found across Act 1’s lyrics, paired with pristine production from Glasgow’s S-Type and Nottingham-based beatmaker Baygee, we’re already excited for the next two chapters.

From one Edinburgh artist to another, Lewis McLaughlin releases his debut album Feel the Ground You Walk Upon on 25 March via Monohands Records. The most striking thing about this record has to be McLaughlin’s voice and the utterly captivating way he enunciates his words, making everything he sings feel like a long-held hug. At times he sounds like a Scottish Nick Drake (especially on Still Looking); you can also just about hear the influence Bon Iver has had on this young artist. This debut record is a great introduction to an exciting talent.

Set for initial release on 5 March as a 64-page book with digital download and lathe-cut 7”, the latest release from the Blackford Hill label comes from Scottish-Indian writer, musician and academic Arun Sood.

Titled Searching Erskine, it’s a response to the uninhabited island of Vallay, just off the northwest coast of North Uist, where Sood’s grandmother Katie MacNaughton once lived.

From Alice Allen’s mesmerising cello on Taigh Mòr and the unsettling

Albums

THE SKINNY

Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul Topical Dancer Deewee, 4 Mar

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March 2022 — Review

isten to: Blenda, It Hit Me, L Reappropriate

The Ninth Wave Heavy Like a Headache Distiller, 11 Mar rrrrr isten to: Maybe You Didn’t Know, L The Morning Room, Everything Will Be Fine

Identity politics weigh heavily on Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s debut studio album, Topical Dancer.

Both based in Belgium but with shared heritage from the FrenchCaribbean island of Martinique, the duo were paired together by the Dewaele brothers, aka Soulwax, and have previously released three EPs together on Deewee.

But on their first release as an official duo, the explorations of their mutual mixed heritage are both celebratory and complex.

On Esperanto, Adigéry challenges ignorant remarks often made to those from mixed backgrounds in a tonguein-cheek fashion: ‘Don’t say ‘But where are you really from?’ / Say ‘I don’t see colour.’’ And she continues exploring this idea on Blenda: ‘Don’t sound like what I look like / Don’t look like what I sound like to them.’

Across Topical Dancer, Adigéry sings in English, Dutch, Creole and French and her mother Christiane Adigéry even features on one of its tracks, Ich Mwen.

The album feels as much a personal exploration of Adigéry’s own heritage and life experiences as it does a commentary on social attitudes.

But, most importantly, it establishes Adigéry and Pupul as a real force to be reckoned with. [Nadia Younes]

The Ninth Wave have long had the allure of a band who know exactly what they are and what they want to do. On album two, this has never felt more certain. Heavy Like a Headache continues their trend of seamlessly evading specific genrefication, and smacks of a band energised by and confident in their art. They retain that unique, almost Joy Division-like quality of creating tracks that are both darkly gloomy and yet joyously sway-worthy, while instrumentally and sonically, more developed and congruous electronic nuances lace the record together with a shiny silk thread.

Lyrically, there’s a fresh air of vulnerability and personability too, as inward reflections indicate a newfound openness to depict difficult, personal perceptions and feelings – be that of anxiety (Maybe You Didn’t Know), shedding a shame that was never yours (What Makes You a Man), or loss (Piece and Pound Coins), piecing together a cathartic puzzle in the hope of achieving self-acceptance.

Heavy Like a Headache feels like the natural next step and successor to Infancy and Happy Days! Expanding on both to enhance their playfully experimental and yet confident, brooding sound, it strengthens their status as one of Scotland’s most exciting bands.

[Dylan Tuck]

Jenny Hval Classic Objects 4AD, 11 Mar

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isten to: American Coffee, Year of L Love, Jupiter

Alex Cameron Oxy Music Secretly Canadian, 11 Mar rrrrr Listen to: Oxy Music, K Hole

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Classic Objects is Jenny Hval’s response to the pandemic. It makes little direct reference, but its simplicity and openness come from a desire to confront what art becomes when the artist is forced to look inward. Many artists choose this as a creative device, but the pandemic made it a necessity.

The results are breathtaking.

Hval’s voice has never sounded better: the upper range on Year of Sky; the intricate bobbing and weaving through the arrangement on Year of Love. There are moments of lyrical intrigue: nurses reciting philosophy on American Coffee; the fragmentary musing on The Revolution Will Not Be Owned that contrast with diaristic straightforwardness. And the arrangements are thoughtfully constructed, frequently catchy, sometimes stark, but always engaging, with a frequent dose of driving bongos. The softly undulating synths on Year of Sky make a bubbly bed for Hval’s searching voice, turning the mundane into the ethereal.

There’s no hint of pretension in these explorations, nor is the embrace of melody a sign of commercial pandering (Cemetery of Splendour still manages to sneak in two minutes of crickets). This is untethered, uncluttered music, made with real heart by an artist at her peak.

[Lewis Wade] Initially inspired by Nico Walker’s novel Cherry, and its depiction of the opioid crisis in America, Alex Cameron’s Oxy Music details narratives of addiction and struggle in a world obsessed with social media. Using this context of drug abuse, Cameron confronts the toxicity and vacuousness of a life lived online, while maintaining the tongue-in-cheek quips and brightness found on 2019’s sardonically blissful Miami Memory.

From the existential balladry of K Hole to the incessant questioning of online-anonymity on Sara Jo, Oxy Music is laden with vividly drawn cultural critiques flippantly delivered in Cameron’s signature style. Highlights include: ‘Mosquito mass hysteria / I’m serving up malaria’ and ‘I’m in the kitchen on a cruise / I’m cooking up a codeine ragu’.

While thematically not necessarily upbeat, Cameron’s playful compositions render a paradox of joy-in-struggle. The record ends with an energy that climbs, climaxing at its close with the title track. A lyrically dark, synthdriven pop-punch, Oxy Music exhibits the best of Cameron’s paradoxical compositions; the featured vocals of Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson adding real vigour.

Without doubt, Oxy Music honours Cameron’s skill as a storyteller, and his unique ability to embed some of the most outlandish lines into sanguine melodies. [Bethany Davison]

THE SKINNY

isten to: stabilise, midnight sun, L the mystic

isten to: French One, Open Your L Eyes, Don’t Wake Me

isten to: I Don’t Really Care For L You, No More Virgos, 2 Wrecked 2 Care

Aldous Harding Warm Chris 4AD, 25 Mar rrrrr isten to: Fever, Passion Babe, L Leathery Whip

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On Warm Chris, Aldous Harding can sound like Nico, Joni, Karen Dalton, Caleb Followill and a cartoon that wants to murder you. Voices, characters, divergent personas – they are all inhabited by Harding in her committed pursuit of throwing you off. What she actually means isn’t as important as how she wants you to feel. The words become untethered from time, often here backed by warm 60s sounding analogues, as she slinks in and out of something new and different. You can’t pin her down.

From New Zealand but aptly based in Wales, she works in the same lane as Cate Le Bon, creating Cool Cymru-adjacent post-modern pop songs that defy easy analysis.

Her imagery is off-kilter, sung in nursery rhyme-like melodies (like when she subverts the traditional children’s folk song She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain). The concept of life coming at you like a BDSM item on closer Leathery Whip, voices fluctuating in frequency, can be sort of sexy, pretty funny and deeply scary all at once. Ultimately, like the Henry Moore sculptures she mentions near the album’s end, Harding’s songs can be as mundanely lifelike from afar as they are strangely alien up close. [Tony Inglis]

March 2022 — Review

Babeheaven Sink Into Me Believe, 18 Mar rrrrr

Babeheaven’s 2020 debut Home For Now channelled a distinct bedroom pop aesthetic. However, their followup Sink Into Me breaks down those bedroom walls and charters new territory, exploring much wider, airier and impressive soundscapes than previously heard from the London five-piece.

This shift is instantaneous from opening track, and highlight of the album, French One. Dreamy, bossa nova-style rhythms set the tone before the drums pick up alongside lead singer Nancy Andersen’s exceptional vocal melodies. Holding On follows in a similar vein with fluctuating synths and guitars evoking hazy scenes, while Make Me Wanna correlates with the openness of Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes’ collaborative album, What Kinda Music.

Andersen’s lyrics may be full of disillusionment throughout. Yet, there’s a sense of calm and hope that permeates throughout Sink Into Me, most noticeably on concluding track Open Your Eyes where glimmers of resolution float to the surface.

The vocal melodies exuded on the album are irresistible. Paired with lush instrumentation, Sink Into Me is in a word, gorgeous, and the perfect soundtrack for a meander in the sunshine or a mellow morning in bed.

[Jamie Wilde]

CMAT If My Wife New I’d Be Dead AWAL, 4 Mar rrrrr

On If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, 25-year-old Irish singer-songwriter, pop star and all-round hook machine CMAT has delivered a nearperfect debut album. A delicious combination of yearning, soaring melodies and hilarious lyrics.

A selection box of influences shine through in her look as much as her sound. The result lands somewhere heartfelt, hyper-feminine and distinctly CMAT. Shades of Dolly Parton, Katy Perry and Lana Del Rey are on display here. As she sings on the album’s opener Nashville: ‘I look and feel like Anna-Nicole, and that’s all I ever wanted’.

Her electro past (she performed in the duo Bad Sea) can be felt on relatable lovelorn synthgroove No More Virgos. Countryinflected ballad Lonely is equal parts sad and silly, with CMAT asking questions no artist has braved before: ‘Who needs God, when I’ve got Robbie Williams?’

Her voice has rarely sounded purer than it does on album closer I’d Want U. This stripped-back lilting ballad is such a pitch-perfect country classic, it practically feels like showing off. And why not?

CMAT is a pop tour de force who knows exactly who she wants to be and has all the talent to deliver it.

[Tara Hepburn]

Albums

Nilüfer Yanya Painless ATO Records, 4 Mar rrrrr

Where Nilüfer Yanya’s 2019 debut album Miss Universe often exudes warmth with its jazzy tones and lush textures, her follow-up, Painless, finds the London-based artist exploring more glacial territory (for the most part). On songs like trouble and try, guitars are plucked like icicles atop arrangements so glassy and spare you can almost see Yanya’s breath cast along the frozen space between bars like mist over a midnight lake.

That’s not to suggest the album doesn’t have any clout though, as lead single stabilise proves in an instant with its addictive mix of pounding breakbeats, barbwire guitar and intoxicating chorus, surely hinting at long-term banger status.

Then there’s midnight sun, which ruptures into a squall of pulverising shoegazey fuzz – one of the rare moments on the record which feels like every space is filled to the brim.

While Painless is not so far removed from its predecessor that it could alienate existing fans, the closing brace of the mystic and anotherlife present some of the more interesting ideas here, exploring the complexities and capabilities of Yanya’s voice, as well as her more ethereal pop chops. If this is hinting at where she’s heading next, it’s very exciting indeed. [Ryan Drever]

THE SKINNY

Scotland on Screen: Lizzie Mackenzie Film Film

Documentarian Lizzie Mackenzie has already led a few different lives in one.

We meet up with the Oban native ahead of the Glasgow Film Festival premiere of her debut feature The Hermit of Treig to find out about her fascination with outsiders and rebels Interview: Rohan Crickmar Filmography: The Hermit of Treig (2022) i: @ofthewiild, t: @of_the_wild www.ofthewild.me

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March 2022 – Feature

Image: Courtesy Lizzie Mackenzie

izzie Mackenzie has brought along some porridge for our breakfast interview. Not the oaty kind but rather a fourlegged bundle of furry canine curls called Brochan – Gaelic for porridge. This restlessly curious filmmaker grew up on Seil, an island just to the southwest of Oban. “Growing up on Seil had a pretty massive influence on me,” she says. “As a result, I have always craved being in wild places.” It is her innate connection to wildernesses and nature that led to The Hermit of Treig.

Having headed off to University in Edinburgh at the age of 19 to study environmental sciences, Mackenzie dropped out to pursue an alternative career path in the culinary arts. She opened a successful restaurant in the Highlands, the Corrour Station House, at the remote station on the West Highland Line that famously featured in Trainspotting. It was while running this restaurant that Mackenzie first became aware of Ken Smith, the eponymous hermit of her debut feature. “Local deerstalkers were our regulars at the restaurant,” she says, “and they would often mention this man who lived by himself in the surrounding woods.”

The idea of a man who had spent many years living by his own rules in such a remote part of the UK struck a chord with Mackenzie at a crucial time in her own life. “The restaurant was a success,” she explains, “and I could see a clear career path ahead of me, but I also felt as if that was hemming me in.” So she sought out Smith.

It was still a long journey from her first encounters with Smith to the completion of The Hermit of Treig.

Mackenzie had no filmmaking experience whatsoever, but a serendipitous encounter with Edinburghbased doc-maker Léa Luiz de Oliveira (Spit It Out) led to her being offered an internship at the age of 27 with Amy Hardie, director of The Edge of Dreaming and Seven Songs for A Long Life. “Coming from Oban, filmmaking just wasn’t something that I thought I could really do. It just wasn’t an option.” Her mentorship with Hardie gave her a truly immersive crash course in documentary filmmaking. “I’ve always Lizzie Mackenzie and Ken Smith

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“I’ve always thought that the best way to learn anything is through doing it” Lizzie Mackenzie thought that the best way to learn anything is through doing it and Amy really encouraged this approach.”

After working with Hardie, Mackenzie tried and failed to get a short doc about Smith commissioned through SDI’s Bridging the Gap and ScreenSkills’ Rising Director schemes. However, when a serious incident with Smith’s health resulted in him being airlifted from rural isolation and making the national news, ScreenSkills changed their mind on the pitch, which ultimately led to three-minute short The Hermit of Treig. When it screened at Sheffield Doc/Fest as part of the Rising Director showcase, it garnered much interest from broadcasters and production companies, including Lousie Thornton at the BBC. A funding award at the 2020 edition of The Whickers (a documentary prize set up by the late Alan Whicker to help new documentary filmmakers) enabled Mackenzie to move forward with her feature.

Mackenzie tells us it’s “good to be in the company of people who are living the lives they should be living” and not a life prescribed for them by society. In Smith, Mackenzie had found a character filled with awe for nature and the wilderness.

She wanted to capture a little of the world through his eyes.

Gradually she became aware of Smith’s photography and the meticulous diaries he keeps, stretching back to his youthful experiences travelling the Yukon.

During her time with Smith, the pair became firm friends.

“It became very hard to maintain this idea of an objective distance from Ken,” Mackenzie recalls, “and I was no longer certain that I needed to. It’s impossible to keep an emotional distance in such a relationship.” Mackenzie was still filming the feature as late as July of 2021, so a significant portion of production was affected by the new COVID realities. “When COVID hit, I had this mad idea that I needed to just live with Ken. I stocked up food, even bought a generator, before I realised how mad an idea it was.” Much of The Hermit of Treig is about this close friendship that emerged between the filmmaker and her subject, to the point where Mackenzie suggests “Ken ended up feeling like a grandfather to me.”

Mackenzie is already well underway on a new film project.

It seems it will continue her interest with rebellious outsider figures provoking and challenging our contemporary societal notions of human domesticity. Reflecting on her time spent with Smith in his wilderness retreat, she returns to this notion of people living the lives they should live. It is clear Smith is very much an example of this for Mackenzie and she even mentions that she hopes she “will be doing just that when she is 80.”

Even having only spent 90 minutes in her unique company, we don’t doubt that Lizzie Mackenzie will continue to dance to the wild beat of her own curious drum.

The Hermit of Treig has its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival on 5 & 6 Mar, and screens at BFI Southbank, London on 11 Mar

THE SKINNY

Film The Worst Person in the World Director: Joachim Trier

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum

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The Worst Person in the World

Great Freedom Director: Sebastian Meise

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Great Freedom makes its metaphorical, almost ironic title clear from the start, diving immediately and brutally into the harsh realities for gay men after World War II. Hans (Rogowski) has been doing short prison sentences ever since his liberation from a Nazi concentration camp, stumbling into charges of obscenity with full knowledge of the consequences in a West Germany still governed by Paragraph 175. While director Sebastian Meise masterfully commands a nonlinear narrative – jumping between places and times for key thematic repetitions – the mundane pattern of his existence and the joyous, if fleeting, connections he forges remain coherent and continuous.

Rogowski, who excels in passion and its containment, is astonishing,

Director: Clio Barnard

Starring: Claire Rushbrook, Adeel Akhtar, Ellora Torchia

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Clio Barnard returns to Bradford with Ali & Ava, an exquisitely calibrated depiction of finding love right on your doorstep. Adeel Akhtar plays Ali, an aspiring DJ who’s keeping his marriage separation secret from his close-knit family. Claire Rushbrook’s Ava, meanwhile, is a classroom assistant preoccupied with nurturing everyone else, tending to her family of four kids – Barnard regulars Shaun Thomas (The Selfish Giant) and Natalie Gavin (The Arbor) are among the brood – and five grandkids. In social realist style, with the city often seen through car windows and under moonlight, observations are gently made about the nature of community. Ali diffuses a confrontation with local kids throwing stones, turning it into a dance party,

Great Freedom

carrying coiled and compounded traumas under Hans’ almost nonchalant approach to an uncompromised life. As Victor – Hans’ uneasy cellmate turned closeted ally – Georg Friedrich gives an equally compelling performance. The pair meet in 1945, 1957, and 1969 – Hans returning on repeated short terms, Viktor in for the long haul – their relationship wearing new unspoken layers that reframe interactions on a morphing timeline.

Great Freedom eschews easy answers for Hans and his companions, however long they may stay. Instead, unchanging experiences in supposedly changing times are the backdrop on which tiny rebellions play out, finding infinite variety in ever-closing walls.

Ultimately, the film proves peace is unsustainable in a world content to criminalise difference, its shattering final moments burning self-congratulatory progress to the ground.

[Carmen Paddock]

Ali & Ava

Red Rocket Director: Sean Baker

Starring: Simon Rex, Suzanna Son, Bree Elrod

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With the iPhone-shot Tangerine and the pastel poverty drama The Florida Project, Sean Baker has proven a knack for getting dynamic performances out of non-professional and inexperienced actors. Red Rocket centres on porn star Mikey (real-life former adult entertainer and Scary Movie franchise actor Simon Rex), who’s returning to his impoverished Texan small town to try to rebuild his life, and the feverish drama cements Baker’s talent for spinning madnessfuelled stories that make you laugh while leaving a sick aftertaste.

Baker and Simon’s collaboration gives us the strongest lead performance in the director’s filmography.

Mikey is manipulative, pathetic and completely indefensible. His constant lying and sickly charisma make you

Released 11 Mar by MUBI; certificate 18

but there remain lurking tensions, including hostility from Ava’s son.

Music underscores Ali & Ava’s developing relationship. In a key scene, they listen to their favourite tracks separately, singing asynchronously yet joyfully, jitterbug Ali jumping on the sofa. As their connection deepens, they increasingly listen to each other’s favourite songs, integrating them into their daily lives. Adding each other to their playlists is a narrative clue, but it also says something of how these notational fragments reflect their avid listeners and resonate in the headphones of someone new.

As the fragility of Ali and Ava’s romance unfolds under the waxing moon – a symbol for new beginnings – the film successfully reveals the complexity of someone arriving unexpectedly into your world and deciding whether to face life, and all its struggles, together. [Eleanor Capaldi] Released 4 Mar by Altitude; certificate 15

Red Rocket

anxious to let him ever leave your sight.

The performance alone isn’t what makes Red Rocket engaging; the snappy editing has perfect comic rhythm and timing, making transitions punchlines as it effortlessly bounces to the next scene.

As Mikey explores an alarming relationship with a 17-year-old, Strawberry (Suzanna Son), Baker tests the audience’s stomach for his protagonist’s vile behaviour. Mikey’s exploitation of an underage girl is extremely uncomfortable, but as we descend into his psychology, Baker makes his salient point: having a career in porn has broken Mikey’s brain, irrevocably damaging the way he sees people and ruining his ability to build relationships where he doesn’t benefit. Red Rocket, while feeling messy at points, is a chaotically-spun yarn about people on the fringes of society, one that’s regularly unpleasant, but always compelling. [Rory Doherty] Released 11 Mar by Universal; certificate TBC

— 53 —

March 2022 – Review

Starring: Franz Rogowski, Georg Friedrich

Released 25 Mar by MUBI; certificate 15

Ali & Ava

Film

Halfway through The Worst Person in the World, Julie (the mesmerising Renate Reinsve) freezes time, taking the opportunity to run through the streets of Oslo while every other citizen stands motionless around her. It’s a magical scene, and particularly liberating for Julie, who finally manages to exert some control over her life in this brief fantasy, before the film returns to the sticky reality of how the years can slip by while you try to figure out who you are.

We see Julie try her hand at multiple career paths in the energetic prologue, and that sense of uncertainty never goes away as she vacillates between relationships in the subsequent 12 chapters.

Building the narrative through these snapshots is a perfect template for Joachim Trier and his co-writer Eskil Vogt, who are so adept at creating standout moments. These moments can be wild – as in an eccentric drug trip – or intimate, such as the night-long flirtation between Julie and Eivind (Herbert Nordrum), which never quite crosses over into cheating.

While Trier’s film is frequently dynamic and funny, a wistfulness emerges in the second half as the characters contemplate lost time and missed chances, with Anders Danielsen Lie’s prickly performance as Julie’s boyfriend Aksel becoming deeply moving here. Neither Julie, Aksel or Eivind deserve the sobriquet The Worst Person in the World; they’re just people trying to muddle through life as best they can, and this empathetic film allows us to see them in all their flawed humanity. [Philip Concannon]

THE SKINNY

ICYMI

Glasgow-based multimedia comic David Callaghan takes a peek at the meta cult hit The Larry Sanders Show

March 2022 – Review

Comedy

Illustration: Miranda Stuart

I

have never watched The Larry Sanders Show. It’s not that I didn’t know what it was, and indeed I’ve spent enough time with other comedians discussing it to be able to know that when they were holding their pint to their mouth I should say something along the lines of “It’s a metatextual masterpiece.”

It’s among a few phrases you learn on the circuit that get you by.

Honourable mentions also go to, “I don’t reckon that’s what actually happened,” and, “I saw him starting to do bits about how much of a feminist he was, so it was only a matter of time before something came out.”

For those as uneducated as I was two days ago, let me smugly sprinkle you with some of my newfound knowledge.

The Larry Sanders Show is a late-night television show about the making of a late-night television show. Garry Shandling plays Larry Sanders, a traditional American talk show host who deals with the pressures of the entertainment industry while also going on television every night. That’s right, you’re reading an article about a show about a show, which is likely a level of abstraction never intended from the original media. Admittedly, I am sorely tempted to see how far down this rabbit hole we could go. Maybe someone could write a poem about this article, and then somebody else do a TikTok dance based on that?

In 200 years’ time, there could be entire discourses dedicated to one of the many films inspired by the genre created from this piece you’re reading, all part of the sprawling DCLSAU (David Callaghan Larry Sanders Article Universe). Hard right commentators from Reddit 4.0 will voice their disgust that the character Paragraph Three is played by a woman of colour. For the avoidance of doubt, I wish every paragraph to be played by a version

of the hologram of Kim Kardashian’s father that Kanye West commissioned for her 40th birthday. They can be made distinct from each other with the use of comical beards and hats.

The author has spoken, that’s now canon. Your move, Marvel.

The issue with many sitcoms about other media is that the writers and performers of them are suited to making sitcoms.

Whether it’s stand-up or dramatic theatre, the show within a show often feels forced and disingenuous. This is where Shandling shines. Touted by many to be the replacement for Johnny Carson before he handed The Tonight Show over to Jay Leno in 1992, Shandling brings a wealth of experience in latenight television to The Larry Sanders Show. The talk show monologues and wry guest interactions are entirely on point, which makes the contrast with the inner workings of late-night TV production stark and refreshing. The meetings with heads of the network in the very first episode, in which Larry is asked to perform his own commercials, are so delightfully irreverent of corporate America that they wouldn’t look out of place in a Talking Heads or Randy Newman video. They’re almost Lynchian in parts. That’s what makes this television show great.

It’s about a group of people who are ‘playing the game’, while pointing out how absurd it all is. It respects that the audience has insight into the world they are satirising, gifting comedic moments like Larry’s producer Artie, played by Rip Torn, saying “I didn’t know Harrison Ford did impressions, his Carol Channing was terrific.”

The Larry Sanders Show is stuffed with character-driven anxiety, the best example being Larry’s onscreen sidekick Hank.

Played by Jeffrey Tambor, Hank’s whole motivation is to grasp at a showbiz ladder that he is consistently worried will be kicked from under him. This is exemplified by his gratitude when Larry allows him to have two tarantulas placed on him during a show, despite his fear of getting bitten. To him, like everyone else in the show, potential death is a price worth paying for the immortality of showbiz fame. It’s wonderful and horrifying in equal measure; a grotesque caricature of an entire industry that viewers comfort themselves as too ludicrous to take seriously. The irony, of course, being that I am only truly appreciating Shandling’s work six years after his untimely death in 2016 – proving it entirely correct.

David Callaghan presents, Progranimate A multimedia comedy night as part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival 9 Mar, Old Hairdressers, 8pm, £4/£3 glasgowcomedyfestival.com — 54 —

THE SKINNY

SANDO @ THE HIGH DIVE, EDINBURGH Kitchen open Thu & Fri 4-10pm, Sat 11am-10pm, Sun 11am-4pm sandoedinburgh.co.uk

‘T

ime is a flat circle’. ‘History repeats itself’. ‘There are no new ideas’. They’re interesting tropes, but it’s a bit weird to watch them unfold in front of you. You pick up a new beer, think it sounds interesting, look back and the entire fridge has restocked itself with that same style of beer. You hear vague mutterings about the 2000s making a comeback, and all of a sudden you can’t move for orange-flavoured editions of your favourite foods.

Or maybe you look on social media and learn of the reopening of a bar that you remember from its first reopening. The High Dive in Newington, once an adjunct to Civerinos’ various pizza places, is now being run by the folk behind atmospheric cocktail-friendly bars Nightcap and the St. Vincent. There’s a new DJ booth, the drinks list has been refreshed, and the enormous colour-changing ball lights remain in

— 55 —

The best thing on the menu is the Karaage Cauli (£5). Again, we’ve had our share of Japanese-style fried vegetables on these pages recently, but this cauliflower blows all other cauliflowers out of the water. Beyond a crunchy exterior is a melt-in-themouth texture that will make you question exactly what is going on, as the chunks somehow end up fresh, crispy, chewy and creamy all at the same time. Throw on some Japanese mayonnaise and a bit more of that excellent tonkatsu sauce and it’s an absolute winner.

Sando are making great sandwiches, and their laser focus and excellent choices make The High Dive well worth checking out. It’s weird to watch trends play out in real time, but if this particular wave results in pubs all across the city serving up delicious and exciting sandwiches, we’re on board.

March 2022 – Review

Photo: Gerald Warrack

place so you can get your ‘pondering my orb’ photos in time for that meme making a comeback. A cool bar with good drinks which feels like it could turn into a massive party at any moment; truly, it’s our kind of place.

But we’re here for the food, as Sando – the Japanese-inspired sandwich pop-up that’s been doing the rounds across the city over the past year – have taken over the kitchen. A much-vaunted sandwich pop-up settling down in a neighbourhood pub sounds like a familiar set-up, and we did write about basically this exact situation at the other end of town a few months ago, but to be fair, King of Feasts and Sando present two very different ideas.

The King is a wildcard, a Joker, and every other card in the deck; a brilliant and mercurial chef who’ll try anything at least once. Sando feels much more measured and deliberate – the Japanese influence on the short menu of sandwiches and sides comes through in both the specificity of the dishes and the meticulous approach to their preparation.

The bread is homemade Shokupan milk bread, the sauces are all made in-house, and the construction is impressively restrained.

The O.G. Tonkatsu (£10) is a hefty, juicy slab of breaded and fried pork, sandwiched in some of that light and fluffy bread. There’s a smearing of tonkatsu barbecue sauce, some pickles and a bit of cabbage slaw, but this is all about keeping things simple and doing them well. The result is pretty delicious – it’s nicely balanced, pleasingly mellow but incredibly umami. The Kinoku Katsu (£8) is a similar set up, but with mushrooms replacing the pork, and it’s also impressive. Without an extremely rich piece of meat in the way, the subtleties in the slaw and sauce get a bit more room to shine.

Words: Peter Simpson

Photo: Gerald Warrack

81-85 St. Leonard’s St, Edinburgh, EH8 9QY

Food

Sando’s residency at The High Dive brings Japanese-inspired sandwiches, incredible cauliflower, and plenty of orbs to ponder

THE SKINNY

Books

Book Reviews

Hex

Good Intentions

The Voids

The Doloriad

By Jenni Fagan

By Kasim Ali

By Ryan O’Connor

By Missouri Williams

Jenni Fagan’s Hex is the second in Polygon’s series Darkland Tales, after Denise Mina’s Rizzio, and just two books in they have already made their mark as essential reading.

Like Rizzio, Hex takes a dark story from Scotland’s history and reshapes it for a modern readership.

The best historical fiction looks to the past to comment on the present, but Fagan takes this further by literally linking the two through the device of having teenager Geillis Duncan – accused and convicted as a witch in 1591 – visited by Iris who has journeyed from 2021 to make sure Geillis is not alone in these final hours. Their relationship becomes one of love and understanding, but also anger and sorrow, as they learn more about each other’s lives.

Fagan brings a terrible beauty to a brutal world – the description of Edinburgh High Street’s cobbles being just one example which, once read, is never to be forgot – and the magical and the realism are always in perfect balance. This is a writer fully engaged with both subject and style, and the range of emotions Hex evokes come not only from the characters, or the reader, but from Fagan herself. At a time when the righteous call for acknowledgment and justice for those accused, convicted, and killed during Scotland’s witch trials is louder than ever, Hex is both a timely and timeless publication. [Alistair Braidwood]

Nur and Yasmina have been together for four years. They met at university, instantly clicked, and now live together, working on their novel and PhD respectively. The only issue is that Nur’s conservative Pakistani Muslim family have no idea Yasmina exists, and that the brilliant, smart, kind woman their son loves is Black.

Opening on New Year’s Eve, with Nur gathering courage to tell his parents about Yasmina, the novel takes a non-linear route through their relationship and the ways in which Nur’s family react to his secret. In Good Intentions, Kasim Ali not only lays bare the sweetness and nerves of first love, but also levels an unflinching gaze on the prejudices and racism within minority communities. While Nur frets over his family’s reaction to what he perceives to be his failure to live up to their ideal of ‘a good son’, Yasmina must contend with her boyfriend hiding her from the world, blinded by his own privilege to the intersection of oppression she faces as a Black, Muslim woman.

This is a complex, tender and bittersweet love story that interrogates familial obligation, religion, race, what it means to be ‘good’ – and specifically, to be ‘good’ to each other. Despite Nur’s belief that he’s in an impossible position, the novel is also incredibly hopeful – maybe our immigrant parents aren’t as immovable as they seem; perhaps the future holds more choices than we believe. [Sim Bajwa]

The Voids is a book characterised by absence. Beginning in a condemned tower block in Glasgow, a young man is watching the home surrounding him slowly ebb away – the smells of neighbours’ food no longer float through the building, the joy of children playing in the halls's silences. He explores these voids, finding remnants of the lives that previously filled the building.

Facing the surrealness of life, and contending with the angels and devils of his mind, readers follow as the past is broken down for something new: “It’s supposed to be [good]. But it isn’t, not really. It’s like a trick, an illusion.” He enters and leaves people’s lives, he lacks purpose at times, other times the will to act – the final notices pile up.

In the more literal voids blossoms a heft of feeling – in its darkness, there’s laughter; as each chapter ends, there’s an emotional weight left with the reader.

The people who pass through his life, whether fleeting loves, those who hold his fate in their hands, or reconnecting with parents, each unveil a complexity of questions and layers about who he has been, who he is, and could be.

The Voids is a portrait of the city, the margins of society, and of a young man, that captures the wealth to be found in perceived emptiness.

As the skylines change, so too does life – disturbing and dizzying, it’s an engulfing read. [Heather McDaid]

If only they weren’t alone. Born after a mysterious, world-altering, cataclysmic event, an incestous family carves out a pitiful existence in the post-apocalypse. Humanity has begun again, born from the Matriarch, the family’s mother who rules over her dysfunctional brood with an iron fist and television set.

Her children – biting, bullying, binding characters with equal parts hatred and devotion in their hearts – ache for something more than just survival in this poisoned wasteland.

After one of the children, the legless, ostracised Dolores, is left in the forest to die – sacrificed after the Matriarch dreams of another group of survivors – her miraculous return the next day marks the end of the new world order. What if there’s something more out there, existing beyond the shadows? And what if that something more could feel like salvation?

Told with brutal lyricism, The Doloriad is a novel about the inherent disaster of being born. As the siblings work to break each others’ spirits (and bodies), the archaic blood bonds of family are pulled taut. Missouri Williams writes with winding, weighty prose, as the novel’s sentences anchor themselves to these depraved human souls.

A strong stomach – and stronger heart – may be required for The Doloriad’s world, but living amongst the cruelty, the disgust and the despair is a formidable novel about the ancient beauty of just staying alive.

[Katie Goh]

Birlinn, 4 Mar, £10

Fourth Estate, 3 Mar, £14.99

Scribe, 10 Mar, £14.99

birlinn.co.uk

harpercollins.co.uk

scribepublications.co.uk

March 2022 — Review

rrrrr

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Dead Ink, 3 Mar, £9.99

— 56 —

THE SKINNY

Listings Looking for something to do? Well you’re in the right place! Find listings below for the month ahead across Music, Clubs, Theatre, Comedy and Art in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee.

To find out how to submit listings, head to theskinny.co.uk/listings

Glasgow Music

THE ALMONDS (UNDETERMINED + THE SQUINTS + SAN JOSE)

Tue 01 Mar

Indie rock from Scotland.

SELF ESTEEM

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:30

Experimental pop from Rotherham.

TEBI REX

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Hip hop from Ireland.

AUDIOBOOKS (VANITY FAIRY)

BROADCAST, 19:30–22:30

Synth pop from London.

ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

Rock from Liverpool.

ORCHARDS

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Alt pop from Brighton.

GALLUS

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Indie punk from Glasgow.

DAVE

BEANS ON TOAST (KITTY LIV)

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Folk from Essex.

ALFIE TEMPLEMAN

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from the UK. THE WANTED

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:30

Pop from the UK.

DENHOLM PRODUCTIONS (MOY + KARDO + POSABLE ACTION FIGURES + MEGAN BLACK) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Multi-genre line-up.

MIC RIGHTEOUS (ISOYSO + RAPTURE 4D + CHEF + SHERLOCK) ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:30

Rapper from Glasgow.

NEGATIVE HOPE SHOWCASE (SLOWLIGHT + CATSLASH + BLEAKS)

WREST

Rap from London.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:30

Multi-genre line-up.

Wed 02 Mar

Fri 04 Mar ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Indie rock from Edinburgh.

TOM ODELL

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from the UK.

CRAWFORD MACK

THE SHEEPDOGS

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Rock from Canada.

YONAKA (JULY JONES)

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

ALKALINE TRIO + TAKING BACK SUNDAY O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Rock from the US.

THE CLAUSE (THE CHASE + COLA)

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Indie rock from Birmingham.

DRAIN GANG

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Hip hop from Sweden.

SMITH/KOTZEN

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Hard rock from the US.

SPENCER CULLUM’S COIN COLLECTION

Indie from Glasgow.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Brighton.

ENOLA GAY

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Post-punk from Belfast.

HUNDRED REASONS + HELL IS FOR HEROES BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

Rock from the UK. A CUT ABOVE

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Multi-genre line-up.

PAISLEY PARC

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Rock from the UK.

PETER CAT (PINC WAFER + ALICE FAYE + LANE GOLDMAN)

SAM RYDER

Jazz from Yorkshire.

BLUE OCTOBER

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

CONNOR FYFE

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Essex.

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

ASTRID WILLIAMSON

CLEAN CUT KID (LORKIN O’REILLY + THE ZEBECKS)

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Indie from the Shetland Islands.

FORGETTING THE FUTURE (MAYA JANE + CLOUD 9INE + CHERUBS)

Alt rock from Houston.

YVES TUMOR

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:30

Experimental from the US. DANA GAVANSKI

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Canada.

Mon 07 Mar DOPE LEMON

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Post-hardcore from Wales.

BOTTLE ROCKETS (NEWTOWN + CLOAKS + GLASS RASPBERRY) KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

New Wave from Glasgow.

CRYSTAL TIDES

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Beach pop from England.

STEPHANIE LAMPREA + ALISTAIR MACDONALD

CHLOE MORIONDO

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from Detroit.

PALAYE ROYALE (BADFLOWER)

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from Las Vegas.

JUAN WAUTERS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from New York.

HALESTORM

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

Vocals and live electronics.

NILÜFER YANYA

Indie rock from the UK.

STEVE PILGRIM (JOHN RUSH + GRAHAM HANLON) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Acoustic folk from the UK.

Fri 11 Mar TORRES

Rock from Brooklyn.

MOONSOUP

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Indie from London.

Indie pop from Glasgow.

Pop from Los Angeles.

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

Pop from London.

Psych rock from Glasgow.

Indie from Edinburgh.

SHYGIRL

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Rapper from London.

LANGKAMER (DINNER NIGHT + HOUND + BRENDA) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Bristol.

Thu 03 Mar

IDLE COMETS (THE MODERN KIND) KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Indie pop from Glasgow.

YARD ACT

Indie pop from Scotland.

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:30–22:30

Surf guitar from the US. ARBOR GREEN THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:30

Folk from Scotland.

Sat 05 Mar LAURA MVULA

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Neo-jazz from Birmingham.

PAUL DRAPER (STEVE HEWITT’S LOVE AMONGST RUIN)

MONO, 19:00–22:30

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

GOGO PENGUIN

CLEOPATRICK

Indie from Leeds.

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Nu-jazz from Manchester.

Rock from the UK.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Hard rock from Canada.

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 20:00–22:30

DIRTY FACES

LUCY FARRELL

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 20:00–22:30

Rant-hop from Derry.

Blues from Denmark.

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Instrumental from Geneva.

Psychedelia from Glasgow.

MONO

Sat 12 Mar

AIRWAYS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from Peterborough.

Wed 09 Mar

Rapper from the UK.

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

UNION OF KNIVES

KILL THE LIGHTS (AVIANA)

Electronica from Scotland.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Fri 18 Mar NINA NESBITT

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Folk rock from the Highlands.

Prog rock from Paris.

CHVRCHES

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Electro indie from Scotland.

Rock ‘n’ roll from Glasgow.

THE CRIBS

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

LUCY DACUS

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Indie folk from the US. WALT DISCO

LOW GIRL

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from the US.

Indie from London.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Scotland.

Tue 15 Mar THE MARY WALLOPERS

WHITE LIES

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Post-punk from London.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Noise pop from Brighton.

TUSKO (FKA WHOLE FOODS KIDS) (LLOYD’S HOUSE) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Punk from Edinburgh.

Wed 16 Mar

CHARLIE SIMPSON

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from England.

— 57 —

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Glasgow.

KRIS BARRAS

THE WEATHER STATION

Rock ‘n’ roll from the UK.

Folk from Canada.

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:30

Pop from Scotland.

WILLE & THE BANDITS THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:30

Alt rock from the UK.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Garage punk from Brighton.

THE DEADNOTES

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Pop punk from Germany.

THE ROLY MO

Indie rock from Glasgow.

THE CHATS

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Punk rock from Australia.

ARRDEE

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Rapper from Brighton.

JACK BOTTS

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Australia.

THE FRATELLIS

KADONNUT MANNER (CRAIG JOHN DAVIDSON)

AMY MCDONALD (CALLUM BEATTIE)

THE MARY WALLOPERS

LIBRALIBRA

THIS FAMILIAR SMILE (CRASHES + PANDACAR)

Indie from Scotland.

MONO, 19:00–22:30

Mon 14 Mar

Metalcore from London.

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Psych garage from the UK.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Mon 21 Mar

Psych pop from Maastricht.

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Metalcore from Texas.

Hard rock from Northern Ireland.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

GONG

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

GELATINE (POLLY + EASY PEELERS)

YIN YIN

BALADO (STATIC + CRODE DUROI)

Singer-songwriter from California.

RICKY WARWICK

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

THECITYISOURS

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Black metal from Belgium.

Pop rock from Scotland.

Alt rock from Liverpool.

Electronic from Stirling.

WIEGEDOOD

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Thu 24 Mar

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

Metalcore supergroup.

SICK JOY

TIDE LINES

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Indie from Wakefield.

Punk rock from Belfast.

Rap from Vancouver.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Tokyo.

PROFESSOR GREEN

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

THE MYSTERINES

SAM GELLAITRY

CROWN THE EMPIRE

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS

Singer-songwriter from Essex.

Rap from the UK.

Indie rock from Canada.

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

TIRZAH

BBNO$

L'ÉCLAIR

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

MOTHER MOTHER

Rock from Cambridge.

Folk from Dundalk.

Folk from the UK.

SLOWTHAI

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

WHIPPET THIN (INDOOR FOXES + KYLE O)

BROTHERS MOVING

Indie folk from Wales.

Rock from Glasgow.

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:30–22:30

Acoustic from Finland.

AGP: OPENPLAN + THE VOLTS + WARREN CAPALDI THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Indie from Caithness.

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Fri 25 Mar

THE WOODENTOPS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Alt pop from Hemel Hempstead.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Rock from the UK.

THE DEAD SOUTH

DE LA SOUL

Hip hop from New York.

EASY DAYS (THE EXHALES + LEMON DRINK + NANI)

KEYWEST

BARROWLANDS, 18:30– 22:30

Bluegrass from Canada.

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Tue 22 Mar

THE FRATELLIS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

NICKY LIPP

THE SURFING MAGAZINES (E.R STEVENS)

MT DOUBT (CONSTANT FOLLOWER)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 19:30–22:30

ORANGE CLAW HAMMER

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Punk rock from Bolton.

DORA JAR

TOM LUMLEY & THE BRAVE LIAISON

CATE LE BON

Underground pop from Perth.

LOLA YOUNG

Tue 08 Mar

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Alt rock from Glasgow.

Indie from ireland.

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30

BUZZCOCKS

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

KING TUT’S, 20:30– 22:30

Indie folk from Nashville.

Sun 20 Mar

Indie rock from Essex.

PARLIAMO

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Post-punk from Manchester.

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

THE SKINNER BROTHERS (THE GULPS + TONTO)

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:30–22:00

BLOC+, 21:00–22:30

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 20:00–22:30

Rock from the US.

TORI AMOS

VINYL WILLIAMS (AMARA)

ROXANNE DE BASTION (AMIE HUCKSTEP + RHONA MACFARLANE)

ALGERNON CORNELIUS

HANDLE (THE ROTATIONS + COWBOY BUILDER)

GET CAPE. WEAR CAPE. FLY (BLAB)

Folk from Dundalk.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Electronica from Germany.

ANGELS & AIRWAVES

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

MONO, 19:00–22:30

Rock from the US.

TANGERINE DREAM

Thu 17 Mar

Rock from Southhampton.

TWIN ATLANTIC

Post-rock from Ireland.

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Alt pop from Sweden.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:30

Indie from Australia.

SARAH KLANG

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Thu 10 Mar

Sun 06 Mar Indie rock from Birmingham.

CREEPER

Blues rock from Canada.

Rapper from Manchester.

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Deathcore from Manchester.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from Liverpool.

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

THE TWANG

THE BLUE STONES

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30

Indie rock from Thurso.

MONASTERIES (BEARERS + THE HEAD OF THE TRAITOR)

Sun 13 Mar

LUCID HOUND (THE RHUBARB + MAZ AND THE PHANTAZMS)

BROADCAST, 19:30–22:30

March 2022 — Listings

BROADCAST, 19:30–22:30

EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY (MARIA CHIARA ARGIRO)

Sat 19 Mar KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Indie rock from Scotland.

KIANA LEDÉ

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Los Angeles.

THE VINTAGE CARAVAN

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Iceland.

AMBER MARK

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

R&B from the US.

SOVIREZ (ICARUS MOON + JOHN PATTON AND RUBBER SPUNK) BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Pop rock from Greenock.

YUMI ZOUMA (SWISS PORTRAIT) KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Alt pop from New Zealand.

BODEGA (THE BUG CLUB)

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

Rock from Glasgow.

MOLLY LINEN (CLEMENTINE MARCH + OTIS JORDAN)

MONO, 19:30–22:30

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:30

CORY WONG

LEWIS MCLAUGHLIN

Art-punk from Brooklyn.

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Funk rock from the US.

Folk indie from Scotland.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

FRED AGAIN...

Alt folk from Edinburgh.

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Sat 26 Mar

Producer from London.

SUPERSUCKERS

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Rock from the US.

DREAM WIFE (LUCIA & THE BEST BOYS)

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Punk rock from Brighton.

THE CORAL

Wed 23 Mar

Rock from Merseyside.

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

Indie pop from Glasgow.

JAKE BUGG

THE DUALERS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:30

Ska from the UK.

MICHAEL TIMMONS (ROSIE H SULLIVAN) KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

Singer-songwriter from East Kilbride.

BLOODYWOOD

CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:30

LAST NIGHT FROM GLASGOW 6TH BIRTHDAY (DOMICILES + LIFE MODEL)

Singer-songwriter from England.

Metal from New Dehli.

WILL JOSEPH COOK

THE WHISTLIN DONKEYS

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

Multi-genre line-up.

KING TUT’S, 20:00– 22:30

Indie rock from the UK.

Folk from Ireland.

BODEGA (THE BUG CLUB)

DAISY MILES

MONO, 19:30–22:30

THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00

Art-punk from Brooklyn.

Lo-fi pop from Glasgow.

STEREO, 19:00–22:00

THE SKINNY

SAM FENDER

THE OVO HYDRO, 18:30–22:30

Indie rock from North Shields.

MATTHEW E WHITE

DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:30

Rock from the US. LYNKS

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from London.

HIPPY (KEV HOWELL + MARK COPELAND) ROOM 2, 19:00–22:30

Acoustic rock from Glasgow.

Sun 27 Mar SAM OUTLAW

ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Los Angeles.

JAPANESE BREAKFAST

Fri 04 Mar

Mon 14 Mar

THE CAVES, 19:00–22:30

Rapper from London.

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

HARLEY KIMBRO LEWIS

SHYGIRL

THE BALUGAS

Indie from Falkirk.

KYOSHI STATION THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Edinburgh.

Sat 05 Mar

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Wed 16 Mar

CHEAP TEETH

LOS FASTIDIOS (OI POLLOI + TRIPWIRE DC)

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Indie rock from Edinburgh.

Sun 06 Mar DAVID FORD

Indie folk from England.

THE QUEEN'S HALL, 15:00-18:00

Contemporary classical.

SKATING POLLY

Rock from Oklahoma.

Mon 07 Mar

WYLDEST

BRYDE (MAGPIE BLUE)

Shoegaze from London.

Indie from Wales.

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Mon 28 Mar

NADIA SHEIKH

Post-punk from Belfast.

Soul from the US.

BROADCAST, 19:00–22:30

Tue 15 Mar Indie from London.

SCO 2022: NEW YORK COUNTERPOINT

CURTIS HARDING

Blues from Nashville.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

M HUNCHO

Rapper from the UK.

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

ENOLA GAY

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Electro indie from Scotland.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from the US.

CHVRCHES

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Tue 08 Mar

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Ska punk from Verona.

AMPLIFI (BROWNBEAR + PAIX + BEE ASHA) THE QUEEN’S HALL, 20:00–22:30

Hip hop and R&B line-up.

TUSKO (FKA WHOLE FOODS KIDS) THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00

Punk from Edinburgh.

Thu 17 Mar

SIMON MCBRIDE TRIO BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Classic rock from Belfast.

Singer-songwriter from the UK.

Folk from the US.

SUMMERHALL, 19:30– 22:30

GRIFF

SWG3, 19:00–22:30

Pop from the UK. CRUMB

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Psych rock from the US. FENG SUAVE

THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Producers from the Netherlands.

Tue 29 Mar THUNDERCAT

BARROWLANDS, 19:00– 22:30

R&B from Los Angeles.

THE BETHS

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Indie pop from New Zealand.

BOB WAYNE (JASON CHARLES MILLER (GODHEAD) + STEVE GROZIER) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:30

Country rock from the US.

Wed 30 Mar

L'ÉCLAIR

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Instrumental from Geneva.

Thu 10 Mar TRASH BOAT

THE BONGO CLUB, 19:00–22:30

Punk rock from St Albans.

DEAN OWENS

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

STEVE ‘N’ SEAGULLS (THREE ‘N’ EIGHTS + MAD DADDY) THE MASH HOUSE, 18:30–22:30

Bluegrass from Finland.

SCO 2022: NEW YORK COUNTERPOINT THE QUEEN'S HALL, 15:00-18:00

Contemporary classical.

Fri 11 Mar

JOHNNY MOPED

WALT DISCO

BANNERMANS, 19:00– 22:30

Pop from Scotland.

ARBOR GREEN

ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:30

Edinburgh Music Tue 01 Mar

BERTA KENNEDY (NANI + KATIE GREGSON-MACLEOD) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

CASEY LOWRY

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Indie from Chesterfield.

Wed 02 Mar YARD ACT

THE CAVES, 19:00–22:30

Indie from Leeds.

BEANS ON TOAST THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Folk from Essex.

Thu 03 Mar

THE SURFING MAGAZINES (LACH) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Surf guitar from the US.

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 20:00–22:30

Folk from Scotland.

KYLE FALCONER LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00

Indie rock from Dundee.

ORLANDO WEEKS THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Indie from the UK.

Sat 12 Mar

SIX YEAR SILENCE (DOLLARHYDE)

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Rock from Glasgow.

THE FIRRENES

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Rock from Edinburgh.

ATTIC CHOIR

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Alt rock from Glasgow.

Sun 13 Mar

ALEXA DE STRANGE (EDDIE & THE WOLVES) BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Shock rock from Scarborough.

The Rum Shack

JAKE BUGG

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:30

Singer-songwriter from England.

Wed 23 Mar

SAM AMIDON

Folk from Vermont.

SCO 2022: NEW YORK COUNTERPOINT THE QUEEN'S HALL, 15:00-18:00

Contemporary classical.

Fri 18 Mar

SATURDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH) MOJO WORKIN’

Soul party feat. 60s R&B, motown, northern soul and more!

Sub Club

SUPERSUCKERS

SATURDAYS

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

SUBCULTURE

Rock from the US.

VAN MORRISON

THE EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE, 20:00–22:30

Blues rock from Northern Ireland.

TAE SUP AT THE QUEEN’S (BURD ELLEN + JAMIE SUTHERLAND + KATHRYN WILLIAMS & WITHERED HAND) THE QUEEN’S HALL, 20:00–22:30

Electic line-up from Scotland.

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

Cathouse WEDNESDAYS

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

DJ Jonny soundtracks your Wednesday with all the best pop-punk, rock and hip-hop.

THURSDAYS

ROSALIE CUNNINGHAM (ALUNAH + TUPPENNY BUNTERS) THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:30

UNHOLY

Cathouse's Thursday night rock, metal and punk mash-up.

FRIDAYS

FIRPO CHOMPEAVY (ROYAL BLOOM)

Stoner rock from Parma.

SHABAZZ PALACES THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Fri 04 Mar CHEAP TEETH

THE HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 19:00–22:30

Hip hop from Seattle.

Indie rock from Edinburgh.

IN-FLAMES

THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:30

Heavy metal from Sweden.

EVERYDAY PHARAOHS + CORDE DU ROI + CAT’S CRADLE RAD APPLES, 19:00– 22:30

Alt metal from Zagreb.

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Sat 05 Mar

OPENPLAN (THE DEVANTIES + PARADISE COLLECTIVE)

RAD APPLES, 19:00– 22:30

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

ROMEO’S DAUGHTER

CHINA CRISIS

Rock from the UK.

ORANGE CLAW HAMMER

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Rock from Scotland.

THE URBAN VOODOO MACHINE THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Blues from London.

GET CAPE. WEAR CAPE. FLY THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Indie rock from Essex.

Sat 19 Mar

THE STORY OF THE GUITAR HEROES THE QUEEN’S HALL, 20:00–22:30

Punk from Glasgow.

THE MARX (ARSENIC ANNIE + AROUND 7)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Thu 17 Mar

Rock from Glasgow.

Sat 26 Mar

IAN MCNABB (ICICLE WORKS) BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

TOODLES & THE HECTIC PITY (ALLDEEPENDS + LIVE, DO NOTHING) RAD APPLES, 19:00– 22:30

Folk punk from Bristol.

Rock from Liverpool.

Sat 19 Mar

FOY VANCE

TOM WALKER

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:30

CHURCH, 19:00–22:30

Indie folk from Bangor.

RUVELLAS

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

Sun 20 Mar

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:30

RODDY WOOMBLE

CHURCH, 19:00–22:30

THIS FAMILIAR SMILE (GO TO GIRL + POLAR BEARS IN PURGATORY)

Alt indie from Scotland.

SUMMERHALL, 19:00– 22:30

WREST

Indie rock from Edinburgh.

STEVE IGNORANT

Punk rock from England.

NEW MODEL ARMY

LOGAN’S CLOSE

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Rock from Yorkshire.

WHITE NOVELS

Rock ‘n’ roll from East Lothian.

Thu 03 Mar

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

Sun 20 Mar

Indie rock from Scotland.

NITIN SAWHNEY

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:30

TWIN ATLANTIC

Alt rock from Glasgow.

Thu 03 Mar

THE CAVES, 19:00–22:30

HECTOR GANNET

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

Singer-songwriter from North Shields.

SWAGADELIC

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Dundee Music

Asian underground from London.

MT DOUBT

Fundraiser for Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis.

Pop party anthems & classic cheese from DJ Nicola Walker.

SUNDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH) CHEERS FOR THIRD SUNDAY

DJ Kelmosh takes you through Mid-Southwestern emo, rock, new metal, nostalgia and 90s and 00s tunes.

SLIDE IT IN

Classic rock through the ages from DJ Nicola Walker.

The Garage Glasgow MONDAYS

BARE MONDAYS

Lasers, bouncy castles and DJ Gav Somerville spinning out teasers and pleasers. Nice way to kick off the week, no?

TUESDAYS

#TAG TUESDAYS

Indoor hot tubs, inflatables as far as the eye can see and a Twitter feed dedicated to validating your drunk-eyed existence.

WEDNESDAYS

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

DJ Garry Garry Garry in G2 with chart remixes, along with beer pong competitions all night.

MISSING PERSONS CLUB: 9TH BIRTHDAY (NENE H + ANDY BARTON) LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

MAGIC CITY: TOO GALLUS + MULLEN + IRA

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

R&B, bass and dancehall.

Sat 05 Mar

COLOURS X MISFITS PRESENTS BEN NICKY SWG3, 23:00–03:00

MEDUZA

Electronica and rave.

HAWKCHILD DIY (MECHATOK + MALIBU)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Pop and club.

SURGE

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

Electronica and dance.

STICKY FINGERS (PAUL MULHOLLAND + BARRY MCCORMACK + DIRTY OLD VINYL + SIMONE BLACK) THE RUM SHACK, 21:00–03:00

Soul and disco.

Thu 10 Mar

SUBCITY RADIO: ÔSTARA

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Disco, house and techno.

HOUSEPLANTS (DYLAN FORBES)

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, £5 - £6

KEEP IT ROLLING: MAVEEN (SHAKARA) & STRAWBERRY JAM SOUNDSYSTEM LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Dubstep, funk and dancehall.

ALL U NEED XL: DANCE SYSTEM WITH JORDAN NOCTURNE

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

FUSE (GRACIE T, PRIYA, VAJ.POWER, CASEMENT, DIJA, NADIA SUMMER)

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

FUSE welcomes Daytimers Gracie T and DJ Priya for their Glasgow debut at StereoFunk, reggaeton and club.

KETA BUSH DANCE PARTY THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00,

— 58 —

SATURDAYS

I LOVE GARAGE

Garage by name, but not by musical nature. DJ Darren Donnelly carousels through chart, dance and classics, the Desperados bar is filled with funk, G2 keeps things urban and the Attic gets all indie on you.

SUNDAYS SESH

Twister, beer pong and DJ Ciar McKinley on the ones and twos, serving up chart and remixes through the night.

Thu 17 Mar

ALL U NEED XL: ST PATRICK’S DAY SPECIAL WITH TOMMY HOLOHAN + YASMIN GARDEZI SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

House, techno and disco.

Fri 18 Mar

SWIFTOGEDDON - THE TAYLOR SWIFT CLUB NIGHT! SWG3, 23:00–03:00

PEACH 15TH EDITION PARTY

Dance and disco.

House and techno.

Dub techno, garage and bass.

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

THE RUM SHACK RESIDENT DJS

GOOD TIMES WITH FRIENDS (DJ PERM + CLARENCE HOUSE GROOVES)

THE RUM SHACK, 22:00–03:00

Soul, R&B and reggae.

ACLP X GOYA

ROOM 2, 23:00–03:00

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00, FREE

Disco, house and techno.

Sat 12 Mar

WE SHOULD HANG OUT MORE WITH ELKKA (LIVE)

SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Dance and disco.

House and club.

GBX ANTHEMS

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Dance and anthems.

Sat 19 Mar

PUSH IT

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

R&B and hip hop.

FLIPSIDE (TALKLESS + DEAN GRAY B2B JACK SCREMIN) THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

House, disco and dance.

LEZZER QUEST

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

House and disco.

SONICA: THE GOLDEN FILTER + LOOSEN UP DJS THE RUM SHACK, 21:00–03:00

Disco and dance. Part of Sonica 2022.

INTERCHANGE X RAVE ROOM 2, 23:00–03:00

Hardcore techno.

Electronica and house.

House and dance.

Dance, chart and remixes in the main hall with Craig Guild, while DJ Nicola Walker keeps things nostalgic in G2 with flashback bangervs galore.

EROSION PRESENTS: AL WOOTTON (BOOSTERHOOCH + JOE UNKNOWN)

BITCH WITH MISS WORLD

SWG3, 22:00–03:00

FRESH BEAT

RETURN TO MONO: SLAM & STEF MENDESIDIS

Techno and club.

STEREO, 23:00–03:00

WE ARE THE BRAVE X PRESSURE

FRIDAYS

SWG3, 23:00–03:00

KÖLSCH

Fri 04 Mar

Ross MacMillan plays chart, house and anthems with giveaways, bouncy castles and, most importantly, air hockey.

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

House and techno.

SWG3, 23:00–03:00

ELEMENT

Pop and dance.

LA CHEETAH CLUB PRESENTS: SAOIRSE

Trance and house.

Fri 11 Mar

THURSDAYS

Synthpop, italo and disco.

ALL U NEED XL: FRANKY WAH

SUB CLUB, 23:00–03:00

CHURCH, 19:00–22:30

Indie from Edinburgh.

FLASHBACK

House and garage.

Glasgow Clubs

THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:30

Rock from Scotland.

TWIN ATLANTIC

Alt rock from Glasgow.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Sun 27 Mar

Mon 21 Mar CHURCH, 19:00–22:30

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00

Rock from Glasgow.

SUNDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Electro indie from Scotland.

THE MASH HOUSE, 20:00–22:30

Punk rock from Bolton.

From the fab fierce family that brought you Catty Pride comes Cathouse Rock Club’s new monthly alternative drag show.

Thu 10 Mar FAT SAM’S, 19:00–22:30

SAINT PHNX

Rock from Dundee.

HELLBENT

Rock ‘n’ roll from Dundee.

CHVRCHES

Indie from Caithness.

BUZZCOCKS

SUNDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

House and rave.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00

Live rockumentary.

Or Caturdays, if you will.

Two levels of the loudest, maddest music the DJs can muster; metal, rock and alt on floor one, and punky screamo upstairs.

Sundays (Last of the month)

Screamy, shouty, posthardcore madness to help you shake off a week of stress in true punk style.

Fri 25 Mar

Rock from Liverpool.

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS

Prog rock from England.

KILLED A FOX

THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:30

SATURDAYS

Wed 16 Mar BURNING UP

Disco and dance.

LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Dance and disco.

FLY CLUB PRESENTS FOLAMOUR + BARRY CAN’T SWIM SWG3, 23:00–03:00

House and dance.

OBSESSION

SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Dance and club.

GANZER TAKT: DIRTY DISTORTION (PSYCHODEVILS + BEAT STROGANOW + HAMATON3 + XILEF) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Techno and house.

DAVID NIMMO VS SAM JOHNSTONE THE FLYING DUCK, 21:00–03:00, £8

Trance and techno.

Thu 24 Mar

STEREO PRESENTS: KUSH JONES (ISORA + MISS COSMIX) STEREO, 23:00–03:00

Club and house.

Fri 25 Mar

DYSFUNCTIONAL II: KLANGKUENSTLER SWG3, 23:00–03:00

Techno and rave.

March 2022 — Listings

Singer-songwriter from Greenock.

Punk rock from the 70s.

Mon 21 Mar

BANNERMANS, 19:30– 22:30

Indie from ireland.

Wed 09 Mar

Regular Glasgow club nights

Singer-songwriter from the US.

Thu 24 Mar

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

PEGGY SEEGER

THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:30

USHER HALL, 19:00– 22:30

KEYWEST

SAMUEL JACK

KING TUT’S, 19:00– 22:30

RANDY NEWMAN

THE SKINNY

CLUB COMFORT X EVENTS RESEARCH PROGRAMME: COUNTY COMFORT (BOOSTERHOOCH + ROO HONEYCHILD + BALIBOC + DJ SELKY) STEREO, 21:00–03:00

Queer party and club.

Sat 26 Mar

POP MUTATIONS PRESENT: GABO & FRIENDS (BUTHO THE WARRIOR + NORMAN WILLMORE + AZAMAIAH) STEREO, 21:00–03:00

Club and dancehall.

PROXIMA (REBECCA VASMANT + JAY GUNNING + WOODY) THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

House, disco and funk.

Fri 04 Mar

FLY: ODEN & FATZO

Fri 11 Mar

Acid techno and underground.

OVERGROUND: COCO BRYCE (MYOR, LOBSTER THEREMIN, CRITICAL)

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

Rave and dance.

THE CAVES, 23:00–03:00

KICKSTART MY HEART

Metal and power ballads.

MUTINY: DUBURBAN & JAHGANAUT + SIMPLY DREAD + TONY JUNGLE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

Jungle and techno.

Sat 05 Mar

PALIDRONE X SCHEMATIC (J WAX + KORAN + DDSIX + DANSA + PROVOST + RUDI) SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

GREENHOUSE RECORDS (LUX + SPOOF-J)

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

House and techno.

Mon 21 Mar

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Sleek, spacey, syncopated sounds from Germany.

REGGAETON PARTY

Fri 18 Mar

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

FLY: FOLAMOUR EDINBURGH

Sat 12 Mar

House and techno.

Reggaeton.

HAND-MADE WITH LOVE (BARBARA BOEING) SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

Funk and disco from Brazil.

SANDSTORM

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

90s and 00s dance.

Thu 24 Mar

THE LIQUID ROOM, 23:00–03:00

AQUELLARRE (PAKO VEGA + LONELY CARP) SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

Experimental, noise and queer industrial music.

STORYTIME 5TH BIRTHDAY (ROMARE)

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00, £7 - £18

Electronica and dance.

GOLDEN DAYS

JORDAN NOCTURNE + FRANKIE ELYSE + CLUB_NACHT

Dance and house.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

Trance and techno.

THE LIQUID ROOM, 23:00–03:00

THE FLYING DUCK, 23:00–03:00

Edinburgh Clubs Thu 03 Mar THE REVIVAL: MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

House and techno.

CALL ME MAYBE

Pop and disco.

Thu 10 Mar

OVERTIME: BAILEY IBBS + HARVEY FURNESS B2B MISBEATS THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Garage, house and drill.

GEORGE IV + REFRACTA PRESENT (SHOSH (24HR GARAGE GIRLS))

Sat 19 Mar

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00

PRTCL808 PRESENTS: MARTIN IKIN

Mon 14 Mar

House and techno.

PRONTO (BALI G) SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

Playful rhythms from Edinburgh and Bratislava.

Thu 17 Mar NOCTURNAL RHYTHMS

THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00

Garage and bass.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

THE LIQUID ROOM, 23:00–03:00

Pop, disco and R&B.

DECADE

TUESDAYS

MIDNIGHT BASS

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

FRIDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH) ELECTRIKAL

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

FRIDAYS (MONTHLY, WEEK CHANGES) SOUND SYSTEM LEGACIES

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

FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH) DISCO MAKOSSA

March 2022 — Listings

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

FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH) OVERGROUND

Offering a new breed of lofi, raw house and techno.

FRIDAYS (FIRST OR LAST OF THE MONTH) HEADSET

Skillis and guests playing garage, techno, house and bass downstairs, with old school hip hop upstairs.

SATURDAYS (FIRST OR SECOND OF THE MONTH) MESSENGER

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

Saturdays (Monthly)

MUMBO JUMBO

Everything from disco, funk and soul to electro and house: Saturday night party music all night long.

SATURDAYS (MONTHLY) SOULSVILLE INTERNATIONAL

International soulful sounds.

SATURDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH) PULSE

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

Sneaky Pete’s MONDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) HEADSET

Scottish rave label with a monthly, guest-filled night.

TUESDAYS

POPULAR MUSIC

DJs playing music by bands to make you dance: Grace Jones to Neu!, Parquet Courts to Brian Eno, The Clash to Janelle Monáe.

WEDNESDAYS HEATERS

Heaters resident C-Shaman presents a month of ambiguous local showdowns, purveying the multifarious mischief that characterises Sneaky’s midweek party haven.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) VOLENS CHORUS

Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook FRIDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) MISS WORLD

All-female DJ collective with monthly guests

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH) HOT MESS

A night for queer people and their friends.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

House and techno.

TELFORT’S GOOD PLACE (TELFORT + TOM VR) SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

SOUL JAM

Monthly no holds barred, down and dirty bikram disco.

Sundays Postal Multi-genre beats every Sunday at Sneaky Pete's, showcasing the very best of local talent with some extra special guests.

The Liquid Room

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) REWIND

Monthly party night celebrating the best in soul, disco, rock and pop with music from the 70s, 80s, 90s and current bangers.

The Hive MONDAYS

MIXED UP MONDAY

Monday-brightening mix of hip-hop, R'n'B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

TUESDAYS

TRASH TUESDAY

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

WEDNESDAYS

COOKIE WEDNESDAY

90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS

HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY

Student anthems and bangerz.

FRIDAYS

FLIP FRIDAY

Yer all-new Friday at Hive.

Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and noveltystuffed. Perrrfect.

SATURDAYS BUBBLEGUM

Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

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

Subway Cowgate

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

Riffs and anthems.

Mon 28 Mar

Dundee Clubs Sat 12 Mar

CONEXION PRESENTS: CALLYT

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

Glasgow Comedy

XO

Oran Mor

Hip-hop and R'n'B grooves from regulars DJ Beef and DJ Cherry.

THURSDAYS SLIC

More classic Hip-hop and R'n'B dance tunes for the almost end of the week.

FRIDAYS

CRAIG HILL: PUMPED! 11 MAR, 19:30–21:00

Scotland's hilariously high-octane kilted comedy treasure. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

JACK DOCHERTY: NOTHING BUT

22-34 MAR, 19:30–21:00

FIT FRIDAYS

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

SATURDAYS

SLICE SATURDAY

The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

SUNDAYS

Sunday Service Atone for the week before and the week ahead with non-stop dancing.

The Mash House

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

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

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

THE FRIDAY SHOW, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS

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

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

SATURDAYS

THE SATURDAY SHOW, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

NIGEL NG: THE HAIYAA TOUR

17 MAR, 18:30–20:00

20 MAR, 19:00–21:00

FAT SAM’S, 23:00–03:00

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

WEDNESDAYS

Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.

Dance and club.

Fri 18 Mar

TUESDAYS TAMAGOTCHI

RED RAW, 20:30

JAX JONES: DEEP JOY CLUB TOUR

Techno and rave.

TRACKS

The Stand Edinburgh

International stand up comedian and host of podcast sensation Rice To Meet You goes on tour. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

CHURCH, 22:00–03:00

MONDAYS

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

The Glee Club FRIDAYS

FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

The perfect way to end the working week, with four superb stand-up comedians.

Regular Edinburgh comedy nights

FRIDAYS

House and techno.

SECRET SUNDAY

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

Sat 26 Mar

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

SUNDAYS

SATURDAYS

THE SATURDAY SHOW, 21:00

THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30

MONDAYS

TAIS-TOI

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

KEEP IT STEEL

Pop punk party.

RED RAW, 20:30

SATURDAYS

Fri 25 Mar

Drum and bass.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

Host Billy Kirkwood & guests act entirely on your suggestions.

FRIDAYS

THE LIQUID ROOM, 23:00–03:00

House and techno.

MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

PURE HONEY VS SUKI SOUND

Rave, hardcore and pop classics from London.

SUB FOCUS

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH

TUESDAYS

Disco and dance.

HEAL YOURSELF & MOVE (BEING)

The Stand Glasgow

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

HOSPITALITY EDINBURGH 2022

Regular Edinburgh club nights The Bongo Club

MARGINS (ANGEL D’LITE + DJ SOSI + MELLY)

House from London

BEAT BOUTIQUE

ROMANIAN BITS (PER HAMMAR)

New school UK garage from Kiss FM resident.

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

Power-house, breakbeat and trance from Paris.

Future-facing techno, breaks, electro.

Sun 27 Mar

HWTS (VITESS)

Regular Glasgow comedy nights

A tender, sharply funny new show from BAFTA Award winner and Ednburgh Fringe alumnus.

STUART MITCHELL: IS IT JUST ME?

25-26 MAR, 20:00–22:00

The longest running panellist on BBC Scotland's Breaking the News performs his new show. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

The Glee Club

GLENN MOORE + JOSH WELLER 13 MAR, 13:00–14:00

A work-in-progress in two parts. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

PULSE

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

— 59 —

KOJO ANIM

Britain’s Got Talent star brings his comedy on tour. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

AURIE STYLA: GREEN 24 MAR, 19:00–21:00

One of the UK's most charismatic comedians.

Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

THE MUSLIMS ARE COMING: EID SPECIAL 27 MAR, 18:00–19:00

The well-loved comedy tour arrives in Scotland just in time for Eid. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

The King’s Theatre

SUSIE MCCABE: BORN BELIEVER 26 MAR, 19:30–22:30

The fastest selling act at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival three years running. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

HANNAH GADSBY: BODY OF WORK

7-13 MAR, 19:30–22:30

The internationally renowned comedian returns with a new contemplating the place of comedy today.

LARRY DEAN: FUDNUT 13 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Double Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominee and star of Live At The Apollo returns.

Monkey Barrel Comedy Club TUESDAYS (BIWEEKLY)

THE EDINBURGH REVUE, 19:00

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

WEDNESDAYS

TOP BANANA, 19:00

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

THURSDAYS

SNEAK PEAK, 19:00 + 21:00

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

STEWART LEE: SNOWFLAKE/ TORNADO

14-15 MAR, 19:30–22:30

One of Britain’s best comedians turns a sharp eye onto our current political climate.

FERN BRADY: AUTISTIC BIKINI QUEEN 17 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Acerbic, fearless comedy from a BBC comedy mainstay. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

JOHN SHUTTLEWORTH’S BACK!

23 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Witty musical comedy and observational humour abound. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

The Old Hairdressers

DAVID CALLAGHAN: PROGRANIMATE 9 MAR, 20:00–22:30

Multi-media stand-up.

The Stand Glasgow MARK NELSON

12 MAR, 17:30–19:30

Award-winning stand-up and Stand favourite, Mark Nelson brings a mix of cutting observations and one-liners (WIP). Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

RAYMOND MEARNS 27 MAR, 20:30–22:30

A wry look at the chaos of modern life. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

FRIDAYS

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG FRIDAY SHOW, 19:00

Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

SATURDAYS

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SATURDAY SHOW, 19:00

Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

SUNDAYS

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SUNDAY SHOW, 19:00

Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

ASHLEY STORRIE

3-5 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Ashley Storrie returns to the Glasgow International Comedy Festival with another hour of her trademark warmth and wit. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

MARC JENNINGS: HERE, BUT

23-26 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Join rising Scottish comedy star Marc Jennings for a brand new show following his sold-out debut at the Edinburgh Festival. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

NATHAN CATON: LET’S TALK ABOUT VEX 8-9 MAR, 20:00–22:30

A lot has happened since Caton’s last tour, The Pursuit Of Happiness. He’s got it all tackled in this hilarious show.

BE HONEST WITH JOJO SUTHERLAND & BRUCE DEVLIN 13 MAR, 14:00–16:00

Join Jojo Sutherland and Bruce Devlin in a live recording of their podcast, Be Honest. Part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

CONNOR BURNS

13 MAR, 17:30–19:30

Join multi-award-nominee Connor Burns for a onehour work-in-progress show. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

KAI HUMPHRIES

8 MAR, 20:00–22:30

Forth on the Fringe Award Winner Kai Humphries brings a one-hour workin-progress show. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

THE SKINNY

STEVE HALL & STEVE WILLIAMS

ALEX KEALY: MONOPOLY

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: MILKSHAKE

Steve Hall and Steve Williams are here to deliver a double dose of stand up. Part of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

A work-in-progress stand-up hour tackling Silicon Valley, advertising, addiction and monopolies.

A right wing politician and left wing activist meet in a court-mandated session after an unfortunate milkshake incident.

14 MAR, 20:30–22:30

GARETH WAUGH

16 MAR, 20:00–22:30

As seen on BBC's Scot Squad, Gareth Waugh works live on his fifth solo stand-up show. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

ST PATRICK’S DAY COMEDY SPECIAL

17 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Celebrate St Patrick's day in style with Ireland’s finest under one roof. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

LOU SANDERS: ONE WORD: WOW 19 MAR, TIMES VARY

Pull up a chair, get all cosy and let Lou Sanders tell you about the time she gave a horse a boner.

LIAM FARRELLY

20 MAR, 17:30–19:30

Having dived straight into full time comedy after leaving school, Liam’s meteoric rise continues with a WIP show. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

AMY MATTHEWS: MOREOVER, THE MOON (WIP)

20 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Matthews explores feeling the main character in the film of your life when you don’t feel like the writer. Part of Glasgow International Comedy Festival.

TOM HOUGHTON: HONOUR TOUR

22 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Tom Houghton has been storming the comedy circuit with his hilarious stories and sharp-eyed silver spoon observations.

Edinburgh Comedy Festival Theatre

HANNAH GADSBY: BODY OF WORK

13 MAR, 19:30–22:30

The internationally renowned comedian returns with a new contemplating the place of comedy today.

Monkey Barrel Comedy Club LAUREN PATTISON

12 MAR, 20:00–22:00

Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer nominee Lauren Pattison is back with the beginnings of a brand new show.

MARC JENNINGS

4 MAR, 20:00–22:00

ELEANOR TIERNAN 6 MAR, 19:30–21:00

A deliciously wild look at mental health.

LIAM WITHNAIL

11 MAR, 20:00–22:00

Multi-award winning comedian takes a sharp look at culture and politics.

KOJO ANIM

18 MAR, 20:00–22:00

Britain’s Got Talent star brings his comedy on tour.

ZACH & VIGGO: LATE NIGHT INTERCONTINENTAL FLIGHT 19 MAR, 22:00–23:00

Award-winning NorwegianAmerican comedy duo return with brand new material.

STAMPTOWN

21-22 MAR, 20:00–22:00

A raunchy, chaotic and full-on fringe experience, Stamptown is a late-night variety show featuring the best alternative performance on the international scene.

The Edinburgh Playhouse JACK DEE: OFF THE TELLY

12 MAR, 20:00–22:30

Non-stop laughs from Britain’s grouchiest comedian.

JOE LYCETT: MORE, MORE, MORE! HOW DO YOU LYCETT? HOW DO YOU LYCETT?

25-26 MAR, 19:30–22:30

14-19 MAR, 13:00–14:00

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: MAN’S BEST FRIEND

21-26 MAR, 13:00–14:00

A poignant comic screwball tale of the bonds formed under pressure.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: DANIEL GETTING MARRIED 28 MAR-2 APR, 13:00– 14:00

The chaos of weddings and marriage is given short and hilarious shrift.

The King’s Theatre

HAIRSPRAY THE MUSICAL

28 MAR-2 APR, 19:30– 22:30

Observational comedy from one of Britain’s most loved young comedians.

A feel-good musical comedy about making your own way in the world.

The Stand Edinburgh

Theatre Royal

NATHAN CATON: LET’S TALK ABOUT VEX 9 MAR, 20:00–22:30

A lot has happened since Caton’s last tour, The Pursuit Of Happiness. He’s got it all tackled in this hilarious show.

LOU SANDERS: ONE WORD: WOW 20 MAR, TIMES VARY

Pull up a chair, get all cosy and let Lou Sanders tell you about the time she gave a horse a boner.

TOM HOUGHTON: HONOUR TOUR

23 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Tom Houghton has been storming the comedy circuit with his hilarious stories and sharp-eyed silver spoon observations.

ADAM ROWE: IMPERIOUS

7 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Host of the Have A Word Podcast & star of Live At The Apollo Adam Rowe brings us his latest standup comedy tour.

STEVE HALL + STEVE WILLIAMS 13 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Straight from Russell Howard's sold out arena World Tour, Steve Hall and Steve Williams deliver a double dose of stand up.

STU & GARRY’S IMPROV SHOW

22 MAR, 20:30–22:30

Our long-running improvised comedy show.

Resident duo Stu & Garry weave comedy magic from your suggestions.

MATT FORDE: CLOWNS TO THE LEFT OF ME, JOKERS TO THE RIGHT 28 MAR, 20:30–22:30

There are wallies everywhere and half of them are running the country. Matt Forde lashes out right, left and centre.

Glasgow Theatre Oran Mor

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: TEN THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE 1-5 MAR, 13:00–14:00

A darkly funny take on what it means to leave a mark on the world.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: I'M DISSOLVING MY LOVE IN A BATH OF ACID

7-12 MAR, 13:00–14:00

A pulpy romp featuring gags and gore galore.

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE 1-5 MAR, 19:00–22:30

The classic Narnia story is brought to magical life.

SCHOOL OF ROCK

7-12 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Stick it to the man at this joyful musical based upon the cult classic film of the same name.

THE DA VINCI CODE

28 MAR-2 APR, 19:30– 22:30

A new staging of the twists and tales of the classic Dan Brown tale.

Tramway

FAME

11 MAR, 7:30PM-10:30PM

Performing arts students try to make it big in 1980s New York.

STAND BY

21-23 MAR, 7:00PM9:00PM

A multi-sensory immersive performance about modern day policing.

EGG

26 MAR, 7:30PM-9:30PM

An evocative aerial circus performance about sexuality, fertility, and creating family.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

7-9 MAR, 7:00PM-9:00PM

A jazz version of the Shakespeare classic.

Festival Theatre

EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT JAMIE 29 MAR-2 APR, 19:30– 22:30

A young boy dreams of being a drag star in this life-affirming musical.

SCOTTISH OPERA: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM 1-5 MAR, TIMES VARY

A magical staging of Benjamin Britten’s take on the Shakespeare classic.

OI FROG & FRIENDS

17-20 MAR, TIMES VARY

A sweet stage adaptation of the bestselling children’s books.

King’s Theatre Edinburgh

Five magical stories told through Bharatanatyam classical dance style. Part of Dance International Glasgow.

The green man in the swamp returns in this satiric take on fairy tales.

6 MAR, 14:30–17:00

16-19 MAR, 19:30–22:30

SHEILA’S ISLAND

1-5 MAR, 19:30–22:30

A survival comedy about four women stranded in the foggy Lake District during a team building day.

Authentic Arangetram performed for the first time in Scotland. Part of Dance International Glasgow.

EDGAS PRESENTS THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE

26 MAR, 13:00–14:00

Royal Lyceum Theatre

FARAH SALEH AND COLLABORATORS: PAST-INUOUS

An innovative, part-digital performance about the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Part of Dance International Glasgow.

THREE60: WORLD’S EVOLUTION

27 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Three connected pieces explore the performers’ African roots. Part of Dance International Glasgow.

Tron Theatre

THE METAMORPHOSIS 16 MAR-2 APR, 19:30– 22:30

Kafka’s haunting tale of transformation and existential dread gets a radical new staging.

MOORCROFT

1-5 MAR, 19:30–22:00

A blistering, forceful examination of working class masculinity.

ME AND MY SISTER TELL EACH OTHER EVERYTHING

23 MAR-2 APR, 19:45– 22:30

A musical production of the intimacies and traumas of sisterhood.

A new variety show from BALLET OF SIBERIA: ROMEO AND JULIET 3 MAR, 19:30–22:30

A dazzling staging of Prokofiev’s famed ballet.

Traverse Theatre

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: OSCAR

22-26 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Adventures abound in this deliciously riotious Gilbert and Sullivan opera.

THE SCENT OF ROSES 5-19 MAR, 19:30–22:00

A dark, funny take on marriage and authenticity from Scottish theatre powerhouse Zinnie Harris.

Scottish Storytelling Centre

ROWAN RHEINGANS: DISPATCHES ON THE RED DRESS 26 MAR, 19:30–22:30

An intimate solo show by double BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winning songwriter and storyteller Rowan Rheingans.

The Edinburgh Playhouse RUSSIAN STATE BALLET OF SIBERIA: SWAN LAKE

4-5 MAR, 19:30–22:30

The traditional tragic romance is given new life by one of Russia’s best dance companies.

Dundee Theatre

An innovative, part-digital performance about the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Part of Dance International Glasgow.

FRANCE-LISE MCGURN: ALOUD

29 MAR, 13:00–14:00

OPTIMISM

THE GARDENER

THE CHILDREN

A hit show from the Edinburgh Fringe, this is an intimate portrait of a lifetime spent in love.

Nominated for Best Play at the Tony Awards, this is theatre writing at its most incisive.

A new musical about friendship, music and inspiration.

New theatre writing about what it means to be young and have hope.

1-2 MAR, 7:00PM-9:00PM

1-19 MAR, 19:30–22:30

Based on words by voicehearers, this innovative stage play weaves together conversations heard even when no one is speaking.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: TEN THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE 8-12 MAR, 1:00PM2:00PM

A darkly funny take on what it means to leave a mark on the world.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: I’M DISSOLVING MY LOVE IN A BATH OF ACID

JACK DOCHERTY

27 MAR, 19:30–22:30

A tender, sharply funny new show from BAFTA Award winner and Ednburgh Fringe alumnus.

THE GARDENER

4 MAR, 19:00–22:30

A hit show from the Edinburgh Fringe, this is an intimate portrait of a lifetime spent in love.

Glasgow Art

CCA: Centre for 15-19 MAR, 1:00PMContemporary 2:00PM A pulpy romp featuring gags Art and gore galore.

TOBOJO (BORIS JOHNSON IS A TOAST) + YES CHEF 15 MAR, 6:30PM-9:30PM

A double bill of two brand new plays being read for the first time. Part of First Stages Festival.

HUMAN NURTURE

17-19 MAR, 7:30PM9:30PM

A dynamic new play about race, the care system, and bonds that can never break.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: MILKSHAKE 22-26 MAR, 1:00PM2:00PM

A right wing politician and left wing activist meet in a court-mandated session after an unfortunate milkshake incident.

THIS GAME RIGHT HERE + COW AND PIG

22 MAR, 6:30PM-9:30PM

A double bill of two brand new plays being read for the first time. Part of First Stages Festival.

MUGABE, MY DAD AND ME

23-26 MAR, 7:30PM9:30PM

Charting the rise and fall of one of the most violent politicians of the 20th century through a personal father-son tale.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: MAN’S BEST FRIEND

29 MAR-2 APR, 1:00PM2:00PM

A poignant comic screwball tale of the bonds formed under pressure.

SOLDIERS + THE CLEANER

29 MAR, 6:30PM-9:30PM

A double bill of two brand new plays being read for the first time. Part of First Stages Festival.

HAIRSPRAY THE MUSICAL

14-19 MAR, 19:30–22:30

A feel-good musical comedy about making your own way in the world.

— 60 —

1 MAR-2 APR, TIMES VARY

FARAH SALEH AND COLLABORATORS: PAST-INUOUS

25-26 MAR, 19:30–22:30

DIALOGUES FROM BABEL

TRANSFORMATIONS

An art and audiovisual exhibition exploring the role of Glasgow Women’s Library in the local community.

Dundee Rep

1-5 MAR, 1:00PM-2:00PM

4 MAR, 7:30PM-9:30PM

ABHINAYA DANCE ACADEMY: PANCHA DALA (FIVE PETALS)

ABHINAYA DANCE ACADEMY: ARANGETRAM

2 MAR, 20:30–22:30

queen of burlesque.

Assembly Roxy the RUSSIAN STATE

THE BOHEMIANS PRESENT SHREK THE MUSICAL

5 MAR, 5:45PM – 20:00

DITA VON TEESE: GLAMONATRIX

AILBHE NÍ BHRIAIN: AN EXPERIMENT WITH TIME 1-19 MAR, TIMES VARY

Combining film, tapestry, print and installation, this exhibition explores disorienting, environmental experiences of time.

MATHIEU LE SOUARD: BLOOM 10-20 MAR, TIMES VARY

An interactive audiovisual installation drawing on themes of nature. Part of Sonica 2022.

ROBBIE THOMSON: END OF ENGINES

10-20 MAR, TIMES VARY

Sonic sculptures and metallic fragments query our relationship with fossil fuels. Part of Sonica 2022.

Compass Gallery

SANDRA COLLINS: SHOW ME EVERYTHING

1-31 MAR, TIMES VARY

Surreal paintings interrogating the relationship between reality, dreams and myth.

Glasgow Print Studio SHOWCASE

1-26 MAR, 11:00–17:00

A sweeping, dynamic overview of prints published by Glasgow Print Studio over the last 30 years.

Glasgow Women’s Library

WHERE THE WORLD MEETS AS NEIGHBOURS

1 MAR-7 MAY, TIMES VARY

Archival exhibition marking 50 years of the Dundee International Women’s Centre.

OUT IN THE ARCHIVE 1 MAR-21 MAY, TIMES VARY

A look back at 30 years of queer activism at Glasgow Women’s Library.

Edinburgh Art &Gallery

ANDREW MACKENZIE 1-2 MAR, TIMES VARY

Dreamy snowscapes are

given a sharp, graphic Kelvingrove that reforms ideas of Art Gallery and edge landscape painting.

Museum LIZ DOUGLAS: 1 MAR-1 JUN, 11:00– 16:00

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

Street Level Photoworks

THIS SEPARATED ISLE 12 MAR-15 MAY, TIMES VARY

Exploring the intersection between identity and nationhood, this series of photographic portraits examines the tensions and divisions in contemporary British life.

The Modern Institute

SUZANNE JACKSON: IN NATURE’S WAY…

1-19 MAR, TIMES VARY

A new body of sculpted paintings that look at the relationship between domestic labour, the natural environment, and the female body.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

HENRIK HAKANSSON: THE CIRCLE OF A SQUARE AND THE EFFECT OF A BUTTERFLY 1-12 MAR, TIMES VARY

The physical and symbolic value of natural life cycles take centre stage in these evocative paintings.

RICHARD HUGHES: PAPERWORK

1-12 MAR, TIMES VARY

Presenting works on paper for the first time, Richard Hughes examines the transformative effect of time and deterioration on objects.

Tramway

KHVAY SAMNANG: CALLING FOR RAIN

SHOORMAL – A SPACE BETWEEN… 5-30 MAR, TIMES VARY

A series of mixed media works exploring ideas of immersion within landscapes and ecologies.

Arusha Gallery CHORUS

1-13 MAR, TIMES VARY

12 artists take their cue from ideas of rhythm, harmony, and music, from depictions of collective euphoria to more fractious tipping points.

CATHERINE ROSS: PHANTOMS 17 MAR-17 APR

Depictions of the city as inspired by Italo Calvino's magical realism.

ILONA SZALAY: THE WITCH'S HOUSE 17 MAR-17 APR

A range of media, from canvas to tracing paper, LED light to glass, explore how to convey the liminality of subjective experience through a restrained, poetic language.

City Art Centre REFLECTIONS: THE LIGHT AND LIFE OF JOHN HENRY LORIMER (1856-1936) 1-20 MAR, TIMES VARY, FREE

The first retrospective of Fife painter’s work.

TAPESTRY: CHANGING CONCEPTS 1-13 MAR, TIMES VARY

Group exhibition of 19 contemporary artists associated with the former Tapestry Department at Edinburgh College of Art.

Collective Gallery

JOEY SIMONS: THE FEARFUL PART OF IT WAS THE ABSENCE

1-13 MAR, 10:00–17:00

A multimedia exhibition of poetry, drawing and audio exploring the role of rioting in Glasgow.

CAULEEN SMITH: H-E-L-L-O

1 MAR-1 MAY, 10:00– 17:00

Multimedia exhibition by Cambodian artist drawing on folklore to explore our relationship with the Earth.

Through installation and video, this exhibition draws on musical motifs from Close Encounters of the Third Kind to imagine sites of greeting and healing in post-Katrina New Orleans.

1-6 MAR, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

Dovecot Studios

1-27 MAR, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

AMARTEY GOLDING: BRING ME TO HEAL

Filmmaking, photography and textile exhibition exploring generational trauma and healing in Britain.

LOVEY AND BOY: A CARNIVAL ODYSSEY 25 MAR-3 APR, TIMES VARY

A dance performance film delving into a mysterious carnival world. Part of Dance International Glasgow.

THE ART OF WALLPAPER: MORRIS & CO. 1 MAR-11 JUN, 10:00– 17:00

The legacy of the great Victorian designer comes alive in this collection of over 130 pieces of his archived work.

Edinburgh Printmakers

MOHAMMAD BARRANGI: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE 1-27 MAR, 11:00–16:00

An exhibition of prints by Iranian artist Mohammad Barrangi drawing on ancient Persian storytelling.

March 2022 — Listings

Rising Scottish comedy star Marc Jennings prepares for his next big show.

20 MAR, 17:00–19:00

Edinburgh Theatre

THE SKINNY

LEENA NAMMARI + LOUISE RITCHIE: PRESENCE OF ABSENCE

1-27 MAR, 11:00–16:00

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

FERONIA WENNBORG: AIR LEAKING THROUGH 1-12 MAR, 11:00–17:00

A polyvocal sound installation, reimagining the Beacon Tower as a portal between public, domestic and imaginary space, a site for listening and drifting.

KATIE HALLAM: STATE OF LIMINAL 1 MAR-28 MAY, 11:00– 17:00

An installation exploring the physicality of ancient geology and the dematerialised aesthetics of contemporary technology.

Fruitmarket JYLL BRADLEY: PARDES

1 MAR-18 APR, 10:00– 19:00

Exhibition of sculptures paying homage to Fruitmarket’s industrial and agricultural past.

HOWARDENA PINDELL: A NEW LANGUAGE

Multimedia exhibition spanning the artist’s decades-long career and her anti-racism activism.

Ingleby Gallery JAMES HUGONIN: COFFEE & BLOODY MARYS

2-26 MAR, 11:00–17:00

Tiny blocks of colour shimmer in this new painting series by James Hugonin, exploring the relationships we create between different adjacent objects and shades.

Open Eye Gallery

JAMES FAIRGRIEVE: JOURNEY - A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION

1-20 MAR, 14:00–17:30

A collaborative exhibition emerging from the artists’ conversations in their shared studio space during the pandemic.

DAVID WILLIAMS: ONE TASTE: (N)EVERCHANGING

1-20 MAR, 14:00–17:30

Three extracts taken from photographer David Williams’ Kyoto-based series exploring ideas of time and space in Japanese culture.

ABIGAIL SIMMONDS: SPACE BECOMES TIME 1-20 MAR, 14:00–17:30

Strange glittery objects play with ideas of space and time, daringly confronting the viewer with themselves.

Talbot Rice Gallery

MEET ME AT THE THRESHOLD

26 MAR-21 MAY, TIMES VARY

An exhibition of works by the first two Talbot Rice Residents cohorts, including Sulaïman Majali, Rae-Yen Song, and Tako Taal.

The Scottish Gallery

CLAIRE HARKESS: THE GARDEN 3-26 MAR, TIMES VARY

Exploring the artist’s immediate surroundings in Perth from a collection of borrowed gardens, employing delicate painting and kintsugi techniques.

HEROINES OF SCOTTISH PAINTING

3-26 MAR, TIMES VARY

Bringing together significant female postwar artists with some of the rising stars of the contemporary art scene.

DOROTHY HOGG: MODERN HEROINE

3-26 MAR, TIMES VARY

A celebration of the renowned Scottish jeweller.

YUTA SEGAWA: IN MINIATURE

3-26 MAR, TIMES VARY

Tiny hand thrown pots reveal the impossible detail and craftsmanship of ceramics.

1-5 MAR, TIMES VARY

FELICITY WARBRICK: REFLECTIONS 12 MAR-2 APR, TIMES VARY

Recent woodcut and drypoint prints from the Shropshire-based artist.

GENNADII GOGOLIUK: FLOWER - MIRROR

March 2022 — Listings

12 MAR-2 APR, TIMES VARY

The Edinburgh-based Russian artist presents a collection of still life, landscape and portrait paintings.

A LOVE LETTER TO DUNDEE: JOSEPH MCKENZIE PHOTOGRAPHS 19641987 1 MAR, 10:00–17:00

Dundee venues Italian restaurants, Indian street food and new vintage clothing shops have been earning attention for all the right reasons in the City of Discovery Words: Jamie Wilde

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

THE STREET AT THE MCMANUS

1 MAR-22 OCT, 10:00– 17:00, FREE

Immersive exhibition looking at Dundee’s historical architecture.

V&A Dundee MICHAEL CLARK: COSMIC DANCER

3 MAR-4 SEP, 10:00– 17:00

A groundbreaking exhibition exploring the life and works of acclaimed Scottish choreographer and dancer Michael Clark.

YINKA ILORI: LISTENING TO JOY

3 MAR-24 APR, 10:00– 17:00

A vibrant and interactive artistic playspace for young and old alike.

DESIGN FOR OUR TIMES

3 MAR-13 JUN, 10:00– 17:00

Using materiality to explore how design can offer sustainable solutions to the climate crisis.

1-5 MAR, 10:00–16:00

Featuring trippy prints created through explorative machine printing, this exhibition by Out of the Blueprint’s artistin-residence blends photography with collage and manipulation to push the bounds of risoprint.

75 PERTH ROAD, DD1 4HY

Dundee’s Perth Road is brimming with independent businesses. From record stores (Le Freak Records) to zero waste shops (The Little Green Larder), the community feel in this part of town is palpable. FIKA Dundee opened during the pandemic and is fast becoming a mainstay for Dundee locals. The café serves up an eye-pleasing range of light bites, including bagels and avocado on toast, that are perfect for a spot of brunch. Hot and iced coffees as well as loose leaf teas match perfectly with FIKA Dundee’s range of pastries and home bakes. And with new wine and cheese experience nights on the horizon, you’d be daft not to pay this place a visit.

72 ALBERT STREET, DD4 6QH

Quite possibly Dundee’s most-talked about new opening in recent months FIKA is Jim’s Delhi Club. Run by Dundonian owner James Ferrie, he previously offered popular home meal kits for people to cook curated Indian cuisine at home. But with business booming, he decided to open his own Indian street food shop late last year. Open from Thursdays to Sundays, the Delhi Club’s menu options change every month. Favourites so far have included butter chicken naanwiches and lamb stovies, as well its one-off bagel collaboration with Heather Street Food. Great tasting food that lives up to the hype and only a short walk away from the city centre.

SOOKSOUK

153 PERTH ROAD, DD2 1AR

Everyone loves coming across a rare find in a vintage clothing shop and Dundee’s latest comes in the form of SookSouk in the west end. Opening in December last year, this new brand-new venue comes packed with tons of vibrant vintage and preloved items of clothing. From jumpers to jackets and shoes to boots, you’ll be surprised how much fits into the shop’s relatively cosy space. Sustainability is also an important part of the ethos at SookSouk. Its owner, Sharyn Farnan, is a DJCAD graduate and is particularly passionate about providing an alternative to fast fashion with her new shop. Pop in for a chat and some music while eyeing up your new favourite garments.

Dundee Art

SookSouk

Cooper Gallery TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE 2021 21 MAR-16 APR, TIMES VARY

A diverse exhibition of 114 drawings overall reflecting a broad scope of current drawing practice by artists, architects, designers, and makers at all stages of their careers.

DCA: Dundee Out of the Blue Contemporary Drill Hall Arts OT PASCOE: FEED YOUR HEAD

FIKA DUNDEE

JIM’S DELHI CLUB

Image: courtesy of Frank’s

An exhibition celebrating acclaimed artist James Fairgrieve’s 40 year career.

The McManus

Image: courtesy of SookSouk

1 MAR-2 MAY, 10:00– 19:00

JAMES SINFIELD + RADOSLAW LIWEN: REMOTE CONTROL

Image: courtesy of FIKA

A two-person exhibition exploring the interplay between the practices of Leena Nammari and Louise Ritchie, as artists, peers and collaborators.

Summerhall

TAKO TAAL: AT THE SHORE, EVERYTHING TOUCHES

THE CANNON

11 UNION STREET, DD1 4BN

The Cannon is a café based on Union Street, one of Dundee’s best spots for bars and record shops.

Scrolling through the venue’s social media pages, The Cannon definitely has that Instagrammable feel with its bright and stylish décor. But its food and drink options are the real talking point. Breakfast options like its Tay Eggs (poached eggs on sourdough toast with avocado and smoked salmon) look a real treat, while its super sweet milkshakes and pancakes are bound to cure any sugar cravings in an instant. Home baked treats as well as teas and coffees are also at hand in this familyfriendly spot that’s ideal for a catch up or an afternoon meander around the city.

FRANK’S

36 NETHERGATE, DD1 4ET

1-20 MAR, TIMES VARY

Glasgow-based artist brings together film, collage, and painting to explore Black subjectivities.

RAE-YEN SONG

1-20 MAR, TIMES VARY

Multimedia exhibition creating an immersive space to explore ideas of self-mythologisation and identity.

Frank’s

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If you like authentic Italian food, Frank’s should be near the top of your list of restaurants to visit in the City of Discovery. Situated across from the Overgate in the heart of the city centre, this wine and pasta bar offers great light bites, evening meals and is a trendy drinks spot all under one roof. The one-page food menu is easy to digest. Handmade pasta is the star of the show with vegetarian and vegan options available including spaghetti with pea pesto and tagliatelle with roasted celeriac. Pair your food with an indulgent Italian red and you’re onto a winner.

THE SKINNY

The Skinny On...

Armando Iannucci The Skinny On...

Armando Iannucci returns to his hometown this month for an onstage talk at Glasgow Film Festival. Ahead of this homecoming, we grill him on burning questions like ‘when did you last vomit?’ and ‘which octogenarian national treasure could you beat up?’

F

or three decades, Scottish writer-director Armando Iannucci has been a thorn in the side of the British establishment. On radio and TV, he mocked our hysterical news culture with On the Hour and The Day Today, and helped create the cringeworthy broadcaster Alan Partridge, who continues to be quoted whenever a naff TV presenter makes a gaff. His blistering satire The Thick of It skewered successive Labour and Tory governments and gave us the word “omnishambles”, which became an instant go-to phrase to describe

our succession of hopeless political leaders. He took ideas from The Thick of It across the Atlantic with the movie In the Loop and the award-winning Veep, while The Death of Stalin was almost Pythonesque in its ridicule of one of the most brutal political regimes of modern history.

Iannucci is sure to discuss some of the above and a lot more when he returns to Glasgow Film Festival for an In Conversation event this month.

Before then, we catch up with the legendary satirist to take part in The Skinny’s monthly Q&A. Photo: Matt Crockett

What’s your favourite place to visit and why?

I’m a sucker for any bookshop, anywhere, and no matter how obscure. Apart from ones that just do military history.

Favourite colour and why?

I’m terrible with colours, as anyone who knew my teenage dress sense will tell you. I wear a lot of blue, for some reason: probably because it’s boring and I don’t have to think about it.

March 2022 — Chat

Who was your hero growing up?

Douglas Adams. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy really inspired me to think about what comedy could do with ideas.

Whose work inspires you now?

Really good journalists with a sense of style. Marina Hyde, Rafael Behr, Matthew Parris.

What’s your favourite food to cook?

Spaghetti Bolognese. Sorry for being so obvious.

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

Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Recep Erdoğan. I would cook them Laxative Pie.

Armando Iannucci

What’s your all-time favourite album?

Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, conducted by Rafael Kubelik.

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What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

Cats. It got us through the early days of lockdown.

We would watch it nightly in five-minute bursts, then have fun dissecting how bad those five minutes were.

What book would you take to a protracted period of government-enforced isolation?

Martin Chuzzlewit. It’s Dickens’ funniest novel, and one of the funniest books ever written Who’s the worst?

Us lot. And the other lot.

When did you last cry?

During Gogglebox. I think because they were all crying at something really moving. It might have been Strictly.

What are you most scared of?

Being burned alive in a tank going into war.

When did you last vomit and why?

On a ferry off the coast of New Zealand, having just been treated to oysters. It turned out not to be such a nice treat after all.

Tell us a secret?

I buried three of them somewhere in Dumbartonshire.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

Judi Dench.

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

A hyena.

What’s your favourite place to visit when you’re back in Glasgow and why?

Always catching up on family and friends. A good Italian restaurant helps. Santa Lucia on Ingram Street is always fun.

What’s your favourite comedy movie?

Cats.

In Conversation with Armando Iannucci, Glasgow Film Festival, 6 Mar, 5.45pm

THE SKINNY

October 2020

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March 2022 — Chat

The Skinny On...

THE SKINNY

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