Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Sinead O'Connor & The Chieftains – The Fo y Dew
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Meet the team
Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "Encanto."
Championing creativity in Scotland
Cammy Gallagher Clubs Editor "Hobbiton, The Shire."
Harvey Dimond Art Editor Redacted
We asked: What is your favourite fictional utopia? Editorial Sales
George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist
"The ‘post-scarcity fully automated gay luxury space communism’ of The Culture series by Iain M. Banks. It might be a flawed utopia but it sounds rad as fuck."
Peter Simpson Deputy Editor, Food & Drink Editor "The Truman Show. As with all utopias, Jim Carrey's having a great time until he really, really isn't."
Polly Glynn Comedy Editor
"The DIY commune the chickens build at the end of Chicken Run A beautiful image of hens helping hens."
Ellie Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant
"‘Can you imagine a world without lawyers?’*Lionel Hutz shudder*"
Anahit Behrooz Events Editor, Books Editor "My best friend is singing The Wombles theme song."
Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor
"I am too tired to think of an answer because I stayed up late last night finishing The White Pube's Poor Artists so maybe this is the answer? Fingers crossed x"
Business
Laurie Presswood General Manager
"My 2006 Animal Crossing island. Simulated socialisation and gradually paying off a mortgagepure bliss."
Sandy Park Commercial Director
"My theme parks in Rollercoaster Tycoon, circa 2001. Infinite loop of adrenaline seekers throwing up after queuing for hours to endure a ride built to make them vomit, before queuing again and again."
Ema Smekalova Media Sales Executive
"The Frog and Toad universe. They're gay, they're kind, they've got great clothes, and they understand that Hanging Out is sacred."
Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "Logan's Run. On the downside: you die at 30. On the plus side: I turned 30 in 2011, before the world became a literal hellscape."
Rho Chung Theatre Editor "The Club Penguin town."
Tallah Brash Music Editor
"‘Be excellent to each other.’ The totally bodacious idea that the music and philosophy of Bill and Ted can lead to humanity one day existing in a utopian society. ‘Party on, dudes!’"
Production
Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager
"That moment in The Sims when you finally manage to keep all your Sims alive and happy for more than five minutes – ultimate peace."
Emilie Roberts Media Sales Executive "The LA of Blade Runner (1982). It's not a utopia at all but those noodles Deckard gets at the start look really tasty."
Phoebe Willison Designer
"The Windows XP desktop background."
Gabrielle Loue Media Sales Executive "Roku City."
Editorial
Words: Rosamund West
This month’s theme, Radical imaginations, a provocation posed by Anahit, proposes that in the world on fire, art still offers the space for revolution. We talk to artists who continue to create under the very worst of circumstances, or in the face of overwhelming hopelessness, art as an act of remembering or inspiration or sometimes solace.
Our lead feature talks to Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose new collection Forest of Noise includes poems written before and during the genocide. His works record acts of violence and despair at the hands of the colonial oppressors, using poetry to conjure the human experience in reporting and remembering. “Poetry does not change people who do not believe in the humanity of others,” he says. “As they are closing their eyes, stuffing their ears with the rubble of our buildings, they are not going to hear the poem.”
We meet Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift, appearing this month at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair, to discuss their upcoming book Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds. Also appearing at the Radical Book Fair, one half of The White Pube, Gabrielle de la Puente. The duo have spent years building a platform which disrupts and rejuvenates the whole concept of art criticism – now they’re releasing a book, Poor Artists, to further challenge the status quo.
Music takes a trip to Appalachia, with one North Carolina local writing about the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene on this oft-neglected musical heartland. We meet Jill O’Sullivan to talk about her latest release as Jill Lorean, Peace Cult, drawing inspiration from an ancient Greek collective resistance to the cult of war. Glasgow Songwriter Round reveal how a trip to Nashville inspired their events which place creative collaboration at the heart of performance.
Political arts organisation Arika return with another programme of radical thinking, art, performance, music
– Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It lands in Tramway this month, so we ask the co-director what to expect. We consider the utopian / dystopian potential of the meme, and look forward to Fair Saturday, a programme of events aiming to challenge the hyper-consumer dominance of Black Friday.
In Film, French Film Festival UK returns and we meet two directors working in stop motion to learn more about the medium’s potential for sharing the radical and the intensely personal. Duncan Cowles opens up about… opening up emotionally in the making of his feature debut Silent Men. We take a look forward to Scotland Loves Anime’s return, and meet the director whose short film on the Scottish care system is taking the film festival circuit by storm. One writer finally says the unsayable, drawing important parallels between Russia tampering with the American electoral system and the elevation of Ryan Reynolds to ubiquitous leading man status. “Garrulous but saying nothing, Ryan Reynolds’ charisma is about as dynamic as a chain restaurant, as boastful as a 4x4 car.” Iconic.
Clubs talks to Wallace, to learn about drawing on his Scottish heritage and memories of the 00s Cowgate club scene, and meets Edinburgh bedroom producer LWS in the hardware store where he works and draws material inspiration. Comedy talks to Felicity Ward moments before she becomes incredibly famous off the back of her role in Australia’s version of The Office. With a new season of A Play, A Pie and a Pint underway, Theatre meets new Artistic Director Brian Logan and playwright Katy Nixon to learn more about the development of Jellyfish, her new play exploring teen motherhood and the relationship between mothers and sons.
In our centre pages, you’ll find a pull-out poster by Zeloot serving as a reminder of the radical potential of collective action. We close the magazine with The Skinny on… Alice Faye discussing fighting her accidental namesake, 1940s actress Alice Faye, for ultimate supremacy.
Cover Artist
Matilda Bull is an Edinburgh-based artist and printmaker. Her work is frequently discovered up in the streets, and is a constant expression of her personal values – often political or environmental. The cover highlights motifs of Palestinian resistance, including the poppy, keffiyeh, and tatreez patterns.
I: @tildathebull tildathebull@gmail.com
Love Bites: Open Mic, Open Hearts
This month’s columnist celebrates the quiet joy of an evening spent in an audience of strangers
Words: Q Manivannan
You find love in a corner, looking for a morsel of truth in the sunset. On the third Sunday of each month, you’re at a record-store-turnedcommunity-café in Marchmont. The sky is orange and the room is packed: knees bumping, elbows clacking, bodies held, the air thickened by prose, melody, and poetry. They call it Fill This Space – an open-mic night quietly fundraising for Palestine. It’s full now, it’s begun. Leaving would be tricky – and there’s no need to leave, anyways. Your caution is left forsaken in the face of a quiet brunette who sings her grief, stretching each note a little past its time; an old poet who narrates the story of a mountain; an archaeologist ju ling peaches; and, a mountaineer playing bass guitar.
Framed by the hazy autumn hue of fairy lights, this open-mic folds the night into itself. Here, you are somehow less alone in solitude; only the partnered, befriended, travel-in-a-pack attendees must mind their company, make conversation. The solitary need only open their borders and allow proximity.
You decide to speak too, fill this unfamiliar space with unsure footing, step to the mic and ask if your hair looks alright; a room gi les with you. Tell them something, anything. You settle on a story of the Fringe and Neil Patrick Harris with a rose up his bum, and another story of love existing in tiny, almost insignificant distances, like the one between your 5’ 7” (and a half) and a taller 6’ date who, with vertical superiority, once swatted away horny men on the dancefloor with a smile.
When finished, you settle back into your corner. You slink into a daze and feel the world unravel, each gasp and gi le inviting a curious return: songs once lost now found, words forgotten miraculously recalled, a memory of the poet Rilke who told you to “go to the limits of your longing” and here — sunset, fairy lights, open-mic, a café in Marchmont — your little longing is, suddenly, immense.
Heads Up
Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair
Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 21-24 Nov
A highlight on this UNESCO City of Literature’s already packed annual calendar of events, Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair is put on by Lighthouse Bookshop and features four days full of emancipatory conversations and stalls upon stalls of books. This year’s edition is themed around ‘From Where We Stand’, celebrating 30 years of a radical bookshop on West Nicolson Street, and features the likes of Alycia Pirmohamed, Marwan Kaabour and Jeremy Corbyn.
Empress Of
King Tut’s, Glasgow, 10 Nov, 7:30pm
Honduran-American singer-songwriter and producer Lorely Rodriguez, aka Empress Of, writes pop songs that are both sultry and introspective. Her latest album For Your Consideration spans both Spanish and English, exploring love and desire through the lens of fame and fantasy spun out by the entertainment industry. Find her at King Tut’s this month with support from Sans Soucis.
It’s the penultimate month of the year – whether that makes you feel sad or delighted – celebrate/commiserate with a whole host of exhibitions, gigs and festivals.
Compiled by Anahit Behrooz
Nat Walpole: SweetBitter
CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 1-23 Nov
This solo exhibition of paintings by Glasgow-based artist Nat Walpole examines a period of transformation, disruption, and ongoing renewal in the artist’s life through dreamlike scenes that invoke ideas of mythological metamorphosis. Exploring trans womanhood through an autosymbolist process of image making, these paintings are filled with chimeric monsters and hybrid figures that interrogate experiences of desire and stigmatisation.
Guadalupe Maravilla: Piedras de Fuego (Fire Stones)
Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until 15 Feb 2025
Bikini Body presents Weirder Party
The Mash House, Edinburgh, 8 Nov, 7:30pm
Edinburgh-based punk legends Bikini Body are throwing their inaugural Weirder Party all-nighter at The Mash House and everyone is invited. There’s a gig portion of the evening, with Big Girl’s Blouse, Jock Fox, Junto Club and Bikini Body themselves playing remixes from their Weird Party EP, released back in April, and a subsequent club night with sets from Smiff and Nikki Kent.
Sit-in #4: Outside the Circle Cooper Gallery, Dundee, until 1 Feb 2025
Part of a years-long, five-part project, The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation returns with Sit-in #4: Outside the Circle, a group exhibition that draws on the seminal work of Audre Lorde to push the boundaries of what art education is and who it serves, foregrounding ideas of collective action and subversive practice through artists such as Tari Ito, Georgina Starr and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
House Gospel Choir
Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, 24 Nov, 7pm
An Dannsa Dub
The Caves, Edinburgh, 8 Nov, 7pm
Meaning ‘the dance dub’ in Gaelic, An Dannsa Dub does just what it says on the tin, blending dubstep rhythms with the instrumentation and lyricism of traditional Scottish music. If you’ve ever wanted to be at the intersection of a ceilidh and a sound system, this weird and wonderful collaboration between dub producer Tom Spirals and trad musician Euan McLaughlin might just be for you.
Edinburgh, 2224 Nov salute King Tut’s, Glasgow, 30 Nov, 7:30pm
Image: courtesy of artist/ Talbot Rice Gallery
Image: courtesy of festival
Photo: Lewis Vorn
Image: courtesy of Sneaky Petes
Image: courtesy of Lighthouse Bookshop
Photo: Anthony Gerace
Photo: Ayano Shibata. Image: courtesy of IPAMIA Archive
Photo: Somharlie Macdonald
Image: courtesy of Nat Walpole
Photo: Fabian Guerrero
Tari Ito, Self-portrait, 1996, performance at The Nippon International Performance Festival
Marwan Kaabour at Edinburgh's Radical Book Fair
Walking Home At Night, acrylic on canvas, 2024
Empress
Bikini Body
An Dannsa Dub
January 1984 Retablo, Guadalupe Maravilla
salute House Gospel Choir
Jj Fadaka
Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It Tramway, Glasgow, 13-17 Nov
Put on by political arts organisation Arika, Episode 11 is a series of screenings, discussions, performances and workshops that explore other ways of existing against our current backdrop of ecological and capitalist apocalypse. Highlights from the programme include a film on Caribbean-European insurgency with Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Ligia Lewis and Emilia Beatriz and a Counterflows collaboration with the likes of Chuquimamani-Condori and Nat Raha.
Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 31 Oct-2 Nov, various times
One of Summerhall’s stand-out shows during the 2023 Fringe, Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz arrives back in town, this time at the Traverse. In true oneman show fashion, it centres on our lovelorn protagonist Nathaniel, a serious romantic about to head out on a first date, transforming into a heartfelt, tender, and infectiously funny exploration of Black masculinity through the lens of Beyoncé and a fresh trim.
Glasgow Print Fair
The Pyramid at Anderston, Glasgow, 2 Nov, 10:30am
Listen, we don’t want to say the C-word, but Christmas is right around the corner and it’s time to start thinking of gifts. What better time, then, for Glasgow Print Fair to come back to town, featuring a day of stalls from independent artists and printmakers. Find the likes of East End Press, Lucy Sherston, Extra Teeth and The Woom Room selling their wares.
Stereo, Glasgow, 2 Nov, 11pm DJ, writer and producer Haseeb Iqbal is making his Glasgow debut at Stereo this month. Having made his start at Worldwide FM before launching his own radio station, his selections spin a kind of story, bringing an eclectic range of undiscovered tracks to the light. This set sees him playing tribute to his dub collection, played through the local, handmade Glasgow-based dub soundsystem Crucial Roots.
Everlyn Nicodemus
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until 25 May 2025
This first ever retrospective exhibition of Edinburgh-based artist Everlyn Nicodemus looks back at four decades of the artist’s life, bringing together drawings, collages, paintings and textiles in a series of joyful, defiant artworks. Her output experimented boldly with colour and form, acting as a powerful response to the ongoing oppression of women, the impact of racism on her and other’s lives, and her own journey of trauma and recovery.
Remi Wolf
Barrowlands, Glasgow, 29 Nov, 7pm
With two albums under her belt, Californian musician Remi Wolf is establishing herself as a name in the alt-pop scene. With notes of 1970s disco riffs and 1960s funk and soul grooves underlying her catchy choruses, her music somehow manages to be both comfortingly old school and deliciously fresh.
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What's On
All details correct at the time of writing
Music
Celebrating eclectic future sounds, The Curve Festival returns to King Tut’s for its second year this November. Taking place over the course of the month, highlights include Meryl Streek (6 Nov), Empress Of and Sans Soucis (10 Nov) and Abbie Ozard (20 Nov). At The Glad Cafe, mini festival Jazz at the Glad takes place from 22 to 24 November with live music from the likes of Home/Lands and MONOMYTH 1K, while in Edinburgh the inaugural five-day Soundhouse Winter Festival runs from 28 November to 2 December with performances at the Traverse Theatre from Victoria Hume and Megan Black (29 Nov), Fergus McCreadie (30 Nov) and Acolyte (1 Dec), while Callum Easter and The Roulettes play The Queen’s Hall (2 Dec).
Festivals aside, at the top of the month Katherine Aly celebrates her new all-singing, all-dancing pop-fuelled EP 222 at Edinburgh club night Echo Disko (Coco Boho, 1 Nov), while on the same night in Glasgow, Dutch Wine celebrate their latest single, If I Fall Through the Ceiling at The Old Toll Bar, with support from Pearling. In the middle of the month, two EP launch parties land in Leith with Shuna Lovelle celebrating Disappointment Is My Expectation (Leith Depot, 14 Nov), and Thundermoon We Can Do Better Than This (Leith Cricket Club, 16 Nov), while back in Glasgow, Pedalo launch their Migration EP at Stereo (23 Nov).
Also in Scottish music, Celtic/dance fusion band Niteworks play their final run of shows. Catch them for one last dance in Inverness (Eden Court, 6 Nov), Edinburgh (The Liquid Room, 7 Nov), Aberdeen (Aberdeen Music Hall, 14 Nov) and Glasgow (O2 Academy, 16 Nov). On 8 November Edinburgh post-punk disco babes Bikini Body bring gig/club hybrid Weirder Party to The Mash House, with four live acts, DJs and dancing all night long. On the two nights that follow in Glasgow, Barry Can’t Swim plays the Barrowlands, while the rest of the month brings shows from Cloth (McChuills, 14 Nov), Erland Cooper (St Luke’s, 25 Nov), Afterlands (Glad Cafe, 27 Nov), Rachel Sermanni (Mackintosh Church, 29 Nov) and Walt Disco (SWG3, 30 Nov), while Admiral Fallow play shows in Galashiels (MacArts, 28 Nov) and Edinburgh (La Belle Angele, 29 Nov).
In Glasgow, when it comes to touring artists, QMU has an impressive bill of shows including Arooj Aftab (2 Nov), Rachel Chinouriri (12 Nov), Warmduscher (15 Nov), and Mercury Prize winners English Teacher (18 Nov). The Garage welcomes the spritely Rejjie Snow (5 Nov), while rapper Billy Woods will likely miss soundcheck for his Drygate show (7 Nov). Don’t miss Fat Dog when they bring their punchy debut album WOOF. to Stereo (9 Nov), while on the 24th pick between two party starters as Getdown Services play The Hug & Pint and Confidence Man play Barrowlands, the latter with New York’s Fcukers in tow.
In Edinburgh, highlights include a pair of shows at La Belle Angele from Ibibio Sound Machine (18 Nov) and Goat Girl (22 Nov). At Assembly Rooms, catch London-based jazz collective Kokoroko (23 Nov), while on the 30th pick between Canadian electronic outfit Desire, featuring Johnny Jewel, at Sneaky Pete’s or Detroit disco rockers Electric Six at The Queen’s Hall for a hit of nostalgia. [Tallah Brash]
Photo: Charlie Morachnick
Photo: Jesse Crankson
Photo: Pooneh Ghana Fat Dog
Kokoroko
Katherine Aly
Film
Film festivals show no sign of abating. This month there’s the return of Scotland Loves Anime (see p51) and French Film Festival UK (see p30). Add to this pair Taiwan Film Festival Edinburgh, which, confusingly, is coming to Glasgow this month with four films at GFT (7-28 Nov). It’s an eclectic quartet, with Hsiao Ya-Chuan’s Old Fox, a wry drama about an 11-year-old from a poor family who has his sense of morality corrupted by his wily landlord, looking like a highlight. The closing night of the London Palestine Film Festival also comes to the GFT with From Ground Zero, a sure-to-be-powerful portmanteau film comprised of 22 short films made in Gaza over the past brutal year (29 Nov).
The legacy of the great filmmaker, artist, set designer and writer Derek Jarman, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1994, is celebrated in exhibition Di ing in Another Time: Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature (2 Nov-4 May, The Hunterian, Glasgow). Based on diary entries in the years leading up to Jarman’s death, the exhibition is built around a new display of Jarman’s artworks (a mix of film, painting and photography) alongside pieces by six contemporary artists inspired by Jarman: Andrew Black, Luke Fowler, Jade de Montserrat, Tom Walker, Matthew Arthur Williams and Sarah Wood. Jarman is well known in cinephile circles for his extraordinary run of films in the 70s and 80s, but this exhibition will give a more holistic view of this radical and much-missed artist.
The spooky season isn’t quite over yet thanks to Samhain Sound, an evening of liminal music, art and film at Civic House (2 Nov). As well as musical performances from Brìghde Chaimbeul and Peaks Duo, the night comes to a close with a screening of F.W. Murnau’s horror classic Nosferatu with a live score from Berlin-based electronic pioneer Gudrun Gut, who will be joined by acclaimed Irish composers Irene Buckley and Linda Buckley. For film fans, November has become Noirvember, and GFT are marking it with a sparkling season of down-and-dirty film noir made by Colombia Pictures in the 40s and 50s. Gilda (1-7 Nov) and The Big Heat (8-14 Nov) screen alongside the lesser-seen Dead Reckoning (15-18 Nov) and Murder by Contract (22-28 Nov).
And how about we also claim November as Point Break month, because Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 actioner is getting a wide re-release after being unscreenable in UK cinemas for years thanks to a rights dispute? There are lots of opportunities to see this action masterpiece on screens big and small, but we recommend making it along to GFT’s double bill of Point Break with Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz (10 Nov), which is littered with nods to Bigelow’s film. A genius piece of programming. [Jamie Dunn]
Clubs
On Friday 1 November, get your skater boi in Glasgow to the backdrop of Busted and Britney for So Fetch – 2000s Halloween special at The Classic Grand. On Sunday 3 November, Dame Area are a surefire bet to leave you breathless at Sneaky Pete’s with their live industrial post-punk show.
Midweek at The Bongo Club, Hip Hop Scotland and Form 696 bring London MC Genesis Elijah over the border – support from Red King and Paque (6 Nov). On Thursday, PSweatpants takes the mic for Volens Chorus at Sneaky Pete’s (7 Nov). Elena Colombi is joined by Cardopusher on Friday in Glasgow at The Flying Duck for Cold Open – expect a psychedelic technofusion certain to get you moving (8 Nov). The next day in the capital, Club_ Nacht welcome back MiNNA, alongside an effervescent bag of house, disco, and garage to The Bongo Club (9 Nov).
Form 696 returns to The Bongo Club on Thursday 14 November, this time with Rapture 4D and Chrissy Grimez – bring your gun fingers. On Friday 15 November, say your last goodbye to Shakara, as they end a six-year legacy at The Berkeley Suite with CC:Disco! Otherwise, head to Sub Club for the
Image:
Photo:
Nosferatu
Old Fox
Shakara
hard drum of Ahadadream, or Stereo for DOLLS DOLLS DOLLS – the longawaited return of Excuse My Beauty. On Saturday, shake your ass to the ghetto sounds of Detroit at the Taikano 7TH Birthday with DJ Assault on The Ferry (16 Nov).
The following Friday 22 Nov, titan techno-mutators Blawan and Pariah aka Karenn tear the roof off Sub Club for Spirit. On Saturday, Edinburgh welcomes back the rhythms of Erol Alkan to a sold-out Sneaky Pete’s (23 Nov). On Friday 29 November, Objekt takes the reins at La Cheetah, providing an underground avant-garde masterclass. Closing out the month, Madam X celebrates ten years of Kaizen with an instore at Glasgow’s Rubadub, followed by a late affair with Hang Tough at EXIT (30 Nov). [Cammy Gallagher]
Art
In Paisley, artist Anya Gallaccio (who was born in the town) presents a new chocolate-focused installation which has been commissioned as part of the JUPITER+ project by Jupiter Artland. You can see the installation at 18 Paisley High Street until 21 December. At Jupiter Artland itself, just outside Edinburgh, Kialy Tihngang presents a new exhibition Neyinka and the Silver Gong, which centres on a film of the same name that was shown for the first time at this year’s Glasgow International. Continues until 1 December.
Elsewhere, in Edinburgh, photography fans have the opportunity to see works by artists who use Stills’ analogue and digital production facilities in a group exhibition titled Stills Salon (until 30 Nov). At Collective, pass shadow, whisper shade brings together artists from the gallery’s 2023 Satellites Programme cohort in a group show which will explore the complexities of cultural, genetic and material inheritances. Continues until 22 December.
A fascinating project by Tape Letters Scotland takes place across three Scottish cities over the next couple of months. The exhibitions focus on the use of the audio cassette as a mode of long-distance communication by Scottish-Pakistani diaspora communities in the 1960s-1980s. The projects will be on display at Dundee Central Library (until 31 Dec), Tramway in Glasgow (until 31 Dec) and Museum of Edinburgh (until 23 Feb).
Arika returns to Tramway between 13 and 17 November for its 11th iteration, titled Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It. Highlights this year include contributions from Denise Ferreira da Silva, Karrabing Film Collective, Emilia Beatriz and Hussein Mitha.
At Cample Line, Chiara Camoni fills the entire gallery with over 30 of her sculptures, which think through the ancestral and vernacular relationship between humans and more-than-human forms. murmur, buzz, hiss and rub continues until 15 December. [Harvey Dimond]
Theatre
November begins at Tramway in Glasgow with Neil Barlett’s Blue Now (2 Nov), a live performance of Derek Jarman’s final film, Blue (1993). With a new score by Simon Fisher Turner, the film’s original composer, the piece reflects on the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the ongoing stru le for liberation. This month, Clare Prenton’s Men Don’t Talk continues its Scottish tour, hitting Orkney, Aberdeenshire, Paisley, Edinburgh and Cromarty (2-19 Nov). Set in a fictional men’s shed, the play is based on real-life conversations with Scottish men surrounding wellbeing and mental health.
Pilot Theatre brings a stage adaptation of Manjeet Mann’s acclaimed novel, Run, Rebel, to the Traverse this month (7-9 Nov). Made for audiences 11+, the play uses mixed genres to tell a story about running, empowerment and family.
In association with National Theatre of Scotland, Disaster Plan is staging Tero Buru, a play by the late Scottish-Kenyan artist Beldina Odenyo, at Platform, Easterhouse (15 & 16 Nov). The play, interpreted posthumously by Odenyo’s sister, Leah McAleer, and her friend and collaborator, Julia Taudevin, was left unstaged after Odenyo’s death in 2021. The work explores grief, sisterhood and heritage. [Rho Chung]
Photo: Miriam Ali
Image:
Photo:
Beldina Odenyo
Image: courtesy of the artist
Chiara Camoni, Burning Sister, 2023,
Tero Buru
Blue Now
Tape Letters Scotland
Books
There’s two big literary festivals in Edinburgh this month. First up, poetry festival Push The Boat Out (22-24 Nov) returns to the city, this time across four different venues – Pleasance, Scottish Storytelling Centre, Dovecot Studios and Dance Base. We’re especially excited about our sponsored events that we picked from an embarrassment of riches: poetry performance Disrupting the Narrative, folk music extravaganza Iona Fyfe and Friends, and a celebration of Benjamin Zephaniah with the likes of Raymond Antrobus and Salena Godden. Over at Assembly Roxy, meanwhile, Lighthouse Bookshop hold their annual Radical Book Fair (21-24 Nov). Themed around From Where We Stand, exploring thirty years of a radical bookshop on West Nicolson Street, find sessions on reshaping the arts, international solidarity, and a queer SWANA cabaret.
Elsewhere, there’re plenty of book launches at The Portobello Bookshop: Eliza Clark launches She’s Always Hungry (27 Nov), Hannah Lavery launches Unwritten Woman (28 Nov), and Jackie Kay appears for a special Book Week Scotland event (20 Nov). And if you’re in Glasgow, you can find Eliza Clark at Waterstones Argyle Street on 28 November, and Jeff VanderMeer also at Argyle Street launching Absolution (8 Nov), the unnerving follow up to Annihilation. Over at Mount Florida Books, Juana Adcock launches their poetry collection I Sugar the Bones (3 Nov). And speaking of poetry, head to thi wurd at Glasgow University Union on 22 November for readings, live music, a short film, visual art and a stall selling books, magazines, literary totes and more, and to Glasgow Zine Library on 13 November for a poetry open mic night. [Anahit Behrooz]
Comedy
Weegie wise guy Christopher Macarthur-Boyd performs Scary Times, his 2023 Fringe hit, on home turf this month after a UK tour. First he’s at Monkey Barrel (2 Nov, 8pm, £14) before a HUGE homecoming gig at Glasgow’s Pavilion Theatre (8 Nov, 8pm, £22.50). In between the two, we also have a Glasgow date for Amy Matthews, who’s recently been delighting folks across the country as Ed Byrne’s tour support. Commute with the Foxes comes to Glasgow Stand on 3 November (8.30pm, £13).
The following week, two more homegrown comics share their wares. Susan Riddell brings a host of brand new jokes to Blackfriars (10 Nov, 7pm, £5), while the brilliant Ray Bradshaw showcases the best bits of his past three shows for a special recording in Edinburgh (The Stand, Edinburgh, 17 Nov, 4pm, £12). Don’t worry, west-coasters – Ray’s also bringing his ‘Best Of’ to Glasgow Stand the following month (8 Dec, 4pm, £12).
And on 22 November, there’s comedy for all tastes in Scotland. Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Jordan Brookes brings a Work-In-Progress to Monkey Barrel (8pm, £8) following his deliriously funny show Fontanelle at the Fringe. Let’s hope he’s brought his tiny chair with him. Over in Glasgow, you’ve got a choice to make. One side of town, you have Scottish socials superstar Paul Black (SEC Armadillo, 6.30pm, from £28.95), whose tight blend of stand-up, character and sketch embodies the show’s title, All Sorts Meanwhile over at Òran Mór, you can snap up tickets to Felicity Ward with I’m Exhausting! (6.30pm, £15), her first new tour show in six years. When we say snap up, we mean it though – Ward’s the new Michael Scott for the Aussie version of The Office, on screens from the end of October. She’s also at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre the day after (23 Nov, 7.30pm, £15-£17) so there’s twice the chance of seeing her before she rockets into megastardom.
[Polly Glynn]
Photo: Kat
Gollock
Image: courtesy of Laughing Stock
Alycia Pirmohamed for Push the Boat Out
Amy Matthews
Felicity Ward
Hannah Lavery
Gary Younge at the Radial Book Fair 2023
Features
20 Our Radical Imaginations theme opens with Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose extraordinary new collection spans poems written before and during the genocide.
23 Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift introduce their upcoming book Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds.
24 Appearing at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair, The White Pube’s Gabrielle de la Puente on their debut book, Poor Artists
26 One North Carolina resident on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and the musical life of Appalachia.
30 Directors Alain Ughetto and Claude Barras on the power of stop motion ahead of their French Film Festival UK screenings.
33 Glasgow-based Chicagoan Jill O’Sullivan is starting a peace cult with her latest Jill Lorean release.
34 Arika return to Tramway with another programme of art, music, performance – Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It.
42 Fair Saturday Foundation reveal their Scotland-wide programme created in counterpoint to Black Friday’s hyperconsumerism.
44 Ryan Reynolds is not our saviour: how the family comedy can get its groove back.
47 We meet Edinburgh bedroom producer LWS in a hardware store to talk eight-bar loops.
50 Documentarian Duncan Cowles on his debut feature exploring male emotion, Silent Men.
56 Comedian and star of the Australian reboot of The Office, Felicity Ward returns to Scotland with I’m Exhausting!
On the website... News from The SAY Award (who won it, etc); reports from Beyond The Music in Manchester and Left of the Dial in Rotterdam; more comedy, gig, film and album reviews; our weekly new music Spotlight On… series.
Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) TildaThe Bull; Eda Sancakdar Onikinci; Maria Gorodeckaya; Tilda The Bull; Les Filmes du Tambour de Soie; Andy Monaghan; Karrabing Film Collective; courtesy of Fair Saturdays; The Nutty Professor @callaiw; Silent Men; Matt Stronge
Shot of the month
Darkside @ La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, 21 October by
Laura Muraska-Ross
Across
1. Increase slowly (5,2)
5. Divides (7)
9. Two fingers up (5,4)
10. Tricked (5)
11. Supple – graceful (5)
12. Highly confidential (3,6)
13. Was the deciding factor (6,3,6)
16. Nuts, millions die (anag) –disappointment (15)
In this month’s advice column, one person asks what to do about a pesky crush on a friend
I have a crush on a friend. I don’t think it's reciprocal but I still feel uncomfortable keeping it a secret from them, especially because I have told other people. Telling them could bring closure to it, but could also threaten a friendship that I value and make them uncomfortable. What should I do?
One day, when they turn this series of columns into a book – à la Cheryl Strayed, or Carrie Bradshaw when she is, once again, rewarded by the universe for being annoying – my publisher will ask me about the throughline, the running theme that will cohere what I can only imagine will be 20 years' worth of letters at that point. And I will say, smugly, because I have been sitting on this gem of wisdom for two decades, that it is that people feel so sad, and small, and ashamed, of the kinds of love that don’t happen in socially sanctioned and productive forms of relation. And maybe, just maybe, that is why we are all a little bit fucked up.
Firstly, you don’t know if it’s reciprocated or not. But even if it isn’t, does that change how you feel? Does that make it any less of an earnest and tenderly meant thing? Why does desire have to be so inherently threatening to a friendship? Why do we have to treat feelings that don’t exist within a recognisable structure with such mistrust?
I guess what I’m saying is you seem very fixated on possible results (reciprocation! closure!), but what if the feelings themselves were the point? You can make it clear that you have no expectations, that you will work hard to maintain the friendship whatever they say, that you are prepared to respect what boundaries they might need from this. But, just for a tiny bit of perspective here, you aren’t disclosing something ethically dubious, like voting Tory, or a secret career performing at poetry nights. The feelings already exist; the relationship between you two has already changed. It is what it is. The question is whether you keep them abreast of it, whether you trust them enough to let them in on its reality.
A GFT CHRISTMAS
Your invitation to Glasgow Film Theatre’s festive programme of cinema. From family favourites to cult classics there’s a treat for everyone this Christmas!
Radical Imaginations
Words: Anahit Behrooz
Illustration: Tillda The Bull
Art is, fundamentally, an act of imagination, giving life to what didn’t exist before. In this month’s theme – after several months and years of everything being Truly The Worst – we explore what happens when we allow that imagina tion to take a radical bent: to both speak to the horrors of the world and yearn for a better one. From poetry from Gaza that articulates the inarticulable stop-motion animation that acts as a form of resistance, this issue is all about pushing the bounda ries of what we allow to ourselves to believe is possible. Another world is out there. We just have to see it.
POSTER ARTIST (p40-41): Zeloot studied painting at KABK. After organising underground events in The Hague, she began designing silk-screened posters. Later, she shifted to editorial illustration, working with international newspapers trying to focus on creating meaningful images that enhance written content or express their political discomfort.
@zelootillustrations zeloot.nl
War Poems
We speak with Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha, whose extraordinary new collection spans poems written before and during the genocide
Words: Xuanlin Tham
Illustration: Tilda The Bull
In November 2023, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha was evacuating Gaza with his family through the Rafah border crossing when he was kidnapped by Israeli forces. He describes this experience in On Your Knees, a poem whose stanzas inhabit the harrowing silence between the echo of one heartbeat and the next, between the anticipation of a blow and the stunning pain of its arrival. ‘On your knees! / Yes, I’m a teacher, I say [...] On your knees! / We are on our knees [...] Minutes later, someone kicks me in the stomach / I fly with pain.’
In this recounting of the exchange between Abu Toha and the Israeli soldier lies the monstrosity of language in a time of genocide: that the words ‘I’m a teacher’ and what they signify could have ever come to mean so devastatingly little; that a violent settler colonial entity funded by the most powerful military and economic forces on Earth can simply remake reality around what they reiterate is the truth, bludgeoning the whole world into kneeling acquiescence. Terrorists are hiding in this hospital, in this UNRWA school, in this refugee camp full of starving, injured people in tents; Israel has the right to defend itself.
Abu Toha’s second poetry collection, Forest
“People usually look at poets as very talented people. But for the poet, it’s not a sign of any talent – it’s a sign of very deep pain”
Mosab Abu Toha
of Noise, collates new poems from Gaza written both before and during this year and a month of genocide: they reject the collective amnesia that justifies Israel’s decimation of Gaza as mere response to 7 October, and not, as is the horrific truth, the latest chapter in a decades-long project of ethnic cleansing. The poem My Son Throws a Blanket Over My Daughter is insistently subtitled with the date May 2021; unable to shake the image of his children comforting each other in the moments before escaping death by air strike, Abu Toha wrote it in the months following this wave of
2021 attacks, during which the Gaza Strip was pummelled by Israeli bombs in response to Palestinian protests against the eviction of six Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah.
These earlier poems instigate a stomachturning recognition in anyone who has borne witness to Palestine this past year, extending already incomprehensible continuities of violence backwards into history. “This in itself is a testimony to the never-ending suffering of the Palestinian people,” Abu Toha tells me over Zoom. “[The poem] is re-acted as if it’s a play: a play that happened five years ago, and now the same actors are perpetrating the same crimes against the audiences who watched [it happen] next to them.”
The collection’s title evokes the sensory assault of living in an open air prison-warzone, summoning into our empty skies the nauseating hum of drones, deafening bombardment, and human terror. “As a Palestinian who has been living in Gaza almost all my life, every hole in the earth, every hole in a wall, is a forest of noise,” Abu Toha explains. “Every tiny hole in the earth compresses within it the screaming of children and mothers, the sound of the explosions, the screaming of the earth pounded by F-16 bombs, the shouting of the people who are demanding a ceasefire. Every hole is a forest of noise that compresses all the pain and the tragedy of every Palestinian individual.” This resolute, tormented connection between body, land, and people – such that every single site of suffering reverberates into a dizzying cacophony – is foregrounded with the collection’s striking opening words: ‘Every house is my heart. Every tree is my leg. Every plant is my arm. [...]. Every hole in the earth is my wound.’
Abu Toha’s poems task the written word with approximating the horror of an air strike; the tragedy of losing a portrait of his grandfather under rubble; the longing for orange trees, birthday cakes, or to stop running long enough that entire lifetimes of grief might begin to catch up. Amidst images of life being torn from human flesh, some of the most devastating poems in Forest of Noise revolve around another locus of grief: the histories and loss of mundane, unimaginably precious artefacts of home. In Gaza Notebook (2021-2022), which scatters across the page like shrapnel, ‘frying pans miss the smell of olive oil’ and stones begin to ‘forget they were in a wall in a bedroom or a kitchen.’
“The Israeli attacks are not only targeting the people and their houses, but everything that ties Palestinians to their land: their flowers, the trees they named after their lost loved ones,” Abu Toha
says. In Palestinian Village, when he writes that one ‘can chock the wheels of your vegetable cart with a stone your grandfather once used to crush thyme’ – the poem’s insistent present tense is a refusal to let these practices, the very stones and building blocks that comprise generations of Palestinian existence, be damned into extinction.
“The Israeli attacks are not only targeting the people and their houses, but everything that ties Palestinians to their land: their flowers, the trees they named after their lost loved ones”
Mosab Abu Toha
Forest of Noise is an archive of survival: a grief-ridden, painstaking commitment to witness both the incredible violence of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza and Palestine, and that violence’s 76-year-long failure, nevertheless, to eradicate a nation and its people. The exhausted sense of duty with which Abu Toha’s poems describe life under genocide is precipitated by the Audre Lorde quote, ‘Poetry is not a luxury’, that serves as the collection’s epigraph. “People usually look at poets as very talented people,” Abu Toha says. “But for the poet, it’s not a sign of any talent – it’s a sign of very deep pain. The process of finding these images is like giving birth to twins after twins after twins without any break. Poetry is not a luxury. Writing it is not a luxury. It’s traumatic.”
He likens his work as a poet to that of a reporter, but in opposition to the brutal flattening of numbers and statistics. “I’m trying to present a human image of the girl who was killed waiting in line to refill her water bucket,” he says. Israel is not only denying Gaza food, water, electricity, and medicine, but shrouding it in darkness by cutting off the internet. Poetry resists the terrifying erasure of reality – and the individuality of every life taken – under such darkness.
“You know, it’s not easy to write when you are under bombardment,” he continues. “But I found myself writing back, trying to resist the silence that was engulfing the whole world about the atrocities that have been committed in Gaza even before 7 October. I’m putting this piece of ‘breaking news’ into a poem, charged with how I feel about this loss of a girl. Because the loss of a girl is the loss of a garden.”
In perhaps the most heart-shattering poem in Forest of Noise, Request Letter, a man writes a letter to the ‘angel of death’, asking if: ‘when you collect the souls of those killed in an air strike, do you mind leaving a sign for us, so we know who is who? Because last time my old kindergarten teacher couldn’t recognise her daughter’s face, which ear or arm or bloody finger on the dusty streets was hers …’ He writes in both English and Arabic, because ‘who could know what language the angel of death uses’? It is gutting when Abu Toha shares that this poem was written before 7 October, 2023.
After a year and a month of ongoing genocide, language seems to either be a deathobsessed weapon or an ineffectual tool: reality warps to accommodate nauseating atrocity; words of protest, witness, and their ensuing actions have not halted the killing machine. “Everything that brought destruction and annihilation for my homeland Palestine has been in the English language,” Abu Toha says. The Balfour Declaration, which created the settler colony of Israel in 1917, was wrought in this colonial language; so too is the genocidal refrain of our Western governments, who, he says, “never stopped saying, in English, ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’. Against whom? Against a population, half of whom are children? A population that has been under siege since 2007, under occupation since 1948? So this is the English language.”
How do we grapple with the English language – indeed, language and poetry itself – in this monstrous time? “Poetry does not change people who do not believe in the humanity of others,” Abu Toha reminds me. “As they are closing their eyes, stuffing their ears with the rubble of our buildings, they are not going to hear the poem.” To confront the terrifying ambivalence and responsibility of language in this moment, then, is perhaps as simple as understanding this. It is not poetry that has revolutionary duty: we do.
Forest of Noise is out with Fourth Estate on 7 Nov
| WINTER MARKETS
Aberdeen Art Gallery > 2nd & 3rd November < | Sat 10 - 5 | Sun 11 - 4 | Join Tea Green as we celebrate a
The Burrell Collection > 9th & 10th November < | Sat 10 - 5 | Sun 11 - 5 |
National Galleries Scotland:National > 23rd & 24th November < | 10 - 5 | All dates |
| V&A Dundee
> 29th November - 1st December < | 10 - 5 | All dates | Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum
> 7th & 8th December <
| Sat 10 - 5 | Sun 11 - 5 |
Bowhouse | St Monans | 9-10 Nov | 13-15 Dec |
| 10 - 4 | All dates* | *13 Dec 2 - 8 | www.TeaGreen.co.uk@teagreenevents
PARTY
22nd & 23rd November 2024
Anyone Can Trans
We chat with Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift about their upcoming book Trans Femme Futures and the politics of trans abolitionism
Words: Rho Chung
Last month, it was reported that Edinburgh’s Chalmers Centre, which provides gender affirming care to trans people in the area, has paused all surgical referrals for patients under 25. Following the widely condemned Cass Review, which makes the transphobic case against gender affirming care for trans children and youth, this fascistic move to suppress the public lives of trans people falls at a grimly apt time for the release of Trans Femme Futures: Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds, a groundbreaking new book by Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift.
The book is a breathtaking exploration for today’s trans abolitionists. With roots in activism and labour organising, Raha and van der Drift each bring a tremendous amount of care, attention and imagination to the intersection of transfeminism and abolitionism. Trans Femme Futures opens the door to a vital route away from ‘rights-based’ trans liberalism.
Trans liberalism, which is fed by the everescalating but never-transgressing ‘demand’ for ‘trans rights now’, never seems to get the goods.
“In the call for trans rights, you hear: ‘We’ve been asking for rights, and now we’re gonna demand them,’” van der Drift says. “The language of demanding, which you do always to a higher power feels sort of like a poverty… in how we think about getting together and how we can make social change together.”
“It leaves the agency with the political powers,” Raha adds. “[Trans liberal] politics is articulating our demands, and then we’re waiting for the political system to deliver them.” Watching our access to life-saving care erode before our eyes, trans people in Scotland are under a rights-based microscope. Meanwhile, Trans Femme Futures imagines a different sort of stru le, one that stretches beyond the confines of legislative reform. Raha calls it a “postmortem for trans liberalism.”
The book, however, does not take up the vocabulary of rejection. Rather, the book feels bound together by radical imagination: Trans Femme Futures imagines a model of care and labour that does not preclude or exclude. Raha and van der Drift manage to articulate the inarticulable, constructing a framework based on what they term “trans femme socialities”, which “draw impurely from the
possibilities of non-normativity.”
The chapters that follow are sexy, galvanising and challenging. It’s a world-changing book – not in a weighty, global sense, but in a personal one – which, I hope, will come to define key questions in trans/abolitionist theory.
It feels so appropriate that a book dedicated to the infinitely creative worlds held within transfeminism should spawn another world in its readers. Pragmatically, the book defines thorough frameworks for care and complicity. It unmoors care and harm from ‘identity’, moving away from the fixity of positionality toward a farther-reaching ethic.
Raha and van der Drift weave an ethic of care – especially related to food and cooking – through structures of labour, by which our interaction with and performance of gender is informed by our relationship to class and labour (and vice versa). Informed by the work of Black feminists and other abolitionists, Raha and van der Drift’s work centres on the kitchen as a site of co-creation. Van der Drift says that the kitchen is “where life happens.” Raha says: “The kitchen table is the beginning.”
This reclamation of the kitchen and the labour within it is just one thread of this expansive work. For me, one of the most important thoughts from Trans Femme Futures is freedom from prescribed affect, which constrains how femmes should look and act, how victims of harm should behave, and what form an ‘academic’ text should take. Affective freedom means that the radical imaginings of trans abolitionism are not limited to the lives of trans abolitionists. As Raha says: “Anyone can trans.” Anyone can cook; anyone can organise; anyone can liberate.
Trans Femme Futures is out with Pluto Press on 20 Nov
Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift will be at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair, Assembly Roxy 22 Nov, 5:30pm, and Glasgow Women’s Library, 23 Nov, 2pm
Artist’s Book
We chat with Gabrielle de la Puente, one half of infamous critical duo The White Pube, about their first book Poor Artists ahead of her appearance at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair
Gabrielle de la Puente wants you to remember the posters on your teenage bedroom wall.
In Poor Artists, De la Puente and her “co-everything”, Zarina Muhammad – the duo behind the subversive critical platform The White Pube – long for a world where it’s normal to be obsessed with something after adolescence; to fixate and create for the sake of it. A world liveable for artists. A patchwork of myth, De la Puente and Muhammad’s experiences, and anonymised interviews with over 20 people – from Turner Prize winners to technicians – De la Puente tells me that the book is a bit of a “Frankenstein”. It follows the story of Quest Talukdar through her art school days to her professional debut. Fact and fiction blur, genres bend, and De la Puente says she wants readers to feel the flux of the journey.
“We didn’t want to write a story,” she says. “We’re going to do gothic horror, and then we’re going to do a comedy zombie chapter: mix things up to keep people on their toes, but also to make sure they know it’s more about the content than the form. The rest of it, the set dressing, is there to make people feel like everything is elastic and therefore, everything can change.”
Elasticity is central. In Poor Artists, Quest bends around the structures of the art world as its figures twist into unrecognisable shapes. Outside of the book, De la Puente and Muhammad’s creative
process is constantly morphing. Quest didn’t even exist until four months into writing and the book kept evolving until the very end. “It was kind of fun to have an almost finished book and then do another interview and have all these new ideas,” she says. “To sprinkle confetti over the top of it is how it felt. Or like, salt. Lots of salt.”
While the pair set out to write a book of “whimsy” about being an artist, the interviews teased out a bleaker message they knew they had to explore. “We wrote this book during a time when we realised we don’t have sick leave, and I am unable to work most days. We ended up interviewing people about that moment where you think, ‘I need to get a real job.’ Or do you not even need to ask that question, because you’ve got so much money in the bank?”
Words: Maria Morava
This compromise – between financial security and a creative life – is at the heart of Poor Artists. But so are the other tensions which follow any “non-artist” through intersecting systems of oppression. Why must I make more and more money? How do I express myself through my queer, racialised, disabled or marginalised body without having to tame it, or simplify it, or sell it? What if I lied on my CV? Poor Artists explores these answers through its bravest characters, and it’s not lost on De la Puente that they exist in a universe enabled by a publishing giant. But the pair realised that if they wrote a nonfiction book, they could get an advance and afford to be writers for a year. And as writers, they had plans for how their work would confront the institutional recognition they oppose.
“There’s a chapter which says that tyrants have an insatiable appetite, and could you insert something into them like a virus?” De la Puente says. “I hope this book is that little bit of poison. And, if not this book, then maybe someone else will create the artwork that will have the same effect on institutions. That’s how I squared it with myself.”
If Poor Artists is poison for institutions, it is a tonic for the people. It’s for art students at orientation and computer programmers who can still remember the painting in their grandmother’s bedroom. It’s for job-seekers who wish they could sleep under their old Buffy posters instead of in front of their laptop.
Where do we go, then, when we face blow after blow from the institutions that claim to
“I think the only thing we can do is to consider creative communities on the scale of who our neighbours are”
Gabrielle de la Puente
support us? De la Puente advises us to think smaller. “I think the only thing we can do is to consider creative communities on the scale of who our neighbours are,” she says. “Who around us has a relationship with film, or books or theatre? How can we help each other get that off the ground?
“It’s important to reduce the scale of how we are working in order to protect ourselves. I think we need to feel the material again. It feels more beneficial, and more true to art to be having those conversations with someone two doors down, rather than a faceless funder who’s going to decide whether you get to be an artist that year or not.”
De la Puente says she doesn’t want to be on her deathbed thinking about an Arts Council England grant she didn’t get. Instead, like Quest, she wants to have lived a life making. So, maybe it’s time to resurrect fan pages and homemade cards; to ask your friends what colour the water really is; to deconstruct the story and start telling the truth. Add a bit of myth, some perspective, until it’s difficult and pleasing – until it’s worth living for.
Poor Artists is out now with Particular Books. Gabrielle de la Puente will be at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair, Assembly Roxy, 22 Nov, 12.30pm
Photo: Maria Gorodeckaya
(L-R) Zarina Muhammad and Gabrielle de la Puente
The Power of Art
There’s a major new exhibition in National Galleries Scotland: Modern One – Everlyn Nicodemus’s paintings, drawings, collages and textiles are displayed across the whole of the ground floor and are freely accessible over winter and spring, until 25 May
The Tanzania-born artist, writer and curator Everlyn Nicodemus has been described as one of the strongest feminist voices to emerge from East Africa in recent decades. Her vibrant, de ant and searingly honest works will animate the gallery spaces of Modern One, with over 80 works from the last 40 years, the earliest dating back to 1980. The survey is a major milestone, and its Edinburgh location holds personal signi cance for the artist herself, after 15 years living and working in the capital. She says, “Having lived as a nomad all my life, this is the rst place where I’ve been able to live and create in one space that is both my home and my studio.
“It’s a rare and unique experience for any artist, and especially for a Black African woman artist, to witness a retrospective of their own, and of this scale, so I feel incredibly lucky. This exhibition is a journey through my whole artistic life, and I hope it resonates deeply with those who experience it.”
Stephanie Straine, Senior Curator Modern & Contemporary Art, says, “It’s a long overdue chance for our audiences both local and international to experience her work for the rst time in her home city, which is very special. Many of the artworks on show have not been exhibited publicly anywhere for decades, if at all, so we’re hoping that people visiting will feel that they’ve experienced a real insight into a major gure in contemporary art, whose work has not been widely seen in the UK.”
The exhibition has been a long time in the planning. Says Straine, “Everlyn and I have spent the last three years preparing for this show by talking about her incredible career, powerful artworks and inspiring life story together, which has been an absolute joy and privilege for me.” There is even a new painting series for visitors to experience – Straine provides some context: “Everlyn won’t mind me sharing that she celebrated her 70th birthday earlier this year. That’s a big milestone for anyone, but it’s particularly special to have a full-career retrospective for the rst time in the same year. She’s nished a new body of work just in time – a painting series collectively titled Lazarus Jacaranda – that makes its debut at Modern One.”
Timing with the exhibition opening, the National Galleries of Scotland have announced the acquisition of two of Nicodemus’s paintings, adding them to the national collection on behalf of the people of Scotland. The Wedding 45 (1991) is on display – part of Nicodemus’s largest body of work, the series was created during her recovery from a mental health breakdown, which the artist now understands to be linked to post-traumatic stress disorder, diagnosed some years later. The Wedding 45 represents a resilient return to life, in all its beauty, di culty and complexity. The faceless female body has returned to a position of strength and empowerment, with an equal relationship to the world around her.
A second work, Eva (1981) has also been gifted to Scotland’s national collection by Everlyn Nicodemus and Richard Saltoun Gallery, ensuring the artist’s legacy will continue long after the exhibition has nished. Painted when Everlyn was living in Stockholm, Eva depicts the Old Testament gure of Eve (Eva in Swedish), pregnant and standing on a large red apple, with a bite taken out of it. Her pregnancy and the apple both indicate that this work depicts her after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden for consuming the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. The painting’s themes of pregnancy and birth, the Biblical focus on sin, and Eve’s victimisation are linked to the artist’s memories, from growing up in Tanzania, of the stigma that surrounded pregnancy outside of marriage. As in many cultures, she recalls that young women were blamed for their unwanted early pregnancies, even when the result of rape. Eva is a painting that proudly declares the artist’s unwavering support for global reproductive rights.
“Together, they speak to her innovations as a painter, and her striking ability to address challenging subject matters in visually striking and resonant ways,” Straine explains. “Both works communicate that art can be a powerful tool for challenging inequality and oppression, creating an alternative feminist space in which to explore shared human experiences.”
Everlyn Nicodemus, National Galleries Scotland: Modern One, until 25 May
Open daily 10am-5pm.
Admission free
To nd out more visit www.nationalgalleries.org
The Wedding 45 1991
Untitled No 56 (Baudelaire and Rimbaud), 2022
Everlyn Nicodemus, National Galleries of Scotland: Modern One
Image: Neil Hanna ,
Unfucktheworld
North Carolina resident Noah Barker reports from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene where nothing can kill the songs and lives of its hills
“There will always be more time,” is the appropriate prayer.
People can pray it, but we’re the problem; the trees pray it while they’re tall; the ground prays it while it’s uphill; the water just prays its level stays low. For all it enveloped, it did not pour there on its own, it didn’t discriminate what it consumed. Maybe the natural world still has the moral high ground to pray because it cannot discriminate. What recent natural occurrences and the prioritisation that followed display is that we’re not as righteous. We will never have that grace.
American society has the gall to place the forthright beauty of Appalachia as the least of its concerns, of which its situation is presently vital. This region of North Carolina, a perfect, ru ed gift I’ve lived my life as a satellite of, was drowned,
levelled, and impatiently, obtusely assisted. For all it’s ever given, this is how it’s treated. Hurricane Helene, which struck the region in late September, was spurred on by weather once referred to as unnatural or uncharacteristic, now shown to be the new normal. It was the storm of a century, something that should never have happened with the altitude and make-up of the area, but is likely to be repeated soon. This may not be the appropriate space to place righteous anger on the onset of climate change, as those observing would rather damn the government responsible. There is swirling, unkempt anger with every passing thought on this last month, but one remains the same: nothing can kill the songs and lives of these hills, and no thanks for trying.
Speaking of the songs, artists like Angel Olsen, MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, and
‘We exist and progress in a world where catastrophe takes with it both lives and art’
dozens more, are dredging all that wasn’t held. Their homes, family homes, their neighbourhoods and studios, all of the above and a growing list more was terraformed for future generations to build around. As any number of social posts could display about the situation; this isn’t a rebuild, the region itself must be reformed up from new foundations. Being the home to artistically inclined cities such as Asheville and Blowing Rock, Appalachia will continue to be a wellspring of inspiration, but what will artists make of it?
De Souza in particular has faced an unfortunately modern situation; she signals to the destruction surrounding her by using her own devastation as a siphon. She hopes for awareness using what popular leverage is at her disposal, but blog posts ad-nauseum distract, as only they can. As the climate crisis arrives, how do we respect the individual’s plight while recognising rising tides will come for us all? De Souza answered it last year, singing, ‘Who gives a fuck / All of this will end.’
This isn’t about a tragedy, or billions in aid evaporating from the American people as it’s disseminated amongst genocidal war lords and their campaigns for gross and negligent slaughter; this is about mountain towns, and it’s about you and I.
First, get your facts straight. Appalachia is the keystone of American culture, often referred to and imitated, stolen from and reappropriated towards other regions. There is no folk, country, bluegrass, or character in music without its rapturous glory. What other cultures, and even other regions inside America, can never understand, is that the vastness of its space, of its nature, allows for its art to tunnel deeper than can be understood.
The wind sings in harmony with its artists, its people want and ask for little, depending foremost
Unfucktheworld
Words: Noah Barker
Illustration: Tilda The Bull
on each other. Life blends together in the summer heat and hides all the same in the winter. Distortion and acoustics are bedfellows like a predator and its prey on the same flat circle of life. You get the sense that twang and sailor-mouthed art districts are as naturally occurring as moss on rocks. It’s a way of living at times traditional, but with a progressive, egalitarian spirit. Every person is laid equal on its terrain, everyone faces the same catastrophe eventually; every tree falls together. Conjure not the sight of roads turned into rivers, or of the roof of a house still below the cooling tide. You will see them quite enough already. Think of linked hands and trees that hum, think of the artistic respite of a region which never took handout from the start. Think of your family holding on to one another in the oncoming current, and of it all washed away. Okay, maybe stop thinking.
No need to get hung up now, wait ‘til it’s at your door instead. But it is now, as it is rushing against mine; however, this isn’t about climate change, like I said. It’s about you and I. You’ve posted a video of your family home washed away in a landslide, waiting for a FEMA loan or nonprofit grant to cover what your flood insurance wouldn’t, if you had it. There’s too many examples here to watch in a lifetime, much less count.
You’re the local college student in Asheville I struck up a conversation with while my wife was in the bathroom at The Orange Peel. You gave me a water and told me you were worried about school. Remi Wolf rocked the venue that night; I hope you’re okay. You’re the voice in my headphones, hailing from Asheville, like MJ Lenderman singing about houseboats at the Himbo Dome, or Indigo
‘Appalachia is the keystone of American culture... There is no folk, country, bluegrass, or character in music without its rapturous glory’
De Souza promising to hold the listener as she holds onto what she can.
When I say ‘you’, I mean some other form of me, on the other end of the geography lottery. Happenstance put these artists and these families in a harm’s way that foreshadows what comes for me next; who’s to say we’re not just the same, especially counted on the cosmic scale.
Whatever is coming, whatever is already here, no matter its origin or propagators, can only be met with linked arms. They may spend undue time pulling each other out of currents, but that’s our only option left. This is solidarity in our drowning world. Beloved Asheville, a centerpiece organisation in disseminating aid, has the floodlights on day and night, trucks navigating paths and roads since replaced by cliffs. Arts grants are attempting to shelter our creators, $500 at a time. What qualified as ‘not much’ yesterday is all a quaking world can muster, no less appreciated.
If this is how life and the breadth of its art and culture are treated as the world dissipates, then it’s not the fault of the rising tide. We failed not a neighbourhood or a city, but a culture when the rain fell and uprooted Appalachia the way it did. We may not have moral culpability in the changing climate (especially when Big Oil exists), but we sure as hell can be transmitters of culture and history better than we have. We exist and progress in a world where catastrophe takes with it both lives and art, ways of playing and means of expression baked into the fabric of peoples’ stories. The greatest sin of the last month is that such a cruelty, through nature or through mali cious, human acts, is even possible. That’s a sin against life, which it earns.
As bulldozers dig trying to find a ground level beneath the muck and debris, whatever they exhume will have a song and a life attached to its story. Appalachia is rife with invention, some thing that predatory realtors scoping the vacated area and war-centric policymakers could never account for. As the US approved funds to create victims overseas, the neglect their people face in the absence of that aid creates victims of themselves.
Learn this unfortunately needed lesson for when this
will happen next: make it a fool’s errand to believe anything can truly die. Live as others have lived, and take their stories with you. Then, you and I will live as a single, unending life.
Famine, drought, flooding, and exodus, are prowling around the corners of our lifetimes. There’s no time to counteract, we’re the first of many reaction generations. With the onset of this plight at our fingertips, I’ll hand out a mission: whoever has the last canteen of water, on the last raft on the tropical waters of the Arctic in 2140, remember how to sing Unfucktheworld. It’s not really about what its title su ests, Angel Olsen wrote it about love and a declaration of self, as usual. But sing it through. You’ll get to the last line, ‘I am the only one now’, and in that moment, you’ll be every one of us, as if our time never did end. You’ll be holding every moment, regional dialect, custom, sacrifice, and mistake in tow, and it will be the closest any of us have ever been.
No matter what efforts there were to rekindle or reshape a world where Appalachia was left to dry, in that moment, we’ll have one prayer answered. There was more time. Look to the million prayers left at the door, and feel bittersweet relief. Even if there’s only one of us left, there will always be more time.
Puppet Masters
New stop-motion films from directors Alain Ughetto and Claude Barras, which screen at French Film Festival UK, tell intensely personal stories and harness the revolutionary potential of this old-school animation technique
“I’ve presided over [claymation]’s imminent demise several times in my career,” says Aardman’s Tristan Oliver on a recent episode of Team Deakins, the podcast dedicated to the art of cinematography. Ever since the onset of CGI, the last days of this painstaking animation technique – usually achieved with nine-inch plasticine figurines in a scaled-down world, photographed at 24 frames per second – have been prophesied many times over. But for this stop-motion cinematographer, its longevity is unsurprising. “If you’re going to make a stop-motion movie,” Oliver told Team Deakins, “you assume that the reason you’re doing it is because you want something that is made, in the hand, in front of the camera. [Something] that has a real sense of being there.” His words set the scene for the arrival of two films to this year’s French Film Festival UK, which begins this month across Scotland and the wider UK.
Those two films – Alain Ughetto’s No Dogs or Italians Allowed and Claude Barras’ Savages – both draw on their filmmakers’ shared family histories of semi-nomadic Alpine living during the early days of the 20th century. Ughetto
reincarnates his grandparents for a harsh portrait of the realities of migrant work as an Italian coal worker in Italy, France and Switzerland throughout the early part of the 20th century. Over 70 brutal minutes, it takes us from abject poverty to war, the deadly Spanish Flu pandemic, Mussolini’s fascists, and then war again. Barras takes a less autobiographical approach, transposing the themes of self-sufficiency, land erasure and displacement amid industrialisation to modern-day Borneo. Both animators describe stop-motion as an act of resistance. If that sounds highfalutin for a children’s medium, consider that beyond the anglophone industries of the US and UK where indie rarities like Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa and dark anthology film The House are largely drowned out by family fare, animation has never been considered something just for kids. In Central and Eastern Europe, animation as a form of resistance dates back to the days of the late Eastern Bloc, when politically-minded surrealist artists evaded Soviet censors via a medium that was underestimated. France, Belgium and Italy have long held their graphic novels, from which they make films, in high esteem. Walk into
bookshops in these countries and in most you’ll find that graphic novels are given equal amounts of shelf space as classic works of poetry or prose and marketed to all ages. In 2007, Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi’s adaptation of Satrapi’s graphic memoir Persepolis was France’s entry in the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, selected above live-action films for its deeply personal account of coming of age against the backdrop of the Iranian revolution. It’s in this climate that both Ughetto and Barras have been making animated films for decades. For their latest, eschewing the allure of a digital workflow was an important, radical act. “Modernity prevails over all forms of resistance,” says Barras, “[because] everything appears easier with computers… it is difficult to resist.” But on Savages, it was essential to do so as much as possible, given the message of the film and his personal connection to it. In it, young Keira lives with her dad on the edges of a palm oil plantation, which is slowly encroaching on and eradicating the wildlife that surrounds it, threatening the survival of its indigenous Penan people. Chasing profit, the lo ing company that is eradicating the Penans’
Words: Louis Cammell
way of life claims to do so in the name of progress, offering jobs that will free them from their ‘savage’ lifestyles. When Barras met the Penan people, their story reminded him of his grandparents, who organised their lives according to nature. While there are myriad reasons why the comparison is a stretch (for one, it sidesteps the racial dehumanisation faced by indigenous populations, the imperial genocide that makes up their past and present), there do exist similarities.
“Modernity prevails over all forms of resistance, because everything appears easier with computers… it is difficult to resist”
Claude Barras
“After my grandparents, my parents embraced the modern world,” says Barras. “They settled in a village, and managed the vineyards using modern methods and chemicals… But due to the use of chemical pesticides, the wildlife disappeared, leaving a kind of desert… For a nature lover such as myself, it was a huge source of conflict with my parents who, although they were sensitive to the wildlife, did not see what the problem was: modernity equalled progress to them, because it simplified the way they worked, freeing them from manual labour.”
In a hyperglobalised economy, we are all increasingly guilty of adopting this worldview, blind to the impacts of our convenience lifestyles. The computer on which this article is being written relies on data centres responsible for 1% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. With demand for them projected to rise by 160% by 2030 in the age of AI, it is no great leap to draw
parallels between them and the pesticides that spayed Barras’s grandparents’ land.
These truths are especially difficult to face when we have to parse our own complicity like this. We must acknowledge, for example, that palm oil is the number one product driving Borneo’s deforestation and given that it is an ingredient of an estimated 50% of all products in the average UK supermarket, most of us are helping contribute to its destruction.
Here lies stop-motion’s power above straightforward live-action cinema, according to Ughetto. While animation needn’t be confined to a kids’ medium, something about its magic does nonetheless reach our inner child; a part of ourselves which, if we can just access it, can empower us to look directly at things that might otherwise be too hard to bear. “The [stop-motion] puppet presents us with our own imperceptible counterpart,” su ests Ughetto. “The technique allows us to transcend words, to address the unspeakable.”
Its other great strength is that it allows us to break the rules of our world, to do things like re-animate the dead or relive the past. In 2013, just six years after Satrapi’s film, Ughetto released his own story set against 1970s Iran’s revolutionary setting. Jasmine recounts his ill-fated love affair with its titular character. Seeing her again, feeling her presence in his plasticine model, gave him closure. Who knows whether he could have achieved something similar with computer animation, but stop-motion allowed him to feel like he was convening with her in real, recognisable time and space.
As if inspired by that experience, Ughetto built the sets for No Dogs or Italians Allowed out of the ruins of his ancestral land, a place called Ughettera. Translating quite literally to ‘land of the Ughettos’, the hamlet in Turin was once inhabited by those who bore his last name. Today, he says, “the roofs [have] caved in atop their peasant past, the trees [have] grown over their old lives,” driven out as they were by Mussolini’s fascists. On trips to Italy, Ughetto salvaged what he could of their
everyday lives: broccoli, chestnuts, charcoal.
“Head set designer Jean-Marc Ogier and I created the decor out of these elements,” Ughetto explains, “one where my grandparents could now tell me their story.”
It is a generous act of land reclamation. Within Ughetto’s miniature world, the little that remains of the real Ughettera covers the scaleddown landscape. At twelve times their real size, stems of broccoli become trees in a land still far from prosperous, but at least still populated by Ughettos, even if they are made out of clay. Inside it, their 74-year-old maker can speak to them once more. He inserts himself into the film, his hand presiding over it like the hand of God. Yet far from breaking our immersion, the technique only emphasises that the distinction between theirs and ours is moot. They really existed. His fingerprints are the marks of their flesh-and-blood legacy; his existence, proof of their perseverance. Perhaps it is no bad thing if these films are given the ‘family film’ label. Kids are, after all, the inheritors of our world. If these films, with their inviting soft textures and colours, can act as Trojan horses that introduce them to difficult but essential subject matter at a formative age, we might still have a chance. Both Ughetto and Barras describe being driven to make these films by the tales they heard in their youth, when they were still as malleable as their clay figurines, before their guards went up about the part they play – we all play – in turning a blind eye. On certain days, fascism, climate disaster and land theft seem too terrifying to confront. Experiencing them head-on in No Dogs or Italians Allowed and Savages are characters who share a striking resemblance to one another: “our own imperceptible counterparts” all have giant, wide-set eyes that call to us, telling us to open our own.
French Film Festival UK takes place 6 Nov to 12 Dec
For screening dates and times, head to frenchfilmfestival.org.uk
Ahead of releasing her second album as Jill Lorean, we catch up with Glasgow-based Chicagoan Jill O’Sullivan and find out why you should join her peace cult
Jill O’Sullivan is no stranger to making and releasing music in chaotic times.
The former Sparrow and the Workshop frontwoman debuted her newest project, Jill Lorean, in May of 2020 with EP, Not Your First Though its reception was warm, there could be no in-person fanfare, of course. The outfit, which also includes musician and producer Andy Monaghan (Frightened Rabbit) and drummer Pete Kelly, released their full-length debut, This Rock, two years later. Lockdown was long in the rearview mirror, but it was still too strange to tour and fill rooms. And though this month’s release, Peace Cult, can get a proper celebration, it too arrives during messy times.
“Whether you’re making art or not, we do not do enough reflecting, but we also don’t do enough resisting”
Jill O’Sullivan
O’Sullivan wrote most of the album last October when the Palestine invasion and all its horrors were beginning to take over our social media feeds. The songwriter says there were moments when making music didn’t feel quite right to her. “I’d like to think I can just shut my brain off, but I can’t,” she says. “So the lyrics on this album are maybe a little heavier than on the last one because I can’t help it. You react to your surroundings. But I also feel like, in me, there’s always a little hope. I feel optimistic about humans despite some of the horrible things we’ve seen.”
For O’Sullivan, the belief in the fundamental goodness of so many people is the hope to hold onto. It’s Jill Lorean’s peace cult, the album’s overarching theme of hope in a bleak world.
It was during her time of self-reflection, a weeks-long pause in writing the new record, that she discovered the concept of ancient Greek peace cults. Allegedly, springtime is when leaders announced their campaigns, deciding if that year would be one of war or peace. Groups calling themselves peace cults prayed to the goddess of peace for no war in the coming year, hoping instead for a time to focus on the harvest and enjoy art and the finer things in life.
“There was something about that,” O’Sullivan says. “Between that and talking to friends who encouraged me to – ‘Please, you can’t stop making things because the world is in a dark place.’ I think
I just thought, ‘OK, this has always been the case. There’s always been a kind of a fight, a stru le between light and dark.’” And so the album’s North Star was born.
This central theme of optimism through resistance is also present in When the Bell Finished Ringing, a track about a cult of another sort. ‘When the bell had finished ringing, we’d put our hands on our hearts, and we started singing – Oh say can you see’, she sings of the place she grew up: America.
O’Sullivan remembers pledging allegiance to the flag every morning in school, but she wished she could opt out, like the little girl who was a Jehovah’s Witness. “It’s not like I wanted to sit it out because I hated America,” she says. “I just didn’t understand what we were doing as a child.”
The song was inspired by this memory as well as the issues now unfolding in the US, from the impossibly high cost of healthcare to the erosion of abortion access. “The song came about because I’m heartbroken,” she says. “So many people I love are there… and you worry; you wake up in the morning, and you worry about the people you love. So it’s almost a love song in a way; it’s a song because of love.”
While O’Sullivan isn’t religious, Peace Cult is inspired by her spiritual experiences while immersed in nature. For example, Paradise sprang from spending time with a group at Lenzie Moss Nature Reserve north of Glasgow. There, she was tasked with discovering what paradise meant to her by collecting natural treasures and using them to construct a matchbox paradise. O’Sullivan’s is now pictured next to her arm on the album cover.
“It really affected me,” she says. “They wanted us to be present in our surroundings and listen to the Earth on our own. We talked about the bogs’ purpose and how they eat carbon and release oxygen, so they’re like the lungs of the Earth. I could feel the ground breathing, and I thought, ‘This Earth is still breathing for us, and we have to listen to it.’”
This is the kind of reflection she has on any given day at the flagpole in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park. With a view of the Campsie Fells, O’Sullivan thinks “about my day, the week, the world, life, everything and anything. And then I think about how to resist.
Words: Kelly Rae Smith
“I think it’s important to resist and reflect as humans.” She continues: “I think whether you’re making art or not, we do not do enough reflecting, but we also don’t do enough resisting.”
From climate change to arts funding cuts, there’s plenty to be loud about. O’Sullivan looks for a quote Patti Smith posted recently that encapsulates all she’s reflected on lately. It’s by Gerhard Richter, who said, ‘Art is the highest form of hope’. “I think that’s it,” O’Sullivan says. “[Art] gives us hope. It’s a light.”
Peace Cult is out 15 Nov via Monohands Records
Jill Lorean plays in support of Afterlands at Tolbooth, Stirling, 26 Nov and The Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 27 Nov; the Jill Lorean full band album launch party takes place at Mono, Glasgow, 4 Dec
jilllorean.online
Jill Lorean
Photo: Andy Monaghan
The World As We Know It?
Turner Bursary award-winning collective Arika return to Tramway this year with Episode 11: To End the World As We Know It. As 2024’s rendition approaches, the organisers tell us more about what they have in store for audiences
Following on from 2019’s Episode 10: A Means Without End, Arika return over five days at Tramway in Glasgow’s Southside, with a programme of film, performance, music, discussion and study groups that addresses the bi est concerns of our age – trying to understand ‘how we might exist otherwise, right here and now.’ This year, Arika have created a special music programme in collaboration with UK experimental music festival Counterflows, which will feature artists including Chuquimamani-Condori, Rashad Becker and Sunik Kim. As the festival approaches, we talk to Barry Esson, Arika’s co-director, about some of the exciting things happening this year.
On the first day of the festival, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri will present a project titled FOR EVER GAZA, a film-performance that straddles fiction, essay and documentary. The duo are deeply involved in radical left wing politics: Esson explains that they were part of 16 Beaver, which was “central to how artists engaged with Occupy Wall Street,” while their AND AND AND project at Documenta was “basically a monthslong open residency for anarchist, marxist, decolonial world-building within the heart of the European art establishment.” Anastas and Gabri are also organising an open assembly on the final day of the festival titled Toward Nakba as a Planetary Process, which responds to the current situation in Palestine and relates it to global ongoing oppressions. This assembly will bring together key allies from across their networks of artists, philosophers and organisers, for a conversation in the face of one of our great adversaries – the forces of colonial, imperial, genocidal denial.
Words: Harvey Dimond
On Thursday 14 November, Ligia Lewis will present a performance titled A Plot, A Scandal. Lewis uses choreography as a practice of study and critique and in this performance she blows open the meanings of the word ‘plot’ – as land, scheme and/or narrative. ‘‘I really love Ligia’s work,” Esson says. “It’s such a deep practice of choreography as critique. I’ve spent a lot of time chatting with her, and it always feels almost endless, the degree to which critical political philosophical concerns inform every aspect of her work, from the movement language, to the themes addressed, to the frame within which it is received (predominantly a European, white gaze).”
On 15 November, Hussein Mitha has organised a workshop for young people (and anyone who works in youth education) where participants will be asked to think about and practice critical tools to fight alongside the Palestinian people in their stru le for liberation. The workshop will take as its starting point from Intifada, Revolution! An anti-imperialist resource for young people edited by Mitha, featuring poetry, essays, questions, prompts, letters and artworks. It explores what anti-imperialist resistance looks like for young people in the imperial metropole, and asks how young people can respond to the calls of the Palestinian resistance.
The following day, Karrabing Film Collective will present a series of films titled The Ancestral Present. The collective are regularly cited as one of the most globally influential Indigenous art
practictioners of the last decade. Karrabing consists of over 50 members, all but one Indigenous stakeholders for their land around Anson Bay, north of Darwin, Australia. This is a chance to see films by the collective and to talk about them in person with some of their members, four of whom are travelling from Darwin to attend the festival in Glasgow. Esson says that while they’re in Scotland, “Karrabing will be visiting ATLAS Arts in Skye, as part of their School of Plural Futures, and engaging with a bunch of folks up there, specifically thinking about land as relational and connected to political stru le.” A conversational event taking place alongside the screenings will aim to show how they attend to the memory and practice of the ancestral present and the ancestral catastrophe that Karrabing and their more-than-human world find themselves facing.
The final day of the festival sees the convening of Toward Nakba as a Planetary Process, with speakers Avery F. Gordon, Houria Boutelja, Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri, Françoise Vergès, Amirah Silmi and many others. Meanwhile, a collaborative project by Scotland-based Nat Raha and Ailie Ormston titled aquasomatics will bring together thinking around the history of racial capitalism, bodies of water and violent histories of expropriation and ecocide.
Arika, Episode 11: To End The World As We Know It, Tramway, various times, 13-17 Nov
Image from Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland 2019, Karrabing Film Collective
Image:
courtesy of Karrabing Film Collective
Photo: Zahra Siddiqui
Share the Stage
With the Nashville-inspired Glasgow Songwriter Round gearing up for its eighth outing, we catch up with organiser Jenn Tapner as well as some past-performers
One of the most notable things about Jenn Tapner, curator of the Glasgow Songwriter Round series, is that she always brings fairy lights. While there are some above the performers, a point is made to wrap them around the staging and mic stands too, adding her own glimmer, while lighting up the performers. But the idea behind this glowing events series is to give artists a platform to share their music with likeminded individuals, to play and discuss their artform without fear of judgement or competition in an informal setting.
The setup is simple – four songwriters, four microphones, oftentimes a piano, and one stage, but not a raised stage, bringing a level of intimacy not afforded at a standard gig. Each songwriter gets to introduce themselves and their songs, and speak about the process of writing or the
inspiration behind the music, and then they perform. If it feels fitting, the other musicians may vocally harmonise alongside them, strum softly on guitars or touch lightly on piano keys. And this might be the most magical part – the performers are able to collaborate. Any and all bravado vanishes and it becomes an immersive experience for all involved.
“The initial concept was inspired after visiting The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville,” Tapner says of the Glasgow Songwriter Round. “I fell in love with the style of the sessions there – focused entirely on songwriting and storytelling. I was particularly drawn to how collaborative these rounds were. I loved seeing the artists sitting together, listening to each others’ stories and songs, and often joining in to sing or play along. There was something very memorable about how attentive the audience were. I feel like I didn’t blink for two hours while I was in that little cafe.”
Initially hosted at Inn Deep in Glasgow’s West End, the decision was made to move to prestigious music venue King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in July to accommodate demand after the first three events sold out, with entry becoming free. Removing payment barriers has added an element of inclusivity, meaning more people can attend and fully embrace the experience. Each night of the series has been chronicled as ‘volumes’, with each having their own dedicated highlight on the Round’s Instagram.
With country music at the heart of the events Tapner experienced in Nashville, lineups at the Glasgow events aren’t exclusive to the genre, with jazz, soul, Americana, Scottish folk and more featuring so far.
For the performers, it’s been a nuanced experience. “Having the space to be vulnerable and talk to the audience about the stories, inspiration and process behind your songs, more than you would playing a normal gig, is quite freeing,” says alt-soul artist Russell Stewart, who played Volume
Words: Alisa Wylie
“It’s nights like these, where you feel a real connection between everyone in the room”
Russell Stewart
6 of the series. “That and being encouraged to hop on your fellow performers’ tunes for impromptu jams just makes for such a unique shared experience. It’s nights like these, where you feel a real connection between everyone in the room, that create those special live music memories and it’s important to recognise the nourishment you get from that.”
Cara Rose who played Volume 4 agrees: “For audiences it’s a really special, intimate experience where you get to see several diverse acts in one evening, and for the performers it’s a wonderful format – it feels great to share the stage/performance with other people,” while Eve Simpson (Volume 5) describes the Glasgow Songwriter Round as her “Nashville dream come true.” She adds, “There are very few bespoke nights that centre songwriters, and even fewer that take the format of a round.”
Tapner speaks to the success of this format. “If you look around the room at the Rounds, you’ll see people laughing, crying, smiling, or sitting quietly with their eyes closed. It’s a beautiful experience to share a space with such an engaged audience, one that respects the musicians’ craft and is there to truly listen. It’s incredibly important for musicians to feel heard. Sharing a song you’ve written is so vulnerable – putting your feelings into music and sharing them with strangers. I’ve often found that some audiences don’t always provide the level of attentive listening that musicians need.”
“This series is so important to the ever growing Glasgow music scene,” affirms Glasgow neo-soul artist kitti, who shared the bill alongside Rose during Volume 4. “Having the opportunity to talk about our songwriting as artists is very special and can give the audience a far deeper insight into the mind of who we are.”
With lyrics, words and connection at the forefront – the Glasgow Songwriter Round offers a heartening experience where performers can truly be heard, illuminated, of course, by fairy lights.
Follow the series on Instagram @glasgow_songwriter_round
The next Glasgow Songwriter Round will be hosted in the bar of King Tut’s on Mon 11 Nov, featuring Grace Honeywell, Josie Duncan, Michael McGovern and Zoë Bestel
Photo: Inner Echoes
Photo: Inner Echoes
kitti
eve simpson
Cara Rose
Photo: Inner Echoes
Photo:Robbie McFadzean
Russell Stewart
Passing Pixels
From Word Art sweet nothings to hyper-specific starter packs, memes are now commonplace in our everyday lives – but what does it all meme? We unpack the astronomical power of online humour to construct both utopias and dystopias
Imeet Dr. Idil Galip, founder of the Meme Studies Research Network and co-editor of Critical Meme Reader III, in the friendly cyberspace of a google doc. It feels fitting enough for an interview about internet culture and memes. Idil is an academic who lectures in new media and digital culture at the University of Amsterdam, and I have a lot of questions about memes.
The word meme was added to the dictionary in 2015, though most people today wouldn’t need to read the entry to identify one. The traditional definition of the term was coined in 1976 by horseman of the apocalypse and author of The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins. Idil explains that in the Dawkins tradition, memes “are cultural units that are remixed, replicated and circulated” and can be, for example, “an internet joke, a recipe, or the idea of ‘God’ itself.” This concept has since evolved to describe typically humorous or parodied content that is circulated online.
With the rapid development of technology, our daily lives are becoming increasingly entangled with the internet. It’s unsurprising that memes in their digital format have emerged as a dominant form of cultural communication. Idil muses, “Memes are like the trash of the internet. They are like spam or a chain e-mail.” In other words, they are ubiquitous in the online world. In the 2000s and 2010s memes were a fairly niche phenomenon, but “now every fan community, online group (even a group chat) has its own memefied culture.” The more we are dependent on the apparatus of the web, the more visible memes become in our culture.
Brat is a niche gone viral, and a fitting case study of when memes, or their mechanism, get hijacked and used by marketing campaigns or powerful political figures (looking at you NATO). I discuss why this might be the case with Edinburgh-based meme maker and artist @ mirrorstage.instapage. Their username references
Words: Ema Smekalova
as in the 2021 storming of the Capitol.
At the same time, memes may also provide a space for ‘radical imaginations’, in terms of their potential to be emancipatory, utopian, or liberating from this capitalist hellscape. But, as Idil points out, “Radical futures can also be horrible, it depends on what radicals do with it.” Memes are just memes – replications – they do not have an inherent radical potential. Technooptimism may have held many people in the internet’s early days, viewing it “as a place of positive radical change, one that isn’t beholden to corporations.” Idil explains that this hope is now gone. “Today we see that turned on its head, with the rise of platforms. Instagram may well be inclined to say that memes help us envisage a radical future, but I would disagree with the idea that memes have some sort of revolutionary quality within them.”
Take the local example of @busspotteredinburghlothian on Instagram, an account that went viral for posting videos of Edinburgh buses edited in a thirst-trappy fashion. Idil responds, “It’s a surprise that a bus can be made to ‘look/feel’ sexy,” though, “memes become successful because they make you feel something.” Memes are funny and ironic, but there is also an emotional aspect to the way we interact with them. Idil continues, “I think these examples are the best bits of internet subcultures and the content economy, those that have a veneer of sincerity at least. Unlike Brat.”
“Memes are like the trash of the internet. They are like spam or a chain e-mail”
Dr.
Idil Galip
Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’, the identification of one’s self in a mirror image. Mirrorstage’s work involves bringing memes into the physical world through painting and textile printing. They stress that “Memes have so much potential to connect people, so the fact that they can act as a message holds so much power in such dangerous spaces.” As long as they saturate our culture, memes are vulnerable to weaponisation by extremists, such
Sometimes, it’s not that deep – or, rather, it’s about having a laugh at the expense of anything remotely deep. The creator of Glasgow-based meme account, @glasgowcellectuals shares that he made the account during the first COVID-19 lockdown, while having little to do and therefore getting into philosophy. The handle (an amalgamation of the words Glasgow, incel, and intellectual) captures what it means to be a self-aware, over-intellectualising incel who “spends the whole day on political Instagram.” Their memes are provocative, shitpost-y, and highly specific to Glasgow. Today it is run by three admins, a move made “so we could post more”, to please the algorithm. The creator explains that over time, some of the initial irony of the account died away. He laughs, saying that, at the end of the day, “It’s just a bunch of random losers who all had the same idea, like, let’s do this.”
Memes convey a dissonance of meanings, whether it’s a funny cat image, a critique of the art world, a Charli XCX reference, or alt-right figurehead Pepe the Frog. At their core, memes are defined by their tendency to spread and replicate. The algorithm is hungry for content, because posting means data extraction, which means profit. Although meme-making is a form of expression, which can be utopian or radical, the meme itself remains constrained by the context in which it is made and disseminated – aka its platform.
The People , Zeloot
On Fair Saturday
As November arrives, we’re looking forward to Fair Saturday – a festival like no other. We chat to the Fair Saturday Foundation about the value of the arts, money well spent, and this year’s stellar programme
Words: Eilidh Akilade
The shop is far too hot and far too busy.
Deals (BOGOF! 70% OFF! SAVE NOW!) are promised in block capitals upon primary colours. Useless plastic and polyester find their way into an ill-conceived basket and gritted teeth accompany snatches to the back of the shelf. Black Friday is a capitalist hellscape – and Fair Saturday is anything but.
Set up in 2015 by Jordi Albareda, the Fair Saturday Foundation in Bilbao-Bizkaia sought to bring communities together the day after Black Friday – the last Saturday in November – in support of both social and cultural projects.
Arriving in Scotland in 2018, the festival has welcomed 12,000 attendees since then. From choirs to craft, dance to poetry, Fair Saturday Scotland puts the arts centre stage while also seeking to recognise, amplify, and fundraise for social projects across the country.
“The arts have a potential to be a real driver of positive social change,” says Suzy Ensom, Regional Manager for Scotland. In supporting communities via the arts, the festival offers an all too rare unity which links social concerns to cultural outputs. Rather than imposing from the outside looking in, Fair Saturday supports arts events embedded within the community. “What we’re aiming for here is communities that don’t necessarily have access to the arts because of some barrier or other – it might be location, it might be cost.”
Such support is needed now, more than ever. “Within the culture sector, in the third sector, people end up competing for funding,” says Ensom. Amid this year’s Creative Scotland funding delays and copious government U-turns, the
funding situation is bleaker than ever. In such desperate times, unity is invaluable. “Fair Saturday is a really nice opportunity for these organisations to come together and appreciate each other and the value that everyone brings.
“Most of the events for Fair Saturday are free but not all of them – and it’s important that not all of the events are free. Sometimes they can’t be free, because it’s essential that artists are paid for what they do,” says Ensom. Fair Saturday encourages those who can and want to spend money on the arts to do so, rather than di ing deep for the senseless cash grab of Black Friday. Meanwhile, those who can’t afford it are supported to attend for free or reduced costs. Last year, Fair Saturday raised approximately £13,000 for social projects at Edinburgh events (including funding some social projects to create events); meanwhile, 29 named charities and social projects were supported by Fair Saturday Edinburgh events.
Of course, the benefits of community-based arts are not solely financial. “It really helps people to understand other people, and sometimes it helps people to understand a different point of view or look at something in a completely new way,” says Ensom. Art has the potential to change us – so long as we let it.
This year, the festival is largely focused in Edinburgh. The Fair Saturday Edinburgh Community Engagement Fund is provided by the City of Edinburgh Council, who also offer some support for the delivery of Fair Saturday Edinburgh. Fair Saturday isn’t interested in competing with the city’s August festival season; however, it is keen to continue connecting communities around the arts throughout the long winter months.
“The arts have a potential to be a real driver of positive social change,
Suzy Ensom, Fair Scotland Foundation
Edinburgh-based gallery AGITATE is hopeful about hosting their event, CONTACT PRINT. “Part of the motivation behind starting AGITATE was to better represent the diversity of photographers making work and platform new perspectives, so we’re excited to invite un-exhibited photographers to join us for that first step,” says Christina Webber, Co-Director of AGITATE and Project Manager of CONTACT PRINT. “Most of our interactions with photography today are via digital screens, but there’s so much joy in seeing your work in print – shows like this prompt social interactions that can become catalysts for all kinds of creative collaboration.”
Indeed, the Fair Saturday Foundation’s efforts aren’t confined to one day. The Kindness of Words project is a year-round educational project which celebrates our interpersonal relationships and the potential for radical kindness within them. Reaching beyond vapid ‘Be Kind’ sentiments, the project involves libraries, schools, families, and community groups, encouraging introspection and action.
A partnership between WHALE Arts and early years arts organisation Starcatchers will also see wee ones get involved. “Families can enjoy a sensory Fairy ‘trail’ with their little ones, before exploring Whale Arts craft fair and arts activities for all age groups,” says Kerry Cleland, Starcatchers’ Wester Hailes artist. “We are very proud to be part of Fair Saturday, working together to promote social inclusion, kindness and sustainable futures for our communities.” All too often early years are sidelined from conversations surrounding the radical potential of the arts. With Fair Saturday, they’re not simply there to be entertained but also engaged.
Everyone’s welcome. “You can’t be all things to all people – but we do try,” says Ensom. And we’re all in need of Fair Saturday’s offerings – connection, community, creativity. This Black Friday, the shiny-but-flimsy discounted coat won’t keep us warm; nor will the worryingly cheap electronics aisle. “There must be a better way.” And Fair Saturday is perhaps it.
Find out more on standrews.fairsaturday.org
Family Comedies Need Their Groove Back
We give a cri de coeur for a beloved film genre in crisis
Words: Lucy Fitzgerald
In terms of mainstream cinema, we are living in a time of insensate storytelling. On one end of the spectrum is try-hard R-rated humour and
monotonous action. On the other, infantilising drags. Concerningly, this has calcified into the accepted standard and in the process displaced an essentially colourful genre: the comprehensive family comedy. The few current studio offerings are tepid at best, insulting at worst. IF, directed by John Krasinski and starring Ryan Reynolds… Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile Harold and The Purple Crayon starring the Shazam man… What are we doing, people?
The family comedy was once a thriving genre that was broadly sentimental, but crucially underpinned by sharp wit and a healthy dose of sarcasm that met the minds of the different generations watching it. I’m talking 90s and early 2000s goldies: Uncle Buck, Richie Rich, The Nutty Professor, The Parent Trap, Father of the Bride, School of Rock, Cat in The Hat, Home Alone, Shrek and Elf. In 2024, it lacks any edge.
A lack of star power is a part of the problem. Former supremes in the family comedy pantheon like Steve Martin, John Candy, Eddie Murphy and Mike Myers tower over the modern, self-insisting Ryan Reynolds model. Russiagate wasn’t the only foreign collusion that altered the social fabric of America in 2016. Notably, the introduction of Deadpool into Hollywood did commensurate damage to people’s perceptions of democratic mores: it elevated the Canadian Reynolds
to a fraudulent status of comedic import. Garrulous but saying nothing, Ryan Reynolds’ charisma is about as dynamic as a chain restaurant, as boastful as a 4x4 car. To me, his prominence in the industry is akin to asbestos insulation. He simply can’t be our guy.
But primarily the malfunction can be located in the sanitised, boring scripts – and we must reckon with such vapidity. The old greats did not have prestige, cult or arthouse credentials, but their intelligence was self-evident due to the tight writing; legible but not condescending; neither merciless nor bad-faith, but not opposed to a caustic turn either (think of Ferris Bueller’s fluid and holistic inbuilt irreverence, for example). There were well-tempered physical comedy sequences that were self-aware when they were derivative. They weren’t saccharine to the point of grating, straining for relevance by overstating down-withthe-kids parlance, or stuffed with modern references that instantly date the film. Between the babying chronicles of Marvel and the current roster of Disney live-action remakes that darken the colour grading but never the actual events of the story, the valence of innocence is limiting. This so-sweet-it’s-stunting state of filmmaking should of course frustrate us adults, but we should also be concerned on behalf of kids too.
When you dumb down any element, it leaves everyone in a state of arrested development. Audiences should not be patronised and children especially, I believe, are suffering from these lacklustre narratives. Kids don’t need to be spoken down to; they can handle smarter writing that has
The Nutty Professor
Stygian and dissident flourishes. It’s productive to integrate pockets of slightly more mature humour, jokes that children may not fully understand yet but will plant a seed in their heads, root them in the real world, and give silly but useful introductions to life’s complicated realities (as well as the generative net benefit of just exposing them to intelligent commentary – the language of The Simpsons is a great, enduring resource for this).
Attesting philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous caution “the limits of my language means the limits of my world”, I gained so much from the world-building of these family movies as a kid, from historical touchstones in Hairspray with quips about J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance to Richie Rich mocking the pageantry of the 1% (see the parents cooing esoteric financial jargon as alternative ABCs over their baby’s cradle: “Can you say blue chip? Can you say convertible debenture?”), as well as playful innuendo in The Cat in the Hat in which a garden rake is addressed as a “dirty hoe”.
‘Kids don’t need to be spoken down to; they can handle smarter writing that has Stygian and dissident flourishes’
In the best of this genre, they would sneak in slice-of-life honesty and absurdities; they would have gently inflammatory moments and humanise complicated but redeemable grown-ups whose vices just might’ve outweighed their virtues. Another fond feature was the inexplicable, goofy choices: take Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood: Men in Tights styling Maid Marian’s iron chastity belt with ‘EVERLAST’ engraving or the beaming Martin Short breaking the mould for the quirky side character in Father of the Bride, as the inimitable Franck delivering cinema’s most mystifying accent.
In terms of animation, the Despicable Me films are straight-down-the-middle fine, but so cutie-pie to the point of inconsequence (I even charge the universally charming Paddington with being a little too adorable as well). The genre needs to get on Shrek’s gag level again, parodying the OJ Simpson Bronco chase with a mediaeval horse and carriage. Movies can still reach an unequivocal optimistic ending with some cynicism or taunting sprinkled along the way, but they are currently frozen in a puritanical and anti-intellectual state. Garfield, originally a sleazy wee bu er, is whitewashed in its 2020s treatment à la the va va voom purification of the Green M&M, and the trojan horse pedagogy like that of the anticonsumerism agenda in Over the Hedge or Chicken Run’s allegory for the Holocaust is notably scarce, with Zootopia’s anti-cop messaging being a rare exception from the last decade. We must dispense with the insipid
influence. Give me eccentric fever dreams with a communist throughline or an anthropomorphised creature that jests double entendres about drugs. Give me a wacky peripheral aunt that only serves to offer non sequitur flashes of her storied past or thinly-veiled criticisms of her useless husband. Give me a sobering nihilistic comment from a ten-year-old here, an AM hip flask swig from a company boss there. Pour raw anxieties and off-the-wall dreams onto the page. Put the marrow of life back into the story.
The Nutty Professor is streaming on Prime Video
Father of the Bride and Home Alone are streaming on Disney+
The School of Rock is streaming on Paramount+
Bedroom Production
Churning out UK techno via Edinburgh, bedroom producer LWS has a knack for appearing amongst top-tier tracklists. Following Palloon, a record championed by Call Super & Parris on their CYFTS imprint, we sit down with them to talk all things production
The Skinny: Back in 2018, you said making tunes was your favourite thing to do. Is this still the case?
LWS: It is. There’s nothing else I really do. I enjoy DJing a lot more now, but it’s not the same in your bedroom. Whereas making tunes, you can do it all the time.
“If you contrive a banger, it will probably be shit. But if I treat it more like a B-side, I can have a four-on-the-floor festival slammer in an hour” LWS
How have you come to enjoy DJing more?
My releases are getting more attention, so I’ve been playing lots in different places. When I went down to London, I’d never stepped foot in Corsica until five minutes before I was supposed to play. Sometimes not knowing what to expect can make you panic, but I feel like I’m getting comfortable quicker now. I also started paying for music. It makes me a better DJ by paying attention to what I’m buying rather than mass-downloading EPs from Soulseek that clutter my rekordbox.
I liked your recent NTS show. More people have messaged me about my mixes lately. It’s reassuring because I’m a less confident DJ than producer. But that’s just down to how much time I’ve spent on it.
How long have you spent producing? I’ve got 1200 Ableton projects. Some I spend 10 minutes on, some 24 hours. I figure that’s around three hours for each on average, which is only 3600 hours.
What is your approach to being consistent? I force myself to open Ableton, but not necessarily make anything. If you contrive a banger, it will probably be shit. But if I treat it more like a B-side, I can have a four-on-the-floor festival slammer in an hour.
The video of Ben UFO dropping your B-Side at Dekmantel is impressive.
Ben didn’t even email me back. I thought he didn’t like it... then I saw that video of him b2b Joy O.
Joy O seems to now be playing it too?
Yeh... I was sitting at my tent in Houghton and suddenly heard it playing in the background. I soon heard from Call Super that Ben had passed it on to him, so he took me on stage, and we all drank champagne together. It should be out mid-November as part of a compilation on TraTraTrax.
Aside from moments like this, what motivates you to finish music?
To say I’ve achieved something in the day. I’m passionate about this and want to do well, but I know it will require a lot of work and am unsure if it will work out. I can tell you it 100% won’t if I don’t finish things. I currently have five projects on the go, but I’m in a self-imposed producer jail. I’m banned from making changes for three days. I was getting upset about mixdowns, needed to take a chill pill, and now I’ve been called up for jury duty.
Not too far from real-life jail.
I think of myself as an efficient person, but you’re not maximising efficiency being on Ableton all the time. My rule is to make four tracks a month to send out. But for every pack, there’s another two I won’t share. It’s like Aussie gold hunters... I metal detect until I hit my target.
What does your workflow look like?
First, it’s fleshing out eightbar loops; a fun evening activity after work – no pressure to do anything more. Once there’s enough of these, I’ll sketch a rough arrangement... that’s where most tracks get ditched. It helps to move on quickly rather than holding onto something in a pit of despair. Finally, I return with fresh ears, open a notepad, work through the notes, and instantly exit Ableton. I don’t like noodling. The idea is already there... you just need to commit to it, if it was good enough for you yesterday, then it’s fine today.
Where do you source your sounds?
Most of the time I’ll record
Words: Cammy Gallagher
mundane things around my room using my Tascam. When listening back in isolation, you can’t remember what you were recording, and you hear it in a different context. I’m always looking for happy accidents. I use the Moog DFAM in every song... I twist all the knobs and see what comes out. Also, the Hydrasynth has a randomise button. It’s like playing slot machines… but you’re the one who decides if you win.
Like problem-solving?
Yeh. I work at a hardware store. Customers always come in asking for a solution, but they don’t know the problem – it’s my job to figure it out. Maybe someone wants a white finish for something they can’t paint over, so you sell them white electrical tape. It’s about finding alternative uses for things.
Palloon is out now via can you feel the sun
Photo: cllaiw
Tartan Techno
Meet Jimmy Wallace – Shropshire’s most Scottish DJ. With a string of releases on Studio Barnhus, Rhythm Section, and CWPT in his wake, we sit down to discuss the next in his tartan-clad studio
The Skinny: Where are you currently based?
Wallace: I’m in Shrewsbury; south of Manchester, West of Birmingham, just east of the Welsh border.
How did your kilt-sporting Scottish character come about?
My dad’s side of the family is from Edinburgh and Fife. I don’t have the accent, so I’m constantly disappointing people, but that part of my nationality means a lot to me. When it came to choosing a DJ name, everything sounded contrived or bland. I thought I’d use my surname and the clan tartan rather than create some bespoke brand. It offered me the ability to hide behind a look. I did also study in Edinburgh from 2008.
How was it?
The scene was a bit flat at the time. I watched Tame Impala play to ten people at Sneaky Pete’s. In terms of dance music, there wasn’t really a big party or night that dominated. My first gig was at a squat party my friends ran on Forrest Road. There was a real opportunity to make our mark promoting at Cab Vol – it was the hot spot back then. I remember we booked Erol Alkan. If you’d have told me at the time I’d be releasing on his label, Phantasy, next month I’d have said pull the other one!
What were some landmark moments in the 12 years between?
Moving from a city to the countryside was the main catalyst for change. I tried to stay on after my degree in 2013, but I was going to Sneaky’s every other night and not doing anything. I needed to find focus, and I was never going to get that in Edinburgh. Many artists find their creative spark in the hustle and bustle… mine always came from a quieter place. There’s so much inspiration in nature. It’s this endless pool of beauty and complexities to draw from. My dad used to make nature documentaries, and as a kid, I’d go out to wherever he was researching.
Your mum was a music teacher, right? Does she offer feedback?
She’s never fed back on my music, but she is learning the harp. I’d love to do a record with her one day. It’d be nice to have someone who’s driven so much of what I do today in the studio.
You collaborated with a vocalist for your new record, Cravings / Concourse. How did it come about?
I’d discussed doing a record with Erol the week before I played Panorama Bar (in my kilt). I dropped a Love Letters track in the set, and a friend of his – who’d been in the crowd – came up to me
Words: Cammy Gallagher
“If you ask a room full of people what they crave, it will be different for everyone. It means something to me, something to you”
Jimmy Wallace
afterwards. So, I reached out to Maxime, and he did what you now hear on the record pretty much first take. It was the first time I’d worked with a vocalist, and he’d never been asked to do it before. It was nice it came around in this serendipitous, stressfree way.
What are some prominent themes found on Cravings / Concourse?
David Byrne wrote this book about music and space. You’re always writing something for your environment. I think this release is a nice segue into the colder months. The lyrics explore the nature of cravings, intimacy, sexuality, and personal experiences with navigating desire. If you ask a room full of people what they crave, it will be different for everyone. It means something to me, something to you.
What do you crave?
I’m constantly in the pursuit of di ing for new music. That’s the feeling that’s driven me since I was 18.
And what drives you to make music?
There’s not too much of a theme to my work, it’s just an expression of how I’m feeling that day. Whether that be happy, sad, dark or warm, I’ve always tried to make it feel alive.
Do you have a process or equipment to get around this?
I use hardware. It gives you the ability to stop screen staring and use your hands and ears to feel what you’re doing. But equally, you need expensive equipment, you can mimic it within the computer by mapping the parameters of sounds to a MIDI controller, recording long takes, editing out the shit, and keeping the best bits. It’s often the mistakes, where the best bits lie.
When are you back over the border?
I’m in Edinburgh on Saturday 14 December. I’ll be playing The Bongo Club with Percy Main – a friend from university – who actually runs an amazing sandwich shop called Alby’s. The oldies are back in town.
Cravings / Concourse is out now via Phantasy; Wallace plays The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, 14 Dec
Wallace
Image: Seb Gardner
Manly Tears
Ahead of releasing his debut feature Silent Men, documentarian Duncan Cowles talks to us about getting blokes to open up on camera, the archivist impulse to capture memories and crying as a cure
“Iam neither silent nor a man.” That’s the first thing I tell Duncan Cowles when we meet over Zoom to discuss his new documentary, Silent Men. But then the men in his film – from his own family and friends to ones he meets down the pub and through online ads – are not silent either. In fact, they’re all extremely chatty.
“Yeah,” agrees Cowles. “I found that most people I spoke to were actually really willing and ready to speak when I started making it. There wasn’t a shortage of people wanting to appear.”
Silent Men is Cowles’ first feature, following a slew of BAFTA-winning shorts as well as a TV series for BBC Scotland where he interviewed millennials about topics like moving back home and getting sober. His knack for diving into tricky subjects makes him the perfect person to put you at ease when tackling his most difficult topic yet: the alarming state of men’s mental health, in large part thanks to a culture where expressing emotions for men is anathema.
The stats are alarming. Despite our growing understanding of the subject, suicide rates have been at their highest since 1999, and men aged 45 to 64 have the highest suicide rate (22.4 per 100,000). “You know, I’d been aware that blokes were a bit useless in expressing emotion, and I knew that I was bad at it,” Cowles tells me. “But it was the stats that really frightened me quite a lot, and then I realised how many friends had struggled with it. That motivated me to prevent myself from getting worse, because I could see all of us getting a bit worse.”
Cowles began filmmaking at Edinburgh College of Art, and his docs make for unique viewing. “I don’t make the type of polished nonfiction films you see on Netflix,” he says. “There are lots of mistakes left in.” But it’s these “mistakes” that make his work feel accessible and human. Silent Men invites you on a journey with the filmmaker, seeing up close and personal the changes in his mental and emotional health, which took place over seven years. Was the film planned to, well… take so damn long to make?
“I was challenged by the film,” he says of the process. “There were points of thinking, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to actually be able to do this,’ because I was aware I was going to have to put much more of my own personal situation on screen and actually do something different on camera, to show some kind of visible progress. Otherwise it wasn’t going to work. And I just wasn’t ready to do it. I was too scared for quite a while.”
On the surface, the stakes of telling your loved ones what they really mean to you may seem low, compared to say, a high-octane action film, but it can feel like life or death if you’ve never been encouraged to do it before (That Margaret Atwood line about men’s worst fear is being
Words: Katie Driscoll
“I don’t make the type of polished non-fiction films you see on Netflix”
Duncan Cowles
laughed at springs to mind). In the film, Cowles visibly squirms onscreen while telling his mum and dad how he feels about them.
Cowles isn’t the only one put through the wringer in Silent Men. There’s also his mate Ainsley. What strikes me is how shocking it is to see a grown man cry on screen. Women’s tears are a genre unto themselves. We watch, through Cowles, a private video sent to him by Ainsley, showing an artistic rendering of a crying session/ ritual set to Martha Wainwright’s Factory. “[Ainsley] was sort of embarrassed even when we showed him it, asking if we still loved him…” recalls Cowles. “Watching films is probably my way of purging emotional buildup. I’m always amazed how ready the tears are. It’s slightly euphoric. Like when you’re sick… there’s points of pure ecstasy lying by the toilet vomiting.”
Cowles’ pain has been our pleasure, in that his vulnerability has paved a way for others. “A guy came up to me after the screening at Sheffield DocFest and was like, ‘I’ve never told my dad that I
love him before, but I’m gonna go and do it,’” Cowles recalls. “And he goes outside – I saw him, on his phone, doing it – and then he came back in with a big smile on his face, and said, ‘I did it!’
”It impacted him so much that he did that straight after the screening. That’s such a nice feeling, to feel like you’ve taken your own situation, which feels quite isolated, and making a film like this, where it’s quite often a bit of a lonely journey, and then having it go out and impact other people’s lives.”
Regardless of the impact – which will undoubtedly spark more conversations around men’s mental health – it’s also a beautiful capsule of Cowles’ own family; something to hold on to. “It’s like a protest against the passing of time and things changing,” says Cowles. “That’s what filming is for me.” And the effects of his film have surpassed the making of it: “My dad won’t let me leave the room without a hug now,” he says with a smile. Silent Men is released 19 Nov by Cosmic Cat
Anime-zing
Scotland Loves Anime returns with a mouthwatering programme of mint-fresh anime and a smattering of classics. We take a look at what's on offer
It might not be December quite yet, but Christmas has come early for UK anime fans with the return of Scotland Loves Anime. Running throughout November at Glasgow Film Theatre, the Cameo in Edinburgh and, for the first time, at the Picturehouse Central in London, this annual festival will, as ever, feature new work from the brightest lights in anime today alongside screenings of some true classics.
If you’ve followed the trailblazing career of Kyoto Animation alumna Naoko Yamada (best known for A Silent Voice), you’ll know to make a beeline for her latest effort The Colours Within, which will be playing at all three of SLA’s venues. The film follows Tonsuko, a teenager with synesthesia, a condition which, in Tonsuko’s case, means she sees other people as colours. Yamada brings Tonsuko’s neurodivergent visions to life with a pleasingly experimental flourish, and the result is easily one of the most visually spectacular offerings of the year – anime or otherwise. Following the theme of creative youngsters, this year’s festival will also see the European premiere of A Few Moments of Cheers, a high school movie about a boy who loves making music videos and the girl whose singing captivates him, as well as Masahiro Shinohara’s J-pop soaked Trapezium, which follows a group of aspiring teen idols.
On the topic of hotly anticipated releases, this year’s festival will see the Scottish premiere of Studio Durian’s long-awaited film adaptation of
Look Back, based on the short and sweet comingof-age manga by Chainsaw Man’s Tatsuki Fujimoto. That’s not all for avid manga readers, though, as the film version of the legendary Akira Toriyama’s Sand Land, a quirky Mad Max meets Dragon Ball Z adventure, will also have its UK premiere at Scotland Loves Anime.
Amid these releases focused on contemporary stru les and worlds of fantasy there’s also Totto-chan, a fantastic work that’s part of the lineage of animes that tackle the devastation of the Second World War. Based on an autobiographical memoir by UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, it’s a beautifully rendered vision of a dark period that’s reminiscent of films like In This Corner of the World
Many of the offerings at this year’s festival display anime’s propensity for telling adultoriented stories in vibrant new ways, but there are still a few films in the lineup suitable for younger audiences. Take Ghost Cat Anzu, a charming adaptation of a beloved shonen anime that stars a little girl and her ghost cat friend as they travel to Tokyo, meeting gods and spirits along the way. Initially filmed in live action before being rotoscoped, it’s a visually compelling treat with a story that combines folklore and contemporary life as only anime can.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, viewers looking for more gnarly fare will find it in screenings like The Birth of Kitaro: The Mystery of
GeGeGe. Drawing on the classic 60s manga series GeGeGe no Kitarō and adding a mature twist to the kid-friendly source material, it’s a novel reinterpretation of a real manga classic. You’ll also find a bloodthirsty offering in SLA’s screenings of all four parts of Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture, a TV series that SLA are giving the opportunity to shine on the big screen. Anime viewers (this writer included) are always looking for opportunities to see anime from decades past on the big screen. If you’re part of this group, you won’t want to miss the 4K screening of Hayao Miyazaki’s first feature Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro, a swashbuckling adventure story in the vein of later work like Castle in the Sky. Likewise, if you missed Makoto Shinkai’s gorgeous fantasy Suzume last year, or Hiroyuki Imaishi’s internationally acclaimed Promare from five years ago, SLA is offering you a chance to catch them as they were intended – on a cinema screen.
Now in its 15th year, Scotland Loves Anime is the most well-established anime festival in the UK, and with a lineup like this, it continues to provide exactly what fans look forward to every year: the crème de la crème of what Japanese animation has to offer.
Scotland Loves Anime runs at Glasgow Film Theatre (1-3 Nov); Cameo, Edinburgh (4-10 Nov); Picturehouse Central, London (15-17 Nov)
Words: Zoe Crombie
Look Back
Totto-chan
The Colours Within
Lupin the III: The Castle of Cagliostro
Choppy Seas
After a lot of venue stress, poetry festival Push the Boat Out returns with a packed programme across The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Pleasance, Dovecot Studios and Dance Base
Words: Louis Cammell
The typical poet archetype is one of a seminomadic figure, untethered to any one place other than by its Bardic traditions. Ready to improvise a stage at will for any spontaneous audience that demands it. The image fits this year’s edition of Push the Boat Out rather well, given its necessary last-minute scramble for new venues for its 54 events. The change follows Summerhall’s announcement that legal woes threaten the multi-arts space’s future; instead, the 130 artists that were due to inhabit it from 22-24 November will disperse across The Scottish Storytelling Centre, Pleasance, Dovecot Studios and Dance Base. Here, we give you a taste of its varied programme that asks where we came from, how it shapes our modern world, and where the hell it’s all going. Featured are a piece of theatre; a night out; a retrospective; and an exhibition with an adjoining discussion.
Disrupting the Narrative
Scottish Storytelling Centre, 22 Nov, 8.30pm
This theatrical performance by Hannah Lavery, Jeda Pearl, Shasta Ali, Niall Moorjani and Alycia Pirmohamed casts a questioning eye on Edinburgh’s heritage sites and historic collections, spotlighting how the city’s colonial roots have resulted in the city that stems from them. What can we learn of its inhabitants and institutions through a decolonialist lens, and how can it lead us to rebuild and re-imagine? The storytellers involved are stalwarts of the Scottish poetry and oral storytelling scene, most recently featuring at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (Lavery) and in last month’s Scottish Storytelling Festival (Moorjani). They will be joined by composer, sound designer and musician Niroshini Thambar for a performance that will also be livestreamed from the festival’s website.
Push the Boat Out Presents: Iona Fyfe & Friends Dovecot Studios, 23 Nov, 8pm
It wouldn’t be Saturday night at Push The Boat Out without a signature evening gig running past 10pm. This time: DJ Nikki Kent and Iona Lee overlay poetic vocals and electrifying beats; Emma Capponi and Fionnbarr Byrne blend ethereal and folk sounds; and closing the evening is the awardwinning folk singer and Scots language activist Iona Fyfe, hot on the heels of a North American tour. With folk unifying and expressing the voices of a culture’s regular people, the antidote to the establishment sound, is the genre not the spiritual
predecessor to the sound system that is the pulsing heart to your favourite club? Come and be reminded that poetry runs through the veins of even the most ecstatic, heady night out.
And All Great Art Is True: A Celebration of Benjamin Zephaniah Dance Base, 24 Nov, 6pm
The festival’s collaboration with Qian Zephaniah celebrates the life and work of her late husband, the great Benjamin Zephaniah, whose work as an artist and activist shone a much needed light on issues of incarceration and racism the world over. His poetry dates back to the 1980s and, in the near 40 years until his death in 2023, spanned genres and continents. For example, his 1990 work Rasta Time in Palestine blended in elements of travelogue from his time in Gaza and the West Bank. His eyewitness account of its inhabitants’ stru le under Israeli apartheid was an early indication of what would go on to be a career of unwavering commitment to anti-imperialism, which culminated in his rejection of an OBE in 2003. The event is also in collaboration with literary editor, activist and publisher Kadija George. Together, Zephaniah, George and PTBO invite guests Raymond Antrobus, Salena Godden and Dean Atta to share their memories of the man and his work.
Machine Whispers
Scottish Storytelling Centre, 22-24 Nov Pandora’s box has been opened. The genie is out of the lamp. The shit has hit the fan. Whichever analogy you prefer, the bottom line is that AI has well and truly arrived and shows no signs of fucking off anytime soon. On a recent episode of This American Life, David Kestenbaum posits why writing a poem is one of the first things anyone who is encountering an AI text generator asks it to do. “Maybe [it’s] because it’s the most human act of creation you can think of,” he says. But if that is the case, can we trust AI to translate our poetry into other languages? Pip Thornton and Evan Morgan’s interactive installation asks the question. Judge for yourself the attempts of their AI translator to capture the beauty of a real writer’s poetry. Whether you think justice is served to the text will have you contemplating the role of human translators in the age of machine learning. Thornton and Morgan will also be joined by poet and translator Rachel Rankin for a discussion on the subject, AI and the (Un)translatability of Poetry.
Raymond Antrobus Qian Zephaniah
Niall Moorjani
Jeda Pearl
Salena Godden
Fionnbarr Byrne (L) and Emma Capponi (R)
Photo: Beccy Strong
Sea Life
We speak to Katy Nixon, winner of the David MacLennan Award, and A Play, A Pie and A Pint Artistic Director Brian Logan about their forthcoming play, Jellyfish
Words: Andrea Cabrera Luna
The Skinny: Congratulations, Brian, on your recent appointment as Artistic Director of A Play, A Pie and A Pint (PPP) and congratulations, Katy, on winning the David MacLennan Award. Can you tell us about what this means to you?
Katy: I was really delighted and honoured even just to be shortlisted and get a day of R&D. I mean, that’s like gold dust as well for a writer.
What was the process like?
K: There was a call late last year and the criteria was that you hadn’t had something professionally produced. The ethos is that anyone has a story to tell and could write a play. You write a description of the play, like a synopsis, and then five pages of your script. Then in January, there were 30 writers that were longlisted. Then we got a day with Douglas Maxwell, which was brilliant. After that, we had until June to get a draft in. Then it was whittled down to three, and then we had an R&D day with Philip Howard.
How did you come to the decision that this was the play that fitted PPP?
Brian: I mean, it wasn’t purely a decision about what fit PPP. We just all thought it was a cracking play that had loads of personality and would be exciting for audiences and had important things to say about life, about mother-son relationships, about domestic violence, about, you know, a particular kind of generation gap that was smaller than usual.
Katy, can you tell us more about how the themes of the story developed, and how the idea came to you?
aging, which spoke to how I sometimes feel paused at 19 in terms of emotional maturity. I also started thinking about absent parents and the impact on sons without a male role model, and how single mums navigate that. I was trying to make it honest. Brian’s been really helpful with feedback.
K: So I was in Berlin with my son for his 16th birthday, and it was a strange trip because he was fed up with my company. I was already writing a few notes about some funny things that had happened, and just not understanding each other. I had him at 19, and in my early 20s, I’d sometimes argue like I was his sister rather than his mum. In Berlin, I noticed he felt too old to be with me, but not quite old enough to explore the world on his own. We were in the zoo and went to the aquarium, and we loved the jellyfish. I later learned there’s a kind that can pause
Brian, what’s your approach to giving feedback?
B: That’s a good question. It’s a skill I’m still developing because, in my previous job at Camden People’s Theatre (CPT), I worked with theatre makers rather than playwrights. The first thing I do is imagine myself as an audience member and consider how the work lands with me, noting areas where I might need more clarity and what might raise the stakes. These thoughts are not demands but provocations. We’ve had conversations about the parameters at PPP, but mainly my focus is on the dramaturgy and understanding Katy’s ambitions for the piece.
You mentioned parameters at PPP and your experience with CPT, highlighting some differences between the two models. Can you expand a bit?
B: Since starting my role in July, I’ve become aware of the perception that a PPP play typically features a maximum of three characters and lasts up to 55 minutes, often seen as naturalistic, set in one location, and comedic because it’s presented at lunchtime. I believe it’s my responsibility to challenge that perception and encourage a broader range of possibilities for what can happen on that stage, although the vision has not been narrow in the past.
Will we see any jellyfish on stage?
K: Brian?
B: Yes, we’re currently in contact with Edinburgh Zoo to arrange a shipment. I had my first conversation with our designer, Heather [Currie], this week about the show as a whole and the jellyfish motif in particular. So, watch this space. I can assure you, though, that no animals will be harmed.
Jellyfish, Òran Mór, Glasgow, 18-23 Nov, 1pm
Katy Nixon
Brian Logan
Big Life Stuff
Comedian Felicity Ward returns to Scotland after a six-year hiatus, bringing raw humour and life lessons to her new show I’m Exhausting
Words: Ben Venables
It’s been six years since Felicity Ward brought a show to Scotland. Yet she’s more than making up for lost time. “Doing a two-hour show with some narrative is very different from doing a one-hour joke show,” she says. “If nothing else, just talking for two hours every night when you have undiagnosed ADHD (talking at the speed of fast forward) takes it out of you. Am I exercising to help myself out? No. But am I doing vocal warmups to give myself the best chance to succeed? Also no. You’ll be happy to know I’m raw-do ing life – unmedicated and unprepared.”
Ward has been performing stand-up hours since 2008, bringing her debut Ugly As a Child Variety Show to Edinburgh the following year. Onstage she’s candid and confessional, her life turned into its own comedy. And a self-effacing comedy in which an audience can empathise and feel better about stigmatised mental health conditions or those bodily (dys)functions we may find embarrassing. What If There Is No Toilet? made an entire show of toilet humour, eliciting laughs from the unlikely source of irritable bowel syndrome; 50% More Likely To Die explored the increased risks to life expectancy for those with depression. Meanwhile, her last show Busting a Nut, for which she was nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2018, was the stuff of pure joy, delivered in Ward’s relentless style. What can audiences expect from I’m Exhausting!? “I’ve been writing the show for four years. Bit by bit. So it’s about all the big life stuff that’s happened. Birth and motherhood and life and relationships and sexuality and changing bodies and buying sunglasses that make you look like a pervert and eating terrible food like Quorn. You know, the big stuff. There are always danglings of mental illness in my work – how can there not be?”
Born in New South Wales, Ward is an established act in both Australia and the UK. Asked where she feels most at home, her answer is surprising. “In the
water is where I feel most at home. And weirdly down in Hastings in the UK – I always feel happy when I go there. More than most other places. I still feel very Australian, even after more than a decade of living here.”
And since she started stand-up, her love for the art-form has only grown. “It was a terrible accident that has got wildly out of hand,” she says about first performing. “I love it more now than I did when I started. I can write jokes now. When I started I would stumble across them, but didn’t know how to do it as a craft. That sounds so
fucking pretentious. Apologies. I mean I have a skillset now, whereas it used to be very much down to inspiration and chance.
“I wasn’t into stand-up until I was in my mid-20s really. Growing up I was really obsessed with Steve Martin and Martin Short; and Bette Midler films. Then as I became a teenager I was most excited by sketch: League of Gentlemen, Big Train, The Late Show (Australian) and Strangers with Candy (the TV show not the film). I was obsessed with grotesques. And I think that shows.”
It’s in an all-new but familar sitcom that Ward now finds herself leading, landing the role of inept and bumbling boss Hannah Howard in the Australian version of The Office. Fortunately, in real life, she hasn’t had to endure a David Brent, Michael Scott, or Hannah Howard: “I haven’t had bosses for years. God bless the arts. And I was always in hospitality so never had those bumbling incompetent ones. I had the ‘steal your tips and spend it on gambling and cocaine’ type managers. God bless hospo.”
And she’s relishing bringing a fresh perspective to a show. “While we were filming you just forget it’s The Office. It just felt like I was filming a sitcom. So I was just being the best bi est dickhead I could for ten hours a day. The character of Hannah was so well written it was easy to riff as well. A dream role to be honest.”
And if you’ve missed the announcement of the new show, Ward confesses that the phrase “You can stream all eight episodes of The Office on Prime Video,” has become her go-to line and something of a mantra to her. “I’ve said it so much now that it goes on the end of every conversation I have. Bus drivers get it from me. Corner-shop counter assistants. ‘Gyno - thanks for the smear, by the way you can stream all eight episodes of The Office on Prime Video.’”
Symposium: 12 Hour Acting Up 1 February 2025, 11am – 11pm
Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design University of Dundee, 13 Perth Road DD1 4HT exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk | dundee.ac.uk/cooper-gallery
Listen to: Everything You Wanted, Must be Somethin’, Gone
Album of the Month kitti — Somethin’ In the Water
On Somethin’ In the Water, Glasgow neojazz artist kitti chooses enchanting nocturnes as her medium for elegant love appraisals. Counselling herself through emotional pratfalls, the album cycles through tension and release; verklempt then casual articulations that ruminate on astringent tastes and ultimately moving on.
As a steady promenade that begets lucidity, the clarity of what liberation could feel like is articulated on Maybe, with elastic vocals that purr and slice like Duffy, while the interlude of Dreamland is an absorbing, sedative departure that meets Michael Jackson’s I Can’t Help It and Seal’s Kiss From a Rose in cosmic reverie. More verdant soundscapes reveal themselves. The dynamic arrangement of Everything You Wanted is a sensory odyssey; over scatting, piano, guitar, contained and careening phrasing, kitti journeys mellow and ja ed frequencies. The sumptuously rich Must be Somethin’ follows – a paroxysm of brass and sax that channels the vibrant mischief of Jamiroquai.
Stirring us with Norah Jones-like coos, Wings is a vulnerable dispatch from the uncertain during period, anticipating a firmer after that retraces herself and sharpens her nerve. Pensive and graceful, the expressionistic Wonderland feels like
a twinkly soundtrack to a Parisian travelogue, but with a very deceptive spring it narrates a dejected transition. Then, as if perched on a lectern soulbaring to an empty congregation just for the sake of unburdening, the delicate contemplation of Me, Myself & I honours disillusionment. In conversation with only the shadow of her lover, Fine Ass is a memento mori of love. kitti mulls on the sweetness she can conjure in her mind’s eye, against the hostility of reality. Make – Up : Break – Up then glides with cruise control ease as kitti lays out the drain of oscillation, but sonically never judders. Reckoning with the end, Gone does the hard yards of calling it a day, like a slow hand thoughtfully tracing the spindles on a staircase before walking out the door. In it, the decision to leave is affirmed in melisma that chassés like a gown’s train enjoying one last spin. Finality moves to the forefront as I Walk Away sees the centre of her pain. This compelling epilogue leans into soupy belts and stabbing addresses that excitingly recall Aretha Franklin’s affecting (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.
Somethin’ In the Water sees a relationship’s fuse trip, but kitti makes something beautiful out of dancing solo by candlelight. [Lucy Fitzgerald]
instagram.com/hiitskitti
W.H. Lung Every Inch of the Earth Pulsates
now via Melodic
Mount Eerie Night Palace Out 1 Nov via P.W. Elverum & Sun The Cure Songs of a Lost World Out 1 Nov via Polydor/Fiction
Warmduscher
Listen to: Rana, Namopi, Lopšinė
After more than a decade Merope have managed to define themselves beyond genre, becoming purveyors of a very specific atmosphere. It’s a drifting, sleepwalking take on folk, sometimes nocturnal, sometimes faintly ominous but always capable of magnificent beauty. On Véjula, they move in this same willowy world, allowing modernity to poke in. It’s as if the dreamlike woodland that so much of their work conjures is under threat, as murky drones and cracks of glitched electronics pierce and peel at the landscape, both calming and deeply unsettling.
What’s remarkable about the album is how this disquiet slips in amongst some of the most purely beautiful music. Lopšinė has all the hushed intimacy of British folk legend Bridget St John, but the silken delicacy of Bill Frisell’s guitar makes it feel ascendent and hopeful, while the unhurried, music-box spiral of Vija is quietly astounding. The key is all this is done with incredible tact, every sonic choice deliberate but sitting loosely enough to feel natural. Even astonishing closer Rana, which at its apex merges the genrepolarised heartbreak of This Woman’s Work and Theme From ‘It’s All Gone Pearshaped’, makes perfect sense in Merope’s mesmeric sonic world. [Joe Creely]
Kim Deal, along with her bandmates in both Pixies and The Breeders, played a crucial role in the explosive growth of ‘alternative’ music, which saw groups formed in garages and basements suddenly performing at festivals and in sold-out arenas all over the world. On her debut solo album, Nobody Loves You More, Deal delivers a cool nod of her head to the various eras of her five decade-spanning career across 11 tidy tracks, from the sun-kissed beach pop of Coast, to the foot-stomping college rock of Disobedience.
Her long-time friend and frequent collaborator, the late Steve Albini plays a noticeable influence on the album’s sound too, whether it be the industrial bite of the bass on Big Ben Beat, or the dense crash of the drums on Come Running. This creative rapport is most noteworthy on closing track, A Good Time Pushed, recorded in Albini’s Chicago studio, and retrospectively serves as a touching farewell to the iconic engineer.
Nobody Loves You More has both the versatility and reflective quality of a ‘best of’ compilation, but one that simultaneously hints at there being plenty more highlights to come. [Liam Casci]
15 Nov rrrrr
Listen to: Small Changes, Rebel Soul, Live For Your Love
The partnership of Michael Kiwanuka with Sault’s Inflo and the inimitable Danger Mouse reunite on Kiwanuka’s fourth album, Small Changes. The album angles to circumvent the temporal; a confident stride in classic songwriting and craftsmanship that gives way to yet another example of Kiwanuka and his collaborators upping their creative ante. Unlike 2020’s Kiwanuka, Small Changes gives pause to the tempo found on those punctuated moments of its predecessor for the amber glow of Sade on the title track and Rebel Soul. This is the case for Small Changes, comprehensively: we are allowed to recline into its runtime, carried along rather blissfully over its warm current.
Textures feel invariably sun-dappled, the lyrics sincere meditations of love, while string compositions are heightened to catch-your-breath inducing zeniths throughout, notably on Follow Your Dreams and Live For Your Love. It is, then, even more effective that his warmest effort to date lets the other shoe drop on album closer Four Long Years, a forlorn, shoegaze-reminiscent heart-stopper. Small Changes seems to reach the listener’s ear with its patina built-in. A boundless effort that, while revelling in its musical referents – Sade, Gaye, Withers – stands tall, ceaselessly, beside them. [Rhys Morgan]
Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s debut EP is an exuberant homage to their live shows, capturing the lairy-lovely energy that’s made them a force to be reckoned with. Vocalist Billy Ward’s opening line on the second track, ‘It’s sports day and I’m coming last’, surely resonates with all primary school outsiders? ‘I’m not the athlete / I’m not the beauty queen’ leads to breezy piano and Plantasiaesque synth, evoking bittersweet summer days spent routinely humiliated by your classmates.
Listen to: The Boss, Sports Day, Ode To Clio
The EP follows the band’s hundredth show milestone and feels like a celebration of how far they’ve come. Opener, The Boss, features Vera Leppänen’s quietly simmering vocals that explode into a Courtney Love-like snarl, while Daniel Fox – known for his visceral live shows with Gilla Band – brings gritty production, concussion-inducing drums and abrasive guitars. EZPZ and Ode To Clio give us the uplifting post-rock folkiness of BC, NR, with lyrics you’ll be shouting with mates at next year’s festivals. Fans of M/W/C’s breakthrough single What Lucy Found There will find similar excitement here.
Eazy Peazy solidifies Man/ Woman/Chainsaw’s place as a band to watch as they continue refining their transition from live show to the recording studio. [Vicky Kavanagh]
Merope Véjula STROOM, 5 Nov rrrrr
Man/Woman/Chainsaw Eazy Peazy Fat Possum, 8 Nov rrrrr
Kim Deal
Nobody Loves You More
Listen to: Coast, Disobedience, A Good Time Pushed
Michael Kiwanuka Small Changes Polydor,
Elori Saxl Earth Focus
Western Vinyl, 15 Nov rrrrr
Listen to: How We Got Here, Taking Action, Architectural Plans
Elori Saxl’s debut, The Blue of Distance – named after Rebecca Solnit’s observation in A Field Guide to Getting Lost, that faraway mountains appear blue – investigated the ways in which technology has altered our relationship to the environment. So who better to compose the soundtrack for PBS’s environmental documentary series, Earth Focus? Exploring the relationship between California’s wildlands and urban infrastructure, the season’s fifth instalment pays particular attention to the Los Angeles River, with Saxl’s score moving in a loose, almost liquid fashion.
Concrete River opens proceedings with strange watery chords that create a sense of tiny movements teeming inside a seeming stillness; like green shoots emerging through layers of cement. From the cheerful wanderlust of How We Got Here and Architectural Plans to the more urgent Taking Action, Saxl combines processed wind instruments and analog synths with digitally manipulated recordings of water to create an album that feels like a mass of possibilities. Closing track Generations and Generations leaves us stranded in an expanse of synth clouds, ending the album on a note of hope and wonder; a generous parting gift when optimism about the climate is scarce. [Patrick Gamble]
Joan Armatrading
How Did This Happen and What Does It Now Mean
BMG, 22 Nov rrrrr
Listen to: 25 Kisses, I’m Not Moving, Someone Else
Joan Armatrading introduces this feel-good addition to her decadespanning discography with infectious lead single I’m Not Moving and an accompanying music video which amplifies the resistance and selfassurance of the titular declaration.
The album opens with 25 Kisses, a discofied, Kylie Minogue-adjacent track led by a gorgeous bass tone, overlapping vocal and driving eshaker. Someone Else follows, featuring a chorus melody that invites you to harmonise (or at least try to) and a great 80s rock edge that will undoubtedly bring Armatrading’s diehard fans back to the era in which her popularity saw its peak.
The album does, however, fail to deliver at times. Irresistible is one of the weaker tracks – it feels like Armatrading is doing too much with a song that should have been kept stripped back and basic. Redemption Love is another. Its use of repetition is borderline annoying, the instrumental is completely uninteresting, making this track feel like just another piece of filler on an album that otherwise features some truly captivating songwriting. The title track, for example, is the Joan Armatrading we know and love, and then some: contemplative, wise and deliciously groovy. [Jack Faulds]
Shuna Lovelle Disappointment Is My Expectation self-released, 20 Nov rrrrr
Listen to: Disappointment Is My Expectation, Power, Die For a Day
Shuna Lovelle’s EP starts strong. Acapella R’n’B trills mingle with layered handclaps to create an arresting marching beat, making way for its bold first line: ‘My lover wants to ask me questions / I’m not ready to lie’. Disappointment Is My Expectation is the title track on this short but promising debut EP from the Edinburgh singer-songwriter, a sneering nihilistic song about the pointlessness of love (‘always ends the same’). These themes persist across the six-track EP which offers an exciting glimpse into Lovelle’s musical world.
The dirgy Three Little Words is an extraordinary vocal performance, bringing to mind the stylings of some big hitters; Nina Simone and Amy Winehouse influences are clear here. Some songs could be improved with more bombast in the instrumentation, such as the powerful couplet (Power and Die For a Day) at the heart of the record. There are nods to the theatricality in both cases: the 70s-inflected guitar solo at the end of Power is a nice touch, as is the su estion of strings in the latter, which has the DNA of a Bond song that could more than handle the heavier instrumental bravado to match. [Tara Hepburn]
Power
Section 1/Partisan, 15 Nov rrrrr
Listen to: In Blue, Soft Power, So Easy
Amelia Murray, better known as Fazerdaze, has spent the last ten years on the outskirts of the indie shoegaze scene. The New Zealand artist’s work leans into pedal-heavy guitar compositions, layered beneath delicate vocals, giving the impression of a hazy trip through a shaded forest or an afternoon spent lying in a sunny meadow. Murray’s second studio album takes this aesthetic and runs with it, offering some of the best and most complex compositions that Fazerdaze has achieved so far. The album’s title track combines floaty vocalisations with fuzzy warped guitar chords, using powerful production to elevate Murray’s soft lyrics. So Easy continues this trend of staticky instrumentation and vocals, exploring the feeling of being so lost in someone that it feels dreamlike. These tracks are where the album excels in creating interestingly composed and catchy dreampop bangers. As the album continues, it becomes more apparent that the writing sometimes takes a backseat, with several tracks relying on endless repetition for their structure, while A Thousand Years gives a glimpse into what Murray is capable of lyrically. Soft Power definitely shows artistic progression from Murray, with occasional sleepy songwriting its only let down.
[Oscar Lund]
Fazerdaze Soft
Music Now
It’s a good month for our music scene – there are upcoming albums drawing influence from around the world, and some that get to the very roots of Scottish music
Words: Ellie Robertson
We’ve had a lot to catch up on in the Scottish music scene – it was a saintly September with songs from St Clements (Precious Little Time) and Saint Sappho (M.A.D.), as well as a new EP from Sara Rae (Passenger Side). In October we enjoyed singles from Lauren Mayberry (Something In the Air), Nama Kuma (Frequencies), Dutch Wine (If I Fall Through the Ceiling), Becky Sikasa (I don’t have words), Fourth Daughter (Hybrid), Danko (Losing Your Mind), Goodnight Louisa (Grace Jones), Supermann on da Beat (Deli ft. Hannymoon) and Megan Black (Something Golden), new albums from Swiss Portrait (Someday) and Snowgoose (Descendant) and a new EP from Psweatpants (2LeftFeet). Follow our Music Now playlist on Spotify for everything that doesn’t make it into the column.
For something to get excited about in November, Auntie Flo is back in town. The SAY Award-winning DJ/producer has been busy since the release of his 2018 album Radio Highlife, starting a 24-hour radio station and launching his own label with a record of mushroom-programmed electronic music. Now, everyone’s favourite Auntie, aka Brian d’Souza, is back in flight with In My Dreams (I’m a Bird and I’m Free), out 21 November. The suitably titled album contains ten tracks of world music, field recordings, and spoken word performance, crafting a lively libretto that transports listeners to somewhere far-off and carefree.
Expect dance hits made of wood chimes and synth stings, each one capturing its own sense of place. Green City is a beat originally based on a field recording in Nairobi, çatlak patlak contains Turkish lyrics and a pipes-driven melody, and Aker the Lion God is an ambient techno track that invokes its Ancient Egyptian namesake. If Scotland’s drizzly November gets you down, Auntie Flo will be able to take you around the world with the speed of the nighthawks and sandpipers referenced in his tracklistings.
If you can’t wait for that, expect to be uplifted on 15 November with the release of Peace Cult, the second album by indie outfit Jill Lorean. The trio’s titular singer/songwriter (real name Jill O’Sullivan) and Hen Hoose member has teamed up with Frightened Rabbit instrumentalist Andy Monaghan and drummer Pete Kelly for a compilation of folk-rock hits. The songs are built on guitar riffs, some bluesy and some brash, and occasionally backed by slightly trad sounds (strings on Paradise; harmonica on Roman Walls), but it’s the sweeping, ethereal vocals of O’Sullivan herself that lends the record a slight folk sensibility. Peace Cult, like the name su ests, is an album that explores ideas of community and harmony, and is certain to cheer you up as the days get shorter.
With the release of Beth Malcolm’s FOLKMOSIS on the 18th, there’s never been a better autumn to give our more oldschool musical genres a spin. 2022’s BBC MG Alba Scots Singer of the Year has scribed a full-bodied folk album, with a backing band of fiddle, accordion, clarsach, bodhrán and more.
Malcolm’s transformative interpretations of ancient anthems like Edward and Bonnie Glenshee are played between newer flavours (see Little Lows and Ghosted providing R’n’B notes between the reels). The highly narrative spoken word interludes craft a world of auld wifeys and bairns going guising on Halloween, blended with Malcolm’s modern point-of-view, championing Amy Winehouse on To Glasgow and visiting The Captain’s Bar in Edinburgh; Malcolm’s album sharply defines music as a gift from the past, and an especially good one for present times.
It’s also a good month for EPs – Katherine Aly has swapped out her backing band for backup dancers, launching a new pop-heavy sound on 222. Aly’s flirty foray into the world of disco beats and diss tracks is all about dating, from the friendzoned to the Freudian. From first dates to the (new) New Romantics, melancholy synth-pop trio Thundermoon release We Can Do Better Than This (8 Nov). Sarah Jane Scouten releases Transmutations, an EP of acoustic performances of her hits from Turned to Gold (11 Nov). Disappointment Is My Expectation, the new EP by Shuna Lovelle (20 Nov), gets a full review on p61, as does kitti’s Somethin’ In the Water (15 Nov), the latest album on Rebecca Vasmant’s label Rebecca’s Records, reviewed on p59.
If you’re desperate to get some listening done before Bonfire Night, two albums drop on the 1st; Holocene is a hardcore dark ambient effort by Edinburgh-based Exterior; and for a dose of breathy psychedelia, check out Apprentice Green from Isle of Lewis-based composer flakebelly. On 8 November, Glaswegian ambient duo Cahill//Costello release their latest collaborative record Cahill//Costello II, and there are new albums from legendary Scottish bands Primal Scream (Come Ahead, 8 Nov) and Dominic Waxing Lyrical (Diminuet, 22 Nov). Plus, make sure to check out new singles from Alice Faye (1 Nov), Constant Follower (7 Nov), waverley. (13 Nov) and Jewel Scheme (15 Nov).
Scan the QR code to follow and like our Music Now: New Scottish Music playlist on Spotify, updated every Friday
Photo: Ray Schnapp
Photo: Magnus Graham
Auntie Flo
Beth Malcolm
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH IONA FYFE
HANNAH LAVERY SALENA GODDEN
RAYMOND ANTROBUS CAROLINE BIRD
ELLA FREARS KATHLEEN JAMIE
IMTIAZ DHARKER LEN PENNIE
MICHAEL PEDERSEN ROGER ROBINSON AND MANY MORE
Film of the Month — Anora
Director: Sean Baker
Starring: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan
RRRR R
Released 1 November by Universal Certificate 18
theskinny.co.uk/film
Early in Anora, exotic dancer Ani (Mikey Madison) is chatting with a colleague outside the New York strip club where they both work, with her friend lamenting the generic dollar-signs tattoo she has on her hand. “No, but you’re manifesting with those,” Ani assures her pal, though it’s she who will soon be whisked off to a world of wealth by an unexpected suitor. If this sounds at all like Pretty Woman, be prepared for something considerably more acerbic and unpredictable. And since this is a Sean Baker film, the depiction of sex work is decidedly stronger.
Simply portraying the lives of sex workers with empathy and honesty, including the validity of sex work as actual work, shouldn’t be some gold standard for a filmmaker to get a pat on the head as a reward – or a Palme d’Or in their hand in this case. But writer-director Baker – known for his hugely collaborative approach in exploring the lives of people on the margins of society, respectability or both – has not unfairly become a torch-bearer for humanising such heavily stigmatised industries with genuinely thoughtful attempts at accuracy, free of patronising.
Through Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), Baker’s films have focused on various forms of sex work, from lap dancers to porn stars. His naturalistic touches have always butted heads with flights of fancy, most notably in the unforgettable climax of The Florida Project. The captivating dance between the possibilities of a hopeful fantasist’s imagination and the harsh realities of life is key to the success of these dramedies,
both in their darkly comic moments and their emotional gut punches.
Anora initially presents a raunchier spin on a familiar fairytale: a Cinderella ‘rescued’ from her circumstances by a Prince Charming, though he’s perhaps cinema’s gawkiest Prince Charming figure to date. Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) is the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch, living in a mansion upstate. Taking a shine to Ani at the club, he invites her to his home for a paid hookup, then to a party, and then to be his girlfriend for a week in Vegas – for a five-digit sum.
Cash is involved, but Ani and Ivan develop genuine affection for one another, leading to an impromptu marriage while in Sin City. But what happens in Vegas can never stay there. When news of the wedding reaches Ivan’s parents overseas, three mismatched lackeys (Yura Borisov, Vache Tovmasyan and Baker regular Karren Karagulian) are tasked with ensuring that the marriage gets annulled; Madison shines the brightest but the whole ensemble is uniformly excellent.
Through the manic, surprising odyssey that follows (recalling the great humanist Jonathan Demme’s similarly screwballinfluenced Something Wild), a compelling theme that emerges is that of growing class solidarity – between those forced to pick up the pieces when the privileged uncaringly drop their latest fascinations on a whim to preserve the status quo. As Blondie’s Debbie Harry sings in the film’s trailer, ‘Dreaming is free’, and it’s the manifestation of those dreams that always costs those born without a silver spoon in their mouth.
[Josh Slater-Williams]
Scotland on Screen: Jagoda Tłok
Care isn’t just last year’s best Scottish student film, it’s probably the best short film made in Scotland that year, period. Edinburgh-based Polish director Jagoda Tłok tells us how its story was inspired by her own spell working in Scotland’s care system
Words: Jamie Dunn
Filmography (selected): Code of Conduct (2024), Care (2023), Her Picture: Choir Song (2023, music video), You Will Never Walk Alone (2021)
w: jagodatlok.com
Every year, the Scottish film scene produces at least one breakout short, and in 2024 that film is Care. The crackerjack graduate project directed by Edinburgh Napier’s Jagoda Tłok has been a mainstay on the festival circuit since its debut at last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, and it has been hoovering up awards. This month it’s one of four contenders vying for the Best Short at the Scottish BAFTAs.
“Oh, it’s crazy,” Tłok tells me. “Like, we really, really, really didn’t expect any of this.” It seems that underestimating herself is something of a habit for Tłok. She explains that she’d been interested in a career in film since secondary school but ended up taking a circuitous path: “I knew I wanted to study film, but I wasn’t very confident. I definitely never thought I could write and direct.”
Tłok’s first taste of filmmaking was making shorts with school friends in her hometown in Poland, but back then she was in front of the camera. “I wanted to be an actress first,” she recalls. “I think that’s all I felt I could do, you know?” But she quickly found she was more useful behind the scenes. “Well, we didn’t know what we were doing,” she laughs, “but I guess I started taking care of the logistics and organising stuff.”
Essentially, she was acting as a producer, and these early dalliances with film inspired her to apply for a production course at a Polish film school... but she didn’t get accepted. Then came Scotland. Tłok moved to Edinburgh hoping to study film here, but the path still wasn’t straightforward. “I had no idea what the system was, how to write a personal statement, any of that.” When a place at film school still alluded her, she found a course in Interactive Media Design at Edinburgh College through the UCAS Clearing system. “It was the closest course to film I could find,” she explains. “I thought, ‘I’m not going to waste time. I’m just going to get into the system.’” After a disastrous spell studying
television (“I don’t hate TV as an idea, but the course wasn’t for me”), Tłok finally got into Screen Academy at Napier at 25.
A bit more experience in the real world might help explain why Care is such a triumph. The film centres on Hania (Aleksandra Blaszczyk), a young Polish immigrant who’s working as cover staff for a private care company. We follow her during a gruelling shift working alongside Lorna (Deborah Anderson), an older Scottish woman who’s been ground down by the job. The atmosphere between the pair is spiky at first, but they soon find a sense of solidarity as their company’s app keeps rushing them to their next job, not allowing them to provide the level of care their vulnerable clients need.
The film was inspired by Tłok’s own experience of working as a carer during the pandemic when the restaurant she worked in closed. She calls the experience “horrific” – “I think the film is quite mild; it was very difficult” – but realised she could channel it into something positive. “I always knew that I had to say something about this system, because it is awful, and the best way I could do that, obviously, was through film. But it took a while. It was two years before I could reflect on it with any perspective.”
Tłok credits much of Care’s success to its producer, Jess Kelly, whom she met on the Napier course. “Nothing would have happened without her,” Tłok says of Kelly. “She is the one who brought the team together and made sure that the team is as big as it needed to be.” Kelly had some hands-on experience in the Scottish film industry (she worked on Irvine Welsh’s series Crime and the prehistoric Highland-set horror Out of Darkness) and had an ambition for Care’s student crew to operate as close to a professional one as possible; they even had an intimacy coordinator. “Having that big a team was great for me because that meant I didn’t have to do anything except actually direct. You don’t often have that when you’re making student films – certainly not the student films I’d made before. Usually you have to wear a lot of different hats.”
There are many reasons why Care has been so warmly embraced on its festival run. It’s centred on two naturalistic and nuanced performances; despite dealing with bleak subject matter, it’s flecked with humour and humanity; in its 13-minute runtime, it explores more ideas – issues around immigration, the inhumanity of capitalism, the power of worker solidarity – than most features. But perhaps why it’s so struck a chord is that it’s a clear-eyed look at a profession that’s rarely been depicted on screen.
“Everyone knows someone who either works in care or has someone in their family who’s in care,” says Tłok. “So many people have come to us asking for the link to send to their sister or auntie who works in care. A lot of people seem very touched by how realistic it is. It makes me really happy that there are people out there who are in the system who feel seen because of the film. I’m really, really proud about that.”
Care is nominated for Best Short at this year’s BAFTA Scotland Awards, taking place 17 Nov
When No Other Land won best documentary at this year’s Berlinale, Israeli filmmaker and journalist Yuval Abraham used his acceptance speech to address the deep inequalities between himself and his Palestinian co-director Basel Adra. However, his call for a ceasefire was met with charges of antisemitism and death threats. It was a depressing, but not unexpected response to a film whose generation-spanning depiction of life in the West Bank demonstrates how the situation in Palestine was at breaking point long before the events of 7 October.
Abraham first met Adra in 2019, when visiting Masafer Yatta to report on the illegal takeover of land by the Israeli army. Together with Palestinian activist Hamdan Ballal and Israeli cinematographer Rachel Szor, they
Conclave
Director: Edward Berger
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati, Brían F. O’Byrne, Carlos Diehz rrrrr
Conclave, a thriller enveloping us in the skulldu ery surrounding the election of a new Pope, is essentially cosy Sunday night telly with a Hollywood budget. Director Edward Berger knows he’s got a potboiler on his hands and he wrings out plenty of surface pleasures to distract from the thin cloak-and-da er plot. Volker Bertelmann’s doom-laden score is a moody triumph and compositions of Cardinals huddling in cloisters and stairwells, as shot by French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, are beautiful enough for the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling.
The actors are as compelling. Ralph Fiennes is magnetic in his dour stoicism as Cardinal Lawrence, who’s attempting to judiciously oversee this surprise election while battling a crisis of faith. Stanley Tucci takes a
decided to chronicle this violent campaign of demolition and mass expulsion. Abraham provides a vantage point for those of us who feel a mix of hopelessness and guilt when viewing the devastating images coming out of Palestine. But ultimately he, like many of us, is shielded from the violence catalogued by Adra’s home movies. Perhaps the most devastating of these is the demolition of Adra’s local school, which was previously saved from Israeli bulldozers following a visit by Tony Blair; a pertinent reminder that international pressure can make a difference!
No Other Land is an eye-opening and oft infuriating film about the emotional and mental impact of oppression. Thankfully the negotiation of the friendship between Abraham and Adra provides a glimmer of hope in the face of such incomprehensible destruction. [Patrick Gamble]
Released 8 Nov by Dogwoof; certificate 15
welcome break from TikTok to play Cardinal Bellini, the moderate candidate, which he performs with effortless charisma, reminding us he’s wasted flo ing pasta recipes. Pretty much everyone else is chewing the Vatican’s scenery: John Lithgow rolls out his sinister grandfather act and Isabella Rossellini is fun, if underutilised, as a no-nonsense nun.
Conclave’s politics are pretty good too. It sharply demonstrates that mealy-mouthed centrists are not the solution to combating right-wing nuts like Sergio Castellitto’s Cardinal Tedesco, who rants about multiculturalism between puffs of his vape (an affectation which has quickly become cinematic shorthand for morally dubious). You’ll be thoroughly entertained, but Conclave will disappear from memory quicker than a puff of white smoke. Well, maybe not its daft but humanistic ending, which should keep right-wing columnists busy until the Oscars. [Jamie Dunn]
Bird
Director: Andrea Arnold
Starring: Nykiya Adams, Franz Rogowski, Barry Keoghan, Jason Buda, James Nelson-Joyce, Jasmine Jobson, Frankie Box rrrrr
There’s a lot going on in Bird, Andrea Arnold’s fifth feature film, including motifs fans might recognise: horses, butterflies, nature in contrast to oppressive human structures. For 12-year-old Bailey (Nykiya Adams), animals – in particular, birds – provide breathing space from her chaotic home life in a semi-squat in Kent with her brother Hunter (Jason Buda) and her unpredictable dad, Bug (Barry Keoghan). Bailey films the birds and nature around her, giving her an outlet from a chaotic ecosystem that requires her to act like an adult but fails to give her the agency of one.
This changes when she meets Bird (Franz Rogowoski), an eccentric, boyish creature who is looking for his
Blitz Director: Steve McQueen
Starring: Elliott Heffernan, Saoirse Ronan, Paul Weller, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Stephen Graham, Kathy Burke, Mica Ricketts, Leigh Gill, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, Erin Kellyman, Sally Messham rrrrr
Received wisdom tells us the Blitz was a galvanising moment in British history, a period of stoicism, of solidarity, of self-sacrifice. But Steve McQueen has never been one for following orthodoxy. His withering vision of London under fire in 1940, told mostly from the point of view of George (impressive newcomer Elliott Heffernan), a plucky nine-year-old lost amid the carnage, su ests this was far from our finest hour.
There are heroes here, like George’s single mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), who takes a break from volunteering at a bomb shelter to search for her boy, and Ife (Benjamin
long-lost parents on Bailey’s estate. Bird disarms Bailey with his attention to the present moment and his ease with life’s volatility. In contrast, every other male character either enacts violence or seeks escape (including Hunter, who tries to flee to Scotland, only for Bug to scoff: “Who wants to go to Scotland? Do you like ha is?”).
Throughout Bird, Arnold pushes the boundaries of what’s ‘real’, leaning into elements of fantasy and magical realism to question what we are owed by nature, if anything. These ideas are textured and lived, yet they don’t always land in their execution. When Bird flows, it’s brilliant, pulsing and alive, yet its fantastical elements can be jarring. It feels as though Arnold is nudging us out of the nest – a challenge some might enjoy more than others.
[Anna Ireland] Released 8 Nov by Mubi;
Clementine), a Nigerian immigrant who takes George under his wing for a night while on his rounds as a blackout warden, but elsewhere this London teems with violent police, jobsworth underground workers and racists civilians who’d perhaps be more at home on the side that’s bombing them. There’s even a gang of corpse-robbing thieves who seemed to have spilled from a Dickens novel (particularly vivid Stephen Graham as a snivelling psychopath who’s Fagin, the Artful Dodger and Bill Sikes rolled into one).
Unfortunately, Blitz is only this spiky and weird in bursts. As well as a critique of the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ vision of WWII Britain, it also indulges in a fair few of its clichés. It seems like McQueen is torn between his natural impulses to take a sureal dive into the horrors of war and to tell the kind of rousing melodrama that a British war film at this grand scale usually entails. [Jamie Dunn] Released 1 Nov
Conclave
No Other Land Blitz Bird
Home Grown
Our national celebration of contemporary craft returns this November, championing the people and places supporting Scotland’s maker community. Our design writer provides a rundown of the must-see venues and makers
Running from the 11 to 17 of November, Craft Week Scotland makes it easier to support craft makers locally – or head out on a road trip to discover new treasures. From Shetland to the Solway Firth, Craft Scotland shines a spotlight on craft businesses with an up-to-date map that includes everything from galleries and studios to coffee shops.
At what must surely be the most picturesque spot on the map, in Ullapool’s Ceàrd you can pick up vessels by Julia Smith and Fergus Stewart, delicate knits by Quernstone and nature themed prints by Louise Worthy.
Wild Gorse Pottery is the Southside of Glasgow-based shop and studio of potter Jen Smith who specialises in functional ceramics from modern makers using age-old methods. A pair of plates illustrated with timothy grass are wheelthrown and have pleasingly pinched rims giving a beautiful rippled texture (and at £35 each, they are giving high street brands a real run for their money). Over in the city centre, Welcome Home continues to curate one of the most eclectic craft collections in the country. Of particular interest are chunky silver rings by pas.cos that look as though they are hewn from ancient rocks and studded with colourful ethical gemstones, and Colette Kerr’s painterly giclee printed still-lifes.
Dunfermline’s historic and beautifully renovated Abbot House is well worth a visit. Situated in the city’s heritage quarter and featuring an elegant walled garden, visitors can also browse a colourful gift shop featuring contemporary work by local makers like Clarabella Christie, Scarlet Knitwear and characterful Christmas decorations by Esther Kent.
In Dundee, DCA continues to be one of the most reliable retailers to pick up something special in contemporary craft. Items of note include bold brooches in modern palettes by Syrah Jay and statement earrings in brass by NMARRA. This November the shop is complemented by Crafted, a festive marketplace which takes place over the weekend of 23 and 24 November. Ten minutes away is V&A Dundee – its waterfront retail space is where younger craft enthusiasts can pick up a kit to make their own monster – designed by Donna Wilson and made in Dundee’s Knit Shop – or a double-handed mug that’s perfect for hot chocolate made by Steph Liddle.
Independent retailers all across our nation are often the centrepiece of our high streets and our neighbourhoods, inviting to both locals and visitors from abroad. From beautiful displays to thoughtful selection through their specialist knowledge, Scotland’s store owners and trade buyers play a key role in bringing contemporary craft into the lives of many.
Edinburgh’s BARD offers visitors a truly memorable craft experience that’s both a shop
Words: Stacey Hunter
and a gallery for Scottish craft and design. By telling compelling stories about ideas, people and objects that forge Scottish cultural identity, there is a genuine opportunity to learn about some of Scotland’s outstanding makers like Jono Smart and Emily Stephen (minimalist ceramics), the Shetland Woollen Co. (cosy sweaters) and Jack Sheahan (handmade furniture) who articulates so well why handcrafted items hold such an enduring appeal: “There is beauty in the time taken and the ability to design – not with a ruler but by eye, there is depth to the imperfections, and uniqueness in the resulting story.”
Scotland is home to over 2,500 makers and craft businesses from furniture to jewellery,
ceramics, textiles and glass where exceptional quality is both accessible and increasingly made with a commitment to sustainable and ethical methods and materials. As international demand increases for Scottish craft with makers receiving critical acclaim and recognition through exhibitions and awards, Craft Week is a timely reminder to shoppers in Scotland that there’s a wealth of craft and design talent on our doorstep.
More information on Craft Week Scotland as well as a growing list of contemporary craft retailers is available at craftscotland.org
Craft Week Scotland, 11-17 Nov, various venues across Scotland
Wild Gorse Pottery
SOTTO, EDINBURGH
The excellent pasta and delightful decor are the highlights at Sotto in Stockbridge
28 Deanhaugh St, Edinburgh, EH4 1LY
Wed-Thu 10am-11pm, Fri-Sat 10am-midnight, Sun 10am-9pm
sottoedinburgh.com
First impressions can have a big impact. With its terracotta and green paint job and fancy window decals, Sotto – the new Stockbridge spot from sommelier James Clark and chef Francesco Ascrizzi – certainly puts its best foot forward. Pop open the front door and that foot comes down on a bespoke mosaic at the threshold, which we’ll say up top is a level of fanciness we can all aspire to.
Sotto is split over two levels; upstairs is a wine bar with shelves of aesthetically-pleasing tinned tomatoes, bottles of wine, and big windows out onto Stockbridge, while we’re off downstairs to the main restaurant space that’s all green leather banquettes and minimal lighting. There are lovely vintage posters on the walls and cork on the ceiling (could be for acoustics, could just look cool, either way we’re on board). It’s a classic vibe – conspiratorial tables for two, space to fit in big groups, marble tabletops, dark wood.
The menu isn’t short, but it is condensed – we’re in classic aperitivo-antipasti-primi-secondi territory here, with three or four options for each. We begin at the top with the Focaccia (£4.50), which is appropriately chewy and light, served alongside a big ol’ blob of red Trapanese pesto that’s very nicely put together. Salty, savoury, as red as a fire engine and just about as loud – it’s a good start. It’s joined by another big blob, and this time it’s a tasty Gorgonzola (£7). It’s served with a little honey,
and some crispbreads that are tasty but do keep snapping in the cheese.
Moving on, the Fritelle di Zucca (£10) are less successful. We mean the following phrase literally and as a run-on to the rest of the paragraph – for starters, they’re just too hefty. There isn’t enough crunchy surface area to balance the slightly heavy pumpkin interior, and while the lemonlaced ricotta alongside is tasty, it doesn’t quite have enough punch to land the contrast. The Gnocco Fritto (£12) is another that just doesn’t quite work – fried dough pockets with stracciatella, mortadella and rocket sounds like it can’t go wrong, but there’s too much meat, not enough of the gnocco, and not nearly enough straciatella.
On to the pasta, which turns out to be the star of the show. The Rigatoni Alla Norma (£14) has a nice bounce to it, the roasted aubergine in the sauce is melt-in-themouth good, and the wisps of salted ricotta on the top bring everything to life. It’s a good plate of pasta. The Tagliatelle al Ragu (£16), though, is an absolute banger – perfectly cooked and brilliantly bright pasta, with an unctuous venison ragu that manages to be both incredibly meaty and surprisingly light. Also, these are both enormous; high-fives are in order after deciding not to go the whole hog and top this all off with a huge bit of lamb.
Dessert is also predictably great. A
warm, buttery and faintly citrusy brioche (£7) loaded up with extremely nutty pistachio gelato – it’s a classic pairing, it tastes great, and because we have separate tummies for sweet and savoury it’s gone in about five minutes.
Sotto is nice. The decor is clean and crisp; the wood is dark, the glass is fluted, you can see the handiwork in the walls and floors. The toilets are genuinely lovely. And the truth is, some of the dishes are also great, but as a whole Sotto doesn’t quite live up to the expectations set by that lovely doorway. They made a good first impression, and we’ll be thinking about that ragu for a while, but this might be a restaurant that needs some time to grow into its two-storey, terracotta shoes.
Words: Peter Simpson
Photo: Tina Leahy
Photo: Tina Leahy
She’s Always Hungry
By Eliza Clark rrrrr
Fishwoman terrorises matriarchal village. Mean goth femdom bullies twink at work. Redpilled immortal cannibal meets her match postapocalypse. Teen girl goes to dangerous lengths to cure her acne. Xenoarchaeologist slips in and out of the past as a hallucinogenic parasite spreads inside her. Bodies lose their integrity in Eliza Clark’s sharp and voicey debut collection. Skin sloughs off to reveal what sits beneath. Characters eat and are eaten in turn, indulging insatiable hungers. Haunting, raucous, and often brutal, these stories confront us with our own modern obsessions with beauty, thinness, moral righteousness, but also our perhaps unreachable desires for rootedness, connection and absolution.
Clark jumps skilfully from genre to genre, creating an enjoyable whiplash that juxtaposes haunting, dreamlike science fiction with stickily humorous psychosexual realism. The collection does not lack for cohesion, though: be it for forbidden love, justice, domination, power, or human flesh, each character is dominated by destructive appetites and the hunger for self-annihilation. It poses the question of what it means to be possessed of a hunger that cannot be satisfied, creating a permeating sense of dread and deliberate irresolution. Besides these common threads, Clark’s devotees will be pleased to find She’s Always Hungry also infused with her characteristic, audacious wit, delivering chills alongside genuine, if shocked, laughs. [Eris Young]
By Pola Oloixarac rrrrr
When Pola Oloixarac’s debut novel was first published in Argentina, it became a controversial success. Between its scatological sexuality, its heretic takes on the country’s foundational mythology and national identity, and its poignant criticism of Buenos Aires’ intellectual class, it is easy to see why Savage Theories has been causing quite a buzz for almost two decades.
Now published in the UK for the first time, this translation from the Spanish by Roy Kesey brings readers to the Argentinian capital in the tense years that followed the Dirty War. Its protagonists, the politically militant and sexually adventurous couple formed by Little Kamtchowsky and Pabst, as well as Rose Ostreech, the seductive and obsessive narrator, are the natural product of these brutal years, the cynical youth that moves between academic circles and the city’s violent underworld.
Savage Theories is funny but it can be exhausting. Transparently proud of its own sharpness, this novel relies on dense philosophical tirades to drive its satire. This unrelenting philosophising could come across as pretentious, even obnoxious, if not for the fact that Oloixarac’s work is supported by enough substance to justify the tedium. The author has a point (or several) to make. This novel is a wild treatise on historic violence, on the power it has to shape all aspects of modern culture and society.
[Venezia Paloma]
Ángel Bonomini rrrrr
First published in Argentina in 1972, Ángel Bonomini’s short story The Novices of Lerna was his most celebrated in his lifetime, though it has since faded into obscurity alongside the man himself. On the strength of this story, it’s unclear why that is. Jordan Landsman’s English translation aims to set things right. It showcases Bonomini’s style, comparable to his contemporary Jorge Luis Borges.
Given his unremarkable academic record, new graduate Ramón Beltra can’t help but be surprised when he receives an unsolicited fellowship from a Swiss university. The sole condition of entry is an exhaustive survey of his measurements, complete with detailed photographs. His suspicion outweighed by itchy feet, he soon departs for Geneva where, upon arrival, he finds that all of The University of Lerna’s scholars look exactly alike. That is, exactly like him. Here, they are asked to rid themselves of distinguishing factors: to don the same blue uniform; keep their names to themselves; and, although they come from all over, to converse only in French, their shared language. Initially incurious towards the ‘experiment’, their dispositions are rocked when their numbers begin to mysteriously dwindle.
Across 100 large-font pages, the fleeting story nevertheless sinks its tenterhooks in. More surrealist than science fiction, The Novices of Lerna’s answers are in short supply. Instead, Bonomini invites us to ruminate for ourselves on the power of deindividuation by a surveillant, faceless regime. [Louis Cammell]
Set My Heart on Fire
By Izumi Suzuki rrrrr
Set My Heart on Fire weaves the thrill of 1970s Tokyo’s music scene with the uncomfortable mundanity faced by a protagonist journeying through her twenties. Main character Izumi’s appreciation of music seems to sustain her long enough to tell this narrative. Each reference and amusement acts as a volta, a break in the passage, which re-energises her system when she most needs it, in the face of the constant modern anxiety that imbues this book. The lucid drunkenness and humbling banality of Izumi’s twenties are encapsulated by vignettes which illustrate the comical, cringeworthy, frigid, and resonant moments in the protagonist’s experiences. Her alienation from others, even when so physically close to them, drives Suzuki’s relatable portrayal of the 20-something woman’s existential isolation. The mental gymnastics of womanhood appear increasingly universal, as the language of music.
Izumi’s discomfort, like her music appreciation, is everywhere. Beauty standards, social rifts, and the general awkwardness of being in this life stage are magnified. Sex becomes a currency rewarded with laxities disguised as niceties. Numbing pains using booze and men defines Izumi’s age of anxiety. As does attempting to sweeten that numbness, in searching for the ‘right’ man.
Izumi Suzuki innovatively encapsulates modern anxieties which are born of the standards of yesterday, and which overbearingly coddle the possibilities of tomorrow. Meanwhile, music offers freedom from this perpetual dread, and away from the burden of time.
[Maria Farsoon]
Faber, 7 Nov
Serpent’s Tail, 14 Nov
Peninsula Press, 31 Oct
Verso, 12 Nov
The Novices of Lerna By
Savage Theories
Dream Gig
Glasgow boy Paul Black delivers a scorching Dream Gig ahead of his huge gig this month
Illustration: Jack Murphy
Ihad the time of my life at The Stand in Newcastle. It was my first time on tour, and I was quite nervous about playing to an audience outside Scotland. That day, Newcastle had beaten Spurs like 6-1 or something, so the town was buzzing. I was standing outside the venue when a drunk, EDL Final Bosslooking guy approached me and a ressively asked what team I support. It was one of those conversations where it could go either way, and I knew there was definitely a wrong answer. But when he heard my Scottish accent, he hu ed me and told me he loved me in the strongest Geordie accent I’ve ever heard. He promised he would bring “20 pals” to my show later. That encounter set the tone for the whole gig. It was rowdy but not to the point anyone was being disruptive or annoying. Newcastle and Glasgow have really similar patter so it felt like being at home.
Newcastle Stand is the perfect-sized venue. The crowd was great – the ideal mix of energy and size. It was one of those shows where everything just clicked; I delivered it exactly as I’d planned and didn’t forget any bits. The only downside was a guy in the front row who replied to every single sentence I said, as if we were having a one-on-one conversation. I don’t think he realised I was talking to the whole room. It got to the point where I had to just ignore him because otherwise, I’d be so distracted I’d never finish the show.
After that, the best gig I can dream up would have to be somewhere abroad because, of course, I want a holiday out of it. I’d go for something big and outdoors, somewhere with extreme natural beauty or historical significance – but still close enough to a supermarket. I need to browse a foreign crisp aisle as soon as I land in a new country, to feel at ease.
I’d host this gig in the amphitheatre of the Pompeii ruins. I went there once and thought it could really use a SPAR or a Keystore nearby. The tour guide showed us photos of The Rolling Stones playing a gig there years ago, so I think it’s time for me to perform and bring in a new crowd – they’ve had their time.
Since there aren’t many seating options, I’d install rows of Odeon-style recliner seats – white leather as far as the eye can see, complete with cupholders, tables, and ashtrays. It’s important that everyone can vape and smoke freely without leaving their seats, which is why the open-air venue and the nearby SPAR (which I’d have built inside the venue) are perfect. Plus, it’s BYOB because the bar queues would be a nightmare. Tickets are only a tenner and include a Lost Mary on arrival.
I’d have Pete Burns compère. I can’t think of anyone better at crowd work than Pete Burns. For the lineup, I’d have Countess Luann de Lesseps doing some stand-up, and she can throw in her cabaret act if she wants. Maybe she could co-host with Pete – I think they’d have some Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly-style chemistry. That should take up enough time before my headline slot.
Given the Italian heat and the length of my set, we’d need regular breaks. To make the most of the ruins, we could fly in Britney, Beyoncé, and P!nk to recreate that iconic Pepsi advert. I could play the part of Enrique Iglesias because we have similar builds and bone structure. I know I might have blown the budget on the Odeon seats, so if we can’t get the girls, we could have a live-action gladiator duel between hecklers and comedians. If the heckler wins, they get a slot in the second half of the show.
For the post-gig celebrations, we’d take a cruise around the Amalfi coast, with Luann bringing out the entire cast of The Real Housewives of New York Season 7 to perform a remix of Everything Is Romantic.
Paul Black’s All
SEC
Glasgow, 22 Nov, 6.30pm, from £28.95 @paulblack_ on Instagram / @paulbiack, not @paulblack, on TikTok
Sorts,
Armadillo,
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
Mon 28 Oct
DISCOVERY ZONE
THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Pop from Berlin. ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE
THE RUM SHACK, 19:00–22:30 Jazz from Bristol.
Tue 29 Oct
HORSE JUMPER OF LOVE
STEREO, 19:00–22:30 Indie rock from Boston. THE MAGIC LANTERN (FINN ANDERSON + LITTLE CLOUDS) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie folk from the UK. STATE OF SATTA (VIXEN SOUND)
THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00 Reggae from Leeds.
Wed 30 Oct
KOE WETZEL ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the US. NIA ARCHIVES SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Experimental dance from Leeds. FOYER RED
THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from New York.
CARL STONE (AMOR/ LEMUR) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:00–22:00 Experimental from California.
Thu 31 Oct
GAZ COOMBES ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Oxford. GAVIN DEGRAW O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Pop rock from the US. TYVEK (THE SHITE STRIPES + RADIO BANTER) MONO, 20:00–22:00 Rock from Detroit. SPYRES SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from Scotland. ICE SPICE BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Rap from the US. MARISSA AND THE MOTHS STEREO, 19:00–22:30 Alt rock from Reading. FLYING DUCK HALLOWEEN (CWFEN + DRUIDESS) THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Occult doom metal. ALFIE TEMPLEMAN ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from the UK. BOLIS PUPUL ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Ghent.
Fri 01 Nov
SCO 24/25: BOREALIS
CITY HALLS, 19:30–22:00
Contemporary classical.
JOYWAVE (QUARTERS OF CHANGE)
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from the UK.
HENRY MOODIE
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. LAND OF RUBBER MEN
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from Glasgow.
PAUL DI’ANNO
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 18:30–22:00 Heavy metal from the UK.
ABSINTHE GREEN (XPOSURE + BLACKCATS + AFTER YOU)
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 18:30–22:00 Hard rock from Greece.
TIM DALLING THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Folk from Scotland. GLASS ANIMALS THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from Oxford.
DOOL (HANGMANS CHAIR)
DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:00 Heavy rock from Rotterdam.
INTER ARMA THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00 Metal from Virginia.
Sat 02 Nov
HIGH FADE
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Funk from Scotland.
ROBERT FINLEY ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Blues from the US. THE PEARLFISHERS (STEVIE JACKSON)
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Rock from Scotland.
AROOJ AFTAB
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Experimental jazz.
JACK JONES
SWG3, 19:00–22:00
Singer-songwriter from Glasgow.
OLD SEA BRIGADE STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie folk from Atlanta. AN AFTERNOON WITH BADO RÉTI & FRIENDS THE GLAD CAFE, 14:30–17:00 Folk from Glasgow. THE SEA KINGS THE HUG AND PINT, 13:00–22:00 Folk from the UK.
JOSHUA BURNELL THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Pop rock from the UK. THE STRUMBELLAS ROOM 2 19:00–22:00 Rock from Canada.
Sun 03 Nov
ARXX (PHOEBE GREEN)
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Alt rock from Brighton. SAM TOMPKINS SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Brighton.
CREEPER SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Southampton.
KRIS DREVER ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Orkney. BEEEATER (NANI + ANNIE BOOTH)
THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Folk from Scotland. NICK CAVE & THE BAD
SEEDS THE OVO HYDRO
19:00–22:00 Rock from Australia. MAUVEY THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Afro-fusion from the UK. SCIENTIST ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Dub. Mon 04 Nov
FLOODLIGHTS
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie from Australia.
THE VIRGINMARYS
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK. THE FELICE BROTHERS
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Folk from the US. STEPH STRINGS THE HUG AND PINT, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Australia.
Tue 05 Nov CRASH TEST
DUMMIES
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Winnipeg. THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Alt rock from the US. RYAN MCMULLAN SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland. REJJIE SNOW THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rap from Ireland. EDDIE CHACON (LYLO) STEREO, 19:00–22:00
R‘n’B from California. LO MOON
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Alt rock from LA. COLE PULICE THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Ambient from California. ST LUNDI THE RUM SHACK, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Hayling Island. ROSALI THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from North Carolina.
Wed 06 Nov
AMYL & THE SNIFFERS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Punk from Australia. MERYL STREEK KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie from Dublin. ARTEMAS SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Alt pop from Oxfordshire.
PAT HAMILTON SWG3, 20:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland. THE ZANGWILLS THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Cheshire. B DOLAN STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from Rhode Island. MIKE NISBET THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland. CINDY (APRIL MAGAZINE + THE MARY COLUMN) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Dream pop from the Bay Area. ANGRY BLACKMEN THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Rap from Chicago. Thu 07 Nov
FOCUS ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Prog rock from Amsterdam. SOFTCULT KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Grunge from Canada. CRADLE OF FILTH SWG3, 18:00–22:00 Metal from the UK. CAMERON HAYES THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. ED HARCOURT THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the UK.
MARCUS KING BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Blues rock from South Carolina.
MARUJA STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk from Manchester. BEAK> ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Electro rock from Bristol. SINEAD BURGESS THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Country from Australia.
BILLY WOODS DRYGATE BREWING CO., 19:00–22:00 Rap from New York.
WISHY (SAINT SAPPHO + ELIOTS GRAVEYARD) THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from Indianapolis. MAN MAN THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Art rock from LA. A CELEBRATION OF JOHN MAYALL ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Blues.
Fri 08 Nov
GRIFF
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Pop from Kings Langley. JOE GODDARD (LOU HAYTER) KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Electronica from the UK. UPSAHL THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the US.
EZRA COLLECTIVE BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Jazz from the UK. ARTHUR HILL STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Pop from Buckinghamshire.
SLOWLIGHT THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Emo from Scotland.
BILLY MAHONIE THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Post-rock from London. SHANNON AND THE CLAMS (MOCK MEDIA) ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Garage punk from Oakland.
Sat 09 Nov
MEDIUM BUILD
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Alt indie from Alaska. ONÓIR
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Ireland. THE DUALERS
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Reggae from London. GURRIERS
MONO, 19:00–22:00 Punk from Dublin. NOAHFINNCE THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.
DOLORES FOREVER THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Pop from Yorkshire. BARRY CAN’T SWIM BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00
Electronica from Scotland. FAT DOG STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Dance punk from London. MUGENKYO TAIKO DRUMMERS
OLD FRUITMARKET GLASGOW, 19:30–22:00 Taiko.
TULLIS RENNIE (FRISE
LUMIERE + SEMAY WU)
THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Experimental.
YUKIKO MATSUKURA (HOWIE REEVE) THE GLAD CAFE, 13:00–16:30 Experimental from Japan.
ROBIN ADAMS (CALUM
GILLIGAN)
THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Folk from Scotland.
KASABIAN
THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Leicester.
BOHEMIAN MONK
MACHINE
THE RUM SHACK, 19:30–22:00 Funk from Perth.
CASUAL SEX
THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from Glasgow.
LIZ LAWRENCE ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from London. Sun 10 Nov
ONÓIR
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Ireland.
EMPRESS OF KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Pop from the US.
SARAH KINSLEY
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Alt pop from New York.
DECO
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK.
BARRY CAN’T SWIM BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Scotland. BLACK SPIDERS STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Stoner rock from Sheffield.
DEADLETTER
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk from Yorkshire.
AN-TING & IAN
GALLAGHER (LUCIEN FLETCHER)
THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Experimental from Taiwan.
DEEP PURPLE
THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from London.
GILLIAN CARTER
THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Post-hardcore.
Mon 11 Nov
BEABADOOBEE
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW
19:00–22:00 Dream pop from the UK.
STILL WOOZY SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Psych from Portland. MAMA TERRA SWG3, 19:30–22:00 Jazz from Glasgow.
MOUTH CULTURE
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Leicester.
SEPULTURA BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Heavy metal from Brazil.
LONDON GRAMMAR (LAUREN MAYBERRY )
THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from Nottingham.
STRFKR ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from Portland. Tue 12 Nov
YELLOWCARD (STORY OF THE YEAR + THIS WILD LIFE)
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Florida.
BASHT
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Alt from Dublin.
RACHEL CHINOURIRI
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.
SOIL
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the US. NORTHERN RESONANCE + CHLOË BRYCE, MEGAN MACDONALD & CALUM MCILROY SWG3, 19:30–22:00 Folk.
BRADLEY SIMPSON THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK. LUSTSICKPUPPY (IZZY SPEARS + GORESHIT) STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from New York.
JULIA FORDHAM ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Pop.
JAZZ AT THE GLAD (ACT SHY ) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz.
PARTY DOZEN THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie from Sydney.
ALICE LONGYU GAO ROOM 2 19:00–22:00 Pop from New York. Wed 13 Nov
JIMMY EAT WORLD
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Arizona.
FRIKO
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from Chicago.
TARA CLERKIN TRIO MONO, 20:00–22:00 Jazz folk from Bristol.
WILD RIVERS QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Toronto.
SEGA BODEGA SWG3 19:00–22:00 Experimental from Glasgow.
CHANEL BEADS SWG3 19:00–22:00 Pop from New York.
PENETRATION (ESSENTIAL LOGIC)
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK.
DEREK FORBES ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Scotland.
NIAMH BURY THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Folk from Dublin.
PIGLET
THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie pop from Ireland. Thu 14 Nov
REMEMBER MONDAY ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Country pop from the UK.
THE WAILERS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Reggae. WES NELSON SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer from the UK. WASIA PROJECT SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. TWENTY FINGERS DUO STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Contemporary classical from Lithuania. 1 5 MONTHS X SONIC BOTHY THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Eclectic lineup.
COURTENEERS (DMA’S) THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Manchester. FAT-SUIT THE RUM SHACK, 20:00–22:00 Jazz from Glasgow. Fri 15 Nov
CHRISTIAN LEE HUTSON ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the US. KOFI STONE KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Rap from Birmingham. WARMDUSCHER
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk from London. PROJECT SMOK
SWG3 19:00–22:00 Trad from Glasgow.
TIDAL END SWG3 19:00–22:00 Pop rock from Scotland.
DELAIN THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Metal from the Netherlands. THE SKINNER BROTHERS STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from London.
TOM MCGUIRE & THE BRASSHOLES ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Funk soul from Glasgow. CHRIS COHEN (SIMONE ANTIGONE) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from the US.
KHRUANGBIN THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Psych rock from Houston. THE PAINTING THE HUG AND PINT, 18:00–22:00 Indie.
Sat 16 Nov
ELLES BAILEY ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Blues root from the UK.
NITEWORKS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Electro-trad from the Isle of Skye.
HARRISON STORM SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.
DELILAH BON THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from London. KNEECAP BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Rap from Ireland.
LAURA JANE GRACE (PET NEEDS)
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the US.
KINGFISHR SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Ireland. SPORTS TEAM SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Indie garage from the UK.
NECTAR WOODE SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the UK.
OLD MERVS THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Australia.
THE SERFS (MEMORABILIA) STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Synth punk from Cincinnati. INSTRUCTION MANUAL THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Experimental. THE KATET VS JOHN WILLIAMS THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Edinburgh. UB40 THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Reggae pop from Birmingham.
XIU XIU ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Experimental rock from the US.
Sun 17 Nov
SEASICK STEVE
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Blues from the US. MILES KANE
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Alt indie from the UK. W. H. LUNG MONO, 20:00–22:00 Synth pop from Manchester.
THE ROYSTON CLUB QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Wrexham. THE ELECTRICS
SWG3 19:30–22:00 Folk from Scotland.
KNEECAP
BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Rap from Ireland. TROPICAL FUCK STORM
STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Art punk from Melbourne. LISSIE
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Americana from the US.
SLASH FICTION
THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:00–22:00 Emo from Sheffield. Mon 18 Nov
KALEO
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Blues rock from Iceland. HIFI SEAN + DAVID MCALMONT
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Electronica.
ENGLISH TEACHER
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Leeds and Lancashire.
SIM THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Metal. THREE TRAPPED TIGERS
STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Math rock from London.
MELENAS
THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie garage from Spain.
BRYDE
THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie folk from Wales.
Tue 19 Nov
RAG‘N’BONE MAN
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the UK.
BEEN STELLAR (CARDINALS) KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from New York. BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Folk from the US.
LORI SWG3 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.
VILLANELLE STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Manchester.
NEWTON FAULKNER ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the UK.
BRUCE MOLSKY THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Folk.
Wed 20 Nov
KARNATAKA
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Prog from Wales.
ABBIE OZARD
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Alt indie from Manchester.
TSATSAMIS
SWG3 19:00–22:00 Dance pop from London.
WHEEL CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Prog metal from Finland. THE SOUTHERN RIVER BAND
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Australia.
CHARLIE MCDERMOTT
STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Pennsylvania. NESSI GOMES
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Folk rock from Guernsey. BLACK STONE CHERRY (SKILLET) THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Kentucky. LOST ROMANTIC THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Alt pop from the UK. Thu 21 Nov
KATE NASH
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Alt indie from London. RAT BOY
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie punk from Essex. SNOW STRIPPERS QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Detroit.
PALACE
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the UK.
BIG COUNTRY SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Scotland. AIRCOOLED STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Space rock.
MARTIN MCALOON ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Art pop.
JOE & THE SHITBOYS THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, 19:30–22:00 Punk from the Faroe Islands.
CLARK
CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:00–22:00 Electronica.
CAOILFHIONN ROSE THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie folk from Manchester. BALAAM AND THE ANGEL
ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Goth pop from Birmingham. Fri 22 Nov
PORRIDGE RADIO
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Punk from Brighton. SHED SEVEN O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock from York.
SHAMBOLICS SWG3 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from Fife. BURY TOMORROW BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Metalcore from the UK. CASSANDRA JENKINS (LYLO) STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Folk from New York. TOM MCGUIRE & THE BRASSHOLES ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Funk soul from Glasgow. ELEANOR MCEVOY
CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, 19:30–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Ireland.
ROZ MACDONALD TRIO THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Scotland. Part of Jazz at the Glad Festival STRAID (NAUTICS + BRIDE) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from Glasgow. Sat 23 Nov
PHILIP SAYCE (TROY REDFERN)
ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Hard rock. SOLSTAFIR
QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00
Post-metal from Iceland. MUSIC FOR MAGGIE’S (VELVET + YOUTH FOR SALE + THE COWARDS + CONNOR JOHNSTON)
SWG3 19:00–22:00 Eclectic lineup. SAINT LEVANT
SWG3 19:00–22:00 Rap from Palestine. POKEY LAFARGE
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Country from the US. CANE HILL (THE GLOOM IN THE CORNER) THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Heavy metal from New Orleans.
JAKE BUGG
BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. PEDALO EP LAUNCH STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Glasgow. ASPYRIAN
THE GLAD CAFE, 14:00–17:00 Jazz from London. Part of Jazz at the Glad Festival. EMMA JOHNSON'S GRAVY BOAT THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from Leeds. Part of Jazz at the Glad Festival. IDLES THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Punk rock from Bristol. JOHNNY MOPED ROOM 2, 19:00–22:00 Punk rock from London. Sun 24 Nov
PHIL CAMPBELL ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Wales. ECHOBELLY KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00
Brit pop from the UK. FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY (SYLOSIS) QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 17:30–22:00 Deathcore from New Jersey.
BEA STEWART SWG3, 19:00–22:00
Singer-songwriter from Northern Ireland. VOLA THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Prog metal from Copenhagen. CONFIDENCE MAN
BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Electro pop from Australia. GLEN MATLOCK STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Punk rock. SAY SHE SHE (GITKIN) OLD FRUITMARKET GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00
Soul from New York. THE SUPERNATURALS
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Glasgow. HOME/LANDS THE GLAD CAFE, 14:00–17:00 Jazz from the UK. Part of Jazz at the Glad Festival. MONOMYTH 1K THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Jazz from the UK. Part of Glasgow Jazz Festival.
GETDOWN SERVICES THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Slacker rock from the UK.
Mon 25 Nov
YOUTH SECTOR
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Alt indie from Brighton. THE 502S SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Indie folk from the US.
MORGAN
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the UK.
MYLES KENNEDY
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the US. HARD -FI
THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from the UK.
ERLAND COOPER
ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Classical from Scotland. SLEEP TOKEN
THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from London.
Tue 26 Nov
WE ARE SCIENTISTS ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Rock from New York. MUIREANN BRADLEY ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Folk and blues from Ireland.
HONEYGLAZE
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie from London.
BARONESS (GRAVEYARD) SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Heavy metal from the US.
HRVY SWG3 19:30–22:00 Pop from the UK.
HAZLETT STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Australia.
ROBERT JON & THE WRECK ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from California.
DIALECT THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Ambient from the UK. THE SCRIPT (TOM WALKER) THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Dublin.
Wed 27 Nov
FRED ROBERTS
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Pop from the UK.
MASSIVE WAGONS SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Lancaster. NEAVE MARR SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Pop from Scotland. HACKLE & BUCKSHOT THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Rock.
NILES RODGERS & CHIC
BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Rock from New York. THE BLOW MONKEYS STEREO, 19:00–22:00 New Wave from London. KEZIA GILL ST LUKE’S, 19:00–22:00 Country from Derby. AFTERLANDS (JILL LOREAN) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie from Scotland. ANTHRAX + KREATOR THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Metal. ANDY IRVINE THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Ireland.
Thu 28 Nov
NUBIYAN TWIST ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Jazz and bass from Leeds. OUR GIRL (ANDSOFIA + FELLOW MAN) KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie from Brighton. SPRINTS
SWG3 19:00–22:00 Post-punk from Dublin.
JOEY VALENCE & BRAE
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from the US. PA SHEEHY SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Ireland.
LAKEVIEW CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Metal from Nashville.
REIGNMAKER THE GARAGE GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Liverpool. SLIME CITY STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Nerd rock from Glasgow. ANNIE HAMILTON (CLEWS) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Australia.
Fri 29 Nov
JACK LUKEMAN ORAN MOR, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Ireland. THE CLAUSE (TOM A. SMITH) KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Indie rock from Birmingham. THE CABEYTU BROTHERS QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Argentina. ROYEL OTIS SWG3 19:00–22:00 Dream pop from Sydney. HULDER CATHOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Black metal from Washington.
REMI WOLFE
BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from California. ROB HERON & THE TEA PAD ORCHESTRA STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Country from Newcastle. THE FURROW COLLECTIVE THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Folk from the UK. JAMIE WEBSTER THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Liverpool.
BILLY NOMATES THE RUM SHACK, 19:00–22:00 Alt indie from Leicester.
Sat 30 Nov
SALUTE
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Electronica from Vienna. THE SMASHING TIMES (COUNT FLORIDA) MONO, 20:00–22:00 Indie pop from Baltimore.
Regular Glasgow club nights
The Rum Shack
SATURDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)
MOJO WORKIN’ Soul party feat. 60s R&B, motown, northern soul and more!
SATURDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)
LOOSEN UP
Afro, disco and funtimes with three of the best record collections in Glasgow and beyond.
Sub Club
SATURDAYS SUBCULTURE
Long-running house night with residents Harri & Domenic, oft' joined by a carousel of super fresh guests.
FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)
RETURN TO MONO SLAM’s monthly Subbie residency sees them joined by some of the biggest names in international techno.
Cathouse
WEDNESDAYS
CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS
DJ Jonny soundtracks your Wednesday with all the best pop-punk, rock and Hip-hop.
THURSDAYS UNHOLY
Cathouse's Thursday night rock, metal and punk mash-up.
FRIDAYS CATHOUSE FRIDAYS Screamy, shouty, posthardcore madness to help you shake off a week of stress in true punk style.
SATURDAYS
CATHOUSE SATURDAYS Or Caturdays, if you will. Two levels of the loudest, maddest music the DJs can muster; metal, rock and alt on floor one, and punky screamo upstairs.
SUNDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) HELLBENT
From the fab fierce family that brought you Catty Pride comes Cathouse Rock Club’s new monthly alternative drag show.
SUNDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH) FLASHBACK Pop party anthems and 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.
SUNDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)
SLIDE IT IN Classic rock through the ages from DJ Nicola Walker.
The Garage
Glasgow
MONDAYS
BARE MONDAYS
Lasers, bouncy castles and DJ Gav Somerville spinning out teasers and pleasers. Nice way to kick off the week, no?
TUESDAYS
#TAG TUESDAYS
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.
Regular Edinburgh club nights
Cabaret Voltaire
FRIDAYS
FLY CLUB
Edinburgh and Glasgowstraddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.
SATURDAYS PLEASURE
Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.
The Bongo Club
TUESDAYS
MIDNIGHT BASS, 23:00
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, 23 00
Sound system and crew, part of a music and art collective specialising in BASS music.
FRIDAYS (MONTHLY, WEEK CHANGES)
SOUND SYSTEM LEGACIES, 23 00
Exploring the legacy of dub, reggae and roots music and sound system culture in the contemporary club landscape.
FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)
DISCO MAKOSSA, 23 00
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, 23 00
A safe space to appreciate all things rave, jungle, breakbeat and techno.
FRIDAYS (FIRST OR LAST OF THE MONTH) HEADSET, 23 00 Skillis and guests playing garage, techno, house and bass downstairs, with old school hip hop upstairs.
SATURDAYS (FIRST OR SECOND OF THE MONTH)
MESSENGER, 23 00 Roots reggae rocking since 1987 – foundation tune, fresh dubs, vibes alive, rockers, steppers, rub-a-dub.
SATURDAYS (MONTHLY )
MUMBO JUMBO, 23 00
Everything from disco, funk and soul to electro and house: Saturday night party music all night long.
SATURDAYS (MONTHLY )
SOULSVILLE INTERNATIONAL, 23 00 International soulful sounds.
SATURDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH) PULSE, 23 00 Techno night started in 2009 hosting regular special guests from the international scene.
Sneaky Pete’s
MONDAYS
MORRISON STREET/STAND B-SIDE/CHAOS IN THE COSMOS/TAIS-TOI House and techno dunts from some of Edinburgh's best young teams.
TUESDAYS RARE Weekly house and techno with rising local DJs and hot special guests.
THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) VOLENS CHORUS Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook
FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)
HOT MESS A night for queer people and their friends.
THURSDAYS
ELEMENT
Ross MacMillan plays chart, house and anthems with giveaways, bouncy castles and, most importantly, air hockey.
FRIDAYS
FRESH BEAT
Dance, chart and remixes in the main hall with Craig Guild, while DJ Nicola Walker keeps things nostalgic in G2 with flashback bangers galore.
SATURDAYS
I LOVE GARAGE
Garage by name, but not by musical nature. DJ Darren Donnelly carousels through chart, dance and classics, the Desperados bar is filled with funk, G2 keeps things urban and the Attic gets all indie on you.
SUNDAYS
SESH
Twister, beer pong and DJ Ciar McKinley on the ones and twos, serving up chart and remixes through the night.
THE ALMIGHTY
BARROWLANDS, 19:00–22:00 Hard rock from Glasgow. PORT SULPHUR (QUAD90)
STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Krautrock from Glasgow. VRAELL
THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Classical from London. FRAZI.ER + EWAN MCVICAR
THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 House and techno from Scotland. MICKEY 9S ROOM 2 19:00–22:00 Dance punk from Glasgow. Sun 01 Dec
SUNDARA KARMA
O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Reading. GINGER ROOT (KING PARI)
KING TUT’S, 19:30–22:00 Rock from California. THE HOUSE OF LOVE (THE PRIMITIVES) QUEEN MARGARET UNION, 19:00–22:00 Britpop from the UK.
LEXIE CARROLL
SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop from London. ELDERBROOK SWG3, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from London. PAUL HEATON (THE ZUTONS) THE OVO HYDRO, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK.
SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)
SOUL JAM Monthly no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty disco.
SUNDAYS POSTAL
Weekly Sunday session showcasing the very best of heavy-hitting 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.
SUNDAYS
SECRET SUNDAY
Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/handle on a Sunday.
Subway
Cowgate
MONDAYS
TRACKS
Blow the cobwebs off the week with a weekly Monday night party with some of Scotland’s biggest and best drag queens.
TUESDAYS
TAMAGOTCHI
Throwback Tuesdays with non-stop 80s, 90s, 00s tunes.
WEDNESDAYS
TWISTA
Banger after banger all night long.
THURSDAYS
FLIRTY
Pop, cheese and chart.
FRIDAYS 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
TUESDAYS
MOVEMENT
House, techno, drum ‘n’ bass and garage.
SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)
SAMEDIA SHEBEEN Joyous global club sounds: think Afrobeat, Latin and Arabic dancehall on repeat.
SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) PULSE The best techno DJs sit alongside The Mash House resident Darrell Pulse.
Thu 31 Oct
NASHVILLE PUSSY (EARL OF HELL) BANNERMANS, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Atlanta. THE TUMBLING PADDIES O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:00 Pop from Ireland. SCO 24/25: BOREALIS THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:00 Contemporary classical. THE KATUNS SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from West Lothian. CAMMY BARNES LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.
Fri 01 Nov THE DARKER MY HORIZON BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Hard rock from the UK. BLUE ROSE CODE (ROSEANNE REID) THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:00 Folk and jazz. PENNY BLACK (AUTUMN 1904, THE NORMANS) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock and post-punk. OFF AXIS PRESENTS FAIRWAYS AND GUESTS THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop.
LYDIA LUCE + ANDREA VON KAMPEN (GRACE HONEYWELL) THE HUG AND PINT, 19:30–22:00 Indie.
Edinburgh Music
Mon 28 Oct
FUCKED UP THE CAVES, 19:00–22:00 Punk from Toronto. KINGS OF THRASH LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Metal.
Tue 29 Oct
RADIO RATZ WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock.
Wed 30 Oct
DIGNITY ROW (PASTEL MOON + ANNIE & THE JAYS) BANNERMANS, 19:00–22:00 Soul pop from Scotland. PAUL DI’ANNO THE LIQUID ROOM, 18:30–22:00 Heavy metal from the UK. BOLIS PUPUL SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Ghent. GAZ COOMBES LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Oxford.
Sat 02 Nov
SKAM BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the UK. QUEER AS PUNK (GAYDAR, PRETTY CRIME, ALEX MUNRO) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Queer punk. KILIMA (VARIANT, ENAEN, JAMIE LAW) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Techno and house. THE BLUETONES THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from London. GIRLBAND! (BORED AT MY GRANDMA’S HOUSE) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock ‘n’ roll from Nottingham. DOM MARTIN BAND LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Blues from Belfast. BUG HUNTER (THE NARCISSIST COOKBOOK) THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter.
Sun 03 Nov
KAINE BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Heavy metal from the UK. MICHAEL HEAD AND RED ELASTIC BAND THE CAVES, 19:00–22:00 Alt rock from Liverpool.
ANCHOR LANE THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK. PABLO LÓPEZ THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Pop from Spain. DAME AREA SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Techno punk from Barcelona.
Mon 04 Nov
GILBY CLARKE BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the US. RON SEXSMITH THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter. CLOCK DVA THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk from Sheffield. FAIR WEATHER SON SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Edinburgh.
Tue 05 Nov
TORTURED DEMON BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Metal from the UK. AGL & THE ALCHEMISTS THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Indie.
BOB DYLAN USHER HALL, 18:00–22:00 Folk from the US.
BIBI CLUB SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Montreal.
Wed 06 Nov HAWKLORDS BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Space rock from the UK.
BOB DYLAN USHER HALL, 18:00–22:00 Folk from the US. ROSALI SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from North Carolina.
Thu 07 Nov
THE DOWNSETTERS BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Ska from the UK. JAMES KIRBY THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from the UK. THE ZANGWILLS (KARDO) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Cheshire.
Fri 08 Nov
NATHAN CARTER THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:00 Pop from Ireland.
MUDDIBROOKE THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Alt rock from Derby.
HOBBIT MUSIC (VICTOR POPE BAND, ERB N TING) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk and hip-hop.
MAN MAN (CHRIS REEVE) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Art rock from LA. BIKINI BODY PRESENTS WEIRDER PARTY THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Funk. Sat 09 Nov FISHERMAN’S FRIENDS THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:00 Folk.
DADDY LONG LEGS THE BONGO CLUB, 19:00–22:00 Blues from New York. THE VINTAGE EXPLOSION
USHER HALL, 19:00–22:00 Rock ‘n’ roll and swing. THE HAAR SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Trad/folk from Ireland. SECRET AFFAIR LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Mod revival. FEET (L’OBJECTIF) THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Alt indie. THE KIDNEY FLOWERS (SHA RIVARI) LEITH DEPOT, 19:30–22:00 Synth punk. Sun 10 Nov
TEMPLE BALLS (STRAIGHT FOR THE SUN + VICTORY OR DIE) BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Metal from Finland. AVANTDALE BOWLING CLUB THE BONGO CLUB, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from New Zealand. TWO WAYS HOME (ROBYN RED + RAINTOWN) THE VOODOO ROOMS, 16:00–22:00 Eclectic lineup. LULU USHER HALL, 19:30–22:00 Pop from Scotland. SHORTPARIS THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Experimental from Russia. MIKE MCKENZIE (ERIN O’CALLAGHAN) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Edinburgh.
Mon 11 Nov
SUNNY SWEENEY THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Americana from the US. JACK CALDWELL (ÉTÁIN) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie folk from Edinburgh. Tue 12 Nov
DEREK FORBES THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from Scotland.
CONFIDENCE MAN
THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Electro pop from Australia.
TARA CLERKIN TRIO
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Jazz folk from Bristol.
DEEP FOREST
LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from France.
Wed 13 Nov
MILES KANE
THE CAVES, 19:00–22:00 Alt indie from the UK.
AFFLECKS PALACE
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Psych from Manchester.
WARGASM LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Electro rock.
Thu 14 Nov
TRUCKER DIABLO BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Metal. THE SKINNER BROTHERS
THE CAVES, 19:00–22:00 Rock from London.
ANTON O’DONNELL
THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Americana from Glasgow. FUNKE AND THE TWO TONE BABY + SAMANTICS
THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Eclectic lineup.
RURA THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Scotland.
NIAMH BURY (RHONA MACFARLANE + NANI)
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Dublin.
SHUNA LOVELLE
LEITH DEPOT, 19:00–22:00 Soul pop.
Fri 15 Nov
SHARP CLASS (DAVID DELINQUENT + THE I.O.US)
BANNERMANS, 20:00–22:00 Punk rock from the UK. LACK OF AFRO THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Funk and soul from the UK. SAM LEWIS THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Country from Nashville. SLEEKIT
WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock.
GEORGIE & JOE ( YARD)
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Dance pop from London. JA LIVE PRESENTS: AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE + VERY SPECIAL GUESTS! LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Psychedelic dub. HAAL THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Post-rock.
Sat 16 Nov
SEAN FINDLAY WITH ADAM SMITH THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Indie.
KING CREOSOTE USHER HALL, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Fife.
CONSCIOUS ROUTE (BLACKSMITH + WENDS + PRO FOCUS)
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from Edinburgh. SHAM 69 LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Street punk. JUSHARRY THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop.
Sun 17 Nov
THE DROWNS
BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00
Rock from Edinburgh. SMOOVE & TURRELL
THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Funk from Gateshead. BLICHER HEMMER GADD THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Jazz. VIRGINS (SUNSTINGER + HÜSH)
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Shoegaze from Belfast.
Mon 18 Nov
MALMO THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from Dunfermline. IBIBIO SOUND MACHINE LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Afro-electro.
Tue 19 Nov
MOTHER VULTURE BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the UK. CONNOR MCGLAVE SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from East Kilbride.
Wed 20 Nov
ZAYN O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT
USHER HALL, 19:00–22:00
Singer-songwriter from the US. FLAT PARTY (COSMORAT + HONGZA)
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie from London.
SLEAFORD MODS LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Punk.
Thu 21 Nov
JAMIE LAMBERT THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Pop.
CROWGOD + LAVINIA WHATELEY + VESTIA BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Eclectic lineup. CHARLOTTE PLANK CABARET VOLTAIRE, 19:00–22:00 Dance pop from London.
ZAYN
O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. BERNARD BUTLER + NORMAN BLAKE + JAMES GRANT THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter lineup. SHOVEL DANCE COLLECTIVE THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Folk from the UK.
TIDE LINES USHER HALL, 19:00–22:00 Folk pop from Glasgow. A PURE GUID
MIXTAPE LAUNCH (VALENSTEIN) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk.
TALISK THE LIQUID ROOM, 19:00–22:00 Trad from Edinburgh. ACID KLAUS (EL GHOUL) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Electro from Manchester.
HUGH CORNWELL (EXTC) THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:00 Rock. MARTIN MCALOON (PREFAB SPROUT) THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Art pop from the UK. CAOILFHIONN ROSE (BLAIR CORON) THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Indie folk from Manchester. QUEER AS PUNK (SISTER GHOST) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Queer punk. THE SANKARAS SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Glasgow. GOAT GIRL LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock.
Sat 23 Nov KOKOROKO THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Jazz from London. SHED SEVEN O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:00 Rock from York.
HORSE THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:30–22:00 Indie. THE FOLK IMPLOSION THE BONGO CLUB, 19:00–22:00 Indie from the US. SOULACOASTER THE VOODOO ROOMS, 20:00–22:00 Soul from Edinburgh. SUB VIOLET
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Alt rock from Motherwell. WREST LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Folk rock from Scotland.
Sun 24 Nov TWIN ATLANTIC THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS, 19:00–22:00 Alt rock from Glasgow. MICK ROSSI OF SLAUGHTER & THE DOGS
BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Rock. JAKE BUGG O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, 19:00–22:00 Pop from the UK. BELLA HARDY THE QUEEN’S HALL, 20:00–22:00 Folk from the UK. THE CHRIS BEVINGTON ORGANISATION (ROBBIE REAY ) THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:15–22:00 Indie. HOUSE GOSPEL CHOIR
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 House from London. SWMRS LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Punk rock.
Mon 25 Nov
ELEANOR MCEVOY THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Ireland. R96: GENESIS SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop from Aberdeen.
Tue 26 Nov
CHERIE CURRIE
BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from LA. TOM VR (LIVE) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Leeds.
Wed 27 Nov
SARI SCHOOR (JOE HICKS) THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Blues rock from the US. ANNIE HAMILTON (CLEWS + THALA) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Australia.
Thu 28 Nov
THE GRUDGE (SKYPILOT) BANNERMANS, 19:45–22:00 Hard rock from London.
BARBARA THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Pop from the UK.
DEAR HEATHER SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Edinburgh.
Fri 29 Nov
BREABACH THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:00 Folk from Scotland. THE BLOW MONKEYS THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 New Wave from London. BARON NONESUCH WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Alternative. VRAELL SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Classical from London. ADMIRAL FALLOW LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Alt from Glasgow.
Sat 30 Nov
ELECTRIC SIX
THE QUEEN’S HALL, 19:00–22:00 Rock from Detroit.
JAMES KING AND THE LONEWOLVES THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Americana from Glasgow. WILLE EDWARDS DUO THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the UK. DESIRE (SYSTEM OLYMPIA)
SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Synth pop from LA. THE CHORDS (EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS) LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Mods and rockers. DAY SLEEPER (SCARRED LIP) THE MASH HOUSE, 19:00–22:00 Indie from Scotland. Sun 01 Dec
BRAVE RIVAL BANNERMANS, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the UK. ROB HERON & THE TEA PAD ORCHESTRA THE VOODOO ROOMS, 19:30–22:00 Country from Newcastle.
Dundee
Music
Thu 31 Oct
OCTOBER DRIFT
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:30–22:00 Rock from the UK. Fri 01 Nov THE PEARLFISHERS BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 20:00–22:00 Rock from Scotland.
Regular Glasgow comedy nights
Drygate Brewing Co.
FIRST AND THIRD TUESDAY OF THE MONTH
DRYGATE COMEDY LAB, 19:00
A new material comedy night hosted by Chris Thorburn.
The Stand
Glasgow FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH
MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30
Host Billy Kirkwood and guests act entirely on your suggestions.
TUESDAYS RED RAW, 20:30
Legendary new material night with up to eight acts.
FRIDAYS THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30
The big weekend show with four comedians.
SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30
The big weekend show with four comedians.
The Glee Club
FRIDAYS FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00
The perfect way to end the working week, with four superb stand-up comedians.
SATURDAYS SATURDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00
An evening of awardwinning comedy, with four superb stand-up comedians that will keep you laughing until Monday.
Regular Edinburgh comedy nights
The Stand
Edinburgh
MONDAYS
RED RAW, 20:30
Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.
TUESDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)
STU & GARRY’S IMPROV SHOW, 20:30
The Stand’s very own Stu & Garry’s make comedy cold from suggestions.
THURSDAYS
THE BEST OF SCOTTISH COMEDY, 20:30
Simply the best comics on the contemporary Scottish circuit.
FRIDAYS
THE FRIDAY SHOW, 21
The big weekend show :00with four comedians.
SATURDAYS
THE SATURDAY SHOW (THE EARLY SHOW), 17:00
A slightly earlier performance of the big weekend show with four comedians.
Mon 04 Nov
STAY IN NOTHING + KULLNES + PORTABLE HEADS CHURCH, 19:00–22:00 Noise and hardcore.
Thu 07 Nov
B. DOLAN
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:30–22:00 Rap from the US.
Sun 10 Nov
ANCHOR LANE
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:00–22:00 Rock from the UK.
Sat 16 Nov
DAVID DELINQUENT & THE I.O. U (LIXX + POWDERKEG)
CHURCH, 19:00–22:00 Rock lineup.
Fri 22 Nov
WREST
CHURCH, 19:00–22:00 Folk rock from Scotland. DIRTBOX DISCO
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!,
20:00–22:00 Alt punk. Sat 23 Nov
MARTIN MCALOON (PREFAB SPROUT)
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:30–22:00 Art pop from the UK.
Thu 28 Nov
CHERIE CURRIE
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 19:30–22:00 Rock from LA.
SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30
The big weekend show with four comedians.
Monkey Barrel
SECOND AND THIRD TUESDAY OF EVERY MONTH
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.
Sat 30 Nov
THE SEX GANG
CHILDREN
BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, 20:00–22:00 Goth rock from London.
Glasgow Clubs
Thu 31 Oct
BEDROOM TRAXX PRESENTS: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 House and tech house. HALLOWEEN: ALL U NEED SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Techno and electro. HALLOWEEN FEMMEDM & THE BERKELEY SUITE PRESENTS: GOOD GIRLS GONE BAD THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–04:00 House and techno.
SILICONE SOUL PRESENTS THE DARKROOM DUBS TOUR THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House and EBM.
Wed 06 Nov HOUSE PARTY THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House.
Thu 07 Nov
GUNK: HU-SANE + RAHUL.MP3 + SLYN + ÉVIA + PYWOI THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Garage and funk. Fri 08 Nov
FRIDAYS
MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG FRIDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00
Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.
FRIDAYS
DATING CRAPP, 22:00 Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, Farmers Only...Come and laugh as some of Scotland's best improvisers join forces to perform based off two audience members dating profiles.
SATURDAYS MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SATURDAY SHOW, 17:00/19:00/21:00
Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.
SUNDAYS
MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SUNDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.
MISSING PERSONS CLUB: HALLOWEEN PARTY (IMOGEN + ANDY BARTON) LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and electro. MAGIC CITY: SPOOKY WITH FLOWDAN SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Bass and garage. THUDLINE HALLOWEEN: GEORGE BEST & ROY DON THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–04:00 Techno and bass. QUEER HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN THE RUM SHACK, 21:00–01:00 Disco and club.
ANCIENT METHODS EXIT GLASGOW, 23:00–03:00 Techno and industrial. Sat 02 Nov THE BEAT LIBRARY: HALLOWEEN SPECIAL SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.
ITALOWEEN: MALA IKA + LEZZER QUEST THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Italo disco.
FEMME45 THE RUM SHACK, 20:00–03:00 Kuduro and Latin bass.
Sun 03 Nov
KEEP ON: PIGEON STEVE LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Disco and balearic.
DIS-FUNCTION: SHLOMO + ONLYNUMBERS SWG3 23:00–03:00 Techno. BODIES IN MOTION (ROY DON + JOEY NAME + RUFUS) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 House and electro. EXIT: STEFAN GOLDMANN + PEL BONHEUR + APRÉS ANORA EXIT GLASGOW, 23:00–03:00 Techno and experimental.
Sat 09 Nov
DARREN STYLES SWG3, 22:00–03:00 Hard dance.
Sun 10 Nov
KEEP ON WITH OOFT! + DAVID BARBAROSSA LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Disco and balearic. Thu 14 Nov LA LA SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Electro. SAY SO THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Trance and techno. Fri 15 Nov
INDIRA PAGANOTTO SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno. EXCUSE MY BEAUTY: DOLLS! DOLLS! DOLLS! STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Queer club and bass. SHAKARA 6TH BIRTHDAY PARTY WITH CC:DISCO! THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House and disco.
Sat 16 Nov
SCANDAL.GLA X STEREO: BIANCA OBLIVION (SOFSOF + ISO YSO + RAHUL.MP3 + DJ BELLAROSA + KICKPILL) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Bass and Baile funk from LA.
SHOOT YOUR SHOT: ROI PEREZ THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno. TASHA & MANTRA AT EXIT EXIT GLASGOW, 23:00–03:00 Jungle and drum ‘n’ bass.
Sun 17 Nov
KEEP ON WITH DISCO MUNDIAL LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 House and disco. Wed 20 Nov ECHO SOUNDSYSTEM PRESENTS: UNDERGROUND SESSIONS LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and Italo disco. Thu 21 Nov
CÉLESTE AT SUB CLUB SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Trance and techno.
CANDLE
THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–04:00 Acid and techno.
Fri 22 Nov
TLO SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno. SOUND
STEREO, 23:00–03:00
Dubstep.
POLKA DOT DISCO CLUB
THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–04:00 Disco.
Sat 23 Nov
DJ HEARTSTRING
SWG3 23:00–03:00 Trance.
WATERSIDE PRESENTS: CAMOUFLY
STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Garage and bass.
SHOOT YOUR SHOT: MIDLAND
THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House.
Wed 27 Nov
FRENETIK
LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno and club.
4AM KRU SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Jungle.
Thu 28 Nov
FLY GLASGOW: SOSA SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Techno.
Fri 29 Nov
ENZO IS BURNING SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Techno and house.
KARAWANE SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Afro-house.
NEW ERA SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Dance.
POLAR BEAR DISCO (PEACOCK + GEORGE BEST + ROY DON + JULIETTE)
STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Disco and electro.
LA CHEETAH 15 X OBJEKT
LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Techno.
CÉLESTE W/ THELMA + PEI UP
THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Trance and techno.
ALEX ZHANG HUNGTAI EXIT GLASGOW, 23:00–03:00 Experimental.
Sat 30 Nov
DANNY HOWARD SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Dance.
CL!CK X
D0NKALICIOUS: CHRISTMAS DONK DOWN (3DMA + ALTERUM + MISS CABBAGE + BABYJAII) STEREO, 23:00–04:00 Donk and hardcore. HUNEE: HUNCHIN’ ALL NIGHT LONG LA CHEETAH CLUB, 22:00–04:00 House.
VOCAL OR VERSION: JAGGER
THE RUM SHACK, 20:00–03:00 Dub and dancehall.
Edinburgh Clubs
Mon 28 Oct
SNEAKS ALL STARS
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Club.
Wed 30 Oct
BEN UFO - RINSE 30TH ANNIVERSARY
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 UK techno from London.
Thu 31 Oct
SATSUMA SOUNDS: HALLOWEEN MYSTERIA CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00 House and disco. DEAD MANS PARTY WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 Goth and New Wave. WHOLE LOTTA RED LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Techno. JOSH FB (DISCOTHÉQUE TROPICALE): DAKSH + MORE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and disco. Fri 01 Nov RAVE 2 THE GRAVE BONGO HALLOWEEN FRIDAY THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Hardcore and electro. RHINESTONE RODEO: THE HAUNTED HOEDOWN THE CAVES, 23:00–04:00 Pop. SAVED BY THE 90SHALLOWEEN PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop.
INKOHERENT: HALLOWEEN HELLRAISER THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.
TRANCEPARENCY WITH JWAX THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Trance and techno. Sat 02 Nov
PALIDRONE: DANSA, J WAX, PROVOST
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass and techno. KEEP IT STEEL X DECADE HALLOWEEN FRIGHT NIGHT LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Club.
SAMEDIA SHEBEEN THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and Latin. BACHATA BLUES NOISE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Batacha. BUG HUNTER AFTERPARTY THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Club.
Sun 03 Nov
POSTAL
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass. BOLLYWOOD DIWALI PARTY 2024 LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Bollywood.
Wed 06 Nov
HIP HOP SCOTLAND X FORM 696: GENESIS ELIJAH THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Garage and grime.
HAPTIC: AL GU & DJ
CABLECAR
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 UK garage.
Thu 07 Nov
NITEWORKS DJ SET - SOLAS NA MAIDNE TOUR - OFFICIAL AFTERPARTY THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Electro.
Fri 08 Nov
DISORDER 2ND
BIRTHDAY W/ SULLY (UNCERTAIN HOUR / ASTROPHONICA) THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Drum ‘n’ bass and jungle. EZSTREET THE CAVES, 23:00–04:00 House. LUCKY DIP: BITTER BABE
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Latin techno from Miami. SAD GIRL RAVE LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop.
Sat 09 Nov
CLUB NACHT + HOBBES MUSIC (MINNA (LONDON)) THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 House and disco. ASCENSION WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 Industrial and goth. ATHENS OF NORTH SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Disco. ELECTRO LATINO THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Latin and electro.
ETERNAL THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.
Wed 13 Nov
SWEATBOX: BIANCA OBLIVION
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Global club from LA. Thu 14 Nov
FEMMERGY
CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00 Pop and club.
MANGO LOUNGE: MY NU LENG
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass.
Fri 15 Nov
LIONOIL
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House. ONE DIRECTION
PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop.
SATSUMA SOUNDS THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House.
CTS THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Industrial. PULSE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.
Sat 16 Nov
HEYDAY: DENNY VOLTAGE
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House from Würzburg. DECADE
LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop punk and emo.
INDUSTRYOFSOUND PRESENTS - WEBBO THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Hard dance.
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass/techno from Berlin.
Thu 21 Nov
HAPTIC: AMY
KISNORBO
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass from Bristol. Fri 22 Nov
MEANWHILE
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House.
DILF LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop. NRVE PRESENTS: TRKN X GALLO THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno. A VOTIVE OFFERING THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Trance.
Sat 23 Nov
GRDN (NOODLE + BARTEK + RELEAF)
WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 House, techno and dub. EROL ALKAN
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Techno from London. MONSTERS BALL LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop.
UNTITLED THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Industrial and trance.
Mon 25 Nov
BLACK FLAG
CABARET VOLTAIRE, 23:00–03:00 House and garage. NIGHT TUBE
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House.
Wed 27 Nov
EPIKA: KESSIE
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Techno from Leeds.
Thu 28 Nov
FULL FRONTAL
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Disco.
Fri 29 Nov
BRAT RAVE 2 THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Pop and club. LIKE THIS (LEE MARVIN + MARTITIME)
WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 House, techno and disco. HEADSET: MADAM X B2B SKILLIS
SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass from Bristol. CALL ME MAYBE2010S PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop. BASS INJECTION PRESENTS - HEX (SYMBIOSIS) - HARRY JACKSON (DISORDER) - RODENT (ALIEN DISKO) THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.
INKOHERENT THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno and electro.
Sat 30 Nov
FRANCK ALL NIGHT LONG EDINBURGH THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Trance and techno.
COMPRESSION (AMBER D + VERTICAL DROP + JADE + RYAN
MURRAY )
WEE RED BAR, 15:00–22:00 Hard house. THAT 70S CLUB LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Disco.
PULSE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno. HEADSET CHRISTMAS WARM THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Bass.
Dundee Clubs
Fri 01 Nov
HARD TECHNO AND HARD GROOVE CHURCH, 23:00–03:00 Techno and groove. Sat 02 Nov
DUNDEMO: DAY OF THE DEAD CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Emo and pop punk.
Sat 16 Nov
CALL ME MAYBE: 2010S CLUB NIGHT CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Pop.
Sat 30 Nov
PINK PONY RAVE CLUB NIGHT CHURCH, 23:00–03:00 Pop.
Glasgow Comedy
The Glee Club
MAISIE ADAM: APPRAISAL
30 OCT, 7:30PM –
8:30PM Fresh from Live At The Apollo, A League Of Their Own and Have I Got News For You, Maisie Adam is heading back out on tour with a brand new show.
NAT’S WHAT I RECKON: MUGSHOT
5 NOV, 7:30PM – 8:30PM Nat's new live show is an hour-long meltdown of information set out to prove a point.
AHMED AHMED
10 NOV, 5:00PM The Egyptian-American comedian Ahmed Ahmed elevates wisecracks over Islamophobia in new special.
DIRTBIRDS: GIRLS WORLD TOUR
14 NOV, 7:30PM –8:30PM Ireland’s Queens of Comedy are back with their brand -new show.
THERAPY GECKO LIVE: THE LIZARD AGENDA TOU
21 NOV, 7:30PM –8:30PM
After embarking on a sold out world tour last year, multi-platform internet sensation Lyle Forever brings his beloved Therapy Gecko live show on the road again in 2024. NO BORDERS COMEDY NIGHT IN AID OF SCOTTISH REFUGEE COUNCIL
28 NOV, 7:30PM –8:30PM
The Old Hairdressers
IMPROV FUCKTOWN
5 NOV, 8:30PM – 9:30PM
Glasgow Improv Theatre Presents: Welcome to Improv Fucktown, population: YOU! Different teams, trying different things!
HAROLD NIGHT
5 NOV, 7:00PM – 8:00PM
Two Glasgow Improv Theatre house teams performing The Harold. Featuring F.L.U.S.H. and Raintown.
YER DA WANTS A WORD
19 NOV, 7:00PM –8:00PM
Glasgow Improv Theatre
Presents: Monthly show from Yer Da! Stick your name in the bucket for the jam at end.
GIT IMPROV CAGE
MATCH
26 NOV, 8:30PM –9:30PM
Two improv teams battle to be crowned champions of the Glasgow Improv Theatre this month. Audience decide who wins!
COUCH SURFS THE WEB
26 NOV, 7:00PM –8:00PM
Glasgow Improv Theatre
Presents: A night of improv comedy where Couch surfs the web.
PERFECT IMPROV - SPECIAL GUEST
MONOLOGIST
12 NOV, 7:00PM –8:00PM
Glasgow Improv Theatre Presents: Wade into the stream of improv comedy with stories flowing from a special guest monologist. The Stand
Glasgow MATERIAL, GIRL
24 NOV, 3:00PM –4:00PM
Susan Riddell and Amanda Dwyer present an allfemale line-up.
SCREEN TIME
7 NOV, 8:30PM – 9:30PM
A new mutlimedia comedy night hosted by Feaghas Kelly.
BRIGHT CLUB
GLASGOW
11 NOV, 8:30PM –9:30PM
Laugh and learn as researchers from Scotland's universities take to the stage for your enlightenment, engagement and entertainment.
HALLOWEEN SPECIAL!
31 OCT, 8:30PM –9:30PM This Halloween come savour some ghoulish gags.
RED RICHARDSON: BUGATTI LIVE 30 OCT, 8:30PM-9:30PM, TIMES VARY Red Richardson is one of the most exciting new stand up comedians in the UK.
TEZ ILYAS: AFTER EIGHT 6 NOV, 7:30PM-8:30PM As seen on Live At the Apollo, Mock The Week, Comedy Central and Comic Relief, Sunday Times bestselling author Tez Ilyas is back with his hilarious new show.
STEVEN HO
10 NOV, TIMES VARY
Edinburgh
Comedy
Monkey Barrel
Comedy Club
CHRISTOPHER
MACARTHUR-BOYD: SCARY TIMES
2 NOV, 8:00PM – 9:00PM
A new hour of stand-up by the wee guy with the glasses from Glasgow.
JORDAN BROOKES: WORK IN PROGRESS
22 NOV, 8:00PM –9:00PM
Jordan Brookes returns with a new hour on the most stressful 30 seconds of his life.
JOSIE LONG: A WIP ABOUT ENORMOUS EXTINCT ANIMALS
9 NOV, 8:00PM – 9:00PM
Josie Long starts working out some fun new ideas for a new show about extinction and really big sloths.
RED RICHARDSON: BUGATTI LIVE
31 OCT, 8:00PM-9:40PM, TIMES VARY
Red Richardson is one of the most exciting new stand up comedians in the UK.
CAMPFIRE IMPROV
29 NOV, 10:00PM –11:30PM
Gather round the campfire to watch some of Scotland’s top improvisers create hilarious scenes based on stories from a special guest monologist.
TEZ ILYAS: AFTER EIGHT
7 NOV, 8:00PM-10:00PM
As seen on Live At the Apollo, Mock The Week, Comedy Central and Comic Relief, Sunday Times bestselling author Tez Ilyas is back with his hilarious new show.
LOU SANDERS: WORK IN PROGRESS
1 NOV, 8:30PM – 9:20PM
Just like Tom Cruise does his own stunts, Lou Sanders is going to try doing his own jokes.
ROSS LESLIE: WORK IN PROGRESS
16 NOV, 6:00PM –7:00PM
Brand new work in progress from top Scottish comedian. An autobiographical tale about an upbringing you will not expect.
LILY PHILLIPS: WORK IN PROGRESS
16 NOV, 8:00PM –9:00PM
Fresh from hatching a baby girl and a sold out Edinburgh run, Lily Phillips is back with a new hour and she’s absolutely fine.
WHO KNEW IT? WITH MATT STEWART
23 NOV, 8:00PM –10:00PM
Join award-winning stand-up comedian and podcast host Matt Stewart (Do Go On, Prime Mates, Who Knew It) for a night of podcasting and stand-up comedy.
The Stand
Edinburgh
ROBIN INCE AND JOSIE LONG
6 NOV, 8:00PM – 9:00PM
BRIGHT CLUB
EDINBURGH
30 OCT, 8:30PM –9:30PM
The freshest thing in stand-up – straight from the (research) field to funny with a new crop of comedic academics from Scotland’s universities every month.
TRAVIS JAY: TRAVISTY
12 NOV, 8:00PM –9:00PM
Travis Jay brings his brandnew show on his debut tour. HALLOWEEN SPECIAL!
31 OCT, 8:30PM –9:30PM
This Halloween come savour some ghoulish gags. RAY BRADSHAW: SPECIAL RECORDING 17 NOV, 4:00PM –5:00PM
Ray will be doing a combination of his three tour shows in one show so hopefully it will be good. A COMEDY NIGHT FUNDRAISER FOR AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
20 NOV, 8:00PM –9:00PM
Come along for a night of comedy fun and help raise money for a very good cause.
Glasgow Theatre CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art
THE FLAMES 23 NOV, TIMES VARY
The Flames will reignite in a striking, innovative mix of film, music and performance presenting a fresh look at how we age.
TORN FROM THE SAME CLOTH + MENDING NETS
26 NOV, 7:30PM –10:30PM
A double bill of of storytelling performances exploring the connection between Scotland and the rest of the world, presented by the Village Storytelling Centre.
Civic House
MAIDEN, MOTHER, WHORE
14-15 NOV, 5:30PM –7:00PM
An interactive, multi-media show using projection, live music, spoken word and South Asian classical-contemporary dance to explore what it means to exist in a gendered body today.
Oran Mor
A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: GHOST OFF 1-2 NOV, 1:00PM –2:00PM
A spooky and hilarious farce set in the reading room of Hillhead's premier psychic.
WEANS IN THE WOODLANDS
26 NOV-5 JAN 25, TIMES VARY
An original, subversive panto full of the usual laughs and boos.
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland
Scottish Refugee Council present a star-studded line-up of local comedy heroes and rising stars on the Scottish comedy circuit in aid of Scottish Refugee Council and the work they do.
LA stand-up and creator of the globally viral Tips from the ER online videos makes his UK stand-up debut.
ALI WOODS: LIVE
20 NOV, 8:00PM –9:00PM
Ali is that wonderful blend of comedy with a heart, speaking on topics such as football, the environment, and many social causes close to his heart.
Where they do some WIP material and record a live episode of their book shambles podcast with a special guest.
SUSAN MORRISON IS HISTORICALLY FUNNY
24 NOV, 5:00PM –6:00PM A trip through some of Scotland’s seediest, skankiest and scandalous history.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL 29 NOV-6 DEC, TIMES VARY Dickens’ classic festive tale is brought to life by students from the BA Performance for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Actors programme in a uniquely visual retelling.
AFTER LIFE
5-8 NOV, TIMES VARY
Adapted from the Hirokazu Kore-eda film, Jack Thorne’s play explores the myriad mysteries of the afterlife.
THE COSMONAUT’S LAST MESSAGE!
5-8 NOV, TIMES VARY
This hauntingly beautiful play weaves together the lives of disparate characters, linked by love, loss, and the vastness of the cosmos.
The King’s Theatre FOOTLOOSE
5-9 NOV, TIMES VARY
A city boy moves to the sticks where dancing is banned in this classic dance musical.
101 DALMATIANS
12-16 NOV, TIMES VARY
The titular band of puppies evade the clutches of Cruella De Ville in this Zinnie Harris stage adaptation.
Theatre Royal DISNEY’S ALADDIN
6-30 NOV, TIMES VARY
The West End phenomenon lands in Scotland, featuring the beloved songs by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice.
ONLY FOOLS & HORSES THE MUSICAL
28 OCT-2 NOV, TIMES VARY
An all-singing all-dancing adaptation of the hit British TV series.
Tron Theatre
PETER PANTO AND THE INCREDIBLE STINKERBELL
22 NOV-5 JAN 25, TIMES VARY
The new Johnny McKnight pantomime takes on a journey from Glasgow’s West End to a magical otherworld.
Edinburgh Theatre
Assembly Roxy
MAIDEN MOTHER WHORE
1 NOV, TIMES VARY
Half-performance, halfexhibition, this mixed media piece invites the audience into an immersory exploration of gender and social structures.
Festival
Theatre
SCOTTISH OPERA: DON PASQUALE
8-16 NOV, TIMES VARY
Set at the start of the Swinging Sixties, this production of Donizetti’s quickwitted comedy explores the not so happily married life of Don Pasquale.
SCOTTISH OPERA: ALBERT HERRING
13 NOV, 7:15PM –10:30PM
One of the 20th century’s most beloved operatic comedies, Britten’s loose adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s short story is full of 90s nostalgia.
PANTO 2024: CINDERELLA
23 NOV-31 DEC, TIMES VARY Head to the ball this Christmas with a classic panto - just be sure to leave before midnight.
Royal Lyceum
Theatre
A STREETCAR NAMED
DESIRE
1-9 NOV, TIMES VARY
One of the great works of 20th-century American theatre makes its way to Edinburgh from Pitlochry.
The Edinburgh Playhouse
THE BOOK OF MORMON
1-2 NOV, TIMES VARY
A hit, outrageous musical comedy from the makers of South Park. & JULIET
12-16 NOV, TIMES VARY
Imagining the famous story if Juliet didn’t end it all over Romeo, this jokebox musical is full to the brim with great pop songs.
ONLY FOOLS & HORSES THE MUSICAL
5-9 NOV, TIMES VARY
An all-singing all-dancing adaptation of the hit British TV series.
101 DALMATIANS 19-23 NOV, TIMES VARY
The titular band of puppies evade the clutches of Cruella De Ville in this Zinnie Harris stage adaptation.
JASON MANFORD: A MANFORD ALL SEASONS
24 NOV, 7:30PM –10:30PM
Perfectly pitched observational comedy from British TV stalwart.
Traverse Theatre
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS
14-16 NOV, 7:30PM –
10:30PM
Having toured in 12 countries, Matthew Zajac's international hit show about his Polish-Ukrainian father returns to Scotland.
NO LOVE SONGS
1-2 NOV, TIMES VARY
A tale of the trials of parenting told through music by Kyle Falconer.
BRIGHT PLACES
6-8 NOV, 8:00PM –
10:30PM
A three-woman, onewoman show about coming of age in the shadow of a chronic illness.
RUN, REBEL
7-9 NOV, TIMES VARY
Physical theatre and gorgeous visuals bring to life
Manjeet Mann’s acclaimed YA novel.
THE BRENDA LINE
13-16 NOV, TIMES VARY
Inspired by the history of the Samaritans in the 70s and 80s, this work of new writing explores the tides of isolation and connection.
PIECE OF WORK
21-23 NOV, 8:00PM –10:30PM
Warm comedy, music and strains of Hamlet come together in this extraordinary feat of storytelling by Fringe favourite James Rowland.
Dundee Theatre
Dundee Rep
OOR WULLIE THE MUSICAL
23 NOV-30 DEC, TIMES VARY Scotland’s most mischievous boy is back for Christmas.
Glasgow Art
CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art
DEBJANI BANERJEE: JALSAGHAR
1 NOV-21 DEC, TIMES VARY
An intricate exploration of Bengali culture set against a 1980s British childhood.
NAT WALPOLE: SWEETBITTER
1-23 NOV, TIMES VARY Bird-headed women, crocodilian monsters, and chimeric demons entangle among esoteric glowing symbols of queer power in this exploration of trans womanhood.
Glasgow Women’s
Library
KATE DOWNIE: CONVERSATIONS WITH JOAN
1 NOV-25 JAN 25, TIMES VARY
Contemporary painter and printmaker places herself in conversation with Joan Eardley, exploring the ongoing affinities within Scottish art.
GoMA
SCOTT MYLES: HEAD IN A BELL
1 NOV-23 FEB 25, 11:00AM – 4:00PM
An exhibition of painting, sculpture, print, moving image and sound exploring ideas of exchange and circulation, and the cyclicality of materiality.
JOHN AKOMFRAH: MIMESIS: AFRICAN SOLDIER
1 NOV-31 AUG 25, 11:00AM – 4:00PM
A film installation from acclaimed artist exploring the significant contribution of over six million African, Caribbean and South Asian people from across former colonies who fought and died in World War I.
SWG3
FLY TIP ROAD TRIP: GLASGOW
1 NOV, 12:00PM –6:00PM
The latest showcase from the acclaimed What A Load O’ Rubbish campaign blends art and environmental activism to highlight our troubling relationship with waste.
Street Level
Photoworks
FUTUREPROOF 2024
1-3 NOV, TIMES VARY
Futureproof returns for its 16th year, platforming the talent and diversity of newly graduated artists across Scotland’s dedicated Photography and Fine Art courses.
The Modern Institute
DUGGIE FIELDS: ‘LESS IS LESS, MORE OR LESS’
1-6 NOV, TIMES VARY
In collaboration with the artist’s estate, this posthumous exhibition looks at his vast archive spanning the gap between pop art and postmodernism.
Tramway
LEONE ROSS: DIRTY
DANCING FLOWERS
2 NOV-23 MAR 25, TIMES VARY
Words act as the building blocks for a series of paintings and prints that explore the interplay between image and text in vibrant, experimental ways.
MAUD SULTER
23 NOV-30 MAR 25
TIMES VARY
An immersive exhibition by the Scottish-Ghanaian poet, artist, photographer, writer, curator, gallerist and publisher whose work sought to claim space for Black Artists and address the erasure and representation of Black Women in art.
Edinburgh
Art
City Art Centre
TAPE LETTERS: MIGRATION ON TAPE
1 NOV-23 FEB 25, TIMES
VARY
A project exploring practices of sending messages on cassette tape as an unorthodox method of communication by Pakistani migrants between 1960-1980.
INKED UP: PRINTMAKING IN SCOTLAND
1 NOV-1 JUN 25, TIMES
VARY
A survey of the historic versatility and experimentation in Scottish printmaking practices.
POP LIFE
2 NOV-9 MAR 25, TIMES
VARY
Examining the intersection between popular culture and contemporary figure drawings, this exhibition explores and subverts the traditional distinction between high and low art.
THROUGH LINE
9 NOV-2 FEB 25, TIMES
VARY
The culmination of a series of four group exhibitions at the City Art Centre featuring the work of nine artists including David Connearn, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Andrew Lamb, spotlighting contemporary art and craft practice in Scotland.
Collective Gallery
PASS SHADOW, WHISPER SHADE
1 NOV-22 DEC, 10:00AM – 5:00PM
A group show by artists in the 2024 Satellites Programme exploring ideas of inheritance and legacy.
Dovecot Studios
TANIA KOVATS: SEAMARKS
1-2 NOV, 10:00AM –5:00PM
Tania Kovats’ seascapes rendered in brushstrokes and ceramics are being transformed into textile form with the creation of a new tapestry, exploring how art can respond to our climate emergency.
STITCHED: SCOTLAND’S EMBROIDERED ART
1 NOV-18 JAN 25
10:00AM – 5:00PM
A new exhibition in collaboration with the National Trust for Scotland brings together an extraordinary collection of their embroidered textiles.
PTOLEMY MANN
9 NOV-15 MAR 25 10:00AM – 5:00PM
A groundbreaking exhibition marrying intricate techniques of hand-weaving with vibrant, expressive painting.
Edinburgh Printmakers
ADE ADESINA: INTERSECTION
1-10 NOV, 11:00AM –4:00PM
Experimentations with screen printing and lithography explore the artist’s African roots and British surroundings.
TAYO ADEKUNLE: STORIES OF THE UNSEEN
1-10 NOV, 11:00AM –4:00PM
Delving into historic accounts and expositions of race, this exhibition re-examines stories about blackness from a new and decolonial perspective.
Edinburgh Sculpture
Workshop
ETCHINGROOM1: WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY IN A WONDERFUL WORLD
1 NOV-1 MAR 25, 11:00AM – 5:00PM
A collaboration between Ukrainian artists Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova, this mural articulates the artists’ experiences of conflict and their strategies for resilience.
Fruitmarket
HOLLY DAVEY: THE UNFORGETTING
1-17 NOV, 10:00AM –6:00PM
A series of sculptures and installations celebrating all the women who have exhibited at Fruitmarket in its 50 year history,
BARRY LE VA: IN A STATE OF FLUX 16 NOV-2 FEB 25, 10:00AM – 6:00PM
The first retrospective since the artist’s death in 2021, this exhibition is a survey from the 1960s to his last works, exploring the particular relationship between drawing and sculpture across his work.
Ingleby Gallery
RICHARD FORSTER: OST..!
1-2 NOV, 11:00AM –
5:00PM
Photorealist pencil drawings explore ideas of place and otherness through the concept of Ostalgie 35 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
STILL DANCING...NEW ADVENTURES IN NONREPRESENTATIONAL PAINTING & SCULPTURE
9 NOV-20 DEC, 11:00AM – 5:00PM
Following a stint at The Armoury Show in New York, this exhibition arrives in Edinburgh, exploring the significance and potential of abstraction.
Open Eye Gallery
ALICE MCMURROUGH + NEIL MACDONALD: TAKE TWO
1-16 NOV, TIMES VARY
An exhibition dedicated to the creative possibilities of collaborative practice.
TOM MABON: CONNECTIONS
1-16 NOV, TIMES VARY
A series of landscapes exploring ancestral and personal connections to the Scottish landscape.
Royal Botanic Garden
FUNGI FORMS
1 NOV-7 DEC, 10:00AM – 6:00PM
An exploration of the biological and cultural presence of fungi, told through music, literature, fashion, design, scent and visual art.
Royal Scottish Academy RSA
BENNO SCHOTZ AND A SCOTS MISCELLANY
30 NOV-19 JAN 25 TIMES VARY
Showcasing the work of Scottish-Estonian artist Benno Schotz alongside the work of other artists who made Scotland their home over the decades.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art WOMEN IN REVOLT! ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE UK 1970–1990
1 NOV-26 JAN 25, 10:00AM – 5:00PM
Fresh off a stint at Tate Britain, this exhibition documents two decades of seismic social and political change and the art that emerged from and challenged the ensuing culture.
EVERLYN NICODEMUS
1 NOV-25 MAY 25, 10:00AM – 5:00PM
The first ever retrospective exhibition by landmark Edinburgh artist, whose joyful artworks explore and resist the global oppression of women and the profound impact of racism.
Stills
STILLS SALON
1-30 NOV, 12:00PM –5:00PM
An exhibition of work created across Stills’ analogue and digital production facilities, spotlighting work by local and international photographer, students, and alumni from Stills.
Summerhall
YUMIKO ONO: COMPOSITION IV
1 NOV, 12:00PM –
5:30PM
Developed out of a residency program in Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, this large-scale work explores intersections between art and architecture.
Talbot Rice
Gallery
GUADALUPE
MARAVILLA: PIEDRAS DE FUEGO (FIRE STONES)
1 NOV-15 FEB 25, TIMES VARY
Sculptures, paintings and murals explore narratives of healing and recovery, drawing on global healing and shamanic practices.
GABRIELLE GOLIATH: PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
1 NOV-15 FEB 25, TIMES
VARY
This first solo exhibition in the UK by South African artist Gabrielle Goliath uses video and sound installations to explore decolonial and Black feminist projects of repair.
Dundee
Art
Cooper Gallery
THE IGNORANT ART
SCHOOL: SIT-IN #4: OUTSIDE THE CIRCLE
1 NOV-1 FEB 25, TIMES VARY
Sit-in #4: Outside the Circle, is an exhibition and public event series inspired by and generated from feminist and queer movements since the beginning of the 20th century.
DCA: Dundee
Contemporary
Arts
CLAUDIA MARTÍNEZ
GARAY
1-17 NOV, TIMES VARY
Multimedia work by
Peruvian artist explores how artefacts, cultural relics, and propaganda communicate the history and social-political memory of cultures.
V&A Dundee
KIMONO: KYOTO TO CATWALK
1 NOV-5 JAN 25, 10:00AM – 5:00PM
Part-fashion survey, partexploration on material culture, this exhibition traces the history of the kimono from 17th-century Japan to contemporary runways.
A FRAGILE
CORRESPONDENCE
22 NOV-30 DEC, 10:00AM – 5:00PM
The Scotland commission from the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale arrives in Dundee, examining the fascinating connection between land, language, and architecture.
The Skinny On... Alice Faye
Following her appearance in the final of Channel 4’s The Piano earlier this year, and ahead of her bi est Glasgow headline show to date, Alice Faye takes on this month’s Q&A
What’s your favourite place to visit?
Probably be my family home. There I can enjoy not only a warm meal and a glorious bath but I can see my oh so lovely and silly parents and have a big goofy laugh!
What’s your favourite food?
My taste in food is pretty basic, I’ll get sort of fixated on one thing and I’ll have it all the time, then totally move on. At the moment my favourite food would probably be a Babybel. They’re just so damn tasty to me, it’s beyond words to explain how much I love them right now.
What’s your favourite colour?
If it’s during the day, blue, if it’s night time, red. I have a big blue coat that’s sort of like my uniform, so the colour is a bit of a comfort choice for me. I love red because it goes with my red lipstick and makes me feel powerful! It’s just an absolute classic.
Who was your hero growing up?
David Bowie, because he’s David Bowie.
Whose work inspires you now?
T. Rex. I think they encapsulate glam-rock’s androgynous sexuality and confidence in such a free and attractive way. Their discography is littered with golden nu ets, and I want to emulate their nonchalant, ‘you are who you are’ musical style.
What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?
I would invite my friend James CareyDouglas, Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli over for dinner. We wouldn’t have anything specific for dinner, but we would drink lots of champagne. Myself and James could spend the whole evening asking them about their relationship, any dirt they have on stars of their time and singing the classics – How You Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On the Farm and Maybe This Time – together for them, at full pelt. I don’t know how much Garland and Minnelli would enjoy the evening, but James and I would have a whale of a time.
What’s your all-time favourite album?
I think it’d be Want One by Rufus Wainwright. It just formed me musically and emotionally at about 15, and I haven’t un-formed myself since.
What’s your favourite song about revolution?
Children of the Revolution by T. Rex.
What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?
Old by M. Night Shyamalan. The film was clearly meant to be super scary but so many scenes were so ridiculous it was hard not to laugh. Dude went hard with the concept though, so respect to that I guess.
What book would you take to a desert island?
Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald. The book discusses the music of The Beatles and the 1960s, explaining all of their songs in detail. With attention to exactly what instruments are played on each track, and who is playing on them. Hopefully the book would keep me distracted for a bit!
Who’s the worst?
People who are afraid of acting silly. Makes me all sad and bored!
When did you last cry?
Just a lil one the other day. I walked home in the rain after a bath at my parents' (lol) and I was in
my pyjamas and my Crocs, so the wind and rain messed me right up!
What are you most scared of?
Being too afraid to be myself.
When did you last vomit?
After my last headline show in Glasgow. I will literally never get that drunk again. Who knew nine tequila shots and double gin and tonics were over most people’s normal alcohol limit!
Tell us a secret?
I was a very socially anxious person before joining the Scottish music scene.
Which celebrity could you take in a fight?
The Hollywood actress Alice Faye from the 1940s. There can only be one of us!! (Just kidding, I was actually accidentally named after her, and she’s a bloody icon).
If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be and why?
A house cat that can go outside. They’ve got a good life: unconditional love, food, cuddles and the right to roam.
The theme of the November issue is ‘radical imaginations’, so what’s your favourite fictional utopia?
I’m not sure if I have one, though if Wonderland in Alice in Wonderland counts, then probably that! What little precocious kid wouldn’t be drawn into that lovely, bizarre and strange land.
And finally, in November you’re releasing the lead single, Silly Little Fool, from your forthcoming EP – what can you tell us about your new music?
Silly Little Fool is really, really close to my heart, I think it’s my favourite song I’ve written so far. I wrote it to be the introduction to this EP, introducing the world (and the relationship) where all the songs take place. Silly Little Fool is about my perception of myself and where that perception came from, romantically and personally. You can expect a vulnerably empowering yet funny and blasé frankness within this song and the rest of the EP. I can’t wait for you to hear the first single!!
Silly Little Fool is released on 1 Nov; Alice Faye plays Saint Luke’s, Glasgow, 8 Nov instagram.com/alicefayemusic
Photo: Delilah
Rose Niel
SCOTLAND v FIJI
SATURDAY 2 NOVEMBER
SCOTLAND v PORTUGAL
SATURDAY 16 NOVEMBER
SCOTLAND v SOUTH AFRICA
SUNDAY 10 NOVEMBER
SCOTLAND v AUSTRALIA
SUNDAY 24 NOVEMBER
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Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust
Hidden Door Festival Collective Royal Scottish Academy Fruitmarket Stills: Centre for Photography Edinburgh Festival Fringe EAF Edinburgh
International Festival Dovecot Studios Talbot Rice Gallery Surgeons’ Hall Museums Edinburgh Printmakers Jupiter Artland
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