The Skinny February 2021

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February 2021 Issue 181

Human connections

The things keeping us together in socially distanced times

January 2020

Books

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Art January 2020

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THE SKINNY

The Skinny's best song we've heard on the radio recently

Louis Armstrong — We Have All the Time In the World Patti LaBelle — New Attitude macaroom + Post Coal Prom Queen — Body of Water infinite bisous — Racist Uncle Arcade Fire — Everything Now Susanna Hoffs — Boys Keep Swinging MF DOOM — Doomsday Gustaf — Design SAULT — Up All Night Ghost — Bodyguard The Soft Moon — Like a Father (Imperial Black Unit Remix) Prinze George — Tenderly

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

Issue 181, February 2021 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk February 2021

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printed on 100% recycled paper

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Championing creativity in Scotland

Meet the team We asked – Favourite podcast / radio show?

Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "The Great Women Artists’ Guerilla Girls interview is so inspiring and offers a timely reminder not to use the word seminal unless you really are talking about semen."

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "Mandatory Redistribution Party"

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "The screaming in my head, but have also been vibing with Overdue and Thirst Aid Kit (RIP)."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "The Slate Culture Gabfest: brainy people being super articulate and funny about culture is good / Craig Charles' Funk and Soul Show: I open a few cans and dance like it's February 2020."

Tallah Brash Music Editor "I love Jessie Ware's Table Manners podcast, although admittedly I haven't listened to it in a while; really looking forward to listening to the rest of Nemone's Journeys In Sound series."

Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "The Polyester Podcast, particularly their Obsessions series where they have a special guest on to discuss their deepest obsessions. Perfect for obsessive people like me."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "At the minute, it's Wheel of Misfortune with Alison Spittle and Fern Brady.

Incredible, hilarious, disastrous stories told via voice message. Always ft one story about someone shitting themselves.

Cracking."

Katie Goh Intersections Editor "The Cut (previously The Cut on Tuesdays) remains superior.

Start with the episode Your Driver is Here."

Eliza Gearty Theatre Editor "I'm enjoying Louis Theroux's new podcast Grounded even though I can't see his beautiful quizzical face."

Heather McDaid Books Editor "I fit in eps of You're Wrong About in between many listens of Jake Johnson on Thirst Aid Kit."

Sales & Business

Production

Rachael Hood Art Director, Production Manager "I'll start my day with gripping stories like Who the Hell is Hamish?, Verified or The Drop Out. I'll end my day with a lullaby of true crime; Casefile or Dr. Death usually help me nod off."

Adam Benmakhlouf Art Editor "The Moth, where regular people tell their best stories live on stage.

Papably encouraging audience, nervous lay performers – hilarious, tearjerking, heartbreaking, life-affirming!"

Phoebe Willison Designer "Dolly Parton's America is a great series, but my GOAT is the old Desert Island Discs, you can get episodes from the 1940s which is mad."

Sandy Park Commercial Director "Off Menu with James Acaster and Ed Gamble, because I love hearing what people like to eat."

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "The Weekly Planet gives me all the nerdy updates I need on comics, film, TV and more.

Hosts James and Mason seem like a great bunch of lads."

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "I can't concentrate when other people are talking."

Laurie Presswood General Manager "Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang tricks my brain into thinking I'm in the company of my best and most ridiculous friends. You should listen too if you like full-body hysteria."

THE SKINNY

Editorial Words: Rosamund West

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February 2021 — Chat

write this to the soundtrack of a two-year-old having a screaming meltdown about wanting to PUT JAMAS ON at 11 o’clock in the morning. Lockdown 2: Lockdown Harder is going largely as expected.

Continuing our theme of exploring the different means of finding solace in our temporarily altered world, this month we are looking at the ways that human connection has been maintained and sometimes strengthened in our socially distanced states. Food editor Peter has taken a look at how the hospitality industry has transposed what they do to a digital realm. We’re nearly a year into businesses pivoting to online delivery and participation, and we have seen sights from mass virtual coffee tastings to Edinburgh-wide Instagram sandwich parties to Zoom beer tastings. But are any as good as a night in the pub? We consider this question in the lead feature.

Music editor Tallah has been thinking about the radio, a constant in her days offering connection and the opportunity to discover new things regardless of what’s going on in the physical environment. It reminded me of how important radio was to me as a teenager, in a sort of similar state of limbo waiting to discover the outside world of live music and clubs and night time. Listening provides a sense of being part of a broader community of people who care about music, and provides an easy to access event to share with friends. Basically what we’re saying is listening to the radio is just like going to a gig with your pals but you’re locked in your respective houses and sending each other voice messages.

Following on from this, we meet some of the people working on Scotland’s community radio stations who’ve stepped up to support and engage their listeners during all of this. A new play, HOTLINE, is being presented via the phone – we meet the artists behind it to discuss why they’ve embraced this particular

technology during this particular period in time. In design, our regular column takes the idea of connection in a slightly more olfactory direction. We meet the woman behind the UK’s first perfume library, and discuss the radical possibilities of lifting the veil on the secretive process formerly the exclusive preserve of a small group of white men.

In February we would usually be gearing up to produce our CineSkinny mini-magazine covering the Glasgow Film Festival.

It’s on hiatus this year, as the festival is scaled down and so are we. But there is still an exciting programme of film available online – we take a look at a few of the highlights.

Clubs meets Shanghai-based producer Li Jingping, aka Laughing Ears, who has produced an album inspired by Norse mythology during and after Chinese lockdown. Books talks to the mighty Salena Godden, whose debut novel, the collected memoir of Mrs Death herself, arrives this month.

In Comedy, former section editor Benables analyses the demise of The Simpsons as told through the character of Ralph Wiggum. We also have an ICYMI featuring probably the best film ever made, Heathers, which luckily receives a positive review from surreal sketch duo Róisín and Chiara.

Intersections offers a clear outline of why the inclusion of Black, Asian and minority ethnic history in school curriculums is absolutely essential in order to help address racism, and explain this nation’s true position in the world. Linking back to our theme of connection, section editor Katie explores how food Instagram accounts have been keeping Asian communities connected, celebrating heritage and fighting racism.

Finally, we close with our regular The Skinny on… Q&A, this month featuring Stuart Braithwaite, marking the release of Mogwai’s tenth studio album with some thoughts on fighting Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Cover Artist Sarah Wilson Sarah Wilson is an illustrator and animator based in Manchester. She creates whimsical and colourful work inspired by femininity and nostalgia.

Her love of cats is strong and you will seldom come across a piece of her work without one featuring. @swillistrations on Instagram and Twitter, her website is swillistrations.co.uk

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Love Bites

Love Bites: Making friends in new cities This month’s columnist reflects on the vulnerability of finding new friends in new places Words: Katie Driscoll

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February 2021 — Chat

he asked me if I was okay because I couldn’t stop laughing and I couldn’t stop laughing because I was happy. We laughed so much at that tiny corner table that we terrified the waiter. It was like we were speaking our own secret, female language.

The night ended giddily with Irish dancing through a square in Stockholm, white sleet trickling down. We were encased in our own bubble of laughter and silliness that felt timeless, like we were schoolgirls, all eager and ridiculous.

I always know if I have found good friends when, no matter where I am – screaming about “clone a willy” in a fancy restaurant or dancing on a cold Brighton beach at night or running hand-in-hand after dining and dashing – it feels like the place where I am meant to be, like fate.

I had built Sweden up to be a fantasyland from years of watching Bergman films, dreaming of tall blonde boys, pine trees and lakes, and it did offer me all of these things. But the thing I came to crave the most was female friendship. No one tells you how to make friends in your mid to late twenties, when everyone is expected to have, if not their career or relationship sorted, then at least their friendship group. Putting myself at the mercy of a Facebook page for expat women, like a kid on her first day of school, I embraced the vulnerability and posted.

That night at the restaurant, in between the laughter, I made sure to tell those expat women that I was having such a good time because we will all die one day and, instead of telling me I was being ridiculous and melodramatic, they all smiled at my sincerity. I knew I was where I was meant to be.

Crossword Solutions Across 1. FIRST TIME CALLER 9. ESCHEWALS 10. MCFLY 11. AIR 12. UNPAUSE 14. ABLE 16. NO BIGGIE 18. CORONA 21. YAMMER 22. SIGNED UP 24. LOOP 25. MARCONI 27. NPR 28. GIZMO 29. APPLE MENU 31. THE RACE FOR SPACE Down 1. FREQUENCY 2. RECAP 3. THE BUGGLES 4. IRA 5. ERSATZ 6. ASMR 7. LIFEBLOOD 8. RHYME 13. EMIT 15. TOWN CRIERS 17. BAMBOOZLE 19. AMPLITUDE 20. FIRM 23. PIRATE 24. LEGIT 26. OMEGA 27. NOVA 30. PRO

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Heads Up

This month is all about connection. From live-streamed gigs to digital theatre podcasts, we round up the best ways to stay creatively connected in lockdown.

Photo: Sarah Grant

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Present Futures Online, 5-7 Feb A collaboration between Scottish choreographer Colette Sadler and Feral Arts, this three-day festival brings together artists – including Keiken, Wong Ping, and Justin Shoulder – whose practices were rooted in virtual and technological mediums long before the pandemic, for a cutting-edge celebration of performance, film, and visual art that speaks with incisive clarity to our present moment.

Heads Up

Paisley Book Festival

Photo: Tristan Jalleh

Online, 18-27 Feb This year’s all-digital Paisley Book Festival is appropriately themed around Radical New Futures, turning to the writing and literature that can help us make sense of the past strange year and imagine a newer, better world. Highlights include a panel on Scottish masculinities with recent Booker Prize winner Douglas Stuart and a cosy poetry and music evening curated

by Digital Writer in Residence Imogen Stirling.

Imogen Stirling, Paisley Book Festival

Present Futures Carrion by Justin Shoulder

Photo: Euan Robertson

Steve Yeun and Alan Kim in Minari, Glasgow Film Festival

Photo: Christine Cooper

Glasgow Film Festival Online, 24 Feb-7 Mar February 2021 — Chat

Mogwai

Time to hit pause on that seventh rewatch of Schitt’s Creek (yeah, we see you), because some of the year’s best cinema is showing at Glasgow Film Festival. The opening night sees the long-awaited UK premiere of Minari, Lee Isaac Chung’s heartwarming Oscar hopeful, while other UK and Scotland premieres include Aubrey Plaza’s darkly comic Black Bear and Ben Sharrock’s wryly touching Limbo.

Mogwai Online, 13 Feb, 8pm In honour of their upcoming tenth studio album As The Love Continues, which drops in digital and physical formats on 19 February, seminal Scottish rock band Mogwai – known for their eerily beautiful, dynamic instrumentals – are holding a special live performance of the album, performed and recorded at Glasgow’s Tramway, alongside highlights from the band’s impressive back catalogue.

Pandemonium Online, 4 + 11 Feb, 7pm

Pandemonium

Image: Blair McLaughlin

The Glasgow Barons, Govan’s very own local orchestra, have assembled together a mini-music festival taking place over the long winter, with two performances lined up for February. Kicking off the month is William Sweeney’s string suite Sian Orainn, a deft, witty take on traditional songs from South Uist, with Alasdair Nicolson’s frenzied, unmissable Stramash arriving a week later, both filmed at Glasgow’s iconic SWG3.

A Bullet Never Lies, It always Tells the Truth, Latitudes

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Latitudes Royal Scottish Academy, Online, until 17 Mar A testament to the enduring spirit of visual art in Scotland, Latitudes brings together diverse work by recent recipients of awards from the Royal Scottish Academy, including last year’s RSA Pandemic Award.

Highlights from the exhibition include Sara Alonso, whose series Padrenuestro explores manifestations of grief in the midst of the pandemic, and Blair McLaughlin, whose work interprets fear and hopelessness in our modern crisis.

THE SKINNY

The Skinny is very excited to partner with the Glasgow Science Centre’s very first digital festival, Curious About: Our Planet, running 18-20 Feb on their website. Here we pick out some of the highlights of a stellar programme.

Design in the Diaspora V&A Dundee, Online, 7 Feb, 12pm

Into the Dark Atmostheatre, Online, 19 Feb, 8pm

Tron Theatre, Online, 3 Feb

BAS Data as Art

BAS Data as Art Series The Greenhouse, Online, 18-20 Feb Hannah Lavery

DOPESICKFLY LimbicTV, Online, 20 Feb, 8pm Another offering by live streaming champions LimbicTV, this one-off gig sees Glasgow duo DOPESICKFLY bringing their soulful harmonies and upbeat energy live from the AluhpaSonics studio. Composed of musicians Ant Thomaz and Joe Djaelani who met while street performing, their collaborative sound blends funk, acid jazz and world music for an instant injection of serotonin.

Nadine Benjamin (The Witch) in Hansel and Gretel. Scottish Opera 2020

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This digital exhibition brings together archival British Antarctic Survey photographs and stunning artwork by Royal College of Art PhD candidate Wayne Binitie in order to explore the ways in which ice can tell the stories of past climates.

Less Waste Laura Atmostheatre, Online, 20 Feb, 1pm

Looking to create a more sustainable household but don’t know where to Less Waste Laura start? Environmental activist Laura Young (Less Waste Laura) has just the tips and tricks on how to practically reduce waste and minimise planetary pollution, with a live Q&A following her in-depth presentation.

Photo: Wendy Kaveney/WWF

Photo: James Glossop

This joyful reimagining of Engelbert Humperdinck’s classic opera was filmed in Glasgow’s Theatre Royal in December, ready for digital broadcast on the Scottish Opera’s website this month.

Staged by Daisy Evans, this is a Hansel and Gretel that leans into the extravagance of the original fairy tale, bold colours and glitter abounding, offering a perfect splash of life on these dark wintry evenings.

Dry January is over, baby, and what better way to celebrate than with a class on sustainable cocktail making with Glasgow Science Centre’s very own mixologist.

Created in collaboration with Zero Waste Scotland, this session offers creative recipes that incorporate leftover fruit peel, food that can be grown at home, and even Christmas tree parts.

WWF Scotland Atmostheatre, Online, 1820 Feb, 10am

Climate change will affect every region and ecosystem on the planet, from the frozen lands of the Arctic to wildlife in Africa and even here in Scotland itself. In these three sessions, researchers from the world’s largest conservation organisation WWF Scotland will share the work they do in protecting endangered species in each particular area, and the ways in which technology can aid the peaceful co-existence of wildlife and humans, followed by a live Q&A. WWF Scotland

February 2021 — Chat

Scottish Opera, Online, 10 Feb, 6pm

Atmostheatre, Online, 20 Feb, 8pm

Photo: Courtesy of Laura Young

Photo courtesy of Dopesickfly and LimbicTV

Hansel and Gretel

Sustainable Cocktail Making

Photo: Pete Bucktrout

Part of Earwig, a series of theatre podcasts developed

by Glasgow’s Tron Theatre in collaboration with some of Scotland’s most in-demand playwrights, There Is Still Something Yet To Discover is scripted by the acclaimed Hannah Lavery, whose recent Lament for Sheku Bayoh rocked Scotland’s theatre scene. This sonic piece revolves around a walk in the woods, haunted by domesticity, darkness, and the presence of a mythical creature.

Credit: Cocktails in the City

Photo: Hazel Mirsepasi

There Is Still Something Yet to Discover

More UK premieres abound, as Michael O Snyder Curious About: Our Planet screens Into the Dark, a documentary following the work of research scientists in the Arctic determining the effects of climate change in one of the darkest and most vulnerable places on Earth. Hot on the heels of the screening comes a post-film Q&A with filmmaker Michael O Snyder and research scientist Dr David McKee.

Heads Up

Credit: Barrington Reeves Barrington Reeves

DOPESICKFLY

Credit: Michael O Snyder

Part of an Instagram Live series exploring creative output from diasporic communities in Scotland, this discussion sees V&A Dundee’s Maryam Deeni in conversation with Barrington Reeves, the creative director of Glasgow-based Too Gallus and the organiser behind the Black Scottish Business Fund, examining themes of identity and heritage within the country’s design industry.

January 2021

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5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Love Bites — 8 Heads Up 12 Crossword — 38 Intersections — 41 Albums — 43 Film & TV — 44 Books 45 Comedy — 46 The Skinny On… Stuart Braithwaite

Features

16 Human connection: We explore the ways we have maintained connection in a time of social distancing, firstly through food.

19 How a renewed love of radio has helped our Music editor stay connected through a year at home.

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20 We meet some of the Scottish community radio stations who’ve been working hard to keep the scene connected during lockdown.

22 A new play, HOTLINE, uses the humble, intimate telephone to deliver performances.

24 A Showcase of work by illustrator Lucy Grainge.

26 Local Heroes meet the woman behind Scotland’s first scent library.

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28 As Glasgow Film Festival returns with an online programme, we meet the directors of Black Bear and Limbo, and provide our top ten picks from the programme.

33 Matthew Rankin introduces us to the new genre of ‘biographical nightmare’ with his debut feature, The Twentieth Century.

34 Shanghai-based producer Laughing Ears on Norse mythology and her second album, Blood.

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35 Salena Godden introduces her debut novel: the collected memoir of Mrs Death herself.

37 We look at the downfall of The Simpsons as typified by the one and only Ralph Wiggum.

38 Why Black, Asian and minority ethnic history must be included in Scottish school curriculums.

On the website...

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Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Sarah Wilson; Beatrice Simpkiss; Andrew Thomson; Teka Wreka; Lucy Grainge; Gordon Burniston; Limbo; The Twentieth Century; Neocha; Olivia Rutherford; disney+; Joke Amusan

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More album and book reviews; get the inside track on The Cultural Stuff That Is Happening in our fortnightly Zap round-up

January 2021 — Contents

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THE SKINNY

Illustrator: Kaitlin Mechan

Are you an early-career writer, based in Scotland?

Do you have something to say about food and drink?

ENTER THE SKINNY FOOD AND DRINK WRITING COMPETITION Send your 300-word submissions to food@theskinny.co.uk Full details, including prizes and deadlines, at theskinny.co.uk/food

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February 2021 — Chat

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Across 1. "Long time listener, ___ ___ ___" (5,4,6) 9. Things avoided – we class, eh? (anag) (9) 10. English pop band responsible for the album Radio:Active (5) 11. Live – on the ___ (3) 12. Play (7) 14. Competent (4) 16. It's of little consequence (2,6) 18. Pale lager produced by Cervecería Modelo, often served with a wedge of lime (6) 21. Chatter (6) 22. Subscribed (6,2) 24. Repeat (4) 25. Guglielmo ____ (d.1937), credited as the inventor of radio (7) 27. Home of the Tiny Desk Concerts (and 4 down) (3) 28. Gadget (don't feed after midnight?) (5) 29. Options accessed from the top left of the screen on MacOS (5,4) 31. Album by Public Service Broadcasting (3,4,3,5)

Down 1. The 'F' in 'FM radio' (9) 2. Digest (5) 3. Band best known for their popular 1979 cover of Video Killed the Radio Star (3,7) 4. ___ Glass, host of the podcast This American Life (3) 5. Fake – e-z arts (anag) (6) 6. Whisper-induced tingles (init.) (4) 7. Vital – old foible (anag) (9) 8. Sound the same (5) 13. Put out (4) 15. Before the radio, these blokes would wander the streets literally shouting the news (4,6) 17. Deceive (9) 19. The 'A' in 'AM radio' (9) 20. Company (4) 23. Illegal radio (6) 24. Genuine (abbrev.) – very (informal) (5) 26. Last letter of the Greek alphabet (5) 27. Exploding star (4) 30. For (3)

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Compiled by George Sully

Turn to page 7 for the solutions — 12 —

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February 2021

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Keeping in Touch Illustration: Sarah Wilson

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his month we are celebrating some of the ways in which our human connections are maintained during these long months of social distancing. While we haven’t been able to meet in person very much for most of the last year (save the heady summer months of #cansinthepark when behind every hedge was suddenly a mound of toilet paper), we have found other ways of keeping in touch.

Long-shuttered food and drink venues have adapted with virtual events to bring people together to make sandwiches on Instagram or taste some beer via the now-ubiquitous Zoom. The radio offers a means to connect, find new music or rediscover lost loves all the while sharing the listening experience with friends near and far. We may be socially distanced, but we can still share experiences with those we love.

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Food

Dining Zoom As lockdown rumbles on, we look at some of the digital efforts to bring community and hospitality to our homes through food Words: Peter Simpson Illustration: Sarah Wilson

February 2021 – Feature

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t’s late afternoon on a deserted Edinburgh street, and a lone figure stands in a tenement doorway holding a brown paper bag. There’s a brief pause, then something pops out of the first floor window. It’s hard to tell what exactly – this is smartphone footage shot from the other side of the road – but whatever it is, it soon latches onto the bag. It then drags it skyward in a weirdly smooth motion reminiscent of an extremely low-key alien abduction. The bag passes through the window, thumbsup are exchanged, and the next bit of Instagram ephemera loads up while the kettle continues to boil. Did I just watch… someone fishing… out the window? For a sandwich?

I often think about that video, of the sight of a disembodied pair of hands reeling a paper bag into their living room like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The clip came from Alby’s, the Leith sandwich spot, as they were in the process of delivering dozens of kits across the city for a massive communal sandwich-making party during the early days of the 2020 lockdown. The result was a huge, communal meal prepared and enjoyed at hundreds of locations across the city, with the attendant social media blitz of photos, stories and video clips to flood your feed even if you weren’t on the list. It was an event, and even if – like me – you weren’t directly involved, it still felt nice to see. It was the digital equivalent of walking past a heaving pub, condensation running down the windows, watching the last person in the door try to drink a pint with their elbow wedged in someone else’s coat pocket. It felt as though something, somewhere was happening, and that despite all the changes around us, our lives would trot on in something close to normality.

They wouldn’t.

It’s true that Scotland’s food and drink scene has done a very good job of adapting to the changes of the past 12 months, whether that’s through offering home delivery, developing new products and ideas, or by building spiffy service hatches and covering everything in sanitiser. The material side of things has been neatly amended to fit a world of social distancing, with the edible bits of the experience often all that remains after various health-enforced revisions. You can still get your flat white – you just need to be ready to stand in the rain to get it, drink it on the

go, and don’t you dare stop walking.

The pieces that can be sold are still here, but the communal and social aspect of food is the part that’s missing. It’s that buzz from the pub, the background chatter in the cafe, getting chased out of your friend’s kitchen because you won’t stop interfering with the dinner. It’s the feeling that you’re sharing a space or moment with other people in your community. It can’t be replicated on your own at home, and it won’t really return to our physical spaces until we’re safe and comfortable enough to fill rooms again.

But there are some ways to snag a little taste of it, or at least enough to keep you going. A whole host of Scotland’s craft breweries have introduced online beer tastings as a way of giving people a hint of the pub life from their respective living rooms.

They all vary a bit, but an online tasting run by Pilot just before Christmas is an instructive example. The brewery sends a selection of cans to the folk on the call, everybody hops on a Zoom call at roughly the same time, and the group talks through the beers with varying degrees of lucidity as the evening progresses.

It’s a rock-solid format, the beers are delicious, and the synchronised crack of tinnies does evoke a sense of pub camaraderie. People can say ‘cheers’, and feel like they aren’t just drinking alone in the dark! At the same time, a good night at the pub with a group of pals is less about having one big conversation, and more about stringing together a collection of smaller chats. When everyone’s round a big table, they don’t all talk into the middle, throwing their thoughts into the word soup. They chat around the edges, hoping that the pal next to them can understand a word they’re saying over the eight other simultaneous conversations. That kind of close-quarters pub chat can’t work in the land of glitches, sync issues, and being able to hear someone now, oh no wait they’ve gone again.

An enormous event with thousands of participants, on the other hand, is ideal for the web tasting format. James Hoffmann is the cofounder of Square Mile coffee roasters

“You can still get your flat white – you just need to be ready to stand in the rain to get it, drink it on the go, and don’t you dare stop walking”

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albysleith.co.uk; pilotbeer.co.uk Beer52 CyberFest, 19 & 20 Mar, beer52.com/cyberfest5 — 17 —

February 2021 – Feature

missing. It’s the unexpected, or more accurately, the weird.

Unexpected smells, strange bits of decor that don’t quite fit in, odd snippets of overheard conversation – these intrusions into normality give depth to our experiences. They interfere with our expectations and make us do a double-take, and they can often be found in the merry old land of food. These, by the way, are precisely the sort of things that franchise restaurants, shitty chain pubs, and the supermarket you probably got this magazine from all try to smooth off, which is all the more reason to support your local indies where you can. Because it’s the slightly out-of-place appendages that make your favourite pub or cafe stand out. Those oddities are hard to replace when your trip to the pub heads online, mediated by technology designed for running business meetings, or when you’re ushered away from the cafe door before you have a chance to eavesdrop.

The pandemic has been burning away for a year at this point. We did the sourdough thing, we sat in the park with cans for a bit, we got introspective, we looked at bad plans being executed badly and wondered aloud ‘whomst so ever could have seen things going thusly?’ – now we’re all a bit fed up. Bored and confused and upset and angry and missing the things that we enjoyed, things that seem as far away as ever and almost impossible to replicate in the current climate.

Well, we say impossible, but one event may have hit upon a formula to bring the spirit of the outside to your screens. Beer subscription box folk Beer 52 have hosted a series of online beer festivals throughout lockdown. These Cyber Fest events feature beers from breweries from all over the world, with each set of brewers providing their own short video to accompany their wares. Watching back through the assorted clips it’s clear that if you have yearned through lockdown for one of those nights out where strange and unexpected stuff kicks off, this is the place to be – because oh my days there’s some strange stuff going on here.

We’re talking greenscreen allowing brewers to interview themselves, or staff deliberately crashing their bikes into walls, shortly followed by brewers giving extremely detailed and earnest descriptions of their products. It’s a surreal tableau of comedy, revelry and a straight-up information dump that has the uncontrolled feel of a night at the pub. It has the confusing, energising vibe that’s needed at this point in lockdown, and it’s a lead that we should all try to follow. Failing that, we’ll split into two teams – you lot start on the sandwiches, I’ll see what I can fashion into a fishing rod.

Food

and a former World Barista Champion. He is also YouTube’s foremost coffee personality, which seems down to both his incredible level of technical knowledge and his equally incredible vocal tone – deep, crisp, conspiratorial, knowledgeable and mildly exasperated all at once. Hoffmann took that voice and knowledge to YouTube to host an hour-long coffee tasting back in October, with the audience blind-tasting five coffees along with the man himself. That audience sat somewhere around the 10,000-person mark.

This is the kind of grand spectacle that suits our new online forums – an enormous, highly caffeinated communion where one person holds court and everyone else tries to keep up or start arguments in the chat. It’s ridiculous, it’s outlandish, it’s ambitious, and it’s a reminder that there are other people out there who are just as interested and obsessive about grind size or terroir as you are.

Over on Instagram, the chef-patron of one of the world’s top restaurants was waving his knife at the camera while his daughter told him off for talking too much about football.

Massimo Bottura of Osteria Francescana ran a series of live Instagram cookalongs from his home kitchen in the spring lockdown, and things were decidedly non-cheffy.

Whether it was making ragu out of leftovers from previous meals or trying to make a tiramisu without getting mascarpone all over the kitchen counter, the videos were a chance to see how one of the world’s foremost chefs operates when he’s putting together the family dinner. You might be thinking ‘isn’t that just a cooking show?’

But there’s something fundamentally different about these videos compared to the slick presentation of a Lawson or a Ramsay – a lack of polish. These are simple, intimate, chaotic, casually bilingual and frequently filled with the sound of clanking pans; they don’t feel like home video-style TV shows, they feel like genuine glimpses into someone else’s life. They’re the IG equivalent of being sat two seats over from the kitchen door, and leave you wanting to poke your head in and offer some well-meaning but probably unnecessary assistance.

Elsewhere, the likes of Glasgow restaurant Six By Nico were running folk through step-by-step instructions to get the most out of their recipe kit boxes, and there have been so many interesting, enlightening and challenging discussions about food online that they could really make for their own slightly-too-long article. Like we said earlier, there has been no shortage of adaptation, reconfiguration and pivoting when it comes to food, and it has been heartening to hear some apparent good news from the places we love. But at the same time, while these online events can help keep communities in contact and maintain relationships between people and the places they love, there’s something

January 2021

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THE SKINNY

Beat Connection Our Music editor explains how her listening habits have changed in the past year, and how she’s found comfort and connection through listening to the radio

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experiences have been created, and so many memories have been stirred through a beat connection. Even hearing friends get shoutouts on the radio has been like a fresh dose of oxygen; knowing they’re listening to the same thing as me at the same time is such a rush.

During the early days of the first lockdown, my friend Danielle and I strengthened our relationship as we started sending each other daft videos of ourselves dancing around our respective kitchens and living rooms whenever something amazing came on the radio; sometimes we’d lip sync; sometimes we’d just do bad karaoke to it – however the moment took us, we went with it! Without the radio to guide us, I’m not sure these joyful moments of spontaneity would’ve happened.

Last November Steve Lamacq had football legend and part-time DJ Pat Nevin on his show, and I was immediately transported to a Butlins holiday camp in Minehead. Belle & Sebastian curated the Bowlie 2 ATP festival there ten years prior where the retired footballer signed mine and my friend Kate’s guns (Ikr). It prompted me to look out the photographic evidence and send it in a reminiscent WhatsApp to Kate, later going on to spread the collective joy on Twitter.

But even on the days when I’m not prompted to reach out to a friend, when I’m not in the mood for company and just need time to myself, memories are still ignited and music I’d perhaps never think to play otherwise become transportative; a live version of a song plays and I can feel the warmth of a late night out dancing by the sea in Barcelona, and dewy summer mornings waking up in a tent on a festival campsite somewhere on the west coast are revived.

Throughout 2020 I was convinced I’d become disconnected from music, when in actual fact it’s just the way I was consuming it that had changed, helping me stay connected with the people and activities I missed every day. If you’ve not yet found your beat connection, somewhere out there is something that will work for you too; maybe you’ll find it in a podcast; maybe it’ll be through fawning over the same album with friends and strangers alike at one of Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties; or maybe, like me, it’ll be through the radio.

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February 2021 – Feature

nd even though I know how very far apart we are [...] / It helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky’.

The scene in An American Tail where Fievel and his sister Tanya sing Somewhere Out There as they both look up at the same night sky still crushes me today, and feels especially pertinent right now as friends and family all over the country are unable to meet in person due to ongoing coronavirus restrictions.

Listening to the radio over the course of the past ten months has, for me, offered the same balm as that night sky did for Fievel and Tanya. It’s offered me comfort and an immediate connection with friends, colleagues and peers far and wide in ways I hadn’t previously realised possible.

I’ve always loved radio. I remember recording the chart show as a kid, making mixtapes of my favourite songs, and I remember my dad would often have the radio on in the car, singing along with whatever came on, even if he didn’t know the words. At uni we often listened to BBC Radio One in the architecture department; listening to Jo Whiley, Mark and Lard and Chris Moyles became so ingrained in my every day, but surrounded by friends in the studio I didn’t ever really appreciate radio’s ability to connect people.

Even after gaining a qualification in the medium, and following years of involvement in student radio, I still didn’t fully understand its power until now. Like many others, last April I suddenly found myself furloughed, sat at home on my own for hours on end, my calendar devoid of gigs, clubs and festivals to attend for those all important shared experiences. I then returned to work in August, without an office and without IRL colleagues to keep me company day in day out.

I found myself tuning into the radio more than I can ever remember. Most days, as soon as I wake I turn on BBC Radio 6 Music; via BBC Radio Scotland, most Monday nights I spend a bit of time with Vic Galloway, while my Friday evenings are reserved for BBC Introducing in Scotland as I finish making dinner. Having spoken to a lot of friends about this in recent weeks, it comforts me to know I’m not the only person who’s found solace in the airwaves. As Jonathan Richman sang on The Modern Lovers’ 1976 hit Roadrunner: ‘Don’t feel so alone, got the radio on’.

But it’s not just the act of having the radio on that’s helped, it’s what listening to the radio has conjured; so many new shared

Music

Words: Tallah Brash Illustration: Beatrice Simpkiss

THE SKINNY

Music

Always Listening We chat to some of the people behind Scotland’s community radio stations to find out how they’ve been keeping the music scene connected during the pandemic Interview: Chiara Wilkinson

February 2021 – Feature

“Lockdown gave us more flexibility in terms of new shows, and oneoff shows” Feena McKinnell, EH-FM For the best part of the station’s inaugural year on air, Glasgow has sidestepped in and out of lockdown, with the whole of Scotland enduring strict coronavirus restrictions, including a ban on in-venue music. When the country’s grassroots music venues were boarded up overnight, the communities they served backed into their bedrooms – but they’ve been far from silent.

Independent radio stations have ensured that the unique spirit of Scotland’s underground music scenes continues to thrive.

“It’s almost like we have become a digital venue,” says Chris Murray, Head of Events & Partnerships at EH-FM. With listening figures rising since the start of the pandemic, the Edinburgh-based station was set up in 2018 to provide a virtual space for people to get involved with the city’s alternative music scenes without going to a club or knowing the right people. The station operates from a cosy studio in Summerhall shared with LuckyMe Records, and is more or less the mouthpiece of the Cowgate club circuit. In the last week alone, it’s hosted a varied

selection of promotersturned-presenters: from the bass-laced electro cuts you’d catch at Palidrone’s Mash House residency, to the heated disco rhythms of the HOT MESS queer parties. “It’s quite like a boiling pot,” says Murray, “and is just the best way to get to know everybody in Edinburgh who is involved in music.”

Akin to London’s NTS, EH-FM, Clyde Built Radio and Radio Buena Vida are independent, community-focused broadcasting projects, allowing for a refreshing amount of creative control and musical freedom compared to commercial stations. Led by a team of dedicated volunteers, it’s a concept that spotlights local talent for a wide audience – without the need for much physical space – and has proved essential for connecting the public to promoters, DJs and musicians while venues have remained empty.

When the first lockdown forced the studio to shut in March last year, EH-FM’s transition to a fully digital station was smooth: DJs, guests and presenters would send in pre-recorded shows and would only broadcast live from home if they had the equipment and ability to do so. “We were able to host a few things – Miss World’s birthday, for example – which would have usually been done in a club,” says Feena McKinnell, the station’s Programming Coordinator. McKinnell started at EH-FM as a volunteer while learning how to DJ, before becoming a resident at Miss World, a collective which promotes female, non-binary and female-identifying people in the club scene. “I think after a while, obviously we’re all missing being in the studio,” McKinnell says. “But lockdown also gave us a bit more flexibility in terms of new shows, and one-off shows.” One such example was when the station hosted St Andrews-based Asha Sound System for an all-day takeover in the summer, with their local DJs programmed alongside the likes of Mungo’s Hi Fi. — 20 —

Photo: David Fleming

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oaked in the smells of wet concrete and deep-fat fryers, a pavement in Glasgow’s Southside resembles a makeshift dancefloor. A crowd accumulates, drawing in passers-by and an audience from the chippy queue across the road as rhythms ripple from a live broadcast in the window of the Some Great Reward record shop and cafe. Bodies move in the rain and smiles appear on faces. It’s not the same as being drenched in sweat, bass frequencies throttling ear drums and hair sticky with stranger’s pints, but for now it’s the best we’ll get.

David Fleming and Susan O’Neill launched Radio Buena Vida in October 2020, a project dreamt up in Barcelona and realised with the help of Glasgow’s music community. Since its launch, the station has been broadcasting three days a week and has hosted Harri & Domenic, VAJ.Power, Suzy Lee Kidd, and the Glasgow African Balafon Orchestra among many others. With a name translating to ‘Good Living’, the couple envision broadcasting full-time and opening a bar to give the station a home from its temporary record store residency on Victoria Road. But it’s not the only independent station to have popped up in the city in the last year; in February, Clyde Built Radio will celebrate its first birthday via a locked-down broadcast shindig.

THE SKINNY

Photo: Chris Murray

Andrew Thomson, Clyde Built Radio David Fleming and Susan O’Neill at Radio Buena Vida were also keen to raise the profile of more left-field genres in Scotland. “There’s a real exploding Scottish hip-hop scene that we’re excited to be supporting,” says O’Neill. The station has previously hosted Glasgow-based rap collective Up 2 Standard, as well as Dundee hip-hop artist India Rose, and they’re currently working on an upcoming collaboration with rising youth rap star CHEF from Aberdeen. “He’s just one example of young talent that is doing absolutely great and is getting recognised by putting out amazing music,” says O’Neill.

Listen to Radio Buena Vida at buenavida.co.uk Listen to Clyde Built Radio at clydebuiltradio.com Listen to EH-FM at ehfm.live and from £5 per month, join EH-FM’s recently launched Patreon at patreon.com/ehfm_live to help the station become a community-led sustainable project — 21 —

February 2021 – Feature

“I hope that at some point in time the studio will provide this physical space for a bit of optimism and connection and hope"

When restrictions were occasionally relaxed, Clyde Built Radio returned to their small but slick broadcasting stall in the Barras, a central hub envisioned to accelerate collaborations and break down musical and social barriers. “We’ve been running for 11 months but have only been in the studio for four-and-a-half of them,” says Thomson. “I hope that at some point in time the studio will provide this physical space for a bit of optimism and connection and hope. It’s like this utopia exists in our minds rather than in physical form, since we’ve not been in regular interaction with it.”

While the stations have been itching to return to their studios, listeners have tuned into Scotland from near and far.

“There’s always someone who listens in Oman,” says Thomson.

“I don’t know who it is.” When Optimo played the station’s first stay-at-home House Party in April 2020, data showed that there were listeners tuning in from every continent on the planet, bar Antarctica. And by programming promising names alongside those more established, like Optimo, Thomson hopes that Clyde Built Radio will globally platform the next generation of presenters. In this respect, lockdown certainly helped to level the playing field: “Someone who was well-established was suddenly in the same position as someone who had never had a radio show before – so long as you had a laptop and could download the software to put it together,” he says. “It’s made it more democratic and a bit more accessible.”

When live music does return, there is a general feeling that the pandemic might move the focus more than ever onto homegrown talent, which has become somewhat overshadowed in recent years by a circuit of international names dominating line-ups. “From the point of view of Edinburgh’s underground club music, I think it was in such a good place before the pandemic; there really weren’t any bad nights,” says EH-FM’s Pettinger. “But I hope that when things return to normal, there will be more of a focus on local stuff. People will just be so excited to go out – there will be no need to book people from overseas.”

Music

Photo: Andrew Thomson

And while EH-FM has garnered a reputation for its clubcentric underground residents, it is by no means restrictive: many presenters are just local people with really good record collections. “I think that’s what is so important about radio,” says Director and Station Manager, Jamie Pettinger. “You can devote time to two hours of ambient or folk music or whatever.”

Broadcasting is also a welcomed liberation for guests who might traditionally play more dance-heavy tracks in a night-time setting.

Gavin Sutherland, a resident and producer known as Other Lands, has been involved in the station since its inception. “It’s been a nice constant doing the show this past year,” he says. “As time has gone on and we’ve got further away from the club experience, I’ve found I’ve played less dancefloor stuff, probably.”

On the other side of the M8, Andrew Thomson founded Clyde Built Radio in February 2020 to share Glasgow’s multifaceted music scene with the rest of the world. “I think people have a false idea of the music scene in Glasgow, thanks to its reputation as the core house and techno city which has been so heavily portrayed by the mainstream music media in the last few years,” says Thomson. “There’s a lot more going on beyond a few familiar names.” He nods to Lizzie Urquhart, a presenter with a folky, gentle sound, who joined the station as a complete beginner. “She’d never done anything like this before,” he says, “but she’s a music fan just sharing what she likes, and there’s a real uniqueness to her style.”

THE SKINNY

Dial In

We may be living in the Zoom era, but some theatremakers are turning to another, oft-forgotten medium to connect with audiences. We talk to Leonie Rae Gasson and Melanie Frances about reclaiming the power of the humble telephone

Theatre

Interview: Eliza Gearty

people early on in the pandemic. “We’d been throwing ideas about... at first we thought, we’re really miserable. Wouldn’t it be nice to just ring a number and be told really nice stuff about ourselves, like ‘You’re great! you’re wonderful!’” says Gasson. “[But] sometimes I want to go on an adventure and be out of this world, quite literally, and I want to imagine new futures and do something else. We wanted to make a show that would meet people where they’re at.”

It’s not the first time artists have explored the dramatic potential of the COVID-proof call. Back in June, Scottish artist Zoë Irvine collaborated with the Bergen National Opera to create This Evening’s Performance Will Not Be Cancelled – a call centre that connected callers to ‘ushers’, creatives who had worked on opera productions all over Europe that had ended up being cancelled due to COVID-19. The ushers shared music and stories from their lost productions.

“I was struck by the intimacy of the experience,” says Rachel Boyd, a participant.

“We ended up discussing the experience of making calls, and how the technology had changed. [The usher’s] generation was the time of landlines and telephone boxes, geared by loose change, whereas now I feel that the impetus to make a telephone call is so often geared by the negative – it’s the reserve of communicating bad news. Even counselling and ‘listening services’ are adapting the short-hand of instant messaging.” For Irvine, who works primarily with sound and has created ‘phone shows’ before, the live, audio-only aspect was a very deliberate decision. “The phone call provides a liveness and an intimacy that Zoom is missing,” she says. “By focusing on the auditory it feels less invasive – but at the same time there is nowhere to hide.”

That liveness and intimacy is part of what makes the call between Nixon and the Apollo 11 astronauts so compelling. To Gasson and Frances, it also represents what we are capable of when we dream big. By throwing us into the world of such a wondrous phone call, HOTLINE may provoke audiences to reevaluate the potential of the newer technologies at our fingertips. “The sheer boldness of that vision is what we need now in our approach to anti-racism, to transphobia, to building a more fair and equal society,” reflects Gasson. “We’re interested in the powerful joy of a dream that big.”

Image: Teka Wreka

February 2021 – Feature

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an you remember the last time you actually left a real-life voicemail for someone? Not a WhatsApp voice note or a Facebook message or a text; a real, raw, after-the-beep voicemail? Leonie Rae Gasson, Co-Artistic Director of the theatre company Produced Moon, can’t. “I couldn’t tell you the last time,” she laughs. “I’ll joke that if someone’s left a voicemail, they’re not our age – that person’s over 50! For millennials, calling feels a bit retro. We WhatsApp, leave voice notes, have Zoom parties now... but we don’t really call.”

We’re talking, along with Gasson’s fellow Artistic Director Melanie Frances (and via Zoom, of course), about Produced Moon’s upcoming show, HOTLINE. Gasson, a performance artist, and Frances, a mathematician and artist, have been creating work together as Produced Moon since 2012. They “make work for the digital age”, by creating, as Frances explains, “artistic experiences, theatre pieces, adventures and interactive narratives that take place both on technology and about technology, and the way it interacts with our lives.”

It’s a wide-ranging, forward-thinking vision, and the company is accordingly ambitious. Since its inception, Produced Moon has created 360 VR films, theatre-video-games, ‘robot cabarets’, drag king flash mobs and city-wide immersive experiences. But with HOTLINE they are, in a sense, scaling it back.

During what has to be the most online era in history, Gasson and Frances are logging off. Their next show will be shared with audiences via one of the earliest methods of electromechanical communication – the phone call.

Why the phone? And what is it about the idea of a theatre show over the phone that feels so, well, soothing? “We were sick of Zoom!” says Gasson, laughing. She points out the need for a different sort of escapism for many people working eight-hour days at their laptops. “We use our digital platforms for everything, and feel so connected to everything all the time,” adds Frances.

“Right now I’m using Zoom, but I also have my email open and I’ve been online all morning.

Whereas on the phone, the only thing you’re really connected to is the other person at the end of the line ... the simplicity of that connection in comparison to the sometimes overwhelming nature of digital platforms really appealed to us.”

The idea also grew out of sessions with young

The resulting piece responds to both of these classic lockdown feelings. Satisfying both a craving for comfort and a thirst for adventure, Hotline is an interactive outer space game wrapped in the nostalgic medium of a one-to-one call. Simulating the famous 1969 phone call to the moon, participants will be invited to dial the provided number and ‘hack’ the call between president Nixon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. “It asks, do you want to listen and think and dream or do you want to press loads of buttons and solve this escape-room puzzle?” explains Gasson of the piece, that was devised alongside artists Meghan Tyler and Nima Séne, and commissioned by Tron Theatre. They’re keen to clarify that it won’t just be pure escapism, though. “At the time of the phone call, the Civil Rights Movement was happening, Stonewall had just happened. There’s a song we use in the show, Whitey On the Moon, which explicitly says, why are we spending millions of dollars sending two white guys to the moon when look around you? We’re interested in that perspective.”

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Call HOTLINE anytime between 26 Feb and 6 Mar Sign up with this link to receive the number when lines open: tron.co.uk/hotline-launch-registration Or countdown to the HOTLINE launch with @TronTheatre on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

Listen to extracts from This Evening’s Performance Will Not Be Cancelled online: thiseveningsperformance.net/listen

THE SKINNY

Fade to Black American filmmaker and photographer Michael O Snyder plunges us into the Polar Night with his latest documentary Into the Dark, which follows a team of scientists studying the Arctic’s hardiest marine life Interview: Jamie Dunn

Michael O Snyder

Image: Michael O Snyder

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Curious About: Our Planet runs online 18-20 Feb Into the Dark has its UK premiere on 19 Feb at 8pm, followed by a live Q&A with Michael O Snyder and research scientist Dr David McKee, who features in the film curiousabout.glasgowsciencecentre.org

February 2021 – Feature

Scottish Association for Marine Science – who are examining how the world’s most hardy sea creatures survive Polar Night, the Arctic’s months of endless darkness.

Snyder explains that, until recently, the orthodox view of Arctic life during Polar Night was that it was functionally dead. “The thinking was there’s no light at the North Pole for six months, and without light, there’s no primary production, there’s no plants to eat, you can’t see to reproduce, you can’t hunt. So essentially, life goes dormant.”

Around a decade ago, however, scientists discovered that was not at all the case. “It turns out the

create a film that’s more than just a portal through which to dispense facts. Thankfully Into the Dark is as compelling narratively and aesthetically as it is informative. “I see my job as to tell great stories,” says Snyder. “So we’re not simply just presenting lots of information, we’re getting underneath that, we’re getting into why people do what they do, and what the emotional experiences are like doing that.” Not only does this make the film more enjoyable to watch, it’s more likely to sock its message across too. “All the research tells us that the data on its own is not enough to move most of us towards a more sustainable lifestyle. As human animals, we are rational to a certain extent, but we’re also emotional and connections oriented. So telling a good story is vital.”

Snyder’s films have taken him to different communities with different issues all over the world, from the water crisis in Uganda to ancient dream cultures living in the Amazon, but climate change has been a throughline. “There are so many issues that need to be addressed in this world but the thing about climate change is that it’s a magnifier for all other issues,” Snyder says. “If we get it wrong on climate change, we get it wrong on everything, whether you’re working on security issues, whether it’s violence, whether it’s migration, whether it’s public health, whether it’s species protection, water access, it doesn’t make a difference.”

Film

“If we get it wrong on climate change, we get it wrong on everything”

environment there is so finetuned and so evolved that it functions with truly infinitesimal amounts of light, like a millionth of what we can see.”

What the team of jovial Scots and stoic Scandinavians are particularly interested in is how climate change will affect this light-sensitive habitat. As the Arctic ice thins and recedes thanks to increasing temperatures, more light will be able to penetrate these once perennially dark ocean waters. The only way to study these light-sensitive sea creatures is for the Helmer Hanssen to switch off all its lights and the scientists take their readings in complete darkness.

Conducting delicate scientific research in such conditions is, shall we say, tricky. And making a film is no picnic either.

“It was an enormous technical challenge,” confirms Snyder. “Cameras essentially paint with light, so in the absence of light, what do you do?”

Well in the first instance, Snyder was assisted by some cutting edge tech. “The timing of the filming was quite fortuitous, with GoPro and Sony both releasing brand new sensors right before the production started on the film,” he explains. “We were very pleasantly surprised by our ability to see in that darkness with some of this technology. And of course, that was mirroring the technology that the scientists were using, because they are also trying to quite literally see in the dark.”

Snyder’s other technique for capturing the eerie atmosphere of Polar Night was much more straightforward: “Very early on we made the editorial choice to allow the audience to just sit in darkness for a little bit, because the truth is, it’s just very, very dark.” This blunt-force effect, of course, would have been particularly powerful in a pitch-black cinema space, but unfortunately Curious About: Our Planet’s programme is fully online, so be sure to have your lights off while you watch at home.

Beyond the technical issues, the biggest challenge any environmental documentary filmmaker faces is to

Image: Michael O Snyder

I

t’s February and you’re most likely reading this in Scotland, therefore you probably know a thing or two about the dark. Spare a thought, then, for the inhabitants of Tromsø, Norway, where the sun hasn’t risen above the horizon since November. Michael O Snyder’s new documentary, Into the Dark – which screens as part of Curious About: Our Planet, Glasgow Science Centre’s digital science festival – opens in Tromsø, and takes us even further north. It follows a team of scientists on the Helmer Hanssen research vessel – comprised of a crew from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the

February 2021 – Feature

Showcase

THE SKINNY

Lucy Grainge L

ucy Grainge is a visual artist and designer from Manchester, currently based in Barcelona. Visually her work is characterised by a strong use of colour, shape and pattern, working across illustration, graphic design and murals. Her work is often community-based and research-led, with a large body of recent work exploring the multifaceted experiences of dyslexia. She is a lover of risograph printing and wants to make more large scale work! Lucy is also a workshop facilitator and co-founder of Psyche, a mental health and socio-politics magazine. Follow Lucy on Instagram @_lucygr

Subscribe to The Skinny and you’ll receive an exclusive Lucy Grainge print – details at theskinny.co.uk/subscribe — 24 —

THE SKINNY

Showcase

Screen-printed Banner at Out of the Blue, Edinburgh

February 2021 – Feature

The Shapes of Words exhibition, National Centre for Craft and Design, Lincolnshire

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Radical Perfumery

Photo: Gordon Burniston

Local Heroes

THE SKINNY

Celebrating human connection, we meet Clara Weale – designer, perfumer and the Director of A Library of Olfactive Material in Glasgow, a beautifully designed open access resource for scent education, experience and experimentation Words: Stacey Hunter

W

February 2021 – Feature

e want to know more about where the concept for the Library came from – the UK’s first – and to introduce you to Clara Weale’s new perfume brand Early Modern.

As this month’s theme is human connections, we begin by asking Weale about the relationship we can have with scent.

“Perfume is such an incredible expression of humanity. The act of scenting yourself is so ancient, so ingrained across the world and so innate. Scent is communication, conscious and unconscious. The majority of us have grown up with the belief that fragrance is made by gifted people with superior noses, who are born into it.

That these people tend to be white French men is no coincidence. Perfume is marketed and sold to us in a way which upholds this myth and image and the perfume industry protects itself by limiting access to knowledge and materials. It’s super insecure, basically. And so for most people, even those who would say that they have ‘always wanted to make a perfume’ the idea of seeking out the opportunity to be creative with scent just isn’t on the table and so it isn’t sought out.”

Putting perfumery materials on display and visible from the street, is therefore, for Weale, a radical act within the world of perfumery. The Library, situated near St Andrew’s Square, exists as a physical and visible presence in order to show people that the possibility exists to create with scent, so, “get ready for a new wave of Olfactive Art coming out of Glasgow,” says Weale.

Where did the concept come from? She explains that over the past couple of decades perfumery has undergone significant change.

Despite the proliferation of brands and seemingly endless options for perfume, the vast majority have been created by just a handful of companies.

But new levels of information sharing, coupled with better access to materials has meant that for

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THE SKINNY

Photo: Clara Weale

Photo: Gordon Burniston

Photo: Gordon Burniston

Local Heroes

During the past year she began to pioneer online classes geared around exploring a specific topic or theme “For example, we transported people to a humid greenhouse, or bonfire. We would send out tiny vials of the materials through the post, and all smell them together over Zoom. This was fantastic as it really increased the reach of the Library; suddenly people from all corners of the UK and further afield were connecting with the Library and attending classes.”

Weale designed the space herself with a big table for people to work around, shelving for the materials, and the Librarian’s desk. A friend, artist Molly Mae Whawell, was moving one of her large sculptures out of storage and offered it up for adoption.

“I love it, because it does something very odd to the scale of things. I strove to strike a balance between it looking fancy and considered, and feeling approachable and utilitarian; like the kind of archetype municipal libraries that gave so much to me as a child. I wanted to soften the edges, with colour choices and details throughout the space that perhaps feel more at home within high end retail spaces.”

In December 2020 Weale launched her own perfume brand Early Modern. When the pandemic first hit, she packed a box to bring home full of her favourite materials from the Library, as well as some that she felt she didn’t know so well. Without a specific goal she made trials of scents, experimented, and started to form the DNA of Early Modern.

These scents are about being instinctive and having fun with the perfumes she makes.

“I feel like the first two scents released, Life of the Party and Veil, were really subconscious responses to 2020. Life of the Party was born out of an experiment with sandalwood materials, and the desire to create the effect of smelling a — 27 —

perfume on someone else – the distance between you and it, even when it’s you that’s wearing it. It then tapped into all these feelings of teenage angst, and the feeling of getting ready for a party when you are young. You feel like the party is going to change everything, and you are going to start a new life. So I feel like pining for that was very much a 2020 mood.”

We love the experimental and expressive imagery Weale created with photographer Alexander Hoyles where still lifes and videos set out to evoke the emotions of attending a fancy party as someone’s plus one, 80s fashion and warm LA evenings.

“Knowing that there would be no big launch it was important to try to capture the feel of them visually. I collected imagery, textures, colours and ideas that I felt ‘fit’ the fragrances and then Alex tried to get me to refine that. I was also thrilled to have the help of Heather Ridley-Moran, a fantastic stylist who would usually be creating the most improbable and beautiful window displays for clients like Selfridges, but due to COVID-19 was at home in Glasgow and keen to flex her creative muscles. I know that scent and perfumery seems to sit on its own, but it can be such a catalyst for other creative projects and connections.”

To coincide with Valentine’s Day this year, Weale is collaborating with Gemma Burniston, the florist behind Little Botanica. Gemma has interpreted both Early Modern fragrances in flower form and will be delivering Veil and Life of the Party themed bouquets, along with bottles of their respective perfume, on 13 and 14 February.

Follow on Instagram at @a_library_of & @early_modern earlymodernperfume.com a-library-of.com/the-library

February 2021 – Feature

the first time people can become self-taught perfumers, working with the same materials as these larger companies.

“However there are still very few places in the world specialising in scent that you can physically visit. A more open access approach was pioneered by The Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles and was followed up with a smaller lab at Mediamatic in Amsterdam, and Smell Lab in Berlin. Aside from that, there aren’t really any places that you can just go and encounter scent materials – so it should be a source of pride that Glasgow has this resource for people.”

Weale took a trip to Amsterdam as part of Creative Scotland’s Go See Share programme, to visit Mediamatic, and met other self-taught perfumers.

“These conversations really helped me to shape what I wanted to do. I realised how much it means to me that this knowledge and information about scent is shared. There’s something really rewarding about doing your best to create the space (or be the person) that you wish you could have encountered at the start of a learning journey.”

The idea of this new space being a library was formed during her visit, as she reflected on different forms of institutions and facilities. The format stems from her love of libraries and deep appreciation for the role of the librarian.

“A librarian doesn’t need to have read every book in the library to be able to help you find what you need, and that appealed to me as someone used to teaching themselves outside of a formal perfumery education.”

Pre-pandemic the Library ran in-person classes geared around making perfume or more experimental scent creation. Every Wednesday evening Weale hosted Library Hours – a low-cost introduction to scent materials where people would come along sometimes with a specific goal or project to work on, or just for a new experience.

THE SKINNY

Film

Welcome to Scotland Humour and humanity abound in Limbo, Ben Sharrock’s moving deadpan comedy about a group of refugees killing time on a desolate Scottish island, patiently hoping to be granted visas Interview: Jamie Dunn

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February 2021 – Feature

hen Ben Sharrock was writing Limbo, his openhearted new comedy-drama, he thought he’d struck upon a suitably ridiculous scenario with which to tell the story of the torment inflicted on refugees once they reach their destination. “Quite early on there was this idea of utter remoteness,” the Scottish director, who splits his time between San Sebastian and Edinburgh, tells me down the phone. “I had this kind of cold environment in mind, this harsh weather, and a small community for them to be trapped in.” Initially, he considered Iceland for his location, but on a recce there he realised there was a barren, secluded, wind-lashed landscape much closer to home that would work just as well.

“We were going around the northwest fjords, and I thought to myself, ‘We could be in Scotland’, and suddenly realised maybe it would make more sense to set it there.”

Sharrock changed the setting to an unnamed island in the Hebrides (Limbo was shot on Uist) where refugees await the mercy of the Home Office. Little did he know that the home secretary, Priti Patel, would soon float the idea that the UK should start processing their asylum seekers somewhere even more remote: a volcanic island on St Helena. “It’s quite amazing that that came up,”

says Sharrock. “I wanted [the setting in Limbo] to give an undertone of humour and create this sort of absurdist situation. So now it’s unbelievable that they’re actually thinking of doing it!”

Suffice it to say, there’s more humanity to be found in Sharrock’s vision than Patel’s. The film thrusts us into the lives of a handful of refugees waiting indefinitely for visas on a weatherbeaten island, whose mostly friendly residents seem as bemused by the situation as the migrants themselves. Sharrock explains that he didn’t want to lean too heavily on the culture-clash possibilities of the scenario. “I wanted to be quite sensitive about that, because Scotland has actually, within the context of the UK, done the best in terms of refugee resettlement programs, so I wanted to be careful not to create this image of the islanders being kind of horrible. And I think that’s also a tired trope that’s used in these cultural reconciliation narratives.”

This wasn’t the only cliché Sharrock wanted to circumvent.

“I started out with a big list of things to avoid. Top of that list was one) sensationalising the subject matter, and two) not using a kind of Western white saviour character, and really telling the story from the perspective of the refugees and putting them in the centre of the film.”

When Sharrock says the centre of the film, he’s also talking literally. Characters are placed very deliberately and startlingly in the middle of the frame, often looking down the barrel of the camera, like in the fastidious fairy tales of Aki Kaurismäki, Roy Andersson and Wes Anderson, creating a world that feels a few degrees of separation from our own, which only accentuates the characters’ feelings of isolation. Similarly to the films of those aforementioned directors, absurdist sight gags abound — 28 —

while one-liners are delivered via the most deadpan of faces.

It’s a very deliberate aesthetic that’s a world away from the gritty and more direct cinema associated with British social realism. It’s perhaps no coincidence, then, that Sharrock, despite training at Screen Academy Scotland in Edinburgh, chose to make his first feature outside the UK. That was Pikadero, a delightfully skew-whiff romance following a 20-something couple from the Basque Country who are unable to consummate their fledgeling romance because both are broke and still live at home with their conservative parents.

“I really wanted to get rid of the big subject, and to bring it down to a human level” Ben Sharrock “Making my first feature not only in the Basque Country but also in Basque is a pretty strange entry point for a Scottish filmmaker into the industry,” admits Sharrock. “But I think it was liberating. I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to make a film like that in Scotland somehow. I think sometimes when you go to other places, when you’re outside of your own country, you have more confidence to take risks.”

We should all be thankful that he took the plunge with Pikadero because Limbo is not only the finest British film of the year, but it’s also a beautifully humane response to the refugee crisis that Patel and her ilk would prefer us to turn our backs on. Here, Sharrock’s hopeful cinema shines a light: “I really wanted to get rid of the sort of big subject, the big topic and just make it about [refugees] as individuals rather than statistics, a mass of people, the numbers that we’re always reading. I just really wanted to bring it down to a human level.”

Limbo has its Scottish premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, screening 3-6 Mar, and is released in the UK 7 May by MUBI

THE SKINNY

Bear in Mind Aubrey Plaza is a revelation in Lawrence Michael Levine’s surprising dark comedy Black Bear. Levine got the idea from a dream – over our chat we dig into his subconscious and the surreal film’s hidden meanings Words: Iana Murray Film

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ne night, Lawrence Michael Levine had a dream. He can’t recall the precise details – the dream having faded from memory long ago – but it went something like this: a director escapes on a writing retreat to a remote cabin. There, she meets the young couple she’ll be staying with, and her presence triggers a heated evening full of jealousy, resentment, and a forestdwelling beast.

That dream would eventually become Black Bear, Levine’s surreal domestic thriller – but only the first part. The remainder of the film takes place on an indie movie set where we see the same story repeated as the plot of the film being made. Adding another layer of intrigue is the fact that the cast switch roles in each chapter. Aubrey Plaza initially plays the director, while Christopher Abbott and Sarah Gadon portray the cabin’s residents. In the second half, Plaza is the lead actress in a film directed by her husband (Abbott).

On the final day of production, she suspects an affair between him and her co-star (Gadon).

Lawrence Michael Levine “I knew I wanted to tell the story in two parts, and the initial conceit going into the screenwriting process was that I would tell the same story twice,” Levine explains. “In the first half, Aubrey’s character would be the homewrecker, and then in the other chapter, she would have her home wrecked.”

Laying Black Bear out in simple terms like that suggests it’s easy to navigate, but the relationship between its disparate halves is more ambiguous, as the divide between reality and fiction becomes indecipherable. Levine explains that he “made the movie open to as many interpretations as possible deliberately”. He says: “I removed most of the clues that would give any sort of concrete ability to analyse the movie.”

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Levine compares the internet’s sleuthing to interpreting his own subconscious. “You wake up, you record your dream and you think to yourself, ‘Well, maybe this is my fear of impotence or maybe I’m feeling held back in my relationship’.

I wanted the movie to have that same kind of effect on an audience where they could be emotionally impacted.”

If you were to parse some meaning from Black Bear, it would be that inviting partnership into your work is a volatile endeavour that can often result in great art. Whether that’s right or wrong is not what Levine is trying to answer. “Art in principle is really important, and sometimes, individuals engaged with it are forced to make sacrifices for it. Sometimes, the line becomes very blurry between what you’re doing for your art and what’s going on in your personal relationships. Are you creating drama in your life so you have something to write about?”

Before I leave, I tell him about a line from the film I loved. It’s potentially too explicit to print here, but it’s a deliciously nasty insult thrown by Gadon during an argument. (You’ll know it when you hear it.) I ask him where it came from. “I think my wife and I were arguing,” he recalls. “I remember her saying that.” But when he told her about the line, he says, she denied ever saying it. Clearly, the lines are just as blurred in this reality too.

Black Bear has its UK premiere at Glasgow Film Festival, screening 27 Feb-2 Mar

February 2021 – Feature

“Art in principle is really important, and sometimes, individuals engaged with it are forced to make sacrifices for it”

Black Bear astonishes in part because of its engrossing mystery – the kind that lodges itself into your brain and stays for hours, if not days afterwards – but also in Plaza’s extraordinary performance. Though she’s known for her biting comedy, Black Bear proves that she’s more than just the master of deadpan.

For Levine, Plaza was the only person he had in mind. The two had acted together in Joe Swanberg’s Netflix comedy Easy, and she impressed him so much that he wrote the lead role specifically for her. “She seemed really hardworking and like she wanted to be challenged as an actor,” he says of Plaza. “The roles that she was getting were in her comfort zone. She was, in a way, typecast.”

In Black Bear, Plaza does indeed shed all traces of April Ludgate. She transforms from churlish filmmaker to embittered wife, rage fuelled by the bottle in her hand. In its rawest moments, Black Bear is reminiscent of a John Cassavetes film, with Plaza its Gena Rowlands.

For an indie film, the usual promotional cycle involves touring festivals across the globe and attending endless Q&As. Save the film’s Sundance premiere last January, the pandemic, unfortunately, eliminated the chance for Levine to meet any moviegoers. But to his delight, he discovered that post-movie discussions have migrated from the cinema to Reddit, where users have been fervently debating the film’s meaning. One person suggests the story might be told backwards, another argues there’s actually a third part we’re all missing, and one theory posits reincarnation is involved.

Film

THE SKINNY

Hot Tickets From a Romanian tale of obsession to a Danish revenge thriller via an Iranian moral tale and a doc about a huge Norwegian pig, there’s something for everyone in Glasgow Film Festival’s online programme Words: Jamie Dunn

February 2021 – Feature

Apples Dir. Christos Nikou The Greek “weird wave” that brought us films like Dogtooth and Chevalier shows no sign of dissipating with Christos Nikou’s mordant black comedy.

Its premise couldn’t be more relevant: it concerns a pandemic sweeping Athens. In this case, it sees a mysterious amnesia come over those who are infected. 28 Feb-3 Mar City Hall Dir. Frederick Wiseman It increasingly feels impossible to have faith in elected officials, but word is this latest doc from non-fiction master Frederick Wiseman puts one local authority in a rare hopeful light. A four-hour epic, it takes us inside Boston’s City Hall, with Wiseman turning the simple day-to-day of the city’s administration and its various civic gatherings and rituals into an engrossing celebration of democracy. 5-8 Mar Gunda Dir. Viktor Kossakovsky If cutesy animal docs are your hog heaven, maybe look away from Gunda, Viktor Kossakovsky’s intimate look at the lives of a massive Norwegian pig and her newly born piglet litter. Free of any of the treacly sentimentality associated with the genre, sans anthropomorphising narration, and shot in chilly monochrome, it’s a bracing insight into life on a farm in all its beauty and brutality.

7-10 Mar Sweetheart Dir. Marley Morrison We’re taking a punt on this one given that GFF co-director Allan Hunter wouldn’t stop bigging it up during the festival’s press launch. It’s one of those coming-of-age love stories that the French do so well – the ones that take place over that one balmy

summer holiday where romance blossomed and everything changed forever. Only this is the British version and follows a socially awkward 17-year-old on a family trip to a Dorset caravan park where she meets the girl of her dreams. 3-6 Mar Poppy Field Dir. Eugen Jebeleanu The pressure of maintaining a dual identity is at the heart of this gripping debut from Romanian filmmaker Eugen Jebeleanu. We follow a macho police officer in Bucharest, who’s gay, with a sweet French boyfriend, but keeps his love life secret from his knuckle-dragging colleagues. That’s all gonna come to a head though when he’s called to break up a homophobic protest at a queer film screening. 27 Feb-2 Mar Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time Dir. Lili Horvát We’re told to expect shades of Alfred Hitchcock and Krzysztof Kieślowski in this twisty tale of obsession from rising Hungarian director Lili Horvát. A brain surgeon falls in love with a man and drops her glittering career in America to follow him across the Atlantic to begin their fairytale romance back home in Budapest. There’s only one problem: he has no clue who she is. 2-5 Mar Riders of Justice Dir. Anders Thomas Jensen It looks like the mighty Mads Mikkelsen might be reaching the Liam Neeson stage of his career as he returns to Denmark for this revenge drama, playing an ex-military man out to get answers after his wife dies in a suspicious train accident. Expect a few more laughs than Taken, though, as this is from genre-bending filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen, who likes to mix absurdist comedy with his thrills.

26 Feb-1 Mar — 30 —

There is No Evil Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof Winner of the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlinale, this is a poetic moral tale concerned with the brutality of capital punishment in Iran. Split into four sections, the subject is tackled from multiple perspectives, exploring the corroding turmoil for those tasked with performing this state-sanctioned murder. Director Mohammad Rasoulof made the film despite being sentenced to a year in prison for his last effort criticising the Iranian government. 7-10 Mar Limbo Dir. Ben Sharrock Limbo, a deadpan tragicomedy about a Syrian refugee waiting for his asylum claim to be processed on a wind-lashed Scottish island, is the pick of the homegrown talent. After only two features, director Ben Sharrock has settled on a startling aesthetic built on precise framing and absurdist gags. Limbo’s blend of humour and humanism is the perfect tonic for these troubled times. 3-6 Mar Gagarine Dir. Fanny Liatard, Jérémy Trouilh We love the look of this dreamy French drama, where gritty naturalism collides with magic realism. It concerns a stargazing teen (Yuri) and a Paris apartment block (Gagarine), which both take their name from the great Soviet cosmonaut. When the flats are due to be demolished, Yuri sets about fixing up the dilapidated building, but his imagination soon gets the better of him and he starts transforming it into a bricks-and-mortar spaceship. 4-7 Mar

Glasgow Film Festival runs online 24 Feb-7 Mar glasgowfilm.org

THE SKINNY

Takin’ Care of Business We speak to two members of the Glasgow Creative Accelerator, a new innovative programme that aims to help Glasgow creatives lay down more solid foundations for their businesses

Andy Campbell “It’s not just about saying to creatives, ‘Here’s a business model canvas, go off and grow your business’,” she tells me over Zoom. “It’s about giving them tools they will need, introducing them to buyers, and a bit of business-speak translation.

It also requires an empathetic mind to help understand the creative individual as opposed to just understanding their business.”

A significant part of Martin’s job is giving creatives the confidence to expand on the skills they already use day-to-day in their practice. “I’m usually working with individual artists and makers who are top-notch at the thing that they do. But

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Lynne Martin & Andy Campbell

level,” says Martin, “it helps them have conversations that they may never have had out loud. You know, ‘Why do you sell these earrings for £75 as opposed to £175?’ It shakes them up, it irritates them, and ultimately it helps them come to more healthy conclusions about their business.”

Now more than ever may be a good time for this kind of self-reflection. COVID has stopped everyone in their tracks, the creative sector and the commercial sector alike, and taught us – if nothing else – how important the creative arts are for our health and wellbeing. Whether you’re a creative at the start of your career or have been in the game for years, the ability to adapt, to refocus and to roll with the punches will be vital in the coming months and years.

Campbell is certainly hopeful for the future of our creatives post-pandemic: “When you look at any historical period when there is an emergence from any challenge – whether that be a war, famine, poverty – the renaissance is always driven by the creative sector. We want to see that for Scotland; we want to see that for Glasgow.”

To learn more about Elevator’s Glasgow Creative Accelerator and to register your interest in taking part, head to elevatoruk.com/accelerators/glasgow-creative-accelerator

February 2021 – Feature

“When you look at any historical period when there is an emergence from any challenge, the renaissance is always driven by the creative sector”

they think they can’t think in an entrepreneurial way, when actually the curiosity and growth mindset they bring to their practice can be applied to some really simple tools that will help them further their business.”

We’re joined on the call by Andy Campbell, Elevator's Commercial Director, who lays out the differences he sees between creative and noncreative businesses. “Non-creatives tend to solve a very clear problem,” he explains. “You know, there’s something missing from the marketplace, a technology that we need to invent or whatever.” Creatives, by contrast, aren’t necessarily trying to fill a consumer gap. “Creatives are in the business of self-expression, but they’re still catering to the vital human needs of others.”

Creatives often don’t see their work in terms of this human need, however, because their main focus is on producing. “They get very caught up in the creation of the thing,” says Campbell, “but what they tend to forget is, what is the commercialisation opportunity?”

For many creative people, discussions of commercialisation may bring them out in hives.

“Even using the term ‘product’ to describe what they’re producing can be very alienating to creatives,” notes Campbell. But an artist cannot live by self-expression alone. One of the key roles of the Glasgow Creative Accelerator will be helping creatives understand their worth.

“People often undervalue what creative people do,” says Campbell. “You hear it all the time, you know: ‘I need a bit of artwork done.

Surely that can’t be that complicated. I’m not going to pay for it.’ But the reality is that artwork takes time and skill to create and people need to value that.”

One way that the Glasgow Creative Accelerator will get artists to see their work in a new light is by presenting their creative businesses to a terrifying panel of ‘agitators’. Martin explains: “it’s about getting people in from lots of different business backgrounds to speak to our creatives and get them to basically justify their marketing strategies.” The conversations are often awkward, but they allow the creatives to see their businesses through fresh eyes. “At a very basic

Photo: Andy Buchanan

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cotland does not want for creative excellence. A cursory glance at any issue of The Skinny will tell you that. This doesn’t mean it’s easy being a creative in Scotland.

Earning a living from your art can often be an uphill struggle and as we’ve seen since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, creatives often fall through the cracks in government support.

Creatives based in Glasgow have some help on the horizon, however, in the form of the Glasgow Creative Accelerator. The programme is run by Elevator, the business support agency dedicated to helping Scottish entrepreneurs make the most of their skills through tailored business advice. Its Creative Accelerator does something similar for creative entrepreneurs.

Lynne Martin, the manager of the project, knows a thing or two about working with creatives.

When there’s not a pandemic on, you’ll find her helping to shake off the shortbread tin image of Scottish folk song and poetry at the Edinburgh Fringe. She describes her role at Elevator as “enterprise education for creators.”

Art

Words: Jamie Dunn

January 2021 – Feature

Film

THE SKINNY

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THE SKINNY

Horrible History Matthew Rankin’s wildly imaginative and visually inventive debut feature, The Twentieth Century, is a bizarro reimagining of the formative years of Canada’s most celebrated prime minister. We dive in Interview: Jamie Dunn FIlm

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“I did think of the film as a biopic but one which is sort of penetrating the subconscious record of the past” Matthew Rankin King was a keen diarist. Rankin has taken those journal entries and liberally read between the lines. “Everything in the film has some link to something that really happened to him, some relationship that was really happening, some sort of pressure in his life, but it’s sort of transmogrified through this Freudian prism,” he explains. “So I did

think of the film as a biopic but one which is sort of penetrating the subconscious record of the past.”

The warped nature of The Twentieth Century’s narrative is mirrored in the wild artifice of its aesthetic.

Shot on grainy 16mm with old-school colour tinting, it looks like it was filmed in King’s own lifetime. Expressionistic sets evoking Victorian workhouses, Art Deco palaces and Canada’s dramatic landscapes are conjured up from lo-fi matte painted backdrops, Lotte Reiniger-esque animations and crude MDF cutouts that look like they’d tumble over if a cast member were to fart.

On one level, Rankin’s stylised design was a way to make a virtue out of his threadbare budget.

“I knew that if I tried to do some sort of glossy Spielbergian, traditional, conventional period piece, my budget would just evaporate within a couple of minutes. So I knew that if I just did the opposite of that, if I embraced artifice, made this world very fake, worked in more of a theatrical tradition, then my budget would go further.”

On a deeper level, however, the art department’s minimalist sets reflect King’s bankrupt morals and shallow politics. For Rankin, it also represents the artificiality of nationhood itself. “I wanted the viewer to have this encounter of Canada as an artificial space,” he explains. “It’s a structure that has been grafted upon the natural landscape; it’s a fantasy that has been invented.

So essentially it’s a film about the empty triumph of nation-building.”

Rankin is hardly the first filmmaker to play fast and loose with the truth when examining historical events. Even straight-laced biopics have to twist and distort real life to fit a narrative.

Rankin studied history at university, so he knows more than most that the chronicling of facts, be it an academic treatise or a glossy Hollywood feature, involves some fudging and fictionalisation.

“I remember one of my professors at — 33 —

university,” recalls Rankin, “she devoted a whole lecture to ranting about the beauty of Leonardo DiCaprio’s teeth in Titanic. She was like, ‘there’s just no way that someone in 1912 who was poor would have such a beautiful smile. His teeth would be rotting and falling out of his head.’ Maybe James Cameron was aware of that, maybe he wasn’t, but some kind of translation took place. He went, ‘Okay, well maybe my romance plot isn’t gonna work because his teeth are rotting.’ So we cheat, there are embellishments.”

What would that pedantic lecturer make of The Twentieth Century?

“My sense is that she, and other historians, would be much more comfortable with a film like mine, which makes no pretence of being credible.

No one is going to leave the film thinking, ‘Ah, well, that’s what happened.’”

What will they be thinking? “People are going to be leaving more likely thinking, ‘Well, what part of that is true, and what part of it is false?’” smiles Rankin. “And that’s actually a good tension for a viewer to have when they watch a historical film.”

We suspect Rankin probably knows that the actual first question people will ask themselves when they finish watching The Twentieth Century is, “WTF?” Questions of historical verisimilitude might come later.

The Twentieth Century is available on MUBI from 15 Feb

February 2021 – Feature

et in 1899, Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century tells the story of the early political machinations of a young, uptight and ambitious William Lyon Mackenzie King, who would go on to become Canada’s longest-serving prime minister. He held the post for 21 years over three terms, which included leading the country through the Second World War. He’s on the $50 bill. He’s basically the Canadian Churchill.

This is no Darkest Hour or Young Winston, however, but you’ll quickly work that out for yourself. Maybe you’ll be clued-in when, in lieu of a general election, King takes part in a contest of Canadian manhood to decide if he’s qualified to become PM – the challenges include log sniffing, butter churning and baby seal clubbing. Or maybe it’ll be the subplot about King’s erotic fixation with putrid footwear that tells you this isn’t your standard-issue biopic. Or maybe it’s just the massive ejaculating cactus that manifests as a physical representation of King’s repressed horniness that gives it away.

The Twentieth Century may be a work of gonzo surrealism that grows more feverishly demented with every passing second of its 90-minute runtime, but this doesn’t mean Rankin’s film is completely devoid of historical elements.

Speaking to the 40-year-old Winnipegian at last year’s Glasgow Film Festival, he tells us to think of The Twentieth Century as a new sub-genre: a “biographical nightmare”.

THE SKINNY

Blood Lines Shanghai-based producer Laughing Ears takes a tale from Norse mythology as the inspiration for her second album, Blood. She tells us exactly why that one particular story resonated with her and how it influenced the album

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he ways in which we process grief can often take unexpected turns. For Shanghai-based producer Li Jingping, aka Laughing Ears, it was the expansive and very strange world of Norse mythology she turned to for answers following the death of her uncle last year.

On her second album, Blood, she explores the theme of blood ties in relation to the character of Fenrir, a giant wolf born to the demoniac god Loki, who is bound in chains from birth due to fears of his strength and inherited evil from his father. An image of Fenrir is interpreted on the artwork for Blood, created

by Brooklyn-based artist Nic Symbios, where he can be seen in all his menacing glory under the light of a full moon; all demon-eyed, fangsbared, and chained to a rock.

Li draws comparisons between the story of the binding of Fenrir and her uncle’s lifelong battle with alcohol addiction, which eventually resulted in her family committing him to a psychiatric hospital where he died by suicide. “I relate Fenrir to my uncle because they were both in the same situation in some way,” she says.

“Fenrir and his family have always been enemies of the Protoss [an ancient race who consider themselves to be the firstborn race of the universe]. The Protoss is like the attitude and tolerance limitation of society towards marginalised people like my uncle.

“It was not my family’s intention to lock my uncle in a psychiatric hospital. It was just that he could not live on his own and would still drink and cause trouble, so he was forced to enter the hospital,” she continues.

“I don’t want to complain or criticise anything about society or others. I just want to express that those who are imperfect and incomplete are also pure, and will always be loved and treasured.”

A video game sound designer by day, Li’s interest in these sorts of otherworldly tales makes a lot of sense, as does the decision to release Blood on experimental, Mexico City-based record label Infinite Machine. The otherworldly influence, naturally, extends across the sound of the album, with the fragmented beats and soundscapes very much in keeping with the stylings of the label’s previous releases from the likes of Bwana, Ziúr and Liar.

There’s a harshness and a coldness to many of the album’s tracks, particularly on title track Blood and the pounding Murderous Means, but the album’s punk leanings can be heard in full effect on the magnificently dark Buona Fortuna, which sounds like it could be an offcut from a Death Grips release.

“[With the] sound design, I like to see what happens if I play with all the knobs at once, from all the oscillators to the effects ratios, and I try not to think in a musical way,” says Li. Made between her home and work studio over the course of last year, the album started to take shape while the COVID-19 pandemic was unfolding across the world, “both before and after [China’s lockdown],” she says. While here in the UK we continue to live in a world of COVID-19 limbo, back in yet another nationwide lockdown, over in Shanghai and across China some sort of normality has returned.

Photo: Neocha

February 2021 – Feature

Clubs

Interview: Nadia Younes

Clubs have been allowed to reopen across China but with travel bans still in place the line-ups have become more localised, with the usual big-name international bookings unable to tour around the world. “The situation in Shanghai is pretty good right now,” says Li. “The government banned big events like music festivals... [but] most of the clubs in China are back open and because there are no bookings of international DJs and artists, local DJs are very active. I went to clubs not only in Shanghai but also in Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Beijing.”

A brief escape from reality can sometimes be all it takes to help us make sense of our own, and with plenty of time to escape during lockdown, by making Blood Li was able to come to terms with her uncle’s death while honouring his life at the same time.

Blood is released on 26 Feb via Infinite Machine Follow Laughing Ears on Instagram @laughing_ears

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THE SKINNY

Death Becomes Her In a world where mortality is at the forefront of many people’s minds, Salena Godden introduces her debut novel: the collected memoir of Mrs Death herself, collated by a troubled young poet Interview: Heather McDaid

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“Even though it’s got death in the title, it’s a book about living life”

Mrs Death Misses Death is out now via Canongate canongate.co.uk

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February 2021 – Feature

alena Godden was walking through Whitechapel when she heard the voice of her narrator, crystal clear, for the first time: “I know a lot of dead people now.”

It was from that line that the title character of Mrs Death Misses Death gradually revealed herself, her collected memoir coming to life. Best known as an acclaimed poet and performer, Godden’s debut novel began from a place of mourning.

Surrounded by death both in her own life and in the world at large – with legends like Bowie and Prince then recently gone – she wanted to make sense of it, to rationalise.

Death herself is a black working-class woman – “no human more invisible, more easily talked over, ignored, betrayed, easy to walk past” – shapeshifting into many forms to work unseen. “This idea of how she is, for a better word, so good at her job, so successful at the job, is possibly because we’re not looking that way,” Godden explains.

“From there, her narration and how she spoke started to form, imagining how she might write letters or diaries or songs or poems, what she might eat, or how she might appear, as Billie Holiday, as Nina Simone, as well as the girl behind the counter selling your tobacco, or the woman in the hospital mopping the floor in the cancer ward. Kind of invisible as well as prominent – powerful.”

Mrs Death’s memoir is collated by Wolf Willeford, a young poet living in the attic rooms of the Forest Tavern in East London.

The two first met when Wolf was a child, having lost their mother in a fire, and are a perfect balance to tell this tale. “Wolf’s very magical,” Godden notes. “Wolf in a way is close to death – Wolf is troubled and perhaps suicidal, and that to me felt the perfect friend to death, that kind of young, troubled, lonely lost soul who’s known a lot of tragedy.”

Acquiring an antique desk – a gregarious character in its own right that Salena pictures as having the voice of RuPaul (“I could have been a piano!”) – becomes a conduit for the duo’s journey, where they navigate death across the eras, sharing tales and memories. Timelessness is captured through a mix of prose

Books

Photo: Olivia Rutherford

and poetry – laments and lullabies, prayers, snatches of memory sitting between the veil of dream and real life.

The story sits in a dreamlike state, flowing prose interrupted by transmissions of people’s last thoughts.

Death can be a tricky subject.

Though inevitable, the language isn’t always there to engage with it beyond a dreaded looming darkness. “There’s a whole thing that if you speak of it that it comes, or death comes in threes; there’s so much stuff we have, ritual and superstition. I think Mrs Death is quite a character. She’s seen it all, she’s this powerful black woman, probably the most feared woman ever.

Fearing death has got to be right up there, right?”

A story of voice and memory, both profound and hilarious in one breath, there’s a need to share Mrs Death’s tale – she had, after all, had enough, and wanted to unburden herself. At one point, we read that writing a book can hurt, but not writing one can hurt even more, a notion that, even in a story packed with lessons on life and love and joy and death, stands out. “It’s the idea of when you’re not speaking your truth, and not saying something you really want to say,” she explains. “When you keep putting something off, you berate yourself and put yourself down for not getting something finished. It’s easy to have a really good idea, it’s difficult to finish something, isn’t it?

So to pursue it, and to persist in finishing it, hurt, but it hurt a hell of a lot more giving up.”

In a time where death is at the forefront, it’s rare to find a book that so thoroughly reminds us about the joys of life, the fragments of memories that last a lifetime, rooting out what really matters. “Even though it’s got death in the title, it’s a book about life – it’s about living life,” says Godden. “It’s about telling people you love them before it’s too late. It’s not really about death, which death often isn’t. So much of this book is about facing your fear, and how empowering it is to see fear for what it is, to see doubt, and to find courage, to find hope.

“I moved to London when I was 19 to be a writer; this summer I will turn 49 – that’s a really long time to wait to get a novel published, that’s a hell of a lot of picking myself up and pushing myself along, and it hurt more to give up, and to let doubt and fear win than to keep going, like a cross country runner, you’ve just got to keep going even though everything hurts.”

January 2021 – Feature

Film

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— 36 —

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Comedy

Wrecking Ralph The rise and fall of a Valentine’s Day hero, and the sad demise of a classic TV comedy – we look at the downfall of The Simpsons and Ralph Wiggum Words: Ben Venables

P

oor Ralph Wiggum. He sits at the back of the class munching on crayons. His teacher has no time for him. Miss Hoover is as blunt as the scissors Ralph isn’t allowed to use: “The children are right to laugh at you Ralph.”

Broadcast 28 years ago, The Simpsons’ I Love Lisa (1993) remains a peerless episode of comedy.

The story pairs Lisa Simpson – gifted, conscientious, kind – with Ralph, floundering in his absent-mind.

But this is no opposites attract rom-com.

This is The Simpsons in bloom. Irreverent and subversive, the show’s take on Valentine’s is instead about unrequited love. It’s an episode that reaches a crescendo as level-headed Lisa explodes at her unwanted admirer while they’re sat in the audience at Krusty the Clown’s anniversary show. And Ralph, navigating emotions he doesn’t understand, has his heart ripped in half, live on prime-time TV. The story, animation and voice acting con-

— 37 —

The Simpsons seasons 1-31 are available to stream on Disney Plus; select episodes stream on All4

February 2021 – Feature

spire to make this one of the most hysterical sequences in sitcom. The absurd tragedy of the moment – Ralph’s hurt and humiliation – only elevates him from oblivious dunce to an archetypal figure. Have you ever liked someone who didn’t like you back? We’re all Ralph Wiggum.

And Ralph Wiggum is someone to be. He spends the rest of I Love Lisa channeling his hurt into performance in the school play. Later he shows the rare maturity to respect and value the friendship of someone who didn’t reciprocate his feelings. How many guys can do that? Unrequited love doesn’t have to be so hard.

Ralph’s appeal as a character soared after

– they always come out.” Other lines do capture something of Ralph: “Do alligators alligate?” Nice.

But this wordplay is more of a literary device than a joke.

More troubling is an obsession with Ralph’s toilet training. The examples are too many, too lame, to recount. But it gets uncomfortable: “I was so a-scared, sour juice came out of my front tail.” Grim.

This infantilised version of Ralph invites us to laugh for all the wrong reasons. His implied learning disabilities become a cruel punchline. It’s not that comedy can’t be cruel – Ralph’s public heartbreak in I Love Lisa elicits the kind of laughter that makes your body shake. But the nuance The Simpsons has lost is that we didn’t used to laugh at Ralph Wiggum. He wasn’t our target. What was special about Ralph was that he helpled us laugh at ourselves.

Image: Disney+

“The Simpsons has over 20 years’ worth of problems to debate – an endless autopsy on a patient who isn’t dead”

this breakthrough episode. His innocence and befuddled nature gave him some of the most memorable lines during The Simpsons’ heyday: “Me fail English? That’s unpossible.”

He became something like a mascot. In The Simpsons Movie (2007), Ralph is the first character on screen, emerging from the 20th-Century Fox logo before the feature starts. Promoting the film at the San Diego Comic Con, the show’s creator Matt Groening named Ralph as his favourite character.

But while The Simpsons is the most-watched show on Disney Plus, it remains haunted by its former genius. The sitcom’s evergreen and global reach means it’s lumbered on and on. The inevitable downturn in quality has lasted two decades longer than its finest years.

Theories abound about why the best comedy on television went bad. Now in its 32nd season, The Simpsons has over 20 years’ worth of problems to debate – an endless autopsy on a patient who isn’t dead. From Homer’s personality changes to technical gaffes on streaming platforms, it’s an intimidating discussion to enter if you don’t know your ‘Jerkass’ from your aspect ratio.

Some of The Simpsons’ flaws stem from being a long-running show for the longest time, running out of plausible stories and ideas for its characters.

Sitcoms rely on stories starting anew from one episode to the next. It’s why Bart Simpson has been ten since 1989, why Lisa can’t keep a new friend, why Marge Simpson endures her reckless and impulsive husband, Homer. Over time, this stasis leaves fans and writers in perpetual frustration. Part of us wants the wisdom Homer gains one week to be permanent; another knows permanent wisdom would make Homer a snooze.

With our favourite characters unable to grow they instead regress into caricature. This is what has become of our Valentine’s hero Ralph Wiggum. In addition, there’s a lot of anaemic jokes that no-one seems to have thought through or made funny.

Ralph’s role is usually restricted to comic relief, and as time goes on his one-liners become less integral to his character. Sometimes he sounds more like Forrest Gump: “Lies are like stars

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Make BAME History Mandatory

February 2021 — Feature

L

ike so many people, when I saw the Black Lives Matter movement resurge in 2020 I was moved but, as time went on, I saw the vicious cycle of history repeat itself: an incident occurs, we protest and then we move on, like nothing happened and the world remains unchanged. The protests were commendable but, when a protest ends, everything goes back to normal and everyone goes back to their lives, forgetting why we were on the streets. We’ve seen this happen countless times and, however veracious our chants, last summer it looked like the same was going to happen. But this time I couldn’t stand back and just let the cycle repeat itself.

This is why in June of last year, I started a parliamentary campaign, the Compulsory education of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic history in Scottish schools. It calls on the Scottish Government to embed underrepresented Black, Asian and minority ethnic history into the Scottish educational curriculum; the parts of history that go ignored, consciously and unconsciously. To be honest, I was anxious to see if it would gain any traction, scared that nobody would care and nobody would want to listen. Gladly, I was wrong.

Far from it actually, as soon over 3000 people had signed the petition. Over 3000 people cared. Over 3000 people wanted to listen. But the question still looms at the back of my mind: for how long?

“Whenever the opportunity arises for us to raise our voices, we must shout, louder than we ever have before – and shouting is what I intend to do” This may just be another petition, one of many that circulated in the summer calling for racial equality, but, in the bigger picture, this is a stepping stone: this could be the beginning of the end of racism. Or at least I hope so. History tells us what has gone before us. In the case of Black

history, it tells us not only the story of slavery, but of a stolen generation and the consequential underdevelopment of Africa. These have cumulatively led us to the notion that Africa and its peoples are somehow inferior, while the western world remains superior.

We can see how history provides us with a context of why racism has been reinforced and upheld for centuries.

Fast-forward to the present day, and many people are oblivious to the history of racism or that they’ve been taught a whitewashed version of history. In 2020, a YouGov poll found that 32% of British people believe the British Empire is something to be proud of and it’s hard not to see a direct connection between education and attitude. Abolishing racism becomes an impossible task if you aren’t privy to racism’s context and history. It’s like fighting an invisible opponent who has had hundreds of years to prepare.

I think it would be naive of me to hope that the petition goes through parliament the first time around. But this is not just a petition, it is the beginning of the end of living with a whitewashed version of history, and the beginning of the end scares people. This petition asks that we address the racism embedded in our educational institutions, society, and even our children. Why else would politicians be resistant to change? So, we must be prepared for the countless setbacks.

I am expecting setbacks, and I am prepared to try again and again and again. Because, by then, I hope that many more people will see the bigger picture and join me in calling for racial equality in Scottish society. When we protested last summer, some politicians called our actions violent, so what is left but our voices and our words. I have found that words can go a long way, but how far do they actually go when those in power refuse to have a conversation? But I believe there will come a point when politicians will have no other choice but to listen – or be left behind. It’s one thing for a small group of close-minded friends to know that you are attempting to keep racism alive and — 38 —

Artist: Joke Amusan

Intersections

During the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, Tobe Amamize was inspired to petition the Scottish government to incorporate Black, Asian and minority ethnic history in school curriculums. Here’s why

thriving, but another thing to have your whole country know it too.

But it’s not all doom and gloom as our recent efforts towards a better, more educated Scotland demonstrate. In 2018, Scotland became one of the first countries to include LGBTI education in schools, a step that is a beacon of hope. It’s a reminder that there is a future for a more inclusive education for generations to come.

The optimist in me can’t help but imagine what’s next, what comes after education. My ambitious answer is reparations and making amends for Scotland’s role in the history of slavery so that the world can truly begin to heal. What I do know is that people are still listening and whenever the opportunity arises for us to raise our voices, we must shout, louder than we ever have before – and shouting is what I intend to do.

For more information about the petition, visit parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/BAMEHistory

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Eat, Drink and Rejoice Lockdown and restaurants closing has devastated and isolated diaspora communities. We explore how food Instagram accounts have been keeping communities connected, celebrating heritage and fighting racism Intersections

Words: Katie Goh Illustration: Eunjoo Lee

I

t’s 3am and my phone is an inch away from my nose. I’m inspecting an old Instagram post from a year ago. It’s a photo of bean sprouts: stout, fat, translucent bean sprouts, piled on top of each other, mountainous and glistening with soy sauce. I can still taste them – so fresh, so crunchy, so good. The photo was taken in Ipoh, bean sprout capital of the world.

When I look at the picture, I remember my aunt who brought me to eat them. I remember the plastic chopsticks I clutched, the cramped restaurant we sat in, the street we walked down afterwards, the way people in Ipoh talk about bean sprouts, the fact that I won’t be able to eat them again for a long, long time.

I miss those bean sprouts. I think about them every week.

I refresh Instagram and start scrolling. I’ve followed so many food Instagram accounts since the beginning of lockdown that my feed is 50/50 food and selfies. Most of the accounts post photos of Chinese, Malaysian or Singaporean food – food that is familiar to me, that I’ve eaten all my life, or street food that I miss nearly as much as my family.

I scroll through photos of dim sum, crispy pork belly, chilli crab and laksa noodles and read the comments: Dumpling swoon!

OH MY GOD YUMMMM omg u made that ?? can u share the recipe?

I miss kl so much

— 39 —

February 2021 — Feature

A hunger, much deeper than a craving for bean sprouts, gnaws inside me.

Lockdown has made us all solitary creatures. Dinner parties, work lunches and the joy of solo eating while surrounded by strangers have all disappeared. Coming together over food, an act that feels quintessentially human, is just one more victim of the pandemic. But while we all miss sharing plates, for immigrant communities in particular, not being able to come together over food has been especially isolating.

For diaspora, food is a bridge, crossing oceans and continents to maintain a connection to the motherland. A bite of a scalding soup dumpling, the right brand of chilli sauce or a tiny pomelo can become a portal to the past and a comfort in the bitter, Scottish winter. But food can also be a means of resistance. In predominantly white cities, a Chinatown, a Nigerian restaurant or an Indian buffet can be a refuge, a safe space for intergenerational communities to come together to celebrate their heritage and culture.

Steve McQueen’s recent film Mangrove is a striking dramatisation of this role

food plays in diaspora communities, focusing on the historic Notting Hill Carribean restaurant that served as a vital hub for Black activists in the late 60s and early 70s.

Food has always been political, used to both galvanise and suppress communities. Recently, MasterChef: The Professionals contestant, Philli Armitage-Mattin, was criticised when she, a selfproclaimed ‘Asian specialist’, referred to street food as “dirty”. Armitage-Mattin has since apologised, but it’s this rhetoric, far too common in the West, that normalises racism around food. Every Asian kid growing up somewhere predominately white has experienced this racism. The food in your lunchbox is “smelly”, “weird”, “disgusting” – in retrospect, a deeply ironic racism as it tends to come from a classmate who has the remains of an egg-mayonnaise sandwich and Wotsits stuck in their teeth.

Chinese food in the West has always suffered from being othered but as COVID-19 numbers reached epidemic levels at the start of 2020, Chinese restaurants started to be avoided by many in the West, as the media and politicians – including the then-president of the United States – correlated China with COVID. Racist hate attacks on East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) people quadrupled in the UK during the first lockdown, vilified as the faces of the virus.

As racism soared, food became a comfort and way of resistance for many ESEA people. After Armitage-Mattin’s “dirty food” comment, people started posting photos of their favourite Asian meals on social media. Stacked bamboo baskets of bouncy baozi, shiny, yellow durian and thick udon were celebrated, unapologetically, in a joyous defiance of racist narratives around food.

Tapping through these photos on Instagram is the closest I’ve felt to communal eating during lockdown. Strangers coming together over a shared love of a regional dish, suggesting where to get the best takeaway ramen and how to get the crisp of a scallion pancake just right feels close to the safe space offered by a community’s favourite restaurant.

As I eat lunch while scrolling through Instagram, double-tapping the neverending stream of char kway teow and roti canai and bean sprouts, I feel connected, not only to my own family half a world away but also to my community of ESEA people closer to home. I slurp my noodles a little louder.

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February 2021 — Review

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THE SKINNY

isten to: Supposedly, We Were L Nightmares, Ritchie Sacramento, Midnight Flit

Listen to: Phase I

Listen to: focus, push

Julien Baker Little Oblivions Matador, 26 Feb rrrrr isten to: Heatwave, Crying Wolf, L Ringside

— 41 —

“Why am I like this?” Those in the habit of reverting to their worst traits at their lowest moments will recognise this question of introspection. Julien Baker asks this across her third album Little Oblivions, a record of often intense, sometimes perilously dark, self-reflection. That’s not new for Baker. Here she’s even more vivid and articulate in her evocation of the traumas of mental illness, addiction and abuse. But this time Baker has the support of a full band sound and an expansiveness that she has so far held back in her solo material.

The sonic adventurousness fits, especially as more bombastic compositions match indulgent imagery like on Heatwave: ‘I’ll wrap Orion’s belt around my neck and kick the chair out’, and her most straightforward pop songs carry the lyrical immediacy that comes from lines like ‘Blacked out on a weekday… / Knocked out on a weekend’ (Hardline). The textures and styles may be different, but Baker’s voice and words remain the star.

In contrast with Baker’s past records, Little Oblivions is messy and loud, and isn’t preoccupied with the end point of the redemptive road to recovery, but with the ragged journey along it. [Tony Inglis]

February 2021 — Review

Blanck Mass In Ferneaux Sacred Bones, 26 Feb rrrrr

While there’s no doubt that Benjamin John Power has nailed the intensity here, In Ferneaux offers a more reflective and hymnal take on his signature Blanck Mass sound.

The album remains an ambitious undertaking, broken into two gigantic tracks spanning 20 minutes each. The noise remains too – both tracks open with blasts of sound that jolt you awake. Still, there’s a loose and meditative approach here, and a more private significance for its creator. These tracks began as personal field recordings. Their origins centre the project as a journey alongside its creator.

The result is a texture-driven project that emphasises dark and light at a cosmic scale. Violent machinery, fire smoke and tribal rituals are all conjured in its heaviest moments, giving way to soft pads, open skies and stargazing. Its best moments are the dreamy, melody-driven passages that burst through, and give new weight to the cacophony around them.

The sound of In Ferneaux is impeccable, but it might be more impactful with clearer structure. Ideas disintegrate before developing, awkwardly blending into the next, leading to occasionally aimless moments. At its best, though, it’s a riveting and subtle edition to an already impressive discography. [Skye Butchard]

slowthai TYRON Method Records, 12 Feb rrrrr

slowthai’s career so far has been shrouded in controversy, but at last year’s NME Awards ceremony things turned sour when a joke between himself and Katherine Ryan spiralled out of control. In a matter of hours he went from being the people’s hero to the posterboy for misogyny in the music industry.

Following ‘the incident’, slowthai – real name Tyron Frampton – returned to his hometown of Northampton, gave up drinking, and made his second album, TYRON, from the basement of his mum’s house. TYRON is an expectedly more introspective body of work than his critically-acclaimed debut, Nothing Great About Britain.

The album is split into two halves, representing the two sides to slowthai. On the album’s first half the track titles are stylised in all caps, while in the second half they’re all lower case, and there’s a distinct shift between the two sides. The symbolism is glaringly obvious, but it emphasises the extremes of slowthai’s personality.

TYRON’s second half is undoubtedly more interesting, demonstrating a maturity to his lyrical ability. While it does feel like a forced attempt to put things right, on TYRON slowthai is allowed the time for self-reflection that cancel culture often denies.

[Nadia Younes]

Albums

Mogwai As the Love Continues Rock Action, 19 Feb rrrrr

Mogwai’s tenth studio album, As the Love Continues, is a continuation of their bombastic instrumental rock, adding enough new experiments to keep things interesting, but staying close enough to their well-hewn sound to ensure a cosy familiarity.

First single, Dry Fantasy, is curiously one of the gentlest cuts here, leaning more on the band’s space-rock inclinations, creating a textured, detailed soundscape without ever reaching the furious intensity of their classic songs. Fuck Off Money and Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever flirt with heavily manipulated vocals, while Ritchie Sacramento offers bittersweet, reflective snippets, lamenting those who’ve ‘disappeared in the sun’.

Midnight Flit manages to one-up the cinematic grandeur with contributions from Atticus Ross, while Pat Stains starts off as a palate-cleanser until Colin Stetson shows up with his massive saxophone, letting loose a bit of skronk to upset the delicate balance. Supposedly, We Were Nightmares is a real highlight late in the album, unfurling a glittering krautrock chug to swallow up its radiophonic samples before It’s What I Want To Do, Mum finishes with an eerie, echo-laden jam that could’ve been taken from any of their previous nine releases. [Lewis Wade]

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Music Now Local Music

We make an attempt at unpacking the overstuffed musical suitcase that is February’s new Scottish releases, featuring Randolph’s Leap, Lizzie Reid and more Words: Tallah Brash

F

or a short month, February is really packing in the releases, feeling akin to trying to fit a month’s worth of clothing into a suitcase when you’re only going away for a long weekend (if you can remember that sort of thing, of course, idk). We’re delighted, then, to be reintroducing our long-overdue album reviews this month, so you’ll find reviews for the new Mogwai and Blanck Mass records if you turn back a page, and online you can read our thoughts on Django Django’s latest effort, Glowing in the Dark. With the rest of this page we’ll do our absolute best to pack as much in the suitcase as possible, starting with Lizzie Reid.

We’ve mentioned Reid in these pages a fair bit since hearing Seamless last October, a hearton-sleeve account of a past relationship. Followup single Always Lovely was similarly emotive,

Photo: Greg Ryan

February 2021 — Review

Photo: Jason Riddell

with lyrics that cut deep, perfectly balanced with Reid’s sparse, considered guitar work. Her debut EP Cubicle is finally out this month (10 Feb) and is a real thing of beauty, feeling both complex and effortless in equal measure. We cannot recommend it enough.

In similar territory, Kim Grant, formerly of Tongue Trap, has gone solo, now performing under the moniker Raveloe (pronounced Rave-low) and is releasing her debut EP, Notes and Dreams, this month (12 Feb) via Glasgow indie label Olive Grove Records. Lead single Abalone, which we premiered at the end of last month, is moody and beautifully cinematic, carried by Grant’s stunning vocal, and the rest of the EP pleasingly follows suit.

Following his debut release – No Life – as cyber-cowboy A.R. Pinewood last year, the ever prolific singer-songwriter Adam Ross returns this month in his more human form as eight-piece Randolph’s Leap release Spirit Level (26 Feb) via London DIY label Fika Recordings.

Even though the album’s titular track references an unsettled spell when writing the album, this latest effort from Randolph’s Leap is likely to help your spirits level up as across its ten tracks it rarely lets up in energy, and is peppered throughout with Ross’s signature lyrical wit with lines like: ‘I like Big Momma’s House 2, but I prefer the novel.’

Catching us off guard this month, Raveloe is the transportative early bird // night owl (19 Feb) from Edinburgh folk duo Dowally. There’s just something so comfortingly familiar about this record, making us nostalgic for folk festivals we went to in Auchtermuchty as a child. Dark Clouds takes us to a hillside bothy in the Scottish Highlands, while the second half of Geese From the East has us longing for a night out at a bruise-inducing ceilidh, and Turkish Reverie makes us pine for island hopping on the west coast of Scotland.

On the same day, Scottish charity Vox Liminis release their latest collaborative Distant Voices EP which Randolph's Leap sees songwriters paired with people — 42 —

who have experienced different facets of the criminal justice system. Looking At Colours Again is instantly engaging as Donna Maciocia sings on opening track Rewind: ‘If I could put the cassette back in the machine / Rewind, record over, rewrite the scenes / Undo the stupid mistakes I made’. It’s an early highlight in a brilliant EP filled with moments of true honesty and vulnerability, not to mention excellent musical arrangements, which is to be expected as it also features contributions from Admiral Fallow’s Louis Abbott, Fiskur’s Ross Clark, Jo Mango and Martha Ffion.

Elsewhere, Glasgow hip-hop producer Steg G releases Live Today (25 Feb), featuring collaborations with Solareye, Empress, CCTV and Freestyle Master.

The following day, Nightshift, featuring members of Robert Sotelo and Spinning Coin, release Zöe, their superbly hypnotic new record.

January releases you may have missed...

Towards the end of January, artist, designer and musician Tommy Perman very quietly released Positive Interactions, a 20-track album inspired by and featuring happy sounds recorded and sent to him by friends all over the world, which includes everything from birdsong and dishwasher bleeps to pet sounds and xylophone as played by Jonnie Common’s young daughter on Tiny Golden Quacks, a track delightfully named by Common’s son.

Used as a form of therapy to help Perman get through a hard year, email him a happy thought (happy@positiveinteractions.space) and you can get in on the happiness too as you’ll receive a download of the album. “An album made from happy sounds in exchange for a happy message”; has there ever been anything more wholesome?

Elsewhere, Sulka released Take Care, his debut album on Lost Map Records; exploring trip-hop, future garage and electronica, Marcel Moliner released High Place Phenomenon, his debut EP as Nice Humans; dream-pop outfit Auld Spells released That’s the Way It Goes, a gleaming exploration of climate crisis; new electronic duo Gefahrgeist released their moody second single, Nukular, and MALKA’s latest morsel of poptimism can be found on Reach Out as she sings: ‘The light will always follow the dark’, making us feel just that little bit better as we eased out of January. theskinny.co.uk/music

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At Home Pretend it’s a City Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Fran Lebowitz

rrrrr

Pretend it’s a City

Streaming now on Netflix

The Mauritanian Director: Kevin Macdonald Starring: Tahar Rahim, Jodie Foster, Shailene Woodley, Benedict Cumberbatch

rrrrr

The Mauritanian splits its time between three threads: Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim) who languishes in Guantanamo Bay for years, without charge or trial; his new allies, defence attorney Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster) and her associate Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley); and military prosecutor Lt. Stuart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is tasked with bringing Slahi to trial, but finds more questions than answers when looking into this supposed terrorist mastermind.

In The Last King of Scotland, director Kevin Macdonald blended fact and fiction and gave us a pulpy, compelling film about the horrors enacted by Idi Amin. Here, he takes a leaf out of Paul Greengrass’ book and

The Mauritanian

frequently shoots in a loose shaky-cam fashion, and takes a much more sober, stately and staid approach. But where Greengrass can imbue quieter moments with the same sense of immediacy and tension as sequences of high bombast, here the film’s depressingly frequent chat-and-a coffee scenes are so ponderous and mild as to feel inert.

Fortunately, the film has an ace in the hole in the shape of Tahar Rahim, who has been stealing the show in everything he’s done since BAFTA winner A Prophet. Whenever he’s onscreen, the film finds its centre.

What Slahi goes through is horrifying, and although it’s been better detailed elsewhere (most notably in Zero Dark Thirty and The Report), the humanity Rahim brings to it is a fresh and much-needed perspective.

[Tom Charles]

At Home

You’ll likely quiver with envy while watching Pretend It’s a City, Martin Scorsese’s new series following author and raconteur Fran Lebowitz around New York. The bohemian downtown artist life that it depicts is all but obliterated now, in an age of wellness and constant surveillance and social media influencers – topics Lebowitz takes to with acerbic energy and fascinating aplomb.

Lebowitz traverses the trauma of being a girl in ‘50s America to the unmistakable truth of the #MeToo movement via the bohemian of the intellectual pantheon circles in which she ran – Warhol’s Factory, Charles Mingus, Duke Ellington’s dinner

parties – without breaking a sweat or losing her humour. She’s effortless.

Scorsese incorporates film clips into the doc, from Joseph Losey’s The Boy with Green Hair to Visconti’s The Leopard, using cinema as a way to contextualise life, and to enhance it, allowing us to see the past, and the world, through Fran/Scorsese’s eyes – through cinema. The result is a beautiful symphony to New York: the New York of West Side Story and Rear Window, of Taxi Driver and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, of the Velvet Underground and the New York Dolls. The kind of New York that perhaps only exists now in the feverish imagination.

In a time when the world is as unrecognisable as it ever has been, Pretend it’s a City is a delightful missive in which to mentally luxuriate, as well as a comforting reminder that the times always change, whether we like it or not. [Katie Driscoll]

The Mauritanian is released 26 Feb by ErosSTX, and screens at Glasgow Film Festival 25-28 Feb

The Great

It's a Sin

TV catch-up

T

V has been a saviour during lockdown, and particularly overflowing with gems right now is All 4. In the middle of its Channel 4 run is The Great, the ‘occasionally true story’ of how Catherine the Great (winningly played by Elle Fanning) seized the throne from her boorish husband, Peter. It’s written by Tony McNamara, who was behind Yorgos Lanthimos’s similarly raunchy exercise in alternative history, The Favourite. Nicholas Hoult – who’s uproariously funny as Peter and proves once again to have a knack for playing narcissistic bastards – is also a common denominator between the two. There are shades, too, of Armando Iannucci in

its commitment to exposing the ruling political class as a grubby cabal of craven morons. Needless to say, The Great lives up to its title.

Russell T Davies’ It’s a Sin, the first British TV series to focus on the AIDS crisis, should have been made years ago but also feels hugely of the moment. It deftly walks the tightrope of being a joyous celebration of being young and gay in the 1980s and a deeply sad lament to the lives that were needlessly taken in that decade when fear, ignorance and indifference allowed the deadly virus to run rampant. It centres on a group of friends who arrive in London in 1981 as fresh-faced teens and follows them into the early 90s, which not all

of them get to see. Each death hits with a cold, sharp shock and the show fizzes with repressed anger, although it sometimes feels aimed at the wrong targets. One character’s clueless mother seems to shoulder most of the rage that a more politically radical series might have aimed at the Tory government and rightwing media’s mishandling of the pandemic (times haven’t changed much). Despite this misstep, this is powerful, heartbreaking, unmissable TV. Also make time for the return of Back, the delicious sitcom centred on the acrimony between Stephen (David Mitchell), an uptight pub landlord, and Andrew (Robert Webb), a louche

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interloper who was fostered for a few weeks by Stephen’s parents decades earlier and has now returned to town and ingratiated himself into the family once again. It’s basically a middleaged Peep Show, but here the mind games and seething resentments aren’t confined to the characters’ inner monologues but out in the open for everyone to hear. It’s a bitchy delight. [Jamie Dunn] The Great screens Sun, 9pm It’s a Sin screens Fri, 9pm Back screens Thu, 10pm All available on All 4

February 2021 — Review

Channel 4 start the year with three sharp shows to help you through lockdown

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Books

Book Reviews

Duck Feet

Nightshift

Diary of a Film

Bolt from the Blue

By Ely Percy

By Kiare Ladner

By Niven Govinden

By Jeremy Cooper

Set in Renfrew in the mid-noughties, Duck Feet is an episodic novel composed of a series of short, snappy stories. A boisterous bildungsroman, it follows teenager Kirsty Campbell and her pals as they traverse the halls of Renfrew High, growing up and growing apart.

It’s not all painting your nails with Tipp-Ex and wondering whether you’ll get nipped at the Kirky disco.

The tension of changing social attitudes thrums beneath these interactions, littered with the kind of casual racism and homophobia common at the time. Percy pulls no punches, leaning into the toe-curling impotency of school life, and deals with bullying, teenage pregnancy, and academic and social pressures with a real, earthy sense of humour.

Standout episodes include Pure Gay, which deals with the lead singer of Kirsty’s favourite (alas, fictional) Scots boyband Stramash coming out, and the casual homophobia of one of her best friends; Witch, a snappy short about a “pure mad gothic chick” joining class and communicating with the spirit world via a makeshift ouija board in the library; and Blood, a complex and gut-wrenching take on the fall out of a knife crime.

Written in Scots, huge chunks are told through sharp, witty dialogue which perfectly captures the breathlessness of being a teenager. Duck Feet is a labour of love, a crackling coming of age, and a warm, witty celebration of working class life and culture in the West of Scotland.

[Michael Lee Richardson]

The modern world has gifted us enough tech tools to create an intoxicating mash-up of catfishing, fake news, Stan culture and obsession. Set mainly in the luddite 1990s, Nightshift is a dark reminder that these kinds of infatuations have always existed in analogue.

Meggie wants to be a writer, wants to be sexually thrilling and thrilled, wants to be other. But she’s living with Graham and working in media monitoring. Her world is liminal until she meets Sabine: an elusive, nocturnal being whose life is mysterious and sexy in all the ways Meggie covets. She allows herself to succumb to Sabine disastrously quickly, and from hereon Nightshift becomes a study of female friendship, sexuality, neuroses and the fusion of reality, fiction and the grey spaces in between.

At its heart, the book exposes how simple it is to lose control of yourself; at its rough edges it displays the ease with which someone can manipulate, love and toss away another. As the leading duo explore London’s recesses under the cover of nighttime, it becomes increasingly easy to understand how she got pulled in – particularly if you’ve experienced a toxic relationship. But the twists and turns in the story prevent predictability, and Ladner’s gorgeous shadowy writing creates a daunting but exhilarating world that’s difficult to leave. [Kirstyn Smith]

An auteur touches down in an unnamed Italian city, home to a prestigious film festival, to present the world premiere of his latest masterpiece. In between photocalls and hotel meetings, the unnamed director meets a local woman, Cosima, and the pair bond over their shared, lifelong dedication to art.

The chance meeting becomes something like fate when the filmmaker discovers Cosima’s published, half-buried novel from her youth, inspired by a boyfriend who died tragically. Her story may just become his next film project. Meanwhile, the director must wrestle with his own anxieties: his cinematic legacy, the toll his creative hunger is taking on his husband and child and whether his identity can be untethered from his art.

Diary of a Film is a slow, careful novel that carves out its characters through their interactions with each other. When the director catches up with the co-stars of his film, Tom and Lorien, who are orbiting each other in an uncertain courtship, we learn as much about his sensibilities as we do about the actors’. In this way, Niven Govinden’s narrative is reminiscent of Rachel Cusk’s recent Outline trilogy: sparse, contemplative and perhaps painstakingly slow paced for some readers. But stay with Diary of a Film, fall into its rhythms, and a few nights at a film festival will become an existential exploration of the creative process. [Katie Goh]

In a year which has seen most of our relationships take to the page and screen, Jeremy Cooper’s Bolt from the Blue feels eerily prescient. Unravelling over 30 years, the epistolary novel chronicles the letters, postcards, and emails that pass between a mother and daughter after the latter leaves home to begin her studies at a prestigious London art college in the 80s.

“It is difficult,” the daughter writes in her introduction, “to match the Lynn Gallagher who wrote these letters to the person who made the films described, even though I am both these women.” The ensuing letters become an exercise in how identity and selfhood are recovered from this tension, an archival imagining of how two women might navigate the knotty entanglement of independence and interdependence that family both promises and threatens.

It is an absorbing premise and an audaciously understated medium through which to explore it, yet the result is a somewhat mixed bag. The conflict between Lynn and her mother frequently feels manufactured – the letter form favouring text for subtext – or simply unsaid, the unspoken ellipses texturally interesting but narratively frustrating. And while themes of gender and class weave throughout the correspondence, a more incisive critique of the relationship between art, Britain and money is needed from a novel that unspools against the backdrop of Thatcherism and Brexit. [Anahit Behrooz]

Monstrous Regiment, pre-orders shipping mid-February, £8.99

Picador, 18 Feb, £14.99

Dialogue Books, 18 Feb, £14.99

Fitzcarraldo Editions, Out Now, £12.99

panmacmillan.com

hachette.co.uk

fitzcarraldoeditions.com

February 2021

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THE SKINNY

ICYMI Surreal sketch duo Róisín and Chiara experience teen cult classic Heathers for the very first time Illustration: Maisy Summer Comedy

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“Heathers was made in 1989 before America became a global embarrassment. I wonder how far its creators would think we’ve come?”

And how about the language these alluring voices intone?

Filthy, merciless and startlingly graphic (‘you stupid fuck’). You wouldn’t get away with a lot of it nowadays (too rude for our ‘snowflake’ sensibilities!?) but it’s wonderfully satisfying. Take

Heather casually asking Veronica, ‘why are you pulling my dick?’.

Why don’t we say that to each other? Why can’t I be pulling my friend’s non-physical dick? Why does it have to be her boring leg?

Things get pretty existential when we realise that the school is really a stand-in for American society at large. All of humanity is there – indeed, you’ll probably find someone in the credits with whom you identify; ‘Fat Cynic’/ ‘Nerd’ / ‘Heavy Metaller 1’. But things get prophetic when it seems that even a radical attempt to rid the school of evil by deposing (or impeaching) the Queen won’t work. It may be impossible to undo the ingrained competitiveness and vertical ties of power and influence that hold this American microcosm together.

On a different note there is a relaxing ease to watching this un-CGI’d, un-botoxed world. We’ve become used to watching (especially female) faces that are finding it hard to express emotion due to ‘procedures’. Poor Hollywood starlets, frozen in fillers. ‘It’s just so fucking boring’, a Heather would say. At least in this film we can enjoy the eccentrically positioned eyebrows of Mr. Slater.

We were shocked, freaked out, concerned by so much in the film. We admit we seldom laughed out loud during viewing; we did not find Heathers funny, per se, but we divined humour in the dark moral of the tale. This film – like Withnail and I, Edward Scissorhands, Arizona Dream, Harold and Maude and so many other films from our childhoods – has character. It’s eccentric and surreal, sometimes excruciating or disturbing but essentially titillating. It is essentially strange as in ‘not previously known’, not strange as in ‘I don’t get it. I don’t like it’.

Heathers was made in 1989 before America became a global embarrassment. I wonder how far its creators would think we’ve come?

And just a quick post-script; did anyone else notice Jordan Brookes’ cameo as the policeman? If anyone has any more information about this please get in touch.

Róisín and Chiara: Back to Back is available to watch on NextUp Comedy roisinandchiara.com

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February 2021 — Review

hen we decided to watch Heathers – a high school comedy from the late 80’s – we were expecting a pastel-hued, proto-Mean Girls giggly snuggle fest.

This seemed like suitable viewing for the grimmest month since the Visigoths invaded. What we weren’t prepared for was a blood-soaked deconstruction of American capitalist society headed up by the aggressively cool Winona Ryder and strangely fit Christian Slater. The jumpers may be fluffy, but the dialogue is razor sharp and sick in the head.

The plot of Heathers is familiar to a host of high school comedies from She’s All That to Never Been Kissed; an allegorical tale of dog-eat-dog where nice guys finish last (maybe). This time, however, our anti-hero behaves a little differently. Rather than killing the Prom-QueenBitch-Oppressor with kindness, Ryder's Veronica goes about dethroning the adolescent dictator with actual murder – or specifically with a series of macabre staged suicides.

Veronica is a reluctant member of ‘The Heathers’, the bitchy, scrunchie-wearing elite of Westerburg High. As her brunette locks suggest, she secretly deplores the ruthless cruelty of basic blonde head honcho, Heather Chandler. Like most teenagers she spends her evenings furiously journaling in gigantic handwriting, while wearing a monocle. Liberation from the Heather tyranny arrives in the form of an emotionally damaged Christian Slater, replete with tiny earring and massive motorbike.

Let us take a moment to mention their voices; Slater’s sounds like a Dickensian-American out of work thief who’s ageing backwards, and Ryder’s deep, sultry, manly, whiny moan is music to our ears. These actors have such hilarious, characterful, odd voices. Are voices that characterful nowadays? It’s as though modern actors are auto-tuned, whereas in Heathers they had more of a garage rock feel.

THE SKINNY

The Skinny On...

Stuart Braithwaite The Skinny On...

Ahead of releasing their tenth studio album – As the Love Continues – Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite tells us who he thinks is the worst, what last made him cry and which celebrity he thinks he could take in a fight

Photo: Rock Action

February 2021 — Chat

I

n 2020 there wasn’t a whole lot to get excited about, but Mogwai gave us two things. In May they surprised us with the release of their stunning ZeroZeroZero soundtrack which they used to help raise money for Help Musicians and NHS Charities, and then in October, excitement rippled around our respective Skinny home offices (kitchen tables, bedroom desks etc) once more as Mary Anne Hobbs gave the lush Dry Fantasy its first airing on BBC Radio 6 Music, announcing that Mogwai were set to release a brand new studio album – As the Love Continues – in February 2021. It was just the news we needed to hear as the days had started getting noticeably shorter, the nights darker, and the ongoing news cycle, well, you know?

It feels like that day in October was just yesterday, but here we are, already in February, with the release of As the Love Continues imminent, or perhaps it’s already out, depending on when you’re reading this? Either way, congratulations for making it this far; you did it, here is your reward: a Q&A with none other than Stuart Braithwaite as he tells us about the last thing that made him cry, which celebrity he thinks he could take in a fight, and lets us all in on a pretty exhilarating secret!

How have you stayed inspired during the multiple lockdowns and various restrictions that have been in place since last March?

Being stuck indoors isn’t the worst when trying to write music so it hasn’t been too hard. Having things to do can be a bit distracting when trying to get songs written.

What’s your favourite meal to cook at home?

I love making Indian food. I’m vegan so am a big dahl fan.

What three people would you invite to your virtual dinner party and what ice-breaker question would you ask them?

Werner Herzog, Siouxsie Sioux and Tilda Swinton; how’s everyone doing this evening?

What would your answer be to your ice-breaker question? ?????

What’s your favourite place to visit?

I’m lucky to have visited a lot of great places, but I think Tokyo is my favourite. It’s unlike any other city and changes every time I go there.

It’s wonderfully weird.

Apart from your own, what album are you most looking forward to coming out this year?

I’m really excited to hear the new Blanck Mass record. I think Ben is on a real roll right now.

What’s your favourite colour?

I’m not sure I have one. I have a lot of black clothes. Is black a colour?

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen and what made it so bad?

The film version of The Hobbit was unspeakably awful. Turning a pretty slight book into three films was a disgusting money-making exercise.

I’ve still not seen the second or third parts.

Who was your hero growing up?

Yoda. I loved Star Wars as a kid (and still do). I think Yoda seems super wise and I like diminutive heroes.

Whose work inspires you now?

I’m constantly amazed by the music of David Bowie. His records are so varied and so unique.

What book would you take to a protracted period of governmentenforced isolation?

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. It’s an amazing

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book and since it’s a while since I read it and I have a rubbish memory it’d feel like a new book. It’s also pretty big.

Who’s the worst?

Michael Gove is the worst. He’s an embarrassment to Scotland.

When did you last cry?

I cried watching the film Soul. I dare anyone to watch it and not.

What are you most scared of?

I’m scared of greedy people. They’re mostly in charge and look at the mess they’ve made of everything.

When did you last vomit?

I used to puke when I was drinking all the time but have curtailed that, thankfully. I think I was sick because some food was too salty a few months ago.

Tell us a secret?

Donald Trump is going to jail.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

Jacob Rees-Mogg.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal which animal would it be and why?

Definitely a dog. They sleep all day and just want to have fun.

As the Love Continues is released on 19 Feb via Rock Action; Mogwai premiere the album on 13 Feb with a special online live performance, filmed at Glasgow’s Tramway The soundtrack to ZeroZeroZero is out now; ZeroZeroZero is available to watch from 4 Feb via Sky Atlantic mogwai.scot

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October 2020

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February 2021 — Chat

The Skinny On...

THE SKINNY

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