The Skinny May 2019

.CO.UK

INDEPENDENT FREE

CULTURAL

J O U R N A L I S M

May 2019 Scotland Issue 164

MUSIC Siobhan Wilson Charly Bliss Rev Magnetic Patience Tacocat Erland Cooper Hamish Hawk Annie Booth FILM Beats Josephine Decker Joe Penna

Into the Wilds EXPLORE THE SCOTTISH OUTDOORS WITH OUR SPRING ADVENTURE SPECIAL

BOOKS Denise Mina ART Shadi Habib Allah Dundee Design Festival THEATRE Zinnie Harris Mele Broomes Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival

MUSIC | FILM | CLUBS | THEATRE | ART | BOOKS | COMEDY | TRAVEL | FOOD & DRINK | INTERSECTIONS | LISTINGS

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THE SKINNY

May 2019

Issue 164, May 2019 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk T: 0131 467 4630 P: The Skinny, 1.9 1st Floor Tower, Techcube, Summerhall, 1 Summerhall Pl, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL The Skinny is Scotland's largest independent entertainment & listings magazine, and offers a wide range of advertising packages and affordable ways to promote your business.

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Contents



Editorial Editor-in-Chief Art Editor Books Editor Clubs Editor Comedy Editor Events Editor Film & DVD Editor Food Editor Intersections Editor Music Editor Theatre Editor Travel Editor

Rosamund West Adam Benmakhlouf Heather McDaid Nadia Younes Polly Glynn Nadia Younes Jamie Dunn Peter Simpson Katie Goh Tallah Brash Amy Taylor Paul Mitchell

Production Production Manager Designer

Rachael Hood Fiona Hunter

Sales Sales Manager Sales Executives

Sandy Park George Sully David Hammond Joanne Jamieson Megan Mitchell

Online Digital Editor Online Journalist Web Developer Intern

Peter Simpson Jamie Dunn Stuart Spencer Emily Corpuz

Bookkeeping & Accounts Publisher

Aaron Tuveri Sophie Kyle

THE SKINNY

Photo: Al Haigh

Photo: Jess Scott

P.54 Sonic Séance

Photo: Sophie Mutevelian

P.32 Dundee Design Festival

P.30 Cape Wrath Trail

Photo: Kathryn Rattray

P.12 Patience

Contents Chat & Opinion: Welcome to the maga06 zine – we look forward to the CineSkinny on Tour, our new short film screening programme, and fill you in on some of the excellent extra content you will find on our website.

Heads Up: Your cultural calendar 08 for May FEATURES

10 We talk to Siobhan Wilson about chan-

son, the Scottish music community and starting her own label ahead of the release of her album The Departure.

collaborator Luke Sutherland 11 Serial introduces his ceaselessly imaginative new project Rev Magnetic.

12 Roxanne Clifford, aka Patience, de-

scribes her synth-pop reinvention postVeronica Falls.

outside urban centres, plus a look at a few events coming up this year that might drag you into the great outdoors.

Scotland is home to a wide array of 30 multi-day routes – we explore just a few of them.

LIFESTYLE

34 Intersections: Has wellness eradicated

binge drinking? We look at its role as a symbol of resistance. We meet the curators of a new exhibition, Body Beautiful, at the National Museum of Scotland to discuss diversity and inclusion in fashion.

37 Food and Drink: As a craze for sour beer

sweeps the nation, we examine how it’s actually made and provide some recommendations to try. Plus, we meet Glasgow Coffee Festival and, as ever, give you the latest news from the world of Scottish food.

14 We talk friendship, community and happiness with Tacocat's Emily Nokes.

15 We meet Cristian Ortega and Lorn

Macdonald, stars of Beats, the new film adaptation of Kieran Hurley’s acclaimed play.

her im17 Josephine Decker discusses Madeline’s pressionistic new feature, Madeline.

18 We talk to Joe Penna about his debut

feature film, Arctic, a survivalist thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen.

21 Crime writing royalty Denise Mina talks

true crime podcasts ahead of the publication of her new novel, Conviction.

s his exhibition opens in CCA, artist 22 A Shadi Habib Allah discusses the social isolation of inner city neighbourhoods in Miami.

24 We talk to Zinnie Harris about updat-

ing John Webster's 17th century play The Duchess of Malfi for the present day, male rage and female resistance.

25 Ahead of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, we look at how theatre could better support the wellbeing of its workers.

32 With a new duo at its helm, Dundee

Design Festival returns for a third year with a new approach to civic inclusivity.

THE ADVENTURE SUPPLEMENT

REVIEW

41 Music: Erland Cooper talks Orcadian seal-

ife, Hamish Hawk talks new album, Laziest River, Annie Booth shares the inspiration behind her new EP, Spectral, while Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss talks about purging toxicity from your life. Live highlights in Do Not Miss, plus two whole pages of album reviews (as ever).

47 Clubs: We meet La Cheetah’s booker, programmer and resident DJ Grahame Ward, look forward to Hopetoun House’s FLY Open Air, plus clubbing highlights for the month of May.

49 Art: Exhibitions and opportunities

news, and reviews of exhibitions in the Gallery of Modern Art and Tramway.

50 Books: Reviews, plus poetry news for May. 51 Comedy: ICYMI looks at Fleabag with Christopher Macarthur-Boyd.

52 Film & TV: Reviews from Too Late

to Die Young to Game of Thrones via Destination Wedding.

54 Theatre: Highlights from the Scottish stage in May, plus Mele Broomes discusses Sonic Séance.

55 Listings: What’s on where, every day. make the case for a queer and radical 63 We Eurovision.

meet some of the women who’ve 27 We found strength from hiking alone.

28 Countryfile: a survey of visual arts spaces

May 2019

Contents

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Editorial e’re pretty sure that this summer is going to involve a heatwave as long and hot as last year* so in preparation we’ve compiled another edition of our Adventure supplement encouraging you to get outside and explore the wealth of possibilities the Scottish landscape has to offer. Loosely based around a theme of Grand Tours, we’ve taken a look at some of the many multi-day routes that weave through the landscape from the Borders to Cape Wrath. We meet some of the women who have embraced solo hiking, to discuss how it has helped them to de-stress, conquer fears and centre themselves without the intrusion of other people and all of their talking. We’ve also approached the topic from a cultural slant, and offer up a tour of the many cultural institutions that are dotted around the country in remote and surprising locations.

Continuing the theme of Landscape, in Music we meet Erland Cooper to discuss Sule Skerry, the second album in his trilogy inspired by the natural surroundings of his Orkney home.

Continuing our Orcadian theme, we meet Luke Sutherland, a prolific collaborator of some two decades’ standing who’s here to unveil his solo project Rev Magnetic (he is from Orkney so this link is seamless). Continuing the theme of Solo Projects of People Who Were Previously Involved in Collaborative Projects, we talk to Roxanne Clifford, formerly of Veronica Falls, about her new synth-pop guise Patience. Continuing the theme of Music by Women Who Live in Scotland, we meet Siobhan Wilson who discusses new album The Departure, and Annie Booth, who is both a woman in the Scottish music scene and a collaborator, as a member of Mt Doubt. That only leaves Hamish Hawk, whose EP title Laziest River is clearly another nod to Landscape, Tacocat, and Charly Bliss, bringing in an... American... theme straight out of the leftfield?

In Film, we depart from our thematic linkage briefly to meet some of the cast of the eagerlyawaited big screen adaptation of Kieran Hurley’s Beats, which centres on one last night of hedonism for two best pals at the end of the 90s West Lothian rave scene. Josephine Decker discusses her new feature Madeline’s Madeline, collaboration and following your creative instincts, while Joe Penna introduces his survivalist thriller Arctic. Which, I think we can all agree, links in nicely to the theme of adventure.

Books talks to Scottish crime writing royalty Denise Mina about her new novel Conviction, a deep dive into the world of true crime podcasts.

Art meets Shadi Habib Allah ahead of his CCA exhibition to discuss the topic of welfare in the USA and the alternative economies that spring up around it. As Dundee Design Festival returns, we meet the new duo who’ve taken over the reins, bringing it into a new central shopping centre hub with an aim to grow local engagement and open design to the community. Theatre meets Zinnie Harris to learn more about her new adaptation of The Duchess of Malfi, and marks the return of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival with a frank discussion on how theatre can better serve the wellbeing of its practitioners.

We finish with an opinion piece on Eurovision as a purveyor of progressive queer politics in 2019. “Covert rebellion exists throughout the contest in slight jabs at the status quo, reminders that we ourselves are not static but pliable, liable to change at will, if only we could imagine it. It’s only a small step further to imagine alternative nationhoods, maybe even people and nations without borders altogether.” Eurovision as a tonic to the politics of division – read all about it on p63. [Rosamund West]

The Skinny on Tour Olá! Greetings from atop a very sunny mountain.

We’ve been on our travels again, to a land of extremely talented footballers, riotous Carnaval festivities, and delicious cachaça-based cocktails.

We’re looking out on the Copacabana, and down on to one of South America’s greatest cities. Oh, and behind us is a giant, looming, world-famous statue of Jesus – fair enough, a 125-foot-tall effigy is hard to ignore at the best of times. On the plus side, our new ecclesiastical buddy appears to be subtly looking over our shoulder, which we guess means that Jesus reads The Skinny. Tell your pals.

Cracked the code? Head over to theskinny.co.uk/ competitions and let us know – one lucky winner will receive a hardback copy of Things in Jars by Jess Kid, courtesy of our amigos over at Canongate. Competition closes at midnight on Sunday 26 May.

Online Only

*We have no evidence for this assertion but reckon an article on the subject would make for some highly shareable content.

THE CINESKINNY ON TOUR Credit: Giulio Castagnaro

Phil Collins, Ceremony, 2018, 67 min

COVER ARTIST Kimberley Grant Kimberley Grant is a creative director & producer from Glasgow. After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2012, she spent the next four years working as a freelance photographer and content producer; during this time she co-wrote the best-selling book Wild Guide Scotland. Kim currently works as Editorial Creative Director at Culture Trip. kimberleygrant.com I: @kimberleygrant

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Chat

The Cineskinny on Tour is our new showcase of some of Scotland’s best emerging short filmmakers, and we’re hitting the road with a programme of animation, horror, documentary, music video and cutting-edge storytelling.

We’re hosting a pair of free screenings this May – join us at Summerhall, Edinburgh on 8 May and at CCA, Glasgow on 22 May for a selection of great Scottish short films, as well as some of Scotland’s best beers courtesy of the delightful folk at Barney’s Beer and Williams Bros.

We’re also delighted to be able to hand out some prizes to our showcase filmmakers.

Each of our showcase filmmakers will receive a year’s subscription to MUBI, and one top prizewinner will receive equipment hire worth up to £600, courtesy of Glasgow-based video production company Production Attic. Head to theskinny.co.uk/film to learn more about the programme, and to grab your tickets.

Photo: Courtesy Shady Lane Productions

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The Ninth Wave on the albums that have influenced them Haydn Park-Patterson and Amelia Kidd tell us how The Twilight Sad, Associates, Cocteau Twins, Grimes, FKA Twigs and more have influenced them over the years.

back to Manchester, a city that helped form his socialist ideas. We ask Collins what Engels would make of modern Britain, ahead of the premiere of his new film at Alchemy Film Festival.

Check out the full list at theskinny.co.uk/music

Taskmaster: A beginner’s guide From Edinburgh Fringe muck-about to awardwinning TV series, we take a look at Taskmaster ahead of the launch of series eight.

Better Oblivion Community Center Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst’s new collaboration launched in a fog of secrecy at the start of 2019; we catch up with the duo as they embark on a UK tour this month.

Read the interview at theskinny.co.uk/music

Brady Corbet introduces Vox Lux Brady Corbet's bold new feature examines a heady brew of celebrity and violence in the 21st century. We speak to Corbet about the film’s star Natalie Portman, gun control in America and working with the late, great Scott Walker.

Read the full interview at theskinny.co.uk/film

Phil Collins on Friedrich Engels film Ceremony Berlin-based British artist Phil Collins brings a statue of the Communist Manifesto co-author

Read the full interview at theskinny.co.uk/film

theskinny.co.uk/comedy

Bill Bailey returns with Larks in Transit Best known for his often otherworldly humour, being a wildlife-obsessed ex-team captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and as hapless shop assistant Manny in Black Books, we chat to Bill Bailey ahead of his new UK tour.

Read the interview at theskinny.co.uk/comedy

Beth McColl on How to Come Alive Again Ahead of the release of her debut book via Unbound, and just in time for Mental Health Awareness Week, we talk to Beth McColl.

Read the interview at theskinny.co.uk/books

Find more at theskinny.co.uk

THE SKINNY

May 2019

Chat

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John Hughes’ canon of 80s-set teen films is vast, but none of his movies are more iconic than The Breakfast Club. Screening as part of Everyman cinema’s Cult Classics series, the Molly Ringwald starring film centres around a group of high schoolers from varying backgrounds forced to spend a day together in a weekend detention session. Everyman, Glasgow, 9.30pm, £11.50-12.50

Elizabeth Macneal

The Breakfast Club

Tue 7 May

Continue your bank holiday shenanigans at multi-venue festival Stag & Dagger, but make sure you plan your day of giggoing out in advance if you want to make the most of your day. Headliners Honeyblood, Dream Wife, Goat Girl and Pip Blom sit alongside a whole host of exciting up-and-coming Scottish bands, including Chuchoter, CRYSTAL, Shredd and Slime City.

Various venues, Glasgow, 2pm, £25

Who better to guide us on a journey to save the world than a bunch of fabulous queens? Aquaria, Kameron Michaels, Asia O’Hara, Kim Chi, Naomi Smalls, Monét X Change and Violet Chachki all join the inimitable Michelle Visage for the drag show to end all drag shows, RuPaul's Drag Race – Werq the World Tour. Edinburgh Playhouse, Edinburgh, 8pm, £40.25-155.15

If you’re a cool party girl in a cool party world, get down to St Luke’s to see wonderful Aussie party band Confidence Man and their incredible dance routines. Join Janet Planet, Sugar Bones, Reggie Goodchild and Clarence McGuffie for a whole lot of madness and a healthy dose of pop bangers taking in everything from 90s dance to Britpop. St Luke's, Glasgow, 7pm, £12

Pip Blom

Asia O'Hara

Photo: Brandon Voss (Voss Events)

Mon 6 May

Photo: Phil Smithies

Sun 5 May

Confidence Man

Mon 13 May

Multi-venue festival of contemporary performance, Take Me Somewhere returns to Glasgow for its third year.

Opening the festival is an examination of popular culture’s depictions of the female monster, from Medusa to Nicki Minaj, in Notorious (Tramway, Glasgow, 7pm, £1015). Later, the festival team up with queer club night PUSH IT and Boss Ass Witch for a launch party with performance and tunes. Stereo, Glasgow, 10pm, £4-5

Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy and De La Soul team up for the Gods of Rap tour, hosted by DJ Premier.

The three iconic groups all celebrate big album anniversaries this year – 25 years of Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and 30 years of both It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 3 Feet High and Rising. The SSE Hydro, Glasgow, 6pm, £51.10-85.15

Do you like beer? Do you live in or near Dundee?

Well, you’ve got a whole week to sample the wares at Duke’s Corner’s U.S. Craft Beer Week. The beers on tap throughout the week include Brooklyn, Sierra Nevada, Cigar City, Firestone Walker and Two Roads. You could have some food at the same time while you’re there too, we guess. Duke's Corner, Dundee, until 19 May

Notorious

Public Enemy

Photo: Euan Robertson

Sun 12 May

Photo: Timothy Fluck

Sat 11 May

Brooklyn Beer

Sat 18 May

Sun 19 May

Neu! Reekie! goes Warhol and Paolozzi, as Michael Pedersen and Kevin Williamson bring their multi-arts affair to the portrait gallery to provide their own unique take on its I want to be a machine exhibition. Joining them on the night are Edinburgh hip-hop group The Honey Farm, Belle and Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson and Edwin Morgan Prize winner Roseanne Watt. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £10

After expanding to a twoday festival last year, FLY Open Air gets even bigger this time around as Boiler Room make their Scottish festival debut with a stage takeover across both days. Expect to see new FLY Club residents Eclair Fifi and Big Miz play alongside the likes of Solomun, Honey Dijon, Nina Kraviz and Peggy Gou. Hopetoun House, Edinburgh, 12pm, £55-85

Michael W. Eagle II’s latest album as Open Mike Eagle, Brick Body Kids Still Daydream, was inspired by the demolition of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes and it landed a spot on our 2017 Albums of the Year list. Since then, he has won his first ever pro-wrestling match and released a six-track EP, What Happens When I Try to Relax. Unpredictable.

The Art School, Glasgow, 7pm, £16.50

The Honey Farm

Photo: Seb Singh

Fri 17 May

Honey Dijon

Fri 24 May

World music festival Knockengorroch is credited with being Scotland's longest-running camping music festival. It returns to Galloway in the southwest of Scotland for four days of music, comedy, theatre, spoken word and more over the Spring bank holiday weekend.

Benjamin Zephaniah and the Revolutionary Minds headline this year’s festival, with Talisk, Solareye and Samedia Shebeen also featuring. Carsphairn Hills, Galloway, £50-125

Sack off your usual payday bevs down the local pub and head to Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival instead, where you’ll be able to sample beers from over 30 brewers. While you’re enjoying those refreshing bevs, line your stomachs with food from Aizle, Harajuku Kitchen and Buffalo Truck, while enjoying DJ sets from the likes of Belle & Sebastian and DJ Yoda. The Biscuit Factory, Edinburgh, 6pm, £40-65

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Chat

Solareye

Photo: Cameron Brisbane

Thu 23 May



Open Mike Eagle

Edinburgh Craft The Dark BeerCarnival Fesitval

THE SKINNY

Photo: Andrew Whitton

May features bank holidays galore, which means it’s time to plan ahead to make sure you make the most of your essentially free holidays

Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop hosts the launch of Elizabeth Macneal’s latest work of fiction, The Doll Factory, in her home city, with Macneal discussing art and fiction.

Inspired by the era in which the novel is set, the event will take place in the bookshop garden with decor depicting 1850s London and surrounded by works of contemporary women artists.

Lighthouse, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £3-14.99

Photo: Tom Bullock

Compiled by: Nadia Younes

Wed 1 May

Photo: Mat Smith

Heads Up

Tue 30 Apr

Spring!

Nightwave

Thu 9 May

Fri 10 May

On the second Wednesday of the month, veganism and poetry collide at Finnieston-based restaurant Soul Food Kitchen. Performance poet, theatremaker and musician Imogen Stirling hosts the monthly Soul Food Poetry night in the vegan hub, with a rotating line-up of newcomers and veteran wordsmiths. Eight poets are each given a ten minute slot within which to perform their work. Soul Food Kitchen, Glasgow, 7pm, free

Ibero-American culture is celebrated via the medium of film at IberoDocs, focusing on documentary films

by Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American filmmakers. Tonight, Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s multi-award-winning documentary The Silence of Others will screen, followed by 23 Shots and a post-screening Q&A with the film’s director Jorge Laplace. Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh, times & prices vary

On his latest album, Health, released at the end of March, Scottish musician C Duncan stepped out of his comfort zone, moving from his bedroom to a proper music studio, and with it came a much more accomplished sound. And, much like the album, Duncan’s live show promises to be bigger than its predecessors, now joined by a fivepiece band. Summerhall, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £12.50-15

Imogen Stirling

Photo: Perry Jonsson

Wed 8 May

The Silence of Others

Thu 16 May

Washington DC band Priests are clearly fans of familiarity, returning to Glasgow nearly two years to the day at the very same venue they last played at in the city. Touring in support of their second album, The Seduction of Kansas, Priests are certain to have you mesmerised by their clever, witty lyrics and diverse exploration of sounds. The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, 7.30pm, £10

Kayi Ushe reprises his role as Lola in this stage production of Kinky Boots, based on the 2005 film, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor.

With songs by musical legend Cyndi Lauper, the show follows Charlie Price who is introduced to the fabulous world of drag queens by cabaret singer Lola and forges a plan to save his father’s shoe business. King's Theatre, Glasgow, 7.30pm, £13-63

The National Theatre of Scotland revive a true Scottish classic for a nationwide tour this month.

Based on the original production by Dundee Rep Theatre, The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil was restaged by director Joe Douglas in 2015, who is reprising it once again and taking the show on tour across Scotland before ending with a two-week run at Newcastle’s Live Theatre.

Ardler Complex, Dundee, 7pm, £5-12

Pint of Science

Mon 20 May International three-day festival, Pint of Science will see thousands of scientists visit over 300 cities worldwide to teach average punters about their research in the pub. In Edinburgh, more than 30 scientists will visit five of the city’s boozers – The Tron, The Cuckoo’s Nest, The Canon’s Gate, The Raging Bull and The Old Bell Inn – to educate those curious about their work. Various venues, Edinburgh, times & prices vary

Kinky Boots

Tue 21 May

Wed 22 May

Take a deep breath now as you prepare to read the insanely-long title of John-Luke Roberts’ latest comedy hour, All I Wanna Do Is [FX: GUNSHOTS] With a [FX: GUN RELOADING] and a [FX: CASH REGISTER] and Perform Some Comedy! If you don’t get it, listen to M.I.A.’s Paper Planes and it will all make sense. Monkey Barrel Comedy Club, Edinburgh, 7pm, £12

As Jupiter Artland reopens this month, with it comes the first solo exhibition in the UK by Daniel Lie and the culmination of a twoyear research partnership by the artist. The Negative Years will make use of both indoor galleries and outdoor spaces at the venue to create a series of immersive installations offering new perspectives on interspecies collaboration. Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, until 14 Jul

John Luke Roberts

Photo: Natasha Pszenicki

Priests

Photo: Helen Maybanks

Wed 15 May

Photo: Drew Hagelin

Tue 14 May

A selection of Glasgow DJs will each play five reggae, dub or dancehall seven inch vinyls in 15 minute slots over five hours for The Rum Shack’s first annual DJ relay, Vocal or Version. Those stepping up to the booth include Subculture’s Harri, 12th Isle’s Fergus Clark and The Rum Shack’s own Rumshack Steve, among many others. The Rum Shack, Glasgow, 8pm, £3-5

Returning with a massive line-up, Riverside Festival this year team up with Denis Sulta, La Cheetah Club, Bicep and Slam’s Maximum Pressure for a series of stage takeovers. Today, Jon Hopkins performs live on the Feel My Bicep stage, while Slam and Daniel Avery go B2B on the Glasgow duo’s Maximum Pressure stage and a team of locals head up the Dockland Stage. Riverside Museum, Glasgow, 12pm, £65-115

Traditional beauty ideals are challenged in the National Museum of Scotland’s latest exhibition, Body Beautiful: Diversity on the Catwalk. With more and more fashion houses finally realising the importance of inclusivity in the industry, the exhibition will feature examples from fashion creatives, including Max Mara and Vivienne Westwood, embracing diversity in size, gender, age, race and disability. National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, until 20 Oct

May 2019

Photo: Sam Huddleston

Mon 27 May

Photo: Brian Sweeney

Sun 26 May

Jon Hopkins

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

Daniel Lie, Death Center for the Living, Festwochem, Vienna, (2017)

Sat 25 May

Rumshack Steve

C Duncan

Body Beautiful: Diversity on the Catwalk

Chat

Photo: Matthew A. Williams

Idiorrythmia

Photo: Jordan Curtis Hughes

If you were planning on using your May Bank Holiday weekend to rest and recuperate, think again. Playground of Sound will be bringing some of the biggest reggae, dancehall, afrobeat, soul, funk, house and disco artists, including Nightwave and Rebecca Vasmant, to Glasgow over two days for you to ease your way into the weekend (or completely fuck it on day one). BAaD, Glasgow, 2pm, £25-27.50

Photo: Tommy Ga Ken Wan

Scottish Ballet kick off their 50th anniversary year with a brand new double bill show, Spring! Sophie Laplane will premiere her latest work, Dextera, combining her trademark choreography style with the music of Mozart, while Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations celebrates the 1920s, accompanied

by Scott Joplin’s songs.

Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 7.30pm, £17.50-30.50

Photo: courtesy Jupiter Artland and the artist

Hawick comes alive with the sight of film, as Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival returns to the Scottish Borders town, bringing with it 147 moving image works over five days and across eight programme strands. Included in this year’s festival is a 16mm programme dedicated to Rotterdam-based analogue filmmaker Esther Urlus and a selection of shorts exploring the benefits of biodiversity. Various venues, Hawick, times & prices vary, until 6 May

Photo: REXShutterstock

Sat 4 May

Photo: Nicola Selby

Fri 3 May

Photo: Alix Rothnie

Thu 2 May

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A Rich Tapestry We speak to Siobhan Wilson about her new album The Departure, which she’s releasing on her own label, and the importance of Scotland’s artistic community

Interview: Kirstyn Smith

I

“ I’m rejecting preexisting industry requirements I don’t conform to or agree with, and I’m keeping everything happy, safe and organised” Siobhan Wilson

Barbara is someone Wilson has been watching for years, being inspired by her style and sound. It’s easy to see why she’d be an influence on any young singer-songwriter, but it makes even more sense when it comes to Wilson in particular, given her love of French music. “I record French music, I sing in French, and I kind of see it as a part of my musical identity. I lived there, and that part never left me.” In fact, just before we speak Wilson was visiting the country, seeing her mum and dad and recording some live videos in a Parisian studio. “It’s still a huge part of my life, it’s this parallel that’s kept on going.

“I don’t write lyrics in French,” she continues, “I’d say I’m fluent, but not bilingual. I think when you’re writing poetry that’s not in your native language, it’s just really funny. I always think, ‘that just sounds wrong and weird.’”

Wilson takes everything that’s good about the chanteuse and manifests it in her own work.

Blessed with a voice that’s sweet and poignant, she’s known for indie-folk that’s ever teetering on the edge of melancholy. But Wilson doesn’t consider herself to be part of ‘a scene’. This is most evident in how the road to The Departure was paved through community: loyal fans who knew what they wanted and trusted Wilson to give it to them. In 2017, she began a Kickstarter to raise funds to create a new record, and ended

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Feature

Photo: Gemma Dagger

f there’s anything that embodies the phrase ‘a certain je ne sais quoi’, it’s the French chanson.

Originating in early France as an epic poem, what makes la nouvelle chanson so different from modern-day pop is its theatricality, high standard of lyrics and the fact that it follows the rhythms of French language rather than English. All these things hold Siobhan Wilson in their thrall.

“Do you not think the French have a way of making things unsettlingly beautiful?” she asks.

We’re talking about Barbara, a singer who came to prominence in the 60s; renowned in her native France, but not as well-known here. On Wilson’s new album, The Departure, she covers Barbara’s Dis, Quand Reviendras-tu?, an achingly beautiful tune that seems handcrafted for Wilson’s haunting voice. “She’s quite gothy. She’s got this weird curly sideburn that’s stuck to her face and big 60s eyeliner,” says Wilson. “She’s just so creepy, everything she sings is so beautiful.”

up sourcing a couple of grand more than she originally needed.

“I don’t know how to be a folk singer or how to be a rock singer, I’m just being myself,” she says. “I’m not competitive, I’m not working to top the charts, and that’s why the Kickstarter community was so valuable. I’m not a part of a scene trying to make fashionable music, but I do have my own team and my own community I feel very involved in and appreciative of.”

The sense of community is further speckled throughout the album in the form of collaborations. On Little Hawk you can hear the lyrics of Jo Mango, while on Reflections there’s Rachel Sermanni, and on Unconquerable Wilson shares the mic with Honeyblood’s Stina Tweeddale. This lends the album a unique twist: while the songs by other artists don’t stand out as being obviously ‘other’, there’s still a clear demographic whose voice is being shared here.

“I wanted to document a part of my life and my surroundings. And I think it sounds like a woman approaching her 30s in Scotland. Me,” says Wilson. “I suppose we’re all singers, we’re roughly the same age, we all live in Scotland. All four of those people are really, really different. I think it’s built like a tapestry. I didn’t set out to do that, but that’s what it sounds like to me when I listen to it.”

Wilson is an incredibly thoughtful person, considerate of each question and keen to ensure she says exactly what she means. Asked about what it means to be brave – inspired by lyrics from Northern Clouds – there’s a long pause

before she answers. “It’s a very brave process, just putting anything out,” she says. “It’s like if you had a normal job working at a desk and creating reports – and then everyone saw it. Literally anyone. That’s a really brave thing to do, and I really enjoy that.” Women can often be perceived, she says, as “whimsical” or “emotional” when they’re doing the sort of thing she does: putting out albums, making music and poetry, crafting a creative life for themselves. “It’s brave to say: ‘This is what I’m doing.’ Essentially just being yourself and not trying to copy other people.”

The pressure to adhere to standards – of music, beauty, femininity, whatever – in an industry that values and is driven by money and looks seems difficult to ignore, no matter how secure in your identity you are. But Wilson has always railed against it – whether intentionally or otherwise. “I can’t understand what not being like that would be like. I’ve always had a flair for making things in as unique a way as possible,” she says. “There’s always going to be a degree of emulation; that’s inevitable because you’re influenced by what you’ve been listening to that day and what you’ve been listening to that year, and over the duration of your life. So there’s always influence there. But it’s just never been an option for me to be any part of any kind of hype. I just don’t find it inspiring or artistic.”

Instead, Wilson is quietly creating her own following. The Departure is set for release on Suffering Fools Records, a label Wilson set up herself. The demise of her previous Edinburgh label, Song, by Toad, she says, gave her a nudge

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to formalise her projects and set up an online shop. “Most of those who have already ordered a vinyl will have most likely met me in person at a gig and seen me at various stages in my musical journey so far. Starting up my own record label was a natural progression from already being mostly DIY for years.

“I’ve kept everything about the label as creative as possible, I’m rejecting pre-existing industry requirements I don’t conform to or agree with, and I’m keeping everything happy, safe and organised. I’ve never been in music for money, obviously, so starting up a new label is mostly a means to facilitate making my new works accessible to my own community – who I appreciate massively.”

So, while it’s not the sort projected by the industry, LA or mass production, there’s a growing hype around Wilson nonetheless. It feels more authentic, however, bolstered perhaps by her own sincerity: emails that go out to the Kickstarters who helped fund The Departure are shot with genuine appreciation and candour, Wilson’s public-facing social media is full of support and gratitude for Scotland’s artistic community. And her new record is much the same: a snapshot of space and time in one person’s life, made beautiful through pathos and charm.

The Departure is released on 10 May via Suffering Fools Records Siobhan Wilson plays VoxBox, Edinburgh, 12 May; Summerhall, Edinburgh, 7 Aug siobhan-wilson.net

THE SKINNY

Filling in the Blanks Luke Sutherland, the imagination behind new project Rev Magnetic, talks about writer’s block, feeling like an anomaly and Versus Universe

t’s unusually sunny for early spring in Glasgow.

Outside, it’s one of the more volatile days in the city’s calendar, as football fans of different persuasions stream from the East End to pubs and homes with a broiling mixed set of emotions.

Govanhill’s The Bell Jar is a placid sanctuary in comparison. Couples tuck into Sunday lunch and families grab a quiet drink while their young ones occupy themselves with board games and toys.

Luke Sutherland is talking about support acts and how old fashioned it now seems to discover a band by seeing them open for another. “The last time that happened to me was seeing Animal Collective supporting Múm in London. I didn’t know a thing about them and god they took my head off,” he quips.

“ There were many times when I would be the only black person in the room... I was constantly being asked to validate my presence” Luke Sutherland, Rev Magnetic

And so it was, last May, that some, including this writer, saw Sutherland and his ceaselessly imaginative new project Rev Magnetic steal the show ahead of power-punks Superchunk at Stereo. Now, Sutherland, a polymath and serial collaborator, is set to unleash his first album under this guise, Versus Universe. The story of its creation is spotted with trials and tribulations, a vehicle for what feels like a singular, heavy dose of magical realism.

Sutherland, it could be said, has been around the block. Best known for collaborating with Mogwai, while also bringing his considerable talents to numerous other projects, most notably Bows and Long Fin Killie in the 90s, his life has been tethered to music for around 20 years. He works in theatre, scoring intricately choreographed dance, and has published three novels, including the Whitbread Prize nominated Jelly Roll.

This truncated list reels off the tongue; he seems to be an endlessly flowing fountain of creativity.

“About 15 years ago I just became completely blocked,” Sutherland intones, not in a grave sense, as some artists might, but with acceptance. “I would laugh about this idea of block, talking like it’s tennis elbow or something – it’s like ‘get over your middle-class sensibilities’, it sounds so self-indulgent. And then I got it. I used to associate block with a blank page. But I think it’s possible to write thousands of words, as I did, and for them to amount to absolutely nothing.”

Sutherland didn’t so much retreat into himself as spread himself out, finding working with other artists much more stimulating. It was the kernel of an idea that pulled him out of his

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funk. “The writer’s block extended to lyrics as well, but I wondered if a unifying concept, where I could just fill in the blanks, would help. That was a necessity because I just couldn’t do the work on my own. I needed a way around the block.

“I saw something on TV about rockets being launched from Zaire [now the Democratic Republic of Congo] in the 70s. It was one of those occasions when you come across a word you’ve never heard before and suddenly you hear it everywhere. It was almost like a spell.”

Versus Universe tells the story of a woman, from adolescence through adulthood, whose parents are immersed in their work on the Congolese space programme to the point of neglect. This ‘daughter of astronauts’ pines for a parental love that’s not forthcoming. “She’s empathetic,” says Sutherland, “one of those folks through whom the whole world passes unfiltered all the time. She feels everything.”

To cope with her dysfunctional family life, she turns to things immediately available around the expat family’s central African home – prescription drugs and music – hoping to be, as Sutherland puts it, “smashed awake, blasted into consciousness.” After her parents disappear, perhaps lost to the cosmos, our protagonist moves to America, studies, parties, embraces hedonism, rebuffs romantic advances, wallows in regrets and finds herself somewhat alone in this insular musical refuge she has created.

Actually listening to Versus Universe feels like submerging yourself in a fully formed consciousness, in all its chaos. Even within a single song, swirling dissonance can turn to breathtakingly beautiful eastern strings, for it to morph into jittery IDM drum programming by way of Japanese ambient, matched with Auto-Tuned androgynous vocals and trap beats, only to surprise you once more by crashing into skyward shoegaze. There are disembodied samples (A Minoutaur’s Mass), live choir singalongs and handclaps (Palaces), solos and hooks (Yonder (Là-haut)) and huge aching orchestras (It Shoulda Been You). Perhaps its closest forebear, if it has any at all, is Yves Tumor’s 2018 record Safe in the Hands of Love.

That album shares few stylistic characteristics with Versus Universe – they are alike insofar as how unlike they are to anything else.

“You’re walking down the street. It’s a busy day in the city and you can hear a song played by a soundsystem from a pub at the end of a street,” Sutherland says, as he tries to explain something of how this came about. “But it’s coming to you through the chit-chat, the traffic and maybe even filtered through three or four other songs coming out of windows. You’ve got this sense of this thing anchoring you to the end of the street and that’s what you’re tuned into, but it’s coming through all this interference. You’re kind of half hearing it, making up the bits you can’t hear. By the time you get to it, it’s nothing like you had imagined.

There’s something tremendously exciting at being at the other end of the street, when you can’t hear it properly at all.”

Throughout our conversation, Sutherland will describe this nameless character as an “anomaly”, as he will himself. A black man growing up to adopted parents in Orkney, he spent his formative years searching for where he fit in. “I listened to music and read an awful lot. I was trying to expand my conception of the world and find out how much was in it, in the hope that I’d be able to find room for an anomaly, such as I felt myself to be in that context. The world was telling

me that I was very much one thing, and I was looking for evidence that, no, actually I can be a million things.”

When he finally found that in music, the homogeneity of the scenes he connected with meant he experienced pushback. “When I was at university in Glasgow, I practically lived at venues like the Barrowlands. There were many times when I would be the only black person in the room. I was once asked, in a perfectly friendly, non-confrontational way: ‘Are you here for the music?’ It was a white band, maybe a shoegaze band. I was constantly being asked, in one way or another, to validate my presence at these shows.”

It’s difficult not to draw parallels between this character Sutherland has envisioned, one full of longing, and his own life. He’s a little more taciturn. “I think that where the daughter’s experiences and mine meet isn’t so much in the relationship with the parents,” says Sutherland, a little blindsided. He speaks carefully. Sometimes he will halt a sentence midway to take a lengthy, considering, pause. “But, not to invalidate the

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relationships that one has, and that have been instrumental in making one the person who one is, and not to devalue the love, in a familial sense, that has contributed to it, I think that, in some cases, longing can be central, in an emotional sense, to an adoptee’s experience.”

While the story may feel solitary and personal, Sutherland uses his art to spotlight numerous voices – 17 other people worked on Versus Universe. Live, it’s brought to life by a full band consisting of friends and collaborators: Audrey Bizouerne, Sam Leighton and Gregor Emond.

The extremely unique and refreshing work of boundless wonder and creativity that has resulted renders Sutherland’s mind painted on tape, magnifying his musical heritage and reclaiming the styles he loves through the prism of his specific cultural experience.

Versus Universe is released on 10 May via Rock Action Rev Magnetic plays King Tut’s, Glasgow, 14 May, supporting Swervedriver revmagnetic.com

Photo: Harrison Reid

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Interview: Tony Inglis

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A Starting Point Three years after the collapse of Veronica Falls and her synth-pop reinvention, Roxanne Clifford finally delivers her darkly danceable debut as Patience

“I

t’s been liberating for me to do things completely on my own terms.”

It’s been a transitional few years for Roxanne Clifford. Up until 2016, she thought she knew who she was as a musician. She spent a long time in guitar bands, starting out with short-lived Glasgow anarcho-pop outfit The Royal We and then breaking away, together with drummer Patrick Doyle, to form Sexy Kids and then the group that, until now at least, would come to define her – Veronica Falls. Clifford was born in Manchester, served her musical apprenticeship in Glasgow and ended up in London by the time Veronica Falls were in full swing; they shifted shape between records, from their debut’s gothic noir to the jangling guitars of its follow-up, but stood musically as the logical culmination of all of Clifford’s work to that point.

“ As soon as I started making music like this, I loved that there was that sense of instant satisfaction” Roxanne Clifford

was a little bit discombobulating when I got out here,” she admits, “and it took a while before I started meeting people. I’m still figuring out how proactive I actually am in LA. I think I’ll maybe always feel more creatively encouraged in Britain.

A lot of this record is about the lifestyle change.”

It’s also, musically, a whistle-stop tour of a lot of influences that Clifford has been keeping in her back pocket for years. She’s always loved Frankie Knuckles, for instance, but she’s never had an appropriate creative outlet to pay homage to him; on the gloriously sunny Chicago housedriven single The Girls Are Chewing Gum, however, that run comes to an end.

Plus, there’s something distinctly European about the night-time techno of Living Things Don’t Last, while the assured strut of Moral Damage, an Anglo-French duet with Veronica Falls bandmate Marion Herbain, feels like a different kind of pop diversion entirely. Hanging over everything is that delicate balance between darkness and dancefloor. “When I think of house, I can see the parallels between that and the guitar music I

made,” explains Clifford. “There’s a happy/sad feeling that I’ve always mixed together.”

It is, overall, a reaction against everything that’s come before for Clifford; she continued to write and demo guitar-based material upon arriving in California, but she isn’t sure whether any of it will see the light of day. “It maybe feels too comfortable to me now. This seems like more of a challenge.” She’s already got a raft of new songs in hand that are more a product of her life in LA than anything on Dizzy Spells; this album, then, marks the conclusion of Patience’s woozy inception, the sound of Clifford finding her feet again. “I always feel kind of uneasy when I’m not releasing music, and it’s been a while. It’s going to be nice to have something to build on. The sound will change a bit, and I’ll always do things in my own time, but I want to get to work on the next thing pretty quickly. This really just feels like the starting point.”

Dizzy Spells is released on 3 May via Night School Records facebook.com/PatienceRoxanne

Photo: Jess Scott

Three years ago, things changed drastically.

Veronica Falls ended up on hiatus after Doyle departed (tragically, he died last year). Clifford swapped Britain for Los Angeles and, without an obvious next creative step making itself apparent, decided she’d have a go at writing a synth-pop song, mainly to see if she could come up with something that sounded like Robyn. The initial results were The Church and The Pressure, two coolly-executed and atmospherically dreamy new efforts that sonically were a wholesale departure for Clifford, all sleek electro polish, with languid melodies that drifted across genre boundaries. Her old friend Michael Kasparis, who runs Glasgow’s Night School Records, put both out on seven-inch.

The limited run was snapped up rapidly.

Ever since, Clifford has chipped away at more material under her new Patience pseudonym, never quite knowing where the project was going to take her but becoming more comfortable all the time with the latest musical identity that she was carving out for herself. “I considered

calling the record The Early Years,” she laughs on an early-morning call from LA, which remains home, “because it feels to me like a collection of tracks that have come together really gradually.

But that might have been too on-the-nose.”

Instead, the first album from Patience is Dizzy Spells, on account of it capturing both the disparate nature of Clifford’s work on the project to date and the disorientation of swapping London for Los Angeles – grey skies for blue ones, reservation for extroversion, an old life for a fresh start.

It’s still a weirdly cohesive affair – there’s something about her airy vocals that helps anchor the songs, as does the beguiling push-pull between the hazy tone and the glossy sound. Ultimately, though, it’s a wide-reaching pop odyssey that delves as far into culture shock as it does the excitement that new beginnings engender.

“As soon as I started making music like this, I loved that there was that sense of instant satisfaction,” she says. “There’s a very quick turnaround when you make something in your bedroom. There’s no external pressure; you’re doing it for yourself. I wasn’t thinking too far ahead – it was song by song. Diving into making a record without knowing how I wanted it to sound would have been too daunting. So, I took things as they came, and I had a lot of fun doing it.”

A fair chunk of Dizzy Spells actually came together away from the city that’s at the centre of it; it was as if Clifford, who calls the record a “transatlantic compilation”, needed distance from LA to properly assess her relationship with it. Those first two singles – “I had to include them, they’re a part of the story” – plus White of an Eye were cut back in Glasgow with Free Love’s Lewis Cook.

Elsewhere, some of the vocals were recorded in London with Misha Hering, including those for No Roses, which chronicles her disenchantment with her new hometown. “Everything

Interview: Joe Goggins

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THE SKINNY

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Photo: Helen Moga

The Upper Hand In a world where the next bout of US elections is starting to ramp up, we talk friendship, community and happiness with Tacocat’s Emily Nokes

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n the wake of the 2016 Presidential elections, the political landscape of the United States found itself in foreign waters; for many, a sense of what was to follow was laced in a malady of fear.

For Seattle-bred riot grrrl four-piece Tacocat, this fear birthed their fourth full-length record (and first on Sub Pop) This Mess Is a Place.

Through their effortlessly charming humour and lyrical conundrums that seek to challenge and change perspectives, Tacocat have delivered a record that subverts. It turns fear into happiness, hate into love and is instilled religiously with a sense that they’re a band who care. “I think metaphors and satire, and just a hint of humour, is sort of how we’ve always approached our brand of politics,” explains vocalist Emily Nokes of the band’s approach to expressing their socio-political criticisms. “There is a lot to say, and it can be said in so many different ways. But anger doesn’t register well with me; I think for a long time people were just fighting anger with anger and that wasn’t really going to do anything. But fighting with satire just feels like a different kind of upper hand. And it just makes people think a little harder or change perspectives.”

This shifting political landscape did lead the band to some changes, though. While lyrically the band retain the witty Tacocat bite, their soundscape has grown, encapsulating a greater sense of joy. “There was this sort of cheesy thing happening after the election where people were like ‘Oh well that’s okay. The best musicians in history have made their best music when they’ve been struck by politics,’” says Nokes. “But I felt like this was some sort of masculine expectation.

So I think that we were informed by the opposite.

We decided this record is going to sound fucking happy and triumphant – we wanted it to sound good despite things being politically crass. We didn’t want to write a bunch of sad sounding lyrics, but even if we did, the musical element on the album is just soaring, and that much bigger.”

The record shouldn’t just be taken as no more than politically concerned at its face-value, while the stories told seem much less personally introspective than perhaps the outlook found in

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Interview: Bethany Davison

2014’s NVM. For a band so politically concerned, and writing in the height of dire change, it’s unsurprising that they find their personal stories so naturally intertwined with the broader scale of national politics. “This is the first album we made post-election, so it was like, God, everything feels bad – the world feels bad, but I feel bad. Both personally, and as a larger zooming out scope. It was very hard to separate [the personal and the political], it’s just part of how you’re alive right now. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, these are personal love songs’. This is what we are thinking about – it just weaves together.”

“ We decided this record is going to sound fucking happy and triumphant – we wanted it to sound good despite things being politically crass” Emily Nokes

The most interesting aspect of Tacocat is their sense of community, both within the band and within the wider society they’ve grown in.

Friendship thrives through the band, as Nokes explains: “Being really tight friends for our band makes the collaboration a lot better.” With all four being close friends even before forming Tacocat, this comes as no surprise. Their creative process runs smoother, enabling their music to breathe honesty; for a group of individuals, they still achieve one all-encompassing voice, which

many bands are clear to fall short of. Beyond internal friendship though, is their embodiment and warm embrace of the Seattle community. As naturally as the band intertwine the personal and political, they too personify the environment that shapes them. “The environment will always inform the music,” says Nokes, “by the way of osmosis, through the things that we care about and the place we live.

“The Seattle community is amazing,” she continues. “When we first started out it wasn’t so much. It was quite exclusively for certain kinds of dude bands and it wasn’t as accepting of female musicians. But now, it’s very inclusive with queer folk and marginalised identities. And we all like to collaborate.” Collaboration is rife through the record. In discussing the conceptualisation of the video for Grains of Salt – the enigmatic first single from This Mess Is a Place – Nokes enthuses, “We’ve had drag performers open for us and stuff like that, but we don’t get a chance to collaborate as much because theirs is such a highly specific art form, so I felt it was fun for the video to take some of the artists we admire and allow them to become the main focus of the video.”

Continuing this discussion on art, Nokes paints a path back to Tacocat’s punk roots. “I always loved the whole idea of all of riot grrrl, which includes visual art [as well as music],” she explains. “There’s also this person in Seattle who makes this zine called Free Witch, and it’s just this art of doing whatever the fuck you want – baking yourself a cake and throwing yourself a birthday party, or taking your clothes off and taking photos. Just everybody doing whatever they want and not feeling guilty for it. It reminds me of that riot grrrl moment of being loud and in your face. I love that literal representation of ‘Anything I do is art because I say it’s art’. I really admire that freeform situation. I really just love people doing their own thing, and being themselves.”

In discussing the playfully vibrant, wondrously abstract lyricism in Grains of Salt (‘That’s just grains of salt / That’s just tears in the oven’), Nokes explains her approach to songwriting with candid profundity. “For this song more than any

Music

other one, I didn’t want it to sound too polemic or literal, because that’s what our songwriting used to sound like. So, for this record I just had this big notebook of things, like a calendar, where I’d just been jotting things down all the time, like sentences I’d heard, or conversations I’d had with people, or just random thoughts. And I just started picking things out and stitching them together.” It becomes apparent that the concept of art as freeform resides in Nokes’ approach to songwriting, which she ultimately describes as “a long process of picking out notes without making things sound too literal.”

The band remain equally as politically-driven in their plans for future projects. While beyond the repetitive cycle of touring and promotions that fall in hand with a new record, Nokes retains this hopeful buoyancy as she expresses the band’s future with the same notion of hope for change, and a better world that gushes through the record. “With the next set of elections starting to ramp up again, it feels good to get out there. We want people at our shows to get registered to vote and we want to get words out. I’m sure the closer we get to the next election we will get more scope to lend a hand, as a band that has a certain kind of platform. We want to be motivating people to be doing the right thing.”

This Mess Is a Place proves the legacy of the riot grrrl movement, as it embodies Tacocat’s fearless ‘Fuck It’ attitude, intertwined with poetic socio-political critique of freeform inspiration, alongside their congenial love for friendship, community and happiness. For Nokes, especially, there lies an intention for the record to instil positivity in whoever it finds. “I’d like people to take away a sense of strength and perseverance, the idea of just keeping on. Anger is valid, and sadness is very valid too, but I wanted the album to just feel like you’re allowed to still find happiness and look after yourself while you’re fighting for things that you hold dear.”

This Mess Is a Place is released on 3 May via Sub Pop tacocatdotcom.com

THE SKINNY

Rave to the Grave Brian Welsh’s Beats follows two best friends as they experience the tail end of West Lothian’s illegal rave scene in 1994. We speak to the film’s talented young stars, Cristian Ortega and Lorn Macdonald

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he 90s are back! If you’ve any doubt about this assertion, just stick your head out the window and see what trendy youngsters are wearing (plaid skirts, athleisure, denim dungarees), take a look at who’s packing out your town’s music venues (Sleater-Kinney, The Pixies, even All Saints) or visit your local multiplex (Captain Marvel, Mid90s and Her Smell are some of the films taking us back to the 90s in 2019). Add to this list Brian Welsh’s vivid coming-of-age film Beats, which transports audiences to the tail end of the illegal rave scene in 1994 West Lothian, just as the era’s rhapsodic dance parties have been outlawed by John Major’s Tory government.

The film centres on two chalk and cheese best pals, 15-year-olds Johnno (Cristian Ortega) and Spanner (Lorn Macdonald), who’re about to get their first taste of the scene that everyone around them insists is moribund. Also in danger of being snuffed out is the boys’ friendship.

Johnno’s soon to move with his upwardly mobile family out of the council estate in which he and Spanner grew up, into a posh new Barratt Home-style development in the suburbs, a place Spanner derisively refers to as “happy clappy plastic land”. Before class and geographic barriers wrench them apart, one final big night out is in order.

Johnno and Spanner make for an appealing double act. Gormless and monobrowed, with a deadpan visage that makes Buster Keaton look like The Joker, Johnno is very much the straight man in this duo, while the gangly, maladroit Spanner is a bundle of livewire energy, wearing a heinous haircut that Johnno’s de facto stepdad (Brian Ferguson), a jobsworth police constable, accurately describes as “a crime against his heid.”

Ortega and Macdonald’s onscreen bond convinces, and the fact they’re good friends in real life surely helped their performances, having met while they were both studying drama at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

This isn’t to suggest, though, that they didn’t have to put the hours in to realise their characters’ intense friendship. “Oh, we definitely had to work on it,” says Macdonald, “in the sense that this isn’t quite our relationship dynamic. We don’t have that kind of strange, older brother hierarchy.” In saying that, Ortega reckons their IRL friendship meant the level of intimacy they had to communicate onscreen came as second nature. “There’s the scene where Johnno and Spanner, they’re lying in bed, hungover and dying,” he says, “like, Lorn and I have done that; we’ve been in that situation many times. So yeah, there was a lot of shorthand.”

Their amity also encouraged some improvisation on set, including a toxic masculinitysmashing smooch during the film’s epic rave scene, when the boys are feeling particularly euphoric after trying their first pill. “I was just like to Brian, ‘I reckon Spanner should give Johnno a big snog after he tells him he loves him,’ because I think in real life I would probably give Cristian a big snog in the same situation,” says Macdonald. “I think I would have felt awkward approaching another actor going, ‘Do you mind if I kiss you?’ But with Cristian, it was just like, ‘Nah, that’s exactly what should happen.’ And now, when I watched that moment back, I’m like, ‘Oh, my heart. I love it!’”

Johnno and Spanner are 15-year-olds, but these fresh-faced actors are considerably older than their characters. Ortega was born in 1990, Macdonald in 1992, so they have vague firsthand memories about the decade in which Beats is set.

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But the fact that the 1990s are very much of the moment also helped in zapping them back to the era. “I feel like a lot of our culture, the clothes the kids are wearing these days, is becoming more and more 90s,” says Macdonald. “Plus I’ve been obsessed with movies set in the 90s as well. If it was set in the 80s, I’d have been like, ‘Right, I’ve got a lot of research to do here.’ But the 90s, I found it quite easy to just kind of sink back into that time.”

Ortega reckons the fact they’re a bit older than their characters had other advantages: “Growing up and being like 14 and 15 and not having a mobile phone, that’s something that we’ve gone through, whereas if we were actually the ages of the characters that we’re playing, we wouldn’t have had that experience.”

“Aye,” agrees Macdonald. “I know what it’s like to go round to my mates, chap his door, he’s not in, and it’s like, ‘I’ve just walked half an hour to come round here. Cheers for that!’”

Beats is co-written by playwright Kieran Hurley, adapted from his celebrated one-man play of the same name, from 2012. After filming Beats, Macdonald went on to work with Hurley again in his most recent play, Mouthpiece, playing a working-class 17-year-old whose life is vampirised for inspiration by an older, middle-class writer. “I remember picking up Mouthpiece at the same time that I was reading Beats,” recalls Macdonald, “And I was like, ‘This is mental, no one is writing young guys like this.’ So, aye, I feel very privileged to be able to do both of them, for sure.”

Ortega clearly concurs: “Kieran always manages to strike just the right balance between absolute tragedy and heartbreak, and then throw in a killer joke. He manages to have you laughing through your teeth with a pit of despair...”

“Which is exactly what Scottish humour is,” agrees Macdonald. “I mean, think of Billy Connolly – or Scottish football even! It’s that element of tragedy that makes Kieran so funny. So he kinda captures basically what it is to be Scottish, I think, in everything he’s written.”

“ I think I would have felt awkward approaching another actor going, ‘Do you mind if I kiss you?’ But with Cristian, it was just like, ‘Nah, that’s exactly what should happen’” Lorn Macdonald

As well as being a perceptive film about the almost erotic intensity of teenage friendship, Beats is also an unabashedly joyous party movie.

And like other great party movies – House Party, Dazed and Confused, Risky Business – the film

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Interview: Jamie Dunn

builds to a massive shindig, in this case, Rave to the Grave, an illegal party taking place in an abandoned building in the West Lothian countryside. As far as club scenes in popular culture go, it’s right up there with Spaced’s iconic clubbing episode, Epiphanies.

Macdonald suggests the authenticity comes from the fact that the shoot for Beats’ club scene genuinely felt like one big party. “We were filming for five or six hours? The music just played through, you know, we had to dub over everything we were saying because we’re screaming at each other and there’s like a thousand people all dressed in 90s gear, all getting drunk themselves, without us necessarily having anything to do with them, and all having a great time.”

“That sort of ambience and energy was around us the whole time,” adds Ortega. “I mean we had guys proper bumping into us as they danced and saying all this mad stuff in our ears, so we just sort of fed off the energy they were giving us. And also, after a while, when you’re sweating – and we were proper sweating – you kind of forget that you’re not out clubbing proper.

It’s like if you’re at a party and someone gives you non-alcoholic beer – after a while the placebo effect kicks in. You’re there, you know? You totally forget you’re making a film.”

Macdonald felt similarly transported: “I think it was the closest we could possibly come to experiencing that era without time travel.”

Dust off your Kappa trackies, find that old whistle from the odds and ends drawer and crack those glow sticks, because, with Beats, you get to time travel also.

Beats is released 17 May by Altitude

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THE SKINNY

Teen Turmoil Josephine Decker, one of the fiercest talents on America’s vibrant indie film scene, talks to us about her impressionistic new feature, Madeline’s Madeline, which centres on an extraordinary performance from teen newcomer Helena Howard

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n artist never knows when inspiration is going to strike, or what form it will take.

Josephine Decker wasn’t actively looking for the star of her next film when she agreed to be one of the judges at a teen arts festival in early 2014, but there she was in the shape of a 15-year-old named Helena Howard, whose powerful rendition of a monologue from David Harrower’s play Blackbird moved Decker to tears. When she had recovered from the impact of this performance, Decker sought out Howard backstage, driven by an overwhelming and unignorable impulse – she simply had to work with this girl.

“Yeah, I never even hesitated,” Decker says as she recalls that serendipitous meeting. “It was so clear to me that she could do anything as an actor and that she was just a great human being as well, and when something strikes you so hard I just try to follow it all the way. It’s weird to have that strong of a feeling, so when I do, I try to listen to it. You know, sometimes actors do things and you don’t understand why you’re so gripped, and I always feel that those are the best kind of actors to work with. Sometimes you think that a person is such a great actor because they can do all these impressive things, but it’s not as great as when you just face someone and you think, ‘I don’t know why I can’t stop watching you, but I just can’t.’”

The rest of us will surely be just as captivated by this remarkable young actor. Helena Howard is a natural; her effortlessly charismatic performance in Madeline’s Madeline is the kind of exhilarating debut that feels as rare and exciting as a comet blazing across the cinematic sky. She plays 16-year-old Madeline, fresh out of a stay in a psychiatric hospital, who attempts to escape from her troubles by joining an improvisatory theatre troupe led by Evangeline (Molly Parker).

Evangeline and her actors are developing… something through their various improvisations

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and roleplays, but Evangeline quickly latches on to Madeline’s personal problems – and particularly her fractious relationship with her mother (Miranda July) – as a source of inspiration.

“ Maybe that’s one of the flaws of my work, that nobody can be comfortable when they watch it! I love that, though” Josephine Decker

Where is the line between inspiration and exploitation? It’s a question that Decker often pondered as she developed Madeline’s Madeline through a series of acting workshops organised with the Pig Iron Theatre Company and their artistic director, Quinn Bauriedel. “It’s never really a conversation that we’re having as artists, but how do you stay responsible to the people you build work with and how are you portraying their story?” she asks. “What are the ethics of improvising, even? When you’re improvising, you’re forced to use what’s inside your own head and that’s to some degree personal, so when does that become exploitative? All of those ideas were things that we were just encountering as we did this process. Eventually I thought that I’ve learned so much from this process it would be a

shame not to be putting that learning into the film.” In this respect, the authoritarian and vampiric Evangeline might be seen as a worstcase scenario version of Decker herself. “Yeah, completely. If I never listened to anyone and didn’t pick up any clues along the way, then maybe what I’m doing is a little off and that would have been me.”

Collaboration is very important to Decker.

Her two previous features, Butter on the Latch (2013) and Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014), relied heavily on improvisations with the cast, and she is quick to pay tribute to the contribution of key colleagues behind the camera too. Her regular cinematographer, Ashley Connor, brilliantly finds a variety of inventive ways to place us inside Madeline’s fractured headspace, while editing consultants Marie-Hélène Dozo and David Barker proved to be invaluable when Decker reached the long and challenging post-production stage.

“I love editing and often that’s where I find the movie, I think maybe to a fault,” she admits.

“With Madeline’s Madeline, I was like, ‘Cool, the script is kind of there, we’re gonna find it in editing,’ and then we got into editing and I was like, ‘Oh fuck.’” The editing process took the best part of a year and the story took on many different shapes (at one point, Decker says, it was an Alice in Wonderland-style adventure) before she found the right path. “When we restructured the first third of the film I think people started to get the movie, and I don’t think they’d really gotten it before that because it was a pretty abstract and elliptical thing. I had eased into it a bit and David was really good at finding that sometimes you need a sharp edge around something for it to stand out and really hit, so I was grateful for that.”

We can feel those sharp edges throughout Madeline’s Madeline. Decker’s work always feels poised on a knife-edge, with every scene feeling like it could flip into comedy or violence, or

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Interview: Philip Concannon

plunge into pain or ecstasy, at any moment. The whole film possesses this nervous, off-kilter energy. It’s invigorating, but it’s not an easy or comfortable experience. “Yeah, maybe that’s one of the flaws of my work, that nobody can be comfortable when they watch it!” Decker says with a laugh. “I love that, though. I appreciate when a movie is giving me a visceral experience and I’m not really into passive entertainment. A lot of that is just trying not to let a feeling land until it’s the right feeling, so my editors and I talked a lot about not having beginnings or endings on scenes, and how we could push the energy of a scene into the next scene, so there’s always a kind of question at the end of a scene that has to be answered in the next one. If you have this rising series of questions, then ideally the answer is going to be something you didn’t expect, which creates a new question that launches you into the next section of the film.”

That feeling of watching a film constantly reinventing itself, going for broke in every single scene, is what makes Madeline’s Madeline feel so special. Even after multiple viewings, the film retains its capacity to surprise and thrill the viewer, revealing new facets to its complex structure and provoking fresh emotional responses. In fact, it’s a film that even managed to surprise its creator. “I think some people really do make the movie that’s inside their mind but my movies are often so improved by becoming whatever is happening with the people that are working on the film, so I’m always really grateful once the movie has reared its head and revealed itself to be something really unexpected and new,” she says. “In this instance, it was nothing like what I thought I was setting out to make, and I’m kind of happy that’s the case.”

Madeline’s Madeline is released in select cinemas 10 May by MUBI, and will also be streaming on MUBI from that date

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Out in the Cold Interview: Gianni Marini

Photo: Courtesy of Signature Entertainment

Prolific filmmaker Joe Penna made his name on YouTube with his popular channel MysteryGuitarMan. He tells us how these early years making shorts online has informed Arctic, his debut feature film, a survivalist thriller starring Mads Mikkelsen

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ccasionally you’ll find a film director’s early shorts included as extras on DVD menus, and often these formative works reveal that the themes that currently preoccupy the filmmaker have done so from the very beginning of their career. With a move from the varying screen size of YouTube to the big one, 12 years of Joe Penna’s development is catalogued for us to watch.

Hundreds of videos uploaded to the platform as MysteryGuitarMan give him a filmography that charts not only his own growth but YouTube’s as well. Over these 12 years, Penna’s work becomes more sophisticated; early clips that show promise have the same ideas re-worked later with increasing quality and attention to detail.

His filmmaking skills improved, as did his understanding of his audience, the main lesson, he says, that YouTube taught him. “It is very difficult to make a living on YouTube, but I learned that every second counts.”

The demands to produce enough of the right kind of content to satisfy the algorithm meant he felt like he was starting to sacrifice quality.

Having uploaded everything from stop-motion animations to music videos, Penna eventually made Instant Getaway, a 14-minute-long short that made it to the big screen, premiering at Tribeca Film Festival. For him, it was a natural progression to make a feature.

Arctic is the result. The film has almost no dialogue and focuses on a single person, Overgård, a man stranded in an icy wasteland struggling to survive. It is a heavy weight for any actor to carry. Fortunately, after an intense Skype call, Penna managed to convince one of the world’s finest, Mads Mikkelsen (Hannibal, Doctor Strange), to take a chance on this first-time director. The Danish actor’s restrained, pensive style matches perfectly with the aim of the project: to create a survival film that reflects reality and doesn’t shy away from the morality of self-preservation.

Penna is firm when explaining how impor-

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tant the team was in making Arctic. Shot over 19 days in Iceland, alongside Mikkelsen, there was a crew that made the $2 million budget suffice.

“There is no way we could have shot this film if we didn’t have a crew who were working in their off-hours, who were getting things ready with their own cash and calling in favours.”

“ We don’t have a bad guy, we don’t have a Machiavellian moustachetwirler, so the sound is our antagonist” Joe Penna

During post-production, the editor created an unscripted sequence out of the footage they had shot. He had Overgård make several attempts at pulling a sledge holding an injured companion up the rockface despite it not being in the script or shot that way. It becomes a more emotionally satisfying scene because of it. In the middle of the sound mixing session, sound editor Mark Mangini found out he had been nominated for an Oscar – for Blade Runner 2049. The film’s score was composed by Joseph Trapanese whose credits include The Greatest Showman and Straight Outta Compton. Penna found himself asking again and again: “How did I get that person?”

Set in a beautiful but bleak landscape and with no conversation, the film’s sound design

becomes narratively vital. Penna hates referring to aspects of a film that aren’t played by actors as characters but says his sound team had to “act”.

“We don’t have a bad guy, we don’t have a Machiavellian moustache-twirler, so the sound is our antagonist.” The wind, the crunching of the ice and the beeping of Overgård’s wristwatch push the story forward. Alone in an empty wilderness, the sounds of the environment are felt more intensely.

The watch beeping is a particularly clever conceit. During the research, every survivalist Penna spoke to emphasised the importance of sticking to a strict schedule, so he gave Overgård a watch with five alarms. The beeps signal when he must go clean the SOS sign carved in the ice or check his fishing lines for a catch. As the film progresses, the beeps become a reassuring reminder of order or a thrilling interruption into a fleeting moment of calm. And, as simple as it seems, they also signal to the audience that something else is about to happen.

YouTube analytics, complete with charts and graphs, detail down to the second when audiences lose interest in a video. Penna says this taught him what maintains interest, so he could then incorporate it into his next upload. It was at the forefront of his mind when making Arctic. “It was invaluable to this feature film, especially because of the lack of dialogue, we had to have ways of keeping people interested.” Penna refers to his audience-captivating technique as “little mysteries”. A sequence will raise a question, the question becomes more complex, and then a payoff is offered. Arctic’s opening demonstrates it like so: Overgård is digging at the snow, we don’t know to what end. Then he becomes perturbed by a white rock sitting in this black trench he has been creating. Then our view cuts to a wide aerial shot showing the giant SOS sign he has carved. “Maybe you’ll keep watching just a little bit longer and then we ask more questions, and hopefully that keeps you watching until the

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end of the film.”

Penna talks about making use of YouTube’s analytics as if it were another tool in the filmmaker’s kit. As troubling as it might seem, he is clear he uses it to inform his work rather than design it. He laughs as he suggests the headline for this piece should be: graphs, charts and algorithms, that’s the way to make art. Like classical music composed by a computer, Arctic hits all the right notes.

Perhaps a robot could have made Arctic with each trope of the survival genre perfectly corrected so as to reflect reality. Penna consulted several survivalists to make sure there would be no eye-rolling in the audience. He and his writing partner, Ryan Morrison, debated the moral dilemmas the increasingly dire situation poses for Overgård. All to ensure the audience didn’t want to shout “no, no, no” as the protagonist does something stupid.

Something that sets the movie apart is all that is left unsaid about the moral tumult going on behind Overgård’s eyes. Whether a robot could look at Mikkelsen’s face and determine whether it conveyed the correct emotional currents remains an open question. But in Arctic, it is Penna’s eyes that watched Mikkelsen transform a simple script into a film with a profound moral undercurrent – how far would you go to save a life?

Work is well underway on Penna’s next project. Written with his long-time collaborator, Morrison, Stowaway is set within the confines of a spaceship en route to Mars. Once again, Penna is humbled by the talent the project has attracted, with Toni Collette (Hereditary, Little Miss Sunshine) and Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air, Pitch Perfect) making up the cast. The film will continue to explore the moral and emotional themes that fascinate Penna. “I am asking similar questions, but I have an inkling there will be different answers here.”

Arctic is released 10 May by Signature Entertainment

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THE SKINNY

The Conviction of Denise Mina D

enise Mina, crime writing royalty, can turn her hand to anything. Her latest book, Conviction, delves into the murky world of true crime obsession, featuring Anna, a regular mum of two living in Glasgow, who has been hiding a troubled past. But when her husband leaves with her best friend, taking the children with them, Anna can do nothing but lose herself in someone else’s story – nestled in a true crime podcast.

Circling a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean with a rich family murdered, Anna realises she knew one of the victims. In a bid to escape her own life, she and an unlikely companion begin to investigate the crime, creating their own true crime podcast along the way.

So, why podcasts? “My previous book The Long Drop was a true crime case and I was listening to true crime podcasts obsessively.” Mina had read that “true crime is ethically problematic” which is “something we need to unpack. It’s complex. It’s the ethics of people listening to true crime podcasts [by people] who are not trained journalists. It tends to be amateurs.”

Just recently, she tells me, a true crime podcast had to be shut down when the presenter broadcast facts that should not have been in the public domain. “It’s a really interesting issue,” she notes. “I find the whole podcast thing fascinating.

No one is making any money, and they are all doing it for the love. People are basically doing it for the love of narrative.”

“ There is a particular disgust with young women, and I don’t really know where it comes from. Particularly beautiful young women – there is a kind of disgust and people find it hard to humanise.

They hate them” Denise Mina

So, what, in her mind, makes a good podcast? “Some of them really captured my imagination and it’s not the story but the way the story is told. There’s one I really love called Last Podcast on the Left [where comedians and actors focus on all kinds of horrors from serial killers to ghosts] where they are so irreverent. One of them is an actor and he does the murderers’ voices and he makes them sound like absolute idiots. It is a brilliant way to tell these stories that are very compelling. ‘Crime’ is a story with really high stakes, and the true aspect of it adds another

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level of high stakes.”

With the rise of crime podcasts, the idea of someone investigating something themselves isn’t too farfetched. Of the infamous podcast Serial, she says, “Possies formed on Reddit and they did go to the places. I’ve just finished filming a documentary with Frank Skinner where we have re-created Boswell and Johnson’s tour of Scotland. They went to Macbeth’s castle and the heath nearby and that is true crime tourism. If you strip it back, it is all true crime.”

Mina’s characters tend to be multi-faceted with a troubled past and Conviction's protagonist, Anna, is no exception. She is the victim of a crime and has been running from the consequences of it her whole adult life. Anna deals with abuse when she should have been protected. Is Mina often shocked at the way women are treated when they are victims?

“I’m shocked at the way anyone is treated.

There needs to be a general acknowledgement that that is not what the law is supposed to do, look after victims. It’s not the police, they always get the blame; it’s juries, its everything. Look at #MeToo. I keep seeing all these people who are exposing themselves through #MeToo, and as quite an old cynical woman who has seen it a lot, people only give a fuck when it suits them. They only care when it chimes with their own agenda.”

But things are changing. Anna starts to gain more support – where does this come from?

“Anna is doing something people are interested in [through researching the podcast], she’s in alliance with someone powerful, she’s older, and it’s a different time. There is a particular disgust with young women, and I don’t really know where it comes from. Particularly beautiful young women – there is a kind of disgust and people find it hard to humanise. They hate them.”

So, does she think what happens to victims, and the support structures around them, is changing enough? “I think it’s two steps forward and one step back. I really fear for women coming forward and there isn’t any protection. People always say, ‘well done’ but then two minutes later they can’t get a job.’

Anna prevails over awful things that have happened to her, naming herself a ‘disposable victim’. ‘[We are] one of five. As perennial as love.

We go about our business, raising kids, running countries, starting wars, solving crimes.’ Is this a message Mina wanted to get across, that women can be victims but also, in Anna’s words, ‘fucking amazing’?

“Really fucking amazing. You will get women who admit to being sacked or getting done for theft, but very rarely will it be known within a group of people that a woman was raped by six guys when she was 15. Because you’re never getting away from that. It’s such a taint on the victim. It’s also about people who don’t tell their own story. I think that’s so interesting, the idea that you’re being dishonest if you don’t tell your story. It does come from Freudian analysis, that you have to perpetually tell your story.”

In contrast to Anna’s hidden past, her companion throughout the novel has a well-known public story. A once successful musician, Fin, her best friend’s husband, is suffering from anorexia and faded glamour. “20 years ago you would have chosen drug addiction [for a character like Fin], but it’s about someone who’s not quite there and dealing with something really big and really

Interview: Rebecca Smith

Photo: Ollie Grove

Crime writing royalty Denise Mina is back with her new novel Conviction, following Anna as she dives deep into the world of true crime podcasts. She talks to The Skinny ahead of publication

struggling. I see the consequences of eating disorders and how they operate as an addiction.

The way people used to be absent from their life when they were drunk or took drugs, people don’t tend to do that as much. But you do see people with eating problems; it could be compulsive over-eating or anorexia or manic over-exercise. I just thought it was a really interesting thing for a guy to have as well – more and more young men are suffering from anorexia. They suffer silently.

There aren’t ways to express yourself. Approaching the world is very difficult for young men now.”

Fin is also struggling with a decline in his fame as a musician. “A lot of people who were massive successes when they were younger, maybe they didn’t hold on to the money, they can’t just walk into a bar and get a job now.”

Power, money and fame: the characters in the book with these things are not safe, pleasant or particularly happy. Does Mina think people are still tricked into thinking money and power will

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provide protection and joy?

“Yes, I really do. And I honestly don’t think you can dissuade people from that, unless you get some of them. Then they really realise: it’s a bit shite.”

What it all boils down to for Mina is the way you tell a story; be it in a book, a podcast or to your friends. Anna talks about telling stories with the victim who was murdered. ‘These were stories to entertain, told for the shape of them, for the sake of them, for the love of a tale.’

When Mina is asked about this line, she says, “People tell stories, but they are really telling you information about themselves. So, when you have conversations that are just exchanges of stories that work really beautifully and nobody is trying to do anything or move in the conversation, it’s just delicious.”

Conviction is published by Harvill Secker, 16 May, £14.99 penguin.co.uk/books/

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Inner City Deserts Artist Shadi Habib Allah discusses the social isolation of inner-city neighbourhoods in Miami, where city planning failures have created food deserts and illegal economies centred around small convenience stores form an alternative infrastructure

Interview: Adam Benmakhlouf

While there’s a slash in the value of the food stamps, as shop owners might give only 50% of their value back in cash, he also notices that relationships build up and cash advances are given to people whom the shopkeepers know.

“ They intentionally had [an] impoverished appearance”

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peaking to Shadi Habib Allah in advance of his CCA show, he offers the other side of his hand to shake. “I’ve been doing the tiles,” he explains. He doesn’t elaborate as he sits down to begin discussing his upcoming show Free Rein, but will later in the interview, as the tiles are some of the objects that he’s transported from the Miami setting. It’s here which Allah lived and where he worked in the local corner convenience stores, which are the jumping-off point for him to delve into some of the most pressing issues surrounding social welfare in contemporary USA and beyond.

“I used to work in these stores and the shifts were ridiculous.” He goes on to explain however that for the people working in the stores, this was where they would spend most of their time. “Even on their days off, this would be their social space.” And he jokes, “I’d always try to get them to leave.” Since these stores are open 24 hours, people would hang around through the night. “It would start picking up through the night, around 3 and 4 am.”

The area of Miami in which he previously worked is indicative of a certain kind of neighbourhood that can be found across different parts of the USA. “They’re considered as desert islands.” Allah names two supermarket retailers, Winn-Dixie and Publix, that have refused to set up there. “The government can advise businesses to open in certain places but the large chains refused.” As most people were low income, big businesses saw no profitable reason to set up there. This absence meant that smaller independent retailers took their place, the kind that Allah worked in while he lived in Miami.

There’s a historical lineage to these kinds of “desert islands,” which Great Allah has charted back to the Depression, but he chooses not to emphasise this kind of timeline approach. Instead, there’s a more subtle line of enquiry that takes the usual discussion from a more left-field perspective.

“I’m interested in the legitimacy of appearances, and how these things change. Why do we deem something as more acceptable, or not?” He sees

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this question as a central factor for “alternative economies”, a category into which he includes the food-stamps-for-money trade that goes on in some of the small convenience stores in isolated areas. “[Alternative economies] constantly reflect back on main systems and adjust, as they’re supposed to adhere to them. So they constantly tweak and recalibrate, not in order to change or escape, but to look legitimate or acceptable. This is very present in how the stores came to function. They intentionally had [an] impoverished appearance in order to signal to people [that the stores were a place to sell their food stamps.]” He also thinks of the analogue accounts system that the shops would have in response to a digitised system that was designed, in part, to facilitate greater surveillance of all transactions in the stores.

This is part of the work in the show, which includes the slips that the stores use to record “what are considered illegal transactions. They hide them in small notebooks or keep small slips in certain spots behind the cash register.” These will be notes of “people who frequent the store, how much they have on their card [which holds the food stamps’ credit]. So they empty their cards in three small sums that correspond to some merchandise. When these transactions are made they look legitimate. The [shop owner and person with food stamps] are interdependent in order to survive.”

The kind of shops that he’s focusing on in the show is immediately recognisable. There’s one down the road from the CCA, also open 24 hours. A reporter’s notebook and Bic pen come in just shy of three quid. There’s a streak of exorbitant pricing in the American convenience stores, too. “They charge more, because there aren’t any larger stores in the area, but they’re also suffering from changes in the neighbourhood, too. In the areas I used to work in, business isn’t as profitable as it used to be.” He describes “development” but that it comes in a “certain way. More stores are opening but not in the

centre [of populated areas].”

Although Allah doesn’t prioritise a historic retelling of the events that led to some of the specific challenges of the area in Miami he lived in, he does give some background to Liberty Square in particular, “where African Americans moved in the 50s and 60s.” While these estates were initially improvements on the slums where communities had been living before, they have now fallen into disrepair and become areas of social isolation.

As Allah observes, the trade in food stamps is often made essential because the system of welfare provision is so restrictive. While the food stamps might allow the person to purchase food, it would nevertheless become necessary to trade the stamps for cash in order to pay bus fare to attend a job interview, for instance. Allah describes the “social bond” that was created.

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Nevertheless, Allah moves away from some of the usual ways of speaking about food stamps and their illegal trade. While it’s a charged context and one that might come up across all levels of political discussion, he emphasises that he makes an effort to move from thinking of the subject in a “topical” way to an analysis that is more “infrastructural”. Rather than thinking about whether the activities are good or bad, he looks to more subtle nuances of how the process runs, and the mechanics of its operation. That’s to say, the smaller tasks that are required of the shopkeepers and the informal systems of accounts and recording that they use, or how they advertise that they offer the illegal service without giving any express indication.

Thinking of his approach, Allah recognises his effort to move from the topical to the infrastructural. So, recognising the mechanics of how something like the illegal food stamps trade operates, rather than focusing on questions of an abstract ethical measurement. He’s not asking, “What is wrong or right?” Going beyond this charged quandary, Free Rein promises a non-judgmental account of the strategies of survival that emerge within the hardest social conditions.

Free Rein by Shadi Habib Allah is open in the Centre for Contemporary Arts until 2 Jun

Shadi Habib Allah, Measured Volumes, 2018

THE SKINNY

Photo: Alan Dimmick

Shadi Habib Allah, The King and the Jester, 2010

Photo: Alan Dimmick

Shadi Habib Allah

May 2019

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Proto feminism The Skinny chats to Zinnie Harris to discuss updating John Webster’s 17th century play The Duchess of Malfi for the present day, male rage and female resistance

Interview: Megan Wallace

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The Lens of Gender In this new adaptation by Zinnie Harris, this classic tale of familial and regal obligations will be focalised through the lens of gender, bringing the power dynamics of the original into sharp focus. For Harris, the attraction of adapting The Duchess of Malfi lay with the Duchess as a character, but also the play’s contemporary feel.

“The Duchess of Malfi is a wonderfully rich tale of love, sex and hatred. It’s one of those plays that is written on a broad canvas, is hugely theatrical and tells a big story. It’s also an important story that will speak to any audience,” Harris begins. “The Duchess herself is a character who in some ways feels timeless – she might have been first written into existence in the 17th century but she acts like a modern woman. She knows what she wants and is prepared to stand up to the men around who are trying to stop her from achieving it,” she explains.

“ The Duchess of Malfi is all about women, and how they are treated by the men around them” Zinnie Harris

Female Triumph and Female Tragedy Yet the play doesn’t just revolve around female triumph, but rather female tragedy. It viscerally charts the backlash which women receive for speaking their mind and daring to defy tradition — particularly in systems of power, where toxic masculinity goes unchecked. As Harris explains, the Duchess’s power and self possession become dangerous sources of male anxiety and paranoia, which ultimately put her and the ones she loves at risk.

“The Duchess is a widow, and that is important because women who have never been married are easier to control as they have no

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Photo: Heshani Sothiraj Eddleston

hether it be The Favourite or Fleabag, the cultural hits of the past year have been resoundingly female. With productions centring emotions like lust and rage, it’s clear that women in culture don’t have to play nice any longer: complex characters rather than one-dimensional heroines are the order of the day.

The changing context of the past few years, which has seen feminism become a hot button topic, has finally yielded the kind of flawed but real female characters who have so long been missing from film, television and theatre alike.

This is exactly what makes John Webster’s 17th century play The Duchess of Malfi so ripe for adaptation. The tale follows the Duchess of the title in the wake of her husband’s death as she wields power independently for the first time, revealing her passions and rejecting the authority of her male relatives – to her own peril.

money of their own,” Harris explains. “The Duchess is rich, she is not naïve about love and sex, and she knows who and what she wants. That position is terrifying to her brothers, who no longer have the upper hand. She literally could do anything, she is fearless. So, of course, they try to stop her.”

We’ve been having conversations about gendered inequalities for what seems like decades now, but what makes the story and character of the Duchess particularly relevant is its juxtaposition of the macro and the micro; highlighting how even the most powerful women can fall foul of abusive power dynamics at a personal level.

“The Duchess of Malfi is all about women, and how they are treated by the men around them. I felt this chimed with a broader question in our cultural lives about how women are viewed and understood. At one level, there are discussions in the media about how many women are on FTSE 100 boards,” continues Harris. “At another there is this whole new movement that started with #MeToo about sexuality and what equality should mean. It makes The Duchess a perfect play to revisit — in many ways I think of Webster as a sort of proto-feminist, bringing the story of the Duchess to the stage, many many years before people were writing or thinking about feminism or women’s liberation.”

Exploration of Masculinity and Femininity Given that women’s lives often become the collateral damage of fragile male egos, Harris’s

adaptation is as much an exploration of masculinity as it is of femininity.

“The other thing that attracted me to the text is the representation of men in the play and their choices. After all, when you are talking about the empowerment of women, you are really talking about men and the choices they are making. The Duchess’s brothers are horribly misguided; they think they love her — in fact in many ways the whole play is about love, what it does to us and how it kills us when it goes wrong — but they can’t see that to love someone is to let them be free. Indeed, we see in our times families where brothers control the women they report to love and would rather kill them than let them make their own choices. This is a tale that has been told no doubt many times across the ages in different contexts.”

Beyond its preoccupation with historical and contemporary gender dynamics, it’s a particularly pertinent play for this cultural moment of reevaluating and redrawing boundaries as seen in one of the characters, Bosola, who, as Harris explains, undergoes something of a moral re-awakening.

“Another of the characters is Bosola, who for the first half of the play is another villain. He is a paid assassin working for the Cardinal, but Webster’s genius is to give this character a huge story arc; he effectively wakes up and starts to take responsibility for what he does through the course of the play,” she says. “In other words we see him grow up before our eyes in a way that none of the other male characters can achieve. I

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like the fact that it’s the most reprehensible character that does this, the one at the start who literally is crawling around the gutter slitting throats for a living.”

Adding Something to the Conversation Dealing with issues that are so relevant to the here and now, it was important for Harris to give her adaptation as contemporary a spin as possible, making sure that the audience feels the full weight of the tragedy as it unfolds.

“My hope is that the audience will experience it like a play that has been written for them today. The characters feel modern, what they do and talk about is modern. That means there is not this sense of removal that you often get watching period drama, so much as being immersed in what the story is saying to us about our times now.”

Ultimately, however, it’s also a play which seeks to add something to the conversation, rather than merely mirror the status quo back to the audience. In this regard, Harris hopes to show the danger inherent in patriarchy — not just for the women who bear the brunt of its toxicity, but for the men who seamlessly step into the role of villain. “Ultimately Ferdinand, by trying to destroy the Duchess, goes mad and ends up destroying himself — this is what I mean about Webster being a proto-feminist, he seemed to be saying we control and destroy women only at our own peril.”

The Duchess [of Malfi], Royal Lyceum Theatre, 17 May-8 Jun lyceum.org.uk/whats-on/production/the-duchess-of-malfi

THE SKINNY

A Spotlight on Mental Health The Skinny chats to theatre director Ross MacKay and Andrew Eaton-Lewis of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival and asks, how can the theatre industry be more mindful of mental ill-health?

Interview: Amy Taylor

Holding it Together

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ental health has long been a worthy topic for theatre, from Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hands of spots of blood, to Tennessee Williams’ entire back catalogue; theatre has raised awareness of the issue just as much as it has sensationalised it.

But, what about the people that make theatre? Can you continue to work in the industry while you have a mental illness?

For theatre director Ross MacKay, who openly discusses his own mental health issues online, disclosing his mental health problems and having to take time off from work to recover made him start to worry about his future in the industry.

In a blog post called Why I Am Afraid to Talk, MacKay revealed that he’d worried about telling his colleagues about a relapse in his mental health because he feared sharing his diagnosis would mean he would be seen as unreliable, and therefore, unemployable.

“I am scared of letting people know. I’m scared that ‘everyone gets one’ is the way we might look at the world. Ross was unwell but now he’s better. But if he’s ill again, not even one year after the last time, then maybe he’s not getting better,” he continues.

While MacKay says that his colleagues have been supportive and open, the insecurity of being a freelancer in an unpredictable industry is another cause for concern. Taking time out could mean that someone else could take his job and affect his job prospects later on.

“I also worry about what that means as a director who is looking to take on more demanding projects with greater strains and stresses.

Does it seem like I can’t cope?”

Overworked and Underfunded Perhaps one of the most powerful things about MacKay’s blog is its honesty and openness. It lays bare his personal fears and reveals how the theatre industry’s structure can and has negatively affected his mental health.

May 2019

While MacKay noted that his doctor advised him to only work 37 hours a week when he returned to work, because theatre isn’t a nine to five Monday to Friday job, he couldn’t. During production week, for example, with opening night looming, working longer hours is industry standard.

This kind of pressure, combined with overwork is something which Andrew EatonLewis, the Arts Lead of the Mental Health Foundation Scotland, knows has a big impact on the mental health of everyone working on a show.

“In my experience it’s very common for people in the theatre world to work so hard that it has a negative impact on their mental health,” explains Eaton-Lewis.

It’s obvious that everyone who works in the industry is there because they love theatre, but as MacKay and Eaton-Lewis explain, a lack of opportunities, and the uncertainty of funding, combined with long working hours all take their toll on the people.

“I think the theatre industry can often talk a good game but not deliver on progressive change.

We need our large institutions and funders to support freelancers by thinking imaginatively about doing things differently,” says MacKay. “People are in this industry in the first place because they’re passionate about the art – it’s certainly not because of the money – so it can be tempting to push yourself to your limits just because you want to get the job done as well as possible,” Eaton-Lewis continues.

What Can Theatre Do Better?

So, what can be done to help people in the industry who might be struggling with their mental health? It’s a complicated topic, but when we ask MacKay what the industry could do better, he is clear.

MacKay believes theatres, venues and companies need to change how they approach making theatre, instead of just talking about making changes to how they work. “Not everything has to be staked every time on the project

Photo: Jassy Earl

Eaton-Lewis agrees, and believes that people working in theatre need to look out for each other – the industry needs to provide a space for these conversations, and how theatres and shows are funded needs to be changed to make it fairer for all.

“We need directors, producers and venue managers to look after performers and make sure they are able to take time out, don’t work beyond contracted hours, and are not put under unnecessary pressure,” he says. “We need a funding system that is clear, fair, and consistent.

We also need forums where people across the industry feel able to talk, in a safe environment, about what they’re going through.”

at hand,” he explains. “We need to see investment in these ideas that goes beyond panel discussions and conversations over coffee.

“We need to build more ways to make work and support artists. We need to recognise that mental health is complex and therefore our ecology needs to be diverse enough to support that,” he continues.

Signs of Change In the Scottish theatre industry, there are signs of change, with the Tron Theatre recently announcing they’ve started piloting Artist Check Ins, a regular session for artists to meet up and share issues, worries, with their peers, in a safe environment.

Changing long-held attitudes and structural issues takes time, but the more we talk about mental health, the more we destigmatise it and tear down prejudices and confront ignorance.

And, as both Eaton-Lewis and McKay believe, allowing yourself to have a rest, and take a break from making theatre, is just as important as the act of making theatre.

“As Ross very wisely said in his blog last year, ‘The show must go on’, is foolish posturing,” explains Eaton-Lewis. “To hell with the show.

There will be another show, the artists must go on and sometimes that means the artists must allow themselves to stop.”

The Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival runs from the 3-26 May at venues across Scotland mhfestival.com

TOP THEATRE PICKS FROM THE SCOTTISH MENTAL HEALTH ARTS FESTIVAL The 13th Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival (SMHAF) takes place at venues across Scotland and exists to support the arts and challenge our ideas about mental health. With so many shows, films and other events on offer, here are five theatre productions that need to be on your radar this year.

Crumble This piece of physical theatre explores Alzheimer’s disease and the struggles a sufferer faces as they try to remain connected to their loved ones. This production uses no words, only movement. Ayr College, Ayr, 9 May, 6pm Electrolyte Wildcard Theatre’s multi-award-winning piece of gig theatre returns to Scotland after its successful Fringe run last year, and uses spoken word and original music performed by six multi-instrumentalists, to tell the story of Jessie as she moves through gigs, city streets, parties and warehouses, trying to find her mother. This show was the winner at the 2018 Mental Health Fringe Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and is being performed in association with Mayfesto. Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 14 May, 7.30pm; Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 15-18 May, 8pm

THEATRE

Holding it Together Glasgow-based photographer and videographer Jassy Earl and performance artist Chlöe Smith have collaborated to create this multidisciplinary performance. Exploring grief, it invites the audience to reflect, either internally or aloud, on the subject in an intimate and safe space.

Platform, Glasgow, 30 May-1 Jun, various times Viola This solo-aerial theatre performance, which blends contemporary circus, theatre and dance with music and multimedia, reimagines Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Now told through the eyes of the character Viola, the piece investigates the topics of depression, anxiety and isolation. Aerial Edge, Kelvinhall, Glasgow, 24 May, 8.30pm Our Tomorrow Written and performed by members of the North Edinburgh Theatre Project, Our Tomorrow is a sharing of scripts, devised work and short films that questions what goes into building a thriving community, while reflecting on the slum clearances and new town approaches of the city’s past. North Edinburgh Arts, Edinburgh, 24-25 May, various times

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Win tickets to Juniper Festival at Summerhall

Juniper Festival

Scotland's original and best gin festival returns for its sixth year at Summerhall in Edinburgh.

Named after the essential gin botanical, Juniper Festival gives you the chance to meet and chat with the people responsible for the gins you love – listen to their stores and enjoy the fruits of their juniper-based labour. As well as sampling the gins, there's also the chance to try them in cocktails from some of the best bartenders in Scotland.

Juniper Festival runs from 31 May to 2 June, with four sessions (Friday and Saturday evenings, Saturday and Sunday afternoons) and we have four tickets to give away to one lucky winner for a session of their choice. To be in with a chance of winning the tickets for you and your pals, just

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head to theskinny.co.uk/competitions and answer the following question: Which of the following botanicals is essential in gin? a) Juniper b) Angelica c) Coriander Competition closes midnight, 19 May. Entrants must be 18 or over. The winner will receive their choice of the following: a) four tickets for Friday evening, b) four tickets for Saturday afternoon, c) four tickets for Saturday evening or d) four tickets for Sunday afternoon. Winners will be notified via email within two working days of closing and will be required to respond within 48 hours or the prize will be offered to another entrant. Our full Terms & Conditions can be found at theskinny.co.uk/about/terms

THE SKINNY

Get Lost In this year's spring Adventure supplement, we look at hiking as a solo woman, explore some of Scotland's grand multi-day routes and survey the cultural spaces dotted throughout the countryside

Interview: Katie Goh

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Freyja Hedinsson

Price cost can be a major barrier to hiking and camping but it’s not essential to splurge on £200 hiking boots on your first trip. Kirkhope emphasises that in many ways she’s “still kind of winging it,” building up her skills with each journey.

“One of my first mountains I climbed was in my Doc Martens. You don’t need fancy gear. There comes a point where, if something becomes long-term, you can justify spending a lot more – but generally you can stick on a pair of leggings and a half decent waterproof and you’re good to go.”

Hedinsson argues that there’s a romanticised ideal of wild camping that can be off-putting to beginners. “There are these influencer

May 2019

Photo: Pippa Lobban

“ There is a space being carved out by women. The person who’s done the most Munro rounds in Scotland is a woman, and a woman just beat the record for running the Pennine Way (while breast feeding)”

Photo: Rachael Hood

f you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise… of seeing more women climbing mountains by themselves than you might have expected. Solo hiking is hardly a new concept, but the idea of solo female and non-binary hikers and campers is still somewhat surprising. Despite societal discouragement of women being alone in public spaces, more and more women, particularly young women, have been setting off on their own into the wild for a host of reasons: to build skills and confidence, to get some headspace, to train, to deal with their baggage, and, most importantly, because they want to. “It’s such an adventure and it feels rebellious, but it’s also such a wholesome thing to do,” laughs Freyja Hedinsson, who started solo wild camping when she was a teenager in Devon. “The adventure is about your autonomy and agency, and nobody gets to own it. You can brag about it, blog about it, photograph it, but the only person who gets to experience it is you. It’s complete and utter independence.”

For Blue Kirkhope, solo hiking began almost as a happy accident. “My family moved up to Perthshire in 2014 and that was in the middle of the hills,” she explains. “I’ve always glanced towards landscapes but never thought about walking into them until that point when I started plodding around.” Her first long-distance trail was the West Highland Way in 2015 and since then she’s upped her game, walking a new, slightly longer trail every year.

personalities of the outdoors world who, to make themselves a brand, have to oversell the adventure and it can be quite intimidating,” she says. “But there are so many ways to do adventure and I think that’s the point. Whatever it means to you, just live your adventure how you want to and don’t try to fit into a box.”

The need for different interpretations of adventure is the reason writer Clare Archibald began her project Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness. “I started it as a reaction against frameworks and as an exploration and record of the nuances of women’s experiences,” she explains. “I’ve always liked being outside but I’ve never really felt like there was a specific definition of the outdoors that fitted me.” In 2012, she found herself on maternity leave without a baby in her home in Fife. “Suddenly I had the privilege of a lot of time to be outside, and I was spending more time outdoors in my local area. It struck me that these little pockets of being outside are just as important and meaningful as going up mountains.”

As Archibald began spending more and more time by herself exploring pockets of what she felt at times to be wilderness around her

home, she found herself confronting things about herself in these spaces. “Even going up a hill on my own, I realised that it carried quite a lot of fears with me, not necessarily even rational fears,” she explains. “I would be shit-scared of things [in the woods] – not necessarily of people but sometimes just noises.” Lone Women began as a writing/performance project for Sanctuary Lab, the visual arts festival at the Dark Skies Park in Dumfries and Galloway, where Archibald wrote different pieces to be read at different stages of darkness and aloneness, going further into the woods. The project has been expanded with women across the world responding to their interpretations of aloneness, darkness and wilderness, from sleeping in a garden to being alone in mountains to going to a gig on their own.

Shanna Alderliesten, who moved to Newcastle from the Netherlands a few years ago, started staying in campsites over long bank holiday weekends for her own grand adventures. “I’m not the kind of person who backpacks with a tiny tent and hikes up mountains,” she laughs. “I’m very much a summer and organised campsite camper.”

While Alderliesten isn’t wild camping (yet), being in

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a space, removed from her daily life, allows her, like Archibald, Hedinsson and Kirkhope, to spend time with her own company in a deep and happy solitude. “I love the peace and quiet of it. There’s a difference between having a hotel versus just relying on yourself. I get to unplug and get to reconnect with myself in a different way.”

Terri Finucane, a hiker based in Edinburgh, agrees that adventuring in the wilderness’s greatest appeal is the solitude. “At the risk of sounding awfully cliché, I’ve learned how to tune into myself,” she says, “In groups I’m far from the dominating character, so when it’s just me I get the opportunity to take responsibility for all my decisions. Everybody always goes on about knowing your limits, but for me it’s been much more important to accept that my limits are in constant flux. How you deal with a situation when you’re alone in the great outdoors isn’t the same from one day to the next, and that’s okay.”

While female and non-binary hikers are undoubtedly walking Scotland’s trails, the outdoors can still feel male-dominated. “I see women out there but the majority I cross paths with are men and I do feel undermined by them,” says Kirkhope. “I did the Affric Kintail Way from Drumnadrochit to the west coast, and was staying in a hostel where I was the only woman, and the only person my age, in the hostel. All the men congregated and talked about their successes and summits and got their maps out and I was like, ‘Guys, I just walked 25 miles today and wild camped last night!’”

“The old boys network is still very strong,” agrees Hedinsson, “but I also think that’s changing. There is a space being carved out by women.

The person who’s done the most Munro rounds in Scotland is a woman, and a woman just beat the record for running the Pennine Way (while breast feeding). Also, women have been doing this for years, they’re just not speaking about it openly because they’re doing it for themselves.”

Recently, more community-based groups have popped up with the aim of making wilderness more accessible. Archibald has expanded the Lone Women project to encourage and give space to women engaging with the outdoors. “The first event we did was a bivvy bag demonstration,” she explains. “I would really like to sleep outside on my own but I don’t really know how to do it, so a woman came and talked everyone through the set up. It’s just about sharing information, and finding opportunities to build confidence in women.”

For a similar reason, Kirckhope started Get Lost Walking Club in Glasgow earlier this year, which aims to help beginners and novices take their first steps. “Hopefully I can champion and show people how to get out there,” she says. “I want it to open doors for people who have never done it before as a safe space for people to be supportive. I think Glasgow’s been lacking in a club that was accessible for young women as well.

It’s not gender-specific but the people who have come forward about it have been mostly young women which is amazing.”

When asked for tips for people wanting to begin camping, all the adventurers agree to start small – sleep in your back garden for a few nights and practise pitching your tent – and to find local groups and communities with whom you can build up experience and skills. And most importantly, enjoy it and own it. As Archibald sums up: “A woman on her own in wilderness is still a political thing. Women have a right to be in public spaces and move through public spaces without barriers.”

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Countryfile As the thought of leaving the house becomes more pleasant, let’s take it a few (thousand) steps further and see what’s going on in the farther reaches of Scotland

ADVENTURE CALENDAR

Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

Needing some inspiration on how to get out into the Scottish wilds and challenge yourself? Here’s a small selection of the weird and wonderful places you can go to test your mettle / learn a new skill / push yourself to the edge of endurance and beyond

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Great Glen Challenge Raising money for Parkinson’s UK, the Great Glen Challenge is a 14, 21 or 32 mile walk through some of Scotland’s most spectacular landscape, taking place on 29 June from Inverness. parkinsons.org.uk/events/ great-glen-challenge

First There is a Mountain

Heading up the isles again, Stornoway’s An Lanntair has an exhibition programme booked up until 2020 which spans the local, national and international, including a conceptual group show in collaboration with the Scottish Society of Artists, a retrospective of island artist Donald Smith, photoworks about the Indian diaspora by Arpita Shah and an open exhibition of artists residing in the Outer Hebrides.

different museological, social, culinary, gardening and cultural branches are part of a holistic approach to their involvement in broader social movements, and their activity is channeled into four major projects per year. Their current exhibition, No Colour Bar: Highland Remix: Clearances to Colonialism, challenges Scottish colonial amnesia, and emphasises the Scottish involvement in the brutalities of slave trading.

On Skye, there is Atlas Arts, an award-winning commissioner of new and ambitious work by contemporary artists. They describe themselves as “without walls,” and each new commission comes as an exciting event in itself. They’ve taken place on boats, or the form of surprising architectural interventions, or a dusk-til-dawn experimental performance of a live sound work.

“ Their current projects each reflect an acute awareness of the urgent climate crisis”

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Photo: Anyuta Gillespie

Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Cample Line

Friends of Huntley Archives at LMA, Timespan

Photo: Katie Paterson

cotland’s countryside is punctuated by cultural venues in remote locations which offer a different context for the display and creation of art through residency and core programmes. Here is the 2019 attempt to get The Skinny’s readership to explore the beautiful destinations far beyond the city streets, with the distinctive and exciting programmes of exhibitions and events in outlying arts institutions.

Director of Cample Line in South West Scotland, Tina Fiske describes some of the more acute sense of responsibility that sometimes comes with being the main arts venue in an outlying location, wondering “What can we achieve here, who can help us do it, who do we want to reach, how do we reach them and how do they in turn reach us?” In their programme, they bridge the kind of artists that might be familiar from main urban galleries with a sensitivity to the distinctive interests and experiences of local audiences.

For keen island explorers-cum-arts enthusiasts, the Hebrides are studded with at least five venues of interest. Like many of the different places listed here, Comar on Mull and Taigh Chearsabagh on North Uist are both multi-arts organisations, each hosting a breathtaking number and range of different events throughout the year. Despite their distance from each other, their current projects each reflect an acute awareness of the urgent climate crisis, whether through clay artworks in Uist or experimental light installation in Mull, hinting at a different sense of the environment that comes with being outside of the Central Belt.

Consciousness of the climate crisis is shared too by Timespan in Helmsdale, a village in the very north-east of the Scottish Highlands. Their

Returning to the mainland, in Huntly there is Deveron Arts. Back in 2017, their project with Manaf Halbouni was featured here as he made the entire town his film set (The Town is the Venue, as their motto goes) and cast the town’s inhabitants, including recently settled Syrians in his alternative historical timeline movie fiction.

State of the art production facility and artist residency provider Scottish Sculpture Workshop this year marks their 40th with a long-term place-sensitive performance project by artistchoreographer Simone Kenyon, who celebrates women’s+ relationships with mountainous places with Into the Mountain, culminating in the final weekend of this month, 31 May to 2 June.

As the last stop on the tour of outlying arts spaces, Hospitalfield in Arbroath also has a dual identity of year-round provider of artists’ residencies and a commitment to being open to the local community and visitors from further afield. Each year, they host three open weekends that activate the entire house, a Summer Procession of local schoolkids, the Summer School when invited curators create a weekend of events and participants can camp out for the entire thing, as well as ongoing activities, events and tours, including an Open Drawing School.

With each remote institution forming its own idiosyncratic identity and response to cultural programming in radically different landscapes and communities, there’s plenty to see and learn by taking a trip into the mildly wild reaches of Scotland.

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Scottish Axe Throwing Open Finally, a chance to test your axe throwing skills against other similarly talented axe throwers! This year’s Braveheart Axe Throwing Open takes place in Scone Palace on 5 May and includes the ominously titled ‘Have a Go!’ heats. There’s also the chance to view / participate in the Scottish Knight League. Who knew that was a thing? Tickets £7.50. scone-palace.co.uk/whats-on/ scottish-axe-throwing-open The St Kilda Challenge This one’s not happening until 2020, which is good because it requires high levels of sailing skill which will presumably take more than one year to acquire. Venture into the North Atlantic through some of the world’s best sailing grounds to reach the World Heritage Site of St Kilda. Add some technical challenges to the mix and, if you wish, a racing element and you have a great recipe for adventure. thestkildachallenge.co.uk Land Yachting That sounds fun, doesn’t it? Gliding across the sand, the master of the wind / your own destiny, like some sort of billionaire… But on the beach in St Andrews? How convenient! Land yachting offers the thrill of actual sailing but on land. Ideal for all those water haters out there. blownaway.co.uk/ landyachting UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, Fort William ‘IT’S TIME TO GET ELE-MENTAL’ screams the promo for this year’s Fort William World Cup. Taking place over 1-2 June, this is Scotland’s premier location for downhill riders to surrender to the ‘UNASSAILABLE LAW OF NATURE’ and hurl themselves down the mountainside in a competitive manner.

Competition is strictly for the experienced and skilled, although the weekend offers many opportunities for spectating these ‘GRAVITY-POWERED RIDERS’ and maybe even some bike-adjacent drinking. fortwilliamworldcup.co.uk STARMAN Night Triathlon Think you’re too hard for a normal triathlon? What about if the triathlon was in one of Europe’s great wildernesses? In the dark? STARMAN Night Triathlon takes place in the Cairngorms National Park on 17 and 18 August and promises ‘sleepless, tough, intimidating and wild’ times ‘under the stars’ (stars cannot be guaranteed cos Scotland). Sounds like LOLs. starmannighttri.com [Rosamund West]

THE SKINNY

May 2019

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Grand Tours of Scotland What happens if you start your adventure and don’t come home? With a bit of prep, a nice sleeping bag and some good cake stops, there’s really no need to

Cape Wrath Trail

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inish your dinner, clear away the empty plates and spread a map out on the dinner table. Run your finger over the dotted lines that mark the vast network of off-road paths that contour across Scotland’s hills and glens – a single line for footpaths, double for surfaced tracks. Already you’re at an advantage compared to the cattle drovers and coffin carriers (not kidding) in centuries past who stomped out and slept out on many of these routes. For starters, you’ve had your tea. Secondly, you have a map. Thirdly, you’ve got a choice – spend the weekend with home comforts, or head out of the door, follow the paths and stop where you need to sleep.

In the north of the British Isles, there’s form here. Compasses have, for a long time, pointed towards Scotland for people wanting to go on big adventures, to walk, canoe or cycle day after day, to sleep under the stars – or, at least, under the cloud. The modern history of Scotland’s importance for outdoors adventurers really begins after the Second World War, when army surplus equipment was, well, in surplus and thousands of men had good reason to escape into the wilderness with their own thoughts. Post-war austerity meant busses to the Highlands were much more within reach than planes to the continent, and so leisure-seekers voted with their feet and their tents. In 1948, Scotland’s National Outdoor Training Centre at Glenmore Lodge, Aviemore opened its doors to provide instruction in safe outdoors adventuring. Moving about and sleeping in Scotland’s hills is no less part of Scotland’s modernist artistic tradition: though not published until ’77, Nan Shepherd wrote her famous paean to the Cairngorms, The Living Mountain, in the 40s, recalling falling asleep on Braeriach (the third highest mountain in the British isles) with her head dangling over the void.

Big Days Out So when thinking of heading out, there’s no shortage of footsteps to tread in. There are, though, some classics. Scotland doesn’t have

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‘national trails’ as England and Wales do. Instead, it has what are now branded as ‘Scotland’s Great Trails’, the first being the famous West Highland Way, inaugarated in 1980. At 96 miles long, this trail starts in Milngavie and heads north, taking the low road along Loch Lomond, threading its way through the vast bog of Rannoch Moor, reaching its high point at the top of the Devil’s Staircase before finishing in Fort William.

Walkers tend to take between five and seven days to do the whole shebang, stopping and setting up tents wherever they start to flag. Remember, Scotland’s countryside access code means you can usually camp where you like – gardens and, strangely, golf courses excluded.

Fort William also marks the start of another of the classic trails, the Great Glen Way which, for 79 miles follows the enormous geological fault line that strikes diagonally across Scotland ending in Inverness. Further south, the Southern Upland Way runs coast to coast, also forming part of the E2 European Long Distance Path from Galway to Nice (a massive 3010 miles). The Speyside Way completes the ‘big four’ of Scotland’s Great Trails, though there are now 29 in total. These are marked on the Ordnance Survey maps with coloured diamonds, and mapping company Harvey have specific maps for many of these routes. What’s great about the Great Trails is that, generally, you can get transport to and from the start and end points, making a through-route possible without the need to call in a lift. More unorthodox options are available: a favourite memory is of finishing a section of the West Highland Way at 5am on a Sunday and cadging a lift with a recovery truck back to the bus station in Fort William.

An Easter Weekend Out Not all big routes get the badge, though – and are less well-trodden as a result. Take the Cape Wrath Trail for instance, thrusting north from Fort William, up into the wilds of Sutherland and the rarely-visited northwest tip of Scotland. A sense of adventure, a bit of ring-leading and a bit of

drink all lead to a poorly fleshed-out Easter plan to load up mountain bikes and follow the route, more or less, from Inverlael near Ullapool up to the Cape. To be clear, this is not a cycling route. In places, it’s barely a path through bog. It’s very unclear whether bikes will be ridden or carried.

“ One day you need to get nine and a half hours of sleep, the next you’re grabbing two hours in a ditch in the pissing rain and your performance is just as good! We’re all capable of much more than we think we are!”

Lee Craigie

Work commitments mean I join an already well-travelled and apparently well-breakfasted group at Oykel bridge. Purists may well point out that I’ve skipped out half the trail (wait until they find out that I’ve no intention of going all the way to the top). But purists miss the point, and the

ADVENTURE

Photo: Al Haigh

Interview: Evan Beswick

Cape Wrath trail, in many ways, emphasises what is lost by sticking too closely to someone else’s plan. Barely waymarked, indistinct in places and replete with variations, this is less a set of instructions to follow than the bare-bones of a choose-your-own-adventure. Walking the full trail might take two to three weeks, but spending two days and a night lugging a bike round it is no less rewarding. Stepping into the great outdoors is, after all, so much more about seeking freedom than it is about receiving rules.

Finding Freedom That’s a sentiment felt keenly by one of my companions on the trip. Attendees to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow may well have seen mountain biker Lee Craigie belting it round Cathkin Braes in national colours, every bit the lean, focussed epitome of an elite athlete. Now Active Nation Commissioner for Scotland, she tells me this apparent discipline wasn’t entirely in kilter with what she felt she needed from life.

Having always lived a life outdoors, post retirement from racing, she took her bicycle and her sleeping bag on longer and longer trips, riding and racing through Europe, America and Asia.

“What’s so interesting is that the physiology element of being a racer allowed me to do this, but the two worlds are absolutely poles apart. In some ways it was a reaction against that life as an elite athlete. I could stop looking down at a heart rate monitor and be free of all that, and return the joy to the sport I love.”

For Craigie, heading out on multi-day trips, travelling from point to point under your own steam has meaning of its own beyond the sheer mechanics. “It’s about the problem solving (working out where to get food and how to keep the bike functioning) but it’s also about being part of something bigger, moving through grand natural landscapes. That sort of experience gives you a reason for being on the planet, whereas racing around a circuit for an hour and a half teaches you how to get faster racing round in circles.

“It’s much more holistic. Being in touch with

THE SKINNY

How things can escalate To find out why, I speak to someone who has actually conquered the world. In October 2018, 37-year-old Jenny Graham became the fastest woman to cycle round the world, covering 18,000 miles in 124 days. For good measure she did it self-supported, packing a sleeping bag and bivvy, laying it out everywhere from the grand expanses of Australia to the back of a bus shelter in Russia.

A late-starter to big adventures, I ask Jenny how she got into it and how it escalated quite so spectacularly. “I started hill walking when I was 24 after being on an introduction to outdoor pursuits at college. I was working for the Highland Council, in a department for young people, and through that I was able to access coaching courses in the outdoors. I went on to do my Mountain Leader course – it was there I met one of my best adventure buddies and it took off from there.”

She remembers her first big one fondly: “The first time on my own was the most significant one. I’d just gone through a major break-up and the same week my camper van broke down. Like,

View west from the Bone Caves, Inchnadamph

May 2019

Under the Kylesku Bridge

proper broken. The camper was more than just a van at the time, it was my safety blanket during those tough times, and now it was GONE! So I planned this trip to make everything OK. I was going to do this three-day walking trip across the north of Scotland. I got the train to Lairg and the post bus to Tongue.

“I was so so scared getting off that post bus.

I thought ‘what am I doing?’ as I walked off into the wilderness. It was freezing. It was so cold that I spent the night round the back of Ben Hope wrapped up like a roast chicken in my foil blanket. I was pretty scared, too. I lay hugging my ice axe, just in case.

“By day two I was getting into it. I camped along Glen Golly. I set up my tent so it got the most sun. As the days went on I just felt stronger and more capable and at peace being out there.

It was like a journey within a journey.

“That last night, on the shoulder of Arkle, I set up my tent at 600m and started melting snow to cook with. I was overwhelmed with a sense of contentment. I was a proper adventurer woman.

It was incredible.”

She talks about how she was rewarded by her adventures: “I didn’t go to uni and I wasn’t very academic at school. I rarely studied hard for exams so never felt that sense of achievement when passing them. But people get that in different ways and I found it in the outdoors. It was there I found a passion for learning.

“People tell me all the time about how brave I was but I’m actually not. I was hugging my ice axe on the first night, but you build it up. No one goes into this full of confidence and skills and abilities. Everyone is pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, but it’s baby steps. If you can do it out the back of your house then you’re building up skills and next thing you know it could be out on big hills or head off abroad. Or round the world!”

Photo: Evan Beswick

What’s the point?

Back in the vast county of Sutherland, we zip along on good tracks through the forests of Glen Oykel, alongside pebble-bottomed rivers. We haul our bikes up the boggy sides of Ben More Assynt. The path goes into hiding for a while at the shores of a beautiful circular loch, invisible to all but those who ascend right to its edge. We rattle down a fast descent into Inchnadamph, bypassing Eas a’ Chual Aluinn, Britain’s highest waterfall. Why? Well, actually because big adventures needn’t be about hardship, and we have a dinner reservation.

The Easter weather deals us the full house.

Sunglasses give way to waterproofs. We wake from a very soggy night in bivvy bags under the Kylesku Bridge, its elegant, 78-foot-high box section offering little shelter from the rain (lesson: learned). Overnight I am woken both by the sound of rain, and the noisy appearance of a large and inquisitive seal. We are dried by warm light after waiting the rain out with elongated breakfast in the wonderful Kylesku hotel. I leave some of the group wearing sleeping bags like

scarves drying them off on the move.

Returning home Sunday evening, after a full day’s riding, I’m tired and ecstatic. I’ve sat in a bog and eaten tinned sardines looking out at the grand hills of Assynt and it felt as significant as dining at Belshazzar’s feast. I’ve travelled barely a quarter of the distance of this beautiful route, and yet I feel like I’ve conquered the world.

KIT LIST Pack light, but smart. We live in a golden age for well-designed equipment. Here’s a sample kit list for a few days out on a bike.

Let’s assume a bike and the clothes you’re wearing as a given: —— Sleeping bag —— Sleeping mat (the new generation of inflatable ones are light and warm – not like those flock-backed horrors at your granny’s) —— Bivvy bag (essentially a big plastic bag, just big enough for your mat, bag and you) —— Lightweight cook set (you can fit a mini stove and gas canister in a big metal mug). Don’t forget cutlery —— Down jacket for warmth —— Warm midlayer (e.g. a fleece) —— Waterproofs (obviously) —— Gloves and hat —— Dry top, trousers (merino long johns are amazing) and socks for sleeping in —— Change of clothes (depending on how dirty you’re OK with being) —— Toothbrush, toothpaste, tissues, washcloth —— Travel towel —— Suncream (for optimism) —— Head torch —— First aid kit (plasters, triangular bandage, tape, paracetamol, at least) —— Tools, repair kit, pump. Remember spare chain links —— Food and snacks. I take a few electrolyte tablets in case it all gets a bit much —— Battery pack and charging cable

Photo: Jim Barton

the natural environment, being in touch with your body and being sociable.”

She recalls life as an elite athlete, as compared to her life as an adventure cyclist: “Oh, they are such different worlds! One day you’re weighing your pasta, the next you are scrabbling about for crumbs in the bottom of your bag.”

ADVENTURE

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Imagining the city How can a city use design to shape its future? Poised to answer this question is the Dundee Design Festival, back this month for its third iteration and with not one, but two energetic new curators at the helm in the form of design studio Agency of None

Interview: Stacey Hunter

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ocated in the UK’s first and only UNESCO City of Design, the challenge to create a festival with the intellectual and aesthetic rigour the city deserves has been fully embraced by this year’s team. Design duo Lyall Bruce and Ryan McLeod launched the theme Liveable/Loveable cities back in late 2018 by asking citizens of Dundee (and the world) what those terms meant to them.

“When we put those questions out there it was a deliberately democratic approach to get everyone to feed in to what this festival should be and could be. One of the outcomes of asking people about what makes the city Liveable or Loveable is learning that citizens are actually much more attuned to cultural shifts than councils are – and now more than ever it’s the right time to bring people’s valid ideas and thoughts to the forefront in a really public way.”

This inclusivity underpins everything in the festival programme, with the core theme being identity and “how you allow people to play with a city’s identity and then reflect that in the real world. We want to ensure that anyone can come along, at any time in the festival, and get involved in any part of it.”

Initial ideas for a new aesthetic for the festival grew from research into city branding.

“Badly done ones just market a city, in quite a reductive way – whereas the really good ones embed themselves and seem to really understand their city.”

Along with graphic designer Tommy Perman, the team explored the city archives and examined historic packaging designs from the original Keiller Factory. These have inspired and informed the brand for the 2019 festival: an exciting variable typeface with a series of patterns and a colour palette that makes up an accessible visual

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identity toolkit.

What could have been just another typeface for graphic design aficionados has been cleverly recast into a highlight of the festival: Poster Playground is an interactive exhibition and a system that allows people to shape and adjust typefaces themselves. “This is about inviting people to come in, play, and explore really easily and freely without the requirement for any level of technical skill or design expertise. We’re removing the obstacles to getting to all the fun stuff in a very tactile way. You can come in, pick up a brief, create something, and then release that and see it go out into designated spaces around the city.”

The 2019 festival takes a genuinely socially engaged approach to exploring what a Liveable/ Loveable city is by asking citizens to speculate on the city’s future and get directly involved with designing and making. The eight-day events and exhibition programme has been shaped by the thoughts, feelings, memories and wishes of Dundee residents and designers. And from 21 to 28 May, the city’s Keiller Centre is where multiple vacant shop units are being transformed into what the festival organisers describe as “a living prototype for audiences to explore and shape.”

The festival is showcasing a spectrum of design disciplines within live production spaces.

Designers working in jewellery, ceramics, lighting and fashion will be festival residents during the course of the week.

“This design festival is for people who want to look at the future of their city differently and think about what it could be like. Or to learn about how they can make a difference. It’s for people who like to get involved and thrive when they can get hands-on and make things. It’s not

for people who like to walk around art exhibitions with their hands behind their back; it’s definitely an accessible environment.”

The designers say they feel as though they only have themselves to blame when they complain about people not understanding design. “We need to remove the barriers to entry; things like software, hardware and university degrees – by developing better tools for change.

Design is a process of creating systems and we enjoy the strategic aspect that takes good ideas and transforms them into usable ideas. Most importantly, our programme will explore how design can empower people.”

SHOWCASE

“ Come in, pick up a brief and get designing. Once your poster is complete we’ll make a copy and paste it up out in the city for everyone to see”

Photo: Kathryn Rattray

Photo: Kathryn Rattray

Exciting new installations, concepts and transformations sit cheek-by-jowl with existing tenants of the 1970s shopping centre: a bustling florists, a nail-bar, a key-cutter and workwear and fashion stores. Located at the centre of no fewer than four Dundee streets, the Keiller Centre occupies what is wryly referred to as the Dragon, Oor Wullie, and Desperate Dan triangle. Its arcade style architecture is out of sight of the main high street, meaning that many units now lie unoccupied. And it’s this that DDF 2019 sees as an opportunity.

Many design curators would shy away from the less-than-fashionable Keiller Centre, especially when competing with new kid on the block V&A Dundee for audiences. But that’s where this festival gets very interesting; not just for sheer ambition and confidence, but for its nuanced understanding of local needs and assets. This combined with the Keiller Centre’s tenants and management’s visible rallying might just be the perfect storm for a lasting legacy (that word so carelessly tossed around by cultural projects).

THE SKINNY

“ Design is a way of making good ideas clearer” An eclectic after-hours programme includes a film screening and the festival team’s own take on design-themed game shows with titles like Play Your Fonts Right! as well as provocative, participatory evening discussion events.

The new curators summarise their ambitions for the festival: “Ultimately our programme will show that design is not always about the shiny objects at the end. The festival will challenge that by exploring the process of design and some real possibilities for lasting positive change.”

Photo: Kathryn Rattray

@DesignDundee Dundee Design Festival 2019 runs from 21-28 May, during daytime opening hours, 10am to 5pm daily, Keiller Centre, 3 Chapel St, Dundee For the full evening events programme and locations please visit dundeedesignfestival.com

Photo: Kathryn Rattray

Fragrance design studio Arboretum (led by Clara Weale) and designer Pete Thomas are using scent to encourage hopeful futures in their performative exhibition Approaching Air. Positive stories about life in Dundee in 2039 will be synthesised, interpreted and formulated into a bespoke scent. During the festival, 100 limited edition samples of the scent will be dispensed.

These will be shared with participants who will be invited to experience the Approaching Air. In Poster Playground visitors of all ages can get hands-on with typography. Using shape, colour and pattern you can design your own poster. Choose from two different production methods – ‘printing blocks’ or ‘building blocks’ – to create your design. Workshop materials are informed by the sweet wrappers and typography created by James Keiller & Son, a historic sweet factory famous for the manufacture of marmalade, Dundee cake and chocolate that once stood on the site of the Keiller Centre.

In Subject to Availability four designers each have two days to make their products live at the festival. Audiences can watch them work up-close, gain an insight into their design process and buy the entire range in this specially designed exhibition. See ceramics, 3D printed jewellery, lighting and limited edition T-shirts by designers Steph Liddle, Lynne MacLachlan, Kevin Sinclair and Jennifer Stewart.

Biome Collective and Kirsty MacGuire have designed Well, a dynamic environment inspired by the natural spaces where people congregate and rest, that will “alter the dynamic flow within the building, encouraging rest and reflection.”

Their installation responds to visitors with abstract organic visuals that move and grow, accompanied by sounds that will fill the space.

Design maven Joanne McFadyen of Tea Green Events has brought together a diverse and exciting range of products from designers based in Scotland, all curated around the theme Liveable/Loveable. Browse for a design souvenir from her colourful custom-built Design Superstore, fabricated by Dundee designers Roots Furniture. With both lifestyle and fashion products ranging from Kate Trouw’s playful jewellery, Clod & Pebble’s ceramics, and vibrant, contemporary quilts by Lucy Engels, there’s lots to love and plenty you’d like to live with.

Photo: Kathryn Rattray

Dundee Design Festival Top Picks The entire festival is under one roof and at street level – and if you’re a design fan it’s a must-see.

Here are our highlights from the festival programme this year.

May 2019

SHOWCASE

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LE Y ST FE LI

Sobering Up Words: Megan Wallace Illustration: Jacky Sheridan

As binge drinking rates fall and Gen Z swear off the booze, one writer explores the ramifications of a society going sober

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ith a history of problem drinking in my family, I was reluctant to hit the bottle throughout my teens. Only when I entered university for the first time and was confronted with the ‘drink: or else’ atmosphere of undergraduate life did I undergo my baptism into binge drinking culture. Despite initial reticence, however, alcohol very quickly became synonymous with socialising – my go-to for celebrating the highs, commiserating the lows and differentiating all the moments in between.

Yet as time went on, the drinking added up.

It wasn’t just the mid-week hangovers at work, but smashing phones and losing house keys, as well as putting myself in increasingly dangerous situations. The temporary bluster provided by Dutch courage often led to behaviour I would never engage in sober; behaviour that would leave me cringing the next day, and often rightfully overwhelmed with shame. While the scenarios I’m describing might seem alarming, they’re probably familiar to many of the people reading as we’re encouraged to not give destructive drinking like this a second thought.

My experience is similar to that of many other Britons, with our love of the bottle positioning us as some of the heaviest drinkers in Europe. However, these attitudes are beginning to change, with millennials’ interest in alcohol progressively waning and Gen Z famously swearing off drink and drugs. In fact, recent years have even seen an aggressive decline in teenage drinking in Scotland, a country whose capacity for dangerous alcohol consumption has been well documented over the years.

What could be the cause of these changes?

On the one hand, it’s likely a response to the fact that many millennials are now in their 30s, and are edging towards more sedate lifestyles as a result.

On the other hand, it might have something to do with aggressive awareness campaigning on the part of the Scottish and UK governments over the past decade, giving younger generations a greater appreciation of the repercussions of habitual binge drinking.

“ Unabashed hedonism might well be one of the last vestiges of resistance we have left” While this might sound a bit preachy, it’s positive to see society’s reliance on alcohol coming under question. Yes, drinking can be fun, but it’s not always positive for the physical and mental health of everyone concerned. It’s heartening to see that younger generations aren’t facing as much stigma if they choose to abstain.

After all, it should be a question of choice, with individuals suitably informed and free from pressure so as to make their own decisions about whether or not drinking is for them.

However, this decrease in drinking rates also goes hand-in-hand with the emergence of sobriety as a facet of ‘wellness’ lifestyles. After all, what’s the point of all those juice cleanses if you

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Lifestyle

INTERSECTIONS

still drown your sorrows in a bottle of wine at the end of the week? Sobriety entails a further commitment to clean living, a step towards truly ridding your diet of toxins rather than waxing lyrical about the body benefits of veganism while still doing sustained damage to your liver. Yet is the championing of sobriety in wellness culture actually a positive thing? Clear links between wellness culture and disordered eating have been uncovered in recent years, particularly as the trend’s popularity on Instagram means that influencers’ seemingly perfect, 100% organic lives can feed nasty forms of health perfectionism in their followers.

Sobriety’s proximity to wellness culture positions it as yet another fad contributing to obsessively high health standards, standards that could easily morph into feelings of superiority to those who choose to drink. With its increasingly aggressive focus on wellbeing and mindfulness, society is moving closer and closer towards a new health puritanism that could foster a climate of shame for those who don’t jump on the bandwagon. Already we can see that the language of sexual moralism, revolving around purity, cleanliness and what’s ‘natural’ has been appropriated by wellness. Just as concerns about smoking often speak in moralistic tones of the collective harms of second-hand fumes, the conversation about sobriety might well begin to place drinking in opposition to civility, painting the alcohol drinker as a burden on the health service and society at large.

Wellness culture (and even certain elements of the self-care movement) emerge from latestage capitalism and its constant imperative to hustle non-stop and then side-hustle some more.

The fact that self-worth is so often measured in productivity places an impetus on individuals to work past the boundary of what their body might naturally be able to tolerate. In this light, the fixation on health becomes just another way of ensuring that we can support this constant grind to continue being model workers. Alcohol, on the other hand, does the opposite: making us sluggish, out of control and often physically ill. To revel in the joys of alcohol-fuelled vice, then, is to reject this capitalistic emphasis on civility and professionalism. In times where enjoyment is replaced by its mere imitation on social media and where brands are so entrenched in each stage of our leisure and pleasure time, unabashed hedonism might well be one of the last vestiges of resistance we have left.

However, it’s important to emphasise that drinking (or drugs, smoking and junk food for that matter) isn’t for everyone, and no one should feel like they have to drink themselves into oblivion each and every Saturday night. On the other hand, we shouldn’t have to give up all forms of self-indulgence in order to squeeze ourselves into some capitalist mould or further accommodate a working culture that jeopardises our well-being. There needs to be a mid-point where we can critically examine our social and cultural relationships towards alcohol, as well as our own reactions to it, to forge healthier attitudes and coping patterns. Alcohol shouldn’t be perceived as innately harmful, nor should the opportunities it presents for socialising and escapism be dismissed out of hand. Rather than jumping to accept second hand generalisations, we should be allowed to forge our own informed decisions about alcohol and not be shamed either way.

THE SKINNY

Diversity in Fashion A new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland is the first of its kind to examine diversity within the fashion industry. We speak to its curator about assembling Body Beautiful

ashion works in trends and there’s perhaps no bigger cultural trend at the moment than diversity. On catwalks and magazine covers, we’re seeing increasing numbers of models that don’t fit neatly into fashion’s white, cis, thin, European conventional beauty standards. While it can be frustrating to see activists’ tireless hard work being packaged into bite-size commodities (hello, Topshop's ‘Femme the Future’ t-shirts), token attempts (and failures) by the fashion industry to become more inclusive is an impressive measure of how far social movements have come in recent years. However, industry trends can fade as quickly as a new pair of jeans, prompting the question: what will happen when fashion moves on to the next hot thing?

This is the question a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland is asking. Body Beautiful takes a look at the recent history of fashion and divides itself thematically into different areas: race, sexuality, age, size and disability, chosen because they are the categories covered by the Fashion Spots Diversity Report, a study dedicated to documenting what’s happening on the catwalk in terms of representation.

We chat with Body Beautiful’s curator Georgina Ripley about how she put the exhibition together, meaningful representation and how progression can regress at any moment.

Where did the inspiration for Body Beautiful come from?

“The main thing was the work we were doing with Edinburgh College of Art’s Diversity Network.

We’ve been involved with them because they got funding to do a fashion forum which was a week

of events we hosted at the Museum. It was through meeting them that the idea was planted.

“Then after the Autumn/Winter 2017 season, reports started saying it was the most diverse catwalk in years and I thought then that this was maybe the time to bring everything together. It was also the year Edward Enninful was appointed editor-in-chief of British Vogue so it did feel a bit more like a tipping point and this time it might be a lasting, sustainable change.”

How has fashion changed, in terms of diversity, over its recent history?

“In the 80s, you had brands like Body Map who were influenced by the London club scene and magazines like The Face and i-D and Blitz. In the exhibition, we line up magazines on our wall and you can see these moments where diversity happens and then goes away again. So you have models like Naomi Campbell on a cover and then you have periods where you won’t have a black model on covers for a number of years. You’ve also got things like in the late 90s, Nick Knight’s cover for Dazed and Confused magazine, which was guest edited by Alexander McQueen, and it was the fashion-able issue that had Aimee Mullins, a Paralympic sprinter on the cover. That seemed great but then it was another two decades until you had disabled models walk the catwalk at London Fashion Week.”

Photo: REXShutterstock

Can you talk us through the exhibition’s key themes?

“Race is interesting because it’s the one category that has made gains in terms of the Diversity Report but of course it’s much more contentious than just the statistics.

As recently as 2013, Bethann Hardison, Iman and Naomi Campbell formed the Diversity coalition to challenge racism on the runway. So there has been an upward trend but of course that has been pushed to happen. We consider the designers who go beyond racially diverse casting and those who actually explore heritage within their work. We’ve got two looks from Ashish, one was when he did a casting of all black models in 2015.

“In terms of disability, it’s often called fashion’s forgotten frontier. And that’s the thing that comes out in that section. It’s down to individuals to challenge exclusion so we give examples of who they are and then we have brands like Teatum Jones whose Spring/Summer ’18 collection was inspired Model Halima Aden wears a look from the Max Mara Autumn Winter 2017 collection

May 2019

& Other Stories Autumn Winter 2015 campaign

by the Paralympic equestrian Natasha Baker and designers that incorporate disabilities into their looks and the creative and artistic possibilities of disability representation on the catwalk.

“Within gender, we present the statistics that there is great progress happening in terms of representation of trans and non-binary models on the catwalk. Having said that, there was a huge drop from spring to autumn 2019. It’s not so much about the numbers but more the LGBTQ+ community is calling for a more diverse and meaningful representation. The designers that we’re showing are unafraid to disrupt the gender binary in fashion like Jean Paul Gaultier and Walter Van Beirendonck.

“Age and size were the two hardest sections to populate which was interesting given how long size has been a topic within the industry. Within age, we also discuss a real change in the culture around how we see age, largely down to style blogs like Ari Seth Cohen’s Advanced Style blog and social media influencers. There’s been a real shift in the terminology used. Beauty magazines like Allure have abandoned the term anti-ageing, as have Dove.

“It was interesting to discover that London’s actually very poor for size, yet the UK’s plus-size retail market is worth about £6.6 billion, so there’s a huge imbalance there. We have a Chromat look they remade for us that was worn by curve model Denise Bidot to open their show in Spring/Summer ’15 and that was the first time a curve model had opened a straight-sized show at New York Fashion Week.”

How does fashion balance meaningful representation with its nature as a business based around trends?

“I’ve heard people actually take ownership and say yes, diversity is a human rights issue but it also makes good business and I don’t think the two need to be mutually exclusive. But it fails when representation is tokenistic or when representation just isn’t considered. Brands have made mistakes where they’ve done things and they haven’t had the expertise behind the scenes to realise that what they’ve done is culturally insensitive and brands are waking up to that and hiring diversity consultants and things like that. Now, with social media and being called out, it’s about how you

INTERSECTIONS

Photo: Amos Mac

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Interview: Katie Goh

respond and how you move forward.”

What was the most surprising thing you learned curating the exhibition?

“One thing that really did surprise me was that since Nick Knight’s Dazed and Confused editorial, there really hadn’t been anything in the mainstream with disability until maybe 2015. Race was also surprising in that it seems to be cyclical with moments where there have been good examples of representation and then nothing. We’ve got the cover of Donyale Luna on British Vogue from 1966, who was the first black model to ever be on a magazine cover. But then US Vogue didn’t have another black model on the cover until 1974. You start learning that there doesn’t seem to be consistency with growth and the recognition of diversity and the importance of diversity, and I have found that quite surprising.”

How do you think diversity and inclusion becomes consistent within fashion?

“I found the most important thing is to go and speak to the people who have the tangible understanding of the themes we’re trying to represent, who are a part of marginalised groups.

Everybody agrees on the fact that there has to be a change culturally and that means culturally within business because the lack of representation is self-perpetuating so if you don’t see something, it cannot be normalised. Visibility is going to be the only thing that brings about change.”

For people who wouldn’t classify themselves as fashion experts, what do you hope they take away from the exhibition?

“What we’ve said is that the exhibition in itself isn’t really about fashion. It’s not really about the actual garments on display; it’s about the stories and inspiration behind it, which is why we wanted the object labels to have the voices of those designers and the models and the people who are actually involved. This is really an exhibition that connects fashion to contemporary life and an exhibition about what’s happening around you in society right now. We just want to give people a platform to use their voices and for people to come and hear about it.”

Body Beautiful: Diversity on the Catwalk, National Museum of Scotland, 23 May-20 Oct, free

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THE SKINNY

Sour Power Ahead of this year’s Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival, we look at the tangy, funky world of sour beer

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f a pint of brown, foamy ale is the liquid equivalent of a big hug from a grandad in a thick cable-knit jumper, and a lager is akin to a reassuringly straightforward catch-up with a pal, sour beers are a bit more like an extremely enthusiastic high-five. Enjoyable, invigorating, a bit different, and they only occasionally leave you writhing on the ground in agony.

The beer world’s embrace of the sour continues, with more and more breweries adding sharp, tangy and funky beers to their line-ups.

You can expect to see a whole host of the blighters at this month’s Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival, but more on that shortly. First, we need to take a quick trip to the laboratory.

In the normal course of brewing, the plan is to keep things under control. Carefully measure your ingredients, work to a precise recipe, get all your ratios spot on, and use a yeast that’s going to give you predictable results. The trick is not to let random stuff into the beer as it’s brewing, say, by leaving the door open...

Lambic beers are created by leaving the door open. This Belgian variety is the original sour beer style, and understanding how it comes together is helpful in getting your head around sour beer in general.

Essentially, there are wild bacteria and yeasts occurring in the environment all around us, and in certain conditions they can be quite useful in building flavour and character into food. They can also destroy your food if they completely overrun the scene, but by allowing just some of those interlopers to get into a batch of beer, it’s possible to get a drink that has a sharpness and funk that can’t be achieved with standard ingredients. As such, a good lambic has a Champagne-like fizz and a dry, sharp finish that comes from the wild yeasts that spark its fermentation. Gueuze beers are made up of blends of different lambics, which are then re-fermented once they’ve been buddied up.

Gueuzes tend to be a bit on the farmy side, so be ready for big musty aromas and strong tangy flavours – if you like the faint smell of hay and cattle with your half-pint, you’re in business.

Then there are two big words that will be helpful in your understanding the new breed of sour beers – Brettanomyces or Brett for short, and lactobacillus or lacto. Brett is a non-standard form of yeast that works more slowly than a standard brewing option, and helps to send beer fermentation in strange and interesting directions.

Lacto is a bacterium that converts sugars into lactic acid rather than alcohol; put some of it in with your batch of beer, and you get a sour beer. It’s also responsible for the lactic funk of yoghurts, kimchi, and many other fermented goods. It is, as the Yakult advert says, a good bacteria. Berliner Weisse makes use of lacto, adding the bacteria to a standard German-style wheat beer; gose works along similar lines but is noted for featuring coriander and salt, just to make things even more interesting.

‘Interesting’ is very much the word to describe the beers coming out of Edinburgh’s Vault City microbrewery. The brewery is an all-sour operation, using wild fermentations and a whole host of hop blends and fruit additions to give their beers a genuinely unique edge. Their Yuzu Sour is a lip-smacker of the highest order, and their Strawberry Sour is a remarkably well-rounded and refreshing drink. The brewery has won a host of plaudits since launching last year, and earlier in 2019 Vault City won the Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival’s Raise the Bar competition to feature at this year’s festival alongside some of the biggest hitters in craft beer.

May 2019

Words: Peter Simpson

The Festival’s official beer is another sour-ish effort, this time from Leith brewers and full-time Twitter shit-stirrers Pilot. It’s a Watermelon, Mint and Hibiscus Semi-Sour, described by Pilot’s Matt Johnson as a drink with a “nice, refreshing tartness” and one that “festivalgoers can enjoy without getting their heads blown off by a high ABV.” Losing one’s head thanks to an unexpectedly high number on the back of a can is something most of us can sympathise with (drink responsibly, folks), but taking a full force shot to the taste buds from the lacto fairy might not be as familiar.

If this sour beer lark sounds like it’s for you, we have some pre-festival tips to impart.

First, head to the experts. Breweries like Wild Beer Co and the aforementioned Vault City are full-timers at the funky fermentation game, so they’re the ideal place to start. Try anything and everything they have, and work out which styles suit you. You might like beers with a distinctly farmhouse vibe, but you’ll never know if you don’t give them a go.

“ A sour beer is like an extremely enthusiastic highfive – enjoyable, invigorating, and only occasionally leaves you writhing on the ground in agony” Next, move up through the gears. Hit up the Berliner Weisses – these are super-refreshing beers that won’t put you off the concept for good.

Expect light, floral smells and crisp flavours from breweries like Whiplash and To Øl. After that, move on to the goses for a more savoury vibe, then to the more traditional styles or heavily Bretted beers. Also, Cromarty have brewed a milk sour called Udder Madness and it’s a bit like a fizzy, mildly alcoholic milkshake. Very weird, but strangely enjoyable, so pop along and see if they have any lying around. These kinds of ‘experiments’ are pretty rife when it comes to sours – give them a bash once you have your lacto legs.

Finally, remember that when it comes to sour beer, fruit is your friend. Tropical fruit and berries are used in many of the best of the new wave of sours, amplifying the hop flavours and helping your addled mind make sense of what it’s drinking.

‘This is a beer, so I don’t quite get why it’s so tangy,’ you think to yourself. ‘But then I suppose a guava does have a bit of a kick to it, so I’ll play along.’

Beers like 71 Brewing’s Passion Killer (lots of passion fruit puree, as many thumbs up as we can manage) and Amundsen’s Raspberry and Lime Berliner Weisse, Lush, are both good examples of fruity beers that end up as more than the sum of their parts. Intriguing, exciting, and probably somehow contributing to your five-a-day – looks like sour beers are here to stay.

The Biscuit Factory, Edinburgh, 24-25 May edinburghcraftbeerfestival.co.uk

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Cleaning Up Glasgow Coffee Festival is a disposable cup-free zone. We talk to organiser Lisa Lawson about how the festival – and the world of coffee in general – can be more environmentally friendly

Interview: Peter Simpson

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cotland’s selection of festivals seems to be ever-growing, from all-day gin festivals in big sheds to weekend-long music blowouts in big fields, via more than one month-long celebration of cocktails. There’s a lot going on, and it all has an environmental impact. Take a car full of people for a pint or to a campsite, that’s fine; multiply that car by a few thousand and you might have some issues.

So it’s good when festivals find ways to try and reduce their environmental footprint. In 2018, Glasgow Coffee Festival became the first coffee festival to completely rid itself of disposable cups, and they’ll do so again this year.

Attendees can put down a deposit on a reusable cup to hand back at the end of the day, or… you know… just bring their own. From home. In a bag.

But how did this ‘do as we say’ approach go down? “We had an overwhelmingly positive response before, during and after the event,” the festival’s Lisa Lawson tells us via email. “We weren’t quite sure what response to expect from vendors and visitors alike.

“We enlisted the support of KeepCup to help us achieve the ban by being able to supply reusable cups to all visitors upon arrival at the venue. Espresso Solutions supported with cup rinsers to allow cups to be washed throughout the festival. We couldn’t have achieved the result we did if it was not for the camaraderie of the industry and the acceptance of the festival attendees! [It] was a very proud moment!”

Coffee, famously, is an industry that has a big supply chain and involves moving lots of physical stuff from one side of the world to another. As much as it’s good to discourage a disposableheavy mindset, it is important to be mindful of the bigger picture. In addition to Glasgow Coffee Festival, Lawson runs Glasgow’s much-loved Dear Green Roasters, so we ask what the coffee industry in general can do to reduce its impact.

“Implementing good and sound practice in

all we do at each part of the supply chain will have a positive environmental impact.

Sustainable farming practices, increasing efficiencies of transportation and storage, using energy efficient equipment for processing, milling, roasting and brewing. Having general rules around reducing CO2 production, reducing waste, repurposing, reusing, composting and sourcing locally where possible.

“Everything you would apply to another business model to make it greener can be applied so easily to each aspect of coffee production... We also have to engage the consumer enough to move away from mass production and choose a well sourced product which will undoubtedly have taken a better environmental path to their palate.”

This year’s Glasgow Coffee Festival features dozens of just those kind of producers – small roasteries that take real care in sourcing their product, farmers who keep their milk organic and as good for the planet as possible, and guys who make cups that you wouldn’t even want to throw in the bin if you were allowed. Making use of all of these people will help you enjoy your coffee knowing you’ve cut your environmental impact a touch.

“Drink your coffee from a reusable cup, always,” says Lawson when asked for what you should do to make your morning flat white better for the planet, adding that a disposable cup – no matter its environmental bona fides – will inevitably end up in one bin or another.

“Choose to drink coffee from a trusted cafe or roastery where you are sure there is transparency in sourcing and the value chain directly to the coffee picker. Most likely you’ll then be investing in the farmer receiving more money for his crop and therefore more access to education on sustainable farming practices.”

Glasgow Coffee Festival, The Briggait, 4-5 May Glasgow Coffee Festival

glasgowcoffeefestival.com

Chews Bulletin This month’s food events guide features a trio of whisky events, a pair of gin fests and a big ol’ vegan barbecue irst up this month is Boilermaker, an event that brings together prominent women from the worlds of beer and whisky. Hosted by the Campervan brewery in Leith, you’ll get three great beers, three drams of whisky and some inspirational booze chat to go with it. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, all proceeds from the event will go to Keymoves, an Edinburgh charity that provides help and accommodation for homeless women. 16 May, 7pm, 112 Jane St, Edinburgh, tickets £25 via kaskwhisky.com Staying with whisky, the annual Whisky Stramash returns to Surgeons Hall this month.

The Stramash, now into its eighth year, tends to stick to the more ‘flamboyant’ end of the booze festival scale, promising experiential gubbins from some of your favourite distilleries. There will be costumes, it will be overblown, the whisky will be delicious. If you want a drinks festival that you won’t forget in a hurry, this looks like the one for you. 18-19 May, times vary, Nicholson St, Edinburgh, tickets £31.44 via Eventbrite And completing this whisky-powered trilogy,

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Dundee cocktail bar 3 Session Street plays host to a tasting of Japanese Spirits. In addition to some of the much-vaunted whiskies coming out of Japan, there will also be the chance to check out some Japanese gin and vodka. 22 May, 7pm, 3 Session St, Dundee, tickets £15 via Eventbrite Over on the west coast, Slow Food Glasgow presents a documentary designed to get you thinking about what you put in your mouth. Food, Class and Transformation in Glasgow, by filmmaker Zev Robinson, looks at the changes to the city’s food consumption, and the ways in which issues like population change and food poverty intertwine. The screening’s followed by a discussion and Q&A. 22 May, 7pm, Project Cafe, 134 Renfrew St, Glasgow, tickets £6.88 via EventBrite Next up is a tasty outdoor event from one of your favourites from our 2019 Food and Drink Survey. Tomillo host an all-vegan BBQ at Spiers Lock on the Bank Holiday weekend – expect the kind of inventive veggie food you’ve seen at their pop-ups, only this time with the added danger and intrigue that you only get with fire. 25 May,

from 4.30pm, 8 Spiers Wharf, Glasgow, tickets £17 via Eventbrite And we wrap up May with a pair of gin festivals. In Glasgow, it’s the west coast leg of the True OriGINs festival at The Briggait. True OriGINs’ USP is that it focuses solely on Scottish gins, of which – as you well know – there are loads. You’ll find yourself amid dozens of Scottish gins across eight bars; truly, there are worse problems to have. 31 May-1 Jun, various times, 147 Bridgegate, Glasgow, tickets £12.50 via mfgfevents.ticketco.events Across in Edinburgh, the Juniper Festival’s hook is that it was the first of the now-endless parade of gin fests across the country. Now in its sixth year, the festival features chances to sample a host of gins from distillers across the country, as well as a range of talks on gin, plus cocktails created by some of the city’s best bars. 31 May-2 Jun, various times, Summerhall, tickets £22.50 via summerhalldrinkslab.co.uk theskinny.co.uk/food

FOOD AND DRINK

True OriGINs

THE SKINNY

Photo: Nicol Rosie

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Words: Peter Simpson

THE SKINNY needs you We’re looking for a General Manager to join the team in our Edinburgh office. Organised? Good with numbers? Have HR and office management experience? If so, we want to hear from you.

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May 2019

Illustration: Emer Kiely

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THE SKINNY

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Points of View We speak to Erland Cooper about his three-album project inspired by his home on Orkney

Interview: Eala MacAlister

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“ If you grow up by the sea it dominates. It dominates in its colours, it dominates in its motion – it dominates in every way” Erland Cooper

enticed by the piano and equipment in the local school. “My father was the deputy head of the school,” he tells us, “so I would steal his keys to go into the school to use the music room and the piano and record on eight tracks and four tracks and use the mics. When he finally caught me he was like, ‘Why didn’t you just ask?’”

London living may be very different to that of the archipelago off the northeast coast of Scotland, but every opportunity Cooper now gets he catches the ferry to Orkney where he grew up, and which continues to be a constant source of inspiration. “We’re quite a big family and we all used to go back at Christmas... I tend to go back a few times a year, at least, and with this [current] project I’ve gone back a wee bit more.”

Cooper’s current project is a three-album epic based on a poem by fellow Orcadian George

Photo: Alex Kozobolis

Residing in London these days, where he now owns a recording studio he likes to call the Sea Haven in a nod to Stromness, Cooper was drawn to music from an early age, particularly

Photo: Alex Kozobolis

ou’ve got to go to the place.”

Nature and a sense of place is something that runs through Erland Cooper’s solo work, as well as in his work with Simon Tong and Hannah Peel as The Magnetic North. “Not only have you got to go to the place,” he tells us at The Lighthouse in Glasgow, a fitting location for our chat, “but you have to bring somebody – an outsider – with you because then you get two views, you get your insider view and someone else’s outsider view.” It’s a theory Cooper regularly puts into practice, having invited several friends and collaborators to visit his home in Orkney over the years, where he freely admits that he ends up playing tour guide.

He tells us about a time where he took someone to see an ancient stone circle called the Ring of Brodgar. “There’s me looking out proudly at this thing... it’s an incredible feat of engineering, and he’s got his back turned and is looking at this rotting old fishing boat,” he laughs. “I just love the idea that we were looking at different things, so when you get the sense of place you need different views, opposing views.”

May 2019

Mackay Brown with the first in the series, Solan Goose, released last year, and the second, Sule Skerry, arriving this month. The plan for this trio of records may be coming together now but it wasn’t always planned this way. “I didn’t intend, or plan, to release Solan Goose,” Cooper explains.

“I kept it to myself for about six months, then played it for a few people and before I knew it, it was out flapping around.”

When it comes to nature and the birds that inspired Solan Goose, he’s passionate about their preservation, too: “I hate the thought that our children’s children, to go and see puffins, will go to a national park, which is a bit like a zoo, while you [can] just walk around [Orkney].” Also, recently there has been a row over the netting of trees and hedgerows to prevent birds from nesting, which Cooper is also keen to highlight: “It’s caused a reaction, as it should have, because it’s so extreme,” he says in dismay. “It’s a shame that extremes make people take notice.”

Where Solan Goose focused on the air, paying homage to the birdlife of Orkney with field recordings of birdsong and the Orcadian names for certain birds doubling up as the album’s song titles, Sule Skerry makes you picture the sea while you listen; the motion of the water at the back of a ferry as you plough through waves. As a result it’s more rhythmic, with instruments such as the cello giving a voice to the sea.

It’s easy to see why Cooper would focus on something that’s so important in island life: “If you grow up by the sea it dominates. It dominates in its colours, it dominates in its motion – it dominates in every way.” The music on Sule Skerry, much like the sea, is sometimes calm and beautiful, sometimes stormy and wild, but never predictable, featuring a number of guest turns throughout from the likes of Benge, Kris Drever and Kathryn Joseph.

As well as guests peppering the album, while practice may have been done in solitude in the

Music

beginning, he’s now found a group of musicians to regularly record and play live with. With this consistent pool of musicians – Anna Phoebe (violin), Jacob Downs (viola), Lottie Greenhow (soprano) and, latest addition, Klara Schumann (cello) – he now finds it easier to write different parts as he knows exactly how they’ll translate: “They make the seven or eight or nine notes sound so much more beautiful than I could.”

With a handful of live dates planned around the release of Sule Skerry, including The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on 24 May, Cooper promises a tour later in the year. He also tells us he’s keen to take the live show to Orkney once his triptych is complete and can be played together – “I want to play in the St Magnus Cathedral and do something different.” It’s a tantalising prospect as Cooper’s gigs tend to be memorable for all the right reasons. On one occasion he had the audience use their phones to record a loop of gannet calls and play them back, he recalls, delighted. “I said to the audience, ‘We’ve just created London’s first live gannet colony here in this church.’”

Written and recorded in the cracks between other commitments as a way to clear a busy brain, Cooper explains that, although specifically inspired by Orkney, it’s as much to do with any place that feels safe and like home. “We get up in the morning and go out from our safe place, whether that’s a room or a house or a book, and go out and anything can happen.”

With the air and sea already brought to life in parts one and two, the final part of the trilogy will focus on land and community, and by the time it’s all finished, Cooper believes it should all come together, adding, “but it’s okay if it doesn’t – it’s only music.”

Sule Skerry is released on 17 May via Phases Erland Cooper plays The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 24 May erlandcooper.com

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Travelling Man We speak to Hamish Hawk about the adventures and misadventures that led to the release of his new, piano-led collection of “away from home” songs, Laziest River

“ A lot of the songs on the first record are about real situations where I met certain people, and how their personalities clashed or matched perfectly with mine” Hamish Hawk

Hawk’s eyes light up as he speaks of his fascination with small, everyday interactions, and how unexpectedly and profoundly they can influence what’s to come. Out for breakfast one morning before leaving for America, he explained his (lack of a) plan for “the longest holiday I’ve ever been on” to Dan Willson – known to many as Withered Hand – who put him in touch with Brendon Massei, a Baltimore-based songwriter who has recorded as Viking Moses since 2003.

Massei tours relentlessly and invited Hawk to travel with him as he played in houses across America. Driving through 26 states, the two covered over ten-and-a-half-thousand miles, “starting in Washington then going to New York,

Rozi Plain @ The Blue Arrow, Glasgow, 3 May Following on from the release of her latest album, What a Boost, which saw her taking listeners on a sonic journey, mimicking her similarly nomadic lifestyle of the past few years, where she’s mostly been on the road playing as a member of This is the Kit, Rozi Plain is set to stop by Glasgow’s Blue Arrow tonight. Be sure to head along early to catch Glasgow singer-songwriter Molly Linen and Lost Map’s latest signing, the accordion-toting Callum Easter on support duty.

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Photo: Jack Barraclough

Rozi Plain

Faith Eliott

Photo: Mario Cruzado

Do Not Miss Faith Eliott @ Skylight; C Duncan @ Summerhall; Annie Booth @ Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, 10 May Some people say nothing ever happens in Edinburgh. Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth tonight as three excellent artists celebrate new releases in tandem creating a lovely musical triangle across the city. At Henry’s you’ll find Annie Booth launching her Spectral EP and, following the release of Health in March, C Duncan plays Summerhall for, um, Nothing Ever Happens Here (awkward), all the while Faith Eliott celebrates the release of the bestiary-themed Impossible Bodies at the Canongate’s Skylight venue. Pick your poison.

Hamish Hawk

certain people, and how their personalities clashed or matched perfectly with mine,” he explains. “It was about uni, the people I met at uni and my girlfriend at the time. The new record finds all of that coming to an end. The darker corners of my songs are darker, but the more playful side of my songwriting is more playful.”

Hawk considers Laziest River an offering of “away from home songs. Thematically, and in terms of genre.” He concludes, “My brain isn’t in Edinburgh when I’m singing them.”

Five of the tracks on Laziest River were recorded by Idlewild’s Rod Jones in his Leithbased Post Electric studio. While the influence of “big crooners and show-tuners” is welcome throughout the record, Hawk assures us “there’s also just an ordinary Edinburgh guy in there as well.” Hawk’s distinct charm shines through on Dud, as he sings ‘I’m a dog / Not been taken for a walk in ages’. Laziest River is tender, wistful, reverent, eloquent, comical and refreshing in its unabashed openness and curiosity.

Hawk hopes to record the follow-up to his debut record From Zero to One later in the year, and hints that a couple of tracks from it may receive an airing at some point during his upcoming UK tour. “A lot of the songs on the first record are about real situations where I met

Laziest River is released on 3 May via Assai Records Hamish Hawk & the New Outfit play Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, 6 May; The Glad Cafe, Glasgow, 7 May; East Neuk Hotel, Crail, 8 May hjhmusic.com

South by Southside Festival @ Queen’s Park, Glasgow, 11 May We know, we know, another festival (!!), but there’s a lot about this one we can happily get on board with. First off, it’s taking place in a renovated bandstand in Glasgow’s Queen Park, which is pretty cool. Second, it’s an affordable outdoor, daytime event meaning it’s family friendly. Third, they’ve a lovely line-up confirmed which includes Glasgow-based American singersongwriter A. Wesley Chung and hip-hop outfit DopeSickFly. Fourth, there will be food stalls and a bar, and fifth, it’s bloody well called South by Southside. Handshakes all round.

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A. Wesley Chung

Photo: Ludovic Farine

down to Georgia and west all the way to California.” After Massei performed, he and Hawk would “be looked after, given beds and such”; their accommodation often housing “some kind of upright piano.”

The three songs Hawk released in 2017 were all written in these houses, as he became overwhelmed by – and compelled to document – “the number of unique and truly inspiring situations I found myself in.” China & Down, he says, “was written in one sitting, Jackie O. Swannanoa was written in six different sittings, so each different little bit is actually about a different place altogether. It just grew an extra limb every so often.” Hawk is particularly attached to Swannanoa, as it stands out amongst his work as a straightforward, yet elegant documentation of “exactly what happened. Those six weeks are journaled in that song.”

Keith Ingram, owner of Assai Records – Hawk’s current label and workplace – suggested that the three “travelling songs” could be released again as part of an EP if Hawk had any material fitting to accompany them, which he did.

None of the songs on Laziest River were written in Edinburgh. “Mudchute was written in London,” Hawk tells us. “I was on the bus in the Isle of Dogs, got off too early, and just ended up wandering about Mudchute. Two of the songs were written in Glasgow, one in Latvia. Jude the Obscure wasn’t written by me at all.” The instrumental was penned and performed by frequent collaborator Stefan Maurice, though the track was named by Hawk after an Assai Records regular who had heard the demo. “I said I could name it after you. That’d be funny. I couldn’t call it Hey Jude,” he laughs, “so it’s Jude the Obscure.”

Assai customers will not be surprised to hear that Hawk is a warm and enthusiastic host and interviewee, who is more than happy for our conversation (taking place in his Edinburgh flat) to stretch on for several hours. We cover everything from performers he admires (“When Kathryn [Joseph] sings, she elevates the whole space into something else”) to a recent Vic Galloway session in which he (and his band, The New Outfit) covered Beauty School Dropout from Grease. “I can’t get away from larger than life romanticism and big showy gestures,” he delightedly admits.

The Beths

Photo: Amanda Cheng

hree of the recordings found on Hamish Hawk’s new EP will be familiar to those who managed to snap up one of the 50 handmade CDs he released in 2017. Name-checking Austin, Texas and the Swannanoa River in North Carolina, the songs were written during the six weeks Hawk spent travelling across America earlier that same year. Keen to part with them quickly, Hawk – after a fruitful day spent in the Penicuik studio of Mattie Foulds (The Burns Unit) – decided not to wait for label involvement, and to share them himself.

Photo: Beth Chalmers

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Interview: Fraser MacIntyre

The Beths @ The Mash House, Edinburgh, 13 May Surely the highest accolade for an album is when as soon as you’ve finished listening to it you want to listen to it all over again? This is the feeling we get from The Beths’ debut, Future Me Hates Me, released last August via Carpark Records. What’s more, it’s one of those rare records that gets better with every listen, which probably also explains why the venue for tonight’s show has been upgraded from Sneaky Pete’s to The Mash House. See you down the front, yeah?

THE SKINNY

Spot On We talk to Annie Booth about the inspiration behind her new EP, Spectral, and what led her to strip back her sound

nnie Booth is a busy woman. Since releasing her debut album, An Unforgiving Light, in 2017, she’s been bouncing around the Scottish music scene both as a solo artist and as a member of prolific four-piece Mt. Doubt. And on top of that, she’s been back in the studio recording a new EP, Spectral, to be released this month.

When we catch up with her, she seems relatively unfazed by it all. “I was so pleased with the reception that An Unforgiving Light received, both from the press and radio,” she says. “But I am still in the lucky position where I’m relatively unknown. That takes the pressure off a bit.”

Hailing from Auchterarder, Booth grew up playing covers and listening to indie-rock. “I was

Morrow, who Booth had met while working on projects with Mt. Doubt. “He was great to work with,” she says. “I don’t think he’d worked on much folky/acoustic stuff before, and so it was a cool balance of a cleaner pop production married with my tendency towards a more intimate acoustic sound. We were really happy with the finished product – it sounded really slick and polished.”

For Spectral, Booth wanted to do something different, and from listening to her first single, Magic 8, the change is palpable. “I wanted to go for something a lot more sparse, and kind of stripped back,” she explains.

We ask what’s influenced the change: does she feel like she’s changed or matured as an artist? “It’s a few different things. One more obvious would probably be my listening tastes. I was really into a lot of indie-rock before, while still having my folk influences in there, and you can really hear that in my earlier music. But nowadays, I’m listening more to singer-songwriters – King Creosote, Kathryn Joseph, and Phoebe Bridgers. There’s something about their outputs in that their songs are quite bare. The lyrics are exposed. They’re really masterful in conveying emotion, but not in a way that’s self-indulgent. It’s universal, but it’s still really personal. That’s inspired the EP a lot.”

really into people like My Chemical Romance and Villagers,” she says. “It was listening to this stuff that I would really think to myself, ‘Wow, this is amazing’. These bands made me want to write songs. I’d always been into writing little poems and stuff, and eventually I moved away from covers and started making my own music.”

Booth moved to Edinburgh five years ago to study music at Edinburgh Napier University. It was on this course that she met the band for An Unforgiving Light and the roots of her first album began to grow. “They all had an eclectic group of influences – electric, post-punk, country,” she says. “It was nice to combine it all together.”

The album was artfully produced by Mark

Be Charlotte @ Perth Festival of the Arts, Perth Theatre, 17 May Last March, Dundee singer-songwriter Charlotte Brimner, who performs under the moniker Be Charlotte, was snapped up by Sony Music’s Columbia Records. A year on, almost to the day, she returned with her first single via the label, the super laid-back yet catchy Do Not Disturb, alongside a new look, which no longer features her trademark specs. Following on from a tour of local schools, catch her tonight in the Joan Knight Studio of the Perth Theatre. Be Charlotte also plays Glasgow Garage’s Attic Bar on 16 May.

May 2019

Vukovi

Annie Booth

Spectral is released on 10 May via Scottish Fiction Annie Booth plays Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, 10 May

To help achieve this new sound, she started working with producer and musician Chris

Broken Chanter

Broken Chanter @ Leith Depot, Edinburgh, 23 May Broken Chanter is the relatively new project from Kid Canaveral’s David MacGregor, which he describes as a musical vehicle for him and his friends. Don’t worry, he’s still friends with Kid C – Broken Chanter is just a very different form of pop. Head along to Leith Depot tonight as MacGregor celebrates the release of latest single Wholesale with a little help from Jill O’Sullivan (Sparrow and the Worksop, BDY_ PRTS), Audrey Tait (Hector Bizerk) and Gavin Prentice, whose band ULTRAS will be on support duty. You know what to do.

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facebook.com/annieboothmusic

Photo: Stephanie Gibson

Vukovi @ Conroy’s Basement, Dundee, 16 May Following the amicable departure of Jason Trotter and Colin Irvine, VUKOVI are now officially a twopiece, comprised of remaining members Janine Shilstone and Hamish Reilly. The success of their eponymous 2017 debut led to the band receiving PRS Momentum funding in 2018, and they now plan to self-release its follow-up later this year. Expect to hear some new tunes as they hit the road this May for their biggest headline tour to date.

VUKOVI also play The Mash House, Edinburgh, 15 May and The Tunnels, Aberdeen, 17 May.

Photo: Amy Muir

Be Charlotte

Photo: Ian Schofield

Annie Booth

Photo: Jannica Honey

“ As I grow older I’ve started to realise that I really don’t know that much. It’s like the older I get, the less I think I know”

McCrory of Catholic Action. Having met Booth while she was recording a song with Glasgow’s wojtek the bear, McCrory got in touch and asked to collaborate. Inspired by the work he’d done with artists like Siobhan Wilson, Booth decided to go for it.

Now, with Spectral ready for release, she’s very happy with the way it worked out. “When I booked the recording I hadn’t actually written most of the songs yet, but I knew what I was going for,” she says. “By the time I reached the studio I had the bones of the songs, but the finished product really happened while we were recording. This was a completely different experience from An Unforgiving Light where we pretty much finished the whole project before we went in. And that really worked at the time. With Chris, we experimented on the spot. He’d just sort of hand me random instruments and be like ‘play that’. It was a really cool way to work.”

Booth and McCrory split the instrumentals in half on Spectral, with Booth primarily taking on the acoustic and electric guitars and Chris coming in on bass and synths, as well as making atmospheric sounds using a Monotron. When we ask more specifically about how she wanted the EP to turn out, Booth muses: “to have a more dream-like feel.

“As I grow older, and I know I’m only 23, I’ve started to realise that I really don’t know that much,” she confesses. “It’s like the older I get, the less I think I know. This EP is about those unanswered questions and unfinished statements. Less obvious parts, more atmosphere and reflection. It’s like it’s an admission that I don’t know everything, and that’s fine.”

Although Booth self-effacingly insists she’s not hit the big time enough to feel the pressure of that “second album syndrome”, it feels like exciting things are on the way for her. With Spectral having been released on a limited edition purple vinyl on Record Store Day, and with an album launch at Henry’s Cellar Bar to mark the official release on 10 May, she’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Hidden Door Weekender @ Leith Theatre, Edinburgh, 30 May-2 Jun Following some fairly serious funding issues, in a bid to keep their unique annual party going in the capital, Edinburgh’s Hidden Door made the difficult decision to pare things back this year, and in this case it seems that less is more, as they’re set to bring an absolute stonker of a line-up to Leith Theatre. RAY BLK, Let’s Eat Grandma, Nathan Fake, Kelly Lee Owens, Cigarettes After Sex, George FitzGerald, Chuchoter, Maranta, Jacuzzi General and The Honey Farm all play. We did say it was a stonker.

Let's Eat Grandma

Review

Photo: Charlotte Patmore

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Interview: Amy Hill

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Album of the Month Holly Herndon PROTO [4AD, 10 May]

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Holly Herndon has always been concerned with the pervasive relationship between humans and technology. Her main instrument – besides her sonorous voice – is the laptop, a tool which has now superseded both diary and planner, containing more of ourselves than we often like to acknowledge. It’s a nuanced relationship, nurturing and uneven, and Herndon’s work often seems borne out of these intersections.

Earlier this year, Endel, an algorithm app ‘signed’ a record deal, making it the first AI to do so. Herndon took to Twitter with a quietly alarmed statement: “this is a warning shot […] we are about to be inundated with automated and procedurally generated music systems, producing good enough music to appease most people for most situations.” For Herndon the news is an ill omen. Where AI was once a mere possibility, it now accompanies us wherever we go, and can now create our music. So, how should we handle it?

Bolstered by radical notions of reproduction and communal creativity, PROTO begins to posit an answer in administering Spawn, a machine learning unit co-created by Herndon, Mathew Dryhurst and Jules LaPlace. Over the course of the album

Hamish Hawk

Laziest River EP [Assai Records, 3 May]

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The latest release from the charming and heartfelt Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter Hamish Hawk, Laziest River could not be more aptly named. The instrumentation has been significantly stripped back since 2018’s From Zero to One as it weaves and meanders, sleepy and beguiling yet driven constantly onwards by piano, drums and steady bass.

Jude the Obscure, a voiceless, softly dissonant, Erik Satie-esque prelude introduces the EP’s characteristic lilting piano. Hawk’s vocals are clear and unadorned with a gentle Scottish lilt; he presents his careful observations through emotional and often unexpected storytelling set against soft, neat ballads. The songwriting finds a satisfying blend of idiosyncrasy and comfortability – just when you feel settled into the song it takes a new turn, there’s unforeseen optimism, or an unexpected lyric surfaces to shift the mood.

Surely the highlight is the disarming, gently self-deprecating Dud that finishes the record.

Epitomising Hawk, it’s equal parts down-to-earth and devastating – a charmingly predictable piano-driven ballad with unpredictable and playful lyrics, Hawk declaring: ‘I’m a dog / Not been taken for a walk in ages’.

Laziest River is perhaps Hawk’s most honest venture yet, and a testament to his versatility as an artist. [Katie Cutforth] Listen to: Mudchute, Swannanoa, Dud

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– namely in Canaan and Evening Shades – Spawn uses its gathered knowledge to accompany gorgeous, folk-informed performances.

The idea is as powerful as its sound, bringing AI directly into human histories of communal music performance. What’s more, PROTO is unabashedly a work of collaboration – among which Spawn can be counted as an agent. Lily Anna Hayes and Jenna Sutela articulate a sci-fi creation myth on the levitational spoken piece Extreme Love, while the Jlin featuring Godmother runs the gamut of the footwork producer’s triplet-spamming exploits, made totally terrifying with Herndon’s hyperventilating sound font.

The album abounds with references to growth milestones, and we’re compelled to imagine Spawn just as Herndon does – a child being nurtured, liable to absorb and internalise the world around it. By design or coincidence, PROTO is a prism through which concerns of our strange, as-yet unknowable epoch refract. In other words: it’s a notable work of art. [Dafydd Jenkins] Listen to: Alienation, Eternal, Crawler

Holly Herndon

Honeyblood

Sacred Paws

In Plain Sight [Marathon Artists, 24 May]

Run Around the Sun [Rock Action, 31 May]

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Honeyblood were always pop really, just under the dark shadow of shoegaze, dream pop and grunge, and those now just seem to be affectations compared to what In Plain Sight is reaching for as Stina Tweeddale goes it alone for the first time.

Starting almost lightheartedly, She’s a Nightmare soon proves itself as an electro-rock anthem worthy of an album opener before slick Ronettes melodies are caked over with distortion and fuzz on The Third Degree. The album’s last movement sees Tweeddale come into her own, specifically with the gothic and spitting, retro and menacing You’re a Trick. It’s the foggy storm clouds of the debut as reinterpreted through acidic pop, and, if anything, it’s a shame the album takes this long to really flourish. And, although welcome on the boards, indie superproducer John Congleton arguably provides a little too much polish.

In Plain Sight is full of references to witches and hexes, nightmares, afflictions and tricks. This is framed around a disturbing, if fanciful, story of Tweeddale returning from her last tour with Cat Myers and being haunted by a woman set on strangling her. There’s no reason to suggest that these barbs are aimed at anyone but the ghostly presence, but someone’s on the sharp end of Tweeddale’s slings and, to be honest, it suits her.

[Tony Inglis] Listen to: She’s a Nightmare, Glimmer, You’re a Trick

The second record from Sacred Paws, Run Around the Sun has to be one of most apt album titles in years for how it perfectly encapsulates the tempo, rhythm and mood of the music it gives its name too.

An unrelenting, fast-paced doubling down on its energetic predecessor Strike a Match, cartwheeling bass, carnival drums and intensely hooky Afrobeat guitars transport you to one of those blissful, sunny days in the park that Glasgow is crowned with way too rarely, but always manages to cocoon you from even your most worrisome of problems.

Annie Booth

Spectral EP [Scottish Fiction/ Last Niht from Glasgow, 10 May]

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Spectral is the new EP from Edinburgh-based singer-songwriter Annie Booth, a collection of personal indie-folk tales that cast her as Scotland’s answer to Phoebe Bridgers.

Opener Magic 8, a sparse guitar and vocals track described by Booth as “far more bittersweet and melancholy than it first appears”, begins with the lyrics ‘I look forward to being alone’. It’s clear that it comes from a melancholic and introspective place, but the highlight comes as a beautifully double-tracked chorus vocal that

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Photo: Boris Camaca

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With their debut, the music created a blend of similar rhythms that, while pleasant and impressive in their own right, felt like sacrificing variety for establishing style. This is a noticeable progression – the theatrical late-album highlight Write This Down’s rollicking horns exemplifying this. Perhaps with Aggs and Rodgers now sharing the same city as home, the closeness of their relationship, as friends and songwriters, has made their mission statement shine even brighter.

But most central to Sacred Paws’ success is their ability to tie up, or even blot out, melancholy, regret (Shame On Me) and post-argument guilt and stubbornness (The Conversation) with their unabashed will to make you dance and will away sadness. [Tony Inglis] Listen to: The Conversation, Life’s Too Short, What’s So Wrong

ascends gently to the heavens.

The pleading Mirage evokes Kathryn Joseph’s choral folk, subtly introducing new instrumentation to complement a repeating central melody, while Still builds on ringing piano arpeggios as Booth sings, ‘Why does happiness seem like a trick of the light?’ before a subtle shifting guitar outro.

Spiralling returns to the simplicity and sparseness of Magic 8, with Booth gently plucking her guitar for an evocative tale of lost and thwarted love. Packed with memorable imagery – ‘This town withered as a leaf in winter’ – it speaks to her lyrical abilities. If you missed An Unforgiving Light, as an intimate introduction to a very special artist, Spectral is hard to beat. [Max Sefton] Listen to: Magic 8, Spiralling

THE SKINNY

U.F.O.F. [4AD, 3 May]

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What is remarkable about Big Thief is the way Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia coalesce. They don’t pan for gold in clashes of ego, or keep their distance from one another on the road to maintain stability. They make a point of trying to understand each other, and four incredibly distinctive personas become, something else: Big Thief.

Often more reserved when captured alone, together they’re frequently bundled like affectionate siblings. As their lives become more intertwined, this naturally informs the music they make, and the four consider U.F.O.F. (the second F stands for friend) their “first record as a fully realized band.”

Second single Cattails was written mere hours before being recorded in a single take.

Sanna

Carbon Compound Combinations [KWAM YC, 17 May]

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Carbon Compound Combinations sounds different every time you listen to it. At first glance it sounds like some sort of experimental I Am Kloot, and then it morphs into something else entirely, as meandering and mesmerising instrumentals

Elsewhere, Lenker’s hushed vocal is incredibly prominent on Betsy, as if she’s whispering in the ear of the listener, while Meek’s charming, skyscraping leads are mostly replaced with intricate, ambient meditations, in keeping with the dreamlike nature of the record.

The absence of the dance wildly around your bedroom country-rock bliss their audience have come to adore is a little jarring at first, but you know where Shark Smile and Real Love are if you need them. U.F.O.F. is lot more restless and abstract.

Lenker says all her songs are about “making friends with the unknown [...] If the nature of life is change and impermanence, I’d rather be uncomfortably awake in that truth than lost in denial”, which is beautifully articulated in Magic Dealer. It takes courage to remain open, and Big Thief lead us gently from the beaten path and into the wilderness with U.F.O.F. There are lessons to be learned underwater, in the cold and among the shadows. [Fraser MacIntyre]

underpin Graham Clarke’s vocals. What’s more, Sanna’s much-anticipated debut album gives us a chance to hear Clarke’s lyrics more clearly than in their live shows, and the poeticism of this selfeffacing frontman is starker than ever.

Clarke’s voice reverberates through the crevices of Martin O’Donnell’s guitar (Pop Chong), and Sylvia Bell completes the three-piece, masterfully navigating cello, clarinet, vocals and keys throughout. There’s also a warmth and intimacy to be found in the album’s production, courtesy in part to co-producer Gavin Fort, best

Tim Hecker

Patience

Pip Blom

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Anoyo [Kranky, 10 May]

Dizzy Spells [Night School, 3 May]

known for his work with Main Ingredient.

At times, when listening to Carbon Compound Combinations, it really feels like you’re in the room with the band, which might be due to the fact that it was recorded in a series of different spaces around their home city of Edinburgh. In Eco Devo, Sanna perhaps pay tribute to the fact that many no longer exist, having fallen victim to the economic pressures that hang over the independent music industry – ‘It’s in your town / There’s economic devastation all around’.

Carbon Compound Combinations is a record

Vampire Weekend

Boat [Heavenly 31 May]

Father of the Bride [Columbia Records / Sony Music, 3 May]

Following the same pattern of its companion record, it would be easy to see Anoyo as a mirror of last year’s Konoyo.

However, the tone moves away from what was at times a punishing intensity, and sits more in a space of weightless uncertainty. In moving towards less desolate themes Tim Hecker’s sonics become noticeably warmer and more beautiful than the often dense abrasion of its predecessor.

One of the surprises of the record is the prominence of percussion on a number of the tracks, and, despite its brevity, Anoyo contains some of the most straightforwardly beautiful music Hecker has made in some time, making for a strong companion and continuation to the themes and sonic developments made on Konoyo. [Joe Creely]

Across two albums with Veronica Falls, Roxanne Clifford helped to craft often gloomy but sometimes warm and jangly indiepop. When she released her first tracks under the moniker of Patience, she threw long-time listeners a curveball as she swapped guitars for electronics.

Continuing to plumb the depths of these electronic tones on Dizzy Spells, scratch the bright surface and a consistent dichotomy between vibrant and melancholic is revealed.

Much of the album follows suit, with tracks like Moral Damage and Silent House helping to break the mould. Such moments prevent Dizzy Spells from becoming one-note by putting a different spin on the happy-sad formula, keeping it a bright yet bittersweet full-length exploration of Clifford’s new sonic world. [Eugenie Johnson]

Amsterdam’s Pip Blom is an anomaly because melody comes naturally to her. Every song on Boat is exemplary of how guitar pop can prevail. It’s pop music with conviction: it’s subtly clever, at times indignant, often vulnerable, and always ballsy.

There’s exciting potential in Pip Blom, particularly as a songwriter. You could argue that there’s no new territory to explore here, though, and that it’s all been done before to the point of saturation, but it requires courage to take on a sound as pandemic as this, turn it upside down slightly and retrofit it for 2019.

Boat is a triumphant debut album because it’s both familiar and authentic, and when you have a melodic impulse that shines as brightly as this, you can’t really go wrong. [Hayley Scott]

Listen to: That World, Step Away From Konoyo

Listen to: White of An Eye, Moral Damage

Listen to: Tinfoil, Don’t Make It Difficult, Ruby

May 2019

Big Thief

Listen to: Terminal Paradise, Contact, Orange

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After a studio layoff of six years it’s not surprising that Vampire Weekend’s Father of the Bride should be so substantial.

Hanging heavy over the record, though, is the departure of multi-instrumentalist and producer Rostam Batmanglij.

Without him, Ezra Koenig has giddily careened off into the deeper recesses of his own creative mind to produce a record that is dizzyingly referential, intimidatingly dense and that, in stylistic terms, fluctuates constantly.

Tying everything together is its overall mood – it’s a pastel kaleidoscope, summery and light on its feet throughout with 60s-indebted pop and R’n’B experimentalism. Going forward, Koenig’s Weekend will be considerably messier. What they won’t ever be, though, is boring. [Joe Goggins] Listen to: This Life, Stranger

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Photo: Michael Buisha

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that rises and falls like breath, with buoyant moments punctuated by backing synths (Divine & Conquer, Elements), followed by slower reflections with soft harmonies and atmospheric guitar (Remember 6, Suppose). Although each time you return to this album, something new reveals itself, it also feels like you’ve been listening to the same record the whole time. It’s fresh but familiar and it’s bloody lovely. [Amy Hill] Listen to: Divine & Conquer, Remember 6, Pop Chong

Interpol

Andreya Triana

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A Fine Mess EP [Matador, 17 May] Thankfully, Interpol, the band who once, briefly, shone brightest during the New York postpunk revival of the early 2000s, are on something of a redemptive arc following a real creative slump at the turn of the decade.

After 2014’s stronger sounding material on El Pintor, last year’s Marauder continued their winning streak, solidifying their definitive sound.

New EP A Fine Mess is the off-cuts from last year’s full-length and, perhaps because of the short nature of just five tracks, is possibly their best post-hiatus release yet.

There is forever a nagging feeling with Interpol, however, that they have settled into their sound, and while it’s an improvement from their lowest ebbs, it will equally never match their highest peaks. [Adam Turner-Heffer] Listen to: Fine Mess, Real Life, The Weekend

Life in Colour [Hi-Tea Records, 24 May] Life In Colour comes four years on from Andreya Triana’s last album, and nine since her Bonobo-produced debut Lost Where I Belong. Over 11 tracks she explores womanhood, love and independence with rousing messages of leaping over societal boundaries.

An album more vulnerable or visceral than she’s produced before, Triana’s smoky vocals are as ever the centrepiece.

However, at times they are the carrying force of a work that is overly emulative of her pop-soul predecessors.

Life In Colour furthers Triana’s previous ventures into the pop-soul world, and will happily adorn the atmosphere of a Starbucks any day, but there’s little here that offers the genre anything new to leave you choking on your coffee.

[Andrew Wright] Listen to: Do That For You

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Photo: Ebru Yildiz

Larger Than Life Ahead of the release of her band’s second album Young Enough, Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss talks about purging toxicity from your life and finding strength in pop music

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wo years ago, Eva Hendricks, the unstoppable rolling Crash Bandicoot boulder dash of joy and energy at the centre of Brooklyn’s Charly Bliss, nursery rhymed: ‘I’m four years above sixteen / I bounced so high, I peed the trampoline / I’m too sad to be mean / I’m gonna end up working at Dairy Queen’. She captured something of the existential dread of the future, an unknown that youth was hurtling towards at speed.

On the opening track to the band’s second full album, it’s not immediately clear how much has changed: ‘I don’t know what’s coming for me after 24’. But then, in the same breath, Hendricks almost mockingly opines, ‘It’s gonna break my heart to see it blown to bits’. This is not a person tragically mourning a past, fearful of what’s next; it’s someone stepping into what’s to come while leaving behind a trail of rubber severed limbs and fake blood. A life blown to bits.

That phrase, which lends itself to the title of the first song on Young Enough, is a simultaneously hilarious and gory image that perfectly sums up Hendricks’ wonderfully tactile way with words. If it was already obvious that she is gifted with searing wit, what’s new here, or simply realised, is a confidence and sense of purpose.

“I kind of always doubted myself as a songwriter. I didn’t take myself seriously and I thought, at any moment, I might never write a song again. Every time I did, it felt like a fluke, something that fell from the sky,” Hendricks admits on a call from Manhattan. “I’m someone who puts a ton of pressure on myself to be the best, and often that can make a person feel like actually they are the worst at everything. When Guppy came out I had to accept that on one hand I am actually good at this and also, on some level, I’m kind of meant to be doing this.”

Charly Bliss came together naturally at a young age – the band’s drummer Sam is Hendricks’ brother, guitarist Spencer Fox met bassist Dan Shure at a summer camp and the latter had already bonded with Hendricks over their mutual love of musical theatre – but their tight-knit

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relationship and long-established interconnectedness is essential to the characteristics that mean Young Enough is both a stylistically, and emotionally-resonant, step forward for the band.

Their closeness provided the basis, and one of the biggest stumbling blocks, to Hendricks’ decision to create an album inspired by some of her darkest and most traumatic personal experiences. “When I’m writing, it feels like a very private moment,” she explains. “It didn’t hit me at the time that I would have to talk about this stuff, or that I would have to figure out whether I wanted to be honest or open about the subject matter. Then I realised like, ‘Oh, we’re going to start releasing these songs’ and I guess I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to be vague or directly speak to it.”

“ I was making fun of myself a lot and singing as a caricature of myself. This time it was intensely important to me to be very honest” Eva Hendricks

On Chatroom, a gleaming pop sucker punch that socks you in the heart well into the album’s second half, Hendricks does that talking directly, frankly describing the aftermath of an abusive relationship and being sexually assaulted. In fact, the whole record is about purging toxic relationships and putting yourself first (as on standouts

Hard to Believe and Capacity). But rather than dwelling on the rage and anguish that such an experience might cause to fester, Hendricks deftly captures the cathartic feeling of not only physically walking away from that toxicity, but mentally banishing it, channelling those emotions into something ecstatic and making her specific rendering of that feel universal.

“I think it brought me to a new place of, for want of a better word, closure, or acceptance of this really brutal experience that I was still coming out the other end of. It forced me to talk about it in more detail with my loved ones and the band, to prepare them for this being all over the internet,” she says. “I really didn’t want this song to be like,” she puts on a grave voice, “and this is the song about sexual assault’.

“If you haven’t been through that, you can’t relate. It’s so important for people to have their own experience with the song and insert their own narrative. I know that’s what I do. When I listen to music I’m always like ‘I know this song is written about me. Like I know that Taylor Swift wrote it, but she must’ve written it about me because it’s exactly what I’m going through’. And I love that.

With Chatroom, it’s more so a celebration of your own personal autonomy and breaking free from things that are totally dragging you down.”

The content and manner of Hendricks’ answers over the phone are revealing: to talk about events so deeply personal, that she concedes she’s “still kind of working through”, to a stranger, while out shopping with her mum, marks her immense generosity. And that extends to her connection with the listener, which seems integral to her decision to splay her feelings out in song. “I always try to be personal in my writing.

As a listener, that’s the kind of music I respond to: someone saying the thing they probably couldn’t say any other way, that they couldn’t just say in a conversation, and couldn’t really articulate it at all, unless they were putting it into this world of a song.

“On Guppy I was really angry and I felt like a

MUSIC Music

Interview: Tony Inglis lot of the time I would get close to saying something that was very revealing but then I would avoid it, or do a fake out, by instead saying something that was a funny or sarcastic version of what I meant. And I think I was making fun of myself a lot and singing as a caricature of myself.

This time it was intensely important to me to be very honest, even if it felt embarrassing or difficult. When I felt like I had said what I was getting at, I made myself go one step further.”

Charly Bliss have never not been a pop band in some way. But Young Enough sees them embrace it. For Hendricks and her bandmates, that progression is deeply honest – pop music is what they love and gravitate towards in their own listening – and vitally important in aiding her to frame the most intensely dark aspects of her life so far. “Pop music makes me feel strong, and my memories of it from growing up are of being with my friends, driving around in my car, feeling invincible, that everything was fine and nothing else mattered other than that moment. And I think I really needed that context to talk about some of the more personal subject matter on this album.”

Charly Bliss have an uncannily natural tendency to tap into the grey areas between conflicting emotions: the similarities between crying and dancing, laughing and being scared, finding strength in feeling ripped apart. And it’s what makes them an act to treasure in your own moments of upheaval. As Hendricks puts it: “It really helped to write from a perspective of strength rather than of feeling defeated. And the truth was that I didn’t ever feel defeated by what happened. I think that’s so important – even though we touch on these topics, ultimately it’s a triumphant feeling album, and I’m really proud of that. Pop music makes you feel larger than life and I wanted to use it to make people feel strong in the same way I made myself.”

Young Enough is released on 10 May via Lucky Number charlybliss.com

THE SKINNY

A Decade in the Dance As Glasgow's La Cheetah Club celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, the club’s booker, programmer and resident DJ Grahame Ward, aka Wardy, discusses the venue’s ongoing success

Interview: Nadia Younes

“ It’s quite good that there’s a large gap between how big some of the acts are and how new some of these nights are, and they’re all happening in the same space”

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ver the last ten years, Queen Street nightclub La Cheetah has grown into one of Glasgow’s most popular clubbing spots, and the team behind it have developed a solid reputation in the city for its diverse range of bookings.

When current owner Dario Bernardi took over the space that once occupied Twisted Wheel in 2009, he set about refurbishing it into a fully-formed club space, installing a proper DJ booth and a sound system. Soon after, he enlisted local promoter Grahame Ward to take charge of the club’s booking and programming.

“I was running parties up at Basura Blanca and I moved everything I was doing down to La Cheetah because I always liked the space when it was the Twisted Wheel basement,” says Ward. “I probably ran parties down here for about two years before Dario took me on to initially do the bookings for the club’s own in-house parties, then eventually took me on to programme and book for the venue itself.”

As well as maintaining a focus on the development of new club nights, La Cheetah is also known for its exciting residency programme.

As part of the club’s 10th anniversary celebrations, they have already announced a series of four-part residencies this year from Objekt, Shanti Celeste and Avalon Emerson, with more yet to be announced. “It’s quite good that there’s a large gap between how big some of the acts are and how new some of these nights are, and

Grahame Ward

they’re all happening in the same space,” says Ward.

“The thing about [the residences] is, for instance, an Objekt or an Avalon Emerson or a Palms Trax, they’re going to bring enough of a crowd in, so it means they can book whoever they want to put on,” he continues. “And it’s cool because we get to book these artists that we’re hearing about and we’d love to bring in for a show, but maybe it’s not the right time for them or maybe it just wouldn’t work out as well because they’ve maybe not got as much of a profile in the city as we’d like them to before they play for us.”

And if running one successful club wasn’t enough, earlier this year the team opened their latest venture Room 2, reoccupying the space the

infamous Chambre 69 once held on Nelson Mandela Place. For its opening weekend, the team enlisted local legend JD Twitch, as well as fresher faces on the Glasgow scene, The Burrell Connection, Sofay and Ribeka to christen the booth before a headline set from Detroit techno royalty Moodymann the following night.

But the team plan to expand the space into more than just another nightclub. “We’ve got it up and running as a club but it will morph as time goes by into a fully fledged venue; that is the main intention with it,” says Ward. “We love the idea of having live acts come down and play in a club environment, and/or even play early on and it run straight through into a club.”

The team take their first steps into festival curation this year too, curating a stage at Glasgow’s

Riverside Festival, with the line-up proving to be an accurate representation of the club’s ethos. Taking place on the Saturday of the festival, the La Cheetah 10 stage will see sets from local talents like Eclair Fifi and Nightwave, as well as festival mainstays like Midland and Shanti Celeste, who described La Cheetah as “one of my fave places to play” when announcing her residency in the club on Twitter earlier this year.

As La Cheetah Club approaches its teenage years, it can count itself a favourite among Scottish clubgoers and a firm fixture on the clubbing landscape with what’s looking to be an even brighter future ahead of it.

Riverside Festival takes place at Riverside Museum, Glasgow, 25 & 26 May

Midland

Midland “We’ve been trying to book [Midland] to play for us for years, and dates have just never worked out, so when it came down to acts that we really wanted to play on the stage he was part of a good amount of acts that had been shortlisted. And when we went to speak to Riverside about it they’d also been looking into Midland as well.

We’ve been chatting to Harry [Agius, aka Midland] for years and he’s a favourite around here.”

Omar-S “Omar-S is an absolute hero of ours. He’s played for us maybe twice, three times over the years; it’s been a while since the last time he played. I’m just an absolute massive fan of most things Detroit, but Omar-S is a stand-out in the house side of things for Detroit. Movement, which is Detroit’s big festival, is on the same weekend as Riverside, so the fact that Alex [Smith, aka Omar-S] is going out of his way to come and play for us is a really big deal.”

Shanti Celeste

May 2019

Omar-S

CLUBS

Photo: Fabian Hammerl

Shanti Celeste “[Shanti] has gone from strength to strength over the last few years and now is probably one of the bigger names in the game. She’s a regular at Dekmantel and it’s a pleasure having her as a resident. We’re really happy she was able to come and join us on the day at Riverside because she’s flying straight out from Riverside as soon as she’s finished playing to go and play at a festival in Amsterdam, so she kind of went out of her way to play for us.”

Photo: Jimmy Mould

La Cheetah 10 x Riverside

Helena Hauff “I don’t know what to say about Helena Hauff that’s probably not already been said about her; she’s absolutely something else. We’ve had her play for us before – she played in the club once alongside Lory D years ago and she was fantastic.

She was definitely on the ascendancy at that particular point in time but she really blew up massively within that time. I saw her close Sonar last year and it’s probably one of the best sets I’ve seen from anybody ever.”

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B2B: Big Miz x Kettama Newly-announced FLY Club resident Big Miz speaks to Galway native, and his frequent DJ partner, Kettama ahead of both of their sets at this month’s FLY Open Air festival

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rom its humble beginnings in the cavernous basement of Edinburgh’s Cabaret Voltaire to throwing weekly parties between Edinburgh and Glasgow, FLY Club has gone from strength to strength over the years.

But the team behind it set their sights even higher a few years ago when they launched their inaugural festival FLY Open Air at Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh in September 2016. For the next edition, they took on the regal surrounds of

Kettama

Photo: Ellius Grace

Big Miz

Photo: Sean Bell

first time last year, the festival is set to get even bigger this year with a stage takeover across both days from Boiler Room, who will be making their Scottish festival debut.

Already counting a host of Scottish DJs, including Jasper James, Denis Sulta and Theo Kottis, who have gone on to become international successes, the FLY Club roster got even bigger this year with the team announcing Eclair Fifi and Big Miz as new residents for 2019. Here, Big Miz and Kettama discuss records, raves and remaining true to yourself, as they gear up to play at FLY Open Air this month.

17th century stately home Hopetoun House, situated in South Queensferry, and they’ve been going back and forth between the two locations ever since.

This month, the festival returns to Hopetoun House, with another huge line-up, featuring sets from the likes of Solomun – who will be making his first appearance in Scotland for over ten years – Seth Troxler, Honey Dijon, Nina Kraviz and Peggy Gou. After expanding to two days for the

Big Miz: What was the first record you ever bought?

Kettama: I only started my record collection about four years ago so I’m still chasing, but my first record was FJAAK – The Wind, bought from Rush Hour in Amsterdam and it’s still class.

Can you remember your first rave – where was it and who played?

The first proper rave that really was a formative experience for me was SHXCXCHCXSH and Tommy Holohan ages ago in Hangar in Dublin, and it was the first time I ever went out in Dublin as well. I remember it just being so nuts. There was never that sort of underground music being played in such a venue where I was from in the west, so this really changed a lot for me.

Words: Nadia Younes Can you name the top five records that influenced your sound?

It’s hard to pick five records alone because I feel my sound is a lot more of a mash of everything, but these are some standsouts: 1. Todd Edwards – Saved My Life (Grant Nelson Remix) 2. DJ Haus – Addicted 2 Houz 3. De Sluwe Vos – OG Anthem 4. Alden Tyrell – GET05 5. FJAAK – Don’t Leave Me Where has been your favourite party this year?

It’s hard to pick one alone, but up there at the top is definitely either Newcastle, where I played at Cosmic Ballroom or Belfast at Limelight – two top class clubs and the vibes those two nights were mental.

Have you got any tips for aspiring young DJs or producers?

The main tip I have for aspiring young DJs or producers is just make or play whatever YOU really like and are into. When I started out producing I just made whatever I wanted at that time and didn’t try to fit into a certain genre or think of a certain type of label I was going to try to get the records on to. I was just making it because I enjoy it. Find what you like and go for it.

FLY Open Air, Hopetoun House, Edinburgh, 18 & 19 May

Club, Actually From festivals in castles and stately homes to club nights in your favourite sweaty basements, look no further than below this very text for May’s best parties across Scotland Missing Persons Club: VTSS & DJ Bus Replacement Service La Cheetah Club, Glasgow, 3 May Warsaw-born DJ and affiliate of the brilliant New York-based Discwoman collective, Martyna Maja, aka VTSS, makes her Scottish debut at Missing Persons Club as part of La Cheetah’s continuing 10th birthday celebrations. Joining Maja, and also making her Scottish debut, is Doris Woo, who goes by the colourful musical alias of DJ Bus Replacement Service and is known to sport a Kim Jong-un mask on occasion, which, as you can imagine, is a rather interesting sight to behold.

Minival 11: The Castle Party Drum Castle, Banchory, 11 May Aberdonian party crew Minival celebrate 11 years on 11 May from, um, 12pm (it almost worked).

They’ve even been kind enough to bring their regular castle party closer, relocating to Banchory’s Drum Castle this time around, roughly only a half hour drive outside of Aberdeen’s city centre. Needless to say, the line-up is as appealing as the regal location, with a live set from Henrik Schwarz, as well as DJ sets from the likes of Bicep, Job Jobse, Moxie and Mafalda.

Room 2 Dance with Overmono, Pangaea & IDA Room 2, Glasgow, 11 May Following the launch of Room 2’s new in-house night last month with Joy Orbison, Cera Khin and Junglehussi, this month they’ve invited an equally exciting trio of DJs along to play. Glasgow-based DJ IDA is very much on the rise at the moment and she warms up for two big hitters in the techno

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Words: Nadia Younes Illustration: Lucy Grainge

game – one-third of the team behind Hessle Audio, Pangaea, and the collaborative project of brothers Tom and Ed Russell, Overmono.

FLY Open Air Hopetoun House, Edinburgh, 18 & 19 May Since expanding to two days in 2018, FLY Open Air is set to get even bigger this year as Boiler Room make their Scottish festival debut with a stage takeover across both days. FLY Club residents Jasper James and Theo Kottis are joined on the Boiler Room stage by new for 2019 residents Eclair Fifi and Big Miz. While further sets across the weekend come from Solomun – making his first Scottish appearance in a decade – Seth Troxler, Honey Dijon, Nina Kraviz, Peggy Gou and more.

Texture x Palidrone: Giant Swan (live) The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, 23 May Specialising in all things loud, heavy and industrial, Bristolian duo Giant Swan are known for their distinctly punk attitude to performing techno and they make their Edinburgh debut with a live set for a joint affair from Texture and Palidrone. The duo, comprising of Robin Stewart and Harry Wright, return to Scotland just a month after performing at Maximum Pressure’s Easter party at SWG3 in Glasgow, so if you missed them then make it your mission not to miss them again.

Broadcast presents Ruf Dug Broadcast, Glasgow, 24 May In addition to running his own Ruf Kutz label and hosting a monthly radio show on NTS, Ruf Dug also found the time to open his own record store

in September 2017 with friend Randy Brunson.

Hi-Tackle is situated above Manchester’s Hidden nightclub and operates an appointment-only policy throughout the week, except on Thursdays, with the set-up more like the box room of your vinyl head pal’s flat than your average record store. Suffice to say, he’s a crate digger through and through and is sure to arrive in Glasgow with a bag full of treats.

Erol Alkan: To the Rhythm Summerhall, Edinburgh, 24 May It’s difficult to describe Erol Alkan as anything other than a bonafide dance music legend at this point. His label Phantasy Sound has seen releases over the years from Daniel Avery, Gabe Gurnsey and Connan Mockasin, among others, and his credentials as a DJ and producer are

CLUBS

second to none. Alkan brings his To the Rhythm tour back to Edinburgh, courtesy of Sneaky Pete’s, in which he performs all night long, controlling everything about the set from the sound to the lights.

Pulse with Anetha The Mash House, Edinburgh, 25 May Also making the trip east in May following a set at Maximum Pressure’s Easter party in Glasgow last month, is Anetha. From her base in Paris, Anetha co-manages the Blocaus Series, launched in 2016 to develop the French local scene, on which she has also released her own music, including her most recent EP Bionic Romance. Pulse residents Darrell Harding and Sean Laird will be on hand for the warm-up.

THE SKINNY

Where Art Now? May brings new exhibitions, events and the beginning of a five-month reading group in Market Gallery. There’s also a top pick of the best opportunities for residencies and open calls with deadlines coming up soon

f you’ve been struggling to muster together some plans to get out in the sunshine, here are some free events to add to your calendar! Next time the sun’s winking through the blinds, head along to some of the exhibitions that are on throughout Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow throughout this month. For anyone with even more of a thirst for culture-cum-adventure, check out the guide to Scotland’s outlying arts spaces that’s included in this month’s Adventure supplement, too.

The CCA hosts two exhibitions this month.

One from Shadi Habib Allah, and he’s the interview subject on p26. His work approaches the topic of welfare in the USA, unsettling the usual ways of discussing the issue with an investigation into a specific ‘alternative economy’ in Miami. Alongside Allah, there’s Emilia Beatriz’ show declarations of soil and honey. Within this, Beatriz draws together oral histories of Scotland and Puerto Rico from beekeepers, subsistence farmers and herbal medicine practitioners, in places affected by military occupation, land struggle and environmental toxicity.

Environmentalism is the topic of interest in

16 Nicholson Street’s new exhibition and events programme for May, titled Essential Body. In their respective contributions to Essential Body, the artists consider their surroundings from crosscutting personal, theoretical, queer and political stances. Expanding on some of these themes, talks take place with the project mentors filmmaker Cameron McKay (2 May) and artist Hanna Tuuliki (10 May), a new publication will be launched on 17 May, then the mentors and artists will be in conversation on 19 May. Across the artist-run spaces, there are also several projects taking place and starting through the month. In Glasgow, Market Gallery begin their five-month reading group On My Way Home with a prologue on Saturday 4 May, which will then take place on the first Saturday afternoon of each month. Then on 10 May, Transmission open a new group show around the theme of refuge on May 10. The next day in Edinburgh, Rhubaba host artist Gordon Douglas for Introduction to Performance Art Volume 2, when participants will discuss what is ‘good performance’ with reference to 120 examples Douglas provides (Sat 11 & Sun 12 May). Booking

Essential Body

is strongly advised. Generator open their graduate show They Had 4 Years from 25 May including their selection of five graduates from the 2018 degree shows.

Opportunities The first of this month’s opportunities comes from Cove Park’s fully funded Early Career Residencies 2019. For a period of three weeks, four artists will each be given private accommodation, a studio/workspace, and a fee of £1,200.

The deadline is Monday 3 June (midnight), and more information is available from the website.

For artists with an interest in collaborating with filmmakers (and vice versa), the BBC welcomes proposals from artists of all backgrounds to address the brief Collaborative Short

Pia Camil Tramway rrrrr

Pia Camil

Domestic Bliss Gallery of Modern Art rrrrr For Domestic Bliss, the Gallery of Modern Art furnishes its top floor gallery full of works from Glasgow’s renowned civic art collection that touch on homelife and domesticity.

In a wide format photograph from Nick Waplington across the back wall, a recent mother tilts the new baby’s head as it vomits, with the frame of the photography taking in the entirety of the small living room’s details, as a frank and exceptional insight into private family life.

There are also drawings of Jane Topping’s own studio wall with fragments of research on the playwright Carson McCullers, particularly a period when McCullers left her husband to live in a queer commune of sorts in the 40s. They show sketches of intimate photos along with quotidian itemised lists (‘cigarettes, dirty plate, war news…’) and poetic annotations or quotations: ‘choice’, ‘Plus, I crave’.

Like the photo of Jacqueline Donachie’s own

May 2019

The first sign of Bara Bara Bara is an explanation that it’s okay to sit on the Jean sculptures. Once you’re in, the Tramway main space is filled with huge colourful fabric hanging works. They are made of hundreds of tees stitched together to look like huge parachutes. Light is coming from the skylights and bright daylight bulb lamps on the ceiling, shining through the fabric making it look like a stained glass mosaic.

There’s the sense of being surrounded by a crowd of bright t-shirt wearing bodies, an abstraction of what it’s like to be a child at T in the Park. It is soft sculpture and considering most of the audience are presumably exhausted (see further: social instability), it’s a surprising and welcome moment of repose.

hectic studio wall, there’s an analogy subtly drawn between the artist’s desk and the build-up of things and papers familiar from well-used coffee tables or fridge doors, and the fortuitous connections and gatherings that might take place there.

Documentary photography takes on a poignant bent in the work of Jane Evelyn Wood, who provides a disarmingly intimate record of Jean Louis, a French man dying of AIDS, in his final months. The photos of him passionately kissing, then shaving in the mirror are warm, close-up, inviting and vulnerable.

As well as moments of tenderness, there are the sumptuous perfume bottles designed by Niki de Sant Phalle, and the eccentrically colourful and elegantly formed vases and glasses of Ettore Sottsass.

Entering and exiting, there’s what sounds like the noise of a basin of dishes in water, or the rhythmic rumble of a washing machine. It’s Ilana Halperin’s recording of melting ice crystals in an Icelandic lagoon. At once, the familiar everyday humdrum is made sparkling, and connected global rhythms and radical shifts. [Adam Benmakhlouf]

Films for BBC Scotland. They encourage applicants to work across film and another discipline, for example a filmmaker and a dancer.

The level of support is not published, but instead a rough budget from each application is requested. Deadline: 27 May. The Royal Scottish Academy of Artists also offers £5,000 for artists working in a lens-based media in Scotland, as well as the opportunity to show the work in the RSA in Edinburgh and for it to be acquired into its Permanent Collections.

Deadline: 30 June.

May is also the last month to apply to be included in Glasgow International 2020’s supported Across the City Programme. GI is one of the best known and respected biennial arts festivals in the UK, and they offer awards of between £1500-10,000. Deadline: 31 May.

It’s sunny in the gallery and there are kids interacting with the sculptures. They are more energetic than the adult response of collapse and repose. A girl sticks her head thought the t-shirt hole, and shouts that the red one is her house and the green is for her mum.

The forms of the sewn fabrics are references to Mexican marketplaces, and look heavy with rain, dipping low like big cow bellies. There’s a polka-dot pattern of headholes; taking cue from the kids, look through a head hole to see an abstracted landscape of colour grouped winged rectangles.

All of a sudden there’s the feeling of bobbing in a wave, seeing the sink before rolling into it on a choppy coast. Sewn into perfect rows in painterly groupings, the hanging t-shirt quilts fill the space, making a comfortable space for revery and imagination out of nothing but worn out clothes. [Adam Benmakhlouf] Bara Bara Bara, at Tramway, until 22 Jun

Domestic Bliss

Domestic Bliss, at Gallery of Modern Art until 31 Dec

ART

Review

Photo: Glasgow Museums

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Photo: Lola Morgan

Words: Adam Benmakhlouf

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Where are the Women?

A Guide to an Imagined Scotland

By Sara Sheridan

rrrrr Everywhere you look in Scotland you can find monuments to famous men: the Wallace Monument, the Scott Monument and the infamous cone-wearing statue of the Duke of

Wellington to name a few. But have you ever stopped and wondered: where are the women?

Sara Sheridan has, and Where are the Women? offers a comprehensive portrait of Scotland told through the lens of women’s stories. You only need open the book to realise why it’s sorely needed. Taking a different approach from a traditional guidebook, Sheridan invents monuments to women where none have stood before, and rededicates existing ones to memorialise women, as well as mentioning the scant few which do exist, creating a map of women – both ordinary and extraordinary – to rival the usual male centric narrative.

Heed the tagline of the book: this is a guide to an imagined Scotland, not one whose streets you can currently walk. It may seem odd the number of monuments Sheridan has had to rename or invent entirely, but the true horror is that she’s been left with no option but to do so.

The real ones simply don’t exist.

Sheridan may be rewriting the guidebook to Scotland, but she isn’t rewriting history. Where are the Women? is an alternative guide to a Scotland which has always existed, a testament to a history which hasn’t so much been hidden as been blatantly ignored while existing in plain sight. [Emily Hay] Historic Environment Scotland, 9 May, £14.99

Rhyme Watch Spring means the beginning of festival season, plus a host of exciting new publications

iterature and arts festival BIG LIT is back from 1-5 May for its ninth year. Taking place in multiple locations across Dumfries and Galloway, venues include its main hub, Kirkcudbright Galleries and The Bakehouse, as well as several others. With five days of film, installations and exhibitions, puppets, song, music and much more, poetry is just one of many exciting facets to the festival. For starters, Gavin and Clare Phillips will be hosting Your Green Lines at The Mill on the Fleet (3 and 4 May). Part community installation and part poetic experiment, take a pencil made from coppiced hazel (£1 per pencil, but these aren’t your average IKEAs) and be inspired by the single word marked on its wood. Write down your environmental worries, thoughts or short poems and hang them on the Phillips’ Poet-trees. BIG LIT will host other poets events including Brian Johnstone and DJ John Cavanagh (2 May), and award-winning poet Henry Bell will be discussing his book, John Maclean: Hero of Red Clydeside at The Mill on the Fleet (3 May).

Further festive activities are taking part in East Lothian’s Dunbar, with CoastWord (24-26 May). There’s plenty of poetry cracking on over the weekend, whether you fancy a workshop with CoastWord’s poet-in-residence Marjorie Lotfi Gill or an enchanting performance by JL Williams at Saturday night’s Gutter magazine takeover. A particular highlight of the weekend is Glasgowbased Kevin P. Gilday’s Suffering from Scottishness Saturday at the Dunmuir Hotel (25 May). A comedy about the absurdity of life in Scotland, character Joe McDaid embarks on a journey which may or may not include audience participation. Gilday’s an excellent poet, though, so let’s hope that wins us round.

On 18 May Stewed Rhubarb’s editor and designer, James T. Harding, will be hosting his much anticipated Typography for Poets workshop in the Scottish Poetry Library. A

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Review

The Bells of Old Tokyo

By Anna Sherman

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In a world of fake news, flat earthers and truthers, conspiracy theories are gaining traction at an alarming speed. In Fallen Angel, Chris Brookmyre taps into this, creating a neglected-child story that reflects the Madeleine McCann conspiracy.

The Temple family unite at their villa in Portugal after the death of father and husband, Max, yet only 16 years ago the family was divided by the death of toddler Niamh Temple, whose body was never recovered. A wannabe investigative journalist, Amanda, finds herself au-pairing at the villa next door, and is soon drawn to the Temple family, questioning what really happened all those years ago.

Fallen Angel switches between 2012 and 2018, claustrophobically keeping us in the family villa to spend time with the mysterious and largely unlikable Temple family. Brookmyre explores the what actually happened? morbid curiosity that surfaces when there are blanks to fill, and does it with perfect pace and exceptionally entertaining writing.

Brookmyre shows, through the twists of the plot and character development, that making conclusions by filling in perceived gaps of a story with subjective impressions can be dangerous. In this suitably meta exploration of conspiracy – in a genre which relies on keeping the reader guessing before gaps are filled – Brookmyre has woven a wonderfully dark tale of deception and denial, of destructive family dynamics and death. A mustread for all thriller fans. [Rebecca Wojturska]

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Anna Sherman draws on her own travels and corresponding history to explore Japanese culture in The Bells of Old Tokyo, jumping off from themes raised by the book Edo’s Bells of Time by composer Yoshimura Hiroshi, and the sense there is a ‘lost city’ lingering in today’s bustling metropolis. In Edo, the precursor to the modern city ruled by Shoguns, bells rung across the city, marking time and setting the pace of working, eating and waking. Now, the five o’clock chime rings out from loudspeakers testing Tokyo’s emergency broadcast system.

A lot of research backs the book, with around a third of the page count going to a bibliography and notes, often enjoyable reading in their own right. There’s clearly an academic mind at work here, but for all its sourcing and contextualising, the book rarely feels bogged down by it, and it’s a warm and engaging read. It makes a refreshing counterpart to quite a few books which fall into the ‘gaijin gets into mishaps’ model – this author isn’t here to tell us about culture shock clichés like coin locker hotel pods, for example.

Sherman walks the city, tracing the path of the old bells, talking along the way to locals and workers and forming a friendship with a cafe owner. Anyone with an interest in Japan will benefit from her inquisitive mind at work in this book. [Laura Waddell] Picador, 16 May, £14.99

Little Brown, 25 Apr, £18.99

Words: Beth Cochrane

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Fallen Angel

By Chris Brookmyre

half-day introduction to typography, Harding will be leading poets on the typographical journey toward having a print-ready poem. The workshop will touch on the poetics of the page, too, with a slight foray into the world of concrete and visual poetry.

It’s hard to get away from Stewed Rhubarb at the moment (not that we want to), with the relatively newly launched press continuing to publish some of Scotland’s finest talent. Latest in their catalogue is Jenny Lindsay’s second collection, This Script. The collection, complete with an absolutely stunning cover, will be launching in The Bongo Club on 17 May alongside performers such as Jen McGregor and Josephine Sillars and the Manic Pixie Dreams.

On 30 May, Picador Poetry will be releasing Canadian poet Karen Solie’s fifth collection, The Caiplie Caves. The collection examines the very nature of crisis, pulling self-delusion apart from belief and belief apart from knowledge, and, in the end, how we can find courage to move forward. The Caiplie Caves’ central figure, St Ethernan, is a seventh-century Irish missionary (sent to Scotland) who retreated to the caves of the Fife coast in order to decide whether to establish a priory on the Isle of May or pursue a life of solitude. Worth a read for its unique blurb, I’d say.

On the same day Carcanet will be releasing yet another publication (what a year they're having!), with Zohar Atkins’ first collection, Nineveh. Carol Rumens says of the book, “How very refreshing to plunge into a collection which re-thinks historical Jewish religion and culture with such subversive, witty originality.

‘Revelatory’ is not too strong a word.” A modern and merry collection of humour, mystical theophany and much more, scholar and rabbi Atkins’ poems have appeared in the Glasgow Review of Books, PN Review, Blackbox Manifold among others.

The Doll Factory

By Elizabeth Macneal

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Debut author Elizabeth Macneal, winner of the Caledonia Novel Award 2018 and one of the ‘hottest-tipped’ authors in the Observer’s annual showcase, has written what is suspected to be one of 2019’s literary highlights. The definition of a page-turner, The Doll Factory is a charming read whose pages flirt with darkness and obsession. At its heart, the story is a simply woven parable teaching female empowerment and freedom, whether it’s freedom from poverty, freedom to love or the freedom of choice.

Macneal’s passion for all things PreRaphaelite is visible throughout, highlighting at once its romanticism, its early vulnerability and its flaws. As yet another addition to the evergrowing canon of neo-Victorian novels, its focus on Pre-Raphaelitism is a welcome digression from the genre.

The novel is arguably a little predictable.

The artists in the text often discuss the myth of Guigemar and his imprisoned Queen, and it’s apparent early on that this tale will be analogous to The Doll Factory’s own protagonist’s story. While this is potentially hampering to the suspense of the novel, the author’s craftsmanship often wins back the reader’s attention. Altogether, The Doll Factory is a well-crafted and relevant historical novel whose vibrant characters lead the reader to become wholly absorbed in its story. [Beth Cochrane] Picador, 2 May, £12.99

BOOKS

The Ice House

By Tim Clare

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Delphine Venner was 13 when she fought to save her world. Over 70 years later, she gets the singular chance of continuing her story and finding the resolution she was denied.

Tim Clare masterfully brings to life the world of Avalonia. The Ice House is replete with rich and compelling characters, from an assassin named Hagar to adversaries-turned-allies. We’re gripped

by Hagar’s mission of vengeance and Delphine’s journey to save the father she thought she lost.

This vividness can be traced to Clare’s background in poetry – his precise command of language can render this book a spellbinding read.

This is a poet’s novel – great if you love beautifully-wrought granularity. While the poetic detail builds the world in places, it can oversaturate the story, and more restless readers could wish these descriptions were replaced with text that furthered the plot.

Readers who are new to the story will be most enriched by the evocative world-building; the plot relies on complex character dynamics and conflicts that are not explained thoroughly enough for someone entering the story to feel invested in what is going on. That said, for those who read the first book in Delphine’s story, The Honours, this is an enthralling expansion to the world you already know. Though The Ice House has its foibles, it shines with originality and as a gripping work of fantasy. [Emily Corpuz] Canongate, 2 May, £14.99

THE SKINNY

ICYMI Long live Phoebe Waller-Bridge. May her knowing glances and wicked wit forever grace our screens ‘cos she’s really good at it Words: Christopher Macarthur-Boyd Illustration: Emer Kiely

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ne of my favourite things about Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag is the butt-rock theme music that plays over the closing credits.

Composed by her sister Isobel, it’s a 46-second slice of downtuned nu-metal testosterone riffage choc-a-bloc with palm-mutes and pinch harmonics. It’s like the intro to a mid-album filler track by some dreadful band like Static-X or Mudvayne – entirely devoid of wit or nuance. Every time it kicks up at the end of an episode I howl, because it couldn’t be any more unlike the 25 minutes of comedy genius that invariably precedes it.

With the last episode just having been and gone, it looks like the entirety of Fleabag is fleetingly just going to be two series of six episodes each: two and done, like Joy Division, except limited by creative intent instead of tragic suicide.

If you haven’t seen the show, it charts a course navigating through a handful of nervous breakdowns by the sex-addict owner of a guinea pig-themed cafe played by Waller-Bridge. There’s loads of jokes about farts and nipples and grief and haircuts and cum and fannies and arses and dicks. It’s very very funny.

A lot of the tragic hook-ups, featuring characters who are referred to in the credits by such names as Hot Misogynist and Arsehole Guy, bring to mind the very best bits of Girls by Lena Dunham. There’s great use of breaking-the-fourthwall where the main character talks directly to the viewer. So much so that if there was a Standard Grade exam in Television, I think a good question would be, ‘To what extent is Fleabag influenced by Malcolm In The Middle? (20 marks).’

I actually read an interview with WallerBridge from Bustle a few years ago where she spoke about how influenced Fleabag was by Louie, the avant-garde sitcom by Louis C.K. (the article

May 2019

was published a few months before the sexual misconduct allegations officially came to light). I was a really big fan of that show, and I like Fleabag for the same reasons: they share a slightly heightened reality that allows exploration of the worst of human behaviour while staying grounded enough for the emotional beats to land.

“ Two [series] and done, like Joy Division, except limited by creative intent instead of tragic suicide” But in light of the #MeToo revelations, I find it difficult to rewatch Louie. For the same reasons I struggle to enjoy his old stand-up specials like Chewed Up and Hilarious – the same ones that inspired me to try stand-up in the first place.

Sitting on the floor of my flat watching the last scene of the series finale Fleabag with a smile on my face and tears welling in my eyes, I realised that the recently disgraced comic heroes of my teens have already been replaced by a new wave of kind-hearted, dirty and hilarious comedians.

Christopher Macarthur-Boyd can be seen at Glasgow Stand, 16-18 May and is currently one of the stars of Up For It on BBC Scotland

COMEDY

Review

51

In Cinemas High Life

Director: Claire Denis Starring: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth, André Benjamin

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The oeuvre of Claire Denis is frequently a study in the limits of place – the apartment complex in 35 Shots of Rum (2008), the unnamed African country in White Material (2009) – and the curious relationships that emerge between the people who confine themselves there. Denis’ latest, High Life, broadly continues this tradition if, ironically, in space, except here she trades questions of nationhood for concerns with humanity and its disposable classes.

Set aboard a drifting spacecraft, the film follows a crew of death row inmates on a fool’s errand to harvest energy from black holes. In fact, they can never go home, their communication with Earth cut off from the start of their voyage.

Meanwhile, sex – almost always transgressive sex at that – dominates their daily lives, all save the celibate Monte (Pattinson) who evades the

designs of Dr Dibs (Binoche), their de facto leader, who’s obsessed with impregnating the women on the vessel and bringing the babies to term.

It’s clear Denis is less interested in the science that fuels her foray into sci-fi than what the boundless parameters that space entails: namely disconnect, loneliness and, most chillingly, the void. With a symphony of indelible, sensory imagery, she has crafted a tale equal parts family melodrama, psychological thriller and dystopian horror, complete with overarching Biblical iconography and implications. The Eden-esque garden where the sequestered convicts retreat for peace betrays a more uneasy significance by the film’s end.

For all the film’s epic ambitions, mapping intimacy in all its oddness and beauty remains, as with most of her work, at the forefront of this project. The psychic effects of incarceration, too, give the film much of its emotional depth. Even with sometimes shoddy dialogue and frustratingly half-drawn supporting arcs, High Life is one of Denis’ most fascinating films. [Kelli Weston] Released 10 May by Thunderbird; certificate 18

Birds of Passage

Director: Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra Starring: Carmiña Martínez, José Acosta, Natalia Reyes, José Vicente

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The biggest masterstroke in Birds of Passage, from Colombian filmmakers Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, the director and producer of the mesmerising Embrace of the Serpent respectively, is how it echoes other people’s past victories.

There’s a recognisable strain of gangster movie – the Shakespearean kind, where illustrious young men rise to power and fall from grace, fighting against the passage of time until the current finally pulls them under – and the film draws from the genre’s history and tropes. Revenge killings, sitdowns, family hotheads: it’s all here, though it’s undoubtedly shot with more earthiness and florid sensuality than most crime dramas can muster.

The stench of death and dirt lingers on the frame, and the taciturn register of the film, even in its louder moments, makes it feel as though it were a waking nightmare.

In that nightmare, however, is the key to Gallego and Guerra’s admirable gamble with their familiar tale. Though the story of Wayuu drug-runner Rapayet (José Acosta) helping his family’s rise to being an exalted criminal operation is very Sopranos, his tribe’s native roots complicate the material. Their rituals and traditions, which struggle to stay in place as Anglo-American fashion, tech and attitudes flood into Colombia, warn that Rapayet’s temptation by wealth will bring the family down and destroy their way of life.

Embodying that tension is Rapayet’s motherin-law, Úrsula, played by a monumental Carmiña Martinez. Torn between the love for her daughter, Rapayet’s wife Zaida and the native values she has upheld for decades, she desperately occupies a shrinking middle ground while the seeds of criminality spread like a virus in her community.

Slowly, Hawaiian shirts, modernist houses and fancy cars creep into the picture – and the guns get larger. By the end, we’re left wondering whether Rapayet’s soul isn’t the only thing lost when prosperity and tradition collide. [Thomas Atkinson] Released 17 May by Curzon Artificial Eye; certificate 15

Too Late to Die Young

Beats

Director: Brian Welsh Starring: Cristian Ortega, Lorn Macdonald, Laura Fraser, Amy Manson, Gemma McElhinney, Kevin Mains

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The ecstasy of friendship and, well, ecstasy are celebrated in Brian Welsh’s freewheeling coming-of-age film Beats, which vividly transports us to a rundown council estate in West Lothian in 1994, where the UK’s illegal rave scene is burnt down to the filter and under attack from the Tory government. Our entry into this world, based on Kieran Hurley’s celebrated 2012 stage show, are two chalk and cheese 15-year-old best pals, lowwattage worrier Johnno (Ortega) and loudmouth livewire Spanner (Macdonald), who plan a final blowout before Johnno’s move to a fancy new estate with his upwardly mobile family.

Cinema is littered with films about that one big night that changes you and your friendship forever, but here shopworn premise has plenty of bounce. Welsh likes to skip from nervy crash zooms to slow-mo vignettes, as if the film itself is mirroring the contrasting energies of its two protagonists. Benjamin Kracun’s crisp black-andwhite cinematography, meanwhile, both evokes the past and lends Johnno and Spanner’s journey a timeless quality. [Jamie Dunn] Released 17 May by Attitude Films; certificate 18

52

Review

Too Late to Die Young

Director: Dominga Sotomayor Castillo Starring: Demian Hernández, Antar Machado, Magdalena Tótoro

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Birds of Passage

Destination Wedding

Director: Victor Levin Starring: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves

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Thunder Road

Director: Jim Cummings Starring: Jim Cummings, Kendal Farr, Nican Robinson, Macon Blair, Jocelyn DeBoer, Chelsea Edmundson, Jordan Fox

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Dominga Sotomayor’s coming-of-age drama Too Late to Die Young is perhaps best read as an allegory for a nation emerging from 17 years of political isolation. Set during the summer of 1990, as Chile was waking up to a new and uncertain future, the film follows 16-year-old Sofía (Hernández) and her family as they start a new life in a secluded commune in the foothills of the Andes.

Although characters never speak directly about the end of General Pinochet’s dictatorship, the film remains incredibly sensitive to the weight of political upheaval happening outside the frame. Loosely inspired by her own upbringing, Sotomayor’s tactile feel for this way of life conjures a richly realised world that is nonetheless subject to adolescent idealism. Scenes of teenage heartbreak and familial dysfunction are shot through a haze of nostalgia with the narrative infused with memories of more optimistic times. The effect is compulsive, and deceptively dramatic, with Sotomayor mirroring Chile’s attempts to reassemble its democracy with the confusion and insecurities that adolescence brings. [Patrick Gamble]

Destination Wedding resembles a Richard Linklater romance that’s been left out in the sun too long and started to curdle. The central pair in Victor Levin’s acidic rom-com, played

by Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves, do a lot of talking to one another, a la Jesse and Céline in Before Sunrise, but it tends to be about how awful the people around them are at the wedding they’re begrudgingly attending. We can neither confirm nor deny their bitchy assertions about the other guests, as the only people who speak throughout are Ryder and Reeves’ characters.

What sweetens Destination Wedding’s venom is the zeal with which both actors approach playing narcissistic misanthropes.

These are two self-aware stars having a grand old time sending up their own personas and bickering like a mismatched couple from a 40s screwball comedy. Reeves’ monotone cadence and deadpan scowl are particularly suited to Levin’s dense, verbose string of sour oneliners.

The film can be a little wearing, and Levin’s writing sometimes isn’t as funny as he clearly thinks it is, but it’s easy to tolerate when coming from the lips of these two game performers.

[Jamie Dunn]

Expanded from a 2016 Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning short film, writer-director Jim Cummings’ Thunder Road follows the downward spiral of Police Officer Jim Arnaud (Cummings himself) as he navigates a messy divorce while grieving for his recently departed mother. Like its forerunner, the feature arrives in the UK with accolades, notably the SxSW Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Feature – and rightly so. From its opening scene, essentially a remake of the original short in which Arnaud delivers his mother’s eulogy, Thunder Road is thoroughly engrossing, deftly mixing pathos and humour in equal measure.

Such a careful balance of comedy and tragedy requires a sure hand, and Cummings acquits himself with extreme skill as writer, director and performer. Filmed in striking long takes, Cummings elevates his material through superb technical craftsmanship, while never losing sight of the emotions that underpin his story. In exploring Arnaud’s struggles, both as a policeman and as a father, the film builds a penetrating study of grief, loss and mental breakdown that isn’t easily forgotten. [Alex Barrett]

Released 24 May by Dat For Night; certificate 15

Released 10 May by Vertigo; certificate 15

Released 31 May by Vertigo; certificate 15

FILM & TV

THE SKINNY

At Home Madeline’s Madeline

Game of Thrones: Series 8 Episode 1

Guava Island

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Director: Josephine Decker Starring: Helena Howard, Molly Parker, Miranda July

Created by George RR Martin; Directed by David Nutter Starring: Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey

Director: Hiro Murai Starring: Donald Glover, Rihanna, Nonso Anozie

Josephine Decker continues her experimental approach to storytelling in Madeline’s Madeline, which fragments its perspectives to explore the quiet, unintentional, intimate violence inflicted upon and by those closest to us. Some moments are baffling, others are clearly contrived nightmare scenarios, but all serve an honest exploration of the brutality inherent when close relationships’ uneven power dynamics reach their breaking points.

Helena Howard makes a fierce screen debut as troubled teen Madeline, who fights, sulks and rebels her way to a voice and identity separate from her mother, Regina (July), and drama teacher, Evangeline (Parker). In their presence, Madeline dances between open defiance and ominous acquiescence in equally volatile measures, but alone she giggles, jokes and revels in a love of life.

Unlike many coming-of-age films, there is no neat resolution to be found – only hard-fought emancipation. Both authoritative women believe that they love Madeline, but each microaggression and tiny invasion of privacy communicate a stinging, suffocating lack of respect. In a stomach-turning performance, July perfectly judges Regina as a mother who dresses up her own emotional neediness as concern for her daughter. Where Lady Bird finds redemption in a newly sculpted mother-daughter bond, Madeline’s Madeline opts for a completely necessary severing. Likewise, Evangeline’s abuse of power may not be as insidious as Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Kindergarten Teacher but chills with its charismatic self-involvement.

Madeline’s Madeline disguises its horrifyingly intimate conflict – presented without sugarcoating – behind a tapestry of dream sequences and untrustworthy characters. This framing keeps the narrative’s rawness from slipping into mawkish kitchen-sink portrayals, keeping Madeline’s experience and escape entirely sympathetic.

While some scenes feel disjointed, the fire behind this exploration will stick in the mind beyond its run time. [Carmen Paddock]

It has been 20 months since Daenerys Targaryen brought her dragons north of the Wall, the Lannister siblings betrayed each other and the remaining Stark children (legitimate and illegitimate – wait, scratch that) clawed their way back towards each other. These characters have been iconically embodied since the beginning, with the cast growing in figurative and literal stature as their characters survive Westeros. Little can be said about these performances now; they simply are Martin’s creations taken beyond the text.

One of the Series 8 premiere highlights is watching those characters interact in new and familiar ways, as revelations and reunions fly thick and fast. Where the remaining Starks are concerned, this reunification in Winterfell seems to bring the show full circle in preparation for their biggest threat – the suddenly tangible horror of the undead, teased since the show’s first moments.

That said, this return to old faces and places highlights that this is a fundamentally different show than the one that adhered strictly to George RR Martin’s pre-existing novels. What began as a ponderous, meticulously crafted political drama that just happened to have dragons in it is now an out-and-out fantasy melodrama.

Not all of the plotlines and character points feel as strong as those rooted in the novels (what happened to Tyrion, and why can we not have two powerful women get along?), but the remaining five episodes will ultimately prove if these choices’ pay off.

It is hard to imagine that this episode, beginning the final chapter of a global phenomenon, would have been anything other than momentous. While it eschews (on-screen) battles and bloodshed for personal drama and reckonings, it brings viewers right back to Westeros’ apocalyptic stakes faced by these wellloved survivors. All men must die has never felt more like a promise. [Carmen Paddock]

Donald Glover’s creativity remains thrillingly uninhibited. With his casually brilliant HBO comedy Atlanta, an askance and absurdly funny look at the gig economy in America, he’s responsible for the most inventive show on TV at the moment. His wild and soon-tobe-retired rapper alter-ego Childish Gambino broke the internet last summer thanks to the politically-charged This is America and its extraordinary video that launched a thousand memes. Behind the camera for both was Hiro Murai, who also directs Guava Island, Glover’s breezy medium-length film that plays like an anticapitalist Purple Rain.

A fairytale opening sees Rihanna’s Kofi narrate over vivid animation telling how the gods created this eponymous paradise, only for a totalitarian regime to take it over and exploit its resources. When the film switches to live action, we see this dystopia is all too real, with Kofi working seven-days-a-week in the sweatshop owned by the island’s thuggish overlord, Red (Nonso Anozie). Kofi’s boyfriend, Dani (Glover), a songwriting dreamer, is also under the regime’s thumb but he’s planning on putting on a festival so the islanders can break free from their chains, for one day at least. “We live in paradise, but no one has the time to enjoy it,” Deni laments.

Adding juice to this thin rabble-rousing plot are some Childish Gambino songs, including a remix of This is America, complete with funky new choreography, and a sweetly romantic version of Summertime Magic. The film is so breezy that resistance against its musical form will prove futile, though Glover doesn’t leave much room for anyone else to shine in this 55-minute feature; to not get Rihanna involved in one of the musical numbers feels like a grievous waste of her star charisma. Glover (or his alter-ego) can be forgiven for hogging the spotlight given he has talent to burn and plenty to say. It feels like a foolhardy attitude, though, when you’re making a film celebrating community and solidarity. [Jamie Dunn]

Released 10 May by MUBI (also on release in selected cinemas)

Currently broadcast on Sky Atlantic and available on NOW TV

Streaming on Amazon Prime

May 2019

FILM & TV

Review

53

Connecting to Another Realm Mele Broomes talks to The Skinny about Sonic Séance, her follow-up dance piece to 2018’s award-winning show, VOID

Interview: Roisin O’Brien

“I

very much talking about the person in a lot of solitude… [Sonic Séance] was trying to find solidarity with other women… to hear their perspective of how they roll and flex in society, how they navigate certain spaces and what they feel they can and cannot do.”

Sonic Séance

have found something in the repetitions and the connections to yourself, to others, and beyond.

The séance is a place to be and give, she says, it’s a place “to thank but also to call for help, and to question.”

In the séance, according to Broomes, you can connect “to something that no longer exists.

We’re all a product of something that came before us, something that helped create our ideas and thoughts…our history runs through all of us.

“Everyone has their different situations that

Photo: Marios Ento-Engkolo

don’t know any more with empathy, because empathy comes in many forms and I don’t always believe it. You can seem empathetic, sometimes people own empathy when they become a hero,” muses Mele Broomes. “Of course you want people to have empathy, but it’s not that, it’s not about making people feel like they have to hold you up at the end of the show.”

Broomes’ latest work, Sonic Séance, the follow-up to 2018’s Total Theatre award-winning VOID, debuts at Take Me Somewhere later this month. This production with her company V/DA sees her directing and performing alongside composer Patricia Panther, music producer and DJ Letitia Pleiades, and researcher and visual artist Ashanti Harris, but, Broomes says, everyone is equal in the production.

“We’ve all got roles – I guess in theatre, the director is seen as this certain position… they’re seen as the boss woman. But each role is important – someone has to direct it because we’re going as a theatre piece, but also someone has to make music – that’s their responsibility.

That role doesn’t mean you’re not being equal,” she explains.

Sonic Séance stemmed first “from the idea of cleaning, how females literally clean up after people. Then there’s cleaning in a more nuanced way, having to be palatable in certain positions in terms of the way you speak or the way you hold yourself, so you’re not too loud,” says Broomes.

“And that fed into my identity, how I change my voice in certain situations so I don’t come across in a particular manner to upset somebody.

“This led to experimenting with voice manipulation, dramatising, stretching and accentuating the voice to sound very ‘strong’ or ‘aggressive’, hence the ‘sonic’ aspect of the piece.”

The séance has to do with connecting to another realm. Broomes doesn’t classify herself or the other artists as ‘religious’, per se, but they

they’re in. Ours is particular to ourselves, as individuals and a collective voice. We are trying to find a space where we don’t have to feel aggro all the time. Yes, the show definitely says I’m not happy, hear me. But also we’re trying to get to a place of rapture, where we can lose ourselves. We can have a small moment in time where we don’t have to think, connecting with our own personal and connected spirituality.”

Sonic Séance is not a sequel to VOID, but Broomes talks of their differences. “VOID was

“ We’re all a product of something that came before us, something that helped create our ideas and thoughts…our history runs through all of us” Mele Broomes

Take Me Somewhere is still in its infancy, defined by its openness to performances that don’t sit easily in one category, and Broomes hopes it will be a visceral performance. “Nobody can understand what goes on for me, I can’t understand what goes on for someone else. Just listen and appreciate, regardless if you don’t know or understand.”

Sonic Séance, Take Me Somewhere, Tramway, 16 & 18 May, 9pm takemesomewhere.co.uk/sonic-seance

Stage Directions This month’s iteration of what’s happening in the Scottish theatrical calendar is perhaps its most eclectic and most exciting so far this year

T

he month of May brings theatrical tales of a football team at war, men lost at sea, experimental performances and, yes, Brexit (again) to the Scottish stage.

You can’t spell May without Mayfesto, and the 2019 iteration of the Tron Theatre’s mini-festival of edgy and provocative new work kicks off the month with the theme of A Season of Escapology. Featuring brand new work from the festival’s Resident Artist Eve Nicol, The Mistress Contract (1-11 May), written by Abi Morgan, which sets out to establish clear cut rules of engagement between the sexes in a complicated world of blurred lines and grey areas.

Other highlights of the festival include Johnny McKnight’s adaptation of Dario Fo’s hilarious 70s farce, Low Pay? Don’t Pay! (2-11 May) (where the action moves to Glasgow and a group of women lose patience with low pay and rising prices and take direct action), Apphia Campbell

54

Review

Words: Amy Taylor

and Meredith Yarbrough's Woke (15 & 16 May), and Stellar Quines’ new play for ages 7+, This Girl Laughs, This Girl Cries, This Girl Does Nothing (17 & 18 May), an empowering contemporary fairytale about determination, friendship and the ups and downs of growing older.

Rapture Theatre’s production of Patrick Marber’s OIivier Award-winning The Red Lion, starring Brookside’s John McArdle, is set to tour 16 venues around Scotland this month. It follows the fortunes of The Red Lion FC, an English non-league side that has dreams of the big time. Opening at the Palace Theatre in Kilmarnock (8-9 May), the show will also visit Howden Park, Livingstone (16 May) and the Theatre Royal in Glasgow (18-22 June).

Also on this month are three semi-staged performances of The Scarlet Pimpernel, a theatrical celebration of the notorious and swashbuckling 18th century dandy, who’s said to have inspired the creators of Batman, Superman

and Spiderman. Written by Helen Bang and directed by Jennifer Dick, these performances will take place in Glasgow (3 May), Denny (4 May) and Edinburgh (5 May).

Although it’s only in its third year, Take Me Somewhere has quickly become one of May’s most popular festivals of contemporary performance. This year’s programme takes place at various venues across Glasgow, from 11 May until 2 June. Keep an eye out for Farah Saleh’s Brexit Means Brexit at the CCA on 14 May, Amy Rosa’s There is a Silence at Glasgow University Chapel on 17 May, where Rosa will rest on top of a plinth of ice that has been collected over the last year, and Nima Séne’s Beige B*tch which explores black culture and white accountability.

The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland plays host to a lot of exciting new work this month, including the UK staged premiere of the critically-acclaimed opera based on the

THEATRE

unforgettable true story of redemption, Dead Man Walking (18-24 May). Adapted from the book

by Louisiana nun Sister Helen Prejean, who became the spiritual adviser to a convicted murderer on death row, the opera is directed by Caroline Clegg and conducted by James Holmes.

Lost at Sea follows a young woman as she returns home, searching for answers about her father’s death. But as she begins to weave together the strands of her past, a mysterious force unravels family secrets. Inspired by the loss of her fisherman father, the play moves through a labyrinth of myth and memory in an epic tale spanning forty years of the fishing industry. The play runs at Perth Theatre until 4 May, and tours to venues across Scotland, including Dundee Rep, (6-7 May), King’s Theatre, Edinburgh (20-22 May) and Easterbrook Hall, Dumfries (24 May). theskinny.co.uk/theatre

THE SKINNY

Glasgow Music Tue 30 Apr MARINA

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £31.25

Welsh songbird/sass-pot Marina Lambrini Diamandis has ditched her diamonds and is now just going by the subtle MARINA. SHY MARTIN

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £9.90

Musical guise of Swedish singer Sara Hjellström. We’re all thinking the same thing, who’s Martin?

DR. CHAN

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, TBC

Garage doom pop from Paris (pronounced Paree).

FLEW THE ARROW

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £5

Tranquil music filled with intricate guitar picking and thoughtprovoking lyrics.

BUILT TO SPILL

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £24.75

Longstanding American indie rock band.

WILLIAM TYLER

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £13

Nashville guitarist, also of Silver Jews and Lambchop.

Wed 01 May URVANOVIC

BLOC+, FROM 21:00, FREE

Over-staffed chamber-pop ensemble Urvanovic get back on the road.

BAKAR

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £11

Madlib-inspired Camden-born indie rock artist.

FLYING BY MIRRORS (NU CROS + THE WINGMISTERS + JOHN GILMORE)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £7

Making waves throughout Scotland, Glasgow’s Flying By Mirrors are sure to bring a dynamically lively set leaving you hooked from the outset.

FRUIT TONES (SLANDER TONGUE + RAPID TAN)

THE FLYING DUCK, FROM 20:00, £6

Fuzzkill Records signees. Ripe and ready since 2012.

AMELIA WHITE & JESS KLEIN (MIKE JUNE)

THE DOUBLET, FROM 20:00, £12

Fantastic double bill of US singersongwriters, featuring Amelia White from East Nashville and Jess Klein from New York City.

GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION (JAMES TWIG HARPER JOHNSTON + HUMAN HEADS + MALCY DUFF) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30, TBC

A twisted riot of sound bordering on audacity.

DARYL HALL & JOHN OATES (KT TUNSTALL)

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:30, £65.75 - £85.15

Hall & Oates bring their live show back to the UK for their first tour in nearly four years.

THE FALLEN ANGELS CLUB PRESENTS WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR (WOLF & THE WEAVER)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £11

A band put together by songwriter Ruarri Joseph, alongside his close musical conspirators Harry Harding and Naomi Holmes.

STELLA DONNELLY

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £9

Donnelly has gone from covering Green Day songs with her high school band to writing songs about being a millennial woman.

Thu 02 May STICKY FINGERS (TRUE VIBENATION)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £18

Australian reggae/indie fusion outfit.

UNDER THE APPLE TREE (WILDWOOD KIN + ROSEANNE REID + FERRIS & SYLVESTER + KATEE KROSS & THE AMBERJAX) KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £16

Music brand Under the Apple Tree head out on tour with headliners Wildwood Kin and regional acts handpicked for each show.

K-X-P

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £8.50

KOJAQUE

TOM SPEIGHT: BEYOND

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £10

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:00, £8

DAYLIGHT SESSIONS (LYNNIE CARSON & FRIENDS)

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:00, £39.75 - £79.45

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £9

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £9

Rozi Plain performs ramshackle folk tunes, built on hand-picked guitar lines, groove-laden drums and her spell-like vocals.

Mon 06 May

THE SPECIALS

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:00, £25

YOKO PWNO

The legendary ska group take to the road, some 30-odd years since they first called it a day.

Spectral electronics and dancefloor beats with a distinct Celtic vibe.

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £13

Sat 04 May

JOSEFIN ÖHRN AND THE LIBERATION

Stockholm psychniks peddling hypnotic, dark stoner pop.

AN EVENING WITH BANANARAMA

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £45 - £84.38

Bananarama’s Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward perform a selection of their hits and newer material.

SOFT RIOT (PARADOX SEQUENZ + MARTA RAYA + POLIS + NULL/VOID)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30, £6.60

Using an arsenal of synthesizers and effects, Soft Riot’s sound is an amalgamation of JJD’s personal experience with music.

MIKKO JOENSUU (MARK W. GEORGSSON)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £10

Finnish musician making music of the shoegaze range.

MUSE-IC

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

Talented singer-songwriters Nicola Evans and Olivia Ennemoser invite local singers and songwriters to join them every week.

MALENA ZAVALA

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £8

Argentinian-born artist, producer and filmmaker lending her haunting vocals to sensual songs.

Fri 03 May JAMES YORKSTON

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 23:00, £5

WHEATUS

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £16.50

CONNOR CLARK AND THE MATADOR KINGS (THE SOCIAL + KASAMA)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £6

Connor Clark and The Matador Kings embark on their first Scottish mini tour playing Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

ROTHWELL (DENI SMITH + EMIAH + REBEKAH KIRK)

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £8

The Bristolian singer plays her first Scottish gig.

SKERRYVORE

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £20

More blazing bagpipes, fiddle and accordions, lynch-pinned on Alec Dalglish’s soaring vocals from the seven-piece folk-rock juggernaut.

THE SMYTHS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £15

The Smiths tribute act.

KID INK

MARTHA (PUPPY FAT + CHRISSY BARNACALE)

MONO, FROM 20:00, £10 - £12

Emo pop punk from Durham.

ORA THE MOLECULE (ELISABETH ELEKTRA)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00, £10

Globespanning krautrock group, consisting of members from Japan, Norway and America.

SAM FENDER

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, FROM 19:00, £13.75

Singer/songwriter from North Shields and one of BBC’s Sound of 2018.

THE XCERTS

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £13

Hard-riffing Scottish trio, whose impressive sound has been honed to perfection (i.e. they sound bloody massive live).

BOYCE AVENUE

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £28

Floridian acoustic pop-meets-rock band of brothers Alejandro, Fabian and Daniel Manzano.

LEGEND – THE MUSIC OF BOB MARLEY

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £20

An unforgettable evening celebrating musical icon Bob Marley in one fantastic stage show extravaganza.

STAG AND DAGGER WARM UP PARTY (CHILDCARE + LIFE + THE ROLY MO) BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £6

Before you spend the day traipsing around Glasgow’s music venues at Stag and Dagger, stay firm-footed in Broadcast for a warm up show.

UB40

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:00, £42.90

UB40’s three founding musicians dig out some classic reggae from their archives.

ESCAPE-ISM (NORMAL SERVICE)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £6

OTOBOKE BEAVER (SAY SUE ME + DRINKING BOYS AND GIRLS CHOIR)

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, FROM 19:00, £16

BRUTUS

Belgian trio straddling post-rock, black metal and explosive punk.

JUNIORE (LYLO + WOMENSAID)

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £8 - £10

60s psych grooves from the Parisian trio.

NEWTON FAULKNER

OLD FRUITMARKET GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £27.50

London-based singer/songwriter known for his guitar playing, which involves rhythmically tapping and hitting his guitar’s body.

LEAFCUTTER JOHN (HOWIE REEVE)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £8

Solo project of John Burton, member of Mercury-nominated band Polar Bear.

Tue 07 May BIKE (MOD)

BLOC+, FROM 21:30, FREE

Brazilian act Bike brings a brilliant dose of eclectic psych to Glasgow, with swirling soundscapes and archangelic vocals.

FLOR

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £11

American indie band signed to (somewhat) legendary pop-punk label Fueled By Ramen.

WEE D (ARCTIC + WRAITH)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £5

Scottish rapper with an exceptional flow.

FAT WHITE FAMILY

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £17.50

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £8.50

BODY TYPE (TONGUE TRAP)

Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds are back in Glasgow to launch their brand new album, Singing It All Back Home.

Scuzzy four-piece from Sydney, who’ve made it their goal to make more space for girls in Australia’s music scene.

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:00, £30.25

ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £10

Expect all kinds of jazz, stirring ambient invocations, club-ready percussive workouts, spiralling grooves and hazy psychedelic electronica.

TOM POTTER/LUCA MANNING PLAYLIST

PETE DOHERTY

Purveyor of shoop-de-lang-delangs and sulky faces comes to Barrowlands.

CONFIDENCE MAN

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £13.50

Dance yourself silly to the party starting tunes of Aussie group Confidence Man. HUGH JACKMAN

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:00, £39.75 - £79.45

Luca Manning and Tom Potter present some of their favourite tunes by the likes of Gretchen Parlato, Kamasi Washington, Esperanza Spalding and more.

The actor takes the leap into music (kind of), performing songs from The Greatest Showman, Les Misérables and others from Broadway and film, accompanied by a live orchestra.

Sun 05 May

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £8

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 23:00, £5

LANCO

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £15

Rising country stars LANCO head out on tour in support of their debut album, Hallelujah Nights.

THE PICTUREBOOKS

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £11

German duo pushing the boundaries of the simple guitar and drums set-up.

STAG AND DAGGER 2019

VARIOUS VENUES, FROM 14:00, £27.50

Now a firm fixture on Glasgow’s music calendar, the one-ticket, multi-venue export takes over Weegieland with a suitably eclectic line-up set across multiple venues.

SORRY

Four-piece from London who you’ve probably never heard of but should have.

Wed 08 May ANA POPOVIC (BEN POOLE)

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £20

Called “one helluva guitar-player”

by Bruce Springsteen and nominated for six Blues Music Awards, so pretty good then?

DARSOMBRA

BLOC+, FROM 21:30, FREE

Trans-apocalyptic galaxy rock from Baltimore.

DOROTHY HALE (CURDLE + WOOD WIFE)

Helsinki-based trio making experimental, other worldly sounds – known for their intense live shows.

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30, £13.20

May 2019

Find full listings at theskinny.co.uk/whats-on

The musical project of mythic rock’n’roll provocateur, theorist and revolutionary Ian Svenonius.

DRYGATE BREWING CO., FROM 19:30, £12.50

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £8

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £11

Kirk Strachan is a singer-songwriter based in Glasgow.

AIDAN O’ROURKE & KIT DOWNES (AVOCET)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00, FREE

ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC W/ GERRY LYONS

Punk-rock-garage quartet from Kyoto, Japan.

KIRK STRACHAN

The actor takes the leap into music (kind of), performing songs from The Greatest Showman, Les Misérables and others from Broadway and film, accompanied by a live orchestra.

The Nashville country star hits town as part of his world tour.

Increasingly notorious grot-pop troupe from London fond of the occasional on-stage strip.

NAOMI BEDFORD & PAUL SIMMONDS (XAN TYLER)

HUGH JACKMAN

Multiple BBC Folk Award winner and founding member of Lau, Kan and Blazin’ Fiddles, Aidan O’Rourke performs tracks from his album with Kit Downes.

MONO, FROM 21:00, FREE

Post-punk, jazz skronk, rigorous funk and vivid prog with madcap antics and an unconventional dress code.

Before you spend the day traipsing around Glasgow’s music venues at Stag and Dagger, stay firm-footed in Broadcast for a warm up show.

The young LA-based rapper, producer and songwriter brings his much-tattooed self to our shores.

CHRIS YOUNG (LINDSAY ELL)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £31.45

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £8

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £15

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £28.90

Jazz and gospel mixed with some southern charm.

Come and see some of the best unsigned artists in the country for free.

STAG AND DAGGER WARM UP PARTY (NIGHTFLIGHT + ELLIS + CONOR HEAFEY)

The Fife dweller and sometime Fence Collective dabbler heads our way.

BABY FACE & THE BELTIN’ BOYS

BLOC+, FROM 21:30, FREE

The teenage dirtbags hit us up with their well-known riffs and smartaleck lyrics.

BANANA OIL

CHRIS DIFFORD ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £25.31

FAITH ELIOTT (MOONSOUP)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £7

Music maker from London, stopping off as part of his UK tour.

Leeds trio blending wiry post-punk with unpredictable art-rock.

GNOSS THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £5 - £10

Neo-psychedelic pop outfit from Brooklyn, New York via Burlington, Vermont.

The Dublin rapper deconstructing toxic masculinity and tackling your everyday real life #issues.

DRAHLA

CARA ROSE THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:00, £8

ST LUKE’S, FROM 13:00, FREE

A lazy afternoon, with music, brunch, Bloody Mary’s, tea and cake, for all ages.

Faith Eliott writes songs, draws, hoards stuff and encrust things with beads and googly eyes.

ROZI PLAIN

THE ESSEX GREEN BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £5

Glasgow band named after the American socialite and actress.

STATS (DOUBLE DISCONE)

Stats’ Ed Seed has played in bands for pop stars including La Roux and Dua Lipa.

LENA JONSSON TRIO

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £5

Lena Jonsson balances a deep knowledge of traditional Swedish folk music with innovative artistic sensibilities.

Thu 09 May MERMAIDENS

BLOC+, FROM 21:30, FREE

The latest signing to New Zealand indie label Flying Nun. CHARITY GIG FOR SAMH (THE RAIN EXPERIMENT + ANNA CONDA)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £7

Proceeds from this gig go to the Scottish Association for Mental Health.

JAMIE LAWSON

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, FROM 19:00, £21

Acoustic singer-songwriter with an Ivor Novello Award under his belt, so he must be good.

HAVVK

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £6

HAVVK produce a haunting and dynamic sound that steers the listener from moments of immersive shoe-gaze to thrashing punk rock, all fronted by a soaring, bewitching vocal.

HUGH JACKMAN

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:00, £39.75 - £79.45

The actor takes the leap into music (kind of), performing songs from The Greatest Showman, Les Misérables and others from Broadway and film, accompanied by a live orchestra.

THE LITTLE UNSAID (FINN ANDERSON + FLEW THE ARROW)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £10

London-based alt/folk/electronic multi-instrumentalist otherwise known as John Elliot.

MUSE-IC

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

Talented singer-songwriters Nicola Evans and Olivia Ennemoser invite local singers and songwriters to join them every week.

JO MANGO & FRIENDS (ADEM + WOLF)

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £8

Jo Mango & friends launch their new EP, System Hold.

Fri 10 May SAMANTHA FISH

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £17.50

Contemporary blues singer who launched her recording career back in 2009.

JAKOB OGAWA

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £10

Norwegian musician crafting a drowsy, luscious and off-kilter sound.

DERMOT KENNEDY

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:00, £16.50

An evening of live music from singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy.

STEWART MAC TRIO

THE FLYING DUCK, FROM 19:30, £15 - £40

Join Stewart Mac on his first ever trio tour, featuring Dean Roberts on guitar and Ash Cutler on keyboards.

PAWS (FISKUR)

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, FROM 19:00, £8 - £13

The Glasgow noisemakers of the tropical thrash variety play a hometown set.

SUPA & DA KRYPTONITES (BUSKER RHYMES + GBH)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £6 - £7

Nine-piece funk, ska, reggae, soul, hip-hop, swing and grime band.

Singer/songwriter from Glasgow who recently performed at Wide Days.

Sat 11 May MADE IN LIVERPOOL

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £16

The Beatles tribute band, who are residents at the world famous Cavern Club Liverpool.

JOHN POWER

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £15

Glasgow folk band comprising flute and fiddle, mandolin, guitar, bodhrán and percussion, plus sweet, sweet wholesome vocals.

Mon 13 May DISTURBED (SKINDRED)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £37

Heavy metal band from Chicago, formed in 1994 and still rocking.

ALEX AIONO

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:00, £11

The Cast and The La’s frontman takes his rock’n’roll solo project out on the road.

Another one of those YouTuber’s; this one is from Phoenix, Arizona.

MONO, FROM 21:00, FREE

Improvised open mic with Jer Reid.

COP GRAVEYARD

Beautifully shambolic indie music with big, emotional, heart and mind on sleeve lyrics about place, love and isolation.

DRAX PROJECT (VICTORIAS FLIGHT + NEON SEAS + RUVELLAS) BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £9

Ex-buskers from Wellington now playing venues across the world (par example in Glasgow at Broadcast).

BARRALOADASOUL 2019

BARROWLANDS, FROM 14:00, £22.15

Northern soul, mod and 60s R’n’B all-dayer.

MEN I TRUST

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £13

GIODYNAMICS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00, FREE

SLEAZYOKE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:00, FREE

The big sleazy karaoke sesh with Gerry Lyons.

THE BETHS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £11

Some of the best indie-pop you’re likely to hear, from New Zealand four-piece The Beths.

ALEX LAHEY

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £9

Australia’s Alex Lahey offers a remarkably focused set of sing-along choruses, punk-pop dynamics and casually witty observations about relationships.

J MASCIS

Indie dance band from Montreal, who love smooth sounds and calm melodies.

The Dinosaur Jr frontman goes it alone.

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £13.50

Tue 14 May

TEN TONNES

George Ezra’s lil bro, Ethan Barnett, paving his own musical career.

THE VAMPS

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:30, £14.20 - £66.95

Acoustic-driven British pop unit led by singer Brad Simpson.

SEMISPECIFIC ENSEMBLE

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 20:00, £4

An improvised music group sitting somewhere between modal jazz and music concrete.

THE THANES (THE BRUTES + THE PHARISEES)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £6

Garage/beat legends, The Thanes make a stop in Glasgow.

MIC CLARK ACOUSTIC BUTTERFLY

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

Mic Clark is a well-known popular performer on the live music scene in Scotland, joined by his band Acoustic Butterfly.

Sun 12 May

DAVE HAUSE AND THE MERMAID

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £15

Philadephia-based musician who cut his chops as a roadie before becoming a performer proper.

SOAK (PILLOW QUEENS)

KING TUT’S, FROM 18:00, £11

Teenage Derry-born singer/ songwriter and multi-instrumentalist signed to Rough Trade and nominated for the 2015 Mercury Prize.

JIGS & REELZY

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 18:00, FREE

Trad/folk open floor with Neil McDermott.

STARA ZAGORA (COLIN HUNTER + GRAEME QUINN)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £7

The project of Ayrshire-based singer-songwriter Sean McGeoch, oddly named after the sixth largest city in Bulgaria.

DESIIGNER

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £25

The guy that sang that Panda song.

JOWE HEAD

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

Jowe Head and The Teenage Filmstars return for an evening of TVP’s and Swell Maps classics.

TALOS

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £25.85

AINO ELINA

BLOC+, FROM 21:30, FREE

Harsh topics are wrapped up in soft hazy harmonies by Edinburghbased, Finnish songwriter Aino Elina.

SWERVEDRIVER (REV MAGNETIC + CHERRY WAVE + STUART BRAITHWAITE (DJ SET)) KING TUT’S, FROM 20:00, £17.60

The resurgent Oxford quartet, playing Raise and Mezcalhead.

THE MURDER CAPITAL

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £8.80

Hailing from all corners of Ireland, The Murder Capital are a post-punk band driven by the desire to affect cultural change.

WARBLY JETS

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £8

LA trio who claim their interest is in ‘making noise’.

TIA GOSTELOW (DENI SMITH + LEMON DRINK)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

Now well and truly a part of the Brisbane music community, Tia Gostelow is going global.

YOLA

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:30, £18

The British vocalist who recorded her debut album, Walk Through Fire, with The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach.

PRIESTS (APOSTILLE)

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £16

Cloudbusting have been championed by BBC One as one of the most authentic tributes in the world.

SONARS

BLOC+, FROM 21:00, FREE

Electro psych duo from Brighton and Bergamo, with a retro futuristic sound.

JOSHUA BURNSIDE (QUICK + BETWEEN BROTHERS)

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £8.80

Northern Irish Music Prize winner, for his debut album EPHRATA. ALE LOY

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £5

Ale Loy is an Italian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Glasgow.

BE CHARLOTTE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £11

Be Charlotte’s songwriting prowess is beyond her years and has taken her on several Transatlantic journeys from her hometown of Dundee, Scotland. Her singing voice is delightful, but she’s also rapper, beatboxer and general badass.

FLAMINGODS

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

Rhythm-driven psychedelic pop five-piece.

LEGION PRESENTS EVOLUTION: AN EVOLVING SOUND (THE DRIVE + CHLOE HAWKINS + VOLTAGE + DISSENTER + DEAR ASTEROID) IVORY BLACKS, FROM 19:00, £5 - £7

Multiple live performances from some of the hottest new indie and rock musicians on the Glasgow music scene. In aid of Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity.

VIAGRA BOYS

THE ART SCHOOL, FROM 19:30, £11

Stockholm gonzo punk rockers.

THE MOTION POETS

AUDIO, FROM 19:00, £6

Formed by four friends who met on Edinburgh Napier University’s popular music course, The Motion Poets set out to challenge and develop its members’ musical ability and songwriting craft.

PROJECT PLAY FUNDRAISER

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 19:00, TBC

Live music and fundraising for the Project Play Calais Charity.

EMERSON SNOWE

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £7

Wed 15 May

MUSE-IC

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £20

Talented singer-songwriters Nicola Evans and Olivia Ennemoser invite local singers and songwriters to join them every week.

CASSADEE POPE (LOGAN BRILL + TWINNIE)

This trio bring together three like-minded approaches for music making, creating an exciting new performance every time they play.

THEA GILMORE (MATT OWENS)

Thea Gilmore appears with her live band, featuring husband and Producer Nigel Stonier on guitar and keyboard.

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £19.80

Former vocalist of rock band Hey Monday riding that solo wave.

FOREIGN BEGGARS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £15

London rappers with a fresh take on the genre, fusing hip-hop and dance in one eclectic whole.

GODS OF RAP

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £8

CROCODILES

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

Three titans of hip-hop team up for this joint tour, as Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy and De La Soul hit the road together. Mad.

San Diego garage rock duo made up of Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell.

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £7

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £9

Hailing from across Canada and the UK, Montreal’s Pottery create a sound that combines eclectic traces of post-punk, pop and dance music.

CLOUDBUSTING: THE MUSIC OF KATE BUSH

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

Melbourne five-piece who tackle everything from addiction to loss in their music.

POTTERY (YAKIMA)

Thu 16 May

The music of Brisbane native Jarrod M. Mahon, who also plays bass in the band The Creases.

The self-proclaimed “sexy party band” from Washington DC return to their favourite Glasgow haunt.

COUSIN TONY’S BRAND NEW FIREBIRD

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:30, £51.10 - £85.15

KAI MARKS (SCALP + DEATH BED)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £8

Formed as a solo project over a decade ago, Kai Marks has weathered the darkness with a sense of humour and one of Boston’s most explosive live shows.

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £10

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £10

The musical project of Eoin French, an artist and architect hailing from Cork, Ireland.

As a member of one of London’s best-loved bands, the Squeeze co-founder has made a lasting contribution to English music.

CHAI

Japanese quartet spreading their own unique message of NEOkawaii alongside their music.

MATTHEW READ TRIO

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £5

Fri 17 May

FAIRPORT CONVENTION

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £26

The longtime British folk-rockers draw on classic songs old and new, on the go now for an impressive 50 years.

JAMES WALSH

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £16.50

The Starsailor frontman plays it solo, his enormous yet fragile vocals all well and in place.

THE NUDE PARTY (PINKY PINKY + A. SWAYZE & THE GHOSTS)

MONO, FROM 20:00, £8 - £10

Velvet Underground goes country with the hottest band in America right now.

SUNNY SENSE (PAUL CORR)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00, £4

Glasgow-based duo who fuse krautrock, experimental jazz, classical and a wee bit of pop to create a rich, multigenre sound.

Listings

55

STONEFIELD (WEAKENED FRIENDS + CLOSET ORGAN) BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £9

Australian psych-rock luminaries Stonefield continue their busy 2019 with a series of live dates.

PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £10

Sun 19 May WHOLLY CATS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 18:00, FREE

Glasgow cowboy jazz, boogie rock’n’roll trio.

HIBUSHIBIRE (DEAD OTTER + THE CONTACT HIRE)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

THE KINGDOM CHOIR

LUNA THE PROFESSOR

INTERPOL

THEATRE ROYAL, FROM 19:30, £29.15 - £39.15

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £7

SWG3, FROM 18:00, £45

The Kingdom Choir deliver high quality performances with their strong blend of choral discipline with the raw Gospel spiritual sound.

If King Gizzard’s name didn’t put you off, then stay tuned for these guys. One mind-meltingly good psych band.

Japanese hard psychedelic rock band, whose name translates to freak out orgasm. Lovely.

OH SEES

Inimitable jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader.

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £19.69

QUEEN MARGARET UNION, FROM 19:00, £28.75

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £15.50

ROBERT FORSTER & BAND

Aussie singer-songwriter who specialises in catchy hooks and tasty, understated ballads.

DANIEL O’SULLIVAN (THE SILVER FIELD + RICHARD YOUNGS)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 20:00, £6

London-based composer, multiinstrumentalist and producer.

ROYAL SOUNDS (EMPRESS IMANI + IRIE YO-YO + HECTORRR)

DRYGATE BREWING CO., FROM 19:30, £9.50 - £11.50

Fast-rising London band who’s vintage reggae sound has been compared to the likes of Chronnix and Proteje.

TROPICAL FUCK STORM (CABLE TIES)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £12

Melbourne band formed by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin.

THE LEISURE SOCIETY

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £13.50

Lovely folk-pop lot lead by Nick Hemming – of early 90s indie fame with former group She Talks To Angels – drawing comparisons to the Fleet Foxes, which is hardly a bad thing.

Sat 18 May GRACE PETRIE

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £14

A charming and engaging performer, Petrie is foremost a protest singer but she has also earned her stripes in the folk, comedy and alternative scenes.

FATHERSON

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £21.35

The Kilmarnock trio do their alternative rock-meets-power pop thing.

ALL TVVINS

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £13.20

Indie-rock band underpinned by a maelstrom of synths, whose disparate influences result in a sonic melting point of TV On The Radio’s art-pop twists with the psychedelic excursions of Animal Collective.

STEFAN MURPHY & THE ATHLETES OF SOUL

MONO, FROM 21:00, FREE

Folk, garage and soul songs from the Atlanta-based Dublin troubadour.

DAMMIT-FEST 2019

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 14:00, £10

Local promoters Dammit present an all day festival, with all profits donated to Rape Crisis Scotland.

KARYBDIS (BURNING THE DREAM + SATIRACY + SUNDROWN)

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 18:30, £8

A killer blend of metal.

SONS OF THE EAST (AMISTAT)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £16

Psychedelic garage rock outfit formed by John Dwyer, formerly of Coachwhips, Pink and Brown and The Hospitals.

BIG THIEF

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £15

Acoustic folk-pop music with meat on its bones.

WHYTE

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £10

Glasgow-based duo blending Gaelic influences with electronic sounds.

KING CHAMPION SOUNDS (THE GYMNASTIC BAND + SPREAD EAGLE)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30, TBC

Anglo/Dutch band and the brainchild of Ajay Saggar.

OPEN MIKE EAGLE

THE ART SCHOOL, FROM 19:00, £18.15

Chicago-bred, LA-based rapper conjuring a psychedelic strain of soul-funk, booming drums and 21st century crate-digging in tropical attics of the imagination.

ALL I SEE IS AN EMPTY CIRCLE (VELVETEEN RIOT + MOTHMATIX) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £10

Edinburgh psychedelic mystery prophets All I See Is An Empty Circle align your chakras.

Mon 20 May

LITTLE STEVEN & THE DISCIPLES OF SOUL

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £41.85

Vocalist/guitarist Steven Van Zandt’s solo band.

SONS OF AN ILLUSTRIOUS FATHER

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £16.50 - £56.25

Ezra Miller is in this band (probably all you’ll need to/want to know).

ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC W/ GERRY LYONS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00, FREE

Come and see some of the best unsigned artists in the country for free.

WALKING ON CARS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £15

Five-piece indie-rock band from Dingle, Ireland.

ALASKALASKA

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £8.50

Londoners blending elements of jazz, funk, disco and R’n’B.

Tue 21 May

RANSOM FA (HAYCH MONEY + CHRISSY GRIMEZ + 2T)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, TBC

Grime artist from Aberdeen, who has collaborated with Shogun.

MILDLIFE

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

Melburnians fusing jazz, psych and disco with an irresistible groove.

KIKAGAKU MOYO

STEREO, FROM 19:30, £16

Sons of the East’s charismatic stage presence and their timeless, anthemic songs culminates in a must-see live show.

If you’re into your psychedelia, prog rock and anti-folk, Tokyobased unit Kikagaku Moyo might just be your new fave.

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £9

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £8

GEORGIA

Up-and-coming pop trio led by Georgia Smith on lead vocals.

HUNGRY HEART

THE FLYING DUCK, FROM 20:00, £8 - £10

The ultimate night out for Bruce Springsteen fans.

ALDOUS HARDING

THE ART SCHOOL, FROM 19:00, £10

The New Zealander heads to The Art School for an evening of gothic folk.

LOVERS TURN TO MONSTERS (COME OUTSIDE + STOLEN WINGS)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £6

One of Scotland’s most underrated DIY artists.

THE JOHN SQUIRE EXPERIENCE

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

All the hits you know and love from the Manchester legend and guitarist John Squire.

TOM SYSON (TOM BARFORD + DAVID FERRIS + PETE HUTCHISON + JONATHAN SILK)

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £5

Highly regarded trumpeter and composer based in the UK.

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Listings

ANGIE MCMAHON

Australian singer/songwriter whose songs ruminate on the diverse topics of life, love and takeaway food.

Wed 22 May

ASTROPHE (EVERYDAY PHARAOHS)

BLOC+, FROM 21:00, FREE

Four-piece alt-rock band from Dundee/Perth.

PETER PERRETT

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £24.75

The former Only Ones front man and sometime pal of The Libertines heads out on tour.

BRUJERIA

CATHOUSE, FROM 18:30, £15

Grindcore-meets-death metal unit featuring some of the genres best players.

GOODBYE MR. MACKENZIE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £20

Scottish 1980s and 1990s rock group formed in Bathgate.

KAMASI WASHINGTON

Teenage indie-rockers from Wishaw.

RETIREE (LE JUNK)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £9

The musical project of three Sydney/Melbourne lads, Matt Crowley, Tori Holleman and Marco Vella.

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:00, £32.75

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE

JASON LYTLE (MALOJIAN)

The Welsh metal titans return to the live stage.

Known for his work with the Californian group Grandaddy, Jason Lytle continues on his own.

SEVERED HEADS (KÜBLER-ROSS)

THE FLYING DUCK, FROM 20:00, £10 - £12

Australian music pioneers, Severed Heads thump out a noisy disco sound that’s inspired dance styles from EBM to Chicago house.

EMMA STEVENS (KATEE KROSS & THE AMBERJAX)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £12

Country pop-styled Surrey singersongwriter who began her musical journey when she was bought her first guitar at the age of three.

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:00, £31.35

WE ARE NOT DEVO

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £12.50

The UK’s only Devo tribute.

EASY STAR ALL-STARS

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:00, £23.63

Easy Star All-Stars perform their classic tribute record Dub Side of the Moon.

JULIANA HATFIELD THREE

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART, FROM 19:00, £21

The former member of Blake Babies, Some Girls and The Lemonheads touring with a new band.

MICHAEL BUBLÉ

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:30, £62.45 - £96.50

JACK SAVORETTI (LISSIE)

The Canadian crooner drops by delivering his usual big band style of showmanship and cheese.

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £23.50 - £27.50

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £12

Thu 23 May

YE VAGABONDS (BURD ELLEN)

The Italian-English solo acoustic singer plays a set accompanied by his trusty guitar.

Irish duo made up of brothers Brían and Diarmuid Mac Gloinn.

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £13.20

The Auricle Ensemble perform Steve Reich’s Radiohead inspired work Radio Rewrite, alongside classical works composed by Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Copeland, Richard Reed Parry and Bryce Dessner.

HELLOGOODBYE

They sang Here (In Your Arms) – you’ll know it when you hear it.

XENO & OAKLANDER (VOID VISION)

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, TBC

Sean McBride and Liz Wendelbo conflate a rich love of analog synths, melody and mythology with eloquent nuance and a nod to the heritage they draw from.

BRY

SWG3, FROM 19:00, £10

Irish singer-songwriter with a unique approach to life and a goal is to travel to (and perform in) every single country in the world.

SAM MORROW

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £13.20

LA musician whose music is rooted in Texas twang, southern stomp and old-school funky-tonk.

TRUDY AND THE ROMANCE

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £10

AURICLE ENSEMBLE: RE-WRITE

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £13

Sat 25 May WRECKLESS ERIC

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £12.50

English rock’n’roll singer/songwriter, out and touring without his usual partner in crime, Amy Rigby.

SHAMBOLICS (THE STREAMS)

KING TUT’S, FROM 20:30, £10.45

Four-piece dreamy rock’n’roll band inspired by the best guitar based music from the 50s onwards.

THE RUTLES

MONO, FROM 20:00, £20 - £22

The Beatles tribute act.

DOGTOOTH (THE SUPERLATIVES + JAMIE MCAULEY)

Somewhere among the daydreamers and heartbreakers, beauty queens and jock teens, Trudy and the Romance are looking to lure you into their suitably skewed, cinematic world.

Trio of dudes playing indie, early mod and punk tunes.

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £12

The SAMA winners return to Glasgow.

EX HEX

Washington rock trio led by singer/ guitarist Mary Timony (also of Helium and Wild Flag).

MICHAEL BUBLÉ

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:30, £62.45 - £96.50

The Canadian crooner drops by delivering his usual big band style of showmanship and cheese.

TOMBERLIN (DANA GAVANSKI)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £10

Kentucky-based Sarah Beth Tomberlin writes with the clarity and wisdom of an artist well beyond her years.

MUSE-IC

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

Talented singer-songwriters Nicola Evans and Olivia Ennemoser invite local singers and songwriters to join them every week.

LOUISE RUTKOWSKI

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £5

The former This Mortal Coil vocalist does her haunting solo thing.

Fri 24 May JACK & TIM

ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00, £19.50

Father and son duo who appeared on Britain’s Got Talent.

THE ICICLE WORKS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £24.15

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £7

WE CAME FROM WOLVES (EVERYDAY PHARAOHS + FASHION BY FIRE)

Imperially dark New York City rockers, who do their best to sound as though they’ve been dredged from the murkiest depths of the Hudson River.

THE YAWPERS

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £11

Three-piece rock and roll band from Denver, Colorado, whose name is derived from a Walt Whitman poem.

BIG BRAVE (MY DISCO + FIRST TEMPLE OF THE ATOM)

STEREO, FROM 19:30, £7

Genre-straddling Montreal trio with a penchant for the sonic.

MARK KNOPFLER

THE SSE HYDRO, FROM 18:30, £51.10 - £62.45

The Dire Straits guitarist steps into the spotlight, accompanied by his live band.

HOLY SMOKES RECORDS PRESENTS: WHY DON’T YOU DO RIGHT?

THE BLUE ARROW, FROM 19:30, £10

An evening of jazz and blues to raise funds for Glasgow & Clyde Rape Crisis.

Mon 27 May ANDY COOPER

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £7 - £10

Accomplished vocalist, songwriter, producer and performer from Long Beach, California, who helped form hip-hop trio Ugly Duckling in the mid-90s.

ACOUSTIC OPEN MIC W/ GERRY LYONS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00, FREE

SPINN

Jangly dream pop from one of Liverpool’s brightest acts.

JIMMY CLIFF: LIVE & UP CLOSE

THE BARRAS ARTS AND DESIGN CENTRE, FROM 17:00, £39.50

The reggae superstar brings his greatest hits to the UK once more – his voice still an instrument of raw, emotional power.

DRYGATE’S FIFTH BIRTHDAY PARTY

DRYGATE BREWING CO., FROM 12:00, FREE

The main event for Drygate’s fifth birthday celebrations, featuring live music and DJs throughout the day.

BROKEN CHANTER (CLOTH)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 20:00, £9

New project from Kid Canaveral’s principal songwriter, David MacGregor.

MOTOWN MOMENTS

PIE & BREW, FROM 21:00, FREE

On the last Saturday of every month, Glaswegian starlet Kitty and her hand-picked band play everything from old school Motown and soul, to neo-soul jams.

Sun 26 May

MAREN MARRIS (RAELYNN)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 19:00, £31.45

Brighton quartet championing dark pop and heavy riffs.

TAMARYN (COLD SHOWERS + GREAT DAD)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £12.10

CHRIS COHEN

The Californian multi-instrumentalist and ex-Deerhoof chap does his solo thing, an all-singing, all-drumming psychedelic pop joy of a thing.

Tue 30 Apr

PRESSURE VALVE UNPLUGGED

BANNERMANS, FROM 17:00, FREE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, TBC

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £13 - £15

Dead Daisies Bass player and former Thin Lizzy member brings his solo band back for an intimate show.

SPYYN (DELIGHTS + BLIND CIRCUITS)

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 19:30, £5

Newbie Edinburgh band Spyyn combine subtle ambient sounds with energetic breakdowns and singalong driven choruses.

GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS (JOSH ROUSE)

THE PLEASANCE, FROM 19:00, £22

AMELIA WHITE

Rootsy pop, neo-folk and raw rock from Virginia-raised musician Amelia White.

THE BAND THAT FELL TO EARTH

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £7

UB40

USHER HALL, FROM 19:00, £41.25 - £46.75

BRAW GIGS AND GIANT TANK PRESENT (GLANDS OF EXTERNAL SECRETION + TWIG HARPER + BELLLUNGSURPER TRIO)

WAVERLEY BAR, FROM 19:30, £5

A night of experimental music in the Waverley, with Glands of External Secretion and Twig Harper from the States, as well as a collaborating support slot from Bell Lungs and Usurper.

MARK MORRISS (NIGEL THOMAS)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £10

USHER HALL, FROM 20:00, £26.95 - £37.95

SUMMERHALL, FROM 20:00, £16

RUMOURS OF FLEETWOOD MAC

Fleetwood Mac tribute act.

CONALL ADAM

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6

Singer-songwriter Conall Adam is a one-man, one-guitar performer that creates a full backing track of harmonies, rhythms, beats and riffs to create his unique sound.

JESS KLEIN (MIKE JUNE)

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

Jess Klein comes to Leith Depot as part of her 2019 UK Tour, with support from Mike June.

ROOTSBASE (CHARLOTTE MARSHAL & THE 45S) THE BASEMENT THEATRE, FROM 19:30, £9 - £11

A new live music club dedicated to presenting the very best in folk, trad and roots-based.

Wed 01 May GREAT ELECTRIC QUEST

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

Classic metal with a stoner vibe.

Indian folk reimagined by local legends.

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 19:30, £10

MARCO MENDOZA (ANNAKI + THE ADDICTION)

Local artists play stripped back sets, before the public get to be the stars at karaoke.

MONO, FROM 17:30, FREE

English electronic pop band, formed by Nick Rhodes and Stephen Duffy.

Thu 02 May

Mark Morriss is a singer-songwriter who famously made his name fronting English indie outfit The Bluetones.

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 19:30, £0 - £5

FREAKWAVE (EDWIN ORGAN + GALLUS + DECLAN WELSH (ACOUSTIC))

The 565 Specials showcase one of the most influential decades in the history of music, 1956 to 1965.

UB40’s three founding musicians dig out some classic reggae from their archives.

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30, £10

Theatrically shambolic three-piece likened to “the sonic equivalent of what it must be like to airlift a panda from precariously thin ice”.

THE EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE, FROM 19:00, £40.15 - £75.15

FRESH PRODUCE: WYLDE (GRAVELLE + SALT)

THE BASEMENT THEATRE, FROM 19:30, £6

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £12.50

Band led by British singer-songwriter Matthew Hagerty.

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £14

Tribute to the late singer, who take you on an emotional journey, showcasing the talent of the songstress.

Sex Pistols tribute act.

THE 565 SPECIALS (ERIC WALES)

Bowie tribute band covering all the bases from classic to oddball and everything in between.

MATTHEW AND THE ATLAS

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS

Another killer local line-up from the Fresh Produce team, featuring female-led dream pop act Wylde.

Tamaryn has been crafting gothic dream-pop and soaring shoegaze records for the better part of a decade.

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 18:00, FREE

THE DEVILS

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

THE AMY WINEHOUSE EXPERIENCE… AKA LIONESS

These two different but deliberate talents are capable of conjuring the darkest corners alive with colour, humour, passion, poetry, politics and profanity.

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, FREE

YONAKA

REGRETTA GARBO (CARNIVOROUS PLANTS + PETROLEUM GENDERLOSS + MNDMTH)

In-store performance from Stina Tweeddale.

HAMELL ON TRIAL + RUTH THEODORE

CATHOUSE, FROM 19:00, £10

Texan country music singer, songwriter and producer.

SHRUTI ANDROID

Great British songwriting with a band that has real character and charm, fronted by the unique vocals of Izzy Baxter. Tipped for big things.

The angsty country chap plays a set of his twisted Americana soundscapes.

Liverpudlian rockers from the same era that spawned Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes.

HONEYBLOOD

BLACK HONEY THE CAVES, FROM 19:00, £11

Come and see some of the best unsigned artists in the country for free.

BROADCAST, FROM 19:00, £5.92

STEREO, FROM 19:00, £8

Edinburgh Music

JAMES YORKSTON

The Fife dweller and sometime Fence Collective dabbler heads our way.

KRIS DREVER

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 19:00, £15

Solo artist, collaborator and member of folk group Lau. CERA IMPALA AND THE NEW PROHIBITION + DELIGHTFUL SQUALOR

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

A right sparkly warm-up to festival season.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6.50

THE SEX PISTOLS EXPERIENCE

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 19:00, £15

THE VEGAN LEATHER

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £9

Art-pop quartet from the far-off lands of Paisley.

FUTURE SOUNDS PRESENTS ( MILVUS MILVUS + BROTHERS + CORNFIELD CHASE + NORTHTOP GUNMAN)

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, £5 - £6

Some of Scotland’s best undiscovered talent at Leith Depot.

Sat 04 May

TRADFEST 2019 (HEIDI TALBOT + VÄSEN + FLORIANE BLANCKE + INGE THOMSON)

LORD BISHOP

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

A blend of rock, fuzz and jazz, in other words the foundation for a great night out.

HAVVK (MEDICINE CABINET + MAGPIE BLUE)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6

ATTIC CHOIR + ILL FITTING THOUGHTS

With both bands releasing singles, Attic Choir and Ill Fitting Thoughts headline the Leith Depot.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £8

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £10 - £12

TOM SPEIGHT

Inspired by early classic Leonard Cohen albums, Tom Speight’s music maintains an element of simplicity.

RED CRUST FESTIVAL

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 14:00, £12

New festival showcasing a variety of rock and metal bands from Edinburgh and beyond.

THE BRIGHT SKIES

Thu 09 May IDLE HANDS

A mix of 80s goth and classic rock.

THE BIZARRE WORLD OF FRANK ZAPPA

THE EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE, FROM 20:00, £50.15 - £55.15

The Frank Zappa hologram tour has recruited its band of former Mothers for this monumental series of shows.

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £7

PATTY GRIFFIN

Sun 05 May

Grammy Award-winning Patty Griffin is among the most consequential singer-songwriters of her generation.

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00, £5

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £17.50

Indie band for fans of NME style acts.

PTEROGLYPH (TRIVERSE MASSACRE + TITAN BREED + THE COLONY)

THE QUEEN’S HALL, FROM 19:00, £25

SAMANTHA FISH

A beastly night of metal at Bannermans.

Contemporary blues singer who launched her recording career back in 2009.

TRAVERSE THEATRE, FROM 20:00, £11

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, £7

SOUNDHOUSE: JOHN REISHMAN & THE JAYBIRDS

QUEER FAITH AND THE MANY

Grammy winner John Reischman leads this stellar bluegrass and folk band.

A gender-queer blue collection of creatures in one body, singing their own stories a capella.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £5

Fri 10 May

CONNOR CLARK AND THE MATADOR KINGS (THE BRIGHT SKIES)

Connor Clark and The Matador Kings embark on their first Scottish mini tour playing Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

RED CRUST FESTIVAL

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 14:00, £12

New festival showcasing a variety of rock and metal bands from Edinburgh and beyond.

Mon 06 May OVERLAPS

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

SOUNDHOUSE: THE FRETLESS

TRAVERSE THEATRE, FROM 20:00, £11

THE QUEEN’S HALL, FROM 19:00, £13 - £17

CLUB NITTY GRITTY

Hamish Hawk and The New Outfit celebrate the release of their new vinyl EP, Laziest River.

THE VILLAGE, FROM 19:30, FREE

Wed 08 May

The British rock veterans head out on’t road, with Ginger reunited with his bandmates CJ and Ritch, alongside the return of Scott Sorry on bass.

HAMISH HAWK AND THE NEW OUTFIT (PAUL VICKERS & THE LEG + HOME CREATURES)

Live music night hosted by The Heartbreak Diet with local special guests The Party Slogan and James Igoe, plus DJs playing soul, funk and rock’n’roll all from vinyl.

A new live music club dedicated to presenting the very best in folk, trad and roots-based.

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

THE WILDHEARTS (MASSIVE WAGONS + TOWERS OF LONDON)

Juno award-winning Canadian super group seen by many as one of the most powerfully charged forces on the roots music circuit.

The celebration of traditional Scottish arts and culture returns to Edinburgh.

ROOTSBASE (RACHEL NEWTON)

THE BASEMENT THEATRE, FROM 19:30, £9 - £11

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £27.50

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £7 - £9

TRADFEST 2019 (TALISK + ADAM SUTHERLAND BAND)

Taking influence from punk, metal, new wave and goth, this four-piece formed in 2011, earning an early reputation in Sydney’s underground punk scene as an obscenely compelling act.

The celebration of traditional Scottish arts and culture returns to Edinburgh.

Experimental jam sessions with special guests.

UK three-piece hard rockers with a kickass live show.

THESE NEW SOUTH WHALES

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £7

HAVVK produce a haunting and dynamic sound that steers the listener from moments of immersive shoe-gaze to thrashing punk rock, all fronted by a soaring, bewitching vocal.

THE QUEEN’S HALL, FROM 18:30, £17

Fri 03 May

THEIA (PARIAH SOUL + THE HOWLING TIDES)

Noel Gallagher and his new band of warriors hit the road.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £8

Tue 07 May

M.O.R.T. (FROM ANOTHER MOTHER + THEM MOOSE RUSH + VIZELJ)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00, £10 - £13

The Beast From the East tour, blending a variety of killer genre acts.

DOOMSDAY OUTLAW (STEVIE PEARCE & THE HOOLIGANS + SILK ROAD) BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £10 - £12

A night of bluesy rock with a stoner edge.

ANNIE BOOTH (HEIR OF THE CURSED + SUPER INUIT) HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 19:00, £8

Young singer-songwriter based in Edinburgh. Performing her indierock tinged folk-pop throughout Scotland, she creates melancholic songs with infectious melodies.

TIM GARLAND: WEATHER WALKER

THE QUEEN’S HALL, FROM 20:00, £17

Tim Garland’s Weather Walker Trio sees three world-class virtuosi at the height of their creative powers.

CELTIC SOCIAL CLUB

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £13.50

The Celtic Social Club are a collective of musicians who have a wide range of experiences in the global music industry but a love of Celtic music.

DANGERZONE

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

An AOR and soft rock event brought to you by DJs Ball and Scrotes (lovely). Expect big’uns from Journey, Foreigner, Rush, Aerosmith, Kansas, Marillion, B.O.C. Bon Jovi, The Eagles, Bob Seger, Stevie Nicks and the likes.

Hotly-tipped Glasgow indie-pop four-piece.

THE SKINNY

May 2019

Find full listings at theskinny.co.uk/whats-on

Listings

57

LUTRAS SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6

The Dumfries four-piece have mastered their live set, built a strong fanbase and forged their very own unique sound over three hundred shows.

C DUNCAN

SUMMERHALL, FROM 19:30, £12.50 - £15

Glasgow-based muso, composing e’er beautiful choral harmonies and acoustic instrumentation in his bedroom-studio set-up.

OFF AXIS PRESENTS (LUKE LA VOLPE)

Mon 13 May

SHAWN JAMES (CORMAC NEESON)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £12.50 - £15

Bluesy folk-soul from the Chicagoborn multi-instrumentalist.

SOUNDHOUSE: THE CREMATION OF SAM MCGEE

TRAVERSE THEATRE, FROM 20:00, £16

WEE RED BAR, FROM 19:00, FREE

THE SPANGLES (THE CREEP VOID)

Sat 11 May

Alberto Novello aka JesterN is a scientist, composer, sound and video artist living in the Netherlands.

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £12 - £15

Jauntxo Kalari & The Rude Band celebrates 25 years in the business with a very intimate show.

ALABAMA 3

THE CAVES, FROM 19:00, £25.31

Alabama 3 bring their highly successful unplugged tour for a special one off intimate show.

THE UNTHANKS

THE PLEASANCE, FROM 19:00, £22

Tyneside sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank’s folk-club singing is set against otherwordly musical pictures.

STEWART MAC TRIO

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, FREE

Join Stewart Mac on his first ever trio tour, featuring Dean Roberts on guitar and Ash Cutler on keyboards.

DEEPER PURPLE

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 20:00, £8

The Anglo-Spanish tribute band Deeper Purple feature the best reproduction of the Deep Purple live sound you’re ever likely to hear, delivering the ultimate rock experience.

EAFB BENEFIT (COMFORT + FALAUN + BRUTAL MEDUSA + CURRENT AFFAIRS) WEE RED BAR, FROM 19:00, £3 - £6

A fundraising benefit gig for the second annual Edinburgh Anarchist Feminist Bookfair. Expect bad ass feminist punk, raffle, merch and a good fun night.

ELEPHANT SESSIONS

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £14 - £16

Award-winning neo-trad quintet forged in the Highlands of Scotland.

FULL FAT BAND (DIXIE FRIED + THE VIOLENT MOOD SWINGS)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £4

Join Full Fat, Dixie Fried and The Violent Mood Swings at Sneaky Pete’s for a night of rhythm and blues.

PHIL COOPER AND LG BRETON (THE SUPER MOONS)

THE BANSHEE LABYRINTH, FROM 19:30, £6.60

Bristol troubadour Phil Cooper completes the home leg of his tour, having toured Canada with Quebec musician LG Breton.

PAWS

SUMMERHALL, FROM 20:00, £12

The Glasgow noisemakers of the tropical thrash variety play a hometown set.

MOPE PROMOTIONS & ANTIMANIFESTO PRESENTS (ANDREW CREAM + CHLOË GLOVER + MAX MITCHELL)

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

All things acoustic punk.

Sun 12 May OPEN MIC

BANNERMANS, FROM 15:00, FREE

Free music all day from acoustic to blues and rock.

JED POTTS & THE HILLMAN HUNTERS

BANNERMANS, FROM 21:00, FREE

More intimate and electric blues from Potts and his merry band.

LIONAL

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, FREE

Formed in early 2014, LIONAL are an alternative rock band from Inverness.

HUNTER & THE BEAR

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £15

They supported Eric Clapton once, which is perhaps the most remarkable thing about this industrious folk-rock four-piece.

GHOST DANCE COLLECTIVE + SMALL FEET LITTLE TOES + BROKEN ROADS

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

A collection of bands and artists bringing their own unique vibe to the Depot.

58

Listings

BYRONIC SEX & EXILE (GOTHZILLA)

Byronic Sex & Exile are delighted head out on the next leg of their Gothism tour.

ALBERTO NOVELLO AKA JESTERN (HARRY BONGO + EMAENUEL)

JAUNTXO KALARI & THE RUDE BAND (CHANGO MUNKS)

Scottish five-piece who won Live Act of the Year at the 2015 Scots Trad Music awards for their unique blend of fiddle, Highland pipes, whistle, flute, bodhran, guitar and voice.

Composed by cellist Christine Hanson, The Cremation of Sam McGee Suite has six movements inter-dispersed among the spoken words.

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, £7

Luke La Volpe headlines Off Axis Edinburgh at Leith Depot.

RURA THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £13.16

THE BETHS

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £11

Some of the best indie-pop you’re likely to hear, from New Zealand four-piece The Beths.

EUGENE RIPPER

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 22:30, TBC

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

Fri 17 May

BANNERMANS, FROM 17:00, £7 - £9

Collaboration of The Idol Dead and The Main Grains.

JOEY RAMONES BIRTHDAY BASH

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 19:00, TBC

Local bands play a mix of Ramones and originals in their own style, with all proceeds going to charity.

THE MUSIC OF OTIS REDDING PERFORMED BY MUDIBU AND THE JEZEBEL SEXTET

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £19.50

After cutting his rock and roll teeth as a founding guitar slinger for Canada’s seminal surf punkabilly rockers Stark Naked & The Fleshtones, Ripper launched into a solo career showcasing his unique synthesis of punk, folk, rock and lyrical touch.

Experience the incredible sound of Otis Redding’s music as two of the UK’s most exciting soul acts join forces to create the world’s funkiest Otis tribute.

Tue 14 May

Hawick-born Scottish musician and songwriter.

PRESSURE VALVE UNPLUGGED

BANNERMANS, FROM 17:00, FREE

Local artists play stripped back sets, before the public get to be the stars at karaoke.

HEATHER PEACE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 19:30, £22.50

The Lip Service actress does that other thing wot she does: setting soaring vocals to jazz-soaked piano and pop guitar riffs.

BABAYAGA

THE CAVES, FROM 19:00, TBC

Karen Dufour and Gwen Sinclair have forged this musical partnership discovering new and original repertoire for saxophone and harp.

MOTHERHOOD (JANE BLANCHARD)

WEE RED BAR, FROM 19:00, £6

Sugar-coated pop-rock.

PLANET

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £8

PLANET is Johnny from DMAs’ younger brother’s band, and the two bands share some musical as well as fraternal DNA. ROOTSBASE (FERGUS MCCREADIE TRIO)

THE BASEMENT THEATRE, FROM 19:30, £9 - £11

A new live music club dedicated to presenting the very best in folk, trad and roots-based.

Wed 15 May

SIBERIAN MEAT GRINDER (KINGPIN + DANIEL WAX OFF)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00, £10 - £12

SMG are a truly unique crossover of the heavy genres.

GLENN HUGHES PERFORMS CLASSIC DEEP PURPLE

THE QUEEN’S HALL, FROM 19:00, £29.50

Pretty much what it says on the tin, the former Deep Purple bassist plays some of the band’s classics.

CRACK CLOUD (NOV3L)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £10

Multimedia collective, comprising members from different cities, ethnicities and origins, who contribute to the sound, visual aesthetic and beyond.

VUKOVI (SUPERLOVE)

CHAMPION DOUG VEITCH (RISE KAGONA AND THE JIT JIVE BAND)

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £22

GRACE PETRIE

SUMMERHALL, FROM 20:00, £12

Mon 20 May ED MOTTA

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £27.50

Brazilian singer and multi-instrumentalist, playing a set spanning funk-soul and jazz, melded together with film soundtrack and Brazilian music influences.

SOUNDHOUSE: THE POOZIES

TRAVERSE THEATRE, FROM 20:00, £11

All-female folk ensemble made up of Sally Barker, Mary Macmaster, Eilidh Shaw and Mairearad Green.

PRETTIEST EYES (CHOKA)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £8

Crafting a completely menacing blues-based sound, attacking from all angles and firmly keeping their feet in the murky pools of psych and noise.

Tue 21 May

PRESSURE VALVE UNPLUGGED

BANNERMANS, FROM 17:00, FREE

Local artists play stripped back sets, before the public get to be the stars at karaoke.

PETER CASE AND SID GRIFFIN

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £15

Following European tour dates in April with Long Ryders, Sid Griffin returns to the road with his longtime L.A. buddy Peter Case.

RUVELLAS (BEHIND THE LINES)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £5

Ruvellas are a young up-andcoming band who are definitely not one to miss.

PETER PERRETT

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £24.75

A charming and engaging performer, Petrie is foremost a protest singer but she has also earned her stripes in the folk, comedy and alternative scenes.

The former Only Ones front man and sometime pal of The Libertines heads out on tour.

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £8.80

THE BASEMENT THEATRE, FROM 19:30, £9 - £11

JOESEF

Joesef writes and produces from the bedroom of his east end Glasgow flat.

KATHERINE ALY (HEIR OF THE CURSED)

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

Edinburgh-based Katherine Aly launches her debut single in collaboration with Graeme Young, Bruce Wallace and Rob Harrison.

MOPE PROMOTIONS & RANDY FOR LOVE LEGIT BIG TIME EVENTS PRESENTS (DON BLAKE + TEENAGE BUBBLEGUMS + LOVERSTURNTOMONSTERS + STOLEN WINGS) LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

Punk bands from around the world come to Edinburgh for a ruckus.

Sat 18 May

PYGMY TWYLITE (IN THE ABSENCE)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £10 - £12

Outstanding tribute to Frank Zappa.

HIBUSHIBIRE (DEAD OTTER + THE CONTACT HIGH)

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 19:00, £4 - £6

Japanese hard psychedelic rock band, whose name translates to freak out orgasm. Lovely.

PARTY FEARS THREE

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £12

One of the UK’s leading and most highly-respected 80s covers bands, celebrating the era’s music and sounds.

ROOTSBASE (THE GIL SCOTT-HERON SONGBOOK)

A new live music club dedicated to presenting the very best in folk, trad and roots-based.

Wed 22 May

WILLIE NILE (FREDDIE STEVENSON)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £15

Praised by legends such as Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed as one of the greatest musicians in years.

THE LUKA STATE

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6

Four piece hailing from that notorious hotbed of rock’n’roll – Winsford.

Thu 23 May LEE STEVENS

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £5

Austrian-born DJ Stefan Schauppenlehner, who goes by the much more beige alias of Lee Stevens.

DELACROIX

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 20:00, £6 - £7

Expect down and dirty bluesy grooves.

SEVERED HEADS (NOL)

WEE RED BAR, FROM 19:00, £15

EASY STAR ALL-STARS

SUMMERHALL, FROM 19:30, £21 - £25

New project from Kid Canaveral’s principal songwriter, David MacGregor.

THE QUIREBOYS UNPLUGGED

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 19:00, TBC

Spike and co are back for another acoustic show.

LONDON CALLING

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:00, £12.50

The UK’s premiere tribute to The Clash.

THE JOHNNY CASH ROADSHOW

USHER HALL, FROM 20:00, £26 - £27.50

The only show to be endorsed by the Cash family.

CROCODILES

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £10

San Diego garage rock duo made up of Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell.

Sun 19 May

IN EVIL HOUR (HAPPY SPASTICS + SPC + PSYCHO THERAPY + RCP)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £5 - £8

Melodic punk rock band from the North East of England.

SONARS (CAVEYEAR + FOREVER ALIEN)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6

Electro psych duo from Brighton and Bergamo, with a retro futuristic sound.

Sat 25 May

SUBHUMANS (SANCTION THIS + HAPPY SPASTICS + SUBVISION)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00, £11 - £15

Hardcore and chaotic punk from the Wiltshire mentalists (two words very rarely used consecutively).

WE ARE NOT DEVO

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:00, £13

The UK’s only Devo tribute.

HALF FORMED THINGS (GAZE IS GHOST)

WEE RED BAR, FROM 19:00, £9

Edinburgh makers of lush, cinematic treats launch their debut album, To Live in the Flicker.

Dundee Music Wed 01 May LUCY SPRAGGAN

FAT SAM’S, FROM 20:00, £19.80

Little Lucy Spraggan, of X Factor fame, now a fully fledged touring musician making ‘flop’ - that’s folk meets hip-hop for the uninitiated.

Thu 02 May

THE MOUSE OUTFIT (THE GIROBABIES + INDIA ROSE)

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 19:00, £12.50

Fronted by UK hip-hop legend Dr Syntax and verbal acrobat Sparkz, this eight-piece band’s horn-heavy and funk-driven live show combines original grooves with classic hip-hop, b-boy and funk breaks.

Sat 04 May

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £22

UNIFORMS (BIRD LAW + DOG EARED + OPUS FLUKE)

THIS FEELING (THE GOOD ARMS + LUNA THE PROFESSOR)

The east coast cowpunks return to the basement for a Pre-Pouzza Fest Party.

GOODBYE MR. MACKENZIE

Scottish 1980s and 1990s rock group formed in Bathgate.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £6

This Feeling present a typically eclectic and quality line-up of up-and-comers.

FLEETWOOD MAC’S RUMOURS: PERFORMED BY THE TRANSATLANTIC ENSEMBLE

SUMMERHALL, FROM 20:00, £20 - £21

The Transatlantic Ensemble are returning to Summerhall by popular demand, performing Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album live and in its entirety.

QUEENS OF ROCK

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 19:00, £15.68

Tribute show dedicated to female rock legends and powerhouse vocalists.

SUPPER CLUB (EYES OF OTHERS)

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 19:00, £5

Wed 08 May THE LITTLE UNSAID

CLARKS ON LINDSAY STREET, FROM 19:00, £11

London-based alt/folk/electronic multi-instrumentalist otherwise known as John Elliot.

Fri 10 May

ZAL CLEMINSON’S SIN DOGS

CHURCH, FROM 19:00, £15

The mighty guitarist from 70s rockers The Sensational Alex Harvey Band is back with brand new material and a brand new band.

YOKO PWNO (VFLAMBDA + QUEEQUEG’S COFFIN)

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 19:00, £6

Hardcore drum ‘n’ brass from NYC. BROKEN CHANTER (ULTRAS)

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

Fri 24 May

SACRILEGE (DESOLATION ANGELS)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £12 - £16

The NWOBHM era masters return to Bannermans.

ERLAND COOPER (SHHE)

THE QUEEN’S HALL, FROM 20:00, £15

Orcadian multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Erland Cooper launches his second solo album, Sule Skerry.

WRECKLESS ERIC

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, FREE

English rock’n’roll singer/songwriter, out and touring without his usual partner in crime, Amy Rigby.

Sat 18 May

THE SPRINGSTEEN SESSIONS

CHURCH, FROM 19:00, £12

Bruce Springsteen tribute act.

TARGET 5

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 20:00, £8

Aberdeen-based MOD tribute band, playing classic MOD revival and 60s MOD tunes.

FOUNDRY (JASMINE AZARIAN) LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

Foundry welcome Jasmine Azarian, head honcho of magazine and record label Motz.

Fri 03 May FRESH! FRIDAY

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £6

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 19:00, £5 - £6

Resident DJ John McLean brings you the biggest tunes and best deals to make your weekend one to remember.

Fri 24 May

80s buzz, non-binary, hedonistic queer fun shit.

SLIME CITY (VFLAMBDA + THE MARX)

Fast existential nerd rock band from Glasgow, made up of three men called Michael.

SUBHUMANS

CHURCH, FROM 19:00, £11

Hardcore and chaotic punk from the Wiltshire mentalists (two words very rarely used consecutively).

Sat 25 May

THE SENSATIONAL DAVID BOWIE BAND

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 20:00, £10

David Bowie tribute act.

Sun 26 May FOALS

FAT SAM’S, FROM 15:00, £11

The Oxford math-rockers are back, touring in support of their new two-part album project.

FOALS

FAT SAM’S, FROM 19:00, £11

The Oxford math-rockers are back, touring in support of their new two-part album project.

BLACKMORE’S BLOOD

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 20:00, £10

Tribute to all things Ritchie Blackmore by actual relations to the great man.

PORKPIE

CLARKS ON LINDSAY STREET, FROM 15:00, £7.92

This eight-piece band recreate the classic songs of two tone and rocksteady ska.

Mon 27 May IDLEWILD (ACOUSTIC)

CLARKS ON LINDSAY STREET, FROM 19:00, £9.50 - £22.99

Scottish indie heroes Idlewild perform an exclusive acoustic show for Assai Records at Clarks on Lindsay Street to launch their new album Interview Music.

SISTERS IN DISTRESS

BLOC+, FROM 23:00, FREE

GLITTERBANG

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Disco divas and Euro-pop anthems for those ready to sweat.

SENSU PRESENT THE MARTINEZ BROTHERS

SWG3, FROM 21:00, £20 - £25

American duo The Martinez Brothers make their long overdue return to Glasgow.

A CELEBRATION OF FRANK OCEAN (& FRIENDS) SWG3, FROM 22:00, £5 - £10

Scotland’s biggest dedication night returns to SWG3, this time celebrating Frank Ocean and friends.

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 22:30, £5 - £6

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

FRESH BEAT

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £6

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

JOHNNY JOHNNY

STEREO, FROM 22:30, FREE

Johnny Johnny returns to Stereo, teaming up with LGBT Youth Scotland to help raise money and awareness for the charity.

MISSING PERSONS CLUB (VTSS (LIVE) + DJ BUS REPLACEMENT SERVICE)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £8

MPC invite VTSS with her raw, pounding, energetic live set to the basement alongside DJ Bus Replacement Service.

A NIGHT OF ACID HOUSE

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £8

Spectral electronics and dancefloor beats with a distinct Celtic vibe.

Optimo’s JD Twitch celebrates all things acid house.

Supper Club is an irregular night for irregular people; a danceable pop, hip-hop and electronic extravaganza with live music from local music-makers and resident DJs playing vinyl.

Sat 11 May

THE BERKELEY SUITE, FROM 23:00, £6 - £8

Sun 26 May

EBB are a hard/prog rock outfit led by award-winning singer-songwriter, Erin Bennett and comprised of ex members of 90s shock metal band, Rockbitch.

THE SAFARI LOUNGE, FROM 20:00-01:00, £0-5

OPEN MIC

BANNERMANS, FROM 15:00, FREE

Free music all day from acoustic to blues and rock.

THE EROTICS (TAKEAWAY THEIVES + CYSTER SCALPEL)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

THE RUTLES

The Beatles tribute act.

MANIC STREET PREACHERS

BLAKK SABBATH

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 20:00, £10

Black Sabbath tribute.

EBB

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 19:00, TBC

Sun 12 May

BIG VERN ‘N’ THE SHOOTAHS

CLARKS ON LINDSAY STREET, FROM 15:00, £8

Wed 15 May CHURCH, FROM 19:00, £10

MAGIC CITY: KINGDOM

Tue 30 Apr #TAG TUESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

Wed 01 May

HALL & OATES AFTERPARTY

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:00, FREE

After Hall & Oates’ gig at the Hydro, keep the party going at Sleazys.

Magic City say farewell to one of their residents, Keoma as he jets off to Gothenburg.

ANTISOCIAL MOTHERS (CAROLINE MURPHY + MANDY BLACKPOOL)

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 21:00, £3

Reggae, dub, punk, post-punk, synth, dancehall and new wave from the Antisocial Mothers DJ duo.

ORGANIC GROOVES

PIE & BREW, FROM 18:00, FREE

Nu-metal, pop-punk, emo and early 00s tunes.

A fusion of Glasgow’s finest DJs collaborate with talented vocalists and exceptional musicians to offer something fresh and exciting to the city’s vibrant music scene.

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £4

ROOM 2, FROM 23:00, £1 - £6

IT’S NOT A PHASE, MOM!

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

FEED YOUR HEAD (RIBEKA & SOFAY)

USHER HALL, FROM 19:00, £43.45

Now well and truly a part of the Brisbane music community, Tia Gostelow is going global.

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

GOODBYE MR. MACKENZIE

Thu 16 May

Feed Your Head returns, inviting along two of Glasgow’s most cherished Djs, Ribeka and Sofay.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

Sat 04 May

The veteran Welsh art-punk trio who just won’t let it die.

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £22

SUMMERHALL, FROM 20:00, £14

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00, £5

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 19:30, TBC

Chris Greig & the Merchants headline Off Axis Edinburgh at Leith Depot.

TOO MANY ZOOZ

Thu 16 May A killer blend of metal.

OFF AXIS AND NEW FOUND SOUND PRESENTS (CHRIS GREIG & THE MERCHANTS)

Scottish 1980s and 1990s rock group formed in Bathgate.

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 19:00, £13.50 - £20.35

Talkin’, fightin’, punk rockin’ blues. Lurgan’s finest and Franklin rock’n’roll club favourites, The Bonnevilles are back.

Punk pioneer and chief songwriter for the Sex Pistols.

TIA GOSTELOW

A chance to experience Motown and soul classics all performed live by the full 16-piece Voices of Virtue Gospel Choir band.

KARYBDIS (BURNING THE DREAM + VOLCANO X + TRENDKILL)

GLEN MATLOCK

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 19:00, £16.50

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:30, £23

RETIREE

100% SOUL: WHQ & THE VOICES OF VIRTUE GOSPEL CHOIR

THE BONNEVILLES (MUDLOW)

The wicked local act play their first headline show at Sneaky’s.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £9

Kilwinning experimental rockers headed by the rather magnificent (at screaming) Janine Shilstone.

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 19:00, £11

DICTATOR

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £8

Sextet from Liverpool, combing sounds of old and new channeling Tarantino-esque wild western vibes with the help of a solitary trumpet.

Nine-piece soul band from Glasgow.

Easy Star All-Stars perform their classic tribute record Dub Side of the Moon.

SUMMERHALL, FROM 20:00, £20

North Eastern indie lot Maximo Park continue to delight us with their shouty indie music.

The NYC rockers return with their controversial frontman.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £9

Velvet Underground goes country with the hottest band in America right now.

RED RUM CLUB SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 19:00, £8

Australian music pioneers, Severed Heads thump out a noisy disco sound that’s inspired dance styles from EBM to Chicago house.

The musical project of three Sydney/Melbourne lads, Matt Crowley, Tori Holleman and Marco Vella.

THE NUDE PARTY

MAXÏMO PARK THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 19:00, £22

AURICLE ENSEMBLE: REWRITE

The Auricle Ensemble perform Steve Reich’s Radiohead inspired work Radio Rewrite, alongside classical works composed by Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Copeland, Richard Reed Parry and Bryce Dessner.

SIXTIES ON A SUNDAY (FAYNE AND THE CRUISERS)

TOM MCGUIRE & THE BRASSHOLES

CHURCH, FROM 19:00, £10

Eight-piece funk/soul powerhouse from Glasgow, making moves in the Scottish scene.

VUKOVI (SUPERLOVE)

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 19:00, £11

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

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

SUNNY SIDE UP ELECTRO SPECIAL (AISHA + SEBASTIAN SWARM) LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3

Kilwinning experimental rockers headed by the rather magnificent (at screaming) Janine Shilstone.

A one time electro special by Glasgow’s own Lunacy residents, with all proceeds going to sustainable energy projects.

Fri 17 May

Thu 02 May

KARINE POLWART

THE GARDYNE THEATRE, FROM 20:00, £22

STAR SIGNZ

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

A Sunday afternoon to drink, dance and sing along to simply the most authentic 60s band you will ever hear.

The Borders lass brings the loveliness with her provokingly poetic and bittersweet folk tunes, dipping into her impressive back catalogue of material.

Flamboyant disco dream weavers.

Mon 27 May

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 19:30, £15

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, TBC

THE BASEMENT THEATRE, FROM 14:00, £7.50

MUTANT MONSTER

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:30, £8 - £10

The Japanese punk rock trio make their Edinburgh debut.

GOODBYE MR. MACKENZIE

Scottish 1980s and 1990s rock group formed in Bathgate.

TENEMENTS (VENA AMORIS + SLOW RENEWAL)

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 19:00, £7

Five-piece post-hardcore band from Glasgow.

UNHOLY

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £2 - £4

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

ELEMENT

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

SATURDAY SHAKEDOWN

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £8

Resident DJ Bobby Bluebell mixes up the house, R’n’B and chart.

DAMMIT ALL TO HELL

BLOC+, FROM 23:00, FREE

Big chorus club extravaganza where punk meets pop hits.

90S RAVE

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £7.90 - £11.25

Revel in the hedonism and fun of a great decade for dance music.

MUSIC’S NOT FOR EVERYONE

CHINASKI’S, FROM 20:00, FREE

Deep, high quality tune selections from Andrew Weatherall in a free show.

EXCELLENT WOMEN

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Hip-hop, bass and trap.

QUEEN’S PARK DISCO SESSIONS

QUEEN’S PARK, FROM 16:00, £15 - £20

One Night at the Disco take you back to an era of pure decadence, excess and glamour, soundtracked by disco music.

THE SKINNY

Glasgow Clubs CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

Thu 09 May SCIENCE FICTION

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

The Queens of the Glasgow disco scene, FKA Drugstore Glamour.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

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

I LOVE GARAGE

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

LA CHEETAH X LEZURE (DARWIN + SPECIAL REQUEST + WARDY & DCLN)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £10 - £12

La Cheetah continue the 10 year celebrations, this time teaming up with Lezure to bring two champions of the UK sound, Special Request and Darwin.

SUBCULTURE

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

A LOVE FROM OUTER SPACE

THE BERKELEY SUITE, FROM 22:00, £10

Andrew Weatherall and Sean Johnston’s rather ace London night comes our way.

ROOM 2 X HANDPICKED (PETE ROCK)

ROOM 2, FROM 23:00, £12 - £15

Hip-hop royalty Pete Rock brings the famous SP1200 back, which he revolutionised producing with.

Sun 05 May NULL / VOID

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

Industrial goth rock disco.

QUEEN’S PARK DISCO SESSIONS

QUEEN’S PARK, FROM 16:00, £15 - £20

One Night at the Disco take you back to an era of pure decadence, excess and glamour, soundtracked by disco music.

HELLBENT

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

SESH

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

SUB CLUB PRESENTS LIL LOUIS

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, £12

A special outing from house DJ, producer, writer, filmmaker (and all-round talented bugger), Lil Louis.

Mon 06 May BARE MONDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

Tue 07 May ONLY THE SUBJECT

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

New wave of underground Glasgow DJ talent. #TAG TUESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

Wed 08 May

RETRONIC W/ FRANKIE ELYSE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

Rock’n’roll, and 50s and 60s bangers.

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £4

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

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

ARCADE

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3

After 10 parties, inviting guests from across the UK, Arcade host their first ever residents night.

May 2019

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

UNHOLY

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £2 - £4

ELEMENT

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

AFLOAT (DD WATERMELON + RYAN MARTIN)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3 - £5

Afloat invite down local heavyweights DD Watermelon and Ryan Martin, with support from residents. Guaranteed party vibes.

Fri 10 May FRESH! FRIDAY

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £6

Resident DJ John McLean brings you the biggest tunes and best deals to make your weekend one to remember.

ANNA & HOLLY’S DANCE PARTY

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Rock’n’roll, garage and soul.

SPICE!

SWG3, FROM 22:00, £6 - £8

SPICE! play all the Spice Girl hits and 90s pop. Expect the music of B*Witched, Destiny’s Child, All Saints, TLC, Steps, Sugababes and more.

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 22:30, £5 - £6

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

FRESH BEAT

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £6

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

LA CHEETAH PRESENTS (BEVERLY HILLS 808)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £10 - £12

SUBCULTURE

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

SUPERMAX

THE BERKELEY SUITE, FROM 23:00, £9

DJ Billy Woods, start to finish, open to close.

LOOSEN UP! (DAVID BARBAROSSA + FERGUS CLARK + CHARLIE MCCANN)

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 22:00, £4

Afro, disco and fun times with three of the best record collections in Glasgow (and beyond).

ROOM 2 DANCE (OVERMONO + PANGAEA + IDA)

ROOM 2, FROM 23:00, £10 - £12

Truss and Tessela’s Overmono project collide with Pangaea for the next Room 2 Dance party; buckle up.

Sun 12 May

DANK: GODS OF RAP AFTERPARTY

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

Hip-hop, grime and nu-metal.

SESH

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

Mon 13 May BARE MONDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

Tue 14 May

OBZRV MUSIC PRESENTS ISSA VIBE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

Hip-hop, grime and UK garage. #TAG TUESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

Wed 15 May DON’T BE GUTTED

I-F focuses on his darker side, all executed with uncompromising distortion and grit.

All-out decadence in the name of euphoria.

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, £8 - £12

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £4

RETURN TO MONO (GARY BECK)

Monthly night from Soma Records, often with special guests.

GLADDY WAX SOUND SYSTEM

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 20:00, £7

Legendary sound man and DJ, Gladdy Wax brings his record collection North for one night.

ORGANIC GROOVES

PIE & BREW, FROM 18:00, FREE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

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

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

ATTENTION//PLEASE (HARRI B2B JORDAN)

A fusion of Glasgow’s finest DJs collaborate with talented vocalists and exceptional musicians to offer something fresh and exciting to the city’s vibrant music scene.

A//P warm up for Jordan and Harri going B2B.

Sat 11 May

PRAY 4 LOVE

SATURDAY SHAKEDOWN

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £8

Resident DJ Bobby Bluebell mixes up the house, R’n’B and chart.

SHAKA LOVES YOU

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Hip-hop and live percussion flanked by wicked visuals.

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

Thu 16 May NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

All love songs + all bangers.

UNHOLY

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £2 - £4

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

ELEMENT

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, TBC

Dutch house and techno figurehead Joris Voorn returns to Glasgow.

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

SWG3, FROM 22:00, £6 - £15

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £0 - £5

SWG3 PRESENT JORIS VOORN

SWG3, FROM 22:00, £12.50 - £15

ALTERNATIVE 80S CLUB

PALA 2ND BIRTHDAY

DJs Bosco and Rob Mason play all things alternative, goth and new wave from the years 1980-1989.

Pala celebrate their second birthday at La Cheetah.

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

FRESH! FRIDAY

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

Fri 17 May ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £6

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

Resident DJ John McLean brings you the biggest tunes and best deals to make your weekend one to remember.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

I LOVE GARAGE

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

SINGLES NIGHT

Beans + Divine explore the hits on 7” vinyl.

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 22:30, £5 - £6

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

FRESH BEAT THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £6

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

LUNACY (ASSEMBLER CODE)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £10

Lunacy land with purpose in their latest transmission from the basement.

DJ DEEON

THE BERKELEY SUITE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £10

Chicago house and booty techno don DJ Deeon returns to Glasgow.

ORGANIC GROOVES

PIE & BREW, FROM 18:00, FREE

A fusion of Glasgow’s finest DJs collaborate with talented vocalists and exceptional musicians to offer something fresh and exciting to the city’s vibrant music scene.

Sat 18 May

SATURDAY SHAKEDOWN

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £8

Resident DJ Bobby Bluebell mixes up the house, R’n’B and chart.

THE LANCE VANCE DANCE

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Exotic dreamy disco.

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

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

I LOVE GARAGE

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

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

LA CHEETAH X PARTIAL (BATU + UPSAMMY)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £8 - £10

La Cheetah continue the 10 year celebrations, this time teaming up with Partial to bring a powerhouse duo in the form of Batu and Upsammy.

SUBCULTURE (MODEL 500 (LIVE))

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

HORSE MEAT DISCO (OOFT!)

THE BERKELEY SUITE, FROM 23:00, £10

The Horse Meat Disco crew bring their usual mischief and disco mayhem.

MOJO WORKIN’ (FELONIOUS MUNK)

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 21:00, £2

60s Rhythm and blues, ska, Motown and Northern soul.

BALKANARAMA’S 12TH BIRTHDAY PARTY

THE AFRICAN ARTS CENTRE, FROM 22:30, £10 - £11

Balkanarama’s hottest Balkan instrumental orgy celebrates its 12th birthday. Expect lots of sweat, lots of dancing and heaps of fun.

Sun 19 May

CHEERS FOR THIRD SUNDAY

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

SESH

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

Mon 20 May BARE MONDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

Tue 21 May ONLY THE SUBJECT

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, TBC

New wave of underground Glasgow DJ talent. #TAG TUESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

Find full listings at theskinny.co.uk/whats-on

Wed 22 May FREAK LIKE ME

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

Soul, hip-hop and funk.

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £4

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

GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

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

Thu 23 May BREAKFAST CLUB

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

An 80s mega-mix party.

UNHOLY

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £2 - £4

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

ELEMENT

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

RUSH (BASH MAN + JOHNNY5 + MI$$ CO$MIX)

LA CHEETAH CLUB, FROM 23:00, £0 - £5

The Rush residents take you to a world beyond with both cutting edge and classic techno, breaks and acid.

Fri 24 May FRESH! FRIDAY

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £6

Resident DJ John McLean brings you the biggest tunes and best deals to make your weekend one to remember.

EASY PEELERS

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Bangers ripe and ready for your enjoyment.

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 20:00, £3 - 5

Edinburgh Clubs

Sun 26 May

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and novelty-stuffed. Perrrfect.

Believe presents the best in bass DJs from Edinburgh at his weekly Sunday communion.

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, FREE

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £5

Mon 06 May

ALTERNATIVE 80S CLUB

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, R’n’B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL 2019 RIVERSIDE MUSEUM, FROM 12:00, £60 - £115

Riverside team up with Denis Sulta, Bicep, La Cheetah Club and Maximum Pressure to curate four stages across two days at this year’s festival.

VOCAL OR VERSION DJ RELAY

20 DJs spin five records each for 15 minutes in aid of the MS Society Scotland.

VIRTUAL GROOVE

Disco, funk and house.

SLIDE IT IN

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, TBC

Classic rock through the ages from DJ Nicola Walker.

SESH

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

RIVERSIDE AFTER PARTY

VARIOUS VENUES, FROM 23:00, TBC

La Cheetah celebrate their 10th anniversary at Riverside before bringing back some special guests to keep the party going at both Room 2 and La Cheetah.

RIVERSIDE FESTIVAL 2019

RIVERSIDE MUSEUM, FROM 12:00, £60 - £115

Riverside team up with Denis Sulta, Bicep, La Cheetah Club and Maximum Pressure to curate four stages across two days at this year’s festival.

Mon 27 May BARE MONDAYS

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

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

CATHOUSE, FROM 22:30, £5 - £6

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

Tue 30 Apr

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £3 - £6

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

FRESH BEAT

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

ORGANIC GROOVES

PIE & BREW, FROM 18:00, FREE

A fusion of Glasgow’s finest DJs collaborate with talented vocalists and exceptional musicians to offer something fresh and exciting to the city’s vibrant music scene.

HANDPICKED PRESENTS POPLOCK (HIGH PARK FUNK + BOP GUN + FOURTH PRECINCT + GOLDY B + TUNER) ROOM 2, FROM 23:00, £5

Handpicked invites a wealth of local talent to throw down and poplock.

Sat 25 May

SATURDAY SHAKEDOWN

ORAN MOR, FROM 23:00, £8

Resident DJ Bobby Bluebell mixes up the house, R’n’B and chart.

SHAKA LOVES YOU

NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 23:30, £3

Hip-hop and live percussion flanked by wicked visuals.

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

HECTOR’S HOUSE

Since May 2012, Hector’s House (known affectionately to many as Hector’s) has become Edinburgh’s stalwart midweek shindig, drawing in capacity crowds each and every Tuesday.

MIDNIGHT BASS

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £1 - £5

Weekly Bongo night by Electrikal Sound System, dishing out drum and bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage.

Wed 01 May WILD ONES

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Perfect blend of modern club chart, and 90s and 00s guilty pleasures.

HEATERS (HOUSE OF WAX)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

Weekly Wednesday hosted by C-Shaman, who welcomes house and techno friends from near and there.

Thu 02 May UNDERGROUND SOCIETY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

Weekly party every Thursday with residents Merlot and Dave Hill.

TASTY

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

FLIP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, £0 - £4

MISS WORLD X HEY QT

The monthly musical beauty pageant Miss World team up with sweaty queer disco party HEY QT. LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 23:00, £5

DJs Bosco and Rob Mason play all things alternative, goth and new wave from the years 1980-1989.

WECHT (TASHA)

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 23:00, £6 - £8

WECHT residents Bissett and Creg bring in the big guns.

JACUZZI GENERAL PRESENTS..

(MR TC) PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

Weekly evening hosted by Palms own musical big man ‘The General’.

Expect towels, shower curtains, dancing and maybe a hot tub.

PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £2 - £4

Clubber’s favourite of indie classics and baggy greats, from Primal Scream and the like.

Sat 04 May PLEASURE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £8

Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.

SOULSVILLE (DAVID BARBAROSSA)

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3 - £6

Residents Cameron Mason and Calum Evans spin the finest cuts of deep funk, Latin rhythms and rare groove into the early hours.

BUBBLEGUM

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, £0 - £4

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

REWIND

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £5

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

HECTORS AT SNEAKYS: 7TH BIRTHDAY PT.1 (MAURICE FULTON)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £5 - £16

Hector’s House kick off their 7th birthday celebration with absolute living legend Maurice Fulton.

KEEP IT STEEL

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 23:00, £4

Starting in the 60s with Hendrix, Sabbath and Zeppelin, Edinburgh’s No.1 Metal club embarks on a riff-tastic journey with each hour devoted to a different era of heavy metal. Irresponsible party games, banter and delightful steel visuals.

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

As always Samedia play music spanning Afrobeat, Latin, kuduru, dancehall, samba, soca, cumbia and beyond.

RIVIERA PARADISO (ANDREA MONTALTO + DAVID BARBAROSSA)

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

Delicious start to the weekend with a chart, R’n’B and club anthem flavour.

THE GARAGE GLASGOW, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

Weekly Thursday chart, house, R’n’B and indie night with DJ Big Al.

JACKHAMMER PRESENTS DERRICK MAY (DAVE CLARKE + STEPHEN BROWN (LIVE) + BRAINSTORM + HARBINGERS DRUM CREW)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

Jackhammer bring the Detroit techno pioneer and all round legend Derrick May to Edinburgh, alongside a solid line-up of support acts.

I LOVE GARAGE

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

RIVERSIDE AFTER PARTY

VARIOUS VENUES, FROM 23:00, TBC

La Cheetah celebrate their 10th anniversary at Riverside before bringing back some special guests to keep the party going at both Room 2 and La Cheetah.

SUBCULTURE

SUB CLUB, FROM 23:00, TBC

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

SILK THURSDAYS

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £0 - £5

POPULAR MUSIC: PSYCHEDELIC SPECTACULAR (BEN LOUTHEAN)

Expect a mind altering experience filled with an alternative take on folk, jazz and rock as Popular Music takes you on a psychedelic trip through the ages.

Fri 03 May FLY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £8 - £15

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

MIDNIGHT BASS

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £1 - £5

Weekly Bongo night by Electrikal Sound System, dishing out drum and bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage.

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

Resident Andrea Montalto hosts a night of new wave, Italo and other electronic oddballs, with special guests often joining him.

LEITH THEATRE, FROM 17:00, £20

Sun 05 May

HEADSET X PULSE (SLAM)

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £8 - £10

Headset and Pulse team up to bring Glasgow duo and Soma Records bosses Slam to the Bongo.

SECRET - CINCO DE MAYO

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Bank Holiday! Tequila, sombreros, décor and cocktails. Chart, club, R’n’B and urban.

COALITION

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, FREE

MIXED UP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

HOMETOWN: BATTLE OF THE PARTY CREWS

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, TBC

The young team go head to head, dropping heaters all night long.

Tue 07 May HECTOR’S HOUSE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

Since May 2012, Hector’s House (known affectionately to many as Hector’s) has become Edinburgh’s stalwart midweek shindig, drawing in capacity crowds each and every Tuesday.

MIDNIGHT BASS: WOODLAND DANCE PROJECT WARM-UP

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £1 - £5

Weekly Bongo night by Electrikal Sound System, dishing out drum and bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage.

TRASH

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

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

Wed 08 May WILD ONES

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Perfect blend of modern club chart, and 90s and 00s guilty pleasures.

HEATERS (SOUNDS OF OGIGIA + ANATOLIAN WEAPONS)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

Weekly Wednesday hosted by C-Shaman, who welcomes house and techno friends from near and there.

Thu 09 May UNDERGROUND SOCIETY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

Weekly party every Thursday with residents Merlot and Dave Hill.

TASTY

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Delicious start to the weekend with a chart, R’n’B and club anthem flavour.

SILK THURSDAYS

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £0 - £5

Weekly Thursday chart, house, R’n’B and indie night with DJ Big Al. POPULAR MUSIC (TALLAH BRASH)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

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

Fri 10 May FLY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £6 - £12

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

HEADSET: GARAGE VS FUNKY (MC UNO)

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3 - £6

Skillis and friends playing garage, techno, house and bass, with special guests often joining in.

FLIP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, £0 - £4

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and novelty-stuffed. Perrrfect.

COSMIC

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 21:00, £4 - £8

Full spectrum of psytrance and eclectic beats.

JACUZZI GENERAL PRESENTS..

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

Weekly evening hosted by Palms own musical big man ‘The General’.

Expect towels, shower curtains, dancing and maybe a hot tub.

PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £2 - £4

Clubber’s favourite of indie classics and baggy greats, from Primal Scream and the like.

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Sat 11 May PLEASURE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £8

Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.

MESSENGER

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

Conscious roots and dub reggae rockin’ from the usual beefy Messenger Sound System.

BUBBLEGUM

THE HIVE, FROM 21:00, £0 - £4

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

SUMMER-IZED SESSIONS (ILLYUS & BARRIENTOS + DONNA LOVE + SHANE FERNANDES + KIEREN LYTHGOW)

ELECTRIKAL THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, TBC

Soundsystem partystarters, part of a music and art collective specialising in all things bass.

FLIP - PIZZA PARTY

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, £0 - £4

Free pizza! Club, mash-ups and alt anthems.

TELFORT’S GOOD PLACE (EVEN TUELL)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

Edinburgh DJ and producer Telfort introduces his own party night; expect mixes of ethereal house, leftfield hip-hop and techno thumpers along with special guests.

BALKANARAMA’S 12TH BIRTHDAY PARTY

SUMMERHALL, FROM 22:30, £10 - £11

The Secret Garden Rave makes its Edinburgh debut with special guests providing all your house and techno needs.

Balkanarama’s hottest Balkan instrumental orgy celebrates its 12th birthday. Expect lots of sweat, lots of dancing and heaps of fun.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £6

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 23:00, TBC

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £5 - £22.25

TEESH

An all you can eat mind buffet of cosmic sounds and visuals with DJ Cheers.

Sun 12 May SUNDAY CLUB

THE HIVE, FROM 21:00, £6

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

COALITION

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, FREE

POWER OF LOVE

The ultimate 80s extravaganza.

JACUZZI GENERAL PRESENTS..

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

Weekly evening hosted by Palms own musical big man ‘The General’.

Expect towels, shower curtains, dancing and maybe a hot tub.

PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £2 - £4

Clubber’s favourite of indie classics and baggy greats, from Primal Scream and the like.

Believe presents the best in bass DJs from Edinburgh at his weekly Sunday communion.

Sat 18 May

Mon 13 May

Hop straight from Hopetoun House to Cab Vol for this FLY Open Air after party.

MIXED UP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, R’n’B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

OVERGROUND

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £0 - £4

Overground bring the rave to new territory, following celebrations of their third year in the game.

Tue 14 May HECTOR’S HOUSE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, TBC

Since May 2012, Hector’s House (known affectionately to many as Hector’s) has become Edinburgh’s stalwart midweek shindig, drawing in capacity crowds each and every Tuesday.

MIDNIGHT BASS

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £1 - £5

Weekly Bongo night by Electrikal Sound System, dishing out drum and bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage.

FLY OPEN AIR AFTER PARTY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £10

SHADOWPLAY (VILKAS + DAVE EXILE)

HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, FROM 23:00, £5

A mix of classic goth, post-punk, new wave, dark wave, synth, deathrock and more.

FLY OPEN AIR FESTIVAL

HOPETOUN HOUSE, FROM 12:00, £55 - £85

FLY throw caution to the wind (so to speak), hosting another Open Air affair. This time the venue’s Hopetoun House at Queensferry, and the line-up features Solomun, Honey Dijon, Nina Kraviz, Peggy Gou and more.

MUMBO JUMBO + LUCKY 7

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3 - £7

Funk, soul, beats and bumps from the Mumbo Jumbo gang and room two residents Lucky 7.

BUBBLEGUM

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, £0 - £4

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

Mon 20 May MIXED UP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, R’n’B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

Tue 21 May HECTOR’S HOUSE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

Since May 2012, Hector’s House (known affectionately to many as Hector’s) has become Edinburgh’s stalwart midweek shindig, drawing in capacity crowds each and every Tuesday.

MIDNIGHT BASS

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £1 - £5

Weekly Bongo night by Electrikal Sound System, dishing out drum and bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage.

TRASH

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

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

Wed 22 May

GOLDRUSH (CAPPA + MICHAEL HAJ + SAM SIGGERS)

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £10

Bongo’s biggest event in the Goldrush calendar, with 10% of profits going to The Encephalitis Society.

WILD ONES

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Perfect blend of modern club chart, and 90s and 00s guilty pleasures.

HEATERS (PROJECT PABLO)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

Weekly Wednesday hosted by C-Shaman, who welcomes house and techno friends from near and there.

Thu 23 May UNDERGROUND SOCIETY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

Weekly party every Thursday with residents Merlot and Dave Hill.

TEXTURE X PALIDRONE (GIANT SWAN (LIVE))

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £6

Texture and Palidrone team up to bring Bristolian duo Giant Swan to the Bongo.

TASTY

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Delicious start to the weekend with a chart, R’n’B and club anthem flavour.

SILK THURSDAYS

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £0 - £5

Weekly Thursday chart, house, R’n’B and indie night with DJ Big Al. POPULAR MUSIC: PRIMAVERA PRE-PARTY

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

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

Edinburgh College of Art’s annual end of term party.

Residents Nick Stewart and Peaky Blindrunk get you hyped for the Barcelona festival, playing the likes of Lizzo, Janelle Monae, Tame Impala and more.

Wed 15 May

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

Fri 24 May

TRASH

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

THROWBACK TO THE 90S

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

End of term nostalgia! 90s pop all night in room one, modern chart in room two.

HEATERS (HAPTIC)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

Weekly Wednesday hosted by C-Shaman, who welcomes house and techno friends from near and there.

Thu 16 May UNDERGROUND SOCIETY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £3 - £4

Weekly party every Thursday with residents Merlot and Dave Hill.

TASTY

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Delicious start to the weekend with a chart, R’n’B and club anthem flavour.

SILK THURSDAYS

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £0 - £5

Weekly Thursday chart, house, R’n’B and indie night with DJ Big Al. POPULAR MUSIC (CHEAP TEETH)

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £1 - £3

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

Fri 17 May FLY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £6

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

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Listings

ANNUAL ECA SUMMER REVEL

WEE RED BAR, FROM 22:00, £15

CLUB MEDITERRANEO (DJ BOOCHIE)

A new night from one of Edinburgh’s best selectors, Andrea Montalto and some of his pals.

NIKNAK PRESENTS: THE OTHER GUY

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

A new monthly outfit from Paradise Palms residents NikNak. AMBIDECKSTROUS (BILL SPICE + DUNC)

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 20:30, TBC

Funky house DJs back at Leith Depot.

Sun 19 May

FLY OPEN AIR AFTER PARTY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £10

FLY

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £6 - £10

Edinburgh and Glasgow-straddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

SOUND SYSTEM LEGACIES XL (COMMODO)

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £5 - £8

Sound System Legacies explores the legacy of dub, reggae, roots music and sound system culture on more contemporary club and dance music styles.

FLIP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, £0 - £4

Hop straight from Hopetoun House to Cab Vol for this FLY Open Air after party.

Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and novelty-stuffed. Perrrfect.

HOPETOUN HOUSE, FROM 12:00, £55 - £85

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £5

FLY OPEN AIR FESTIVAL

FLY throw caution to the wind (so to speak), hosting another Open Air affair. This time the venue’s Hopetoun House at Queensferry, and the line-up features Solomun, Honey Dijon, Nina Kraviz, Peggy Gou and more.

SUNDAY CLUB

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

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

COALITION

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, FREE

Believe presents the best in bass DJs from Edinburgh at his weekly Sunday communion.

LEZURE

Dance music aficionado collective, Lezure continue to charm dancefloors all over Scotland.

EROL ALKAN

SUMMERHALL, FROM 23:00, £11 - £14.30

Sneaky Pete’s invite the all-round DJ extraordinaire to take control of Summerhall’s Dissection Room for the evening, well-kent for his tight productions and damn good remixes.

CALIFORNIA LOVE

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 23:00, £7

Celebrating 90s hip-hop and R’n’B, with tunes from the likes of Tupac and TLC.

SHAPEWORK (JOY ORBISON + GIGSTA) THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £15

The hot young techno team continue to bring a slew of techno heavyweight guests.

JACUZZI GENERAL PRESENTS..

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

Weekly evening hosted by Palms own musical big man ‘The General’.

Expect towels, shower curtains, dancing and maybe a hot tub.

PROPAGANDA

THE LIQUID ROOM, FROM 22:30, £2 - £4

Clubber’s favourite of indie classics and baggy greats, from Primal Scream and the like.

Sat 25 May PLEASURE

CABARET VOLTAIRE, FROM 23:00, £5 - £8

Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.

Sun 05 May MUSIC IS THE ANSWER

CONROY’S BASEMENT, FROM 14:30, TBC

A one-off event with a line-up of international and local Djs over 10 hours.

Wed 15 May

WALK & SKANK TAKE OVER (MUNGO’S HIFI SOUND SYSTEM + THE 420 SOUND + VIXEN SOUND + ESCAPE ROOTS + TOM SPIRALS) READING ROOMS, FROM 21:30, £8

The heavyweight Mungo’s Sound System returns to kick Degree Show weekend off.

Fri 24 May

QFX – DANCE ANTHEMS LIVE

FAT SAM’S, FROM 22:30, £6 - £10.15

QFX are back with their massive Dance Anthems live show, performing 90s and 00s classics.

THE BONGO CLUB, FROM 23:00, £3 - £5

SECRET - BANK HOLIDAY

THE HIVE, FROM 21:00, £0 - £4

Bank holiday! 25% off premium drinks. Chart, club, R’n’B and urban.

Glasgow Theatre

A tribute to the era of Stranger Things, the 80s.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £5

7-9 MAY, 7:30PM, £6 - £8

WEE RED BAR, FROM 23:00, £6

RIDE

Live fast die yung, Ride gals do it well. Teacha El and Checkyer Strides play 00s rnb and 90s hip hop and put their lighters up.

JUNGLE MAGIK (NICKY BLACKMARKET)

LA BELLE ANGELE, FROM 23:00, £7

Jungle and drum’n’bass with DJ Kid, G-Mac and DJ Tez. PULSE WITH ANETHA (DARRELL PULSE + SEAN LAIRD + SHAUN JOHNSTON)

THE MASH HOUSE, FROM 23:00, £8 - £10

Pulse welcome resident of Paris’ Blocaus parties and co-manager of the Blocaus Series’ imprint, Anetha.

MANY ANIMALS (DAVIE MILLER + TIM CLERKIN)

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 21:00, FREE

Bringing underground delights from around the world to the lounge.

REGGAE GOT SOUL

LEITH DEPOT, FROM 20:30, FREE

A night of dub, reggae and ska bangers.

Sun 26 May

ACHILLES

Glasgow’s acclaimed Company of Wolves re-imagines the myth of Achilles in a heart-stopping solo performance by Ewan Downie.

BUENOS TIEMPOS, INT: STRICTLY BALLROOM

2 MAY, 6:00PM, FREE

An arrangement of six acts set in courtrooms and other places, featuring fabulous queers and other people, with material selected from films, TV and literature.

THE FLAMES

11-11 MAY, TIMES VARY, £4.50 - £6

The Flames will reignite in a striking, innovative mix of film, music and performance presenting a fresh look at how we age.

NIMA SENE: BEIGE B*TCH

22-23 MAY, 7:00PM, £7 - £11

Invited into the luxurious world of self-made icon Beige B*tch, the audience take their seats and tune in as the latest audience of Beige Nation TV.

Platform LISTENING PARTY

24-26 MAY, TIMES VARY, £4 - £8.50

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

Created by Ásrún Magnúsdóttir, Listening Party displays a party on stage, which is hosted by a big group of 13-17 year olds playing their favourite music.

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, FREE

24-26 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

SUNDAY CLUB

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

COALITION

Believe presents the best in bass DJs from Edinburgh at his weekly Sunday communion.

LE FREAK ALL DAY TAKEOVER

PARADISE PALMS, FROM 15:00, FREE

Le Freak and Friends are back in the capital for an all day party.

Their unique seven man B2B is something everyone should see.

Mon 27 May MIXED UP

THE HIVE, FROM 22:00, FREE

Monday-brightening mix of hiphop, R’n’B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

SHEPHERD & FRIENDS TECH-IT-OUT

SNEAKY PETE’S, FROM 23:00, £0 - £3

Bringing together the boys from QMTS and HWTS resident Stuart Graves-Morris for a mad night at Sneaky’s.

Dundee Clubs Sat 04 May I AM A RAVER

CHURCH, FROM 23:00, £5 - £7

A night of happy hardcore, DJ Rankin, DJ Bad Boy and co.

ALL GOOD PRESENTS PROSPA (VAN D + ETHAN BELL)

READING ROOMS, FROM 23:00, £5 - £10

The duo hit Dundee for the first time.

DIRTY DANCING

20-25 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13 - £79.90

The cult 80s film revamped for the stage – cue Baby and Johnny, sexy dancing and a good dose of hungry eyes.

KINKY BOOTS

7-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13 - £63

With songs by Grammy and Tony Award-winning pop icon Cyndi Lauper, Kinky Boots takes you from the factory floor to the glamorous catwalks of Milan.

CATS PRESENTED BY THE PANTHEON CLUB

Pantheon bring Andrew LloydWebber’s hugely popular Cats to The King’s Theatre Glasgow in a production directed and choreographed by Chris Stuart Wilson.

Theatre Royal

SCOTTISH OPERA: THE MAGIC FLUTE

CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

STRANGER SOUNDS

The King’s Theatre

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, £11.90 - £30.90

HOTLINE

Smashin’ cloob, run by women, for everyone. R’n’B, disco, funk and dancing.

Theatre

IN THE INK DARK

A project in four parts from Luke Pell and collaborators. Part of Take Me Somewhere and Luminate.

SEC

LET IT BE

10-11 MAY, 6:30PM, £22.70 - £51.10

Celebrate the legacy of The Beatles with West End production Let It Be. Squint real hard, ignore the stickon sideburns and convince yourself you’re in the real life company of John Lennon. What fun.

RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE: WERQ THE WORLD TOUR

17 MAY, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

4-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, £12.50 - £82.50

Sir Thomas Allen and Simon Higlett take on the fantastical charms of Mozart’s beloved opera, set in a visual world inspired by steam punk Victoriana. No ‘magic flute’ jokes, please.

Tramway

THE FAMOUS LAUREN BARRI HOLSTEIN: NOTORIOUS

11 MAY, 7:00PM, £10 - £15

Examining the myth of Medusa, Nicki Minaj and her own legendary self(ie), Notorious examines pop culture’s take on the female monster.

METTE INGVARTSEN: 21 PORNOGRAPHIES

16 MAY, 7:30PM, £11 - £15

Danish choreographer and dancer Mette Ingvartsen examines the powers of pleasure and the pleasures of power in this tour-de-force performance on pornography.

V/DA: SONIC SEANCE

16 MAY, 9:00PM, £8 - £12

A spiritual collective energy materialised through sound and music, dance and voice.

IVO DIMCHEV: P PROJECT

18 MAY, 7:30PM, £10 - £15

A performance based on ‘P’ words, where Ivo Dimchev invites members of the audience to write improvised poetry on stage as he transforms it into a live song at the piano.

JAHA KOO: CUCKOO

24-25 MAY, 7:00PM, £8 - £12

A deranged disco, showboating the consequences of society’s reluctance to let their children take risks.

NORA CHIPAUMIRE: 100%POP

26 MAY, 7:00PM, £8 - £12

An Afro-futuristic soundclash of dance and music, inspired by Grace Jones’ One Man Show.

25 MAY, 8:30PM, £10

Created by and centering queer people of colour, especially those with disabilities, Brownton Abbey features an international collective of UK-based artists.

THE MISTRESS CONTRACT

The Mistress Contract sets out to establish clear cut rules of engagement between the sexes in a complicated world of blurred lines and grey areas.

LOW PAY? DON’T PAY!

2-11 MAY, TIMES VARY, £9 - £17

In this adaptation of Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, a group of women in Glasgow take direct action against low pay and rising prices.

TURN THE NIGHT

10-11 MAY, 8:30PM, £8.50 - £11

Musician Gav Prentice writes and performs solo for his first play following a residency with the National Theatre of Scotland.

LOCAL HERO

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, £10 - £68

A wry comedy about a man who sets out to buy a beach, but ends up losing his heart to a village.

THE DUCHESS [OF MALFI]

17 MAY-8 JUN, TIMES VARY, £10 - £32

An exploration of male rage and female resistance as two brothers try and control their sister, block her marriage and repress her agency with fatal results.

Summerhall

KLAR - OR THE PERFORMATIVEPOETIC SEARCH FOR SCHRODINGER’S CAT

24 MAY, 7:30PM, £5 - £8

Assembly Roxy UMBRELLA MAN

2-4 MAY, 8:00PM, £8 - £10

A daft, dreamy, unmissable piece of spoken word theatre from one of Scotland’s most exciting new performance collectives.

SHOWCASE: THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (ABRIDGED)

5 MAY, 7:30PM, £10

A rollicking, epic new adaptation of the classic adventure story transporting you from the gaming tables of Georgian London to the prisons of Revolutionary Paris.

THE HOUSE THAT MELTS WITH THE RAIN

Tatraum Projekte Schmidt present a collaboration between performers from Dusseldorf and Edinburgh, where video and soundscapes help to create an unreal reality space.

The Edinburgh Playhouse THE MOUSETRAP

27-29 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13 - £49

Agatha Christie murder mystery, famous for being the longestrunning show of any kind in the history of British theatre.

ROCK OF AGES

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13 - £52.50

6 MAY, 7:30PM, £5

80s-themed musical out on tour after five years on Broadway, following three years of ovationinducing performances in London’s West End.

THE GUITAR MAN

4-8 MAY, 7:30PM, PRICES VARY

A reading of a new play by Jennifer Adam about a woman who refuses to leave her home, despite it visibly disintegrating around her.

14-18 MAY, 7:30PM, £5 - £12.50

This tender study of a so-called ‘outsider’ traces the delicate balance between loneliness and longing, loss and salvation.

VALENTINA’S GALAXY

25 MAY-1 JUN, TIMES VARY, £9 - £12

Inspired by women in space, this immersive performance features a combustible concoction of experiments, rocket launches and star gazing.

Festival Theatre WE’RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT

25-26 MAY, TIMES VARY, £14

Michael Rosen’s timeless classic, in which the ever-popular poet and children’s author bringing his inimitable brand of humour and energy to a tale about tracking down the grizzlies.

SCOTTISH BALLET SPRING!

2-4 MAY, 7:30PM, £17.50 - £30.50

To kickstart their 50th anniversary year, Scottish Ballet presents a fresh double bill fizzing with energy.

27 MAY-1 JUN, TIMES VARY, £24.50 - £34.50

1-11 MAY, TIMES VARY, £7.50 - £11

BROWNTON ABBEY

Edinburgh Theatre

21COMMON: IN THE INTERESTS OF HEALTH AND SAFETY CAN PATRONS KINDLY SUPERVISE THEIR CHILDREN AT ALL TIMES

The Art School In this docu-performance, Samira Elagoz explores desire, the power of femininity and the female gaze in a world in which the virtual and the real are inextricably intertwined.

The tenacious trio at the heart of this contemporary fairytale inspire audiences with their determination and sisterhood.

King’s Theatre Edinburgh

A journey through the last 20 years of Korean history told by a bunch of talkative rice cookers.

Tron Theatre

23 MAY, 9:00PM, £8 - £12

17-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, £10

22 MAY, 9:00PM, £8 - £12

Your favorite drag stars return with a fierce new show. Slay.

COCK COCK... WHO’S THERE?

THIS GIRL LAUGHS, THIS GIRL CRIES, THIS GIRL DOES NOTHING

Royal Lyceum Theatre

AVENUE Q

Tony Award-winning production set in downtown New York, featuring brightly-coloured puppetry, people and catchy tunes from the same guy behind the songs of Disney’s Frozen. You’ve been warned.

THE COMEDY ABOUT A BANK ROBBERY

14-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, £19.50 - £33

Ocean’s Eleven meets the Marx Brothers in this dynamite new comedy.

THE VERDICT

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, £18.50 - £32

A stunning courtroom thriller made famous by the five times Oscarnominated Sidney Lumet film with Paul Newman and James Mason.

THE WORST WITCH

7-12 MAY, TIMES VARY, £17 - £25

Featuring all of Jill Murphy’s beloved characters, this new stage adaptation features original songs, music and magic.

LOST AT SEA

20-22 MAY, 7:30PM, £14.50 - £23.50

Lost at Sea journeys through a labyrinth of myth and memory in an epic tale spanning forty years of the fishing industry.

RAMBERT2

SEVEN DRUNKEN NIGHTS: THE STORY OF THE DUBLINERS

The show brings to life the music of Ireland’s favourite sons The Dubliners.

RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE: WERQ THE WORLD TOUR

6 MAY, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

Your favorite drag stars return with a fierce new show. Slay.

Traverse Theatre TWA

24-25 MAY, 8:00PM, £5 - £12

A contemporary tale interwoven with the Greek myth of Philomela, based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: CASABLANCA – THE GIN JOINT CUT

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13.50

A lovingly disrespectful homage to one of the classic films of all time that will have you raise a Bogart-style eyebrow, shed a Bergman-like tear.

DONNY’S BRAIN

3-4 MAY, 7:30PM, £5 - £7

Funny and moving in equal measure, Donny’s Brain raises fascinating questions about the essence of love, human nature and our sense of self.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: THE ORIGINS OF IVOR PUNCH

7-11 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13.50

Based on Colin MacIntyre’s novel The Letters of Ivor Punch, this stage adaptation explores mythology and how it washes up against faith.

KEEP ON WALKING FEDERICO

9-11 MAY, 7:30PM, £5 - £17

A new show by Mark Lockyer full of virtuosity, heart and humour.

A PLAY, A PIE AND A PINT: TOY PLASTIC CHICKEN

14-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13.50

Based on a true story, Toy Plastic Chicken is a violent comedic exploration of degradation and revolt.

SHINE

16-18 MAY, 7:30PM, £5 - £15

Kema Sikazwe, also known as Kema Kay, makes his powerful stage debut in this bittersweet comingof-age story.

HARBOUR

16 MAY, 8:00PM, £5 - £7

Created by Lyceum Original Sixty, The Lyceum’s 60+ group, as part of Luminate Festival, celebrating creative ageing.

DOUBLE BILL: RITUALIA & THE CIRCLE

24-25 MAY, 7:30PM, £5 - £17

An exhilarating new double bill from Scottish Dance Theatre.

24-25 MAY, 7:30PM, £15.50 - £25.50

Rambert2 is a new group of the world’s best young dancers, coming together to showcase the most exhilarating and fierce choreography around today.

THE SKINNY

Dundee Theatre Caird Hall

SEVEN DRUNKEN NIGHTS: THE STORY OF THE DUBLINERS

4-8 MAY, 7:30PM, PRICES VARY

The show brings to life the music of Ireland’s favourite sons The Dubliners.

Comedy MARC JENNINGS: GETTING GOING 26 MAY, 6:00PM, £9 - £10

Join rising star of the Scottish comedy circuit Marc Jennings for his first solo show at The Stand Comedy Club.

Yesbar

2-30 MAY, 8:00PM, £3

5-26 MAY, 4:30PM, £0 - £3

Graham Barrie introduces a selection of fledgling comedy talent handpicked fae Scotland every Thursday.

NEW MATERIAL COMEDY NIGHT

1-29 MAY, 8:00PM, £3

Blackfriars Basement

GLASGOW HAROLD NIGHT

7 MAY, 8:00PM, FREE

One hilarious show, completely improvised by two teams, based off an audience suggestion. Improv comedy at its finest.

LIGHT BULB

14 MAY, 8:00PM, FREE

Stand-up, characters and sketches for fans of weird and silly things.

Drygate Brewing Co. BREW HAHA!

5 MAY, 8:00PM, £4

Spend your Sunday enjoying some of Scotland’s finest comic talent.

Glee Club

FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY

3-31 MAY, 7:00PM, PRICES VARY

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

SATURDAY NIGHT COMEDY

4 MAY-1 JUN, 7:00PM, £8 - £17

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

The Stand Glasgow

MICHAEL REDMOND’S SUNDAY SERVICE

12 MAY, TIMES VARY, £5 - £6

This popular Sunday show has resident Irish funnyman Michael Redmond at the helm.

RED RAW

6-28 MAY, 8:30PM, £3

Legendary new material night with up to 10 acts. Every Monday in Edinburgh and Tuesday in Glasgow.

THE THURSDAY SHOW

2-30 MAY, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

Start the weekend early with five comedians.

THE SATURDAY SHOW

4-25 MAY, TIMES VARY, £17.50

The big weekend show with five comedians.

THE FRIDAY SHOW

3-31 MAY, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

The big weekend show with five comedians.

GLASGOW KIDS COMEDY CLUB

5 MAY, 3:00PM, £4

The Stand Comedy Club presents a live stand-up show for younger fans every month.

MIDWEEK COMEDY CABARET

8 MAY, 8:30PM, £5 - £6

Midweek comedy showcase.

BANK HOLIDAY SPECIAL

5 & 26 MAY, 8:30PM, £9 - £10

Celebrate the Bank Holiday in style with a night of top comedy.

COMEDIAN RAP BATTLES

Resident host Julia Sutherland introduces a variety of stand-up comedians from the Scottish circuit delivering all new material every Wednesday.

YESBAR VIRGINS: COMEDY SUNDAY SCHOOL

5 MAY-2 JUN, 8:00PM, £3

A selection of five fledgling comedians do their best to win over the audience and graduate Yesbar’s Comedy Sunday School.

THE EARLY SHOW

3 MAY-1 JUN, 7:30PM, £10

Resident MC Viv Gee hosts a weekend comedy club every Friday and Saturday, with some of the best comedians on the circuit.

Edinburgh Comedy Festival Theatre HORMONAL HOUSEWIVES

19 MAY, 7:30PM, PRICES VARY

Vicki Michelle, Josephine Partridge and Julie Coombe muse on the joys (and otherwise) of being a 21stcentury woman.

Monkey Barrel Comedy Club SPONTANEOUS SHERLOCK

2, 16 & 30 MAY, 7:00PM, £5

An entirely improvised Sherlock Holmes comedy play from Scotland’s hottest improv troupe.

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY’S BIG FRIDAY SHOW

3 MAY-1 JUN, 7:00PM, £10 - £12

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

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY’S BIG SATURDAY SHOW

4-25 MAY, 7:00PM, £14

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

TOP BANANA

1-29 MAY, 7:00PM, £0 - £3

Monkey Barrel’s comedy competition for new folk on the scene, hosted by Liam Withnail every Wednesday.

PROJECT X

7, 14 & 28 MAY, 7:00PM, £0 - £3

Iain Campbell hosts an experimental and new ideas alternative comedy showcase.

PETER PANCAKES’ COMEDY EXTRAVAGANZA

13 MAY, 7:30PM, FREE

Phil O’Shea brings a handpicked selection of riotous lols to Monkey Barrel on the second Monday of the month.

SPONTANEOUS POTTER

9, 23 & 29 MAY, TIMES VARY, £5

20 MAY, 7:00PM, £5

CABARET FROM ELSEWHERE

Catherine Bohart has some new jokes she’d like to try.

Elsewhere is a troupe of artists, musicians and circus performers.

Find them staging shows, telling stories or playing music and games anywhere people gather in celebration.

19-20 MAY, 8:30PM, £17

27 MAY, 7:00PM, £5

CATHERINE BOHART: WORK IN PROGRESS

16 MAY, 6:00PM, £3 - £4

SAM AVERY: THE LEARNER PARENT

A million nappies, Peppa Pig episodes and a head-full of hair loss later, Sam Avery shares all the lows, highs and hilarious in-betweens of his experiences of first-time parenthood.

MONKEY NUT LIVE

A monthly round-up featuring sketch, character, musical and stand-up comedy all from the minds of Joe McTernan, Megan Shandley and Jojo Sutherland.

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY’S BIG SUNDAY SHOW

5-26 MAY, 7:00PM, £0 - £5

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

May 2019

The Basement Theatre THE COMEDY SHOW

3-25 MAY, 8:00PM, £10 - £12

Bringing you top notch line ups from the best in the world of comedy for a side-splitting evening every Friday and Saturday at 8pm.

MUM’S THE WORD

10 MAY, 1:00PM, £9 - £10

A comedy gig designed for parents with babies hosted by comedian and mum, Katie Mulgrew.

THE COMEDY SHOW: NEW SH*T

2 & 22 MAY, 8:00PM, FREE

The Comedy Show’s wee sister, where old pros and new talent try out fresh material for free.

Bringing you the best and brightest of the comedy scene, showcasing brand new gags alongside tried and tested material.

SONNET YOUTH

16 MAY, 8:00PM, £5

6 MAY, 8:30PM, £3

Comedian improv battle.

Join Jill Cowley, Steven Millar, Phil O’Shea and Ben Verth for a caffeinated buzz of an afternoon stand-up and improv show every Sunday.

9 MAY, 8:00PM, £6

The country’s best comedians battle it out.

MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV

I SCREAM SUNDAYS

BELTER COMEDY

A brand new Harry Potter play from some of Edinburgh’s most top notch improv wizards.

1 MAY, 8:30PM, £4 - £6

21 MAY, 7:00PM, £12

Quick, hide! The Fringe favourite returns with a brand-new hour of extraordinary absurdist character comedy nonsense. Just terrific.

Blam blam!

YESBAR VIRGINS

Glasgow Comedy

JOHN-LUKE ROBERTS: ALL I WANNA DO IS...

Sonnet Youth is a spoken word house party curated and hosted by Kevin P. Gilday and Cat Hepburn.

SCOTT GIBSON AND PALS (TRY NEW JOKES)

BANK HOLIDAY SPECIAL 5 & 26 MAY, 8:30PM, £9 - £10

Celebrate the Bank Holiday in style with a night of top comedy.

STU & GARRY’S FREE IMPROV SHOW

5-26 MAY, 1:30PM, FREE

Improvised comedy at its very best every Sunday.

VIVA LA SHAMBLES

1 MAY, 8:30PM, £4 - £5

Anarchic comedy mayhem from Scotland’s finest young acts.

BONA FIDE

14 MAY, 8:30PM, £5 - £6

New comedy show with a different theme every month.

JOJO SUTHERLAND AND SUSAN MORRISON: FANNY’S AHOY!

26 MAY, 5:30PM, £4 - £5

Set sail with the award-winning grand dames of Scottish comedy.

THE END OF THE WORLD SHOW

15 MAY, 8:30PM, £5 - £7

Armageddon is not so much nigh as teabagging the world in the face. So now that we’ve bought the tickets to Hell in a handcart and this really is the end of civilisation, surely we can still find the time to trivialise it?

BENEFIT IN AID OF ROWAN ALBA HOMELESS CHARITY

7 MAY, 8:30PM, £8

Proceeds go towards Rowan Alba, a Scottish charity that works with at risk, predominantly homeless, people in Edinburgh, Perth and Kinross.

SCOTT CAPURRO IS COMING!

8 MAY, 8:30PM, £8 - £10

In his new show, Scott Capurro wrangles with rich friends, worthy yoga and the miseries of home ownership.

JAY LAFFERTY: WORK IN PROGRESS

22 MAY, 8:30PM, £5 - £6

A new work in progress from Jay Lafferty, following a massive year in 2018, where she was nominated for Best Compere at The Scottish Comedy Awards and Best Comedy Show by Broadway World.

8 MAY, 8:00PM, £5

Join multi-award-winning comedian Scott Gibson and some handpicked comedy pals as they road test new material, half baked ideas, and ramble on about a story or two.

FRINGE PREVIEWS

11-26 MAY, TIMES VARY, £5

Some of the UK’s best comedians give you a sneak peak at their Fringe shows.

SO YOU THINK YOU’RE FUNNY: REGIONAL HEATS

19 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

The UK’s biggest and best comedy newcomer competition is back for its 32nd year, hosted by Scott Agnew.

Dundee Comedy Whitehall Theatre

JERRY SADOWITZ: MAKE COMEDY GRATE AGAIN

17 MAY, 7:30PM, £24.50

The man with no visible demographic returns to make you laugh while simultaneously depriving you of money.

The Edinburgh Playhouse

Glasgow Art

22-23 MAY, 8:00PM, £35.15

CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

MICHAEL MCINTYRE: BIG WORLD TOUR

Michael McIntyre is continuing his Big World Tour this spring and is warming up with shows around the UK.

The Queen’s Hall DANNY BAKER: GOOD TIME CHARLIE’S BACK

20 MAY, 6:30PM, £22 - £24.50

Danny Baker returns with a nationwide, high-principled, peppy series of one-night-stands.

The Stand Edinburgh RED RAW

6-28 MAY, 8:30PM, £3

Legendary new material night with up to 10 acts. Every Monday in Edinburgh and Tuesday in Glasgow.

THE THURSDAY SHOW

2-30 MAY, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

Start the weekend early with five comedians.

THE SUNDAY NIGHT LAUGH-IN

19 MAY, 8:30PM, £5 - £6

Chilled Sunday night comedy to see out the weekend.

THE SATURDAY SHOW

4-25 MAY, TIMES VARY, £17.50

The big weekend show with five comedians.

THE FRIDAY SHOW

3-31 MAY, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

The big weekend show with five comedians.

SHADI HABIB ALLAH: FREE REIN

1 MAY-2 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Shadi Habib Allah’s exhibition at CCA explores the legacies of government welfare policies, examining how local areas adapt and survive in response to changes of city planning and strategy over time.

EMILIA BEATRIZ: DECLARATIONS ON SOIL AND HONEY

4 MAY-30 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Emilia Beatriz draws on ongoing research between Scotland and Puerto Rico in sites connected by military occupation, land struggle and environmental toxicity.

RHONA MÜHLEBACH: LOCH LONG

4-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

In this solo exhibition, Rhona Mühlebach turns her attention to the role played by ecology in narrative construction.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS

5-6 MAY, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

A showcase of projects, prints and physical artworks produced by students studying Digital Art, Animation, New Media Art and Interaction Design.

Art

David Dale Gallery and Studios

ROLF NOWOTNY: DEMENTIA

2-11 MAY, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

Danish artist Rolf Nowotny presents a new work based around the subject of dementia.

Glasgow Print Studio

SCOTT CAMPBELL: TWENTY YEARS OF MONOPRINTS

1 MAY-7 JUN, TIMES VARY, PRICES VARY

A retrospective exhibition of monotypes by master printmaker Scott Campbell showing progression in style and skill.

FEATURED ARTIST: ELKE FINKENAUER

3 MAY-2 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

New works in print.

GoMA

STALKING THE IMAGE: MARGARET TAIT AND HER LEGACY

1-5 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

This exhibition provides an opportunity to honour Tait’s achievements in her centenary year alongside work by nine contemporary artists and filmmakers, many of whom have been inspired by Tait.

Mary Mary EMILY MAE SMITH

1-25 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

New York-based, Texas-born artist Emily Mae Smith presents new work at Mary Mary.

Platform TIMEFIELD

1-25 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

A cross-art installation developed by six older artists – Ian Cameron, Kate Clayton, Frank McElhinney, Annie Peel, Lesley Wilson and John Wills – weaving together stories of memory and forgetting, of nature and ageing.

RGI Kelly Gallery

FRASER TAYLOR: STAGE

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

Fraser Taylor is a Glasgow-based interdisciplinary visual artist whose studio practice is rooted in drawing.

SWG3 FIELD NOTES

1-4 MAY, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, FREE

For her first solo show in Glasgow, Edinburgh-based artist Stephanie Mann will be presenting a series of screenprints informed by Field Notes, a new text also written

by Mann.

YARDWORKS FESTIVAL 2019

11-12 MAY, 11:00AM – 8:00PM, £0 - £5

Scotland’s only graffiti and street art festival returns to SWG3.

The Glasgow Art Club LACHLAN GOUDIE: SHIPYARD

11 MAY-7 JUN, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

An exhibition capturing the work, vibrancy and renewed optimism at shipyards on the Clyde and Forth, created by renowned Scottish artist and broadcaster, Lachlan Goudie.

The Lighthouse REFLECTING MACKINTOSH COLLECTION

1 MAY-16 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Craft Design House presents a bespoke collection of original pieces by designer makers, celebrating Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s 150th anniversary.

V&A: WOMAN’S HOUR CRAFT PRIZE

1-26 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

The Woman’s Hour Craft Prize is the most comprehensive of its kind, established to find and celebrate the most innovative and exciting craft practitioner or designermaker resident in the UK today.

FOLLOW THE THREADS

1-27 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

A rare opportunity to see a selection of the Scottish made patterns, designs and fabrics that furnished and dressed a large part of the world in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

The Modern Institute

ANDREW KERR: MIST AT THE PILLARS

1-11 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

New work by Glasgow-based artist Andrew Kerr.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

JEREMY DELLER: EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE, AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY OF BRITAIN 1984-1992

2-11 MAY, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

Conceptual, video and installation artist, Jeremy Deller presents a new work at The Modern Institute.

SPENCER SWEENEY: THE PASTELS

2-11 MAY, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

New York-based artist, musician, DJ and club owner Spencer Sweeney presents new work at The Modern Institute.

Tramway

PIA CAMIL: BARA BARA BARA

1 MAY-23 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Tramway presents the first solo exhibition in Scotland by Mexico City-based artist Pia Camil. This immersive installation hosts new and existing textile sculptures which visitors are invited to inhabit and activate.

THE THEATRE OF ROBERT ANTON

4 MAY-30 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Tramway presents an exhibition of the extraordinary theatrical puppets, props and drawings of the late artist Robert Anton (1949– 1984), marking the first time this incredible archive of Anton’s work has been seen in the UK.

Dovecot Studios ORLA KIELY: A LIFE IN PATTERN

1 MAY-29 JUN, 10:30AM – 5:30PM, £0 - £9

This exhibition offers a privileged insight into Orla Kiely’s world, and explores the story of pattern and how some designs can come to epitomise the style of their time.

Edinburgh College of Art ECA PERFORMANCE COSTUME SHOW 2019

17-18 MAY, TIMES VARY, £13.68

Catch a catwalk of performance costumes created by ECA students for theatre, film, opera and dance.

Arusha Gallery

CASPER WHITE: AND YOU DANCED

1-5 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

Casper White’s paintings on aluminium and zinc are some of the best in contemporary portraiture.

He recently won the prestigious BP Portrait Travel Award.

PIPPA GATTY: AGAINST THE FALL OF THE NIGHT

10-27 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

Dark and small in scale, Gatty’s oil paintings are an exploration of time and space - an intimate invitation into an unsettling world with resonances rooted in nature.

City Art Centre

IN FOCUS: SCOTTISH PHOTOGRAPHY

1-12 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

In Focus: Scottish Photography showcases the City Art Centre’s photographic collections, charting the development of fine art photography in Scotland from the 19th century to present day.

VICTORIA CROWE: 50 YEARS OF PAINTING

18 MAY-13 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

Embracing every aspect of her practice, this exhibition of Victoria Crowe’s work will feature over 150 paintings, stemming from youthful student works to the assured, timeless landscapes and portraits of recent years.

Collective Gallery

PETRA BAUER AND SCOT-PEP: WORKERS!

1 MAY-30 JUN, 10:00AM – 4:00PM, FREE

Workers! is a new film resulting from a long-term collaboration between Collective, HER Film, Swedish artist and filmmaker Petra Bauer and SCOT-PEP, a sex-worker led organisation in Scotland.

KATIE SHANNON: THE LAST SONG FOR A WATERBABY

1-5 MAY, 10:00AM – 4:00PM, FREE

Katie Shannon moves between sound, image, print, sculpture and video to explore the alliances and collective experiences that form on dancefloors.

IMPRINT

1-12 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

Highlighting the breadth of innovation in printmaking and multiples within the RSA membership, Imprint will show new, innovative practices alongside historic processes.

FRAGMENTS OF FORM

1-12 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

A retrospective exhibition of the pioneering printmaker and collagist Philip Reeves RSA (1931-2017).

Scottish Embassy Gallery National Gallery THE GLOW IS REAL of Modern Art 3 MAY-2 JUN, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, FREE

Rhona Foster and Meg Jenkins present a new video and performance installation.

Ingleby Gallery THE GATES OF ONOMATOPOEIA

1 MAY-13 JUL, 11:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

A new exhibition of drawings, sculptures and text by Charles Avery representing aspects of a lifelong project called The Islanders.

ANDY WARHOL AND EDUARDO PAOLOZZI: I WANT TO BE A MACHINE

1 MAY-2 JUN, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Taking its theme from a muchquoted remark by Andy Warhol, this exhibition examines Warhol’s and Paolozzi’s work, showing how they captured images from photography and advertisements.

Jupiter Artland

Scottish National Portrait Gallery

18 MAY-14 JUL, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

1 MAY-27 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

DANIEL LIE: THE NEGATIVE YEARS

The culmination of a two-year research partnership focusing on decentring human agency in favour of other actors in our shared ecological and emotional field.

Museum of Childhood BRINGING UP BABY

1 MAY-29 SEP, TIMES VARY, FREE

Edinburgh Art

Royal Scottish Academy RSA

A new exhibition exploring the choices and challenges faced by parents, featuring a range of objects from the museum’s collection.

National Museum of Scotland ROBOTS

1-5 MAY, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, £0 - £10

From early mechanised human forms to today’s cutting-edge technology, this major exhibition reveals our 500-year quest to make machines human, featuring more than 100 objects.

FRONT ROW: ECA FASHION SHOW 2019 23 MAY, TIMES VARY, £16.32

ECA’s traditional fashion show gets a whole new look, seating every audience member on the ‘front row’ in order to shake up the idea of hierarchies in fashion.

BODY BEAUTIFUL: DIVERSITY ON THE CATWALK

23 MAY-20 OCT, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Discover how today’s fashion industry is challenging perceptions and championing alternative ideals of beauty on the catwalk, in advertising, editorial and behind the camera.

Open Eye Gallery

BRITA GRANSTRÖM: RHUBARB & ROCKPOOLS

3-27 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

In her new exhibition of works on canvas, Brita Granström presents delightful domestic interiors alongside wild all-weather landscapes inspired by her seaside home in the Borders.

MICK MANNING: NEAR THE BEAR NORTH

3-25 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

In conjunction with the launch of his new illustrated ABC book Near the Bear North, Mick Manning’s solo exhibition of the same title is a lyrical mix of works on paper.

FELICITY WARBRICK: TRACES

3-27 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

An exhibition of drawings and woodcuts focusing on preserving the traces of human existence through the depiction of everyday objects.

Patriothall Gallery

THE MODERN PORTRAIT

A display collating paintings, sculptures and works from the Portrait Gallery’s twentiethcentury collection, feat. a variety of well-known faces, from Ramsay Macdonald to Alan Cumming, Tilda Swinton to Danny McGrain.

HEROES AND HEROINES

1-31 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

A re-examination of major Scottish figures which questions our habit of framing history around individuals and idols.

ART AND ANALYSIS: TWO NETHERLANDISH PAINTERS WORKING IN JACOBEAN SCOTLAND

1 MAY-26 JAN 20, TIMES VARY, FREE

A small exhibition focusing on two 17th century artists, Adrian Vanson and Adam de Colone, showcasing a group of paintings which have been examined by paintings conservator Dr Caroline Rae, along with the findings from her research.

IN FOCUS: THE EXECUTION OF CHARLES I

1 MAY-26 JAN 20, TIMES VARY, FREE

An exhibition centred around a painting of the execution of Charles I – based on eye-witness accounts and contemporary engravings – by an unknown Dutch artist.

THE REMAKING OF SCOTLAND | NATION, MIGRATION, GLOBALISATION 1760-1860

1 MAY-21 JUN 20, TIMES VARY, FREE

An exhibition exploring the lives and careers of the Scots behind the period of dramatic change between 1760 and 1860, when Scotland rapidly attained a central role in European cultural life and in Britain’s industrial and imperial expansion. It documents the material and artistic benefits of their achievements, while also confronting the darker shadows they cast.

ARTIST ROOMS: WOODMAN, ARBUS AND MAPPLETHORPE

1 MAY-20 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

Celebrating the work of three of the twentieth century’s most influential photographers, with a particular focus on self-portraiture and representation.

THE LONG LOOK

25 MAY-27 OCT, TIMES VARY, FREE

The Long Look is a collaboration between the painter Audrey Grant and the photographer and printmaker Norman McBeath.

Stills

AMBIT: PHOTOGRAPHIES FROM SCOTLAND

1 MAY-2 JUN, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

AMBIT is an exhibition of work celebrating new and diverse approaches to photographic image making in Scotland.

HUNGRY GHOST ENGINES

4-19 MAY, 12:00PM – 6:00PM, FREE

An exhibition by two Scottish artists, as the second part of a project that started in Japan in 2018.

Listings

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Summerhall

FRAG'M NT (TERRA NON-FIRMA)

1-19 MAY, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Frag'm nt (Terra non-firma) brings together two recent recipients of Lateral Lab’s Robert Callender International Residency for Young Artists, Russell Beard and Stephen Kavanagh.

LOUISE MACKENZIE: PITHOS (ONE POSSIBLE STORY OF OUR LIVELY MATERIAL)

1-19 MAY, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

Works in film, installation and participatory performance reimagine the myth of Pandora for the biotechnological era.

AURÉLIE FONTAN: TENSENGRITY

1-19 MAY, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

The Fruitmarket Gallery SENGA NENGUDI

1-26 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

The first solo institutional exhibition of the work of Senga Nengudi outside the United States brings together pioneering sculpture, photography and documentation of performance from 1969 to the present, including recreations of work not seen since the 1970s and a major new installation.

The Skylark Portobello JO TENNANT: PLUNGE

1 MAY-3 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

Tensegrity demonstrates the positive combination of craft and technology, essentially based on science imagery and disciplines.

An exhibition from a winter sea swim in Portobello.

4-31 MAY, 11:00AM – 6:00PM, FREE

DCA: Dundee Contemporary Arts

PAST FORWARD. STORIES OF URBAN SCOTLAND

An interactive journey through the history of Scotland’s towns and cities, allowing you to experience Shetland’s Second World War defences, get an inside look at Ayr’s medieval St John’s Tower and test your skateboarding skills.

Talbot Rice Gallery BORDERLINES

1-4 MAY, TIMES VARY, FREE

Borderlines is a group exhibition that gives form to the conceptual, geo-political, economic and cultural impacts of borders.

TRADING ZONE 2019

25 MAY-22 JUL, TIMES VARY, FREE

Trading Zone 2019 will reflect work from second year to PhD level students at University of Edinburgh’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

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Listings

The McManus

AS WE SEE IT: TWENTIETH CENTURY SCOTTISH ART

1 MAY-22 DEC, TIMES VARY, FREE

Exploring the innovative and diverse approaches artists have taken in their creative practice.

Whether representing the real world, abstracting elements from it or depicting a realm from the imagination, each artwork is unique and individual.

WISE WAYS: TRAVELS OF A DUNDEE DOCTOR

1 MAY-25 AUG, TIMES VARY, FREE

Thanks to a loan from the British Library, this exhibition reunites the maps and objects collected by physician and surgeon Dr Thomas Alexander Wise.

V&A Dundee MAEVE REDMOND

Dundee Art

1 MAY-15 SEP 20, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

DAVID AUSTEN: UNDERWORLD

1 MAY-15 SEP 20, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

1 MAY-9 JUN, TIMES VARY, FREE

This exhibition will offer up a new constellation of work by British artist David Austen, bringing the breadth of his artistic practice to audiences in Scotland for the first time.

Generator Projects

THEY HAD FOUR YEARS (TH4Y) 2019

25 MAY-9 JUN, 12:00PM – 5:00PM, FREE

Annual group exhibition featuring newly commissioned work by recent graduates from art schools across Scotland.

A compelling piece of graphic design that unpacks the wider context around a 19th century trade catalogue by cast iron manufacturers Walter MacFarlane & Co. CIARA PHILLIPS

A new commission, championing the often-unseen process of making by evoking a moment suspended in time where vital decisions about materials and their composition are made.

SCOTTISH DESIGN GALLERIES

1 MAY-15 SEP 20, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, FREE

Explore the everyday relevance of design and how it improves our lives, experience the processes that underpin it and discover little-known stories of Scottish design with international impact.

VIDEOGAMES: DESIGN/PLAY/ DISRUPT

1 MAY-8 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM, TBC

Gain a unique insight into the design process behind a selection of groundbreaking contemporary videogames.

THE SKINNY

You’re a Vision With 2019’s Eurovision Song Contest within touching distance, we make a case for a queer and radical Eurovision

Words: Dafydd Jenkins Illustration: Julija Straizyte

I

n spite of its ‘apolitical’ stance, the Eurovision Song Contest has always been the stage for geopolitical struggle and ideological warfare. It can also be purveyor of progressive queer politics in the 21st century.

When questioned by the Metro newspaper earlier this year about the controversy surrounding Eurovision Song Contest 2019’s grand final being held in Israel, amid widespread boycott appeals to broadcasters and competing nations, contest host Assi Azar gave the PR-polished response expected of a man in his position: “leave the politics to the politicians.” It’s a politically neutral response mirrored in Eurovision’s set of guidelines: ‘the ESC [Eurovision Song Contest] is a non-political event […] the ESC shall in no case be politicised and/or instrumentalised.’ But Azar’s response may as well have been given at any time during the 63 year history of Europe’s biggest music competition, after which political controversy follows like thunder follows lightning.

Their self-imposed rules apparently don’t outlaw public alignment with political figures or ideologies. Eurovision 2018’s Israeli artist and contest winner Netta Barzilai (whose performance of her song Toy was full of questionable Orientalist imagery, but that’s another story) was later filmed in a congratulatory press conference alongside Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu (topped off with his stunning reproduction of her ‘trademark’ chicken dance, broadcast for the entire bemused planet to see).

The contest overwhelmingly relies on their LGBTQ+ viewership, yet still included Russian entries in recent years despite widespread condemnation of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s aggressively heterosexist government policy; the UK’s 2018 entry SuRie’s performance was disrupted by a serial anarchist stage invader; and it was alleged that Spanish military dictator Francisco Franco rigged London’s 1968 Eurovision, in which Spanish entry La, la, la by Massiel won out against UK entrant Cliff Richard’s Congratulations by a single point.

“ Eurovision is a sign of life in the dearth of live television events due to its spectacular campiness and unabashed queerness” Specific cases aside, geographical voting and international collusion have additionally dogged the competition for decades, an oft-referenced joke among commentators Graham Norton and the late Terry Wogan, cited as the latter’s reason for quitting the show altogether in 2008. Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned SuRie’s entry, Storm, placed 24th in 2018’s competition, making barely any traction with voters and the jury, with the exception of Ireland in the former category. Back then, it was felt that the UK received this flogging from the rest of Europe for its decision to leave the EU. Now, as Theresa May’s ‘nil points’ Brexit plan will surely disqualify her from returning to any

May 2019

future rounds, the long and arduous process of leaving the EU has since escalated into real fears of a hard border in Ireland, among other things.

All that said, it looks to be yet another unpopular year for the UK (this is to say nothing of its entry, Michael Rice’s gassy bloater Bigger Than Us).

Perhaps we’re destined to linger in the contest as a ghost haunts its former home, mournfully weeping Bucks Fizz’s Making Your Mind Up in the hopes that someone might notice and recall that glorious past.

Watching Eurovision today is an equally uncanny experience: a picture perfect postcard of European landmarks, with the ugly reality of emergent far-right extremism and political turmoil just out of frame. You may ask yourself, is this what complicity looks like?

Eurovision is prohibited from political involvement within the neat confines of its broadcast – ‘it’s all about the music’, is always the line – but it’s clearly had an uncomfortable relationship with politics throughout its history, often becoming a stage on which geopolitical struggles and ideological warfare play out. What’s more, fair criticisms of the contest’s half-hearted, self-ordained neutrality are usually dismissed as the whining of bleeding hearts, rather than being welcomed as preliminary comments to a wider discussion about the social responsibility of broadcasting alliances.

Now, at its heart, the singing competition is the ultimate example of a capitalist product, ostensibly conceived to fuel the twin European industries of music and tourism. The contest’s final often seems vaster and more brightly-lit than any Premier League football game, with a similar continental-scale hunger for competition intertwined with patriotism. But, in our current media landscape, where anyone from musicians to sports personalities are held to account for their personal politics and behaviour, is it unfeasible to

scrutinise the values and behaviour of a major commercial event that apparently stands for ‘human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, cultural diversity, tolerance and solidarity’?

All this said, despite the foul stench of aggressive centrism that surrounds everything it does, I love Eurovision. Admittedly, some of that love is ironic. Magisterially large corporate affairs are constantly misjudging what the people really want, often playing down to their audience. They fail to see that much of Eurovision’s viewership is hoping for some monumental live television slip-up, something to loop over and over again on their Twitter feeds. On this level, it’s very rarely ‘all about the music’.

The rest of my love for Eurovision is genuine admiration of its enduring uniqueness. Aside from the fact that it’s among the few remaining shared viewing experiences we have – true to the European Broadcasting Union’s founding principle of broadening the limits of television broadcasting technology – Eurovision is a sign of life in the dearth of live television events due to its spectacular campiness and unabashed queerness.

While these moments can be few and far between from year to year, when they do show, they elevate the contest to something more ostentatious than the Oscars, more quixotic than the BRIT Awards, and more cringe-inducing than Britain’s Got Talent; it’s positively life-affirming in its daft grandiosity. Eurovision is a contest in which glamorously-bearded Austrian drag artist Conchita Wurst and grotesquely-dressed Finnish hard rock act Lordi have earned winning entries. This year, Iceland’s self-identified anti-capitalist, leatherclad, BDSM-enthusiast techno punks Hatari will represent their country with their song Hatrið mun sigra (Hate Will Prevail), a genuinely frightening rallying call of those tired and defeated by the wave of far-right sentiment sweeping across Europe.

On numerous occasions, Hatari have stated

Music

that their mission is to, simply, “destroy capitalism”, as if capitalism was a literal Godzilla-sized creature wreaking havoc upon cities rather than a harmful and deeply ingrained economic system.

It’s utopian and rebellious, just as many socially conservative publications have pointed out. But, as theorist Jack (also known as Judith) Halberstam insightfully put it in The Queer Art of Failure, there may be something to learn from the likes of Hatari: “the politics of rebellion can be cast as immature, pre-Oedipal, childish, foolish, fantastical, and rooted in a commitment to failure. [But] they also offer us the real and compelling possibilities of animating revolt.”

“Animating revolt” is an admittedly unlikely hope for Eurovision. Covert rebellion exists throughout the contest in slight jabs at the status quo, reminders that we ourselves are not static but pliable, liable to change at will, if only we could imagine it. It’s only a small step further to imagine alternative nationhoods, maybe even people and nations without borders altogether. It presents alternative forms of knowledge, with all the accessibility of a light entertainment show on Saturday night television.

Despite its corporate interests and aggressive centrism, we must continually hope that Eurovision works against its own knowledge.

At its very best, it presents an unwitting audience with societal alternatives and other forms of knowing and being. True, these weird and wonderful acts may be played for laughs or dismissed as ludicrous, but their overwhelming success at Eurovision may hold that something else is at hand. Perhaps these outsider figures speak to us on a deeper level, to a political situation we truly desire.

The Eurovision Song Contest 2019 takes place on 18 May in Tel Aviv, Israel and will air in the UK on BBC One theskinny.co.uk/music

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