The Skinny October 2020

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October 2020 Issue 177

January 2020

Books

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Art January 2020

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The Skinny's support act playlist The Very Best — Warm Heart of Africa AKUA — This Woman's Work Angie McMahon — Slow Mover Self Esteem — The Best Frank Sidebottom — Complete works Bossy Love — Sweat It Out Free Love (fka Happy Meals) — If You Want Me Now Young Fathers — Toy Amber Mark — Love Me Right Sylvan Esso — Die Young Everything Everything — Kemosabe Placebo — Bruise Pristine S Club Juniors — Complete works Cosmo Sheldrake, Andrea Vargas — Rich Creeper — Winona Forever

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

Issue 177, October 2020 © Radge Media Ltd. Get in touch: E: hello@theskinny.co.uk

October 2020

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.

Get in touch to find out more.

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printed on 100% recycled paper

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Championing creativity in Scotland

Meet the team We asked – What part of Lockdown 1 do you hope to repeat in Lockdown 2: Lockdown Harder?

Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief "Just figuring out what I'm going to stockpile this time round."

Peter Simpson Digital Editor, Food & Drink Editor "Continued community solidarity and/or another run of exclusively watching slightly weird documentaries."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor "The existential dread!!

More please!!!!!!"

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist "Not contracting COVID-19 and dying a painful death is top of the list, although I'll not say no to another 'Eat Out to Help Out'."

Tallah Brash Music Editor "Bake more things I haven't baked before.

I'm currently considering whether or not to do all the weekly Great British Bake Off challenges."

Nadia Younes Clubs Editor "Recreating festivals at home (top tip: using bin bags as ponchos)."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor "Getting even better at Zelda and finally perfecting winged eyeliner."

Katie Goh Intersections Editor, "Animal Crossing: New Horizons this time with bonus Seasonal Affective Disorder."

Eliza Gearty Theatre Editor "The end of it."

Heather McDaid Books Editor "Watching Schitt's Creek on the limited clock before my baby realises it's not kid TV."

Production

Rachael Hood Art Director, Production Manager "Stumbling across parts of Edinburgh I had no idea existed through long walks in the sunshine.

Please, please be a sunny autumn/winter."

Adam Benmakhlouf Art Editor "A feeling of unkempt simplicity that felt like an fantasy 1970s."

Sales & Business

Fiona Hunter Designer "The daily game of Ready Steady Cook to try and assemble some weird ingredients into a delicious dinner."

Sandy Park Commercial Director "Only leaving the house to buy wine."

Tom McCarthy Creative Projects Manager "Hours and hours and HOURS of video games."

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "Rewatching Community again.

Cool. Cool cool cool."

Laurie Presswood General Manager "Breaking my ankle (for the attention)."

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Editorial Words: Rosamund West

T

October 2020 — Chat

his month is The Skinny’s 15th birthday. We had been planning to have an epic month-long party to mark the occasion – loads of partnerships lined up, working with different artforms across different Scottish locations. It was definitely going to be amazing. But, like everything else, that can’t happen now. So we’re going to have a really, really super sweet 16 in 2021. Probably. What is certainty?

For a pared-down but perhaps more long-lasting celebration, we’ve teamed up with 1 of 100 to launch our very first merch – a limited edition t-shirt featuring this month’s beautiful cover illustration by Jacky Sheridan. The message is a distillation of our thoughts at this time. The constantly shifting regulations and restrictions around our daily lives can be vertigo-inducing. But we know that the arts are essential, and we can maybe help them pull through (and they us) by showing up – engaging with digital programmes, watching online screenings, buying albums, paying for online performances.

With that in mind, we continue our exploration of the creative endeavours you can experience right now. First up, Tramway and The Common Guild have each embarked on series of digital artworks involving movement, audio, music and much more – they have fully embraced the current restrictions and continue to present urgent, fascinating work within these new forms. Playwright Joe McCann has been commissioned by the Tron to develop a new verbatim work around the oft-denied racism in Scotland, Things My White Friends Say. He’s looking for participants whose anonymised perspectives could form part of the finished piece.

The comedy scene has always been sorely neglected by governmental arts funding, a fact which is brought into sharp focus now as they are ignored in cultural bailout funds. Mark Nelson, Scottish comedy advocate and The Stand compere, discusses what’s next as their campaigning starts to turn the tide.

More than three years on from their live show in The Caves (presented by this very magazine), Timothy London and Law Holt tell us about the trials and tribulations of releasing their debut album as IKLAN. Scottish Queer International Film

Festival are presenting this year’s programme online, with queer dystopia, stories of QTIPOC activism and queer horror icons setting the record straight.

Digital presentation even extended to this year’s degree shows, with the art schools rising to the occasion to completely rethink their approach to graduate display. In our Showcase, ECA alumna Tayo Adekunle’s powerful photography series Reclamation of the Exposition explores the commodification, fetishisation and sexualisation of the black female body.

Another strand to the degree show activity was a new critical writing prize, which we were honoured to partner. You can read the winner’s text on the art review pages.

As cinema continues to be an actual thing that exists in the physical world (or does it?), we talk to some directors about their new releases. Rose Glass discusses her confident debut, the claustrophobic psychological thriller Saint Maud; Josephine Decker introduces Shirley, which imagines a fictitious period in the life of celebrated horror writer Shirley Jackson; and we talk to Peter Mackie Burns about Rialto, which follows a middleaged Dublin dock worker going through a crisis.

Even at our reduced size, we’ve packed a lot into this here magazine. We also look at the rise in gardening among locked down millennials and Gen Zs, explore how the internet has impacted communication for autistic people, take a browse through a big pile of Halloweeny books, meet the people behind a pair of new queer sober spaces, poke about Newbarns’ shiny new brewery. Loraine James tells us about her latest release on Hyperdub, we give you a rundown of the Scottish Album of the Year longlist, ICYMI finally watched Nighty Night and Local Heroes explore the ancient Indian Miniature Painting practices being employed by Glasgow designer Shweta Mistry.

Finally, as instructed by the crowdfunder supporter who wrote, “The idea of The Skinny not coming back is unthinkable.

No other publication/site in Scotland covers the things I love better. Who else is going to review every single Aidan Moffat project?” we close with The Skinny on… Aidan Moffat.

Cover Artist Jacky Sheridan Jacky Sheridan is an illustrator and a displaced Dubliner who uses her unique humour and a high contrast illustrative style to create expressive, fun, bold and engaging work across a broad range of commercial and personal clients.

You can check her work out at jackysheridan.com or @jackysheridan on Instagram.

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Love Bites

Love Bites: On TikTok Dance Duets This month’s columnist reflects on how TikTok dances became a language between her and her sister during lockdown Words: Eilidh Akilade

I

October 2020 — Chat

learned to spell my sister’s name before my own. She’d sing each letter, swinging her hips to the rhythm, dancing around the living room. I’d copy every letter and every step, barely realising it was hers and not my own.

Seventeen years or so later, during lockdown, she wanted to do it all again. But TikTok dances are hard and I have little coordination so we gave up early on in those slow, heavy weeks. But still, my sister clung to the app – I’d hear its erratic tones, softened by the wall between us. The sound became a constant and a comfort.

It started out as a joke. She’d reach over from her corner of the couch, shoving something relatable in my face. But, slowly, each TikTok became more specific. Thanks to an algorithm or some sisterly bond, we found ourselves laughing over 2007 EastEnders, natural hair, our absent father – all things we had come to know together.

As life began to unfold itself once more, TikTok became a lens to understand each other.

Sometime in August, I sat crying at the kitchen table. “You know, there’s a TikTok for this,” she said, passing me her phone. She rearranged my misery into a different form, a different genre – one that was easier to hold.

At 1am she sends me a TikTok – it’s how we talk now. We’re busy and no longer live together, and these few second-hand seconds say more than empty politeness. It plays, something about Replay (Shawty’s Like a Melody), and it’s not particularly funny but, to us, it sounds like those days where she clung to her Paul’s Boutique hoodie and I to her. For a moment, we share a sound and a vision.

We share a past and a present.

Crossword Solutions Across 1. FIONA HYSLOP 6. GUERNICA 8. UPROAR 9. OIL 10. SOUR 11. (AREAS) 13. BESTOW 16. LOCALLY 18. FIASCOS 20. GARNER 23. VEGAN 25. EASE 26. IMF 27. TRAVEL 28. SUPERIOR 29. WETHERSPOON Down 1. FREELANCER 2. ORNATE 3. ACCESS ALL AREAS 4. SUBURB 5. OPERAS 6. GHOST LIGHTS 7. CROWDSURFER 12. (ALL) 14. ECA 15. TECHNICIAN 17. LIE 19. IRE 21. NOVICE 22. RELISH 23. VENUES 24. GAZEBO

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Heads Up

As Scotland dips in and out of quarantine, we've rounded up some of the best online and in-person events happening in October - from film festivals to art shows, there's something no matter your lockdown status.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz Photo: Genevieve Stevenson

Scottish Queer International Film Festival

Heads Up

Online, 5 - 18 Oct 2020’s Scottish Queer International Film Festival has moved entirely online, with an unmissable programme of films and events that can be streamed from anywhere in the UK. Highlights include Fluidø, a speculative feature set in a post-AIDS world, and Water Makes Us Wet, part of their Queer Ecologies strand.

Tickets are priced on a sliding scale and most films can be accessed throughout the festival’s run.

Fluidø

Comprised of two short plays – Strange Rocks by Oliver Emanuel and Undocumented by Anita Vettesse – Emergence is a brand new theatre project starring Simon Donaldson and Ashley Smith and conceived by Mull Theatre Director Beth Morton, exploring themes of isolation, connection, loss, and change. The plays will be staged and filmed in Mull Theatre ready for their two-week digital run: find tickets on their website.

Photo: Rod Penn and Andrew Perry

Photo: Sarah Darling

Online, 13 - 27 Oct

Pollyanna

Emergence

Riddles of the Sphinx

Caroline Walker, Hoovering, First Thing, December, 2020, Oil on linen, 210 x 160cm

Photo: Amy Muir

Photo: Dean Gray

October 2020 — Chat

Caroline Walker brings an artistic gaze to what has been normally rendered invisible: the daily, domestic lives of women and the social, economic, racial, and gendered implications that such labour has. In this deeply personal series, and her first exhibition with Ingleby Gallery, Walker turns to her own mother as a painterly subject, documenting her quotidian tasks with an evocative tenderness.

Photo: British Film Institute

Photo: Peter Mallet; Courtesy of the Artist and Grimm

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, 3 Oct - 19 Dec

Online, 16 Oct, 8pm Scottish folk artist James Yorkston is putting on a one-off live streamed gig as a pandemic-friendly alternative to his regular Tae Sip Wi’ a Fifer folk club night. Yorkston will be joined by cult musician Withered Hand and Scottish Album of the Year nominee Kris Drever, assembling some of the best sounds coming out of Scotland’s folk scene.

Nab your ticket in advance!

Kris Drever

Emergence

Caroline Walker: Janet

Tae Sup wi' a Fifer

Women in Translation: Lighthouse Books Reading Group

Online, 1 - 4 Oct, various times Queer cabaret collective Pollyanna are back for their first real life show, showcasing everything from drag performance by Pollyfilla to soft queer rap from one person cabaret troupe Rhys’s Pieces. The set will be performed and filmed in one take at Edinburgh’s Paradise Palms, and available to stream over four nights: head to their website for tickets.

A Is for Avant-Garde, Z is for Zero: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen Cooper Gallery, Dundee, 6-31 Oct Originally due to open mere days before the first lockdown, Cooper Gallery is finally opening the doors on this groundbreaking exhibition. A one-of-a-kind retrospective, A is for Avant-Garde, Z is for Zero traces the work of renowned filmmakers and theorists Laura Mulvey (she of the female gaze fame) and Peter Wollen through the visual arts, bringing together various ground-breaking artist collaborations and responses.

Oktoberfest Pitt Market, Edinburgh, 2 - 4 Oct Photo: Peter Dibdin

Online, 19 Oct, 7pm

Pollyanna: A Real Life Show!

David Belingham, Earth Sun Moon

Bossy Love

Open Wide: Online Exhibition

SAY Award Ceremony

Peacock and the Worm, until 22 Oct

Online, 29 Oct, 7:30pm Women in Translation

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Barney's Beer

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Photo: Cameron Fitzsimmons

Bikini Body: LimbicTV Online, 24 Oct, 8pm

A brand new series of audiovisual shorts by Glasgow-based art house Cryptic, Sonic Bites broadcast at lunchtime on the second and fourth Thursday of every month. Táifēng and the Motorway Saint sees sound artist Mark Lyken explore the unheard voices of three Taiwanese cities. Tickets are at a pay-what-you-can rate, and should be bought in advance at musicglue.com/cryptic.

Bikini Body

Heads Up

Photo: Sam Drake; The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation

Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 24 Oct 2020 - 5 Sep 2021

Táifēng and the Motorway Saint

Photo: Vince Laws

A giant of cinematic history and the grandfather of modern special effects, Ray Harryhausen’s career spanned over 50 years and comprised ground-breaking films such as Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts. This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition brings together some of his most iconic designs and achievements, including never-before-seen concept sketches and stop motion models, to the newly reopened Modern Two.

Online, 22 Oct, 1pm

Photo: Mark Lyken

Brought to you by some of the best technicians and production specialists in Scotland, LimbicTV is a streaming channel built to showcase outstanding grassroots musical talent, with live streamed gigs presented several times a month. This exciting session features Bikini Body, the Edinburgh-based feminist punk band whose acerbic, wry lyrics are just the antidote to this infuriating year.

Sonic Bites: Táifēng and the Motorway Saint

Ray Harryhausen, Jason and the Argonauts Credit: Kavion Robinson

Scottish International Storytelling Festival Online and various venues, 17 - 31 Oct This year’s Scottish International Storytelling Festival is themed around water and brings together over one hundred performers from across Scotland and beyond to voyage through Scotland’s coasts and waterways.

Highlights include Nanny of the Maroons, the tale of Jamaican hero Queen Nanny who helped people fleeing enslavement on Scottish-owned plantations, and outdoor Storytelling Walks through the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Vince Laws, If The System Cripples You, You Must Cripple The System, A2 poster, 2020

Collective Observations: Not Going Back to Normal Online, 8 Oct, 6pm Not Going Back to Normal, commissioned by Collective Gallery and headed up by artists Harry Josephine Giles and Sasha Saben Callaghan, is a radical manifesto that explores how a post-pandemic art scene should be for disabled artists. With introductions by Giles and Callaghan and performances by artists from the project, this launch event is an unmissable moment in the world of Scottish art.

October 2020 — Chat

Nanny of the Maroons by by Mara Menzies and Apphia Campbell

Photo: Courtesy of Compass Gallery

Walking:Holding Screening Glasgow Zine Library, Online, 1 Oct - 1 Nov

Florilegium: A gathering of flowers Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, 16 Oct - 13 Dec

Gregor Smith, Loch Long Old Blind Dogs

Four Points: A Geographical Journey

Old Blind Dogs: Tradfest Spotlight Season

Compass Gallery, Glasgow, 3 Oct - 28 Nov

Online, 12 Oct, 8pm Walking:Holding

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Annalee Davis, As If The Entanglement Of Our Lives Did Not Matter

October 2020

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5 Meet the Team — 6 Editorial — 7 Love Bites — 8 Heads Up 12 Crossword — 38 Albums — 39 Film & TV — 40 Design — 42 Books 44 Art — 45 Comedy — 46 The Skinny On… Aidan Moffat

Features 15 The arts continue to fight for survival – and there’s no prospect of that struggle ending soon. We look at how you can SHOW UP FOR THE ARTS as restrictions tighten once again 16 The Common Guild’s In the Open and Tramway’s new Instagram-based Tramway TV offer a digital route into art 18 Playwright Joe McCann on his new verbatim piece Things My White Friends Say

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19 Scottish comedy advocate Mark Nelson on the future of live stand-up 20 IKLAN's Timothy London and Law Holt on their debut album 22 The mighty SQIFF, or Scottish Queer International Film Festival for the uninitiated, returns 24 Photographer Tayo Adekunle shares a Showcase of her thought-provoking self portraiture

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26 Daphne director Peter Mackie Burns returns with finegrained drama Rialto 27 Rose Glass introduces her claustrophobic psychological thriller Saint Maud 28 How lockdown has introduced a new generation to gardening 30 We meet the people behind a pair of new queer, sober spaces

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On the website...

The latest on this year’s SAY Award ahead of the ceremony this month, a full recap of Glasgow Short Film Festival, and more film reviews (specifically, Summer of 85 and Saint Maud)

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Image Credits: (Left to right, top to bottom) Jacky Sheridan; Kemono L. Riot; Kirsztián Horváth; Trudy Stade; Zeinab Batchelor; Fluidø; Tayo Adekunle; Rialto; Saint Maud; Fiona Smith; Lesley Imgart; Miranda Stuart

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October 2020 — Contents

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34 A look at 2020’s book releases that capture the Halloween season – from the power of superstition to the monsters all around

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Support The Skinny If you like this month’s cover, you’re going to love this T-shirt – our support drive is back and this time it’s got merch

A

s part of our ongoing fundraising efforts, we’ve teamed up with Glasgow-based slow fashion exponents 1 of 100 to release this limited edition design. Limited, as you may have guessed, to 100.

It’s our 15th birthday this month – we were going to do a whole thing, there were going to be events with different partners from across the cultural spectrum every weekend throughout the month, it was really going to be very good.

Unfortunately, you know, the mass curtailment of civil liberties etc. So we’re having a more muted affair, and hopefully doing the grand bash for our Sweet 16. We’d still like to mark the occasion though – so here is our very first purchasable merch, a T-shirt featuring our SHOW UP FOR THE ARTS message, as beautifully illustrated by Jacky Sheridan.

We’re working with 1 of 100 because they closely align with our values. They’re locally-based,

thoughtful in their ethical approach, they advocate for slow fashion. Their T-shirts use low-impact, organic cotton and manufacturing processes that minimise their environmental impact, using only renewable energy. Their T-shirts come from a supplier that’s built their business on social responsibility, paying a fair wage wherever they do business and FWF accredited (fairwear.org for more details on that). It’s been calculated that each of the T-shirts saves around 7kg of CO2e, and their products proudly carry a ‘Climate Neutral’ label.

They’ve got a long series of collaborations with luminaries ranging from Cosey Fanni Tutti to Chrissy Hynde via Ian Rankin. We’re really excited to be joining their ranks.

Our limited edition is available now, £35 from weare1of100.co.uk

The Skinny’s Pyramid Compilation We launched a compilation album last month, featuring some of the bands who were supposed to be playing our stage at Kelburn Garden Party this summer. Many have generously donated tracks so we can raise some money, taking advantage of Bandcamp Friday, the first Friday of the month when Bandcamp waive their fees. If you like music and supporting independent magazines, this one is for you – head to theskinnymag.bandcamp.com to pay what you can (suggested donation £7).

Here’s the tracklist in full: Moonsoup – Fucked Friday Edwin Organ – I’m Doing Good Miss Leading – Between Chances Katherine Aly – God Breed Kapil Seshasayee – The Item Girl Echo Machine – St Elmo Squiggles – Everything I Did Is Just Like Everything I’ve Done Slime City – Different (And Frequently Fake) Ears Fistymuffs – Hey You! Bikini Body – Jazzy Boi Swim School – Sway Free Love – The Dharma at Pollok Park Tupper Werewolf – All Sorts

Head to theskinnymag.bandcamp.com to buy your copy of the album

Across

October 2020 — Chat

1. Scotland's Culture Secretary (5,6) 6. One of Picasso's best-known paintings (8) 8. Public outrage (6) 9. Dead dinosaur goop, source of many international disputes (3) 10. Tart (4) 11. See 3 down 13. Confer - wet sob (anag) (6) 16. Best way to shop to support businesses in your area (7) 18. Disasters (7) 20. Gather or collect, especially praise (6) 23. One who shuns animal products entirely (5) 25. Facility (4) 26. Initials of the fictional espionage agency in the Mission Impossible films (3) 27. Go from A to B (6) 28. Better (8) 29. Parasitic pub chain - nowhere spot (anag) (11)

Compiled by George Sully

Down 1. A bravely self-employed worker (10) 2. Elaborately decorated (6) 3. (& 12 down & 11 across) What the label 'AAA' stands for, in the context of working in live entertainment (6,3,5) 4. Outlying residential area (6) 5. Classical dramatic works with a shitload of singing (6) 6. Lamps left on in an unoccupied theatre (5,6) 7. Performer or punter doing the ultimate trust fall off a stage (5-6) 12. See 3 down 14. The capital's art college, now part of Edinburgh University (initialism) (3) 15. Equipment wizard working in 23 down, without whom things wouldn't happen (10) 17. Speak untruths (3) 19. Rage (3) 21. Beginner (6) 22. Enjoy (6) 23. Places where things happen, now under threat (6) 24. Look, I don't know how to easily explain this one. It's like a small house in a garden or a park but with like just a roof? But not a shed? It's got a 'z' in it, hope that helps (6) Turn to page 7 for the solutions

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October 2020

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October 2020

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Support the Arts Illustration: Jacky Sheridan

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October 2020

ou could argue that our theme this month is our theme every month – our cover slogan is SHOW UP FOR THE ARTS. As you no doubt know, the cultural sector has taken, and continues to take, a real battering this year. We’re all in a position of surviving month-to-month, at the mercy of governmental policy that seemingly does not or will not comprehend the significance of the arts as a driver of employment and wellbeing.

Take this month’s issue as a gently-shouted reminder that your favourite artists and organisations are still out there, working away – we’ve taken a look at some of the ways you can engage with them, regardless of your lockdown status.

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Art

Exceptional Circumstance As concerts, exhibitions, performance and theatre remain public health risks, and for some no longer an option for the foreseeable, cultural organisations have been taking up the possibilities of the digital like never before Interview: Adam Benmakhlouf

October 2020 – Feature

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

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he Common Guild’s In the Open and Tramway’s new Instagram-based Tramway TV represent a gentle artistic intervention

by Glasgow arts spaces into the two most dominant channels of culture right now: online videos and podcasts.

“Tramway TV came through as a digital offering that wasn’t trying to be a replacement for anything,” says producer Claricia Parinussa, “but as a way to keep connected to artists and for artists to be able to stay connected to their practice and each other.”

Tramway TV’s intention to connect artists with each other comes to the fore in a new iteration of Ghost Dimensions, a work presented by Project X, a multi-disciplinary organisation based in Scotland platforming dance of the African and Caribbean Diaspora. For the Tramway TV project, they have brought Ghost Dimensions to the digital space, with a call and response process with four artists, responding to the first call. On the channel, there are replies to Project X’s first video from practitioners who pick up and form complex movement responses from the text prompts on their video, including: “our bodies/ hold/ histories/ harbour/ memory inherit/ trauma/ our surroundings/hold/ histories/harbour/memory/inherit/trauma”.

The videos themselves also give insights into the private practices of performers, during a time when public spaces for dance and expressive movement are almost entirely closed. “With artists like Christian Noelle Charles, she made an intimate and active performance to the camera as radical self-love.” Parinussa also fondly mentions the videos that Noelle Charles often shares through social media, offering glimpses into her dancing at home. “As a movement practitioner, you need to move… That can happen in the smallest space and that becomes your new parameter. Of course, you miss the space, but there’s been different ways that practitioners have gone about that.”

Speaking more about limits and different approaches to them, Parinussa brings up dance artist Aya Kobayashi’s Mother Tongue, “a beautiful new work she made with her daughter. She did some of her filming at home, then a space she was able to

Still from Aya Kobayishi, Mother Tongue, 2020

access.” In this work, Kobayashi allows a tender insight into her movements around and interactions with her young baby daughter. She picks up washing, breast-feeds, and at times she’s on her own, moving in circular and revolving motions, juxtaposing her movements with the revolutions of the washing machine. It’s a touching and sometimes mysterious (to some audiences, at least) vision of the routines and emotions of new motherhood.

While the artistic responses that have been brought together under Tramway TV vary in length from two to 40 minutes, and encompass movement practices along with artists’ moving image, The Common Guild’s format for In the Open concentrates on new sound works between 20 to 30 minutes in length. Nevertheless, within this format, they have invited artists to think expansively of the possibilities of sound, audio and music. One of the artists, Duncan Marquiss, describes his response to this open invitation: “I thought it would be interesting to do something that was essentially music but driven by the way I think about making art, starting from a question or a topic that I’m interested in and want to learn about through the process of making the work.”

Bringing a sense of awareness to listeners is one of the intentions of Marquiss’ work, Contact — 16 —

Call, which draws on his background as a musician in bands. In the work itself, Marquiss begins by listening to his immediate surroundings, especially the bird song that became more perceptible during the peak of lockdown. “Listening to bird calls and trying to mimic the bird calls – the pitch, the texture or the timbre – forced me to play very differently and get sounds out of the guitar that were new to me.” Through careful audio production, the track leaves sonic gaps and spaces for sound to come through at the same time as Marquiss’ multi-tonal, variegated guitar track.

Another of the new suite of commissioned works is Méduse, by artist Lauren Gault. An encounter with Victoria Park’s Fossil Grove during Gault’s lockdown exercise sparked a curiosity in the process of petrification as a way of thinking about how to relate sound and the kinds of works she makes as a sculptor. “When I was reading a lot more about the process of petrification, there’s a complete and explicit exchange that happens; it’s this solid ghost, a new thing in place [of what was there before]. It really [spoke to] a lot of things I was trying to push in sculpture... [and] chimed with the very slow kind of time during this global moment that was happening and infiltrating all of us.”

She continues: “I really liked the relationship

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Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Art

still from Project X presents Kemono L. Riot, Ghost Dimensions, 2020

that petrification as a process has with how I wanted to experience or how I wanted to make sound… I was thinking of that filling up of all your pores as the way that sound can relate to that.”

What emerges in Méduse is an intimate experience of hearing Gault’s voice nearby as she speaks a poetic and detailed text full of allusions and unpredictable association. At various points throughout, distinctive sonic layers and textures accumulate and dissipate, adding a material complexity to the listening experience.

While Méduse comes to the listener as a flow of myth, recordings, scientific description and sound, the work of artist Ashanti Harris (part of Project X mentioned above) is structured around the histories of four Guyanese women and their

children, who were part of Scottish society in the 18th and 19th centuries. These are combined with an introduction and intervals where Harris draws the listener’s attention directly to their body and breathing.

This relationship between body practices and historical enquiry has been a consistent means of research for Harris, who visits the sites where the people she researches once lived – the field recordings from which feature in her new work.

“The coast is the same, but the boats look different. There’s the idea that some parts of my experience will mirror theirs…” Where there were more details about parts of their lives, Harris used that detail as inspiration. “For example, Doll Thomas made a skirt of five pound notes. From this, I did a

Watch Tramway TV on Instagram @glasgowtramway Lauren Gault, Méduse, 2020

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Listen to In The Open at thecommonguild.bandcamp.com

October 2020 – Feature

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and The Common Guild, Glasgow

performance making a skirt out of five pound notes. [I’m] physically using reenactment and performance and movement to physically embody their existence in some way. A lot of my work is looking at historical archival documents… It’s about the past, but it’s created in the present.”

Rather than “trying to create history as these facts that are looked at from this neutral position and with hindsight to look back.” Harris works with the idea “that history is created in the present, it’s physically coming through the body of writing it down, saying it out loud, and trying to make that the main point of the work. I’m completely acknowledging this is history I’m creating from things that I’ve found, from feelings that I have and these other works that I’ve done and that’s where these stories are coming from.” As listeners, between the biographies of the Guyanese women and their descendants, Harris draws the audience to attend to their physical sensations, breathing, tensions or discomforts in their bodies.

All of the In the Open works are now available to listen to freely online, and Tramway TV will be releasing new content throughout this month and into the future. For Parinussa, “one thing that’s really important is trying to keep our relationships with artists that we’ve worked with, and not have it as a one-off or short duration.” She also mentions the importance of “giving time”.

She says: “Some people are able to reply straight away, or some people have a lot going on and will get back later. It’s nice that there’s not that limitation, and that it can keep going for at least until the end of the year and into next year. It’s not about switching to [the digital way of working] then switching back, this is now a part of what we have to offer and what we can develop from.” Finishing off, Parinussa makes the invitation to “come to [Tramway TV] whenever you have a moment, and not feel like you’re rushing to something. It’s a very different existence in time right now.”

THE SKINNY

Conversations with Friends Interview: Eliza Gearty

C

ongratulations on being commissioned to write Things My White Friends Say. What can you tell us about the project so far?

Thank you! This play will be a verbatim piece – I’m out there speaking to people and what’s interesting will go into the play. Right now I’m still at the interview stage and I’ve been interviewing a wide range of people about the Black Lives Matter Movement and race relations. It’s been quite difficult at times – I’ve been shocked by a few things I’ve heard and moved by a few things, too. So far I’ve talked to an MP, a police officer and an author, among others. I have most of the material now so I’m going to sit down and write it in the next few weeks.

Photo: Kirsztián Horváth

Theatre

We speak to Tron Theatre’s freshly commissioned writer Joe McCann about Black Lives Matter, racism in Scotland and why he wants you to contribute to his new play

October 2020 – Feature

You want to interview people of colour who have experienced racism growing up in Scotland. Is there any reason why you wanted to focus on the everyday racism in this country specifically?

There is a fallacy that racism doesn’t exist in Scotland, or that it’s not that bad here. Of course that’s not true.

I’ve been on the receiving end of racism in Scotland for as long as I can remember, and I know other people who have been too. It’s something that should be looked at, which is why I want to write specifically about lived experiences of racism here.

You’re also hoping to hear from white people who ‘perhaps do not agree with BLM or the removal of statues and everything that symbolises.’ Why? I know lots of people personally who don’t support the Black Lives Matter movement. A lot of these people would not consider themselves to be racist. I want to gain an insight into their thought process. Why do they have an issue with statues coming down? Why do they have an issue with the BLM movement? My immediate reaction to that would be ‘because they’re racist’ – and they probably are! But I want an insight into where that comes from. I want to understand why close friends of mine – people I’ve known for 20 years – react to things like the murder of George Floyd by saying, ‘that could have happened to a white person, too.’ The defensiveness is very strange to me and I think it could be of interest to an audience, too.

Where did the title Things My White Friends Say come from?

It came from speaking to white friends during this period. I had a conversation with one friend who was talking about how racism is a two-way street. He said that if he were to go to the Bronx, he would be killed for being white. When he told me that, I thought that Things My White Friends say would make a good title for a play – it [can encapsulate] both ludicrous and sinister aspects.

Figures suggest that the Black Lives Matter movement may be the largest civil rights movement in history – somewhat paradoxically, involvement soared during a period of unparalleled intense isolation. Most people have attributed this to

the power of social media. What can theatre still do that social media can’t? Does theatre still have a role to play in the movement?

I believe all art still has a role to play in protest movements.

Social media of course has contributed hugely to the success of this one. [But] theatre is immediate, live and brings a group of people together in one room to hopefully be enthralled by performances of words – I don’t think there’s anything else like that out there. I would hope that people would come see Things My White Friends Say and engage with BLM if they haven’t already.

You left Scotland to live in Hungary for 13 years. How did that experience influence or inform your work?

In Hungary I was a foreigner, so I was always a bit of an outsider. I’m interested in the art of the outsider – my favourite film is Taxi Driver, which was written about that feeling [of otherness].

I try to channel that sense of being an outsider into my writing and my experience in Hungary fed into that.

Finally, what would you say to anybody reading this who would like to reach out to be interviewed?

Hit me up on my Twitter or my Tron email! No names will be included in the piece – your input will be totally anonymous and you can be as honest and open as you like. Let’s have a conversation.

If you’re keen to be interviewed for Things My White Friends Say, contact Joe via the Tron on: joe.mccann@tron.co.uk

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THE SKINNY

Funds and Games We speak to Mark Nelson, regular Stand compere and passionate Scottish comedy advocate, about the future of Scottish comedy and the struggle to get the artform its rightful recognition Interview: Yasmin Hackett

comedy the recognition it deserves. He’s hosted an online gig dubbed Saturday Night Live At The Stand since March, which only came to an end recently, but kept comedy fans laughing throughout lockdown. We chat to him about how gigging has changed, the importance of funding for the industry and the future of comedy.

What do you miss most about live gigs?

I miss talking to the crowd. The most exciting parts of a show have come from interactions with the crowd. It is unique every time and only stand-up provides that.

Photo: Trudy Stade

What is the best thing about club stand-up?

You get to see true professionals doing what they are supposed to do in life. Comedians raw and in the moment, not edited or filtered, just making people laugh.

What does performing at venues like The Stand mean to you?

It means everything. I have honestly wanted to be a comedian since I was about eight years old so to be doing my dream job in the best venues in the world is incredible.

Do you have any other plans or ideas for virtual comedy shows in the near future if things continue as they are?

Yeah I would love to experiment with some stuff and see what I can put out. I don’t think anyone has truly nailed it yet.

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Has performing online brought in new audiences for you personally?

Definitely but I think that audience has always been available, I just haven’t been exposed to them. It has shown the reach that online can have and is a much greater leveller than TV. The constant use by TV companies of the same 12 comedians for every single show does not do justice to comedy in this country and is actually harmful.

Do you think this wider audience reach has raised awareness about the threat posed to live comedy?

I really do think it has. It has reminded people of the fact that there really is nothing else in culture that is like live comedy and also reminded them of how much they miss it. I also don’t imagine many people will have realised how shoddily and dismissively our industry has been treated by Creative Scotland.

What are your thoughts on the future of funding for comedy and the ongoing feeling that Creative Scotland are not recognising comedy as an art form?

Well due to the very hard work of ASCA (Association of Scottish Comedic Arts) and idiots like me shouting a lot, the tide is slowly turning and Creative Scotland are recognising us. What remains to be seen is if the government will stick to their word and provide the much-needed funding.

At the moment I am very dubious about that.

What has been your biggest takeaway from lockdown?

One night I got a salt and chilli sharing munch box from our local Chinese. Way too much food for one person.

Catch Mark Nelson at Glasgow International Comedy Festival 2021, 18, 19 & 20 March, The Stand, 7.30pm, £13.50+ BF scottishcomedicarts.co.uk twitter.com/marknelsoncomic

October 2020 – Feature

What’s the most innovative bit of lockdown comedy you’ve seen?

I think some of the stuff people have been doing on Twitch has been awesome, Rosco McLelland in particular. It is like that platform was custom-made for him.

Is the current situation of virtual/online comedy sustainable for comics?

No, absolutely not. It is not viable for the future from either a comic or an audience point of view.

Comedy

F

ew could have envisaged the length and impact of the pandemic-induced lockdown we still find ourselves in. It has been an incredibly tough process for all businesses, but immeasurably so for those in the creative industries.

Countless venues are on the brink of collapse and some acts have had to go back to their day jobs.

What’s more, while some emergency funding for comedy has been announced, comedy as an artform has not seen the same level of recognition from Creative Scotland and the Scottish Government that other artforms have. As a result, a spate of comedy clubs across Scotland and the rest of the UK have found themselves in crisis without emergency funding. Mark Nelson has been one of the Scottish comics at the helm of efforts to keep the comedy industry alive, and to get

THE SKINNY

Against All Odds Timothy London and Law Holt tell us about the trials and tribulations of releasing their debut album as IKLAN, which has been over three years in the making

October 2020 – Feature

I

Photo: Zeinab Batchelor

Music

Interview: Nadia Younes

t’s hard to imagine a time pre-COVID when we were all allowed to gather together in a cavernous room and witness some actual live music, but back in April 2017 that’s what was happening at Edinburgh’s The Caves when Timothy London and Law Holt launched their new collaborative project, IKLAN, at a Skinny event, no less.

The collective also features twins Pauline and Jacqui Cuff aka the Soho Sisters, mysterious vocalist Cheng Cheng (“we’re calling him Cheng Cheng because we can’t officially name him,” says London), fashion designer Theresa Coburn, and artist Stephen Lee. Given their trans-national bases, with London and the Cuffs in Birmingham, Holt in London, Coburn in Peebles and Lee on the east coast, remote working is nothing new to the group. It’s also part of the reason why it’s been so long since we last heard from them.

“Because we’ve not been together as much we’ve had to find new ways of working, even before lockdown really,” says Holt. “It’s like you’re liberated by restriction almost because you’ve got less to work with, but you’re having to constrain yourselves in different ways. But then you realise different things that you can do that you didn’t know you could do, so it’s more interesting.”

“It’s not that far from how we work anyway... I mean, we create constrictions on purpose so that we can react to them,” adds London. “The first time I ever recorded Lauren [Holt], I hadn’t really heard her sing properly… and she came in the studio and we threw a track at her, just a backing track, and said come up with a song for this. And she basically recorded the whole track in the first take, and that’s what came out as Hustle.

“Part of the job of an artist is to tap into the zeitgeist and sometimes to have to anticipate it” Timothy London “Those are the kind of restrictions that I love, because it meant that there was something really exciting about it. It was magic. It just came out of nowhere. It was just like plucking something out of the ether.”

Holt agrees: “I think we both always prefer working the way we did Hustle, don’t we? When we can, we always prefer being in the room... I think that’s the best way to work as well. It’s exciting.”

Law Holt

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Photo: Jacqui Cuff

“Because we’ve not been together as much we’ve had to find new ways of working [...] It’s like you’re liberated by restriction” Law Holt

— 21 —

Tim London

about it, and we’ll work out something... if it ends up being recorded on mobile, then that’s what it will be and it will work. We’ll make it work.”

Despite all the hurdles they’ve had to contend with, IKLAN have managed to pull together an album that is timely, powerful and as unique as they come. In a time where the world feels increasingly disconnected and human contact is being legitimately limited by law, perhaps a transnational, cross-generational, community-building project like IKLAN could be just the kind of joyous madness we can all unite in.

Album Number 1 is released on 19 October via Soulpunk iklanmusic.com

October 2020

whatever music we want.

“It’s absolutely fine for anyone, from someone who’s as old as me down to someone who’s in their early teens, to like the same music; it just doesn’t matter anymore.”

Holt adds: “It fits in with that community feel, as well, that we’re trying to grab… just putting stuff out there and seeing what happens with it and doing it regularly... When we work together we’re quite productive, so there’s stacks of stuff there to put out, so why not let people hear it?”

The biggest frustration for the group, though, in releasing this album under the current circumstances, is the inability to perform the tracks in a live setting.

With COVID still very much prohibiting many live music venues from reopening and safety concerns still ongoing, the group haven’t been able to launch the album in the way they had initially intended.

“Half the process of the launch has had to stop now because of this,” says London, “so that’s been the tricky thing, just figuring out how you can carry on building and trying to make things happen when you do it from a very, very low base.”

It’s put plans for a second album on the back-burner slightly, too, as they wrestle with adapting to the ever-changing restrictions on socialising put in place under current government guidelines. “A large part of it is recorded to a certain degree… I mean it literally depends on whether or not we can meet up. The way things are at the moment it’s so, so fucking difficult; it’s almost day by day,” says London.

“Lauren hasn’t been able to meet up with anyone because of her job [Holt is an NHS nurse], and I’m an old git so I have to be careful.” He continues: “For us to meet up we have to really think about it and make sure that it’s going to work out.”

Holt adds: “It’s the singing part of it, isn’t it Tim? If we were going to meet up and have a coffee I wouldn’t be so worried. It’s the singing and me spitting everywhere that I’d be concerned about.”

London concludes: “We’ve been thinking

Music

Just over three years on from that aforementioned show at The Caves, the group are gearing up to release their debut album, Album Number 1, via London’s own label Soulpunk. On it, there’s a sense of capturing the tension and uncertainty of present times, where upbeat rhythms and melodies that could easily echo any massive pop hit are distorted and twisted to form a much more menacing sound. There’s an overriding air of unease and unsettlement in the album’s production, which allows Holt’s lyrics to hit harder than ever.

On Fuckit she challenges sexism (“Tired of being weakest / Brother I won’t take it / Fuck it I won’t say shit”), on PrayForTimeless she addresses police brutality (“The fear is coming out / My brother’s been shot down / But it won’t go any further”), and on WhoAmI she explores her identity (“I’m mixed race and I’m feeling it / Don’t care what you folks calling it / Spent my whole life explaining it”).

“The way that she writes, it’s always surprising. I never know what she’s going to come up with,” says London. “There’s a description of angst and stress that you get when you’re in a city by yourself and you’re trying to make your way through the city.

“It does kind of prefigure the mood,” he continues, “and part of the job of an artist is to tap into the zeitgeist and sometimes to have to anticipate it. I think there’s an element of that there; it’s not a gentle album.” Holt adds: “I felt like you sent me the original beats sometimes, I wrote to it and we recorded it, but then the mixes that you would send me after would sort of change according to the lyrics, as you’d listened to the lyrics more.”

As a result of the wealth of material the group have gathered over the years, in the run up to the album they’ve been releasing something new every month. So far that’s been in the form of singles and album offcuts, but with more to come ahead of and following the album’s release. This includes a fanzine-style magazine, featuring the work of various writers and graphic artists with contributions from IKLAN affiliates Coburn and Lee, which they hope to release ahead of Album Number 1 dropping.

This kind of consistent, attention-grabbing output is in keeping with the meaning behind the band’s name, too: IKLAN being the Malay – an Austronesian language spoken in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and parts of Thailand – word for advertisement. “It’s about establishing the aesthetic of the group as well. It’s really hard to do if you can’t perform live,” says London. “And this is a way of putting out tracks that might confuse people a little, but also would establish the fact that we’re not going to be boxed in, we can make

THE SKINNY

Film

Connected Communities The mighty SQIFF, or Scottish Queer International Film Festival for the uninitiated, returns with queer dystopia, stories of QTIPOC activism and a queer horror icon setting the record straight Interview: Jamie Dunn

October 2020 – Feature

T

he sixth edition of the much-loved SQIFF is being beamed to your laptops at home, it being the latest Scottish film festival to embrace the brave new world of online film exhibition and events in the age of COVID. But as with previous editions of SQIFF, don’t expect it to necessarily be a solitary experience. “As well as the chance to watch heaps of brilliant LGBTQIA+ feature films from across the world, we are offering a number of online watch parties, workshops, and other events to keep our communities connected,” says Helen Wright, SQIFF’s producer and programme coordinator.

One such watch party will be centred around SQIFF’s opening night film Pride & Protest. It’s certainly appropriate for this fierce documentary celebrating QTIPOC communities and activists, as it follows various queer people of colour taking on homophobia and racism in its myriad forms across the UK. Director Blaise Singh will join SQIFF for a live Q&A following the screening.

The mood of the nation is matched with the Every Utopia is a Dystopia strand, which dives into some rather funky sounding queer sci-fi worlds. Take Austrian cyberdyke flick Flaming Ears.

Shot on Super 8 and blown up to grainy 16mm, it’s basically a dime-store Mad Max without toxic Mad Mel. We’re told this hilarious and wildly provocative lesbian adventure makes the most of its low budget, with claymation, stop-motion photography and cardboard cut-outs creatively deployed to tell its gonzo narrative. “Imagine the film that J.G. Ballard might have made if he’d been born an Austrian dyke,” is how one critic described it.

Elsewhere in the strand you’ll find documentaries Queering the Script, which tells the history of queer women on television, and Keyboard Fantasies: the Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story, about the musician of the title who recorded a curious folk-electronica hybrid album back in the mid-80s, which has become an unexpected global hit three decades later. You can also visit digital exhibition Many Black Moons Ago, To Go…, featuring a selection of Afrofuturist films and writings curated

by Scottish-Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and curator Natasha Thembiso Ruwona.

Pride & Protest

Pride & Protest

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THE SKINNY

Film Fluidø

“The mood of the nation is matched with the Every Utopia is a Dystopia strand”

Fluidø

Horror fans should be drawn towards Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street, which probes the legacy of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. Overflowing with homoerotic subtext, this slasher sequel was dubbed the “gayest horror film ever” and gained a cult following. Yet its lead actor, Mark Patton – who was closeted at the time of its release – found himself ostracised from homophobic 80s Hollywood. Here, Patton gets the chance to set the record straight, so to speak.

If sport is more your bag there’s Game on: queer disruptions in sport. The documentary follows gay runners from Hungary, a Scottish lesbian boxer, an intersex rower from Bulgaria and a German trans woman footballer, with these specific stories bringing up themes faced universally by LGBTQIA+ athletes. There’s also the opportunity to see Marlon Riggs’ groundbreaking Tongues Untied, a poetic documentary grappling with, among other issues, black-on-black homophobia, the seduction offered by white gay culture and the lived experience of AIDS among gay black men.

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This is just a taster of what’s on offer in SQIFF’s thoughtfully curated programme, which also includes a pub quiz, workshops, and virtual parties that promise to be “big, sweaty and super social”. As ever, SQIFF strives for all this to be welcoming and inclusive. “We are also working hard to make the online festival as accessible as possible with various access measures and free tickets and assistance with internet access for people based within Scotland,” says Wright. All tickets are free or on a sliding scale based on what you can afford.

Scottish Queer International Film Festival runs online, 5-18 Oct sqiff.org

October 2020 – Feature

There’s also a sci-fi slant to the work of Japanese multi-media artist Shu Lea Cheang.

SQIFF’s Cheang retrospective, Cruising the Future, presents her 2017 feature Fluidø, set in a post-AIDS future of 2060, and 2000’s I.K.U., tantalisingly described by the festival as “a demented tale of seven sexy replicants, envisioned as a sequel to Blade Runner”. In addition, there’ll be a live viewing of Cheang’s earlier short films, followed by a Q&A with this visionary filmmaker.

The future of the planet will also be on your mind in the Queer Ecologies section of this year’s festival. Documentary Fire and Flood takes the point-of-view of the LGBTQIA+ communities on the ground in response to two overlapping climaterelated disasters: Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the fires in Santa Rosa, California. There’s also the chance to see Derek Jarman’s intimate Super 8 film The Garden, in which the great filmmaker captures the lush paradise he’s created in the back yard of his home in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station.

October 2020 — Feature

Showcase

THE SKINNY

Reclamation of the Exposition (2020)

Reclamation of the Exposition (2020)

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THE SKINNY

Showcase

Reclamation of the Exposition (2020)

T

ayo Adekunle is a British Nigerian photographer based in Edinburgh. Working a lot with self-portraiture, she uses her work to explore issues surrounding race, gender and sexuality as well as racial and colonial history. Her work is centred around reworkings of historical tropes relating to the black female body, taking from contexts that include art historical paintings and sculptures as well as 19th-century colonial photography. By placing historical imagery in a contemporary context, the relationship between the treatment of the black female body in the past and its treatment in the present day is explored.

Reclamation of the Exposition (2020) explores the commodification, fetishisation and sexualisation of the black female body, specifically through the human displays in ethnographic expositions in the 18th and 19th centuries. The

work is influenced by ethnographic photographs which were circulated as pornography. Black (and other racial minority) bodies were photographed either naked in front of a white background, stripped of their identity, or surrounded by random tropical plants to make the photographs seem authentic. Using self-portraiture and digital collage while drawing from Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte’s photographic collection Boshimans et Hottentots, the works combine the contemporary with historic ways of being seen.

Referencing her Nigerian heritage, Adekunle explores the relationship between the past and present ways the black female body is treated. tayo-adekunle.format.com All photos by Tayo Adekunle

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October 2020 — Feature

Tayo Adekunle

THE SKINNY

Keeping It Real Daphne director Peter Mackie Burns returns with fine-grained drama Rialto, which follows a middle-aged Dublin dock worker going through a crisis

October 2020 – Feature

Film

Interview: Jamie Dunn

P

eter Mackie Burns is only two features into his filmmaking career, but a distinct style is already beginning to form. Not that the Glaswegian director has time for my attempts to label him an auteur. The 53-year-old is quick to shoot down the notion of a stylistic link between his vibrant debut feature Daphne and his followup Rialto, a delicately told story of a middle-aged Dubliner with a wife and two adult kids, who suddenly finds his life in freefall.

“For me, my approach to the material isn’t intellectual; it’s purely a reaction to what’s going on around me at the time and what I happened to be reading or thinking about,” Burns says of his process. “I suppose if you’re an established master, you may have your territory that you explore. But I’ve made two films; I’m finding my feet.”

Burns is similarly straightforward when it comes to how he got involved in the project. The film is written by the great Irish writer Mark O’Halloran, best known for his fruitful collaborations with Lenny Abrahamson, penning 2004’s Adam & Paul and 2007’s Garage. When we ask Burns if he feels Rialto swims in the same universe as O’Halloran’s earlier bittersweet studies in Irish masculinity, he swerves the comparison. “I can’t really speak for Mark or Lenny’s work other than to say that I’m a huge fan of both. The script just came along and I was interested in it from a personal perspective.”

When the job landed in his lap, Burns wasn’t even aware that O’Halloran had adapted Rialto from

his own 2011 stage play Trade. “I’ve never seen the play – I didn’t even know it was a play until after I had a draft and I was at work on it in preproduction.

It was only then that I read the play version.”

He would have found a significantly different piece of work. Trade is a short duologue set in a crumby B&B where an older married man (Colm) and a young male prostitute (Jay) talk to each other and try to find a connection. In Rialto, O’Halloran has opened the play out to explore Colm’s home and work life, and slowly reveals what has led him to seek out the affections of this young man he spots in a shopping mall.

“The quality of Mark’s writing is really, really high,” says Burns. “I thought it was very interesting to make a film where the setup may seem perhaps familiar, but the journey where the character goes, how he gets there, is unusual and surprising.”

As well as being distinguished by an outstanding script, Rialto also features extremely fine performances from its lead actors, Tom VaughanLawlor and Tom Glynn-Carney, who play the middleaged sadsack father Colm and Jay, the teenage rent boy Colm falls for, respectively. “It’s a complex relationship between the two men,” explains Burns.

“It’s victim and aggressor, and almost father and son sometimes, so dark and disturbing in that sense.”

The prostitute and punter relationship is a well-worn trope in cinema, but Rialto breaks through the old cliches. “I think what Mark is very good at doing is making characters that live and breathe. They feel complex and naughty and flawed – you know, like all

“I think David Bowie gave me the impression that whatever you were, wherever you lived, wherever you’re travelling to, had an effect on your work, whatever your work was” Peter Mackie Burns

— 26 —

of us to a greater or lesser degree.”

This point is key. Colm is not your typical movie character. He is very recognisable, though, in that he’s crushingly ordinary, and that’s exactly why the character appealed to Burns. “Colm is someone you’d see every day at work, but you’d never realise they’ve got momentous chaos and tragedy and change going on in their lives. And that speaks to me. I’ve been a fan of Mike Leigh since I was an avid cinema-goer as a kid, and I always loved that he made movies about the kinds of people we know.”

Another connection between Daphne and Rialto is that they both have a vivid sense of place; their characters and their environments seem intertwined. “I suppose I’m very interested in the urban experience,” says Burns. “Cities especially interest me and how people rub up against each other, and how ancient and modern history are built on top of each other and the confluence of those elements.”

Interestingly, Burns reckons his curiosity in place stems not from a cinematic source, but from his love of David Bowie. “When I was a teenager, Bowie would talk about his Berlin period, and how place was enormously important to him in making stuff and I think that stuck with me. I think Bowie gave me the impression that whatever you were, wherever you lived, wherever you’re travelling to, had an effect on your work, whatever your work was.”

Rialto is released 2 Oct by Break Out Pictures

THE SKINNY

Blind Faith You’ll struggle to find a more confident debut film in 2020 than Rose Glass’s claustrophobic psychological thriller Saint Maud. Glass talks to us about creating a horror film that’s as darkly funny as it is disturbing Interview: Jamie Dunn

Film

A

pins and a pair of Converse plimsolls will have you squirming in your seat) certainly show influence from the two horror masters named David, but it might be Scorsese whose impact is most strongly felt in Glass’s debut. Specifically his 1976 masterpiece Taxi Driver.

“When I was trying to get some of the execs to understand where I was coming from, I said, ‘Try imagining if Travis Bickle [Taxi Driver’s maladjusted protagonist] was a young Catholic woman living in an English seaside town.’” Like Bickle, Maud is a socially alienated misfit with a saviour-complex and quite a different version of reality going on in their head. “I think I like characters with a nice healthy mix of arrogance and self-loathing,” she says.

Another quality Saint Maud shares with Scorsese’s film is an onyx-black sense of humour.

“All people, to some extent, are contradictory and complicated, so humour was always incredibly important to me,” says Glass. Not everyone saw the funny side, though. “During development, people would say, ‘OK, so you say it’s going to be funny. Where’s that going to come from?’ And I would be like, ‘Oh, you know, the jokes. I thought I’d put some in there.’ But I think because it’s all very deadpan people couldn’t quite see it.”

The Glasgow Film Festival audience we watched Saint Maud with certainly seemed to appreciate its streak of mordant comedy, although we had the advantage over the executives of seeing the lines delivered by actors who are clearly relishing their rich, complex roles. “That was one of the things I loved about Morfydd [Clark, who plays Maud] so much, and partly why she got the role is she’s a really fantastic comic actress and her timing is brilliant.”

Casting was another area where financiers — 27 —

were second-guessing Glass’s instincts. Another reason she was drawn to Clark as her lead is the actor’s “saintly” qualities. “Morfydd can look incredibly pure and sweet and innocent,” Glass explains. “So that’s obviously a nice way of misleading people at first. But when we went to the financiers and said she was who we wanted to cast, I think they were a little bit nervous. They were like, ‘She’s a fantastic actress, but can she go to the really dark, weird, extreme places the character does?’ So I cut together a little video of Morfydd thrashing around on the floor having a fit of some kind, and that seemed to persuade them.”

“I think I like characters with a nice healthy mix of arrogance and self-loathing” Rose Glass Maud’s ‘communing’ with God sends her down a dark, dangerous path. We wonder how Saint Maud will go down with genuinely religious folks. Does she envisage picket lines with “Down With This Sort of Thing” placards? “Maybe the film says something about the psychology of faith, but to me, it’s a much more psychological story delving into mental illness. But obviously we’re very much experiencing the film through Maud’s eyes, and she has an intense relationship with God. So I don’t know. I’m curious to see what people think.”

Saint Maud is released 9 Oct by StudioCanal

October 2020 – Feature

s far back as Rose Glass can remember, she always wanted to be a filmmaker. This ambition really kicked into gear around age ten, when her parents bought a mini-DV camera. “I started nicking that and messing around with it, trying to do little stop motion experiments with toys and stuff,” the 30-year-old told us back in March at Glasgow Film Festival. “And whenever I’d go on family holidays, I’d always end up making weird movies casting my parents, sisters and cousins in various rambling mockumentaries.”

There’s nothing rambling about Saint Maud, Glass’s first feature. It’s one of the most assured debut films in recent memory, in fact, although this deeply unsettling psychological horror does get a little weird in places. It centres on a young palliative care nurse – the Maud of the title, played by elfin Welsh actor Morfydd Clark – who lives a lonely life in some unnamed English seaside town.

She’s deeply religious, but her sarky narration suggests she’s not as pious as she might appear. “I hope you will reveal your plan for me soon,” she says rather impatiently to her Lord.

Maud thinks she’s found her calling when she meets her new patient, Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a former avant-garde dancer clinging on to her hedonistic ways despite her terminal illness. Maud gets it in her head that God wants her to save Amanda’s soul, a mission He communicates via intense bodily sensations that often sees the young nurse writhing around on the floor in ecstasy – episodes that Glass wryly refers to as “God-asms”.

Glass namechecks three filmmakers over the course of our chat: David Lynch, David Cronenberg and Martin Scorsese. Saint Maud’s marbling of nightmarish surrealism and its moments of gutwrenching body horror (a scene involving drawing

THE SKINNY

Intersections

Photo: Fiona Smith

Seeds of Change A new generation of gardeners has emerged from lockdown. We speak to some of them about how the hobby has become a coping mechanism for job loss, mental health and economic uncertainty Words: Liv McMahon

into nature whenever I want. So the idea of having my own terrestrial paradise was too appealing to pass up.” It also helped her and her partner stay connected when restrictions kept them apart.

While Zoom dates and phone sex quickly became popular ways to maintain some semblance of intimacy during lockdown, they could also become tedious. But Dani found another way to keep her and her partner connected: “We’d send each other videos of us gardening. Who would have thought you could get turned on by watching someone plant potatoes!”

Millie, 23, also started gardening when she and her boyfriend were furloughed in April.

Something they had been thinking about for a while as a fun, creative activity – and one that is literally and mentally grounding – was now possible, with “plenty of time to plan what we wanted and start our gardening journey.” The result is a garden bustling with bees and butterflies, boasting a mix of perennials, herbs, fruit and vegetable crops. Establishing a daily watering routine provides some stable ground and inspiration when these have otherwise been in short supply.

As lockdown gardening became a trend taking on a life of its own, there was a tangible, well-overdue change to the face of gardening.

No longer was it to be seen as a hobby reserved for middle-class white boomers. When the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported in May that one in eight British households don’t have a private garden, it tapped into swirling debates on social media that located gardens at the apex of an unequal society straddling huge disparities in wealth and welfare. Digging deeper into ONS local authority data reveals that in Scotland, 21% of homes in Dundee City and 19% of homes in Glasgow Photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash

October 2020 – Feature

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n estimated three million of us in the UK have turned to gardening in lockdown to deal with being furloughed, working from home and managing our mental health. As someone who feels the urge to shove their hands into soil when shit gets real, I dealt with a crushing job loss by returning to my indoor jungle with reckless abandon. Apparently, I wasn’t alone. On Instagram, I found my feed – usually glowing with the artificial sheen of plant influencers posing with sickeningly shiny exotic specimens – giving way to realistic representations of gardening. Everyone, it seemed, was making forays into this messy, muddy, muchloved hobby.

Some, like Dani from Glenrothes, were blessed in renting a home with a back garden. But, like so many of us resigned to renting as property prices climb, Dani tells me she “never wanted to put time and effort into [her garden] because it wasn’t really mine.” It was her boyfriend, based on a farm in the Highlands, who encouraged her to have a go at taming her wild, weedy garden.

“Lockdown was really hard to get used to,” she explains. “Not only because I missed loved ones but because I’m so used to being able to go out

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City have no private outdoor spaces. For flats in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen city centres, private gardens are shared by an average of five flats – with tenements housing a mixture of students, families and professionals creating a creeping claustrophobia when the outside world was shutting down. But a new generation emerging from lockdown is proving that you don’t need a garden to be a gardener.

Miruna, a 26-year-old researcher living in an Edinburgh flat, is one such example. She began growing and collecting houseplants several months ago when searching for a lockdown hobby.

Having brightened up her home with tropical specimens, succulents and chrysanthemums, she aims to grow herbs in the near future. Similarly, I spoke to French chef Max who used his time on furlough to grow fruit and veg in his Edinburgh flat – enjoying this so much that he now hopes to change career and become a gardener.

Meanwhile, young people have also mucked in at local gardening initiatives, transforming unruly tenement gardens left to rot by feckless landlords or growing fruit and veg to enjoy themselves and share with their wider communities. Collectives in and around Edinburgh, like Craigmillar Growers and Edible Estates, have supplied local families with starter packs of seeds. Over in Glasgow, Blackhill’s Growing, South Seeds and Urban Roots are just some of the organisations encouraging younger generations to garden. And it’s not merely to satisfy our boredom; it also helps ease our fears for a future in which climate crisis and economic uncertainty loom large.

Gardening has resurfaced as a nutritious, therapeutic and fun activity rooting us to a natural world when the material has failed us. The act of reclaiming this is in itself a radical act and gardening has always offered an alternative to a capitalistic way of life – demanding nothing of us except care and patience. It is only fitting, then, that in a time of unprecedented crisis a new generation is picking up the shovel and digging their way to a better world.

THE SKINNY

The internet has been radical for creating safe online spaces for autistic people. As we increasingly rely on the internet during COVID-19, one writer explores what we can learn from online, neurodiverse communities

Intersections

Digital Witness Words: Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart

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activism can have on the way society actually treats autism. It can even stop us as individuals trying to learn neurotypical social skills and nuances of communication at all. Instead, we can form easier internet friendships without the troubles of real life.

I relied on online spaces when I was younger, but now I recognise that learning to socialise and read behaviour better through real-life communication might have helped me see that a friend in art class who wanted to be friends immediately was dangerous. At 16, I did not have those tools and I ended up in an abusive relationship. I was unable to understand why they would compulsively lie, gaslight me or say they love me if they didn’t. I had found shelter online but it made me unprepared for the dangers of the real neurotypical world.

“Neurotypical people are finding themselves part of an unfamiliar social landscape, like autistic people face every day” I found true friends at university. Not people forced together at school but kindred spirits who both shared ideals and interests but also differ in amazing ways. Every one of these friendships is more important than anything I experienced online. It has taken me a decade to learn the nuances of socialising but through interactions in the real world, I’ve slowly done it.

Ultimately, the internet has given autistic people like me a vital space and voice. Now we need to use our voices in the real world to make it better. COVID-19 has changed how we’re using the internet as most of us are now dependent on our computers for maintaining friendships and undertaking work and education.

Neurotypical people are finding themselves part of an unfamiliar social landscape, like autistic people face every day.

Meetings, classes and just chatting on video is unexpectedly draining and the simple act of seeing your face constantly as you talk can be stressful. Everyone, including autistic people, is struggling with this. We need to come together online to understand one another right now, to make both the online and offline world inclusive as we move forward. If we do, then maybe we can make spaces beyond our screens truly neurodiverse.

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October 2020 – Feature

or those on the autistic spectrum like me, the internet has provided something radical: neurodiverse spaces and ways of communicating that help us better navigate and develop friendships and communities. The online world is our braille through which we can speak and connect with other autistic people as well as the neurotypical world without the issues our disabilities can cause for us during offline interactions. Instead of struggling to communicate verbally or read expressions or intentions, we can show our real selves in unique and neurodiverse ways online. From conversations on forums to social media, we set our own pace without the need for face-toface interactions unless we consent.

Pre-internet, autistic people often faced the isolation and hostility of the neurotypical world alone. If we did not try to learn or just couldn’t learn to be ‘normal,’ then we were shunned or worse. Nonverbal autistic people faced total isolation. But the internet has liberated autistic people. We can attempt to learn communications skills in an easier medium and for some nonverbal autistic people, it’s given them the ability to communicate at all.

Autistic millennials and Gen Z are the first generations to grow up with the internet as a means of autistic communication, community and connection. We are so lucky. It was even a lifeline for me during my teens. An eating disorder, mental illness and suicidal thoughts due to bullying meant that I spent time in adolescent psychiatric wards for a few months when I was 15.

When I got out and returned to school, I felt friendless and totally alone. But the internet gave me something to live for. I avoided MSN as it was too tied to real school cliques but online forums, MySpace, DeviantArt and, eventually, Tumblr helped me connect with other autistic people and likeminded folk who loved the same bands and books. I became a confident and articulate version of myself, able to discard the mask I felt the need to wear at school where my communication difficulties were painfully visible.

Many have noted that the internet has given autistic people a level playing field for communication and enabled autistic communities and spaces to emerge. This has been instrumental for rising autistic advocacy and activism online as part of the disabled rights movement. We can speak back to those who have tried to control and ‘fix’ us. Through such activism, I have learned to feel proud about being autistic.

But the internet has caused problems for autistic people too. Being online has enabled us to form neurodiverse spaces that exclude the neurotypical world and its ableism. While this provides individual and collective feelings of safety and security it can also risk isolating ourselves and the effects our wider

THE SKINNY

Taking Up Space Food

A lot has changed with this pandemic, not least our feelings towards physical and online space. We talk to the people behind two new sober, queer spaces in Scotland’s biggest cities Interview: Peter Simpson Illustration: Lesley Imgart

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October 2020 – Feature

reenwood is a cafe space in Edinburgh which, under the stewardship of Oskar Hansen and Zak Riding, reopened last month as a queer sober cafe. Over email, Oskar fills us in on the story behind the venue, and the need for sober spaces.

The Skinny: How did the idea for Greenwood come about?

Oskar: The idea of a sober queer space was bouncing around the community for the last year or so. I had numerous hypothetical discussions with people about it; ‘wouldn’t it be nice if there was an explicitly queer space that didn’t just revolve around alcohol and drag?’ ‘Yeah I wish someone would do that.’ One day in early July I saw a Facebook post announcing that a small shop in Polwarth called The Greenwood was looking for new management from September onwards. I shared the post, with a half-joking caption saying ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we had a little sober queer space one day?’ Loads of people commented in support, and Zak, who used to run the Joke Shop on Victoria Street, mentioned that he was about to write to them too, as he was looking for a new job. With Zak’s mind for business, and with my creative experience and network, we united forces to make this a reality.

Your crowdfunder was really well received and got a lot of traction and support; what was your reaction to that?

We started the GoFundMe campaign as a way to cover some very basic initial costs. We weren’t too optimistic about it, especially during these trying times, but thought we may as well give it a shot. We smashed our original £1500 goal within just three hours of starting the campaign. More than just the money, the amount of messages and comments of support from people truly proved to us how much this was needed. A lot of people mentioned that seeing someone take on a project like this gave them some hope during these dark days.

Was The Greenwood always intended as a sober space, and what led the venue in that direction?

Ironically, before lockdown both Zak and I worked in the queer nightlife scene, Zak as a DJ and I as a drag queen and cabaret host, both predominantly at The Street bar. Clubbing, partying and drinking

are historically important spaces of socialisation for queer youth, but it is also a risky space for all sorts of reasons.

I think what we strive for in opening a queer sober space is having balance, creating a space where queer people of all ages can still socialise, eat food, and buy art, but in a space that is relatively quieter and doesn’t expect you to be out of your senses. The more options and variety we have, the stronger we can be as a community.

Pink Peacock is a queer, Yiddish, anarchist, pay-what-you-can café, soon to open a physical space in Glasgow’s Southside. During lockdown, Morgan Holleb and Joe Isaac delivered food to homes across the city; over video chat, the duo talk us through the project.

Morgan: It’s a queer Yiddish anarchist cafe, which will be alcohol free and open late and is also vegan, and we’re hoping to get certified for kosher and halal. So that’s a lot of different things. But the reason why we’ve decided on all those... oh God, it’s pay what you can, that’s actually the most important thing! The reason why we’ve settled on centring on all of those things is because there is a community need for all of them. There isn’t a space that is like that anywhere in Glasgow.

Joe: There’s a noticeable need for sober queer spaces. And the ethos is just... apply that to — 30 —

all the other identities that are there. They’ve all come about from things that we have noticed a need for, either because we need them or because you notice the community has a need for them.

M: We were inspired by Category Is, which is the queer bookshop in the Southside. Fi and Charlotte who run it are lovely and absolute, like, power babes; they have made nothing short of a community hub. And it was really obvious right from the word go how necessary queer community spaces are that aren’t centred around alcohol or clubbing. So we just wanted to add to that through a cafe space that had food for people. And we’re going to be open late. So after Category Is closes, people can come to our place!

J: On that topic, [the] queer community is very big and it’s a very big and diverse community, right [...]

I guess I’m trying to say that those queer nightclubs and queer bars and stuff, they obviously do serve a community purpose and they have a place within the community. But that can’t be all there is, because if you’re a minor or if you’re just dry for whatever reason, you still deserve access to community.

Greenwood, 5 St Peter’s Buildings, Edinburgh, @greenwoodkafe pinkpeacock.gay Read extended chats with both Greenwood and Pink Peacock at theskinny.co.uk/food

THE SKINNY

Barn Raising Newbarns is Edinburgh’s newest brewery – we pop in for a chat with brewer Gordon McKenzie to talk interior design, concrete and keeping beer accessible Interview: Peter Simpson

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“I don’t necessarily think people are intimidated by craft beer... but there’s definitely room for a bit more familiarity” Gordon McKenzie, Newbarns

Now that the concrete’s been scraped out and the utility saga is over, things are kicking into high gear, and the numbers are a lot to get your head around – even if you’re one of the people running the brewery. “I’ve never been able to rationalise the concept of coming into work every day, and making, let’s say, 7000 pints of beer a day,” McKenzie tells us, visibly working through the scenario in his head.

“So I’m making 7000 pints of beer a day, and we’ve always got the same level of stock. So that means we’re selling 7000 pints of beer a day, which means somewhere, somebody’s drinking 7000 pints a day. And, like, I just can’t imagine how that’s happening. But then that’s not even a big brewery. I mean, it’s a reasonably-sized brewery, but… it still boggles the brain.

“Emma and Johnny and I have all come from the brewing side of things. We’ve all worked in places where you’re involved with every step. Fred is the most specialist; he was the first real member of sales staff that Beavertown ever had... he knows what’s going to happen, much better than we do.

So he could kind of say like, ‘I know that that [volume] sounds like a lot. But once we start doing it, it’s not going to be a lot.’” With beers as good as these, Newbarns might need a bit more room sooner than you’d think.

Newbarns will be at Edinburgh Craft Beer Festival, 9-10 Oct, Corn Exchange edinburghcraftbeerfestival.co.uk newbarnsbrewery.com

October 2020 – Feature

beer,” McKenzie says. “But I think there’s definitely room for a bit more of a kind of familiarity for people who maybe don’t always want an IPA, people who drink a lot of Tennent’s. I mean, we drink quite a lot of Tennent’s. I think it’s really nice to open what we’re doing up to people like that.”

At this point in the story, it’s time to reveal that the road to turning this former carpenters’ workshop into a brewery wasn’t exactly smooth, and that ‘every day’ comment from earlier was pretty literal. “We got the keys to this place in November,” McKenzie tells us, “and so we were in here, just covered in shit all day digging out concrete. We dug these trenches half a metre down, making space for all the drainage and stuff, and we did a lot of it quite manually.

“And at that point, we were living in Broughty Ferry, travelling back and forward... In December we came through and we just didn’t want to drive back, so we slept in the car. It was absolutely freezing – it was like minus nine – and we parked the car inside [the brewery]. And then it’s like, getting out to run to the toilet and thinking, ‘God, I can’t do this even one more day.’” Thankfully, they soon found a flat nearby, which led to more work, which led to getting the gas and water folk involved... and then the country shut down.

Undeterred, Newbarns worked with some of their pals in the beer world, taking their recipes on the road and brewing their first batches at other breweries. They put the beers up for pre-sale – and sold the whole lot before they were finished brewing. For McKenzie, it was an exciting feeling “seeing how many people had our back, and also seeing so many names that we recognised.”

He says: “Whether it was family, friends in the brewing industry, people that you’ve not seen in 15 years, and they’re like, ‘yeah, I’ll buy two or three cases of your beer.’ Wow. People were really up for it.

“There’s a lot of kindness going around just now,” he says, “which is... maybe not surprising, but something like that.”

Food

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ordon McKenzie is walking us through the freshly kitted-out Newbarns brewery just off Leith Walk, past the huge bags of malt and chunky metal tanks. “I don’t really know how it looks to other people,” he says, “because I’m in here every day.”

It looks like… a lot, but the Newbarns team certainly know what they’re doing. McKenzie, his partner Emma McIntosh, Jonny Hamilton and Fred Bjerkseth have an impressive array of experience between them from the likes of The Kernel, Siren and Beavertown breweries (Hamilton is also the co-founder of the excellent beer magazine Pellicle). Having met on the London brewing scene, it’s a return home to Scotland for threequarters of the team, and a chance to follow their own ambitious vision.

That vision – tasty, approachable pints for enjoying in the pub. Their Table Beer, Oat Lager and Pilsner are all vibrant, refreshing, and packed with flavour and aroma, but steer clear of many of craft beer’s wildest excesses. “If you want to think about it, there’s enough there,” McKenzie says of the delicious pilsner in his hand, offering the most succinct but accurate tasting notes we’ve heard in a while. “And if you don’t want to think about it, and you just want to have a chat with your mates, it works then too.”

It’s craft beer in the classic sense; tasty, skillfully-made beer produced with quality ingredients. “I don’t necessarily think that many people are intimidated by craft beer, or small brewery

October 2020 – Feature

Film

THE SKINNY

Mind Games Shirley imagines a fictitious period in the life of Shirley Jackson, shot in a way that channels the cult author’s writing style. Director Josephine Decker talks to us about the purging pleasures of exploring dark characters and themes Interview: Jamie Dunn

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osephine Decker won’t turn 40 until April next year, but already her CV requires a sturdy binder. She’s 18 acting credits to her name, mostly in films by her fellow US indie directors like Joe Swanberg and Stephen Cone. As a director, she’s made 15 works since 2005, ranging from a talking-heads documentary on bisexuality (2008’s Bi the Way) to an episode of a short-lived teen cheerleading drama (Dare Me) to a Terry Gilliamesque short fantasy film exploring the transformative powers of a child’s imagination (2012’s Me the Terrible). But it’s her trio of formally daring features – 2013’s Butter on the Latch, 2014’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, and 2018’s Madeline’s Madeline – that have marked her out as one of the most original and visually exciting young filmmakers on America’s lively indie scene.

Decker’s films look like no-one else’s. They’re lyrical, unfolding like pieces of music, but they’re also jagged and uncomfortable; they can turn surreal and nightmarish on a dime. The camera in her film often feels like one of the characters; it’s almost always mobile and in among the performers, but also prone to wandering away from the action or observing it from a strange or startling

THE SKINNY

“The movie in your head is very rarely the movie you end up making” Josephine Decker

— 33 —

Shirley is released 30 Oct by Curzon

Josephine Decker on the set of Shirley

October 2020 – Feature

Josephine Decker

to this subject, she compares it to mild-mannered actors who love to take on dark roles. “I think I’ve wanted to explore, ‘What if this [the creative process] went horribly wrong? What if I put the version of myself on film that I would never be in real life?’ Sort of out of curiosity, but also as a kind of cleansing.

“I definitely felt that with Madeline’s Madeline when I was writing that character, and Lizzie Moss said one of the reasons she wanted to play Shirley was that connection with some aspect of darkness; she was excited to play somebody who has that edge. So it’s sort of being drawn to the side that you would never get to explore in your real life. That’s what makes art-making fun, you get to – as a creator, as a director – be inside of these characters’ minds. So I get to become them, sort of, even though I would never do the things they do in real life. It’s almost like you’re purging something.”

We’re not sure Decker had to do that much imagining to get inside Jackson’s head; as artists, they seem like kindred spirits. “Oh totally,” agrees Decker. “I mean, I think of her as such a genius, so I don’t try to hold myself up to that, but I think I am interested in similar things. I’m really interested in how you move from an objective reality into a subjective reality in a way that the audience isn’t even aware that you’ve done so, and she does that in a lot of her work. Like The Haunting of Hill House, you think that you’re observing these characters and then all of a sudden you realise you might have spent the last 20 pages inside one of the characters’ minds, but you’re not sure when it went off the rails. It’s such an exciting way of telling stories.”

We couldn’t agree more. It’s what makes Decker’s films so thrilling to watch too.

Photo: Thatcher Keats

“That’s what makes art-making fun, you get to be inside of these characters’ minds”

literary professor Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), invites a newlywed young couple – Fred (Logan Lerman), Stanley’s new assistant, and Rose (Odessa Young) – to live with them in their ramshackle Vermont home.

The offer of accommodation is presented by Stanley as a generous favour, but really he wants Rose to help keep the house straight, as Shirley is in a deep spell of depression and agoraphobia – she’s barely able to leave her bed and hasn’t written in months. Initially displeased at having strangers in her house, Shirley soon takes a liking to Rose, who becomes a kind of muse to the author while writing her second novel, Hangsaman. Rose, who comes to the house a timid housewife, also experiences a reawakening. Like Shirley, she starts challenging the social norms of the time.

“Shirley was exciting because it was such a discovery process,” Decker explains. This is the filmmaker’s first feature where she hasn’t originated the script: it’s written by Sarah Gubbins, adapting Susan Scarf Merrell’s 2014 book Shirley: A Novel. “I initially thought we were gonna shoot it in a much more locked-down, Hitchcockian way, but then there was something so visceral and sensual and tender about the relationship between Rose and Shirley that we ended up shooting it much more handheld because we wanted to be there and get in close and interface with the actors. It’s always a discovery process when you get in there with your collaborators. The movie in your head is very rarely the movie you end up making.”

In a way, one of these collaborators was Jackson herself, as her writing proved one of Decker’s chief stylistic influences. “We were much more focused on putting the audience into a Shirley Jackson-type story, rather than replicating Shirley Jackson’s life,” she explains. “So my research was much more about reading her work. I did research her biography too, but I was trying to think how she would do this story herself.” How do you reckon it turned out, we ask. “We’ll never be as good as the magician herself,” Decker laughs, “but we did our best.”

Delving into the darker recesses of creative people’s minds isn’t a new subject for Decker. Her elliptical psychodrama Butter on the Latch concerned two performing artists who have their friendship tested at a music retreat, while Madeline’s Madeline focus was an experimental theatre company whose vampiric director was mining the troubled mind of her teenage star for inspiration. When we ask Decker why she’s drawn

Film

angle. But it also likes to get in close too, intimate and tactile. It’s a style that initially appears chaotic, but the camera always feels like it’s in the right place at the right instant to capture the perfect glance, texture or emotion.

She is a born director, in other words, although it took her a while to figure that out. “I didn’t really know that this was a possibility, that you could do this,” Decker tells us on a spotty Zoom call. “I just remember being a kid and being like, ‘I want to walk along the coast of Africa taking photos and writing for National Geographic.’

That was my dream.” At college, she studied literature but also found herself heavily involved in music. “Those influences turned out to be a great mashup for filmmaking,” she notes, “because as a filmmaker you get to be part musician, part writer, part photographer, part costume designer – which I also did when I was in college. All these things I love sort of fall together into one awesome medium, so I’m very grateful that I found filmmaking.”

Decker is speaking to us from northern California, where she’s trying to work around the COVID pandemic and the state’s still-blazing wildfires – “there are a couple of apocalypses upon us at the moment here,” she laughs – to start shooting her fifth feature, The Sky is Everywhere.

She describes it as “a love triangle between grief and life, but it’s a really sweet movie and so fun”.

We’re here, though, to discuss her fourth feature, Shirley, and its flavour is decidedly more tart.

The film pivots on a barnstorming turn by Elisabeth Moss as Shirley Jackson, but anyone expecting a conventional biopic of the writer of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle will be sorely disappointed.

Instead, Shirley imagines a fictitious period in the author’s life in the early 50s when her husband,

THE SKINNY

Scary Stories Books

2020 has been its own collection of horror stories, but with Halloween around the corner, Rabeea Saleem looks at this year’s releases that capture the season – from the power of superstition to the monsters all around Words: Rabeea Saleem Illustration: Miranda Stuart

October 2020 – Feature

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ctober beckons the arrival of Halloween, so with that autumn chill in the air, it’s the perfect time to read a spine-tingling book.

Light a candle and cozy up with your favourite hot drink to this year’s creepiest reads – from twisted feminist folklore to spooky mysteries and macabre, dark fairytales.

One of this year’s most anticipated books was Piranesi (Bloomsbury), marking the longawaited return of Susanna Clarke, author of the bestselling Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. It’s a delight to report that this gorgeously imagined masterpiece was well worth the more-than-15-year wait. Piranesi is a mysterious man who lives in a labyrinthine house brimming with history and magic; a gorgeous hall of mirrors packed with secret chambers and haunting secrets. A bewitching fusion of mythology and fantasy, this gripping mystery will keep you guessing till the very end.

Similarly, Where the Wild Ladies Are (Tilted Axis Press) is one of the best reads of this year.

Matsuda Aoko (translated by Polly Barton) delivers wonderfully absurdist fiction that gives traditional ghost stories a feminist spin – an inventive collection populated with a motley crew of ghosts, demons and monsters. Wickedly funny, these stories are inspired by Japanese folklore and cleverly subvert dated notions about gender.

Another collection that reframes old folktales with a feminist slant is HAG (Virago). Reinvented for our times by the most talented women writers from Britain and Ireland, this is a collection of dark modern fables from authors including Irenosen Okojie, Daisy Johnson and Eimear McBride.

Diverse, relevant and fierce, it makes for a compelling and varied read.

Though Conjure Women (4th Estate) doesn’t sit in the horror sphere like many others here, author Afia Atakora describes it as an “allegorical Southern Gothic tale”, centring on the evils of the American Civil War while touching upon faith healers, magic and superstition. Fans of Toni Morrison’s Beloved will find many parallels in this mystical novel.

Elsewhere, in The Anthill (Faber) Julianne Pachico masterfully combines sharp social commentary with a literary ghost story. A young girl returns to her hometown in Colombia searching for her forgotten past. As soon as she starts to make

“Follow Me To The Ground is the type of novel that gets under your skin and stays there”

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THE SKINNY

Books

“Fans of Toni Morrison’s Beloved will find many parallels in Afia Atakora’s Conjure Women” latest in the Twilight series, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (Quirk Books) is at the forefront for the genre with Grady Hendrix’s tastefully written vampire novel. Starting as an endearing tale about a housewife with an ordinary life whose only source of joy is her close-knit book group, her seemingly mundane life is upended with the arrival of a mysterious and handsome stranger.

Part murder mystery and part morbid horror, this compulsively readable novel will keep you hooked till its dying breaths.

With looming longer nights and the changing seasons, there’s no need to step outside to encounter the dark, magical or unsettling. These books should see you through many a night.

theskinny.co.uk/books

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October 2020 – Feature

discoveries about both her personal and national trauma, inexplicably strange things start occurring around her.

Surreal and profound, this is a truly captivating read.

The Devil and the Dark Water (Bloomsbury) marks Stuart Turton’s much-anticipated return to fiction. More of a Sherlockian mystery, its atmospheric feel and mysteriousness make it thoroughly enjoyable as a seasonal read. The world’s greatest detective embarks on a journey on the high seas to Amsterdam in 1643; these Dutch Indiamen are in for an array of surprises on an action-packed voyage where ominous symbols appear, a terrifying voice promises three unholy miracles, and death is closing in from all sides. An absolutely riveting, vividly-realised locked room mystery.

Hailed as the “Jordan Peele of horror literature”, Stephen Graham Jones’ latest novel is another that does not disappoint. The Only Good Indians (Titan Books) is the story of four American Indian men who find themselves up against an entity seeking revenge for an event that occurred ten years ago during an elk hunt. If socially relevant horror books are what you’re after, then you will love this twisted, character-driven novel.

A similarly eerie tale can be found in Sue Rainsford’s Follow Me to the Ground (Black Swan).

A beautifully hypnotic story of a non-human father and daughter duo who heal the local human folks, with a narrative that is at once unsettling and lyrical, this is the type of novel that gets under your skin and stays there.

You Let Me In (Bantam Press) is another darkly unsettling novel, this time considering trauma and the power of the human subconscious.

A cross between folk horror and fairytale, this is the story of a controversial novelist with a bizarre life. Camilla Bruce’s unsettling debut isn’t one to read in the wee hours of the night!

Though 2020 saw blood-sucking literature in a frenzy once more with the release of the

THE SKINNY

Fresh Focus Loraine James tells us about her latest release on Hyperdub and about staying motivated throughout lockdown

Clubs

Interview: Nadia Younes

I

t’s not often that a Twitter exchange can result in a record deal, but that’s what happened for north London DJ and producer Loraine James, with a little help from fellow DJ object blue.

Following a mutual admiration of each other’s work, object blue invited James onto her Rinse FM radio show in September 2018 and tweeted the Hyperdub label, founded by Glasgowborn producer Kode9, to sign James. Shortly after, Hyperdub got in touch, and James made her debut on the label with her critically-acclaimed 2019 album, For You and I. “I thank [object blue] everytime I see her,” says James. “I didn’t expect anything to happen, so I’m really grateful that it has.”

For You and I made it onto several Best Albums of 2019 lists, and even topped The Quietus’ list. Now, just over a year later, James is set for her second release on the label – a new four-track EP, Nothing. “At the beginning of the year I was feeling

October 2020 – Feature

Photo: Eddie Otchere

really down about stuff and somewhat numb as well, hence the title,” says James. Despite its seemingly bleak title, though, the making of the EP was not an entirely solitary affair.

For it, James put out an open call for collaborators and narrowed down the selection to three artists: Uruguayan singer and producer Lila Tirando a Violeta, Farsi language rapper Tardast and HTRK frontwoman Jonnine Standish. “With Lila and Jonnine I was fans of their work beforehand, so I was definitely interested in working together and seeing what we could come up with,” says James. “[Tardast] was recommended by Manchester friends I knew, so I got in touch with him and checked out his stuff.”

All of the collaborations had to be carried out remotely, due to the artists being based in different parts of the world, so James created a playlist of demos and sent versions back and forth to each of the artists via WeTransfer. This, James says, is not too dissimilar to how she normally carries out her collaborative work, so the social and travel restrictions put in place by the government-imposed nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19 didn’t impact her ability to make music too much.

“I think because I kind of work at home anyway the lockdown thing hasn’t changed much... but sometimes doing anything at home is a bit draining,” says James. “Not getting the chance to test music in the live setting has been kind of difficult… but, generally speaking, in terms of actually making music, it’s not really changed.”

In fact, James has actually been very productive, and Nothing is just one of several releases from her this year. During lockdown, James released two EPs – Bangers and Mash and Hmm – and a selection of For You and I demos/album offcuts via Bandcamp, taking advantage of the platform’s Bandcamp Fridays, where all profits from sales on the — 36 —

first Friday of every month go directly to the artists. “I was definitely a bit worried because I put so much stuff out this year that people wouldn’t care about the Hyperdub [EP], but people are liking the single so that’s cool,” says James.

“I was definitely a bit worried because I put so much stuff out this year that people wouldn’t care about the Hyperdub [EP]” Loraine James While Hmm and Nothing were both made at the start of the year, Bangers and Mash was made during the lockdown period, when James became a full-time musician. Although her ability to actually make music wasn’t particularly hindered, James does admit that she struggled to maintain a consistent focus and enthusiasm for it. “There would be sometimes I would make something, and then for like two/three weeks I wouldn’t make anything,” she says. “And then I would get it in my head about not being productive because I had so much free time, so it’s kind of that battle in my head.”

It may still feel like a faraway pipe dream to be able to listen to club music in an actual club again, but we can at least celebrate the fact that artists like James have managed to maintain a steady flow of releases throughout the pandemic. And we can only hope that we’ll be able to dance together in a dark, sweaty room again sometime soon.

Nothing EP is released on 2 Oct via Hyperdub lorainejames.bandcamp.com/

THE SKINNY

First Times The latest Scottish Album of the Year longlist takes a broad, cross-genre look at albums released between 1 April 2019 and 31 May 2020 and, as usual, there’s plenty of room for new artists. We take a look at some of the longlist’s finest debuts

The Longlist Anna Meredith FIBS

Words: Joe Goggins

Blanck Mass Animated Violence Mild Bossy Love Me + U Callum Easter Here or Nowhere

Albums

Photo: Zaynab McGroarty

Photo: Erin Catherine Mackenzie

O

Cloth Cloth Comfort Not Passing Declan Welsh & The Decadent West Cheaply Bought, Expensively Sold Elephant Sessions What Makes You Erland Cooper Sule Skerry Fat-Suit Waifs & Strays

Cloth

NOVA

the seething Trophy. Sinckler has nodded to the likes of Little Simz, Shystie and Nolay as influences, as well as longer-standing trailblazers Lauryn Hill and Macy Gray (both of whom she name-checks on Let Me Know), but between Re-Up and last year’s scintillating Risin’ Up mixtape, there’s already plenty of evidence that she’s making her own lane, with a SAY Award nod this soon only serving to further cement the sense of promise.

The future appears similarly bright for Su Shaw, the Dundee-based, Scottish-Portuguese multidisciplinary artist who, with her debut record as SHHE, has also bagged a SAY nomination at the first time of asking. The seven-track, selftitled effort is a brooding, atmospheric album that makes an ideal companion piece to the Cloth record and summons up the spirit of, among others, the likes of Ex:Re, Warpaint and Zola Jesus. Like the Comfort and NOVA records, SHHE is primarily concerned with self-exploration of identity; unlike Comfort and Nova, it was influenced mainly by Shaw’s decision to swap her old life and relationship in Fife for a new start in the City of Discovery, as well as by time spent in Iceland. She’s crafted a terrific synthpop mood piece out of the experiences.

With the 20 albums in the running for the £20,000 prize now finalised, a public vote for one slot on the ten-place shortlist will open on 5 October, with the other nine chosen by the judging panel before the announcement of the final nominees on 8 October. The winner will be announced on 29 October at the live-streamed SAY Award ceremony, with online live events to be confirmed.

The 2020 SAY Award winner will be announced on 29 Oct sayaward.com — 37 —

Free Love Extreme Dance Anthems Honeyblood In Plain Sight Karine Polwart Karine Polwart’s Scottish Songbook Lewis Capaldi Divinely Uninspired to a Hellish Extent Mezcla Shoot the Moon The Ninth Wave Infancy NOVA Re-Up Sacred Paws Run Around the Sun SHHE SHHE Vistas Everything Changes in the End

October 2020 — Review

f the 20 records nominated for the 2020 prize, eight are debuts, running the stylistic gamut from soaring indie rock (The Ninth Wave) to ambitious experimentalism (SHHE), and from thrilling new ideas (see jazz fusion group Mezcla) to considerably less inspiring old ones (Lewis Capaldi).

They include, too, the beguiling first full-length from Glasgow trio Cloth, whose self-titled LP from last November marked the culmination of three years of not-inconsiderable local hype. The result is a stately, unhurried ten-track collection that drips with atmosphere; on the surface, comparisons with The xx seem obvious, but digging deeper into Cloth reveals something closer to the nuanced Lynchian drama of Chromatics, or the darkly dreamy soundscapes of Depression Cherryera Beach House. Most striking is just how sure of themselves they sound; they lay out a meticulous, minimalist sonic blueprint and follow it with conviction, particularly on the moody likes of Felt and Curiosity Door, tracks that say as much with their use of negative space as they do their sparse guitars and glacial beats.

Alphabetically speaking, fellow Glaswegians Comfort are sitting alongside Cloth on the longlist, but they’re worlds apart sonically – underlining the scale of the city’s musical diversity.

Not Passing, the first album from the sibling duo, is a scorchingly noisy queer rebuke to heteronormative society, with consistently crashing percussion paired with dissonant synths and furious vocals from Natalie McGhee to create a chaotic punk racket that feels like it exists within a newly-carved niche.

It’s by no means the only politically-motivated record on this year’s longlist, but it might be the most personal – a blistering mission statement from McGhee, driven by her own experiences of transphobic prejudice and of the chasm between Scotland’s working and middle classes. As she pointedly announced in the album’s press materials, “my womanhood needs no permission”, a line that could just as easily have served as the title for this searing reclamation of identity.

Another debut crafted fiercely in the image of its creator is NOVA’s Re-Up, released back in January. The Edinburgh rapper and producer – Shaheeda Sinckler when she’s at home, and sometimes known as Nova Scotia the Truth – presents a sixtrack, 18-minute opening salvo that plays like a paean to both Scotland’s underground music scene and youth party culture, but that’s still scored through with social commentary.

She’s happy to break with long-ingrained genre norms, casting an even-handed eye over hip-hop’s cannabis culture on Trees and serving up an incendiary critique of the toxic masculinity she experienced during the early days of her career with

THE SKINNY

Shout Outs We take a look at some of the artists releasing music in Scotland this month, and highlight some of the September releases you might have missed

Albums

Words: Tallah Brash

O

ctober is usually one of the busiest months in the gig calendar but that, obviously, won’t be the case this year. It is, however, still an incredibly important month for Scottish music, and this year more than most due to it housing the SAY Award, where one deserving winner will receive the coveted accolade of Scottish Album of the Year, and a cash tip of £20k, for what would be a career-defining moment for most.

But the SAY Award isn’t all that’s worth shouting about in Scottish music this month, as a quartet of wildly disparate albums is set for release. SAY Award longlist recipient Su Shaw, aka SHHE, is releasing Re:, a reworked, reimagined and remixed version of her eponymous debut. Due for release on 9

October via One Little Independent Records (fka One Little Indian), Re: adopts the same running order as SHHE and is still very much a SHHE record. However it comes with a different energy due to collaborative reimaginings of SHHE’s tracklist from Sophia Loizou, Alva Noto, rRoxymore, Black Taffy, and closer to home, Makeness and Tommy Perman. Filled with pleasing noises and grooves galore, Re: is an exquisite companion piece to Shaw’s stunning debut.

On 1 October, Scottish harpist Ailie Robertson, who performs under the moniker Adenine, is set to release her self-titled debut album. A thing of sheer understated beauty, its five tracks some of which clock in at almost ten-minutes long – are filled with intricately played harp, ambient drones, heart-melting strings and

October 2020 — Review

Photo: Chris Fleet

thoughtful field recordings. The track titles pleasingly borrow their names from Scottish words for types of rain, from a light drizzle (Smirr) to a coastal mist (Haar), as the album deftly explores our relationship to nature. It’s the perfect soundtrack for chilly evenings hiding from the world, wrapped up in a blanket on the couch. Something most of us will likely be doing a lot this autumn.

If you like your indie guitar music with a psychedelic spaghetti western edge, then Order of the Toad’s second album, Re-order of the Toad, could be just the thing to scratch that itch. Set for release on 2 October via Gringo Records and Reckless Yes, Re-order of the Toad features the singles Lady’s Mantle and Do It With Feeling, the latter of which the keen-eared among you may have heard recently on Marc Riley’s BBC 6Music show. Toad’s Theme, which also features on the record, might be the most fun/ bonkers (delete as appropriate) thing you’ll hear this October. Turn it up loud and have a dance around your kitchen, you’ve earned it.

From one toad to another, Edinburgh label Song, by Toad is officially back after what appears was just a bit of a hiatus. Following the release of the new Fair Mothers album, In Monochrome, back in August, it’s now the turn of Falkirk’s highly prolific Adam Stafford as he releases his umpteenth record, Diamonds of a Horse Famine, on the

label on 16 October.

How Stafford can make lyrics like ‘Nailed down my death mask and fashioned it into a dildo’ (Erotic Thistle) and ‘What kind of a man’s gonna want me / With an anus like a wizard’s sleeve’ (What Kind of Man) sound so pretty is something we’re not sure we’ll ever understand.

Suffice it to say, Diamonds... is a beaut in the Stafford canon. Staffy die-hards will also be pleased to hear that as well as this new release, he’s recently uploaded most of his back catalogue to Bandcamp, including from his former band Y’all is Fantasy Island. Making us aware of this via email, he quipped: “If you fancy staring at a wall for 80 hours straight listening to abrasive experimental and folk doom pop, or are just a masochist in general, I’d recommend it!”

Elsewhere, Glasgow singersongwriter Cara Rose releases Urges, her debut EP on 2 October. Produced

by Matt Ingram (Lianne La Havas, Laura Marling), Urges is a neat five tracks of heartfelt, stripped back piano pop, with Rose’s rich soulful voice deservingly placed front and centre. When it comes to singles, Becca Starr’s 8-bit/pop/dub/rap hybrid First Step is out on 2 October; Andrew Bates releases the dancefloor-ready My Love on 16 October, and after 15 years away Arab Strap release The Turning of Our Bones on 23 October, available on 7” vinyl via Rock Action.

Here are a few September releases in case you missed them. Glasgow alt six-piece Pelts released their longawaited debut album A Little Less Lost on 18 September, while on the same day Glasgow performance android Kleopatra released Machina, a four-track EP combining industrial, pop and electronica. Zoe Graham released her Gradual Move EP; Glasgow pop duo HYYTS released their latest single Lonely People;

Stanley Odd released KILLSWITCH, their third single since the start of lockdown; Megan Airlie released Cardamom, her debut single as Ruby Gaines; Malka’s Moving Together got a remix makeover courtesy of lau.ra; and NOVA released No Way, a collaborative track with Charlton Russel as part of a Black Lives Matter compilation put together by Edinburgh collective Volens Chorus.

Order of the Toad

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THE SKINNY

In Cinemas

Shirley Director: Josephine Decker

Relic Director: Natalie Erika James

Starring: Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin, Bella Heathcote

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Released 30 Oct by Signature; certificate TBC

Starring: Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg, Odessa Young, Logan Lerman

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It’s hard to succinctly describe what Shirley is, but it most assuredly isn’t a biopic. Josephine Decker and screenwriter Sarah Gubbins (adapting Susan Scarf Merrell’s novel) give us a fictionalised portrait of author Shirley Jackson (Moss), presenting her as if she was a character in one of her stories. The gothic atmosphere, psychological fragmentation and cruel barbs recall Jackson’s writing, but the aesthetic style is all Decker’s.

Her woozily subjective camerawork and fluid approach to narrative will likely alienate as many as it entrances, but few could deny it’s a bracingly inventive and bold piece of work – every scene feels charged with anxiety, bitterness or desire.

In Cinemas

In Mike Flanagan’s Oculus, the ostensible antagonist may have been a haunted mirror but was really the traumatic past. In Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, it’s depression; in It Comes at Night, it’s fear of the mind.

In Relic, Natalie Erika James’ brilliant debut feature, the terror comes from some combination of all three. While being a three-hander between grandmother Edna (Nevin), middle-aged daughter Kay (Mortimer) and 20-something Sam Heathcote), Relic also feels like a study of one woman at different points in time interacting with herself.

James renders age as both terrify-

ing and transformative. After Edna goes missing from her remote home, Kay and Sam arrive to find her. On her eventual return, it’s clear that Edna is developing dementia, a condition that exposes unspoken resentments between the three women. Growing hints at a supernatural force driving Edna’s erratic behaviour disrupt the film’s early realism, leading to a terrifying climax. A subtle score makes room for every floorboard creak and intake of breath, emphasising perspective over objective reality. Indeed, the space inside Edna’s house becomes increasingly abstract and expressionistic as the new phase of her being takes hold, as if the perspective has shifted from her family to her own, separating each into their own version of reality. [Christopher Machell]

As in Madeline’s Madeline, Decker probes at the point where artistic inspiration and exploitation meet. Rose (Young) is a young woman entering Jackson’s life just as she writes about the disappearance of a female college student. As reality and fiction blend, Rose grows into a far more complicated and intriguing character than the wideeyed newlywed we are introduced to, and Young more than holds her own against her co-stars. Michael Stuhlbarg is perfectly awful as Jackson’s smarmy and condescending husband, while Moss attacks the title role with relish, giving us a painfully vulnerable yet larger than life Jackson. “I’m a witch, didn’t anyone tell you?” she tells Rose when they first meet, and you half-believe her. [Philip Concannon]

Released 30 Oct by Curzon; certificate TBC

Photo: Courtesy of Signature Entertainment Relic

Body of Water Director: Lucy Brydon

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An early moment in writer-director Lucy Brydon’s debut features startles in its blunt vitriol. Stephanie (Brooke), fresh out of another stint at an inpatient eating disorder facility, goes to pick up her 15-year-old daughter Pearl (Piolini-Castle) after swim practice. Pearl sees Stephanie, and keeps her head down, walking faster. It ends with Pearl storming off and Stephanie yelling futilely in the car park. To make matters more complicated, Stephanie’s mother Susan (Burton) has been caring for Pearl in Stephanie’s absence.

Body of Water unflinchingly captures the intergenerational relationships rent to shreds by eating disorders, as well as their messy, addictive reality. The film never goes

into the full extent of Stephanie’s habits – a smart move for a triggering topic – though Brooke captures every moment of doubt and struggle, and makes the validation she receives from secret ‘pro-ana’ online posts palpable.

Family dinners are unbearably tense, the sound design capturing the effort behind each bite and the lighting design bouncing off Brooke’s frail frame (the actor lost weight with a nutritionist’s supervision for the role). Brydon’s sensitive approach never sugar-coats the reality – indeed the film undercuts the narrative of anorexia as something rich white girls grow out of.

Body of Water is bleak, ambiguous, and leaves Stephanie’s ultimate recovery hanging in the balance.

Brydon’s head-on exploration of bodies and our (dis)comfort in them marks her career as one to watch.

[Carmen Paddock] Released 16 Oct by Verve; certificate 15

Shirley

On the Rocks Director: Sofia Coppola

Starring: Bill Murray, Rashida Jones, Marlon Wayans, Jenny Slate

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Signs that Laura (Jones) and Dean (Wayans) might not be a perfect match are there from the start in Sofia Coppola’s melancholic comedy On the Rocks. Chet Baker’s I Fall in Love Too Easily plays at their wedding reception, for Pete’s sake. But when Dean’s hipster tech job keeps sending him off on extended work trips with his gorgeous assistant, Laura starts to get suspicious – although there’s a good chance her paranoia is partly a distraction from the monotony of motherhood. Who better to turn to for advice than her incorrigible father Felix (Murray), a gregarious art dealer who knows a thing or two about cheating on spouses?

Like in her wistful Somewhere, it’s the father-daughter relationship

— 39 —

On the Rocks

that really interests Coppola. Jones and Murray make for an endlessly watchable duo. They turn amateur sleuths, with Felix using his connections (a running joke is that he’s on a first-name basis with everyone in the city) to keep tabs on Dean’s movements.

If you come to Coppola’s work to luxuriate in the ennui of the affluent, that’s all here, although On the Rocks never quite penetrates the surface glamour. Its belly laughs do compensate for the souffle lightness, though.

If the sight of Murray struggling to scale a waist-high wall doesn’t send you, then several motormouth appearances by Jenny Slate as one of Laura’s fellow school-run moms surely will.

[Jamie Dunn]

Released 2 Oct by A24 (streaming on Apple TV+ from 23 Oct); certificate 15

October 2020 — Review

Starring: Siân Brooke, Amanda Burton, Fabienne Piolini-Castle

Body of Water

Local Heroes

THE SKINNY

Ancient Arts Shweta Mistry is a Glasgow-based designer and artist whose rich influences include historical and modern Indian art and modern European art and design

October 2020 — Review

Interview: Stacey Hunter

Tropical Gold Yellow; Photo: Spectacle Glasgow; Styled by I AM NOMAD

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THE SKINNY Photo: Shweta Mistry

Local Heroes

S

Enchanted Large scale detai

“My designs are created to nurture and nourish people’s living spaces and interiors around the world” Shweta Mistry

business more sustainable.

“My designs are created to nurture and nourish people’s living spaces and interiors around the world. I am really excited about a new linen look fabric, which is highly durable, made 100% from recycled plastic bottles which diverts the equivalent of 2,242 approx two-litre bottles, away from polluting the oceans for every 50 metre roll of fabric.

“Scotland is beautiful and it has a thriving community of artists and designers. For me it has the combination of natural beauty and a contemporary modern creative community that is a catalyst for my creativity. I am always open to collaborate on projects with people who share my passion.”

Instagram @shwetamistrydesigns shwetamistry.com

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October 2020 — Review

hweta Mistry’s exclusive collections of textiles and wallpapers are made in the UK to the highest quality for interior designers, boutique hoteliers and retailers and are complemented by bespoke designs for individual clients. Mistry employs a painting technique known as Indian Miniature Painting to create the basis for the artworks used in her designs. These are rooted in 12th century BC India and the pigments used have a global historic basis stretching from the Silk Road in Persia to central and south Asia.

“I have been very fortunate to learn the delicate brush work of Indian Miniature Painting techniques first-hand and to experience the process from a third generation master, Manish Soni, who has worked with museums and collectors all around the world. The pigments I use are very rare. You can’t order them online or buy them off the shelf. For example, I use Cinnabar – which was more precious than gold at one point. It can be found in Turner’s paint box – you can actually see this displayed at Tate Modern. I have used Cinnabar in my Enchanted Midnight Blue wallpaper on the body of the peacock perched in a tree.”

From her studio in Glasgow the artist and designer keeps a set of books to refer to including: Masters of Indian Painting, 1100-1900; a rare compilation of Indian Miniature Painting; and Colour: Travels Through the Paint Box. Mistry’s fine art background in Creative Drawing and Painting is from the prestigious Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, a prominent art school in India established by K G Subramanyan, a student of Nobel prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore, which situated its curriculum around the modernist ethos with a strong undercurrent of arts traditions and crafts. Mistry then studied internationally across the US and France before completing her Masters of Research in Creative Practices at Glasgow School of Art. Her unique and distinctive designs have been installed in a variety of locations from a boutique hotel in the North East of England to individual residential houses across the UK, and are regularly specified by interior designers in New York. The aforementioned Enchanted Midnight Blue design had delighted visitors to I AM NOMAD, the open house concept of interior designer Claire John who has created a peaceful place to browse and buy beautiful design in the intimate setting of her home in Bishopbriggs.

As part of her journey to building an international brand, Mistry intends to continue expressing her passion for art, history and nature through colour and pattern, culminating in designs that brighten, mesmerise and transform spaces. She is also conscious of the climate emergency and exploring and testing ways to make her design

THE SKINNY

Books

Book Reviews

What Are You Going Through

Grimoire: New Scottish Folk Tales

Ramifications

By Sigrid Nunez

By Robin Robertson

By Daniel Saldaña París, translated

by Christina McSweeney

October 2020 — Review

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A Spell in the Wind: A Year (and six centuries) of Magic

By Alice Tarbuck

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Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through is a work of autofiction, musing about life and death while providing companionship to a friend who is slowly dying of cancer. At the crux of this story is the friend who decides to die of her own volition rather than wait to be consumed by her terminal illness. Around her, Nunez also dwells on ordinary encounters with a disparate group of people throughout her life.

Distilling the reflective and illuminating conversations she has with predominantly older people, it all boils down to the yearning for human connection. To put it simply, wanting someone to ask: “What are you going through?”

At a time when the pandemic has made everyone feel unmoored, this book serves as a respite from modern anxieties. Nunez observes how most intellectual discourse is focused on “scaring the bejesus out of you” by listing the litany of threats humankind is facing: the inevitable fallout from the pandemic, cyberterrorism, the rise of far-right regimes – the list goes on. The narrative is peppered with commonplace anecdotes where most of us choose to react by lashing out rather than being considerate and showing compassion.

Spare in its emotional coherence, Nunez renders a graceful portrait of empathy amid chaos. This is a heartbreaking yet life-affirming book about the stress and solitude of being alive – a compassionate portrayal of life as we know it.

[Rabeea Saleem]

Robin Robertson’s new collection Grimoire: New Scottish Folk Tales unearths and remakes the folk tales of selkies and seers, changelings and shapeshifters, into poetry that is at once otherworldly and familiar.

Illustrated by the author’s brother, Tim Robertson, the images lie stark in black-and-white; at once slashing fresh meaning onto the page while also taking flight with the poetry. The mythic and uncanny walk hand in hand up your garden path and straight through your front door.

Grimoire is an elemental manual for the magic of shapeshifting and changing: ‘‘‘Watch the wind doesn’t change, or you’ll stay like that…’/ So I stayed and watched the wind so long I became it;/ became it, for its very changing.” Through a natural wave of language – weaving between Scots, Gaelic and English – and by sweeping through landscape and story, Robertson masterfully commands reinvoking traditional tales as present and persistent stories.

It is no wonder Roberston’s narrative poem-novel, The Long Take, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018. Grimoire is a collection which revels in this same talent for the tale; the reader is insistently drawn through these poems by the mythical narrative figure. Whether you read for the magic of the story, for the lull of beautiful language, or for the mysteries of the occult, Grimoire is a must-have for your poetry shelf this autumn. [Beth Cochrane]

In 1994, the Zapatista uprising shook the Mexican state of Chiapas, rallying against the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Bringing forth her spirit of protest, Teresa, the mother of Ramifications’ unnamed narrator, leaves her family to join the uprising. What follows in Mexican author, poet and essayist Daniel Saldaña París’ latest novel is a picture of a childhood coloured by the loss of a mother and an emotionally distant father.

Written from the perspective of the narrator, now aged 32 and isolating himself in his apartment, unable to leave his bed, events skip between 1994 and closer to the present day.

Saldaña París crafts Ramifications like a bildungsroman but subverts the genre. While the narrator does undertake a voyage of discovery to find the truth behind his mother’s disappearance, it’s one that simultaneously features a retreat from the world, hiding in the darkness of his “Zero Luminosity Capsule” (a wardrobe with cushions) or obsessing over origami.

Amongst this, Saldaña París also uses the narrative as a way of probing the reliability of memory and, in the process, casts doubt on the narrator, who pores over the details of the past while openly projecting his adult sentiments on to his childhood experience. The resulting effect is that, as well as being a portrait of arrested development, Ramifications is also a deft examination on the nature of truth. [Eugenie Johnson]

In A Spell in the Wind, Alice Tarbuck guides us along a year of magic, reflecting on her own practice as a witch through the seasons, combined with thoughtful and fascinating analysis on the different meanings the word ‘witch’ has taken through the centuries and in the media. She chronicles her own journey and experiences, describing the many different places in which magic is found, seeing as much of it in a dog park in the city as she does in a moonlit field in the country.

Refreshingly, she is particularly interested in the value of everyday things that are often overlooked, rejecting the idea of ‘purity’ or that magic has to be practised in any particular way – instead she believes that witchcraft is deeply personal and individual, defining it as an act of letting the world in, of letting yourself be present and in partnership with the world.

Beautifully written, compassionate, deeply kind and often joyful, Tarbuck’s invitation into discovering the power and necessity of everyday witchcraft in the social and political chaos of our modern world is intersectional and truly accessible to anyone. She is keenly aware of institutional and structural barriers existing in society that could affect one’s practice, and has taken care to be inclusive, providing a space that feels comforting, inspiring, and radical all at once. [Sim Bajwa]

Virago, 1 Oct, £16.99

Picador, 1 Oct, £11.99

Charco Press, 13 Oct, £9.99

Two Roads, 1 Oct, £16.99

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THE SKINNY

Art Reviews Paula Rego Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art (Modern Two), Edinburgh Narrative intrigue and political urgency form a dual momentum for the six room survey of Paula Rego’s paintings in Modern Two.

In Room One, Rego’s Popinspired abstract collages riotously obscure references to the oppressive political circumstances in Portugal at the time. Disorganised, violent and menacing, Centaur 1964 has as its centre an inverse of the titular mythical creature: a bloodied-looking human body and bull’s head

sly-faced woman inspects the underwear of her infant daughter dressed in a Disney Snow White costume. The girl’s craggy and wisened face is an acutely disturbing visual of a childhood ruined by parental abuse – a theme that continues in the Female Genital Mutilation (2009) sequence.

Rego is clear that she isn’t interested in showing ‘blood, gore or anything to sicken’. Nevetheless, at their most effective the images are cut across by, and look out into the gallery with the figures’ hate-filled glances like in The Maids (1987), the Abortion series’ defiant gazes or the miserably resolute staring of her Dog Women series. Through careful observation and classically informed technique, each of Rego’s works is a singular and synecdochal encounter with well-known myths, stories or political situations. [Adam Benmakhlouf]

Art

Credit: Paula Rego, Courtesy of Marlborough, New York and London

surrounded by abstract cartoonish characters, poised to attack.

Over the following decades and the next room, Rego’s work becomes weightily figurative, laden with knobbly flesh, broad-limbed women, and at times a claustrophobic sense of psychological tension. See Rego’s Abortion paintings (1998-9), complex windows into the unofficial medical set-ups necessitated by conservative law.

They were made to furnish the debate surrounding the 1998 referendum on abortion in Portugal.

Rego’s figures are often in uncomfortable poses or curled in pain, staring with an implacable vulnerability. She renders their forms robustly, in dense accumulations of pastel or brush marks.

Other works engage more literary references, like Snow White in which a

Until Sun 19 Apr

Paula Rego, Painting Him Out, 2011, Pastel on paper mounted on aluminium, 119.4 x 179.7 cm

Photo: Ruth Clark

France-Lise McGurn Tramway, Glasgow

October 2020 — Review France-Lise McGurn, In Emotia, Installation detail, Tramway 2020

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Art

Photo: Rowan McIlvride

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The Distorted Organic The winner of Edinburgh College of Art’s inaugural Cultural Criticism Prize – for critical responses to 2020’s digital degree show – shares a piece of writing on Rowan McIlvride’s You Know It Better

October 2020 — Review

Words: Sarah Smith

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icture this: it’s a typical Edinburgian day (that is to say, dreary at best) and there is nothing extraordinary or peculiar about it.

You’re pacing through the Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show in a slightly damp jacket, maskless and huddled into installation rooms and peeling your way through new up-and-coming works of art.

Then, horrifyingly, you are called into an even smaller room to sit closer to your fellow dampmaskless-huddling-peeling-brethren to listen to a piece of sound art bellowing from speakers, opening with one long, hoarse, breath.

Although Rowan McIlvride could not have predicted the contemporary associations of the opening material for her composition You Know It Better, the music student’s intimate yet formidable work benefits from the surreal and isolation-laden times we are living in.

McIlvride’s work acts as an exploration of the human body, incorporating recordings of actions such as breathing, biting, scratching and bonecrunching before throwing it in the metaphorical blender to be edited and manipulated beyond recognition. The piece is divided into Parts I and II, with each one beginning on a long, imperfect, crackling vocalisation with minimal (if any) editing. After this,

the work showcases its myriad of noises which find their place within the ‘uncanny valley’ of sound.

The sheer breadth and contrast of musical material McIlvride manages to pull from the body is truly remarkable: industrial rhythms; ethereal inhuman chants; zingy sonic dashes; and a sound that can only be described as the deep-voiced big brother to the ondes Martenot, which is frequently heard monothematically rumbling underneath textures. Only occasionally are you pulled back out of the spectacle and reminded through a close whisper or spoken word that the origins of these other-worldly sounds are natural.

Through these unsettling transformations, McIlvirde battles the disconcertingly intimate and spine-tinglingly enormous all within the spectacle of something terrifyingly organic.

This composition would be worthy of praise in any year of the degree show, but in times like this, its meditation on the body and self are at once a topical point of accessibility and a beacon on its laudable qualities. McIlvride’s work would typically have been performed with several speakers around the performance hall in order to capture the binaural effects she had incorporated into her work. Due to the digitised repercussions of quaran— 44 —

tine, the work will now be heard and understood through audience members’ headphones in the comfort of their own home. Listeners are thereby given a more personal experience of the work by default: listening etiquette and its anxieties are defunct; the work is now directly ‘performed’ to you, and the binaural effects are heightened. For example, Part II ends leaving the listener with the wonderful and inward association of neurons flying back and forth between your ears. On a piece exploring the human body and our understanding of it, this unforeseen obstacle has only proved to heighten the listener’s experience of McIlvride’s material and indeed her compositional aims.

It has become almost a joke that our sense of reality is changing under quarantine, with time feeling the most jumbled. There is nothing quite like the surreal feeling of your experience of the world being at odds with reality, and while McIlvride’s portfolio would have been well underway by the time pandemic anxiety began to take hold, its central conceit of ‘the distorted organic’ is one that both haunts and comforts in these uncertain times.

Listen to You Know It Better at soundcloud.com/rowan-mcilvride

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ICYMI BBC The Social and Chunks regular Chris Thorburn experiences the deeply macabre Nighty Night Illustration: Jonny Mowet Comedy

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her terminal case of main character syndrome. Jill feels like a pointed retort to the golden age of television that was only just beginning, which mostly featured stories about good men turned bad. Breaking Bad wouldn’t debut for another four years but they make for a fascinating contrast. Both are wish fulfilment fantasies incited by cancer diagnoses. We get glimpses of the story in Jill’s head in which she is the hero, never better than the dance sequence to Marillion’s Lavender in the first episode. The ongoing juxtaposition between the romantic fantasy and the grim reality is the show’s best joke. Well, second best if you count Jill listing “red jumper” as one of the qualities she looks for in a partner.

As a binge-watch, Nighty Night is almost overwhelmingly misanthropic at times, but that’s to the show’s credit. As a case study in pure unchecked narcissism, it’s a gleeful horror with a terrifically rotten central performance. I highly recommend it, and the movie Twins.

Chris Thorburn’s 2020 Glasgow Comedy Festival show Grown Ass Man will debut at the 2021 Glasgow Comedy Festival, hopefully. Before then, you can catch him on Twitter @CBThorburn

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October 2020 — Review

hen given the opportunity to write for ICYMI and cover a comedy classic I had never seen, two options immediately sprung to mind: Ivan Reitman’s 1988 film Twins and the 2004 BBC black comedy Nighty Night. I decided to cheat and watch both.

First, my verdict on Twins: Twins is lovely.

Now, Nighty Night. On writing and starring duties is Julia Davis, the mind behind the wonderfully bleak anthology series Human Remains and the I’ll-also-get-round-to-this Camping.

From her early appearances in the pitch-black sketch show Jam through to her brief turn in 2017’s Phantom Thread, Davis has proven time and time again her capacity for playing characters with a detached yet devastating cruelty. She’s wonderful at it.

And in that regard, Jill Tyrell may be the role of her lifetime.

The cold open of the very first episode even plays out like a self-contained Jam sketch. Jill Tyrell and her husband Terry (fellow Jam alum Kevin Eldon; one day I will make my big spider diagram of British comedy actors and the sitcoms they’ve appeared in) sit in a doctor’s office, where they are given the bad news – the removed lump was malignant and treatment must begin immediately. Jill bursts into tears: “I just feel so… I mean why? Why me?” Terry lovingly reassures her: “Jill, let’s keep things in perspective. It’s me who has the cancer.”

After a quick establishing shot where we meet Don (Angus Deayton) and long-suffering Cathy (the wonderful Rebecca Front), we cut to the opening title sequence which encapsulates the tonal dissonance of the entire programme: the cheerful theme tune by Ennio Morricone (!) plays while Jill’s silhouette drifts hauntingly towards us through a doorway. In the four seconds of the opening titles we realise Jill isn’t simply a selfish asshole: she’s a ghoul.

Jill sees her husband’s diagnosis as a fresh start and is immediately determined to move on, despite Terry still being very much alive. She dates widower Glenn (The League of Gentlemen’s Mark Gatiss), she forces herself into Cathy’s life in the hopes of seducing her husband Don, and she withholds Terry’s recovery diagnosis from him, convincing him he is dying.

Eventually she begins telling others that Terry has passed.

Watching in 2020, Nighty Night is simultaneously a product of its time and seemingly ahead of it. In many ways it feels entirely bound to 2004; not least of all in its needle drops.

Songs that were no doubt contemporary at the time now carry their own nostalgic comedy: In Demand by Texas, Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Kylie Minogue, Don’t Call Me Baby by Madison Avenue. Don’t Need the Sun to Shine by Gabrielle plays at least three times, maybe more. It gets funnier and more sarcastic each time.

But more than that, Nighty Night is emblematic of the comedy of cruelty that the early 00s excelled at. Characters’ disabilities, bigotries and suffering are played for laughs in a way that does jar today. But that’s not to say it’s aged poorly.

Unlike other difficult comedy figures from that period, we’re never invited to look past Jill's flaws and see the ultimately decent person underneath. She is a monster and all we can do is watch in horror at the destruction in her wake.

The show also feels prescient in terms of its lead, and in

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The Skinny On...

The Skinny On...

Aidan Moffat Having just surprised us at the start of September with their first new music in 15 years, Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat tells us what inspires him, who he thinks is the worst and what makes him cry

Where’s your favourite place to visit?

I’m very fond of Blackpool. I went there every summer as a child with my grandparents, and sometimes we’d go with a bigger party of friends and family. I never liked the beach, but I loved the piers and the rides at the Pleasure Beach, and the smell of chips still takes me back there. I love that old kiss-me-quick, saucy postcard, Carry On culture too, and Blackpool’s steeped in that.

What’s your favourite colour?

Pink and black. Sex and death.

October 2020 — Chat

Who was your hero growing up?

My grandfather, or Papa, as we called him. We were very close and he was cool as fuck. By the time I came along, he had a bad hip and couldn’t really work, so while my grandma went out to clean hotel rooms he stayed home baking rhubarb from his tiny council garden, which also had lovely yellow roses. He told me he

almost killed Hitler, which I believed until I was 13. He was actually an RAF engineer and never saw combat, but he was in the same regiment as Laurence Olivier – that’s definitely true, because I’ve seen the photos.

Whose work inspires you now?

I take bits and pieces from everywhere. I’m very good at reading a book up until the point it gives me an idea then not bothering to finish it – I recently read books about crying and death rituals, for instance, but didn’t get to the end because I started writing songs about the subjects and moved on.

What’s your favourite food to cook?

I’m a pretty shit cook, so not much at all, I’m afraid. I can do the easy stuff, like salads – my son loves the salsa I make – and I make the occasional tart. Broccoli and stilton’s quite good, but it’s been a while.

What three people would you invite to a dinner party and what are you cooking?

I detest dinner parties, and thankfully I’ve managed to avoid them most of my life. I’ll meet you in the pub afterwards.

What’s your all-time favourite album?

I honestly haven’t a clue... But I can tell you that my favourite album this year’s been Keeley Forsyth’s Debris – if you could wear MP3s out, I’d be on my tenth copy by now.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

God, there are so many! I absolutely loathed Joker; it’s a cynical, contrived, shallow turd. But then there’s also Avatar, with its shite aliens and magical trees. When I saw that at the cinema, there was a boy sat next to me playing on his Nintendo DS – normally I’d be raging but I really, really envied him. Utter shit.

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

Only one?! I’ve no idea. Maybe a B.S. Johnson one, I love him. Or I recently read The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas and I definitely want to read it again.

Then again, I never finished Ulysses, so I should probably tackle that again.

Who’s the worst?

Johnson, Gove, Rees-Mogg, Hancock, Farage, Hartley-Brewer, and all the other right-wing Tory pricks that continue to try and flame the embers of empire and make Britain a shithole global laughing stock. If you’re not angry these days, I can only assume you’re not paying attention.

When did you last cry?

I cry all the time, usually after a drink while watching emotional telly – but only ever on my own. Not because I’m trying to hide, it’s just that it’s usually when everyone else is asleep.

The last time was probably the end

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of that Katherine Ryan Netflix show, The Duchess. That was lovely.

What are you most scared of?

I don’t mean this in a macho, hardman kind of way, but I honestly can’t think of anything. I had some therapy about ten years ago, and I absolutely hated it, but the one thing I took away from it was the illusion of control. So I’m very much of the ‘life is chaos’ mindset now, and I don’t really worry about things that haven’t happened yet. As Mark E. Smith used to sing: ‘Life just bounces’.

When did you last vomit?

I don’t get drunk enough to puke these days – it’s not a very dignified look for a dad, is it? And I absolutely hate being sick, it’s horrible.

Tell us a secret?

No. Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

These days, not many of them; I’m getting on a bit and I’ve got two fucked ankles that keep me very out of shape (but nice and cuddly). But with the right celebrity, I’m sure what I lack in physical prowess I could make up for in enthusiasm. Just pick one of the men from the ‘Who’s the worst’ list above – celebrities are all they are now.

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

A cat, definitely. Lying about all day doing fuck all while harbouring a hatred for the human race but still needing the occasional hug from them? Sounds about right!

The Turning of Our Bones by Arab Strap is released on 7” vinyl, 23 Oct via Rock Action arabstrap.scot

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October 2020

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October 2020 — Chat

The Skinny On...

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