Issue 576

Nouvelle Vague

21 May 2007

BOSSA NOVA REINVENTION There’s something about covers bands that usually screams ‘novelty record’. However, Nouvelle Vague managed to transcend the Mike Flowers Pops comparisons with their eponymous debut album, and multi-instrumentalists Marc Collin…

Introdans Ensemble for youth and NDT2

22 May 2007

MODERN DANCE Double Dutch usually implies confusion and misunderstanding. But in Edinburgh this month, it means two tasty helpings of dance from the Netherlands. Hot on each other’s heels, Introdans Ensemble for Youth and Nederlands Dans Theater 2…

Sara Barker

22 May 2007

SCULPTURE (Picture: Falling Abbey) Conceptual and perceptual reality fit like a Möbius strip, chasing and paralleling each other in the work of Glasgow-based sculptor Sara Barker. Her new installed sculptural works kick the over-stuffed…

Vince Ray

21 May 2007

Name Vince Ray Occupation Cult pop artist and leader of The Boneshakers What’s the skinny on this bloke? The man is something of an underground legend when it comes to design, especially on the alternative scene. He designs album covers, mugs…

Peacock Among the Ruins

22 May 2007

INTERIOR DESIGN DCA hosts Peacocks Among the Ruins, co-curated by Glasgow-based designers Timorous Beasties as part of the Six Cities design festival. The exhibition brings together a rich selection of contemporary design with antiquated textile…

1971

DVD

21 May 2007

ACTION/WAR Debut writer/director Amrit Sagar’s factional action adventure, follows 54 Indian POWs gathered from Pakistan’s national prisons and herded into a secret POW camp close to the border, where Major Suraj Singh (Manoj Bajpai) leads a daring…

Thai yoga massage

21 May 2007

Amy Ku Redler has been practising Thai massage - known in Thailand as nuat phaen boran, which translates as ‘ancient’ or ‘traditional’ massage - since 1991. She studied in Thailand and has really become an ambassador for the practice since her return…

The Graffiti Project

22 May 2007

If you stand on the 45th floor of the tallest building in downtown Sao Paulo, the chaotic concrete jungle stretches in all directions as far as the eye can see. The energy and traffic fumes produced by this Brazilian city’s 18m inhabitants create a haze…

Hitlist - The best comedy

21 May 2007

Frankie Boyle This powerhouse comic is at the top of his game right now and these shows will be a fine indication about how massively he’ll be storming the Fringe come August time with Morons I Can Heal You. Brilliant, eh? The Stand, Edinburgh, Thu 24…

Hitlist - The best dancefloor action

21 May 2007

FC Kahuna The remix royalty take their spinning talents to Glasgow for a night of dance fuelled mayhem. Karbon, Glasgow, Fri 25 May. Kinky Afro A DC Recordings label showcase is always going to be a winner, especially when label boss J Saul Kane aka…

Life & Style - Shop

22 May 2007

That tired old maxim that nobody queues like the British has had a new lease of life this month, with a nasty rash of ‘event shopping’ getting consumers and commentators itchy. They included the launch of Kate Moss’s collection for Topshop and Anya…

Biffy Clyro

22 May 2007

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The Golden Tower is a tall structure not unlike a stunted Big Ben with a row of seats strung around it. It looks like a lot less of a drop than you think even when you’re stranded several hundred feet up, legs…

Aernout Mik

22 May 2007

(Picture: Scapegoat) At first, it might seem surprising that Dutch artist Aernout Mik claims to care little about art. He argues that you might as well get rid of the words ‘experiencing art’. Yet, in going against his orders and experiencing the…

Alison Peebles

22 May 2007

Here’s something you may not know: Samuel Beckett is the only Nobel Prize winner to play first class cricket. This might only be of significance to a quiz master, but for the following story, possibly apocryphal, yet terribly plausible, that’s…

Also Released

Album

21 May 2007

The Hold Steady Separation Sunday/Almost Killed Me The band who have produced the best album of 2007 so far finally get their first two albums issued here, the first of which, Separation Sunday, is arguably better than their latest, Girls and Boys of…

Isle of Skye Music Festival

21 May 2007

The fact that Isle of Skye Music Festival scooped the ‘Most Fan Friendly’ gong at the 2006 UK Festival Awards is testimony alone to its quality. Consider that the event took such a prize in spite of being one of the most soggy, windswept outdoor…

Paradise Lost

21 May 2007

HORROR Having already flopped under the title Turistas in the US last November, John Stockwell’s limp lettuce of a thriller finally emerges in the UK as little more than a smudged photocopy of Eli Roth’s Hostel. It’s not Slovenia but Brazil that…

Close to Home

21 May 2007

DRAMA Written and directed by a pair of female filmmakers, Dalia Hager and Vidi Bilu, Close to Home has the distinction of being the first ever Israeli film to focus on the experiences of women in the country’s armed services. The rebellious Smadar…

Derren Brown

21 May 2007

MAGIC SHOW (Picture: © Gary Moyes) There’s something about the world of magicians that turns people right off. In the old days it was easy to be repelled by the over-the-top theatrics and dodgy bouffant hairdos as skimpily-clad women went around…

Hitlist - The best books, comics & events

21 May 2007

Martina Cole The big-selling thriller scribe does a signing at WHS and holds court at RCH as copies of Close go flying out the shops. WH Smith, Glasgow, Thu 24 May; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Fri 25 May. William McIlvanney A good fat-chewing…

Essex County Vol 1: Tales from the Farm

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY Superman and flying saucers feature figuratively in Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire’s lovely low-key coming-of-age graphic novel. Set in a fictionalised version of the Ontario agricultural community in which the author grew up (here…

Burns an’ a’ That festival line-up unveiled

22 May 2007

Words: Allan Radcliffe (Picture: Deacon Blue (left) and the MacDonald Brothers (right)) The sixth Burns an’ a’ That festival, which takes place from Wednesday 23-Monday 28 May, features an enticing programme of entertainment, music, dance…

Mahabharata

22 May 2007

CLASSIC East meets West is often a tricky encounter. Can either of us truly reproduce the culture and sensibilities of the other? Director Stuart Wood’s version of the ancient epic Indian poem, Mahabharata, chooses to combine the two. ‘We use Western…

Hitlist - The best theatre & dance

22 May 2007

Mahabharata Epic narrative, vivid colour, dancing and puppetry are promised in this new production of the sprawling Indian tale, first brought to Western audiences by Peter Brook. Written by Stephen Clark and with music by Nitin Sawhney, this looks like…

Day Jobs

22 May 2007

Look closely at your electrician. Can you imagine him as a rock singer? What about your cleaning lady - does she exhibit in the Saatchi Gallery? And have you heard the one about the aerobics teacher with a book deal? For a variety of (mostly financial…

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

21 May 2007

Sparklehorse The Smokey Mountains are home to Mark Linkous (pictured) a wayward music force whose magical sound invokes thoughts of Robert Wyatt and Syd Barrett. Oran Mor, Glasgow, Tue 5 Jun. (Rock & Pop) Nouvelle Vague Who would have though covers…

Abram Wilson

Album

21 May 2007

JAZZ The New Orleans-born, London-based trumpeter and singer has been winning a lot of admirers, both for his work with Jazz Jamaica and in his own bands. This second album for Dune, subtitled Ferris Wheel to the Modern Day Delta, follows the example…

Biffy Clyro

Album

21 May 2007

ROCK The pressure of expectation on a band is only really pressure if you don’t have the requisite songs to walk the walk. This, Biffy Clyro’s fourth album, walks the walk. The proggy edges that might have frightened the greater populace in the past…

Candie Payne

21 May 2007

MELANCHOLIA Phil Spector’s name may now be more likely to be linked at the moment to incarceration than innovation, but the eccentric New Yorker’s influence still casts a powerful shadow over the performance by diminutive Scouse songstress Candie…

The Skatalites

21 May 2007

SKA After April’s rare treat of The Funk Masters, Glasgow’s next Band To See Before They Die offering was this May Day Fundraiser from Ska originals The Skatalites as they closed the Scottish leg of an expansive world tour. The support had been…

Le Weekend

21 May 2007

EXPERIMENTAL (Picture: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori) Experimental music festivals are currently so voluminous as to arguably be considered more over-ground than under. When Le Weekend first set the trend back in 1998, however, the landscape was a…

Dizzee Rascal

21 May 2007

HIP HOP For many the turn of the new millennium was a bleak time for British music. A mixture of saccharine garage, imported nu metal and Travis had ripped the spine from the charts, leaving a charmless corpse and no respite in sight. Few though…

Science is Fiction

DVD

21 May 2007

DOCUMENTARY There’s just space to mention this fascinating film about one of the great pioneers of science films, Jean Painlevé (1902-1989). Painlevé was a poet in every sense of the word and there was nothing he liked to do more than film fish, foul…

Flyboys

21 May 2007

ACTION/ADVENTURE Based on true stories about American pilots flying for the French Lafayette Escadrille in WWI, director Tony Bill’s $90m film opens here nine months after crashing and burning spectacularly at the US box office. And despite being…

Playlist

21 May 2007

The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised; this issue’s PlayList bangs on your door in the middle of the night to evoke memories of the Eastern Bloc and consider what life would be like under the yolk of a repressive and uncaring…

Lights in the Dusk

21 May 2007

DRAMA/CRIME/COMEDY The final part of Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s ‘Loser Trilogy’ (preceded by Drifting Clouds and The Man Without a Past) concerns itself with lonely night watchman Koistinen (Janne Hyytiäinen) who has modest hopes of setting…

Wee Chill

21 May 2007

FESTIVAL (Picture: Masters At Work) Celebrating its fifth year on the festival circuit, the central belt’s own Wee Chill has this year moved to the fabulous Glasgow Science Centre, boasting a greater capacity and bigger guests. The change of venue…

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY Given that this is by far the best work Mike Mignola did before creating Hellboy, it’s a wonder it’s taken Dark Horse this long (17 years) to collect his marvellous adaptations, scripted by Howard Chaykin, of Fritz Leiber’s terrific sword and…

Gutsville No.1

Comics

21 May 2007

FANTASY HORROR Created by two of British comics’ brightest new talents, Gutsville No.1 is a steampunk fantasy yarn that has absolutely no truck with even the furthest reaches of possibility. Yet it’s all the better for that, as Simon Spurrier has an…

Resistance

21 May 2007

WAR DRAMA September 1944. The women of a remote valley in Wales wake to find their husbands have disappeared in the night with neither explanation nor warning. Within weeks, a German patrol moves into the valley on some unstated mission, their…

Esther Freud

21 May 2007

Esther Freud has been called ‘the best writer about childhood we have.’ Certainly, since her 1992 autobiographical debut Hideous Kinky, the tale of two young girls accompanying their free-spirited mother on a pilgrimage to 1960s Marrakech, her work has…

Life & Style - Travel

22 May 2007

The car rental clerk has me sussed. ‘Of course, for only an extra US$100 you can have this.’ Turning the page of his display book, he taps invitingly on the upper corner of a photograph. There, glistening in the Californian sunlight, is a Chrysler…

Life & Style - Eat & Drink

22 May 2007

The Meal When both YoSushi! and the original OKO shut their doors a few years back, some predicted the death knell for sushi in Scotland. The pair were sprawling joints and probably evidence that the local market for cold cooked rice, seaweed and…

Aereogramme call it a day

22 May 2007

Scottish four-piece Aereogramme have announced that they are to split up. The band, credited with crafting intelligent, innovative alternative/progressive rock for the past nine years, across four albums, are currently in the midst of a UK and European…

*Hitlist

22 May 2007

Sara Barker An exhibition of sculptures by the Glasgow-based artist made out of flimsy, throwaway materials. Barker arranges her anti-sculptures in intentionally unimpressive geometric arrangements, forcing the viewer to stand directly in front of her…

Hanneline Visnes

22 May 2007

PAINTING (Picture: Possessions) Belgian-born, Glasgow-based artist Hanneline Visnes’ paintings record the tension between abstraction and representation, pattern and spontaneity - a play of opposites that has come to characterise a slightly…

Remote Control

22 May 2007

They don’t make ‘em like they used to back in the good old days, do they? The nostalgia industry is showing no sign of abating and, frankly, why should it when it consistently throws up some fascinating television. The clutch of shows about the past…

Brits Get Rich in China

22 May 2007

BUSINESS DOCUMENTARY Paul Merton recently recalled with some anxiety how he forced down a portion of cooked donkey penis in the name of travel shows. And in this documentary, a marginally traumatised businessman dines briefly on the same delicacy.

Broken Glass

22 May 2007

SCOTTISH PREMIERE Whenever someone expresses a view that dissents from the mainstream it makes others feel uncomfortable, and they may feel the need to find a label for them. In his own time, Arthur Miller endured a good deal of abuse from various…

Too Close to The Sun

22 May 2007

MUSICAL THEATRE ‘When I was very young, just a nipper, after my first album, I was living with a pal, Steve Morris, who lived in some style in Beverley Hills and I was invited to go to St Louis and write a musical with some real theatre people,…