Issue 579

*Hitlist

3 Jul 2007

• T in the Park 80,000 folks have over 100 reasons on stage to get down this weekend, from Arctic Monkeys to Wu-Tang Clan (pictured) and all in between. See full running order . Balado, Fri 6-Sun 8 Jul. (Rock & Pop) • The Skids After Green Day and…

*Hitlist

3 Jul 2007

• Alexandre Perigot: Pipedream The Parisian artist creates a life-size reconstruction of Elvis’ house Gracelands, creating a stage for various performances and events - a monument to those few short minutes in which The King touched down in Prestwick…

*Hitlist - Classical

3 Jul 2007

• Mendelssohn on Mull Festival Whether heard in the beautiful setting of Iona Abbey, or the Aros Hall in Tobermory, music at this nearly 20-year-old festival takes on an almost magical quality. String players of international renown come together on…

5 Reasons - Blondie

3 Jul 2007

1 We’re talking about icons here OK, one icon, namely Debbie Harry. The rest of ‘em could be picked from a supermarket checkout queue for all anyone cares, but Harry is a worldwide musical icon, and rightly so. She was the sexiest thing to appear on Top…

A Midsummer Night's Dream

3 Jul 2007

CLASSIC Just as Freud’s Oedipal theories altered the modern perception of Hamlet, his dream theories exert a powerful influence on this Shakespearean classic. Freud professed that dreams were a manifestation of forbidden thoughts and unconscious…

Aereogramme

3 Jul 2007

FAREWELL SHOW When Aereogramme released their aptly-titled third album My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go earlier this year, it was to a certain critical warmth and a gust of commercial tumbleweed. Now that they’ve knocked it on the head…

Alexandre Perrigot

Interview

3 Jul 2007

Rosie Lesso For this exhibition in Glasgow you will be creating a full-scale replica of Elvis’ house, Graceland. Why did you choose to recreate his house in particular? Alexandre Perigot The first time I came to Glasgow by plane I landed in…

Bela and Iain Archer

3 Jul 2007

INDIE FOLK Glasgow-based Icelandic singer/songwriter Bela’s debut album Ticket for a Train didn’t enjoy anything like the response its fantastically warm, woozy folk pop merited upon release a year ago. Watching him pick away contently at an acoustic…

Cape Wrath

3 Jul 2007

DRAMA Channel 4 haven’t been too lucky of late with their new British serial dramas what with the dire sub-Footballers Wives romp Goldplated and the wildly overblown and overrated Skins. So, when news arrived of this witness protection drama, it…

Converge

3 Jul 2007

HARDCORE While metal is enjoying something of a renaissance as Mastodon and Tool’s esoteric leanings catch the mainstream’s attention, there’s yet to be a group to prove that hardcore is a bona fide art form. A group to attest hardcore is more than…

Eat - Sadivino

3 Jul 2007

The Meal On paper there shouldn’t be anything particularly special about Sadivino. A relatively anonymous Italian café/delicatessen, hidden away at the quiet end of West Richmond Street, it hardly cries out for attention, probably failing to…

Eat - Secret Garden at the Gate

3 Jul 2007

The name conjures the image of a clandestine oasis hidden within the façades of the Trongate. Perhaps in time the Secret Garden will live up to its moniker, but it’s early days and for now it is a semi-screened dining space at the back of a smart but…

Eat - Side Dishes

3 Jul 2007

• Predictably, our recent Eating & Drinking Guide [pictured], has been another top seller this year. Alas, almost equally inevitable are a few wee errors of fact amid the torrent of accurate information. To set the record straight and with sincere…

Elastic Axis

3 Jul 2007

JAZZ Elastic Axis got together last year in Dublin, but the five members of the band are scattered far and wide. The core of the group are the three Roth brothers, Alex (guitar), Nick (saxes) and Simon (bass), with Colm O’Hara on trombone and Peter…

Exchange Youth Theatre Festival

3 Jul 2007

YOUTH THEATRE It is perhaps the mark of a certain sickness in our society that we pay our policemen more than our teachers, for the priority given to education is certainly the barometer of a culture’s health. So it tells us something about the NTS…

Exposure - Cajun Dance Party

3 Jul 2007

It’s not Cajun or dance music, but their indie rock has given these five smiling north Londoners a rollercoaster 18 months. Aged 17 and still at school, they’ve supported Kings of Leon, Thom Yorke loves them and Bernard Butler is producing their next…

Hitlist - The best theatre & dance

3 Jul 2007

• Othello Bard in the Botanics continues with Shakespeare’s classic of ambition, jealousy and intrigue. Gordon Barr’s production sees an appropriately stifling and claustrophobic use of space employed in the leafy Kibble Palace where the drama is played…

Indian Summer

3 Jul 2007

Wilco are an important rock band. Not just entertaining, although they are often ass-shakingly so. Not just innovative and intelligent and experimental and heartfelt and unpredictable and honest, although they are all those things. No, Wilco are also a…

Indian Summer - Running Order

3 Jul 2007

14 SATURDAY • Wilco See preview . • Midlake Glorious 70s folk-rock inspired album The Trials of Van Occunapther was one of the albums of 2006. • The Rapture Scratchy punk funk with a slick disco edge from these hipper-than-hip-New…

Irational.org

3 Jul 2007

INSTALlATION AND DIGITAL ‘Project art’ and ‘web-based art’ sound like something hippies with palm-pads get up to of an evening after a shisha pipe and a banana beer. This anti-aesthetic guerrilla-esque expression appeals to computer geeks, the…

Jackie Wylie

3 Jul 2007

Fessing up that you like to be in small, dark and dirty rooms and experimenting with bunches of strangers might seem an alarming admission. When you add that the folk you are with are liable to get naked at any moment, some rather rum conclusions might…

National Youth Choir of Scotland

3 Jul 2007

CHORAL CONCERTS While the professional outfits take a summer break, it’s the turn of Scotland’s musical youth to take to the stage. First off on the round of summer courses, concerts and tours is the National Youth Choir of Scotland. In preparation…

Nightshade

3 Jul 2007

STRIPTEASE ART In these days of ubiquitous sexploitation advertising and cinematic ‘torture porn’, striptease can seem like an almost quaint activity. Such, indeed, is the thesis of one of the striptease artists in Nightshade, the latest show to be…

Play - Lord of the Rings Online

3 Jul 2007

How best to describe Lord of The Rings Online? World of Warcraft in the land of Tolkien? Too simple. Perhaps it’s time to find out for certain by setting forth through Middle Earth. So say hello to my character, Snide the dwarf guinea pig. Day One…

Records - Alex Tronic Records

3 Jul 2007

ELECTRONICA Rather than looking to Detroit or Paris, this compilation is a reminder that Edinburgh’s electronic music scene is alive and well. The first in a series of chill-out albums produced by Alex Tronic on his eponymous Leith label, showcasing…

Records - Also Released

3 Jul 2007

Suzanne Vega - Beauty and Crime (EMI) Twenty-two years in she’s still innovating in her own subtle ways. The songs remain mesmeric, filled with story and wonder and that she was the first major recording artist to play live as an avatar in online world…

Records - Antimc

3 Jul 2007

LEFTFIELD HIP HOP As billed this solo outing from Radioinactive and Boom Bip associate Antimc is a freewheeling hodgepodge of avant-garde jazz sensibilities applied to punk, electro, experimental rock and hip hop. As such it can be angular, maddening…

Records - Ash

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Ash hit their creative peak blending pure pop and adrenaline rock with the near-flawless Free All Angels in 2001, so, after the heads-down metal reaction of 2004’s Meltdown, where next? Back to basics, it seems, the band ditching Charlotte…

Records - Bjørn Torske

3 Jul 2007

ELECTRONICA There was a time you knew where you stood with a term like techno. Back in the halcyon days of jackhammer beats and painfully minimal backing it meant the true definition of machine music. Now with folks like Torske around it can mean…

Records - Built To Spill

3 Jul 2007

ALT.ROCK It’s been years since we last heard from this influential, Idaho-based collective and thankfully we find them on remarkable form sixth record around. Refreshingly at odds with the current glowsticks and guitars-strewn music scene they have…

Records - Clinic

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Apparently, Clinic’s motto is ‘ignoring the tenets and trends of the music industry’. Admirable sentiments, but not really enough when your brand of stomping voodoo surf punk sounds as old as the hills, and feels just as mucky. This b-side…

Records - Fraud

3 Jul 2007

JAZZ Fraud are making considerable waves on the more experimental end of the London jazz scene at the moment, and have clearly won some influential backers, as this debut album was nominated for album of the year at the BBC Jazz Awards even before it…

Records - Kurt Elling

3 Jul 2007

JAZZ Kurt Elling has stood out in the current plethora of jazz singers on both sides of the Atlantic. Hailed as a natural successor to Mark Murphy, Elling has developed as an individual and distinctive stylist, and his debut recording for Concord…

Records - Pig Destroyer

3 Jul 2007

GRINDCORE Pig Destroyer have always had more to them than your average grinders, largely thanks to the lit-heavy lyrics of JR Hayes. So, while Phantom Limb plays like the illegitimate offspring of early Napalm Death, there’s a deeply unhinged quality…

Records - Shellac

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Shellac have always played by their own rules. Whether it is their obsessions with pure analogue high fidelity and high quality packaging - this album (that’s vinyl Antique Roadshow fans) is the finest piece of work you’ll see all year, no…

Records - Singles & Downloads

3 Jul 2007

(Image: Malcolm Middleton) Think back to when you were 17 or 18. Remember the bands you enjoyed then, when music seemed like the most important thing ever? Now subtract the ones that fill you with toe-curling embarrassment and the ones that somehow…

Records - Sonic Youth

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Plaudits land at the feet of anyone who’s managed to straighten out long enough to make it to the pressing plant these days. It’s not difficult to make music and the internet age has meant it’s even easier to get it out there, but it is hard to…

Records - The Fast Camels

3 Jul 2007

TRIP POP Hailing from Glasgow, The Fast Camels pay a psychedelic tribute to the 60s in their energetic debut album. Guitar heavy, with mature harmonies and strong rhythms, the band are unashamedly influenced by the likes of Love and Pink Floyd.

Records - Thoumire & Milligan

3 Jul 2007

FOLK Folk meets jazz and cuts a very acceptable deal in the music of concertina player Simon Thoumire and pianist David Milligan. The pair bring a diverse range of stylistic options to their music. The combination of instruments is an unusual but…

Records - Torche

3 Jul 2007

ROCK Imagine a being rising from the primordial quagmire, shaking its thunderous fists in a display of brute strength, conjuring a whirlwind of frothy guitars and emitting an uncomprehending, enraged bellow. This is what Miami sludge rockers Torche…

Records - Will Haven

3 Jul 2007

METAL After splitting up, re-forming, and then losing vocalist Grady Avenell, Will Haven’s continued existence has been in question of late. But with the arrival of long-time friend Jeff Jaworski, the California metal quartet has finally found a…

Remote Control

3 Jul 2007

You often get the feeling TV executives must have decided within themselves that there really are no fresh ideas left and all that can be done is endless recycling, rehashing and resurrection. Yet just when you think nothing new can ever come out of the…

Richard Long

3 Jul 2007

When art exited the gallery in the 1960s, the street outside became a theatre for performances and an arena for installations - a move that simultaneously questioned the sanctity of the art object and the white cube that protected it. Some artists opted…

Sellotape

3 Jul 2007

NEW NEW WAVE The whiff of freshly heated maize that accompanies Sellotape’s vocal version of Hot Butter’s 1972 electro-disco hit, ‘Popcorn’ (the first ever totally synthesiser-based single to chart, pop-pickers) may take its subject matter literally…

SNJO plays Coltrane

3 Jul 2007

JAZZ John Coltrane is the most iconic of modern jazz giants, and it was inevitable that the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra would get round to honouring the master. Tommy Smith chose the 40th anniversary of his death, and celebrated Trane’s own…

Summer in the City

3 Jul 2007

It’s summer. Well, as close as it gets to summer in Scotland. Sunshine is carefully rationed so when it does make an appearance you’d better be prepared to make the most of those breaks in the cloud. Here we present some of the best ideas for enjoying…

T in the Park 2007 - Running Times

3 Jul 2007

Please note times and order is subject to change. 6 FRIDAY • Arctic Monkeys 9.20-10.50pm Sheffield’s all-conquering guttersnipe punk poets get the weekend started in earnest. • Bloc Party 7.50-8.50pm Angular London art rockers Bloc Party…

Tender Scene: Group Show

3 Jul 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION After a successful exhibition at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice as part of the third leg of his 2005 Venice Biennale contribution, Alex Pollard exhibits his work again, taking over as curator at Stirling’s Changing Room…

The Jerwood Photography Awards

3 Jul 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY With the Jerwood Photography Awards partnership with Portfolio Magazine, it seems only right that the touring exhibition of the four 2006 winners should come to Edinburgh. Paul Winch-Furness’ series of photographs of Milton Keynes are…

The Magnificents

3 Jul 2007

ELECTRO ROCK The Magnificents were always ahead of the game. Formed seven years ago at Edinburgh Art College, the eccentric but brilliant foursome set about assaulting audiences with a relentless, high-octane blend of post-punk and new wave, at a…