Issue 586

Vintage clothes in Glasgow and Edinburgh

20 Sep 2007

Throwing out old clothes can be an emotional task and parting with that ripped pair of jeans you wore every day when you were 19 can be hard, but with a little imagination and some creative stitching, rips, tears and pinching waistlines need no longer…

Jose Gonzalez

20 Sep 2007

FOLK In Our Nature (Peacefrog) For most people, Swedish-Argentine troubadour Gonzalez will always be known for his song ‘Heartbeats’ soundtracking that Sony Bravia ad with the bouncy balls in San Francisco, and that’s his main problem. What makes…

Dan Dare Rogue Planet

Frank Hampson & Don Harley

20 Sep 2007

Purists might be shocked by the news that Dan Dare is to return in a new series written by Preacher’s iconoclastic author Garth Ennis, yet no update could surely go further than Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ Dare, which saw our despairing hero…

Kylie – The Exhibition

20 Sep 2007

EXHIBITION Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Fri 21 Sep–Sun 23 Jan 2008 ‘The interesting thing about Kylie is that she represents that world of glitter and glamour and sparkle that so many gay people wrap around themselves as a form of…

Old Crow Medicine Show

20 Sep 2007

BLUEGRASS ABC, Glasgow, Thu 27 Sep Like the American travelling bands from whom they take their name, Old Crow Medicine Show’s musical education came on street corners and county fairs. They came together in 1998 in upstate New York, bought…

Captain America: The Chosen No 1

David Morrell & Mitch Breitweiser

20 Sep 2007

In the current Marvel universe, Captain America is dead. Still, that doesn’t stop him being reincarnated when David Morrell – the novelist who created Rambo – comes calling for a scripting job. The majority of this first issue of six is about as…

Spent

Joe Matt

20 Sep 2007

The confessions of a self-justified jerk-off continue in this follow-up to The Poor Bastard, which collects the next four issues of Matt’s ongoing comic Peepshow. If anything, Spent (as in ejaculated and knackered) is an even more brazenly confessional…

Psychic TV

20 Sep 2007

From his days as ringleader of prime industrialists Throbbing Gristle through various incarnation of PTV, Genesis P Orridge has never creatively stood still. His early music proved a defining influence on Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, and he…

Alasdair Gray Interview

20 Sep 2007

Claire Sawers meets Alasdair Gray at his Glasgow home and finds that he has created yet another iconic, naïve and semi-tragic anti-hero.

King Creosote and Emma Pollock interview

20 Sep 2007

We meet in Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery Café in the middle of the day. Not because Emma Pollock and King Creosote (AKA Kenny Anderson) are living the rock’n’roll lifestyle and couldn’t get out of bed because of terrible hangovers, but to give both…

The Barber of Seville

20 Sep 2007

She’s 31, he’s 62. She’s a young Scot at the start of her operatic career, he’s a singer who seems to have been at the top of his for ever. But in Scottish Opera’s new production of The Barber of Seville, it is not as singers that the two come together.

Andrew Weatherall

20 Sep 2007

If you know dance music you already know Andrew Weatherall. He’s been at the forefront of the scene since the early days of acid house. He’s one of the most respected DJs in the world, his techno mixes often veering off into new undiscovered…

Merchant City Festival

20 Sep 2007

We’re not short of festivals in Scotland. The months between April and November have begun to feel like one of those Strip the Willows that happen at particularly drunken céilidhs, where you’re buffeted relentlessly between cultural events and…

George Clooney in Michael Clayton

20 Sep 2007

There are two sides to George Clooney that are as bipolar as his famed salt-and-pepper hair. Although it would be fair to say that when he popped up in Venice to promote Michael Clayton, for which the former ER star is heavily tipped to be in Oscar…

A Mighty Heart

20 Sep 2007

THRILLER/TRUE CRIME (15) 107min For a number of reasons, it’s difficult not to think of Henry Miller’s remark that ‘whatever there be of progress in life comes not from adaptation but through daring’ when watching Michael Winterbottom’s powerful…

The Bow

(15) 89mins (Tartan/DVD retail)

20 Sep 2007

Best known in Western audiences for Bad Guy, 3-Iron and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, enfant terrible Korean director Kim Ki-duk has some serious twisted form in Asian cinema. This one, like most of the others, comes recommended. The…

The Yacoubian Building

20 Sep 2007

EPIC DRAMA (PG) 172min With the possible exception of Iran, new cinema from the Arab world gets a fairly raw deal in the UK, so it’s a rare pleasure indeed to immerse oneself in this accessible but sprawling multiple story drama from Egypt based on…

Death Proof

20 Sep 2007

HORROR/ACTION (18) 113min Like the best roller-coasters, Death Proof takes an eternity to get moving, but once in top gear, Quentin Tarantino’s thriller will leave you hanging on tighter than poor Zoe Bell, who clings grimly to a speeding car’s…

Transylvania

20 Sep 2007

DRAMA (15) 101min Tony Gatlif’s latest musing on Romany life is a visually stunning road movie that attempts to evoke the freewheeling spirit of Fellini’s La Strada. Wild-eyed Zingarina (Asia Argento) discovers she is pregnant and heads to Romania…

Evening

20 Sep 2007

DRAMA (12A) 117min From its literary origins through its evocative photography and exquisite production design to its award-winning crew and all-star cast, Evening is the kind of class act that Hollywood refers to as a ‘prestige picture’. Adapted…

The Brave One

20 Sep 2007

CRIME/THRILLER (18) 122min There is no actor working today who portrays motivational fear better than Jodie Foster. Her performances in The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs and to a lesser extent the more recent Panic Room and Flight Plan are…

Ibiza travel feature

20 Sep 2007

If you’re in search of a relaxing holiday, then Ibiza probably isn’t high on your list. After programmes like Ibiza Uncovered in the 1990s followed hoards of football shirt-bedecked British tourists throwing up in the streets of San Antonio’s notorious…

Jack Peñate

20 Sep 2007

With a toe-tapping, top-ten hit under his belt, two incendiary sold-out UK tours and a highly anticipated debut album on the way, Jack Peñate really shouldn’t have a care in the world. However, when we catch up with the London-born lad in a Covent…

The Winter's Tale - interview

20 Sep 2007

Ever dealt with the green-eyed monster? If not, you’re lucky, but most likely you have. Mark Thomson, never one to shirk the “difficult” plays of Shakespeare’s oeuvre, has chosen to begin the Lyceum’s autumn season with The Winter’s Tale. Aside from…

Xavier Giannoli

20 Sep 2007

The French director Xavier Giannoli can pinpoint the moment cinema entered his life. He was five years old and asleep in his parents’ flat in Paris, when he woke up to the sound of tanks and machine guns. It turned out that the noise was coming from the…

Johanna Billing

20 Sep 2007

Modern life often forces us into strange and awkward social situations, something Swedish artist Johanna Billing seems painfully aware of. Somewhere between document and fiction, her films record moments that she breezily calls ‘on the surface, quiet…

Mental Health Arts and Film Festival

20 Sep 2007

Ahead of Scotland’s first Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, Kirstin Innes spoke to organiser Lee Knifton about dialogues, drama and positive mental action

Bella Mbriana - restaurant review

20 Sep 2007

There are, probably, too many Italian restaurants around. Don’t take this the wrong way: Italian cuisine and, perhaps more importantly, the Italian attitude to food, bows to no-one on earth. Yet a month hardly passes without the appearance of another…

Elf Analysis - theatre preview

20 Sep 2007

Few young writers of recent years can have had quite so rapid a rise to prominence as Morna Pearson. Before November of last year, few beyond a handful of mentors would have heard of the Elgin born writer, but after her Critics’ Awards for Theatre in…

DVD Round-Up

20 Sep 2007

On hearing of Marilyn Monroe’s death, the filmmaker and actor John Huston said: ‘It’s a terrible pity that so much beauty has been lost to us.’ Forty-five years on, the first of two definitive DVD collections dedicated to her are coming out. Marilyn…

Peer Gynt - preview

20 Sep 2007

Dominic Hill’s last project at Dundee Rep, here combining its resources with the National Theatre of Scotland, shows no lack of ambition. The soon-to-be artistic director of the Traverse has chosen a complex, picaresque classic full of incident as his…

Singles & Downloads

20 Sep 2007

The Cult are back! Raaaaaaaaar, let’s party like it’s 1987! Actually, let’s not bother, because Ian Astbury and co’s latest comeback, ‘Dirty Little Rockstar’ (Roadrunner) •• is a lacklustre rehash of their Stones and AC/DC roots, except creakier in the…

Scott Myles - Askit

20 Sep 2007

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING It would be wrong to immediately dismiss the new work on show by Scott Myles at the Modern Institute at first glance, as your initial aesthetic reaction will be incorrect. It may seem overly dramatic to say that the painted…

Macbeth: Kill Bill Shakespeare

20 Sep 2007

As the Scottish king might ask: ‘What bloody man is that?’ Well it’s not quite William Shakespeare that’s for sure. Writer/director Malachi Bogdanov loves Shakespeare but he also loves the films of Quentin Tarantino. Describing Macbeth: Kill Bill…

Profile - Killa Kela

20 Sep 2007

Name: Killa Kela Occupation: Internationally renowned beatboxer extraordinaire, collaborator to the stars, sometime gossip magazine mainstay. Where’s he from? Twenty-eight year old Lee Potter is originally from Billingshurst, West Sussex, and he…

The Algebra of Freedom

20 Sep 2007

It’s not often we’re called upon to be sympathetic to the police officers who mistakenly killed Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground in July 2005. Nor are we expected to find time for those fundamentalists who prefer the bomb to the ballot…

Exposure - Foals

20 Sep 2007

Tomorrow’s music today. This issue: Foals Mixing a love of techno, Timbaland and loud guitars really is no rarity these days but what sets Foals apart from the rest is the Brighton-based quintet’s musical prowess, math rock tendencies and fierce…

Ricky Gervais and Harry Hill

20 Sep 2007

CHILDREN’S BOOKS Once upon a time, it was perfectly acceptable for an entertainer to devote their life to one career. These days, however, if you don’t learn to ice skate, cook or dash off a kids’ book in your spare time, you’re a veritable…

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

20 Sep 2007

NEW SEASON Classic Bites, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 21 Sep; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 22 Sep; Opening Concert, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 28 Sep; Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sat 29 Sep The leaves on the trees are starting to…

Meeting Joe Strummer

20 Sep 2007

Joe Strummer, the son of a crofter’s daughter and foreign service diplomat who became the poster boy for leftist, politically astute rock music is not lying quietly in his grave. Since his death in 2002 from an undiagnosed congenital heart defect there…

Hamlet - preview

20 Sep 2007

If I had a Kroner for every time someone reinvented Hamlet, I could afford a cruise to Denmark. If it’s not being set in Nazi Germany or a mental institution, the lead is being performed by – Gosh o’blood – a woman, the whole thing’s being done in the…

Crazy P

20 Sep 2007

DISCO HOUSE Ultragroove at Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Sat 22 Sep With a new album recorded and all-but mixed, the artists formerly known as Crazy Penis have toned down to appeal to the popular market. ‘Yeah, the Penis has gone,’ says singer…

Hitlist - the best books, comics & events

20 Sep 2007

Bruce Parry, the intrepid BBC guy, helps launch the book of the TV series Tribe. Yann Martel, the Canongate author who sprung a major surprise with his Booker win for Life of Pi, drops by for a couple of events to mark the illustrated version of his…

Tom Findlay at SoCo Social

20 Sep 2007

HOUSE/FUNK/SOUL The Buff, Glasgow, Fri 28 Sep There is a now an alternative to the customary quick drink after work and it comes in the form of the SoCo Social, a series of free gigs in Glasgow that run from 6pm until 10pm. The first event took…

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY (12A) 110min Adam Sandler’s determination to earth his angry-funnyman persona within real-life tragedy has already resulted in the flop of maudlin post-9/11 drama Reign On Me. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry offers a rather sunnier view of…

Hitlist - the best theatre

20 Sep 2007

Peer Gynt Dominic Hill’s last production at Dundee Rep takes on Ibsen’s classic picaresque adventure centring on a single, wasteful, very modern man. Keith Fleming leads in this epic existential caper. Dundee Rep, Mon 24 Sep–Sat 13 Oct. Rupture A…

Feist

20 Sep 2007

FOLK POP Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 26 Oct If Leslie Feist has done one thing in her varied career that deserves to make her a star, it’s the day she spent shooting the video to her recent, mesmerisingly cheerful single ‘1234’. Google it or find it on…

Hitlist - The best dancefloor action

20 Sep 2007

• Merchant City Festival Club Every night the best in local DJs play the hottest sounds to round off your festival day including Bebado, Harri and the Trouble DJs. Carnival Arts Centre, Glasgow, Thu 20 Sep–Sun 23 Sep. • Our Haus Set in a tenement…

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

Richard Strachan

20 Sep 2007

PAINTING Amber Roome, Edinburgh, until Thu 4 Oct As verdigris slices through neon lime, which in turn is edged with bright jade, Richard Strachan’s pragmatically titled ‘Green/Yellow’, becomes a crystalline image that seems to take you deep into the…

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

20 Sep 2007

• Dean Owens and the Whisky Hearts This masterful Edinburgh songwriter kicks of ten days of shows in Darvel with a full-blooded, full-band show of his beguiling Americana. Darvel Music Festival, Darvel Town Hall, near Kilmarnock, Wed 26 Sep. (Folk…

Chuck Prophet

20 Sep 2007

AMERICANA King Tut’s, Glasgow, Thu, 27 Sep Not to be confused with the current trend for trucker-chic and check shirts, Americana in the musical sense magics up the sound of smoky bars, whisky-soaked nights in the desert and heartbroken farm boys.

Mark Thomas

20 Sep 2007

STAND-UP There’s still something horribly unfashionable about political comedy in Britain. It can’t simply be that most comics have such sensitive leftist tendencies that they find it unbearable to go hell for leather at attacking the government that…

Also Released - Film

20 Sep 2007

The Sound of Music (U) 174min ••• This restored print re-release of the popular sugar-coated family musical is a must for fans but hardly essential viewing for everyone else. Selected release from Wed 26 Sep. Across the Universe (15) 133min •••…

Hitlist - The best exhibitions

20 Sep 2007

• Scott Myles This exhibition of installed sculptures and work on paper frustrates easy judgements of taste, and plays with ideas of illusion, reflection and artifice with a sense of humour. Myles’ sculptures, as fixtures and fitting, stand apart from…

Yella

20 Sep 2007

DRAMA/THRILLER (12A) 89min Nina Hoss won the best actress Silver Lion at the Berlin Film Festival for her turn as Yella. Uniting with director Christian Petzold for a third time (Wolfsburg and Something to Remind Me being their previous efforts…

Beneath You - Spider Girls Are Everywhere

20 Sep 2007

One in ten women in the UK uses more than half her monthly take-home wage to pay off debt, and popular TV programme Spendaholics no longer shocks us with its weekly depiction of debtors borrowing thousands in their quest to portray the perfect outward…

As You Like It

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/ADAPTATION (12A) 126min His forthcoming remake of Anthony Shaffer/Joseph L Mankewicz’s Sleuth (this time adapted by Harold Pinter) may put his career back on track, but Kenneth Branagh’s once golden touch with the Bard turns leaden with As You…

Dan Miller: Stockade

20 Sep 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND PAINTING Studio Warehouse, Glasgow, until 24 Sep One has to wade through the familiar sophomoric references to modernist architecture, ‘dazzle’ camouflage and death to arrive at the germ of what is an interesting talent, in the…

The Inquisitor - theatre preview

20 Sep 2007

Peter Arnott’s work is always political, but seldom didactic. The contemporary nature of Arnott’s vision is as well demonstrated in his recent Cyprus as in any of his work, for as this piece investigating the murky world of our intelligence services and…

Also Released - Music

20 Sep 2007

• Qui - Love’s Miracle (Ipeac) Former Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow joins two LA malcontents for some gleefully deranged and frequently ingenious tribal blues rock. • Miaoux Miaoux - Rainbow Bubbles (Koshka) Glasgow one-man-army Julian Corrie…

Hatchet

20 Sep 2007

Although the tagline – ‘it’s not a remake, it’s not a sequel and it’s not based on a Japanese one’ – suggests Hatchet is an original horror movie, it’s far from that. It is, as a second tagline more accurately describes this low-budget offering, ‘old…

Ecoute Le Temps

20 Sep 2007

MYSTERY/CRIME (15) 87min There are echoes of Brian de Palma’s superb 1981 thriller Blow Out in this low-budget, high-concept drama from writer/director Alanté Kavaïté. A documentary sound engineer Charlotte (Émilie Dequenne, best known for her debut…

Molly Sweeney preview

20 Sep 2007

Dr Oliver Sacks’ work has inspired a number of fictional stories including the 1990 film Awakenings and Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska. His paper entitled ‘To See or Not to See’, a case study of a blind man who regains his sight was the starting point for…

Rocket Science

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 101min Having charmed cinema-goers with his enthralling Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound, director Jeffrey Blitz works a different kind of magic with this beguiling fiction film debut. Where his first film followed a bunch of…

Profile - Joe Rogan

20 Sep 2007

Name? Joe Rogan Who’s this guy then? Just having passed his 40th birthday, Rogan has built a successful career as an outspoken comic in the Doug Stanhope-ranting vein and has even landed himself the odd TV gig such as being the host of Fear Factor.

Ladybird •••, Kattparaden ••

20 Sep 2007

INDIE POP The Winchester Club@The Flying Duck, Glasgow, Sat 8 Sep The performance space (calling it a stage would be a stretch of the imagination) at Glasgow’s newest nightspot The Flying Duck is obviously far from ideal – not least because of…

Catweasels

20 Sep 2007

INDIE PUNK Between the broad north-east English accents, quirky vocal harmonies and tunes possessing more angles than a job lot of geometry sets, Chester-Le-Street quintet Catweasels will be constantly dogged by comparisons with The Futureheads. The…

Whitehouse

20 Sep 2007

NOISE Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 6 Sep For a quarter of a century, Whitehouse have existed in a flabby imaginary hinterland where late cock-er-knee geezer Mike Reid duets with shamed gang-master Gary Glitter. Or at least that’s how it seems…

The Graduate

20 Sep 2007

ROCK Barfly, Glasgow, Thu 6 Sep ‘Did you see his hair? Did you see his arms? Did you see his teeth?’ The post-gig analysis comes in many forms, but for some it had an overwhelmingly teenybopper feel when The Graduate left the stage after this…

Hitlist - The best classical & opera

20 Sep 2007

• BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra: Thursday Night Series The opening concert of the BBC SSO’s new series is inspired by heavenly bodies, centred on Holst’s everlastingly vivid portraits of The Planets, one of the most popular pieces of classical music…

Clubland

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 107min Brenda Blethyn is on Little Voice form in this touching, bittersweet Australian comedy. She plays Jean, an ageing stand-up comedienne whose best days are behind her. She’s also a control freak who refuses to accept that her…

Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution

20 Sep 2007

The National Lottery logo often elicits audience groans at the start of a film; twee comedy-dramas like Mrs Ratcliffe’s Revolution are the reason why. Set in 1969, Billie Eltringham’s film begins when British couple Dorothy and Frank (Catherine Tate and…

Hitlist - the best events, talks and sport

20 Sep 2007

Maggie’s Building Life Walks Around 4,000 people are expected to participate in these sponsored ten-mile walks, taking in the buildings that are open to the public as part of Doors Open Day, and raising funds to set up a network of Maggie’s Centres to…

Kanye West

20 Sep 2007

HIP HOP Graduation (Def Jam) The battle between Kanye West and 50 Cent for the album chart top spot was a sensational mismatch. 50 is a man adrift, trundling out clichés, devoid of the soul that made his early work so annoyingly catchy. West on…

Hitlist - The best comedy

20 Sep 2007

• Fred MacAulay The star of telly and radio also happens to be a truly inspiring stand-up performer and this show is one of the main draws of the Merchant City Festival. The Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Sat 22 Sep. • Debra-Jane Appelby The former…

The Red Shoes

20 Sep 2007

HORROR (15) 103mins (Tartan Asia Extreme) Based loosely on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and the Powell and Pressburger film of the same name, this Korean psychological horror flick’s biggest inspiration is perhaps the likes of The…

Also Published...

5 History Books

20 Sep 2007

Rosemary Goring Scotland: The Autobiography Here comes the story of a nation in the words of its folk from the first century to now. Everyone from Mary Queen of Scots to the Big Yin have their say. Viking. Roy Hattersley Borrowed Time The ex-Labour…

Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror

Chris Priestly

20 Sep 2007

With a title like that and these spooky stories being told to a boy called Edgar, it’s hard not to think that this is a tribute to the creator of literary chillers, Mr Poe. And while reading this, it’s highly conceivable to hear the liquidy tones of…

Man In The Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story

20 Sep 2007

BIOPIC (PG) 87min (Scanbox DVD retail/rental) On the subject of once highly-regarded artists fallen on hard times, this made-for-TV biopic isn’t the finest hour in director Allan Moyle’s career. His first film was the New York-set cult punk classic…

Divisadero

Michael Ondaatje

20 Sep 2007

Best known for The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje provides another trademark non-linear narrative, attempting to create a whole out of disparate story strands, but with rather limited success. On a Californian farm, Anna, adopted sister Claire and…

Maria Schneider Orchestra

20 Sep 2007

JAZZ Sky Blue (ArtistShare) Maria Schneider’s decision to take her CD releases out of the established distribution system and throw her lot in with ArtistShare paid rich dividends when her 2004 recording Concert in the Garden became the first disc…

The Time of the Rebels

Travelogue by Matthew Colin

20 Sep 2007

A compelling account of the challenging and toppling of undemocratic governments by youth resistance groups across ‘the second world’, from Serbia to Georgia, through the Ukraine, Lebanon and beyond, Matthew Collin’s latest book is as much a tribute to…

Dàimh

20 Sep 2007

FOLK Crossing Point (Greentrax) The addition of Lewis-born Gaelic singer Calum Alex MacMillan to their well-established instrumental line-up has added a new dimension to the music of Dàimh, a band with roots in the West Highlands, but a personnel that…

War

20 Sep 2007

War, as Edwin Starr once noted, is good for absolutely nothing, particularly when it’s a non-event of a smack-down between cockney tough-guy Jason Statham and celebrated martial arts star Jet Li. Pop promo director Phillip G Atwell somehow manages to…

One Last Dance

20 Sep 2007

COMEDY/CRIME/ROMANCE (18) 110min (Tartan DVD retail/rental) Straight-to-DVD premieres no longer herald generally third-rate titles, as this off-beat Asian crime film proves. Written and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Max Makowski, and financed and…

Virgins

Anke Bernau

20 Sep 2007

In these enlightened days, discussions about virginity are spread freely across many areas of life from the school playgrounds of the world to the policy departments of the Republican Party. But it wasn’t always this way. In this lively book from Anke…

They Fought For Their Motherland

20 Sep 2007

WAR DRAMA (15) 137min (Nouveaux Pictures/DVD retail) Like Sergei Bondarchuk’s earlier Destiny of a Man, this is taken from a book by Mikhail Sholokhov, a writer best known for And Quiet Flows the Don. Unlike that film, this is a multi-character…

Foo Fighters

20 Sep 2007

ROCK Echos, Silence, Patience and Grace (Roswell/RCA) A wave of post-Nirvana excitement propelled Foo Fighters through their first few albums with ease and just as they were going to running out of steam a whole new generation of rock kids came along…

The Saga of the Blood Benders

Rick Geary

20 Sep 2007

Rick Geary has produced stories and art for everyone from Heavy Metal and National Lampoon to Disney. However, recently he’s been focusing on his ‘Treasury of Victorian Murder’, which has covered Jack the Ripper through to The Murder of Abraham Lincoln…

The-Quartet

20 Sep 2007

JAZZ Illuminated (Helium Records) When you hear an awful lot of jazz CDs that sound broadly similar in terms of instrumental sonority and idioms, it is always refreshing to be hit by something that comes out of leftfield when you slip a new disc into…

DJ IQ

20 Sep 2007

HIP HOP Live from the Sofa (Man Can) Don’t worry, the Sofa isn’t some tragically hip underground club you’ve never heard of – it’s in the living room of DJ IQ, one of the UK’s most tenacious new beatsmiths. With the help of a whole bus-load of UK hip…

Sonorous

20 Sep 2007

INDIE A Series of Unanswered Questions (Sonorous) Melding atmospheric electronics and indie rock guitar histrionics is often a tricky gig; the two battle for supremacy in the mix and often end up cancelling each other out. Sonorous live up to…

Les Savy Fav

20 Sep 2007

INDIE Let’s Stay Friends (Wichita) It’s been almost six years since this New York quartet saw fit to release a full album of new studio material but, boy, has it been worth the wait. Let’s Stay Friends features some of their finest work to date; a…

Colombiafrica

20 Sep 2007

WORLD Voodoo Love Inna Champeta Land (Riverboat Records) The title and artwork evoke early Dr John, but this exuberant album was brewed in a much bigger melting-pot than New Orleans. Like the original bluesmen travelling to London to record with their…

Georgie James

20 Sep 2007

POP Places (Saddle Creek) Imagine The White Stripes raised on summer sunshine and vintage Beach Boys instead of Detroit rain and Delta blues, and you’ll get some idea of the genius of boy-girl duo Georgie James. This is pure, driven pop music with…

Linda Thompson

20 Sep 2007

FOLK Versatile Heart (Rounder/Universal) Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Martin and Eliza Carthy and a Johnsonless Antony combine to further the leisurely comeback of the wonderful veteran folkie after 2002’s Fashionably Late. But this is not an album…

The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Mountain Choir

20 Sep 2007

Naming albums is tricky business – you’re going to have to live with it for eternity, so when TAMGC (as they shall be know here for space reasons) named their album Fighting and Onions you just kind of knew they were a bit special. With a sound that is…

Brakes

20 Sep 2007

Regarded on their formation a couple of years ago as an indie supergroup for England’s south east, they’ve been together for as long as the bands they put on hold – Electric Soft Parade, Tenderfoot and British Sea Power – arguably with as much success.

Ian Brown

20 Sep 2007

ROCK The World is Yours (Fiction) As lovely as it is hearing Ian singing ‘Wish I could scoop all of those children in my arms and protect them all from harm’, it’s hardly the ex-Stone Roses man at his lyrical best. The much-worshipped simian…