Issue 614

Found Magazine

2 Oct 2008

We’re a curious bunch us humans. We seem compelled to concern ourselves with the business of others, be it people-watching in bars or gazing into strangers’ front rooms. Now, there is a quiet phenomenon coming to our shores from America, offering a…

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

2 Oct 2008

Screenwriter, producer and director Bob Weide has spent his two score and ten odd years genuflecting at the altar of American comedy. A foremost knowledge on the life and work of the Marx Brothers (along with our own Simon Louvish) and, arguably, the…

The Stone of Destiny

2 Oct 2008

The pedigree highlight of Charles Martin Smith’s career so far was directing Air Bud, the story of a basketball playing golden retriever. So how did he come to be directing a film about the Scottish National Party? Stone of Destiny is a feature film…

Gerry Mulgrew - The Lesson

2 Oct 2008

Gerry Mulgrew is a smart director, but when he’s in the rehearsal room he prefers to work from instinct. ‘I respond to Peter Stein when he says a director should have unlimited enthusiasm and absolutely no idea of what he’s going to do,’ says the man…

Simon Schama - The American Future: A History

2 Oct 2008

With its military overstretched, natural resources running dry and markets fluctuating wildly, America faces the biggest presidential election in generations this November. You might scoff that a country which gave George ‘Dubya’ Bush two terms in…

Roots Manuva

2 Oct 2008

The likes of Dizzee Rascal and Mike Skinner might have higher profiles but there’s only one true king of British rap music and that’s Roots Manuva. London-based Rodney Smith has continued to amaze and delight with his idiosyncratic and original take on…

In the Eye of the Storm

2 Oct 2008

The first half of the last century was a period of uproar and turmoil for nearly all of Europe, but few nations went through as much tumult as Hungary. Devastated by the first world war, a Bolshevik revolution, a subsequent right wing backlash…

Sunset Song

2 Oct 2008

ADAPTATION It was some time in the early-60s when His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, last produced a play of its own, barring the annual pantomime. To return to the fray with a ten-strong company and a mainstage tour after so long was ambitious but…

The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA In January 2004, British photography student Tom Hurndall died after being left in a coma for nine months, the victim of a bullet fired by a member of the Israeli Defence Force. The fact that the killer, Taysir Hayb, was handed an 11-year…

Tilda Swinton

2 Oct 2008

It says an awful lot about the rise and rise of Tilda Swinton that, during the course of the teaser trailer to one of her forthcoming films (the Coen brothers crime comedy Burn After Reading) three legends are flashed up on the screen: ‘CLOONEY’…

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival

2 Oct 2008

‘Anyone can suffer from mental health issues, regardless of your walk of life,’ says Idlewild’s Rod Jones, curator of a music evening during the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. ‘It’s something I really wanted to get involved in. It’s…

Glasgay! Film Strand

2 Oct 2008

From heart-warming and cheering to heart wrenching and chilling, the film strand at this year’s Glasgay! could be seen as a nod to the glory of diversity. Featuring only five feature films (three of them accompanied by shorts) it’s a small collection of…

The Porcelain Project

2 Oct 2008

DANCE/VISUAL ART In the normal run of things, dancers rehearse, set-makers build and eventually the two elements come together. Not so with The Porcelain Project. The latest offering from Belgium’s Needcompany started life as an artwork by…

Sarah Wakeford: Light, Air and Space

2 Oct 2008

PAINTING ‘I see myself as a decorative artist,’ says Sarah Wakeford, ‘rather than one who wants to make a big political statement or anything like that. I paint things which I find attractive.’ It seems somewhat ironic that this is Wakeford’s view…

Brideshead Revisited

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Julian Jarrold’s revamp of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel pares back the opulent trimmings of the television series to expose the bare bones of Waugh’s lament for the civilised past. Charting blithe social-climber Charles Ryder (Matthew…

James Pants

2 Oct 2008

ELECTRO Now if you reckoned Arctic Monkeys was a ridiculous moniker, try James Pants for size. Being named after an undergarment, however, hasn’t stopped critics and bloggers falling over each other to heap shed-loads of praise on this smart…

The Tiger Who Came to Tea

2 Oct 2008

STAGE ADAPTATION Uninvited dinner guests can be a pain, especially when they arrive armed with a big appetite. But it’s unlikely any of the readers of The Tiger Who Came to Tea haven’t fantasised about just such an occurrence taking place in their…

Exposure - Ladyhawke

2 Oct 2008

No relation to the Vancouver indie rock band of the same name, but absolutely related to (i.e. named after) the corny 80s sci-fi film which starred Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer, Ladyhawke is the finest recording artiste to come out of New Zealand…

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2 Oct 2008

STAGE ADAPTATION With no budget to keep to, the human imagination can run wild in the best possible way. Which is why director Gill Robertson shied away from staging Something Wicked This Way Comes for so long. Ray Bradbury’s 1962 novel is filled…

Bodies Of Water

2 Oct 2008

INDIE It slipped by largely unnoticed, but in second offering A Certain Feeling, released in July, Bodies Of Water calmly and quietly came up with one of this year’s most beguiling records. Consisting of a husband and wife duo plus various family…

White Lies

2 Oct 2008

INDIE ROCK No money, nights drawing in, a new Kaiser Chiefs record on the way … There’s a lot of stuff to sob about these days, and while you’re at it you’d better add White Lies to the list. When the brooding Bunnymen-esque West London trio…

Richard Hughes

2 Oct 2008

SCULPTURE Richard Hughes makes some of the most repulsive sculptures around, and some of the most attractive. His subject matter is the sort of abandoned tat that would make most folk wrinkle their noses in disgust. Hughes lavishes attention on…

Sarah Millican

2 Oct 2008

STAND-UP The last time The List had a chat with Geordie Sarah Millican she was looking forward to, but a little apprehensive about, taking her debut show to the Edinburgh Fringe. It was obvious she was going to do well though, and she went home with…

Good Dick

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Glasgow-born, Los Angeles-resident 27-year-old filmmaker Marianna Palka has written, directed, co-produced and taken the leading role in her feature debut, which she is currently self-distributing in America. That’s an impressive achievement in…

Don Juan

2 Oct 2008

CLASSIC John D is a 21st century mover and shaker. He sets up meetings with celebrities, has his photograph on billboards and indulges in high-profile charity work. He is all ego and, as played by Mark Springer, both charismatic and…

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…

Cherry Blossom

2 Oct 2008

MULTI-MEDIA PLAY Catherine Grosvenor’s Cherry Blossom is an impassioned attempt to represent the experience of Poles migrating to the West, while Lorne Campbell’s direction ensures that the play – performed in English and Polish – is understandable…

Gomorrah

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Movies like The Godfather have tended to make life in the Mafia seem glamorous, Shakespearean and operatic. Heck, it’s so appealing that at times it seems like the Mafioso is the best Italian export since pasta. Now it’s time for the more…

5 Things you might not know about - Frankie Boyle

2 Oct 2008

1 Boyle had his first big break winning the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Award in 1996, beating off five other comics in the final, including one Noel Fielding. 2 He believes that while he was performing on BBC Scotland’s Live Floor Show, the mic he was…

The Fall (Myrin)

2 Oct 2008

FANTASY Extravagant, self-indulgent, amazing, eye-catching, confusing: the second feature by Tarsem Singh, the Indian-born director who gave us the wacky The Cell with Jennifer Lopez, warrants all these adjectives and more. By the end of it all, you…

88 Minutes

2 Oct 2008

THRILLER Someone really should keep Al Pacino away from director Jon Avnet. The star of Sea of Love and Carlito’s Way has struck up an unfortunately productive relationship with the hack director of Red Corner and Up Close and Personal. Avnet…

Mark Doty - Theories and Apparitions

2 Oct 2008

POETRY COLLECTION Mark Doty’s talent has always been in bringing elegance to simple, normally very recognisable, snapshots from everyday life. The American poet starts out with a plain observation – some rude truck driver tearing up the NYC streets…

SMITH Magazine - One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours?

2 Oct 2008

MINIMALIST MEMOIRS Ernest Hemingway, challenged to write a six-word story, came up with ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’. Inspired by that, literary website SMITH Magazine accumulated six-word memoirs from everyday punters and authors alike. This…

Autoconstruccion

2 Oct 2008

Mexico’s Abraham Cruzvillegas has spent the last six months in residency at the CCA and Cove Park developing a show that is more than just an exhibition. As well as his trademark sculptures made from whatever he has to hand (‘wool, sheep shit, chicken…

World International Acrobatics Championships

2 Oct 2008

The cream of the British acrobatic crop are gathering in Glasgow to compete over ten days against stiff competition from countries including Russia and China. Bring along a Union Jack to wave, and prepare to be amazed, excited or maybe just thoroughly…

Loser takes it all

2 Oct 2008

To understand the real art of being a loser, we need a definition. This one from the 2008 Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English will do: Los•er (noun): (informal) a person who fails frequently or is generally unsuccessful in life: a ragtag…

Found Magazine - Tales from the unexpected

2 Oct 2008

What’s the best thing you’ve found? There’s a note I found in our hometown, I think I just found it next to my bike one day. It’s a pretty handsome looking flyer, and it says, ‘Please Lock This Door. It will prevent unauthorised people from entering…

Air apparent

2 Oct 2008

I am so stupid. I’m shuffling forward on a bench in a King Air plane above Hollister, California. Only now, at 15,000 feet, after a quarter of an hour of shivery anticipation, and a mere stride from an open door to the sky, do I realise the implications…

Summer wine

2 Oct 2008

‘Authentic Fado tonight!’ the waiter announced, as I peeped inside his restaurant on my first night in the city. I was pulled in and fed with espedatas, huge fish kebabs, just off the chargrill, while serenaded gravely by folk ballads. ‘The Fado songs…

Remote Control

2 Oct 2008

With the USA on the brink of its most epoch-making presidential election since the one four years ago, chances are that Afghan cable networks and Iraqi terrestrial channels will be doing their utmost to ignore the ensuing bunfight between Barack and…

Changing places

2 Oct 2008

When a restaurant location starts to see a few different tenants in a short span of time it gets a bit of a reputation. ‘Bad site,’ many will mutter. Not necessarily true, however. Of course some locations are harder work, but also in play are things…

Pinup Nights

2 Oct 2008

‘Alex James demanded a microphone, played twenty seconds of Blur’s ‘Popscene’, pulled it off, shouted “that’s bollocks” and put on Chic instead. Brett Anderson told us people were following him into the toilets to try and look at his bits and I once…

Cryptic Productions

2 Oct 2008

Cathie Boyd takes her research seriously. She wasn’t comfortable directing a modern opera set in the Caribbean without getting a proper sense of the place. So, at the start of this year, she took a trip to Haiti. ‘I wanted to know what Haiti looks and…

Last word: Lesley Garrett

2 Oct 2008

First record you ever bought ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon & Garfunkel. Last time you were chatted up Last weekend at the Eurovision dance contest – that Len Goodman really is very saucy! First film you saw that really moved you…

Taste test - Tea

2 Oct 2008

China Green Tea from Dragonfly Tea, Happiness Tea from Today Was Fun, Yunnan from Twinings Light Classics range, Yerba Maté from Mr Scruff’s Make Us a Brew Tea Company, Rose Tea from Brewhaha, White Tea from Tea Tree Tea

New Season Previews

2 Oct 2008

CLASSICAL After the short post-Edinburgh Festival classical music famine, it is back to feast time on the concert and opera scene as all the main companies celebrate the start of their autumn seasons. October alone would surely justify Glasgow its…

Also Released - Film

2 Oct 2008

Drona (12A) 125min ••• Indiana Jones-style Bollywood adventure based on a mythological Indian text about one man’s journey through a mystical cosmos. Some good special effects, great locations and a compelling central performance from Abishek Bachchan…

Singles & Downloads

2 Oct 2008

Nothing draws a groan of predictably quite like finding a new Oasis shortplayer on top of the singles pile, so we’ll keep this brief. ‘Shock of the Lightning’ (Big Brother) •• is another bit of drony fluff Noel Gallagher probably found down the back of…

Picture perfect

2 Oct 2008

Artists have been invited to submit work for next year’s Jolomo Awards, which gives creatives the chance to win one of the UK’s largest privately funded painting prizes. Those applying must live and work in Scotland, have studied at a Scottish…

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People - Hot Press

2 Oct 2008

Simon Pegg’s Sidney Young is the latest in a long list of big screen journalists holding the front page with a sensational scoop. The daddy of them all, 1941’s Citizen Kane, has Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) driving everyone mental banging on about…

Profile - Ulrich Seidl

2 Oct 2008

Name Ulrich Seidl Born November 24, 1952, Vienna Background A graduate of the Vienna Film Academy, Seidl spent the first 20 years of his career making a series of controversial ‘documentaries’ for television, including Animal Love (which Werner…

Gregor Laird: Plastic Pastorals

2 Oct 2008

ART GALLERY SHOW ‘Living in Edinburgh,’ says artist Gregor Laird, ‘I’m kind of surrounded by the romantic ideal of Scotland on a daily basis, all the picture postcards with this beautiful scenery on them.’ Sending up these chocolate box images…

Profile - Orlando Voorn

2 Oct 2008

Name: Orlando Voorn Occupation: Pioneer of Dutch techno, whose early obsessions with electro and hip hop turned into a love affair with the Detroit sound at the end of the 80s. The Detroit sound? So we aren’t talking your stereotypical ‘tops…

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People

2 Oct 2008

COMEDY Toby Young’s semi-scandalous memoir about the period the gobby English journo spent carousing with the rich and famous, while working at Vanity Fair magazine in New York is given a mainstream movie makeover with this enjoyable enough romantic…

Profile - Paul Sinha

2 Oct 2008

1 The doctor is out He is indeed. Sinha might not be the UK’s only gay GP, but he is the world’s only gay Bengali GP who moonlights as a stand-up comic. This situation, as you might imagine, gives him plenty of material to go on. 2 He’s a Fringe…

Food for thought

2 Oct 2008

There is surely never a better reason to indulge than when it’s for charity, a mindset many Scottish restaurants will be hoping for this month. For the whole of October, a selection of eateries in Edinburgh will join hundreds of restaurants, gastropubs…

Offshore

2 Oct 2008

NEW PLAY It’s easy to imagine that the countryside exists without money. With all that fresh air, isn’t cash just a distraction? Of course, just as the wilderness is actually the result of centuries of industrial exploitation, so the rural population…

Import Export

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA The great Werner Herzog would surely approve of the way the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl (Dog Days) dissolves the traditional boundaries between the ‘real’ and the fictional in his films. With Import Export he works without a traditional…

Kjell Bjorgeengen/Paul Sharits

2 Oct 2008

SOUND INSTALLATION Do not adjust your sets. The 15 TV monitors arranged every which way in ‘Figment Light’, Norwegian auteur Kjell Bjorgeengen’s series of flicker-based sound and light installations, developed primarily at New York’s Experimental…

The Foundation

2 Oct 2008

HIP HOP Random Aspekts are Scotland’s pre-eminent breakdance outfit having in seven short years forged a path from keen enthusiasts to career dancers, learning a thing or two about what their art owes to its aural inspiration along the way. So after…

Times and Winds (Bes Vakit)

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA It’s taken a couple of years for Times and Winds, the fourth feature of Turkish writer-director Reha Erdem, to find a British distributor, but it’s been worth the wait: this magnificent work provides a striking vision of childhood in a…

Fleeto

2 Oct 2008

NEW PLAY No doubt it’s Fleeto’s origins as a piece of lunchtime theatre in A Play, a Pie and a Pint that mean this revival by Glasgow’s V.amp is stripped back and elemental. The set amounts to nothing more than a table and a couple of chairs – and…

Popup - A Time and a Place

2 Oct 2008

INDIE If it has felt like a long time coming for Popup’s debut long player to land in our arms then maybe it’s because we’ve been aware of them being damn good from very early on. Furious early demos, bursting with barely contained energy, recorded…

Side dishes: News to nibble on

2 Oct 2008

Leven’s is the latest opening from Thai Lemongrass and Time 4 Thai operator Carole Tong, offering what’s described as ‘Thai Fusion Cuisine’ in a highly designed setting boasting moody purple lighting, sparkly wall paper and sleek wood. The menu is…

Food for thought: Michael Caines

Chef and entrepreneur

2 Oct 2008

In the food trade we eat in a strange way. I don’t know any chef who’s a good eater when it comes to the discipline of eating: your work time is people’s mealtime.The biggest problem is that because you don’t remember sitting down to have a meal you…

Xplicit

2 Oct 2008

DRUM & BASS/DUBSTEP There will be times in your life when you’ll meet relatives with whom you have a strange relationship – second cousins, suspect uncles, your gran’s new boyfriend – you know that there’s a connection, but you struggle to figure out…

5 Reasons To Go See - Dave Arcari

2 Oct 2008

1 He’s a rockabilly punk trash country delta blues maniac. From Scotland Arcari is a one-man musical whirlwind, thrashing his metal-bodied National acoustic guitar and producing some seriously fucked up gravelly bottleneck blues mojo with gargantuan…

Also Released - Music

2 Oct 2008

The Clash - Live Revolution Rock (SongBMG) Apparently Joe Strummer found the long-lost tapes of this 1982 concert while moving house. The punk rockers shake up New York’s Shea Stadium with hits including ‘London Calling’ and ‘Rock the Casbah’. Kris…

Fly Me To The Moon

2 Oct 2008

ANIMATION A 3D film describing man’s first trip to the moon is a lively sounding prospect, and moments in Ben Stassen’s animation offer a genuine wow-factor, depicting a space-rocket blasting into the atmosphere, or the view from above the…

Mirrors

2 Oct 2008

HORROR Korea has recently surpassed Japan as the go-to guys for rubbish horror-movie ideas, with this remake of 2003’s Into the Mirror a good example of an already hokey plot getting seriously lost in translation. Alexandre Aja’s disposable shocker…

What Just Happened?

2 Oct 2008

Tales about the mechanics of the movie industry and the bloated egos that work within it are the stuff of fantasy to filmmakers. Robert Altman’s The Player is pretty much the definitive account of Hollywood, although that hasn’t stopped films such as…

The Dykeenies

2 Oct 2008

LIVE INDIE ROCK WEBCAST This live webcast with The Dykeenies is a promo for the Red Bull Bedroom Jam website, which invites up and coming bands to post footage of gigs in their own bedrooms online. Except, erm, we’re not in a bedroom, but rather…

The Fire and I

2 Oct 2008

POWER DUO Congratulations to Bathgate duo The Fire and I, who have managed to strip the whole concept of the rock ‘n’ roll band back down to its most basic elements. Essentially a four-legged rhythm section, they combine the drumming of Hooligan (we…

Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul

2 Oct 2008

ROCK Liking a new Oasis album nowadays has less to do with the actual songs and more to do with how you feel about them. They, like their fellow indie spods turned megastars Coldplay and Razorlight, provoke wrath and rapture in equal measure in our…

Unrelated

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA British TV director Joanna Hogg’s debut feature, shot during a hot summer in the Tuscan hills, has none of the trappings of Merchants Ivory’s A Room with a View, that other British heritage film made in the same location. Forty-something…

Iglu & Hartly

2 Oct 2008

ROCK ‘Glasgow make some fucking NOISE! We’re Iglu & Hartly and we’re here to party!’ If you’d ever wondered what would happen if a chiselled boy band took a brace of hook-laden pop songs to the wrong side of the tracks, then this was your answer.

Also Published - 5 Humour Books

2 Oct 2008

Benrik Ltd - A Book for People Who Want to Become Stinking Rich But Aren’t Quite Sure How The folk who annually bring us This Diary Will Change Your Life offer tips on overhauling airport security and getting really close to the mega-famous.

The Starlets

2 Oct 2008

INDIE They might be clad in jeans and speak (if not sing) with pronounced Glasgow accents, but The Starlets are the model of sophistication, from their choice of covers – a Go-Betweens song ‘to warm up’ – to their impeccable arrangements.

Desalvo - Mood Poisoner

2 Oct 2008

ROCK The fringes of rock music are littered with bad intentions. Bands of grunts that wish to thrill us, disorient us, frighten us and make us feel mildly queasy. Glasgow’s own Desalvo achieve all of this in one long-coming, fast burning debut album…

TV on the Radio - Dear Science

2 Oct 2008

POP Since they first sneaked into view five years ago, throwing down doo-wop takes on Pixies tunes and post-MBV space funk, TV on the Radio have been, to say the least, awkward customers, their sonic tricksiness often being a barrier to the enjoyment…

CHEETA - Me Cheeta: The Autobiography

2 Oct 2008

SHOWBIZ SATIRE At first glance it might sound as daft as a bag of monkey nuts. But this ‘autobiography’ of the septuagenarian chimpanzee who became world famous as the companion of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan is actually a brilliantly conceived and…

Curt Sibling - Total Fear: Collection 2

2 Oct 2008

CARTOON SATIRE It’s obvious right away that pseudonymous Scots comic creator Curt Sibling is taking the mickey, but the way in which he does it really has to be spot-on in its execution to succeed. This self-published, black and white anthology takes…

Garth Ennis & Gary Erskine - Dan Dare

2 Oct 2008

SCI-FI ADVENTURE Following cold on the heels of Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ controversial, and some might say ugly, early 90s update of Britain’s noblest comics hero, this seven-part revival from Richard Branson’s comics line, now repackaged in…

Nate Powell - Swallow Me Whole

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA Although Nate Powell’s graphic novel about the growing pains of a pair of step-siblings living in small town America is in the magic realist mould, the fantastic elements here are definitely – and in no way contrarily – of the mundane variety.

David Sanborn - Here & Gone

2 Oct 2008

JAZZ Saxophonist David Sanborn takes on the staple blues and R&B repertoire in a disc that many will doubtless see as just another commercial gambit from a very successful musician. The stacking up of guest artists – Derek Trucks on ‘Brother Ray’…

Jacques Chessex - The Vampire of Ropraz

2 Oct 2008

CRIME NOVELLA Taking a true story, apparently, Swiss author Jacques Chessex has crafted a disconcerting novella of horrific sexual crime that alternately seduces and appals. Set against a bleak 1903 backdrop of rural belief in black magic, the Jura…

Babylon

2 Oct 2008

DRAMA/CRIME The long overdue DVD release of Franco Rosso’s seminal 1980 tale of working class black youths and their music in South London really is something to celebrate. A kind of reggae counterpart to Quadrophenia, Rosso’s naturalistic film…

Alan Skidmore's Ubizo - 50 Journeys

2 Oct 2008

JAZZ Another foray into the fusion of Coltrane-influenced jazz with a vibrant African vibe that saxophonist Alan Skidmore has previously explored with Ubizo, but with a stronger slant toward the world music pole than on their two earlier discs. The…

Travis - Ode To J Smith

2 Oct 2008

INDIE This, Travis’ fifth studio album, is both their finest since 1999’s The Man Who and just, y’know, alright. The fact is, after making a glistening splash with Good Feeling and then predictably repeating the winning formula hit on with The Man…

Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross - Marvels

2 Oct 2008

SUPERHERO Comics are often repackaged and reprinted, sometimes seemingly ad infinitum, but when it’s as gorgeous a package as 1994’s Marvels it’s hard to argue with another opportunity for new readers to discover such a wonderfully rounded work of…

Ben Folds - Way To Normal

2 Oct 2008

INDIE Divorce is a bitch. But instead of languishing in his underpants, all beardy and beer-soaked following a much publicised split from his wife, Ben Folds jumped straight back into the studio and has come up with these 12 energy-packed tracks for…

Mary Poppins

2 Oct 2008

At least one commentator has compared Sarah Palin, the American vice-presidential hopeful, to everyone’s favourite nanny. ‘This election isn’t about the issues any more,’ wrote Steven Wells in The Guardian recently. ‘It’s about America’s strange desire…

Kings of Leon - Only By The Night

2 Oct 2008

ROCK Darwin’s theory of convergent evolution states that disparate, unrelated organisms evolve similar traits when adapting to similar environments, and it’s clearly in evidence amongst stadium rock bands. Using the blustery, overblown U2 blueprint…

Doug Hoekstra - Blooming Roses

2 Oct 2008

ALT-FOLK COUNTRY Now several solo albums and 14 years into his career (not counting his pre-solo time with Chicago outfit Bucket No.6), Nashville-based Hoekstra returns with another set of whispering, easy-on-the-ear songs. While Dylan, Cohen and…

Mungo's Hifi - Sound System Champions

2 Oct 2008

REGGAE ETC Sound system culture is surprisingly at home in a dreich Scotland and one has come of age here throughout the course of the last decade. Here Mungo’s self-congratulatory debut long-player champions the collective as no less proactive in…

Thievery Corporation - Radio Retaliation

2 Oct 2008

WORLD LOUNGE Leaders of the horizontal protest Thievery Corporation remain resolutely political in their approach and there is really no mistaking who programmed this set of sophisticate dub lounge. The breadth of styles treated to their signature…

Colours

2 Oct 2008

Ten years is considered pretty damn successful in this game and not many clubs have lasted anywhere near as long as Scotland’s own superclub Colours as they celebrate Streetrave’s 19th birthday. Starting way back in 1989 there’s plenty of reason to…

Can’t Smile Without You

2 Oct 2008

OK, we’ve had the ABBA musical, the Queen musical, the Pet Shop Boys musical, the Rod Stewart musical and the Madness musical. So, what the theatre world really needs now is a stage extravaganza inspired by the life and work of that…

Vessels

2 Oct 2008

White Fields and Open Devices, the debut album from this Leeds quintet is a breathtaking beast, recorded in the wilds of Minnesota at the same studio where Nirvana’s In Utero and PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me were laid down. At first glance, Vessel’s epic Sigur…

Eliza Gilkyson

2 Oct 2008

In our increasingly cynical world, moments of optimism appear more fleeting than ever. Eliza Gilkyson’s is a chink of bright sunshine on a cloudy day, and her lilting, warm tones have been a delight to behold for almost 30 years now. That’s not to say…