Issue 616

Hunger

Protest picture

30 Oct 2008

'Were you out last night my friend?' 'Is it that obvious?' I say pulling down a wrinkled lower eyelid to expose an eye as bloodshot as those of the two men opposite me. They are hot young actor Michael Fassbender - all fair brown hair, blue eyes, slight…

Stephen Petronio Dance Company

30 Oct 2008

As the enfant terrible of the dance world Stephen Petronio has worked with some of the world’s most recognisable names. Kelly Apter meets the man behind the stage magic

Quantum of Solace

30 Oct 2008

Director Marc Forster has said in interviews that he agreed to do Bond because the producers asked him to make an art house version. Well, if this is art house then the Pope is atheist, Quantum of Solace starts with a trademark action sequence involving…

James Bond - Killer Tracks

30 Oct 2008

When Bond's latest music maker, Jack White, told Rolling Stone magazine recently that he wanted to 'join the family of Barry, Bassey, Connery and Craig', he cleverly omitted any reference to the occasional black sheep of the 007 family. After all…

Jazzie B

Keep on movin'

30 Oct 2008

'I never made house music, mate! You've got the wrong bloke.' He's got a point actually, maybe I have. Is this the same Jazzie B whose band Soul II Soul produced a genre defining album entitled Club Classics Vol. 1 just as house music was breaking…

Circuit training

30 Oct 2008

‘Tangerine Dream,’ Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter said to Lester Bangs in a 1975 interview, ‘although they are German they have an English name, so they create onstage an Anglo-American identity, which we completely deny. We cannot deny we are from Germany…

Gerhard Richter

Man for all seasons

30 Oct 2008

When Sonic Youth toured their 1988 Daydream Nation album in 2007 on the back of the same year's two-CD deluxe edition of what had originally been the New York art rock pioneers' final independent release, the original LP cover art was probably the last…

Dylan Moran

Good stock

30 Oct 2008

Despite the current economic doom and gloom, or more likely because of it, live comedy is booming, with a host of big names currently touring the UK. And while luminaries like the Mighty Boosh, Sarah Silverman, Steve Coogan and Lee Evans have recently…

Slava’s Snowshow

30 Oct 2008

After well over a decade on the road, Slava’s Snowshow continues to pack ‘em in. Steve Cramer reckons this is about childishness, love and pain

Michel Faber

Baptism of fire

30 Oct 2008

Michel Faber is a tough act to follow, especially when you're Michel Faber. The chameleonic author has built an impressive back catalogue that flips between postmodern memoirs of a Victorian prostitute, ghostly love stories or a sci-fi thriller about a…

Birmingham Royal Ballet

30 Oct 2008

George Balanchine, Kenneth MacMillan and Bronislava Nijinska – a heavyweight line-up of choreographers, all of whom have created a ballet to Stravinsky’s 1928 score, Le Baiser de la fée. So when British choreographer, Michael Cordor was asked to make a…

Rebel Waltz

30 Oct 2008

It's been to Barcelona, to Shoreditch and even to Brazil, but Rebel Waltz co-founder Murray Richardson finds much amusement in the fact that his club, which celebrates its tenth anniversary here, will be happening on the very same street on which it was…

John Updike - The Widows of Eastwick

30 Oct 2008

For almost half a century, novelist, poet and New Yorker writer John Updike has chronicled the concerns, thoughts and sexual foibles of the American middle class. Not always successfully though, as can be forgiven amidst a career which embraces almost…

Hunger

(15) 95min

30 Oct 2008

In 1981, IRA member Bobby Sands allowed his body to become the ultimate instrument of protest when he led the Maze prison hunger strike in order to win political status for imprisoned members of the IRA. Directed by Turner Prize winning artist Steve…

Telefunken

30 Oct 2008

Telefunken is a proper house night. Its music jacks in all the right places, its residents know how to mix without molestation and its guests are great. You can tell residents Alan Gray and Nick Wilson come from the right sort of background because…

The Caretaker

30 Oct 2008

Pinter’s tale of a power struggle between three men, one destitute, one marginalised by mental health issues and one seeming to exist at the twilight edge of bourgeois respectability, assumes a new power in the current economic climate. When…

Alexander McCall Smith - La's Orchestra Saves the World

30 Oct 2008

When a master of storytelling such as Alexander McCall Smith puts pen to paper, we have come to expect great things. And he doesn't disappoint with this latest stand-alone title, a warm and captivating tale of strength, passion and friendship set in…

Terence Davies

Liverpool echo

30 Oct 2008

Of Time and the City is an idiosyncratic and deeply personal documentary essay, which draws on vivid archival footage and some inspired musical selections (everything from Mahler to Peggy Lee), it's narrated by Terence Davies, who peppers his commentary…

W.

30 Oct 2008

The American aphorism that suggests 'any boy can grow up to be president' is blandly dramatised in Oliver Stone's outrageously timed film, the first biopic to consider the life story of a sitting US president. Fresh from his deadly pursuit by Anton…

Hydro

30 Oct 2008

Straight outta Bellshill, Hydro grew up listening to his dad’s hip hop collection, split into ‘kid friendly’ and ‘non-kid friendly’ categories. He soon skipped the De La Soul and Tribe Called Quest and broke out the NWA and the Public Enemy. Moving to…

Shellac

30 Oct 2008

'My band means too much to me for me to allow anyone to put me in a position of resenting my band. I insist that it remain a hobby for that reason. If it becomes anymore than a hobby then it becomes something that I rely on, and my frame of mind and my…

Martin Kershaw

30 Oct 2008

A visit to the Eduardo Paolozzi retrospective at the Dean Gallery four years ago was the starting point for alto saxophonist Martin Kershaw’s ambitious new Hero as a Riddle project. A Scottish Art Council New Music Award has finally allowed Kershaw…

Jean Muir

Absolutely fabulous

30 Oct 2008

Jean Muir didn't invent the little black dress, but she made it her own. The trailblazing designer, who established her own label Jane & Jane in 1962 before branching out under her own name in 1966, was loved not for her catwalk extravagance or her…

Suddenly Last Summer

30 Oct 2008

Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer is the theatrical equivalent of a shot in the arm from a hypodermic needle, a visceral cocktail of madness, repressed sexuality and cannibalism all played out against the sweltering New Orleans heat. It’s also…

Hannah and Harvey

Young people's theatre

30 Oct 2008

Mental illness isn’t something you see on the stage very often, and certainly not in a show aimed at children. But given that one in four of us will experience it at some point in our lives, we’re as well to find out about it sooner rather than…

Alex Frost: Compassion Fatigue

30 Oct 2008

The packaging from healthy breakfast cereals, eye drops, tooth polish and intensive moisturising lotion may not sound like promising subject matter for contemporary art, but Alex Frost's excellent new exhibition consists of works based on just these…

Richard Alston Dance Company

30 Oct 2008

Music has always played a huge part in Richard Alston’s work, but these days he’s having fun with lyrics, too. Last year’s Shuffle It Right introduced dance audiences to the witty words of late American jazz singer, Hoagy Carmichael. ‘Hoagy was an…

Monika Sosnowska

30 Oct 2008

While Polish artist Monika Sosnowska's architecturally-concerned works can often be playful in tone, the pieces on display here are masked by a kind of bleak austerity. In this regard, Sosnowska has taken inspiration from her home city of Krakow, and in…

5 Things you might not know about - Tina C

30 Oct 2008

Despite appearances to the contrary, Tina C is not a genteel C&W dame from Tennessee but is in fact a strapping gentleman by the name of Christopher Green, a bloke from Derbyshire. To be more map-specific, Green hails from Matlock, a true hotbed of…

Simon Day

30 Oct 2008

From white rapper to alcoholic car salesman, Simon Day has taken on a wide and varied range of comedy personas over the years - most famously getting us giggling with his hilarious skits on successful sketch show The Fast Show. But he's tired of only…

Celtic charms

Celtic Connections

30 Oct 2008

From Africa to America, bluegrass to country, Celtic Connections looks set to showcase a roster of international talent, finds Anna Millar

Bring in the bells

30 Oct 2008

This year’s Hogmanay festivities could provide a stepping stone to stardom for one lucky band, as King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut and Winterfest Glasgow this year offer an unsigned Scottish act the chance to kick off New Year festivities in Glasgow’s George…

A History of Scotland

BBC1, Sun 9 Nov, 9pm

30 Oct 2008

Following recent criticism about the lack of native history being taught in Scottish schools and widespread whinging about BBC Scotland spending increasingly less cash on home-grown fare, the corporation has risen to both challenges with this ambitious…

Remote Control

30 Oct 2008

A worrying trend has developed in recent times: folk better known for doing other things have begun reinventing themselves as TV documentary-makers. From Louise Reknapp's psuedo-journalistic investigation into the phenomenon of size zero models to…

Screen bites

30 Oct 2008

When a 1970s Indian journalist labelled populist Bollywood films as 'masala movies' - a dollop of drama, pinch of comedy, stirred in with some song and dance - Indian cinema's association with food became firmly established. While the masala movies…

The Bollywood Lounge & Indian Restaurant

Movie smoothie

30 Oct 2008

The gaudy glamour of the Indian film industry seems a parallel universe away as you button up on a dreich Glasgow night and stride past Sauchiehall Street's greasy takeaways and booze-addled hordes down by Charing Cross. Yet, just on the other side of…

Last word - Kyle Falconer

30 Oct 2008

Singer Kyle Falconer from Dundonian indie rock outfit The View waxes lyrical about boozing, Paul McCartney and Pulp Fiction

Taste test - Chicken Tikka Masala

30 Oct 2008

McLeish Brothers, Lidl, Mother India, Tesco, Caledonian Curry Company, Marks & Spencer

Singles & Downloads

30 Oct 2008

You know times are tough when you have to resort to Tony Christie to get you through the day. OK, the climate’s shagged and the banks are collapsing, but it’s the piffling amount of brilliant tracks that’s really getting my goat this issue. What? Us…

Valerio Zurlini

Italian Stallion

30 Oct 2008

In one of his last-ever interviews, Italian director Valerio Zurlini discussed his life-long passion for Leo Tolstoy. 'What I find extraordinary in his work,' Zurlini observed, 'is the remarkable fusion between public and private history'. Zurlini never…

Build your own Bond movie

30 Oct 2008

Exotic locations, the hot girl, the evil villain, clever gadgets, bad puns and interrupted love scenes.

Cockroach

30 Oct 2008

It sneaks up on you unexpectedly, this full-length debut by Sam Holcroft. At first, she gives the impression of writing a lightweight comedy of high school life; all cat-fights, smashed windows and detentions. But something is afoot in the biology…

West Side Story

30 Oct 2008

From Charles-Francois Gounod’s 19th century opera to Baz Lurhmann’s gun-toting 1996 film, there’s been no shortage of momentous adaptations of Shakespeare’s love epic. But of all the play’s modern reworkings, West Side Story continues to be one of the…

Profile - Toby Jones

30 Oct 2008

Name Toby Jones Born 7 September 1967, Oxford, England Background In 2001, the diminutive British actor premiered his self-penned monologue – Missing Reels at the Edinburgh Fringe. The show was an entertaining account of how his role as a…

Scottish Opera - La Traviata

30 Oct 2008

‘Born to die’ seems a bit of an extreme expression to describe a singer, but for Carmen Giannattasio it appears to fit the bill. Star of tragic opera after tragic opera, the Italian soprano says it’s unfortunate, but, ‘I have died so much in the last…

Film & DVD Playlist - Paul Newman

30 Oct 2008

‘What we’ve got here is failure to communicate’ was the tagline of Cool Hand Luke, 1967’s chain-gang drama starring Paul Newman, who sadly died from cancer in October. The many obituaries covering his best-known performances in hits like Butch Cassidy…

DVD Round-up

30 Oct 2008

The much threatened, barely still breathing DVD industry has had little to celebrate in the last few years. The current modus operandi seems to be: ‘let’s release as much old, new and rubbish stuff as we can before the bubble bursts and new technology…

Umek

30 Oct 2008

Name Umek Also known as Uros Umek Occupation The biggest name in Slovenian techno, whose reputation is growing around Europe and even further afield. Where is he from? Ljubljana, where he was born 32 years ago. A teenage devotee of the…

News Briefs

30 Oct 2008

A self-portrait of Edinburgh-born artist Allan Ramsay has gone under the hammer in the capital’s Christie’s auction for almost £300,000. A painting by Edinburgh-born Samuel Peploe, Roses, fetched £529,250 – a record sum for a Scottish Colourist.…

Heartbreak

30 Oct 2008

Stuck between two separate camps of zeitgeist-grabbing greatness, East London based duo Heartbreak are both flag-bearers for the much name-dropped Italo disco revival, and also affiliates of the ever-high quality scene based around Australia’s Modular…

Fleet Foxes

30 Oct 2008

While music with a sense of the rustic American has been back on the menu of late (what with the rise of Band of Horses and Bon Iver) Seattle’s Fleet Foxes raise the game even further. Their music is a chiming approximation of the 60s’ best country rock…

Langlands & Bell: Films and Animations 1978-2008

30 Oct 2008

Reflecting on Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell's joint career since first collaborating at Middlesex Polytechnic in the 1970s, this show tracks a continuing assessment of visual culture in the moving image, from Super-8 film to digital…

Slayer, Trivium, Mastodon & Amon Amarth

30 Oct 2008

When it comes to metal they don’t get any more influential than the founding fathers of thrash: Slayer. While pretenders to the throne may go heavier and faster you can’t match the peerless Reign in Blood and in particular the blueprint for thrash metal…

The Dogstone and Nasty Brutish and Short

30 Oct 2008

This double bill, part of the jamboree of new theatre on a small scale laid on by the NTS and Traverse, looks very much a boy thing. Andy Duffy’s Nasty Brutish and Short deals with the deteriorating relationship between two brothers in a Glasgow…

Matthew Smith

30 Oct 2008

It seems as though Mary Mary has executed a bit of a coup by getting Matthew Smith's work to Scotland for this new exhibition. Smith's CV includes solo shows at cutting-edge galleries such as White Columns and Rivington Arms in New York, and he was…

Side Dishes

30 Oct 2008

● Agua Restaurant has been re-launched with a seafood theme under head chef John-Paul Persighetti. For anyone tracking the oyster index, six west coast bivalves are doing well at £9.50. Prawns, mussels, cockles and crab also feature at the new crustacea…

Exposure - Logan

Tomorrow’s music today

30 Oct 2008

I’m sure their name rings a bell … For the past six years the boys have been doing it for themselves, with great success. They’ve sold more than 8000 copies of their first two albums,and in 2006, became the first unsigned band to have two…

Mary Rose

30 Oct 2008

Fans of Lost will be familiar with the supernatural powers a (seemingly) deserted island can possess. However, it seems the US TV show’s creator JJ Abrams had an unlikely forerunner – Scottish playwright JM Barrie. While Barrie is more commonly…

Something Wicked This Way Comes

30 Oct 2008

When Gill Robertson first set out to put Ray Bradbury’s 1962 novel on the stage, her main concern was doing the book justice. In reality, if anything, she puts it in the shade. The standard of this co-production between Catherine Wheels and the National…

Food for thought

Hardeep Singh Kohli

30 Oct 2008

Food's a very important part of my life. I can't begin to tell you how much. I'm notoriously bad at eating breakfast, yet ironically I'm obsessed with it, to the extent that my next book is going to be about breakfast. I will have a decent lunch, and…

Of Time and the City

30 Oct 2008

The great but religiously underfunded British filmmaker Terence Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, The House of Mirth) returns to his Liverpool home with this fascinating subjective documentary. Made and released to coincide…

Marat/Sade

30 Oct 2008

Call it a testament to the human spirit or the will to triumph in the face of adversity, but for some reason, after the interval, the audience comes back. Perhaps, they are thinking, it is a mistake to imagine the acting is terrible. Maybe, they hope…

Let's Talk About the Rain (Parlez-moi de la pluie)

30 Oct 2008

In an interview to promote their 2004 feature Look at Me, the French actors/filmmakers Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri felt that they couldn't pitch their films at Hollywood meetings, and their latest collaboration Let's Talk About the Rain again…

The Warlords

30 Oct 2008

Jet Li's risky decision to trust his acting rather than his action skills pays off in this mid-19th century Chinese civil war drama that is actually deserving of that over-used epithet 'epic'. Taking real historical events as a bouncing-off point…

Abraham Cruzvillegas: Autoconstrucción

30 Oct 2008

Abraham Cruzvillegas creates work that reflects his upbringing in Ajusco, a district of Mexico City developed by migrants from the countryside attracted to work in the city's building trade, who used their knowledge to collaboratively construct their…

Ruth Claxton: Postcards

30 Oct 2008

Rightly celebrated for her touring large-scale installation, Lands End, Claxton's presentation of nine small postcards at the Ingleby Gallery sadly disappoints compared to that sprawling installation of delightfully kitsch figures arranged atop dazzling…

Also released

30 Oct 2008

The Midnight Meat Train, Pride and Glory, The Midnight Meat Train

Easy Virtue

30 Oct 2008

England, the 1920s. Dashing young socialite John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) returns to his ancestral pile with his spunky new American wife Larita (Jessica Biel). A hotbed of dysfunction, xenophobia and bankruptcy the family home contains his highly-strung…

Aaloo Tikki aur Pudine ki Chutney

Potato cutlets with mint chutney

30 Oct 2008

This is Abhishek Bachchan's favourite dish, and it's very popular with the whole family. Across India, there are variations on the stuffing, from mashed peas to spice blends, but the Bachchans prefer it simple and don't stuff theirs. Mint chutney is…

Histoire(s) du cinéma

30 Oct 2008

At one moment in this four and a half hour documentary on the history of cinema, Jean-Luc Godard muses over why what we remember of Hitchcock’s films, for example, isn’t the motivation of the characters, but the specific images, like the glass of milk…

The Fusiliers

Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 16 Oct

30 Oct 2008

While definitions of what might count as a good local band are varied, there are three broad categories: the ones who fly out from under the radar to astonish with their skill and ingenuity; the ones who perfectly sum up a period of time in their home…

Bloc Party

Barfly, Glasgow, Sun 19 Oct

30 Oct 2008

It’s no way to endear yourself to a crowd when one song in you announce ‘I know it’s a Sunday night and all Glasgow, but this is a Bloc Party show!’ A declaration from Kele Okereke that could easily be taken as a preening popstar sniping because he…

The Creeping Nobodies

Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh, Wed 15 Oct

30 Oct 2008

Back in the dark(er) ages, The Creeping Nobodies were an imaginary indie band immortalised on a demo tape which adorned the typically slap-dash front cover of The Fall’s 1980 Grotesque (After The Gramme) album, addressed to ‘A Famous Ape’. Well, praise…

Two-Minute Warning

30 Oct 2008

Larry Peerce’s part-thriller, part-disaster movie evokes a certain nostalgia for its period, while containing some of the flaws characteristic of its time. The 1976 epic sees an unhinged sniper with a high powered rifle secret himself into a tower…

Holy Ghost Revival

30 Oct 2008

Not only does the Devil have the best tunes, but he lurks in the detail, and so it proved for this five-piece, religiously obeying all the rock’n’roll clichés. Trashing equipment, leaping out into the audience and sprawling himself across the floor…

Jim Holt - Stop Me If You've Heard This

30 Oct 2008

If there is one art form often deemed to be beyond analysis, it's comedy. You hear, see or read something funny and then you laugh. End of. Right? Anyone who seeks to go beneath the skin of stand-up and explain the mechanics only succeeds in killing the…

Will Eisner - Textbooks

30 Oct 2008

Undoubtedly what editor Denis Kitchen calls the 'primary treatise on the theory and mechanics of modern comics', Eisner's influential textbook Comics and Sequential Art and its two companion guides get a makeover for the digital age. Honed from lectures…

Take three: Cinematastic cafés

30 Oct 2008

Café Royal Oyster Bar 17a West Register Street, Edinburgh, 0131 556 4124 This venerable Victorian fish restaurant tucked off Princes Street appeared in the 1981 Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, although despite the movie's Scottish connections it…

Puffball

30 Oct 2008

An adaptation of a Fay Weldon novel by Nicolas Roeg seems to boast all kinds of potential. Yet somehow, even given a strong cast, the piece dissipates both its ideas and narrative tension with ham fisted symbolism and uneven performances. In it, a…

Feast

30 Oct 2008

John (son of Clu) Gulager’s horror comedy is a delight in minor key. Somewhat like the endearing Tremors of two decades ago, it never loses its playful spirit and sense of homage to earlier monster movies, though here the tone is somewhat darker and…

Lambchop - OH (Ohio)

30 Oct 2008

After the melancholy of Lambchop’s last album, the illness-inspired Damaged, Kurt Wagner and his band return with a more upbeat – and occasionally up-tempo – offering. Their tenth album definitely has a lighter feel than its gloomy predecessor, but in…

Dag Solstad - Novel 11, Book 18

30 Oct 2008

The only three-time winner of the Norwegian Literary Critics Award, Dag Solstad follows up 2006's much praised Shyness and Dignity with this sophisticated, sometimes claustrophobic, representation of a mid-life crisis coming to an extreme end. The plot…

Zoo

30 Oct 2008

Incest, cannibalism, bestiality – cultures always have taboos, but are they all of equal magnitude? Respected documentary and fiction filmmaker Robinson Devor (Police Beat, The Woman Chaser) explores the latter in a film that adopts an Errol Morris…

The Best Man

30 Oct 2008

A welcome – and well-timed – DVD premiere for this witty and robust 1964 drama about the Machiavellian world of American politics. Adapted from his own hit Broadway play by Gore Vidal (The Left Handed Gun, Suddenly, Last Summer) and directed by Franklin…

Giant Sand - ProVISIONS

30 Oct 2008

Arizona-bred Howe Gelb has been reconstructing North American country music under various guises and with numerous collaborators for the past 20 years. Almost twice as many records later it’s hard to tell the difference between his solo projects, his…

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane

30 Oct 2008

An odd, mid-seventies Canadian film with Jodie Foster as the precocious kid who seems to be keeping a few things to herself, and revealing others that don’t quite ring true – not least hat her poet father is working in the study upstairs in the rural…

Laura Dockrill - Mistakes in the Background

30 Oct 2008

The emergence of a sassy-tongued poet who can relate to the yoof should be a good thing. And Laura Dockrill, aka MC Dockers, truly does seem to be articulating, in her unaffected, unchecked, stream of consciousness way, the existence of the Facebook…

Robert Mitchell 3i0 - The Greater Good

30 Oct 2008

Pianist Robert Mitchell resisted entering the crowded field of piano trios for a while, preferring to concentrate on his larger Panacea groups, but the 3io (the name apparently is how they refer to the group in text messages) with Tom Mason and Richard…

Jesse Reklaw - The Night of Your Life

30 Oct 2008

Since 1995 American cartoonist Jesse Reklaw has invited readers of his website to submit synopses of their dreams, then adapts the best into four-panel comic strips. Reklaw's second compilation (after 2000's Dreamtoons) features a surreal discount…

Babylon

30 Oct 2008

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 details the…

John Goldie - Open 4 Closure

30 Oct 2008

Guitarist John Goldie’s latest offering eludes easy genre classification. He is probably best know for his jazz work, but is equally comfortable in a range of styles, and this disc is touched by various shades of jazz, folk, rock and funk without…

Sarah-Jane Summers - Nesta

30 Oct 2008

The Norwegian Hardanger fiddle is one of the most distinctive sounding members of the violin family, and invests the Inverness fiddler’s debut solo album with a very characteristic signature, one that will be familiar to anyone who knows her work with…

Bobo Stenson Trio - Cantando

30 Oct 2008

Swedish pianist Bobo Stenson leads this superb trio with bassist Anders Jormin and drummer Jon Fält in a concert in Edinburgh this month, and their new disc suggests that it will be a must-see occasion. This is the first time that the pianist has…

Brave Story

30 Oct 2008

Based on a novel by prolific Japanese authoress Miyuki Miyabe, Brave Story is a tale of love, friendship, and the sacrifices people must make in order to do what is right. Eleven-year-old protagonist Wataru meets Mitsuru, a lone figure who tells our…

Soldier Blue

30 Oct 2008

Originally released in 1970 at the tail end of a period of huge social, political and psychological change and based on the massacre of Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek in 1864, Soldier Blue is as relevant today as it ever was. Predominantly a love story…

Super Adventure Club - Chalk Horror!

30 Oct 2008

If this CD becomes a movie (Kung Fu/Ninja preferably), the hybrid title could be The Ghost of Zappa meets Fugazi on prog-rock pills. The debut from Edinburgh trio SAC (er, Bruce, Neil & Mandy) is an unpredictable, genre-busting stream of off-kilter…

Dave Gibbons - Watching the Watchmen

30 Oct 2008

If pushed to name the greatest comic ever, most would say The Watchmen. Aimed at an adults, when writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons created a hugely detailed world where heroes did exist, they made it so realistic it was almost another genre of…

Alan Tyler & the Lost Sons of Littlefield - Lonesome Cowboys

30 Oct 2008

Sometimes all it takes is a good tune and a kick-ass attitude. Alan Tyler and his Lost Sons of Littlefield have both to spare and while there is little here that will shake up the country rock canon, Lonesome Cowboys is a tremendously likeable record.

Misty's Big Adventure - Television’s People

30 Oct 2008

From the glam Brummie ensemble – whose claim-to-fame so far was a 2006 video for ‘Fashion Parade’ guest starring Noddy Holder – comes album number four. Conceptual – about a depressed individual cocooned in his own environs and indeed, mind…

Get on your bikes and ride!

30 Oct 2008

'Cycles,' say the organisers, 'is a musical event. It's also about bicycles.' Good, that's cleared that one up, then. That's about as close as we can come to it too, to be honest. So, there's live and electronic music inspired by - and played on…