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Issue 617

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Issue 617

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The Cathouse

Clubbing birthdays

13 Nov 2008

Three Scottish clubbing institutions hit big milestones this month: rock club The Cathouse is 18, the Art School’s regular soul night Divine is 18, and Slam’s techno hoedown Pressure is 10. We asked three regular punters just why they love these clubs…

Inside Deep Throat

Porn in the movies

13 Nov 2008

Platonic friends Zack and Miri one day decide that in the current economic climate the only way to diminish their respective personal debts is to make a pornographic film together, but the world of amateur porno filmmaking is not as easy as it seems. So…

TV on the Radio

TV on the Radio

13 Nov 2008

Three years ago the alternative music industry seemed determined to talk itself into a coma. You couldn’t open a magazine or turn on the radio without suffering some whinging executive complaining about the internet killing music. Fans who downloaded…

Social networker

Social networker

13 Nov 2008

How many times have you heard some over the hill rap star attempt to dismiss any attempts at innovation and excuse creative treading water by claiming their doing it ‘old school’? I still hear it a lot. This rosy, Ray Ban-ed view, which in actuality was…

Sara Maitland

A quiet life

13 Nov 2008

It would seem that we’ve all become a little wary of silence. The sizeable majority of British society who own mobile phones may agree. Plug in, jump online, talk in libraries, and you’re doing OK. Withdraw however, and you have issues. Accomplished…

Lost in Fiction

Lost in Fiction

13 Nov 2008

It’s been eight years since the much-missed John Smith’s bookshop on Byres Road closed its doors and turned into a branch of Starbucks. At the time, many residents of Glasgow’s West End saw it as another, depressing, sign of the times. John Smith’s…

Calistoga Central

Calistoga Central

13 Nov 2008

The first hurdle to clear is that this is an American restaurant that doesn’t serve burgers. The best explanation of this is that it’s not an American restaurant but Californian. Calistoga has been around in Edinburgh since 2004 on St Leonards Street…

Fernando Meirelles

Visionless Express - Fernando Meirelles director of Blindness

13 Nov 2008

‘What’s the most challenging thing about making a film about blindness?’ asks Fernando Meirelles, the relentlessly upbeat director of relentlessly downbeat mood-blackeners City of God and The Constant Gardner. ‘Trying to establish relationships between…

Glass Baubles

Shock! Markets!

13 Nov 2008

Something gets into the air about halfway through November, something that compels otherwise rational people to stand at tables – maybe decorated with fake snow or tinsel – offering genuinely original presents. There’s really no excuse to give anyone a…

Taste Test - White beers

Taste Test - White beers

13 Nov 2008

Black Isle Organic Wheat Beer, Colomba, Grolsch Weizen, Konig Ludwig, Hefe Weizen, Weihenstephaner Dunkelweiss

Heer Ranjha

Heer Ranjha

13 Nov 2008

Shan Khan should be the epitome of calm. Speaking to me on the phone during his first holiday in three years, he’s staring out across the tranquil waters of Lochgilphead. Yet, the subject of theatre clearly has his hackles raised. Since bursting onto…

Sneaky Pete’s

Born Sneaky - Sneaky Pete’s

13 Nov 2008

It’s still hard to discuss Edinburgh’s club scene without referencing the Cowgate fire which claimed La Belle Angele and the Gilded Saloon in December 2002. The event, along with the demise of the Venue on Calton Road, was a hammer blow to the city’s…

Open Field

Open Field

13 Nov 2008

Artists’ residencies sound like wonderful things. Who wouldn’t appreciate the opportunity to go somewhere new and moon around with a paintbrush? Unfortunately, this is not the reality of most residencies. Instead, pressure is often piled on artists to…

Big time

Big time - Metro Ecosse film competition

13 Nov 2008

It’s been too long, but you know how it is – one thing leads to another and then it’s Christmas time again. Anyway, the time has come to check up on the progress of the second film competition. To recap – back in December 2006, The List launched Metro’s…

Derren Brown: The Specials

Derren Brown: The Specials

13 Nov 2008

(4DVD) 196min Almost five years ago to the week that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were threatened with being burnt at the stake, another witch-hunt was conducted for another man merely seeking to thrill us. In October 2003, Derren Brown asked a…

John McCusker’s Under One Sky

John McCusker’s Under One Sky

13 Nov 2008

Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Tue 25 Nov; Music Hall, Perth, Fri 28 Nov; Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Mon 8 Dec John McCusker’s head has been in the clouds a lot lately – flying all over Europe and the Americas in a private jet, courtesy of Mark Knopfler. ‘Yes…

Last word: Mark Gatiss

Last word: Mark Gatiss

13 Nov 2008

Actor, screenwriter and novelist Mark Gatiss is best known for his role in The League of Gentlemen and acting in Doctor Who. Here he talks trousers, baked beans and sheds.

Will Young

Will Young

13 Nov 2008

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Thu 20 & Fri 21 Nov It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly seven years since Will Young shot to fame as the first winner of ratings-grabbing TV talent search Pop Idol. What’s perhaps more surprising is that he still enjoys…

Exposure -The Phantom Band

Exposure -The Phantom Band

13 Nov 2008

The latest in a long line of great discoveries by Chemikal Underground Records, Glasgow sextet The Phantom Band mash a coarse mix of influences – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Can and the theme to Crocodile Dundee among them – into a fine experimental…

Jason Cook

Jason Cook

13 Nov 2008

Jason Cook is a happy man. Today, he cheerfully tells me, he has purchased a new Xbox game. But Cook has other reasons to feel upbeat; his 2007 début fringe show My Confessions was a critical hit and was successfully followed by a show about happiness…

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky - The Essential Chomsky

13 Nov 2008

(Bodley Head) For over 40 years, ‘the world’s greatest public intellectual’ has been not so much a thorn in the side of the West’s establishment structures as a battering ram to everything held dear by liberals and conservatives alike. Now fast…

Five reasons to go and see: Death Cab For Cutie

Five reasons to go and see: Death Cab For Cutie

13 Nov 2008

1 They toured with Neil Young Which gives Ben Gibbard and his fellow Washington makers of schmoopy, winsome guitar pop a more legit reason than any of the other army of young copyists to continue in his vein. 2 They’ve become a fixture on US TV…

Joe Zawinul & The Zawinul Syndicate - 75th

Joe Zawinul & The Zawinul Syndicate - 75th

13 Nov 2008

JAZZ JOE ZAWINUL & THE ZAWINUL SYNDICATE 75th (BHM/Birdjam) The concert represented on this live 2-CD set was recorded on the late Joe Zawinul’s 75th birthday on 7 July 2007 in his native Vienna (he died only a couple of months later). Despite the…

Ross Clark & The Scarfs Go Missing

13 Nov 2008

The Mill Live @ Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wed 5 Nov. Glaswegian Ross Clark has been around as an alt.country/pop/folk soloist for quite while now, crying out for an ‘and The Somethings’ to back him. The Scarfs Go Missing are it – an electric band augmented…

Artur Pizarro - The Complete Piano Works of Maurice Ravel, Volume Two

Artur Pizarro - The Complete Piano Works of Maurice Ravel, Volume Two

13 Nov 2008

Keenly awaited second volume of Ravel’s piano works recorded by the Portugese pianist does not disappoint. There is a graceful clarity to Pizarro’s playing that suits Ravel to perfection. The Sonatine may not be as familiar as the ever-popular and…

Dialogues

Dialogues

13 Nov 2008

Informatics: it’s the future. This study of ‘the structure, algorithms, behaviour, and interactions of natural and artificial computational systems’ has been around since 1957, when German computer scientist Karl Steinbuch coined the word, ‘Informatik’.

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

13 Nov 2008

(18) 149min Based on the non-fiction book by Der Spiegel editor and journalist Stefan Aust, The Baader-Meinhof Complex is a compelling and engrossing attempt to explain the trajectory and political position of arguably the most incoherent post-war…

Conversations With My Gardener

Conversations With My Gardener

13 Nov 2008

(12A) 108min When a successful Parisian painter (Daniel Auteil) returns to the rural childhood home he has inherited in the Rhone-Alps region of southern France, he places an advert for somebody to rejuvenate the property’s unkempt garden. The first…

Blindness

Also Released - Film

13 Nov 2008

Outlanders (15) 98min ●●● When his father dies, young Pole Adam (Jakub Tolak) sets off to find his older brother Jan, a former football player who was last heard of in England. The journey brings him face to face with the UK itinerant illegal labour…

Midsummer

Midsummer

13 Nov 2008

ROMCOM WITH SONGS Ah, the romcom: an often-derided form in cinema, easily discarded as lightweight. In the decidedly heavyweight world of the theatre, it’s unmentionable. Sometimes, though, it’s necessary to make art out of the sheer joy to be found…

Choke

Choke

13 Nov 2008

(18) 92min Unrepentant sex addict Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) has always believed that life is about making other people do stuff for you. By day he does as little work as he can at a historical theme park and by night he cons money in restaurants…

Body of Lies

Body of Lies

13 Nov 2008

(15) 128min As with 2001’s Black Hawk Down, South Shields’ most famous filmmaker Ridley Scott again attempts to pull a callous zeitgeist from international news headlines, with unconvincing results. CIA operative Roger Ferris (Leonardo Di Caprio…

Waltz With Bashir

Waltz With Bashir

13 Nov 2008

(18) 90min An animated feature about war, memory displacement and the hideous genocide committed by Christian militiamen on Palestinian refugee camps in Sabra and Shatila during the 1982 Lebanese War may not sound particularly inviting but, like last…

Max Payne

Max Payne

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min The film noir influences on the Max Payne video game series made a cinematic outing inevitable, but John Moore’s abortive fantasy-thriller exemplifies everything that’s wrong with console to big-screen crossovers. Jockstrap-fresh from…

My Best Friend’s Girl

My Best Friend’s Girl

13 Nov 2008

(15) 99min From Howard Deutch, the auteur behind the seminal teen movie Pretty in Pink starring Molly Ringwald, My Best Friend’s Girl is a 1980s throwback rom-com, updated with scatological language. Dane Cook, so disagreeable in last year’s Good…

Quarantine

Quarantine

13 Nov 2008

(18) 89min Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s grimly effective Spanish-zombie movie [REC] gets the Hollywood treatment in John Erick and brother Drew Dowdle’s scene-by-scene remake. Quarantine purports to be the surviving document of what happens…

Zach and Miri Make a Porno

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

13 Nov 2008

Forget the salacious sounding title, Zack and Miri is a Kevin Smith movie so it was never going to be a Ron Jeremy skin flick. Indeed, it’s an archetypical Smith movie – an over-sentimental tale in which boy knows girl, boy and girl have relationship…

Tigrero

Tigrero - A Film That Was Never Made

13 Nov 2008

(E) 75mins Diminutive, pugnacious and legendary director Sam Fuller (The Big Red One, Pickup on South Street, Shock Corridor) returns to the Amazonian jungle where 40 years previously he had attempted to make a harsh on-location adventure film with…

While She Was Out

While She Was Out

13 Nov 2008

(18) 82min This urban chiller executive produced by Mexican fantasist Guillermo del Toro and starring the enduringly gorgeous Kim Basinger and evergreen teen-alike Lukas Haas starts off promisingly but all too swiftly proves as lame as its pedestrian…

Postal

Postal

13 Nov 2008

(18) 99min Uwe Boll doesn’t have the best pedigree in movies; he’s an oft-reviled director with a penchant for videogame adaptations. But one thing you can’t dismiss is that the man has balls, and Postal is flat-out in-your-face nutzoid entertainment…

Saxon

Saxon

13 Nov 2008

(15) 92min Semi-blinded Eddie (Sean Harris) has to pay off his debts otherwise he’ll lose an eye to the gangsters who plucked out the other one. He’s handed a lifeline by childhood sweetheart, the wealthy Linda (Sarah Matravers), who is looking for…

The Baader-Meinhof Complex

Red or dead

13 Nov 2008

Bernd Eichinger is best known internationally as the writer and producer of Downfall and after having forced the German public to look back at their relationship with Hitler he has now turned his attention to the Red Army Faction (RAF). Whether these…

Pumpkin Pie

A bluffer’s guide to Thanksgiving

13 Nov 2008

Call it the Americanisation of Britain, call it another excuse for a slap up meal, but Thanksgiving has grown in popularity. Celebrated on the last Thursday of November, it’s akin to a grown up Christmas without the gift buying or wrestling with…

Ace Trucking Co. Vol.1

Alan Grant, John Wagner and Massimo Belardinelli & Ian Gibson - Ace Trucking Co. Vol.1

13 Nov 2008

Born out of the 70s and 80s-mired misapprehension that CB radio talk was the vernacular of the future (let’s blame Burt Reynolds for that), this weekly 2000AD serial nevertheless became one of the British comic’s best for a while. That’s partly down to…

4.48 Psychosis

4.48 Psychosis

13 Nov 2008

MODERN CLASSIC It doesn’t seem right to say you have enjoyed Sarah Kane’s final play. Written not long before her suicide in 1999 and staged posthumously, it is a poetic evocation of the mind of someone in the depths of clinical depression. There are…

Digitalism

Profile - Digitalism

13 Nov 2008

Also known as Jens ‘Jence’ Moelle and Ismail ‘Isi’ Tüfekçi. Occupation German purveyors of funky and discordant dancefloor filth. Where are they from? Moelle and Tüfekçi founded Digitalism in 2004 after meeting at a record shop in Hamburg where…

Blake Baxter

Blake Baxter

13 Nov 2008

BLAKE BAXTER Cotton Cake at the Sub Club, Glasgow, Fri 21 Nov. Brush up on the history of Detroit techno DJ and producer Blake Baxter for a bit and one of the first adjectives you’ll come across in many of his biographies and career summations is…

Derrick May

Subculture

13 Nov 2008

PREVIEW TECHNO & HOUSE Studio 24, Edinburgh, Fri 14 Nov. This fortnight Subculture comes to Edinburgh after Studio 24’s manager, Gill McArthur, witnessed their programming of T in the Park’s Bacardi B-Bar by chance and felt she could make the night…

Jack Kilborn - Afraid

Jack Kilborn - Afraid

13 Nov 2008

Starting with a plane crash and ending with a coyote-on-human chow down, Afraid is a rattling good read for those who have the stomach for it. When a mutant military force turns up unannounced at the friendly law-abiding town of Safe Haven (population…

Unreliable Witness

Unreliable Witness

13 Nov 2008

MIXED MEDIA Who says the world isn’t flat? Not, one suspects, any of the six artists playing with personas, pseudo-science, imagined histories and parallel universes in a show that creates a set of brand new myths made in their own (self) image. The…

The Dogstone/Nasty, Brutish and Short

The Dogstone/Nasty, Brutish and Short

13 Nov 2008

NEW WRITING DOUBLE BILL The ongoing Debuts season presented by the Traverse both confounds and confirms the expectation invited by the listless opening effort Cockroach and the possibly gloomy subject matter (the darker side of the Scottish family)…

Richard Forster

Richard Forster

13 Nov 2008

DRAWINGS Recalling poet laureate John Masefield’s most famous poem, Sea Fever (‘I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide / Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied’), Untitled (Seascapes), Forster’s first solo…

Michael Zansky

Scales

13 Nov 2008

SCULPTURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY The work of the three artists in this group show is rich and multi-layered, but there’s a lack of austerity, which makes each piece readily available to the viewer. The first work in the series, Gregory Chatonsky’s ‘I Just…

Four Men and a Poker Game

Four Men and a Poker Game

13 Nov 2008

ADAPTATION Today, news on the financial crisis is ever-present: it’s on our TV screens, our radios, and now it’s even on our stages. Later this month, the Tron will host a new adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s little-known short story, ‘Four Men and a…

The Tobacco Merchant’s Lawyer

The Tobacco Merchant’s Lawyer

13 Nov 2008

Following its acclaimed premier at Glasgow’s Oran Mor earlier in the year, Iain Heggie’s satirical insight into the moral dubiety of the merchant class in late-18th century Glasgow takes to the road by popular demand. The play has garnered particular…

Close Up

13 Nov 2008

Curated by Dawn Ades and Simon Baker, this comprehensive show charting the history of close-up photography and film, explores the ways in which artists, photographers and filmmakers have been influenced by the close-up image in creating their work. See…

Yo, ho . . . ho?

Yo, ho . . . ho?

13 Nov 2008

Yeah, we know. Christmas is the last thing on your mind. The economy is in crisis, you’re worried about your mortgage/rent/job/bank account/pet stockbroker. And it’s November. However, the festive season is looming like a tinsel-bedecked freight train…

The Christmas crunch

The Christmas crunch: Shopping on a budget

13 Nov 2008

The stock market’s in turmoil, the housing market’s throwing a strop and the price of bread is skyrocketing. Not ideal conditions for celebrating our annual festival of excess and gluttony. Don’t worry, though, The List is here to help. Ahead of our…

Tinsel towns

Tinsel towns: Glasgow and Edinburgh Winter Festivals

13 Nov 2008

Kirstin Innes takes a look at the free activities going on in both cities over the festive season. Ah, remember back when the civic contribution to the festive effort started and ended with a couple of lightbulb angels hanging off the lampposts, and…

Snow business

Snow business: The Snow Queen

13 Nov 2008

Over the last few years, Andy Arnold’s Arches has established a tradition of putting on beautiful, immersive versions of classic children’s stories for 3-8-year-olds who might find themselves a wee bit lost in traditional panto. However, when Arnold…

Dame on

Dame on: Pantomimes in Scotland 2008

13 Nov 2008

There’s been something of a shift in the pantomime world over the last few years. Traditional pantos – innuendo-laden fairy tales replete with dame and a couple of faces off the telly – are still going strong, but increasingly, theatres have begun to…

Eat, drink and be merry

Eat, drink and be merry: Christmas food

13 Nov 2008

‘Christmas dinner on a budget is easy, and you don’t have to end up with a can of Spam and a tub of out-of-date potato salad, either. It should be a special meal; it should feel special, and the secret to that is really simple – get a table set…

12 Days of Christmas

12 Days of Christmas: Festive hitlist

13 Nov 2008

The Low Christmas Concert Malcolm Middleton doesn’t have the monopoly on miserablist Christmas anthems, you know. This lot have been at it since 1999, and are back on the gloomy festive trail to promote new menace-laden single, ‘Santa is Coming Over’.

O holy night

O holy night: Christmas clubbing 2008

13 Nov 2008

It’s dark in the mornings, so why not live nocturnally? As DJs get into training for Hogmanay – the biggest night in the clubbing calendar – Jasper Hamill and Kirstin Innes round up the best-lookin’ Christmas parties Glasgow A merry little…

Off to see the wizard

Off to see the wizard

13 Nov 2008

‘They’re big shoes to step into, aren’t they?’ says Helen McAlpine, about the specially-customised ruby slippers she’ll be wearing onstage in the Citizens’ Theatre’s Wizard of Oz. She’s not talking about her shoe size, either – as Dorothy Gale, McAlpine…

Ready for the festive floor

Ready for the festive floor: Hot Chip interview

13 Nov 2008

What are your favourite Christmas hits? My favourite is the Phil Spector Christmas album, which I think is wonderful and romantic. Of course, there are also the classics, like ‘Little Drummer Boy’ and ‘I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus’, which is about…

The Fallen

Remote Control

13 Nov 2008

When reading the brief synopsis of The Fallen (BBC2, Sat 15 Nov, 9.05pm) ••••• your worldview may determine how you approach this documentary: ‘a powerful and poignant film in which families and friends of those who have died fighting in Afghanistan and…

Singles & Downloads

Singles & Downloads

13 Nov 2008

It would seem that the season-savvy have been busy fashioning tracks to stay indoors to. Sofas, fine lounging and low key indie sounds are the order of the day for this fortnight’s top runners. Producer Kwes’ salutation to the slipper-set, debut solo…

Scottish Chamber Orchestra – East Meets West

Scottish Chamber Orchestra – East Meets West

13 Nov 2008

Samaagam, in case you didn’t know, means coming together. For the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, it is the coming together of musical traditions from east and west. Samaagam, in this instance, is a new concerto by Amjad Ali Khan (pictured), reputed to be…

Rocking Rascals

Rocking Rascals

13 Nov 2008

Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Sun 16 Nov As all parents know, having kids can seriously damage your social life. But if you’re hankering for your dancefloor days – or simply want to pass on the joy of cutting a rug to Dancing Queen – then the answer may be…

Charity begins at home

13 Nov 2008

A treasure trove of stars are doing their bit for charity this month, with special gigs in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. OXJAM, the UK’s biggest music festival, will present its South East Scotland launch event at The Hive in Edinburgh on Thursday 27…

Pulp

TV on the Radio - Time for heroes?

13 Nov 2008

Pulp Time to hit big: 12 years Languishing in the back streets of Sheffield and the toilet circuit for almost a decade before Britpop, multiple Mercury nominations and ‘Disco 2000’. Biffy Clyro Time to hit big: nine years In the time they…

Vic Godard and the Subway Sect/The Sexual Objects

Vic Godard and Subway Sect/The Sexual Objects

13 Nov 2008

Citrus, Edinburgh, Fri 14 Nov; Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 15 Nov. If Subway Sect hadn’t supported The Clash at the Edinburgh Playhouse on 7 May 1977, it’s unlikely Postcard Records, Fast Product and Fire Engines would have happened. Thirty-one years on…

The Devil’s Whore

The Devil’s Whore

13 Nov 2008

DRAMA Having coped admirably with the distasteful task of bringing the early political career of Margaret Thatcher to fruition during The Long Walk to Finchley, Andrea Riseborough steps into the shoes of another headstrong historical female. Born…

Earthy Foods & Goods

Side Dishes

13 Nov 2008

Earthy Foods & Goods, opened in Edinburgh’s Southside earlier this year, has introduced online shopping with a home delivery service. Now the vast majority of lines in the store – which focus principally on good food producers in the Lothians, Borders…

Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us

Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us

13 Nov 2008

BLACK COMEDY There’s been a verdant field ploughed by dramatists over the last century about the loss of religious faith. We’ve spent quarter centuries at a time replacing it with other things, from violent nationalistic jingoism to the more…

Portico Quartet

Portico Quartet

13 Nov 2008

The Arches, Glasgow, Mon 24 Nov The Portico Quartet’s debut album Knee Deep in the North Sea was attracting considerable attention even before it was included among this year’s Mercury Prize nominations, including a prestigious award as Time Out’s…

vegas

Hitlist-Clubs

13 Nov 2008

● Cathouse 18th Birthday Weekender Bands, DJs and much more help celebrate Glasgow’s finest rock club. Cathouse, Glasgow, Fri 14 & Sat 15 Nov. ● Fantasylands Twelve hours of rave, trance and hardcore, with headliner Ferry Corsten. Royal Highland…

Also Released - Records

13 Nov 2008

Little Joy Little Joy (Rough Trade) Strokes’ drummer Fabrizio Moretti joins Los Hermanos’ singer Rodrigo Amarante for this slice of slowed-down 60s pop, with Moretti’s girlfriend Binki dropping in for some adorably dreamy singalongs. Fabric 43 Metro…

Have a crafty Christmas

Have a crafty Christmas: Ethical Christmas shopping

13 Nov 2008

Ethical elf Anna Docherty, visits the one-stop-shop for a guilt-free Christmas. Christmas comes but once a year and so do those niggling feelings of guilt about getting a real tree, not recycling your wrapping paper, or omitting to get charity Christmas…

Alastair Campbell

Hitlist-Books

13 Nov 2008

● Alastair Campbell New Labour’s arch doctor of spin tackles matters concerning real health with his debut novel, All in the Mind, based on his own mental breakdown back in the 1980s. Waterstone’s, Glasgow, Wed 19 Nov. ● Alexei Sayle In the not too…

Otter Pie

Otter Pie

13 Nov 2008

PARODY ‘Biggest load of crap I’ve seen in my life …’ muttered one punter, padding past me halfway through the show. He wasn’t the only early departures from the Brunton Theatre, yet I couldn’t help feeling that a harsh judgement had been made. While…

Drums of Death

Drums of Death

13 Nov 2008

Playdate at Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sat 25 Oct If this is the future of music, then it’s loud and frightening, switching between grime, booty bass and a kind of sophisticated approximation of hardcore techno with a ferocious BPM which doesn’t…

Glasgow Winterfest

Hitlist-Around Town

13 Nov 2008

● Glasgow Winterfest and Edinburgh’s Christmas Yes, it’s coming! Earlier and earlier. And there’s no way you can resist it, you old curmudgeon, as both city centres unleash the outdoor ice rinks, fun fairs, vaguely-Teutonic market stalls bedecked with…

Esther O'Connor

Esther O'Connor

13 Nov 2008

Brel, Glasgow, Wed 29 Oct An ethereal vision in a white lace corset, voluminous cotton skirt and flowing red hair, you could easily be forgiven for thinking that Esther O’Connor had stepped either out of a painting or off the set of a period drama on…

Max Tundra

Max Tundra

13 Nov 2008

Carling Academy, Glasgow, Sun 2 Nov The Max Tundra live experience is a million miles away from the home listening headphones one, as I discovered. Max was made to perform live, and perform he does, throughout a one-man, all-singing-all-dancing-show.

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

Chris Addison - It Wasn’t Me

13 Nov 2008

One grotesquely amusing aspect of the current economic crisis has been the sight of our beloved PM desperately trying to hammer home the notion that the predicament should be blamed on ‘global’ factors and is absolutely nothing to do with him, mate. You…

Gillian Slovo - Black Orchids

Gillian Slovo - Black Orchids

13 Nov 2008

Evelyn wishes to be ‘rescued from the boredom of her life’ and it’s in Emil, the beneficiary of a rich Ceylon family, that she finds her non-white knight in shining armour. What seems like an exotic fairy tale in 40s Ceylon, however, is an altogether…

Toni Morrison - A Mercy

Toni Morrison - A Mercy

13 Nov 2008

In 1993, Toni Morrison became the first (still only) African American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her ninth novel A Mercy, which addresses the cruel genesis of slavery in early colonial America, arrives as an African American strides…

Corrina Hewat - Harp I Do

Corrina Hewat - Harp I Do

13 Nov 2008

Corrina Hewat forsakes the chumminess of the various groups in which she is involved – including co-directing the might Unusual Suspects – for the more isolated terrain of solo harp. As the title says, harp she does, and very well too. She approaches…

Take Three: Regional redoubts

13 Nov 2008

Dakhin 89 Candleriggs, Glasgow 0141 553 2585, www.dakhin.com Not just another Glasgow curry house but a discreet Merchant City venue dedicated to the food and cooking of south India, with dosas as a mainstay, some lovely seafood dishes from Kerela…

The Bad Plus - For All I Care

The Bad Plus - For All I Care

13 Nov 2008

The Bad Plus continue to push at the boundaries of what might constitute a jazz repertoire – and a jazz style of playing it – in the 21st century. This time round the tunes include Nirvana’s ‘Lithium’, an electrifying version of Pink Floyd’s…

Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna

Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna

13 Nov 2008

Gang Gang Dance hold a very special place in my heart. They reside – still – as the single most terrible live act I have ever seen. The most pretentious, ill-conceived, tragically hip display of musical arsery I have ever had the misfortune to witness.

The Voyage

The Voyage

13 Nov 2008

(PG) 97mins Vittoria de Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan) was one of the great voices of the Italian neo-realist film movement. He was also, alas, not always the most innovative of filmmakers, and this, his last completed film made in 1974, is…

The Cure - 4.13 Dream

The Cure - 4.13 Dream

13 Nov 2008

As Robert Smith shuffles – his unlaced hi-tops squeaking across the floor – into pop musical maturity, his willingness to indulge his dark side wavers. The band’s last album, a self-titled behemoth from 2004, was The Cure gone metal. For the greater…

Also released - 5 Poetry Books

13 Nov 2008

● Vera Brittain Because You Died A collection of poems and prose from the author of Testament of Youth, all about the men she loved who perished in the First World War. Virago. ● Dennis O’Donnell Stepping Stones This one features interviews with…

Sunshine on Leith

Sunshine on Leith

13 Nov 2008

When it premiered at Dundee Rep last year, Sunshine on Leith, a musical based on the songs of The Proclaimers, proved an instant success, more than holding its own against the legions of musicals based on pop music back catalogues, such as Mamma Mia!…

Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns

Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns

13 Nov 2008

Zzzzzzzzzz … Oops sorry – you want to read a review right? OK. Here goes. Nothing very new to report from Glasgow/Belfast’s premier guitar balladeers; just more of the same insipid arena rock we’ve been battered round the ears with for the past few…

Remember Remember - Remember Remember

Remember Remember - Remember Remember

13 Nov 2008

In an age when laptops ship with gigabytes of studio quality loops for users to shuffle round on a grid to make their own creations with, it’s never been easier to make loop-based music – and quickly end up with some sterile wallpaper music – just spend…

Various - Sleepwalk: A Selection By Optimo (Espacio)

Various - Sleepwalk: A Selection By Optimo (Espacio)

13 Nov 2008

Any album which takes a full ten minutes to actually develop any BPM at all – over Chris Watson’s found wavesound and the calming tone of Nurse With Wound’s ‘Funeral Music For Perez Prado’ isn’t your typical dance mix. But then, as should be obvious by…

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