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Issue 622

Sorted by date / most viewed. Showing 25, 50, 100 per page.

Sex in the 21st century

Sex in the 21st century

5 Feb 2009

By now, you must have heard of Feuchtgebiete, the debut novel by 30 year old television presenter Charlotte Roche, routinely described in interviews as ‘Germany’s Davina McCall’. You know, the one that the press are up in arms about. The one with the 18…

Comedy of Errors

Armando Iannucci - Comedy of Errors

5 Feb 2009

Armando Iannucci has a ringing in his ears. He’s just back from the Sundance Film Festival in the States where his debut feature film as writer and director, In the Loop, had its world premiere. The film’s reception was so overwhelmingly positive that…

Tricky

Tricky

5 Feb 2009

Tricky is difficult and moody, right? That’s the perception of the Bristol-born rapper that still persists, 14 years after he was launched into the nation’s musical consciousness with his startling, groundbreaking and bestselling debut…

Sex in the 21st century - Alternative Valentine’s

Sex in the 21st century - Alternative Valentine’s

5 Feb 2009

‘Hello, is it me you’re looking for …?’ Some of the most romantic words ever written have come via the medium of song, so why not throw caution to the wind, and go all Sonny and Cher this February. Book you and yours into a recording studio for an hour…

Sex in the 21st century - Rude Britannia

Sex in the 21st century - Rude Britannia

5 Feb 2009

The Scots are at it like rabbits. 10,000 Scots go dogging every year. I’d find people at it on a Monday night in East Kilbride, next to a landfill site. Or we’d drive up some country lane and spot a white bottom moving up and down, lit by the light from…

Sex in the 21st century - Valentine’s Day Clubs

Sex in the 21st century - Valentine’s Day Clubs

5 Feb 2009

With Valentine’s Day landing at the weekend this year, there is ample opportunity for those hoping for a love injection on the dance floor Love will be in the air like a tropical smog on 14 February, and every club and bar you walk into will be playing…

Russell Brand

Russell Brand

5 Feb 2009

STAND-UP With Jonathan Ross back on the box and Russell Brand returning to our stages with the merest of minor tabloid outrage, it seems that the Sachsgate furore has at last subsided. Some Radio 2 heads may have rolled but the key characters can now…

Glasgow Film Festival: Audrey Hepburn

5 Feb 2009

The Film Star Allison Gardner co-director of Glasgow Film Festival Although she’s remembered best as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Audrey wasn’t just a ‘fluff’ actress. She has great depth, and always wanted to stretch herself as an…

Glasgow Film Festival: Richard Jobson and Jim Hickey interview

Glasgow Film Festival: Richard Jobson and Jim Hickey interview

5 Feb 2009

Film directors Richard Jobson and Jim Hickey both have low-budget genre films appearing as part of Glasgow Film Festival’s Great Scots strand. Jobson’s New Town Killers sees Dougray Scott’s hedge fund manager hunting a teenage boy in a white-knuckle…

Valentine’s Day entrepreneurs

Valentine’s Day entrepreneurs

5 Feb 2009

Michelle Aaron, cupcake baker from Glasgow Everybody loves to see a cupcake. If I’m selling them at a craft fair, people always stop and smile. I guess they evoke childhood memories and look fun. All that sticky frosting and sweet indulgence – there’s…

Glasgow Film Festival: Jason Edwards interview

Glasgow Film Festival: Jason Edwards interview

5 Feb 2009

It’s hard to pick which event will be best – they’re all going to be pretty epic. We want to attract people who are not necessarily into live gigs but might like going to the cinema, and vice versa. Shhhh! An Evening of Not So Silent Movies is a…

Glasgow Film Festival: Short Films

Glasgow Film Festival: Short Films

5 Feb 2009

A highlight of last year’s programme was the short films strand, so it’s great to discover local shorts showcasers the Magic Lantern offering another varied programme for 2009. Things kick off with True Things, a retrospective of shorts from…

Glasgow Film Festival: Recommended Comedies

Glasgow Film Festival: Recommended Comedies

5 Feb 2009

Hamlet 2 Bad taste high school comedy starring the multi-talented Mr Steve Coogan. Cineworld, Sun 15 Feb, 7pm & Mon 16 Feb, 2.30pm. Lake Tahoe Deadpan and occasionally whimsical Mexican comedy from Fernando Duck Season Eimbecke.

Friday Night Takeaway

Friday Night Takeaway

5 Feb 2009

Miranda Ralston and Angie Koorbanally believe that Friday nights are where it’s at clubbing wise. The duo, both Arches employees and Octopussy and Death Disco workers, are the brains behind Friday Night Takeaway, a one-off night in conjunction with…

Alan Moore - Lost Girls

Alan Moore - Lost Girls

5 Feb 2009

‘What we wanted to do with Lost Girls was to come up with a different form of pornography. We realised we had the ideas for something enormous and wonderful.’ Alan Moore, who’s widely considered to be the finest writer working in comics today and is…

James Houston - Cryptic Nights

James Houston - Cryptic Nights

5 Feb 2009

What happens to your average art school student in the six months after they graduate? A spell travelling? A job waiting tables to finance their next project? Probably not a flurry of media attention, more job offers than they know what to do with…

Educating Rita

Educating Rita

5 Feb 2009

PREVIEW REVIVAL If there’s a consistent thread that runs through the work of Willy Russell, it’s the need for escape, usually from a stagnant class system that oppresses his protagonists. Yet his work is more nuanced, less moralistic than you might…

The View

The View

5 Feb 2009

INDIE ROCK First time around with their Mercury Prize short listed 2007 debut album Hats Off to the Buskers, young Dundonian rapscallions The View left a trail of drug busts, trashed hotel rooms and US Visa rejections in their wake. The quartet are…

Slabs of the Tabernacle

Slabs of the Tabernacle

5 Feb 2009

TECHNO ‘It’s not that we don’t want to book bigger-name DJs and artists,’ says Slabs of the Tabernacle DJ and co-promoter Andrew Ingram, ‘but we just can’t afford them. So our club’s the way it is for financial reasons as much as anything else.…

Jackhammer/Creative Industries

Jackhammer/Creative Industries

5 Feb 2009

TECHNO It’s certainly a busy month for the folk at Jackhammer and Creative Industries. Not content supplying the capital with their usual brand of high quality techno, minimal and electro, they are hosting a full weekend of techno and at the end of…

Magazine

Magazine

5 Feb 2009

POST-PUNK As second comings go, few have been more anticipated than that of Howard Devoto’s hugely influential troupe of post-punk pioneers. Formed after Devoto left Buzzcocks and the one-chord wonderings of punk behind, Magazine were an infinitely…

Lloyd George Knew My Father

Lloyd George Knew My Father

5 Feb 2009

Well-known star of stage and screen Edward Fox stars alongside Helen Ryan in this touring production of William Douglas-Home’s frothy drawing-room comedy, first mounted on the stage in the early 1970s, which depicts the aristocracy at their most…

Entrading café

Entrading café

5 Feb 2009

Situated in the heart of the busy business district of Glasgow is a café and shop that some might find a bit of a surprise. Entrading is a combined high street eco-store and café. Like high street shops, drinking and eating in our city centres have…

Also Released - Film

Also Released - Film

5 Feb 2009

He’s Just Not That Into You (12A) 129min ••• Romantic comedy based on the self-help book of the same name by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo. The film follows the lovelorn misadventures of several individuals in their 20s and 30s. Ben Affleck, Jennifer…

Claire Barclay: Pastures new

Claire Barclay: Pastures new

5 Feb 2009

Claire Barclay is safe inside the glass-fronted confines of Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery putting the final touches to her new show, Openwide, on the day we speak. Given the gallery’s smooth interiors, it’s a knowingly apposite title for two…

Gregor ‘G-Man’ James: Last Word

Gregor ‘G-Man’ James: Last Word

5 Feb 2009

First record you ever bought Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock ‘Get On the Dancefloor’. I was nine years old and about to discover dance music. My second record was ‘Stakker Humanoid’. Last time you were chatted up In Germany, she was 50. I refused but…

National Review of Live Art

National Review of Live Art

5 Feb 2009

A bit of tunnel vision is required at the National Review of Live Art (NRLA). Not least because it takes place in the atmospheric, underground warren that is the Arches. Filling every available space in the building – foyers, bars, studios, theatres…

Films for Valentine’s Day

Films for Valentine’s Day

5 Feb 2009

If you want to go and see a film with your beloved this Valentine’s Day you can chose between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s lovely 1945 Highland flit I Know Where I’m Going, a couple of Audrey Hepburn films (Funny Face and Sabrina) and four…

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

MYSTERY/ROMANCE What would it be like to live in reverse? Born as an old man only to die as an infant, the Benjamin Button character created by F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1922 short-story gets the full ‘prestige picture’ treatment in David Fincher’s…

Educating Rita

Educating Rita

5 Feb 2009

REVIVAL If there’s a consistent thread that runs through the work of Willy Russell, it’s the need for escape, usually from a stagnant class system that oppresses his protagonists. Yet his work is more nuanced, less moralistic than you might expect.

Profile - Jonathan Levine

Profile - Jonathan Levine

5 Feb 2009

Name Jonathan Levine Born 1978, New York City Background Given he’s been making movies since he was a prepubescent 12-year-old, NYC born and bred Jonathan Levine was always going to become a film director. Graduating from the Arts/Semiotics…

Doubt

Doubt

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

DRAMA If, as the old proverb goes, ‘doubt makes the mountain that faith can move’, then John Patrick Shanley’s powerful 2004 play, set in a Catholic school, posits a relative Kilimanjaro in the middle of the Bronx. When the headmistress Sister…

Playlist

Playlist

5 Feb 2009

There’s nothing quite like a good spine chiller for passing the long, dark winter nights; MR James was a master of the genre, and although his work has irregularly been translated into the mediums of film and television, the results have been uncommonly…

Jonathan Owen

Jonathan Owen

5 Feb 2009

PREVIEW SCULPTURE Beyond their image of well-ordered conformity the great British suburbs have long been hotbeds of creativity, spawning restless youngsters who flee the semi-detached des-res leafiness to find the throbbing heart of the city. The…

Labels of Love - T.I.M.s

Labels of Love - T.I.M.s

5 Feb 2009

Brainchild of the ex-Soho songwriter, producer of Add N to (X) and all round off-the-wall pop creative Timothy London, T.I.M.s (Tim’s International Mobogram service) is a ‘pop experiment’ dedicated to releasing singles and remixes in a way that ensures…

Profile - The Unabombers

Profile - The Unabombers

5 Feb 2009

Name: The Unabombers Also known as: Mancunian duo Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford. Occupation: Premiership electro-funk producers, remixers and DJs of longstanding vintage. You might know them in their other guise, Elektrons, who are heavier on…

Colin Currie and the Scottish Ensemble

Colin Currie and the Scottish Ensemble

5 Feb 2009

COLLABORATION Percussionist extraordinaire Colin Currie is making a return visit to his native Scotland to be re-united with the Scottish Ensemble for the first performances of a new specially commissioned piece intriguingly named now you hear me…

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

5 Feb 2009

COMIC BALLET A company’s name usually offers pertinent information about who they are and what they do. Aside from the word ‘ballet’, however, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo tells you very little about the delights in store. For one thing…

2dayatschool.com

2dayatschool.com

5 Feb 2009

NEW WEBSITE As all parents of school-aged children know, finding out what happened to them during the day can be akin to pulling teeth – and that’s when you actually see them. For working parents who arrive home post-bedtime, keeping yourself…

Bolt

Bolt

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

ANIMATION/ADVENTURE Classic pet road movies The Incredible Journey (1963) and Homeward Bound (1993) meet The Truman Show in heart-tugging Disney animation. Child actress Penny (voiced by Miley Cyrus) and dog Bolt (John Travolta) star in a hit TV…

Beirut/Realpeople - March of the Zapotec/Holland

Beirut/Realpeople - March of the Zapotec/Holland

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

FOLK/ELECTRONICA Ever since he quietly elbowed his way onto the 2006 end of year polls of several critical organs with debut Gulag Orkestra, there’s been intrigue surrounding Zack Condon and his peculiar combination of Eastern European party music…

Defender of the Faith

Defender of the Faith

5 Feb 2009

TROUBLES DRAMA The power sharing deal struck by the DUP and Sinn Fein in 2007 may have suggested to the world that the Troubles in Northern Ireland were finally over but the impact of decades of violence has permanently left its mark on the public…

Karla Black - Material world

Karla Black - Material world

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

REVIEW SCULPTURE The perfect storm of grease, dust and cotton wool towelled onto the floor and hanging from ceiling tiles that forms the bulk of Karla Black’s show is something of an assault to eyes not used to squalor. The natural urge is to tidy…

Morrissey - Years of Refusal

Morrissey - Years of Refusal

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

ROCK It could be argued that Morrissey’s inertia is our gain. While his old partner in crime Johnny Marr whores it about with everyone from Modest Mouse to The Cribs, a veritable six-stringer for hire, quick to adapt to any new vibrations, Stephen…

Lamb of God

Lamb of God

5 Feb 2009

METAL Lamb of God are part of the new breed of American metal. The sheer level of musicianship involved in these fast, brutal and aggressive songs is something that is often overlooked by the mainstream press. ‘I think there’s a stereotype of the…

Desk Job/Night Duty

5 Feb 2009

DOUBLE BILL The quest to find a venue on the same scale as the Arches, bringing exciting experimental small- and medium- scale work to Edinburgh, has now spawned the GRV, which now has a small performance space to complement the existing gig and club…

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

(2 stars)5 Feb 2009

COMEDY/ROMANCE Another year, another execrable Woody Allen film. Our bankrupt Icelandic friends have a proverb for this kind of thing – ‘mediocrity is climbing molehills without sweating.’ Young Americans Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina…

Yaba Badoe - True Murder

Yaba Badoe - True Murder

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

MYSTERY DRAMA Ever attempted to get inside the head of an adolescent girl? It’s a veritable minefield. Yaba Badoe achieves it effortlessly, however, in this tale of Ajuba, a Ghana-born youngster who rather unhappily moves to boarding school in Devon…

Donna Wilson: Escape to the Woods

Donna Wilson: Escape to the Woods

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

REVIEW TEXTILES The line between art and crafts is too often blurred – mostly by aspirational types who mistake the satisfaction of making something by hand for a personal statement that can then be transferred to the viewer. Yet, in some cases…

The Good The Bad The Weird

The Good The Bad The Weird

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

WESTERN/ACTION Gifted South Korean filmmaker Kim Ji-woon takes on Sergio Leone’s greatest western and (unbelievably) emerges victorious. It’s the 1930s in the desert wilderness of Japanese colonised Chinese Manchuria and three treasure hunters are in…

5 Reasons To Go See - Fife Jazz Festival

5 Reasons To Go See - Fife Jazz Festival

5 Feb 2009

1 It just got bigger This is the second jazz festival over in the Kingdom, and it has expanded a good deal, with more venues, more musicians and more diverse programming, not to mention the debut of the new Fife Jazz Orchestra (not to be confused with…

Also Released - Music

5 Feb 2009

Alex Tronic - To Infinity (Alex Tronic Records) This tenth concoction by the Edinburgh-based label was recorded in an RAF club basement under the watchful eye of a ‘Phantom Airman’ – the likely muse for techno tracks such as ‘Chiller’ and ‘In…

Hitlist: Visual Art

5 Feb 2009

● Donna Wilson: Escape to the Woods Scots textile designer Donna Wilson’s dolls and purposely sickly-hued furniture inhabit their own strange world of cartoonish archetypes. The cast includes Canibdoll, who is ‘always hungry’ and Rudie Raccoon among…

Profile - James Dowdeswell

Profile - James Dowdeswell

5 Feb 2009

Name: James Dowdeswell Who’s he then? This West Country lad has been on the gigging circuit since the turn of the century, and has a few Fringe shows under his belt, including the critically quaffed Wine from 2007 in which he threw a banana skin…

Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11

Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

(12) 105min (Joiningthedots.tv DVD retail) DOCUMENTARY However you might feel about conspiracy theories Franco Fracassi and Francesco Tre’s documentary does leave one with food for thought. In it, such notable figures as Dario Fo and Gore…

Cinema 16: World Short Films

Cinema 16: World Short Films

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

SHORTS COMPILATION (E) 303min (Warp DVD retail) A collection of 16 short films from filmmakers around the world, this DVD includes work by Sylvain Chomet, Alexander Sokurov, Guillermo Del Toro, Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuarón and Ousmane Sembene.

Black Watch

Black Watch

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

(18) 154min (John Williams Productions DVD retail) FILMED THEATRE There can be little doubt about the power of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch, an international hit for Scottish theatre unparalleled for a decade. Its story of a…

Notorious

Notorious

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

BIOPIC Unlike Nick Broomfield’s irascible 2002 documentary expose Biggie and Tupac, this fictionalised account of the fast times of Christopher Wallace/Biggie Smalls, aka the Notorious BIG (Jamal Woolard) sheds no new light on the hip hop star’s…

The Relentless Kerrang! Tour 2009

The Relentless Kerrang! Tour 2009

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

ROCK There’s always a surprise or two at this annual showcase of musical ingenuity. Some hit, some miss. This year was a fairly even split. What do you need? Howling, taut, ingenious rock shapes? Come see the mighty In Case of Fire, a short, sharp…

Scottish Opera - La Traviata

Scottish Opera - La Traviata

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

OPERA What better opera for St Valentine’s Day than La Traviata? Verdi’s impassioned tale of the tragic heroine whose love is truer than true, however, is much more than heady romance. In David McVicar’s lovely-to-look-at new production for Scottish…

Boycotts

Boycotts

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

INDIE Just when you think you’ve got this Glasgow four-piece nailed as an abrasively angular, art school outfit, the pixie-booted minx bopping about onstage opens her cheeky gob and takes you by surprise. The sound emanating from knowingly named…

Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream

Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

ROCK While the chicken or the egg quandary remains the very definition of evolutionary conundrums, we can only assume that Bruce Springsteen’s return to a more conventional, accessible rock format and the unquenchable enthusiasm for left leaning…

Punisher - War Zone

Punisher - War Zone

(1 star)5 Feb 2009

THRILLER/ACTION Worn without much distinction by Dolph Lundgren and Thomas Jane in two previous outings, the Punisher’s body armour proves a similarly uncomfortable fit for Ray Stevenson in this latest attempt to reboot the comic book franchise.

The second hand marching band

The second hand marching band

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

INDIE FOLK With How To Swim, Broken Records and The Parsonage all going strong, Scottish bands with more personnel than a football squad are in vogue. The 22-piece SHMB – a collective featuring members of other local notables including…

Marc Phillips - The Legend of Sander Grant

Marc Phillips - The Legend of Sander Grant

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

FANTASY DRAMA Sander Grant is a giant, but that’s no surprise because he comes from a long line of giants. The Grants have been cattle ranchers in Texas since anyone can remember, and the locals have gotten used to their ten-feet-tall…

Darin Strauss - More Than It Hurts You

Darin Strauss - More Than It Hurts You

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

SOCIAL DRAMA If you’re in the mood for a brisk, entertaining read, More Than It Hurts You isn’t it. If your interests lie in the inner workings of individuals and relationships, however, this is an in-depth study of exactly that. Josh, Dori, and…

Duncan Sarkies - Two Little Boys

Duncan Sarkies - Two Little Boys

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

BLACK COMEDY Flight of the Conchords fans will take delight in this dark, twisted and idiotically funny novel from fellow Kiwi Duncan Sarkies, a sometime writer on that show. When the feckless Nige knocks down a Norwegian backpacker, he calls his…

The Lady in White

The Lady in White

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

(15) 108min (Optimum DVD retail) THRILLER Even though writer and director Frank LaLoggia mixes supernatural and thriller elements, in this 1988 film, to cheat the audience (especially in the climax), this 1988 film is genuinely…

Dolphin Boy - Vertical Variations Vol. 1

Dolphin Boy - Vertical Variations Vol. 1

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

FOLK Folk and club culture have been mixing and (sometimes mis-) matching for a while now, with the late Martyn Bennett as chief pioneer and figurehead of the enterprise. Edinburgh DJ Dolphin Boy, otherwise known as Andy Levy, acknowledges Martyn’s…

Aoife Mannix & Raymond MacDonald - Other Voices

Aoife Mannix & Raymond MacDonald - Other Voices

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

JAZZ/POETRY Jazz and poetry has a lengthy if often problematic history of interaction, and remains a specialised taste. This collaboration between Irish poet and Glasgow saxophonist originated by accident. The two were brought together for an…

Amy MacKinnon - Tethered

Amy MacKinnon - Tethered

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

PSYCHODRAMA The most remarkable aspect of Tethered, Amy MacKinnon’s debut novel about a mortician drawn into the hunt for a missing child, is that the central character, Clara, an isolated, damaged woman, who devotes herself to beautifying the dead…

Joni Keen - Fragile

Joni Keen - Fragile

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

JAZZ Like Lorna Reid’s album reviewed in these pages recently, this self-issued debut album by Glasgow-based singer Joni Keen is further evidence of the healthy state of jazz singing in Scotland these days. Fionna Duncan’s successful vocal workshops…

Sukiyaki Western Django

Sukiyaki Western Django

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

(15) 94min (Contender DVD retail) WESTERN Japanese auteur Takashi Miike puts the wanton bloodletting and cruelty of Audition and his Dead and Alive series aside for this tongue-in-cheek spaghetti western. Throw in an acting turn from Quentin…

Mike Bones - A Fool for Everyone

Mike Bones - A Fool for Everyone

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

POP On first glance Mike Bones seems like a right miserable bastard. Opening his debut album with a protruding, protracted moan/mourn called ‘Today The Word is Worthy of My Loathing’, he sets his agenda for upside-down smiles galore. Persevere though…

Also Published - 5 Popular Science Books

5 Feb 2009

David Bainbridge - Teenagers: A Natural History This vet from Cambridge writes about teens as though they were animals (in a nice way), providing biological, anthropological and cultural reasons to explain their behavioural patterns. Portobello.

Lost Robots - No

Lost Robots - No

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

EXPERIMENTAL No. Or yes if you’ve an ear for moody, noodly, semi-improvisational soundscapes. If you haven’t, then you’ll think this debut no more than a racket. However, those attracted to more esoteric aural adventures will be rewarded. ‘Beryllium…

Crystal Stilts - Alight of Night

Crystal Stilts - Alight of Night

(2 stars)5 Feb 2009

INDIE You know Crystal Stilts are hip because they’re from Brooklyn, right? Well, here’s some news for you: whatever your locality, you still need to write a decent melody every now and then. The fivesome’s striking image, and the mean and moody…

Aidan Moffat & The Best-Ofs - How to Get to Heaven From Scotland

Aidan Moffat & The Best-Ofs - How to Get to Heaven From Scotland

(4 stars)5 Feb 2009

LOVE SONGS Lovable little Mr Doom and Gloom, or as he puts it, ‘Glasgow’s alcoholic lo-fi miserablist’ set out to write an album of positive love songs and this, the result, shows Arab Strap’s one-time frontman in playfully sentimental but happily…

Teitur - The Singer

Teitur - The Singer

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

ORCHESTRAL POP Unashamedly ambitious and epic, this is the first album from the Faroe Islands singer-songwriter to be released in the UK, his third overall. It’s a sumptuous and elegant piece of orchestral pop, a melancholic concept album as much…

Balkanarama

Balkanarama

5 Feb 2009

Balkan nights of gypsy jazz mashed with folk and klezmar tunes are always riotous affairs. This month Balkanarama have live music from Black Cat and Jani Lang Band as well as Balkan beats DJ DD (from Turin), all topped off with Hungary’s Kalam Balogh.

Hint

Hint

5 Feb 2009

Mixed Bizness have yet another special guest this fortnight with a set from Ninja Tune’s Hint. Known for his downtempo, chilled out take on beats and breaks he’s ploughed his own furrow that’s been labelled ‘ruralbeat’. Of late he’s been upping the BPM…

Novalima - Coba Coba

Novalima - Coba Coba

(3 stars)5 Feb 2009

WORLD FUSION This third release for the Lima-London collective Novalima furthers the adventures in Latin form, Afro-Peruvian percussion and electronic tweaks that spawned 2005’s award-winning Afro. Coba Coba, however, bears all the hallmarks of a…

Desire Lines

Desire Lines

5 Feb 2009

Edinburgh University’s Talbot Rice Gallery is closing for refurbishment and has invited various artists to choose a public site on campus in which to create work that reaches out to students, staff and the public. The gallery will produce a guide to…

Golden Hour – Paper Cinema

Golden Hour – Paper Cinema

5 Feb 2009

Be enchanted as Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is brought to life by the Paper Cinema company. They will be using a cast of hand-drawn marionettes to act out a fairytale version of Professor Challenger’s expedition into the Amazon rainforest.

Twitter - Twestival

Twitter - Twestival

5 Feb 2009

Are you one of these new-fangled cyber-punk internet hippy people? Well, you may be interested to learn that Edinburgh-based users of the young person’s website Twitter, whatever that is, will be gathering together at an event jocularly called a…

Charles Avery The Islanders: An Introduction

5 Feb 2009

If you value true escapism in art, grab this final opportunity to catch the highly recommended introduction to the work of Mull-born artist Charles Avery. Inspired by his upbringing on the island, Avery’s ongoing project explores the flora and fauna of…

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

5 Feb 2009

The manipulate Visual Theatre Festival continues with the return of 1927’s multi-award-winning darkly beautiful journey through sinister visual landscapes, which takes in weird cross-dressing twins, homicidal sisters and gun-toting gingerbread men. The…

Paperweight

Paperweight

5 Feb 2009

This offbeat two-hander won plaudits at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe for its detailed insight into the daily minutiae of office life. The piece tracks the attempt of two workers to battle tedium through childish pranks and endless tea-making, and is set…

The Gussets

The Gussets

5 Feb 2009

Where will we get our fix of fishnet-and-Goretex referencing all-female punk thrills from now on? It’s the last gig for Edinburgh’s Gussets and we’re hoping for some throbbing, man-eating, hedonistic thrills as they bow out in their own inimitable…

Secret Machines

Secret Machines

5 Feb 2009

Dallas prog-rockers Secret Machines released their self-titled third album last month, at once familiar-sounding and yet their spaciest, most epic and Pink Floydian effort so far. Ben Curtis left on good terms to join School of Seven Bells, (playing…

Ray Lamontagne

Ray Lamontagne

5 Feb 2009

The once semi-reclusive, gravelly voiced grizzly bear of Americana folk has come a long way from early gigs where he used to keep his eyes shut throughout. Last year’s Gossip in the Grain was praised as his most open album to date. Royal Concert…

Late of the Pier

Late of the Pier

5 Feb 2009

A shouty, glammy rush of youthful noise, sitting somewhere between Klaxons and Friendly Fires. New rave might be old news, but these Castle Donington boys remind us why we first fell in love with it. Oran Mor, Glasgow, Sun 8 Feb.

Todd Gordon

Todd Gordon

5 Feb 2009

An evening of sweet nothings from the Scottish jazz singer, who brings his smooth, baritone tribute to Johnny Mercer, Moon River to the Days of Wine and Roses. Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Sat 14 Feb.

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