Issue 630

What goes around - Orbital

Orbital were pioneers in the world of dance music, with brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll epitomising up the sound of the illegal rave scene with their marrying of ambient and techno, but perhaps more significantly they managed to turn this music – until…

Party On

Our love of a good festival is by no means new. The desire to recharge – or more often, decharge our batteries – goes back to prehistoric times when people felt confused and scared by the forces of nature, so tried to keep on their good side by…

Terminator Salvation

With a track record that includes Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and the straight-to-DVD We Are Marshall, McG was always going to have his work cut out proving he was the right man to reboot the Terminator franchise. Now his judgment day has arrived…

Tongs of praise

Summer wouldn’t be summer without the irresistible smell of something sizzling away on a barbecue. Although the traditional BBQ may conjure up images of basic burgers and sausages, there are plenty of pubs now offering something more upmarket, whether…

Howard Chaykin - American Flagg!

With a penchant for eroticism and violence, US comics visionary Howard Chaykin is releasing another groundbreaking work. Miles Fielder chats to him.

Balgay Hill - Simon Macallum

Today we associate Dundee with the enterprising work of Dundee Rep’s ensemble, the world-class art at DCA and the tourist attractions of the City of Discovery. It’s a place the Victoria and Albert Museum can consider setting up a northerly outpost…

On the Record

‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking …’ So begins Christopher Isherwood’s novel Goodbye To Berlin. While the book is now most famous as the inspiration for the musical Cabaret, the new exhibition of artists’ films…

You the jury

You may have noticed that here at The List, we love movies. We don’t care if they’re contemporary or old, blockbuster or art house, we just want to witter on about them, compare them to each other and rejoice in all those spools of celluloid accumulated…

Life as a cabaret

Calum Ritchie investigates the low-budget, cross-genre revolution happening on Glasgow and Edinburgh’s cultural scenes That’s not to suggest these nights are homogenous, because each…

Everything's Gone Green - Coloursfest'09

These straitened times seem to be treacherous ones for festivals, but the last thing we need to get us in the mood for summer fun is a story about another call-off. How about a bit of feelgood news instead? ‘We’re already up 700 ticket sales on where we…

Tobias Sternberg: Review

Those who have been through art college or a creative visual media course might have experienced the collage test at some point: the challenge being to use found images to create a composite with some kind of combined visual meaning. The aim is to…

Sleep Furiously

The title comes from a phrase created by Noam Chomsky, meaning words that are grammatically correct yet semantically nonsensical. Giddeon Koppel’s film is no scathing polemic however, but rather a quietly compelling and melancholic portrait of life in a…

Led Bib

Led Bib hit Scotland for a couple of small venue gigs this month on the back of their latest studio CD, Sensible Shoes, newly released on a new (American) label, Steven Feigenbaum’s Cuneiform Records. The London-based quartet has been attracting a lot…

Fete accomplis - The West End Festival

The West End Festival, which has been going since 1996, is a community festival in the proper sense of the word, running free workshops and concerts, hosting events that involve local businesses and generally inviting residents to celebrate the various…

A View From the Bridge

One of the gifts that made Arthur Miller such a significant dramatic writer was his ability to capture the world of Greek tragedy – on the face of it an unfamiliar theatrical landscape with its dark blood feuds, incest and primal passions – and make it…

Dock Life - The Leith Festival

So what’s The Leith Festival, then? It’s an annual community celebration that takes in comedy, dance, film, literature, music, storytelling theatre, visual art and children’s events – in other words everything. A small affair, is it? Hardly. Its…

Aeroplane

Location: Brussels, Belgium. Occupation: Cosmic orbiters of Planet Disco. Should I be excited? We think so. Having planted the magic beans in Glasgow with an infamous performance at H&P last September, Aeroplane return to spray their flourishing…

Bethany Black

As the UK’s foremost goth, lesbian, post-op transsexual stand-up, Bethany Black worries about being pigeonholed. So it’s a ‘recovering alcoholic, drug addict and love addict too’ who will be showcasing material from her forthcoming Fringe show this…

Fermat's Room (La Habitacion de Fermat)

Spanish filmmakers are cornering the market in intriguing, ingenious thrillers. Following on from the chronology-warping comic thriller Timecrimes (released on DVD only in Scotland) this murderous mathematical mystery arrives to confound and…

Round the World

Just for Laughs Montreal, Canada, 16-26 Jul Legendary comedy fest brings together global superstars of comedy including Tommy Tiernan, Bill Cosby and John Cleese. www.hahaha.com Iceland Airwaves Reykjavik, Iceland, 14–18 Oct Weekend-long…

Capital - Edinburgh Festivals

Not for nothing has Edinburgh garnered a reputation for producing some of the finest festivals in the world. Although Manchester and Melbourne are coming hot on its heels, the Fringe continues to dominate the festival calendar as the self-styled…

DJ Vadim

The promised summer heatwave arrives early with sunshine beats and heavy hip hop sounds. Imagine the Notting Hill Carnival played out on a tropical island and you’re halfway to capturing the good time grooves of DJ Vadim. Bringing a full live set (with…

Small Wonder - The Wee Chill

So, what’s The Wee Chill then? The Wee Chill is a small, relaxed festival that takes place in the atmospheric environs of the Glasshouse in Glasgow’s Queens Park. This one-day party is an official precursor to The Big Chill, which is, as the name…

Le Weekend

A dubstep artist headlining at a left field music festival may have come about by accident, but the appearance of Jazzstepper and the Moody Boyz as the closing act of this year’s Le Weekend festival is as much of a coup as it is an eye-opener. Throw in…

Ghosts

Of the two Ibsen revivals gracing Scottish stages at present, Dundee Rep and the National Theatre of Scotland’s award-winning Peer Gynt appears the more irreverent in its approach to the playwright’s satirical fantasy. On the surface at least, Jeremy…