Issue 644

Koyaanisqatsi screening in Glasgow with live score by Urban Farm Hand

19 Nov 2009

Organised by Take One Action to mark the lead up to the global climate change talks in Copenhagen and the national climate change march in Glasgow on Saturday 5 December this screening of Godfrey Reggio’s still prescient 1982 film collage will be scored…

Wasabi Disco

Raw like sushi

19 Nov 2009

‘I left Edinburgh to live in Glasgow about four years ago,’ says Kris Walker, promoter and resident DJ at Sneaky Pete’s Wasabi Disco, ‘and the Edinburgh I see now is completely different to the one I left behind. The club scene in the city’s really…

Gary Lightbody Interview

First word

19 Nov 2009

First record you ever bought Michael Jackson – Thriller. On tape. Last time you were chatted up Ha. Doesn’t happen very often. Honestly don’t know. Actually, have I been? First movie you ever went on a date to Reservoir Dogs Last time…

Social Science at Glasgow Science Centre

Let’s get physics, y'all!

19 Nov 2009

There are certain ‘childish’ ways of being that we’re encouraged to leave behind when we grow up. Throwing tantrums in the street, for example, or scratching yourself there in public. Unfortunately, just simply playing, and indulging a wide-eyed sense…

Zadie Smith - Changing My Mind

19 Nov 2009

(Hamish Hamilton) As she notes in her foreword, Zadie Smith had written her latest book without even knowing it. All it took was one person to point out that since she burst onto the scene brandishing her White Teeth, Smith has committed thousands of…

We Will Rock You

19 Nov 2009

Regardless of how unsure or cynical you may be walking into this musical, by the time the eponymous song comes around, if your hands aren’t clapping and your voice isn’t belting out ‘we will, we will rock you!’, then check your pulse, for you may well…

Michael Crichton - Pirate Latitudes

19 Nov 2009

(HarperCollins) The first of two books to be published posthumously, Pirate Latitudes was found as a complete manuscript after Michael Crichton’s death in November 2008. Set in the volatile colonial Caribbean in 1665, it details British privateer…

Homecoming Final Fling - ditch cynical, think musical

19 Nov 2009

You know the big speech by Renton in Trainspotting where he goes on about how it’s ‘shite being Scottish’? Well, he was only half right. His defeatist rant is a quintessential example of that under-a-dreich-cloud Scottish pessimism, rubbishing…

Leanne Shapton - Important Artifacts …

19 Nov 2009

In this empty literary age of celebrity autobiographies written by someone else, increasingly desperate misery memoirs and Dan Brown, the notion of an original novel making its way onto our shelves seems a crazy one. Yet, just when you thought there…

What You See Is Where You’re At

19 Nov 2009

A new exhibition launches a year of celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, as Neil Cooper discovers

Pantomine in Scotland

19 Nov 2009

As the panto season gets underway a new exhibition celebrating Scotland’s other national theatre embarks on a nationwide tour. Allan Radcliffe investigates

End of year film magazines round-up 2009

19 Nov 2009

It’s time to drop into the wonderful world of film magazines. December is a crucial month for these cinephile glossies – it’s the time when readers decide whether to renew their loyalty for another year – so let’s have a look at what you are really…

Rumpelstiltskin

19 Nov 2009

If any art form can claim a familiarity and a relevance that crosses all boundaries of age, class, education and even culture, it may well be the fairy tale. And if there’s a form of art that suffers most from a reputation for being elitist, obscure and…

Karla Black: Sculptures

19 Nov 2009

While these new sculptures comprise Karla Black’s now familiar array of nebulous materials – chalk dust, eye shadow, sugar paper – they command a more distinct level of authority than has previously been seen. Her impermanent sculptures transcend…

Scottish Matthew Bourne showcase given go-ahead

19 Nov 2009

A new piece of work by dance legend Matthew Bourne will be staged as a result of National Lottery Funding. The King’s Theatre and Theatre Royal have been awarded £265,905 by the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) as part of a £2.5million National Lottery…

Pippa Evans

19 Nov 2009

Going along to a show featuring Pippa Evans generally means confronting some fears of many a comedy-goer. Audience participation has been her thing since she arrived on the Fringe in 2008 with an if.comedy Best Newcomer-nominated debut which revolved…

Edinburgh's Christmas

19 Nov 2009

‘Christmas is a time for families to be together, so we wanted to make Edinburgh’s Christmas suitable for all ages,’ says Nickie Gott, of She’s Gott It, the company charged with putting smiles on faces in the capital this Christmas. Gott and her company…

SCO Homecoming Concert

19 Nov 2009

As Scotland’s Year of Homecoming draws to a close, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra pays tribute to three of the country’s finest composers with a special focus on Edward Harper who died earlier this year. In the world premiere performance of the complete…

Arctic Monkeys

Preview

19 Nov 2009

On the title of a 2006 EP, these Sheffield boys asked the question Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys? They were being a bit ironic, we can only presume, considering you’d need to have been hiding in a subterranean bunker, wearing earmuffs and a thick…

Fortified

Preview

19 Nov 2009

Hessle Audio is a dubstep label, and its origins were in the most dubstep of locations. The queue for seminal, scene-defining night FWD>> at London’s Velvet Rooms (which currently lives at the city’s Plastic People) was where Ben Thomson and David…

Rain Man

19 Nov 2009

It’s a pleasant surprise to see how successfully Dan Gordon’s theatre adaptation of the screen classic starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman translates to the stage. The tale of city slicker Charlie Babbitt’s relationship with his long-lost…

Exposure: Burnt Island

19 Nov 2009

Burnt Island are a richly melodic and understated folky five-piece from Glasgow. Singer Rodge Glass – a regular renaissance man who counts novelist, biographer, academic and occasional List contributor amongst his lengthy CV – spills the beans. How…

Anna Sikorska: Exchange and Harbour

19 Nov 2009

It was a while ago now that the European surrealists were drawn to the marvel of surprise juxtapositions – Lautréamont’s poetic proclamation about the chance meeting on a dissecting table of an umbrella with a sewing machine, sparked something pretty…

Charlie Hammond: The New Improvement Scheme

19 Nov 2009

Glasgow-based painter, Charlie Hammond, exhibits a new body of work under the banner The New Improvement Scheme. His canvasses have been altered, added to, taken from, layered with impasto ceramic-laced paint and sheets of raw linen dressed in shades of…

The Slow Club

19 Nov 2009

As the name suggests, The Slow Club doesn’t go for furious beats and sweaty dancefloors. ‘It’s the dark candlelit bar at the end of the world where everything is not quite right, yet perfect, somewhere to get lost in, immerse yourself in,’ explains…