Issue 697
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- Issue 697
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First Writes - Elaine Proctor, author of Rhumba
22 May 2012
The books tells the story of a Congolese boy’s life in London
Give us five words to describe Rhumba? ‘They had horns and tails’. Can you name one author who should be more famous than they are now? Mark Gevisser is the brightest, most original witness to the complicated condition of being a global South…
Friends & Aluna George - King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow, Mon 7 May
22 May 2012
Disco-tinged set of dazzling pop music
‘Come closer,’ beckons Friends’ enigmatic frontwoman Samantha Urbani, as the Brooklyn quintet make their Glasgow debut. She means it too: blink and next thing, she’s on the floor, shimmying up to an exhilarated crowd. If the intimate touch hints at a…
Hannah Berry - Adamtine
22 May 2012
A disconcerting horror comic from the creator of Britten and Brülightly
British graphic novelist Hannah Berry’s near-perfect debut, Britten and Brülightly, was a detective yarn inspired by Graham Greene and Carol Reed. But the familiar post-war milieu was given a surreal comic twist with the inclusion of a character that…
Howard Marks in discussion event with MC5 manager John Sinclair
22 May 2012
The two can offer different takes on the 1960s counter culture
Every generation needs a figurehead to accentuate the fun side of drugs. From Thomas de Quincey to Sherlock Holmes and through to Timothy Leary, the Beatles and Bill Hicks, it’s not all been bad trips and cold turkey (if there any wags out there…
Scottish Ballet's Family Challenge Day
22 May 2012
A fun event for the whole family to try out some basic ballet steps
‘When you’re a parent, quite often you’ll do things with your child that you wouldn’t do on your own,’ says Catherine Cassidy, associate director of education at Scottish Ballet. How very true. Or at least that’s what Scottish Ballet is banking on, when…
Auntie Flo - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 13 May
22 May 2012
Club-friendly house beats with a world music undercurrent
It’s a foul Sunday night and getting late, with the hour moving near to midnight when Glasgow duo Auntie Flo take their place behind a pod of trestle tables loaded down with kit and cables. The flickering projection behind them bears the legend ‘Night…
Ewan Morrison - Tales from the Mall
22 May 2012
A wealth of information and anecdotes drawn together to paint a funny, scary portrait of our times
As Ewan Morrison notes in his introduction, the shopping mall is a potent symbol of the homogenised world in which we live now. You could look at images of shopping centres in Dundee and Dresden and chances are you won’t be able to tell them apart. The…
Nikita Lalwani - The Village
22 May 2012
A tense social drama about trust and betrayal, set in an Indian prison
When Ray Bhullar travels to an Indian ‘open prison’ village to film a behind-the-scenes BBC documentary, she gets more than she bargained for. ‘Everyone here has killed someone,’ she’s told, as she slowly adapts to the sights and smells of her alien new…
John Irving - In One Person
22 May 2012
A fascinating and engaging novel set against the backdrop of gay culture in America
Write about what you know, we’re told, and John Irving is certainly a big subscriber to that particular maxim. For his 13th novel, Irving once again inhabits the worlds of New Hampshire (his birthplace) and wrestling (his preferred sport). Our…
Chris Cleave - Gold
22 May 2012
Well-timed Olympic-themed novel fails to fulfill the promise of its intriguing premise
There’s something intriguing about the mindset of those athletes who are honed from a very young age into Olympic machines. Lives are altered irrevocably in pursuit of a small gold disc and the too-fleeting associated glory: a strange, self-obsessed way…
Peter Zummo - Zummo with an X
22 May 2012
Minimalist experimental reissue from the regular Arthur Russell collaborator
An excellent reissue of the out-of-print debut from Peter Zummo dating back to 1981, a long time session musician and collaborator of Arthur Russell’s – who also lends his distinctive cello and baritone stylings throughout. With its feet firmly set in…
Friends - Manifest!
22 May 2012
An insidiously hooky album that's sometimes brilliant, sometimes bloomin’ annoying
There are songs you can’t get out of your head, and then there are songs you wish you could get out of your head. In the latter category: ‘Hey Baby’ by DJ Otzi. In the former: Friends’ ‘Friend Crush’ and ‘I’m His Girl’. The Brooklyn band’s well-blogged…
Ultravox - Brilliant
22 May 2012
Dull and pompous record from the no-longer-relevant Ure and co
Does the world really need another album, the first in 26 years, from the ‘classic’ Midge Ure-era Ultravox – a group of negligible lasting impact on music even at their mid-80s arena synth-pop zenith? The Trade Descriptions Act-violating Brilliant is…
Paul Buchanan - Mid Air
22 May 2012
Poor solo effort from the former Blue Nile member
Written as a kind of pop requiem for a late friend, Mid Air is, quite fittingly, something of a musical flatline; a cycle of 14 barely-there doodles for voice and piano with all the punch and urgency of a ghost falling asleep. Virtually nothing remains…
Neneh Cherry & The Thing - Cherry Thing
22 May 2012
Inventive and charismatic return from Cherry in this free jazz/post-punk collaboration
Neneh Cherry’s first album in 16 years is perhaps closer in spirit to the jazzoid post-punk of Rip Rig & Panic than the glorious hip-pop of Raw Like Sushi, but hot damn, it’s good. The Thing are renowned for their wild takes on cult rock and free-jazz…
Mary Epworth - Dream Life
22 May 2012
A lavish and eclectic debut album from the folk-rock singer
Where shall we begin? With the banjo twang, Black Sabbath fuzz and Goldfrapping blues-stomp of ‘Black Doe’? With the brass-toting folk-rock euphoria of ‘Long Gone’? With the swirling psych-pop of ‘Come Back to the Bough’? Or perhaps we should start…
Patti Smith - Banga
22 May 2012
Unique album of punk poetry populated by rocky arias, improvised psalms and lyrical reveries
You may have heard that Patti Smith dedicates a song to Amy Winehouse on her 11th studio album, Banga. This takes the form of a syrupy ballad, ‘This is the Girl’, and its intentions are honourable, but look beyond it: there are greater, more defiant…
Miaoux Miaoux - Light of the North
22 May 2012
Gloriously melodic dance-pop in the vein of Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and the Avalanches
This is a perfect example of how good pop music can be if it’s driven by a restless intelligence. Miaoux Miaoux, aka Julian Corrie, has been turning heads with his distinctive electro-pop sound for a while, but this first album for Chemikal Underground…
Ben Zabo - Ben Zabo
22 May 2012
Vibrant and inventive Malian Afro-beat, occasionally let down by naff blues guitar
Described as Malian Afro-Beat, Ben Zabo’s music expands its scope well beyond the Fela Kuti-inspired sounds of 1970s Bamako to incorporate the bwa rhythms and melodies of his own Bo region, alongside elements of funk and rock. Slick production has…
Sigur Rós - Valtari
22 May 2012
A typically dazzling record from the Icelandic cosmic folk-pop outfit
The rumours of an ‘indefinite hiatus’ might have left us thinking that was it for Sigur Rós, but the four years since their previous album have amounted to little more than a bit of creative refreshment time. Valtari (the infinitely less satisfying to…
Silver Jews - Early Times 1990-91
22 May 2012
Reissue of early works by David Berman, Stephen Malkmus and Bob Nastanovich
Disbanded in 2009, David Berman’s Silver Jews project was a tremendous portmanteau of country and US indie that acted as a vehicle for Berman’s lyrics, his voice, smooth and unsteady as stretched taffy, often simply speaking the words in tune, offering…
Steve Kuhn Trio - Wisteria
22 May 2012
Accomplished, crisp and cool recordings by Kuhn, Steve Swallow and Joey Baron
Pianist Steve Kuhn has worked with both bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Joey Baron in many contexts over several decades, but they had never played together in a trio setting prior to recording this last year. You would never guess that, though – they…
Oriole - Every New Day
22 May 2012
Distinctly Latin-influenced sounds from the F-IRE collective
The latest offering from the ranks of the London-based F-IRE collective features music written by Oriole’s founder, guitarist Johnny Phillips, during a six-year stay in Cadiz. The distinctly Spanish/Latin melodic and rhythmic feel has an appealing…
Can - The Lost Tapes
21 May 2012
An essential Can album with unheard versions of familiar tracks and some never-heard-before material
Not lost at all, but just forgotten about in Can’s cluttered studio until archived by the classic German psych-rock explorers’ Irmin Schmidt recently, this three-disc dump of material is unfeasibly good considering it managed to avoid the light of day…
Hot Chip - In Our Heads
21 May 2012
The elctro-pop masters' fifth album is their most smartly accessible effort to date
Every self-appointed creative with a WTF haircut and a MacBook thinks they’re an ‘electronic artist’ these days. But there’s more to it than bedroom-recording cry wank vocals over presets and dropping them to Tuesday night cheek-chewers. Hot Chip’s…
