Music, Issue 635

Music hitlist

The best music from the festival

The Bang Bang Club, David Byrne, Dub Syndicate, The Edge, Rough Cut Nation, Rough Cut Nation, Shooglenifty, The Stranglers, Time(less) Machine

Busta Rhymes - Back on My BS

In a sea of pouting, posturing wannabe players, Busta Rhymes has always stood out as a true rap individual. Never afraid to play for laughs, he broke through in the early 90s as an affiliate of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Solo, he’s been one of…

One More Tune turns two

The folk behind the sound talk to David Pollock about difficult beginnings

It’s overplaying things to describe it as a rags-to-riches tale, but Matthew Craig’s career as a DJ and promoter on the Glasgow circuit has come a long way since he started putting on One More Tune (alongside Ralph Thomson, who he DJs with as Define…

Online Clubbing

Be At TV at the EH1 Music Festival

Having established itself as the destination for virtual and vicarious clubbing, free web TV community Be At TV (www.be-at.tv), featuring some of the world’s best venues and festivals – from Space to Matter via Global Gathering – and backed by DJ’s…

Ludus Baroque

Indulging in Alexander’s Feast

His fame these days may be mainly due to his commanding role as conductor of The Really Terrible Orchestra, but there is a much more serious side to Richard Neville-Towle’s pursuits with a baton. Having founded the baroque chamber orchestra, Ludus…

Libera

Boys in fine voice

Think English choirboys and centuries of choral tradition in vast cathedrals spring to mind. Libera is somewhat different. The South London boys, aged seven to 16, who make up the internationally chart-topping group, would rather think of themselves as…

Eilidh Steel and Mark Neal

Double dunt of local folk talent

While performers and musicians jet into the capital this August ready to ply their trade amongst the city’s myriad venues, Edinburgh-based folk duo Eilidh Steel and Mark Neal are broadening their horizons by embarking on a European sojourn instead. But…

Piping Live! – Family Fun Day

As this little lady ably proves, you’re never too young to pick up a pipe. ‘Come and try’ sessions are just one aspect of the Family Fun Day, organised as part of this year’s Piping Live! You can also try your hand at drumming and Highland dancing…

Baptiste Trotignon

Sometimes the setting is everything, and for one of the real Edinburgh Jazz Festival highlights this year, the programmers have taken the ingenious step of putting French pianist Trotignon in the hallowed environs of Rosslyn Chapel. Trotignon has shown…

Kilmarnock Edition Festival

Kilmarnock might not be the first place you think of as Scotland’s musical Mecca, but the Kilmarnock Edition Festival is aiming to redress the balance. Centring around Dean Castle there are free gigs (featuring the likes of Pearl & the Puppets and El…

The Heptones

Formed in Jamaica in 1965 The Heptones were one of the top vocal groups of the rocksteady era. Working with names like Coxsone Dodds and Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry back in the day they reunited in 1995 and have been bringing real reggae back to the live…

Stone Roses - Stone Roses (20th anniversary re-issue)

Here’s a thought no one who bought The Stone Roses’ debut album on the morning it was released 20 years ago will want to be alerted to – The Album That Changed Your Life is as old today as Abbey Road was in 1989 on the day you shelled out your pocket…

Lola: The Life of Lola Montez

Biographical flamenco drama

During the 19th century, Irish-born Lola Montez plied a career as an unlikely Spanish dancer across Europe, Australia and the US while bedding the likes of King Ludwig I of Bavaria along the way. Her story is one of scandal and celebrity. ‘Lola is a…

Man versus machine: Sambor Dudzinski

The Polish musician is gearing up for his Fringe debut. He meets Anna Docherty

‘I sing, but I’m not a singer; I play piano, but I’m not a piano player; I act, but I’m not an actor,’ says Polish conceptual artist, Sambor Dudzinski. By way of alternative explanation he simply says: ‘I am timeless.’ And he’s not being deliberately…

Bag of tricks: Piping Live!

As the annual piping festival kicks, The List finds plenty of fans of the maligned instrument

In Germany they’ve got the doodlesack; in Sweden, the säckpipa; and in Italy, the zampogna. Nearly every country in Europe has some version of the bagpipe, giving the instrument a range and diversity that stretches way beyond that lone piper standing in…

Singles and downloads

Virtually no one releases good singles in August. The charts are full of summer pap while decent acts are up to their knees in festival mud. So hello, Dolores ‘The Cranberries’ O’Riordan, whose ‘The Journey’ (Cooking Vinyl) is utterly anaemic, dreary…

Rough Cut Nation

Music meets art uptown

Gallery gigs are ordinarily bespoke, underground shop-front affairs that flaunt their art-rock credentials like billy-o. The renovation of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has allowed some of that DIY spirit to mess up its normally plush interior…

5 reasons to go and see: Tartan Heart Festival - Belladrum 2009

1: The best new music in Scotland. Now in its sixth year, this perfectly formed Highland shindig outside Inverness has always been a champion of new Scottish music. This year is no exception, with The Phantom Band, Dananananakroyd, Unicorn Kid, St…

Dub Syndicate

Sci-fi wall wobblers

Anyone who witnessed former Pop Group vocalist Mark Stewart with ex-Sugarhill house band The Maffia play Edinburgh last year with seminal producer and On-U Sound head honcho Adrian Sherwood manning the controls will probably still be wondering where on…

Barbara Morrison

Ebullient and expressive jazz singer

Los Angeles-based singer Barbara Morrison has been a popular visitor to Scotland in recent years, and settles in to a Fringe residency via a couple of outings within the Jazz Festival programme. Raised in Michigan, she has an ebullient, wise-cracking…

Shooglenifty at the Fringe - Keep on Shooglin’

When Shooglenifty burst onto the Scottish folk scene in the early 90s playing their radical new take on traditional music-meets-club culture (quickly dubbed ‘acid croft’), their impact was enormous. According to co-founder Garry Finlayson, there was no…

Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra

Burns meets big band jazz

The second of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival Orchestra’s two concerts turns from familiar ground with Duke Ellington into rather more uncharted waters. Robert Burns has been even more ubiquitous than usual in the course of this 250th anniversary year, but…

Rufige Kru - Memoirs of an Afterlife

RUFIGE KRU Memoirs of an Afterlife (Metalheadz) To your nan, he may be that nice lad with the funny teeth that did quite well on that conducting gameshow on BBC2, but to us, Goldie remains an unquenchable source of energy when it comes to music. He…

Colin Steele - Stramash

JAZZ/FOLK (Gadgemo Records) Colin Steele’s ambitious jazz-meets-folk project made a striking impression when first heard live back in 2006 and retains much of its adventure and imagination in this excellent studio recording. His genre-crossing…

Low Sonic Drift - Shadows of the Titan

Never ones to be criticised for false advertising, this mighty trio from Glasgow eschew the frippery and foppery of modern music for something bigger, deeper and darker than most.