Music, Neil Cooper

Missing Twin presents

4 Sep 2008

Missing Twin is the publishing empire of cartoon genius Malcy Duff. Alongside geek-soul brother and Giant Tanker Ali Robertson, Duff makes up half of premier lo-fi fidgets, Usurper. This popcorn-friendly triple feature of late-night wow-and-splutter…

Calvin Johnson

7 Aug 2008

When Calvin Johnson plays a booze-free all-ages show in a church hall in Glasgow this week, he won’t be attempting to be cute. Rather, it’s just one more wilfully skewed strategy in this most single-minded of mavericks’ ongoing mission of DIY…

Bittersweet symphony - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Brecht and Weill’s Mahagonny has inspired an artistic generation. Neil Cooper analyses the pair’s enduring appeal.

Momus

17 Jul 2008

PREVIEW POP Stereo, Glasgow, Sun 27 Jul When Nick Currie named himself after the Greek god of mockery, being clever, like ridicule, was nothing to be scared of. Edinburgh-based Currie had already fronted The Happy Family, a band that featured half…

Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura Group

17 Jul 2008

This collaboration between the Japanese husband and wife team of pianist Satoko Fujii and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura with a quartet culled from Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra was a bijou precursor to a full GIO blow-out with the pair later in the week at…

Harmonia

3 Jul 2008

KRAUTROCK ABC, Glasgow, Fri 11 Jul As long lost supergroups go, the reignition of Harmonia is the musical equivalent of discovering some buried mythical city. When Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius got together again in 2007…

Harry Smith Anthology Remixed

19 Jun 2008

When American song-collector, artist, ethno-musicologist and experimental filmmaker Harry Smith released The Anthology Of American Folk Music in 1952, it was a labour of love which had a huge influence on the 1950s so-called Folk revival. Without this…

The Sexual Objects

19 Jun 2008

ROCK New Breed @ The Vic Café, Glasgow School of Art, Sat 7 Jun ‘Play it a bit more Todd Rungren, baby.’ Not words you hear at every art school hop, but it’s what Fire Engines/Heartbeat/Win/The Nectarine No 9 guitarist and guiding light Davy Henderson…

Mark Stewart and the Maffia and A Certain Ratio

5 Jun 2008

PUNK FUNK Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jun Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Sat 14 Jun Somewhere between Manchester and Bristol there’s a punk-funk ley line. How else to explain the umbilical link between The Pop Group and A Certain Ratio, two bands who…

The Chap - live music review

5 Jun 2008

ART POP Limbo@The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Thu 1 May ‘In case you didn’t realise,’ deadpans Chap bassist Panos Ghikas, ‘all our songs are about pleasure.’ Well, blow me down with a showroom dummy, who’da thunk it? Because this pan-global North…

Ulrich Schnauss

24 Apr 2008

ELECTRONICA Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Sun 4 May Without British Forces radio, Ulrich Schnauss’ brand of transcendent electronica wouldn’t be quite so lovely. In early 90s small-town Germany, it was the only way quintessentially English bands such as…

Paul Haig

10 Apr 2008

INDIE Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, Sun 13 Apr When Josef K named their solitary album The Only Fun in Town in 1981, it was as dry a statement on Edinburgh nightlife as a band named after a Franz Kafka character could muster. Almost 30 years on, ex-Josef K…

Barry Adamson

27 Mar 2008

Barry Adamson is making his pitch. The way the composer, crooner, ex-Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist and now big(ish) band leader tells it regarding his forthcoming eighth album, Back to the Cat, though, sounds like making movies. But then, the absorbed…

Chris Corsano and Massimo Pupillo

27 Mar 2008

EXPERIMENTAL The Ark, Edinburgh, Fri 14 Mar With scheduled headliners Italian skronk power trio Zu depleted in ranks by a broken-limbed drummer, last-minute reinforcements come in the shape of ubiquitous sticks-man Chris Corsano, briefly home from his…

Exposure - Simon Breed

13 Mar 2008

With shades of Scott Walker, Smog and Simon Bonney by way of Julian Cope and John Cale to his intimately epic, full-larynxed crooning, Simon Breed’s wordier than thou late-night troubadouring has been championed by Bad Seed Mick Harvey, the late John…

6 Reasons To Go See - Instal

14 Feb 2008

This three-day festival of left-field sound has consistently revisited ideas explored by the avant-garde half a century ago. This year Instal focuses particularly on attempted subversions of bog-standard us’n’them gig protocol in a multitude of…

Singles & Downloads

4 Jan 2008

With January a dry month for releases, the New Year seems a good time to catch up on some left-field singles that have shamefully slipped through the net in this old-fashioned vinyl-only special. Edinburgh’s Wee Black Skelf is the most unsung but…

The Sandals of Majesty

13 Dec 2007

Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Tue 15 Nov The name is misleading. Rather than some mellowed out, magic-carpet-riding, back-packer-eyed mystics as may be implied, this bi-aural, bi-lingual, buy-now-while-stocks-last quartet are up-tight, in-tense and…

Trianglehead

13 Dec 2007

The Lot, Edinburgh, Wed 14 Nov ‘Fucking technology, eh?’ spits drummer Stu Ritchie by way of an abrupt end to a mid-set melodica-led number, shattering the chummy mood of this launch gig for Trianglehead’s just-released second album, Exit Strategy.

The Necks

15 Nov 2007

JAZZ The Lot, Edinburgh, Wed 7 Nov Live, the extended improvisations of the Australian trio of pianist Chris Abrahams, drummer Tony Buck and bassist Lloyd Swanson should curl up into an inward-looking heap. Yet, as their recent album, Townsville…

Kuupuu

18 Oct 2007

EXPERIMENTAL Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Mon 17 Sep There are Moomins on the poster, and something equally other-worldly about Kuupuu’s fractured folk tones. Having wafted all the way from Tampere, Finland, they sound still swathed in dawn mist…

Tracer Trails First Birthday Party

4 Oct 2007

A tracer trail is the streak of light left behind by a speeding bullet. It’s also the name of the micro cottage industry who’ve promoted some of the most charming live shows in Edinburgh over the last year. To celebrate, a very special anniversary do…

Whitehouse

20 Sep 2007

NOISE Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 6 Sep For a quarter of a century, Whitehouse have existed in a flabby imaginary hinterland where late cock-er-knee geezer Mike Reid duets with shamed gang-master Gary Glitter. Or at least that’s how it seems…

Happy Mondays

23 Aug 2007

‘Hola!’ Shaun Ryder is just back from Spain, and has clearly been learning the language. In between shows leading up to next week’s T on the Fringe gig, though, the surprisingly sharp and decidedly affable Happy Mondays frontman is at home, ‘catching up…

5 Reasons To Go See - Giant Tank vs The Fringe!!!

9 Aug 2007

Edinburgh’s premiere promoters of aktionist noise happenings commemorate a decade of cottage industry chunder with three bloody Sundays of non-Fringe-based hissy fits. Five reasons for their essentialness follow 1 It’s not music. It’s just noise And…

Classic Anxiety Dream

16 Jul 2007

IMPROV TATSUYA NAKATANI, RAYMOND MACDONALD AND NEIL DAVIDSON Classic Anxiety Dream @ The Meadow Bar, Edinburgh, Mon 18 Jun (Image: Nakatani & Davidson) Edinburgh last hosted a weekly improv night in the mid-1990s, when Lindsay…

Uni And Her Ukelele

16 Jul 2007

POP UNI AND HER UKELELE Fence Club 2 @ The Caves, Edinburgh, Thu 14 Jun The ukelele’s place in contemporary pop is usually second, um, fiddle to more conventional, less novelty-inclined instrumentation. Where George Formby and Tiny Tim’s…

Sellotape

3 Jul 2007

NEW NEW WAVE The whiff of freshly heated maize that accompanies Sellotape’s vocal version of Hot Butter’s 1972 electro-disco hit, ‘Popcorn’ (the first ever totally synthesiser-based single to chart, pop-pickers) may take its subject matter literally…

Le Weekend

21 May 2007

EXPERIMENTAL (Picture: Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori) Experimental music festivals are currently so voluminous as to arguably be considered more over-ground than under. When Le Weekend first set the trend back in 1998, however, the landscape was a…

Blurt

Optimo at the Sub Club, Glasgow, Sun 1 Apr

27 Mar 2007

NO WAVE When Blurt play Optimo on April Fool’s Day, it will be vocalist/sax player Ted Milton’s first Glasgow performance since supporting the late Ian Dury at the now demolished Apollo almost 30 years ago. That was in the guise of Mr Pugh’s Velvet…

Birchville Cat Motel

Tremors@Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, Wed 10 Jan

29 Jan 2007

EXPERIMENTAL Last time Stills Gallery white-not-quite-cubed space played host to live music was in 1998, when Quebeçois baroque apocalypsists Godspeed You! Black Emperor marked their low-key live UK debut before a phone box capacity audience (ignore…

Gay Against You

2 Oct 2006

POST PUNK The Subway, Edinburgh, Mon 11 Sep What to do with a sparse audience on a soggy Monday night? If you’re electro-saccharine noise terrorists Gay Against You, you drag all 20-odd onstage with you, thus immediately quelling the venue’s…