Music and Paul Dale

The Qatsi trilogy at the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival

Godfrey Reggio's film trilogy with Philip Glass Ensemble live score is a masterpiece

15 Aug 2011

It’s been twenty-eight years since I saw Koyaanisqatsi, twenty-odd since I saw Powaqqatsi, and almost a decade since Naqoyqatsi. The first two I saw in empty art house cinemas on wet afternoons, I watched the third in a somnambulistic state from my sofa…

Leroy Jones Band - Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

The trumpeter visits Edinburgh after appearances in TV drama Treme

21 Jul 2011

‘I was in an episode two weeks ago with my local quintet. I was performing one of my original compositions for about a minute and twenty seconds.’ Bandleader and trumpeter Leroy Jones is bubbling with pride over his recent appearance in an episode of…

Review - Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, Tue 28 Jun

Beninese Afrobeat with brass, percussion, guitar, bass and drums

1 Jul 2011

Nine good men and true fill the stage of Glasgow’s most beautiful (internally) venues in a Django like return to European conscience. Presumed missing or dead, or both, in their home country of Benin, West Africa, the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo were hunted…

Jim Jones Revue - The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Mon 28 Mar 2011

Storming show from the old school rock'n'rollers

30 Mar 2011

Clement Monday nights in the shadow of the parliament and a stumble away from the pounded sheep trails where the radicals of the Enlightenment once surreptitiously gathered, are not supposed to be this loud, or fun.

Tindersticks: Claire Denis Scores 1996–2009

Excellent anthology of film scores from the French filmmaker and regular collaborator Stuart Staples

21 Mar 2011

(Constellation) This five-disc boxset containing six film scores are testament to the remarkable collaboration between French filmmaker Claire Denis, arguably the most intellectually fertile auteur working today, and Tindersticks bandleader Stuart A…

Benda Bilili!

A documentary on the Congolese rhythm'n'blues band Staff Benda Bilili

2 Mar 2011

(12A) 85min Kinshasa is the largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s rated as one of the most dangerous cities in the world in terms of crime with a spiraling homeless problem that includes over 20,000 children under the age of 18…

Lord Rochester - Hey!

Sounds and smells like a 1960s garage band, but isn’t

1 Mar 2011

(Twenty Stone Blatt) What sounds and smells like a 1960s garage band but isn’t? Lord Rochester, that’s who. Resurrected from some fantasy about aristocratic ruin and the ghosts of the D-Men, Lord Rochester fizz and fuzz their way through thirteen…

Genius Within: The Inner Life Of Glenn Gould

Film of archive material untangles the the life of Canadian pianist

18 Jan 2011

(U) 108min What a deliriously nutty double bill this film would make alongside Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould, François Girard’s schematic but pleasingly conceptual project completed in 1993. Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont’s feature…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Winter's Bone

7 Sep 2010

(15) 100min With its all too familiar theme of familial collapse and undercurrents of social disgrace and fear of the local customs, Debra Granik’s excellent second feature film could be a British colonial horror from a distant age, and in some ways…

No One Knows About Persian Cats

23 Jul 2010

(12) 106min (Network) Gifted and celebrated Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Turtles Can Fly) threw caution to the wind and hung his reputation on the line in the making of this freewheeling semi-documentary about…

Gil Scott Heron

HMV Picture House, Edinburgh, Mon 26 Apr 2010

12 May 2010

At over three score years, novelist, poet and musician Gil Scott Heron cuts a dapper, if weathered figure. Slender and sage-like, he resembles a jazz Gandalf. His famous baritone cuts through the packed auditorium, here to witness the return of a true…

Gil Scott–Heron on UK tour in support of new album I'm New Here

15 Apr 2010

Polemicist, ex-prisoner, poet – Gil Scott–Heron’s spoken word diatribes are charged with political passion and fused with jazz, proto-rap and blues rhythms. As he arrives in Scotland, Paul Dale traces a life lived politically Between the moon and…

The Go-Go 10th Birthday Bash

31 Mar 2010

Edinburgh’s finest beat night The Go-Go has been on the go for ten years and celebrate with a live set from Them Beatles. Here founder and resident DJ Tall Paul remembers ten great crucial moments from the decade.

Crazy Heart, Tender Mercies and country music on film

17 Feb 2010

Crazy Heart is a tale of alcoholism, love, redemption and country music. It has a healthy lineage writes Paul Dale

Crazy Heart

17 Feb 2010

(15) 111min It’s another day in another shit hick town for country and western singer-songwriter Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges). The music business isn’t what it used to be; his schedule now consists of bowling hall and the back rooms of bars. Between the…

No Distance Left To Run

15 Jan 2010

(15) 104min Taking its title from a song on their 1999 album 13 (believed to refer to Damon Albarn’s protracted split from his long term partner Justine Frischmann) this solid, occasionally compelling documentary revisits Britpop’s fabulous four on…

Lost boy - a tribute to Chet Baker

A play, talk, film documentary and recital commemorate the jazz pin-up

13 Jul 2009

On 16 June 1952, Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and Chet Baker played together in a small restaurant club in Inglewood, California. Baker was fresh out of the army and played trumpet to both Parker and Sonny Criss’ mercurial, blues-drenched alto sax. Within…

Soul Power

9 Jul 2009

Just when you thought there were no more films to be made about the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman bout in Zaire in 1974 there comes a remarkable film about the 12-hour, three-night-long concert which took place around the event. In 1974 musician Hugh…

The Hot 100 2008

11 Dec 2008

It’s been a helluva year. 2008 has been a time of significant global change, socially, politically and culturally, with Scotland no exception. So here, for your delectation, is The List’s pick of the 100 people, places and things that rocked our world…

Todd Rundgren interview: Full transcript

6 Nov 2008

What follows is a transcript of an interview I did with the great American musician and record producer Todd Rundgren on Tuesday 21 October. He spoke to me down the line from his Hawaii home, it was 8.30pm UK time and 12.30pm Pacific Mean Time when we…

Little Feat

Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

22 Jul 2008

Formed in 1969 by Lowell George, one of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, Little Feat were always going to be different from the blues bands of the period. Small in stature, guitarist and lead singer George was a talented firebrand of R&B, country…

Carbon/Silicon, Hard Fi and BMRC rock the JD Set Legendary Mash

22 May 2008

Paul Dale reports from the JD Set Legendary Mash, a very special, intimate music event at the Jack Daniel's distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee.

Gregory Isaacs

8 May 2008

REGGAE Citrus Club, Edinburgh, Tue 20 May Born in Kingston Jamaica in 1950, five years after Bob Marley, Gregory Isaacs’ musical trajectory offers a fascinating counterpoint to the beloved Rastafarian musician. While Isaacs’ early inspirations came…

Komma, Ex Drummer

19 Jul 2007

A pair of Belgian movies at the EIFF will showcase the talents of Flemish superstar composer and actor Arno Hintjens. The 59-year-old’s surprisingly mature acting (for a pop star) can be sampled in Martine Doyen’s engrossing personality theft drama…