Previews, David Pollock

Julie Brook's made, unmade

Fascinating multimedia installation calling upon all senses to enter landscapes' wilderness

For this large-scale multimedia collaboration with Dovecot Studios, Julie Brook has attempted to bring the wilderness with her and site it within a darkened gallery space. Although she lives on Skye, it’s the hot desert tones and ambience of her working…

Toro Y Moi set for 2013 UK tour with third album Anything in Return

South Carolina's Toro Y Moi on his musical influences and latest album Anything in Return

‘I want to make music that people should hear, not what they want to hear,’ says Chazwick ‘Chaz’ Bundick, the South Carolina native who records a selection of boundary-pressing intelligent dance tracks under the alias Toro Y Moi, amongst many others.

Preview: the National Museum of Scotland

A peek inside the museum, plus reminiscences from notable Edinburghers and a guide to coming events

The National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street is due to reopen this month after a three-year, £46.4 million redevelopment. David Pollock takes an exclusive peak behind closed doors to find out about the new exhibits

Old Vic production of Noises Off set for UK tour

The play within a play gets a scientific and funny makeover

‘It’s one of the purest farces ever written in the English language,’ is how director Lindsay Posner describes Michael Frayn’s 1982 comedy Noises Off: ‘I do see it as a truly great play.’ Posner’s new touring version of the play celebrates its thirtieth…

Crate Digging: Richard Fearless selects six of his current favourite tracks

DJ and co-founder of Death in Vegas starts new night Drone at Glasgow’s Berkeley Suite

'578’ Gunnar Wendel (FXHE Records) is a stunning, melodic, trance-inducing piece of techno. Lauded by the likes of Mr Andrew Weatherall, it's been remixed by the genius that is Omar S, a man who can do no wrong in my eyes. It's truly sublime, with…

Nicolas Jaar interview - Electronic pop artist on UK tour

NY-based experimental DJ and head of the Clown and Sunset label

Trends bloom and wither fast in the fragmented landscape of modern music, and most die out without ever seeing the light of the popular consciousness. In the high-turnover world of electronic music this ephemeral air is accelerated, although it’s…

Wet Sounds - Glasgow event combines swimming and music

Float in a pool listening to sounds by Joel Cahen and La Horrox

It’s the most listening fun you can have without electrocuting yourself. You get in the pool. You listen to music either in the water, out of the water or somewhere in between, floating on the surface. There are speakers submerged below you and in the…

David Batchelor's Flatlands highlights the artist's painted and drawn pieces

Show of artist's two-dimensional work puts colour centre stage

Renowned for many years for his sculptures using lightboxes and pieces of reclaimed detritus from city streets, the Dundee-born, London-based David Batchelor didn’t show his drawings and paintings in public until a show at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice…

Theatre director Michael Emans set to revive Hector MacMillan's The Sash

The play, which was first staged at the Fringe 40 years ago, addresses the dangers of sectarianism

Forty years after it was first staged on the Edinburgh Fringe, Hector MacMillan’s homespun homily about the perils of sectarianism and its grip on the past and the future remains depressingly familiar to the landscape of Scottish society. Michael Emans…

Alex Scally of dream-pop duo Beach House - interview

Scally and vocalist Victoria Legrand are enjoying success from breakthrough album Bloom

An interview with Beach House’s Alex Scally is worth the chase across a continent, the reschedulings and delays as he, singer Victoria Legrand and their band and crew relay their way through the duo’s biggest tour of the United States since they formed…

Glasgow's new Riverside Museum presents an evolving story of travel and transport – and of the people who use it

‘One of the first things I thought when I visited the old Museum of Transport,’ says Lawrence Fitzgerald, the man in charge of the project to deliver Glasgow’s first major new museum in almost 30 years, ‘was, "Why isn’t it on the Clyde?"’ It’s a fair…

Solar Bear's Therapeutic Theatre strand presents Inside Outside In Our Stride

The production will take place as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival

Solar Bear theatre company’s Therapeutic Theatre strand was created five years ago for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival, and it’s now developed into a process of engagement for its participants which culminates in a show at the…

John Cale promises 'straight rock'n'roll' for upcoming Edinburgh gig

The ex-Velvet Underground man discusses his latest album, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood

Whatever you do, don’t even dare to ask 70-year-old ex-Velvet Underground member and renowned experimentalist and collaborator John Cale if he’s ever thought about retiring. ‘No, I’ve never thought about retiring,’ he comes back with a bristling laugh…

Interview with New Order drummer Stephen Morris and guitarist Phil Cunningham

The reunited music icons on playing live and the importance of arguing

New Order are back, and it’s as if they never went away. Are you enjoying it Stephen Morris, drummer and longest continuously-serving member alongside Bernard Sumner? ‘Yeah, it’s been great,’ he says from his house/studio just outside Macclesfield…

Five reasons to go and see Tim Hecker

The electronica artist is appearing at church venues in Edinburgh and Glasgow in May

1. Celebrate the death of rave At least according to Hecker’s new album: the wonderfully-titled Ravedeath, 1972, a lush assembly of droning, dream-like electronic soundscapes which builds upon the work he’s been creating for the last two decades, both…

5 reasons to go and see OFWGKTA

Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All set to play O2 ABC gig

1. We might find out what they are Are they an ironic comedy hip hop troupe? Or are they a wilfully nasty, relentlessly violent, misogynistic and homophobic throwback whose goofy nonsense just happens to distil the finest styles of rap created in the…

Numbers discuss the club/brand's New Year plans

Hogmanay celebrations in both Edinburgh and Glasgow lie ahead

It’s been another good year for Glasgow’s ever-growing clubbing export Numbers. So big, in fact, that they need a whole three cities to contain their send-off to 2011. First they’ll be warming up with a set at Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s the night before…

DJ Yogi Haughton presents Scottish Soulful Weekender

Dumfries event features Todd Terry, Kerri Chandler and Joey Negro

A weekend of soul music held at a hotel in Dumfries & Galloway sounds almost like a niche market event, a retro get-together for old school Northern Soul junkies to relive the glory days. Yet Yogi Haughton, the promoter of the first Scottish Soulful…

Electric Frog September Weekender 2011

Frankie Knuckles, The Fall, Jeff Mills, Mogwai, and Joe Claussell feature in stellar line-up

Whoever chose to carry out some large-scale maintenance at their Eastvale Place business premises on the last weekend of July has inadvertently done Glasgow’s clubbing fraternity a favour. It might have meant the planned Electric Frog Summer Weekender…

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

Lyceum and Dundee Rep co-production of Liz Lochhead's classic

For director Tony Cownie and the cast of the Lyceum and Dundee Rep Ensemble’s new co-production of Liz Lochhead’s 1987 Scots classic, the Edinburgh Festival is over. Already they’ve had Lochhead in to give advice on pronunciations and, in the middle of…

How to Dress Well - Tom Krell interview

Tom Krell on of many reinventing solo songwriting

This is getting to be a trend. Where young men with an indie sensibility used to express themselves by picking up an acoustic guitar and letting it all out, a new generation disguise their fragile falsettos with a wash of reverberating electronic…

Amjad Ali Khan to perform set of morning ragas on sarod at EIF 2011

Edinburgh 11am concert accompanied by Ravi Shankar's evening ragas

The sarod may not be as familiar an instrument to western audiences as the sitar made famous by Ravi Shankar, but virtuoso player Amjad Ali Khan is happy to establish its proper context. 'Ravi Shankar's teacher was a sarod player,' says Khan on the line…

Electro-rock outfit Three Trapped Tigers gear up for their slot at Glasgow's Stag and Dagger festival

Tune-packed annual stumble around Glasgow’s streets and venues Stag & Dagger is back, and with it come some of the most voguish local and national bands of the moment. The List will be looking forward to seeing Clinic, Warpaint, Yuck, Sons & Daughters…

François K and The Unabombers get ready for Electric Frog’s Easter Weekender

Danny Krivit, Erol Alkan, DJ Yoda, Dave Clarke and more also on the bill

Anyone who’s been to one of the Electric Frog festivals at the Studio Warehouse knows why this month will see a second spring event emerge, this time extended over two days and featuring even more massive names in dance music from across the globe. With…

Liz Lochead translation Educating Agnes explores universal themes

Scotland's Makar translates Moliere's The School for Wives into Scots

Following on from the success of Tartuffe in 1985 and Miseryguts (nee The Misanthrope) in 2002, Scotland’s new makar Liz Lochhead will return once more here to translating the work of the 17th century French satirist Moliere into Scots, with the…