Scottish

New Scottish bands

15 Nov 2007

Over the last couple of years, it has sometimes seemed like the end of an era for Scottish indie music. Starting with the amicable split of the seminal Delgados, and, more recently, the demise of Falkirk’s Arab Strap and underrated noiseniks…

Glasvegas star James Allan overdosed

Music Gossip

7 Mar 2011

Glasvegas frontman James Allan has confessed the band axed American tour dates because he suffered an overdose. The Scottish band pulled out of the 2009 Coachella music festival, which is held in the Californian desert, at the last minute announcing…

Great Scots in film

Bill Forsyth's Gregory Girl and documentary Burning: Mogwai

17 Aug 2010

Celebrating all that is great in Scottish cinema and the arts this popular season of films screening at both ends of the M8 with screenings of Bill Forsyth’s still masterful Gregory’s Girl and music documentary Burning: Mogwai. GFT, Glasgow, Wed 25 Aug…

Naked ambition - Naked takeaway

10 Sep 2009

Too often in Scotland home-delivered food is a substandard equivalent to anything you can cook yourself. A lukewarm pizza, luminous curry or MSG-packed sweet and sour chicken are the traditional, and often only, options. Convenient? From the depths of…

2Duos - Until The Cows Come Home

11 Jun 2009

An unusual twist on the kind of Euro collaborations that have become familiar on the Scottish folk scene, often with Scandinavian musicians. 2Duos combines well-established pairings from Scotland and Germany as Aaron Jones and Claire Mann team up to…

Scottish or Scotch? A guide to interpreting food labels

1 May 2009

Read the label carefully if you want to scotch the myths about where your food and drink comes from.

Janice Galloway

30 Apr 2009

As well as being one of the most original, lyrical writers from the current crop of major Scottish novelists, Janice Galloway is also one of the best performers of her own work that we've had the pleasure to hear. She’s going to be reading sections from…

Findlay Napier and The Bar Room Mountaineers - Out All Night

11 Dec 2008

SCOTTISH AMERICANA This debut from the Back of the Moon, Croft No. Five and Celtic Connections stalwarts is a peculiarly natural Scottish Americana that weaves traditional Scots instrumentation with an altogether wider influence, exemplified by the…

St Andrews Day

27 Nov 2008

While Homecoming 2009 will be the real biggie in terms of Saltire-waving celebration, various Scottish cities are building up to it with unprecedented displays of patriotism this St Andrew’s Day. Virtually every tourist attraction in Edinburgh (or at…

The Stone of Destiny

2 Oct 2008

The pedigree highlight of Charles Martin Smith’s career so far was directing Air Bud, the story of a basketball playing golden retriever. So how did he come to be directing a film about the Scottish National Party? Stone of Destiny is a feature film…

Cherry Blossom

2 Oct 2008

MULTI-MEDIA PLAY Catherine Grosvenor’s Cherry Blossom is an impassioned attempt to represent the experience of Poles migrating to the West, while Lorne Campbell’s direction ensures that the play – performed in English and Polish – is understandable…

Cherry Blossom

18 Sep 2008

What does the word ‘collaboration’ make you think of? Director Lorne Campbell thought he knew until he tried it for himself. ‘You think of something cosy and cuddly,’ he says. ‘But this has been really hard. We’re still friends, still happy and excited…

Nicky Bird: Beneath the Surface/Hidden Place

3 Jul 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 20 Jul For a project which corrals so many amateur photographers and their family photos to share co-creative billing with the artist, its unifying theme is acutely realised. This show is about…

Stephen McGinty - Fire in the Night: The Piper Alpha Disaster

3 Jul 2008

SCOTTISH HISTORY (Macmillan) The Scotsman journalist Stephen McGinty’s Fire in the Night is a moment-by-hideous-moment account of the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster in which 167 men died, and published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the…

Swindle and Death

5 Jun 2008

NEW WORK Tron, Glasgow, Wed 11–Sat 14 Jun; Byre, St Andrews, Mon 16–Fri 20 Jun There’s a long history of plays by Scottish writers about the Scottish theatre, and too often these pieces become mired in self referential jokes. While Peter Arnott’s new…

As You Always Do

8 May 2008

NEW WORK Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Wed 21–Sat 24 May Behind the stories of the media there are truths that we will never see. When we view reports of murders, disappearances and wars, our perspective is controlled by the scripting, editing and camera…

Tigerfest

8 May 2008

This year’s Tigerfest once again brings some of the most exciting Scottish acts to Dunfermline and Fife, but also branches out with gigs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Names like Twilight Sad, Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Paul Haig will all be gracing…

Nova Scotia - John Byrne

24 Apr 2008

‘Thirty years! Thirty years!’ John Byrne is standing in the middle of Victoria Street in Edinburgh, looking like one of his own drawings. Perfectly-sculpted, curled white quiff, battered layers of tweed and colour, thoroughly imposing, nicotine-stained…

Nova Scotia - From working class revolutions to conceptual art

24 Apr 2008

1978 Traverse director Chris Parr commissions The Slab Boys. ‘Chris decided that the Traverse was going to focus on new Scottish writing, and in doing so he changed the face of theatre in Scotland,’ says Byrne. 1979 Margaret Thatcher elected…

createeurope

She’s a model, und she’s looking good

24 Apr 2008

The Goethe Institut are helping to launch createeurope, a pan-European competition for young fashion designers, with a day of talks and discussions looking at how the German and Scottish fashion industries have been revived after years of being…

Black Watch

10 Apr 2008

WORLD TOUR Rothes Hall, Glenrothes, until Sat 5 Apr, then touring While many Scots disagree with the continuing troop presence in Iraq, there remains an undeniable sense of pride in and anxiety for our troops overseas, and it’s this sense of a shared…

La Vallée Blanche

27 Mar 2008

When rationalising business-speak began to creep into the way things were run at étain restaurant in Princes Square a couple of years back, chef Neil Clark knew it was time to pack up his pans. Not one to compromise on his creativity, he left the…

Black Watch - John Tiffany

27 Mar 2008

Certainly the most phenomenal success produced by the Scottish theatre for a couple of decades, Greg Burke’s Black Watch has travelled the world since its first appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006. New York, Sydney, Los Angeles – it has become…

DVD - Bridging The Gap: Lies

Bridging The Gap: Lies

11 Apr 2007

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS This collection of short documentaries from the all too often undervalued and under funded Scottish Documentary Institute serves as a welcome taster for the excellent work executed by this organisation. The best of the films here…