David Pollock

Summer Festivals 2012: Music

T in the Park, Wickerman and Belladrum among the music fests pleasing your ears this summer

25 May 2012

T in the Park Basics: Balado by Kinross, Fri 6–Sun 8 Jul, tinthepark.com Price: Weekend: £179 (campsite tickets available separately). Day: £70–£77.50. Line-up: The Stone Roses, Snow Patrol, Kasabian, New Order, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds…

Summer Festivals 2012: Here We Go Magic - interview

The band's Luke Temple gets ready for their slot at T in the Park

25 May 2012

‘I’m kind of a late bloomer, really,’ testifies Luke Temple, singer and songwriter in chief with Brooklynite indie-pop contenders Here We Go Magic. ‘I didn’t start writing songs until 2000, until I was about 25, and up ‘til then I’d only listened to…

Edvard Munch: Graphic Works from the Gunderson Collection

Extended introduction to troubled Norwegian painter

23 May 2012

Perhaps the greatest surprise for casual viewers of this high-profile new exhibition from the Scottish National Galleries is the discovery that Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had a whole catalogue of work besides ‘The Scream’. One of the most famous…

Tony Swain: Drowned Dust, Sudden Word

Using materials of newsprint as starting point for abstract painting canvasses

23 May 2012

There’s a deliberately seductive art to the design of a newspaper page, but only within the uniform rigour of the reader’s expectations. Northern Irish artist Tony Swain subverts these norms by using the materials of newsprint as the starting point for…

Techno night Unseen aims to shake up Edinburgh's club scene

Special guest Adam X to appear in June

22 May 2012

One of the first shoots of a clubbing revival in Edinburgh is emerging through a group of old-stagers returning home to one of the city’s most enduring venues. Together, Patrick Walker and Mike Lavin started off promoting a nascent trance night called…

Crate Digging: Rebecca Vasmant

The young Glaswegian DJ is set to play Ministry of Sound & Mixmag's Warehouse Party

22 May 2012

I love jazz music, and as much as I love house music too, I don’t think it has the same timelessness. My first choice is one I got about a year ago, it’s PE Hewitt Winter Winds (Now-Again), a three-LP box set of material self-recorded by a 16-year-old…

Miaoux Miaoux UK dates ahead of album Light of the North

Glasgow-based electronic musician also has live band set

22 May 2012

Julian Corrie sighs when you mention a certain fashionable designer drug that people used to swear was ‘plant food’. Come on, counters The List, don’t tell us the name isn’t a reference to mephedrone. ‘Not at all,’ he says, aghast. ‘This project started…

Auntie Flo - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 13 May

Club-friendly house beats with a world music undercurrent

22 May 2012

It’s a foul Sunday night and getting late, with the hour moving near to midnight when Glasgow duo Auntie Flo take their place behind a pod of trestle tables loaded down with kit and cables. The flickering projection behind them bears the legend ‘Night…

Sigur Rós - Valtari

A typically dazzling record from the Icelandic cosmic folk-pop outfit

22 May 2012

The rumours of an ‘indefinite hiatus’ might have left us thinking that was it for Sigur Rós, but the four years since their previous album have amounted to little more than a bit of creative refreshment time. Valtari (the infinitely less satisfying to…

Can - The Lost Tapes

An essential Can album with unheard versions of familiar tracks and some never-heard-before material

21 May 2012

Not lost at all, but just forgotten about in Can’s cluttered studio until archived by the classic German psych-rock explorers’ Irmin Schmidt recently, this three-disc dump of material is unfeasibly good considering it managed to avoid the light of day…

Interview with New Order drummer Stephen Morris and guitarist Phil Cunningham

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

26 Apr 2012

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…

Karla Black

'Giant tiramisu' is breathtaking and ludicrous in equal measure

25 Apr 2012

Between Karla Black’s work and its viewer, the tension is unbearable. Rarely can inert sculptural work have exerted such a gravitational pull upon its audience, and the effect of ‘art vertigo’ it inspires just can’t be understood unless it’s seen live.

Lorna Macintyre: Midnight Scenes & Other Works

Intriguing and apparently unrelated pieces across various media

25 Apr 2012

An exhibition which speaks most eloquently only when its creator’s intentions have been read and understood, Midnight Scenes & Other Works at first appears to be a series of intriguing but unrelated pieces across various media. There’s a video work…

Emory Douglas: Seize the Time

Imagery of Black Panther party’s minister for culture still high in insurrectionary power

25 Apr 2012

The imagery of the Black Panther party’s first and only minister for culture has lost none of its insurrectionary power over the last half-century. At a time when the Arab Spring and Occupy movements have reintroduced a generation to often violent…

Five reasons to go and see Tim Hecker

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

23 Apr 2012

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…

Madonna - MDNA

Album with producers Benny Benassi, Martin Solveig and William Orbit

18 Apr 2012

Kudos to 53-year-old Auntie Madge not for delivering a classic album, but for having the sheer brass she-balls to turn out a record that’s as clubby, sexy and designed for the dancefloor after midnight as any she’s produced. A nod and a wink to naughty…

Auntie Flo - Future Rhythm Machine

Highlife's Brian d’Souza delivers debut album of electronic music

18 Apr 2012

(Huntleys + Palmer) He coyly describes this as not being a full-length debut album and points to the fact it predates his debut singles ‘Highlife’ and ‘Oh My Days’, but as one of Glasgow’s foremost new electronic producers Auntie Flo (the recorded alias…

Highlife's Auntie Flo releases debut album

Afro-house DJ Brian d'Souza launches Future Rhythm Machine LP with dates in Glasgow and Edinburgh

17 Apr 2012

It’s a busy month for Brian d’Souza; first he’s launching his debut album as Auntie Flo Future Rhythm Machine at his Highlife night in Glasgow, then a fortnight later he’s celebrating the club’s second birthday in the same city. Sandwiched in between…

Crate Digging: Harri of Subculture

The long-term Sub Club resident picks five tracks that have served him best over the years

17 Apr 2012

Sandee ‘Notice Me’ (Fever Records) came out years ago [1988] and it sounded amazing at the time: the production, the sound – hundreds of people have sampled it since. It’s vocal house, but dubbed out and with wee bits of acapella and lots of things to…

New Print Generation

Edinburgh Printmakers exhibition featuring Rachel Maclean, Patrizio Belcampo and Lyndsay Gauld

17 Apr 2012

Just in time for Degree Show season, Edinburgh Printmakers has chosen to hold its own mini student exhibition – a selection of emerging graduates from the four major colleges who use printmaking techniques as the basis for their work. As with every…

The Scottish Album of the Year Award, and why it's worth taking seriously

FOUND, Mogwai, Rustie and more longlisted for inaugural award

12 Apr 2012

It isn’t the punchiest tagline to slap on your press release, but the Scottish Music Industry Association’s assertion that the recently-announced Scottish Album of the Year (SAY) Award will be ‘a qualitative arts prize for music which is discerning…

The best breakfasts in Edinburgh

The finest cafes, bistros and restaurants in the capital for a morning meal

29 Mar 2012

Broughton Delicatessen 7 Barony Street, 558 7111, broughton-deli.co.uk Breakfast served: Mon–Sat 8am–3pm; Sun 11am–3pm. What does this place not do well? A great deli, healthy lunches and superb, made-from-scratch breakfasts from morning until 3pm…

5 reasons to go and see OFWGKTA

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

27 Mar 2012

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…

Blanck Mass - School of Art, Glasgow, Sun 18 Mar

Fuck Buttons' Benjamin John Power's intense ambient electronica

27 Mar 2012

In comparison to Fuck Buttons, his and Andrew Hung’s punishing drone-techno crucible, Benjamin John Power’s solo project Blanck Mass makes music that manages to recreate the elegia and emotional power of club-ready electronic music with none of the…

Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland - Black is Beautiful

Debut from Hype Williams pair is striking and boundary-crashing

26 Mar 2012

(Hyperdub) Can Tupac and Kanye West-lensing promo director Hype Williams finally have gotten wise to the ridiculously inventive London duo using his name? Is that why the pair are using their own names for this debut album on Kode9’s Hyperdub? The…

New Edinburgh venue The Third Door launches mini-festival Qabalala

26 Mar 2012

In the past month it’s seemed there’s been precious little to get excited about on Edinburgh’s clubbing and live scene, but let’s put the hand-wringing to one side for a few paragraphs and remember that people are still out there trying to get things…

Carter Tutti Void - Transverse

Throbbing Gristle's Chris & Cosey collaborate with Factory Floor

26 Mar 2012

(Mute) Fans of doom-laden industrial machine music might find their clockwork hearts oiled slightly by the release of this most definitive of collaborations, as Carter Tutti (Throbbing Gristle’s Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, nee Chris & Cosey…

Graham Coxon - A+E

Latest lo-fi gem from Blur guitarist delivers arch and ugly meditations

26 Mar 2012

(Parlophone) What need for Blur these days? While their will-they-won’t-they recorded reunion is a brand of comeback cock-teasery perfectly suited to the age of stone-bleeding revivalism, what will their eventual decision to just get on with it offer…

The Twilight Sad to play final Pinup Nights

Malcolm Middleton, Miaoux Miaoux, Emma Pollock and Sonny Marvello also set to say farewell

21 Mar 2012

Has there ever been an indie night that’s worked as hard as Pinup Nights? Perhaps, but none have managed to alchemise the same mix of cannily chosen guest DJs, intelligently-curated young bands, painstaking theme nights and frankly dedicated gimmickry…

Alec Finlay show at Edinburgh's Ingleby Gallery

Quintet of ‘poem-objects’ reflects ideas of memory through biography

21 Mar 2012

To subtitle mention of the artist with the fact that he’s the son of Ian Hamilton Finlay is to run down his own acute artistic sensibility without cause. Yet it’s inescapable here, because this quintet of ‘poem-objects’ reflects ideas of memory through…

Alison Turnbull

Constrained pieces exploring ideas of order and chaos

21 Mar 2012

Order and chaos, Alison Turnbull’s work implies, are both simple functions of human perspective, with her seemingly very precisely constrained pieces actually subject to no more than the artist’s own arbitrary designs for them. In large part that’s a…

Crate Digging: Melting Pot's Simon Cordiner and Andrew Pirie

A selection of tunes ahead of the disco night's eleventh birthday

8 Mar 2012

Fonda Rae ‘Living In Ecstasy’ (Mood II Swing mix) (Wave Music) has to be one of our favourite ever records. It’s now a classic, a timeless house track featuring a fabulous vocalist from the disco era in Fonda Rae and the superb house producer Mood II…

M_nus: Hobo & Heartthrob

The two techno DJs discuss working on Richie Hawtin's label and their upcoming Glasgow shows

29 Feb 2012

You’re an emerging electronic producer and your label boss is Richie Hawtin aka Plastikman – so do you get star-struck when you talk to him? ‘Why not?’ laughs Joel Boychuk aka Hobo. ‘I don’t usually think so, but I guess the fanboy part of me will never…

Tom McClung of Wu Lyf - interview

The Manchester epic indie rockers eschew traditional approaches to getting their music heard

28 Feb 2012

Manchester quartet Wu Lyf’s unwillingness to play the conventional pop game has been a breath of fresh air. Now they’re preparing to stop talking and start delivering. ‘At the start we didn’t want to be a band for the sake of it,’ says Tom McClung of…

Psyche and Wounded Knee share Single of the Month title

Also featuring Martin Creed, Ladyhawke and Estelle

28 Feb 2012

What this world needs is more high-concept ephemera created by actual, proper artists like Martin Creed, who create minute-long folk ditties like ‘Where You Go’ (Telephone) ●●● amidst light switch-flicking their way to the Turner Prize and Scotsman…

Summer Camp set for UK tour

Bitter-hearted take girl groups of 50s and 60s

28 Feb 2012

Summer Camp: a duo so in tune with one another they respond to The List’s email questions as one entity. ‘How did you get together’, we ask them. ‘We’d known each other for ages,’ Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey tell us in stereo. Then Elizabeth…

Spector - King Tut’s, Glasgow, Wed 15 Feb

Blending the anthemic and the generic to pleasing effect

28 Feb 2012

‘What a pleasure,’ notes Fred Macpherson. ‘I thought Newcastle on Tuesday was something, but this...’ Wearing his hair gelled to one side and a pair of thick-framed black glasses, the suited singer recalls Buddy Holly or Crispin Glover as Marty’s dad in…

Tanlines - Mixed Emotions

Brooklynite art-pop duo embrace the sound of 1980s pop on debut

22 Feb 2012

(Matador) Brooklynite art-pop duo Tanlines, aka Jesse Cohen and Eric Emm, are contemporaries of Yeasayer and Health, and perhaps some positive pre-judging on that basis is required. After a batch of singles, splits and remixes, the pair fully embrace…

Roger Ackling

Assemblage of garden tools from alumnus of late 1960s St Martin’s School of Art scene

17 Feb 2012

It’s hard, at first, to see just what Roger Ackling has created here. An alumnus of the late 1960s St Martin’s School of Art scene that also produced Richard Long, Ackling’s ideas of what constitutes sculpture are unique to say the least. In this case…

Lynn Macdonald, manager and promoter at the soon-to-close Soundhaus - interview

The Glasgow techno den plans final parties for massive send-off

2 Feb 2012

The first that Lynn Macdonald (manager and long-time promoter at Glasgow techno den the Soundhaus) heard of the venue’s death was in an impersonal email she found in her inbox when she arrived at work one morning. ‘It was heartbreaking,’ she says. ‘I…

The Sculpture Show

Well-managed and educational group sculpture show also contains big impressions

1 Feb 2012

Those who find their attention can escape the orbit of this show’s central spectacle – Ron Mueck’s striking ‘A Girl’, a life-like model of a quite grumpy-looking newborn baby girl rendered as a vast monolith many dozens of times the size of nature…

Anna Barriball

Sculpture show from the Plymouth-born artist contains a relaxed humour

1 Feb 2012

There’s a certain fascination in concealment within the work of Plymouth-born Anna Barriball, a tension between what the works appear to be and what they actually are. Is a framed, full-sized pencil rubbing of a door a drawing of said door, or are its…

Trailer Trash Tracys - Captain’s Rest, Glasgow, Sun 15 Jan 2012

Effects-laden shoegaze fog heavy on the exquisite melodrama

27 Jan 2012

Not, as you might have expected from the name, a clan of bad-mouthin’, whisky-swillin’ Midwestern girls battering badly-tuned guitars and trying to resurrect the lost souls of L7 or The Distillers, Trailer Trash Tracys are instead three guys and a girl…

Pulp - It/Freaks/Separations

Reissue of first three albums from 1980s originally released on Fire

27 Jan 2012

(Fire) Testament to the 80s’capacity to incubate provincial bands until they’re ready for megastardom, Pulp’s first three albums on Fire were a career’s worth in themselves, although hardly anyone remembers. Containing, as all three of these reissues…

Machinedrum - sXlnd

Inventive release taking in UK funky, smooth old-school house and sophisticated club tracks

27 Jan 2012

(LuckyMe) A five-track EP rather than a full-blown album, there’s nonetheless a long player’s worth of sonic invention on the latest from Travis Stewart, running the gamut from UK funky to smooth old-school house with an understated Balearic edge.

The Twilight Sad - No One Can Ever Know

Influence of post-punk and synthesisers lends more heart-shredding, austere edge

23 Jan 2012

(FatCat) Bearing the uncertain honour of an ‘anti-production’ credit from Andrew Weatherall (it means general pre-recording guidance, it seems), this second album from The Twilight Sad is a surprising and substantial progression. The washes of epic…

Chris Duncan of Sub Club discusses plans for the venue's 25th anniversary

9 Jan 2012

You’ll probably be hearing a lot more about this as the year progresses, but it doesn’t do any harm to draw your attention to two anniversaries happening in Glasgow in 2012 – one big and one absolutely enormous, and both under the same roof. This is the…

The best restaurants in Edinburgh and Glasgow for cheap eating in January

Dining out options that won't break the bank

9 Jan 2012

EDINBURGH The Mosque Kitchen Now relocated from its former al fresco spot outside Edinburgh’s mosque, the café-style Mosque Kitchen still serves a fine range of halal meat and vegetable curries in no-fuss polystyrene dishes for under £5 including…

Preview of 2012 - Emeli Sandé

The Scottish chart-topper aims to release a hit album in 2012

6 Jan 2012

Whenever Emeli Sandé gets a chance to stop and think, she says, the journey she’s already been on in her life still has her pinching herself. ‘To think that three years ago I was sitting in a lecture theatre in Glasgow learning about anatomy,’ she says…

Malcolm Middleton - Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Wed 14 Dec

The ex-Arab Strap man isn't as miserable as he makes out

6 Jan 2012

What better way to celebrate Christmas than with Mr Season of Goodwill himself, Malcolm Middleton, the man whose campaign to get ‘We’re All Going to Die’ to the 2007 Christmas number one spot will live long in the hearts of those who believed in it.

The Saturdays - SECC, Glasgow, Tue 13 Dec

Polished pop performance that felt lacking in soul

6 Jan 2012

With Little Mix winning this year’s X-Factor, you would think the positively elderly Saturdays (average age: 24) would be showing signs of abject desperation not to lose their crown as the current biggest UK girl group not in semi-retirement. But no...

The Lemonheads - Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners: The Best Of

Expansive look at Evan Dando and co's back catalogue

5 Jan 2012

(Rhino) Evan Dando is still going strong as the lone remaining member of The Lemonheads, although his days as a mainstream slacker rock heartthrob are long behind him. As this two-CD, 47-track collection demonstrates, though – perhaps too extensively…

Stuart MacBride - Birthdays for the Dead

The tartan noir author diverges from the Logan McRae series with a compelling and brutal thriller

5 Jan 2012

(HarperCollins) A standalone diversion from his Logan McRae series of novels, Stuart MacBride once again demonstrates how he puts the grit into the Granite City. That said, Birthdays for the Dead isn’t set in Aberdeen, instead the action shifts to…

François and the Atlas Mountains - E Volo Love

Breezy, summery pop from the former Fencer

5 Jan 2012

(Domino) Graduating, as James Yorkston and King Creosote did before him, from Fence to Domino, La Rochelle’s François Marry has produced an album here that’s worthy of the increased exposure. A set of breezy summertime pop songs which seem strangely…

Alison Watt – Hiding in Full View

The artist's paintings are good, but suffer in comparison to the photography of Francesca Woodman

19 Dec 2011

‘All rooms will hide you, if you stand just so – ghosts know this, that’s really all they know,’ declares one of the poems by Don Paterson (a credited collaborator in this show), which are printed in fluid lower case type just below eye level on the…

The Hot 100 2011: 100-50

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

16 Dec 2011

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

The Hot 100 2011 - No. 22: Steven Moffat interview

Writer behind Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes and Tintin

16 Dec 2011

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block the latest series of Doctor Who hit this year were complaints in some quarters that it was becoming too complex. Yet Paisley-born showrunner Steven Moffat is rightly unrepentant about a storyline which began and ended…

Numbers discuss the club/brand's New Year plans

Hogmanay celebrations in both Edinburgh and Glasgow lie ahead

13 Dec 2011

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…

Music-themed Christmas parties round-up

Festive shindigs on offer from Song, By Toad, Phantom Band, James Yorkston, Fence and more

13 Dec 2011

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas in Scotland’s indie village without a bunch of our favourite bands getting together to chip in for mince pies and mulled wine and treat us to / inflict upon us some of their most diligently practiced seasonal covers. Yes…

Arab Strap - Nice ‘n’ Sleazy, Glasgow, Thu 17 Nov 2011

Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton strip down their back catalogue

13 Dec 2011

As if anyone would have called their band ‘William Harness’ anyway. That was the not-so-secret moniker Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton chose to add deniability to the fact they were getting the old band back together here, even if it was just for one…

Hidden City

Edinburgh Printmakers members’ show a mixed bag

9 Dec 2011

In compiling their latest, largest annual members’ show, Edinburgh Printmakers have imposed an unwitting watermark of quality with their decision to give it a theme. ‘Edinburgh Uncovered’ is the subtitle, and the collection claims to offer ‘an intimate…

Jonnie Common - Hair of the Dog

Common's debut Master of None yields a just-as-good set of muso-buddy remixes

8 Dec 2011

(Red Deer Club) Jonnie Common’s debut album Master of None: a record so good he actually got two albums out of it. This remix package is more of an appendix to the original than a cohesive new creation in its own right, but its roll call of some of…

Abandoned Scotland - How derelict historic buildings are being documented

The urban explorers investigating the nation’s forgotten architecture

18 Nov 2011

‘I love it when you see a sign that says “Dangerous Building – Do Not Enter”,’ says Veranique Dron as we walk back down from the hill overlooking Edinburgh’s Barnton Quarry. ‘“Building at risk” – it’s only an invitation.’ From the crest of that hill…

Single of the month: Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks’ ‘Senator’

James Morrison feat. Jessie J, Erasure, Kelly Rowland, Vaccines and more also reviewed

15 Nov 2011

At last, the collaboration we’ve all been waiting for! Yes, it’s James Morrison feat. Jessie J ‘Up’ (Island) ●● and it’s astonishing that they’ve come up with a lump of saccharine X-Factor duet fodder and not the greatest song you’ve ever heard. What…

The Scottish Colourists series: FCB Cadell

Retrospective of the early 20th century colourist's work displays a life-long development of talent

15 Nov 2011

To modern eyes this retrospective of the work of early 20th century Edinburgh colourist FCB Cadell might appear a little staid, a procession of chintzy New Town interiors and still life compositions involving china crockery and the distinctive white…

The Shivers - Mono, Glasgow, Mon 7 Nov 2011

Impressive, broad-ranging show from the US/Aussie duo

15 Nov 2011

‘I really love Glasgow,’ says The Shivers’ Keith Zarriello, ‘it’s much better than London.’ Cue easy-won cheers and chants from the home crowd. ‘He loves the power, don’t give it to him,’ laughed his keyboard playing accomplice Jo Schornikow. Too…

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Wolfroy Goes to Town

Compelling alt-country from Will Oldman

15 Nov 2011

(Domino) ‘Stop all the moaning and bemoaning your fate / god isn’t listening, or else it’s too late,’ sings Will Oldham on ‘Time to Be Clear’, his voice like driftwood lapping at the shore. In all things heart-shattering and beautiful in the world of…

Johnny Foreigner - Johnny Foreigner vs Everything

Bright-eyed punk-pop anthems toytown post-punk and wistful emo ballads

10 Nov 2011

(Alcopop!) Ludicrously long song titles did no harm to the late, lamented Mclusky and Biffy Clyro in their early days, and Birmingham’s Johnny Foreigner attempt a similar route to notoriety with ‘If I’m the Most Famous Boy You’ve Fucked, Then Honey…

Django Django set for UK tour

Band support Metronomy and release self-titled debut in 2012

9 Nov 2011

‘We weren’t really a band when we started,’ says Dave Maclean of London quartet Django Django. ‘We had to engineer a band around us so we could play a gig. We were booked to play a gig at [Brick Lane venue] 93 Feet East and we just had to recreate our…

Slow Club - Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Mon 19 Sep 2011

Folk rock twosome expand numbers but lose none of their charm

21 Oct 2011

Despite Rebecca Taylor’s protestations, Slow Club looked to be in reasonable shape considering they spent the previous night out with Aidan Moffat in Glasgow. ‘It was like an Indiana Jones film before I went to bed,’ recalled Charles Watson ruefully…

Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds - Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds

The usual ingredients from a seemingly unencumbered Gallagher

20 Oct 2011

(Sour Mash) Given that Noel Gallagher hasn’t made a truly vital album since 1995 and his brother has already unleashed the underwhelming Beady Eye upon us, expectations perhaps aren’t stratospheric for the solo project the elder Gallagher has been…

Bjork - Biophilia / Dirty Projectors & Bjork - Mount Wittenberg Orca

Embracing innovative on niche experimental curio by a huge artist

20 Oct 2011

(One Little Indian/Domino) It’s clear that Iceland’s premier musical export has no interest in writing another ‘Big Time Sensuality’ or ‘Violently Happy’ to please the casual listener, but these almost simultaneously released new albums demonstrate…

Rustie - Glass Swords

A step into a future sounding uncannily like the past

19 Oct 2011

(Warp) The boundary-nudging boy producer from Glasgow signed to Warp Records who isn’t Hudson Mohawke, Russell Whyte shares the same obsessions as his fellow sometime Numbers alumnus. This record is a step into the future to find it sounds uncannily…

Seven-strong art-rock group Muscles of Joy - interview

Band member Katy Dove discusses the group's history and future

19 Oct 2011

The phrase ‘art-rock’ is a much-abused one, but in this case it seems appropriate. Each of the seven members of all-female Glasgow group Muscles of Joy is a practising visual artist in their day jobs, most having previously attended Glasgow School of…

DJ Yogi Haughton presents Scottish Soulful Weekender

Dumfries event features Todd Terry, Kerri Chandler and Joey Negro

18 Oct 2011

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…

Emma Donoghue - The Sealed Letter

Re-issue of a slow-burning Victorian-set drama by the Booker-shortlisted author

18 Oct 2011

(Picador) ‘No corsets, no crinoline’ is the unladylike lot of one who takes up the cause of women’s rights amidst the bustling, vital Victoriana of this reissued 2008 novel from Room author Emma Donoghue. Emily ‘Fido’ Faithfull has matured into just…

Crate Digging: Deetron, aka Sam Geiser

The Swiss DJ gives a sneak peak in his record crate ahead of his appearance at No Strings Attached

17 Oct 2011

Scuba ‘Adrenalin’ (Hotflush Recordings) has been a constant in my set since I got it a few weeks ago, because the crowd reactions are always amazing. The combination of Detroit-ish bassline, euphoric pads and the vocal works beautifully, it’s a real…

New York's The Rapture set for UK tour

After a tumultuous period, the band are back on track with new album In the Grace of Your Love

21 Sep 2011

‘It’s been a real up and down five years,’ says The Rapture’s drummer Vito Roccoforte on the line from his home in New York City. That’s something of an understatement. In the half-decade since their second full-length album Pieces of the People We…

Exposure - Connan Mockasin

Erol Alkan's psychedelic protegé talks motivation and ideal album lengths

21 Sep 2011

Originally from Hawkes Bay in New Zealand, Connan Mockasin has lived in London for the last five years, during which time he’s covered Michael Jackson, worked with Charlotte Gainsbourg, played with Crowded House (find him below alongside them and Johnny…

5 Reasons to go to EH1 LIVE

The capital's new one-dayer features The Dykeenies, Jakil, The 10:04s and more

21 Sep 2011

1. Welcome to Edinburgh It’s that time of year again. Students are back, a new bunch of freshers are unleashed upon the bright lights of the big city, and while this new one-day, one-ticket-accesses-everything festival doesn’t cover all of the city’s…

Crate Digging: Andrew Divine

The Divine DJ picks some of the long-running indie night's best

21 Sep 2011

Divine’s summer vacation has been a perfect opportunity to stock-pile some new (old) vinyl ammo aimed straight at the dancefloor. These recent 7” excavations are all awaiting their debut Divine spins at The Admiral, beginning with Tangerine Peel ‘Solid…

Profile: DJ and producer Maya Jane Coles

The multi-talented tech-house queen visits Musika

21 Sep 2011

She’s been producing since she was in her mid-teens nearly a decade ago, but for young Londoner Maya Jane Coles the years since have provided a steep learning curve. Her real breakthrough track was last year’s ‘What They Say’ on Real Tone, a song which…

Brian d'Souza's Glasgow club night Highlife expands its horizons globally

19 Sep 2011

‘Highlife started with a conversation about the mass of fantastic music being made outside of the normal Western club genres, of things like house, techno and dubstep.’ That conversation was between Brian d’Souza (speaking above) and Andrew Thomson…

Cabaret Voltaire's Alternative Freshers' Week

A list of reasons to attend the week-long club extravaganza

19 Sep 2011

SBTRKT Welcome to Edinburgh, say Cab Vol, as they introduce nine big student specials in a row. Allow us to take you through who’s appearing, starting with Young Turks-signed London producer Aaron Jerome, aka SBTRKT, playing at Sugarbeat. The…

PJ Harvey - Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, Sun 4 Sep 2011

Assured and powerful set from artist in command of her own medium

16 Sep 2011

Forty-eight hours after this concert finished, PJ Harvey would have her second Mercury Prize safely in hand. While the award was an open field this year in terms of the albums submitted, the assurance and power in Harvey’s set here spoke of an artist…

Feist - Metals

Striking songwriting enters more mature and mellow-textured style

14 Sep 2011

(Polydor) This evidence seems to suggest Canadian siren Leslie Feist has foregone trying to recreate the breathy anthemics of 2007’s The Reminder – and the Apple-advertising ‘1234’ in particular – in favour of a more mature and mellow-textured…

Laura Marling - A Creature I Don’t Know

Nice, but not ground-breakingly so

14 Sep 2011

(Virgin) While some will lap up anything by the Brit winning and twice Mercury-nominated Marling, those with a little remove on the scene might want to consider whether this is the sound of the emperor’s new clothes rustling. Marling’s voice is…

Death Disco: Trans-Europe Expressway

Two-venue club night featuring Factory Floor, Lindstrom, Prins Thomas and Feadz

25 Aug 2011

Anyone making Glasgow their home for the new student year is in for a treat here, and would be well advised to get on board the Arches’ Trans-Europe Expressway early to see just what sort of clubbing scene their new city has to offer. The cavernous…

Electric Frog September Weekender 2011

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

25 Aug 2011

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…

King Creosote and Jon Hopkins set for UK tour

Duo take Mercury-nominated Diamond Mine on the road

24 Aug 2011

The List must confess it has to stop taking cues from the John Motson school of interviewing. ‘So, Kenny Anderson aka King Creosote, Fence Records founder and self-made recording artist who’s been working away in relative obscurity for many years now…

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off

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

24 Aug 2011

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…

Soma Records: 20 Years

Three CD celebration pack of hits and resurrections

24 Aug 2011

(Soma) As ‘the UK’s longest-running dance label’, so they tell us and we’re inclined to believe, Soma (the releasing arm of production duo Slam, the guys who pitch that pointy blue tent at T in the Park every year) continue to occupy a place…

Example

Picture House, Edinburgh, Mon 15 Aug 2011

24 Aug 2011

As Mike Skinner’s sometime protégé it’s easy to pigeonhole London rapper Elliot Gleave as the new bearer of the crown soon to be abandoned by The Streets. Yet what he does is subtly different – where both men are outright crowd pleasers, Skinner’s…

The Rapture - In the Grace of Your Love

Operating with one or both feet off the dancefloor

24 Aug 2011

(DFA) Don’t go into this third album by New York’s sometime disco-punk mavericks expecting the uplifting Chicago house keys of comeback single ‘How Deep is Your Love?’ and you’ll be fine. That the second and most recent of their club-friendly earlier…

Beirut - The Rip Tide

Delicately composed and personal music which occasionally lacks bite

24 Aug 2011

(Pompeii) For such a unique artist with a truly intercontinental approach to music, taking inspiration from the lineage of North American alternative indie rock and the instruments and styles of Eastern European music, there’s a lot that sounds…

Washed Out

Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 14 Aug 2011

23 Aug 2011

Okay, we might be calling it ‘chillwave’ up above, but that’s not actually what we were hearing at this, a set which lovers of below-ground music had been hotly anticipating at this year’s Edge festival. Where Atlanta, Georgia’s Ernest Greene makes…

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Mirror Traffic

Expansive treat from ever-original American artist produced by Beck

16 Aug 2011

(Domino) There’s a fine line between playing to the crowd and finding your groove, and sometime Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus appears to be walking it. His new album bestrides most genres known to man, bouncing between the familiar (the cheery…

Darren Shan, Barry Hutchison and Alexander Gordon Smith talk horror

Creating terrifying tales for teenage readers at the EIBF

16 Aug 2011

As far as groundings in the horror business go, young adult writer Barry Hutchison knew exactly what fear was from an early age. ‘I lived in a perpetual state of terror when I was a kid,’ says the Fort William-based creator of the Invisible Fiends…

Horror Stories for Kids at 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

Darren Shan, Barry Hutchison & Alexander Gordon Smith talk horror

16 Aug 2011

As far as groundings in the horror business go, young adult writer Barry Hutchison knew exactly what fear was from an early age. ‘I lived in a perpetual state of terror when I was a kid,’ says the Fort William-based creator of the Invisible Fiends…