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Design & Democracy

Neil Cooper

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Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Ex-Banshees bassist delivers brooding live score to 1930s horror classic

(3 stars)1 Feb 2012

The man with the flowing white hair walks towards a small table and chair to one side of the Cameo’s big screen. Sporting a long black winter coat and carrying a glass of red wine, the man looks as if he’s stepped in from another, altogether darker age…

Allan Sekula: Ship of Fools

Allan Sekula: Ship of Fools

Large-scale images explore shipping industry’s role in exploitation of labour

(4 stars)1 Feb 2012

Now that capitalism is a sinking ship with assorted captains scrambling for the lifeboats, Allan Sekula’s ongoing photographic exploration of globalisation in motion is the perfect metaphor for a world all at sea. This most recent series by the…

Michael Nyman - Michael Nyman

Michael Nyman - Michael Nyman

Handsomely packaged re-release of early scores by minimalist composer

1 Feb 2012

(MN Records) Long before his soundtrack for Jane Campion’s The Piano, Michael Nyman’s very English form of baroque minimalism had impeccable art school credentials. Following his debut on Brian Eno’s Obscure label, this 1981 follow-up five years…

Space rock pioneer Silver Apples set for Glasgow Music and Film Festival.

GFF 2012 - Silver Apples set for Glasgow Music and Film Festival

Live set from the cult 60s space rock pioneers

27 Jan 2012

When Simeon Coxe III took a 1940s vintage oscillator onstage with him to liven up the psych-rock band he fronted, sparks flew to the extent that half the band left, and, with only drummer Danny Taylor in tow, Silver Apples were born. With their name…

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

Stunning exhibition of post-punk music photography

(5 stars)19 Dec 2011

Harry Papadopoulos is the great unsung documenter of post-punk, who, between 1978 and 1984, captured a crucial era in pop history in all its geeky glory. Having started out taking snaps for Bobby Bluebell’s fanzine, The Ten Commandments, and orbiting…

Alasdair Gray: City Recorder

Andrew Kerr – So Ensconced

Over 70 new paintings in this debut solo exhibition from the Glasgow-based artist

(3 stars)19 Dec 2011

Absence makes the heart grow fonder in Andrew Kerr’s first major solo show in Scotland. Almost 70 new paintings discreetly dominate both floors, only interrupted by the odd smattering of drawings or sculptural intervention. Most of the mainly…

The Hot 100 2011 - 7: Martin Boyce on winning the Turner Prize

The Hot 100 2011 - No. 7: Martin Boyce on winning the Turner Prize

The Glasgow artist on Glasgow School of Art, fame and the future

16 Dec 2011

Unlike his work, Martin Boyce doesn’t appear to have any angles. Two days before scooping the 2011 Turner Prize for A Library of Leaves, his 2010 show at Zurich’s Galerie Eva Presenhuber, the Hamilton-born, Glasgow School of Art-trained maker of…

Beholder

Beholder

Gloriously disparate jumbled-up wonderland of art for art’s sake that’s a joy to wander through

(4 stars)9 Dec 2011

‘Beauty’, according to that man David Hume, whose tercentenary year is almost up, ‘is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.’ So it goes in this bumper grab bag of some 50 works, each subjectively…

Torsten Lauschmann: Startle Reaction

Torsten Lauschmann: Startle Reaction

Explores tangled-up mess of interconnectivity

(4 stars)9 Dec 2011

You don’t immediately notice the quieter, more domestic pieces in Torsten Lauschmann’s biggest box of tricks to date. The subverted digital clock above the DCA box office and the wired-up chandelier that hangs in Gallery One, where two of Lauschmann’s…

Bill Wells' National Jazz Trio of Scotland to appear at Tracer Trails' Christmas Party

Bill Wells' National Jazz Trio of Scotland to appear at Tracer Trails' Christmas Party

Another engagement for the ubiquitous collaborator and jazzman

9 Dec 2011

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland has never really been a trio. Nor has Bill Wells’ cheekily-monickered combo ever played jazz in the conventional sense. With a first album of original material – the waggishly christened Standards Volume Two…

Fordell Research Unit - The Illusion of Movement

Fordell Research Unit - The Illusion of Movement

Edinburgh noise auteurs' exercise in metal machine minimalism

(3 stars)7 Dec 2011

(At War With False Noise/Braw Music) Following the textured nuances of his Pjorn 72 label’s Songs For Dying compilation, Edinburgh noise auteur Fraser Burnett joins forces with Muscletusk’s Grant Smith for a relentless exercise in metal machine…

FareWell Poetry / Matthew Collings / Hiva Oa / Opul, The Third Door, Edinburgh, Mon 14 Nov

FareWell Poetry / Matthew Collings / Hiva Oa / Opul, The Third Door, Edinburgh, Mon 14 Nov

Carefully crafted multi-media, poetry-meets-noise and guitar assaults

(4 stars)18 Nov 2011

Salsa class is cancelled tonight, according to the blackboard outside what used to be after-hours hippy student dive Medina, but which now looks intent on filling the DIY boho gap that the Roxy Arthouse and The Forest once occupied so randomly. The…

Various artists - Songs For Dying

Various artists - Songs For Dying

Vibrant collection of tunes exploring noise genres from techno to metal

(4 stars)16 Nov 2011

(Pjorn 72) The local Noiserati and associates’ recent reclaiming of their techno and/or metal roots helped their clan avoid a nihilistic dead end. As this bumper fifteen track compendium of clings, clangs, sci-fi slapstick, sepulchral drones…

Bill Bollinger

Bill Bollinger

The contemporary of Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse et al gets his own well-deserved retrospective

(4 stars)15 Nov 2011

Onscreen in black and white, a man is attempting to stand a log upright of its own volition. Time and again the man methodically lifts the log off the ground, moving it from horizontal to vertical before it topples as though felled with some invisible…

Twin Sister - Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, Thu Nov 9 2011

Twin Sister - Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Nov 2011

Infectiously prettified melodies threaten to become dance-floor dream

(4 stars)15 Nov 2011

In her geek-girl specs and floppy Annie Hall hat, Twin Sister chanteuse Andrea Estella appears as quintessentially kooky a New Yorker as any afficionado of 1970s me-generation peak era Woody Allen movies could wish for. The check-shirted quartet of…

Rob St John - Weald

Rob St John - Weald

Forceful mix of melancholy and otherworldly rapture

(4 stars)10 Nov 2011

(Song, by Toad) Forget the much misused ‘F-word’. Rob St John is miles better than that, and putting a full electric band behind his whey-faced Lancastrian intonations has put muscle and guts on his musings. Yet for all the low-key chorales…

Viv Albertine - Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Saturday 5 Nov

Viv Albertine - Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Saturday 5 Nov

Musically and emotionally raw 'secret' show from former Slits guitarist

(4 stars)8 Nov 2011

“Penis!” Former Slits guitarist Viv Albertine may only be checking her sound levels, but her one word opening gambit sets out her store for the artistic splurge that’s to follow. Within seconds Albertine is relating how she thinks about sex all…

The Writing On Your Wall

The Writing On Your Wall

Rob Tufnell-curated group show chronicling the history of radical print

(4 stars)28 Oct 2011

When Jeremy Deller put Rupert Murdoch’s walnut face on a sky-blue ‘Vote Conservative’ poster to raise funds for the Labour Party, it looked like satire. Given the ongoing phone-hacking saga, it now feels like prophecy. The ‘Murdoch Doesn’t Give A XXX…

Minimal: Glass at 75 - Programme highlights

Minimal: Glass at 75 - Programme highlights

Glasgow festival features, Scottish Ensemble, Bang On A Can and composer himself

19 Oct 2011

How fragile is Glass? And how shattering? Audiences have had plenty of time of late to ponder the cause and effect of veteran New York composer Philip Glass’ considerable body of work. Glass himself appeared with his Ensemble to perform the dizzying…

Koreless - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 9 Oct 2011

Koreless - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 9 Oct 2011

The youthful, bright-eyed dubstepper takes centre-stage at Sneaky's

(4 stars)19 Oct 2011

Lewis Roberts may only be just about old enough to attend a club, but judging by this appearance he certainly understands what’s required to keep the customers satisfied. Still in his teens, this Glasgow-based Welshman has patented a form of lazy…

John Foxx & The Maths - Interplay

John Foxx & The Maths - Interplay

Cold synth masterpiece from the electro-pop pioneer

(4 stars)12 Oct 2011

(Metamatic Records) Now a real-life silver Foxx, the pushing-60 electro-pop/clash pioneer and former vocalist with Ultravox before Midge Ure made them rubbish might just have found his time. This retro-future compendium of detached, dystopian…

The Wild Swans - The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years

The Wild Swans - The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years

Paul Simpson’s band of reignited pop classicists plus guests

(4 stars)10 Aug 2011

(Occultation) After 30 years of hurt, Paul Simpson’s band of reignited pop classicists are on a mission. Featuring a supergroup of musical crusaders recruited from the ranks of Echo and the Bunnymen, Spiritualised and Brian Jonestown Massacre, this…

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 - Printmaking, but not as we know it

(3 stars)5 Aug 2011

Drip, drip, drip go the variations on a theme that form the quartet of works culled from Ian Davenport’s ‘Etched Puddle’ series, in which assorted rainbow-arrayed, candy-striped, multi-coloured streams trickle down into a similarly hued liquid carpet at…

Robert Rauschenberg: Botanical Vaudeville

Robert Rauschenberg: Botanical Vaudeville

Sparkling post-industrial dance on gleaming surfaces

(4 stars)3 Aug 2011

Inverleith House has long carved a niche for itself as a champion of late 20th century American icons, and for the gallery’s British Art Show contribution has gathered up a grab-bag of 37 works made between 1982 and 1998 by Abstract Expressionism’s…

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

Compendium of works inspired by the Renaissance innovator

(3 stars)3 Aug 2011

There’s something of an inky-fingered Dürer overload in the ‘burgh just now. Following on from Dürer’s Fame over at the National Galleries, this 16th century compendium of more than 100 works uses his output as a springboard for the burgeoning of…

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