The Skinny July 2024

The Skinny's favourite songs about trips

Amerie - 1 Thing

The Kooks - Seaside

The B-52s - Roam

The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner

Metronomy - Back on the Motorway

The Sonics - Have Love Will Travel

LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends

Jay Z and Beyoncé - '03 Bonnie & Clyde

The Lonely Island - Japan

Vengaboys - We Like To Party! (The Vengabus)

Brijean - Take a Trip

Marvin Gaye - Hitch Hike

Black Dresses - DOORWAY

Alex Gaudino Feat. Crystal Waters - Destination Calabria

Mungo's Hi Fi & Eva Lazarus - Amsterdam

Noah Reid - American Roads

A Tribe Called Quest - Excursions

Listen to this playlist on Spotify — search for 'The Skinny Office Playlist' or scan the below code

Issue 222, July 2024 © Radge Media C.I.C.

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Meet the team

Championing creativity in Scotland

We asked: What's your favourite park and why?

Editorial

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief

"I like that Holyrood Park is in the middle of a city but has a mountain in it. Shoutout to the Borghese gardens in Rome for their boats, precious shade and terrapins."

Cammy Gallagher Clubs Editor "Kelvingrove. The regular police presence is so calming and peaceful."

Harvey Dimond Art Editor

"Kirstenbosch Botanic Garden in Cape Town – it's on the slopes of Table Mountain and has an elevated walkway above the trees."

Sales

George Sully Sales and Brand Strategist "Sandy. IYKYK."

Peter Simpson Deputy Editor, Food & Drink Editor

"Harrison Park, Edinburgh: stays light very late, fancy corner shop down the street, canalside location gives it a bucolic *vibe* plus *some ducks*."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor

"Back home (Lincoln), there's a lovely park by a lake which I recently discovered has a zipline in it. Tried to get on it but I was too short, walked back to my family to see my 70 year old Dad run over, jump on and have the time of his life. Managed to film it and it is a treasured video."

Ellie Robertson Digital Editorial Assistant

"My local park has great amenities, beautiful scenery, and someone's always ditched a shopping trolley in the lake, which is handy if you're on your way to Lidl."

Sandy Park Commercial Director "Ahem."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor, Books Editor

"The park next to me when I was growing up that had an enormous slide which got smaller when I got older which was devastating (they replaced the slide I didn't just grow)."

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor "'The Panic in Central Park', season 5, episode 6 of Girls –sorry but."

Business

Laurie Presswood General Manager "Park and (let's) Ride."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist

"Korean genius director Park Chanwook of course. But if we’re talking green places: Pollok Park. It’s got art, it’s got deer, it’s got Highland coos, and it’s so huge I’m always finding cool new paths to explore."

Rho Chung Theatre Editor "Fort Tryon Park in New York City. Sorry!"

Tallah Brash Music Editor

"Parc del Forum, baby! Okay, it's not a park in the traditional sense, but it's where Primavera Sound takes place in Barcelona, and there's just something so inexplicably magical about that big lump of concrete."

Production

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager

"The hill on Kelvingrove Park is an amphitheatre for bam fights."

Ema Smekalova Media Sales Executive

"So many good parks in Prague... I recommend Grébovka for the grotto and vineyard, Kampa for the mill cafe and giant baby statues, and Letná for the beer gardens and summer circus!!"

Emilie Roberts

Media Sales Executive

"The Iveagh Gardens in Dublin. It's tucked away and it's got a WATERFALL!!!"

Phoebe Willison Designer

"Parallel cause I love a challenge, showing off, and unnecessarily making things into a competition (yes I am an Aries x)"

Gabrielle Loue Media Sales Executive "Central Park: the museums, the break from the city noise, and also somewhere in there is a cafe where I had the greatest avocado toast of my life and I haven't been able to find it since."

Editorial

Words: Rosamund West

In July we advise you to find some grass and touch it. Take a break from the city, get into nature, swim in the sea etc etc. We’re all about connecting with the environment: take a pause to breathe, lie on the ground, stare at the sky.

Books leads this theme, talking to Kate Zambreno about her memoir The Light Room, a collection of critical meditations on relationships, the cosmos, humans and nature. She shares her definition of environmental writing and an insight into the writing of what she describes as a series of ‘light boxes’. Then we meet Jen Hadfield, whose eco-memoir Storm Pegs explores movements of land, people and languages on the Shetland Islands.

Next, we’re advising you take a trip to the Cairngorms for a party. We talk to the promoter behind The Speyside Fantastic Party to find out more about taking the event up north. Clubs meets Aberdeenshire’s finest clubbing export Massie to hear about running Bothy Bass nights around the country, and the importance of preserving spoken Doric. Film talks to director Lina Soualem about generational longing and how her documentary Bye Bye Tiberias explores Palestinian dispossession from the land. Art looks back on last month’s Glasgow International festival of contemporary art and examines how artists are unearthing Scotland’s concealed colonial and environmental context.

In Intersections, a writer shares how queer community and climbing go hand in hand. And as the July election looms, we take a look at fatigue amongst young voters. Music looks

forward to a summer of DIY festivals at a time when a lot of the big hitters seem to be vanishing before our very eyes.

Grassroots to the rescue – which leads us conveniently on to the resurrection of Edinburgh’s Jazz Bar, which is being relaunched by a former staff team as a community interest group.

Comedy has one thing on its mind and that thing is the Fringe. We talk to a selection of Scotland-based comics about the economic realities of taking a show to stage in Edinburgh in August. Film meets Spanish philosopher turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado to hear how an overwhelming identification with Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel led to creating his difficultto-define debut Orlando, My Political Biography. And, as A Family Affair hits Netflix, one writer passionately argues for a critical reappraisal of Zac Efron and his eclectic, decadesspanning oeuvre.

Art talks to Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas about her new Tramway exhibition, Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding, which explores the mythologisation and discrimination of Romani, Gypsy and Traveller communities. Looking to artists at the very beginning of their careers, we’ve got a degree show round-up from the Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow fine art displays.

Finally, we close with the keystone of the Touch Grass issue – roving reporter Jamie Dunn journeys to Pollok Park with a microphone to conduct an in-person interview with a Highland coo, finding out more about its favourite music, films and dinner party guests.

Cover Artist

Indrė Šimkutė is a multidisciplinary artist, herbalist, and avid plant enthusiast whose creative journey is deeply intertwined with her love for plants. She facilitates workshops in Glasgow which serve as a platform for sharing her knowledge on plant identification, herbal medicine, foraging and bushcraft. When not immersed in plant shenanigans, Indre enjoys going on long walks in the countryside and indulging in the art of 'danooking' in her kitchen — a harmonious blend of dancing and cooking.

@Indresimkute4 indresimkute.co.uk

Love Bites: Water Seeking

This month’s columnist reflects on bodies of water and the peace of mind we may find in them

Words: Anita Bhadani

Last year, immersed in uncertainties in my life, I felt a pull to any bodies of water I could find. All I knew was that I wanted to be by lakes, seas, oceans, and so, I planned trips seeking these out wherever I could find them. Day to day my mind is pulled into a hundred different streams: obligations, tasks, random thoughts, hopes, worries, memories. Water felt like a potential antidote. It wasn’t so much that I was seeking escape as it was that I wanted to experience something bi er than myself. Maybe it was a combination of the two.

Bodies of water have long been imbued with significance. Drawing from neuroscience and anecdote, marine biologist Wallace J Nichols coined the term ‘Blue Mind’ to refer to the meditative state your mind enters when in proximity to water. I’ve definitely experienced this sense of near instinctual peace near water. Around the world, water embodies a multiplicity of spiritual depths and meanings: from water deities and sacred waters, to holy water and ritual purification. It both sustains life and is life itself, irreducible to mere commodity.

Fear when faced with the vast unknown of the ocean is common. The unknown scares me too, but what scares me more is the preclusion of possibility. While drinking in still, clear waters, my anxieties didn’t wash away as I had initially hoped. But instead, I sat with the feeling, and that was enough.

I returned to early summer in Glasgow, the boundary of each day dissipating into a cool, clear night. Slowly re-entering the routines of everyday life after a period away, I hoped to stretch out the afterglow of clarity I felt for as long as possible. Watching the last light of the dying day dance across the rippling surface of the river, moving onwards, I felt fully present, immersed in the moment.

Heads Up

Lunarpalooza

The Shore, Edinburgh, 26-27 Jul

There’s just a month until at least one of Scotland’s cities descends into chaos, but there’s plenty to keep you busy until then: exhibitions, club nights, and so so much music.

Put on by local brewery Moonwake, Lunarpalooza is a local micro arts and music festival taking place in Leith: a perfect mini introduction to festival season before the Fringe kicks off. There’s live music from Blue Giant Orkestar, Kathryn Joseph, Callum Easter, Maranta and Bikini Body, as well as street food stalls and – appropriately –plenty of beer.

Delaine Le Bas - Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding

Tramway, Glasgow, until 13 Oct

With this large-scale immersive install, constructed from straw, textiles, paint, and found objects, positioned on the intersection of the personal and political to examine facets of the Romani experience through different perspectives on land, gender, and discrimination. Bringing together contemporary techniques such as graffiti with mythic symbols and figures, Le Bas’ work reflects on the ongoing mythologisation and demonisation of Romani, Gypsy and Traveller peoples in the UK and Europe.

Lost In Leith presents: Hiba, Ria, Ann Tweak

Lost In Leith Bar & Fermentaria, Edinburgh, 12 Jul, 9pm

For Lost in Leith’s first summer party of the year, they’re welcoming three local DJs whose work spans a gorgeous sunny mix of SWANA- and Caribbean-influenced tunes. Scottish-based DJ and selector Hiba plays back-to-back with Femmergy resident Ria, spinning Arabic grooves, dancehall, amapiano, and baile funk, with support on the night from Edinburgh DJ Ann Tweak.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Love Is Strange

Glasgow Film Theatre, 2-28 Jul, various times

In celebration of Michel Gondry’s iconic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind turning 20 this year, Glasgow Film Theatre have programmed a whole month of films dedicated to the subject of love in all its strange, expansive and prickly forms. There’s Gondry’s classic, of course, as well as the likes of Call Me By Your Name, Bringing Up Baby and the Before Trilogy, including some 35mm screenings.

Good Vibes Relaunch Party

Good Vibes Neighbourhood Store & Studios, Edinburgh, 13 Jul

Good Vibes Neighbourhood Store, Leith’s wee record shop and studio space with the eponymously best vibes, has undergone a little refurb: to celebrate their reopening, they’re hosting a relaunch party on the weekend, with a lineup of gorgeous local DJs spinning all day long while you browse records, and an evening of live music from electro-pop duo Both Hands and indie artist Susan Bear.

Al

Theater UK Tour: A Voice for Theatre and Culture in Palestine

Civic House, Glasgow, 9 Jul, 7pm Palestinian theatre company Al Harah Theater puts on incredible performing work for young people and adults across Palestine, exploring how theatre can help people in expressing, processing and overcoming trauma. As part of a UK-wide tour, the company’s General Director is coming to Civic House for a talk on her work, with proceeds going to fund her tour and work in Palestine. Edinburgh

Various venues, Edinburgh, 12-21 Jul

Ibrahim Mahama: Songs About Roses

Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 13 Jul-6 Oct

One of Fruitmarket’s major exhibitions to celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, Songs about Roses is the first solo exhibition in Scotland by acclaimed Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama, whose large-scale, site-specific works explore the social and cultural legacies of colonialism and global migration. Using materials collected from Ghana’s now obsolete railway, Mahama’s work examines the histories embedded in material objects.

Surge Festival 2024

Merchant City, Glasgow, 19-21 Jul

The 15th edition of Surge Festival, Glasgow’s outdoor festival of street performance, physical theatre and circus, returns to the Merchant City with a programme of innovative events. Highlights include The Most Dangerous Animal in the World, about an a dventurous sheep exiled from her community, and Fish Out of Water, in which a shoal of gigantic fish take over the streets.

Celya AB: Work in Progress

Monkey Barrel Comedy Club, Edinburgh, 27 Jul, 8pm

Beloved UK comic and Edinburgh August regular Celya AB returns with a work-in-progress show ahead of her run at the Fringe. Following big sell-out tours and appearances at huge comedy festivals such as Laughs in Montreal and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (listen, other comedy festivals exist!), she returns to Edinburgh to tackle the big three: beauty, money and the void.

Pop Mutations 2024

Various venues, Glasgow, 18-21 Jul

Pop Mutations have become one of the best indie promotions companies in Scotland, consistently putting on local emerging talent that go on to become big big names. Their annual weekender is always a banger, offering a lineup of incredible artists, from Alliyah Enyo and Eyve to KUTE and chizu nnamdi, across Glasgow’s best indie venues.

Soccer Mommy

Summerhall, Edinburgh, 2 Jul, 7pm

Fresh off a support tour with The National and a slot at Glastonbury, Soccer Mommy is doing a wee tour of the UK and Europe. One of the big names of the indie pop rock music scene, her music is simultaneously raw and delicate, with lilting vocals laid over intimate lyrics that cut to the heart of modern love and alienation.

sarya Broadcast, Glasgow, 11 Jul, 7pm

Q’iwa Pride Party

Mono, Glasgow, 20 Jul, 4pm

It’s Glasgow’s turn for Pride and if Edinburgh Pride was anything to go by, queer POC collective Q’iwa will be the throwing the best party in town. Head down to Mono for a bright, sweaty, sexy night full of drag performances by the likes of gender fluid Mongolian artist ZULAA, music from effua and Eyve, and DJing from Ptk.enbybby Xaia Chimera and Q’iwa co-curator 3MR.

Sneaks 16th Birthday: Popular Music

Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, 8 Jul, 11pm

KEEP ON with special guests

What's On

Music

It’s July and we’ve reached peak festival season! Straight out the gate is Kelburn Garden Party (4-8 Jul) at Kelburn Castle on the west coast, just outside of Largs. The big hitters on this year’s lineup include Erol Alkan, HAAi, James Holden and Nubiyan Twist, while on The Skinny-curated Pyramid Stage you’ll find headliners in the form of LVRA, rEDOLENT and Bikini Body. We are very excited; come hang out!

The following weekend, TRNSMT (12-14 Jul) returns to Glasgow Green with Calvin Harris, Garbage, Sugababes, The Last Dinner Party, and CMAT, while the end of the month brings the 20th edition of Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival (25-27 Jul) to Kiltarlity, with Deacon Blue, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Teenage Fanclub and Hamish Hawk. On the same weekend in the capital, Moonwake launch Lunarpalooza (26-28 Jul) for a weekend of music in the Leith brewery, with Pictish Trail, Callum Easter, Maranta, Bikini Body and Alice Faye.

There’s also the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival (12-21 Jul) this month, with highlights including Nathan Somevi, kitti, Soweto Kinch Trio and Fergus McCreadie, while Pop Mutations (18-21 Jul) returns to Glasgow with Apostille, LYLO and R.AGGS and more. The Hug & Pint’s endless summer (1 Jul-30 Aug) series returns this month with shows from EYVE (28 Jul), neverfine (30 Jul) and Possibly Jamie (31 Jul), while King Tut’s Summer Nights (18 Jul-31 Aug) are also back with Grace & The Flat Boys playing on the 25th.

There’s loads more local talent playing across the Central Belt in July. On the 5th, Susan Bear launches their latest album, Algorithmic Mood Music, at Nice N Sleazy, while in Dundee, catch Echo Machine at Church, fairly fresh from releasing Accidental Euphoria. The following night, ones to watch, Red Vanilla celebrate their debut EP, Days of Grey, at Beat Generator Live! Back in Glasgow, lo-fi bedroom pop gem sarya plays Broadcast (11 Jul), while a day later in Edinburgh, East Lothian trio racecar launch single Got You Into It at The Caves.

Good news for record lovers as Good Vibes in Leith reopens on 10 July, with a big party on the 13th featuring Both Hands and Susan Bear. The next week, Off the Record returns with a showcase at Sneaky Pete’s (18 Jul) featuring Carsick Charlie, DARA DUBH, Joshua Grant and Liv Dawn. Staying in Edinburgh, at the end of the month The Twistettes launch their Tory Cunts single at Wee Red Bar (27 Jul), while All Hands sees Other Other Music and Supper Club join forces (see: hands) with Both Hands to bring some summer fun to the Leith FAB Cricket Club. Both Hands play live alongside Thundermoon, El Ghoul and Faith Eliott, with Supper Club DJs until late (26 Jun).

Finally, a glut of touring artists swing by Edinburgh and Glasgow this month. Catch Soccer Mommy at Summerhall (2 Jul), Megan Thee Stallion at OVO Hydro (4 Jul), Nils Frahm at Usher Hall (9 Jul), The National at Edinburgh Castle (11 Jul), Garbage at Usher Hall (14 Jul), DFA 1979 at SWG3 (17 Jul) and Waxahatchee at QMU (30 Jul). [Tallah Brash]

Film

On 4 July, after 14 years and five prime ministers, each more hopeless than the last, we will hopefully be saying goodbye to our cruel, corrupt and inept Tory overlords. There’s been little to laugh about during their reign, but after casting your vote, you should treat yourself to a celebratory chuckle thanks to a sparkling bit of programming at Glasgow Film Theatre. On election night, they’re screening Armando Iannucci’s blistering political satire In the Loop With fewer exciting titles due out over the summer period, cinemas are getting creative in July with tonnes of classics back on the big screen. Dundee Contemporary Arts, for example, have a screening of Stanley Tucci’s foodie favourite Big Night (6 Jul) and Francis Ford Coppola’s paranoid 70s classic The Conversation (7&10 Jul).

GFT are going down the love route, with a season of romances of all stripes. There’s Michael Gondry’s sci-fi romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (17 Jul), the screwball romp Bringing Up Baby (13-16 Jul), the rapturous queer coming-of-age romance Call Me By Your Name (22 Jul), Paul Thomas Anderson’s underrated and deeply fucked-up romance Punch-Drunk Love (8 Jul, 35mm), plus Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy is screening across three nights, from 26 to 28 July. The cinema’s Pride season also continues with Hedwig and the Angry Inch on 13 July, with a performance by Pink Pound, and The Watermelon Woman on 31 July, with an intro from our very own Eilidh Akilade.

At Cameo, there’s a rare chance to see Don Hertzfeldt’s animation masterpiece It’s Such a Beautiful Day on the big screen — and even better, it’s screening with Hertzfeldt’s newest short ME (21 Jul). Cameo are also going back to the 80s this summer, with a season that kicks off at the end of July with Paul Verhoeven’s director’s cut of Robocop (27 Jul), followed by Paul Shrader’s American Gigalo (28 Jul) and Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride (31 Jul), with the season continuing into August.

And in Glasgow, film fans are being treated to a month of outdoor screenings at Queen’s Park Arena in the Southside (1-19 Jul). The lineup is

an eclectic blend of family favourites (eg The Aristocats, 6 Jul; The Jungle Book, 17 Ju), which screen in early afternoon, while in the evening it’s time for cult movies (eg The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 17 Jul; Labyrinth, 15 Jul), scary movies (eg Scream, 3 Jul; Candyman, 10 Jul) and the odd masterpiece (eg Raging Bull, 9 Jul; Fight Club, 16 Jul). Tickets booked in advance are free, and then sold at a sliding pay-what-you-can rate.

Clubs

Throw it back in Edinburgh with Princess Superstar on Tuesday 2 July at Sneaky Pete’s. The next day, Doctor Jeep pulls up to the Cowgate for haptic at Sneaky Pete’s (3 Jul). On Thursday in Glasgow, Skream takes over Sub Club open to close. Otherwise, get lit with ISO YSO in 142b lounge at the MEGAN THEE STALLION: AFTERPARTY (4 Jul). On Friday, Magic City return to Sub Club with high energy from Effy (5 Jul). Palms Trax & Young Marco cook up a storm on Saturday for 15 years of Glasgow’s La Cheetah – day party at BAad with Function-One sound (6 Jul).

On Friday 12 July, celebrate Pride in the Southside at The Rum Shack for Queer History of Dance Music x Cùrlach. At Sub Club, Neil Landstrumm meets Slam for Return To Mono. In Edinburgh, Feena and the gang land at Edinburgh’s Summerhall for Miss World in the Old Lab

On Saturday 13 July, brush up on your Gaelic at Na Gabh Dragh with baile/baile from 8pm, followed by a Bothy Bass blowout. At Sneaky Pete’s, expect percussive earworms from Redstone Press x Eclipse Tribez. In the north east, it’s Sabotage’s 1st Birthday – celebrate one extravagant year at The Tunnels with Aberdeen’s favourite underground queer party. Last but not least, Juliana Huxtable headlines Stereo X Ponyboy Pride in Glasgow – you don’t want to miss this.

Find some of the best local artists at Pop Mutations 2024 from Thursday 18 July spread over various Glasgow venues. On Friday, Bclip brings a broad range of Colombian influence to Stereo, while Bimini takes The Tories Out Toor to Polka Dot Disco Club (19 Jul). On Saturday, join Mojxmma –for their last party of the year – at EXIT, in celebrating PoC PRIDE (20 Jul). Across the water, get on your ISLAND VIBE 2024 with Hometown & Messenger Sound System for two days on the Isle of Arran (19 & 20 Jul).

On Thursday 25 July, get intimate with the weird and wonderful LUCY aka Cooper B. Handy at The Flying Duck from 7pm. For something more big room, Bicep flex their CHROMA AV DJ show at SWG3’s Galvanizers Yard – support from Hammer & Ysanne. [Cammy Gallagher]

Art

Mount Stuart’s first exhibition of the year is a series of site-specific installations by Alberta Whittle situated throughout the house and gardens. Under the skin of the ocean, the thing urges us up wild reflects on the histories of Mount Stuart, the Isle of Bute and the Clyde in relation to ancestral roots, trade routes, power and empire. Continues until 11 August.

In Glasgow, Cathy Wilkes’ show at the Hunterian continues past the end of Glasgow International until the end of September. The exhibition brings together new works which respond to conflict in the context of the artist’s upbringing in Northern Ireland.

At Talbot Rice in Edinburgh, iconic Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui fills the gallery with his large-scale, vibrant multimedia sculptures. The most significant exploration of his practice ever staged in the UK, Scottish Mission Book Depot Keta spans five decades of the artist’s work. The exhibition runs throughout the summer, closing on 29 September. Also in Edinburgh, Fruitmarket is presenting Ibrahim Mahama’s first solo show in Scotland, Songs about Roses. The exhibition draws inspiration from the gallery’s proximity to Waverley station and the histories and legacies of Britain’s colonial railway systems in Ghana. Continues until 6 October. Close by at Collective, Moyna Flannigan’s exhibition Space Shuffle explores the unique context and architecture of the City Dome gallery. Flannigan was one of the gallery’s early committee members and the exhibition forms part of Collective’s 40th year celebrations. Continues until 15 September.

July also presents the opportunity to see the most comprehensive exhibition to date of British painter Sheila Girling, opening at Bowhouse, near St Monans in Fife on 20 July. Presented by SPACE TO BREATHE, audiences will be able to view over 70 of her large scale paintings and collages from the 1970s to the 2010s. Continues until 5 August, before reopening again on 17 August for the rest of the month. [Harvey Dimond]

Books

It’s the month before the big festivals land in Edinburgh so events are a little quiet, but there’s still plenty to occupy the book worms out there. The Skinny’s own Andrés N. Ordorica launches his debut novel How We Named the Stars, first at The Portobello Bookshop on 11 July and then at Waterstones Sauchiehall Street on 16 July. While on the subject of The Portobello Bookshop, they’re celebrating their fifth birthday with a wee birthday party, with appearances from T L Huchu, Nadine Aisha Jassat, Roxani Krystalli, Heather Parry, Mary Paulson-Ellis and Michael Pedersen (24 July). They’re also launching Dean Atta’s memoir Person Unlimited on 12 July, and Atta will also be heading to Waterstones Argyle Street the day before (11 Jul).

On the poetry side of things, Lighthouse Bookshop are hosting a summer party for indie publisher Stewed Rhubarb Press on 13 July, featuring the likes of Olivia Thomakos, Linden McMahon, Ian Macartney, Catherine Wilson Garry, Alec Finlay, and Hannah Lavery, while Lovecrumbs Readings returns to everyone’s favourite cafe with readings from Iona Lee, Hannah Lavery, Jenni Fagan and Thomas Stewart (19 Jul). And finally in Glasgow, Good Press are doing a double launch of FLOOD zine and FIELDNOTES Issue 6 (5 Jul), with readings from artists and writers Kate Paul and George Finlay Ramsay, introduced by FIELDNOTES Editor Bella Marrin. [Anahit Behrooz]

Comedy

Heading to Glasgow just before Fringe is Dee Allum (6 Jul, Glasgow Stand, 5pm, £8-10). Roadtesting her debut Edinburgh hour, Deadname, Dee’s stand-up is super fresh and observational with her show celebrating the person she was pre-transition and her true self today.

At Glasgow Stand the same week is Stand Up for Al Harah (8 July, 8pm, £16.50), a benefit in aid of Al Harah Theater, Palestine. With a lineup yet to be announced, but sure to be packed with the cream of Scottish comedy talent, we’d recommend booking now for a brilliant cause.

As for Scotland-based acts squeezing in some final show previews before the festival cometh, take your pick. Let’s start with one of this month’s interviewees, Sam Lake who brings a WIP of Esméralda to Monkey Barrel (13 July, 8pm, £7). Mainly an uplifting show about grief, Sam’s third solo hour gets bonus points from us as we’re desperate to know how this all links to the Ice Age films. Also on our WIP wishlists for July are Fringe debutante Chris Weir (10 July, Glasgow Stand, 8.30pm, £7-£8), low-key surrealism from Paul McDaniel (14 July, Glasgow Stand, 8pm / 27 July, Edinburgh Stand, 5pm, £8-£10) and a delightful sounding double bill from kind clown Phil O’Shea and honorary Glaswegian Josie Long (21 July, Edinburgh Stand, 4pm, £10£12). And, a week before Fringe begins, make sure to catch Laura Davis’ new hour Albatross (24 July, Monkey Barrel, 8pm, £7), which delicately balances politics and settling into their new Scottish home with a trademark twist of whimsy.

Finally, one last hurrah before the Fringe, catch long-time legend Bill Bailey at Kelvingrove Bandstand (26 July, 6.30pm, from £49.50) for their only comedy Summer Nights session this year. [Polly Glynn]

22 Kate Zambreno discusses her new memoir The Light Room

25 We talk to Jen Hadfield about her Shetland eco-memoir Storm Pegs

26 We meet the promoter behind The Speyside Fantastic Party to find out what to expect at their Aviemore all-dayer.

28 Aberdeenshire’s finest clubbing export – Massie – discusses Doric, Boiler Room, and a brandnew game.

29 Lina Soualem on the documentary Bye Bye Tiberias, which traces one family’s displacements and departures from Palestine.

30 A deep dive into the work of Glasgow International artists resisting the erasure of Scotland’s colonial past.

38 Grassroots and community music festivals in Glasgow this summer.

42 Scotland-based comedians offer an insight into the financial realities of performing at the Fringe.

45 Spanish philosopher turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado speaks to us about his bold essay film Orlando, My Political Biography.

46 Prowess beyond the pecs –a paean to Zac Efron’s creative dynamism.

49 We speak to Delaine Le Bas, Turner Prize 2024 nominee, about her new exhibition, Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding.

50 We tour the country’s degree shows, taking in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

On the website...

An interview with new Edinburgh International Film Festival director Paul Ridd; a report from this year’s Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival; a clutch of gig and theatre reviews; longer online versions of our Degree Show coverage; our Edinburgh Guide and GNAW magazines; tune in to The CineSkinny, our film podcast; plus read Spotlight On…, our weekly new music column

Shot of the month

Troye Sivan @ OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 23 Jun by

Kate Johnston

Across 1. Flee (4,3,3,5) 9. Nest us (anag) (6)

10. Relax (8) 11. Resign (4,4)

12. At the place – it's one (anag) (2,4) 13. Make available (4,2) 15. Least old (8) 17. Unshowy (2,6)

20. Two-digit number (6)

22. Isolated – unlikely (6)

24. Immediately (5,3)

26. Curfew – embargo (8)

27. Far-flung – tropical (6)

28. Spontaneous (4,2,3,6)

Planet's waistline (7)

Vanish (9)

Coda (5)

Skipping school – cut yarn (anag) (7)

Paddock (9) 7. Things (5) 8. Finds (7)

Achieved (6,3)

Where visitors stay (5,4)

Coincide (7)

Extend – length of time (7)

Weathering (7)

Happen (5)

Shine (5)

Compiled by George Sully

In this month’s advice column, one reader wonders how to handle a kissing drought

I’ve never been kissed. Not even able to achieve the my-pals-are-all-in-long-term-relationships-and-I’mnot stage of mid-20s singledom crisis, the dearth of ANY intimacy is rattling my lovergirl sense of self. I’ve read so many self-help platitudes for years about time working things out but I’m tired. Oh, baby. This is a tricky question for me to answer wisely because I have been this person in various ways at various stages of my life and I did not handle it with wisdom, grace or, indeed, mental fortitude. What I am not going to do is tell you to take it at your own pace, because it sounds like you are very much not at the pace you want and that fucking sucks. I am also not going to be like, “kissing’s not all that, friends and family are all that matters in your 20s!!” because man it is and I want you to be able to do it! People who say physical intimacy is unimportant are usually the ones who have access to plenty of it and belong, if not in jail, in an extensive period of community service.

I really understand what you’re saying about the seismic effects this can have on your sense of self. It can erode both your mental and physical health: I would get to a point where existing within my skin became so unbearable that I constantly imagined zipping it off and stepping away. It’s exhausting and you have every right to be exhausted.

I don’t really have solutions as such, because I assume if it were as simple as sticking your tongue in someone’s mouth, you would have done it already. I guess I am struck by the phrasing of “never been kissed” – very Drew Barrymore of you, but it’s also a very passive construction. Do you think of it as something that has to come to you, that you wait for? Even if it doesn’t feel like it, you do have a tiny bit of agency in making it happen. Could you muck around with a friend? Lmao?? This is maybe starting to be quite actively chaotic and bad advice but I wonder if part of the healing process is dispensing with the waiting and fantasy and bringing it into your life in funny and tangential ways, until it properly takes root? I hope it happens for you soon, I really do xxx

POSTER (p36-37)

Lauren Cory is a multi-disciplinary illustrator who draws inspiration from video games, the natural landscape and abstract paintings. She uses colour and analogue materials to create dream-like familiar worlds that question the boundaries between the digital and the physical. Her primary methods combine drawing, pixel art and risograph printing. She recently completed a risograph print residency at Out of The Blueprint in Edinburgh, and her work has been featured in Its Nice That, AOI, Middleground, Crack and So Young magazine @lovelylawn laurencory.cargo.site

Great Escapes

Words: Anahit Behrooz

This month’s issue is all about touching grass, however that might look to you: escaping urban life, (re)discovering havens of peace, gtfo-ing from all your personal responsibilities. We spend some time in the contemporary world of nature writing, talking to two authors – Kate Zambreno and Jen Hadfield – who have written two distinct memoirs about our affective relationship with the world beyond ourselves. We look at festivals and club nights that are happening, *gasp*, outside of the Central Belt; at

exhibitions happening in the Central Belt that situate Scotland within a broader colonial and ecological context; and talk to French director Lina Soualem about how her new film archives Palestinian belonging and dispossession. And last but not least – arguably the loadbearing pillar of this issue – we conduct a Q&A with one of the Highland coos found in Pollok Park; rest assured the interviewer was holding a microphone up to the subject in question the entire time.

That Green Light

We speak to Kate Zambreno about her new memoir The Light Room and how to articulate moments of everyday in the midst of extreme crisis

Words: Venezia Paloma

Kate Zambreno speaks to me on the phone from inside a parked car, where she found a quiet moment in her busy day to discuss ecological writing, active hope, and thinking through the collective in anticipation of the UK release of her memoir, The Light Room. At first glance, it might seem that life is still as hectic for her as it was at the time of the book’s conception when, at the height of the pandemic and soon after the birth of her second daughter, Zambreno found herself overwhelmed and exhausted by the neverending labour of care, her teaching — then imparted through a screen — and the uncertainty of living through political, ecological and public health crises

In The Light Room, Zambreno documents these anxieties through short texts that chronicle the period between roughly the autumn of 2020 and the summer of 2022, though time in Zambreno’s work rarely moves in a linear fashion. More than diary entries, however, these passages are a collection of critical meditations, brief essays on the relationship between the small and cosmic, the personal and the collective. Taking inspiration from Joseph’s Cornell boxed assemblages, Zambreno uses the term ‘light boxes’ when referring to these entries in order to highlight their “translucency”; the vagueness of the time they encompass, and the seemingly insubstantial, yet luminous quality of everyday life.

“It wasn’t really journaling,” Zambreno explains about the writing process behind her hybrid memoir, “but the whole first section of the book did come out of these tiny little notebooks I was keeping, brown Moleskine notebooks that were so small I could balance them on a pillow and scribble notes. [I was writing] about this specific period of time postpartum, thinking through Joseph Cornell, outside scenes in the park, and what it was like having two children at home during the pandemic.”

Although the book had its conceptual genesis in a proposal behind Zambreno’s Gu enheim Fellowship, a work centred around the idea of ecological grief, the project shifted once she began writing these notes as a way of processing her own feelings of anxiety and isolation. “[The book] is also about loneliness as almost a devotional stance,” she explains, “I think of The Light Room in connection with works like Ma ie Nelson’s Bluets, Anne Carson’s The Glass Essay, and Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City. I was working too much, teaching again after a brief break, and I became very interested in the question of how art can come out of paying attention to the interior space, even out of being lonely... It took me a while, at least a year, to begin to gather these notes together, to realise I was writing these light boxes.”

While so many authors seem reluctant to write about the pandemic, Zambreno directly addresses it, finding value in exploring how collective psychological distress and sorrow can result in more meaningful artistic expressions, and bring forth a deeper sense of hope and connection with nature and one another. “I found an impulse to think about how we are all breathing the same air together, we are existing together,” she reflects. “One of the reasons I think that David Wojnarowicz and Derek Jarman are such the patron saints of The Light Room is because they were gardening, taking care of others, making photographs of animals, all while dying of AIDS. And I think both of them are attributes that we can make individual art, we can still find beauty while also being activists and paying attention to the collective.”

Naturally, Zambreno’s concerns with public well-being and communal grief are not limited to the pandemic: uneasiness about climate change and environmental uncertainty permeate the entire narrative of The Light Room. Here, Zambreno’s approach seems more mournful than apprehensive,

“I was working too much, teaching again after a brief break, and I became very interested in the question of how art can come out of paying attention to the interior space, even out of being lonely”

Kate Zambreno

perhaps more accurately defined by the term solastalgia, or as Zambreno puts it: “a sense of a home to which one can never completely return.” She writes about taking her daughter to outdoor classes in Prospect Park (one of New York’s major municipal parks); about children sledding down the snowy hills resulting from recordbreaking winter storms; about her family trips to the Museum of Natural History where, in the Hall of Ocean Life, she ponders about the fragility of existence, and planetary transformation. Her candid writing invites the question: is it even possible today to write about the environment without a sense of melancholy, or even despair?

On the phone she tells me that The Light Room is one of several of her recent projects nurtured by the years she spent teaching Environmental Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. “In a way, it was also new for me to think: what does it mean to write the environment?” she recalls. “I think environmental writing is writing about the ‘I’ in the suburbs, in isolation, or in the city amidst everything going on, and recognising that our relationship to the outside world is tinged with melancholy but also it can be tinged with joy.”

It all goes back to the idea of ecology, which she defines as something that goes beyond what would be traditionally considered the natural world, and instead focuses on the relationship between the human and the nonhuman, community and individuality. “Both collaboratively and in my own writing, I’ve been really interested in how to address climate change,” Zambreno explains. “In literature it seems impossible, but I think it’s okay to still have an individual lyric impulse while being aware of

the outside world and not shutting [it] out. The idea of paying attention to the small, to the everyday, to the local, is one of the ways that I try to practise optimism.” She continues, “The prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba talks about hope as a practice, and I think The Light Room was a form of practising hope, in a daily way.”

Zambreno’s hopeful outlook is also apparent in her devotion to her daughters; raising children might be seen as the ultimate display of faith in the future. Much of this memoir is dedicated to recording her impressions of childhood social dynamics, non-traditional education, and the reshaping of her worldview via witnessing her toddler discover art and nature for the first time. But despite the extensive commentary on wooden toys and Montessori methods, The Light Room remains a largely universal work, the merit of which relies more on its examination of care in general than of motherhood in particular. Zambreno elaborates: “Joseph Cornell, Derek Jarman, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar…

So many of the artists I write about in this book are queer bachelors, who did not have children, but they did take care of other things. They took care of people, they took care of their parents, siblings, their gardens, and you know, their art.”

Beyond these examples, Zambreno’s work establishes a critical dialogue with a variety of artists, authors and poets, creating a record and, simultaneously, contributing to an ecosystem of ideas around topics such as light, kinship, life and death. From Yūko Tsushima to Natalia Ginzburg, Sontag and Sebald, Kate Zambreno’s narrative voice moves between these texts and images, drawing insightful parallels with her own experiences and observations. “I think it’s the ‘I’ — who I was then — and the narrator’s thinking, that kind of anchors everything,” explains the author on the phone, creating a discernible distance between the person she is at the time of our talk, and the woman who penned these meditations from confinement nearly four years ago. “My work can often be digressive and go on all these different historical grooves, but I also think I keep returning to the same places.”

Indeed The Light Room is a cyclical book: we visit and revisit the dioramas at the Hall of Ocean Life, and the seemingly immutable trails in Prospect Park, following Zambreno and her family through birthdays and changes of seasons. Now, almost exactly a year after the US publication of her memoir, I wonder how Zambreno’s perspective on the state of the world and how she approaches it has changed. “I’ve been much more active as an organiser,” she tells me. “I think this discovery I made in The Light Room, and then this current moment of protests we live in, wanting to support protestors and seeing the way they are treated, has made this shift towards prioritising collectivity much more pronounced. We have to hope and we have to not do it passively. Again, as Mariame Kaba says: ‘let this radicalise you, not lead you to despair.’”

The Light Room is out with Corsair on 18 Jul

Great Museums Outwith the Cities

Fancy getting out of the city this summer on an affordable day trip that promises fun, adventure and a chance to learn about urgent issues from climate change to colonialism? If so, we recommend hopping on a bus or train to explore these wonderful museums

In Scotland, we’re lucky to have cities lled with wonderful venues o ering ways to explore art, culture and history. But if you already know your local museums and galleries like the back of your hand, you should set your sights on some new horizons. Plus Summer is nally here, so you’re probably itching to escape town. Time, therefore, for a day trip! One that blends imagination and creativity and takes you to some of the wonderful museums and galleries in rural areas across Scotland. The good news is that as well as being fun and a ordable, lots of these museums are easily accessible by public transport from our biggest cities, making a visit there environmentally friendly too.

David Livingstone Birthplace, Blantyre

A 20-minute train ride will take you from Glasgow Central to Blantyre Station, and from there, it’s just a short stroll to the birthplace of one of Scotland’s most famous sons:

David Livingstone.

The enduring image of this legendary Victorian-era explorer and missionary is a rather romantic one of him as a lone pioneer taking epic journeys across Sub-Saharan Africa, but this doesn’t tell the full story. The brilliant David Livingstone Birthplace museum, situated in the former textile mill building in which Livingstone was born and raised, tells his story from myriad perspectives, from his humble beginnings as a child millworker to becoming a world-famous adventurer. It’s an expansive and thoughtful exhibition that puts Livingstone’s life and work in a fuller and more comprehensive context, exploring the collaborative aspect of his missions, his role as an abolitionist and reexamining the darker side of his work within the complex and painful realities of slavery and colonialism.

Situated within 11 acres of beautiful parkland, there’s also plenty to explore beyond the exhibition – there’s nature trails, the Livingstone and the Lion sculpture designed by the great Ray Harryhausen, and a fun playpark inspired by Livingstone’s journeys down African rivers. The museum has a bustling summer schedule including arts, crafts and an archaeology school for budding adventurers. Full events calendar at david-livingstone-birthplace.org/events

Other great options from Glasgow by train include The Wyllieum, a new art gallery in the heart of Greenock, and the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine

National Mining Museum Scotland, Newtongrange

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Miners’ Strike, so it’s the perfect time to learn more about the rich history and heritage of Scotland’s coal mining industry. You’ll nd no better introduction than at the National Mining Museum Scotland, which coincidentally also turns 40 this year. Located in the site of the Lady Victoria Colliery in the village of Newtongrange, which is 20 minutes by train from Edinburgh Waverly, the museum paints a vivid, moving picture of what life was like for miners who worked this huge Victorian mine as well as their families and the wider community.

A highlight of the museum is the preserved pithead, which has remained as it was when the pit closed in 1981, and a recreated

underground roadway and coalface. There are plenty of interactive elements that will keep youngsters excited on the tour, from getting to dress up in miner gear to crawling through a replica tunnel. You can explore the two oors of exhibitions at your leisure, but for some rst-hand history of life at the coalface, you can take one of the museum’s hourly guided tours led by an ex-miner. Throughout the summer you’ll nd storytelling and craft events, talks and a Community Family Fun Day on 10 August. Full calendar of events at nationalminingmuseum.com/experience/whats-on

Other great options from Edinburgh by train include the Roman fort site at Trimontium Museum in Melrose, the bustling Kirkcaldy Galleries, and the Coastal Communities Museum in North Berwick, which can also double as a day at the seaside.

Hospital eld, Arbroath

Fancy a day of art and culture in a beautiful location just an hour’s bus ride from Dundee? Then plan a trip to the historic arts and crafts house Hospitalfield in Arbroath. The stunning arts centre and artist campus, which is housed on the site of a 13thcentury hospital, has been part of the fabric of Scotland’s art scene for well over a century. The owners of the estate, Patrick Allan and Elizabeth Fraser, were keen supporters of the arts, and they left behind an impressive collection of artworks that continues to grow, re ecting Hospital eld’s ongoing commitment to supporting contemporary visual artists.

Regular exhibitions and artist residencies ensure that there is always something new and exciting to see here. The actual building of Hospital eld House, meanwhile, is an artwork in itself, a beautifully preserved celebration of the craftsmanship of the arts and crafts movement. There are also gorgeous gardens across the estate, and the Hospital eld cafe, which uses ingredients fresh from the gardens, serves possibly the tastiest food from any museum in Scotland. As well as exhibitions, you’ll nd music events, tours, and on 17 August, a Summer Festival. Full calendar of events at hospital eld.org.uk/programme/events

Other great options by bus from Dundee include the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther and the Alyth Museum, Perthshire, which is home of the Cateran Ecomuseum

Find all the museums and galleries near you by using this QR code to access the interactive #MuseumsAreGo map!

Weathering the Storm

We talk to Jen Hadfield about her eco-memoir exploring the movements of land, people and languages on the Shetland Islands

Words: Marguerite Carson

The sense of something happening over and over again is precious in Jen Hadfield’s Storm Pegs, a poetic tracing of cyclical movements in the land, people and language that form Shetland’s fabric. The flowing prose, full of feeling, explores the seasons and movements that eschew the rigidity of the conventional calendar in favour of the movements of the weather and the sea. “That’s the thing I’m really interested in,” Hadfield explains. “When I first thought how I would shape this book, [it] was to have a series of micro-essays without a connecting narrative structure. [It] would just be moments of presentness, in place, and I wanted them to be as intense as I could possibly make them, almost a wee bit trippy in their intensity sometimes.”

In Storm Pegs, we’re given a privileged insight into Shetland, which to many is an almost mythical place characterised by its farawayness and not much else. Part of this insight is the language, Shetlaen or to some Shetlandic, which runs like a secondary narrative thread throughout the book. Each word, threaded through the prose and catalogued in definitions at the beginning of each chapter, becomes an opening into something much bi er. “It was really important to me to be really honest about my own partial understanding of place through language,” Hadfield explains. “If I just wrote about Shetland entirely from my perspective and didn’t speak about language, it would be like pretending that at least half the population doesn’t exist. And that this multiplicity of perceptions of place, and belonging and home doesn’t exist. And that felt wrong too.” She continues: “You’re trying not to speak for people.”

“Islands can be fragile places. I felt that belonging was just a very slow, gradual process of me finding out where I am”

Jen Hadfield

Throughout the book, this relationship to language is a reading of place, driven by sensation that dominates the flowing poetics of each moment. Hadfield captures the fallibility of language

and moving between languages; swilling new words around and in doing so touching the routes through Nordic, old English, Scots and elsewhere they have travelled. “As I write after the cockle and welking incident, just trying to pick up a pen and describe something that literally just happened is really difficult,” she explains. “And I felt like I was banishing myself from that state by stepping into language. So it’s always a faint imitation, but imitation is the thing I’m most interested in in writing and poetry. I’m trying vaguely to recreate something – that everyday astonishing in the wild world – in other materials.”

In 2005, while on Shetland’s southernmost island Fair Isle, Hadfield was gifted a copy of A to P: a partial dictionary of Fair Isle words with many entries missing their definitions. The book ignited something akin to a dissolution of writer’s block, an urge to write again, as well as a permanent move to Shetland. As a newcomer to a place, belonging is a process that has to be navigated personally in an intimate and often internal way: it’s not necessarily about acceptance or what is right or wrong but something much harder to articulate. “I never felt that there were tests that I had to pass or that belonging was something that could be granted by someone else, which is a wonderful courtesy I think, because it could be like that,” Hadfield explains. “Islands can be fragile places. I felt that belonging was just a very slow, gradual process of me finding out where I am. And acknowledging my own not knowing, that felt really important. I think I say at one point that the more that I discover the less I feel I know where I am, and I cherish that.”

The idea of a place as remote is something that Hadfield riles against, finding it to be a dangerous stripping of autonomy from a place and its communities, leaving them open to exploitation. “To call it remote you have to be looking from somewhere else,” she explains, “and you’re forgetting that there’s an ecosystem and a community there, for whom this is the centre of the world.” Storm Pegs reorients the world, placing the margins – of communities, of ecologies – back at the centre. “You don’t get a sense of farawayness when you live here,” Hadfield says, “you get a sense of all the people coming and going, that we’re thedestination.”

Storm Pegs is out with Picador on 11 Jul

Fantastic Man

Ahead of their inaugural all-dayer in Aviemore, we catch up with David Weaver to find out more about the promoters behind the festival – Fantastic Man

Words: Tallah Brash

You’ve been running your Fantastic Man parties in Glasgow and beyond since 2010 – what was the original premise? We just started as a way to play silly songs to our pals. Bloc asked us to do a night, and I think the main thing was to not take things too seriously. The name, the posters, the songs we played – it was all about just having maximum fun and not trying to be cool. It was very much an ‘anything goes’ policy – why not play N-Trance followed by Papa Roach followed by Hudson Mohawke? We managed to attract a pretty magical group of regulars – folk who just wanted to dance and be a bit silly. It’s always been a very open, welcoming and accepting atmosphere.

How do you feel your parties evolved since the start?

Well, we learned to DJ for one! When we started, we just had our laptops and Spotify, mashing tunes into one another... Our musical tastes have also evolved – while we’ve never been part of any ‘scene’, we’ve managed to pick up on the interesting things happening in dance music; from that first TNGHT EP, to discovering SOPHIE and PC Music... And about six years ago, Iain’s [Stewart] mum created us some amazing disco cloaks. So now people know – when the cloaks go on, it’s time to dance.

As well as running regular nights in Glasgow, you’ve played a number of festivals and events outwith the city over the years. What is it that inspires you to take Fantastic Man further afield? It’s just always a joy to be asked to go anywhere. Some of our favourite sets have been at festivals – people are definitely in the mindset to cut loose and totally go for it.

I last caught you on Ei as part of last year’s Howlin’ Fling and it was an absolute riot. This

July, you’re hosting The Speyside Fantastic Party in Aviemore. How did this come about? Why Aviemore?

Johnny Lynch has been an amazing supporter of us and we’ve been regulars on Ei for a few years now. It feels like a spiritual home for us. So when we heard there wasn’t going to be a Howlin’ Fling this year, we decided we needed a big Highland party to get us through the summer. The Old Bridge Inn is a legendary venue. I got in touch asking if they might be up for hosting a big outdoor party and they were totally on board.

What’s the plan for the day? Give us the hard sell! Oh, it is going to be a powerful day! The Old Bridge Inn is in an amazing spot, right next to the River Spey. They have a big beautiful space out front, with a wee outdoor stage. So from 4pm til 10pm, we’ve curated a free party with live music from Free Love and Pictish Trail, while Junglehussi and ourselves will be DJing. It’s free entry, all ages, so we’re hoping for a big community turn-out, along with a good few folk travelling from further afield. There will be food-trucks and plenty of beer, and maybe even some swimming in the river, weather permitting. Then, for the harder partyers, we’ve got an afterparty in Aviemore’s legendary nightclub The Vault.

What have been some of your highlights over the years?

The first night back in Bloc after lockdown was pretty special – there was just such a sense of joy and relief to be back in a room with all your pals, getting sweaty together. Beyond that, our times on Ei stand out – DJing til 7am after a Jon Hopkins set as the sun comes up is hard to beat... Oh yeah – and that time our pal Lindsey surprised us by revealing she’d got a tattoo of us DJing on her arm!

Will this year’s Speyside Party be a one off? I’d love to do more wee wild Highland parties.

“Folk love a wee escape from the city, and if you can tie it up with some amazing music, then absolutely ideal”

David Weaver, Fantastic Man

There are so many brilliant village halls in rural areas in Scotland – folk love a wee escape from the city, and if you can tie it up with some amazing live music and DJs, then absolutely ideal. We might try and do a wee tour in 2025.

Back in Glasgow, you have Fantastic Susan at the start of July in Glasgow, and a Charli XCX afterparty planned for later in the year. What else does 2024 have in store for Fantastic Man? We were super chuffed that Susan Bear asked us to host her album launch party. She’s amazing. We’ve got our regular night in Nice N Sleazy (Hot Fat), and we’ll also be doing more shows in The Rum Shack, which we love. We’ll hopefully be hosting a few more after-parties for festivals (core. and The Great Western to name a couple) – we’re just up for doing anything weird and fun and a little bit wonky.

Tell us a joke.

Did you hear about the magic tractor? He was driving down the road, then turned into a field.

The Speyside Fantastic Party, The Old Bridge Inn, Aviemore, 4-10pm; afterparty at The Vault, Aviemore, until 3am; Fantastic Susan, Nice N Sleazy, 5 Jul; Vroom Vroom, Nice N Sleazy, 2 Dec

Scan the QR code for a fantastic playlist made especially for us; follow Fantastic Man on Instagram @wearefantasticman

Out The Cities

Aberdeenshire’s finest clubbing export – Massie – discusses Doric, Boiler Room, and a brand-new game

Words: Cammy Gallagher

Where did you grow up?

In the countryside near Fyvie, two farms from the late John Strachan’s, a big Bothy ballad singer. He recorded an album with Alan Lomax, a famous ethnomusicologist, in the 1950s, but turned down an American tour in favour of his family farm. He was a thoroughbred teuchter. I love that, but I’m keen to see the world yi ken?

What’s it been like to tour Bothy Bass?

I love doing Bothy Bass but I’m wary of becoming typecast, so we don’t do the shows too often; around two or three a year, but energy is always mental. We had to slow it down a bunch because people were getting hurt in mosh pits. I was like hud’ the heid min!

You don’t wanna go Limp Bizkit mode. Exactly, fuckin’ Widstock. It’s nice to see folk so into it, especially such a young audience. Our grandparents were discouraged from speaking Doric by teachers because it was seen as low class, so they’re happy to see it celebrated by bairns now. There’s aye gan ti be mare chunce fer a hoolie – just want to keep it a rare treat. Some days I feel crushed by the weight of new ideas I wish I could make, and if I don’t exercise them I start feeling depressed about it.

When did all the ideas begin?

I’ve known Miles – the other half of Bothy Bass – since nursery and made short films since childhood. In early teens, we were on either side of the goth / ned divide respectively… it was the black or Burberry pill. But our mums were pals so we’d get together on weekends, smoke wee hash zoots and create all manner of shite without the pressure of conforming to social groups. I ran a website for homemade 2D games, music and skits that was eventually blocked by school because of our unfinished, direct-to-web classic Finding Emo.

What led you towards electronica?

Drum 'n' bass felt familiar through games like Ape Escape, Rollcage, and Bomberman. I started making music at 15. I’d go to Jungle Nation at Kef – it was cutting-edge. The Minival beach parties were bangin’ too. Also, I was heavy into piracy… you’d be searching for something on LimeWire or Kazaa and stumble upon all this other shit.

I’ve seen your paper The Pirate Bay Case. Big up all the torrent trackers. Piracy is having another golden age right now… streaming is the norm, so no one’s policing it. I put all the Truth Hz stuff on Soulseek... I’d rather someone went out and earnestly searched than have it passively absorbed through playlists on low-paying streaming sites. I founded the project with friends through the Boiler Room Crowdsourced series, and then we brought in Parkinson White. He’s mega Soundcloud famous, but unknown back home. Oil-powered money culture often made it uncool to support small independent things but that’s thankfully changing.

“Oil-powered money culture often made it uncool to support small independent things but that’s thankfully changing”

Massie

How did you get involved with Boiler Room?

I created a compilation of strange Boiler Room moments back in 2013. It blew up overnight, so they offered me a job. I got pulled onto shows since I could work cameras… of which BR did around 276 throughout 2019. There’s a scene and a setting for every type of music… yes, even electro swing. People talk about culture vulturism but it’s complicated; a lot of shows were subsidised by the company while it lost money every year for a decade. Since DICE bought them over, it’s become more of a machine, so it can survive… It’s just whether you’d rather it die as this underground thing since it can’t exist in a vacuum.

What would you rather?

Difficult question. It seems romantic to go out on a high, but I’m proud of everything we built, even if it sometimes feels that the subsequent livestreaming gold rush is saturating the culture.

Did you enjoy playing in Ullapool?

I was proud of that baile/baile party. Part of my job was going to clubs all over the world… how is it that this remote fishing village hosted one of the best nights I’ve been to? If you can go to the end of the Earth where’s for some random night with a buzz about it, do it. It’s so much better than some

into Instagram stories.

Could you explain the VR 360° sets you’ve created?

As with the other ideas this has an origin in parodying club culture. Cercle came out of nowhere with these ostentatious streams at iconic tourist traps. I thought: “where would they not think to do one?” In a video game. I love making 3D sets, but it’s not my property at the end of the day… it’s fan art. You’re a guest in somebody’s house. Most companies are supportive though – Activision reached out to collaborate, and the creator of Tekken reposted us.

I’ve heard there’s an original Truth Hz game in the pipeline?

I’m building an open world in Unreal. You run around and collect samples to make tunes which you can then play in the different clubs. I want to crowdfund it soon so it can be played on PCs and phones. We’re gonna do all our releases for the foreseeable via the game, starting with my own new EP.

Into the Past

In her intimate new documentary Bye Bye Tiberias, Lina Soualem turns her camera on her actor mother, Hiam Abbass, as she returns to Tiberias, her ancestral village in Palestine

Words: Anahit Behrooz

How do you tell the story of a country – of a people – when no national archive exists? This question lies at the heart of Lina Soualem’s documentary Bye Bye Tiberias, a film that traces one family’s displacements and departures from Palestine, and in doing so, creates a new archive out of a historiographical gap. Tangling together the personal and political, Soualem’s second film – much like her first, which examined her paternal family’s departure from Algeria – turns to her mother, Succession actress Hiam Abbass, and the generations of women before her, pulling together old home footage alongside carefully excavated material from the years following the Nakba.

“History with a big H has affected [our] most intimate relationships”

Lina Soualem

The seeds of the film, Soualem explains, began with a desire to trace Abbass’s decision to leave her Palestinian village of Deir Hanna to pursue her dreams. Yet as layers of footage and photography and writing mount and mount, the past bleeds into the past bleeds into the past, centring the family’s forced migration from Tiberias after the Nakba, and the ruptures that have come to define Palestinian identity.

“I cannot separate one story from another,” Soualem explains of her doubled approach, “because the history with a big H has affected [our] most intimate relationships and the ways that we can tell or cannot tell our story. So for me, the intimate and the collective are really imbricated. What I wanted was to focus on the individual paths of each of the women in the family so that they could exist as individuals and not be seen as an abstract mass, as Palestinians are usually represented.”

The process of constructing the film, its intricacies of personal memory and collective history, was knotty and laborious: Soualem combed through old family archives all while filming her family in the present, so that present-day material turned into its own archive as the filming went on. Finding material that would speak to the context against which the family’s lives played out was more complex; Palestine has no official national archive, and Soualem had to turn to tangential sources, pulling material from the archives of historic colonial and military presences in the area and reframing them through a decolonial Palestinian voice.

“Even when you take institutional archives, they all come from a person or a subjectivity,” Soualem says. “In the context where there is no body of national archives, each personal archive becomes part of the collective archive and enriches the collective memory.” This work happens, Soualem explains, at a micro and macro level: curatorial practices across Palestine, for example at the

Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, draw from family photos and ephemera to point to a broader history. They contribute, Soualem says, “to telling the story of a diversified society,” one that has been systematically erased from public and historic memory.

Bye Bye Tiberias is ultimately a story about departure(s), broadly conceived: Abbass’s self-imposed exile for Hollywood, and her eventual return with her small daughter in the 90s, is part of a legacy of ongoing ruptures that have come to construct the Palestinian experience. Abbass’s exile was a choice, Soualem explains, but it was a choice that was born from the family’s eviction from Tiberias and their lives under occupation. “There’s different kinds of exile in the film,” Soualem says. “The chosen exile of my mother… it’s chosen [but] it’s also the consequence of the previous exiles. It’s not only a personal choice.

“It’s kind of the metaphor of exile,” she continues, “which is a constant state of trying to find your place in the world. As Edward Said said, it’s one of the greatest tragedies that a human being has to face, but it also allows you to recreate yourself and reinvent yourself in the margins.”

This recreation happened to Abbass as she left, and carved out a new path and career for herself, but it also happened on her return. Old home footage shows her re-entangled with her family, half-alienated from and half-attached to the familiarity of her previous world; newer footage, captured by Soualem, shows her mother in the present-day back in Palestine, uncovering and retreading the ghostly paths of her family’s displacement. The past, it rapidly becomes clear, is not a finished thing: it lingers in empty homes and dust-covered streets, within the very land and its newly inscribed borders.

“I feel like there’s more urgency to represent the past when it’s not over, more than when it is over,” Soualem says, “because it’s a way to prove your existence at a moment when there is an intention of erasure. The past becomes important to understand the present, to find your roots again, to try to get an idea how you can perpetuate and maintain your legacy.” The violence of dispossession, while not wholly reclaimed, becomes fertile ground for a new rebuilding: a future that can emerge from the past. “I was born of this departure. This fracture,” Soualem says in a voiceover. In Bye Bye Tiberias, so much is born from the fractures; the goodbyes that might, one day, become a reacquaintance.

Bye Bye Tiberias is released 28 Jun by TAPE Collective

Resisting Erasure

At this year’s Glasgow International, many artists focused on Scotland’s colonial project and its historical and contemporary repercussions – the continued systematic erasure of Black stories and voices being one of them

Agurgling wall-based sculpture vaguely reminiscent of a fountain spouts rum through a tube, glazing a large sheet of steel, infusing the air with the sweet scent of rum. Perhaps a re-imagining of the public fountains that mark many of Britain’s civic spaces, Untitled (Falls of Clyde, 1492, 1707-) acts almost like stark antimonument to their archaic excess, while also noting the invention of rum in the colonial Caribbean, its creation and transportation facilitated by waterways. Camara Taylor’s exhibition [mouthfeel] atTramway, part of Glasgow International, examines what the artist describes as Scotland’s “entanglement with racial capitalism” – chiefly, how Scotland’s involvement in the transatlantic chattel slavery and its wider colonial project has shaped contemporary Scotland. The exhibition brings together years of research (which is still very much ongoing) into historical traces that register Black presences in Scotland.

The bubbling rum punctuates a beautiful but mournful audio work by 皚桐 (Ai Túng) titled river psalm, which ebbs and meanders around you in the gallery space. The references that crop up in the exhibition are broad; the widening of the River Clyde to accommodate larger cargo ships to facilitate colonial trade; an image of a Black family in the Gorbals in the 1930s, annotated with text; a giclee print makes reference to the 2019 drowning of a still-unnamed Black man who was chased into the River Clyde by the police. Indexing, reimagining and reworking are deployed readily throughout this exhibition; notes accompanying photographs are scribbled out; photographic materials are worked into and over; the rum is funnelled through a tube,

recollected and recycled.

Meanwhile, at the festival’s Florence Street venue, Josie KO and Kialy Tihngang’s sculptural and moving image installation also examines the presences and absences of Black people in Scotland. Titled fir gorma (which translates as ‘blue men’ from old Irish), the exhibition shares a name with an ongoing research project developed by KO, which

Words: Harvey Dimond

focuses on the presence of Black people in Scotland in the pre-colonial era; in particular, Black people from North Africa enslaved by the Vikings in the 9th century and taken to Scotland and Ireland. KO’s historical research subverts and resists the myth that the presence of people of colour in Scotland is a 20th-century phenomenon. KO invited Tihngang to create an installation together in response to fir gorma, which Tihngang describes as “such an unfixed, uncharted piece of history” – this both allowed for conversations to form and grow, but also allowed Tihngang to “expand [her] concurrent research on Black Scottish identity, Blackness in high fantasy, precolonial African traditions, and Blackness in pop culture.” KO initially had doubts about pursuing the research, she tells me: “At first I felt so insecure about researching such a complex and unknown history – I am definitely no historian – but now I have felt confident that as an artist I can share my research and present it in an accessible way, showing my perspective, which as a Black woman, doesn’t usually get such a platform.”

KO’s epic papier mâché sculpture of a woman is painted in oceanic blues, towering up to the first floor of the building, emblazoned with words of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Titled Monument to fir gorma, the artist has created a cavernous, kaleidoscopic space inside the sculpture – ceramic busts greet visitors, one blowing a kiss, another sticking her tongue out, water splashing playfully from a fountain. Emerging from the sparkling blue tunnels KO has constructed, Tihngang’s film is projected on to a shapely oval screen. Neyinka and the Silver Gong is similarly playful and features the artist playing a multitude of characters in an extended trailer for a fantasy blockbuster revolving around the fir gorma. The film

subverts traditional tropes and representations of Scotland as white, homogenous and virtuous, but is also incredibly poignant in its exploration of displacement, movement and longing.

KO says her imagining of fir gorma was “very other-worldly, so I wanted the whole installation to feel like you were entering this made-up fir gorma world… this time Kialy’s specific fir gorma film world. I was really proud of how effectively and harmoniously this constructed idea worked in the end. Through osmosis of working together the curves of Kialy’s screen was compatible with the curve of my big construction and the curves of my ceramic pieces.” Tihngang agrees: “I think the synergy of the exhibition is testament to the strength of the conversations that Josie and I had at the beginning of the project, where the final outcomes weren’t fixed yet, but the potential energy of dreaming was so strong.”

Erasure is certainly still on my mind when I visit the Sandra George exhibition upstairs at Florence Street. Curated by The Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions, the photographs by the Black Scottish community worker and artist Sandra George are real treasures, snapshots of the working class and immigrant communities she lived with taken over several decades. George sadly passed away in 2013, her work having never being shown in Scotland, but this collaboration with Craigmillar Now (who hold George’s archive) been her work to life, enhanced and reframed through a commission by Christian Noelle Charles, who created several portraits of George and curated a discussion and community event held in her honour during the festival.

Camara Taylor, [mouthfeel], Tramway, continues until 18 Aug

Women in Revolt!

This month, we find out more about Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990, the radical survey exhibition currently on show at National Galleries Scotland: Modern Two. Linsey Young, Curator of British Contemporary Art at Tate Britain, where the show originated, tells us more

Women in Revolt! has been widely celebrated as a pivotal display of feminist work. How did the exhibition initially come about?

I was brought up by a working-class single mum and as her only child we had a very close relationship. To me, women like her and her friends were goddesses, and growing up and moving into the world it astonished me that wider society did not see them as I did.

As I moved through my career that sense got stronger – so many of our institutions are run by men, and women’s voices, particularly those of older women, women of colour, queer women, trans women and working-class women are overlooked or intentionally ignored. In terms of art history I’ve been working in major organisations for over 15 years and it’s always astounded me that in British art there is a massive gap in our knowledge from those critical decades of the 1970s and 80s. I include myself in that; I had no idea what I would nd as I was never taught these histories.

And what do you hope the audience is taking away from the exhibition?

I have two favourite reactions. One was a woman saying she was going home to leave her husband because Women in Revolt! made her realise she didn’t need to accept her current personal situation. Then a security guard at Tate telling me that reading the reports of women’s labour in Women and Work by Margaret Harrison, Mary Kelly and Kay Hunt had made him realise how little he did to help his wife with their children and that he was going to change that.

Personally, I’m always hoping for a revolution and the destruction of patriarchy. However, perhaps more manageable is a hope that people feel at home, that they see their own lives represented and celebrated and that it is empowering to them.

Three works on show in Women In Revolt! have been acquired for the national collection on behalf of the people of Scotland. They’re part of an ongoing strategy to increase the number of works by women in the collection. Emma Gillespie, Assistant Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, National Galleries of Scotland introduces two works by Penny Slinger As one of the pioneers of the feminist avant-garde, it was essential to include Slinger’s work in Women in Revolt!. Since the late 1960s, she has worked across a range of media – including sculpture, painting, photo-collage, lm and performance – often employing her own body, both as a subject and a tool.

Wedding Cake – Open Secret and Bride and Groom – Ceremonial Cutting of the Cake belong to Slinger’s Bride’s Cake (1973), a provocative series which explores food, nourishment, eroticism and their gendered associations. In these striking and empowering images, Slinger wears a threedimensional costume that transforms her into a surreal hybrid – she is both the bride and the wedding cake.

The costume has a detachable slice that, when ‘cut into’, exposes the artist’s genitalia. Parodying the traditional wedding ritual, Slinger draws attention to the complex power relations that hide at the core of such conventions. In merging the female nude with an enticing consumable, Slinger pokes fun at the fetishisation of women’s body parts by the male gaze.

Lucy Askew, Chief Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, National Galleries of Scotland introduces a work by Sam Ainsley Warrior Woman V: The Artist (1996) is a truly monumental wall-based work. At nearly three and a half metres high it depicts a striding gure, setting out to confront and resist the patriarchy. Ainsley has noted that her work considers “how we might bridge the gap between women’s experience of the world and that of men”, and this work is indicative of her

interest in the politics of the body and feminism. Towering over the viewer, the work is made of acrylic paint on canvas with cotton binding – this and its strong colour palette, dominated by blue and red, might suggest the language of protest banners.

Sam Ainsley is a hugely in uential gure in the Scottish art scene – she co-founded the Masters of Fine Art Course at GSA in the early 1990s. Her role as an educator and champion of younger generations of artists has been signi cant in creating the vibrant artistic community in this country. It is an essential work in Women in Revolt! and it’s been terri c to see it at Tate Britain, and now at Modern Two in Edinburgh. We are thrilled that visitors are able to encounter this major work from the national collection in this landmark show.

Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990 is open to visit in Modern Two until 26 January 2025. Tickets are on sale now!

A Queer Ascent

Chalk-on-hands, carabiner clips – the climbing centre is the new queer place to be. We speak to the frontrunners in Scotland’s queer climbing scene about representation in sports, creating safe spaces, and finding selfacceptance through community

Iwatch a video of a woman hanging off a climbing hold, lip-syncing to a viral podcast clip.

“Why do all lesbians climb? A sport that requires finger, forearm, arm strength, hip flexibility, problem solving, short fingernails.” I’ve lost track of how many variations of this Instagram video I’ve scrolled past today. “The only thing that could make climbing better for lesbians is if we could use our tongues.”

Their conclusion is a tad reductive, but in the few years I’ve been climbing, I’ve found a seed of truth in it. I first went climbing on a work bouldering trip, distracting myself from the end of a recent sapphic dalliance. It was unlike any sport I had experienced before. A facility where rainbow flags hung proud, a mid-session oat flat white was encouraged and friendly punters of all ages offered advice.

I was certainly not the first to find a queer affinity with Scotland’s climbing scene. The sport’s many forms – be it bouldering, speed, ice or lead – have witnessed a meteoric uptake in the last few years. The introduction of competition climbing into the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has aided its popularity, along with the likes of Harry Styles and Jason Momoa championing the recreation. So, how has a sport synonymous with six-packed men dangling off cliff faces become favoured by queer communities internationally?

The brilliance of climbing is its levelling quality. Rather than competing with others, you focus on the battle with your own strength, agility and determination. As Emma Davidson, a former competitive climber and head of Eden Rock Edinburgh’s youth team puts it, “It’s a really nice alternative to more regimented sports; it helps you connect with your body.”

Cam Proctor, overseer of Glasgow Queer Adventure, attests to this unity between the mental and physical. “When I’m not going to the climbing gym, I get hung up on what’s not masculine enough,” he says. “I feel pretty dysphoric sometimes.” While the sport is no silver bullet to self-acceptance, Proctor appreciates its advantages. “It really takes me out of my head and puts me into a physical space.”

Proctor first entered a boulder room ten years ago, while in the process of transitioning. The accessibility of bouldering – an equipment-light, rope-free form of climbing – has made it a firm favourite of climbing newcomers. Unlike the bulk of Scotland’s queer social spaces, alcohol is not a customary ingredient. For non-drinkers, like Proctor, its sobriety is appealing. He reflects on his youth: “It would’ve been so handy to have that space... it would’ve been so good for me.”

Since 2022, queer climbing nights have been a regular event at The Climbing Academy centres in Glasgow. Proctor has seen the collective

Words: Myrtle Boot

Illustration: Mahnoor Khan

flourish, “[The events] grew organically from the participants who were going.” Today, the WhatsApp group stands at 150 members. “There’s this supportive culture,” he explains. “They give us an instructor on our Sunday sessions for free, who is also queer.”

Davidson has been witness to the sport’s shifting image since they first took to the walls at age seven. Despite initially believing it to be “a boy’s sport”, Emma soon made the cut for their local youth team, and later the GB Development Squad. “I was lined up to go to three different Europeans, then COVID happened.” Since the pandemic, Emma traded competitions for championing the sport’s queer community, staging the first dedicated queer nights in September 2022. “Those first two sessions were insane,” they say. “There were so many people that showed up.”

With countless queer nights, two pride parties and an ever-growing LGBTQ+ presence at Eden Rock, Davidson’s impact is being felt. Their fresh approach includes reclaiming playground activities. “We start our sessions off by doing a PE game, we’d play tig or dodgeball,” Davidson explains. “For a lot of queer kids, [they didn’t] get involved in PE at school.” Emma describes it as a “do-over”, “a chance to experience those games in a happier environment.” The sheer number of returners testifies to their thoughtful methods.

Last spring, Proctor and Davidson both attended Climb Out, the UK’s first queer outdoor climbing festival. The success of the event cemented Proctor’s intention to take Queer Adventures

“It’s a really nice alternative to more regimented sports, it helps you connect with your body”

Emma Davidson

Glasgow out into the Scottish wilds. “There’s only a few people who have the experience and equipment,” Proctor says. This sits in disproportion with the many climbers interested in these trips. “It would be nice to shift that balance eventually.”

Similarly, Emma has set their sights on an instructor qualification, allowing them to lead groups on outdoor rock. “In Scotland, there aren’t many instructors who have the qualification to take groups outdoor climbing,” they say, noting that only a fraction offer a queer presence. Davidson credits their youth squad climbing coach, Rachael Carr, as their role model. “[She’s from] where I’m from,” they explain. “Being that confident and that open was really inspiring to see.”

The impact of queer representation in sport can’t be understated. “It’s nice to feel like you’re giving kids a representation,” Davidson reflects. “[It] made me feel less alienated.” There’s no doubt the visibility of Proctor and Davidson within Scotland’s climbing community will be having the same effect.

Unboxing the Ballot

General election season is here – and, honestly, we’re not all that excited. One writer unpacks why Scotland’s young voters are feeling disillusioned by yet another polling day and how they’re making their voices heard beyond party politics

Words: Oscar Lund

From Brexit to gender self-identification, Scotland is often found resisting prevailing attitudes in English politics. The 2016 EU referendum saw the majority of Scots vote to remain (62% to 38%); meanwhile the last general election saw the Conservatives take only six seats in Scotland, with the SNP taking 48. Despite this, Scotland still left the EU with the rest of the UK, and the country has been drastically affected by Conservative policies of austerity.

With a general election right around the corner, I spoke to young adults living in Scotland about their feelings towards the state of Westminster’s politics. For some young people, like Urban Planning student Gregor, 25, there is still some hope for mainstream politics. “The SNP for me right now is more for Scotland than Labour is,” he says. For Gregor, attitudes towards Scotland from Westminster are rarely even expressed. “As I started to try and consume news channels and figure out what actually goes on in Westminster… there’s nothing, there’s nothing about Scotland.” When parliament treats England as the most important – and often only – country in Britain, it’s no wonder that Scottish voters feel sidelined by Westminster politics.

Although, in Gregor’s view, both major English parties “don’t have much of an interest in Scotland”, the SNP offers a route for Scotland to govern itself in accordance with its population’s political views. However, some are unconvinced even with the SNP’s Scotland-focused campaign.

James*, 26, a chef in Edinburgh’s New Town, says, “I usually vote Green. It’s not a party I’m hugely behind, but… they’re the best out of the bunch.” For young voters looking for radical change in housing policy, energy infrastructure, and wealth inequality, the Green Party appears to be the only option – but with their minority position in parliament, a vote for progressive action often feels like a vote wasted.

A general dissatisfaction with party politics was echoed by others I spoke to. “I think democracy works. I think that it’s good to give people a

say. I just think it’s more a question of ‘is the political system we interact with now – can we call that democracy?’ I would say we probably can’t,” says Miranda*, 24, a bartender and postgrad student in Edinburgh’s Old Town.

Alongside standard media corruption, this distrust in the UK’s democratic process partly stems from the continued electoral victories for a party that has delivered us five Prime Ministers (two of whom were never actually elected in the first place) in the last 14 years. Additionally, the Conservatives have done nothing to tackle the skyrocketing rents and spiralling living costs that continue to make it harder for young people to start their lives. As Miranda notes, “The precarity of the economy at the moment is such a damaging thing on so many young people.”

“When parliament treats England as the most important – and often only –country in Britain, it’s no wonder that Scottish voters feel sidelined by Westminster politics”

This sentiment is perhaps most prominent with regards to housing. “I feel pretty hopeless in front of housing,” says Gregor. Despite the SNP’s attempts to limit unaffordable housing with a rent increase limit that ended in March of this year, rent in the Lothian counties has, according to the ONS, increased by at least 15% over the last year. When the county’s average rent for a two bed flat

is sitting at £1,247 per month – not cheap even when split with a flatmate – what hope do young renters have when trying to save for a deposit?

Outside of the country’s economic downturn, other issues remain pertinent to younger voters. The UK has seen people of all ages taking to the streets and university campuses in protest of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have neglected to take a strong position against Benjamin Netanyahu’s military action in Palestine, a fact that many young people will not forget. “I think that people are going to continue to be more politically active and the major parties do need to figure out a way to respond to this because it’s not going to be going away,” says Miranda, regarding mainstream apathy to Gaza. While Palestinians are subjected to horrific conditions and a number of elected MPs across the UK refuse to take meaningful action, the ballot box can seem somewhat redundant. Instead, Edinburgh’s voters – of all ages – have taken action via encampments and hunger strikes outside Holyrood and inside the University of Edinburgh’s Old College.

So where does this leave us? With both major Westminster parties deeply unpopular with young voters in Scotland, are there any alternatives to backing the mainstream? Gregor hopes to “get involved with boots on the ground” SNP party organising, using his education in urban planning to try to make a difference to people’s lives. For others, like Miranda, “getting more involved with direct action” is a more effective path to take when voting for either major party yields little action. However you feel about Scotland’s political future, it’s clear that there is dissatisfaction among younger voters. But there is still a desire to impact the world in a meaningful way. Whether through the use of skills gained via education, local advocacy, or direct action, the young people I spoke with seemed determined to have their voices heard.

*Names have been changed for anonymity

Stepping Stones

We take a look at the current state of festivals in Scotland, and highlight four grassroots and community-focused parties to check out in Glasgow this July and August

Following the dark days of the pandemic, the live music industry seemed to have bounced back surprisingly well when lockdowns were lifted. A voracious appetite for shows and festivals, a sense of making up for lost time, and a (shortlived) increase in disposable income created a bumper year for the industry in 2022, especially on the festival circuit as bands were also keen to get back out there after a prolonged absence.

However, the enthusiasm quickly cooled as a certain sense of normality resumed in 2023: a cost of living crisis inspired by callous political decisions, coupled with the war in Ukraine and global economic uncertainty, forced the prices up for both punters and touring bands. This trend continues as even the bi est artists are being forced to cancel tours due to poor ticket sales/over-zealous promoters/the general cost of touring, as cited by Black Keys and Animal Collective, while festivals big and small rapidly disappear from the cultural calendar, most recently Connect, Riverside and Mugstock in Scotland.

Despite all these difficulties, this summer in Glasgow is seeing a glut of exciting festivals that cater to specific audiences with a focus on local artists and concerns. This trend towards the boutique and closely curated sits in opposition to

the monolithic festivals that typically hoover up all the attention. This isn’t surprising given they are where the household names can be found, but these smaller events are demonstrating that there is an alternative if you’re culturally adventurous and willing to try something different.

Glasgow Weekender

@ SWG3, Glasgow, 2-3 Aug

Lineup: Belle & Sebastian, Camera Obscura, CMAT

↳ Starting with Gasgow Weekender makes sense as it’s clearly the bi est of those we’re considering, but it’s also logical as it’s being curated by a band who helped normalise the concept of the artist-run festival. “We did break some ground,” says Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, speaking about the original 1999 Bowlie Weekender. “It was a boutique festival, curated by one band, with the (sort of) idea of bringing down the barriers between band and audience, bringing everyone together.”

Spread over two days, this is the latest Bowlie event orchestrated by the beloved band. The previous edition really pushed the proverbial out: the Boaty Weekender in 2019 that saw the band set sail in the Med with a host of indie royalty. This time, they’re working closer to home: “[After Boaty] we thought we could do something a

little more green next time, and what’s more green than doing a festival in your own city?” The sustainability aspect is clearly important to Murdoch and co, but the goals behind the events haven’t changed drastically in 25 years: “We want to have a good time, and for everyone coming to have a good time!”

Murdoch acknowledges that the band have been lucky to secure the SWG3 complex, with its mix of indoor and outdoor spaces, and newly opened garden area, for the weekend. “It’s the ideal choice – we played it six, seven years ago and had such a great time, and we’ve watched it develop since... and I’m such a train fanatic; I love that the trains are going behind you while you play the show.”

As well as a lineup heavily skewed towards Scottish acts, there’re also going to be local vendors for food and merch, ensuring that every feasible facet is keeping things in the community. Previous Bowlie editions have also included accommodation, something not possible this time round, but Murdoch ensures us there’ll be a few “fringe events” to make it a unique experience, including a film screening and on-location tour, lunchtime pub quiz (all hosted by himself), and maybe even a bowls tournament.

M4 Festival

@ Barras Art and Design, Glasgow, 3 Aug Lineup: Bemz, Becky Sikasa, Joell

↳ From the largest to the smallest event featured here, there’s something equally exciting happening on the same weekend over in the East End. The M4 Festival is a one-dayer utilising the unique concert spaces in the BAaD Centre, focused on homegrown rap and R’n’B talent. It’s been created and curated by Bemz, a breakout star and unofficial ambassador of the Scottish scene, who has been pushing rap in Scotland forward since his youth growing up in Ayr. Early events like Respect The Wave demonstrated his early initiative, and an ethos that continues through to today: “If people aren’t gonna book me, I’m gonna book myself.” Bemz has been betting on himself since day one and now he’s providing a platform for others.

“If you don’t give people opportunities, how can they flourish?” Bemz

“You don’t see too much of the younger generation, don’t see as many Black and Brown kids thriving in these spaces, you don’t see local rappers or R‘n’B artists at big events,” he tells us with an infectious sense of purpose. “If you don’t give people opportunities, how can they flourish?” For some of these artists it’ll be their first time playing to such big crowds, though Bemz is clear that many are well past due for it. “It’s all about making money, but if we’re not investing in the grassroots, there won’t be much of an industry.”

While not expecting to go up against the heavyweights like TRNSMT, there is a hope that such an event can help get us to the point where local rap and R‘n’B slots don’t feel like token gestures. There’s pressure personally for Bemz as the banner name here, but as he confidently asserts: “Even if it doesn’t do the numbers, we still want to entice people back, to show it can be done. Big risk, big reward, innit.”

core.

@ The Hug & Pint and Woodside Halls, Glasgow, 2-4 Aug

Lineup: Gilla Band, Mclusky, Empire State Bastard

↳ Another popular mode of festival at the moment is the multi-venue event, such as The Great Western and Stag & Da er. And if you criss-cross back across Glasgow, core. is another such one, providing a haven for, as organiser Ryan

Drever says, “like-minded folk to be in great company while getting their fucking heads caved in with incredible, bone-crushing live music.” core. is split between The Hug & Pint and Woodside Halls, another excellent example of using an atypical concert space, and caters to the heavier crowd with a mix of local and international acts.

In a similar vein to M4, Drever sees core. as a necessary step to the bi er festivals, one that operates “at a grassroots level, providing a pathway for development as well as a formative opportunity to cut your teeth among peers and influences.” Smaller, local bands sometimes get lost in the noise and crowds of big festivals, but more closely curated events “are vital for providing a platform for exciting new music, and usually offer a more level playing field, particularly when you sta er the schedule to allow some of the newer, lesserknown acts to get a decent sized audience.”

Pop Mutations

@ Multi-venue, Glasgow, 18-21 Jul Lineup: Pictish Trail, R.A s, LYLO

↳ Pop Mutations is a joint effort between Stereo, Mono, The Flying Duck, The Old Hairdresser’s and The Glad Cafe. It grew out of streaming events put on during lockdown, blossoming into an inaugural in-person festival in 2022. After a year off last year, it’s now returned with a slightly different focus. Venue Programmer at Stereo, Ross Keppie tells us: “This time round we decided to make it almost all local, just to highlight all the great artists in Glasgow.” Each venue books their own lineup, though there’s consultation between them to ensure a good flow and variety across the four days. “We want representation of more diverse groups, not just the usual ‘guys in bands’, to give a platform to more marginalised groups.”

With both Pop Mutations and Freakender (to be announced in due course) returning this year, there’s evidence of a healthy scene at present, but it’s still a precarious situation. Cost of living and inflated touring costs make it difficult for both bands and crowds at the moment, but the value for money you get across one weekend, as well as being able to support local artists and businesses, should be a no-brainer.

As indicated, there are plenty of good intentions behind these events, including commitments to platforming young and underrepresented artists, supporting local businesses and encouraging sustainable ways to enjoy music festivals. All those we speak to agree that the bi er festivals serve a purpose, but these smaller events are where the foundational work goes in, where those from the community are able to use their knowledge and means to give back. “[M4 Festival] should be a stepping stone” to that next level, muses Bemz.

“We decided to make it almost all local, just to highlight all the great artists in Glasgow”

Ross Keppie, Pop Mutations

With the exception of the Glasgow Weekender, all are hopeful that their festival will become a fixture in the annual cultural calendar. And with the uniformly strong lineups this year, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. As for Glasgow Weekender, Murdoch seems ready to pass the baton to others in the festival curation business. “Maybe for the future we’ll be looking at new ideas...” he reflects enigmatically, “Watch this space.” Indeed.

Pop Mutations, 18-21 Jul / @popmutations

Glasgow Weekender, 2-3 Aug / @bellesglasgow core., 2-4 Aug / @corethefestival

M4 Festival, 3 Aug / @m4festival

Community Interest

Following its shock closure in April, The Jazz Bar in Edinburgh will reopen on 1 July – to celebrate, we catch up with the venue’s new co-owners, Nick and Justyna Mushlin

While profits from Taylor Swift’s record breaking Eras Tour are quite literally in the billions, the grassroots end of the industry is not in good health. In the last 12 months, 125 grassroots music venues (GMVs) in the UK have closed their doors, with 38% of all UK GMVs reporting a financial loss. But these smaller venues are a necessary part of the live music ecosystem – they help harness and foster entire communities, and give early-career artists the chance to cut their teeth; without them most of your favourite artists wouldn’t exist.

Of course, the closure of music venues is not new. Over the years in Edinburgh we’ve lost a number of beloved spots including The Venue, Studio 24, Electric Circus, Henry’s Cellar Bar, and, well, depressingly, the list goes on. While it’s always deeply upsetting, rarely does it come as a surprise, and so amid the current cost of living crisis, it was truly unsurprising when The Jazz Bar announced its immediate closure on 10 April. But, a lot has happened since then, and in a shock twist, The Jazz Bar is set to reopen its doors on 1 July!

“There’s been so much support from the community. We just couldn’t let all the musicians down”

Nick Mushlin

Opened in 2005 by legendary jazz drummer Bill Kyle, the venue’s new co-owners Nick and Justyna Mushlin have a long history with the venue. Nick joined as Assistant Manager in 2007, while Justyna got her first ever bar job there in 2010. While she did go on to work in other bars, she found herself constantly returning. “The Jazz Bar is such a fun place to work,” she enthuses. “Most [of the staff] have been messaging, asking if they could come back when we reopen!”

So why did the venue close in the first place? “It wasn’t that business was really down, because that’s just not true,” Nick admits, barely visible over Zoom as he dials in from the dimly-lit venue in question. “It’s that everything costs so much more. I think the bi est problem is the viability of doing what we do. We don’t just put a few bands on as entertainment.”

He continues: “We’re a destination, people come for the music – everything is about the music. And when you run a venue where the music comes first and you’re not there to exploit the musicians and you’re there to provide a platform, it’s just not viable as a business.”

Words: Tallah Brash

The Jazz Bar has been fostering its tight-knit community of like-minded musicians and aficionados in its late-night basement spot on Chambers Street for almost two decades, so its sudden closure in April sent a shockwave across the country. Following incredible unwavering support from their community, on 30 May there was a surprise announcement that they had set up a new company – The Jazz Bar Edinburgh C.I.C. (Community Interest Company). And with The Jazz Bar’s assets, name, social media and licence all secured, hope that the venue would soon reopen sparked a flurry of excitement; a Crowdfunder launched on the same day raised 50% of its initial target in less than 12 hours – “That’s when we realised we can actually do this,” says Justyna.

“It’s been such a hard few months, going through the liquidation, and closing up The Jazz Bar Ltd, because I’ve been trying to help the old Directors out... I mean, it’s a minefield,” Nick says. “At so many points we were just like, ‘It’s just not worth it, let’s give up’, but there’s been so much support from the community. We just couldn’t let all the musicians down.”

While it’s not been without its challenges, changing from a Limited company to a C.I.C. means lots of added benefits for the venue, with a reduction in business rates, VAT exemption on ticket sales, and the ability to apply for funding, loans and grants. “The Music Venue Trust is who helped us… We needed someone to cheer us on, to say, ‘You know what, you can do it!’” Justyna

tells us. “They helped us with the crowdfunder. They were just a huge help and the support that we needed at the time when we were in a really dark place.”

The first few months of the venue relaunch will be business as usual, with the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival hosting a number of events there from 12-21 July, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe quickly following in August. But from September onwards, the new business model comes with new business opportunities, and Nick and Justyna are excited to make some changes. They have grand plans to extend the opening hours, with youth development projects, music workshops and afternoon shows for kids, with the hopes of giving “a proper introduction to music for children,” says Nick, as Justyna interjects, “to introduce our future customers, but also future musicians, to give them the hunger they might not even know that they have.”

Justyna concludes: “I’m genuinely very, very excited and I am just so grateful – I’m still speechless with everything that has happened and is going to happen. We cannot wait for how we can change it and just bringing it back.”

The Jazz Bar reopens on 1 Jul; follow them on Instagram, Facebook and X @thejazzbar

If you run a music venue and are stru ling to make ends meet, find out more about how the Music Venue Trust can help at musicvenuetrust.com

Fringe Finances

We take a deep dive into the realities of Fringe budgets

Words: Laurie Presswood

If you’re a strong financial planner, you might set aside £30 a month in anticipation of your yearly summer holiday. If you’re a strong financial planner who also happens to be a stand-up on the UK circuit, chances are you’re putting money aside for an anti-summer holiday every August.

The discussion around Fringe costs has been at boiling point for the best part of a decade. For the most part, this concerns the price of accommodation, and its role in Edinburgh’s wider housing crisis. But even for acts who are based in the central belt and have the bi est cost taken care of, the Fringe can still be a stru le financially.

On the most shoestring of budgets, the costs for acts include: venue hire, Fringe registration fee, public liability insurance, flyer design, printing and distribution, and of course food and drink. If you want anything on top of that, for example to use music (live or pre-recorded), or rent a projector if one isn’t included with your venue, it entails additional costs. Some of these payments, such as the registration fee, have to be put down as early as March – and in the event that you do make a profit, you often don’t see the money until October, when venues have had a chance to count their takings.

Edinburgh-based comedian Sam Lake is bringing his third solo show to this year’s festival, based on stories about his mother, Esméralda. He says that although you can do a pared down Fringe show, first-time acts come under a lot of pressure to fork out for all the bells and whistles:

“There’s always people around you telling you you should because who knows, you could get nominated for the award.

“That’s why so many people focus so much on the debut... I’m sure some people do go for [the Best Show nominations] but it’s really the Best Newcomer that everyone goes for. So that’s where a lot of the people who make money by doing all of this stuff – production, PR and all that stuff – will focus.”

The result is inevitably that early-career comics end up spending more than they can afford on something where the payoff will be at best intangible, or at worst non-existent.

“My first show was definitely the one where I lost the most money and spent the most as well. And the thing is, the return of investment that you get back on it, there’s not really any way to measure it. Because you don’t have any way of knowing

if opportunities you get in the future are a direct result from someone seeing you at the Fringe.”

In a programme of over 1300 comedy shows, it’s important that people notice, remember, and come to your show. Marketing and publicity are often where a distinction emerges between those who can afford and those who can’t. You can print and distribute flyers yourself, of course, but shows under the wing of a PR professional or big production company are more likely to get buzz, reviews, and a shot at the comedy awards.

Kathleen Hughes is bringing her first solo show, Cryptid!, to the Fringe having presented a mixed bill showcase and a short WIP run previously. She’s doing her own publicity, but points out it demands a completely new skillset.

“These are all skills I think will come in handy as a performer and as someone who works in comedy – it’s a brilliant learning curve. However, if I’m spending time on those things, I’m not spending time writing, I’m not practising the show.

“I don’t have the experience or the skills of someone who works in PR or knows people in the industry so I do feel I’m on a wee bit of a backfoot.”

She knows that not going with a PR professional might mean she doesn’t get as much attention, and the experience might not be as ‘warm and fuzzy’ overall, but she’s not coming into it expecting that.

“I had to adjust what my goals for the Fringe were... I’m not looking for a radio commission or an agent – it would be nice, but that’s not my goal. That’s to do a good show that I’m proud of, to get good reviews and not lose lots of money. I think that is both quite a realistic and quite an optimistic goal.”

BBC New Comedy Award finalist Dean T. Beirne is earlier still in his career – for now he’s still pre-debut. They’re doing a week-long mixed bill with Kyle Samuel and Alan Jay called Scream Queens – loosely based around the horror film podcast Blood Sweat & Fears which the three co-host. The goal: to build confidence, and a solid set of laughs.

“I’m still at the stage where I’m trying to get a solid club 20 and doing compilation shows just to build that confidence up before a debut hour. And having those two in my corner, because we’re already a good team with doing the podcast... it’s a lot easier, financial-wise, material-wise and mental-wise.

“Me, Kyle and Alan are a team and we can rely on each other if we’re confused, or if one of us is better at handling PR or marketing or sourcing posters.”

The Fringe Society’s website contains some budget examples, but these are from 2018 and a considerably different financial climate – a website note says they will be updated following Fringe 2024. Lake thinks the cost of accommodation is now around twice the £700-£1000 that is su ested there, but he also says there are some lines that wouldn’t have been accurate even in 2018. The c. £300 it costs to register for the Fringe, for example, doesn’t seem to be included. Venue hire is budgeted at £0.

Lake agrees that some Free Fringe venues don’t charge rental, but goes on to tell a story about his last Free Fringe show, for which he was expected to carry stacks of chairs up the Grassmarket and into his venue, in the downstairs of what is now the West Port Oracle. One thing immediately becomes clear – there’s no such thing as a free venue. Or a free fringe.

Like that? Try these…

If you like Sam, Kathleen and Dean, why not also grab a ticket for one of these brilliant local acts: We’ve a handful of Scottish comics with debut hours this Fringe. Chris Weir brings Well Flung (Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Bothie), 31 Jul-26 Aug (not 14), 2.40pm, £9-12) - a funny, flirty holiday romance. Chris recently discussed his time as a sex sauna receptionist and just released a podcast with Skinny favourite, Krystal Evans. One half of Material, Girl – the Glasgow female comic new material night (and at The Stand all month long) – makes her debut too. Amanda Dwyer: What You Thinking About (The Stand (Stand 4), 14-25 Aug, 5.25pm, £8-10) is a deadpan deep-dive into mental health.

Kimbo off TikTok is also debuting (GB Patter Hoose (Other Yin), 31 Jul-18 Aug, 9pm, £9-14). Making the leap to stand-up at Glasgow Comedy Festival 2024, Might As Well sees Kim try and crack the Fringe with her charming, laidback style. Joining her in the online gem gang is Chris Thorburn (who went viral again recently, tweeting about Capri-Sun) with Cineman (The Stand (Stand 4), 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 2.45pm, £5-10), his upbeat show crammed with cinema and pop culture jokes. Also, the lads from Some Laugh come to Monkey Barrel (MB3, 20 Aug, 11.20pm, £10-12.50) – catch up with Stephen Buchanan, Stuart McPherson and Marc Jennings and special guests for a late-night one-off. The hosts all have solo shows too.

After something stranger? Rosco McClelland’s (Monkey Barrel @ The Hive (Hive 2), 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 9pm, £7-10) show this year sounds serious (an underlying heart condition!), but when we saw him last, he closed with a Meatloaf-esque tune about two brothers in love. David McIver’s back with a half-run WIP (PBH’s Free Fringe @ Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room), 18-25 Aug, 12.20pm, Free/PWYC). Silly and certainly armed with a powerpoint, Wild Horses will be no run-of-the-mill stand-up hour. Lovely Phil O’Shea returns to solo work (The Stand (Stand 2), 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 9.30pm, £4.50-10), directed by mischief maker John-Luke Roberts, whilst Northern Irishman Paul McDaniel (The Stand (Stand 4), 31 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 1.25pm, £5-10) will impress with his quietly surreal musings. Finally, make room for Twonkey (Laughing Horse @ Dragonfly, 1-25 Aug (not 5, 12, 19), 8.15pm, Free/ PWYC). Unlike anything else you’ll see all Fringe, the cult comic was once banned from The Stand for “treacle misadventure”.

Sam Lake: Esméralda, Monkey Barrel (MB2), 31 July-25 Aug (not 12), 1.30pm, £7-12.

Kathleen Hughes: Cryptid!, Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose (Snug), 31 July-26 Aug (not 12), 4.20pm, £9.50-12.50

Scream Queens ft Kyle Samuel, Alan Jay and Dean T Beirne, Boteco do Brasil, 5-11 Aug, 2.30pm, £7/PWYC

Hour of the Woolf

Spanish philosopher turned filmmaker Paul B Preciado speaks to us about his bold essay film Orlando, My Political Biography, an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s seminal 1928 novel Orlando and so much more

“To tell you the truth, it was not my main concern,” says Paul B Preciado when we mention to the Spanish philosopher that his debut feature, Orlando, My Political Biography, resists easy definition. Is it a documentary essay? A documentary adaptation? A manifesto? A memoir? It’s not quite clear – and such is its charm.

Bringing together 26 trans and non-binary individuals, the film looks to Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando, reading and re-reading the text anew via contemporary experiences of non-conforming gender identities. Preciado is well-known for his piercing exploration of gender and sexuality in his writing and this side-step into filmmaking is a boldly experimental and accomplished work.

Preciado was initially approached with an offer to make a film about himself, but a traditional biography wouldn’t do. If there was to be a biography of Preciado’s life, it had to be an adaptation (of sorts) of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. As Preciado’s voiceover reminds us in the film, “Because fucking Virginia Woolf wrote my biography in 1928.”

When it comes to the hybrid nature of the film, Preciado is very clear. “I have not invented this genre,” he says. “This genre already existed – especially in France but also in other places. There is a long tradition of documentary essays questioning this difference between documentary and fiction.”

Particularly, Preciado looks to French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard’s work. During filming, Godard passed away, aged 91; improvising, one Orlando – Jenny Bel’Air – brought this into the film, noting her sadness and irrevocably changing the textual and intertextual possibilities of both Preciado and Woolf’s work. “This is a real event that happened exactly the day that we were shooting, but that has now become a part of the

story,” says Preciado. In Orlando, My Political Biography, fact and fiction become blurred – delightfully and mesmerisingly so.

He had doubts. Instances of unease in the (im) possibilities of the project. “One of these crucial moments was the moment in which it started to be a collective story rather than being just my own story,” says Preciado. Despite his own obsession with Orlando – from a first reading aged 14 – he was unsure whether anyone else really cared that much about this narrative. It turned out not to simply be his ‘private madness’, though. Preciado called a casting, and over 100 people showed up.

“First, the Orlandos thought that I would choose one Orlando, that I was looking for the best Orlando, so they would compete with each other,” he says. Rather, Orlando, My Political Biography intended to seek, facilitate and spotlight a political solidarity, as well as the joy such collectivity can bring.

“I worked more with a methodology coming from activism, political activism – so gathering collectively,” Preciado explains. “What is representation for us? How do we want to be represented or cut from philosophy? Basically, I’m trying to ask the question, ‘What does it mean to narrate a story of a life?’” The myriad Orlandos span decades and outlooks. There’s nightlife icon and actress Jenny Bel’Air; performer Victor Marzouk; three rosycheeked, grinning children; Preciado himself. One young Orlando confided in Preciado, ‘‘I never read the book, but I read the Wikipedia page and through Wikipedia I can tell you, I am Orlando.’’ Such is testament to both the genius of Preciado and Woolf.

With institutional language – medical, legal – so often used to marginalise trans and

non-binary people, the collaborative development of the script was crucial. “We read the book together, and then I chose the paragraphs from Virginia Woolf that were best for each of them,” he says. “And then we mixed the language of Virginia Woolf with their own narratives of their lives, their own stories.” Familiar, unfamiliar – yet another binary collapses, beautifully so, as the Orlandos speak their truth and it is uncertain, slightly, whether these words were first written by Woolf or themselves.

It was a tight budget; limited setting and no fancy costumes, sidestepping the finery of Woolf’s novel. With so many Orlandos, Preciado was keen to link them all. As such, the neck ruff came to be, worn by each Orlando. “When you wear this, it gives you this Orlando element that almost transcends the gender binary,” says Preciado. It became “this shared, performative enunciation”, bound to the body – its presentation, its perceptions. Clothing has, of course, historically been used to restrict and control gender, especially that of marginalised or non-conforming gender identities. And so, clothing – a 17th-century style collar, paired with a t-shirt, chain mail, a fringed denim jacket, a crinoline, perhaps – may also liberate. “It opens the present towards the past but also towards the future,” says Preciado. “Because who knows – eventually anyone could actually wear a collar.”

Precaido poses a question. “When you take an adaptation of a novel, you take for granted that it is pure fiction, right?” he asks. “But what if, in a fiction, the main character would be alive?” Orlando is certainly alive – with Preciado and beyond.

Orlando, My Political Biography is released 5 Jul by Picturehouse; certificate 15

Prowess Beyond the Pecs

Ahead of A Family Affair coming to Netflix, we look back on Zac Efron’s eclectic career and underrated star power

When it comes to engagement with Hollywood actor Zac Efron, typically, his appearance makes more headlines than his films. What gets lost in the sauce of aesthetic scrutiny and collective lust is his on-screen range across his varied, two-decade-spanning body of work. So despite being a globally recognisable face, Efron is still, largely, underrated. Let it be known: there is prowess beyond the pecs.

Equally as game playing a sensitive musical theatre kid as he is a serial killer, Efron’s oeuvre is expansive. Despite looking every bit the Übermensch, he dodged the superhero contracts that claimed and culled the artistic integrity of many careers in the last decade. Efron wields his notorious torso not in service of shameless, sexless military propaganda, but of slapstick, good-hearted vulgarity, and haunting dramas. His project choices have remained dynamic, with his IMDb boasting more indies than one might realise (Richard Linklater and Harmony Korine say hi). Efron is what I call an ambidextrous actor: he triumphs equally in comedy and drama.

“Efron is what I call an ambidextrous actor: he triumphs equally in comedy and drama”

Over a decade before Timothée Chalamet apparently revolutionised male vulnerability on screen in Call Me By Your Name, a generation bore witness to the distress of Efron’s Troy Bolton on the Disney Channel sound stages of High School Musical, where his mounting existential crises were causing him multiple breakdowns because he was just so damn porous to the enrichment a life in the arts brought. Rendering the conflicted psyche of a teen at his first coming-of-age crossroads, Efron was deep in his feelings. Then, in 17 Again –playing a man who is approaching middle age and plagued with regret, but magically gets a do-over at youth – Efron summoned and sustained astonishingly lived-in emotion; we saw far-beyond-his-years pathos as he looked longingly at his separated wife with a lifetime of remorse in his eyes. His weepy fragility in the key penultimate courtroom scene was less art-house than Chalamet’s famous fireplace scene, but no less affecting!

Post-Disney, it was time to get serious. With consistent top billing, there was period drama Me and Orson Welles, Nicholas Sparks’ war romance

The Lucky One (in which lovers were sweetly

tethered by… interventionist American foreign policy), the lachrymose Charlie St. Cloud, and the more explicit The Paperboy. Simply never turning in a bad performance, he also did the most with limited scripts – see the meagre That Awkward Moment, and We Are Your Friends, a distinctly 2015 schematic on EDM’s liberating power and meditation on millennials resisting their generation’s assigned fait accompli of debt, hustling as self-starter disruptors in the Valley (Efron had heart as the central master of decks).

Then, crucially, it was time to get silly. The mid-2010s marked a transition point. Some suggested he was on a downward trajectory, playing limbo with low-brow projects, but dismissing the power of the ribald studio comedy is a naïve, fatuous move – think of all-time great Robert de Niro, post-Meet the Parents, embracing fun and accessing a whole new creative reserve as a result.

In the Neighbours movies, Efron played a profoundly immature, insecure, and riotous frat bro. He brought subtlety to the crude cracks, a Midas touch to even the cheapest riff on erectile dysfunction. There is a delicate art to overkilling bong jokes and still being charming. With inspired expressions as Himbo Supreme, he became an auteur of airheads with every incorrect use of air quotes, scoffing retort, and glorious Buster Keaton-meets-Jackass feat of physical comedy. When Seth Rogen is cartoonishly grunting away, you have Efron, the unsuspecting comedic subject, statuesque, stealing the show with an eyebrow raise and a nonplussed cocked head.

In 2016 he brought the compelling buddy comedy, the Palme d’Or-deserving Dirty Grandpa (some call it tasteless, I call it irreverent!) in which Efron entertained with incredulity as an uptight young lawyer, utterly mortified by the sleazy transgressions of his newly-widowed grandpa. Then,

affirming the no-small-parts-only-small-actors adage, his colourful cameos in offbeat A24 films The Disaster Artist and Beach Bum were delightfully insane injections of chaos. In the former, he’s a caricature street mu er. In the latter, a mystifying chain-vaping-skater-rehab-escaper with a paninigrilled beard and penchant for pyro.

Efron has been so defined by his commanding physicality, from his foundational work in musicals (there’s been a demanding dance quotient in many of his contracts: HSM, Hairspray, The Greatest Showman) to his Olympic-standard lifeguard training in Baywatch. With new roles, come fullbody transformations à la Christian Bale. He underwent his most intense makeover yet for The Iron Claw last year, as a pro wrestler whose imposing form appears to scale only with his immense grief. It’s a near-merciless tale of the Von-Erich dynasty’s dysfunction and dashed dreams. He is the family’s keystone, and the harrowing film’s centre. He delivered a career-best performance, showing off a divine culmination of all his métiers fortified over the years: implosive and tender temperaments, and a formidable athleticism.

Now, in A Family Affair, opposite Nicole Kidman, Efron is back in the comedy combat zone as a soldier of silliness ready to disarm the audience once more.

Whether swa ering or laid bare, Efron paints with his versatility. How lovely for us to witness a well-adjusted child star evolve and surpass their potential. His beefcake peers simply cannot stir tragedy like he can (Hemsworth, you’ve been lapped!), and his dramatic contemporaries simply cannot match his humour (Butler, I challenge you to a duel… at the open mic!). Ladies, get you a man who can do both!

A Family Affair is streaming on Netflix now

Movement and Material

We speak to Delaine Le Bas, Turner Prize 2024 nominee, about her new exhibition, Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding

“Fear is used to control people. But I’m always saying, ‘We mustn’t let them steal our joy,’” says Delaine Le Bas. Upon canvas and calico: bodies emerge in neon pink and green; photos of a young Le Bas are collaged alongside embroidery and sequins; goddesses look outwards, unafraid; text sprawls over itself. “We’re not having that,” she laughs. Commissioned and co-curated by Glasgow International and Tramway, Delaine Le Bas’s Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding explores both the mythologisation and discrimination of Romani, Gypsy and Traveller communities, with a distinctly feminist, experimental lens. Interweaving popular culture and mythology with reflections on movement, land, and her childhood, the exhibition pulls together both new and existing works in a spectacularly expansive and immersive installation. Following Le Bas’s Turner Prize 2024 nomination for her presentation at Secession, Vienna, the exhibition is poignant and utterly singular.

“I’m trying to give access points or different doorways for anyone to access the work [...] If there’s only one door in and out and something happens - we might be in trouble. You want some fire exits”

Delaine Le Bas

The exhibition also marks Le Bas’s return to Tramway, following To Gypsyland (2013), a travelling research project, in collaboration with Barby Asante, exploring Romani, Gypsy and Traveller communities in cities throughout the UK. As such, she knew the space well; the scenography was undertaken by herself and her partner Lincoln Cato. “Some pieces, we knew where they were going. They had their own place already,” she says.

Tapping into Le Bas’s own Romani heritage, an aluminium frame wagon, titled Off Kilter, has been commissioned by Tramway and Glasgow International for the exhibition. “It’s about movement, but non-movement; the romanticism of

being nomadic, but if you are nomadic, no one wants you to be nomadic,” she says. “It’s off-kilter – so it doesn’t function, it doesn’t work. And so it’s about being captive as well within this and trying to escape from it.”

A number of her works reference “linguistic engineering”, recalling a previous exhibition in Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin – Delaine Le Bas: Beware of Linguistic Engineering. “I think it’s about language, misuse of language, abuse of language, language being used as a tool to exclude people but also to confuse them. And how many words have double, triple, quadruple meanings,” she says. Such is especially true for those who have English as an additional language; language then becomes yet another means to other and to isolate.

Rather, Le Bas is keen to speak outwith fear, welcoming all in. Textiles meet sculpture, sound, text, video – the exhibition spans across forms. “I’m trying to give access points or different doorways for anyone to access the work,” Le Bas says. Hierarchies are dismantled, delightfully so: Le Bas’s work is for all to engage with, in a multitude of ways. “If there’s only one door in and out and something happens – we might be in trouble. You want some fire exits.” In times of emergency and fear, Le Bas’s art offers alternative routes; such routes are necessary but the art is all the richer for them, regardless.

Throughout, her work continues to reference itself, returning to itself. ‘Fear’ is written in thick, black ink, repeatedly; a trouser suit appears in a film, a photograph, a remake hung up elsewhere; Mickey Mouse finds himself upon a tapestry, a jumper, and a canvas book. Recycling and reclaiming materials throughout her career, Le Bas is now creating from scratch more often than not. “I’ve

sort of run out of space in the house because it’s so much archive material, bits and pieces. And also because of the nature of the work that I’m making – the scale of it’s just got bi er and bi er and bi er,” she says. Some pieces within the exhibition were made on-site, in Tramway, the large floor space and high ceilings a necessity.

Throughout, Le Bas renders visible this process of “bi er and bi er and bi er”. A number of the works re-appear within the show – smaller, adjusted ever so slightly. “It’s blown up but it’s not identical to it. It’s almost like the embroideries have acted like small maquettes for the bi er pieces,” she says.

A string of numbers – undivided by slashes or full stops – lines the edges of many works, noting their date of completion. “I don’t put my name on the front of my work so the numbers have become like a signature but in a different way. And also because people seem so obsessed with numbers,”

Le Bas explains. “They also act as records for me because often the paintings take place over a period of days and might even be weeks.” The show’s title continues this, noting the artist’s birth date: Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding

“Part of it is just a space where people can sit and maybe talk to someone and have a conversation,” she says. Hay bales come together at the end, clustered close and circular. On top, books rest: Le Bas’s Secession publication; her son Damian Le Bas’s The Stopping Places; a Roma women’s poetry anthology, Wagtail. They’re there to be engaged with, to be thought from – much like the show in its entirety. “Just come along. Enjoy it, if you want to.”

Delainia: 17071965 Unfolding, Tramway, until 13 Oct

Degree Show 2024: The Reviews

We take a tour of this year's degree shows – here are our highlights of the Fine Art graduate exhibitions in Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow

DJCAD

The Duncan and Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee 2024 undergraduate degree show showcases works by 490 graduating students across its 12 departments, many of whom had enrolled during the pandemic years. The projects demonstrate an experimental but committed approach, addressing personal, social, cultural, spiritual, political, and ecological perspectives; interweaving elements of history, fiction and the contemporary.

GSA

This year, the Glasgow School of Art’s School of Fine Art exhibits the works of approximately 120 students at the Stow Building, across three of its undergraduate departments: Sculpture & Environmental Art, Painting & Printmaking, and Fine Art Photography. Displayed across its five levels, this Degree Show is ambitious, with many of the students’ projects designed to offer immersive walk-in experiences –visibly achieved through large-scale installations and sensory components like video, sound, as well as scents. Some works recreate living spaces and preserve remnants of performances as part of the work and process, creating environments that encourage introspection and active physical engagement from the audience.

Among a number of projects exploring climate crises, Grace Pitman Ross has created an intriguing work using biodegradable materials including cardboard, teabags, paper and wood collected over the last few months. The installation replicates a living room scene, featuring a limp cardboard figure seated in a chair, watching a faux news channel played on television reporting emergency climate news and pleading with people to save the planet.

Kristína Gondová observes her relationship with landscapes she traverses, and builds her works using material foraged during her walks; in the process preserving the histories of the land and allowing these natural elements to mould her works. Titled On the Pot’s Road, the project evokes a Stone Age aesthetic, with a series of uniquely shaped ceramic pots placed on low stools leading up to a kiln and a nest-like shelter.

Alana Brand’s project consists of cylindrical ceramic and plaster sculptures installed to form pillars, positioned across a series of embossed prints on the wall. Central to these large-scale works is the exploration of themes relating to the Anthropocene and its detrimental impact on the environment. Mark-making and textures resembling imprints engraved by human activity form the surfaces of these works.

Kerry Donohoe delves into her personal stru le with irritable bowel syndrome, using humour to depict her experience of navigating between food and the ensuing medication. She presents a circular moving table set with three chairs inviting the audience to engage with the various food items meticulously crafted from bronze, occupying three ceramic plates and a fruit bowl.

In his work titled Freakshow, R.L. Taylor explores themes of religion, mythology, conspiracy, escapism and ritual as a means to address

feelings of guilt. Drawing on religious and Christian iconography, the paintings are presented as two triptychs, composed of softly coloured whimsical figures and fictionalised characters set within magical landscapes. The paintings are meant to serve as portals to the viewer, either forming escape routes or becoming a barrier.

Esme Valentine speaks from her personal experiences of working in the sex industry. Two large works installed on the wall are created from collaged shirts and suits, overlaid with paintings of women in inviting poses. The discomfort evoked in the viewer becomes a ground for critical discussions around power, desire and consent, challenging the viewers to delve inwards and recognise their assumed notions around female sexuality. These works highlight a society that subjects sex workers to disrespect and censorship, while also objectifying and commodifying their bodies.

Alice Snowdon’s abstract collages made up of photographs, film and audio delve into family archives and her own identity. She has transformed the space to resemble a familial living area, complete with a rug and an analogue TV. The fragmented sequence of photographs investigates her connections to her family past and present, not only through inherited objects, but also through traits, emotions and the notion of touch revisited through the recurring motif of hands. The work emphasises the disjointed nature of memory as it is passed down through the generations. [Shalmali Shetty]

From the Sculpture & Environmental Art course, Robyn Bamford presents six figure-like ceramic sculptures, placed on high stools within a curtained space, inviting the audience into a meditative enclosure. Titled Water Flutes: An Elemental Motet, these water flute sculptures crafted from various coloured clays resound an eerie tune inspired by ancient sound and musical techniques.

In another work exploring the environment, Ruby Caldwell-Hardie has crafted a hut-like structure in the form of a cabinet accessed by two steps. Inside this, the artist has placed a chair with a speaker playing music. Making use of raw materials such as cotton, paper, wood, and wax, the artist creates an inviting space that is softly illuminated by lights and handcrafted lamps, giving it a magical undertone.

From Fine Art Photography, Kaiying Qian explores themes of home and culture rooted in her Chinese heritage. Using photojournalism, archival photography and personal narratives, she delves into her memories of her grandmother’s house, family albums and other parallel histories. Reflecting on time, nostalgia, ageing and cultural communication within East Asian households, she addresses her frustration over irretrievable moments, as she comprehends the passage of time, and its ability to reduce everything to dust.

In another work exploring similar themes, Ella Gunning reflects on her distant memories of home, culture, identity, and family, far removed from her current surroundings. Through soft monochromatic photographs and evocative stills, she explores a

longing for familiar environments from her past, generating wistful feelings associated with lost time and distant memories. Her frames capture candid moments in time that tell a story of individuals, families, animals and landscapes which collectively create a sense of home and belonging.

From Painting & Printmaking, Quentin Borland uses their backgrounds in painting, printmaking, and textiles to create organic designs centered on the motif of the dandelion. In their project The Dandelion Room, they employ the organic and delicate motif of the dandelion and a natural palette of greens, yellows and creams to create a living room-like space. By arranging decorative furniture and other household articles, they design a compact, comfortable environment with the illustration of the dandelion featured throughout the space.

Jungyoon Im, a South Korean artist, uses painterly strokes to create hazy visuals that explore themes of memory, dreams and repressed desires within liminal spaces. Her display Always be with you includes paintings that draw from a year’s worth of daily dream journaling, and attempts to recreate the visuals, textures and colours that she recalls from these dreams. This display is accompanied by a zine or ‘Dream Diary’ that documents the process of journaling her dreams, which are further translated into drawings and subsequently transformed into paintings. [Shalmali Shetty]

ECA

Ahed Alameri’s multi-dimensional installation We Love The Country is the stand-out work in a degree show that seems mostly disinterested with current global issues. The sound installation, an all-encompassing cacophony repeating the phrase ‘we love the country’, bounces off the building’s grand central staircase. Beguiling and powerful in its simplicity, it complements a more extensive, interview-style audio work in a dark room, with microphones and speakers su estive of a performance. The work has an openness in terms of context that makes it relatable for many people; it can, at once, speak to the far-right nationalism that is currently surging throughout Europe (note the fixation on flying the Union Jack in political party broadcasts, especially in the run-up to the election) but also the fight for

self-determination and liberation taking place across our planet – in Palestine, in Ukraine and in so many other places. While many graduates play it a little safe with their degree show presentations, Snoz, aka Moz Hodnett, has taken a risk with their room-sized installation. A bodily, contorting latex sculpture is bound to a cage-like structure, swirling with yellows and greens. Snoz works with music, performance and drag too – it can be difficult to translate such a polymathic practice into a degree show showcase, but they have done so with great success – while also leaving a desire to learn more about their performance practices. Molly Mavor’s room-sized installation is one of the highlights of presentations from the Intermedia programme and similarly subverts ideas that degree show presentations need to be ‘neat’ or conform to a certain aesthetic. While there is certainly a DIY, punk-aesthetic in this showcase, there is also evidence of a delicate and intentional approach to making – the monochrome acetate transfers have taken form in works in ceramics, gel wax and foam board, straddling photography, collage, drawing and sculpture.

Meanwhile, Shiza Saqib’s delicate embroidery, painting and printed works are a welcome relief from some of the garish, over-sized paintings that could benefit from a reduction in size. Saqib’s gentle, organic palette of ultramarine blues and delicate whites makes for a therapeutic, calming experience. The mark-making here is slow and considered – seemingly approached with introspection and pauses to focus on the physicality of making. The sea and the sky seem to dominate the artist’s visions – compositions, consisting of drawn, painted and sewn forms meander and flow, taking the shape of rippling waves, a formation of flying birds, the effervescent light of a setting sun.

Sculpture particularly stands out in this year’s degree show. Fiona Goss’s silvery, glimmering palm tree sculpture in one of the larger spaces is one of several beguiling installations.

Goss describes her practice as being a “collaborative endeavour with the environment” and this showcase seems particularly enamoured with coastal ecologies, explored through a combination of making on-site but also through gathering materials for later use in the studio. Justine Watt’s freestanding and wall-based sculptures are interspersed playfully through corridors and in rooms, immediately magnetic for their shapely and seductive forms. Seemingly mundane and domestic forms, such as wooden chairs and clothes hangers, are taken apart and reimagined in mobile forms that twist, mutate and spiral. Also apparent is a real joy in making using traditional methods such as steam bending and kerfing, repetitive processes which translate directly into the repeated motifs that form these works.

Sitting quietly in a corner of another room, Anna Avery’s wall-based sculptures fascinate with their ambiguity. The crafting process is not immediately obvious on first approaching the work, which encourages a closer look at the dense network of embroidery thread sewn into a digital print of a painting printed on recycled calico. Their forms are reminiscent of sculptures by El Anatsui (albeit on a much smaller in scale), but the organic patchwork of earthy colours also invokes looking at a mountainous, wild landscape from above.

[Harvey Dimond]

Album of the Month

Cassandra Jenkins — My Light, My Destroyer

The only functional places in the cosmos for Cassandra Jenkins to be are pining under city streetlights or deep within outer orbit, everywhere else is disingenuous. She has a radiant, spectral soul, equal parts romantic and existential. Her angle in sophisti-pop is like broken glass being suspended in spacetime: glistening and still. She’s at home crooning over broken drumlines and airy synths, but can pop out a distorted guitar to attention-check her crowd with ease. It’s an effortlessly dynamic approach for an artist whose narratives often handle lofty themes.

Jenkins’ body of work is in tune to natural and spiritual wavelengths usually withheld for monks and Adrianne Lenker. Romance is often the setup where the unfortunate punchline is mortality. Hard Drive, a standout from her previous record An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, was a test of her non-linear, emotive narrative style. Hard drive could mean a computer, the storage ability of the human soul, or Jenkins’ physical inability to drive at the time. Implant that teleology into an entire record, where Jenkins makes a broad stroke every

time she looks up at the sky, and My Light, My Destroyer becomes a web of love and grandeur.

Most importantly, there’s the William Shatner rainbow connection, whose themes permeate the listen. She recalls the bereavement Shatner felt when he first saw the petty majesty of human life in the context of the vastness of space, squarely in between her own fascinations of self and other. If Jenkins is the poster child for anything, it’s that there’s always a place for yourself in the vastness of time and space.

It’s a striking, and very human, proposition throughout the record that grief and anticipatory awe can exist as a singular emotion, in a blip on the cosmic scale; the overwhelming ego death of human self-importance and the perfect realisation of its own in-spite beauty, that love and death are on the same spectrum. What a world we live in where a stranger can be your light and your shadow, one often because of the other. We meander like the rock beneath our feet, hurtling without trajectory, but enraptured by invented, triumphant purpose, simply because there’s nothing more perfect to do than love and die. [Noah Barker]

Los Campesinos!

All Hell Heart Swells, 19 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: To Hell in a Handjob, A Psychic Wound

Obvious to say, but how much you’ll enjoy All Hell will depend on your tolerance for peak Los Campesinos! The seventh album from the sevenpiece is chock-full of doomed romance, booze, tattoos and football. As with Sick Scenes and No Blues the real joy here is found in the sharp commentary that wraps up the highs and lows of everyday life in sparkling wordplay.

LC! have forged their own musical universe that this album fully inhabits, dropping lyrical Easter e s and leaning into the poppier side of their emo-punk (Holy Smoke (2005); Moonstruck). It feels like a vindication/affirmation of the cult status that the band has developed during their absence. But what comes through strongest is that although circumstances change, people mostly stay the same. We’re all just one terrible night out or relationship wobble away from being reminded of the person we were at 17, or at 26, or will be at 51. LC! demonstrate once more that they are masters of drilling down into the minutiae of life, spotting the danger ahead, while remaining powerless to make better choices. This is a hell we can all get behind. [Lewis Wade]

One Little Independent Records, 19 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: Hólar, Sandáa

SHHE’s music is not just transcendental, it is remarkably profound. The Scottish-Portuguese artist and producer based in Dundee (aka Su Shaw), first gained traction through her 2020 self-titled debut album. It showcased SHHE’s vast soundscapes, synths and vocals – akin to The xx – to dazzling effect. However, her new project DÝRA focuses completely on ambient field recordings, putting stillness to the fore in a wholly meditative experience.

The project took form during an artist residency in the Westfjords of Iceland. SHHE’s distinct approach to gathering field recordings and environmental data of these landscapes allowed her to build an archive of sounds, with the tranquillity of her surroundings ultimately directing what would flow through her music. Hólar stands out most for its shifting dynamics and frequencies, floating symbiotically like the sun and the shade between high-pitched reverberations and deep drone hues. Sandar is the most intricately layered offering with its ocean-like array of sounds. Trickles of water and echoes of birdsong form the backdrop to the Alice Coltraneesque Sandáa, pairing with closing track Hjallar on a spiritual level.

DÝRA encourages you to listen deeply. The more you do, the more rewarding these beautifully crafted recordings become. [Jamie Wilde]

The Joy Hotel Ceremony SO Recordings, 19 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: Jeremiah, Rapid Eye Movement, While You’re Young

Vocalist Emme Woods welcomes the listener to the sound of The Joy Hotel with a captivating, soulful and adequately raspy performance on opening track I Decline – an immediate standout which employs captivating slowed down segments, offering a few deep breaths before the journey of this incredible debut continues.

Each song flows seamlessly into the next and builds on the innovation of its predecessor. Lead single Jeremiah is a swelling forewarning of a coming rapture, where the Glasgow septet prove themselves masters of suspense, tension and release. This album is retro to the bone, taking a leaf out of the books of Phil Spector and Paul McCartney to provide each of its outstanding tracks with that crisp, timeless sheen.

Having recorded the album at the birthplace of Bohemian Rhapsody, the group naturally invoke the spirit of Queen on tracks like While You’re Young and on the two-part theatrical epic Twenty Three (A Comedy). The closing lament, Small Mercy, becomes an explosive curtain call as vocalist Luke Boyce joins Woods on the final beckoning line, and as the swathe of unending distortion cuts abruptly, you’re almost spellbound to start the whole thing again. [Jack Faulds]

WHO AM I Columbia Records, 12 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: WHO AM I, HATE, DEAR IMMIGRATION

Following the acclaim of Mercurynominated bedroom mixtape DEMOTAPE/VEGA and its follow-up TAPE 2/FOMALHAUT, WHO AM I is declarative. The candid expression of his previous work remains, now finessed into a towering major label debut. The title track is an emphatic opening gambit. An intense, undulating drum snaps around the earworm topline, BERWYN lamenting cyclical regret as he defiantly concludes that the pressure of his stru les has turned him ‘into a diamond’.

I AM BLACK is incisive and unwavering, juxtaposing self-affirmation against the social realities of existence as a Trinidadian immigrant in Romford from the age of nine, a stricken vocal tearing as he speaks of having to ‘move 8-balls in the playground’. Levity, however, can be found on a new mix of Fred again..-assisted NEIGHBOURS, tender and firmly coded for Sunday mornings.

Minor frustrations do present, though they are quickly dispersed. ALL SHE EVER WANTED, which feels like disposable Radio 1 fodder, transitions into HATE and DEAR IMMIGRATION, pillars of brilliance from which BERWYN confronts systems of power that engage in active oppression: moments that affirm BERWYN’s voice and salience as an important figure in British music. [Rhys Morgan]

Crack Cloud Red Mile

Jagjaguwar, 26 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: Blue Kite, Ballad of Billy, The Medium

Crack Cloud have been softening a touch over the years; the pained spikiness that charged their initial releases being replaced by a tighter pop sensibility, reinventing themselves whilst many of their peers still mine the post-punk cliches. On their latest album, with the cast list slimmed down, they feel the most like a band that they have in some time. And for the most part, Red Mile sounds like a 1976 punk band’s third record, where raw fury ceases, replaced by flirtations with pianos and optimism.

Some of it works tremendously well. The slightly gormless swa er that propels Blue Kite meshes brilliantly with the opulent pomp of its surrounding strings, whilst Ballad of Billy has a really enjoyable surly barroom energy. By the same token, the record’s move towards the anthemic is done without much subtlety, their sense of invention deserting them in the rush to get the lighters up. Epitaph for instance plods along in truly nondescript fashion, as if designed to soundtrack the gently life-affirming closing montage of a second-rate TV show. Unfortunately, Red Mile ends up an experiment in straight-forwardness that doesn’t all work, shining best when Crack Cloud embrace the wonky route. [Joe Creely]

Abbie Ozard

everything still worries me House Anxiety, 25 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: I miss it when we were just friends, miss american dream, days like these

Stepping away from the programmed instrumentation of her early bedroom pop efforts, Mancunian singer-songwriter Abbie Ozard has enlisted Pale Waves’ Hugo Silvani as a collaborator on her debut album, everything still worries me. The result is a more energetic pop sound and a bright 13-track album designed for live performance. There are shades of noughties indie twee in Ozard’s conversational storytelling style. i miss it when we were just friends is charmingly child-like, a woozy end-of-the-night acoustic ballad about regret packaged hopefully thanks to Ozard’s syrupy vocals. The album’s cacophonous closing track, think for yourself, is a layered wall-of-sound number featuring clips from a self-improvement audiobook (‘Close your eyes and picture your happy place,’ it begins) overlapping with computer sounds, drums, electric guitars and lyrics about morning routines and manifestations. It creates a trippy sensory overload that mimics the modern world as Ozard presents it – as a place that is both isolating and frighteningly connected. Still, there’s a glint of positivity in the youthful cinema of Ozard’s lyrics. This is particularly true on the sunny and addictive miss american dream, an open-hearted song about girlhood and wide-eyed admiration. [Tara Hepburn]

Brijean Macro

Ghostly International, 12 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: : Euphoric Avenue, Workin’ On It, Breathe

Comprised of singer Brijean Murphy and producer Doug Stuart, Brijean have a track record of producing percussion-focused airy summertime rhythms. On their fourth album, Macro, with help from a selection of guest instrumentalists, the pair lean into their dreamy aesthetic wholeheartedly. Macro’s front end is littered with floaty vocals and hallucinogenic instrumentals; Get Lost and Euphoric Avenue draw you down a garden path into a hazy summer’s day, while After Life evokes the relaxing production of Mort Garson’s 1976 cult classic Mother Earth’s Plantasia

Counting Sheep steers the project in a distinctly electronic direction with the track’s production layering a house-style beat underneath Murphy’s vocal delivery. By far the highlight of the album, however, is Workin’ On It. Featuring a funky slap bassline, the track feels like Murphy has left you a voicemail detailing her increasing sense of ennui in the face of modernity.

Although the project offers quality in production and vocals, tracks like Roller Coaster and Bang Bang Boom fall a little flat with overly repetitive refrains. Despite this, Brijean continue to carve out their own sound through an increasing mastery of production and vocal talent, and Macro achieves dreaminess without sending you to sleep. [Oscar Lund]

PAN Pan The Pansexual Transgressive Records, 12 Jul rrrrr

Listen to: Pansexual, Imperfect Poetry, Look Into The Fire

You might already be familiar with 潘 PAN from her appearance on Grimes’ 2015 album Art Angels, where she performed as Aristophanes on Scream. However, her 2024 EP Reborn saw the Taiwanese rapper officially lay that moniker to rest. No surprise then, that her debut LP engages heavily with issues of personal metamorphosis. These concerns surface early on Pansexual, in which metallic percussive jabs and loops of traditional Taiwanese folk instruments lend her voice a sense of urgency. FNGRMHRDR moves things in a rockier direction; a delirious tug of war between pleasure and unease that combines confident sexual expression with a deep-seated frustration at having to make herself heard. Despite its su estive title, 潘 PAN’s debut isn’t driven by the thrust of the libido, but a disregard for the confines of both gender and genre, something exemplified on standout track Look Into The Fire. Performing in a mix of Mandarin and English, heavy bass beats and swirling drones clash with heavily processed vocals, transforming anxieties into a renewed sense of self. Teeming with ideas, and in a state of constant mutation, Pan The Pansexual can feel discombobulating, but its unpredictable structures and shapeshifting vocals make for an exhilarating listen. [Patrick Gamble]

Music Now

Songwriters around Scotland spend July doing what they do best: releasing records indie, ambient, trad, techno, basically every type of tune for keeping cool this summer

Words: Ellie Robertson

For our favourite albums that we missed last month, see Self Help and Fictional Doubts by Be Charlotte, Virgins by Stanley Welch, and Business as Usual by The LaFontaines, while jazz producer corto.alto released 30 tracks in 30 days, the whole of which is available under 30/108. Some June singles included Nancy Dearest by Hamish Hawk, I’m Coming Home by Nina Nesbitt, Fall Leave by racecar, Spectral Index by Jewel Scheme, I Want by Tina Sandwich, Edie by Alice Faye, Here Comes The Agony by Silvi, and Don’t Borrow Grief From Later by Theo Bleak (featuring The Twilight Sad’s James Graham).

As for this month, Clair returns on 2 July with Sonic Shorts 1.0, a reworking of the readings and field recordings featured in the producer’s Sonic Book Club residency project on Listen. camp. Sonic Shorts 1.0 has all the hallmarks of ambient songwriting – wind whistling through caves, fluttering of wings – but the resonance of the natural world builds throughout the record. Over nine tracks, Clair identifies the background sound of everyday life as a sort of tinnitus, isolates this metallic ringing, and incorporates it into a chorus of humming sirens and crackling vinyl. By track Gothic Times, the serenity of the early album has mutated into primal chants and dark, wailing sirens. Fading in and out are sampled monologues of writers and musicians such as Ali Millar, Jude Rogers, and Joe Mu s. These consummate collaborations, all under Clair’s artistic purview, have resulted in a richly textured sound story and a memorable listening experience.

This next one has a bit of background; ‘Waulking the Tweed’ was an ancient practice in the Highlands wherein the women of the community would sit in a circle and strike tweed with rocks to soften the material. The melodies of the songs they would sing – which were themselves records of working women’s dramas, complaints, and aspirations through history – are the basis of fiddle player Laura Jane Wilkie’s trad compositions on Vent (Hudson Records, 5 Jul). With a full backing of dextrous instrumentalists – and occasional vocals from Rachel Sermanni – Wilkie brings this fascinating relic of Scottish culture to life.

On the same day, Simultaneity (同時性), the newest psychedelic journey produced by jazz collective Ari Tsugi, is out on Rebecca Vasmant’s label. Then on 10 July, retro outfit Maxwell Weaver & The Fig Leaves release their EP Looking Lovely, a charming listen of do-wop and gospel pastiches, and for a debut EP of orchestral indie ballads, Edinburgh newcomer Ella Kennedy releases The Observer on 19 July.

Nightshift’s third album, Homosapien (Trouble in Mind, 26 Jul), is a collection of indie/alt-rock ballads, pairing distorted guitars and grungy riffs with the intimate, revelatory vocals of Eothen Stern. On S.U.V, Stern confesses being ‘Suspicious of the facts of polyamory / With my lovers between me’, whereas the overt Marxist tones of Side Effects – ‘They complain that there’s not enough work / They’re stealing our jobs / Give them the right to work, dignity / Dignity for you and me’ – shows nothing is being held back, personally or politically. The composition is just as multifaceted, with songs like Your Good Self having a punk tempo and resulting in instrumental breakdowns, while Together We Roll is bluesy with chanting couplets. The percussion and guitar work is exemplary, there’s the occasional synth buzzing in the background, and listen out for the fiddle contributions of Scottish music scene mainstay Ray A s on tracks like Phone.

Kinky rockabilly sextet Night Caller give us four fistpounding bangers on EP So Much Pink, out later this month. Expect 60s song structures, screaming sax, and a lot of crooning about the ‘toybox’ under your bed. If Night Caller leaves you desperate for more, member Mungo Carswell is also playing for super-indie supergroup Scorpio Leisure who release their eponymous, debut album on the 19th via Last Night From Glasgow. Members also hail from Fire Engines and the Brian Jonestown Massacre amongst others, making this a melting pot of techno pop, hypnotic synthwork, and dark, trippy lyrics.

Hardcore listeners should check out For Display Purposes Only by Buffet Lunch (26 Jul), a frenetic concoction of piano key smashes and discordant guitar breaks. Fans of Jesse Rae might be interested in a repressing of the funk/punk poet’s 90s underground anthems in Almost Ma Self Again (Pace Yourself, 2 Jul). And turn back a page for full reviews of DÝRA by SHHE, and Ceremony by The Joy Hotel

Finally, expect singles from Amy Papiransky and Joe Hearty on the 5th, and from Thundermoon and Keno on the 12th, while Andrew Wasylyk & Tommy Perman round off the month with Be The Hammer (featuring Arab Strap’s Aidan Moffat) on 30 July.

Scan the QR code to follow and like our Music Now: New Scottish Music playlist on Spotify, updated every Friday

Film of the Month — About Dry Grasses

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Starring: Denı z Celı loğlu, Merve Dı zdar, Musab Ekı cı , Ece Bağci, Erdem Ş enocak, Yüksel Aksu, Münı r Can Cı ndoruk, Onur Berk

Arslanoğlu, Yildirim Gücük, Cengı z Bozkurt, S. Emrah

Özdemı r, Elı f Ürse, Elı t Andaç Çam, Nalan Kuruçı m, Ferhat Akgün, Eylem Canpolat

RRRR R

Released 26 July by Picturehouse

Certificate 15

theskinny.co.uk/film

Impeccably captured against the chilly, ru ed beauty of snow-laden Anatolia, About Dry Grasses is another masterclass in deliberate, textured, literary-minded arthouse cinema from Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

This Turkish filmmaker is no stranger to creating intellectually-minded protagonists who elicit conflicting emotions from the audience, and the ambiguous character at the centre of Ceylan’s latest film is a doozy. Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu) is a disgruntled educator completing the fourth – and he hopes, final – year of a placement at a school in a rural backwater. He is an art teacher and sometimes photographer who cares little for the people eking out an existence around him. He produces vaguely condescending portraits of locals and longs to be in Istanbul. He is prickly and fairly unlikeable even before he and his colleague/roommate, Kenan (Musab Ekici), are accused of inappropriate behaviour by two female students.

Prior to the accusations, Samet is seen being overfamiliar with Sevim (Ece Bağcı), one of his students, to whom he brings a gift from his recent travels and shares a moment of slightly too intimate physical contact. Sevim is subsequently embarrassed when a love letter is confiscated from her bag in class and Samet reads it. She appears to lash out in retaliation by reporting Samet to the headteacher.

This setup might sound like it is laying the groundwork for something salacious or melodramatic, but rather than being seduced by the spectacle, Ceylan is instead more interested in the prevailing bureaucratic morass and moral fallout. The situation becomes the catalyst for foibles and failings to be laid bare – both in Samet’s increasingly unpleasant behaviour

towards his class and his spiteful intervention in a burgeoning romance between Kenan and Nuray (Merve Dizdar), a fellow teacher from a nearby town in whom Samet had previously shown little interest.

Discourse About Dry Grasses has been filled with references to the film’s running time, the third consecutive outing in which Ceylan has breached the three-hour mark. He is not making durational work, though. Even when scenes feature glacial, painterly shots of figures engulfed by wide-angle landscapes, how long they last is not their defining attribute. Instead, the pacing of Ceylan’s films allows for a more immersive experience of their narratives – akin to entering the world of a slow-burning television programme more than being a film that intentionally draws out its action to emphasise its length. That is the case here, where About Dry Grasses patiently follows the stilted flows and elliptical eddies of its characters’ lives to deepen our understanding of their discontent.

Ceylan draws this out visually, offering just the kind of ravishing imagery we’ve come to expect from the director’s oeuvre, and through a meandering series of conversations that have become equally synonymous with his filmmaking style. These conversations range from innocuous or idle to pointed and political and far from tipping into overly talky territory they feel like rich and necessary excavations of character and milieu. There is even one flourish that feels like something of an outlier in Ceylan’s filmmaking which beautifully combines piercing introspection with Brechtian alienation to disarming effect. This is one of arthouse cinema’s maestros on top form.

[Ben Nicholson]

Crossing

Director: Levan Akin

Starring: Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanli rrrrr

Crossing, from And Then We Danced director Levan Akin, confronts the deeply human way we fail the ones we love.

Set in Istanbul, the film follows Ms Lia, a stubborn and solitary Georgian woman played by Mzia Arabuli, as she sets out to fulfil her late sister’s dying wish: locate her estranged daughter, who’s trans. On her journey to find her niece Tekla and bring her home, she is opened up by experience and finds a surrogate family in the form of a directionless young man, a young female lawyer and street vendor children.

Crossing’s opening line – “Both Georgian and Turkish are genderneutral languages; they make no distinctions of grammatical gender” – is a poignant and pointed starting

Orlando, My Political Biography Director: Paul B. Preciado

Starring: Paul B. Preciado, Oscar S Miller, Janis Sahraoui, Liz Christin rrrrr

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – the stories of a male Elizabethan courtier’s transformation into a 20th-century woman – has been interpreted and reinterpreted since its publication as a statement on gender and its fluidity. One could argue that transgender director Paul B. Preciado’s interpretation of this modernist masterpiece is incomplete or idiosyncratic, given it ignores Woolf’s commentary on English society, but such selective engagement when crafting one’s relationship with ‘great’ art is a longstanding tradition and the right of all.

Throughout Orlando, My Political Biography, 26 trans and nonbinary people introduce themselves by announcing to the camera that they will become Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Around their lived testimonies that capture aspects of Preciado’s personal transformation,

point. Our characters’ very words do not dignify invented differences, so why should their actions? We see the unstable, bereft logic of prejudice play out. Ms Lia initially despairs after seeing her niece’s living and working conditions: “This is the life she chose?” She is plainly told, “I hardly think it was a choice.”

Crossing’s cinematography also complements its raw experience: natural light makes even dirt on car windows take on an emotional dimension; drunken baklava appears decadent; and, as they allow themselves to dance, perspiring foreheads and flushed faces signal freedom. Crossing deals with duty, enlightenment and new possibilities. We witness various stages of rejection and embrace. We see territory and relationships being reclaimed from the pain initially imbued in them. [Lucy Fitzgerald]

Released 19 Jul by MUBI; certificate 15

there are meta-cinematic touches. Outfits, makeup, and microphones are adjusted between monologues, and cameras keep rolling after a scene concludes to capture discussions of new ways to perform the scene in question, drawing attention to the performance of gender on screen. But as Preciado notes, “fiction is not opposed to truth.” Constructing an “Orlandoesque life” is perilous in the face of laws, history, medicine and its limits, psychiatry and its prejudices, traditions, and corporations with vested interests.

Despite beautiful, binary-shattering designs and irreverent asides, Orlando, My Political Biography never quite figures out how its form equals its content, making its 100-minute run time feel long. However, in an age where trans lives are consistently and ruthlessly under attack, it is a powerful affirmation that LGBTQIA+ history is inseparable from literary, world, and all histories. [Carmen Paddock]

Sleep Director: Jason Yu

Starring: Jung Yu-mi, Lee Sun-kyun, Kim Gook-hee rrrrr

Wikipedia categorises the debut feature from Jason Yu as a ‘black comedy horror mystery thriller.’ It’s a clunky mess of a genre descriptor that just happens to be 100% correct. Sleep takes place almost entirely inside the apartment of young couple Soo-jin (Jung Yu-mi) and Hyeon-Soo (Lee Sun-kyun). There’s a lived-in cosiness to their home, an intimacy that’s reinforced by the cheerful chemistry between the two leads. They seem blissfully happy until Hyeon-soo starts acting oddly in his sleep. At first, it’s just a bit of ominous mumbling, but pretty soon he’s devouring the contents of their fridge, scratching himself raw and menacing their beloved dog, Pepper. With a baby on the way, Soo-jin starts to wonder just how

Chuck Chuck Baby Director: Janis Pugh Starring: Louise Brealey, Annabel Scholey, Emily Aston rrrrr

Chuck Chuck Baby opens with a recurring metaphor: a floating dandelion-head that encapsulates the dreams that Helen (Louise Brealey) harbours, but has long since let disappear with the wind. She lives in claustrophobic circumstances with her rage-filled ex-husband, Garry (Celyn Jones), his new girlfriend (Emily Fairn), their baby and Gary’s dying mother Gwen (Sorcha Cusack), in a small Welsh town. Alongside caring for Gwen, Helen works in the local chicken factory, an insight into packing chicken carcasses that could turn even a staunch meat-eater vegetarian. It all looks pretty bleak until Helen’s secret teenage crush, Joanne (Annabel Scholey), returns to town.

Helen and Joanne have both faced weighty personal tragedy, yet their blossoming romance leads both

dangerous this slumbering, zombified version of her husband might be. But are Hyeon-soo’s nocturnal activities as sinister as Soo-jin thinks? Or are these sleepless nights beginning to mess with her head? Could there be a supernatural explanation to it all? And what exactly is the deal with the passive-a ressive lady who lives downstairs?

Sleep keeps us guessing, not just about the details of the plot but about the genre it’s operating in. It looks like a darkly funny relationship drama one moment and a nerveracking ghost story the next, Yu tilting the picture and changing our perspective with each new twist in the tale. And then he pays it all off with a showstopping finale where all of our ideas about what this story might be come crashing together in the most striking, shocking, hilarious way. [Ross McIndoe]

to gradually unfurl. Throughout, Pugh uses music as the vehicle for their emotional expression. 70s favourites like Neil Diamond and Janis Ian float from the radio before descending into full-blown musical numbers and sing-a-longs (one of the film’s most rousing moments involves chicken carcasses being thrown in the air to Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs). The musical elements imbue what could be a drab, gritty narrative with a lightness that shouldn’t work, but often does.

There are pantomime-worthy performances from Helen’s ex-husband and his girlfriend, and some of the dialogue is clunky and over-written. Yet there are touching moments of real compassion and a fairytale quality that ensures that Chuck Chuck Baby retains a soft centre throughout. It’s a sweet love story with a lot of heart. [Anna Ireland]

Released 19 Jul by

Clinical Intimacy

By Ewan Gass RRRRR

Ewan Gass’s debut novel Clinical Intimacy explores the life of one man through a patchwork of relationships. In interviews with each of these relationships – friends, lovers, clients and his immediate family – a picture of this unseen individual forms. ‘S’, as this character is referred to, is the subject of each interviewee’s reflections but is never granted a voice himself; the tangle of first-person speeches all outlining this man while working to simultaneously reveal the speaker themselves.

This unusual structure may at first seem daunting. A small diagram is helpfully provided to help track the different participants, all anonymous, but each voice has a distinctive signature as they paint themselves into fullness almost inadvertently. What follows is a fascinating dive into what manipulation and crucially, care, can be. As ‘S’ moves through relationships, he is driven by his ability to decode what people need: ‘Every person has a question they are dying to be asked.’ As he interacts with the world his actions can be viewed by turn as exploitative or caring, manipulative and tender. We are offered every perspective on a man but his own, leaving the ultimate judgement open-ended, in ways that justice in the courts often isn’t.

[Marguerite Carson]

By Dean Atta RRRRR

Napalm in the Heart is a haunting and inventive debut novel by poet Pol Guasch. It’s rich with imagery thanks to Mara Faye Lethem’s translation from Catalan which maintains Guasch’s poetic lyricism and haunting prose with evocative effect: ‘And I fell asleep in that night that wasn’t yet fully night.’ Beauty and brutality are woven throughout as two lovers try to find refuge against a Pinteresque backdrop of death and conflict. ‘In the real world,’ Guasch writes, ‘something happened and I didn’t know what it was.’

The novel is a challenging read at first but eventually the carousel of forms begins to flow effortlessly. Guasch employs epistolary conventions as his narrator writes to Boris, a photographer-cum-friend-cum-lover. Yet, it is Guasch’s poetry and photographs that best capture the end of days in this unnamed country in the midst of something unknowable and yet eerily familiar.

The prose is pregnant with speculative uncertainty as paramilitary patrols lurk in the background and the unnamed narrator follows his lover to a secret destination through the mountains and along the coast. They meet a band of outsiders who have found safety in the woods, but the danger of death continues to follow them as society begins to unravel. Politically wistful, brimming with queer desire, this novel evokes an end of days which might not be far beyond us. [Andrés Ordorica]

Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body is the story of Dean Atta’s life told through seven respective lenses, such as ‘Crown’, ‘Belly’ and ‘Roots’. Atta does not attempt to trace a linear path through the narrative, instead inviting the reader to examine an intricate and deep mosaic of memories. Atta lays bare the most intimate parts of himself: his relationship to his family, his understanding of his own race, the difficulties and joys in navigating his sexuality. In doing so, Atta connects the dots between joy and grief, desire and contentment.

While it is Atta’s express intention to not cast his life as a linear passage, the connections between sections of his life can sometimes appear disjointed; straight after a long section on Atta’s shifting and developing relationship to religion throughout his childhood and adolescence, he then presents us with a descriptive passage on his grandfather’s death in Cyprus. While Atta may quickly recover his command over the narrative, we as readers are required to catch up to his pace.

Yet for its structural meandering, Atta writes movingly about his relationship to sex, and with a profound honesty on the long-lasting effects of trauma on the body, not shying away from the ways it has rendered him rageful and irrational, even when the recipient of stable and secure love. Person Unlimited is a book striving not for popularity or praise, but instead for connection and honesty. [Laila Ghaffar]

By Anita Desai RRRRR

Rosarita, Anita Desai’s latest novella, takes readers on a moving journey from India to Mexico, in a story about haunting pasts and an illusive present. Strikingly vivid not only because of its evocative writing and rich imagery, but also because Rosarita speaks directly to you – the reader – this book is the literary equivalent of a lucid dream, a surreal and deeply personal experience.

Bonita (you) is a young woman who travels to San Miguel de Allende to study Spanish, but finds herself swept by memories — real, fabricated, individual and collective — from the moment a mysterious character recognises her as the daughter of an Indian painter who travelled to the same small town many years before. She may be the spitting image of that woman, but Bonita’s mother was not a painter, and she never visited Mexico. That is not the woman Bonita knew or remembers, but how well can you trust your memory?

Reminiscent of Carlos Fuentes’ Aura in its setting, dreamlike atmosphere, and elegant use of the second person point of view, Rosarita offers a unique approach to magical realism. The parallelism between mother and daughter mirrors that of the two countries: India and Mexico share a violent colonial past in common, and Bonita, much like these nations, stru les (often painfully) to construct a defined identity from personal and generational trauma.

[Venezia Paloma]

Canongate, 4 Jul

Picador, 4 Jul

KOFI KADE, GLASGOW

to your lunchtime

Kofi Kade, 636 Cathcart

Wed-Sun 10am-4pm

@kofikade on Instagram

Friends, I have a confession to make – I have strayed so far from the light of the packed lunch. There’s really nothing like a handmade sandwich, prepared with care and attention then wrapped up and popped away in semi-secret for you to discover later. ‘Cheese *and* ham; I like both of those!’, and so on and so forth. So news of a new sandwich place in the Southside, with a pretty unique take on the classic sarnie, has drawn us down the train line for a midweek lunch trip. We’re off to Kofi Kade, there are school kids everywhere, and it looks like it might absolutely chuck it down any moment.

Kofi Kade is a simple space, in that there’s a counter to order your sandwich, a bench to sit on while you wait for your sandwich, and room behind the counter for your sandwich to be made. On the other hand, it looks and smells great in here – the forest green and mustard yellow on the walls is a delight, and it’s always fun to try and plan your order based on a combination of aroma and general snooping about. And it’s busy: for a Thursday lunchtime at a spot that opened four weeks before our visit, there’s a steady stream of folk popping their head in the door, some of whom are already working their way around the menu board. That board features six sandwiches, each named for a Sri Lankan city, with artwork around the shop reminding you of that fact while you impatiently wait for your lunch.

Nowhere to sit at the moment though, so once we have our sandwiches we’re off on an adventure. After a wrong turn brings us to the haunted Cathkin Park football pitch and one extremely funky tree, we manage to intrepidly explore our way to the rose gardens by Queen’s Park. It’s not exactly Stand By Me, but we do have to dodge two of the loudest and most active puppies we’ve seen in a while – shout out to the women training them not to run after the nice people with their sandwiches.

Words: Peter Simpson

As for those sandwiches, they’re loaded with Sri Lankan flavours but still very much in the form of your classic, ‘cut it in half and serve it with a bag of crisps’ sandwich. The Kandy (£8.50) is a take on the classic combo of steak and cheese, but with South Asian elements at the fore. We say ‘the fore’, but the earthy, spicy marinade has really worked its way into the meat, and every bite brings it right to the front. The bread is excellent, with strong crusty edges and a satisfying give when you really chomp down on it, at which point you’ll get more of that spicy goodness. The pomegranate seeds laced through the salad, the gooey, stringy cheese holding everything together, that marinade popping its head up again; it all works brilliantly, and it’s an absolute unit.

The Arugam Bay (£8) is another one to file in the ‘exciting ve ie options’ column – it’s basically an aubergine pickle curry toastie. Soft, squidgy aubergine with a sweet edge and a powerful garlicky hit, plus the gooey cheese and sweet pomegranate from before. It’s zingy, it’s savoury, and it all coheres together both culinarily and physically (ie, it tastes great and none of it goes on our laps or shoes).

They’re many miles from the kind of sandwich you’d find in your lunchbox, but Kofi Kade brings that sense of joy back to lunchtimes. Exciting flavours, lovely people, nice surprises and the rain stays off throughout our lunch – the spirit of childlike wonder remains undefeated.

Dream Gig

Stand-up Alex Franklin gives a super meta Dream Gig for July, shedding light on her unusual comedy beginnings

Illustration: Jack Murphy

Believe it or not, my best-ever gig was actually my very first. I feel like at all my favourite gigs I had something to prove, and this was when the stars first aligned to let me do so. My first gig (if you can even call it that) was an end-ofweek show at a Christian Union camp I went to as a teenager, where each year group was expected to write and perform some sketches. I remember being somewhat underwhelmed by what my peers had come up with, and, despite being quite a shy kid, went out on a limb to write my own; and they CRUSHED. The laughter felt like it was being injected straight into my veins. I remember at the time thinking “this must be how God feels,” and I prayed that night and he agreed.

Also any gig where I get to be villainous is a favourite gig. Despite my adorable appearance and demeanour, I am actually a mischievous and cunning villain. For example, the first Hot Rubber (a night where comedians race Scalextric cars, run by Hudson Hughes) was perfect; I got up to all sorts of mischief. Forged alliances. Betrayed those alliances. Made my car way too dangerous (they had to make new rules just to stop me from strapping a firework to mine). Got a friend to buy a specifically designed CO2 booster device. Flew a drone into the host. Psyched out my opposition. And I guess I did some comedy as well.

I’d want a similar level of drama/villainy at my dream gig. I’d want something straight out of a telenovela.

It starts out normal. Darkened room, slightly raised stage, laughter and merriment. Then, a puff of smoke! The magician Dynamo materialises out of thin air, and starts doing crowd work. He invites the first act to the stage – it’s Sarah Millican; she’s doing a tight five of her best stuff. Dynamo is to the side, vigorously timing her to make sure she doesn’t overrun – until! Sarah reveals a photo during her second punchline; a sonogram! She’s pregnant, and with Dynamo’s baby! The audience gasps!

And they gasp again when they see the second act; it’s that same baby! But now they’re an adult, and have time travelled from the future (never explained how) to stop Sarah

making the bi est mistake of her life; marrying the wrong man! “Which man?” Sarah asks. “All men,” replies her future child. They wheel in a TV (one of the old boxy ones with an aerial) and press play, but only after fumbling around with the buttons and cables for three to four minutes. On the screen it’s Sarah, but now old and in a hospital bed, dressed like a character from the Mad Max universe. “What have you come to ask me?” says first-on-the-lineup Sarah. Silence. A deep breath… future Sarah whispers to current Sarah “Will you marry me?” Then a thud; future Sarah flatlines. Those were her last words.

But we don’t have long to mourn, as the third act is welcomed to the stage; an assassin, dressed identically to Ezio from Assassin’s Creed so we can instantly tell their profession. They use their retractable blades to instantly dispatch Sarah’s child from the future, who vanishes in a puff of smoke. “Were they even real to begin with?” I wonder (I didn’t mention it but I’ve been there the whole time doing the light and sound).

I look to where I think the audience is. Darkness. I take out my phone torch and shine it. All I can see are the walls of a… cave? A broken gas pipe? It all comes flooding back; the hike, the lost map, the thunder, the rain, the cave, the rope breaking, the fall. None of it was real – we were trapped in a cavern, hallucinating on odourless methane gas. Just me and Sarah… or is she…? She’s nowhere to be found. I don’t even think I’m a comedian. I’m a forest ranger. Or was one? I spiral. All hope seems lost.

Until… is that scratching? Voices? The sound of a pickaxe. A crack opens. Rescuers approach! They drag me free!

I see light! I smell fresh air! I hear… applause? ... Is that Dynamo?

Alex Franklin: Gurl Code, 1-25 Aug (not 12), Underbelly Cowgate (Delhi Belly), 20:25, £7-£11

@AWildFranklin on Twitter and TikTok / @alex_franklin_hallo on Insta

Listings

Looking for something to do? Well you’re in the right place! Find listings below for the month ahead across Music, Clubs, Theatre, Comedy and Art in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. To find out how to submit listings, head to theskinny.co.uk/listings

Glasgow Music

Mon 01 Jul

THE SOUTHERN RIVER

BAND

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Rock from Australia.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:30 Rock from New York.

TONY MCMANUS & JULIA TOASPERN THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Celtic and classical.

THE ENDLESS SUMMER (MOUSE) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Indie from the UK.

Tue 02 Jul

BODY COUNT FT. ICE-T SWG3, FROM 19:30 Metal from the US.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:30 Rock from New York.

EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Comedy hip-hop.

WEEPING WILLOWS THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Country folk.

KINGS OF LEON (THE VACCINES) THE OVO HYDRO, FROM 18:30 Rock from Nashville. ALAS DE LIONA (MOKUSLA + JOSPEH HEWER) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Indie folk from California.

Wed 03 Jul

AIDAN MOORE & THE OUTKKASTS (ANNIE & THE JAYS + RED HEARTED VIBRATIONS + THUNDERMOON)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Rock from Scotland. THE SMOKEBOSS MILITIA

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30 Americana from the US. AMBER LEITH (TEOSE + TOAST) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie folk from Scotland.

Thu 04 Jul

THE DETROIT COBRAS ORAN MOR, FROM 19:00 Garage rock from Detroit. ACEE (EYES OF HOME + PINKY PROMISE + THE HIGH FLATS) KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Indie from Scotland.

CODY PENNINGTON COUNTRY SHOW SWG3, FROM 19:30 Country from Nashville. TT LS (BAD KNEES + VERSINIO)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:30 Indie lineup.

BARBICAN ESTATE THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Psych rock from Japan.

MEGAN THEE STALLION THE OVO HYDRO, FROM 18:30 Rap from the US. SPENT (CHONG + BE NOT AFRAID) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Experimental from Glasgow.

GLASGOW STREETSOUND PRESENTS...(CHAD PABIANEK + NIAMH MORRIS + CIARAN WHYTE + AMY LOUISE) ROOM 2, ECLECTIC LINEUP FROM 19:30 Fri 05 Jul

LOST IN VANCOUVER (THE MARCHES + THE REVENANTS + TOM HARRIS) KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Indie rock from Scotland.

SUSAN BEAR NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, FROM 20:00 Indie folk from Scotland. NEAR FIELD PRESENTS: STROOM (VOICE ACTOR + NOSEDRIP + SUSANNAH STARK + FERGUS CLARK) THE FLYING DUCK, 20:00–03:00 Experimental pop lineup.

ELI WALLACE & JESSICA ACKERLEY (MARK VERNON + ALEXANDRA SPENCE + MARIJA KOVACEVIC) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30 Experimental lineup.

MARCEL WAVE (SYSTEM EXCLUSIVE + PINK POUND + ESSEN) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:00–22:30 Post-punk from England. MALLET SPACE (SHIMMER 94’ + PLUKE)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Post-rock from Glasgow.

Sat 06 Jul

OVERDAZE (PARKSIDE VERTIGO + THE MOON CADETS + WHEN BORED)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Alt from Glasgow.

HARRY MARSHALL SWG3, FROM 19:30 Singer-songwriter. TONY MORRIS (DANCER + SUBSPACE HIGHWAY + ONAT ÖNOL + EVEN SISTERS) STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Electronica from Glasgow.

REBEL YELL (DJ WILMA + COOLANT + HEAT) THE FLYING DUCK, 20:00–01:00 Industrial dance pop from Australia.

STEVIE NICKS

THE OVO HYDRO, FROM 18:30 Folk from the US. VANDERLYE (NORTH ORBITAL + ALI STOTT)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Indie from Glasgow.

Sun 07 Jul

CALVA LOUISE (BOBBY WOLFGANG)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Alt indie from London.

RANDOLPH’S LEAP

THE RUM SHACK, FROM 19:30 Indie pop from Scotland.

TRANSMISSION SUITE (AULD WHITE LABEL)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Electronica from Scotland.

Mon 08 Jul

KILYNN LUNSFORD (BOMBER JACKETS + GUESTS)

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Post-punk and electro pop. Tue 09 Jul

KELLEY STOLTZ

THE FLYING DUCK, 16:00–22:00 Indie from San Francisco. BLUE GOOSE (LILY GRACE & THE STRING MERCHANTS)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Rock from the UK.

Wed 10 Jul

IAN MOSS (WILLIE CAMPBELL)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Rock from Australia.

BRØR

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriters. Thu 11 Jul

DEVON ROSS MONO, FROM 19:00 Indie rock from the US. SARYA (MORVEN AND THE MCARDLES + MOONSOUP)

BROADCAST, FROM 19:30 DIY pop from Edinburgh. THE GORIES STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Garage from Detroit. ROOTS IN THE ROUND (DEAN OWENS + KIRSTEN ADAMSON + MATT JOE GOW) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30

Singer-songwriters from Nashville.

CAT’S CRADLE (QUIET, THE ART + 8 DAYS) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Folk from the UK. Fri 12 Jul

LIZZIE NO BROADCAST, FROM 19:30 Americana.

ALBUM CLUB (NIALL CONNOLLY ) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Indie folk from Scotland. Sat 13 Jul

HANNYMOON THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Hip-hop.

Mon 15 Jul INTO IT. OVER IT. STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie rock from Chicago.

Tue 16 Jul

ABBIE BELL & THE HIGH RYES (MAYA’S RADIO ORCHESTRA + GRACE HONEYWELL) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Pop rock from Edinburgh.

Wed 17 Jul

DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 SWG3, FROM 19:30 Rock from Canada. LARIATS (PAT HASH) BROADCAST, FROM 19:30 Hip-hop from Scotland. MADALITSO THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Afrobeat from Malawi. BENBEN & LILY DESMOND (KATYA MANSELL) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Folk from the US.

Thu 18 Jul

ROBYN RED (NEEVE ZAHRA + LUCY TAY + ERIN PONSONBY ) KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Country from the UK. HORSEBEACH BROADCAST, FROM 19:30 Alt indie from Manchester. BEN DE LA COUR THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Americana from the US.

Fri 19 Jul

BIG GIRL’S BLOUSE (PETCH + CORRINE + CHEMICAL WHITE ROOM) KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Alt punk from Glasgow. FATBOY SLIM SWG3, FROM 19:30 Dance music from the UK. POP MUTATIONS FESTIVAL (LUGAS EUROP + NEY + ALLIYAH ENYO + MURRAY COLLIER & OLIVER PITT + RIBEKA + MAG) THE FLYING DUCK, 18:00–03:00 Experimental all-dayer. SQUIRREL FLOWER (MARIPOOL) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Lo-fi indie rock from Chicago. WAVERLEY. (RAVELOE) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Folk rock from Scotland. Sat 20 Jul

THE ZEBECKS (PVC + STATIC + WHISSKER)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Indie rock from Elgin. FATBOY SLIM SWG3, FROM 19:30 Dance music from the UK.

POP MUTATIONS

2024 (1990S + LYLO + BRENDA) STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Indie lineup. MARINA ROLINK (MIKE MCKENZIE) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

Sun 21 Jul

THE BRAES (HEAVY WEATHER + THE FROWNS + THE RENAISSANCE) KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Shoegaze from the UK. STRANGE DIMENSIONS SWG3, FROM 19:30 Rock from Greenock. NICKY MURRAY STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland. MARY HURRELL (HANNAH ELLUL + ALANA FREY & JAMIE GREEN + CAAPI) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS, FROM 19:30 Experimental from Bristol. POP MUTATIONS FESTIVAL AT THE GLAD CAFE THE GLAD CAFE, 14:00–22:30 Indie lineup.

Mon 22 Jul

DRAKE MILLIGAN

SWG3, FROM 19:30 Country from Texas.

Tue 23 Jul

THE JUNGLE GIANTS

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Indie rock from Australia.

GARY LOURIS

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:30 Rock from Minnesota.

BIRDVOX

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Electronica from Scotland.

HARLEY HUKE (LUNA J + JUST SOMEONE WHO CARED)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Electro pop from Glasgow.

Wed 24 Jul

DALLAS LOVE FIELD (SON OF THE RIGHT HAND + PRETTY UNDERGROUND)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Indie from Glasgow.

Thu 25 Jul

GRACE & THE FLAT

BOYS (FIRST LADY + PAPERCUT PEACH + FECKLESS)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Jazz from Edinburgh. MR. BIG

BARROWLANDS, FROM 19:30 Rock from LA.

GARETH

STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Country.

JON MUQ

THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

THE GODFATHERS

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Punk from the UK.

Fri 26 Jul

THE RANTS (THE EUPHONICS + THE REGENTS + DYLAN WINTERS & THE POSTERITY )

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Indie rock from Scotland.

MILANGE STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Punk and jazz from Glasgow.

LOVE FT. JOHNNY ECHOLS

ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:30 Rock from LA. IONA LANE (FRITILLARIES) THE GLAD CAFE, 19:30–22:30 Alt folk.

TOAST (DEAR HEATHER + SEAN CHOON)

THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Indie lineup.

Sat 27 Jul

SAMUEL NICHOLSON (CALLUM STEWART + DAVID MOORE AND THE FACHANS + FISHBOWL)

KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Indie rock from Edinburgh. LACUNA STEREO, 19:00–22:00 Folk rock from Glasgow.

PLEBFEST (THE CRAILS + THE KIDNEY FLOWERS + EAT THE FRIEK + GAS KUNST + AHMED & THE ROMANS + LADY JESUS + WAX HEAD + OPIUM CLIPPERS + GOVERNMENT SPY ) THE FLYING DUCK, 15:00–22:00 Indie all-dayer. GOING OFF (DOSS + VIBRATOR + BRAT COVEN) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Hardcore from Manchester. Sun 28 Jul RIVAL SAINTS (CRASHKID! + MAXWELL VAREY + LONELY DAZE) KING TUT’S, FROM 19:30 Electronica from Scotland. REGGAE ALL DAYER (HOMETOWN SOUNDSYSTEM + YT + WENDS + RIDDEMPTION + GERI IRIE) ST LUKE’S, FROM 19:30 Reggae lineup. EYVE (HANNAH BERRY + PRIYA) THE HUG AND PINT, FROM 19:30 Rap from Zimbabwe.

Edinburgh Music

Mon 01 Jul

SWEET PILL (SUDS) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Emo.

Tue 02 Jul

SOCCER MOMMY SUMMERHALL, FROM 19:00 Indie pop from the US. Wed 03 Jul

DEMI MCMAHON (CHRIS NORRIS) BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Singer-songwriter from Scotland. BIG SANDY & HIS FLYRITE BOYS THE CAVES, FROM 19:00 Rockabilly from the US. KASABIAN

O2 ACADEMY EDINBURGH, FROM 19:00 Rock from Leicester.

Thu 04 Jul

SPIKE & TYLA’S HOT KNIVES

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Rock from the UK. THE SUNRYSE SOUND (CONSTANTINOS LYRAS) SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Folk.

Fri 05 Jul

FUTURE GET DOWN (QUIET, THE ART) SUMMERHALL, FROM 19:00 Techno pop from Edinburgh.

HARRY MARSHALL SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter. MOVEMENTS LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Indie from California.

Sat 06 Jul

DANA GILLESPIE & THE LONDON BLUES BAND (BLACK CAT BONE) THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 19:15 Blues from the UK.

RANDOM RULES: TATYANA (KLEO + SHEARS)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Electropop. SOMETHING OR NOTHING (CYMBOLLOX) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Rock and heavy metal.

Sun 07 Jul

JESSE SMITH

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Rock.

Mon 08 Jul

LIZZIE NO (NATE BERGMAN)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Americana.

BEN OTTEWELL, IAN

BALL (GOMEZ)

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Pop rock.

Wed 10 Jul

WARRIOR SOUL BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Rock from the US.

JALEN NGONDA SUMMERHALL, FROM 19:00 Jazz from the US. PEDALO

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie.

Thu 11 Jul

LAURA SILVERSTONE

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Singer-songwriter. DJ SHADOW LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Hip-hop.

Fri 12 Jul

SPOOKY MENS

CHORALE THE ASSEMBLY ROOMS, FROM 19:00 Pop from Australia.

CLOUD CARAVAN (SPINNEY )

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie pop.

GROOVE GARDEN 2 (THE ROCKETTES + THE RAINFLOWERS + ROUGHLY 4000

GEESE) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Alternative, rock and indie.

Sat 13 Jul

MARC VALENTINE BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Rock from Norwich. SUNSTINGER SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Noise.

Sun 14 Jul

DARNELL COLE & THE VIBE BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Rock and soul from the US.

GARBAGE USHER HALL, FROM 19:00 Pop rock from the US.

THE RAGHU DIXIT

PROJECT

LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Indian folk. Sat 27 Jul

GRRRRLS ARE LOUD (THE TWISTETTES + BLONDE SECRET + UNSPEAKABLE MONDAY + REVELATION 23) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Alternative, riot grrrl and punk.

Sun 28 Jul

DINOSAUR 94

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Indie.

Mon 15 Jul

ROOTS IN THE ROUND THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 20:00 Singer-songwriters from Nashville.

Thu 18 Jul

CASSIDY PARIS

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Rock from Melbourne. MARYEN CAIRNS & CARRIE MARTIN (CHARLES GORRIE + MAYA KEDDILTY ) THE CAVES, FROM 19:00 Folk pop.

JAZZ FEST NIK WEST LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Jazz and funk.

Fri 19 Jul

RHABSTALLION (TERGAZZI)

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Heavy metal from Halifax. JAZZ FEST (JENSEN INTERCEPTORS + REDFISH BLUES BAND) LA BELLE ANGELE, 19:00–22:00 Jazz.

Sat 20 Jul

TIGERTAILZ

BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Glam metal from Cardiff. CULANN (3 OUT OF 4 + LIVID)

SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Alternative.

Sun 21 Jul

THE KLITTENS SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Post-punk.

Mon 22 Jul

OGIVES BIG BAND SNEAKY PETE’S, 19:00–22:00 Hardcore.

Tue 23 Jul

JOHN MURRY

THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 20:00 Americana from the US. SUBALTERNOS BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Punk from Brazil.

Wed 24 Jul

ANTI-VIRUS (PHAT PROBLEM + THE DEPLOIED) BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Punk from Brazil.

Thu 25 Jul

LOVE (FT. JOHNNY ECHOLS) THE CAVES, FROM 19:00 Psych rock from the US. ROSA GOOD (ROSA GOOD) WEE RED BAR, 19:00–22:00 Folk and acoustic.

Fri 26 Jul

SKA FACE THE VOODOO ROOMS, FROM 20:00 Ska. ECHO MACHINE (ZACHARY KIBBEE) BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Rock from Dundee. THE COMMONERS THE CAVES, FROM 19:00 Roots rock from Canada.

Sun 07 Jul

KEEP ON WITH DAVID BARBAROSSA ALL NIGHT LONG LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Disco and Balearic.

Fri 12 Jul

CHOKING SUSAN (GNASHER) BANNERMANS, FROM 19:00 Punk from Detroit.

Dundee

Music

Fri 05 Jul

ECHO MACHINE CHURCH, FROM 19:30 Rock from Dundee. Sat 06 Jul

THE NAEBODYS CHURCH, FROM 19:30 Indie rock from Dundee. RED VANILLA (CLOUD HOUSE)

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!, FROM 19:30 Alt rock from Dundee. Thu 25 Jul

JAKE BUGG

DUCK SLATTERY’S, FROM 19:30 Alt indie from the UK.

Glasgow Clubs

Wed 03 Jul

INR PRESENTS: REYKA + INEZ + CLISHAM + PMCCOTTER LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Trance and techno. Thu 04 Jul

BLUNT FORCE

ELECTION TRAUMA NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:00–03:00 House, funk and soul.

Fri 05 Jul

SUSAN BEAR ALBUM LAUNCH (FANTASTIC MAN) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:00–03:00 New Wave and electronica. HITS DIFFERENT - THE NEW WAVE OF POP: OLIVIA RODRIGO SPECIAL SWG3, 23:00–03:00 Pop.

STEREO: DORICA & HIBA TILL LATE (RAISING FUNDS FOR GAZA ESIMS) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 R’n’B, hip-hop, bass and club.

MAGIC CITY: EFFY SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 House and garage. I LOVE ACID (POSTHUMAN + REBECCA GOLDBERG + JAMIE GUNN) THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Techno and acid.

Sat 06 Jul

ACT NATURAL (BAILLIE JNR + HUUSSH) NICE ‘N’ SLEAZY, 23:00–03:00 House and disco. OPTIMO (ESPACIO) RESIDENCY PARTY THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Disco and acid. EUPHORIC GROOVES PRESENTS JANIS ZIELINSKI ROOM 2, 23:00–03:00 Trance and house.

SHOOT YOUR SHOT PRIDE WITH ERIS DREW THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House and techno. POC PRIDE EXIT GLASGOW, 21:00–01:00 Bass and Baile funk.

STEREO BAR: PURE GIRL STEREO, 22:00–02:00 House. REDSTONE PRESS X ECLIPSE TRIBEZ (CABASA + RSII + MORAY LEISURE CENTRE + LEWIS LOWE) THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Bass HANG TOUGH WITH WHEELMAN FEAT. KURAN THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Techno and bass. SOUTHSIDE PRIDE PARTY: QUEER HISTORY OF DANCE MUSIC X CÙRLACH THE RUM SHACK, 21:00–01:00 Disco and house. Sat 13 Jul

MCCHUILLS AT NIGHT MCCHUILLS, 17:00–01:00 House and disco. PONYBOY X STEREO PRIDE W JULIANA HUXTABLE (DILL + DJ FLUFFIE + GRLOFSWORDS + HUNTRESS + KIKI RIVERA + LOLA DING + LUCKYBABE + MISS CABBAGE + MI$$ CO$MIX + MOVENTIA + MV BROWN + PIXIE CHANEL + PRINCESS XIXI + SOFSOF B2B CHICHA + ZULAA + HOSTED BY OPIA & LOURDES) STEREO, 22:00–04:00 Techno and bass. WORLD OF TWIST: GLOBAL GROOVES WITH SELECTORS JAMO KIDD // HOW BIZARRE // ALL NIGHT LONG THE RUM SHACK, 21:00–01:00 Disco and Afrobeat. Sun 14 Jul KEEP ON WITH SPECIAL GUESTS SOUL JAM LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Disco and Balearic. Fri 19 Jul

STEREO: BCLIP (DJ MA1COL + AKUMU + FLIRTY.LOLLYPOP33 + VISUALS BY MOVENTIA) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Latin bass and drum. JAIVA: SHIMZA + BUTHOTHEWARRIOR SUB CLUB, 23:00–04:00 Afro house. POLKA DOT DISCO CLUB INVITES BIMINI : THE TORIES OUT TOUR THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 House and electronica. Sat 20 Jul

LET’S GO BACK TO BALEARIC: FABI PARAS + BOSCO & ROB MASON MCCHUILLS, 19:00–01:00 House and Balearic. Q’IWA PRIDE PARTY MONO, 16:00–01:00 Disco and ballroom. POP MUTATIONS FESTIVAL AFTERPARTY (EFFUA + EYVE [LIVE] + LEWIS LOWE & BOOSTERHOOCH + PEARLING [LIVE] + RAHUL.MP3 + LORETO & MARKY MARBLES) STEREO, 22:00–03:00 Club and Baile funk.

LUCKY DIP SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Hardcore. KICKSTART MY HEART LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00

Sun 21 Jul

DANSE MACABRE THE FLYING DUCK, 19:00–22:00 Goth. KEEP ON WITH SPECIAL GUEST BUTHOTHEWARRIOR LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Disco and Afrohouse. Fri 26 Jul

SHITEPOP STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Pop. CÉLESTE W/ SHAKE DADDY THE BERKELEY SUITE, 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Sat 27 Jul

LDN 2 GLA (HOW IT STARTED X WATERSIDE X HOMETOWN SOUNDSYSTEM) (WIBBLY + HICKEY + SHAWK + JAMES HOMETOWN & MC CAMPEAZI) STEREO, 23:00–03:00 Jungle and bass. STEREO BAR: BELLAROSA STEREO, 22:00–02:00 Club and bass. VOCAL OR VERSION: JD TWITCH (OPTIMO) THE RUM SHACK, 20:00–01:00 Dub and dancehall. ELEVATE X THROUGH THE ROOF AFTER PARTY ROOM 2, 23:00–03:00 House and minimal. Sun 28 Jul

KEEP ON WITH SPECIAL GUEST TRE TURNER LA CHEETAH CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Italo disco.

Edinburgh Clubs

Wed 03 Jul

HAPTIC: DOCTOR JEEP SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass.

Thu 04 Jul

TAIS-TOI: SILVA BUMPA SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 UK garage. Fri 05 Jul THAT 70S CLUB LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Disco.

Sat 06 Jul

HECTORS RETURNS: SUMMER OF LOVE WITH DJ DRIBBLER CABARET VOLTAIRE, 22:00–03:00 House and disco.

Metal and power ballads. BANGER AFTER BANGER THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Drum ‘n’ bass and jungle. Tue 09 Jul

MB X BONGO CLUB CLOSING PARTY THE BONGO CLUB, 23:00–03:00 Drum ‘n’ bass. Wed 10 Jul

PLANT BASS’D SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass.

Thu 11 Jul

MANGO LOUNGE SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 UK garage.

Fri 12 Jul

LOST IN LEITH PRESENTS: HIBA, RIA, ANN TWEAK LOST IN LEITH BAR & FERMENTARIA, 21:00–01:00 Italo disco, Arab and amapiano. CLUB MEDI SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Balearic.

CALIFORNIA LOVE LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 90s/00s hip-hop and R‘n’B. SOUNDS OF SUMMER THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Scottish indie and alt rock. INDUSTRY OF SOUND THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Hard techno. Sat 13 Jul

REDSTONE PRESS: ECLIPSE TRIBEZ SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass.

ASCENSION WEE RED BAR, 23:00–03:00 Goth, EBM and alternative. EVOL LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Indie.

VIVID X ELATION THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno. EZSTREET + JARDINE THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House.

Mon 15 Jul

MILE HIGH CLUB SNEAKY PETE’S 23:00–03:00 Techno.

Wed 17 Jul

FAEARIE CIRCLE SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Hardcore.

Thu 18 Jul

SIGNAL SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 House.

Regular Glasgow club nights

The Rum Shack

SATURDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

MOJO WORKIN’ Soul party feat. 60s R&B, motown, northern soul and more!

SATURDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

LOOSEN UP Afro, disco and funtimes with three of the best record collections in Glasgow and beyond.

Sub Club

SATURDAYS

SUBCULTURE

Long-running house night with residents Harri & Domenic, oft' joined by a carousel of super fresh guests.

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

RETURN TO MONO

SLAM’s monthly Subbie residency sees them joined by some of the biggest names in international techno.

Cathouse

WEDNESDAYS

CATHOUSE WEDNESDAYS

DJ Jonny soundtracks your Wednesday with all the best pop-punk, rock and Hip-hop.

THURSDAYS UNHOLY

Cathouse's Thursday night rock, metal and punk mash-up.

FRIDAYS

CATHOUSE FRIDAYS Screamy, shouty, posthardcore madness to help you shake off a week of stress in true punk style.

SATURDAYS

CATHOUSE SATURDAYS Or Caturdays, if you will. Two levels of the loudest, maddest music the DJs can muster; metal, rock and alt on floor one, and punky screamo upstairs.

SUNDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH) HELLBENT

From the fab fierce family that brought you Catty Pride comes Cathouse Rock Club’s new monthly alternative drag show.

SUNDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH) FLASHBACK

Pop party anthems and classic cheese from DJ Nicola Walker.

SUNDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

CHEERS FOR THIRD SUNDAY

DJ Kelmosh takes you through Mid-Southwestern emo, rock, new metal, nostalgia and 90s and 00s tunes.

SUNDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) SLIDE IT IN Classic rock through the ages from DJ Nicola Walker.

The Garage

Glasgow

MONDAYS BARE MONDAYS

Lasers, bouncy castles and DJ Gav Somerville spinning out teasers and pleasers. Nice way to kick off the week, no?

TUESDAYS #TAG TUESDAYS Indoor hot tubs, inflatables as far as the eye can see and a Twitter feed dedicated to validating your drunk-eyed existence.

WEDNESDAYS GLITTERED! WEDNESDAYS DJ Garry Garry Garry in G2 with chart remixes, along with beer pong competitions all night.

THURSDAYS ELEMENT

Ross MacMillan plays chart, house and anthems with giveaways, bouncy castles and, most importantly, air hockey.

FRIDAYS FRESH BEAT

Dance, chart and remixes in the main hall with Craig Guild, while DJ Nicola Walker keeps things nostalgic in G2 with flashback bangers galore.

SATURDAYS

I LOVE GARAGE

Garage by name, but not by musical nature. DJ Darren Donnelly carousels through chart, dance and classics, the Desperados bar is filled with funk, G2 keeps things urban and the Attic gets all indie on you.

SUNDAYS SESH

Twister, beer pong and DJ Ciar McKinley on the ones and twos, serving up chart and remixes through the night.

Fri 19 Jul

HEADSET

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00

UK garage.

OLD TOWN MOTOWN

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Motown, funk and soul.

MACKA & LOWREE (ALBUM LAUNCH): FRESH TAKE RECORDS THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 House and disco.

Sat 20 Jul

PALIDRONE: WARMCHAINSS, DANSA, J WAX, PROVOST

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Bass.

DECADE

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Pop punk and emo.

Wed 24 Jul

MIDNIGHT BASS

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Drum ‘n’ bass. Thu 25 Jul

FULL FRONTAL

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Disco.

Fri 26 Jul

SNEAKS 16TH

BIRTHDAY: POPULAR MUSIC

SNEAKY PETE’S, 23:00–03:00 Indie disco.

REGGAETON PARTY

HAROLD NIGHT 2 JUL, 7:00PM – 8:00PM

Two Glasgow Improv Theatre house teams performing the improv format

The Harold.

COUCH SURF

23 JUL, 7:00PM –8:00PM

A night of improv comedy from Couch and special guests who are crashing for the night.

GIT IMPROV CAGE MATCH

23 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM

Two improv teams battle to be crowned champions of the Glasgow Improv Theatre this month. Audience decide who wins.

PERFECT IMPROV SHOW SHOW

(JOSIE LONG GUEST MONOLOGIST)

9 JUL, 8:30PM – 9:30PM

Wade into the stream of improv comedy with stories flowing from special guest monologist Josie Long. The Stand Glasgow MATERIAL, GIRL

28 JUL, 3:00PM –4:00PM

The best and most exciting female stand-up comics both established and new with regular hosts Susan Riddell and Amanda Dwyer. SCREEN TIME

11 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM

CHRIS WEIR: WELL FLUNG (FRINGE PREVIEW)

10 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM

Chris leads us through his first ever holiday fling, set in the sunny cruising beaches of Gran Canaria.

MICHAEL WELSH & RALPH BROWN: FRINGE PREVIEW

DOUBLE BILL

14 JUL, 4:00PM –5:00PM Join us for a double bill show as Michael and Ralph work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

SAMMY OBEID & AHMED AL-KADRI

17 JUL, 6:45PM –7:45PM

Host of 100 Humans on Netflix, Sammy Obeid & TikTok star Ahmed Al-Kadri make their Stand debut.

STUART MCPHERSON: WORK IN PROGRESS 17 JUL, 8:00PM –9:00PM

A brand new hour of jokes from the co-host of the Some Laugh podcast and Scot Squad star ahead of this year’s Fringe.

HELEN BAUER: WORK IN PROGRESS

6 JUL, 6:00PM – 7:00PM

Co-host of Trusty Hogs, Helen Bauer (Live at the Apollo) presents a work in progress show of her new thoughts and feelings on pretty much everything.

SAM LAKE: ESMÉRALDA (WIP)

13 JUL, 8:00PM –9:00PM

Regular Edinburgh club nights

Cabaret

Voltaire

FRIDAYS

FLY CLUB

Edinburgh and Glasgowstraddling night, with a powerhouse of local residents joined by a selection of guest talent.

SATURDAYS

PLEASURE

Regular Saturday night at Cab Vol, with residents and occasional special guests.

The Bongo Club

TUESDAYS

MIDNIGHT BASS, 23:00

Big basslines and small prices form the ethos behind this weekly Tuesday night, with drum'n'bass, jungle, bassline, grime and garage aplenty.

FRIDAYS (THIRD OF THE MONTH)

ELECTRIKAL, 23 00

Sound system and crew, part of a music and art collective specialising in BASS music.

FRIDAYS (MONTHLY, WEEK CHANGES)

SOUND SYSTEM LEGACIES, 23 00

Exploring the legacy of dub, reggae and roots music and sound system culture in the contemporary club landscape.

FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

DISCO MAKOSSA, 23 00

Disco Makossa takes the dancefloor on a funk-filled trip through the sounds of African disco, boogie and house – strictly for the dancers.

FRIDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

OVERGROUND, 23 00

A safe space to appreciate all things rave, jungle, breakbeat and techno.

FRIDAYS (FIRST OR LAST OF THE MONTH) HEADSET, 23 00

Skillis and guests playing garage, techno, house and bass downstairs, with old school hip hop upstairs.

SATURDAYS (FIRST OR SECOND OF THE MONTH)

MESSENGER, 23 00

Roots reggae rocking since 1987 – foundation tune, fresh dubs, vibes alive, rockers, steppers, rub-a-dub.

SATURDAYS (MONTHLY )

MUMBO JUMBO, 23 00

Everything from disco, funk and soul to electro and house: Saturday night party music all night long.

SATURDAYS (MONTHLY ) SOULSVILLE INTERNATIONAL, 23 00 International soulful sounds.

SATURDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

PULSE, 23 00

Techno night started in 2009 hosting regular special guests from the international scene.

Sneaky Pete’s

MONDAYS

MORRISON STREET/STAND B-SIDE/CHAOS IN THE COSMOS/TAIS-TOI House and techno dunts from some of Edinburgh's best young teams.

TUESDAYS RARE

Weekly house and techno with rising local DJs and hot special guests.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

VOLENS CHORUS Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

HOT MESS A night for queer people and their friends.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

SOUL JAM Monthly no-holds-barred, down-and-dirty disco.

SUNDAYS POSTAL

Weekly Sunday session showcasing the very best of heavy-hitting local talent with some extra special guests.

The Liquid Room

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

REWIND

Monthly party night celebrating the best in soul, disco, rock and pop with music from the 70s, 80s, 90s and current bangers.

The Hive

MONDAYS MIXED UP MONDAY Monday-brightening mix of Hip-hop, R'n'B and chart classics, with requests in the back room.

TUESDAYS TRASH TUESDAY Alternative Tuesday anthems cherry picked from genres of rock, indie, punk, retro and more.

WEDNESDAYS COOKIE WEDNESDAY 90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY Student anthems and bangerz.

FRIDAYS FLIP FRIDAY Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and noveltystuffed. Perrrfect.

SATURDAYS BUBBLEGUM Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

SUNDAYS

SECRET SUNDAY

Two rooms of all the chart, cheese and indie-pop you can think of/handle on a Sunday.

Subway

Cowgate

MONDAYS

TRACKS

Blow the cobwebs off the week with a weekly Monday night party with some of Scotland’s biggest and best drag queens.

TUESDAYS TAMAGOTCHI

Throwback Tuesdays with non-stop 80s, 90s, 00s tunes.

WEDNESDAYS TWISTA Banger after banger all night long.

THURSDAYS FLIRTY Pop, cheese and chart.

FRIDAYS FIT FRIDAYS Chart-topping tunes perfect for an irresistible sing and dance-along.

SATURDAYS

SLICE SATURDAY

The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

SUNDAYS

SUNDAY SERVICE

Atone for the week before and the week ahead with non-stop dancing.

The Mash

House

TUESDAYS MOVEMENT House, techno, drum ‘n’ bass and garage.

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN Joyous global club sounds: think Afrobeat, Latin and Arabic dancehall on repeat.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH) PULSE

The best techno DJs sit alongside The Mash House resident Darrell Pulse.

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 Reggaeton. FREDDY K

THE MASH HOUSE, 23:00–03:00 Techno. Sat 27 Jul

DILF

LA BELLE ANGELE, 23:00–03:00 House.

Dundee

Clubs

Sat 06 Jul

DUNDEMO 5TH BIRTHDAY BASH

CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Emo and pop punk. Sat 13 Jul

RHINESTONE RODEO CLUB NIGHT

CHURCH, 22:30–03:00 Disco and pop. Sat 27 Jul

POP PUNK DISCO

CHURCH, 18:00–01:00 Pop punk.

Glasgow

Comedy

The Old Hairdressers

IMPROV FUCKTOWN

2 JUL, 8:30PM – 9:30PM Welcome to Improv Fucktown, population: YOU!

A new mutlimedia comedy night hosted by Fearghas Kelly.

MICK MCNEILL: I’M NOT ANYTHING

20 JUL, 4:30PM –5:30PM

A preview of his 2024 Edinburgh Fringe show, where you can expect anecdotal and observational stand-up which is light-hearted, clever and extremely relatable.

PAUL MCDANIEL: BUTTER BEANS FRINGE PREVIEW

14 JUL, 8:00PM-9:00PM

Join Northern Irish comdian Paul McDaniel as he previews his 2024 Fringe show.

GARETH WAUGH & VLADIMIR MCTAVISH: FRINGE PREVIEW DOUBLE BILL

3 JUL, 8:30PM – 9:30PM

Join us for a double bill show as Gareth and Vladimir work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

DEE ALLUM: WORK IN PROGRESS

6 JUL, 5:00PM – 6:00PM

An hour of new material from comedian Dee Allum. STAND UP FOR AL HARAH

8 JUL, 8:00PM – 9:00PM A night of Satire, Stand-Up - and maybe even a song or two - to raise funds for Friends of Al Harah Theater/Bethlehem CIC.

KATE HAMMER & CRAIG WILSON: FRINGE PREVIEW

DOUBLE BILL

18 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM Join us for a double bill show as Kate and Craig work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

STUART MCPHERSON & TAMSYN KELLY: FRINGE PREVIEW

DOUBLE BILL

22 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM

Join The Stand for a double bill show as Stuart and Tamsyn work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

MARK NELSON & ELAINE

MALCOLMSON: FRINGE PREVIEW

DOUBLE BILL

24 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM

Join The Stand for a double bill show as Mark and Elaine work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

GARETH MUTCH & ROBIN GRAINGER: FRINGE PREVIEW

DOUBLE BILL

27 JUL, 4:00PM –5:00PM Join The Stand for a double bill show as Gareth and Robin work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

AMANDA DWYER & MARK BLACK: FRINGE PREVIEW DOUBLE BILL

28 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM Join The Stand for a double bill show as Amanda and Mark work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

Edinburgh Comedy

Monkey Barrel Comedy Club

CHRIS FORBES: WORK IN PROGRESS

5 JUL, 8:00PM – 9:00PM

Four time Scottish Comedy Award winner, Chris Forbes, presents a work in progress show to find out if the thoughts in his head are actually funny.

Award-winning stand up Sam Lake uncovers the mystery behind his mother's powerful last words.

MARJOLEIN ROBERTSON: WORK IN PROGRESS

6 JUL, 8:00PM – 9:00PM

After a sold-out 2023 Fringe and multiple 5 star reviews, Marjolein Robertson brings her new work in progress to Monkey Barrel Comedy Club.

ELEANOR MORTON: HAUNTED HOUSE (WIP)

16 JUL, 8:00PM –9:00PM Join online viral hit comedian Eleanor Morton in a work in progress show for this year’s Fringe, exploring all things ghostly and what it truly means to be haunted.

CELYA AB: WORK IN PROGRESS 27 JUL, 8:00PM –9:00PM Following multiple sell-out tours, the Live at the Apollo star returns to tackle the big three: beauty, money and the void.

MC HAMMERSMITH’S FREESTYLE

BREAKDOWN (WIP)

19 JUL, 8:00PM –9:00PM

MC Hammersmith is completely improvising 100% of the content, including the structure.

MILO EDWARDS: HOW REVOLTING! SORRY TO OFFEND (WIP)

2 JUL, 8:00PM – 9:00PM Award-winning comedian Milo Edwards brings a preFringe work in progress performance of his new show.

ALEX KEALY: THE FEAR (WIP) 14 JUL, 6:00PM –7:00PM Cerebral stand-up presents a work in progress about fear (probably). ROSS LESLIE: HAS THE CHANCE TO DO THE FUNNIEST THING (PREVIEW) 20 JUL, 6:00PM –7:00PM Preview of Edinburgh Fringe show number five for the five-time Scottish Comedian of the Year finalist.

GARY MEIKLE: NO

REFUNDS

21 JUL, 8:00PM –9:30PM

Gary Meikle is back yet again with another selfwritten, self-deprecating show to leave you all short of breath.

LAURA DAVIS: WORK IN PROGRESS

24 JUL, 8:00PM –

9:00PM

New material from nominee for Most Outstanding Show at MICF 2022 and 2023 and internationally acclaimed cult comedy favourite, Laura Davis.

The Queen’s

Hall

LUKE KIDGELL

26 JUL, 7:30PM –8:30PM Star of the Luke and Meg and BLT podcasts.

The Stand

Edinburgh

TOM STADE: WORK IN PROGRESS

10 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM Canadian superstar comes to work out his 2024 Fringe show.

SUSAN MORRISON IS HISTORICALLY FUNNY

28 JUL, 5:00PM –

6:00PM

Susan takes you through some of Scotland’s seediest, skankiest and scandalous history. And the funniest.

MICHAEL WELCH & RALPH BROWN: FRINGE PREVIEW

DOUBLE BILL

13 JUL, 4:00PM –5:00PM Join us for a double bill show as Michael and Ralph work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

MARK NELSON & GARETH WAUGH: FRINGE PREVIEW DOUBLE BILL

20 JUL, 4:00PM

5:00PM Join The Stand for a double bill show as Mark and Gareth work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

JOSIE LONG & PHIL

O’SHEA: FRINGE PREVIEW DOUBLE BILL

21 JUL, 4:00PM –5:00PM Join The Stand for a double bill show as Josie and Phil work their 2024 Fringe shows out.

RAUL KOHLI & RAM

ARANGI: FRINGE PREVIEW DOUBLE BILL

21 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM Join The Stand for a double bill show as Raul and Ram work their 2024 Fringe shows out

BRIGHT CLUB

EDINBURGH

24 JUL, 8:30PM –9:30PM The freshest thing in stand-up – straight from the (research) field to funny with a new crop of comedic academics from Scotland’s universities.

PAUL MCDANIEL: BUTTER BEANS FRINGE PREVIEW

27 JUL, 5:00PM-6:00PM

Join Northern Irish comdian Paul McDaniel as he previews his 2024 Fringe show.

Glasgow Theatre

Oran Mor

MUMBELINA

1-20 JUL, TIMES VARY

A summer panto about a protaginist who shrinks smaller than the Glasgow city council budget.

The King’s Theatre

THE WIZARD OF OZ

2-7 JUL, TIMES VARY

Five unlikely companions travel to see a wizard in this iconic musical.

THE TOMMY BURNS

STORY

18-20 JUL, TIMES VARY

A play about Glasgow Celtic footballer.

INTO THE LIMELIGHT

27 JUL, 6:30PM –10:30PM

It's the school holidays in Glasgow and a group of friends find themselves locked inside a grand old theatre where adventures await.

Theatre Royal

THE SYNDICATE

2-6 JUL, TIMES VARY

Based on the hit BBC TV series, five supermarket employees’ lottery syndicate numbers come in, just as their jobs and livelihoods are under threat.

Tramway

DELAINE LE BAS: DELAINIA: 17071965

UNFOLDING

2 JUL-13 OCT, TIMES

VARY

Regular Glasgow comedy nights

Drygate Brewing Co.

FIRST AND THIRD

TUESDAY OF THE MONTH

DRYGATE COMEDY LAB, 19:00

A new material comedy night hosted by Chris Thorburn.

The Stand

Glasgow

FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH

MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

Host Billy Kirkwood and guests act entirely on your suggestions.

TUESDAYS RED RAW, 20:30 Legendary new material night with up to eight acts.

FRIDAYS THE FRIDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

The Glee Club

FRIDAYS

FRIDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

The perfect way to end the working week, with four superb stand-up comedians.

SATURDAYS SATURDAY NIGHT COMEDY, 19:00

An evening of awardwinning comedy, with four superb stand-up comedians that will keep you laughing until Monday.

Regular Edinburgh comedy nights

The Stand

Edinburgh

MONDAYS RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to 8 acts.

TUESDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

STU & GARRY’S IMPROV SHOW, 20:30

The Stand’s very own Stu & Garry’s make comedy cold from suggestions.

THURSDAYS

THE BEST OF SCOTTISH COMEDY, 20:30

Simply the best comics on the contemporary Scottish circuit.

FRIDAYS THE FRIDAY SHOW, 21

The big weekend show :00with four comedians.

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW (THE EARLY SHOW), 17:00

A slightly earlier performance of the big weekend show with four comedians.

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

Monkey Barrel

SECOND AND THIRD

TUESDAY OF EVERY MONTH

THE EDINBURGH REVUE, 19:00

The University of Edinburgh's Comedy Society, who put on sketch and stand-up comedy shows every two weeks.

WEDNESDAYS TOP BANANA, 19:00 Catch the stars of tomorrow today in Monkey Barrel's new act night every Wednesday.

THURSDAYS

SNEAK PEAK, 19:00 + 21:00 Four acts every Thursday take to the stage to try out new material.

FRIDAYS MONKEY BARREL COM-

EDY'S BIG FRIDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

FRIDAYS DATING CRAPP, 22:00 Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, Farmers Only...Come and laugh as some of Scotland's best improvisers join forces to perform based off two audience members dating profiles.

SATURDAYS

MONKEY BARREL COMEDY'S BIG SATURDAY SHOW, 17:00/19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

SUNDAYS

MONKEY BARREL COM-

EDY'S BIG SUNDAY SHOW, 19:00/21:00 Monkey Barrel's flagship night of premier stand-up comedy.

The Edinburgh Playhouse

LORD OF THE DANCE: A LIFETIME OF STANDING OVATIONS

16-18 JUL, 7:45PM –

10:30PM

An all-out revival of the legendary dance extravaganza.

Traverse Theatre

SO YOUNG

25-26 JUL, TIMES VARY

Three friends reconnect in this touching drama about the passage of time.

THE SOUND INSIDE

28 JUL, 7:00PM –

10:30PM

An Ivy League professor is captivated by a brilliant new student in this taut mystery.

Dundee

Theatre

Dundee Rep HEN NIGHT HORROR

9-10 JUL, 7:30PM –10:30PM

A musical comedy about a hen night that goes horribly wrong.

Glasgow Art

CCA: Centre for Contemporary Art

ASHANTI HARRIS: A BURIAL

2 JUL-31 AUG, TIMES

Objects, installations, textiles and costumes are positioned at the intersection of the personal and the political, exploring the artist’s Romani heritage.

YDANCE: PROJECT Y

EVOLUTION

13 JUL, 7:30PM –10:30PM

An ambitious summer programme for young dancers culminates in this innovative new performance.

Tron Theatre

RADIANT VERMIN

2-13 JUL, TIMES VARY

A wickedly comic satire about a young couple offered a 'too-good-to-betrue' way onto the property ladder.

SAME TEAM

25-26 JUL, 7:30PM –10:30PM

Five women come together to win the Homeless World Cup in this uplifting tale of community and teamwork.

Edinburgh Theatre

Festival

Theatre

CATS

26-27 JUL, TIMES VARY

The Jellicle cats make their big return in this Beyond Broadway Experience’s 200-strong cast adaptation of the infamous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

Scottish Storytelling

Centre

HEARTH FIRE

SESSIONS

18 JUL, 7:30PM –9:30PM

An eclectic night of ancient myth, contemporary storytelling, post-folk music, and physical artistry.

Glasgow Women’s Library

REIKO GOTO COLLINS + YOKO ONO: PEACE ARBOUR

1 JUL-31 AUG, TIMES VARY

A temporary orchard becomes a place to acknowledge grief and imagine new futures, drawing on work by Reiko Goto Collins and Yoko Ono.

GoMA ENZO CAMACHO + AMI LIEN: OFFERINGS FOR ESCALANTE

1 JUL-1 SEP, 11:00AM – 4:00PM

Experimental filmmaking, works on paper, and lightbased installation explore forms of resistance within globalised economies of labour.

New Glasgow Society

FANTOM FERMENT: QUALIA

25-28 JUL, 10:00AM –5:00PM

The debut exhibition of Fantom Ferment, an international art collective formed by Jasminka Letzas and Annalisa Simonella, including paintings, textiles and costumes.

Project Ability

JONATHAN MCKINSTRY: I LIKE THINGS I REMEMBER

2-20 JUL, 10:00AM –5:00PM

VARY

Scottish artist Ashanti Harris’ moving image work invites viewers to engage with and memorialise long histories of violent extraction, both ecological and colonial.

THOMAS

ABERCROMBY + THE SCHOOL OF MUTANTS: YOU HAVE NOT YET BEEN DEFEATED

2 JUL-31 AUG, TIMES

VARY

An exhibition of radical work delving into the intertwined narratives of colonialism, extraction, labour, class struggle and freedom.

David Dale Gallery and Studios

MINNIE KERSTEN: WHERE I’M CALLING FROM 4-13 JUL, 12:00PM –5:00PM

Drawing on the architecture of the gallery, installations explore the narrative capacity of inanimate objects, and their role in triggering memory in a transportative way.

Glasgow Print Studio

EACH BODY WAKES UP ON A WAVE

2-27 JUL, 11:00AM –5:00PM

A group exhibition exploring critical connections between labour, migration, and the environment, using Edouard Glissant’s concept of the creole garden as a symbol of resilience, post-colonial resistance and care.

Edinburgh Art

&Gallery

EMILY MOORE: FRAGMENTED LANDSCAPES

2-3 JUL, TIMES VARY

Paintings that take inspiration from the natural environment to explore experimental forms of mark making.

City Art Centre

EDINBURGH RISING FROM THE ASHES: 200 YEARS OF THE SCOTTISH FIRE SERVICE

1 JUL-22 SEP, TIMES VARY

Celebrating 200 years of the world’s first municipal fire service founded in Edinburgh.

ADAM BRUCE THOMSON: THE QUIET

PATH

A new collection of paintings inspired by childhood memories and collective nostalgia.

The Modern Institute

KIM BOHIE

1 JUL-5 SEP, TIMES VARY Western and Korean landscape traditions play off each other in this first solo European exhibition by acclaimed Korean artist.

The Modern Institute @ Airds Lane

RICHARD WRIGHT

1 JUL-5 SEP, TIMES

VARY

A new exhibition of work by Turner Prize-winning artist responding to the gallery’s architectural space.

KEITH HARING

1 JUL-5 SEP, TIMES

VARY

An exhibition of studio works and urban pieces by acclaimed American artist who died of AIDS-related complications in 1990, and whose work reveals complex interrogations of semiotics, language and counterculture.

Tramway

CAMARA TAYLOR: [MOUTHFEEL]

2 JUL-18 AUG, TIMES

VARY

A collaborative exhibition centring work on Glasgowbased artist Camara Taylor and their investigations into the historical traces that register Black presence as a fugitive undercurrent of Scotland’s entanglement with racial capitalism.

1 JUL-6 OCT, TIMES VARY

A retrospective of a largely neglected landmark Scottish artist, who was among one of the first to study at the Edinburgh College of Art.

Collective

Gallery

MOYNA FLANNIGAN: SPACE SHUFFLE

2 JUL-15 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Figurative collages and paper sculptures drawing on myth, art history and pop culture that explore the fragmentary and generative potential of collage.

Dovecot

Studios

PAULINE CAULFIELD TEXTILES 1-20 JUL, 10:00AM –5:00PM

Large-scale screen-printed panels that draw on architecture and ecclesiastical themes, veering between abstraction and illusion.

CHRIS OFILI: THE CAGED BIRD’S SONG

1-5 JUL, 10:00AM –5:00PM

Chris Ofili’s major tapestry in which colours, myths and magic of a watercolour design are transformed into a textile.

TANIA KOVATS: SEAMARKS 27 JUL-2 NOV, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Tania Kovats’ seascapes rendered in brushstrokes and ceramics are being transformed into textile form with the creation of a new tapestry, exploring how art can respond to our climate emergency.

Fruitmarket

IBRAHIM MAHAMA: SONGS ABOUT ROSES

13 JUL-6 OCT, 10:00AM – 6:00PM

The first ever UK solo exhibition by Ghanaian artist using site-specific installation to interrogate ongoing legacies of colonialism and global migration.

Ingleby Gallery

HAYLEY BARKER: THE RINGING STONE

3 JUL-31 AUG, 11:00AM – 5:00PM

The first exhibition in Europe of paintings by the Los Angeles painter, whose elaborate landscapes record her intimate experiences of her surroundings.

Jupiter Artland

LAURA ALDRIDGE: LAWNMOWER 1 JUL-29 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Textile, ceramic, glass, found objects and moving image examine the emotional and sensory potential of materiality.

ANDREW SIM 1 JUL-29 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Symbolic and mythic paintings explore experiences of queerness and the visibility of the cis/het gaze.

National Gallery

AN IRISH IMPRESSIONIST: LAVERY ON LOCATION

20 JUL-27 OCT, TIMES VARY

The late 19th and early 20th centuries come to life in this survey of renowned Belfast born artist, Sir John Lavery.

Open Eye Gallery

BRENDAN STUART BURNS: INTO THE LIGHT

2-20 JUL, TIMES VARY

Paintings and drawings of rock pools and lichen that examine the ontology of the natural world.

MODERNIST BRITISH PRINTS

2-20 JUL, TIMES VARY

A collection of prints by landmark artists in the British Modernist movement.

Out of the Blue Drill Hall AS FAR AS IT GOES

2-6 JUL, 10:00AM –

6:00PM

Group exhibition by Art Psychotherapy students at Queen Margaret University. This exciting new exhibition will be a mixture of 2D and 3D work from the 2024 Art Psychotherapy cohort.

Royal Scottish Academy RSA

CONSTRUCTED NARRATIVES

1-28 JUL, TIMES VARY

A group exhibition by Lennox Dunbar, Ian Howard and Arthur Watson exploring the significance of construction, whether physical or implied.

CONSTRUCTED NARRATIVES

1-28 JUL, TIMES VARY

An exhibition of work by Aberdeen-born Academicians Lennox Dunbar RSA, Ian Howard RSA and Arthur Watson PPRSA, exploring the significance of construction, whether physical or implied.

DENNIS BUCHAN

1-28 JUL, TIMES VARY

Work by renowned Arbroath artist whose work carved out the possible intersections between the Scottish colourist tradition and more modern, abstract expressionism and pop art.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

DO HO SUH: TRACING

TIME

1 JUL-1 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Exploring the foundational role drawing and paper play in acclaimed South Korean artist Do Ho Suh’s practice. WOMEN IN REVOLT! ART AND ACTIVISM IN THE UK 1970–1990

1 JUL-26 JAN 25, 10:00AM – 5:00PM Fresh off a stint at Tate Britain, this exhibition documents two decades of seismic social and political change and the art that emerged from and challenged the ensuing culture.

BRUCE MCLEAN: I WANT MY CROWN

1 JUL-31 AUG, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Working across photography, performance, painting, printmaking, film, and ceramics, this survey of the acclaimed Scottish artist delves into his six decades-long inquiry into the remits and possibilities of sculpture and what it can be.

Scottish National Portrait Gallery BEFORE AND AFTER COAL: IMAGES AND VOICES FROM SCOTLAND’S MINING COMMUNITIES

1 JUL-15 SEP, 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Quiet, intimate portrait photography examining the history and ongoing legacy of coal mining on Scottish communities.

Scottish Storytelling Centre OTHERWORLDLY TALES

1-20 JUL, 10:00AM –6:00PM

An exhibition of paintings, poetry, glass, willow and talismanic jewellery created with gratitude for the quiet wisdom and wonder of the Otherworld.

LIVING STONE

27 JUL-26 AUG, 10:00AM – 6:00PM

In 2023, Mairi Campbell embarked on an odyssey in image inspired by a 400 million-year-old millstone found on the island of Lismore. This exhibition of her paintings explores themes from her show Living Stone.

Summerhall

YUMIKO ONO: COMPOSITION IV

1 JUL-1 NOV, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

Developed out of a residency program in Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, this large-scale work explores intersections between art and architecture.

SAM KISSAJUKIAN: PAINTINGS OF MODERNIA

26 JUL-20 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

Bold paintings that explore the complex and ineffable mental states of being an artist living with Bipolar.

HELEN DENERLEY: FLUX

26 JUL-20 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

Sculptures informed by Haiku poetry and uncommon assemblages crafted out of a rusting library of scrap metal.

CALUM COLVIN: THIS LIVING HAND

26 JUL-20 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

A collection reflecting on mortality, creativity, and the essential role of the material in artistic creation in the face of encroaching AI.

LUCIAN PERKINS + ALEC MACKAYE: HARD ART DC 1979

26 JUL-20 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

A traveling exhibition and book bringing to life the thriving landscape of the Washington DC punk scene and its lasting impact on music and culture worldwide.

ROBERT MCDOWELL: THE MEDIUM OF MADNESS

26 JUL-20 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

A collection of paintings exploring the capacity of art to articulate madness as a non-transgressive form of being.

JO COATES: RESTORATION

26 JUL-20 SEP, 12:00PM – 5:30PM

An exhibition examining the complex and intricate art of restoration.

Talbot Rice

Gallery

EL ANATSUI: SCOTTISH MISSION BOOK DEPOT KETA

1 JUL-28 SEP, TIMES

VARY

The most significant exhibition of Ghanaian artist El Anatsui yet in the UK, this interrogation into his long and storied career spills out over the building’s facade, transforming it into an open-air gallery.

The Scottish Gallery

AMONGST THE TREES

2-27 JUL, TIMES VARY

A celebration across very artistic mediums, genres and timelines of the way we engage with our natural environements.

ASH & PLUMB: ECHOES

2-27 JUL, TIMES VARY

Sculptural artworks and vessels drawing on historical forms and responding to organic shapes.

Dundee

Art

DCA: Dundee

Contemporary

Arts

SUKAINA KUBBA: TURN ME INTO A FLOWER

1 JUL-4 AUG, TIMES

VARY

Industrial and packaging materials examine material objects as carriers of cross-cultural history in the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK.

V&A Dundee

PHOTO CITY: HOW IMAGES SHAPE THE URBAN WORLD

1 JUL-20 OCT, 10:00AM

– 5:00PM

Bringing together items from the V&A archive as well as two specially commissioned works to explore how two distinctly modern phenomena – cities and photography – have informed each other.

KIMONO: KYOTO TO CATWALK

1 JUL-5 JAN 25 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Part-fashion survey, partexploration on material culture, this exhibition traces the history of the kimono from 17th-century Japan to contemporary runways.

Glasgow Arts and Crafts Venues July 2024

We take a look at some of Glasgow’s arts and crafts spaces, with many now opening later to offer a more creative alternative to a night out

Words: Tara Hepburn

Arts and crafts are becoming an increasingly popular alternative to a night out in Glasgow. Among the most visible businesses in this category in Glasgow is The Craft Pottery, the colourful BYOB pottery painting spot on Washington Street which is a short walk from Central Station. The studio runs workshops in pottery throwing, alongside their ever-popular pottery painting sessions – a regular spot for birthday parties and hen nights. Here participants can choose from a selection of plain items – cups, plates, vases, trinket dishes – priced according to the value of item itself (starting at as little as £5) and transform them into masterpieces of their own making. The studio also run themed painting sessions, such as Taylor Swift and Chappell Roan nights complete with lyric stencils and stamps.

This BYOB painting trend pops up elsewhere across the city and makes for a low-cost alternative night out. Vine and Canvas on Hope Street offers classes hosted by experienced art tutors, from life drawing to pop art where professional guidance is provided to replicate the techniques of great artists. A messier and more active version of this format is available at Splatter Art Studio at the Bri ait. For just over £30 you are dressed up like a Ghostbuster in a head-to-toe protective boiler suit and encouraged to go wild decorating your A3-sized blank canvas. Weaponry includes sponges, splatter brushes and powerful paint guns. Staff offer lessons in how to achieve certain techniques such as gradients and textures, but this advice is widely ignored in a place where chaos reigns supreme. You can bring drinks with you here too but take it from us, it may be best to opt for something with a lid.

Art Space G41 in the Shawlands Arcade is a varied space that does a bit of everything. From

pottery painting, to art classes, to mending and sewing workshops, it is a CIC (community interest company) meaning all the profits are fed back into the community, being used to pay tutors or fund projects in the local area. These include art therapy classes for veterans and a partnership with Rainbow Families, offering free arts and crafts opportunities to LGBTQIA+ families in Shawlands. Among their most popular evenings on offer are the blocks of Beginner’s Sewing Classes which take place on Tuesday evenings, starting with simple handheld sewing techniques, building up to creating cushion covers and pyjama trousers on the sewing machine.

Sew Confident over in Rutherglen takes these kinds of classes to the next level, with a packed menu of sewing workshops available from beginners to advanced. Here, sewers can have a go at dressmaking, crochet and even homeware projects such as curtain and blind making. They also have occasional ‘Sewcials’ – open days for menders to bring in their own project and connect with other sewers over lunch and refreshments while clocking a few more hours on their project under the experienced guidance of the Sew Confident teachers. More centrally located mending classes can be found at The Stitchery, not far from Mitchell Library with many focusing on prolonging the life of our favourite items of clothing.

Although not strictly in the arts and crafts space, it is worth shouting out Re:Volve in Rutherglen here too, a swap shop for second hand clothing. The shop, like a lot of the mending spaces listed above, is a response to the fast fashion industry. It works on a points system, just drop off a bunch of your pre-loved clothing and you’ll build up a points balance which can be used in-store whenever you like.

The Skinny On... a Random Highland Coo from Pollok Park

Plenty of stars have graced this back page, but none of them could claim to be a bigger Scottish icon than the mighty Highland Coo. We went down to Pollok Country Park in Glasgow to speak to one of these coos, who are the park’s main attractions

Words: Jamie Dunn

We’ve been banging on all throughout this issue about why you should leave the cities and explore what’s happening across Scotland. But what if we told you you could escape the hubbub of urban life without actually venturing outwith the city’s boundaries at all? No need to pack your suitcase, hop on a coach or drive further than Shawlands. Nature-loving people of Glasgow, we give you Pollok Country Park.

Pollok Park is properly huge and wild and windswept. It’s like someone dropped one of the less hilly corners of the Cairngorms slap bang in the middle of the Southside. It’s dotted with verdant fields and diverse woodland with the shimmering White Cart Water snaking through it. While walking its maze of tree-lined paths you’d be forgiven for thinking you were hundreds of miles from Scotland’s largest city.

As well as teeming with nature, Pollok Park is also home to The Burrell Collection and the impressive Pollok House… and Highland coos. Lots of them. For this month’s Skinny Q&A, we sent a roving reporter down to Pollok Park to chat with one of these hirsute bovines to see what makes these beautiful creatures tick.

What’s your favourite place to visit?

I love to visit the majestic Highlands, where my ancestors are from, but when I’m at home in Pollok Park I’m torn between Hay Field (because of all the hay) and Deer Field (because I like to spot the deer).

What’s your favourite food?

I love to eat grass in the summer. It’s just so, I don’t know how to describe it… grassy. In the winter, I eat hay and straw, which I think is just old, dry grass, but it’s quite nice too.

What’s your favourite colour? Ginger, of course.

Who was your hero growing up?

David Attenborough. He seems to really like animals, although I wish he would pay more attention to my fellow farmyard brethren. Yes, we might not be as exciting as the creatures living on the Serengeti or in the Amazon, but I think he should consider coming to Pollok Park to make a show about the wildlife here too.

Whose work inspires you now?

Well, as you can tell from our haircuts, me and my coo pals are pretty emo, so we’re big fans of My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Fall Out Boy.

What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking?

Mooohatma Gandhi, Paul MooooCartney and Mooootya from the Sugababes. Normally when I have guests round I keep it simple and just serve grass, but most of my friends have five stomachs so that works out fine. But these three don’t even have five stomachs between them. Maybe I can sneak them a panini from the Burrell Collection cafe – vegetarian of course.

What’s your all-time favourite album? Well, you know my favourite genre. Let’s say…

My Chemical Romance’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge

Who’s your all-time favourite pop act? Mooooodonna.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

Babe: Pig in the City. It’s actually a masterpiece, but I wish it starred a coo.

What book would you take to a desert island? I love Michel Faber’s Udder the Skin.

Who’s the worst?

Alt-right poster boy Jordan Peterson. Not only because he’s awful, but because he promotes an all-steak diet. He eats my friends.

When did you last cry?

I love watching sad moooovies like Brokeback Mooooountain and Mooooonlight. Maybe one of those.

What are you most scared of?

Climate change and cattle prods.

When did you last vomit?

I have five stomachs, so I have a strong constitution.

Tell us a secret?

At night, when all the humans have gone home, me and my pals sneak into The Burrell Collection to have a nosy. I recommend their current Discovering Degas exhibit, although he should have painted fewer horses and more cows.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

I weigh over 500kg of pure muscle. And have you seen the size of my horns? I’m pretty sure I can take all of them. But I’m a lover, not a fighter.

If you could be reincarnated as another animal, which animal would it be?

I’d probably try and be reincarnated as a less delicious-tasting animal, and then humans would be less likely to eat me.

You can see this Highland Coo and all its pals at Pollok Country Park all year round glasgow.gov.uk/pollokcountrypark

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