The Skinny November 2025

Jacob Alon — Don't Fall Asleep

Brooke Combe — How Can I Tell You? (To Love Me More)

Cloth — The Cottage

Zoe Graham — Evilin

Maranta — Day Long Dream

Kai Reesu — Measures

Kathryn Joseph — HARBOUR

TAAHLIAH — Boys

Hamish Hawk — Machiavelli's Room

Maranta — Microsteria Overture

Jacob Alon — Fairy in a Bottle

Matt Carmichael — flint

Walt Disco — Pearl

Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman — Blessing Of The Banners

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

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Meet the team

Championing creativity in Scotland

We asked: What is a meaningful way of changing the world that you have implemented in your life?

Senior

Rosamund West Editor-in-Chief

"I have stopped engaging with unsolicited male rage."

Peter Simpson Deputy Editor, Food & Drink Editor

"When they brought in the 'dracula sneeze', that was a real leap forward for us lads who are allergic to everything."

Anahit Behrooz Events Editor, Books Editor

"I stopped buying from Amazon. I tried to inconvenience the government. I attempted polyamory. The full leftist bingo."

Jamie Dunn Film Editor, Online Journalist

"I’m on a one-man crusade to bring back cinema audience etiquette. If I see you on your phone or hear you chatting shite with your pal in a movie, you’re getting a telling off."

Tallah Brash Music Editor

"I've been looking at alternatives to Spotify. So far Qobuz has been very good with excellent sound quality and most of the artists I already listen to are on there!"

Commissioning

Cammy Gallagher Clubs Editor "N/A"

Eilidh Akilade Intersections Editor

"My phone is on black & white and I'll tell anyone in a 50 mile radius."

Laurie Presswood General Manager

"Why would I want to change the world? She's perfect the way she is."

Sandy Park Commercial Director "No."

Production

Dalila D'Amico Art Director, Production Manager

"Gave up meat. Did you know one beef burger = the carbon footprint of 500 chatGPT messages? Now I can keep typing my silly little questions in peace."

Joanna Hare

Business Development Executive

"I deleted social media. Apart from Reddit, which is necessary when I am on the hunt for the truth."

Rachel Ashenden Art Editor

"Voting Green (and ditching Labour). Also, wearing secondhand clothes because fast fashion sucks."

Phoebe Willison Designer

"I don't eat meat, except for my enemies whomst I grill x"

Ema Smekalova Media Sales Executive

"Making memes will not save the world but it does help me remember to reject inertia and despair. The act of creating, however silly and small, can be a reminder not to passively accept things the way they are."

Polly Glynn Comedy Editor

"I dunno, maybe making someone have a lil giggle every day?"

Mika Morava Theatre Editor "My friends and I look after each other, and I give them little kisses on their heads."

Ellie Robertson Editorial Assistant "Complying with BDS as best you can is the new vegan diet! Plus, it's not as tempting to break when you're drunk on a night out."

Emilie Roberts Media Sales Executive

"Walking everywhere, which is definitely a political decision and nothing to do with my fear of learning to drive. #FuckCars"

Editorial

Words: Rosamund West

It’s a protest issue this month, because we wanted a reminder, for ourselves maybe as much as for our readers, that people are still fighting, building networks, organising, resisting. In the face of so much atrocity and systemic injustice, it is easy to feel that resistance is futile. This issue is testament to the many people in Scotland and beyond who are working hard to contradict that.

We were inspired initially by Optimo’s Keith McIvor, whose commitment to using his platform for good, fundraising, supporting community causes, has been widely celebrated in recent weeks in the wake of his passing. Our tribute to the man and his impact runs this month.

No Music for Genocide is working to allow artists to engage in a cultural boycott by geo-blocking their music from streaming platforms in Israel. In the absence of state-level sanctions, the campaign allows individuals to withdraw their art from the territory. Music Declares Emergency, meanwhile, works to address climate change through the music industry – we meet some of the Scottish artists who’re demanding action.

We also talk to some of the organisers behind Spending Strike Thursdays, which aims to disrupt global capital with a grassroots campaign. It’s a discussion of the cumulative effect of collective action. One person not spending any money on a certain day of the week may not make a difference to anyone, but if enough people do it, it has real potential to influence the only thing our governments care about: global financial systems. We also consider building sustainable movements in a piece on Scotland’s upcoming Climate March, taking place ahead of COP30.

Sonic Bothy, a Glasgow-based charity with the goal of making music more inclusive, talk about the ripple effect,

building momentum in their advocacy. Author Dalia al-Dujaili discusses her memoir Babylon: Albion, A Personal History of Myth and Migration, and opposes the notion that migration is an anomaly rather than the norm of human and family history. Fair Saturday returns to counterpoint Black Friday with a programme of community engagement, we take a tour through an exhibition in The Alasdair Gray Archive creating a queer working-class cartography of Glasgow, and look forward to Push the Boat Out with some words with poet Jay Mitra.

Beyond the theme, our poster comes from International Assembly, Glasgow’s graphic design festival, which returns this month with a programme of posters, workshops and industryniche celebrities. We talk to Julia Ducournau and Tahar Rahim about Alpha, their film about a mysterious pandemic of the 80s and 90s. Writer-director Harry Lighton discusses ‘his funny, horny, tender and thoughtful debut feature’ Pillion, and we look forward to the programmes of French Film Festival UK and Scotland Loves Anime.

As The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy turns 40, we take a retrospective look at the seminal album and its enduring influence. We talk to Iona Zajac about topics including touring with The Pogues ahead of the release of her debut album Bang, which is also our album of the month. We take a tour of new Edinburgh club, the People’s Leisure Club, talk digital connection with the playwright behind Òran, and delve into the calculated chaos of comedian Harriet Dyer.

We close with The Skinny on… KT Tunstall, who marks the big birthday reissue of her debut album, Eye to the Telescope, by answering our questions about vomiting and fighting celebrities. Many happy returns.

Cover Artist

I'm Jonny Kirkwood, I make a whole variety of different art focusing on creating pieces that highlight the stereotypes and taboos of mental health. I use humour to open up conversations and make fun, bright and eye-catching work.

IG: @kirkwoodbroth johnnykirkwood.com

Love Bites: To Squirrel

This month’s columnist reflects on stocking up on love for the winter months

Words: Peilin Shi

When the year turns – after Mazu’s birthday in the spring, Mangzong in the summer, and here again passing Samhain – I find myself in quietness. And regarding that, I have no regret, because when love was in full summer’s bloom, I had already stocked up like a squirrel preparing for the cold.

Autumn and winter have always been solemn, solitary seasons for me, perhaps because I live in gaps. Friends return home to their crowded family holidays, while my own family far away are too busy preparing for the lunar year’s end to notice this lone wanderer abroad. The drop in temperature quiets the city, pushing people back into their caves, leaving diasporas and drifters often with only ourselves for company. Then, there is the gap between states of mind: one side soaked in warmth and happiness, the other drowning in unrest, where simply surviving is enough. Perhaps that’s why the change in season feels heavier, this time when I’m falling into these gaps; perhaps that’s how I learned to store love like seeds, to keep it growing.

I look back to this summer in Scotland. I loved it when we grabbed each other’s arms to tie two yachts together and raced the jellyfish beneath the waves, after our first attempts at paddle-boarding the freezing open water. I loved it on a hot sunny day when the circle of dancers on the square pulled me in, and laughter made space for silence, so that even empty pockets or heavy thoughts did not exclude me. I tuck these kernels away. I’ve heard squirrels do not always remember every seed they hide, but what they forget is never wasted. It feeds other creatures through the winter, or sprouts into trees after some time; that is the abundance I now trust. Even when silent, forgotten, or unseen, love can still nourish and take root. And so the love I’ve stored keeps me company through the winter, and then one day, when summer blooms again, I’ll be ready to join.

Heads Up

The Gaze – you, me, us, and them Tramway, Glasgow, 22 Nov Blending Indian classical dance, live music and spoken word, The Gaze - you, me, us and them by Edinburghbased choreographer and dancer Himadri Madan explores what it means to exist under the gaze – male and social – as a woman. The dance becomes both an expression of experience and an act of resistance, challenging the power structures that entrench gendered oppression.

As the nights get longer, the after-hour events begin to stack up. There’s so many gigs this month, as well as club nights, alternative music festivals, and more.

Compiled by Anahit Behrooz

Deep Time: I See Red Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 27-29 Nov

Fruitmarket’s annual festival of new and experimental music returns for its third edition. This year’s Deep Time is curated by Diné (Navajo) composer, performer and artist Raven Chacon and titled I See Red, evoking the current urgencies of ecological, civil and political unrest through the liberation of loud noises. Various sound artists, including Charmaine Lee, Li-Chin Li and Mazen Kerbaj will explore these emergencies, responding with voice, sound and noise.

Grace Ndiritu: Compassionate Rebels in Action Cooper Gallery, Dundee, until 13 Dec

The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation, Cooper Gallery’s five-chapter exhibition project that began in 2021, draws to a close with Grace Ndiritu’s exhibition Compassionate Rebels in Action, an examination of practices of radical spirituality, pedagogy, social justice, and decolonisation through moving image, murals and large-scale installations.

The Portobello Bookshop, Edinburgh, 6 Nov, 7pm

Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, until 1 Mar 2026

Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair

Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 5-9 Nov Perfect for this month’s issue, get inspired at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair and hone your revolutionary skills. Organised every year by Lighthouse Bookshop, the city’s leftist bookshop, the Radical Book Fair is five days of panels, workshops and book stalls. This year it’s themed around Ecosystems of Change, with appearances from Xuanlin Tham, Joelle Taylor and more.

Bob Vylan O2 Academy, Glasgow, 6 Nov, 7pm

Perhaps best known for their incredible pro-Palestinian set at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, Bob Vylan (consisting of Bobby Vylan on vocals and guitar and Bobbie Vylan on drums) incorporate elements of punk rock, hip-hop and grime in their highly political music. Their songs speak back against power in exhilarating ways, tackling racism, late-stage capitalism and police violence.

Push the Boat Out

The Pleasance, Edinburgh, 20-23 Nov

Push the Boat Out, Edinburgh’s international poetry festival, returns for a long weekend of poetry performances, panels and workshops. There’s over 120 poets participating this year, exploring the full spectrum from poetry and spoken word to hip-hop and punk. We’re especially excited about What Now?, a vibrant night of theatre, spoken word and music from Hannah Lavery, Zinnie Harris, Anthony Anaxagorou, Carla J Easton and William Letford.

Edinburgh, 27 Nov-7 Dec, various times

Raveloe

The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, 25 Nov, 7:30pm

Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Kim Grant takes her musical moniker from the fictional village in George Eliot’s Silas Marner, in which a reclusive weaver struggles to make a life under increasing industrialisation and poverty. Growing up in the small industrial town of Motherwell, Grant weaves similar themes into her music, exploring ways of finding beauty amidst heartbreak and isolation.

Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival

Filmhouse, Edinburgh, 9-10 Nov

Named after a grassroots practice of self-publishing to evade censorship under the Eastern Bloc, Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival returns to Edinburgh this month, with a small programme of classic and contemporary cinema and animation. There’s AniMasters, giving a sweeping overview of 20th-century Czech animation, and Romanian coming-of-age film Stuff and Dough

CIEL

Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 10 Nov, 7:30pm

Blurring the lines between scuzzy gothic rock, dreamy pop and shoegaze, Brighton-based indie outfit CIEL’s musical offerings are at the perfect intersection of compellingly moody and extremely catchy. They released their debut album Call Me Silent last month following a handful of EPs: catch them at The Voodoo Rooms with support from Edinburgh shoegaze band Puppy Teeth.

piri & tommy

King Tut’s, Glasgow, 3 Nov, 7:30pm

Rae Yen Song: 宋瑞渊 - •~TUA~• 大眼

•~MAK~•

Tramway, Glasgow, 15 Nov-16 Aug 2026

The largest solo exhibition to date by groundbreaking Glasgow-based artist Rae-Yen Song, this ambitious project encompasses Song’s multidisciplinary approach to worldbuilding and diasporic-futurism. Tramway’s vast gallery space is transformed into an aquatic wonderland shaped by the ancestral logics and narratives of the Song family, acting as a place of memory, refuge and mythologisation.

The SAY Award

Caird Hall, Dundee, 6 Nov, 7pm

The SAY Award ceremony is taking place in Dundee this year. On the shortlist are some of the best albums by Scottish artists this year, including Hamish Hawk’s A Firmer Hand, Jacob Alon’s In Limerence, and TAAHLIAH’s Gramarye. Head to the afterparty afterwards at CANVAS for the debut of PONYBOY in Dundee, with sets from Miss Cabbage, HUNTRESS and more.

Big Hot Mess

Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, 21 Nov, 8pm

Part of Sneaky Pete’s installation series, which brings iconic DJs and club nights to the atmospheric space of Fruitmarket’s Warehouse, Big Hot Mess scales up the beloved queer clubbing institution for one night only. Expect the usual ecstatic disco, psychedelic techno, and dance-y house from the night’s founder and host DJ Simonotron.

Lorde

The OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 19 Nov, 6:30pm

Join us for a feast of

It’s a Wonderful Life - 4K (U)

The Bishop’s Wife (U)

The Holdovers (15)

White Christmas (U)

The Muppet Christmas Carol (U)

Elf - 4K (PG)

Home Alone (PG)

Gremlins (12A)

Anna and the Apocalypse (15)

Movie Memories: When Harry Met Sally (15)

In Bruges (18)

Die Hard (15)

Batman Returns (12A)

Eyes Wide Shut (18)

What's On

All details correct at the time of writing

Music

Things kick off this month in Dundee, where the Scottish Album of the Year Award ceremony will take place at the Caird Hall on 6 November. In the lead up to the winner being crowned, expect performances from corto.alto, Brooke Combe, rEDOLENT, Dillon Barrie and KT Tunstall, winner of this year’s Modern Scottish Classic award for Eye to the Telescope. After the ceremony, head to CANVAS where iconic club night Ponyboy continue the celebrations with live music from Jacob Alon, Possibly Jamie, EYVE, Pearling and more. On 29 November, the Scottish Alternative Music Awards (SAMAs) will take over Glasgow’s Saint Luke’s, celebrating alternative artists releasing music across Scotland.

While festival season has slowed down, it’s not completely ground to a halt. Radio Buena Vida celebrate their 5th Birthday with Buenafest taking over The Glad Cafe (15 Nov). Kai Reesu, mokusla and Terra Kin are among the ten acts set to play. The Glasgow Improviser Orchestra’s annual GIOfest (20-22 Nov) returns for its 17th outing, bringing collaborations from Indonesia, Japan and Sri Lanka to the CCA. At the end of the month in Edinburgh, Soundhouse Winter Festival (27 Nov-1 Dec) returns to the Traverse Theatre; learn the art of improvisation with Simone Seales (30 Nov) or enjoy live performances from Dara Dubh (28 Nov), The Ayoub Sisters (29 Nov) and Constant Follower (1 Dec) amongst others. Fruitmarket’s annual festival of new music, Deep Time (26-29 Nov), also returns to the capital this month for its third iteration curated by composer, performer and artist Raven Chacon.

When it comes to artists celebrating their music this month, Siobhan Wilson beckons the release of THAW with shows at Stereo (7 Nov) and Cabaret Voltaire (8 Nov). On 8 November at Dundee’s Marryat Hall, Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman celebrate their SAY Award-longlisted album, Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On, with a special performance featuring brass and woodwind, while Cloth bring their SAY Award-shortlisted album, Pink Silence, to King Tut’s (8 Nov) and Cabaret Voltaire (9 Nov). Following the release of This Is the Debut Album at the end of October, Swim School play QMU (14 Nov), while Vlure play The Art School on the same night in honour of Escalate.

On 19 November, Simone Seales brings Dearest to Listen Gallery for a very special launch party, while Peter Cat’s latest release, Starchamber, means shows at Nice N Sleazy (20 Nov) and The Mash House (21 Nov).

Admiral Fallow bring First of the Birds to Church, Dundee (20 Nov) and QMU, Glasgow (21 Nov). The Glasgow Library of Synthesized Sound (GLOSS) have their official launch party at 5 Florence Street (21 Nov), Iona Zajac celebrates Bang with shows at the Voodoo Rooms (23 Nov) and The Hug & Pint (24 Nov) and Edinburgh producer and songwriter SHEARS brings WE ARE BUT CHEMICALS to The Hug & Pint (26 Nov).

Elsehwere this month, in Glasgow catch Perfume Genius (SWG3, 8 Nov), The Rapture (Saint Luke’s, 11 Nov), Water From Your Eyes (The Rum Shack, 15 Nov), English Teacher (Barrowlands, 19 Nov), Nourished by Time (The Art School, 22 Nov), Tune-Yards (Saint Luke’s, 26 Nov) and Home Counties (The Flying Duck, 28 Nov), or head to the OVO Hydro for Lorde (19 Nov), The Hives (26 Nov), My Bloody Valentine (27 Nov) and Kneecap (30 Nov). In Edinburgh, catch Kae Tempest (12 Nov) and Dizzee Rascal (24 Nov) at the Corn Exchange, Smerz

(16 Nov) and Benefits (21 Nov) at Sneaky Pete’s, CupcakKe (23 Nov), Lambrini Girls (25 Nov) and Divorce (28 Nov) at La Belle Angele or Westside Cowboy at Cabaret Voltaire (28 Nov). Or catch the mighty fine (and fun!) Getdown Services at Dundee’s Beat Generator Live! (19 Nov). [Tallah Brash]

Film

Autumn’s film festival season keeps on serving. Coming up in November, we’ve got Scotland Loves Anime (until 16 Nov) and French Film Festival UK (6 Nov-14 Dec) – find highlights from both on p49. The Dundee leg of Take One Action comes to DCA (7-9 Nov), while the Taiwan Film Festival brings a programme titled ‘Encounter Taiwan and the World’ to GFT (7-13 Nov). Edinburgh Short Film Festival offers a selection of short films at Filmhouse (7-16 Nov). Inverness Film Festival (6-13 Nov) has another great lineup at Eden Court, including Palme d’Or-winner It Was Just an Accident and a retrospective dedicated to documentary don Frederick Wiseman. And not to be confused with Glasgow Film Festival, the International Film Festival Glasgow (12-16 Nov) rocks up at Grosvenor Picture Theatre with a lively selection of films that includes the likes of Joachim Trier’s festival hit Sentimental Value

Among film fans, November is Noirvember. If you partake in this annual celebration, get yourself to Filmhouse, where themed noir double-bills screen every Sunday throughout the month, from French crime noir (The Hole & Rififi, 9 Nov) to corrupt journalist noir (Ace in the Hole & The Sweet Smell of Success, 23 Nov). Filmhouse also pay tribute to French provocateur Julia Ducournau: as well as screening her latest release, Alpha (21-27 Nov), the cinema’s bringing back her two previous features, Raw (22 & 25 Nov) and Titane (23 & 27 Nov).

The programming at weekly film club Leith Kino continues to be immaculate. A double bill screening 16 Nov at Leith Depot looks particularly special: they’re showing the brand new Rocky Horror Picture Show doc Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror alongside the criminally underseen Shock Treatment, a sort-of sequel to Rocky Horror from 1981.

One of the best books on cinema this year has been Ryan Gilbey’s It Used to Be Witches, which evocatively mixes a deeply researched history of queer cinema with memoir. Gilbey will be in Glasgow for a Q&A and signing at GFT as part of Aye Write on 9 Nov, and will be presenting one of the great queer films: Teorema, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 allegorical masterwork in which Terence Stamp plays a mysterious man who’s so hot that he sends an entire bourgeois family into a sexual frenzy.

BFI’s Too Much Melodrama season expands to Filmhouse, DCA and continues at GFT. A highlight at the latter will be a screening of All About Eve on 8 November, followed by a panel discussion digging into the queer legacy of Hollywood melodramas. On the panel: film historian Pamela Hutchinson, Invisible Women’s Lauren Clarke, and The Skinny’s Jamie Dunn (that’s me!). [Jamie Dunn]

Clubs

On Wednesday 6 November, umru lands at Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s with hyperpop, baile funk and everything in between for Volens Chorus. Erol Alkan takes to The Berkeley Suite all-night-long in Glasgow on Friday 7 November – expect a flowing curation of synths and experimental grooves. At Sub Club, Spirit presents Timedance 10 with Batu & Bake – think Bristol, bass, and big mixes (7 Nov). On Saturday 8 November, common room hosts Hyperdub vocalist Iceboy Violet and Kincaid (live), bringing ambient and rap to EXIT. After ten years, it’s a farewell to Loose Joints, as Dilly Joints, Nurse, and Suma Bac take to the decks all-night-long at The Berkeley Suite (8 Nov).

On Wednesday 12 November, it’s james K (live) at The Flying Duck – think breakbeats and trip-hop mellowed by mesmeric vocals. Bongo Incognito is back in Edinburgh on Friday 14 November – if last month’s secret guest, DJ Storm, is anything to go by, then it’s not one to miss. La La brings house and techno to a Glasgow home crowd at The Berkeley Suite on Friday 14 November, while Scandal.gla hosts George Riley at Stereo with support from Rahul.mp3 and more (14 Nov). Later in the month, Junglist duo 4am Kru headline the SWG3 Warehouse in Glasgow on Saturday 22 November. [Myrtle Boot]

Art

AI, the politics of surveillance and data extraction are the focus of a new solo exhibition by Felicity Hammond at Stills Centre for Photography. From 6 Nov, Variations presents an evolving installation that zooms in on the relationship between image-making and machine learning, geological mining and data mining.

Opening on 7 Nov, Fruitmarket presents Wilding, a major posthumous exhibition dedicated to the work of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, the late Native American artist, activist, educator and curator. Quick-to-See Smith was an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. The exhibition, which engages with the politics of land stewardship, was conceived in conversation with the artist before her sudden passing earlier this year. Highlights include a sculptural canoe created by the artist specially for the show and works from her I See Red series from the 1990s, which serve ‘to remind viewers that Native Americans are still alive’ amidst quincentennial celebrations of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the US.

Alongside, Deep Time (an annual festival of new music) presents I See Red at Fruitmarket from 27-29 Nov. Named in homage to Quick-to-See Smith, I See Red creates space for several international artists to explore anger at current ecological, civil and political crises through sound, while also seeking connection through collective listening.

Trans Masc Studies and Edinburgh Art Festival continue their collaborations, imagining what a trans masc archive might look like. In a conversation held at Fruitmarket on 17 Nov, Ellis Jackson Kroese and poet Remi Graves discuss and read from their respective publications, Memory is a Museum and coal, both of which reclaim the archive as a site of trans exploration.

In the artist’s most ambitious presentation to date, Rae-Yen Song 宋瑞 渊 promises to transform Tramway into a ‘sub-aquatic world’ shaped by ancestral knowledge, memory and imagination. At the exhibition’s heart, Song transforms the ancestral figure of tua mak (大眼, translating ‘big eyes’ in the Teochew dialect), who drowned at sea in Singapore at 13 years old. The figure, who is only known through Song’s familial memories and myths, is transformed into a lifeform who is ever evolving and in perpetual migration. The exhibition opens on 15 Nov and runs until 24 Aug 2026.

At David Dale Gallery, Esther Gamsu’s solo show MEDIUM explores acts of obsession and repetition through sculpture as a counter to capitalist logic. Gamsu plays with irony, humour, scale and DIY processes in this larger-than-life installation. MEDIUM continues until 29 Nov. [Rachel Ashenden]

Theatre

There’s a whirlwind of old and new in Scottish theatre this November, with performances spanning immersive multimedia to classic drama. In Edinburgh, the Studio Theatre hosts Innovations on 7 and 8 November, showcasing cutting-edge works by choreographers and dance companies from Spain, the Netherlands and Scotland. Meanwhile, the Royal Lyceum Theatre stages Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (4-8 Nov), offering a fresh interpretation of the classic memory play.

In Glasgow, Gravity is featured as part of A Play, A Pie and A Pint at Òran Mór (10-15 Nov). This heartfelt Glaswegian drama delves into the redemptive power of unlikely connections. Elsewhere, Scottish Dance Theatre’s double bill of The Flock & Moving Cloud heads to the Reid Hall, Forfar and Macphail Centre in Ullapool (12 and 14 Nov). The Flock explores the migration of birds through dynamic choreography, while Moving Cloud fuses contemporary dance with traditional Celtic music.

At Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Bestie Award winner Òran (13-15 Nov) blends spoken word, lyrical storytelling and an electronic live score in a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus, rounding out its months-long tour. Also at the Traverse, Stellar Quines co-presents Through the Mud, Apphia Campbell’s exploration of the parallel lives of Assata Shakur and a student during the Ferguson riots in 2014 (14-15 Nov).

Finally, opera-lovers rejoice as Scottish Opera’s update of La bohème, set within the vibrant context of Paris’s flea markets, visits Festival Theatre

(14-22 Nov). On 15 November, the company also performs a double bill of L’heure espagnole and The Bear, two mini operas by Ravel and Walton, reimagined for a modern audience. [Mika Morava]

Comedy

We’ll start things off nice and calm Oh wait, it’s gravel-voiced rockstar comic Nick Helm, ready to kick things in the dick. No One Gets Out Alive (The Stand, Glasgow, 5 Nov, 8.30pm; Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 6 Nov, 7.30pm, £16-18.50) will be an electric night of high energy aggression, oneliners and songs, perfect for folk who like your comedy loud and on the edge of your seat.

For local talent look no further than the Nae Borders Comedy Night (Glee Club, Glasgow, 13 Nov, 7.30pm, £30). The line-up is STACKED with top names including CMB, Marjolein Robertson and Paul Black (there’s more too) all for a vital cause, the Scottish Refugee Council Liam Withnail’s a Big Strong Boy. The Essex-born, Edinburgh-based comic talks about leaving home for Scotland in another excellent hour of storytelling stand-up (The Stand, Glasgow, 30 Nov, 8pm, £15-17). He’s also recording it as a special early December if you can’t make it this month (Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 6 Dec, 5.30pm and 8pm, £12).

Two more total Fringe smashers are coming your way. Helen Bauer brings Bless Her to Edinburgh and Glasgow (Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 20 Nov, 7.30pm; The Stand, Glasgow, 24 Nov, 8pm, £17.50), having, in our opinion, narrowly missed out on a nom for the big comedy gong this year. Her latest hour tackles self-hate, life-changing illness and more with lashings of personality and incisive gags. Best Newcomer 2023 Winner and mega baddie Urooj Ashfaq returns with her second hour (Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 23 Nov, 8pm; The Stand, Glasgow, 29 Nov, 4pm, £16) promising girly edgelording and sassy teen erotica (mainly about One Direction).

And a book ahead banger for you: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Mediaeval Christmas Festivitye brings everyone’s favourite poot to town with a host of special guests (Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, 11 Dec, 7.30pm, £15). Last year’s festive treat was a complete corker and this year’s lineup includes Eleanor Morton, Phil O’Shea, Amy Matthews and Jonny Donahoe (of Jonny and the Baptists), with John-Luke Roberts as the wildly funny and largely naked wordsmith. [Polly Glynn]

Books

Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair returns to Assembly Roxy from 5-9 November, with a host of panels, workshops and tables upon tables of books, all themed around Environments of Change. There’s a myths and legends cabaret with Nikita Gill, Mara Gold and Niall Moorjani, a full moon reading on how to alchemise grief and transformation with Sophia Hembeck and Fariha Róisín, and a panel on music, politics and power with Dave Randall, DJ Paulette, Adele Oliver and JJ Fadaka amongst much more.

Elsewhere, over at The Portobello Bookshop, Olga Ravn launches The Wax Child on 6 November and Ella Risbridger launches In Love With Love on 11 November. Over at Lighthouse Bookshop, there’s a fundraiser for Palestine with Readers and Writers Against Genocide (26 Nov). And of course, November sees the return of Push the Boat Out, Edinburgh’s international poetry festival (20-23 Nov), with events from the likes of Iona Lee, Marjorie Lotfi, Michael Pedersen and more.

Over in Glasgow, there’s a poetry open mic at Glasgow Zine Library (12 Nov), and a new workshop called Dissent Rover / composing a poetics of dissent (7 Nov). Helena Fornells Nadal launches her poetry pamphlet in Burning House Books (7 Nov), and Ben Pester and Rose Ruane discuss Pester’s debut novel The Expansion Project at Mount Florida Books on 6 November. [Anahit Behrooz]

Cooper Gallery Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design University of Dundee, 13 Perth Road DD1 4HT coopergallery@dundee.ac.uk | dundee.ac.uk/cooper-gallery ExhibitionDJCAD CooperGalleryDJCAD cooper_gallery_djcad

FAIR SATURDAY 2025

Saturday 29 November A Day. Culture. Change.

A global cultural movement creating a social and empathetic response to Black Friday. All kinds of cultural events, each supporting a social project, charity or the community. Music, dance, storytelling, fine art, photography, printmaking, craft, workshops, nature, wellbeing, family activities, and community events. Come and join us!

For the full programme of events and activities, visit standrews.fairsaturday.org

Kindly supported by

Features

22 We find out more about the No Music for Genocide campaign and what local artists are doing to contribute.

25 Scottish musicians are speaking up about climate change with No Music on a Dead Planet

26 Spending Strike Thursdays are disrupting capitalist systems and organising for Palestinian liberation.

28 A tribute to Optimo’s JD Twitch and his role as an activist, community builder and changemaker.

36 Dalia Al-Dujaili on her migration memoir Babylon, Albion ahead of her appearance at this Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair.

38 The Alasdair Gray Archive’s exhibition The City maps Glasgow through a queer, working-class lens.

45 Julia Ducournau and Tahar Rahim on Alpha, the story of a mysterious pandemic of the 80s and 90s.

46 Writer-director Harry Lighton on his debut feature Pillion

50 As Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy turns 40, we explore the impact and continued influence of the East Kilbride band’s debut.

54 We explore Edinburgh’s newest club, the People’s Leisure Club.

55 Owen Sutcliffe discusses his visceral debut play, Òran, currently touring Scotland.

56 Harriet Dyer on her current tour, chaos, whimsy and the love of reading.

On the website...

The SAY Award’s in Dundee this month, and we’ll be there to tell you who’s won. Elsewhere, there’s podcasts a-plenty via The Cineskinny and Music Now, plus our weekly new music Spotlight series and our weekly Zap! events newsletter (both every Thursday, easy to remember)

Pynch @ The Hug and Pint, Glasgow, 21 October by

Elliot Hetherton

Famous festive misanthrope (8,7)

As intended (2,6)

Opt for – like (6)

Frank in a bun (3,3)

Gap between (8)

Marked – downing tools (8)

Supplication (6)

Tyrant (6)

Appeal (8)

Protested (8)

Persecute (6)

Fervid – ranted (anag) (6)

Worried deeply (8)

Coup (7,8)

2. Spurn – blacklist (7)

3. Very much – ___ in sight? (2,3)

4. Time ghost? (9)

5. Operational – standing for election (7)

6. Defunct (5)

7. Respond disproportionately (9)

8. Small explosive (7)

14. Put into action – instrument (9)

15. Pick forth (anag) – farm utensil (9)

17. Restriction – mob rage (anag) (7)

18. Episodic audio (7)

19. Vulgar (7) 21. Complete (5)

23. Large ungulate – horni (anag) (5)

Email crossword@theskinny.co.uk

to page 7 for the solutions

In this month’s advice column, one reader asks how to feel chill in a temporary situation

How to be happy and normal in a relationship that you feel will end eventually?

Honestly, you are so real for this. No one gets the urge to be happy and normal more than me. I love to schedule in my happy and normal time, like it’s a deal I’m making with the universe: “I will be happy and normal right now and in exchange, you will let me be happy and normal.” Neither of us are very good at holding up our ends of the bargain, but I really understand this desire to Jedi mind trick yourself into a state that in reality can only occur when the circumstances are right. Sometimes the only way to feel like you have agency over your life is to try and control every uncontrollable aspect of it. You tell those serotonin molecules where to go!!

So listen. As much as I admire your tenacity, the question here isn’t really how to be happy and normal in this situation, but whether the situation is working for you. There are some people on this good Earth who I’m sure can feel fine in something they know won’t last. These people are either well-adjusted to the point of suspicion or delusional to the point of psychosis, but they do exist. Are you one of them? You can’t make yourself feel happy and normal if you’re the kind of person who finds endings unhappy and strange. I’ve never met an ending that didn’t make me want to kill myself so, as much as I have been – and will continue to be, because I’m stupid – in relationships that I know won’t last, I do know they’re probably not good for me! And that’s OK! Maybe you’re like that too!

Ultimately, none of us know what is going to happen. You might meet your soulmate and Wile E. Coyote might drop an anvil on them, or you might end up staying with your situationship forever because everyone else is taken and why not. Relationships are at the end of the day about choice, and people only stay together forever not because their love is stronger and more magical, but because they choose to. Who knows what your life will look like? You don’t have agency over the outcomes, but you do have agency over whether you stay in something that makes you anxious. Devastating news, but there it is.

Do you have a problem Anahit could help with?

Get in touch by email on pettyshit@theskinny.co.uk, send us your quandaries with an almost-unhelpful level of anonymity via NGL, or look out for Ask Anahit callouts on our Instagram stories

Rooted in personal discovery, Gut Feelings is a new column that explores how art can be a conduit for memories and sticky emotions. In the launching edition, art writer Megan Rudden responds to Uist Corrigan’s exhibition, Get Wet

Iopen my eyes to a sting of chlorine, half-conscious and sinking. Sunk, to the bottom of Ainslie Park swimming pool, where my feet land on tufted ground. Recoiling to the surface, I add to a mental list of places that shouldn’t have carpets; nightclubs, toilets, nightclub toilets, swimming pools. I emerge through the water, to laughter and screeches that reverberate off spearmint tiles. In the changing rooms, I get dressed too quickly and the fabric clings to damp skin. Dropped costumes solidify the moment they touch the floor, abandoned Speedos exalted to sculptural status, each crease articulated in bronze. An Adidas shoe box opens to display a pair of yellow stained lobsters, glowing like cartoon treasure. A strange tea, obtained from an area of Scotland where you might be offered curry sauce at the chippy. Despite being in the salt and sauce region, I can see Iona out of the window, but the view is pixelated plastic. The smell of Hama beads melting under greaseproof paper lingers and I am in my childhood living room asking my mum if she can put the iron back on. Another shift in consciousness transports me to the exhibition opening, where I recognise the objects like seeing your own house in a dream. Almost familiar but something is strange, like the pincers that emerge from my dinner plate. Before picking up the blue text I am already thinking about layering, of places and people and time. The first sentence mentions multiple worlds, and I know I have been here before. A place is a portal, and D is talking about when this building was Embassy, the artist-run space. He tells a story about catching a rat in a bucket just before the Scottish Arts Council was due to visit, the time period revealed by this detail. I say you’re showing your age, which is a joke because nothing is linear. In the corner, that same bucket is upturned, underneath a smoked haddock wishing well. There’s no rat inside, just a collection of wishes, surrounded by scattered coins that missed the bucket. The ceiling is deep blue, stars stencilled in silver and I am in the bath at my gran’s house. A wooden lighthouse on the wall is surrounded by a flock of tiny lines that mean seagulls. The memory is thick and full of water.

Get Wet took place at Whitespace Gallery, Edinburgh, 10-15 Oct

Saturday 8th November

Saturday 1st November SCOTLAND v

Sunday 16th November

Sunday 23rd November

We want to shine a light on some of the activism that’s going on in Scotland at a grassroots level whose impact extends far beyond these borders. The jumping-off point for the theme was a tribute to Optimo’s Keith McIvor, whose unwavering commitment to activism and community has been widely celebrated in the wake of his passing.

We look at some of the campaigns which attempt to utilise the power of the collective to curtail the destructive force of rampant capitalism. With No Music for Genocide, artists geoblock their music from streaming platforms in Israel as a form of cultural boycott. Environment pressure group Music Declares Emergency has declared No Music on a Dead Planet – we talk to

some of the Scottish acts who’ve signed up to the pledge.

The movement behind the Thursday spending strikes is growing – some local organisers talk us through the process and potential impact of collective action to disrupt global capital. Fair Saturday returns with a community-focussed programme in counterpoint to the consumer hellscape of Black Friday, and we explore Scotland’s Climate March. We also spotlight the solidarity of masking, punk poetry at Push the Boat Out festival, a queer cartography of Glasgow in the spirit of Alasdair Gray, and talk to Dalia al-Dujaili about her migration memoir Babylon, Albion ahead of her appearance at Edinburgh's Radical Book Fair.

Collective Action

As the international music community rallies behind the No Music For Genocide campaign with artists continuing to geo-block their music from streaming platforms in Israel, we find out more about the campaign and what local artists are doing to contribute

Words: Billie Estrine

Illustration: Megan Barclay

No Music For Genocide, a cultural boycott of Israel launched in September with 400 artists and record labels signed on to a pledge to geo-block their music from being accessible on streaming platforms within the occupying territory. In the campaign’s mission statement the organisers laid out the strategy behind the NMFG campaign: “This tangible act is just one step toward honouring Palestinian demands to isolate and delegitimise Israel as it kills without consequence on the world stage.” Utilising the economic power held in collective action, the international music community has rallied behind NMFG’s campaign with the signatories having more than doubled in only one month to over 1000 participating members, including Lorde, Amyl and the Sniffers, Björk, the estate of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japanese Breakfast and Kneecap.

At the heart of NMFG’s cultural boycott are the Palestinian people, who have resisted the Israeli occupation of their land for the last 77 years. Following the release of Toronto-based, Palestinian musician Nemahsis’ music video covering the nostalgia-fuelled Lorde track Team, the artist was interviewed by the NMFG campaign. Nemahsis’ interview began with the announcement that she had joined the campaign to boycott Israel. In the interview, published to NMFG's Instagram, Nemahsis shared the experience of her grandma’s forced isolation due to her fear of displacement from her home. Nemahsis explained: “Last year I was home in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. My grandma wouldn’t leave home to

“If geo-blocking were as simple as flicking a switch, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take part in the campaign”

Johnny Lynch, Lost Map Records

restock her fridge because she was afraid settlers would come and steal our house.” Nemahsis’ music video shows the stunning creation of Handala, a symbol of Palestinian resistance and the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Nemahsis’ family’s resistance to displacement from her home by Israeli settlers makes Handala, in this instance, also symbolise both the injustice and steadfast resilience of her grandmother’s inability to leave her home to do something as routine as grocery shopping.

To ground the NMFG campaign within the local music scene I spoke to Scottish artists about the reasons behind their pledge to join the NMFG campaign. Jolon Yeoman of Knockwood Studio emphasises his motivation to have the studio join due to “the unavoidable fact that a genocide of an entire people is being committed right in front of our eyes. I never once expected to open my phone to see the charred remains of a child, yet for over two years I’ve seen it almost every day.” The horror of genocide necessitates economic pressure which can create enough power to put a dent in the killing machine that supplies weapons to Israel. Yeoman’s transparently aware of this; “If we are to make the ‘Israeli’ settler-colonial project unviable we have to make it a ‘bad return’ for investors. To do this we need to follow BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) guidelines in all parts of our lives.” As working artists, folks like Yeoman who run studios are engaging BDS in their labour practices by joining the NMFG campaign and having previously joined the PACBI (Palestinian Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel) a year ago.

Johnny Lynch, the Isle of Eigg-based artist behind Pictish Trail and DIY label Lost Map Records shares some of the practical process behind geo-blocking music from streaming platforms. “One of our artists on the label contacted me recently asking if we could remove their music from being distributed digitally in Israel. We spoke with our distributor, a Scottish company called EmuBands, to see if that was possible.” Lynch continues, sharing a one-off experience that’s a testament to communities’ inclination in the local

Scottish music industry to help each other. “Initially it seemed that to geo-block a release would mean taking it down and re-uploading it again – which incurs a charge per release – but on this occasion EmuBands were really helpful and managed to geo-block Israel from that artist’s catalogue immediately.”

Given the fee associated with geo-blocking music from Israel, Lost Map Records hasn’t joined the NMFG campaign. Lynch explains that, “As a label we discussed applying this across all our releases, but with over 350 titles available on streaming platforms, the costs [and time] of re-uploading everything would run into the thousands – simply beyond our means as a small, DIY operation.” Given the financial resources needed to geo-block music from artists’ discography, it’s important to consider how class difference affects artists’ ability to participate in this cultural boycott of Israel. Especially when Lynch ends by telling me, “If geo-blocking were as simple as flicking a switch, I wouldn’t have hesitated to take part in the campaign.” For example, on the other side of the coin, a bigger artist, such as Hayley Williams was able to lean on financial resources and the support of her team to get her new album Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party and Paramore’s decades-long discography geo-blocked from Israel

when she and the band became signatories of the NMFG campaign.

Even with the financial concerns that can restrict smaller artists from geo-blocking their back catalogue from streaming platforms in Israel, Edinburgh-based goth rock’n’roller Dylan Wilson is one example of an indie artist who has signed on to NMFG and geo-blocked their new single from streaming in Israel even though geo-blocking their previously released music is not financially feasible at the moment. While speaking with Wilson, he explains the behind-the-scenes process of geoblocking the band’s music. “Our new single, The Camera Girl’s Genius, was blocked from release in Israel without issue, and was very easy to handle through our distributor. To block our previous releases, however, there is no way to change the release territory without taking them off streaming, and paying to release them over again.” Wilson has proved to create an important alternative avenue for joining the cultural boycott of Israel given their financial restrictions as an indie band.

As the NMFG campaign continues to update their list of signatories and put out media on their Instagram account highlighting big name artists who have joined the cultural boycott, the campaign has also emphasised that the isolation and delegitimisation of Israel via a boycott is only one of their

organising goals. Galvanising the collective power harnessed from their signatories in the international music community, the NMFG campaign wrote in a statement published to their Instagram, is the bigger picture behind this campaign. In that statement they said: “This boycott is just the tip of the spear. We wanted to encourage our peers to directly challenge their own ecosystems while fostering open dialogue, and we’re excited to witness that rapidly materialise and expand.”

There’s the potential for NMFG to collaborate with local chapters of Punks Against Apartheid – established in 2011 with chapters across the globe – and other grassroots movements that focused on their local music and club scenes’ ability to stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine. It’s tantamount that collective action focused on economic power leads to direct action efforts that target the profitability of businesses invested in Israel’s occupation of Palestine. From organising efforts against weapons manufacturers, such as the New York City-based grassroots organisation Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard to the boycott of the London-based entertainment company Boiler Room via organising efforts against their international events by Ravers for Palestine, the NMFG campaign has the potential to amplify and further activate direct action that have grass-

roots organising efforts behind them already.

The No Music For Genocide campaign has received an overwhelmingly positive reaction with artists joining the cultural boycott of Israel in droves. Spotlighting the appetite within the international music community to materially stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people as they resist occupation and genocide in Palestine. The last two years of Israel’s livestreamed violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza and heightened international knowledge of settler attacks against Palestinian people who live in the occupied West Bank – such as Nemahsis’ family back home in Jericho, Palestine – have woken the world up to the Israeli entity’s intrinsic violence as a settler-colonial state. No Music For Genocide is a starting point for artists to materially support the Palestinian people by joining the cultural boycott of Israel. From there the campaign seems to be on track to educate their signatories on how to join and amplify grassroots direct action organising for Palestinian liberation that’s occurring in the city or town that houses their local music or club scene.

For more information on the No Music For Genocide campaign head to nomusicforgenocide.org or follow them on Instagram @nomusicforgenocide

People Power

As governments and NGOs assemble in the Brazilian rainforest for the COP30 Climate Change Conference this month, Scottish musicians are speaking up about climate change

Words: Andrew Williams

As we reach the tail end of the first quarter of a new century, it’s useful to take stock. Has much improved over the past 25 years, since fireworks danced over The Millennium Dome? It would take a very rose-tinted observer to say we are in a better place. Even narrowing it down to a mere four horsemen of the apocalypse might be a challenge. And while the world seems to be meandering downhill, where are the voices of dissent? Where are the Dylans, the Woody Guthries, the protest singers? So far, the 21st century may not have been a golden age for radical rock, but there are glimmers of hope.

When it comes to the biggest issue of our age – climate change – there are signs that a new generation of artists, emboldened by those who have gone before them, are starting to become more strident in their approach to political action. Music Declares Emergency is probably the most high-profile vehicle for this, with acts such as Billie Eilish, Massive Attack and Jarvis Cocker all signing up to the declaration.

There are a number of Scottish names on the list too, from Annie Lennox to Mogwai and Honeyblood. And there are surprises. Nineties indie crossover stars The Soup Dragons may feel like unlikely climate activists, but anyone who witnessed their blistering performance at this year’s Glas-Goes Pop festival will know that they’re not going through the motions. Having won over the crowd with their early hits, from indie disco classics like Hang-Ten!, through to Top of the Pops favourites like I’m Free, the band chose a curveball with which to close the show. A new song, called No Music on a Dead Planet. As the band’s bassist, Sushil K. Dade, writes so eloquently below, this is an issue that’s moving the band forward, creatively and musically.

Perhaps it’s the thought of a new generation coming through the ranks? Sushil’s daughter, Radhika, has already been enjoying BBC 6Music

“No matter how small a change you make to your lifestyle choices, these tiny changes really matter”

Sushil K. Dade, The Soup Dragons

airplay for her newest track, Starry Eyes, but her back catalogue includes tracks like Future Me, which she describes as “an eco anthem for my generation”. Ultimately, does any of this make a difference? Will politicians in Belém, Brazil, for the COP30 Climate Change Conference really pay any attention to a bunch of indie kids rocking the boat? Does Ed Miliband even know who The Soup Dragons are? Keir Starmer, lest we forget, is on record as being a big Orange Juice fan, so who knows?

History would suggest that no matter how insignificant individual action may seem, it is actually the only thing that ever changes everything. People have the power, as Patti Smith sang, and while things often seem to take an age to change, they can shift over time. Improvements have been made on emissions – perhaps a sign that the COP process does work? Arguably the biggest problem for musicians is that acts who begin to make small changes are often derided for the things that remain out of their control. So perhaps a good starting point might be to pause the purity tests and focus on the positive stories that can shine a light towards a better future for all of us.   On their website, Music Declares Emergency have a number of suggestions for what you can do to enact positive change, offering advice on how to be a responsible gig-goer. Here’s our top three tips: 1) Take public transport where you can. Parking is a nightmare for most city centre shows anyway, so catching a bus or a train can take a lot of the stress out of a gig. 2) Choose the veggie option for your pre-show snack. Meat and dairy

are huge contributors to climate change and making a small switch can make a big difference. 3) Speak out and show your support on climate issues. Governments have to respond to public campaigns and your voice could be a vital tool to make change happen.

Finally, a message from The Soup Dragons’ Sushil K. Dade: “As custodians of the beautiful countries we all live in on planet Earth, we all have the shared responsibility of looking after Mother Universe, especially in these ever changing times. In Scotland we have our beautiful parks, glens and lochs for us all to enjoy, which attract millions to our country each year. No matter how small a change you make to your lifestyle choices, these tiny changes really matter. When The Soup Dragons reformed a few years ago we promised we would not only look back on past glories but to create new music and to also use the power of music to highlight other issues. We named our first new song after a slogan, No Music on a Dead Planet, which we saw on a t-shirt by the climate action group Music Declares Emergency. The Soup Dragons would urge you to visit their website below and join us alongside fellow artists, fans and music professionals to demand urgent government action on the climate crisis.”

Find more information about Music Declares Emergency at musicdeclares.net

Follow The Soup Dragons and Radhika on Instagram respectively @thesoupdragonsofficial and @radh__1ka__

Strike for Gaza

Our money matters. We learn more about Spending Strike Thursdays, disrupting capitalist systems, and organising for Palestinian liberation

At the time of writing, it has been two years and 22 days since this iteration of the genocide in Gaza began. One hundred and four Palestinians died yesterday, on 28 October, in a wave of fresh Israeli strikes during a supposed ceasefire that was announced earlier this month. The Guardian reports that the ceasefire looks ‘increasingly fragile’, bizarre and oxymoronic phrasing that epitomises the complicity of the Western world in facilitating these war crimes.

The weight of this violence is so unbearably, unfathomably huge, that it can sometimes feel difficult to know how to act, or to believe that any action or agency is even possible. It is this sense of paralysis against which the organising group behind Spending Strike Thursdays is attempting to push back. The call for weekly spending strikes – a global economic strike in which participants refuse to spend money on a particular day, pausing all cash and credit transactions – was initiated by the Humaniti Project, a grassroots collective organising for Palestinian liberation. The strike was taken up in Edinburgh by a small group of

activists working to encourage their local community and networks to participate.

On Wednesdays, they encourage everyone to plan ahead – make lunch and purchase travel tickets in advance, and reschedule any standing payments and subscriptions. No money is spent on Thursday, and the money saved is then donated directly to crowdfunders for families in Gaza.

“There’s the theoretical impact that this strike could have at a global critical mass – which could be noticeable if even 5% or even 1% of people took part in this – but to me, it’s not even about this theoretical result yet,” says Xuanlin Tham, one of the organisers. Instead, they explain, the strike is a way of beginning to exercise political muscles: practising the acts of collectivism, solidarity, sacrifice and discipline that are necessary for liberation.

“I live in Hackney,” explains Anna McKibbin, who saw the call for the strike and decided to participate within her community in London.

“While attending a local protest I learned that Hackney and Stoke Newington were the first

‘The strike is a way of beginning to exercise political muscles: practising the acts of collectivism, solidarity, sacrifice and discipline that are necessary for liberation’

Words: Anahit Behrooz

Illustration: Vaso Michailidou

boroughs in London to refuse to sell South African goods during apartheid. I found this quote [by] Alderman Leonard Levy, leader of Stoke Newington Council: ‘It is not intended that this should, of its own, have any profound effect in South Africa. But if all authorities of goodwill made similar objections then enough drops might fall on the stone to wear it away.’ Those words have echoed through my head – all of it is meaningful and worth trying!”

Jan, another of the Edinburgh organisers, agrees that the strike is largely a tool for further action, a way of beginning to awaken political agency. “We can start by asking ourselves: if I can commit to withdrawing my spending for just one day each week, what else is waiting for me if I just try?” she says. “How much am I willing to positively transform my life, divesting from complicity and directly challenging the unacceptable order of this world?”

It is not just individuals who can and should participate. Mairi Oliver, owner of Lighthouse Bookshop, is also participating, encouraging customers not to buy books from the shop or online on Thursdays. “When a call comes from society experiencing genocide and they are saying, ‘We want you to disrupt capital wherever you are’, how can we not answer that call?” she asks. “It wasn’t necessarily that we were going to stop the war machine, but in small ways the cumulative effect of people – whether it’s showing up to protest or disrupting arms factories or deciding to sacrifice income – is part of a tapestry of tactics that we need to learn to use.”

Capital and Palestine are inextricably entwined – it is only by refusing to participate in the former that we can liberate the latter. “Israel is capitalist necropolitics incarnate,” Tham says. “Weapons are tested on Palestinians and then sold to the US, UK, EU, Singapore.”

“It’s pretty clear at this point that all that world leaders and arms companies care about is the accruing of wealth and resources,” McKibbin adds. “The US and UK continue to fund the Israeli military as a way of accessing oil in the area and the murder of people is incidental in maintaining these economic interests.”

The spending strike, then, while not an end in and of itself in disrupting these mechanisms of violence, is a way of redirecting social behaviour away from the numbing effects of capitalism and towards the empowering possibilities of collective action. “Humanti have made their strike poster free to download; what if you put it up around campus?” Jan asks. “Alongside the strike, we emphasise the importance of donating to fundraisers the day after the strike, to remind you of the people in Gaza who demand life and who, in turn, teach us life.”

It is, OIiver says, ultimately about practising disruption. “By refusing to contribute to the flow of capital for an entire day,” she says, “we are making clear that there will be no ‘business as usual’ under a genocide.”

More Than Music

Following the untimely passing of Optimo’s JD Twitch, aka Keith McIvor, we celebrate his unwavering devotion to activism and supporting his local community

On 20 September via a beautiful Instagram tribute from Optimo’s Jonnie Wilkes, it was announced that his partner Keith McIvor, aka JD Twitch, had passed away peacefully the day before. Following an outpouring of heartfelt, music-filled and deeply personal tributes, it’s important to also celebrate another side of this much-loved man, DJ and label boss – his unwavering devotion to activism.

While much of his time was spent behind the decks and releasing records, McIvor was also devoted to raising money and awareness for causes he truly believed in. Following the announcement of an untreatable brain tumour diagnosis in July, his generosity has been matched by friends, family and fans via a Crowdfunder for hospice care. Far exceeding its target – hitting almost £150,000 – it means excess funds raised will go to the Glasgow NW Foodbank, brainstrust UK, the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) and Takis Shelter, an animal shelter in Crete.

“Keith felt all the love that surrounded him, right to the very end,” his wife Marissa wrote on social media. “His kindness, creativity and joy touched so many lives, and his music and spirit will live on.” Wilkes added: “His belief in people and the idea that standing together, that our collective strength is powerful was unwavering. I loved him for that.”

A page set up for people to share memories and donate to the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice also raised more than £40,000 – including £9,500 from DFA Records, £1,000 from Domino Records and £25,000 of excess funds from the Crowdfunder. The DFA money came via the sale of a T-shirt stating ‘No DFA Without Optimo’ in memory of early support for the New York imprint made famous by the likes of LCD

Soundsystem. “The struggle of our dear friend has generated a righteous and justified wave of support from people all around the world,” read DFA’s website. “This shirt is our tiny way of trying to raise money for our friend, but it’s also an opportunity for us to show love and respect where it’s so truly deserved.”

“Keith managed to incorporate the charity angle to his various projects, without it coming across as performative and disingenuous”

Brian d’Souza, aka Auntie Flo

At the start of October, Brian d’Souza, aka Auntie Flo, released a remix of the Liquid Liquid track that Optimo are named after, raising money for brainstrust. A long-time friend and collaborator of McIvor’s, he helped with Optimo Music’s Autonomous Africa offshoot, which in 2012 started releasing music inspired by the continent while also raising funds for African organisations. The proceeds from one release with DJ and producer Midland went to a charity that Midland’s parents founded, the Mtandika Mission in Tanzania.

“I know the Boiler Room we did in Glasgow raised over £2,000 for the charity, the records

Words: Peter Walker

must have done more,” d’Souza tells us. “Keith managed to incorporate the charity angle to his various projects, without it coming across as performative and disingenuous, which isn’t easy to do... There was a real commitment to the causes and a selfless approach that is often lacking.”

Will Jones, Chief Executive of brainstrust, confirmed that it has received donations via McIvor’s recent hospice Crowdfunder. “Any funds that are donated to brainstrust are used to support people who are living life with a brain tumour diagnosis,” he states. “We provide UK-wide support, with coaching, information and peer support helping people to feel less afraid, less alone and more in control.”

It wasn’t hard to find people in the third sector willing to praise McIvor for his community work. “We will always remember him – and the wider music community around Optimo – for their generosity and solidarity,” says Robina Qureshi, Founder and CEO of Scottish charity Positive Action in Housing (PAIH). “At a time when people seeking asylum often had no money at all and were unable to protect themselves, we were distributing hardship funds so they could buy food, essentials and keep themselves safe – their support helped us reach those most at risk when it mattered most.” Optimo’s donation to PAIH came in 2020, at the height of pandemic lockdowns. Qureshi describes McIvor as “strongly supportive of our human rights work with people from refugee communities, especially during COVID-19.”

Carol Young, Deputy Director of the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER), tells me that over the years “no one has supported us more than Optimo,” noting that McIvor was the first person working in music to get in touch and offer to raise money. “He called the office and spoke to our-then Communities and Campaigns Officer, Zandra Yeaman, and asked if it would be okay if Optimo raised some money for us,” Young says. “She was quite surprised at the time, as we’d never had an offer like that before, explaining to him that we don’t have service users – we’re focused on tackling institutional and structural racism – but he said he already knew that and this was exactly why they wanted to support us.”

The 2019 Optimo Hogmanay party at Room 2 in Glasgow split ticket sale profits between CRER, PAIH and Drumchapel Foodbank. “Over the years, Keith would just call out of the blue to let us know that we’d be receiving another split of the profits – they never sought any public recognition or praise for their fundraising. Quite the opposite, this was just a core part of what they did,” says Young. “Optimo never placed any expectations on how we would invest the donations they made – they just knew that we could do with a hand.” Young continues: “However, our relationship with Optimo had a wider influence on our work; it generated conversations about the racism that’s unfortunately still affecting Black and minority

ethnic people when they go out clubbing. This led to a programme of work on racism in Scotland’s night-time economy, funded by the Corra Foundation, and as part of this we’ve produced guidance for licensing boards to increase the emphasis on protecting customers of licensed premises from discrimination.”

Shona Simm, a Project Manager for Glasgow NW Foodbank, said McIvor and Optimo helped raise more than £10,000 to keep people fed. “Despite his illness, Keith remained determined to make a difference,” she says. “Using his platform, his voice and his connections, he brought attention to the growing issue of food insecurity in Glasgow – and inspired others to act. Keith was a true friend to this foodbank and to the community, his generosity – even while facing unimaginable challenges – was nothing short of extraordinary.”

In 2018, Optimo Music launched Against Fascism Trax, to “provoke dialogue that is fundamentally anti-racist, anti-sexist, non-homophobic, non-transphobic, non-ageist and non-ableist,” as well as “to question and break down the class divide.” The sub-label promoted artists making music that openly questioned and criticised those movements, with all profits going to campaigning charity Hope Not Hate.

In 2020, they released a compilation featuring Auntie Flo and Joe Goddard to support No Evictions Glasgow, a campaign helping people in asylum accommodation across the city against evictions, reacting to their peaceful protests being violently broken up by fascists. McIvor wrote at the time: “When I started the Against Fascism Trax label two years ago I never imagined such a

scenario happening in my city, but this has been a wake up call to see what a deeply racist city Glasgow is capable of being and that there is an element in this city that has to be confronted – they can not be allowed to pass.”

Never one for ‘just sticking to the music’ and leaving politics off the dancefloor, he would regularly intersperse sets with clips from campaign rally speeches and drop anarcho-punk records into the mix. McIvor also revealed his growing support of the Scottish independence movement, around the time of the referendum. “I still think of myself as opposed to nationalism, I think the notion of nations is an outdated historical anomaly that seems out of step with the world we live in and the world I spend a large part of my working life travelling around and experiencing,” he wrote for National Collective in 2014. “However, a bit over a year ago, after much thought, soul searching and engaging with the debate I did a u-turn and am now very much a Yes supporter.

“I was a great admirer of the late Donald Dewar and he never stopped saying these words – “Social Justice”. Put together those two words form one of the most beautiful things in the English language [...] I believe that the majority of Scottish people, no matter what their political persuasion, feel strongly that those two words are an important thing, worth fighting for. Our current system acts like they are dirty words worth expunging.”

Talking to DJ Mag to mark 25 years of Optimo, Keith said of Glasgow: “I like its down-toearth quality, it’s quite bullshit-free […] but I hate the sectarianism and I hate the poverty, so if I wasn’t doing this, I’d probably be working in the charity sector. I’m able to do a lot of fundraising in

“No one has supported us more than Optimo”

Carol Young, CRER

this position which I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. This gives us a platform to channel something back to the community.”

While McIvor grew up in Edinburgh and made his name running Pure in the capital, it was over the M8 where he built the most long-lasting community, with Optimo’s legendary Sunday night residency at the Sub Club and latterly via parties at The Berkeley Suite. Another fellow Weegie DJ, Maya Medvesek, aka Nightwave, also has tales of McIvor’s dedication to a long list of causes.

“He organised and donated tracks for many charity compilations, including my own – Love Amazonia – that supported Indigenous people in the rainforest affected by fires,” she says. “What some people might not know, is how crazily generous he was to his friends, and would not take no for an answer (or even ask), if someone found themselves in a crisis... He would just get it done – his big heart, compassion and fighting spirit against injustices will live on and continue to inspire us all – we owe him so much.”

JG Wilkes continues Optimo’s legacy; for updates on future endeavours, follow Optimo on Instagram @optimoespacio optimoespacio.com

Every Moment, Every Day

How do we use our freedom? We look ahead to Scotland’s Climate March, as part of a global day of action, and question how sustainable movements are made

This Saturday 15 November, ahead of COP30, Scotland’s Climate March joins a global day of action to demand change. The organisers, which include a broad coalition of campaign groups, NGOs and community networks, have put out a call to action: “Let’s stand together to demand a fairer world for all.”

The march comes at a moment of crisis, not just for the climate but for the act of protest itself. We’ve seen protesters charged with conspiracy for attending a Zoom call and octogenarians charged with terrorism for holding a sign in support of Palestine Action. Bank accounts were frozen, defendants banned from speaking about the climate crisis and protesters sentenced to prison time for nonviolent climate actions, the first in Scotland’s history.

In response to this crisis, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recently stated what may prove to be a poetic summation of the Starmer project: “Just because you have a freedom doesn’t mean you have to use it at every moment of every day.”

Over the last few years I’ve interviewed protesters, organisers and groups attempting to bring about change. Some of these conversations were captured in How Does Change Happen? published by 404 Ink. A consistent refrain I have heard within these interactions is that it has become increasingly difficult for anyone to protest in the UK.

We arrived here quickly, but not suddenly. Consecutive governments have shrunk the acceptable definition of protest, brutally punished activists, and curtailed the rights of unions to organise.

As the window of admissible dissent gets smaller, Scotland’s Climate March could be a welcome opportunity to gather enthusiasm and energy. I spoke to Freya Aitchison, Activism Organiser at Friends of the Earth Scotland, who told me about the goals of the upcoming march. “We are expecting loads of civil society groups to come together and demand better from their governments,” she says. “[COP30] is a useful focal point for the global climate movement to demand better, to demand more.”

To Freya, marches like this can play an important role during a time of crackdown on protest. “Part of the motivation is to visibly show how many people care about this,” she explains. “There are recent studies [published in journal Nature Climate Change] that show 89% of people support climate action, but most of those people don’t think that other people support it. A huge outcome of doing a march like this is showing that other people care as well.”

But any kind of effective change-making needs to involve, as she puts it, “a diversity of

Words: Sam Gonçalves

‘It is folly to hope that one action will lead to a chain-reaction that can make everything better, but bringing people together can energise a movement’

tactics.”  The march will present opportunities for attendees to connect with local causes through different stalls present on the day. The gathering, as well as a show of support, could be the first point of contact for people who care about the climate crisis but don’t know how to get involved.

This resonates with what I have heard from other activists. It is folly to hope that one action will lead to a chain-reaction that can make everything better, but bringing people together can energise a movement. From there it is necessary to build resilient structures and coalitions that can fight on many fronts, consistently.

One group I spoke to during my research was the Landless Workers Movement (MST) based in Brazil, the host country of COP30. MST has fortified their movement to the point of becoming a national institution that is impossible to ignore. Since their inception in 1984, they have become the largest producer of organic food in the country, taught hundreds of thousands of adults to read and write, and extended their presence to every state. They have occupied land that now belongs to the people working on it.

By building a critical mass of working-class members engaging in protest, organising, and fighting legislative and legal battles, they have built a movement that was able to push back against the most oppressive forces – from the 1% of landowners who possessed 45% of land in Brazil, to the Government of Jair Bolsonaro which hoped to outlaw their efforts, to the growing

environmental impact of the climate crisis. They built a movement focused on, as I was told in many of our conversations, a “protagonism of the masses.” They now find themselves able to influence agribusiness policy and consequently extend their struggle for climate justice. It’s easy to dismiss the work of MST as irrelevant to the Scottish context, but there is a clear lesson in their work that meaningful change requires strong movements that can support it in the long term.

The real test of the upcoming march’s effectiveness will be about whether it can bring people in and energise permanent movements, capable of withstanding ongoing attacks. It’s tempting to see activism as an exchange of statements and proclamations. As a marketing campaign that, with any luck, could go viral enough to change things. But as the façade of freedom of speech and protest is eroded, meaningful change will require organising workplaces and neighbourhoods in our everyday lives, building resilient organisations that can withstand the pushback of a riot shield. As Freya puts it: “That’s where the real power comes from, when you work with others to create change yourself.” We need to organise for freedom, every moment of every day.

How Does Change Happen? is out now with 404 Ink

Scotland’s Climate March, 15 Nov, assemble at Glasgow Green from 11am

Sorry, Baby Rethinks Trauma on Screen

Eva Victor rewrites the script on films about trauma with their funny, tender drama Sorry, Baby. Discover this fresh new voice in cinema and their essential black comedy Sorry, Baby while it streams exclusively on MUBI

Words: Jamie Dunn

Every year, a handful of vital new filmmaking voices emerge on the scene, and one of the most exciting to do so in 2025 has been Eva Victor with their electric debut feature Sorry, Baby, which they wrote, directed and starred in. Set in and around a leafy New England university town, it’s a sharp, darkly funny and deeply tender drama centred on Agnes (played by Victor), an academic in their late-20s who’s grappling with the aftermath of a sexual assault by their English lit professor. Rather than focus on the horrible thing that happened, however, Victor’s film explores how that horrible thing stays with you in your body. Agnes is emotionally stuck, unable to move forward, and feels isolated as they struggle to process the mess of anger and shame they’re feeling, and the trauma they’re trying to bottle up.

If that all sounds a bit bleak, fear not. What makes Sorry, Baby such a tonic is its delicate approach to this troubling subject matter. Victor displays a unique lightness as they navigate Agnes’s emotionally complex journey. It’s a bruising film, but one filled with humour and hope. “I really wanted to write a film about trying to heal,” Victor told me when they visited the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which opened this year with Sorry, Baby. “I felt like there were these years, the years right after something bad happens, that hadn’t been documented in film. I was missing some sort of conversation about these years when everyone looks away and moves on with their life, as they should, but you are left stuck trying to make sense of what happened. I feel they are very definitive years; they’re really their own thing. So I wanted to make a film about that time, and I wanted to move away from the violence being the centre of the film and move towards these lost years.”

Perhaps the reason why Victor’s approach to this tough material feels so fresh is that their journey to filmmaking isn’t the typical one. One of their early gigs was writing for Reductress, the satirical website skewering the kinds of articles aimed at women in glossy magazines. Victor is also a master of online

video comedy. They amassed a huge following while making snappy, sarcastic videos on Twitter, many of which went viral, including hilarious takes on the gender pay gap, romcom BFFs and Straight Pride. Those videos helped Victor hone the deadpan humour they display in Sorry, Baby, but crucially, they also gave Victor the confidence to step into filmmaking. “I think [those videos] prepared me for how humiliating it is to make something when no one is begging you to,” Victor tells me. “When you put things online, you’re not responding to some sort of demand. You’re like, ‘I have something to say’ or ‘I want you to think this is funny’. That’s humiliating. Sorry, Baby is obviously more heavy and important, but those videos prepared me to fight for myself.”

Sorry, Baby rewrites the trauma plot. Victor has inventively structured Agnes’s ‘lost years’ out of order, which emphasises the sense of paralysis the protagonist feels. It also ellides the assault itself, and characters only allude to it in euphemistic language, calling it “the bad thing.” Not only was this a way of protecting Agnes from the language of sexual abuse, but it also protects the audience. “I think I made a film about [a sexual assault] in order not to show it,” explains Victor. “It feels like other movies, they have to show it, or they want to show it for impact. And often those films are impactful, but I really wanted to try to make a film that was emotionally impactful and didn’t send my body into shock while watching it.”

Sorry, Baby isn’t just about the lasting scars of sexual assault. It’s also about the power of a delicious sandwich, the companionship of a small tabby cat and at the very core of the film is a celebration of friendship. The film opens with Agnes’s best pal Lydie (played by the excellent Naomi Ackie) visiting, and throughout, Lydie acts as a ballast at different points in Agnes’s life. “I wanted to show how a really good friend can keep someone alive,” says Victor, “and I wanted to honour that kind of platonic love too. It took a bit of time to figure out how to structurally support the idea that the film wasn’t about the violence and was, in fact, about a loving friendship.”

Sorry, Baby is streaming exclusively on MUBI

To get 30 days of MUBI free, head to mubi.com/theskinny

Masks & Us

Masks aren’t just for lockdowns. One writer explores how mask wearing – and other measures to reduce COVID transmissions – can help us look after one another in an increasingly authoritarian society

Afew weeks ago, I got an email about a book event I had a ticket for, explaining that the author had requested all attendees wear a mask. The bookshop would also make masks available for those who didn’t have them. This email would have been standard a few years ago, but is pretty uncommon in 2025. Because – let’s face it – nowadays the majority of us act like the pandemic is over. Even though it’s not.

This misconception isn’t solely our individual fault. As Disabled philosopher of disability Élaina GauthierMamaril points out, the UK Government has essentially declared that the pandemic is over, even though COVID is still classed as an ongoing pandemic by the World Health Organisation. We also have more evidence of how debilitating Long COVID can be – as TIME reports, the RECOVER Initiative has found that repeat COVID infections can double your chances of developing Long COVID.

Words: Quinn Rhodes

Illustration: Fiorella Quaranta

‘Starting masking again in 2025 means I – we – have to confront the fact that maybe we should never have stopped’

There are people still masking for the safety of themselves and their loved ones, but the burden of keeping disabled and immunocompromised people safe is placed almost entirely on them. There’s no acknowledgement that the structural care abled people might expect exists to support them is all but non-existent. In absence of care from the UK government, the venues that do still ask people to mask create a space where disabled and immunocompromised people know they can attend with much lower risk. Lighthouse, Edinburgh’s radical bookshop, asks all event attendees to wear masks and encourages folk browsing the shop to also do so. Mairi, the owner of Lighthouse, explains that this is part of the bookshop’s wider ethos of “disrupting the neoliberal, individualised sense of personal responsibility that is so responsible for making disabled people have to navigate needlessly difficult barriers to being part of public life.”

Mairi and the team at Lighthouse are committed to continuing to find room in the shop’s small budget for masks. Of course, masks are expensive, but there are also groups working to make them more accessible. Edinburgh Mask Bloc are a grassroots mutual aid group who have distributed more than 2,000 high filtration masks. They supply

pick up points around the city and support both regular and one-off events. With a similar ethos, Air Library Scotland loans out air purifiers for free across Edinburgh, as research shows these can reduce the risk of airborne disease transmission, including COVID. Structures do exist to help us look after each other – even if they’re not government-built structures.

Wearing a mask can be inconvenient and uncomfortable – and it’s vital we don’t ignore the needs of people for whom masking is impossible due to disabilities or sensory issues. But there are other ways you can mitigate the risk of COVID transmission and play a part in making spaces and events safer and more accessible.

Take vaccine boosters. A piece in Scientific American by Sara Novak published in October 2025 opens with the line: “Getting a COVID booster could save your life, even if you’ve had multiple prior infections and vaccinations.” Novak explains that a new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests getting the booster is just as important for young people and those without risk factors. Despite this, the criteria for

who’s eligible for one in Scotland have tightened this year. People who are immunocompromised and those over 65 are eligible for a flu vaccine; meanwhile, only those over 75 and a reduced group of eligible folks can get the COVID vaccine. You can still pay for a booster vaccine at many high-street pharmacies, of course… if you can afford one.

Testing before events –even if you’re not feeling ill – also helps, because COVID can be asymptomatic. As does staying home if you are ill. As Gauthier-Mamaril tells me, we need to “create a society where no one will be unduly penalised for not going to work sick.” Such care can be taken into all areas of everyday life.  These acts of COVID risk mitigation are also intertwined with other issues: workers' rights and labour movements; our rights to privacy and protest. In GauthierMamaril’s article for The Polyphony – co-authored with her friend and colleague Daniel P Jones – they write that: “the UK law (enacted under the 20222024 Sunak Conservative government) [states] that ‘Police will be given power to arrest protestors who wear face coverings.’” Wearing a mask at protests makes them more accessible and safer for disabled people, but Gauthier-Mamaril thinks that more people are actually wearing masks now to “ protect themselves from state surveillance and video footage” – especially given the government’s brutal response to pro-Palestine protestors.

I am trying to get better at wearing a mask again. The book event email prompted me to stock up on my favorite black FFP2 masks, but I’m definitely not perfect. Starting masking again in 2025 means I – we – have to confront the fact that maybe we should never have stopped. It’s scary to admit that we might have been harming ourselves and our communities; that our government might not have our best interests at heart.

In 2025, wearing a mask is a sign of resistance in an increasingly authoritarian society. It’s a show of solidarity with disabled people. But even if you can’t mask, there are ways to show up and care for the people in your community. Our liberation is interconnected, and so must our efforts to keep each other safe.

Ripple Effect

We catch up with Atzi Muramatsu, creative director of Sonic Bothy, a Glasgow-based charity with the goal of making music more inclusive

Words: Rhea Hagiwara

Sonic Bothy isn’t your typical classical music collective. Based in Glasgow, the organisation’s ensemble brings together Disabled and non-disabled musicians to explore sound on equal terms, breaking down the hierarchies that define much of the arts world, proving that accessibility can drive creativity, not limit it.

“Our main purpose is to challenge the social structure that places Disabled artists outside of the mainstream,” says Atzi Muramatsu, the charity’s creative director. “We’re not anti-classical or anti- any kind of music, but we’re anti-ableism, and anti-not listening to people.”

Sonic Bothy runs over 120 inclusive workshops a year, and has engaged and supported over 500 participants with underlying health conditions and learning disabilities. It also has a professional music ensemble that has performed at contemporary music festivals, including Counterflows and Sound Festival. The group’s focus is less on technical perfection and more on listening, collaboration and the appreciation of sound.

“The traditional definition of art and music is based on excellence, as an ability,” Muramatsu explains. “But music is a social and physical phenomenon that is much more open than how tight and clean you can play the music. What we’re saying is that if you want to express yourself in any way through this tiny glockenspiel, that is music.”

This belief comes alive in Sonic Bothy’s inventive projects. Their award-winning piece Verbaaaaatim turned accessibility captions for Deaf and hard-of-hearing participants into a part of the art itself. Captioners creatively described sound and music rather than just dialogue, and the musicians improvised in response to their words. The result was a creative feedback loop, introducing a new narrative of the accessibility tool as an artistic tool and a form of inspiration. The work has since garnered interest from ensembles across the UK. “We do feel that it is really creating a ripple,” Muramatsu muses.

The ripple is certainly spreading. Sonic Bothy is now one of several inclusive music organisations supported through Creative Scotland’s Multi-Year Funding Programme, and is part of a growing movement to make the arts sector more representative. Partnerships with festivals such as Counterflows have also helped bring their work to larger audiences. As some of Sonic Bothy’s members are wheelchair users, accessibility is always a big consideration. Muramatsu notes the importance of the work of partners in making a difference: “Everybody’s working really hard to make this work, and there have been improvements.”

Still, structural inequality exists. Around one in four people in the UK are disabled, yet only a small portion of public arts funding goes to inclusive organisations. That imbalance isn’t just anecdotal; Arts Council England’s equality analysis of the 2023-2026 Investment programme states that their “investment in Disability-led organisations in the 2018-22 NPO (National Portfolio Organisations) is less than 1% and for self-definition is 1.7% of overall funding.”

Furthermore, Muramatsu points out the importance of advocating for Disabled artists to be able to do their job. “Let’s talk about access. Access support is an area we feel that is not discussed widely enough,” he says. Slow and complicated processes often make it harder for Disabled artists to sustain work, with access-towork support taking months (or sometimes even a year) to come through.

Despite structural hurdles, Sonic Bothy continues to expand what inclusion in music can look like. Their next project draws inspiration from British Sign Language and uses gesture and haptic technology to explore sound through movement and touch. A collaborative effort with Deaf or hard-of-hearing participants in an inclusive workshop, they are looking to experiment with and challenge conventional concepts of the arts and inclusivity.

“Our main purpose is to challenge the social structure that places Disabled artists outside of the mainstream”

Atzi Muramatsu, Sonic Bothy

What’s next for Sonic Bothy and the inclusive arts sector in Scotland? “The hope is that our work is getting seen,” Muramatsu replies. After a turbulent period of delayed funding decisions, Scotland’s inclusive arts sector is beginning to regain momentum, and the sector is more visible than ever. Through Sonic Bothy’s work, people are also realising that inclusion goes beyond fairness, but is also expanding what art can be.

He credits that progress to listening and collaboration. “The best way to advocate is through conversation. We’re a friendly bunch who want to talk.” When asked about what inclusive music-making means to him personally, Muramatsu emphasises the importance of a safe space. “Ultimately, it is a space that you feel comfortable, safe, and relaxed within a group of people where everybody’s voices are heard, respected, listened to and shared.”

That openness, rooted in respect and listening, is what makes Sonic Bothy’s work so powerful. By turning accessibility into art, the collective isn’t just making music more inclusive. Rather, they are redefining what art means in the first place.

sonicbothy.co.uk

Deep Roots

We chat with author Dalia al-Dujaili about her migration memoir Babylon, Albion ahead of her appearance at Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair

“Nothing happens without movement, nothing survives without migration,” says Dalia al-Dujaili, author of Babylon, Albion: A Personal History of Myth and Migration. “You kill something when you keep it stuck or in stasis, whether that’s a culture, an idea, a story, a plant or an animal, a person or a river.” Humankind, the author explains, is no different. Following this ancient history of human migration, al-Dujaili’s own family migrated from Iraq to the UK before she was born; her debut book is a generous and gorgeously poetic investigation of this family history, told in an incisive conversation with the natural world and intertwined with the myths and folktales which bloom from it.

“Public imagination and our media has done a very good job at making us believe migration is the anomaly and that the migrant is the odd one out, when in fact it’s the opposite way around. If there is no movement in your heritage, you’re one of very few populations in human history that hasn’t moved from one place to another,” al-Dujaili says. It is an idea that is challenged in Babylon, Albion which, between the date palm and the oak tree, covers plenty of (literal) ground. From the soils of Ancient Mesopotamia to the Christian pastoral, the book pulls up the roots of oral histories passed down through generations. It traverses landscapes such as Iraq’s depleting marshlands and England’s disappearing ancient forests. Environments, people and stories are each prised open and held up to the light. Al-Dujaili’s writing, while personal and specific, also feels universal in its meditations on the natural world and on what it means to belong.

Words: Parisa Hashempour

The earliest iterations of this book began with al-Dujaili making notes and curating stories from her family as a way to document and archive their journey from Iraq: “A way for me to connect to my homeland without going there,” she explains. After a family visit in 2023, she began to feel a deeper urge to write about Iraq from the perspective of someone who had grown up far away.  Yet al-Dujaili also feels a fierce connection to “the British countryside and British landscapes” of the country in which she was born and raised. This, and a spiritual experience the author had while camping out in nature in the UK, helped inform the direction of this book.

The UK’s countryside radiates through her

the UK often have a traumatic and ruptured relationship with the land. In light of this, she was compelled to ask:

“How does someone without roots here feel spiritually connected to a place and feel drawn to protect it?

Drawn to write about it and imbue it with magic?”

The question of what might drive us to protect our planet hovered over al-Dujaili during the entire writing process. And the author hopes that by turning to the stories, myths and folklore which are so often inspired by our landscapes (examples of which al-Dujaili draws out in her book), we might find new ways to tackle the climate crisis. “If we all take a little bit of time to ask our elders questions about where they’re from and how they connected to the land where they are from, we will learn so much about how to guard ourselves for quite a difficult future in terms of the climate crisis,” she says. “And I think we will come away from those conversations with a lot more reverence for the natural world, which in turn asks us to be responsible for it.”  If readers take away one thing from this book, al-Dujaili would like it to be this:

telling just as brightly as descriptions of Iraq. “I wanted to find a way to talk about being in a place and feeling like you belong there despite lacking heritage or [a] connection beyond just being born [or] living there,” she says. In this way, Babylon, Albion poses inheritance as something which is also interwoven with feelings of kinship towards our local, nonhuman environments.

“I really love Romantic literature that talks a lot about the natural landscape, that imbues the natural world in Britain with this magic, with this folklore, lyricism and beauty and poetry and very importantly, spirituality,” al-Dujaili explains. Exploring this was essential for the author since, due to violent colonial histories, diasporic people in

“I really hope that people leave the book with a deeper curiosity about where they come from,” she says. And rather than seeing conversations on the climate as solely the realm of scientists, al-Dujaili hopes we will all increasingly come to view climate as essential to our storytelling in its many forms. “Our culture is inspired by the natural world,” she says. “When you save the planet, you’re saving yourself. When you save species and environments, you’re saving a whole culture.”

Babylon, Albion is out now with Saqi Books

Dalia al-Dujaili appears at Places that Built Us: Belonging and Environmental Justice Across Borders, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, 9 Nov, 2.30pm, part of Edinburgh’s Radical Book Fair on 9 Nov at 2.30pm

All’s Fair

We take a closer look at this year’s innovative Fair Saturday programme and unpack how the arts can be a force for good.

As the nights grow longer and the air catches a chill, it is easy to retreat into ourselves. To turn down gallery trips and community meals and poetry readings. Instead, as Black Friday beckons, we’re tempted with discounts and deals for items we don’t need (or, really, want). Each year, Fair Saturday takes place the day after Black Friday and pushes against this late-stage capitalist inclination. Instead, we’re offered a one-day celebration of creativity and community. In a long winter, we need it: gathering together – whether with a song or a dance – will keep us warm.

“The idea is very simple – instead of focusing on material things, we use this day to come together, enjoy experiencing and sharing in cultural activities, and show how proud and grateful we are to social projects for the work they do,” says Suzy Ensom, Regional Manager Scotland for the Fair Saturday Foundation. Founded in 2014, by Jordi Albareda in Bilbao-Bizkaia, Fair Saturday has since arrived in Edinburgh, much to the delight of communities across the city. Now in its eighth edition, Fair Saturday Scotland is looking forward to bringing people together again on 29 November, the last Saturday of the month. “I think the advantage of a single day is that it creates a sense of celebration and momentum, something very special that’s a real response to Black Friday,” says Ensom. A fixed, single date in the calendar offers a focal point from which new connections – both creative and social – can blossom.

Edinburgh, of course, isn’t a stranger to the odd arts festival or two. “Edinburgh is a city of world class festivals, so we’re finding our niche, which I think is really about engaging communities across the city and providing a platform for artists, both well-established and newly emerging,” says Ensom. Centring itself around a range of social projects, Fair Saturday Scotland is keen to champion the vital work already existing within our local communities. “Rather than trying to compete with the brilliant festivals and year-round arts, we’re trying to complement and support the existing cultural ecosystem, while trying to do something a little different.”

This year’s programme yet again promises a warm welcome. At Scottish Storytelling Centre on

“We’re trying to complement and support the existing cultural ecosystem, while trying to do something a little different”

Suzy Ensom

Words: Eilidh Akilade

Friday 14 November, Fair Saturday’s Opening Party will offer haggis, neeps and tatties, alongside storytelling from Niall Moorjani and a performance by step dancer Alison Carlyle and fiddle player Amy Geddes. On Fair Saturday itself, there’s truly something for everyone. From Bharatanatyam dance organisation Cosmic Dance to social enterprise Mycobee Mushrooms, to Pianodrome Bruntsfield Community Hub and Bookbinding with Cass, the breadth of organisations involved reflects the rich variety of arts in Edinburgh. The day will bring a range of practical workshops to learn new skills – printmaking, singing, songwriting. Those who’d rather sit back and relax are also in luck: a plethora of artists will take to the stage in performances to remember.

Anyone can attend Fair Saturday; likewise, any artists or venues can participate. With an open access format, the festival isn’t interested in the traditional programming hierarchies of the arts. “As we promote all the events in a single programme, everyone is equally valued and has an equal platform, but it also means that smaller or less well-known artists or events benefit from cross-promotion,” says Ensom. With limited opportunities within the arts, it’s all too easy for

the sector to become overly competitive, with each cut-throat funding round more grave than the last. But Fair Saturday is keen to remain true to its ethos: all are welcome and all are valued, no matter how many awards and accolades you’ve got under your belt.

With low cost or free tickets, Fair Saturday aims to open its door to anyone – regardless of whether you can afford a Black Friday shopping spree or not. The support of the City of Edinburgh Council makes the Fair Saturday Edinburgh Community Engagement Fund possible, supporting artists, organisations and community groups to create events for communities across Edinburgh. In this, the festival’s funding structure lives up to its namesake – a matter particularly pertinent amid wider conversations around ethical finances in the arts.

“We live in complex and uncertain times, and culture has a way of bringing us together, sharing and exploring ideas and learning about ourselves, each other, and the world around us,” says Ensom. We need the arts – but we need the arts fairly. And Fair Saturday is all about exactly that.

Find out more on standrews.fairsaturday.org

Gray’s Glasgow

Inspired by Alasdair Gray’s mythologising of Glasgow, an archivebased exhibition maps the city through a queer, working-class lens

In 1977, the artist and writer Alasdair Gray took up his first, and only, stable visual arts job as Glasgow’s artist recorder. Based out of a storeroom studio in the People’s Palace, Gray painted the streets and faces of the East End at a time when civic redevelopment plans threatened to flatten the area and erase its working-class histories. Gray’s portraits were democratic, taking as his subjects everyone from poet Edwin Morgan to Simon McGinley, a local bricklayer. They were all, in Gray’s eyes, worth at least their weight in canvas and paint.

The City, the current exhibition at the Alasdair Gray Archive, takes its lead from Gray’s equalising practice. Curated by Holly Rennie Brown, the exhibition spotlights working-class and queer communities in Glasgow, drawing an intuitive and deeply personal map of the city along its back alleys. In Renfield Lane you’ll find a wristband for a Ponyboy club night at Stereo, on Bath Street a love note handwritten on the back of a receipt from Bloc. These time capsule scraps are mounted and framed, presented like borrowed geocaches held up briefly as art.

Gray was skilled at injecting aesthetic value into found objects. The archive is a wellspring of junk, like a ledger he found in a skip in Garnethill. Its pages crinkle with the ink of his distinct cursive, which weaves between abandoned expense reports and PVA’d film photos of a disappearing Glasgow. Some sketches are recognisable as early sections of Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties (1964), an oil painting completed a year before the area was all but demolished to make way for the northern flank of the M8 inner city ring

road. His streams of consciousness evoke snippets of writing that he later adapted for Lanark, the dystopian setting of which was likewise inspired by the debris of Cowcaddens.

Brown’s exhibition calls to mind the oft-quoted line of Lanark’s protagonist, Duncan Thaw: “If a city hasn’t been used by an artist, not even the inhabitants can live there imaginatively.”

Gray’s work took strides to mould that Glasgow imaginary, but, as Brown’s exhibition emphasises, class boundaries compound geographic ones in the stunting of the imagination. The slog of hospitality work stifles creativity, keeping the working-class distracted while the managerial class envisage their future. Yet, Brown’s framed tokens of restaurant and retail work subvert those spaces into sites of radical care, fugitive creativity and solidarity. One note, given to them by a friend while working in retail at END on Ingram Street, reads ‘I Love You’ / ‘You got this’. It forms a poetic couplet written across two perfume strips.

Words: Evie Glen

This philosophy of radical care is fundamental to the curatorial practice of the archive’s custodian, Sorcha Dallas. With support from Creative Scotland’s Open Fund, Dallas commissioned The City alongside a mentorship scheme for an early-stage curator.

Following Gray’s ‘socially conscious model of making’ and insistent citation of his inspirations, Dallas’s curatorial approach seeks to address overlooked histories and transform them into a catalyst for meaningful connection through commissioning creative responses like Brown's. Central to this commissioning process is an imperative to facilitate the creative practice of those ordinarily denied the time, energy or resources to pursue theirs alone.

As someone who lived near the breadline all his life, Gray depended on the generous labour of others to facilitate his practice. He paid them back in tradesman wages and any flattery his literary and artistic talents could offer. His greatest compliment to those closest to him was to commit them to art. For his cleaner Kelly Crosan, for example, he

‘The slog of hospitality work stifles creativity, keeping the workingclass distracted while the managerial class envisage their future’

one day wrote a poem in place of an agenda. It begins: ‘Our Kelly has the magic touch! / Dirty floors and messy tables she soon has shining clean. / Just when you [think] she’s finished work, / our Kelly starts again.’ Much as he did in his work for the People’s Palace, even in his personal life Gray canvassed attention for unsung workers by investing in them an aesthetic value nobody had yet thought to grant them. Brown does a similar thing in the exhibition.

However, where Gray plays with perspective in a kind of fabulation of working-class Glasgow, Brown is more documentary. Their exhibition is rooted in their lived reality – one that has always existed in its own queer imaginary but omitted from the heteronormative city map, pushed into back alleys and underground. That personal reality flows outwards, through the crowd in a low-roofed club, behind ‘staff only’ doors and back into red-brick tenement homes. From this community web, Brown follows in the footsteps of Dallas, who follows Gray, down Glasgow’s cobbled lanes to forge a new map.

The City, The Alasdair Gray Archive, The Whisky Bond, Glasgow, until 13 Nov

thealasdairgrayarchive.org

Punk’s Not Dead

We chat with poet and multi-slam champion Jay Mitra about the role of punk in poetry ahead of their appearance at Push the Boat Out Festival

It would be easy to describe punk through a reductive set of stereotypes: spiked bleached mohawks, studded chokers and a foul-mouthed sense of humour. But for spoken word artist Jay Mitra, punk offers an irresistible way of being, a kind of praxis that both rejects our violent realities and discloses the possibility of softer, hopeful futures. “Punk is a resistance to the establishment. It’s often supporting marginalised voices and [is] a very powerful expression of self, regardless of judgment,” they explain to me over a Zoom call. This is the foundation from which Mitra approaches their creative practice. Their poems challenge the audience to think, feel and move together, drawing us away from our individual subjectivities to bind us together as a collective. “Punk poetry has given me the space to feel like the frontman of a band, without a band. Which was always my dream,” Mitra laughs.

Mitra’s poetry often engages with stereotypes of South Asians in the UK, stereotypes which assume parity amongst distinct communities despite their diverse characteristics. I ask them about their poem Green Flame, in which Mitra disassembles Indianness and Britishness, and then playfully recreates a hybrid identity, one that resembles their own reality. “I was just navigating this grey, in-between space, but also finding a way to triumph even in that grey space, and regain my confidence,” they muse. But engaging with race in their poetry is also a way to enrich the punk scene by opening it up to more cultures, contexts and realities.

“Punk poetry and the punk scene in general has always been whitewashed,” Mitra says. “So for me, claiming that title of a punk poet is sort of me reclaiming that space in which people that look like me were maybe pushed out or ignored.” This urge to create space, to question and to disrupt, is best epitomised by how Mitra defines their success. “If it’s boring to listen to, if it doesn’t change [the audience’s] thinking in some way or get them to reconsider something, then in my opinion, I feel like I failed as a poet.”

Although Mitra claims affinity with the punk movement, it does not stop them questioning its contradictions, particularly its tendency to reproduce the very hierarchies it claims to resist. Mitra identifies the election of Trump as heralding a new era for the punk movement, finding

fertile ground in the president’s oppressive declamations. “These bands, these artists that have built entire careers off being for the people and fighting the establishment are now working in support of the establishment and encouraging very harmful rhetoric,” Mitra says.

“During the Black Lives Matter protests, I remember seeing John Lydon [lead vocalist of the Sex Pistols] supporting Trump, a known white supremacist. Even now with people being dragged out of their homes by ICE,” they say. “It just feels

Words: Laila Ghaffar

completely contradictory to what I feel punk stands for.” Mitra is quick to stress that the rise of right-wing hate speech is derived from governments’ failure worldwide to meaningfully address the social reality of deprived communities. “I think a lot of it comes down to working class anger, not finding the right cause of their problems, you know?” Mitra continues. “We’re seeing it now with the Reform voters, people are angry, and they don’t know where to put their anger. So when the media tells them to blame it on the immigrant, the people coming on the rubber dinghies, then now they have someone to blame for their problems.”

In this context, Mitra identifies an opportunity for their poetry, and for culture at large, to invite audiences to move away from the discursive and rise towards collective action and mobilisation. “Art can only go so far,” stresses Mitra. “It takes people actually on the ground, doing that outreach and having those difficult conversations that are actually going to make a difference.” Mitra is particularly clear on the role of the artist and their responsibility to couple their work with clear tangible action. “I think it’s really important as artists, especially if you’re claiming to be against this oppression, to get stuck in and do something about it. Raise money if you can.

“Your music means nothing unless you’re actually doing the work,” Mitra continues. “That beautiful line in your poem, is that it? Is that the only contribution you’re making?”

For Mitra, the role of punk poetry, and of culture more broadly, extends far beyond self-expression. It is a call to action, a way of keeping the possibility of revolution alive, despite the intensifying pressure to cease resisting. “The thing about my words is, the topics that I try and cover are quite diverse.” They pause, considering their statement before they continue. “But I think what I’m aiming for is maybe just a world of more understanding for each other. Especially for people of colour. We have to work ten times as hard to get the same level of respect, it’s exhausting. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Jay Mitra will appear alongside Tim Wells at The Ranting Poets, Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh, 22 Nov, 5pm, part of Push the Boat Out

Poster Modernism

We deep-dive into the radical world of posters, with James Gilchrist of INTL

Eleven years ago, two graphic design students noticed an opportunity for Scotland’s design community. Beth Wilson and James Gilchrist, having gone to design festivals around the world, realised we needed one of our own. With the wealth of design studios, educational institutions and creative people, Scotland doesn’t want for talent, but INTL was born from the desire to create something large-scale to bring everyone together. And they were absolutely right, with INTL proving itself year on year as a vital part of Scotland’s design infrastructure. The festival has welcomed over 250,000 participants through its doors, through its star-studded programme of talks, workshops and Q&As with cutting edge design talent, hailing from around the world.

While Scotland’s graphic designers rub shoulders with the niche glitterati of the industry, an exhibition showcasing a medium much more humble ticks along in the background – the poster exhibition. It’s hardly humble in its scale, as up to 200 posters from thousands of submissions around the world find themselves on the walls of The Pyramid in Glasgow, culminating in a competition where the top three entries are awarded a cash prize. Being walk-in, free, and open for nearly the whole month of November, it’s also the most accessible, public facing event of the festival.

So why posters? And what even is a poster, in our eyes-locked-screenwards, five second attention span brains. Does anyone even look at them? Of course, that’s exactly the point. Gilchrist tells us: “A poster can be anything, as long as it intends to communicate something... on paper, on a screen, on a plinth, on a wall, even in the sky.” He sees posters as a foundation of design – and not just to promote events and missing cats: “They’re also platforms of expression… places where artists, designers, creatives, anybody really, can articulate a vision, express themselves, and contribute to a cause or movement they believe in.

“I suppose all posters have a shelf life,” he explains. “They’re usually designed for a transient moment or product, which means they have to reflect something happening right now. Lots of posters are designed with longevity in mind as a

“A poster can be on paper, on a screen, on a plinth, on a wall, even in the sky”

James Gilchrist, INTL

piece of art, and some do go on to become collectable or cultural icons, but posters are usually modest in format. Even so, they can symbolise things that are much bigger – for ideas and indicators of culture and the condition of society.”

Visitors can see for themselves that the posters of INTL’s exhibition are undeniably art pieces. “I think people are usually quite stunned by the tsunami of visuals they’re forced to look at. It’s quite an overwhelming experience, taking in so many radical designs. It can be disorientating, maybe confusing, but also interesting and enlightening. Some things take a while to understand, some are immediately recognisable – or funny, or confusing – but all are food for thought.

“We try to offer a diverse, well-rounded collection of posters that has something for everybody. Part of what we look for when we’re curating the work is posters that challenge the way people think.”

And it’s not just the posters that stand out – INTL has come up with some equally exciting ways to exhibit the posters. “To let people around the world access the posters anytime, we also created an online gallery called Olympia. It mirrors a classic white cube gallery space – familiar context, unfamiliar content. People can find extra information about the works there, and also see animated work in its native environment, on screen.

“After that, one of our collaborators, Nam Hyun, asked why we were showing posters in a white gallery when usually they’re seen on the street. So, with Nam and Sebastian Andre, we created a new AR app that allows posters to be viewed anywhere, on weird and wonderful frames. It takes them out of the gallery and onto the street

Words: Phoebe Willison

or out into nature. It lets you see them in a new light and in a new world.”

In the eleven years since the first exhibition, INTL has seen changes to submissions which reflect the taste, culture, values and economics of the times they’re created in. But a thread of consistency is the impact the competition has, to create a more connected global design community. “We hope the poster exhibitions inform and influence the local community by challenging established ideas, habits, and thinking and connects Scottish creatives and designers with people around the world, creating longstanding relationships.”

With the collection of thousands of posters INTL has amassed in their archive, it’s also a gift to designers of the future. With submissions from over 110 countries, the breadth of their collection reminds me of the frozen underground seed library in Svalbard, that in case of the apocalypse wiping out all of our plants, those left behind will be able to grow crops again. Gilchrist laughs: “Imagine trying to understand a civilisation based on the poster collection. That would be wild.”

INTL Festival runs from 6-21 Nov in locations across Glasgow

INTERNATIONAL POSTER EXHIBITION runs between 6-21 Nov (excluding some dates) at The Pyramid at Anderston, Glasgow. See website for more details of dates and times intl.international

You Got the Fear

Julia Ducournau’s latest film Alpha tells the story of a mysterious pandemic of the 80s and 90s – just don’t call it an AIDS analogy, and certainly don’t assume it’s about alpha males. Ducournau and actor Tahar Rahim tell us more

Midway through a long, thoughtful answer about finding beauty and humanity from within the ashes of tragedy, Julia Ducournau takes a moment to chuckle. “I remain very optimistic in many ways, even if my world is pretty dark,” she says. Our conversation is specifically about her new film, Alpha, but the idea of forging tender connections in spite of, or even directly through, traumatising circumstances recurs throughout her previous features. Those hurdles range from an inherited taste for human flesh (Raw from 2016) to the overwhelming discomfort of being trapped within one’s own vulnerable, fallible body (the Palme d’Or-winning Titane from 2021).

If Raw and Titane could be classed as body horrors, Alpha is more a drama about societal response to finding bodies terrifying. Split across two timelines (one set in the 1980s, the other the 90s), Ducournau’s latest follows one family’s experiences with a virus wreaking havoc upon the French population, as well as the resulting epidemic of fear around victims and suspected carriers. Given the chosen time periods, you’ve likely already guessed which real-life epidemic may have influenced the film. But Ducournau is adamant that Alpha is not a story about AIDS, especially since the symptoms of her created disease have a distinctly fantastical element: the skin of those infected slowly turns to marble.

The writer/director decided on this physical symptom early on. “It goes with what I wanted to do with my vision for this particular story,” she tells me at the London Film Festival. “At no point did I expect to make a movie directly about AIDS. If I had done a movie directly about AIDS, I would obviously have treated the symptoms differently; I would have named the disease, and I probably would have done a way more historically accurate film than what this is.

“The main disease that spreads in the film is fear. And I’m trying to study and dissect how fear works and how it can lead to rejection and hate, even as far as a young girl is concerned. I’m thinking, if it shocks you that a young girl is treated in such a way, why doesn’t it shock you in real life when it happens to real people?”

That young girl is the eponymous Alpha (Mélissa Boros), who’s 13 years old in the 90s timeline. She’s suspected of catching the virus when she stumbles out of a party with a new stick-and-poke tattoo of unknown origin, the arm art’s frequent bleeding prompting disgust and rejection among her schoolmates. Making matters stranger is the arrival of an uncle, Amin (Tahar Rahim), whom she doesn’t remember, coming to stay at the apartment she shares with her mother (Golshifteh Farahani), a doctor who predominantly treats increasingly statue-like infected patients.

“Marble is a very noble material,” Ducournau says. “It’s used to sanctify saints and kings in cathedrals and churches. It’s very much linked to the sacred. I wanted to implement this sacred within the lives and deaths of the people affected; to somehow elevate the lives and deaths in the eyes of society and to build a dignified monument to them, when they were actually in their lives treated like pariahs and marginalised. Also, this image of the coexistence of a non-mutable, hence dead material, such as stone, with flesh, which is a very lively material that’s pumped up by blood and constantly moving, was a very uncanny vision that I thought was the closest way that I could express our mortal condition, and our fear of mortality, visually speaking.”

One person who got a direct taste of the uncanny designs first-hand – realised through silicone prosthetics with stone-like rigidity added through CGI – was Tahar Rahim, though the actor also underwent a considerable physical

Words: Josh Slater-Williams

“I’m trying to study and dissect how fear works and how it can lead to rejection and hate”

Julia Ducournau

transformation before the shoot to play someone already emaciated through drug addiction, even before the mysterious virus changes his body. “When you have to play someone who’s suffering from addiction like Amin at this level,” he tells me, “physically you have to match. There’s no other way. Otherwise, I would’ve ruined the movie from the inside out.” And from the sound of things, sabotage was not on his agenda, having wanted to work with Ducournau ever since seeing Raw. Rahim also did his homework, volunteering at a facility that helps people suffering with addiction, where he assisted with operations to drive through Paris to addicts’ gathering spots and administering sterile supplies “to do what they have to do.”

Away from Amin and back to Alpha, Ducournau tells me that the idea for the character’s name came before settling on the film’s title. “But it’s so funny because a lot of people thought it was a movie about alpha males,” she says with a laugh. “What the hell?! Thank God there are no alpha males in my film. And since when is it so ingrained in our brains that the word ‘alpha’ belongs to alpha males? I’m sorry, but no! I’m reclaiming it a hundred percent.”

Alpha is released 14 Nov by Curzon, and screens as part of the 33rd French Film Festival UK. More details at frenchfilmfestival.org.uk

Feels on Wheels

Pillion dives into the sub-dom relationship between a meek traffic warden (Harry Melling) and a hunky biker (Alexander Skarsgård). Writer-director Harry Lighton tells us more about his funny, horny, tender and thoughtful debut feature

What’s the strangest first date you’ve ever been on? How about meeting a man you’ve exchanged no more than a few words with on Christmas Day, following him into an alley, kneeling down by the bins and giving him a blowjob before licking his boots? This is how the relationship begins between introverted traffic warden Colin (Harry Melling) and the taciturn, Adonis-like biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård) in Pillion. The pair slip quickly into a submissivedominant relationship, although it’s clear that the naïvely romantic Colin yearns for much more intimacy than Ray is willing to give.

Pillion is the feature debut from writer-director Harry Lighton, who was immediately captivated by Adam Mars-Jones’s novel Box Hill when producer Eva Yates sent it to him. “I read it and I was really intrigued by the tone of it, that was the thing that got me,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this has made me laugh, but it’s also made me horny and it’s made me think,’ and those three things are interesting combinations to try and play with.”

Lighton juggles these tones throughout his liberal adaptation, which creates a series of erotically charged, awkward, painful, funny and tender encounters between its two perfectly cast leads.

These encounters hinge on outré sexual activities, from a bout of living-room wrestling to an al fresco orgy with a gang of leather-clad bikers, and Lighton saw each sub-dom setpiece as integral to the film’s structure. “For me, those scenes are the most interesting to write because you know that dialogue isn’t going to be the catalyst to changes in action or in their dynamic,” he says. “Trying to think of ways in which sexual manoeuvres or sexual shifts in status can create a shift in a character’s mood or tell the audience something about that character, I found that fascinating.”

Lighton worked with intimacy coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt to help the actors choreograph these scenes while maintaining a crucial sense of authenticity. “My biggest thing with sex scenes generally is that they don’t feel like sex scenes, they feel like gestures towards sex,” he says. “I told Robbie and the actors that we needed to avoid that kind of symbolism of sex and just get the clumsy reality. Robbie’s great at that, because the way he works, it’s very much not the ‘Right, move your knee here, four thrusts’ kind of work. It’s more like, let’s map out the sex scene and then give the actors cues where they can trigger a shift in it.”

While some people across the industry have been dismissive of the need for intimacy coordinators, Lighton now sees them as valuable collaborators. “It’s an evolving art, isn’t it, in terms of coordination. When I first started working with them, it was more prescriptive and felt a little bit inhibiting, whereas now I don’t find it at all inhibiting.”

As Pillion progresses, Colin’s relationship with Ray gets into some increasingly uncomfortable territory. The pair assume their sub-dom roles with little discussion of boundaries or comfort

levels, and Colin’s infatuation with Ray threatens to override his awareness of where to draw the line and how much degradation he’s willing to accept. Colin’s slowly dawning sense of his own desires and his own dignity gives the film its narrative arc, and Lighton was keen to cultivate some ambiguity and tension around the character’s journey.

“It would be clear to anyone from the community, but it should be clear to everyone who watches the film that this is not meant to be a model BDSM relationship at all. Ray is not a good dom. There’s no protocol established, there are none of the usual ways of safeguarding these relationships, and that’s why I wanted to contrast Ray and Colin’s relationship with some of the other biker-pillion pairs,” he explains. “I didn’t want it to seem like I was offering up a blueprint for a relationship, and I want that question of whether Colin is being liberated or being abused by this to be a live question for the audience.”

Lighton has already enjoyed plenty of success with Pillion, receiving the Best Screenplay Award in Un Certain Regard at Cannes and winning a Chanel/BFI Filmmaker Award the day before our interview, but he’s now focusing on future projects. Whatever he makes next, Lighton is determined to recapture the spirit that carried him through his debut. “I’ve been lucky, because I

Words: Philip Concannon

“Trying to think of ways in which sexual manoeuvres can create a shift in a character’s mood, I found that fascinating”

Harry Lighton

was always told that producer-director relationships don’t survive the first feature, and I’m still very good friends with both of my producers,” he says. “I had a very young, eager, hungry team around me, and I’ll hopefully continue to work with a lot of them. If I get to make more films, I want to try as hard as I can to engender that same feeling of, ‘We really want to make this great, and we all have stakes in it being good,’ because it was such a fun set to be on.”

Wild at Heart

Lynne Ramsay is back after eight years away with Die My Love, which takes her fans on another atmospheric trip into a disturbed psyche. The Scottish director discusses working with Jennifer Lawrence and lacing her intense movie with gallows humour

Few directors are better at placing you inside a character’s head than Lynne Ramsay. Her films are dreamy, dizzying, a bit delirious. Most of them are adaptations of celebrated novels (Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here), but there’s very little that’s literary about them: they’re deeply cinematic, and they immerse you in their characters’ worlds not through dialogue or theme or structure but via the alchemy of images, sound and performance.

Ramsay’s latest film, Die My Love – only her fifth since she blew minds with her evocative debut, Ratcatcher, 26 years ago – is another heady concoction. It’s based on Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel and was suggested to Ramsay by Jennifer Lawrence, who’d been dying to make a film with her ever since she saw Ratcatcher. The 55-year-old Scottish director took some convincing, though.

“[Jennifer] sent me the book and she said, ‘This is really interesting.’” Ramsay explains over a video call. “I can’t remember the exact timing, but I didn’t get back to her right away. I had to see how I could find my way into the book, because it’s quite a challenging piece.” The plot centres on a young woman who’s moved with her husband to the countryside, and there she battles loneliness and postpartum depression. Part of Ramsay’s resistance was that she didn’t want to retread what

she’d already explored in We Need to Talk About Kevin, which concerns a mother coming to terms with the damage wrought by her psychopathic son. “I just didn’t want to make two films about motherhood, you know?”

After some reflection, though, and some persistence from Lawrence, she began to see Harwicz’s story in a different light. “I saw the book as not just being about the postpartum, you know?” explains Ramsay. “I felt like it was about someone being isolated, someone’s marriage starting to disintegrate. It was about what happens when sex stops in a marriage when a baby’s there.” Mainly, though, she began to warm to the protagonist, who goes unnamed in the book but is Grace in the film. “[She’s this] completely unapologetic character who was so honest. She says everything in a very matter-of-fact, truthful manner. She didn’t feel like a character trying to gain sympathy from us. In a way, she was the opposite.”

Joining Lawrence in the cast is Robert Pattinson as Grace’s husband Jackson. He’s the one who’s dragged her to the sticks after inheriting his uncle’s rustic house in Montana. In the opening scene, the pair arrive at this fixer-upper with grand dreams of making it a home, but the abode only becomes more dilapidated across the film as Grace struggles to adjust to her new life, and Jackson, who often works on the road, might

Words: Jamie Dunn

possibly be having an affair and has the worst taste in pets, only makes matters worse.

Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte also feature, giving soulful, lived-in turns as Jackson’s parents. All three supporting actors are strong, but this is Lawrence’s movie, and she joins the likes of Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Gena Rowlands and Julianne Moore as actresses over the decades who’ve found their groove playing women on the edge of a nervous breakdown. “I felt like I hadn’t seen such a powerful character [on screen] for a while,” says Ramsay. “[Grace] is feral, very animalistic; you’re either gonna love her or hate her.”

Like all of Ramsay’s films, Die My Love aligns itself deeply with its protagonist’s turmoil. This type of subjective filmmaking relies on intimate collaboration with actors, most of whom seem to have adored their time on Ramsay’s sets. Morvern Callar’s Samantha Morton called her “a mad composer defining and tuning the composition and my movement,” while Joaquin Phoenix, star of You Were Never Really Here, said, “there’s something about Lynne... It’s exciting and inspiring standing next to somebody who feels that strongly about things.”

It sounds like Lawrence was similarly enamoured. “I think Jennifer trusted me a lot, because we did some pretty wild stuff.” That “wild stuff” includes the actor prowling naked through tall grass like a lioness, barking like a dog, and wielding violent implements (carving knife, sledgehammer, shotgun) with abandon. The film opens with Ramsay equating Grace’s manic energy to one of the forest fires that rage near their Montana home: she’s a literal force of nature. Ramsay puts some of Lawrence’s extraordinary performance down to the fact she was pregnant during the shoot. “That made her almost more powerful, in a way.”

If this discussion hasn’t made it clear, Die My Love is an intense ride. We’re completely in the trenches with Grace as she dives deep into existential crises. But it’s also Ramsay’s funniest film by a long shot, with Grace and Jackson’s furious arguments descending into hilariously foul-mouthed and childish shouting matches. “That was something I really wanted right from the beginning: I thought, it has to have this kind of absurdity. I also love when they’re arguing: those scenes are heightened, but funny in places, even though they shouldn’t be. It’s a kind of gallows humour, I guess, which Glaswegians tend to have. Plus, Jennifer Lawrence, she’s just got great comic timing, you know?”

Die My Love is released 7 Nov by MUBI

*Valid only between Friday 28 Nov - Sunday 30 Nov 2025, online and th th at Filmhouse Box Office. Discount only apples to Filmhouse Memberships usually priced at £60, and joint memberships usually priced at £110. Excludes Student, Benefactor and Under 26s memberships.

Bangers Only

With two of our favourite film festivals – French Film Festival UK and Scotland Loves Anime – returning this month, we pick out five highlights from each

French Film Festival UK

Enzo

The story behind Enzo’s production is just as moving as the film itself. It’s the final work from Laurent Cantet (The Class), who wrote it with longtime collaborator Robin Campillo (120 BPM). Cantet was also planning to direct, but died from cancer last year before production began. Campillo stepped in to take over from his old friend, and the resulting film, a heartfelt drama concerned with class divisions and queer coming-of-age, reportedly showcases the best of both filmmakers.

Sirāt

Sirāt begins with a hedonistic alfresco rave, and by its end, it resembles a survivalist thriller. The title refers to the Islamic word for the narrow bridge between Paradise and Hell, and Oliver Laxe’s film walks this tightrope, with its characters ricocheting from drug-induced highs set to pulsating electro to soul-shattering tragedy and edge-ofyour-seat tension as a group of ravers lead a father and son on an ill-advised expedition across the Moroccan desert.

The Stranger François Ozon always keeps us guessing, and his eclectic oeuvre takes another unexpected turn with this visually sumptuous adaptation of Albert Camus’ existential classic. Benjamin Voisin, who was equal parts sexy and menacing in Ozon’s Summer of ‘85, reportedly makes for a compelling Meursault, the quiet young man who senslessly commits murder one night. This is Ozon’s 22nd feature since the turn of the century, and word is it’s one of his best.

Out of Love

Call My Agent’s Camille Cottin is superb in this nuanced French drama about a middle-aged woman who’s suddenly charged with the care of her niece and nephew when her sister walks out on her life. It’s the third feature from the prodigiously talented Nathan Ambrosioni (he’s 26, and has been making independent features since his teens), and its sophisticated script and measured direction mark him out as one of France’s most exciting talents.

A Magnificent Life

FFFUK’s programme features Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s open-hearted celebration of cinema rule-breaker Jean-Luc Godard. But there’s another love letter to a titan of the French arts that you should check out: A Magnificent Life, Sylvain Chomet’s animated biopic of the muchloved playwright Marcel Pagnol. It’s been 15 years since Chomet’s last animated feature – the whimsical The Illusionist – so this should be top of any animation (or Pagnol) fans’ list.

6 Nov-14 Dec at various venues across Scotland. Full details at frenchfilmfestival.org.uk

Words: Jamie Dunn

Scotland Loves Anime

All You Need Is Kill

Alien creatures are decimating Earth and only one person, who’s caught in a time loop of dying and then waking up again at the start of the same day, can stop them. If All You Need Is Kill sounds a lot like Edge of Tomorrow, it’s because that Tom Cruise film is also based on the same manga by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. This animated adaptation similarly blends existential dread and a dash of doomed romance to create a nail-biting sci-fi thriller.

Junk World

Indie stop-motion animation Junk Head was made almost single-handedly by animator Takahide Hori; as well as being responsible for most jobs on set, he voiced many of the characters in this steampunk sci-fi. He’s now back with prequel Junk World, which we’re told is just as strange as the original but even more ambitious in terms of scale and world-building.

ChaO

ChaO sounds a bit like The Little Mermaid flipped on its head. Set in a world where humans and mermaids coexist, it follows a mild-mannered administrator called Stephan, who’s whisked off his feet by Chao, a princess from the mermaid kingdom. Can an office drone and a fish lady find true love? This delightful romance that bursts with life will convince you they can.

The Last Blossom

Anime isn’t all sci-fi and fantasy. This existential drama from Baku Kinoshita concerns an elderly prisoner who’s rotting alone in his cell near the end of a long sentence when one day he strikes up a conversation with his only other companion: a balsam flower. This gorgeous film sees the man, a former yakuza, recount his early life and the events that led up to him spending his twilight incarcerated.

Angel’s Egg

One of the biggest joys of Scotland Loves Anime is that every year it digs into the archive to put some classics back on the big screen. There are plenty of seminal works playing this year, from Golgo 13: The Professional to Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust Our pick of the older films, however, is Angel’s Egg, a spellbindingly beautiful and deeply symbolic fantasy about a girl caring for an egg and a man searching for a bird in a decaying city.

Glasgow Film Theatre, until 4 Nov; Picturehouse Central, London, 7-9 Nov; Filmhouse and Cameo, Edinburgh, 10-16 Nov. Full details at lovesanimation.com

Psychocandy at 40

With The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy celebrating its 40th anniversary this month, we revisit the East Kilbride band’s debut as its influence continues to sprawl 40 years on

Jim and William Reid were caught between opposing forces from the moment they decided to start a band. On the dole in East Kilbride in the early 80s, they couldn’t relate to the polished pop music they heard on the radio. New wave, disco and Americanised rock music had little in common with their upbringing in the original ‘new town’, which by this time was starting to feel the segregating effects of industrial decline and Thatcherite policies it had never signed up for. But instead of retreating too deeply into abstraction like many post-punk bands of the day, the Reid brothers held onto a deep love and appreciation of 60s melodicism; The Beach Boys, The Shangri-Las, even The Monkees. These were all as big a part of The Jesus and Mary Chain DNA as the rapidfire proto-punk of The Stooges and Ramones, and the industrial experimentation of Einstürzende Neubauten.

Until the release of Psychocandy, the JAMC were in danger of being a chaotic footnote in an era that often prioritised aesthetics over substance. The Reid brothers, in shades and all black, were already moody curmudgeons in their early 20s. They played fast, guerrilla gigs partly because they were banned in so many places and partly due to all the speed they were taking. They performed with backs to the audience and wouldn’t engage until things turned violent. Alan McGee had pound signs in his eyes when Bobby Gillespie turned him onto this band that many thought would be the new Sex Pistols. What a pleasant surprise for all involved when it turned out they could also write a song.

motorbikes and leather boots. And from there, distortion is used liberally to smear the lens of what might otherwise have been perfectly serviceable two-chord melodies. You can practically feel the crackling electricity through the speakers on In a Hole and the first two singles, Never Understand and You Trip Me Up; both have a steady hum of feedback that will have you checking your connection.

Gillespie’s fleeting legacy with the JAMC is exemplified within the first ten seconds of the band’s remarkable 1985 debut, Psychocandy Flagrantly pinching the most famous drum riff in pop history from The Ronettes (Be My Baby), Gillespie instantly connected the band to pure pop royalty just moments into the album’s opening song, Just Like Honey. Gillespie had only been in the band for a few months when Psychocandy was recorded, and would leave just after it came out to focus on his own game-changing rock band, but when that riff mixed with William’s reverb-laden guitar, the juxtaposition that would fuel the sound of the band was born.

Squalling feedback appears on the second song, The Living End, where the band’s love of New York’s Suicide becomes apparent, both in the propulsive arrangement and references to

Jim’s inscrutable vocals rarely rise above laconic, though he can occasionally muster up a bit of enthusiasm to sell a hook like on Sowing Seeds and Taste of Cindy; the latter a sub-two minute nugget of fuzzy bubblegum rock that laid the blueprint for The Vaselines. Lyrics are mostly vague and simple, revealing detail on closer listens but rarely demanding your attention. Jim almost affects a shout just before the album’s 39 minutes are up on It’s So Hard, but remembers his nonchalance just in time.

Alan McGee managed the band from 1984-86 and the profits he made were funnelled into the nascent Creation Records, indirectly leading to now-classic albums from Primal Scream, Slowdive, Teenage Fanclub and Oasis. The JAMC were influential to varying degrees on all of these bands (the Gallaghers’ back story is basically a Mancunian retelling of the Reids’), but the sounds they cultivated and popularised have had much more far-reaching reverberations.

Words: Lewis Wade

‘As long as there are disaffected youths with charity shop instruments, there will be new converts to the cult of the JAMC’

Psychocandy is generally viewed as the platonic ideal of noise-pop, directly influencing the shoegaze explosion of the late 80s/ early 90s close to home via My Bloody Valentine and Ride, and the emergent alt-rock scene in the USA via Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. This continued into the new millennium as bleary-eyed noise-rockers abounded in the American indie scene, with No Age, Best Coast and Sleigh Bells just a few examples. However, it’s Glasvegas who are the most blatant torch-bearers in Scotland. Jim Reid’s throwback greaser look was already anachronistic in the 80s; it was basically cosplay when James Allan took it up 20 years later. But beyond that, the band’s wall-of-sound approach, unapologetically accented vocals and alternating fragile/ menacing arrangements tread a fine line between homage and tribute band.

After Psychocandy the JAMC went on to experiment with electronics and synths, dialling back the fuzz and aggression, and highlighting their melodic chops, but this remains the mission statement and foundational document 40 years on. They continue to be an influential presence through endless post-punk and psychedelic revivals, and the work of anyone who seeks to slather a bit of distortion over a catchy hook. There hasn’t been a new generation yet that hasn’t sought out Psychocandy for inspiration and as long as there are disaffected youths with charity shop instruments, there will be new converts to the cult of the JAMC.

Psychocandy was first released on 18 Nov, 1985 via Blanco y Negro Records; a limited edition splatter vinyl to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the record is available now as part of last month’s National Album Day celebrations themarychain.com

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER PENDULUM

WHERE MUSIC COMES ALIVE

SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER INSANE CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING: WE’RE NO FAE HERE

SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER

SUNDAY 9 NOVEMBER YOU & ME WEDDING SHOW

WEDNESDAY 12 NOVEMBER KAE TEMPEST

FRIDAY 14 NOVEMBER PETER HOOK AND THE LIGHT

SATURDAY 15 NOVEMBER BELFAST BRUNCH CO

MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER THE LAST DINNER PARTY

MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER DIZZEE RASCAL

SUNDAY 30 NOVEMBER A NIGHT AT THE DARTS

TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER THE WOMBATS

THURSDAY 4 DECEMBER CAST

FRIDAY 5 DECEMBER

SATURDAY 6 DECEMBER CORN EXCHANGE CHRISTMAS CRACKER

SUNDAY 7 DECEMBER

ABOVE & BEYOND

THURSDAY 11 DECEMBER LUKE COMBS UK: THE CHRISTMAS COUNTRY HOE DOWN

FRIDAY 12 DECEMBER

SATURDAY 13 DECEMBER FRIDAY 19 DECEMBER

SATURDAY 20 DECEMBER CORN EXCHANGE CHRISTMAS CRACKER

SATURDAY 27 DECEMBER SKERRYVORE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY WINTER TOUR 2025 SCAN FOR TICKETS

Saturday 1 November The Dualers

Sunday 2 November Turnstile: The Never Enough Tour

Tuesday 4 November The Red Clay Strays: Get Right Europe Tour

EDINBURGHCORNEXCHANGE.CO.UK Get your tickets now via

Wednesday 5 November The Plot in You

Thursday 6 November Bob Vylan

Saturday 8 November Maren Morris

Sunday 9 November Saxon

Monday 10 November Joy Crookes

Saturday 15 November Glasville: The Modern Country Music Show

Sunday 16 November G flip

Monday 17 November Brand New

Tuesday 18 November DJ Premier x The Alchemist

Saturday 22 November Talisk

Sunday 23 November Monday 24 November Wet Leg

Tuesday 25 November Royel Otis

Thursday 27 November Nikhil D’Souza

Tuesday 11 November Gary Numan

Wednesday 19 November Cat Burns

Wednesday 12 November

Thursday 13 November Friday 14 November Loyle Carner: hopefully !

Thursday 20 November Dodie

Friday 21 November The Wailers

Friday 28 November Hardstyle Superheroes presents Rebelion Scan for tickets

On Her Own Terms

Ahead of releasing her debut album, Bang, Iona Zajac tells us about touring with The Pogues, album number one and romantic dreams about Billy Connolly

Iona Zajac had to remind herself she wasn’t dreaming as she looked out at the New York skyline from the window of her 7th Avenue hotel room. Picked out by Spider Stacy himself, Zajac recently joined The Pogues on their seven-night tour of the US and Canada. “I can understand that lots of people have been quite sceptical, like ‘well this isn’t The Pogues’, and it’s not, you know, it’s a very different thing. Nobody is trying to replace anybody, but it really works,” says Zajac of the group’s new formation, which now sees three of the band’s original members propped up by the likes of Zajac, Lisa O’Neill and Nadine Shah. For Zajac, who is on harp and vocal duties for the iconic Celtic punks, The Pogues’ North American excursion marked a more relaxing tour experience than she’s used to. “They’re just quite old school, the band. They’ve been in the game for so long, they book nice hotels and really look after us… it’s just a dream.”

The stateside jaunt, fun though it was, was a warmup for the biggest undertaking of Zajac’s career to date – the release of her ambitious debut album, Bang. Be it searing takedowns of violent

men or abstract tales recounted from her dreams, every track is bound together by Zajac’s signature brand of gothic surrealism. To release a debut album as intricate as Bang is an impressive feat for any artist, let alone an independent one. “I recorded the album two years ago with a fantastic band and was like, ‘right, I need a cool label’,” reflects Zajac. “But I think as we entered that process and I realised what a label could actually offer me, especially in the early days, I was just going to be in loads of debt.” Instead, Zajac, alongside a small management team, decided to release Bang on her own terms. “I feel very good about the fact that I’m releasing it independently because, not only do I not owe anyone any money, but in a way I’m releasing this album for me, and not to show a label the numbers.”

Included in Bang’s tracklist is the opening trio of Bowls, Dilute and Anton, described by Zajac as “sisters in different stages of processing something bad.” Each of these offerings tackles the heady subject matter of violence against women, culminating in the expulsion of the line, ‘Go fuck yourself, go learn to get consent’ on

Words: Danny Munro

“I’m releasing this album for me, and not to show a label the numbers”

Iona Zajac

Anton. Crafting such emotively unsparing art can undoubtedly be a draining endeavour, though Zajac rejoices in the sense of community she feels from her listeners. “The thing that really comes from releasing these is the response I’ve had from other people who get in touch with me and say, ‘Thank you for releasing this song that I can relate to so much.’ My processing of what happened, happened years ago. I’ve had a couple of people send me messages saying: ‘I hope you’re okay’, but if I wasn’t okay I wouldn’t be releasing this right now… It’s a general anger and fuel in me that’s built over the years in being aware of what women had to put up with and what I had to put up with as a teenager.”

The two-year buffer between the recording and the release of Bang may sound laborious to some, though Zajac relishes the confidence she’s developed in her ability during that time. “One of the things about the album taking so long to be ready is that, at 27, 28, I felt much more wobbly generally. I was very aware of being a young woman artist,” she admits. “But you can’t help but think, especially when it comes to major labels, they’re not going to sign a 29-year-old woman, and woman is the key word there, because you get pumped with this idea that you’re not sellable – and I’m totally over that hump now. I don’t feel worried about that at all.” Zajac’s carefree approach shines on Chicken Supermarket, an absurdist tale scribbled together on the harpist’s Notes app in the wee small hours. “Really, it’s lots of lines from different dreams, but one of those involved a romantic dream I had about Billy Connolly,” Zajac laughs, describing the track that sees her stranded in the middle of a sea of jelly with the king of Scottish comedy. “I dreamt I met him and his wife, and I was really jealous of her!”

Predicting that Bang will keep Zajac busy come award season sounds like a fairly safe bet, though the songwriter is quick to stress that connecting with audiences is the main ambition for album one. “I’d like to play it as much as possible,” Zajac reflects. “Playing live shows is really what I want to be doing. And even if I can see a tiny step up in the venues I play over the next months, then that would be very cool.”

Bang is released on 21 Nov via Post Electric; Iona Zajac plays Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 23 Nov; The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, 24 Nov

instagram.com/ionazajac

Beneath Bristo Square

Something is brewing beneath Bristo Square – as clubs across the UK shut their doors, Edinburgh’s newest underground venture, the People’s Leisure Club, opens its own, quietly proving nightlife doesn’t have to stay on the Cowgate

There’s a palpable fascination that surrounds Edinburgh’s newest venue, People’s Leisure Club, tucked away in a cavernous basement below Bristo Square. Maybe it’s the unlikely trio of businesses at the helm, or the uncanny Lynchian interior, or the sheer guts required to open a club while much of the UK’s nightlife industry falters. Whatever the root cause, the space has gathered intrigue since opening its doors in September. Created from the amalgamated minds of Kelburn Garden Party (beloved arts and music festival), the Gilded Balloon (one of Scotland’s leading comedy producers) and Paradise Palms (wacky cocktail hotspot with record label to boot) – the team behind the venture have no shortage of ambition.

Functioning as a nightclub, a comedy club, live music venue and with a sister pub, the Gilded Saloon, serving seasonal grub upstairs – the multi-purpose space evades easy definition. Driving its vision are individuals who understand the complex dynamics of Edinburgh’s arts scene. Amongst them is Chris Knight, Programme Director and Co-founder of Kelburn Garden Party, who joined alongside the Festival’s team to oversee the programming for the club. “One of my hats is the programming of Kelburn, but I’m also a club promoter in Edinburgh,” he says, “I’ve got a great love for club culture, I’ve been quite heavily involved for 30 years.” Despite the club opening some two months ago, the networks underpinning the People’s Leisure Club have existed for decades.

It’s no surprise then that Kelburn Garden Party’s involvement sets a precedent for the club’s bookings. “One of our [main] strategies and philosophies at Kelburn has always been to collaborate with key people from underground scenes,” Knight says. “I wanted to help create two sides to the club. One was finding a platform for people within our central network who are part of the Kelburn family,” he says, “The other side of the coin is [about] creating a space within Edinburgh’s scene which we think there’s a gap in.” The venue’s location away from the Cowgate – Edinburgh’s premier spot for clubbing – suggests this separation. “We’re trying a lot more jazz, funk, soul, disco and house, which is all stuff we love at Kelburn,” Knight adds, “but we’re definitely trying to fit in as well and add to the overall range of spaces in the city centre.”

These considerations – to carve out a niche amongst the top clubs in the city’s Old Town – are all the more necessary with the critical juncture currently facing the UK’s nightlife industry. One in four late-night venues have closed in the UK since 2020, with knock-on effects from the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating running costs and changes in young people’s behaviour taking a severe toll.

Words: Myrtle Boot

Has this been cause for rumination? “There’s a certain amount of suspending reality,” says Knight. “In this sector of the arts, when you’re presented with such an opportunity, it’s hard to resist… but obviously it isn’t easy.” The solution for the team has been to engage with what is successful about UK nightlife. “In terms of wider club and festival culture, there’s a renewed appreciation for community,” he says. “When there’s so much going on in society, community is a really supportive and positive thing… The younger generation in particular are really starting to understand that.”

A crucial element to fostering this sense of community is nurturing the city’s promoters. “There is a lack of promoters and you can see why, it’s a risky business,” Knight says, “We definitely look to find the systems and pathways that can support promoters, and one of those is keeping the rent cheap… the first barrier is finances.” The profile of the promoters making use of the new venue has ranged considerably, from university music societies to household names behind the city’s favourite club nights. As Knight puts it, “We want to have space in the diary and be supportive of anyone doing a night for the first time… we’ll

hold their hand and help them to be successful.”  The venue equally champions those directly involved with its operations. Assistant General Manager Bartek Lech has held several nights in the venue as part of Edinburgh DJ collective GRDN. From his perspective as a promoter, Lech explains the venue’s merits, “The People’s Leisure Club definitely has its own unique look and feel. It’s the perfect size to have a decent size crowd and still feel intimate, which makes booking a bigger artist easier… there’s less risk of losing money.” As well as its benefits to promoters, Lech recognises its potential among Edinburgh’s wider scene, “It’s going to take time for everyone to become familiar with the place and what we do, but I’m confident we will build a strong community.”

From the extensive musical scope realised for its events, down to the (already iconic) monochrome striped corridors, the People’s Leisure Club is an undeniably bold venture. Yet, with roots firmly grounded in Edinburgh’s creative ecosystem and a burgeoning community to the fore, it is an optimistic sign for the future of the city’s nightlife.

People's Leisure Club, 45 Lothian St, Edinburgh

The Digital Depths

Owen Sutcliffe discusses his visceral debut play, Òran, and the ways in which young men find and lose each other in an online world

When Owen Sutcliffe pictures the underworld, he sees a black mirror.

The 31-year-old playwright’s first show, Òran, is enjoying its first UK tour after an award-winning run at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe. Directed by Jack Nurse with lyrical storytelling and a live electronic score, the modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus follows Òran on an odyssey to rescue his best friend from an underworld of social media and pubescent shame.

Sutcliffe – also an emcee, forest school leader and youth worker – says the inspiration to write Òran came about from his work with young people navigating this digital abyss. “[Òran] is about the pain of young people growing up in this modern age,” he says. “It’s about my own experiences as a wee guy… but being around this stuff in my work, the underworld is this terrible place that is stoked by the insidious nature of social media.”

Through Òran’s journey, Sutcliffe illustrates the emotional toll social media takes on today’s youth. They have “whole languages,” he explains, that adults don’t speak. Emojis, memes and online personas reflect a youth culture practically password-protected from older folks. So, who can they turn to when trapped behind the screen?

Sutcliffe’s answer is tender: their friends.

Òran is a play about platonic love, especially among boys and men. And although Sutcliffe didn’t intend to write about masculinity, it becomes an inevitable theme, as the depiction of young Òran risking it all for his best pal is subversive against the backdrop of male friendships so often shown without consequence.

Sutcliffe says his own experience growing up in a home where emotional expression was encouraged deeply shaped this portrayal. “I didn’t set out to comment on masculinity, but I’m a man, and I’ve written about a boy, so I have,” he says. “I work with young people for whom the definition of masculinity is quite narrow. It’s difficult sometimes – I’m maybe a different sort of man than they’re used to, and sometimes they can be triggered in an inexplicable way by my version of a man.”

The play also touches on the shame and confusion boys experience as they grow up, especially in the age of social media. The pressures of adolescence – exacerbated by online culture – are central to Òran, and Sutcliffe emphasizes that platonic love can be an antidote. “I feel it is so important for men to tell each other that they love each other; to not only show it, but to take time to reflect for themselves about their male friendships,” he says. “I love my pals.”

One of Òran’s most distinctive features is its immersive soundscape by Glasgow duo VanIves. Sutcliffe, a lover of hip-hop and rhythm-based music, chose to tell the story through rhyme and Robbie Gordon, the sole performer on stage, plays a crucial role in building this soundscape. As he manipulates his musical equipment live, looping sounds and creating layers of music, he enhances

the emotional weight of the story. “It’s a gargantuan effort,” Sutcliffe says. “The more he’s doing on stage, the more of a tour-de-force he is to watch.”

Sonically, the composers have created a soundscape that “does not let up,” he says, noting the way the score shifts and distorts as Òran heads to Hades. The show begins in the real world, with acoustic music holding audiences in a palatable calm – until it begins to fracture. As Òran goes deeper, industrial and electronic sounds disturb the clarity of life on Earth, and viewers are swept into chaos. It’s a sonic journey that Sutcliffe calls “just as important as the text.”

He remembers last summer at the Fringe, when his debut play was finally up and running, and he made his first whole-hearted descent into Òran’s story with an audience. “In that sweatbox [Pleasance Courtyard’s Baby Grand] last summer at the Fringe, we were piled on top of each other, pissing sweat, and the whole thing was cranking up in temperature as you went to hell,” he says. “It was hectic in a beautiful way.”

On the back of such evocative performances, Sutcliffe hopes that audiences leave Òran thinking about their relationships. “I hope audiences leave thinking about their friends. I hope parents will leave thinking about their children,” he says. “I

Words: Mika Morava

“I hope audiences leave thinking about their friends. I hope parents will leave thinking about their children”

Owen Sutcliffe

hope people leave thinking about the way they use their phones… but we’re all so stuck in the tide, it’s difficult to extract yourself from that world.

“I hope young people feel like it is for them, and about them, but not talking down to them… I hope it feels true and real and shocking, in a way that feels theirs. I hope it feels like it belongs to them.”

Òran tours Scotland until 15 Nov, including Eastwood Park Theatre, Giffnock, 4 Nov; Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1 3-15 Nov

wonderfools.org/projects/oran

Calculated Chaos

Sean Lock Comedy Award winner Harriet Dyer brings her latest hour of manic whimsy on tour, and explains how reading changed her life

Seeing a Harriet Dyer show, you’re likely to leave using words such as weird, bizarre and, most importantly, chaos.

You might think it’s a perfectly calculated stage persona, but seconds into our chat, we’re flying into oddities with tangent after tangent veering in every direction. Before long, Dyer’s recounting a dog she saw frightening itself with its own bark or telling the story of a storm that threatened to permanently separate Cornwall from the rest of the UK, proving that on and off stage, the comic has a unique, energetic mind.

Dyer’s meandering anecdotes beautifully encompass the spirit of her latest tour, Easily Distra…, which dashes from idea to idea with a compelling mania. “My previous shows have been story-oriented, all revolving around a certain mental event in my life, but this one feels much more ‘classic gags’.”

As naturally tangential as Dyer is, the comic never lets that undermine her material, quipping “I did a big show at the Apollo recently and had another comedian come up to me, complimenting the act, saying how amazing it was that it all came to me in that moment, as if it spurted out

randomly. It is planned! I swear there’s a routine! I’ve written proper jokes, or at least, my version of proper jokes!”

If anything, it’s an absolute testament to Dyer’s comedy that her honed material has the same energy and hit power as her natural outbursts. “I couldn’t do a carbon copy of a show if I tried,” she confesses. “I’m always enjoying the moment and catching myself focusing on random things. The other day in Bath I had a nice sandwich, and I just kept talking about that sandwich. Or, a few nights ago the venue was full of moths, and I just couldn’t believe all the moths. Everywhere you looked, moths,” she reminisces, before conceding “they must have heard all the jokes about them, because they’d all left after the interval!”

Amongst the madness and chaos, what shines through is Dyer’s crystalline and unique comedic voice. The innately physical delivery that floods her set only elevates each absurd punchline and fortifies the walls around the world she creates. What you get with a Harriet Dyer gig is “a rambling, whimsical journey of daftness,” which promises to be pure and simple fun.

Words: Cameron Wright

“I guess that’s where it started, just reading in the bath, trying to shit, but turning all the characters into little games and making up worlds for myself”

Harriet Dyer

Although this show steps away from her previous story-oriented shows, Dyer is quick to acknowledge that she has always had an affinity with stories, citing novels as the catalyst for her stand-up obsession. “I was a terrible student, just awful, but we had a creative writing competition – it was the only thing I could do. I won every week, a new story each time, to the extent that they would say, ‘right we’ll ignore Harriet this time’, to give someone else a chance. Looking back, they were all weird fucking stories, so not much has changed.”

Dyer then spirals off deeper into her writing origin, claiming, “I was really constipated once so my dad put me in the bath with a bunch of books and just told me to read and read until my constipation went away. I guess that’s where it started, just reading in the bath, trying to shit, but turning all the characters into little games and making up worlds for myself.”

Dyer enthusiastically talks about how important reading is, mentioning recent conversations with her nephews and nieces, recounting the urgency in which she encourages them to read and how she has sustained a career because of it. She speaks about stories with a feverish glee, quickly pointing to the music of Slick Rick and The Streets and how their lyricism centers around characters and events, before catching herself and reiterating with a cheeky, bashful grin. “I say all this, but I’ll remind you, none of this is really relevant to my new show.”

Whatever the influence and whatever the structure, Dyer is a delight. There is nobody else pairing quite the same delicious sense of playful comedy with her unbridled love for live performance. “My favourite part isn’t the writing or the performing, it’s the bit in the middle that pulls on both, it’s constantly tinkering and working the room.”

No comic on the circuit so effortlessly weaves the spontaneous and the sculpted like Dyer, and her new show is no exception.

Harriet Dyer: Easily Distra..., 22 Nov, Monkey Barrel Comedy, Edinburgh, 22 Nov, 7.30pm, £16

@harrietdyercomedy on Instagram and TikTok

Sounds Good

November

1st Garth Marenghi - This Bursted Earth Book Tour

2nd Across The Universe - The Beatles ‘66-’70

3rd Beth Nielsen Chapman + Judie Tzuke - Live in Concert

6th SCO 25/26: Steve Reich+

7th Butler Blake & Grant

8th Ardal O'Hanlon - Not Himself

9th Stewart Copeland - Have I Said Too Much

10th Professor Alice Roberts – Domination – The Fall and Rise of an Empire - SOLD OUT

13th SCO 25/26: Schumann & Mozart Matinee with Anthony Marwood

14th Fergus McCreadie Trio

15th HORSE: The Same Sky Anniversary Tour

16th Steeleye Span in concert 2025

17th Dominic Waxing Lyrical x Mr McFall’s Chamber String Quartet

18th Colin Hay

19th Art of Andalucia | FLAMENCO DANCE

20th Simon & Oscar

22nd Nouvelle Vague

23rd SCO 25/26: Carmina Gadelica

24th New Town Concerts: Timothy Ridout & Federico Colli

27th The Bootleg Eagles

29th The Vintage Explosion - SOLD OUT

30th Swing Into Christmas with the Down for the Count Swing Orchestra

Full Listings

Album of the Month

Iona Zajac — Bang

Following a spell on the road this year performing with The Pogues, Glasgow-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Iona Zajac’s distinct brand of folk intimacy and raw experimentation reaches its highest heights so far on her debut album, Bang

Zajac first emerged as a solo artist in 2022 with the EP Find Her in the Grass. The short four-track record introduced her sound: a mix of soft folk guitars, emotionally raw vocals and reflective lyrics. Later singles such as the fantastic Rubbish Jubilee indicated that she was moving in a heavier direction, bringing in electric guitars, darker lyrics and a desire to play with the full range of her vocal abilities.

This evolution is fully realised on Bang, a blistering 11-track album that sees Zajac explore new depths, leaning into her anger more than ever before. This fury is best represented by lead single Anton. Built on looping percussion and jagged guitar, the song is a portrait of power, control and sexual assault Zajac’s voice is suitably unsettling, sitting somewhere between vulnerability and challenge, matching the track’s emotional heft well. This mood is explored further on Dilute, a

rousing battle cry of a song which recasts rage as a communal energising experience: ‘Don’t dilute me, I’m not losing again / Don’t salute me, I won’t bow to your friends.’

There are moments of humour and tenderness on Bang, too. Chicken Supermarket is a woozy song built around a literal dream, where jelly seas, girls with yellow hair and police officers drift in and out during its hazy twominute runtime. The best song on Bang, however, might just be the record’s most understated –End of the Year; sweet and nostalgic, it’s a deceptively simple narrative track that plays out over delicate strings. The song hops across time, from childhood to adulthood. The most evocative sections paint a picture of a teenage Zajac and a friend wasting time in their youth (‘I got red, you got blue Golden Wonder / When the man turned around it was under your jumper’), drinking until they were sick, wondering what the future might hold.

Bang is a truly original debut album that burns bright with emotion and wild imagination, confirming Zajac as one of Scotland’s most fearless and intriguing new voices. [Tara Hepburn]

14 Nov

Listen to: Time Will Tell, This is Who I Am, Carmen’s Song

Despite having released just one studio album, 2021’s Not Your Muse, British singer-songwriter Celeste has established herself as a soulful, stirring artist, a reputation which Woman of Faces will undoubtedly further solidify. The aptly titled opening track, On With the Show, sets the stage for a theatrical musical performance; the album’s deluxe release follows a smooth, elegant progression that ends with the nostalgic Carmen’s Song. With each new listen, as the album unfolds, it seems to mature and reveal infinitely new facets of feeling.

While a few of the songs feel somewhat repetitive, they are more than compensated for with the experimentation and risk-taking on tracks like Angel Like You and Could Be Machine. Regardless, each track is complete with Celeste’s characteristically haunting, emotive vocals and harmonious backing instrumentals; the keys and strings of the title track are particularly standout. In short, Celeste’s second studio album reinforces the captivating, distinctive sound she brings to the industry, and encourages us to keep our sights set on her promising work to come. Woman of Faces is no exception to Celeste’s moving discography – it is a performance certainly deserving of applause. [Sophia Goddard]

Liquorice Secretly Canadian, 7 Nov rrrrr

Listen to: Only One Laughing, Lose It Again, Stuck

On her first two records, Harriette Pilbeam, aka Hatchie, opened with an irresistible hook. But on her latest project, Liquorice, there’s a tinge of unease in the pulsing synths and reverb-drenched vocals of meditative opener Anemoia. ‘Maybe the world you want has to slip away’, muses the Australian singer-songwriter.

Produced by Melina Duterte, aka Jay Som, the album took shape after Pilbeam settled into a slower pace of life back in Australia after a period in Los Angeles. Where her previous LP fizzed with fluorescent synths and giddy dance-pop, Liquorice is looser and less hurried, luxuriating in cascades of shoegaze guitars.

The lush liquidity of Cocteau Twins is the clearest touchstone for Pilbeam but there’s also echoes of The Sundays in the blissful, elastic vocals of Only One Laughing, the Cure’s Disintegration in the dark, watery guitar on Someone Else’s News, and the crunchy guitar pop of Lush and Echobelly in the caustic fuzz of Sage and Wonder. Nestled among the more turbulent pieces are some truly infectious melodies, with euphoric lead single Lose It Again closely followed by the effervescent Part That Bleeds, while frothy, loved-up closer Stuck might just be the record’s most endearing moment. [Zoë White]

Brown

Listen to: Copycats, Whatever the Case

Stardust is Danny Brown out to make a point. His first album made in total sobriety, it finds him collaborating with a host of underground musicians. Brown has built a career as an iconoclast and experimenter who’s as likely to conjure memories of syrupy LuckyMe production while rapping about Evanescence as he is to compare women to Pokémon over chiptune beats. Both of which he does convincingly on this frenetic, kaleidoscopic, frequently brilliant new album.

Loading all but two songs with features leads to a certain amount of tonal whiplash, but Brown has the chops, charisma and unbridled energy to mostly pull it off. The production is inspired, demonstrating how a newfound clarity and focus have elevated every aspect of his artistry. Anyone yearning for a follow-up to 2014 Rustie collab Attak will not be disappointed.

The only minor complaint is that it occasionally comes off like Brown featuring on someone else’s song rather than vice versa, and there are too many mawkish choruses that have no business on a Danny Brown record. But overall, Stardust is a tremendous reinvention for the most vital rapper of the last 15 years. No-one is doing it like Danny. [Lewis Wade]

Ellis

Sparrow

Press, 14 Nov rrrrr

Listen to: Vesper Sparrow, Savannah Sparrow (for and after Kenita Miller)

“The stutter […] can be a musical instrument,” states CaribbeanAmerican musician and academic JJJJJerome Ellis at the start of his latest record. It’s more than a declaration, it’s a guiding principle that shapes his practice. With Vesper Sparrow, Ellis expands his study into the intersections of Blackness, music, and disabled speech by using granular synthesis (a technique that deconstructs and rearticulates sound) to highlight the unintentional beauty of speech disfluency. At the core of the album is Evensong, a four-part composition that treats silence as a fertile space for reflection and transformation. This is perhaps best observed in Evensong 2, which closes on an unfinished sentence: ‘When I make a piece of music, the music […]’, Ellis’s trailing pause creating a clearing into which two standalone compositions emerge. Rooted in the gospel hymn His Eye is on the Sparrow, these tracks draw from Black religious traditions to highlight the healing power of music. They also show that beneath the conceptual rigour of Ellis’s work lies a master of musical feeling, a composer in the same league as Arthur Russell or Julius Eastman. There is poetry in silence, and with Vesper Sparrow, Ellis allows us to lean in and hear it. [Patrick Gamble]

Ric Herrington’s Audiatic Orchestra PROCESSION: The Environmental Symphony For An Occasion Records, 1 Nov rrrrr

Listen to: The First Dream, The Journey, The Sunrise

Led by Paisley-based Ric Herrington, on PROCESSION: The Environmental Symphony, Ric Herrington’s Audiatic Orchestra produce a charmingly dreamy and humorous world. Built from a cacophony of acoustic instruments and nature sounds, the music, narration and sound design create a seamless whole that turns the album into a single, expansive painting. Where the orchestra doesn’t seem as tight, the looseness helps retain an authenticity vital to the work. With a brief narration towards the beginning of each track, you’re guided on a sonic journey, invited to bask in the sounds of nature with the music somehow bringing even more attention to the surrounding ecosystem.

The First Dream begins with dreamy percussion followed by ominous double bass, leading into a sequence of calmly flowing guitar and flute paired with airy birdsong. The atmosphere is one of slight tension in tranquility. The Journey will make you smile with its use of duck quacks amongst a bed of contemplative and meditative music. The Sunrise stands out with a unique soundworld that feels warm and glowy, true to its title. By expertly blending birdsong and insects into his musical palette, Ric Herrington paints an immersive worldview that is dynamic and brimming with vitality. [Rhea Hagiwara]

Thaw Sufrecs, 14 Nov rrrrr

Listen to: Snowflakes, On Est Bien, Thaw

This latest full-length from Edinburgh’s Siobhan Wilson touches on many themes including, but not limited to, friendships, wanderlust and the cosmos, but if there’s a relationship that’s key to the record, it’s Wilson’s own with the electric guitar. Known previously for a more folky, pastoral sound, Wilson has clearly come to understand the power that amplification can provide, especially when used minimally. Thaw is loosely conceptual – side A inspired by summer, and side B by winter – but in truth, its mood shifts continually. Opener Starlove is somewhere at the junction between grunge and shoegaze, while Snowflakes, thick with atmosphere, is straight out of Twin Peaks

Some songs you might categorise as guitar-pop, including the charming On Est Bien, one of two tracks that Wilson, a one-time resident of Paris, sings in French; Paris Brûle is almost garage-y, whilst the title track is scored through with menace and suspense. The one constant on Thaw is the strippedback palette, Wilson’s vocals and spare use of the electric guitar its key colours. It feels as if picking up the guitar has opened up new songwriting avenues for her; this might be the beginning of a rich new vein of form. [Joe Goggins]

Simone Seales Dearest

Self-released, 21 Nov rrrrr

Listen to: there are no accidents, I release you

On their debut album, Glasgowbased cellist Simone Seales is able to recapture and share experiences of queer love that should be lost to time by angelically bowing the strings of their cello and expressing the feeling of longing that comes from remembrance. Accompanied by poetry penned by Seales, the spoken word here is performed by awardwinning multidisciplinary artist Mele Broomes, who shares memories of Seales’ first queer romance with the reflective glimmer of a nostalgic storyteller. The energy created by this sharp poetry intertwines magically with the tone created by both Seales’ cello and Broomes’ cadence.

On there are no accidents, a slight distortion of Seales’ cello is the shifting cue that this piece will act as a guide to love’s dynamic nature that sometimes elicits a more agitated or nerve-racking sensation within a partner. The shift ruptures the feeling of warmth and holds the pain that the relationship caused Seales, which they are reckoning with through their music. Taken on a journey of queer love, Dearest’s reflective nature welcomes the challenge of holding tight to fleeting tender moments before they manage to slip away. [Billie Estrine]

The Universe Is Loading Hand In Hive, 14 Nov rrrrr

Listen to: After the Ending, The Whole World Cries

The title of Wyldest’s (aka Zoë Mead) latest album feels like an existentially accurate description on today’s world turmoil. An examination of the world on a micro and macro level, it sees the London-based singer-songwriter – who has long been acutely talented at portraying introspectiveness in her writing – look more outward for personal upheaval, finding more artistic freedom in the process.

After the Ending paints this picture vividly. Wyldest’s vocals lilt over shimmering guitars via pop-imbued melodies. It may sound bright, but the track was actually written after Mead received a diagnosis of endometriosis. This forced her to contemplate the prospect of a life-threatening illness and temporarily pause production on the album. However, out of this huge challenge, the song instead focuses on selfacceptance, embracing change and making the most of life.

This positive mantra continues on Wax Museum and The Whole World Cries. Other moments, such as Foolish World, ruminate on nature’s power to prevail over human interference, while Old Flame and Foxglove Will Grow prioritise personal growth among difficult relationships. Both sonically and thematically, this is Wyldest’s most immersive work to date that sees her find strength through fragility. An impressive return. [Jamie Wilde]

Music Now

It will come as no surprise that November is incredibly busy for new Scottish releases. We look forward to albums from Claire M Singer, Peter Cat, Slime City, Vagrant Real Estate and loads more

Words: Tallah Brash

As is custom, here’s some of what we missed last month. There were new albums from Supermann on da Beat and Xidontile, Sister John, Starsky-Rae and Swim School, plus singles from Red Vanilla, SULKA, TAAHLIAH, TEXTURE TEXTURE, Róisín McCarney, Jacob Alon and jasmine.4.t, Szaskia, Nani Porenta, Adam Ross (ft. C Duncan), Linzi Clark, Radhika, Charlotte Devlin and more. November is similarly stacked. In the mag you’ll find full album reviews for Siobhan Wilson, Simone Seales, Ric Herrington’s Audiatic Orchestra and Iona Zajac, who we also chat in more depth to on p53.

On 7 November, Claire M Singer (Music Director of the organ at London’s Union Chapel) releases the second instalment of her triptych inspired by both her journeys in the Cairngorms and experimentation with the pipe organ. On her latest body of work – Gleann Ciuín, meaning ‘Quiet Glen’ in Gaelic – its five tracks and approximate 50-minute runtime is bookended by two 19-minute pieces; opener Turadh takes its name for the Gaelic word for ‘a break in the clouds’, while the Ivor Novello-nominated title track closes the album. Several organs recorded across Scotland appear on Turadh, while Gleann Ciuín’s composition beautifully pairs viola, violin, cello and French horns with the Southbank Centre’s 1967 Flentrop organ. The album’s filling features two shorter, rumbling electronic pieces that flank the centrepiece, the bright and optimistic Rionnag a Tuath (‘north star’). A fascinating listen from start to finish, as evocative, atmospheric and as grand as you’d expect from a record rooted in a journey through the Scottish Highlands, but it’s the sounds Singer creates from the myriad organs featured that truly mesmerise.

On 14 November, Graham Gillespie, aka Peter Cat, releases his latest album, Starchamber, via Trapped Animal Records. Regularly taking unexpected and adventurous sidesteps steps, expect tricky time signatures, creative chord changes and playful lyricism. On atypical love song INSTRUMENTALITY. he sings ‘We eat plant-based material, but when we’re steaming we’ll order the spicy buffalo wings’, while a nod to Empire Records brings the line ‘Shock me, shock me, shock me, with that deviant behaviour’ on the almost eight-minute closing dirge of Execution. A cocktail of outsider pop acts like Neil Hannon, Franz Ferdinand, Sparks, Pulp and Hamish Hawk all spring to mind, making for an intricate, theatrical cross-genre exploration across nine tracks that regularly delights.

On 21 November, Glasgow’s premier nerd rock outfit of Michaels, Slime City release National Record of Achievement, its title track opening the record: ‘They tell you that you’ll need it / But you’ll never need it [... ] Nobody ever asks to see it / Your National Record Of… Achievement’. They channel The

Futureheads and Devo on You Do the Math(s), become full-blown pranksters on Millennial Pause (no spoilers), state the obvious on Never Stop Giving Up (‘If you don’t like your job, you can leave it’) and deliver a biting criticism of how fucked the music industry is on This Song Cost £2000. Across its 12 tracks, you’ll often find yourself rolling your eyes while smirking at the same time, and with the album recorded by Bruce Rintoul (Vukovi/Twin Atlantic) it sounds brilliant to boot: sarcastic, frantic, hefty, and above all fun.

At the end of the month, Aberdeen producer Vagrant Real Estate releases Neither Collar Nor Crown (30 Nov), a 13-track exploration of what it means to be Scottish. “It’s shite being Scottish,” he says, explaining the mantra that led to his personal exploration of Scotland’s musical history that went on to inform this record. A cross-section of Scotland’s music scene as it currently stands is celebrated by 25 diverse voices across 13 tracks, with rappers like Bemz, Paque, Jackill, Chef the Rapper and Madhat McGore joined by singers like Katherine Aly, Iona Fyfe and Viv Latifa. Alongside samples and Vagrant’s beautifully vintage production style, Neither Collar Nor Crown offers up a rich tapestry of sounds that could only have been made in Scotland.

Also this month, expect a 90s-indebted album (Capitalism Kills Culture) from techno heavyweight Frazi.er (7 Nov), an ambient electronic debut (Instructions Not Included) from Edinburgh producer EchoDeltaYankee (19 Nov), and a new record from Grammy Award-winning violinist Nicola Benedetti; Violin Café arrives on the 21st. And on the 14th, be sure to grab yourself a physical copy of Pictish Trail’s brand new album, LIFE SLIME, well ahead of its full release next year.

Stacks of EPs are set to land this month too. Following the release of the punchy Voices In My Head last month, Glasgow surf-punks Maz and the Phantasms release their self-titled debut EP/mini album on the 14th. Self-proclaimed as “equal parts punk and charity shop glam”, it’s a tagline that suits this gang of four that upcycle and repurpose ideas from across their musical journey so far, piecing it together to form a record that feels polished but, by design, is delightfully shabby chic and restless at the same time. You should also expect new EPs from DM Arthur, Milange, Mha Iri, Florence Jack, Eleanor Hickey, Midnight Painters, Becca Hunter and Ask Alice, with singles due from Andrew Wasylyk, Pearling, Brontës, Chris Anderson, Elsie Mac, F.O. Machete, Aurora Engine, Filmstar and more.

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

Film of the Month — Pillion

Director: Harry Lighton

Starring: Harry Melling, Alexander Skarsgård, Douglas Hodge, Lesley Sharp RRRR R

Released 28 November by Picturehouse Certificate 18

Pillion had its UK premiere at London Film Festival

theskinny.co.uk/film

There may be nowhere more devoid of sex appeal than a deserted English high street on Christmas night – all shuttered shopfronts and a few decorations twinkling half-heartedly over the rain-wet pavement – but a young man on his knees is about to find God tonight behind this Primark. How better to mark the day of the lord Jesus Christ than enthusiastic fellatio and licking the dirt off a man’s boot?

Harry Lighton’s debut feature Pillion, named for the passenger backseat of a motorcycle, is about the ride of your life that comes with surrendering control. Based on the Adam Mars-Jones novel Box Hill, it is a sweet, often funny, still-thorny portrait of the dominant-submissive relationship that sparks between Colin, a gentle-natured traffic warden played by Harry Melling, and Ray, a mysterious motorcyclist he meets at the pub. Ray, a stone-cold god of a man, is a biker who wears all leather, deigns to speak very few words, and taciturnly reads Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle in bed. Alexander Skarsgård is on continuing, excellent form here playing beautiful men with deviant desires; after all, what is the point of being hot if you’re not going to get freaky with it?

Colin’s days consist of being yelled at for giving people parking tickets, and his nights are spent at home with his loving parents or singing in his dad’s barbershop quartet at the pub. It’s here he meets Ray, who wordlessly orders Colin to rendezvous for that first, fateful supplication, and where Colin

discovers he likes the taste of submission on his tongue. Like a puppy, his first forays into the rituals of kink are eager yet clumsy, but as he reorients his life around Ray’s beck and call, they both discover that he has “quite the aptitude for devotion”.

Pillion largely plays like a rom-com, giving familiar beats (including the dreaded ‘meet the parents’ scene) a fresh and explicit spin. Its sweetness works in tandem with rather than against its unflinching sexuality. A particularly inspiring rough fuck on a picnic table impressively proves just how much emotional storytelling a well-made sex scene can hold, and thankfully, the film is largely uninterested in moralising about the kind of sex people want to have. Besides a slightly unconvincing final act, what emerges is a small story compellingly told: not so much about Ray and Colin’s D/S arrangement as it is about how we come to negotiate an understanding of ourselves through our relationships with others, the restraints that serve us, and the ones that don’t.

Stylistically pared-back in a way that lets the dynamic between Melling and Skarsgård shine, an exception is made for the dreamlike, slow-motion sequences of Colin riding pillion: the camera gazing fetishistically on hands gripping leather, the stark floodlights on a night ride making everything else fade away, arms wrapping around waists with the rush of being able to touch what feels like freedom. There will be pain and loss and joy and pleasure; life is about submitting to it all. [Xuanlin Tham]

Scotland on Screen: David Mackenzie

We catch up with Scotland’s most prolific filmmaker to discuss his success in the States, his channelling of 70s paranoid thrillers in Relay and why he tries to avoid repeating himself

Filmmography: Fuze (2025), Relay (2024), Outlaw King (2018), Hell or High Water (2016), Starred Up (2013), You Instead (2011), Perfect Sense (2011), Spread (2009), Hallam Foe (2007), Asylum (2005), Young Adam (2003), The Last Great Wilderness (2002)

Relay is out now via Black Bear

David Mackenzie is a difficult director to pigeonhole. When BAFTA hand him his inevitable lifetime achievement award, the showreel will be all over the shop. His mainstream breakthrough was the muscular prison movie Starred Up (2013), which he followed up with the Oscarnominated neo-western Hell or High Water (2016), and then epic Scottish period drama Outlaw King (2018). But by Starred Up, Mackenzie was already a veteran, with six wildly different features under his belt, including a whimsical coming-of-age film centred on an adorable Peeping Tom with an Oedipus complex (Hallam Foe, 2007), a soulful romance taking place during a mysterious global pandemic (Perfect Sense, 2011) and a glossy LA sex comedy starring Ashton Kutcher (Spread, 2009).

“I never want to do things the same way twice,” Mackenzie tells me on a video call from his home in Joshua Tree, California, when I ask about the eclecticism of his film projects. He reckons this instinct to continually switch things up was instilled early in his career. “When I was making Hallum Foe in Edinburgh, I thought, ‘All I’m doing is just battling here’. I was fighting a dragon, and the dragon was the schedule, just what you’ve got to do in a day. And I was like, ‘This is not creative.’” He promised himself that he wouldn’t get stuck in a similar situation. “Since then, I’ve tried to keep evolving my methodology so that you can be creative even within the limited time frame you’ve got, and you don’t have to just do it one way or another.”

The Scot continues to surprise with his upcoming slate. Early next year, he’ll release Fuze, a London-set heist movie, but before that, there’s another nifty genre flick: Relay. It’s a hugely enjoyable surveillance thriller set in New York starring Riz Ahmed as Ash, an anonymous fixer who helps potential whistleblowers walk away from sticky situations with their

corrupt employers. It’s satisfyingly old-school in Ash’s use of trains and the US Postal Service to circumvent detection as he runs rings around his hi-tech opponents. And our hero keeps his identity a secret using an ingenious analogue method: he communicates with his clients using the New York Relay, a service that allows deaf people to place calls by having operators read aloud their text messages.

Like Hell or High Water, Mackenzie’s finest film to date, Relay is a deeply American film. It doesn’t feel like a European director slumming it in US genre filmmaking: Mackenzie clearly knows and loves this breed of paranoid crime thriller. Does he feel, after living in the US for several years, that he’s part of the furniture in Hollywood? “Oh, no, not at all,” he says. “You know, I’ve made 12 films, but only three are American, so I’m still an outsider here.”

He does agree, though, that he’s part of the lineage of émigré filmmakers whose outsider eyes have captured their new environments astutely.  “I often talk about Roman Polanski’s British movies being among the most British of them all, and there’s an argument for Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves as one of the greatest Scottish films. It sometimes takes an outsider’s vision to capture a place because you don’t know the nuances, so you just play with the images to produce a film that has the right resonance. I definitely felt that in Hell or High Water, going into the world of Texas, which I only knew through spending two weeks there visiting a friend. That was all the experience I had, so I just had to trust the material and let the landscape do the work.”

Place is strongly evoked, too, in Relay: it’s a great New York movie. “I’ve always wanted to make a film in New York,” says Mackenzie. “And I was definitely channelling some of those great 70s New York-based thrillers” – think Klute, Three Days of the Condor and The Conversation – “in all sorts of ways. The paranoia and loneliness of New York, and the sort of intensity of being lost in the big city were important flavours in the film.”  Many reviewers have picked up on the influence of 70s cinema on Relay, but don’t mistake it for a throwback. It may call to mind the past in its style and in Ash’s use of pre-digital tech in his espionage, but Mackenzie’s certainly got something to say about our over-surveilled modern world too. “That’s really where the heart and soul of the film is for me,” he explains. “It’s about how to keep below the radar.” He also notes that few critics seem to be picking up on the contemporary significance of Relay’s big bad. “No one seems to have noticed in interviews so far, but the film is also, dare I say, taking a little bit of a dig at the pharmaceutical industry, which is not an easy industry to criticise in this business: you know, they sponsor the Oscars and they’re heavily involved in the media. The film is small p politics, rather than big P politics, of course, and I guess lots of people see it in terms of its 70s influences, and I’m happy to channel a bit of that. But for me, this is New York today; it’s about the here and now.”

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Director: Rian Johnson

Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor rrrrr

Rian Johnson’s third Benoit Blanc murder mystery is the least of the series to date. Daniel Craig’s folksy Southern detective is largely relegated to following Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) around after the young priest calls Blanc to upstate New York. Monseigneur Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) has been murdered in a seemingly impossible locked door mystery. The suspects: devout churchgoer Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), spiralling doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), content creator Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), sci-fi author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), disabled cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), and Father Jud himself.

Despite a killer premise, Wake Up Dead Man misses the sharp specificity of Knives Out and the arch

The Ice Tower

Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović

Starring: Clara Pacini, Marion Cotillard, August Diehl, Gaspar Noé rrrrr

The Ice Tower is a suitably eccentric return for Lucile Hadžihalilović. It’s a fairytale that’s equal parts messy and mesmeric, presenting a shadowy vision of the dreamworld of 70s filmmaking; one coloured by hope, magnetic glamour, and nightmarish dynamics.

When runaway teenage orphan Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini) stumbles into a filming of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, she’s immediately fascinated by the film’s Dietrich-like diva of a star, Cristina (an imperious Marion Cotillard). Taken under the star’s wing and brought further into both the film and Christina’s influence, we follow as fiction and reality become increasingly intertwined.

As with Hadžihalilović’s 2021 body-horror Earwig, The Ice Tower leans towards the baggy and its plot

silliness of Glass Onion, struggling to maintain pace and mystery. It squanders the dramatic potential of its Easter Week setting, and its congregation feel more generically American Evangelical than seeped in Catholic traditions, peculiarities, or the challenges of changing times. Despite committed performances and the star powers of O’Connor, Craig, Brolin, and Close, the supporting cast is relegated to types; they deliver their comedy lines with aplomb, but the barbs rarely transcend the scenarios.

That said, a mediocre Johnson mystery is still a great time.

O’Connor’s Father Jud affirms the actor’s leading man credentials, and his ease with physical comedy is the film’s highlight. The reveals – traced by Blanc through pulpy tropes – are satisfying if not mind-blowing. Wake Up Dead Man is a treat to watch with a crowd, perfectly suited for the cold months ahead. [Carmen Paddock]

Released 26 Nov by Netflix; certificate 15

has a tendency to drag. Her cinematic fairytales appear to work best when their narratives are pared back to their essence, such as with 2015’s Evolution This latest work is clear-eyed and timely in its take on both the appeal and exploitative power of idolatry, but its patchwork of influences (Fassbinder, Cocteau, and, indeed, Peter Strickland all hang heavy) has it wandering in too many directions at once.

Hadžihalilović remains, however, a master of imagery and atmosphere above all else. There is rich, intriguing framing here, and the film drifts on a brilliantly judged bed of nauseous tension, even as it sinks deeper into somnambular fugue. In this knotty unease and Pacini’s superbly restrained performance, there is a fantastic portrayal of the hopes and pains of adolescence, and a further demonstration of Hadžihalilović as a singular and always interesting filmmaker. [Joe Creely]

Released 21 Nov by BFI; certificate 15

Blue Moon

Director: Richard Linklater

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott rrrrr

Richard Linklater has a knack for setting his stories during memorable nights (see his Before trilogy). And, arguably, there is no night more memorable than a Broadway opening, as talented, semi-closeted lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) knows all too well, particularly when his name is not on the marquee.

On 31 March, 1943, Hart sneaks out of the opening night of musical Oklahoma!, written by his composing partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) in a new collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). You don’t need to be a theatre expert to know that that premiere changed everything for Rodgers and Hammerstein, who would go on to become one of the 20th century’s most prolific musical theatre duos. As he

Alpha

Director: Julia Ducournau

Starring: Mélissa Boros, Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield rrrrr

Julia Ducournau seems to have fallen victim to her own success. Her first two features (2016’s Raw and 2021’s Palme d’Or winner Titane) announced a filmmaker of singular vision, marrying gnarly body horror with exuberantly deviant negotiations of burgeoning queer identity. When her notably more downbeat third feature opened at Cannes earlier this year, where attendees tend to be as eager to depose queens as they are to crown them, this enfant terrible inevitably found herself unable to maintain her winning streak.

Despite its vitriolic reception, Alpha is in many ways consistent with Ducournau’s small oeuvre. A dystopian tale of a teenager growing up amid the paranoia and moral panic surrounding a bloodborne disease

senses defeat, Hart holes up at the Theatre District bar Sardi’s for a night of reminiscing, telling the odd lewd joke about his young protégée, Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), and drinking one too many shots with bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale). With Blue Moon, Linklater crafts the anti-biopic. It’s an ebullient yet melancholic Sunset Boulevard detailing one of Hart’s lowest lows, just months before his death. Hawke is excellent as the exquisitely eloquent, flawed protagonist who’s badly concealing his fragilities under layers of dark humour, hedonism and alcohol. Written by Robert Kaplow, Blue Moon occasionally loses itself in the hefty, though never empty, chatter, but Hawke’s textured, theatrical performance will have you wanting a seat at the bar right next to him. Blue Moon isn’t Linklater’s most engaging film, but it is one of his finest. [Stefania Sarrubba]

Released 28 Nov by Sony; certificate 15

that transforms its victims into marble, the film provides plenty of the visceral bodily transformations (realised through ingenious practical effects) and boundary-transgressing intergenerational interplay that Ducournau’s admirers have come to expect.

What lets Alpha down is the dour register that Ducournau adopts in lieu of her usual playful volatility. Despite best efforts from a committed cast – including newcomer Mélissa Boros as titular teen Alpha alongside established stars Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim – Ducournau imbues her sci-fi analogy for the AIDS epidemic with a stale air of misery that provides little insight into the history it attempts to render in metaphor.

It’s a letdown, but three films do not an auteur make. If Ducournau hopes to win back the crowd, she’ll have to inject a little more life into her next cinema du corps. [Rhys Handley]

Released 14 Nov by Curzon; certificate 15

QUEEN’S DINER, GLASGOW

A brunch spot inspired by the classic American diner, we find enormous ambition and equally large breakfast sandwiches at Queen’s Diner in Battlefield

50 Battlefield Rd, Glasgow, G42 9QF

Mon-Fri 7.30am-6pm, Sat

8am-6pm, Sun 9am-5.30pm; kitchen open 9am-4pm daily

i: queensdinerglasgow

We’re deep in Twin Peaks season. By this we mean a) it’s a bit chilly outside, b) there are leaves on the ground and mist in the air, and c) there’s a general sense of foreboding, such is life in this, the cool and vibey year of Two Thousand and Twenty Five. Auspicious timing then for Queen’s Diner, a brand new spot in the former Grain and Grind in Battlefield, and an on-trend update of your classic American diner.

Inside the white and red corner unit is a mini-warren of booths, benches and counter seating that feel a bit like the result of a particularly experimental Sims speed build. There are some very nice interior touches, mostly in one particularly pleasing shade of deep red, with brilliant tabletops and checkerboard cushions in the booths that are either inspired by or directly taken from the old Glasgow Subway carriages. It’s extremely bright – enormous windows and our old friend fluted glass playing an absolute blinder at flooding the room with natural light – and the whole look feels extremely… thought-out. The vibe is of a cafe, a very nice cafe, which yearns to one day be a brand. They’ve got the logo (a slightly incongruous line drawing of a beaver, in a bow tie, holding a sandwich). They have the colour scheme. And they have their name on everything. Branded shirts? That’s just uniform, fair play. Branded mugs? You do see it from time to time. Branded plates? Now we’re intrigued. Over to the menu, where the ‘diner 2.0’ vibe continues. There’s a hefty range of breakfast and brunch options, big sandwiches, and assorted diner classics. Sometimes they’re fairly straight-up, but others – such as the Sausage Bagel (£11) – have a little hometown twist to them. It’s a riff on your classic sausage-egg-andcheese, with a sausagemeat patty, a fried egg, some ooey gooey American cheese, a pleasantly sweet Bloody Mary ketchup, and then a tattie scone thrown in for good measure. It’s a lot to stuff inside a seed-loaded bagel, but it does all work together in one big salty, fatty melange. Unfortunately, the individual

elements do keep trying to throw themselves out of the bagel, which if anything is too robust. We’ve all felt the pain of a big sandwich falling apart under the weight of its fillings – you squeeze it all together and it just collapses – but it’s rare to feel your breakfast trying to fight back. Still, it’s very tasty, and it’s enormous; throw in the two hash browns on the side and you’ve got a recipe for a lovely afternoon nap.

On the sweet side, the Queen’s Diner waffles (from £6.50) seem to be a hit both on socials and on various Sunday morning tables around us. Happy to report, they’re very good waffles – crunchy on the outside, soft and fluffy in the middle, with a little bit of heft to them that keeps them from crumbling at the first sign of trouble. Pour as much maple syrup on as you like, these

lads aren’t going anywhere. We opt to follow our sausage bagel with *just* a massive, dinner plate-filling waffle rather than the favoured option of topping that waffle with fried chicken – very demure of us, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Queen’s Diner plays its ‘US diner’ role very well – the staff are lovely; the vibe is nice; the coffee is solid, but ‘£4.50 for bottomless filter’ feels more like a challenge than a friendly offer. Still, it also feels like the sheer amount of ambition and red paint that’s gone into this will see them iron out any and all flaws in the coming months. In any case, this situation doesn’t call for Dale Cooper-style overthinking – Queen’s Diner do big breakfasts on very comfy chairs, and the line drawings of a well-dressed beaver are a bit of a red herring. Mystery solved

Esther Gamsu: MEDIUM @ David Dale Gallery

A larger-than-life sculptural installation is layered with irony and ambiguity, demonstrating the maturing of the artist’s craft

“Art School? No, Boring Bearurcratic [sic]

Overpriced Hellscape!”

These are the words that greet visitors at MEDIUM, scrawled in loose red handwriting across a framed print outside the inner entrance to the gallery. For a moment, I mistake it for a hastily written whiteboard notice announcing who’s showing inside, and it even takes me several more looks for the altered spelling to register. This sets the tone of the exhibition, which feels like an in-joke, possessing layers of the easily mistakeable and an air of comedy only fully appreciated on closer inspection.

Inside, Esther Gamsu’s exhibition unfolds centrally as a set of three sculptures, each a translation of a domestic miniature into something almost, but not quite, human-sized. The gallery’s bare-brick interior and industrial columns set the stage for these modest monuments: a red wooden-framed bed, complete with a matching striped linen, stands slightly elevated, its stacked frames recalling something akin to an irimoya roofed building, accompanied by the other two iterations, depicting a washing machine and small rug.

Each sculpture begins with a piece of dollhouse furniture, meticulously rebuilt again and again, each iteration larger than the last until the object teeters on the edge of usefulness, rendering its initial function useless as it strives towards something beyond itself, evoking familiar themes of success and desire in Gamsu’s work. This process of repetition and addition makes explicit the meticulous labour behind each piece, and her dedication to understanding the objects she replicates is evident through the exquisite attention to detail present across each of the enlarging replicas, simple though they may appear at first glance.

These works sit alongside a window installation: an alternative first impression, depending on which direction you’re visiting from, comprised of faceless chrome stickers, scaled up from photos taken of those which cover the car windows of children’s seats, all but covering one of the gallery windows with the

implication of sharks, horses, and love hearts.

Looking for guidance, I find an exhibition text in the format of a pink handout that details, without explanation, a psychic’s cold read on Gamsu. I’m met with a double page spread of personal judgements and assumptions, various statements jumping out at me, such as: “You’re on the 30 hump, right? So, this is you wanting to get married, wanting to get babies, wanting to work, wanting to…” Taken rather literally, the exhibition text pokes fun at those of us seeking absolute clarity around the artist’s intentions, but instead invites us to engage with the artwork on display as a personal encounter. Without the benefit of hearing from Gamsu directly, how clear this context would be I am not sure, which is seemingly, and I think successfully, the point. The ambiguity is central to the artist’s work.

A highlight, the exhibition poster’s covergirl and a soft spot amidst the harder forms, is the rug. The hide of a blue-eyed stuffed toy, a bear, gazing upwards and outwards

Words: Celeste MacLeod-Brown

‘Gamsu’s exhibition unfolds centrally as a set of three sculptures, each a translation of a domestic miniature into something almost, but not quite, human-sized’

with a glossed-over sheen, a little sorry for itself and its counterparts of shifting size. This instills a strange life into the space, a presence I remain aware of throughout.

A sense of restraint is consistent across this small presentation of works. An unexpected air of discipline inhabits the space, negotiating pockets of humour and moments that flick between sincerity and softness, as Gamsu’s processual labour is made so evidently clear through the immaculate recreation and enlargement of these objects that possess a charming quality enough in themselves to pose a potential pitfall of the unnecessary,

but which she challenges through a clear and utter dedication to a craft of remaking and rethinking.

The exhibition as a whole speaks to the maturing of Gamsu’s practice, one oozing with a satirical elegance that she handles with clever consideration and patience, enabling her to enact developed depictions of how replica and repetition can behave.

Esther Gamsu: MEDIUM, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, until 29 Nov. Open Fri and Sat, 12–5pm

daviddalegallery.co.uk

Noopiming:

The Cure for White Ladies

By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson rrrrr

Noopiming is a living artefact, in Anishinaabemowin meaning ‘in the bush’. The novel follows six main characters who compose the narrator’s voice, Mashkawaji, weaving in satire while remaining sincere to Indigenous experience and dispelling colonial myths. Colonial rule and environmental anxiety are major issues that the book interrogates, but they do not dominate it. Meditatively, Simpson decolonises Western ideas of the self and the capitalist urge for material possession, owing life to the ‘we’ that each of us is not possible without. In Noopiming, we do not have, rather we are.

Simpson’s writing unifies us across the occupied pond, illustrating images that are all too real: one of the characters only has Al Jazeera activated, ‘notifications turned on for Palestine. They dream of a Jayco trailer houseboat… of driving their Jayco house trailer boat all the way to Palestine with the flotilla to resist the idea that this situation is complicated, that there are two sides, that there is no way to help.’ Sentences move between internal monologues, poetry, and the affirmations that ‘White Ladies’ wish to appropriate. The eponymous ‘cure’ is in the book’s final product, playing with form and lyric to reject eurocentric (dis)order and heal through constant awareness.

Sarcastic yet searingly hopeful, Noopiming teaches that those who appreciate mundanity, value nature, and notice the smaller things, are also capable of going to extreme lengths to liberate. [Maria Farsoon]

In Love with Love

By Ella Risbridger rrrrr

Reading Ella Risbridger’s In Love

With Love feels like a late-night gossip over wine with your cleverest friend. Intimate, playful and thoughtprovoking, this book is a heady exploration into the many weird and wonderful realms of romantic fiction. Risbridger takes you tenderly by the hand and pulls you into the worlds of hot billionaires, cowboys and aliens and hometown heroes to unravel what lies behind the allure of this enduring genre.

Part literary criticism, part journalistic inquiry and scattered with personal anecdotes which bring Risbridger’s telling to life, this piece of nonfiction is a must-read for die-hard romantic fiction fans. For everyone else, there’s still plenty to take away. It’s replete with kernels of wisdom and incisive meditations on topics from queerness and gender identity to why we reach for the delight and comfort of romance in socially and politically precarious times.

Although it claims not to be an exhaustive history of the romance novel, it still feels very comprehensive. Between Jane Austen and Elsie Silver, plenty of ground is covered and at times, the uninitiated may feel lost in the rose bushes of it all. But this thorough coverage also feels necessary to do justice to a genre which is often all too easily dismissed. In Love With Love will make you think more deeply, feel better about yourself, and fatten your romantic to-read list.

[Parisa Hashempour]

And Other Stories, 4 Nov

Sceptre, 6 Nov

By So Mayer rrrrr

Bad Language, manifesto-cum-memoir from writer and editor So Mayer, dives deep into the archives – of their life, of colonial violence, of protest – to lay bare the politics of speech. What is a ‘bad word’?; Who decides; and what happens to our histories when the written word becomes gospel?

Mayer gives their answers in an at-once deeply personal and rousingly universal work that takes us through the OED, bust cards, BDSM safewords, Tarot decks, and the two writers who have been a constant in their lives for as long as they have been able to read: “God, and Ursula K. Le Guin.” Eurowestern culture (which Mayer hilariously shortens to EW, “for obvious reasons”) has a lot to answer for when it comes to how language stifles and oppresses. They were still young when EW taxonomies began to delimit their future, particularly in the walls of the synagogue or at home where the semantic traps of their multilingual upbringing instilled in them an associative curiosity towards language.

It is this curiosity which they impart on us throughout Bad Language in the form of invitations to make connections outwith traditional linguistic study. From one language tree to another, for example, or from the words we speak to our bodies – those inconvenient, complex things crammed awkwardly into the binary of English grammar.

The result is Mayer’s own pin-sharp act of protest against dominance culture. Because, as they say best, “it is only by using language that we can change it – and, through it, the world in which we speak.”

[Louis Cammell]

Peninsula Press, 13 Nov

By Olga Ravn rrrrr

Delicate, visceral, yet with slightly indulgent prose, The Wax Child explores Olga Ravn’s ongoing preoccupations surrounding motherhood, the body and the surreal. Grounded in the real witch trials of 17th-century Denmark and the fate of noblewoman Christenze Kruckow who was accused of witchcraft, The Wax Child bears witness to the unfolding terror of a nation scouring its women.

Throughout her writing, Ravn explores the common ground between ritual and domesticity, drawing on archival documents, letters and folklore to create a densely atmospheric piece. Mute witness to the unfolding events around her, the titular wax doll becomes positioned as a dangerous and ritualistic totem, yet also takes on a detached vantage point as Ravn unpicks the instrumentalisation of fear, silence and the gathering of women, imparting the same currents of fear to a modern audience in an evocative and lyrical manner.  Raven’s writing is pleasurable but does not necessarily uncover new ground. Rather, her writing is an exploration of resilience, the cost of motherhood and female connections; ties that bind, ties that break and ties that drip like molten wax. The Wax Child is a short but disjointed read. Like her previous Bookernominated work The Employees, Ravn draws on speculative and surreal techniques to disorientate her reader and to drive home the fragility of a wax doll; a tchotchke that absorbs and reflects the anxieties of her maker.  [Josephine Jay] Viking, 6 Nov

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 3 Nov

PIRI & TOMMY (LUKE

OSEY)

KING TUT'S

Drum 'n' bass from the UK. THE CHARLATANS

ORAN MOR Rock from the UK.

PALAYE ROYALE

SWG3 Rock from Las Vegas

Tue 4 Nov

JAMES MARRIOTT

BARROWLANDS

Indie rock from Switzerland. MOREISH IDOLS (CHARTREUSE)

KING TUT'S Psych pop from Cornwall. GWENNO (QUINQUIS)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie from Wales.

THE RED CLAY STRAYS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Country rock from Alabama.

KRIS BARRAS'

HOLLOW SOULS

ORAN MOR Blues rock from the UK.

FIEVEL IS GLAQUE

ROOM 2 Jazz pop from the US and Belgium.

HARD LIFE

SWG3 Indie pop from the UK.

OUR MAN IN THE FIELD

SWG3 Americana from London.

WEWANTWRAITHS (NINOUPTOWN)

THE GARAGE Rap from the UK. RATTLE (JER REID & RAYMOND MACDONALD + THE CHOP)

THE GLAD CAFE

Experimental from Nottingham. CRIPPLING

ALCOHOLISM THE HUG AND PINT

Murder pop from Boston.

DWARFS OF EAST AGOUZA (AILBHE NIC OIREACHTAIGH)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Experimental from Egypt.

SAM WILLS THE RUM SHACK Soul from the UK.

Wed 5 Nov

EMMA-JEAN THACKRAY

KING TUT'S Jazz from Leeds.

THE PLOT IN YOU (CURRENTS + SAOSIN + CANE HILL)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Metalcore from Ohio. OCIE ELLIOTT ST LUKE'S Folk from Canada.

CAROLINA DURANTE

STEREO

Indie rock from Madrid.

ANNA PHOEBE

THE GLAD CAFE

Classical from London.

GAG (INGROWN + PLASTICS)

THE HUG AND PINT Hardcore from Washington.

Thu 6 Nov

THE ENEMY (SHAMBOLICS)

BARROWLANDS

Rock from the UK. MOMMA

KING TUT'S Indie rock from California. SPAIN MONO Indie rock from LA. TRUCK VIOLENCE (GUILT CHAMBER)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Folk punk from Canada. ALBERTINE SARGES (ANNY LEIGH + MIDNIGHT PAINTERS)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie from Berlin.

BOB VYLAN

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Punk rap from London. ECHOBELLY ORAN MOR Rock from the UK.

BIG|BRAVE STEREO Rock from Montreal.

VIC ALLEN

SWG3

Singer-songwriter from the UK.

SPRINTS SWG3 Garage punk from Dublin. LUVCAT SWG3

Singer-songwriter from the UK.

EBBY (AUFLAUF)

THE FLYING DUCK Indie from the Netherlands. AS DECEMBER FALLS

THE GARAGE Rock from Nottingham. NIGHTBUS

THE GARAGE Post-punk from Manchester.

NICKY (RETURN POLICY + BABY AND COMPANY + SHARK WEEK)

THE GLAD CAFE

Experimental from London.

RANAGRI THE HUG AND PINT Folk from the UK and Ireland.

RESTRICTED CODE (BIG LANES) THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Rock.

JLS THE OVO HYDRO Pop from the UK.

MICAH P HINSON THE RUM SHACK Americana from the US.

Fri 7 Nov DIRT BOX DISCO NICE 'N' SLEAZY Punk rock from the UK. LACK OF AFRO ORAN MOR R'n'B from the UK. BOW WOW WOW ST LUKE'S New Wave from the UK.

SIOBHAN WILSON ALBUM LAUNCH

STEREO

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

BILLIE MARTEN SWG3 Folk from the UK. THE BLUETONES THE GARAGE Indie rock from London.

TOMMY ASHBY THE GARAGE

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

SCOTT MATTHEWS THE GLAD CAFE

Singer-songwriter from the UK.

GOODVIBES SOUND THE HUG AND PINT Psych pop from the UK.

Sat 8 Nov

CLOTH (ZOE GRAHAM)

KING TUT'S Indie pop from Glasgow. THE 113 (CASUAL DRAG + POLLY)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY

Post-punk from Leeds.

MAREN MORRIS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Country from Texas.

JAMIE DUFFY

ORAN MOR Indie from Ireland.

PERFUME GENIUS SWG3 Pop from the US.

YNDLING

SWG3

Dream pop from Norway. AVIANA THE CATHOUSE Metalcore from Sweden.

JOSÉ ANTONIO

FAJARDO & HOWIE REEVE

THE GLAD CAFE

Indie from Spain.

SPIKE FUCK THE GLAD CAFE Folk rock from Melbourne.

NEIL STURGEON & THE INFOMANIACS (KEMPES)

THE HUG AND PINT Rock from Glasgow.

Sun 9 Nov CLIFFORDS (TANZANA)

KING TUT'S Shoegaze from Ireland.

EF MONO

Post-rock from Sweden.

LOU AID 2 (CENTRILIA + GO DOWN FIGHTING + THE FUCKUPS + THE FRAGZ)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Hardcore from Glasgow. SAXON (DIRKSCHNEIDER)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Heavy metal from the UK.

NELL MESCAL

ORAN MOR Indie from Ireland.

NEAL FRANCIS

STEREO Singer-songwriter from Chicago.

ROYAL REPUBLIC

SWG3 Punk rock from Sweden. NATION OF LANGUAGE

SWG3 Indie pop from the US.

MELT SWG3 Indie from New York. THE HENRY GIRLS THE HUG AND PINT Folk from Ireland.

Mon 10 Nov LATE NIGHT DRIVE HOME

KING TUT'S Rock from the US.

JOY CROOKES

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW R'n'B from London.

CURTIS HARDING

ORAN MOR Soul from the US.

DEKKER

STEREO

Indie folk from the US.

KNUCKS

SWG3 Rap from London.

DROWNING POOL

THE GARAGE Rock from Texas.

VOLBEAT THE OVO HYDRO Metal from Denmark.

Tue 11 Nov

THE RIONS (THE MARTELLS + CALLUM STEWART)

KING TUT'S Indie rock from Australia.

GARY NUMAN

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW New Wave from the UK.

SUNDAY (1994)

ORAN MOR

Dream pop from LA.

SCALER

ROOM 2 Techno from Bristol.

THE RAPTURE

ST LUKE'S Dance punk from New York.

ORBIT CULTURE

SWG3

Death metal from Sweden.

JAMIE WEBSTER

SWG3

Singer-songwriter from Liverpool.

SHATTERED CITY X

SOUL PURPOSE THE FLYING DUCK Metalcore.

BEAR GHOST THE GARAGE Rock from Arizona.

PARTY DOZEN THE GLAD CAFE Noise rock from Australia.

PAN AMSTERDAM THE HUG AND PINT Jazz from Houston.

BASTILLE

THE OVO HYDRO Pop from the UK.

JIM GHEDI

THE RUM SHACK Alt folk from Sheffield.

Wed 12 Nov

NELL BRYDEN THE GLAD CAFE

Singer-songwriter from the US.

GREAT GRANDPA (KATIE MALCO)

KING TUT'S Indie rock from Seattle.

WITCH POST

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie rock from Scotland and the US.

LOYLE CARNER (REJIE SNOW)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW

Hip-hop from London.

XGENERATIONX

ORAN MOR Punk rock from the UK.

JADE BIRD

ST LUKE'S Folk from the UK.

ASHLEY SINGH

SWG3

Singer-songwriter.

JAMES K THE FLYING DUCK Pop and trip-hop.

BELLS LARSEN

THE GARAGE Indie folk from Montreal.

DEEP FOREST THE HUG AND PINT Jazz from France.

MOBIUS LOOP (WHISKEY MOON FACE)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Folk punk from Preston. Thu 13 Nov

HEAVEN 17 BARROWLANDS Synth pop from Sheffield. FICKLE FRIENDS

KING TUT'S Indie rock from Brighton. HOTLINE TNT (JADE HAIRPINS)

MONO Indie from New York.

LOYLE CARNER (REJIE SNOW)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Hip-hop from London.

WILLY MASON ORAN MOR Indie from the US.

KEYSIDE

ORAN MOR Indie pop from Liverpool.

MATT ANDERSEN

ST LUKE'S Singer-songwriter from Canada.

OSCAR BLUE SWG3 Folk from Ireland.

VISTAS SWG3 Indie rock from Scotland.

JARED HART

THE GARAGE Rock from New Jersey.

PHEW (FREDDIE MURPHY)

THE GLAD CAFE Underground from Japan. THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART THE HUG AND PINT Indie pop from New York. FERGUS MCCREADIE

TRIO THE OLD FRUITMARKET Folk from Scotland. DANNY WRIGHT THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Pop punk from London. THE DREAMING SPIRES

THE RUM SHACK Indie from the UK. Fri 14 Nov

THE SAW DOCTORS BARROWLANDS Folk rock from Ireland. CLOUD HOUSE DRYGATE BREWING CO. Indie from Scotland.

THE SUBWAYS (CONGRATULATIONS)

KING TUT'S Rock from Welwyn Garden City. TEETHE NICE 'N' SLEAZY Slowcore from Texas. LOYLE CARNER (REJIE SNOW)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Hip-hop from London. POP WILL EAT ITSELF ORAN MOR Alt rock from Birmingham. SWIM SCHOOL (BASHT)

QMU Indie rock from Scotland. DOM MARTIN + BLUE NATION ST LUKE'S Rock. TOPS STEREO Indie from Montreal. BAXTER DURY SWG3 Chamber pop. MT JONES SWG3 R'n'B from Liverpool. DEA MATRONA THE CATHOUSE Rock from Belfast. 6ARELYHUMAN THE GARAGE Rap from the US. SON OF THE RIGHT HAND THE GLAD CAFE Psych folk from Glasgow. THE ORCHESTRA (FOR NOW)

THE HUG AND PINT Indie from London. SYZYGIE THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Jazz from Cambridge. THE TINO BAND (FERRI & THE FEVERS + DREAM JOURNAL) THE RUM SHACK Alt from Glasgow. Sat 15 Nov

THE SAW DOCTORS BARROWLANDS Folk rock from Ireland. TTSSFU KING TUT'S Dream pop from Manchester. STONE FOUNDATION ORAN MOR Soul from the UK. DREADZONE VS THE ORB QMU Electronica. HAMILTON LEITHAUSER ROOM 2 Singer-songwriter from the US.

WILLIE J HEALEY ST LUKE'S Indie from Oxford. THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART STEREO Indie pop from New York. THE FRAY SWG3 Soft rock from the US. MIRADOR SWG3 Rock from the US. DYLAN FLYNN AND THE DEAD POETS SWG3 Indie rock from Limerick. CONJURER THE CATHOUSE Metal from the UK. THE MURDERBURGERS (CROCODILE TEARS + HEEDZ) THE FLYING DUCK Pop punk from Scotland. BUENAFEST THE GLAD CAFE Local lineup. BLEACH LAB THE HUG AND PINT Indie rock from the UK. SONNY FODERA THE OVO HYDRO Dance from the UK. WATER FROM YOUR EYES (MORGAN GARRETT) THE RUM SHACK Indie from New York. Sun 16 Nov HEY, NOTHING KING TUT'S Emo folk from Atlanta. DECIUS (ACCIDENT MACHINE) NICE 'N' SLEAZY Techno from Glasgow. G FLIP (CHINCHILLA) O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Pop from Melbourne. SMERZ STEREO Electro pop from Norway. LUCY SPRAGGAN SWG3 Singer-songwriter from the UK. BILLIANNE SWG3 Indie. TINIE TEMPAH SWG3 Rap from the UK. SHAME THE GARAGE Post-punk from London. AGABAS THE GARAGE Deathjazz from Norway. FINDLAY NAPIER THE GLAD CAFE Folk from Scotland.

Regular Glasgow club nights

The Rum Shack

SATURDAYS (LAST OF EVERY OTHER MONTH)

VOCAL OR VERSION, 21:00

Vintage Jamaican music on original vinyl by resident DJs and guests. Sub Club

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.

Regular Edinburgh club nights

Cabaret

Voltaire

FRIDAYS

FLY CLUB, 23:00

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

SATURDAYS

PLEASURE, 23:00

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

Sneaky Pete’s

MONDAYS

RIDE N BOUNCE, 23:00

R‘n’B, pop, rap and hip-hop bangers every Monday.

TUESDAYS

RARE, 23:00

House, UKG and occasional techno from special guest DJs and rising locals.

THURSDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

VOLENS CHORUS, 23:00

Resident DJs with an eclectic, global outlook.

FRIDAYS (SECOND OF THE MONTH)

HOT MESS, 23:00

A night for queer people and their friends.

SATURDAYS (LAST OF THE MONTH)

SOUL JAM, 23:00

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

SUNDAYS

POSTAL, 23:00

Bass, breaks, grime and more from a selection of Cowgate all stars.

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,

KEEP THE HUG AND PINT Rock from the UK. FIVE THE OVO HYDRO Pop from the UK.

Mon 17 Nov

ALEX G BARROWLANDS Indie from the US. PILE (HEX BAR) MONO Punk from Boston. BRAND NEW (GEORGE TAYLOR)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Rock from New York. THE DAMN TRUTH ORAN MOR Rock from Montreal. STEELEYE SPAN ST LUKE'S Folk rock from the UK.

HOT MILK

SWG3 Emo from Manchester. CABARET VOLTAIRE SWG3 Electronica.

ELLE COVES SWG3 Indie from Ireland.

SATURDAYS

SUBCULTURE, 23:00

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

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.

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)

CHROMATIC, 23.00

Championing all things UKG, grime, dubstep, bass and more, with disco, funk and soul from Mumbo Jumbo upstairs.

SATURDAYS (EVERY OTHER MONTH)

PULSE, 23.00

Techno night started in 2009 hosting regular

CKY THE GARAGE Rock from the US. ŠIROM (OLLIE HAWKER) THE GLAD CAFE Folk from Slovenia. Tue 18 Nov THE LAST DINNER PARTY BARROWLANDS Indie rock from London. KEAN KAVANAGH KING TUT'S Americana from Dublin. BOB MOULD ORAN MOR Indie from the US. MUIREANN BRADLEY ST LUKE'S Folk blues from Ireland. CITIZEN SOLDIER THE GARAGE Rock from Utah. JAZZ AT THE GLAD: JAMES ALLSOPP THE GLAD CAFE Jazz from London.

BULGARIAN CARTRADER THE HUG AND PINT Indie from Berlin.

special guests from the international scene.

SATURDAYS (MONTHLY)

HOBBES MUSIC X CLUB NACHT, 23:00

A collaboration between longrunning club night and Edinburgh record label ft. house, techno, electro, UKG and bass.

The Liquid Room

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

REWIND, 22:30

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 POPTASTIC, 22:00 Pop, requests and throwbacks to get your week off to an energetic start.

TUESDAYS TRASH TUESDAY, 22:00

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

WEDNESDAYS COOKIE WEDNESDAY, 22:00 90s and 00s cheesy pop and modern chart anthems.

THURSDAYS HI-SOCIETY THURSDAY, 22:00 Student anthems and bangerz.

FRIDAYS FLIP FRIDAY, 22:00 Yer all-new Friday at Hive. Cheap entry, inevitably danceable, and noveltystuffed. Perrrfect.

SATURDAYS BUBBLEGUM, 22:00 Saturday mix of chart and dance, with retro 80s classics thrown in for good measure.

THE OFFSPRING THE OVO HYDRO Punk from the UK.

Wed 19 Nov

ENGLISH TEACHER

BARROWLANDS Indie rock from Leeds. HARRISON STORM (GIO DARA) KING TUT'S Country from Australia. MADMADMAD NICE 'N' SLEAZY Electronica from London.

CAT BURNS (NXDIA)

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW R'n'B from London. CHAMELEONS THE GARAGE Rock from the UK. MAGNETIC SKIES THE HUG AND PINT Synth pop.

LORDE THE OVO HYDRO Pop from New Zealand. RIOGHNACH CONNOLLY AND HONEYFEET THE RUM SHACK Folk from Ireland.

SOMBRE ARCANE (ORCUS + RESINATOR + MOUNTAINFOG)

THE FLYING DUCK Metal.

THECITYISOURS

THE GARAGE Metalcore from London. THE COLONY (FROM TYRANNY)

THE GARAGE Metal from Scotland. HOLYSSEUS FLY THE HUG AND PINT Indie from the UK.

Fri 21 Nov

ARTHUR HILL

SUNDAYS

SECRET SUNDAY, 22:00

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

Subway

Cowgate

MONDAYS

TRACKS, 21:00

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

TUESDAYS TAMAGOTCHI, 22:00

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

WEDNESDAYS TWISTA, 22:00

Banger after banger all night long.

THURSDAYS

FLIRTY, 22:00

Pop, cheese and chart.

FRIDAYS FIT FRIDAYS, 22:00

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

SATURDAYS

SLICE SATURDAY, 22:00

The drinks are easy and the pop is heavy.

SUNDAYS SUNDAY SERVICE, 22:00

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

The Mash House

TUESDAYS MOVEMENT, 20:00

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

SATURDAYS (FIRST OF THE MONTH)

SAMEDIA SHEBEEN, 23:00

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

Thu 20 Nov

AMBLE

BARROWLANDS Folk from Ireland. RADIO FREE ALICE

KING TUT'S Indie from Melbourne. VAPORS OF MORPHINE MONO Rock from the US.

PETER CAT (ONAT ÖNOL)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY

Art rock from Glasgow.

DODIE

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Indie pop from London. SNOWGOOSE

ORAN MOR Folk from the UK.

EMMA HARNER

ROOM 2 Folk rock from the US.

HUGH CORNWELL (THE COURETTES)

ST LUKE'S Punk rock from London. ASH SWG3 Rock from Northern Ireland.

CALLUM BEATTIE

THE OVO HYDRO Indie from Edinburgh. Sun 23 Nov

LIL TRACY BARROWLANDS Rap from the US.

THE BEAT (THE MEDIA WH*RES)

DRYGATE BREWING CO. Reggae from the UK.

LOU BARLOW NICE 'N' SLEAZY

Rock from the US. WET LEG

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW

BARROWLANDS Indie from the UK. LEISURELAND

KING TUT'S Indie from Glasgow. WORLD NEWS (HONEY)

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie rock from London. THE WAILERS O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Reggae from Jamaica. DECLAN O’ROURKE

ORAN MOR Rock from Dublin.

ADMIRAL FALLOW QMU Indie from Scotland.

TURIN BRAKES

ST LUKE'S Folk rock from London. THE SKINNER BROTHERS

STEREO Indie rock from London.

JERUB

SWG3 Indie from Nottingham.

JOSI & ALEX

THE FLYING DUCK Indie rock from the UK.

THE SHERLOCKS THE GARAGE Indie rock from the UK.

PHILIP JOSEPH RAE

THE GLAD CAFE Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

ELENI DRAKE

THE HUG AND PINT Jazz from London. CHRISTONE 'KINGFISH' INGRAM THE OLD FRUITMARKET Blues.

KEV HOWELL

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Indie from Scotland.

HALESTORM THE OVO HYDRO Rock from LA.

MURS

THE RUM SHACK Rap from the US. Sat 22 Nov

2HOLLIS BARROWLANDS Rap from the US.

SOFTCULT

KING TUT'S Grunge from Canada.

JOSEF AKIN

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Hip-hop from London.

TALISK

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Trad from Scotland.

DECLAN O’ROURKE ORAN MOR Rock from Dublin.

HAZY SUNDAYS STEREO Indie rock from Glasgow.

STONE ASHES + OFF PEAK LEISURE + DIVERSION + RIVIERA + APPEAL TO AUTHORITY SWG3 Local lineup.

KELORA

THE FLYING DUCK Cyberfolk from Glasgow.

PG CIARLETTA

THE GARAGE

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

BROKEN CHANTER

THE GLAD CAFE

Singer-songwriter from Scotland.

EDWIN R STEVENS (PETE UM)

THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Indie from the UK.

SIMPLE THINGS KING TUT'S Folk pop from Ireland. SOUP ACTIVISTS (CLASS) MONO Rock. PET NEEDS (CARSICK + SAMANTICS) NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie from Colchester.

BABYMOROCCA ROOM 2 Pop.

Indie from Isle of Wight. BYWATER CALL

ORAN MOR

Blues rock from Toronto. HENGE + GONG ST LUKE'S Rock. LOLO + AMOR STEREO

Experimental from New York.

SOUTH ARCADE SWG3 Rock from Oxford. GREEN GARDENS SWG3 Indie rock from Leeds. THE SAINTS '73-'78

THE GARAGE Indie from Scotland. RADIOPHRENIA: FÉLICIA ATKINSON (+ MATT ROBIN) THE GLAD CAFE

Classical.

BAD OMENS

THE OVO HYDRO

Heavy metal from Virginia.

SWINGING ON BIRCHES

THE RUM SHACK Trad from Scotland. Mon 24 Nov KINGFISHR BARROWLANDS Indie folk from Ireland.

ZACH TEMPLAR

KING TUT'S Indie rock from the UK. WET LEG

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Indie from Isle of Wight. CUPCAKKE QMU Rap from the US. MINAMI DEUTSCH STEREO Krautrock from Tokyo. MICKEY CALLISTO SWG3 Synth pop from the UK. IONA ZAJAC + ROBIN KESTER

THE HUG AND PINT Indie from Scotland.

Tue 25 Nov

NORA BROWN WITH STEPHANIE COLEMAN

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART Americana from the US. VENNA

KING TUT'S Jazz from London. ROYEL OTIS

O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Indie pop from Sweden. THE HORRORS QMU Rock from the UK. STRAY FROM THE PATH SWG3 Punk from the US.

BETH MCCARTHY THE GARAGE Pop rock from York. FINN ANDERSON THE GLAD CAFE Folk from Scotland. RAVELOE (CRAGGYLAND + MICHAEL STEELE) THE HUG AND PINT Indie from Glasgow. FIVE THE OVO HYDRO Pop from the UK.

Wed 26 Nov

BRIAN BILSTON & THE CATENARY WIRES

CCA: CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART Indie pop.

TUNE-YARDS ST LUKE'S Art pop from California. GANGSTAGRASS STEREO Bluegrass from the US.

MATT MALTESE SWG3 Singer-songwriter. WHEATUS SWG3 Rock from the US. JASMINE JETHWA SWG3 Indie from London.

KLING KLANG (LUCID SINS + AILBHE NIC OIREACHTAIGH) THE FLYING DUCK Kraut punk from Liverpool. BETTY TAYLOR THE GARAGE Indie.

SHEARS THE HUG AND PINT Pop from Scotland. THE HIVES THE OVO HYDRO Rock from Sweden. Thu 27 Nov EVERYTHING EVERYTHING BARROWLANDS Art rock from Manchester. MEHRO KING TUT'S Indie from California. NIKHIL D'SOUZA O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Indie from Mumbai. JJ GILMOUR ORAN MOR Rock from Glasgow. CONAN STEREO Metal from Liverpool. PINTGLASS THE GARAGE Hardcore from the UK. MASON LINDHAL THE HUG AND PINT Indie from Sacramento. MY BLOODY VALENTINE THE OVO HYDRO Rock from Dublin. Fri 28 Nov STARSAILOR BARROWLANDS Post-Britpop from Wigan. ZAIMIE DRYGATE BREWING CO. Funk and jazz. THE GUEST LIST KING TUT'S Indie from Manchester. FACESOUL NICE 'N' SLEAZY R'n'B from London. HOLY COVES (BOX OF TRASH + TRANSMISSION STREET) NICE 'N' SLEAZY Indie from Wales. BLACK GRAPE QMU Rock from Salford. INSPIRAL CARPETS ST LUKE'S Rock from Manchester. THE MODERN KIND ALBUM LAUNCH STEREO Rock from Glasgow. EVIL SCARECROW THE CATHOUSE Metal from Nottingham. HOME COUNTIES THE FLYING DUCK Indie from the UK. TOUGH COOKIE THE GARAGE Indie from Dalston. RACHEL LOVE THE GLAD CAFE Post-punk.

MARSEILLE THE HUG AND PINT Shoegaze from Derbyshire.

ELEANOR HICKEY THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Folk from Scotland. HERON VALLEY THE RUM SHACK Trad from Scotland. Sat 29 Nov CAST BARROWLANDS Indie rock from Liverpool. LOLA KIRKE KING TUT'S Indie from the US. CLICKBAIT (BEAUTY SLEEP) MONO Disco from the US. BARRANQUISMO NICE 'N' SLEAZY Rock from North Ayrshire. IST IST ORAN MOR Post-punk from Manchester.

ELECTRIC SIX QMU Rock from Detroit. MASON HILL THE CATHOUSE Hard rock from Glasgow. SNUGGLE + HORSE VISION THE FLYING DUCK Indie from Denmark. JAMES MICHAEL RODGERS (+ JACK BORRILL) THE GLAD CAFE Alt folk from Scotland. DRY SOCKET (UNCERTAINTY) THE HUG AND PINT Hardcore from Portland. KEMPES (THE SHERMAN) THE RUM SHACK Rock.

Sun 30 Nov THE ALMIGHTY BARROWLANDS Hard rock from Scotland. OLD MERVS KING TUT'S Indie rock from Australia. ALESSI ROSE O2 ACADEMY GLASGOW Indie pop from the UK. FUN LOVIN' CRIMINALS ST LUKE'S Blues rock from New York. BELAIR LIP BOMBS STEREO Indie rock from Melbourne. THE RASMUS SWG3 Rock from Finland. WINDOW KID SWG3 Dance from the UK. UNLEARN THE WORLD + AIROSPVCE SWG3 Hip-hop from Scotland. LOATHE THE GARAGE Heavy metal from Liverpool. ROMÉO POIRIER (+ DIALECT) THE GLAD CAFE Ambient from Belgium. ROSIE FRATER-TAYLOR THE OLD HAIRDRESSERS Rock from the UK. KNEECAP THE OVO HYDRO Rap from Ireland.

Edinburgh Music

Mon 3 Nov

TRENCHES (BLACK WOLF CLUB)

BANNERMANS Grunge rock from Lancashire. RATBOYS THE MASH HOUSE Indie rock from Chicago. BETH NIELSEN CHAPMAN + JUDIE TZUKE THE QUEEN'S HALL Folk and roots from the UK and US.

NICK HEYWARD THE VOODOO ROOMS Singer-songwriter from the UK.

Tue 4 Nov

MATT WILDE (ELOI)

SNEAKY PETE'S Jazz from Manchester.

RANAGRI THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from the UK and Ireland.

Wed 5 Nov

JULIETS'S NOT DEAD (AMONGST LIARS)

BANNERMANS Rock from the US.

KRIS BARRAS'

HOLLOW SOULS

LA BELLE ANGELE Blues rock.

MACKENZY MACKAY

SNEAKY PETE'S Singer-songwriter from London.

PORTRAYAL OF GUILT THE MASH HOUSE Post-hardcore and screamo from Texas.

CARL MARAH THE VOODOO ROOMS Indie from Scotland.

Thu 6 Nov

SYNCOLIMA (SLUMP)

BANNERMANS Metal.

MARTIN STEPHENSON & THE DAINTEES

LA BELLE ANGELE Folk rock from the UK.

DAIISTAR

SNEAKY PETE'S Noise pop from Texas.

BOW WOW WOW

THE CAVES New Wave from the UK.

LUKE JACKSON

THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from Canterbury.

Fri 7 Nov

WARNER E. HODGES

INTERNATIONAL ALL STARS BANNERMANS Rock.

ALBERTINE SARGES

SNEAKY PETE'S DIY pop from London.

AMENRA THE LIQUID ROOM Post-metal from Belgium. THE LILACS THE MASH HOUSE Indie from Wigan.

BUTLER BLAKE & GRANT

THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock from the UK. THE HENRY GIRLS THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from Ireland.

MARIACHI DEATH SQUAD (LOS FANTASTICOS MELONES + DOM & NICK)

WEE RED BAR Surf punk.

Sat 8 Nov

DECONTROL (SOCIAL EXPERIMENT + DENIAL + THE UNDACLASS)

BANNERMANS Punk from the UK.

STERLING PRESS

SNEAKY PETE'S Indie rock from London. THE SEXUAL OBJECTS (QUAD 90)

WEE RED BAR Post-punk.

Sun 9 Nov

AISLES (VRA)

BANNERMANS Prog rock from Chile.

ERIN HARPE & JIM COUNTRYMAN THE VOODOO ROOMS Roots from the US.

CUBAN BIG BAND (SHUNPIKE SOCIAL CLUB)

WEE RED BAR Cumbia.

Mon 10 Nov

HOUSE TIGER (UNDER THE ROCK + MANU LOUIS + THE VEIN)

BANNERMANS Punk from Scotland.

SUNDAY 1994 THE MASH HOUSE Indie from LA.

CIEL (PUPPY TEETH)

THE VOODOO ROOMS Indie rock from Brighton.

Tue 11 Nov

BEASTS (BE) (8TH CIRCLE)

BANNERMANS Punk. THE LOTTERY WINNERS LA BELLE ANGELE Indie pop from Leigh. BELLS LARSEN SNEAKY PETE'S Singer-songwriter from Montreal.

DEEP FOREST THE VOODOO ROOMS Electronica from France.

Wed 12 Nov

KAE TEMPEST

EDINBURGH CORN EXCHANGE Folk from London. PAN AMSTERDAM SNEAKY PETE'S Hip-hop from New York. JIM GHEDI THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from Sheffield.

Thu 13 Nov

BULLETS & OCTANE (MOSKITO)

BANNERMANS Hard rock from St Louis. HUGO YASUMOTO

LA BELLE ANGELE Experimental pop from Japan.

WHITE FLOWERS

SNEAKY PETE'S Dream pop from Preston. ANDERS BUAAS THE VOODOO ROOMS Prog rock from Norway. MARTIN MCALOON THE VOODOO ROOMS Rock from the UK.

Fri 14 Nov THE HOT ONE TWO (ELECTRIC BLACK + VOODOO SIOUX)

BANNERMANS Rock from Cambridgeshire.

PETER HOOK AND THE LIGHT

EDINBURGH CORN EXCHANGE Rock from the UK. EYES OF HOME

SNEAKY PETE'S Indie rock from Edinburgh. KEYSIDE THE MASH HOUSE Indie rock from Liverpool. FERGUS MCCREADIE

TRIO THE QUEEN'S HALL Jazz and blues from Scotland.

STONE FOUNDATION (NIA WYN)

THE VOODOO ROOMS Soul from the UK.

Sat 15 Nov

POP WILL EAT ITSELF

LA BELLE ANGELE Rock from the UK. DECIUS (ACCIDENT MACHINE)

SNEAKY PETE'S Electronica from London. GETDOWN SERVICES

THE MASH HOUSE Indie rock from Bristol.

HORSE

THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock from Scotland. ROOT 5 (BLACK DOVES + DANNY BISSET)

WEE RED BAR Indie.

Sun 16 Nov

HOTEL LUX

SNEAKY PETE'S Indie from London. XGENERATIONX

THE VOODOO ROOMS Punk from the UK.

Mon 17 Nov

BURNING BRIDGES

BANNERMANS Hard rock from the UK. THE LAST DINNER PARTY

EDINBURGH CORN EXCHANGE Rock from London.

SMERZ

SNEAKY PETE'S Alt pop from Copenhagen.

DOMINIC WAXING

LYRICAL X MR

MCFALL’S CHAMBER

STRING QUARTET

THE QUEEN'S HALL Folk from Scotland.

SHAM 69 THE VOODOO ROOMS Punk rock from Surrey.

Tue 18 Nov

JOSEF AKIN

SNEAKY PETE'S Jazz from London.

COLIN HAY

THE QUEEN'S HALL Pop rock from Australia.

RIOGHNACH

CONNOLLY AND HONEYFEET (THE RULERS OF THE ROOT)

THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from Ireland.

Wed 19 Nov

HAWKLORDS

BANNERMANS

Space rock from the UK.

PENTIRE

SNEAKY PETE'S Indie from Herefordshire.

COLE STACEY THE CAVES Folk pop.

TARA LILY

THE VOODOO ROOMS Jazz from London.

ELIZABETH

DAVIDSON-BLYTHE + DANIEL QUAYLE

THE VOODOO ROOMS Synth pop from the Isle of Man.

Thu 20 Nov

SIMON & OSCAR

THE QUEEN'S HALL Rock from the UK. TIDE LINES

USHER HALL Folk pop from Scotland.

Fri 21 Nov

FROM TYRANNY (THE COLONY + THOSE ONCE LOYAL)

BANNERMANS Metalcore from Glasgow. BENEFITS (THE DSM IV)

SNEAKY PETE'S Noise punk from Teeside.

PETER CAT THE MASH HOUSE Art rock from Edinburgh. JUSTIFIED SINNERS THE VOODOO ROOMS Rock from Edinburgh.

FRACTIONS

THE VOODOO ROOMS Electronica from Prague. KADDISH (MY RUSHMORE + CLOWNWORMS + FAKING PRETTY)

WEE RED BAR Indie.

Sat 22 Nov

ALTERNATIVE (THE INSANE + THE SYSTEM + REALITY ASYLUM) BANNERMANS Rock.

WORLD NEWS LEITH FAB CRICKET CLUB Indie from London.

DEAR HEATHER

SNEAKY PETE'S Garage rock from Edinburgh.

NEWSHAPES THE MASH HOUSE Alt rock from Scotland. NOUVELLE VAGUE THE QUEEN'S HALL Pop from France. YOUNG KNIVES THE VOODOO ROOMS Post-punk from the UK. HASSEL & THE HOFFS (THE C-80S) WEE RED BAR Indie.

Sun 23 Nov

CUPCAKKE

LA BELLE ANGELE Rap from Chicago.

THE RIFLES THE CAVES Indie rock from London. THE PRIMITIVES THE VOODOO ROOMS Indie from the UK.

IONA ZAJAC + ROBIN KESTER THE VOODOO ROOMS Indie from Scotland.

Mon 24 Nov

WISENT BANNERMANS Post-hardcore from Leipzig. DIZZEE RASCAL

EDINBURGH CORN EXCHANGE Rap from London.

RIVYRS (TRAMSURFER + CHERRY RED)

SNEAKY PETE'S Rock from Edinburgh.

Tue 25 Nov

LAMBRINI GIRLS

LA BELLE ANGELE Punk rock from Brighton. NAMA KUMA

SNEAKY PETE'S Jazz from Edinburgh. GANGSTAGRASS THE VOODOO ROOMS Americana from the US.

Wed 26 Nov

THE TALES OF THE MOON (JENIFER BERNING + JAMES LOW)

BANNERMANS Folk pop.

SWEET LA BELLE ANGELE Glam rock from London. NORA BROWN WITH STEPHANIE COLEMAN (HOLLY POWERS) THE VOODOO ROOMS Indie.

Thu 27 Nov

INSPIRAL CARPETS THE LIQUID ROOM Rock from Manchester.

Fri 28 Nov

VISION DIVINE BANNERMANS Prog metal. DIVORCE LA BELLE ANGELE Country from Nottingham. THE DREAM MACHINE SNEAKY PETE'S Psych from Merseyside.

VANTAGE POINT (EASILY DISTRACTED) WEE RED BAR Rock.

Sat 29 Nov

THE RESTARTS (GNASHER + SKRAP + THROWN AWAY) BANNERMANS Street punk from London. FUN LOVIN CRIMINALS LA BELLE ANGELE Rap rock from New York. GIRLS ROCK SCHOOL (THE TWISTETTES + FISTYMUFFS + CECILY SCALL) WEE RED BAR Punk and riot grrl. Sun 30 Nov

MARTYN JOSEPH THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from the UK. HERON VALLEY THE VOODOO ROOMS Folk from Scotland. BLAZIN' FIDDLES WITH JULIE FOWLIS USHER HALL Folk from Scotland.

Dundee Music

Thu 6 Nov

JULIET’S NOT DEAD BEAT GENERATOR LIVE! Emo punk from the UK. Sat 15 Nov

XGENERATIONX BEAT GENERATOR LIVE! Punk from the UK.

Wed 19 Nov

GETDOWN SERVICES

BEAT GENERATOR LIVE!

Rock from Bristol.

Glasgow

Clubs

Thu 6 Nov

NOTION

SUB CLUB

Techno.

NICK'S NIGHT 2025

THE BERKELEY SUITE

Trance and garage.

CUR8

NICE 'N' SLEAZY Techno.

Fri 7 Nov

YOUTH: LEO + LYSTER + NUSHEEN

THE FLYING DUCK

Bass and experimental.

SPIRIT PRESENTS

TIMEDANCE 10: BATU & BAKE

SUB CLUB

Techno.

EROL ALKAN ALL NIGHT LONG TO THE RHYTHM

THE BERKELEY SUITE House.

GET SASSY X LA CHEETAH WITH DAN SHAKE + HAYLEY

ZALASSI

LA CHEETAH CLUB House.

APEX PRESENTS:

DORUKSEN + D-AMAGE ROOM 2

Hardcore. JAZZY: GEWAH SELECTS TOUR SWG3 House.

DJ BONE

EXIT

Techno.

RUSH: BASH MAN + MI$ CO$MIX

THE ART SCHOOL

Techno and acid.

BARE MAX X STEREO:

SAMURAI BREAKS & NAPES (BIG PHARMA + EMILIOOO + ORLA HALLIGAN)

STEREO

Jungle and bass.

Sat 8 Nov

10 YEARS OF LOOSE JOINTS: THE FINAL PARTY THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno and house. LA CHEETAH CLUB PRESENTS: HAAI LA CHEETAH CLUB House.

ABYSS: JAMES RUSKIN + QUAIL + FEAR-E ROOM 2 Techno and acid.

FRAZI.ER: OPEN TO CLOSE SWG3 Techno.

COMMON ROOM WITH ICEBOY VIOLET + KINCAID + AKUMU + TEKHOLE + LEWIS LOWE EXIT Techno and experimental. NIGHTSHIFT: ANDRE DANCEKOWSKI + MONTY + SURPLUS THE ART SCHOOL House and deep house. ACT NATURAL NICE 'N' SLEAZY Italo.

SPINNIN' ON THE SPECTRUM 4 STEREO Techno and house.

Sun 9 Nov

KEEP ON WITH OOFT! + DAVID BARBAROSSA LA CHEETAH CLUB Disco and balearic.

Thu 13 Nov

SAY SO PRESENTS: NESSY ALL NIGHT LONG

PEDESTRIANISM 7: GROOVE HARDER LA CHEETAH CLUB Garage and jungle. SEMS NICE 'N' SLEAZY House and electro.

Fri 14 Nov THE BERKELEY SUITE PRESENTS LA LA THE BERKELEY SUITE House.

ABRUPT PRESENTS SO JUICE ROOM 2 Techno and gabber. CLOUDS + DART SWG3 Hard house. FULL TILT SWG3 Trance and hard house. RUPTURE X EXIT

GLASGOW II EXIT Drum 'n' bass. BLUNT FORCE SAUNA NICE 'N' SLEAZY Funk and house.

SCANDAL.GLA X STEREO: GEORGE RILEY STEREO Baile funk.

Sat 15 Nov

TOTAL RECALL THE FLYING DUCK Experimental and industrial.

MIDNIGHT BASS: POLA & BRYSON SUB CLUB Drum 'n' bass. SHOOT YOUR SHOT: PABLO BOZZI THE BERKELEY SUITE Disco. LA CHEETAH CLUB PRESENTS: LEGOWELT = ZORLOK COMPRESSOR + NIGHTWAVE LA CHEETAH CLUB House. PHG BIRTHDAY BASH: D|K|OXY + D-AMAGE ROOM 2 Techno and gabber. 12TH ISLE X SOUTH OF NORTH X TURTLE DUBS EXIT House. VIV AND SUZ NICE 'N' SLEAZY Electro.

FAWDA BBS X STEREO (DJ KALUUN + HIBA + RÁRA + SHADOBENI) STEREO Dancehall, Afrobeat and SWANA club.

Sun 16 Nov KEEP ON WITH REBECCA VASMANT LA CHEETAH CLUB Disco and jazz.

Thu 20 Nov

VICE VERSA PRESENTS DJ SWISHERMAN THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno.

Fri 21 Nov

BODIES IN MOTION 010: RUF DUG THE FLYING DUCK Electronica. POLKA DOT DISCO CLUB THE BERKELEY SUITE Disco. LA CHEETAH CLUB PRESENTS: HUNEE LA CHEETAH CLUB House.

STFS PRESENTS: WELCOME TO THE BARN ROOM 2 Techno and gabber.

ACCELERATE PRESENTS: LIAM DOC (TINO + M1-DJ + K-LUB)

STEREO House and electro.

Sat 22 Nov

THE BERKELEY SUITE PRESENTS 'GOO' W/ DANIEL AVERY & RICHARD FEARLESS THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno. THROUGH THE ROOF BASEMENT SERIES: RESIDENT TAKEOVER LA CHEETAH CLUB Tech house.

4AM KRU SWG3 Jungle. EXIT CLUB EXIT Techno and industrial. PRAY TO GOOD THE ART SCHOOL Drum 'n' bass.

GUNK NICE 'N' SLEAZY Bass.

GLASTAR - THE DEBUT (RAHUL.MP3

+ BELLAROSA + KINZ

LUIZ + EYVE + STAR EYE + SIMBA) STEREO Hip-hop and house.

Sun 23 Nov KEEP ON WITH OOFT! + DAVID BARBAROSSA

LA CHEETAH CLUB Disco and balearic.

Thu 27 Nov

LOVECYCLE #9: 2ND BIRTHDAY PARTY

THE BERKELEY SUITE Techno and house.

DEEP PURPLE: ISHERWOOD LA CHEETAH CLUB Techno and electro.

Fri 28 Nov

LUNA ROJA + PHIL KIERAN + ÁNGEL NEGRÍN + LOVELL THE FLYING DUCK Techno and disco. CÉLESTE

THE BERKELEY SUITE Trance and techno.

NEW DAY

LA CHEETAH CLUB Techno and electro.

EXPAND PRESENTS:

SAMUEL MORIERO + REVOXX B2B WEBB ROOM 2 Techno and gabber. CL!CK X STEREO: BCLIP STEREO Guaracha.

Sat 29 Nov

POSH END PRESENTS:

JEROME HILL + FEAR-E THE FLYING DUCK Techno and acid. LA CHEETAH CLUB PRESENTS: CALL SUPER LA CHEETAH CLUB House.

SHAKA LOVES YOU NICE 'N' SLEAZY Disco.

STEREO 18TH BIRTHDAY STEREO Jungle.

Sun 30 Nov

KEEP ON WITH GENCIA + BRANDEAUX LA CHEETAH CLUB Deep house.

Edinburgh Clubs

Mon 3 Nov

GABRIEL HOPTON THE MASH HOUSE UKG, house and disco.

Tue 4 Nov

MIDNIGHT BASS

CABARET VOLTAIRE Drum 'n' bass.

Wed 5 Nov

KATALYSIS

SNEAKY PETE'S Techno.

Thu 6 Nov

MÉLANGE VOL.1 VA: DJ LIFE + CAMEN BAÍA + GABRIEL GRIFFITH

PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB Techno.

Fri 7 Nov

ALIEN DISKO: VELCRO THE BONGO CLUB Techno.

JAZZY: GEWAH SELECTS TOUR THE LIQUID ROOM House.

KELBURN PRESENTS... COCO MARÍA

PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB Funk and soul.

FERAL THE MASH HOUSE Electronica.

Sat 8 Nov

EZSTREET / SWEENEY CABARET VOLTAIRE House. MAKE A DANCE: HOBBES + JEDDA + LOBOS THE BONGO CLUB House and disco.

FANGS #3

PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB Acid and electronica.

EROL ALKAN – TO THE RHYTHM

SNEAKY PETE'S Electro.

VOLTAGE THE MASH HOUSE House and techno.

Sun 9 Nov

FREE TIME: ROMARE (DJ SET)

SNEAKY PETE'S House.

Mon 10 Nov

NIGHT TUBE: LEO

ROBIN + WESTON

PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB House and electronica.

Wed 12 Nov

MONTYJACKS

PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB Disco and club.

HAPTIC: BARTEK & FREDDY HAPTIC

SNEAKY PETE'S UKG. APPLE THE MASH HOUSE Y2K.

Thu 13 Nov

MANGO LOUNGE: REFRACTA & FRIENDS

SNEAKY PETE'S Bass.

Fri 14 Nov

BONGO INCOGNITO #5 THE BONGO CLUB Techno.

PALIDRONE: DANSA

B2B J WAX

SNEAKY PETE'S Techno.

SATSUMA SOUNDS

THE MASH HOUSE House and techno. PINK MOON SOCIAL CLUB WEE RED BAR Pop and Chappel Roan.

Sat 15 Nov

DBT. W/ DJ SENC, HABB

CABARET VOLTAIRE House and techno.

DECIUS DJ AFTERPARTY

PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB Techno and acid.

LF SYSTEM

BISCUIT FACTORY House.

HEYDAY

SNEAKY PETE'S House.

FRENZY EVENTS: BLURRED MOVEMENT & RAMØN THE MASH HOUSE Techno.

BORLEY ROOM

Tue 18 Nov

MIDNIGHT BASS: JOURNEY THRU JUNGLE

CABARET VOLTAIRE Drum 'n' bass.

Wed 19 Nov

MEMBRANE: LENA WILLIKENS AND DAKSH

SNEAKY PETE'S Experimental.

Thu 20 Nov IMPORT

SNEAKY PETE'S Bass.

Fri 21 Nov

4AM KRU THE BONGO CLUB Jungle. HEADSET

SNEAKY PETE'S Bass. BIG HOT MESS FRUITMARKET House and disco. BAD BUNNY PARTY LA BELLE ANGELE Reggaeton.

Sat 22 Nov

ATHENS OF THE NORTH SNEAKY PETE'S Disco.

MIDLAND: SNEAKY PETE'S INSTALLATION #014 FRUITMARKET Techno. JUST LIKE HEAVEN ALTERATIVE 80'S PARTY

LA BELLE ANGELE Alternative.

BPM THE MASH HOUSE Hip-hop, R'n'B and house.

Sun 23 Nov

FREE TIME: KELLY LEE

OWENS

SNEAKY PETE'S Techno.

Tue 25 Nov

MIDNIGHT BASS: M.O.B + FIFI

CABARET VOLTAIRE Drum 'n' bass.

Wed 26 Nov

MILE HIGH CLUB

SNEAKY PETE'S Techno. APPLE THE MASH HOUSE Y2K.

Thu 27 Nov

TREASURE, TREASURE: GINA BREEZE & PANOOC SNEAKY PETE'S House.

Fri 28 Nov

THE FINAL BRAT RAVE THE BONGO CLUB Hyperpop.

SIM0NE CLUB ZERO THE LIQUID ROOM Trance and techno. NIGHTS & FOLDED NOTIONS: ALEX KASSIAN PEOPLE'S LEISURE CLUB Trance and house. LIONOIL SNEAKY PETE'S House.

Sat 29 Nov

DBT. PRESENTS OLGA KOROL

CABARET VOLTAIRE House and techno. 16 YEARS OF PULSE: ANNĒ THE BONGO CLUB Techno and house. ACTUAL LIFE: FRED AGAIN RAVE

LA BELLE ANGELE House, techno, and pop.

Sun 30 Nov

Regular Glasgow comedy nights

The Stand Glasgow

FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH

MONDAY NIGHT IMPROV, 20:30

Host Billy Kirkwood & guests act entirely on your suggestions.

TUESDAYS RED RAW, 20:30

Legendary new material night with up to 8 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.

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, 21:00

The big weekend show with four comedians.

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

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

Dundee Clubs

Thu 6 Nov

PONYBOY X DUNDEE: SAY AWARD AFTERPARTY CANVAS House.

Fri 14 Nov

MUNGOS HI-FI 25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR FAT SAM'S Dub and dubstep.

Sat 29 Nov SLAM (SOMA) FAT SAM'S Techno and electronica. DAY MOVES WITH GAV WILL PRESENTS YOGI HAUGHTON NOLA BAR House and disco.

Glasgow Comedy

The King's Theatre

ARDAL O'HANLON: NOT HIMSELF

SUN 9 NOV

Irish comedian takes on the joys and follies of contemporary life.

The Old Hairdressers

HAROLD NIGHT TUE 11 NOV

SATURDAYS THE SATURDAY SHOW, 20:30

The big weekend show with four comedians.

Monkey Barrel

Comedy Club

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.

HAMISH NIGHT

TUE 11 NOV

Two Glasgow Improv Theatre house teams performing The Harold. Featuring tubducky and Smoking Cat.

SPREAD: UNDER THE COVERS

TUE 18 NOV

Improvised comedy inspired by print media.

BOUNCE HOUSE: SOLVES EVERYTHING TUE 18 NOV

Solving all of the petty squabbles they come across with improv comedy.

COUCH SURFS THE WEB

TUE 25 NOV

A night of improv comedy where Couch looks up bad reviews of places the audience have been.

GIT IMPROV CAGE

MATCH

TUE 25 NOV

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

Edinburgh Comedy

The Edinburgh Playhouse

JIM JEFFERIES: SON OF A CARPENTER

SAT 8 NOV

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

Glasgow Theatre

Citizens Theatre

FLIGHT

THU 6 NOV - SAT 15 NOV

Two orphaned brothers set off an odyssey to safety in a heartwrenching road story of terror, hope and survival.

Royal

Conservatoire of Scotland

BLOOD WEDDING

TUE 4 NOV - FRI 7 NOV

Lorca's tragedy explores the intersections of love and hate in a small rural Spanish community.

The King's Theatre

THE LITTLE MERMAID SAT 22 NOV - SUN 4 JAN

Join Glasgow panto superstars Elaine C Smith and Johnny Mac as they dive into the ocean for this year's Christmas show.

FRIENDS! THE MUSICAL PARODY

TUE 11 NOV - SAT 15 NOV

Return to Central Perk in this musical comedy retelling of all ten seasons of Friends.

TO KILL A

THE BERKELEY SUITE Trance and garage.

CO:CLEAR THE FLYING DUCK Ambient and electronica.

PRESENTS: ARWEN, BORLEY THE MASH HOUSE Techno. SILO WEE RED BAR Hyperpop.

CANDYFLIP: JIGSORE SOUNDSYSTEM TAKEOVER THE BONGO CLUB Drum 'n' bass.

Two Glasgow Improv Theatre house teams performing The Harold. Feat. Saved By The Beep and With Bits.

Beloved comedian now on his tenth stand-up special.

The Queen's Hall

ARDAL O'HANLON: NOT HIMSELF

SAT 8 NOV

Irish comedian takes on the joys and follies of contemporary life.

MOCKINGBIRD

TUE 4 NOV - SAT 8 NOV

Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin stages an acclaimed adaptation of the seminal American novel.

Theatre Royal HAMILTON

WED 29 OCT - SAT 27

DEC

Head to the room where it happens in this global musical sensation.

Tron Theatre

GALLUS IN WEEGIELAND

WED 19 NOV - SUN 4 JAN

Johnny McKnight's annual Christmas Panto descends upon the Tron.

Edinburgh Theatre

Assembly Roxy

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG

IN THE NIGHT-TIME

TUE 25 NOV - FRI 28

NOV

A dog is discovered murdered in this adaptation of Mark Haddon's bestselling novel.

Festival Theatre

SCOTTISH BALLET: THE SNOW QUEEN

THU 27 NOV - SUN 7 DEC

A lavish production of the winter classic with music from Rimsky-Korsakov.

SCOTTISH OPERA: LA BOHÈME

FRI 14 NOV - SAT 22

NOV

Director Renaud Doucet and designer André Barbe set Puccini's La bohème within the context of Paris's fleamarkets.

SCOTTISH OPERA: L’HEURE ESPAGNOLE / THE BEAR

SAT 15 NOV

Jacapo Spirei and Scottish designer Kenneth MacLeod interpret Ravel’s and Walton’s mini masterpieces for a modern audience.

Royal Lyceum Theatre

CINDERELLA: A FAIRYTALE

THU 27 NOV - SAT 3 JAN

Music, puppetry and performance bring the classic fairytale to fresh life.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

TUE 4 NOV - SAT 8 NOV

Tennessee Williams’ iconic investigation of post-war class dynamics is brought to blistering life.

Studio Theatre

INNOVATIONS

FRI 7 NOV - SAT 8 NOV

A programme of international choreographers and dance companies showcasing the cutting edge of dance theatre.

The Edinburgh Playhouse

INSIDE NO. 9 STAGE/ FRIGHT

TUE 25 NOV - SAT 29 NOV

Dark humour and horror come together in this adaptation of the acclaimed anthology TV series.

TINA: THE TINA

TURNER MUSICAL

TUE 11 NOV - SAT 22 NOV

The West End hit telling the story of the iconic singer comes as part of its first ever UK and Ireland tour.

Traverse Theatre

ÒRAN

THU 13 NOV - SAT 15

NOV

Spoken word, lyrical storytelling and an electronic live score come together in this thrilling retelling of the myth of Orpheus.

THROUGH THE MUD

FRI 14 NOV - SAT 15 NOV

Apphia Campbell's blistering play explores the parallel lives of Assata Shakur and a student in the midst of the Ferguson riots.

ARLINGTON

THU 6 NOV - SAT 8 NOV

A strange conversation held through a wall begins to hold dark implications in this fable on surveillance and connection.

Dundee Theatre

Dundee Rep

JACK AND THE BEANSTALK

SAT 29 NOV - TUE 30 DEC

Caroline the Highland cow brings a bold new twist to this panto adaptation of the classic fairy tale.

THE FLOCK & MOVING CLOUD

FRI 31 OCT - WED 12 NOV

Two of Scottish Dance Theatre's most physically daring and innovative works get the back-to-back treatment.

Glasgow Art

Common Guild

PENG ZUQIANG: AFTERNOON HEARSAY

SAT 11 OCT - SUN 7 DEC

The first solo exhibition by the artist in Scotland centres on a new threechannel film installation of the same name, co-commissioned by The Common Guild and the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai.

David Dale Gallery

ESTHER GAMSU: MEDIUM

SAT 11 OCT - SAT 29 NOV

Sculpture, film and textile considering acts of obsession and repetition as creative tools to disrupt capitalist ideologies.

GoMA

JOHN AKOMFRAH: MIMESIS: AFRICAN SOLDIER

SAT 26 OCT - MON 20 APR

A film installation from acclaimed artist exploring the significant contribution of over six million African, Caribbean and South Asian people from across former colonies who fought and died in World War I. THE MILKY WAY

SAT 13 SEP - FRI 9 JAN

Part of a touring exhibition looking at the culture of infant feeding in public spaces.

Ingleby Gallery

CHARLES AVERY: THE EIDOLORAMA

SAT 27 SEP - SAT 20 DEC

Abstract, world-building paintings in which simple pictorial forms which combine to form more complex and charismatic structures.

Kendall Koppe

DITTA BARON HOEBER + MARINA GRIZE + OLIVIA JIA: MARGOT SAMEL @ KENDALL KOPPE

FRI 17 OCT - SAT 15

NOV

A collaboration between Kendall Koppe and Margot Samel Gallery in New York.

Platform ALAN DIMMICK:

DAYTRIPPING

THU 2 OCT - THU 1 JAN

Exhibition by local photographer examining the importance of daytrips in and around Scotland.

South Block

MATT SILLARS: FRAGMENTS: THE RAINFOREST AND THE GHOST WOOD

WED 15 OCT - MON 8 DEC

A reflection of time spent in the ancient woodlands in the North and West of Scotland.

Tramway LEAP THEN LOOK: PLAY INTERACT

EXPLORE

SAT 27 SEP - MON 11

MAY

An exhibition of interactive artworks created by artists Lucy Cran and Bill Leslie.

RAE-YEN SONG: 宋瑞渊 - •~TUA~• 大眼

•~MAK~•

WED 15 OCT - SUN 16

AUG

Glasgow artist transforms Tramway’s vast gallery space into a sub-aquatic world, which serves simultaneously as a spectacle, a memorial and a refuge.

Edinburgh Art

City Art Centre

MICHAEL FULLERTON

SAT 22 NOV - SUN 1 MAR

A new body of paintings by Glasgow-born artist, as well as prints and works selected from the City Art Centre Collections.

Collective Gallery

SHEN XIN: HIGHLAND

EMBASSY

FRI 3 OCT - SUN 21 DEC

Three projects by artist and filmmaker that use storytelling to explore themes of migration and indigenous communities.

Dovecot

Studios

IKEA: MAGICAL PATTERNS

FRI 18 JUL - SAT 17

JAN

An innovative exhibition exploring six decades of textile design by IKEA and the development of interior design.

PICKING UP THE THREAD: THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE OF TAPESTRY

MON 20 OCT - FRI 14 FEB

68 artists from nine countries present over 90 tapestries in The British Tapestry Group’s celebration of its 20th anniversary.

Fruitmarket

ADAM BARKER-MILL:

PHOTOSYNTHESIS 2 FRI 31 OCT - SUN 16 NOV

Sculptures that examines the physical and experimental properties of light.

Fruitmarket

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE

SMITH: WILDING

FRI 7 NOV - SUN 1 FEB

The first posthumous exhibition in a public gallery or museum of the work of the artist, activist, curator and enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation.

Jupiter Artland

GEORG WILSON: THE EARTH EXHALES

SAT 11 OCT - SUN 1 MAR

Folkloric, eerie paintings imagining a wild natural landscape untouched by humanity, and the inherent autonomy of the nonhuman.

TAI SHANI: THE SPELL OR THE DREAM

SAT 11 OCT - TUE 1 SEP

A new sculpture by Turner-prize winning artist, in which a luminous giant figures lies and breathes gently in Jupiter Artland's orchard space.

Mote 102

EMILY RANDALL + EMMA MACLEOD:

UNDER THE FULL MOON OF LATE

SUMMER

FRI 24 OCT - TUE 11

NOV

An exhibition of new work exploring the physical and metaphysical body in nature.

Out of the

Blueprint

LIMINAL EXHIBITION

THU 30 OCT - THU 6 NOV

New collaborative exhibition developed by young people, part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.

Royal Botanic Gardens

Edinburgh FUNGI SESSIONS

SAT 2 AUG - SUN 11 JAN

The premiere of Edinburghborn composer Hannah Read’s albums The Fungi Sessions Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 as an audiovisual installation.

RSA: Royal Scottish Academy

TOBY PATERSON: A SHORT GUIDE TO TOWNS WITHOUT A PAST

FRI 24 OCT - SUN 23 NOV

Abstract paintings by Glasgow artist exploring methods of representation and exhibition.

THE CHRISTMAS SHOW

SAT 29 NOV - MON 22

DEC

The RSA's annual winter show, presenting work by Royal Scottish Academicians, many offered at an affordable price.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

RESISTANCE: HOW PROTEST SHAPED BRITAIN AND PHOTOGRAPHY SHAPED PROTEST

SAT 21 JUN - SUN 4 JAN

An unmissable exhibition conceived by acclaimed artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen.

Scottish Portrait Gallery

ALFRED BUCKHAM: DAREDEVIL PHOTOGRAPHER

SAT 18 OCT - SUN 19

APR

Take to the skies in this extraordinary exhibition looking at the life and work of the pioneering 20thcentury aerial photographer.

Stills Gallery

FELICITY HAMMOND: VARIATIONS V4: REPOSITORY

FRI 7 NOV - SAT 7 FEB

Staged in four venues across the UK, this exhibition is an evolving installation exploring the relationship between geological mining and data mining, image-making and machine learning.

Summerhall

KIRSTIE ÉRTZ: NEW FIGURES

THU 13 NOV - SUN 23 NOV

Plein air work by emerging artist exploring changing qualities of light.

Talbot Rice

Gallery

THE CHILDREN ARE NOW

SAT 25 OCT - SAT 7 FEB

Examining the relationship between children and the structural global challenges we face, this group exhibition draws on imaginative practice to articulate patterns in history.

Dundee

Art

Cooper Gallery

GRACE NDIRITU: COMPASSIONATE REBELS IN ACTION

FRI 10 OCT - SAT 13

DEC

Cooper Gallery’s fivechapter exhibition The Ignorant Art School: Five Sit-ins towards Creative Emancipation culminates with Sit-in #5, staged by British-Kenyan artist.

DCA: Dundee

Contemporary

Arts

LAUREN GAULT: BONE STONE VOICE ALONE

SAT 25 OCT - SUN 18 JAN

Sculpture, print, sound and moving image using the mythological figure of Echo to investigate the land of Tayside and beyond.

V&A Dundee

GARDEN FUTURES: DESIGNING WITH NATURE

SAT 17 MAY - SAT 25 JAN

Bringing together artists and thinkers such as Derek Jarman and Jamaica Kincaid, this exhibition looks at the politics and aesthetics of the modern garden.

DESIGN HOPES: FROM HOPE TO HEALTH

THU 2 OCT - SUN 8 FEB

Exploring how healthcare systems can build towards a healthier planet.

The Skinny On... KT Tunstall

With Eye to the Telescope celebrating its 20th anniversary and winning the Modern Scottish Classic award at this year’s SAY Award, KT Tunstall takes on our November Q&A

What’s your favourite place to visit?

I love Japan. It’s a fascinating culture with great people, amazing food, so much beauty and interest, and really feels like visiting a completely different world.

What’s your favourite food?

Italian food. I love all the different courses, the sauces and fresh herbs, the different styles of cooking things. It’s always made with passion and old family recipes, and there’s so many different versions of each dish. The flavours of each ingredient are simple, and the end results are mind-blowing.

What’s your favourite colour?

I have favourite colours to wear, which would be different from a room, or a painting, but if I had to choose, I think a soft coral pink is my current favourite.

Who was your hero growing up?

There were pop stars I liked, like Wham!, Kim Wilde and Bros, and sportspeople like John McEnroe, but I struggle to think of one person. If I have to choose, I’d say Dr. Seuss! I loved the worlds and characters he created, and his rhythm and rhyming are *chef's kiss*.

Whose work inspires you now?

Now that I live in Santa Fe, NM, I am constantly inspired by the life of artist Georgia O’Keeffe. I’m also excited to dive deeper into the music of Bonnie Raitt, which I’m surprised I haven’t done yet, and Dolly Parton is always an inspiration with her incredible songwriting and graceful way of moving through the world.

What three people would you invite to your dinner party and what are you cooking? Picasso, Bill Hicks and Joan Rivers. I’m making cheese fondue.

What’s your all time favourite album? Extremely difficult question. I will choose Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. Incredible songwriting, feel-good as well as heartbreaking, superb musicianship, I always discover new feelings and moments of enlightenment with this album.

What’s the worst film you’ve ever seen?

Jupiter Ascending. It was so bad it actually started becoming amazing and I would totally watch it again. I’m a HUGE fan of The Matrix, so had high hopes. They were initially dashed, but I am completely open to a second viewing.

What book would you take to a desert island? I would probably take The Bible as I haven’t read it and would like to. It’s obviously long and very

dense, and there are countless interesting stories with different interpretations. If I was taking something more fun, it would be The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s a beautiful story, and I love the resilience and the hellish pursuit of goodness. Also extremely long and dense.

Who’s the worst?

Um. There are a number of answers to this?! Dictators? Despots?! But to lighten the mood, let’s just go with people who have phone conversations on loudspeaker in public. Absolute douchebaggery.

When did you last cry?

I actually cried a week ago from using a foam roller on my left thigh. I’ve been smashing a tambourine for 20 years and, believe me, it is taking a terrible toll. I think it’s time to retire the tambo.

What are you most scared of?

I’m deeply conflict-averse. I wish I wasn’t and would love to get over it. It’s much worse stewing over something, but I never learned how to calmly express an issue without getting stressed out and tongue-tied. My other half is absolutely brilliant at it, so I’m learning from him!

When did you last vomit?

Minging question!! A bad cashew nut a few years back. Up all night.

Tell us a secret?

When I won my Brit Award, it got immediately sent off to get engraved, and they gave me a second blank one to do all the press with, and let’s just say they didn’t ask for that one back.

Which celebrity could you take in a fight?

I’d like to think I might win a pillow fight against Natalie Imbruglia. But she’s spicy.

If you could be reincarnated as an animal, which animal would it be?

An eagle. Probably South America. The views! The hunting! The massive nest! So many reasons.

With the 20th anniversary reissue of Eye to the Telescope just released, how has the past year been celebrating this iconic record?

It’s been a pure joy. I’m used to promoting a new record that no-one’s heard and trying to persuade people to listen. It’s lovely celebrating something

that people already love, and hearing all the amazing stories people have about these songs. My favourite thing is 20-year-olds telling me they play and saying it’s because of this album, it’s wonderful and unexpected.

The album is picking up the Modern Scottish Classic award at this year’s SAY Award Ceremony. What does this mean to you? And if you were awarding another artist and album with the same accolade, who’s getting the award? It’s a beautiful thing to happen on this anniversary year. It means a great deal to me, I’m deeply honoured, and I’m thrilled I get to join a list of Scottish luminaries who have all contributed so much to the world of music. If I were to award it, I would give it to the Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas. Visionaries, explorers, creators of new worlds. Very deserving.

Eye To the Telescope: The Stargazer Edition, featuring new tracks and bonus material, is out now

KT Tunstall performs at The SAY Award Ceremony, Caird Hall, Dundee, 6 Nov