Out of Time

Spear of Destiny / TV21 / Bobbi Peru – Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh – 28th September 2008 Sunday night at Cabaret Voltaire presented what seems at the moment to be an all too rare opportunity to see TV21 live. The signs weren’t too promising – a couple of the band were feeling less than 100% and…

We Were Promised Rabbits

A busy spell of gigs kicked off last night with the Frightened Rabbit/We Were Promised Jetpacks double bill at the Mill in Edinburgh. (And big thanks to Murray for getting me tickets at the last gasp). The club itself appears to be a former storage vault of some kind which certainly gives it a different…

It’s Shite Being Scottish

A sentiment that we all share at  times but one that has been pilfered from Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’ by today’s book. And if there was ever a novel meant to be reviewed on a Scottish music blog then Doug Johnstone’s ‘The Ossians’ is surely it. Although I read about the book when it was published…

The Night Sessions

Whilst our visits to the recent Edinburgh International Book Festival largely centred on kids’ authors, we managed to squeeze in one Sunday to see a handful of “grown-up” writers. One of these was Ken MacLeod about whom I’ve written before. The session wasn’t the outright entertainment of Chris Brookmyre (although it’s interesting that both authors…

A Million Daddy Longlegs

Just in from seeing Idlewild at Elmwoodstock. Idlewild seem to have reached a stage of real dependability and this evening’s set was largely drawn from ‘Make Another World’ and last year’s Best Of.  Essentially the set pushed all the buttons you would expect which means to say that it was pretty good all  round. Particular…

This Insubstantial Pageant Faded

You know what you’re going to get with a Christopher Brookmyre novel. An implausible plot, a dose of satire and some brilliant humour. Pleasingly his latest ‘A Snowball in Hell’ is well up to scratch. ‘Snowball’ is actually a sequel to 2 of his earlier books “A Big Boy Did It and Ran Away” and…