Coffee-Table Notes

These are busy times for Last Night from Glasgow, the four-year-old record label whose unique subscription based model has all but broken the mould for DIY endeavours. In the last month, the label led by Ian Smith, Stephen Kelly and 400 subscribers have put out the first album by C-86 legends Close Lobsters for thirty years. There have also been singles by Mt. Doubt and Lemon Drink, the latter of whom launched their new four-song EP, Better Run at a sold out show in Glasgow last weekend. Releases are pending too from ‘existential nerd rock’ band, Slime City, and a debut from Life Model, while in May, Medicine Men will release their second album, A Different Port. Then there is the long-awaited release of Earthbound, the second album by Starless, aka Friends Again and Love and Money keyboardist Paul McGeechan. This spate of activity follows on from acclaimed releases from Cloth, L-space and a new album by 1990s indie darlings, Bis. The last year too has seen LNFG expand operati

Nothing Spreads Like Fear. This is the tag-line for Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s 2011 film about a global pandemic and the subsequent loss of social order before scientists eventually identify and contain the virus with a new vaccine. Given some of the hysteria in response to the real-life Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic we’re currently in the thick of, there are few more apt descriptions of the toilet-roll panic buyers currently turning supermarkets into Ballardian wastelands. In the current climate, Soderbergh’s film sounds like both prophecy and warning. I missed Contagion when it first came out, though I intend rectifying this oversight utilising the new breadth of downtime I’ve suddenly acquired since all the theatres closed this week. It appears I’m not the only one keen to see the film. According to my colleague Russell Leadbetter, who has seen it, Contagion is currently at number two in the Amazon Prime chart, with its level of online hires second only to Harry Potter.

Cryptic Nights, Glad Café, Glasgow Four stars Strange times require creative solutions, and with the Covid-19 pandemic causing live events to be scrapped, it’s time to get virtual. Such is the case for this latest Cryptic Nights concert, an initiative begun a decade ago by Glasgow-based international auteurs Cryptic with the aim of showcasing a multitude of composers who mix up artforms to ravish the senses. With the aim of presenting music designed to benefit both body and mind, having this triple bill of international artists perform work in an otherwise empty venue while being streamed online has set the template for getting art out to a self-isolated audience. So, as it ramps up each performer’s hi-tech futurism, while there is an extra distance between audience and artist, there is also an intimacy that comes from such a one-on-one experience.   This is certainly the case in Glasgow electronicist Alex Smoke’s opening set, a conceptual piece called Eirini, named afte