Coffee-Table Notes

Phonographics, Ruins, Sunburned Hand of the Man, [The User], Acid Mothers Temple, Philip Jeck, Ira Cohen Dundee Contemporary Arts  “I feel more at home here than I do in my neighbourhood in New York,” says sixty-something Beat poet, compulsive namedropper and living shamanic totem Ira Cohen, introducing a screening of his legendary Angus Maclise/La Monte Young soundtracked film, The Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda. Bearing in mind that it’s a Sunday afternoon in Dundee, such a magnanimous statement, however much it’s designed to flatter, is pretty big cheese indeed. Taking up residence amid the chi-chi white cube main gallery inside one of Europe’s sexiest 21st century spaces, this provocatively named three day festival of sight and sound embraces two specific strands of thought criss-crossing each other beyond its solely aural/visual interface. On the one hand, Philip Jeck, [The User] and Phonographics offer more insular reflections that tiptoe cautiously but utterly, unremit

Guildhall Arts Centre, Gloucester For a decade, Ochre Records has existed in a backwoods wilderness of its own design. Even at this, the Cheltenham based label’s tenth anniversary all-dayer, which took place in the civic confines of Gloucester’s Guildhall — its spiritual home, having hosted the label’s fifth and seventh birthdays — it all seemed unfussily homespun and low key. A sure sign of confidence from any cottage industry. Nowhere was this better personified than in opening act The Serpents, Ochre’s very own ‘supergroup’‚ whose ranks have previously been swollen by members of Super Furry Animals, writer Jon Savage and even reality TV model Catalina. This time out there were eight people up there, mostly culled from Ochre acts scheduled to play later on. Their one minute’s noise for the late John Peel whipped up a glorious storm of rustic Prog clatter, augmented by bass clarinet and singing bowl. The extended piece that followed magnificently cascaded through a landscape of

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

Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh Four Stars Broken hearts were everywhere onstage for Mark Ronson’s headlining slot in a DJ-only show to see in the new year as part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay’s main event. Two pieces of a giant silver construction sit like a collapsed mirrorball, dwarfing the midas-touch producer as he sits inbetween, where his desk-top console resides. Behind him, a twelve-strong all-female string section featuring Scottish Chamber Orchestra violinists Aisling O’Dea and Siun Milne, plus cellist Niamh Malloy swish out the sort of lush clusters barely heard since the Biddu Orchestra turned disco into a classical gas. Other hearts are either framed in red as neon shapes zigzag about them, or else spiral round like Joe 90 might hatch like a Kinder toy. Ronson moves through a set of the last decade’s bangers at a gallop. He only pauses to don guitar for a brief guest slot from Daniel Merriweather, whose Ronson-produced mash-up of the Smiths and the Supremes on Sto

Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh Four stars The Day of the Dead might have passed along with Hallowe’en, but that hasn’t paled Natasha Khan’s penchant for gothic drama in terms of this stripped down mini tour to showcase this year’s independently released Lost Girls record. A concept album of sorts forged in the heat of Khan’s Death Valley wanderings and involving vampire girl gangs, Lost Girls began as a film script idea. Dressed majestically in a vivid scarlet frock on a stage of old school synthesisers and a music stand illuminated by a circle of vintage lamps, she certainly looks the part. With only a keyboardist for company in a cabaret table set-up, this is Khan as chanteuse, freed from the machine-age trappings of a full band set-up and left vulnerable and exposed in the solitary spotlight of such an intimate and safety-net free arrangement. Preceded by a mood-setting play-list of 1980s synth soundtracks full of foreboding, Khan opens with a salvo of the new album’s openin