Coffee-Table Notes

Light on the Shore @ Leith Theatre Five stars The chairs are out for the penultimate Leith Theatre show as part of Edinburgh International Festival’s Light on the Shore series. This is one indicator of just how seriously this reimagining of Edinburgh-sired electronic duo Boards of Canada’s 1996 EP, Hi Scores, by Berlin-based contemporary classical collective, Stargaze, is being taken. In the unlikely event that Boards of Canada’s Mike Sandison and Marcus Eoin will show faces themselves since their last live outing in 2001, this is something that Stargaze’s twelve-piece ensemble duly take advantage of. Utilising French horn, oboe, flute and clarinet to play the melodies of the EP’s six tracks alongside strings, guitar, percussion and double bass, Stargaze add a flesh and blood warmth and wit to the tracks. Given that synthesisers were originally designed to emulate the sounds of ‘real’ instruments, such a reinvention brings things full circle. At one point some of the record’...

Light on the Shore @ Leith Theatre Five stars “You all look too young to remember the sixties,” says Jeanette McKinley, standing beside Emma Pollock as she announces their duet of Sweet and Tender Romance, one of 1964’s great lost pop classics when Jeanette and her sister Sheila released it as a single under the name The McKinleys. It’s one of many high points of this lovingly curated celebration of some of the unsung female pioneers of Scottish pop that forms part of Edinburgh International Festival’s Light on the Shore live music strand. The night acts as a trailer of sorts for a documentary film being made on the subject by Carla J Easton and Blair Young. As initiator and driving force behind the night, Easton’s tenure fronting Teen Canteen and as a solo artist now sees her fronting a house band made up of members of Randolph’s Leap, Lola in Slacks, Kid Canaveral and The Moth and the Mirror. The night opened with the sassy power-pop-punk-a-rama of The Van Ts followed ...

King’s Theatre Five stars When a pair of fancy dress cops break up the onstage party instigated by American auteur Geoff Sobelle and an ever-expanding cast in his epic evocation of building a home from scratch, one could be forgiven for thinking it a nod to current civic thinking towards anything resembling fun. With lights strung across the auditorium to decorate assorted weddings, birthdays and other life-and-death shindigs, Sobelle’s creation becomes a mass housewarming to which we’re all invited. By this time, Sobelle and his company of seven plus deep-fried crooner Elvis Perkins have constructed a piece of architectural magic, which sees the foundations of a des-res put in place by several generations of the house’s occupants. As a bedroom is seemingly conjured from thin air, we see children, mothers and lovers rise from their slumber to go about their days and nights. With a fully functional kitchen and bathroom on the two slotted-together floors of Steven Dufala’s...