Coffee-Table Notes

The Arches, Glasgow, Fri 15-Sun 17 Feb 2008 Instal’s three day festival of left-field sound has consistently revisited ideas explored by the avant-garde half a century ago. This year they focus particularly on attempted subversions of bog-standard us-n’them gig protocol in a multitude of ways. 1 Personal Space – You’ll have missed Edinburgh minimalists Usurper performing in a skip beside cartoonist Bud Neill’s Lobey Dosser statue of cartoonist in Glasgow’s west end, but if you’re quick you’ll still catch Blood Stereo’s pilgrimage to the Blackburn community hall they grew up beside. 2 Self-Cancellation – In which founder of auto-destructive art Gustav Metzger co-opts musicians such as John Butcher and Rhodri Davis to negate the creative act itself. Tubas will be filled with sand. Ice will melt. 3 Translation – Sound poetry and sound art snuggle up via poet Kenneth Goldsmith, text-based artist Simon Morris and others rewiring the word. 4 Energy Births Form – A wig-out by any other name,

The Arches, Glasgow, Fri 13-Sun 15 Oct 2006 Instal, the annual festival of experimental music in Glasgow, has attracted equal amounts of flack and praise in its six year existence. Critic Neil Cooper and Instal curator Barry Esson go head to head to debate its pros and cons in a virtual dialogue. Neil Cooper Instal’s now in its sixth year, and has grown considerably since it started. I’m not convinced, though, that bigger is necessarily better. Barry Esson If you’re into this kind of music already, then of course you’ll be happy to see more of it. If you don’t know much about it and fancy trying to find out more, then if there are more acts, over a wider range of styles then hopefully you’ve got an even better chance of finding something you love. NC When Instal started, Le Weekend in Stirling and Free RadiCCAls at the CCA were running. Now, there’s Kill Your Timid Notion, Subcurrent and Dialogues. That’s a very crowded arena for what’s essentially a small marketplace for ‘left field m

Fence Club 2 @ The Caves, Edinburgh, Thu 14 June 2007 The ukelele’s place in contemporary pop is usually resigned to playing second, um, fiddle to more conventional, less novelty-inclined instrumentation. Where George Formby and Tiny Tim’s eccentric schtick was strictly Kodachrome, however, Uni And Her Ukelele, aka Heather Marie Ellison, is a day-glo riot of candy-coloured tutu, kids TV presenter tights and sparkly silver eye make-up. The San Francisco belle may be at the bottom of the bill of this latest and increasingly homogenised Fence Records love-in, but, with her uke Sally Luka in tow, she’s by far the most interesting thing on it. Because, behind the rosy-cheeked apparel, chorus girl ditziness and wonky dance moves, is a handbag full of classic 1960s girl pop that could have shimmied out of The Brill Building, loaded up on bubblegum and busked its way into your heart with would-be Wall Of Sound power-pop show-tunes pared back to one-gal-band basics. Somehow, miraculously, Uni m

Optimo@Sub Club, Glasgow, 1 April 2007 When Blurt play Optimo on April Fool’s Day, it will be vocalist/sax player Ted Milton’s first Glasgow performance since supporting the late Ian Dury at the now demolished Apollo almost 30 years ago. That was in the guise of Mr Pugh’s Velvet Glove Show, a demented Punch and Judyesque puppet act Milton fronted for 15 years prior to forming his No Wave-styled trio. Since an inspired appearance by Mr Pugh on Factory Records boss Tony Wilson’s TV show ‘So It Goes’ led to a brief tenure on the label, Blurt have released more than 20 under-the-radar albums. Highlights, including their magnificently titled debut single, ‘My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People,’ can be found on two essential ‘Let It Blurt’ best-ofs. It’s a long way from Milton’s original calling as a bookbinder and poet, whose work appeared in The Paris Review and seminal 1960s UK Beat compendium, Children Of Albion. Milton’s subsequent saxophonic epiphany, however, proved too f

Spies In The Wires@Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh Thu 10 May 2007 How smarty-pants London quintet 586’s charming concoction of shouty, dancy pop-pummelling got itself hijacked by the smattering of glow-sticks-to-the-max joke-New Rave trendies in evidence tonight is Scooby-gang mysterious. Six months back they’d have been hailed as post-punk pastichists extraordinaire. Then again, as with many of their compadres emanating from that particular cultural blip, 586’s sound is actually pre-punk, their reedy confection of mid-70s dressing-up-box dramatics and fair-ground boy/girl Dub more resembling that long-lost missing link between Glam and New Wave, Deaf School. To be applauded, then. 586’s finest moment, ‘Saying My Name,’ may be the result of drug-n’-cheese induced paranoia, but in terms of over-ripe Cheddar, Trash Fashion prove themselves as equally willing to embrace self-parody as they are in the YouTube-available mockumentary highlighting their east London antics in a manner more resemb

Tolbooth, Stirling, 25-27 May 2007 Experimental music festivals are currently so voluminous as to arguably be considered more over-ground than under. When Le Weekend first set the trend back in 1998, however, the landscape was a very different place to the one its tenth anniversary three-day wig-out now occupies. The previously strict demarcation between free jazz, electronica and a then fledgling noise scene has this year given way to an array anything-goes approach. So, just as Falkirk pianist Bill Wells introduces Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake to a collaboration with trombonist Annie Whitehead, To Rococo Rot’s Stefan Schneider and electronicist Barbara Morgenstern, Phantom Orchard unites harpist Zeena Parkins with Ikue Mori, once drummer with New York No Wave pioneers, DNA. Beyond such an inclusive roster are three especially exciting Le Weekend commissions. The One Ensemble Orchestra’s debut live show finds Volcano The Bear’s Daniel Padden fleshing out his low-key improvisat

Classic Anxiety Dream@The Meadow Bar, Edinburgh, Mon 18 July 2007 4 stars Last time Edinburgh hosted a weekly improv night was in the mid 1990s, when Lindsay Cooper’s Free Underground took over Monday nights at Henry’s Cellar Bar. Classic Anxiety Dream occupies similar terrain, and, judging by the amount of bodies squeezed into The Meadow Bar’s bijou upstairs function room, is filling a serious gap in the musical calendar. Nakatani is a Japanese, New York based percussionist who previously worked with Glasgow based sax player MacDonald and guitarist Davidson on the recent Aporias album. The final date of this UK tour finds the trio exploring similar percussive avenues, as Nakatani largely eschews conventional drumming in favour of bowls, gongs and rocks, while Davidson attacks his fret-board with a paint stripper and MacDonald skitters busily into his horn. For the second set, Phil Bancroft adds melodious tenor sax. Sods law, Classic Anxiety Dream moves to The Wash on The Mound f