Coffee-Table Notes

4 stars It was Kitchenware Records underdogs Hurrah! Who gifted this bumper 5 CD 1980s indie-pop compendium takes its name its title via a lyric from their single Hip Hip, which duly inspired a Sarah Records related fanzine. It's arguable that neither Kitchenware, Sarah or the bands they housed could have existed without Orange Juice, who flirted with the fragile notion of happiness on their song, Felicity. It was Edwyn Collins' arch-janglers, after all, who arguably invented the anti-macho, anti-rockist aesthetic that would go on to become a genre before Madchester and Brit-Pop triumphalism shoved such literate sensibilities aside. It's odd, therefore, that while Collins' Sound of Young Scotland contemporaries Josef K, Aztec Camera and Fire Engines are here, Orange Juice aren't. Neither, indeed, are The Pastels, who picked up Postcard Records DIY mantle and went on to influence the spirit of every generation of independently-minded bands that followed in t

Summerhall, Edinburgh 3 stars The title of this new show of sixteen watercolours hung all too appropriately in Summerhall's wood-panelled Dean's Room may sound lifted from a 1960s Cold War spy caper, but its depictions of books and documents all bundled up with brown paper and string are even more intriguing. The Esterhazy family archive is stored in Forchenstein, south of Vienna in twenty-five vaulted rooms in the basement of an ancient fortress. Buchanan's excavation not only captures the meticulous intricacy of the endeavour, but, seems to tap in too to the whole notion of archiving as art so much in vogue right now. Yet, by observing it at first remove, as Buchanan does here, there's a gimlet-eyed objectivity to his studies as much as there is warmth. While there are hints of Beauysian-styled detritus on show acknowledged in the title of one of the larger works hung on the walls beside Summerhall's staircase, framing the archives in impressionistic pa

Tron Theatre, Glasgow 3 stars The clue is in the title of this new comedy sci-fi musical by Mick Cooke, Gordon Davidson and Alan Wilkinson as to what it's about. Set a hundred years into the future, the earth is so overcrowded that sex has been banned, leaving shiny shell-suited virgins Largs and Jaxxon on a mission to pop their cherry by way of a one-way ticket to Mars to help repopulate a planet occupied solely by women. When they fall into the clutches of Queen Beatrice and her man-hungry daughters Pippa and Yasmin, however, they appear to have bitten off more than they can chew. Andy Arnold's production, a collaboration between the Tron, Twentytwo Productions and Limelight, blasts off with a series of libidinous scenarios in a camp cartoon of a show that boldly goes places that taste forgot. Arnold's production is rough round the edges, as fringe musicals should be, and is enlivened by a fistful of songs accompanied by a four-piece band led by musical dir

On a stage full of musical clutter, there's a man playing a harmonium. The drones emanating from the instrument are mournful, and as familiar sounding as the school assembly piano tinkles coming from the other side of the stage. Yet, only when a voice comes in does everything click into place. It's a voice that doesn't so much speak as intone in a doleful and deadpan baritone that's instantly recognisable as one Ivor Cutler, the Glasgow-born poet, songwriter and performer whose minimalist absurdism captured several generations of left-field humour-loving listeners to BBC radio. This relationship began in the 1950s and 1960s on Monday Night at Home, broadening Cutler's appeal in the 1980s and 1990s via John Peel and Andy Kershaw's shows before Cutler passed away in 2006. The above scene opened the third day of a week's development at Inverness' Eden Court Theatre for Matthew Lenton's Vanishing Point theatre company's forthcoming show. This co

When a lone trumpeter found himself beguiled by an alien spectacle populated by strange creatures, he was inspired to do something similar. So, enlisting a pair of fellow travellers, the trumpeter and his comrades decreed to set out on a mission and boldly go where they'd never been before. The result of the endeavours of Mick Cooke, Gordon Davidson and Alan Wilkinson is Cannibal Women of Mars, a brand new science-fiction comedy musical involving a planet-load of man-eating women, an over-crowded Earth offering cheap emigration deals to Mars, and a set of brand new songs in the best rock and roll musical tradition. “I went to see Avenue Q,” says Cooke of the left-field musical behind his initial inspiration. “I hadn't been to many musicals, but this seemed really different, and I felt there was maybe more room for something like that. Then at the start of 2011 I got together with Gordy and Alan, and said how do you fancy writing a musical. All I knew at that stage was tha

When research scientist and PhD student Kevin McMahon took part in a TV reality show that gave members of the public a crash course in a field diametrically opposed to their own, he would never have dreamt that it would lead to him, not just switching careers, but to founding what was probably the world's first magic festival. As the fourth Edinburgh International Magic Festival begins this weekend, however, McMahon, now the festival's co-director and a full-time close-up magician himself for the last six years, it's an accidental dream come true. It was when McMahon applied to take part in Faking It that the dream began. The producers whisked him off to America, where he studied magic for two weeks under globally successful double act, Penn and Teller. On his return, he performed to Paul Daniels, who presumed McMahon not to be an old hand at the magic game. McMahon himself was smitten, and has been performing professionally ever since. EIMF was born from an ide

From the playground to the office block, pecking orders exist in all walks of life. This is made explicitly clear in the revival of Multiplex, Christopher William Hill's play written for the Tron Theatre, Glasgow's Tron Skillshops young people's theatre group that forms part of the theatre's outreach and community initiative, Tron Participation. Hill's play looks at the twilight world of multiplex cinemas where a coterie of ushers jockey for position in the after-dark food chain they occupy. From the Plankton at the bottom of the pack, we move up a peg with the too cool for school Dudes before we meet the Buffs, for whom what goes on up there on the big-screen is a matter of life and death. Whether such a chain of command exists in the assorted groups that make up Tron Skillshops and Tron Participation isn't on record, although it's interesting to note that many of the teenage performers taking part in Multiplex were members of the junior group when