Coffee-Table Notes

02 ABC, Glasgow Celtic Connections Saturday January 18 th Four stars It may have been thirty-three years since Mark Stewart and Gareth Sager's gang of punk-funk avant-provocateurs last played Glasgow, but it was more than worth the wait at this unlikely but inspired Celtic Connections show that laid bare the roots of Bristol's influential post-punk melting pot of free jazz, funk and dub. The night also formed part of the twentieth anniversary of the similarly maverick Creeping Bent record label, hence the appearance of The Sexual Objects, the band formed by ex Fire Engine Davy Henderson following on from his previous band, The Nectarine No 9, with whom Pop Group guitarist Sager played and recorded. While all bar one of The Sexual Objects are time-served Nectarines, the SOBs opening gambit goes back even further, to Henderson and guitarist Simon Smeeton's post Fire Engines project, Win, with a cover of that band's heroic 'You've Got The Power&

The Arches, February 13th in the city there are eight million stories. One of these is 'Pulse', a collaboration between film-maker Ruth Paxton and Grammy nominated composer Dobrinka Tabakova. The world premiere of this thirteen-minute impressionistic noir opens this year's Glasgow Short Film Festival accompanied by a live rendition of Tabakova's Gamelan-based score. “ We started off talking about the idea of the city,” says Paxton of an idea which developed after the Royal Philharmonic Society, who had commissioned Paxton's earlier film, 'Rockhaven', suggested the collaboration. “There was the idea too of this basic human need to connect, and we talked about someone sending a distress signal.” 'Pulse' eventually won the RPS a PRS for Music Foundation commission. With the film's Glasgow screening preceded by a selection of short works by Tabakova, music and image are as inseparable as they were in Paxton's film, 'Nevad

Think of rock and roll Shakespeare, and likely as not the commercial kitsch of Return To The Forbidden Planet, based on a 1950s science-fiction film inspired by The Tempest, will come to mind. When the energetic Filter company decided to tackle Twelfth Night, however, a far more eclectic musical mix came out in the stripped-down ninety-minute version of Shakespeare's romantic comedy that visits the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow next week. Like The Tempest, Twelfth Night opens with a ship-wreck. Unlike The Tempest, Twelfth Night veers off into a madcap sequence of mistaken identity, cross-dressing and thwarted love affairs before the inevitable happy ending as Viola and Duke Orsino get hitched. Originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company for its Complete Works Festival in 2006, Filter's thoroughly post-modern take on the play has proved to be a sensation in Edinburgh, London, Holland, Germany and Spain, hence this latest tour. “It's the show that never d

Collective Gallery,  Edinburgh – January 18-March 2 2014 When it was announced that French artist Bertille Bak's home town of Barlin, city No.5 in the Pas-de-Calais in northern France, was to be renovated as part of a programme of urban regeneration, the authorities promised much for the former mining parish. This included vastly increased rents for a tight-knit community who were effectively being priced out of living in what is now described on Barlin's Wikipedia page as being 'a modern and dynamic place that offers its residents numerous amenities...' Bak's response was 'Faire le mur', her 2008 film which in part charts the residents of Barlin's resistance to the proposed changes, yet does it in a way that goes beyond documentary to create a magical-realist meta-narrative that blurs the boundaries of fact and fiction. Rather than the poverty porn of Channel 4's latest underclass-baiting obscenity, 'Benefits Street', Bak has lo

Mary Mary, Glasgow January 25-March 15 There's something missing from Alan Reid's second show of paintings at Mary Mary. Anyone familiar with the already hazy façades of the Texan-born artist's work will recall how much it has been dominated by the figure of a woman, aloof, enigmatic and as studiedly bored as a 1970s 'Jackie' magazine mannequin, soft-focused, dappled pink and insipid. As the title of this new show points to, the lady has vanished from the scene, leaving a trail of clues that suggests that she might in fact just be hiding. “It’s an exhibition designed to convey an absent character,” Reid explains. “ A show without a subject. My previous shows used images of women extensively, so I thought it would be interesting to hint at her presence, without showing. Something like all those cinematic clichés of lipstick on glass, or a newspaper left on a park bench, or a bra thrown over a lampshade…The paintings are basically non-functioning clock

02 ABC, Glasgow Four stars Mark Stewart and Gareth Sager's reformed crew of original punk-funk provocateurs aren't an obvious choice for Celtic Connections. Then again, anyone who can mix up a multi-cultural stew of free jazz, dub and anti-capitalist agit-prop is more connected than most, as the Pop Group prove in their first Glasgow show for thirty-three years. Tonight is also about celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the similarly eclectic Creeping Bent record label, and the evening begins with a set from The Sexual Objects, former Fire Engine Davy Henderson's latest groove-laden vehicle. Selections from their forthcoming second album are preceded by a magnificently audacious cover of You've Got The Power by Henderson's former band Win. Stripped of its 1980s production gloss, tonight it more resembles the Live 1969 version of the Velvet Underground's What Goes On. The Pop Group go one better with their opening clarion call of We Are All Pro

Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock Four stars There's something irresistibly invigorating about Robert Louis Stevenson's historical romp, first published in 1886. Dressing it up as a Boys Own style adventure was a master-stroke, and by putting young David Balfour in the thick of a plot that involves political intrigue, Jacobite rebellion and considerable macho swagger, Stevenson created something akin to a Look and Learn of its day that has captured the imaginations of would-be Davie's ever since. The ambitious Sell A Door company take the book's spirit and run with it in Anna Fox's big, bold production of Ivan Wilkinson's new stage version, which opened its extensive tour last week. There's already something of a commotion onstage as the audience enter to the cast belting out a song on fiddle, guitar and pounding percussion as if they were a punk-folk ceilidh combo in full pelt. This is just a curtain-raiser, however, to allow the older Davie to sp