Coffee-Table Notes

Stevie Jones always thought Sound of Yell would be a cool name for a band. This was the case ever since he used to go on holiday with his parents to the Shetlands with his parents, where the Yell Sound is the strait of water running between the two largest islands, Yell and Mainland. As one of the most sought after musical collaborators in the country prepares to release Leapling, his second full-length record under the Sound of Yell name, his full eight-piece band show at the CCA in Glasgow tonight has clearly made his wish come true. This is the case despite what those unfamiliar with Scottish geography might presume the band sound like from the name alone. “I suppose it suggests shouting,” says Jones, “but there’s a fragility there as well. As for the real Sound of Yell, I suppose it suggests a form of escape, and o I guess there’s a degree of nostalgia there as well.” Leapling’s collection of acoustic guitar-led instrumentals and low-key songs mix strings, woodwind, percus

Andy Gill – guitarist, producer Born January 1, 1956; died February 1, 2020 Andy Gill, who has died aged 64, was one of the most influential and inventive guitarists of his generation. As co-founder of Gang of Four, his abrasive and metallic guitar shards captured the urgency of the punk era, yet retained a skewed funkiness that suggested dance music as an incendiary and oppositionist force. Offset by the serious intent of songs such as At Home He’s A Tourist and To Hell with Poverty, Gang of Four gave the anything-goes eclecticism that punk opened up an extra edge. The band’s debut release, the Damaged Goods EP, released on Edinburgh’s Fast Product label in October 1978, was one of the earliest records now regarded as post-punk. The original Gang of Four’s mould-breaking sound forged by Gill with singer Jon King, bass player Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham eventually gave rise to a new wave of bands such as The Rapture. This in part inspired the quartet to reconvene i

Summerhall. Edinburgh until March 8 th Four stars Building a home, as demonstrated by the fifteen photographers and film-makers in this British Council touring exhibition travelling across ten venues in the Middle East and UK, is about more than four walls and a door. Pulled together by Cardiff-based Ffotogallery director David Drake, the show brings together work by artists from both territories to create a disparate community occupying the same global village. Kids play football and sit on walls in Xo, Josh Adams Jones’ studies of Oman’s ex-pats. In Melting Boundaries, Gillian Robertson captures a group of teenagers posing on a bench beside a tree, looking invincible enough to take on whatever world you’ve got. Such enlivened everydayness proves similarly captivating in Beyond Home, Hussain Almosawi and Mariam Alarab’s series of images of Bahraini immigrants who built new lives in Britain. En route to this, however, are the ruined mosques on the road to Medina in Moath