Wintersong, The Platform, Easterhouse - Gig Review

Wintersong Festival, The Platform, Easterhouse - Gig Review. November 2014

I've been to a couple of events at The Platform in Easterhouse now and always found it a great venue. Nice staff, decent spaces for performances and just about accessible from the city centre with a short walk from Easterhouse train station or, as on this occaision, those nice people at Mono often run a bus to gigs. It goes without saying that this is what the people of Easterhouse have to do in reverse when gigs are elsewhere.

Wintersong was billed as "an evening of music and song based around the theme of winter". With eight acts lined up it promised to be a busy evening and Northumbrian guitarist and singer Steve Malley (who performs as Horse Loom) had the task of kicking things off whilst it had hardly got dark outside, or many people had yet got to the bar. He admitted to not having done his homework on the winter theme but played a grand set of folk-tinged tunes, and told some creaky jokes. (On a side note if you Google "Horse Loom band" you do get to see some lovely ponies that people have made with those colourful wee rubber bands, I bet he never thought of that when he chose the name.)

Next up Plinth had Michael Tanner, sporting beard and sailor's cap, and friend looping their accordion and violin into bleak drones. Then Howie Reeve played solo with his acoustic bass, giving us lyrics like a "one legged pigeon pecking at a battered sausage" and looking on winter as a political winter we are going through in the post-referendum Britain of David Cameron. 

The winter theme gave Alasdair Roberts plenty of scope to indulge a very Scottish list of seasonal cold hearts, death, betrayal and poison. His folk leanings seem to view winter as a dark place. Mesmerising as ever, I could have watched him perform for another hour, but the tight schedule didn't allow for that and it was back across the hall again to hear Richard Youngs. At this point it is obligatory to use the phrase "prolific and diverse" to describe Richard's musical output. Tonight he bemoaned a sore throat, so he played guitar whilst his young son Sorley was the star of the evening with a 30 minute, impeccably delivered piece. He'd suggested that the piece was based upon the 154 days between the clocks going back and then forwards again in the spring, 14x11 dividing the piece (also the same number as Shakespeare's sonnets by the way). Whatever the reasoning it was the stand out performance of the night. 

As Grumbling Fur Alexander Tucker and Daniel O'Sullivan and a lot of kit delivered a half hour set of psychedelic electro-prog-rock. Very enjoyable it was too and I'd look out for them performing again. They feigned an attempt to find a wintery theme to their songs, but Louis Abbot, lead singer of Scottish band Admiral Fallow, didn't even pretend. As he tried out the novelty of playing solo, it did feel a wee bit as if he was missing his band. 

Finally, the previous Scottish Album of the Year winner RM Hubbert played a specially composed instrumental piece on unaccompanied guitar, giving us a quieter, more reflective perspective of winter, like a wee mouse having to "thole winter's sleety dribble". I wouldn't have been surprised to step outside to find the silence that a sudden 6 inches of snow creates, but it was the usual mild, wet Glasgow winter nonsense and the strum of the traffic on the M8 back to town soon shook me out of my tranquil repose.

Sighthill Stone Circle - Rock Music

It's always a treat to see Mogwai perform. The post-rock band have been ploughing their own furrow for almost two decades now and their fabulous soundtrack album for the French TV series Les Revenants/The Returned seems to be winning them new followers and appreciation. Listening to their albums you sometimes forget the impact that their live performances have, shifting from low key tranquil passages to crashing white noise that feels like getting punched in the chest. They've had a busy couple of weeks as they performed their soundtrack to Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's film Zidane live in Manchester, London and Glasgow over the past fortnight. Alongside that frontman Stuart Braithwaite has been busy organising a gig and doing the round of newspaper interviews to raise publicity and funds for the campaign to save the Sighthill Stone Circle.

Looking west from Sighthill stone circle

Designed by Duncan Lunan, the astronomically aligned stone circle was erected in 1979 in an imaginative use of the government's Job Creation Scheme and was immediately criticised by Margaret Thatcher on her arrival in power. To this end it was never properly landscaped or completed and has always been a wee forgotten corner of Glasgow. Stuart Braithwaite (of Mogwai) is the son of John Braithwaite, technical supervisor to the project. Glasgow City Council recently announced plans to remove the circle as part of their application for the World Youth Games 2018, as part of a housing project. However as their application has failed, uncertainty surrounds the future plans for the area and there is growing support for investing in maintaining the green space around the circle properly and refurbishing Sighthill Park with the stone circle as its focus, completed to the original plans.

But before seeing Stuart playing solo at the Sighthill Stone Circle gig we had the chance to see Mogwai perform last weekend in Glasgow. The venue at 220 Broomielaw caused a bit of head scratching but turning up on the night revealed that it was indeed the gap site down by the Clyde where the stage had been set up outdoors. Fortunately in a rare outbreak of summer they had picked a balmy evening and as the sun went down behind the neighbouring buildings Mogwai came onstage to perform the Zidane soundtrack live with the film projected behind them. I am a big fan of documentary films but this portrait of the footballer Zinedine Zidane plays out more like a drama with the rising music of Mogwai telling the story. It is quite hypnotic as we watch a Spanish league match but with the 17 cameras all focused on Zidane in real time. He broods, he frowns, he seems peripheral and in his own wee bubble whilst we read occasional subtitled thoughts from him on what goes through his head during a game, he paws the ground like a racehorse. As if someone scripted the whole thing, after initially going behind he lays on a fantastic pass for one of Real's two goals, emotionless throughout. When an unexpected smile breaks across his face it feels like high drama, then a minute later he needlessly punches someone and is sent off. It is quite hypnotic but I hadn't realised until seeing it live how much the music is the narrator of the drama. The final ear splitting crescendo left me waiting and waiting for Zidane's final, explosive act. The whole thing manages to convey the drama that is found in even the most mundane of football matches, and was made shortly before Zidane's crazy headbutt of Materazzi in the world cup final, showing that the film makers managed to capture something of the man.



Emma Pollock

Six days later a fantastic line up of musicians performed at Easterhouse's Platform for the Sighthill Stone Circle cause. As my priority that Saturday afternoon was Partick Thistle's return to Firhill after the summer break (a nil-nil draw against AEL Limassol which didn't quite carry the same drama as Zidane's match) we missed Aidan Moffat's opening set and I think Duncan Lunan spoke about the circle too. However we were there to catch Graeme Ronald in RememberRemember guise, fighting against the noise from the bar with his looping tunes. After his first album I wondered how much mileage there was in this and then he came out with the fantastic "The Quickening" album, combining great music and a possible reference to one of my favourite films. So I await his next move with interest. Next up was Eugene Kelly, once of The Vaselines doing his guitar and mouthie thing, before we were back across into the smaller hall for the exceptional Emma Pollock. (Is it just me that sees Shirley Henderson and Emma Pollock as twins seperated at birth?) The one-time Delgado performed solo and then backed by 75% of the Cairn String Quartet. Her new material sounded good, particularly her song for Strathbungo, "Marchtown".

 

Stuart Braithwaite

Then we had Stuart Braithwaite and it was great to hear some of the Mogwai material stripped down to just his singing and guitar, such as CODY. The highlights were from the more soulful, gospel end of the spectrum such as "What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?" which is a perfect fit on the "Les Revenants" soundtrack. Seeing him doing these songs in this way you can see the strange roots of Mogwai's music in these southern gospel and blues tunes. Next up was the winner of this year's Scottish Album of the Year award, RM Hubbert doing his thing on guitar but singing some of his new material too. He also reprised two tracks off of his last album accompanied first by Emma Pollock for Half Light and then in a finishing "battle of the bearded SAY award winners", by Aidan Moffat for Car Song.

  

Aidan Moffat and RM Hubbert

Kilsyth shoe-gazers The Twilight Sad brought proceedings to a close. As you can see it was a feast of fine tunes and I think they sold themselves short by charging only £6 for the tickets. So if you are wanting to find out more about the Sighthill Stone Circle, sign the petition or get involved in the consultation, have a look at their website. Even better go and have a look at the circle itself and imagine what could be done to sort it out rather than demolishing it. If for no other reason than for the fact that it wound up Margaret Thatcher, take a minute to find out about it. Surely that is a good enough reason for preserving it?

 



Sighthill Stone Circle looking east

East End Entertainments In Glasgow.

Review of Outskirts Festival, Platform. Easterhouse and BFI Mediatheque, Bridgeton Olympia Library, Glasgow.

 

Last year's inaugural Outskirts Festival was a sell out. No surprise with popular acts such as Aidan Moffat, Vashti Bunyan and readings from the likes of William Letford that time around. This year the festival stuck more closely to its own goals as "a venue on the outer reaches of a major city ought to doff its cap to artists on the edge of their disciplines or those creative people who are simply too curious to stick to one artform". They had advertised it as "recommended for the whole family". So taking them at their word we headed to the Platform as a family. There were options to include food in the ticket price and price reductions available if you had "local links". I was going to claim this on the fact that a decade ago I had spent a year working in Easterhouse but in the end "local links" just meant having a Glasgow postcode. The venue is not one I'd been to before. It is part of the Bridge complex in Easterhouse, which also includes the swimming pool, library, John Wheatley college and plays host to Scotland's National Youth Theatre.

Olympia building at Bridgeton Cross

We decided to make a day of it in the east end and started at Bridgeton Library. This recently re-opened in the former Olympia cinema and music hall building right at Bridgeton Cross and includes Scotland's "first BFI Mediatheque". This is a film and television archive from Scottish Screen and the BFI. Armed with just your library ticket you access this at a computer screen in wee booths in a dedicated section of the library. The choice is so wide and varied the hard part is deciding where to start, whether you go for old 50s Horlicks adverts and documentaries about Glasgow shipbuilding or the first episode of TV show Swap Shop. There are films too, from Gregory's Girl to Great Expectations. We ended up dipping in and out of a lot of things but our collective favourites were footage of the 1908 London Olympics and watching Peter Cushing as Doctor Who in Dalek Invasion Earth 2150.

BFI Mediatheque, Bridgeton

We also wandered round the corner to a gallery which has been open for a couple of years in an industrial building here but which I only heard about when there was a feature on it in The Skinny this month. The David Dale Gallery was hosting an exhibition by Harry Meadley featuring some other Leeds based artists. You wouldn't stumble across the gallery by accident unless you had come here on purpose but it is certainly worth seeking out. After this we swung past the Modern Institute in Osborne Street which has an exhibition just now of paintings by Swiss artist Nicolas Party. From here we could pop around the corner to get a vegetarian lunch at Mono and join in the fun of Record Store Day, the day when lots of men with beards queue up at record shops to buy vinyl they don't want but hope to flog later on ebay. Mono were also running a bus to Easterhouse for the Outskirts Festival, so wiping the last falafel crumbs from the corners of our mouths we headed for it.

David Dale Gallery

Outskirts Festival

As I'm visiting Denmark and Holland during the summer I was drawn by the chance to hear Danish Frisk Frugt (it means fresh fruit apparently), and Dutch performer/ musician Jaap Blonk. A Hawk and a Hacksaw's Balkan-influenced folky music was also a draw and the chance to hear a reading from Rob Newman, once part of The Mary Whitehouse Experience. There were other more eclectic offerings promised to and performance art promised throughout the evening.

Florence To

Jaap Blonk set the tone giving us a sound poetry recital. I've been to lots of sound poetry performances and I'm not convinced that it brings anything more than the reading of words or the playing of music could to tell a story or express an emotion. This was the first time that I'd forced it upon my three children though and their less filtered opinions are always interesting. They found it bonkers but amusing, which is probably fair enough. He gave us a history of Sound Poetry, from early 20th Century Russian to Dutch members of the De Stijl movement. Between acts in one of the rooms Florence To played projections of geometric shapes onto white pyramids to a background of ambient electronic music. It was hypnotic stuff and the later performers got her to leave it on to add to their performances. Some of the other art on show was a bit hit or miss, although I did end up with a bag from the screenprinting Poster Club. In the main auditorium next up was "Sonata for a Man and a Boy" by Greg Sinclair and an excellent turn by young Bartek Bialucki. It was a performance involving movement, conversation and a cello lesson where the man's inner child and boy's adult interplay. It was gentle and engaging and warm and fuzzy without feeling the need to be dark or foreboding. A poetry reading by Ryan Van Winkle never quite hit the right note, whereas acapella singers Crying Lion, were note perfect and oddly one of my children's favourite performances with their olde England cider-appley sound.

 

We were disappointed that Rob Newman wasn't well, as we'd been quite keen to hear him, but Scottish writer Kirstin Innes stepped in for him, reading her tales of social dancing torture at school.

Frisk Frugt

Frisk Frugt's latest album got a rave review in The Quietus so I was looking forward to hearing them. Danish musician Anders Laug Meldgaard comes from a country where jazz is apparently not a bad word, but also a country where it has not been allowed to stagnate and has positive influences on the experimental, jazz-tinged sounds of Frisk Frugt. Driven on by his forceful percussionist who used a variety of bells, drums and chimes Anders moved from keyboard to mini-sax and his homemade organ put together from an array of swanee whistles and recorders. Their last piece was particularly impressive and beautifully put together, moving from chaos to order. This was definitely the highlight of my day. The evening was finished in style by A Hawk and a Hacksaw, the two-piece from Albuquerque, New Mexico rattling off their Balkan soaked tunes on violin and accordion. It was a foot-tappingly good performance but a bit unengaging for me. Central European folk music is not something I have a great handle on so it is hard for me to know where respectful imitation ends and original music making begins here. I think perhaps the setting didn't help this with the audience sat in the auditorium chairs looking down on the musicians. It was music that would be better heard sat around a fire with them or dancing in a village hall.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw

Overall it was a well organised, interestingly curated festival. The atmosphere was pleasant and the unusual settling with library book shelves you could browse between acts and a sports centre cafe serving bottled beer and paninis worked well. It didn't feel like it had imposed itself on the area either but tried to engage with it. When a group of local boys kept wanting into things they were invited in without anyone fussing over it. Even after they ran out from the sound poetry guffawing theatrically I later saw Jaap Blonk and one of the festival organisers talking to them in a hall trying to show them how he makes his loudest farting noises. Other kids who had wandered in seemed to be getting a chance to do some screenprinting. Good effort all round, but maybe needs to work on the publicity a bit next year as this felt a bit like a wee secret.