Which one will you pick?

So - I am in a foul mood. My belated enthusiasm for football has me on an emotional roller-coaster, and the comprehensive defeat by Peterborough of Watford has me in a very bad temper. It makes a nice change from the anger that I feel about my personal failures, I suppose. At least when the Hornets get drubbed, I don't blame myself.

However loud I shout, the team won't hear me in the south of England. Instead, I'll find something else to complain about...

One of the things that has preoccupied me as a critic is the idea of the curator as an artist: manipulate, Arika, Svend Brown with Minimal. Simon Reynolds suggests that this is a very contemporary response to art: in the mood of the internet, it becomes collation rather than creation that is the focus of artistry.

And I have been positive about this development. Taste, determination, the ability to see connections between disparate artists: the curator does need a skill set that could probably be taught in an art school. But let me add another quality, something from the stock of the comedian: timing. It would be wonderful if the audience weren't forced to pick between events.

For fans of music outside of the mainstream, here's the choice for next week: first up we have Outskirts. It might be a little old school - having a band at the top of the bill and all- but it is at Platform, meaning that there's a chance for a swim if anyone turns up early and it features two artists - Xana Marwick and Greig Sinclair - who get into the music/live art cross over action.

Second choice: Freedom is a constant struggle, from Arika, at Tramway. I have quite a bit to say about that, and look out for updates in the coming days...  however, this ought to appeal to anyone who likes chat as much as music: Arika are all about the dialectic.

Third choice is at The City Halls. A special mention must go out to UNESCO, city of music. They have a lovely website that tells you all about the events in Glasgow without mentioning their own weekend of Man and Machine. Being disconsolate that Watford only managed to pull back two goals towards the end of the match, I am just going to cut and paste the press release...

Robots and Space

Fri 19 April, 7:30pm

Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, Main Auditorium
The amazing M&M robot orchestra from Gent fills the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall auditorium with its magical offering of musicality and machinery. Musicians interact with the machines – part techno magic, part steampunk fantasy – to create a moving and theatrical performance.

Andrea Sartori (from Bologna) makes music characterized by fine grooves, evocative moods, humid reverbs and hypnotic synth patterns. The grand finale is Volkwerk Folleto, again form Bologna: audio visual fantasists with a lyrical edge.

Please note there is nudity at this performance.





Man High and OdeusSat 20 April, 7pm
City Halls, Recital Room/Old Fruitmarket

Man High brings together live and electronic music with spectacular live manipulation of visuals to pay tribute to a pioneer of the space age, Joe Kittinger. In 1960, Kittinger set the record for the longest skydive, from a height greater than 31 kilometres. He recently hit the headlines again for helping Felix Baumgartner break this skydiving record.

A club night of outstanding sound and vision from across Europe and a rare gathering of digital artists, innovators, visionaries and mavericks. Odeus, a digital ‘orchestra’ from Seville fill the Recital Room with ravishing cinematic soundscapes using the latest technology.

Part of Man and Machines: UNESCO Music Days in Glasgow.



I take one weekend off and miss three things that would have excited, intrigued and fascinated me. I guess there are three workshops on being a curator. The "what" you put on is sorted, and the "where" (all the venues are worth a visit on their own, let alone when packed with happenings). It's just the "when" that needs some work - a date without competing events is a good idea: all three of these events will be of interest to similar audiences...

Eno gets Brewed

Shock Upset at City Halls as Local Boys Take Down Magisterial Soundscape artist


Music at the Brew House 4: Icebreaker 3

Brian Eno, long established as the defining artists for both ambient and electronic music, has lost out to Edinburgh's contemporary classical underdogs Stephen Deazley and Martin Parker. This long-awaited clash, pairing Edinburgh's Music at the Brewhouse against Icebreaker's recreation of Eno's Apollo, ended in upset as Deazley's collaboration with media designer  Andy McGregor emphasised an idiosyncratic story of one man's bravery over The Science Museum's 2009 commission featuring Eno's music and NASA's footage of the moon landing.

On paper, it was no contest. Eno's 1983 album Apollo, Atmospheres and Soundtracks had been scored for Icebreaker, known for their driving soundtrack to Ashley Page's seminal ballet, Cheating, Lying, Stealing. The addition of BJ Cole upfront on pedal steel, and the unseen images from Apollo's mission to the moon, seemed to ensure that Brewhouse, more frequently seen at Tramway creating multi-media musical happenings and relying only on a film of the barely known test pilot Joseph Kittinger, would provide little more than a distraction.

Brewhouse chose to bat first, offering a taut introduction. Guided by Kittinger's journey into the outer reaches of the stratosphere, and his descent, Man High made optimum use of the chamber line up: Peter Furness' clarinets summoning up the woozy splendour of the ascent, while the three violins held steady, lending a romantic swoon to the adventure. Driven by Joby Burgess' diverse percussion and David Knotts' pulsating keyboards, Brewhouse illustrated McGregor's mixing of the 1960 footage of the pilot's 32  kilometer leap.

In the second half, Icebreaker began with a solid summary of the space race's intentions. Footage of Kennedy giving it patriotic pride and the tension at Cape Canaveral soon resolved into iconic imagery of the Apollo spacecraft reaching to the moon. Because of the emphasis on new footage - no countdown to blast-off or amusing zero gravity snacking - the familiarity of the journey does not detract from the spectacular surrealism of the moon landing. By the time the astronauts finally reach the moon, Icebreaker have established both the bravery of the mission and the splendour of our species' trans-planetary ambition.

For all Brewhouse's dynamic drama, the relaxed majesty of Eno and Icebreaker looked set to triumph. Then, sometime between the landing and the larking about on the moon, Icebreaker lost the game. Cole's pedal steel adds an awkward sentimentality to the sequences after the US flag has been planted. The new footage is given the intensity of holiday film, a schmaltzy, thoughtless celebration of a couple of guys arsing about in outer space. Eno is not just an avant-garde electronic experimentalist: he is the producer of U2, and this is audible in the later half of For All Mankind. Ironically, the astronauts are brought back to earth by his sterile theft of Hawaiian and country motifs.

Of course, the real winner tonight was contemporary classical music: Deazley and Parker established themselves as accessible, forceful composers, and even Icebreaker's disappointing result linked ambient electronica to lush orchestration. A show of two halves, perhaps... but both halves demonstrated how music can reanimate obscure heroes of history and events that familiarity has rendered empty.