Music
EMBRACING BRANCHES OF DIY CULTURE IS TO BE APPLAUDED
www.list.co.uk/music Hitlist THE BEST ROCK, POP, JAZZ & FOLK*
Do you DIY?
A new mini festival in Edinburgh brings together grassroots musicians, filmmakers and artists. Neil Cooper hopes sparks will fly
T he poster for Hidden Door says it all. Or rather, the shakily sketched image advertising Edinburgh’s new cross-artform weekender at Roxy Art House says so little that it cannily sums up the event’s enigmatic appeal. A shadowy figure tentatively peers through the cracks of some secret passageway, light dazzles – suggesting something revelatory beyond its portals.
In spirit, this strategy recalls the opaque publicity from two very different artistic institutions; Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre during its 1970s golden age, and Eric’s, the Liverpool cellar punk club that spawned the city’s music scene, and a million legends with it. The Citz’s penchant for audacious re-workings of obscure European classics were sold with a title, the bare bones details of the event and an image bearing only an abstract relationship with its inspiration. Meanwhile, over at Eric’s, visionary owner Roger Eagle reputedly promoted a gig by a band called The Table not with posters, but by leaving an actual table outside the club. In both instances, if you got the idea, you were welcome. And if you didn’t, well, you were never going to like what was on offer anyway.
Judging by its website, Hidden Door is a lot more user-friendly than its initial missives suggest. With thirty bands, forty visual artists and an array of film- makers and poets, the event is an ambitious attempt to rub a disparate set of artists up against each other in the hope that sparks fly. In a city with no historical precedent for such events, and venues generally focusing exclusively on one artform, Hidden Door’s attempt to embrace the assorted branches of local
DIY culture is to be applauded.
‘It’s an attempt to get all the different strands of creative people in one place,’ explains Hidden Door creative director David Martin. ‘I’ve always felt Edinburgh’s artistic community was quite fragmented. There are lots of little pockets of activity, but they tend to exist in isolation from one another. The more you meet people though, there’s a sense of them really wanting to go for something like this.’ Hidden Door is a grand-scale step-up from having like-minded bands play artist-run exhibition openings, a tactic employed by The Embassy gallery (now housed in Hidden Door’s venue, Roxy Art House), The Forest, The Bowery and regular band/art coordinators Sierra Metro. Hidden Door also acknowledges the music/art interface in a similar way to The Link show at Edinburgh Music Library. For instance, the line-up includes Randan Discotheque, the musical project of artist Craig Coulthard who recently won the award to create Scotland’s contribution to 2012’s Cultural Olympiad. Other music acts include Jesus H Foxx, The Pineapple Chunks, The Leg and Broken Records.
‘The ultimate goal with Hidden Door is to establish it on Edinburgh’s cultural calendar as a platform for people to collaborate,’ says Martin. ‘We’re describing it as a pilot event, and I’d like it to happen at least once a year. If it does well, there’ll definitely be another event in October. There’s a real hunger for it just now. The time is right.’
Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Sat 30–Sun 31 Jan.
✽✽ Delphic There are New Order-y moments and Depeche Modisms on Delphic’s debut album Acolyte, so expect quite a dancey live show, we reckon. Fri 22 Jan, King Tut’s, Glasgow. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Gordon McIntyre, Any Color Black, Dirty Boots and Pandacetamol Ballboy’s Gordon joins Glasgow electro- rockers ACB and Edinburgh vintage-synthers, Pandacetomol. Thu 21 Jan, The GRV, Edinburgh. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ The Ex and Brass Unbound Straight outta the Dutch underground, The Ex are a bit punk, a bit krautrock, a bit ‘world’ and a whole lot good. They’re joined by jazz trumpets and saxophones from Brass Unbound. Sat 30 Jan, CCA, Glasgow. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Celtic Connections Performances from the tweedily eccentric wonderboy Alasdair Roberts, and a showcase of the best on Chemikal Underground’s roster are some of the highlights in the last ten days of the festival. See listings, page 77. Thu 21–Sun 31 Jan. Various venues, Glasgow. ✽✽ Hidden Door Festival See preview, left. Sat 30–Sun 31 Jan, Roxy Art House, Edinburgh. (Rock & Pop) ✽✽ Born to Be Wide Ah, zer gut! They’re doing a German night at Born to Be Wide’s sixth birthday, and inviting those Berlin techno-pop wizards Jeans Team. Should be super-fantastische. Thu 4 Feb, Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh. (Rock & Pop) 21 Jan–4 Feb 2010 THE LIST 63