BEST OF 2012
BEST OF 2012 Before we’re launched headlong into 2013, it’s worth taking a look back at some of the cultural gems 2012 has delivered. Here, fi ve of The List’s section editors look back over their top fi ves for the year.
32 THE LIST 13 Dec 2012–24 Jan 2013
ALBUMS EXHIBITIONS
1 DJANGO DJANGO Django Django (Because)
It’s easy to draw comparisons with The Beta Band – especially as DD member David Maclean is brothers with BB’s John Maclean – but from the chirping, floaty intro that segues into the transcendental swamp-funk of ‘Hail Bop’, their debut treads its own sci-fi rock path, merging folk, Afrobeat and electronica with indie-pop. Continuously inventive and complex, yet accessible, warm, comforting and irresistible.
1 GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF VISUAL ART
Glasgow International returned for its fifth edition with the usual impressive city-wide programme of Scottish and international artists. Highlights included new work by Karla Black (pictured), whose layer cake of sawdust, resembling a giant tiramisu, took over the ground floor of the Gallery of Modern Art, while Jeremy Deller’s ‘Sacrilege’, which recreated Stonehenge as a huge bouncy castle, proved a massive popular hit. Various venues, Glasgow, Apr.
2 MEURSAULT Something For The Weakened (Song, By Toad)
2 IAN HAMILTON FINLAY: TWILIGHT REMEMBERS
Back in June when this third LP from Neil Pennycook and co came out, The List proclaimed it ‘their most cohesive, gorgeous and forceful album yet’. The soaring arias and insistent strings – all driven forward like a steam train by Pennycook’s powerful vocal – marked a big step forward for the Edinburgh chamber-folk band. No filler, and it sounds radio-ready too.
3 ERRORS Have Some Faith in Magic (Rock Action)
They’ve been building pleasure palaces (a terrible pun on the title of one of this LP’s more shimmeringly infectious tracks) out of their electro- kosmsiche-math rock vibes since 2006, when they released ‘How Clean is Your Acid House’. Six years on, the Glasgow trio added vocals for the first time, plus more woozy space-odyssey melodies (eg ‘Blank Media’) and throbbing synth masterworks. Lords of the dance, these guys.
4 THE TWILIGHT SAD No One Can Ever Know (FatCat)
Grandiose drama is the stock-in-trade of the Kilsyth emo-post-rockers. And there were a few shivers up the spine delivered by this, an icy update on their guitar-squall sound, with added synths, and deadpan, Depeche-style chills. It led to a stunning remix album towards the end of the year too, featuring Com Truise, JD Twitch, Liars, Mogwai and Errors.
5 KONX-OM-PAX Regional Surrealism (Planet Mu)
Tom Scholefield, aka Konx-Om-Pax, used to DJ around Glasgow with Ross Birchard, aka Hudson Mohawke, and is chuffed at the upwards spike his friend’s career’s taken. ‘I’m really, really happy for him. He’s gone and totally smashed it.’ Although their music styles diverged, K-O-P definitely deserves to bask in his own glory too, particularly after this year’s album (out on Planet Mu, after putting out previous releases on his own Display Copy label), a trippy, tingling sleepwalk around ambient, foreboding Aphex-y soundscapes. Softly majestic. (Claire Sawers / Henry Northmore)
The Ingleby Gallery curated one of the highlights of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, a remarkable retrospective of work by the late poet, artist and creator of the Little Sparta garden in the Pentlands. While the centrepiece was the intermedia work ‘Carrier Strike’, which depicts an epic naval battle, the exhibition also included sculptures, postcards and posters exploring everything from football to Fishing News headlines. Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh Art Festival, Aug.
3 DAVID PEAT: A RETROSPECTIVE
Following his death early in 2012 at the age of 65 Street Level Photoworks mounted this wonderful collection of documentary filmmaker David Peat’s street photography. The result was a rich historical document, giving insight into life in and around the condemned tenements of Glasgow in 1968 as well as later international street scenes, showing the humanity and pathos in Peat’s work. Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, Jul.
4 SUSAN PHILIPSZ: TIMELINE
The Glasgow-born artist and 2010 Turner Prize winner created a typically intriguing and provocative sound sculpture for this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival. Inspired by the electrical cable that once ran from Nelson’s Monument on Calton Hill to Edinburgh Castle to mark out the speed at which the sound of a gun travels, the piece took the form of an otherworldly three-note female harmony that segued into the noise of the One O’Clock Gun being fired. Edinburgh Art Festival, Aug.
5 STUDIO 58 Curator Dr Sarah Lowndes brought together
the work of 54 women artists with a connection to Glasgow, exploring the impact women have had on the city’s art scene since World War II. The exhibition charted the ways in which the current crop of celebrated Glasgow artists such as Karla Black and Christine Borland had been influenced by previous generations. Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow School of Art, Jul. (Allan Radcliffe)