61 STOCKBRIDGE MARKET STALL SETTER
58 DAVID GREIG EVENTS MAN
The weekly Sunday lunchtime gathering crystalises the eager appetite for vibrant food and community markets in Scotland, with its thriving mix of produce stalls, hot food, music and social hubbub. Involved in seeding a Saturday event in the Grassmarket too. (DR) The amateur mycologist and playwright hasn’t lost his enthusiasm for the experimental (The Events featured a live choir), the traditional (a revived Dunsinane drew on Macbeth) or political that could still be fun (Dalgety and Fragile were written for Theatre Uncut). (GKV)
60 TOMMY SHEPPARD 57 LUCKYME
ENTERTAINMENT IMPRESARIO RECORDING ARTISTS
Another strong year for the Stand with a Fringe which featured everyone from Baconface to the Lost Voice Guy, while Sheppard hosted another Edinburgh Comedy Award winner in the shape of Bridget Christie. He even had time to programme another exciting Assembly Rooms lineup which included Mogwai, Tony Benn and Janeane Garofalo. See his i ve highlights of 2013, page 32. (BD)
59 YOUNG FATHERS
EDINBURGH HIP HOP TRIO (See panel, right)
Scots-founded, internationally-focused music and arts collective LuckyMe have gone from strength to strength this year, with club dates at home and around the world, plus a bunch of i ne EP releases from TNGHT, Obey City, Cid Rim, Jacques Greene and Yolo Bear. (DP)
56 LEITHLATE MULTI-ARTS EXTRAVAGANZA
A glorious mash-up of music and visual art at venues scattered around Leith’s main boulevard,
63
LeithLate took off this year, with art contributions from David Shrigley and Bronwen Sleigh, and an after-party featuring Sparrow and the Workshop and LAW. (NB)
55 LOST MAP LYNCH MOB
From the Fence Records fall-out rose Johnny ‘Pictish Trail’ Lynch’s brand new label and
festival-promoting entity. A low-key launch saw Monoganon’s album FAMILY released, as well as ‘postcard’ singles from Pictish Trail, Kid Canaveral and eagleowl. (DP)
54 THE HYDRO POWERHOUSE VENUE
Opened in September by a medley of Rod Stewart shows, the up-to-13,000 capacity SSE Hydro became the second biggest concert arena in Britain and a dei ning, l ying saucer-like feature of Glasgow’s skyline. In 2014 it will play host to Scotland’s second MTV European Music Awards. (DP)
53 RALLY & BROAD SPEAKING UP
The fastest-growing performance night in Edinburgh, this spoken word cabaret run by
poets Rachel McCrum and Jenny Lindsay presents a packed programme. Recent highlights include dance, story, music and a co-written poem about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (KL)
52 CASUAL SEX
MODERN MUSIC HISTORIANS Invoking the awkwardly sexual spirit of everyone from Postcard Records’ i nest to art school icons Franz Ferdinand, Casual Sex proved to be one of Scotland’s smartest and best new bands. The single ‘Stroh 80’ emerged on Moshi Moshi, while other favourites from their busy touring schedule included ‘National Unity’, ‘The Bastard Beat’ and ‘What’s Your Daughter For?’ (CS)
51 ADAM STAFFORD FALKIRK POLYMATH
Musician, i lmmaker and fearlessly independent Falkirk renaissance man Stafford made another distinctive and stirring contribution to the Scottish creative fabric this year, between his excellent loops-based album Imaginary Walls Collapse and his poetic short i lm about the 1923 Redding Pit Disaster No Hope for Men Below. (MJ)
THE HOT 100 THE HOT 100
59
Young Fathers DAD RAP
‘We got frustrated, that’s where “Tape One” came from,’ says Young Fathers’ Graham ‘G’ Hastings of their initially self-released debut mini- album. Although this group of youthful Edinburgh rappers and producers have been active for over a decade, various stalled and ultimately aborted management and record company relationships had failed to help them get a proper record out. ‘We knew we had to tell everyone to fuck off and put it out ourselves,’ he continues. ‘That’s how we just took it into our own hands. That was us taking a stand. We just realised that no one knows better than us.’ Their dark, brooding collection
proved more than just a bold statement of independence. It prompted Los Angeles alternative hip hop label Anticon to throw their weight behind Young Fathers, re-releasing ‘Tape One’ internationally in early 2013 and helping turn the last 12 months into a whirlwind, one which the trio – Hastings, Alloysious Massaquoi and Kayus Bankole – have been waiting a long time for. They’ve since played over 50 gigs at home and abroad and – from the bosom of their Leith basement studio – recorded and released a second mini-album ‘Tape Two’, as well as readied their full-length debut Dead for early 2014. ‘It sounds like a funeral procession, but the most beautiful one you’ve ever seen,’ reveals Hastings intriguingly, of an album which he promises will push Young Fathers’ ever- restless sound further into still new directions. Full of pent-up ambition after years of waiting for their break, it’s not hard to imagine the band riding even higher in the Hot 100 this time next year. Hastings i rmly states Young Fathers’ goals for 2014: ‘We dinnae want to be cool, we want to be everywhere.’ (Malcolm Jack)
12 Dec 2013–23 Jan 2014 THE LIST 27