I’m DJ’ing at a benefit gig on Wednesday. I’m sure I’ll be great, so come along to The Vale, just by Queen St. station.

But there’s more than just me trying to inflict my taste on hapless punters: there’s bands and video projections and an Easter egg raffle.

The bands that are playing are Magdalena, Yuffie and Transient Noise. I look forward to hearing what they’re like, they doubtless rock.

We’re asking for a £3/£2 donation to The G42 Collective. The money will be going towards opening a social centre space in the southside of Glasgow. We know what building we want and what we can do with it, we just need enough to get the ball rolling. There’ll be space for film screenings, cafe nights, exhibitions, talks, workshops and allsorts.

On Tuesday, Vialka are back playing at Stereo. Hooray!

and…
The Copy Left Film Festival
Free Films in March !
(donations highly appreciated…)

Glasgow University, Mondays 3 PM, Boyd Orr Building
7th – Weapons of Mass Deception
14th – Dr. Stragelove
21st – Land and Freedom
28th – Surplus & Total Rubbish

Glasgow School of Art, Mondays 6 PM, Bourdon Lecture
theatre (architecture building) … please arrive on
time or a bit before so we can let you in the
building.
7th -Brazil
14th – Outfoxed

Strathclyde University, Fridays 1 PM, Graham Hills
Building room 550
4th – Corporation part 1 & 2
11th – Corporation part 3
18th – Weapons of Mass Deception
25th – Land and Freedom

A film column I kept wanting to write but never finished (started) was about Val Lewton’s beautiful, disturbing black & white 40s horror films.

The Seventh Victim is the most intriguing. There’s layers of allusion in there, hints at darker secrets and untold backstory it’s the most morbid and haunting film to not be available on video.

And it’s on telly Friday night. After midnight, natch. Watch it! Guaranteed better than the soft-porn on C5.

There’s loads of films being shown outside of cinemas in Glasgow at the moment. Just for a start, all next week at the Art School (but open to plebs) is Brain Wash, a bunch of undeground-y documentar-y films that are well worth seeing. Surplus I remember being especially good.

From the head of the Hollywood film studios association: “These people are parasites leeching off the creativity of others.” (No, he’s talking about bittorrent users.)

I should have blogged about how good the 1-speed bike, Germlin & Loss Leader show was last week.

But I’ve just been to see Therese Raquin at the Citz. It’s very good but has got me thinking: are there any 19th century novels with a woman’s name in the title that don’t end with that woman debased and dying?

Just a thought.

Diskant’s favourite musical wankfest Instal is happening a bit earlier and over 2 days this year (16th & 17th October). There might be a noisy day and a trancey day. One day there’s Keiji Haino and Derek Bailey, the other’s Charlemagne Palestine, Current 93 and Six Organs of Admittance. Admittedly I don’t know a huge amount about (most / all) the acts but that’s never stopped it being great before.

And this Saturday (11^th) at Stereo, el Hombre Trajeado are playing with The Dragon Rapide from Leeds. I saw them in Newcastle a while back and they were dead good I would being going to see them if I was in Glasgow.

I’ve been to see some films at the Edinburgh Film Festival. Two of them were really good. Red Cockroaches is a SF film made for $2000, shot in NYC and edited on a home computer. I thought sounded a bit like ? and as everyone at diskant likes pie I thought I should taste it. It turned out not to have a huge amount in common with Aronofsky’s film, beyond no budget and an early scene on a subway platform. Apart from the obvious (it’s in colour), the pace of this film is more measured and it’s (arguably) a lot weirder. Like Star Wars (stolen line alert) it’s the sensitive tale of a boy’s attempt to sleep with his sister and the ensuing adventure. It’s thoughtfully shot and edited so well that although the effects are obviously digital, it looks better than films costing 1000x as much. No honestly, it’s fantastic.

Incident at Loch Ness is another film whose inventiveness makes up for its low budget. It’s the story of legendary director Werner Herzog’s attempt to make a documentary about the Loch Ness Monster. You might remember it being in the papers last September. Saying much about it would spoil the story so suffice to say not all goes to plan. Relationships in the crew are fraught to the point where the producer mutters to camera (after an argument about the boat), ‘at least we’re not dragging it over the mountain’.

The other film I saw was War, a moody post-apocalypse thing. When I was younger, post-apocalypse films were a lot more fun. They had punks and weird cars and guns. Here we have much mud, toil, graininess and confusion. Which is probably more truthful but unfortunately I’m no less confused about the film than I was before it finished. Some beautifully stark black & white photography didn’t make up for a lack of empathy with the characters and if I was feeling cruel I’d say that the film is plain boring and confuses moody with meaningful.

One of the good/bad things about living somewhere that has lots of good stuff going on is that sometimes there’s no reason to do something because other folk are already doing it very. Like miso. Why would I want to start up a regular electro night when they are already bringing up all the acts I want to see?

Last night they had Marcia Blaine School for Girls and Isan playing. Both playing electronica that sounds too much like fields to have been created digitally. MBSG had a mix of styles and tempos and Isan a vast array of Korgasmic melodies. So good I forgot how hot and stuffy the Note was.

Thanks Chris.

So has refinding the name of the church where John Cage’s As Slowly As Possible is being played. I want to visit that.

The Tchai Ovna call out. If you’re wondering why you should care, one reason is that it’s the first place I saw people beatboxing and not being shit. Acappella Hardcore!

People are stupid and greedy and weird. My favourite cafe Tchai Ovna, is under threat from someone wanting to build flats on the half-wild spot between their garden and the river. This will wreck the feel of the place and I’m baffled that anyone would want to do that.

There’s been a visit from the developer and work could start as soon as next week.

There’s a meeting about it there at 10 tonight and I’ll post more stuff about the campaign to stop this when I know more.