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Scotsman
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Album reviews: Irvine Welsh & The Sci-fi Soul Orchestra Dennis Bovell
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Irvine Welsh & the Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra: Men in Love (Port Sunshine Recordings) ★★★★ Jah Wobble: Dub Volume 1 (Dimple Discs) ★★★★ Dennis Bovell: Wise Men in Dub (Wise Records) ★★★ Michael Steele: Mosaic (self-released) ★★★★ Irvine Welsh At various points in his literary career, Irvine Welsh has described himself as a failed musician, claimed that he was saved by acid house and created playlists for his characters to bring them to life, so music is a key trigger for his writing. He now takes that love a step further by writing and producing an album companion to his new novel, Men In Love. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This Trainspotting sequel picks up immediately where his classic novel left off, with Renton, Spud, Sickboy and even Begbie finding salvation on the dancefloor. The setting is the Nineties but the music on Men In Love – written by the shadowy Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra with lyrics penned by Welsh – is far from the contemporary strains of Britpop and more reflective of the soulful sounds of Nineties clubland, in particular the dancefloors which reverberated to gospel house music. Welsh and compadres are clear on their inspirations, crate-digging to emulate the sounds of Philly soul and New York disco which were sampled by the deep house producers of the day. Unsurprisingly, Welsh has all the necessary vocabulary to evoke the era and a little bit more. Opening track A Man in Love with Love captures the mania of love with lusty soul vocals from Shaun Escoffery and a Chic-meets-Boney M disco breakdown. Jah Wobble Jools Holland collaborator Louise Marshall represents for the women on the disco riposte You Gotta Be Strong, cutting through the sentiment and extravagant expressions of this man in love to demand actions not words. Both she and Escoffery are Welsh's mighty mouthpieces as they testify across the album to clubbing as religion on Saviour and the transformative powers of the dancefloor on A Whole New Side Of Me. The latter is the most explicitly house music-influenced track on the album, if still dripping in delicious disco strings. With this exultant music ringing in their ears, how could Renton and co not prevail? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad You wait ages for a decent dub album and then two come along in one week. Bass ace Jah Wobble has been a dub devotee from his early days in Public Image Ltd but is not content with mere righteous vibrations on Dub Volume 1. Titles such as Old Jewish East End of London Dub suggest that this is not traditional dub territory. This geezer philosopher infuses Existential Dub with a hint of slinky Sixties exotica and uses distorted and pitchshifted vocals to unsettling effect on Lovers Rock Dub. Tragic Slavic Dub is embellished with keening klezmer violin, Dub in the East is built around an eminently melodic bassline while Tyson Dub Remix is a true dub odyssey with its wiggy analogue synths, melancholic ska brass arrangement and the sheer elasticity of Wobble's playing. On Wise Men in Dub, reggae veteran Dennis Bovell offers a more traditional adventure in sound though his curveball choice of dub-infused covers ranges from Musical Youth's Pass the Dutchie and Pete Seeger's Black and White, originally reggaefied by Greyhound but rendered here by Aswad's Brinsley Forde, to more transformative takes on The Zombies' Time of the Season, Minnie Riperton's Les Fleurs, Argent's Hold Your Head Up and The Stylistics' You're A Big Girl Now, dreamily rendered by Imagination frontman Leee John. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Michael Steele Edinburgh-based singer/songwriter Michael Steele describes himself as 'genre-diverse' - and how on his Mosaic EP which embraces French chanson, pastoral folk, low-slung punk funk, mellow country and angular guitar picking across its ten tracks with equal credibility. There may be no stylistic consistency to speak of but you have to admire Steele's laidback audacity in offering such a dizzying pick-and-mix of styles to choose from, each as well-executed as the next. CLASSICAL Visiting Rachmaninoff: Chopin Variations | Romances (Harmonia mundi) ★★★★ One of the true delights of the 'variations" genre is to witness the assimilation of two divergent independent minds. Here we have Chopin (the simple sequential theme and solid chordal identity of his Prelude in C minor) reconsidered via the virtuosic expansionism of Rachmaninov. Moreover, Russian pianist Alexander Melnikov presents the latter's 22 Variations on a Theme by Chopin Op 22 on Rachmaninov's own piano, an instrument presented to him as a 60th birthday present and housed in the Bauhaus-style Villa Senar by Lake Lucerne commissioned by the composer in the 1930s. This well-maintained piano exhibits the same formidably brooding persona as its original owner, Melnikov mindful of such in a performance that captures both the intellectual and expressive fluidity of a constantly fascinating piece. He's joined later by soprano Julia Lezhneva, who imbues extracts from the Op 21, Op 26 and Op 34 Romances with a typically glowing, soulful Russian-ness. Ken Walton FOLK Grace Stewart-Skinner: Auchies Spikkin' Auchie (Independent Release) ★★★★ Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
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Scotsman
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh says he has one big ‘concern' over Oasis comeback gigs
Trainspotting author gives his thoughts on Oasis renunion tour Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Irvine Welsh has heaped praise on Oasis ahead of their eagerly-awaited Edinburgh gigs – but he says he'd much rather the famously feuding Gallagher brothers were still at each other's throats. In an interview with The Times to promote new novel Men in Love, which sees him continuing the life stories of Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie 30 years after his cult 1993 novel Trainspotting, the Edinburgh author was asked if he's planning to catch any of the Oasis comeback gigs. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Irvine Welsh's new novel Men in Love is released in July. | LISA FERGUSON 'Probably. Maybe at Murrayfield,' the 66-year-old said. 'I'm not a big nostalgia guy. My concern is if there's no rapport between Liam and Noel [Gallagher]. I'd much rather they were fighting. I remember going to the Stone Roses reunion and though the music was great, there was no interaction between the four members. You could tell they were done with each other. 'I've no idea how close Liam and Noel are, but you'd think down the line they would each acknowledge that one is among the greatest songwriters we've ever had and the other among the best singers.' Elsewhere in the interview, Welsh, who has made a disco album to Men in Love, was asked if it's true Noel Gallagher turned down the chance for Oasis to appear on the Trainspotting soundtrack - because he thought it was a film about actual trainspotters 'I think that's true,' said Welsh.'I told Noel that he owed me a song because of it and he kindly gave me a beautiful one for The Acid House soundtrack.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In an interview with The Scotman's Janet Christie in April, Welsh described Men In Love as a 'very dark and funny' novel. He went on: 'It's about guys in their mid twenties who are getting serious about life. You go through stages in life where you start off influenced by your family when you're a kid, then break away from that and your peers are everything when you're a teenager and young, then you break from them in your mid twenties into serious romance and think about settling down and having a proper relationship. So these guys are at that time in their lives and they're looking to be serious about relationships and love. People bond at that age. It's strange, you get people getting together and setting themselves up… Good luck, you know, it's a f***ing tough shift.'
Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Irvine Welsh: why I've turned Trainspotting into a disco album
I f you were asked to choose an author least likely to revel in romance, Irvine Welsh would be a strong contender. Yet the subculture-chronicling Scot has not only written a new Trainspotting novel, Men in Love, which swaps heroin for matters of the heart, he has also made an accompanying disco album that unveils his slushy side. 'Baby, you're the one for me' is a line from the frisky strings and horns-soaked track Damn Straight, written during lockdown as a love song to the actress Emma Currie, his girlfriend at the time and wife since 2022. Did Welsh say those actual words to Currie? 'I think I did,' he says, laughing. 'I might even have sung them to her. And I'm a terrible singer.'
Malay Mail
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Irvine Welsh calls ‘Men in Love' an antidote to hate, criticises AI and social media
LONDON, July 12 — Scottish author Irvine Welsh on Friday described the new sequel to his cult novel Trainspotting as an antidote to a world full of 'hate and poison', as he took aim at social media, the internet and AI. Men in Love, the latest in a series of sequels, follows the same characters — Renton, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie — as they experience the heyday of rave culture in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Welsh's novel was turned into the wildly successful 1996 hit film of the same name directed by Danny Boyle and starring Ewan McGregor. The black comedy drama featured a group of heroin addicts living in an economically-depressed part of Edinburgh. 'We're living in a world that seems to be so full of hate and poison. Now it's time I kind of focus more on love as a kind of antidote to all that,' Welsh said. Although his novel was published over 30 years ago, there were many parallels with the world today, he added. The 1980s demise of much heavy industry such as shipbuilding in the Leith area of Edinburgh heralded a new world for some 'without paid work'. 'Now we're all in that position. We don't know how long we'll have paid work, if we do have it, because our economy, our society, is in just a long form revolutionary transformation,' he told BBC radio. 'It's a big, contentious, messy revolution. There's lots to play for, but there's some very dystopian tendencies within it,' he added. Despite the problems faced by earlier generations, Welsh said he detected less optimism now. 'Natural stupidity' 'I think we're just a bit more scared... I think we've got this existential threat on the horizon, basically, of species extinction... through kind of wars and diseases and famines and climate change and no economic means for younger people to make their way in the world as we had,' he said. Welsh also took aim at artificial intelligence (AI), an internet appropriated by big corporations and a social media culture marred by 'vitriolic pile-ons'. He said the internet had stopped people from thinking and had created a 'controlling environment' in which 'we just take instruction'. 'We've got artificial intelligence on one side, and we've got a kind of natural stupidity on another side. We just become these dumbed down machines that are taking instruction. 'And when you get machines thinking for you, your brain just atrophies.' He said he hoped that people's current addiction to mobile phones would be a phase that runs its course. 'You look down the street and you see people with a phone stuck to their face. 'Hopefully, if we survive the next 50 years, that's going to look as strange on film as... people chain smoking cigarettes did back in the 80s,' he added. Men in Love is due to be published by Penguin on July 24. — AFP
The National
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Hollywood stars join line-up for Edinburgh Book Festival 2025
Authors Maggie O'Farrell and Alexander McCall Smith are also on the line-up, along with comedian Julian Clary and actors Brian Cox, Viggo Mortensen, Sam Heughan, and Vanessa Redgrave. Performances at the festival, which runs from August 9 to 24, include Fun Lovin' Crime Writers – a band which involves novelists Chris Brookmyre and Val McDermid. Sturgeon will launch her memoir, Frankly, and will be in conversation with journalist Kirsty Wark as part of the Front List series. Welsh will give discuss his new novel Men In Love, which features the characters from Trainspotting as they experience the heyday of rave culture in the late 80s and early 90s. The talk Second Summer of Love will ask if love is the drug all men need, according to the festival programme. READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon's memoir has cleared government security checks, documents show Sports commentator Ally McCoist will give a talk on his career, and former first minister Henry McLeish will join academic James Mitchell for a discussion on Scottish devolution and how it has progressed. The core theme of this year's festival is Repair, and organisers said it will be 'seeking to explore the many things around us which feel broken, and how we might seek to fix them'. Others on the line-up include historian David Starkey, while former Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable will give a talk about shifting economic powers, and commentator Ash Sarkar will 'tear into the morals of identity politics'. Festival director Jenny Niven said: 'This year's key theme of Repair starts from the belief that the brilliant ideas of writers and thinkers can help us repair a host of seemingly 'broken' things in our society, from the cycle of fast fashion and our relationship with the environment, to cultural reparations and the state of our politics. 'It's a statement of hope and resilience, and an invitation for our audiences to think about what 'repair' might mean for them. 'At a time when important conversations can feel impossible to have without igniting conflict and anger, we want the Edinburgh International Book Festival to provide a safe place for challenging but considered discussions. 'This year our programme features over 600 writers and artists from 35 countries, who have a wide range of perspectives on topics of personal, social and global importance. 'We invite you to come and learn something new, feed your curiosity and to broaden your horizons.' Renowned author Hanif Kureishi will give a talk remotely about his recovery from a devastating accident which left him paralysed. Shattered But Unbroken will discuss how he dictated his thoughts to his family following the fall on Boxing Day 2022. Palestinian writer Ilan Pappe and Israeli historian Avi Shlaim will discuss the conflict in the Middle East and whether peace can exist. Bookbinder Rachel Hazell will lead a workshop, Junk Journals Workshop, where old books will be re-fashioned into journals. This year's children's programme will include more than 100 events for young readers, including from renowned authors Michael Rosen, Jacqueline Wilson and Cressida Cowell.
