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Subcity Archives // Interviews // Student Radio Takeover // Documentary // News // All Podcasts
Debate is Free // General Election Special 2010
With a general election looming Subcity Radio invited six politicians to face an audience of young people from across Scotland. On the panel were: Patrick Harvie, MSP and Co-Convener for the Scottish Greens; John Mason, SNP MP and spokesman for Work and Pensions; Ann McKechin, Labour MP and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Scotland Office; Ruth Davidson, Conservative PPC for Glasgow North-East; Katy Gordon, Lib Dem PPC for Glasgow North; and Tommy Sheridan, ex-MSP and now co-convener of the Solidarity party. The questions were chosen by the audience, with the debate focusing on issues such as public faith in politics, immigration, higher education financing, and lowering the voter age.
Highlights include:
"The current government seems happy with a UK Border Agency which is endemically racist" - Patrick Harvie
"Surely the fact that at 16 years of age you are liable for taxation is the single most important point? You should not be taxed if you are not allowed to vote" - Tommy Sheridan
"One of the great scandals this year was that 141,118 people had the grades to go to university, and applied, and the places weren't there" - Ruth Davidson
photos on flickr // comment on this podcast // programme pdf
Photo by: Sean Anderson
Posted at 22:47, 12th March 2010
GFF // Part 3: First?
Mark Cousins is a cinematic polymath. He’s a film critic, writing for such notable publications as Sight and Sound and Prospect. He’s a film historian – his Story of Film book should be on the shelves of anyone who’s interested in cinema. He’s a film festival impresario: he was artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival in his 20s and in recent years has co-directed a series of small, intimate festivals with his close friend Tilda Swinton. And he’s a filmmaker, directing documentaries on subjects as varied as Iranian cinema and neo-Nazism.
“What’s it like to be a child in war – not when the conflict is raging, but when the war tide is out, as it were, when kids are telling stories or playing games?” The First Movie tries to answer this question through film – watching and making them. Mark tells us how he traveled with a small team to Goptapa in Kurdish Iraq, a village of great beauty and tragedy, armed with a hand-full of digital camcorders, some red balloons and a few of his favourite DVDs, to create a “magic realist” documentary that paints a very different image of the country we know from rolling news footage and Hollywood movies.
Screen Shrapnel in association with the Glasgow Film Festival
Posted at 23:04, 28th February 2010
GFF // Zombie Zombie
When you’re a kid, gross-out horror can be pretty cool. Watching cert.18s around your mates house, rewinding head slicing, dog-skinning, eye-slicing, flesh-eating, psychotic-doll-mutilating, rapey-tree scenes until the tape shows visible signs of use, loses its appeal when its not scary anymore, and nobody thinks your cool because you watched Sleepaway Camp the other night. Besides, horror got dull as it became more digitized, those masters of prosthetics and make-up got overtaken by ‘digi-SFX wizardry’*. The music to, became a bit expected, the same loud sound effects pronged-out --it all became a bit gimmicky.
John Carpenter’s music was never gimmicky, the themes are incessant and mainly in minor keys. Halloween seems to endlessly gain and gain and The Fog is just as minimal and eerie.
Parisian duo Zombie Zombie don’t use gimmicks either, unlike other more notable French duos, there is no disguise, its human and sweaty. Any mystery is replaced by a mass of analog synths, theremin and live percussion.
Due to the excitement around this sold-out show at Mono, the band have decided to release a John Carpenter album, but before that...swatch it!
*quote pre-dates the Internet Super Highway (1995)
Josh Hill // Photo: Benzo Harris
Posted at 18:46, 25th February 2010
Yeasayer // Pied Pipers of Paris
The Yeasayer greenroom was littered with half eaten chickens and bottles of beer, the decadent backdrop of the Oran Mor’s stain glass dappled hall lead me to expect Robert the Bruce to come stalking out. Instead, I chatted with the understated and chilled, Anand Wilder from the band about his dream to create a musical about coal mines, Mexican sheep riding children, infectious nanorobots, spoons…amongst other things.
Yeasayer have been washing over us with their self-labelled ‘Middle Eastern-psych-snap-gospel’ music since 2006 and this year has seen them release their second album entitled ‘Odd Blood’ and gain more recognition in the United Kingdom. Subcity caught up with them on the second date of their forthcoming European and North American tour.
Posted at 21:54, 24th February 2010
GFF // Findo Gask
Findo Gask are Glasgow's Best Boy Band. Soo pop and boys that Smash Hits could have given them a gong. With their triple threat of sweet harmonies, addictive electro-pop and...erm no synchronised dancing…but at their recent performance of Yellow Magic Orchestra compositions, another boy-band trope: the matching outfit --a tribute to the white shirt, red armband Yellow Magic Orchestra 1980 look.
For a band well-distinguished for their harmonies, celebrating the work of progressive synthesis dudes YMO seems uncharacteristic, but Findo Gask were up for “letting the music do the talking”. Accompanied by Remember Remember, they pooled together seven synths, restrained by YMO’s standards, and performed a sweet set of YMO songs in a tribute to a band that pushed pop’s technological sophistication to a grandiose level.
Ryuichi Sakamoto the main-synth player for YMO (obvs) has made some notable film composition like Nagisa Oshima’s Taboo and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, he also acted alongide David Bowie in the latter film. The one-off event was organised in conjunction with the The Arches, the bands were clearly fanboys of YMO and chatted about hearing the band for the first time and then getting everything they had made. This is geekery sublime.
Josh Hill // Photo:Benzo Harris
Posted at 23:08, 22nd February 2010
GFF // Part 2: Second Course
“Welcome to the feast!” proclaim the Glasgow Film Festival’s organisers. And what a feast it is; now in its sixth year, it has grown from its humble beginnings to become one of the largest festivals in the UK, with over 200 screenings spread over eight venues across the city. The GFF prides itself as a festival for the people, with no private screenings for industry types. It is also not uncommon to be sitting beside the director or leading actor of the film you are watching; this rare intimacy and community atmosphere are at the hub of the GFT and the GFF.
To retain such a characteristic must be difficult for the festival organisers, considering its growing status and popularity (more than 28,000 visitors in 2009). Screen Shrapnel spoke to co-director of the GFF, Allison Gardener about curating such a festival, and we get an insight into some of the special events and guests planned for the coming week.
We also spoke to Rosie and Matt from The Magic Lantern, about the pain and pleasure of sifting through hundreds of short films, and how important the Shorts Film Festival is for the film-making community in Scotland.
Screen Shrapnel in association with the Glasgow Film Festival // image from the GFF press launch
Posted at 21:20, 20th February 2010