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I’ve been zipping about a fair amount this past week.  I’ve been ambling around in Inverness…

…and exploring Glasgow at night.

The Glasgow visit was for an Explosions in the Sky gig on Monday night. It was my third time of seeing them and they were excellent. Beautiful, uplifting, energetic and powerful. The Texan post-rock outfit remain my favourite band right now. It was a great set, though to my mild surprise they didn’t play much of their most recent album, but with such a strong catalogue that was no loss.

The support was in the form of Lanterns on the Lake, a Sigur Ros-like outfit from Newcastle. I’d not heard of them but they were very good, and I’ll definitely be checking them out further.

Then on Wednesday night I was in Edinburgh overnight for work, and took the opportunity of a quiet evening to take some night shots from the top of Calton Hill. Being at a major spot overlooking the capital felt somehow apt on the day that the referendum consultation was launched.

It’s interesting times in Scotland these days.

See the whole upload of this week’s shots here on Flickr.

It’s a sad symptom of our age that we are cynical about our politicians.  Regardless of the fact that there are genuinely “good eggs” across most parties, such rarities are ignored amongst the wave of hostility we have towards our political class.  They are all, we think, self-serving liars, detached from the needs of ordinary people.

It’s surprising, then, that some of the post popular political fiction involves characters who are notable for their excellence.  Perhaps, though, it’s to be expected – why shouldn’t we use fiction to dream of what could be?  A prime example would be Jed Bartlett, the President of the USA in the fictional series The West Wing.  To be honest, I never got into that show.  For some reason, despite having been incredibly politically aware and interested in the past, I was never really grabbed by political fiction.  I’m not sure why – perhaps because reality was often stranger.

Anyway, maybe the epitome of the chasm between political reality and political fiction was the reported signs saying something like “Bartlett is my President” held by the crowds as George W Bush was sworn in as an all too real president.  At least I think I recall that correctly, though I can’t find any reference to it online.

Anyone swept along by one of the quiet successes of television in this country would recognise a couple of other fictional examples of model politicians: Troels Hartmann and Thomas Buch.  I am of course talking about the Danish murder mystery series The Killing (Forbrydelsen, in Danish).

The Killing I and II were both excellent, gripping, edge of the seat dramas featuring the very driven and focussed detective Sarah Lund. In each, her steely resolution, lack of warmth towards colleagues and of course her Faroese jumpers have made her and The Killing as a whole quite a star.  Though in both series, the murders’ consequences reached into the political spheres, with parallel plots featuring a politician who found himself wrapped up in the gruesome proceedings.

In the first, Troels Hartmann was a young, dynamic and likeable local politician desperately trying to brush off what turn out to be unfounded connections with the murder of a young girl while at the same time fighting a mayoral election camaign.  In the second series, we meet Thomas Buch, a young and inexperienced MP who is appointed justice minister and uncovers potential cover-ups of murders that his superiors are desperate to sweep under the carpet.  The political dimensions to the storylines are so central that they are not so much sub-plots to the murder investigations as co-plots.

In both cases, the politicians were portrayed as truth-driven, determined and honest, a thoroughly refreshing antedote to the cynicism we have about politicians here.  Admittedly in the second series the consequence of Buch’s terrier-like pursuit of the truth is that his talent is recognised and he is finally tempted into the very inner circle he’s been trying to implicate.  But it’s a significantly more positive portrayal of a politician than you get in most British dramas.  It’s hard to imagine a British political thriller with such likeable central characters being as popular as The Killing has been.

And, thankfully, there is more of this to come. The makers of The Killing have now come up with an entirely political drama, which like The Killing has also been snapped up by BBC4. Called Borgen, it contains all of the moody drama – and some of the actors – of The Killing, but minus the body count. A deep, unpredictable and gripping drama, Borgen is basically The Killing, without… er, the killing.

We’re two episodes in now, and I’m really enjoying it.  The central character is a leader of a relatively minor Danish political party who fights her way to becoming the country’s first female Prime Minister.  A number of storylines seem to be emerging, including the lies, secrets and plotting in the world of both media and government, but the new female PM is presented as a humane, fresh and personable character, again something it’s hard to see most British political dramas doing.

There’s been some backstabbing, a death, and quite a bit of wheeling and dealing, plus some gorgeous shots of Copenhagen which seems to have more than a little Edinburgh about it in its historic and political areas.  But the main message is that – so far, at least – it’s possible to be both a good person and a successful politician.

That’s something worth noting in this cynical age.

I spend a lot of time on trains.  Too much, at times.  I’m at the stage where I recognise train conductors, can recite stations along routes my most regular routes, and have often found myself at the whim of the vagaries and foibles of ScotRail.  Mostly, to be fair, ScotRail does a good job, though its staff do let it (and passengers) down terribly at times, for instance by not having a clue how to get places or not checking whether passengers have all fully boarded.

One regular consequence of being on trains is the delays.  Sometimes the weather, technical problems, staffing shortages or whatever else mean that trains can’t run, and I’ve had more than my fair share of replacement buses, freezing cold station platforms, late night replacement taxis and soul-sapping experiences at the life-void that is Perth railway station, which incidentally is home to The Worst Cafe In The World.

I’ve come to be philosophical about delays.  There’s nothing you can do about them, except sit back, try enjoy your journey, and politely complain in writing later.  And if you’re delayed by a certain length of time – as I all too often am – you can get part or all of your ticket reimbursed.  I’ve obviously been unlucky in the past few months because I’ve found myself amassing about a hundred pounds of compensatory rail vouchers.

Much as compensation in the form of rail vouchers is like giving the victim of a botched tooth extraction the chance to have the rest of their healthy teeth extracted for free, I’m too much of a lover of travel to turn down the chance for free trips.  And the vouchers will certainly come in useful.

In a couple of weeks, I’m going to Glasgow overnight to see Explosions in the Sky play – the third time I’ll have seen them live – and I’m very much looking forward to it.  In April, I’ll be attending the joint Scottish and British Esperanto Congress in Edinburgh.  Both will be all the more enjoyable for them costing me nothing in terms of train tickets.

Those trips will still leave plenty vouchers left, which will come in handy for another rail adventure I am planning.  I am not sure when precisely it will be, but it will be this year, certainly.  I want to get under the skin of my very regular Inverness-Edinburgh journey, by finding out more about the places I pass through with often the barest of glances, towns and villages I have mostly never been to.  The plan, therefore, is to travel from home in Inverness to Edinburgh by rail, stopping for a minimum of two hours at every station.  It will take me the best part of a week: though of course that doesn’t account for any delays…

I blogged last year about Calamateur’s album Each Dirty Letter, and it barely seems like five minutes later that he’s produced another album – The Quiet in the Land.  I mentioned in Each Dirty Letter’s review Calamateur’s vocal versatility, comparing his voice to Thom York.  Such is his versatility, though, that I am going to have to revise that temporarily to somewhere in between Bono and Billy Corgan.

There is comparison with U2 and the Smashing Pumpkins beyond their lead singers though, because those two bands are who The Quiet in the Land reminds me of most.  Calamateur’s sound on this latest offering is rich, deep, dark, and verging at times on the tense and sinister.  As he says himself on his website, this new album, which regularly seems to crosses the line from rock to electronic, is very, very different from his previous album (effectively a collection of sweet but gently catchy ballads).  Time to use that “versatility” epithet again.

The music boasts sharp, dramatic guitars; haunting and evocative background instruments; edgy samples; uncompromising lyrics on Calamateur’s favourite topics of spirituality and humanity; and industrial rhythms that evoke the Smashing Pumpkins’ later electronic phase.  It is such a full, rounded, mostly heavy, and engagingly complex sound that it’s often hard to forget that Calamateur is not a band, but an individual: and an individual making the music in a tiny wee studio at that.

The Quiet in the Land is a thoughtful, engaging and absorbing listen.  I think it’ll take more than the few listens I’ve had to really appreciate it.

You may remember me raving some time back about the self-titled debut album by Liverpool post-rock outfit MinionTV.  The album was my favourite listen of last year, I think, and its opening track, We Are Ghosts, a magnificent piece of music that remains one of my most-listened tracks of late.  You can listen to it via the magical widget gizmo below.

The band have just released an EP called Arecibo, and I was delighted to be sent a free download for review purposes.  So here goes.

A slow, dreamy opening blurs into the first substantive track, also called Arecibo.  Reverberated guitars set out an enticing melody, evocative of a journey into the unknown, and the song compels you to listen as you find out where.  The early melody soon is joined by soft keyboard music and moody bass, as if a cathedral had sacked their organist and got Sigur Rós in to do the job instead.  A light drumbeat soon coming along to add to what is a tense, expectant song just waiting to boom into life, that does eventually do so with a wave of spaced-out guitaring that would make Hawkwind proud.

A great opener though the title track is, I’m not convinced it’s the best on the EP.  That, in my view, is the subsequent track There Will Be Bulldozers.  A soft and mournful intro evokes a dreamy sadness, and then a floaty keyboard tone takes us on a gently psychadelic journey, a light pulse provided by drums that draw you deep into the track and build up slowly to present a wonderful change of tempo where lovely guitar riffs send the track soaring.  It’s a curious mix of the cautiously energetic and warmly downbeat, and reminds me of Explosions in the Sky‘s excellent latest album.

Track three, Keep The Negatives, is something of a change of feel.  Though still soft, warm and as mournfully nostalgic in feel as the first two tracks, the echoey piano and lilting guitar invite comparison with Dire Straits, the track occupying a curious isthmus between 80s soft rock and shoegaze.  The final track, Vi, opens with sharp, echoey guitars calling out like a searchlight in the mist, and this gives way to more lilting, floating sounds to round off the EP. Though like many short releases, it all ends too quickly, and I can’t help thinking the band have a sound that lingers, haunts and stretches, and therefore better suits the wide canvass of a full-length album than the comparative snapshot of an EP.

Though MinionTV’s debut album was moody and atmospheric, this EP Arecibo sometimes feels somewhat darker, with four dreamy songs that draw you in and create evocative soundscapes that evokes both a science fiction other-worldliness and a deep draw into the emotions of the world in which we are. I’ve listened to it several times, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Many of the songs’ riffs linger long as earworms, and there is a depth and richness to the sound that suggests the band will come up with plenty more great music in time to come.

I think it comes from being a over a hundred miles away from any place of a similar size and thus being in no other city’s shadow, but there is a great confidence to Inverness.

No more so is this true than in the city’s music scene.

Half-decent (or, indeed, full-decent) bands can crop up in the city or the wider area, last for years, and accrue large and loyal followings.

The flip side of this, however, is that the Highlands’ best bands are rarely on the radar of the music industry’s labels, venues and promoters in the central belt or beyond Scotland and thus rarely gain the coverage or success they arguably deserve.

That must be a frustrating experience for bands who genuinely believe in themselves yet who admirably choose not to relocate south.

That’s probably especially true for The Side, a long-running indie rock band from Alness, not desperately far north of Inverness, who after seven years and a handful of EPs decided to quit.  Their farewell gig was at the Ironworks on Friday past, and I was not only there but (unintentionally) first in the queue at the door which got me jokingly labelled a “groupie” by the security staff.  Not that I know the band – I’ve never met any of them but have seen them play a handful of gigs in smaller venues around Inverness and their bouncy, catchy songs are all the more enjoyable for the band’s energetic performances that are almost exhausting simply to watch.

Their album “Nowhere Left To Run” was my album of the year a couple of years ago when it came out (check out “One Fine Day” on their MySpace which is a particular favourite track).  The release threatened to propel them into the big time, with the band played in various locations around Europe and got some big gigs supporting names such as Texas and Bon Jovi.

However, the band sadly made the recent announcement that they were to split – it was sad that the intended success did not emerge, with my network of spies in the Easter Ross music world speaking of that old chestnut “creative differences”.  It’s a credit to the band that they’ve decided to go their own way before sliding into obscurity, instead leaving as they do pretty much at their peak.

Their gig was excellent, and a fine send-off to one of the best bands to have come from the Highlands in recent years.  Their album is still available, and they have a number of songs on MySpace.  For much better photos of the gig than my grainy, shaky efforts, I refer you to local music photographer Al Donnelly’s blog (1|2).

It’s hardly your typical cheerful and easy holiday read, but while in France I finished off The Long Bridge, a memoir of a Polish woman’s experiences in Soviet gulags.

I probably wouldn’t have known about it were it not for the fact that it was published by my publisher, Sandstone Press, nor have bought it had I not happened to be in Edinburgh and have a free evening when it was launched a few months ago.  Though I have enjoyed (if that is the right word) other books in that genre, including by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Arthur Koestler and – not strictly the same but nonetheless related – another Sandstone title, Shadow Behind The Sun.

Such books are inevitably dark and horror-filled, but the small lights of hope we find in the key characters burn strongly and hopefully, making all the more powerful comments about the strength of human nature and the importance of hanging on to what good there is in the world.

The Long Bridge is written by the late Urszula Muskus and brought to life by the efforts of her grandson Peter who lives in the Highlands, and is her account of her life in prison and labour camps in the 1940s an 1950s under Stalin.  Like most people in that extensive, hellish network of Siberian prisons, Muskus was no true criminal nor deserving her decade or so’s sentence – merely she was one of the many middle class professionals (or family members thereof) imprisoned for entirely spurious reasons by the paranoid Soviet leader Stalin from throughout the Soviet Union itself and its emerging central European empire.

The book starts with an evocative description of life in an ordinary Polish (though today Ukranian) village, over-run at the outbreak of World War 2 firstly by the Nazis and then by the Soviets, followed by the latter’s arrest of Muskus’s husband and the author’s own subsequent incarceration.

We then follow her from camp to camp, spending often years in one place, and Muskus is very selfless in her descriptions – she describes her multinational fellow inmates in great detail, not least their suffering, life stories (she appears to be someone others open up to easily) and hopes.  The work in the camps is invariably gruelling, the treatment by guards brutal, and the food awful, but the author’s stoic approach throughout demonstrates a real strength of character.  She was clearly a strong, determined, intelligent woman, with a mother’s compassion and a voice very similar to that of Remzije Sherifi, author of Shadow Behind The Sun mentioned above.

While a certain degree of restraint and selflessness is entirely admirable, and is probably part of what helped her survive, it does lead to the occasional moment where you feel the book dulls the horrors of the story, and because she is so dispassionate about her own afflictions we only truly connect to the evil of the gulags when she describes others’ endurances.  But the strength of character of Muskus shines through the book, not least in the introduction, explanatory footnotes and postscript provided by her grandson.  The conclusion is suitably moving, with a marvellous reflection on human nature that belies the horrors she has experienced.

It’s a beautifully written book about an entirely unbeautiful period of history – which is, scarily, still within the lifetimes of people alive today.  Stalin’s gulags were one of the last century’s great evils, and this book is a good way of hearing from those that experienced them.

I like to say that my political retirement must be one of the earliest on record: I quit the Scottish National Party when I was twenty-one, and after being active nationally for some years in the party I am quite sure there is a “Sliding Doors“-esque parallel universe version of me who is still heavily involved and, who knows, is perhaps even a career politician.

I don’t envy my imagined alternative self for a microsecond. I’ll not bore you with the reasons why I gave up active politics (though when I left the SNP I did not stop supporting them or voting for them), but it left me in a position where I could enjoy commenting on politics without any line to tow, or indeed also enjoy being utterly apathetic if I felt like it.

One consequence of this has been that I now read considerably less political stuff than I used to, and probably wouldn’t have read the 2010 biography of SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond had I not received it as a present last Christmas. I had every intention to read Salmond: Against the Odds before May’s 2011 election, but various things got in the way and as such I ended up reading it after that astonishing SNP landslide which I am sure would have changed the tone of the biography had it been released now. Though of course, that’s the problem with biographies of people who are still alive and displaying few signs of changing that designation – there’s no perfect time to write them because the story is still constantly being written.

I should declare a brief connection before I continue – I know the book’s author, journalist David Torrance, from university days and recall on one occasion being interviewed by him for the student newspaper, Gaudie, while I was president of the university’s SNP society. David’s article quoted an unnamed source as describing me as a “psychopath”, which proves firstly that he was set on a path for high-powered in-depth journalism and secondly that made the right choice when I got out of politics.

Alex Salmond, for the uninitiated, has been SNP leader for two stints, the first beginning in 1990, and became Scotland’s First Minister in 2007 when the party won a wafer-thin victory in the Scottish Parliament elections, a lead unexpectedly extended in last year’s elections to create the parliament’s first-ever overall majority. The major consequence of this is that there will almost certainly be an independence referendum, probably in 2014 or 2015, and these two major votes past and future will prove a fascinating new chapter to the book if ever David Torrance chooses to update it.

At times, Against the Odds reads like a general history of the SNP or a summary of Scottish politics through the later 20th century, rather than a pure biography, but then again this is firstly reflective of the frequent perception that Alex Salmond is the SNP or that the party is a one-man band. Because more than being First Minister, Salmond has been one of Scottish politics’ biggest figures for years, and his incredible skill, political astuteness and phenomenal debating ability that has swept aside many opponents all suggest that had he been a member of a UK party, he’d doubtless have been a major frontbench figure and, most likely, a Prime Minister if he had been of the Labour or Conservative member. And secondly, Salmond is an infamously private person, rarely discussing his private life and – unusually for a major politician – fiercely keeping his wife from the limelight.

As such, though it is surprising it has taken so long for a biography of such an important figure to appear, the book is all the more remarkable that it is able to tell us anything of Salmond at all given the subject’s tendency to privacy. It reveals stories from Salmond’s early years and family history, while quoting friends and colleagues – often anonymously – from throughout his studies and career. If I have a criticism of the book, though, it is the frequent quotations of one figure from the party’s history, Salmond’s long-standing rival and critic Jim Sillars, who – as far as I recall from my active SNP days, was little more than an irrelevance to the party at that time so must be even more so today. But it demonstrates a depth of research and a balance of perspectives that does leave as few stones unturned as possible in the portrayal of Salmond’s life.

The question at the heart of the book is what makes the man who became First Minister tick, and in a life seemingly devoid of ill intent, scandal or personal failings, the answer seems to be a genuine passion for Scotland and an enthusiasm for revealing its untapped potential. The author, to my knowledge no SNP supporter himself, has therefore produced a book that will probably reinforce the views of Salmond’s fans, reassure any neutrals, but provide no new ammunition to his enemies.

Scotland is at an important point politically, with a party and parliament dominated by one man who will (rightly or wrongly) be firmly centre stage in the forthcoming independence referendum. It’s right that we know something of that man’s history, and so Against the Odds is an important book, and engagingly written.

It’s not making me miss active party politics one bit, though.

Last year I blogged a review of the excellent Max Brooks book World War Z. A documentary description of a fictitious future war against zombies, it was one of my favourite reads from last year and which, as I mentioned at the time, was to be turned into a film.

With part of the film set in Philadelphia, the search for somewhere that could play the part of that soft cheese-inspired American city began and, oddly, Glasgow was the winner. This is rather akin to the famous story of Charlie Chaplain once coming second in a Charlie Chaplain lookalike competition, though of course it also speaks of the financial incentives offered by Glasgow City Council.

I was in Glasgow for work from Wednesday until Sunday last week, and the event we were running was located just a short zombie shuffle from George Square, where the main centre of filming action was.

For many, the key draw was a chance to see the film’s star, Brad Pitt – though the closest any of our event’s participants got was a brief glimpse of one of his stunt doubles. For me, though, the appeal was the surreal and quite convincing way that Glasgow city centre was dressed up as an American city.

The attention to detail was impressive – everything from roadsigns and pedestrian crossings through to newspaper stands, cars and even tourist information signs. Such was Glasgow’s appeal with its grid system city centre and grand early twentieth century architecture that it was a good fit as an American city.

Our event was regularly interrupted with the sounds of gunfire and screaming from outside (and yes, the jokes about how Glasgow normally is were done to death), and at one point we were barred from leaving our building while the street outside was used for filming.

I managed to get a few photos of the streets, although not sadly when any filming was taking place. Take a peek at them on Flickr.

My scepticism about the film, explained in my post last year, remains, but it will be fun to watch it in order to spot bits of Glasgow that I recognise, and to remember that I was just metres away when those parts were being filmed.

It is, apparently, out in late 2012. If the zombies don’t rise up and kill us all first.

I went to the cinema at Eden Court last night with some friends to see Life in a Day, an unusual and surprisingly effective film experiment.  The premise, created by YouTube, Ridley Scott and others, involved asking people all over the world to submit videos of their lives taken on one particular day – 24 July 2010.

Prompted only by a few questions, such as “what is in your pockets?”, “what do you fear?”, and “what do you love?”, thousands of hours of footage were submitted and various extracts were put together.  The result is an astonishingly moving and inspiring portrait of humanity, from its dramas to its equally beautiful mundanities.

The film leads us intimately into the lives of a diverse and seemingly disparate collection of people throughout the world.  A young Japanese man living with his toddler son in a cramped and untidy apartment, poignantly lighting an incense candle each morning to his seemingly dead wife.  A young South American boy who works as a shoe shiner.  A group of goat farmers somewhere in Europe.  A destitute man and his family living by a graveyard in an Arab country.  A gay American man documenting his “coming out” over the phone to his grandmother.  A Korean man nine years into his round the world cycle trip.

We often discover little about the people we see. Subtitles (where needed) tell us their words, but not their names, countries or occupations.  Such things are left for us to ponder but then quickly dismiss as we realise that it is the everyday details of their lives, rather than the headline biographies, that matter more and which more meaningfully illustrate their humanity.

The film’s “stars” and “co-directors” are seemingly unconnected individuals, yet connected that day either by their desires to film themselves or by others’ desires to film them.  The project brings them together as strangers in a collective sharing of their moments and experiences that day.  As the film progresses, whether Asian families struggling to make ends meet or Americans battling with classic “middle class” problems, the commonality of people becomes more apparent: we discover that love of simple things like family, friends and food is universal; that love of God or fear of death is widespread, that everyone wants to be happy, that most people are essentially good.

Despite the plethora of languages, accents, standards of living and locations, the film presents the clear impression that we are pretty much the same, and life goes on in often ordinary ways for people all over the world.  We see laughter, tears, dancing, mourning and celebration. We see a few births and deaths, we see meals eaten alone or together, religious ceremonies being performed, and possessions or loved ones being cherished.  There is joy and sadness, but also great humour – both intentional and otherwise.

But there is another side to the film that in a sense grabbed me more strongly – the scenes of different countries and cultures around the world.  Whether it is the family on a simple boat on a river overshadowed by the massive luxury liner in the background, a dramatic night-time thunderstorm in an industrial coastal city, or an Afghan man taking us on a tour of the bustling, colourful markets of Kabul, it is the places that join the people in becoming the film’s characters.  The places, as much as the people, are a key part of the story.  While we might easily talk about the portrayal of humanity’s diversity, beauty and commonality in this film, the same is also, perhaps inadvertently, true about our planet.

It’s a film that can affirm your faith in humanity, yes, but more than that it can fuel your desire to get out and explore this incredible world of ours.