Tipsy Tapsy is a film by artist Alastair Cook to accompany guitarist R M Hubbert’s track of the same name. The film was the winning entry for the Edinburgh International Film Festival and Ten Tracks Music Pictures Project 2011.

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Lola Dupre is a collage artist from Glasgow, Scotland, who produces highly detailed and fractured collage art. Her work is made the old-fashioned way, with paper and scissors. Eye catching and contorted works cover almost every topic: browsing her site you can see celebrity portraits, animals, fashion editorials, political caricature and reworked classical art images.

Designed in 1989 by architect Charles Jencks, and open to the public for only one day a year, the eye-poppingly original Garden of Cosmic Speculation features gardens, bridges, sculptures, and architectural works, and was inspired by mathematics and science. [Photos below by Paulus Maximus]

Drawing from her experience as a printmaker (she was one half of Scotland-based printmaking duo Whitehaus), Cody Cochrane, now residing in her hometown of Toronto, makes amazingly layered and ornate paintings and murals that often incorporate Native American motifs with bizarre sexual humor.

Written during Olney’s Ph.D. in algorithmic algebraic geometry in Edinburgh, Scotland and Clark’s lost months of limbo and relocation from Los Angeles to Texas following the death of his father and grandfather, best friends Grant Olney and Barry DeBakey wrote the songs that would become their self-titled album with hints of Bryter Layter-era Nick Drake and Scott 4 era Scott Walker. But with echoes of McCartney, a la Ram, Lennon circa-Sometime in NYC, and After the Gold Rush Neil Young in their orchestrations.

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Boasting perhaps the greatest band name on the planet, Scottish four-piece We Were Promised Jetpacks released their debut album, These Four Walls, on Pod Records [Inertia]. Standing alongside the likes of Frightened Rabbit, Glasvegas, and The Twilight Sad as leading figures in Scotland’s indie-rock renaissance, the band’s first full-length was recorded almost entirely live. We checked in with them to get the inside word on the music that inspired it all and they started with The Twilight Sad song, I Became A Prostitute [listen below]: ‘This is the new single by one of the best bands around. It’s pretty perfect. We’ve been lucky enough to see this live three times recently, and each time it’s felt like that footage of the nuclear bomb going off that they love to use on TV. You know when the house gets flattened?’

Jo Gannon is a printmaker working out of Aberdeen, Scotland. Her work is drawing based, intricate and detailed: ‘I like to create surreal compositions’, she says, ‘exploring the subconcious and the free-flowing thoughts that run through the mind’.

We love the energy and raw power of Scottish rock group, Frightened Rabbit. So we checked in with frontman Scott Hutchison about their interesting, but relatively unheard of, hometown: What else outside of Frightened Rabbit should we know about Selkirk, Scotland? ‘It was the birthplace and home of Sir Walter Scott the romanticist writer, it has a few excellent delicacies such The Selkirk Bannock (essentially a fruit loaf, in a kind of dome shape), the Pink Bun (a bun with pink icing, available in Cameron’s bakery on the High Street). The annual town festival, known as the Common Riding, involves a dangerous combination of heavy drinking, horses and large flags. It’s such fun!’ What impact has the addition of Andy on keys had to the live shows?
‘He does a great deal more than that too, but the live show is now so much more detailed as a result. I’m really happy with how the whole thing sounds now. Plus he’s so very handsome’.

Does [song title ] the The Midnight Organ Fight refer to an actual event? Perhaps in [producer] Peter Katis’ studio?
‘Not a specific event, and there was certainly no organ fighting in the studio! The title is hopefully fairly open ended in its meaning, and i’d hope it conjures up multiple scenarios. I did once throw some liver at my brother’s face, but it was around 2 in the afternoon, so its not that applicable’.

How exciting is the Scottish indie scene at the moment: are there potentially big bands bursting out of the woodworks or has the country been enveloped more by the downbeat electro vibe?
‘I think there are so many great great guitar bands playing in Glasgow right now. The sound seems pretty raw and emotional, with acts like El Padre, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Ross Clark, The Twilight Sad, it’s really exciting and a total departure from any of the electro nonsense flying around’.

Hooray! Scottish troubadour Malcolm Middleton is touring Australia and we have double passes to his shows in Sydney [May 8], Melbourne [May 9] and Brisbane [May 10] to giveaway.

To win one, just be the first reader in one of those destinations to leave a message under this post. It’s as simple as that! First in, best dressed. Oh, and we’ll throw in a copy of his Sleigh of Heart EP for each winner as well.

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There was a lot of fuss about former Arab Strap frontman Malcolm Middleton’s recent single, We’re All Going to Die, and the timing of its release around Christmas. We asked him if it was a publicity stunt, a reality check, a coincidence, or all three wrapped up into a two minute fifty slice of classic, introspective pop. ‘It wasn’t a publicity stunt I’m afraid. That would imply that I cared about publicity. It was simply a joke that got taken out of hand and then avalanched a bit. I’m glad it only got to number 31 over here as it could have ruined the nice little rut of miserablism that I’ve carved for myself. Ho-ho-ho!’ Four Cigarettes has been played over and over on my Ipod. A wonderful track. Do you recall writing it and then playing it for someone the first time? ‘I remember writing it and then immediately recording a pretty detailed demo the same day, including all the string and brass parts. The demo is slightly rockier, with louder choruses and distorted guitars. I felt it need softening a bit though. I can’t remember playing it to anyone. I tend to work in a vacuum’. Has it been a challenge moving away from the sound you created so successfully with Arab Strap? Though there are parallels to be drawn obviously. ‘It hasn’t been a challenge — more like fun. I now get to do all the bits that were good in Arab Strap but also stuff that I like without having to compromise or fight about it. I miss being in the band, though we did end it at the right time’ Does Australia [where he's about to tour] hold fond memories for you? If so, which part in particular? ‘I played on a boat in Sydney harbor in 2002 with Mogwai, Arab Strap, Machine Translations and myself. That was good fun. Most memories involve alcohol fueled youthful jet-lag. I’ll hopefully make some more memories like that, except without the youthful, of course’.

Malcolm Middleton’s new EP, Sleight Of Heart, is out now on Pod through Inertia. Malcolm will be touring Australia between 7th and 10th of May.

Vikings terrorized and dominated Britain for the better part of three centuries, so its not surprising that there’s a dearth of viking metal bands in the UK. What the Brits did have, however, were pirates — Alestorm are a Scottish Finntroll-style metal band that sings about treasure, wenches, and battle on the open seas. Next time you have a pirates vs. ninjas party, put these guys on and watch as terrified ninjas cower like the landlubbers they are.

When I first saw the art of Ray Caesar, I thought to myself no other digital artist could compare. Then recently, I’ve started coming across myriad digital artists who prove that this truly is an artform. Last week, for example, I fell in love with the work of Mark Bannerman. His work is rendered so well, that one would think that it was actually painted by the hand of a master. [see also the artwork of Kasper Ledet]

Formerly of Arab Strap, Scottish songwriter Malcolm Middleton sings with all the integrity and smoky purity of someone who has spent way too much time puffing away in the back corner of a sketchy Dundee pub. Four Cigarettes is a devastating track – sparse in the verses, lush in the choruses, and majestically organic in the delivery. I discovered it quite by accident on a wet New York morning whilst working away at a Soho cafe. It kinda shimmied into my headphones, the crackling wickedness of Middleton’s Scottish lilt ripping me straight out of my cappuccino induced haze. ‘Oh man!’, I thought to myself. ‘This is the greatest song most people will never know about’. Until now. Well, for a few of us anyway.

Listen to Malcolm Middleton’s track, Four Cigarettes.

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