Usher Hall

Wed 27th August

The Cowshed, Edinburgh

August 17th

Yesterday Avo I saw a Godfather and God-daughter song-writing team that look set to blow Adele out of the water. All original compositions penned by the brain-child behind the street-review Blog ‘themumble.net,’ Mr Damo Bullen plays Bass, who with drummer, Mr Luke Grifiths, provide a very funky rhythm section. Then along came the very, very cute Al Roberts on rhythm guitar and Roy Saunders on melodica & mandolin completing a sonic template for the amazing voice of Kae-Lei Stowell.

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A Fourteen year old with an amazingly powerful vocal range that brought tears to my eyes. This always happens when I experience Genius. For a girl to have such realised gift at the age of 14 I am confident in saying that Kae Lei Stowell gave the best vocal performance I have witnessed this Summer season and feel blessed to have been moved by such a fine performance of Rock n Roll.

The Cowshed,in the Cowgate has the perfect dance floor all dusty and strewn with straw. With a band as good as this, I was hooked immediately, and the funky moves began. A new band,original songs and with such an impassioned, evolving soul Diva as Kae Lie Stowell leading the quartet. How could they go wrong. FIVE STARS

Reviewer : Mark ‘Divine’ Calvert

Pleasance Dome

16-24 August

£8.50-£9.50

22.45

O’Neill’s performance was strong and energetic from the start. He erupted onto the stage wielding an electric guitar, a wealth of musical knowledge and a keen sense of humour, all of which he shared forthright and throughout the show with an excited audience. Despite the shows title ‘History of Heavy Metal’, this show is not only for lovers of heavy metal music, but for all. O’Neill is both informative and entertaining in his deliverance, and if his knowledge and his passion does not draw you in his witty jokes and charismatic energy will. When a performer enjoys doing their own show so much its hard not to enjoy it with them and in this case it’s evident how much O’Neill enjoys fusing two of his passions, Heavy Metal Music and its life span and his own art form, stand up comedy.

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When I said this show was for all I meant it. I went with two of my counterparts who like myself were never big on Heavy Metal, however we left the venue after the performance with a new found understanding, or for want of a better word curiosity, for a music genre and its disciples, a warm feeling as though we’d been welcomed into a new community and sore sides faces from laughing for the best part of an hour. We are all in agreement that for this show Andrew O’Neill with his magnetic enthusiasm, passionate knowledge but mostly his whimsical personality and performance has earned himself all FIVE STARS.

Reviewer : Dermot Nelson

Summerhall

13-24 August

£10-£12

16.00

This is how it should be done.I joined a couple of friends waiting in a Que. The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside and down we went. Imagine being transported back to Andy Warhol’s art factory in 1967.

Only Andy had borrowed a Tardis to travel into the future to persuade Lux Interior, Poison Ivy, Nick Knox and Aphex Twin to collaborate with The Velvet Underground in an immersive cutting edge art project that was multi media and packed to the rim with everything that would captivate and engage my pleasure buttons. The spirit of Andy Warhol was very present. He was smiling. And like me. He, loved it. FIVE STARS

Reviewer : Mark ‘Divine’ Calvert

Assembly Checkpoint

19.25

13-21

£12-£14

The British love a good impersonator, the ability to emulate to a tee some famous figure off the telly. However, to do this with the unbelievably beautiful, million-single selling singing voices of the the world’s greatest ever divas takes some doing – yet Christina Bianco pulls it off with an ear-shattering ease. Joining her (in drag) is her taller, more hairier equally as powerful a singer,  Velma Celli. They clearly share chemistry on & off stage, & seem to love every second they spend singing together.

The show consists of a wide choice of costumes, & an even wider selection of Divas both dead & alive – Gwen Stefani, Cher, Shania Twain, Billie Holiday & many more all get the Bianco treatment throughout the 70 mins of this pulsating, ear-trembling, soul-quivering show. Velma is more than just a comedy side-kick, & her diva exit towards the end of the show is absolute genius. I, & just about everybody else in the audience, were completely blown away by the bacchanalian energy of Bianco & Celli, which coomplled many to stand clapping in ovation at the end of the show. A well worthy FIVE STARS.

Reviewer : Damo Bullen

Usher Hall

8th August

To a packed Usher Hall, the ever-amiable EIF director Jonathan Mills delivered his opening speech, highlighting the themes of this year’s season, from war-theme plays to South African extravaganzas, celebrating 20 years of that nation’s independence. Together, he called this year’s offerings would, ‘defy the immediate circumstances of their creation.’

Then came the first half of the concert,  the first offering controlled with one of the world’s two best conductors, Oliver Knussen (the other is the 90-year old  ). This was Arnold Schoenburg’s FIVE PIECES FOR OCHESTRA OP 16, a wonderful piece of quite modernist music that is over a century old. We are presented with quite an otherworldly sound, the third piece in particular reminiscent of walking through a swamp, with bubbles of music rising to the surface. Schoenburg called this piece ‘summer morning by a lake.’  The music somehow paints colours in the mind as this eerie soundworld immerses one’s thoughts in dreaming.

The second piece was Scriabin’s PROMETHEUS, THE POEM OF FIRE, & indeed the music 

flows as if one were reading poetry, as a series of short musical flourishes making for a splendid composite whole. At the front-centre of the stage, Kirill Gerstein dramtically  waved his arms &  danced his fingers over his gleaming ebony grand piano. Deeply engaging, this pre-great war slice of Scriabin’s avant-garde mind was performed beautifully by the orchestra, the highly watchable Royal Scottish Orchestra. With the excellent acoustics of the Usher Hall to cast their melodical medley up into, the music was a joy to hear  

Reviewer : Damo Bullen