Soundscapes in motion

lead to an amusing battle to break down language barriers. When it becomes apparent that the woman on the headphones can translate, she’s involuntarily drawn into the men’s chat – something she quickly responds to by upping the volume of her eclectic music collection. Dance, flamenco, classical: the train rattles on to the sound of her mix tape, the men’s broken English and Orwell’s Winston and Julia spending their final moments together.

The crash grows nearer and the woman paints her face, a tragic clown.

One of the men listens to the final words from a loved-one on a phone: “pick up some toilet roll”.

The other man simply eats a sandwich and opens a carton of juice.

“Where would you rather be?” the captions at one point ask – as they describe the countryside outside and invite us to appreciate everyday moments that, when confronted by the prospect of death, are made beautiful. SALLY STOTT Scottish Storytelling Centre (Venue 30) JJJJ Matching 18th and 17th-century Gaelic songs to sweeping electronic soundscapes, with shifting background images to match, Whyte is a duo of Mull singer Alasdair C Whyte and composer, keyboard player and laptop operative Ross Whyte (no relation).

Part of the Fringe’s Made in Scotland strand, their show reprises the well-received album they released last autumn, Fairich (Gaelic for “awake,” “sense,” or “feel”).

It’s a pretty immersive experience, with Alasdair’s poised and expressive singing couched in Ross’s often cavernous electronic soundscapes, the two performers’ shadowy presences on either side of the stage, allowing full view of Dan Shay’s faintly trippy, colourised

0 Alasdair C Whyte and Ross Whyte (not related) make up the musical duo Whyte footage of shadowy landscapes and glimmering seascapes.

Alasdair’s singing commands from the offset in the opening Gaoir, a lament which sets the tone for much of the programme, while the accompaniments are envelopingly ambient, sometimes with percussive pulsing, or with effects such as creaking timbers for Black Oaken Boat, while the title track is a relatively mellow keyboardled instrumental spliced with old field recordings of waulking song chorusing.

There’s a strong sense of motion in the seaborne An Làir Dhonn – “The Brown Mare” – while the images grow darker for the dramatically declamatory Cumha Ni Mhic Raghnaill – a sister’s lament for her murdered brothers, and a weathered graveyard angel presides over the closing Cionran (“melancholia”), stilling and reflective over a simple keyboard accompaniment. likes a vibrant, lively, imaginative theatrical experience. Led by the tight drumming and boisterous Mc-ing of Andrew Bleakley, Stan Hodgson’s Ray is buffeted through the contest. Around him, a quartet of female performers form his backing band the Raylettes, and play the other dancers; like Maria Crocker’s champion Rosa, desperate to win, and Meghan Doyle’s Ida, nervous and unable to move. The music is good and the sense of invention is tangible, although perhaps the sweat-soaked exhaustion of a Northern Soul dancefloor could have been more vividly portrayed. DAVID POLLOCK

They perform it in a more or less seamless sweep of music and image, with no introductions.

For us hapless non-gaels, translations and programme notes were available after the concert, and while they would be impossible to read in the darkened auditorium, some kind of priming beforehand would have enhanced our engagement with this often beautiful show. JIM GILCHRIST where he at least amuses himself. More specifically, he can be said to specialise in reverse engineered wordplay, with a screen projecting clunky, sticklebrick-like puns which he then deconstructs to laughs or otherwise. In between, he shares short stories that reinforce the perception of him as a disaffected, shambling stoner, making few concessions to being likeable and essentially goading the crowd into disengaging.

Abandoning jokes halfway through if he reckons they’re not going well, he was over-sensitive from the start this evening, the fault lying squarely with him. The only saving grace to this petulant, immature display is that it feeds his misanthropic projection of what The Andy Field Experience is. And that a lot of his material, in isolation, is really quite good, with an inventiveness and wilfully renegade juvenilia that sets it apart from the clockwork machinations of the typical punster comic. If he could meet the audience halfway he’d have a decent, distinctive act. JAY RICHARDSON