Brave New Music

INSTAL: a cast of pioneering, provocative spirits (musicians, artists, writers, poets and bon viveurs), who exist outside the mainstream, between borders or definitions and for one weekend only, also in Glasgow. INSTAL is your chance to experience some of the most exciting experimental artists in Scotland and the world presenting a bunch of never to be repeated events quite unlike anything else you’ll see or hear in 2008.

We’ve hooked up with nearly 50 of the most original, essential and legendary musicians (folk, free jazz, noise or improvisation) of the last 50 years, as well as visual artists, conceptual poets and radical thinkers and asked them what it is that really inspires them, what’s right at the core of what they do? And then we’ve gone about turning those ideas, those key impulses to create, from some of the most creative people in music, into one-off happenings, readings, performances and a couple of guerrilla distractions about town. We reckon that there’s a whole bunch of you out there that share our affinity for things that don’t quite fit into any given category, that take creative chances or don’t conform.

INSTAL tries to let you see some of those things, and to provide flashbulb moments for everyone that comes; moments of fascination and excitement, confusion and inspiration. So if you think it might be interesting to find out what it sounds like to press white hot metal into dry ice, to treat punctuation as percussion or to see some of the most exhilarating live performers in music knackered and on their knees after a 3-hour high-energy-marathon, then INSTAL’s for you.

INSTAL 08 was reviewed by Nick Cain for The Wire here and Neil Cooper for The Wire here and The Herald here; Laura Cameron Lewis for the Scotsman here; Matt Evans for Rock-A-Rolla here and Euan Andrews, Daniel Barrow and Matt Evans for Plan B here.