Across
4. ASHKENAZY. Vlad the Conductor. Well known for impaling out-of-tune first violins on his long baton; and possibly the only Russian-born Icelandic citizen living in Sydney? Anag; except there's a typo in the clew. Should be "shake zany". You can't spell his name with two Ys.
8. UNROLLS. UN (a continental; French) + ROLL + S(upper).
9. ENTROPY ?? Anag of "poetry"; but there's no N in sight.
10. AFGHANI. Anag of "if Ghana". The rest is padding.
Sadly, this isn't a language. Many tongues are spoken in Afghanistan, but this isn't one of them. The Afghani is the currency unit. (There's a joke here about the Englishman who goes into a Kabul brothel looking for small change.)
11. SITARISTS. Mediocre cryptic def.
13. PANGOLIN. PAN (criticise) + GOL (rev of LOG) + I + N. The Scaly Anteater.
14. ETHICS. Anag of SET containing HIC ("this"; Latin).
17. CAROUSE. C (about) + AROUSE (start). Strangely enough, this can be a noun.
19. KISSER. Vague double def based on Rodin's sculpture, "The Kiss". How, I wonder, would he have sculpted just the one? Something like this?:
23. CARTHAGE. ART (skills) + HAG (witch) inside C [of] E.
25. MOLECULES. Rather obvious anag as you don't have to move too many letters. And "break" as an anagind?
26. SEA BASS. A bizarre mixed homophone. Sea/see ... OK. But bass/bass ... I don't think so: the two are heteronyms. (Note the position of "heard" in the clew.) And there really isn't a def as such. Trying to fool us into writing "sea-bird" [time -- in the nick] perhaps? "What flavour is it?"
27. HARRIER. Exactly the same clew as 22ac in #663. Shoddy.
And, talking of #663, how come they've moved to giving the winner from two weeks ago? And how come there's been no apology for the missing clew in that puzzle?
28. SECTION. Anag of "notices". Also a verb describing what should be done with both the setter and the editor of the Leisure pages.
29. HEAD'S TART.
Down
1. LUNA(+)R PARK. Novel by Bret Easton Ellis, best known for American Psycho.
2. BRIGAND. GI (rev) inside BRAND (mark).
3. ALL AT ONCE. Double def.
4. ASSISI. ASS (donkey) + IS + I ("in" small?). Hangout of St Francis who was reputedly very fond of asses, though not to the point of covetousness.
5. KEN JAMES. KEN ("know" in Scots) + JAM + E (ecstasy) + S (southern). Best known as the elder brother in Skippy.
6. NARRIAH. RAN (managed, rev) + HAIR (rev). Not sure, but I think it's supposed to be Narriah Mountain, NSW. Not my neck of the woods but, if so, a nice reversal of Dorothy's usual tendency to think that Australian placenames starting with "Mount" are mountains. (The "up" bit of the clew can't be signalling an elevated place; it's the reversal indicator.)
Update: so obscure a place that, when I Googled it this morning (Sunday), this very blog entry (the one you're reading now) came up twice on the first search page!
7. ZAPOTEC. Rev of TOPAZ + EC (ECuador -- according to the UN's 1949 and 1968 Conventions on Road Traffic). EQuador is a city in Brazil.
12. IN/VOICE. Bad pun.
15. TEST MATCH. "Try" + "agree".
16. STREISAND. Anag of TRIES + SAND (smooth).
18. ARGUMENT. A + RENT around GUM.
20. IRON AGE. IRON (even) + AGE ([news]paper). The rest is from Barbara's shoulders.
21. SEES RED. How come "gets on" shows something (RED) goes below?
22. MANAKIN ?? Utterly unsure of this one. It's a bird from S/Central America. But how do you get KIN from "catty"?
Update: found it! Chambers has "kin" (def 2) as "a Japanese and Chinese weight, the catty". Under the latter, we find: "a unit of measurement used in SE Asia and China, equal to about 1.3 lb avoirdupois ..." etc. Obscure or what?
24. ASSIST. ASS + anag of SIT. Presumably it should be "fool", not "fools"?
