Tag Archive: brighton


GRASSCUT IN THE LOFT

Filed under: Italy, Music, Poetry — Leave a comment
November 13, 2015

GRASSCUT – Live at Diagonal Loft Club, Forlì, Italy 11th November 2015
grasscut

In Grasscut’s short nine-song set, the Brighton-based duo play the whole of one of the year’s best releases : Everyone Was A Bird. The odd one out is – Reservoir – from 2012’s Unearth.

In my review of this album for Whisperin’ & Hollerin’, I highlighted the subtlety and intimacy of this record. Perhaps inevitably, these qualities are hard to replicate in a live setting, particularly one where many punters are out for a drink and a chat rather than to listen to music.

Nevertheless, it is great to put a face to the songs and to personally thank Andrew Phillips and Marcus O’Dair for the music after the show. This studious looking pair are joined on stage by drummer Aram Zarikian.

The black and white homemade movies playing on a screen behind them is a nice touch in that it emphasizes how Phillips’ primary subject is the British countryside near his current home or from his childhood. Both in words and images, these are no dewy-eyed odes to nature. We see bleak yet beautiful Autumnal or Wintry landscapes peppered with electrical pylons and the ominous presence of a nuclear power station.

The absence of string instruments is quite a loss and the sampled voices, including the voice of poet Siegfried Sassoon, cannot be heard clearly but they still manage to convey the rugged charm of the melodies and richness of the language.

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WORSHIPPING AT THE OUTER CHURCH

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
August 4, 2013

Tomorrow sees the official launch of a double CD of cutting edge sounds from the UK underground by Manchester’s Front & Follow records.

The Outer Church is not an occult gathering place but a musical event in Brighton and obviously a place of pagan worship for musicians with no interest in pandering to mainstream tastes.

The 28 previously unreleased tracks showcase the artists who have appeared there.

These have been selected by The Wire’s Joseph Stannard and I can vouch for the fact that the quality is exceptionally high throughout.

You can read my review of the album here and find out more about the album and all matters related at tumblr.

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IAN McEWAN’S SWEET TOOTH

Filed under: Books, Fiction — Leave a comment
June 3, 2013

Write about what you know is the predictable advice given to budding authors. I think it’s safe to say that Ian McEwan knows more about writing and publishing houses than he does about spying and the MI5.

The acknowledgements are there to show that he did the required reading before putting pen to paper but anyone expecting some action packed James Bond style adventure will be seriously disappointed. The undercover role of agent Serena Plume doesn’t involve risking life and limb but winds up with her becoming a “writer’s moll” (with plenty of under covers work).

Her mission as a well-read reader of contemporary fiction is to recruit an up and coming writer named Tom Haley. The cunning plan is that his work can thereafter be used for propaganda purposes.

The author is in the dark about the MI5 involvement; he thinks he is being supported by a generous arts foundation. Sweet Tooth is mainly set in London and Brighton during the early 1970s. This means that McEwan doesn’t have to worry about the huge technological changes within security work. It allows him to concentrate on getting the period detail right through references to the provisional IRA, pub rock, the cold war, Edward Heath and the three-day week. He can also make quirky statements like: “Paper tissues were becoming ubiquitous, like supermarket trolleys. The world was starting to become seriously disposable”.

Serena is a prolific reader but doesn’t care much for ‘clever’ writers who play tricks on their readers (“I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form”). Haley has more of a literary taste; he likes poetry and experimental authors. He’s also a bit of new man who, in his stories “seems to know women from the inside”. He explains that fiction needs tricks if it is to work.

Of the novella that makes his name, he says: “The end is there in the beginning – there is no plot. It’s a meditation”. This is also a concise description of McEwan’s novel which begins: “My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume)and almost 40 years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British security service. I didn’t return safely. Within 18 months I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a hand in his own undoing”.

Having the central character as a sexy spy in her early 20s is a temporary distraction from the fact that the novel is essentially an autobiographical meditation on the world seen from a literary, rather than political, perspective.

There is a lot of stuff about the donkey work involved in writing and how the finished work then gets to be dissected by critics. There’s a cameo for Ian Hamilton of The New Review and knowing references to Martin Amis. McEwan seems to be treading water with this novel. It drifts along through some affectionate character studies but the lack of tension or intrigue means that it also ends up being smug, contrived and self-indulgent.

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RAGING AGAINST THE FEAR

Filed under: Health and fitness, Movies, Television — Leave a comment
December 18, 2012

THE FEAR written by Richard Cotton, directed by Michael Samuels (Channel 4 2012)

I’d hate to be on the receiving end of one of Peter Mullan’s stares. When he fixes his unflinching gaze on someone you know it’s only a matter of time before he decks them.

He’s one of those actors for whom the red mist of rage seems to come as second nature. He was so convincing as an alcoholic in films like My Name Is Joe and Tyrannosaurus that you just know that he is drawing on personal experience rather than simply method acting.

There’s always a risk that he gets typecast as a drunken Scot which is why I think that it was a mistake in this four-part drama to show him guzzling a bottle of whiskey prior to going on a bender. For this is not the story of a heavy drinker but of a tough guy being brought down by a serious mental illness.

Set in Brighton, it follows Mullan as gangster turned entrepreneur Richie Beckett in his slow descent into madness caused by the early onset of dementia. Confabulation sounds like a joke word but actually describes the serious psychological state whereby sufferers fill in gaps in their memory by fabricated events. Against this backdrop, we see Richie desperately trying to hold things together while embroiled in turf wars with a ruthless Albanian gang of archetype (and stereotypical) bad guys.

For dramatic purposes it would have been better had we seen Mullan losing control solely because of this medical condition. The boozy scenes serve only to distract the viewer from the crippling effects of Alzheimer’s.

Mullan dominates to the point that the other parts seem sketchy and undeveloped. Nevertheless Harry Lloyd is impressive as Matty one of his two sons and it was good to see Richard E Grant as a smarmy doctor.

Despite his violent character, you can’t help but feel sympathy for Mullan /Richie in the same way that you may take pity on a punch drunk boxer who is unaware that he is losing the bout. “I’m here – I’m alive – I’m normal – What the fuck are you?” he rages when his wife suggests he seeks help. Ultimately I ended up feeling that going down fighting like this was better than a slow death in a hospice.

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COMPARING TWO SPARROWS

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
September 19, 2012

WOODPECKER WOOLIAMS is the bizarre pseudonym for Brighton resident Gemma Williams who earned this nickname for her tendency to nod along to her music and a fervent love of woolly jumpers.

Her excellent album The Bird School Of Being Human has just been released and you can read my glowing Whisperin’ & Hollerin’ review here.

The standout track is Sparrow, a disturbing song that takes lines from Dolly Parton’s ‘Little Sparrow’ and presents them in a darker, more venomous setting. Continue reading →

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