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| INSIDE ISSUE NUMBER 72
| THIS WEEK'S HEADLINES
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January is usually the cold season, but with the unseasonal weather albeit with gale force winds, it is on the sporting front -- avoiding any WMD questions -- that the turbulence is really being felt. Fortunately, we're still bringing you normal service.
With John Currin leaving Andrea Rosen for Gogo, and it's looking like Louis Saha hiking North to join Sir Alex, the transfer market's certainly keeping us warm.
To cool you down we're recommending a combination of talks and private views, preferably in tandem. With Alex Coles drawing out the intricacies of Jorge Pardo's work and NYC it-lit-boy Jonathan Lethem speaking 'bout his work, or a nice talk about the nuance of football overspending; and Charles Sandison, Mark Wallinger, Jim Shaw, juneau/projects/, Identity and Inventory opening this week, it's certainly shaping up to be several, maybe long, nights of cooling. And if that's all too arty for you, we say cut some rug at Bugged Out! or get " uncaged" with John Cage!
This is also the last week for our resident artist, Hiroshi Sugimoto, who this week brings us a photo essay of architectural images. And it's also your last chance to catch his show at the Serpentine Gallery.
And finally, we'd like to wish a big Flashtastique 8th Birthday to: SPRAWL! | | | |
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| FESTIVAL | |
ADDICTIVE TV: AUDIOVISUALIZE | Wednesday 14 January (Wed to Fri 4 - 8pm & Sat 2 to 6pm) | @ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus | Price: £1.50 weekdays and £2.50 weekends | | London-based Addictive TV collective will be curating an exhibition of audiovisual work unfolding the relationship between music and visuals. The focus will be on AV mixes -- a new genre of art intertwining cinema, club culture and digital arts. The films will include pieces from their Mixmaster project; ten-minute AV remixes of re-edited classic and cult films ranging from Kurosawa to Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. The exhibition will also feature other UK artists' works including Giles Thacker and The Mellowtrons, Si Begg and Exceeda, winners of the 2003 Diesel-U-Music VJ award. "Foreigners" will include New Yorker artist DJ Spooky and American AV pioneer Brian Kane (Emergency Broadcast Network); key figures on the Japanese VJ scene Glamoove (creators of the Motion Dive VJ software); German AV Bauhouse; French award-winning short film directors; and VJs Metronomic will be representing mainland Europe. During a talk on Thu 29/01, Graham Daniels of Addictive TV, after touching issues regarding the development of the VJ ( Visual Jockeys) and AV ( Audiovisual) artistic figures, will introduce the ethos of the group by showing examples of their work, including extracts from their project Transambient for Channel 4 and Sci-Fi's remixed NASA archive series Spaced Out. NB: The festival runs from Thu 14/01 to 07/02. Giveaway: We have three copies of Spaced Out and three copies of Transambient to give away. They'll go to six randomly picked Flashers who can give us SI Begg's full name.
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| FESTIVAL / FILM | |
NICHOLAS RAY: BITTER VICTORY | Wednesday 14 January (Wed 14/01 to Thu 15/01 at 6:30pm & 8:45pm) | @ National Film Theatre, South Bank, SE1 (020.7928.3232) Tube: Embankment/Waterloo | Price: general £7.50 | concessions £5.70 | | Cinema-goers usually associate the maverick American film-director Nicholas Ray with such established Hollywood classics as Rebel Without A Cause or In A Lonely Place. However, Bitter Victory -- a new print of which is a highlight of the NFT's current major retrospective of Ray's work -- is a late neglected gem. Set during the WWII, the film stars Richard Burton as the brooding Captain Leith, an Arab-speaking archaeologist, now reluctantly serving in the British Army in North Africa. Sent on a secret mission to steal plans from German headquarters in Benghazi, Leith soon becomes embroiled in a conflict with his superior officer, Major Brand ( Curd Juergens). The tension is heightened when Brand discovers that Leith had an affair with his wife, Jane ( Ruth Roman) before she married him. Having captured the plans, along with the Nazi officer who wrote them, the commando unit begins the long trek back to safety. But things begin to unravel as the hazards of the desert bring the rivalry between the two men smouldering to the surface. Instead of focusing on the panoramic landscape, Ray creates dramatic tension through a characteristic use of close-up that exposes the desperate loneliness within the characters. The French new wave film director Jean-Luc Godard called Bitter Victory "the most beautiful of films", and watching this sublime CinemaScope print of the film you can see why. NB: Bitter Victory is being screened on Wed 14/01 (6:30 & 8:45pm) and Thu 15/01 (6:30 & 8:45pm) and is part of the Nicholas Ray festival (runs till 31/01). | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| READING / TALK | |
JILL DAWSON & JULIE MYERSON | Wednesday 14 January (7:30pm) | @ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo | Price: general £6 | concessions £4 | | Fresh Fiction anyone? Bouncy, juicy, fresh young novelists to devour? Well, no.
The RFH has a series of author nights bringing together established, if slightly lesser known names in a friendly, pillow fight at tea-time type forum. This week, Julie Myerson sets up with Jill Dawson to discuss, presumably, their latest books. Myerson's Something Might Happen is a twister of tradition, conjuring societal constructions out of conventional suspense -- it's a skilful murder mystery that changes the point of the genre. Meanwhile, Whitbread-nominated Jill Dawson presents her fifth book Wild Boy, an extraordinary discourse on autism set amid the chaos of 19th-century Paris and concerning the true story of a feral child found living in the woods. Whilst the event might not spring off the screen in quite the way that their characters jump off the page, if you've spent the new year staring at a telly promising to get out, get cultural and actually do things this year... well then, this is a cheap, worthy and promising place to start. The Guardian's Alex Clark referees. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| PERFORMANCE / THEATRE | |
WHITE CABIN | Wednesday 14 January (Wed 14/01 to Sat 17/01 at 8:45pm; Sun 18/01 at 6pm) | @ Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, SE1 (020.7960.4203 or 4242) Tube: Embankment/Rail Waterloo | Price: general £15 | concessions £9 | | In our general preview of the Mime 2004 festival
last week we didn't mention Akhe, a fascinating performance collective who usually describe their work as "Russian Engineering Theatre". Akhe, founded in 1989 by former members of Boris Ponizovski's YES-NO theatre group, are based in St. Petersburg and, like many of the most interesting groups these days, have fallen into making theatre almost by accident. Their work is propelled by a vision that pulls in whatever disciplines necessary to achieve it, and with awesome skill and inventiveness -- "struggling all the while with space and matter", as they put it. As well as being fascinating from textural, conceptual, spatial and design viewpoints, at the heart of Akhe's practice there's a great understanding of dramatic rhythm and tension -- this is thoroughly engaging theatre. Imagine a collaboration between Jean Tinguely and Tadeusz Kantor -- ideas and contraptions pouring into the room and threatening to self-destruct before you've quite grasped them, but all with a virtuoso execution and the kind of deep-cut Russian humour that, if you don't notice it immediately, will probably thump you over the head while you're lying in bed trying to remember it all. NB: White Cabin runs for five nights from Wed 14/01 till Sun 18/01. A post-show discussion will be held on Thu 15/01 after the performance. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ARCHITECTURE / TALK | |
MARK COUSINS | Thursday 15 January (6:30 pm) | @ Bartlett School Of Architecture, Gower St., WC1 (020.7679.7504) Tube: Euston Sq. | Price: FREE | | With Big Brother, Temptation Island, even Pop Idol becoming an annual if not weekly event, getting used to being watched is coming to a monitor near you. Those theory-heads in the crowd will recognise the smell of Michel Foucault's understanding of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon. Those arty-farties will know that this is the theory that also partly (with Baudrillard) inspires Peter Halley's paintings. Now finally, we have someone to pooh-pooh the arch-theorist's analysis, and rightly so that it should emanate from the 18th-century philosopher's own home. Having already described his discipline -- architecture -- as "weak" because its contents and boundaries are confused, the Architectural Association's Director of General Studies and also of Histories and Theories, Mark Cousins, is now ready to seriously take the Frenchman to task. Having already co-written a book on Foucault, the Arts Council member and Zaha consultant will be discussing Bentham's ideal prison: the highly utilitarian and economic model which has provided the theoretical architecture for Foucault's societal study. NB: Be sure to pay old JB a visit after the lecture!
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| TALK | |
FOOTBALL: FOR LOVE OR MONEY? | Thursday 15 January (7pm) | @ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus | Price: general £8 | concessions £7 | | Anyone familiar with the current transfer shenanigans will be a regular at the soap opera being provided by his Fergieness, but that other story being played out in South London -- whether Alan Curbishley is a truly great manager without the funds to prove it -- should be the real story. Instead, it's the drama of the big 5 spenders -- yes, Arsenal, Man U, Newcastle, Liverpool and Chelski -- with their large war chests who'll determine the collection of silverware. Take Chelsea, who've already spent £111 million, enough to sort some Third World problems. That aside, our national sport, despite a certain Jonny Wilkinson making us proud, also has thugs painting their faces and doing things in the Nation's name. Now The Economist and the ICA have put together a talk to discuss just these "sporting" issues. With Sports journo David Lacey, Media Strategist Mark Oliver of Oliver & Ohlbaum, Glen Kiron formerly of the FA, and Matthew Bishop from The Economist chairing, setting out discuss media sponsorship, yob culture and over spending, it should prove an intellectual if highly recreational evening. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| DANCE / PERFORMANCE | |
THE BANQUET | Thursday 15 January (7:30pm) | | Price: general £12 | concessions £7 | | One of the UK's leading dance theatre companies plays at one of London's newest dance venues for one night only. Two treats in one... the Laban Centre -- designed by Herzog and de Meuron -- and Protein doing their thing. It's a brave, or brazen, dance company that tours to London smack bang in the middle of Resolution! at The Place and the MIME Festival (Purcell Room and ICA). If only it could be this competitive and exciting all the time! Still, it's a shame the companies in the MIME Festival and Resolution! will miss out on seeing Protein's acclaimed show, featuring the renaissance man Richard Strange. The Banquet is back by popular demand after the success of last October's Royal Festival Hall performance, which, strangely enough, was on the day before Halloween.! Giveaway: We have two copies of Strange: Drunks and Punks, Kicks and Flicks autographed by Strange to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can name of few of Strange's main activities.
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| CONCERT | |
ELLA GURU | Thursday 15 January (8pm) | | Price: general £5 | concessions £4 | | If you're looking for something to warm up your soul this week, then an evening in Ella Guru's company should prove irresistible. Their sweet, tender, fragile melodies envelop you in an evocative, dreamy world, their layered orchestrations and near-whispered vocals so intimate and simple, that you unabashedly want that silly tingly smile of contentment that has arisen up inside you to stay there all night. Anyway, before we get carried away and cue the violins, there's no sentimentality here either, just honest, gentle music from a group of slightly shy Liverpudlian musicians, telling tales through optimistic eyes. Kind of like the soundtrack you need for that moment when you slip into a scrumptious candlelit bubblebath and close your eyes. Gorgeous and glorious. NB:
Support from Magic Numbers and Vincent Treacey.
Giveaway: We have three copies of 3 Songs From Liverpool (their debut EP) to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name all the members of that quintessential liverpudlian band.
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| CLUB | |
SOLID STEEL | Thursday 15 January (8pm - 2am) | | Price: £3 | | "Say kids, what time is it?" It's time for the Solid Steel Radio Show to return with a new ground-breaking club night in London. Since its conception in 1988 by Coldcut's Matt Black & Jonathan More, Solid Steel has given its vast worldwide listener base access to a rare blend of aural treats with a highly successful radio show -- an eclectic series of mix CDs and now finally, back once again, a regular Solid Steel club night. Promising to represent the radio show in every way with its diversity, creativity and open-minded attitude, this monthly night will feature residents Strictly Kev ( DJ Food) & DK plus unannounced special guests, in keeping with the unexpected nature and experimental spirit of the show. Bringing you the most diverse selection of music from jazz, breaks and beats, funky rock,
hip-hop and techno, through to drum & bass, soundtracks, world music, poetry and electronic oddities, the new Solid Steel night is guaranteed to be a journey into sound! Giveaway: We have two copies of the Solid Steel Herbal Blend CD to give away. They'll go to two randomly picked Flashers who can name five artists that are on the Ninja Tune label. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| FILM | |
A MIGHTY WIND | Friday 16 January | @ Various cinemas across London | Price: Check press for times and tickets prices | | For those with a tendency for similitude, A Mighty Wind smites the wind from their sails; for there is nothing like this Christopher Guest film. Except, that is, his others. Fans of genre-creating This Is Spinal Tap, the bafflingly under-known Waiting For Guffman, and the joyously acclaimed Best In Show, will presumably have their tickets booked, and can rest easy in the knowledge that the genius of this mighty ensemble is not simply intact, but has blown up a storm of a movie. For the rest, a few toots as to what you're missing and then it's off to the box office with you. Firstly, this film is about folk music, it's basically improvised and it is documentary(ish). Yay, eh? Secondly, it has an inspired Eugene Levy leading a gifted cast clearly in love with their jobs and thirdly, it's hysterical (in the good way). There is little more to add other than: Catherine O'Hara (because they're two or three beautiful words) and that Mickey & Mitch are the soundtrack to our life. Brilliant stuff! | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CONCERT / FESTIVAL / FILM / TALK | |
JOHN CAGE UNCAGED | Friday 16 January | | Price: Check programme for times and ticket prices | | "The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." (JC).
A unique and impressive three-day event recapturing the wonders of the late American composer John Cage (1912-92), probably the one who most likely represented the emergence of experimental music. He indeed moved all constraints stuck to the term " music", as Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) did with the term " art", by stating that any means or material should be used for musical composition, especially environmental noise. An impressive and extensive list of sub-events ranging from concerts, films and talks recreate Cage's happenings (the revolutionary 4'33", Seasons, and Solo for piano among others). The BBC Symphony Orchestra, along with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, will be leading the orchestral work by performing both Cage's works and compositions by Charles Ives, Willam Schunam and former Cage's student Christian Wolff. Guest performers include pianists John Tilbury, Joanna MacGregor, the young Rolf Hind and Nicolas Hodges. Despite the expensive weekend pass (£96), it would be a mistake to miss even partially such an incredible happening. We suggest at least a day pass or single events while taking the opportunity to follow the free events. The problem remains, which days!? An undeniable must-see. NB: The festival runs for three days from Fri 16/01 to Sun 18/01. Some concerts will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART / PRIVATE VIEW / TALK | |
CHARLES SANDISON | Friday 16 January (7 - 9pm) | | Price: FREE | | Ever since Magritte professed that his painting of a pipe, " n'est pas une pipe" the dialogue of image vs. language was set firmly into place. British-born and Finland-based artist Charles Sandison continues the parameters laid out by '70s conceptualists such as Laurence Weiner and Robert Barry, exploring the play between the sign and signification of singular, often oppositional words such as yes/no; male/female; mother/father; child/old. At the same time, he broadens this into a romantic, aesthetic symbolism by shaping words into advanced computer-programmed installations allowing them to interact, evolve and swirl evocatively around darkened spaces. With the installation Tribes (2003), Sandison's words glide, spar, jostle and intermittently coalesce, and elsewhere LCD screens re-produce a mesmerising combination of both random and carefully constructed patterns of text from arguably the two most important (and diametrically opposed) books ever written, The Old Testament and Darwin's The Origin of Species. Across these endless exchanges and juxtapositions Sandison's texts flow effortlessly from the profound to the inconsequential, and in doing so create a sensitive illustration of art, language and the arcane nature of existence itself. (Runs till 14/02.) NB: On Fri 16/01 at 5:30pm Sandison will talk about his work. The private view takes places after from 7 - 9pm. Lee Ufan's solo show opens on Tue 20/01 from 6 - 8pm at 52-54 Bell Street. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| CLUB | |
BUGGED OUT! | Saturday 17 January (10pm - 7am) | | Price: general £15 | concessions £12 | | Don't kid yourself: booze tastes delicious, fags make you look grown-up and you can't smoke and drink on a running machine. For as long as London resembles Basingstoke, show January two bony yellow fingers and get out on the razz with everyone else as Bugged Out! pile into The End this Saturday. Ever the populists, the Manchester label has always eschewed the moody-boy techno and jazz noodlery of their less successful peers for a giddy romp through house, techno and electro. In the Main Room, fancy-dan Justin Robertson offers impeccably styled grooves while Phil Kieran delivers both "chunk" and "funk" before FC Kahuna attempt to rekindle the love affair between your waistline and the bassline. In the Lounge, Erol Alkan commands with the fashionable bootleg tat that has a made Trash such a success, while the The Glimmer Twins show that their hometown of Ghent is not the only thing they have in common with Soulwax. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART / FILM PREMIERE / PRIVATE VIEW | |
MARK WALLINGER | Monday 19 January (6:10 pm) | | Price: £10 | | Mark Wallinger creates sublime tableaux out of the mundane or overlooked of our society: passengers wearily exiting an airport arrivals gate in slow motion; a crowd of football fans frozen in their exodus; and the arcane world of horseracing have numbered among his subjects. And whether or not you've liked all his work all the time, it's hard to deny his art will alter your perception of these things. Wallinger has worked in a variety of media, but it is in video that he has created perhaps some of his most celebrated work. This month the artist continues his cinematic explorations with his first full-length feature, The Lark Ascending. (The title comes from a composition by Vaughan Williams, which itself was inspired by a WWI poem by George Meredith, although apparently the film itself does not reference either.) The Artprojx event also includes art critic -- and now White Cube employee (Director of Exhibitions and Artists Liaison) -- Tim Marlow taking the stage with Wallinger after the screening for a little chit-chat. NB: Wallinger is also in town for his first London exhibition since the Whitechapel show at Anthony Reynolds Gallery from Fri 16/01 till 21/02. The private view will take place on Thu 15/01 from 6:30 - 8:30pm.
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| CONCERT | |
THE ESSEX GREEN | Monday 19 January (7pm) | | Price: £6 | | The Essex Green (from Brooklyn, not that famous English county east of London) return this week to continue the promotion of their current release The Long Goodbye. The band conjures up a very therapeutic blend of luscious vintage Rhodes/Vox keyboards, skilfully woven with yearnful vocal tones akin to Belle and Sebastian and/or Broadcast. This band would stand out well from their peers had they indeed been releasing records in the late '60s -- there are tinges of The Mamas and the Papas and The Velvet Underground nestling amongst the melodic undertones of more recent craftsfolk like Teenage Fanclub and even Ash. These faithfully honed songs promise to massage a warm fuzzy glow within the punters' bellies; the feeling being a familiar one, but still difficult to pigeon-hole. So whilst the texture of the music itself may be nothing new, the melodic karma induced by this band surely is something worth experiencing. Giveaway: We have three copies of The Long Goodbye to give away. They'll go to three randomly picked Flashers who can name the three bands that Sasha Bell is a member of (hint: see this week's CD review). | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| | ARCHITECTURE / DEBATE | |
THE SMITHSONS | Tuesday 20 January (7:15pm) | | Price: general £10 | concessions £6 | | Do you find the Barbican a bit too chintzy? Think Lasdun's design for the National Theatre should have featured more concrete? Then the "Brutalist" work of husband and wife architects the Smithsons is for you. Most notably the infamous Robin Hood Gardens Estate in Poplar, whose grimness is further enhanced by the close proximity of the Blackwall Tunnel, or their revolutionary design for Hunstanton School in Norfolk -- also revolutionary in the sense that the building didn't work. In this ongoing exhibition, the Design Museum has been looking at whether this image of the Smithsons' oeuvre tells the whole story, and concentrates on some of their smaller individual housing projects, including the Solar Pavilion and the " House of the Future", designed for the 1956 Ideal Home Exhibition. A panel of notable architects will be grappling with these issues in a debate chaired by Peter Cook, known both for being a member of the '60s Archigram group, and also recently co-designer of the fabulous blue "friendly alien" form for the new Kunsthaus Museum in Graz. NB: The Smithsons -- The House Of The Future To A House For Today runs till 29/02. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| FILM | |
ZABRISKIE POINT | Tuesday 20 January (Tue 20/01 8pm & Wed 21/01 to Thu 22/01 8:45pm) | @ ICA, The Mall, SW1 (020.7930.3647) Tube: Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus | Price: general £6.50 | concessions £5.50 | | The first movie the Italian legend Michelangelo Antonioni made in America (where he was famous for his previous works L'Avventura and Il Deserto Rosso) was a big flop which followed his 1966 success of Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar-inspired Blow-Up. Digging intelligently into America's darkest side of consumerism, the title relates to the white landscape of Death Valley, Zabriskie Point, where the two neophyte actors Mark Frechette, a runaway high-school student, and Daria Halprin merge to create one of the most sublime and hallucinatory love scenes in cinema. Despite the financial loss the movie made at its time and some of current criticisms about Antonioni's obsessive American counterculture view, the movie is a beautiful photographic tale featuring one of the most striking last scenes in cinema's history, dramatically rejecting American Imperialism. The motion picture is also backed by one of the most compelling original soundtracks comprising Pink Floyd, Kaleidoscope, John Fahey, and the legendary solo guitar love scene takes by Grateful Dead's front man Jerry Garcia. A must-see on the big screen! NB: Zabriskie Point is being screened on Tue 20/01 at 8pm and Wed 21/01 to Thu 22/01 at 8:45pm. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART | |
NOTHING IF NOT SATIRICAL | Ends Saturday 7 February (Thu to Sat 1 - 5pm) | | Price: FREE | | In the converted spaces of The Nunnery, political art goes unexpectedly irreverent and pleasurable. Well-established names such as Martha Rosler, Tracey Moffat and Jenny Holzer are rigorously selected for the irony used in videos to point out subtle propaganda and gender or racial stereotypes. Dough Hall's The Amarillo News Tapes, in which the artist learned the rhetoric of a Midwestern local TV station, ends up in a shamelessly hilarious invented news broadcast, aimed to point out information's artificiality. In Love, Sex and Kung Fu Kip Kilberg creates a sequence of scenes featuring Hollywood representation of the Asian as exotic. The edited passage had naughty comments recorded over it reminiscent of a bunch of male friends enjoying a beer, pizza and video night in. Even the young David Blandy, shortlisted in last year's Beck's Student prize for Film and Video, effortlessly stands up in the Olympus of '80s engaged artists. His video shows him getting around the London Tube with his walkman silently lip-syncing the Wu-Tang Clan, which does not entirely fit his timid nerd look. Although the names may suggest heavy theory, the enjoyment and intelligent laughter the selection elicits is well worth a Number 8 bus ride till its last stop east. NB: Show ends 07/02. | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| DANCE | |
RESOLUTION! 2004 | Ends Saturday 14 February (8pm) | | Price: £5 - £15 | | | | | BACK TO TOP |
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| ART / DESIGN | |
PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM | Ends Saturday 14 February (Wed to Sat 12 - 6pm) | @ Henry Peacock Gallery, 38A Foley St., W1 (020.7323.4033) Tube: Oxford Circus/Goodge St. | Price: FREE | | Before TV and the Internet, public speeches and posters were the two most effective means of disseminating information and propaganda. Politicians wishing to make the history books must still deliver at least one memorable speech (and boy does Bush try). The power of posters likewise continues unabated: the recent Sloggi "thong" billboard caused as much disruption to traffic as did its Wonderbra equivalent a decade ago. But what would happen if these very different modes of communication were combined? This was the challenge set by the Henry Peacock Gallery for 40 typographers: to interpret a speech of their choice as a poster. Mostly cramped onto small-scale posters, these speeches proved frustratingly difficult to read, all the more so given that many designers had deliberately played up the illegibility of the texts. And yet perhaps this was the most appropriate and creatively liberating solution to the dilemma: these speeches were -- with the exception of those lifted from novels -- intended only for our ears, and their peculiar rhetorical devices do not generally translate into satisfying written prose. In this context, even HG Wells' War of the Worlds speech appeared tame. In one sense, then, Public Address System is a failed experiment in breaking boundaries; it is undoubtedly more thought-provoking for it. (Show ends 14/02.) NB: Exhibitors inlcude among others Anthony Burrill, The Designers Republic, Paul Elliman, Jonathan Ellery ( Browns), Experimental Jetset, FL@33, Alan Fletcher, Angus Hyland ( Pentagram), Michael C. Place ( Build), and Erik Spiekermann ( United Designers Network). | | | BACK TO TOP |
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CD REVIEW
The Ladybug Transistor
Ladybug Transistor
Release date: 19/01 ( Merge Records)
If Stephin Merritt is the
Cole Porter of the New York
indie world, does that make Ladybug Transistor's weedy
frontman Gary Olson its Rogers & Hart? Although
authorship has always been attributed to the band as a whole, the fact that this is very much Olson's outfit is even clearer
now that the band has spawned spin-offs The Essex Green and
Finishing School
to showcase other members' talents. In any case, the band's self-titled
fifth release shows that, unaffected by
the recent wave of post-punk bands, Olson is continuing to develop his own brand of sophisticated, baroque-yet-intimate
chamber pop. But without repeating himself:
The Ladybug Transistor
is more subdued than on previous albums, with the band shifting personnel (goodbye to Jennifer Baron, a mainstay since 1997,
now with an unsigned band in Pittsburgh) and off home turf for the first time, having exchanged Olson's own Marlborough
Studios in Brooklyn for the wide open spaces of Arizona and the services of
Calexico producer Craig Schumacher.
Oddly enough, the changes emerge above all in Olson's vocal technique. He's now singing every song as if it were set just a
couple of steps lower than his natural range, so that his voice sounds tremulous, strained, almost buried in his chest. This
could easily become an irritating mannerism, but on tracks like "Song for the Ending Day" or the brilliantly chosen cover of '60s pop rarity "Splendor in the Grass" (originally sung by
Jackie DeShannon with the
Byrds), it decisively shifts
the emotional focus of the Ladybug's music from the nuances of the songs' structure and arrangement to the immediacy of the
voice. And then when the clear, thin singing of Sasha Bell
chimes in, it's like catching sight of a silver lining.
To buy
The Ladybug Transistor click
here
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BOOK REVIEW
Ed Ruscha
Richard D. Marshall
Phaidon: £45
ISBN: 0 7148 3908 6
Buy Ed Ruscha online or buy it through Walther Koenig Books at the Serpentine Gallery (020.7706.4907).
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It's surprising that Ed Ruscha, a creative polyglot and key Conceptual Pop artist, has not had a proper monograph -- as opposed to major exhibition catalogue -- until now. The Omaha-born artist (1937) has constantly reinvented the form of his communication, from books to prints to photographs, not forgetting the paintings. The Hollywood sign, the burning museum and products were but the beginning, moving from named stains (e.g. gunpowder) to snappy texts (e.g. Sex at Noon Taxes) and even road maps -- the Ageleno resident is certainly in the running to be KF's coolest artist on the planet. But then, cool may be his theme. It's Ruscha's cool application of language to image, elision of signage to wordage, that is now bringing him world renown. Thus, making him an appropriate subject for Richard D. Marshall's detailed and chronological study of his diverse oeuvre.
Giveaway: We have one copy of Ed Ruscha to give away. It'll go to one randomly picked subscriber who can tell us the name of Ruscha's two main dealers.
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kultureflash info |
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STAFF
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Julien Dobbs-Higginson, Sherman Sam, Rob Oldham, Iain Norman, Jen Thatcher, Simonida Tomovic and Deborah Coughlin.
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CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
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Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) and Barry Schwabsky.
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CONTRIBUTORS
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James Cowdery, Charlotte Dobbs-Higginson, Justine Dobbs-Higginson, Thom Falls, Ant Hampton, Andreas Hesse, Nicola Homer, Jim Hudson, Ingrid Lunden, Jamie MacLaren, Francesco Manacorda, Eric Namour, Emma Pettit, Graeme Ross, Tom Uglow, Kate Zamet.
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ABOUT US
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KultureFlash is a free, weekly newsletter covering happenings and openings in and around London.
Each week we track down some of the most interesting and unusual events taking place in the capital
and deliver them straight to your inbox. Featuring art, gigs, films, talks, clubs and more -- we are
committed to bringing you an eclectic mix of the best of what's on in London. If you want to tell us
about an upcoming event please do so by sending us an email: events@kultureflash.net. Questions,
praise and/or criticism: feedback@kultureflash.net. We do not share subscriber information or email
addresses with any third party without first receiving your consent.
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