avant-garde
The Story of Film: An Odyssey, More 4Saturday, 10 September 2011
After the first two parts of Mark Cousins’s magisterial The Story of Film: An Odyssey, I’m still in two minds as to whether it’s fair to call the presenter a generalist. He has already managed to piece together details from the cinema cultures of... Read more... |
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins, Queen Elizabeth HallFriday, 09 September 2011
There are some acts you’d rather not catch in a concert hall. The relatively recent pairing of King Creosote and Jon Hopkins isn’t, however, one of them. Diamond Mine, their seven-year project, is a deceptively serious piece of art that prefers... Read more... |
AttenbergSunday, 28 August 2011
In Attenberg Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari illustrates that there is no species on earth more peculiar than man. A hit at the 67th Venice International Film Festival, where its lead Ariane Labed rightfully claimed Best Actress, it is on... Read more... |
CD: Lucas Santtana - Sem NostalgiaWednesday, 17 August 2011
I first heard Bahia-born Lucas Santtana on the best compilation of contemporary Brazilian music of the past couple of years, Oi! A nova musica Brasileira. His track “Hold Me In”, an acoustic slice of bossa nova, was a quiet interlude amonst all the... Read more... |
Rain Dogs Revisited, BarbicanThursday, 14 July 2011
So how did you survive the 1980s? I don’t mean money-wise; I’m sure you had plenty of that. I mean musically and therefore spiritually. It was a diet of Thomas Mapfumo and old Nina Simone albums that got me through the first half, until the Red... Read more... |
Last Year in MarienbadSunday, 10 July 2011
It is resonantly famous, picking up plaudits from the off, with one Sight & Sound commentator claiming in 1962 that it was the "greatest film ever made", for which he'd been waiting "during the last 30 years". That now seems slightly hysterical... Read more... |
Colin Currie, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, CBSO, BCMG, Oliver Knussen, Aldeburgh FestivalMonday, 27 June 2011
Yesterday afternoon's final concert at the Aldeburgh Festival saw an astonishing world premiere. A major new double concerto from a 102-year-old Elliott Carter. Imagine Schubert premiering a song cycle in 1900, or Van Gogh unveiling a self... Read more... |
Sónar 2011: Day 3 and Round-upTuesday, 21 June 2011
This is where the delirium kicks in. Tired but happy, the attendees started the third day of Sónar festival slightly boggled by how to pick and choose from the strange delights on offer. Saturday was when the true musical variety of the festival was... Read more... |
The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World, Tate BritainWednesday, 15 June 2011
Who were the Vorticists? Were they significant? Were they any good? And does this little-known British avant-garde movement – if it can be called anything as cohesive - really deserve a major survey at Tate Britain? Many of the group’s paintings... Read more... |
tUnE-yArDs, ScalaThursday, 09 June 2011
Sometimes you hear something new and your perspective on music shifts seismically, making everything you were listening to previously sound safe and predictable by comparison. Inevitably, as one gets older and more musically knowledgeable, such... Read more... |
European Festivals 2011 Round-UpMonday, 23 May 2011
Be different - take a festival break in Europe instead of the UK, and catch a different landscape. While artists in both new music and classical are constantly circling the world in search of more picturesque settings, you can find your alternative... Read more... |
CD: tUnE-yArDs - whokillSunday, 24 April 2011
Even the cover artwork refuses to conform, breaking the first rule of graphic design by utilising a dozen different typefaces and alternating upper and lower-case lettering for maximum optical anarchy. In fact, the inference is that we should play... Read more... |
