The premise for ‘Slap Talk’ is certainly a novel one: Standing under spotlights at either end of a darkened stage and each speaking directly into a camera, a man and a woman rant, threaten and insult each other while their… Continue Reading
Mayfest, Bristol’s unique annual festival of theatre and the performing arts, kicked off in typically idiosyncratic style with the variety showcase of ‘Scottee’s Camp.’ The clue, of course, was in the title but the pre-show soundtrack of Village People’s ‘In… Continue Reading
St George’s welcomed James Lovelock as part of this year’s Festival of Ideas, the burgeoning season of lectures and talks covering topics as far-ranging as contemporary cinema, urbanisation and monetary reform. Lovelock is a seminal thinker, whose once-ridiculed theories of… Continue Reading
Originally part of the American lo-fi guitar ‘scene’ along with bands such as Blank Dogs, Woods and Crystal Stilts, Dum Dum Girls have now been around for so long that their inception occurred when Dee Dee Penny (real name Kristin Welchez)… Continue Reading
The spectacle of a filmmaker being violently ambushed by his subject is a compelling way for any documentary to begin; this is exactly what happens in the first minutes of ‘Beware of Mr Baker’ as legendary rock drummer Ginger Baker… Continue Reading
‘Nikki Nack’ is the third studio album by Tune-Yards, aka New England’s Merrill Garbus, a project largely undetected by the mainstream music press, yet an incredibly engaging and rewarding one nonetheless. Her debut release, Bird Brains (2009) was a low-fi, tightly-financed solo… Continue Reading
Following 2011’s excellent ‘Ritual Union’ album and the single “Sunshine”, one of the standout tracks of 2012, expectation has been high for Little Dragon‘s fourth studio album, ‘Nabuma Rubberband’. The Swedish band have gained a reputation for combining quirky, often ambiguous,… Continue Reading
Drummers are the oft-neglected musicians, hidden at the back of the stage behind their kits and subjected to derisory jokes. How do you tell if the stage is level? The drummer is drooling from both sides of his mouth. However, forget the… Continue Reading