Brighton
CD: The Fiction Aisle - Jupiter, FloridaFriday, 19 January 2018The third album from Thomas White under his Fiction Aisle moniker is a match for its delicious, under-heard predecessors. White remains best known for his output with The Electric Soft Parade and Brakes but the prolific Fiction Aisle (three albums... Read more... |
Orpheus Caledonius, Brighton Early Music Festival review - a thrilling meeting of musical clansSaturday, 28 October 2017In 1725 a collection of some 50 songs was published by one William Thomson. You might not know his name, or even the names of the songs, but given the first bar of most I’m betting you could hum them from beginning to end. The work? Orpheus... Read more... |
12 Stone Toddler, Green Door Store, Brighton review – experimentalism can still be popMonday, 24 July 2017Ten years ago Brighton band 12 Stone Toddler burst onto the scene with two off-the-wall albums of madly inventive pop-rock. They then vamoosed back out of existence. Now they’re back, preparing a third album for the Freshly Squeezed label, and... Read more... |
Meow Meow's Souvenir, Brighton Festival review – subversive but evocative new song-cycleMonday, 22 May 2017Dream palace, cesspit and church; celebrated, mopped (by Marlene Dietrich, no less) and fucked: Brighton’s Theatre Royal has seen a whole lot of history, of both the splendid and the seedy variety. Now it has found a magnificent if unlikely... Read more... |
Jeremy Hardy, Brighton Festival review - expert raconteur shows political biteThursday, 18 May 2017Jeremy Hardy is very happy to mock his audience and they love it. One of the biggest laughs of the night is when a punchline refers to us as a collection of “middle class white people”. Being Brighton, he goes further, explaining how tolerant the... Read more... |
Visual art at Brighton Festival - disturbing, playful, but ultimately rudderlessThursday, 18 May 2017As befits a festival with a spoken word artist as its guest curator, storytelling is at the heart of the visual arts offer in the 2017 Brighton Festival. It is not known if performance poet Kate Tempest had a hand in commissioning these four shows,... Read more... |
High Focus Records showcase, Brighton Festival review - smart hip hop, dodgy soundSaturday, 13 May 2017The two main commands coming from the stage at this evening's Brighton Festival event are “Everybody jump, jump” and “Put your hands in the air and go side-to-side”. The crowd are mostly under 30 and emanate dancing energy from the moment the doors... Read more... |
Laetitia Sadier Source Ensemble, Green Door Store, BrightonSaturday, 15 April 2017Perhaps most famous as the singer in seminal Nineties art-pop band Stereolab, Laetitia Sadier has worked hard in recent years to establish herself as a solo artist in her own right through a series of well-received avant-muzak albums, including this... Read more... |
Black Honey, Concorde 2, BrightonFriday, 07 April 2017The first thing that hits me as I walk into Concorde 2 is the age and energy of the audience, dominated by excitable booze-fuelled teenagers. Black Honey themselves are pretty young for a band capable of quickly selling out a 600-capacity venue,... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: One More Time with FeelingFriday, 07 April 2017“But when did you become an object of pity?” Nick Cave asks himself. Brighton’s streets have become an obstacle course of concerned strangers and acquaintances, in the arms of whom he may find himself collapsed, crying. Such indignity was his grief’... Read more... |
Brighton Festival 2017: 12 Free EventsThursday, 06 April 2017The Brighton Festival, which takes place every May, is renowned for its plethora of free events. The 2017 Festival is curated by Guest Director Kate Tempest, the poet, writer and performer, alongside Festival CEO Andrew Comben who’s been the event's... Read more... |
CD: Fujiya & Miyagi - Fujiya & MiyagiTuesday, 04 April 2017Fujiya & Miyagi are greater than the sum of their parts. Singer David Best recently explaned that he "sees it as an album rather than a compilation", but Fujiya & Miyagi’s sixth album is, essentially, a collection of three EPs, combining... Read more... |