Brighton
Esben and the Witch, Pavilion Theatre, BrightonWednesday, 02 February 2011![]() It seems to me that Esben and the Witch would like to perform in absolute darkness. Or perhaps in silhouette behind a screen like an oriental shadowplay. Such a theatrical device might even suit their dark, menacing music. Instead, two of the three... Read more... |
Brighton RockMonday, 31 January 2011![]() Revisiting Brighton Rock was bound to cause an uproar. A couple of weeks ago, The Daily Telegraph’s Simon Heffer launched a ferocious assault on Rowan Joffe’s new screen version of Graham Greene's novel, while admitting he hadn’t seen it. Mind you,... Read more... |
CD: The Go! Team - Rolling BlackoutsTuesday, 25 January 2011![]() The last album from Brighton’s The Go! Team, 2007’s Proof of Youth, followed the template set by Thunder, Lightning, Strike, their 2004 debut. AD-HD sample-driven songs met Northern soul and hip hop with call-response vocals and melodies that could... Read more... |
The new funk: Belleruche exclusiveWednesday, 27 October 2010![]() Here, we present the exclusive first showing of a new video by the Brighton/London band Belleruche. This clip for “Fuzz Face” is highly arresting, an ingenious and slightly disturbing collision of hi and low-tech, made using thousands of photocopies... Read more... |
The Jim Jones Revue, The Komedia, BrightonThursday, 07 October 2010![]() The great music writer Nick Tosches put me onto James Luther Dickinson. In Where Dead Voices Gather, his self-indulgent but fascinating book about the obscure early-20th-century minstrel performer Emmett Miller, Tosches kept touching on Dickinson, a... Read more... |
Down TerraceThursday, 29 July 2010![]() Tired of the slick, pastiche world of the post-Lock, Stock... British crime movie? Then Down Terrace may be the address for you. Director Ben Wheatley’s micro-budget, naturalistic debut details the paranoid decline of a drug-dealing family in the... Read more... |
Brighton Photo Biennial gets an above-Parr treatmentThursday, 15 July 2010![]() The fourth Brighton Photography Festival (BPB) has been launched amid dramatic economic hardships, but my money is on it being a roaring success. It will put Brighton on the map as somewhere other than a gay clubbers’ delight and a hen-party hub.... Read more... |
The Miserable Rich, St Giles in the FieldsThursday, 03 June 2010![]() If you thought Chamber Pop was dead, think again. The Divine Comedy are back with a new album, Rufus Wainwright is playing Meltdown, and The Leisure Society are gradually building up a cabinet of awards. The genre may sometimes come over as the... Read more... |
The Lion's Face, Opera GroupMonday, 24 May 2010![]() An opera about Alzheimer’s disease might seem an idea calculated to send the most community-minded audience rapidly to the nearest exit. Yet there's a longish history of theatre – musical and otherwise – about loss of memory and the failure of... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brighton: Festival Beside the SeasideSunday, 23 May 2010![]() Site-specific theatre spread from artists’ studios to police cells with the realisation that all the city (and a wee chunk of neighbouring Newhaven) is a stage. Dreamthinkspeak’s Before I Sleep (pictured below), a promenade Festival commission based... Read more... |
I Am a Warehouse, Newhaven Fort, Brighton Festival FringeSaturday, 22 May 2010![]() Just say "Gaza" and it's like throwing a bombshell marked "Darwin" in among the Creationists. Only in this case it's not always clear who the antagonists might be. Several seemingly liberal theatre venues in Israel, where this project originated as... Read more... |
Philip Glass Ensemble, Koyaanisqatsi, The Dome, BrightonSaturday, 15 May 2010![]() One of the hottest tickets at this year's Brighton festival is Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film Koyaanisqatsi accompanied by live soundtrack performance from the Philip Glass Ensemble. Sold out for weeks beforehand, there are touts outside but most of the... Read more... |
