Monthly archives: November, 2014

Nov 30 2014 0Commentby Sean Redmond

Bonobo at the Warehouse Project Manchester

Posted in Music

Store Street, the home of this year’s Warehouse Project is an odd, sometimes scary place. Situated in a disused car park underneath Piccadilly Station in Manchester city centre its crumbling arches and dripping ceilings wouldn’t make Jack the Ripper feel out of place. Yet it’s Manchester’s home for top DJs and electronic musicians including MK, Chase and Status, and many more. Tonight was the turn of ambient and downtempo artist Bonobo, which in the dark dungeon-like scenery of the Warehouse Project may be an odd fit, but he brings his style of ambient chilled electronic to brighten up this dingy corner of Manchester.

Bonobo first appeared in 1999 and since then has gained traction in the electronic music scene, particularly 2010’s ‘Black Sand’ and follow up ‘The North Borders’. This show is near the end of a two year mammoth tour which has seen him play across the world to over 2 million people.

His live shows have become an important part of his appeal, choosing not to simply play his music solo, instead bringing a live band to truly bring out his sounds. With flutes, violins, saxophones and a variety of other instruments, Bonobo’s live shows comes closer to watching an orchestra perform than a dance musician.

Appearing one by one for captivating opener ‘Cirrus’, each member of Bonobo’s band add a layer of sound building up a wondrous wall of sound in one of the best openers I’ve seen. The combination of live violinists for track ‘Kiara’ is a unique and brilliant experience and combines both electronic sounds and live orchestration, which many may argue are polar opposites.

Later on there are live vocals from Szjerede for Bonobo’s calmer moments such as ‘Towers’ and ‘Stay the Same’ which still entice the audience, despite the lack of beat. These proved to be some of the highlights of the set, which is testament for a venue known for its fast and loud dance music.

However it’s not all solemn and reflective, as tracks such as ‘Kong’ and ‘Ten Tigers’ get the packed out crowd moving. Other highlights include ‘Flashlight’ from the forthcoming EP, which shows a bright future for the musician, further enhancing his staple of atmospheric electronic music.

As the band leave the stage at the end of their set to loud cheers from the grateful, and very sweaty audience, it’s clear Bonobo’s live show is a journey of what can be achieved in modern music. From raving one minute, to reflecting emotionally the next, Bonobo’s shows are unique in showing the power and beauty of dance music. Never before has a sweaty disused car park been so beautiful.


Nov 27 2014 0Commentby Clare Bowden

Guy Bourdin at Somerset House

Posted in Arts

For Walter Benjamin, fashion was a fusion of two extremes – frivolity and death.  Never has this fusion been so extreme as in the photography of Guy Bourdin, and it is the subject of an exhibition at Somerset House opening on the 27th of November.

Bourdin’s trade was as a fashion photographer, not that he ever believed it.  He was a surrealist artist to the last and whatever product he was being paid to advertise always played second fiddle to his extraordinary vision.  His working process involved the construction of elaborate fictions from which he would pluck a single moment from the narrative, and this would be the image he would enigmatically present to the world.  On occasion, much to the world’s bewilderment.

Narcissism forms a strong and heady presence in Bourdin’s photography.  The gaze is instrumental and it is his and his alone, which only renders his raw depictions of violence and exaggerated forms of sexual objectification of women and children more remote, more troubling and more problematic.

Bourdin’s subjects are hyper-sexualised and submissive.  Frequently, his models are depicted as the victims of extreme violence.  They lie amid elegantly assembled surroundings unconscious or dead – a signature Bourdin image and the one he felt was the ‘purest’. His almost exclusively female subjects rarely have agency.  Often they don’t even have heads. A woman lies prostrate in a pool of vomited nail varnish, another lies inert surrounded by expensive shoes, others are decapitated, but always beautifully dressed.  It would be easy to read his work as a savage statement on the destructive collusion of women and their vanity.  An odd statement from a Vogue photographer, but Bourdin was the type of man liable to commute to his Parisian office by camel, a key indicator of a man who didn’t put much stock by the rules.

Serge Lutens once commented that he felt that; “What Guy did was conduct his own psychoanalysis in Vogue.”  This isn’t an uncommon view and there has been a great deal of head scratching over his early abandonment by his mother and the unfortunate fact that all his wives and girlfriends ended up either dead or wishing that they were.  Surely, this is a line of argument that will provide much mental masturbation for decades to come but it doesn’t do a great deal to answer a more pressing question – what has the effect of Bourdin been on the fashion photography of today?

The crass sexual objectification in Terry Richardson’s output with the odd, juvenile surrealist touch as though to add a gloss of artistic merit to his personal sexual entitlement bears the shadow of Bourdin, although Richardson’s work at its best is only a pale parody of the painfully uncomfortable and intricately contrived photographs of Bourdin.  On the other hand, there is painstakingly created and beautiful work of contemporary artists such as Tim Walker who surely owe a nod to Bourdin’s meticulous narrative working process.

A complicated and problematic legacy for a complicated and problematic artist.

For information on the exhibition visit www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/guy-bourdin

 


Nov 25 2014 0Commentby Laura Woodall

Give Peas a Chance

Posted in Food

After 24 years of vegetarianism I was this year persuaded by Animal Aid’s campaign; The Great Vegan Challenge to give veganism a go for the month of November. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far….

It doesn’t take that much effort

I imagined it would be difficult if not impossible to think of meal ideas that didn’t include the same boring options. What I have actually found is that I can have a great variety of meals, very little brainpower needed!

Many of the vegetarian meals I would normally eat were actually already vegan or easily ‘veganised’ through the omission or replacement of a couple of ingredients. For example Indian and Chinese dishes are often already vegan along with soups, salads, hummus, falafel, chips, I could go on. Other meals can be made vegan by leaving the dairy out – for example pasta dishes, bean chilli and pizza are all still pretty good without the cheese. And for the times where you are craving something non-vegan there are so many vegan alternatives around that you’re never really stuck. What’s also great is that many everyday brands make products that just so happen to be vegan. Did you know Bisto, Oreos, Wheat Crunchies and Jammie Dodgers are all vegan!? Easy!

Not all vegan food has to be healthy

To be honest I should have figured this one out beforehand. Lot s of people presume that the vegetarian option is the healthy/low fat choice but being overweight myself I know it’s not that straightforward. However I’d always thought if I’d just cut cheese and cream out of my diet I’d be a size 8. Three weeks in, I’m not so sure. Since turning vegan I’ve eaten just as much lovely indulgent food as ever, try searching #veganjunkfood on Instagram…14,421 edgy photos of burgers, cakes, nachos and pizzas last time I checked.

I suppose you could see this as a negative point (especially when hoping to drop a couple of dress sizes) but actually I think if people realised it was just as easy to treat themselves on a vegan diet than an omnivorous one maybe more people would make the switch.

Not all vegans are scary or weird

Ok, so there are definitely some militant vegans out there whose Facebook pages are filled with graphic videos of slaughter houses and who are willing to shun anyone who so much as sits in the same room as a Babybel.

But by being part of a number of vegan groups online I have found that in the main everyone is supportive and understanding. In particular the group set up specifically for The Great Vegan Challenge has been fab. People often post about their slip-ups or difficulties and everyone on there is pretty chilled about it all. In my opinion that’s how it should be. If people are making an effort to change their lifestyle for the better that should be celebrated rather than scrutinised!

For more information about veganism go to the Vegan Society’s website or visit http://www.govegan.org.uk/ for more info on The Great Vegan Challenge.


Nov 19 2014 0Commentby Jonathan McMahon

Common Review @ Gorilla Manchester

Posted in Music

Fresh off the bat, touring worldwide for his new album Nobody’s Smiling, Common was originally booked at the Albert Hall, having filled up venues from Paris and Amsterdam, to London and Bristol, but it was a late switch to the smaller Gorilla that mixed things up surprisingly at last minute. Now Manchester’s scene for music is pretty renowned, but with most of its current attention on the electronic side of music, its pull for hip hop is different. If you add that with little promotion, and his two recent albums haven’t done as well commercially as the previous efforts of say Be, Like Water For Chocolate, or Finding Forever, then the surprise switch for a change in venue isn’t as surprising when you think about it.

On the positive side, moving to Gorilla was better for Common’s fans, as it meant not only a closer and intimate performance from its lower stage, but it has a clearer sound system and was packed to the rafters.

When we arrived it was just before Common was about to hit the stage, backed up by two DJs, a keyboard player and a vocalist, when he finally walked out, it was to a very warm reception! With Gorillas sound being far clearer than the Albert Hall’s this was a good switch in the end, what would be muffled was now crystal and Common moved about the stage with confidence, spitting rhymes and words of motivation to the crowd.

When you have a catalogue spanning 10 albums and a whole bunch of hits, it’s obviously nigh on impossible to fit them all in, but Common did the job well playing newer slots from Nobody’s Smiling like ‘Kingdom’ and ‘Diamonds’ to the classics like ‘Go’ and ‘Southside’. Judging from the crowd’s reactions the older cuts were what people were there for, as fans sauntered around when ‘Diamonds’ was on, yet the difference was huge when Common stopped to speak about and thank his long-time producer/friend No ID, before breaking out ‘I Used To Love H.E.R.’ to epic roars from the crowd!

There was some touching moments in there too, his heart-felt mentions of the late J-Dilla and his interactions of when they first met through A Tribe Called Quest, before playing some of their cuts, to then Common laying out what was said between them when he found out Dilla was dying, emotional and pure reminiscing of the legendary influential producer that gave a surreal feeling throughout everyone.

From one moment a long time ago, to being completely in the moment at Gorilla, Common decided to break away from the sadness of the latter with some free-styling, which again completely turned the crowd and got them roaring through mentions of Manchester and punch lines of photos for Instagram. He wasn’t the only one to freestyle on the night either, his DJs took it back to the days of real beat matching and scratching through beat juggling tracks like ‘Billie Jean’ & ‘Ten Crack Commandments’ to thunderous applause.

Ending the night on a high after his encore, Common had achieved the opposite of his newest album’s title and it’s safe to say the crowd got what they wanted… the gig in the end was a great night for hip hop fans of all creeds.

 


Nov 18 2014 0Commentby Alex Morris

Science Fiction Classics Invade Manchester In Time For Christmas

Posted in Entertainment, Film

The season’s been well timed for the release of Christopher Nolan’s engagingly divisive Interstellar (a timeless masterpiece or miserable failure, depending on who you talk to) which can be seen at any cinema you dare to think of. Cornerhouse are offering all manner of sci-fi classics if Nolan’s latest doesn’t appeal, with the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey set for an (extremely) limited release. For more details you can visit the Cornerhouse site, but for condensed reading the highlights are:

  • 2001: A Space Odyssey – 28th November.
  • Dr. Strangelove – 1st December.
  • The Midnight After (Hong Kong director Fruit Chan’s violent 2014 effort) – 6th December.
  • The Neverending Story – 6th December.
  • The War of the Worlds (not the 2005 Tom Cruise vehicle) – 14th December.
  • Ghostbusters – 11th December.
  • E.T. – 21st December.

Film fans can try out their debating skills at the Cornerhouse, as a discussion will take place before the screening of Dr. Strangelove. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its release, lecturer of Film Studies Peter Kramer will join Salford University’s Andy Willis to consider whether the Dr. is still crazy after half a century.  There’s also a chance to discuss science fiction and the apocalypse on 3rd December at Manchester’sInternational Anthony Burgess Foundation Centre. A must for sci-fi fanatics, it’s free to enter but booking is required.

Finally, to cap a busy month ahead, there are two other events worth considering. The first, rather excellently, is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner: The Final Cut. It returns to numerous cinemas on 14th December for a limited release (if you’re busy don’t panic, as it will have another run in April 2015). The second is a recording of Danny Boyle’s award winning 2011 theatre production of Frankenstein. It ran at London’s National Theatre and starred Benedict Cumberbatch (the man who’s in everything), and Jonny Lee Miller (of Trainspotting fame) to considerable critical acclaim. It will be shown on 4th December at the Cornerhouse.

You could go for any of these. Alternatively there’s Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Donkey?, although you can hear film critic Mark Kermode’s scathing review right here. Perhaps stick to the Cornerhouse.