The Archer by The Deer Tracks
It’s testament to the sheer volume of weird and wonderful music emanating from Sweden currently that the boy/girl duo The Deer Tracks’ decide to launch their album in a mine 500ft below ground? Pah!
14 Jul 2011
Has someone spiked the London Fields lido? Hackney Council say it's "tripping out"
The Lido has lost it. Too much summer sun? Or have a few of the locals been pushing it to try something a little harder. The Hackney Citizen reports:
14 Jul 2011
Stokey Sainsburys - is it time to make a stand against supermarkets?
Last night somewhere around 150 people went to a meeting in Stoke Newington to share their thoughts on a new Sainsburys in the middle of their patch.
14 Jul 2011
London agenda for Thursday 14 July
1. Get on the guest list for Glasser at The Sanderson [Le Cool]
2. Freeze one’s arse off in the Arctic [Run Riot]
3. Celebrating the Life of DJ and pirate radio pioneer Kenny Hawkes. East Village. [Flavorpill]
4. Wander the Bloomsbury Art Fair [Time Out]
5. Discover the dystopian futures of London in fiction. Or is it… reality? [Ian Visits]
6. Drink tea in a stable [Tired of London]
14 Jul 2011
It's Real by Real Estate
New Domino signings Real Estate are set to release their debut album Days on October 17th.
13 Jul 2011
"It has half-male, half-female sexual organs welded together"
That’s what The Guardian reports butterfly manager Luke Brown saying about a gynandromorph just born at the National History Museum. But tell me, I hear you say, why is this dual sex animal a gynandromorph and not a hermaphrodite? What is the difference between the two?
Well, a hermaphrodite has both male and female sexual organs. A gynandromorph has half male and half female, welded together. They can be very beautiful, or very strange. So far it appears that the other butterflies have treated the unusual newcomer with tolerance and respect, none of them have called it names or laughed or tried to make a BBC3 documentary about it or anything. Good for them.
13 Jul 2011
London agenda for Wednesday 13 June
1. Look at Uzbek gravediggers on the Caspian coast and Hasidic Jews on holiday in Wales at Roof Unit’s exhibition [Le Cool]
2. Ride a bike then die. Then go for a pint. Roadblock [Run Riot]
3. Look at art of people in chronic pain at Deborah Padfield: Mask: Mirror: Membrane [Flavorpill]
4. Get a flat white from the nearest Pret and check out London in Peril: The Gentrification of London [Ian Visit]
5. Listen to some Brass on the Grass [Tired of London]
13 Jul 2011
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
(Image above shows the critics gathering for preview screening of HP7Pt2)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (HP7Pt2) picks up, obviously, where the the last film left off, with Harry, Hermione and Ron chasing after and destroying horcruxes into which He Who Must Not Be Named has invested chunks of his soul. Whereas the first Deathly Hallows seemed a sort of satire on camping holidays in the UK, the second is a relentless battle against the forces of good and evil, wherein characters loved and hated are dealt their final fates.
Harry Potter, the biggest franchise in book and film history, is finally done and fairy dusted. Millions more pounds, perhaps billions, are still to be made in book sales, boxed DVD sets, amusement park tickets and assorted accessories such as video games, commentaries and spin-offs. Yet the bulk of the financial adventure is over. HP7Pt2, incidentally, is also the chemical formula for heffalump tears, a crucial ingredient in a Potion of Sentimental Commercialism.
Contrary to what many pundits seem to think, however, the cultural significance of Harry Potter is only just beginning. Critics may sniff at JK Rowling’s creation, but the kids who love it are going to be reading the books to their kids long after the professional naysayers are dead and patrolling Azkaban. Playground word-of-mouth, not media coverage, propelled early sales of Harry Potter into the stratosphere. Children don’t tend to pay much attention to literary reviews, and anybody who knows anything about the reading habits of kids knows that it wasn’t parents foisting “must reads” on their little darlings that made Rowling’s boy wizard such a publishing phenomenon.
Painted in a palette ranging from iron to lead, without a single scrap of Weasley knitwear to jumper-start the colour scheme, and lit only by gloomy skies and bursts from deadly wands, Hallows actually contain more humour than any of the films since Chamber of Secrets. Apparently the film makers finally realised the morbid themes of death and regret might be better offset by playing up the story’s more lighthearted, entertaining aspects. If all the films had been as enjoyable and thrilling as this one they might have made twice as much money and half as many grumpy enemies in the press.
In the octology’s conclusion Harry finally stops whining and takes destiny on the jutting chin of his square head. Neville finds a spine, Hermione and Ron get to make out, the late Dumbledore is revealed as being, above all, a ruthless tactician, and Snape is, well, the coolest Emo wizard ever. (I’ve long had a theory that Harry is actually the product of a one-night adulterous fling between the surly Potions professor and lily-white Lily Potter in the basement of the Leaky Cauldron Pub. I don’t care how low the alcohol content is, you serve enough butter beer and there’s going to be unicorn action going on downstairs.) Voldemort, however, is somewhat diminished as a bogeyman by having almost as much screen time as Harry. And frankly, Potter is beginning to become the scarier-looking of the two.
While the focus is obviously placed on our three main heroes, Deathly Hallows Part 2 at last sees minor characters, played by fantastic actors, flexing their magical muscles. While short, these scenes are often the punchiest, most energised moments in the film. Matthew Lewis as the other prophesied boy wizard, Neville Longbottom, carries several key moments on his shrugging shoulders. Maggie Smith is given a chance at last to have some real fun while Julia Walters kicks Slytherin ass and unleashes the nearest thing to a wobble in the franchise’s 12 certificate. (As yet another aside I think the film is unfair to Slytherin, the dorm of the school dedicated to, yes, future City Bankers, but also to the weird, broken Goth kids who don’t even fit into the wizarding world. For centuries they’ve been good enough for their parents to pay the school’s fees, but at the first sign of trouble- one girl says they should turn Harry over to the Deatheaters to spare everybody else. Fairly practical thinking, it seems to me- and they are evicted by McGonagall! Shameful. Send owls to your local MP. )
Most of the actors are, as usual for Harry Potter films, utterly wasted. Sure, Robbie Coltrane filled the screen through much of the first two films, and Helena Bonham Carter’s Bellatrix LeStrange was elevated in Half Blood Prince and HP7Pt2 to become one of the all time great screen villains. But to be all but ignored for the grand finale seems cruel. Here LeStrange serves mostly to reveal how cool Mrs. Weasley can be when you let her out of the kitchen. Most of the film is a connect the plot points exercise for fans of the books. Having said that, and keeping in mind I am actually a big fan of both the books and movies (How dare he call himself a film critic! For a start he calls them ‘movies’!) I feel I can say this is easily the best of the series, even above Prisoner of Azkaban, and a fitting conclusion to a British mythology equal in eventual cultural impact to (wait for it) Lord of the Rings. There. I said it. Go writhe in your cringing place if you disagree. Meanwhile, I’ll be in that back room of the Leaky Cauldron with a barrel of butterbeer, a stack of slash zines and hopes the Grey Lady of Hogwarts will one day comes to her senses.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows opens pretty much everywhere 15 July. 12A certificate.
12 Jul 2011
Lach, the father of anti-folk
Halfway through my interview with Lach, the Brooklynite breaks off from our conversation to admire a nearby flower ‘exploding with colour’ in the Edinburgh garden where he’s sitting. He loses his train of thought. ‘What were we talking about?’ he asks me. You were telling me that anti-folk is not just music; it’s an ethos I say. ‘Oh yeah right’ continues the man widely credited as being the father of New York anti-folk, ‘it’s the poetic acid to crack that mental egg and open you up and bring out that child like innocence’ he says, before returning to the flower.
Lach is in Edinburgh ahead of this year’s Fringe Festival, where he’ll be performing a one-man show throughout August at Cabaret Voltaire. Lach, The Waitress, The Walls and The Weirdos is based on his experiences running and playing at the legendary Antihoot at NYC’s Sidewalk Café for 15 years, the epicentre of anti-folk that spawned the likes of Jeffrey Lewis, Regina Spektor and The Moldy Peaches. In addition, he’ll be resurrecting the Antihoot every night at the Gilded Balloon and producing a CD of the best acts. Does he feel Edinburgh can compete with NYC? ‘(Edinburgh’s) another section of the simultaneous now’ he says. That would be a yes then.
This is his second time at the Fringe. Last year’s The Day I Went Insane show was his first foray into comedy, a move encouraged by BBC producer Richard Melvin, whom Lach had worked with on several radio shows. It was, by the sounds of it, a complete blag. ‘He asked me if I’d be interested in doing the Fringe. As it got nearer the time I think he expected me to have a one-man show prepared but I kept stalling. I just went on stage and started rambling. The room was packed. I didn’t need notes…it was like a drug’.
Now well and truly hooked, it’s hardly surprising that the man once described by the New York Times as a ‘Manhattan institution’ has found the transition to live comedy a relatively smooth one. His songs bristle with a matter-of-fact humour and speak of three decades worth of eccentric character study at the heart of New York’s alternative music scene – he first moved to Greenwich Village in 1982. Take this line from Everyone’s Therapist, a track from his soon to be released sixth studio album Ramshackle Heart: ‘Donald is fucked-up, he knows I’m a sober guy. So why does he spend so much time telling me how great it is getting high?’
The album was co-produced by Neil Halstead, formerly of Slowdive and now Mojave 3, a ‘wonderful songwriter and great guy’ according to Lach, at an old RAF hangar come studio in Cornwall. Recorded in a mere two weeks, albeit with a further two weeks set aside for mixing, it’s a warm, organic record featuring two members of Halstead’s touring band and an untried drummer who turned out to have ‘a bit of a Mo Tucker in her’. Lach seems happy with the results: ‘I was pretty sceptical at first, I had no idea of what the record should sound like…but we had a wonderful telepathy, we were in sync. Kaz is a wonderful drummer; Neil has an amazing voice. I’d like to do another record with him, maybe like a duets album. Our voices work well together’.
Two shows a night for almost a month is surely going to test his endurance, even if he is a ‘sober guy’. Is he planning to spend a good few weeks decompressing back in New York once the festival’s over? ‘Oh I’m not going back to New York’, he tells me, ‘I’m all sold up’. So where is he thinking of settling? ‘I’m seriously considering Edinburgh…but the future is unwritten, as Strummer said’.
Ramshackle Heart is out July 18th on Song, By Toad Records.
12 Jul 2011
London is amazingly cheap to live in, considering
The Evening Standard reports that London is 6.7% more expensive to live in than the UK average. Isn’t that amazing? I’d have thought it would have been twice that figure, what with all the access to wide and varied cultural events, excellent career prospects, aspirational lifestyle possibilties, and more. What a bargain!
12 Jul 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Nice map of London's fruit trees shows you where to pick free food
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
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