New London trend: being unsewer
The whole scheme stinks. It stinks of out-of-touch government agencies mandating things based on paper—not people. And it stinks of big business steamrolling over local interests, not to mention our property prices, our public health, and our peace of life.
That’s Rats, the Fulham anti-sewer campaign.
I use this park daily. I’m an old east-ender. I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve had to watch everything that is ours taken away from us; they’ve built Canary Wharf, and the whole of our river is gone to their flats. This is our last little bit of river, this is our last bit of heritage, this is all we’ve got left and they’re not taking it away, no way.
And that’s SaveKEMP in Tower Hamlets. Sewers are so out this year.
30 Jun 2011
Lilies On Mars
The spirit of collaboration is dead it seems, at least according to Matthew Parker, drummer with three-piece, experimental shoegazers Lilies On Mars. ‘A lot of bands in London are like islands’ he tells me, ‘there’s no scene, it’s hard to be friends with bands, we want to be friends with bands!’
I’m sitting with Matthew and bandmates Lisa Masia (guitar, keyboards, vocals) and Marina Cristofalo (guitar, vocals) in a non-distinct pub next to Highbury and Islington station, North London. Later on they’ll charm the pants off a small but appreciative audience at the Buffalo Bar next door – ‘we have to win everyone in the room’ – their riotously infectious energy spreading through the venue like the norovirus. Right now, we’re discussing London’s current guitar music scene, or lack of it.
‘Everybody’s very self-centred’, interjects Lisa. ‘When we were putting on nights last year, we were doing it to try and find new bands and create a scene’. ‘A lot of bands are like, hey great show, then you never hear from them again’ adds Matthew, ‘I’m from Toronto and there’s a real scene there, a real community…this year has been better though, we’ve met some great bands’. Like who, I ask? ‘There’s a band from Brighton called Stars Fell Down to Earth. We really like Zoey Van Goey, Hong Kong In The Sixties, Wrong Notes from Glasgow…’
Lisa and Marina first met 15 years ago in Sardinia. Re-locating to London in the early noughties, they recorded their self-released, eponymous debut at home. Following self-arranged tours of the U.S. and Europe and a collaboration with renowned Italian film-maker, composer and singer-songwriter Franco Battiato – ‘a good friend of ours’ – they bumped into ex-Sunny Day Sets Fire drummer Matthew at a Grizzly Bear gig and bonded over a love of Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead and My Bloody Valentine.
A month later, he was in the band. ‘I came to see a show and I remember saying to Marina afterwards, you guys are really good but I don’t like your drummer. I didn’t have an agenda I just genuinely didn’t like him. Not long afterwards Marina phoned me up and said the drummer had left and if I was such a hotshot why didn’t I give it a go’. They clicked straight away and two weeks later started work on second album Wish You Were A Pony. Recorded in a fortnight – mixing duties were handled remotely by friend Dan Brantigan in New York – it’s a bold, adventurous record, accessible yet edgy, easily jumping between alt-balladry (I’m Confused, It’s Ok!), anthemic dream-pop (Aquarium’s Key) and dark, heavy, verging on post-rock (La Mattina Prima Di Andare A Letto).
Released on their own Elsewhere Factory imprint – a label/creative collective set-up and run with the help of friends across Europe – the album was described by Gavin Martin in Uncut as ‘compelling’, the Lilies ‘digital primitives with a folky feel’. Is their fondness for the DIY aesthetic deliberate I wonder? They seem to inhabit their own little, self-contained world. ‘We’re not actively looking for a label, though if someone wanted to come along and help us that would be amazing’ laughs Lisa, ‘we don’t have a manager’. ‘It’s not a question of ideology’ says Matthew, ‘it’s more to do with our circumstances. We have our own label, we release our own records and we stand by the independent spirit of that, but at the same time we don’t fly the DIY flag. When I first came over to London all the bands had managers. We’d much rather spend time writing really good music and playing great shows than finding a manager.’
Lilies On Mars play Ship of Fools, July 3rd
30 Jun 2011
London agenda for Thursday 30 June
1. Relax on the Dalston Roof Park with Sea of Bees and Labyrinth [Run Riot]
2. Listen to the glitch at Blank Canvas [Flavorpill]
3. See the real London in black and white [Time Out]
4. Hear Iain Sinclair demand that we stop making big things [Ian Visits]
5. Visit the Buxton Memorial Fountain [Tired of London]
30 Jun 2011
Treading Water by Vieo Abuingo
Vieo Abuingo is the brainchild of songwriter and film-composer William Ryan Fritch; he blends modern classical, tribal, experimental and film music, creating quirky, (mainly) instrumental mini-symphonies that defy categorization. Today’s MPFree Treading Water is taken from new album And The World Is Still Yawning, out August 30th on Lost Tribe Sound.
29 Jun 2011
Attention lolcat lovers: academia needs you!
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I need your help. I am in the final stages of my Masters degree, and I’m writing my thesis on lolcats. Specifically, why people like them. To do this, I am holding focus groups of lolcat lovers.
Halp heer.
29 Jun 2011
London agenda for Wednesday 29 June
1. Relive the Ivory Coast’s civil war with The Battle For Abidjan [Le Cool]
2. Do the Homework at the Working Man’s and see a mix of poetry, stand-up, literature and music [Run Riot]
3. Check out Everywhere and Nowhere, Menhaj Huda’s look at what it’s like to be young and looking for a sense of belonging in a fast-paced multicultural city [Flavorpill]
4. Hey, it’s Liza Minnelli [Time Out]
5. Walk around the Orpington countryside and visit the locations that inspired Darwin to kill off God [Ian Visits]
6. Drink at the Dacre Arms [Tired of London]
29 Jun 2011
Visual artist lampoons visual artists in video art piece. Confusion ensues
Charlotte Young takes down her own kind. This video eats itself. I have no idea whether I really like it or really hate it, but it’s definitely one of the two.
28 Jun 2011
Australian beach volleyballer sells tattoo space on her body to fund Olympic dream
Top Aussie beach volleyballer [Claire] Kelly is so committed to getting her and partner Carla Kleverlaan to the Olympics that she’s selling tattoo space on her body for sponsors. For $10,000 you can have a 2cm x 2cm piece of Kelly’s toned and tanned left limb, while $50,000 buys 5cm x 5cm on her right arm or shoulder. There are other … um, packages, for between $10,000 and $50,000 and an eBay auction.
You’ve got to hand it to the Aussies. They may be crap at cricket, but they know how to run a publicity stunt.
Source: Herald Sun, via reddit
28 Jun 2011
10 things I learned at the opera, by a first time opera goer
I went to see the new cybersex opera Two Boys last night at the Coliseum. The closest I’ve been to an opera before is watching season 1 of Glee. Here is what I discovered.
1. It feels nice to dress more smartly than usual. I was so perturbed my by accomplice’s remark that “operas tend to be quite smart” that I excavated an iron from under the stairs and made a pitiful attempt to decrease my trousers. I needn’t have bothered, jeans and t-shirts were abundant, but I felt a fleeting sense of sartorial superiority.
2. The Coliseum seats were a lot more comfortable than I expected. In my experience the more highbrow the performance, the more crucifying the seat. It’s called suffering for your art. But these were plush on the tush.
3. Teenage boy wanking jokes are almost always funny.
4. Contemporary language sung in operatic tones can be fatally bathetic. When a doctor solemnly belts out something like “He’s staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaable, but he’s lost a lot of bloooooooooooooooooooooooood”, or a policewoman trills “did you monitor his online activitiiiiiiiiiiies?”, it would take a heart of stone not to LOL. I do not possess that heart.
5. When the chorus appears about 20 minutes in the thing really starts to get going. Maybe about 20 people holding laptops which shine like candles on the stage, singing over each other, harmonising their sound but distorting their words, representing the incessant chatter of a 24/7 online world. Very good.
6. I estimate the hearing rate for this opera at being about 85%. That is, about 15% of the lyrics might as well be sung in Italian for all I could tell what they were saying. This matters less than you’d think.
7. There are some cool staging and visuals going on. At one point during a scene, some CCTV footage is projected onto the back wall. As the actors onstage watch the footage, their shadows seem to be moving in the CCTV behind. This identity headfuck fits in beautifully with the opera’s themes.
8. Those themes are absolutely the right ones to be talking about now. Is the online world less real than the physical? Is an online identity less valid than one forged face to face? When do fantasies become dangerous? Why are teenage boys so awful? And so on and so forth.
9. In any medium, it’s surely no longer acceptable to rely on the trope whereby a detective solves a case because some gormless sod says something to them in passing which finally makes the penny drop.
10. Overall, I kinda liked it. You can get tickets for £16, which I would recommend. You can also get tickets for £53, which is completely insane. And it’s fine to just wear a t-shirt.
Read proper reviews by people who know what they’re talking about here (positive), here (negative), and here (meh).
28 Jun 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Random Interview: Eileen Conn, co-ordinator of Peckham Vision
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
© 2009-2026 Snipe London.