Snipe Likes: Summer Camp
Issue #3 cover stars Summer Camp have put up a new video. Something to do with Paddy Power, weirdly. But hey! Summer Camp video! The single release follows on Sept 13th.
11 Aug 2010
Daily MPfree: Babe Rainbow
Babe Rainbow is our friend Cameron Reed from Vancouver. Having just played the Warm Up Sessions at PS1 in Brooklyn with Animal Collective and CFCF he’s released this Screwed Mixtape, featuring a load of Babe Rainbow tunes and assorted remixes of tracks you might recognise such as Comanechi and Zomby. There’s also a brilliant “The Descent” style video for Shaved at the bottom there. Enjoy.
Babe Rainbow – Popcommon (Rico Uno’s Fast Blend)
Babe Rainbow – Shaved
Midnight Juggernauts – The New Technology (Babe Rainbow Dark & Dubby Remix)
Babe Rainbow – Mexico (Rico Uno’s Drifter Blend)
Babe Rainbow – Tummy Sticks (Rico Uno’s Got To Be Strong Blend)
Demarco – True Friend (Babe Rainbow Remix)
Fine Mist – In The Mountains (Babe Rainbow Remix)
Comanechi – On & On (Babe Rainbow Remix)
Zomby – Aquafresh (Babe Rainbow Stilettos Blend)
Basketball – Lightning Lip
Wavves – Weed Demon (Babe Rainbow Surf-Step Edit)
DOOM – Gazzillion Ear (Babe Rainbow Remix)
Babe Rainbow & Basketball – Proper (Rico Uno This Feeling Blend)
10 Aug 2010
A whole bunch of Camden Fringe festival reviews
The Camden Fringe Festival takes place until the 29th of August.
Don’t forget to check out their apps for iPhone and Android.
City Cant
Three weeks before the Fringe was due to open, Andy and JJJ dropped out to do more important things. Did they take their frenetic insight into the world of investment banking to The City and make a million pounds? Did they tie towels and bedsheets around their necks and start prowling allies and rooftops looking for crime to stop? Perhaps they drew straws to see which would start taking estrogen and have a womb implanted to make children together? Crop dusting the Antarctic? Weeding the oceans? Giving confidence-boosting make-overs to clouds? Whatever it was, it was very important.
Precious Things
A women struggles to mount an exhibition of her great uncle’s paintings, despite his international reputation as Hitler’s favourite artist and Nazi. Her brother, visiting from American with his pregnant wife, disagrees with her dream. The gallery assistant, meanwhile has some sort of secret agenda, as well as a creepy butler complex. Do we need to separate an artist’s life from their work rather than cloud it with the details of historical reality? You won’t find out from this show. Despite raising all sorts of interesting possibilities Precious Things investigates none. Not only does fail to look into its own subject matter, the play raises internal questions and then avoids them, too. Why does the sister need the brother’s involvement so much? Why is the assistant doing… whatever it is he’s doing? Why does this exhibition need to happen, besides being “important”, the artist a “genius”, his works being “so beautiful”? At nearly an hour and a half it’s 45 minutes before the word Nazi appears. You can’t depend on an audience remembering the programme blurb to keep in mind something is going to happen eventually. It’s a full hour before we have dramatic tension of any kind, and the final explosion of emotion wouldn’t dent a box of tissues. They had Nazis! Estranged siblings! A really creepy villain who made great coffee! To My Little Theatre Company: even a quiet play needs dynamism and pacing. At a Fringe you need just a little bit more.
Not Just a Suitcase
Cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Maybe the City Cant boys stole their suitcase, filled it with money and went on a business excursion to the Columbian rainforest, buying exotic frogs and using them as tiny poisonous mules to transport coke back to the UK? Excuse me sir, did you pack these frogs yourself? Are these frogs harbouring drugs? I’m sure I don’t know, officer, why don’t you pick it up and have a look inside? Argh! My heart! And then in the confusion they split up, the Cant boys abscond to their flat in Canada Water, the frogs hop to Eel Island to hang with friends. They meet later to conclude their important business.
Big Baby
During the eighteenth century Age of Enlightenment, ignorant but loving peasants John and Janet have a beautiful baby together. He’s everything poor but happy parents could desire, plus gigantic and able to talk, levitate and glow. Naturally they want the best for their child, and when they have a chance to move to London to provide an education and the first steps to his becoming a proper gentleman they jump at it. London, however, is full of mad, unscrupulous characters, and not just at the educational institutions!
Written by Brendan Murray, Big Baby is a gloriously overblown cautionary tale, in the same vein as Voltaire and Swift. Ruthless black humour spawns grotesque monsters eating and shitting rationalism to its logical end- More rationalism. At first I didn’t know what to make of the Gogandmagogic performances, but once ensconced in this satiric realm I was enthralled by its speed, energy, joyous anger and limberness. Phil Bishop and Kate Tucker are brilliant, veering precariously along an arc of country naivety and urban wantonness. They are made to seem naturalistic, however, by the outrageous and semi-gymnastic cavortings of Hayley Michaels as Everybody Elsie, both our narrator and the entire population of this wretched urban hell. Watching her snap between personas ties your eyelids in knots.
A warning, however. Gunshot is used in this performance. Usually, in such a small acoustic space the gunmaster uses less powder so audiences aren’t deafened. These folks don’t hold back. As much as I think people should see this show, if you can’t take noise either stay away or be ready to plug your earholes so deep your fingers touch.
Even Greedy Bankers Deserve Freedom
A variation on the Tom Stoppard play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, an ex-banker, who helped trigger, or at least worsen, the recent economic meltdown is holed up in a mental institution faking madness to avoid being killed by his victims outside. His sister and a journalist struggle to tell his true story, though for different reasons. Meanwhile the slightly mad psychiatrist and the accountant’s very mad roommate debate his true state of mind and the possibility there really is an invisible band playing in an insane asylum.
The original Stoppard play featured a symphony onstage. This version just has two guitars and an empty, unused drum kit. Performances aside, which ranged from frenetic to uncertain, the biggest problem with this show is its untapped musical possibilities. At least a joke was thrown in, at the moment the hero is about to break into song, that this was not going to be allowed to turn into a musical. What? Why the hell not? Is there a hole on the stage the drum kit is covering up? There are flashes of sharp humour to alleviate the ponderous earnestness, but the show never addresses the question why we should have sympathy for a banker avoiding his responsibilities. If they had at least bashed out some tunes it wouldn’t have mattered so much.
Maddy Nebraska: Nearly the Biggest Jew is North London
MC Nebraska has changed this show at the last minute, swapping the ongoing stand-up comedy show she presents regularly in Belsize Park. Which happens, Fringe programmes are made long in advance of what the shows evolve into. Maddy is a congenial host and very funny, though her act, focused on being a single girl not quite Jewish enough made me wish all the more I could be seeing the show she was going to do, and hopefully will in the near future. Suzi Ruffell was also a laugh, a breathy, overexcited lesbian with terrific charisma. The third comic, Adam Tempest, needs work done on his act, but he has this run to do tuning. All three are of the “hey, who’s ever had this happen to them before?” school, but while both Nebraska and Ruffell are also great storytellers, with gifts for improv and the knack for bouncing ideas off the audience, Tempest is still struggling not to let the audience have to supply him with ideas when he dries up. A good show, but I definitely want to see Nearly now, and Ruffell has at least a few full-sized productions of her own in her.
Life is Short, Have an Affair
Not really a cabaret as three short and rather sweet little plays that seem to be about people fighting for the last few drops of love left in the world. A girl grows into an old woman bickering with her unicorn; two rivals meet to host a celebratory funeral for their shared love; a nature documentarist and a porn film producer join forces, and other other stuff, to make a film about grumpy panda bears mating in the only way possible at a Fringe. Filthily. French Canadian Amélie Murdock and New Yorker Kate Chavez are students at the London International Performing Arts School, as seemed most of the audience that night, but they are both already accomplished entertainers. Murdock struggles with her English, but she’s having a ball, so that’s all right. The two together are a hoot, though the sketches between playwright Lila Rose Kaplan’s playlets need to be tightened, scrapped, or invested in as much as the main stories. Not a hilarious show, not an out-and-out comedy, but something subtler and more interesting.
This article was edited on 12 August 2010: Life Is Short, Have an Affair co-creator Amélie Murdoch was initially identified as French.
10 Aug 2010
Oyster machines at London Bridge, Victoria, Liverpool Street and King Cross stations love doubling your charges
Using a freedom of information act request, BBC London has discovered that 2,421 people have complained about Oyster machines doubling their charges, with major National Rail stations London Bridge, Victoria, Liverpool Street, and Kings Cross getting the most complaints.
Says Transport for London: ‘We didn’t know until someone complained.’
10 Aug 2010
Daily MPfree: Tim & Sam vs Foreign Office
Well, this is all very nice. Rosy-cheeked chamber-pop muffins Tim & Sam (pictured above) have remixed Hackney’s Foreign Office (pictured below), turning their bangin’ post-punk into a sun-dappled indie jaunt; Foreign Office respond by putting a donk on a Tim & Sam number. Both bands are finding their feet and finding fans – hear the results of their remix face-off below.
Tim & Sam – Finders Keepers (Foreign Office remix) by snipelondon
Foreign Office – Leaving the House (Tim and Sam Remix) by snipelondon
09 Aug 2010
Carp Diem - Giant fish caught in Victoria Park
Check out this monster carp fished out of the lake at Victoria Park yesterday afternoon, right in front of a hundred or so hungry diners at the Pavilion cafe. Who knew such beasts lurked beneath the surface of our city’s lakes and ponds? Who knows what larger monsters are out there right now, hidden in the reeds?
The carp, caught by a fisherman named locally as ‘Jim’, weighed in at 22 and a half pounds, or just under a quarter of Cheryl Cole. Despite several requests for it to be filleted and cooked on the spot, it was later returned to the lake unharmed.
09 Aug 2010
Snipe Likes: Cats In Paris
Super-interesting Mancunian indie 3-piece Cats In Paris are playing the news every day in August. It’s times like this when you think their sickening talented frontman Michael probably parps bum symphonies in his sleep.
8th August 2010 by catsinparis
This is a new video I spotted on their website. new Cats In Paris = yay!
And here’s one of their pop hits for the uninitiated. It’s called “The One” and it has an awesome DANCE. You can get it on 7”, too.
08 Aug 2010
Snipe Likes: Peter Broderick
A creative way to use photobooth 3446 times from the Berlin-based singer and songwriter, who apparently made this whilst recuperating from an operation. The song is typically beautiful; a sparse arrangement on just piano and voice. A new release, “How They Are”, is coming in September on Bella Union.
07 Aug 2010
Daily MPfree: Anthony & The Johnsons
Anthony Heggarty is back with his Johnsons. “Thank You For Your Love” is a gentle soul ballad with his familiar wavering falsetto and a nice arrangement on piano, strings and brass. Even though this one is a little more upbeat than some of his more funereal prior work, it still sounds like heartbreak in motion. That voice is so loaded with pathos, even celebrations sound endlessly tearful.
Anthony & The Johnsons – Thank You For Your Love by snipelondon
06 Aug 2010
Snipe Likes: Jónsi
Here’s a new video from the Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi’s brilliant debut solo album, “Go”.
05 Aug 2010
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- A unique collection of photos of Edwardian Londoners
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Summer Camp: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
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