Baths
3 May | Cargo | 83 Rivington Street, EC2A 3AY
We’ve been head-over-heels in love with Baths (aka L.A. resident Will Wiesenfeld) since hearing the opening notes of his 2010 album Cerulean: a heavenly harmony that sounds like it’s wafted in on a breeze from some faraway dreamy wonderland. “Apologetic Shoulderblades” then explodes into life with palpitating beats and electronic burbling, at once disorientating and soothing. There’s an enlivening vein of inventiveness and character throughout the record, marking Wiesenfeld out from more distant and faceless electronica artists. He’s supported at Cargo by hyped solo artist Star Slinger.
01 May 2011
Sacred Harp - Julie
We are utterly smitten by this beautiful debut album “Window’s A Fall” by Sacred Harp, out in Norway on Trust Me Records. The song isn’t super representative of the album, which segues between intoxicating dark prog jams, delicate slowcore ballads and stadium-sized indie-rock, in the best possible way.
30 Apr 2011
She's Hit - Shimmer Shimmer
Sleazy garage rock from Glasgow’s She’s Hit, drawing comparisons with Mark E Smith and The Cramps. Released May 23rd on RE:PEATER RECORDS.
29 Apr 2011
23 Apr 2011
Jamie Blake
Love, as everybody knows, is an unstoppable avalanche that you can try and hide from in a small cottage on the mountainside, but it will simply smash away your hapless wee house like so many matchsticks and sweep you away, on a thrashing wave of happiness and joy, over a cliff of desire to the bottom of a ravine of contentment and fulfillment. Jamie would rather avoid all that. Good luck! He shouldn’t have gone skiing on the Slope of Life during a Love Avalanche Warning. It’s all going to come crashing down on him faster than this shaky, overextended metaphor. But look at him! Trapped in some kind of mediaeval sewer with two gorgeous woman and a guitar and he’s still miserable. What hope?
Ravenrock Theatre presents Jamie Blake, an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia hoopla featuring beatbox girl Grace Savage and a passionate little cast that, with any luck, will descend every night into hopeless throes of love-making on stage. A musical orgy, that’s what I’m hoping for. All that imagery has got me stirred up.
Jamie Blake runs 22-23 April at the Cockpit Theatre, Gateforth Street, London, 020 7258 2925, ravenrock.org.uk, nearest station, Marylebone.
19 Apr 2011
Pinocchio Review
The first of many beautiful but shocking scenes in Winshluss’s Pinocchio comes when Svetlana Geppetto, the dissolute, beehive bombshell who probably married the greasy little inventor to get out of Soviet Russia, discovers her husband’s new electric toy can have uses of her own. That nose, it’s just the right shape and size… Unfortunately for the bored wife, unlike the original Pinocchio, whose nose grew when he told a lie, this one, as Geppetto enthusiastically pitches to his military clients, is actually a flamethrower. The mechanical boy leaves his smoke-filled home to head out on the road of adventure, where he meets tyrants, perverts, sea monsters and doomed children. Most of whom, as in all the best kids books, come to horrific ends. Some might argue this isn’t a kids book, but those people have never read the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales and were probably never children themselves. They just popped up in a pumpkin patch somewhere, already wagging their fingers and looking for stuff to scold.
An epic graphic novel following very, very loosely the original story of Carlo Collodi’s little wooden boy, Winshluss’s pen hacks and chops inky images out of the paper as though his deadline was Doomsday, and that right soon. At first glance the sloppy dynamism seems a little crude, but painstaking attention to detail and a flawless sense of composition gives his scrawls a scruffy elegance that builds to a richer finish than clean perfection ever could. Every panel is drenched in dark, forbidding atmosphere- assisted by colourist Cizo’s moody palette of mostly blues and greens. Winshluss expands the Pinocchio myth, shovelling other fairy tales and cultural myths into the fire, everything from Snow White to Superman and Christianity, Easter Island and Mussolini.
Reading a bit about the artist Winshluss, I found several references online to his supposed lack of morals. But this is a very moral tale. This Pinocchio may be a devastating war machine, but he’s an innocent. His only dark side is that he exists. He was built to be ultimate killing machine, but it is the schemes and deceits, the abuses and corruptions of those who use him that are evil. Pinocchio is content just to be around folks and observe. In fact, the only thoughts in his head belong to Jiminy Cockroach, the lazy drunken bug that lives rent-free in his steel head.
The use of vignettes, short little interludes employing a variety of styles, mostly to tell mini-tales of Jiminy, start to proliferate about two-thirds of the way through. To the point that they threaten to derail the previous, solid storytelling. It sort of suggests the artist was losing steam and needed ways to keep his own interest going. However, as said before, this is an epic work, and whatever it took to complete the story is justified to me. Since these these breaks are all beautifully done and hilarious, tackling various themes, interlacing storylines, introducing characters, it seems a rather petty observation. Even if it was my own.
A gorgeous and inventive piece of storytelling genius, Pinocchio takes on a life of its own and becomes considerably more than the sum of the fairy tales Winshluss pilfers and scribbles. Easily one of the best graphic novels I’ve read in fifteen years.
Originally from French publishers Les Requins Marteaux, Pinocchio is published in English (not that there’s much translation needed, the book is almost entirely wordless) by Knockabout Comics on 25 April, but advance copies may be found at several comic stores in London, including Forbidden Planet and Gosh!
13 Apr 2011
Rökkurró in London
The wonderful Rökkurró hit UK shores this week for two dates. The first is at the Windmill on April 13th, the second at the Queen Of Hoxton on April 14th. They are touring to support a download EP gleaned from the debut album Í Annan Heim (In Another World), which you might be able to forage for on import. But on the strength of their barnstorming live show, perhaps it’ll be available in the UK sooner rather than later.
Rökkurró – Sjónarspil (The Line of Best Fit Session) from The Line Of Best Fit on Vimeo.
12 Apr 2011
Multiphonic Rodent
Snipe came across Estonian solo artist Multiphonic Rodent on a recent trip to Tallinn Music Week. The one-man-band and fearless multi-tasker is a master of lo-fi loop-pedal tapestries, wonky pop songs and earworm instrumentals. Listen to a full album (released in 2008 but still sounding fresh as a daisy today) below, and keep an eye and an ear out for more in the near future.
10 Apr 2011
07 Apr 2011
See this tonight: Tearist
The Old Blue Last
Ever-reliable arbiters of all things noisy and obscure Upset The Rhythm tonight bring over LA duo Tearist for a show at the Old Blue Last. Resolutely lo-fi and cut from the same alt/emo/noise cloth as Xiu Xiu and Former Ghosts, expect harrowing passages, pulsing synths and a firmly DIY aesthetic.
28 Mar 2011
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- The five spookiest abandoned London hospitals
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- Punk brewery just as sexist and homophobic as the industry they rail against
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
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