Laki Mera » 7 October
Inspiral Cafe | 250 Camden High Street, NW1 8QS
Drawing influence from their fellow Glaswegian ambient maestros The Blue Nile, Laki Mera create lush textural beds of synths, drones and cello to create a richly ambient bed for the fragile, Liz Fraser-influenced vocals of Laura Donnelly. Recent EP ‘Clutter’ saw rave reviews and, in some quarters, more than occasional references to The XX. The ghost of trip hop past hangs over the band and they’re in no small debt to the work of the Bristollian greats Massive Attack and Portishead, but there’s enough of an edge to the synths to place them in the present and, in Donnelly, they have a wee starlet waiting to spread her wings.
03 Oct 2010
Dirk Stewen
Maureen Paley 21 Herald Street, London E2 6JT
Working on potato starched paper from the post-war era, Dirk Stewen’s watercolour’s take on a ligneous texture as they combine with traces of glue and marks from work that previously inhabited the page. Works shown will consist of large sheets of photographic paper, each dyed with several layers of Indian ink, strewn with patterns of confetti and thread applied with a sewing machine, then joined together to form large rectangular panels.
Brooding, melancholic and languid strokes accompany the genderless figurative images adored in old fashioned props, whilst the abstract works express Stewen’s interested in geometry and balance. The crisp lines of paint capture a precise moment in time, a window to the intangible past that should really be seen first hand.
03 Oct 2010
Testbed 1
33 Parkgate Road, Battersea, SW11 4NP
A collaborative effort that has been gaining momentum over the past year, TestBed 1 focus on a series of screen-based digital commissions that explore the gulf between high-end cinema and low-fi independent films. As Youtube grants fame overnight to some videos, it propels others into obscurity amongst what is literally thousands of videos of babies or kittens. Thankfully, this exhibition promises nothing as cutesy but rather ponders the anarchy that might ensue in a world in which creator and consumer roles collide.
03 Oct 2010
Watch: Applicants
An ace Applicants video that somehow slipped under the radar, directed by Mike Prior.
24 Sep 2010
Gaggle: The Brilliant & The Dark
24-piece all-girl choir Gaggle do a very special show tonight, performing a reinterpreted opera, first performed in 1969 by the Women’s Institute. An intriguing idea: check out the trailer below, and get more info here.
23 Sep 2010
Eric Chenaux, Dead Rat Orchestra, Braindead CollecTive » 22 September
Café Oto | 18 – 22 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL
A night of noise and improvisation at Cafe OTO, headlined by former Constellation recording artist and Toronto resident Eric Chenaux, who mixes guitar work with effect-laden strings and lots more. Dead Rat Orchestra, apparently from Madrid via Colchester, veer between heart-rending solo violin, mesmerising proto-folk and rhythmic noise. Braindead Collective features a rotating casts of London jazz-heads and improv stars headed up by Oxfordian instigator Sebastian Reynolds. They whip up unpredictable storms and eddies on brass, drums, woodwind and all kinds of pedals and sound sources, feeding on each others’ performances to climactic effect.
20 Sep 2010
Wilco and Philip Selway » 14 September
Royal Festival Hall | South Bank SE1
Having only just released the delicate and beautifully nuanced solo effort that is Familial, Radiohead drummer Philip Selway will be taking to the spectacular Royal Festival Hall stage this September in support of veteran Chicago folksters and sometime collaborators, Wilco. With a career spanning over 15 years, multi-instrumentalist Jeff Tweedy and co’s back catalogue is as stylistically diverse as it is inspiring. In fact between them, Wilco and Selway possess an oeuvre that straddles and challenges every discernible genre typecast from “alt-country” to “experimental rock”, so tonight promises to be nothing less than a stunning operetta.
13 Sep 2010
Wild Beasts
Leeds-based Mercury Prize nominees Wild Beasts have released a stream of their forthcoming remix EP, ahead of Thursday’s Campfire Trails show at London Troxy. Lucky us.
13 Sep 2010
The Black Cab Sessions
For the uninitiated, the Black Cab Sessions concept is simple: take a band in the back of a randomly flagged cab, and film the resulting performance as they cruise around the East End. From humble beginnings filming promising London newbies, the sessions have since attracted the interest of American TV stations and taken some musical legends along for the ride. Highlights are many – from the barber-shop-style Brian Wilson session to a rainy night time performance from David Thomas Broughton, complete with self-sabotaging improvised looping through a battery powered amp; from the spectral blues-folk of the Smoke Fairies, to the newest session of all, by The Flaming Lips. Click the still below to check that one out, and sign up for their newsletter to hear about some hugely ambitious sessions coming soon…
09 Sep 2010
Slow Burners and Hot Lights
Mum is seeing a fellah. Daughter is steadily dropping out of life, disappearing before her mother’s eyes. Brother is on a path to a bad end. And mum’s fellah may or may not be a monster.
Visits, by Jon Fosse, is a dark, slooooow burner, with moments of revelation hidden behind other moments of misdirection. Characters take forever to say anything, building pressure like a percolator, but never letting the steam escape.
When I first entered the main stage space Theatre Delicatessen has created at the former Uzbekistan Airways building I immediately thought, This place needs a Scandinavian play! I hadn’t then realised I was about to see one. The setting is perfect. Dark wood panels and shelving, peeling walls scraped away and replaced with corrugated translucent plastic sheeting, behind which we see backlit silhouettes acting as both memories and intimations of impending danger. Characters walk out of the space, out of sight, and their voices bouncing around the corridors, creating additional distance and disconnection.
05 Sep 2010
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Could red kites be London's next big nature success story?
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- Peter Bayley has worked for 50 years as a cinema projectionist in East Finchley
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Silencing the Brick Lane curry touts could be fatal for the city's self-esteem
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
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