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Now available again through AmazonMP3, my 2001 album Hyperreal And Supercool and the follow up, Advanced Emotional Engineering.
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March 04, 2007
We popped along to see Gilbert & George at Tate Modern on Friday whilst Chris was visiting. Are they the missing link between Morecambe & Wise and The Pet Shop Boys?I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I've never been able to decide what I make of Gilbert & George. I preferred the earlier work informed by 60s/70s gangster movies and magazine spreads, particularly Bloody Life No. 3. [which I can't find online and they didn't have a postcard of either], to the later post 80's stuff. It's a very well laid out exhibition allowing you to see how their work has evolved since they started, from the charcoal sculptures to using photography, adding colour, increasing the scale of the work etc.
What struck me the most was how easy it was to tell which decade their work came from at a glance and how much of the EastEnd it evokes; whether the stark B&W works of the 70s or the Keith Haring-esque colourings of the post AIDS 80s.
By the "post poo" works it all got too repetitive for my liking and the introduction of digitalisation added little, apart from the graffiti tags and Muslim text, to their work. The shock value of nudity and excrement has long gone [along with the Beatles "long hair" of the 60s]. Also, it seems a long time to work within the same constraints even if the works have got larger... For artists that originally referred to themselves as sculptors their work is persistently 2 dimensional although I guess their performance pieces added another dimension. What the show needs is the pair of them walking around pulling a few shapes.
We hoped to get down to the Andipa Gallery for a bit of indoor Banksy as well but that will have to wait. I think it's on a for a little while. Everything is for sale and should make the man a tidy sum I don't doubt.
The fantastic Modified Toy Orchestra are supporting Tunng as part of the South Bank's Ether 2007 festival this week. MTO produce work on the modified circuits of children's toys and use no midi or samples. Ether also includes the Human Beatbox Convention 2007.
I hope to spend this drizzly Sunday afternoon sniffing through the mixes posted at Players Association to see what I can find. Wonder where I can get myself a pot of Guinness Marmite? I'm sure our local Somerfield won't have any!
Categories: Music, Art, London
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Art Links
March 03, 2007
The Spring 2007 Affordable Art Fair is almost upon us and I still haven't finished putting links up to the artists I liked at the London Art Fair. So here's a few to rectify that. There's quite a mixture here and the links can tell you more than I can.Claire Fahys creates mixed media cityscapes, Michael Brick paints geometric abstracts and Brendan Neiland's works feature abstract reflections of metropolitan landscapes. More city landscapes from Jon Probert, some abstracts from Philip Reeves, whilst James Naughton is a landscape artist. Edward Burtynsky is a photographer of spectacular manmade landscapes and Alessandro Papetti is an artist with a photographers eye, capturing water, movement and light.
Alessandro Papetti:Piscina.
Neale Howells work is chaotic, a kind of graphic representation of voices in your head [or in many heads] - The description taken from the above link is pretty accurate... "Sometimes a huge aerosol figure or a sprayed tag will be the final layer of a painting that seems to represent decades of abuse but shares the same fascinating beauty you find lifting the lid of an old school desk".
Gregor Harvie's work depicts the shifting boundaries between land and sea, city and countryside... Whilst Robert Sample's paintings appear to have been plucked from a graphic novel or storyboard.
OK, that'll do for now!
Categories: Art, London
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The Rapture
March 01, 2007
Well, when I said it might be a while after Trev's party before another post got put up here. I didn't expect it to be this long. The consequences of arriving for a party at 5.00pm on a Saturday and not leaving until midnight the following Monday [with only one period of sleep] is a lack of much energy to do anything else later in the week... Unfortunately plenty needed doing!Including The Rapture at the Astoria last night. They were far less polished sounding than the last album suggested they might be, which is fine by me, although the sound at the Astoria is rarely good in my experience. Both Underworld and Princess Superstar gigs that I've attended there have been spoiled by the sound. It certainly wasn't a lack of volume, just separation and levels. There was a particular predominance of cowbell I must say!
But they put on a good show with very little interaction with crowd apart from some crowd surfing during the encore. They just got on with it with every other track finding another band member playing a keyboard that you hadn't previously noticed in one corner of the stage or another.
The Rapture wear their influences on their collective sleeves with essences of post punk acts like Gang Of Four and PiL. But you find thoses squaring up to the pop and goth nuances of Duran Duran and Gene Loves Jezebel [Luke's vocals are very similar to Michael Ashton's if you ask me] and even the odd suggestion of the [largely overlooked] first couple of Japan albums. Well, Luke's guitar solo on The Devil is pure Rob Dean in my book. All of this is underpinned with some old school house lines and a tendency to wander into 60s/70s style elongated jams with jazz style sax noodlings!
A good live act I'd like to see in another venue with better sound; If had had a bit more energy I would've fought my way into the centre of the crowd, where I'm sure the sound would have been better, and enjoyed it even more.
Categories: Music, London
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