Yoko Ono was up in the Royal Box orchestrating proceedings through her trademark large sun glasses, Viv Albertine (formerly of the Slits) sadly failed to be a convincing support act whilst Siouxsie Sioux, resplendent in an ever changing combination of shiny white vinyl layers, leather straps, hats and tails, blew us all away with a quite magnificent show… her first live outing for over five years, although you never would have guessed.

I’d never seen Siouxsie, either with or without the Banshees (John McGeoch with the Armoury Show was the closest I’d got) but And had back in the 80′s, and just prior to going to take our seats inside the RFH, we couldn’t help but reflect on the differences in going to gigs twixt then and now…  Then: £3.50 tickets, venue scum on the floor, going as part of a big group, plastic beer glasses and drunk students, all in an atmosphere dense with cigarette smoke, testosterone and patchouli. Now: comfy seating, polite middle age respect, a predominance of couples and £35 tickets (plus booking fee of course)..

However as soon as Siouxsie came on, the audience roared with excitement, everyone stood up and as the opening riff of Happy House rang out, I’m sure it wasn’t just us that was immediately transported back to our younger selves…

As for the gig, it was much better than I thought it might be. The band played for two hours, the first half of which was the Kaleidoscope from (1980) played in order and in its entirety. Not an album I know very well (other than the two singles of course) but it sounded remarkably fresh after all these years, big guitars, big synths, even bigger drums and of course Siouxie’s huge voice bellowing out across the whole.. A voice that undoubtedly got stronger as the gig went on.

After some greatest hits, a couple of Creatures songs, a Jacques Brel torch song involving a cane chair and the ever wonderful Spellbound to close, we all left happy and smiling, our adolescent memories and tastes reassured and our ears ringing. She quipped she wouldn’t be back for another ten years during the show, but I for one hope it’s sooner than that.

She really was quite mesmerising, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of lines from my favorite Siouxsie & the Banshees song, about being entranced by a rag doll dance, only in this case it was the white vinyl clad Queen of punk who was doing the entrancing, and it was us who were all Spellbound and more than happy to follow…

I’ve been a big fan of Massive Attack ever since first hearing Unfinished Sympathy in the early nineties, but I have to admit that it wasn’t until a number of years later that I discovered that Del Naja, who had started off as a graffiti artist on the streets of Bristol, was also responsible for all the cover artwork for the bands albums and singles. The last time we got an opportunity to see his work was when he exhibited a few pieces as part of the James Lavelle curated Daydreaming With…  a few years ago.

The many works on show at the Lazarides however, have all been created especially for this event and are a combination of both reworked and remade ideas from his back catalogue, from Blue Lines right up to Heligoland, along with a spattering of brand new and previously unseen pieces…

The down side of which is that there is nothing radically different here, no big departures from his easily recognisable style of Baconesque faces, montaged backgrounds and the simple graphic devices which he seems drawn towards.

The upside however is that in the relative smallness of the gallery, the sheer density of stuff on the walls gives it all a real added punch. The collected dark figures seem even more unsettling (despite Del Naja’s almost perverse use of bright colours) whilst the repetition of motifs in both the paintings and the wall coverings behind, binds the work together and gives the whole show real consistency.

I’ve been a Banksian fan almost from the very beginning. Bank’s first novel The Wasp factory was published in 1984, but it was a year later when I started at Leeds Poly in 1985 that I was told in no uncertain terms by one of my new friends that I just had to read it and that I was obviously from some backwater town for not having done so already (students are like that).

Suffice to say my friend was right (about my birthplace and Iain Banks) and from then on I was hooked. I’ve bought every single one of his books since, even taking time off work to go to bookshops where I’d queue to get whatever his latest book was signed by him and to shake the great man’s hand… (well I did that 3 times anyway)

Iain Banks (and even more so Iain M. Banks, the name he used for his Science Fiction works) was the only author I can think of that I counted down the days to the “release” of his newest book in the same way I did for the new releases of records from bands. It was the seemingly limitless invention of his imagination that amazed me, with each story in whatever style or genre, expanding beyond all expectations to the point where I used to wonder how on earth he was going to follow on from (let alone better) the last one.

Banks’s writing never disappointed, and I would argue that he almost single handedly (along with maybe William Gibson) made Science Fiction cool again in the 1980′s, giving it a more high tech and politically aware aspect that, after the floppy excesses of the Science Fantasy books that washed out most of the decade, was very welcome to a hungry mind like mine.

So it is with an empty heart that I have to accept that there is only one more book to look forward to from one of Britain’s very finest writers. The Quarry will be a story about living with cancer and was rushed forward in the schedules so that Iain could be there to see it published on June 20th.

Sadly this was not to be and the literary world is a lesser place for his loss.

Two things left a big impression on me. Firstly it was the level of control and input Bowie had into everything he did. We all know he wrote the songs, but he sketched out stage sets, costumes, film treatments and photo shoots. The result being that virtually everything on show  in the exhibition came directly from his imagination. A startling realisation…

The second thing was watching my And watching the video for Life on Mars.. It was playing in a perspex box with the suit, tie and shoes that Bowie was wearing on a mannequin next to it. She was totally transfixed, and must have watched it three or four times all the way through, moving her gaze between the whited out image of the film and the sharp colours of the clothes.

She walked away only reluctantly and with a far away look in her eyes that suggested I might have a rival for her affections….

This is for you And, so you can watch him whenever you like…

Two Italians and an American (Leonardo Ceccanti, Gianluca Salvadori and Paul Murphy) make up Almunia and their music is a divine, Balearic, hypnotic and ultimately satisfying affair, with a good helping of Pink Floyd, hints of Lemon Jelly and a spattering of Norwegian House…

They’ve just released their second album entitled Pulsar, which is just wonderful, but sadly not available ‘pon de Spotify as yet, so instead I’ll guide you to New Moon their excellent first album.

Almunia – New Moon

The artwork that adorns both these records, I think is also rather fine.

Mark Warrington is an English painter of fantastic landscapes, which perfectly echo the beauty of Almunia’s music, having as they do an odd symmetry and wistfulness that speaks simultaneously of the past and the present, the familiar and the strange…

Anyway enough of the verbiage, see what you think…

A sampler of the new album is here on Soundcloud, and some more of Mark Warrington’s work follows after that…

Just in case you don’t know, The Shard is London’s (and indeed Europe’s) newest and tallest skyscraper. Designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, it’s just over 300m tall, and the viewing galleries are spread over the top three of the buildings 72 habitable floors at a height of about 250m.

I really like being up high. Me & And have been fortunate to go up quite a number of tall buildings across the world, including the Fernsehturm TV Tower in Berlin (200m), the KL Tower in Kuala Lumpur (276m) and the Eureka Skydeck in Melbourne (285m)

Looking down on a city that you know well however, adds even more excitement for me, as it allows you to piece together seemingly disparate parts of the city, and work out how they all connect up together…

Good photos are not always easy to get due to the reflections from the glazing, however after a bit of judicious photoshopping, I think these are a pretty good record of our time at the top of the world…

Filed under: Architecture & Urban Design, Things I Like... Tagged: Fernsehturm TV Tower Berlin, KL tower Kuala Lumpur, London, postaweek2013, Renzo Piano, Skydeck Melbourne, The Shard ]]> http://wharferj.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/a-journey-to-the-top-of-the-world-well-the-top-of-london-anyway/feed/ 5 wharferj P1220046_a P1220115 P1220072 P1220100 P1220105 P1220151 P1220058 P1220083 P1220108 P1220162 http://wharferj.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/eddie-braben/ http://wharferj.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/eddie-braben/#comments Tue, 21 May 2013 22:29:51 +0000 Joe Blogs http://wharferj.wordpress.com/?p=11046 ]]> Graham Linehan has just told me on Twitter that Eddie Braben died today, he was 82…

Eddie Braben was the writer that almost single handedly propelled Morecambe and Wise to super stardom throughout their time at the BBC in the 1970′s, as he was the man that wrote virtually everything they said, although not how they said it, that was Eric’s particular skill.

It’s a bit late and I’m afraid I haven’t got the energy to write a glowing obituary just at the mo, so I’m going to put this short video clip up instead, as to me it says more about timing, comedic lines, silliness and middle aged men sharing bedrooms than words ever could..

Genius indeed.

Secret Cinema is like Fight Club; you’re not supposed to tell anyone about it, but in light of the fact that we did everything we were asked to, fulfilling our side of the bargain, as you will see if you read on, I think the organisers fell well short of what could be reasonably expected of them.

Hence any perceived contract is null and void, and hence me feeling free to tell you all about it. So click away now if you don’t want spoilers…

The experience all started off intriguingly enough, as over the course of the week leading up to the event, we had to enroll online into a company called G.O.O.D, answer questionnaires to generate our security levels and the Departments to which we would be assigned. We had to dress appropriate to our new stations, print out business cards and bring specific items with us such as newspapers, marigold gloves and brief cases…

Also on the plus side, the organisers had obviously put a lot of effort into it: the disused office building in West Croydon was decked out over six or seven floors to resemble various scenes and aspects from the secret film, which was…  Terry Gilliam’s wonderful Brazil, which I must admit I was well chuffed about, as I’ve always been a huge fan.

The recreation of the office floor in which Sam Lowry worked with Mr. Kurtzman’s office tucked away at the back was particularly well done, whilst the restaurant with the string quartet and box like illuminated, numeric menus was also pretty impressive.

So the first hour or so was all pretty good, with signing telegram roller girls, freelance heating engineers, and red boiler suited Central Services personnel all running around and interacting with the (huge) number of guests (or employees as we were encouraged to think of ourselves) milling about the six or seven floors that were open to us.

The problems started when after an obscure announcement telling us to follow the screens and not our dreams, we tried to find out where the screens were and where the film was being shown. The be-costumed people we asked were either evasive or just plain idiotic and as our frustration grew we were directed to the lifts to get even more frustrated by being taken to floors where only a couple of tiny televisions were showing a DVD of the film…

So we bought more drinks at extortionate prices from bars with massive queues and not enough staff, to calm us down and continued to look for the feature presentation. We met more and more angry and frustrated people as we traipsed from floor to floor, looking for any sign of the film. We found art installations (on big projector screens please note), freeform dancing and performance art and small monitors showing the film but with the sound turned down (although you could hear the soundtrack in the stair towers bizarrely enough, but that was on the other side of two fire doors).

Eventually (after an altercation of which I’m not proud) we were told that the film would be projected onto the outside of the building in a courtyard area, sometime after about 9 o’clock when it got dark. It would only start from where the film was up to at that time however (it started at 8.00pm) and we could only watch it through the office windows, which were too high off the floor when sat down, as you can imagine from this screen grab of the building below…

It did occur to me that this was all part of the experience. Brazil is all about petty bureaucracy and small mindedness after all, and maybe the actors were under instruction to make life as difficult as they could for us. All of which would have been OK, if we’d then seen the film as a reward.

Sadly though, I can’t think of this as anything other than a total con. Effectively it cost us £43 each for a few hours membership into a very expensive drinking club in less than salubrious surroundings, miles away from home in Croydon, with some side shows to dull our senses. About 25 of us went last night for a friends 40th Birthday, and all of us left either angry, disappointed or both, quite rightly believing that our collective £1000 could have been far better spent on almost anything else we could think of. Indeed the birthday boy and his wife were going to look into getting a refund, so ripped off did they feel…

It’s all such a shame really as it’s undoubtedly a good idea, and could work really well. We met some people who saw Prometheus and said it was the best thing they’d ever done (although they did get to see the whole film on a big screen)

We may have just hit a bad night or a ridiculous and over ambitious production, but I for one will not be duped again…

I’m a huge fan of Saul Bass’s graphic style (having written about him on these pages before) and although the thought of Google appropriating his effortless style by association sits a tad uncomfortably with me, I’m a realist and know that’s how it all works…

And besides, the video is a pretty clever summation of some of his best work. I’m even quite liking Dave Brubeck’s jazz tune this morning (but don’t tell my And)

And don’t bother sending Saul your best wishes either… he died in 1996.

There is however at least one of her tunes that you will recognise, as Delia was responsible for generating the futuristic bleeps, whooshes and synthetic sounds that combined to make the original Dr. Who Theme, which despite being made 50 years ago in 1963, is well worth a quick listen now, to remind yourself how good it still sounds…

Although credited to Ron Grainer, who wrote the basic melody, it was Delia who after three weeks of hard work recording noises and splicing together bits of magnetic tape, created the sounds and atmosphere that continue to make the tune as memorable today as it was then…

Delia (who sadly died in 2001 of alcoholism related problems, just as renewed interest in her work was beginning to pick up) was a key member of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a name synonymous with the sonic and musical experimentation of the 1960′s and 70′s.

Formed in 1958 the Workshop’s original brief was to provide incidental sounds for radio and TV shows although this was quickly expanded and the team (which included Daphne Oram, Brian Hodgson and Paddy Kingsland) was soon creating theme tunes and other impressively futuristic sounds not only for The Doctor but also for The Goon Show, Quatermass & the Pit, Blakes 7 and The Hitchhikers Guide to name just a few.

Each of the members was also a composer in their own right and Delia wrote and recorded many original compositions, one of her most well known (and strangest) of which is Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO-OO from 1967. If you think it sounds odd today, imagine what it sounded like back when everyone looked this….

Delia was also involved in two offshoot groups in the mid 1960′s: the brilliantly named Unit Delta Plus (with Peter Zinovieff, inventor of the first British portable synthesizer the EMS VCS 3) and Kaleidophon (with David Vorhaus), neither of which had great musical success at the time, but both of which have since been the subject of much reassessment by musicians who see in their experimental electronic recordings, the beginnings of today’s digital soundscapes…

There a number of videos on YouTube about Delia & the Radiophonic Workshop, and the ones below I think are the most interesting. It’s fascinating to watch how sounds were created by speeding up and slowing down tapes, playing them backwards and then chopping everything up and making loops…. It must have taken hours and hours to do what any self respecting sampler can do in seconds today…

(I’ve no idea what the ghostly chap in the background is all about…)

There’s also an excellent 1 hour audio mix here put together by Soundhog, which through a mix of spoken word and music, gives a pretty good oversight of what they got up to over in their Maida Vale studio…

As a final aside and if you’re interested in this kind of music like me, I’ve also come across this BBC TV programme from 1979. Called The New Sound of Music and presented by Michael Rodd, it’s a wonder of optimism, science and massively complex technology. I especially enjoyed seeing David Vorhaus in the last section (Part 4) who at about 7.40 mins seemingly invents Goa Trance at least 15 years before anyone knew what to call it…

Truly Impressive…

One final excellent BBC TV programme of related interest can also be found here… (noted more for my records than anything else)