Faber & Faber Manchester post-punk legends The Fall are probably most notable for two things; their famously irascible and erratic leader Mark E. Smith, and (not unrelatedly) their rapid turnover of band personnel. There are, at the time of writing, somewhere north of 60 ex-members of The Fall and no shortage of memoirs documenting their…
Exhibitionism is more than just a deluxe treasure trove of Stones memorabilia, it’s a well of pop-cultural history and an audio-visual audit of the ways in which one English band has impacted on many individual lives and personal narratives around the world. Beyond nostalgia, this is a demonstration of why The Rolling Stones still matter…
Gagosian Gallery – April 27 – June 17 In Search of the Absolute, is the first exhibition to pair works by modern masters Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) and Yves Klein (1928-1962). Working almost a decade apart, but within a mile of one another in Montparnasse, Paris, both artists shared the experience of living through the Second World War.…
Originally born and raised in Streatham, Conrad Armstrong now 26, has moved to the uber desirable surrounds of Hackney Wick where he lives and works in one of the many warehouse spaces in the area. I met Conrad here to see and chat about his new work for a forthcoming show, Shadow Progress at Unit…
Franz Schubert’s lovelorn 1828 song cycle Winterreise (Winter Journey), based on poems by Wilhelm Müller, gets a stunning orchestra-meets-Weimar-cabaret reinterpretation from Hans Zender that will have you believe spring has yet to arrive. As the Barbican prepares to transform their Theatre into the winter’s landscape of Winterreise, Ben Eshmade talks to director Netia Jones, tenor…
It’s been half a decade since Gil Scott-Heron’s final release but his music and messages continue to resound. His home-grown gravely Jackson Tennessee voice and lyrical wordplay led him to be dubbed as “The Godfather of Rap” and he’s been sampled by artists from Jamie XX to Common to Rihanna and Drake. As part of…
I am often overwhelmed by living in a city. I spend a good portion of time daydreaming about being someplace else; of disappearing into remote little villages or of driving down endlessly empty Texan roads. As soon as I am weakened by claustrophobia, I begin to obsess over the idea of being in a mountain or on a…
A world where most of what exists is invisible, or existing in shadows both physical and not. The only piano ‘Vigil’ to just do one thing, musically speaking – the others transforming and (for me at least) transcending their openings – a soundtrack maybe for the hope that at some point we may evolve/transcend. Perhaps…
Ronnie Wood describes himself as “an artist who plays the guitar, inspired by Mucha to Rembrandt and everything in between”. For the last three years he has been the patron of National Open Art, a charity that exists to support the brightest emerging artists from across the UK and Ireland through its annual competition. From…
What kind of musical comfort does the inveterate fan of gloomily melodramatic recording artists like Nick Cave and Nico reach for when genuine personal sadness comes a-knocking? So asks self-confessed lyric junkie and pop song connoisseur Jamie Holman after finding unlikely, revelatory succour in the kind of music he thought he hated… I’ve always been…