East End Review

Tag: Dalston

Too late to stop Nao: interview

Nao: “Vocal acrobatics and flair…” Photograph: Jeff Hahn

The story of Nao is not one of overnight success. The 28-year-old East Londoner this year released her debut album For All We Know to some acclaim, with critics hailing her vocal acrobatics and flair in taking the sounds of her old school idols and bringing them up to date. But in contrast to the fame-hungry, manufactured stars of today, the rise to prominence of Nao (née Neo Jessica Joshua) is the result of years of hard work. She has been gigging since the age of 14, studied jazz at music school and been a session vocalist for the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Kwabs. Here she talks about East London sounds, the joy of jamming and ‘wonky funk’…

You grew up and live in East London. How does that come through in your music?

East London has always been a hub for fresh and original music. When I was growing up in my teenage years we were listening to pirate radio stations and grime crews like Heartless Crew and Pay as U Go. They were all people who weren’t signed and were just on the hustle and I think that influenced me in following my own nose. It made me think, ‘I love making music so I’m just going to get on the grind and hope that one day it works out.’ It’s beginning to.

And your recording studio is on Ridley Road, home of the famous market. Do you find inspiration there for your music amongst the market stalls and traders?

I love hustle and bustle and Ridley Road definitely has that. When I’ve been in the studio working without windows or people for a long time I’ve started going out in Dalston, clubbing a little bit just to let my hair down. And I was hearing all these new tunes that people were getting down to and I was like ‘ when did this music come out?’ So it helps me keep up to date with new music that’s for sure.

It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years for you, from your first EP in 2014 to a MOBO nomination, playing Glastonbury twice, coming third in BBC’s Sound of 2016 poll and now a debut album under your belt. How are you coping with the success?

Well I’m not Adele so I don’t get mobbed down the street but it’s definitely a new path for me. I’m realistic though. I understand stuff goes up and stuff comes down and that with the music business you can’t really hold your self-esteem to it because it’s fickle. So I just make music because I love it though obviously I want other people to enjoy it too.

Does the fact you’ve been gigging since you were 14 make you appreciate this all the more?

Yeah, 100 per cent. I’ve been gigging most of my life around London and around the world actually and when I was doing those shows I was a voice of other people’s projects, a singer just floating around. But it did teach me about stage presence, about performing and it taught me about how to be a professional and I learnt my craft trying to be good vocalist. I appreciate that all those years have helped me in my late 20s hopefully be at a good standard.

You worked with some well-respected producers on For All We Know (Grades, A.K. Paul, Loxe, John Calvert) yet there’s something quite homespun about it, like the inclusion of voice memos. What was the rationale there?

You’re right, it’s definitely not all that polished. I recorded all the vocals in my cupboard at home and sometimes you can hear a train going past because I live by the train tracks. There’s a couple of voice memos in there, one in front of a song called Happy and another straight afterwards. And that’s basically an insight into how that song came about. When I make music I leave my phone recording for hours because you never know what you’re going to come up with. So I was recording me and my friends jamming around and we started to form the bass line and then you can hear the chorus developing. I just wanted to show that it’s not about being in the studio with Pharrell, it’s about sitting with people you’re comfortable with, jamming it out and finding a song within that beautiful moment.

You studied vocal jazz at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which suggests to me you’ve always been very serious about a career in music. When did you realise it was something you wanted to do full-time?

I knew I wanted to be a musician from very young, but not from watching Popstars on TV – there was something about dancing around in a video didn’t click for me. Some of the musicians I love are pretty old school, like Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. They’re amazing musicians and that’s why I went to the Guildhall to study jazz because it was all about musicianship, and I got to compose for orchestras and arrange for like big bands and things like that. Hopefully throughout the album you can hear strong musicianship because that’s what I’ve always wanted to get across.

You’ve described your particular type of music as ‘wonky funk’. What does that mean and why have you felt the need to invent your own genre?

Well a lot of people connect me to R&B and I see R&B as quite a particular thing. It’s quite smooth, it’s quite silky, it’s quite… I don’t know, it’s quite sexual sometimes. But I feel with my music there are so many colours in there: there’s funk, there’s R&B, there’s electronic future music in there. It’s just an amalgamation of all the things I grew up listening to, so for all those people putting me into one bracket because I don’t sound like Usher I just made up my own genre. The funk I take from people like Prince and Michael Jackson who I love and the ‘wonkiness’ is my own interpretation for the moment that we live in. My music doesn’t sound retro, it doesn’t sound like it’s recorded in the 70s, it sounds new I hope, it sounds contemporary.

For All We Know is out now on Little Tokyo Recordings

August 26, 2016
Jidori, Dalston, restaurant review – View-a skewer

The bar at Jidori. Photograph: Mary Gaudin, Design: Giles Reid Architects

Jidori had been piquing my interest ever since it first opened. Walking by on Kingsland Road, I couldn’t discern the cuisine, but the warm, soft lighting beckoned, and through the glass pane I could see the tables were full, with pairs of casual diners chatting at the wooden bar, the whole dining space framed by blue-grey walls lined with crockery and plants. The cuisine is contemporary Japanese, and when I finally walked in for dinner, TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ started playing whilst I was served a Yuzu lemon slushy margarita. All my pleasure centres lit up at once, as if an algorithm somewhere was running to ensure maximum appeal to a broad, urban 30-something demographic.

In fact, the responsible parties are Brett Redman and Natalie Lee-Joe, restauranteurs and co-founders. Redman has opened several popular places in London, of which I’ve only been to the Pavilion café in Victoria Park, a very different type of venue but again, one that knows its market very well. Whereas the Pavilion serves free-range breakfasts and craft beer, the vision for Jidori is yakitori – a casual type of Japanese cuisine centred on chicken skewers, cooked on a charcoal grill and washed down with copious amounts of booze. Although there are nice vegetarian highlights, I wouldn’t recommend eating at Jidori if chicken isn’t your thing.

The tsukune, with cured egg yolk. Photograph: Aaron Tilley

The menu is quite small and we had most of it, starting with the katsu curry Scotch egg, which, in the final reckoning, was a well-executed Scotch egg, but a Scotch egg nonetheless, so not exactly a rarity in Hackney. I then had a simple bowl of chicken broth. Broth well done is lovely and understated. This had depth and flavour and was as clear as glass, indicating the stock was simmered slowly and never came to the boil. Next, the omakase, a tasting platter for two, which for £18 each allowed us sample most of the skewer menu. Chicken thigh and spring onion; aubergine and miso butter; chicken hearts and bacon; king oyster mushroom; and tsukune: minced chicken on skewer (think the consistency of kofte), dipped in raw egg yolk. The mushroom, hearts, and tsukune stood above the rest. The set menu included rice and pickles. It was supposed to also include an onsen egg, but this never materialised. We finished off with the ginger ice cream with miso caramel, which is a serious dessert and unmissable.

Jidori is certainly not the only, or the most authentic, yakitori in London – perennial favourite Jin Kichi in Hampstead comes to mind – but it is inviting and cheerful, with attentive service. It is also good value – even with drinks you can eat there for less than £20 a head. With this winning formula, there may well be more restaurants to come from Redman and Lee-Joe.

Jidori
89 Kingsland High St, London E8 2PB
jidori.co.uk

August 25, 2016
Dalston’s NTS Radio to go global with international tour

Taking on the world: Sean McAuliffe and Femi Adeyemi. Photograph: NTS Radio

A Dalston radio station is going global after receiving funding for an international tour.

NTS, an online station run from a small studio in Gillett Square, has been awarded £57,000 by Arts Council England to take its sound around the world.

Sean McAuliffe, Managing Director of NTS, said: “We are really happy that, with Arts Council England’s support, we will be giving a group of young DJs and producers the chance to perform in countries across the globe, including Greece, Canada, China and Australia.

“The fund will also make it possible to help promote these artists and hopefully further their careers globally.”

The NTS International Festival Tour will take a selection of underground artists overseas as part of the Arts Council’s International Showcasing programme.

Joyce Wilson, Arts Council England’s London director, said: “We’re really pleased to be able to support NTS and its international tour.

“This exciting organisation is one to watch as it takes the vibrant talent of London from the underground to the world stage.”

NTS was founded in 2011 by DJ Femi Adeyemi and operated out of the tiny shack in Gillett Square where it remains to this day.

Adeyemi wanted to create a counter to commercial radio with no on-air advertising and interesting music 24 hours a day. The station’s tagline – “Don’t assume” – sums up the diversity on offer.

Five years later and NTS reaches more than 360,000 listeners in the UK and beyond, with extra studios in Los Angeles, Shanghai and Manchester.

The station has over 200 regular hosts and has helped establish artists such as Skepta and the Young Turks record label.

August 9, 2016
Rio Cinema set to host the London Feminist Film Festival in August

A still from Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

The organisers of this year’s London Feminist Film Festival (LFFF) aim to provide a space for discussion, organisation and celebration.

The fourth edition of the festival is opening with a 25th anniversary screening of Pratibha Parmar’s A Place of Rage. Parmar’s award-winning documentary celebrates African American women within the context of the civil rights, black power and feminist movements, all of which the organisers deem important struggles to recall in a time when women’s rights are still under attack.

The films aren’t all quite so heavy, with some screenings coming from places of laughter such as feature length “pop-u-mentary” Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, in which a young girl and her aunt attempt to create an alternative pop star who isn’t hyper-sexualised.

Other notable screenings include the European premiere of documentary feature No Kids for Me, Thanks!, about childless women, and the Shappi Khorsandi-narrated short One Thousand And One Teardrops, about women’s dress codes in Iran.

Each screening will be followed by a discussion with the filmmakers, providing opportunity to discuss the themes of their work and talk about the challenges of working in the film industry.

Throughout the festival there will also be panel discussions addressing topical social issues such as the right to abortion, the experiences of refugee women and the representation of the female body in patriarchal society.

The festival takes place at the Rio Cinema in Dalston from 18 to 21 August, and the full programme can be found on the festival website. If you’re even slightly interested in female empowerment, there’s definitely something at this year’s LFFF for you.

London Feminist Film Festival
18-21 August 2016
Rio Cinema
107 Kingsland High Street
E8 2PB

July 29, 2016
Iain Sinclair walks ‘ginger line’ in film adaptation of London Overground

Walking the line: Iain Sinclair (left) surveys London

London’s itinerant seer Iain Sinclair, famed for his documented walks around the city, has set out again to trek around the ‘ginger line’ for a filmed adaptation of his latest book, London Overground.

Directed by John Rogers, the film takes place over the course of the year, rather than a single day. It follows Sinclair as he follows the railway tracks on foot from his home in Haggerston, visiting 33 stations in a 35 mile round trip.

Film-maker Andrew Kötting, who walked him when he first made the 15 hour journey, joins him in Rotherhithe, and they make their way together through Canada Water, Surrey Quays to Queens Road Peckham.

At Willesden Junction he is met by film-maker and author Chris Petit, and in Dalston local campaigner Bill Parry-Davies, who composed some of the film’s score, joins him to survey what has changed as the area has been redeveloped.

Sinclair dubbed the Overground the ‘ginger line’ after he heard the moniker from some costumed art students in New Cross, who make an appearance in the film too.

He describes it as the “spin-drier of capitalism whirling bank notes around the city – a real moment to look at this city of unreal money” where a new city is emerging.

The film offers a “snapshot of the city in transition and a unique insight into the most important chronicler of contemporary London.”

The film will premiere as part of the East End Film Festival. The screening will take place at the Rio Cinema in Dalston on Saturday 2 July and a Q&A with Iain Sinclair and John Rogers will be held afterwards.

June 29, 2016
Passing Clouds founder vows to fight on despite ban as company director

Disqualified: Passing Clouds founder Eleanor Wilson. Photograph: Hackney Council/Adam Holt

In an exclusive interview with the Hackney Citizen, the founder of Passing Clouds has vowed to keep the Dalston venue afloat, in spite of her recent ban as a company director for failing to pay tax.

Eleanor Wilson, boss of the much-loved nightspot, is also in dispute with the building’s new owners Landhold Developments over its tenancy.

Passing Clouds’ ten-year tenancy agreement expired last month, though Ms Wilson insists they are not currently occupying the building illegally.

Wilson told the Hackney Citizen she had made a private agreement with the landlord to remain until 11 August, but admitted no contract had been signed by both parties.

The premises was last week ‘reclaimed’ by protesters after staff arrived at work to find the locks had been changed.

In triumphant scenes, supporters were able to clamber in through a second-floor window and wrest back control of the building.

Jubilant: Passing Clouds supporters outside the Dalston venue

But their coup may yet be short-lived, as it emerged that Wilson, as director of Passing Clouds Ltd, has been barred from running a company because of sloppy bookkeeping and her failure to pay thousands of pounds of tax due.

The disqualification, which kicked in on 1 June 2016 and lasts for five years, was the end result of an investigation by the government’s insolvency service.

Wilson’s bid to have the ban overturned in a court challenge last month (11 May), but was unsuccessful.

In a statement to the Hackney Citizen, a spokesperson for the government’s insolvency service said: “Eleanor Mary Wilson, the sole director of a community arts centre and live music venue, has been disqualified from acting as a director of a limited company for a period of 5 years for failing to pay tax and failing to properly maintain and/or deliver up the company’s accounting records.

“An Insolvency Service investigation found that Ms Wilson had been the sole director of Passing Clouds Limited from March 2011 and failed to deliver up accounting records to explain cash withdrawals and transactions debiting the company bank account totalling more than £80,000.

“The company also failed to pay sufficient monies to HMRC in respect of VAT and PAYE/NIC throughout its period of trading which resulted in a debt due to HMRC of more than £170,000.”

The case details can be found on the government’s insolvency service website.

Competing commitments

Wilson told the Hackney Citizen that the company’s tax liabilities had now all been settled with HMRC.

She admitted her “bookkeeping wasn’t on point”, and put it down to “complicated personnel issues” at the time.

She explained that tax deadlines were missed due to her competing commitments, which included work in Sierra Leone.

“I’m involved in international development work [as well as running Passing Clouds] and wasn’t able to juggle the two things,” she said.

Insolvency investigation

As long ago as 20 August 2013, Wilson decided that one of her companies, Passing Clouds Ltd, would be wound up voluntarily and a liquidator appointed, according records held at Companies House.

Passing Clouds Ltd is one of five companies linked to the venue run by Ms Wilson.

It was formed on 31 March 2011, however it went into liquidation less than three years later.

Two other companies, Passing Clouds Community Limited and Passing Clouds Community Trust Ltd, were struck off a year later, in December 2014.

Wilson also decided to wind up another of her companies, Passing Clouds Trading Limited, on 18 February 2015.

Three of the companies, Passing Clouds Trading Limited, Passing Clouds Community Limited, Passing Clouds Community Trust Limited were formed on the same day, 24 January 2013.

She was also company director of World Transtition (sic) Trust, which was dissolved on 8 March this year.

Wilson told the Hackney Citizen that Passing Clouds currently trades as East London Community Arts Ltd. The company was formed just under two years ago, on 14 Aug 2014, and came close to being struck off late last year.

When asked why she had set up so many companies with similar names at the same time, Wilson explained that each was set up as as “interim experiment” with the idea that each would run for specific projects, but that this did not materialise.

Future

But despite the travails of of the iconic club, Wilson still predicts a bright future for Passing Clouds.

“It doesn’t need to be me running it,” she said, commenting on the new situation. “I may not be the best person to head up Passing Clouds in the future.”

Wilson added that the organisation, which she founded ten years ago in June 2006, could survive by adopting a different operating model, such as a cooperative, a Community Interest Company (CIC) or a charitable trust.

Asked by the Hackney Citizen what she would consider to be a best-case scenario, Wilson said ideally she would like Landhold Developments “to sell us the building or grant a long lease – 10, 20 or even 30 years.”

She also pointed out that she was looking at cooperative and other business models for the future.

“With a project as pioneering and long-term as Passing Clouds, I need look into different types of corporate entity to find out which is the right one,” she said.

“I need to consider how it functions in the community – perhaps something like a charitable trust foundation.”

When asked by the Hackney Citizen if Passing Clouds might look for premises elsewhere, Wilson said it would be very difficult.

“Rents have gone up astronomically,” she said.

A late licence was crucial to keeping the business financially viable, she added, and said the council is no longer issuing them.

“We would never find a building like that in central London. We’d have to find a derelict warehouse, soundproof it as a music venue. As an international and cultural community cohesion project – that would be over. It would be almost impossible to set up a project like Passing Clouds again.

“We are a frontline community project that set up in what was known at the time as Crack Alley.

“Running the place in terms of all the paperwork and licensing and so forth, was a very difficult thing to do.

“Finally after 10 years the project has found its feet. They [the landlords] can buy any building, they can wipe us out just like that.”

June 24, 2016
Protestors ‘reclaim’ Passing Clouds after landlord changes locks

Jubilant: Passing Clouds supporters outside the Dalston venue

Dalston venue Passing Clouds has been ‘reclaimed’ by protestors after the landlord changed the locks, shutting venue staff out.

The venue was able to open later to host its scheduled event.

The premises, which first flung open its doors ten years ago, was sold by the previous owner in September last year to a new landlord, Landhold Developments.

The lease expired last month, and so Passing Clouds were legally bound to vacate the premises.

Eleanor Wilson, the founder of Passing Clouds, last month told <em>Hackney Today</em>, the council’s fortnightly freesheet, how she she first began back in June 2006: “Our vision was unique and there was no model for what we were doing. On a business level,though, we were stepping into the unknown.”

“It all happened so fast. Suddenly, I had signed the lease and had the keys. It was the beginning of an incredibly steep learning curve.”

Passing Clouds is now petitioning its Landhold Developments, asking they agree to either with a long-term lease or sale to them of the building.

A spokesperson for the landlord, Landhold Developments, said: “Passing Clouds have been aware for many months that her lease was due to expire in May of this year.

“They have continued to occupy the premises without the landlord’s consent.

“Whilst there is no obligation on the landlord to serve notice in such situations, our solicitors wrote to Ms Wilson on two occasions to inform her that she was occupying as a trespasser and if she did not leave the premises immediately, the landlord would take back possession.

“Passing Clouds failed to respond to either of these letters and so bailiffs were instructed accordingly.

“Possession of the premises was lawfully taken back by the landlord on 16 June 2016, with two security guards remaining on site to protect the property

“Later that day, a mob of 30-40 people, forced their way into the property, damaging the new locks that had been installed and ejecting the security guards.

“Any occupiers who remain on the premises are occupying unlawfully which constitutes a trespass.”

June 21, 2016
Living in a material world: upholstering with the School of Stuff

Chair repair: upholstering in action at the School of Stuff

The shapes of furniture are weird. Their curves and angles of wood or plastic, strange bulges and depressions, make sense to the body but not to the eye.

So it’s at once unsettling and reassuring to rifle through the Pictorial Dictionary of British 19th Century Furniture Design, in which chairs and their friends throughout the ages are depicted without any humans present.

Forms are presented in all their stand-alone visual bizarreness, but are also domesticated into changing styles and periods, and shown to be part of life after all.

It helps to have a guide. Amanda Girling-Budd, a one-time TV producer, has been a professional upholsterer for many years and holds a PhD in the history of design.

She now teaches the craft – alongside cabinet-making and furniture restoration – at her establishment the School of Stuff, housed in Lighthouse Studios on Shacklewell Lane.

The Pictorial Dictionary has been brought out to illustrate the history of ‘buttoning’, the activity being done in the workshop by students on the School of Stuff’s two-year traditional upholstery course.

‘Traditional’

“The interesting thing about traditional upholstery is it sounds like ‘upholstery the way it’s always been done’,” muses Girling-Budd.

“But in fact it refers to some quite specific techniques that were done in the 19th century. In the 18th century there were other techniques, but they become most elaborate in the 19th century.”

Buttoning is a case in point, developing from a functional way of tying a thread through a chair to hold the stuffing in place into a highly decorative method of folding deep gorges in geometric patterns into the shape of a piece of furniture.

Step by step

But buttoning comes late in the process. Traditional upholstery starts with a wooden frame for the chair, onto which strips of webbing are tacked.

Over the webbing is placed a stretch of hessian, a coarse, tough fabric, which is the base, ultimately, for everything that goes between the webbing and the eventual posterior of the seated user.

The next step is, surprisingly, to add coconut hair. Coir fibre, as it is known, is shaved from coconuts then washed, dried, permed and dyed before being shipped to upholstery studios worldwide.

Animal hair used to be used, but is very expensive compared to coir.

Springy, if rough, to the grip, there is a huge sack of coir in Girling-Budd’s workshop and the three students are as we speak stuffing it into the chairs they’re upholstering.

Once the coir is in place and covered with another layer of fabric, stitching can be applied to shape it into decorative or functional contours.

After this is done, another layer of softer stuffing – usually animal hair this time – can be added for a more comfortable sedentary experience.

Then it’s time to add the final covering, which can be coloured or patterned or fulfil whatever decorative desires a client has voiced.

This is also when buttoning takes place, adding further interest and shaping to the finished chair.

‘Like tailoring’

“Traditional upholstery is rather like tailoring,” reflects Girling-Budd. “You start with a body and you fit some clothing to it.”

Like tailored clothes, traditional upholstery is labour-intensive and can, therefore, be expensive. But even in the age of flat-packs, Girling-Budd is confident of traditional upholstery’s continuing appeal: “maybe it’s because we’re a bit of a throw-away culture, people like the idea of doing something that’s going to last a bit longer,” she reflects.

“I think there’s several things people find appealing about it. There’s the whole design-y side – making something look lovely – and then there’s the craft skill, finding out how to do a craft; and then there’s also recycling: sometimes you’re bringing something that would otherwise be fit for the rubbish heap back into use again.”

So if you too sometimes fear chairs, you could do worse than getting to know them and their place in the world better, and taking a course in upholstery.

More at theschoolofstuff.co.uk

June 8, 2016
Review: The Fish Police, Café Oto

Dean Rodney, the charismatic singer of The Fish Police. Photograph: The Fish Police

‘It’s gonna be a big one,” warns Dean Rodney, lead singer of the Fish Police – and although size is always relative, he isn’t wrong.

Within minutes of taking my seat at Café Oto, the five-piece launches into a song that has the venue on its feet. ‘Coco Butter’ nods to the quirky alternative hip-hop of De La Soul with its blaring 80s funk keyboards, but as a paean to the pale-yellow, edible vegetable fat extracted from the cocoa bean, this is music that inhabits its own unique world.

“Just a little cream, raise your hands up to the skies, it will moisturise,” Rodney implores. Won over, the crowd obeys. Before I know it the chairs are folded away – I’m in danger of becoming an island in a sea of revellers.

There’s no raised stage so audience and band blur into one as the dirty fuzz bass and spoken-word intro to ‘Black Scissors’ kicks in, calling to mind the silliest (and most fun) excesses of George Clinton.

The Fish Police play catchy and uplifting pop songs informed by singer Dean Rodney and guitarist Matt Howe’s autism. The band is part of a nascent music scene, where learning-disabled acts share bills and audiences with those unaffected, that includes Ravioli Me Away, a post-pop-punk trio with a penchant for costume who are the evening’s excellent support act.

Listening to the Fish Police takes you away from the drudgery of the real world into a joyful realm inhabited by cartoons.

Through the course of the night we hear about a Japanese girl who is “always reading and falling asleep in the classroom” and Monica 300, whose defining feature is her blue hair.

Watching the band is pure escapism from everyday drudgery, with Rodney’s deadpan delivery balanced by soulful backing vocals and some very capable musicianship from bassist Charles Stuart and drummer Andrew McClean (both of whom have played in Grace Jones’s backing band, no less).

The biggest crowd pleaser of the night is ‘Chicken Nuggets for Me’, in which Rodney whips the crowd into a frenzy promising “I’m gonna tell you how I like my chicken” before doing just that in the chorus (no spoilers).

Jumping up and down about chicken nuggets is an oddly liberating experience, and one that – like the rest of this band’s extraordinary output – comes highly recommended.

The Fish Police played at Café Oto
on 15 March
thefishpolice.com

April 6, 2016
Land of Kings to kick off the festival season

My Panda Shall Fly. Photograph: Oliver Holms

The festival season starts in earnest next month with Land of Kings, which returns to Dalston after a year’s hiatus.

Starting at midday on Sunday 3 May, the festival will see 16 hours of live music, food and film in venues across Dalston.

Live acts announced include electronic maverick Tom Vek, who will be performing a special a/v set alongside techno artist Nathan Fake, female choir Deep Throat, melodic indie funk act Boxed In and 90s-influenced power pop act Juce.

On the DJ front, Dalston’s backrooms and basements will welcome the likes of Hot Chip spin off The 2 Bears, house specialists Waze & Odyssey, plus NTS resident Moxie who will spin an eclectic mix of techno, grime and hip-hop.

Aside from the music, the festival programme is reaching into the realms of immersive performance with Gideon Reeling’s flamboyantly irreverent Land of Queens at the Arcola.
Film curators Lost Picture Show will be hosting a roof top cinema, and Dalston’s Rio Cinema will be hosting a late show of shorts by local filmmakers.

New for the 2015 festival is Royal Thoughts, described as a “salon of talks, interviews and ideas”, and cultural journal Let’s Be Brief will be holding a creative forum.
Street food pioneers Street Feast will be serving up their signature nosh, and women’s group the Dalston Darlings will also be in attendance.

Confirmed venues include the Alibi and Birthdays, the Arcola, the Bunker, Dalston Roof Park, Eastern Curve Garden, Rio Cinema and back-live music den the Servant Jazz Quarters, while Oval Space will be throwing open its doors to hold the Land of Kings Afterparty.

landofkings.co.uk

April 13, 2015