East End Review

Author: East End Review

  • In Stormy Nights, Dream Maps, review: ‘an ambitious first record’

    Dominic Simpson
    Enigmatic sounds: Dream Maps is Dominic Simpson

    Despite many a shoegaze hallmark, Dream Maps is a far cry from any My Bloody Valentine impersonators you may have heard recently.

    The solo project of local musician Dominic Simpson, Dream Maps’ debut album, In Stormy Nights, is based around samples from the enigmatic radio station UVB-76, often referred to as ‘The Buzzer’. Since 1982 the station has broadcast a perpetually recurring buzz tone, occasionally intruded upon by ambiguous Russian voice transmissions.

    This is a dynamic that features heavily throughout, from the Russophone syllables spoken in the opening moments, to the tinnitus-inducing crackle and hum of final track ‘100 Bars In C Minor/UVB-76’.

    The ponderous ‘London’s Burning’ leaves drone and vocal barely distinguishable. It’s certainly the most mainstream track on the album, almost reminiscent of an Anton Newcombe original.

    The ‘In Stormy Nights’ triptych captures a cross-section of keening feedback, hissing vocals and subaquatic echoes, piano fragments and sepulchral chanting, bridging the gap between spaced-out guitar rock and experimental electronics.

    The record takes an abstract interlude on ‘Train Tracks’ and ‘To The Birds’, whose sparse, drone-heavy melees are overlaid with snatches of instrumental and found sounds, moments of which call to mind something of Fripp & Eno.

    Whilst the transition from ‘To The Birds’ into ‘Gakken Analogue Book’ is a sharp and not immediately pleasing contrast – from ambient drone back into tripped-out shoegaze – the displeasure is short-lived as the latter proves to be one of the album’s most insatiable tracks. With an instrumental constructed over an acid-house beat, Simpson’s vocals emerge from between the presets, delivering the lyrics with a lingering snarl.

    At 14 and a half minutes long, ‘Static On The Wire’ is more a suite than a song, swelling from intricate guitar lines into a cavalcade of modulated noise that drifts in and out of focus, enveloping and isolating like an outtake from Tim Hecker’s Norberg.

    With a sound that sits at the Y-junction between shoegaze, ambient and industrial, In Stormy Nights is an ambitious first record. Through 12 dense, challenging but undeniably affecting tracks, Simpson has built a paean to UVB-76’s cryptic radio broadcasts.

    Mirroring the experience of capturing an alien voice through the buzz, the erratic transmission of Simpson’s vocals materialises unexpectedly from droning interludes, giving them a rather discombobulating characteristic of being anticipated yet never fully expected, like a figure appearing through fog.

    Listen to Dream Maps at dreammaps1.bandcamp.com/releases

  • ‘If it’s weird and wonderful we’ll play it’ – Cave Club comes to Hackney Central

    Rhys Webb 620
    Founder of Cave Club Rhys Webb

    As the last tune rang out and sweat hung in the air of the room where the final Cave Club of 2014 had run its course, Rhys Webb felt it was the end of an era.

    For the last seven years his aptly named night had been a monthly feature at Highbury and Islington’s Buffalo Bar, which was set to close to make way for flats at the end of that year.

    The night showcased some of the finest psychedelia ever made from around the globe, all of which was from the extensive record collection of Webb, otherwise known as the Horrors’ bass player.

    Soon the same psychedelic sound reared its kaleidoscopic head at Oxford Street’s 100 Club. But although Cave Club still drew big crowds, the more ample space of the legendary venue absorbed the atmosphere of one of London’s key underground gatherings.

    Seeing an opportunity at the newly opened Moth Club off Mare Street, Webb seized the chance to find a new home for his “party.”

    “The party at the Moth, the first one there [in September 2015] was just electric and fantastic and so reminiscent of the feeling and atmosphere of the original night,” Webb recalls.

    The word psychedelia tends to evoke whimsical images, Lewis Carroll poems and the heavy use of a harpsichord, and it’s no secret that many of the discs spun have been produced in the late Sixties. But Cave Club takes account of how the genre has developed since then.

    “The inspiration for the night is mind expanding psychedelia, and has a heavy focus on the lost and obscure groups of the late Sixties.

    “There are no rules. If it’s weird and wonderful we’ll play it. I want the club to be an experience and an adventure,” he says.

    Webb, along with The Voyeurs’ Sam Davies, is on a mission to harvest the world for the rarest, trippiest 45s, along with some more familiar sounds and others that have become “Cave Club classics”.

    To his memory, Webb’s vinyl-only policy has only been broken once (“probably to play a demo from The Horrors or one of our friend’s bands like TOY,” he says).

    The night attracts the cream of the East London music scene as well as music lovers of all ages, many of whom dressed in technicolour cast-offs, and all gathered to hear psychedelic rarities from a collection which Webb jokes, has cost him “about a decade in pocket money”.

    Each month, a band is picked to open the night, which has seen TOY, Telegram, The Wytches, Connan Mockasin and Temples’ drummer Samuel Tom’s shoegaze warriors Secret Fix do the honours.

    This month will see Riddles, a lysergic space metal band, take to the stage of the former working men’s club, in which the ceiling has been completely adorned with gold glitter.

    Even when Webb is out on the road with his acclaimed band, who are currently in the studio working on new material, he says the night is never far from his thoughts.

    “I’ve been as far away as Mexico or Tokyo and sitting on the end of a hotel bed and sending texts to people who are there, just wanting to know what’s going on.”

    Cave Club is at Moth Club, Old Trades Hall, Valette Street, E9 6NU
    mothclub.co.uk

  • Uchi, review, Clapton: ‘ It truly felt like a neighbourhood restaurant’

    Uchi
    Susgu at Uchi. Photograph via Twitter

    Clarence Road and the adjacent Narrow Way, the nexus of the Hackney riots in 2011, have of late become home to several Japanese restaurants. There’s Sho Foo Doh at the Pacific Social Club, which paved the way for Japanese food in Homerton with their okonomiyaki, then Tonkotsu’s eastern outpost. Now there is Uchi.

    Although Uchi started as a sushi delivery service, dropping off responsibly-sourced sushi around Hackney by bike, you would not know it from the restaurant. Stepping in from the street through a set of noren (traditional Japanese curtains), we emerged in a warm, immaculately designed space built with quality materials, where we were bathed in soft light and soothing but crisp ambient music. Not a hint that this was potentially an upgraded takeaway.

    Uchi is active on Instagram and Twitter but its printed menu is scant and its website bare, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. It quickly became apparent that the real menu consisted of numerous daily specials, pegged to a lattice on the wall.

    Although they serve skewers, nigiri and rolls, Uchi is not a yakitori or sushi restaurant, but a self-described home-style café, offering a range of small dishes designed to be shared over several hours and many pints of cold Asahi, or high quality sake.

    There was nothing exceptionally surprising on the menu, which featured tried and true favourites such as karaage (deep fried) chicken and salmon nigiri. I had hoped for chawanmushi, a hard-to-find home-style dish – perhaps this will be a future special. The dishes were without exception excellently prepared and presented.

    I enjoyed the hijiki seaweed salad with sweet beancurd, which had a briny, pleasantly fetid taste. The sashimi was very fresh, served at the proper temperature, and the diner had the option of eating their prawns with the head still on (one of our party was happy to do so). There were original vegetarian options such as eryngii mushroom and spinach nigiri with black rice.

    Dinner and a couple of drinks averaged out at about £40 a head, but the price seemed fair given how carefully and precisely the food was assembled. Uchi truly felt like a neighbourhood restaurant – minimal marketing, little to no press, no fanfare: it’s just quietly getting on with things, while locals start to filter in.

    Uchi
    144 Clarence Road, E5 8DY
    uchihackney.com

  • A Steady Rain, Arcola – review: two cops in an ‘armpit of a place’

    A-Steady-Rain-2-Vincent-Regan-Photos-Nick-Rutter-700x455
    Vincent Regan in A Steady Rain at the Arcola. Photograph: Nick Rutter

    Set in downtown Chicago in the “not too distant past”, A Steady Rain sucks you in.

    Denny and Joey have been best friends since childhood and are now partners in the police force.

    This pair of beat cops would do anything for each other.

    “I don’t want you going back to that armpit of a place and giving it to the bottle,” Denny says when trying to keep Joey away from “the sauce”.

    When a “lowlife” injures Denny’s son in an act of revenge, Denny goes off the rails and takes the law into his own hands. Joey steps in to support Denny’s family and rifts surface between the friends.

    Written by Keith Huff (House of Cards and Mad Men), A Steady Rain debuted on Broadway in 2009 with Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.

    In the London debute, both Vincent Regan as Denny (300, Troy, Clash of the Titans) and David Schaal as Vincent (The Office, The Inbetweeners) are also strong enough to convince that a play with just two characters can enthrall for a full two hours.

    They successfully rescue the plot when it veers too close to the good cop–bad cop dichotomy.

    The simplicity of the set works well with the pace of the plot as it switches between the present, flashbacks and direct narrative. A table and two chairs double up, amongst other things, as a sofa, kitchen table and police van.

    Weather as a metaphor is a familiar device. But when rain begins to fall across the back of the stage, the audience nevertheless feels the oppression. And the sense of relief when it finishes, just as the plot resolves.

    Where the play treads a little too close to cliché, the production and acting sustains it.

    A Steady Rain at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 5 March. 
    www.arcolatheatre.com

  • Yield N16 review: ‘a good option for midweek indulgence’

    YieldN16 620

    Wine and preserved meats are among the classic pairings that just get better with age, much like a recently transformed shop space in Newington Green.

    Housed on the site of a former children’s clothes and toy store, the space was redeveloped into a natural wine and charcuterie shop late last year.

    The shop’s simple décor complements the menu of meats, cheeses, olives, bread and jam on offer.

    Chilli and Oregano Salami, Saucisson with Black Peppercorns and Bresaola were among the offerings on a recent visit.

    The cured meats are all made at the Islington-based Cobble Lane, which prides itself on using British meat, and beers and spirits are sourced even closer to home.

    Then there’s gin from Highgate and vodka from Hackney.

    The wine range – one of the few products Yield N16 sources from outside the UK – comprises labels that won’t be found on the supermarket shelves.

    All natural, the wine is sourced from small suppliers from around the world.

    It comes largely from renowned wine-making regions, but not all the in-store labels give that away.

    The shop’s assistant manager, Sebastian Roach, said they buy from a number of small-scale producers who have opted out of the denomination system.

    “You have the familiar names such as Bordeaux or Burgundy,” he said.

    “In order to have that name on your label you have to conform to certain rules set down by the administration…the way the wine is produced, the varieties of grapes you’re allowed to use, how you seal the bottle.

    “You’ll find quite a number of the wines on these shelves are produced from within those recognised regions but those names don’t appear on the label because the producers want to do things their own way.”

    The shop’s house red – Raisins Gaulois – is among those.

    In character with most natural wine, it is lighter in colour and body, boasting fruity flavours with strawberry and raspberry notes. The house white is a Muscadet from the Loire Valley in France.

    Typical of wines grown near the sea, it is crisp and fresh – a perfect pairing for seafood.

    Natural wine has over the years earned itself a reputation for reduced hangovers.

    And while there are no guarantees, the traditionally lower alcohol level and lack of chemicals in natural wine does lend itself to a more pleasant morning after.

    Which is why Yield N16 might be a good option for midweek indulgence.

    Yield N16, 44/45 Alliance House, N16 9QH
    Yieldn16.com

  • How London’s terror attacks inspired novel No More Heroes

    Stephen Thompson
    Novelist Stephen Thompson

    Most people can remember what they were doing when they heard the news of the 7/7 bombings. I was working as a receptionist in an office in Bloomsbury, and heard a bang from several streets away of a number 30 bus exploding on Tavistock Square.

    No More Heroes, by Hackney-born author Stephen Thompson, takes us closer still to the events of 7/7. The reader returns to the day of the attacks through the character of Simon Weekes, a man who miraculously survived one of the blasts on the London Underground.

    Simon, an unambitious man who wants nothing more than a quiet life, is catapulted into the media spotlight after saving people’s lives in the aftermath of the bombing.

    But attention is exactly what Simon doesn’t want, for he is harbouring a dark secret. The book goes further back in time to Simon’s childhood in Hackney during the Eighties, where we find out about the life from which he has long since escaped, but is now threatening to catch up on him.

    Judging from accounts of survivors, the book’s fast-paced prologue is a realistic and extremely vivid portrayal of what happened that day, to the extent that at first I thought the book was autobiographical.

    But Stephen Thompson is not in the business of autobiography. The 44-year-old author, who has published four other novels, was not even in the country at the time of the bombings, though recalls them having a profound effect on him.

    “The event itself rocked me as a Londoner even though I wasn’t in London at the time,” he says. “It took me a long time to filter it and to understand what had had such a strong impact on me, and what if anything I wanted to say about it.

    “I realised what I wanted to say was that we can come back from something like that. Only seven years later we had the Olympics here, which around the time of 7/7 no one could have imagined actually happening.”

    Simon’s parents are African-Caribbean immigrants, and ethnicity is not incidental to the narrative. Freeing himself from the bombed out carriage, Simon in his shock identifies each person by their skin colour.

    For Thompson, writing through the prism of race is an “inescapable thing” for any black writer who works within established literary traditions.

    “The consciousness [of race] changes your approach and the fabric and whole aesthetic of the piece. You have to make up that mind: do I want to go down that road or do I want to write for a non-ethnic or non-colour specific audience? I chose to concentrate on race because I thought race and racial identity, and religion and religious extremism, are important components of the novel and give it another dimension.”

    Like his protagonist, Thompson grew up in Hackney during the 1980s to working class parents of African-Caribbean immigrant stock. But any similarities end there, as Thompson stresses that Simon Weekes is a “fictional composite” and that the book’s tales of squatting and of school and family life, are the result of rigorous research into the period.

    “Good fiction does have some kind of autobiographical underpinning,” he says. “But I’m keen to stress that I am a writer who uses the tools and trade of his imagination to create fiction.”

    That said, the decision to set part of No More Heroes in Hackney was, Thompson admits, a case of writing what you know.

    “Many of the bombers were from the north and I toyed with the idea setting it in the north of England,” he says, “but I thought I’m from Hackney so it just made sense to set it in this part of the world.”

    No More Heroes is published by Jacaranda Books. RRP: £7.99 ISBN: 9781909762121

  • Julia Holter, Oval Space, live review: ‘not pigeon-holed by expectations’

    Julia Holter
    Playing straight: Julia Holter. Photograph credit: Flickr

    Julia Holter’s bracing and intelligent compositions have met with great critical acclaim ever since her debut Tragedy in 2011. However, she turned out to be one the big flavours of 2015 following her fourth studio release Have You In My Wilderness, which deviated from her more avant-garde earlier albums with its mix of vaudevillian pop and literary ballads.

    Holter’s vocals are every bit as striking in the flesh as they are on record, effortlessly clear and cool as she enunciates the first few words of set opener ‘City Appearing’.

    There’s always been a sense of perfectionism in Holter’s music that presents each track as a finished whole. This translates to the live show as she plays each song exceptionally straight, swerving away from too much embellishment as she trips through ‘Silhouette’ and ‘Horns Surrounding Me’.

    Surprisingly, ‘Feel You’, one of the stand-out pop tracks from Wilderness, is played in muted tones, flattened down and shuffled in between ‘Lucette’ and ‘Into The Green Wild’. But if Wilderness taught us anything it was that Holter is not one to let herself be pigeon-holed by expectations.

    Between songs the LA-native offers up a bit of context, expanding on the ideas that shaped the tracks or the time and place of their inception. ‘Silhouette’, we learn, was the last track she wrote for Wilderness, ‘Goddess Eyes’ was written when she was “a teenager, basically”.

    “This song is about Betsy above the building,” she says, eliciting hearty chuckles from the audience until they are all struck dumb by the frosty opening bars of ‘Betsy On The Roof’.

    However, in her introduction to ‘Lucette Stranded On The Island’, a track built around an unfortunate minor character in a short story by Colette, Holter informs the crowd she’s growing tired of talking about this particular song. “Maybe it’s just about going to the store,” she deadpans in her California drawl. “Maybe it’s a metaphor.”

    Pre-encore closer ‘Vasquez’ is the evening’s certified show-stealer. “This one’s about Tiburcia Vasquez who was on the loose back in the 19th century,” offers Holter as a primer. “I was there. I saw it happen with my own eyes.”

    The jostling percussion and slow-burning vocal lines, imbued with the electrified energy of live performance, dazzle their way into a dramatic clamour of scrambled jazz.

    Finishing with a two-song encore of the Dionne Warwick/Burt Bacharach hit, ‘Don’t Make Me Over’, and the harpsichord-heavy ‘Sea Calls Me Home’, it’s an apt conclusion to what has been a relaxed and rewarding display of Holter’s motley talents.

    Julia Holter played at Oval Space on 15 February 2016.

  • Red Africa: exhibition explores an overlooked cultural exhange

    Soviet poster from 1920, part of the Wayland Rudd Archive. Courtesy of Yevgeniy Fiks 620
    Soviet poster from 1920, part of the Wayland Rudd Archive. Courtesy of Yevgeniy Fiks

    East London’s only gallery dedicated to contemporary Russian culture has reopened, and the inaugural season for new look space is dedicated to the legacy of cultural exchange between Africa, the Soviet Union and related countries during the 20th century.

    Red Africa will see a range of living artists’ responses to the relationships forged during this period, incorporating film, public art, propaganda and photography.

    Exhibition Things Fall Apart is the highlight of the season, drawing on film, photography, propaganda and public art to present interdisciplinary reflections on African connections to the Soviet Union and related countries.

    Taking its title from Chinua Achebe’s 1958 post-colonial novel, the exhibition reaches back to the beginning of the Soviet era through the work of Russian-American artist Yevgeniy Fiks.

    Fiks examines representations of black people in Soviet press and propaganda from as early as 1920.

    Contemporary traces of communist street art and propaganda are captured by Jo Ractliffe and Kiluanji Kia Henda, revealing the legacy of liberation struggles on the continent, while Our Africa, by filmmaker Alexander Markov, uses footage from the Russian State Film and Photo archive to expose the mechanisms behind the creation of Soviet propaganda films that sought to record the expansion of ‘glorious socialism’ across the African continent.

    Things Fall Apart – Red Africa is at Calvert 22, 22 Calvert Avenue, E2 7JP until 3 March
    calvert22.org

    Soviet poster from 1932, part of the Wayland Rudd Archive. Courtesy of Yevgeniy Fiks 620
    Soviet poster from 1932, part of the Wayland Rudd Archive. Courtesy of Yevgeniy Fiks

  • Jarvis Cocker to DJ at Médecins Sans Frontières fundraising event

    Jarvis Cocker. Photograph: via flickr
    Jarvis Cocker. Photograph: Jason Persse via flickr

    Jarvis Cocker is the star attraction at a fundraising event for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) this month.

    The Pulp frontman will be one of the celebrity DJs for a ticketed event on Saturday 27 February in the London Fields studio of British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare.

    Other DJs include Jarvis’s former Pulp bandmate Candida Doyle, Corinne Drewery from Swing Out Sister and Bishi. There will also be acoustic performances from Sukie Smith and Sarah Gill from Madam, as well as Kitty Finer and Matty Barclay.

    Deborah Rigby, an artist and part-time art teacher who has lived in Stoke Newington for more than 20 years, is organising the fundraising event as a response to the refugee crisis.

    “I have been so saddened by the months of shocking images and news stories about the plight of people forced to flee their homes and country,” she said.

    “The constant flow on TV of bombings and deaths all around the world today has shocked and horrified us all.”

    “Friends have donated their time, as well as talents, to enable this wonderful evening and all proceeds will be going to the exceptional charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

    Tickets for the 110-capacity event cost £125 each, but everyone who buys a ticket is guaranteed to win a prize, with 50 raffle winners set to receive original artworks by artists including Martino Gamper, Anne Hardy, Anish Kapoor, Goshka Macuga, Paul Noble, Elizabeth Price, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Bob & Roberta Smith, Georgina Starr, Gavin Turk and Gary Webb amongst others.

    www.msf.org.uk/event/art-music-fundraising-event
    twitter.com/artandmusic4msf