East End Review

Author: East End Review

Bloc Party review, Village Underground: ‘time is the only silent alarm’

New line-up: Bloc Party

Bloc Party, a name that triggers elated nostalgia for those who embraced seminal album Silent Alarm as teens, has undergone major surgery. But is it a convincing facelift of no regrets, or a botched nip and tuck job? Imagine a BLT without the bacon. Then remove one of the slices of bread. Considering exactly half the original band members are missing, this sick sandwich sacrilege goes some way to painting the current situation – kind of.

No discredit to the new fillings, not mere fillers. Bassist Justin Harris’ adaptability was quickly on show as he picked up a baritone saxophone to support Kele’s vocals in the loop-laden ‘Mercury’. The You Tube-scouted Louise Bartle probably has the toughest job of all, however, tasked with filling the shoes of Matt Tong, one of indie’s standout drummers since the millennium.

But with new band members comes new material, and the intimate Village Underground provided an opportunity to road test new album Hymns. An online stream went live only hours before the gig, hardly giving fans time to acquaint themselves, and like most of their previous follow-up albums Hymns will take some bedding in, based on the lukewarm reception here.

Opener ‘The Good News’ set a sauntering pace for the night’s live premieres, which on the whole displayed less ecstatic emotion, and more mature introspection (aren’t we too old for moshing now?). The chirpy guitars of ‘Into The Earth’ sounded like something you’d play on an American road trip (a diversion from the familiar), while ‘Only He Can Heal Me’ leaves the biggest impression with its holy incantations. Otherwise the songwriting is a bit predictable.

Whatever happens to the shelf-life of Hymns though, Kele may be confident that they can rely on older songs to spark a crowd, as proven by mosh pits breaking out right on cue for the likes of ‘Banquet’, ‘Song for Clay (Disappear Here)’ and ‘She’s Hearing Voices’ – tracks founded around Tong’s consummate drumming skills.

Then there was the encore, which nearly didn’t happen. It was as if the crowd just accepted the gig was over, temporarily forgetting their customary role of baying for ‘one more tune’. After ghosting back on, the band slipped into the intimacy of ‘Fortress’, a strangely down-tempo start to the encore when the whole room was craving a fiercer finale.

“East London, do you like bangers?” Kele finally asked, before fixing the mood with the swaggering ‘Ratchet’ and closing on crowd-pleaser, ‘This Modern Love’. This is no longer the same Bloc Party that rips into the spurring ‘Helicopter’ as they please, a noticeable absentee.

Seventeen years have passed since the band first formed, 11 since their first album – time it seems is the only silent alarm. And while Bloc Party are still fun to watch, the new LP fails to deliver anything really special to their live show that the old guard didn’t already possess. Anyway, who said we’re too old to mosh?

Bloc Party played at Village Underground on 26 January.

February 8, 2016
A Traveller’s Year: 365 Days of Travel Writing in Diaries, Journals and Letters – review

Author and historian Travis Elborough

In the dead of winter, the mind has a tendency to venture into warmer climes and imagine the adventures to be had there. But the holidays are over, and most of us face the daily grind through bleak grey days for weeks to come. What better way to escape than a good travel book?

A Traveller’s Year puts at one’s fingertips a cornucopia of travel writing, in small morsels. The book is made up of snippets of travellers’ journals and diaries from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Use of the calendar day as an organising principle means that the book is full of serendipitous incongruities of time and place.

A 1992 account by Max Décharné of a man in an American bar asking for his Guinness to be microwaved is immediately followed by James Boswell’s 1773 tale of his journey to the Isle of Skye with a seasick Samuel Johnson.

George Orwell relates how in 1936 Wigan “nearly everyone seems very badly dressed and youths on corners markedly less smart and rowdy than in London”; in the following entry, Mungo Park recounts that on a 1796 African trip “the king, whose name was Daisy Koorabarri, was not to be distinguished from his subjects by any superiority in point of dress; a bank of earth, about two feet high, upon which was spread a leopard skin, constituted the only mark of royal dignity.”

There are between one and three entries – ranging from half a page to two pages in total – for each day of the year. Those who like their text in small quantities can savour the book for a full twelve months, reading each day’s entries at the relevant point in the calendar.

Yet it is easy to gobble up months at a time, mesmerised by the mish-mash of contemporary concerns about wifi to seventeenth-century tales of travellers dining on beaver tail, bear and camel meat.

The format of the books means one is never bored with tedious accounts of the duller moments, as the editing has been craftily performed by others.

Many of the authors are professional writers, together with painters, explorers, botanists, political leaders and tourists. Most are Anglophone, including Samuel Pepys, Captain James Cook, Mary Shelley, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Morris, Charles Dickens, Graham Greene, Jack Kerouac, Alan Bennett and Bruce Chatwin. There is also a smattering of European and Indian writers such as Christopher Columbus, Michel de Montaigne, Simone de Beauvoir and Rajaram I, the Rajah of Kolhapoor.

The locales range from Easter Island (Jacob Roggeveen, 1722) to Brighton (which the Rajah of Bobbili likens to Bangalore) with all the continents in between.

One thing that strikes the modern reader is the arduousness of pre-modern journeys. Before the era of jet travel, voyages were truly exacting and the misery of travel is well documented in this volume. Writing in 1934, Wilfred Thesiger appears to take these dangers in his stride: “I have not seen any horse in Aussa, though I have seen some mules and donkeys. As I was going to bed I killed two tarantulas in my tent. Beastly things.”

The book also pulses with the wonder of foreign lands. Travelling in the US in 1846, Edwin Bryant marvels at the physical attributes of Native Americans: “Many of the women, for regularity of features and symmetry of figure, would bear off the palm of beauty from some of our most celebrated belles.

A portion of the Sioux women are decidedly beautiful.” In 1914 Ernest Shackleton describes Antarctic recreation: “We remained moored to a floe over the following day, the wind not having moderated; indeed it freshened to a gale in the afternoon, and the members of staff and crew took advantage of the pause to enjoy a vigorously contested game of football on the surface of the floe alongside the ship.”

And arriving in the Barbados in 1932, Evelyn Waugh finds welcome refreshment: “Dropped anchor about 7 and went ashore to the Aquatic club to bathe and drink rum swizzles. Returned to ship for breakfast and later went ashore to Bridgetown.”

This hardback volume is handsomely produced and includes a selection of vintage photographs that add considerably to the magic of the writing. Simone de Beauvoir tells of “becoming a different me” in New York, and with this delightful book, we can all share in the transformative powers of travel, a bit at a time.

A Traveller’s Year: 365 Days of Travel Writing in Diaries, Journals and Letters is compiled by Travis Elborough and Nick Rennison and published by Frances Lincoln Ltd. RRP: £25. ISBN: 9780711236080

January 31, 2016
Short film Cosmico takes a swipe at organised religion

Terry Gilliam-eque: The animation of polemical short film Cosmico

Director C.J. Lazaretti’s latest short film Cosmico sees a jaded aristocrat literally feed off the world’s major religions: crucifixes are set on fire and pages are torn from the Quran. Animated similarly to the rustic cutouts of Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python work, Lazaretti’s short takes swipes at Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism.

Needless to say, the film has polarised audiences, receiving an award and nominations at European animation festivals yet being booed at a screening in Bethnal Green, where the film was made, and where until recently director Lazaretti was living. Have people taken it too seriously?

Says Lazaretti: “We’ve gone beyond being easily offended. These days, people go out of their way to find offence in anything they see or hear.”

Talking about controversial film director Pier Paolo Pasolini, Lazaretti declares: “I agree with Pasolini when he says that to scandalise is a right, and that to be scandalised is a pleasure.”

Cosmico is funny and short, but not as offensive as audiences have claimed. Coming in at just over three minutes in length, it feels slight – not just in terms of running time, but in terms of content too. The animation and sound production is unique, but the film could have benefitted from being a few minutes longer to develop its ideas.

Lazaretti originally intended the film to be played on a loop. “Before I made Cosmico, I had a vague idea for a short film that could be played like a loop, inspired a bit by David Lynch’s Lost Highway,” he said. “I mulled it over for a while, simplifying the concept as much as I could.”

Cosmico is a promising short film, with great visuals, music and style, which the director would do well to expand on.

cjlazaretti.com/cosmico

January 29, 2016
Lost in the City: photographs of London’s office workers

Photograph: Nicholas Sack/Hoxton Mini Press

Five men in black suits and crisp white shirts stride with purpose along a pavement, casting shadows between the monumental columns of the Bank of England. A photographer lurks in full view – beyond the frame, of course – and freezes the image in time. A newspaper twisted on the floor is the only trace of discord in this clean, colourless shot.

Nicholas Sack has been photographing London’s financial district for 30 years, and his new book, Lost in the City, published by Hoxton Mini Press, is a striking collection pulled together from the last decade.

The project shows office workers moving uniformly through the streets, or taking a brief break, while the City’s architecture looms oppressively behind and above. The figures are like characters in science fiction – a matrix of the capital.

Sack captures a vision of London somewhat unfamiliar to those who have never worked in the City; there’s an ethereal quiet, both cold and clinical, with little of the warmth of, say, the photography of Bob Collins.

Instead, Sack’s work is an arena of alienation and testosterone, charged almost like advertisements for corporate fashion. Faces are generally turned away, expressionless or otherwise lost, and interaction seems relatively rare, but for those clicking into the digital world.

Previously a rock drummer, Sack finds musicality – a rhythm and beat – in the corridors and caverns of the territory. Typically shooting at lunchtime, when the sun is high, he sees patterns and symmetries in the buildings and their shadows, which mimic the repetitive routines of nine-to-five commerce. Although the voyeuristic images hint at a degree of impulsiveness, many will have demanded extraordinary patience.

In one shot, of a woman walking beneath an office block fronted by rows upon rows of large windows, a shard of darkness slices through the centre of the building; it’s a perfect composition, meticulous in its geometric alignments and typical of the wider body of work. I imagine Sack waiting all day for it.

Others images catch the city’s relentless urge to plan and build on top of itself, with scaffolding climbing into the sky and posters displaying a computer-generated future.

Photograph: Nicolas Sack/ Hoxton Mini Press

In his introduction to the volume, Iain Sinclair draws a comparison with Robert Frank’s 1951 City of London exposures; this is a spot-on reference that pays dues to the haunting, unreal quality of the prints. Other influences include Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Henry Wessel.

As much as Lost in the City is a document of a strange place and its people, it is also one of the photographer’s own journeys through, and complicated relationship with, his chosen zone. The title illuminates this duality, pointing to both the photographer’s urgent need to shoot and his subjects’ ultimately aimless wandering.

Lost in the City is published by Hoxton Mini Press. RRP: £12.95 ISBN: 9781910566039

January 27, 2016
‘Breaking’ the January mould: Hackney Wick warehouse to hold dance jam party

Are music and breakdancing enough to sweep away the January blues? All photographs: JAMuary

Perhaps January has the hardest job of all, forever playing backing dancer to the all-star bingeing of December and New Year. The fridge is bare, payday couldn’t come sooner and the most depressing day of the year is forecast.

But that doom and gloom looks set to break down with the third edition of JAMuary – a global, grass roots dance jam that promises world-class breaking, taking place on Saturday 30 January across two rooms in an East London warehouse.

Special guest ‘breakers’ and dancers hailing from New York, Paris, Oslo, Stockholm and Marseille to name but a few, will converge upon Stour Space in Hackney Wick.

Accompanied by a line-up of wax DJs, the international invitees will share the dancefloor with a UK cohort from all over the country to create the unique community atmosphere that defines these back-to-basics parties.

JAMuary is the annual dance beginning-of-the-year blowout organised by a collective of London-based breakdancers, artists, DJs and musicians called Hashtag Unity, who throw free parties and regular open events across the capital to promote ‘unity in the community’ – look out for their monthly parties at Bohemia Café in Hackney Central. And it’s their passion for the collective dance that is helping keep B-boy culture alive in London.

Music duties will be led by Hector Plimmer who has had releases on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings as well as an appearance from Ninja Tune affiliate Dolenz. Live band Smith and the Honey Badgers are also set to soundtrack some of the night with their infectious analogue funk, while Colectivo Futuro have just announced a special DJ set celebrating female artists.

It’s rare not to have a stage at live dance and music performances, but that’s exactly what it’s like at JAMuary, where the warm vibe is all about inclusivity; no barriers, no spotlights, just an open floor where everyone is welcome – boys and girls – to join in and be part of the community.

Get tickets for JAMuary here. (http://www.residentadvisor.net/event.aspx?774279)

Facebook event. (https://www.facebook.com/events/1722816361285993/)

Hashtag Unity (https://www.facebook.com/hashtagunity/) throw free monthly parties at Bohemia Café in Hackney Central.

January 26, 2016
Forge & Co, Joyeux Bordel, reviews: high life on Shoreditch High Street

Hot-desking and dining: Forge & Co

Shoreditch High Street, for all its tech start-up glitz, product launches, and photography studios, is still remarkably shabby on street level. But no shabbiness makes it through the doors of Forge & Co, with beautifully etched letters on its windowpanes, pendant lighting and East London Printmakers’ images on the wall.

“We try to encourage creatives to work here,” the manager tells me, while giving me a tour of the building. Forge & Co combines hot-desking with a bar and modern grill in the heart of Shoreditch, directly across from the Ace Hotel. My dining companion, a prop scout, remarked she had been here for work drinks, and looking around it seemed there were several clusters of post-work drinkers.

Forge we were told is experimenting with several dishes at the moment so the menu will probably reduce once they have gauged what works best. For us though the standouts were the steak tartare – chopped raw beef and shallots with a glistening egg yolk perched on top; chateaubriand steak with bone marrow and chips; and baked Alaska for dessert.

The chateaubriand, coming it at a whopping 60 quid, seemed like a quintessential Shoreditch indulgence, but in fairness it fed three of us amply, and the steak was beautiful. The gelatinous marrow, that we scooped out of bone and spread over the steak and chips, infused the dish with an almost cloying richness. The baked Alaska also deserves further mention: fresh warm meringue and tart blackberry ice cream; of all the menu items, this I will need to eat again.

For a follow up drink to help you digest your rich meal, you could pop over to Joyeux Bordel, literally meaning ‘joyful mess’, an underground cocktail bar on Curtain Road. You go down some stairs into an intimate bar space where we were welcomed by some cheerful French waiting staff who guided us through a selection of rare vintage spirits and a list of original cocktails, one of which included a whole egg. If, unlike us, you haven’t already eaten, there are decent bar snacks including the ubiquitous rillettes and burrata.

Making my way home, I was intercepted by a tipsy office worker with two female colleagues in tow, who judging me to be local, asked me where to find “a fun place”. Since they were clearly looking for something a little more upscale than Bar Kick or Prague, I gestured them in the direction of Shoreditch High Street.

Forge & Co
154-158 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6HU
forgeandco.co.uk

Joyeux Bordel, 147 Curtain Road, EC2A 3QE
joyeuxbordel.com

January 25, 2016
Escocesa, Stoke Newington, review: Scottish tapas is a must-try

Tapastastic grub at Escocesa

The clue is in the name. Escocesa is Spanish for Scottish, and this new recruit to Stoke Newington Church Street serves up food from the Western Highlands, tapas-style.

Inspiration for this perhaps obscure combination came to the owner, a Scot called Stephen Lironi, 15 years ago from an article describing how all the best Scottish seafood was exported to Spain, as there was no domestic market for the more unusual catches.

Stepping inside Escocesa, you feel closer to Spain than to Scotland. A metal-topped bar surrounds the busy open kitchen, from where you can perch on a bar stool, sip Spanish wine and watch the chefs prepare your tapas from ice to pan to plate.

The dishes are served as they are in places like Bilbao and San Sebastian in northern Spain – fresh, stylish and modern – rather than the rustic-looking, oily tapas typical further south.

Standout dishes included the langoustines, freshly caught in Scotland and so flavourful they had us sucking the juice from the legs. Three of the crustaceans for £9.50 was more than enough for two people – and the same goes for all main dishes: each costs between £5 and £10, and is plenty for a pair.

Octopus and hand-dived scallops also graced the specials board, which changes daily as per the fresh stock.

The salt cod croquettes were surprisingly good, a far cry from the usual dried up deep fried parcels. These were piping hot, crispy on the outside and succulent on the inside.

If you’re not wild about sea creatures, fear not: the menu offers meat and vegetarian options too – chorizo with lentils, charcuterie board, goats cheese and fig salad.

Another must-try is the morcilla iberica, a moister, more crumbly Spanish take on black pudding. It arrived warm, loaded with sweet and tangy piquillo peppers and a fried quail’s egg.

Artichokes with pimenton and strong garlic aioli added some welcome greenery to complement all the seafood.

The cocktails are delicious and fantastically presented, topped with fresh ginger or fig slices. At £8 a pop they weren’t that pricey for a London restaurant either.

Some of the food was too salty, coming as it did with a liberal pinch of whole flakes, which was sometimes too much even for my salt-loving companion.

But other than that minor point, Escocesa is a dream: fresh, perfectly cooked, juicy seafood, lively atmosphere and prices that don’t make your eyes water.

Escocesa
67 Stoke Newington Church Street, N16 0AR
escocesa.co.uk

January 22, 2016
Space Studios is ‘reclaiming the future’ from developers

An Idea of Progress banner at Space Studios. Photograph: Russell Parton

A giant banner covering the entire facade of Space Studios on Mare Street was unfurled yesterday, inviting speculation that the building behind it may soon be demolished.

The banner is of the canvas type used in large-scale construction projects, and on it is a series of images drawn in that computer-generated style used in property development brochures to represent the future of a given site.

On the banner one can see a swimming pool, a tropical garden and a gravity-defying bendy skyscraper alongside the mind-bending slogan: “The future’s future is in construction.”

But what could be the next step in the ‘regeneration’ of Hackney is, in fact, part of a project about progress and the complexities of gentrification.

An Idea of Progress is by Ivan Argote, a 31-year-old artist from Bogotá, Colombia, who lives in Paris. As well as the giant hoarding the project comprises an exhibition of film and collages.

Over six months Argote visited construction sites across East London and interviewed residents, asking them what they thought about the developments going on around them; whether they liked them and what they would put there given the chance.

He combined his findings to create a fictional structure that he says represents the real desires of local people.

“I first came here in August and returned every month,” he says. “By observation and by talking with people I started noticing the aggressiveness of property development in East London. It’s way more violent here than in Paris. In Paris the market is more controlled, for example there are restrictions so that owners cannot raise rents more than 5 per cent a year.

“In Bogotá they’re developing new neighbourhoods. I remember when I was little boy in Bogotá there were empty fields. But it’s different because there’s not this gentrification phenomenon – the city is actually expanding into the countryside.”

The Idea of Progress exhibition opens on 21 January at Space Studios, 129-131 Mare St, Hackney, E8 3RH.

January 21, 2016
‘Should be a right laugh’ – Sleaford Mods among new acts confirmed for Field Day

New York band Yeasayer, confirmed as one of the acts for this year’s Field Day festival in Victoria Park

Some of the most signifiant breakthrough acts of 2015 have confirmed as playing at this year’s Field Day – proof, if it were needed, that it’s never too early to start thinking about which summer festivals to attend.

Sleaford Mods, the Nottingham punk duo fronted by Jason Williamson, are the most eye-catching addition to the line-up. The group came to the fore last year with their album Key Markets, a collection of scathing and witty portraits of contemporary Britain that take aim at everything from politicians to the very idea of alienation itself (“no one’s bothered”).

With trademark cynicism, Williamson said the festival “always houses a great deal of interesting new music and not the usual bland array of star employees from big labels. Should be a right laugh!”

Other additions to the Saturday line-up include New Yorkers Yeasayer, noise-rock quartet Girl Band, whose recent album Holding Hands with Jamie was included in Time Magazine’s 10 Best Albums of 2015 poll and producer Gold Panda, who is receiving considerable acclaim for his album Half Of Where You Live. They join already confirmed acts Skepta, Four Tet, Deerhunter, Floating Points and Youth Lagoon.

Meanwhile, neo-psychedelia The Brian Jonestown Massacre have signed up to play Field Day Sunday. They join the likes of Beach House, John Grant, Molly Nilsson, GOAT, Optimo and the Thurston Moore Band.

Field Day takes place in Victoria Park on the weekend of 11-12 June, with advance tickets available at www.fielddayfestivals.com/tickets.

January 21, 2016
Get the Picture: Harun Farocki – Parallel I-IV (2012-2014)

Parallel IV by Harun Farocki

J.R.R. Tolkien observed it was mankind’s right and nature to create worlds, seeing in us a ‘divine spark’ that impels us to make myths and languages.

Harun Farocki closely studies the phenomenology of computer game-generated worlds in his large-scale video installation Parallel I-IV (2012-2014), on display at the Whitechapel Gallery.

The installation successfully communicates the rapid evolution in visual innovation, technological and conceptual limits and leaps over 30 years of computer game graphics.

Parallel I by Harun Farocki

Early forms of trees, water or fire are cropped and shown in succession, with nostalgia playing a powerful role in providing visual pleasure for the viewer.
The first set of parallel films compare games to cinema and film. There’s a real sense here that the detail and information in games could eventually replace film as the main source of mediating and recording the world, particularly as they offer a greater degree of choice and design.

In Parallel II, a game set in the Wild West, the voiceover asks the question ‘how far can a rider ride?’ as an infinite horizon in a world with no natural borders opens up. We are then shown in a programming mode how the invisible borders of this ‘infinite world’ are defined and how your cowboy figure can fall off the edge of the world, like an astronaut catapulted into space.

Each game world needs to be explored to elicit its rules. This happens in part through loops of interactive dialogue that are impressive in their textural authenticity to human speech.

Farocki observes the different rules and qualities of these infinite worlds, the logic traps, glitches and redundancies. Philosophical observations are made, curious accidental traits pulled out and phenomena pondered and enjoyed.

Harun Farocki: Parallel I-IV (2012-14) is at Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX until 12 June
whitechapelgallery.org

Parallel I by Harun Farocki

January 20, 2016