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  • Laxmi: Rules Made By Men Who Never Sleep – EP review

    Lou Barnell and
    Laxmi relaxing: Lou Barnell and Stergin

    Hackney-based duo Laxmi bounce straight out of the speakers and into your brain: you can’t shake them off, no matter how hard you try. Their unique brand of ‘voodoo pop’, created from found noises and urban soundscapes, is suited to both grimy clubs and the darkness of your bedroom at night.

    Laxmi’s new EP, Rules Made By Men Who Never Sleep, is a challenging set of songs that fights definition. It pays homage to the likes of PJ Harvey and early M.I.A., while settling into its own groove, carved out by pulsing basslines and razor-sharp lyrics. It can loosely be termed electronica, though so many other influences creep in that it’s hard to keep up with them. ‘I Wanna Be Your Blood’ is probably the most accessible track, with its strangely relatable lyrics and potential for remix. It builds satisfyingly, drawing in the listener before dropping off into nothing.

    Singer Lou Barnell has a massive voice, dripping with nonchalance and cool. Her enveloping vocals are supported by guitarist Stergin, forming a match that’s dirty, deep and fresh. Both are labelled producers, suggesting an independence and spiritedness that shines through in every track. ‘It Is Over’ is the highlight of this short offering, with a thumping rhythm and catchy hook. This is music to move to.

    Not everyone’s cup of tea, Rules Made By Men Who Never Sleep is undeniably ambitious and atmospheric. The concept isn’t new by any stretch, but it’s a clever and provocative rendering of found sound. It might not break any records in the mainstream, but this EP’s originality and irresistibility surely mean this sound will become a staple on the East London electronica scene.

    Laxmi next play at The Bird’s Nest in Deptford on 17 April

    laxmiband.com
    soundcloud.com/laxmiband

  • Arts Emergency Response Centre turns election spotlight on creativity

    Patients await treatment at the Arts Emergency Response Centre. Photograph: Steve Blunt
    Right prescription: Patients await treatment at the Arts Emergency Response Centre. Photograph: Steve Blunt

    An immersive ‘arts hospital’ curated by artist Bob and Roberta Smith has opened, aiming to put the arts in the spotlight this General Election.

    ‘Patients’ can visit the Arts Emergency Response Centre at The Cass Bank gallery in Aldgate East and receive ‘treatment’ (knowledge and advice) from organisations advocating the arts.

    The exhibition confronts issues such as funding, privilege and class. Visitors enter a hospital ward and pick up a prescription from an ‘Arts Emergency Pharmacist’.

    They then pass on to a ‘waiting room’ where they can view art that considers the value of art in society. Patients then receive treatment in a series of clinics held by organisations such as Bow Arts and The Art Party.

    Over three weeks, the immersive exhibition will be dealing with the themes of democracy, health and diversity.

    Cass Professor and curator Bob and Roberta Smith (real name Patrick Brill) said: “Since the coalition agreement was signed in 2010 there has been concern that the arts are diminishing within the school curriculum and that the arts have suffered a disproportionate cut in Government funding.

    “We are bringing together many of the organisations who have actively engaged with this issue.”

    The exhibition is a collaboration with Arts Emergency, a charity founded by comedian Josie Long and Neil Griffiths which promotes the arts and humanities among low income teenagers.

    Griffiths added: “This show is a celebration of our collective creative response to the erosion of access, the reversal of genuine social mobility, and the entrenchment of privilege in the arts and humanities.”

    Until 3 May
    The Cass Bank Gallery, London Metropolitan University, 59–63 Whitechapel High Street, E1 7PF
    @TheCassArt #cassemergency

  • Homes of the homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London – a big issue then as now

    Homeless men in a Salvation Army Shelter c.1900 © The Salvation Army Heritage Centre
    Homeless men in a Salvation Army Shelter c.1900 © The Salvation Army Heritage Centre

    The homeless person sleeping rough might be a common image in London today, but in the 19th century there were hundreds spilling onto the streets every night.

    Short but powerful, the new exhibition Homes of the Homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London at the Geffrye Museum seeks to illuminate the daily struggle of the bitterly poor in the city 200 years ago. What this exhibition highlights most candidly is the juxtaposition between the Victorian ideal of the home and the reality of destitution in this period.

    The middle class prized the family unit, privacy and the sanctity of the home, all the things the homeless could not achieve: workhouses split families, early shelters grouped people into dormitories, and many found it impossible to gather together the little money needed to find shelter at all. The cholera epidemic of the 1840s and housing crisis of the 1880s brought the situation to serious peaks, resulting in mass poverty, widespread homelessness and total desperation.

    Some took to sleeping in London’s parks, while others tumbled into shelters and workhouses, where conditions varied massively. Queueing for accommodation was something frequently seen on the streets come dark, even in central locations like Covent Garden, and protests broke out as hundreds camped out in Trafalgar Square.

    The Pinch of Poverty by Thomas Benjamin Kennington 1891. Credit: The Foundling Museum
    The Pinch of Poverty by Thomas Benjamin Kennington 1891. Credit: The Foundling Museum

    Touching in so many different ways, the exhibition features paintings, photographs, testimonials and engravings all depicting homelessness in its various guises. The destitute family was a common image, with children evoking particular sympathy, and billboards and newspapers both carried adverts imploring people to give whatever they could to support the city’s more unfortunate souls. The government did, by today’s standards, much to stem the flow of homelessness in the capital, but as the century progressed, the problem became more difficult to contain.

    Homes of the Homeless charts this challenge, touching on the different approaches to homelessness – from casual wards where ‘inmates’ could exchange hard labour for a place to sleep, to model lodging houses that were designed to more closely imitate a real home – as well as real people’s reactions to their dire circumstances, collected from investigative journalism and charity reports.

    Thoroughly researched and straightforwardly presented, this exhibition is accessible to anyone interested in the history of London. With glaring relevance today, it presents a significant slice of history that should not be overlooked, and an important lesson in charity and compassion. Homes of the Homeless is a succinct, enlightening exhibition in one of London’s most charming museums.

    Homes of the Homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London is at the Geffrye Museum, 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA until 12 July

    geffrye-museum.org.uk

    Men at dinner in a St Marylebone Workhouse, c.1900. Credit: Geffrye Museum
    Men at dinner in a St Marylebone Workhouse, c.1900. Credit: Geffrye Museum

     

  • The Flat White Economy – book review

    A flat white: stirring up an economic revolution. Photograph: Flickr
    Flat whites: stirring up a revolution in the economy. Photograph: Flickr

    Douglas McWilliams first found out about hipsters by monitoring the number of passengers coming through Old Street tube station every day. He thought the huge spike in Oyster swipes he saw by 2012 must be some kind of recording error, but on further examination found it was in fact the thunderous beeping and banging of thousands of people rushing to join a new kind of economy.

    The “advanced techie people, marketing people and creative types” McWilliams and his staff at economics consultancy CEBR increasingly had to wade through to get to their own Old Street offices had their odd collection of new industries christened by McWilliams’ colleague Rob Habron as the ‘Flat White Economy’, after the beverage the workers consumed in the largest quantity. The name allegedly stuck in economic circles and, thanks to McWilliams’ zippy little book on the ‘FWE’, may well catch on in other circles too.

    Its headline finding is this datum: 32,000 businesses were set up in the postal district EC1V (i.e. Old Street) between March 2012 and March 2014. The book is about how this astonishing level of entrepreneurial go-getting got going, where it’s got to and where it might get us: by 2012 there were 114,500 FWE jobs, and McWilliams argues that if its success can be replicated elsewhere the Flat White Economy may lead to a bright future for the UK as a whole.

    McWilliams tells the story of the City Fringes’ transformation into Tech City through lots of stats, international comparisons and aside observations about the lives of young workers. There were three main drivers of the FWE’s development: relatively cheap rents (at least to start with); an existing substrate of art, media and communications business; and a lot of high-skilled immigration, mainly from afflicted Eurozone countries. McWilliams’ general point about immigration is that having lots of people from different backgrounds working together makes for more creative thinking, which is a hearteningly cosmopolitan thing to hear in a time of increasing parochialism.

    The book’s optimism may occasionally grate. There’s little room for what has been lost to the FWE’s creative destruction: the closed galleries and priced-out tenants. It’s not that kind of book. And McWilliams – as an economist – should be fulsomely praised for writing about young people without emphasising their importance as a mysterious and fickle market needing to be advertised to in complex ways.

    Instead, a generation closely associated with recession, austerity and student debt is given economic agency and seen as having the potential to transcend the beards, fixies and craft beers – and maybe change the world.

    The Flat White Economy is published by Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd. RRP: £16.99 ISBN: 9780715649534

  • Media satire endorsed by Mark Rylance opens at the Arcola

    Robert Gibbs in Clarion
    Greg Hicks and Clare Higgins in Clarion. Photograph: Robert Davenport

    Playwright Mark Jagasia is used to seeing his work in print, although his new play Clarion, which opens this month at the Arcola, is his first.

    That is because Jagasia was for years a tabloid journalist, working as a reporter for the Evening Standard, and later becoming Showbiz Editor of the Daily Express.

    So what better subject for his debut play than the state of the British media, set in the office of Britain’s worst newspaper, the Daily Clarion?

    “It’s about the ideologies behind the headlines and about the way newspapers are used to further political agendas that readers may not be aware of,” Jagasia explains.

    As well as the press, Clarion takes aim at the rise of nationalism globally, UKIP, and the “general ominous sense that’s in the air at the moment”. It’s main weapon in doing so, however, is humour. “I was trying to write a ferocious comedy about quite a serious subject, says Jagasia. “I think the best way to tackle that is through comedy – sugaring the pill.”

    For a debut play, Clarion boasts some big name actors. The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Greg Hicks is monomaniacal editor Morris Honeyspoon, who rules the newsroom with an iron fist, while Olivier Award- winning actor and Dr Who star Clare Higgins plays “washed up foreign correspondent” Verity Stokes.

    “It’s not based on a particular newspaper,” insists Jagasia, “but anecdotes I heard do inform the background. There are some extraordinary characters in newsrooms. And the editor is not based on one specific person but on a specific type of monster.”

    Clarion took its first steps towards being staged when it was spotted by the Arcola’s Playwrought new writing festival, where new plays are premiered as rehearsed readings. For it to be picked up, then staged, is itself no mean feat, but the story of how Jagasia managed to snag two such experienced actors for his first play has even more of a fairytale ring to it.

    Around 13 years ago at the Globe, Jagasia met Mark Rylance at an afterparty. Rylance advised Jagasia to leave tabloid journalism and get a job in theatre. When that finally happened, and Jagasia was struggling to find a home for Clarion, he decided to send the play to Mark Rylance.

    “I didn’t know anyone in the theatre at all, so I sent it to his dressing room on spec and he really loved the play and opened a lot of doors for it,” Jagasia says.

    Jagasia gave up working as a newspaper hack more than five years ago. What does he miss most, I ask.

    “Probably the wild parties. I was the showbiz editor so I moved in the showbiz world,” he says, before adding: “Probably the humour actually. The gallows humour in newsrooms would be hair-raising if it was put down in black and white, but if you lived through it there was quite a camaraderie about the tabloid press that’s largely disappeared now.”

    Not that Jagasia has any time to mope about the decline of Fleet Street. Although Clarion is yet to open, a follow up is already on the cards. “I’m sat with a towel around my head trying to write the next one,” he tells me, as our phone conversation draws to a close. “The moment you have any degree of success you think you’re going to bask in it but you’re not. Suddenly it’s all about the next play. So back to work basically.”

    Clarion is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL 
    15 April – 16 May
    arcolatheatre.com

  • ‘Such a pity’: arts charity IdeasTap to close

    IdeasTap founder Peter de Haan
    IdeasTap founder Peter de Haan

    Arts charity IdeasTap has announced it is to close. In June the South East London organisation will cease its work helping early-career artists, filmmakers and writers to find funding, work experience, training and jobs in the creative industries.

    The Peter de Haan Charitable Trust, which funds IdeasTap, has run out of money and attempts to secure alternative sources of funding from government or corporate sponsors have failed.

    IdeasTap has nearly 200,000 members across the UK receiving its services for free. The charity has given away more than £2.3m in funding and mentoring to its members since it was set up in 2008.

    Peter de Haan, the businessman who founded IdeasTap, wrote in a letter to members: “I am the bearer of sad news. On 2 June 2015, IdeasTap will shut its doors. It is a painful day for me, and for the whole IdeasTap team.”

    He added: “If running IdeasTap has taught me one thing it is that we have an incredible pool of creative talent in this country who – given the chance – have an enormous amount to contribute to our culture, our society and our economy.

    “It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss.”

    De Haan’s Trust was not intended to last forever. Constituted in 1999, its reserves were meant to be spent gradually over a 20-year period.

    Since the closure was announced in March, IdeasTap members have rallied round in a display of support, gratitude and sadness.

    Writer Kirsty Logan tweeted: “Very sad to hear that IdeasTap is closing. I got my first literary agent and my first columnist job through IdeasTap. They will be much missed.”

    Big names in the industry have also got involved on Twitter. BBC economics editor Robert Peston tweeted: “The closure of arts charity IdeasTap a huge blow to young artists, was important leg up for many.” Theatre critic for the Guardian, Lyn Gardner, added: “Such a pity; given a helping hand to so many artists, writers and more at crucial point. So hard to get started.”

  • Cuban appeal: Los Carpinteros come to London

    Tomates by Los Carpinteros
    Tomates by Los Carpinteros

    Los Carpinteros come this month to London’s Parasol Unit for their first major London show. The duo, Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodriguez, have wowed critics and the public alike with their playful take on Latin American conceptualism in which ideas, influences, ideologies and world views collide.

    Their sculptures possess layered, simultaneous meanings, brought from collisions – rather than simple juxtapositions. A fusion of cultures particularly found in Cuban music informs much of their work, as in the case of the melting musical instruments of Cuarteto Rebelde.

    Often using humour, Los Carpinteros make work about possible futures that never were; utopian visions of how past ideological systems might have played out. Robotica is a Lego construction that looks like a spacecraft, or something prised from Russia’s Institute of Robotics and Technicial Cybernetics. It is also a paean to the wonder of child’s play, while paralleling Barthes’ idea that every ‘writing’ contains, within it, the seed of a utopia.

    Cuarteto Rebelde by Los Carpinteros
    Cuarteto Rebelde by Los Carpinteros

    Their thrill and excitement in the production process is palpable as you talk to them, as is their generosity in sharing their ideas and openness to collaborations. It’s something that they reflect on and acknowledge that is part of the Cuban system, where they were trained to think of how their work could be of maximum social benefit.

    17m is a clothing rail of 200 black suits, the number about the same size as a military unit. The shape of a star, a typical military symbol, cuts through them all in a solid block. The piece was made using an operation that required surgical precision, an internal armature allowing the highly-finished cutting and support of the suits as they were hanging.

    In Tomates, there is a vigour and explosive energy emanating from the idea of 200 tomatoes being seemingly hurled across the gallery space, producing violent and messy splatters on the white walls. Looking not dissimilar to a Jackson Pollock action painting or Niki de Saint Phalle’s Shooting Picture, the piece vividly evokes the austerity protests in Spain.

    Key to the work, however, is the realisation of a trompe l’oeil effect. The tomatoes are in fact ceramic, cast from previously splattered vegetables, with said splatters emphasised through watercolour. The ceramic tomatoes remind us of protest and spontaneous gestures, while providing a wider and more reflective context. On the surface, Los Carpinteros seem to be whimsical, but there is deep political engagement too. It’s a tension that gives their work a peculiar power and ability to captivate the viewer.

    Los Carpinteros is at the Parasol Unit, 14 Wharf Road, N1 7RW until 24 May
    parasol-unit.org

    Robotica by Los Carpinteros
    Robotica by Los Carpinteros

  • Land of Kings to kick off the festival season

    My Panda Shall Fly. Photograph: Oliver Holms
    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

  • Top five tips for spring dressing

    Raincoat by Christopher Raeburn
    Raincoat by Christopher Raeburn

    The arrival of spring puts us in an annual state of flux. From April showers to sunburnt summers, we are destined to be second-guessing the weather until October comes around again. So it is lucky that a practical combination of rain macs and walking sandals, durable fabrics and sensible silhouettes, defined the Spring Summer ‘15 collections, unveiled at Fashion Week back in September. Our guide draws on an unusual combination of practicality and sartorial goodness, with a firm nod to East London’s top fashion names.

    1. Get yourself a raincoat

    Christopher Raeburn’s Spring collection ASCENT featured feminine versions of waterproof classics, such as parkas in iridescent pink and coloured marbling. Describing the aesthetic
    as “easy elegance and feminine functionality”, this East London
    brand has created a niche for itself by fusing practicality with style. Simone Rocha, who works from a studio on Shacklewell Lane, featured delicate custard-coloured trenches for her collection, less practical and more refined. While Emilia Wickstead paired long a-line PVC coats with ladylike skirts. Spanish brand ECOALF creates waterproof outwear
    from recycled plastic, available at sustainable retailers 69b Boutique, on Broadway Market.

    1205 brand
    Layering up: a model wearing items from 1205’s SS15 collection at London Fashion Week

    2. Layers are your friends

    Tackle unpredictable weather with layers. A host of emerging designers are creating interesting silhouettes through systems of layering. Louise Alsop’s second season with Fashion East – an incubator for British fashion talent – gained attention for its grungy monochrome aesthetic. The collection is a rebellious combination of slashed fabric, frayed oversize tees and dresses on top of skimpy sportswear crops and skirts. The brand 1205, headed up by ex-Savile Row designer Paula Gerbase, also adopts layers, producing striking silhouettes and practical details through loose fit shirts and mid-length skirts in cool starched white, with belted waists.

    3. Try sensible sandals

    At British heritage brand Margaret Howell, monochrome flat leather sandals were paired with contrasting socks (another take on layering), while Antipodium matched their feminine dresses with full-on Velcro walking sandals (as did Raeburn), and Eudon Choi also adopted flats. With or without socks, sensible sandals bring a contemporary and structured element to an outfit as well as being good for your feet.

    4. Dig out your denim

    Durable, and currently being fashioned into everything from crop-tops to parkas, denim is the fabric for spring. Thanks to the likes of East London stalwarts Marques’ Almeida and newbie Faustine Steinmetz, jeans are being re-imagined, as flares, in boot- cut, baggy and cropped. Denim also embraces the current penchant for the seventies. Lower Clapton Road’s Bad Denim offers an edit of the best jeans from international brands including NEUW and Paige.

    5. Practical accessories

    From J.W. Anderson’s shady wide- brimmed leather hats, to ADAISM’s paper-bag style clutches made from cork, suede and metallic leathers, spring’s accessories embrace unconventional materials and simple functional design. ADAISM’s tactile rolled up sacks are available from LN- CC on Shacklewell lane.
    

  • Secret Cinema defends price hike for The Empire Strikes Back

    Secret Cinema – Empire Strikes Back 620

    Secret Cinema has hit back over the cost of tickets for this summer’s immersive screening of Star Wars: The Emperor Strikes Back.

    Tickets for the sci-fi blockbuster, which will be screened in a secret London location for two months from 4 June, cost £75, compared with £53.50 to see last year’s screening of Back to the Future.

    One Star Wars fan taking to Twitter called the price hike “daylight robbery”, though Secret Cinema’s founder and creative director Fabien Riggall points out that the extra cost is due to the grander-than-ever scale of the project.

    “This is a film that’s loved by millions of people and the scale of what we have to create to fuel that love is of such magnitude that the production costs have gone up and everything’s gone up,” he said.   

    “These things really do cost a lot of money to put on. And also to secure the buildings and the space and the environments that fit the film.

    “What’s been frustrating is that the whole idea of it is that we want to keep it a secret. I find it heartbreaking that I have to explain all of this because it takes a bit of the mystery out, but at the same time I want to be transparent.”

    Secret Cinema has also fended off allegations about the payment of its ensemble cast members, following the discovery of an advert, apparently from 2010, which suggested they were only paid expenses.

    “We have paid our ensemble cast ever since Secret Cinema has started,” said Riggall. “It’s completely inaccurate, and I’ve been trying to locate how that [advert] came about. What we do is highly complicated so for people to say that we don’t pay our staff or pay our actors is … I find it amazing that they would think that.”

    Tickets for Secret Cinema Presents: The Empire Strikes Back are currently on sale, with some of the dates already sold out.