East End Review

Tag: Oval Space

  • Concert pitch – October gig guide for East London

    Concert pitch – October gig guide for East London

    Isabel-Sörling-Soil-Collectors
    Isabel Sörling of Soil Collectors, playing at Match and Fuse Festival this month

    15–16 October, Hackney Wonderland @ Oval Space, The Laundry, London Fields Brewery, Sebright Arms, The Pickle Factory

    Five venues play host to a line-up of established bands such as Mystery Jets and We Are Scientists as well as up-and-coming acts like singer Sonia Stein and NGod.

    21–23 October – Stoke Newington Music Festival @ various venues including Mascara Bar, St Pauls Church West Hackney, The Waiting Room, Haunt, Stereo92, The Lion, The Lacy Nook, Green Room Café, The Haberdashery

    Three-day multi-venue event across Stoke Newington will see DJ sets and live music from the likes of Thurston Moore, Sterling Roswell, Pink Cigar and The Pacers

    22 October – Super Hans @ Oval Space

    One of the nation’s best loved comic creations Super Hans from Peepshow (aka Australian comic Matt King) takes to the decks for his debut London DJ set.

    28–29 October – Match and Fuse festival @ New River Studios, Café Oto, The Vortex

    Organisers boast this will be a “knees up like no other”, bringing together musicians from 14 European countries. Highlights include Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and the Native American/Scandinavian pop improvisers the Soil Collectors.

    29 October – Mirrors festival @ St John at Hackney, Moth Club, Oslo, Round Chapel

    Eyes will be on the Mercury Prize-nominated Bat for Lashes, who is set to headline this one-day indoor festival. Also on the line-up are Allah-Las, Bill Ryder Jones and the curiously-named garage punk six-piece Diarrhea Planet.

  • 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.

  • London Short Film Festival gets underway this weekend

    London Short Film Festival 620
    Stick ’em up! Eve Hedderick-Turner, Matilda Sturridge and Bonnie Wright star in How (Not) to Rob a Train playing at Hackney Picturehouse on 13 January as part of the London Short Film Festival. Photograph: Claire Pepper

    Short films will be in plentiful supply this month with the return of the London Short Film Festival to cinemas in East London.

    Hackney Picturehouse and Oval Space are two of the host venues for the 12th edition of the festival, taking place from 9–18 January.

    This year’s programme is billed as a snapshot of 21st Century Britain, complete with love stories, horror stories, comedy, documentary, music and low budget gems.

    An eclectic itinerary includes themed programmes such as Surreal World and Night of the Living Docs, as well as special screenings and events.

    Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting will be discussing their new project By Our Selves, a film that traces the journey of Romantic poet John Clare from Epping Forest to Northamptonshire accompanied by a straw bear.

    Other highlights include a fashion film programme, a night of queer short film and music, and Fourwalls, a selection of films about housing made by Londoners.

    Favouring original voices over mainstream filmmakers, the LSFF has become the most comprehensive showcase of short film in the UK.

    Festival director Philip Ilson has spelt out the festival’s mission, saying: “We want to be challenging and questioning; looking behind the curtain to seek out what’s hidden, and expose it to the world.

    “It’s an amazing feeling to get wowed by the ground breaking creative work coming through year after year and get that out in front of excited audiences.”

    For the full programme see www.shortfilms.org.uk

  • ‘Unique’ Bethnal Green gasholders face uncertain future

    Uncertain future: Bethnal Green gasholders
    Industrial heritage: Bethnal Green gasholders

    Architecture lovers are rallying to save two iconic pieces of the East London skyline from possible demolition.

    The Bethnal Green gasholders at Marian Place are a potent reminder of East London’s industrial heritage. But campaigners believe they are at risk of being pulled down, after National Grid applied to English Heritage for a Certificate of Immunity from listing.

    Tom Ridge, a local historian and founder of the East End Waterway group, has started a petition to retain the gas holders that has already gained over 1,100 signatures.

    “They’re unique, there are no other gasholders like it left in the country,” said Mr Ridge, who is also campaigning to save gasholders in Poplar. The two holders date from 1866 and 1889 and are the only surviving example of adjacent gasholders in London. The smaller of the two has a similar design to those listed at Bromley-by-Bow and St Pancras, but is an earlier and, according to Mr Ridge, “better proportioned” example.

    Christopher Costelloe, Director of the Victorian Society, is concerned East London is “whitewashing its industrial heritage”. He said: “It is not just grand country houses which deserve protection for future generations but also buildings which are important reminders of the great technological and domestic changes of the 19th century, such as these gasholders.”

    Tower Hamlets Council’s plan for the site around the gasholders, which was given conservation status in 2008, includes a “strategic housing development” and local park, which according to its site allocation map is roughly positioned where the gasholders are currently standing.

    Jordan Gross, owner of Oval Space, which overlooks the gasholders, wants them to be included in any future development. He said: “I think the result of their removal would be that horrendous high rise flats will be built there which will then probably tower over Broadway market and the entire area. There are lots of options for repurposing these holders without building flats there.”

    Following National Grid’s application, English Heritage is to make its recommendations to the Culture Secretary, Sajid Javid, who will make a final decision about listing the gasholders.

    A spokesperson for Tower Hamlets Council said: “Tower Hamlets Council is committed to ensuring that the borough’s many historic assets are managed effectively and preserved for the benefit of the community wherever possible.

    Residents who would like to share their views about the Gasholders can contact English Heritage directly.”

    View the East End Waterway group petition here: www.residents-first.co.uk/no-2-and-no-5-gasholders-at-the-bethnal/

  • ‘I’m the Oval Space man’ – Jordan Gross, the man with a plan for London’s night life

    Revellers at Oval Space. Photograph: Lee Arucci
    Revellers at Oval Space. Photograph: Lee Arucci

    Despite opening in only 2011, Oval Space is already one of London’s hottest night spots. Its industrial setting in Bethnal Green, overlooking a disused gasworks, rivals Hackney Wick for gritty urban chic, and the 6,000 square foot warehouse-style space affords mesmeric views over East London.

    It’s not the views, however, that make Oval Space regularly full to capacity. Jordan Gross, 29, is co-director of the venue alongside his business partner Daniel Sylvester, 28. It was their vision to transform a warehouse once used to stock pharmaceutical supplies into a top class music and arts venue.

    “We felt London needed more good entertainment spaces and that this could be one of those places,” says Gross. “But as with all of these things, what you end up with is a lot different to what you think it’s going to be in the first place.”

    A successful 2013 saw Thom Yorke, Bookashade, Cutcopy and Giorgio Moroder perform. Oval Space also has monthly cinema screenings from independent filmmakers and hosts one-off events such as this month’s TED event. Incongruously enough, you can also get married there.

    At 29, Gross is intimidatingly successful. He used to own a telecoms company and started his first business as a teenager. With Oval Space, however, he’s looking to embrace a slightly older and wiser crowd.

    “You’ve got to try and elevate the conversation a bit in terms of this nightlife thing,” he says. “We make sure that when you come here you’re having a really great experience, so the toilets are nice, the food and drinks are good and everything’s reasonably priced.”

    Drawing on his experience in other international cities such as Berlin, Gross calls London “a world class city without world class night life”, and has made it Oval Space’s mission to redress the balance.

    This is not merely a case of attracting the biggest names – although they are doing that – or hosting shows by outside promoters. These days Gross and his team want to develop their own events in-house, taking advantage of the fact that nobody knows the space like they do.

    For Gross this is part of a wider philosophy. “In my view we’ve got to get back to having venues and clubs and places where you trust their curation and you’ll go along no matter what,” he says.

    In February begins Oval Space Music – Chapter 1, a grand title matching Gross’s ambition. Detroit techno pioneers Robert Hood and Jerome Sydenham will be part of a line-up that includes sets from the Oval Space’s new resident DJs, jozif and Fritz Zander.

    Gross adds: “We’d like to bring more interesting things to the audience and stuff that’s really very good but you just haven’t heard of it yet. That’s essential I think.”

    www.ovalspace.co.uk