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Holocaust exhibition, Imperial War Museum
2007-02-16 01:36:00
The permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Muse um is both exhaustive and exhausting. The curators have created a concise and comprehensive history of the Jewish experience in the years leading up to and including the second world war. It is extremely sensitively handled, economic and factual at all times and censorious where necessary.
More About: Exhibition

Mr Happy
2007-02-09 02:09:00
Ray Lamontagne and his band walked onto the Hammersmith Apollo's stage in darkness and waited for the lights to go on. When they did, we could see Ray was wearing his usual beard, jeans and shirt. But he also had on a "Mr Happy " t-shirt. Without a hello, a smile or anything else he went straight into the first song. It was "Be Here Now" off his second album "Till The Sun Turns Black", which crept into the shops with little announcement a short while ago. That famous voice of his is way up in the mix, crystal clear, but still hushed, dry and powdery like he's singing a lullaby to his deaf uncle. The next three songs are all new, then he hits us with a few oldies, which the crowd respond to with more enthusiasm. He still hasn't said anything at this point. The Apollo is a huge venue. It's freezing, and there's little warmth emanating from the stage save the tones of the pedal steel which gives nearly every song tonight a bit of barroom nostalgia. But the venue is big, a...

More Arcade, and more Fire
2007-02-08 00:29:00
I saw them again at Porchester Hall three days later. This time they rocked even harder. It wasa all-standing, I'd heard the new album in the interim, and had a better idea of what to expect. They mashed the set around a little bit, opening with the new Springsteen-esque rockabilly number "Keep The Car Running" instead of Black Mirror, a welcome change. Win leapt into the crowd and got swallowed up for a few minutes, before emerging and dancing through the crowd like the pied piper, guitar held up in the air above him. I even enjoyed Régine Chassagne's arch dramatic delivery of everything from vocals to accordion. They finished again with Wake Up, apparently after a scuffle with a security guard. As Alan Partridge would no doubt have commented, the number of people crowded in the foyer surely exceeded sensible fire regulations. Anyway I found myself standing next to Chris Martin from Coldplay singing along to Arca de Fire in the chandalier-lit foyer of an old Victorian banq...
More About: More , Cade

Scissors, paper, arcade fire, neon bible
2007-02-07 23:52:00
Wow. I saw Arcade Fire last week at St John's, Smith Square, a church as gloriously baroque as the band's music. Interestingly, the church has not been deconsecrated, so the gig was taking place on holy ground. They played nearly all of the new album, Neon Bible , and threw a couple of oldies in for thefans, after frontman Win knowingly commented that "it's a drag when bands turn up wanting to play the new stuff, when all you want is for them to play the fuckin' hits." I always thought they sounded like the Pixies mixed with Talking Heads, but the sound I couldn't shake out of my head this time was the crooning, anguished yelp of 80's icon Ian McCulloch and his band of guitar rock heroes. The two bands share a yearning, soaring gift for the operatic, both aiming for the emotional breaking point. But where the Bunnymen placed themselves head and shoulders above the crowd, Arcade fire literally and figuratively dive right in. They still resemble a touring ramshackle Victor...
More About: Neon Bible , Arcade Fire

Just one Canaletto...
2007-02-04 00:52:00
Canaletto's panoramic paintings of London are awesome. I've seen some of his stuff at the National Gallery before, and always thought that they resembled architect's technical drawings (this is a good thing). At the Dulwich Picture House's exhibition of his work in London between 1746 - 1755, we get to see the preliminary sketches alongside the finished works, and this apparent scientific accuracy is on display more than ever. Or is it? One of the continuing themes of the exhibition is Canaletto's looseness with facts. Sometimes this is geographic and architectural, in terms of prettifying the painting's compositions. Elsewhere it means bending to the will of his purchaser, emphasising a building or person representing his benefactor. Canaletto also took the unusual step of producing pictures on spec, so occasionally the filling in of landscape blanks was purely practical in nature, and such details anyway were usually sourced from architect's or builder's plans, as...
More About: Just , Cana , Canal , Anal

Less jingo, more bingo
2007-01-30 23:35:00
I was pleasantly surprised to see the front page of The Sun today going with a headline and image I would normally have expected to see running in the corduroy-wearing, sandal-footed Independent: It's a bold statement on the contradictory success and failure of British multiculturalism. It's riding the wave of interest in the subject generated by Shilp Shetty's racist, or not, treatment in Celebrity Big Brother, which has dominated the news cycle across both qualities and tabloids for the past 10 days And all this as the Independent turns into an outraged parody of itself...
More About: Bingo , More , Less , Jing , Bing

LinkedIn
2007-01-26 01:38:00
I've been signed up to Link edIn.com for a couple of weeks, and have built up a decent sized list of connections. I was pleasantly surprised by the mechanism, for making connections - namely, that there's no way to "cold call" someone. You need to know their contact details in order to send them a connection request. Once you have made the connection, you are able to be introduced to that person's contacts, with LinkedIn acting as a trusted intermediary. The whole thing is, in the fashion, self-moderated, and spammers and the like should be fairly easy to prohibit given the traceability of connections.
More About: Linkedin

Chola - Sacred Bronzes of Southern India
2007-01-25 01:28:00
Part two of my sculptural journey, which began with the Rodin show at the Royal Academy, is the Chola exhibition at the same venue - subtitled "Sacred Bronze s of South ern India ". These bronze sculptures, dating from around 900 - 1250, not only depict and represent Hindu gods, including Shiva, Vishnu and Ganesh, but were actually believed to be physical manifestations of those gods and were worshipped as such. Prior to the advancements which facilitated the casting of these deities in bronze, they would have been sculpted from stone, heavy and immobile. Now, though, they could be easily removed from temples and carried outside on a tour of their lands, also allowing their followers to see and worship them at close range. The notches and loops where carrying poles and chains would have been fitted are still clearly visible. On returning to the temple, the idols of the deities were bathed in milk, curds, butter, honey and sugar, before being anointed with sandal paste and dressed ...
More About: Southern , Hola

Thinking about Rodin
2007-01-13 13:29:00
I went to see the Rodin exhibition at the Royal Academy recently. I have to admit I knew absolutely nothing about Rodin prior to going. For this reason the explanatory texts throughout the gallery rooms proved informative and indispensible in placing the sculptor in a wider context, that of the swirling art world of Delacroix and Duchamp. Time and again we learn that Rodin revolutionized the sculptural art form, although I found this hard to confirm with no knowledge of the genre up to that point. At this risk of asking to be spoon-fed I wonder if the RA could have provided a short introductory history up to the point of the artist's emergence. But looking at the works here it's immediately apparent that here was a man in thrall to the human body. Everything is smooth and fluid and balanced, every physique perfect and perfectly realised. To think of the amount of time the artist would have spent looking at his subject, admiring it, understanding it, is to share with him in ...
More About: About , Think , King , Thinking , Odin

Cat Power, The Roundhouse, Camden
2006-11-02 00:38:00
Went to the Round house in Camden last night to see Cat Power , backed by the Memphis Horns. Cat herself is as ramshackle and loose as the Horns are tight and focussed. She often ended songs abruptly, stopping her guitar and leaving the backing singers hollering alone. She seems to suffer from a distinct lack of confidence, more than once apoligising for her 'flat' vocals. The show was divided into two parts, the first with the whole band, the second performed solo. The Memphis Horns tights funk and Cat's bluesy shuffle wouldn't seem to be natural partners, but that they go together so well is a revelation. After an initial instrumental workout, they settled into a warm groove as Cat played through most of "The Greatest" album. In the second part Cat shifted between piano and guitar, a lone spotlight from above picking her out in the cavernous darkness of the Roundhouse. Her voice, so deep and smoky, sounded beautfiul and full of detail, and the sound throughout the show w...
More About: House , Cat Power