Brighton
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - 12 hours on the musical frontline of Day ThreeTuesday, 21 May 2024
If the weather’s good TGE Beach is a grand start to a day. As it sounds, it’s a purpose-built seafront space to the east of central Brighton, containing three stages as well as stalls selling vegan kebabs, Filipino street food and German sausage.... Read more... |
The Great Escape Festival 2024, Brighton review - a dip into day one and the elephant-in-the-roomFriday, 17 May 2024
Before reviewing The Great Escape, we must first deal with the elephant in the room. Or, in this case, the room that’s crushing the elephant, like the trash compactor in the first Star Wars film.THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM BITThere is a boycott, by... Read more... |
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rockers deliver a whopperMonday, 13 May 2024
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok, 1989), boasts a whopping guitar riff. Keys-player Adam Mole, his ushanka cap’s ear-covers flapping, leaps onto his seat, waves his synth aloft. Frontmen... Read more... |
Bill Bailey: Thoughtifier, Brighton Centre review - offbeat adventures with a whirling, erudite mindThursday, 22 February 2024
I first saw Bill Bailey at least 30 years ago in the cabaret tent at Glastonbury Festival, the audience lying on hessian matting, a fug of hash smoke in the air. He seemed one of us, a bug-eyed, Tolkien-prog hippy with a stoned sense of humour and... Read more... |
Snayx/Shelf Lives/Monakis, Patterns, Brighton review - storming, punking triple-headerFriday, 20 October 2023
Patterns is a small, low-ceilinged, underground, seafront venue. Tonight it would be a feast for any passing ancient succubae who happens to feed on raw human energy. From 7.00 PM until 10.00 PM, the room plays host to a package tour of three rising... Read more... |
Album: Dexys - The Feminine DivineFriday, 28 July 2023
In 2012 Dexys returned with their fourth album, and first in 27 years, One Day I’m Going to Soar. It was a concept piece, original and funny, chewing over the volatility of love, containing wonderful set-pieces, most especially a trio of songs at... Read more... |
Album: Maisie Peters - The Good WitchFriday, 23 June 2023
Whether it’s the newly platinum tresses or the bubblegum production shimmer that make up Maisie Peters’ sophomore record, The Good Witch has a definite nod to The Wizard of Oz’s Glinda. Unlike that Good Witch of the North though, Peters’ career didn... Read more... |
Kieran Yates: All the Houses I've Ever Lived In, Brighton Festival 2023 review - home as comfort, and crueltySunday, 28 May 2023
The audience questions are when Kieran Yates’ talk boils over. Her book All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In considers housing policy through autobiography and imaginative research, and the preceding interview has focused on its sometimes academic... Read more... |
Moby Dick, Brighton Festival 2023 review - way more than your average puppet showSaturday, 27 May 2023
Perhaps one of the most intriguing aspects of contemporary puppetry is its ability to skew our perception of reality so entirely that our senses become more heightened as we wait with meta-awareness in excited anticipation for what comes next –... Read more... |
The Great Escape Festival 2023, Brighton review - a long, hot, messy Day ThreeTuesday, 16 May 2023
“stay with the beer. beer is continuous blood. a continuous lover.” So said Charles Bukowski in his poem “how to be a great writer”. Who am I to argue. It’s a bright day and 11.50 AM. The sun isn’t past the yard-arm but the beer is cold and good.... Read more... |
The Great Escape Festival 2023, Brighton review - a vibrant dip into Day OneFriday, 12 May 2023
Brighton is writhing with music biz sorts. The Great Escape is here, the multi-venue festival that’s taken place here for over a decade-and-a-half, presenting bands from all over the world, most of them little known, at least in the UK. It takes... Read more... |
Album: Steve Mac - Bless This Acid HouseFriday, 05 May 2023
Some rock bands base their career around being musically fluid, an ever-changing what-will-they-do-next? conundrum. Others, such as, famously, Motörhead and The Ramones, simply go on doing their thing, honing it, repeating ad infinitum, with an... Read more... |
- 1 of 17
- ››
