thu 28/03/2024

Brighton

The Great Escape 2022, Brighton review - sunshine, queues, and thrilling new bands

My friend George claims to have nightmares about The Great Escape. In them he’s standing in an endless queue, never reaching the front, never entering the venue, and never seeing the band he wants to see. That was his experience the only time he...

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Transgressive Records showcase, The Great Escape, Brighton review - five acts offer intriguing pop alternatives

Onstage at The Old Market in Hove, New York’s Mykki Blanco has been waving around a knot of garlic bulbs as if it were a wand or occult aspergillum. At some point during Blanco’s punchy rendition of 2016 single “Loner”, or possibly the dizzier “...

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The Patient Gloria, Brighton Festival review - an electric exploration of the control and manipulation of women

The psychology of female desire in 1960s California, was a field awash with voyeurism and exploitation. This brilliant play uncovers not only the bizarre story of Gloria Szymanski, but catholic hypocrisy and everyday sexism too, with a nod to third...

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Unchain Me, Brighton Festival review - Dostoevsky-inspired theatre through the streets of Brighton

To take to the streets in Brighton in pursuit of a superior political ideology isn't unusual. What is unusual is that some of the young folk currently lurking about the Brighton Museum are part of dreamthinkspeak, an immersive theatre company taking...

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Melt Yourself Down, Patterns, Brighton review - ballistic double sax punk attack

“As you’ve noticed, I’m really terrible at talking between the songs,” announces Melt Yourself Down singer Kushal Gaya, two-thirds of the way through the gig. He is. But it really doesn’t matter; the genre-uncategorizable London six-piece smash...

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Album: Sea Power - Everything Was Forever

The former British Sea Power’s seventh album draws on deep reserves of melancholy and ecstasy. Several songs sound like elegies for Yan and Neil Wilkinson’s recently deceased parents. The band’s emotional heart – sometimes missed beneath the...

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Madness and Squeeze, Brighton Centre review - enjoyable annual December nostalgia romp

Madness frontman Suggs is asking the capacity crowd at the Brighton Centre if any of them are in school-age education. Quite a few are. There are actual young people here! Some are with parents (even, possibly, grandparents), but gaggles of...

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OMD/Scritti Politti, Brighton Centre review - an engaging, ebullient good time

A persistent moan of this writer in recent years, about gigs attended by those his own age (54) and up, is that, however good the band is, the audience are stationary, staring, semi-catatonic. They don’t twitch or move, facing stage-wards earnestly...

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Arthur Smith, Brighton Fringe review - touching memoir of his dad

“A real live audience,” said Arthur Smith delightedly as he kicked off the Brighton Fringe with Syd, his touching and funny tribute to his late father, “an ordinary man who lived in extraordinary times” – his life included a stint in Dad's Army (the...

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Live is Alive!, Brighton Festival 2021 review - local talent makes for snappy return to gig-land

The idea live music is back is worth shouting about. Indeed, the BBC News has been doing just that about this gig. In reality, though, while it’s a joy to be out (this is my first major venue concert for a year-and-a-half), Live is Alive is a...

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Points of Departure, Brighton Festival 2021 review - Ray Lee's harbour-based sound art impresses

They stand in a row, nine of them, in a long, strange corridor between rows of stacked, palleted, planked wood and the red brick wall of an endless warehouse. Nine tripods, each two humans high, with a spinning helicopter head, double-ended by...

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Album: Rag'n'Bone Man - Life by Misadventure

Rory Graham was always stoically familiar with life’s knocks. With a stage-name inspired by Galton and Simpson’s fatalistic family tragicomedy Steptoe and Son, and an underground hip-hop career hinterland in Sussex and London, this big 30-something...

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