Sweet Bird Of Youth

This summer brings the revival of the tragic American raconteur – a figure hiding his past through the combination of cynical manipulation and wilful self-delusion, enjoying an overblown lifestyle until the edifice crumbles around them. Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby explores the lavish ends to which a character will go to create the illusion, but this production of Tennessee Williams’ 1959 play far better highlights the tragedy at its end.

See the review at http://www.justaplatform.com/london-theatre-sweet-bird-of-youth-review/

The Hotel Plays at the Grange Holborn Hotel

Watching The Hotel Plays in three suites at the Grange Holborn Hotel, it is difficult not to picture Tennessee Williams typing in similar rooms, populating scenes with the people that surrounded him: the couple carrying out a muffled argument through the wall, a shifty yet charming bell boy, drunken late-night arrivals, and porters delivering endless room-service orders.

The claustrophobic atmosphere created by packing an audience into a suite, on chairs two deep around the walls, complements the atmosphere of the plays and their succession of insane characters. Williams creates extremes - a damaged soldier drinking bourbon in the morning, an uncomfortable young male escort and panicky, inept crooks amongst them. Being at such close quarters (at one point a character spat some wine and a little landed on my foot, and we had a pretty good look up a young man's boxers) means that you are forced right into the middle of the characters' lives and the conflicts they are facing.

Hotel rooms straddle private and commercial space, blurring what actions might be considered as acceptable. Add to that the infantilising effect of room service - the closest you can get to tugging on a parent's sleeve and asking for some food - and you have a great setting for exploring how people behave when rules are removed.

The Hotel Plays run until the 27th October.

Ryan Dunn at Vyner Street Gallery

Ryan Dunn's collages use the language of advertising photography to create unnerving images that can evoke a range of emotions.

We've seen a lot of collage this year, not least Geoffrey Farmer's overwhelming Life Magazine Cut-outs from 1935-1985 at Documenta 13, but Dunn's work uses a less-is-more attitude to create images that are just as memorable, and just as rewarding of your time.

Sadly, his show at Vyner Street Gallery was only very brief, but as he's been officially labelled 'up and coming' (thanks in part to a role in the Cultural Olympiad) his is a name you will definitely see again.

Detail from Ryan Dunn's Inane Systems

Keep A Good Thing Going: Omi Palone and The Proper Ornaments

Some good things happened on Sunday at Record Affair, a night put on by the ace Just a Crush at the equally ace Shacklewell Arms. The 9pm finish meant it was PERFECT FOR A SCHOOL NIGHT and there was a record fair from lots of independents. Also, we met someone from Upset the Rhythm who is friends with Dan Deacon: that wasn't even on the flyer.

One of the good things was Omi Palone (we pronounce it like it rhymes - you can say what you want). Singer Phil rejects indie falsetto, keeping things between the Ian Curtis pitch parameters of 'growl' and 'normal speaking voice' (weirdly, but vividly, bringing to mind Michael Stipe 'reigning it in' on King of Comedy). It's good to have limits, and the band work well within them; swooping guitar lines complement Phil's vocal, and the whole thing is set firmly to 'fun.'





Another good thing were The Proper Ornaments: woozy dream pop with a debt to the sixties and nineties-sixties-revivalists. This is a good thing. When The Proper Ornaments inspire another generation of bands we'll be able to write that they owe a debt to the sixties, nineties-sixties-revivalists and 2010s-nineties-sixties revivalists. Music blog posts will be like genealogies of royal families, poured over by the indie elite for the exact provenance of the latest Dalston heroes. Actually, that's pretty much what they are now.

Anyway. This lot are good - far better than these overly sun-drenched recordings suggest. Catch them live.

New Finds at Finland's Flow Festival: Elifantree

Elifantree are a Scandinavian jazz-pop trio, signed to independent Finnish jazz label Eclipse Music. Their debut album, Love and Trees came out in 2010, and they followed that up with this year's Time Out. We caught them on the Tiivistämö stage, where they were exceptional enough to draw the crowd to their feet, away from the delicious sushi and noodles served in there.

Vocalist Anni Elif Egecioglu has hints of Kate Bush in her freewheeling delivery, and drummer Tatu Rönkkö has one of the most triumphant drumming faces we've ever seen. Rounding off the band is saxophonist Pauli Lyyntinen, who, alongside cheer-inducing solos, adds the effects that push this into Bjork territory.
ELIFANTREE - That Girl from Charlie Harjulin on Vimeo.

New Finds at Finland's Flow Festival: Jason Moran

As you might expect from a festival in the hip capital of a self-consciously cool country there were a few esoteric choices in the Flow Festival lineup - but a couple of these really blew us away. One such artist is Jason Moran, who we loved so much we saw no fewer than three times over two days.

Moran is a Brooklyn-based jazz pianist who's been around for about 15 year and often performs with his band The Bandwagon. We saw him with The Bandwagon (bassist Tarus Maseen and incredible drummer Nashteen Waits) and performing solo, and in both settings Moran's talent, musicality and New York cool gave the set a laid back but exciting vibe. 

He seems to be able to take all of the fun parts of avant-garde jazz - the madness and freedom - and dispense with the dull insistence on extended periods of arhythmic atonality which often mar the genre, replacing these with hip hop-inspired beats and looped melodies which burst into explosions of creativity.

A standout track from Moran's solo performance was 'Ringing My Phone (Straight Outta Istanbul)' which appears on his 2003 live album The Bandwagon. Here, Moran plays along with the voice of his wife, speaking on the phone in Turkish to her mother. Check out the video below for how that pans out, especially when he loops a short section of her speech at around 3:20. Moran said he records conversations habitually, with the aim of turning them into tracks like this. Finnish, though was "on some other shit" and was going to take him some time to groove to. 

I've Started So I'll Finnish - Oneohtrix Point Never

Oneohtrix Point Never is the moniker of Brooklyn-based Daniel Lopatin, whose sound has grown out of drone electronica to inhabit a world between cinematic mood music and an 80s version of The Disintegration Loops. Tracks throughout his three albums grow and develop in beautiful and unexpected ways, and can sometimes become frustratingly repetitive before creating release through blossoming or decay. 

OPN are on stage at midnight at Flow, and it's easy to see why. Our shared dreamimage of Scandinavia here at LIFB is of flowing landscapes and minimalist design, the contrast of days of endless sunlight with the knowledge that days of endless darkness are only a few months away. The sound of OPN,  with its combination of melancholy and nostalgia fits this perfectly.