August 2008 Archives

PERFORMANCE ART WITH A DIFFERENCE.

The opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing were spellbindingly beautiful and extraordinarily soulless. Thankfully, the city is not all false smiles and lip synching kids.

ALL IT TAKES IS IMAGINATION. Michael Phelps.

The Chinese press, in a uniquely Chinese way, refer to him as the ‘American Superfish’, but as Michael Phelps waited imposingly on the blocks during the 4×100M Medley, it was their imaginations - and ours - which ran wild with the thought of what might unfold in the Cube, a pool paid for by China, but indisputably owned by the great wide-winged American.

IT'S GOOD TO BE HOME. Caleb Followill.

‘Modest’ is the word that always seems to pop up when reviewers talk about Brixton Academy. The sentence usually goes “They have sold out the biggest arenas in the world, and I wondered how they’d respond to the intimacy of a venue as modest as Brixton.”

THE KOURTAJME COLLECTIVE DENY A CITY THEY BARELY KNOW.

The picturesque Paris of beauty and high culture is a foreign city to Kourtrajmé. They rarely see it, and they won’t show it. But they are Parisians. Yes, Parisians, driven by the city as they know it, a city of decay, desolation and neglect, but a city of people the authorities would rather forget.

AN INTREPID YOUTH WHO WENT FACE TO FACE WITH AN ICON.

In 1969, the 14-year-old Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room for a chat. The tapes form the basis for this intriguing animated short.

ONE RUNNER SHOULD NEVER BE FORGOTTEN.

Pierre de Coubertin brought back the Olympic Games at the end of the 19th century. His vision was a festival of stories to inspire, the marriage of muscular strength with the creative imagination. “Every human being belongs to the great orchestra of mankind,” he once wrote, yet some, through history, have played their parts greater than others; among them, Emil Zatopek at the Helsinki Games of 1952.

WHY DON’T ALL BIKES COME RIGGED TO THE TEETH FOR BASS?

Kellog’s Frosties once gave away brightly coloured beads which you could add to your bike spokes to make other kids turn green with envy. To an eager to impress ten year-old like me, it seemed like a pretty painless improvement to make to my BMX. But there are people who put glow in the dark beads on their bikes, and then there’s this bunch from Queens.

INNOVATORS DIE HARD.

In 1996, Etienne De Crecy produced the seminal album, Superdiscount. It was the launch pad for French Touch, spawning the likes of Daft Punk, Alex Gopher and Air. There are guys that are now safely into their thirties that once embraced this new ‘filter funk’ as a welcome alternative to that Ministry of Sound sound. For those that remember - Tori Amos was a Professional Widow, Underworld were Born Slippy, David Morales, Apollo Four Forty, Todd Terry...

A FACELESS MUSICIAN CONSUMED BY THE OCEAN.

An album on legendary British label Warp was re-released recently: the Elektroids LP, Elektroworld. The precise identities of the artists involved were never officially revealed, though it was fairly well known that at least one member of the equally mysterious Detroit duo Drexciya was behind it. The recent re-release confirmed as much: “Produced by Drexciya’s late James Stinson”, one of the great virtuosos of electronic music, yet a man we know so little about.