Guy Bourdin...
http://www.bonesmagazine.co.uk/?p=389
Friday 30 October 2009
Wednesday 28 October 2009
No Worms
The Book Club had their launch party lastweek at what used to be the Home Bar - a gorgeous, two storey Victorian warehouse in the heart of Shoreditch. Coco Sumner and Matthew Stone christened the decks, breaking them in for the procession of special guest DJs lined up to appear at the new venue over the next month as part of its programme of workshops, talks, cultural showcases, and parties.
Bringing together wit, wisdom and enough food and drink to see you through from breakfast to last orders at the bar, The Book Club presents an eclectic mix of events and social activities in art, philosophy, film, fashion, music, science, and even the odd spot of DIY, and fuses them with the tried-and-trusted formula of 7 days-a-week late-night drinking.
Just like your house, The Book Club is as conducive to chilling with your lover over coffee and Sunday morning papers as it is to setting the world to rights with friends over a bottle of wine, or swinging from the chandelier on your birthday. There are newspapers and second hand books lying around for reading as well as a menu of cocktails and comfort food. Dining is informal and communal and the kitchen has a counter service so you have to take your plate up to the front and ask for more, like Oliver Twist.
Over the next couple of weeks Jocks and Nerds magazine will be hosting a night of Philadelphia soul and the like, with a competition for ‘Best Haircut’ and ‘Best Poseur’; the Drinking and Thinking workshops will feature guest speaker Richard Osbourne discussing philosophy; and kitsch collective, Girl Core will be celebrating their favourite B movies. There’s also a workshop on uber fashion with uber fashion label, PPQ; a Carousel Cabaret; a short film night; a death drawing workshop; and a science fair on the third Monday of every month. See you there but I shotgun the big sofa.
For full programme listings, check www.wearetbc.com.
100 Leonard St, London, EC2A 4RH
Bringing together wit, wisdom and enough food and drink to see you through from breakfast to last orders at the bar, The Book Club presents an eclectic mix of events and social activities in art, philosophy, film, fashion, music, science, and even the odd spot of DIY, and fuses them with the tried-and-trusted formula of 7 days-a-week late-night drinking.
Just like your house, The Book Club is as conducive to chilling with your lover over coffee and Sunday morning papers as it is to setting the world to rights with friends over a bottle of wine, or swinging from the chandelier on your birthday. There are newspapers and second hand books lying around for reading as well as a menu of cocktails and comfort food. Dining is informal and communal and the kitchen has a counter service so you have to take your plate up to the front and ask for more, like Oliver Twist.
Over the next couple of weeks Jocks and Nerds magazine will be hosting a night of Philadelphia soul and the like, with a competition for ‘Best Haircut’ and ‘Best Poseur’; the Drinking and Thinking workshops will feature guest speaker Richard Osbourne discussing philosophy; and kitsch collective, Girl Core will be celebrating their favourite B movies. There’s also a workshop on uber fashion with uber fashion label, PPQ; a Carousel Cabaret; a short film night; a death drawing workshop; and a science fair on the third Monday of every month. See you there but I shotgun the big sofa.
For full programme listings, check www.wearetbc.com.
100 Leonard St, London, EC2A 4RH
Thursday 22 October 2009
Trying to join the BNP
The guys over at Don't Panic have teamed up with Ctl.Alt.Shift to make this film about the BNP. On the day that the BNP became legally obliged to allow people of all ethinic origins to join their party, the film crew turned up to an open-invite BNP meeting in East London with 10 British, 'non-white' friends and were refused entry on the basis that they were non-white, basically. The non-British, but white Swedish immigrant was allowed to stay, though and they even offered her some 'BNP cock'. See, they are friendly to immigrants.
Check it out here:
http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/social/joining-the-bnp
Check it out here:
http://www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/social/joining-the-bnp
Thursday 1 October 2009
Are the MOBOs still relevant?
Last night the MOBO awards were held at the SECC in Glasgow, rewarding producers and performers for their achievements in Music Of Black Origin. According to the Guardian today, the event was 'dogged by claims that top British and US performers were unwilling to appear because the awards were in Glasgow. Music industry figures said performers were put off by the location, the cost and the view that Glasgow is "too white".'
Is there a place in British culture any more for an event which fuels a debate around whether people in Glasgow are too white to host an awards ceremony appreciating 'black music'? Is it possible that there would be no such debate if the MOBOs stopped using self-limiting differentiators like, 'black music'? And what qualifies as 'black music' these days anyway?
When you look at the winners, you have to wonder whether this issue of provenance is becoming a bit outdated, and even irrelevant. The X Factor finalists, four piece boy band JLS, won the MOBO for best song last night for their single 'Beat Again'. Listen to it yourselves if you must, or save yourself the agony and just take my word for it when I tell you that it sounds like a male vocal version of ANY Lady Gaga track written ever. Is Lady Gaga's output black in origin, or were JLS simply being rewarded for (brace yourself for controversial opinion) being successful and black?
Likewise N Dubz, who won Best UK Act and Best Album - was there ever a more vanilla iteration of urban pop? They're like East 17 except one of them has a vagina.
Take drum and bass for example, a genre so fragmented it's no longer really true to claim that every extension of it is black in origin. A band like Pendulum, or an artist like Subfocus, have a sound which has evolved from drum and bass to incorporate elements of hair rock, euro electro and even chart pop - arguably NOT styles of music which are black in origin according to the MOBOs schema.
Conversely you could argue that every musician over the past 25 years has been inspired by a black artist even if they didn't know it - Michael Jackson.
Cultural signifiers and memes belonging to one niche genre of music are now so frequently co-opted, traded, adopted, and disseminated by cousins of that same genre, we're now in a place where the idea of 'ownership' of any one particular style is a slightly old fashioned one. Audiences are as likely to enjoy dubstep as they are Calvin Harris, who isn't sounding so very different from Dizzee Rascal these days.
At what point does music stop being derivative and just become really great music? How far can you credibly stretch the provenance issue before it becomes so wide it's no longer exclusive enough to self-identify as 'other'?
Wherever that point is, the MOBOs have reached it and have gone beyond it, which is actually an indication of huge progress in terms of the variety of breakthrough artists, the innovation in new music and more broadly, issues of racial identification amongst generation Y-ers. The MOBO brand needs to continue to recognise this while reflecting the fact that it doesn't matter where you're from, it's what you do that counts.
URL to original article onKnowledge's site here: http://www.kmag.co.uk/editorial/blogs/rinse_and_repeat/are-the-mobos-relevant
Is there a place in British culture any more for an event which fuels a debate around whether people in Glasgow are too white to host an awards ceremony appreciating 'black music'? Is it possible that there would be no such debate if the MOBOs stopped using self-limiting differentiators like, 'black music'? And what qualifies as 'black music' these days anyway?
When you look at the winners, you have to wonder whether this issue of provenance is becoming a bit outdated, and even irrelevant. The X Factor finalists, four piece boy band JLS, won the MOBO for best song last night for their single 'Beat Again'. Listen to it yourselves if you must, or save yourself the agony and just take my word for it when I tell you that it sounds like a male vocal version of ANY Lady Gaga track written ever. Is Lady Gaga's output black in origin, or were JLS simply being rewarded for (brace yourself for controversial opinion) being successful and black?
Likewise N Dubz, who won Best UK Act and Best Album - was there ever a more vanilla iteration of urban pop? They're like East 17 except one of them has a vagina.
Take drum and bass for example, a genre so fragmented it's no longer really true to claim that every extension of it is black in origin. A band like Pendulum, or an artist like Subfocus, have a sound which has evolved from drum and bass to incorporate elements of hair rock, euro electro and even chart pop - arguably NOT styles of music which are black in origin according to the MOBOs schema.
Conversely you could argue that every musician over the past 25 years has been inspired by a black artist even if they didn't know it - Michael Jackson.
Cultural signifiers and memes belonging to one niche genre of music are now so frequently co-opted, traded, adopted, and disseminated by cousins of that same genre, we're now in a place where the idea of 'ownership' of any one particular style is a slightly old fashioned one. Audiences are as likely to enjoy dubstep as they are Calvin Harris, who isn't sounding so very different from Dizzee Rascal these days.
At what point does music stop being derivative and just become really great music? How far can you credibly stretch the provenance issue before it becomes so wide it's no longer exclusive enough to self-identify as 'other'?
Wherever that point is, the MOBOs have reached it and have gone beyond it, which is actually an indication of huge progress in terms of the variety of breakthrough artists, the innovation in new music and more broadly, issues of racial identification amongst generation Y-ers. The MOBO brand needs to continue to recognise this while reflecting the fact that it doesn't matter where you're from, it's what you do that counts.
URL to original article onKnowledge's site here: http://www.kmag.co.uk/editorial/blogs/rinse_and_repeat/are-the-mobos-relevant
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