Birmingham Literature Festival 2013 with Carol Ann Duffy, Will Self & Benjamin Zephaniah
The Birmingham Book Festival has been building its reputation for the last 15 years. Looking back, it’s a great legacy having brought writers and thinkers such as top selling authors Kate Mosse and Nick Hornby, explorer Ranulph Fiennes, Black Country star Julie...
Stewart Home’s Proletarian Post-Modernism – Spoken Word Performance Album
Writer, artist, filmmaker and activist Stewart Home releases ‘Proletarian Post-Modernism’, the third album in the spoken work series from Test Centre, a London based experimental label. Stewart Home follows the renowned Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit in the limited...
Pop Montreal – A delicious mash up of genres
Festivals can’t just be festivals anymore in these event-saturated times; they must be all-singing, all-prancercising, immersive multi-disciplinary happenings. Welcome Pop Montreal, a latecomer in the Summer Fun Calendar, with a formidable schedule split into live...
Melanie Friend’s The Home Front – War Games for all the family
From the distant silhouette of a Lancaster bomber glimpsed over a British seaside resort, to the hidden world of global arms trade fairs, The Home Front explores links between militarism, marketing and entertainment. Made over four years, this is the international...
Hotel de Russie – The Secret Garden in the heart of Rome
You immediately know the Hotel de Russie is a slick operation the moment you step into its lobby. This icon of the Rocco Forte hotel group is situated in the heart of Rome between the Spanish Steps and the Piazza del Popolo. The approach to the luxury 5 star residence...
Claude Cahun – The Soldier with No Name – Artist & Nazi Resister
My name’s Gavin, and I’m a Cahunian. My addiction to The Artist Formerly, and indeed Formally, Known As Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob dates back to 2004. Serendipitously, given the here and now, I was asked to write a FLUX feature on an exhibition at the Manchester Art...
Indian Essence – A kind of culinary rapture – Indian Food on another level
Towards the end of our meal at Indian Essence, just as the chocolate tart is vanishing chunk by chunk from our plates, leaving behind smeared comet’s flames of ganache, my friend sighs: “I can’t imagine how you’d begin to do this place justice” he says. “You’d have to...
Drenge by Drenge – Bitter sweet and hard as concrete
Brothers Rory and Eoin Loveless, who make up Derbyshire two-piece Drenge, opt out of the easy listening music of a countryside upbringing, for a self-titled debut that hits you like cold hard concrete leaving you bruised and bleeding. The angst-ridden album comes from...
First Peoples Film Festival: Voice of native peoples in the Cinema
First Peoples Film Festival: From the air you can see the endless expanses of tundra, snow, ice, stone and boreal forests of the Nunavik region. From the air, the first Inuit aviator, Johnny May, presents the greatest changes that have modified environment of the...
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints – Two outlaws in love and on the run… Film feature
Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a long shadow cast by the separation of two impassioned outlaws. The movie opens to a scene where Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and pregnant Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara) find themselves holed up and in a gun fight with local police. [gallery...
Mulatu Astatke – Sketches Of Ethiopia – Unique, playful album from African jazz pioneer
Ethiopian musician and conductor Mulatu Astatke takes his original combination of jazz, Latin, and traditional Ethiopian influences for the latest soundtrack to his homeland, Sketches Of Ethiopia. Mulatu Astatke, best known as the pioneer of Ethio-jazz is celebrated...
Factual Nonsense: The Extraordinary Life and Art of Joshua Compston
The cultural bridge between the tail end of the industrial Kray scarred Shoreditch and its early days as an artistic haven in the early nineties was dreamed up, built and cemented by Joshua Compston. Artist, impresario and curator. Read about a new book rejoicing...
Kuma – Intimate portrayal of a man and his two wives
Kuma – literally translated as co-wife or second wife – is Umut Dag’s impressive debut as a Director in what an earnest and intimate depiction of how a Turkish / Kurdish family unit transfers over to European culture and the tensions that arise. The movie starts with...
Field Harmonics ‘Everyone’ – Kitchen Sink Pop – UK Video Premiere
Field Harmonics is Rob Glover, one half of pastoraldelicists epic45 and co-founder of the Wayside and Woodland record label. Taking musical influence from 80s synth-pop and electronica, his debut album, 'Walls', is a pop subversion of epic45’s psychogeographic...
Eternity: Death Inspired Fashion Editorial from Leonardo V
Eternity is a captivating, death inspired fashion editorial by photographer Leonardo V which breaks with convention and stares that great taboo, our own mortality, straight in the eye. Some high calibre labels feature alongside specially selected creative pieces....