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June 12, 2023

Weird On Purpose At The Hare And Hounds 31.05.23

Writer David Evans / Photographer Emily Doyle

“I’m Brian Lightning and this is my shoe,” says a tall, denim-eyebrowed character with slicked-back hair, as they toss a Cuban heeled boot up into the air. It floats, for a brief moment of confusion and anticipation, before landing back in a black-nailed hand as an equally denim-clad band kicks into action.

I’m at the fourth instalment of This is TMRW’s distinctly Brummie event, Weird on Purpose, celebrating the dynamic range of the city’s music scene(s), and stood among a crowd who, understandably, look slightly at odds with each other.

Starting off tonight’s selection is Mr Brian Lightning (aka Ed Quigley), someone I haven’t heard anything from beyond three seconds of their debut single ‘Pilot’ looped over a promo video. On this basis, and the very reasonable ticket price, I thought I would give the Weird on Purpose pick-n-mix a go and come taste what’s on offer.

Complete with crooning backing singers, in Brian Lightning’s performance lines are traded about being brought together and torn apart by a former lover atop an infectious electric drum beat. Brian’s stylised image and songwriting instantly make me think of something halfway between Bowie’s iconic ‘Aladdin Sane’ and the more humorous Forced Witness-era Alex Cameron, an utterly serious but over-the-top performance.

The band ploughs through its repertoire and it becomes clear that alongside the curated image is a really solid set of songs. Led by a shaky electric organ, Brian plays while twirling a hand in the air or expressly raising one of those blue-slugged eyebrows. Guitars run lines like laser beams and witty vocals bounce effortlessly between the frontman and backing singers.

Mid-way through, we are treated to a friend of the band, Georgie Boy, who reads off a poem which seems to be about tonight’s show. After a few lines I don’t quite catch, he ends his chattering by announcing “the cats are in the Hare and Hounds, and the devil (Brian) is in double denim and fishnets”. Much like the flying boot episode, the band seamlessly rolls into another groove and I am thoroughly entertained.

Now for something completely different; local three- piece grunge-punk outfit, Otherless, take to the stage as a new kind of audience member shuffles to the front of the crowd. Their songs are dark, angry, and full of great moments of sludgy guitar and bass.

The opening track starts with this dredgy repeating riff reminiscent of one of King Krule’s darker cuts on Man Alive! if it were accompanied by heavier drums and more intense. It’s an instant hit with me and I love the variety of vocals the band has, as they share out singing duties. Our man on the bass is giving properly strained vocal performances in a slightly American accent, whilst the drummer sounds distinctly British and shouty – a lovely combination.

As we are about to start the second song, I’m informed by a friend of the band that they do have a beloved Sinatra cover that’s tragically not on tonight’s setlist. Whilst I’m equally gutted it’s not getting an airing, the next tune quickly helps me forget as it comes in with another massive sound. Cleaner than the first and featuring a chorus effect on the guitar, it’s a proper slow trotter of a song with a dreamlike quality, picking up dramatically into a chorus and huge climax.

More tracks bring us more impressive riffs, as the debut single ‘Murmur’ flexes Otherless’ incredibly catchy songwriting abilities. Fat guitar lines, washed in tremolo, and jarring pitch-shifting effects drive the song forward until its final reprise where the bassist screams a top the drummer’s repeated calls, it’s a great moment and I’m in awe.

After detuning the guitar during a funny interval moment, the deeper low-end sound on the next song really adds another layer of darkness. It’s another slow one that picks up to new intensity with the band giving it their all.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the collision of influences which you can hear in Otherless’ music; some Pixies chaos, some Squid vocals, and some Sonic Youth guitars, it’s a lovely mix. True to their sound, the set ends in a chorus of shouting and aggression met by a great reaction from the crowd as they’re clapped offstage.

Graywave, the final act of the night, is a local dream pop, shoegaze four-piece who probably sit somewhere between the previous two acts in terms of heaviness. Their opening track sets a clear tone by creating a wall of sound of guitars and bass, complete with long held vocals over the top.

As the guitarist viscerally hammers away at his instrument, singer Jess Webberley delivers powerful notes and melodies with an eerie aura.

Their set flies by with more huge sounding, moody, and dark tracks, but the recent single ‘Cycle’ really sticks out to me whilst I’m watching. It starts with a more reserved riff that pings around the room and gives a flavour of the different textures the band is capable of.

Webberley has a great way with the crowd, and as they approach the end of their set it’s clear they’ve also been a big hit with tonight’s audience.

All in all, I’ve been dead impressed by the three bands performing at Weird on Purpose and am very glad I took the punt.

Weird On Purpose @ Hare and Hounds 31.05.23 / Emily Doyle

For more on Brian Lightning visit www.instagram.com/brianlightninginc
For more on Otherless visit www.instagram.com/otherlessband
For more on Graywave visit www.graywaveuk.bandcamp.com

For more from the Hare and Hounds visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

For more gigs and events by This is TMRW visit www.thisistmrw.co.uk

June 3, 2023

Osees Return To Force At The Crossing 26/05/23

Writer Mark Roberts / Photographer Connor Pope

The Crossing is a weird venue, a perfectly constructed live music room inside of South & City College Birmingham. The sound and the lighting are amazing with a stage built for a small festival. You wouldn’t know it was part of a college if you didn’t have to find the merch tables in the cafeteria.

Osees are a legendary act who’ve been slowly but surely building their fanbase consistently for twenty years, defying the usual pump-and-dump nature of the music industry. Check out their social media and you’ll realise they don’t really try to increase it through any PR trickery, their last Facebook post was in 2013.

Their reputation precedes them. I’m anticipating greatness.

We wait a bit for Psychic Graveyard who honestly, I’ve never heard of. I’m not too au fait with noise rock but I watched my fair share of it at Supersonic Festival last year and enjoyed most of it. I’ve now come to understand that Psychic Graveyard contains members of multiple noise rock acts with Eric Paul the lead singer having been on the same label as Death Grips and Clipping with one of his acts.

Not a bad pedigree then apparently.

As they enter the stage the energy is definitely there. They all possess an ungodly amount of movement which is anything but regular for your average human being. From the bearded gent on the right jumping up and down grinning, with his hands in jubilation like a toddler on ecstasy, to the lead singer walking as though he’s taken too much speed and screaming into the microphone.

This is quite the sensory experience.

Noise erupts from the band and there are impactful drums. It truly is disgusting. I can’t help but say it… this is terrible. The noise of the guitars/synths for me doesn’t create something huge with emotional impact. The instruments clash and bang, jarring inside me. They all occupy the same exact frequency space in the mix. It’s boxy and horrible.

I can’t seem to work out where the instruments are meant to fit into the drums. Maybe this is the sort of thing that isn’t to time but freely floats over the music. Even so, it’s just in no way enjoyable to me.

The singer also has no sense of mic technique, moving the mic everywhere around his head as he jolts back and forth. The vocals sound like they’re passing you by in a moving vehicle.

I hear one line the entire gig: “drown in piss”.

To be honest, I’d rather do that than watch this. I feel for the soundman, how the hell do you work out what this is meant to sound like?

Some people are clearly enjoying it and cheer as the band finishes, but there’s also a bunch of bemused faces around wondering (and rightly so) what just happened.

Osees come on very shortly after and we’re not disappointed. John Dwyer and co waltz on and get on with it. As they burst into ‘I Come From he Mountain’ my predictions over how good this show would be materialise. It’s exactly what you want from this sort of band. The crowd (including myself) opens up and a pit develops instantly – it’s going to be a big one tonight.

Osees rip through their set quickly going from track to track. Occasionally they pause for Dwyer to tune beyond tuning and play a new set of songs back to back. It’s slick as hell, punk as anything, and it’s downright incredible to watch. The guitars ping and shimmer, with Dwyer’s signature echo and doomy to razor-thin tones.

Tunes range from two minute stormers to 10 minute jams. Sections build and explode into the stratosphere, never breaking a second and giving us an almost relentless pace. As sweaty bodies push against each other and rocket around the room the pummeling onslaught continues.

We boogie through ‘Toe Cutter – Thumb Buster’ and then we drop out to ‘The Daily Heavy’ in all its psychedelic silliness, squeaky toy and all. It’s far more raucous than the album. That’s the case with all of their tunes live, it’s just that much more hard.

Dwyer, on the left, rolls forward and back in a lunge from the ball of one foot to the other. He watches as the two drummers interlock and interweave. Their keyboardist’s hair flies wildly behind the two percussionists who frame the center of the stage and on the right, the bassist bass-necks like the best of them.

Full punk energy unleashes when ‘A Foul Form’ comes in. The moshpit starts to take a darker edge. There are a couple of guys who are pushing the line of what’s camaraderie and what is going too far, but it remains civil. Although there is a verbal altercation between a muscly topless short man and a seven foot tall bloke.

There are a few technical issues throughout the set, mainly problems with the monitors, and lighting going directly into the band’s eyes from the rig. Dwyer finds it especially hard to get the spotlight out of his eyes after repeated requests to the lighting man, but it’s no issue. The mood never dies down, the tempo never lulls, and the show continues on.

No gimmicks, no performance theatrics; just the band and the audience.

Dwyer bids Birmingham a good night and says this will be their last song. The band ends on ‘C’, a boogieing jam that crescendos into perfectly danceable lines and memorable riffs with building sections that bring you back into the jam. In famous Osees style, there is no encore.

They’re a tour du force, a band to be reckoned with, and one that has inspired many. Osees are a revelatory experience live and even with a support that I didn’t like, I went away with no regrets.

To summarise, Osees are one of the best acts touring in the world right now and if you haven’t seen them you should cut off a leg to see them… See them… SEE THEM NOW. That’s is all.

Osees @ The Crossing 26.05.23 / Photographer Connor Pope

For more from Osees go to: www.theeohsees.com
For more from Psychic Graveyard go to www.psychicgraveyard.com

To find more gigs by This is Tmrw check go to: www.thisistmrw.co.uk
For more about what’s going on at The Crossing got to: www.thecrossingdigbeth.co.uk

June 2, 2023

Paris Memories: Delicate Yet Uneven Drama Depicts Life After Trauma

Writer Jimmy Dougan / Press Images courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment

How do you recover from something so traumatic that you find yourself physically unable to remember it happening? This is the question faced by Mia (Virginie Efira) in Paris Memories, a powerful yet heavy-handed drama from director Alice Winocour.

Screened as a low-key epilogue of sorts to this year’s Flatpack Festival and hosted by Film Hub Midlands, this modest film is worth catching for Efira’s devastating central performance.

Winocour’s film delves into Mia’s traumatised psyche in the aftermath of a mass shooting in a Parisian bistro. Her recovery is hindered by her inability to recall exactly what happened in the moments following the first shots. “Erased from my memory,” she remarks in a voiceover, “What happened then”’

Winocour, sensibly, never reveals the motive of the attackers and instead foregrounds Mia’s recovery and her experiences with a group of fellow survivors. But the story has its basis in very real, very tragic circumstances – Winocour’s brother is a Bataclan survivor and communicated with his sister via text as he hid from three gunmen aligned with the Islamic State, and Winocour also later took inspiration from message boards and forums used by survivors in the aftermath of the attacks.

Winocour is clever still to keep Mia as a bit of a blank slate. She lives in a trendy apartment and is in a steady if dull relationship with a doctor, Vincent (Grégoire Colin). She is a journalist and translates Russian for an artsy radio station. The point Winocour makes is that Mia could be any one of us. The world is a fundamentally unknowable place, and terrorist acts are by their nature unexpected.

Winocour cleverly forces us to consider how we would respond to finding ourselves in such extreme scenarios, and it helps that the rendering of the attack she gives us is genuinely frightening. It’s harrowing and upsetting. Julien Lacheray’s editing is brutal. Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography switches to handheld the moment the shooting begins. It’s an astonishing sequence and recalls Polytechnique or even Elem Klimov’s Come and See in its relentless, hyper-realist Denis Villeneuve’s intensity.

Paris Memories returns obsessively to the attack and Winocour tantalisingly gives us alternate perspectives: in one hypothetical scenario, Mia locks herself in a bathroom while other victims beg to be let in. Another is from the perspective of two young people who, reasoning they may well be dead soon, hide in the air vents and kiss.

Following the attack, Mia often finds herself stuck on public transport with the deceased or passing by them in the street or hospital corridors. Winocour’s point is simple but profound: survivors very rarely revisit the memories of their trauma voluntarily. Mia is unable to find closure because her memories have fundamentally altered the way she experiences the world.

In terms of directorial choices, Winocour splits the film down the middle: one half is a tense investigative thriller depicting Mia as she tries to excavate her grief and find some semblance of a definite version of events. The other half depicts the support group for survivors where Mia begins to find some semblance of solace.

One member, Félicia (Nastya Golubeva Carax), wasn’t even present at the attack, but takes comfort in sitting at the table where her parents were murdered. Finance guru Thomas (Benoît Magimel) was celebrating his birthday but is now bleary-eyed and using crutches.

If these sequences seem heavy-handed, it’s because they are. Winocour is clearly writing and directing from a place of genuine earnestness, but they regrettably sap the momentum from the rest of the film’s investigative elements. Efira and Magimel make for a loveable duo, yet their profound insights into recovery feel overly weighted and pointed.

More affecting is Mia’s desperate wish to locate the stranger who clasped her hand and helped her stay calm during the attack, which also allows Winocour to delve into the experience of undocumented black migrants in contemporary Paris’ service industry. It’s truly powerful stuff, the image of a bloodied hand reaching out from the darkness to intertwine itself with Mia’s eliciting gasps from the audience.

And it’s anchored by a quietly colossal performance from Virginie Efira, who gives a softly devastating depiction of Mia’s psychological turmoil. In her native France, Efira’s name has become synonymous with the kind of grand, tour-de-force performances which sweep awards ceremonies. She’s working in a more contemplative register here, beautifully aligned with Mia’s inability to articulate exactly what she’s endured. The way her eyes constantly move around the room scanning for exits is heart-breaking.

The world Winocour depicts is a frightening and unknowable one, an idea enforced by Efira’s moving performance and tense, nerve-jangling flashback sequences. Even if the film feels structurally uneven and emotionally heavy-handed, Winocour’s complex depiction of womanhood post-trauma is sure to stick in your memory.

Paris Memories releases in UK cinemas on 2 June, with Birmingham showings announced soon.

June 1, 2023June 1, 2023

Melati Suryodarmo Performs 12 Hour Endurance Piece ‘I’m a Ghost in My Own House’ – At IKON Gallery Until 3 September

Words Victoria Lane / Photography Connor Pope

It is 8pm on a Friday night. Melati Suryodarmo stands in a white room situated on the first floor of the IKON Gallery. The floor is blanketed by jagged pieces of charcoal. Systemic and serene, she grinds lumps of the charcoal with a heavy stone rolling pin, seemingly unaware or unbothered by the crowd gathered to watch. The walls, her dress, and her face are covered with charcoal residue, it swirls through the air and later in the night I will find a smudge of it on my forehead.

Her calm composure and stamina shock me as by my arrival she had been repeating this action for 10 hours.

Passionate Pilgrim is the first ever UK exhibition of Melati Suryodarmo’s work. Considered one of Indonesia’s most important living artists, she is famed for her time-based performances which are considerable feats of physical and mental strength as well as performance pieces.

Mentored by famed performance artist Marina Abramović and Butoh dancer Anzu Furukawa, Suryodarmo’s work blends strands of contemporary performance with traditional influences from Indonesian cultural tradition, most notably for the works on display here the concept of rasa; the ‘essence’ of ‘feeling’ of a work of art.

The exhibition focuses on documenting the artist’s celebrated career in performance. Video screens line the walls playing excerpts from performances from 2000 to 2022. Her work is varied, but is linked by themes revolving around the strength, resilience, and the perception of the female body.

In ‘Exergie-Butter Dance’ (2000), we see the artist dance to Javanese music whilst slipping repeatedly on blocks of butter, and in ‘Sweet Dreams Sweet’ (2013) groups of young women stain each other’s clothing with dyed water.

The actions of the performers in these pieces take on a measured, meditative quality which speaks of endurance and strength.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is by far the most powerful. The piece I’m witness to, ‘I’m a Ghost in My Own House’, is noted in the exhibition guide as Suryodarmo’s “longest and most arduous work”. Suryodarmo breaks pieces of charcoal for a total of 12 hours, her exhaustion symbolic of the expenditure of life’s energy. Despite her unaffected expression, her shoulders droop, she sighs when bending to pick up pieces of charcoal and she is covered with a sheen of sweat and dust.

Performance art is a mutable medium. A piece’s meaning can change and shift based on the viewer’s perspective and the physical context in which the piece is performed. The artwork’s present stage is the West Midlands, a region famous for industrial coal mining and sizable working class.

The performance echoes the gruelling and monotonous work undertaken by the women in the mines, unsung and forgotten by many male-centric history books.

The piece also speaks of the strenuous unpaid labour undertaken by women and migrants; child care, cleaning, cooking and emotional labour, which all take mental and physical toll. Here, the repetitive motion and exhaustion of the performer brings a very physical quality to this notion. As the performance draws to a close, the artist’s white dress is stained almost completely black, symbolic of the physical traces left by the strains of modern life and the hardships faced by migrants.

As the charcoal swirls around the room and covers almost everything within the pristine white cube space, I cannot help but think of the performance as a metaphor for climate change, the expenditure of fossil fuels and its devastating effect on the environment.

Performance art is a very tricky artform to document in an impactful manner. Whilst a video may record the action, it does not convey the essence of the performance.

After the performance ends, Suryodarmo’s soiled dress and shoes are hung within the space amongst the charcoal rubble, representing a tangible link to the action of the performance. Her blackened handprints line the walls and opposite the performance area, nine charcoal drawings evoking the gestures of the performance are also hung, appearing as ghosts of the action.

Melati Suryodarmo’s exhibition runs from 17 May to 3 September 2023 with a delegated performance and a talk by the artist taking place on separate dates in May.

Passionate Pilgrim Extended takes place on Sunday 28 May from 2-4pm and viewers will get to see Suryodarmo and women from the migrant domestic worker activist group ‘Voices of Domestic Workers’ perform the piece, which promises to meditate on questions of identity, reflection, and the ‘audience gaze’.

Melati Suryodarmo’s exhibition ‘Passionate Pilgrim’ is free to visit at IKON Gallery from 17 May to 3 September 2023

For more on Melati Suryodarmo go to: www.melatisuryodarmo.com

For more on IKON Gallery go to: www.ikon-gallery.org

May 31, 2023June 1, 2023

High Key 1st Birthday Rave At The Rainbow Pub 19/05/23

Writer Beth Exley / Photographer Connor Pope

I’ve not been on a big night out in a long time. Full-time work has zapped my energy and I’ve been feeling like I don’t have much to offer to a dance floor. Needless to say, I was a little bit scared before coming tonight. It doesn’t help that my memories of The Rainbow Pub mainly revolve around the Cellar. Although I’ve had many fun nights there, it is a bit of a sweaty space that makes me feel a touch claustrophobic in my weaker moments. Today has been pretty humid. I’m wearing a thick black T-shirt.

The Cellar calls but I don’t know if I want to answer.

I’m pleasantly surprised when getting my ticket checked. We bypass the Cellar entirely and get to a space I didn’t even know existed. An airy courtyard covered by something akin to a circus tent. Warm lighting and smiling faces greet me. It’s fairly early but I can spot a nice-sized group getting their groove on to the funky garage sounds of High Key co-founder DirtyBulk. It’s just the right sound for this warm late-spring evening, and I can feel the promise of summer in the air.

I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered such sound bouncers. They tell me we’re actually in the pub’s smoking area, but whenever they have events on everyone congregates up here anyway so they decided, last minute, to move High Key upstairs. We exchange a little chit-chat as they search my bag. A few jokes are cracked, and I start to feel right at home.

As I walk through the doors, A4 posters with light blue and pastel High Key branding catch my eye. They spell out an event policy that states:

‘HIGH KEY IS A SAFER SPACE. NO HARASSMENT, NO MISOGYNY, NO RACISM, NO TRANSPHOBIA, NO HOMOPHOBIA. IF YOU FEEL UNSAFE, PLEASE SPEAK TO SECURITY OR INFORM THE HIGH KEY CREW – WE HAVE A ZERO TOLERANCE FOR DISCRIMINATION AT OUR EVENTS.’

I’m impressed. As I’m sure most of us have, I’ve had my fair share of sketchy encounters in Birmingham clubs and I have often left nights out feeling scared, on edge, or just a bit gross after unwanted touches or comments. So, I can only imagine how rough people who don’t fit into my fairly privileged category have it out there.

Setting out such great boundaries at the entrance and having them be so prominent, as well as ensuring the bouncers are the kind of people that you could approach for help, is such an important (and easy) step for event organisers to take. It’s amazing you don’t see these safe space policies more often really, considering how widespread the harassment issue is in the nightlife scene.

High Key have immediately gained my respect for making this such a central part of the entry process.

I buy a pint – I’m alone and slightly self-conscious. But before I even have the chance to be fully aware I’m actually on a night out by myself, someone dances over and introduces themselves. We exchange a slightly sweaty hug, and the music pulsates through me. Dirty Bulk has been replaced by Malado on the decks and she really looks and sounds like she’s having fun up there.

The tunes have gotten a bit techier and the crowd has filled up some more. There’s a mix of Kelis’s ‘Milkshake’ at one point that really gets everyone going. Before I know it, I’m spinning this stranger round like we’re the lead roles in some ballet. Hands clasping together as if we’ve been friends for years. I don’t know this person’s name, but I owe them one.

As Karakat takes to the stage I’ve fully embraced my big night out. The music is taking a funkier turn as it moves into jungle territory. Looking around, the crowd is pure good vibes, everyone is smiling and getting on. My dance moves become slightly more suspect, but all self-consciousness has evaporated. The High Key team has done it; they’ve carved out such a lovely, welcoming, and safe space. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so at ease in a nightlife space as a solo woman.

I want to stay longer but, unfortunately, I have work in the morning and a last bus that I need to catch so I don’t end up dropping big money on an uber. I say my goodbyes to my unknown dance partners and the lovely bouncers.

I’m gutted to be missing the last few sets of the night from Murder He Wrote and Ringers, I’ve listened to solid mixes from them both before. But I make my peace with having to leave as I’m safe in the knowledge that it definitely won’t be long before I return to a High Key Night.

High Key 1^st Birthday @ The Rainbow 19.05.23 / Connor Pope