BPreviews Archives - Page 23 of 69 -

November 7, 2017November 7, 2017

BPREVIEW: J Hus @ O2 Academy (B’ham) 09.11.17

Words by Cameron Goodyer

On Thursday 9^th November, J Hus comes to the O2 Academy Birmingham. Doors open at 7pm, with the event billed as sold out at the time of writing – please check with the venue or respectable ticket outlets before purchasing. For direct gig info, including venue details, click here.

J Hus continues his headline tour across the UK with dates at the Manchester Academy (10^th Nov), Rock City Nottingham (14^th Nov), O2 Academy Brixton – London (15^th Nov), Alexandra Palace – London (30^th Nov) The LCR – University of East Anglia, Norwich (6^th Dec). Click here for full tour details, as presented by SJM Concerts/Gigs and Tours.

Thursday 9^th November marks the midpoint of the UK leg of J Hus’ European tour, following the release of his latest album ‘Common Sense’ which went straight to No3 on the iTunes chart and flew through the UK albums chart, being hailed as one of the best British Breakthrough albums of the year. This in mind, it’s unsurprising that every UK date, including this one, is sold out.

Booming out of rolled down car windows and out of almost every late night club won’t be the only places you’ll be hearing hits such as ‘Did You See’ & ‘Playing Sport’ as ‘The Fisherman’, as J Hus is more colloquially known, graces the O2 Academy in Birmingham this coming Thursday. J Hus earned this title through his considerable collection of ‘fisherman style hats’, an iconic accessory which became such a key part of his image he even wrote a song about it. And something that we may be able to see first-hand on Thursday 9^th November.

J Hus was and is a true pioneer in the sound that, once unique, is now deeply rooted into the ideology of modern day grime. Although once is the key word as since his skyrocket in success many have tried to impersonate his style, his sound, his character. In some ways, you could say it’s been diluted down but for sure it’s becoming more and more noticeable to the point where it’s no longer just his style – it’s the style he shaped.

J Hus is as a born and bred Londoner with strong African essence flowing throughout his music most likely inspired by his, Gambian decent on his mother’s side.

After aspiring to take up rapping, it took the push of two friends (and later managers) to help him out and take the leap into professionalism, coming after the release of a few tracks online. Summer 2015 was the beginning of the boom for J Hus as he released ‘Lean & Bop’, a simple yet catchy song that makes your body want to jive. This one song, streaming six million times (double that now), and getting its own dance, soon became the summer club anthem being blasted everywhere and remixed countless times.

2016 was no slacking point following this success and proving he was no one hit wonder, J Hus released the single ‘Friendly’(receiving a nomination at the MOBO Awards) alongside, ‘Playing Sports’, ‘Liar Liar’ (remix) and ‘Solo One’ – not bad for someone whose career has, in some ways, only just begun.

Alongside an article about him in The Guardian and signing to Epic Records, this year has been full of hits and features for J Hus. Including a collaboration with arguably one of the biggest current UK artists and a godfather to the grime scene, Stormzy.

At present, J Hus’ name is scattered all over the UK charts, not only via his features but his solo single ‘Did You See’ coming in at No9 and I’m sure the O2 Academy Birmingham crowd will give a very warm welcome to this new star in his highly anticipated headline show.

‘Did You See’ – J Hus

J Hus comes to the O2 Academy Birmingham on 9^th November, as part of a UK wide headline tours – for full tour dates and details, visit www.gigsandtours.com/tour/j-hus

For more on J Hus, visit www.jhusmusic.com

For more from Birmingham O2 Academy, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2academybirmingham

For full gig listings from SJM Concerts/Gigs and Tours, visit www.gigsandtours.com

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October 27, 2017

BPREVIEW: Tropical Soundclash @ Hare & Hounds 28.10.17

Words by Charlotte Heap

Birmingham based DJ and producer, Sam Redmore, is collaborating with Spinx and The Mighty Magoo to present Tropical Sounclash at the Hare & Hounds on Saturady 28^th October.

Doors open at 9pm with music running until 2am. Entry is free before 10, with a pay on the door charge of £5 thereafter. For direct event info, including venue details, click here.

Many may be familiar with Sam Redmore’s eclectic style from his previous music event Freestyle, which spent many years as a familiar feature of the Birmingham music scene – starting at The Bull’s Head, before moving the Hare & Hounds in 2014. Since then, Redmore’s star has continued to rise, releasing music on 2 Dogs and Felt Tip, alongside remixing numerous artists including DJ Vadim.

Freestyle was a showcase event for local hip-hop luminaries, while Redmore’s remixes began to regularly feature on BBC 6 Music whilst the man behind them made increasingly frequent guest appearances on Craig Charles’ Funk & Soul show.

Birmingham Review interviewed Sam Redmore back in 2014, when Freestyle moved to the Hare & Hounds, where he discussed his desire to “support local artists, and the music scene in general”. Three years to the month later and Redmore clearly feels the time is now ripe for a new, fruitier fixture to the Hare’s already well-respected events calendar – adopting the name Tropical Soundclash.

To deliver this, Sam Redmore has reunited with co-host Spinx for the first time in over a year, an artist also known for his soulful and varied sets who is fresh from a summer schedule of festivals including Shambala, Green Man, Samphire and Glastonbury. The pair will be joined by the local percussionist Mighty Magoo, who will be playing on live percussion at the Tropical Soundclash events.

Neither Sam Redmore not Spinx are new to the world of music promotion, but Tropical Soundclash is a shift away from Freestyle’s familiar hip-hop focus which may surprise some of their more regular crowd.

Perhaps anticipating people’s curiosity, but also showing his flair for promotion, Redmore has put together a Spotify playlist to tempt the uncommitted – giving some weight to the promise that Tropical Soundclash will combine ‘afrobeat, highlife, samba, salsa and more with house, broken beat and bass’.

Sam Redmore’s Tropical Sounclash Spotify Playlist:

Tropical Soundclash comes to the Hare & Hounds on Saturday 28th October, running from 9pm to 2am. For more on Tropical Soundclash, including venue details, click here.

For more from Hare & Hounds, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

October 25, 2017October 25, 2017

BPREVIEW: Screening Rights Film Festival @ mac 26.10-01.11.17

Words by Heather Kincaid

Returning for its third year in 2017, Screening Rights Film Festival is Birmingham’s international festival of social justice film –screenings features from around the world, with Q&A sessions and panel discussions on the themes and issues they address.

Held at mac, Screening Rights Film Festival 2017 will run from Thursday 26 October until Wednesday 1 November – with ticket deals available for people booking multiple screenings. For more info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

According to the Screening Rights Film Festival website, ‘The need for heartfelt films about the depths of human adversity around the world has grown enormously in recent decades’ – as the festival organisers seek to inspire and develop debate by shining a light on filmmakers responding to major contemporary concerns. At the heart of the project is the question of the potential for film, both drama and documentary, ‘to affect, or even effect, personal, social and political change’, whether by informing, provoking, moving, inciting action, connecting people or simply bearing witness to events.

Emerging out of research conducted by former University of Birmingham film lecturer Dr Michele Aaron, Screening Rights Film Festival has spent the last couple of years steadily establishing a place in the city’s cultural calendar. With Aaron having recently taken up a post at Warwick, this year the festival has been helped by the joint support of both universities, as well as a base at mac Birmingham.

Building on her long-held interest in the ethics of film and spectatorship, the project was originally kicked off by a symposium on ‘Screening Vulnerability’, beginning as an event series co-organised by Aaron and PhD student, John Horne. In 2016, it expanded to encompass twelve films screened in five different venues. This year, however, the focus has narrowed again, with just nine films being shown at mac. It’s a little smaller then, but the greater simplicity afforded by a single, centralised location might well work in the festival’s favour in terms of attracting audiences.

Unsurprisingly, the films being shown at the Screening Rights Film Festival reflect the organisers’ specific areas of expertise and investigation, as well as being influenced by hot topics on the global sociopolitical stage. Dr Aaron has described how, in recent years, her focus has shifted from writing about “power and ethics of representation and spectatorship in relationship to, principally, mainstream English cinema,” and towards a more outward-looking approach with an interest in film practice, often collaborating with filmmakers and community groups.

Among the manifestations of this change has been an intensive smartphone filmmaking course delivered to university students from the West Bank with the help of Palestinian youth advocacy agency, Sharek. The best short film to come out of that ‘Tammayaz’ scheme was screened at last year’s Screening Rights Film Festival, alongside Mohamed Jabaly’s and Abu Marzouq’s Ambulance. Meanwhile, John Horne’s PhD thesis concerns the ‘western’ spectator and the ‘Arab Spring’. Accordingly, films from and/or about the Middle East feature prominently on this year’s programme, making up a total of six out of the nine films being shown.

2017’s line-up includes the documentary Ghost Hunting, in which Palestinian director Raed Andoni confronts his demons head-on by recruiting a team to help him build a replica of the Israeli interrogation centre where he was held at the age of 18.

Drama Tramontane follows the struggle of a young Lebanese man to uncover the truth about his origins and identity after discovering that his ID card is a forgery; while Raving Iran sees two DJs forced to make a choice between home and family or moving abroad to pursue their passion for forbidden ‘Western’ music.

In The Other Side of Home, a Turkish woman raises questions about identity in a moving, personal tribute to the still-denied Armenian genocide of 1915; in Mr Gay Syria, the crowdfunded debut feature of Ayşe Toprak, a group of LGBT Syrian refugees kick back against intolerance in Turkey.

There’s also Notes to Eternity, a more ‘impressionistic meditation’ on the Israel-Palestine conflict, centred on the lives and ideas of prominent thinkers and Israeli policy critics Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Sara Roy and Robert Fisk.

Another area of interest for the festival’s creators has been depictions of illness, madness and even death on screen. Among Aaron’s more recent projects, for example, has been the Life: Moving exhibition, comprising a series of films created with residents of Erdington’s John Taylor Hospice, lately displayed at Birmingham REP as part of a wider UK and international tour.

This year, Screening Rights Film Festival has joined forces with Flatpack Assemble to present a screening of Jennifer Brea’s Unrest, which charts the director’s own experience of living with ME, otherwise known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Despite the fact that thousands of people worldwide independently attest to similar symptoms, medical science has so far failed to offer any explanation for the condition, leading many to conclude that it is purely psychosomatic. In an attempt to conduct some investigations of her own and potentially change attitudes towards the illness, Brea connected with fellow sufferers, piecing together her film from recorded Skype interviews, iPhone footage and professionally shot vérité.

Coinciding with mac Birmingham’s ongoing Women and Protest season (13 September – 26 November), Jaha Dukureh also uses personal experience as a springboard for her film Jaha’s Promise. Now based in the US, the activist began her life in Gambia where a significant number of girls are subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) during infancy. Having been cut at just a week old, Jaha herself did not discover the truth or what it would mean for her until she was married to an older man at the age of 15. After having a daughter of her own, however, she vowed to return to her home country to confront its deeply embedded culture of FGM, whatever the cost.

Finally, Nick de Pencier’s Black Code uses The Citizen Lab’s 2009 exposure of global internet spy ring ‘Ghostnet’ as a starting point for a chilling exploration of 21^stCentury surveillance culture. In an unnerving trailer that combines archive footage with satellite imagery and CCTV-style shots, Citizen Lab director Dr Ronald Deibert describes the highly detailed and growing “digital exhaust” produced by Internet users and how three developments – mobile devices, social media and cloud computing – have resulted in “the most profound change in communication technology in the whole of human history”.

But this isn’t just a case of emails being intercepted: there are hints of cameras and audio devices being hacked and switched on unbeknownst to owners, and documents being extracted from hard-drive storage. “This is where Big Data meets Big Brother,” the trailer concludes. Prepare to leave feeling a little paranoid…

Unrest – @ mac 27.10.17 / Screening Rights Film Festival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWZ1_-7KOS4

Screening Rights International Film Festival is at mac Birmingham from Thursday 26 October until Wednesday 1 November – ticket deals are available for people booking multiple screenings. For more info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

For more on Screening Rights Film Festival, visit www.screeningrights.org

For more information about mac Birmingham, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.macbirmingham.co.uk

October 24, 2017

BPREVIEW: The War of the Worlds @ Old Joint Stock Theatre 25-31.10.2017

Words by Lucy Mounfield

Running from Wednesday 25^th to Tuesday 31^st October, Tin Robot Theatre presents The War of the Worlds at the Old Joint Stock Theatre. For direct event information, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Tin Robot Theatre is a Midlands-based company led by director Adam Carver, who is also an associate of the Old Joint Stock Theatre. Having only been established a few short years, Tin Robot Theatre have already built an impressive back catalogue of adaptations including Anthony Burgess’s infamous A Clockwork Orange, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey and Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Tell-Tale Heart.

It seems only right, then, that they take on H. G. Wells’ science fiction masterpiece The War of the Worlds – the long revered story of an alien invasion from Mars. As a first-person narrative, The War of the Worlds is an intimate and brutal depiction of mental trauma wherein Wells documents the fragmented mind in an uncertain and threatening environment.

Wells wrote the novel in 1898, but The War of the Worlds has since spawned numerous film, television and theatre adaptations; clearly, this story of an alien invasion can be adapted for modern audiences. In 1938, Orson Welles directed and narrated an hour long adaptation of the novel – broadcast as a Halloween Special on CBS in America, as part of the station’s drama anthology The Mercury Theatre on the Air. The broadcast was so powerful that many listeners, reportedly, believed the news bulletin format to be real and that Earth was indeed under attack from Martians.

Then in 1978, Jeff Wayne released his concept album based on the book, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, which proved to be a phenomenal success – selling millions of albums across the world and spawning a long running musical production.

In 2005, the Tom Cruise film adaptation utilised an enormous blockbuster budget to create the massive alien tripods and terrifying invasion scenes. However, the Hollywood penchant for dizzying CGI did not always push the story forward; we saw the conflict in minute detail, but the silver screen protagonist lacked the emotional range that Wells imbued his original central character with.

So, what can Tin Robot Theatre bring to this canon of invasion stories? Adam Carver, the director of the Midlands based company, offers a self-assured statement on his website:

‘Our work is about challenging expectations, and rethinking adaptation. We believe in story, and champion the stories of Others; our work has focused on identity (in its many guises), its construction, and relation to popular and dominant culture. We make “full-fat” theatre. We believe in theatre as an experience beginning the moment the audience arrives, transforming space and bringing our distinctive visual style to breathe new life into the familiar.’

Producing such an expansive and explosive piece in the Old Joint Stock’s relatively small theatre space may be a hard task. But great theatre often utilises the audience’s imagination, and this is something Tin Robot Theatre are seemingly adept at doing.

As well as a visual transformation of the space, the production will utilise an ‘interactive soundscape’ to create a sense of scale. From music to the sound of the Earth’s frequency, Tin Robot Theatre’s production of The War of the Worlds promises to attack many of our senses whilst immersing us into the terrifying world of an alien invasion.

Tin Robot Theatre presents The War of the Worlds, running at the Old Joint Stock Theatre from 25^th to 31^st October. For direct event information, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

For more on Tin Robot Theatre, visit www.adamgcarver.com/theatre/tin-robot-theatre/

For more from the Old Joint Stock, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.oldjointstock.co.uk

October 24, 2017October 23, 2017

BPREVIEW: Kioko + Ed Geater, Kofi Stone @ O2 Academy 26.10.17

Words by Ed King

On Thursday 26^th October, the Birmingham based ska/reggae collective, Kioko, perform a special home town show at the O2 Academy – with support from Ed Geater and Kofi Stone.

Doors open at 7pm, with tickets priced at £9 (+ booking fee) – as presented by DHP Family. For direct gig info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

Birmingham reggae… not often you see those two words throw together these days, at least not unless Basil Gabbidon and friends are about to swagger on stage (and Gaw’d love ‘em when they do). But now this moniker can introduce a younger, leaner, smarter looking ensemble, as Kioko have been clawing their way across festival sites and music industry desks since their debut True What They Say EP back in 2014. And the seven piece have accumulated a fair amount of excitement too, bringing a fervent live show to pretty much every stage they grace… even if they do end up shouting the wrong town name to the crowd.

Picked up by BBC Introducing, Kioko have played respectable festivals including Glastonbury, Kendal Calling and Reading. But their support sets that have held some significant impact too – opening for luminaries including Dub Pistols, Lee Scratch Perry and The Wailers. So if they’re looking to build a portfolio of endorsement from the golden era of reggae, there’s only a few more until they get the complete set.

But Thursday 26^th October is their show, with support from some more homespun talent in the form of hip hop producer and emcee Kofi Stone, and the one-man-six-string beat machine that is Ed Geater. And after chewing a diary for a few hours, we’ve landed on ‘STONKING’ as the line up’s official description.

Coming to the 600 capacity room at the O2 Academy, this is a big gig in more ways than one. But the momentum of love and support has been building behind it so we’re fingers crossed for a sell out – the heavens know the line up deserves one. So if you want to guarantee your place to see Kioko headline their homecoming, you might not want to not drag your ticket buying heels for to long.

‘Tired of Lying’ – Kioko

Kioko come to the O2 Academy on Thursday 26^th October, with support from Ed Geater and Kofie Stone – as presented by DHP Family. For direct gig info, including venue details and online ticket sales, click here.

For more on Kioko, visit www.soundcloud.com/kiokomusicuk

For more on Ed Geater, visit www.edgeater.co.uk

For more on Kofi Stone, visit www.soundcloud.com/kofistone

For more from DHP Family, including all tours and venues, visit www.dhpfamily.com

For more from the O2 Academy, including full event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.academymusicgroup.com/o2academybirmingham