Category: BReviews

Words by Sasha Holt / Pics by Ella Carman

Well hello fashion fabulous, it’s your Stylist in Surburbia back with another dose of sartorial critique.

This Sunday I had a pass for the most hyped style event in the Midlands – Style Birmingham Live ’15. So did it live up to its name? Well my lovelies I’ll walk you through it.

On entering the venue I could hear loud Techno/Pop and what sounded like a cocktail party going on; I was running late so most of the guests were already enjoying their complimentary drink at the bar. No time for me to quench my thirst however, as I was ushered to my seat.

The show guide on my seat was impressively glossy, and had helpfully categorised the different labels that were showing and their key looks – so I was anxious to see how they would deliver on what looked very promising (fashion wise) for the upcoming seasons.

But just before I start on what came before me on the catwalk (that wouldn’t have gone amiss at LFW ) I have to touch on the fashion crowd that nestled around the road to style salvation. It may just be me, but why is mediocrity accepted and clothing constipation the norm these days? I guess avant garde garb is not for everyone, but come on fashion show attendees… get a mirror and use it. However a beautiful blogger called Bella & Robot also arrived late and we were serendipitously sat together.

Anyway back to the designers from our fabulous high street that did put some thought and effort in to show innovative and interesting looks. Although with varying degrees of success – ranging from ‘I would kill for that outfit’ to ‘I would rather wear a bin bag.’ So let’s start with the worst because that’s always the most fun.

A relative newcomer to our Birmingham high street was Liquor Store and their take on ‘American Heritage’, whatever that means. As a very knowledgeable fashion A-lister sat next to me pointed out, “it was hard to tell which was men’s and which was women’s wear”.

It may have just been the styling, but every outfit was fiercely masculine – from the heavy knit to fishermen yellow anoraks and clunky brown boots. I don’t know any woman, unless she was training as a lumberjack, who would wear these outfits in public? Again, it may have just been the styling of the looks, so I’m game to give them a second look, but that’s all you get from this fashion assassin on their range at Style Birmingham Live ’15.

Another label jockeying for the position of ‘who really wears these clothes?’ was Lipsy. The least said about them the better, but just to remark they sent down dress after dress of the cheap lace creations you would expect from a brand that has a certain well known celebrity doing a certain diffusion line for them. Think brash and unsophisticated, always trying too hard, and you have what Lipsy vomited onto the catwalk.

But Top Shop were the biggest disappointment to me, promising so much with a Vintage mix theme but ending up looking like the rejects from a low grade jumble sale.

There were certain key pieces, such as the faux fur gilets that we also saw in hippie looks of Debenhams and New Look, that could have saved them; but all in all it was too much leopard faux fur coat and no knickers for the high street giant. Although this too may have been another case of sack the stylist, so Top Shop win me back please with some great Autumn and Winter pieces in store.

The rest of the labels were all a bit bland nothing to write home about; a bit of metallics by Coast, florals by Jigsaw, and elements of geometric innovation by River Island – all catering pieces that you could mix in with more exciting separates.

Then there was a return to structured tailoring from our two department stores, John Lewis and House of Fraser, weaving in some pastels and neutral tones. Not terribly exciting but pleasant enough.

Red tones also seemed to be a common theme, mixed with luxe fabrics of tweed, lace and satin. These were shown to great effect by Marks & Spencer and the higher end of the high street, including Reiss and Cos – not forgetting covetous arm candy bags from Radley.

But the stand out offerings from the Style Birmingham Live ’15 catwalk, for me, had to be a combination of three. Firstly, Disorders’ cutting edge outerwear. Both male and female outfits were simply superb and embodied everything that fashion should stand for: innovation, inspiration and enjoyment. Using a mix of oriental silks, tartans and pin stripes they lit the catwalk on fire with their designs at this show.

Then we had an outstanding, fantastic suede Christmas tree sent down the catwalk from Mango; as the tassels sashayed from side to side it physically took my breath away. I purchased said coat the next day.

Now last but not least were the sensual lingerie offerings from Marks & Spencer. Satin shorts with balcony bras that seemed to effortlessly form as one with the body rather than as necessary appendages. Again, I was inspired to strut my own stuff in those regal undergarments – so watch out Mr Stylist in Suburbia.

So to sum up my time at Style Birmingham Live ’15, in one word I would have to say underwhelming. It promised so much and had all the right ingredients, but just did not quite make the perfect result.

I believe in the fashion credentials of Birmingham and would love to see more risks taken and more confidence shown. It’s a reflection of how we can be as a city, never standing on our soapboxes to extol our own virtues. Well now is our time; come on Brummies, let’s start a style revolution.

Stay fashionable suburbia and most importantly stay you.

For more on Style Birmingham Live, visit http://stylebirminghamlive.com/

For more on Style Birmingham, http://stylebham.com/

Words & pics by Ed King @edking2210

The problem with a personal pleasure is just that, you enjoy something; the object of desire is isolated to one.

This rather lonely appreciation, especially of music, can make you a bore – inciting social tumbleweed as you spread your excitement across a Friday night pub table.

And as a man who discovered Tori Amos in his early teens, I speak from experience.

Collective enthusiasm, however, seems to have a much bigger voice; when you address a mob, from shoppers on a Saturday to patriots in a stadium, you’ve simply got more chance to be heard. So as I creep into the Arcadian Centre to watch Ólafur Arnalds, on soggy Tuesday evening, I am playing with rhetoric.

Since seeing the unassuming black & white poster on the Glee Club corridor wall last September I have been itching for tonight’s gig, but I am relatively late to this party; I first listened to Arnalds‘s sophomore classical release, …and they have escaped the weight of darkness, about 2 years ago. It hooked me, it broke me; but so far I’ve only had two people from my esoteric peer group (Facebook) corroborate this new found fascination. So how do I best review this concert, how do I position this gig, how do I engage a room of potentially deaf ears?

Hold on…

There is a queue, stretching halfway round the top level of the Arcadian. And tonight is £20 a ticket.

I snap some pictures as proof before nestling into the (still growing) queue behind an old friend, his wife and the friend they’ve come with. So makes that five. On the door the stewards are checking “do you have a ticket for this evening?” with the tired familiarity of repetition, and as I stag my way into the main room it’s already standing room only.

Shutting the bar early, to “create that Kate Bush effect”, the audience are complicit and settled. The stage is set with a grand piano, laptops, a free standing bass drum, and six seats for accompaniment.

It’s a big set up on a small stage, but I’m pleased to see so many places set for other musicians. Ólafur Arnalds is exemplary in his compositions for keys, wind and string, but I didn’t know how much would make it onto the limited Glee Club rostrum.  There’s also a curious arrangement of strip lights – and the large GLEE lettering, that usually makes up the backdrop, has been covered in black cloth.

I take my default position by the EXIT sign and nurse the only glass of red wine I’ll get to order tonight. As the lights dim, a hushed reverence grips the crowd and I catch my last glimpse of earnest faces, tweed, and neatly trimmed beards. This is, for a large part, a crowd who ‘know’; I lick the back of my teeth and hate myself for it immediately.

The ensemble take their positions on stage, before Ólafur Arnalds slides quietly behind the grand piano and simply starts to play; soft keys introducing a slow violin, before incremental layers lead us away from Arnalds’s meticulous restraint. The accompanying instruments ebb and flow, filling the room and releasing it again.

Moving through a taste of the Broadchurch soundtrack, ‘Danny’s Funeral’, and a selected proffering from Arnalds’s last studio album, For Now I Am Winter, the quality of sound coming of the stage is excellent.  But it is track four, the opener on Arnalds’s 2011 Living Room Songs EP (seven tracks recorded in seven days, in his living room), that begins to stamp the evening’s authority; ‘Fyrsta’, or ‘first’ as it translates, comes out across the Glee Club in as close to perfection as I believe is possible on a weekday. I lean against a pillar on the back wall, peering at the stage like child sneaking into an adult’s Christmas party. I don’t quite know what to do.

After small break and nervous clap, like a good classical audience should, Ólafur Arnalds introduces himself and the other artists on stage. I am somewhat surprised to see a Trombone and French Horn in tow, with brass not being easily prominent in what I know of his material; but the man sounds like his music and I just want to shut up and listen.

The next track is ‘Poland’, which featured on the oddly incongruous soundtrack to Another Happy Day but was written whilst touring across the eponymous country – with only driving and drinking to pass by the hours. It’s mournful, hopeful and reserved, and leaves an air of comfortable melancholy hanging over the room.

The rest of the set is a hopscotch of tracks from either Broadchurch or For Now I Am Winter; albeit with a couple of tracks, ‘Montage’ and ‘I Felt So Guilty’, being unknown elements to me. Midway, the mystery of the free standing bass drum is answered as vocalist Arnór Dan joins the stage for a further five tracks, again from either Broadchurch or For Now I Am Winter. Dan’s voice is soft and determined, and usually fighting its way to the top of Agent Fresco’s ‘sideways-pulling polyrhythms and spasmodic eruptions of aggressive guitar’, but also a moving adornment to Arnald’s compositions. It’s a spectacular affair, but one that sadly limits the set list, again, to…

The last two tracks, however, return to Living Room Songs – as the sublime and simple ‘Near Light’ and ‘Lag fyrir Ömmu’ (translated as ‘song for Grandma’, the woman who reportedly compelled her grandson’s more classical endevours) close what has been a beautiful concert. My only gripe, for there is always a gripe, would be the number of soundtrack songs that dominated the set list – leaving little room for Arnalds’s wider body of work.

Not a single track from his heartbreaking 2010 album, …and they have escaped the weight of darkness, or the masterful 2009 Found Songs EP, made it onto the stage tonight. But with the Broadchurch series 1 & 2 soundtracks released in January, alongside a recent move to the Mercury Classics imprint, perhaps this is more strategy than pandering. Or perhaps it’s a little of both. After the whole stage takes a bow, I layer up and make my way out with the crowd – running into yet more people I didn’t expect to see tonight and one I thought I might.

Ólafur Arnalds is a superb voice in the burgeoning scene of contemporary composers – crossing the classical/electronica divide with more depth and deftness than most (Max Cooper and Nils Frahm not too far behind). But another success of this evening has been the numbers that attended; I honestly didn’t know how well received this Icelandic composer would be. The last time Arnalds played in Birmingham was upstairs at the Hare & Hounds.

Mind you, in between that gig (2007) and this gig there have been some widely celebrated successes for Ólafur Arnalds – including the omnipresent recognition you get from a BAFTA winning soundtrack. But Birmingham is still not the easiest place to pack out a venue, and it was a most welcome surprise to turn up and see that queue – for a contemporary composer on a miserable February weekday; I feel a strange civic pride.

Perhaps the next garrulous endorsements I give, even in alcohol tinged tones, won’t fall as flat as they did in those formative years. Perhaps. To everyone who wasn’t queuing up outside the Glee Room tonight, I apologise in advance.

For more on Ólafur Arnalds, visit http://olafurarnalds.com/

For further listings from The Glee Club (B’ham), including all comedy and live music shows, visit https://www.glee.co.uk/birmingham/

For more from Birmingham Promoters, visit http://birminghampromoters.com/