Nick Park / Men / Marina Lewycka / DocFest review
Fuse.
Features.Short Fuse. Editorial Feeling young again
How old do you feel today? Perhaps with all the wintry weather all you’ve been doing lately is complain about the cold and feel a little sapped of energy, or maybe with, ever mounting work, you have not been out of an evening in what feels like years. Oh God, you’re slipping slowly towards the world of comfortable slippers and cocoa before bedtime. Fear not, for with the help of this week’s Fuse you can reminisce about your childhood and feel revitalise by the warm glowing memory of those innocent days that should help banish the chilly nights of November*. If you quickly browse back a page you will notice two familiar characters adorn the cover of Fuse. Surely everyone amongst us, including the international students, recognises Wallace and Gromit and still enjoys the immense family fun they provide. If you don’t, you are probably pretentious. And to celebrate the 20th anniversary of this lovable duo, Nick Park and Aardman Animations have digitally re-mastered their first adventure, A Grand Day Out, which was shown at London Film Festival. As we were there too, we went along to the screening and also went to the special press conference with Nick Park, which is our centre spread feature in this issue of Fuse.
Off the beaten track and into the leftfield
Clubbers’Guide Offbeat The Raynor Lounge Name of the night Offbeat. Tagline Sheffield’s real indie night. Who runs it Chris and Gill AKA Dr and Mrs Offbeat. When is it on and how often is it Friday nights; every 2 to 3 weeks. Where is it The Raynor Lounge. What type of music will be playing Leftfield indie, both past and present, with a slight bent towards the fey, the noisy or the eccentric. Think Los Campesinos!, Belle & Sebastian, Slow Club,
The Shins, The Smiths, Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, The Fall, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Camera Obscura, Future Of The Left, Animal Collective, Magnetic Fields etc. The hosts very much welcome requests, bring 20,000+ tracks with us, and deliberately avoid playing the same ones every time - John Peel’s motto of ‘something I know you’ll like followed by something I think you’ll like’ is appropriate guidance. Door Tax £3, pay on the door. No advance tickets; it’s first come first served. Standard attire/uniform No uniform required, though observations from the DJ booth suggest a scruffy yet stylish look for the boys, and perhaps some sort of Hello Kitty/Karen O/Mad Menchic hybrid for the girls. Or a Pavement T-shirt. Who’s it for Anyone who enjoys the music
Moments later the rodent revellers were thrown from the revolving dancefloor. that is played and is as happy General Info from the last 10 years and to hear something they The playlist never attempts heaps of historical Offbeat haven’t heard before to follow particular scenes, info. as something they there’s always play a mix of have. Offbeat attracts old and new songs that Next event a very diverse crowd in don’t get played much or Friday, November 20, which terms of age and background, at all elsewhere. For further is a Belle & Sebastian which actually contributes info, check out www. special. Then on Friday, to the friendly and o f f b e a t s h e f f i e l d . c o m , December 11, there’s relaxed nature of the event. which has every playlist Christmas Offbeat.
MyTunes: Let’s play iPod Roulette
Fuse.
Friday November 20 2009
They possess scary things like children and talent
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If stories told in Plasticine don’t send you spinning back to a time when academic work was much simpler and you’re still feeling the dread of deadlines, then take a read of the Men feature. It’s about men, but men in a band called Men if you follow me. They possess scary things like children and mortgages and responsibility and talent. And if that doesn’t offer you reassurance, then take note of the fact that they are distinctly more capable of time management than you, holding down full-time jobs whilst being in a band. There’s plenty more besides in this week’s Fuse and if you read it all, next time someone asks you how old do you feel today you can reply: “much younger than you, you cheeky bastard!” Alistair White * This is not guaranteed and, to be honest, central heating is a more proven method of preventing hypothermia.
Name Francois.
Name Chris.
Name Ben.
Name Emily.
Course English Literature Erasmus student.
Course International Development and Planning.
Course Mechanical Engineering.
Course English Language Linguistics.
Describe your music taste in three words Hip-hop, electro, rock.
Describe your music taste in three words Alternative, chilled out.
Favourite Artist Massive Attack.
Favourite Artist The Walkmen.
Last gig you went to Massive Attack.
Favourite Album Bob Dylan – The Free Wheelin’ Bob Dylan.
Most embarrassing song on your MP3 player Abba - ‘Fernando’. iPod Roulette Puppetmastaz ‘The Hyperconcept’, Mattafix ‘Gangster Blues’, Massive Attack - ‘Exchange’, Nine - ‘Whutcha Want?’, Jay-Z ‘22 Two’s’.
Last gig you went to Bright Eyes. Most embarrassing song on your MP3 player Something by Girls Aloud. iPod Roulette The Walkmen - ‘My Old Man’; Klaxons - ‘Magick’; The Beatles - ‘Glass Onion’; M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade ‘Body Language’; The White Stripes - ‘I Can’t Wait’.
Describe your music taste in three words House, dance, dubstep. Favourite artist Swedish House Mafia. Last gig you went to Paul Van Dyk. Most embarrassing song on your MP3 player Probably the Spice Girls. iPod Roulette Ray Keith - ‘Chopper’ (Shy FX Remix); Underworld - ‘Two Months Off’; J Majik - ‘Your Sound’; Voodoo & Serano ‘Blood is Pumping’; DJ Zinc & The Ganja Kru - ‘Super Sharp Shooter’.
Name Matthew. and
Describe your music taste in three words Instrumental, electronic, ambient. Favourite Artist Flying Lotus. Favourite Album Flying Lotus – LA EP 3 X 3. Most embarrassing song on your MP3 player Bruce Springsteen; My Dad likes him. iPod Roulette Tellier, Oizo & Sebastian - ‘C.H.I.V.E.R.S’; Madlib ‘Interlude’; Mayer Hawthorne - ‘Let Me Know’; Danger Music & Sparklehorse ‘Little Girl’ (featuring Julian Casablancas); Bonobo ‘The Shark’.
Course English Language Linguistics.
and
Describe your music taste in three words Eclectic, jazz, funk. Favourite Artist Fugazi. Favourite Album Jeff Buckley – Grace. Most embarrassing song on your MP3 player The Powerpuff Girls – ‘Love Makes The World Go Round’. iPod Roulette The White Stripes - ‘There’s No Home For You Here’; New Order - ‘1963’; Coldcut - ‘Return To Margin’; Explosions in the Sky ‘Glittering Blackness’; Cool Calm Pete - ‘Lost’.
Features.Short Fuse.
Flood with black In Hindsight The Smashing Pumpkins Adore The mid ’90s were (commercially speaking) the apex of The Smashing Pumpkins’ popularity. Three best selling, critically acclaimed albums and cameos in The Simpsons were proof of the sympathy of the alternative scene fans, who relished in their catchy music and identified with singer Billy Corgan’s teenage angst-fuelled lyrics. Although fame and fortune were smiling, their foundations cracked. Touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin overdosed, with the first dying and the latter being fired. A rift occurred not only in the characteristic live sound they had developed, but also their friendship. Corgan’s mother passed away at the end of that year, spiralling the already conflicted leader into a deeper depression. The recording process of every one of their albums was always a struggle and this time it seemed to be a bigger one. Producer Brad Wood (Liz Phair, Sunny Day Real State) clashed with Billy Corgan until he was dismissed. Even acclaimed producer Rick Rubin couldn’t manage to stay on board and any recordings produced from these sessions were all scrapped. After bringing Flood (U2, Depeche Mode) back into producing duties, the
band managed to find their direction, slowly but surely. Adore wasn’t just an album, but a reinvention of Smashing Pumpkins’ sound and the development of an entire new image that would encompass the whole band as an entity, a process that seeped into their next release. Out went the alternative scene approved clothes (reminiscent of seventies rockers) and in came black garments, clerical clothes and Victorian motifs. Black was the colour that went with their gothic baptism, giving them a gloomy atmospheric presence. The subject matter reflects in the quite sombre booklet, showcasing black and white pictures faded, where old empty streets and stark autumnal images are the leitmotif. The album is pretty much impossible to categorise. It would be a disservice to call it ‘goth rock’, as there are
folk moments with sparse synthesisers (‘Once Upon a Time’ and ‘To Sheila’). It would be misdirecting to call it ‘art rock’, as guitars play more of a cameo role than a starring slot. Billy Corgan called it “electric folk”, then the even more strange category of “arcane night music”. Whatever label that’s to be applied to Adore, the album did manage to get a good reception from the critics; from Entertainment Weekly to The Guardian with even the notorious curmudgeons of Pitchfork giving the album a great score (8.1). The lyrical state of the album is perhaps the strongest point; the one that marks the moment their lyrics stopped being pure anger and became more poetic and with a broader spectrum, talking to a more varied audience in hopes of branching out, shedding the “alternative band” moniker
Poem
Samuel Valdes Lopez
The Fuse team’s thoughts Fuse will... have seen New Moon by now as we went along to one of the midnight showings. Saddos. Obviously we will have already gone to press by this point, so a gaze into the Media Hub’s crystal ball suggests that: 1) We’ll roll our eyes at just how much of a sap Bella Swan is; 2) we’ll be pretty appalled that such an unhealthy, controlling relationship is being held up as a romantic ideal; and 3) we’ll get a bit fed up with the ‘abstinence’ propaganda. However, the crystal ball also tells us that we won’t care a smidge, as the entire cast is flippin’ gorgeous. And we’re entitled to be shallow once in a while, hence this final gratuitous picture of Robert Pattinson.
Fuse misses... Fuzz Club terribly. Laughing on a Thursday night is great, but what to do after 10pm? Sit in a deserted Bar One and dance to the sound of the passing tumbleweed? Totter off to Plug and dance to the Backstreet Boys, like we can do at Embrace, Population, Roar, Pop Tarts, Leadmill, etc? And don’t get us started on “Woah-oh, it’s Propaganda”... We want our weekly Fuzz dose, and dodgy snakebite, so boo to bad finances. We also don’t appreciate the name of the Facebook group being changed to ‘Lets Go Disco’ (with the terrible absence of an apostrophe making it sound like a bunch of rented houses are off out on the town). Sneaky, sneaky.
aka Dr. Karl Kennedy from Neighbours. If you don’t inadvertently see him perform at least once during your time as a student, then you’re not trying hard enough.
Fuse is... sad to hear that keyboardist and guitarist Baria Qureshi has left one of this year’s awesome discoveries, The xx. Having missed a few live shows not so long ago, citing “exhaustion” as the cause, the news that Baria had decided to depart was hardly a surprise. We’re wishing her luck, and selfishly hoping that the newly-three group continue along the road of awesome.
Fuse was... really sad to hear of the tragic death of !!! drummer Jerry Fuchs on Monday, November 9. The 34-year-old was at an event in New York when he was killed trying to jump clear of an elevator that had become stuck. Our thoughts and condolences go out to Fuchs’ family, friends and bandmates.
With eyes like darkening clouds, She watches her reflection rise As she pours a double measure Of whisky. Waiting, holding each breath in, She builds a dam, to shield herself From the fear of him, Saying it aloud.
He steels himself, and embarks on His last hope of redemption; She becomes a river, Burbling softly over rocks and the Turbulent river-bed. His words break down the dam: The water within her breaks its banks, and Cascades like a waterfall. He hands her a tissue, But she takes, instead, his hand.
Fuse is... confused/amused by the number of musicians cropping up in movies at the moment. Tom Waits played the Devil in Doctor Parnassus and British rapper Plan B, to our utter amazement, turned up opposite Michael Caine in Harry Brown. If you wish to find an example of actors getting behind a microphone, then it shouldn’t be too hard to track down Alan Fletcher
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He stretches a hand like a bridge, The river between them Offering no quarter. Her silence denies his attempts.
Fuse is... starting to make Christmas wish lists. DVD boxsets, limited edition albums with b-sides, rarities and live recordings that no-one really cares about, and maybe, if we’re lucky, a kitten! If you’re stuck for what to get, we will be compiling a ‘Best of 2009’ in the next issue, which will keep us out of trouble momentarily. Join in by emailing us suggestions to fuse@forgetoday.com, and keep an eye on your inbox for our survey. And as we all know, ‘best of’ lists cause terrific arguments, so have a gander at NME’s ‘Top 50 of the decade’ one for some fight fuel. Crystal Castles?? Predominantly boys with guitars?? Not surprising, just disappointing. Pish.
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Jon Payne Bridges
that can alienate some listeners. Although some of the teenage angst that sold Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness to the masses was still lingering, the motifs are broader, ranging from a state of mourning (‘For Martha’) to the imperfections of a loved one (‘Ava Adore’ and ‘Daphne Descends’). This acceptance of a flawed loved one might have been a contributor to accepting Chamberlin back into the band. Again, lyrics stop being snippets of a very angry teen, growing into poetic passages of a person coming to terms with who he/she is and accepting their closest friends for what they are. Emotions create a longing atmosphere that lingers like a sonic incense in a long forgotten church. The testament of this album, even 11 years after its debut, could arguably be as one of the precursors of the current wave of bands mixing acoustic passages with keyboards and electronic sequencers. Maybe it’s an album that came before its time to find the audience for it, but certainly it was the album the band had to make before venturing into other territories. It was that feeling of catharsis that gives the album longevity. Although there will come a day when the music will sound dated, the thematic elements of Adore, mainly grief and longing, are as timeless as the feelings portrayed on the lyrics.
Fuse musings
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Interview.Marina Lewycka.
Tales of bondage and tractors
Marina Lewycka’s home in a quiet and leafy part of Sheffield reflects the writer’s modest charm; she is friendly and understated, inviting me in and immediately offering a cup of tea. Despite her recent successes, since 2005 she has had three novels published, Lewycka remains down-to-earth. Perhaps this is because although she sounds quintessentially English, she is categorically Ukrainian. She speaks with a directness and honesty that the English can sometimes struggle to muster, and it is her Ukrainian heritage which she drew on for her first published novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Lewycka’s writing is highly original, you get the feeling that only someone with her interesting background could produce work which is warm and funny, even when dealing with serious issues like immigration and, in the case of new novel We Are All Made of Glue, the IsraelPalestine conflict: “I’m quite a serious person but as a fiction writer I’ve found that I have a comic voice so I try and do both things really and sometimes it’s not easy.”
Writing is a compulsion; you just keep going
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Friday November 20 2009
Sheffield-based author Marina Lewycka has just published her third novel. She talks to Amy Patricia Smith about her work, the Israel-Palestine crisis, and the bonds that connect us all.
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Despite the positives that undoubtedly come with being a successful writer - “giving up the day job” for example - Lewycka has found that her writing has had to become more regimented: “The more books you write the harder it gets because people are always wanting you to go off on tour, to do readings and to do interviews. The awful
thing is that the more books you publish the harder it is to actually find time to sit down and write. “I’ve written five novels altogether but I’ve only had three published. In a way, I enjoyed writing the first book more than the others in the sense that I didn’t have any pressure and really no expectations; and you have all the time in the world. After that it gets harder because people expect a lot of you. I also push myself as I try to do something a little bit different as well as keeping the same voice and the same readers. “On the other hand it’s very nice to write with the knowledge that you are going to get published. So you write with a bit more confidence.” Writing seems to be a natural calling for Lewycka and despite being unpublished until she was 58, she persevered simply for the love if it: “I do enjoy writing very much. Once I get into it I really lose all sense of time. The rejection was disheartening but I think that if you’re a writer then writing is what you do, whether you want to or not. It’s a compulsion so you just keep going.” Lewycka’s writing, particularly in A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and Two Caravans, benefits from her mixed heritage by allowing her to make insightful judgements on the characteristics of various nationalities, something she is familiar with as traits within herself: “When I’m in Ukraine I’m very conscious of how British I’ve become and when I’m in Britain I often think I’m really not like these people; I’m Ukrainian.” This is demonstrated most clearly in Two Caravans. Lewycka’s second novel which follows the story of a group of immigrants from varied
nationalities. Focusing on the idealised dreams of two young Ukrainians, Lewycka skillfully depicts their gradual disillusionment and search for happiness whilst managing to retain some hilarious personal touches, creating a story that is both profound and comic, gently poking fun at everyone involved.
We are all directly involved in the crisis Although Lewycka’s humour can be quite tongue-in-cheek and playful at times it appears that not everyone appreciates it: “My Ukrainian family think the books are wonderful, but overall they are not very popular in Ukraine. Ukrainian-Ukrainians do take themselves a bit seriously. They think that the books are disrespectful because they feel that they are being stereotyped as female gold-diggers, women with big boobs and incontinent old men. Funnily enough I do a lot of Ukrainian media, yet it’s always a double-edged story.” Her most recent novel, We Are All Made of Glue, keeps Lewycka’s theme of treating serious issues along-side comedy: “The book is about bonding. It’s about what we’ve got in common as people so it’s quite a serious book in a way but I hope there are some quite funny themes too. Although it’s mainly about bonding there’s also a little bit about bondage.” Set in London, We Are All Made of Glue tells the story of Georgie who meets and begins to bond with an old lady, Naomi, “who lives in a grand house with seven
very smelly cats. It’s set in London but funnily enough the house and the old lady are both here in Sheffield.” As the bond between Georgie and Naomi grows (and Georgie begins to protect Naomi from the unwanted attentions of estate agents and property developers) Georgie finds that the old lady has a secret, leading to the more serious part of the plot about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Such a contentious topic was chosen because of Lewycka’s desire to interact with important issues the world around her: “I’m always very interested in what’s going on in current affairs; I want to be engaged with the present world and comment on it.” In the case of the IsraelPalestine conflict, Lewycka’s research was intense: “When writing a book you not only need to find out about it at a practical and historical level but you need to find out about it at an emotional level. I realised that I didn’t understand very much about the crisis so I went over there. I visited Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and I got some help from some wonderful Palestinians and Israelis who showed me maps and took me out into the places that I wrote about.” Lewycka strongly believes that there are bonds which connect everyone together, this, she says, is shown in
each of her novels, and particularly in the third: “We are all directly involved in the [Middle Eastern] crisis even if we don’t realise it. It’s something that seeps into everyday life very much and affects us in ways we don’t realise.” Lewycka’s interest in current affairs continues with her next project: “At the moment I’m writing a book
about the credit crunch. There’s so many scams and double dealings that it would work very well as a comedy because what you realise is this is completely insane.” These are wise words from a writer as talented and as perceptive as Lewycka, and if her next novel is as entertaining as her previous three she may just provide us with some much needed comic relief from the banking crisis too.
Feature.Doc/Fest 2009.
Uncovering the reel deal at Doc/Fest This year’s documentary festival saw its share of capitalist crooks, philosophising Finns, pioneering pirates, and some unexpected nudity. Peter Walsh caught the cream of the observational crop. With whistle-stop speed this year’s documentary festival came and went, breezing through the Showroom with over 1,500 delegates and over 200 docs small and large from every corner of the world. With deals for funding and distribution constantly being struck over the five days, the festival is growing in profile as the place to go to either sell or buy the big-deal docs that are going to cause waves in the next year.
Michael Moore asks ‘WTF happened to the economy?’
rooms of some genuine, if oddball, Finns. To say the film followed a retired priest, an unwilling father, a widowed husband and a singing pensioner could make you think it was a bleak and depressing tale fitting of Finnish stereotype. But the film mixed brilliant moments of unwitting slapstick with profound reflection from the subjects who were unshiftingly open with the filmmaker. An equally revealing doc was the personal portrait Bastardy, following aging
Nudity is not what you expect going into your average doc Aborigine stage actor, film star, blues guitarist, cat burglar and heroin addict Jack Charles. One of the ‘forgotten generation’ of Australian Aborigines forcefully taken from their parents in the 1950’s, Jack’s life has charted some dizzy heights and some painful lows. The film finds him living hard on the streets of Melbourne, scrounging from hit to hit. With wild hair and unkempt beard, Jack is an opinionated if unimposing character whose grand past is slowly revealed throughout the film. The revelation of Jack’s lost glory makes the tragedy
of his current state all the greater. A brilliant character portrayed without apology. Just as opinionated, but far more imposing are 90 year-old mother Josephine and her 75 year-old son Eddie. Italian-Americans from sunny San Francisco, Junior follows the endlessly quarrelsome pair as they go about their life. Conversations between them are nothing but constant banter, and the old timers make a comedy pairing too good for any onscreen comedy ever written. The delicate mix of the bitter and the sweet saw Doc/Fest audiences voting this their top pick of the festival. Another audience favourite was RIP! A Remix Manifesto a rallying call to filesharers around the world. With Lord Mandelson and
other ne’er-do-wells looking to cut off your internet for downloading music and films, now is the time for gathering a defence and RIP! is as concise a case as could ever be hoped for. Cut from the same cloth as Moore’s films, this doc mixes a wry sense of humour with expert opinions to deliver its’ impassioned point of view. Essential viewing for downloaders everywhere, look it up on a torrent site near you. Final word has to go to the festival’s special jury prize winner: Videocracy. A headin-hands horror story of the state of media and politics in Italy, this distinctively shot doc beggars belief as to quite how absurd things have got under Berlusconi’s media dictatorship. We all know that he has almost all print and
broadcast media under his control, but Videocracy expands on this to reveal a society which reveres TVpersonalities as saints, and places Silvio as the king of TV-kings. In interviews ranging from media royalty down to X Factor hopefuls, filmmaker Erik Gandini lays bare a crumbling democracy where politics is nothing but light entertainment. A powerful doc and worthy prize winner. Some of these docs might hopefully find wider cinema release, some of them may just pop up on BBC4 at two in the morning. Others might hopefully bubble up on the net. Some of them will sadly disappear completely off the radar. Whatever the opportunity, chase-up these films wherever you can.
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The result for the happy filmgoer is an offering which truly cut it as the cream of the overlooked genre, and this year’s selection did little to disappoint. Here is as wide an overview as one viewer could manage over a packed five days. Big by stature, and big by reputation, the filmmaker Michael Moore’s latest documentary Capitalism: A Love Story was exclusively screened at the festival, with the man himself beaming in afterwards by Skype to answer the audience’s plucky questions. The film tackles the global financial crisis square on, and sees
Michael putting politicians and financial experts on the spot by asking ‘what the fuck happened?’ A blunt question that needed asking, Moore approaches the issues as he does in all his films, with an impish will to poke fun at the absurdities of any system which overlooks the greater good. Side-stepping his irritating nagging approach he’s pursued in his last two films, Capitalism sees the be-capped filmmaker taking a more restrained approach, and letting the actions of others speak for him. While preaching to the converted, the film will still be worth a look when it’s released nationwide in February next year. Nudity is not what you expect going into your average doc, but then the short film Bob is about a man who’s anything but average. The titular Bob is a 90-year-old communistnudist-gardener, who’s more than willing to reflecting on a long life well spent. Well worth seeing, I wouldn’t recommend Googling keywords (old man + nudity) about this film in any hope of finding this strangely lifeaffirming film. As if inspired by Bob, one of the Finnish filmmakers behind the curious Living Room of the Nation felt compelled to conduct the Q&A that followed the screening of his film completely in the buff. His film didn’t have anything to do with nudity, but was a warts and all observational window into the living
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Feature.Men
“I
kind of have to keep an eye on things at the same time,” begins Men’s Mike, all available limbs apparently occupied by administrative tasks, “but I’m pretending to take a break”. As a music journalist, it seems downright unreasonable to expect your average selfrespecting rock star to answer the phone from anywhere but the most outlandish locations. Back of a van, crack den, someone else’s bed – it’s all part of the hedonism quota bands are no doubt required to meet in their label contracts. But the office?
‘We’re all supervisors or managers.We have things like mortgages and children’
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Friday November 20 2009
In the course of arranging this interview, we start to form an image of Mike; similar to Flight of the Concords’ Murray, managing band affairs from the office whilst continuously having his feathers ruffled by colleagues who have the cheek to bother him with business calls. The reality, as it turns out, is even scarier. When asked as to what Men’s plan of action would be if the band’s exposure continued at the rate it has done in the
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MEN AT WORK As buzz around the band begins to build Mike, of Norwich fun-punks, Men, talks to Jeremy Peel about positivity, Huey Lewis, and why they won’t be quitting their jobs in management any time soon.
past few weeks, Mike’s replies almost apologetically: “I don’t know. We’re all supervisors or managers in offices for national companies or councils, and actually we kind of really enjoy it, which is a bit… weird, but I’m getting older. We have things like mortgages and children”. We’re a long way from the Gallagherstyle world-beating oratory most new bands feel obliged to take part in, that’s for sure. As well as full time real jobs, two thirds of Men – Mike and Jem – also play in surprisingly mellow posthardcore act Pennines, and it soon becomes clear that these are men playing for fun rather than finance. “Everything to me is a hobby, really. It’s the same for all of us – they’re expensive hobbies, but…” Mike lowers his voice. “But I don’t view it as any different to most of the people I work with playing football on a Sunday, or something. It’s kind of at the same level to me”. We could have guessed. After all, Men do have more than a whiff of commercial suicide about them. Perhaps their most radio-friendly song to date is entitled ‘Big Fucker’ – by the band’s admission a “working title that never got changed” – and all their studio recordings thus far have been released for free. Mike refuses to even consider the band as a viable career move. “You throw so much money into petrol, travelling, practice, everything like that – even if I did this for the rest of my life I don’t think there’d ever be any kind of financial return from it. So doing it for financial reasons would be
the dumbest thing ever, I think. The fact is it’s loads of fun, you get to hang out with some really nice people and that’s why we still do it.”
‘I don’t view this as any different to playing football on a Sunday’ Maybe this is the future of UK music in an environment where, quite simply, not enough people pay for their music. Artists don’t make nearly enough from proposed legal solutions like Spotify and no one, not Lord Mandelson, not the major labels and certainly not Lily Allen, seems to know what to do about it. If the artists themselves can’t make a living out of music it follows that we’ll have to start looking to talented hobbyists for the best of it; weekend punks with enough fire in their bellies to keep at it without
the promise of private jets and supermodel girlfriends at the finish line. And let’s make this clear now – Men are really, really talented hobbyists. The trio have been playing together for “probably about five years” in various different incarnations of the band. Most recently they were Fun! Yeah! but a departing keyboard player provided them with an opportunity to change the name. “We just wanted something with a single syllable, and so we went with Men, because it made us laugh. Anything that encourages heterosexual males to state that they love Men is a positive thing in my eyes”. As Men, they started to write winding punk tracks, unashamedly melodic and interlaced with Jem’s yelping of things like, “Turned on! / The extremities are safe!” Already though, they’re a band in transition. More recent songs from sessions in June unveiled new skills to add to their collective CV; the likes
of ‘Calculators’ feature an altogether more measured sound, with lyrics distinguishable and genuine – if yelled – vocal harmonies in places. “We kind of moved away from riff-based stuff, where me and Jem would be playing the same thing, trying to make things a little bit more structured. Then all of a sudden Carl started singing, which he’s never really done before, and it was just absolutely amazing. We were all kind of shocked”. There’s a positivity in Men’s
‘We encourage heterosexual males to state that they love Men’ songs that we suggest is lacking in a UK music scene filled with bands terrified of being dubbed
the new Wombats, but Mike disagrees: “It depends on the kind of stuff you listen to but if you go back a few years and look at somewhere like Wakefield, for instance, you had Dugong and Nathaniel Green – it’s all positive and it’s all really good. From our perspective, all we’re trying to do is sound like a cross between Dillinger 4 and Huey Lewis and The News. I don’t know whether we actually pull it off or not. We’re all old punks who just love pop, really”. Ah yes, Huey Lewis, pop-rock pioneer of the late ‘80s and also namesake of Mike’s son. “He obviously doesn’t know that yet, ‘cos he’s only one, but when he’s older I’ll introduce him to the first Huey Lewis and The News record and he’ll understand”. As the interview draws to a close and Mike returns to his desk, we begin to understand something ourselves: Men might just be our new part-time heroes.
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Interview.Nick Park.
True British H
Melissa Gillespie meets Nick Park, Hallam graduate and the cre lengendary Wallace and Gromit animations, and chats Pixar, P
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verybody knows Wallace and Gromit. Their stories have charmed the British nation and the rest of the world, even travelling as far as Japan, for decades and continue to do so. Four-year-old children to 80-yearolds grandparents find enjoyment in their fantastic adventures, showing that they have everlasting and universal appeal. Gromit has become one of the greatest silent movie stars ever, whilst Wallace’s beaming grin and quirkiness have made him the epitome of British eccentricity. They are two of the most popular and loved characters to emerge from Britain and have established themselves as true icons of our culture. Probably the reason the duo are the new faces of M&S’ £10million Christmas TV adverts, alongside other well-know figures like Twiggy and Joanna Lumley. On the dawn of their 20th anniversary, Fuse was invited to a special screening of Nick Park’s digitally remastered A Grand Day Out, his first Wallace and Gromit story, which famously took more than six dedicated years of his life to complete. A simple quest for cheese has never been so funny, as Wallace and Gromit decide that the most obvious choice for when they run out of supply is to fly to the moon to find some “because everybody knows the moon is made of cheese”. After building a rocket in their basement, the fearless duo blast off on an epic adventure, discovering along the way a peculiar little skiing robot that protects the moon from being eaten. The charming simplicity of this first film paved the way for numerous multi-award
winning shorts and features, such as Creature Comforts and Chicken Run, which will always be timeless Christmas favourites despite the new wave of computer graphic animations. Part of this is due to the admirable commitment to quality and attention to detail; it takes a whole day to produce just four seconds of footage with 24 frames b e i n g used per second. That’s a
staggering 35,00 frames per film. Nick Park proves to be one of the most innovative and motivated film makers of our time, and the stack of Oscars and Academy Awards he has collected along the way would also suggest he is also one of the most successful. What sort of ambitions did you have when you first started, as obviously you couldn’t have predicted the great successes you have achieved with animation? After so long, I just aimed to finish A Grand Day Out really; so, no I never imagined its success and I’m really just grateful that it is still out there after all these years. When something is successful you never quite know how long it is going to last, but Wallace and Gromit seems to have gone from strength to strength, and I’m just so thankful. Looking back, do you see flaws in your older work? All the time, I’m like that with all my films. I find it very hard to watch any of them really, as much as I admire all the skills that go into film-making. I work with a fantastic team and I’m very p ro u d of what they’ve done but as far as my part is concerned, I constantly wish I could re-write a scene or re-shoot something. I used to feel very ashamed when I looked at my work at the thought of how naϊve and simplistic it looked, but now I think that’s where I was then, and I have come to love the charm that it has. I was very proud to first see my film in the public eye, and I first saw A
Grand Day Out in Asda actually. Not many people get to see their college film in Asda, but it was in the cheap basket for just £6.99.
‘I used to feel very ashamed when I looked at my work ’ You have said that this first film, A Grand Day Out, helped you to fulfil some of your childhood dreams, because it enabled you to bring together some of the enthusiasms and interests that you had. Yeah, I’ve been a big animation buff all my life. I loved The Clangers to Disney to Morph. I also loved the big sci-fi films, like the H. G. Wells adaptations into films and comic books like The Adventures of Tintin. What I always loved about working with three-dimensional models
though was the subtlety that you can achieve with Plasticine, but you’ve also got the squash and stretch of a cartoon too. It can be very cartoony in the way that you make shapes and design the characters, but I also like the live action, you can be very dramatic. Lots of animation just doesn’t go into the same kind of detail as A Grand Day Out goes into which works like a feature film with the depth of characters it has and the lighting and camera effects it uses. Were you self-consciously trying to make a film? I was really and that’s what kept me going for six years. I went way over my student time but the college just let me carry on. I just got any piece of equipment I could. I would adopt a dolly, which they use for the tracking shots in films, and put all the measurements on it and create frame by frame crane shots all animated, and long shots panning up the side of the rocket. So I definitely always had a
Heroes
eative genius behind the Plasticine and daydreaming. cinematic vision as an animator. And did that increase the amount of time that it took to progress the film? Yeah it did. I had no idea at the time about structuring films, and time and planning have never been my strong points; I’ve always needed a producer. It is quite easy to write something in a script like ten helicopters exploding, but it is quite a different thing putting it onto film. There was a scene in A Grand Day Out, and it was just a paragraph that said ‘Wallace and Gromit now build a rocket’; it was just one sentence. But that one sentence took me a year and a half to create.
‘I’m constantly surprised at how far it has travelled’ And I understand that the rocket scene held an interesting moment for you.
And were Aardman Animations, the studio that famously created Morph amongst other material, an influence at all? Definitely. I was doing animation as a hobby at home from the age of 12 and I used to watch Vision-On and I used to follow the work of Peter Lord (the creator of Morph) but never
Yes it was and you’re absolutely right, it was the same sort of transition that Homer goes through over the years in The Simpsons, from simple dad to centre-piece of the comic action. When writing a script everything can get rather complex and confusing, and one way to help simplify it is just to ask ‘who is this about, and who’s story is this?’; and of course Gromit is the one who looks at the audience for sympathy and we receive his reaction through everything. It makes each film very much his story, which really helped to hone the script down and make the films sharper. And how did Wallace evolve with that famous broad smile of his? I think it was because of course he’s a northerner, and I remember my grandparents with their ‘Lancashire hotpots’ and the big vowels, so I wanted to give him that strong bottom row of teeth.
‘I believe daydreaming is very useful for writing’ What made you choose the colouring for the models, as Wallace’s, in particular, is slightly odd? When I was a student, with not a great deal of money, I wrote to the company that made Plasticine back then, and I asked how much Plasticine they would give me if I put their credit on the end of the film, and they said I could have as much as I could carry away with me. So I went down in a big van and they gave me about a tonne and I simply had to choose from those colours they gave me, so Wallace just had to be stone because it was the only appropriate colour I had. Have you ever thought of why these two characters have endeared themselves the world over?
‘It purely all grew out of laziness and silliness’ How do you work out the story behind the films? I honestly believe daydreaming is very useful for writing, so just sitting on a train and letting the mind wander for quite a long time. I keep sketchbooks and doodle constantly and slowly I will gravitate towards an idea. My team and I often write on postcards and put them on the wall and just look at them, for weeks in fact. We just keep swapping them around until it fits, then write it up, re-write, re-write, and then go back to cards. We are constantly making models and story boards trying to work out each character’s distinct vocabulary, so it’s a multi-level process, but very fluid. Did you find it difficult moving from shorts to feature films and maintaining that rhythm and ensuring it was still compelling? Yes that was the biggest challenge really, it was scary and a big learning process for us. I mean, how do you make a story compelling? The story really is so paramount but it’s not just that. A lot of the big studios just think of the story and then hang the gags on afterwards, but I think it is the humour of the story, the turning points and all the quirky reversals that are intrinsic to the nature of the film. You can’t just have a story and stick the characters on afterwards, but I think that’s the way things are going now actually. I also wondered what your opinion was of Pixar and their recent releases and whether you would ever consider experimenting with
computer graphic animation? I’m a big fan of Pixar; I’m good friends with the studio including Pete Doctor who wrote Wall-E. They make great films; they really know how to make computer animation and make it look like art. I think there’s a lot of people doing CG and doing it well, so now in a way we stand out now because we are so different. We do CG as a company, and some live action, but for me I feel like we have a niche and I’m enjoying it. My ideas seem to be best expressed through Plasticine. Where did the original idea for Wallace and Gromit come from? Well, I was an art student and I drew constantly in my books. In the very early sketches Gromit was in fact always a cat. And then I had an idea, which was just a joke really, about this guy who built a rocket in the basement of his house, and I just thought it was quite funny. But I thought he needed an assistant and I just paired him up with my Gromit character. But whilst doing the models, I just found a dog easier to make than a cat, so it purely grew out of laziness and silliness. So are you going to make any more films? The problem at the moment is I have too many ideas. I think I will probably stick to doing the half hour TV shorts with Wallace and Gromit as I think it suits that style more. But I am planning to do a feature film with completely new characters, but if I told you anymore than that I’d have to kill you.
Fuse.
I often didn’t even have an idea about what to do as a teenager and I would just start playing with a ball of Plasticine to see what would happen. It’s a wonderful thing; you can just distort it and let your imagination go.
Was it a conscious effort to give Gromit more of an essential role as the films progressed over the years, rather than being just part of the ensemble as he started out as?
I am often asked that and it’s hard to know, especially when I’m so close to the work. Hopefully it’s a number of things, such as the humour which can be very cartoony and slapstick, and I think slapstick humour is very universal. I’m constantly surprised at how well received it has been abroad, as I initially just made these films just for myself, and it was originally intended just for a British audience with a very British sense of humour; I’m just constantly surprised at how far it has travelled.
Friday November 20 2009
It was one of the first shots that I did in the entire movie and I actually had recorded a voice for Gromit with this growly tone. He was just very much a dog that was repeating everything that Wallace said. But the set was quite small, and I had a mouth for him but I couldn’t quite reach and manoeuvre it so I just decided to remove it. I just changed his eyebrows into that incredulous and ‘give me strength’ look, and his eyes just managed to say everything that needed to be said. Suddenly he became an intelligent introvert dog who had a greater dynamic than the extrovert canine ever had. How did you start playing around with animation?
imagined I would eventually end up working with him. Morph was a big influence on what I was doing at home. I actually first met Peter Lord here at The London Film Festival 25 years ago and I just remember staring at the Morph badge he was wearing and thinking how cool it was. I was so amazed to be given a job by the company.
Art: Elisa Santos
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Reviews.Music.
Three crooked wise men Album Them Crooked Vultures Them Crooked Vultures
The debut album by Them Crooked Vultures, the latest cadre in the recent line of super-groups, is pure, unadulterated rock. Formed by Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters fame, Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, this self-titled album is a breath of fresh air in the current limp rock scene. ‘Bandoliers’ and ‘Scumbag Blues’ make no qualms in brandishing
Album
The unlikely collaboration of American vocalist Wendy Rae Fowler and UNKLE’s Richard File turns out to be somewhat of a mixed bag. Their eponymous effort starts strongly; opener ‘Spin This Town’ sets the tone with a slow-burning, almost hypnotic track that bares similarities to School of Seven Bells as Fowler’s vocals are introduced towards the end. This similarity might just be the problem with this record though; everything sounds like something that’s already done before. ‘Lights Out’ is Bristol band Gravenhurst all over, and even the intro to ‘The Double’ is (albeit undoubtedly without intention) lifted straight from I Was A Cub Scout’s ‘Pink Squares’. While the band declare themselves to be primarily
inspired by the Krautrock genre through the fusion of their backgrounds in dance and rock, the sparse ‘Careful What You Wish For’, with its stuttered and compressed female vocals, could have Portishead rushing for their lawyers. Inevitably, things burn out a little towards the end. Penultimate track ‘Undone’ is unnecessary baggage, drifting along with few distinguishing features, while ‘Sunshadow’ is distractingly busy in its production. For the most part, however, this album manages to stand up in its own right. Ambient and atmospheric, the stamp of renowned producer Ben Hillier (here in mixing capacity) is all over it, and the highlights, such as the pulsating ‘Sovereign’ with Fowler’s haunting vocals, are genuinely absorbing tracks. One gets the impression We Fell To Earth might be taking themselves a little too seriously; it all comes across as being a bit solemn. With such diverse musical backgrounds,
Fuse.
Friday November 20 2009
We FellTo Earth We Fell To Earth
the ’70s influence that permeates the whole album. Jones certainly managed to survive that period and Grohl and Homme are unabashed fans of it. For those unfamiliar with this bygone era, the album will require some patience. Indulgence in tense atmospheres and instrumental breaks are present, which are once again a reference to staple bands from the time (think Hawkwind, Deep Purple and Quartermass). ‘Warsaw Or The First Breath That You Take After You Give Up’ will probably be the one that’ll divide audiences, but if ’70s throwbacks appeal, then satisfaction is guaranteed. Aside from some piano work, there’s barely a calm moment. This alternate project seems to have refreshed
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We Fell To Earth recover from their landing.
all three members. It certainly delivers more consistently that anything either Homme or Grohl have done as of late and Jones finally gets another shot at being at the limelight with some extraordinary bass lines. Major kudos to the mixing and mastering of the album, as, from a technical point of view, the sound is very crisp. Each instrument gets its well deserved time in the spotlight and can be identified perfectly, with each player getting their chance to show off their talents. (Note Grohl’s drumming in ‘Caligulove’). If classic, honest rock is what you’re after, then look no further than America’s new saviours Them Crooked Vultures. Samuel Valdes Lopez however, the options are open for shaking things up with whatever comes next. Ffion Thomas
Album Levellers Live at the Royal Albert Hall
Levellers have never seen eye to eye with the mainstream music scene; you know, that respectable institution that anticipates Lady Gaga’s latest, most heinous fashion stunt more than her musical merit (a term used loosely). Perhaps the Levellers’ overt anti-capitalism campaigning or their tireless environmental activism intimidates the modern mainstream audience, or, God forbid, the occasional grey hair. This mutual disliking has been both a hindrance and a blessing to their career, depriving them of much deserved mainstream popularity, but also providing them with a far more devoted, musically literate fan-base. Either way, none of this has damaged the Levellers’ effortlessly sharp delivery as this live release reveals. The album is split into two halves. Part one is a subdued acoustic set whereas the finale sees the band crank up their amps, but only to about six or seven. Nonetheless, their loyal fan base aren’t let down with heartfelt renditions of classic favourites: ‘Julie,’ ‘No Change’ and ‘Together all the Way,’ all of which are received very warmly by the crowd. Highlights include the faultless ‘Before the End’
from latest album Letters From The Underground, in which performance violinist Jon Sevink describes it as “better than the recorded version.” The band’s effortless delivery is consistent with energetic versions of ‘Exodus’ and ‘Hope Street’ standing out in particular. Despite their unfortunate and baffling neglect from the British music press, Levellers maintain their relevance long into the 21st century. To stand the test of time in such a way, without the help of the materialistic mainstream music industry is a great testimony to the talent and flair on display in this live collection. Tom Fletcher
Album Cosmo Jarvis Humasyouhitch/ Sonofabitch
Cosmo Jarvis’ debut is actually a double album, and even if the decision might seem arbitrary, there is actually a reason behind the split. Humasyouhitch, or “the fun album” as it should be known, is mostly driven by happy tunes about partying, living the life, body humour and even crushes on celebrities. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having some fun with your lyrics (the strangely funny ‘You got your head’) but there are moments when trying to be funny
Levellers prove that they’ve still got it. could lend itself to a very Humasyouhitch, even low-brow comedy. confessing that “I’m getting Not all the humour is too old for this young man’s wrong however, even when game” and is akin to that some can be considered ‘morning-after’ feeling of obscene, but it feels like a regret. few lyrics were chosen for There will most likely be the shock value rather than qualms in having an album the quality. split in two in that the lack On the other hand, of variation would weaken Sonofabitch starts with the its potential impact. bluesy ‘Clean My Room’. But here there could be a The obligatory valid counter-argument. The comparison to Mike Skinner first half is a night of binge will undeniably be fixed to drinking and the second this second half, and maybe is more the realisation there’s some validity to it in that you’re not getting any voice delivery, but not in the younger and rethinking your lyrical content. direction in life might be in Indeed, Sonofabitch order. is almost the opposite Cosmo Jarvis is a jack of the careless fun of of all trades as composed, arranged, produced and mixed this offering. However, as previously stated, splitting the album might be detrimental but the lyrical logic pretty much justifies this action. Amongst the songs that simply don’t work, there are some more thought out, well worked gems in it. Samuel Valdes Lopez
Reviews.Music.
BLK JKS play their ace Live BLK JKS The Harley 04/11/2009 The whispers about BLK JKS have been getting louder, and a comfortably busy crowd stayed out, despite a late finish, for a band that could and should filling bigger venues than this in the near future. Describing the Johannesburg band as “the South African TV On The Radio” is about as big as current music clichés get, but it’s difficult not to mention at least a passing resemblance. On the Harley stage, BLK JKS guitarist Mpumi Mcata, with his beard, oversized glasses and a baseball cap precariously perched on his
Live Mabel Love Bungalows and Bears 06/11/2009
backed throughout on vocals by all three of his bandmates, as Mpumi Mcata careered about with his guitar and the dreadlocked Tshepang Ramoba attacked the drumkit with ferocity. On a local note, Mcata’s quip to the crowd about the aptness of playing in Sheffield on a Wednesday suggests that if news of the Owls can reach Johannesburg, then the 2010 World Cup finals are in safe hands. Their brand of noise rock might not be quite as immediately catchy as their musical near-neighbours, but it has a tangible South African character that sets them apart. It might have taken them a while to get going, but they’re certainly gaining momentum.
Lead singer Richard Rice’s voice has matured even in the short time they’ve been gigging, resulting in a dark, almost haunting tone that offers a unique edge to the run of the mill guitar bands that pass over the boards. The boys seem to have developed a firm fan base in Sheffield already, with the crowd gingerly (but enthusiastically) singing back the words. ‘Ha Ha People’ was a particular favourite, thundering along into a chant that left no doubt in anyone’s mind: this lot meant business. ‘Shotgun’ stood out as definite single material, catchy and heartfelt with a radio-friendly strong chorus. Despite a few moments of failing equipment, it was an overwhelming success. Mabel Love looked and sounded like a band that’s got the talent and drive to go the distance. At a time when the music industry is saturated with r‘n’b and socalled pop ‘gems’, maybe this is just what the people need. Amy Collin
Gig Gallery
Gig Gallery
Photo: Sam Bennett tour of dance music, this set would constitute the ideal beginner’s guide for any electro novice. Katy Bourne
Live Maps Fusion 04/11/2009 Vincent Frank, aka Frankmusik, narrowly avoiding being upstaged by support act Killa Kela. Read the review at www.forgetoday.com Photo: Richard Stapleton
Live The Count and Sinden + support Plug 14/11/2009 There aren’t many occasions that justify leaving the sofa after X Factor and spending over three pounds on a double gin. The Count (Hervé) and Sinden, however, was one of them. With unwarranted modesty, Hervé and Sinden crept up to the decks unannounced leaving most party-goers blissfully unaware of their presence. Kicking off with funky house, it wasn’t until the onslaught of Hervé’s renowned ghetto bass sound that it was obvious they had truly arrived. Combining big wobbly garage inspired basslines, grimy hip-hop rhythms and gnarly screw-face samples; this pairs influences are as eclectic as the crowd itself. A montage of diverse tracks showcased the technical prowess of both DJs, who are both rightfully receiving recognition for their production skills. The Mixmag tour provided a line-up that kept booties shaking from start
to finish. A surreal set from Crystal Fighters was the absolute antithesis of the headliner’s understated arrival and they kicked the night into gear delivering a fearless performance unlike anything you have ever witnessed. Thwarting synthesisers, traditional Basque-inspired wooden percussion and downright absurd lyricism is perfectly offset by a front man that quite frankly resembles someone you would give a wide berth in the street. Arms swinging like a madman, ranting uncontrollably and pointing sporadically into the audience, the theatric elements of Crystal Fighters make them a must-see live act. DJ sets from Friendly Fires and Jaymo and Andy George successfully kept heads bobbing and bodies popping in preparation for remix royalty, The Count and Sinden. Juxtaposing fidget house, samba inspired beats and electro hooks, their new tracks caused a rhythmic epidemic, infecting and uniting everyone with energy reminiscent of a carnival. The pair incorporated remixes of crowd pleasers such as Fake Blood’s ‘Mars’ to sculpt their epic compilation; A whistle stop
“We’ve had a really bad day. Just got another rave review from the NME,” lamented James Chapman, also known as the artist behind Maps, as they played to a relatively sparse but contented crowd in Fusion. The Northampton-based musician’s dry wit was not the only attraction of the night, however; true to the review Maps did indeed put on an impressive show. Demonstrating his talent for simultaneously playing the keyboard, electronic drum kit and occasionally the tambourine, Chapman enlisted only one member of his backing band instead of the usual four, giving the gig a more intimate vibe which suited the small venue. A colourful light show accompanied the electronic melodies, along with strobes and a surreal,
smoke-filled atmosphere, ensuring that all the senses were well and truly taken care of. Maps’ predictable but well-received set consisted of a good number of tracks from latest album Turning the Mind, including the atmospheric ‘I Dream of Crystal’ - one of those rare songs that just wash over you like a wave of pure synthesised joy. The banging techno beats underpinning ‘Let Go of the Fear’ nearly managed to break through the crowd’s British reserve, but by and large the attendees were too cool to dance. Imminent single ‘Die Happy, Die Smiling’ was one of the catchier songs of the night, and definitely had the makings of an electro club hit. The ever-charming Chapman kept the audience entertained with his deadpan humour as he introduced each track. “This one’s not about drugs,” he announced before launching into a song entitled ‘Valium in the Sunshine’. Something different from the mainstream, guitar-led music which dominates the live scene, Maps’ evergrowing following speaks for itself. Lizzie Palmer
Gig Gallery
Fuse.
Plug spent Saturday, November 14, in the company of troubadour Scott Matthews. Photo: Jack Gilbert
Ffion Thomas
Friday November 20 2009
It’s 9.30pm and Bungalows and Bears is packed beyond recognition: taxi drivers urge their customers to avoid the chaos, the bouncer actually has something to do and the queue for the bar resembles a January sales crush. Tonight it’s the music lovers, not the foodies, out in force to see Sheffield’s latest offering to the musical world. At 10.30pm Mabel Love take to the stage for their third hometown gig and quite frankly, smash it. The band, as an outfit, are relatively new to the game but the four members have all dabbled in previous musical projects and in front of this discerning crowd, their experience showed. Musically, they are incredibly tight: creating deep and atmospheric melodies that would easily fill a space twice the size.
afro even looks like TVOTR’s Kyp Malone. And of course, they sound like them too. But these are no bandwagonjumping imitators. BLK JKS have been together for nearly 10 years, but have only this year released their EP Mystery and album After Robots, both of which have steadily gained them admirers. In terms of setlist, the one-two of their first single ‘Lakeside’ - an at times brooding, at times chaotic imagination of escapism from the city - and the enthralling ‘Molalatladi’, full of tribal drums and squealing guitar solo, that came midway through the set was the high point, but this was a consistent performance by a band genuinely fascinating to watch. Baby-faced lead singer Lindani Buthelezi was
Bleaklow demonstrate the proper way to lunge at West Street Live on November 11. Photo: Sam Bennett
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Fuse.
Friday November 20 2009
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Listen online at www.forgeradio.com, in the Union or at The Edge
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Reviews.Screen.
The retired take revenge
Film Harry Brown Out Now
Michael Caine’s strong performance in this gritty British thriller of intense action sequences and slick storytelling is a decent take on the tried and tested formula of one man’s relentless journey of redemption. Harry Brown (Michael Caine) lives alone on a housing estate in London. Following the death of his wife, Harry has become a total recluse, barely leaving the house due to the troublesome youths on the estate. Brown only leaves the house for two reasons: the pub; and occasional chess games with his friend, Leonard (David Bradley). Leonard is scared on the estate and has been for some time. The police have been contacted but they cannot control the situation. Soon enough a helpless Leonard is found dead in a subway. The police finally take notice, but not before
Brown takes action. Feeling let down by life Brown sets off on a ruthless, vengeful rampage. What follows is a sadistic film of graphic violence, witty one-liners and antiheroics. Critics have labelled Harry Brown as the British Gran Torino. But this is simply not the case. Both films share one thing: a vigilante pensioner. But the similarities stop there. Clint Eastwood made a film of gritty beauty, tailored to a Hollywood audience, about revenge and forgiveness. It was grim no doubt, but it had a massive pay-off strewn with clichés. Harry Brown is not of the same gene-pool. It starts grimly, it grimly continues down a dark path, and then it ends grimly. It’s a Tarantinoesque level of violence, a vile script, and horrific landscape which differ the film from anything before it. However this added darkness does not make it a better, or more realistic, film. The youths in the film are evil, but in an unbelievably exaggerated way which just begs belief. The same discomfort applies to the plot. Caine’s apathetic disposal of the horrific youths is supported by the audience throughout.
Fed up with the injustices he sees every day, Harry Brown chooses to take the law into his own hands. You want to see the thugs mire of average acting. fails to get off the ground, Criticisms aside, Barber pay for their actions – just Emily Mortimer seems but which none the less makes an excellent filmmaybe in not so many strangely cast as a police manages to disrupt the flow directing debut. The dismal gruesome scenes. investigator, appearing far of the picture. nuances of an inner-city What makes this film too timid in her character. Maybe director Daniel wasteland are captured special is Michael Caine. He Her partner appears far Barber wanted to show beautifully and set fittingly doesn’t approach the levels too casual and could he could incorporate alongside an exciting plot. of Get Carter in terms of easily be mistaken for meaningful tangents into an Overall Harry Brown is an character or performance, one of the youths. And her otherwise straight-forward entertaining, if not sadistic, but his ability to sensitively Superintendent appears far thriller. Perhaps the depth thriller which will eloquently play the complex role of a too old-fashioned. element would’ve been slot in among this year’s disgruntled and damaged All these characters better left floundering in the best films. man shines through an merge late-on in a miniscule shallows of the cutting-room otherwise supplementary subplot – which thankfully floor on this occasion. Ashley Scrace
TheWhite Ribbon Out Now
Bright Star Out Now
Ever get the feeling that something untoward is just around the corner? This is how it feels for the entirety of the two and half hour marathon, The White Ribbon. Set in a small Protestant village in northern Germany on the cusp of World War I, this black and white piece is deliberately uncomfortable to the point being wholly unsettling. The story aims to suggest the problem with corrupted ideals, conveyed through children’s interpretations of these ideals as absolutes. Narrated by the village school teacher, who has what can only be described as a ‘stereotypical pervert’ appearance, you expect the chapters to revolve around his sordid acts. To the film’s credit, I was instead made to question my own prejudices as he proves to be one of the few stable characters. Instead it is the more trusted members of a community – the village pastor and doctor, for example – which prove to harbour more secrets than meets the eye. According to director Michael Haneke, the use of a narrator, as well as shooting in black and white, helps create a ‘distancing’ effect;
It’s hard to make a film about a poet truly poetic. However, Jane Campion’s Bright Star avoids the pitfall of being flouncy, instead taking a restrained approach. This understated period drama sheds the baggage of stuffy dialogue and fussy costumes that so often spoil many other films in the genre. Campion realises that Keats’ poetry can take care of itself, and relies simply on having a confident artistic vision. For once the drama is focused primarily on the story, delivering real emotional thrills rather than just frills on a bonnet.
it becomes impossible for the audience to get involved with the characters. Aided by some staggeringly awkward static shots, where all or part of the action is limited to an ineffective angle, or heard behind closed doors. Adding to the disturbing sensation, these scenes draw into feeling like a small eternity. One scene in particular comes to mind when two of the children of the village pastor must receive lashes for staying out past curfew. The shot, taken from the hallway, never changes perspective as the reluctant mother collects the children from their bedrooms and leads them to face their father. After an agonising wait, where only muffled voices behind the closed door are heard, the tension is finally
relieved when the first crack of the whip is heard. The intertwined stories between various large families raise far more questions than answers, making it occasionally hard to follow. It is definitely a film that would benefit from a second viewing, although I’m not sure I could take it. There really are so many unsettling scenes that even now I recall disturbing images that have not quite yet been suppressed. There is no happy ending; you will not leave the cinema feeling warm and fuzzy. It is however a fascinating piece that will certainly get you thinking, and more importantly, keep you thinking for a substantial period of time. Adam Saunders
Bright Star follows the secret love affair between the 23-year-old English poet, John Keats, and the vivacious girl next door, Fanny Brawne. Initially sparring about art, poetry and fashion, this unlikely coupling of headstrong ‘minxstress’ and ailing writer, slowly begin to fall for each other. A moving tale of Keats’ greatest love and inspiration, his creative writing is once again reanimated as the young lovers become more intensely absorbed with each other (Brawne was his muse for his most famous poems, such as ‘When I Have Fears’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’). But this picture perfect romance is tainted by the disapproving opinions of Brawne’s family and Keats’ roommate Charles Browne (Paul Schneider), and Keats’ ever deteriorating health.
Based on Andrew Motion’s biography and snippets of the actual letters that were sent between the lovers, Bright Star is not only historically realistic, but emotionally authentic. One letter used reads: “I have the feeling as if I were dissolving”, highlighting the strong romantic obsession they had with each other. The film doesn’t rely on any theatrical swooning or thousand yard stares to get its point across. Campion also cleverly chose to tell this story from Brawne’s perspective, ensuring that the focus stays on their relationship, rather than Keats’ untimely death and his failures as a writer whilst he was alive. The director also treats Keats’ work with respect and doesn’t lecture the audience or attempt to use it for emotional effect. There is no booming voice over, and his work instead is allowed a deserving part in the film scattered in fragments throughout the story. But the real poetry of Bright Star is in its visual beauty. From pallid light creeping through windows, to the array of vibrant shades of butterflies that flutter around a room, Campion plays with shadows, light and texture so sensually that it makes you want to fall into the picturesque scenes Mary Poppins style. Not everyone will enjoy this film, but even the least romantic of you will at least appreciate its aesthetic quality. Melissa Gillespie
Fuse.
Film
Friday November 20 2009
Film
Star crossed lovers that couldn’t be.
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Reviews.Games.
Act your Dragon Age
Multiplatform Dragon Age:Origins PC, PS3 and 360
Few games have as bad an ad campaign as Dragon Age. A sequence of comically bloody battles and a PG 13 sex scene set to Marilyn Manson’s ‘This is the New Shit’ was the most prolific trailer in the campaign and it was a blow to many who expected Bioware to build upon their success with Knights of the Old Republic and nod to classics like Baldur’s Gate. Fortunately for most, it appears while there is plenty of new shit in this game, it acknowledges and plays upon its roots. Dragon Age is at heart an isometric turn based RPG, sure you can zoom in to an over the shoulder view as your character hacks and slashes at monsters and you’re perfectly capable of controlling battles in real
Console
Grand Theft Auto, one of the world’s biggest games franchises, is weighed down by controversy due to the violence and obscenities contained within but at every release it’s lifted back up by its enormous fan base due to, well, the enjoyable violence and hilarious obscenities contained within. Episodes from Liberty City is the latest release in the series; a standalone package of the two expansions for Grand Theft Auto IV, namely ‘The Lost and Damned’ and ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’. So how do two smaller
audience to your actions; instead of simply labelling you as good or evil the way you approach problems will alter the relationship you have with your comrades. This can either mean forming a strong friendship, romantic relationship or even having them turn on you at a critical moment. This works well as each character has a fleshed out back story and their motivations seem human even if they aren’t quite human themselves. The overarching story itself is rather bland in parts: big bad on the way, nation divided and only you as a member of a special organisation can stop it by uniting the various factions to face it. The real draw comes from your character’s back-story, the smaller plot events and the history of the world itself. A quick glance at the ingame codex yields pages and pages of history, stories and interesting facts about the world. It’s not compulsory to read the codex but it’s there if you’re
Ferelden unfortunately hasn’t invented ogre mouthwash yet. interested. treated as a ticking time game. The limited character bomb, because you pretty Dragon Age isn’t the creator is such because much are. greatest RPG ever made but each background option These scenarios and in recent years it has been provided leads to a vastly the few others available difficult to find one this well different look at the world. not only provide a couple written and this polished. If you play as a city elf you of hours starting off in Truly immerse yourself in start in a slum and follow a a different setting with it and you’ll find yourself tail of racism and tragedy different challenges they reluctant to come back out. on a wedding day. As a also colour the reactions of mage you’re feared and NPCs throughout the entire Brendan Allitt
episodes combined compete with the new breed of sandbox games? Well often with big sandbox games focus can easily be lost, a perfect example is GTAIV itself, there were so many opportunities; what with drug runs, guys wanting to hang out and girls wanting to date that the gameplay became somewhat fuzzy. In these episodes there is still a huge environment and a whole lot of things to do except now everything is more streamlined, extra content has been handled better so it really is up to you if and when you want to do it. ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ is the star of the show here, it unashamedly offers up players everything they want from GTA (think drinking games and tanks) and then wraps it all up in an enjoyable and super stylish story. If Gay Tony is the stylish game, then ‘Lost and Damned’ is certainly
the cool and more relaxed game. In ‘The Lost and Damned’ the main campaign does have a few highlights and it’s freshened up a bit with biker gang inspired features (ride in formation to gain health) even though such features set this episode apart from the rest of the series there is a dangerous lack of variety from mission to mission leading me to recommend taking this episode pretty slow, do some mini games, the odd rampage or go tear something up in ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ inbetween missions and you will appreciate this game a whole lot more. These are really fun games with some great ideas and (Gay Tony in particular) they can really keep you on your toes, however all of the great ideas can often fall short thanks to a pretty flawed control scheme. A good example is the terrible aiming and cover systems;
perhaps it is due to games like Gears of War doing it so well that it ends up being such a disappointment something so fundamental has been handled so badly. You do get used to the gunfights but when things get intense it can be hard to forgive the controls for letting you down; luckily interchangeable dialogue stops replays from getting too frustrating. As a package these games work really well; what with the ‘Ballad of Gay Tony’ acting as some kind of a greatest hits, giving you all the bits of the series that you look forward to, helicopter fights, tank rampages, cinematic shootouts, speedboat chases and genuinely interesting characters (they will make you laugh throughout) it is well worth your time. It is a shame ‘The Lost and Damned’ doesn’t tick many of these boxes but it does accompany well
Fuse.
Friday November 20 2009
GrandTheft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City 360
time. A warning to those that attempt this though, the game is unforgiving even on its easiest setting. It requires spatial awareness, forward thinking and micromanagement skills to master. Many will find themselves constantly hitting the pause button and cueing up skills in advance rather than risk relying on their own reactions. They’ll also need to zoom out to get an idea of their surroundings. This isn’t a criticism; the combat system is deep enough that even the Final Fantasy XII style gambit system can’t lessen how deep and complex the fights can be. The real draw of this title however will be the dialogue. Every character you speak to is voiced and the developers have used skilled cast of voice actors to do so. Conversations between your different party members are of particular interest; you find yourself stopping whatever you’re doing just to listen to a back and forth between them. Your party acts as an
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I suddenly have a craving for some Burger King.
as a different, cool and alternative game. Despite some mechanics not being as good as genre specific ones you can still have a blast in Liberty City, this is not a watered down Grand Theft Auto, it’s more condensed fun. Daniel Rowbotham
Console Agarest:Generations ofWar PS3
It’s a low-level miracle that this relatively unknown Japanese game was ever localised for English release, but it’s a step towards righting the conspicuous lack of spritebased tactical RPGs on the current-generation consoles and certainly of those with English translations. Having said that, the story isn’t incredible by any means, but is at least coherent - it’s good to know that the days of preposterously broken English and ten-dot ellipses in RPGs are all but in the past – though slow text speed and the screen needing to pan between each character’s artwork can often make conversations seem laborious. There are significant ‘dating sim’ elements involved, as well – the narrative spans five generations, and the statistics and appearance of the next protagonist change depending on the partner you secure in the preceding chapter. The era-spanning narrative and choice of potential heirs are
nice touches, and serve to mix things up a little bit. Agarest has actually courted some controversy, given that the CG anime images it employs during cutscenes occasionally push the boundaries of good taste - but the overtly sexualised stills only rarely show up, and generally aren’t as bad as was hyped. The game is smart to not defy its ‘12+’ rating. The gameplay is most definitely the game’s strong point, though. You’ll spend most of the game navigating menus (save the occasional free-movement area plagued with slowdown), and the statistical gridbased combat will be familiar to anyone who’s played a tactical RPG before, though the difficulty takes a sharp upturn fairly early on. It soon becomes necessary to consider every meter in play, and the precise alignment of your party at any given moment – there’s slightly deeper strategy at work than the ‘move-attack-heal-repeat’ all too commonly seen in the genre. Unfortunately, there isn’t too much variation between the battles, and frequent runs of battles interspersed with only minimal plot can get somewhat tiring. Overall, Agarest carries an air of being very much for the ‘hardcore’. Its considerable length, high difficulty level and tactical complexities all indicate that the game’s already well aware of its niche. For those within the niche, it’s probably even worth a solid four stars. For everyone else, it’s worth a shot – but it’s feasible that you could be scared off. Mike Bentley
Reviews.Arts.
SuTCo’s got your tongue Theatre
Book
The Love of the Nightingale Drama Studio
Take It To The Limit by Neil Anderson
If you were unaware that The Love of the Nightingale was in the genre of a Greek Tragedy then you would have been forgiven for thinking this would be a tale of love and happiness as the curtains fell back to reveal a comic fight on a beautifully decorated stage. But this is a story of rape, betrayal and destroyed innocence. The story begins with the daughter of the King of Athens being married to the King of Thrace. Her loneliness leads her to ask her husband to bring her much beloved sister Philomele from Athens. But the King’s lust for Philomele leads him to rape her and cut out her tongue to silence her. After years of imprisonment she finally manages to tell her ordeal through the dolls that she has crafted. Director Beth Grant does not hold back from displaying the violence of the play, and whilst for some audience members it might
Della-Ann Owen as Philomele and Selina Thompson as Niobe. Photo: Dom G.B. be overly graphic, it was slickness over authenticity (Philomele) and Nick interesting and all the more avoided the cheap laughs Birchill (Tereus) working harrowing to view a lot of the that would have come very well together. The violence on stage. The rape with togas. This was not intimate scenes were not scene was acted very well: the only attempt at mixing awkward but convincing physical but not sickeningly contemporary with classical: and heartbreaking. The voyeuristic. These intricate modern music by artists director really took the play and sensitive scenes could such as Bat for Lashes and and made it interesting, have easily become messy Florence and the Machine horrifying and stunning and unconvincing but was incorporated. On production. There was no they are so well acted and some occasions it was hit escaping the unrealistic and directed that they were or miss whether the songs cheesy ending of the play as terrifying yet enthralling. added anything to the the characters transformed The set was beautifully performance. into birds, but that’s Greek done. The women were in Overall the play was myth for you. Greek style clothing whilst beautifully and poignantly the men wore suave suits: done with Della-Ann Owen Catherine Redfern
Can Art Save Us? Millennium
A Christmas Carol Lyceum
John Ruskin believed art could change our thinking and therefore our actions. He said “Art devoted humbly and self-forgetfully to the clear statement and record of facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficial to mankind.” This exhibition not only looks at how art changes our thought process and views, but also raises the issue of whether it can impact the world and better it. This is demonstrated with a sustainable silver platter and Georgina Bell’s sustainable woollen homes (Homing, 2009) which shows how travelling can enrich communities. In both pieces the materials set an example for the rest of the world by highlighting the importance of taking measures for the preservation of our environment. ‘Can Art Save Us?’ points towards the fact that art can save individual lives as well as communities, with the inclusion of works by Charles Creswick (18541946). His interest in art led him to meet John Ruskin, who helped him to become a sculptor and leave behind his profession as a table-knife grinder. Art is considered a means of
Conventionality has never really been the Northern Ballet Theatre’s style. With past productions including A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Wuthering Heights and Dracula, this year’s show, A Christmas Carol, was certainly not going to be what you would regard as a traditional, classical ballet. It was, however, nothing short of fantastic. Combining stunning dancing with clever, witty acting techniques and exquisite scenery and costumes, the Northern Ballet have succeeded in breathing a whole new life into the Dickens’s classic. Throw in a beautiful score and Christmas carols sung live on stage by the cast, and you’ve got a production that will appeal to all, regardless of age or gender. The solo performances of the dancers were superb. From the cheeky leaps and twirls of Bob Cratchit, to the melancholy duet between young Scrooge and his wife-never-to-be, there wasn’t a single one who didn’t delight. Even Scrooge himself, who, being the miserly old git that he is, doesn’t showcase his dancing skills until the final
Woman Reading a Possession Order by Tom Hunter. education that can save us from ignorance, as illustrated by the drawings of Florilegium, a group who draw the plants of the Botanical Gardens, and the pieces by the craftsmen employed by C R Ashbee, who offered them new skills and better conditions through his Guild of Handicraft. One of the more poignant segments of this exhibition demonstrates the idea art saves us by holding up a mirror to our downfalls, such as the cruelty perfectly portrayed in the etchings of Goya’s (What more can be done? and Heroic Deeds! Against the Dead!). Unfortunately, while the dilemmas presented by ‘Can Art Save Us?’ are interesting, the theme is too large and too vague to be tackled in one exhibition. John
Ruskin’s views dominate too much, and there are not many alternative ones on offer. It appears that often exhibitions in Sheffield constrict themselves to perspectives based on the city’s own past and present. The setting of the exhibition also has its flaws: it is too dark, oppressive and labyrinthine, taking away some of the pleasure and robbing the vibrant character of some of the pieces. The quality of the works is inconsistent and there is often no link between them. One leaves the exhibition feeling more confused on the matter of whether art can save us, but perhaps the intention is for us to come up with our own answer to the question. Iris Provias
scene, is quite something to behold when he finally begins to jump about. Possibly the biggest showstealers were Mr and Mrs Fezziwig, Scrooge’s former boss and his wife, whose wonderful comic duet had the audience in stitches. The group dances, of which there were many, were equally fantastic. The choreography was so mixed and varied that it told the story perfectly. The joyous opening scene was possibly the one that featured the most traditional ballet, but after that there were a whole range of different takes on the dance-form, including a raucous hodown inspired Christmas party scene from Scrooge’s past and a downright creepy routine when the tormented souls took to the stage as a warning to Scrooge to mend
his money-grabbing ways. As for the costumes, there wasn’t a tutu in sight; every character’s dress was suited to the period in which the tale is set. The most impressive attire was without doubt the Ghost of Christmas Future, who was portrayed as a huge skeletal angel with raggedy wings. The set, too, was so cleverly manipulated and involved so many different levels that the audience was never sure which way to look. A Christmas Carol is not a traditional ballet: comical, beautiful and intelligent, it is much more than that. Like other Northern Ballet productions, it is making ballet more accessible and enjoyable to a wider audience. In short, it was an absolute delight. Georgie Beardmore
Fuse.
DanceTheatre
Samuel Valdes Lopez
Friday November 20 2009
Gallery
The history of a musical venue can always be retold in several ways and not all of them truthful. Written by former Sheffield Telegraph’s columnist Neil Anderson, this is a compilation of memories from performers and fans who enjoyed The Limit, a venue for many bands who eventually struck big. The first chapters set the story of Sheffield’s musical scene and pay tribute to old gig joints (The Black Swan, Mojo). The urgency of having a place where people could listen to music and not be discriminated against for how they look (denim jeans seems to be a recurring theme) was the driving force for Kevan Johnson and George Webster to create The Limit. Cautionary tales about bands getting too big for their own boots and nights out that could have (and should have) ended as disaster are common fare for the book. Sure, some stuff is slightly embellished for dramatic effect (“The
memory cheats” - John Nathan Turner) but that’s the way memories works, especially when their lens is working on an era that has a stranglehold on your heart. Again, recounting several points of view instead of a chosen few allows myths to be dispelled (and others to be created). Stories as diverse as set lists falling apart due to being drenched in lager to how many a seminal gig as an first musical initiation play a big part in this chronicle. One qualm though: comparing it to the Hacienda is a bold statement, and whether the comparison strikes you as valid will probably depend on your sensibilities as a reader. The Limit might not have a film with Steve Coogan’s face leading it, but it did play a big role in Sheffield’s music scene. It certainly was held in high regard by local acts; Pulp and Def Leppard returned even after breaking out of the scene. It’s a light read. This is not meant as a slight: the amount of memorabilia, photographs and newspaper clippings certainly make it more a loving scrapbook than a book, and it’s finished as at the same breakneck pace as the era set.
The Ghost of Christmas Future thralls the audience.
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Fuse.listings Friday November 20 - Thursday December 3 2009
email: listings@forgetoday.com
Fri 20
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New Moon @ Cineworld; Various times; £5.30 NUS The next chapter in the sparkly vampire epic Twilight hits cinemas to a chorus of a thousand screaming teenage girls. The star crossed lovers Bella and Edward are parted and a sexy werewolf Taylor Lautner tries to catch her on the rebound.
Aladdin matinée @ Foundry; 3:00pm; £3.50 suggested donation The University of Sheffield Light Entertainment Society promises to put on an all singing, all dancing, sweet throwing pantomime to kick-start the season. Shouts of ‘he’s behind you’ are likely to be prevalent.
Dio @ O2 Academy; 7:00pm; £20.00
Kasabian plus Reverend & the Makers @ Sheffield Arena; 6:30pm; £25 Indie-rock super stars Kasabian appear alongside Reverend & The Makers with Sheffield is their second to last stop as they wind down their explosive November tour.
The Sky Below @ Showroom; 8:30pm; £5
Celebration @ Library Theatre; 7:00pm; £7 The Denys Edwards Players present a comedy by Keith Waterhouse (author of Whistle Down the Wind and Worzel Gummidge).
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince @ SU Auditorium; 7.30pm; £2
Aging metal god Ronnie James Dio graces Sheffield with his unholy presence. There will surely be plenty of horns thrown up and nuns offended.
Here Come the Girls@ City Hall; 7:00pm; £25 Three superstar female voices: Lulu, Anastacia and Chaka Khan combine forces to celebrate women everywhere. An exciting and glamorous show that the girls will find they can’t help but get up and dance to and that the guys will like but probably not say so outloud for fear of being laughed at in the pub.
Concert in Aid of Children in Need @ The Octagon; 2:00pm; £5 NUS Local bands, processional dancers and DJs come together to entertain all in the name of a good cause. There will be something for everyone with Jazz to Heavy Metal and even a bit of Belly dancing.
GONG @ Leadmill; all; 7:00pm; £18.50 Celebrating 40 years performing Live GONG are touring the UK to prove they’ve still got it after all this time. They appear to also have a long future ahead of them as well with their new album 2032 foretelling the future for us all.
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream @ Drama Studio; 7:30pm; £6 A chance to see the award-winning documentary on the subject of the Partition of India filmed with balance and integrity. Afterwards there’s also a chance to ask the Director herself some questions.
Abigail Williams @ Corporation; 7:00pm; £7 North American band Abigail Williams black metal band appear alongside violent stage showmen Viatrophy and the almost orchestral Xerath for a night that no true metal head would miss.
A slightly darker turn for our lightning scarred hero as the return of he who must not be named leaves the wizard world in disarray. Still time for some teenage soap opera side plots though apparently.
A Christmas Chuckle @ Lyceum Theatre; 2:00pm or 5:00pm; £15-16 “To me, to you”, childhood mainstays Paul and Barry Chuckle put on a lighter version of Charles Dickens’ classic as brothers Ebenezer Sneezer and Bob Scratchit respectively. Somehow outdoing the muppets in the absurdity of their recreation.
Gary Numan @ Corporation; 7:00pm; £19 Incredibly influential King of Synthpop tours for his album re-release The Pleasure Principle.
Exit Calm @ Leadmill; 7:00pm; £6.50 Yorkshire based rising indie-rock stars Exit Calm showcase their new single were on our own. They ebb and flow with an effect-laden build to a satisfying conclusion.
Christmas Lights Switch on Party@ City Centre; 1:00pm; Free Music, martial arts and dancing on show in the centre along with fairground rides and a German market to get you in the holiday spirit.
British Ice Figure Skating Championships @ iceSheffield; 8:30am; £8-10 The start of a weeks worth of events to pick Great Britain’s representatives at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Give It A Little Go: Streetdance @ Dove Dale, The Ridge; 70:00pm; £1.50 Get funk and footloose with experts teaching you the basics of modern street dance. Judging by the performance of most the student body at Union club nights, it’s sorely needed.
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Drag Me to Hell @ SU Auditorium; 7:30pm; £2 Sam Raimi’s triumphant return to his horror roots after directing a few spider related superhero films. Drag Me To Hell showcases what will happen to you if you anger elderly women and unlike Raimi’s earlier work this time he has a full Hollywood budget backing him.
Alice Cooper @ Sheffield City Hall; 7:30pm; £32.50 Cooper’s focus on smaller venues for his Theatre of Death Tour means the audience will get the true rock spectacle they expect from him. Get ready to rock and be terrified in varying amounts depending on how close to the stage you’re sitting.
The 400 Blows @ SU Auditorium; 10:30pm; £1.80
Will Young @ City Hall; 7:30pm; £35 Pop Idol created popstar Will Young brings his UK and Ireland tour to your doorstep. This is on the heels of his greatest hits collection released this month and he’ll be singing the two new songs off that album.
Dreamboats and Petticoats @ Lyceum Theatre; 7:00pm; £16:50
Half Man Half Biscuit @ The Boardwalk; 7:30pm; £16 adv With only an average of six live shows per year this acclaimed cult band sings about everything from daytime television to Joy Division Oven Gloves.
Janusz Orlik @ The Foundry; 7:00pm; £8 Live on Stage is dance extravagance preformed solo by Polish artist Janusz Orlik. The show not only claims to involve slick moves and song, it also will feature jokes and satire.
Jo Brand @ Crucible Theatre; 7:45pm; £12.00 Professional quiz show panellist Jo Bran takes a brave step into the world of stand up to plug her new book Look back in Hunger. The show promises to be as witty and absurd as one would hope from Brand.
UB40 with Eddia Grant @ Sheffield Arena; 7:30pm; £32.50 Reggae icons combine forces to take their well polished live show to the next level. Playing songs from their forthcoming album Labour of Love IV they promise to impress new and old fans alike.
We Were Promised Jetpacks @ Leadmill; 7:00pm; £6
Betty and the Warewolves @ Plug; 7:00pm; £5
Post-punk indie-pop newcomers We Were Promised Jetpacks play sentimental and sometimes bleak anthems presumably about their desire for more vertical modes of transportation.
Three girls and one boy from London provide a lycanthropic inspired colourful and melodic indie sound. They cite their influences as pretty much anything with the word wolf in it.
Propaganda ft. Kaiser Chiefs DJ Set @ O2 Academy; 10:30pm; £4 NUS Propaganda provides a multi-DJ event with the Kaiser Chiefs making an appearance for a DJ set.
Gay For Johnny Depp @ Leadmill; 7:00pm; £7 New York band with an all too true statement for a name is ready to blast eardrums and morals apart as they tear through the nation.
Connecting with the Collections @ Graves Art Gallery; 10:30pm; £4 Explore the Graves Gallery collections with other enthusiasts and take inspiration to create your own art work using painting, drawing and other media.
suTCo put a darker twist on Shakespeare’s fairy filled comedy. Lust, revenge, obsession and other messy sounding buzzwords as a bunch of people in the woods get into complicated love webs which put most modern soaps to shame Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat @ Lyceum Theatre; 7:30pm; £10 Give it a go showcases the musical Biblical story of Joseph, his multicoloured jacket and his eleven less well dressed brothers. They promise singing, dancing and fun for all.
Dragonforce @ The O2 Academy; 7:00pm; £16 A powerful and influential film from late 50s France which when analysed shows many of the key features of what would be striking in French cinema in the 60s. A young boy at the centre of an unresponsive school system and preoccupied parents. Societies Showcase @ Foundry; 7:30pm; £3.50 SHRIMPS, Music Players, Hip Hop Soc, SingSoc and many other societies put on a show to celebrate their achievements and hopefully bring in new members. Clubland Live 3; Sheffield Arena; 7:30pm; £26-27.50 Featuring Cascada, N-Dubz, Darren Styles, Agnes and many more big names Clubland returns with a vengeance.
Celebrating the release of their fourth studio album Ultra Beatdown power metal band Dragon Force bring their finger breakingly fast, impossibly tough on guitar hero riffs to Sheffield. Best of Kendal Film Nights @ The Showroom; 8:00pm; £7:50 The Showroom cinema is set to display a selection of films from the Kendal Mountain Film Festival. The massive programme will be whittled down to the best for your viewing pleasure.
Inspired the best selling 50’s compilation album of last year this musical is written by the team behind Goodnight Sweetheart. Songs from Roy Orbison, The Shadows, Chuck Berry and other legends of the past will feature. Seriously Big: The Latest and Greatest Hits of the Hubble Space Telescope @ Pennine Lecture Theatre; 7:00pm; Free A chance to see stunning photography from the Hubble Space Telescope and learn more about the Universe. Rickey Gervais Science @ City Hall; 7:30pm; £30 After being involved in multiple television and film hits recently Gervais returns to his roots for this live show.
Thriller- Live @ Sheffield Arena; 7.30pm; £35
High octane and nonstop music and dancing from the extensive collection of hits from Jackson’s career. A mix of dazzling choreography and jaw dropping effects promise to faithfully recreate the singer’s love of the spectacle.
Buddy Whittington @ Boardwalk; 7:30pm; £14 Texan Buddy plays the best in rocking blues in an intimate setting.
Chuck Berry @ The Octagon; 7:30pm; £45
After cancelling the previously planned show Chuck Berry and his full USA band are still supported by the Paul Jones Blues Band and The Jim Jones Revue. Berry is a living legend and many point to him as an architect in the birth of rock and roll.