NOW THEN I ISSUE 96 I

NOW THEN

MICHAEL WARAKSA | BRIDGET CHRISTIE | BLOOD SPORT A MAGAZINE FOR SHEFFIELD | ISSUE 96 | FREE

EDITORIAL of NOW THEN.

Now Then is a free, independent magazine published in Sheffield, supporting independence in art, trade and citizen journalism.

Local people are encouraged to contribute, whatever their skills or experience, and each magazine is built around artwork from a different featured artist.

Now Then is all about supporting the things that make a community what it is - creativity, collaboration and conscience. If you have something to say, get in touch.

We’ve just announced the spring season of the Festival of Debate 2016, so all hands are on deck in the Opus office.

There’s a small sample of the programme on page 35. Pick up a printed brochure from town or visit festivalofdebate.com for the full shebang. With the help of lots of likeminded groups, we’ve got 40 events taking place from March to June.

This month our interviewees are comedian Bridget Christie, local band Blood Sport and Jules of Sheffield Beer Week. I would also recommend our piece on the potential closure of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills office in Sheffield (p7), written by an anonymous staff member, and Samantha Holland’s Filmreel piece about the neutering of politics in the remakes of Robocop and Stepford Wives.

Artwork this month comes from the desk of US illustrator Michael Waraksa.

Please let us know what you think of the page layouts we introduced last month. We want to continue improving the mag, but we can’t do that without feedback and constructive criticism, so it’s all welcome.

Next month we’ll be celebrating eight years of Now Then.

We support the local economy and therefore we do not work with chains, corporations or multinationals. Instead, across all Opus projects, we work exclusively with independent traders, community groups, charities and local government.

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5 // Localcheck

Harpham’s Battle Rages On

7 // BIS

Office Closure is Bad Policy

9 // Cadence

Changing The Rhythm

12 // Bridget Christie A Book For Her

18 // Food Pizza

22 // Wordlife

Kayombo Chingonyi / Ledlowe Guthrie / Jim Daniels

25 // Cool Beans

35 // Festival of Debate The Debate Continues

36 // Michael Waraksa This Month’s Featured Artist

41 // Sound Writer? Musician? Artist? sam@nowthenmagazine.com Poet? wordlife@nowthenmagazine.com Want To Advertise? james@opusindependents.com Search ‘Now Then’ on Facebook.

Twitter? @nowthenmag #nowthen

Pop Ate Itself and Got A Dicky Tummy

42 // Live

Vieux Farka Toure / Ohhms / Listings

44 // Albums

Big Eyes / Louis Barabbas / Solar Bears / Steel City Rhythm

46 // Blood Sport Axe Laid To The Root

48 // Headsup Sheffield Beer Week

contributors

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Check Now Then for updates each month.

Changing The Rhythm

Dog Grooming / Monoculture SAM sam@nowthenmagazine.com

Opus Independents is a not-for-profit, independent organisation working in culture, politics and the arts, encouraging and supporting participation, activism and creativity through mediums including print, online and live events. Currently our main strands are Now Then Magazine and the Now Then Discounts App, Opus Distribution, Festival of Debate and Word Life.

NOW THEN 96, MARCH 2016

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52 // Filmreel

Robocop Wives: Remakes

54 // Favourites

Our Pick of Independent Sheffield

56 // Discounts

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The views expressed in the following articles are the opinions of the writers and not necessarily those of Now Then Magazine. Reproduction of any of the images or writing in Now Then without prior consent is prohibited. Now Then may be unsuitable for under 18s. Now Then is a registered trademark of Opus Independents Ltd, 71 Hill Street, Sheffield, S2 4SP.

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Localcheck Harpham’s Battle Rages On

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L

ast month Harry Harpham, Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough, died. He had served in Sheffield City Council and became an MP not long before being diagnosed with cancer. This is not an obituary, although it’s worth recording that Sheffield Trades Council called him “a working class gentleman, pleasant-mannered and kind” and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that “to the very end he was fighting for working people”.

This is significant. He worked down the pits, moving here from Nottingham after the miners’ strike in 1985. The dispute with the Conservative government was bitter, with militarised police actions like the violent Battle of Orgreave. Harpham, supporting the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, moved a resolution to get Sheffield City Council to call for an inquiry into the events, after years of lies and cover ups.

At that time, climate change was hardly recognised. The closures were a purely financial and political move. The few remaining mines were largely privatised and eventually mothballed. The same is happening with other industries now. Jobs are ‘outsourced’ to cheap labour countries. Short-term contracts replace careers. Staffing levels are cut again and again.

Uber, for example, looks set to destroy working conditions for taxi drivers. They sneaked into Sheffield with massive financial clout, enough to seal a deal with the Council which the public are not even allowed to see. Airbnb looks set to decimate the hotel industry. Journalism is replaced by ‘churnalism’ based on advertising press releases. A combination of corporate muscle, privatisation, cuts and new technology is slashing at professions like teaching, medicine and administration. The working world is changing, becoming very different from that of our parents.

We need ideas and organisations at the grassroots to support people, and this column has highlighted many. One hopeful sign is

MARDI GRAS

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the revival of co-operative working, where principles of mutual aid replace the fiercely competitive greed motive. A new generation is finding empowerment and pleasure in self-organising, in co-ops ranging from housing to food, from finance to transport.

For a full list of local co-ops, see sheffield.coop. If you’re interested, a good starting point is Principle 5, a recently opened co-operative resource centre in Aizlewoods Mill in Nursery Street.

Named after one of the International Statements of Co-operative Identity - the principle of education for co-operation - it provides existing and proposed co-ops with support and information about the vast co-operative movement.

Organiser Steve Thompson says, “The development of a co-operative commonwealth can bring about a more equitable and socially just society to replace or minimise the private profit motive of capitalism [...] It is easy to see why co-operators have put so much effort and dedication into building the co-operative alternative. It is also easy to see why there has been such a concerted effort by the upholders of the status quo to denigrate it.”

We need to fight for better ways to live and work, to have a vision of a better future than the glittering delusions of market capitalism. As Harry Harpham said, “Working people have never been handed change - we’ve had to fight for it”. No-one has all the answers, but clearly, more than ever, we need to take on Harpham’s fight.

Hosted by Alt Sheff

otjc.org.uk | principle5.org.uk | alt-sheff.org

RED MENACE #2

SAT 19 MAR | 2pm–2am | Hagglers Corner

SAT 19 MAR | 7pm | RS BAR, ST MARY’S ROAD

Sharrow Festival fundraiser with afternoon children’s activities and dance workshops (Bollywood, Bhangra, African Fusion and Street Dance) followed by a lively evening line-up - Mango Rescue Team, Hot Diamond Aces, InaVibe, Son de América, Sheffield Samba Band and DJs. Tickets £5 via partyforthepeople.org.uk.

A night of solidarity and raging live music, raising funds for next month’s Anarchist Bookfair (Saturday 23 April at the Showroom). Dru Blues, Lunar Maria, Chris Rust, The Washbrook Family Band, Dead Badgers and more in an inappropriately named venue, The Royal Standard.

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ARTS & WELLBEING

BIS Office closure plan is bad policy

Don’t live with pain see how we can help

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backgrounds, experiences, and attitudes, who approach the same problem in different ways,” as Matt Hancock, the cabinet minister responsible for civil service reform, said this February.

Civil servants in BIS Sheffield have proven for decades that we can work successfully with ministers on areas like higher education, further education and small business support, ironically including work on the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. We did not have to sit by their side, day in, day out, to deliver the work.

It’s an even greater irony that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has publicly stated it can only work from one location in London. Despite pushing ‘smarter working’, it can’t work across two policy hubs, or with civil servants in different parts of the country, although multi-site working is second nature to most modern businesses. Yet it wants to lead the nation on innovation. The idea that it can send a man into space but can’t work with staff in Sheffield is risible.

BIS has the chance to lead Government here, because it has an HQ outside London. It should build on that. Instead it intends to retreat to the dark ages, where work can only be done when people are sitting next to each other. Quills might be optional.

If you think this is all beyond ridiculous, please sign and share the petition (link below) and write to Sajid Javid, BIS Secretary of State, via your MP (or he won’t see your letter), to ask him about BIS’s rationale. Feel free to use any of the points in this article.

Sajid Javid, Se cre tar y of State for BIS

e do not take this decision lightly,” said Martin Donnelly, the civil servant in charge of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), when making the shock announcement to staff on 28 January that BIS plans to close its Sheffield site by January 2018. I work in BIS Sheffield and listened to this announcement in utter disbelief.

I feel compelled to write about this but have to do so anonymously.

This would cost Sheffield around 250 high-quality, highvalue policy jobs, and the rest of the country around 100. BIS has said it could decide about Sheffield as early as March, mid consultation. To be clear, the job roles won’t stop. They will all be done in London instead, as BIS intends to move all policy jobs to London, that already over-heated labour market where these jobs aren’t needed.

No evidence, no cost-benefit information and no detailed options have been offered to back up the proposal. All major BIS policy decisions must have all of these and be open to scrutiny. In this case there is no transparency and an almost contemptuous refusal to allow scrutiny of the decision-making process, even when pressed in Parliament by Sheffield MPs. BIS also refuses to publish the £200,000 report by consultancy firm McKinsey which supposedly informed the plans.

The Department states it wants to “modernise the way BIS works, reduce operating costs, and deliver a simpler, smaller department that is more flexible and responsive to stakeholders and businesses”. Internally, it says it’s about being “close” to ministers. There is no explanation of how any of BIS’s plans will make sure it does a better job for ministers or the public, or how they will save money.

If saving money is the spur, Sheffield wins hands down. But there is another principle at stake here - that policy thinking and creation should not become an insular and isolated activity undertaken only in London. Civil servants, who inform and advise ministers, and regularly feed in new policy ideas for events such as budgets, statements and speeches needing announcements, will all be London based if BIS forges ahead.

The public and the country get a better service from policy development which includes real world experience and diverse perspectives from across the country. A Northern policy base is invaluable for this. Good policy development by its very nature must include a wide range of views and experience. This proposal to move all policy to London is a prime example of bad policy, and it also runs counter to the recognition in Government that a better civil service is “full of people from different

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120406

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Cadence Changing The Rhythm

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“I

t doesn’t feel like coincidence, you know. It’s more like the meshing of some weird gears,” says Jayne, gloomily. “Everything’s apocalyptic at the moment, like it’s all stuck in the wrong gear.”

We’re sitting in the Rutland Arms, indulging in a midafternoon pint. I haven’t seen Jayne for a year, but she’s ranting like she’s never left off from last time. “My mum and dad are marooned by floods, the country’s getting all right-wing, my Facebook’s full of casual bigots. We’re bombing half the bloody world and then trying to stop refugees. What the hell’s going on?”

Jayne’s mention of gears gets me thinking about cadence - cycles of rhythms. Cadence is why you know when the verse is ready to shift to the chorus, or when it’s time to change gear, even if you can’t hear the engine. Every situation has its own rhythm, and if you change the rhythm you change the situation to one that fits the new rhythm. In a roundabout way, it’s a law of

and David Bowie have New York in common, and while she’s writing this book she goes to Tokyo and she’s reading the same Murakami novel that I read recently. Those three people, they’re each doing exactly what I was talking about – changing the rhythm. Introducing an alter ego, or a surreal parallel world, or living with the dead, just to stir things up and see what happens.

And what happens is that they actually do change the world.”

New York, London, Tokyo. People who want to change the world move to where the action is. Cities big enough to absorb a million stories, mashing up truth and imagination, spinning at many different speeds at the same time, synchronising with each other on stock markets, airport clocks and on the Internet.

But what of smaller cities? People around the world still use Sheffield knives, so our city is part of their daily rhythm, but for how long? My generation will always dance to songs by Pulp and Human League, but they’re growing old with us. What comes next? New technologies are now called ‘disruptive’, and art is

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“Every situation has its own rhythm”

.................................................................... nature. It’s why the climate is adjusting to our abuses, finding a new cadence, instead of just booting us out unceremoniously.

We venture out of the pub and up towards Charter Square.

Instinctively we link arms and fall in step with each other, reassuring ourselves that this simple, timeless act of human contact can protect us. We talk about our families, our loved ones.

Heading along Wellington Street towards The Washington, we lengthen our stride slightly, pick up pace, and everything around us seems to change. It’s as though the infinitesimal reaction of the city to our treading on it differently is somehow amplified.

A bit of energy and optimism starts to seep back into our weary blood. We’ve changed the cadence.

I tell Jayne about Patti Smith’s memoir, M Train, which my wife bought me for Christmas. I read it during the Grim Reaper’s January sale, which claimed Lemmy, Bowie, Rickman, Frey, Wogan. It’s a wonderful window into a brilliant mind, but the insight comes from her day-to-day rhythms: seeking out decent coffee, taking polaroids, planning journeys, learning to live with the dreams and ghosts of her husband and her brother.

“Talk about meshing gears,” I say to Jayne. Maybe it’s the beer that’s thinking for me now, but I’m on a roll. “Patti Smith 8

too. It’s the rhythms they disrupt. How long does it take the interrelated things, the meshing gears, to find a new cadence? If all the creativity in Sheffield can produce disruptions, do we get the credit – or the blame – for how things turn out?

As afternoon turns to night, we wander back towards the railway station for a parting snifter among the transient crowd in the Tap. “We should do this more often,” says Jayne. I nod my head, but actually I’m thinking once a year is about the right rhythm for our friendship.

Andrew Wood

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complaining, but it really is a balance. Sometimes you feel like you’re not doing anything properly. You do learn to juggle it a little better the longer you do it, but if I wasn’t in work right now, I’d be complaining about that and blaming the kids to their faces.

A Bic For Her (2013) and An Ungrateful Woman (2014) were both hugely successful and won the Chortle Award for Best Tour. A Book For Her is up for nomination this year.

Yes it is! But I don’t think I’ll win this year, because it’s a public vote and I’m not on social media. I made a decision years ago to not be on social media. It seemed like opening a can of worms to me, but it’s not. It’s a wonderful thing, and the Internet is an amazing thing. There have been times where I’ve thought it may be useful, when someone has taken me out of context and misconstrued, or a journalist has just got something completely wrong that I’ve apparently said. I sometimes think if I was on Twitter, I could say, ‘Hey, I actually didn’t say that. I said the opposite of that.’ There are disadvantages with not being on it, because you can’t clarify things to people.

You’re a regular on the Edinburgh Fringe circuit and have been attending since the start of your career. How has the Fringe shaped you as a performer?

It’s completely shaped me. I remember when I started doing stand-up now and then, back in 2003-2004. In stand-up now, they’re out seven nights a week gigging, and I didn’t do that for quite a while into my career. For a start, it’s hard to get gigs. You kind of have to beg promoters to let you have

Yes it is, and it’s a massive question for the whole of society to address, because it happens in every single profession. But what I think will help is to encourage more and more women and girls to go into professions that have been historically male-dominated. The more women that come through, the less unusual it will be when women are seen doing those roles in subjects such as politics and science. We won’t be viewed as different and won’t need to be representative of our whole gender. Hopefully we’ll get to the point where we’re judged as individuals, rather than by sex. It’s a huge seismic shift that’s going to have to happen everywhere, not just in stand-up.

How much work do you typically put into a routine about something like female genital mutilation (FGM) before you feel confident about discussing it on stage?

Although it may not look like I’ve put much work in, I’ll have put an extraordinarily large amount of work into even a two-minute routine about something as serious as that. It’s about tone, it’s about language, and you owe it to the subject to have a really good think about what you’re going to say.

Knowledge, information and facts are your armour, if you like. You need to know what you’re talking about. Being absurd and writing comedy about a serious issue doesn’t insult victims. It’s satirising ideas that are completely and utterly absurd. Supporters [of FGM] say it’s a cultural tradition, but that is absurd because it’s torture and abuse.

People seem to take things at face value. I had people saying that my routine was deeply offensive to those who

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Bridget Christie A Book For Her

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H

aving garnered a reputation for her audacious wit, multi-award winning comedian, actress and writer Bridget Christie prepares to embark on her 2016 spring tour, A Book For Her, which shares its name with her debut book, published in July 2015 to critical acclaim. Like the book, themes of feminism and human rights form the backbone of Christie’s stand-up routines, where realism meets the absurd in the most hilarious way.

You’ve just finished a string of London shows and will soon be on the road with A Book For Her. How are you feeling about it?

I’m looking forward to it. Well, I’m not looking forward to being away from home, because the kids are small. I do like 12

going round the country and meeting people. Because I’m not really on social media, I don’t often get the opportunity to interact with my audience that much. It’s great because you can go away and get lots of writing done on trains and stuff like that. All I ever wanted to be able to do was tour in my own right, so I suppose I hope the rooms fill up.

How do you maintain the delicate balance of family life with a hugely successful career that often comes with a demanding schedule?

It’s really weird how it happened for me. I mean, I’m 45 in August. There’s just no right time to have children and for your career to take off. Ideally, I suppose you’d get ahead before you had children so you weren’t slogging yourself to death when they’re little. There’s no way around it. I’m not

“writing comedy about a serious issue doesn’t insult victims”

.................................................................... five minutes, and then you sort of build it up over the years and get more slots. But I was completely naive. I didn’t really know how anything worked and I didn’t really have a plan. I just used to do loads of different material all the time, instead of honing in on 10 or 20 minutes of content.

However, what I did start to do, against a lot of people’s advice, was Edinburgh shows which ran for four hours or so, right at the beginning, even before I had a proper set. I still don’t even have a proper club set that I can do, which is a failing on my part. Even though I’ve done 11 Edinburgh shows, I still don’t have a good 15-20 minutes I can do in any club, after all this time. But I do have all these shows that I’ve been able to do theatre runs with, and tour art centres with, and that is always what I wanted to do.

Would you say that the recurring theme of feminism throughout your work is a conscious effort?

It’s interesting to me. I’ve been taking about feminism in my shows since 2011-2012. I did a show called War Donkey which was about feminism, then I did a radio series, and then A Bic For Her, which was the one that really took off, I think.

I don’t pick themes. I just write about what’s important to me at any given time. The thing about feminism is that it’s human rights, so that never ends or stops. I do feel that I have a responsibility to my audience. It’s such a direct relationship and everything else is irrelevant.

Stand-up comedy is still a very male-dominated arena.

What can be done to address that gender imbalance?

have suffered with FGM. This person really thought that I saw FGM as being the same as Morris dancing. I can’t write something and think, ‘Oh, someone might think I’m being serious about this,’ because my job is to find different ways of talking about serious things. You’ve got to be free to be able to do that.

What do you most want the audience to take away from your shows?

Don’t let a lack of confidence get in the way, try and go for it, and don’t ever think it’s too late, because it’s not.

Ebony Nembhard

Bridget Christie brings A Book For Her to Sheffield City Hall on Wed 13 April. Tickets via City Hall box office. bridgetchristie.co.uk

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FILM & BOOZE

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Food Pizza

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P

izza is one of the world’s most popular foods, from the Neapolitan, where less is more, and the thin and crispy Roman-style to en vogue artisan sourdough pizza and your high street chain’s stuffed cheese, piled high with toppings.

There are also many variations on the pizza theme, with Turkish lahmacun, a flatbread traditionally topped with spiced mince and vegetables, the French pissaladière and socca from Nice, a gluten-free alternative made with gram flour.

But what makes a great pizza? We consulted a few of Sheffield’s aficionados to get the lowdown.

Picture House Social chef Ste Mullins: “Ingredients are key, which for us means importing San Marzano tomatoes and 00 flour from Italy […] Whilst it’s really hard

wood-fired. Once you’ve experienced a wood-fired pizza, there is no going back [...] Make your own dough, use quality ingredients (less is more), turn the oven up to full and get it as hot as you can. A black enamel paella pan makes a great pizza pan. Fire away!”

Craft & Dough chef Luke French: “Use the best ingredients you can find [...] Slow cooked and pulled ox cheek is definitely a favourite and it has been a true winner at Craft & Dough. Also nduja, a spreadable spicy Calabrian sausage [...] If you’re not so lucky as to have a pizza oven in your garden then get yourself a decent heavy cast iron pan, turn it upside down and get it as hot as you possibly can under the grill or in the oven, place the pizza on top and slide it back in the oven as soon as it’s on so you don’t lose any heat.”

Nether Edge Pizza Co

Reet Pizza @ The Punchbowl

This mobile pizzeria is geared up with a wood-fire oven that can cook a pizza in 90 seconds. Their thin and crispy bases are served with a range of delicious toppings, including the Nether Edge Vegan, the Meersbrook Meaty and the Heeley Hot. You can find them at Café #9 in Nether Edge (Wednesdays), The Cross Scythes in Totley (Thursdays) and The Greystones (Fridays). From March, they are setting up a permanent pizza home at the Peddler Market in Kelham Island.

The guys who own The Closed Shop, The Rutland Arms and The Three Tuns recently took over the reins at The Punchbowl in Crookes. Enjoy decent real ales together with great pizzas. The menu has a tempting choice of 12” pizzas with cider piggy pork, Yorkshire goat’s cheese and the Punchbowl pizza. There are daily specials, weekly special offers (Mon-Wed £18 for two pizzas and a bottle of wine) and a takeaway service is available.

Craft & Dough

Picture House Social

From The Milestone team comes Craft & Dough. The name says it all, as the menu serves up an extensive choice of craft beers (over 30) and a selection of handmade pizzas. They do brunch dishes, coffee and cocktails too. The pizzas have creative toppings, from butternut squash, purple sprouting broccoli and rosemary to tandoori chicken breast, raita, chilli and Bombay mix. Gluten-free and vegan options available on request.

Housed in the former ballroom and billiard hall of the 1920s Abbeydale Picture House, PHS is a chilled-out venue where you can play table tennis and indulge in pizza, beers and cocktails. Feast on flavoursome pizzas cooked with topnotch ingredients, with toppings of sprout, pancetta and blue cheese, nduja and artichoke. Check out their hungerinducing pictures on Instagram.

netheredgepizza.com

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“You can make great pizza dough with beer”

................................................................ to emulate a pizza oven, simply because a standard home oven temperature isn’t high enough, a pizza stone will certainly make a difference [...] A good margherita cannot be beaten. Really good quality San Marzano tomatoes, flor di latte cheese and fresh basil. If a place can’t serve you a good margherita, then don’t go.”

Ed Phillips of Reet Pizza at The Punchbowl: “For great pizza, you need great fresh ingredients and good quality dough. 00 flour is slightly more expensive but well worth the money. Also, letting the dough rise properly before rolling or stretching it. Experimenting is also key. You can make great pizza dough with beer. Just use half a pint of real ale and a good pinch of salt with the flour and you can taste the flavours in the bread.”

Editor’s tip - if you don’t want the faff of making your own dough then Forge Bakehouse sell pizza dough and Urban Pantry do pizza DIY kits.

Nether Edge Pizza’s Gary Hutton: “Pizzas have to be

According to the experts, here’s where the best pizza can be found outside of Sheffield: • Civitavecchia, near Rome - They are huge, cheap and really tasty.

• New York - John’s of Bleecker St • London - Pizza Pilgrims (Soho)

Ros Arksey @Nibbly_Pig

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Don’t forget to check out the Now Then Discounts App for the latest eating out offers.

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ABBEYDALE ROAD RULES

Big Sur Breakfast

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Afterword

Limoncello

leaving the piano behind

‘If this was another kind of story, I’d tell you about the sea’ –

They drove out to the Edge. ‘Look at that,’ she said.

Past the heather, orange under the sinking sun, was the ridge.

The grey millstone grit of Stanage Edge, crumbling and cracked, stretched for miles along the horizon, sprinkled with dots of climbers’ colour. If they drove just a little further they’d find Froggat, Curbar, Baslow and Birchen.

She wanted to look at a map and see all the lines: the contours and paths and rivers. She wanted to touch the stones and follow the scars and weaknesses. She wanted to see how it all fitted together.

Two cups of sweet flask coffee sat on the dashboard. She watched the steam cloud the windscreen and the blur of a red and white paraglider’s sail drift over the forest ahead. Now and again the wind shook the car. The man next-door had taken off from one of those edges when he smashed into a rock face. She wondered which edge it had been. The doctors said he might spend three years in a wheelchair and still not walk again, so he chose to lose the leg. I bet he’s jumped off the same edge again though, she thought.

She reached for a cup. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Behind us.’ In the wing mirror she could see a murmuration of starlings swooping and circling.

‘You know—’ he began and drummed his chewed fingers on his knees.

‘Don’t,’ she said.

‘But don’t you think we should talk?’

She noticed the mint on his breath. ‘Not here.’ She took a sip of her coffee, then rubbed her lips together. ‘It might ruin this view forever.’ She stared at the stones again.

‘I used to think you had a thing for Vince.’

‘Vince?’ she almost smiled.

‘He could dance. And he brought you a bottle of Limoncello once. I didn’t even know you liked Limoncello.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘We haven’t climbed for years,’ he said and opened the window a little. The steam began to clear and his red hair ruffled in the sudden breeze.

‘Did you always think there was someone else?’ She watched a couple of rabbits run into the trees.

‘Well you said you were at French on a Wednesday.’ He got out of the car.

She got out too and looked back up at the changing greys and lengthening shadows beneath the Edge. The hotel had been nothing special. She should have known.

‘I’m going to walk up,’ he said.

She looked at him and said, ‘Have we got enough time?’

He held out his hand and she took it.

we packed the shrunken sleep of old pillows and the broken

Junot Díaz

Wordlife Hosted by Joe Kriss

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One prose piece and two poems for you this month, all sharing a theme of beginnings and endings. Kayo Chingonyi co-founded Word Life with me back in 2006 and has just released a new pamphlet, The Colour of James Brown’s Scream. This is Ledlowe Guthrie’s second time in Now Then, having appeared back in issue #75. Jim Daniels is a new resident of the city, a visiting Creative Writing Professor at Sheffield Hallam University over from the States. Let us know what you think and keep the submissions coming.

Joe @WordlifeUK

I’m afraid the end will be too easy.

INT. a restaurant made ours by habit. We laugh about the cheesy pull-back-clinch, those petrol station flowers, plans hatched in the whispers of small hours.

You order a Prawn Korma with boiled rice, feign restraint, ask for a glass of house white.

When the laden plates settle on the cloth of our favourite table and the talk slips to a hill-top village, dew-soft lawns, a loch, the house we built that no longer exists, we won’t disturb the moment with a kiss.

The waiter, on cue, will come over to see the food’s to our taste. We’ll scrape cutlery.

.......

Poetry Workshop Every Wed | 7-8:30pm | Sharrow Community Forum Local poet and Word Life favourite Gevi Carver has started a regular poetry workshop open to new and established writers. If you’re interested in improving your skills, contact gevicarver@gmail.com to sign up.

Lyrical Fri 11 Mar | 7pm | Vittles Cafe Lyrical is the newest addition to the local poetry scene here in Sheffield, taking the count up to eight monthly open mic events. This event is free and features headline readings from Kate Garrett and Carol Eades.

Word Life Fri 25 Mar | 7:30pm | Theatre Deli | £5, £4 concessions March’s instalment features award-winning British writer and spoken word artist, Toby Campion, who has featured on BBC1, BBC Radio 4 and E4, and on stages across the UK and the US. Also featuring open mic. More details TBA.

Interested in performing or writing something for Wordlife? Contact Joe Kriss at wordlife@nowthenmagazine.com

Kayombo Chingonyi

wedding clock. We packed the dreadlocked mop and the shaved head of the basketball. We packed the love letters of the insane yellowing in a box. We packed three trophies, one for each sport, and discarded the others. We packed the extra wine glasses that would be extra forever since I swore off the stuff. I swore I wouldn’t take so much stuff, but I packed the winter socks from dead Mr. Callahan and the oversized sport coat my son outgrew.

We packed my daughter’s IV port and my son’s pre-surgery video. We packed sour dreams stale dreams overcooked still-raw dreams, all the dreams came along and most of our broken sunglasses. We dumped our random drawers into boxes and marked them fragile. The whoosh of thirty years, the chill of the newly empty rooms, the choked-back tears, and even the worn welcome mat on our way out the door, but we left the piano upright in the corner, having taken all its songs, having loved its silence, having watched our children’s fingers dully press the keys, having survived the lost names, the floods of grief, the midnight phone calls, the joyful dancing, we left the piano movers suspended in comic waiting, we left the piano in the mute awe of our lives lived there.

We left the piano untuneable, humming either goodbye or hello, one long held note.

Jim Daniels

Ledlowe Guthrie

23

DO IT TOGETHER

Cool Beans ....................................................................

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Professional Network Co-working Volunteering

5 Years supporting

Community New businesses 6 11 Artists/Groups

Dog Grooming

Monoculture

Dear Advice Arnold,

Hi guys! Wow! Wow!! I have to say, I’m feeling so hyped for the vibrant monoculture that we have to look forward to now that the mass deportation of unskilled migrant workers has become part of law!

Finally! This is our chance to return to proper British culture.

No more of these thobes, asceticism and endless droning conversations about the Hajj. We can get back to good, old-fashioned, proper British values: protracted silence, fox blood face painting, Poundland, colonial guilt, Nectar cards, anti-homeless spikes, kettles, kettling, Kettering, a crying butcher, imperceptible anxiety attacks, black mould and Cromwell’s nude ghost.

Bring back feudal lords! Smash up my house with a morning star. I don’t care, as long as it’s historically British. I can’t wait!

WOW The most exciting bit is the transformation this mass deportation will have on our purebred stock of xenophobic nationalists.

Once feared as unapproachably furious, the realisation of their deepest desires will provide them the opportunity to become the pillars of joy, generosity and community building that were previously stifled by the presence of minarets, kebabs and mathematics.

We are entering a brave new world: each new food bank staffed by our new skinhead champions, each local library propped up by a surge of new volunteers and St George’s flag window hangings, profits exploding at each new charity drive as they’re carried out with militia-like mass intimidation.

God bless our new champions, with no local migrant communities to persecute, finally making good on their stated desire to improve the life of ordinary British people.

Long-time reader, first-time writer. Love the work you did in the 90s with Keith & Maxin. It was the soundtrack to my youth.

I would like to trouble you for some advice regarding a career move. After 28 and a half glorious years behind the till at my local sex shop, I’m now making plans to start up my own dog grooming business. As a proud business owner yourself, what steps can I take towards success, fortune and eternal happiness?

Many thanks in advance, Betty Smith, Croydon Hi Betty, Thanks for your message. I took much delight in reading it over my Special K this morning (the popular breakfast cereal, not the slang term for ketamine - those days are over).

I believe you’re mistaking me for Liam Howlett, the brains behind popular dance act The Prodigy. Don’t worry, it happens all the time. My own mother started singing ‘Firestarter’ at me the other day.

Now, with a dog grooming business it’s absolutely imperative you clearly state that you’ll be tending to their fur, trimming, shampooing, etc, and not that you intend to mould them into some sort of an obsequious bedroom slave. It’s an easy mistake to make, and one that has left me up a creek without a paddle in the past.

Bearing that in mind, try not to name your business anything too risqué. Speaking from experience, ‘Doggy Style’ and ‘Bring Ur Bitches’ are strictly off limits. Apart from that, I’d advise you store your receipts in a shoebox, keep your prices competitive and avoid employing anyone with a history of arson.

Hope that helps Betty! Never contact me again.

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Sean Morley @SeanMorleyBrand

Advice Arnold @ChrisArnoldInc 25

ABBEYDALE CREW

BREWERS & DISTILLERS

@

WITH THORNBRIDGE BREWERY 30th March 2016, 7-9pm at The BBQ Collective at The Hop West One Plaza, S1 4JB

Sheffield, meet America. Once a month, we introduce one of Sheffield’s finest products – beer – to one of America’s – oak smoked barbecue. The two get along brilliantly. At BBQ & Brewers Night, our pitmaster and guest brewer will talk you through this perfect pairing, while you tuck in and take a few swigs.

Advance booking only. Limited availability.

Ticket £25 for a 5-course BBQ & beer pairing. www.bbqcollective.com/brewersnight Call 0114 278 1000 Email info@bbqcollective.co.uk

b a x r

@bbqcollective

FUTURE SMOKING

PERFECT CHEMISTRY

Introducing the new Platinum Range of E-liquids from Mirage.

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SMOKING - EVOLVED www.mirage.co.uk

SHEFFIELD ART & DESIGN

Art and Pottery courses starting in April Fully equipped pottery and art studios Beautiful new building Courses for all abilities See www.arthousesheffield.co.uk for details or email info@arthousesheffield.co.uk

Pottery Handbuilding Beginners and intermediates Wheelthrowing All levels from beginners to master classes Glaze Technology Get the best results from glazing and develop your style Open Studio Time to practice and refine your skills

Art Drawing It’s fun and easy to learn Life drawing Taught and drop in classes Watercolours Develop the techniques and love of this great medium Printmaking, Linocutting Work with a range of techniques, skills and creative ideas Textiles: A range of machines and media

OPUS WANTS YOU

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• GA

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a s a h n o u i n f o r mr e a bi n: e a s u t u a l pl

A new series of wandering gigs hosted and curated by Neil McSweeney and Opus Independents, moving between venues big and small across the city.

NOW THEN MAGAZINE SALES ROLE

NOW THEN.

A full-time paid role, based in Sheffield. £14,040 per annum, plus 28 days annual leave, including bank holidays. Travel expenses and company bonus scheme.

To apply, please send your CV and a covering letter sharing your enthusiasm and eligibility for the role to accounts@nowthenmagazine.com.

Deadline for applications: Mon 21st March 2016 by 5pm.

Interviews: Weds 30th March 2016.

RICHARD WARREN Saturday 19 March, 7:30pm

Regather Works. Tickets £7 via WeGotTickets

BIG EYES FAMILY PLAYERS Sunday 3 April, 7:30pm The Greystones. Tickets TBC

HAVE SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TO BE SEEN? POSTERS, FLYERS, BROCHURES, MAGAZINES GET YOUR PRINT TO THE PEOPLE OF SHEFFIELD LARGEST PRINT DISTRIBUTION RUNS IN THE CITY & LOWEST RATES AROUND. RUNS FROM JUST £20

FESTIVAL OF DEBATE CHRIS T-T

Saturday 7 May, 7:30pm

Eten Cafe. Tickets £7 via Eventbrite

OUR REGULAR CLIENTS INCLUDE: SHEFFIELD CITY HALL, SHEFFIELD THEATRES, SHEFFIELD MUSEUMS, THE SHOWROOM CINEMA. AS WELL AS NUMEROUS INDEPENDENT BUSINESSES, PROMOTERS, COMMUNITY GROUPS AND CHARITIES.

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NOW THEN.

The Debate Continues

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Join the team

www.opusindependents.com www.nowthenmagazine.com

PEACE IN THE PARK FUNDRAISER

Festival of Debate

W

ell, after a good few months in gestation, the Festival of Debate Spring season programme went live at the end of February. You should see brochures all over Sheffield, as well as online at festivalofdebate.com.

We are chuffed with the number of partner organisations and individuals who have got involved with the festival so far this year, and that number is only going to increase when the Autumn season comes around. What we want now is for people to come along to the events throughout March, April, May and June, ask questions, get involved with discussion and debate, and engage with the topics they care about. We have 40 events scheduled as part of the festival at the moment, but stay tuned to the Festival of Debate Facebook and Twitter pages for more event recommendations as they come in.

If you want to get involved with the festival - as a volunteer, event organiser or speaker, or if you have an event topic suggestion - please get in touch on hello@festivalofdebate.com.

Here’s a small sample of March and April’s events. Pick up Now Then next month for more April and May listings. Full programme and tickets at festivalofdebate.com.

THE PEARL BUTTON Fri 18 March | Showroom Cinema A meditative film by legendary Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán that delves into the waterways of Chilean Patagonia, examining the connection between humanity and water, and chronicling the devastating history of the region.

IT STARTED WITH ONE WELL Thurs 24 March | 7pm | Regather Works Sheffield Against Fracking host a feature film screening and debate around this controversial topic. After cuts to green energy subsidies and the recent granting of licences to drill test sites across the UK, many of which are in the Peak District, it is more important than ever that this issue is brought to the fore. Pay what you feel.

AUSTERITY AND THE ALTERNATIVES: AN ECONOMICS MASTERCLASS Sat 9 April | 10:30am-5pm | Gallery 3, University of Sheffield Students’ Union A session exploring why the dominant economic ideas of today place short-term consumerism and the interests of big business over long-term wellbeing and social and environmental justice, and what we can do to change course. No prior knowledge of economics needed (or indeed useful). Hosted by Christine Berry and Tim Jenkins of New Economics Foundation. Pay what you feel.

ALL OR NOTHING? CHANGING THE ELECTORAL SHAPE OF SHEFFIELD Thurs 14 April | 6-8pm | Mandela Room, Town Hall Following changes to the ward boundaries in Sheffield, we will have an ‘all out’ election in May where all councillors will be up for re-election. This is the time to consider the impact of ‘all out’ and whether this is a change that should become permanent. A panel debate with presentations from Sheffield’s Electoral Services and contributions from political, academic and campaign group panellists.

STEVE BELL Thurs 21 April | 7:30-10pm | Auditorium, Sheffield SU Steve Bell reveals the deep dark secrets of the world of political cartooning and his ongoing mission to tear holes in the clothing of the political establishment. Tickets £8/£6 via SU box office. festivalofdebate.com

YOUNG PEOPLE’S QUESTION TIME Tues 5 April | 6-8:30pm | Star House Sheffield Futures host an event looking at issues for today’s young people around education and employment. Featuring Sheffield Youth Cabinet, Louise Haigh MP and guest speakers TBC.

opusindependents.com/opus-presents 35

Michael Waraksa This Month’s Featured Artist

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O

ur featured artist this month is Michael Waraksa, an illustrator based in Chicago who works with clients including TIME and The New York Times. Building multi-layered collages, most of them digital, Michael creates work with a sense of humour and a strong through line, putting his own stamp on a multitude of source materials lifted out of time and liberated from their original contexts.

What was your route into art and illustration?

I was interested in art even before I started kindergarten. I spent many hours drawing as a child and received a fair amount of encouragement from teachers and relatives during those early years. My interest in art continued through high school and I eventually decided to attend art school. At The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in Wisconsin, I decided to major in Illustration. After graduating, I started working in the art department of an advertising agency, where one of my duties was creating editorial illustra-

be handmade or digital. I am attempting to build something new and unexpected by layering and juxtaposing a variety of disparate elements together. Scraps of printed text, photographs scanned from books, my own photography and scribbles, along with items fished out of the trash or found blowing in the wind, may all find their way into the mix. I allow any preconceived ideas to take impulsive detours as my final destination is purposely vague.

Nature, history, technology, advertising and dreams are some reoccurring themes and influences in my self-generated work, but much of the direction is driven by my subconscious and simple reaction to the elements at hand. Any meaning is mostly openended and the viewer is encouraged to fill in the blanks.

When it comes to creating commissioned illustrations, the technique remains similar but there are obviously parameters that are to be followed, including a specific subject, size and due date.

Sketches are presented and the chosen direction must be adhered to. Those impulsive detours must be held in check. The commer-

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“I like to let it develop as I go along”

.................................................................... tions for various in-house publications. After about five years I left to begin freelancing and have been doing that ever since. When I have time in between commissioned illustration jobs, I like to work on personal projects.

There are loads of layers in your work. Do you plan them out before you begin or make it up as you go along?

When I am working on commissioned illustrations I need to do much more planning and provide sketches so that the client has an idea of what direction I plan to take and so that there are no surprises when I submit the finished illustration.

When working on personal work my process is usually a little different. Most often I like to let it develop as I go along, observing how different elements and colors play off each other and allowing that to push me into unexpected directions. I usually do not really have a preconceived idea of what the finished piece will eventually look like.

What’s your working process and how does it differ between commissioned and self-initiated work?

Most of my recent work has been done digitally, but I do also make hand-cut works from time to time and may return to doing that more often. I see collage as a form of recycling, whether that 36

cial work is also usually more of a collaboration between me and the client.

What do you have planned for 2016?

I hope to continue making work that makes me excited and inspires me to keep exploring. With commissioned work, there are many surprises. You never really know where or when the next assignment or opportunity is coming from. Your day or week can turn on a dime. It can be a challenge to balance commissioned illustration assignments with finding the time and energy for creating personal work. An artist also needs to make time for experimentation, which is essential to evolving and keeping things fresh.

Sam Walby

michaelwaraksa.com

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SHEFFIELD CREATIVES UNITE

BEST PRINT IN TOWN

Make a list. Make a wish.

Sound Pop Ate Itself And Got A Dicky Tummy

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L

oathe him or loathe him, part-time lover and paint can power pop balladeer Phil Collins is a revelation. Yes, Phil Collins, the ferret-faced uncle of pop, with his vocal sack of heartache from his Su Su studio of emotional longing, is a living, breathing revelation.

Before you start choking on your biscuit-shaped prejudice, I understand that Phil Collins is probably an anathema to everything you believe music should be - soul, blah, integrity, blah blah, artistic vision, blah - but we are talking about pop music here, and pop is a genre that will always be the giant turd on the dance floor of life, because the general public are an inordinate bunch of yapping dogs. You know you are miles better than them simply by owning a Clash album that isn’t London Calling. You win, but in the realm of pop Collins is a revelation, worthy of respect and admiration.

Why? Because there is something glorious and hopeful in the fact that at one point, Phil Collins was the world’s biggest

I can’t see how the ordinary Collins’s of the world could ever compete against these godlike creatures.

If you think I’m talking nonsense, I have done the maths.

Poorly remembered GCSE maths, admittedly, but nonetheless I have worked out that the average age of a singer with a number one hit single in 1985 was 31. In 2015 it was 25. At least five artists were 21. This is why whenever I look into the shining bald head of Phil, I’m filled with deep despair. In 2015, a bald head in pop music is as likely as a dodo for Christmas dinner.

It’s a sad indictment of our culture that with the rise of the music video and the instant proliferation of images we are becoming more obsessed with appearance, and this trend is only set to continue. Today there are very few pop acts that work beyond 30, because we don’t want to look at them and their crusty, ageing faces. There’s just no room for wonderful naffness. Everything has to be so edgy and cool. It’s tiring.

Back in the 80s there was at least some hope that if you

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“Collins is a revelation, worthy of respect and admiration”

.................................................................... pop star. He couldn’t dance, couldn’t talk. The only thing about him was the way he walked. Ellie Golding or Rhianna he ain’t, and yet it was probably his song your Auntie Margaret danced to at her wedding to Uncle Peter while wearing that big orange pom-pom toilet roll cover dress.

Phil Collins was hugely popular even though he looked more like a plumber than a pop star. He wasn’t cool, he wasn’t sexy, he didn’t have elaborate dance routines with a harem of scantily clad women, but he did have number one hits and that was a wonderful thing that seems sadly lost in our current pop climate.

There will never again be room in the pop sphere for another like him or his ilk - Daryl Hall and John Oates, Midge Ure, Nick Heyward, Feargal Sharkey, Michael McDonald, Billy Ocean and loads more - who all looked like depressed Geography teachers. Pop, with a few honourable exceptions, is a well-oiled machine churning out repackaged, ever-younger versions of the same sexually explicit, high-tempo music of beautiful, toned, made-up glamour model kings and queens.

wrote a catchy song with a pleasant melody you could have a hit record. I can’t see that happening now unless it’s a novelty, push a pineapple up your arse kind of record.

It’s a great loss, because anyone who has ever had a conversation with a 21-year-old will tell you that they’re all idiots, obsessed with drinking in the klub, having fun and enjoying life. Yuck. What the hell can a 21-year-old tell me about the vicissitudes of life and the pitfalls of love? Phil suffered a divorce after his wife had an affair with the painter decorator. That’s real pain.

So thank your lucky stars that Phil is now out of retirement.

He is a walking relic of a different age, soon to disappear into the air tonight, and we’ll be left with toddlers shouting their incomprehensible nonsense.

Stan Skinny

41

Live

Listings

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Vieux Farka Toure

Ohhms

3 February Yellow Arch

18 February Lughole

This is the latest in the excellent Talking Gigs series, where musicians from around the world are interviewed about their life and work, interspersed with songs that explain or expand the narrative.

Vieux Farka Toure is the son of Ali Farka Toure, the Malian guitar maestro. During the conversation Vieux talks about his upbringing in Niafunke, Mali, his relationships with his father and grandmother and the more recent civil war. He comes from a historical tribe of soldiers and his father, despite himself being a world renowned musician, wanted Vieux to follow in his ancestors’ footsteps. Vieux had no interest in joining the army and eventually received his father’s blessing to be a musician just before his death in 2006.

The first song Vieux plays showcases his dazzling fingerstyle guitar playing. He mixes traditional West African music with flashes of other styles including flamenco and gaelic. We hear that Vieux is not a fan of rehearsing and prefers a looser, less regimented approach (“I don’t like perfect music, like from a machine”). This is apparent from his playing, with fantastic technique delivered in a fluid, almost improvised manner.

‘Desert blues’ is a catch-all term that is frequently used to describe the various musics of West Africa and, despite a common misconception, it is Vieux’s absolute belief that the blues originated in Africa, and that John Lee Hooker’s forebears travelled from Africa and took that music consciously or intuitively to the US. Vieux has previously said that “the best moments in music happen when no-one is thinking,” and towards the end of the evening Vieux is joined by a bassist and a drummer (from Cameroon and Ivory Coast respectively) to play a short set including a joyous eight-minute extended jam that is driven along by a galloping backbeat and throbbing bass. Layered on top are Vieux’s shimmering, trilling guitar lines and sweet vocal tones. A final solo guitar and voice piece allows Vieux to beautifully capture the haunting and graceful spirit of his homeland.

Shoestring venues come with shoestring problems. You wouldn’t know from watching opening act Conjurer who, against tradition, have the cleanest and crispest sound of the evening – as clean and crisp as doom metal ever gets, at any rate. The guitar tone is gloriously foul, the pace alternately funereal then manic, the vox guttural and screechy. There may not be much originality going on here, but I’ll take solid competence from an opening support act any day of the week.

Less competence from Kurokuma, but they make it up with ambition. Doom metal with Latin rhythms, you say? That’s quite an offer, but a challenge that the band aren’t quite up to. They make a good fist of it, but early in their set the PA goes down.

The spectacle is further enweirdened by some guy in a red anorak and black balaclava wandering around with a camcorder.

Slabdragger have to play without any vocals at all, but they gamely get on with it anyway. It takes a good band with solid tunes to pull off an unplanned instrumental set and they do so with surprising good humour, despite sounding like someone killed two members of Clutch before locking the other three in a room containing only codeine and bathtub amphetamines. To be clear, this is a good thing.

The sound-person manages to kludge up some vocals for headliners OHHMS, though the earlier acts have hammered my ears so hard I can hardly make them out. It doesn’t matter, though. No one sees bands like this to hear the words. You see bands like this because you want to hear the musical equivalent of Satan driving a steamroller through the smoking ruins of Disneyland. And once you have, a grotty former industrial unit with no windows seems an oddly appropriate venue, broken PA or otherwise.

Now, can anyone help with my tinnitus?

Pete Martin

Paul Graham Raven

Hosted by SAM GREGORY

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It’s really exciting to be typing up a listings column in Sheffield right now, with more great venues, promoters and home-grown musicians than ever before playing in 1,001 different genres.

From DINA to CADS, Access Space to the Audacious, South Yorkshire’s scene feels uniquely orientated towards something other than profit making, as music the world over becomes ever more commodified. I just hope I can go someway towards covering our singular city as comprehensively as my predecessor, Alex, though matching his beautiful prose is a pipe dream.

Anyway, I’d better get on with it. Sheffield traditionally emerges from its collective deep freeze in March, and fortunately there’s plenty to lure you back out this month, whether you like pastoral folk over a pint of Jaipur or clinging to a can of Red Stripe in a dingy dance warehouse. Get to know:

Gravitational Waves Fri 4 Mar | Access Space | Price TBA Not much known about this one yet, but it promises to “explore diversity in electronic music within the space-time community of Sheffield”. Who can argue with that? If its anything like the recent Algoraves held at the same venue, opposite The Rutland, it’s bound to be fascinating.

Joy Orbison / Gerd Jansen Sat 5 Mar | Hope Works | £22 Darmstadt’s Gerd Jansen is often talked about as a DJ’s DJ, so it’s no surprise that the house and disco meister has been booked for his first Sheff date by the discerning programmers at Hope Works. London producer Joy O headlines. In the words of his 2013 DJ tool, he makes it so good sometimes you just can’t speak.

Force Majeure Sat 5 Mar | Golden Harvest | £6 If their debut event at Theatre Delicatessen is anything to go by, expect to be confronted with a barrage of off-beats and hyper-glossy synth textures courtesy of such grime luminaries as Lloyd SB, Wölfe, Wumpa Fruit & Korra, Body Antoinette and Joanne.

The Altered Hours Fri 11 Mar | Audacious Art Experiment £5 suggested donation The so-called shoegaze revival isn’t all reunion tours and cash-in comebacks. Catch modern practitioners of the form The Altered Hours in this intimate living room space. Sleep Terminal and Audacious veterans The Skipping Forecast complete an impressive line-up.

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Newham Generals Sat 12 Mar | Harley | £15.40 Cutting-edge grime from London duo Footsie and D Double E, with support from K Dot, DSL, Forca and Shinobi. Tickets are almost gone for this one, so act quick.

Holy Wave Wed 16 Mar | Picture House Social | £6 Combining elements of stoner rock, surf and shoegaze, this Texan quintet will drench the Picture House’s gloomy ballroom space with otherworldly atmosphere. Good luck picking out the vocals from underneath an ocean of murky fuzz.

New Model Soldier Sat 19 Mar | Corporation | £8 Once-forgotten Sheffield post-punkers NMS continue their triumphant resurgance with a headline gig at Corp. Their new single in aid of Rockin For Refugees, ‘Adrift’, was recently spun

by Jarvis on his 6Music show and more new material is in the pipeline.

Off Me Nut Sat 19 Mar | Night Kitchen | £8 An antidote to the po-faced seriousness of techno, the Off Me Nut crew welcome guests Jakazid, Blitz and Shosh for a night of irreverant UK hardcore and bassline madness. Gurning optional.

Kano Sat 26 Mar | Plug | £15 Completing this month’s grime triptych is Kano, East London’s old master who can still command a massive audience with his crisp, technicolour productions and razor-sharp observations on urban life. Support from Jammz + Dapz and Tempa with Swifta Beater.

Greg Russell and Ciaran Algar Thu 31 Mar | The Greystones | £10 Contemporary, vital folk music from a young duo who aren’t content to rework the standards. Their violin and guitar-based songwriting has won them two BBC Folk Awards, but they stay true to folk’s traditions of writing about the everyday.

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FREE LOVE AND FIGHTING The Big Eyes Family Players

Louis Barabbas

Solar Bears

Steel City Rhythm

Oh! Home Assembly Music

Gentle Songs of Ceaseless Horror Debt Records

Advancement Sunday Best

Free Love and Fighting Via Bandcamp

The latest album by The Big Eyes Family Players feels otherworldly yet strangely seductive. In the past Big Eyes were an instrumental band that collaborated with vocalists such as James Yorkston and Adrian Crowley. However, with the introduction of Heather Ditch the group have taken a more vocal-led approach for Oh! Their new release sees Big Eyes create an elegant mix of sombre and melancholic pop music. The band haven’t veered too far away from their past endeavours in soundtracks and folk music nevertheless, and Ditch’s vocals lend the album a restrained yet evocative quality. You could say that Oh! is reminiscent of the Birmingham group Broadcast, since her voice has a similarly icy presence to Trisha Keenan’s. This isn’t to say that they are mere copyists though, as Big Eyes put their own spin on familiar territory.

With help from producer Dean Honer of I Monster they add just the right amount of electronic flourishes to give the music depth and personality. Ditch’s vocals phase in and out of the mix, at times floating on top of the drums, guitars and organ.

A minor drawback is that most of the album remains midtempo, meaning it can occasionally merge into the background.

Overall it is an absorbing listen, but a more obvious change in tempo on some songs could have given Oh! more urgency.

I think I first heard (and fell for) Louis Barabbas when he played in Sheffield many years ago. Louis playing a bizarre, Tom Waitsian version of ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ is an image that has stuck in my mind whenever I have seen him with The Bedlam Six or solo since.

Within The Bedlam Six ranks, Barabbas has carved himself an entertaining and sometimes terrifyingly theatrical persona foot stomping, shouting and crooning to bring forth the beasts he sees below our feet. You can see why he is regularly compared to Waits or Cave. But, much like his counterparts, every time he wrote a dramatic song of Faustian wanderlust he would find himself with fragments of ideas that were much more understated and personal.

Taking everything he has learnt with Bedlam, this album is a highly matured venture. Not to say the others are immature, but on this set of songs these techniques are repeated and refined with a delicate touch - never too much of anything.

And when he does dip his toe into a crooked tale, its delivery is tempered, controlled and softened. You can rest your head, but I wouldn’t trust those dreams.

Gentle Songs of Ceaseless Horror isn’t a move away from Barabbas’ immense theatrical style at all (just look at the title), but it certainly focuses it, boiling his dramatic and darkly romantic storytelling down to more subtle ballads.

The spooky, often accidentally experimental public information films of the 1970s are by now a well-mined vein of musical inspiration. Dublin-based Solar Bears pinch the sonic signifiers – the chugging synths, the minor key melodies, the muffled drums – but dispense with the samples and specific geographical references, giving their take on so-called ‘hauntology’ a more timeless quality.

Haven’t we been here before though? Solar’s sound will be immediately familiar to anyone au fait with Boards of Canada, and this could easily be an unreleased LP of the Sandison brothers. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – BoC are hardly prolific – but it’s a comparison that looms unavoidably over the record.

Melodically, tracks like ‘Scale’ move as slowly as ocean liners, but the restlessly glitchy beats lend them enough propulsion to make some headway. After the dubby ebb and flow of ‘Wild Flowers’ and the ethereal space walk of ‘Persona’, the Bears edge towards the dancefloor with the hazy house of ‘Gravity Calling’, the album’s widescreen centrepiece. Unusually for a release influenced by the Ghost Box scene, there doesn’t appear to be an overt concept threaded through the tracks, though the titles ‘Longer Life’ and ‘Age Atomic’ make a nod to energy.

Three albums in, the duo are adept at drawing warmth from the type of vintage synths that soundtrack a hundred school science tapes. Ironically, Advancement leaves the envelope firmly unpushed, but if overly technical and ever more minimal electronic music doesn’t do it for you, this might be the record that welcomes you back in from the cold.

Sheffield’s finest eight-piece reggae rock group bring a fresh batch of wholesome grooves, punchy lyrics and good vibes with Free Love and Fighting.

The South Yorkshire octet waste no time, jumping straight into the offbeat rhythm you’re expecting. Shades of old school influence take hold on ‘This Life’, which has a classic reggae feel. Johnny Osbourne and Jimmy Cliff resonate throughout this banging opener, which is never a bad way to start.

‘Never Stop’ eases us in with tingly, Chili Peppers guitar tones. This is a track that really shows the group off as musicians, each member locking in perfectly to deliver a stellar groove.

The overtly political message of ‘Pennies and Pounds’ rings out as one of the strongest tracks here. The infectious tones and powerful lyrics - “Roll up another government vision / To bring your country down to the ground” - hark back to the social commentary of The Wailers on a poignant and important track.

The sounds of a smoky jazz club introduce ‘Price We Pay’, something with a totally different sound but which complements the rest of the release well. It lends itself to the rest of the songs as a refreshing addition, as the upbeat ska horns give us a feel of The Specials.

Steel City Rhythm offer a solid group of tunes here, all well produced and very well written. Free Love and Fighting provides something different and is hugely crucial to the diversity of the Sheffield music scene. Bravo.

Paul Robson Gordon Barker

Lewis Budden

Sam Gregory

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over the last couple of years, which is a lot more geared towards the dancefloor. With Life In Units it was a bit more scattergun, the ideas we were working with. We were just playing around with loads of different sounds and fusions, and even though we recognised the dancier, rhythmic elements in our sound then, it wasn’t as focussed.

When you’re playing to a drum machine, it’s always a challenge to make it sound natural, not too fixed. Were you aware of that when recording the album?

[Alex] Yeah. I do the drum machine and Sam drums, and we recorded the parts together. They were more flexible than a very rigid structure, so that we could capture some kind of live energy and a vaguely improvised feel. We were more excited when we were performing it, because we were playing together, and hopefully trying to infuse more life into it, rather than it being metronomic.

[Nick] A good proportion of the ‘conversation’ between instruments is between the drums and the drum machine. I’ll often have a rhythm or a riff that I’ll just keep playing. A lot of the slow, subtle changes are between the drums and the drum machine.

Is that how you do it live then - you’ve got fixed parts but the way it develops is different each time?

[Alex] We do have structures that we use as a base, but we’ve been constantly trying to move away from being stuck in that, and leaving it open to explore new territories when we play live, because we find that really exciting. If we’re playing and there’s a particularly good reaction to a certain part, we

then expand that and try to build something from that.

[Nick] It’s that locking in that I love, and I think that’s what I really love about My Life and Remain In Light, and what I love about dance music - when you kind of feel that you’ve found the rhythm. I think that’s a common thread across all of those things, and maybe the thing we drew out.

The gigs you did at Cafe Oto in London in January were a big deal - playing with Tony Allen, who more or less invented afrobeat.

[Alex] It was pretty scary, because we always claimed to have started because of Fela Kuti. I think that took over more directly than Talking Heads, because it was such an exciting sound that we wanted to take influence from. And not really play afrobeat, but just do something which was similar in approach.

[Sam P] I think we’re almost more like that now than we were before, because afrobeat is so extended and so longform, and we’re much more like that now than we were originally. We were doing two-minute songs…

Whereas now they’re about ten minutes. You’re getting close. They need to be 20 minutes, really.

[Alex] We do have an ambition to do a six-hour set.

[Sam P] Yeah, that’s the holy grail that we’re constantly striving to achieve. We’ve broken the ice of the hour-long continuous set, so now it’s just a matter of how many hours.

The last album you put out on your own label, Hybrid Vigour, and this one is in collaboration with Blast First Petite.

What’s the plan for Hybrid Vigour?

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Blood Sport Axe Laid To The Root

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O

ne of the perks of publishing a magazine like Now Then is seeing local acts building themselves from the ground up, brick by brick. In no band is this more apparent than in Blood Sport, whose first album, Life In Units, we featured in issue #50.

Fusing post-punk, new wave, noise rock, afrobeat and dance music, the Sheffield three-piece have raised their game since the release of that debut on Hybrid Vigour, their own label and gig collective. New approaches have been forged for their follow-up, Axe Laid To The Root, which has found a home on Blast First Petite, a spin-off imprint of Mute subsidiary Blast First. It’s a snarling, throbbing, urgent record, released alongside a mix CD featuring remixes by the likes of Richard H Kirk, as well as early takes of album tracks and 46

songs the band love. We chatted shortly after they’d played two big gigs at Cafe Oto in London with afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen.

The new album has a really dirty feel to it, compared with your other recordings, which feels a lot more like your live performances.

[Alex] It’s about catching the live energy, because we know we are a live band, and the power, rawness and energy of ourselves comes from people perceiving us live, rather than on record. We wanted to get closer to that so we could portray that through our recordings.

[Sam] It’s also come out of the sense of direction we’ve had with this release and the kind of music we’ve been producing

“It’s about catching the live energy”

.................................................................... can all carry on and milk the potential of it, without feeling obliged to change straight away. There’s more of an interaction between the audience and us, in the same way that there is if there’s a DJ set.

[Sam P] We’ve written a whole new set and started recording new songs since. Because we’ve honed this aesthetic for the band, over the last couple of years we’ve been able to stretch and play around with the basic elements and frameworks of the songs on this album, and then add new songs or in live settings really play off the audience reaction, so that feeds back into how we consider the songs.

I remember reading that you have a shared love of My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne. I can hear elements of that album, and of Talking Heads, in what you do.

[Sam P] Really?! [laughs] [Nick] Alex refused to listen to Remain In Light for quite a long time, simply because he knew how much of a massive influence it was on me and Sam. They are a massive influence, but I think in many ways it’s more about the way they worked.

That album was constructed from ultra-long jams which they then deconstructed and reassembled, part by part, which is a process we adopt when jamming and constructing songs out of those jams. We’ve got a very basic recording setup and we record all of our practices.

[Alex] We have always done that, using one mic. We’d select a certain few bars, where it all locked in together, and

[Nick] We want to expand Hybrid Vigour beyond it being led just by us. Initially it was a label set up to put out the first record, but the whole idea was that we would have a label to do that and put out releases by our friends, and then we’d do gigs.

Hybrid Vigour is this concept of combining the gig space and club space, dance music, experimental music and world music. So now we’re doing a mixtape series too, getting collaborators such as The Audacious Art Experiment’s Clelia Ciardulli to produce interesting mixes that we’ll be putting onto short runs of cassettes. They’ll intentionally explore the Hybrid Vigour idea, mess with people’s ears a bit and include various exclusive tracks.

[Alex] We’re also going to be exporting the HV experience to other cities, bringing the world we’ve constructed here in Sheffield to other places around the country whilst collaborating with bands and artists we like to achieve the dream of the elusive non-stop six-hour set.

Sam Walby

Axe Laid To The Root is out now via Blast First Petite/Hybrid Vigour. bloodsport.bandcamp.com

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BEER WEEK BEGINS

Headsup Sheffield Beer Week

.......

Highlights

Wednesday (open 6pm - 11pm)

• 6pm - SIBA announce their national beer awards - Real Ale, Craft Keg, Bottle and Can winners

icesheffield Coleridge Rd, Sheffield, Yorkshire S9 5DA

Thursday

(open 6pm - 11pm) • New Craft Keg area ‘Brewers’ Yard’ opens

Friday

Saturday

• Live Music from Tom Hingley (former lead singer of Inspiral Carpets) & Vernon Lewis & E-Maculate • Tutored tastings • Bottled beer sampling

• Live 6 Nations Rugby - all three matches • Live Music - Bootleggers

(open 2pm - 12am)

Tickets on sale now visit beerx.org for details

(open 12 noon - 12.30am)

BeerXSheffield SIBA_BeerX

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• Vo t e d

Mo

nt

Tasha Franek

Austin Lucas + Adam Faucett. Country & Western singer. £10adv, £12 otd.

Tue 8.

Psycho Tom’s Comedy night £tbc.

Thu 10.

Eurosession European Dancing. Free entry.

Fri 11.

Swing Dancing with swing dancing ‘pro’ Matt Tate. Lessons then social. £5

Sun 13.

Green City Blues dancing social. £5.

Mon 14.

Sheffield Beer Week. Mon 14. - Sun 20.

sheffieldbeerweek.co.uk

the f

Mon, Tue & Wed: London beer Showcase. Beers from several of the capital’s new micro breweries on cask and keg, including Kernel, Brew By numbers, Weird Beard & Brodie’s.

Wed 16th. Belgian Beer Tasting w/ Hop Hideout. £tbc. £1 off with the now Then Discount App

135 Bottled Beers From Around The Globe.

146-148 Gibraltar St, Sheffield S3 8UB tel. 0114 275 5959 shakespeares-sheffield.co.uk

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Constantly Changing 9x Hand Pumps & 6x Craft Beer Taps

Tue 1.

R A pub

Great Ale Great Music

AM

MArCH LiSTinGS

effield

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350+ SIBA Champion Beers • Live Music • Live Rugby • Street Food

Sh

Tell us a little bit about Sheffield Beer Week.

The first Sheffield Beer Week was coordinated last year and was inspired by the 1,000s of visitors attending the SIBA [Society of Independent Brewers] conference and BeerX Festival up at iceSheffield in March. The idea was to showcase Sheffield’s wonderful beer scene and venues to all those visitors, ensuring people travelled around and explored the city while they were here. This year we have beer-focused events, from ‘meet the brewers’ to tap takeovers, beer and food pairing events, brewery open days and more. We’ve also talked to local chefs, breweries and beer enthusiasts to collate a selection of recipes which we’re publishing and sharing on our website.

How many venues have you got involved?

There are over 25 venues - breweries, pubs, bars and beer shops - involved in this year’s Sheffield Beer Week. We’ve put together a beautifully polished and designed map with the help of Sheffield-based Eleven Design, called A Sheffield Beery Map. How has the event evolved from its debut last year?

The event has evolved to encompass more new beer launches from breweries this year and collaborations which we’re incredibly excited about. Collaboration is a key element and it’s great to see this happen in action. True North Brew Co are hosting a couple - one with Sheffield brewery North Union and a Manchester brew day at their new brewhouse with Blackjack and Runaway. Abbeydale have a twist on a stout launching too and I’m looking forward to sampling Thornbridge’s new Irish-style dry stout at their first pour event on St Patrick’s Day at The Bath Hotel.

New for 2016 are our Twitter Hours, where we ask people to get involved on social networking sites to discuss topics such as beer cocktails. These hours will be hosted with partners alongside @SheffBeerWeek and the aim is to engage people both online and in person in talking about beer. We’ve also international breweries hosting events - Brooklyn and Founders Brewing at Hop Hideout, and more Yorkshire breweries too, including Exit 33, Stancill and Brass Castle.

Are there any other events for the beer enthusiasts in the meantime?

There are a number of pre-Sheffield Beer Week events going on in the run-up to the official week. The best thing to do is to check our website.

What are your top picks of the festival?

The launch party at True North Brew Co’s new brewhouse behind the Forum on Saturday 12 March is a top pick. The venue is currently being refurbished and they’ve allowed us in early doors to celebrate, so it’ll be exciting to see the first phase of development of this new brewhouse and tap room venture. My second top pick is the Buxton Brewery event at Shakespeares on Friday 18 March from 5pm, a tap takeover and meet the brewer from this highly rated brewery. Thirdly, our closing events at new brewhouse and tap room Sentinel on Shoreham Street and Picture House Social for the final after party.

Should we expect a Sheffield Beer Week 2017?

The plan is to keep it as a yearly event in the second week of March, sitting alongside SIBA’s conference and festival.

We’re not affiliated in any way with SIBA, we’re an independent beer-focused events-led group, but I think the two work really naturally together, bolstering and creating an additional buzz round the city.

C

S

heffield Beer Week returns from 14-20 March for another seven days of showcasing our most delicious local bottles, pints and tankards. We had a chat with Jules Gray from Hop Hideout, who is coordinating SBW, about what’s going to be popping up over the city to satisfy our thirst this month.

Thur 17. St Patrick’s Day Stout & Porter Bottle Tasting w/ Beer Central. £10 for 6 beers. *£1 off with the now Then Discount App. Thur - Sat. Bristol Beer Showcase. Beers from one of the liveliest beer scenes in the UK, including Arbor, Wiper & True & Moor.

Fri 18.

Sheffield Writer Open Mic night. Free entry.

Fri 25.

Sheffield Sessions Folk Festival. Concerts and sessions all Easter weekend in the main bar and Bard’s Bar. Entry fee varies by concert. Sessions free entry. Fri 25. - Sun 27.

CUTTING EDGE WED 2ND MAR

THU 24TH MAR

FRI 4TH MAR @ PICTURE HOUSE SOCIAL

SAT 26TH MAR

FRI 4TH MAR

THU 31ST MAR @ PICTURE HOUSE SOCIAL

THU 10TH MAR

SAT 2ND APR / TRIBUTE TO BOWIE - CHARITY FUNDRAISER

THU 17TH MAR @ PICTURE HOUSE SOCIAL

FRI 8TH APR

JAMIE WOON BLACK HONEY

ACDC / UK + DIZZY LIZZY THE RIFLES

PROSE KANO

THE CARNABYS

ABSOLUTE BOWIE

ROBYN SHERWELL

DEFINITELY OASIS

SAT 19TH MAR

SAT 9TH APR @PICTURE HOUSE SOCIAL

MON 21ST MAR

SAT 23RD APR

THU 24TH MAR @ PICTURE HOUSE SOCIAL

WED 25TH MAY

REEF DIIV

APRIL TOWERS

THE DUNWELLS VANT

JAGWAR MA

TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM, PLUG BOX OFFICE, 1 ROCKINGHAM GATE, SHEFFIELD, S1 4JD TEL: 0114 241 3040 / WEB: WWW.THE-PLUG.COM

n pe so nt ve le Al to

Off The Shelf: Tim Birkhead - ‘A Bird's Egg'

Thu 14 Apr 19:30, Foundry, £14/£11 conc/£7 NUS

World Food Festival

Sheffield Jazz: Tim Garland Thu 21 Apr 19:30, Auditorium, £8/£6 conc

Festival Of Debate: Steve Bell BOX OFFICE 0114 222 8 777

tickets.sheffieldstudentsunion.com Sheffield Students’ Union, Western Bank, S10 2TG

ts en ud st

ShefUniCon: Sheffield University Comic and Culture Convention

n no

Wed 27 Apr 19:30, Auditorium, £7/£5 conc

d an ts en ud st

Sat 19 Mar 10:00, Sheffield Students' Union, £3

Sat 7 - Sun 8 May Octagon Fri 20 May 19:00, Octagon, £16

Russell Kane Mon 6 Jun 19:30, Auditorium, £8/£6 conc

Off The Shelf: Wilco Johnson In Conversation BE SOCIAL

facebook.com/flashsheffield twitter.com/flashsheffield

Filmreel RoboCop Wives: Remakes

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Joanna doesn’t die and get replaced by a Stepford wife, and the 2014 Murphy doesn’t die and get used primarily for cybernetic ‘parts’. Accordingly, the villains of the original films are, if not redeemed, at least given a more human face. In RoboCop (José Padilha, 2014), Murphy remains Murphy throughout. There is no denial of his identity, as was the case in the 1987 film, and as was central to the film’s scathing attack on the corporate mentality that engineered his death and tried to obliterate his humanity.

And in 2004 Stepford, it’s Joanna’s husband who ‘saves’ her from being replaced by a machine, in contrast to the 1975 Walter, who is complicit in her murder.

These shifts indicate the newer films’ total lack of any critical perspective on socio-political issues. This is further illustrated by each film’s reliance on peculiarly romantic notions of marriage.

Not only is Joanna saved by her loving husband(!) in 2004 Stepford, but the 2014 Murphy remains a husband and father whose wife permits OmniCorp to experiment on him, in contrast

....................................................................

“Stepford Wives is a horrifying critique of sexism and misogyny”

.................................................................... terror of body snatching.

Tellingly, the politics of both Stepford Wives and RoboCop are radically different in their respective 21st century remakes.

Contrary to the omnipresent cultural myth of ‘progress’, those politics are far less critical of contemporary society than the originals, in respect of both gender politics and more widely.

Stepford Wives is a horrifying critique of sexism and misogyny, as much as it’s about robots replacing ‘us’, not least because only women are ‘replaced’. And RoboCop is one of the most emphatic and damning critiques of neoliberalism and class relations created on film. In contrast, the remakes (2004 and 2014, respectively) make light of the horrors of murder and misogyny.

The biggest problem with the remake of Stepford Wives (Frank Oz, 2004) is that it takes a tale of mass murder justified by a backlash against feminists and makes it into a comedy. It is, predictably, about as funny as The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course, it’s been argued that it’s satire, but as a New York Times reviewer argues, the film operates as “the opposite of satire […] intended not to provoke but to soothe”.

Perhaps the most significant difference in each remake is that the central character does not lose his or her identity. The 2004 52

to his 1987 counterpart, whose wife and son are lost to him after they’re told he is dead.

Fundamentally, the lack of violence in the remakes shows their unwillingness to address the violence inherent in the two tales – of killing and replacing women and police officers with machines, where the ‘improved’ models in each case serve the interests of patriarchy and its corporate capitalist militarism.

In the 21st century remakes, the glossing over of horror with comedy, and the conflation of murder with saving a life, reveals a Hollywood increasingly unwilling to engage in meaningful social critique and increasingly willing to justify the status quo. These two remakes set out not to critique, but to contain social anxieties, in particular the ongoing contemporary threats of anti-feminist and corporate violence that the earlier films represent as lethal to human identity.

Samantha Holland

showroomworkstation.org.uk/robosapiens

Robocop (2014)

he Showroom screened the 1975 version of Stepford Wives last month as part of its Robosapiens season, which asks ‘Will homosapiens give way to robosapiens?’ In the context of ‘sneak previews of the latest inventions’, the season of films which this month presents Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982) participates in ongoing popular discussion about ‘how real technologies are shaping our aspirations and anxieties, and how the imagined technologies of our movie dreams and nightmares may be becoming real’.

The theme of what makes us human in the first place is central to films such as Stepford Wives. The horror of Stepford Wives is quite explicitly a loss of identity, and of ‘replacements’ that use outward appearance to deceive and cover up that loss, as with other films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (all three versions) and TV shows like V and Battlestar Galactica. This fear is also the crux of RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven, 1987), a film that along with the Terminator films and their ilk shares Stepford’s

Film Listings Collated by Samantha Holland

Roman Holiday

The Ambulance

Sun 20 Mar | 7:30pm | Sharrow Reels, 215 Sharrow Vale Road | £3 inc coffee and cake

Sun 27 Mar | 2pm | Showroom | £7.30

William Wyler, 1953

Larry Cohen, 1990

A graceful romance in which the camera has a love affair with Rome and Audrey Hepburn stars opposite Gregory Peck. Tying in weirdly well with The Ambulance, its story also starts with a man and woman meeting on the street late at night. But Wyler’s film takes quite a different, cheerier direction.

A biting satire in the vein of RoboCop, its close focus on the ethical quagmire that is the US healthcare system makes it sadly - especially pertinent for us to watch in the UK today. Sobad-it’s-good credentials, coupled with its star, Eric Roberts, make it my top choice of the always-interesting Film Bites picks at The Showroom.

facebook.com/SharrowReels

showroomworkstation.org.uk/the-ambulance

Wild City

Shorts in Sheffield

Ringo Lam, 2015

Tue 22 Mar | 6pm | Showroom | £8.50 Despite wildly mixed reviews, this Hong Kong noir sounds both philosophical and crazily kinetic, and is Lam’s first in more than a decade. Since its story also starts with a late-night meeting this time in a bar - it’d make a great triple bill with The Ambulance and Roman Holiday. Part of the Crime: Hong Kong Style season screening at The Showroom into April. showroomworkstation.org.uk/hong-kong-crime

Thu 17 Mar | 7:30pm | Cafe #9, Nether Edge Café #9’s free film night is on 17 March, with a trip back to the 1940s, while Showroom Shorts is on 15 March. Between 11 and 13 March, ShAFF presents numerous short films about the great outdoors. The shorts are grouped together, each programme with a focus, such as ‘running, climbing, biking, skiing, surfing, kayaking and everything in between’. shaff.co.uk

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FAVOURITES Our Pick of Independent Sheffield

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BeerX

DiEM25

16-19 March beerx.org

diem25.org

Returning to iceSheffield for its fourth year, BeerX 2016 boasts over 300 award-winning beers available for sampling, with hundreds more in cans and bottles. Run by brewers themselves, the festival promises the finest quality keg, bottled and canned beer served in the best conditions on an impressive 30-metre bar.

As well as fine beverages, BeerX is screening all three international rugby matches on the final day of the Six Nations Championship live, including France vs England at 8pm on 19 March. They are also hosting various music acts throughout the festival, including Motown band Vernon Lewis & E-Maculate and Tom Hingley.

BeerX also offers tutored beer tastings, opportunities to meet the brewers, and beer and food matching demonstrations for individuals passionate or just casually interested in the subject.

The EATstreet food area this year is being run by Percy & Lily’s, who have carefully selected other local food stands and trucks, promising cuisine from around the world. 2016 also sees the introduction of Brewer’s Yard, a new space with 20 individual brewery bars, each manned by the brewers themselves - perfect to gain an insight into their craft.

The festival runs from Wednesday 16 to Saturday 19 March, with tickets priced at £8 in advance or £10 on the door per day, and there’s a £2 discount for students, CAMRA members and Armed Forces when booked in advance. Tickets are available via WeGotTickets and the SIV box office. Visit beerx.org for more information.

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Seeking better answers to questions surrounding the EU, we at Now Then attended the launch of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, in Berlin last month. Initiated by former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, DiEM25 is a coalition of democrats united in the aim of fighting corporate interest, nationalism and extremism in the EU and instilling true democracy in Europe.

The DiEM manifesto states that Europeans at this moment have only two options, to “retreat into the cocoon of our nation states” or to “surrender to the Brussels democracy-free zone”. DiEM proposes a third path which would turn the EU into a fully-fledged democracy focused on transparency, with a sovereign parliament that respects national self-determination.

As a first stage in this process, Varoufakis suggests live streaming European Council, Ecofin and Eurogroup meetings, with full disclosure of trade negotiation documents and publication of the minutes of European Central Bank meetings. He also urges the redeployment of existing EU institutions to pursue innovative policies addressing Europe’s most pressing problems. DiEM25 aims to convene a constitutional assembly on these issues which will bring about a democratic EU-topia by 2025.

Featuring over 20 speakers, from MPs and musicians to philosophers and economists, the event was inspiring and seemed to offer a much needed third option to the dilemma of leaving Europe and inadvertently encouraging right-wing nationalism, or staying in and validating an unelected technocracy and the rampant dominance of corporations and the likes of TTIP. The EU is far from perfect but, to some extent, don’t you have to be in it to win it?

BBQ and Brewers Night

Sheffield Skincare Company

bbqcollective.com

sheffieldskincare.co.uk

The BBQ Collective is an American barbecue concept led by a husband and wife team. Since August last year, the restaurant is located in The Hop, West One Plaza, offering traditionally cooked barbecue by Jeffery Wright, a Minneapolis-born chef with over 30 years of experience.

With the aim of complementing classic BBQ smoked meats with fantastic local beers, the concept of BBQ and Brewers Night was born. As they quite rightly note, “nothing beats a damn good pint of beer and a platter of smoked barbecue meat”. The brewers will talk about their story and the beers they make, while BBQ Collective will talk about food and drink pairings and dispel a few myths in the process.

In its second instalment on 30 March, having hosted Abbeydale Brewery last month, the Collective is bringing in the multi award-winning Thornbridge Brewery. Thornbridge has 11 years of experience creating countless bottle, keg and cask beers and has won 350 awards in the process. More details on the website.

Sheffield Skincare Company is an independent business based in Crookes specialising in natural artisan skincare products.

Their aim is to create unique, hand-crafted products which are free from parabens, artificial colours and preservatives, all wrapped in beautiful eco-friendly packaging.

Their assortment of products are made in small batches to gain a high level of quality, whilst providing the freshest ingredients possible. Each of their products uses purely natural ingredients, which are freely displayed, meaning you can make your favourites at home.

If you’d like to try your hand at doing so, pop in for some handy tips from the team. If you want a full tutorial, there are classes available on making lip balms, body scrubs, soaps and bath truffles beginning this month. These can all be booked online. A perfect gift for Mother’s Day. Check their Facebook for competitions and the latest updates.

Elsecar Heritage Railway elsecarrailway.co.uk Have you always dreamt of rolling your sleeves up, getting stuck in and manning a steam train? Of course you have.

Elsecar Heritage Railway, located this side of Barnsley, is managed by a team of volunteers committed to preserving its engines, maintaining a stretch of track on land it leases from Barnsley Council, and protecting the only preserved railway in South Yorkshire.

Their footplate experience courses give two people the opportunity to man a steam train for one or two-hour sessions. One of you will be shovelling coal while the other drives, though presumably you will want to swap half way round. It will undoubtedly be hot and sweaty, but don’t worry, because you will obviously be supervised by a qualified crew. We hear the 1 in 37 gradient hill is a particular challenge. Boiler suits provided.

The courses run on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from Easter until Autumn and can be booked via the website. Get in quick because they are popular.

Mandy Payne: Betwixt and Between Cupola Gallery, 11 March - 9 April cupolagallery.com Award-winning Sheffield artist Mandy Payne launches her new exhibition, Betwixt and Between, at the renowned Cupola Contemporary Art Gallery in Hillsborough this month.

From attending Sheffield College in 2010 through to graduating from Nottingham University with first-class honours in Fine Art, Payne has focused her attention on Park Hill Flats, which of course are in the midst of regeneration.

Payne’s continued work on this icon of brutalist architecture has led to the formation of her new exhibition. Its name is apt, due to Park Hill’s current state of partially renovated yet partially derelict.

The exhibition itself includes observational paintings showing the desolation and displacement of an established community, often using the very materials which are integral to the estate. The opening night is on Friday 11 March (7:30pm, free) and the exhibition runs until 9 April.

If you’ve never been down to Cupola then now is the time.

They are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year and routinely display work by over 300 artists.

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opEN mic sEssioNs Thu 3rd & 17Th Mar

NEW BaNd Night [ft. housE BaNd JoYRidE & local talENt]

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Fri 4Th Mar

ViBRatioNs [fuNk - soul - hiphop | BisoN, captaiN hotkNiVEs & moRE]

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New Offers on the App

Thu 10Th Mar

pEcha kucha Night [#20 ‘shEffiEld hEaVEN’]

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The Street Food Chef (streetfoodchef.co.uk)

Music In The Round (musicintheround.co.uk)

• Free churros with every meal bought 3-5pm.

• 3-for-2 tickets for Sir Scallywag and The Battle of Stinky Bottom (Sat 5 Mar).

caRl maloNEY pREsENts…

The Rude Shipyard (therudeshipyard.com)

[thE RuBY BluEs, fRazER, thE VElcRo tEddY BEaRs, matt loNgdEN]

Harley Live (harleylive.co.uk) • £5 ticket for Owiny Sigoma, Mon 23 May (usually £8).

Shakespeares (shakespeares-sheffield.co.uk) • Sheffield Beer Week deals (14-20 Mar).

• Any rum & mixer for £3.20, including spiced, and aged golden and dark rums.

• £ 1 off Belgian Beer Tasting (Wed 16 Mar).

• £ 1 off St Patrick’s Day Stout & Porter Bottle Tasting (Thu 17 Mar).

• Bacon sandwich & large coffee for £5 (before 12pm).

• Free slice of Guinness cake when you buy any lunch menu meal (weekends only).

• Free regular drink with any meal or upgrade to a large for £1 (Mon-Fri).

• 2-for-1 brunch (daily, 11am-3pm).

The Tea Studio (@cafearthouse1)

Kindred & Kind (kindredandkind.co.uk) • 10% off organic skincare and candles.

• 2-for-1 on cream teas (daily, 2-4pm).

• 2-for-1 on tea & coffee (daily, 10am-12pm).

Jameson’s Tea Rooms (jamesonstearooms.co.uk)

Sheffield Skincare Company (sheffieldskincare.co.uk)

• Traditional afternoon tea for two for £20 (usually £12.95 each).

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Wed 16Th Mar

REfugEE RhYthms [liNEup tBa!]

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Fri 18Th Mar

Beanies (beanieswholefoods.co.uk) • New organic fruit & veg box delivery customers get their 4th box free.

Anchorage (anchoragebar.co.uk)

Fri 11Th Mar

stiRRiN’ up somE soul [NoRthERN soul & motoWN]

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Mon 21sT Mar

Big No No [altERNatiVE comEdY cluB]

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Fri 25Th Mar

• Free 100% natural soap when you spend over £20 in store.

doWNtoWN Roots [hoNEY BEE BluEs cluB]

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Sat 26th Mar

NoRthsidE sEssioNs [dRum’N’Bass | dJ guV, Vital tEchNiquEs aNd moRE]

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