Arts & Entertainment >

Tue Apr 23, 2024 7:41 am

Gitench performance artist, Michel Pappinion, has crossed the channel to bring us his latest piece entitled "Pappinion boulez j'ai bouccet mon hesuit".

Pappinion, clad in gold paint, bores down through the planet's crust to retrieve giant diamonds as big as your head, returning to the surface in vapour form ; a gas filtering through sedimentary rocks. With giant papier-mache wings attached to all three legs, he commences a dance 'tres exotic', as they say in Gitance, staged onlookers soon join, naked except for their clothes and wearing masks to cover their expressions of glee/boredom.

When the dance completes air is trapped inside and is set alight, a bright blue flame surrounding the audience until we are all slightly charred, backlit up until about the start of christmas, but warm and confident thanks to Pappinion's pulsating rhythms.

We are transfixed with PVA for most of the performance, Pappinion splurging from side to side and rarely touching the ground, and then its all over, just like it began.

Pappinion will be performing daily outside the capital's North Bank theatre through December. Tickets are free.

Mon Apr 15, 2024 11:08 am

By the time the Mudpickers arrived on stage, most of the small audience were already well gone, having taken advantage of the bar's special 180-minute long 'Happy Hour' offer during the sound-check and not looked back since.

Lead singer Bruce Wickson sauntered unsteadily to the microphone to a ripple of friendly applause and a mild, joyful heckle from close friend Mickey Saunderson (sitting near the back with an extra pint of Amstel, just in case) who ironically suggested that the band should "Get off".

Unfazed, the Mudpickers leapt deliberately into their opening standard "Why won't you let me bury you in the garden?", with its surprisingly melodic guitar riff (ably replicated by stand-in guitarist Jerry Frison, who had managed to learn most of the band's repertoire in the afternoon rehearsal) and its plaintive chorus, "I ain't done nothing wrong // and hey i promise it won't take long // come on babe give me a pardon // why won't you let me bury you in the garden?".

The rest of the set was somewhat less polished, and by the second half of the epic 45 minute, psy-jazz freakout that is "Purge in D minor", most of the audience had moved to the quieter half of the bar where they could drink shots and chat about the recent behaviour of their sexually adventurous friend, Kenny Bootson.

2.5/5

Thu Apr 11, 2024 11:04 am

Daniel Copperson's return to the Old Nick is a triumph of form over factor, of space over spending and reputation over reason.

You wouldn't necessarily expect an actor of Copperson's calibre to appear in a role and at a location such as this, with the Old Nick's aching halls still clinging to the vapours of recent performances by lesser actors such as Bridleson and Cartier. But irrespective of the setting - and forgetting Copperson's much publicised recent tabloid troubles - it doesn't take long to realise that this is an actor, on a stage, and you're just gonna have to sit there and listen to him going on and on and on.

Copperson's rendition of the famous opening monologue is like a breath of stale wind through a dusty closet, revealing subtleties of stench that would never be apparent reading the text alone, with no voice in your head but that of the author, and it is this ever present reek that refuses to leave you even days after your visit.

Please, god, never again.
1/5

Tue Apr 09, 2024 11:29 am

On second episode basis, ITC's humdinger 'Broken Armchair' wakes the primal spot in leopardskin, tight, morning show coverage.

Blown open covering supports under welcome arches, made sure by celebrity ghost appearances, unlikely though that may seem. Shing brightly in this second episode, beacons of respectability in the dark underbelly of exchange tone, no line signal, no boat - its what we expect.

Underworn models beckoning, as usual, the second episode denies it all where most viewers will be expecting sheepskin not leopard, in recitals most choral, almost catholic, but with darker more satanic coverage. It's a star turn by Japsuit Tuttinson, that saves the whole flotilla.

2/5

Fri Apr 05, 2024 7:34 am

This year's "Worst Sects Scene" has been awarded to Imaginary author Biggleswick Chundermath for an episode in her blockbuster, Cathedral Postman: Onion Rings Twice.

The prestigious award is now in its 73rd year, and goes to the author of religious fiction that a panel of top judges considers to have penned the worst possible sects scene. We are grateful for permission to print Ms Chundermath's award-winning entry in full:

'Quobbing mightily, the Highest Priest strode imperiously through the Nonery's Paphian Grove, applying a liberal amount of Holy Ointment to his Magic Stave. The Head None quivered, sparkling angrily at such impudence, but this only served to inflame his deep fat friar desire.

"How dare!", said she, swinging her Orbs of Mystery to parry the thrust of the Priest's glistening stave. Globsome they battled, back and forth, 'til the grove were nought but a steaming and dangerously spittled swamp, litten by etheric emissions. For naughty days and nights the tumescent combatants raged, battering each other until finally lapsing into happy, greasy exhaustion.

"Fancy some chips?"
"Yeah."'

This is the fifteenth year running Ms Chundermath has won the award.

"It is literally the worst thing I have ever read," said Stephen Fryson, Top Literary Judge. "I literally can't sleep at night. Literally. And I'm right off my egg banjos. Literally."

Ms Chunderwick's novel is available through all of the usual Imaginary outlets.

Tue Apr 02, 2024 10:26 pm

In a tapwater backwater, high-rise basement flat, hidden away in the suburban outer inner-city, a unique new pop-up hidden gallery has been created by culturific art heroes Jimson and Blythe.

Here they display their latest nude fetish counter-clockwise counter-culture contrail counters ; numbers rotating leftwise on independent student breasts linked to live flight data, hidden behind partially-revealing leather thongs.

Visitors to the gallery are asked to remove their shoes before entering, and the fine-grained broken glass lining the hallway floor is only the first in a series of deterrents that, in the words of Blythe, "allow visitors to suffer for their art as much as we do". Nipple clamps optional, of course!

The gallery is open between 6 and 6:30 am on alternating weekdays throughout the month.

Mon Apr 01, 2024 4:28 pm

Self-seeking introspection always sells, as Roger Eccles once said, and never has this been more true than for In My Mouth, the triumphant debut album from 23 year old Overly Winsome.

Stand-out tracks include "Bang for your Buck", which weaves a funky Afro-Czech rhythm section with a sombre melange of rustic guitar and cowbells, as Overly first wails then pleads for a return to a more honest sexuality:

"In the duvets of desire / Both my flaming legs on fire / Wallet bulging at the ready / As you came I was unsteady" harks back to the classics of the disco age while forging a new and edgier aesthetic. Overly frequently paints herself as the feminist Dylan of our age.

"Doin' it on the sly" sees Overly in religious mode, combining church organs with an ethereal hint of her native folk musical upbringing, to tackle the complex issue of family life as a independently wealthy independent musician.

The eponymous instant top 100 single, In My Mouth, simply speaks for itself. You'll be putting In My Mouth on your playlist for a good few hours.
6/10