Tagged: southbankcentre

Drone, as a genre, is one only rarely associated with such salubrious surrounds as those of the Southbank Centre. Of course its dingy tendencies and industrial undertones ensure it's not entirely incongruous with the gently brutalist cement work smothered about the innards of this iconic construction, although the two don't quite make for an immediately logical fit. And as such, in what for me became an increasingly impatient wait to witness the live collaboration between two of its most eminent modern-day practitioners in Daniel Lopatin (perhaps best recognised under the guise of inscrutable Brooklyn phantom, Oneohtrix Point Never) + Montréal [...]

By Russell Warfield March 14, 2013 It’s only a year since Al Spx released her startlingly well-formed and engrossing debut LP I Predict A Graceful Expulsion , but the young artist is already starting to show signs of restlessness about showcasing the old material. This generally manifests itself positively, especially through the promisingly enrapturing smattering of new material offered up tonight. Of course, there is undoubtedly something a little deflating about hearing her admit how sick she is of singing minor-detonation show stoppers like ‘Winter Solstice’. But the discomfort largely [...]

Ethiopian-born singer-songwriter Meklit Hadero plays three special shows next week Co-founder of The Nile Project and a prominent figure in the UN Women’s campaign for gender equality in Africa, Meklit Hadero was born in Ethiopia and raised in the US, where her musical talent has been nurtured for the last few years in San Francisco. As a deeply committed social and cultural activist, she has created a collective of young artists of the Ethiopian diaspora. Meklit will be performing at for free at London’s Southbank Centre on Friday, March 8 at 5.30pm [...]

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is set to give a talk at the Southbank Centre in London this May. Joined by artist Gavin Turk , the pair will deliver speeches on 'What Celebrity Does to Identity'. The event, which takes place on 24 May at 7.45pm, will be hosted by journalist Miranda Sawyer . The press release has the following blurb: "Both of these people are famous. But what does that really mean, and how do [...]

Whether it be Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End) or keep calm and carillon , the instrument known only as the bell lends itself particularly well to  Wortspiele . And though rather more traditionally associated with the resonances to emanate forth from hilltop belfries and Medieval steeples than it is with the minimal techno renowned of, say, Hendrik Weber, when the electronica monarch also known as  Pantha du Prince came together with newfangled Oslo ensemble  The Bell Laboratory to piece together  Elements Of Light , the results were perplexingly well equilibrated. The name of the [...]

Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 15th 2013. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 15th 2013. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 15th 2013. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 15th 2013. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 15th 2013. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, February 15th 2013. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory, Queen Elizabeth Hall, [...]

The Iranian percussion virtuoso Mohammad Reza Mortazavi is regarded as one of the most versatile and innovative players of the goblet-shaped hand drum, the tombak and of the larger frame drum, the daf .  His performances have been described as a ‘drum revolution,’ as the patterns and polyphonic sounds he extracts from these traditional instruments with just his two hands is quite extraordinary.  After performing at WOMEX 11, several major international festival appearances followed and now Mortazavi will be playing his first major concert in London tomorrow evening [...]

If Sean Penn’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High  character Jeff Spicoli and Trip Fontaine of  The Virgin Suicides decided to have a lovechild, and said lovechild decided that when he grew up, he wanted to be a rock star, then said lovechild would surely have been Evan Dando . The perma-stoned, long-haired slacker singing songs about babies in prams, yet still managing to sleep with supermodels whilst playing Letterman. He's that kind of rock star. "We’re kind of winging it", muses Juliana Hatfield after bumbling onstage with Dando, the man clad in slip-on vans [...]

I've recently come to disregard London's TFL-demarcated Zone 1 as something of a disproportionately enlarged ashtray come the weekend. More or less annular in its constricted dimensions, nicotine perfumery becomes all-pervasive beneath the gentle smoulder of Thames-side towers. These be its dwindling cinders; ominous, crimson beacons of the self-absorption and über-commercialism upon which the capital thrives. Don't get me wrong – to "quote/ unquote" one of its innumerable musical exports, I Love London . It's just that – and to paraphrase another from its slightly less salubrious suburbs – I'm not exactly living for the weekend any [...]

A bit of an old-fashioned brouhaha was made when Tyondai Braxton upped and left Battles. Irreconciliable differences, contrasting artistic directions, and violent clashes of personality were posthumously divulged as motives for the dissolution of the band as was, and yet to a not insubstantial degree he of the haywire barnet was Battles in that Mirrored quite evidently reflected Braxton. It was a joyous record. And although Atlas may never again be thrashed out as we may now only dream, Braxton lives on. And it's in the live realm where he tonight truly thrives. [...]

You'd be hard pushed to have an evening that is anything but transcendent at the Southbank Centre, and this year's Ether looks set to provide soirées that'll indubitably, and with it undeviatingly be just that. An exploratory series set within the brutalist walls of the somehow sightly multi-venue gargantua, the festival has strived to, and indeed consistently succeeded in, challenging the way we interpret sounds, along with the way in which electronics can be employed to create what many of us may construe as music. Perennial envelope pushers such as Kraftwerk, Lou Reed, David Byrne, and Brian Eno [...]

• John Cale - I Wanna Talk 2 U
• mountkimbie - RA.216 Mount Kimbie
• Tyondai Braxton - Rubric

By Robert Freeman August 6, 2012 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Matmos choose to open their Meltdown evening on the South Bank with a Burroughs reading. The story, a Robbe-Grillet style obsession with inanimate objects and the way they move under our fingers, is the beginning of a series of efforts that Matmos make to imbue life into machines and ‘things’. “You may experience a strange feeling as if the objects are alive and hostile,” reads Martin Schmidt. In this cut and paste musique concrete, the sweep of a [...]

Photo by Dan Smyth

Swimming through athletics screenings and scurrying across crammed foyers, it's surprisingly still once inside tonight's Royal Festival Hall. Indeed given the unpredictability of the inherently unorthodox CocoRosie , the evening could quite conceivably keep both serene and sombre: the sisters' proclivity for melancholia has and most likely always will be fairly pervasive, and as they hurdle the discography much woe remains. However that it be plenteously seasoned with joy differentiates this Meltdown showing from their richly varied – and with it variegated previous. Gone are the Sharpie moustaches, yet like stubborn infants clinging to unduly sugary desirables down the [...]

This month the Southbank Centre hauled in baroque pop minstrel Antony to curate its annual Meltdown, and a thorough refurb in feel he's been furnishing the idyllic riverside cultural retreat with over the past week too. Conducting a folkloric saunter both proverbial and enviable through hallowed halls previously trodden by the likes of Bowie, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Costello, Cave and Ray Davies just last year, there's a particular poignancy to the unchanged designation (one resolute since '93) of this year's series as the capital finds itself at the very centre of Olympian maelstrom. If Meltdown hasn't yet descended [...]

Nick Cowan, Robert Freeman, Greg Salter and Sam Cleeve take a moment to look at some of the events they're looking forward to as part of this year's Antony-curated Meltdown Festival . This year's Meltdown Festival takes place August 1st-12th t London's Southbank Centre. F ull line-up and tickets details are available here:  http://meltdown.southbankcentr e.co.uk/ Planningtorock + Light Asylum : Wednesday 1 August, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7:30pm  (By Nick Cowan) [...]

Post-punk industrial band Public Image Ltd . is enjoying a late career renaissance, mainly due to the insistence of its greatness by singer/growler John Lydon, as well as upcoming new music and a British tour. NME featured Lydon on last week's cover, with the inside story seen left. Lydon's also on the cover of Loud and Quiet magazine . The band has recorded [...]

Desde 1993 algunos de los músicos más distinguidos han sido directores invitados en el festival Meltdown , seleccionando a mano a sus artistas favoritos para exhibir su trabajo en el Southbank Centre. John Peel, Massive Attack, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Morrissey, entre muchos otros se han encargado de curar el festival. Para la edición de este año, el curador invitado será Antony Hegarty , frontman de Antony & The Johnsons, artista visual y colaborador con una inmensidad de artistas incluyendo a Björk y Lou Reed. El Meltdown Festival se llevará a cabo [...]

  In 2007,  Brian Wilson and his band came to do a special show at the then newly-reopened Southbank Centre. I was fortunate enough to go along to review it, I danced in the aisles then pondered how it could be that I can be reviewing a legend.  Over-used a term as it is, it definitely applies here. Well, it seems I got that lucky twice. So here I go again, writing the review of the fan-girl. This is show of two halves, a proper grown up concert with programmes, and an interval replete with delicious honey and [...]

The Southbank Centre in London have announced their listing for Autumn/Winter and it's looking rather wonderful. They've got a selection of the finest bands and acts out there at the moment and damn, it's looking hot. Full listings are below. VISION SOUND AND MUSIC FESTIVAL Friday 2 – Sunday 4 September 2011, Southbank Centre CAT’S EYES + The Sundowners Monday 5 September 2011, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7.30pm, Tickets £16.50 JOHN GRANT WITH [...]