[A Silver Mt Zion, photo by Mark Slutsky, via pitchforkmedia.com]
In terms of music last week was great, seeing A Silver Mt Zion at Scala was a real treat. Two straight hours of music and the occasional comments of Efrim Menuck on the Olympic torch in London and all. They started off with 1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound, track 13 of their new album (the preceding 12 tracks being a few seconds short sounds) 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, and hypnotised the audience (mainly) with new songs. Personal highlight was BlindBlindBlind, also from their last album.
The exhibition I saw last week: Cranach the Elder at the Royal Academy (until 8 June). Thank god there were two different ticket queues for Cranach and the Russian collections, otherwise I would have been there for half an hour or more. The exhibition is on the top level, which means that it can get quite crowded as the spaces aren’t very big. Well it was crowded, but, worst of all, it was full of visitors equipped with evil audio-guides. Standing in line and waiting to see a painting I wondered why people can’t appreciate what’s hanging on the walls without pretending to know everything about it. There are large panels (and large print is available too) with information, context etc., do people need more? Most of them end up listening without actually looking. End of rant. The show is good, many paintings and works on paper on loan from important foreign collections and the always interesting portraits of Martin Luther, old school propaganda.
This week I have tickets for two gigs, Phosphorescent at Borderline and Low playing at the Union Chapel. I’m quite excited for both: I saw Phosphorescent opening for Akron/Family at Cargo a few months ago and liked his voice and songs (as my friend M would say, ‘he’s very Will Oldham, right?’) and now that I’ve been listening to Pride for a bit I’ll probably like his set even more; well, and Low in a church, who can beat that? Art-wise: courtesy of my friend P I have tickets for the Chinese design exhibition at the V&A, I’ll come back here to report on that.
