mishmash

Cover illustration for 'Opus International', 1968

I had been warned of the scale of Cold War Modern – the new design exhibition at the V&A – so I wasn’t shocked when I realised that the visit lasted at least two hours. Although I can’t really say I remember the cold war (but I do remember when the wall fell), growing up in Italy gave me a pretty good idea of political propaganda and strong pro- and anti-Americanism. I’ve been wanting to visit the exhibition also because of the shady 7th Syndikate, that contacted me through this blog at the beginning of September. As it turned out they’d contacted a bunch of other London-based bloggers with instructions and tasks to carry out in order to become an active ‘agent’ (I was Caroline something), and the big finale was a secret gathering for the show’s opening on September 24. Talking about viral marketing! I was sorry to miss it, but had a previous engagement with two friends and a pizza. Back to the exhibition: the posters were among the best pieces on show, especially the French ones from the 60s, but also a fine example of Trabant, a few interesting chairs and stereos, propaganda films from USA and URSS, and a short clip of Dr Strangelove by Kubrick that brilliantly summed up those years. It seems that the subject of war is quite popular with London galleries as Barbican has just opened three parallel exhibitions This is war! Robert Capa at work, Gerda Taro, and On the subject of war. Will definitely see them.

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I’d mentioned the End Of The Road festival (12-14 Sept) in a previous post saying that I was not going, but the lineup was too good to miss so I grew a spine and bought a ticket. It was worth every penny and ounce of mud, because almost all bands did amazing sets and the atmosphere was very relaxed and friendly.

Day one (12 Sept): Acorn (Canadian band that I saw opening for Akron/Family at the Luminaire, nothing too exciting but entertaining), followed by  A Hawk And A Hacksaw (they make great music fullstop), Micah P Hinson, and the almighty Dirty Three. There are no words to describe their music. Inspired by the Australians I went to the Big Top Stage to see Akron/Family leaving my friends at the Conor Oberst (aka Bright Eyes) gig.

Day two (13 Sept): Absentee (perhaps a bit too pop for me, but very dance-able), Bowerbirds, Bon Iver (amazing gig, probably one of the best of the weekend), Baby Dee (first time I’ve seen her live and enjoyed the set a lot, especially the craziness of Teeth Are The Only Bones That Show and The Earlie King), Kurt Wagner (great voice, great stage presence), Mark Kozelek with Sun Kil Moon (I love his/their albums but I find Kozelek very boring and cold when he plays live).

Day three (14 Sept): Sons of Noel and Adrian (a pleasant surprise), The Wave Pictures, Kimya Dawson (wonderful and endearing), Jason Molina (again, I love songs:ohia but live he’s a bit boring), Woodpigeon, Jeffrey Lewis (always funny), Moutain Goats (not a good gig, something was missing).

End Of The Road – A Hawk & A Hacksaw

End Of The Road – Dirty Three

End Of The Road – Baby Dee on fire

End Of The Road – A very focussed Alex Nielson drums for Baby Dee

End Of The Road – Kurt Wagner’s intimate set

last week|this week

[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.