Articles & Reviews

I Hear A New World...

The arrival of wholly electronic music was treated with disdain and fear by most, even by those who had endeavoured to defy convention in that mythically cataclysmic decade, the 1960s. They objected to what they saw as the dehumanisation of music, but this objection masked an unconscious fear of what this ‘new’ music potentially represented – the dehumanization of life. This was, in some sense, a neurosis rooted in the 60s, where crude expressions of colour and melody had played a talismanic part in the social liberation of the time. The ordered, monochrome, industrial sounds of the ‘future’ could not help but be associated with the rigidity and extremism of Nazism and modernism at its most stubborn, and were welcome to few. The hippies had survived punk (just) and now there was this. Was this what ‘free love’ had led to?

The first notable influx of ‘electronic’ technology into the construction and aesthetics of British music was in the post-punk class of 1980-82. Bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle married the brash politics and primitive fetishism of punk culture to overtly industrial and frequently unlistenable machine sounds, deploying all manner of lo-fi equipment to do so. Punk, in its attempts to extinguish the arrogant politics and indulgent psychedelia of the 70s had, to an extent, done its job; but it left a vacuum, a blank vision of the future, that just had to be filled. For the post-punk generation, a fascination with the future (as always) was founded on a dissatisfaction with the present; electronic music offered an escape from the present moment, whilst simultaneously beautifying and taking inspiration from the grey, insipid artefacts of industry and misguided architecture which characterized the British cityscape at the time. As Robert Hughes describes the supposition of this generation, that ‘Technology would reform culture, but in a gratuitous and socially amoral way. Its muscle would abolish history’. Technology, according to post-punk’s loose ideology, would no longer be a means of institutional suppression and co-option of the individual, but a mode of expression, a weapon against the very establishment which had spawned it. To Sant’Elia and Chiattone, authors of the Futurist Manifesto of 1914, the glamour of the machine was ‘its power to transform life no matter what class held the levers’. Remember, twenty-four years ago, such noughties commonplace as the internet was, if anything, the stuff of wild, stoned conjecture or idle daydreams, and yet in their embrace of the future as a concept, the electronic pioneers helped to bring that future about. Like science fiction authors, or the Italian Futurists with their architectural extremism, they were presenting to their audience new ways of imagining, shifting the paradigms of what popular culture could be, and purported to be. As such, technology was not only used, it became a muse, it was fetishized and worshipped – from Kraftwerks’ ‘Computer Love’ to The Normal’s ‘T.V.O.D.’ (depicting rapture and alienation respectively), the arrival of technology as a musical tool coincided with, or rather precipitated, technology as subject. The pop-art/postmodern clarion call of ‘culture as nature’ had become ‘technology as nature’.

The tension between the body and the machine was being explored by producer and audience alike; by the mid-80s the everyman was dancing to synthesized sound – a timely indicator of our love for, and our subjugation to, technology. (This implicitly sexual relationship of power was explored memorably, if rather crassly, in David Cronenberg’s film ‘Videodrome’). The familiar was mutating into the unfamiliar, as live instruments came to be represented by their synthetic impressions and human voices were filtered through vocoders – Freud’s vision of the uncanny, the unheimlich, was suddenly apparent in popular music.

The rise of Chicago house and Detroit techno later in that decade cemented the surreal mechanization of music. Voices became unnecessary, and if they were present, they were disembodied, floating in the ether. The bawdy snap of the standard disco drum pattern was further simplified to a 4x4 bass drum figure, and endlessly repeated, at once alluding to the heartbeat and its tribal simplicity, and to the unending pulse (and Spartan simplicity) of modern industry. The poly-rhythms which bubbled under and over the presiding metronome were like the ancillary, cyclical parts of a machine, aiding and abetting the linear progression at the machine’s core. This music was not only product, it was process as well, and one could see all the parts working. It’s unsurprising that Chicago was the birthing pool of house music; like Detroit, Berlin and Sheffield, the spiritual homes of electronic music, Chicago is almost offensively industrial and modernist in its architecture and history. Louis Henry Sullivan, a Chicago architect working in the latter part of the nineteenth century, was the first man to give the load-bearing steel frame, the skeleton of most modern, high-rise buildings, its aesthetic and functional content. By aiming upwards, literally, in his schematics and design, it could be said that Sullivan granted skyscrapers their ‘lyric theme’ – verticality .Tenuous as it might be, we can see the parallels between the steel frame and the 4x4 drum figure; with the additional melody, bassline and other effects as the ‘load’ (and I dare say ‘verticality’ is a quality to which much house music aspires). What makes house music so potentially thrilling and even psychedelic, though, is the textural digression from the basic percussive framework, the tension between these antagonistic movements, the relationship between them.

Throughout the history of music, classical and popular, there are clues as to what the next great convulsion of life and culture would bring, and responses to what has already been. Most intriguingly, you will find predictions of futures that never came to pass.

Theatre Review

Tom Stoppard’s ‘Arcadia’ at the Old Vic

Cross-cut between two time zones, Olivier Award-winning Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” was directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, a director famous for her successful interpretation of Shakespearean comedies, such as “The Merry Wives of Windsor” in June 2003 and “Two Gentlemen of Verona” in Regent’s Park earlier last year.

The play has enjoyed many positive reviews, particularly in the national press, “I have never left a new play more convinced that I’d just witnessed a masterpiece”, claims The Daily Telegraph. Stoppard is also a favourite here in the South West, as he worked as a writer in the 1950s for the Western Daily Press in Bristol, aged just 17, joining the Bristol Evening World as news reporter, feature writer, theatre and .lm critic in 1958.

Set in the main house of Bristol Old Vic, Kavanaugh used the potential hindrance of the Proscenium Arch convention to her advantage, creating an almost cinematic screen on which Stoppard’s interwoven plots unfolded. The opening plot, set in period, reveals the events of 1809, and the other battling to discover what happened to Septimus Lodge and Lord Byron on “the fateful weekend” in 1809 when a Mr Chater discovers the truth about the young poets’ “carnal embraces” with his wife. John Hodgkinson plays Bernard Nightingale, an academic lodging at the historic house in an attempt to track the true history of the events through letters, diaries and records of grouse shootings, nearly a century after they occurred. Hodgkinson delivers his lines with perfect comic timing, his style is reminiscent of Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder, and his keen wit engages the audience as vital, but dull information is imparted to maintain the complex plot. Academic Hannah Jarvis was played by Hermione Gulliford, unfortunately switching an otherwise engaging performance into an unsuccessful Brechtian awareness of “half-curtain” by her way of overacting and obvious role-playing. However, she succeeded in maintaining her character during long periods of staged “listening” and was physically very convincing – her physicality was realistic and appropriate, and her diction was clear and well-projected, carrying off the gags reliant on pace of conversation.

The actors performing the scenes set in 1809 were convincing and engaging, comfortable enough in the period costume as to not draw attention to it, well-rehearsed and capable of delivering their lines as “second nature”, breaking down the language barriers and thus opening the play up to a wider, and perhaps less “theatre-going” modern audience. Loo Brearly played Thomasina Coverly, the young tutee to Septimus Lodge. Clearly a capable actress, Brearly ful.lled the role of a childlike and naïve genius with wide eyes and convincing tongue. Particularly towards the end of the play, Blake Ritson’s interpretation of Septimus Lodge made the character’s dilemma of attraction but obligation convincing, touching and admirable. Ritson played up the comedy with skill and sensitivity, demonstrating an affection and deep understanding of the text.

Kavanaugh’s climactic denouement, however, becomes confused in the last scene, having successfully maintained what is essentially a juggling act of two plots for the entirety of the play. The dance between Thomasina and her tutor is touching, romantic, and deeply sexual, yet it comes as such a dramatic climax that the audience expects the play to end. Instead, however, they we are put on hold, hands raised in anticipation of applause, as a .nal scene is roped on the end, closing the play with anticlimax rather than satisfaction.

Stoppard’s “Arcadia” ran from 17 September – 16 October 2004 at Bristol Old Vic and was a Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company production.

Davinia Livock

Film Review

A Culinary Masterclass

‘Facing Window’ (La Finestra di Fronte)

(Italy 2003)

Eating good food and getting passionate in the bedroom – two of Italy’s most popular pastimes, closely followed by watching the football or going for a zip around town on a motorino. Stereotypes will be stereotypes but it’s still fair to say there’s a certain amount of things the Italians do a lot better than the rest of us. No better is this exemplified than in the latest cinematic offering from Italy, Facing Window, a visually sumptuous tale about lost memories and re-awoken passions. One of the biggest films in Italy last year, it scooped five Italian Oscars including a Best Actor award for Massimo Girotti, a household name in Italian cinema (most famous for his roles in the films of Visconti and Rossellini) who sadly died days after filming finished. It also features two of the hottest Italian stars of the moment in the form of the beautiful Giovanna Mezzogiorno and the equally beautiful Raoul Bova, who has since cut his teeth on the Hollywood circuit with Aliens vs. Predator. Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek won a lot of admirers with his earlier features, Hamam – The Turkish Bath and Ignorant Fairies, sparking Almodóvarian comparisons whilst earning himself a credible reputation for his photographic flair and refined direction.

Facing Window centres on the story of Giovanna, a young housewife frustrated with her menial domestic routine and her uninspiring job in a poultry factory. Whilst her affectionate but meek husband struggles with his poor paying night job, Giovanna indulges herself with the odd bit of pastry cooking and the occasional glimpse of the attractive neighbour in the flat opposite. One day Giovanna and her husband come across a vagrant old man (expertly played by Girotti) who seems to be suffering from amnesia and flitters in and out of lucidity. Much to Giovanna’s annoyance, her husband brings the mysterious stranger home in an attempt to help him recover his memory. Although originally indifferent, Giovanna begins to become actively involved in trying to help the old man rediscover his past as the memories sift back to him. A forbidden love affair, the suffering of the Holocaust, the pain of a lost life – the old man begins to inspire Giovanna to pursue her passions where he sacrificed his.

Although this film could have easily descended into over-indulgence, director Ozpetek handles it all with a free flowing elegance that makes it a very appealing and rewarding experience. The cinematography is as rich as the onscreen pastries and the performances more than match it for class and style. Although slightly let down by a rather weak ending, Facing Window is a fantastic slice of contemporary Italian cinema that really shouldn’t be missed. Especially if you’re a fan of cake baking.

Dir. Ferzan Ozpetek
Running Time: 106 mins

Max Malagoni

Back to Contents



Articles & Reviews I Hear A New World... The arrival of wholly electronic music was treated with disdain and fear by most, even by those who had endeavoured to defy convention in that mythically cataclysmic decade, the 1960s. They objected to what they saw as the dehumanisation of music, but this objection masked an unconscious fear of what this ‘new’ music potentially represented – the dehumanization of life. This was, in some sense, a neurosis rooted in the 60s, where crude expressions of colour and melody had played a talismanic part in the social liberation of the time. The ordered, monochrome, industrial sounds of the ‘future’ could not help but be associated with the rigidity and extremism of Nazism and modernism at its most stubborn, and were welcome to few. The hippies had survived punk (just) and now there was this. Was this what ‘free love’ had led to? The first notable influx of ‘electronic’ technology into the construction and aesthetics of British music was in the post-punk class of 1980-82. Bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle married the brash politics and primitive fetishism of punk culture to overtly industrial and frequently unlistenable machine sounds, deploying all manner of lo-fi equipment to do so. Punk, in its attempts to extinguish the arrogant politics and indulgent psychedelia of the 70s had, to an extent, done its job; but it left a vacuum, a blank vision of the future, that just had to be filled. For the post-punk generation, a fascination with the future (as always) was founded on a dissatisfaction with the present; electronic music offered an escape from the present moment, whilst simultaneously beautifying and taking inspiration from the grey, insipid artefacts of industry and misguided architecture which characterized the British cityscape at the time. As Robert Hughes describes the supposition of this generation, that ‘Technology would reform culture, but in a gratuitous and socially amoral way. Its muscle would abolish history’. Technology, according to post-punk’s loose ideology, would no longer be a means of institutional suppression and co-option of the individual, but a mode of expression, a weapon against the very establishment which had spawned it. To Sant’Elia and Chiattone, authors of the Futurist Manifesto of 1914, the glamour of the machine was ‘its power to transform life no matter what class held the levers’. Remember, twenty-four years ago, such noughties commonplace as the internet was, if anything, the stuff of wild, stoned conjecture or idle daydreams, and yet in their embrace of the future as a concept, the electronic pioneers helped to bring that future about. Like science fiction authors, or the Italian Futurists with their architectural extremism, they were presenting to their audience new ways of imagining, shifting the paradigms of what popular culture could be, and purported to be. As such, technology was not only used, it became a muse, it was fetishized and worshipped – from Kraftwerks’ ‘Computer Love’ to The Normal’s ‘T.V.O.D.’ (depicting rapture and alienation respectively), the arrival of technology as a musical tool coincided with, or rather precipitated, technology as subject. The pop-art/postmodern clarion call of ‘culture as nature’ had become ‘technology as nature’. The tension between the body and the machine was being explored by producer and audience alike; by the mid-80s the everyman was dancing to synthesized sound – a timely indicator of our love for, and our subjugation to, technology. (This implicitly sexual relationship of power was explored memorably, if rather crassly, in David Cronenberg’s film ‘Videodrome’). The familiar was mutating into the unfamiliar, as live instruments came to be represented by their synthetic impressions and human voices were filtered through vocoders – Freud’s vision of the uncanny, the unheimlich, was suddenly apparent in popular music. The rise of Chicago house and Detroit techno later in that decade cemented the surreal mechanization of music. Voices became unnecessary, and if they were present, they were disembodied, floating in the ether. The bawdy snap of the standard disco drum pattern was further simplified to a 4x4 bass drum figure, and endlessly repeated, at once alluding to the heartbeat and its tribal simplicity, and to the unending pulse (and Spartan simplicity) of modern industry. The poly-rhythms which bubbled under and over the presiding metronome were like the ancillary, cyclical parts of a machine, aiding and abetting the linear progression at the machine’s core. This music was not only product, it was process as well, and one could see all the parts working. It’s unsurprising that Chicago was the birthing pool of house music; like Detroit, Berlin and Sheffield, the spiritual homes of electronic music, Chicago is almost offensively industrial and modernist in its architecture and history. Louis Henry Sullivan, a Chicago architect working in the latter part of the nineteenth century, was the first man to give the load-bearing steel frame, the skeleton of most modern, high-rise buildings, its aesthetic and functional content. By aiming upwards, literally, in his schematics and design, it could be said that Sullivan granted skyscrapers their ‘lyric theme’ – verticality .Tenuous as it might be, we can see the parallels between the steel frame and the 4x4 drum figure; with the additional melody, bassline and other effects as the ‘load’ (and I dare say ‘verticality’ is a quality to which much house music aspires). What makes house music so potentially thrilling and even psychedelic, though, is the textural digression from the basic percussive framework, the tension between these antagonistic movements, the relationship between them. Throughout the history of music, classical and popular, there are clues as to what the next great convulsion of life and culture would bring, and responses to what has already been. Most intriguingly, you will find predictions of futures that never came to pass. Further reading/listening: Robert Hughes, The Shock of The New (Thames & Hudson) Various Artists, Rough Trade: Electronic 01 (Rough Trade) Kiran Sande Theatre Review Tom Stoppard’s ‘Arcadia’ at the Old Vic Cross-cut between two time zones, Olivier Award-winning Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” was directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, a director famous for her successful interpretation of Shakespearean comedies, such as “The Merry Wives of Windsor” in June 2003 and “Two Gentlemen of Verona” in Regent’s Park earlier last year. The play has enjoyed many positive reviews, particularly in the national press, “I have never left a new play more convinced that I’d just witnessed a masterpiece”, claims The Daily Telegraph. Stoppard is also a favourite here in the South West, as he worked as a writer in the 1950s for the Western Daily Press in Bristol, aged just 17, joining the Bristol Evening World as news reporter, feature writer, theatre and .lm critic in 1958. Set in the main house of Bristol Old Vic, Kavanaugh used the potential hindrance of the Proscenium Arch convention to her advantage, creating an almost cinematic screen on which Stoppard’s interwoven plots unfolded. The opening plot, set in period, reveals the events of 1809, and the other battling to discover what happened to Septimus Lodge and Lord Byron on “the fateful weekend” in 1809 when a Mr Chater discovers the truth about the young poets’ “carnal embraces” with his wife. John Hodgkinson plays Bernard Nightingale, an academic lodging at the historic house in an attempt to track the true history of the events through letters, diaries and records of grouse shootings, nearly a century after they occurred. Hodgkinson delivers his lines with perfect comic timing, his style is reminiscent of Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder, and his keen wit engages the audience as vital, but dull information is imparted to maintain the complex plot. Academic Hannah Jarvis was played by Hermione Gulliford, unfortunately switching an otherwise engaging performance into an unsuccessful Brechtian awareness of “half-curtain” by her way of overacting and obvious role-playing. However, she succeeded in maintaining her character during long periods of staged “listening” and was physically very convincing – her physicality was realistic and appropriate, and her diction was clear and well-projected, carrying off the gags reliant on pace of conversation. The actors performing the scenes set in 1809 were convincing and engaging, comfortable enough in the period costume as to not draw attention to it, well-rehearsed and capable of delivering their lines as “second nature”, breaking down the language barriers and thus opening the play up to a wider, and perhaps less “theatre-going” modern audience. Loo Brearly played Thomasina Coverly, the young tutee to Septimus Lodge. Clearly a capable actress, Brearly ful.lled the role of a childlike and naïve genius with wide eyes and convincing tongue. Particularly towards the end of the play, Blake Ritson’s interpretation of Septimus Lodge made the character’s dilemma of attraction but obligation convincing, touching and admirable. Ritson played up the comedy with skill and sensitivity, demonstrating an affection and deep understanding of the text. Kavanaugh’s climactic denouement, however, becomes confused in the last scene, having successfully maintained what is essentially a juggling act of two plots for the entirety of the play. The dance between Thomasina and her tutor is touching, romantic, and deeply sexual, yet it comes as such a dramatic climax that the audience expects the play to end. Instead, however, they we are put on hold, hands raised in anticipation of applause, as a .nal scene is roped on the end, closing the play with anticlimax rather than satisfaction. Stoppard’s “Arcadia” ran from 17 September – 16 October 2004 at Bristol Old Vic and was a Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company production. Davinia Livock Film Review A Culinary Masterclass ‘Facing Window’ (La Finestra di Fronte) (Italy 2003) Eating good food and getting passionate in the bedroom – two of Italy’s most popular pastimes, closely followed by watching the football or going for a zip around town on a motorino. Stereotypes will be stereotypes but it’s still fair to say there’s a certain amount of things the Italians do a lot better than the rest of us. No better is this exemplified than in the latest cinematic offering from Italy, Facing Window, a visually sumptuous tale about lost memories and re-awoken passions. One of the biggest films in Italy last year, it scooped five Italian Oscars including a Best Actor award for Massimo Girotti, a household name in Italian cinema (most famous for his roles in the films of Visconti and Rossellini) who sadly died days after filming finished. It also features two of the hottest Italian stars of the moment in the form of the beautiful Giovanna Mezzogiorno and the equally beautiful Raoul Bova, who has since cut his teeth on the Hollywood circuit with Aliens vs. Predator. Turkish director Ferzan Ozpetek won a lot of admirers with his earlier features, Hamam – The Turkish Bath and Ignorant Fairies, sparking Almodóvarian comparisons whilst earning himself a credible reputation for his photographic flair and refined direction. Facing Window centres on the story of Giovanna, a young housewife frustrated with her menial domestic routine and her uninspiring job in a poultry factory. Whilst her affectionate but meek husband struggles with his poor paying night job, Giovanna indulges herself with the odd bit of pastry cooking and the occasional glimpse of the attractive neighbour in the flat opposite. One day Giovanna and her husband come across a vagrant old man (expertly played by Girotti) who seems to be suffering from amnesia and flitters in and out of lucidity. Much to Giovanna’s annoyance, her husband brings the mysterious stranger home in an attempt to help him recover his memory. Although originally indifferent, Giovanna begins to become actively involved in trying to help the old man rediscover his past as the memories sift back to him. A forbidden love affair, the suffering of the Holocaust, the pain of a lost life – the old man begins to inspire Giovanna to pursue her passions where he sacrificed his. Although this film could have easily descended into over-indulgence, director Ozpetek handles it all with a free flowing elegance that makes it a very appealing and rewarding experience. The cinematography is as rich as the onscreen pastries and the performances more than match it for class and style. Although slightly let down by a rather weak ending, Facing Window is a fantastic slice of contemporary Italian cinema that really shouldn’t be missed. Especially if you’re a fan of cake baking. Dir. Ferzan Ozpetek Running Time: 106 mins Max Malagoni Back to Contents
You can now pick up your copy of Helicon from: