Existential angst in Stewart Lee’s Carpet Remnant World - February 2012 NottinghamArtsBlog - February 25th, 2012

Stewart Lee sums up his latest show Carpet Remnant World perfectly when he describes it as ‘an aggressive lecture’. Seemingly uncomfortable with his own fame, he is addressing the people who may have brought friends along with them that evening, believing this will be an entertaining night of comedy. Which of course it is –…

Review: Stewart Lee, Nottingham Playhouse - February 2012 This Is Nottingham - By Nick Parkhouse - February 24th, 2012

AS he reminded us during his latest beautifully structured show – the depressingly titled Carpet Remnant World – Stewart Lee has been a stand-up for a quarter of a century. During that time his popularity has waxed and waned, although thanks to recent award winning BBC series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, the 43 year old…

Tindersticks – The Something Rain – City Slang - February 2012 February 19th, 2012

Ideally suited to smoked filled rooms long since legislated out of existence, Nottingham’s most cosmopolitan export have spent two decades finessing an exotic gallic soul noir, a perfect fit for the outpourings of moody mumbler Stuart Staples’ barely beating heart. Their ninth studio album, excluding four film scores, opens with a lava lamp lit, nine…

Damo Suzuki’s Network – Seete Modi Per Salvare Roma - February 2012 February 19th, 2012

An expanded reissue of the Seventies krautrockers Can’s Tago Mago album stuffed the stocking of many a former head this Christmas, but front man Damo Suzuki has never become a nostalgia act. The former busker continues his endless global tour, spieling spontaneous vocalese over sympathetic sound-beds from ad-hoc assemblies of like-minded locals wherever he lands.…

Ronald Duncan and David Cain – The Seasons - February 2012 February 19th, 2012

In the early Seventies we shivered in our pants in school halls, hurling ourselves about, interpreting dramatically the sounds and words of BBC Schools’ Music And Movement programs. Trunk have saved an especially exceptional example from the BBC bins, 1969’s The Seasons, during which the violent poetry of Ronald Duncan is intoned over spooky electronica…

Michael Chapman – The Resurrection and Revenge Of The Clayton Peacock - February 2012 February 12th, 2012

Last time anyone checked Michael Chapman was a forgotten Seventies songwriter, but American revisionists, citing his guitar instrumentals, have found a lost folk-blues primitivist in the John Fahey vein. Nothing in the Yorkshire troubadour’s catalogue presaged these two lengthy electric guitar drones, buoyed on throbbing loops, and serrated with scratchy noise, the first a low…