Tag Archives: Music

Brighton Festival, Brighton Life, Theatre

Nadine Shah and The Brighton Festival by Jed Novick and Gilly Smith

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“I’m a little breathless”, whispered Ganavya to a packed audience as she joined her harpist and double bass combo on stage. “It’s probably because I’m a little heart-broken. I may need your help tonight. Would you sing with me?”  

Ganavya, a New York born, Tamil Nadu-raised sonic shapeshifting multi-instrumentalist and guilt tripper and star of Indian music, supporting reigning queen Aruna Sairam was probably the show of the Festival. Hard-bitten cynics in that audience have since confessed that they did sing with her. My friend and I sang with her. Everyone sang. And as we did, so her breath returned, filling her lungs with a soaring song of heartache that rocked the Theatre Royal, a transcendent mix of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music that many of us may never have heard before. Yes, it was in Tamil and in Hindi. Yes, we understood every word.  

The Brighton Festival. It’s one of the highlights of the calendar, but it’s difficult. How do you know what to go to? A reworking of Philip Glass and Ravi Shankar’s “Passages” aside, there were no big “must see that” shows, and if you didn’t know your South Asian arts scene, Anoushka Shankar’s Festival was a bit of guesswork. There’s absolutely no doubt there was some marvellous stuff – as evidenced by the Sairam and Ganavya gig, but if you’re not an aficionado of Indian music, would you have known that was going to be such a hot show?  

There’s something else– let’s call it May Fatigue. There’s so much going on in Brighton in May. The Festival, the Great Escape, the Fringe… the Open Houses. Yes, the Open Houses. A lovely thing to do, seeing some art, nosing round other people’s homes. And it might be free, but you’re out and being out, maybe you’ll stop for a drink. Or a bite.   So yes, lots going on and all demand your attention and your time and your energy and, maybe more importantly, all demand your wallet. Nothing’s cheap. We went to the Spiegel Gardens last night and bought a bottle of wine to share. £39.50.  

For a whole month, the streets are alive with the sound of, well, everything. Not just music but everything, and if the Weather Gods smile, there’s no finer place to be. Just maybe… it could all be spread out a bit more? The Great Escape in June maybe?  

Anyway, back to the Festival. The best non-music thing I saw was Emma Rice’s Wise Children production of North by Northwest, also at the Theatre Royal. A triumph of parody and comic timing and, well, you can read all about it here in The Mighty Whistler.  https://westhillwhistler.com/2025/05/17/north-by-northwest-at-the-theatre-royal/

Saturday night’s showstopping gig was Nadine Shah at The Dome. Again, Mercury nominated she might well be, but she’s not “Bloody hell, cancel everything, this we have to see”. As it turned out, she was great and, while we didn’t have to cancel anything, it was very cool. And this is the glory of the creative directorship of the Brighton Festival; if Anoushkar’s already shown you her record collection and opened a door into a whole new world of music and arts, how could Nadine Shah be anything other than an exciting new find?  

Like a cross between Shirley Bassey, PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, South Shields-born Shah is as loud and opinionated as any girl from the Geordie Shores. But her mash up of her own singular influences from Afrobeat to Eastern scales – apparently her father sang Urdu ghazals, a form of Arabic poetry, around the house as she grew up – became a roar of pain as she took us with her on her personal journey of grief, rehab and recovery as she pranced like a dressage pony across the stage. The music was hard, her voice sharp, the roar raw.  

The spiritual delicacy of Sairam and Gavanya, the joy and verve of North by Northwest, the raw noise of Nadine Shah. All in one Festival. And how cool is that?

Brighton, Green Door Store, Hope and Ruin, The Great Escape

The Great Escape by Alex Hill

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Down every street in the city, venues are alive with the sound of live music and hordes of people queue outside standing around talking and smoking. It was, of course, The Great Escape. Over 450 different acts taking the stage in all the best pubs and clubs over four days.

If the weather plays nicely, there’s nothing like a Great Escape weekend. You set out with an idea of going here to see that, but then you meet someone who says you really should go there to see something else and then… Well, who knows  what happens then.

A typical Great Escape night tends to include a lot of drifting around venues in search of a band you’ve never heard but you’ve heard of. And as you’re halfway there, maybe going to the Hope & Ruin, there’s an alert on the phone app. The venue’s full. There’s a queue. Maybe you’d like to go to The Green Door Store instead.

It truly is a cross-city festival, and you may just find yourself doing that; especially during the particularly busy times if you’re intent on finding new and exciting gigs like I was. If you don’t mind the strain on your legs, and if chancing upon interesting new sounds is something that grabs your fancy, then the festival is definitely for you. You’re bound to discover many great bands you were previously unaware of.

You’re not always guaranteed to find that gig you were hoping to see. Late one night, feeling dejected due to not having the required wristband for a gig near the seafront – something the festival app neglected to tell us – myself and a few friends ended up at the Fiddlers Elbow for a curiously busy gig. We found ourselves in the company of an obnoxiously loud garage rock gig which was awfully mixed by the sound engineer and with frankly poor song writing from the band (who were, I believe, from Canada). The band just weren’t that great, but weren’t helped by long and droning instrumental parts drowning out the vocalist and… It was all too loud. We escaped, checked our timetables only to discover to our own chagrin that there weren’t any more gigs on – onto the next day.

Organisation is key to having a great Escape. A friend had an Excel sheet – really, an Excel sheet. All times and places and descriptions. I didn’t have an Excel sheet. I had a friend who said we had to go to Jubilee Square to see hot local band Slag. We got there to find that hot local band Slag were playing Jubilee Square. Or rather, had played Jubilee Square. Yesterday. Instead, we saw Azamiah, a smooth, laid-back jazz funk band. Good, but not as nature intended. Next year, Excel.

The Hope and Ruin was religiously hosting gigs, in both the upstairs and downstairs bar and I saw a lot of good bands here I’d never heard of before. No complaint from me. That’s the other thing about The Great Escape. You get to see loads of bands and very possibly you were told who they were and very probably you really remembered who they were and… who were they?

The bands at the Hope where all punk and hardcore; screaming the house down and getting the audience fired up. With each band delivering half an hour sets, I think I saw four or five different bands here – Pleasure Inc.from Norwich played funky headbangers with a Rage Against the Machine type feel; Jools were an intense, dual vocalist modern hardcore band; Really Big Really Clever were a midwestern emo sounding four piece who made the crowd go wild. The Molotov’s were also playing, but they were stuck upstairs.

In Green Door, where the uneven cobbled flooring tends to make your night a bit more like you’ve had a drink when you’ve drank enough to make you unsteady, various great bands played as part of both the Alternative Escape and the main festival. With so many gigs on in such a short time frame, it’s quite hard to plan where to go; especially with so many overlapping time slots – navigating the festival effectively requires incredible foresight I seemed to lack as a first timer. Next year, Excel.

My feet were complaining, my head also a little, but had a fantastic time and saw loads of great bands I otherwise wouldn’t have had the chance to see. It’s probably been said before, but if the weather plays nicely, there’s nothing like a Great Escape weekend.  

Great Escape, Pete Doherty

The Great Escape: Pete Doherty by Alex Hill

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It was a sunny Wednesday in Brighton, along the beach swathes of people waited in eager anticipation in a fenced off area. I mingled amongst them, armed with a predictably overpriced lager and a worryingly dwindling supply of cigarettes. As part of The Great Escape’s spotlight shows, Pete Doherty was playing – enough cause to warrant the self-detriment – it was going to be a good gig.

Like a festival within a festival, there were heaps of different bands playing in tents around the site, and while this made it impossible to see all the acts, it did mean you could catch a listen from outside before you braved the stuffy, crowded gazebos. We saw a couple of great sounding bands leading up to Doherty’s gig – all being part of Strap-Originals, his eclectic record label.

Vona Vella were first up; an upbeat indie band with bright sounding guitars, heavy bass riffs and joint vocalists with a Fleetwood Mac style on stage tension. Broken up by light-hearted monologues from the talented vocalist Izzy Davis (“this song’s about someone you really like… but they’re kinda ugly”). Wailing guitars, chirpy bass and fast paced drumming accompanying the harmonizing vocals are all charming features of this up-and-coming indie rock quintet.

Moving to the main tent just in time for Warmduscher’s set – these guys were really cool. Driven by booming synths, powerful basslines and wild sound effects overlaid by the sunglasses-clad front man Craig Higgins commanding the crowd with conversational rapping delivered in a charismatic American twang. Strobe lights illuminated the crowd as they bounced to the bass and heavily distorted synthesisers. With the sound and the attitude, they should’ve been playing a much larger venue – which would’ve in turn prevented the odious people behind from feeling the need to constantly shimmy up against me. They were funky, heavy and energetic in equal measure. Write the name down, remember it.

Next up was the main event. Doherty was joined on stage by Mike Joyce of The Smiths making his first stage appearances in 22 years – you’d never have known the way he hit the drums for the opener ‘Killamangiro’. It was electric. Doherty is clearly at his best when joined by a full band on stage. Playing a mix of Babyshambles and his solo songs, Doherty is clearly at his best when joined by a full band on stage. Perhaps strangely he didn’t play any Libertines ones – too many ghosts? – although the brand-new songs off his album, and a couple of Smiths classics – Panic and How Soon is Now?  -more than made up for it.

Without a guitar in hand for most the show, he instead opted to twirl a cane or prance around the stage carelessly waving the mic in his signature fashion. His confident stage presence and ability to control the crowd was evident as he went through the bangers like ‘Fuck Forever’. While the songs of his brand-new album are definitely more hit or miss; it was interesting to hear him exploring new sounds and genres, bearing a clear country influence. With trumpets and a glockenspiel accompanying the songs, the man’s sound has clearly come a long way from the raw-garage rock sound of The Libertines. Bringing his happy, tail-wagging dog on stage at the end while the band did their bows – it was an adorable end to the night.

Bom Banes, Brighton Life, Film, Film Clubs

Film clubs in Brighton: By Fraser Simpson

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It can be said that Brighton is a hub for cinema. There are a wide variety of cinemas in the area, ranging from multiplexes to independents, with someone to offer for anyone somewhat interested in film. But what if cinemas don’t offer a specific niche that you happen to be craving? That is where film clubs come into play.

Brighton itself has a few film clubs to go around, ranging a variety of genres and niches. One of these clubs is the Toad Lickers Collective (TLC), although it is not strictly a film club. Founded last year by Keziah Keeler and Liz Rose, TLC’s wider programme includes free exhibitions and workshops alongside film screenings once a month at the Rose Hill, an independent music venue.

Regarding why they wanted to do more than just film screenings, Kez said, “There’s a lot of things you can express through film that can reach a wider audience, and we’re quite interested in the idea of film as the eye of the workers. We thought it was a cool way to get a lot of people in a room talking about the same subject which feels a bit missing in this era.”

TLC themselves don’t make much of a profit, due to being a Community Interest Company, so any profit made from screenings goes towards running free workshops and exhibitions, due to their desire to make themselves as accessible as possible.

The choice of The Rose Hill as their venue for film screenings was one that TLC are happy with, as Rose points out the difficulty of finding places to host events. Rose said, “The Rose Hill are really welcoming and really care about the community, and I think you feel that in the atmosphere they create, it’s all very casual and we really like how comfortable it is as well, it’s cosy and intimate.”

TLC’s most recent exhibition was Folklore, which set out to explore why folklore is having a revival and how contemporary artists are using its legends, techniques and aesthetics to describe their experiences. This fits in with what Kez describes as the core of the club, “this idea that storytelling is really important, and there are all these different ways of storytelling that we can use the rules and the methods to help us describe social issues and real problems.”

Whilst they’ll be looking at other interests when their film screenings return after the summer in September, Liz wishes to explore working class culture in a potential future film season, looking at joyful working-class films such as Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. Their reasoning is because, to them, “Folklore has a history that belongs to people and has the potential to be much more linked to working class cultures. As funding disappears, it’s becoming increasingly hard to see diverse voices, and if you’re working class or from an underrepresented background, those stories don’t get told in a genuine way by people telling them.”

Similarly to TLC’s recent folk-based exhibition, Bom-Bane’s Folk Horror Film and Ice Cream Club may be of interest as well, a film club that explores the many films belonging to the folk horror genre. Hosted by David Bramwell at Bom-Bane’s in Kemptown, each film screening features an intermission, a discussion halfway through the screening, a food break, and what David describes as ‘an avant-garde unsettling performance from a group calling themselves the Bewilderkin’

David himself is no stranger to folk horror, having been performing a Wicker-Man singalong for 16 years. To him, the club is a chance for him to ‘explore the genre and see how far we can stretch the boundaries of the definition of folk horror, and not present the obvious choices like The Wicker Man. We try and delve into weirder fringes of Folk Horror, including folk horror films from around the world, not just Anglo-centric, and presenting films from parts of the world that wouldn’t necessarily be associated with the genre.’

The difficulty of running any film club largely revolves around the financial aspects. Despite most screenings at Bom-Banes selling out tickets-wise, thanks in part to the venue capacity being just 25, David notes there is difficulty in spreading the word about his folk horror film club. He said, ‘It’s too expensive to put posters up around town, and I’d be making a loss on the night if I paid for 50 posters to go up for a week or two.’

Regardless of the financial aspect of keeping the film club going, David is still optimistic for the club’s future. Whilst there is no showing at Bom-Bane’s in May due to David’s work during Brighton Fringe, his next screening will be the film ‘Wake in Fright’ from 1971. As David describes it, ‘It’s one of Nick Cave’s favourite films, it’s similarly themed to ‘Straw Dogs’, about the breakdown of civilisation in remote places and about the schoolteacher through unfortunate circumstances finds himself trapped in this town and how he descends into this toxic-machismo culture.’

While these two clubs are just two examples of film clubs across Brighton, there are undoubtedly more than these two, and if your interest is not in folk horror or folk in general, there will likely be other film clubs that will satisfy any cravings for film clubs of a certain genre.

Brighton Festival, Great Escape, The New Eves

The New Eves

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“A lot of our songs are influenced by literature”. Alex Hill talks music and The Great Escape

Sometimes you interview a band and they only have to say one thing and you’re hooked. “We’re all big Big Patti Smith fans” said Kate from The New Eves, one of the brightest sparks to be playing The Great Escape. Patti Smith. That’s us sold. It gets better. “We’d have to write a book listing all our influences, but Talking Heads are a big inspiration…”. And it gets more interesting. “… as well as more unique inspirations such as Bulgarian choir music”. Wasn’t expecting that.

If you’re even a little tired of the regular ‘guitar-bass-drums-vocals’ set up, The New Eves should make you smile. The Brighton based band feature Nina Winder-Lind (cello, guitar, vocals), Ella Oona Russell (drums, flute, vocals), Kate Mager (bass, vocals), and Violet Farrer (violin, guitar, vocals, dance) and it’s a little more arty – and can we say darker – than your average band. 

“A lot of our songs are influenced by literature”, says Kate and there’s a lot of the unexpeced here. Their new single, “Highway Man” is a darkly-energised, female-first retelling of Alfred Noyes’ classic 1906 romantic poem that, as they put it, flips the lens. “In the original version it’s this dude, who’s being the dude, and the girl doesn’t do anything and then dies,” says Nina. “So I was like, ‘We can’t have that…’” 

If all that sounds a bit too much, there’s still a bit of guitar solo rock’n’roll. “It was when I first started to find my guitar style, which is basically just weird noises and bashing” said Violet. And it is. Kinda cool though. The distorted guitar turns into adistorted cello – which is also kinda cool. 

“It’s really good to play The Great Esacpe but it can be a bit overwhelming. We’re also playing The Alternative Esacpe because more of our friends can come and there’s more of a local buzz.”

The New Eves are playing Chalk on Friday May 16 at 6.15pm