Brighton Festival: Lou Reed Drones

'Lou Reed Drones is an installation of his guitars and amps in feedback mode: 24 strings set in motion from the push of magnetically driven cones; 360 partial harmonics colliding against each other, cascading, uniting, elevating, rising up like New York skyscrapers along the Hudson.

Introducing gain and sculpting sonic frequencies, a feedback loop is created with each guitar and its respective amplifier. Their overlapping harmonic structures produce pseudo-acoustic notes in which a beating sensation is then set in motion. Lou Reed Drones is a visceral, emotional and spiritual experience...'

Stunning metal machine music in a disused church.

The only concert I've been to where they thrust earplugs at you on the way in, and where they had beds inside.

It's on every afternoon til Tuesday (and it's free).

Might try and get some acid and go again.

Almost certainly the only thing I'll see in this year's Brighton Festival.

Brighton Festival: Stella

As per, there is only one thing Fagburn is looking forward to at this year's Brighton Festival; Neil Bartlett's new work Stella, about Ernest Boulton of Fanny and Stella infamy.

Other gay-related stuff is available.

Brighton Festivals: Fagburn's Picks

Err...

Brighton Festival: Vanessa!

Vanessa Redgrave is guest director of this year's Brighton Festival, which starts tomorrow.
I love Vanessa, me.
It's largely a ceremonial role, with the "director" as a figurehead - a bit like the Mayor of London - and it's hard to see what imprint the mighty Vanessa has had on this year's programme.
Though she has championed the festival as a political project in itself; “Of course, we’re not under bombing and shelling here in Brighton. But things are very hard in the UK. People can’t even turn their gas fires on because of the price. But if you can listen to the radio and hear a beautiful piece of music, or if you can come to some of the many free events at the Festival, then it helps us all, not only to feel together – because we do these things communally – but also to feel better.”
There's a selection of her fillums being shown at the Duke of York's, though sadly no showing for the one I really want to see, the TV remake of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? she made with sister Lynn.
Vanessa is in conversation at the Dome tomorrow evening (tickets still available at the time of typing!) which is rather tempting.
Being boring the only things I usually end up seeing at the Brighton Festival tend to be these "Interesting People Talking" events; Edward W Said, Mark E Smith, Neil Tennant, Brian Eno.
Actually I was standing outside the MES one, it's a long story.
The best bit of your actual art is Neil Bartlett's What Can You Do?: A Queer Retrospective at the Theatre Royal.
I love Nelly Bartlett, me.
But I see Vanessa is leading the Childrens' Parade tomorrow morning - the traditional start of the festival - so I'll probably go along and watch her doing some waving.

Festival News 1: Brighton Festival

Fagburn has just been leafing through the programme for this year's Brighton Festival.
Usually Fagburn is lucky if he finds one event he wants to see - and they've usually been not so much "art" as watching someone talking; Edward W Said, Mark E Smith, Neil Tennant, Brian Eno...
This year's no different - just the one event has grabbed me by the gonads, and it's most definitely your actual gay culture!
So, here is Fagburn's Pick of the Brighton Festival 2011...

For Alfonso: A Wilde Evening at the Royal
by Neil Bartlett, with Bette Bourne and guests.
World Premiere

Saturday May 21st, Theatre Royal, Brighton

Blurb! "In 1888, Oscar Wilde published a children's story called The Remarkable Rocket, about a firework who fails to understand the true nature of love.
On 27 September 1894, he took a boy called Alfonso Conway (whom he'd picked up on Worthing Pier) back to a hotel room in Brighton. Six months later, Alfonso was in a solicitor's office, being forced to give evidence against the man who'd treated him to a very special night out.
"Witty, provocative - and for one night only - For Alfonso imagines the words first spun for Oscar's children in their Chelsea nursery being whispered in the ear of a very different kind of boy..."

Obviously this will be beyond amazing.
Can I have a free ticket, please?

Why I [heart] Brian Eno

Now I don't care about you, but I love Brian Eno, and am pretty fucking excited that he's organising next month's Brighton Festival.
They've given Brian some slightly wanky title; so he's not the artistic director, he's the curator.
Actually, it could be a self-description he once said in an interview that he thought the role of the artist was like that of a museum curator, bringing things up from the metaphorical cultural basement that he thinks are interesting and wants to share with people.
A bit like Cornelius in Planet of the Apes, though Brian didn't mention him.
There was an odd interview with Brian in the paper yesterday. It included a great piece of Eno ire at being asked in an interview about the Brighton Festival about being in Roxy Music; '"Jesus Christ," snaps Eno. "The second question is about Roxy Music. I knew it. Where's that knife? I'm sick of journalists asking me if I'm going to reform Roxy Music. Didn't I warn you I'd shoot you if you asked about Roxy Music."'
And comes up with a predictably perspicacious cultural dichotomy of control versus surrender. Eno thinks we need to start celebrating surrender; '"Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That's what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we've become incredibly adept technically. We've treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part." Eno considers all his recent art to be a rebuttal to this attitude. "I want to rethink surrender as an active verb," he says. "It's not just you being escapist; it's an active choice."'
I think that's brilliant. It's celebrating the passive role over the active - whereas the norm, in sex and in life, is for the latter to be lauded. It's wanting art that's democratic, participatory, anarchistic...
I'm looking foward to going to see Brian's 'This is an illustrated talk!' at Brighton Dome on My 22nd. Brian Eno is one of my few heroes, and one of the even fewer of my heroes that I haven't been in the same room as yet. I love his music, but it seems more appropriate and more thrilling to go and hear Brian thinking aloud.
He's a pretty handsome fellow for a 61 year-old too.
If we get to ask Brian Eno questions I'd like to ask him if the fact that his father was a postman made him interested in human communication, why this technophile doesn't have a website, and why his exhibition 77 Million Paintings is never open when I visit.