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This Machine Kills Wasps with MJ Hibbett & Chris Thorpe-Tracey, The Highchurches, Lilla Multipass, Leslie Bloom and Verity Grebble
This was a special, sweaty little show, which will live long in the memory of all who attended. It was a bit of a last minute job. Chris and Mark have a beautiful project in which they’re doing a new, stripped down album of Hibbett songs accompanied by piano. They’re songs from the sadder end… Read more
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Sketch Off Edinburgh Preview, Edinburgh Branch Theatre, London
Note: this review first appeared in the Morning Star newspaper… As July collapses into August, all the weirdos migrate north. Trains, planes, and automobiles filled with more clowns than seems possible – honk honk! – are en route to Edinburgh for the Fringe. Some of these clowns are tired already. Every year, working class performers… Read more
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James and Anna versus Morris Folk Club
Back in February, myself and Anna, a fellow London exile now in Glasgow, met up at one of our old haunts and sang together at Sharp’s folk club for the first time. This time, we met at Morris Folk Club at another former hangout, The Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon, opposite The Guardian’s former headquarters before… Read more
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The Highchurches / The Hognutters Mummers at Rottingdean Windmill
Rottingdean Windmill was host to the Wilde Volk exhibition this weekend – a display of masked, often animalistic figures in folklore. So who better to perform at its opening than the Hognutters Mummers, with their traditional “give us money or booze or we will beat you up” play of death and rebirth, and pig costumes… Read more
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Amersham (4am Eternal)
I’m currently cat-sitting at the end of the Metropolitan Line, deep in John Betjamin’s Metro-land. O Metro-land! Is all still pleasant in this Tory suburban eternal? All early data points to no. Amersham-on-the-Hill is where the old Metropolitan Railway now ends, an almost-place with a little mock-Tudor high street, two vainglorious kebab shops, and a… Read more
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Brighton Folk Choir End Of Term Cabaret
Twice a year a lovely thing happens at The Rose Hill, the city’s most interesting music venue and Brighton Folk Choir’s rehearsal space most Mondays during the academic year. After practice, the bar is opened up and we have a little cabaret. Members share whatever they want – a song, a story, a poem, a… Read more
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This Machine Kils Wasps with MJ Hibbett and Chris Thorpe-Tracey / The Highchurches do a gig on a barge in Shoreham
Tickets are now on sale for a special This Machine Kills Wasps in Brighton on Friday 15th August. MJ Hibbett and Chris Thorpe-Treacy have both been massive influences on my life, my music, and my philosophy. Hibbett writes amazing songs and taught me you don’t need anyone’s permission to make music; Chris writes amazing songs… Read more
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On remembering people exist IRL who actually read this blog
I was woken early this morning by the seagulls of Brighton having a screeching session below my window. I like to think this is how they start every week: a parliament of anti-owls, plotting and screaming in democratic consensus, before unleashing their latest mandate of chaos, madness, and chip-based supremacy upon a cowering and fearful… Read more
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Pells Pool, Lewes
For all its myriad charms, Brighton lacks a good, old-fashioned, public outdoor pool or Lido. [1] It had one once – at Black Rock, below Kemptown, before the dirt, dust and noise that came with the construction of Brighton’s crappy Marina put punters right off their morning breast stroke. It closed in 1978, and the… Read more
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The Portsmouth to Gosport Ferry
My mum moves out of Southsea tomorrow. She has been busy with the emotional task of chucking out what needs to be chucked out, and putting into storage what needs to be put into storage, as she continues to look for somewhere new to live in the old, familial lands of Nottingham. Last week I… Read more