Tom Jenkins

London (UK)-based producer/journalist at Crane TV and freelance writer at Port Magazine, The Independent and Avaunt Magazine. Freelance commissions to [email protected]

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Perfume Genius: Bright, Bright, Bright

For this exclusive styled feature, Tom Jenkins meets an artist who’s now demanding the acceptance he always craved, whilst feeding this newfound confidence into his music

For some, attack is the best form of defence. Growing up as a young gay man in New York and then the Pacific North West, Mike Hadreas felt like a “very tiny, strange feminine person – very different, an outsider”. His first forays into music under the moniker of Perfume Genius, 2010’s Learning and 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It, were tentative and “a little timid” as he describes it, both artistically and personally, as if he was censoring his own voice in order to contain whatever pain and anger was bubbling under the surface, afraid of what might erupt. When we meet there’s still a hint of that timidity. He’s friendly and has a playful smile, but seems tired.

But there’s a steely determination about him and he comes alive in front of the camera. His movements are gracious and fluid. During our interview he’s coy and often keeps his eyes fixed on the plate of eggs in front of him, but when he wants to make a serious point he looks you straight in the eye and you don’t doubt his conviction. This newfound confidence extends to Too Bright, his third and latest album. It is perhaps exemplified best by a lyric from the lead single, ‘Queen’: “No family is safe, when I sashay” he opines, tongue in cheek.

It’s a finger pointed firmly in the direction of a twisted minority who view gay men as predatory heathens intent on destroying the nuclear family and luring wholesome straight men to their doom. Or perhaps he really is that comfortable in his own skin now: “There’s a playful element to it… but this album is about me demanding acceptance and about me giving it to myself or just straight up stealing it from other people whether they want to give it to me or not” he says, holding my gaze. “The songs have a ‘fuck you’ tone. I feel more purposeful. I have a sense of duty with my music that I haven’t ever really felt before.”

I wonder whether, given his back-story and the strong online presence he’s cultivated since first sharing his music with the world via Myspace, if that sense of duty extends to young fans who may be going through a hard time? “I feel like I’m not equipped to give advice really but most of the time I don’t think people want advice, they just want to know that you listened to them and you feel the same way or used to,” he admits. “When I’m writing music. I get some long, pretty intense letters sometimes. They want to tell you things they can’t really tell their families or friends yet.”

The tender piano ballads that characterise much of Hadreas’ work to date are present and correct on Too Bright, but there are moments that signal the arrival of a true pop star: the glam stomp of ‘Queen’ for instance, or the guttural electro-blues of ‘My Body’, which brings to mind PJ Harvey’s murderous ‘Down by the Water’. Hadreas is a huge fan of Harvey, who he describes as a “badass, wizard woman”. Did he ever write a gushing fan letter to his heroes pre-Twitter? “I never had the gumption,” he says.

“The songs have a ‘fuck you’ tone. I feel more purposeful. I have a sense of duty with my music that I haven’t ever really felt before”

Hadreas’ personal life certainly seems more settled now: he’s in a serious relationship with Alan Wyfells, a longtime member of his live band. They share a house, a dog and the chores, if you can call reading your own press a chore: “There are two of us now. He’s involved in it too, so he’s refreshing feeds and stuff. Even if I’m taking a break he’ll say ‘what do you think this means?’ I can get anxious and nervous sometimes in conversation and I end up saying things I don’t mean. I feel very smart about my music and sometimes when I talk about it I’m definitely not doing it justice. But nine times out of 10 I just want to see if somebody is being mean to me”.

I put it to him that this stability in his personal life has helped him to grow as an artist. He insists he’s never really thought about it, which I find surprising – the life of a touring musician can be gruelling at this level, even with your beloved in tow. Not that it’s a total slog of course: he gets to be styled by and hang out with the wonderful team at Portfor instance, a side of the job he largely enjoys.

“There’s a level of performance to everything now. It’s about the promo shots and the album covers as much as the music, but it’s still coming from the same place. It’s mostly fun,” he says gently placing his knife and fork onto his yolk-stained plate. “[For this album] I have this very specific man-dressed-as-a-woman-dressed-as-a-man kind of thing, like an Inception drag. I want things to look iconic and have a classy feel, but still feel like me”.

As I bid him farewell – he’s penciled in some more promo for the afternoon – I find myself wondering about that level of performance: though he might not feel equipped to hand out would-be advice to fans, it seems he’s more than ready for the next step in his career. Even if he is still learning.

Photography Agnes Lloyd-Platt Styling Alex Petsetakis Grooming Terri Capon using Nars and Leonor Greyl

http://www.port-magazine.com/fashion/perfume-genius-bright-bright-bright/

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This Is Just a Modern Rock Film: Stuart Murdoch

The Belle and Sebastian frontman discusses the near decade-long struggle to get his debut feature film God Help the Girl made

Pitching your first film, the first script you’ve ever written in fact, to poker-faced media executives at London production companies must be inexorably nerve-wracking. So imagine that the film is a musical film and the script, by your own admission “probably isn’t the strongest part of the film”. Despite being a well-known and successful musician, and band-leader of a Brit Award winning indie-pop ensemble with a Hollywood producer in your corner, when asked what kind of style you envisage for your film, protestations along the lines of “there’s no such thing as style, style’s for people like you to tell me, I’m just going to do my thing” barely cause a flicker of recognition. What next?

For Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian fame and producer Barry Mendel (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense, Bridesmaids) the answer was to start a Kickstarter campaign, with the promise that were $100,000 to be raised, the film would “definitely” be made. Unsurprisingly, given the affection in which Murdoch’s Glasgow-based band are held, that target was easily surpassed (though the total budget was eventually closer to £2million). Nine years after the inception of the project, which started as a collection of songs Murdoch could see only being sung by a girl group, God Help the Girl (also a 2009 studio album) hits UK cinemas today.

“It’s a risk taking a flyer on a guy who’s never made a musical before”

The film centres on Eve, played by Emily Browning, a fragile young Australian singer-songwriter, who after following a boy in a band to Glasgow now finds herself an inpatient at a mental health facility. She often sneaks out at night to watch bands at Glasgow Barrowlands and soon hooks up with musician James (Olly Alexander) and his precocious, ethereal friend Cassie (Hannah Murray). They form a band called, yes, God Help the Girl, and a tight bond forms over one magical summer. It’s a film about friendship and the unifying power of creativity.

“As with songwriting, I tried not to try too hard with the script,” says Murdoch when we meet in the bowels of a video production company in Covent Garden. His trademark black hat and a half-eaten egg salad sit on the small table opposite the sofa on which we’re perched. “You don’t want to try too hard. P.G. Woodhouse said a great thing once: ‘You become a writer by simply applying the seat of your trousers to the surface of the chair’. Basically, just do it. When I got a break from the band I had the characters around, I could feel them. So I just sat down and typed and had them talk. I didn’t know what they were going to talk about, I didn’t have a story. It was as you see it in the film, endless scenes of the three of them just walking around and talking about shit, talking about stuff. Talking about trivial prattle the way that kids do.”

“James was meant to be as Glaswegian as me… but then we cast the thing and you pick the best people. I don’t regret that for a second”

The lack of a coherent plot, as Murdoch concedes, was probably what led to the likes of the BBC, Film 4, Sky and the BFI passing on his first draft. “They probably thought it wasn’t going to be any good,” he says with an air of slight embarrassment but also satisfaction. “I don’t mean that flippantly. It’s my first script. It wasn’t plot driven, nothing super-dramatic happens in the film. It was a character driven film and it came to life through music. When you see the script you maybe can’t feel that and it’s a risk taking a flyer on a guy who’s never made a musical before”.

Admittedly the script isn’t the strongest part of the film – it’s functional and sufficient, whereas the real moments of humour arrive during some of the improvised scenes. It’s the songs that really grab the attention and get the feet tapping at a frenetic pace. They bristle with unbridled joy in places, aching melancholia in others, recalling The Shangri-La’s or 1960s French pop at its most playful. One only has to look at the beaming, unapologetic smiles on the faces of some of the non-professional extras during the ‘I’ll Have to Dance with Cassie’ (one of the standout tracks) scene, which takes place at a community centre dance for OAPs, to realise how classically great these songs are. The dawdling pensioners are immediately transported back to their teens.

Murdoch’s cinematic influences include giant musical films such asThe Sound of Music and “the first half” of My Fair Lady – “the scripts are snappy and the songs are amazing” – as well as American Graffiti andHarold and Maude, and the narrative arc of classic British films such asWithnail & I and Billy Liar. But perhaps his biggest influence was the city of Glasgow itself, his home since the late 80s (he grew up in Ayr). Its sights and sounds and ever-changing weather provide the perfect backdrop to the transient moods of the film’s characters.

“It’s funny, sometimes when I’m away I get homesick and I’ll go on the BBC website and I’ll find the Scottish page, then the Glasgow page,” he says as we begin to wrap up the interview. “It’s like any other big old town, there’s still rough stuff. But I must say, and I talk to my wife about this, it is getting better. There used to be a lot of no-go zones in Glasgow, places you wouldn’t walk into. I tend to range across the city, I like to walk right across the town and I’m still intact.

“I was in the East End yesterday to see what’s happening with the [Commonwealth Games] Athletes Village. The whole area has been transformed, it’s amazing, they’ve built new bridges and landscaped. When the industry goes, a town really starts to die and things stagnate, but it’s more vibrant now than it was in the 80s and 90s.”

Interestingly, none of the main characters in the film are Glaswegian, or even Scottish. “It was absolutely not meant to be. James was meant to be as Glaswegian as me. I always thought that Eve drifted in from somewhere on the east coast of Scotland or the north. Cassie was always meant to be the exotic one, either posh English or American. But then we cast the thing and you pick the best people. I don’t regret that for a second.”

Somewhere, in a pristine glass-walled meeting room in London, those non-plussed folks who turned Murdoch down might just be counting theirs.

http://www.port-magazine.com/film/this-is-just-a-modern-rock-film-stuart-murdoch/

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Your Face Or Mine: Zkipster App

A new tablet app may sound the death knell for party gatecrashers, but let’s remember young creatives rely on favours to get ahead

Ah, the simple thrill of a successful blag. Door staff have been sidestepped like soldiers at a checkpoint in Nazi-occupied France (or so it feels), with a quick rebuttal along the lines of “Vivian’s a boy’s name too”. As you descend the stairs into the previously off-limits celebrity hangout, you see someone off the telly heading to the loo – this is the life! Then it’s to the bar, where yourself and fellow blaggers – the ‘real’ people, the only people you have anything in common with in the whole damned party – can indulge the free drinks tab like a starving litter of puppies at their mother’s teat.

Actually I’ve always been terrible at blagging: the act of “using persuasion or guile to obtain something.” I’m too self-conscious, too easily embarrassed to really pull it off. Blagging doesn’t just apply to party hopping of course. Film and TV has been obsessed with the idea of getting something for nothing for years: think the Ocean’s 11franchise or The Real Hustle. It could be argued Hollywood is one giant blag. Cold War espionage? Blag central.

A new tablet app called Zkipster (pronounced ‘skipster’) could put an end to the fun however. Aimed at professional events planners, it allows users to digitally manage multiple guest lists across devices, via The Cloud. A mere obstacle in the road for the skilled blag-artist of course, but it’s the zFace add-on that may scupper gatecrashers, as Zkipster co-founder David Becker explains.

“zFace is mainly used for high-end events with a tight guest list, extra security needs and a lot of media attention. Event planners use zFace to source, select and match faces with names prior to the event. Guests drop their names and the face pulls up in real time. Giving gatecrashers a hard time wasn’t our initial goal but it became a selling point”

“It could be argued Hollywood is one giant blag. Cold War espionage? Blag central”

Zkipster has already been used to run lists at Cinema Against AIDS at Cannes 2014 and Elton John’s post-Oscars party – the holy grail of party blags. The idea for the app originated from a disastrous night back in 2008, when Becker and his business partner were running an event at the University of Zurich. Says Becker: “We had 1200 people subscribed to our guest list. When we opened the door there was a long line which kept on growing because we weren’t fast enough with our manual check-in; guests walked away and we realized that there had to be a better way to run guest list management.”

Thinking ahead, Becker says he would be “honoured” were people to start using the app for private events such as house parties and gigs. The professional pricing of the app – around £45 per event pay as you go, up to £110 per month for a seasonal plan – currently makes this unlikely, but it does stir intriguing visions of riotous house parties with half-crazed tablet wielding hosts roaming the dance floor, checking people off against their Facebook profiles – not exactly in the spirit of spontaneity of course.

“Giving gatecrashers a hard time wasn’t our initial goal but it became a selling point”

Aside from this however, let’s not forget that many small creative businesses and individuals rely on favours to get an initial foothold in the market. Whilst researching this piece I asked friends and colleagues to submit their favourite blagging anecdotes. Most centred on booze and parties, but this one from writer and artist John Rogersperfectly illustrates the point.

“I didn’t buy a concert ticket between the ages of 17 and 19 and just went and hung around outside the Wolverhampton Civic Hall waiting for the bands to arrive. We’d just ask the bands if we could be on the guest list, and without exception they said yes. I started a paper fanzine that I’d photocopy 50 copies of and give away and started phoning major labels asking for interviews, and before long was getting backstage with Elastica, Supergrass, Sleeper, etc, and doing interviews with them. It was a really fun time. It didn’t matter that the publication barely existed.” So let’s not kill-off the noble art of blagging just yet. After all, the people who aren’t really supposed to be at the party are often the most interesting of all.

http://www.port-magazine.com/design/your-face-or-mine-zkipster-app/

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Tees and Teeing Off: Henrik Stenson

The Swedish golfer on his straightforward approach to clothing and life and balancing time in the gym with time on the green

Henrik Stenson in BOSS Menswear © HUGO BOSS

For a man who once stripped down to his underwear at the WGC-Cadillac Championship to play a shot from a water hazard, Henrik Stenson is remarkably conservative when I ask him to envisage a scenario where there are no rules of dress on the golf course. “I’m all for having some kind of code. I don’t think I would play in a tracksuit if it were allowed,” he laughs down the line from his hotel room in Akron, Ohio, prior to his appearance at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational. “I guess we could play in shorts if it gets ridiculously hot. Living in Florida, when I’m at home I practice in shorts all the time. But it’s important to wear clothes on the golf course that fit and look like they belong on you. I get a lot of help from the team at HUGO BOSS [his sponsor].”

Stenson’s no nonsense approach to clothing mirrors his outlook on life. “I’m a straightforward shooter, I don’t like bullshit. I value people who are honest and stand up for what they say. I take that pretty seriously. I’m also pretty hard on myself in terms of performing and working hard on my game. I’m sure I can be hard on the people around me too.”

Born and raised in southern Sweden, Stenson has been in the US since 2012 with his wife Emma, also a golfer, and two children. “Emma has an understanding about the game and how much time and effort you have to put into it in order to get where you want to be. She’s very supportive in that sense,” he tells me with obvious pride.

Henrik Stenson in BOSS Menswear © HUGO BOSS

Stenson is now very much where he wants to be professionally. After slipping to 230th in the world at the beginning of 2012, he now sits third after a meteoric 2013 in which he won both the Race to Dubai and the FedEx Cup. He credits his success partially to a new strength and conditioning regime. “75 to 80 percent of players on the tour are working with physios and trainers to keep their bodies in good shape, so they can train hard and avoid injury. I think that started when Tiger (Woods) hit the scene. He wasn’t a very physical player, but he hit the ball a long way.

“Golf is very repetitive and takes its toll on the body. All of us have issues now and then but it’s about trying to keep the body in good shape and keeping it balanced. I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t have been able to keep that long run going I had last year if I wasn’t in decent shape.”

This sense of contentment extends to his private life, though he does admit to missing certain things about Sweden – he and his family have just returned from a break in Barsebäck when we speak. “It was hard to pack up and fly yesterday, I wouldn’t have minded staying for another couple of days. It was gorgeous weather at home and we’d had a great week with some friends from Orlando and their kids. Then it was time to go back to work and fly to the US to play a golf tournament,” he says with a hint of a sigh.

“But I’m in a very fortunate situation on the tour, we all are. We get to play the sport we love for a living, travel the world and see so many places. I said, even before last year, that I was very happy with what I’d achieved. Even if that had been the end of my career I would’ve been very happy. It’s been an incredible journey, you have to be thankful for that.”

http://www.port-magazine.com/fashion/tees-and-teeing-off-henrik-stenson/

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The Narrow Way

I recently contributed several pieces to a free newspaper from Hackney Council and Wired Canvas. The Narrow Way is a guide to events going on in and around Hackney Central this summer... 

Creative studio SDNA are looking to enhance Hackney Central’s character by illuminating its rich history

Putting together a public art strategy for Hackney Central whilst also running a successful creative studio might seem like a tall order, but that’s exactly what Valentina Floris and Ben Foot of SDNA have done. Drawing on Hackney’s rich past, not only in textiles but also horticulture (the Loddiges plant nursery, now the site of the Trelawney Estate, was once home to the largest hot house in the world), the design duo, who produce distinctive digital artwork, aim to encourage an evening economy in the Hackney Central area, whilst promoting the borough as the greenest, most colourful and multicultural in London.

“Our strategy’s mainly based on lighting because our company works with lighting projections,” says Valentina. “We developed it around 10 locations, but added some extra ones.  They’ll be animated projections and innovative creative lighting. Through commissions and competitions involving local residents, artists, businesses and institutions, we hope to establish a creative network and a sense of ownership. We want to make the area more exciting, welcoming and safer. We want to enhance Hackney Central’s character.”

“It’s about taking pride in the area,” says Ben. “It’s not about coming in and changing everything, but trying to integrate. There are some great places here already. We want to bring people out in the evenings. There’s a versatility in it as well obviously, because it can change down the years, being digital. It’s something that can be taken on by other artists.”

In keeping with their ethos of “Exploring interaction within public spaces using emerging technologies and unusual presentation media”, the pair have already commissioned two pieces: a slide projection piece on Churchwell Path featuring the work of designer Anna Glover in static form, and an animated projection onto St Augustine’s Tower by illustrator Bryan Pool. As Ben points out, Hackney’s botanical and textile history is a perfect metaphor for the borough’s multiculturalism.

“It’s a fairly lose brief: you should be referencing the history of Hackney and something that fits within textile design,” he explains. “Textiles come from all around the world; the plants come from all around the world. There’s an openness, culturally, there.” “All the visual inspirations come from tropical plants, mixed with the fashion industry and textiles,” adds Valentina. “Something like the Hackney Fashion Hub will obviously be referencing this history too.”

Ben and Valentina’s attempts to establish a dialogue between past and present is being done in a contemporary way, but both become misty eyed when reminiscing about first coming to Hackney, which for Ben was over 20 years ago.

“It’s always been very colourful,” he says. “When I first arrived there was already an artists community here. It’s just built and built and it draws more and more people in, simply because you’re surrounded by creative people. I think the rapid change that’s happening now is interesting as well, that’s been happening since I came here. It feels like it’s always in flux.”

Valentina puts it succinctly: “It’s the cultural aspect as well. It’s very inspiring.”

Morning Lane's popular Brew for Two is coming to St John-at-Hackney

Elyem Binboga, proprietor of the Tea for Two café on Morning Lane, jokingly refers to herself as the community gossip. “But in a nice way,” she says. “This June we’ve been here for two years. There are always meetings taking place here: the church, new businesses and developments. I witness this and get a lot of information. I’m open about sharing it, I’ve almost become an information centre for what’s happening around here.”

Which is fitting because Binboga will soon be opening a new café, in the information centre in the grounds of St John at Hackney, as part of the church’s ongoing desire to “Open our building for wider business and community use” says Fr Rob Wickham. She’s optimistic for a 12 July opening.

“I think it’s still going to be called Brew for Two, but maybe ‘Brew for Two in the Churchyard’ or something similar, because it’s going to be an extension in a way,” she says. “I think we’re going to be doing things gradually, making sure the building’s in keeping with the wishes of the church and the council. We’ll have to start as a takeaway, there isn’t a closed space where you can eat and drink, but we’ll be looking to cater or offer our services to individuals who benefit from the church – weddings, etc. We’re hoping to do things like waffles and crepes and burgers, a healthy, Brew for Two-style alternative to chicken and chips. People who have found out about it are really excited. It will be really nice to have somewhere to grab a bite to eat whilst enjoying the church grounds, or an ice cream for the children.”

How does she see the wider role of the café in the community?”

“It will bring people together, a meeting place, a gathering point. Once we have a closed space we want to keep the supper club idea we’re already doing at Brew for Two, where we invite local street food stall holders who want to start their own little kitchen, to use the premises to run their supper club. If we can get permission we’d like to hold outdoor film events, so we can show films for children or films from different countries, so we can really bring people together and be at the heart of the community, I hope. ”

Binboga emigrated to Hackney from Turkey with her family in the late 1980s and has spent the majority of her adult life in the borough. How does the Hackney of today differ? “It’s changed dramatically: it’s become friendlier; it’s become more cosmopolitan,” she says proudly. “It’s become more arty, more creative and much more pleasant for families with children. I love Hackney.”

Hackney Central will soon become the focal point for the borough’s enviable fashion reputation

With a rich history as the centre of London’s textiles industry in the 1800s, to its position today as one of Europe’s most exciting hotbeds of new and established fashion talent, the borough of Hackney could be considered a ‘fashion hub’ in itself.

Now construction on an actual fashion hub is underway on Morning Lane. Framed by two seven storey landmark buildings designed by Adjaye Associates, the hub will include retail outlet space – some of which has already been snapped up by revered British brands such as Aquascutum and Pringle – high quality food and drink outlets and pedestrianised and open spaces, encouraging people to visit and remain in the Hackney Central area.

But it’s not just about buildings; it’s about people. The development will create hundreds of jobs, including sales, manufacturing, hospitality and security roles, the majority of which will be filled in conjunction with Hackney’s Ways into Work scheme, which connects businesses with local residents looking for work. The scheme will also be offering apprenticeships and training opportunities.

Fledgling designers and start-ups will be supported via a ‘Stitching Academy’ and a subsidised manufacturing and sampling space. The former will provide a fascinating crossover with the apprenticeship scheme, with willing participants able to gain sewing and stitching, machinery operation, inspecting and measuring and health and safety skills.

Hackney Fashion Hub will be the focal point for the borough’s rich heritage and its continued and enviable international reputation as a fashion force.

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Cross-Continental Cuisine: La Petite Maison, Istanbul

Head chef Liam Smith-Laing on the challenges of bringing fine-dining to old Byzantium

When one thinks of eating in Istanbul, one thinks of street food: succulent grilled meats, fresh fish sandwiches and warming spices that speak of Asia, the continent that claims the eastern half of this ancient city. The idea of a stiff, formal dining experience sits uneasily with Istanbul’s steamy vibrancy. If someone were to attempt to remove crumbs from a diner’s tablecloth with a tiny little brush, they’d probably be laughed all the way back to the service hatch.

So why have La Petite Maison, slick proponents of the flavours, scents and glamour of the Côte d’Azur and neighbouring Liguria, with outposts in London, Moscow and Dubai (amongst others) decided to open in Istanbul as of two months ago, albeit in the ex-premises of Emporio Armani in the upmarket Nişantaşi district?

“There isn’t really a fine dining scene here,” says head chef Liam Smith-Laing over the phone, in between instructing his brigade. “Eating is very social: you don’t see as many small groups eating in restaurants as you do in London. People like to be seen and they like places to have a buzz.

“Also, they’re fairly conservative about food. Nine out of 10 restaurants are very Turkish and it’s quite difficult for other cuisines to muscle in on the territory. But the types of ingredients we’re using are familiar – olive oil, lemon juice, tomatoes, courgettes – and they suit the climate. It’s food made for sharing. It seems like a good opportunity for us to make a mark in a city that doesn’t have a great deal of foreign food in it”

Above: Liam Smith-Laing

Snaring diners used to a completely different way of eating out is one thing, sourcing produce in a country with exceptionally strict import rules, particularly on meat, is quite another, especially for a restaurant whose signature dish is Whole Roasted Black Leg Chicken with Foie Gras (Poulet au Foie Gras). Then there’s the annual summer-long fishing ban caused by decades of over-fishing in the Bospherous and the Sea of Marmara.

“We’ve kept the menu true to the brand, it’s instantly recognisable, but we sometimes can’t source the quality we want,” says Liam, “so we have to be a bit more creative. The fishing ban has really reduced the amount of fish available to us over the summer months and we can’t get any imported meat in. There are incredibly high taxes on most import goods. So the menu changes much more than the other [La Petite Maison] restaurants. In somewhere like Dubai they’re allowed to get everything in because they produce nothing. Part of a very well recognised brand is that it’s got a real reputation for certain dishes and the quality of its produce. We don’t want to compromise.”

“It seems like a good opportunity for us to make a mark in a city that doesn’t have a great deal of foreign food in it”

Whilst hardly over-starched, the brand has a reputation for service at least on par with other restaurants of the ilk, where mains come in around the £30 mark. “Service in restaurants here is generally not great so that’s something we’ve really tried to concentrate on. Guests won’t have to look around for a waiter, but they won’t be tripping over them,” Liam reassures me. “The really busy restaurants here, the high turnover restaurants, are places that give their customers what they want. Customers know what they want here and they’re very particular.”

So the recipe for success seems simple: give customers what they want, be willing to adapt without compromise, as they seemingly are, and make – if you can find the filling – the best fish sandwich in all Istanbul. Get that right, and La Petite Maison should be anything but a ‘petite’ success.

http://www.port-magazine.com/food-drink/cross-continental-cuisine-la-petite-maison-istanbul/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Grand Designs: Annie Atkins

The graphic designer on Wes Anderson’s fervent imagination and why advertising wasn’t for her 

Annie Atkins doesn’t like to live in the here and now, at least not in her professional life. As the lead graphic designer on Wes Anderson’sThe Grand Budapest Hotel, she was in her element. “I love period stuff. If not period, then something futuristic,” she tells me, following a Q&A with a small, enraptured but terribly hung-over crowd on the second morning of the Drop Everything festival in Ireland. “I love the Harry Potter movies. I love that mix of old and magical. I love Tim Burton movies… anything where you can bring a bit more imagination to it, like Wes’s films.”

Atkins and her team were responsible for all the graphics on The Grand… including all the signage and numerous small props such as handwritten letters and newspapers, to banknotes and prison wall graffiti. They were based upstairs in the same art nouveau department store – in Görlitz on the Germany/Poland border – used for many of the hotel interior shots.

“Our offices were on the top floor, that’s unusual,” says Atkins with a smile. “Usually you work in offices that are very separate from the set. Everyday we’d be working up there and we’d be able to look down over the balcony and see the set come to life. It was really nice to feel like you were a part of it.”

Annie stuns her audience during the Q&A by revealing how every single story in the newspapers that appear in the film was written word for word by Wes Anderson – usually copy would be pulled from Wikipedia – evidence of his notorious attention to detail.

“Wes is 100% hands on in every single department,” she says. “It’s really important when you’re making graphics for a film that you can actually see and hold your references. If you look at things on screen, you don’t really have a feel for the scale of things, or the kind of paper they were printed on. You actually need proper documents. We started in Berlin and went to all the old museums there. The DDR Museum has great stuff from 1960s Berlin, so many surviving documents from that time. The props guys got us loads of boxes of old military documents and police paperwork to study.”

“I thought I was leaving design behind, I thought it was design I didn’t like. When I went to film school, I realised it was design I loved, it was just a different world of design”

Intriguingly, prior to enrolling at University College Dublin to study film in 2007, Atkins spent four years in Reykjavík working in advertising. “It was 2003 so it was the height of the boom,” she says. “I went over with my portfolio and loved it. They were hiring like crazy; advertising was really big even though it’s a small island. I got a job as a junior graphic designer and at the end of four years I was an art director.

Intriguingly, prior to enrolling at University College Dublin to study film in 2007, Atkins spent four years in Reykjavík working in advertising. “It was 2003 so it was the height of the boom,” she says. “I went over with my portfolio and loved it. They were hiring like crazy; advertising was really big even though it’s a small island. I got a job as a junior graphic designer and at the end of four years I was an art director.

Intriguingly, prior to enrolling at University College Dublin to study film in 2007, Atkins spent four years in Reykjavík working in advertising. “It was 2003 so it was the height of the boom,” she says. “I went over with my portfolio and loved it. They were hiring like crazy; advertising was really big even though it’s a small island. I got a job as a junior graphic designer and at the end of four years I was an art director.

Intriguingly, prior to enrolling at University College Dublin to study film in 2007, Atkins spent four years in Reykjavík working in advertising. “It was 2003 so it was the height of the boom,” she says. “I went over with my portfolio and loved it. They were hiring like crazy; advertising was really big even though it’s a small island. I got a job as a junior graphic designer and at the end of four years I was an art director.

“It was great, but advertising wasn’t really for me. A lot of the time when people leave advertising they say they don’t like it, but really I think it means you’re not very good at it – I wasn’t very good at it. I thought I was leaving design behind, I thought it was design I didn’t like. When I went to film school, I realised it was design I loved, it was just a different world of design.”

I ask Atkins if there’s an inherent contradiction in film graphics, in that in order to succeed, they mustn’t stand out. “It depends on the film, “ she says with authority. “If you’re making something that’s very much about realism they shouldn’t catch the eye because it’s all about the actors and the story, these are just things that help create the world around them. If your eye’s drawn to a graphic, it’s probably because there’s a spelling mistake. With Wes’ films he uses the graphics themselves as storytelling devices; he uses them in close-up. It’s a very different way of working.”

Given the passion and work Atkins puts into her craft, one suspects she prefers it that way.

http://www.port-magazine.com/design/grand-designs-annie-atkins/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: King of France: Eugene McGuinness

The solo musician talks to Tom Jenkins about his new album, Chroma, over tea and cake in Soho

Sharing a rich, wobbly cheesecake with Eugene McGuinness in a famous Soho patisserie with French accordion music playing in the background, our conversation inevitably turns to the singer’s unexpected popularity across the channel. The French have taken the 28-year-old Londoner and his 2012 album, The Invitation to the Voyage, to their hearts.

“For some reason it’s resonated over there. I don’t know why. French radio stations picked up on it and it was a lovely surprise for me. The ego in me agrees with them,” he quips, “but France is a bonkers plus in a career that otherwise is a bit of a difficult, one-man mission to get people’s attention.”

This last sentence is typical of Eugene McGuinness: funny and self-deprecating with a strong sense of self-belief. On a sticky June afternoon in London he cracks jokes and struts the pavements with purpose. During our interview he’s more caustic, but frankly hilarious. The only time he bristles is when I mention his time in Miles Kane’s live band. McGuinness is on the verge of releasing an accomplished, taut, single-heavy third album, one that he’s obviously very proud of. Understandably he doesn’t want to talk about another – and he’d freely admit this – more successful musician.

“I put a lot of thought put into my last record. It’s a complete audio omelette of influences – it’s everywhere. The omelette would have Lego in it and bits of metal. I deliberately put zero thought into Chroma”

“That was a couple of years ago now so it feels strange talking about it,” he says with a steely gaze. “I remember being on autopilot with that stuff because my default setting, no matter what I do in life, is song writing. Subsequently it’s become quite difficult being asked about people more famous than myself. It’s a hard one because I didn’t foresee that happening – maybe a bit green of me.”

Not that McGuinness is unsuccessful. Since releasing his eponymous debut in 2008 he’s received vivacious praise for his classic song writing skills and receives as ecstatic a reaction live, with the audience “screaming the words back”, here as he does in Paris, one of his favourite places to play. The new album is called Chroma. Produced by Dan Carey (Hot Chip, MIA, Santigold), it’s a more cohesive offering than The Invitation…

“Chroma sounds like it does because it does come from one place. Essentially, it was written in the same room. The song writing was driven and it happened very quickly. It goes in a few different directions but you can tell it comes from the same place. I put a lot of thought into my last record. It’s a complete audio omelette of influences – it’s everywhere. The omelette would have Lego in it and bits of metal. I deliberately put zero thought into Chroma.”

Going back to the idea of a “one-man mission”, has he ever craved the gang mentality of a band? On the evening we talk he’s due to perform for the first time with a “nervous” new live band and has previously played with his brother Dominic in Eugene McGuinness + the Lizards, releasing one album.

“My brother’s been fantastic: we’ve always helped each other out. But ultimately I can never claim to feel like I’ve been in a big proper band where I’m one of the boys. The nature of how I was signed, it was just me. I’ve got a great band, it’s not like I’m Liza Minnelli or Diana Ross, pissing people off wherever I go, but that communal band thing? I never really got it. I think if I were to be in a band, the band would split up… because I was in it. At least if it’s just me I can’t split myself up,” he laughs.

“I’ve got a great band, it’s not like I’m Liza Minnelli or Diana Ross, pissing people off wherever I go, but that communal band thing? I never really got it”

McGuinness is self-effacing when I ask him what kind of reaction he’s expecting to Chroma: “I’m not expecting any, as in I don’t expect there to be any. I don’t know what else I can do: wear an eye patch? I don’t really care. It won’t have any bearing on what I do next. I’m buzzing.” He sounds like Liam Gallagher, he jokes.

He certainly has the swagger but I can’t imagine sharing a cheesecake with Gallagher Junior.

Photography: James Rawlings

http://www.port-magazine.com/music/king-of-france-eugene-mcguinness/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Cut and Dried

What can be more infuriating than picking up your favourite pair of scissors – should you be lucky enough to have a collection – only to find the blades peppered with pimply shards of adhesive tape, or worse, a thick layer of dried glue? The effort required to then prise said blades apart takes on an almost superhuman quality.

These Teflon-coated Japanese scissors from the shelves of East London stationery goldmine Choosing Keeping negate that problem. Resolutely non-stick, they’re favoured by architects and artists keen to leave the mess and gunk of the studio in the studio, rather than on their blades. They also possess the rich and illustrious manufacturing history favoured by the shop’s proprietor Julia.

“The pair on the left was designed and produced in 1988 by an office products company called Lion which is over 230 years old, and the one on the right in 1974,” says Julia. “Not surprisingly they’ve both received multiple design awards in Japan and could be considered ‘design classics’ as they are still made and sold 20 and 30 years respectively after their inception.”

Both are manufactured in the town of Seki in central Japan, which like Sheffield in northern England or Solingen in Germany is renowned internationally for its steel production and manufacturing of knives and cutlery. It was also once the epicentre of Samurai sword production. Prospective users may hope to imbibe their work with something of the warrior spirit then.

Published: 12 June 2014

Photography: Liz Seabrook

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: London Festival of Architecture: Peace Breaks Out!

Dr Jerzy J. Kierkuć-Bieliński, curator of a new exhibition at Sir John Soane’s Museum, explains how a small man with a big personality (Napoleon) helped shape London as we know it today

On the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, the anniversary of an altogether more positive development in European relations is also taking place. In the summer of 1814, peace returned to Europe following the deposition of Napoleon and the Treaty of Paris. Curious Brits, who had previously been unable to travel to the continent during the emperor’s reign, flocked to the French capital, seeking fine food, the latest fashions and dangerous liaisons.

One of those who visited Paris during this time, though perhaps not for the same reasons, was English architect Sir John Soane. Impressed by Napoleon’s neo-classical regeneration of the city, Soane sought to export a taste of Parisian grandeur back to London. Assisted by his draughtsman Henry Park, Soane sketched out the grand boulevards and triumphal arches of post-revolutionary Paris and formulated an ambitious plan for a processional route which would be utilised for the King’s State Opening of Parliament, from Windsor (to the west of the city) all the way to its heart at Westminster.

“The British were fascinated by Napoleon, Europe’s great bogeyman, the enemy”

“London was the capital city of the world’s largest maritime empire at the time, a superpower that led the allies to triumph over Napoleon, but there’s a very conscious realisation that the urban fabric of the city did not reflect this status,” says Dr Jerzy J. Kierkuć-Bieliński, Exhibitions Curator at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. “The processional route, which Soane proposes in 1827 to 1828, can be read as a response to what he’d seen in Paris. This was an extraordinary urban regeneration project, with a series of colossal structures along the route inspired by Britain’s victories in the Napoleonic Wars – he was looking at the processional axis of Paris, the Champs-Élysées, from the Arc de Triomphe to the The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel – both built by Napoleon of course – to the Tuileries Palace.”

The route was never constructed, more a hypothetical proposal, but a selection of Park’s drawings, as well as assorted memorabilia from the golden summer of 1814 can be seen at Peace Breaks Out! – a new exhibition in conjunction with the London Festival of Architecture, at Soane’s Museum. Amongst the items on show are various pieces from Soane’s collection of Napoleonica.

“Soane had a genuine admiration for Napoleon, despite him being the ‘bogeyman’ of Europe, the enemy,” says Kierkuć-Bieliński, “not only for his impact on architecture – London at the time and the Prince Regent’s patronage of it couldn’t compare – but because he’s the ultimate example of a self-made man. Soane was the son of a bricklayer, Napoleon is a relatively obscure Corsican officer who rose to become a revolutionary general and then emperor of the French and conqueror of most of Europe.”

The British public were similarly enthralled: “The more radical elements of British society were sympathetic to the politics of Napoleon’s early career, people like the artist Maria Cosway. The broader public didn’t engage with Napoleon on a political level, but they were fascinated. He was the antithesis of what Britain stood for.

“One contemporary writer, who travelled to Paris at the time, said ‘The British are popping over the channel like champagne corks’. They were very enthusiastic, but a little shocked when they arrived. Although it was full of these magnificent buildings, it was a battle-scarred city, particularly on the outskirts where the Battle of Paris had been fought. The sanitation too, though I don’t think London was in a better state so that’s slightly disingenuous. Then there was the unending sexual innuendo…”

“One contemporary writer, who travelled to Paris at the time, said ‘The British are popping over the channel like champagne corks”

Despite this, the British knew Paris was ‘where it was at’, for want of a better phrase. “Paris was still the centre of fashion, the centre of art,” says the curator. “The Louvre was crammed full of the greatest works of art that Napoleon had confiscated as his armies marched from Italy to Gdansk. You could effectively go to the Louvre and undertake a grand tour in two days, without having to leave the building. It was a unique museum.

“Fashion was incredibly important. The Empress Josephine patronised fashionable designers and changed the course of fashion. If you think of those beautiful, empire-line dresses and cashmere shawls that ladies wore at the time, this came out of her, her style. And the food – French cuisine was of a much higher standard than what you could find in London. Also, Paris was, even at that early stage, known as the city of love.”

What did the French think of the British? “Napoleon used the popular press, caricatures, etc, to create a sort of propaganda around the opposition. One just has to remember: Napoleon termed Britain ‘Perfidious Albion’, a nation of shopkeepers. He was making a claim about the lack of grand imperial vision when it came to Britain and its empire: it was all about trade on quite a small scale.”

Echoes of this period are still visible in London today: Regent Street and the terraces of Regent’s Park, as well as the city’s grand public squares, can all be traced back to Napoleon’s neo-classical vision. But the real legacy is the thawing of relations between Britain and France after centuries of fighting, a legacy which reached it’s bitter-sweet apex on the battlefields of WW1.

All images courtesy of Sir John Soane’s Museum.

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Paul Kelly: How We Used to Live

As his latest collaboration with pop band Saint Etienne shows at the London Festival of Architecture, filmmaker Paul Kelly explains why documentaries always have an element of fiction

As the credits roll on How We Used to Live, the latest film project from Paul Kelly and pop band Saint Etienne (plus writer Travis Elborough), the thought that lingers most is how little the bustle of day-to-day life in London has changed for ordinary people. Essentially a feature-length montage of colour footage from the BFI archive, spanning 1950 to 1980, there’s plenty the modern London dweller will recognise: heaving platforms at Oxford Circus, equally heaving Soho dancefloors, the unnatural pace of the hurried commuter…

“Nothing really changes,” says Kelly, when we meet at a café in Hackney, a short bus ride from his home in Clerkenwell. His young son, Donovan, who would rather be anywhere else but here, accompanies him. “There’s a great book called ‘Soft City’ by Jonathan Raban, written in 1974,” he continues, “that talks about how people live in cities and how cities work. It could’ve been written yesterday. People’s concerns – house prices, the wealth divide – are the same. That’s one of the things we tried to show with the film, we weren’t saying ‘Hey, wasn’t life great back then’. We’re saying it was exactly the same.”

How We Used to Live is the fourth film Kelly has made about London with Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs of Saint Etienne – the latter composed the original score. Their first, Finisterre (2003), looked at the city’s secret corners and pockets of creativity, and its eternal allure to outsiders, whilst 2005’s What Have You Done Today, Mervyn Day?provided a guided tour of the deprived Lower Lea Valley as the bulldozers moved in, in preparation for London 2012. This Is Tomorrow (2007) focused on the refurbishment of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank.

“The first one was about London in general, the second was about a part of London and the third was about a building in London. We didn’t really need to do anymore. What was the next one going to be about, a brick?” he says laughing. “Then myself and Bob spent a night watching Terence Davies’ Of Time and the City. We watched it four times and decided we loved it – not that we wanted to make a film like that, it’s very personal. We tried to think of London archive films and couldn’t think of something similar.”

“The legacy of the welfare state was the 1960s and The Beatles. The legacy of Thatcher is Mumford & Sons and a bunch of gap-year Tories”

Narrated by the syrupy tones of Ian McShane, How We Used to Livemakes you want to metaphorically throw your arms around London and smother it with kisses. It’s part feature film, part documentary, a glorious, Technicolor homage to this great city, a visual shaming tool to sit alongside the old “If you’re tired of London…” adage.

“Documentaries are as much fiction as anything. Take Werner Herzog – his documentaries are more fictional than his features,” says Kelly. “The idea that a documentary is the facts and a feature film is fictional is completely false. As soon as there’s an editor involved there’s an angle. I don’t think that matters. When people say it isn’t strictly a documentary, so what? What is? Nothing’s real.”

Unsurprisingly, the research was somewhat time consuming: “Naively we thought half the job’s been done, it’s already been filmed. We spent about four years – very loosely – researching and only three or four months editing. Originally it was going to be 100 years of London on film, but we realised we had to narrow it down. Going through the BFI archive you start to realise a lot of libraries start going onto video around the early 80s – they stopped using film stock. The quality just drops away. I guess a lot of the cameramen were trained-up film guys who were suddenly given these video cameras they didn’t really know how to use. That gave us our cut-off point.”

That cut-off point is very neatly bookended by the end of World War Two and the establishment of the welfare state, and the beginning of Thatcherism. “It’s looking back at this golden era and saying ‘this was good for a reason”, ventures Kelly. “We had a very good socialist model in this country and it’s being dismantled for no good reason. The legacy of the welfare state was the 1960s and The Beatles and a bright open future for everyone. That was a great thing: it made people feel secure, that their lives were safe. The legacy of Thatcher is Mumford & Sons and a bunch of gap-year Tories.

“Originally we were hoping to have a much stronger polemic in the film, but we decided to step back. The way I like to do films is to invite people in and seduce them. Then you’re very subtlety pushing your point in a slightly subversive way – to provoke thought, rather than preach.”

Kelly has lived in London for over 30 years, having arrived in the capital as part of the band East Village, who were signed to Heavenly Recordings (through which he met Saint Etienne). As Much as How We Used to Live reinforces the unchanging, repetitious nature of city life, there’s no doubt London is a different city to the one Kelly found himself in, in the 80s. We’re both aware of the irony of having a conversation such as this in the gentrified surroundings of E8 in the epicentre of one of the capital’s most eye-wateringly expensive property bubbles.

“I don’t think it’s as easy to arrive in London now as it was for us in the 1980s. You could rent cheaply – you could get by. I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I don’t think that kind of access to London exists for young people. You have to have a career or rich parents.”

He’s still in love with the city however: “I feel as much a Londoner as I do an outsider. I’m still in awe of the place; it still inspires me.”

How we used to live and how we should live: Paul Kelly is still a dreamer at heart.

Photography Liz Seabrook

http://www.port-magazine.com/film/paul-kelly-how-we-used-to-live/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Why I Love: Everybody Loves Raymond

Ray Romano’s sitcom about family life in suburban New York deserves to sit alongside the US classics

© CBS

Everybody Loves Raymond. Well, not everybody of course. A quick Internet search will reveal a cauldron of hatred for comedian Ray Romano’s hugely successful, semi-autobiographical sitcom, which ran for nine seasons between 1996 and 2005.

Perhaps it’s the simplicity of the premise: Ray is an Italian-American sports writer living in Long Island with his wife and three children; he lives opposite his overbearing mother and pig-headed father who naturally can’t keep their noses out of his affairs; he’s neurotic and insecure, a back seat parent perpetually haunted by his past as the high-school geek. His older brother Robert, a cop, is unlucky in love and jealous of Ray’s relatively stable family life, though much to Ray’s dismay, an excellent disco dancer.

Standard sitcom fodder then – the show’s even drawn disparaging comparisons with The Flintstones (how can that ever be a bad thing?) But it’s the quality of the performances from the likes of the late Peter Boyle (The Candidate, Taxi Driver) as Frank, and Emmy Award-winning Patricia Heaton as Ray’s long-suffering wife Deborah that makesEverybody Loves Raymond a classic. It deserves to sit alongside Cheers as one of the great American sitcoms.

The humour is pitched somewhere between the vicious sarcasm ofRoseanne and the sheer unbridled and joyful stupidity of Married With Children, both of which follow the dysfunctional family template. There’s real affection between the characters too, which isn’t just shoehorned in as it else elsewhere. I don’t mind admitting I’ve been close to tears on a couple of occasions.

Most importantly, it’s laugh out loud funny, in a similar vein to the first two seasons of Friends before it morphed into a hit and miss televisual comfort blanket, a side order to a hangover and a takeaway pizza. Maybe my humour isn’t that sophisticated: I’ve never watched an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Arrested Development; I don’t ‘get’Seinfeld (perhaps it’ll suddenly ‘pop’ one day, like ears after a swim).

It’s not as cringe inducing or as clever as Frasier, but compared to the dross being pumped out of the big studios currently (Two and a Half Men? Don’t make me laugh… no seriously, you won’t), Everybody Loves Raymond stands as a bobbing buoy of genuine hilarity in a choppy ocean of cheap laughs. I cling to my box sets as if my life depended on it.

I love you Ray.

http://www.port-magazine.com/film/why-i-love-everybody-loves-raymond/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Restaurant Review: Camp and Furnace

Tom Jenkins stumbles upon a hidden gem in Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle… eventually

Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle neighbourhood, to the south of the city centre, is a mere half a mile downhill from the majestic Anglican Cathedral. Somehow, whilst making this journey on foot on a warm, breezy May evening, I lose all sense of direction. I unintentionally take the scenic route via the waterfront, as if bewitched by a siren of the murky River Mersey. It takes me 45 minutes; it should take 10. Before you ask, I did consult a certain smartphone app, but its veiny form seemed to dissolve into unintelligible binary code before my eyes. “You can walk everywhere in Liverpool,” they said.

I’m in town for the seventh annual Liverpool Sound City festival. I’ve heard murmurings that the Baltic Triangle, a largely industrial area framed by the traffic-heavy Parliament Street, Jamaica Street and St James Street, is home to a small but blossoming creative community. My first stop then is the aptly named The Baltic Social, a bar cum performance venue on Parliament Street itself.

However, due to my aforementioned pede-odyssey the kitchen is closed by the time I arrive. I head back towards the Liverpool One area, essentially the city’s main retail zone, and enjoy a fine spot of tapas at the Salt House, which is something of a local institution by all accounts. Honeyed chorizo with a satisfyingly spicy finish and tender monkfish on a bed of samphire, topped with a gentle sun-dried tomato tapenade, is washed down with a crisp, zesty Villa Domiziano Prosecco. Highly recommended if in the area.

The following day I seem to have regained my bearings. I head back to the Baltic Triangle to Camp and Furnace, a cavernous bar/restaurant on Greenland Street with an enormous group dining area (the ‘furnace’) and club venue (‘camp’) attached. Despite its size I almost miss the entrance, save for an upturned oil drum outside with the Camp and Furnace logo punched into it.

On the weekends the venue hosts three separate food events: a ‘food slam’ described as a “large-scale supper party, where food meets drink, meets dance music”, a ‘meatmarket’ – “a weekly disco/dining carve up, meat-laden and heavy on the cocktails” – and a traditional Sunday menu. When I arrive, proprietor Ian Richards and his staff are busy preparing for their forthcoming second birthday. The DJ line-up – X-Press-2’s Ashley Beedle, Horse Meat Disco, amongst others – seems perfectly tailored to the tastes of Liverpool’s notoriously glam club goers. Ironically, I take a seat in the library area of the lobby bar, which is gloomy but comfortable.

The kitchen claims a distinct Scandinavian influence in their cooking but the lobby bar menu appears more modern European, with hints of Americana. I opt for a spatchcock poussin, with peanut-slaw and fries. The peanut-slaw is a revelation – I’m sure this is something that’s been slavered over in countless trendy London BBQ restaurants, but it’s my first time [blush] – and matches perfectly with the honey tones of a Spanish Alhambra lager.

The poussin is deliciously moist, as is the rich chocolate brownie with pistachio ice cream I have for dessert, though the accompanying honeycomb is on the wrong side of chewy and ultimately inedible.

The clientele is mixed when I visit and includes a young family, wizened old ale drinkers, the 22-and-tattooed brigade and middle-aged men with the haircuts of younger men, tapping away ferociously at silver Macbooks. Speaking to Ian I get the sense that he’s one of a small but devoted group of business people attracted to the area by the cheap rents, who are now looking to put the Baltic Triangle on the map culturally, or at least fashion something to rival the pubs and clubs of nearby Seel Street.

As I leave I look towards the cathedral and thank a non-specific almighty for my poor sense of direction: the inevitably elongated walk back to Lime Street station will give me the chance to burn off the delicious food I’ve just devoured at Camp and Furnace.

http://www.port-magazine.com/food-drink/restaurant-review-camp-and-furnace/

[jenkinstom]

The Independent: A Stylish Sixties Survivor

Ahead of a speech in Liverpool, the Velvet Underground star John Cale tells Tom Jenkins about this times with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol and how he became a style icon

“I think it was the Hitler haircut,” says John Cale when asked to identify the biggest fashion faux pas of his career. The 72-year-old composer, musician, record producer and occasional actor and catwalk model is in a Los Angeles recording studio, remixing new material. The voice on the other end of the phone is a craggy and commanding hybrid of deep Welsh and light Californian accents (though predominantly Welsh). “It was fun for doing Yohji Yamamoto fashion shows but the worst part of it was, I was playing squash at the time and it was a pain in the arse to play squash with that haircut,” says the unlikely sportsman.

We’re discussing the interminable link between music and style, to coincide with Cale’s appearance as a guest speaker at this year’s Liverpool Sound City festival, which takes place across the first weekend of May. As a founding member of The Velvet Underground, Cale helped chronicle the debauched, druggy goings-on of New York’s 60’s underground, under the astute gaze of Andy Warhol. Style regrets aside – I would venture his mid 70s ‘Dad sinking a few pints at the local rugby club after a game’ look as his biggest calamity – the VU are a band lauded as much for their influence on ice-cool, nonchalant metropolitan style as popular music.

“Nobody in the VU was as into black as I was,” says Cale proudly. “Eventually Sterling (Morrison) got into it – but the main point of wearing black clothes was they were really serviceable. You could wear those clothes without people knowing they were quite as well worn as they actually were. It was an economic thing more than anything else; nobody had any money to buy clothes. Lou (Reed) was appalled when I asked Andy to lend me $25 to buy a leather vest.”

Generations of bands and individuals since, looking to define themselves as rebel outsiders, have imitated that look, one Cale describes in his 1999 autobiography What’s Welsh for Zen? as “Presbyterian black. A style closer to a religious Wyatt Earp than glam rock.” “It eventually popped up in the art world,” he says chuckling. “It was like heavy mourning every time you went into an art gallery!” Current press shots show him with a neatly trimmed flame of white hair flecked with pink and an equally neat soul patch stroking his bottom lip, pale against his lightly sun-stained skin.

John Cale grew up in the small mining village of Garnant in South Wales. As a viola-playing member of the Welsh Youth Orchestra he fantasised about plying his talent on Manhattan’s bohemian Lower East Side alongside his hero John Cage, the American minimalist composer most famous for his silent work “Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds”. At home he was the archetypal Teddy Boy. “As a kid I was very rebellious,” he admits. “I used to put wallpaper up in my room that went from corner to corner, not horizontally, but my mum let me do it. When she took me down to get fitted for a suit I always used to make the pants tight. I put a lot of gel in my hair. It wasn’t too dissimilar to the stuff we were doing in the VU.

“In school, you had to play rugby; that was the national sport in Wales. I didn’t want to get anywhere near a scrum: I didn’t want my hands getting broken and I didn’t want my teeth getting kicked out – so I went for soccer. Boy, they thought I was much weirder for playing soccer than for playing viola! They could understand something about the viola, but soccer, that really wasn’t tolerable.”

 After several years at Goldsmiths’ Teachers’ College in South London his dreams came a step closer in 1963, with a scholarship to the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. “The clothes I arrived in were really out of date. They were too hot for the climate. You learnt fast how to pair down,” he says. “I just thought, ‘I’d better find something decent to wear because I’m going to be in Tanglewood with these composers and these conductors.’ I didn’t know what to expect. When I got there, there were a lot of Raggedy Anns – it was the beginning of the hippy period.”

He would eventually go on to play with Cage and after moving to New York City, quickly fell in with a group of experimental musicians including La Monte Young and Terry Riley, before immersing himself in rock and roll, Warhol and the Factory scene. “I got lucky: I met Lou and we put the band together. We were doing something that was really unpleasant for people in clubs in New York and we were determined not to change. You want to put a band together because everybody there has the same mindset and that happened with the VU and it didn’t happen for me with the bands afterwards,” he says regretfully.

Cale is an avid consumer of new music and is looking forward to catching some bands in Liverpool if he has time. “I download mostly. I troll around to find different sites: mainly hip-hop sites. I search for radio stations in places like Kuala Lumpur to see what kind of music is being played there. I’m looking for drum grooves. At one time I was just listening to Bollywood radio stations and as time went on it became clear that they were learning bridges, choruses: the shape of songwriting. It was really interesting to hear it change and grow. Then all of a sudden it became so casual, it sounded so European and American that I lost interest at that point. It was more fun when it was awkward and undisciplined… like most things.”

There’s a hint of nostalgia in the pause and one can’t help thinking he’s picturing that wide-eyed 21 year-old stepping off the plane onto American soil for the first time, with his whole life, as well as the odd fashion faux pas, in front of him.

Published in The Independent 'Section 2' 28/04/14

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: American Artifacts: Phil Bergerson

The Canadian photographer finds a country fundamentally unsettled by economic and political trauma, but hope is far from extinguished…

Orangeburg, South Carolina 2006

Phil Bergerson is seated in a gallery just off the bustle of the Gray’s Inn Road in London, reflecting on whether he could ever settle in the US, the country whose idiosyncrasies he’s spent the last two decades documenting. The Canadian photographer is surrounded by images from his new book American Artifacts, the follow-up to 2004’s Shards of America. The Stars and Stripes feature of course, alongside crumbling religious iconography and hastily scribbled slogans that speak of a new vulnerability in the American psyche.

“I could live there, but there are two main differences between Canadians and Americans – and Brits too – two things that really change your attitude: guns and healthcare,” he says. “I was in Texas. Four trucks pull up, full of guys having a good time. I’m watching this and realising every one of those trucks probably has three guns in the back. I’m there by myself – if they wanted to, they’ve got me. That’s a different pressure. I have elderly relatives in Florida who have pensions from the government and the military. They think healthcare’s fine, but there are six million black women in poor neighbourhoods who are having children and never go to the doctor because they can’t afford it. People are struggling.”

San Marcos, Texas 2006 (left); Biloxi, Mississippi 2006 (right)

Since he began photographing the US in 1990 – he’s been exhibiting internationally for 35 years and is Professor Emeritus at Ryerson University in Toronto – Bergerson has witnessed the American Dream being twisted and shaken by world events and political corruption and infighting at home. That sense of entitlement, that unshakable belief that “Your children will be able to do better and you’ll be able to do better than your parents, and you can become the President of the United States” as Bergerson neatly surmises it, has been left twitching by the side of the road, barely alive. I chuckle when I imagine the British being raised on the belief that it’s possible for ‘anyone’ to become Prime Minister.

“It’s cyclical I think,” says Bergerson. “When Bush was in, it galvanised everybody to say something. When Obama was coming in we were all so hopeful that maybe he could change our societies by changing theirs in a positive way. I still believe in him as being a good guy who’s intellectually astute. I’m glad he’s there. But he’s shackled by the system. The super-rich really are controlling things. People are starting to question not just authority, but how authority got authority in the first place. In other words, how were we duped?

Montgomery, Alabama 2004 (left); Kenner, Louisiana 2006 (right)

“I was in a Walmart in a small town and on the wall were all these individual portraits of young military men. Some were dead. Some were kids of the cashiers. The consensus was, ‘It’s the worst thing we ever did. We didn’t have the money to send them to university so we suggested they join up for the weekend stint’. And they did. But once you sign up, if there’s the need to go to war they pull you in.”

That feeling of being duped also extends to religion. “You have more and more people leaving Christianity, and the other religions – especially in the Midwest – are gaining strength,” he says. “But things are being presented about different faiths out in public that are racist. You’re realising something is showing its ugly head here, which can be good because you can see it and maybe change it. I see the positive in the things I’m picturing because people are often trying to fight against something.”

Pocatello, Idaho 2007

Shot largely in the transitional zones of cities, where the nouveau riche have moved in to take advantage of cheaper rents, and small towns across the country, Bergerson’s images hark back to an illustrious lineage of American street photography that includes Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and Walker Evans. They burst with irony: witness a brief glimpse of the real mountain range behind a painted scene in a shot taken in Pocatello, Idaho in 2007. It’s difficult to believe some haven’t been manipulated, though Bergerson insists not. People are a notable absence – aren’t they American Artifacts too?

“When I first started the project I did photograph people but as I moved forward I realised the pictures without people were saying more than the portraits,” he says. “Once I actually grounded it in a particular person, as opposed to an imagined person, it changed things. I spoke to a lot of street people. The people who struggled with the economic crises of 2008, they’re more plentiful but they weren’t the people I was encountering. They’re all trying to figure out what happened to them and how to recover from it.”

Portland, Oregon 2007

So what’s the answer? A return to real American values, not those pedalled by religious zealots or the political right, would be a good start. “A grassroots movement towards rejuvenation of the spirit of America needs to happen,” says the photographer, enthused. “In my first book I quote Salman Rushdie, who says America’s the only state that has declared it’s statehood by saying the citizens deserve the pursuit of happiness. Everybody’s striving to be happy. They believe it’s something that’s owed to them.

“Then the question is, what is this happiness? That’s where I see the American Dream splitting: the majority of the population have pursued consumerism with a vengeance, that’s what’s going to make them happy. The minority group are just trying to find out what it is to be human, learn more, go to school more and study things, the spiritual stuff… the other group have lost that part I think.”

Confidence may be low, but the ‘American Dream’ is fundamentally about hope – and that’s the last thing to be extinguished in the good ol’ US of A.

http://www.port-magazine.com/feature/american-artifacts-phil-bergerson/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Silent Flight: Heathrow Terminal 2

Construction of ‘The Queen’s Terminal’ may not be grabbing the headlines, but there's plenty to shout about ahead of opening day

In the midst of bickering about airport expansion in and around London, the construction of a new terminal building at London Heathrow has flown somewhat under the radar. As environmental campaigners, business leaders and the Mayor of London face-off in the press over the need to increase Britain’s flight capacity, over in the west of the city the finishing touches are quietly being applied to Heathrow Terminal 2: The Queen’s Terminal – as quietly as one can work on a five year, £2.5 billion construction project at one of the world’s busiest airports.

Of course, it’s no surprise that bosses are looking to downplay the 4 June opening of this new 44,000sq m hub, which replaces the original Terminal 2 building erected in 1955. In 2008 the airport’s then newest addition, the slick Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners designed Terminal 5 opened with great fanfare before quickly descending into farce, with cancelled flights, lost baggage and queues of understandably angry (non) flyers snaking around the terminal building.

Terminal 2, part of a £11billion airport development programme, is expected to handle close to 20 million passengers a year and their ‘experience’ on the ground will be key to its success. Step forward Luis Vidal of Madrid-based Luis Vidal + Architects. The UK educated RIBA member, a specialist in transport infrastructure, is concept and lead architect on the project – his first in the UK. His award winning practice designs sustainable public buildings in which user wellbeing and intuitive wayfinding are paramount. Previous projects include Zaragoza and La Coruña Airports in his native Spain.

“There’s been a revolution in terminal design,” says the softly spoken Vidal. “In the 1930s, airports combined arrivals and departures in a single building. Then in the 60s, this concept evolved to the segregation of circulation, whereby the arrivals were on one level of the building while the departures were on a different floor. In the 90s, commercial revenue became a priority and airport terminals became shopping malls. [Terminal 2] is the fourth generation of airports. Our concept converts an airport terminal into a destination unto itself, a place where people gather and spend time in a stress-free environment. Passengers will enjoy the balance between retail amenities and restaurants in a comfortable and approachable space integrated into the travel experience.”

The new building is 40 per cent more carbon efficient than the old terminal and is the first airport terminal in the world to be awarded aBREEAM rating for sustainable design. The standout feature is an undulating steel-framed roof that floods the building with natural light. As well as reducing the need for artificial lighting the roof aids navigation through the various zones – check-in, security and boarding – via three vaults or ‘waves’. There’s a clear view of both the gates and the retail space from security (a rarity in many airports if you think about it) and no enclosed gate rooms. Essentially, passengers will have a visible route from drop-off to boarding.

However, up to 40 per cent of those using the new terminal will be transferring between flights and thus won’t be entering or leaving the building. British Artist Richard Wilson, who today unveils a major new, aviation-inspired sculpture titled ‘Slipstream’ in Terminal 2’s Covered Court (which is actually open to the elements at either end), says making the right first impression is vital: “We’ve always boasted about London being a cultural capital and it’s interesting that it starts as soon as you get off the aeroplane. ‘Slipstream’ is a significant statement: ‘You have arrived in the cultural capital of the world.”

Above: Slipstream by Richard Wilson at Heathrow’s new Terminal 2: The Queen’s Terminal. David Levene

The aluminium sculpture, suspended from four central columns in the Covered Court, represents the imagined flight path of a Zivko Edge 540 stunt plane. It’s 78 metres long and weighs 77 tonnes. “I started thinking about the notion of the journey, the movement from A to B, from departure to arrival and vice versa. That’s really what the sculpture’s about,” he says. “The wonderful thing is, because it’s a movement that undulates and twists and turns, as you walk along it picks up the light coming in from the roof or from either end of the space and reflects it in all sorts of odd ways. It’s very beautiful, rather like seeing a fish skimming along under water.”

A frequent flyer, Wilson is full of praise for the new terminal: “I do a lot of travelling, a lot of long haul – I’ve worked extensively in Japan. Once I’m on the plane I’m happy but I get quite nervous beforehand. Wherever you are in the world, once you get to an airport and you go ‘air side’ – through departures and into the lounges – you could be anywhere really. With the new Terminal 2, Luis Vidal has managed to stamp his authority on it and give it a very specific feel. It’s very relaxing; it’s very, very spacious.”

Above: Luis Vidal’s architectural drawings for Heathrow Terminal 2 including Arrivals (bottom-left), Check-in and Security (bottom-middle) and Departures (bottom-right). © Courtesy of Luis Vidal + Architects

Vidal and his team had to address a number of site constraints: the close proximity of the Piccadilly Line running just seven metres below, height restrictions on both the structure and the cranes to allow a clear line of sight from the control tower, and the limitations of just one access tunnel running in and out of the site. The solution would set the heart of any 80s schoolboy aflutter. “One of the main technical features of the terminal’s design and construction is the use of prefabricated modules that contain the mechanical and electrical equipment,” says Vidal. “These pieces were easily assembled on site in a way not dissimilar to a Meccano set. This enabled a fast and economic build.”

Vidal’s assertion that airports will become destinations unto themselves seems tenuous – one’s presence there will always be a necessity rather than a luxury – but a desire to make travel as enjoyable, enriching and stress-free as possible, whilst cutting emissions, is a noble cause. Here’s hoping Terminal 2 is a quiet, understated success.

http://www.port-magazine.com/architecture/silent-flight-heathrow-terminal-2/

[jenkinstom]

Port Magazine: Jimi Goodwin: Taking Flight

The former Doves man talks going solo, adjusting to life outside of the whirlwind and why he’d never say never to a reunion

There’s a song on Odlulek, the recently released debut solo LP from former Doves frontman Jimi Goodwin, called ‘Oh! Whisky’. It opens with the line “I saw a child with a skipping rope/I said I used to be like that/One of these days I’m going to give myself a real good talking to/Recover some youth.” “Oh to be that care free and not have a thought in your head!” says Jimi over the phone in broad Cheshire tones. “Worry’s a killer, isn’t it!”

Odlulek has been in gestation since Doves called an indefinite hiatus in late 2010, after four massively successful albums. The title is a Polish word that translates as ‘loner’ or ‘pilgrim’. Does he enjoy solitude? “I am a bit of a loner, I can go days without speaking to people, and it’s fine by me,” he laughs. “Most of the time I’m fairly happy in my own company.” Fittingly, he recorded all of the instruments on the record himself, which should come as no surprise to Doves fans – he and bandmates Andy and Jez Williams would often swap between guitar, bass and drums onstage.

“In my head this record was going to be a collaborative effort, because that’s all I know,” he says, “but I realised two things: one, I’d be at the mercy of other people’s schedules and I didn’t want to be firing off emails going ‘I’m Jimi Goodwin, I used to be in a band called Doves’ – I wanted to get moving. Two, I was enjoying exploring me and not having to run ideas by anyone other than myself, I only had myself to please. It’s good to know what your strengths are. I got my Prince on. I’ve always admired one-man bands.”

Odludek is a diverse record that glides seamlessly between anthemic (‘Hope’), dance inflected (‘Live Like A River’) and thigh-slapping hoe down (‘Panic Tree’) songs. They’ll be comparisons with Doves of course – they always were a diverse bunch, more so than people gave them credit for – but it’s only really the pretty ‘Didsbury Girl’, the oldest song on the record dating back to 2004, that brings Goodwin’s previous band instantly to mind.

The split with Andy and Jez, who he’d been making music with since his teens, initially as chart bothering dance trio Sub Sub, was amicable: “It was literally the first proper time off we’d had in 12 years. If we weren’t on tour we were in the studio writing and recording for the next one. Kingdom of Rust was a tough record to make. Ultimately it came out well, we believed in it, but it wasn’t easy. There were warning signs. I don’t think any of us could face that again.”

However, he found it difficult to adjust to his new-found freedom and the absence of routine, despite insisting he hates the latter. “When we called time, it was the first time in my life I’d ever questioned my allegiance or love or passion for music – I don’t like to call it a career, but it’s become one,” he says. “I think I had some kind of breakdown, it was like ‘What now?’ It scared me. I’d never questioned music, or my intent or my passion. I was sat there going ‘Do I even like music anymore? Am I any good at it? Have I got anything to say?’ It’s sobering: you need times like that to re-evaluate where you’re at. You’ve life goes on hold as you knew it, but those times have to happen don’t they. It’s about motivating yourself.”

There’s a refreshing lack of self-pity when he talks. He obviously went through crises, but feels he’s over it now and recognises the privileged position he’s in: “We spent all our adult lives in bands. Obviously that’s great – our dreams came true. The whole whirlwind was great in the main, but when you finally do come home and unpack and you’re unpacking this time indefinitely, life has a funny way of knocking on your door: family illnesses and all sorts of stuff that we all deal with… or don’t deal with! Thankfully, I started to believe in the songs that were coming.”

Now he has a band to play those songs live: “It’s all new and yet it’s not new. It’s been great. The guys I’ve got in the band, I’ve admired them as players for years. Bo (Walsh) was in a band called One Lady Owner, on Creation Records. Christian Madden the keyboard player I’ve always admired. He’s played with Simon Cherry Ghost and was in a great band called The Earlies years ago. He’s an awesome musician. There’s a young friend of mine called Jake Evans on guitar. He’s a great, really inventive guitarist.” This “Tough little unit” as he describes it will be embarking on a full UK tour this May. Prior to that they’ll be hitting the arena circuit in support of Elbow.

It feels strange to refer to Jimi as the “former” frontman of Doves: what does the future hold for the three musical soulmates? “Never say never – you feel like you’re trotting out a line, but it’s the truth,” he says, and I believe him. “I don’t know when that will be, but there’s every possibility we’ll get together and make music again. Maybe we should’ve had more rows in Doves. We’d always have words but it’d never be about things like ‘Jesus, I hate the way he eats crisps’. Perhaps sometimes we should’ve cleared the air more, but we’re polite and non-confrontational. Ultimately there were never any massive issues.

“As for friendship, I don’t see them a lot: Andy’s got a young family, so has Jez; I’ve got two psycho teenagers. You know what life’s like; there aren’t enough hours in the day to see your mates. I don’t know how people do it, how you manage to get everything else done and then go the cinema with a pal or whatever. You’ve got to make time for that and I’m an incredibly disorganised person. I love them man, they’re my brothers.” That’s a maybe then.

“I’m more nervous now than I’ve ever been I think,” he continues, “but maybe it’s that thing of you used to be able to dive off 30ft rocks as a kid but as you get older you think before you leap.”

Take the leap Jimi, after all, it’s the worrying that’ll kill you, not the fall.

http://www.port-magazine.com/music/jimi-goodwin-taking-flight/