HARRIET: DISTORTION FESTIVAL!

THE 5 DAY STREET PARTY.

I landed in Copenhagen yesterday to cover DISTORTION festival for i-D. The architecture is completely stunning, like a graphic designers haven. Clean cut shapes, perfectly symmetrical, the residents mirror this, perfection walking amongst perfection. Okay so think Shoreditch with an extreme face lift and a more natural “bottle blonde” look, less “ugly is beautiful” and more “we are all beautiful”. I am being chaperoned round (I asked for a nanny but they said it was out of budget) by a delicious Scandinavian model and her friends. They all have dirty minds, pistol whip the blue-eyed boys and drink beer and suckle sausages until their bellies explode.

Everyone is here for the atmosphere, It’s exhilarating, the streets are cordoned off for this 5 day street party.

After mistaking Copenhagen for a clean-cut quiet city I turned a corner to see 200,000 people jumping on church spires and figures heads to Snoop Doggy Dog, 4 handsome German boys on stage rapping along to Sean Paul and a man using a McDonald’s bag as a sun hat (no eyes holes cut out).

It was complete insanity, every corner you turn a different genre of music awaits you, I think I’m in a jungle.

This is a picture of what I saw last night.

PHOTO BY: Mark Stig Bertelsen

   THE CROWDS IN THE CITY LAST NIGHT:

PHOTO BY: Thorbjørn Chiloux Fessel

Off to ride the “devils” 666 bus now, 2 hour party on a day bus, used by day-to-day Copenhagen commuters.

People are staring at me thinking I’m a rose-coloured alien, it’s an attention seekers paradise. Don’t know if ill come back. Do they sell TIGI in Denmark? We’ll see…

LUCY: UNLOST BY K L GILLESPIE

In the night she cultivates orchids …. and at dawn she talks to birds… I’m talking about K L Gillespie and yesterday I went her UNLOST book launch held at Antenna Studios in Crystal Palace SE19, London.

The book launch delighted and unsettled as much as the book promises to. There were blood thirsty Bloody Marys and Gillespie’s Gin and Tonics, a master of ceremony and a narrator called Max. We were plunged into darkness and submerged into the mind of a blind fantasist. This is erotica but K L Gillespie is no Jilly Cooper, its macabre, lyrical and thought provoking, a drum sounds and its attack of the senses, we are surrounded by an exhibition of the illustrator of UNLOST Mr Jeff Conways’s explicit colourful although monochrome fierce in your face prints with a touch of humour for good measure.

Jeff Conway and the beautiful Urania Li

I was asked to read a passage from the book, 8 of us were plucked from the crowd by a very persuasive Max to read Datum the alphabet of lovers. I got to read G, G for Geoff which thankfully was rather less explicit than the rest. After the reading, we were subjected to some throbbing climatic music to which we swayed and wondered what on earth was going to happen next. When the music climaxed there was silence and that was the end of a most enjoyable yet ‘very unusual for a Sunday’ experience.

Heres my friend Paula with one of Jeffs prints.

Punk looks in on Jesus

About the book… “Unlost is an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories with a flamboyant sense of the absurd that dips into the lives of masturbating surrealists, blind fantasists, sadomasochists and provocative pickpockets. One by one they explore life, death, sex – lost minds, lost love and lost ways. In one breath macabre and relentless but also wildly funny…. Revelling in the sense that life is stranger than we can imagine, this anthology will delight and unsettle in equal measure.”

Above K L Gillespie
http://www.klgillespie.co.uk
Photographs by G Dalton check out more of his work at www.gdalton.tumblr.com
UNLOST GET IT, IT WILL NOT DISAPPOINT.
I’m off to Dubai now so catch you lot in a bit….

SAMI: UNHAPPY BIRTHDAY

You may know Amy Lamé from the radio, or from off the telly, or perhaps you know her as host of Duckie,  Vauxhall clubnight extraordinaire.

You may however, not know her as a stage performer, but if not, you bally well should.

She warmed audiences across the country back in 2006 with her heartfelt melange of Mama Cass, family issues, and plus size princesses with her show ‘Amy Lamé’s Mama Cass Family Singers’, and has returned to the performance world with her latest ‘Unhappy Birthday’.

A ticket to Unhappy Birthday is an exclusive ticket to Amy’s birthday party, where there is a seat saved for legend to the lonely Morrissey, and what a party it turns out to be. Set to a backing track of Morrissey classics, punctuated with a game of pass the parcel the show is a trip through the ego of Amy’s upbringing, self discovery, teen angst and of course her obsession with Morrissey.

Be warned, you may get messy, as this performance has been directed by performance legend Scottee, a well suited collaborative addition to Amy’s style. If you’re a Scottee fan you’ll be able to see his sticky fingered touches scattered throughout the production, to great aplomb.

Amy shone through this performance, her candour was touching, and her comedy was creative. Emotionally, and sometimes physically taking you down a road that showed just how hard it can be to be different. Minimal staging was used to great effect with the addition of a basket full of party supplies, props and a large birthday cake.

I was lucky enough to score a ticket for the penultimate performance in London just before she sped up to Moz homeland Manchester to begin a UK wide tour, details of which can be found on the Unhappy Birthday website www.unhappybirthday.net/

This is the kind of show, that with a good friend or two, and a glass of wine or two will make an ordinary evening into something extraordinary, and definitely something to tell your friends all about. Go and see it.

STEVIE: DEMS

Following on from their recent supporting tour with the brilliant Azelia Banks, Dems played at Old Blue Last recently and I went along with Arielle Free (co-presenter on Keep It On The DL – Shoreditch Radio, every second Thursday 6-8, tune in!) to catch them playing live. The electro trio played to a packed house in the popular East London haunt.

With a crackle of anticipation they came out to whoops and cheers from the crowd, clearly a happy blend of fans and friends alike, with their down-tempo beats and infectious hooks they  gave the awaiting crowd a raucous and energetic set, tearing through tracks such as House and Down On You and ripping through recent single Inner O with ferocity and fervour, which excited the crowds to a bouncing chanting audience.

With the aforementioned support tour already under their belts and Radio 1 airtime also common 2012 looks to be a big year for the boys from the South London…

http://soundcloud.com/dems