Brummie band of the moment The Destroyers are to launch their UK and Ireland tour with a Summer Gypsy Ball in the new Digbeth music venue The Crossing at South Birmingham College on Milk Street. The gig this Fri 4th June will also feature a performance from East London’s Urban Vodoo Machine, live visuals from Syzygy and DJ sets from the Jibbering collective and Marc Reck.
Tickets are £10 in advance from The Ticket Sellers or £12 on the door (though I suspect this may sell out beforehand). If you can’t make what promises to be a seriously cracking gig, the action will be live streamed via The Destroyers website. As I’m on me holiday, I’m going to be well lazy and copy and paste rest of the press release below. The Irish Post have also done a feature on the gig.
The Destroyers by Pete Ashton
The Destroyers’ Summer Gypsy Ball coincides with the beginning of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month in the UK and will pay homage to a nomadic culture rich in both tradition and musical exploration. With careering Klezmer rhythms, Mariachi brass, Balkan strings, traditional Irish melodies, uptempo ska, gypsy jazz and punk-polka amongst other ingredients, The Destroyers have embraced this genre defying approach, and in doing so reflect the cultural and musical make-up of their home city as well as a love of gathering and interpreting new and established influences.
On debut album Out of Babel, the song Torregaveta paid tribute to two young Roma sisters, while the lyrics “Intorno al mondo la musica attraversa la frontiera (around the world music crosses the frontier)” sung in Italian by band member Leo Altarelli in Questa Canzone has become an unofficial mission statement for the group.
“Gypsy music has been a source of immense inspiration for us – the word gypsy itself conjures up many things. Firelight and painted caravans. Swirling skirts and stamping feet. Hand clapping and stirring guitars. A people for whom music is life-blood. I don’t have to be a fortune-teller to predict that The Destroyers’ Gypsy Ball with the Urban Voodoo Machine is going to be one whirling spectacle of a gig. Only the dead won’t dance!” Paul Murphy, The Destroyers
Urban Voodoo Machine, described by the Washington Post as “Nick Cave in a dark mood fronting a drunken Dexy’s Midnight Runners” supported veteran Irish folk-punk band The Pogues on their recent US tour, have recorded a cover of AC/DC’s Hells Bells to Classic Rock magazine’s Back in Black 30th anniversary tribute album and host the regular Gypsy Hotel night at Barden’s Boudoir in London.
Between them, Jibbering DJs and Marc Reck are responsible for programming and promoting some of Birmingham’s most eclectic and groundbreaking events, including the sell-out Mr Elephant nights at hip venues The Rainbow and Hare & Hounds and have brought internationally renowned artists such as Keith Murray, Horace Andy [Massive Attack] and The Black Seeds to the city.
2009 saw The Destroyers release debut album Out of Babel and embark on a 24 date tour, which took in single launch parties in London and Birmingham, five shows at Glastonbury in four days, an impromptu set at a tiny Norfolk village fete as well as triumphant shows at Trowbridge and Shambala Festivals.
Out of Babel was produced by influential recording engineer Gavin Monaghan [The Editors, Scott Matthews, The Twang] and Louis Robinson, a founding member of The Destroyers, at the Magic Garden Studios in Wolverhampton. Following its release the album garnered critical acclaim, including a four star review from world music bible Songlines.
This coming weekend sees the famous St Patrick’s Festival. The fun kicks off with a Festival Launch Party at The Irish Centre on Friday night, ‘a free evening of entertainment, dancing and a buffet’. To request tickets for the event email stpatricksbirmingham@gmail.com.
A Saturday of The Reel around The Bullring leads into the big Sunday parade, which starts with Mass at St Anne’s Church before the street parade and dancing around the St PatROCKs stage in South Birmingham College.
Post-weekend, the celebrations take a cultural turn with Irish film, literature and theatre events. NLP Theatre perform Singin` I’m No a Billy, He’s a Tim on Monday 15th March in The Paragon Hotel. On Tuesday 16th March you have a choice between an Irish Film Night at The Spotted Dog or a St Patrick’s Literary Festival at The Old Crown Inn. On St Patrick’s Day, Weds 17th March, Irish Storyteller Katrice Horsley will be weaving her magic at The Irish Centre, as will musicians John McNicholl and John Kiernan. Rather amazingly, all of these events are free.
We Are Eastside
Friction Arts' The Edge - part of We Are Eastside
Once you’ve recovered from the St Patrick’s festivities you’ve a little time to pause for breath before the launch of We Are Eastside on 27th March, ‘an online and printed guide to the artists, collectives, promoters and spaces helping to transform Birmingham’s industrial heartland into a thriving creative playground’. The weekend will be jam-packed, with the Flatpack Festival being joined by local arts organisations showcasing their wares.
On Friday there’s a Curtain Show at Eastside Projects whilst The Lombard Method goes all Cinematic on us. I personally will be striving to catch Monuments at Ikon Eastside and mischievous audio-visual antics Synth Eastwood: Fast Forward at The Rainbow Warehouse.
Supersonic 2009 - Capsule are leading We Are Eastside and I get to post a picture of someone's bum
Saturday promises to be rather magical, with the new Rhubarb East gallery opening with The Uses of Enchantment, ‘inspired by fables and fairy stories, nostalgia and psychology’ and Laterna Magicka at Ikon Eastside, which later hosts the new concert film Burning, featuring Mogwai. VIVID will be providing the late-night space to let your hair down, with an Eastside Plasticine Party of ‘Psychedelic claymation’ by Bruce Bickford, which I think I’ll need to see to understand.
If you’re still standing on Sunday there’s plenty going on, with Paul Sharit’s 70′s Flicker films at Ikon Eastside and Belbury Youth Club’s evening of haunted audio and creepy telly at VIVID. I love a good scare…
So there we have it – we can finally see an end to the long, bitter winter and taste spring in the air, with lashings of Guinness and culture in equal measure. Swap your winter coat for a fetching emerald green number and enjoy!
If you buy a copy of this week’s Birmingham Post you’ll find inside a supplement all about Digbeth: Soul of the City, with articles about that Big City Plan, Digital District things and places like South Birmingham College, The Bond, Fazeley Studios and the new Birmingham Coach Station. You’ll find some spectacular photos from yesteryear on pages 4 and 5 and on page 16 there’s an article by yours truly, all about a few if my favourite Digbeth things. In a newsagent near you until Wednesday.
So Bennie Gray’s been in the paper saying Birmingham needs a few more Custard Factories. George Ferguson, who spoke at the Organic Eastside seminar held by MADE* and Digbeth Business Association in South Birmingham College last night, would heartilly agree. He feels that creative hubs are part of a pattern that make up ‘complex cities’.
George’s philosophy of looking beyond architecture in regeneration, planing change and bringing the best out of places rather than rebuilding, went down a storm.
He had a very interesting take on the credit crunch, that it may actually be a blessing in disguise. It’ll stop the building of blinkered, one-use projects in their tracks for a start. It could instead leave room for ‘slow architecture’ of more flexible, mixed-use buildings, which develop organically over time, adapting to economic and environmental change as they grow.
George later said that we need to ‘identify the maniacs’ who’ll make exciting places by sympathetically utilising their environments rather than flattening and rebuilding them. Bennie Gray is one such maniac, and Birmingham is blessed to have him.
Jonathan Bore’s less popular presentation of the Big City Plan wasn’t exactly new information – expand the concrete collar in building a bigger and better city centre. Some felt he had too many questions (for which he’s had the time to find answers) rather than solutions and others felt the means being used to achieve the goal were questionable, with talk of areas such as Highgate undergoing ‘social cleansing’.
Other highlights were the Rescue Geography presentation, Richard Trengrouse’s Digbeth wisdom and the presence of the men behind the planned Horton Project opposite Selfridges – a ‘city within a city’ that will transform Digbeth Cold Storage and surrounding buildings. Let’s hope they move those bus stops, which are as restrictive as that concrete collar, whilst they’re at it.
