“London-based Spannocchi boasts a vibrant, big-name sextet for this latest album release – trumpeter Jay Phelps, tenorist Sylvie Leys, pianist Robert Mitchell, double bassist Michelangelo Scandroolio and drummer Tristan Banks – who collectively put the ‘wow’ into his ebullient collection of nine original numbers. To rummage through the altoist’s Bandcamp catalogue is fascinating, his previous recordings featuring names such as Tony Kofi and Jure Pukl; and his diverse creations (including a hymn or two) reveal an inquiring and exploratory musical mind. In Perihelion, however, he presents a straight-ahead sequence with a metaphorical sparkle in its eye; and Spannocchi, himself, has a distinctive embouchure characterised by an endearing, even unusual, rapid vibrato.”

London Jazz News

“The play, Oi! For England, was written by Trevor Griffiths and had first been performed in Manchester. It was then adopted by the Royal Court Theatre and toured through a series of youth clubs, mainly venues in parts of London where National Front supporters were thought to gather and seek recruits. It follows the story of a band modelled along the likes of Cockney Rejects, who are approached by a suited stranger about performing at a large event. Initially a step-up in their social lives, it soon becomes clear that the event is a National Front rally, and the band begins to split as they try and define why their music and their culture is being associated with, or hijacked by racists and neo-Nazis. The story, it turns out, is very real: one of the film’s producers, John Carnell, was offered the same deal as a young skinhead, and since he knew the roots of ska music and The Specials, he recognised that racism was nothing he wanted to be a part of.

Robin’s film examines Oi! music, his own and his colleagues’ experiences as young actors, and the political environment that inspired Griffiths to write his play, which seems relevant still today. We see revealing interviews with Griffiths the playwright and Mickey Geggus of the Cockney Rejects, while Beverley Martin recounts the racism she was exposed to on tour, often being the only dark-skinned person in a room full of angry young whites, some of whom had National Front sympathies. She might be spat at, shouted at, or otherwise tormented, and was often neglected by other members of cast and crew who were lost in the room’s atmosphere in their own ways: still terrified but also feeling their roles and the safety of their “uniforms”, their shaved heads, boots, jeans and skinny braces.”

The Hastings Independant

Robin Hayter, The maker of this documentary will be doing a Q and A after the screening

Jayde Adams: The Ballad of Kylie Jenner’s Old Face

NOMINEE Edinburgh Fringe Best Newcomer 2016
WINNER Best Show Scottish Sun 2017
WINNER Best Female Comedian Scottish Sun 2017

‘She’s a star’ (Guardian).

In 2019 if you want to be a ‘successful independent woman person’ you better have something to say and you better be wearing a Serious Black Jumper™. ‘Britain’s funniest woman comic’ (Daily Mail) has put the sequins in a box (for now), because it’s time to get serious. If pop stars, razors and even sausage rolls can attach themselves to important movements, why can’t Jayde Adams?

Jayde Adams: The Ballad of Kylie Jenner’s Old Face

NOMINEE Edinburgh Fringe Best Newcomer 2016
WINNER Best Show Scottish Sun 2017
WINNER Best Female Comedian Scottish Sun 2017

‘She’s a star’ (Guardian).

In 2019 if you want to be a ‘successful independent woman person’ you better have something to say and you better be wearing a Serious Black Jumper™. ‘Britain’s funniest woman comic’ (Daily Mail) has put the sequins in a box (for now), because it’s time to get serious. If pop stars, razors and even sausage rolls can attach themselves to important movements, why can’t Jayde Adams?

Lunatraktors return to the Tom Thumb Theatre to celebrate the madness and magic of Yule with some dark and twisted carols.

Limited numbers and negative COVID test required.

AK Patterson are a three-piece formed in Brighton after lead singer Alex, an art-school graduate found fellow bandmates Alfie and Nat on the festival circuit in 2015. With comparisons to the visceral attack of PJ Harvey, the feral cabaret of Nick Cave and the post-modern jazz grooves of GoGo Penguin, AK Patterson are a whirlwind of contrasts.

The multi-instrumentalists flavour the warmth of their organic instrumentation with electronic experimentation in the shape of mood-setting field recordings and subtle synths.

In 2018, the band worked with award-winning producer Charlie Andrew (Alt-J, Marika Hackman, Nick Mulvey) on their debut EP, Shadows. Following its release, they were invited to support Alt-J on tour culminating in two shows at the Royal Albert Hall. They subsequently embarked on their first headline tour in 2019 appearing at London’s Oslo. Festival appearances include Latitude, Boardmasters, Victorious, The Great Escape, Live at Leeds, and Blue Balls (Switzerland).

The band’s versatility has led to multiple collaborations, including the scoring of a short film, Adira’s Dream which has won numerous awards at festivals in the last year.

On 4th September 2020, AK Patterson released a brand new track in the shape of ‘Out of the Steel Works’. It features on their forthcoming EP Mettle, again produced by Charlie Andrew, and will be released on 15th January 2021.

Douglas Dare

Milkteeth

DOORS 7.30

Gig 8pm

English songsmith Douglas Dare returns with his third and most stripped back studio album to date, Milkteeth, released on 21 February 2020 with Erased Tapes. Produced by Mike Lindsay — founding member of Tunng and one half of LUMP with Laura Marling — in his studio in Margate in just twelve days, Milkteeth sees Douglas become confident and comfortable enough with his own identity to reflect on both the joys and pains of youth. In doing so, he has established himself as a serious 21st century singer-songwriter with an enduring lyrical poise and elegant minimalist sound.

Douglas Dare grew up on a farm as the youngest member of a large extended family, where he was often found in his own private world, dancing in his mother’s pink ballet dress. “Only now do I feel free to express my inner child again, and am giving myself permission to play dress up,” says Dare of Milkteeth’s cover shot, in which he wears soft makeup and is draped with layers of white linen, acting the part of a Greek muse. “I never felt like I fit in. I was different, odd. I wanted to dance and sing and dress up and on a small farm in rural Dorset that really stuck out.”

Where previously he has been known as a piano player, for Milkteeth Dare picked up a new instrument, the autoharp, and as soon as he sat down with it, songs poured out – he wrote the album’s first single Silly Games, in under an hour. “Instinctual feelings about childhood and innocence were the catalyst,” he explains. “Then with the autoharp, it all just clicked – I could see the album laid out ahead of me.”

Milkteeth opens with I Am Free, which loops piano and lyrics in an intimate dance, comparing the seemingly inexorable freedom of childhood to flying. The Playground is a song Dare says he’s wanted to write for years, about a yearning for childhood innocence and simplicity. WhileRed Arrows tells a story of vulnerability, of craving parental comfort, The Joy In Sarah’s Eyes is a Jeff Buckley-esque ballad for a new generation. In Heavenly Bodies there is an unhurried darkness that nods to Leonard Cohen’s songwriting, and is also the first time Dare has played the guitar on record. The melodies on Milkteeth are deliberately simple; Dare wanted it to feel familiar right from the first listen. In between these songs sit instrumental pieces – The Piano Room, The Stairwell, The Window – named for the spots they were recorded in, moments for stillness and reflection.

Marking his arrival in 2014 with the release of his acclaimed debut Whelm and establishing his musical dexterity on the much darker follow up Aforger in 2016, Dare’s star keeps growing. In 2017 he was asked to contribute a re-interpretation of Dance Me to the End of Love to the Leonard Cohen exhibition A Crack in Everything at the Contemporary Art Museum of Montréal, currently showing at The Jewish Museum in New York before opening at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in September 2020. He was invited by Robert Smith to perform at his Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in 2018, followed by the David Lynch-curated Manchester International Festival alongside Anna Calvi in 2019.

Dare’s music speaks of his own experiences of universal themes like love, loss, and childhood. Perhaps most importantly, his music gives a voice and a sanctuary to anyone who’s ever felt unusual or out of place. Whether he’s singing of the pain of those in the Magdalene Laundries as on Whelm, describing coming out to his parents on Aforger, or processing his own childhood isolation on Milkteeth, Dare has a graceful honesty and an abiding clarity of vision in his simple and distinctive sound.