An eclectic weekly mix of interviews and performances from musicians, artists, writers and performers, as well as those behind the London arts scene.
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Nathan Penlington
Our technical challenge on this week’s show was to get a great sound from drums in a very small studio. We were riding the faders as the drums sang. Malik Tebrizli really knows how to play: using the various parts of his hands to coax a beautiful range of sounds from his drum, he drifted into that other place musicians go when they’re caught up in their music. It’s easy to see what Nihat Tsolak meant when he talked about the almost spiritual aspect of percussion. His words linked closely with those of choreographer Maddy Wynne-Jones, who several weeks ago described the natural movement every one of us has in our body. For Nihat, and I think for Malik too, that movement is a rhythm, with which they connect when they drum.
Maddy and Steve
The quantity and scale of Rosie Cooper’s projects interested me very much. She talks about her work with great earnestness and thoroughness. There is no gimmickry in what she does. I loved that she’d turned the Savoy café into a place where art could be ordered from the menu; the idea sitting in a retro joint watching men in brown coats wheel in a Brancusi is exactly my idea of a good time. At the end of Rosie’s interview I went to play one of the station idents – jingles, if you prefer – and instead the studio was filled with the voice of Peter Griffin from Family Guy talking to Meg about something completely indecent. Rosie looked to me for explanation, for which I had none. Thank God for post-production: now no-one will ever know it happened. I certainly won’t mention it.
Incidentally, I meant to ask Rosie why she’d brought a five-metre, four-socket extension cable with her to the show. It seemed a little odd, given that she had nothing to plug in, and reminded me of a man I met, once, at the top of the Empire State Building, who had a goldfish in a bag. No funfair or pet store anywhere close. “He likes to get out and about,” the man told me. My best guess, given all Rosie’s got going on, is that recording the interview was a momentary diversion from a much bigger mission, one requiring power – entirely reasonable. If she’d had a goldfish instead, I’d have started to question myself.
Malik, Rosie, Nihat
Nathan Penlington sounded to me like a good, fresh voice in poetry; not over-stylised as some younger poets can be. He has an engaging, almost confessional quality, both in subject and delivery, and I liked the inventiveness of his experiments on street lighting, as well as the poignancy of that poem’s conclusion. Following Nathan, Steve McGregor was on fine, self-assured form. His war anecdotes – including the story of the time he believed he was about to die at the hands of a suicide bomber – had me so gripped that we almost failed to get around to mentioning his writing at all. A strong guest to round off the show. Now we get to find out whether that work on the faders did the trick.
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