Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2021 i BN1 Magazine

CRYPTIC Across 5 What 6 across is to 2 down / Hanging out more often initially before call up (9) 6 Caution / Taking back uncooked tail of prawn (4) 7 Block / Beginning to chop piece of wood (4) 8 Commotion / Guts to steer it slowly in reverse (4) 10 Mount / If returning, join regularly (4) 11 Pact / Limb is cold in piece of clothing (9) Down 1 Religious community / My senator is confused (9) 2 Shabby / Right to infiltrate the present uprising (4) 3 Band / Baby bird with wing clipped (4) 4 Flag / Wedding card (5,4) 9 Cats and dogs? / Practice with top of (4) 10 Lot / Unwind after finishing early (4) SUDOKU MODERATE HARD…

In the seventies, Fela Kuti rose to international stardom as the pioneer of afrobeat, a new politically-charged genre of music which brought together the Ghanian highlife popular in his home country of Nigeria and the James Brownian funk and Blue Note jazz he encountered on his travels in Europe and America. As afrobeat grew in popularity and his antiestablishment messages reached wider audiences across the world, Fela’s home in the Nigerian capital of Lagos became the target of violent police raids. Despite the fear he faced throughout his life, his fervour for positive change remained undiminished and the power of his brand of protest music has rarely been equalled. Fela died in 1997, but afrobeat remains a strong presence in today’s musical landscape. From the drawn-out polyrhythmic instrumentals of Talking…

I manage to elicit a belly laugh from Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival Chief Executive, Andrew Comben, when I ask if he ever wishes his career choices had involved something less complex. This last year has been difficult for every arts organisation. The coronavirus hasn’t cared how historically, or culturally, important work might be. “It’s hugely challenging. But I’m aware how tough other people have had it during the pandemic. How friends and colleagues in the medical profession have managed over this last year, I just don’t know. All in all, I’m pretty lucky.” It’s been just under a year since social-distancing restrictions saw Brighton Dome close its doors to the public and abandon plans for its annual worldfamous festival. Similar issues have been faced by almost every single corner…

After the events of 2020 and their substantial impact on our ability to travel, it’s possible that some of us have forgotten the various broad and noble stereotypes around British holidaymakers. To avoid this existential threat to our national identity, we’ve prepared a short guide on how the British should rinse their summer getaway. So, pop your hanky on your head, grab those Union Flag shorts and blue passport, and let’s get going! ATTIRE Obviously, with Britain’s haphazard summers and often constant rain, the sunshine provides the most delightful of novelties. So, when the locals are wearing jumpers and turning off the air conditioning, any self-respecting tourist will be skipping around in the briefest of clothing. To get that true Anglo feel, you should always ensure no two items of…

With many film festivals across the globe still unfortunately on hiatus, event organisers, film makers, and audiences alike, are fervently chomping at the bit for the opportunity to connect with the music they love. Stepping up to the plate is the Doc’n Roll Film Festival. Providing a unique and accessible platform, the Brighton-based event supports compelling leftfield music documentaries and celebrates the performers, labels, scenes and stories that make this genre of filmmaking so captivating to an ever-expanding audience. BN1 chatted to Brighton Festival Producer Sam Chandler about how fans can still enjoy Doc’n Roll music documentaries in lockdown and what the festival has planned for 2021. For those that don’t know, can you tell us what is Doc’n Roll Brighton all about? Doc’n Roll is an annual music documentary…

Across an extraordinary career, David Yarrow has pushed the boundaries of what a simple image can represent. As such, his photography has become instantly recognisable with its ability to astound and captivate. An awe-inspiring shot from the FIFA World Cup Final in Mexico brought him to the world’s attention in 1986. Featuring the jubilant Argentinian captain, Diego Maradona, carried upon the shoulders of an ecstatic crowd stretching across Estadio Azteca’s cavernous interior, this iconic image was the product of good fortune and a keen eye. “I was totally unprepared,” Yarrow tells me, with considerable modesty. “I didn’t really know what I was doing. But over time, you earn your luck.” He describes his craft as being a “numbers game”. To be in the right place at the right time, you’re…

Across 1 Song that holds the record for most streams in a single week on Spotify 1 Song 10 Take a punt at (2,3) 11 Tell a lie to (9) 12 Peanuts, for example (7) 13 Splits (7) 14 Phenomenon found at the disco or on the streets of London? (5) 16 If not (9) 19 Flowers / sugary vegetables? (5,4) 20 Vehicle / went about listlessly (5) 22 Someone who does something for the love of it, not the money (7) 25 Maintenance break (3,4) 27 Possession (9) 28 Baggy (5) 29 Sister company? (6,8) Down 2 Allusion (9) 3 Star sign (5) 4 Aquiline facial feature (5,4) 5 Leans to one side / groups of words (5) 6 Brain twister (9) 7 Not a soul (2,3) 8 In…

TO describe Bourgeois & Maurice as a musical comedy duo would be something of an injustice – or at least an understatement. This territory is way more strange, hilarious and thought-provoking than this narrow description allows. Mind you, they are very musical, very funny, and undoubtedly a duo. This outlandish pairing and their art are also constantly evolving. One year saw them staged as a bittersweet performance duo, deploying a glorious melange of synthpop and showtunes to deal with topics as varied as pregnancy, weird British values and the crushing indignity of not being invited to chem-parties (ask your uncle). But now they’ve revealed themselves to be time traveling aliens with a sharply observed song and dance extravaganza looking at human society’s myriad troubles. For want of a better label,…

Plastic is… interesting. It can be moulded into almost any shape, it’s cheap to produce and, alarmingly, durable. It lasts for a very, very long time and current estimates suggest 8 million pieces of plastic are entering the oceans every single day. Not only does that cause devastating environmental damage, it’s also entering the human food chain. While public and major supermarkets have been quite slow in reacting to the mountain of plastic waste society creates every day, there are many local stores making it easier to reduce the impact of your grocery shopping. We all should be reducing the amount of plastic travelling through our lives, beyond using that bag-for-life and a decent water bottle. There’s a new breed of wholefood and zero-waste stores springing up, all eager to…

The results of the Friends of the South Downs 2019/20 photography competition have been announced, and it has again offered up a selection of stunning images. The organisation’s core aim is to encourage people to get out into the South Downs National Park. This 1,627km2 area is packed with beauty and tranquillity amongst the huge variety of its landscapes. Judged by Society Trustees, Richard Reed, Andrew Lovett and Caroline Douglas, along with Angela Waters from Midhurst Camera Club, the competition drew a large number of high-quality entries – once again making final decisions very difficult. The competition’s brief was to celebrate the beauty of the SDNP – its landscape, wildlife, buildings and other man-made structures contributing to the area’s cultural heritage. The Friends was founded in 1923 as the Society…

From an early age Luke Bradford has had a burning desire to create films which are evocative and thought-provoking. Over the past 20 years, he’s worked on hundreds of productions in over 30 countries, witnessing some of life’s greatest extremes – while seeing 24 award wins and a further 44 nominations. Now the Brighton-born director/writer’s latest work, White Gold, a dramatic examination of the everyday issues faced by one of Africa’s most vulnerable communities, is enjoying similar widespread acclaim. “The titles of films are always intriguing and have layers of meaning,” he tells me. “What this reflects is how the body parts of people with albinism have become a commodity.” The short centres on an African woman who has had her arm hacked off in the name of witchcraft. Now…

Sometimes you don’t realise what you have until it slips away. Since Arab Strap stopped making music, so many other bands sounded just a little anodyne. Not bad as such, just occasionally a little bland. Vocalist Aidan Moffat and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton formed Arab Strap in 1995. Growing up together in Falkirk, the pair started out musically by sharing their home-recorded tapes with friends. These reflected their environment, bawdy anecdotes and in-jokes, but the tales of sex, death and crushing comedowns attracted attention from legendary Glasgow label, Chemikal Underground. Soon, their debut album, The Week Never Starts Round Here, was delighting listeners everywhere with its startling post-rock dynamics and bittersweet accounts of weekend misadventure. After little more than a decade of reclaiming British rock from a legion of chart-friendly haircut…

For those of you who haven’t listened to Creeping Jean’s music, from the band name alone you could be forgiven for imagining a sound that is quietly tiptoeing out of the shadows. You’d be wrong. With soaring melodies counterbalancing guitar riffs like chainsaws, this band isn’t creeping from the darkness, it’s sprinting towards the light. With the group’s songs being played on stations such as Radio One, 6 Music and Radio X, the band are gaining both momentum and acclaim. Having just finished their first record, Desert Sauce, BN1 spoke to the group’s founding member, Oliver Tooze, about their musical influences, how lockdown affected the recording process, and what fans can look forward to from their debut album. How would you describe the band’s sound? We like to think of…

Amassing more than 170k Instagram followers, the majority of whom have discovered his words of comfort and inspiration during lockdown, Blake Auden has become one of the UK’s most popular ‘social poets’. By sharing his short, yet powerful, ‘micro poetry’ every day, he’s increasing the form’s popularity, and helping others realise the wellbeing value of expression. That we’ve all been living in isolation during the digital age presents a blessing of sorts. “Social media has been somewhat vilified in recent years for the negative impact it can have on our mental health, and often, rightly so,” Auden tells me. “But I feel like the ease of communication afforded by these platforms has really helped many of us cope during the pandemic. Social media has played an important role in keeping…

Everyone knows spring is the best season - the world is turning green and flowery, the birds are starting to sing, it’s warming up, and we still have a whole summer ahead of us to look forward to. It’s a time of hope, and no more so than this year with the loosening of Covid restrictions tentatively round the corner. This time last year, we were all coming up with our own versions of the Quarantini; this year, our spring cocktail sessions can hopefully be a bit less…apocalyptic. Here are some recipes offering something a little bit different to swap your mulled wine for as we enter a new season. Fresh fruit, flowers and fizz feature in these spring twists on some beloved classics. Honey and Rose Margarita • 30ml…

Either our Prime Minister was expertly trolling the UK as he won his Brexit General Election in 2019, or he can’t quite get the lie of the £350m a week Brexit Bus out of his head. In January 2017, Dominic Cummings, Director of Vote Leave, admitted in his article, How the Brexit referendum was won, written for the Spectator, that they played the NHS card with a lie to tilt the EU Referendum result. "Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No.” “WOULD WE HAVE WON WITHOUT £350M/NHS? ALL OUR RESEARCH AND THE CLOSE RESULT STRONGLY SUGGESTS NO.” “I like to paint. Or I make things. I have a thing where I make models of buses. What I make is, I get…

Winston Churchill once said “every garden presents innumerable fascinating problems.” In my experience, chief among those problems (and less fascinating, more bewildering) is how not to immediately kill everything within it. Of course, Churchill also called Gandhi “a bad man and an enemy of the Empire,” so not all his musings were home-runs. My point being, albeit arriving circuitously and with the main goal of showing off that I’ve done some research, that gardening isn’t easy. I am the opposite of green fingered – which I have just learned is known as “brown thumbed,” but as that sounds like a specialist, altogether more post-watershed article, I’ll just say I kill plants. So, who better to write an article giving simple tips on how to bring your garden to life this…

SECRET MAGIC CONTROL AGENCY Thurs 25 March // Netflix Brightly coloured fun for all the family comes in the form of a much-loved fairy tale being adapted for the streaming age. Gretel is an agent with the top-secret Department of Magical Security, assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the King. While the case is already beset by problems, she gets lumbered with her brother, Hansel, as a partner - a notorious fraudster who risks casting shame on her impeccable reputation. Yet there’s a strong chance his trickery and insight will hold the key to locating the missing monarch. So, they venture forth, uncovering the eerie secrets of the magical world, fighting the forces of evil and challenging a powerful Witch, in this humorous animated film. THE FALCON AND THE…