1. Art and Diseño

local musicians
local musicians
..........................................
..........................................
ATheCurious
Life
Levellers are back
Ben Bailey rounds up the Brighton music scene
THE SPOKEN HERD
The Levellers are back on tour this month with
an acoustic show at the De La Warr Pavilion in
Bexhill alongside a screening of A Curious Life – a
Photo by Judith Burrows
new music doc about the band’s early years made by
Chumbawamba’s Dunstan Bruce. We chatted to artist, archivist and whisky-loving bass player Jeremy
Cunningham (pictured, with dreads).
Does it still surprise you how popular The Levellers became? Kind of. But we’re a shit-hot band!
Did you ever think you’d be doing a seated
missing out on our rise and that it had nothing to
acoustic gig at an art deco theatre in Bexhill?
do with them. The left wing/anarchist squat scene
No, but it sounds interesting. My dad was a biker
we came from was completely alien to them. And
back in the day – did the Isle of Man TT race. And
I think most of them genuinely just didn’t like our
he used to ride the murder mile or some such by
music. Or us, particularly. Which is fair enough. It
Bexhill. So I know the name, though I’ve never
was their personal attacks and piss-taking of our
been there.
fans that really upset us.
You seem to be very much the focus of the film.
Is it weird watching back the early years of the
Isn’t it unusual for a bass player to get so much
band? It was great watching the early stuff. We
attention? How did it all come about? It was
had no idea some of that had been filmed. Obvi-
Dunstan’s idea. It’s his baby. We took him on the
ously you see me tracking down the footage from
Our Forgotten Towns tour of out-of-the-way places
Glastonbury ’92 in the film but the earlier stuff
back in 2010 to do a daily video blog. That worked
from ’88 was shot by mates of ours for their art col-
so well I think he pitched the idea of the film after
lege projects. We had to go to Australia to get some
that. I seemed the most comfortable in front of the
of that! It’s all going on the extras of the Curious Life
camera on that blog and don’t have any family com-
DVD.
mitments like the others, so they reckoned I should
What was Brighton like when the band started?
do it. Half of them hate being filmed anyway. As for
Brighton was a lot rougher and shabbier in the 80s.
bass players getting attention... Not all bass players
But there’s still a lot of alternative types here and
are made equal. Haha!
unusual characters. I love it! I’m not sure when we’ll
How much were The Levellers’ spats with the
be coming back but we almost certainly will at some
music press to do with the band’s politics? Well,
point. Interview by Ben Bailey
they hadn’t really heard of us ‘til we were playing
The Levellers play an acoustic show with a film
700-1000 cap venues and then they felt foolish for
screening at De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sat 28.
....
42....
Thurs 12, Komedia, 8pm, £5/3
Throw a dozen
musicians into
the ring with two
of Brighton’s top
MCs and sprinkle
with audience
suggestions. The
result is a washingmachine jumble of
genres, ideas and on-your-toes freestyling. Promising improvised film narrations and choose-yourown-adventure lyrical games, The Spoken Herd
take up their residency at Komedia this month
after similar stints at The Bee’s Mouth and Fortune of War. Led by Brighton rappers-about-town
Gramski and John Clark, the band brings the spirit
of hip hop ciphers to bear on the world of comedy
crowd participation, all wrapped up in eccentric
wordplay. It feels like anything can happen and if it
does it will probably rhyme.
BREATHE PANEL
Tues 13, The Hope, 8pm, £5
They only formed in August but Breathe Panel
have already had a song featured on a Beech Coma
compilation, been used in an Urban Outfitters
advert and reviewed in the NME. The track in
question, On My Way, is two-and-a-half minutes
of shimmery dream pop with an old-school indie
sheen and hints of bands like Deerhunter and Real
Estate. It’s also their only song, it seems. Curiously,
of the three gigs Breathe Panel have played, their
first was also at The Hope, one was in a WW2
bunker and the other was at Vice magazine’s
notorious Shoreditch HQ, The Old Blue Last.
Breakthrough talent or hipster hype? You decide!
....
THE ACADEMY OF SUN
Thurs 19, The Old Market, 8pm, £8
Garnering praise from artist-musician Meredith
Monk must have been encouraging for Nick
Hudson, the singer and pianist behind The
Academy Of Sun. Arguably a cross between an
avant-garde composer and a somewhat ambitious pop performer, this long-time Brighton
musician is just as likely to give us an extended
set of orchestral drones as he is to break out into
psychedelic rock or bring it down for a lyrically
mischievous piano ballad. The support is equally
diverse: a shoegaze space opera based on the myth
of Persephone from LA artist Carisa Bianca Mellado, and Thomas White’s new 10-piece jazz rock
project, Fiction Isle.
REMI MILES
Sun 22, Prince Albert, 8pm, £5
The Virginia-born
singer has been
knocking around
Brighton for a
while, but his recent
support slot for
The Ting Tings
saw him reinvented
as a suave and
suited pop star in
the making. While his previous output may have
been purged from the web in a Soviet-style PR
move, what remains is a fine piece of breezy soul
pop with a ‘Beat It’ bassline and a Duran Duran
groove. Written in 15 minutes after a night out
on the town, ‘I Want You’ comes with a vintage
video montage of what Brighton might look like if
it was full of 60s beatniks and 20s flappers roaring
around in sports cars. Squint and it could be real.
43....