Reviewed by Guy Sangster Adams

Through a rainy and misty dusk on London’s Westminster Bridge, the lamplight reflecting on the tarmac between the cars, black cabs, and Routemaster buses, the unmistakeable silhouette of the Houses of Parliament looms majestically over the traffic. It might be the past, the present, or times still to come, but it is unmistakeably and evocatively London, whether viewed from the city’s streets or internationally. Over this image on the back cover of the 72 page booklet accompanying this excellent Madness anthology floats the track listing spanning 30 years and beyond…

All aboard for a guided tour of Madness across three CDs and one DVD, 94 tracks, including singles, from 1979’s The Prince/Madness to 2011’s Le Grand Pantalon (released on CD for the first time), favourite tracks from their nine studio albums, from 1979’s One Step Beyond… to 2009’s The Liberty of Norton Folgate, and the first DVD release of the band’s performance at their inaugural Madstock festival in London’s Finsbury Park in 1992.

Madness One Step Beyond ©Cameron McVey

To accompany this journey the back cover of the booklet unfolds through fantastic 1940s/50s Boys Own style illustrations of derring-do and suspicious goings-on in and around the capital’s bombed out streets and docks to reveal a ‘Sightseers’ Map of Madness’ with locations of import to the band highlighted by a pointing finger and a red dot. Although ostensibly ‘Madworld’, it is explained, is located within “a short stroll from Camden Town”, over the last three decades Madness have become a cipher for the capital as whole.

“We are London…” is the announcement with which the map’s legend begins, which is exactly who Madness are, unmistakably, evocatively and majestically. Listening to the tracks chosen for this anthology, none of which have been diminished by the passing years, it is clear that like the silhouette of the Houses of Parliament, Madness now instantly encapsulate London historical, London contemporary, London timeless. But although the majority of the songs may be London rooted, such is the strength of the songwriting, the storytelling, the shared experience of characters and situations, and the accessibility and irresistible panache of their presentation that they are and have become universal.

Madness ©Michael Putland/Getty Images

The joy of A Guided Tour of Madness is that one can plot one’s own route through the anthology: take the complete, chronological journey from start to finish, start in the era of the band’s work with which one is most familiar or indeed unfamiliar, or hop on and off along the way and see what one discovers. Either way it’s accompanied by a rush of emotions. With so many landmark songs and a career spanning so many years, the words and music are entwined, consciously or unconsciously, with so many stages in one’s own life instantly evoking, with a welter of back of the neck tingles, associations with people and places.

But their power is not purely nostalgic, in listening to the earlier songs again, in many instances for me they appear to have gained extra layers of resonance in the intervening years that I had been oblivious to before. A primary example being Michael Caine, which I realised I had rather dismissed at the time as being more of a ‘novelty’ song, but have completely rediscovered it now in all its perfectly paced and placed sonic and lyrical splendour. Madness’s acute talent for combining the seemingly contradictory elements of humour and poignancy, melancholy and joie de vivre, the wonderfully observed day-to-day with an equally insightfully created surreality, are all to the fore in the song which, depending on your point of view, could be the simple love of a fan for a star, or a far more sinister stalking confession, a cautionary tale of a celebrity being consumed by his public persona, the lost script of a Harry Palmer film… or all those at the same time and more!

The enduring strength of the songs allied to the degree to which they have entered the vernacular was underlined last year by the reworking of two tracks for television advertisements. Virgin Media’s campaign, More Exciting Place to Live, used the lyrics of Our House narrated over the music of Dan Black’s HYPNTZ, whilst as part of Kronenbourg 1664’s Slow the Pace advertising campaign, Madness themselves rearranged Baggy Trousers, slowing the song right down to create the highly reflective and Francophile, Le Grand Pantalon. The track closes the anthology’s chronological journey in wonderfully surreal style, as though the life of Madness has been reimagined by Amelie director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, raising a glass of cognac and, as the repeated vocal refrain of Le Grand Pantalon has it, “baggy trousers to the days/To the days/To the days…”

A glass of cognac, and indeed any baggy trousers, should also be raised to Salvo because A Guided Tour of Madness continues their fantastic catalogue of box sets, put together with fantastic and celebratory creativity, insight, and passion. Each part of the concept for the Madness anthology works wonderfully well from the track selection, to the booklet which also includes an essay by Paul Morley, new interviews with the band and key personnel, and a reproduction of the first issue of the Nutty Boys Comic (1981), to the overall look and feel of the packaging… a wonderful celebration of the days: past, present, and still to come.

Links:
Madness:
blog.madness.co.uk
www.myspace.com/madnessofficial

Salvo: www.salvo-music.co.uk
Union Square: www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk

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(Avon) Paperback: £6.99; ebook: £4.49

Reviewed by Dave Collins

Taking the codes and conventions of classic ghost stories and positioning them within a contemporary setting, Syd Moore’s debut novel, The Drowning Pool, is literally a tale of two dimensions. Sarah Grey, a young widowed mother, appears to be receiving signs, visions and visitations from the spirit of a long dead, although still unsettled, 19^th century sea witch, also named Sarah Grey. But is it stress, illness or something genuinely supernatural that’s behind the hauntings?

The novel’s threads of historical wrong doings and teaser glimpses of horrors-to-follow have the long shadows of H. P. Lovecraft cast across them, while the serial style chapter closers draw on Charles Dickens and Bram Stoker, with the veil of local myths and mysteries stirring memories of Thomas  Hardy and The Withered Arm.

Bringing us into the present day, Sarah Gray and her network of female friends and family are a compact circle of extended sisterhood - almost an allusion to unwritten coven bonds for modern times - reclaiming the ‘Essex Girl’ image as an East Anglian archetype rather than a tangerine-tinted stereotype.

Taking its base, build and background from the area’s tradition of witchcraft, witch hunters and cunning men, keeps the fantasy rooted in reality but also brings a fresh perspective to the sexual politics of ‘Witchfinder General’, Matthew Hopkins’ 17^th century hate crusades - particularly in Essex.

Like Hardy’s studies and sketches of ‘Wessex’, the book’s topographical map is also Syd Moore’s home town, Leigh on Sea, a Thames-side fishing village terraced between its neighbours, Hadleigh and Southend-on-Sea. If you are a Southender (or familiar with the area) you’ll click and connect with the micro-local references immediately. If not, you’ll want to visit and root around the town ticking off The Drowning Pool locations: Old Leigh, the Library Gardens, or St Peter’s Church, looking for sword marks on the Mary Ellis grave (yes, they really are there) and similar historical reminders of a hidden past.

One of the most accomplished debut novels I’ve read, The Drowning Pool’s now-wave narrative, historical story arcs and subtext of gender politics through the ages presents a fully formed, confidently voiced entrance into the world of fiction of any genre. With none of the style finding Bambi-steps and plot-wobbles that usually dilute the early works of established authors. It is a pitch-perfect read for a wild, wind-whipped, wintry evening. A black Jackanory, that at its ghostliest moments will trace a line of grave-cold fingernails down your spine, and one of the few books-at-bedtime that has genuinely given me a fidgety night’s sleep.

Tuesday 6^th December 2011: Syd Moore will be in conversation with Dave Collins on the Radio Podrophenia programme on Chance Radio (www.chanceradio.com).
Listen live from 9pm or catch up with the programme after broadcast on iTunes.

In addition to being a regular contributor to both the webzine and print editions of Plectrum-The Cultural Pick, Dave Collins is editor of the blog, Planet Mondo, and also presents the programme, Radio Podrophenia, with co-host, Piley, on Chance Radio every Tuesday from 9pm. Following the live broadcast each episode of Radio Podrophenia is available on iTunes (search under, ‘Podrophenia’).

Links:

Avon is an imprint of Harper Collins:  www.harpercollins.co.uk

Chance Radio: www.chanceradio.com

Radio Podrophenia: www.facebook.com/Podrophonia.co.uk

Planet Mondo:  planetmondo.blogspot.com

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Jenne Lombardo

By Guy Sangster Adams

Fashion Next, W Hotel’s programme in support of rising designers, is now in its third season and as it goes international for the first time, from New York, to London, to Moscow, and Bangkok, W Hotels have appointed Jenne Lombardo to be their global fashion director. For her inaugural Fashion Next in New York launched in early September 2011 Lombardo, whose career includes being director and curator of the MAC & Milk, and the founder of The Terminal Presents, chose designers Juan Carlos Obando, Nomia, Bibhu Mohapatra, Michael Angel, Rochambeau, and Electric Feathers.

Marios Schwab

In London she collaborated with designer Marios Schwab to create a documentary short, W Hotels Presents London Fashion Next?, which launched during London Fashion Week in late September. In providing a celebratory snapshot of London creativity, the film poses the question, What is new and next in London fashion? Lombardo, Schwab, and Schwab’s stylist, Katy England, respond to the question, alongside three of London’s emerging talents as picked by Lombardo and Schwab: Craig Lawrence, Fleet Ilya and Jordan Askill.

Katy England and Marios Schwab

“I have long been a fan of Marios Schwab and am thrilled to be collaborating with him on what’s new and next in London Fashion,” says Lombardo, “Marios has brought his sophisticated style and an international dimension to W Hotels’ Fashion Next programme.” Whilst Schwab says, “I share W Hotels passion for fashion and have enjoyed working with them to support emerging designers in London. W Hotels offer young talent a global platform to showcase their collections to guests and customers alike.”

The documentary may be watched or downloaded for free at: http://starwoodpromos.com/whotelsfashion/gallery

For the next stage of Fashion Next, which launches in October 2011 during Moscow Fashion Week, Lombardo has worked with the Russian Fashion Insider, Vika Gazinskaya, and their  upcoming Russian Fashion Next talents, Anna Miminoshvili and Alexander Terekhov.

Links
W Hotels: www.starwoodhotels.com/whotels

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(Ghost Arc Records) On release
Reviewed by Dave Collins

Warmed only by a Motown backbeat and some woolly fuzzed-up guitar Dirty Lakes, the latest transmission from Tynesiders Let’s Buy Happiness is fitted around the neat, clean lines of a Scandinavian design school with a hand-stitched folk-art finish. It’s entirely the style of a midnight lullaby that’s a ready-to-run storyboard for an animated Eastern European short film. The delicately textured ghostly guitar washes from James Hall/Graeme Martin and Sarah Hall’s pixie-voiced skipping gives Dirty Lakes the close-mic’d intimacy of a fireside confessional from Kate Bush’s pen pal.

Links
Let’s Buy Happiness:  letsbuyhappiness.com

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(Decode) On release

Reviewed by Guy Sangster Adams

The revolving opening rhythms that draw one into the ‘original mix’ of the highly atmospheric Turn 2 Dust suggest a police helicopter hovering above city streets; the sound of spinning rotor blades overhead make one wary on even the most familiar streets, bring an edginess to the happiest evening out, as all too often one can only hear the sound, and see neither the helicopter, nor what it can see, perhaps just around the next corner.

Emotionally and politically charged, Turn 2 Dust, which has now been released in a nine track remix package (including mixes by David Jones, Bootik, and a great ‘lovebox’ mix by Kris de Angelis and Sam H), is the second single from Ordinary Alien - The Kinky Roland Files, Boy George’s first artist album in nine years, on which it is the opening and particularly stand out track. Beginning with the homophobic pejorative, “Chi Chi man everywhere you turn”, the song is an exhortation to remain strong and proud in the face of growing intolerance and hate crimes directed not only towards gay men and women, but towards anyone who is different, or stands out from the crowd.

Within weeks of Turn 2 Dust’s first appearance, with the release of Ordinary Alien in March, the song’s message was brought even closer to home for Boy George, after one of his oldest friends, Philip Sallon, the always flamboyantly dressed, 59 year old, gay socialite and club host, who founded the Mud Club in the 1980s, was left unconscious, with a fractured skull, and many broken bones, after being attacked in London’s Soho; streets with which he is very familiar and on which he has been a familiar figure for over 40 years. Speaking after the attack, for which no one has yet been arrested, Boy George said, “It’s hard to say and you don’t want to jump to conclusions, but it must have been something to do with the way he looked.”

Listening to Turn 2 Dust on the back of August’s riots in London and other English cities, watching footage, much shot from helicopters overhead, of violence and flames, familiar streets made unfamiliar in an instant, brings another layer to the song.

Portentous and powerful, lyrically and musically Turn 2 Dust is an highly evocative collage of urban life: edgy dance beats give way to the sweet release of floating melodies, one both relaxes into the moment and stays watchful, not knowing what might be around the next corner, pleasure and pain are co-existent on these city streets. Turn 2 Dust is a great return for Boy George, that both channels resonances of all that has gone before, whist also resolutely setting off in a fascinating new direction.

We would all be the poorer if everyone was the same. Long may he continue to celebrate difference.

Links:
Boy George: www.boygeorgeuk.com
Decode Records: mn2s.com

Further reading:
Recent music reviews in Plectrum - The Cultural Pick
Miracle Worker - Superheavy (Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart, Joss Stone, Damian Marley, A.R. Rahman)
Elephant Room - Channel Cairo
Different Story - Wolfette

Or click on the tag Music Reviews to browse all the music reviews in the webzine edition of Plectrum - The Cultural Pick

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(Universal Music) On release

Reviewed by Dave Collins

How do fidgety rock stars busy themselves during their downtime? By forming a supergroup with similarly loose-ended friends. SuperHeavy is a tag-team which at its heaviest-hitting end stars Mick Jagger, Dave Stewart and Joss Stone. Buffed up with international swish from Damian Marley and A.R. Rahman (composer of the Slumdog Millionaire and 127 Hours soundtracks).

It’s a collective whose debut single dips a toe into the shallows of extra strength reggae. The ‘extra’ being soul vocals with rock guitar. However - music that may pump with muscular dub ‘n’ thump during a high end studio playback, can, on standard issue home audio sound, well, overcooked and/or sterile.

Certainly there’s enough ’song’ and substance buried under the gloss, but an over polished production positions Miracle Worker at the wrong end of the reggae spectrum, leaving the backing track uncomfortably close to the white bread dynamics of UB40.

The irony here is SuperHeavy aren’t actually heavy enough. The single lacks the thick rhythmic fug and touches of Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One output or some dubbier dynamics. Hinting-at, but never quite hitting the genre’s heady textures.

As a song it’s a fine enough piece of pop built on a solid body of workable raw material and nippy top lines. As a production it’s in need of a snappier remix. To these ears, SuperHeavy should tighten up the loose Lovers Rock grooves and let Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry loose on the tune to wing in some vintage grit, shuffle and skank.

Dave Collins is editor of Planet Mondo and a regular contributor to Plectrum - The Cultural Pick

Links:
Superheavy: www.superheavy.com
Planet Mondo: planetmondo.blogspot.com
Universal Music: www.universalmusic.com

Further reading
Recent music reviews in Plectrum - The Cultural Pick:
Turn 2 Dust - Boy George
Elephant Room - Channel Cairo
Different Story - Wolfette

Or click on the tag Music Reviews to browse all the music reviews in the webzine edition of Plectrum - The Cultural Pick

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(Beautiful Books) Hardback £15.99; ebook £12.99

Reviewed by Guy Sangster Adams

At first one is struck by the sheer beauty of the words. Words that combine poetically and often with seemingly abstract imagery into sentences that feel like the most delicate threads that should be reread and savoured for their own protection. The story seems secondary to the desire to maintain the feeling they engender, but the only way to do that is to keep reading. In so doing, one is almost unaware of the degree to which one is being drawn into the narrative, so gently and sensuously do the sentences envelop one.

However, when tragedy befalls the characters half way through the book, following the anger one feels with Simon Van Booy for not only turning the lives of Rebecca, George, and Henry upside down, but also one’s own, realisation dawns as one picks up the book thrown to one side in an effort to break the skein in which he has enmeshed you, that he has you well and truly caught on the hook at the end of those threads. The desire to keep reading is underscored by the fear of how it would feel to go cold turkey at that point such is one’s addiction to the book. Thankfully, although sadness does remain, as the second half of the story unfolds, hope is restored so fully to both the characters and the reader, that like them one does feel better equipped to embrace the future.

Haunted by events in their childhoods, the three lost and lonely protagonists have come to Athens, Greece, from three different countries and ostensibly with three different intentions: French artist, Rebecca, to paint, American expert in ancient languages, George, to translate, and English archaeologist, Henry, to dig. As their lives intertwine, their love for, and dependency upon each other grows, and in the streets of modern Athens and amidst the ruins of Ancient Greece, to further that love they begin to excavate and make sense of their own pasts, ultimately creating the means for independence and redemption.

Van Booy’s debut novel wonderfully and exhilaratingly compounds the promise, talent, and acclaim inherent in his two collections of short stories, Love Begins in Winter (Beautiful Books, 2009), which won the 2009 Frank O’ Connor Short Story Award, and The Secret Lives of People in Love (Beautiful Books, 2010). Beautiful, innovative, devastating, delightful, Everything Beautiful Began After is everything and more.

Links:
Simon Van Booy: www.simonvanbooy.com

Beautiful Books: www.beautiful-books.co.uk

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(Laissez Faire Club Records) Released 29^th August 2011

Reviewed by Guy Sangster Adams

Opening floatingly with a piano like sunlight crested waves, and harmonies that gently build the swell, the debut single by Channel Cairo, Elephant Room, quickly becomes a bracing walk along the beach of a seaside town, as layers of fascinating and atmospheric refrains, vocals, piano, guitars, and rhythms, fleetingly and enticingly reach one on the ebb and flow. Or perhaps the allusion is to AM radio waves and the fluctuations of reception and interference, creating a sonic collage. Either way, as all the disparate threads evocatively coalesce with complete and rousing clarity for the song’s epic, climactic crescendo, one is already hooked and on the strength of this refreshingly original single determined to stay tuned to Channel Cairo.

The intriguing multi-layering also extends to the band’s name and, in its evocative combination of kidnapping and hieroglyphs, brings an extra suggestion of a thriller or film noir title. Cairo is a city that has haunted lead singer and keyboard player, Josh Bowyer, since he was kidnapped there, albeit very briefly, at the age of nine. But it was only when he put together the band with old friends Hamish Murtagh (guitar), Joe Cross (bass), James Gardiner (drums), that he discovered that Gardiner’s great, great grandfather was the preeminent early - mid twentieth century Egyptologist, Sir Alan Gardiner, who in 1927 published the important work, Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hieroglyphs. Whilst ‘channel’ is a reference to the Anglo-French line-up of the band, as a few weeks after the old friends got together they met a French guitarist, Luke Saunders, at an open-mic night and asked him to join the line-up.

The cover of the single includes the imprint of a letter written by Howard Carter to Sir Alan Gardiner, discussing the former’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt. But don’t wait for the sands of time to settle before you unearth Channel Cairo… discover them now with this excellent debut single.

Links:
Channel Cairo:  www.channelcairo.com

Laissez Faire Club Records: laissezfaireclub.com

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Reviewed by Sam Burcher

Simon Astaire ©Simon Astaire

Simon Astaire’s loosely woven trilogy of novels is an attempt to free himself from his past and become a respected writer. No longer content to manage the lives of other people, he has come a long way from being the best friend of Sting, the squire of Tara Palmer-Tomkinson and Ulrika Jonsson, and the personal manager of Princess Michael of Kent.

By his own admission, Astaire began writing because his therapist suggested it after they hit upon the fact that he had been so emotionally unavailable in his relationships. This is something that he relates directly to the experience of being sent away from home at a very young age to Harrow School.

The first two books, Private Privilege, And You Are…?, are his rites of passage, whilst Mr Coles is an extension of that exploration and written with extraordinary darkness.

In Private Privilege, Astaire’s alma mater is thinly veiled as Montgomery House, and it is through this medium that I found myself vicariously returning to a world of Sunday exeats, black tails and boaters, and bumpy rides on the Metropolitan line to Harrow-on-the-Hill, on London’s outermost margins, for Speech Day.

Reading this book has helped me to understand what happened to my brother Julien during his time at Harrow, which was concurrent with the story told here.  Astaire’s peripatetic take has undoubtedly demystified some of my private perceptions of public school education.

The books central character Samuel Alexander, note the initials match the author’s, is sent away from home at 13 to begin a life at Montgomery House. From day one he is greeted with an oppressive regime of fagging, toshing, and bullying by older boys as the norm. Calculated acts of rebellion such as graffiti, theft, truancy, and drug taking intensify to arson and even suicide, all of which are hushed up by the school.

In empowering Sam in whichever ways he can against this dysfunctional backdrop, Astaire is giving a respectful nod to Lindsay Anderson’s powerful film, If, which is about a schoolboy lead revolution in a public school. From this forms surreal images of the shape shifting and shamanic psyche of a schoolboy torn from his roots and situated in a conditional culture where loneliness and abandonment reign and, fortunately, Matron is the only succor.

The task of raising public consciousness about the sticky subject of adolescent boys from an insider’s view of an ‘establishment’ institution is a tricky one. But the author manages it by using a literary camera obscura that allows him to entertain, whilst asking questions that go beyond mere survival.

Astaire’s second novel, And You Are…?, follows seamlessly and swiftly on the heels of Private Privilege. Sam, the central character, has graduated with dishonour from his emotionally deprived public school, and is ready and willing to face the challenges of young adulthood.

A former agent to stars, Astaire draws deeply on his own experience of Hollywood to entertain us.  He cleverly plays with time to measure just the right amount of reverie for the grand days of a Hollywood past to balance the book’s present.  Indeed, this mix of fact and fiction acts as a powerful stimulus to the reader’s imagination.

There are plenty of laughs, as well as an eclectic coterie of friends, acquaintances, a snake and Telly Savalas. On the other hand, the emotional darkness of the first novel remains. Only this time, the grief of a boy’s separation from everything that is familiar to him is disguised as the death of his older brother.  His grief finds company with the lonely Hollywood actors, who despite their fame, drink alone at the bar.  Perhaps no one is as lonely as the stars.

The second novel demands a second love affair, which comes in the form of the free-spirited February, who is the conduit for the author’s detailed and sensuous descriptions of nature.  She is the muse guiding the juxtaposition between the smog on the Scaletrix streets of Los Angeles and the scented forests high above the Hollywood hills. Such attention to the natural world would make the Pre-Raphaelites proud.

As I read this book one afternoon at Kentish Town station, I couldn’t help but notice a railway worker flapping a pretty grey and white pigeon off the opposite platform. After much wafting with the lid of a large cardboard box she succeeded.  I had just got to the part in the book where Sam is imagining his own death during lovemaking with his first love. I was reading about death, thinking about death and suddenly death was imminent. I looked up from my reading.

A shrill whistle meant that the worker had not finished tormenting the pigeon, which was now perched upon the track.  Its body convulsed with the electric current as the 18.30 to St Albans collided into it.  In one motion, the bird fell to its own little death and as the train departed there was no sign of it. I dared to believe that the pigeon had flown away like an angel, or a Magi. Then, from beyond the track, I saw a white wing rise once, twice, and then no more.  A railway worker looking on flashed me a cynical smile as he made towards the opposite platform with a pair of plastic litter pickers at the ready.

This book has strange ways of connecting with the reader through different mediums. As with the previous novel, music is used as a channel. So too is food, place and smell.  But it is the celebration and the tribulations of youth in search of identity that connect you to its core. Ultimately, Sam’s story is about the ambitions, with sensitive limits, of a boy who will not be broken by systems that don’t always care, be it the public school system, or Hollywood.

Mr Coles is Astaire’s third novel, published this year.  It picks up the theme of private school, this time from the perspective of a teacher in a boys’ prep school in Norfolk.  But this is no ordinary teacher; this is Mr Coles, pederast and fantasist. Written in the first person narrative it takes the reader intimately into the lurid depths of the daily machinations of an alcoholic child sexual abuser.

Lyrically beautiful, tighter and more multi-textural than the previous two novels, it is a compelling read rather than a comfortable one.  A book of two halves, we fast forward twenty years after Mr Coles has tricked the family of his most desired pupil into being invited to their summer retreat in Cannes, and is eventually found out. But who tells?

Comparisons can be made to Thomas Mann’s novella and film, Death in Venice.  However, Mr Coles is not merely a voyeur.  His sweaty desires are actualized and when not in the act, he is a lone predator prowling the dormitories sniffing the sheets of little boys.

The three novels demonstrate just how successful Astaire has been in his stated mission. All three books have enjoyed critical and commercial success. Private Privilege is a bestseller and Astaire has recently adapted Mr Coles into a screenplay for a film which begins shooting in Norfolk, in the East of England, early next year. He has also received a lot of feedback from Old Harrovians who similarly found it hard to commit to a relationship or communicate with their partners. Although equally, he has also heard from those who said their time at Harrow was very happy and the best start to life they could have had.

Links
Quartet Books: www.quartetbooks.co.uk

Sam Burcher: www.samburcher.com

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Savile Row ©Richard Ryan

By Guy Sangster Adams

In Richard Ryan’s four pop art visions of the streets of London, reality coalesces with the fantastical and romanticised, as emblematic pageantry, the iconic red profusion of buses, telephone boxes, and pillar boxes, youth culture, graffiti art, and a menagerie of animals evoking Britain’s classic children literature from Lewis Carroll, to Beatrix Potter, Roald Dahl, and Dodie Smith, run wild in a predominant palette of bright reds, blues, and yellows, across halftone urban vistas.

Thus on the corner of Savile Row, the street in London’s Mayfair internationally famous for the finest bespoke tailoring, stands a top-hatted androgynous dandy, in the lea of a trio of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s classic telephone boxes and an unfurled Union Jack umbrella, paid homage to by a proliferation of Peter rabbits and Benjamin bunnies. Whilst across town, in the little known but evocatively named, London Street, close to Paddington Station, a debutante in a voluminous Union Jack ball gown, escorted by two of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, makes stately progress along the down-at-heel street, past the graffiti and stencil art—including a hot pink Winston Churchill with a Tommy Gun—daubed riveted steel of the railway bridge parapet.

London Street ©Richard Ryan

Outside Victoria Station, a boots and braces Skinhead stalks away from a woman wearing a British policeman’s helmet, reimagined in Houndstooth check, a belted yellow Macintosh, and a parrot on her shoulder. Then, to the fore of the Houses of Parliament, a bullet belted woman on a Mod Union Jack scooter trails three Fantastic Mr Foxes on Punk collars in one hand and three Burberry shopping bags in the other, as a bowler hatted City gent walks away toward Big Ben.

London Victoria Station ©Richard Ryan

Born in Santiago, Chile, Richard Ryan began working as a photographer in Stockholm, Sweden, where he continues to live and work. With a long held passion for mixed-media prints, he quickly developed a way to combine his photography with graphic and fine art techniques to create images suitable for creating silkscreen prints. He created his first portfolio of prints, Homage á Warhol, in 2005, followed by The Manhattan Art Portfolio (2007), Homage á Klein (2009), Stamp On (2010), Nikki Beach Edition (2011).

Parliament ©Richard Ryan

For the London portfolio he utilised not only photographs that he had taken, such as the woman in the Victoria Station print, which originated as a shot he took of a Swedish fashionista on her lunch break, but also archive images and scrapbook items. Whilst, intriguingly, his model for the woman on the scooter in the Houses of Parliament print is French actress, Audrey Tautou; a reference, he explains to the Entente Cordiale. Joie de vivre certainly abounds in the four prints, and in exploring the multiple layers of the London’s culture ‘from afar’, and in collaging and paring down styles, moments, history, and signifiers he gets under the skin of the city in a fun, fascinating, immediate and celebratory way.

The London prints measure 480×624mm and are in a limited edition of 350. Each print is numbered and signed by the artist, and cost £400 each or £1200 for the whole portfolio, and are available from www.artnowfactory.se

Links:
Art Now Factory:  www.artnowfactory.se

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