music

When I first read the news that London's Medicine Bar was about to undergo an expensive refit to emerge as new rebranded London nightspot East Village, I was dubious to say the least.

As the name might suggest, the inspiration for London's newest venue is New York's East Village area, which as a concept for a London-based nightspot seems bizarre - and ever so slightly theme pub-esque. Surely you are never going to create the stuff of new London musical legend by alluding to another city's nightlife, particularly when that city is famous for its lack of places to go dancing!

And with elder statesman of house Stuart Patterson at the helm, I could only envisage line-ups of a slightly too old school and dad-friendly nature. "The vibe will be quality house music all the way," the club's promotional materials ominously proclaim.

And lo and behold, we do indeed find names like Rocky, Clive Henry and Gilles Peterson peppered throughout the club's recently unveiled listings. Although I suppose the old-timers do need somewhere to go now that Turnmills and the Kings Cross complex of clubs have vanished from the clubbing map...

But in all fairness, I did find the odd morsel amongst the listings which might tempt me through the door: Andrew Weatherall may not exactly be the cutting edge of new music, but he will be unleashing his superior taste on East Village on Friday 14th March. Meanwhile, the Warm agency's bi-monthly residency looks very promising indeed, hosting Chateau Flight's first UK live show and Swiss techno maniac Deetron on March 22nd, whilst the DFA-centric line-up of Tim Goldsworthy and Tim Sweeney on May 24th certainly reads like something of a coup for the new venue.

East Village claims to be plugging a much-needed gap in the East London clubbing market for small venues with great soundsystems, a point which I have yet to be convinced on. But if you want to put that theory to the test yourself, a rather unfriendly sounding door picker does promise to keep out the suit-wearing city-boy locals, just in case you simply can't bear to drink in the same place as anyone less cool than yourself...

books

After decades teaching the nation how to cook, first lady of Norfolk Delia Smith seemed to be heading into a very comfortable retirement focused far more on football than flour. In the new millenium the modern breed of celebrity chef which has stepped up cuts an altogether more dashing figure next to Delia's rather worthy home economics textbooks for grown-ups. But who could have predicted what a can of worms (or tinned mince, to be precise) Delia would open up with her recent return to the cookery writing fray? read more...

music

The twin stars of electronica and art rock move into alignment this Friday 15th February to mark the onset of An Electric Storm, an unlikely but rather pleasing meeting of the minds at Elephant & Castle's Corsica Studios.

The now Chris-less Clark will be back on home turf and turning dragon for the evening: I am expecting a po-faced set of joyless, ugly hard techno aimed squarely at the males in the room, in-keeping with his most unwelcoming new album, but don't let that put you off...

Hopefully the pair of Berliners flown in for support should make up for the testosterone-fest. Khan last year pulled on a pair of rabbit ears and stepped up to the mic for latest album Who Never Rests, which receives a further flogging tonight; 2001's Say Goodbye with inimitable long-term collaborator Julee Cruise meanwhile remains a true blue anthem round these parts to this day. Hoary old Disko B rocker Electronicat will also be dropping by to peddle last year's Chez Toi album.

Throw in Minima's live band soundtrack accompaniment to the screening of the Cabinet of Dr Caligari, the Noise of Art crew's own audio-visual soundclash, and an extremely promising sounding absinthe den hosted by UK ambassadors for Krautrock the Kosmische DJs, and all in all you've got a perfectly valid way to spend your Friday evening.

Oh, and if you do happen to be in the neighbourhood, pop by the Corsica Studios again on March 12th for another evening in the company of the Kosmische DJs, joined this time by the fuzzy psychedelics of the legendary Silver Apples. Or else stay at home on a Friday night and catch the rather inconveniently timed Kosmische DJs radio show between 22.30 and 23.30 on the incomparable Resonance FM.

music

It is the end of an era: Scala stalwart club night Popstarz is currently gearing up for the big move to new home Sin on Charing Cross Road, where normal service will resume on February 8th. The countdown clock currently shows just three more chances to relive all of your Scala memories before the dawn of a new age of Popstarz in the West End.

London's biggest gay alternative night is now over a decade old, working through a variety of venues before eventually settling into the Scala to serve up a weekly three room blend of indie, credible pop and classic disco. The move to the gothic ballroom of the Sin venue coincides with a subtle rebrand of the music policy, with the launch of a new electro room in a nod to new rave "fever", featuring DJs from The Cock and Frat Party nights at Popstarz sister venue Ghetto (also home to the infamous Nag Nag Nag) just down the road in Soho.

Popstarz' January closing down sale kicks off on Friday 11th January, where everything must go as the organisers clear out their store cupboard and offer the contents up for free on the night: DVD players, MP3 players, cameras, CD players, CDs, and all of the assorted promotional ephemera donated by guesting bands over the years. You can even get in for free before 11pm if you print out a copy of the flyer from the website, and you can't say fairer than that.

With bounty suitably offloaded, that just leaves the penultimate and last Popstarz nights at the Scala on January 18th and 25th before the bell tolls. Then on February 1st you will have to find somewhere else to go for the night, as the promoters take a well-earned holiday before reconvening at Sin for the all systems go February 8th relaunch.

music

We all love the smell of free music in the morning. But preferably free music that someone else has already had to pay for somewhere along the way. Like the never-ending sale, music which has always been available for free just doesn't seem worth the bandwidth it is downloaded on... read more...

style

Some valiant attempts have been made by Ebay sellers to flog their own handmade wares (the knitted food search has proved particularly fruitful in this respect). But since the Ebay search model is based around the assumption that you already know what you are looking for, goodness knows how many potential desirables remain undiscovered amongst the deluge.

Enter handcrafted haven Etsy, with its multiple quirky methods of browsing the vast array of goodies listed by their global network of craft-minded independent sellers. Search for accessories in your favourite colour using their fancy flash colour chart tool, let other Etsy users be your guide with their 12 favourite items in the Treasury view, visit the Showcase page daily for a fresh batch of 36 choice items, view items as they are listed with the Time Machine function, check out some of your favourites' favourites, or simply browse by category or use the search function in the conventional fashion. A mountain of things-you-didn't-know- you-needed-yet awaits you, and the sheer variety available is a refreshing alternative to the identikit blandness of real-life shopping.

In fact, such is the scope of Etsy's offerings that it is hard to make any sort of a summary, so you are urged to take the opportunity to browse yourself (taking care to navigate around the more chintzy and traditional takes on the crafts brief). So far, my own head has been turned by Details' cute felted critters; Lupin's array of felt creations, moustache obsession (I wonder if she does monobrows too?) and cards crafted from recycled paper; Sugar Snaps' malformed soft toys, charm bracelets and squirrel gloves; Emma Loves Apples' assortment of badges and cobbled together jewellery; and The Mymble's Daughter's ever so gothic and Victorian jewellery. But this truly is just the tip of the iceberg...

The vast majority of sellers are based in North America, and although the weak dollar means that postage costs are generally affordable, be warned that not every seller will ship to the UK. To avoid disappointment and to support your local economy, try adding "uk" to your searches. The UK Etsy Sellers! blog also makes a useful UK-centric navigational starting point.

music

Summer is now a distant memory (if indeed this year's effort even counts as a summer), and so too is the annual Cologne Summer Tunes homecoming party thrown by the Karmarouge team. But that doesn't mean that your chance to download the free Ton sur Ton Vol.II mp3 compilation released to commemorate the occasion has also passed - so get downloading from the mini-site while you still can...

Following on from the free mp3 selection offered last Christmas, the most recent Karmarouge digital compilation serves up some "sunkissed electronica" back catalogue treats from their roster, which includes Luciano (with his Vegetable Orchestra interpretation), Gabriel Ananda, Cio D'Or and Max Cavalerra (who sadly has nothing to do with the rather better known - and crucially lacking one 'R' - Max Cavalera of Sepultura fame). In the beginning there was minimal, runs the lesson from Daniel Mehlhart, underlining the central position the M-word had now assumed on the dancefloors of Europe with his "Am Anfang war es minimal" tribute.

To complete your Karmarouge education you will find yet more mp3 treats amongst the links on the left hand side of their skeletal weblog, making sure to absorb the stream of consciousness nonsense verse masterpieces of Denglisch that pass for press blurb chez Karmarouge as you go. Ignore the literal meaning and simply listen to the sound of the words, and the effect is positively poetic: "The interlocking master tunes are well fed by a smacking acidline and merge to a big fat groovebastard," they tell us of the Metope remix of Gabriel Ananda's 'Life is steadily breaking my heart'. "It's a snotty jack - your - body- track that sets the floor on fire." Indeed.

travel

There was a time when Germany was about as uncool as it was possible to be. A mixture of national stereotypes, sporting rivalries and our own Second World War superiority complex placed the poor old Germans at the sharp end of our jokes throughout the entire second half of the twentieth century, as a 2003 campaign by their own Goethe Institute pointed out. Just one decade ago, my decision to study German at university was met with a near universal "Why would you want to do a thing like that?".

But jump forward to 2007, and things couldn't be more different. Whether actually down to the campaign by cultural ambassadors the Goethe Institute, or more likely the post-reunification rehabilitation of Berlin into a mecca of budget rental opportunities for the world's creatives, modern day Germany is quite the cultural hub. If you haven't moved to Berlin yourself, then you probably know someone who has: a whole generation are now kicking themselves for not paying more attention to their German lessons at school.

This new and improved image of German cool extends as far as Mexico, where tucked up next to the US border in the city of Juarez there lies the Germanic-themed Hardpop Bundesbar. Using an antiquated typeface, a Kompakt-esque eagle logo and the odd ironically misplaced Eszett and Umlaut, the club draws upon the extraordinary reputation for electronic music that the Germans have acquired in recent years, as well as the stylish simplicity and understated glamour of German design.

Although not exclusively of German extraction, at weekends you can expect to find guests of the calibre of Michael Mayer, James Holden and Troy Pierce taking on the enviable task of entertaining the excitable mixed Mexican and American crowd; Bill Patrick's übercool Robots party meanwhile is soon to start a regular Juarez residency of the New York nightlife staple. Although on a Thursday night, a slightly incongruous soundtrack of Britpop can be heard rinsing the club's soundsystem...

music

The rowdily titled new album Oi oi oi from Boys Noize hits the streets at the beginning of October, but if you think you have seen the cover somewhere before, that may well be because it bears more than a passing resemblance to the OTT blingtastic $100 million diamond encrusted skull unveiled by Damian Hirst earlier this year. But as the old chicken and egg adage goes, which came first, the diamonds or the disco ball?

As this amateurish YouTube "video" rather clumsily points out, it seems that Berlin's rebel with a cause Alex Ridha has indeed stolen a march on old Hirsty, using the skull-shaped disco ball image as a logo for a considerable period of time before it graced the cover of his album, as any self-respecting electrotrash aficionado will know. "But I don’t really like the Damien Hirst skull, so I don’t care if he stole the idea," Ridha recently told the Montreal Mirror. "The one I use is a bit older, so he probably saw it and got inspired by it, but I think it’s just a big waste of money. Who needs this expensive skull? It’s just ridiculous, really.”

Hirst is presumably equally unperturbed (the phrase "laughing all the way to the bank" has surely never been more apt), even if the disco ball comparisons have dogged his latest extravagant work since day one. "I was worried it might look like a skull ring - spend all that money and you just end up with a disco ball, shock horror," he told The Guardian's Maev Kennedy at the dazzling White Cube gallery unveiling.

But for us, the now-classic Halloween Meathead creation will always be our favourite way to decorate a skull...

art

Where I grew up, "chav" (or more precisely, "chava") was just another word for man, or guy, used more or less interchangeably with the less well-known "gadgie". So imagine my surprise when the term chav started to creep into the lexicon of the mainstream media: only now it is being used in an altogether less neutral way, to simultaneously denote and denigrate a specific social group.

So what does this mean for our old use of the word "chava" in my native Berwick-upon-Tweed tongue? Can you even still use it in that more general sense of "guy" to refer to, for example, "that chava there"? And is that only because most of the guys from Berwick would also fall into the rest of the country's understanding of what it means to be a chav?

Julie Burchill put it best in her sadly-not-on-YouTube-yet Sky One documentary Chavs, which highlighted the element of social sneering inherent in this recent media appropriation; but to the rap sheet I might be tempted to add a plea to give the good people of Berwick their word back. Only it turns out that it was never actually our word in the first place: "chava" is just one of the many loan words from the Romani language which have been absorbed into our local dialect (this one derived from "chavi", meaning "kid" in the source language).

It seems then that it is down to the UK's Gypsy and Traveller communities to reclaim the term chav, and this is precisely the goal of the new exhibition at the Novas Contemporary Urban Centre - London Bridge Bankside. Running from September 6th through to October 13th, Chavi is a collaboration between three artists from those communities, Damian and Delaine Le Bas and Daniel Baker, who by confronting and subverting stereotypes aim to both re-evaluate and reclaim the representation of the Gypsy within society.

"Chavi, the Romany word for kid, has been recently appropriated as a derogatory label for working class youth style," the website of the Novas Group charity helpfully explains. "Although the look signalled by this label has its origins in a Gypsy aesthetic, these references are usually forgotten, reflecting society’s ongoing denial or ignorance of the Gypsy’s creative influence on wider society."