Revert to Disar­ray

Published Categorised as Art & Design, Music No Comments on Revert to Disar­ray

 


(paint­ing image from Stef’s website)

I went to an art/​music event this week organ­ised by painter/​illustrator Stefanos Rokos. He’s an artist friend of Ellina’s from back in Athens who is currently hold­ing an exhib­i­tion in London. The idea was that every Thursday, there would be music perform­ances in the gallery. The musi­cians are all friends of Stef’s, and they each created a piece of music that related to the paint­ings. The paint­ings are large and full of fine details ideal for creat­ing stor­ies from. First up was Matt Fried­ber­ger of the Fiery Furnaces, who was going to perform some spoken word pieces over a back­ground track. Next week is Stef Carlens, ex of dEUS.

friedberger

The gallery’s PA had broken down, and someone seemed to have tried to fix things by putting the mic through a guitar amp. That doesn’t really work, espe­cially for spoken word stuff. Matt was telling stor­ies and point­ing out details in the paint­ings, but you couldn’t make out what he was saying half the time, which of course spoiled the effect.

matt kai stef

The gallery has some kind of connec­tion with a hotel, and they held anoth­er event there the follow­ing night, with Jim Sclavun­os from the Bad Seeds djing ( a strange mix of Iggy Pop and novelty jazz records), and a repeat of the music. It was quite a  surreal exper­i­ence. I don’t really drink in fancy hotels anyway, it not being in the budget. Also, on the way there, we stopped off to get some food, and eat it in a little park, the sort where office work­ers go to eat sand­wiches. There was a crown green bowls contest going on in the middle of the finan­cial district. We felt very civil­ised, watch­ing bowls before going to social­ise in a hotel.

waterfall

The hotel bar was on a balcony high up on the inside wall of the hotel. It was done up like a rain­forest, with an led-lit water­fall. There is a music video from the late 90s where Jennifer Lopez has a shower in the rain­forest. It reminded me of that. The greeks liked the fact you could smoke in the bar. For some reas­on both an enorm­ous cock­tail or a spir­it with a mixer both cost £10. If I can only afford one drink I’ll go for the huge piña colada.

bottles

Some kind of cock­tail ingredient/​Borgia pois­on.

drinks

The menu claimed that the drink on the left was limited to one per guest. I don’t know why, or how they would enforce that.

mirror

This was above the balcony. My brain couldn’t quite figure out how the build­ing was put togeth­er when you compared the views from the balcony, room and street.

hotel audience

The music perform­ances were in some kind of hotel lounge. It had a framed cupboard of booze, and a pool table, and a couple of artfully placed Bowie records on a table, and they’d hung one of Stef’s paint­ings on the wall. It was like being in a very expens­ive living room.

hotel performance

Matt sat in a chair and repeated his perform­ance. This time you could actu­ally hear the pieces and they were enjoy­able. The paint­ings weren’t there for him to point at though. You win some, you lose some.

painting

The paint­ing. The only one from the set that wasn’t featured in the night’s music. I went back to the bar to get a glass of water, and it was suddenly full of the sort of people who can afford to drink in hotel cock­tail bars. They smelt of terri­fy­ingly expens­ive toiletries. Then when I walked past again, it was suddenly closed.

ellina

Ellina.

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