When great British pop institution, The Beautiful South split in 2007, several members of the band weren’t ready to let it go. So 2 years later, singers Dave Hemingway and Alison Wheeler, alongside life long members Damon Butcher (keys), Gaz Birtles (sax) and Tony Robinson (trumpet), came out of retirement and formed the 9 piece band, The South. With the realisation that if the fans didn’t want it, they wouldn’t do it, The South embarked on their journey. But boy, did the fans want it!...
Fresh off the back of the Summer Series, Our House & Hold It Down deliver a massive event to kickstart the year, hosted by two of Exeter’s finest music venues.
One wristband | Two venues | Three headliners
They're taking over five spaces and filling them with three of the finest names on the dance music scene, plus full support from your favourite residents from both Our House and Hold It Down.
France / Poland, 2013, 96 mins. Dir. Roman Polanski
Alone in a Paris theatre after a long day of auditioning for the lead role in his new play, writer-director Thomas complains that no-one has what it takes to play his lead female characters. When actress Vanda bursts in, a whirlwind of erratic-and erotic-energy things change Thomas see everything he has been lamenting. She is pushy, foul-mouthed, desperate and ill-prepared-or so it seems. But when he, reluctantly, agrees to let her try out for the part, he is stunned and captivated by her transformation. Not only is Vanda a...
London-based singer/songwriter Lewis Watson got his start in music by quietly uploading cover versions of his favorite songs to a sleepy YouTube account in 2010.
The singer’s spare acoustic guitar complemented his booming and slightly soulful voice on covers of tunes by the Knife, Bombay Bicycle Club, Bon Iver, and others, and before long he was uploading his own original compositions to great response. Watson began playing out in support of larger acts, and after a gig with his former music teacher Joe Porter, Porter offered up his production services in the recording of Watson’s...
Throw all the genres and hyphenates together you want to describe her – indie, roots and soul, rock, blues and country – they are all right, and also not enough.
Chastity Brown writes songs that are carried deep in the American psyche, the hunger, desperation and confidence that runs through our times. Coming from Tennessee to Minnesota, touring the country, touring Europe, she has had half her own lifetime and million lifetimes gone before her to concoct her powerful sound. She’s been hailed by NPR, CMT, American Songwriter, The London Times, and Paste Magazine as a songwriter to...
Courts wasted an estimated £230 million of taxpayers’ money last year by needlessly locking up people on remand, figures published by the Howard League for Penal Reform reveal today. During 2013, more than 35,000 people who had been remanded in custody went on to be either acquitted or given non-custodial sentences. The money spent on keeping them in prison would have been enough to build 16 new secondary schools, pay 10,000 nurses for a year, or reverse the government’s cuts to the criminal legal aid budget. Of the 36,044 men, women and children who were remanded into custody by...
Would a stranger save your life? It may depend on who you are, where you live and whether you’ve got a family, according to a survey for Anthony Nolan, a charity which relies on the kindness of strangers.
People in the South West are more likely to come to the aid of their pet than to help a male or teenage stranger in danger, new research has revealed.
A poll conducted for the blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan found that overwhelmingly, over four out of five people in the South West (86%) would be willing to help their pet if it was in danger.
With a fifth of UK homeowners claiming to have had items stolen from their garden, a leading insurer is warning homeowners to look out for their gnomes, as nearly one in ten households report the theft of a garden figurine or gnome. Research from The Co-operative Insurance found that the South West of England is the riskiest place to be a gnome, with almost a fifth of homeowners (16%) reporting the theft of a friendly garden figurine, twice as many as across the UK on average. Gnomes in the North West can however sleep easy tonight, with just 2% of gnome owners in the region reporting the...
Georgia / Germany / France, 2013, 102 mins. Dir. Nana Ekvtimishvili, Simon Groß
Eka and Natia are 14-year-old best friends living in cramped family high-ris apartments in Georgia, 1992. Big problems loom in the background: the aftershocks of the Soviet Union collapsing and deadbeat fathers. But like all prepubescent schoolgirls, Eka and Natia are far more preoccupied with classroom gossip, dodging the attention of local bullies and the budding sexual power they exert over neighborhood boys. Loosely based on Ekvtimishvili’s childhood memories of growing up in newly independent...