| | | The big idea: is going vegan enough to make you – and the planet – healthier? | | by Tim Spector Jan 31, 2022 | | Simply going without meat and dairy isn’t going to cut it if you still turn to ultra-processed foods Did you change what you ate or drank for January? The start of the year is an annual cue for a Pandora’s box of diet demons to be released; from meal replacements and super-keto diets to slimming teas. Alongside these trends live the regular and more ethical health-conscious messages of dry January and Veganuary, both of which have grown in popularity and have a much cleaner public image. Despite that, they are still not perfect. So this year I’d like to propose another idea that hopefully has longer staying power: call it the “real food revolution”. The premise of Veganuary is simple: use the pivotal month of January to make a big change to your diet, your health and the planet’s health by cutting out animal products. Veganuary is a not-for-profit charitable company that provides recipes and motivational emails to help you give up meat and dairy products for just one month, with, ideally, positive effects on your waistline and your carbon footprint. Overall, they do a great job, and there is plenty of evidence to support the efficacy of reducing animal-based foods for our health and our planet’s survival. We now know that agriculture is responsible for about 25% of global heating and the single most important action we as individuals can do to help address the climate crisis is not to give up cars, but to eat less meat. Continue reading... | | | | | Kae Tempest's Paradise among finalists for Susan Smith Blackburn prize | | by Chris Wiegand Jan 31, 2022 | | Tempest’s National Theatre play, Amanda Wilkin’s Shedding a Skin and Benedict Lombe’s Lava all shortlisted for major playwriting award A reworking of Sophocles’s tragedy Philoctetes by the performance poet, writer and musician Kae Tempest is one of 10 plays in the running for this year’s Susan Smith Blackburn prize for female, transgender and non-binary dramatists. Tempest – an award-winning poet and two-time nominee for the Mercury music prize – was shortlisted for the play Paradise, which was performed at the National Theatre in London last year. It is joined on the shortlist by two plays produced on smaller stages in the capital. Benedict Lombe’s memoir-monologue Lava, which spans from Mobutu’s Congo via post-apartheid South Africa to modern-day London, was presented at the Bush theatre. Amanda Wilkin’s Shedding a Skin, which will soon return to Soho theatre where it ran last summer, was described as a “wondrous weepie” by Guardian critic Arifa Akbar in her review. Continue reading... | | | | | Armonico Consort review – Scarlatti sparkles in anniversary concert | | by Andrew Clements Jan 31, 2022 | | Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick
The period instrument group joined with violinist Rachel Podger to perform music by a lesser-known Scarlatti – Francesco Brother to the more famous Alessandro, who composed more than 60 operas, and uncle to Domenico, whose 555 sonatas are one of the mainstays of the baroque keyboard repertoire, Francesco Scarlatti spent his life as a choir master, first in his native Sicily, and later in the British Isles, where his music was performed in London and at the Three Choirs festival; he apparently died in poverty in Dublin in 1741. Francesco’s own music is hardly known today, but one of the Armonico Consort’s earliest concerts, 20 years ago, included both of his surviving large-scale choral works, a Dixit Dominus and a Mass. As part of the group’s 20th anniversary season they have programmed the two again, before recording them. The pieces both date from the early 1700s, when Scarlatti was maestro di cappella in Palermo; they are written for a 16-part choir, divided into four groups, with an orchestra of strings and trumpet. But as these performances under Armonico’s director Christopher Monks vividly demonstrated, those forces are often employed in a strikingly distinctive way. In the Dixit Dominus psalm setting verses for the full forces, sometimes fugal and occasionally densely chromatic, are interspersed not with the usual solo numbers but with sections highlighting each of the voice types in turn, while the mass draws very selectively on the full Latin mass – there’s no Credo or Agnus Dei – though the use of antiphonal effects and the deployment of solo voices is just as striking. Continue reading... | | | | | American Night review – hot mess of an art-world thriller with a Tarantino-esque edge | | by Phil Hoad Jan 31, 2022 | | With a madcap plot and dodgy Michael Madsen cameo, Alessio Della Valle’s crime caper feels like a risible, though not irredeemable, Tarantino replica Erotic body painting, deadly scorpions, Italian futurism, a ninja stuntman, a Warholian MacGuffin, the singer Anastacia, not one organised-crime faction but four: incorporating all the above and more, this art world-set thriller told non-linear-style believes it’s a scrambled cubist masterpiece. But in truth it is closer to an abstract expressionist hot mess, as writer-director Alessio Della Valle splatters his canvas with everything he can lay his hands on and sees what sticks. As if he’s force-feeding us the whole of Pulp Fiction in the first 15 minutes, Della Valle initially hops between three characters homing in on the botched exchange of a stolen print of Andy Warhol’s Pink Marilyn: a failed stuntman and would-be courier (Jeremy Piven), his high-class art dealer brother (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and a shoddy bagman (Fortunato Cerlino). But goons sent by Emile Hirsch’s junior mafia don – who wants his artwork back – seize the wrong package. The ensuing mayhem lets Della Valle erratically collage even more elements: Meyers’ dodgy counterfeiting past; his smoking-hot affair with a Spanish restorer (Paz Vega); Hirsch’s Michael Corleone-esque misgivings about the family trade and artistic aspirations (he likes firing his assault rifle at his easel); Michael Madsen, included for reasons indeterminate, with a voice like a dodgy motorbike throttle. Continue reading... | | | | | Turnstile review – raucous return of the hardcore punk live show | | by Dave Simpson Jan 31, 2022 | | Rock City, Nottingham
The Baltimore band hit the stage with the ferocity of uncaged wild animals as Covid restrictions are finally lifted After two years of the pandemic and largely socially distanced gigs, the scenes here feel surreal. Every inch of the sold-out, ram-packed venue hosts a heaving body. Hair is flailed and heads are banged. A succession of fans – many of them upside down, chunky footwear in the air – crowdsurf towards the stage, where they are helped down by security. Some people manage to actually get on the stage itself, launching themselves skyward back into the heaving throng. The jubilant atmosphere is partly informed by this week’s abandonment of Covid restrictions – only the venue’s powerful new ventilation system suggests anything has changed since 2020 – but also reflects how the Baltimore, Maryland band have become arguably the current hardcore punk scene’s most exciting band. Turnstile certainly stepped up a level with last year’s eclectic third album, Glow On, which combines hardcore with elements of soul, psychedelia and at least one Latin-funk breakdown. Continue reading... | | | | | Norma Waterson, celebrated British folk singer, dies aged 82 | | by Ben Beaumont-Thomas Jan 31, 2022 | | Musician acclaimed for work with siblings and husband Martin Carthy in the Watersons had been suffering from pneumonia Norma Waterson, whose bracingly beautiful singing made her a key figure in British folk music alongside her siblings Mike and Lal and husband Martin Carthy, has died aged 82. Folk musician daughter Eliza Carthy wrote on Facebook: “Not much to say about such monumental sadness, but mam passed away yesterday afternoon, January 30th 2022.” Continue reading... | | | | | |
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