Osymyso is something of a cult hero in the electronic scene. He’s been active for over twenty years, shaping and influencing the bootleg genre with cool beats and wacky samples. Last term he was in the Bargain Bin with his record ‘Rabbit to Rabbit’, which saw him mash up breakbeats, Peter Rabbit and Bugs Bunny. Now Cherwell talks to the man behind the whiskers, musician and DJ Mark Nicholson, about inspirations, being a perfectionist, and EastEnders.

Nicholson can still vividly remember where Osymyso started, “As a teenager, I was obsessed with Art of Noise and their use of sound collages and the new sampling technology. I got into synths and sampling in the dying months of the 1980s inspired by the likes of The JAMs, Negativland, The Orb. Then M/A/R/R/S got to number one and Bomb The Bass reached number two, with a record that was just a montage of other people’s stuff. I got myself a drum machine, a sampler and a computer and tried to emulate my heroes.”

Osymyso became my own hero when he immortalised the Pat and Peggy fight from EastEnders by sampling “You Bitch!” and “You Cow!” and pressing it into a breakbeat. ‘Pat n Peg’ may be one of the bootleg genre’s finest creations, but Nicholson is quick to point out that it “came about by accident as I saw that fight scene whilst round at a friends house who had it on in the background”.

But despite my love for the soap-inspired track, there’s no denying that Nicholson’s masterpiece is ‘Intro-Inspection’, a mini-mix of 101 intros in one twelve minute mash up. Nicholson also regards it as his greatest achievement. “It’s the one thing that people ask me about the most and it had clever people writing essays about it in magazines. I like listening to it now and then, it brings back such good memories. “It’s also one of only a few things I’m really happy with. I very rarely make anything that I like. When I finish a track all I hear are the faults and it gets deleted before anyone hears it. But now unlike before, I actually like my music to sound a bit rough around the edges. I like the mistakes.”

It’s been fifteen years since he release his debut album, Welcome to the Palindrome, but Nicholson has been releasing music underground, online with free MP3s, and even soundtracking Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I ask him where the project’s at currently. “I’ve given up trying to work out what Osymsyo is and where it’s going as I keep starting these ludicrously over ambitious projects and never finishing them. I’m working on some new tunes, which might become an album or they might just be free tracks I throw at the internet. Some of the new tracks I’m working on are short melodies with beats and synths, and I’m also working on some really harsh unofficial remixes of chart toppers.”

But of course, it would never just be the Top 40 to spark his interest. “I’ve been collecting loads of fragments of discarded and utterly forgettable TV, like 30 year old bits of Continuity. I found some VHS tapes someone had dumped in the street with strange late night TV clips.”

Late night TV, breakbeats and synth. You’ve been warned.

Metamorphosis of Narcissus

Salvador Dali (1937)

One of the most famous paintings by the mag­nificent Spanish surrealist, the Metamorpho­sis of Narcissus depicts the story of Narcissus. According to Greek mythology, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool and, unable to embrace it, remained sitting on the bank until the gods turned him into a flower. In the painting, he gazes into the pool. To his right, a decaying stone figure bears a resem­blance, but is in fact a stone hand holding up an egg. A Narcissus flower grows out of it.

Arachne from Metamorphoses

Ovid (8 AD)

The Roman poet Ovid’s work the Metamorpho­ses related numerous different transforma­tions from throughout ancient Greek and Roman mythology. Arachne, the weaver, claimed to have more weaving skill than Minerva, goddess of wisdom. Since weaving and looking pretty were women’s primary roles in the ancient world, this was some chal­lenge. In a contest, Minerva defeated Arachne, and transformed her into a spider. Have fun drawing your own etymological conclusions.

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

William Shakespeare (1590)

In a metatheatrical construction within this classic Shakespeare play, a troupe of actors put on a production of Pyramus and Thisbe. They journey into the forest for rehearsals with di­sastrous and hilarious consequences. One of the actors, Nick Bottom, encounters Puck, ser­vant of Oberon, King of the Fairies. The sprite casts a spell on him, transforming his head into that of a donkey. The Fairy Queen Titania is later bewitched into falling in love with this unlikely ass.

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To some extent, all of the most memorable musical artists are shape-shifters. There’s the transformation of Snoop Dogg to Snoop Lion which enabled him to go from gangster rapper to reggae prophet; the evolutions of child-stars Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus from innocent pop-princesses to rebellious, sexual women; Prince’s metamorphosis into a symbol, “the artist formerly known as Prince”. 

Arguably, there is no artist who is so defined by his many “ch-ch-changes” as David Robert Jones – or David Bowie, as he is known to us mortals. Bowie has been a major figure in the world of music for over four decades. The exhibition “David Bowie Is” at the V&A was the first retrospective of the extraordinary career of Bowie. It charted his rise to fame, his various transformations and reinventions, and his continuing and monumental influence on music, art, film, and the fashion industry. 

Interestingly, the first thing with which visitors to the exhibition were met was an installation piece by Roelof Louw – a conceptual artist who explores the relationship between physical space and viewer. Pyramid (Soul City) is a pyramid of 6,000 oranges to which visitors are invited to help themselves. The shape of the artwork gradually depletes as more oranges are taken. 

What does this have to do with David Bowie? Colourful, experimental, and ever shape – shifting from all angles, Pyramid is a metaphor for Bowie and his career. 

Perhaps Bowie’s most memorable transformation was Ziggy Stardust – theatrical, deliberately flamboyant, neither male nor female. For Bowie, Ziggy was “a shape for the moment” – an opportunity to explore a world outside of gender constraint. His next persona was Aladdin Sane, with the lightning-bolt which would become our iconic image of Bowie. 

Although technically a new persona, Bowie now regards this as a way of “getting out” of Ziggy: a transitional, ephemeral self. He changed again for Diamond Dogs, with Bowie’s head appeared attached to a dog’s body: a sinister, sphynx-like metamorphosis from human to animal. 

In the ‘80s, he disappeared briefly into relative anonymity, recording under the guise of other band-names and questioning the validity of creating a new persona for each new album. On the jacket of 1999’s Hours, he holds his own corpse, mourning the passing of yet another self. 

Where many celebrity transformations nowadays are messy, fleeting, or deliberate publicity stunts, Bowie changed in carefully considered stages, all of them theatrical, beautiful and psychologically complex. His shape changing made him a cultural icon of the Twentieth Century, proving that change is the way to endure. 

Like Prince, Bowie is in some ways more of a symbol than a man. He is a living legend marked by his various incarnations, who will doubtless continue to influence culture in all its forms for many generations to come. 

Transformations provide happy endings: the beast becomes human; the sleeping princess awakens; the frog becomes a prince. The idea that wishes really can come true is a premise that provides the foundations of our myths and fairy tales, where metamorphosis is a magical plot device that restores order and brings about happy endings. 

Transformation into a princess, if only for a night, gives Cinderella that one chance meeting she needs to dazzle the prince and make her nocturnal guise a permanent reality. This is a fantasy of climbing the ranks – the phenomenon of social mobility technically known as hypergamy. The virtuous Cinderella has her goodness rewarded. Dressing up gives her an external beauty that reflects an internal reality eventually made permanent by the marriage at the end of the tale. 

You need only flick through any British tabloid to see that this obsession still prevails. “‘Commoner’ Kate Middleton finds happiness with the heir to the throne” is a fantasy that conveniently ignores Kate’s not-so-common origins. Now we have a load of St Andrew’s girls kicking themselves for not joining the running club, and the upcoming reality TV show I Wanna Marry Harry, in which a host of American girls try their very best to replicate Kate’s success. 

The fantasy has its literary antecedents. Richardson’s epistolary novel Pamela centres around the eventual transformation of its protagonist from serving girl to wife, to “the joy of the chambermaids of all nations”, in the words of Lady Mary Montagu. Montagu’s observation is rooted in economic and social reality. The outlook for 18th century servant girls was particularly bleak – domestic servants were pretty much bound to stay with employers until twenty-one or until married, and many even forbade their servants to marry servant girls. It’s therefore no surprise that these kind of social transformations should capture the imaginations of a nation’s wishful servants. 

This all gets a bit worrying, though, when you start to fully consider the abuse that Pamela endures to get her happy ending. The same is true for a character such as Patient Griselda, depicted most famously in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, who has to do more than just shove her foot in the slipper to get her happy ending, enduring the loss of first her daughter, then her son. 

So, transforming for the prince can sometimes be pretty painful. In fact, it seems that transforming for love is about shoehorning yourself into a form that will accommodate Prince Charming. Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid slits her tail so she can walk on land to please her man. The statue in Ovid’s Pygmalion is turned from stone to human at the bequest of its creator. Sandy goes from good girl in gingham to black-attired femme fatale to snare Danny Zuco. The lines of gender are drawn in pretty clear ink – these are women transforming to fit in with the systems that will please their men. 

We’re reminded of The Taming of the Shrew’s Kate who, exhausted from the abuse of Petruchio, finally submits to her new husband’s dictatorial reality. The very world transforms according to her husband’s will: “And be it moon, or sun, or what you please. / And if you please to call it a rush candle, / Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.” 

However, this idea of transformation as the submission to another’s will doesn’t always seem to be gendered. The 1993 Pulitzer Prizewinning play Angels in America explores the transformative powers of love, and has the Mormon Joe offer to give up anything to be with the man he believes he loves. In one of the most powerful scenes, he stands naked on a beach and denounces his religion, removing his Mormon undergarments (his skin) and then punning on this removal: “I’m flayed… I can be anything I need to be. And I wanna be with you!” 

The powerful location of the scene is brought out even more vividly than is possible on stage in the terrific HBO miniseries of the play. The beach is a place of continuous transformation – my Geography teacher once told me that no beach is fixed, the sand and its waters never the same. It’s also a place where gay men historically explored and discovered their sexuality. And here Joe undergoes this same change, treading in the footsteps of his gay forefathers, submitting and leaving his body vulnerable to any change dictated to him by his new lover. 

This isn’t always the case, of course. Elle Woods in Legally Blonde wants to change herself into Warner’s ideal man. But, after studying really hard and broadening her horizons, she realizes that Warner really isn’t all that, and finds a new Prince Charming to suit the independent transformation she has undergone. 

I don’t recommend Legally Blonde to any finalists, though. Despite Elle’s metamorphosis into a successful, confident feminist icon, the message is basically that good grades can be acquired through a montage scene of revising on a treadmill. If only the reality were that simple. 

A lot has been said about Arcade Fire’s latest record, Reflektor, and not all of it complimentary. Certain diehards lamented, and continue lamenting, the transition from the underdog indie outfit they were back on the now seminal Funeral, to the supposedly over-populated, self-indulgent, make-up clad rabble that appears at Earl’s Court tonight in support of Reflektor. This change of image is only aggravated with the insistence beforehand that all attendees dress up in either fancy dress or formal attire, an arrogant and pretentious request according to some. Other devotees worried about how this risky new style would translate from the security of a New York recording studio to a faceless British arena; any doubts were quashed as soon as the lights went down and the curtain was raised. Earl’s court was, for a night, transformed into a 1970s discotheque, with the sight of the best part of 20,000 fans in black tie, tiger onesies and banana costumes producing a staggering communal atmosphere not often felt in a venue of this nature. 

From the outset, the band exhibit such raw energy and enthusiasm that it’s impossible for the audience not to be swept away with them; opening track ‘Reflektor’ is eight minutes of unadulterated disco, and the often forgettable ‘Flashbulb Eyes’ that follows is hypnotic in both its meandering pace and visual accompaniments. The set that follows is a beautiful balance between new and old material: the euphoric coupling of ‘Neighborhood 3 (Power Out)’ and ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ are still enough to get any cynic crying with joy, with new track ‘Joan of Arc’ instilling a similar level of ecstasy. But it’s the more reserved numbers where the band really shows how far it’s come. Win Butler’s haunting vocals on ‘The Suburbs’ stun the audience into silence, and the intimacy between Butler and wife Régine Chassange, singing on a separate stage in the middle of the arena, on ‘It’s Never Over’ is quite remarkable in its beauty. There’s even room for Ian McCulloch (of Echo and the Bunnymen) to guest on a cover of his own band’s ‘The Cutter’, a touch that few would have expected.

The encore, as it sometimes can, does not drop the pace. The blistering guitar riff in ‘Normal Person’ again whips the crowd into a frenzy, with confetti canons accompanying the climax of ‘Here Comes The Night Time’. The night ends where the band begun, with original breakthrough track ‘Wake Up’, a fitting reminder that, despite all the smoke and mirrors, they are still the same awkward group of nobodies they were when Funeral erupted into the music world. This shows encompasses Arcade Fire at their imperious best: the intricacy of their new material combined with the raw passion of their old creates a show so ecstatic that, despite its two hour run time, ends far too soon. And with student tickets priced at £33.00 for their Hyde Park comeback (July 3) to come, it’s almost tempting to do it all over again.  

Rather inaccurately, Jumpy describes itself as a play about sex. If anything, sex is merely a tiny part of a larger story about a mid-life crisis, about teetering on the edge of sanity as a feeling of powerlessness against the outside world chips away at all the reassurances of self-control.

It opens with Tilly, a moody 15 year old about to go out drinking to celebrate the birthday of her heavily pregnant friend, impatiently berating her mother’s concerned questions in a bid to get out of the door. At first it seems as though we are to be faced with a story of (somewhat clichéd) teenage rebellion and angst, but as the play progresses, it reveals a concern with more deep-seated feelings of confusion and vulnerability that are shown to be as prevalent at fifty as they are at fifteen.

The mother, Hilary – a neurotic middle-class woman in her fifties who suffers from panic attacks on the tube and eagerly turns to a diminishing supply of red wine to get her through the day – is reliving an adolescence of anxiety, excessive alcohol consumption, and later, in the wake of her disintegrated marriage, awkward sex. Tilly’s consistency, albeit little more than a consistent indifference to everyone and everything, stands in contrast with the volatility of her control-freak mother and subverts the expected hierarchy between parent and child.

Threatened with losing her job and living, it seems, in a stifling environment in which communication with either daughter or husband is scarce, Hilary’s breakdown is symptomatic of a feeling of loss and loneliness when confronted with age and the imminent prospect of sagging skin, or as Tilly illustratively terms it, ‘vagina neck’.

Despite an uncertain start, and some inconsistencies between the cast members, several really engaging moments of humour propel the first act forwards in the promise of more.

Unfortunately it’s a promise that is on the whole unfulfilled. The audience is left feeling as disconnected from the action as Tilly is from her mother’s attempts at bonding. The problem is perhaps the fact that there is no clear climax to the action, or at least, that the most climactic event (a gunshot) seems premature and lacking a convincing emotional basis.

Lara McIvor finds a compellingly tremulous balance between strength and vulnerability in her portrayal of Hilary and succeeds in the difficult task of embodying a much older role. Clara Davies’ Tilly seems effortless yet the two performances seem somewhat at odds with one another and the many nuances of the relationship are disappointingly left unearthed.

Without a doubt the standout performance is Sammy Glover’s Frances – Hilary’s uninhibitedly flirtatious friend who channels Samantha Jones and Edina Monsoon in equal measure; it was only a shame that there wasn’t more of her.

Jumpy is a play about the fragility of relationships commandeered by selfish instinct and a universal craving for connection, a recognition of which would perhaps have provided the play with the sense of unity that it needed to hold its best moments of comedy and pathos together.

When we think of Frankenstein far too often Boris Karloff’s rigid bolted figure lumbers into our minds, yet this production produces a monster a thousand times more scary. By constantly oscillating between humour and the darker development of the monster’s crimes the audience is invited to laugh, but always slightly uneasily. And boy are there laughs! I tried surreptitiously listing them at first but found that I was almost constantly writing and gave up. The moment Frankenstein (Howard Coase) strolled on stage, looked quizzically at the monster (Nick Finerty)… then ate a monster munch the sere absurdity of it all sent the audience into hysterics. He proceeds to give a hilarious dichtophone commentary on his actions which marks the start of a fantastic script, cleverly adapted from the novel, that constantly plays with our expectations . By mimicking Shelley’s own disjunction of narrative into several separate plots, the script constantly invites you to trace through your memory to remember quite where you have heard ‘cartoons’ or ‘Billie Holiday’ before. I will leave you to find out.  

Finerty and Coase are undoubtedly the stars of the show and their early scenes, particularly the one in the restaurant, are the highlights of the entire production.  Nick Finerty’s development from writhing inarticulacy to questionable humanity was confidently and convincingly portrayed throughout. His rise mirrors Frankenstein’s fall, yet both are placed within an alarmingly realistic modern context. In an earlier interview, director Harley Viveash said that ‘exploring ideas of perspective’ was a key aim and this is borne out in the constant misunderstandings between the characters. They seem to exist at one remove from each other, never comprehending each other’s analogies or turns of phrase.

The success of this is a testament to the whole cast who, though obviously having read the lines a million times in rehearsal, are able to seem  distant. The two leads are supported by a solid cast whose well choreographed chorus actions provide unnerving backdrops to dialogue and facilitate near seamless scene transition. I don’t have enough words to explain the many individual merits of each cast member, but Josh Dolphin’s portrayal of Mike, the old man, and Henry, the best friend, showed him to be a talented and highly versatile actor.  I suppose there was very audible talking in tech box which did somewhat ruin the tension that between the monster and Elizabeth (Alice Sandelson), but now I am hunting for problems. All in all this is an excellent production acted by a strong cast which sparkles with mirth and malice. A must see.

The beauty of sketch comedy is in its variety. Should a particular skit be received badly, it is only moments before it will be replaced by another with a different topic, different characters and quite possibly a different style altogether; there is rarely an observable linking thread between items. Audiences are swiftly taken from piece to piece and thus misses are inevitably swallowed up by hits.

In creating what is essentially a sketch show with a narrative then, three-man comedy group The Awkward Silence have taken a bold step, but one that was undoubtedly worth taking. With The Voyage Of The Narwhal, they have fashioned a series of skits linked by a vague storyline but commendably managed to retain the diversity typical to most sketch shows.

All (or the vast majority) of the scenes are set on the eponymous luxury cruise liner on its doomed maiden voyage. Ralph Jones, Vyvyan Almond and Alexander Fox share a host of imbecilic, eccentric and downright bizarre characters between them, ranging from three rugged seamen who sing entirely politically-correct sea shanties (‘What shall we do with a transgender sailor?’) to a trio of vain American ladies who speak solely in banalities, from a mysterious eastern-European scientist to a strange Pterodactyl-like monster.

There is something of Radio 4’s brilliant comedy series Bleak Expectations about The Voyage Of The Narwhal, particularly in Jones’ somewhat nostalgic narration. Plot-line is entirely secondary to comedic content but this is hardly has a detrimental effect. The show’s hectic nature, dynamic style and undeniably entertaining concept mask any depth of narrative.

The three performers are laudably versatile. Almond undoubtedly provides the most laughs. His Captain Grey is memorable, notably for the utterly hilarious story he tells about losing his manhood in an amorous encounter with an iceberg, but his caricature of a blind American showbiz mogul is equally funny. Fox’s portrayal of the ship’s beleaguered stand-up comedian is praiseworthy, although his affected incompetence occasionally seems a little too real, and Jones is amusing as a sex-crazed transatlantic gentlewoman.

It is when all three combine, however, that the laughs are loudest and the show at its finest. The trio have obvious chemistry and although their interaction lacked a modicum of slickness, their ability to play off each other, both verbally and physically, more than makes up for this. Perhaps the show’s best sketches are those where all three portray incompetent master criminals, intent on sinking the Narwhal yet simultaneously distracted by its lavish decadence.

The Voyage Of The Narwhal was shortlisted for a BBC Writer’s Prize and such an accolade is wholly deserved; Its variety of mirthful characters, engaging concept, and adept comic performances combine well, creating a thoroughly enjoyable show.