Anyone who has experienced the music of Aaron Funk (more commonly known as the man behind Venetian Snares) in full flow will be aware that it is about as bracing as the weather that has been recently tearing through the producer’s Canadian home town of Winnipeg.

In this release, however, gone are the harsh, synth-heavy sections; intense, chopped up breakbeats and erratic time signature changes. This could be due to the influence of collaborator Joanne Pollock, a relatively new name to electronic music, with only a few independently released tracks on Bandcamp and SoundCloud.

Together they have created an ethereal and dreamlike landscape; its synthesized textures just abstract enough to allow the listener to drift off into it, whilst the occasional jarringly surreal lyric on tracks like ‘Ancient Pony’ bring moments of lucidity. The lo-fi vocals given by both artists have a distinctly Warpaint-esque sound to them, whilst the nocturnal atmosphere calls to mind Moby’s 2011 release, De- stroyed. Though some tracks such as ‘Losing Meaning’ feature more activity, at times even the most sparse musical textures seem to retain the intensity of Funk’s breakcore output.

Poemss is a vehicle for abstract escapism best experienced late at night, in its entirety, as loud as possible.

Actress has done it again. This, the fourth, and possibly final LP under Darren Cunningham’s thespy moniker is an excellent addition to an outstanding body of work. 2012’s R.I.P. was always going to be a tough act to follow, and whilst Ghettoville doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of that masterpiece, it is his strongest conceptually. R.I.P. was equal parts beautiful and erratic, subtle and abrasive: more a compilation of sketches than the carefully considered narrative presented here.

Ghettoville sees Cunningham return to a more stereotypical sound palette, far removed from that of R.I.P. The album’s title, therefore, is not all that surprising, forming a sequel of-sorts to 2008’s debut Hazyville. That being said, it is striking how individual and distinct each of his four albums have been from one another. True to his name, Cunningham is a dab hand at playing different roles. Even so, every album unmistakably carries his signature.

The opening track, ‘Forgiven’, sets the scene for Cunningham’s miserable portrayal of the modern metropolis. An ominous thunderstorm occasionally infiltrates the beat, only to be driven back by the incessant hum of traffic. The realities of urban living are laid plain: this is the London of the people, not of the fat cats and their bonuses. The theme is continued through a series of anaesthetised 4/4 interpretations brimming with emotion until an orchestral stab of dread pierces the fabric of the album in ‘Towers’, conjuring images of an Orwellian nightmare. ‘Gaze’ offers a glimmer of hope with its uplifting string pads, only to be abruptly curtailed by the visceral terror of ‘Skyline’. A cityscape defaced by decay.

The overarching gloominess is juxtaposed by the pop sensibilities of ‘Rap’, but the melancholy remains in its repetitive cries of “Wrap yourself around me”. A reflection of the city’s youth craving physicality in our increasingly virtual world. Connected, but alone.

If this really is the curtain call, then so be it. Cunningham has said and done more with Actress than I ever dreamt possible on discovering Hazyville. And therein lies the crux – all that can be said, has been said. In the artist’s own words: “the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout.”

Exit Actress.

One of the greatest unforeseen challenges of capitalism has been the concentration of financial power within institutions which manage investments. The share-owning democracy is the openly stated ambition of many a politician. An instrument of investment in which profits are contingent upon volatile share prices, which can fluctuate wildly in response to any number of factors, has created an ancillary industry of stock brokerage. Knowledge of share price behaviour has become a profession of itself, one for which investors are willing to pay a handsome premium in order to try to shield themselves from the volatility of the shares market. The Wolf Of Wall Street is a case study by one of the greatest living film directors, Martin Scorsese, of one such real life stock broker, named Jordan Belfort. It is based on a book of the same name, written by Belfort (played by a superb Leonardo DiCaprio) as a memoir of his “professional” life.

It begins with a 22 year old Belfort arriving on Wall Street to begin a career in a stock brokerage firm. Married, seemingly honest and decent, his sole determination appears to be to improve his prospects for both himself and his wife. A laudable ambition. Upon commencing his job, however, he is inculcated into a world which seems utterly insane. His immediate senior within his job is a wealthy but morally bankrupt drug addict and alcoholic share dealer, who sees his function as one of organised theft of the investors whose interests he is theoretically supposed to serve. Although initially reticent to replicate the behaviour observed in his superiors, Belfort quickly succumbs to temptation. We see him embark upon a hedonistic orgy of class A drugs, alcoholism and sexual promiscuity barely imaginable. Fuelled by the high earning lifestyle of his role in the brokerage firm, Belfort’s activities are brought to a sudden halt by ‘Black Monday’ as his firm is forced to close.

Scratching around for a new job, Belfort begins working for a small, run-down brokerage firm which tries to push “penny-stocks” (i.e. worthless investments) upon the unsuspecting poor. Realising that the commission rates on worthless stock run to 50% of the value of the investment, rather than the 1% he was used to in his previous work, Belfort sets up his own firm with the sole objective being to foist such worthless shares upon as many unsuspecting investors as possible. By recruiting a plethora of salesmen, with no moral inhibitions, he becomes a personal financial success, and before long is earning north of $40m per annum.

Belfort is a fascinating character. Much like Shakespeare’s Richard III, he wins our affections as an audience, not because we ethically endorse his behaviour, but because he has a charm and wit which is appealing. He is highly intelligent, driven, and conducts his life without any moral restraint whatever. Yet his transformation on screen is from an ambitious but naïve family man to a morally vacuous individual. The brokerage firm he establishes is a ruthless environment, where non-conformity to the accepted professional norms of the exploitation of naïve investors is met with dismissal, violence and social exclusion. The almost exclusively male environment painted on screen by Scorsese is one in which cocaine, prostitutes, alcoholism and theft become ends in themselves. Their indifference to those they steal from is only exceeded by their indifference to any notion of fidelity or emotional loyalty they might be expected to exhibit toward their wives and families.

A moral treatise this film is not. The objective is to set out on screen what happened in Belfort’s life, and how. There is no focus on the consequences of his behaviour for anybody except himself and his immediate friends and relatives. Despite given numerous attempts to escape from his degrading and self-destructive environment, Belfort refuses to surrender his delinquency. Manipulative, myopic and aggressive, he is the very definition of a psychopath. Scorsese offers us no solution to such behaviour, or cure for its consequences. As a study of the human nature of financial elites who have made the world what it is today, The Wolf of Wall Street is a reiteration that man, placed in an environment with no ethical, financial or legal checks on his behaviour, is unlikely to conduct himself with the best interests of others in mind. DiCaprio’s on screen performance is one of unconstrained, unabashed self-interest, the very behavioural norm that market liberal economists tell us is good for all. Whether audiences are inclined to agree is another matter, but the closing scene – in which many hundreds of members of the public seek to learn the secrets of Belfort’s wisdom in order to replicate his ‘success’ – might tell us all we need to know about the future of capitalism.

There can be little doubting that the BBC’s modern-day adaption of the Sherlock Holmes stories is amongst the most popular dramas of today. Setting aside the soaps and the odd special episode of Doctor Who, the opening episode of the most recent miniseries, The Empty Hearse, achieved the highest consolidated rating for a TV drama in nearly a decade, with 12.72 million viewers tuning in. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories has clearly struck a chord with audiences, but it’s surprising to note the sheer scale of this success.

Considering the heights Sherlock was going to reach, it had something of an inauspicious start. There was no denying its pedigree; one of the co-creators had just shepherded a new incarnation of Doctor Who to the screen, and the other had a distinguished career in scriptwriting. However, the signs weren’t particularly good- Steven Moffat’s previous stab at the modernisation of a classic of Victorian literature, Jekyll, was received with critical praise but viewer apathy, and the production of Sherlock had been beset with issues, not least the need to rewrite and restage the pilot episode when the original running time of 60 minutes was deemed to be insufficient. With all of this considered, Sherlock’s immediate success was remarkable, with 9.23 million watching over the course of the week. Sherlock began big, and has simply got bigger and bigger- every series has outrated the last.

This wild popularity isn’t just confined to the UK, either; it has made international icons of the two lead actors. Both Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman were largely unknown outside of British acting circles- Freeman had gained some degree of notice as Tim in The Office but he was largely unknown beyond that, and Cumberbatch hadn’t received any notable degree of fame. However, both actors swiftly became leading Hollywood figures shortly after Sherlock aired. Freeman became the face of a multi-billion dollar franchise when he was cast as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, and Cumberbatch has had his choice of roles, with him becoming the villainous Hollywood Brit de jour through his roles in Star Trek Into Darkness and the Hobbit, as well as roles in more challenging fare such as 12 Years A Slave, August: Osage County, and The Fifth Estate.

If the level of success that Sherlock has achieved is immediately obvious, the reasons why are perhaps less so. Perhaps the most obvious reason for its success is the fact that it’s actually a very good programme- intelligently written, well-acted all round, and with a willingness to assume that the audience is intelligent that’s rather uncommon in such a populist drama. The BBC have been savvy in its promotion and marketing, too- the first trailer for series 3 arrived nearly half a year before the first episode, unthinkably for a BBC production. Beyond all of that, though, is the fact that the modern show properly pays tribute to where it came from. Although decades of Holmes adaptations strewn with Victoriana may have convinced us otherwise, the originals weren’t period pieces- they had their finger on the pulse of contemporary society to a degree that matches extraordinarily well to the modern day. In the original Study In Scarlet, you read that Watson is a veteran of Afghanistan, struggling to find a roommate in expensive central London, and you wonder why on Earth it took so long for someone to realise how applicable it was to the modern day.

So, the question is- where next? The last series ended on a cliffhanger pointing to the return of the insane Moriarty, last having been seen blowing his brains out on top of a hospital. Attempting to guess where the series is going to go dramatically has, thus far, been fruitless (although the fact that Moriarty has a younger brother in the original stories may just be relevant to the character’s apparent return), but the real question is whether Sherlock can possibly maintain its ridiculous levels of popularity and acclaim. It remains to be seen, but it’s quite clear that the game is going to be on for the foreseeable future.

Carmen is the tour de force of classical opera. It is a work of supreme melodrama and passion that showcases many of opera’s greatest and most recognisable pieces of music, from Carmen’s Habanera to the Toreador song, to Micaela’s lament which have entered the popular consciousness. It is the most accessible and popular work of Opera, and has been a key piece in the Royal Opera houses repertoire for decades. What follows is an exciting, well-acted and well-rehearsed performance, but one that feels slightly too comfortable.

Carmen follows the titular character, a gypsy notorious for her beauty and charm who, after being arrested and seeking to escape, seduces a straight laced army commandant Don Jose from a life of service and his marriage to his sweetheart Micaela. Jose falls deeply in love with her yet but she soon tires of his slavish devotion and falls in love with the superstar bullfighter (Toreador) Jose grows more and more heartbroken and obsessed, eventually stabbing Carmen to death in a fit of jealous rage.

Don Jose is  alternately noble, tragic and pathetic character, and it takes skill to play him with the necessary doses of sympathy and pathos, and Roberto Alagna’s performances is one the best I have seen. Anita Rachvelishvili’s Carmen may not look the part of a great seductress, but she certainly sounds it, which is much more important, and has a voice that is powerful while still sounding appropriately sultry and  with the perfect hint of menace.

The only complaint I had with the performances was Vito Priantes’ Bullfighter. His voice, while good, does not project particularly well and lacks the necessary timbre for such a dangerous or exciting figure; it’s not particularly powerful, masculine or exciting, which is a problem when his character is supposed to be a direct foil to the weak willed and feeble Jose. He comes across as quite dainty, almost if he is playing an acrobat rather than a warrior.

His entrance on stage, which is supposed to be one of the defining moments of the Opera occurs on a live horse; this could have brought some excitement to his performance, but it comes across as quite superfluous, as it trots on stage limply merely to be walked off within a minute. It’s little more than an easily discarded prop. You only have to watch a recording of Lawrence Tibbets magnetism and swagger when he strides on stage to realise the power this scene when done well, but this is one of the weaker parts of the whole production when it should be a showpiece.

Carmen is still a rousing work, and it is difficult not to enjoy Bizet’s timeless music or the Royal Opera House’s lavish production values. It’s a perfect introduction for anyone unfamiliar with opera, but for experienced opera-goers it is a very solid, but slightly underwhelming performance.

Brecht’s celebrated work of epic theatre is set to be the unmissable extravaganza of Hilary term, hitting up the Playhouse stage in 7^th week. In a series of tell-all features, members of the cast and production team will be revealing to Cherwell the trials, tribulations and joys of being involved in one of Oxford’s biggest and wildest current plays.

First days are exhausting. Changing schools, Freshers’ Week, rehearsals with a new cast, these days send you to bed with a sore face due to plastered smiles and the niggling hope that you’ve made friends. I have many reasons to thank Jessica Lazar and Edwina Christie for casting me as Natella Abashvilli in this term’s production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, one of which is giving me a character that not only eliminated any aching in my face, but also saved me from worrying about making friends that day, because I probably didn’t.

There was no question about it. After being required on the first day to spurn half the cast, shriek at the lovely Claire Bowman, ‘I’ll kill you, you bitch!’ and kick Luke Rollason in the face (sorry, Luke. Still feeling very bad about that), any niggling hope was impaled – though it was quite cathartic.

Indeed, we all quickly found out that there is nothing bashful about Natella Abashvilli.* Wife to the autocratic Governor of Nukha, Natella is monomaniacal in her pursuit of attention and shoes. When Nukha is set ablaze by rioters, and her husband brought out in chains to be beheaded, she lingers in the palace hysterically ordering servants to fetch her clothes on fear of being flogged. When she sends the nanny (Emma D’Arcy) off to find her morocco slippers, her son Michael is put down, eventually lost and swaddled in a mountain of gowns. Then she frantically flees from the burning town without her husband’s heir – and only a fraction of the clothes Natella asked for – inciting a plot-worth of troubles as the kind-hearted kitchen maid, Grusha (Connie Greenfield), stumbles across him and promises to keep him safe.

Costume is obviously of key importance to Natella. Whilst Anusha Mistry is checking out the National Theatre costume wardrobe for morocco slippers and fantastical 1940s dresses and furs, peasant clothing is surprisingly going to be a staple for me, and the rest of the cast, as we all start the play in rustic garb. The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a play-within-a-play. The main two hours’ traffic of our stage is set as a parable for the folk of two communes in the Soviet Union after WWII, hence the rags (this is, of course, a sneaky way of setting up a moral lesson for the audience too).

So: peasants, maniacal shrieking, ‘swaddle’. Yes, the play is meant to be a comedy – please come. On at the Playhouse, with the promise of singing, puppetry à la War Horse, and Azdak, the rascal judge, it is a spectacle for the ears, the eyes, and the temperament. And for 7^th week, when exasperation has hit its height, it will serve as a vital reminder that ‘in bad times, there are good people’. Well, except for my character.

*Dom Applewhite must either be credited or blamed for conjuring the following joke:

‘What are you doing if you’re embarrassed about applying your chocolate spread?’

‘Spreading Natella Abashvelli!’

The greatest strength of the upcoming Fools and Kings production of Pinter’s morally ambiguous account of a complex love triangle, is that it succeeds in making the audience feel like strangers. In a play in which the moral compass is entirely corrupted, I have no idea how far I can trust me reaction to the protagonists. There is no victim: no betrayer or betrayed; no right or wrong.

What we are left with to fill this vacuum is a series of highly intense scenes, which are presented to us even more disconcertingly out of chronological order. As an audience we are trying to judge a play which refuses to fulfil the comfortable categories of the immoral and sympathetic. In the capable hands of director Max Gill we are made to feel complicit in the betrayal; a betrayal which at once applies to the sordid web of affairs and their implications for the status of marriage in middle-class suburban England.

I was privy to heart of the play: the scene around which the play revolves. Emma, played by Flora Zackon, is the unfaithful wife of Robert (Henry Faber, who has also featured in the Hollow Crown series of BBC Shakespeare). At the moment where he forces her to admit her infidelity they sit on a bed ostensibly in an image of comfortable intimacy, which soon morphs into a sinister portrayal of Robert’s controlling, violent nature. At the moment where he plays with her hair above her head I am grotesquely reminded of a puppeteer pulling the strings.

Although this may seem too full-on for a casual evening of entertainment, the fluency of the actors make this performance compulsively watchable. Flora Zackon in particular promises a versatile presentation of Emma, a woman in an unfulfilling marriage who we see both in the role of seductive mistress and jaded, oppressed spouse.     

Clearly, Betrayal will not have you rolling in aisles. Instead you will be forced to endure an occasionally cringy, often emotionally wearing performance, which will nevertheless see you leave satisfied in the knowledge that you have seen, and lived, one of the more intense dramatic experiences of the year. 

Art dealers maintain a monopoly over the public’s consumption of the visual arts in a way that is true of no other cultural medium. Where music, film and literature are all cheaply and widely available, originality is everything in the art market. One copy of Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Call Me Maybe’ is worth as much as the next but an imitation masterpiece is not worth the canvas it’s painted on. 

The first graffiti is crude sexual scribbling no more impressive than the exhortations to ‘CALL 4 A GOOD TIME’ scrawled over the bus-stops, toilet doors, and playgrounds of England today. A penis carved on the wall in Pompeii is labelled ‘handle with care’. Though not art in any real sense of the word, it is a historical and cultural document, providing a rare example of written history set down not by senators but the barely literate man on the street.

In the 20th century, graffiti became a medium for dissent. In daubing slogans on the walls, would-be revolutionaries are able to force the public into a response, even if it is delivered in the form of a bucket of whitewash. Painting over a political graffito has the same viscerally totemic impact as the burning of a book. ‘Boredom is counter-revolutionary’ read one slogan reproduced across Paris during the 1968 student protests. Graffiti demands engagement, taking back public space for the public.

Alongside MCing, breakdancing and DJing, graffiti is one of the ‘four pillars’ of hip-hop culture. Hip-hop fermented in the crucible of the Bronx, but soon burst out of this ghettoised community to become arguably the defining cultural movement of the late 20th century. Though their inspiration came from Philadelphia, the early pioneers of the art form were New York citizens who ‘bombed’ their vibrant work all over subway trains, sending it rattling across the five boroughs. The dream for young artists was to see their work go ‘all-city’, to develop a name outside of the block they grew up on.

Yet soon even New York proved too small to contain the ascension of graffiti culture. The modern centre of the art form is São Paulo, another enormous city with a young and disenfranchised population. Belfast and Los Angeles, two cities riven by war, are covered in murals that are a potent distillation of frustration and grief. Like the Berlin Wall before it, the Israeli West Bank barrier is a concrete postingboard for the anger of people who feel that their voices are going unheard. Graffiti has gone all-world.

“Graffiti is revolutionary”, according to the director of an exhibition in Williamsburg presenting graffiti as fine art. “And any revolution might be considered a crime. People who are oppressed or suppressed need an outlet, so they write on walls — it’s free.” His argument is persuasive, but the act of hanging the art in a sanitised indoor space neuters the art and decontextualises it, robbing it of much of its potency. Graffiti is a forceful act of engagement with the community. It is guerilla street art. Regardless of whether or not it contains a political message, it is a statement in itself, an assertion of our right to free artistic expression on the streets where we live. Graffiti’s place is on the walls of our cities, not choked by the noose of a frame.