‘You guys are really quiet,’ says a slightly bemused Conor O’Brien to the enrapt O2 Academy. Such is the respect in the room for the lyrically rich and atmospherically crafted songs that constitute Villagers’ debut album, Becoming A Jackal. Written by O’Brien, who, for all intents and purposes, is Villagers, Becoming A Jackal is an album that began as a sketch (the same sketch which went on to become the album artwork), and whose chief themes combine everything from transfiguration to death. It has seen Villagers nominated for last year’s Mercury Prize and honoured with an Ivor Novello Award for the lead single ‘Becoming A Jackal’, cementing their place on Britain’s musical scene and O’Brien’s reputation as a song writer.

When we talked earlier in the day, O’Brien commented that ‘it’s a weird thing about awards. It’s nice to be nominated, particularly for the less commercially driven ones like the Ivors because it’s voted for by other musicians. But I’m just trying to not let it go to my head and concentrate on writing.’ The success that the last year has brought should certainly be enough to enhance any band’s confidence. Coming off the back of a tour supporting Elbow in arenas across the country, O’Brien felt that ‘our songs seemed to fit in that bigger environment. They’re kind of cinematic and because of that they have the potential to fill the large spaces.’ Asked if that meant he preferred playing the big arenas to the more intimate venues he replied: ‘Not really. You can never pre-determine whether a show is going to be good. It depends entirely upon the atmosphere of the room and the people. It differs from venue to venue.’

There was certainly no sign of any stadium hangover as Villagers took to the stage. O’Brien began the set solo, playing a new song about statues which revealed the humorous side of his song-writing and immediately captured the attention of the crowd. His live renditions differed saliently from the studio versions; ‘The Meaning of the Ritual’ featured the kind of breakdown ending that we are more used to hearing at the end of the album version of ‘Pieces’, whereas ‘Pieces’itself was performed by O’Brien as another simple acoustic solo number.

O’Brien confesses to be ‘too much of a perfectionist when recording. I recorded all the instruments on the album myself and then taught them to the other guys in the band the way that I played them. It’s nice to take the songs on tour because they develop; the guys in the band are all my friends from home and they each develop their own take on the songs.’

The show itself featured four or five new songs including ‘The Bell’ and ‘Memoir’, the latter of which was recently released in collaboration with Charlotte Gainsbourg for Record Store Day. On the possibility of a new albumO’Brien remained elusive: ‘I can sort of see the shape of the new album but it won’t be out for a while – maybe not even next year. Sometimes I go through phases, like now, where I wonder if I’ve lost the ability to write songs just because I haven’t written one for a couple of weeks. I want to be sure that I have a set of songs that are ready to be released and sound like an album. I just hope people will wait around long enough to hear it.’ Judging by the attentive silence of the O2 audience, I am sure that they will.

The music of Haydn floats through the University Church of St Mary’s. Each note is spoken with impeccable diction, voices plucked out to sing brightly over flurried layers of sound. Four musicians are seated before the altar, slowly coaxing glowing lines of song from their Stradivariuses. Suddenly it is brought to a halt. The cellist throws a glance at the vaulted ceiling. ‘What I’m really concerned about is how the articulation is going to sound in here’ he mutters as the quartet launches into a process of democratic consultation, broken only by the sound of a violin or viola testing the church acoustics. The legendary Tokyo String Quartet is warming up.

Founded in 1969 at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music, the Tokyo Quartet have come to dominate a position of unparalleled respect. With seven Grammy nominations, the Grand Prix du Disque Montreux and numerous Gramophone magazine nominations, the four musicians truly are the nobility of the classical music world – no mean feat in an obsessively competitive art form. The quartet are in Oxford to play a Japan benefit concert for victims of the earthquake and tsunami. ‘It’s our way of helping out, perhaps not financially but at least in spirit’, explains Kikuei Ikeda, second violin in the quartet. ‘Japan is a country that has experienced many problems. It’s a country that we feel a close connection to. It’s a country to which we often return.’

The quartet’s shifting relationship with Japan is one that has come to define its character. ‘We started off as four Japanese who went to the same school and who were rooted in the same background,’ says Ikeda. Over four decades on the quartet has faced striking cultural changes, not least the arrival of its first non-Japanese member in 1981. ‘There was huge pressure from our management to stay completely Japanese’, Ikeda recalls, ‘after all, we were the Tokyo Quartet! We had been Japanese for twelve years and that had created a culture where we always had to be the same. We tended to hide our personalities in the early years.’ Now composed of a Canadian, a Brit and two Japanese, the quartet seems remarkably free of any cultural tensions. ‘It was a huge change and above all it was a striking language change,’ Ikeda observes of his Western colleagues. ‘But it was what we needed. Cultural differences played a big part in removing us from an insular framework and granting us four independent minds.’ 

The quartet nevertheless remains something of an anomaly within classical music. Four Japanese creating a successful string quartet in the 1970’s within a tradition revolving around “dead white men” was always going to be surprising. While classical music has increasingly found a hungry market in the Far East, the old prejudices still remain. The recent signing of the Seoul Philharmonic to the great German label Deutsche Grammophon caused an uproar among conservative circles earlier this year. Ikeda acknowledges his quartet’s unique position. ‘We were certainly a significant change from the very beginning. To see four Japanese on stage playing classical music shocked many audiences! And we were lucky to emerge at just the right time. Any earlier and we may not have made it.’

So what are the quartet’s plans? ‘The music always comes first. That is very important,’ Ikeda reflects. ‘We‘ve spent the last three years working on Beethoven and it’s been an amazing journey. The musical life of Beethoven was unique – still so full of triumph to the very end’. But it’s time for a shift in the quartet‘s focus. ‘We’d love to revisit the Bartók quartets,’ enthuses Ikeda, ‘our record label, Harmonia Mundi, seems to be the only company that allows us the freedom to record what we want. That’s a wonderful thing. Revisiting works we have recorded before is always an interesting challenge. Tradition is always open to so many interpretations.’

I leave the musicians as they launch into a Schumann quartet, filling the church once more with delicately crafted sound. Classical music has increasingly been struggling with accusations of complacency and stagnation, not least in the unhappy era of arts cuts. The Tokyo Quartet seems to offer up an uncompromising proposition. The old school focus on the established string quartet repertoire is defiantly traditional. Yet the quartet’s supranational history is far from orthodox. In these times of crisis the Tokyo Quartet is a reminder of classical music’s heritage as well as a symbol for its potential to adapt.

Long since dethroned from the position of sound-of-the-moment, the genre of chillwave has taken a sharp downturn in recent times. Over four years since Panda Bear’s seminal Person Pitch helped shape the genre in its infancy, chillwave’s artists have done little to develop their core aesthetic, content instead to rework and refine rather than drastically rethink their sound. And with its washed out textures and dreamy vocals, it would be easy to label Chad Valley’s sophomore EP, Equatorial Ultravox, as yet another unnecessary addition to the already bloated chillwave canon.

Indeed throughout Equatorial Ultravox, Hugo Manuel (the Oxford based musician behind Chad Valley) does not shy away from any of the usual clichés. On ‘I Want Your Love’ and ‘Fast Challenges’, Hugo’s vocals are buried beneath swathes of reverb and swooning synths forming a shimmering bed of sound which is certainly pleasant if slightly anonymous. What’s more, at points throughout the EP the production strays from merely bland to somewhat sickly with gratuitous amounts of autotune layered atop Hugo’s voice.

On occasion, however, Hugo makes a strong case for his relevance alongside his contemporaries; the fleeting moments where his vocals are allowed to take the spotlight are simply spellbinding. Comparisons to the vocal style of Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear) have been numerous, and not entirely misplaced, but Hugo’s voice carries so much more depth and brute force than Lennox’s choirboy delivery. The soaring vocal melodies of standout tracks ‘Acker Bilk’ and ‘Shapeless’ display Hugo’s talents in all their glory; as he moves seamlessly between a full baritone and a glorious, pure falsetto one is struck with a distinct impression of what might have been if only the vocals had not been so obscured elsewhere.

As one of Oxford’s most consistently exciting musicians of the last few years, both as Chad Valley and with the 4 piece Jonquil, it is surprising to see Hugo Manuel so in awe of his influences on Equatorial Ultravox. Whilst this record does display a considerable amount of promise, Hugo is going to have to focus on what makes his project unique if he is going to save Chad Valley from slipping politely into the background in the future.

When I was asked to review an anthology by ‘The Failed Novelists’, I was slightly apprehensive. I’ve been burned before by attempting to appreciate amateur creative writing (my primary school writing club – brrr), and any group actively embracing failure didn’t exactly entice me. Was this going to be some kind of clever-clever ‘ironic’ mess, representing the decline in modern fiction? Or was this going to be some self-righteous postmodern look at the craft of the novel? Either way, I wasn’t anticipating a very fun Saturday morning.

Oh how wrong I was.

Before I get onto the anthology, I should say a little bit about the novelists themselves. The Failed Novelists’ Society is probably the biggest, and certainly the most inclusive, creative writing society in Oxford, allowing anybody to join regardless of experience or accomplishment. The name comes from the idea that all novelists are failed novelists, no matter how well they sell, because what you eventually write will never match the original conception in your head. The importance is to keep on trying, and not be afraid of failure. Many of the society have been published, and the Failed Novelists’ anthology is the only student writing book to be produced in Oxford.

This anthology is a nice mix of styles, taking in poetry and prose and variants within those classifications. Selena Wisnom’s Underwater Archaeology is a skilfully structured piece, following the thoughts of an archaeologist reminiscing about her time at Oxford. As she dives into the silent seas she is more concerned with finding relics of an ancient past than preserving her own, letting happy memories fade like a peeling photograph.

Another narrative by James Benmore, Bitter, is a fascinating character study. As Terry consoles his recently jilted friend, we grow to realize the unreliability of our narrator and the simmering, unspoken bitterness that comes from Terry’s treatment by his friends. The whole piece rings true, with a striking maturity considering the age of the author. In fact, I’d say that about many of the works within the anthology, such as the poem Giraffe in a Palestinian Zoo, by Tom Nailor. Opening with a quotation from the Qur’an, the piece tackles the thorny subject of the Israeli-Palestine war by looking at the death of a truly innocent bystander: the giraffe of the title. The Giraffe has no concept of war, but is a casualty of the conflict just the same with his death described in grim medical detail. The poem is an inspired take on the cost on innocent life in war, and on forced sacrifice.

My favourite piece in the anthology has to be Ling Low’s She Danced the Robot, an achingly realistic take on first love. The story follows the young protagonist’s realization about the fickle nature of attraction, and is full of wry observations and laugh-out-loud moments. Anyone who’s been in love, been to a club or even just been a teenager will find much to love in this very sweet story.

I don’t have enough space here to mention all the authors, but I would like to say that while some pieces are a little rough around the edges, the varied writing in the anthology is of a very high quality. Some of the poetry was a little over my head, but there’s something here for everyone. One word comes to my mind now thinking about the Failed Novelists:

Success. 

You may not have heard of first year History student Richard Keen yet, but he’s just won an Oscar – sorry, make than an Oxcar – at the Oxford Film Festival. His stop-motion animation series Herman and Harold, depicting the adventures of two rather strange friends, is rapidly gaining an enthusiastic fanbase. So far we have seen them in their lounge, outside in the snow, and most recently being chased by a mummy in an Egyptian tomb. How did it all start?

“It was procrastination really,” Richard says, laughing. “I started with filming lego.” He admits a fixation since childhood. A few years ago, he decided that the little plastic men just weren’t malleable enough for his purposes, and the first version of Herman was created – a cardboard figure with a ping pong ball head. The current Herman is much more sophisticated, built around a skeleton of barbeque wire padded out with foam and plasticine. Harold, a creature with a voracious and interesting appetite, is born from doodles drawn in exercise books at school. “People have said he looks like a jellyfish and other things, but in my head he’s an alien. I think he’s very dependent on Herman too – he wouldn’t really be able to exist on his own.” 

Apart from this, Richard hasn’t really fleshed out a backstory for his characters, protesting that “that might be taking it too seriously!” But doesn’t he want them to be taken seriously? “Well, when I first started they were just a sort of greetings card for friends. I just wanted to have fun, and make people laugh.” It’s clearly gone a bit further than that, as Richard plans to enter his films into various competitions in the near future.

Stop-motion has a long history in animation, and Herman and Harold has a nostalgic atmosphere that reminds me of the good old days of Pingu. “I use the same software as Wallace and Gromit actually,” Richard states with some pride.

He takes the photos for the films on a webcam, which rests upon a small wooden boom that allows him to zoom and pan around, before editing them on his laptop. It all seems deceptively simple, but every tiny change in motion must be photographed, to about 15 photos per second of film. The snowman film, which is five minutes long, took him a staggering half a year to create.

“But I only did a couple of hours a day,” he says quickly, with characteristic modesty.

The influence of animations such as Wallace and Gromit on Richard’s work is clear. But he has also obviously put much of his own humour and style into his creations too, and this labour of love does not lack a great sense of fun. “I’ve realised it’s just not a good film unless the set’s been destroyed by the end!”

And what to expect next from this destructive duo? The impressively detailed Egyptian tomb set sits in the corner of Richard’s room – will it be used again? “Definitely. They’re going to have an Indiana Jones-style adventure.”

The Herman and Harold films can be seen at www.youtube.com/user/hermanandharold

The first thing you see at the O3’s summer show is a huge nest. The man-sized bundle of dried leaves and grass rests matter-of-factly on the exhibition floor, both strange and familiar. Created by Emma Kwan, the ‘Nurture’ installation piece is interwoven with dried medicinal herbs and tea leaves so that it becomes at once natural and artificial: a nest that might have fallen out of an enormous tree, and a concoction of man-made ingredients.

This playing with the ways humans relate to nature is typical of the whole exhibition: its subjects vary from a vast, uncultivated forest in Bee Bartlett’s ‘Boars Hill Tree Canopy 2’ to the neatest bunch of cut roses in the painting ‘Flowers and Coffee’ by Roberta Tetzner. The exhibition’s curation brings out the contrasts between these different representations, so that we are frequently surprised by unsettling, unexpected combinations of ideas. The Tetzner painting, for instance, is hung next to ‘Stolen Rose’ – a figurative etching by Morna Rhys of red blooms on a white background. This clarifies its counterpart so that the layered circles of red and pink hues become symbols for roses too, and we see the same object interpreted in both geometric and organic ways.

Elsewhere Rachel Owen’s screenprint ‘Noah’s Eye View’ depicts a single, enormous white flower spread across the upper half of a stark black background. Its majesty is subverted when we realize it is a blow up of an image of a dandelion, and that the impression of natural grandeur which might be expected in a sweeping landscape by Constable have been given instead to a common weed. We are forced to re-examine the way we consider not only nature but the way it is represented.

In another corner, Sarah Simblet’s ink drawing ‘Lime Tree (Tilia)’ is hung by Rachel Ducker’s wire sculpture ‘Three People Tree’. Seen alone, the Simblet drawing has a softness brought out by the featherlike detailing on the finest branches — but  the tight prickliness of Ducker’s wire construction brings out a sharper, more imposing side to Simblet’s carefully wrought ink lines.

Finally, you descend the gallery stairs to Lisa Busby’s ‘Moth’s Wings’, another highly intricate expression of man-made and natural worlds colliding. An old wardrobe seems to explode with plant life, its vine-covered wallpaper blending into a huge pile of dried leaves and the stems of potted flowers that loosely surround it. Piles of books, record covers, picture frames and tapestries that cover the floor. The main part of Busby’s practice is musical composition, and throughout the exhibition her songs can be heard playing from a laptop on a rickety desk nestled among the leaves. The whole installation is organic to the extent that Busby herself ‘lives’ inside it and constantly adds to it, hanging knitted flowers on the stalks of real flowers and proffering trays of cake to visitors. At one point I looked down at ‘Moth’s Wings’ from the upper gallery and saw just Busby’s feet as she lay down within the plants. It seemed another of this exhibition’s emblems of merging natural and cultivated worlds.

The night before Glastonbury started, I sat by a Stone Circle where a 12 foot Wicker Man was being ceremonially burnt. The night before Reading started, I sat around a bonfire with a group of total strangers. The night before Get Loaded in the Park started, I watched Friends and was in bed by 10. Can a one day event ever create the atmosphere which makes music festivals so legendary?

True, Get Loaded isn’t trying to be Glasto or Reading, although the overpriced food would suggest different. It had some of the traditional festival accoutrements: heavy rain, a sea of mud and a stellar line-up. But the atmosphere did feel a little fake. Wearing tinsel round your neck that you inexplicably found in a field is fine, wearing tinsel that you’ve presumably brought from home is not. The proliferation of flowery headpieces just seemed a bit try-hard at a one-day festival. But maybe I’m just bitter.

If you’re not coming to a festival for the atmosphere, the only reason to come is the music. And this is where Get Loaded shone. Highlights of the day included Patrick Wolf, who worked the crowd superbly dressed in an all-green suit, perhaps in homage to his saintly namesake. The Noisettes opened to a sprightly ‘Don’t Upset the Rhythm’, with lead singer Shingai Shoniwa clad in a gold leotard and appearing from huge angel wings centre stage, who later got the crowd singing along to an emotional rendition of ‘Never Forget You’. British Sea Power performed a slightly lacklustre set, whilst full points for effort went to Darwin Deez, whose four members performed immaculate yet incongruous dance routines in between songs.

The other two stages in the tiny area of Clapham Common were host to a selection of up and coming talent, of whom Babeshadow shone with upbeat tunes. Headliner Johnny Flynn got the crowd humming along to his folky songs, although without a backing band his acoustic set wasn’t perhaps the climax one would expect at a festival. Back on the main stage the ever-reliable Cribs produced an outstanding hour of some of their best work, showing that they don’t need Johnny Marr, who left the band this year. Old classics including ‘Hey Scenesters!’ and ‘Men’s Needs’ were greeted with rapture by the boisterous crowd, intermingled with new songs which look set to rocket the Wakefield band to even greater heights.

Love them or hate them, Razorlight’s London Exclusive set was the final cherry on the already Loaded cake. Johnny Borrell led his new, long-haired band through old hits such as ‘America’ and ‘Golden Touch’ which were greeted with delight, although some uninspired new songs received distinctly cooler receptions, suggesting that this is a band which has had its heyday. Borrell performed much of his set from the ground in front of the stage, proclaiming ‘Why should you get wet, and us not get wet, y’know?’ How in touch with his fans he is. Unfortunately this meant that we still got wet, and now couldn’t see him. Get Loaded is all about the music, and there isn’t much else to be there for. But the music was fantastic, and whet many an appetite for the festival season to come. And I’ll admit it, after it was all over I’d choose a warm bed over a damp tent any day.