In the wake of James Blake’s emergence into the mainstream towards the end of last year, the atmospheric, subdued colours of post-dubstep have become more familiar to us, and Blake’s success is likely to stimulate further explorations into this murky underground scene as the year progresses. One man who is receiving much critical acclaim for his experimentation with similarly sparsely-textured sounds and relaxed beats, is singer-songwriter and producer Jamie Woon, who recently came fourth on BBC’s sound of 2011 list. Cherwell spoke to Woon this week, ahead of his gig at the Jericho Tavern on 19th February.

It all started for the 27-year old Brit School graduate in 2007, when his ethereally beautiful electro-soul track ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, was remixed by smooth dub-steppers Burial. Despite the song’s wide-spread recognition, Woon was in no hurry to build on this first step towards fame. Instead, he took time out to reflect on the direction of his sound: ‘I wasn’t ready to make an album until now: record companies are looking for a finished package’. He goes on: ‘It seems that, for example, Radio 1 now shows far more openness to new stuff’. Indeed, a few years ago it was unlikely that, however accomplished he might be, Woon’s brand of soulful but minimal and self-produced music would have won over the major record label Polydor, to which he is now signed. His forthcoming album, MirrorWriting (due for release the 4th April) has, then, come along just at the right time, with 2010 seeing an explosion in musical eclecticism that is inspiring more and more artists to delve into the underground scene. Woon agrees with my suggestion that over the past couple of years, his music has met Blake’s sounds somewhere in the middle of a spectrum which ranges from neo-soul at one end, to ambient IDM at the other: Blake, having come from the latter end, seems to be progressing towards a more soulful strain in his music, while Woon, having already perfected his vocals, is using them to great effect in a more ambient, layered sound-world than his early material.

Nevertheless, Woon is keen to emphasise the centrality of the melismatic vocals in his latest tracks. I am somewhat surprised at first when I ask him to describe his sound, and he classes it as ‘R’n’B’. When he expands on this categorisation, however, summarising his work as ‘groove-based and vocal-led’, I realise that his music actually goes some way towards rediscovering the true essence of this genre, reaching back to its roots in soul and blues. His influences include mid-90s R’n’B groups such as Boys II Men as well as celebrated singer-songwriters Lewis Taylor and Jeff Buckley. Despite his wide range of musical inspiration, his sensitively ornamented lyricism remains entirely his own, and coupled with an immaculate rhythmic timing one senses an innate musical understanding lying always at the surface of his work. His characteristic touching poignancy is particularly apparent in his latest single ‘Night Air’, (produced by Burial), which leaves its haunting melody snaking through your head for hours after listening to the song. I ask him what we can expect from his debut album, to which he gives a seemingly contradictory answer, labelling it as ‘groovy and upbeat’, while also ‘reserved and ambient … definitely a ‘night-time record”. Yet listening to ‘Night Air’ justifies this statement entirely: his mellow voice belies a lively, percussive beat, while the call-and-response effect between his voice and a sampled chorus gives an eery, crepuscular feel to the record.

It becomes apparent that Woon has had music flowing through him from a very young age. His mother, Mae Makenna, is a Celtic folk singer, who has provided backing vocals for artists from Michael Jackson to Bjork. ‘I was never particularly encouraged to take this path’, he says, ‘and I had no formal training. My vocal style happened, I guess, by osmosis, through listening to my mum’s records. It was, as a teenager, watching her making and recording her music that inspired me to do the same’. He describes her as the ‘biggest influence’ on his music, although his work has come a long way from his earlier more folk-derived songs as ‘Gravity’.

It will be intriguing to see how the singer translates his laptop-produced songs on to the stage, a process which he himself describes as a ‘challenge’. What can we expect from his gig in Oxford next month? He describes the set-up as being a synthesis of ‘live and recorded elements, real and electronic percussion’, backed up by complex programming and sampling, along with his four-piece band, comprising of keyboards, bass and drums. His softly-spoken, thoughtfully-layered vocals will be at the heart of the performance, and, for all those not acquainted with the works of Flying Lotus, Mount Kimbie and James Blake, this gig will be worth attending simply on the strength of his velvety, mesmerizing voice.

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits… – Ecclesiastes

This epigraph to Hemingway’s ‘The Sun also Rises’ crystallises the idea of the eternal and magnificent power of nature in stark contrast to transient human experience. In ‘Asperatus’, an exhibition by Jericho-born photographer Nick White, the awe-inspiring power of nature is captured through a series of cloud formations that the artist witnessed in the local area. There are also rarer phenomena such as comets and upside down rainbows known as circumzenithal arcs.

Art Jericho is a new and independent gallery tucked away behind Walton Street: a real hidden gem. It specialises in painting and original prints, and most importantly has given local artists the recognition they deserve. Nick White is no exception – a former medical photographer, he has developed and refined his vision in pursuit of bold and rare skyscapers that have fascinated him since the age of eight. The result is a competent, engaging and charming collection of photographs backed on aluminium which perfectly capture the transformative and transcendental power of nature.

The space in itself is beautiful, and as the rays of sunlight fill the gallery all at once, the Oxford bubble seems like a distant memory – somewhat ironic given the fact that the vast majority of these photos were taken in Oxfordshire and the surrounding area. One of the many highlights was the eponymous Asperatus, an image of a newly discovered cloud formation which towers majestically over the Oxfordshire countryside. The scientific seamlessly merges with the artistic to produce beautiful and mesmerising photos of the sky, retaining scientific integrity through captions which explain the formations in perfect detail. There is also a photograph of the Northern Lights taken in Buckinghamshire, lunar formations and a still of the cloud that caused the floods in Boscastle.

Warmly recommended, ‘Asperatus’ is the perfect escape from every essay crisis, and is a truly inspirational collection of photographs. Just try not to get lost when trying to find this gallery.

What do you think of when you see the Rad Cam? If you’re a frequent visitor to its collections, sadly, it’s probably work. Essays. Drudgery. All the more reason to visit the enthusiastically-titled ‘Rad Cam!’ show at the O3 gallery, with two local artists’ interpretations of the Oxford icon.

You won’t able to look at it the same way after the vibrant colours of Emma Dougherty’s plasticine and found-object constructions. Her work lends itself to the gallery’s unusual layout, which offers many different perspectives from which to look at a particular image. On one stairwell is a series of Dougherty’s pictures, each in a saturated block colour, which from far away make the library look like it has spires and minarets. It is only when you get closer that ‘Rad Camblage’ (2010) reveals itself: Dougherty has used candles, dice, iPod headphones and many other objects of the same colour to create a refreshingly innovative interpretation. Gone are the damp greys and browns of a typical rainy day’s ‘Bodding’. Dougherty’s work instead reminds us of the Rad Cam’s harmonious proportions and graceful vertical lines by reproducing them in a way that is unexpected, eye-catching and fun. This is even more the case in ‘Poly Cam’ (2010), a collection of tiny hand-made clay images on a brightly-coloured circular backgrounds which plays with the building’s status as an Oxford landmark, multiplying and reducing it to resemble a child’s badge.

Tim Steward, the other artist on display, undertook classical training in London before returning to draw from the architecture of Oxford. Steward’s black and white pieces in graphite or media contrast well with the vibrant hues of Dougherty’s design. His drawings use fragmented lines and discontinuous areas of shading to evoke the form and size of the building whilst not entirely delineating its structure. In some of his pieces the frenzied mark-making becomes almost an end in itself, so that the Rad Cam seems to be exploding outwards. In ‘Rad Cam 50’ (2010), one of the most successful drawings, Steward uses loose but delicate lines to evoke a moment within the architecture: the outline of one window, the intersection of a pilaster with the edge of the dome.

At times it can seem like the only people interested in Oxford architecture are the passing hordes of camera-laden tourists. This is exhibition is pleasing proof that this is not the case, and challenges us with representations that play with what we expect.

‘What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters.’

This quotation from ‘2666’ defines the work of Chilean Roberto Bolaño: submersion in the unmanageable, the feared and uncontrollable rather than the exquisite.

The black-and-white stills of Bolaño freeze the author mid-cigarette in his round glasses, wearing a shrewd beetlish expression: dishwasher and vagrant, traveler and poet, dead in 2003 at the age of fifty from liver complications, ostensibly from his hedonist bohemian adventures. It was four years after his death that Bolaño began to garner attention in the Anglophone literary world with the English publication of his ‘Savage Detectives’, a polyvocal literary manifesto. This reputation was cemented in 2008 with the obliquely named ‘2666’, widely regarded as not only Bolaño’s masterpiece, but – hyperbolically, one might assume – one of the masterpieces of the late twentieth early twenty-first century.

‘2666’ is constructed in five parts which share two spiritual centers: the search for a mysterious and obscure German novelist named Benno von Archimboldi, and the search for the answer to the unstinting femicide in the Mexican desert city of Santa Teresa, a stand in for the real violence in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Could the comparisons with Cervantes, Proust, Musil and Joyce be awarded purely on the basis of size? (‘2666’ clocks in at just under 900 pages.) But no, the book lives up to its hype – spanning a century, both hemispheres, the safe and imperiled, civilization and savagery. At the base of this rich and dense novel are Bolaño’s perennial themes: fear, estrangement, and the surreal nature of reality. ‘2666’ is sprawling, epic, a Borgesian garden of forking paths which at any point might converge or split. It, like Bolaño’s other novels, gives voice to madmen and lovers, hysterics and vagrants, men and women who daily defy obliteration.

His debut ‘The Skating Rink’, released this year in paperback, brief and much narrower in scope than Bolaño’s later works, contains the seeds which will ripen and be returned to: possession and loss, culpability and unexpected communion, characters who are helpless to oppose fate, to rouse themselves and defy the unnamable, unavoidable delirium. In ‘The Skating Rink’, three male narrators – a petty government official, a middle-aged opportunist, and a wandering poet – take turns narrating the strange story of an ice rink built in an abandoned palace in a Spanish seaside town and the subsequent murder it houses. But don’t be afraid of ‘The Skating Rink’ being one of the ‘perfect exercises of the great masters’; it isn’t. But it is a warm-up act for what was to come.

To offer a pop culture reference, like Desmond in the second series of Lost, who saved Dickens’ ‘Our Mutual Friend’ in order to leave himself some comfort in his last hours, I struggle between wanting to read all of Bolaño’s novels in succession, and spacing them out. Despite his publishers promising a stream of translations to come, it is unavoidable that at some point the fountain will be sealed up. We are left with the finite, and yet Bolaño’s novels (at least the ones I’ve read) pursue the fissure between finite living and infinity, between knowledge and guesswork, contradictory truths, and the surreal unknown. As the omniscient unembodied narrator says in ‘2666’, ‘Great scientists, great mathematicians, great chemists, and publishers knew that one was always feeling one’s way in the dark.’ Tracing that path is some consolation.

Judging from this preview, it’s hard to see why Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s least known plays. It seems to have it all – fight scenes, star-crossed lovers, and many witty one-liners. But it was very rarely performed until the 20th century heralded a mini revival. Now director Rafaella Marcus leads a talented team of actors who bring these characters to life and give the play the performance it deserves.

It takes place during the Trojan War, as political disputes amongst the Greeks are balanced by the love blossoming in Troy between gallant Prince Troilus and the smitten but shy Cressida. In the Greek camp, Lucy Fyffe shines as the scheming Ulysses, with her careful and measured diction making sure that her long monologues keep the audience’s attention. Chris Adams and Charlotte Salkind are excellent as the young lovers, utterly convincing both in joy and in the face of utter disaster. Richard Hill steals the show with a hilarious portrayal of Cressida’s interfering, bawdy uncle. The comedy that ensues when he is onstage only heightens the tragedy that later follows, when Cressida is forced to go to the Greek camp as slave to Diomedes in exchange for a prisoner of war.

The production gives Shakespeare some interesting twists, including the regendering of Ulysses and Aeneas, which helps them stand out in the otherwise all-male Greek camp, and the addition of a chorus, giving the play an appropriate air of the Greek tragedy. A brilliant production of an excellent play: how better to fill 3rd week?

3rd-5th February
Mansfield College Chapel
8pm

A famous film director once said that all good stories could be summed up by a simple plot: boy meets girl. However when the ‘boy’ in question is Julien Sorel, a carpenter’s son from the provincial town of Verrières devoured by his desire for social climbing, and the women are M. de Rénal and Mlle de la Mole, the story takes an interesting twist. It is Stendhal’s famous novel ‘The Red and the Black’ adapted by Tara Burton and directed by Julia Hartley. They explain that the bold idea of this adaptation came up over a conversation on Skype. A decision was quickly made to challenge themselves with what is considered one of the major classics of French literature. Their goal was to demystify such a text, strip it of the aura of complexity and lengthiness, show the true colour of what is an extremely entertaining adventure.

So there it is. You are immersed in the religious silence of the Mansfield chapel, dark at first. The stage has been placed centrally so that the aaudience surrounds it and is connected to the action throughout. The setting is exciting, but a question springs in one’s head: how will it be possible to stage the presence of such a strong narrator as Stendhal? Magically, he materialises to introduce the first scene. He will take you by the hand and physically pull you into a world where all are looking for what they can’t have. The trick works.

You are involved by the energetic Jordan Waller (Stendhal) who skilfully mimics improvises (mimics) many characters and swirls around the stage involving the audience in a flamboyant game worthy of the best commedia dell’arte. While Julien Sorel (Michael Brooks), Mlle de la Mole (Becky Moore), M. de Rénal (Abi Rees) battle through the social codes weighing on them, we are taken to the whirl of events that simply make life itself: the desire for love, power, revenge, until the crucial turning point arrives. Julien faces his destiny: finally the red fire of passion ends in a flash of black.

So let us sit down, relax, and enjoy this entertaining story of a society crumbling apart. Yes, Mesdames et messieurs, you have been served a deliciously shaken and stirred Stendhal’s finest, and you won’t look at the French novel lying in your dusty bookshelf with the same eyes again.