Alice In Ultraland
The Amorphous Androgynous
out now
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The Amorphous Androgynous may not be a band that many people have heard of. This is because they are anything but mainstream. Merely the complexity and artistic merit of their name should give that away. Former Future Sound of London duo Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans formed the psychedelic electro-ambient outfit three years ago, and Alice in Ultraland is in fact their second album under this guise.
The sound of this band is something the likes of which hasn’t been heard too frequently since the 60s and 70s. That doesn’t however mean that it is archaic or limited in its musical accomplishment. The two band members have taken some quality elements of classic rock bands such as Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Dire Straits and infused them with some reasonably appropriate ethnic and electronic touches. This creates a very worldly album, with some real atmosphere.
The opening track Emptiness of Nothingness draws obviously upon Pink Floyd’s finer works, using sound effects of crows flying over an impressive piano lead and specialised keyboard effects to combine “the beat with the beatless”, as their members claim. There is even a buxom warbling singer present to further parallels with songs that include The Great Gig in the Sky. It is an epic opener for sure, with hints of a jam session about it, strong vocals and a memorable piano riff that makes for a promising start.
This is immediately followed up by a spaced out, sitar-filled throwback to free love, The Witchfinder. Its didgeridoo, pan pipes and psychedelic George Harrison influenced strands give way to smooth but powerful African style vocals that grab the attention. When the drums finally make their appearance, it completes a very powerful progressive piece of music.
Having started with such a wealth of influences and a decent pace, the album then continues quite well through various moods, from all corners of the earth, be it saxophones leading a jazz movement, Spanish guitars, violins or chilled out electronica.
But if there is a problem with this album, it is precisely the fact that it is more a collection of movements rather than distinct tracks. Some may find this a good attempt at gelling many different styles together, but it feels a little like the energy that the album began with wears slightly thinner it moves towards its end. The album is sadly a touch too long to be an immediate winner, with fourteen tracks all pushing a weighty five or six minutes.
Tracks further down the listings such as High and Dry, replete with Jagger-style hip shaking or Billy the Onion – which will make anybody feel like they are road tripping through the desert – are definite highlights. However, by the final track, Wicker Doll, there isn’t enough left from The Amorphous Androgynous to create the tearjerker that it could and should have been.
Alice in Ultraland is musically strong and those who enjoy harking back to the good old days of psychedelic rock or feeling nostalgic over far off travels and experiences will not want it to end. For first time listeners, however, it will prove an acquired taste that may not hold their attention all the way until the final track.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Taller in More Ways
Sugababes
out 10 October
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Perhaps what is most striking about the new Sugababes record is its schizophrenic stance. What shocks even more is that this is a cause for celebration, rather than a dearth of musical focus one might expect from any given girl group’s fourth album. But then again, the Sugababes have made a name for themselves as R&B renegades, never being so predictable as to follow the rules of pop school. They were dropped from their original label, London Records, only to return in 2002 with Heidi Range and the hottest mash-up since Jason Nevins met Run DMC in Freak Like Me. Last year, rumours of a break up filled column after column, fuelled by a couple of lower charting singles, though indicative of the downward sales trend more than anything else, and the news that Mutya was (shock horror!) to become a mum.
And here the girls have pulled off the whole return-to-form feat once more with what is their finest single to date, the blippy, electro-fused opener Push the Button. The track epitomises all that is good and great with Taller in More Ways: a refreshingly rich, diverse, at times expansive pop sound that actually dares to revel in melody.
Much of this bravado comes courtesy of the varied stock of production talent in evidence on the album. While British pop stalwarts Cathy Dennis and Guy Chambers do the usual rounds with expected grace (the dirty swing bass of It Ain’t Easy is a treat) the real joy comes courtesy of the arch presence of Stateside uber-producer Dallas Austin, who, notably, has worked with another famed girl trio of recent years, TLC. Whereas Austin’s brief for that group was to, perhaps, soften the spiky edges which remained from their early 90s beats and rhymes, on Taller in More Ways Sugababes’ already contemporary savvy makes for an attractive contrast to the American immaculate polish.
Gotta Be You is a masterclass in this transatlantic register. Its relentless pounding crunk bass thumps over Mutya’s deadpan delivery of pearls of wisdom such as, “My ass is the only thing you’ll see”. Future single Ugly, itself a literal reimagining of TLC’s Unpretty, sounds like a dispatch from young womanhood but without the hackneyed melodrama of regular pop sentiments in this vein. Elsewhere, tracks such as Bruised are recorded slightly off skew, with faintly sped up vocals or skipped beats for example, which have a disconcerting effect at first, only to then sit effortlessly with the spacey, retro design of subsequent songs Obsession and Ace Reject. It is such expert breaching of the void between radio friendly pop and leftfield styling that lends Taller in More Ways its distinction.
Yes, there does exist on the record, as one may expect, moments of mainstream R&B mediocrity dug from the depths of a thousand other urban pop albums, but these are few and far between, outweighed by moments such as Xeromania’s (responsible for past successes Round Round and Hole in the Head) throbbing composition, Red Dress, or the orchestral overflow of closing track 2 Hearts. Most crucially of all, however, is that with Taller in More Ways the Sugababes have equalled the tallies of predecessors Destiny’s Child, TLC and The Supremes in terms of sheer productivity. And that’s saying something for this cat-of-nine-lives trio. To the Sugababes size obviously does matter, and with this record they are about to prove it to the rest of us.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Ever wondered what goes on in those bits of the festival that are rarely shown on TV? Months ago you were up at three in the morning to buy your one festival ticket. You bought all you needed for a weekend camping (one tent, two wellies, and a lot of baby wipes); you set up tent well away from the portaloo and made your way down to the main stage. So there you are with a crowd of expectant faces when Lucie Silvas appears. Disaster! You throw your hands up in frustration, scream with consternation and turn away in disgust. But wait. What do you see but a whole world of other stalls and stands? You’ve found the festival beyond the music.
Of course not everyone must go through this strange but comforting ritual to discover the background delights of festivals. Most see them as they walk in, or read about it in the programme, or wake up with a hangover and only one sock in the middle of a circus. But sooner or later everyone comes to explore the other side.
And it’s not just a set of empty diversions for those who got corporate tickets, or lost. The other attractions are what give a festival its colour and complexion. After all, they all have big bands, stages, fences, crowds and even bigger security guards. They all make lots of money, though they do give it to different people (Oxfam, Greenpeace and Richard Branson invariably). It’s what they have going on around all this that makes each festival individual and unique.
The hippy granddaddy of the festival is, of course, Glastonbury. Originating, no doubt, in ancient times, Glastonbury has long been a centre of the slightly weird to the downright barmy. And the festival, while centering around the music, has a truly awesome amount of space devoted to every form of performing art imaginable, and a few beyond that.
There are traditional and folk music acts, circuses, mimes, jugglers, stilt walkers, burger salesmen, hippy priests, and old women who will sell you homemade cookies at competitive prices. In the vast fields devoted to the great, the random, and the odd, you can discover unique politics, philosophies and religions. You can bask in the ludicrous, the self indulgent and the crazy. You can marvel at the talents, abilities and skills on display. You can wonder at why a man taught himself to juggle twelve balls at a time in a perspex box. Truly it is a celebration of the limits of mind, body and soul.
As the first of the many fresh-faced festivals, the V Festival is the trendy, easy going, well off, new liberal, middle-class, mud-hating, blow-up sofa bringing place to be on one weekend in mid-August. Not as extensive as Glastonbury, the other side of the V festival is dominated by the absolute basics – food and beer.
That’s not to say there aren’t a couple of smaller stages devoted to the up-and-coming or down-and-leaving bands of the day (where else are you likely to see a woman in a heart-shaped hat playing a xylophone?). Their funfair provides endless fun to the drunk and bored, and very reasonable prices if you happen to have lots of disposable income cluttering up your bank account.
The skateboarders add a youthful edge (especially if you grew up in the late 1980s) and the padding and armour they wear just adds to the sense of danger and risk, when they stand about doing nothing all day. So, maybe not enlightenment but certainly a lightening of the wallet is the order of the day at V.
And finally, the grown-up anarchist rocker enjoying his weekend before being an IT consultant again is the Leeds/Reading chaos. Here can be found plenty of stages, plenty of alcohol and plenty of weirdly, wonderfully and woefully dressed rock fans. Beer riots and tent fires are not unknown. Sporting takes the form of the bottle throw, the fifty metre crowd surf and the classic mud wrestling. All in good spirits (and bad lagers), Reading and Leeds festival-goers have a focus beyond that of the common man.
And so, as we reflect on the past festival season and our brief tour, it seems Lucie Silvas has done us a great favour. Exploring the other side of festivals can be more than a way to pass the time, it can be an exploration of the true essence of a festival – get a load of people in a field and let them act like the music-loving crazy people that they are.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

The job has changed in the six years that I’ve been doing it, in terms of the college being much busier. I think financial pressure causes the colleges to need to make full use of the facilities. Out of term-time we have to maximise things like conference guests and banquets, which is important to us to maintain a good income for the college generally. Sometimes it’s a bit calmer out of term-time, but when you’ve got strangers coming in every other night during the holidays, obviously you have to acquaint them with the same situation over and over again, which can get a bit tedious. When the students are settled in during term everything runs itself really.
Luckily our students are all very pleasant; most of the time they’re quite good fun. That’s the part of the job I enjoy most, as opposed to the difficult people we get from time to time. Occasionally we have some very snotty-nosed people who seem to like ‘humiliating the servants’, as it were. That’s the hardest to deal with, they think you’re some sort of ‘flunkie’. You’ve just got to grit your teeth and bear it, really. We’ve lost quite a few staff because of that, it’s the main factor which causes people to leave, I think. We do get some pressure from that area and it has taken its toll on a number of us; unfortunately we’ve lost some good people because of that.
There have been funny times as well. One of my favourite stories involved a student of ours, very nice chap actually, still see him now and again. The main thing with students really is drunkenness, usually at the beginning of term we have a few wild nights before they settle down and start the work. We had this one chap who came in with his girlfriend and suddenly vanished from view. I heard these gurgles and groans so I went out and found his girlfriend collapsed on the edge of the lawn there, semi-conscious and gurgling away. I took my flashlight and saw this chap standing in the middle of the front quad lawn. He was pissing against one of the trees, so i crept up behind him and mentioned his name. He must have drenched his trousers! We’ve laughed about that ever since.
I work 8-hour shifts Monday to Friday, but I also write. I used to teach English in a state school and for private tuition, and then I was Finance Officer at the Job Centre before coming here. Now writing is a sort of hobby: I publish my work on the internet. At the moment I’m writing a critical examination of Colin Wilson for next May, a book of about two hundred pages in which I’m examining his New Existentialist philosophy, which is an argument against Sartre. Wilson’s argument is that we’ve meandered into a contemporary pessimism through following Sartre to the letter. I want to reassess that argument and see if it’s correct. I’m not trying to publish in the conventional way as there’s not really a market for my sort of work, so I use the PABD (Publish and Be Damned) network on the internet. It’s an author empowerment sort of service, which a lot of people are using now, as you’ve got total control over what you do, and you can distribute it yourself. In a way, it’s self-publishing, because the sort of thing I’m writing is not really commercial at all. You could say that my ambition is to carry on working in this field.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

The Secret of Drawing
BBC2
8 October, 8.10pm
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Love Soup
BBC1
11 October, 9pm
« « « « «Drawing is everywhere, proclaims presenter Andrew Graham Dixon as the opening gambit of new documentary series The Secret of Drawing. The series sets out to reassert what Dixon feels has become the neglected art of putting pencil to paper, nowadays ignored in favour of carelessly splattered canvases and unmade beds.
The first episode, The Line of Enquiry, focuses on the importance of drawing to the development of human knowledge and scientific enquiry. We meet Dr Francis Wells, cardiac surgeon, who not only prepares himself for an operation with a few preliminary sketches, but ends the surgery by inking explanatory diagrams for his colleagues in that medium most freely available in the operating theatre: his patients’ blood.
Graphic means to the graphic end are not uncommon, it seems. Eighteenth century British artist George Stubbs procured horse carcasses, stripped them layer by bodily layer and winched them into life-like positions, so as best to capture the unique poise of the equine form. Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the unsentimental John James Audubon shot his avian subjects by the hundred to produce his master work The Birds of America.
Such shockers and other revelations of artistic eccentricities aside, what makes this documentary worth its salt is what it has to show us. Studies of anatomy, nature and even the moon, produced by artists in eye-popping photographic detail, are proved to be still shaping the course of scientific enquiry hundreds of years after they were sketched.
Thankfully, there is no need among all this for costumed actors dressed as Leonardo da Vinci or nifty computer generated gimmicks. The Secret of Drawing is an old fashioned but not unexciting documentary, with a presenter genuinely wide-eyed over his subject matter. If you can stand the ponderous, arty intensity into which Dixon drifts by the end of the hour, then this is well worth a look.
Anatomical studies of a different kind abound in the latest episode of Love Soup. This rom-com drama series charts the neatly parallel, but as yet still not intersecting lives, of Alison and Gil as they continue along the path of romantic misadventure.
Confronted by some thought provoking footage bequeathed her by an ex, and forced to share a hotel room with luscious model Rochelle, Alison has her sexual confidence dashed but is soon the object of an unexpected admirer’s affections.
Gil too comes across the unexpected when his seemingly perfect blind date steps out in her swimwear, revealing more than he ever could have bargained for. Meanwhile, a dream come true dustman is not all he seems for Gil’s slightly over- friendly neighbour Irene.
Not judging a book by its cover becomes the theme of this episode. It’s a path with much comic potential, but there’s a little too much earnestness to certain elements for the good gags to draw the laughs they should.
That said, this series has a lot going for it. Written by David Renwick, whose past projects include One Foot in the Grave and Jonathan Creek, it has a cast of rising comic stars (notably Sheridan Smith and Montserrat Lombard) and a novel premise. Yet, while it is watchable enough and the writing is engagingly sharp, Love Soup remains less of a clear, tasty broth, and more of a murky gruel.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Oliver Twist. Cinema has already been there, done that. Many times, in fact. You’ve probably already got the t-shirt. Yet the last cinematic attempt was in 1968, so perhaps we cannot blame Polanski for wanting to attempt a remake of one of Dickens’ best-loved novels.
For a film director attempting a modern remake of a classic, ambition and bravery are prerequisites to the task, working in fear of negative comparisons to the masterpieces that have already gone before. The last time we heard of Polanski, he was winning awards for The Pianist (2002), a story of suffering, pain, but above all survival. It is clear why Oliver Twist, concentrating on the hardships and misadventures of a young orphaned boy who finds himself a misfit in society, was an obvious next choice. Charles Dickens was a champion of the underdog. So, it seems, is Polanski.
His aim is not to achieve realism with this adaptation; quite the opposite, which he attains from the surprising amounts of humour. Polanski has discovered the seemingly comfortable juxtaposition of the gritty truth with unexpected hilarity within the novel, and conveys this with style to the screen. As part of the gritty truth, one shot shows a streetwise, fearless, swaggering Artful Dodger strolling alongside a bewildered Oliver. For the unexpected hilarity, the next time we see them out on the filthy streets of a polluted London together, they both share the same savvy expression. Before you know it a smile – albeit small – has crept across your face, as you recognise the swift, if not entirely seamless, transition from workhouse boy to pickpocket in the making.
The film works primarily through its desire to elicit the latent humour, often forgotten, from the larger-than-life characters, with the emphasis on their amusing eccentricities. Polanski seems keen for his audience to realise that besides being a great social realist, Dickens was also an enchanting entertainer.
The movie is also oddly unemotional, except for a remarkable closing scene of forgiveness and reconciliation between Oliver and the iconic, if ambiguous, figure of Fagin. The Fagin that the audience is introduced to is the Fagin that Oliver knows, loves, and hates; one moment playing the elderly joker, the next looming over him, wildly brandishing a knife and holding it dangerously close to the boy’s throat. Sir Ben Kingsley creates a personality which is devious and corrupting, but heartbreakingly likeable, immersing the ending of the film in torrents of pathos.
In Polanski’s world, everything is simple. The good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad. Shit happens, but that’s just the way it is. Some may think this approach too simple, too clean-cut. The result, however, is not one-dimensional, but a chance for children to enjoy the classic novel. As Polanski says himself, his film is “above all a tale for a young audience”.
That is not to say that Oliver Twist has no appeal for an older crowd. The film transports us back to Victorian England, a time period instantly captivating both in literary and visual dimensions. Dickens’ London is a thrilling city, rich in sweeping images and sordid details, which has captured the world’s imagination and is brought to life on the screen here. Polanski used Gustave Doré’s original Victorian prints to recreate the London Dickens knew. The result is top-hat clad men silhoetted ominously against smoky street-corners, and it will take your breath away.
Nor has Polanski purposefully neglected the darkness of the Dickensian universe. When the film wants to be sinister, it can be chillingly so. Polanski knows full well the compelling power of the audience’s imagination to create fear for themselves, and never forgets the useful mantra of less being more. This shines through during the scene of Nancy’s death: a splatter of blood flying across the kitchen table is far more chilling and horrific than a graphic, brutal murder scene could ever have been.
This is a beautifully visual, enchantingly warm remake of an old favourite. After leaving the cinema, you’ll feel like approaching Polanski as Oliver once approached his orphanage cook, and tremblingly ask: “Please, sir, I want some more”.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Pip Stewart, an historian of Queens College, is the first Oxford student to get through to the Miss England finals. The competition is an annual event searching for England’s strongest candidate for Miss World. Stewart achieved 12th place having won the regional round for Miss Cheltenham and Gloucester. Stewart commended the support she received from her college, “Our JCR president was awesome because she e-mailed around college and asked people to vote.” Stewart has high hopes for a future Miss England from Oxford as she believes “[the organisation is] trying to make the image less about ditzy blondes and more about personality and charisma.” When asked why she chose to enter the competition she said it was “quite a fun thing to do during the holidays”.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Oxford University has been selected to recieve $26.4m (£14.5m) from the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health to fund research into malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis. The research is part of the Grand Challenges initiative, a major international effort to achieve scientific breakthroughs against the world’s most deadly and widespread diseases. Professor Adrian Hill, whose team has research units in Kenya, Gambia and South Africa, was cautiously optimistic about the development of a vaccine against HIV within the next ten years, but stressed that the initial vaccines may just act to slow down the disease.

Damian le Bas, a third year theologian from St John’s College, has appeared in an advert for mobile phone company T-Mobile after being approached by a representative for the company at an art exhibition. Damian spent 6 hours on a rooftop in East Croydon and was paid £1000 for featuring in the advert. With the money, he bought presents for his girlfriend and a hot air balloon ride. Le Bas said that he had no further plans for a modelling profession, but that he had enjoyed the job. Asked to describe the experience overall, Le Bas said “it was top joke.” Harry Kretchmer, JCR President of St John’s described Le Bas’ unconventional method of earning money as “both exciting and sensible”.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005