Imperial Leisure - The Flowerpot, September 5th 2009

“MORE ME!!! MORE ME!!” Imperial Leisure’s Denis bellows into the mic, preparing to grab the attention of every crammed sardine in this tin of a venue, the Flowerpot. Pushing, shoving, skanking, jumping; the crowd are soon warmed up with the band’s chaotic fusion of ska, rock, punk and hip-hop, all blended together with a soulful latino-esque trumpet. The band play the tunes their fans love to hear: favourite ‘In A Letter’ kicks the set off comparatively dark and moody to the cheeky lyrical banter of later tracks such as Beer Belly (“Your Beer Belly’s looking like a baby but that’s fine we’re OK,”) which with its pulsating rhythm a perfect design for crowd and 7 piece band alike to lift their knees to chin level and skank like it was 1979. Frontman Denis is a charming soul, something of a children’s party entertainer with clownlike hair, and with this particular party opting for cider and lager over jelly and ice cream, he’s able to get a largely too cool for school crowd to get all sweaty in their skin tight jeans and jump around like fools, shouting ‘Hey’ and ‘Oi’ (depending on which side of the room they are on) and revel in the joys of a man in his underpants crowd surfing (mmm, nice). With half an hour gone, Denis is heard to warn his band mates that they’re set will soon be over, so they rush into the final 2 songs much to the pleasure of the fans, ‘Landlord’s Daughter’ and ‘Untouchable’. At this point I glance over at the band’s keyboardist Stu, who is now sweat –drenched, drops flying out of his mop of hair, and is looking more and more like Animal from the Muppets. He lunges at his keyboard and sings like his life depends on it. The kids all sing along too and it is at this point that you realize that you don’t really want this party to end.

Setlist:

In A Letter

Jenny

Dead Model

Sitting in the Middle

The Beast

Alperton

1^st Past the Pump

Beer Belly

Great British Summertime

Man on the Street

Dance Floor

Landlord’s Daughter

Untouchable

More info on the band:

www.imperial-leisure.co.uk

www.facebook.com/imperialleisure

www.myspace.com/imperialleisure

the rose by cy twombly

Latest show 'The Rose' by Cy Twombly at the Gagosian treats us to 5 monumental new paintings by the king of high romance and painterly decadence.  Each panel measures 252 x 740cm and brings to mind billboard advertisements as well as previous admissions of raw emotion as expressed by Cy and many of his abstract expressionist predecessors.

On entering the space, these explosions of colour and lust scream at your senses, demanding that you bow down in awe.  It leads you to suspect that this is the artist urging you to feel as much for these works as he does for the subject matter.

The lurid colours Twombly uses, and the flatness of the turquoise background in each of the works is so immediate and adolescent, you almost forget that this is the work of an 80 year old man.  This is the work of a love stricken teenager, so hungry to express his burning desires of the rose, that he whacks paint on so fresh and watery with no room for contemplation.  Admittedly the first impression of this is that these are 5 very crude depictions, but with the clever simplicity of a limited palette in each panel, and the seductive drips, spills, gestures and transparent layers, these works show their fragile complexity and parallels with the human psyche when viewed close up.

The key juxtapositions of commercialism and self expression, of nature versus man and of flaws against perfection within these paintings are informed further through the choice of stanzas by Rilke.  In lines such as "flower of all flowers, petal over petal, do you feel our own palettes, pleasures, dreams," and "...deep inside, wet as me who weeps, you lean against the dawn," Twombly has selected lines that reflect a yearning for an emotional connection with the rose to be reciprocated.  The tension brought about by the hunger and passion in the poetry makes for a perfect match for Twombly's emotionally charged touch.

The rose is a show of high drama, of tension and passion.  It reminds us that you are never too old to feel, love and live.