The Odditorium - Events
Wednesday 10th May 2017
At The Odditorium - Events
Doors 7:00 pm
Price Various
Check out the below events coming up from David Bramwell in May — Odditorium!
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VIV ALBERTINE AND SARAH ANGLISS:
PIONEERING WOMEN IN MUSIC
Wednesday 10th May 7pm-9pm £14
Brighton Spiegeltent
Viv Albertine is one of the founding members of The Slits and author of The Sunday Times music book of the year, ‘Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys.’ She is also a wonderfully disarming and frank speaker.
Tonight she will take the audience on a fascinating journey celebrating some of the women who have inspired her, from Stacie in Hawkwind to Vivienne Westwood; taking in June Child (Marc Bolan’s wife), Sandie Shaw, the bongo player form Kokomo, Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Ari Up, the backs of album covers (looking for a girl’s name or girlfriends of the band), the dancer on Heard it Through the Grapevine film on TOTP and Nina Simone.
Musician and roboticist Sarah Angliss will discuss the life and work of Daphne Oram, co-founder of the radiophonic workshop and inventor of the Oramics machine, which cerated music by drawing on film.
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BLONDIE’S GARY LACHMAN ON COLIN WILSON
Thursday 11th May 7-8pm
Bosco Tent £10
Colin Wilson burst on the literary scene in 1956 with his first book The Outsider, a study of creativity, alienation, and extreme mental states. From then until his death in 2013, Wilson produced an enormous body of work, exploring existentialism, crime, sex, literature, philosophy, psychology, the occult, mysticism and more in his quest for the ‘peak experience,’ a moment of supreme affirmation and insight. Gary Lachman’s talk will focus on the essence of this extraordinary writer’s existential search and is based on his new biography, Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson.
Gary Lachman is the author of many books on consciousness, culture, and the western esoteric tradition, including The Secret Teachers of the Western World and Turn Off Your Mind: The Mystic Sixties and the Dark Side of the Age of Aquarius. A founding member of the rock group Blondie, in 2006 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He lectures frequently in the UK, US, and Europe and his books have been translated into many languages.
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MAGICK AND MUSIC
Wednesday 17th May 7-9pm
Bosco Tent £12
A night of esoteric talks exploring the magickal & ritualistic music scene of the 1980s/90s & Beyond. From Coil and Current93 to Psychic TV and Nurse with Wound, these bands were created in the aftermath of the post punk era and drew much of their material from the occult, the texts of Aleister Crowley and work of Austin Osman Spare. By experimenting with altered states and utilising such exotic instruments as Tibetan thighbones and Theremins, these bands invented a ritualistic, magical and ethereal sound and created a visible army of ‘modern primitives’ who were as much a creative part of the movement as the band themselves.
Graham Duff (Dangerous Minds / I Deal) will discuss the life and works of John Balance, the founding member of Coil.
A.D Hitchin will discuss the continued importance of cultural engineer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge; from the COUM Transmissions to the Pandrogony project, a career of some fifty years of radical creativity and provocation, a ritual in change it’s self.
Musician Lisa Jayne will talk about Current 93 and David Tibet’s lyrical style. She will discuss how C93 influence her own creative processes have been affected by paganism, menstrual blood and alchemy.
Ben Graham, Nick Hudson and percussionist Ash Babb (The Academy Of Sun) present a talk/ritual exploring the magical and transgressive influences that informed the post-industrial underground music scene of the 1980s and early nineties.
With a strong site-specific approach, they will tap into local myth, memory and folklore, invoking the spirits of Crowley, Spare, Burroughs and Balance to re-energise Brighton’s counter-cultural currents, reclaiming and reimagining the queer, occult lineage of Coil, PTV and Current 93 for the birthing of a new aeon.
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THE GHOSTS OF WATLING STREET WITH IAIN SINCLAIR, ALAN MOORE, JOHN HIGGS & ODDFELLOW’S CASINO
Hosted by Dr. Bramwell
Wednesday 24th May 6.30pm-9pm
Spiegeltent £16
Three visionary authors – Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair and John Higgs – gather under one roof to take an epic journey through Britain’s hidden history, geography, myth and culture, as they travel west along one of Britain’s oldest roads – Watling Street – from Dover to Wales, via London and Northampton. Along the way Moore, Higgs and Sinclair reveal a country haunted by John Crow, St Alban, William Blake, Rod Hull and Emu, James Bond and stranger ghosts of its past – and unearth an identity of Britain that transcends our current Brexit divisions.
Adding music and visuals into the mix, David Bramwell’s eight-piece, Oddfellow’s Casino, provide songs themed around Watling Street, Penda’s Fen and the Principality of Sealand. Singing with them will be The Shoreham Sea Shanty Choir, run by Sussex folklorist Chris Hare, who’ll also be performing the odd ditty.
Oh, and we’ll also be discussing the recently released 1974 BBC classic, Penda’s Fen, essential viewing if you’ve not seen it already.
It’s going to be flipping fantastic.
Please note this event is 150 minutes in length and will include a field trip to the bar and toilets in the middle.