CULTUREMAKING

Presenting Beardyman

                        

Last year, around June time, I went along to a rather brilliant design presentation night at Sadlers Wells.

On the lineup was a guy called Bernhard Steinerhoff who was billed as an Austrian environmental design thinker.  After a promising start, he randomly transformed into a human beatbox machine and delivered a bizzare yet outstandingly talented performance - I was truly blown away.  Did anyone else see it by chance?

Anyway, found out the other day that he’s only the UK beatbox champion aka Beardyman. 

Here’s his MySpace site and humorous personal website – well worth checking out.  Particularly enjoyed his Tim Shaw radio interview on Kerrang Radio.

AF's new testament

                                                                                    

Following up on Neil's lead, I finally got round to checking out NMEs' free premiere streaming of Arcade Fire's Neon Bible - and must say that I'm pretty impressed.

Track 4, Keep The Car Running, steals the show for me, quite possibly a contender for tune of the year even.  Kind of has a Christmas feel-good vibe without being Christmas-y if that errr, makes sense?  Must be the choir thing going on, which does straddle on the cusp of cheese at times, but heh, a little cheese never hurt anyone right?

Anyway, definitely worthy of a purchase.  You'll need to register and load the media player first - but all straightforward.

Enjoy.