From the Editor: Tuesday 11th April

In stark contrast to my effusive praise for the intellectually invigorating book Infinite Jest last week, here I’d like to revel in the rush of sheer spectacle and pageantry one can see at the theatre. I saw Yamato Drummers at the Dome recently, who are a group of approximately 10 performers who flamboyantly play a wide range of different drums. As I discuss in my review on page 14: there was real musicianship aligned with playful showmanship, and the sense of enthusiasm in the crowd and on stage resulted in a fun night out.

I’ve been told that I have quite eclectic interest in the arts, when I worked at Resident for example some found it odd that I would veer between manufactured pop, classical and metal.

I don’t want to limit myself with a few descriptors in this brief column, but my tastes probably, generally, skew towards the strange, the intelligent, the eloquent, the beautiful and the musical in art (which might be why Twin Peaks, The Beatles and The Simpsons register so fondly with me as confluences of all those things). There’s certainly something to be said for the bold and bombastic however. The Drummers were fresh and stark in a directly entertaining way which sounds similar to how Nick Aldwinckle enjoyed the “unashamedly ridiculous spectacle” of metal band Ghost (also reviewed on page 14).

Whatever your tastes then, it’s great that we have such a wealth of shows on our doorstep, be they an avant-garde performance art piece reflecting on the diurnal rhythms of the 19th century factory worker subtitled with the impenetrable argot of an obtuse website-coder as imagined by a sadly neglected but luminously artificially intelligent suprasubliminal vacuum cleaner from the future… or simply some loud drums played together impressively.

Joe Fuller
editorial@thelatest.co.uk