upfront
FESTIVAL NUMBER 6
WHAT are you looking for in a festival? Great music? Writers, comedians and midnight screenings of cult classics? Drunken torch-lit processions with masked festival goers? If so, you’re in luck as Festival Number 6 has all of this and more. The idea of a festival in Wales in mid-September might not sound all that appealing, but Festival Number 6 has an ace up its sleeve. If you wanted to get away from the plonking-a-sound-system-in-a-field type of festival, and were looking for the ideal location for a more modern festival experience, you could do a lot worse than the strange and otherworldly Portmeirion. A Mediterranean fantasy built by an eccentric architect on the west coast of Wales in the 1930s, the displacement in time and space gives it an uncanny feeling. The village is best known as the backdrop to The Prisoner, the surreal Sixties spy thriller in which Patrick McGooghan played the titular prisoner named only ‘Number 6’ ? hence the name of this festival. The “carefully curated bespoke bill” features, among others, My Bloody Valentine, Manic Street Preachers, Nile Rodgers, Johnny Marr, Neon Neon, Clinic, and Wire, alongside DJs Andrew Weatherall, David Holmes, Gilles Peterson, Frankie Knuckles, literary types such as Jan Morris, Caitlin Moran, John Cooper Clarke, and Paul Morley, comedians Mark Thomas, Tom Stade, Charlie Baker and Sean Walsh. This long list of interesting artists and performer are then spread over 14 venues, including tents, plazas, bars and a cinema. There’s no dearth of variety in the accommodation either. There is a range of choices for ‘boutique camping’ in tipis or lotus belle tents. On the higher end of the housing scale is the Castell Deudraeth, “a spectacular early Victorian castellated mansion,” and other self-catering cottages. Those hardy souls who prefer to rough it can simply purchase a camping ticket and bring along their own tents. Last year’s inaugural festival was a rousing and award-winning success, and it looks as if this year’s event is going to be very memorable indeed. DAVID GRIFFITHS Festival Number 6, Portmeirion, Fri 13-Sun 15 Sept. Tickets: £40£65 (per day), £170-£180 (weekend). Info: www.festivalnumber6. com
A SYMPHONY OF SOUNDTRACKS
THE film score is an art in itself, with composers such as John Williams and Danny Elfman winning Oscars and printing their own indelible stamp on a film. These are distinctive musicians with unique style and beautiful original melodies, but the nature of film score does mean that this is often overlooked and the score sometimes just becomes a subliminal layer of the experience that tells you, as a viewer, whether to feel maudlin or terrified. This is being set straight by film critic and obsessive Mark Kermode in a new show brought to St David’s Hall. America At The Movies is just you and the orchestra, and without the distraction of a captivating film like Taxi Driver or Raiders Of The Lost Ark to get in the way it is possible to enjoy these nine slices of perfection taken from perfect films on their own merit and savour every trill and string swell on your aural tongue (eww) without any other senses getting involved. There are plenty of scores from the golden age of film with the earliest being Miklós Rósza’s Spellbound Concerto from the Hitchcock film of the same name. Also included in the show is the suspenseful Vertigo Suite by Bernard Herrmann and the iconic Magnificent Seven Theme. There are also a number of different tones on show here, with newer film scores from Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Tim Burton’s Batman providing a rip-roaring dose of excitement to balance the more symphonic delights of the earlier films. It will also be broadcast in a suitably auditory manner live in Concert on BBC Radio 3 so you could enjoy the pieces at home, eyes-closed with even less distraction, or if you have to keep your eyes busy somehow, then you could quickly watch the films in fast forward as the radio plays the score. The concert will be available for seven days after broadcast via BBC iPlayer Radio, but if you can make it to the event then you will surely be treated to a beautiful concert as well as a special indulgence for film lovers and lovers of this underappreciated art form. LUKE JOHN America At The Movies, St David’s Hall, Cardiff, Wed 18 Sept. Tickets: £10-£29. Info: 029 2087 8500 / www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
BUZZ 20
pic: SHETLAND ARTS