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| Project Adorno Reviews - The good, the bad, the indifferent... | ||||||||
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Project
Adorno’s Top Ten of Popular Culture
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PROJECT
ADORNO'S TOP TEN OF POPULAR CULTURE
Buxton Fringe 2010 I've never got around to asking
Project Adorno (PA) quite what their take on popular culture is - from a
theoretical/philosophical perspective that is. I had always supposed
that their view was that popular culture in some way seduced and
pacified the population as a whole and is, therefore, a bad thing. (My
reading of Theodor Adorno's work is very limited). The more I see PA,
however, the more convinced I am that they really love elements of
popular culture and aren't too bothered about subverting the influence
it has. This year's show is essentially a
repeat of last year's; I loved it then, I love it now. I accept that PA
are an acquired taste - they're a sort of mix of Gilbert & George,
Pete & Dud and the Pet Shop Boys and offer a loving take on aspects
of English (rather than British) culture set to techno type tunes. As the title suggests the show is
loosely hung around a list of recreational and leisure activities drawn
from Social Trends data. PA's background is more literary and musical
than, say, sporting and their affection for Darts (the band, not
arrows), early computer games consoles (Sinclairs and Commodores, not
Amstrad) and Sci-Fi seems entirely genuine. As middle-age looms they are
able to recognise that future recreations could include being part of
the National Trust. They don't seem totally dismayed at the prospect,
and the rhyming of 'appealing' and 'Darjeeling' is inspired. Other songs debate the sexiness -
or otherwise - of Jeremy Paxman; piers as a metaphor for death; dispute
the way in which football supporters assume identity with their team (as
in "we need a new goalkeeper"). The final song starts by asking
"If you were a motorway, which one would you be?" As a
London-based Project they feel defined by the M25. It may not be a
question that makes so much sense in all parts of the country. I'd happily sit through this show
every week - proof that popular culture pacifies? We might need a call
to action before long. There's a challenge PA - see you next year I
hope. Keith Savage |
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Project
Adorno's Top Ten of Popular Culture
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| Tales
From The Cutting Room Floor Project Adorno and Steve Lake Edinburgh Festival Fringe Aug 2008 Three Weeks Performance poetry is confusing. It blurs the line between writing and performance and leaves the audience wondering what is real and what isn't. It felt like Project Adorno were joking when they sang "I feel fantastic, despite the greenhouse gases playing on my mind", but with the dry humour of their Ministry of the Mundane, they could be deadly serious. Steve Lake's piece was more of a plot-driven story with a real film noir feel, but still the fusion of electro-poetry-music-film makes for an experience that bombards the senses. To be honest, I can't begin to tell you whether this was good or bad - it was interesting, I decided, after an hour of reflection. tw rating: 3/5 Rhiannon Smith |
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Tales
From the Cutting Room Floor
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| Tales From the Cutting Room Floor Project Adorno & Steve Lake Buxton Festival Fringe July 2008 Synth
and performance duo Project Adorno have become something of a regular
fixture at the Buxton Fringe in recent years, mixing studied banality of
delivery with electro-pop for the masses. This year they are joined by
Steve Lake, anarcho-punk frontman of Zounds for something a little
different. This
show comes in three parts - three short films, fused with live
performance. For the first part - The Ministry of the Mundane - Adorno
are on familiar territory, playing Kafka-esque bureaucrats endorsing
recycling schemes and telephone boxes in simple electronic song. It was
droll and effective. However,
for the second part - Tales from the Cutting Room Floor - Steve Lake
took to the stage for something altogether darker. To the accompaniment
of a silent film of gangland murder and treacherous molls, Lake takes to
the stage like a sinister fairground barker in glittery top hat and
carrying a clear plastic umbrella, reciting a tale of youth cut down by
corruption. More like an angry jazz poet than the more good-natured
Adorno's Kraftwerk-style descriptions, Lake's tone becomes increasingly
ranting and, while unquestionably exciting and full of showmanship, hard
work for the audience. By the end of his segment I for one felt somewhat
bludgeoned and worn out, and certainly not up to enjoy fully the return
of Adorno to the stage with a piece eulogising Eric Satie (something of
a spiritual inspiration to electro-pop and avant garde alike). There
is no question that, if one was to think of a show that illustrates the
word 'fringe' this would be it, but although I'm glad I saw it, it will
undoubtedly not be up everybody's street. Robbie
Carnegie |
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PROJECT
ADORNO Praveen Manghani’s
production is more confident than ever and stronger at the bass end than
on previous recordings. As good as it is though, one can imagine what a
craftsman like The The’s Matt Johnson would do with this material, if
they could persuade him in the producers chair. Here we have an album
that pulls off the rare trick of being both original and accessible. Steve Lake |
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| The London Years Project Adorno Edinburgh Festival Fringe Aug 2007 The Herald You have to kiss a lot of frogs to get to the princes in this show. It's all rather earnest, bed-sitter fare, except there are backing tracks, celebrity voice-overs and on-screen illustrations rather than merely acoustic guitar accompaniment. A trainspotterly presentation and some (presumably) ironic disinherited-uncle-at-wedding dancing doesn't help. However, things pick up with a less self-conscious and quite catchy treatise on the M25 and a final two celebrations of London past and present end the show on a comparative high. |
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| Project Adorno Songs 4 Screensavers Buxton Festival Fringe July 2006 The Fringe welcomes Project Adorno's latest outburst of songs from the world of the office. Not The Office but a close relation. Setting
the tone with a Leonard Cohen song (don't let that put you off), the boys
soon get into their stride with a collection of songs of office politics,
post it notes and revenge. A sly, often quirky take on some of the things
that have often driven this reviewer to distraction - for example job
descriptions. Find them helpfully translated here by the Baddiel &
Skinner of this year's Fringe. They do mention Essex, but don't hold it
against them. With
tunes reminiscent of the early Pet Shop Boys, Yazoo and ABBA your toe will
tap and your fingers . . . well I'll leave that up to you. Pop inside and
take a chance on these chaps. Ian
Heath |
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| Project Adorno Electro Pop Heroes Edinburgh Festival Fringe Aug 2005 Germaine watch out! ***** A truly bizarre experience in the company of two talented but odd individuals. They write idiosyncratic songs and perform them with brio to a recorded backing track. They veer between enthusiastic amateurs and faux-naif geniuses but you must see them yourself to make up your own mind. Having seen them before I must report that the omission of “library library” was a shame but “Love song for Davros” more than made up for this. Keep it up the ‘Dorno. Reviewer: Hal Bakanak |
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Project Adorno Who was the best Dr
Who? Did Salvador Dali do housework? What would happen if Picasso was a
cockney? These are some of the many hypothetical questions addressed by
Electro Pop group, Project Adorno. Wonderfully silly and exceptionally
geeky, this is a very weird, but enjoyable 45minutes of 80s grooves
dedicated to the likes of “professional feminist” Germaine Greer.
There is, however, an air of the tragic about this performance: the two
band members are just a little too old to be strutting around
the stage. Or perhaps this is what makes the whole act all so
amusing…I did enjoy their dancing. Oh, and in case you were wondering,
Salvador Dali does NOT do the washing up. 3/5 (LC) |
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| Project Adorno Electro Pop Heroes Buxton Festival Fringe July 2005 Electro-pop
heroes? I could name a few. The Human League - Philip Oakey, masculine
in mascara, Joanne and Susan, ungainly dancers; Soft Cell - Marc Almond,
histrionic and fragile; The Pet Shop Boys - sardonic and static. That's
what Electro-pop heroes means to me. Was I expecting a nod towards the
legends of the 1980s synth sound in Project Adorno's show? Maybe. I
wasn't necessarily expecting two bespectacled, be-suited men - one a
librarian, one a user of libraries - wandering about the stage in a
deliberately ramshackle way: one fiddling with a minidisk player to
provide backing, occasionally strumming a guitar; the other dancing
uncoordinatedly and singing along with more exuberance than skill. They
name-dropped their influences, and I could certainly detect the Gallic
influence of the likes of Jacques Brel, but there were also hints of
Jarvis Cocker and Neil Hannon, as well as the fondly remembered, papier-mach
headed Frank Sidebottom. Their
songs, by their own admission had three main themes: libraries, painters
and Doctor Who. So we had love songs to Germaine Greer and Davros
(creator of the Daleks), fanciful evocations of Picasso's cockney years
and Dali's refusal to do the washing up, and a jolly song of praise to
Tom Baker. There were times when one felt that it might almost fall apart, so apparently unconcerned were Project Adorno in putting on something approaching a traditionally organised show, but somehow it seemed to hold together in a bizarrely enjoyable hour of nerdy oddness. Robbie
Carnegie |
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| Project Adorno Dr Dewey Decimal in the House of Vaudeville Buxton Festival Fringe July 2003 What are those numbers on the spines of books in the county library? Yes! They’re Melvil Dewey’s decimal book catalogue system. And –wow!- here is Melvil himself in crimson dressing gown, desert boots and elongated stove pipe hat partnered by a real librarian with a guitar to sing a cerebral song about his incomparable system followed by songs revealing the secret vocabulary of librarians, a list of famous librarians and the delights of libraries in somewhere called Essex.. |
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| Project Adorno Dr Dewey Decimal in the House of Vaudeville Edinburgh Festival Fringe Aug 2003 Three Weeks A show for librarians (and other people too if they're interested) in the style of a holiday camp cabaret, consisting of two men in funny hats singing songs to pre-recorded 80s style electronic music. Ridiculous certainly, entertaining perhaps, funny occasionally. Interesting from the points of trivia it brought up such as the famous people who have worked as librarians including J. Edgar Hoover and Benjamin Franklin. SK |
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| Project Adorno Beat Bedsit Benefit – Sanctuary Café, Brighton Nov 2003 Live Review (extract) …Then
came Project Adorno and their wholesale theft of the evening. I think it
was the second best Project gig I've been lucky enough to witness (beaten
only by their performance in Frome on the 2002 Beat Bedsit tour).
Unusually tight and together, they looked like they knew exactly what they
were doing from the beginning to the end. Some fantastic new tunes were
aired, the one that has stuck in my head being about Pablo Picasso and his
hat. For those who might not know, Project Adorno are a two piece (Praveen
and Russell) who perform songs and poetry about such topics as Doctor Who,
libraries and Salvador Dali's hatred of washing up to a background of
electronic music, usually played from minidisk but occasionally (and
increasingly I'm pleased to note) supplemented by Praveen on the acoustic
guitar. Both handle the vocals, Praveen handles the music and Russell
dances like a man only loosely in control of his limbs and who gave up on
rhythm at the age of three. On paper the whole thing should be a disaster.
But instead it's magical. It often takes a while for an audience to get
their heads around Project Adorno (you can see them wondering whether to
laugh or flee) but tonight everybody loves it from the off. All power to
their elbows: they're fabulous. Buy their records. |
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Project Adorno Record Collector Magazine 2001 A stunning five-track exercise in electronic beat poetry, “PA/CD” is less a venture into an area bordered by Mark Astronaut and John Cooper-Clarke than those rapid-fire vers libre readings accompanied by jazz that were prevalent in bohemian circles in the early ‘60s. Have times changed so much that experimental works such as this have no place? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding no. |
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