Herschel 36 / Megahammer / Mathew Bourne / James Graham-Katherine Joseph

An excellent if slightly eccentric, festival at Platform in Easterhouse, an arts centre combined with a library – what is not to like about that. The event was sold out (tickets £10 adults, £0 for kids) and BM and her two charges (Mr Hendrix and Mr Hendrix’s pal) rolled up around 4.30pm so we had missed a couple of acts already. What we did see though was very good.

Hershel 36 – the Germans played some treated keyboard and ponderous chords in the main auditorium over a film about outer space – very good although must admit it did cause a bit of drowsiness, but not their fault.

Megahammer (in the corridor of the library mainly) attempted to mix music, art and theatrical dance – think a Legs Akimbo homage. First of all Marvin Gaye Chetwynd accompanied herself on the accordion with some heavily stylised torch songs. A pretty unique voice (although some of the kids at the front did have their hands over their ears), she played a Prince cover, was bashful with the audience and provided the front end to some adults and kids making a mural at the back. Things took a more surreal turn when Jedrzej Cichosz began a series of “happenings”, accompanied by band Culture and Leisure (who btw were very good) – BM is not a theatre critic but there were some weird scenes, also they almost caused an health and safety incident when their giant inflatable elephant knocked some bits off the light fittings in the library. Nobody died though…

Ishbel MacFarlane performed her “O is for hoolet” show which was very good but outside remit of ITM, check out her website though.

Next up musically was Mathew Bourne, who with one other collaborator gave us an hour of Moog workout, along with some arresting visuals. He is a bit of a master of the genre and it was a bit of a coup for Outskirts to get him, so well done.

Last up and probably the biggest draw of this event was a one-off collaboration between James Graham (The Twilight Sad) and Katherine Joseph (SAY award winner last year). Ably accompanied by instrumentalist (and drummer) Marcus Mackay, they played six new songs which were of course a bit miserable. James said that to start the project off they sat and listened to various people in Easterhouse (the collab was called “Easterhouse conversation”) talking about their lives. These chats were generally quite positive but James admitted he still made something miserable from them, oh well, why change the habit…

Both singers were in fine fettle, great harmonies, lyrics bearing some relation to both their other band/solo work – they got a good audience response and BM would encourage this wee supergroup to perform them again, as they were very enjoyable – in a miserable sort of way, of course.