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19 December 2019
Review in Tempo, Cambridge University Press
About Post-Paradise[18 & 19]

Written by Lawrence Dunn

Dunn, L. (2020). Post-Paradise, Birmingham, May/June 2019. Tempo, 74(291), 101-103. doi:10.1017/S0040298219000822

At the end of June, I had the unsettling pleasure of wandering through a blue fringed curtain and into the backroom-disco of Rowland Hill’s miniaturised Eurodance clubnight. Presented at Post-Paradise in Birmingham, Interesting Times was a foreboding inoculation of nineties ‘lyrical optimism [in] an emotively charged minor key’. La Cream, Alice Deejay, Phutura, Aqua Ninja: their tracks have, as Hill writes in the programme notes, ‘melodies reminiscent of breaking news sound effects and beats that suggest states of both euphoria and emergency’ – this is music that brings an ‘unsettling blend of doubt and hopefulness’. Sash!’s ‘Mysterious Times’ opens with samples of thunder, later including the line ‘We’re counting the hours and days to the end of all time’.
Are there many other regular concert series where one might have encountered an informal installation piece conceived as a 20-minute club- night – especially after seeing two other previous sets by composer-performers, each with their own setup? Rowland Hill’s installation is in some ways a perfect example of what Post-Paradise is about: simultaneously carefully curated and loose, sort-of ironic and sort-of not, exploring composition-adjacent practice from the point of view of composition. And with a thoroughly unsettling atmosphere. As a concert series, Post-Paradise is unusual in having a certain tone or ‘outlook’ – a continuing eschatological mood is never far away. Concerts in the series exude a vibrant sense of dread – something like Minima Moralia meets CSI: Miami.
For each event in the Post-Paradise series, the curators bring together a group of composer-performers. (The curators, Maya Verlaak, Zach Dawson and Richard Stenton, are composer- performers also.) The composer-performer is of course a familiar enough phenomenon, but there is a particular quality this form of practice exudes within the wider contexts of contemporary music. It can be a little tricky to pin down, but it does differ from the more usual lyric indie singer-songwriter or folksinger. The composer’s approach to their own material is typically more corrugated, closer to assemblage: the piece being exhibited as an example of a space the performer has come to live in. ‘This is the house’ – or shack, or den – ‘I have built for myself’. The composer-performer is also better at exuding a sense of powerlessness – something that, traditionally, composers were not in the habit of foregrounding. Given the eschatological mood of these concerts, powerlessness, even if powerlessness-while-wearing-a-smile, is at the forefront.
At the Centrala space, at the back of Birmingham industrial estate, multiple different rooms are available, allowing for performance and installation and much else in between. Alongside artists associated with UK experimentalism, the series has a notably strong connection with The Hague. As well as Verlaak, musicians working or studying at the Conservatorium featured in series have included David Pocknee, Leo Svirsky, Andy Ingamells, Robert Blatt and Lucie Vitkova. The curation of Post-Paradise since 2016 forms, at least for myself, a fascinating glimpse into parallels and linkages in artistic practice between scenes which can sometimes feel distant, with Dutch arts often sinking under the radar outside of the Netherlands. The series has featured more established artists within UK experimentalism – Howard Skempton, Matthew Shlomowitz, Michael Wolters and Andrew Hamilton have all performed solo sets. The effect of focus on performance by the artists themselves is one poised between looseness, vulnerability, self-sufficiency, asociability and flexibility.
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26 May 2017
About Post-Paradise[7]


Presenting Neil Luck & James Whittle, Kinder Meccano and Hillary Springfield

"Friday saw Centrala play host to the final Post-Paradise concert of the 2016-17 season with a visit from
Manchester-based Kinder Meccano. Reel-to-reel tape decks, a Tascam Portastudio, a zither, an old Casio synth,
wind-up toys, and a hairdryer were all put to use to create music that swung from delicately magical to
thumpingly raucous and back again in a fluid and engaging way. Displaying the names of each piece using
homemade signs was a nice touch: a gorgeous moment of glowing ambience took the name ‘Before You’.
In this duo format, much as with their other project Almost Credible Music, Cutting and Glovackyte cast
a distinctive enchanting and whimsical spell; my impression on Friday night was that the music has grown
strong enough to achieve this all on its own, without the theatrical devices it has leaned heavily on in the past.
If anything, it was the full-on noise components that didn’t quite convince, though perhaps the venue’s PA contributed to this.


Kinder Meccano’s set was preceded by two intelligent and well-performed pieces from the duos of
Neil Luck and James Whittle, and Michael Wolters and Hillary Springfield, though
I think I enjoyed them more as theatre than as music."

(by Nathan Thomas) Link to full article



8 March 2017
Frontiers Festival Blog, Birmingham Conservatoire

"An alien has landed in Birmingham, they are hungry and also in need of examples of contemporary culture
report back to their people. Where do you take them to eat and how do you entertain them?

I would take them to the Post-Paradise concert series happening once a month at Centrala in Digbeth.
While we are there we might as well see if there are any other events happening at Centrala,
Vivid Projects right next door, or go check out the exhibition at Eastside Projects down the road.
We can then go for beer at the Old Crown where there are two ghosts said to roam the very old pub."
(Birmingham City University - Andy Roberts interviews Roché Van Tiddens)Link to full article




23 September 2016
About Post-Paradise[1]

Birmingham Review:
BREVIEW: Post Paradise – feat. Zach Dawson, Paul Zaba, Louis D’Heudieres
@ Centrala (Minerva Works) 23.09.16

"All in all tonight has been rousing and a success; Post-Paradise is a welcome celebration of contemporary compositions, and at five quid a pop it is as cheap as it is cheerful. Centrala, the Minerva Works based café & gallery, is an intimate, warm and welcoming venue with a good sound and lots of scope. A little back end of beyond, but only a 10 min walk from either The Custard factory or Millennium Point.

My only problem was with context, or lack thereof. It’s great to be challenged, and the unexplained is just
another reason to explore, but with more understanding of each piece tonight I could have been more engaged.
The room was full of those that know and those that are learning, but if you’re going to invite the general public
to watch your art in action, some helpful introductions would be just that."

(Words by Ed King) Link to full article