We’ve reached the halfway point of the Midlands’ street sounds/art festival but there’s plenty left to come in Birmingham:
There are a few more workshops running too, and events over in Derby, Nottingham and Leicester to boot. See the what’s on page on the BASS Festival website for more.
I went over to the BASS Festival launch last night over at the Woom Gallery (an excellent little place, incidentally).
I had a quick chat with Ammo, the guy behind Punch Records, who was enthusiastic about the programme of events they’ve got coming up but most excited about the the competition they ran to design a logo for the festival. The winner was Pretesh Mistry and, as well as being used on the festival’s branding, his design can now be seen on a city centre billboard – just near the Arcadian Centre.
What excited Ammo was the idea that, thanks to the festival, an unknown, aspiring designer could showcase their work in such a big and unorthodox way (and with his contact details at the bottom – mistry_pretesh[at]hotmail.com). So there you go, not just another advertising hoarding.
As I was leaving the Electric yesterday having seen the excellent Planet B-Boy I was handed a brochure for this year’s BASS Festival, happening across the East Midlands over June.
BASS stands for British Art and Street Sounds and the festival is a Punch Records production in partnership with 2Funky Arts, Hella Music and Baby J Studios. This year the festival revolves around the theme of ‘The Elements of Hip Hop’, usually broken down into MCing, DJing, graffiti, breakdancing and beat-boxing.
Go to BASS Festival for the full line-up, but here’s a few of the events in Birmingham:
- Hedz Interative Aerosol Mural, 31 May to 1 June – creating a 50ft bespoke aerosol mural in the city centre
- Urban Disturbance v MyBass ft Mary Anne Hobbs, 31 May at The Rainbow – drum n bass and dubstep heaviness
- Faith 47 – The Restless Debt of Third World Beauty, 3 to 10 June at Womb Gallery – this looks very good
- BASS West Mids Launch – 3 June
- The New Mastersounds, 14 June at The Yardbird – a band at the forefront of the retro-funk sound
- My Love for Hip Hop, 19 June at The Drum – powerful spoken word with 3 poets, 3 hip hop artists and a turntablist
Actually, this is daft, there’s loads of good stuff so please go and have a look at the listings and maybe flag up anything you think looks really interesting in the comments.
Don’t forget that Jessica is currently doing a work placement at Punch and blogging about her experiences.
Punch’s director, Ammo Talwar, was at Buckingham Palace the other week to pick up his MBE for “outstanding achievement and service right across the industry”. He’s emailed to say that his dad was annoyed at not having tea with the Queen! Ammo’s sent over a pic of his dad with some beefeaters though – nice shoes.
