Everyone’s tuning into …
With their continuous jamz, KEMET.FM is Nottingham’s first official urban music radio station. So if they’re not tuned in already, they should be now.
Best current venue?
Cramped, sweaty and showcasing the roughest shared toilet in the world, JT Soar is an old potato warehouse that has been converted into a music and arts venue. Some of the best nights are promoted by the folks from The Music Exchange, the finest independent record store in the city. The venue is also home to a brilliant recording studio, currently building sleeping bunks for bands!
Who’s top of the playlist?
Music video for Tied up in Nottz by Sleaford Mods.
Loud, raucous, poetic and blunt Sleaford Mods are a definable sound of Nottingham. Vocalist Jason Williamson moved to the city in 1996 and warmed to it straight away. “It was the close proximity of things that I found endearing,” says Williamson, “I’m a small towner so I connected to that aspect of Nottingham straight away.”
The city is rooted in their post-punk, kitchen sink sound too. Williamson remarks that in Nottingham, “ruined reminders of the Old Empire’s megalomania stand everywhere, in old bridges and homes through to the hard faced terrace houses that litter the city.”
Elsewhere Scor-zay-zee has just released his latest album to critical acclaim – after 20 years of hard work as a rapper and actor (Shane Meadows used him in Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee in 2009 and he continues to appear in shorts and features, including the brilliant Gary The Rapper, by Mark Devenport).
It’s worth noting too that there would be no Scorz without places like Nottingham’s Community Recording Studio (CRS) in St Ann’s, which has been going for over 20 years. Run by Trevor Rose and Nick Stez, CRS has nurtured singers, rappers, dancers and producers and notable luminaries include Nina Smith, Mistajam, Harliegh Blu, Out Da Vile, Ms Tempz, Illmanna, Kick Spencer and Scorz, of course.
Dominic West visits the CRS to promote the film Guillemot, which was shot by and stars young people from an estate in St Ann’s, Nottingham.
Best local artist?
Nottingham has a great literary heritage to pick from (from Byron and DH Lawrence to Alan Sillitoe), but great, popular authors still live and work here …
Niki Valentine writes blood chilling psychological horror like the novel Haunted, which takes a lovely married couple out to the Scottish wilds and shakes things up nastily. Or Alison Moore, a member of the Nottingham Writers’ Studio, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for her unsettling novel The Lighthouse.
The best cultural Instagram?
Rather than a single Instagram account, you should follow the #nottinghamrocks hashtag which is probably the best celebration of the city’s cultural diversity.
But to find out what is happening, where, when and why … then Left Lion has all the culture fit to print, monthly.
What’s the big talking point?
The tram! When will it end? They’ve been building new tracks for years and we still don’t know when they’re actually going to open. It’s a shambles.
What Nottingham does better than anyone …
Nottingham has become a city of film. Thanks to left-field outfits like Kino Klubb, Strange Things Are Happening and Kneel BeforeZod, it’s possible that you might stumble into a pub and find a screening of a Radley Metzger art-house porno movie, or indulge in VHS nostalgia with an open air screening of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.
There’s Shane Meadows of course, but Jeanie Finlay is making waves with feature docs and Steven Sheil directs international horror films out of a small office in the Broadway Cinema. Wellington Films (behind films including London To Brighton and the Duane Hopkins breakthrough, Better Things) are based there, too.
Just down from the Broadway is the legendary Television Workshop where some of the finest modern actors have emerged: Vicky McClure, Joe Dempsie, Samantha Morton, Jack O’Connell, Toby Kebbell and many more. There’s a longer list than we have space for …
Moment in history?
Nottingham is a city filled with great art, fantastic writers and amazing film, so of course it’s football! Nottingham Forest (technically the wrong side of the river) has provided the city with not one, but two of the most important cultural contributions to its identity: both of them are Forest winning the European Cup – in 1979 and 1980. Nottingham is also host to Notts County, the oldest professional club in the world, and inspiration for Italian giants Juventus’ famous zebra stripes.
Graffitti artists Dilk (from England) and Sunk (from Holland) painted this graffiti mural on a car repair garage in the St Ann’s area of the city.
Chris Cooke teaches and presents film and sometimes (once) made things. Melissa Gueneau talks about films in a dodgy accent for a living and spends too much time on Twitter.
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