The Black Lights review – Mica Levi, Moin and Klein thrill at an awesome addition to the UK festival circuit

Various venues, Blackpool Tapping into the kitsch and romance of a Blackpool weekender, this debut offering from Manchester’s White Hotel becomes a triumph of pan-genre experimentalism One measure of quite how bold the programming is at new Blackpool festival The Black Lights: within two minutes you’re able to go from the closing notes of a BBC Philharmonic performance of John Adams’ symphonic masterpiece Harmonielehre in an awe-inspiring art deco concert hall, to a DJ, Afrodeutsche, slamming breakbeat techno in a side room as digital visuals canter alongside her and lager swells over the side of plastic cups. This heartening disinclination to view art as “high” or “low” is what gives soul to this three-dayer curated by the team behind now-closing Salford venue the White Hotel , much loved for their tendency towards underground murk as well as absurdist wheezes, impulses both on show here. Continue reading...