Wednesday 19 November 2008

Disco and Jumbo introduce more gluten free products


Hooray! Disco and Jumbo are looking to keep their celiac customers happy by expanding their range of sin TACC (gluten free) products and giving a snail away with every shop.

Good news, but now I would love to see Hausbrot expanding their range to include gluten free products. It's torturous to have to pass their delicious looking seedy loaves on the way in and out of Jumbo. So much of the gluten free goods on offer are highly processed crap, there is definitely a need for more natural freshly made offerings, like that you can find at Celigourmet.

Creamfields




You could definitely feel the buena onda at Creamfields BA. People were relaxed, having fun, properly raving. It felt very similar to the very first ever Creamfields festival, which took place in Liverpool in 1999. Nearly everyone wore their sunglasses throughout the night thus avoiding signs of 'clubbers eye' ie when you like a mangled wreck after consuming too many narcotics. In England no one cares about looking wasted, which is why people in clubs take on the appearance of the living dead after 4am.

On the Corner, the Buenos Aires blog which snaps eye-catching portenos, produced a Creamfields special and photographed the shiny happy people. It was great to see people feeling free to express themselves through interesting outfits. I love these three girls above, they look oh so pretty and sweet.

Music wise, Simian Mobile Disco were thumping, they looked like evil geniuses on stage, meddling with a massive 80's Moog and making all kinds of crazy noises. Derrick May played in his usual rhythmic Detroit style, though maybe too quick for the Argentinian crowds. He is consistently great as you might expect from one the forerunners of techno music.

Gorillaz on the other hand were laughable, a dude onstage waving his towel around and jumping up and down and a woman MC'ing badly over Daft Punk's 'Around the World'. I can't believe they were paid to perform, what a load of rubbish.

The more progressive trance / house style DJ's, Erik Morrillo and David Guetta attracted massive crowds. Their music is Latino friendly, more so than the unrelentless, ear bleeding types of techno favoured by Scousers which doesn't give you a pause to breathe let alone pose in your sunglasses.

Saturday 8 November 2008

Pecha Kucha


This is a great evening of talks from creatives and artists, held at the Konex centre every couple of months.

Pecha Kucha night originates from Japan, with the idea of getting a group of creatives together to talk through 20 images with 20 seconds allowed for each.
The evening provides a brilliant forum for creatives to talk about their work to a wider audience and is a great showcase for creative work in Argentina.

The speakers are always very well known Argentinian figures. At the past couple I've been to, I've seen the wonderfully eccentric visual artist Marta Minujin and Pablo Del Campo, one of the top advertising creatives in the world.

Obviously it's a bit difficult to follow the discussion of abstract ideas if, like me, your Spanish is pretty terrible. But nevertheless, it's a great introduction into the cultural world of BsAs and Argentina.

Pecha Kucha
Every 2 months at Centro Cultural Konex