Gigs in London this weekend

Music and philosophy combine at this highbrow, but fun, festival at Kenwood House. September’s theme is ‘Error and Rennassaince’ and there’s a nicely eclectic programme of thought-provoking discussion and debate from various creative minds, performance, film, comedy, poetry and music, with some big names from a lot of different worlds rubbing shoulders. A multi-faceted gem. Line up includes: Music from Gwenno and Django Django (DJ), Girls of the Internet, Rosie Frater-Taylor, Rosie Alena; Comedy from Alfie Brown, Tatty Macleod, Ahir Shah’s, Stath LetsFlats’ Sunil Patel; Talks from speakers Peter Singer, Esther Freud, Labour Paul Mason, DavidHare and Amelia Gentleman. 

ABBA are back with their first live show in 40 years… but they’re not quite the band we once knew. ‘ABBA Voyage’, which takes place in a new, spaceship-sized venue in Stratford, is a digital gig, which means ABBA themselves don’t actually perform. You don’t find out what that really means until you’re in there.  On opening night, the venue was full of everyone from older couples reliving their ’70s heydays to trendily-dressed Gen Zers who probably first heard the Swedish stars as a TikTok audio. It’s not just any venue, either: it’s a purpose-built arena with 500 moving lights, 291 speakers and a capacity of 3,000. It even has dancing booths.  Chants roar through the audience as the show starts and then you see them: Benny, Björn, Agnetha and Frida. Dressed in tight, sequinned jumpsuits, crowned with full heads of hair, they’re glowing, smiling and flawless. The 3D digital avatars (or ABBA-tars, as they insist on calling them) were created by George Lucas’s company Industrial Light & Magic and were made by blending five weeks of motion-captured films of ABBA’s current selves with a younger body double, engineered to look like their ’70s prime. It’s a wild idea. But ABBA have always been innovative, so it sort of makes sense that they’re pioneering one of the most exciting, and most ridiculous, technologies in live entertainment today. ‘Last time we played London was 1979,’ says Benny, who fumbles his words, adding to the effect. Björn’s cheeky smile and Frida’s mannerisms are

Music and philosophy combine at this highbrow, but fun, festival at Kenwood House. September’s theme is ‘Error and Rennassaince’ and there’s a nicely eclectic programme of thought-provoking discussion and debate from various creative minds, performance, film, comedy, poetry and music, with some big names from a lot of different worlds rubbing shoulders. A multi-faceted gem. Line up includes: Music from Gwenno and Django Django (DJ), Girls of the Internet, Rosie Frater-Taylor, Rosie Alena; Comedy from Alfie Brown, Tatty Macleod, Ahir Shah’s, Stath LetsFlats’ Sunil Patel; Talks from speakers Peter Singer, Esther Freud, Labour Paul Mason, DavidHare and Amelia Gentleman. 

ABBA are back with their first live show in 40 years… but they’re not quite the band we once knew. ‘ABBA Voyage’, which takes place in a new, spaceship-sized venue in Stratford, is a digital gig, which means ABBA themselves don’t actually perform. You don’t find out what that really means until you’re in there.  On opening night, the venue was full of everyone from older couples reliving their ’70s heydays to trendily-dressed Gen Zers who probably first heard the Swedish stars as a TikTok audio. It’s not just any venue, either: it’s a purpose-built arena with 500 moving lights, 291 speakers and a capacity of 3,000. It even has dancing booths.  Chants roar through the audience as the show starts and then you see them: Benny, Björn, Agnetha and Frida. Dressed in tight, sequinned jumpsuits, crowned with full heads of hair, they’re glowing, smiling and flawless. The 3D digital avatars (or ABBA-tars, as they insist on calling them) were created by George Lucas’s company Industrial Light & Magic and were made by blending five weeks of motion-captured films of ABBA’s current selves with a younger body double, engineered to look like their ’70s prime. It’s a wild idea. But ABBA have always been innovative, so it sort of makes sense that they’re pioneering one of the most exciting, and most ridiculous, technologies in live entertainment today. ‘Last time we played London was 1979,’ says Benny, who fumbles his words, adding to the effect. Björn’s cheeky smile and Frida’s mannerisms are