by Naggeen SadidMeeting Calum Melvile, current President of the all male a capella sensation OOTB, is quite an event. He stood before me wearing cowboy boots (over jeans), a matching leather jacket, the obligatory artsy scarf, and a wry smile; I must say I felt quite ordinary meeting such a high standing member of the Oxford a capella community.

As President of the most successful a capella group in Oxford, Melvile is a busy man organising the group’s hectic schedule, the group’s particular brand of pop a capella being quite popular. I innocently ask what the schedule currently contains, expecting a few gigs here and there in Oxford. The schedule is in fact The Schedule, including a private party at Gleneagles (yes, the G8 summit venue), potentially an Oxford Ball, a tour of South Africa, and an upcoming show at Keble. Much of Out of the Blue’s success Melville puts down to ‘the hard work and the hours the guys put in’, and the group’s founder, Derek. An American Post-Grad studying in Oxford, Derek formed the group eight years ago, with an inception including secret initiations, trust funds, and a constitution. Talking to Melville, one barely gets a sense of the group’s success: they are the only Oxford group to sell out the New Theatre.

Out of the Blue have certainly been a hit in Oxford, and, well, the world in general. Having conquered the East Coast of America last summer (‘a capella groups are huge in the States’, Melvile informs me) and played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Out of the Blue world does seem a whirl of events and non-stop touring. What is even more appealing is that the money they are paid for performing (I won’t tell you how many hundreds of pounds they earn for a mere 40 minutes) goes towards their travel expenses and accommodation.

The commercial success of Out of the Blue has meant that they are able to donate half of their yearly earnings to charity. The group are thinking of flying out to South Africa to visit a potential school for sponsorship, ‘It would be so cool, because it’s something that we as a group can feasibly do, indefinitely, and see develop.’

Melvile often talks of the group in a charming understated way, only mentioning the New Theatre amidst other gigs, despite having sold 1500 tickets of the venue’s 1800 capacity already. Get tickets while you can. Even if you’re not a fan of a capella, we’re talking a group of guys, all seriously (but entertainingly) singing high pitched renditions of Take That and Boyzone classics. You’ll love it

by Ben LatimerCian Ciarán, keyboard player of Super Furry Animals, walks into the interview room looking a little worse for wear. It is hardly surprising when, after a few minutes of holding his head in his hands in obvious discomfort, he asks if I’d mind coming to the band’s own backstage hangout. Evidently, the background din of the roadies’ onstage sound-check was bugging him, so before we long relocate. Truth be told, he is nursing all the symptoms of one mother of a hangover, and I sympathise when I notice the lengthy list of all the other interviews he has to do over the next two hours.

There’s no particular reason why this state of affairs should surprise me; only you come to imagine your heroes as attaining a kind of superhuman existence, a kind of life outside of themselves. Yet apparently these people still get ill like the rest of us; they sleep and eat, perhaps even bleed. You would not have thought it. Of the 8 albums SFA have released over the last 11 years (solo and side projects aside), there has been not one dud among them. In fact, new album Hey Venus, and its predecessor Love Kraft stake a claim to being the very pinnacle of SFA’s career so far. The one-time darlings of the NME remain largely overlooked by today’s music press, however, which begs a lot of questions.

I ask Cian if this might be due largely to the demise of the whole Britpop era in the late 90’s, since his band tended to be carelessly lumped into this broad category. He replies that he ‘never really felt a connection to the whole movement’, but that they were lumbered with the tag by some journalists. Certainly, this lazy pigeon-holing of the band does not do any justice to SFA’s genre-defying hybrid of psychedelia, anthemic rock, techno & soaringly melodic pop anthems. Yet, what may have a greater bearing on SFA’S neglection by the music press in recent years is simply their complete and utter lack of concern for it. Any band who hopes to become stratospherically successful in terms of sales must also play the game to an extent, maintaining a constant flirtation with the music press. Cian sums up the band’s attitude to this with ‘We certainly didn’t fly the Union Jack. The Union Jack is like a fucking swastika as far as I’m concerned’.

Which leads on to something I was hoping to ask him on anyway – how important the band’s Welsh identity is to them. Here, I’m referring specifically to the fact that SFA are, apart from Catatonia, the only band of recent years with any significant international renown to release music in their native Welsh tongue. Cian assures me this is no gimmick; it was simply the natural product of having a band of bilingual musicians. Their album Mwng, sung entirely in Welsh, reached #11 in the UK album charts, and is cited to be the most commercially successful Welsh album ever. When I ask if Welsh songs were written specifically for this album, Cian responds that the band are constantly writing in both languages, and it simply ‘felt more coherent to release them together on one record’. He then turns the tables and asks whether I would ‘have even asked that question if it was an English artist releasing an English-language album, or a French band in the French language’.

He makes a valid point; and with music this good, who cares about questions of language and national identity? Just sit back, crank up the volume and let yourself be swept away by the hauntingly beautiful melodies.

by Daniel Roberts‘You’re up, big man’ I hear Editors’ tour manager say as I wait outside the band’s dressing room, before bassist Russell Leetch emerges. The Birmingham four-piece, successful purveyors of epic gloomy post-punk, are watching the rugby: taking a well deserved, but not very rock ‘n’ roll, break from heavy touring to promote their second album, An End Has A Start. Was it hard, I wonder, for Editors to follow up their Mercury nominated debut, The Back Room? Leetch doesn’t think so: ‘when you are doing your first record, you are working and you are doing other things – you’ve got day jobs. When you are doing your second, yeah it’s a short period of time, but we were confident; we’d been on the road for so long that we wanted to go and record, we wanted to try new things.’

Indeed, the second album does present an obvious progression – sweeping, soaring, melodies; spiky guitars swapped for building choruses. The album title also hints at a change. Whereas before singer Tom Smith’s vocals seemed consumed by existential doubt and despair, now there is hope: ‘even an end has a start’. While The Back Room was ‘claustrophobic and tight’, says Leetch, the less despairing outlook of it’s follow up is thanks to ‘love lives, or just where your head can be at. We are all in a good place at the moment’. Edith Bowman then, Smith’s famous other half, is partly responsible for the change in tone.

That’s not to say that Editors have cheered up completely.  Leetch admits that there is a lot of fear and doubt in the band’s music, ‘especially cos people can do anything but they tend to just destroy a lot of things. That’s definitely a theme that runs through it – you go outside and walk down the street and there are just so many different people and walks of life, it can be interesting, but sometimes it can just be really threatening.’ Musically, the band want to keep pushing themselves, but it won’t be into completely alien territory: ‘we could end up doing an acoustic record, we could end up doing a rock record in two weeks in the local studio where we do our b-sides’. Leetch does note that despite the epic direction the band are going in ‘we don’t want to come out as pompous at such and early stage’. So they don’t mind doing it later? – ‘Yeah, exactly!’

Like it or not though, there is no escaping the fact that Editors have hit the big time. From adoring fans (‘Japan is just crazy – people come up and hug you and tell you that they love you!’), to celebrity friends (‘we were over in LA recently and Jamie T was there and we hung out with him – he’s great for a 21 year old! He’s got a lot to say.’), the band are now in the big league. Not big enough to release their records the Radiohead way though. Leetch thinks that the Oxford band’s move can only harm emerging artists. ‘It does devalue it. Radiohead are an established band, how can non-established acts get to that point?’

There are signs that Editors’ excessive touring regime is taking its toll. The band’s performance later in the night seems somewhat weary, and Leetch is not impressed with the conversion of the Zodiac, a venue the band played twice before: ‘these Carling Academies… you start at half eight and it’s over by ten, it’s just a bit naff really. They make more money doing club nights, which is a bit sad.’ One thing that hasn’t changed is Smith’s on-stage contortions, the inspiration behind his dancing? ‘Elvis’. I say that i don’t see it. ‘No’, says Russell, ‘but that’s the beauty of it.’ At least Editors are aiming high.

by Jack Marley-PayneIn the summer of 1998, four hip-hop artists were disillusioned with the bravado and posturing seemingly entailed by their career choice and so decided to try for a change. The result of said decision was Deep Puddle Dynamics’ The Taste of Rain…Why Kneel? On this album, one cannot find any self-referencing, machismo or cheap jokes. Instead we are presented with challenging sounds, complex structures and some of the oddest (if you’re cruel: ridiculous) lyrics recorded this side of the sixties- ‘In the immortal words of Oliver Wendell Holmes “A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension.”’

With this was born the Anticon label and the genre many refer to as ‘Back-pack hip-hop’- as no one likes to be pigeon-holed, this term is rejected by most of the artists who fall under it. Basically, it is concerned with forward thinking rappers who combine their native style with less conventional elements- namely the ambition of progressive rock and the sonic experimentation and out-there lyrics of pyschedelia. If this all sounds too much, remember that it does have the strong and catchy beats intrinsic to hip-hop. The compilation from Anticon entitled Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop gives an overview of the ideas involved and is exceptionally mixed to boot.

Perhaps the high point of this style thus far is cLOUDDEAD and their self-titled album. It is beautifully crafted and really blurs the boundary between singing and speaking. Mesmerising sounds are created as the members talk simultaneously or go round saying one word each. The voices slip in and out of focus so you only catch mystical snatches- ‘Space is potent.’ Vocals are complimented by some inspired production and samples that are both comic and creepy. If you do nothing else, at least give this a go.

The genre is constantly developing and diversifying as more and more influences are accumulated. Elephant Eyelash by Why? puts most straight indie bands to shame whilst Boom Bip and Doseone’s Circle seems to be a sort of aural depiction of a hypnosis induced regression. In short, this is one of the few genuinely exciting movements around right now. Whereas so much of what claims to be new is just digging out old styles we’ve forgotten a bit, these guys are making stuff that sounds like nothing that’s been heard before. An idiot might suggest: ‘it’s a sound like no other.’ Idiot or not, you should investigate.

by Monique Davis and Mary WaireriInnocenceChildren’s films these days, aside from the bright colours and anthropomorphised animals, are barely distinguishable from adult films. Take Pixar: the puns and slapstick may be for the children, but the themes are wholly adult. Watching Ratatouille recently, I couldn’t help but be struck by the thought that no child could truly be moved by the sweeping panoramas of central Paris or the subtle romance underlying the simple dialogue. A five or seven year-old would be just as happy with a field or, indeed, nothing at all. The term ‘family film’ is a reflection this; it is no longer good enough for a film to entertain just children. In fact, looking around during this film ostensibly for children, I reckon a tiny minority of the clientèle were below voting age.

Disney’s latest films deal with ever more complex and subtle issues. Earlier films like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin dealt solely with issues deeply rooted within the world of the child; remaining true to oneself, obeying parental commands, the pursuit of romantic love. However, later films have become much darker, dealing with sexual obsession (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), interracial issues (Pocahontas) and even genocide (Mulan).

In earlier films with a young audience in mind, the themes of adapted stories originally aimed at adults were toned down in order to make them more comprehensible. Once, Hans Christian Andersen’s haunting tale about an inherently unjust universe impervious to the suffering, sacrifice and risk undertaken by a creature in love was transformed into a simple story about a malevolent villain willing to take advantage of weak emotions. But now, films aimed at children are decidedly darker, calmly presenting the horrors that man can inflict upon man – the latest release from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise featured dozens of people, including children, being hanged. And that was just the opening scene. Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, which was specifically written as a fairy tale for adults, portrayed sex and violence unflinchingly. The messages about romantic love and belonging change little in the adaptation from book to film; it is just that the realism that the author attempted to inject into his tale are glossed over with whimsy and humour.

We live in a society in which the age of innocence is ever being eroded. In my childhood, we feared spiders; now, pre-pubescent girls fear becoming overweight and unattractive and thus develop eating disorders. Primary school children are developing stress disorders and depression. Sex has been demystified. And this is reflected in the films to which parents are encouraged to take their children. I can only ask what next – will the next Harry Potter feature a wild romp between the teaching staff, or even Ron and Harry?
ExperienceChildren’s films have always been rather sinister. When I think back to the 1937 surreal, trippy Disney version of Snow White I can’t help but think that some of its imagery more closely resembles scenes from Trainspotting than anything currently considered ‘child proof’. Even 1963’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang featured some unsettling and altogether chilling scenes, with the obvious parallel of the creepy, sweet proffering Child Catcher and the contemporary image of the paedophile lurking at the school gates. But can children’s films really be considered too dark? The answer is a resounding no.
Children’s imaginations are incredibly fertile; rather than patronising them. children’s films should explore the full range of their intellectual and emotional spectrum – within reason of course: nobody’s saying that children should be exposed to Martin Scorsese at primary school. Why should children be confined to watching things that are so intellectually bankrupt they leave the viewer feeling ashamed? Recent films like the all-singing all-dancing Happy Feet and the unwatchable Bratz are utterly lacking in emotional dexterity. These films seem to have adopted the attitude that children should feel nothing more than a sort of numb contentment while watching films. Bratz is especially objectionable because it appears to be a version of Sex and the City for the pre-teen generation.
Interestingly, rather than becoming more sinister, children’s films today just seem to be more ‘adult’. The imagery may not be more upsetting but the dialogue and humour certainly seems to be aimed more at the parents than the children. Look at The Incredibles, Monsters Inc and Shrek. Pixar are definitely responsible for this new wave of pseudo children’s film; essentially very enjoyable but with slightly more biting wit than The Tweenies.
One film that strikes the right balance between being mind-numbing and excessively upsetting is the critically acclaimed Bridge to Terabithia. It blends fantasy and reality perfectly and has just the right dose of tragedy thrown in. Holes was another particularly skilful children’s film that dealt carefully with serious and relevant themes without being too disturbing or – worse still – condescending to its core audience.
So, unless we see children as soulless, mindless mini-adults, we should encourage children’s films to explore more sophisticated themes without being excessively adult or inappropriate.

by Hayley MirekThe Squid and the Whale is about a dysfunctional family going through a divorce, combining comedy, drama and awkwardness into ninety minutes of cinematic delight. The film is mostly centred on the Berkman family’s oldest son Walt, and the last scene focuses on his self-realisation. 

The Squid and the Whale ends with Walt running from his father’s hospital bed through Central Park to the Natural History Museum. As Walt reaches his destination, the squid and the whale that hang in the sea life exhibit, Lou Reed’s ‘Street Hassle’ begins to play. Out of breath, Walt stares at the exhibit. He doesn’t say anything, but something has changed inside him. He has grown up, or at least reached the point where disillusionment forces him to begin his ascent into adulthood. 

The song ‘Street Hassle’ seems like an odd choice to end the film. It is a ten-minute epic whose lyrics tell of the seedier side of New York life; drug overdoses, crack-heads, pimps, whorehouses, and an explicit depiction of prostitution. Yet the song is a perfect fit for the end of the film, and not only because of the almost triumphant string quartet that opens the song. In between the blush-inducing lyrics are words that speak of loss, hopelessness and disillusionment. As Walt stares out, the music and lyrics seem to reflect what his mind can’t really articulate. Dialogue would be pointless anyway; the viewer understands. 

Throughout the film, Walt sides with his father on every issue and uses every opportunity to tell his mother how much he disapproves of her. Yet, as Walt sits by his father’s hospital bed, it becomes clear that Walt can finally see his father as the highly flawed man that he is. His father has become human, part of Walt’s growing up.

The film could have ended with Walt running to Joan, his mother, and telling her how much he loves her. But this is not that kind of film. Joan knows that Walt loves her; an entente the audience shares. Instead, Walt runs to the squid and the whale; the exhibit that used to terrify him as a child, so much so that he had to cover his eyes while Joan would narrate the scene. At the end, Walt stands in front of the creatures and stares, and then the screen goes dark. 

I was in New York this summer and went to the Natural History museum to see the squid and the whale. I put Lou Reed on my ipod and entered. The whale was there, but the squid had been moved to another wing. The exhibit was nice enough in its way, but it didn’t have the power I felt when Walt stood in front of it. The film transformed the longstanding museum exhibit into something meaningful. While Walt stands in front of it, with Lou Reed playing, the scene transcends into something epic, something life changing.

by Mary Claire WaireriBased on the Old English poem of the same name, this epic, action romp bursts onto our screens from the imagination of Forrest Gump director Robert Zemeckis. Imagination being the operative word, since the finished product has as much to do with the original poem as this week’s issue of Heat magazine. In fact, he admits ‘nothing about the original poem appealed to me’. Of course, departure from the original text is not in itself a criticism, but some sort of health warning needs to be attached to Beowulf, because I imagine anyone watching it with the intention of seeing the epic poem realised in celluloid will be in for a very nasty shock.

For those troglodytes who remain unacquainted with Beowulf, it is the tale of a young, heroic warrior (played by Ray Winstone) who offers to save the Danish kingdom of King Hrothgar from the monster Grendel – a ruthless beast that wreaks havoc in the kingdom, feasting on its subjects and leaving chaos in his wake. After Beowulf slays Grendel, the beast’s mother (played by Angelina Jolie) emerges to avenge her son’s death. The adaptation was filmed using the performance capture technique – this involved the actors wearing form fitting suits covered with motion sensors and performing in front of a green screen. The actors’ movements were then digitally recorded; think Gollum in Lord of the Rings.  In addition, Beowulf will be screened in 3-D at dozens of cinemas across the UK, which basically means that you get to wear goofy glasses, and stuff flies out at you in a rather menacing but altogether thrilling way.

Yet all the dazzling effects, and a cast of such respected actors as Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovitch, cannot disguise the fact that Beowulf falls seriously short; there’s minimum character development, the dialogue is clumsy and the narrative arc is incoherent at best. Zemeckis seems more interested in laying a lascivious eye on Angelina Jolie’s naked body than in injecting any emotional complexity into the story. So, while Beowulf is eminently watchable, it is neither original nor particularly memorable.

Zemeckis has a lot to answer for here. He had skilled actors and state-of-the-art effects at his disposal and the best he could come up with was a few action sequences, peppered with gratuitous nude shots of a digitally enhanced Ray Winstone, all strung together with some supposedly snappy one-liners. Not to mention some shocking anachronisms – it seems seriously unlikely that Grendel’s mother would have worn gold stilettos, for starters. But of course, it’s equally unlikely that Zemeckis spent more than five minutes developing his ideas, or that anyone who watches Beowulf can expect to leave the cinema feeling anything more than bemusement, that so much money was put behind such an ill-conceived project. It could have been so much more. Instead, what we have is a lazy, uninspiring and emotionally bankrupt film.

by Isabel SuttonI haven’t actually read the Booker prize short-listed novel Brick Lane but, having seen the film, I’m certain it deserves all the praise it receives. As to its recent adaptation for screen – I’m not so sure.
The tale is of a young Bangladeshi girl, Nazneen (Tannishta Chatterjee), who is fixed up in marriage with an unknown older man with whom she is sent to live. His home is in London, amongst the Bangladeshi community of Brick Lane, where they live in a council flat with two daughters. The film follows Nazneen as she dreams continually of life in Bangladesh, a vision which is fuelled by her sister’s letters. It is only when she becomes attached to Karim (Christopher Simpson) – a young man who runs a clothes business and sends the material to Nazneen to be sewn – that her perspective on life in Britain changes.

Brick Lane is a story full of interesting dimensions: the psychological struggle of Nazneen; the subtle dynamics between herself and her intriguing husband Chanu Ahmed (Satish Kaushik II); the nature of love; the social tensions which emerge after 9/11 and the reactions of Karim and the Muslim community. There is one significant problem, however – none of these are visual themes.
The beauty and colour of Bangladesh, which fills the screen at the opening of the film, becomes a faraway world which we occasionally glimpse through Nazneen’s imagination. In reality, her eyes stare out on the bleak landscape of council buildings and a grey British sky, and this is the backdrop that dominates the film. 

The focus of the story lies in Nazneen’s thoughts and emotions – the letters she receives from Bangladesh and the hopes she harbours of a return. But the film can only hint at this through a mood of suppressed tension and melancholy. Nazneen is a character silenced by the misery of her predicament, and it isn’t easy to penetrate her psychology on screen.

Once in a while there is an image which catches your attention: the vivid saris worn by the women in Bangladesh are still worn against the grim background of London streets: Nazneen’s figure stands out like a jewel against her concrete block of flats. Later we see the cloth of Nazneen’s sari unwind in a wave of colour, and witness her admiration for the sequined dresses in the market where Karin sells his clothes.

The film draws to a close with a dramatic chase through the streets of London: Nazneen’s teenage daughter, Shahana, runs out of the house in a fury at her father, closely followed by her panicked mother. The camera darts through the darkness, blinded by the city lights: Nazneen keeps on running and running until she finds Shahana collapsed on a station platform. Nazneen travels great distances through the strory – both physically and emotionally – and this becomes apparent in her desperate chase. With scenes like this one, the film adaptation doesn’t entirely fail in conveying the power of the narrative. 

by Connie HanThe plot of Solaris, such as it is, can be summed up in one faintly absurd sentence. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, goes into space, and is haunted by his dead wife; confusion ensues.

There is more to Solaris than any summary or review can tell. It’s not a film you can dip into: it immerses you for almost three hours and leaves you astounded and breathless. It is a film both uncompromisingly beautiful and bleak. Even under the burden of Soviet censorship, Tarkovsky refused to bow to creative pressures, crafting his films to produce a unique and enduring vision. With Solaris, Tarkovsky hoped to transcend science fiction. He was disappointed that he had not succeeded and that Solaris was categorised and trapped within a narrow genre. Yet to describe Solaris as ‘sci-fi’ is like describing The Seventh Seal as a film about chess.

If general consensus means anything to you, Solaris is regarded as an astounding film. ‘An extraordinary film of great sensitivity and lyrical power…engrossing and gravely beautiful,’ gushes Newsweek. ‘In every way a majestic work of art…a masterpiece’ writes Mark leFanu in The Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky. On the other hand, Stanislaw Lem, the author of the book on which Solaris was based, famously disliked it, feeling it concentrated too much on the relationship between Kelvin and his wife, and too little on the book’s main theme: the incomprehensibility and unrelatability of alien life. Yet many feel that the focus on the relationship enriched, not detracted, from the film’s alien atmosphere. ‘Man needs man,’ declares Snaut, one of the scientists. Later, Kelvin tells his wife; ‘you mean more to me than any scientific truth.’ Science and love, knowledge and delusion, humanity and the Cosmos; these are the themes juxtaposed continually in Solaris.

The performances are low-key and taut. Kelvin’s dead wife, Hari, is at once both eerily alien and more human than any of the scientists. She is played by then 18 year old Natalya Bondarchuk, who was catapulted to fame by her performance. The film has almost no musical score, proceedings being interrupted either by mechanical beeps and clicks or by strange, unsettling swells of sound. The only actual music is Bach, played during moments of intense emotion and unsettling beauty.
Solaris is about time, grief, perception, reality; guilt and memory; man’s quest for knowledge and the failure of science. It is also about a man adrift in space around an alien planet with his dead wife. Though at times it verges on pretension, it sails gracefully on where a lesser film would have lapsed into self indulgence. It is one of the films you need to see before you die. Make of it what you will.

by Aaron BorboraRarely does one find a curry house that combines excellent food with tasteful surroundings and top-notch service. 
But Chutney’s, located on St Michael’s Street, offers just that. From beginning to end, we had a thoroughly enjoyable dining experience, thanks to the polite and capable staff. Despite our last-minute booking, a table was found at peak time and on arrival we were promptly seated at a good table well away from the distractions of the door. This positive first impression was only reinforced by the contemporary décor and furnishings. While many Indian restaurants seem to go out of their way to emulate the interior of a cross-channel ferry, the styling at Chutney’s was refreshingly modern. 
The menu offered a truly extensive choice of mouthwatering dishes, meaning that one had difficulty in not ordering the whole lot. Bank managers and Yorkshiremen alike will be pleased with how reasonable the food is, with starters between £3 and £5 and mains £7-£11. Vegetarians are well catered for with a selection offering so much more than a generic ‘vegetable curry’; indeed, Chutney’s has won awards for the range and quality of its vegetarian offerings. Continuing the trend of offering much more than the average curry house, pescarians are able to choose from a selection of Bangladeshi fish including bhol (although rou, that king of fish, is a sad omission). A welcome feature of the menu is a brief description of each of the dishes, explaining their style and principle ingredients. Furthermore, many dishes can be chosen in mild/medium/hot variants, which makes it possible to try a new recipe free from the fear of destroying the buccal mucosa.

After an excellent starter of warm and crisp popadoms, which held no hint of oil and were accompanied by beautifully-flavoured dips, we were promptly served our meal. The Korai seafood dish was excellent, with plenty of succulent king prawns.  The vegetables and onions were very fresh and the spice made its presence felt without being too intrusive. The only criticism is that it was a little on the dry side. The generous portion of lamb Pathia contained tender morsels, (as opposed to the meat at many Indian restaurants which seems to have the consistency of British Rail pork pies), smothered in a sauce that was rather too sweet and lacking in lemon to hold true to the dish’s Persian ancestry.  For our side order we enjoyed Sag Paneer. This was truly excellent, with home-made cheese and fresh spinach. In contrast to many other establishments, the portions were all generous and there was no attempt made to cover up a stingy use of protein by an excessive amount of sauce or vegetables. Drinks, of the same reasonable prices as the food, were of a similarly high standard.
Throughout the meal service and presentation were first-rate. The well mannered staff paid attention to detail.  It was nice to see, in these days of ever tightening margins and falling service standards, that we were still bought warmed plates. The quality feel also extended to the speed of service, something ensured by having a higher ratio of waiters to diners and a ‘common-user’ approach to service, whereby any member of staff would attend. 

Overall, Chutney’s is a high-end establishment catering to those seeking something better than the flock-wallpaper and greasy food style of Indian restaurant. Surprisingly, for such an experience there is not a heavy financial premium, making this an ideal choice for a special or celebratory meal out. For those in a rush, they offer a take out service and an express lunch for only £7.50 during the week –  the prefect antidote to too much time in the Bod.