Friday evening in the bowels of Broadcasting House and the 300 strong audience are calling out in unison as if the xmas panto had been transferred to the Radio Theatre.
“Ian, Its the last Verb of the series” the audience hamily intone from their script
“No, really”
“Yes, We’re afraid so”

Dubbed the Beat Generation’s Les Dawson (by himself) the host of Radio 3’s The Verb, Ian McMillan presides over a programme that brings together all the various styles, tones, genres, and classes of the human tongue in a wonderful “cabaret of the word”.  Its always worth tuning or in this case turning up for The Verb.

This week features multilingual rappers from Manchester, the TS Elliot prize winning poet Hugo Williams, along with Polarbear, David Thewlis, and William Orbit.

Long time readers (or MP3 grabbers) of this blog will be well aware of the brilliance of Birmingham’s Polar Bear.  Every time I visit his myspace I’m shocked to find a new piece of music or spoken word thats somehow even better than the last piece you had stuck on repeat.
On return from The Verb recording, the story was no different with Myspace offering up a sad but wonderful new collaboration with Octave Mouret dealing with a father/son relationship.  I can’t recommend it highly enough! Listen to it here asap.

“I will not allow you legacy, I will forget your face, I will believe in what’s meant to be,
I will not hate…
You will not make me hate”

PolarBear debuted a new work “Creatures Of Habit” which apparently goes all David Lynch in part 2.

PolarBear (Twitter / Myspace / HomeOfPolar)
PolarBear – “Creatures of Habit (Part 1)” (MP3)
REPOST: PolarBear – ‘David (Player Piano mix)’ (MP3)

Uber-Producer William Orbit has come along way since I listened to him as a kid with Bass-O-Matic and Strange Cargo. He flew over from the States for The Verb to set the words of Alfred Tennyson’s “Memoriam” to music, ably assisted by the voice of David Thewlis.

William Orbit (Twitter / Myspace / Blog)
William Orbit – “In Memoriam (feat. David Thewlis)” (MP3)

Listen to the full programme on BBC iplayer for the next 7 days

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