Basics is back in town and with such a bang! To get a proper introduction to Basics you might need to actually go to one but I will try my best as a fan… Basics is a series of gigs featuring local music artists and now, also local art spaces and venues. It started with its first volume early in 2024 and now it has already grown to become a sold out show several times in a row.
The latest volume of Basics took place on November 15 at Fabrica Gallery, a refurbished church space that now hosts many wonderful art and community events. It is located on Ship Street in the centre of the town and as someone who has attended a range of different events at Fabrica, I recommend it as one of my favourite venues in Brighton. Especially for a music event, the church acoustics work brilliantly well in carrying the melodies through and around the entire space.
This volume of Basics was in collaboration with the Brighton Arts Space and was the first of its kind in this series. Therefore, Fabrica was not just decorated with warm lights as usual but also featured many wonderful paintings by Brighton-based artists. To add to that, some artists from the collective did a live painting all throughout the duration of the gig. The addition of a different medium of art to the already wonderful musical elements of Basics, created an atmosphere of nurturing creativity that organiser Jed spoke about while introducing the show to us.
As the audience settled into the space taking in the artworks and the ambience, we were greeted by the first act of the evening – Theo Warrington and his lovely accompaniments on the acoustic guitar and vocals. Theo Warrington is a violinist and he played original compositions such as ‘Unbound’ and ‘Fortitude’. The acoustic guitar, resounding vocals and extremely skillfully played violin all worked together in harmony to set the tone for the evening.
The second act was a personal favourite and a former headliner act in one of the Basics volumes – the Stone Jets. Since I first heard them play to now, I have often grooved to their songs such as ‘Love is No Illusion’ and ‘Fountain of Youth’. Hence, it was absolutely delightful to hear them play these songs and more live, yet again, but also render them beautifully for this particular evening. Given’s soulful voice and joyous stage presence along with Manfred’s sombre yet very crucial part on strings and backing vocals brought up the crowd’s spirits to match our headliner for the evening.
Kymara, returned as a headliner for the second time to Basics and quite literally filled up the stage with music. They were accompanied by The SoulKind Collective, a choir and the band consisted of strings, bass, drums and piano. Kymara’s powerful vocals accompanied by all of the wonderful musicians on stage and the audience’s enthusiastic spirit off stage, turned Fabrica into a venue of love and celebration. Her songs such as ‘Dancing with my elf’ and a brilliant cover of Pastor T L Barrett’s ‘Nobody Knows’ proved to be such crowd pleasers that everyone ended up wanting an extra song to keep the vibe going.
If this absolutely fantastic lineup and a spectacular venue don’t convince you to attend a Basics show, you have to attend one to prove yourself wrong. Check them out below.
Basics: Instagram
