A couple of months ago I wrote something about scary visuals, and posted a bizarre video of myself wrapped in clingfilm. The long and short of it was this: Smokin Jo had asked me to produce some visuals for her latest (and very exciting) live performance project, TRNSSTR.

And so the story goes on…

With the invaluable help and experience of James Mountford, we organized a shoot with Angie (thank you Angie and Bookings Models!) which was filmed in slow motion on a Sony EX1. Just after a couple of weeks of preparation we were all ready for the first gig, to be performed at Redlight!

It was the first time I had mixed visuals in public like this (and it was only a month before that I had started practicing), so to say that I was nervous whilst sipping green tea backstage doesn’t really paint the picture very well – but the green tea bit is accurate. Even though this was not a massive venue, and small visual mistakes would probably go unnoticed, I just couldn’t control my heart trying to jump down into my stomach. Luckily for me it didn’t, and before I knew it I was on the stage, in my booth, with my laptop and his friends all ready to go.

I really would have loved to be in the crowd to enjoy the whole event. It went perfectly.

In this video James and I make a rare public appearance. James’ one is probably less fabulous than mine, but important nonetheless. So keep your eyes peeled for his skinny legs and my really nice t-shirt.

I need to make an edit of the visuals by themselves, so I hope to be posting that up here some day soon.

For more info on TRNSSTR visit smokinjo.com/trnsstr.

Shortly after editing REBELRAVE #2 back in February 2008 I was struck yet again by my usual and almost predictable luck: the external hard-drive I saved it on suddenly stopped responding (not to be confused with the time when my laptop died some time after), and I was left with nothing but a low-quality version I had uploaded for the Crosstown Rebels to preview. So we had no choice but to use that for the Rebel newsletter (rebelrave.tv didn’t exist at the time). And when rebelrave.tv went live I simply skipped this episode, to the confusion of many visitors.

However today, after 11 months, I came across a folder on another drive which I had simpy forgotten about. It contained a good quality export of the video. Not perfect, but good enough to go up on .tv!

My friend and housemate Robbie is featured in the intro. Illustrations are by Martin Wollerstam.
This episode sees Damian Lazarus playing at Goa in Madrid. There I met Anja Schneider, Shinedoe, Pan-Pot, and Exercise One.