This is quite an interesting period, partially because of my relocation to New York, but mostly because of the fact that three days after arriving I got mugged in broad daylight in the middle of peaceful Williamsburg. I got hit in the face by something which felt like a bat, this broke my zygomatic arch (cheekbone: from eye socket to jaw, from ear to nose) which needed to be fixed up with some surgery.

This was a week ago. A day after being discharged I was already on Skype with Mr Lazarus discussing (under the effects of some hardcore morphine) RebelRave’s next big step: The REBELRAVE U.S. Tour.

Here’s a small promo I made for it, for more info go to rebelrave.tv/us-tour-2010

This tour is going to be special: 26 dates across the country with Damian Lazarus, Jamie Jones, Seth Troxler and Deniz Kurtel. I’ll be filming parts of the tour which will be featured in REBELRAVE #9, and also I’ll be producing the visuals, which actually I need to get onto right now as there are only 2 weeks left until the first date at Pacha New York.

The U.S. tour will then carry on in Europe in April for a second phase, which again I’ll be filming for episode #10!

Getting the chance to fly to New York for another REBELRAVE episode earlier this year turned out to be a life changing experience in a weird way. I came back to London with a hunger for drastic changes, and New York was the gateway that could make that happen. Six months have gone since then, and lots has happened on the personal side of things, but most importantly I am in possession of a one-way ticket to the USA which I’ll be making use of on the 7th of January 2010. Exciting? Yes.

So I went to New York for the 8th installment of REBELRAVE to document the happenings in and around the “Wolf+Lamb” crew: their magical parties have become something of a myth, set in their extremely cosy home/studio/party-venue/pseudo-hotel. Zev and Gadi from W+L were really excited about me filming and made sure we got everything covered, with the help of Lee Curtiss who surprised everyone with his Blind-Date host skills.

A whole day’s filming interviews with the various W+L members was followed by a 18 hour party, which speedily moved through the deep hours of the night into a hot summer’s day, sun rays streaking through the sky light, filling the dance floor (the living room) with an incredible energy. I’ve attended quite a few after-parties and this was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I came away inspired, the kind of inspiration you feel when waking up after an amazing dream.

So editing the footage just brought all those feelings back. Seeing what these guys do is a real inspiration to me: their Burning Man projects, Deniz Kurtel’s art and music, their Black Label, the Marcy Hotel, their unforgettable parties, all the artists on their label. Finding a way to tell this whole story has been an impossible task to fit in a 10 minute video, so unfortunately you’ll only get a taster of some of what Wolf+Lamb is about, but hopefully you can get the general picture!

Go see this on rebelrave.tv (contains tracks info and links to buy)

The bubble has popped and I’m back in the real world: REBELRAVE #7 is out. Probably the most significant episode so far for me, as it has really affected me on different levels in combination with Damian’s world tour (read about that here), and an overload of other work. Well, I say I’m now back in the real world, but that’s not really accurate as it’s now 8AM and I’ve just been working solid for the past 20 hours!

Once again, there’s just so much to write about this as it’s a very convoluted story, so because I don’t have much time on my hands I’m going to keep this one short. The only thing I’d say about this episode is that it’s the first of a two-part series; the second part features a very special crew in New York who I went to film a few weeks ago, but this edit will only come into my schedule in the next few weeks. Again, this is going to be a very special episode, which will also feature a short personal take on dinosaur documentary-making.

Many thanks to the lovely Anna once again for doing a great job at being in front of the camera, and to Marko and for his help and advice on the postproduction, and to all the guys in LA! A special thanks goes to Red Earth Studio (my brothers’ production company where I rent my desk) for the huge support.

Moving on in the latest news headlines, things to expect in the next few weeks are the launch of the Skunk Anansie website (finally!), some visuals for Mark Knight, a video promo for a really cool hair stylist, and finally a music video for a hot new band!

Six months ago I started this blog as an excuse to kill 10 hours’ waiting time at Stansted airport: I had just missed my flight to Barcelona where I was meant to spend the day with Dinky shooting a story about her for a future RebelRave episode. My next flight left us no time to film any interviews during the day, in fact as I landed in Barcelona I was driven to the hotel, then to the restaurant, then to the club, all within the space of an hour.

I felt relieved that Dinky didn’t throw anything at me when she saw me, as she had been up from the crack of dawn to fly in from Berlin. As a matter of fact she was rather forgiving and managed to make me feel better about the whole situation - she’s very nice, you must know.

Liquid is a fantastic club, I would love to go there again and would recommend it to anyone. It’s on the bottom edge of a hill on the west side of Barcelona, with a large outdoor swimming pool. Swimming pools and clubs usually don’t go well together from what I can gather, having witnessed the nauseating happenings at the Aquarium (Old Street, London), but the setting at Liquid was a small tropical paradise in comparison, and I often fought off the urge to jump in. Dancing awkwardly with camera in hand to the sounds of my favourite DJs on the side of a pool surrounded by palm trees and a starry sky is something I often look back on, especially when, like now, I happen to be staring out from my studio window onto a dark, gloomy and wet East London street.

Gosh, as usual there’s a lot to tell and I’d probably end up writing pages of all the endevours to produce this episode, so I’ll stop right here and move right onto mentioning the people who helped:
-Anna did a fine job at presenting the show for a second time.
-Her parts were filmed by my brother Adam on his big camera. Apart from its size I know nothing about it: it’s got big lenses, big tapes, a big bag. It’s also very heavy. It was really good to get his expert help on this, you’ll most probably notice the difference in filming quality!
-The photos taken at Stink are by Rob Low, who also does the press photos for Damian and other DJs on the label.

The next episode will be an exciting one, for which I shall be spending a couple of weeks in LA with Damian following part of the tour promoting his debut album. I’m also very excited to announce that I shall be producing the visuals for this tour, which will see him playing live at the best clubs around the world.

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.

REBELRAVE is always wrapped in drama, and this episode has been no exception. This was meant to be released a couple of months ago (or maybe more), but my computer’s hard-drive suddenly died just a few days away from the video being released. The files for this episode had disappeared, but miraculously made it back without a scratch, thanks to the help of a bunch of crazy technicians with white frizzly hair who live in a tiny basement of Spitalfields. You can read more about this story here

This episode of REBELRAVE has a slightly more developed format than the other episodes. We have been wanting to upgrade the format into something more cultural and a bit more appealing to people who aren’t necessarily techno-heads.

One of the additions to the format is that we now have a presenter, who also happens to be my girlfriend (what are the chances?), Anna Bosworth. Having a presenter gives the video a new dimension, and gives me a lot more to play with both when filming and when editing. There is now a story.

Another new element is that we don’t just focus on the club experience. From this episode you will see an interview with Seth, and a quick chat with the illustrator behind the Crosstown Rebel record sleeve designs.

To celebrate the new format I have launched REBELRAVE.TV, which will be the portal for all our films.

Hope you enjoy.

As well as featuring Seth Troxler and the party in Paris, the 5th episode of REBELRAVE will also show an interview with a Japanese illustrator called Saeko, who didn’t want to be shown in the video.

I had to think of a way of showing her answering Anna’s questions, without letting the viewer recognize her face.
My initial idea was to get Saeko to film herself with a webcam, whose feed got projected onto a wall where Anna was standing. The outcome was pretty impressive (a huge image of Saeko’s face projected next to Anna), but I still needed to conceal the projected face.
It was at that point, when looking for live webcam effects, that I came across Quartz Composer, which is an amazing tool that lets you manipulate the video feed from your webcam.

I added some halftone effects to the video feed, after which I found out that I could also grab the information sent by the microphone. So triggered by the volume of the input audio I made the halftone effect increase and decrease.. The result got me jumping up and down in my bed: as usual it was something like 4am, and this is the sort of thing I do when I can’t sleep..

So now I had managed to achieve a fairly cool way of showing Saeko’s face, with the projection effect throbbing up and down depending on when she spoke.

Here’s some screenshots:

After being satisfied with all of this, I looked down the list of options in Quartz Composer to see what other goodies it may contain: mouse, keyboard and MIDI control! Perfect! I could now insert videos and images over Saeko’s face while she gave her interview, LIVE! No post production needed.
For example when she spoke about Damian Lazarus, I triggered a short video loop of him to flicker on. I also used this so she could talk about specific pieces of her work.

Here’s a screenshot of how the file looked like in Quartz Composer’s… hot!!!!

Well, now that REBELRAVE is taking its first steps into adolescence with its very own hot presenter (Anna Bosworth) and new format, I’ve decided it’s a good time to start saving clips that I can’t use in the final product.

It’s my second day on the edit of episode 5, which is the one that features Seth Troxler in Paris, and I’ve just come across a really funny scene that I can’t just throw away. We went to meet Seth at Sety’s top-floor apartment in the heart of Paris to film his interview. He was really intrigued by my name and kept saying it in full because he liked the sound of it, so here’s one of those times:

It’s been a few months that I’ve been trying to start up this blog, but I was never really happy with my [numerous] attempts of opening it up in a spectacular and fabulous way.

I’ve now given up on that, as I find myself in a not so spectacular nor fabulous situation. Which may bloody well be my golden opportunity to get this blog rolling. Let’s see!

Today is Sunday 10th of August, my mother’s birthday, and I should have landed in Barcelona about an hour ago to meet Crosstown Rebels’ female talent, Dinky. She’s going to be playing at Liquid tonight, along with Damian Lazarus and Pier Bucci, and I was meant to film the event, for the 6th episode of REBEL RAVE.

Instead I missed the flight by exactly two minutes, thanks to the brilliantly thought out Easyjet check-in queuing system. This was at 6 AM. My next flight is at 6 PM. So I’ve been sitting around on uncomfortable chairs for a few hours now, and it’s only just occurred to me that I can only laugh about the situation, especially after what I went through to prepare for the trip.

I don’t know how this happened really, but last night my friends and I decided to catch James Holden and Richie Hawtin at FieldDay festival, a great idea at the time! But I spent the whole evening with the niggling thought that I needed to get to bed early, as I would be waking up at 4:30 the following morning. The niggling eventually became stress and finally panic, when I nervously fell asleep at 3AM, after fighting the double-vision whilst preparing the equipment. Nonetheless I was up on time and got to the airport well in advance. Which brings us back to the beginning of this post and to the present.

I’ve just spoken to Damian about it, I think it’s a bit disappointing for everyone because Dinky and I were flying in early specifically to do a feature of her in some of the cool parts of Barcelona. I feel really bad for her especially, she’s had to get on to a flight at the crack of dawn for no reason at all…

Anyway, I’ve now managed to check in and sit on less uncomfortable seats, and I have been thinking of how we could do a piece with Dinky after dinner and before her set, or more importantly, where. I wanted to film in La Rambla, but it’s a bit out of the way from both the hotel and the club.

I’ve also arranged with a girl who works for Liquid to try to lead a conversation with Dinky for the camera, which should turn out to be quite interesting!