Damian appears to be gloriously taking over my portfolio in a way that would put my other clients to shame – yes, shame on you! In December last year he asked me to produce the official music video for his single “Neverending”. As exciting as this may sound to some people, I found that once again I had taken on more than I could handle, with close to no experience in the field.
So once again Marko Perendija came to the rescue and got the project rolling by calling up his friend Vanessa Whyte, a young and talented DoP. She popped round the next day and by the end of the evening we had an idea that we sent off to Damian. From that point on things moved very quickly, and a crew of very clever people suddenly took shape.
Vanessa took on the role of directing the video, and did an impressive job at carrying the project from start to finish. I enjoyed playing around with some effects towards the last stages of the project, whilst Marko churned away at grading over 300 different cuts.
Once again I’m sitting around waiting for a video render to finish: I’m working on the second part of Damian Lazarus’ visuals, which will be played in full for the first time this thursday in Stockholm. I consider this to be the second beginning of his world tour, as so far he has only been performing half of his set.
Anyway, I’ve been staring at the render progress bar for far too long, so I decided to upload a little Flash toy I made to be used in Damian’s visuals, the “Random Shape Generator”.
A Pret A Manger has opened directly beneath the studio, securing yet another brutal mark in the heart of Shoreditch. I feel ashamed to say that I love their coffees, and religiously buy one each morning before walking up through their staff back door into my office’s corridor; however the other night as I left work to head home I saw some perfectly hydrated youths urinating on Pret’s glass front door, and I couldn’t help but smile.
Leaving work late at night happens quite often, so I get to see a few interesting scenes on the street. For example I get to witness the progression of the “girl’s night out”: the night begins with the wonky-walking stilettos in heavy makeup, then gracefully moves on to wonky-walking with stilettos in hand, ending with sitting on the pavement, makeup splattered all over the face yelling obscenities at no-one in particular (or down the phone). The “boy’s night out” isn’t as glamorous and nowhere near as captivating.
Anyway, this track was inspired by such Shoreditch happenings, while the Pret A Manger logo glared at me from the reflections in the windows on the other side of the road. Ah, Shoreditch.
During my incredibly busy times working on video-based projects for Damian Lazarus I managed to squeeze in a nice little web project for Skin, who I’ve got to know through Smokin Jo. While talks of a website for her Format 3 project are still being made, Skin also asked me to build a brand new website for the return of Skunk Anansie.
I remember telling a few people in LA about this fairly big news piece, but to my surprise they had never heard of the band. Is that just an LA thing? I found it quite intriguing.
Anyway, I don’t know how much I can say about what’s happening exactly with the band (apart from the fact that they’ll be playing at the Water Rats tonight and tomorrow), so I’ll just stick to explaining my side of things briefly: I brought in talented designer Casper Franken from Shotopop to art direct the whole project, and I’ll be taking care of the “creative development” (that is my job title, after all).
The holding page is up right now, and the full site should be live towards the beginning of May, so take a look: skunkanansie.net.
The past 10 days have been a much welcomed change of scenery for me. As I write now I’m sitting on Damian’s sofa, looking out from Echo Park onto the valley and hills of Hollywood. I arrived here primarily to film the next REBELRAVE episode, dedicated to the Droog boys and their new label, Culprit, but also to “vj” for Damian’s first show of his world tour. Read my previous post to know more about how I’m involved in this.
My time here has been full of stories to write about, and I’ve kept my close friends and family posted with essay-length extracts (according to Anna) of my daily happenings: the days spent in Damian’s studio rehearsing, flying to Texas for SXSW, staying at the “Bunker” (Droog’s villa in Hollywood), gawping at the views from the rooftop of the Standard Hotel in Downtown LA (check the mind-blowing photos from the party here), laying on the beach in Santa Monica, thrift shopping in Melrose Avenue, and tomorrow flying to Miami for the third and final leg of this trip. But I’ll delve no further than this list, and in fact I’ll keep this blog post short and sweet, and hope you enjoy the video: Damian Lazarus live at La Zona Rosa, SXSW, 18th March 2009.
The visuals were made by myself with an enormous helping hand from my friend Marko Perendja, who spent many sleepless nights and days at my side as we filmed and edited all of the content. Without him this project wouldn’t have turned out the way it has.
As Pete Tong says on Beatportal: “By the end of the set everyone in the room was mesmerised, not only by the mad K-hole visuals but also by this unique and engaging character who looked uncannily like Fagin in Oliver Twist, mumbling, sometimes screaming into the mic (on an awkward 6” stand) over dubby dark and minimal techno beats. It rocked. Full marks for having the balls to do something original.”
Working with video means you get to spend a lot of time waiting for things to render. Depending on the project, I’d say that no more than 40% of my time is spent editing, and the other 60% of my time is spent waiting the elements to render.
I’ve missed making music a lot over the past few weeks, so about two days ago I started on a new track. Nothing complicated, just an average down-tempo riff with a beat. So tonight, as I worked on bringing the Laz Wabit to life (and rendering) I decided to just finish the track off and upload it here.
Every track has a history and always brings back vivid memories of the period when you made it. I know that this track will always remind me of this incredibly stressful period in preparation for the Smoke The Monster Out tour.
Damian Lazarus’ debut album “Smoke the Monster Out” is coming out in a couple of months. To promote this release, Damian will be performing at some of the biggest clubs around the world over the next few months, starting in a couple of weeks where he will be playing at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
I’ve been producing the visuals for his show, which will also see me VJing alongside him. I’ll have to go into more detail about this at some other time, as right now I’m racing against time to get the content ready before I go to L.A. next Saturday.
So while you anxiously wait for me to write my next post about this, you can rest your eyes on Laz Wabit, who will be one of the creatures entertaining thousands of clubbers around the globe.
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.
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.
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.
A few weeks ago I attended Contakt, a yearly event hosted by the people from Minus. I came out feeling completely blown away, and the memories of the event flashed obsessively through my head for many days after. But apart from the musical side of things I was most taken by the visuals, the work of Ali M. Demirel and Burak Arikan. In a similar way to Minus’ sound, these visuals were MINIMAL, but had a catastrophic impact that was jaw-dropping.
Here’s an interview that might give you an idea of how Ali plugs into the Minus team.
One of the setups they made was based on a grid of dots, each with their own small square-shaped boundaries, watch it in action here, made by Burak. This is one of many other ideas based on a single concept called Meta Control: “Collection of visual/kinetic performative artifacts. These software pieces have a single organizing principle: their control mechanisms are not hidden and often exposed.”
The grid idea in particular has been stuck in my mind since I first saw it, probably because it was one of the few that I managed to figure out, so yesterday I tried to re-build it in Flash.
Stupidly, before I started building it I didn’t look for a video to refresh my memory, in fact I’ve just realized by watching this video that he didn’t actually use any vertical/horizontal lines to connect the dots, which is how I built mine.
Anyway, you can check out my first version, which I’ve creatively named MinusGrid here. Maybe I’ll upgrade it one day.
Smokin Jo and her new project, TRNSSTR, are going to be performing live over the next few months, starting towards the end of December. So she asked me if I fancied doing some visuals for the event, and I immediately said yes.
I’ve been doing the odd bits of visuals for small parties here and there, using a mixture of “static” animations and physics-based graphics (all in Flash). But for this event I really wanted to use some real footage, especially as I have access to an EX1 camera through my brothers’ production company, which is a lot nicer than the camera I usually use (FX1). It has a variable framerate that can capture between 1 and 60 fps, which means that you can do some nice slow-motion stuff, and it also gives you the option of changing the lens, which gives the footage a real filmic look, losing a lot of digital traces..
So the other day, on my 1-hour break from a Flash project for Orange, I wrapped myself in clingfilm and set-up the camera (maybe it wasn’t in that order), with the help of brother #1.
We agreed that the clingfilm wasn’t right, and that if shown to a crowd of [temporarily] mentally and emotionally fragile people, would have been the perfect way to empty the venue – as well as crushing the poor souls of those who happened to be there.
However the lighting and the feel is just perfect for what I imagined, so based on this idea we’re going to shoot it again next week, with the help of my friend James who knows a bit more about lighting and styling than I do. I’ll be behind the camera this time. And Jo’s hidden the clingfilm.
I often play records together with my good friend (and now flatmate) Robbie on his decks in his tiny little bedroom. The other day, after playing straight for three or four hours, Robbie had lay down on the bed, exhausted, while I continued playing.
Banging techno isn’t really the most favourite thing for someone trying to sleep, but for Robbie it’s actually not that bad. In fact he often falls asleep listening to the sounds of Richie Hawtin and Anja Schneider. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to play something with a bit of warmth.
I like to think of this mix as an abstract representation of Robbie’s Sleep that day: it starts off low and warm as he’s drifting off, then gains pace while he’s fast asleep, and as he begins to wake up it ends with one of my favourite ‘morning tracks’.
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.
Yesterday Damian Lazarus asked me to design the logo for the Rebels’ new sub-label: Crosstown Digital Rebels. It was done in a bit of a rush, as it was meant to be included in the banners I created for the Resident Advisor newsletter, sent out tomorrow!
Screensavers with style are extremely difficult to find: I wanted to find a nice slick one for my newly fixed computer, but after years of occasionally google-ing “slick screensaver mac” and finding myself in very scary websites, I didn’t even go near google. Instead I made my own, based on a clock.
There’s an interface that lets you choose which style to use. You can preview it by clicking on the image below, which will load one of the 4 styles randomly each time it’s opened.
Click here to download (Mac only). Just unzip the file, and open up “The Clock.saver”. It will automatically add The Clock to your list of screensavers.
I’m looking for name ideas, so any suggestions are very welcome. “The Clock” is a bit too Apple, I’d like it to sound as slick as [i think] it looks. Suggestions? “SLOCK”? “CLICK”? huh?
10 days ago, while I was working at an ad agency in Soho, my laptop suddenly died and refused to come back to life. All my latest projects were on the computer and I hadn’t backed anything up (since my external hard drive also died on me just a few weeks earlier!). I won’t go into detail about this now, but it’s been a catastrophy: I lost the REBELRAVE project that I had been working on for the past two months. I had practically finished the video and just needed to export it to web format so that it could go live!
There may be a chance of me being able to recover my hard drive, but the guys at the data-recovery lab have been working on this for the past week without much success.
Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post. The point is that because of all of this I just couldn’t do any work last week, so I came very close to having some time away from the computer to enjoy some thumb twiddling. I wasn’t too comfortable with this prospect, in fact I decided to learn Processing (watch this and this to see what it can do if you’re not familiar with it). But I got interrupted after a day by an email about Radiohead’s remix contest. I immediately dropped my Processing project and got onto the case, using my friend’s laptop and his Ableton Live (thanks James).
So my remix is now up on radioheadremix.com. Have a listen below, and if you like it please vote! I’ve titled it “Reckoner (Ripples mix)” as it focuses on the verse of the original song: “Because we separate like ripples on a blank shore”
Just hit the vote button here:
And if you feel like taking part in this promotional stunt of mine, just copy and paste the following code into your own myspace/forum/blog!
update 29.09.08 15:01: I’ve just learned that the voting system blocks out multiple hits from a single IP, so if you’re in an office you probably won’t be able to vote if someone else in your office has already.
update 30.09.08 19:16: Over the last 10 days I have been receiving regular phone calls from the chap at the lab that were fairly negative about the recovery’s progress, however this morning’s phone call from him was the best news I’ve had in a long time. The data was saved!
The thing I love about all of this is that this whole story has taken me from one extreme to another, from total life crumbling desperation to a massive sense of achievement. But without the initial loss of my computer, I would have never been able to make the track, and instead would have had to work on my ongoing design and video projects. This track might seem like a small thing for most people, but those who are closest to me know how little time I’ve had to make music, and how frustrated I’ve been as it’s ultimately the thing I love doing the most.
update 31.09.08 13:53: I have my beloved laptop back, many thanks to Ian and Mark at Mac 1 – Spitalfields who spent many days fighting to recover the data.
Playing around with WordPress for my own blog gave me enough confidence to tell Smokin Jo that I could do the same for her, building her not only a blog but a website that she could update and manage using the WordPress admin system.
When I first met Jo two years ago I was fairly new to the club scene and I didn’t really know that she was a world-class/award-winning DJ! Over these two years however I have learned much about Jo, and compiling her About page with her was a really nice way to learn about her past and how she got to where she is now.
Lately she’s been producing some extremely hot tracks with Pete Gleadall under the name of TRNSSTR. Their latest release on “As you like it” is one of my favourites yet!
Find out more about Smokin Jo by checking out her new website here: smokinjo.com
Back in the day when I use to work fulltime for an ad agency, banners used to come in by the dozen every month, often promoting the release of things like dvd boxsets of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or 24! Those of you who know me will totally understand why I might have a problem designing banners promoting these types of products. I seem to remember that a few of us hated them so much that eventually the design studio got divided into Banner Lovers and Banner Haters, which in turn caused the design team to split into departments. I sat proudly in the non-advertising department until I left few years later.
Those days are long gone and I’ve decidedly moved on, only working on advertising projects occasionally. So it was a bit strange for me when the other day James Priestley, who came to me through party contacts, asked me to make some banners to promote a secretsundaze event on Resident Advisor. Surprisingly though, I really enjoyed it! Mainly because the secretsundaze brand and corporate identity focuses on slick typography, but also because I believe in the product!! A party under some arches with Carl Craig? That’s my thing! Just like Buffy is the thing for Pam from Milton Keynes.
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!!!!
