“Sometimes you have to go up really high to see how small you are.”
Event
Kid Koala tonight – DAMN! – way to build a show around a turntable blues record with an average bpm of 80. Dancing girls, puppets, giant record deck, paper planes, kazoos, audience participation and crowd surfing.
And that’s not even everything, in the middle of the show he plays a particular track, one I never thought I’d hear him play, those that have seen it will know what it is but I won’t spoil it. He plays Bristol tonight and Manchester Saturday, make sure you see it, he only does these shows once.
If you can’t then do the next best thing and buy his new ’12-Bit Blues’ LP which melds The Blues with Turntablism perfectly and also comes with a DIY turntable and 5″ flexi disc.
Kid Koala tonight – DAMN! – way to build a show around a turntable blues record with an average bpm of 80. Dancing girls, puppets, giant record deck, paper planes, kazoos, audience participation and crowd surfing.
And that’s not even everything, in the middle of the show he plays a particular track, one I never thought I’d hear him play, those that have seen it will know what it is but I won’t spoil it. He plays Bristol tonight and Manchester Saturday, make sure you see it, he only does these shows once.
If you can’t then do the next best thing and buy his new ’12-Bit Blues’ LP which melds The Blues with Turntablism perfectly and also comes with a DIY turntable and 5″ flexi disc.
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More photos from the recent Sacrum Profanum concert in Poland – this time by the excellent photographer Bartosz Holoszkiewicz. These go right through from our arrival, rehearsal, backstage banter and make up (B&W) to the final performance (colour). There are even more over on Bart’s site but this is my pick of the bunch, also that’s Prof. Penderecki with Skalpel below.
It’s taken me a while to post these as I was collating a lot of photos from the concert in Poland last weekend. Here’s a selection of images from my own efforts plus a few that I gleaned from the web, some by photographers Andrzej Banas and Wojciech Wandzel
Copyright: 10th Sacrum Profanum Festival, Krakow, Poland
The event was Sacrum Profanum, the 10th time it has happened in Krakow, situated in a working steelworks which is usually a no go area for the city’s inhabitants. This time the focus was on four Polish composers – Penderecki, Gorecki, Kilar and Lutoslawski – and the reinterpretation of their works. I was invited, alongside The Kronos Quartet, DJ Vadim, King Cannibal and Grasscut, by the Polish duo Skalpel, to perform a work by Kilar called ‘Krzesany’ in front of over 2,000 people for the event.
The set up ran like this: The Kronos Quartet would perform a piece (or a section of) by one of the composers, then one of us would perform our remix, then Skalpel would perform their take on another piece by the same composer. Once the show began we were encouraged to leave very little time between each piece so as to present a seamless flow, save for applause at the end of each piece. The audience were incredible, absolute silence during the pieces, no talking, mobile phones etc. – you wouldn’t find that in the UK at an event like this.
Skalpel are huge in Poland and this also acted as their reunion concert as they have been working apart the last few years (the Igor Boxx album on Ninja Tune is a solo record by Igor Pudlo from the group). They got big cheers when they appeared and, even though I was unfamiliar with all the music in both its original or remixed form, theirs stood out as being quite excellent. But the highlight for me was Grasscut’s take on Lutoslawski, an incredible piece in 11/2 time which grew to epic proportions with the addition of drummer Aram Zarikian. Coupled with the multi-layered projection screens behind them and the fantastic lighting design the whole stage resembled a huge stained glass window with the sun streaming through at points. The visuals were a big part throughout, helping fill the cavenous space.
The Kronos Quartet played their first piece with their backs to the crowd, reading a huge rolling projection of the score as they plucked and tapped their instruments to create a concrete opener for the concert. After this the screen was lowered as DJ Vadim presented his take on Penderecki (who was actually in attendance too) and an ‘X’ shaped cluster of screens were revealed showing different notes and textures. The X was a feature of the festival graphics, being that it was their 10th anniversary, and two of the huge supporting structures within the factory had also been lit to form the giant letter. I had sent animations of my own although I couldn’t see them when I was performing but was delighted to see used in photos afterwards.
A truly incredible gig in a year that has already had its share of great moments and events. I was honoured to be asked to such a concert (Aphex Twin and Johnny Greenwood had played similar pieces the year before) and will remember it for a long time. All the music I heard was excellent and I hope this will be collected and released as an album at some point. It was all filmed for DVD and Blu-ray release at a later date as well. More gigs like this please!
I’m currently in Krakow preparing for this gig which promises to be a highlight of the year as performances go. This is an annual festival, highlighting and celebrating Polish composers be presenting their works in new and different ways.
The composers celebrated this year are Krzysztof Penderecki, Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki and Wojciech Kilar and the Kronos Quartet will play versions of their original compositions tonight before myself, DJ Vadim, Skalpel, Grasscut and King Cannibal present out reinterpretations. I have taken on Kilar’s ‘Krzesany’ and turned in a 13 minute piece of strings, electronics and drums.
Tomorrow night Kronos will perform with Sigur Ros and it all takes place inside a huge steelworks that an house 3,000 people and is usually off limits to the public. I’ve heard some of the new versions as rehearsals and they sound incredible, I can’t wait to hear them in front of a large crowd tonight. Below is a shot of Kronos practicing yesterday inside the venue.
I’m very pleased to announce that my full dome show ‘The Search Engine’ will be returning to the SAT in Montreal for another run between 18th Sept and 12th Oct (that’s next week!).
For those who didn’t get to make the 5 day run in July there’s another chance to see it in one of 16 showings Tuesdays – Fridays.
I won’t actually be at these performances but before I left in July we programmed the whole piece to be automated in that certain sounds will follow random patterns around the dome the same as if I was controlling them.
Full details of dates, times, ticket prices etc. are on the Facebook event page. Or a direct link to tickets for each event is here. I’m told that Friday 21st might have two showings and some sort of Ninja Tune after party in the Foodlab space (good name), more info when I get that.
A quick reminder of what’s in store in the form of this little promo video I shot there last time.
DJ Food ‘The Search Engine’ live at SAT, Montreal from Solid Steel on Vimeo.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”290″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvfAYdn4DA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Finally the day has come, Dredd3D is released and will, hopefully, wash away the (distant) memory of the 1995 Stallone blow out (which, to be fair, had a great looking Mega City 1 and Stallone’s chin looked the part). Here’s hoping also that it will open the door to many more franchises from the vast back catalogue that the comic holds – there’s already talk of Grant Morrison writing a Rogue Trooper screen play. Got my tickets for tonight with several other long-time fans / friends, some sort of review tomorrow…
Here’s a short featurette on the film and the world of Dredd from the comic
To the news that George Obsbourne just got booed by a stadium of 80,000 at the Paralympics medal giving ceremony, I bring you more beautiful design from the games’ past.
The gorgeous look for the Olympic Games held in Munich in 1972 was designed by Otl Aicher and his team. This is widely credited as a superb reaction to such a wide-ranging brief with everything working together in harmony to create a perfect look and feel. 
Seeing as we are still in the grip of ‘Olympic fever’ I thought I’d post some excerpts from the brochures that accompanied the ’68 games in Mexico. There were at least 2 volumes and they included everything from historical background, art and architecture of the region, design styles and transport layouts.
The design team responsible for the look of the games was headed up by Lance Wyman alongside Eduardo Terrazas for urban design Beatrice Trueblood for Olympic publications, Manuel Villazon for the student design team and Peter Murdoch for special projects. I also have some from the Munich games which are widely considered the pinnacle of Olympic design.
Well Mexico.
So many Food-related things to look forward to this Autumn / Winter:
‘Caught In The Middle of a 3-Way Mix‘ – a tribute to the Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album in mix form by DJ’s Cheeba, Moneyshot and Food with artwork by Jim Mahfood tomorrow night on Solid Steel via Strongroom Alive.
Debut of my remix of Kilah’s ‘Krzesany’ at the Sacrum Profanum festival, Poland on Sept 15th
A night of DJ Shadow mixes on XFM to support the ‘Reconstructed‘ comp with two by yours truly on Sept 21st
‘The Search Engine’ quadruple vinyl gatefold repress edition and return to the SAT in Montreal this Sept/Oct
A John Rydgren compilation on Omni Recording Corporation curated by David Thrussell with audio and images supplied from my archive.
‘The Search Engine’ fulldome performance at the Leicester Space Centre, UK on November 16th
I’ve got some big gigs coming up in the next few months, see the above film for something very special at the Sacrum Profanum festival in Krakow on Sept 15th alongside other Ninja artists past and present, Grasscut, King Cannibal, Skalpel and DJ Vadim. I’ll be remixing a piece by Polish composer Wojciech Kilar and presenting that live, very excited about this one as it will look and sound amazing. The big gig in October is at the Forum – the first time I’ve ever played there – alongside Belleruche, DJ Cam, Chris Read and headliners The Herbaliser who will be using it as the release party for their album, ‘There Were Seven’.
Before both of those though I can finally reveal a very special project that I’ve had in the pipeline for several years now that has finally come to fruition. DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot and myself had the idea of collaborating on a version of the Beastie Boys‘ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album shortly after Moneyshot aired his mix of their ‘Check Your Head’ made entirely from the original sample sources. It was one of my favourite mixes that year (or any year) and we decided we should get together to try and tackle ‘Paul’s Boutique’ as it was a far bigger task being that it has at least twice as many samples.
The result is ‘Caught In The Middle Of A 3-Way Mix’ – a tribute to The Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album, and it will make its debut on Solid Steel on August 30th. Each of us have taken a third of the album each to work on and combined our efforts into a mix that lasts just over an hour, if you’re a fan of the record then be prepared to hear it in a new way. Aside from the original sample sources we’ve included commentary from the Beasties, vintage interviews, demo versions and much more, if you thought the original was multi-layered then this adds even more.
The mix was over half way completed when we heard the tragic news of MCA‘s death in May so the impetus to finish it was instantly doubled and new meaning given to the project. It goes without saying that this is also a tribute to Adam Yauch and the legacy he left behind and we hope it will be embraced by Beastie fans around the globe when it drops, we’re just putting the finishing touches to it this weekend.
Incredible photo of the sunset on Mars, taken from the Curiosity Mars-Rover, and another view in 3D from the craft. It’s been pointed out that this was taken in 2005 by another craft, thanks. Still an amazing photo.
DJ Food ‘The Search Engine’ live at SAT, Montreal from Solid Steel on Vimeo.
This is what I got up to in Montreal recently. Many, many thanks to Anne-Marie Bergeron who put this together at very short notice. If anyone seeing this works at a dome or planetarium, anywhere in the world, and are interested in hosting it in the future then please get in touch. I realise not every dome has a surround system or space to lay on the floor, it doesn’t have to, I will happily work with you to tailor the show to your needs. Contact details are up on the right there…
As it always does, the day of the show came and went in a blur. By 7pm on July 19th we actually had everything in place, there was no last minute rushing around or ‘that will have to do’ decisions. The only thing I was worried about was doing a short introduction in front of the assembled press, I’ve never been comfortable being center stage, even less when speaking through a mic. By the time the first show kicked off there was little to do but sit down and play, or even lie down and shift sound around as much or as little as it needed for the 50 minute show.
I should have done this years ago, I get to lie down with the audience and just play with the sound, no one is looking at me up on a stage, they’re concentrating on the dome and I can watch it too whereas most projections are usually behind me when I DJ.
Sébastien Roy – the SAT‘s photographer – took an amazing set of photos that really capture the scale as well as working well with the low light levels (see above and below galleries).
Sam from Vinyl Junkies made this video clip compilation. That’s his 6 year old daughter at one point at her first ever gig, she loved it. I also did an interview with him the day after about the shows which will be online soon.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIP1mAHZdOw&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
Thursday, post show comment: Thanks so much to everyone who came out last night, it was such a thrill to finally see it up on the dome. So happy to be hosted by the SAT in one of my favourite cities in the world, everyone who helped on this has been amazing, especially Olivier Rhéaume who helped me mix the sound all week. Looking forward to coming back for the Friday night crowd. Tickets have been selling so well that a Saturday show was announced too.
Here’s a review (in french) by Olash Bacon and a nicely put together set of pictures by Jü|Graphee
Friday, post show comment: Just back, another two down, we tweaked the sound during the day and it’s now sounding a lot better, less top end in places, the spoken word stuff cuts through a lot better too. One more show for Saturday at 8pm, tickets still left but selling fast, a lot who came tonight couldn’t get in and bought for tomorrow instead. I met so many cool people tonight and the posters are selling really well too.
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Also, more fantastic photos: this time by Susan Moss
I should take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped me, especially people who supplied some of the footage and gave invaluable advice before I even got to Montreal. Jan Zehn and Stefan Berke from Germany for their CymaSonics sequences, very happy to have their input. Paul Bourke, something of a legend in dome projection, and the sequences he sent, very generously at the last minute. Thomas English for the Red Epic footage, again donated very kindly. Phil Mayer and Ben Stern at Fulldome UK for advice and who will be staging the next version of this show in Leicester this coming November. Also Mario Di Maggio from Thinktank‘s Digital Planetarium in Birmingham for a special preview show which opened my eyes to several possibilities.
At the SAT it’s thanks to LP, Dominic (it was a boy!), Olivier, Guillaume and Alex that it all went smoothly. Evelyn at Evenko for helping stage it, Jeff Waye and Danna Takako Hawley at Ninja Tune N. America for setting it up and doing all the nitty gritty stuff. Finally a big man hug to Pat Hamou (that’s him below) who initially suggested it, helped out and designed the poster to boot – thanks all. I hope to make it back soon with a better show, each one is a learning process and there’s still work to do and plenty more domes to visit.
Some of this content appeared on the Facebook page for the event as this was the most direct way to explain what was happening to the people who were going, so apologies for any repetition.
Pre-gig article by Lucinda Catchlove for CBC Music on what it’s about and what I intend to do.
Now some background on the process of getting it to the screen:
July 9th: Currently rendering footage from both After Effects and Final Cut Pro as well as preparing images in Photoshop. To show films ‘full dome’ (ie covering the whole surface of a dome) you need to have an image between 3000 and 4000 pixels square. Only Red cameras can shoot over the 4k image size but this is only on the long side, and the raw footage for one frame this size is 36MB. As a result most full dome films are animations and I’m attempting to make a 50 minute sequence to go with my mix of the album.
July 12th: Another late night, nearly ready to put the whole thing into the final arrangement. Most of the animation is done in After Effects but AE isn’t too great for synching visuals and sound together, especially a 50 minute sequence. So image sequences are loaded into Final Cut Pro for an easier handle on editing to a timeline although low res versions are made because of the huge file sizes needed for a dome and not a regular projection screen.
Once everything is in it’s correct place an XML file of the session is exported BACK to AE so that a plug in that simulates a 3D dome environment can be added in various different ways to sections. More on that later, that’s the really tricky part where you go from thinking in 2D to 3D and start placing things in space…
Trying to render FX on 2700×2700 pixel footage from a R3D Epic camera inside a 3600×3600 pixel video sequence. “Computer says no…”
July 9th: Animating images is largely done in After Effects then rendered to Image sequences of huge jpegs at 30 fps (frames per second). That’s 30 jpegs per second x how ever many seconds in a sequence. I’m making a 50 minute + show: 30 x 60 x 50 = over 90,000 images. Here’s one below…
I’ve already broken the whole soundtrack down into ‘stems’ (each instrument or part isolated onto a separate track) and this has been sent to the SAT where they are busy making ‘sound maps’ for each song in the mix. With over 150 speakers inside the dome we can place each sound from each track wherever we want. Even better, once the show has begun I should be able to move sounds around the dome manually as it plays using a program on an iPad.
So if you wonder what I’m doing if you come along, I’m not surfing the web or checking email, I’ll be moving sounds around to mess your head up. The song I’m most excited about for this is ‘A Trick Of The Ear’ – this track was actually written with the intention of each part panning around a sphere. Besides various polyrhythms working in tandem throughout the track, I wanted it to feel like you were inside a gyroscope when you listened to it. Hopefully we’ll get somewhere near that next week.
Friday 13th: Last day putting the finishing touches where I can before bouncing it all over to After Effects and applying the full dome plug in to certain sections. Off to Belgium today for a gig too so going to leave stuff rendering no doubt but some will have to be done at the SAT next week.
Monday 16th: Well, I’m in Montreal, about to head down to the SAT and plug everything in, still need to do work on parts today before we push the ‘render’ button. Had to pull an all-nighter Saturday in order to make sure everything copied over to 3 external hard drives. Today should be a pivotal day in getting this from my machines into the SAT. For anyone thinking of getting into dome projection in the future, I’d say… think very carefully. But if you’re determined you’ll need a very fast machine / graphics card, huge amounts of hard disc space and lots of time on your hands…
It’s 9.40pm and I’m still at the SAT, today has been trying to say the least. The Mac to PC file exchange got off to a flying start when trying to copy 300GB to their servers was going to take 9 hours. Luckily they have a Mac Drive program now which enables them to read drives formatted in HFS+ (Mac read/writable) and we needed the time to finish fine tuning the show.
Dominic, who is helping me with all the visual side is about to be a new dad, I mean imminently, not any day, but any hour or minute. He was giving me tips by mobile whilst at the hospital 
The initial render time direct from my drive for the 50 minute piece was over 30 hours so we’ve stop that and are now copying the files needed to the server for a multi-machine render tomorrow. Here’s a shot of the mini dome that they have in their computer lab and the bar and terrace on the second floor outside the dome.
On the audio side we have 164 separate tracks to sort out and bounce to a manageable amount before ‘spatializing’ them into different parts of the dome for each song. This will create song maps unique to each track and enable me to move certain parts around at will. For everyone back in the UK, the sun was out this morning and I’m in shorts and a T-shirt. But lo and behold, what happened this afternoon? It pissed down, exactly like London, I couldn’t quite believe it.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, at one point the master drive I’d bought as back up with EVERYTHING on it wouldn’t show up on my laptop after being pulled out of the SAT server. ‘The drive could not be found, would you like to reinitialise it?’ Luckily Disc Utilities saved the day.
Tuesday 17th: Day 2 in Montreal: Woke up to rain at 5.45am – WTF? I’m beginning to think I brought the bad weather with me from the UK. Monday was full on, got home around midnight with ‘homework’ on the audio to do. Couldn’t face it so got up super early this morning to get a few hours in before heading out.
Dominic was here (still no baby arrived) and set the visuals up on 6 machines to render, he thinks it will be done by tomorrow morning when it then has to be re-rendered for the various projectors in the dome. Making sound maps and spatializing all the tracks this afternoon hopefully – I need some lunch.
Wednesday 18th: Mixing, mixing mixing, all day and into the night with Olivier Rhéaume… The downstairs floor of the SAT is open plan and there’s been a full orchestra ‘practicing’ most of the week. Insanely good players, completely perfect to my ears, we’re working on the 2nd floor and hearing Holst‘s piece ‘Mars’ from The Planets suite wafting up the stairwell was amazing. Apprarently we really pissed them off with the volume we were mixing at unfortunately. Had a midday break to go and record a mix for CBC (see last post) and do an interview for La Devoir paper then dinner and back to the mix until 11pm.
Thursday 19th: Show day – last minute emergency, some donut (me) left a reference film in place of the last sequence. When we watched the whole thing through we got to the end and it looked like someone had used an animated gif in place of a hi res image sequence, not a good way to end the show. Currently re-rendering from the proper source files…
It’s been a bit quiet on the blog this past week as I’ve been away in Montreal doing the ‘Search Engine’ shows at the SAT (Société des Arts Technologiques), I fly back to the UK this evening so I’d like to share what I’ve seen and done all week. It’s three posts until the 1000th entry so I’ll set the scene before the big 1k reveal. First off, I’m sure anyone who’s visited Montreal will know that it’s a city full of great street art and unique architecture, once hosting Expo 67 (the Buckminster Fuller dome is still there if not in its former glory).
The view above was taken from the 15th floor of the CBC building (Canadian Broadcasting Company) where I was doing a mix for a late night show, Bande a Part, the Fuller dome is just out of shot on the righ. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to make it over to the old site but I’ll be back and then it’s top of the list. It’s impossible to walk around though without being confronted by huge murals, graffiti pieces or interesting signage, the best of which I’ve put in the small gallery here.
Pat Hamou, an old friend who worked for Ninja Tune North America and was responsible for suggesting this whole project to the SAT, had curated an exhibition of screen printed gig posters called Music On Paper which was held in the crypt gallery of a church. It’s just finished but there were some great posters on display including the one he designed for my gig. 
The next two posts are quite content-heavy so I might not get time to post them before I leave, more when I return to the UK…
‘The Search Engine’ album in an immersive 210 degree fulldome environment with 157 speaker surround sound mix. Presented over 2 nights, 4 shows, Tickets here
The uber-talented Felt Mistress has some of her creations on show at the NoBrow shop for a final week before they move to Foyles bookshop in the west end to accompany her partner Jonathan Edwards‘ exhibition as part of the sketching the city season. She will also be giving a monster-making workshop in Foyles on July 30th, details and tickets are here.
Long time heroes of mine, graffiti legends, absolute masters from back in the day whose influence is still felt. They have a show opening tonight in Soho, London. Can’t make it myself but will definitely check this out. See examples of their work here.