Here is the video for ‘Volcano‘ by Liverpool mod-rockers The Universal. A thumping rock love song with catchy riffs if I ever heard one. I filmed the band last Friday at Liverpool Sound City and am really pleased with the outcome. More pleased than usual, as this was the second attempt at filming the band.
The first attempt was a month before at FAC251 in Manchester and the sound from the desk was awful. My filming wasn’t great either to be honest. Good sound can often sometimes carry a poor music video, but a great video can do little with poor sound. It bothered me to leave it at that so I was glad to get another crack of the whip. This time the girl on the desk was great and the band sounded brilliant and I got good audio as a result ( a mix of clean desk and the camera mic). I also knew the songs inside out, which was helpful as I was approaching this as a single-take so could anticipate changes.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the band and the video. It’s fairly energetic. I tend to dance around a lot when I film bands. If I can’t get in the swing, it just aint rock n roll.
Last week I presented a AV set with Tom Rea Smith as for the opening night of MOVES10 at the Bluecoat. Most of my set was created using dynamic patches in Isadora, mixing live camera and video feedback, but for this section I decided instead to plunder an old project, The Model City, for material and give myself a breather in the set. The track ‘Lines of Bees’ is presented simply with the Liverpool One section of the film.
A visual mix of selected video works over the last five years. I decided to take stock of my work as part of an application for a residency at the North West Film Archive as part of AND. Fingers crossed.
Featured works:
0. Intro 1. Insane Mind 2. Human Grace 3. Electronica / Experiments in the revival of organisms 4. Angry boy 5. Noise Clouds 6. A Long Journey 7. LOVE 8. Symphony of Bells 9. The Model City 10. The Huge Entity
All material used is either produced by myself or taken from archive.org and used under the Creative Commons license.
‘Kinetic Fallacy – Audiovision’ – music by Kinetic Fallacy (Hannah Peel and Emma Welsby)
tracks:
‘Insane Mind’ – footage from ‘Nosferatu’ ‘Human Grace’ – Footage from ‘Olympia’. ‘Electronica / Experiments in the revival of organisms’ footage from ‘Experiments in the revival of organisms’ ‘AngryBoy’ – footage from ‘Emotions of Everyday Living’ and ‘Angry Boy’ ‘Noise Clouds’ – video by Steve Clarkson.
A Long Journey – Sounds by Amos. Videos by Sam Meech / Pete Bamford. Mix by Sam Meech
‘Love’ – recordings and colours by Sam Meech, sounds by Amos.
‘Symphony of Bells’ – filmed by Tim Brunsden, Steve Clarkson, Markus Soukup, Sam Meech. Edited by steve Clarkson.
Last Sunday I went round to John’s house to document a few tracks for his new album ‘Map or Direction’. He made me some cracking beans on toast and a cup of tea and then we did some single shot takes of his new songs. It was a really great afternoon, and once I got home and captured the takes, I was pleased to see they had worked better than I’d initially expected.
Those kind boys and girls at Mercy have included a link to the video in their Flatline fanzine with some lovely comments. Keep a look out for more John Smith shenanigans with the Mercy folk. This is the first of four videos that John will be releasing over the coming weeks. Enjoy.
Red Wire Gallery’s‘Apocalypse Now’ exhibition finished at the weekend. There were some great works in their including a 4 screen installation of an old lady 4, 3, 2, and 1 days before her death, and these crows pecking at baby birds. ‘A Long Journey’, a video piece I developed for Amos‘ music performance The Winter Will Not Last Forever in collaboration with Pete Bamford, was also part of the exhibition. The video is essentially a glowing red pulse that grows and wanes, whilst crackle swirls around like a snow storm, feeding back on itself, whilst a voice over recounts their personal reflection on battling bereavement and drug addiction and the possibility of hope. The crows provided an audience.
As part of the Make Your Own Liverpool project for NML back in May, me and John asked young people to begin adding places to the model of Liverpool. What emerged was a cityscape abundant in McDonalds restaurants and Primarks, but no Liver Building.
I filmed this event for Easy Money Records last month and was lucky enough to meet Jimmy’s family. Hopefuly there will be more Jimmy Campbell Tribute nights in the future.
