The Orb - Doune The Rabbit Hole

What a splendid wonderful festival.
We all had a superb time and it looked like the audience did too!

Roger's Trumpet Tree

You come across the strangest things when you go outside London.

Orb Tour 2018

What The Floyd - Mini Tour

Another gig behind the MQ80
What an astonishing band.

Orbfest Roundhouse

First Time back on the lighting desk in 25 years for The Orb & Friends at the Roundhouse.
What a banging gig.
Chris from the Light Surgeons guesting on visuals

Primordial Ooze

Sometimes, you just have to get in the water and do it yourself.

Being an advanced open water diver comes in handy occasionally. So when there were problems with the pump system, as well as designing and operating the show, I spent two days in the estuary mud in chin deep water putting in the water screen. Plus I made some new friends. Pity they were all crabs.
Client EMF

Background life

That's me, twenty feet behind what you can see in this Artic Monkeys video

How The Light Gets In

A very relaxed and laid back gig on the riverside in Hay On Wye, with The Orb showcasing material from their latest album, No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds.
I got to do the lights, all eight of them...lol

Circle Sky

A full day of lip sync DOP in the studio with Circle Sky

Rush Hill Road

New vid from the Orb
All the nice shots were by Chris Allen from The Light Surgeons. I did all the clicky stuff in Davinci Resolve.

The Queen's Commonwealth Canopy

Back at the Palace for another very successful projection by EMF

No Sounds Are Out Of Bounds - The Orb

New band, new sounds, new album, new show.

What's not to like.

I'm all over it.

Behold

York - more promo

a mega 23 hour day, driving to York and back to do projections for yet another Promo.
It was a day of cold fast fold screens and my fingers still hurt.

3 legs good

Hard to believe, but it is actually possible to have too many tripods.
I've managed to keep it down to 5 these days, a studio column stand, a pro video tripod, two photo tripods and a travel tripod. So imagine my distress when my beloved photo 055 pro Manfrotto somehow mysteriously got damaged  a while back- two of the leg locks sheared off by persons unknown???

Anyway, after two years of pondering which model of tripod I should replace it with, I finally came to my senses, ordered the replacement parts online and 3 days later it's as good as new.

It's the little things that count.

Fashion

Something something London Fashion Week

Yet another day in the studio

another fun day of filming and projections, yet again NDA keeps details vague,
Next time I'll be using a Hyperdeck

back in the black hole

fun day in Black Island Studios with someone super famous, who I can't mention, but my dad would have been very impressed.. As famous people go, he was quite lovely and took the trouble to shake hands with every single person in the room..
an event that has happened so many times that I can count them on the fingers of one thumb

The Orb - Butlins

My family were too poor to visit Butlins for a holiday. I remember being aged 6 in a caravan on the wrong side of the fence, peaking over it at the swish monorail that snaked around the camp.
FFWD 50 odd years and it's time for The Orb to premiere their new line up and album at the Rockaway Beach festival.
Having the flu didn't help but I made it to the end of what I thought was a wonderful gig..

Sunrise 2018

Delighted to see Duran Duran loving my new onstage video for "Reach up for the Sunrise"

pic stolen from  bbamok... x

Westfield London - Xmas Lights

Gwen Stefani sings in the Xmas lights.

Fenwick Colchester - Xmas Projections

A 4 projector blend RP on the store front being a major upgrade on the previous year's Xmas decor which featured a shop dummy and some plastic pigeons..
client EMF

xmas 2016

Rosewood Hotel - Xmas Projections

Now this was one of the most difficult jobs I have done in a while.
But in the end it all lined up and overlaid just how it should.
If there is one thing I know, it's how to get those projectors to do as they are told.
As for the content, well 3/10 must try harder ....lol

Client EMF

Kempton Park

Fireworks at Kempton Park, which for once went smoothly.
I worked on one of the worst ever jobs of my life at Kempton back in the early 90s for LCI who managed to totally destroy the Kempton Balloon Festival by concentrating more on the guest list than the project management. The only thing that worked on that fateful night long ago, were my four follow spots.. Not much of a show for the 15k in the crowd

Ahh those were the days..

Hungary vs Wales

The fist fight outside the chip shop took me back to my teens in Nottingham..
Ahh those were the days...

as for the show
projection mapping experts Glowing Bulbs made newbie mistakes, but nothing is new under the sun. It looked fine in the end. Of course.

More foolishness

Seven Hours in a van checking out who has the shortest miniskirt..

Diwali - Trafalgar Square

Had to get the Marigolds flown in from Africa for this one..

Duran Duran - Budokan

Here we are again 14 years later,  Japan's No 1 venue..
I offered Dom Brown a fiver to play Deep Purple's 'space truckin' during girls on film, but he bottled it.. we both had Purple's seminal 'Made in Japan' album when we were kids - much of it being recorded at Budokan.
And then it was over. Two years of Paper Gods and now it's back to some semblance of Reality.

SW4 - 2017

Back after a 4 year hiatus for two days of average music and lots of EDID issues in Tent 5.
It was fun to VJ again after such a long break and no surprise that the visiting VJs had a bad dose of monkey see monkey do.

Heavy Music Awards - House of Vans

Coolest venue ever and I am totally in love with the  lead singer of Venom Poison

The Graduans

A truly odd few days in darkest Cornwall babysitting projections for the Graduation Ceremony.

Feel Korea - Olympia

a very silly evening doing camera at a Korean boy/girl band event..
Throw in a Taekwondo display and some traditional Korean drummers and we have ourselves quite a show..

DP

Infrastructure fixer for long term visual comrades Insight Lighting who did a spanking job for some well heeled clients.. image blatantly stolen from Insight's instagram..

Foolish

Day of the Dead projections for a Mexican bar in London for EMF.

Aphex Twin - Dublin

Another trip out for Aphex Twin to prepare the video infrastructure for the 'late in the day' arrival of Mr Weirdcore, who remains at the core of all things Weird.
Shame I caught the flu while I was there.

4GB festival Tbilisi

Another outing with The Orb, this time to country No57 Georgia and a spectacular weekend at the 4GB festival, held in an abandoned Satellite Factory.

The Light Van Gang

The Orb & friends electric - Royal Festival Hall

Review of the 'Mind Bending Visuals'  here

Keeping busy

Company car

Behold the new wheels...

By Royal Appointment..

I said I would only do it if I could wear a Busby.
Didn't come to pass.. the weather was too bad.
Against all the odds, it looked superb -

Client: EMF
Event: UK India Year of Culture 2017

Rita Ora

My favourite line up... At warner bros studios with RO

2016

I think, in retrospect, the two biggest things that happened to me in 2016, were almost identical.

I was hurtling down the M4 on my motorbike, when what looked like the handlebars of a bicycle fell off the back of the skip lorry 100 yards in front of me.. They bounced chaotically towards me at 80mph,  their irregular shape making it impossible to tell where they would go next.

With only seconds before impact, all I could do was keep my cool, knowing that one wrong move would mean disaster.

A few months later - 

I was in the pit at the end of the Chic performance putting up the cameras and Nile Rodgers gestured to me how to get down from the stage - I indicated over by the side. Instead, he launched himself off the downstage edge into my arms… Again I had to keep my cool, knowing that if I dropped him, I would for evermore be known as the guy responsible for the death of disco…

Here’s to another year of cool under pressure!

ultra widescreen

Very happy am I, with the new widescreen projection system I created for The Orb

Big projections

Two days in a photo studio on an aftershave shoot featuring a very, very famous ex-footballer and me and two 30k Barcos... Of course the insurmountable problems from the screen bowing in the middle were all sorted in due course by your's truly

The Orb - UK tour 2016

Back on tour with The Orb.
9 UK shows before Xmas..

I believe in Father Xmas

fame at last...
Yep, I really did dress up as santa to star in the projections for Hotel Cafe Royal

Bi-Cyclic Existence

My first major gig doing onstage visuals was at the Town & Country club in Kentish Town for the promoter.
Headlining were a band I’d never heard of - Gaye Bykers On Acid
Post show I was quickly asked if I wanted to join them on tour and before I knew it I was on Stewed To The Gills - my first Rock tour. Since then I’ve worked in 56 countries on countless shows - Johnny Cash, Sting, Bowie, Elton John, Duran Duran, The Orb, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Pet Shop Boys, Radiohead, Aphex Twin.
25 years later and I find myself back at the same venue with the same band and still loving it like it was the first time.
In case you were wondering, I used resolume for playback. The old byker vids had their audio replaced with a metronome click which resolume picked up with it's automated beat looper, so I can get it to play video samples that loop to the beat. I then midi mapped the playhead for each clip to a rotator, so i could scroll to any point in the movie then set it all to randomise, which is how I got some of the guitar solos up on screen at the right time.. next time, I'll put in some goto points so I can hit solos and chorus bang on.. it was worth all the effort as I had the time of my life and best of all, I was home by nine… lol

Gaye Bykers On Acid

25 years later and it seems like no time at all.
I turned up at the first show of the tour and had a fantastic evening.. Loved every minute of it.
Hope I don't have to wait another 25 years to see them again.

Not quite home yet

It's planetarium time again. 

This time up in the wilds of Quebec. 

I get to spend a few days winding down from Duran by the St. Laurence Seaway in splendid isolation...

Tempted to just stay here ....

The Ending




Duran USA, 19,485 miles, 50 shows, 96 days.

It's done. 

We all leave the tour fulfilled and with an enormous sense of achievement. It's been a genuine privilege to be a part of such an incredible experience. 

I can almost feel it now, like the first chill of Autumn.
The ache when you say goodbye to people whose lives you have touched, knowing it will be at least years and maybe never until next time.
The moment when you are totally alone in the dark under the stage with the band playing above you and you know that any day now, you’ll be back in the UK and it will all seem like it was a dream. But what a dream! UK, Italy, USA/ Canada 3 times!!! - and they pay me to do it! I get paid to make people happy!!