Faithless to split after 15 years
Dance group Faithless have announced they will split after 15 years together, with their final date at the O2 Brixton Academy on April 8, 2011.
We’ve witnessed many legendary performances from the duo, most recently at the O2 Arena in December where we shot them for the project. You can see the production shot above, and it’s clear that there is a unique and intimate bond between the artists.
During a recorded chat for the book, they revealed that their set at Glastonbury 2010 (ahead of Stevie Wonder) was their favourite ever live performance. No doubt they’ll be looking to go one better for those lucky fans at Brixton in April.
War Child BRITS afterparty kicks off in style
War Child kicked off another of their legendary BRIT Awards after-parties last night at the IndigO2. With previous years featuring unique performances from artists such as Coldplay, U2, Kasabian and The Killers, the annual event has something of a reputation to keep up, and the 2011 edition was certainly up there with the best.
The evening kicked off with a typically polished performance from The Bees, before International Breakthrough Act nominees The Temper Trap stepped things up a gear. However the highlight of the night was Mark Ronson with an ensemble cast of stars including Boy George, Ms Dynamite, Katy B, Alex Greenwald, Kyle from The View and Jonathan from The Drums. Check out our exclusive photo taken as they came off stage.
Check out this great highlights video:
Disturbing the BRITS!
Huge congratulations to Tinie Tempah for his brace of BRIT awards last night. The South London rapper won British Breakthrough Act and British Single awards, the latter for the number one singe, “Pass Out”.
We shot Tinie before and after his gig at Koko in London recently, and can exclusively share with you the portrait that will be seen in the exhibition later this year.
Like art? Love music? Check this great album art resource!
If, like us, you have fond memories of buying albums on vinyl (I still pore over my double-gatefold issue of Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’) you will almost certainly have something of a penchant for the accompanying artwork. Of course, much has been written on the subject and there have been countless exhibitions and books, but http://sleevage.com/ does an amazing job of bringing together the best album art in a fully searchable format.
With the gradual shift away from physical product to digital distribution, are we seeing the death of album art? Or will musicians, artists and labels find a way to innovate and move the genre forwards?
Janelle Monáe: Superstar in waiting
Janelle Monáe’s debut album, ‘The ArchAndroid (Suites II and III)’ was just voted Guardian Music Album of the Year 2010.
For some that might have come out of left-field. For us, it’s on the money. From the very earliest planning stages of this project, we wanted to capture and highlight not only the live music legends such as Suede, but also the emerging stars like Dutch Uncles.
Alongside apparently pretty much everybody else including The Guardian, we saw the astonishingly confident and multidimensional performance on Letterman and knew immediately that she had to be a key target for Be Here Now.
That opportunity arose recently at Alexandra Palace where we were scheduled to shoot Vampire Weekend, with Monáe in support. Unfortunately we were unable to reach her management before the show, and so near frozen to death from waiting outside for passes in deep snow for 30 minutes, I broke the ultimate taboo and bum-rushed her dressing room.
Fully expecting and indeed deserving to be read the riot act, instead I was thrust in front of a heater, and had my hands rubbed back into life by members of the band whilst I explained the details of the project.
Undoubtedly one of the more surreal, and indeed life-affirming moments of Be Here Now to-date.
I didn’t get chance to speak directly with Janelle until she lined up for her ‘before’ portrait 2 minutes before taking to the stage, but hadn’t expected her to be so tiny. But once she faced the camera and the lights hit her, the transformation was immediate and the cavernous hall at Alexandra Palace seemed to almost shrink around her.
I think Tom’s portrait above speaks for itself.
The next 45 minutes were a whirl of energy, both on and off the stage. During these shoots I generally flip-flop between backstage and front of house, taking in both the performance and the crowd’s reaction to it as well as the drama and intensity of the crew. Frankly I’ve never seen such a professional, natural and above all fun bunch of people, and it’s a massive breath of fresh air in an industry which needs precisely that.
I was fortunate to have a longer one-to-one conversation with Ms Monáe later in the evening, much of which will be transcribed later for the book, and it was fascinating to hear her broad range of influences. However what was most inspiring is that she is very clearly her own woman – no PR person looking over her shoulder, nobody stage-managing her every move. She even had the confidence to look me in the eye and tell me that the secret to her stage performance was avoiding the bathroom for an hour beforehand ‘to give things a sense of urgency’.
If you get chance to see her live, grab it with both hands while you can.
Welcome to the Be Here Now blog
Welcome to the inaugural Be Here Now blog post. Launching a new project, no matter how big or small, is never less than nerve wracking. Like sending your kid to school for the first time, it’s easy to wrap them up in cotton wool and convince yourself how lovely they are and what a great job you’ve done, but at some point you have to let them out into the world to exist on their own merits.
Okay, so maybe that’s a little melodramatic. Blame it on the weather, or shooting five nights a week.
The point is, over the course of the past six months we have been working all hours planning and putting the foundations in place for what we promise will be a genre-defining project. The bulk of this has been literally dozens of calls each day with artists, managers, label PR’s, promoters and venues to secure access to some of the worlds finest musicians at precisely the moment when they want to be least accessible – seconds before and seconds after performing.
Although it is very different for every artist, and indeed even for every performance, it is typically a hallowed moment in time. ‘Edgy’ pretty much sums it up. Engineers make last-minute checks of hastily assembled kit, promoters nervously eye the room for dead space, tour managers watch the clock and the artists go through their pre-show rituals. Pretty much the last thing any one of those people want at that precise moment is for the artists to have to pose for a photo.
Which is precisely what makes this project so unique and exciting.
Call us gluttons for punishment (we’ve been called much worse in recent months) but who wants ‘easy’ these days? Easy has been done. To death. Anyone can do easy.
Portrait photography is consistently shown to be one of the most powerful tools for capturing human emotion, and emotion is of course the essence of any great live music performance. No doubt, there are some amazing photographers out there documenting the live scene, but of course the eyes are the window to the soul, which is what this project sets out to capture. With our before and after photos we are documenting some very powerful, often conflicting emotions at a unique and generally unseen moment in time.
So what about the artists? Who are we shooting?!? Well, you’ll have to stay tuned to find out. We’ve already shot over 35 artists across a broad spectrum of genres and geographies, from global icons to local heroes. Over the coming months leading up to the final exhibition and book launch we will gradually start releasing more details, images and interviews with the bands – sometimes directly and sometimes you’ll need to look for hints here and there…could be a playlist, or maybe a ‘liked’ video on YouTube. Ultimately it would be ‘easy’ for us to just stick a list on the website and post all the images now.
But as we’ve already said, easy is not for us. We still have six months of shooting, which is why we’ve chosen to launch the project half way through, so that you can come on this exciting journey with us. You can follow us here, and also via Facebook and Twitter, the latter of which will give you a real-time backstage pass as we post images and interesting moments from behind-the-scenes. We also plan to bring you exciting opportunities, such as coming backstage to meet your favourite artists or even to be captured for the book.
We have a vast amount of exclusive content, events and competitions lined up for you in the coming months, and much more to come, so stay tuned and enjoy the trip!