(I Don’t Want To Be) All By Myself

By everything, I mean trying to micromanage every aspect of what I’m doing, always assuming I know best, and generally stressing out when it becomes apparent that I can’t do it all. I’d like to talk about this in reference to some new visuals I’m having made for NZCA LINES, the realisation of a long-running ambition to bring the atmosphere of our new(ish) album Infinite Summer into our venue shows.

I released my first record as NZCA LINES in 2012. It was pretty much a solo album, with material going back a number of years, songs I’d kept as home demos reworked into a synth-driven aesthetic with producer Charlie Alex March. I had no idea how to perform it live, but eventually ended up on a format centred around my MPC1000 sampler, with my friends Leo Stamps and Adrian Acolatse on drums and bass respectively. As we were using a ton of backing track, I knew it would be possible to sync video easily to the music, which would then be projected over us. I really liked the ‘smoke and mirrors’ element - who cares about who’s playing what, it’s all about the overall impression. We got some white nylon sheets which were draped over the keyboard stands, and wore white clothing. Leo had a strobe light taped to his crash cymbal. The animations I made were a part of me getting used to using the program After Effects - I was studying an Illustration BA at the time - and was very much reliant upon the metronomic, staccato electronic drums of the music. This worked great as a kind of portable light show - not interesting in itself, but very satisfying in its synchronization with the music (ok...my girlfriend thought they were interesting). This was handy for low budget touring too - one can eliminate the uncertainty of a lacklustre in-house lighting engineer by simply asking them to turn off the lights, and let the projector do the talking. In fact, the projector became like a fourth member of the band; I tried to make sure we had one at every venue, but when we didn’t I felt incredibly exposed. It literally got to the stage where the show hung entirely upon the quality of the projector. I was completely addicted. I remember a show in Dalston where I was finishing the animation for a new song we were about to play for the first time in the car on the way there, rendering out in the cramped ‘backstage’ area as the support band were playing right beside me. When it came to that song, the stage stayed pitch black - of course, in my rush I’d messed up something. It totally ruined the experience for me.

So, when it came to playing Infinite Summer live, despite the temptation to learn Cinema 4D (it’s not that hard!!) I knew I should just focus my time on translating the music to stage. I also knew that, when it came down to making video content, I wasn’t the best man for the job. My motion graphics skills, whilst adequate for making flashing columns of light that worked with many of the earlier tracks, didn’t fit so well with the emotion and narrative of the new songs. Infinite Summer follows a sci-fi concept based around a far-future Earth in which the sun is expanding, soon to engulf us all. After the rise and fall of countless civilisations, the planet is littered with a patina of ruins, strange obelisks in deserts, and entire cities carved from marble. Also, it’s really hot - kind of like L.A. So as you can tell, this context is begging for some cinematic accompaniment. I’ve always been a fan of bands that create a world for their music onstage. of Montreal, for instance, with the multi-coloured psychedelic projections of their Paralytic Stalks tour, on which we supported for a few dates. I saw Phoenix play in 2014 and was blown away by their minimal use of huge LED screens - opening with the halls of Versailles, returning to flat colour at times, and at one point resting on a static image of an alpine mountain. Cornelius really pulled it out the bag for his Sensuous Synchronised Show tour, which I never saw live but of which there is Youtube footage. This is a great example of using simple imagery that ties together with the music, a fusion of film, graphics and physical lighting. At their best, visuals are complementary, literal without being attention-grabbing, abstract without being an iTunes visualiser.

I would love to have had a fully-produced visual show for all our Infinite Summer touring, but then I would have loved to live in a glass-walled house on the top of a mountain in Corsica. Some things happen slowly. We decided we needed to perform in uniform, and both me and Sarah had futuristic white outfits tailor made by Anh Duong, a Paris-based fashion designer. She drew inspiration from THX 1138 and The Man Who Fell To Earth for these clinical work clothes, and I feel even this simple decision helps give context to the music in a live setting. However, by March/April, I decided it was time to start thinking seriously about having NZCA LINES visuals again. I talked a lot with my girlfriend, a filmmaker and designer (Alina Landry Rancier/AMALA), about the idea of having video that conveyed the landscapes of Infinite Summer, as well as showing human warmth, figures and gestures. Rather than just being abstract or an impressive light show, I wanted the visuals to complement the music, and try and bring the album to life for an audience. Serendipitously, two architect friends of mine, Jo Dejardin & Matteo Mastrandrea, began collaborating together under the name Taxonym, keen to start making visual work that gave them creative freedom.

Knowing we had booked our biggest headline show to date at Village Underground for Sept 28th, it seemed like a good moment to start planning a new show, with Taxonym at the helm and Alina providing her skills as filmmaker, designer and art director. In addition to this, we decided on an interim show at Assembly Point, a contemporary arts space in Peckham, on July 26th. This would serve as a first deadline to get the system working, and prepare draft versions of the visuals. Work began with me writing notes for each song, giving something of the intention for each track. Then, Taxonym compiled an extensive moodboard for the whole set, song by song.

This introduced me to a lot of imagery I didn’t know, but also brought up some familiar references that I love - abandoned Soviet architecture, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Solaris, Gaspar Noe’s Enter The Void, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, Zabriskie Point, Olafur Eliasson’s Tate Modern ‘setting sun’ installation - the list goes on. It was fantastic to see all this imagery collected together, and got me very excited - I then made selects to narrow down the focus for each song, and we moved onto Taxonym and Amala producing rough ‘animatics’ for each track - basically, draft versions of the visuals compiled from existing footage, intended to bring a moodboard into a timeline. In addition to this, we were talking about how the stage architecture could work. Basically, turning the focus onto projections as a descriptive, cinematic tool. They would not be covering us, but rather showing behind us, a widescreen, in a Cinemascope 21:9 aspect ratio.

In addition to this, Jo suggested having LED lights behind a semi-transparent reflective fabric; invisible whilst turned off, yet diffusely shining through the screen when activated. This would also give a new feeling of depth, opening out the stage behind. My role in all this was to discuss and approve the concepts - the actual work has been carried out by Taxonym and Amala. For the lighting, we received the help of programmer Will Gallia, who sorted out the hardware required to power the LED strips and wrote a piece of custom software to receive MIDI information from my stage computer running Ableton. I have been amazed at seeing this all come together, and I actually write this from Assembly Point, on the afternoon of our first show with Taxonym + Amala’s visuals. The video content ranges from footage of chemicals forming taken through a high-powered microscope at UCL, to windswept landscapes, hieroglyphic graphics and a chrome airship. This is just the first test of this production, but i’m excited about where it’s going to go, and amazed at the hard work of Jo, Matteo, Alina and Will for getting it to this point. Hopefully the show goes well tonight!