Posts tagged “djyoda”

Glastonbury and Bestival!

Shlomo’s collaborative concert series ‘Music Through Unconventional Means’ will depart from Southbank over the Summer to hit some of the UK’s festivals! Starting with a massive 2 hour collaborative show headlining the Glastonbury Park Stage, followed by a reprise of Shlomo and DJ Yoda’s collaboration on the mainstage at Bestival. Details below.

Music Through Unconventional Means @ Glastonbury

6-8PM, GLASTONBURY PARK STAGE, SAT 28 JUNE 2008

We are proud to announce that a special collaborative show will take place at this year’s Glastonbury festival, led by acclaimed British beatbox artist SHLOMO with his beatbox choir THE VOCAL ORCHESTRA. The two hour show will feature a secret list of guest acts from across the musical spectrum, with several of the festival’s key artists playing exclusive acoustic performances before collaborating and jamming with Shlomo and each other.

The emphasis of this extraordinary evening is on spontaneous collaboration and improvisation, often pushing the guest artists away from their usual performance zone to create something entirely original and unique.

The title ‘Music Through Unconventional Means’ is taken from Shlomo’s monthly concert series at the London Southbank Centre, where he is currently Artist in Residence. The series has been running since November 2007, and so far Shlomo has collaborated with Martha Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, DJ Yoda, Mad Professor and Polar Bear.

The Glastonbury show came about after discussions between Shlomo and Park Stage curator Emily Eavis. “This is one of the most anticipated shows at this year’s festival…” says Emily, “Expect special guests, unusual collaborations and amazing beatboxing for two hours…This year’s big surprise gig.”

Shlomo vs DJ Yoda @ Bestival

6.30PM, Bestival Main Stage, Sat 6 September 2008

The amazing collaboration between Shlomo and AV artist DJ Yoda will be revisited in front of 30,000 people on the Bestival mainstage in September. The show was originally created for a special show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of Shlomo’s residency at Southbank Centre. It features a crazy mashup of beatboxing, scratching and video trickery, and is one hell of a party starter!

This was the third concert in the series and by now the momentum of the idea has really picked up some pace. Tickets for the show sold out almost straight after the concert with Martha and Teddy before we had really done any promotion, which is awesome as it means that people heard about it through word-of-mouth and buzz!

This was another show put together against the clock - I only first met with DJ Yoda to chat through ideas about 2 weeks beforehand, and tickets were already sold out. Yoda was a bit worried at first because he was then away on tour until a few days before the concert, but after a bit of jamming we were coming up with shedloads of ideas.

The concept of DJ Yoda’s performance is all about scratching video using special DVD turntables. It’s amazing to watch and the extra visual element to scratching really adds to the experience and the understanding of how skilled a scratch DJ really is.

It also meant that we had to do some fairly meticulous preparation as everything has to be burned on to custom DVDs beforehand. We spent a day shooting some clips around the Southbank, and then spent 3 days locked in the lab polishing up the show.

We came up with a technique which means we can do a ‘live remix’ of almost any tune. Yoda has a hundreds of acappella versions of well known tunes… once he had synched that up with the original video (courtesy of YouTube!) he could then scratch up the original vocals over my remix beatbox version.

Hence the ‘collaboration’ with Michael Jackson, aged 7, on a crazy live remix version of ‘Want You Back’, featuring myself looping up the instrument tracks, singing the backing vocals, and all five of the Jacksons dancing on a giant screen behind me!

At this point the already wild Friday night crowd at the QEH nearly lost control! They were all up off their seats, dancing in the aisles and down at the front! The party continued with Yoda and friends DJing out in the Foyer until the early hours, and I was chuffed to meet a some audience members who had travelled all the way from places like Newcastle, Nottingham and Bristol to see the show, several who had been at all three of the concerts so far, and loads who already had tickets for all the upcoming ones.