Slamboree

Friday, March the 18th saw a brand new event take it’s first tentative steps into the big wide world. Slamboree, the twisted carnival brainchild of Mike Freear of Alphadrive fame, Stirling Freeman (live circus / band) along with Marc Reck (Mr Elephant / DJ Narrative) saw a multitude of artists, circus performers, DJ’s, percussionist’s and Blend come together from all over the UK for a mind melting 45 minute set of fire, light, brass, bongo’s, choons and live music.   theLABvisuals had previously VJ’d to Alphadrive at Mr Elephants 2nd birthday bash at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath, whilst working alongside Blendstate visuals for the VJ workshops throughout the day.

SLAMBOREE is a brand new LIVE next-level dance music circus band mashing up underground bass-driven beats with live orchestra, guitars, drums, loops, visuals, pyrotechnics and circus!!!!! NOT to be missed (or tried at home). Stomping through breakbeat, dubstep, drum & bass, dub and electro, whilst throwing in balkan, gypsy vibes for good measure.

Featuring Freear (Alphadrive), Marc Reck (Dj Narrative), Stirling, missKittyflip (R:evolve), The Now Here Nowhere Circus, Blend AV & special guests including Robinson Boone (Deathretro) & members of Dexter Dextrous and the Fingersmiths
www.facebook.com/slamboree

Blend’s involvement with Slamboree began on the 20th of January after a gracious introduction from Marc Reck, and whilst we were juggling forthcoming events and live performance we were shoehorning in enough time to develop the visuals for the show.  Mike Freear & Marc Reck created a superb musical score from scratch for the show which also infused Marc’s love of a good story (more on DJ Narrative to come) along with poignant samples to tell the tale as the night progressed.  Visually, these samples became Blend’s individual cue points for each track’s visual theme, covering everything from Mr T’s fear of flying to crazed gipsy dancing!

Aside from a gruelling four and a half hour drive up North (courtesy of the M6) the setup into the house projector was painless.  The biggest concern was MacOS’s newest feature of overwriting a gig of data and destroying all my video loops!   Huge thanks have to got to Paul for finding his PC operating skills once again and bring up to me a DVD of all the missing data (lifesaver!).   Yes indeed, with an hour or so to go before showtime, it was chowtime.  And what can you say except WOW!  We were all treated to a good vegetable curry courtesy of the hosts for the evening (if only all promoters and venue owners were so gracious!).  Throughout this, Liam was busy converting the missing loops to a usable format as well as loading them onto my video hardware, so time was swapped and as I started to frantically go about organising the footage on the P-10′s, Liam took a well earned break and grabbed some grub.

‘It’s showtime!’

Now, I’d been listening to the set from the early days of inception, and felt reasonably confident that I’d be able to drop the Mr T and Barstow clips manually, in time with the samples that Marc would be triggering.  Overall, I reckon (in my humble opinion) they were pretty much on the nail and only took the minutest of tweaking to get right.  But then again, it’s different when you put yourself under that much pressure and I’m pleased to say that I wasn’t embarrassed by the outcome.  The visuals worked, the live musicians added a hereto unheard depth to the tracks, the circus performers were superb and I think the only thing that was missing from the whole spectacle were a few pyrotechnics (although I will not be offering my services on this front after an incident quiet a few years earlier!).  Outside of that, what a show!  Everything came together amazingly and I’m pretty certain that all involved can do nothing else except congratulate Mike & Marc on a great concept and an even better realisation!

Here is looking forwards to the next outing for Slamboree!

Tony (typed not dictated, 22nd March 2011).

The complete line up for the first Slamboree event are:

Visuals: Blend
Synth, loops, guitar: Freear
Scratches, synths and beats: Marc Reck
Vocals: Cova Stirling
Violin: missKittylip
Sax: Jamie Orde Metherell
Trombone: Joe Rogers
Trumpet: Philip Basil Unciano
Accordian: Claudio
Drums: Paul Drums

And the Now Here Nowhere Circus:
Ashley Ferrari
Alexandra Lexisexx Lee
Jake Williams
Delia Ceruti
Gail O’Brien

Hope we got everyone here, and of course a HUGE thanks to you should you have come along for the first outing :) \o/