Music

Words: Ian Ravenscroft
Photography: Jade Sukiya

With a bold colour palette, striking graphics and a dash of playfulness, this duo, both 26, aim to change the face of hip-hop promos. And they’re not stopping there.

James Knott and James Curran didn’t just have a name in common when they met in the unlikely setting of an entrepreneurship course in Nottingham four years ago. They discovered a shared passion for music video, and have since produced promos for the likes of DJ Yoda, Toronto’s Wio-K and even trend-setting super-producer Mark Ronson.

Heavily influenced by graphic design, the duo use bold colours, playful movement and a blend of live action and animation to bring a new angle to the crowded promo scene. Main animator Curran, whose video for Californian hip-hop group Ugly Duckling scooped an RTS Student Award, points out that these style choices are no accident.

“Particularly in UK hip-hop, a lot of music videos tend to look pretty similar, so we try and make ours stand out from the rest,” he reasons. “We try to push the boundaries and produce a recognisable visual style,” adds director Knott, whose affiliation with hip-hop producer Baby J has been another reason for the duo’s relatively rapid emergence from the promo-producing pack.

“I was asked to produce a video for Baby J, and the video ended up getting played on MTV,” Knott explains. “Myself and Baby J then set up a small company called Baby-Knotted Films, bringing James C in on the post-production side of things.”

“Having Baby J helping to push the music videos from the very beginning was a great advantage,” Knott concedes. “As you begin to get noticed and your name starts to grow as a director, the phone starts ringing. We are lucky that everything fell into place at the right time.”

One of these calls was from Brit Award and three-time Grammy Award-winning producer, Mark Ronson. “He was a fan of Baby J’s production and wanted him to produce a remix for the Valerie single featuring Amy Winehouse,” says Knott. “It was through this we got the opportunity to make the video.”

However, actually producing their breakthrough promo wasn’t quite so simple: “We started work on the concept before the remix was even finished,” explains Curran. “Then from the shoot we only had a week to complete it.” Knott is clearly still exhilarated: “Seeing the video I’d edited in my bedroom on MTV was a magic moment.”

www.slimjimstudios.com
www.myspace.com/knottedfilms

Words: Frankie Ward
Photography: Katja Ogrin

His dauntingly dark Stanislavky EP is a huge U-Turn for former kids’ television presenter Iain Woods.

Recorded as a final project at art school, Iain Woods’ debut record is a sample-infused, soulfully performed and wonderfully produced piece of work, and yet Iain himself is effortlessly charming, despite having endured a couple of train journeys and a photo-shoot before making his way to be interviewed.

Four months after graduating, Iain discovered that he was nominated for the 4Talent Music Award whilst on work experience at London-based label Transgressive Records.

“I was saying to a guy that I’d been play-listed at BBC 6 Music, but didn’t find out until two months later. I asked him, ‘Could you give me some advice on how to stay on top of things?’ And as I said it I scrolled down the 4Talent website, saw ‘Iain Woods’ in the shortlist and thought, this is exactly what I mean!”

According to his MySpace page, Iain’s music blends grime and gospel – not exactly the genres that leap to mind when browsing his material. “I don’t really take the genre thing that seriously,” he shrugs. “It’s more to do with a sombre setting, than really syncopated Dizzee Rascal style grime beats.”

He once wrote that his work comprises pop songs about amphetamines and anal sex. So which tracks are about what? “It’s all a big web to be worked out by the listener, and not to be explained by me,” is his enigmatic reply.

“It would be really difficult and undermining to say that this song is about this, and this song is about that,” he goes on. “Some are written in ten minutes, others over a couple of months. They’re more about just general moods and feelings,” he reflects. So will enlightenment come with repeated listens?

“A lot of the people I listen to have really random lyrics, like PJ Harvey and Beth Gibbons,” he responds. They’ll often pointedly say something that’s completely nonsensical, and I really like that.”

This feels like a good time to raise the topic of his track 1994. On his blog, Iain writes in fragmented note form about the various happenings in that particular year – such as the death of Kurt Cobain, and Nelson Mandela becoming President of South Africa. “I’ve just got this thing about years, I’ve always found them really interesting,” he explains – this particular year having the significance of being the year his uncle was murdered.

“I’m quite a storyteller, but I don’t think you’d be able to tell what it’s about just by listening,” he reflects. “It’s about something generally dark: that was my first memory of something really, really serious.”

During the interview Iain says he’s not working on new material, but calls me later to apologise. “I don’t know why I said that; I’ve nearly finished a new EP,” he tells me. “I think I got carried away. You were my first interviewer.”

www.myspace.com/iainwoods

Words: Michael Leader
Photography: Hamish Jordan

With a mod mother and a beatnik father, Ben, 30 has a knowledge of music and passion for the culture that surrounds it that shines through on screen.

When I meet Ben in a Central London pub, he greets me with a bear hug, and indicates his ‘hair of the dog’ bottle of beer with a wink. I admit that I couldn’t find much about him online, apart from his showreel on YouTube, so where did he come from?

He takes a sip and replies: “I was the front man in a band until about a year ago, called Dirty Cuffs. But I got really bad tinnitus in the long run. I’ve been doing stand-up for the last eight months, but my first love has always been music and culture: talking about it, and communicating it.”

“I studied performing arts,” he continues. “But I could never see myself leaping into a pair of tights and going, ‘Alas, poor Yorick.’ I wanted to either be myself, or to play larger-than-life characters. For me, presenting and jerking around being comical was always natural.”

It shows. His video, a mash-up of an interview, a gig report and a stand-up routine, is anchored by his personable nature and an evident passion for and knowledge of music. “I come from this very liberal, hippy, background,” he explains. “Well, my Mum was a mod and my Dad was a beatnik. Because of that, they had a hell of a lot of music, and I was flicking through old copies of Melody Maker and NME when I was knee-high.”

Ben’s obviously an educated fellow: he peppers his speech with references, and within our short chat manages to quote Confucius, going on to relate an anecdote about David Bowie’s PR stunts in the 1970s. Does he feel the need to tone himself down for presenting gigs?

“I don’t want to come across like a snob,” he admits. “I dig a lot of commercial stuff that’s out there. Everyone has tastes, but when you go to work, you go to work. If you’ve got a love of music, you’ve got to embrace it and know it all. You could be an art dealer and particularly like Jackson Pollock and Picasso, but you’ve got to know all your masters as well, even though they may not be to your taste.”

Personality will only get you so far: Ben describes his jokes as “good… for a working men’s club in Bolton,” and is quick to insist that knowledge of your field is just as crucial. “If you don’t know that particular genre or interviewee, you come well-equipped, so you’re not just a pretty face. You take the facts, then imprint your personality on it.”

benjohnchancellor@hotmail.com

Words: Anna Lord
Photography: Sanna Charles

Turning his back on a life of rock-and-roll, Richard Mead, 29, embraced electronica, set up his own studio and composed the soundtrack for the car in front.

Music can do so much to fuel our emotional connection with the moving image. Sometimes it’s barely perceptible, quietly doing its thing in the background, but occasionally production music becomes iconic. Take the menacing notes that signal the shark’s approach in Jaws, or the high-pitched strings accompanying Janet Leigh’s grisly demise in the shower at Bates Motel. Music can make or break the atmosphere of a scene, and yet the talent behind the composition is all-too-often unsung.

One such production music hero is 29-year-old Richard Mead. Starting out playing in a band, he soon developed an interest in electronica and music production, setting up a small studio in his house, recording and occasionally playing live. After composing a piece for a short animation, commissions started rolling in and Richard promptly quit his day job.

Beyond the staples of film and TV, advertising and increasingly new media have a growing need for composing talent. Working under the moniker Cranium Sound, he has crafted the music for numerous short films, and recently, along with his writing partner, had an album published by EMI’s production music library KPM Music House.

His versatile creations blend styles from industrial electronic beats to serene piano compositions. “It’s really important to get the tempo and pace of the track right in the first place,” he explains. “After that, it’s a matter of picking up instruments, plugging in synths and playing around with melodies – trying to create something that is memorable, but that won’t detract from spoken words on screen.”

Working into the night to meet a deadline can numb your sense of perspective, and Richard advises anybody hoping to break into the field to find a trusted mentor: “After hours of listening to the same track, your ears get tired,” he points out. “It’s really important to get another perspective, especially from someone who knows their stuff.”

He draws inspiration from a broad range of material, but name-checks Michael Andrews and Thomas Newman. “I love a lot of things on the Warp label, like Chris Clark and Jackson and his Computer Band,” he adds. “Philip Glass and Max Richter are great, and so’s Mr Oizo – he wrote Flat Beat for that Levi’s ad, but also does some amazing progressive electronic music.”

Currently working on music for a computer game ad and adding the finishing touches to a joint album of production music album with another composer, his career ambition are simple: “It’d be great to be at the stage where I have an established reputation as a ‘go-to’ guy,” he reflects. “It’d also be nice to find time to write an album just for me.”

www.craniumsound.com

Contributor Ian Ravenscroft blogs from the 4Talent stage at Gigbeth festival on the 8th November and would like to note he was not paid to say all the nice things he says here.

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Exchanging indie haircut bands for an eclectic line-up of unknowns is a brave move for an up-and-coming festival. I went to find out if the gamble paid off on the 4Talent stage at Birmingham’s Gigbeth festival.

Thingamagoop has a new friend.

Photo c. Pete Ashton

Following a hectic Friday night with Hot Monocles after they raucously opened Gigbeth’s unsigned bands stage, I made my way once again to the Dragon Bar at the Barfly to check out the eclectically-assembled 4Talent stage. Exciting, innovative acts were the name of the game and in the event the billing did not disappoint.

As I entered the room I was greeted by Pete Ashton’s bleeping, blooping, buzzing boxes, also known as the Film Dash-winning Thingamagoop and new addition, Thingamakit, tentatively named King Tubby. Confused? Let me explain…

Pete’s hi-tech toys are light-sensitive synthesizers, which he manipulates using the bots’ built-in light stalks, an ingenious LED glove and any source of light within reach. The result being a cacophony of piercingly ambient electronic bleeps and bloops, which visitors to the stage found equally intriguing and inexplicable, especially once given an opportunity to have a go themselves.

After all that frantic commotion, the unassuming Rich Batsford settled into his seat to sooth our bleeping brains with his emotive classical piano compositions. Playing to a crowd of incredibly-attentive leather-clad metal fans added a hint of the surreal to his set of hypnotic melodies and powerful, booming chords, but this could not distract from the calibre of his musicianship. A brave choice for a festival crowd maybe, but a worthy stage for such artistic talent.

The act that really marked out the eclectic nature of the evening however, was 4Talent award winner, Iain Woods & The Psychologist. Melding grimy hip-hop beats with soaring gospel and soul vocals and strings, Iain strutted provocatively into his first gig with the group - which included a DJ, two violinists and live painted visuals - with ease, trying in vain to disguise his sheer excitement. His stage persona may split opinions in the wider world, but his raw enthusiasm and originality will surely gain many admirers.

Dancing of the night goes to The Keyboard Choir, whose enthusiastic lead key-basher pioneered some ingenious leg-bending moves, twisting and turning to keep his Casio firmly planted through the group’s synthesised hip-hop tinged epics. At times I felt like I was peering in on a team of prog-scientists trying to crack some musical cypher as their conductor fought to maintain control of the chaotic, frenzied fingers of his team.

Finally, Einstellung took to the stage purposefully, arming themselves with weapons of guitars, bass, amps and drums. And what an assault we were in for. Starting off with an upbeat two-chord progression, the Krautrock five-piece built and built the volume and distortion to a wall of crashing noise and pounding rhythm, layering screaming slide guitar and crunching riffs to create a scorching, tumultuous soundscape. One track, two chords, and half an hour later, I felt like asking the band politely for my eardrums back, but I fear it may have been too late.

As 4Talent stage curator Catherine Bray admitted, it would have been very easy to populate this stage with safe, carbon-copy indie bands, which would have been an easier sell. But in the end, artistic innovation won a minor victory that night in the tiny Dragon Bar.

Imagine a rubber festival wristband. Now imagine a 1GB USB memory stick loaded with video, podcast and MP3 materials. Cross the two and you’re looking at the 4Talent Gigbeth stage limited edition multimedia USB album, a small slug of memory built into a wristband you can plug into your computer.

We’ve pre-loaded it with videos, MP3s and a podcast from the 4Talent acts gracing Gigbeth festival 2008 on Saturday 8th November. We’re not a fan of locked content, so everything on the memory stick can be ripped to your computer and the memory stick reused as many times as you like. This is what the album contains:

Video: Bugs, The Keyboard Choir
The video to Bugs by The Keyboard Choir was made by the acclaimed new production outfit Bang, who use time elapse black and white film to create a distanced dystopian vision perfectly accompanying the laid-back electronic glitch-pop of this track.

Video: Konstant live, Einstellung
Relive the live experience with this thumping video of Brummie favourites Einstellung tearing it up onstage.

Podcast: Einstellung, Rob Horrocks
Einstellung manager Rob Horrocks put together what he calls a Krautcast about the inside story of managing Krautrockers Einstellung, with contributions from band members explaining the practicalities of life in a band.

MP3: Futuristic BBoy, WiZe
WiZe is someone who should have been playing the 4Talent stage at Gigbeth. The winner of last year’s 4Talent Music Awards, outstandingly talented MC WiZe tragically passed away this year. We include his music as a tribute to his memory and thank his family for allowing its inclusion.

MP3: Namaste, Rich Batsford
Gorgeous virtuous pianical tinklings from Birmingham’s own Brian Wilson. You can download Rich Batsford’s entire album Valentine Court for free from his website, and we recommend that you do.

MP3: In This Situation Thinking Won’t Help, The Keyboard Choir
A sample-happy track from the finest all-keyboard act we’ve ever heard of, this unwieldily-titled tune makes and wins the case for fusing prog and hip-hop.

MP3: Stream, The Icarus
Shortlisted for the 4Talent Music Award 2008, Edinburgh’s The Icarus have gleaned comparisons to Massive Attack, Overseer and Rage Against The Machine from The Skinny, who called their album “curiously different and immensely gratifying, [...] fusing hip-hop, ambient leftfield, rock and even hints of funk and jazz.”

MP3: Wireless World, Camille Davila
Shortlisted for the 4Talent Music Award 2008, Camille Davila was born in Los Angeles, and spent most of her life on the West Coast before relocating to Liverpool where’s she’s been producing such gems as Wireless World.

MP3: Iain Woods & The Psychologists
He named his act after his own panic attacks, but on the evidence of his music, Iain has no need to panic. Winning the 4Talent 2008 Award for Music is just a tiny part of the recognition that his unique gospel grime soul sound merits.

WHERE TO GET IT
4Talent are giving 100 of the limited edition album away free to the first 100 people through the door of the Dragon Bar on the 8th November.

For more on the 4Talent Gigbeth stage line-up, go to:
www.channel4.com/4talentcentral
www.twitter.com/4talent

In a 4Talent special live event, we’ve put together the line-up for a stage at Gigbeth festival 2008, from 18:00 til midnight on 8th November 2008 at the Dragon Bar in the Barfly, Digbeth High Street, Birmingham. You can read all about this eclectic line-up of the best bands you’ve never heard of over here on the 4Talent Central site, including the winner of the 4Talent Awards 2008, music category, but we thought we’d blog here to let you know about not one, but two, competitions to win tickets.

• The first comp is sitting pretty with those doyens of the best niche music, Artrocker
• And the second comp is over on The Line Of Best Fit, you one-stop shop for all that’s good and pure in new music
• Plus BandWeblogs.com has a few more details on the acts…

Early ticketage is advised: you can get hold of £18 day tickets for the Saturday and £25 weekend tickets, plus check the full line-up of Gigbeth acts including the Sugarhill Gang and the Young Knives, over here on the Gigbeth site.

Keyboard Choir: from Brian Eno's 60th birthday party to the 4Talent Gigbeth stage in one easy move.

To hear Frankie’s pre-Bestival podcast with Rob Da Bank, click here.

Another week, another festival microblog. The weekend just gone saw 4Talent head to Birmingham’s Custard Factory to bring you Twitter updates from the small but noisily formed Supersonic, featuring a dream line-up of sludgey, grungey, kraut-rocking noise for those who like their music uncompromisingly large of sound and eclectic of source. For those who couldn’t make it, we’ll be rolling out our interviews with teen screamers Rolo Tomassi, local lads Einstellung and the ever popular Fuck Buttons on 4Talent Central over the coming week.

But forget Supersonic for a moment and cast your mind back all of three weeks to grande dame of festivals Glastonbury, where amidst the excitement of secret gigs from Franz Ferdinand, being roped in at the last minute to interview James Blunt for Oxfam, and doing our bit for the planet by taking tea to Oxfam volunteers in a battered jeep, we just about found the time to run a live Twitter competition from the festival site.

We’re now pleased to be able to announce the winner of said competition, who with the best answer to our Oxfam-sponsored question “What gets your knickers in a twist?” will be joining us at sold-out Bestival in September to interview an artist for a 4Talent podcast. The winner, 19 year old Frankie Ward, persuaded us with an answer we couldn’t agree with more. So what, exactly, gets Frankie’s knickers in a twist? That would be: “Interviewers asking bands who they’re doing, not what they’re doing.”

Currently on a work experience placement with BBC Kent, Frankie is an aspiring journalist whose festival experiences this summer have already included standing in for teen folk sensation Laura Marling (pictured below) on stage with the Mystery Jets at Lounge on the Farm. Watch this space for her 4Talent Bestival podcast in September…

Laura Marling at Glastonbury getting her knickers in a twist.

The 4Talent Awards 2008 are now open: across 20 categories, get your work judged by Channel 4 commissioners and the producers who supply them.

Categories are short doc, long doc, dramatic writing, dramatic performance, directing, comedy writing, comedy performance, presenting, on-air radio, off-air radio, music, music for production, music video, innovation, multi-platform, animation, journalism, photography, multi-talented and the mysterious wildcard award.

channel4.com/4talentawards