Here’s a little film of Mr Underwood at the end of a very busy Theremin Day at The Edge last Saturday, looking tired but happy. He’d teamed up with the fizzPOP crew to help people build their own optical theremins during the day, a selection of which are here:
The star of the day was most definitely Julia Gilbert’s big apple:
I didn’t make the theremin-making workshop but there’s a great write-up by genzai·chi (Nikki Pugh), who also talks about the concert later that evening, which I did go along to. As Nikki says, it started off with ‘a selection of short films exploring the historical, technical and fun sides of the theremin’ including this brilliant one of Super Mario Bros. theme tune.
Then we got a set from from 8bit Pete and his Thingamagoops, of which Antonio Roberts took some nice photos:
8bit Pete by hellocatfood
I particularly liked the fact that it was as much a light show as a music set of bleepy-bloppiness. Pete managed to capture on film the performance that followed his – what Nikki describes as ‘Mr Underwood’s performance of Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music for optical theremin’ actually seemed to be a giant Newton’s Cradle office toy made out of torches, that emitted an increasingly intense hum which reverberated inside your ears. It was pretty amazing.
Last but by no means least was Ms Hypnotique playing her live theremin set, giving us nice informative introductions to the instrument, its history and the pieces she performed. It was great when she told us how Simon Cowell described her theremin playing as, “Who would buy this shit?…He kind of missed the point of what makes the theremin special.” I’ll bet he did.
Entry is free, but we really need you to bring some random stuff to help make the contraption truly great….Whatever evolves out of this crazy idea, the end results will be highly influenced by your contributions. Bring random stuff and a willingness to tinker with things until they work. All are welcome. We might also try and sell you cake.
Window of a hardware shop on Digbeth High Street on Flickr – Picture by Julia Gilbert, aka Catnip. Suspect this is the window of Gregory Pank hardware store, next to the big yellow vintage clothes shop. Is it me or does that head’s colouring look a little off? Who has deep red hair and grey skin?
4Talent Gigbeth stage round-up | 4Talent magazine – Ian Ravenscroft rounds up the 4Talent acts on Saturday night’s Gigbeth and gives much deserved acclaim to organiser Catherine Bray: ‘artistic innovation won a minor victory that night in the tiny Dragon Bar.’ He’s also posted some great photos from the Hot Monocles gig on Friday on his Flickr account.
Pete Ashton’s Gigbeth set on Flickr – Pete Ashton’s photos, mainly from the 4Talent gig so including Iain Woods, Rich Batsford and Einstellung.
Dave Piper – the photographer’s pics from the Gigbeth conference and gigs.
Rhubarb Radio’s Gigbeth & Drop Beats Marathon – their extensive coverage of the Gigbeth weekend. The Station Manager lost the keys, perhaps he was a bit tired? Tough – sleep is for wimps!
Catnip’s Gigbeth band review – Julia Gilbert reviews the bands she saw at Gigbeth over the weekend, which included Iain Woods, Kano, Young Knives, Rich Batsford, The Keyboard Choir and the Sugarhill Gang.
Catnip on Gigbeth: urban music festival or urban myth? – ‘You won’t get chance to see a load of up and coming artists that you’re excited about having heard them a lot on music radio recently, over one weekend in the same city. You’ll see a hotchpotch of whatever acts the promoters, that are lumped together under the umbrella of “Gigbeth”, (probably) already had booked for that night anyway, a few local bands and a couple of token acts provided by Gigbeth themselves….It could be so great, it’s got a great name, a great home (Birmingham) with some great venues, but it’s got no cohesion and a severe lack of decent acts.’
Screen Media Lab – Have a building round here. Or something. Read Dave Harte’s comment, which has the right links and info after I posted an out of date link. Whoopsie.
‘Digbeth police station evacuated,’ reads the Birmingham Mail, ‘after suspicious package was discovered inside…A cordon was placed around the station and a number of roads were closed off.’
However to Twitter addicts such as myself this news was, like, so last hour. We’d been discussing the road blocks, traffic jams, suspicious package and bomb squad for hours. So much so that, after viewing the search results, Pete Ashton went and wondered aloud if Digbeth could become top-rating, trending Twitter topic for the day.
It was like a red rag to a bull. If you tweeted, you simply had to mention Digbeth. Even if, like Antonio Gould, it was to say you weren’t sure what to say about Digbeth.
Pete Ashton’s blogged about the internetty aspects of today’s little exercise, so let’s get on with the important stuff:
But if you’re sticking to strict anagramming like Shona McQuillan you get THE BIG D, which is still pretty cool.
There are Killer Badgers in Digbeth according to Emma Jones. In the Police Station, apparently. Part of the Anti-Terrorism Act, I think. They’re better at extracting intelligence than bog-standard dogs. I shall be risking life and limb David Attenborough-style to get pictures of them for the Faunography trail.
Me and that bloke down the pub aren’t the only ones who think Digbeth is derived from DUCK BATH. Andy Mabbett says so too, so it must be true.
As you can see, our efforts weren’t in vain and it all left me rather distracted and excited this afternoon. Oh yeah, there was some stuff on Winterval as well, which made Simon Gray wonder if that could be a trending topic too. Go on, Tweethearts: you know what to do.
