My friend and fellow electronic musician Tupper Werewolf asked if I would perform some live visuals for him at the Hidden Door Festival, and of course I said: “Aye, sure why not?”. Though I demanded a space on the actual stage like a diva. Nobody was going to put Stevie in the corner.
The Hidden Door Festival goes between a bunch of different and unique locations, with a mix of art and music. This year’s was to take place at Granton Gasworks, under the imposing steel structures that will be familiar to anybody growing up near major cities in the UK. Do they even still use those? I have no idea. They look cool though.
Anyway, off to the festival we went, carting along a big case full of video equipment. It was a bit nerve tingling, as it was the first gig I’d played in almost two years… and the very first where I had done this kind of live video art – at least – the first where I was actively controlling the visuals for somebody else’s music. That’s always a bit of pressure, as you don’t want to mess up somebody else’s show. It didn’t help that the stage was huge. An actual, proper festival stage – complete with a big friendly crew of folks who were there to help get you set up and sound checked. Though they did give me a bit of (friendly) abuse for using what they must have seen as video mixing equipment from the dawn of time. To be honest, I got a sick pleasure out of transmitting my goopy, colourful analogue composite video up onto this massive, high definition split screen. It was pretty amazing to get the chance to do something that I’d just been messing about with in the house on a stage like that, so cheers to Mr. Werewolf for having me along. Hopefully there’ll be more occasions in the future, but from now on that has set the bar for the minimum kind of production value I’ll accept.
and to round things off, here are some pictures from Mrs. and Mr. Tupper Werewolf.
I’ve uploaded a few videos below, if you want to see us in action. The first is a backstage vlog thing, and the following two are full tracks recorded using my GoPro from the stage.
i enjoyed your pictures. This festival sounds like so much fun.