Moving Music

the new seed

Share your ideas. That is what I told someone in a meeting today.

This came after they mentioned in passing that they have been working on some sort of website with their friends. The person wanted to keep the website a secret until it was definitely online and happening. I stressed the importance of telling people about your ideas, engage people with them, ask for support or at the very least, to be aware of your creative plans. 

I guess after stating this, I figured I should announce my newest idea, well, the seed of an idea anyhow. 

In January 2013, I plan to run a festival. Running a festival is not a new idea, we all are well aware of this. However, it almost feels wrong to label this event as such. Most festivals I have been to, I have been aware of where it would take place. Most festivals I have been to, you are supplied with all the pieces of puzzle. You know when every act is going to be playing, where they will be playing and you also know that the security guard is going to stop you if you try enter the backstage compound. 

However, one thing that has gotten me thinking about events these days and after many discussions with colleagues and general lovers of the arts alike, is that people are thirsty for an experience. Correct me if I am wrong, however, I feel like people are getting sick of the big acts playing festivals and long lines for cheap hot dogs and alcohol that just speeds up the process of that slow wait in the long toilet cue. Various festivals that tour across Australia are looking to make a decent buck and they think that all their audiences want is a quick day of radio friendly bands and some sunburn to match. Although, the experience of something curious and weird has been selling tickets to some events faster than you could say ‘Kanye west is cancelling his show in Adelaide’.

You only had to walk along the 3000+ people in a cue to Barrio, to understand the appreciation of the unknown. The bizarre. The participative experience. Although this was a free club, I understand that curiosity will have someone reaching deeper into their pocket to find those few extra dollars. I’ve even witnessed people pay a small fee to attend a mystery tour across the city of Adelaide earlier this year when I ran Moving Music | Tour 1. 

After various discussions with the team of incredible self-starters who are part of Moving Music, we have all agreed that we wish to invest our time (and in some cases, money) into a full scale Moving Music festival next January 2013. So what can people expect from this? 

Well, you can expect a cross artform day long festival, visual artists collaborating with bands, a festival where you become the artist in some scenarios. A festival that caters for those who are thirsty for another experience in their life. Don’t expect a map, we will lead you. 

So, there it is, the seed of an idea, it is small, though with time, it will grow. Now I would like to know, who has some water?

Early Morning Reflections

It is 8.25am and I should probably be fast asleep after crawling into bed at 3.30am last night, post-Moving Music celebrations. However, the excitement of this new project is still lingering in my head and it seemed like it was time to write down some retrospective thoughts for those who are interested.

We started planning this tour around mid November I think. Running events is normally not my thing. I spend a majority of my time marketing and publicising events and not worrying about the logistics of what happens on the actual day. Needless to say, I spent a good portion of the last few weeks worrying. 

Logistically, this whole tour seemed a bit out there. We wanted to lead 200 people from the centre of the city out to Rymill Park and then back again, exposing them to 3 completely different styles of music in 3 different locations. The answer to doing so? We spent a lot of time thinking.

We thought about the bands and what would make their space feel appropriate. 

Tom West is a folk singer/songwriter. We all put our heads together and thought about what folk meant to us and it always came back to one thing. Words. Written words. So from this idea, we wanted to set a scene of a man who was scribing his lyrics before us, though he had found it hard to get anything decent down to paper (I feel a similar way as I type, to be honest). From this man’s writer block, we were witnessing his frustration as he threw paper after paper into the bin, until eventually these scrunched up balls of paper overflowed onto the whole floor of the car park. The tour took full advantage of basking in his frustration, as can be seen by the comfy seated area.

Steering By Stars are an incredibly deep and mysterious band to me. I spoke with Lachy (singer/keyboard/guitar) about what we could expect from their set with Choral Grief and he replied with something like “honesty”. The theme was born straight away. We found a long archway covered with vines in Rymill Park and turned it into an installation that we called Dirty Laundry. 

The idea behind this installation was that we asked every single person on the tour for a secret at the very start of his or her adventure. People scribed with concentration and purpose. You could tell that some people were giving up something very close to them. It was not as simple as handing over $10 to attend. The interesting thing at the time was that not one single person on the tour understood that all their secrets would be revealed on a washing line within the archway for all eyes to see an hour later. They would essentially come clean on their dirty laundry.

Some secrets were funny. Some were sad. Some were thought provoking. 

My three favourites were…

“I’m Batman” 

and

“I had a threesome with a stripper and my best friend” 

and

“I found a wallet with $70 in it and rather than report it, I spent the money on a bracelet for my girlfriend. I buried the wallet” 

Shaolin Afronauts were the closing band for the tour and there could not have been a better finale. This group of musicians play music from another time, another space, another dimension. I don’t know what it is about this band, but they always make me think of old games we used to play on computers. Like Space Invadas or Tetris. I believe the original concept was to build a giant pyramid for the guys to perform on and I only just realise how Daft Punk this would have been. However, given the limited space we were working with in the alley off Ebenezer, we decided to keep this space relatively simple. So we built a giant tetris wall out of 80+ milk crates that people had to walk through. It really helped to keep people packed in and create a vibe similar to a house party.

So. What next? The team are asking the same thing. We want to know what you thought? What would have made it better? How can we improve? 

If you have thoughts, please post them on our facebook.

Or if you want to get in contact privately, email thewrightsam@gmail.com and we will get back to you.

Most importantly though, if you were feeling great about what was going down at Moving Music | Tour 1, then tell your friends, encourage them to come to the next one when we announce it. We can continue to build upon what we have started here and most importantly, we can continue to have a great time in this wonderful city of ours.

A Beginning

Moving Music began as all projects normally do for me. With an idea that came from other ideas. 

Prior to creating this project, I founded an online web series titled 6 on the St which basically stemmed from an idea of filming musicians in a space less familiar to the musical eye. The true pioneers of these kinds of films can be discovered here. Over the span of a year and a halfish, we completed this web series based on 12 Adelaide music acts and melded these performances together to create a documentary which premiered late in the month of October.

Around a similar time that I was producing this project, I was exposed to an incredible street theatre experience through my job at Adelaide Festival Centre. This experience is known as En Route and was created by an innovative group called one step at a time like this. 

After finishing the documentary and experiencing En Route, I found myself in a space where I wanted to share the filmed sessions we had created with Adelaide’s musicians in real time, not just online. 

With my unique experience of art in a public setting that one step at a time like this gave me and my previous love for music in such a space through filming, Moving Music has been created and starts moving January 14.

Without further ado, find a brief idea seed/mission statement/promise of what you may expect if you choose to become a participant in Moving Music.

Moving Music is an innovative Adelaide based project, which serves the purpose of activating various spaces in the city by injecting them with temporary architecture, interactive/public art, and live music. An audience of this project will be led through paths less travelled in the CBD to discover secret gig installations within alleyways, car parks, rooftops or anywhere else you normally would not appreciate such art forms.

We are excited to announce our first line up for Moving Music which includes the following 3 acts. I will be explaining each of these acts in more depth in coming weeks but for now, be entertained by their names and this video of our final artist for the night.

Line up for Moving Music - January 14

Tom West

Steering By Stars w/ Choral Grief

Shaolin Afronauts

Register for Moving Music by asking us here

Limited spots are available

Shaolin Afronauts - WOMalley-way Sessions from Kieran Ellis-Jones on Vimeo.