Project X Presents was, and continues to be a huge inspiration to Mr Elephant. Some of us have been involved with Project X from the start, and Mr Elephant was born out of the experience of the first Project X Presents Event, the early Rockfall events, and a lot of what was going on in Birmingham at the time.

One of those things that was going on in brum was the noise abatement orders Our first home for the first Project X Event, and the first Mr Elephant festival style events – Epic Skate Park, ended up being shut down due to one obsessive complainer. Then followed the first home for the Mr Elephant Family Events – The Prince of Wales, which Keith & Diane were again really keen to use for arty and community events, but yet again they are facing more and more restrictive legislation, which pretty much stops them doing anything.

All of the above events were very safe, full of lovely people, incorporated both family events in the day and music events on the evening and generated a wealth of positive response from all ages, yet both events were not able to continue at the venues, because of the restrictions imposed upon them by the council. Its worth noting that our 6th event host – the fabulous the Rainbow Beach for Celebrate Birmingham’s Underground was also under scrutiny, and it seems that all these venue owners, (promoters and collectives) are all just trying to do great stuff for Birmingham, always at great financial risk, but seem to be constantly limited by the very council who is looking to put Birmingham on the map with the big city plan!?

Following some initial conversations with John Tigue and John Mostyn, the stirrer and created in birmingham was the first time we read about all this online, and it inspired 3 investigative reports from Ruth Robinson on Digbeth (who herself has a deep interest and experience in the development of areas). They raised an interesting question of whether the complaints were also linked in with the developers plans, and whether the intention to close venues down was not because of any real problems or issues, but to develop the vision of splitting Digbeth in quarters, as part of the Big City Plan, regardless of the impact on business and the city.

We’re not sure, but it leads really nicely onto this insightful Project X Presents video – Music Is Not Pollution, with interviews from John (Spotted Dog), Keith (Epic/Prince), Kent (Rainbow), and an abacus resident, all of which raise some very interesting points. One of which being why would the council want to stop such venues when there is such a huge support for them and only a handful of complaints, and when they are wanting to put Birmingham on the map in such a big way.

If you have anything to say, please feel free to comment. Now we’ve got the website going again, this video has inspired us to follow up some interviews we did in 2007. We’ll post links to any further debate from the Project X Presents collective, and anything else we can find, and feel free to add links yourself in comments

Not forgetting the comedy at the start of course. Rich had sorted a great comic, who came down before a gig at the Glee Club. He started on the floor as opposed to the stage, which was a great touch at the start, as made everything feel more balanced, but also meant when people came in, because of the layout of the Cross, that the room was split into too, which must have been pretty difficult to perform.

Following that was Rich Batsford and Leon Chromatouch, who performed a beautiful set. I captured a bit of it on me camera below.

plus these a few stills like this one, which are on the flickr set here

Following some more music from me (i was playing in between bands, which when its a diverse as project x, i really enjoy) we had a set from the Lazy Lizards, who got people up and dancing with their spanish influenced acoustic worldbeat music. I’d seen them play once before with Rich at Bohemian Jukebox, and liked their set / bought a cd, etc.

After some scratching and dancing music, the mighty Cracked Actors were up, and as usual, didn’t fail to deliver with a crowd pleasing set of ska which got the whole room boucing.

I caught a little bit on the video again, and i was real impressed by their swing moves after their set!

Then it was my couple of hours, which like i say, was a great experience for me dj wise. I must now apologise for this next paragraph, as its about me, from my point of view, but honestly, it meant a lot, so please avert your eyes if your adverse to self postivity online. For my set I got to play Scratching, Funk, Swing, House, Breaks, Drum & Bass, and then back into chillout, and the crowd response was amazing/inspiring…i absolutlly loved every minute, and remembered why i love djing so much.

The reason i’d missed most of the event in the day, was because i wanted to mix all the live music in the same way that we mix the electronic music, and it took a fair bit of planning to get there, but teh reaction meant it was all well worth it, and throughout the set, people came up with champagne, warm handshakes and proper lovely comments! A guy who was best mates with one of the headline djs of Ministry of Sound was well into it, and even said something along the lines of there was nothing that comes close to what i was doing, it was another level compared to what his mate and the biig names were doing, and that he’s been in the game for 15 years down in London! Inspiring stuff, which put me on cloud nine for the rest of the weekend.

Right far too much about me…If you dont say it no-one will know right…anyway, back to the night. After a little break outside, walking down the entrance hall of laughs, and hearing some faint noises of the now infamous buzz boxes, it was time for Rohit and his band, which comprised of tabla, sitar and bass. Sitar’s always a difficult one to mic up, but when that was sorted a truly beautiful sound filled the cross. Tabla is the one for me..probably my favourite of all the hand drum sounds, but together with the sitar and the bass, it was a really fitting end to another great project X presents.

There are so many people involved in just that one part of the xhibition…much more than on the actual stage, and the whole event over the day saw “xhibitions” by all manner of creative people. I wont list them now, but i do advise checking out our www.projectxpresents.com website, as it is soon to be updated, to feature a lot of the footage created for the xhibition.

Its been covered on the 4 Talent website, and the Birmingham Post, and you can read more on new PxP Website.

More soon, but for now, here’s your invitation -

Greetings Citizens of the Future!

You are cordially invited to the one and only performance of our unique Project X Presents event

Digital Dystopia

Saturday, September 13th, 8pm
Tickets – £10

BUSK, Gough Street, Birmingham, B1 1HN

Concerned that the UK has more than 20% of the world’s CCTV Cameras? Worried for the wellbeing of a nation addicted to television? Concerned your bank details have just been sold on ebay? Come explore some Orwellian themes with us and see if things will turn out alright in the end.

Join us on this entertaining journey of music and spoken word, spread across three stages with you in the middle of it all, loving every second. The continual mix of exciting and beguiling sounds will combine with theatre performers, set designers, dancers, poets, stand ups and a whole team of VJs – each adding their unique style to the mix.

Some of the acts appearing are:

SubSource

A frenetic concoction of Electro and BreakBeat executed with fearsome Punk Rock energy. SUBSOURCE are PUNKBREAKS. Subsource serve frenzied sermons of primeval beats and their live shows are controlled collisions of musical sub genres.

360

one of Birmingham biggest bands – a fantastic 8 piece fusion of ska, funk, reggae and all things good and all things Birmingham.

Reginald D Hunter

possibly the best and most challenging comic in the UK today – provocative, bold and piercingly perceptive. Triple Perrier Nominee.

Our smaller room offers a chilled selection of beats, bleeps, lounge and glitches and our Object X crew have produced a tantalising array of of weird and wonderful pieces to enjoy – interactive toys for the curious!

The venue, BUSK is a superb new venue in Birmingham City Centre (Gough St, near the Mailbox) plays host to this great new production – a carefully sequenced evening where many performers combine to present a seamless whole of sound, light and interaction

… an “omnimedia experience”.

You can buy your tickets right now online or by phone, or in person at Moseley’s Jibbering Records, or just rock up and get them on the door.

This event thrives on word of mouth, and no one gets paid – we do it all for the love – so please pass this email on to your friends – spread the joy!

You can find us on Facebook and Myspace if you’d like to be friends

Featured here are a few of the amazing acts taking part on Saturday 13th September from 8pm. For lots more information, do visit our shiny new website http://www.projectxpresents.com/

Doors open at 8pm
Saturday September 13th
please arrive early to experience the whole journey.

Big love

Project X Presents
Xx

email: info@projectxpresents.com

web: http://www.projectxpresents.com/

Photography by Matt Murtagh, Katja Ogrin & Emma Lord, and me

This beautiful flyer is the work of the supremely talented Matt Jinpow, who created the image and put the thing together, and i will be blogging more about the event and the venue when there’s time, because its pretty interesting.

For now all i’m going to say is that the theme is about digital distopia, and there was some extremely exciting happenings being discussed at the meeting last night.

Again more news soon, but from my side of things the 1st dj set will be chronological and feature an array of music, with Liam Blendstate flexing his visual light on the controls, and the second set, will feature two percussionists, 6 performers, and my own mask designed by Pyn, and hopefully a jedi cloak if i can get it knocked together with the support from our costume designer!

While it was nothing new as we’ve been talking about the ideas for a while now, it was nice to reconfirm the ideas, and always good to see people face to face, plus a few new faces who had the project x vibes flamin in full force. (i.e not having a particular skill but just really wanting to get involved in whatever is needed).

One interesting thing that i did learn at the meeting was just how much money we spent on food and drink last year…(£1250)

£250 of that was the rider which for 90 people is fair enough. But the rest of it, was on food and drink for the production week!  I offered the idea, that if we were spending £50 a day, then maybe we should take it turns to cook, (which hopefully we can do, as long as there arent any restrictions from the venue)

Just how much money in total we need also blew me away, and bought it home to me just how much of a financial risk it is, despite everyone working for free and a shitload of equipment being borrowed! £6500 is base level costs, which means if we dont get funding and half fill the venue, we are going to be couple of grand in debt!!?!

Itss weird to think, that if it were to be costed with people being paid fairly for their time, maybe in the same way that organisations like birmingham royal ballet, or bham opera are, (of which i only know total figures so dont quote me on that), but at a reasonable rate to each participant nonetheless, then we’d be looking at at least 120 – 150 times that figure!

Maybe one day!

First a skate park, …then a warehouse, …. a brief experimental X-Lab:VL to break in Concrete ….where next???

 But we can’t tell you where!!! Apparently licensing law states that no events can be promoted in a venue before the license has been granted and unfortunately in this instance, the license has yet to be granted. So we’ve got to keep our mouths shut, tight! Suffice to say work is currently being carried out in the venue, and we’re set to move in on the 7th September to prepare for the production which is on Saturday 13th September.

Well, aside from needing at least a week setup time for the production of the show, it needs to be somewhere that’s big enough for three stages in the main room, and can accommodate an audience of at least 300 people in there, ideally have at least 2 other rooms, with a suitable smoking area, and of course be somewhere that we can make all the ideas generated by 9 months of planning and meetings happen to maximum effect.

It’s also becoming a bit of a tradition to “break in” new venues before they open fully to the public. As Rich pointed out, what we’ve done in each case, is got involved with a venue as it is becoming a venue. That is, at a time when it’s in the process of development – that “twilight zone” when it has some or all of the facilities we need, but isn’t yet a regular venue.

Before then however our merry band of participants will be continuing to work hard on developing our biggest show to date, with all manner of ideas being put into action to explore and create an unforgettable multi-sensory assault based on the theme of Digital Distopia, inspired by 1984, Bladerunner, and the impending threat of I.D cards.

With our full line up spanning over two rooms, musicians, performers, dancers, DJs, VJs, percussionists, comedians, poets and installations already confirmed and collaborating, Saturday September the 13th 2008, is most definitely a date for the diary, and i for one really hope you can be there to experience it.

Photograph from Rob Nicholas (More can be found here)

I was pretty nervous on Thursday night, as it was to be my first outing with Traktor scratch, 2 months ahead of my proposed schedule! Alongside wondering if my laptop could handle 4 hours and 4 decks, Steve had been unavailable to rehearse til Thursday, and i wasn’t sure if this new interface would be too much to get used to, if i should really play out all this new music, and if to revert back to just my trusty cdj’s? The next morning however i got more music prepared, had a few more run-throughs of the Completion duet, and started to look forward to the evenings proceedings once again.

Preperation was somewhat stifled by some upsetting news from a friend in the afternoon, but by the time we’d got to the venue, soundchecked, eaten and returned, the evening led the way. Concrete looked suitably transformed, with the work from the object x-ers demonstrating just how clever they really are! An overhead projector that had been bastardised, a sofa that had been turned into a phone booth, a staircase that lit up as you walked down it, and an interactive game of light snap, were just some of the interactive attractions that the crew had been hard at work on.

The bar was busy at the bottom of the staircase, and i proceeded along the corridor into the main room, where I walked into the sounds (and chaos) of Leon doing his youtube set. It was quite the spectacle, possibly drawing inspiration from Leon’s trademark methods of organisation. I unfortunatly missed chunks of the show, due to the amount of people to meet and greet, the short length of the sets, and how far apart the rooms were. I heard that Steve Loopz played some beautiful tunes, the first band were gorgeous, the Opera was interesting, and Shana Tova rocked! Not the best review i know, but suffice to say i did take my usual spot in support of Koala Grip, who gave a great performance in an old/new lineup, and culminated in Ant almost having a hernia when signalling their last song!

The cast and crew who were over 40 strong achieved some inspiring feats, from the organisation to the performance, and i was lucky to be part of it all. Apparently we were just 20 people under a full venue, featuring a mixed up crowd of alternative, underground, beautiful and electic people, who all created a real friendly atmosphere. I was most impressed by just how many people stayed for the long haul (after the event had been extended by an 2 hours), but i was kinda dissapointed by a friend of ours telling everyone there was an “afterparty” from 2 at his nearby pub, where they could get much cheaper drinks and smoke inside.

Djing wise was amazing, and i had nothing to worry about regarding the new music and Traktor stability. Rich Batsford playing live in Australia was great, and i was fortunate to be able to drop some samples of Howard Marx in our first intercontinental duet. Highlight was when the link broke and then came back to a huge roar! (This footage was recorded in Australia but i have some of Birmingham which i’ll post soon.)

It all paved the way for a really responsive dancefloor, and for the first hour or so, i got play music from across the board, from nu jazz like Quantic, to reggae greats from Trojan and Dawn Penn, from big Showtunes like All that Jazz, to classic rock like Senser’s Age of Panic, which all went down an absolute treat. Steve only had a box breaks with him, so the second hour we built it slowly through all our biggest breaks, finishing with a drum and bass finale, and an encore of classics from the Banana Boat song to the Prodigy.

All in all a fantabulous affair, and a great test bed for some ideas for the big one on June 14th 2008.