Practice Hours 2
Last week I spent 3 days helping Troy Miller put together the graphics for the forthcoming Practice Hours DVD. I met Troy when I went down to Rinse FM in the Summer. We got chatting about techy video stuff and I offered to help out for free on the Motion Graphics. That's what I do for a living you see, graphics for Channel 4, T4, MTV, Sky, Title Sequences, Pop Videos, Commercials, in essence whizzy surreal eye-candy for Telly. Flash stuff.
Troy has spent the entire year getting together the interviews for the double DVD set. I'll repeat that, an *ENTIRE YEAR* on this *DOUBLE DVD* set. He had so much quality footage that it had to go on two discs. I've seen quite a bit of the video and there's brilliant stuff in there. It's a true survey of the Grime nation, peopled with a surprisingly high quotient of new unknown faces as well as all the big names. That filled me with hope for the music actually, that there are people coming through. Punters are going to have a load of fun watching these discs.
The job was a challenge cos although I've done lots of high-end stuff, I'd never turned my hand to any DVD Menus. So I had to understand how that all worked. Which I did. It was also a challenge because this was a Grime DVD, for Media Gang who (with the Conflict DVD, Practice Hours, Aim High Volume 2 and Run The Road 2 DVDs under their belt) must surely rank as the "market leaders", and I couldn't deliver no wussy Ice Cream commercial graphics. Street, raw, inflected by video game graphics but also just a likkle bit Pop-Arty. It had to look ruff and, well, grimey. I wanted my graphics to look like a million dollars (well, a few thousand quid at the very least), and when you look at this DVD and compare it to its competitors Box Bloody Fresh, Risky Roads, Lord of the Decks, well I like to think my small contribution has helped Practice Hours raise the game.
And naturally my own involvement got me thinking a bit. I'll always remember Alex Petridis's comments way back in April last year, about Grime's "comically polarised fan base" and well, enjoy a laugh at his expense really. It's been truly cool watching Riko and Plasticman become bloggers, witnessing Martin Clark and Chantelle Fiddy embracing the net, hanging out with Logan "The Ice Man" Sama at Dissensus, checking the Prancehall man playing an opening set for Ruff Sqwad, seeing Dave "bun-u" Moynihan arranging the awesome Dirty Canvas night. What a strange trip it's been!
But a caveat. I read Eno quoting Robert Wyatt recently and it seemed very appropriate to to this situation: "Wyatt always says that the most interesting period in any ethnic music is the first couple of months that the middle classes get hold of it, and then they ruin it after that. For the first short while they put a tremendous amount of energy and resources behind it and then it flourishes but then it dies from its own dinosaur proportions." Substitute the odd term here and there and voila. Grime and the bloggers. It'd be extremely easy to disown this culture, and I'm as guilty as the next man of having felt a bit negative about Grime recently. Internet critics dem have a sweet tooth. It's especially easy for the more superficial individual to find something they come in close proximity to to be delibidinised. I'm not telling people to disown their critical faculties, but yunnuh, have patience. Sincerely I believe this music is not going away, and that, unlike Jungle it won't wither creatively. Have faith people!