The stunning picture above of a tiny Neil Pennycook of Meursault onstage at the Roxy Art House is by Dylan Matthews, who has a bunch of other excellent photos from the gig (and numerous other gigs) over at Blueback Hotrod. I’m pretty sure he gave me permission to use his photos on the night, however this was what I have already referred to as the legendary ‘Day 4′ and so I don’t have very concrete memories of that point in the evening (but I’m sure he won’t mind). Also, Neil is not tiny in real life, merely in relation to the surroundings in this picture (see obvious choice of Father Ted clip if this distinction is still not clear).

The Roxy Art House is the upstairs part of the building used up until this month for the Edinburgh Bowery. It’s a great place, though at times the vastness of the venue meant there was a distance between the performers and audience that you don’t usually get at Edinburgh gigs as most of them are in tiny venues.

The gig, which was put together by Ten Tracks, was still excellent though due to the fine line-up, with Panda Su impressing us with her melodic lullabies (though asking the audience if they knew the alphabet didn’t seem to go down terribly well even though I’m sure she was joking!), Neil filling the venue with his formidable voice despite this being a rare solo Meursault appearance, and Found‘s last gig of the year was as danceably daft and entertaining as usual, even closing with a uncharacteristically punky cover of Devo’s Mongoloid (see the original below). The only question I have is, why wasn’t everyone up dancing to Let Fidelity Break? 

Not content with winning a Bafta for their amazing creation Cybraphon, Found have also won over the U.S. as shown in this great video. Watch out for the twirly Umbrella man near the end..

Related posts:

Video: Edinburgh band ‘Found‘ provoke outbreak of crazy dancing

Playing with the Past

Robot Love in Edinburgh – Cybraphon & ASIMO

After reading about Cybraphon everywhere, including  wired.com, and seeing footage of him everywhere including US TV, I finally got to see “him” last week at the inspace gallery in Edinburgh, and was blown away. It reminded me of when ASIMO, Honda’s humanoid robot, visited the city back in April as part of the Science Festival.

At first the link may seem quite tenuous, as I’m not even sure if Cybraphon could be termed a robot in the strictest sense of the word, but what both share is their human qualities. In ASIMO’s case this is “his” physical resemblance to the human body and his ability to walk in a similar way (something which took Honda’s engineers years of testing to achieve). In Cybraphon’s case it is his huge ego. His emotions, as anyone following him on twitter or facebook will be well aware, fluctuate wildly from dismay to rapture – and it’s all driven by how popular he is on a variety of internet search engines and social networking sites (believe me, I know the feeling).

When we saw him I’m pleased to say he was well at the upper end of the scale, varying slightly from outright rapture to bliss. The music he plays is of course excellent, being programmed by Edinburgh band Found. I missed the event where Found played with their (and Prof. Simon Kirby’s) creation but I asked my friend Iain Radcliffe to report back from the event and he had this to say:

“The other night I went to see a lecture about and performance by autonomous, emotional, robot band Cybraphon at the Inspace Gallery on Crichton Street (free entry and free beer too). Created by fantastic Edinburgh band/art/film collective FOUND, Cybraphon blends the old fashioned with the ultra modern, combining the look of Victorian mechanical orchestrions with the modern musician’s need to be noticed. “Image conscious and emotional, the band’s performance is affected by online community opinion as it searches the web for reviews and comments about itself 24 hours a day.”It has been described as “the barmiest object ever conceived by anyone” – what better recommendation than that?

Highlights were the incredibly complicated wiring diagram of Cybraphon’s brain, comparison of web stats for cybraphon and FOUND (cybraphon much more popular) and the video of cybraphon on Dallas TV news show/pictured in Italian magazine. Its popularity seemed to soar after being picked up by Wired magazine. But Prof. Simon Kirby explained that after all that attention, its ego has been designed to crave more, so can slump from delirium to depression pretty quickly. It probably didn’t help when Found frontman Ziggy Campbell slagged off his creation, saying, “I personally don’t rate it…you can’t play along with this thing.”

What was most surreal about my own experience visiting Cybraphon was when we were asked to applaud him when he finished each song. Though it wasn’t clear that this would have any affect on its mood, what we were doing was applauding a wardrobe. But it was a wardrobe with human qualities – the ability to make music, and to have a range of emotions.

I got the same strange feeling at the ASIMO event earlier in the year and as you can see from the short video below there was also much applause for this amazing robot. Just watching it walk across the stage I hope you get an idea of just how eerily human it’s movements make it seem. During the presentation ASIMO delivered a round of drinks, walked upstairs (which was another massive challenge to its creators due to the unique way the human body works) and even danced while the audience clapped along.

Now obviously Cybraphon is a fantastic and innovative piece of art, whereas Asimo is a masterpiece of scientific progress with huge amounts of funding behind it, and designed by Honda strictly with consumers in mind. Let’s face it he’s designed to fulfil rich people’s desire to have a butler/servant that they don’t have to feel too guilty about. But in both cases the humans present, myself included, treated the robot as if it were a human – and we were thrilled to see the robot act in a very similar way to ourselves.

Were we in fact applauding prototypes of our future masters? Were we celebrating the early stages of the encroaching singularity? Are these the ancestors of the robot uprising of 2174? Only time will tell. All I know is, these robots are seriously fucking cool.

Robot Love in Edinburgh – Vimeo version

Robot Love in Edinburgh – YouTube version

Visit Cybraphon

Visit Asimo

Update – the full video footage of the Cybraphon vs Found event is now online:

I’m delighted to say that Playing with the Past is back in Edinburgh for a second night on August 22nd. This combination of film and live music was my highlight of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival (ok I only saw one other film, what of it?) bringing together three of my favourite Edinburgh bands eagleowl, Meursault and Found, to provide original soundtracks to some bloody ancient, but fascinating pieces of footage.

The picture above is from the film Granton Trawler, for which eagelowl provided a lovely instrumental sea-shanty, complete with a brilliant replication of a creaking boat, which Bart somehow created merely by twisting his guitar strap (via an effects pedal). Living in the vicinity of Granton Harbour, it was great to see this genuine slice of life from over 70 years ago, and although the fisherman’s life looked very tough indeed, it’s hard not to romanticise their seafaring ways just a little bit when you’re stuck on the number 8 bus due to endless roadworks. Notice I didn’t mention the word ‘salty’ once. The ‘owl also provided a fast and furious accompaniment to a strange little animated film from Canada called Begone Dull Care which let us see the other, less laid back side of the band.

Meursault were up next, for Stan and Ollie, a bizarre piece of newsreel about Laurel and Hardy’s visit to Edinburgh, back in the day when there were those old-fashioned trams.. (cough). Their accompaniment to this piece was quite subtle, with their main contribution to the event an epic twenty minute piece de resistance to the 1936 short Night Mail, about the postal train from England to Scotland.

This was a bit of a blast from the past as I was shown this film as part of my degree many moons ago. Like Granton Trawler it made by the GPO film unit, which was a pioneer of British documentary, if I remember rightly.

I’ve included a very brief extract from the Meursault track below, to give you a sneak preview if you weren’t there, and am hoping that the band won’t mind (if they do though, it will be removed sharpish..) Cheers to Chris Bathgate for his recording expertise.

Finally it was Found (who I’ve seen live so often recently they must think I’m stalking them). They had a particularly tricky piece called Camera Makes Whoopee, which included montages of various instruments, making it difficult for them to deviate from the footage, but the band cleverly brought in samples and beats to match what was on screen.

What I enjoyed about this was the creative, and different approach taken by each band, and the genuine enthusiasm of the crowd. I’d like to see some contemporary local film-makers teaming up with the city’s musical talent more often, but I can see that it would take a lot of work to come up with something like this completely from scratch.

Anyway, it’s great that there’s another night in the offing making this an almost unique, two-night only event that you’ll not want to miss the second time around.

  Meursault – Night Mail (extract from Playing with the Past live performance)

Playing with the Past is on at the Filmhouse, Edinburgh on August 22nd: more info here.