timeline of past work

very happy with this one. missed soundcheck because of flight delays, busking on a rig full of fixtures I'd never heard of before, but it turned out beautiful. it's such intense and passionate music, and I'm pleased with the way that I complemented that. salv requested a lot of strobing and it really fit with their sound, especially towards the end of the show. they closed with my favourite track of theirs, "kotshena", and you can see part of that in the second video here.

kiss facility's album is some of the best music out right now, and it's a dream to be able to work with them.

ra event

house lx shift but flashed both acts. toe are really cool.

blog post of an attendee

left to right: leo (creative director/playback), ada (lighting operator), lou (stylist), ian (van driver/crew), clara la san, colin (tour manager), rakhi (merch). not pictured: keith (foh sound)

the last night of the UK tour and my first time in birmingham. I really liked the venue and the team working there, and this ended up being the smoothest stop of the tour for me. I actually had enough time between finishing setup and show start to shower and have a bite to eat, which was not really the case for any of the other dates except maybe for glasgow.

this tour was a great experience for me, really hard work but very rewarding. I met so many great people that I hope to work with again someday.

my first time in dublin. had to wake up very early in the morning and get off the bus for customs, onto the ferry, then back onto the bus to sit in traffic for much longer than planned due to a trucker protest. this gig was always going to be a bit mental, as it was a smaller venue than this show was designed for and we couldn't bring all the kit that was usually in the van. on top of that, we had left a crucial power cable behind in the UK, and we were having serious network issues that I have since learned were probably caused by a dodgy batch of MA consoles. we managed to solve everything eventually, but I had to busk a bit to fill in some gaps and was reprogramming the show on the fly to compensate for the changes.

a really challenging day, especially on so little sleep, but the rest of the crew (specifically the TM colin and the FOH sound guy keith) were brilliant on this day and all the others, which makes a huge difference.

back in glasgow! got a day off to sleep in my own bed, then back in familiar territory at SWG3. I don't list all the gigs on this page but I'm in there all the time as a house tech so it was a house rig I knew well, albeit one I usually operate on MagicQ as opposed to MA2. shaun came along to lend a hand so that made things easier too. we had to modify the build a bit for the low ceiling but this was planned for and it looked good.

my first time in bristol. house lampy was nice, as were the crew helping us build. they were all young so I didn't feel like the odd one out as I frequently do. felt more like I was hitting my stride with the build by this point, but it was a seriously involved setup, and on most days I was working basically the entire time from load in until show start.

day 2. I remember being surprised by how much I liked sleeping on the tour bus. I thought I'd get motion sick but it actually rocked me to sleep and the bunk was cozy rather than claustraphobic.

this one was the night of the uk tour that they recorded on video. it was also their hometown show and biggest venue of the uk tour.

ordered a butter paneer from mughli charcoal pit for dinner. tasted good.

first date of my first ever bus tour, operating a shaun murphy design for clara la san. preceding this opnening night we had a day of prep at the lighting hire warehouse in coventry, then a couple days of rehearsals in london. shaun was with me for those days through to and including this first show, then he was off. while this opening night wasn't entirely without mishaps, it all worked out in the end.

can't remember who the opener was for this one. I wasn't flashing openers on this tour but it's nice to write them down anyway.

got a last minute call to hop down to london and flash this mg show. scrounged up a pile of extra strike Ms for the floor package and got cracking. this was my first time working with machine girl, they were awesome and I'd love to do it again sometime

so nice to work with kj again, such a wonderful kind crazy lady who really seems to believe in my work. just a house rig busk but set a moody passionate vibe with what was there. lighting SHHE was a nice full circle moment as well, since my initial gig with kathryn came about due to her seeing my work at another gig SHHE played.

braid archive

absolute insanity. if you missed it you missed out. shaun, ross, hamish and me playing happy hardcore all night long. old school pre-dmx xenon strobes deployed, 5am license secured, sold out tickets and a line down the street. crowd was eccied to the gills, the bar ran out of water. magical.

full recording and pictures yet to be released but they exist don't you worry

ra event braid archive

helped shaun out with another la Cheetah jeff mills show, just on LX2 duties again. dope rig as always, they screened the film on rear project scrim that then got kabuki dropped when mills started his set

ra event

ra event

i was on tech for room 2 of the numbers art school party, had to put on a brave face while really quite unwell and missing out on rustie, blawan and hekt upstairs. it was a dead simple lighting rig, just a couple spots, pars, and a sun strip, but this was also my first time babysitting the sound desk. OK Williams was a real highlight, that set absolutely tore the place apart.

ra event

was on house lx duties in the galv for trancefest 25, had fun flashing darude and all the rest.

from Trancefest's facebook page

just a house tech shift, flashed both wheatus and their support. funny one to add to the list.

back with vlure, for my first time in the venue fabric. fabric's lx rig was cool, but definitely geared towards club operation and not the easiest to clone onto.

off the bat, this was just a house tech shift, and obviously I wasn't actually doing anything during autechre's performance as they perform in total pitch black. but between lighting the opening sets, and executing autechre's very particular instructions for lighting both before and after their performance, I'm satisfied with the performance I gave and got some really positive feedback afterwards.

apparently it's not uncommon for house techs to fuck up the transition between darkness and light, to the point they've considered touring with an LD for solely that purpose. hearing that definitely leaves me satisfied with this day's work.

ra event

ra event

it was an amazing oppourtunity to get to go to são paulo and do lights for arca's dj set at this festival, and i had a lot of fun with it. her vj on this show, gray, was really interesting to talk to and work with, and of course alejandra was lovely too. after the show we all went to a local club for a party pabllo vittar had organised, and the music they were playing was amazing. there's clearly a great underground club scene in são paulo; i'd love to go back some day.

operated this beatiful shaun murphy design for two legends. 4 sheets of mylar blown by dmx controlled fans reflected the beams of 4 spots to cast beatiful caustic-esque reflections on the performers and venue.

review (in italian)

the lads who run TP are lovely, was a stressful day but a good team to work with. great fun to be at the controls for a classic trance party "as much strobe as we can til we pop a breaker" light show, but a little less fun when you do actually pop a breaker. yung sherman and wraith9's sets were favourites of mine, and the laser show went crazy as well.

ra event

anahita's first club night! I ran a similar visual setup to subveillance, except this time with two projectors, and onto scrim that surrounded the dancefloor. this fabric was hung from the ceiling and came to about chest height, and really transformed the apollo bar as a space. other than just providing visual interest, it had the effect of separating the dancefloor from the bar, toilets, entrance, and seating enough that it felt less exposed and more intimate, but without impeding people's movement. it also made the dancefloor look more inviting to those not on it.

ra event braid archive

another year another subcity freshers' party. put some translucent scrim material across the front of the stage and a projector behind the dj, then ran visuals to it from resolume. it made a cool sillhouette effect as well as pretty beams escaping past the fabric. to make these beams crisp I made sure that the visuals had large black areas so the bright parts would pop out.

ra event braid archive

first time working with kin-tu, had fun with it. reprogrammed the berkeley light tubes to pixel mode to do some sparkly shit, put 4 moving spots behind the DJ and some pars in front of them.

ra event

always great to work with vlure, first time with them at a festival.

ra event

a lovely show to work on; kj was introduced to my work at the SHAPE+ gig I did at the glad cafe, and this design is a descendant of that one. 3 pillars of warm glowing sun strips backdropped by st lukes' stained glass windows.

braid archive

writeup, pics and vids coming soon <3

braid archive

just a house lx shift but opped for all 3 bands and had fun with it.

braid archive

was really nice to get to bring real tears up for a glasgow debut. did a big table on the dancefloor with all the DJ, VJ, and LX kit like a mad control panel for a spaceship. light bars and fabric draping like at bitrot002, two flatscreen TVs for visuals this time. had some tech issues but all worked out fine in the end, a great night overall.

ra event braid archive

some analogue glitch for avalon emerson on outernet's big stupid LED wall. roland V4 mixer with feedback loop via composite colour corrector, diy karl klomp dirty mixer to output upscaler, resolume clip launching into v4, PTZ camera feed with screen-camera feedback loop. really happy with this show; shaun on lights & i felt locked in to his + avalon's vibes. did lots of very abstract textural noisy feedback stuff.

the admittedly quiet first installment of sam's new night stasis11. some really good tunes were played and it was fun to go b2b with finn for some dubstep, breaks, and 4x4.

one of the djs appeared remotely, i think from the states? as a video stream on a projector. the sound was a bit quiet and the stream cut out a couple times (there was only a wi-fi connection) but the concept was there. the night itself was also streamed on twitch.

i ended up getting real buckfast drunk and started chatting shit in the stream chat on sam's laptop. lol.

i'm really happy with how the second bitrot x stereo party turned out. i've loved gyrofield's music for ages, and while she's known for her intense neurofunk and dnb, the set she performed here tended more towards the delicate, intricate, textural techno and electro she's been exploring recently. she told me afterwards that she's tired of how the male-dominated dnb scene can be sometimes, and i empathise with that. the goal for these parties is simple: ridiculous bassy music by and for the girls, the dykes, the theys, and a couple weird guys if they're nice. the crowd was great, and a reassurance that there is a place for us here if we make it.

david's 2 hour set took the club through a whole spectrum of intensity, digging deep for some early house and electro, winding through grime, up to breaks; he totally killed it. i played a wee warm up of some ambient, mineralism, deep dubstep, and garage, and also closed with some mad dnb, dubstep, and trap.

the decorations and lighting came together so nicely - you can see the lighting layout in the image and pdf below. we built this big pixel mapped LED bar rig for basically as cheap as possible, but put that extra lil bit of effort in to make it really pop. classic throw a whole roll of black gaff tape at it type beat, the rigging dissolved into the backdrop and the bars looked crisp as fuck. we went really easy on the strobes til the end, they were gelled a nice amber til the last hour. david helped operate the lights during my set and part of gyrofield's, and he did a great job.

we also spent a bunch on black fabric to drape the whole venue, and it was so worth it. shaun came by to lend a hand and made the process of hanging it so much less stressful. daphne was also a huge help with this. the fabric gave the feeling of a much more intimate, dark, mysterious club than plain old stereo. we'll definitely be bringing this element back.

shaun was on lx design and op for this, i just helped out with the build and other general tech work.

more analogue visuals, this time with an extra twist. the artists wanted a really dark room, so conna asked if we could partially block off the projectors with some pierced foil on the back and side projectors. we did this for the back one, but it felt too static for the sides. what i ended up doing in the day or two before was designing and fabricating these rotating discs to place in front of the projectors. they're essentially gobos just on the other side of the lens. the main discs were made of cardboard painted black, mounted with 3d printed pieces to some DC motors. these motors were driven by a quick and dirty transistor circuit on a perfboard and an arduino. i dialed in the arduino to semi randomly rotate the discs with little pulses, as slowly and quietly as the motors could manage.

really rough around the edges but worked nicely considering i just threw the contraptions together in a day using things i had on hand. combined with my hazer, the organic slivers of light looked really beautiful. the folder linked below contains pictures, videos, and the arduino code.

opped a shaun murphy (lights) and tom schneider (set) designed show for two shell's album launch. put in proper grunt work shifts setting up and taking down as well as the full busk. venue was a couple of arches under a railway line, location plus code FWQX+66 London.

back working with VLURE for their headline slot at tenement trail festival's stage at BAaD. was a real belter; six led bars, 4 atomics, 4 moving spots for the floor package. coupla beams and washes on the house rig. bosh

the last ever pure bliss and first ever bitrot party <3

many more details to come soon! but it was sick...

happy hardcore thursday returns! this time on a friday... i hopped on subcity with hamish aka coy burn for the traditional thursday radio show, ahead of the party the next day.

back in the dream machine for another co:clear. analogue rig as per, was using my panasonic wj-mx10, videotech vec1070, a homemade karl klomp dirty mixer, two raspberry pis running video looper and a handful of usbs with footage on them. took a lot of video from insecam for this one, as well as some home movies from archive.org like before. was using my laptop with obs and an easycap dongle to output to the projectors, and I even managed to record the whole thing, visuals and music! sadly i didn't remember to turn off system sounds on the recording, so you get a couple of usb plugged in/unplugged noises :/

the first club night i ever had serious creative input on. i wrote about the whole thing on the subcity website here.

this was the event which i had to come up with a dj name for. jules gave me a firm but fair deadline, and eventually i settled on netgf.

my first VJ gig ever. i (ab)used OBS with video clips and camera feedback for fractals, with 4 overlapping and offset projectors. that night is where this image was taken:

subcity's 2022 freshers party and one of my first ever real DJ gigs. "venus netscape" is me; that's the name of my vaporwave show on subcity. subcity policy was to bill djs as their show name rather than dj name, but even if that weren't the case, i hadn't even come up with a stage name at this point.