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Interview
by SashaS
17-1-2002
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| One giant leap |
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1 Giant Leap go global
An idea morphed into a mammoth project to put beat driven global music on one DVD with a host of music and movie stars into the mix. ..
Take the following ingredients: a filmmaker and a music producer, a shared love for David Byrne and Brian Eno's 'My Life In The Bush of Ghosts' and Peter Gabriel's 'Passion -Music for Martin Scorcese's The Last Temptation of Christ' and all the components for an extraordinary project are in place. To make a globally collaborative record and visuals that combine myriad rhythms, sounds, spoken word and images to create the a purpose-made DVD. It's called lGiant Leap and there is a site where you can follow the project through its stages.
Producer Duncan Bridgernan (worked with Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Shakespeare's Sister) and film maker Jamie Catto (co-founder of Faithless) packed some basic tracks in their smart kit bag and set out to connect with variety of World musicians and quite few stars: Michael Stipe, Neneh Cherry, Brian Eno, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland (both ex-Police) as well as actors Tom Robbins, Dennis Hopper, Merryl Streep and Harvey Keitel plus the great American writer Kurt Vonnegut.
"When we started out it felt like a fairy-tale," Bridgeman recounts the story, "that became reality. We presented the idea to a lot of people until we found someone who thought it was a great idea. We then told the company (Palm Pictures) that we'd like to replace all the samples with the field recordings. They didn't blink, it evolved into a multi-media project and off we went."
A big blue place...
Plenty of anecdotes surface from along their route. An African tribe were too intrigued with the recording of their trunk-drums to be able to mime for the vidcamera. And when they called actor Harry Dean Stanton (Dennis Hopper supplied the home number), he listened carefully and then told them in no uncertain terms to "F**k off!" for disturbing his afternoon nap!
"That was a gem," Bridgeman laughs at the memory, "and I'm glad to have had such a reaction from him. It makes for a much better story. We didn't get Jerry Springer but we couldn't have had everybody."
Having circled the globe, is there one generic conclusion about the human race they arrived at?
"The conclusion we came to," Duncan formulates his answer carefully, "is that everybody wants what they've not got; East would like to be like the West and the West is attempting to be more spiritual...The human race is 95% the same..."
Speech on vocals
The latest stage in the gradual release schedule lGiant Leap amassed 300 hours of tapes - follows the debut DVD single 'Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost' (released last autumn) and has Speech of proto soft-rapper's Arrested Development delivering the vocal on 'Braided Hair' (as well as Neneh Cherry). When we spoke with 1GL Speech was present and offered us his thoughts on what made him jump at the chance to voice the song.
"It attracted my interest," Speech replies from behind his shades, "because it was an interesting idea that started in England, had elements added in Africa and Asia and I was to add vocal in America. Part of their success is in bringing the project to people and I recorded my vocal in my living room. I choose the track and was very pleased to take part because they were doing something a lot of musicians would love to."
"Collaborating with Speech was very easy ," says Bridgeman, "because he instinctively knew what we were after. Since then we've recorded another song together, 'Culture'."
There is also talk of TV specials for BBC2 and Channel 4. But mightn't the magnitude of glittering celebrities overshadow the whole project?
"Yes, we're well aware of it," Bridgeman readily admits, "and we've concluded that the project has grown so huge there's nothing we can do about it. Our satisfaction is in having done it and what else happens will boost our egos."
Guest editor: Deirdre Molloy
SashaS
11-2-2002
1 Giant Leap album '1 Giant Leap' is released 11 February 2002 on Palm Pictures
1 Giant Leap DVD '1 Giant Leap' is released 18 March '02 on Palm Pictures
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