On the evening of Tuesday 18th September 2018, four pop-up events took place in London to promote Aphex Twin’s latest release. A map was shared to his social accounts and the masses started to quickly speculate what would go down. Was it even possible that he would make a live appearance at these locations without having some type of time machine?
These events took place at Shoreditch Hight Street Station at 20:00, Southbank at 20:30, Soho at 22:15 and the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden at 22:30. Thankfully Instagram user @kesselrunner23, real name Adam Seth-Ward, captured photographs and a video of the event that took place at Southbank. Now we know that this was a promotional campaign directed by Weirdcore and supported by Amazon Music.
Below is a transcribe of the email that was projected onto the wall at Southbank:
“Hi Rich – All going well – Amazon Music have been in touch after seeing E&C and other posters. They want to do something with us to promote Collapse and were talking about projection mapping around London release week. Could be good. What do you reckon”
“Ok – as long as branding isn’t too yucky and Weirdcore directs it”
“Agreed – spoke to W this morning and we’re meeting the people tat can do it – we can have 2 vans that can hit 2-3 locations around London each. Suggesting E&C, Southbank, Shoreditch Station and one in Soho. They might get shut down – We projection map onto walls collapsing the texture of the walls. There is also the possibility that it can be interactive – there would be a plinth near the projection van that people can use a bit like a theremin – the closer your hand goes the deeper the collapse goes or something. We could potentially include sound in this. Up for doing something there?”
“Yeh let me know what you need. W on CC. “They said : 4 audio samples (Max/MSP controlling pitch speed from the leap) seeing them later.”
“Ok. Seems cool. I have some ideas whihc I’ve just email you about – it will be intro, an interactive bit and a playback bit. Main 2 questions. can Notch do ambient occulsion features I’d love to control is cycling / cascading / color changes, like the edges/sides/caps of the logo, a bit like the rough gif attached thinking of maybe making simple data visualisation for the other track of EP, & maybe the stims from t69 & do some kinda close encounters type visual mural, as would fit with the extra added to vl. 1. Would be good to have some of the overlay.”
Collapse EP is out now on Warp Records, order a copy from Bleep.
TRACKLIST
1. T69 collapse
2. 1st 44
3. MT1 t29r2
4. abundance10edit[2 R8’s, FZ20m & a 909]
5. pthex
Discover more about Aphex Twin and Warp Records on Inverted Audio.
