Bournemouth music maker and creative Timo Peach releases a special one-off new piece, testifying to the strangeness of “the summer that would never come” to help raise support for Dorset Mind’s new Creative Minds campaign.

Momo has released a brand new tune in response to the Covid19 crisis, and the song, Pandemonstrate, attempts to both look back and forwards, to face some creative possibilities.

“This is such a moment in time to pause and reflect,” says writer and producer Mr Peach. “I am always wanging on about art testifying, but I suddenly realised around Easter that it hadn’t even occurred to me to look up from my own grand schemes and try to testify to this historic experience as an artist.”

A deliberately nostalgic-seeming slice of retrowave, Pandemonstrate sets a distinctly 1980s summery tone, but it’s feel-good vibes are a little bitter-sweet, reflecting the duality of a time of griefs and fears that has also glimpsed a possibly cleaner, healthier future. A duality that is likely to manifest in an increase mental health support need – just when budgets have dropped into the dark.

“As all of us are so mindful of our health workers and their challenges responding to the pandemic, it can be hard to know how best to demonstrate a response that feels meaningful enough. I’ve felt it. Living through this crisis is such a weird experience for everyone, in so many unequal, different ways, we’re all having to process a lot as we try to find support, find work, look after each other and watch some things helplessly” Timo says. “So I’m mindful of the next health challenge brewing seriously all around us – how we make sense of all this and find good mental wellness, looking to such an uncertain-seeming future.”

So he approached Dee Swinton at Dorset Mind, and long-time champion of their’s Dan Willis, to see if there was merit in using the song as a useful springboard to raising funds for the charity and awareness of the potentially significant extra emotional challenges facing society.

“With all my research into the human planet with my podcast Unsee The Future, exploring as I have been the components of crises that we’re currently facing, I’m mindful that we already had a global mental health pandemic” he says. “The coronavirus is really just a blacklight marker highlighting systemic problems not dealt with yet. So this is an incredible opportunity for us. If we’re willing to face it.”

 

Buy the brand new single Pandemonstrate by Momo:tempo now >

Art as an enabler

A big believer in the empowerment of facing big global problems as ordinary people, who might just feel helpless about such issues, Timo says he felt he had to make a piece of music that evoked the summers of 30 years ago.

“I turned 18 at the end of the summer of 1988. First year driving, the year I started making music, met the lovely first lady of Momo – many formative things go back to then for me,” he says, “but so do many of our problems around the world. The 1980s gave us the political paradigm we’re living in now” he suggests. A culture, he thinks, that has contributed to drying up bolder visions of tomorrow.

“We are way overdue to reawaken our imaginations and start writing new stories of us. It’s imperative now. This is my call to that. But as a music maker and a creative, I’m interested in how ordinary us lot can find empowering ways to engage with the complex story we find ourselves part of now, in such times of transition and change. I’m convinced that allowing ourselves to explore creativity and artistic responses to the worlds around us and within us can help us write whole new stories of us – but I think it starts by acknowledging it’s all pretty overwhelming.”

Pandemonstrate is out now on Bandcamp and all sales are going towards Dorset Mind’s Creative Minds campaign, which is aiming to raise £2,000 to help the team simply keep offering their support services.

 

DONATE TO THE CREATIVE MINDS CAMPAIGN >

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Don’t feel alone in trying to make sense of the pandemic and its effect on you. Explore the services of Dorset Mind >

 

Lingo: Empower the creative individual by getting over individualism >

Read the related blog post exploring a theme of Pandemonstrate.

 

Light puppet theatre project Banana Moon brings a delightful vignette story to Light Up Poole 2020, exploring a sense of flow in mental health – with a little musical storytelling support from Momo:tempo.

 

Have you ever felt that you just don’t fit in? This is the question posed by Banana Moon Puppets‘ story A Fish Out Of Water. The tale of a boy and a fish finding each other, it’s a graphic silent movie in gentle technicolour, some of which is musical, thanks to an invitation to the bloke from Momo to help create the experience.

“When Anna first contacted me with the idea, I was really intrigued about the process,” says Timo Peach. “It’s such delicate craft of a truly ancient seeming kind and as I sat with this tiny narrative I felt moved to be part of it.

Artist Anna Shiels has been developing her light puppetry style for some years, often using it in schools performances. But it can be an instincutal process as much as a planned one.

“I have little ideas for things but often find a style, a shape, is the starting point to physically play with and see how the characters want to behave. It’s a quite flowing process and it can surprise me how a story turns out.”

The effect is gently magical, and seems to Timo suspended somewhere between ancient and modern storytelling.

“It’s such a tiny experience,” he says, “but it’s oddly moving. It’s interesting that the tone of the music that fell out of this for me is very slightly sort of far-Asian. There’s obviously something of a very old perhaps Japanese tradition in the craft, but there’s also something very 21st century about the theme of lostness and yearning for flow. I didn’t try to tap into any culture with the sound, just follow the starting point of loose rhythm and organic sound that Anna and I discussed, but she was very open to work with and there is a hint of both old and new Tokyo about the complete end result. I quietly love it.”

“It strikes a significant chord with ideas of mental health and emotional wellness” he says.

Light Up Poole is a public art festival of light design, with performances of A Fish Out Of Water taking place in Scaplans Court in old Poole high street regularly across the evenings of 20th, 21st and 22nd of February 2020.

With thanks to Manuela Boeckle for photography.

Listen to the complete pocket score to A Fish Out Of Water on Soundcloud right here:

 

Artist and conference hacker Marcus John Henry Brown’s Re:publica19 keynote debuted the third part in his chilling, digi-dystopian corporate vision, The Passing trilogy, in a remarkable one-man performance that brought a startled audience to its feet. Scored by Momo:tempo, in full 80s confidence overload.

HEADER PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAIMUND VERSPOHL.

 

 

When Marcus Brown began performing his piece, The Passing, a couple of years ago, the gift of it to its audiences was a surprise – a big context twist. Known for his presentations and talks as a tech and digital culture speaker, his audiences were conference people – advertising and web conference people. Attending those conferences to learn some new ideas, hear some leading edge creative technology thinking, perhaps – but not expecting… art. So when he took this particular season of talks from PowerPoint slides to choking and dying on stage, Brown’s reputation spread. Now he refers to his performance work as conference hacking.

Today, The Passing has grown to three distinct episodes in the story – not presentations – and the last part, Flex, has taken the whole format to another theatrical level. Including adding a specially commissioned score, as composer and creative Timo Peach explains.

 

Hear a cut of the theme from Flex by Momo:tempo:

 

“The first time I met Marcus was at Silicon Beach – Matt Desmier‘s ideas conference in my home town, Bournemouth. The year before, he’d spoken also and it had been thought-provoking, wry, almost techno-poetic philosophy. But half way through the first ever performance of The Passing, it sunk in properly what he was doing this time – performing in character. And it was just genius!” Timo grins. “I was on my feet cheering with rambunctious enthusiasm at the end, which was the finale of the conference’s first day – what a closing keynote. I approached him the next morning and essentially fanboyed at him.

“For some reason, he kept talking to me over time and eventually approached me with a terrific proposal – music for the trilogy’s highpoint finish.”

The three pieces in the series are chilling, near-future critiques of technocratic business culture.

“Friends have asked me to stop writing these things,” Marcus says, “they think they’re too predictive of the real world.”

“The Passing Trilogy revolves around one simple idea: what would happen if a corporation rebuilds the world in its own image? A society based on it’s corporate and marketing values. A world that feeds off of our fears and egos.”

 

 

“Be the hustlepreneur you were always meant to be.”

 

Flex is another one-man structure and it’s as dense in content as the other chapters.

“The first part of the Trilogy, The Passing, is the end of the story — we see the completed version of a world “made great again” as Marcus explains. “In the second part of the Trilogy, The Sensorium Process, we go right back to the start of the story and witness the strategy kick-off, a corporate all-hands, where the new talent strategy “From Human to Resource” is presented to 300.000 employees by the Director of Human resources, a man called Tyler Xavier. The challenge with the third and final part, which chronologically sits in the middle of the three, was to show how we get from the mundane evilness of the Coalition Strategy Day 2020 to The Passing grounds of 2059.”

Across almost an hour on stage in the debut performance, Brown struted, preached, cackled and scorned back and forth across Re:publica’s huge backdropping stage screen, through a sequence of heavily branded, richly detailed typographic and video content, fleshing out the ironic but close-to-the-bone absurdism of an influencer future turned up just a notch or two to 11. All still as a director of human resources essentially giving a corporate conference talk.

The protagonist in Flex is Tyler Xavier, and his personality was the key to setting the performance’s tone – in graphics and in music.

“Tyler is driven: driven by his vision of a total influencer resource state, driven by the need to hustle and driven by the power of fame” says Marcus. “He is a corporate man who becomes a corporate God.”

This had one singled-minded tonal implication for the score, as the bloke from Momo recalls.

“Marcus briefed me in Franky Goes To Hollywood 12″ titles” he says flatly. “Marcus asked me if I got it. I said I totally got it.”

 

 

 

 

“Influencers never stop, even when they…”

 

The music score was the first time Brown had collaborated with a composer so directly, especially in the world of The Passing. So Mr Peach was conscious of being invited in to a space so efficiently personal.

“Marcus is a multi-talent. These pieces are something really only his combination of experience, outlook and capability could hope to pull off” he says. “The primary thing is the thinking behind it – it’s horribly impressive, in concept and articulation. Very clever subversion of the lexicon of techbro marketing that tickles the mind beautifully, but filtered through the visual language of a real art school designer into a complex satirical work of science fiction. Words, pictures, story and thinking to challenge reality, by simply tweaking it the tiniest mirror universe degree. Barely a whole degree.

“Then he gets up on stage all alone with nothing but a slidedeck on a laptop and performs it like a bloke with a street theatre background. Which he also has” nods Timo. “This time painted up for the full digital cabaret. All that was missing was the massive ZTT-style synth score – which I gingerly set about working up, trying not to muck it up with sheer excitement.”

Mr Peach felt this called for some core sounds from the era directly.

“That kick drum. I never thought it would suddenly sound so good” he raises an eyebrow. “The Linn Drum kick that’s not very good with bass response – I just knew Marcus would recognise it and delight. And even more so, the legendary orchestra strike. ..You know the one.”

“Timo sent me his first demo response after a couple of weeks and I pressed play on the file” says Brown. “It immediately did that orchestra strike loudly. I pressed stop and said: “He’s got it.””

 

 

 

“Do not be alarmed.”

 

Writing in 1980s mode is a natural fit for Momo:tempo, as it’s chief character started making music then. Which is what worried him.

“I felt in my own flow doing this score,” Timo says. “It’s second nature to build textures in this synth-minded way. It does now sound very of an era, of course, but being a native to it I could essentially channel the spirit of it without being slavish to every sound source – it could evolve into some more contemporary sound design around the Emulator II samples and drum machine-gunning cowbell. Clear little tunes, arpeggiated tonal rhythms and big pads, augmented with some bombastic 80s guitar from Momo’s head of guitar department, Martin Rice. I had a ball. Terrified I’d turn out something unbelievably naff.”

In the end, Marcus felt encouraged by the collaboration.

“It was a remarkable experience working with Timo, and I think we both agree that, in terms of FLEX music, this is just the beginning” he said.

And on the night, as Re:publica’s main evening keynote in Station Berlin, Momo:tempo’s score did seem to strike the right note, worked subtly into the bold canvas of Marcus Brown’s whole barnstorming theatre performance, bringing the audience to its feet for what may have been an unprecidented standing ovation at the end.

“It was bonkers and brilliant and disruptive and daring,” says Timo. “And it was an honour to tinker around the edges and creatively encourage this absurdly impressive bit of work, in a small but responsible way. How could I not have gone out there to watch for myself. Re:publica is Marcus’ favourite conference, rooted in a sense of digital creativity and society as it is, and still he punked  its socks off. I can’t wait to go the full Lion King one day, as he put it. But for a first ever production, this was something next level. And I think I learned much just working with him and spending time with him. He’s become an invaluable mate to Momo. I can see why he is a mentor to many youngers in the creative community.”

 

WATCH THE FULL PERFORMANCE OF FLEX
BY MARCUS JOHN HENRY BROWN:

VISIT MARCUSJOHNHENRYBROWN.COM >

Read Marcus Brown’s own account of finishing a long developed body of work in The Passing Trilogy >

 

 

 

Listen to a playlist of cues – The stations of Flex by Momo:tempo on Soundcloud >

—

 

Love Love Films commissions Timo Peach to help sonically bring alive their playful planet-minded new animated series for young Earthlings, exploring the issues of plastics polution in the oceans – with a little recognition from the UN Environment Programme.

 

When it comes to thinking about tomorrow, there seems to be a world of challenges for children and young people to try to make sense of today, and schools are often at the forefront of helping them engage. And their parents. But perhaps children’s TV still has lots of opportunity to join in and explore today’s planetary themes more. Bournemouth film and TV production company Love Love decided to create a playful response to the grown-up problems of now by pouring some dedicated time into a passion project, aiming to help inspire young minds with new perspectives on one particular big problem for humans on Earth in the 21st century – the plastics waste crisis.

Bottle Island is a preschool adventure series that encourages smaller folk, just ahead of their formal education years, to think about care for the planet.  As the team says: “The series follows a group of quirky friends as they work together to try and save the island from the rubbish that washes up on the shore. Through their eco-adventures, the characters discover the wonders and perils of the world around them.”

And to bring alive the sonic dimension of the show, Love Love approached the bloke from Momo to score the development pilot episode, and to bring voices to the characters themselves.

 

“What a gift of a bit of work,” grins Timo. “When I first saw the production stills, I was enchanted with the background style of Bottle Island‘s world, especially influenced by Joanne Salmon’s work on the team, along side lead animator Sunny Clarke. And the whole premise of it had me hooked – a great way to get younger children making sense of the crazy state of consumer waste.”

As well as looking for a musical language to backdrop the characters and their island world, Momo had to help them literally find their voices.

“Of course, I’m as much a performer as I am a composer,” Timo says, “so I had enormous fun working through with Georgie and Ollie how the different personalities of Bottle Island would sound. And I had no hesitation in turning to m’great mate Michele O’Brien – storyteller and Valise Noire Theatre co-founder – to join the cast. She’s a brilliant warm presence, even just in voice.”

 

 

“If you can’t reuse it, refuse it!”

 

Script lead Oliver Selby also wrote the original title song, which Momo helped to bring alive – and with it, a very particular sound to the music.

“I essentially collected a few different items of plastic from our own recycling bin and mucked about with sampling them – hits and slaps and various plasticky percussive sounds. Then built up a pallette of musical sounds to write with. It’s a bouncy, cute vibe that’s come together, helping to simply posterise the sense of these odd characters in a sort of bonkers tropical setting.”

 

Love Love MD Georgina Hurcombe says the team did enjoy trips to the Momo studio to not just hear all the odd noises and music but how Timo and Michele were auditioning up the characters’ voices.

“There was never a dull moment in Timo’s shed. We did all have a good laugh working up crotchety old Prof Z and chirpy robot Socket and the ever sensible Nurdle, who’s probably the real brains of the gang. And those crabs…”

” I think my favourite characters are the conjoined turtles, held together by old beer can rings – the two Rons” says Timo. “It’s a brilliant idea and grimly based – as everything is in this show – on evidence of just how plastics and other human waste deforms natural habitats for animal life. But they’re also kind of a funny pair, and I thought it especially amusing to make one of them sound a little unsophistocated while the other was a sort of hispanic lothario. When it comes to animation, you sometimes have to run with what instinctively flows as funny and the team graciously let me!”

Host of UN World Environment Day 2018, India, chose Plastics Pollution as it’s theme for that year, and Love Love Films collaborated with the United Nations Environment Programme to produce an educational short using characters from Bottle Island.

 

 

 

Head of UN Environment, Erik Solheim said of the show:

“It is crucial that the next generations understand the enormous responsibility and power that they have. They need to know that they can truly transform this world to make it better and that they don’t need to make our same mistakes. We can’t reach out to them with scientific reports. Bottle Island is a great way to help them understand environmental challenges, to realise that solutions are in our hands and to have fun with a bunch of rather crazy characters on a peculiar little island!”

 

The team hope to share news of a commissioned series of Bottle Island in due course.

Find out more about Bottle Island at the Love Love development page >

 

 

On Sunday 28th April 2019, Timo Peach co-hosts the latest outing of the artist-encouraging industry insights event at Absolute Music.

 

Alongside consummate piano man and right-ol’ character Matt Black, Momo will be welcoming you to Strawberry Fields Represents‘ latest CMI Music Conference, designed to help musicians, DJs, producers, songwriters and venue folk glean some game-raising extra knowledge from industry insiders.

This year’s one-day career encourager will be meeting another selection of pros from the music business to share some practical insider knowledge and take questions direct from those ready to learn from them – including some of the team from BBC Introducing, Connor Sheehan, Performer Relationship Manager for PPL, Bonita McKinney, Business Development Manager for Music & Festivals at Ticketmaster and BBC judge and social media guru Matt Spracklen, along with others.

“It’s a super day together in an informal, intimate musical setting, that gives some great direct insights to music makers who would like to know more about how make more of their work” says Timo. “It can be a real encouragement to picture your music a little more applied, and the CMI get-together can leave you feeling ready to take things up a level. It’s all part of helping you find the right space for you as an artist – I’m really looking forward to joining Matt and Suzy Wheeler and our guests.”

There are still a few tickets left, and you can grab them right here.

CMI Music Conference – Sunday 28th April / 11am til 3.30pm / at Absolute Music, Bournemouth.