Eden Sessions
I will be performing at the Eden Sessions in Cornwall on July 2nd, collaborating with The Boxettes and Disraeli as part of Cape Farwell’s event on the Biotik stage. Also appearing are Calvin Harris and Annie Mac.
More info:
http://www.edenproject.com/come-and-visit/whats-on/music-and-art/cape-farewell-events.php
Latitude 2009
On the way to latitude, we stopped off at Skyfest to perform with the newly formed Sky Choir. This was their first gig (at a festival for 7000 soaking wet sky employees!) and they were great.
Next morning, we were up early to record for BBC Radio 4′s Loose Ends with Clive Anderson. It was Eerie walking round the Latitude festival site at 9am when not a soul was around.
We were playing on the tiny Outdoor Theatre Stage in the woods. It was rammed – the stage manager told us it was the biggest crowd the stage had ever had!
The Vocal Orchestra get their Superman on
Jestar* is down with the kids
The next day it was over to the Film and Music stage where I was doing a show with Cape Farewell alongside my fellow Arctic explorers David Buckland, Marcus Brigstocke and Jarvis Cocker.
Me and Jarvis onstage
We ended with a version of Purple Haze. Latitude was great, next stop Womad!
Loose Ends at Latitude
Shlomo will be at Latitude Festival this weekend, and you can hear him live on Radio 4 at 6.15pm on Saturday 18th July. BBC Radio 4 – Loose Ends, 18/07/2009.
If you are going down to the festival you can also catch Shlomo and the Vocal Orchestra on the Outdoor Theatre Stage on Saturday at 4.30pm, and Shlo is performing again on the Sunday with Cape Farewell, Jarvis Cocker and Marcus Brigstocke in the Film and Music Arena at 5.25pm.
eden sessions
went down to the eden project in cornwall this week to support razorlight
Setting up the campsite.. lush views of the coastline
I was there with Cape Farewell who were hosting an event called “Cool Sounds from the Frozen Arctic”. They set up a special performance area inside the mediterranean biodome, which was essentially the biggest greenhouse i’ve ever seen
did a quick interview for eden project
beatbox workshop in the afternoon
eden is an amazing place, it’s like a live environmental experiment.. a massive reclaimed clay pit turned into an incredible green space
marcus brigstocke was there doing his comedy thing, talking about our trip to the arctic.. i shared a cabin with him and one of his main jokes seems to be about me beatboxing in my sleep. which is definitely not true.
then off to see razorlight
campfire til dawn
yum.. cooked breakfast from the camping stove... thanks to my lady wife !
Shlomo at Eden Project
Shlomo will be supporting Razorlight at the Eden Project as part of a collaborative performance with Marcus Brigstocke and Liam Frost. “Cool Sounds from the Frozen Arctic” is presented by Cape Farewell.
Head down to the biome early and you can also take part in The Amazing Human Beatbox Workshop with Shlomo.
MORE INFO HERE.
Late at Tate – this friday
Hey all.. I will be performing live and talking a bit about my recent voyage to the Arctic at the Tate Britain this Friday evening as part of Cape Farewell’s takeover of Late at Tate. Other performers include Max Eastley, Ian McEwan and one of the superstar musicians from the trip who is apparently “confirmed but shy”.. aaah secrets…. 
More info here: http://www.capefarewell.com/news/latest/347-late-at-tate.html
Rehearsing with Martha Wainwright
Martha and Shlomo rehearsing Martha’s new song, “So Hard” at the Roundhouse in London. from Martha Wainwright on Vimeo.
This is the song that Martha wrote on board our expedition to the Arctic last October. You can hear it in full in the Babelbox Podcast Arctic special!!
Tomorrow is Cape Farewell's Uummannaq Day
Come check out a free event tomorrow evening – Uummannaq Day
Friday 9 January 2009, 8pm.
Ballroom Floor, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre
“I feel like I could live in Uummannaq, it feels like a good town with good people in it.”
KT Tunstall, 1 Oct 2008
The most northerly settlement we visited during the Disko Bay 2008 expedition was Uummannaq, hometown of our Greenlandic guide Ludvig and home to 1400 people and 3000 howling dogs. This town will inspire Uummannaq evening at the Southbank Centre. Join Arctic voyagers Lemn Sissay, Quentin Cooper and myslef for an evening of Arctic stories and performances at Southbank Centre, guided by Ludvig. It’s worth it just to see Ludvig, the guy is a legend!
Uummannaq Day – Cape Farewell – The cultural response to climate change.
Babelbox Podcast episode 5 out now (Arctic Special!)
The Babelbox podcast Episode 5 is out now – an Arctic special.
In this episode we follow Shlomo on an expedition to North Greenland with Cape Farewell. Hear an exclusive new song from Martha Wainwright, music from Feist, Jarvis Cocker and interviews with Marcus Brigstocke, Vanessa Carlton and Laurie Anderson.
your money is powerful
Whilst I was out in the Arctic I was really concerned about the amount of energy we were munching up just by being there. I brought this up at one of the discussions, and one interesting response was from Marcus Brigstocke.
He pointed out that you can waste hours worrying about whether you’ve left the TV on standby, but one thing that can really affect the planet is what you do with your money.
If you put your money in a bank who don’t tell you what their ethical policies are, you have no way of knowing what kind of companies they are investing in. You could be funding weapons deals, oppressive governments and doing all kinds of damage to the planet.
It had never occured to me.
arctic food!
a selection of Greenlandic staple dishes
dried whale-meat. tasted chewy and meaty, slightly fishy. was ok but kept ‘repeating’ on me.
Not sure what these little dried fish were called. I am a big fish fan but these were so chewy!
Graham (founder of treehugger) tries his best to look enthusiastic
raw seal. tastes of blood. and fish. the blubber is cold and flobby. i quite liked this but it was too much for most.
dried haddock – i ate loads of this!
raw seal liver. yum.
Most of our group found the Greenlandic food overwhelming… the local kids thought we were hilarious for making such a fuss – they’d walk past and grab a handful of whale to shove in their mouth.
They also served us melted iceberg… the purest water i’ve had – frozen for over 10,000 years.
Some pics from the Arctic
The view from our cabin on my first morning in Greenland
Me in front of the glacier. (Look closely to get an idea of how massive the glacier is – check out how tiny the people are as they get nearer)
‘BERG!
View from our dinghy on the way to the gig
Performing with KT Tunstall, Robyn Hitchcock and Jarvis
Old-skool sunglasses in local museum
after a while you get used to the wonkiness of living on a boat
Arctic Lofi
Over the final couple of days on board the Cape Farewell trip to the Arctic, everybody on the boat seemed to be extra excited. We only had a little bit of time left together, and suddenly it felt like we all wanted to get as much done creatively as possible.
I’d been chatting with Leslie Feist about messing around with choirs and weird recording spaces (we tried to make a recording in the emergency lifeboat but it was snowed in!). Jarvis had brought a collection of lo-fi equipment, including a tiny battery operated amplifier the size of a pack of cards, a JVC mic that felt like a toy, a miniature battery powered electric guitar, and his piece de resistance, a toy turntable that played real records. (He also used the turntable in one of his many disko dj sets. One of the highlights of the trip was with Marcus Brigstocke and Jarvis, DJing from our iPods for the dancing voyagers until 4am most nights).
Shlo and Jarvis
Anyway, I was in the bar listening to an impromptu piano performance from Ryuichi Sakomoto (amazing guy, he’s an Oscar winning composer but was still happy to put his hat on backwards, don some shades, and take part in the beatbox battle on the last night!). Suddenly I was grabbed by Leslie and Jarvis, and taken up a cabin upstairs where they had set up all the lofi gear. The following jam ensued. We decided to name our newly formed super-group the Arctic Lofi.
Activities
Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jarvis Cocker. Photo: Nathan Gallagher
More images of crew members and their activities
Cabin chaos (representing the general state of the boat). Matt Wainwright edits video for the website hours before we leave the Grigory Mikheev in Kangerlussauq. Photo: Nathan Gallagher
Shlomo prepares for the world’s first Arctic beatbox battle. Photo: Nathan Gallagher
Ryuichi Sakamoto with Sam Collins. Photo: Nathan Gallagher
KT Tunstall’s guitar signed by all the gang. Photo: Nathan Gallagher
Ship’s Bar
Some audio of Vanessa Carlton, KT Tunstall, Robyn Hitchcock and myself jamming in the ship’s bar before playing at the local hotel bar in Ummannak later that evening.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Heroes and Thieves
Vanessa Carlton performs Heroes and Thieves, backed by Shlomo, on the bridge of the Grigory Mikheev as we return south to Kangerlussuaq.
An MPEG 4 version of this clip is also available to download.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Arctic beatbox
Shlomo dedicates his beats to the cause at Hotel Uummannaq. Video: Matt Wainwright.
Click here to view the embedded video.
An MPEG 4 version of this clip is also available to download.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Glaciers, gigs and giggles
Oh my gosh I am in the Arctic. It’s my third day here and I am still a little overwhelmed. And cold. We just went out in a motorised dinghy and I saw my first ever glacier. As we approached this giant wall of ice, there was a sudden explosion, a loud crashing sound, followed by a mini avalanche and a minor tsunami as a large section of ice cracked off the glacier.
This is dramatic stuff, but I couldn’t help but notice that it’s really quite cold. I don’t think my feet have ever been so cold. I’m thinking maybe we should do something about it and warm this place up a bit. Maybe we if we just all made the effort to let out a bit of extra CO2 gas into the atmosphere, it might just have some kind of warming effect and we could increase the world’s temperature a little. I mean come on, these polar bears must be freezing. We could call it ‘international warming or ‘global heating’ or something along those lines. Anybody with me?
Anyway, yesterday was one of the highest ranking days of my life in terms of sheer awesomeness. Ludvig, our Inuit guide, took us through a snowstorm to Uumannaq, his hometown. For me, just a little bit of snow is a pretty exciting concept. As a child, the idea of there being even just a trace of untouched snow (i.e. that has not already been thrown at someone) was pretty rare. So the excitement of seeing pure white snow as far as the eye can see, completely untouched and about half a metre deep was a little overwhelming. I felt my mental age suddenly plummeting. Suddenly I was six years old again. The mass snowball fight was inevitable, but the local Inuit kids were clearly way more experienced and gave us quite an embarrassing pummelling.
In the evening we put on a special birthday gig for one of the kids from the local orphanage. The line-up was quite something. Imagine KT Tunstall singing lead, with Jarvis Cocker doing rhythm guitar, a backing vocal trio of Martha Wainwright, Leslie Feist and Vanessa Carlton, and of course myself as the walking rhythm section.
After the gig I tought a few beatbox sounds to an excited Laurie Anderson. I am now training her up for the Big Beatbox Battle Showdown between herself and Marcus Brigstocke, who does an impressive impersonation of Donald Duck (if he’d just accidentally swallowed a drum machine).
Later on today we are hoping to step out onto a glacier. I actually cannot wait. But I think I might wear a fourth pair of socks.
Arrived at Disko Bay
Hi. Shlomo here. I am pleased to announce that I have finally arrived at Disko Bay. And I am totally shellshocked.
Shlomo in Disko Bay, photo by Nathan Gallagher
In the past 36 hours I’ve travelled from Moscow to the Arctic, with a quick stop off for a performance at Wembley Arena. Somehow I feel quite surprised to have actually arrived. I spent the whole of the last week trying not to visualise what the Arctic would be like, seeing as nothing ever turns out to be how you pictured it.
This seems to have left me a little unprepared for the combined experience of a a) seeing my first giant iceberg (the size of a small bus station) and b) being introduced to Jarvis Cocker, KT Tunstall and Laurie Anderson, all within 10 minutes. Definitely time for a peppermint tea break.
So I’m writing this first blog post with a sense of sleep deprived self-detachment, not really taking in what is happening. Being with all these inspired people seems to have filled my head with a zillion ideas for musical endeavours that could easily save the world. But I think the sea is going to rock me to sleep before they ever make it out of my dizzy mind.
Shlomo is on his way…
Eating pate sandwiches in copenhagen. Flying to greenland first thing tomo!!
9:39pm Monday 29 September
finally off to arctic (via copenhagen)…let’s do this
10:09am Monday 29 September
- as his blog diary states.
Hello from Shlomo in Moscow
Hello. my name is Shlomo. I am a beatboxer who loves music, people and peppermint tea. Right now I am pretty excited to be going on an arctic adventure.
Shlomo in Moscow
But I am not going yet. Right now I’m on the way back to London from Moscow. I am one of the 3 late comers who will be joining the rest of the crew a few days in. When I was first invited on the trip, I was screwing: it clashed with an incredibly important gig (the culmination of a 6-month long commission at Wembley Arena). So I thought I would have to miss out. But the guys from Cape Farewell would not be defeated. Myself and Jude Kelly will be flying out, via Copenhagen, to meet the rest of the crew at the port of Ilulissat on Tuesday.
I’m really excited about the trip – I’ve got myself some amazing mittens that feel like you are putting your hand into a warm room. I’ve also skipped my usual monthly head shaving. Surely I will need all the warmth I can get.
So Moscow to Wembley to Copenhagen to Greenland – I know that is a lot of miles in a plane. This is something that has been bothering me since I heard about the trip. We are going to be munching our way through a fair amount of resources on this mission. At the moment I don’t have an answer to this particular problem. I
have no idea what the voyage will be like, so I’m here with no preconceptions, just to see what happens, and see what we can make happen.
I'm going on an Arctic Expedition.
I’m really pleased to announce that I’m going on an expedition to the Arctic with Cape Farewell. They are a charity working to create a cultural response to climate change. They are taking a 40 strong crew of musicians, artists and scientists on a 12 day trip to Disko Bay on the West coast of Greenland.
The boat will voyage across the front of the Jakobshavn Glacier, one of Greenland’s largest glaciers. It is moving at an alarming rate, faster than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day.
Some of the artists on board include Laurie Anderson, Vanessa Carlton, Jarvis Cocker, Feist, Robyn Hitchcock, Ryuichi Sakamoto, KT Tunstall, Martha Wainwright, Marcus Brigstocke and Lemn Sissay.
We set sail in four weeks time. I’ll be blogging and sending updates to this site live from the voyage. So far I have not really had a moment to think about it. But I need to get myself a warm jacket!
