Free download: London Mouthtronica collaborations
I invite a different artist to perform an improvised collaboration with me at each of my Mouthtronica shows. The day after each show you can download the live collaboration as a free single. Share the love!
Free download: Lip Factory Circle Jams
FREE DOWNLOAD!
The day after each ‘Shlomo and the Lip Factory’ gig you will be able to download the unique improvised ‘circle jam’ FOR FREE from this very page.
love from Shlo and the team x
Mouthtronica London Run at Southbank Centre, December 13-15 2011
SHLOMO: Mouthtronica
Purcell Room at Southbank Centre
Tuesday 13 December 2011 – Thursday 15 December 2011, 7.45pm
BUY TICKETS
I’m delighted to announce a three night run of my one-man show Mouthtronica at London’s famous Southank Centre. Come and spend an evening listening to me making loud beatbox sounds and polite conversation as I take you on a journey through my life as a beatboxer. Warning, may contain extremely heavy vocal beats, mammoth mouth breaks and bad-ass throat bass.
Video: Michael Winslow, Shlomo and Soweto Entsha in HD
Here it is in full HD – the now legendary #Winshlo night at the Edinburgh Fringe where I got to collaborate with a childhood hero Michael Winslow, and the beautiful voices of Soweto Entsha. WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE
Only 8 weeks to download the Mouthtronica charity albums
Ladies and gentlemen, here they are in their entirety. 45 nights. 45 guests. 45 tracks of pure spontaneous collaborative improvisation, all benefits going to MSF (Doctors Without Borders).
These will only be available to download until October 31st 2011. What are you waiting for?
List of collaborators for Mouthtronica at the Fringe
Here’s the list of guest collaborators who will be joining me to improvise during the run of my one man show Mouthtronica at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. You can buy tickets here and don’t forget to download the audio of each collaboration for charity the next day.
Tue 9th Aug – Butterfly Effect
Wed 10th Aug – Randolph Matthews
Thu 11th Aug – Worbey & Farrell
Fri 12th Aug – The Rayguns Look Real Enough
13th Aug – Vikki Stone
14th Aug – Rob Broderick from ABANDOMAN
16th Aug – Helen Arney
17th Aug – Segue Sisters
18th Aug – Steve Lawson
19th Aug – The Magnets
20th Aug – Special Guest To Be Announced
21st Aug – The Twoks
22nd Aug – Fork
23rd Aug – Out Of The Blue
24th Aug – Special Guest To Be Announced
25th Aug – All The King’s Men
26th Aug – Isy Suttie
Video: Rehearsing for Shlomo’s Glasto Circus
Here’s an exclusive behind the scenes video of preparations for Shlomo’s Glasto Circus featuring Ed Sheeran (who is currently at number 3 in the charts!), Bellatrix (World Female Beatbox Champion) and Rob Broderick (ridiculously talented comedy freestyle rapper from Abandoman).
Watch the LIVE STREAM of Shlomo’s Glasto Circus on Fri 24 June
For those of you who can’t make it to Glasto:
We will be broadcasting live, right here, from the biggest festival in the world! Lyrix Organix in partnership with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have a huge stageshow at Zona Bassline in The Common on Friday night, featuring the biggest and best artists from the UK underground – including Example, Ed Sheeran, Shlomo, Toddla T, True Tiger, P Money and many, many more! Get your tea and watch it mud-free from your bedroom. It’s going to be truly epic.
SHLOMO’S GLASTO CIRCUS
1.15am BST on Friday night (Saturday morning)
NB The broadcast starts at 10pm with the running order below:
10.00pm KAYA
10.30pm DJ (Cal Jader)
11.00pm LATIN DUB SOUNDSYSTEM
11.30pm DJ (Cal Jader)
11.45pm THE BOXETTES
12.15pm Special Guest
12.30pm ED SHEERAN
01.00am DJ
01.15am SHLOMO’S GLASTO CIRCUS + surprise guests
02.20am EXAMPLE
03.00am TODDLA T + MC SEROCEE
03.45am GENTLEMANS DUB CLUB + P MONEY
04.15am TRUE TIGER
05.00am ENGINE-EARZ EXPERIMENT + special guests
06.00am close
SHLOMO: MOUTHTRONICA AT EDINBURGH FRINGE Aug 4-29 2011
SHLOMO: MOUTHTRONICA
Aug 4-29 2011 @ Belly Dancer, Underbelly, Cowgate
BUY TICKETS NOW
One man. One mouth. One mic. Taking the art of beat- boxing beyond gimmickry. A dazzling mix of story telling and high energy, genre-hopping, voice-box mashing from the 2011 World Loopstation Champion. ‘Jaw-droppingly good’ (Guardian).
Highly exciting news friends: my one man theatre show “Mouthtronica” will be running for the duration of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August! Come and join me for an evening of loud beatboxing and polite conversation. Once again I’ll be collaborating with a different artist each night, so any suggestions welcome!
Polar Bear vs Shlomo jazz quintet
What a night!
I played with my own jazz quintet, featuring my dad Jeremy on guitar, and trombone legend Annie Whitehead.
I also did a special duet with poet Lemn Sissay which made my spine tingle.
Polar Bear played a storming solo set which redefined experimental jazz to me.
Then I joined Polar Bear in the second half for what was my single most incredible experience with free improvisation.
I ‘battled’ their drummer and leader Seb Rochford, had my voice mangled and magnified by Leafcutter John’s electronics, and we created some incredible music!
Check out the MP3 of the first piece we did. I’ve called it ‘Stephats’.
Then as the finale both bands came back onstage for a massive jam! Too awesome for words. The Guardian gave us a 4-star review.
Shlomo collaborates with Michael Jackson (via DJ Yoda!)
This was the third concert in the series and by now the momentum of the idea has really picked up some pace. Tickets for the show sold out almost straight after the concert with Martha and Teddy before we had really done any promotion, which is awesome as it means that people heard about it through word-of-mouth and buzz!
This was another show put together against the clock – I only first met with DJ Yoda to chat through ideas about 2 weeks beforehand, and tickets were already sold out. Yoda was a bit worried at first because he was then away on tour until a few days before the concert, but after a bit of jamming we were coming up with shedloads of ideas.
The concept of DJ Yoda’s performance is all about scratching video using special DVD turntables. It’s amazing to watch and the extra visual element to scratching really adds to the experience and the understanding of how skilled a scratch DJ really is.
It also meant that we had to do some fairly meticulous preparation as everything has to be burned on to custom DVDs beforehand. We spent a day shooting some clips around the Southbank, and then spent 3 days locked in the lab polishing up the show.
We came up with a technique which means we can do a ‘live remix’ of almost any tune. Yoda has a hundreds of acappella versions of well known tunes… once he had synched that up with the original video (courtesy of YouTube!) he could then scratch up the original vocals over my remix beatbox version.
Hence the ‘collaboration’ with Michael Jackson, aged 7, on a crazy live remix version of ‘Want You Back’, featuring myself looping up the instrument tracks, singing the backing vocals, and all five of the Jacksons dancing on a giant screen behind me!
At this point the already wild Friday night crowd at the QEH nearly lost control! They were all up off their seats, dancing in the aisles and down at the front! The party continued with Yoda and friends DJing out in the Foyer until the early hours, and I was chuffed to meet a some audience members who had travelled all the way from places like Newcastle, Nottingham and Bristol to see the show, several who had been at all three of the concerts so far, and loads who already had tickets for all the upcoming ones.
Short-listed for music prize
The PRS Foundation have just announced the shortlist for their ‘New Music Award’, and I’ve made the last six from over 130 hopefuls! The winner of this prestigious award will be announced in April, and will receive £50k towards their proposed project.
My plan is to commission a ‘Concerto for Beatboxer and Orchestra’ from top composer Anna Meredith, to be performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 2009. This is no novelty piece, it will be a challenge to create a modern classical work recognising the human voicebox as a full-blown musical instrument.
More info at the PRS foundation.
Folk meets beatbox
In the second of the MTUM concerts I invited Martha Wainwright and Teddy Thompson to collaborate with me. I first met Teddy a couple of years ago when we were on Jools Holland’s show together, and we’d talked about getting something together ever since. I met Martha backstage at Glastonbury and we got on really well, so I thought it would be amazing to mix their delicate, singer-songwriter folksy guitar music with my beatboxing.
The first half was a real treat… Teddy went on first to a packed QEH crowd, they seemed to be a mixed bunch, kind of spread out between the three artists. I was amazed by Teddy’s country style singing… he sounded the real deal! I went on after him and was so concious about the massive change in volume so I started off by going easy on the crowd, with some quiet kicks and snares, before dropping in some looping. Martha was on next and her solo slot was spine-tingling.
For the second half we started with a series of duos. First of all me and Teddy did a rendition of one of Teddy’s tracks, followed by our interpretation of ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’. Here’s an MP3 of the first track: cantsingstraight.mp3.
Then Martha joined Teddy to sing a duet of an Everly brothers song, followed by another duet from myself and Martha.
The finale of the show was when all three of us performed together, and Martha made me do something I have never done before – playing guitar and singing a folk song! We sang Bob Dylan’s ‘Dont think twice, it’s alright’. I was so nervous to sing but the whole crowd were so supportive and I enjoyed it so much, I’m planning to bring more singing / guitar into my shows.
Here’s the MP3 of us singing together: martha-teddy-shlomo.mp3.
The show got a great response, including a 4-star review in The Independent, describing it as “A performance of jaw dropping artistry…the experimentation is playful, the message is simple: in the music playground, carefree creativity beats crass commercialism hands down.”
Top right is the short film that Sarah from SeaBuzzard prepared, it was screened at the beginning of the show. If you want to see the full performance, you’ll have to wait for the MTUM Box Set DVD release!!!
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