Opening the first ever Optronica Festival at the BFI London IMAX with the World premiere of their new surround-sound AV project Greedy Baby, Warp Record's artists Plaid and video artist Bob Jaroc brought their electronic music and visual collaboration to the ultimate AV venue, making the most of the amazing 5.1 surround sound PA and, of course, the biggest cinema screen in Europe.

In the early and mid-'90s, working with Ken Downie as the dancefloor-confounding Black Dog Productions, Plaid's Ed Handley and Andy Turner began their recording careers much as they have carried on; making eclectic but inspiring dance music that always managed to neatly side-step the commercial compromises of your average techno act. Splitting from Downie in 1995, the pair released an EP on the neo-electro Clear label before signing to Warp Records. Plaid's first two albums, 1998's Not for Threes and the following year's Rest Proof Clockwork gained a raft of glowing reviews, establishing their reputation. The end of 2003 brought their fourth proper LP, Spokes.

Plaid's live performances always attract a strong following, not least because of their impressive visual dimension thanks to the on-going collaboration with Brighton-based animator and VJ Bob Jaroc. The DVD of Greedy Baby is due for release in 2006 on Warp.

www.plaid.co.uk
www.softloader.com

Voting them number one in their 2004 Worldwide VJ poll, DJ Magazine said of London based Addictive TV "If there ever was a truly ground-breaking bunch of guys in the VJ world, it's certainly this lot." The group of VJs, DJs and producers have been championing the art of the VJ and pushing it into mainstream media for a decade now; performing, producing TV shows such as the seminal DJ:VJ music series Mixmasters for ITV1 in the UK and releasing DVDs (Addictive TV set-up what's acknowledged as the first VJ-oriented DVD label back in 1999), releases have included Audiovisualize, the Mixmasters compilation series and DVD cult classic Transambient.

Criss-crossing both the art and club worlds, they've played at venues from the Pompidou Centre in Paris to Tokyo superclub Ageha. And as VJs, they've mixed live visual sets for artists including Howie B, Andrew Weatherall, Goldie and Fatboy Slim. This year, Addictive TV were asked to be the judges for the VJ category at the 2005 Diesel-U-Music Awards and the Radio 1 / BBC archive "Superstar VJs" competition.

Teaming up with the UK's National Theatre to launch their Watch This Space outdoor strand, Optronica presented the festival organisers Addictive TV performing their new AV show The Eye of the Pilot live on the fly-tower of the National Theatre building. The giant 30 metre projections were visible right across the River Thames and stopped traffic on Waterloo Bridge! With an original soundtrack from Addictive TV featuring live guitar from French artist Alejandro de Valera, the aerial travelogue remixed the incredible 8mm colour archive of the French airline pilot Raymond Lamy, filmed during his global travels back in the 1950s.

Straight after the show, Addictive TV performed a special short AV club set, where The Streets met Elvis, Mick Jagger and the Stones never looked so young and The Italian Job got completely remixed!

www.addictive.tv
www.optronica.org

If you're talking artists always cited by top musos as being hugely influential, you can't get much better than this guy. Originally a classically trained percussionist and keyboard player, Karl Bartos was a key member of the pioneering German electronic group Kraftwerk, famed for groundbreaking albums such as Man Machine, Trans Europe Express and Computer World. Acknowledged to be one of the most important bands to come out of the 1970s, without them there would have been no hip hop, no house, no ambient music, no electro and even Michael Jackson, with whom they flatly refused to collaborate, would probably have sounded different.

Kraftwerk were one of the few groups who've actually changed how music sounds.

Mixing new material with Kraftwerk classics and wittily illustrated on-screen by Cologne VJ artist Karsten Binar, the Bartos live show, with its themes of communication, celebrity and technology, brought classic Teutonic techno-pop with a visual twist to Optronica's second night at the bfi London IMAX Cinema.

Also, in a special Optronica event at the NFT, where the former white-suited robot turned polymath was interviewed by BFI artistic director Eddie Berg, Bartos gave a talk on the development of cultural communication. From the magic of writing to the magic of electronics, and tracing ideas from Plato, Heidegger through to Huxley and Leary, Bartos expounded on how modern media is turning word-centered culture into image-centered culture. Heaaavvvvyyyy dude.

www.karlbartos.com

DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation - a solo multimedia remix of DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation, the cinematically sophisticated but ideologically flawed 1915 chronicle of the American Civil War and its aftermath. Despite being America's first full length feature film and being cited as a seminal work of visual syntax, Griffith's revisionist message badly needed taking to task. That sounds like a task for That Subliminal Kid.

New York conceptual artist, writer, and musician Paul D Miller, in his guise as the noted turntablist DJ Spooky (That Subliminal Kid), has done more to mainstream the DJ-as-artist concept than perhaps anyone. Before turning at least some of his attentions to the world of film, he has recorded a huge volume of music over the years, remixing artists from Metallica to Steve Reich and launching the NYC 'illbient' scene with his mix album Necropolis: The Dialogic Project and his debut solo release Songs of a Dead Dreamer. His 2002 CD Optometry, a collaboration with Matthew Shipp and other downtown NYC jazz musicians, was released to critical acclaim. His newest release is Drums of Death, with Dave Lombardo of Slayer, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Vernon Reid of Living Color and Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto. He's collaborated with eminent artists such as Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yoko Ono, Butch Morris, Kool Keith a.k.a. Doctor Octagon, Killa Priest from Wu-Tang Clan and Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth. He also scored the Sundance Film Festival award winner "Slam" starring poet Saul Williams.

www.djspooky.com

Exceeda was formed in 1995 and are now one of the UK's leading live AV acts and VJ teams, headed by edit master DVJ:X aka Xavier Perkins and scratch turntablist and DJ producer Tom Guest. Romping through graphic styles and cultural references, Exceeda push the frontiers of audiovisual production by raiding archives, remixing film samples and constructing original beats alongside experimental sounds to create a truly live multiscreen cinematic experience that combines a huge variety of imagery and contemporary music.

Applying their innovative editing skills to producing trailers, idents and ads, they've worked for MTV, FilmFour, Channel 4, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, Nickelodeon, Panasonic, Smirnoff and Nike. They've also created work for Warp Records, drum 'n' bass artists London Elektricity and for projects such as Addictive TV's Mixmasters series. Live they've played at Cinedays in Brussels, Antenna and Netmage in Italy, Videa in Barcelona, Chicago Film Festival, SAT in Montreal and Bochum in Germany, as well as events in France, Poland, Spain, Denmark, along with Glastonbury, The Big Chill and Essential festivals in the UK.

In London they run regular short film and visual oriented nights including 4x4 at the 291 Gallery, and FutureCinema at Too2much (the former Raymond Review Bar) in Soho. Exceeda won the Diesel-U-Music best VJ Award 2003, were voted in the top ten of world VJs by DJ Magazine 2004 and are currently working on their debut DVD album for release in 2005.

www.exceeda.co.uk

LEGOWELT

Described by Vice Magazine as "one of the most inventive and restless talents in electronic music today" Danny Wolfers aka Dutch remixer and recording artist Legowelt began producing music in the early 1990's after hearing Detroit artists like Underground Resistance and Model 500 and Chicago heroes Farley, Jackmaster Funk and Mr Fingers.

In 1998 Holland's Bunker Records released Legowelt's Pimpshifter, which became an instant cult hit with tracks such as Stumvogel and Total Pussy Control. Other notables included Disco Rout which was voted track of the year 2002 by Germany's Groove magazine. He's remixed for producers and artists from Sven Vath to Solvent (Ghostly International) and Plastique De Rev (Mental Groove). An insanely prolific producer, Wolfers also records under a handful of other aliases including Gladio, Polarius and Klaus Weltman, releasing on a number of different labels. As Legowelt, he's released a dozen or so projects on various formats, with particular fondness for vinyl, most of them on Bunker records.
Legowelt is an artist who thinks that most electronic music is too clinical, and has been quoted as saying "the music that I want to make and hear has a raw kind of vibe that isn't so clinical like today's dance music, where everything is so digital and flat. It has to rock!"
www.xs4all.nl/~awolfe/


STANZACREW

Famous for absorbing just about anything and everything into their twisted minds, before realising it digitally and spitting it back out on-screen, the stylistically self-described stilo cutters, copy paste stencil masters and photo-maniacs, Stanzacrew, actually started out their creative life with a slide show for the 103 birthday of one of their grandmothers!

Six years on, the top Dutch visuals trio perform their idiosyncratic motion graphics internationally playing in France, Germany, Belgium, the UK and the USA and have been spotted at festivals like 10 Days Off, Pukkelpop and I Love Techno in Belgium, the Lowlands Festival and TOON in the Netherlands and Dedbeat Festival here in the UK - and of course at many clubs, venues, living rooms and even underground bunkers!
They've made videos for bands including Lomechanik, Autophonic and Krang and their work has been released on the Dutch visuals DVD label NoTV on their Visual Music compilation series.

www.stanzacrew.com

Si Begg

Toying incessantly with genre conventions, Begg's bass heavy tunes span the dance music spectrum; from breaks & electro funk to techno and UK Garage.

To wean himself off a teenage diet of prog rock, electro and free jazz, Begg joined the notorious Cabbage Head collective in the early '90s, working with noted dance producers like Cristian Vogel, with whom Begg formed the Mosquito label.

Since 1994 Si has released a deluge of tracks, recording as Cabbageboy, Bigfoot, Buckfunk 3000, SI Futures and under his own name on labels such as Ninja Tune, Chrome, Mille Plateaux, Tresor, Eukatech, Language, Mute and his own Mosquito and Noodles imprints. Solo albums include Director's Cut and (as SI Futures) The Mission Statement. Crammed label subsidiary Language issued the debut Buckfunk 3000 EP toward the end of 1996 and the 1997 Buckfunk 3000 LP First Class Ticket to Telos was followed by a Si Begg full-length for Caipirinha - the 1998 Commuter World. His plethora of remixes include Sven Vath, Leftfield, DJ Rush and Sigue Sigue Sputnik!

www.sibegg.com


Tomographer

A collective of 3D animators, motion graphics designers and live VJs lead by Ken Sawamiya aka Ken-S, Tokyo based TomoGrapher are one of the leading and most pro-active VJ teams in Japan. The team, including Psy-men, Shimamu, Zoe and Art Takeshi, have produced work for Sony, Nike, TDK and Japanese telecoms giant NTT DoCoMo. They closely work with the techno group Share The Fantasy, especially for audiovisually recorded work. Ken-S is also the man behind the VJ project Pixelcraft, who release the VJ software Pixplayer Lite and compilations of copyright free visual material called Pixdiscs. He also organises the Tokyo VJ nights called PIX, where VJs perform head-to-head hip-hop MC style.

www.pixdisc.com

Spinning for the UK amongst the international line-up at Optronica @ The Spitz is one of London's most dynamic DJs, recording artists and remixers, Si Begg. Toying incessantly with genre conventions, Begg's bass heavy tunes span the dance music spectrum; from breaks & electro funk to techno and UK Garage.

To wean himself off a teenage diet of prog rock, electro and free jazz, Begg joined the notorious Cabbage Head collective in the early '90s, working with noted dance producers like Cristian Vogel, with whom Begg formed the Mosquito label.

Since 1994 Si has released a deluge of tracks, recording as Cabbageboy, Bigfoot, Buckfunk 3000, SI Futures and under his own name on labels such as Ninja Tune, Chrome, Mille Plateaux, Tresor, Eukatech, Language, Mute and his own Mosquito and Noodles imprints. Solo albums include Director's Cut and (as SI Futures) The Mission Statement. Crammed label subsidiary Language issued the debut Buckfunk 3000 EP toward the end of 1996 and the 1997 Buckfunk 3000 LP First Class Ticket to Telos was followed by a Si Begg full-length for Caipirinha - the 1998 Commuter World. His plethora of remixes include Sven Vath, Leftfield, DJ Rush and Sigue Sigue Sputnik!

For Optronica Si Begg will be playing a DJ set at the club night Optronica at The Spitz alongside Japanese VJs TomoGrapher.


Optronica at The Spitz
The Spitz, London E1
Saturday July 23


Streaming on Samurai FM is a remix of the Cary Grant and Audry Hepburn film Charade made as The Noodles Foundation with his visuals collaborators Robin Mahoney (director of Glastonbury - The Movie) and Antony Alexander for the Mixmasters television series. The Noodles Foundation are now working on a DVD album for Addictive TV.

www.sibegg.com
www.optronica.org

Voting them number one in their 2004 Worldwide VJ poll, DJ Magazine said of London based Addictive TV "If there ever was a truly ground-breaking bunch of guys in the VJ world, it's certainly this lot." The group of VJs, DJs and producers have been championing the art of the VJ and pushing it into mainstream media for a decade now; performing, producing TV shows such as their seminal DJ:VJ music series Mixmasters for ITV1 in the UK and releasing DVDs (Addictive TV set-up what's acknowledged as the first VJ-oriented DVD label back in 1999), releases have included Audiovisualize, the Mixmasters compilation series and DVD cult classic Transambient.

Criss-crossing art and club worlds, they've played at venues from the Pompidou Centre in Paris to Tokyo superclub Ageha. And as VJs, they've mixed live visual sets for artists including Howie B, Andrew Weatherall, Goldie and Fatboy Slim. This year, Addictive TV are the judges for the VJ category at the 2005 Diesel-U-Music Awards.

Teaming up with the UK's The National Theatre to launch their Watch This Space outdoor strand, Optronica presents Addictive TV performing their AV show The Eye of the Pilot live on the fly-tower of the National Theatre building. With giant projections visible across the River Thames and an original soundtrack from Addictive TV featuring live guitar from Alejandro de Valera, the aerial travelogue remixes the incredible 8mm colour archive of French airline pilot Raymond Lamy, filmed during his global travels back in the 1950s.

The following night at the Optronica club night, Addictive TV will also perform a special short live AV set, where The Streets meet Elvis and The Italian Job gets completely remixed.

Addictive TV - The Eye of the Pilot
National Theatre, London SE1
10.30pm. Friday July 22

Optronica at The Spitz, London E1
Saturday July 23

Streaming on Samurai FM is Addictive TV's audiovisual breaks remix of the
first US TV performance in the 60's by The Rolling Stones of 'Satisfation'.

www.addictive.tv
www.optronica.org

Following their first audio-only release in 1995, The Mellowtrons debut album Evacuate was released in 1996 on the Chillout label. More releases followed on both Skam and Lo Recordings in the UK and on US label Rawkus.

In the early 90's Lee Walker began as a backline technician for the influential band Meat Beat Manifesto before eventually collaborating with them. As an engineer, he also toured with Orbital, Disco Inferno and Autechre. Giles Thacker began VJing in the mid 80s under the name Ultrascope and was one of the first VJs in the UK, even using homebuilt projectors! In 1994 he joined forces with Orbital, transforming their live show with powerful motion graphics and over the next 7 years Orbital's live show became a legend, winning awards and gaining a reputation for innovative video design. Giles has also created live show graphics for the Verve, KLF, Richard Ashcroft, Royksopp and Turin Brakes.

Their first live AV performance as The Mellowtrons was in 1998 at London's Institute of Contempory Arts and they're currently working on their first DVD album for release in 2006.

At Optronica The Mellowtrons will be supporting Plaid & Bob Jaroc for the festival's opening night at the bfi London IMAX Cinema.


The Mellowtrons
BFI London IMAX cinema, London SE1
9.15pm. Wednesday July 20

Streaming on Samurai FM is their audiovisual piece 'Momentum'.

www.themellowtrons.com
www.optronica.org

A collective of 3D animators, motion graphics designers and live VJs lead by Ken Sawamiya aka Ken-S, Tokyo based TomoGrapher are one of the leading and most pro-active VJ teams in Japan. The team, including Psy-men, Shimamu, Zoe and Art Takeshi, have produced work for Sony, Nike, TDK and Japanese telecoms giant NTT DoCoMo. They closely work with the techno group Share The Fantasy, especially for audiovisually recorded work. Ken-S is also the man behind the VJ project Pixelcraft, who release the VJ software Pixplayer Lite and compilations of copyright free visual material called Pixdiscs. He also organises the Tokyo VJ nights called PIX, where VJs perform head-to-head hip-hop MC style.

For Optronica TomoGrapher will be performing a VJ set at the club night
Optronica at The Spitz alongside DJ Si Begg.

Optronica at The Spitz
The Spitz, London E1
Saturday July 23

Streaming on Samurai FM is the piece 'Third Ear' with visuals by TomoGrapher and music by leading Japanese DJ / producer Hiroshi Watanabe aka Tread. This audiovisual mix was produced for the Mixmasters television series.

www.pixdisc.com
www.optronica.org