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Cabaret Songs
& Shows (2002 - Present)
Project Adorno are seasoned performers on the fringe cabaret scene
with appearances at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Buxton Fringe,
Cheltenham Literature Festival and Latitude Festival among others.
Their songs and poems feature a range of subjects from old computer
games, and love affairs with Daleks to celebrations of Jeremy Paxman
and the smell of second-hand books. Often chaotic, their
performances generally leave audiences with smiles on their
faces....
There's a wealth of Project Adorno
footage on YouTube featuring live performances and odd videos
(official & unofficial). It's hard to keep track of it all sometimes, but
if you're interested in seeing what we look and sound like here's a
summary of some of our favourite clips:
Project Adorno at Dodo Modern Poets
(videos courtesy of PR Murry):
Project
Adorno perform their National Trust song (venue unspecified), 2012
Project
Adorno at Brighton Peace and Environment Centre benefit gig October
2007
Project
Adorno "lock-down" special gig May 2020
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Brontë
Beat
(2019)
The
contribution to literature made by the three Brontë
sisters and their brother Branwell is the stuff of legend – their
work has a unique flavour mingling wild romance, domestic realism,
epic poetry and local detail, the personal and the peculiar.
Brontë
Beat is a performance collage weaving the facts of their
lives with the myths of their fiction. Comprising
original songs, film, ambient sounds and spoken word, it explores
the multi-faceted world of the Brontës
through an electro-pop lens – from their early dabblings in
“scribblemania” to the success of their novels and the
fascinating history of their all too brief lives. The piece also
includes interview extracts from people connected to the literature,
landscape and places associated with the Brontë
story.
Synopsis
& song summary
Brontë
Beat video excerpt |
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Dennis Potter in
the Present Tense (2016)
TV
dramatist and playwright Dennis Potter was the ultimate
Marmite figure – one minute delighting millions with musical
plays such as The
Singing Detective and Pennies
From Heaven, the next causing outrage and controversy with
productions such as Blackeyes and Brimstone
& Treacle. In this performance piece, electro-acoustic
duo Project Adorno present a contemporary interpretation of
Potter, through an ambient segue of original songs, video and
spoken word extracts from people who knew or had some
connection to him and his work.
Buxton Fringe review 2016:
"Project
Adorno have to be admired by their tenacity and thorough
research, thereby generating a unique and very enjoyable
nostalgic work."
Synopsis &
song summary
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Jarman in Pieces
(2014)
Filmmaker,
painter, gay rights activist, author, gardener – Derek
Jarman packed many roles into a short life. Twenty years
from his death, his standing has never been higher. And
yet he remains a contradictory figure: a self-effacing
exhibitionist, a well-to-do RAF child who embraced the
possibilities of punk. For decades, he was a thorn in the
establishment’s side and yet is now dangerously close to
something he would have hated – the status of national
treasure.
Jarman In Pieces is a performance collage comprising
original songs, film, interviews with people who knew
Jarman, ambient sounds and spoken word that aims to
celebrate these contrasts rather than reconcile them.
“A
multi-media experience with a good deal of entertaining
and thought-provoking music”
ScotsGay
magazine.
Synopsis & song
summary
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Ministry of the
Mundane (2008)
A
short film & performance piece in the vein of Patrick Keiller's
"London/Robinson in Space" series. With a nod to Gilbert
& George, Project Adorno recount tales of Kafka-esque
beaurocratisation putting the "Eighties" into
"1984" with an Orwellian take on news, views & (dis)information
all accompanied by a pre i-pod soundtrack that is entirely their
own.
Ministry
of the Mundane Pt1 extract |
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Satie (1995/2008)
We were approached to make a film to
accompany a live performance of Erik Satie's "Relache"
opera/ballet for the 1995 Merton Arts Festival.Satie was a rather
eccentric figure by all accounts with a penchant for umbrellas and a
collection of twelve identical grey suits among other things. We
decided to include such elements of his personality into the film
which ended up becoming a somewhat surreal biographical portrait of
the man himself. In addition it borrowed heavily on the themes of
artists such as Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte. Disaster
almost struck on the day of the performance/screening when five
minutes before we were due to "go on" there was a power
cut rendering the whole of the Lantern Cafe in darkness. This was
somewhat ironic bearing in mind that "Relache"
roughly translated into English means "non performance"!
In 2008 the Satie film was dusted down and digitally restored. It
was screened at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to the accompaniment
of a new, original score as part of the Project Adorno/Steve Lake
show, Tales From the Cutting Room Floor. Best
described as an
abstract biopic featuring filmic images shot in gaudy, Jarman-esque
super-8 welded to a lively sound-collage mixing song, spoken word,
found-sound and electro-rhythms.
Watch Satie
2008 Pt1 extract
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A-Z of the London
Underground (2004)
The brief:
to visit 26 stations on the London Underground from A-Z, in a
weekend, in the process writing a song or poem inspired by each
location, ultimately creating an alternative cultural guide to
underground London…
The idea became a reality and in turn became an Edinburgh Festival
Fringe Show. Performed since at local festivals, in many ways this
work is akin to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ever evolving and never
quite finished....
The
Central Line song video
Upney
Sidings Audio Recording
Dollis Hill Audio Recording
Project Adorno's A-Z of the London
Underground audiocast Pt1
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Dr Dewey Decimal
(2003)
Otherwise
known as Library:
The musical.
A two-man cabaret piece - songs and musical poems largely on the
theme of libraries, with a twist of vaudeville thrown in. First
performed at Edinburgh Fringe in 2003, but resurrected
since for local festivals and also performed at an Annual Chief
Librarians Conference.
Project
Adorno's Library Poem
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Chunnel
Vision & Art-Space (1995/2002)
We
threw everything we had into "Chunnel Vision" a multimedia
work of staggeringly "operatic" proportions. It was a
concept seriously beyond our abilities (and our budget!). Featuring
electronic music, sound samples, choral singing, "treated"
violin and de-tuned TVs it was showcased to an audience of one at
the Merton Civic Centre in 1995, pre-dating Brian Eno's "Music
For Civic Recovery Centre" by some years. Positively Wagnerian.
Here's what the local newspaper said by way of promoting the event:
30th
March 1995 - Mitcham & Morden Guardian
Leisure
Multi-media day at Centre
An audio visual
celebration of twentieth century European culture, art and music is
being staged by a brother and sister [sic] at
Merton Civic Centre. Keynotes are performing the multi-media show on
April 8 under the title Chunnel Vision. Entry is free and pieces
will be performed at regular intervals throughout the day starting
at noon. Anyone interested in performance art, the avant garde and
the use of new techonology in sound and vision is invited.
Chunnel Vision was briefly resurrected the following
year as part of Project Adorno's 1996 Edinburgh Fringe show,
Millennium Suite, although technical glitches prevented it from
being fully realised. In 2002 the Chunnel
Vision piece was revisited and re-worked to include elements of
spoken word performance poetry. It was performed at Artspace, an art
show taking place in a terraced house in North London.
Read
more about it here
One day we vow to return to Chunnel Vision and perform it as it
appears & sounds in our heads. In many ways the later works on
Jarman and Potter owe a nod stylistically to this piece.
A digitally "re-constructed" version of the original
Chunnel Vision piece from 1995 can be viewed here |
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Cheap
Sweets & Sequencers (2001)
In
2001 Project Adorno contributed a multimedia installation entitled
"Cheap Sweets & Sequencers" to an art show organised
by Lost Property Arts. The installation featured all the usual
Project Adorno trademarks including music, sound samples and poems.
It also featured slide projections and a large quantity of
sweets....(Soundtrack available on Project Adorno CD "Cheap
Sweets & Sequencers")
The work was just one of a number of exhibits on display at
the avant-garde art show taking place in the undercroft of the
Camden Roundhouse...
Read
more about it here
Watch
Project Adorno's "private view" tour of the exhibition
here |
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Fickle
(1994)
Project
Adorno's first film. Shot in black and white super 8 Fickle was
foisted onto an unsuspecting public at Morley College, London during
1994.
In
undertaking electronic music courses at the time we were invited to
contribute an "electro-acoustic" composition for the
"end of term" concert. Whilst those around us grappled
with Baroque style arrangements, familiarised themselves with the
intricacies of MIDIfying bass guitars, or used ancient synthesisers
to provide passable impersonations of the BBC radiophonic workshop,
we on the other hand decided to bring visuals into the equation.
Thus
Fickle was born embodying all that is transitory in our lives. It is
a film very much in the tradition of Bunuel and Dali's "Un
chien Andalou" and owes much also to "Meshes of the
afternoon". The emotions of the central character, the
androgenous engineer, are displayed within the various settings that
he/she/it? finds itself. (The drudgery of walking up and down stairs
as opposed to the adrenalin rush of a fairground joyride). The
exploration of opposites such as the work/leisure,
freedom/conformity, inside/outside, open/closed, up/down, choice/no
choice dichotomies are discussed. Images ebb and flow with the music
(a discarded wardrobe on a beach, oily globules of paint running
down a canvas of confromity, television as deity and its subsequent
execution), exploring the relationship between the individual and
the surrounding internal and external architecture. It is a film
embodying the maxim "as one door closes another one
opens".
Click
here to watch Fickle on You Tube
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OpenHaus
Communications 2019