Last night the String Project convoyed over to Bristol for some live performance video shooting with the rather wonderful Harboured Sounds project.

As a video shoot / live recording session, probably the only thing I want to say about it is that I cannot imagine that band laying down such good results as we did in three and two takes respectively even months ago. I’m really looking forward to the results coming out!

Also though, just setting up and playing music in a public place without promotion, context or any apparent purpose is always an interesting experiment. Particularly in a city centre on a Saturday night, and when it’s Bristol with its vibrant grassroots music and busking scene. Video shoots aren’t much fun to watch, even live performance ones – there’s an awful lot of standing around, fiddling with electrical gear, playing short snatches for level / setup / reference, and relatively very little actually just playing entire songs. Nonetheless as people came and went we gathered a surprising number of passing audience (more than the couple of buskers I’d seen while it was still daylight anyway), and even got a couple of rounds of applause at the ends of takes. And one particularly enterprising or desperate flyer distributor for Walkabout (!).

Turns out trip-hop minimalist classical folk funk fusion with live strings and beatbox has mass appeal after all!