 |
It is increasingly rare to come across a project that genuinely defies description, where no pigeon-hole will do. 1 Giant Leap, pushing the cutting-edge technology of the 21st century to its limit, their own fierce intelligence and consumate musicality plus a list of collaborators ranging from Michael Stipe to Kurt Vonnegut, Asha Bhosle to Dennis Hopper, have done just that. Others taking part include Stewart Copeland, Brian Eno, Baaba Maal, Tom Robbins, Maxi Jazz from Faithless, Neneh Cherry, The Mahotella Queens, Speech from Arrested Development, Andy Summers, Eddi Reader and Linton Kwesi Johnson. 1 Giant Leap are Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman who first met at a mutual friend’s flat in Brighton and found that they shared a deep love for two universally influential albums: David Byrne and Brian Eno’s “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” and Peter Gabriel’s “The Passion”, music for Scorcese’s film ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’. They talked music, technology, travel, the universe and everything and about their mutual dream of travelling the world, recording and filming as many of their heroes from Music, Art, Science, Literature and Philosophy as they could find, seeking out the unity in the diversity. Luckily, Palm Pictures’ boss Chris Blackwell shared their vision and offered them a contract. The impressive list of collaborators included on the DVD/CD was not drawn from Jamie & Duncan’s personal address books. They became the self-styled ‘World Champion Cold-Callers’. Dennis Hopper was so enthused by the project that he immediately got on the phone to Harvey Keitel and Meryl Streep to get them involved and even handed over his pal Harry Dean Stanton’s home number. Harry, however, was not so excited. He told Jamie and Duncan in no uncertain terms to ‘Fuck Off’ for disturbing his afternoon nap, and Roseanne Barr stood them up in L.A. 1 Giant Leap has become a unique DVD/LP project for the 21st Century which fuses spoken word, sounds, rhythms and images from around the world to celebrate the creative diversity of a number of musicians, storytellers, authors, film-makers, artists and thinkers from different cultures. The results illustrate breathtaking artistic and cultural diversity with a clear message of unity running through it all. This project is the first of its kind in terms of its immense frame of reference and revolutionary use of cutting edge technology. Having brought their backing-tracks with them, the musicians were able to not only collaborate on OGL’s music but also hear what previous collaborators had been inspired to lay down. So, for example, the sarangi player in India could play to the grooves laid down a week earlier by the Ugandan drummers and each track could grow and develop as they circled the globe. Catto & Bridgeman travelled the world recording all the artists on digital equipment as the basis for a twelve chapter film and album. Each film chapter corresponds to a track on the album and explores a theme such as ‘Masks and Roles’, ‘Death and Change’, ‘Freedom and Innocence’, ‘The Shadow’ and ‘Inspiration’. Having shot an abundance of unique footage from the streets of New York to the jungles of Ghana, the mountains of Nepal to the deserts of Rajasthan, the end result is a completely new genre of film-making, somewhere between documentary and pop-video, a music-based time capsule of planet earth at the turn of the 21st Century. |