From the very moment we agreed on our ‘Rhythm’ theme for this year we were keen to involve East Midlands-based band Star From Ivy.
Though not for any obvious outward reason – like them being a 180 beats-per-minute dance act or a troupe of kinetic, dustbin lid-clanging performance artists – but more for the rhythmic ‘what-goes-around-comes-around’ philosophy that drives their creativity.
In 2016 Star From Ivy released their ‘Circularity’ album – a collection of songs that explore human existence beyond the typical material of many of their contemporaries.
Though not only did they release the tracks as finished pieces of work, they released all the component parts too. Making the medium very much part of the ‘Circularity’ message.
So if people wanted to use an isolated drum track to use for their own creation – they could help themselves.
Or if someone needed a cool riff to spice up their own recordings – there was an album full of them ripe for the picking.
Or indeed, if you were a bunch of TEDx organisers and were looking for ways to have some fun with your theme and give your event a bit of an aural identity… well, you can see where this is going.
The TEDxLeamingtonSpa/Star From Ivy REMIx Project has brought together a number of musicians and producers from Warwickshire and beyond (including Matt Waddell of 14 Records, Jason Langdell of Jam AV Media and John Connearn from The Ellipsis, with many more to come) to take one Star From Ivy track and make it their own.
The song we chose – Sounds Like Crows is a big-chorused rumination on life and death (You live, you die, and there’s breathing in-between) – and the resulting remixes will feature throughout our event on the 13th October as well as being officially released as an exclusive digital ep – ‘Sounds Like Sounds like Crows’.
A massive thank you to everyone who has given up their time to make this multi-stranded creative collaboration happen. We can’t wait to show you the results, and have the band play live at our event, but in the meantime here’s the song it its original form…
