Trajectory I, II & III, Aug 2008 - Feb 2009

From my Chew Magazine interview with Richard Cole King:



R: You recently did a collaboration with Kidofdoom at Ramfest. What was the idea behind that show? What exactly did you do?

B: Yeah, it was too cool - I had the best time. The show was the final chapter in a trilogy of performances called Trajectory.

The Trajectory series was basically our first prototype for creating a narrative audio/visual performance. We first came up with the idea during our first tour of Cape Town in September 2006. We were planning the first Sovereign Halloween party, and I dunno how, but we got it into our heads that the band would dress up as the Ghost Busters and that I'd VJ with them as the Stay Puffed Demon. Unfortunately I couldn't find a keytar by then, and it was actually only by Oppikoppi 2008 that we finally got to play together for the first time.

Basically how the Trajectory sets worked was, the band would come up with a set list. Then the lighting guy Peter Rodda and I would work through the set, breaking it up into sequences and then giving each of them a mood and a colour pallet. From this template and the soundtrack I'd then figure out a narrative and present it to the rest of the team. Once we had everything finalised I'd sit and animate all the clips we'd need, we'd rehearse everything and then throw it all down on stage.

Live I was using my keytar to trigger the video and animation for the visuals using the white keys to trigger clips, the black keys to turn effects on and off and the controls on the neck of the keytar to manipulate these effects.



Trajectory III (like the rest of the Trajectory performances) was about space travel. The "trajectory" of each set was dictated by the music, and the idea behind the lighting and visuals was that they'd take the audience on this journey with the band. It was a pretty abstract narrative, and I don't for a second fool myself into thinking that anyone actually followed it the way I wrote it, but I think that's pretty great. We just wanted to offer people something new, something more immersive than just a show, and if there were some people that formed their own story of what was happening then that's awesome. Kidofdoom - Son - Trajectory 02 - Earthdance festival - 13 September 2008