Universal Mind Systems (UMS) is the multi-faceted duo made up of bassist/rapper Renell Shaw and guitarist Michael Antoniou. As musicians, producers and song writers, their combined credits include artists such as: Rihanna, Rudimental, Maverick Sabre, Aloe Blacc, Speech Debelle, Daley and Core Mega. Critics have described their sound as “electric-organic and cutting edge”, but to the duo “It’s music as we hear it, let them label it.”
In the summer of 2013 I worked with the band to produce live visuals for use on a series of showcase gigs featuring the range of vocalists they were producing. The approach was to combine narrative music video composition, engaging with themes and lyrics, and interactive video triggering. Assets included my own originally shot material combined with sourced material (space footage for the song “Magnitude”) and audio reactive Quartz Composer patches edited to create interactive scenes for each verse/chorus/bridge of a song. Additional sprites and/or layers included a filmed solo dancer cut up so that he could be ‘puppeted’ by playing drum pads and triggerable particle flows onto which a variety of images could be texture mapped at will using assigned keys on the computer keyboard. As usual I used Isadora to create a custom VJing application for the tour with bespoke control patches for each song.
© 2016 Derek Richards. All Rights Reserved.
