Dance music is always at the forefront of embracing technology, and leading the charge of VJing is the Addictive TV team. To call them VJs is an understatement, the four person crew constructs (and deconstructs) audio and video mashups and original productions to use in their live performances around the world. Word has gotten about them and Hollywood has come calling with remix work on major films like Snakes on A Plane and Take the Lead. People take notice - video is the killer app - the third dimension of the club experience and Addictive TV is setting the standard.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: OK, what exactly is Addictive TV?
Graham Daniels (of Addictive TV): We are artists, audio video artists. We also produce
other artists, other AV acts, AV artists. And, we've also run a
festival, in the UK, in London.
RS: So you're basically a VJ, a visual jockey group, who produces
your own content.
Graham Daniels: Yes, but I wouldn't really say we're a VJ group
because that implies we don't do music. We do all our own music.
RS: So you do original music also?
Graham Daniels: Yes, and we remix stuff, and we do a lot of
bootlegs. We may take a track and completely remix it, or we'll mash
up two or three tracks into one, or we sample the movie, all the
sounds from a movie – the door slams, little bits of speech, gunshots,
wheel skids of a screeching car – and we make music from all of those
sounds. So what you're seeing on the screen is what you're hearing in
the music, and it's all breakbeat music.
RS: And do you normally play at club and dance events?
Graham Daniels: Yes, we play at both. It's all dance music, what we
produce, so we play a lot of clubs, all over the world, and big music
festivals. We also do art projects as well, where we do live cinema,
which we only perform in theatres and museums and cinema spaces. And
we do art festivals and things.
RS: You've recently been doing a lot of movie footage. What are
the movies you've worked on?
Graham Daniels: Yes, we've been doing a lot of stuff for cinema in
the States, and we did something for Sony in Japan as well, who
released Ecom, King Crew. We've been doing bootleg kind of film
cut-ups and remixes for a while. Some marketing guys in cinema in the
States saw what we were doing and really liked it and so we were asked
to remix some of the of the films. We were first asked to do Antonio
Banderas with Take the Lead, which was the first kind of official
Hollywood remix, in the sense that the directors allow the film to
actually be cut up and remixed. That ended up winning us an award –
which was really nice – in the advertising industry awards. Since then
we were asked to do more, like Snakes on a Plane. We've just done the
new Clive Owen movie - Shoot 'Em Up and we've been asked to do some by
a British film company.
RS: When you're doing your mash-ups, what software do you use?
Graham Daniels: It's a mixture of Ableton Live and Cubase, and
video-wise, it's Aftereffects and Premier.
RS: What do you use when you perform live?
Graham Daniels: Software-wise we use V Jam Pro, and with hardware,
we used DVD turntables with DVJ 1000, and we use a standard audio
mixer like a DJM 8000 or 1000 which has MIDI, and then the MIDI can
control the video mixer, which we had modified. We actually have an
upgraded video mixer, an audio video mixer, so we can cut and scratch
audio and video at the same time. So we have two mixers when we play.
RS: And you've been involved with Pioneer, helping them create
the turntable, correct?
Graham Daniels: We have, yes. We were the first people to have them
in Europe back in 2003, and then we did a lot of testing and
developing with the second generation one, the DVJ 1000, which was a
lot smaller and lighter and had more functions than a DVJ X1. And for
that, in the last year and a half, we've been helping them to develop
an audio visual mixer. So yes, we've been working quite closely with
Pioneer.
RS: I would guess with all the traveling that you do, the
different tech specifications must be a lot of fun to figure out – in
one country it's one kind of power, one kind of TV signal, that kind
of thing.
Graham Daniels: No, that's never really been a problem, we just make
sure that we have converters and things like that. I mean yes, we're
PAL over here and obviously in the States and in Japan and places like
that, they're NTSC, but as long as we've got converters... The DVJs
play both, they're both PAL and NTSC. Our video mixer is convertible
as well, because it can go between PAL and NTSC. So that's not really
a problem. Power-wise, it depends. Most equipment these days has their
own in-built transformers and so they can be plugged in wherever. But
we do have step up and step down transformers, which we often take
with us, depending on where we're going, unless the club provides all
the equipment. Then we don't have to worry.
RS: Let's talk a little bit about your music. You all did the
video for the Blondie vs The Doors mashup of "Rapture Riders," didn't
you?
Graham Daniels: We did, yes. We did the Blondie version of The Doors
for EMI. They gave us all the footage of the tour. Actually it was
quite difficult with Jim Morrison of The Doors, because there was no
footage of him actually singing that particular song, Riders on the
Storm. So they gave us a whole load of footage from the Hollywood
Bowl, and of them rehearsing and stuff, which was great. We were able
to find lots and lots of footage where we could match-synch his lips
and make it look like he was singing that song. Which no one's
actually ever noticed, so that's really good. They've never noticed
it's another track, people think it is him singing that song.
