Audio: Scanner, Sleepless City
7 minutes 18 seconds
So, welcome to the London that never sleeps, yeah, will never dream – can’t – and will never see…Yeah, while you’re counting sheep... — MC Utta, Sleepless City
NightJam was a musical collaboration by acclaimed artist Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) with young people who have been homeless. NightJam presented two music tracks with the voices of MC Utta, MC Marcel, MC Quick Latino, MC Magic & MC Sweetie and a photographic montage, plus a limited edition CD distributed for free through the project's original website at www.nightjam.org.uk.
Over the aching beats and lonely piano of Sleepless City, three soft voices spin bitter words of exhaustion and despair in the dark underbelly of the city: “I’m in the depths of London / Straight up in the depths of a dungeon.” In the elegiac breakbeat song S’alright, two people in very different parts of the night reassure themselves everything’s going to be fine.
NightJam formed part of Artangel Interaction’s Nights of London series of artist-led collaborations with people who have a special view on a hidden side of the nocturnal city. Scanner invited young people at New Horizon Youth Centre in King’s Cross to collaborate on a creative project that expresses how the city at night looks and sounds to their ears and eyes. Through music and voice workshops they explored the sense of freedom and fear, celebration and solitude of the concealing darkness. Meanwhile, they captured their nights on disposable cameras, taking images that are at times eerie, startling, contemplative and funny. NightJam presents two elusive visual and musical journeys through the city’s ‘quiet’ hours.
Audio: Scanner, Sleepless City
Sleepless City is a track produced collaboratively by Scanner, MC Utta and New Horizon Youth Centre for the NightJam project.
Available to listen to on Soundcloud.
Image: NightJam: a music and photo project exploring the London night led by Scanner with MCs and photographers from the New Horizon Youth Project for homeless young people in King's Cross. Commissioned by Artangel Interaction, Summer 2006
Audio: Scanner, S'Alright
4 minutes 40 seconds
Audio: Scanner, S'Alright
S'alright is a track produced collaboratively by Scanner and New Horizon Youth Centre for the NightJam project.
Available to listen to on Soundcloud.
Image: NightJam: a music and photo project exploring the London night led by Scanner with MCs and photographers from the New Horizon Youth Project for homeless young people in King's Cross. Commissioned by Artangel Interaction, Summer 2006.
Nights of London
Running for just over a year, Nights of London was a thread of projects exploring the nocturnal life of the city. It ran through cinemas and galleries, was hosted on websites, burned onto CDs, written into letters, performed in nightclubs and broadcast via radio channels, before concluding in an old East End town hall that – for one night only – was filled with bat experts, musicians, cabaret artists and paranormal researchers. We heard stories from the unorthodox side of nightfall. We learned about ways of life that, despite their physical proximity, are all but invisible to most of us, most of the time.
Nights of London projects include:
Scanner
Scanner first worked with Artangel on Surface Noise in 1998, then on NightJam (2006), before working on the sound design for Sukhdev Sandhu's Night Haunts (2006) and performing Haunted Lullabies: A Psalm for London's Night Soul a collaborative work with Sandhu at the Because the Night event the same year.
Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) is a composer whose work traverses the experimental terrain between sound, space and image. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music.
Committed to working with cutting edge practitioners he has collaborated on projects with Bryan Ferry, Wayne MacGregor, Merce Cunningham, Mike Kelley, Miroslaw Balka, Michael Nyman, Carsten Nicolai, Steve McQueen, Stella McCartney, Laurie Anderson and Hussein Chalayan, amongst others.
He scored the hit musical comedy Kirikou & Karaba (2007), designed the sound for the Philips Wake-Up Light (2009), and campaigns for Sprint Telephones (2012), Stella McCartney (2016) and Christian Dior (2017). For the UK Olympics Scanner scored The Big Dance in Trafalgar Square for 1000 dancers and the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in the company of Queen Beatrix. In 2012 he toured with Live_Transmission: Joy Division Reworked with Heritage Orchestra, and in 2014 was Visiting Artist at MIT in the USA.
He scored Dutch National Ballet’s and ISH’s Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, and Rambert Dance’s Tomorrow in 2016. His work Salles des Departs is permanently installed in a hospital morgue in Paris, and Water Drops in Rijeka Airport in Croatia. His work has been presented throughout the United States, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe.
Image: NightJam: a music and photo project exploring the London night led by Scanner with MCs and photographers from the New Horizon Youth Project for homeless young people in King's Cross. Commissioned by Artangel Interaction, Summer 2006.
Production Credits
Scanner with MCs from the New Horixon Youth Centre
Original composition by Scanner
Featuring MC Utta, MC Marcel, MC Quick Latino, MC Magic & MC Sweetie
Recorded at New Horizon Youth Centre, London.
Mastered at the Soap Factory London
Music Video
Filmed by Scanner, Alexandra Gillespie and Somaya Langley
Edited by Scanner and Alexandra Gillespie
Special thanks to contributors, especially Robin, Utta, Marcel, Gica, Patrick, Natalie and Stef, and also Taliso, Tanessa, Justin, Richard, Nathan, Yonas and Yohanes and everyone who joined the sessions. Thanks also to all those who helped make this project happen, particularly Cathy, Sarah, PJ, Pauline, Shelagh, Ajay, Vivianne, Nigel, Niall, Alex and Somaya, and all of the staff at New Horizon and Artangel.
Image: Workshop with Scanner as part of NightJam, 2006. Photographer: unknown.
Who made this possible?
Credits
Artangel is generously supported by Arts Council England, and by the private patronage of The Artangel International Circle, Special Angels, Guardian Angels and The Company of Angels.
