Steel City audio-visual adventurers
Who they?
Two Sheffield legends. Ron Wright was the founder of The Now Society, aka NowSoc, the club where The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire played some of their earliest gigs. He was also later the prime mover of 1980s mutant funksters Hula. Neil Webb has meanwhile forged a long career as a sound designer and an audio-visual artist, his work encompassing installations, videos and performances, as well as recordings under the name Bocman.
Why Ron Wright & Neil Webb?
Wright and Webb have collaborated many times over the years, Including a live surround sound production at Tate Britain in 2010, and their latest project is the fascinating ‘Burning Pool’, a 24-minute film that shows Sheffield as “a post-industrial city in transition”. The footage, shot entirely on an iPhone, is an evolving collage of ghostly and often overlapping images – buildings, rivers, trains, weeds, midges, the occasional person – and is accompanied by an atmospheric electronic score. It’s an enthralling mix of sound and vision.
Tell us more…
Unlike most of Wright and Webb’s previous collaborations, you don’t need to visit a gallery to experience ’Burning Pool’. The film is available as a DVD bundled with a 12-inch featuring two tracks, ‘Over Underland’ and ‘Rumble Roller’, that echo the vibe of the ‘Burning Pool’ soundtrack. The record comes in an individually hand-painted sleeve too, emphasising the DIY aesthetic of the project, and the whole package is available on Bandcamp. Get yourself over there right away.
For more, go to neilwebbronwright.bandcamp.com
