The Ugly Happiness

I've finally been given the all clear to post this, and very happy about it I am! We won the Royal Television Society award for best student animation last year for this one. Rightly so, the animation is beautiful. Enjoy!

The Ugly Happiness from Rory James [Corsair] on Vimeo.

Watching Millie

A recently completed LCC 2010 graduate film, directed by Tom Law. The sound and music are by Matt Appelhans and myself, respectively. Our version of the sound track wasn't used in the final edit, in favour of a more austere affair. C'est la vie.

Here's a sample from the soundtrack that wasn't used.

Watching Millie by CorsairUK

Blue Waters

This little gem has been M.I.A. for some time. I wrote this track in 2005(!) when I was sharing a house with my buddy Ventriloquist. He spent one hot summer night sitting out in our garden listening to this track on his mini-disk player over and over, and penned the lyrics in one sitting. The film was made a couple of years afterwards by Tom Collinson and deals with the nature of masculinity in a changing society.

S.A.V.E.

From a documentary I composed the music for in 2009 for the charity group WOMEN WITHOUT BORDERS. The documentary features 3 women: an ex-member of an Islamist organisation in the UK, a pioneer against violent extremism in Northern Ireland and a young woman affected by terrorism in Madrid. This Women without Borders SAVE / Sisters Against Violent Extremism feature was produced by Zia Trench.

"Aurora"

This is the sister piece to 'Transfer' (see earlier posts), performed on the 22nd March by 3rd yr Link Dance studenets at Islington's Urdang Academy.

From the show 'Projections'
3rd Year Link Dance group at The Urdang Acadamy. London UK
Choreographer: Mandy Braden.
Music: Orion By Corsair.

Yo MTV Rocks!

Towards the tail end of 2009 MTV came to the animation dept at LCC offering FDA animation students the chance to make an ident for the channel. The project was to be Christmas themed, and if MTV liked any of the student's efforts then they would air them for a month over Christmas. Myself and my buddy Peter Warnock were appraoched by Manav Dhir, and Caspar Seale-Jones, both on the animation FDA, to make the soundtrack to their submission. Peter took care of sound design, whilst I made the music. Ours was the only ident that got aired. Bo! Selecta-ta-ta...

"Transfer"

On the 22nd March, 3rd Year Link Dance students at the Urdang Academy in London performed two pieces for their degree show - "Projections". The two pieces were choreographed by the stupidly talented Mandy Braden and are entitled 'Transfer' and "Aurora". In her infinite wisdom Mandy approached me to compose scores for these pieces, and obviously I was suitably humbled at the opportunity. I can safely say that to sit in the audience on the opening night, watching 18 dancers throwing themselves around to your music is a goose-bump inducing experience, and one of my proudest as an artist. This video is of the 1st piece - Transfer, Aurora will follow shortly. (Film shot and edited by Chris Jones).

From the show 'Projections'
3rd Year Link Dance group at The Urdang Acadamy. London UK
Choreographer: Mandy Braden.
Music: Grey Sky Conduits (Lodestone Edit) By Corsair. Additional production & arrangement by Chris Redmond.

"It's in the game..." Unknown Devices at Tate Britain

On the 5th March the Improv ensemble I'm involved with played at Tate Britain as part of the Games and Gaming symposium. From the Tate website: "David Toop and Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra (London College of Communication) explore the dynamics, technical and interpersonal demands of group collaborations using digital audio tools and ‘unknown devices’, creating an improvisation using an unusual variety of instruments, noisemakers and gaming equipment." Indeed...

Ugly Happiness Wins RTS Award

A short animation that I composed music for last year has won the Animation category at the Royal Television Society's Student Television Awards. Whoo! 'Ugly Happiness' animated by Manav Dhir & Jing Xin Lieu picked up the award at TV London Television Centre on Tuesday 9 February 2010. Sadly I wasn't able to attend because there weren't enough tickets, and I'm just a lowly composer...The film is an eerie and atmospheric work about the ultimately futile attempts of strange deformed monsters to recapture the lost happiness of childhood.

Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra @ Tate Modern

Directed by David Toop, 'Unknown Devices: The Laptop Orchestra' is an improvising ensemble of students and alumni from London College of Communication. For our performance at the Speaking Out symposium, we performed a selection of text based compositions, including works by Mieko Shiomi, Bob Cobbing, John Stevens and David Toop.

The event was held on 6th Feb. 2010 in the Tate Modern's turbine hall. Heavy... The text scores we used, and the recordings are below.



Click Piece by CorsairUK




Graphic Score by CorsairUK




Boundary Music by CorsairUK




The Mediumship of the Listener  by  CorsairUK