Learn More About The Chemical Brothers’ Hollywood-Like Visuals

The Chemical Brothers have always been able to attract people to their shows with their unique play on musical genres and their long time collaborator Adam Smith. These days, there usually needs to be an added element of engagement to accompany said music. The go to are LED lightboards with some pre-progammed light sequence, sometimes poorly made at that; detracting from the musical experience.

They (The Chem Bros), have stepped it up a notch, using lights and motion capture to project the experience. Minus the lights, motion capture has been used in a lot of your favorite movies for over two decades. However, it is fairly new the stage of music. While holograms and complex patterns of light sequences that accompany melody and basslines alike had brought stages to life in the music industry, motion capture is a fairly new experience.

“We just follow the emotion of the music and where that takes you and we try to take people on that ride, said Smith. We use everything at our disposal to affect people, to take them somewhere.” – Smith

The original music video for ‘Galvanize’, a 2006 track by The Chemical Brothers, was created by Adam Smith, the British filmmaker who has brought their music to life for the last two decades with his take on production videos and live shows. For their Born in the Echoes tour, a string of dates featuring the music of their eight studio album, Smith and his co-director Marcus Lyall do their magic with the new material as well as getting a second take on conceptualizing the 2006 Grammy award winning tune mentioned above.

A lot of electronic shows are designed to evoke a sense of community with the music, the lasers, the visuals – almost predictable. With The Chemical Brothers show, the product was unpredictable and sometimes unsettling. Painted faces that angrily stare at the audience, having them engage with the visual creation, or floating paint balls that represent light and uplifting moments.

The visual experience is a big part of electronic music. It’s not in a pub anymore. So it has to be huge now and it needs to be visceral on a grand scale. There’s something very communal about electronic music, about being in this amazing wonderland with lots of other people who are all having this collective experience… It’s not just about being at a concert or watching a band, but being in a place where lots of different things are happening at the same time.

Smith and Lyall produce their visuals with a perfect blend of technology that creates a perfect combination of the now and the analog imperfections of old. “We’re constantly trying to add noise, grain and texture and analog stuff to everything,” said Lyall. “We’re not trying to make Pacific Rim, we’re trying to make something that has a more vintage feel to it.”

Source: Engadget