Beck fans are you available on February 10th? Come on it’s a Sunday and Beck is cooking something very special that will be shown online in real time.
Beck is indeed working with video director Chris Milk (Kanye West, U2, Green Day, Arcade Fire,…) on a very special and unique performance to re-imagine David Bowie’s classic song ‘Sound and Vision’ with 170 musicians.
Wow that’s ambitious, and even more than you think. Not only his new take on the song will be done ‘by putting together a collection of sounds from unexpected places’, but we will ‘hear layer upon layer of unique sounds coming together from different musicians’.
Plus the musicians will be performing on a specially constructed circular stage, encircling the audience: the concert will be captured on three 360º cameras and 360º microphones (whatever this means), allowing us, the audience of the digital experience, to feel as if they were just there. According to Beck’s website, ‘the performance will experiment with the possibilities of perspective and sound movement surrounding the audience’, and ‘viewers will be able to move within the 360º environment and change the direction of the audio in real time’. I am not sure how this will work exactly but this sounds really interesting.
Should we revisit the classics? Should we leave them alone and venerate them as untouchable pieces of art? ‘Sound and Vision’ is a dance-y exhilarating number, already very layered, and expanding in happiness at each Bowie’s ecstatic sighs,… I wonder what Beck will bring to this already perfect soundscape.