EO and FLO collaboration was ‘on the cards’ since Nela met Roger Mills (amazing trumpeter, producer and founder of the Ethernet Orchestra), at the World Stage Design 2017 in Tapei, where Roger presented his work with EO and talked about how they did the recording of their latest album ‘Oceans Between Sound’ (which btw is amazing!!!).
As Nela was already in Australia doign her fellowship with the University of Melbourne, and had planned to do stuff with FLO in Sydney too, a perfect opportunity for a collab with EO presented itself at the well known and cherished Halfback Books & Records store in Dee Why (surfing paradise/suburb of Sydney). A few days before the concert, Nela visited RØDE Microphones HQ outside of Sydney to have a look at their amazing facilites and thank them for supporting FLO over the years. She got an amazing book on history of RØDE, and SC6-L Mobile Interview Kit (awesome!) and some other goodies (THANK YOU RØDE!)
Nela she did a lot of environmenal recordings whilst out and about, so this can be used to ‘situate’ the concert in a geographical location of Sydney (as she usually does for every FLO performance!).
This was one of the rare occasions where Nela (mixing electronics and recordings of soundscapes) and Donna (mixing electronics and voice) were able to play together in the same space (as Donna is also based in Sydney) and were joined remotely by Sonia (streaming from Melbourne) and Léa Ikkache (streaming from Paris). Roger (who played the trumpet and did all the live engineering and recording) was joined in situ by EO member Mir Shahab Chilan (who played amazing traditional Persian instruments balaban and dozaleh) and remotely by EO members Chris Vine (streaming guitar from Brazil) and Holger Deuter (streaming piano from Germany).
Another technically challenging performance (mainly due to unstable network in the local area) but what an amazing venue with an intimate atmosphere and amazing audience!!!
We totally need to do this again at some point!!! Perhaps staged somewhere on the Dee Why beach (with surfers in the background), somewhere around Bondi Beach (where Donna is based) or somewhere around the Sydney town centre!
In the meantime, you can check the (audio) excerpt from the first part of the performance (expertly mixed by Roger) on Ethernet Orchestra SoundCloud and a (video) excerpt from the second part of the performance (filmed with the Zoom Q2n) on FLO YouTube channel.
And btw, Vivid Sydney was happening at the same time as all of the above! If you are ever in town between the end of May and the middle of June, do check it out!!!
A BIG THANK you to the following peeps and organisations who supported the performance of EO+FLO: Live at Halfback Books & Records in various ways:
- Lovely staff from Halfback Books & Records in Dee Why
- University of Melbourne Macgeorge Fellowship 2019
- Bitwig Studio, Audio-Technica and RØDE Microphones (for supplying FLO with software and hardware!)
A BIG THANKS to EVERYONE who came to see the concert (especially our Australian friends and family, who rarely get the opportunity to find out what exactly we mean when we say we play music ‘telematically’!)
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