Anyone who is familiar with Herzog may have noticed that over the past two years or so I have been adding more of a visual element to augment the music that I make. This all started as a way of making my live shows a bit more visually appealing.. I'm pretty nervous infront of a crowd so I figured that anything which could attract attention away from me would be for the best! What followed was a few months of painstakingly cobbling together a half-hour 'visual collage' using the bog-standard Windows Movie Maker software and whatever else was at hand. I premiered it at my debut live show supporting Christ. in Aberdeen and was completely shocked and overwhelmed by the positive feedback both the set and the video received, with lots of people asking "who does your visuals?" to which I had to bashfully reply that they were completely home-made and the first time I had attempted anything of the sort.

Since then, I have continued to experiment with DIY visuals, and was even offered to be a resident VJ for a London club night, having to unfortunately decline the offer because I'm not really a 'VJ'.

So after a long time flirting with the idea of starting up my own VJ project, I tentatively present: DisastroVJs!

The main premise behind the project is this: To produce and display live background visual projections which reflect the lo-fi, lo-tech, DIY aesthetic which is characteristic of alot of the music coming out of the netlabel / ambient / lo-fi / noise genres.

I can't say I'm an expert in current trends in live visuals, my only references being whatever I happen to see at the gigs and clubnights I go to, but it seems to me that what I see is often rather uninspiring, and technology-intensive. Computer-generated vizualisations are great for creating atmosphere in dance clubs, but seem pointless when twinned with something subtler, weirder, more personal. Similarly, video-based projections tend to rely heavily on long tracking shots of the sky, the sea, the road etc..

The reason I got into making music was because It was just so easy to create something from nothing and share it on the internet (and many thanks to all the people I have met in the netlabel community for helping me do that!). Netlabels have shown that absolutely anyone can produce and distribute music, and in a similar way, anyone can produce and share visual media.. you don't need thousands of pounds worth of hardware and software to do either.

I'd be interested to hear what you think. As I said, I'm really no expert.. just trying to start a new project with absolutely no idea where it might go. For a start, I have uploaded a little taster of what I have been working on this weekend. You can also have a look at the other little videos I have made here.

Keep it lo-fi!

Hrzg