Singing Faces

Welcome to Singing Faces, a combined music and photography project created by Mark Hucks.

Background

In early 2011, once Belleville’s debut album was finalised, I decided to commence a project which combined two of my favourite things: music and photography. As readers of the Battle Rock Motel blog will know, I like any ideas which help to establish a creative community in London,  and so my aim with this project was to bring together a randomly selected group of London based musicians. To achieve this, I  advertised here and on Gumtree for musicians from around London who had a song to record that they had written.

Recording the songs

The response was great and, in April, I started to record and produce the songs in the Bunker (the soundproofed room in my flat where I sleep and record!).  It’s a fairly simple set up, but it’s amazing what you can achieve now with some good mics and a decent mixing desk. Most importantly, and luckily for the project, the musicians who came forward and got involved were enthusiastic, willing to experiment and, most importantly, had a great mix of songs to capture.

Taking the portraits

Once the songs were nearing completion, I visited each of the participants in the part of London in which they live and took a selection of portrait photographs. With the locations broadly defined by where the musicians live, once we had narrowed down to a specific couple of locations to shoot, we met up and I tried to capture in the photographs both elements of the songs as well as the something of the characters of each of the musicians. Inevitably some songs lent themsleves to a photographic representation much more easily than others, so it was an enjoyable challenge!

The most important bit

Anyway, enough by way of introduction. To listen to the songs, view the photos and learn more about each of the participants, please just click on any of the names listed in the menu at the top of the page. To download the songs for free (just insert £0 in the pop up box) in a range of formats and quality please go to the Singing Faces page on Bandcamp.

I can’t say enough positive things about the musicians themselves – they’re a great group of people, and I highly recommend seeing them live and grabbing a word with them if  you get the chance. There’s links to their own pages throughout this site, so it’s easy to keep tabs on what they’re up to and find more of their music.

Finally, and another important bit, it would be great to hear any comments you have on the project. I’ve set up a Singing Faces Facebook page for this purpose, so please click your way over there.

Singing Faces: Gig and Exhibition

To round off the project, on 25 October 2011 at Native Tongue EC1 (near to Barbican Tube) all the musicians, the photos and the songs will be together in one place under one roof. Don’t miss it!

Please also check out my new night Pick Me Up on the last Tuesday of each month down at the always excellent Native Tongue – next night 27 September 2011.

Contact

If you have any questions about the project, or you need a photographer, please contact: mark@markhucks.com

Battle Rock Records

For more information about Battle Rock Records, or if you have any enquiry, please just let me know: contact@battlerock.co.uk

All website images are the copyright of Mark Hucks © all rights reserved.