Jamie Woon Interview for Polydor

In October, Mistral Productions produced an interview between Gilles Peterson and Jamie Woon, ahead of the release of Jamie's sophomore album, 'Making Time' on Polydor Records. 

The 10 minute video piece was shot at the legendary Konk Studios in North London, where Jamie recorded the album with engineer Lexxx, with the pair discussing various topics including what Jamie's been up to in the 4 years since his debut LP, and what the album writing process involved this time around.  

The video was premiere'ed over on Mahogany blog, and features live performances of 3 live tracks, also filmed and recorded at Konk Studios.

The Worldwide Awards Weekend

It's been a lively few weeks working on the content production of The Worldwide Awards 2015! 

The main event was on Saturday 17th January at Koko London, with a heavy-weight line up of live music and DJs, curated by our own Gilles Peterson.  Spanning the genres and generations, artists on the night ranged from 90 year old Sun Ra band leader Marshall Allen performing with the Heliocentrics, right through to up-and-coming London rapper Little Simz, who picking up an award for Best Newcomer.

With a team made up of our in-house staff, complimented by a number of trusted freelancers who joined the team for the project, Mistral Productions oversaw all the content production for the event, from promotional material in the run-up, the running of the official social media activity during the event, through to post-event content.  

The Awards were streamed live online (by Flipside Productions) for the 2nd year running with boutique trainer store Footpatrol and US music blog, Okayfuture, partnering on the stream, with a second broadcast running on Thursday 29th January.

With a public vote for two of the awards, we produced content in the run up to the event to raise awareness and engagement for both. With a brand partnership secured on the Footpatrol Track of the Year Award, we produced a radio show/podcast hosted by Gilles, which Footpatrol hosted on their Soundcloud account.  The 80 minute show ran through the nominees and their tracks, as well as Gilles giving an overview of the Awards in general.  

We achieved record levels of engagement on Footpatrol Track of the Year, surpassing all previous votes, with many of the artists, labels and fans also sharing our content. Even the winner, Flying Lotus, sent through an acceptance speech, which of course, Footpatrol were delighted with!

For the Worldwide Awards 2015 Album of the Year, we created a playlist of videos for each nominated album, with Gilles Peterson presenting his thoughts on all the artists who made it through to the public vote long list.

By creating multiple video clips within a playlist, the content could both be shared:

• as a playlist, to be consumed as a complete run-down of the Worldwide Awards Album of the Year. 
• as individual clips, for artists/labels/fans who wanted to promote a particular album/clip on their social media. 

This lead to over 22,000 views across the Album of the Year playlist, with record voting and engagement on the Album of the Year public vote. 

Post-event, we continued to promote the Awards with a highlights video and photography from the event, with help from Clouded Vision and Theo Cottle.

Any questions regarding audio or video production, music consultancy, or our event design and production work, get in touch!  

Recent Video & Audio Work - Live Sessions and Events

In the last few weeks we've had a number of talented musicians come to the Mistral studios to perform live sessions which we filmed and recorded in-house. Last week we had the talented Brooklyn singer/songwriter Gabriel Garzon Montano swing by to perform a couple tracks, with him on keys, vocals and a vintage Roland 707 drum machine!

He was in Europe supporting Lenny Kravitz, and as the performance shows, he's a genuine talent so expect his star to rise in 2015. It was a pleasure having him in. Here's the first of two tracks, 'Everything Is Everything' from his fanstastic debut EP/mini album, Bishoune: Alma del Huila on SUS Records. The second performance will drop in January!

And last month we had Cuban force of nature, Dayme Arocena come through to perform her collaboration with Russian producer, Rumskaya. Her debut album is due in early 2015, and we've heard some early mix downs, and it's an incredible record combining Cuban influences with Jazz and Soul. It's particularly remarkable, as it was written and performed by someone so young! 

Dayme was in London for the Havana Cultura Mix - The Soundclash album launch party, so in case you missed the summary video, here it is!