For those of you wondering what the Planetarium launch night was like, well, it was one of the proudest moments and most memorable gigs of my career so far. It all went so well, considering the awkward travel arrangements and the margins for error with the sets, that I couldn’t quite believe it. Whilst the shows were by no means perfect they were better than at the rehearsal a few days before and I could happily hold my head up and say it was all a great success. Ninja Tune did a great job organising the whole event, PC, DK and 2econd Class Citizen all played space-themed tracks in the foyer, there were drinks and bowls of flying saucer sweets and the people from the Royal Observatory did a great job too.
Outside was an astronomer with a telescope and you could actually see Jupiter and several of its moons, coupled with the stunning night time view over South East London and the great setting for the shows amongst the galleries of the observatory, it was just perfectly pitched. I’m not going to try and describe the shows because it’s kind of redundant and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive afterwards so I was pretty relieved, considering I think I knew at least half the people at the gig! I have to say a big thank you to Ed Bloomer, the astronomer I worked with on the show, as it couldn’t have happened without him and he really pulled it out of the bag in as far as building the elements into a cohesive set.
Adrian Williams sent me the image above that he took before the show started, if you click the image you should be able to pull it about a bit too. It’s hard to convey the scale of what you’re seeing, imagine sitting in half a dome, with the screen 360 degrees around you, joining at the top – that image was stretched across it when you walked in (the red/pink was the lighting so that people could see where they were going). I’m waiting on both photos and film of the event so I’ll post more when I have it. Below, the amazing view that greeted everyone when they left the Planetarium (by Jonny Cuba)
