1 Giant Leap – What About Me?
Reviewer: Tom Leins
Issue 106 August 2008
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A musical leap into the unknown.
Review: Back in 2002, 1 Giant Leap (AKA ex-Faithless songwriter Jamie Catto and former Take That producer Duncan Bridgeman), dropped their long-gestating self-titled musical project on an unsuspecting public. The record was painstakingly pieced together across the globe and featured contributions from everyone from Kurt Vonnegut to Robbie Williams, and Baaba Maal to Asha Bhosle. The album became a huge hit, and the resultant DVD was described as a “musical and visual feast” by this very publication!
The duo are back with a new musical project, this time entitled ‘What About Me?’ Four years in the making, ‘What About Me?’ sees the duo stretch themselves even further than before, with visits to Japan, China, Brazil, Mexico and the Middle East. This multi-faceted DVD offers up the dizzying results of their globetrotting musical travelogue. Disc 1 comprises of the 12 short musical films that they concocted on their travels, whilst Disc 2 chops the trip up into seven eye-opening episodes (recently shown on Channel 4), which help to explain how they concocted their exotic new masterwork. Although the short films are placed first in the pecking order, it would probably be a better bet to absorb the series first, as it gives you a far better grounding for what you are about to experience. (Also included is a largely superfluous two-hour ‘movie cut’, which offers nothing that the other two options don’t present far more interestingly.)
Some viewers may be dissuaded from approaching 1 Giant Leap by the omnipresent whiff of world music trendiness, but it takes a cold-hearted individual not to warm to Catto and Bridgeman’s astonishingly ambitious project. They visited approximately 50 different locations (in 20 countries) armed with just digital video cameras, laptops, iPods and the all important selection of rudimentary backing tracks. Over the course of six months these backing tracks were put to good use, forming the basis for their new material.
As well as fleshing out their embryonic musical compositions, the pair endeavours to explore a selection of universal themes concerning what they term “our collective insanity”. Pretentious maybe, but their global ‘compare and contrast’ approach definitely hits the spot and the way that their tapestry has been weaved together is rich and compelling. The series is broken up into episodes entitled ‘Bombardment’, ‘Wounded’, Men & Women’, ‘Love and Need’, ‘The Wanting & The Freedom’, ‘Grace’ and ‘The Journey’. Those themes are pushed to the forefront and the pair interview the likes of Noam Chomsky, Eckhart Tolle and, erm, Stephen Fry, for their considered opinions on the subject in question.
However, it is the music that will be the ultimate selling point here. The deft way in which they blend the vocals of major league stars like Michael Stipe, Alanis Morissette, Maxi Jazz (from Faithless) and kd lang with the contributions of Bedouin musicians, Chinese rappers, Gabonese pygmies, Egyptian folk musicians, Japanese taiko drummers and Tuvan throat singers is truly astonishing. World music stars like Baaba Maal, Lila Downs, Rokia Traore, Oumou Sangare and Zap Mama effortlessly riff off the backing tracks and even wannabe rappers on street corners get stuck in and flesh out the project.
On the basis of this series the second 1 Giant Leap album looks set to be richer and more fully realised than the first. What’s more, only by watching the TV show can you truly appreciate the extreme lengths that Catto and Bridgeman went to in order produce these astonishing songs…
FILM: 8
EXTRAS: 5
DVD Info:
Certificate: 15
Directed By: Jamie Catto & Duncan Bridgeman, 2008
Distributor: 4DVD
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1
Visuals: 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Running Time: 346mins
Price: £19.99
Special Features:
Disc 1:
Video Selection
‘What About Me?’ two hour Movie Edit
Disc 2:
Episode Selection
Stills Gallery
