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“MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN7)

OnDaMic:

This gallery in the MNNN series is dedicated to those who live under the brightness of the lights, bathed in the spotlight, alone in the beam except for their conduit companion, the microphone. They stand alone yet are connected to their band and to the audience through the tech that projects their voice. The mic stand supports them both physically and metaphorically. Together they become one, a fusion of (wo)man and machine. A living breathing cyborg illuminated by artificial light projecting the pain and pleasure of being human. We gaze upon them for guidance and to speak the words we can’t.

The featured vocalists are as follows:

1 & 2. Charlotte Adigery

3. Law Holt

4 . Kayus Bankole (Young Fathers)

5. Alloysious Massaquoi (Young Fathers)

6. Horace Andy

7. Valentina (performing with Joe Goddard)

8. Alison Goldfrapp

9. Grace Jones

10. Aluna George (My toys Like Me)

And here comes the deal in case you don’t know already…each signed A3 print (420x297mm approx) in the ‘My Neon Noir Nights’ series is £100 (50% off normal price) and is in a limited edition of 10. And £30 from each sale will go to https://thefelixproject.org/ who are sourcing food that would go to waste and delivering it to those who desperately need it – and there are those who do desperately need our help. With each 30 quid The Felix project will generate a whopping 183 meals which will feed a huge amount of people that wouldn’t otherwise have been fed. Or if you don’t want a print (not trying to talk you out of it obvs) but you could just make a donation…

To order a print or for any more info please email info@babycakesromero.com

To see the full gallery from ‘My Neon Noir Nights’ series please click on link here:

(offer ends 15th Dec)

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“MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN6)

This gallery which kicks off phase two of this neon noirish print series features the illuminating wonder of neon itself. There is something so compelling about neon. It stimulates such an immediate visceral response, you can’t help but gravitate towards it. This is possibly why it is used for clandestine venues to lure prospective clients in. It’s like it flicks on a switch in your head and you become like a moth, ensnared by its glow. Neon, for me, symbolises the world of nitelife, which is an infinitely more evocative & stimulating version of its daytime counterpart. Nighttime is when you find excitement, when you release your inhibitions, when you can explore under the cover of darkness, with just a few neon strips to guide you towards your innermost desires.

And as nitelife is largely absent from our lives it feels we need to be reminded that daylight is only half the story. There is an entire nighttime world waiting to return. Waiting to bring relief to the stresses and strains of the day and to bring fun back into our lives. And so we wait…patiently for our neon lit activities to resume.

And here comes the deal: each signed A3 print (420x297mm approx) in the ‘My Neon Noir Nights’ series is £100 (50% off normal price) and is in a limited edition of 10. And £30 from each sale will go to https://thefelixproject.org/ who are sourcing food that would go to waste and delivering it to those who desperately need it – and there are those who do desperately need our help. With each 30 quid The Felix project will generate a whopping 183 meals which will feed a huge amount of people that wouldn’t otherwise have been fed. Or if you don’t want a print (not trying to talk you out of it obvs) but you could just make a donation…

To order a print or for any more info please email info@babycakesromero.com

(offer ends 15th Dec)

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MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN5)

MassivenineXXI:

Last year I was lucky enough to document the U.K tour of Massive Attack’s 21st anniversary reimagining of their classic album Mezzanine which both deconstructed the album, performing covers of tracks they sampled on the record, whilst succesfully rebooting it for the modern era.  Accompanied by a powerhouse visual show, designed by Robert Del Naja and featuring work from ongoing collaborator Adam Curtis, it felt more relevant to today than even possibly the era it was born out of. And it mesmerised the crowd, transporting them both backwards and propelling them forwards, as the narrative of the show sought to highlight that the current course of the human race was maybe not the most positive trajectory.

It was truly the opposite of the usual by-the-numbers cash-in that many bands do when trotting back out on the road with a past glory. The show itself was incredibly powerful and thought provoking rather than a jolly nostalgic singalong making it a deeper and more resonant experience. The visuals were also stunning in their simplicity and felt very monochromatic which is why I could only really see it in black and white and this gallery very much embodies the concept behind this neon noir series. I think it is also a reminder of how impactful live shows can be and why we must do everything we can to preserve the live events industry for a post-covid era.

Ok, so that’s phase one of My Neon Noir Nights print series. More to come. If you can’t wait and want to see all the shots together from this week and next in one glorious gallery here link here:

MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS GALLERY

And just to recap: each signed A3 print (420x297mm approx) in the ‘My Neon Noir Nights’ series is £100 (50% off normal price) and is in a limited edition of 10. £30 from each sale will go to https://thefelixproject.org/ who are sourcing food that would go to waste and delivering it to those who desperately need it – each 30 quid will generate a whopping 183 meals. Or you could just make a donation…

To order a print or for any more info please email info@babycakesromero.com

(offer ends 15th Dec)

p.s ­­­If you want to listen to a spotify playlist of Mezzanine XXI set list whilst you peruse the photographs (full gallery here if you want to see more) you can listen to it here:

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MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN4)

Light Show:

The gallery featured above from this print series is dedicated to that moment when you are out at a club or at a gig or festival when you become momentarily mesmerised by the light show. That moment might last a minute or indeed significantly longer depending on your levels of induced intoxication at the time. Utterly entranced you give yourself over to the vortex, your surroundings disappear. During that time the rest of your life melts away, all thoughts vanish and you transcend into a state of bliss. And then after that, once you return to the club, and your mates, you will probably need a brief lie-down..and maybe some chips.

Each signed A3 print (420x297mm approx) in the ‘My Neon Noir Nights’ series is £100 (50% off normal price) and is in a limited edition of 10. £30 from each sale will go to https://thefelixproject.org/ who are sourcing food that would go to waste and delivering it to those who desperately need it – each 30 quid will generate a whopping 183 meals. Or you could just make a donation…

To order a print or for any more info please email info@babycakesromero.com

(offer ends 15th Dec)

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MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN3)

Despacio:

This gallery in the MNNN print series is dedicated to Despacio, which I have been documenting since its inception in 2013. In my opinion and each and every one of its legions of fans I have met on its dance floor over the years, it is the greatest sound system and the greatest disco dance party in the world. It is also an extraordinary sensory experience like no other.

The jaw dropping sound being projected from the decks upon which its creators James Murphy & 2manydjs deliver their joy generating vinyl selections, which is then pumped through no less than 40 Mcintosh powerhouse amps, is accompanied by an ecstasy inducing light show channeled through one of the biggest and baddass disco balls you will ever see as its centre point of gravity. It kinda makes you feel like you are being sucked up in a tractor beam into a vortex of wonder and then propelled straight into a celestial spaceship fuelled by pure happiness which is then launched into the stratosphere of bliss and beyond…I might have got a bit carried away there but that’s how it feels..well to me at any rate.

To order a print or for any more info please email info@babycakesromero.com

(offer ends 15th Dec so there is time to get it to you b4 Xmas)

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MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN2)

Clubbin’ innit

This gallery in the MNNN print series is dedicated to the joys of clubbing which is currently and sadly very absent from our lives. Will we ever feel the intensity of a packed dancefloor again? Swirling together amidst the lights, squeezed into a sweat box, hugging your mates like your life depended on it, punching the air as you go apeshit to your favourite track…is there anything quite like it? Well, if its removal from our lives has proved one thing, no, there isn’t and we desperately need it back. In the meantime we can gaze at a dance dominated life that once was and will be again.

This print series consists of 10 galleries, 10 prints in each gallery, 10 copies of each print = 100 shots at £100 a pop  for each limited edition A3 print (420x297mm approx) which is not only 50% off the normal price but also £30 of each sale will go to https://thefelixproject.org/ who are sourcing food that would go to waste and delivering it to those who desperately need it – each 30 quid will generate a whopping 183 meals. So you get a print, 183 people get fed and I make a sale, that’s a win,win,win in my books. Or you could just make a donation…

To order a print or for any more info please email info@babycakesromero.com or DM me on Insta.

(offer ends 15th Dec so there is time to get it to you b4 Xmas)

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MY NEON NOIR NIGHTS – Print series (#MNNN1)

For the next 10 posts I will be showcasing a new print series entitled “My Neon Noir Nights” (I know I normally take out the vowels but it wouldn’t have made any sense ;) These are all shots that I have taken whilst engaged in and documenting music based fun fuelled nocturnal activities.

Me and my camera have a symbiotic relationship so it somehow manages to capture the essence of my own experience. The camera never lies apparently and these pictures are indeed an honest depiction of how it looked and felt at the time…which was mostly mashed and blurry with intense colours, a barrage of lights, rushes of joy inside an amorphous dancing blob monster…well that’s how I don’t remember it anyways ;) How is my camera able to do this? I have no idea. I’m just glad it can…

So here comes the math…10 galleries, 10 prints in each gallery, 10 copies of each print = 100 shots at £100 a pop  for each limited edition A3 print (420x297mm approx) which is not only 50% off the normal price (offer ends 15th dec) but also £30 of each sale will go to https://thefelixproject.org/ who are sourcing food that would go to waste and delivering it to those who desperately need it in London – each 30 quid will generate a whopping 183 meals. So you get a print, 183 people get fed and I make a sale, that’s a win,win,win in my books.

We are in the midst of an economically devastating pandemic for the financially fragile so if we can just help prop them up and sustain them during this difficult period they will hopefully be able to survive until a semblance of normality returns. But you could also cut out the middle man (that’s me) and just make a donation to them if you don’t want a print. Not that I’m trying to talk you out of a sale, just throwing it out there..

Crowd Surf

This first neon noir gallery is a selection of crowd shots all taken mid frenzy at gigs & festivals and show how a ton of individuals united by music can become one mass of positive energy with a thousand hands all reaching for the sky in jubilation…or ‘larging it up’ as it is also known.

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I don’t necessarily disagree with this equation but did we really need a name for it? Is that helping at all? And why are you trying to make Britastrophe happen, yeah? How is that gonna get us out of this mess? It’s also not very good let’s be honest.

Why do we feel we have to labradoodle everything these days? It’s like everything has to be simplified to fuck and made hashtagable before anyone pays attention? It’s like our current government seem more focused on creating the right slogan rather than implementing genuine measures to combat Covid. The virus can’t read. It doesn’t give a shit what catchy phrase you use. Maybe now the Spin Doctor of Barnard Castle is gone, they won’t focus quite as much on advise that rhymes and think that’ means the job is done.

So featured this week are some random wall scrawls alongside some stickers & posters that have been plastered around to jolt people into thought. I think it is the fact that printing has got become much cheaper which has spurred on a new wave of slightly more professional executions than dragging a fat sharpie across a wall as presentation for people’s message out there on the streets. Its become more and more of a thing as you can see..

Many are of an anti-government nature but as in the drug one above, (which I don’t really understand tbh -are they drug shaming or class shaming ?) they can be sometimes quite oblique in their intention. Although most, it has to be said, are of a political nature as are most things these days and am quite astounded how over-politicised are lives have become recently.

It feels like almost everything goes through this political polarising filter. It would appear our persuasions are being pulled whilst others are pushing their own agendas. There was a time when not everything was about politics. It seems to really dominate all aspects of life at the moment. I think we all need to take a step out of the red corner and the blue corner and stop looking for a fight with the opposition at every turn.

I blame the 24 news feed which just wants to stoke our rage to keep us wired in and the easiest way to do that is to push our respective buttons & beliefs. But all it achieves is increased polarisation when we really all need to be coming towards the middle. I miss the centrism of 90s politics. Less black and white, less hostile, less like feeling you had somehow fallen into a civil war you don’t remember starting.

As for the anti-lockdown brigade trying to incite dissent, (well done on the logo & slogan, lovely work ;) they are seemingly the only ones oblivious to the irony that their activity will most likely prolong the very thing they want to end. And its pretty fucking pointless..I mean, go ahead, ignore the lockdown by all means, then what? What are you gonna do? Everything’s shut for fuck’s sake.

And so I will end this week of walled bulletins the way I started it, with some good ole fashioned sprayed graffiti with no real agenda other than to delight up your day…are you talkin to me? Awww, shucks n stuff..thanks!

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ok, clearly the days of consensus are over…some good ‘uns in there although my favourite has to be “I just want to spend more time with Adrian” – ahh bless…

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Ok, personally they wouldn’t have been my first two choices…I’m not gonna go into the first one but full? really? You want the new world to be full? For what purpose? I mean, it’s going that way anyway but who actually wants that?

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Not sure about the Ironbladder reference but there is definitely some wallside conflict over Cummings…or should I say…actually I guess I don’t need to as the wall scrawl says it all..and guess it doesn’t really matter now anyway as he’s gone, too late for it to really have any genuine positive effect as just like this wall, the damage is already done…defend his right to disobey? (that’s what’s underneath the “correction” btw) Apparently that’s what Boris fired him for…poor Dom, hoist by his own puppet..although I don’t imagine too many people in U.K will be shedding a tear for D.C..maybe he can take his government’s advice to the arts sector and retrain as a politician..

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Maintaining social distance on the underground is really not hard at all these days as its mostly empty . Even before the current lockdown the bulk of the commuting population of London had not returned. It feels like its about 75% down which is inadvertently creating a very pleasant experience . This is in stark contrast to being on the Underground before the Invisible enemy descended as there was one thing that had really came to define London and that was packed tubes. And over the years, as rising rents shunted most normal earners into the outskirts to places they could afford the transportation system of this city became more and more congested.

Crammed in like the proverbial sardines, made to have your body pressed up against a stranger you had no interest in being even remotely near…this was life on the underground and we all endured it because we had no choice. At rush hour you looked down a carriage to see two hundred plus people in a space designed for 50 all pretending everyone around them didn’t exist. And that was the norm. Personal space was an impossibility. And you dreamt of travelling on a train that didn’t instantly induce a claustrophobic panic attack and then suddenly, one day, all the people were gone.

People have been avoiding the tubes since the pandemic to avoid people but there are not really any people on it. Not since I was a kid and I used to hang off the miniature punching bags dangling from the ceiling have I enjoyed being on the tube quite so much. But even though enjoyable, it is also very fucking eerie. You feel like you are in a sci-fi where everyone’s vanished and you are the last remaining person alive. It is also extremely weird because when you do see someone, they are masked up to the hilt looking like Bane’s offspring. You are too obviously but you can’t see how scary you look.

And yet this weirdness and emptiness is starting to feel normal so felt it was important to show you some shots taken on the night tube to remind you that it isn’t. We cannot make our current existence normal. This is just something we are doing temporarily whilst we wait for our pre-covid lives to return. We cannot forget this.

I am also sharing these with you as have just completed a new prototype photography book documenting 3 years of travelling on the night tube at around 3am every Saturday night on my way back from my ‘night job’ which is currently on hiatus as is the whole of the nitelife world. I know it existed because I have shots to prove it but it already feels like a dream..and I really hope we wake up someday soon…cos days are alright and everything but nights are way more fun..

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During the last lockdown me and Mrs B had many conversations about leaving London. With everything closed we just couldn’t think of a reason we wanted to be here anymore. It seemed astonishing to me to even consider this as my hometown has always been my lifeblood but the city clearly had no circulation. And then lockdown lifted and we started to go to things again and the desire to depart faded. Once we were able to visit galleries and go to gigs everything started to make sense again. And I realised that without culture there was no point to being in a city. And, in fact, what was life without culture?

Why is culture so important? I think its because in those moments when you are immersed in a cultural experience, you are not thinking about your life, you are thinking about life itself. Art in all it’s forms generates these moments of contemplation and in these moments we transcend our own existence and are free of the machinations of our own mind. We get to think of something other than ourselves and that is liberating. It doesn’t matter whether it is an art exhibition or a gig or a dance performance, they all transport us away from our little lives and we get a sense of being connected to something larger, something universal.

And now as the second lockdown has just gone into effect we have to retreat back into our own caves with only boxsets for sustenance and we will have to wait until a more collective & more interactive life returns. But to underestimate the importance of culture is a mistake.

The neglect this government has shown during this pandemic for the arts & the events industries and everyone who works within it is truly painful. If they do not give adequate support to venues, companies and individuals there will not be much to come back to when it is all over. And then what are we all gonna do? Shopping and eating is just not enough. They do not feed the soul. They will not nourish our minds. Our spirits need sustenance, not just our bellies.

This week’s photos and above were provided by:

Monday: Among the Trees exhibition at the Hayward

Tuesday: Sister Cookie gig at Paper dress Vintage

Wednesday: Electronic music exhibition at the Design Museum

Thursday: Dance Performance at Southampton Row by Rocio Chacon, Thomasin Gulgec and Estela Merlos. Music performance by Kundai Munetsi

Today: Sunil Gupta exhibition at the Photographer’s gallery

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