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100% SILK UK/EUROPEAN TOUR teaser from 100% Silk on Vimeo.

The Film

100% Silk is a burgeoning independent record label and tastemaker in the evolving and expansive world of underground dance music. This June, four core acts from the label – LA Vampires, Ital, Magic Touch and Maria Minerva – will be embarking on a lengthy group tour through the UK, Europe, and beyond. This feature-length documentary will chronicle the performances, cultural environments, and global scene of the many cities through which the trip travels, ranging from Berlin to Brussels to Paris to London to Moscow, Madrid, and more, before culminating at the massive Sonar Festival in Barcelona.
With strange synchronicity, the last half-decade has seen a steady but subtle rise in sideways and forward-thinking approaches to the aesthetic of dance music. Labels, promoters, DJs, and recording artists in cities as diverse as Chicago, San Francisco, Manchester, Berlin, Brooklyn, The Hague, Portland, and Lisbon have collectively yet independently manifested a micro-renaissance in the form, community, and culture that’s been missing (or hidden from all but a few) for years. As the 100% Silk tour spans a spectrum of venue types and sizes and scenes, it will offer an intriguing window into the various ramifications of this rebirth of 21st century electronic body music.

Benjamin Shearn has been an in-house videographer and editor for 100% Silk (and its sister company, Not Not Fun Records) for the last two years. You can check out his work for them on Vimeo, and YouTube. The tour documentary will be more of an expressionistic, experiential portrait of a certain slice of the underground dance scene than a straightforward analytical profile. The film will strive to be much like the music: modern, hybridized, joyous, exciting, homegrown, inclusive.

The Perks

The funding is very simple. To vividly, and accurately, capture the sights and sounds of live performances, proper equipment is required. Your contribution will go directly into funding the rental of a top-end HD camera and shotgun microphone. For this film to function as intended, image and audio must be visceral. The viewer should be able to feel the force of the speaker stacks, see the sweat on bodies, become fully immersed in the strobes, fog, lasers, and sensory overload of the overall experience.

Working in conjunction with 100% Silk and Not Not Fun Records, perks for contributions include a copy of the finished DVD, handmade mixtapes, vinyl records, signed tour posters, special thanks in the film, and – at top donation levels – an opportunity to collaborate as a producer. If you have questions or concerns as far as perk options, contribution size and/or delivery dates, please e-mail Benjamin at benjamin.shearn@gmail.com

By no means do we need to stop at $3500! Any funding which exceeds our goal will go toward a campaign to premiere the film at choice film festivals (South by Southwest, Slamdance etc.)

Press Links

100% Silk in the LA Weekly

ITAL interviewed by Pitchfork

Maria Minerva in FACT Mag

LA Vampires in The Guardian UK

Magic Touch on XLR8R

Press Quotes

ITAL

“There’s a rough, low-spun quality to Ital’s detour laden creations, one that somehow sounds patently contemporary and ever-indebted to classical house and 40+ years of experimental electronic getaways. He’s got a sly way with melody; his tracks always feel highly elastic, elongated almost to the point of a-recognition, like they’ve been stretched and drawn out until they reveal themselves only several minutes in.” –Resident Advisor

MARIA MINERVA

“Think Donna Summer’s Casablanca for Wire readers – she does disco. Only this is murky disco, full of reverb and delay, disco from a distant decade, decayed, dismayed, frayed…Minerva’s music is like hearing a bunch of unknown 70s disco tracks from MTV Estonia through a wall – a wall of static, fuzz, echo, and memory haze.” – The Guardian UK

MAGIC TOUCH

“The music of Magic Touch (a.k.a. Damon Palermo of Mi Ami) acts as a sort of aural history lesson on the touchstone moments of classic underground dance music….it strives successfully to insert itself before the hard boundary of linear time via a dizzying application of interpolation, simulacra, and samples.” – XLR8R

LA VAMPIRES

“Slowed-down tape loops and grainy house beats are the basics here, with production that is equally crystalline and hazy, as though recorded underwater. This is no chillout zone, however; the beat and the pulse demand insistence…heavy on the bass, songs that echo memories of drunken nights surrounded by bodies, sweat and flashing lights. Brown’s voice shimmers across the throbbing wall of sound amidst snippets of flute that dart in and out like playful predatory birds. It’s almost a throwback to her Pocahaunted days, but with a sleek new makeover that turns sacred chants into sinister dance.” – Electronic Beats

Payment Options

Besides contributing, the next best thing is spreading the word! Link your like-minded friends to the project, share it on Facebook, tweet it, embed the teaser on your website, on your blog, in e-mails etc.

We appreciate it more than you know!

No credit card or PayPal account? Just shoot us an and we will get you our PayPal details. All the same perks apply, naturally.