A Press Release of sorts, in the first person:
Dianne Swann Solo album announcement and first single release
I am recording my first solo album and the first release is a song called ‘Show Your Heart’ and will be released on bandcamp this Friday, along with a video put together by crowd sourced material. https://dianneswann.bandcamp.com/
The song was recorded in December 2019 with Tom Broome in Kumeu, Auckland and mixed in London by UK producer Steve Power (Blur, Baby Bird, Julian Cope, Robbie Williams, British Sea Power).
The album recording has stalled due to the lockdown – but I was keen to keep the project rolling – the song had already been mixed, and feedback from those who worked on it with me, was that this was a good time for people to hear it.
How to make a video in lockdown, without it being a “lockdown’ video?
I contacted a few friends and family members and asked if their locked down children would be keen to work on a project. I sent them the lyrics from the song and asked them to visually interpret them in any way they wanted to - artwork, dancing, miming, acting anything!
This was in the second week of lockdown, and when the small iphone clips started rolling in on the email, it put some warmth and colour into a very grey week for me.
I enlisted the help of editor and musician Jared Kahi, who started putting the clips together and also put his own whanau to work with contributions for the video – I added some of my own iphone videos of my favourite things. I wasn’t 100% sure if this would all work – but the result works so well as a warm visual interpretation of the song.
The video was completed on Wednesday and I am going to release it tomorrow Friday April 23rd – why wait?