Real World

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death of Hector Zazou. The innovative French composer and producer was a regular visitor to Real World Studios and delighted us all with his unique charm. His international reputation came from his diverse musical projects - from rock to classical, avant garde experimental electronica to pure vocal and world music. He worked in collaboration with artists as diverse as Bjork, Jon Hassell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Peter Gabriel, Jane Siberry and LIsa Germano.

Real World Records worked closely with Hector when he produced the exquisite album 'Coming Home' for Tibetan artists Yungchen Lhamo. He then took a voyage of discovery to Tashkent, Uzbekistan to meet Sevara Nazarkhan and produce her ground-breaking debut album 'Yol Bolsin'. His bold and beautiful use of strings, traditional instruments alongside electronica gave both albums their futuristic and yet timeless quality.

One of Hector's most recent projects, a CD/DVD titled Quadri [+] Chromies, result of a two years collaboration with French digital painter Bernard Caillaud which was released in 2006 was designed and authored by the team at Real World's Multimedia Department.

Peter Gabriel pays tribute to Hector in September's Moon Club: " He had a particular, unique personality - very drole, very witty. His musical persona was very emotional but restrained. You could feel the passion but it was kept at an observer's distance. We will all miss him greatly."

Join Jude Law and Peace One Day founder and filmmaker Jeremy Gilley for a Gala Screening of the new acclaimed documentary The Day After Peace, together with musical performances from Peter Gabriel, Annie Lennox, Bryan Adams, John Legend and more, contributions from Emilia Fox, Martin Bell OBE, David Bentley, Gabby Logan and other special guests.

Following the tremendous success of last year's sell-out Peace One Day concert, the Royal Albert Hall is once again the venue of choice to stage this year's Peace One Day Celebration on 21 September 2008.

Peter's back from his summer in Sardinia with tales of an award from Amnesty International and promotion for their Small Places Tour. There's news of his appearance on September 21st at the Peace One Day concert in The Royal Albert Hall, our Dub Colossus remix competition, work in the studio and a tribute to the much missed Hector Zazou who died this week.

We've just turned on our new digital download facility on the womadshop.com site. We are still in a pseudo 'soft launch' phase, only one product available so far as we want to deal with any teething problems and get some customer feedback before opening out the service.

The Big Blue Ball record has had such a long gestation, dating back to the famed 'Recording Weeks' here at Real World in the early 90's, that we though we would make it's delivery to the customer as fast as possible. Big Blue Ball is now available as a 320Kbs MP3 or in Apple Lossless format (CD quality, but roughly half the file size). Both options are DRM free and available for a very reasonable £4.99. Purchasers of the CD or vinyl versions also get the benefit of the download system as we now throw in the MP3 version of the album so that you get instant gratification whilst waiting for the joy of a package in the post.

If you do try it out, we'd love to know how it works for you.

Art for Amnesty today announced that Peter Gabriel is the recipient of the Amnesty International 'Ambassador of Conscience Award' 2008. The presentation to Peter Gabriel will take place during a ceremony at the Hard Rock Cafe in London, on September 10th, 2008.

Peter Gabriel is a long time campaigner for human rights around the world, having first worked with Amnesty during the Conspiracy of Hope Tour in 1986 and then on the ground breaking Human Rights Now! Tour in 1988. Gabriel went on to found Witness, a video community campaigning for Human Rights and more recently The Elders a private alliance of senior global figures to launch diplomatic assaults on the globe's most intractable problems.

"Peter has been at the vanguard of the struggle for human rights and justice around the world for nearly a quarter of a century" said Bill Shipsey of Art for Amnesty, "all of his wonderful work, not just with Amnesty, could justify his selection as an Ambassador of Conscience".

The Ambassador of Conscience Award, now in its sixth year, recognizes exceptional individual leadership and witness in the fight to protect and promote human rights. The award, inspired by a poem written for Amnesty International by Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, aims to promote the work of Amnesty International by association with the life, work and example of its 'Ambassadors' who have done so much to inspire and uplift. Former recipients include: Nelson Mandela, U2, Mary Robinson and Vaclav Havel.

The Ambassador of Conscience Award will be presented to Peter Gabriel by The Edge (guitarist with U2). A previous recipient of the award, The Edge (along with band mate Bono) has been credited by Peter Gabriel with recruiting him to Amnesty International.

The event will also mark the launch of Amnesty International's global Small Places Tour 2008 the organisation's most ambitious global music and human rights project since the Human Rights Now!

Tour in 1988. Details of the tour and the artists participating will be announced following the award presentation to Peter Gabriel.

Real World Multimedia is currently recruiting - if LAMP is your thing, or PHP your cup of tea, you may be just who we are looking for.

Peter's beamed a Full Moon Club video update our way from his summer base in Sardinia. Peter talks about his new son Luc, Nelson Mandela's 46664 concert and birthday dinner party in London, a meeting of The Elders in South Africa, Big Blue Ball and WOMAD Charlton Park all with a Mistral blown Sardinian coastline backdrop.

The Imagined Village's fantastic performance at the Cambridge Folk Festival will be broadcast on BBC4 Friday 29th August at 10.30pm!

Don't forget to check out some footage and cool photos on the Radio 2 Cambridge Folk Festival website...

There are some great mixes of the Dub Colossus track Shima Edy beginning to flow in to the site, and we've had a few requests asking us to explain how the competition voting works, so here goes....

To vote in the competition you need to log-in to the site, then on each remix page you will see a button 'Add to comp chart' Clicking this button adds the remix into a list on your 'remixer page' which you can access from the log-in panel in the side bar. When you are on your 'remixer page' you can drag the tracks up and down in your competition list until you have the remixes in the right order. At the end of the competition we will combine all the charts and a winner will emerge.

Maybe it all sounds a little complex, but we created this system to try and get around the ratings war that has occasional broken out in other competitions. You can still rate and comment on these mixes as with any other, and the site generates it's top 20 each week, but the competition voting is a separate system.

Let us know how it works for you at webmaster@realworldremixed.com.

...oh and don't forget there's a Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin going to the winning mix in this vote.

Take a look behind the scenes of Peter's Writing Room with Richard Chappell at sonicstate.com.