Coming to a video store near you - OUTRI vs. Jeremy Bradfield
It could be 1998. Or 1987, or even 2003 if you were a DVD latecomer. I’m unwrapping my first new VHS tape in twenty-five years or more, slipping it out of its cardboard cover and smiling at the sound of the plastic-on-plastic scrape that’s unavoidable if you ever wanted to play a home video in your own machine. There’s a mechanical clunk as the video player accepts the tape, locates it in place and lines it up. Will it work? It’s been such a long time.
The default blue screen on the TV changes to crackling black as I hit play…
Jeremy Bradfield and OUTRI outside B.Box Studios.
By now you might be familiar with OUTRI if you’re a regular reader of Moths and Giraffes. OUTRI is the solo work put down by session bassist and producer Ian ‘dodge’ Paterson, whose music with jazz group Slowlight Quartet we covered in the summer of 2023. We caught him playing live with YVA in November ‘24 and last year we wrote about the fourth OUTRI single, ‘Her Bright Smile’ with vocalist Imogen Bose-Ward.
You could say dodge has kept busy with the OUTRI project since then. He released a new solo track in October called ‘Vignette #3: Birdsong’. Like most of his work, it was recorded in a single pass with video captured at the same time, though the settings always change, this one was shot at the sparse Northern Dance in Newcastle.
OUTRI’s music is often a voyage of discovery by its very nature, decisions are made in the moment and ideas are committed to using a bass guitar, drum machine, a myriad of pedals and even some spoken word. What starts as a sketch becomes the track as it unfolds, and this also applies to live performance. Paterson has taken the project to various stages over the past year, a digital drum solo excerpt titled ‘Susurrus’ is captured from the Lancaster Jazz Festival, while a full set from Cobalt Studios shows dodge’s growing visual presentation.
As well as solo works, OUTRI has also immersed himself in collaborations with Ruth Lambert (‘Skylark’), pianist Phil Richardson (‘Our Paths Cross & Abut Each Other’) and most recently with videographer Jeremy Bradfield. But let’s rewind … … …
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The default blue screen on the TV changes to crackling black as I hit play…
‘In a world of modern computing, precision is key.’
A screen within a screen blinks into view, moments later Jeremy Bradfield manually pushes titles across to introduce the audio/visual duo, and OUTRI’s most ambitious piece so far – ‘Erroneous Digit’. For this time, what you see on the screen is also an interaction with Paterson’s music. This isn’t simply a music video that’s been created to fit the sound, it’s a weaving of visuals by Bradfield, an immediate emotional response pulled from the same creative space.
Early on, OUTRI pairs drum ‘n’ bass beats with a melodic bassline, an influence taken from London dance label Ninja Tune, whose music shaped Paterson’s own style while at university. This fades into a chattering of electronica that’s become a staple in OUTRI’s sonic explorations. The second movement evokes the smoky back-alley atmosphere of a detective novel brought to life, interspersed with the spoken word of a computer scientist giving an impromptu lesson.
‘A single Erroneous Digit could set the entire system into disarray.’
The visuals from Bradfield are a constant swirl of colour, a creative combination of layers upon layers, utilising all the tools and angles at his disposal. Some of the blocks, lines and superimposing are techniques from decades past that would’ve been used on television. It seems an obvious decision to put this work out on VHS, it’s right where it belongs. At times, pre-selected slides turn the piece into a high school science class from 1995. I hope you’re all taking notes, there will be a test at the end!
A dynamic mix of live cameras are scattered throughout the studio. Some are unusually placed, squashing the viewer into the pair’s claustrophobic environment amid cables and blinking lights. Overhead shots of the visual mixer can turn into OUTRI’s pedals, or his bass headstock, capturing hand movements and not facial expressions. Not all the cameras are mounted – Gareth Williams (who can occasionally be seen in the back of some shots) is also capturing some handheld footage.
‘Oh, well, thank you. I enjoy all aspects of data processing. Up to, and including the identification of an Erroneous Digit.’
‘Erroneous Digit’ remains a conversation throughout, unmiked words are said between the two performers, leading up to OUTRI taking out the beat. With pulses scattering around and the sound of a record player stopping mid-song, Jeremy Bradfield pushes across one last pre-made title – ‘The End’.
All artforms are escapism, and with each passing year this has become increasingly obvious. Except, there are always distractions, aren’t there? ‘Erroneous Digit’ is a self-contained art exhibition. It’s the sound, the lighting, the paint on the walls, the accompanying voice on your way round. It’s the safety of, ‘Whatever’s going on out there, it doesn’t matter in here.’ This 12-minute epic encompasses all that is joy in art creation, involving the viewer on the journey. OUTRI and Jeremy Bradfield lovingly use techniques of the past to create a work that is still futuristic, that if found by our descendants, they’d be hard pushed to accurately date its origin.
And if you were to buy one of the super limited copies of ‘Erroneous Digit’ on VHS, you will get more than just the music video. A ‘making of’ feature shows how OUTRI and Jeremy Bradfield put this whole sequence together. Dust off your video players and grab a copy from Bandcamp!
Continue reading for our interview with OUTRI. We ask about collaborating with Jeremy Bradfield, working through the takes in the studio and the concept of putting this single down on VHS. We also talk about expanding the concept to a full live performance and the potential for future collaborations. All this and much more below!
OUTRI and Jeremy Bradfield outside B.Box Studios.
1. Your new single and video for 'Erroneous Digit' is a 12-minute ambient and dance epic all captured in one take. I know it's loosely composed so when putting this together, are you doing songwriting sketches or a demo to give you some kind of roadmap when you captured the one take?
It turned into a bit of a sprawling 12min epic didn’t it. I had the ideas roughly laid out and the different parts prepared (musically and in terms of the sounds etc) but the structure was a bit more flexible, especially the second down-tempo section where I was really responding to how it felt at the time & the occasional mistake in looping. I mis-sampled one of the vocal parts for example on the take we chose and so then needed to respond to that in the moment. But it all worked out well and I don’t think you’d necessarily notice. And there was an element of responding to Jeremy as well - we had some rough ideas sketched out but there were bits where I was shouting out directions live as to where the track was going and then waiting for him to respond. So it was quite organic in lots of ways while still having defined ideas / sections. It’s never quite the same twice!
2. How did you meet Jeremy Bradfield? At what point did you decide to work together?
We played together years ago for a couple of gigs but then did nothing together for about a decade though we do have loads of mutual musical contacts. Jeremy also does quite a lot of kids theatre so I often would see him at shows when we would take our kids. We properly reconnected on the school run when our kids ended up at the same school and it kind of went from there. Jeremy did an amazing video for a great local singer / songwriter (Liz Corney) and has been so helpful with my live AV setup that it was a no-brainer really to ask him to do a collaboration. And I’m so glad he was up for it!
3. As mentioned already, this was all done in one take, but were there other experiments done on the day? Were there a series of pieces from which you selected your favourite?
Due to time constraints and also wanting to keep It fresh and enjoyable we set up the night before (took hours, there was so much gear!), checked everything worked, messed around a bit and then came back on the day just to run takes. We wanted to keep it fresh and live and try and grab something quite quickly rather than slogging away at it for hours on end. The last take which we used (I think it was maybe take 4) just felt great and we were both like, “yeah that's it, let's stop there even if it isn’t 100% perfect”. So we stopped and went home early :)
We didn’t have loads of time to experiment per se but in a way the whole thing was an experiment to see if it would work with the two of us (it certainly did) and if there was the possibility of doing more in the future (there is).
‘Erroneous Digit’ single artwork.
4. One thing that fascinates me about all your videos is how you're surrounded by a multitude of pedals and gear that you're constantly interacting with. Aside from your basses, what's your favourite, most essential bit of gear here?
Ooh - great, but tricky, question! Well, this track was a chance to work properly with the drum machine that I’ve just incorporated into the setup - I had used it on a previous single but the workflow wasn’t quite right so it needed some re-jigging and this was a good chance to see how that worked. And I was very pleased with how it now works within my setup…BUT, I do also love the little mini-sampler that I use to create the little vocal samples - it’s got so much potential that I’ve only just started tapping into. And then there’s the old school Kaoss Pad that I’ve got as well which allows me to mangle sound in all sorts of fun and unusual ways….arghh, how do I choose from all of those great little boxes. Perhaps I can lump them all into one (non-bass) category and choose all three?!
5. This track takes some inspiration from London dance label Ninja Tune, what do you love about that music? What does it bring to you that differs from your jazz-inspired work?
I love that a lot of the Ninja Tune recordings follow in that tradition of sampling old jazz and groove records, or using those ideas as starting points and then developing it from there. And I love the strong sense of groove and electronic sensibilities that runs throughout all of their artists as well. We’d often listen to a lot of these albums at university in the early 2000s after going to an intense DnB night or a gig and as a bass player that kind of material really grabs me and gets my head nodding (always a good sign!), even at 3am. Seeing Kid Koala with a live band in a small sweaty room at Newcastle Uni is a very strong musical memory for me - loads of grooves, incredible scratching / sampling, great rapping. So a lot of this music was very formative for me in my early years as a bass player but in a way it’s only now that it has all come together.
6. I'm writing these questions while watching the VHS, at what point did you decide 'Erroneous Digit' was going to be put out that way? Is this something you'd like to do more of?
One of the joys of the OUTRI project is collaborating with other NE based musicians and I’ve absolutely loved all of the collaborations I’ve done so far. This collaboration felt different as it was with an AV artist rather than another musician and so I really wanted to celebrate that. Jeremy has been super helpful over the past few years helping me with the AV side of my live shows (lending me old TV screens / cables / video mixers) and as that’s all analogue it just felt right that the physical release should be on VHS. And yes I’d absolutely love to do more of this. My first release was on tape, my next release will hopefully be on mini-disc and then I’m aiming to do an album on vinyl. After that I’m not sure…perhaps laser disc, DVD, reel to reel?!
7. I unwrapped this tape thinking, 'This is the first VHS I've unwrapped in probably 25 years.' If you had a choice between streaming and physical media, what would it be? What do you miss about the VHS era?
I feel like streaming promised so much as a way to release and promote music but in the end we ended up with about 150,000 tracks being released a day (a day!) of which about a third are purely AI generated (urgh). So in the face of that tsunami of music (and AI slop) how does anyone ever get their music listened to or make any headway against that? And that got me thinking about physical media again and how much fun it is to have something physically in your hand that you can actually touch / feel / enjoy. And also how much more enjoyable the process is when you end up with a physical copy of it at the end. So for me, physical media wins out and I do think (and hope) that we’re going to see a lot more of that in the coming years as artists move away from streaming and back to more analogue approaches to releasing music. I've also really enjoyed learning how to use a graphic design program and create all the artwork etc myself.
8. To me, the potential to expand this collaboration to incorporate a whole live set is huge, is that something you'd both be interested in doing?
Well - actually I have a gig in February doing just this! It’s at an amazing independent venue called Cobalt in Newcastle and they have an amazing video wall. So we reached out to them and they agreed to put us on as part of their ‘Fresh’ original jazz nights which happen on a Thursday. I’m going to do a set that will segue live into a set by another NE solo artist Faye MacCalman. Jeremy is going to be providing visuals throughout - so it will hopefully be a really immersive audio and visual event - I can’t wait! And I’m actively looking out for other gigs that I can get Jeremy involved with.
9. Is OUTRI the kind of project that could be recreated with a live band? Or would we be straying too much into jazz territory?
OUTRI is primarily a solo vehicle when I perform live, partly because that's how I envisaged it initially and also purely pragmatically I don’t need to organise rehearsals with other people! Having said that I would love to do some live work with a slightly larger ensemble, maybe a string quartet or perhaps a more quirky line up (I’d love to do some writing for bass clarinet for example), to really expand on the soundscape side of things and free me up from having to create everything in the moment. I think I’m less interested in trying to recreate it with a standard band line up because I can already do that myself, but the idea of adding different / unusual instruments in is very exciting - so watch this space!
10. Your music as OUTRI often includes collaborations as this one has, is there anyone you'd love to work with on this project who hasn't been involved yet?
Yes, I’ve got a couple of people in mind. My pal John Hirst, an incredible drummer, is next up for a few tracks with live drums, hopefully in an amazing library space in the North-East. There’s also an amazing London based tabla player that I worked with last year that I have designs on doing something with - just need to figure out some musical / geographical logistics to make that work. There’s a few other folks that I’ve approached initially to do collaborations with that I need to follow up. So lots of exciting things to come in the next few years :)
11. What are your plans for 2026? OUTRI or otherwise!
Jeremy and I are definitely going to do another single together and hopefully some more gigs as well. I also have an OUTRI album with an amazing Glasgow based singer-songwriter (Harry Bird) that we wrote and recorded in five days (!!) in November 25 to finish mixing so that we can release that. And then I’m hoping to get started on a full album which will hopefully appear early 2027 all being well. And alongside that hopefully a few more solo OUTRI gigs and whatever else comes along. I’d love to soundtrack a film, maybe live and as mentioned do some writing / arranging for larger ensemble. So there’s lots to be getting on with!
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Purchase the music of OUTRI, Slowlight Quartet and more at the Jazz Sound Records Bandcamp page.
Watch ‘Erroneous Digit’ as the artist intended – on VHS! Get a copy from an extremely limited run of 10 here.
Get tickets to see OUTRI and Jeremy Bradfield at Cobalt Studios.
Find out more about dodge on his official website.
Follow Jeremy Bradfield on Instagram @jeremy_bradfield.
Follow Ian ‘dodge’ Paterson on Instagram and Facebook @dodgebass.
Follow the music of OUTRI on Instagram @outri__bass.
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