To celebrate the Olympics coming to London, Mother will be documenting the Games from a unique perspective - that of an ordinary man is Nigel, from Kettering. For the duration of the Games Nigel will travel on London’s transport network, listening in to the worlds’ conversations and writing songs inspired by what he hears.
For the two weeks of the Olympic Games, Mother have tasked Nigel to write a set of song lyrics and deliver them to a recording studio by midday everyday. Nigel will travel on bus, tube, train and cable car and his observations will inspire anything from a power ballad, to a dub-step or folk song, which will be produced overnight by Racket Music and available to listen to for free the next morning from www.listenwithnigel.com.
Nigel’s challenge from Mother is a complex one and we have no idea what will happen. Will the muse be with him? Will our transport system be chaos as predicted? Will he get stranded and have to bike his lyrics to the studio?
Throughout the Games, Nigel’s songs and daily tweets will provide a unique perspective on what happens when the world comes to London. People will be able to map Nigel’s progress on twitter through @ListenWithNigel. A new track will be released each weekday from 30 July – 10 August on www.listenwithnigel.com.
The collaboration with Nigel happened after he had a chance encounter with one of Mother’s strategists, Alice McGinn. Alice met Nigel back in May when they were travelling (separately) from Nottingham to London. He overheard Alice’s friend tell her that she’d once been to a gig to see a ‘Really boring, old guy… Bob something…Bob Dylan!’ Nigel was so gobsmacked by her ignorance of his life-long hero, that he went home and wrote a song about it. A week later Alice bumped into Nigel again and he rasped his song in a Dylan-esque drawl, right there on the train, and gave her a copy of the lyrics. When Alice came back to Mother, she told Anthony Austin, head of BOSH, Mother’s production arm, and he set about getting Nigel’s song recorded. They emailed it back to Nigel, and a unique musical experiment was born.