Updates
Lions of Dissent join us as Music Partner to create original music for the 2024 festival
A big welcome to our first Music Partner for BDF, Lions of Dissent. Read on to find out how they created bespoke music to soundtrack each district at this year’s festival.
Lions of Dissent is a music and art collective formed in 2015. With a proven pedigree proudly built on back-to-back sell out shows and exhibitions, international critical acclaim, BBC 6 Music plays and a wide and varied canon of self-produced sonic and visual material, we are more than just a band.
We feel that music, design and art are intrinsically linked in many ways, but primarily by their ability to provoke and inspire an emotional reaction and foster a deep connection. So when the opportunity presented itself to work with the BDF team to create original music for the festival, we grabbed it with both hands!
Becoming Music Partner for BDF was an exciting and unique proposition for us. We have worked with the team to create a suite of audio elements which were used on the speaker announcement visuals on social media and digital channels, loopable music for on-stage speaker changeovers, along with an expansive ambient soundtrack for use within the auditorium as festival goers enter/leave or are waiting for an event to start.
The key part of the brief was to create music to reflect the 4 districts of the festival – Digital, Product, Graphic and Illustration – which would act as an entrance soundtrack for speakers in that district complementing bespoke visuals created by the BDF team.
Our concept was to create one piece of music which is transposed into 4 different musical styles to reflect the districts. The creative process of interpreting each district sonically was very intuitive and instinctual. We took inspiration from the types of speakers who will feature in each venue, along with the typefaces and colour palette used for each district, and the resulting four 30 second vignettes take on their own musical persona whilst creating a consistent soundtrack for the festival.
“We can’t wait for you to hear our music around the festival this year, and we’re looking forward to seeing the visuals played on the big screen. It’s been a really exciting and creatively fulfilling project to work on and we are looking forward to an ongoing creative relationship between Lions of Dissent and BDF for future events.”