Alex Banks – “Phosphorus” Visuals

Cursor Video used Notch to create manipulable visuals for the newest iteration of Brighton DJ, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Alex Banks’s AV show.

In 2023, Alex Banks contacted Cursor Video to develop visuals to accompany a few tracks, including “Phosphorus,” for his latest AV show. Banks made a special request for something that could be played live via Ableton using Ebosuite plugins. Creative Director Jamie Shaw set out to create a collection of work that could hold its own without any added manipulation but to which Banks could, when inspiration struck, easily add complementary effects during performances.

As Shaw explained, “This track has long been a favourite of mine, so I was stoked! I immediately came up with a clear vision of a mountainous landscape comprised of blues and greens with a luminous glow.” Shaw began production by using Resolume to sketch out rhythmic 2D chunks and Gaea to make a procedural mountain, extracting flow maps and saving other layers for later.

Shaw handled everything else—lighting, texturing, post effects, and camera animation—in Notch, feeding the original Resolume-generated patterns into the scene, adjusting to taste before bringing in rendered clips.

Banks; the team at Max Cooper’s Mesh record label; and audiences at Brighton, London, and Kelburn Garden Party loved the culminating show, with which Banks will continue to tour throughout 2024.