Jonathan Gooch is known as the talented producer behind the incredible Feed Me and drum and bass, dubstep and electro-house moniker Spor. Gooch spent last year on the road touring America, Europe and throughout the UK with his new live show Feed Me With Teeth. An absolutely phenomenal project, Gooch’s new live show is – put lightly – out of this world. It’s a huge set of teeth with lights, visuals all synced up with what’s happening behind the decks and more. “I’ve spent a lot of years DJing constantly and I’ve played over the world several times doing just straight DJ sets. But, for me, I’ve always been a visual artist as well,” Gooch says down the line from his studio back home, speaking of how Feed Me With Teeth came about.
“It always seems a more exciting prospect to do a bigger, interactive digital show as well as bringing the music which I’ve been doing anyway. For me, it was a way of furthering creativity and just expanding. For me, it was probably the biggest thing I’ve ever done, it still is. I’ve had so much fun doing it. It’s a lot more rewarding from my point of view to be able to do the show.”
Gooch has received “amazing” feedback about the new live show, having spent a great deal of last year on tour with the new set up. “Apart from learning the technical aspects of touring the show and battling electronics, we’ve done a tour bus all over America and we’ve been to Europe doing big festivals and we’ve done some fantastic festivals across the UK,” he says. “I’m so pleased with how it looked from the very first sculpture of it to the final thing; it’s pretty much exactly how we wanted it and we’re still adding to it now. We’ve just added more lights and it’s kind of growing in all dimensions.”
One would think that it’d be a mission to move such a gigantic piece of equipment from venue to venue across boarders and oceans but, Gooch says it’s his crew who are to thank for making the ‘mission’ like magic. “It weighs just over three tonnes and it’s 20 feet wide by 10 feet high [apart from] external stuff – lights and tubes,” he says. “Despite it being as lightweight as possible, you don’t want it to fall on you. We have a really good crew of people, they’re so good at taking it up and down – it vanishes after the show so quickly, it packs down very small. So that’s also part of the fun of seeing it being built – realising that it wasn’t just a sculpture you can just wheel on stage, it has to be a touring object that you can live with and other people need to understand it in case it needs repairs and things like that.”
As for being on the road, Gooch has had a few great shows with the new live set up over the last year. “We did some great ones when we did the bus tour in North America – I did a fantastic one in Chicago, that’s always a really good crowd and some great shows across Europe and in the UK – Reading and Leeds Festivals – they were probably the largest crowds I’ve ever seen in my life, couldn’t believe it, it was complete chaos,” he says. “Coming out this month in London – I’m doing my first London headline show, I’m really looking forward to that.”
Gooch is pumped to be bringing the Feed Me With Teeth live show down under for the first time for Future Music Festival in March. “It’ll be great to see The Stone Roses,” he says. “My stage is pretty much lots of people I know and obviously headlined by the Prodigy who have always been one of my big influences probably since the first piece of electronic music I ever heard. Kill The Noise – Jake [Stanczak] – he’s one of my best friends. I’ve toured Australia twice with him before so this will be an even bigger version of the same antics I’d imagine. I’m bringing the Teeth show so I’ll have my crew with me and stuff. Last time I toured Australia, I had one of the best back-to-back tours of dance festivals, it was a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it.”
BY ANNABEL MACLEAN
