Real World Celebrates in Style!

Everyone on site at Real World had their fingers crossed on the morning of Wednesday 28 June and were looking skyward for signs of ominous black clouds! We were all hoping that it wasn't going rain! This was the day of the Real World Summer Party - our biggest celebration in the last 7 years- and we were relying on the sunshine to make it a perfect day.

The big event was to celebrate 20 Years of Real World Studios, its investment in a future of recording and the unique relationship with Real World Records. The refit and relaunch of two of the main studios - the famous Big Control Room and smaller Production Room - were the motivation to crack open a bottle of wine. It then seemed a good idea to invite a number of Real World artists to the studio and put on a concert in the grounds of the studio.

During the afternoon the invited media took part in a press conference where Peter Gabriel talked about the illustrious history of the studio, played some tasters of forthcoming music to be released on the label and introduced a number of musicians and producers.

Following a wonderful barbeque from resident Real World chief Geraldine, lashings of Pimms, fine wines, delicious deserts and west country cheeses the invited audience of friends and business associates enjoyed an evening of music.

Adrian Sherwood opened proceedings with a mellow 'dub lite' DJ set followed by new comer singer song writer Charlie Winston. Chinese flutist Guo Yue provided a magical moment of solo performance followed by the wonderful Daby Touré who got the crowd in party mood. Sevara Nazarkhan, the beautiful Uzbek diva, was outstanding. LIttle Axe brought the house down (even though we were all outside on the lawn) with a fantastic set of 21st century blues featuring the legendary Skip Mcdonald, Keith Le Blanc, Doug Wimbish and original Tackhead vocalist Bernard Fowler. Quite unexpectedly the band were joined on stage by Robert Plant (who was unable to resist the temptation to get up there with like-minded musicians!) followed by Peter and Sevara. What a finale! The whole evening was brought to a fabulous conclusion with a specially designed firework display - the scale of which has never been seen before in the skies above the village of Box!

And we didn't even have a light shower.....