The Petebox Future Loops album launch

The Petebox - album launch at The Space

Since he first performed for LeftLion eight years ago, the verbal skills of Pete Sampson (aka The Petebox) have taken him to audiences across the globe.

But Pete still knows where his home is and, as his video-audio crossover Future Loops project finally comes to fruition as a package, he decided to launch it back in Nottingham where it all started. Hence 200 or so people packed into The Space at The Contemporary for the first back-to-back screening of the entire album – and the first opportunity to buy a copy from the man himself.

For those fresh to the concept, it all started just over a year ago when Pete decided to do a cover of Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies. The audio was admittedly brilliant, but what made this cover version so fresh was that the video filmed him doing it all – in a single take. It soon went viral on youtube – within a week it had hundreds of thousands of views. It made the front page of Youtube and The Pixies themselves even tweeted about it. Now, a year on, it is clocking in at over 2.2million.

That video was filmed by Simon Ellis and soon a partnership was born. Pete decided to perform more songs, other covers of favourite songs and some of his own, whilst Simon filmed the process – showcasing to the masses how his beatboxing was done. So in many ways this night was as much of a showcase for Simon’s work as it was Pete’s - although as one of the duo comes off as shy and retiring, the other… well let’s just say he has a right gob on him.

Petebox Future Loops album launch

The nine album tracks are played back to back. The stand out ones for me at the awesome cover of MGMT’s Kids, a cover of I Get Around by The Beach Boys and Wave, one of Pete’s own compositions – which frankly displays as much in the way of songwriting talent as it does of his extraordinary vocal range. Watching all the videos together is great – particularly on the big cinema screen – and solidifies the concept.

Then a film by Tom Walsh is revealed. Tom Walsh is another local filmmaker (who recently filmed our latest covershoot) and it turns out that he’s been hanging round during all the shoots, shooting the shooting as it were and creating aa great little ‘behind the scenes’ documentary.

After this we’re about ready to leave our seats and head to the bar, but it wouldn’t be right if Pete didn’t perform, right? And so the cinema screen comes up and reveals a Petebox-style gig set up. He goes onto play three songs to the crowd – Where Is My Mind?, Panther Dance and Wave.

It’s great to see Pete still keeping it real in Nottingham. And thankfully you know that however big he gets, he’ll always come back to Notts to give his home crowd that little bit extra. Your next chance to see him is at the Dot To Dot Festival in May.

The Future Loops album launch took place at Nottingham Contemporary on Friday 13 April.

Watch Petebox videos on LeftLion
The Petebox website

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