'The Fabric Of Football' is a mini-documentary zooming into the lives of May's friends, talking about their upbringing in their local communities, why they follow their respective football teams and how this influences their fashion sense. He interviewed his participants with the intentions of showing them in the most unique ways possible, to show how each and every person involved is different. The influence of area, surroundings and team followed was the main area of research to see how May could respond to this.
With music production and sound design being a large part of May's process, his main intention to further showcase the uniqueness of each of his participants was to respond by using sound, specific to the days of the shoots with those involved. To give an authentic and intimate feel to the video, he recorded voiceovers on his phone to gather the thoughts of his participants, and then mixed this in with their soundtracks.
'How We Listen' is the start of a series of interviews conducted by Jacob May, where he interviews songwriters and producers, discussing the importance of safe spaces to create. His first participant, James Jozef, is a singer, producer and songwriter, currently based in London. He with Jacob discussed the impact of where he makes his music, and why it makes him feel comfortable to write, inside and out of there, especially when in collaboration.
To show Jozef's sense of listening, he responded to his answers by creating motif's and ideas to show how his musical ideas develop in a studio session setting, to show how he listens. To develop these ideas further, as the interviewer, I then went away and developed his ideas, to show how I listen to his music, therefore collaborating to show 'How We Listen'.
May is a contemporary multi-faceted artist, who has explored his identity as a British mixed race male in his latest project, The Mixed Race Lens - a documentary style video, combining portraiture, moving image and music production.
By isolating elements from three pieces of music chosen by his subjects, he created soundtracks by combining individual elements from each of the separate works, experimenting with the clashes of different genres, which parallels the clashes of cultures experienced by mixed race individuals.