What you might not realise is that the Skating Minister is actually a highly accomplished artist who happens to live on the Isle of Wight.
How does an artist ends up skating in a music video?
Nick Martin, who teaches life drawing at Quay Arts (listen to our 2009 podcast with him), has appeared in two music videos for Clean Bandit, last year in Dust Clears – which has had over six million views on YouTube – as well as appearing in the later video for Rather Be (which has had an enormous 88 million views).
Nick told OnTheWight,
“I was approached by the band as they wanted an older skater and together we came up with the idea of using Raeburn’s ‘The Reverend Walker skating on Dudingston Loch’.
“It seemed apt, as I trained in Edinburgh, skated competitively until I was 19 and have always loved the painting of the Scottish minister.”
He went along to Queen’s ice rink in London for an audition and, not surprisingly given his singing and skating talent, he got the job.
The skating singer
Nick went on to explain,
“We flew out to Lake Vattern in Sweden, which is 40 miles long and four miles wide and frozen from December to March. We had a lot of fun filming for two days in perfect conditions for figure skating.
“I had to sing (for the lip-sync) as I was skating which was interesting! I sing with the Tritone Singers on the Island and have always loved singing. It’s a nice change from painting portraits and singing Vaughan Williams!”
The rise of Clean Bandit
The Cambridge-based band have been going from strength to strength. They’ve appeared at all the major summer festivals, and will be returning to the Isle of Wight in September for Bestival after their Isle of Wight Festival success.
Nick tells us that they’ve appeared on ‘Later ‘with Jools Holland’ and were recently on Radio Four’s ‘Front Row’ talking about their success. Their Album came out in June and is enjoying a great success having been in the charts since its release.
We love the video, especially now it has an Isle of Wight connection, and were fascinated to learn of Nick’s other talents.
Look carefully in the video below and you can also see a glimpse of Nick on the number one single ‘Rather Be’ which has had an enormous 88 million+ hits on YouTube
