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Pool.looP party, outside Zürich, July 13, 2003
I played with Matthias last night at a pool party thrown by the sons of his older brother (who is currently on vacation). We decided to name the gig the Pool.looP Party.
On the way, we stop at the home of Eric Obermühlner, who is having a big Brazilian party. Eric is one of the partners with Matthias and Kim Flint in Aurisis, the company that designed the complex and wonderful Loop IV software for the EDP. He lives outside Zürich with his very talentend wife, Tania, and their kids. I have a wonderful time talking to Tania, who is very interested in making musical instruments and art objects out of found objects (something very dear to my heart). She designs for kids and is a truly creative person. We discuss lots of creative ideas for making simple but effective instruments. I like her immensely and am sad that we have to press on to the pool party.
The party was held at their grandmother's home, which is an amazing estate high up the side of the mountain overlooking Rieden, with a stunning view of the Alps and a beautiful valley below that runs into the huge lake just outside of Zürich (I forget the name). We were the musical portion intended to officially accompany the sunset over the beautiful valley. I can't overstate the beauty and majesty of the view of this estate. Matthias' nephew's grandmother and grandfather were the first people to import Japanese electronic devices into Switzerland and obviously did very well by their efforts. The estate looks like a swingin' playboy, circa 1957, designed it as an amazing bachelor pad. It has a lot of 1950's and 1960's futurism built in and even has a very hip concert shell (with a circular bachelor bar underneath it--!) where they have thrown private classical music concerts for the past 40 years. I should mention that their grandmother is in the hospital and can use our prayers and well wishes for a speedy recovery.
Matthias and I were sandwiched between DJ's playing mostly hip hop and some lovely Brazilian downtempo electronica. Eropean hip hop is a lot softer and less obviously angry than its counterpart in the U.S. (from my perspective) and it was soothing for me to hear them play a lot of one of my favorite French rappers, MC Solaar. The Algerian tour guides and drivers helping us on my past French tours with Bob Brozman and his Thieves of Sleep had previously hipped me to this cool smooth rapper and I really dig his stuff.
I was also a little insecure about whether my weird dayglo green instruments and slightly avante garde show would go over well with this 20-something crowd of Swiss hipsters and was astonished that they seemed to love it and were rapt with attention. I did a lot of BeatBoxing (human vocal approximations of drum set) including using a lot of half speed/double speed manipulations of the EDP and Line 6 DL4 to affect that technique of half-speed hip hop going into double-speed jungle/Drum and Bass breaks.
I've also borrowed a technique learned from Andre LaFosse at last year's Y2K2 Looping Festival where I record two identical loops and then use the sus/multiply feature of the EDP to reduce the 1st loop to tiny loops that go gradually faster and faster, causing the stuttering effect that is often used in jungle/D&B and then, at the last moment, switching to the unedited loop 2, giving the illusion that I have just sliced and diced the loop and suddenly gone back into time to the unexpurgated loop. I can then mute this and continue beatboxing in real time, triggering and retriggering the original stuttered loops as 'fills'. I've gotten quite seamless with this technique and the audience was heavily digging it, to my relief............lol.
I have to say that I am falling in love with the depth and musicality of the EDP. I am a brand new endorsee of this instrument for Gibson (who manufactures it). I received my unit from them shortly before I left on tour, and the manual is so bulky and heavy that it was impractical to bring it on such a long tour, so I am learning techniques one by one from the sophisticated users that I am touring and performing with.
Claude Voit (an amazing musician by the way, whose music I highly recommend to anyone) hipped me to the realign function the other night in Lucerne. He is very respectful and drove a long way to see me play in Lucerne without even bringing his own guitar to play on. I was finally able to ask him if he would borrow someone's guitar to join Luis and me at the end of my set. The realign technique he taught me just allows for one to really mangle a loop and then to realign it to whoever is synching to you with another EDP. It allows for a lot of elasticity of manipulating the loop in real time and still being able to synchronize. A very hip feature that no other looper that I know of has. I had been having trouble synching to other musicians previously on the tour and this simple (and obvious, if you have a manual) technique really helped me out.
The party is amazing and I have several stimulating discussions with several of the party goers who are DJs , musicians or even one fascinating beat boxer that I met. It all culminates in a lovely sunset (while we play) and a small fireworks display once it is dark. I'm really glad to have played here in such a beautiful place and feel like I got to play for a much younger crowd than at most of the previous shows on the tour. I really like Matthias' nephews and end up giving them all a free rhythm intensive lesson (with Matthias sitting in) back at his brother's place the next day.
On Sunday, Matthias has a gig playing by the lake in Zürich for his sister's non-denominational congregation. It is a solo gig for him and the green plastic weirdness that I'm up to is just not appropriate, so , for once, I sit out and just enjoy the true beauty of Matthias' ambient and ever-changing modal excursions on his amazing, proprietary guitar (that has polyphonic distortion built in that is just an amazing sound). He can get the most incredible subsonic sounds out of his axe and on this gig he plays his subwoofer that we have just picked up at a guitar shop in Zürich the day before. It sounds incredible wafting over the lakeshore as the sunbathers frolic and the dogs bark. It is just a lovely experience. Another day that I am thankful for.
That evening we attend a party of Mark Stenzler, an American 'americana' disc jockey who has a show on a Zürich radio station and has lived there for several years as an expatriate. Several of our Brazilian friends including Tania (who we met at Eric Obermühlner's party) come to the party and I have a really good time. Our host is an aficionado of fine whiskeys, something I know nothing about, and he trots out about 10 world-class and very, very expensive brands for me to taste. Man, oh man, the best of these whiskeys are incredibly good, and before I know it, they have thrown me into the car more intoxicated than I really care to be for the trip to Matthias' family's cabin in the Alps. We start out after midnight for the few-hour trip on a beautiful moonlit night.
Matthias's car is having all kinds of transmission problems and finally , in the middle of the night in the middle of the Alps, it comes to a halt. This makes me very nervous, but Matthias is his typical upbeat self and doesn't seem concerned at all. We just let the car cool down and drive further until it stops again. We have to make two or three stops like this until we drive way up onto the side of the mountain and the car will go no further. Luckily, we drag our exhausted carcasses up another 100 yards or so and reach his family's amazing cabin. Matthias' father was a scientist and his company bought this cabin for him as a thank you for all the innovative work that he did for them. It's a great place. One of Matthias' other nephews is already there with a friend, studying for exams, but they have gone to sleep by the time we arrive.
The next day we awake to the beautiful Alps and have a breathtaking breakfast on the patio overlooking the steep valley we are in. After a long hike in the afternoon up the mountainside I finally have time to corner this brilliant inventor of the Echoplex EDP and get some world class tutelage in the use of the machine. He teaches me, finally, how to make presets and we do some cool jamming together.
I'm just intoxicated by the beauty and the serenity of this place. We look down at two small villages perched on the mountainside, including a small 12th century stone church. There are cows everywhere and this land is very domesticated compared to the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California where I spent a lot of time in my youth. The Alps are young though, so they are very spectacular and jagged, even though we are not even in the highest of them by any means. The view of the valley changes hour by hour and we have rain clouds come in and then it is really warm.
I also got the rare opportunity to hang out alone this afternoon. We've been blessed to spend only five nights in hotel rooms (because everyone has put us up for free along the way) but we have had no alone time for almost two months. Chris and I are both craving it and it feels good to sort of putter around doing nothing for a change.
I feel deeply indebted to Chris because she has been like a rock for me on this trip. First , she has been amazingly supportive of me during the time immediately after my mother died. Then she has been so helpful in helping me negotiate moving and setting up equipment (in train stations, subways, taxi cabs), tearing my equipment down on those long days when we have long train rides, long sound checks and long performances. A couple times I was so wasted and Chris just jumped in and started rolling cords...........I felt so lucky and grateful. She also has done all of the tour travel managing for me as well: booking the trains and planes and ferries and taxi cabs and buses and subways.
The next time we go on tour, I have made a pact that I will be her roadie, tour manager, back scratcher and man-servant. There are really far more opportunities for her as a singer-songwriter to get gigs in Europe and the UK than there are for me as an abstract live looping artist and she has been making great contacts with musicians along the whole tour.
Her new CD is coming out when we get home to santa Cruz and even though she hates me making a fuss about it, she wrote it, played all the instruments on it (acoustic guitar, electric guitar,bass, keyboards, percussion, drumset and electronic effects), arranged, produced, mixed and mastered it, did the artwork and is now designing the website (as well as being the designer and webmistress of this site of mine). Her record is beautiful: haunting , minimal and very melancholy. She is the most self deprecating and humble superwoman I've ever met and she is as beautiful as she is talented. I deeply love her (even if she will squirm as she updates this post.......................LOL...................it's good for you hon...............soak it up!!!!!!!! LOL.)
We are planning on starting a new project when we get home that I'm very excited about. We'll probably have to wait until after the Y2K3 Live Looping Festival and my 50th birthday in the first two weeks of October before we can get started, but we are planning to do a duet abstract pop electronica project (which I hope to do some of my first lead vocals in of my life!). We did one performance with this concept several years ago, where we gave ourselves 4 days to write and learn and perform 5 songs at a benefit concert. We both got a gnarly flu and ended up writing the whole show and memorizing it and performing it in 18 hours (!). It really impressed me just how quickly a band can work if everyone is focused and a deadline set. We were really well received too and have been wanting to find the time in between our various records and production projects to work together again. It will be called Vermin Circus (you know those striped tents that cover houses when they are fumigated? I know, I know...........pretty dark, but there you have it.........).
After this tour, which is the culmination of a three year period of investigating found sound and abstract sound design and almost completely eschewing the drums (which have been my main instrument along with percussion for the last 36 years of my life), I am going to really get back into grooving again. If I had this tour to do over again, I would have brought either a sophisticated keyboard (sampler or synth) or a laptop (which I just couldn't afford to purchase before we came on tour). My dearth of melodic instruments on the tour has frustrated me a little. I can't even have a bass guitar with me because of weight and space limitations (although many people have honored my rider requests for a bass guitar at several venues). I can't wait to get home and start to play drums again. LOL. I never thought I'd see the day. I also can't wait to start working on my next CD, tentatively titled Purple Hand. This next CD will be an abstract electronic project and I have an enormous amount of material to sort through and finish in order to release it before the end of the year. I'm really trying to release a project a year for the rest of my life. That is my goal at least after having released only three records in about twenty years due to limited finances and my perfectionism. Thank heavens computers have made digital recording, composition and sound design a reality for relatively little money (compared to twenty years ago when a cheap record cost $10,000 - $20,000 to record. Now for $3,000 of investment and a little help with software a musician can OWN their own studio, do their own artwork and manufacturer their own CDs for very little cost).
It's an amazing time we live in.
Lucerne, Switzerland, July 10, 2003
Luis Angulo (from Radolfzell---website www.labalou.com) and I got to Lucerne in time to find the Sedel Club, a truly unique place that was a prison from the 1920s to the 1980s, when the Sedel folks opened up their combination punk rock club and rehearsal hall. Bands rent each of the 55 rooms there (3 bands per room), and while we ate dinner with the sound crew and gathered looping artists before the show, we listened to indie bands 'working it out'. I felt at home in this rock and roll environment that I spent so much time in in the early 80s with my successful new wave band, Tao Chemical.
Roma, a noise artist who is also the president of the Sedel, began the Lucerne Live Looping Festival with Jesus Torino's brother Javier improvising on a capella vocals and loops. This combination immediately got my attention. I like the Frippish e-bow-ridden ambient vibe that is so prevalent in the live looping community as much as the next person, but I really love dark music as well and I hadn't heard any since I began this long tour. Roman was creating some beautiful dark and industrial noise loops with a couple of Dr. Samples and one of those cool small new Korg synths. I came within a gnat's breath of buying one of those synths before I came on this tour and I really regret that I didn't. I left my own excellent EMU Audigy synth, with an amazing bank of custom sounds that ex-EMU sound designer David Fitzpatrick (who is a drum student of mine) has loaded into it, at home because it was so heavy; I really wish that I had the versatility of a sophisticated synth to augment the relative lack of sophistication I have in all of the found-sound instruments and toy instruments that I brought.
Anyway, Roman's music was inspiring to me, and Javier, performing his first looping performance ever, did a creative job of improvising lyrics that fit perfectly with Roman's vibe.
Interestingly, the dark vibe of the music coupled with the pitch black punkish interior of the Sedel seemed to influence everyone who played afterwards. Next up, Jesus Turino (a Spaniard living in Switzerland) and Matthias Grob took the stage together. Jesus seemed to be having some technical problems with his looper but nonetheless created some really interesting loops on his bass guitar. He had a really rockish indie kind of vibe and played really loud. I dug it. Matthias' attempts to play along were the most 'outside' and angular I've heard this very melodic and inside musician play. I respected his attempt to match Jesus's vibe and dug what he played but he had a hard time, not only with his set, but with the darkness of the whole evening. (Many days later, Matthias and I were sitting in the middle of the beautiful Swiss Alps where Matthias' family owns a cabin, during a summer thunder storm, listening to those same tracks. Matthias was liking the evening's music a lot more than he did on the day of the gig. That is frequently the case when one listens to music after the emotions of the performance are over.)
I came on next but before I did, I asked Roman if he would join me at the end of my set when I told him I would start playing overtone harmonics on a beer bottle. I had actually been playing the same beer bottle un-mic'd during his set and got very inspired so I was honored to have him sit in with me.
Next, I was happy that Claude Voit came up with Luis Angulo to play with me (as a start to Luis's set). At sound check we had a really cool jam that, unfortunately, didn't get recorded by Matthias (who has been meticulously recording every single set of every show on all of the numerous times we have played together from Sweden to Wales to Berlin to Switzerland). We were so jazzed about our earlier sound check jam that we have started talking about doing a looping tour of Northern Mexican cities together next February when Luis will be visiting his folks in San Diego. Through Luis, I found out that some of the northern Mexican cities like Tijuana and Mexicali have a really new and thriving electronica scene happening. I'm very excited to do this tour if is possible for it to happen. I've never played a gig in Mexico before and have always had a great love for that country and its culture, stemming back to my days visiting my grandmother in the summer in San Antonio,Texas, which has a very Mexican vibe compared to where I grew up in Northern California.
Luis went on and had a really cool set. We got into some very hip Middle Eastern spaces. The night dissolved into a long series of jams, the most memorable of which was a Cubano styled piece that Luis and I both sang a little on.
We played until 4 a.m. at which point we all went to sleep in our prison bunkbeds (literally).
Altogether it was a great evening for me: one of the most creative of the whole tour. I woke up the next day very inspired and longing to be back at my computer to start work on my next abstract electronica CD.
The next day I miraculously had an amazing connection with a member of the Paiste family, who runs the Paiste Custom shop, in the parking lot of the Sedel. He was loading in some unusual-looking gongs to practise with a new project, and we had an amazingly spirited conversation about weird cymbal design (a subject that is near and dear to my heart as a collector of the weirdest cymbals that I can find). We had a late breakfast, hung out in Lucerne for a bit, and said goodbye to both Claude (who I'll see again for a gig in Lago di Garda) and Luis (who drove back to Radolfzell), and got in Matthias's car to drive to his brother's home to stay for a couple of days.
Cambridge, England June 21st, 2003
We took the train to Cambridge today and got to the Michaelhouse Cafe, site of the 1st International Cambridge Festival of Looping a little earlier.
The cafe is a privately owned and very modern cafe built into the interior of a really old church right in the middle of the multitude of beautiful ancient colleges at Cambridge.
Os (aka Andrew Ostler) the producer of the event and a long-time L.D. contributor was the next to arrive with the P.A. and , one by one, the other artists arrived to be greeted and to set up. Like most of the looping festivals (which tend to be populated by solo loopers) everyone generally sets up at the same time. This is always great in case there is time for a last large jam.
We had a nice crowd including people sitting at tables on the 2nd floor which looked down upon us. I have always liked venues like this, where there are multi-levels of audience. Two of my favorites that I can remember were the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) in Osaka, Japan where the interior was like a curved blimp hangar with the entire venue gradually moving up hill.........the band playing up high......the audiences below.... and one of the stages at Festival d'Ete in Quebec city where some of the audience sit in the castle turrets of the old city above your heads as you play.
Peter Chilvers started the show (which ran continuously like our shows have in Santa Cruz) with a beautiful set of synthesizer ambient music. I agree with Chris' assessment that Peter has a great sense of timbre in the choice of his sounds. It was a really beautiful and understated performance that really moved me. Peter is also, very notably, the co-founder of the cool online record label Burning Shed which is also home to a few of the Cambridge looping artists. You can find out more about Pete at www.burningshed.com/chilvers.
Next up, there was a fascinating set (and one of my personal favorites) by Pete Um , who calls himself a "Community Pop Star", which is a phrase I just love. I have a great love of pop music even though I haven't played much of it in the past five years or so and so I love it when people push the envelope of pop by using electronics, loops, processing, and odd times or odd harmonies. He uses live loops, pre recorded DAT tapes and lo fi sounds to play really interesting 'avante pop' or 'indie tech' or 'lo fi hi fi' something like that. Chris , who is in her own right a very talented multi- instrumentalist singer-songwriter who plays in both acoustic and electric projects, really dug his set as well. There tends to be a dearth of pop music in the live looping scene so I found Pete's set to be really creative, quirky and refreshing. Check him out at www.umbusiness.co.uk.
Os was then joined by Michael Bearpark (guitar, loops) and Tim Bowness (voice) to do a set as Darkroom, a project that they have been doing for several years and with which they have several fine recordings(www.collective.co.uk/darkroom) . Andrew played a laptop and mixed, looped, processed and manipulated Michael's fine guitar loops and Tim's exquisite voice. I have to say that after hearing Tim sing I was more than a little intimidated to use voice in my own set which I have been doing quite a lot these days. Tim is a singer's singer with a beautiful quality to his voice. I , on the other hand, am a relative vocal newbie. If you ask me, he is right up there with the likes of David Sylvian and with an extensive output deserves to be just as famous. I was also extremely impressed to learn that Tim has a pop project called NO-MAN with Steve Wilson, the leader of Porcupine Tree, one of my favorite new bands. (btw I just got to see Porcupine Tree play a brilliant set with ex-Japan keyboardist, Richard Barbieri in tow at the Fillmore in San Francisco upon arriving home from Rome...........they were really fantastic. Check out 'In Absentia', their latest release, as well as Tim and Steve's latest No-Man release, 'Together We're Stranger' at www.burningshed.com.
Next up, Cos Chapman looped and processed an improvisation by classical pianist Guy Avern that was
fascinating and beautiful. Cos teaches music technology at CRC and CATS and I was impressed again by the
intelligence and sophistication of his processing. I put on a festival a couple of years ago called the Festival of
Voice and Electronics where three electronic processing artists (Miko B, Bill Walker and myself) did electronic duets
with 10 acapella singers who ran the stylistic gamut from Opera to Tuvan Overtone singing to Avante Pop to Death Metal
(!) so I am fascinated by the prospect of duets where one person processes the live performance of an acoustic musician.
It is a fascinating mix because the processor cannot control what the instrumentalist is going to do, nor can the instrumentalist
control what the processor creates so both people have to really listen hard to the other for it to be successful.
Cos and Guy had a great set in that regard...............a lot of deep listening with satisfying results there if you ask me.
They are at
Theo Travis came on next and wowed us all with an exquisite set using only a silver flute and a Line 6 DL-4. Theo has an amazing career playing with the likes of John Marshall, Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri (ex-Japan), Anja Garbarek, Roger Eno and the aforementioned No-Man and Porcupine Tree. I'd love to get Theo together with Robert Dick (the amazing renowned avante garde flautist who I did a duet tour with last year). They are both master flute players (Robert hates the term 'flautist'.....lol)and it is fascinating how each's brilliance is so different in effect. I think I will point people in Theo's direction the next time they tell me they are afraid to buy the inexpensive DL-4 for fear that it is not sophisticated enough. Theo is a really deep musician and I really dug his concept and mastery of the DL-4. Since I did virtually all of my last live CD with two of the little buggers (editor's note: "bugger" here refers to the DL-4, not to any of the musicians), I was intrigued to see someone else really get into that minimal green box. (I also must add that Stuart Wyatt, John Whooley and my brother, Bill Walker are also musicians who use the DL-4 extensively.) Check out Theo's latest solo looping CD, 'Slow Life' at www.theotravis.com. You'll be glad you did.
I was up last and , for the first time in my looping career, I was the designated 'headliner' at a big looping festival. I felt really humble about this honor as the Cambridge festival has been the most intelligent and consistently fascinating loop festival that I've ever attended. The quality of musicianship, while very diverse, was just universally high in this place. I was really impressed not even to mention the beauty of the town and environs. Os and the Cambridge loopers have got a very hip and together scene going and I can't wait to come back and be able to spend time with everyone here again.
I had perhaps my best played and best received performance of my whole tour so far in Cambridge. I felt really "on" and I used a lot of humor in my set (more from a musical standpoint than from a verbal standpoint). I really had fun with my '30 second Techno' piece where I use only dayglo green personal fans, hair combs, frisbees and voice changers.
The next morning we had a really nice breakfast with Cos, Michael and Peter under a beautiful and threatening Cambridge sky. These after-looping festival breakfasts are starting to become a tradition and talking with these guys made me wish that our tour wasn't so rushed. We didn't have a place to stay and in an effort to save money we returned to London where Paul Shearsmith had offered to put us up. In the meantime, Chris and I took a very, very long walk around Cambrige, getting caught in a huge downpour where we huddled under a giant tree and watched the beautiful swans be rained on. It was a gorgeous day and I felt really good for the first time since my mom passed away. It's funny, but that cause me a little sadness to realize that I will be happy and move on even after her death. LIfe is so impermanent. But I also know that my mom would want me to enjoy this tour as ill timed as everything is with her passing. I missed my family today as well.
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