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August 25 |
August 26
Zürich Live Looping Festival Diary Part 1, August 24-25
Zürich Friday, August 26th
On Friday afternoon we put together (at Matthias Grob's insistence) an afternoon of workshops, hosted at the last minute by Simon Grab, a friend of Bernhard's, at his studio. Today I am nervous because I know I have to figure out either
1) how to get my mixer to work for my own set coming up or
2) figure out an alternative way to accomplish what I have planned. Mercifully, Thomas Maier has volunteered to both lend me his board and also to come help me troubleshoot my system. He is so sohpisticated, having worked on both the electrical side and the software and hardware programming side of digital electronics, so I feel safe but I am nervous going into my own first planned workshop.
I look at an issue that plagues a lot of live loopers, in my estimation: rhythmic acuity and rhythmic dissonance. Much is made of harmonic and melodic consonance and dissonance in Western music, but not much is said about consonance and dissonance in rhythm, timbre and arrangement. I have, over the years, come up with a theory of rhythmic arrangement based on observation of pop musics from all around the planet. I just observed hundreds and hundreds of different rhythm section arrangements, for musics from JuJu in Nigeria to Country Western from the United States, and I analyzed the placement of notes in the respective rhtyhmic arrangements. All of this information takes a full four to eight weeks of hour-long sessions to get across to a bright player, and it is too big for the scope of my short workshop. So, I just choose to talk specifically about the notion of learning a new rhythm by listening to sonic groupings of notes, and then coming up with subset strategies for responding to rhythms. Just as a base of simple triadic chords can give a soloist more melodic freedom, so simple rhythmic structures give the melody writer or the soloist more freedom to move. It is such a simple and conservative and structurally formalist approach that I have come up with, that I feel embarrassed initially teaching it to some of the sophisticated musicians in the room (Per Boysen, Claude Voit, Bernhard Wagner, Os, Michael Bearpark, Matthias and several others), but this goes away quickly as I realize that this truly is some new information for them. We spend the next hour clapping and singing and talking about the whole thing. I find it really fun and almost forget my nervousness about my pending equipment woes.
Afterwards, Matthias and Claude (demonstrating on guitar), show off the prototype of the brilliant new Firewire guitar; Per follows with a demonstration of his set up and the use of midi sequencing to drive live loops in Ableton's Live and Os just begins his demonstration of the latest version of Augustus Loop when I have to leave, regretably, as I am getting close to trying to use this cool software live. Os, by the way, has been amazing in trying to incorporate almost every suggestion into his software. Per tells me a few days later when he downloads the new version that he is amazed that the exact requests he has made are already incorporated, and Os tells me before we part on Sunday that he really encourages me to write him with suggestions for how to improve the software.
This is tremendously exciting to me: to be hanging out with the designers of some of the top software and hardware in this live looping field and talking philosophy, technique and design for the future. It feels like we are all riding the crest of a very cool musical wave: a new way of making music that has really not existed heretofore. If none of us ever make a penny doing what we are doing (and precious few of us are doing so presently, some ten years after the advent of the first dedicated digital live looping machines) we can console ourselves that there is new music being made that has never been before and could not be made without this amazing technology.
I negotiate my way to the Moods club to meet Thomas and am chagrined when a bus driver purposefully tells me incorrect information and sends me miles in the wrong direction. Luckily, Thomas is also late and arrives right as I arrive at the venue. It takes me a while to re-set up my gear and we ascertain that the brand new board that I have purchased does not at all work for my purposes (I have to have my Aux sends going to my EDP and Repeater and then feeding into each other and this isn't possible). He generously goes out and brings in his big Yamaha board which has never been used in a live setting before and we begin the arduous task of trying to figure out how to hook my system up utilizing it. I cannot simply put it together the way I normally do and it takes a while to jury-rig ways of accomplishing it with the board's sophisticated group of busses. Finally, everything works and I finish sound check just as the lights go down and the show begins.
A group from the Czech Republic opens up with a world music theme. Petr Samojský and Nechej features Peter on Sitar, Vlastík Krejcí on bass guitar, Filip Drsek on percussion and Dan Vojtíšek on drums and percussion. Their music is an acoustic blend of Indian and Western influences and while not breaking any new ground in this field (see Shakti, Oregon, etc.) they do it well and it is a nice set that is well received. This is the first time I have heard of loopers from Eastern Europe (and I also eagerly await the Croation group Triangulzone, who I have corresponded with on the internet, who will play tomorrow evening).
Next up is a guy who I have liked tremendously through the internet. Roberto Zorzi will be a featured performer at the Y2K5 festival in a month's time. He had been scheduled to play last year but had to cancel at the last minute due to the ill health of his partner. He is just the sweetest guy and I like him immensely upon finally seeing what he looks like. People say that you cannot always tell what a person is like from e-mail but I don't agree. Almost everyone that I have liked in email I have ended up feeling affection for in real life and Roberto is no exception. He is a free avante garde guitarist and has a very impressive pedigree of playing and doing duets with internationally known free players from the US, Europe and England. His set is challenging (even to me at times) but he is extremely passionate and in the moment in all of it. Later on we joke at the bar when he asks me how he thinks it has gone over. I say that the people in the room who are interested in this very challenging type of music seem to really dig it (Per Boysen being one of them, as we stand next to each other at the bar listening to the set), but that some people in the room obviously are not up to the challenge. "This doesn't surprise you, though, does it", I ask, "since you have been doing music like this for a long time and know how challenging it can be to the lay listener." He gets a very thoughtful look on his face and walks away for a second and then cracks me up by walking back up a little later and saying, "I like to think of myself as the 'White Mosquito'". I totally get what he means..............something buzzing into the listeners' ears and making them pay attention......what a great title for an upcoming CD of his. This guy just rocks and I so admire his committment to playing this kind of music that is usually not understood or appreciated by the masses. I really look forward to his coming to Y2K5. His partner is still having a lot of health issues and I tell him that I will pray for her. It is not established quite yet if he will come or not.
Andre Mueller follows Roberto. He is an accomplished Chapman stick player from Switzerland who plays a blend of very consonant ambient and melodic music. I tend not to like this kind of music, personally, but Andre is really good at it and really has very nice compositions. One thing he does that I find lacking in a lot of loopers is that he actually plays melodies, themes, idees fixes, and has discernable song structures with beginnings and endings. He also brings quite a lot of fans and gets not only the first standing ovation and encore of the festival but also, incredibly, sells out every single one of his CDs. This is amazing! Hardly anyone is selling CDs. It seems that loopers just don't or can't afford to buy CDs from each other, although there is a lot of trading going on.
Next Gareth Whittock gives a very spirited set on a custom-made double guitar/lapsteel guitar that he has made. Gareth several times waves a Welsh flag proudly which gets a big cheer from the large festival audience. He also is accompanied by his stunningly beautiful and talented partner Becky. She has a beautiful voice and I am entranced by the wonderful music that Gareth has composed. She also doubles on dumbec and she confesses before going on that she is really nervous playing the drum in front of me. I try to be as encouraging as I can be. I know that, particularly in multi-instrumental live looping, the simplest of simple drum parts are what is called for so I know she will do well and she does. Becky and Gareth can be proud of themselves for a rousing and well-received set. Gareth tastefully blends world music influences with a ferocious and beautiful guitar tone with a lot of distortion and sustain. He occasionally uses some faux bagpipe sounds that I just love. He also does some nice e-bow work.
Gareth has set up in the dead center of the stage, unlike the previous performers who have played on one side ,whilst the next act sets up across on the other side. This means that I can't set up for the next set so I have to go over to Bernhard and get his permission to take a 15 minute break between acts. I know this is really stressful for Bernhard but he is very gracious about it. I get set up and have cued the lighting people to completely douse the stage lights as soon as Bernhard introduces me, while having Michael Peters turn on the two small blacklights I have brought 6,000 miles for my cheap theatrics in my set.......lol. I have disappeared half way through Gareth's set to put white, UV-active dye in my hair and in a fit of strange inspiration, I decide to also spray it on the backs of my hands so that they will glow under the blacklights that I've set up. I also take my orange toy voice-changer and leave it at the back of the club with the bartendress, and when the lights go out, I come from the back of the venue in a kind of manic Papua New Guinea warrior meets Raver Vocoder man.......going through the audience, improvising until I hit the stage.
I'm really in a strange zone and really loving it. Someone tells me later that I'm the first artist to play the festival where everyone stops talking at the bar (a real problem during some of the more ambient sets I'm afraid). This makes me feel good. I have planned several things to do during my set but I throw caution to the wind and just follow my instincts. At one point my cheap wireless headphones quit working and I announce it to the audience and then begin to use them as a percussion device, hacking them into an EDP'd rhythm track. My set is a little on the edge and at one point I remember that I have really been working hard on a couple of kalimba pieces. I get out my beautiful two-octave kalimba and I start song but suddenly in the middle decide not to loop it at all. I am really emotional because I have intended to do a piece in Richard Zvonar's honor and realize that this is the piece. The audience reacts really favorably and I am brought to tears with the sad melody that I am playing.
I have also planned the first actual song I've played in a live looping gig in five years. I practised for three weeks on my little Ashbory bass that is very difficult to play because it has silicon strings and is fretless with a very, very small scale. I've even requested a drumset at the festival to play this piece, but I get the five minute sign from Bernhard right in the middle of a piece that I have planned, where I ask my brother up to manipulate my loops as I play Kanjira and Bansuri flute. The night before the flight to Zürich I accidentally dropped my heavy suitcase lid on my favorite D Bansuri flute cracking it and destroying it. I am completely bereft when I discover that I have done this (not two hours from "waking up" to take my 4 a.m. drive to San Jose with my wife to catch the plane). Luckily, the week before I had purchased another flute in B and I find this after a lengthy search of the house. There is no time to play the piece I have planned, but I turn suddenly and start playing trapset over the piece that Bill is manipulating, just so that I can justify all the trouble the wonderful staff has taken to get the drum set together for me. This is one of the problems with festival settings. 30 minutes just go by sooooo damned fast. I get a really nice applause at the end of my set and feel glad that everything has gone well. It had so threatened to be a disaster so I feel like a huge load has lifted off of my shoulders.
As I hustle my gear off the stage, I am treated to one of my own personally most anticipated sets: that of the UK's Andy Butler. Andy has not only developed for the EDP and runs the company that producers the Chopitch and Chopan VST instruments, with EDP inventor Matthias Grob, but he also came to see me play at the first Cambridge Live Looping Festival (at which I was bummed to hear that he wasn't on the bill) and gave me a little toy drummer with prerecorded lo-fi drum samples just before my set there. This was such a thoughtful and funny gift to be given by a person I had not even met in person (though I knew of this wonderful inventive, intelligent and sensitive man from Loopers Delight and e-mails) and it really touched me. He was even unable to hang out that evening and had to leave right after my set there to drive home, so it gave him an air of the mysterious to me at the time!
Andy is a master of the EDP and an incredibly inventive and magical player. He also loves percussion and found percussion which also gives us a very strong bond. Playing his Gibson SG Hoffner copy solid body guitar with humbuckers, Andy has a beautiful set, made all the sweeter by my relief at having survived my own set. His set is inventive and delicate and I head back to the bar to enjoy it with a beer which the kind bartrendress gives to me on the house. I feel really happy and lucky.
The night just gets better and better with my personal favorite set of the festival, the wonderful Loibner/Meier Duo, a group that has Austrian Loibner on hurdy gurdy and Australian Meier on percussion/trapset. Looping his beautiful-sounding hurdy gurdy (a bowed machine from Celtic music that the player plays by winding a round crank case that lowers a circular bow over drone strings, while fretting the instrument with a keyboard in the left hand) through a laptop (and I can never see what software he uses to loop, though I suspect it was Abelton's Live), Loibner has a wonderful approach that marries Indian raga sensibility with Celtic and even fusion. Meier plays a very creative blend of eastern and western drums on his "kit". He has a beautiful huge double-headed kick drum (which as someone says later, "means there is no need for a bass melodic instrument"), traditional cymbals and even a large Indian dohl (double-headed drum) turned, creatively, on its side and used as a floor tom. The group weaves odd-time combinations in intricate dances. Loibner's creative use of the half speed/double speed function (meaning he probably has an EDP in his rack) with his midi footpedals means that he can play different ostinato figures against his own improvisation, changing the time signature or even the tempo at will. I use this trick a lot when I play pieces for the melodica, but he really has it down to a science and it is really impressive. His playing is beautiful and sublime...............and sometimes ferocious. He has prodigious technique and sometimes sounds like a very advanced Sarangi player (the hurdy gurdy's timbre is very much like the droning sound of the Indian Sarangi, which has sympathetc drone strings and is one of the most bluesy and emotional of all the bowed string instruments). The group changes from Middle Eastern to Celtic to Indian themes and I am just entranced. The looping is seamlessly connected to their playing and the whole thing is one of the most intriguing blends of world music fusion that I have ever heard. I played in the World Beat/New World Fusion movement for 25 years and I have really high standards for this kind of fusion, and I just rarely hear anything so impressive and successful artistically. It is interesting and coincidental that these guys also come from countries so far away from each other that both start with the letters AUSTR.
The excellent evening ends with the Swiss group Neuromodulator. I have been trying to connect with several of my friends who have to leave early, so I don't get a lot of chances to hear their set, so my apologies. It is very difficult at these multiple act festivals to be able to pay attention to everything that gets played. I have always felt guilty that I just have to tune out a little at the Y2K? festivals, but I notice that everyone does, sooner or later.
I am really impressed with Bernhard's choice of acts. He and I differ in our respective philosophies concerning the Loop Festivals: I have never turned anyone down for them, preferring the rather hippyish and communcal approach of trying to encourage groups or individuals with less experience to get some by playing early in the festival. Bernhard on the other hand has carefully picked who will play this festival (with the ruffling of feathers that frequently occurs when people are turned down). I even have been shocked that some artists that I thought would be excellent for the festival are turned down, but I have to give to him that he has created a really incredible musical experience for the audience, who has been loving the whole festival. Also, this enterprise is really costing Bernhard, as he has hired a very professional venue, with topnotch professional staff, and he has a high number of audience members that he needs to meet each night to even break even financially. On the opposite hand, I have been able to get venues for free for all of my festivals so that my overhead costs are only the publicity and transport of artists. Frankly, I could not have produced this wonderful festival and am very thankful that Bernhard has put so much of his own personal finance on the line to create it. He has, in one fell swoop, raised the bar significantly in the presentation of live looping festivals in the world. The upcoming Y2K5 festival that I will have to rush home and start to produce in a very, very short five weeks will not even come close to the quality level that Bernhard's festival has set.
Thursday, August 25th, Zürich Live Looping Festival
The festival begins: so many people that I have grown to love from my past European and British tours are here already. I have a great sense of excitement to see them all again. Yesterday, I got to the train station in Zürich ahead of, amazingly, the two cars of artists and gear. Using Rolf's cell phone I find out that I need to hang around the train station for 45 minutes or so until they can come pick me up. I walk around in that slight daze one has when one is in the large train station of a new city, when someone right next to me calls my name. Startled, I look up at a tall handsome man whom I fail to recognize for a second, until he introduces himself as Os, the producer of the Annual Cambridge Festival of Looping and the brilliant inventor of the August Loop VST instrument (digital sound plugin) that so many people on the Macintosh platform are starting to use with Abelton's LIVE or Plogue Bidule. I don't recognize him because he had a beard and looked older than he does now when I met him two summers ago. He is standing next to his partner in the wonderful group Darkroom (with several records out on the prestigious Burning Shed records), Michael Bearpark.
I really had a very strong resonance with Michael when Chris and I first had breakfast with him and the head of Burning Shed Peter Chilvers. He is a quiet sensitive man with a really discerning intellect and he is a beautiful guitarist. He and Bernhard have just released a beautiful improvisational guitar record on Burning Shed. They had not met before and the results are really amazing for two musicians playing together for the first time. There is a strong feeling of intimacy in the record and it has become one of my favorite listening discs on the tour (which says a lot). I also like Os a lot and just haven't gotten to spend that much time with him so it is a total serendipitous delight to accidentally run into them. I walk with them to their hotel which, as it turns out, is very close to the venue. We go into the lobby/bar of their hotel and Os buys us all a coffee. (Coffee is very,very expensive in Zürich I find out to my dismay: I'm an addict and I'm on a very small travelling budget). It's really cool to be talking about music and tech with these wonderful Brits and I feel happy to be back in Zürich again.
As soon as we walk up to the venue both carloads of the Mathon Irregulars show up. I write this entry now two days later on Saturday morning on the beginning of the third day of the festival. Last night, as Thomas and I stand getting ready to listen to Andy Butlers' fantastic set (right behind Per and Pita and Michael who are all in animated conversation), we both agree that we really have a sense of a family with this wonderful group of people who have been hanging out all week. I feel very emotional watching them talk with such obvious affection.
James Sidlo from San Antonio (a great guy from one of my favorite cities in the US who has a wonderful avante pop band called Honey Barbara, and a solo looping CD as well) comes in and asks me if I will play with him during his set). I tell him that I haven't brought very many percussion instruments and he says this is fine but that he would like me to manipulate and loop his performance. I agree and get my equipment out from the car, pleased that I will get a chance to check out all my gear a day ahead of my own scheduled performance. I am very nervous about my equipment because shortly before I left on tour I decided to jettison my beloved Mackie 1402 mixer because I have just beaten it to death in the past ten years. I also have destroyed my vocal processor that I have really gotten to know very well. Not to get too techy on you, but, the Digitech Vocal 300 is a really fun processing box but it is very cheap and noisy and I have literally stomped it on and off until the buttons no longer function. Bill has graciously lent me a very powerful little processor (the Boss FB-1 for those interested, with 24 bit processing). It does everything the old box did, but it has a high learning curve and I just haven't spent enough time learning it. I finally get an hour with it at the end of the Mathon trip and have at least a few presets set up for what I want to do, but it just isn't the instrument that I have gotten to know and use intimately. I also have a brand new mixer and am really a little freaked out to discover that it is lacking a couple of features that I thought it had.
I can't get the damn thing to work and spend two hours troubleshooting it in the dark during others' performances. I wish I could spend more energy listening to Michael Klobuchar's set: he seems to be in a really good zone and mixes up his fascinating blend of older-fashioned jazz cum country cum blues with really oustide processing. I have to say, I love his setup. He is using radical processing boxes that Alesis has dumped on the market because people wouldn't buy them. He has two Inekos and two Bitr-mans. The Ineko is really cheap but has a ton of very interesting "distressing" algorithms. Michael really has command of these little boxes and make me think that I should start using mine as well. He has some really beautiful panning things going on in stereo and ring modulation and bit reduction modes. I think he is seamlesss at taking the styles of music that he uses, which are pretty conservative harmonically, into the ozone. I am happy that he is being well received. He's a very unique musician and should be heard by more people.
Next up is Michael Peters, who was my hero when I first got my computer and started doing electronic music. He has just gotten an amazing review of his ambient CD, Stretched Landscape #1, in Wire, which is a very prestigious and widely read new music magazine. He is a very interesting guitarist/multi-instrumentalist but tonight he is mining the territory that I first saw him work with two years ago............He uses and FM radio, randomly going up and down the dial, using the EDP's amazing ability to not only capture snippets but also to slice and dice them. It is "found sound" of the electronic nature and it is fascinating how musical he makes this reconstitution of pop and talkshow radio. He is having trouble for some reason tonight because he is picking up mostly static in the club. I can tell he is a bit frustrated but he still turns in a very cool performance and there are some brilliant portions. One time, in particular, he captures a black contemprorary Christian R&B singer, looping the line, "you have to excorcise your demons".
The next artists, Darkroom, I already mentioned as being my friends who picked me up at the Zürich train station. Michael Bearpark is a wonderful guitarist and he is processed by Os (pronounced 'Oz', aka Andrew Ostler, who is not only a really fascinating processing artist but also a triple threat as the inventor of the Augustus Loop, the VST plugin that many people are using with Ableton's Live, and the producer of the annual Cambridge Looping festival where I played with them for the first time two summers ago). They have a really nice set: ambient in feel, but very intelligent. Michael has given me a couple of CDs of music for what I call a "slow project"...........a duet CD that may take a couple of years or more to complete because we don't live in the same country. I am really loving the fact that the internet is allowing artists to collaborate all over the world through e-mail and ftp sites, and can't wait to hear the tracks he has sent me when I have my long plane flight home.
My brother is up next and I am really jazzed that he is playing here. He is not as well known on this side of the big pond and this will be the first chance for the really good European and British loopers to hear him play. He has a really frenetic and excellent set. Bill is one of the funniest people I know and he interjects a lot of humor into his set. He also is perhaps the most sophisticated user of the Line 6 and Electrix Repeater out there and has developed an innovative and really interesting technique using sequences in his guitar synthesizer to repitch the loops in the Repeater. At one point, Claude Voit, whose set I highly anticipate tomorrow, asks me how Bill is doing what he is doing. Claude is a very sohpisticated EDP user (and worked on its development) so I feel proud that Bill is having an effect on people.
Per Boysen takes the stage and begins his set with a silver flute (and instrument that he has recently taken up). We have both agreed that we love how prominent breath can be in the sound of the flute as opposed to the saxaphone (which Per is known for playing). Per's setup is a really state-of-the-art combination of hardware and software looping, all synchronized. He uses both the EDP and Os's Augustus Loop through the Abelton's Live host. Per is a wonderful multi-instrumentalist and is a very minimal and emotional player. I'm grateful that he also uses electric guitar in his set as well. I, unfortunately, have decided to completely jettison my equipment in the upcoming set with James Sidlo as I cannot get my Aux sends to function. To add insult to injury, I have misplaced my headlamp that is so necessary to troubleshoot in the dark on the side of the stage. I decide to ask Bill if I can use his rig to process James and he misunderstands my request and takes down most of it by the time it is our time to play. I have brought very few acoustic percussion instruments so I have gone back to the bar and grabbed a chair, and I also borrow a large aluminum bucket in case I need something to augment my mouth, my kanjira and my frame drum.
The set begins and to my horror, I cannot loop James at all and realize that I am consigned to playing percussion live for the whole set. James too, struggles with his equipment but we forge bravely on. I'm so stressed out that I can't really even remember much of what I do. I do notice that James's digital delay/looper also starts malfunctionioning towards the end of the set and we are suddenly loop free. Some day you get the bear; some day the bear gets you. Tonight the bear has us. Luckily, James is incredibly gracious about it and we do have a few nice spots in the set. I'm dying to hear the mini discs of it just to hear how it actually sounded.
Dan Mayfield from England plays next and does a very pretty set using very simple and beautiful English folk structures with his acoustic guitar and violin. He also has a very, very low signal and it takes the really pro sound staff until halfway through his set before they can figure out how to get it up in the mix. It is okay, though, as it forces people to really lean in and listen. This beautiful, delicate and emotional music is served by the quiet volume. Later on I have a really nice connection with Dan at the bar and I look forward to hearing him play again. I always wish I was a millionaire so that I could bring acts like this to the US and at least pay their fare over and back.
The next act is a complete and utter mind blower. A combination of Zappaesque jazz fusion, outside playing and just sheer virtuosity, Christy Doran's New Bag is the brainchild of the brilliant guitarist Christy Doran. Everyone who has not heard this band is just slackjawed at what a sophisticated and beautiful band this is. Every member is a motherfucker on their respective instruments and the combination of live looping and live playing is really impressive. The band particularly features the amazing singer, Bruno Amstad, who also does solo looping shows. He is all parts, scat singer, Tuvan overtone singer, outside insturnmentalist, noise artist and beatboxer. He has wonderful mic technique and is really impressive with his use of the looping technology. I can give this band nothing less than an A+!! Everybody was raving about them afterwards.
They have intense committment to a music that can't possibly be commercial. I talk to the very talented and sophisticate trapset drummer and he tells me that they rarely rehearse, which is really hard to believe, but he says that they have been together for 6 years and are really committed to each other. It really reads as they have incredible tightness in some very obviously written and heavily rehearsed unison figures. The band to me really sounds like one person's vision. It would be just too difficult to have music this complex and intense in a democracy, I think from my 30 years of playing both in heavily rehearsed and pickup band situations. Just incredible!!!
diary entries:
August 25 |
August 26
Zürich Live Looping Festival Diary Part 1, August 24-25