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Looper's Delight
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On Mon, 29 Sep 1997, Dave Stagner wrote: > Mick Karn, who often plays bass with David Torn, uses a very similar > technique on fretless bass. Wonderful lines. It starts with just a > couple of notes, and eventually grows into a blur of slides, pops, and > snorts. Yes, indeed, this is very much how he comes up with some of those irresistable bass lines. I wish i could relate to you folks what it was like witnessing Karn, Torn, and Bozzio warming up during the Polytown recordings with 45-minute jam sessions. For many of those pieces on the album, Bozzio already had a solid idea what the drum parts were going to be. I remember the first night they had everything set up and were finally going to get to play together, with Bruce Calder (the engineer) tweaking here and there. Bozzio put on this CD of Senegalese drummers in the control room, to which everyone listened intently. Then they went out and jammed. Like i said, Bozzio already had pretty set ideas of the ostinato patterns he was going to use in the drum parts, leaving room for improvisation. But it was up to Karn and Torn to lift these patterns and take them to a different place (a city populated in three weeks?). Dave, i thank you for nailing it right on the head. I was not that familiar with Karn's playing before those sessions, only what Torn had said about him, that there was no other bass player like him. He would start out simple, fitting in comfortably with what Bozzio was doing. At first i thought, Nice groove, great tone, but nothing all that out of the ordinary. The dude's got chops. Then Torn would come in, soaring in, above, underneath, and around the "rhythm section". The chemistry of all three was instantly apparent, yet very unique, like nothing i had ever heard. I would try to keep my attention on the whole, but it would drift from musician to musician, often to the relation between two of them. I realized then that Karn's simple little bass line groove wasn't so simple any more. He had added really hard thumps in between Bozzio's kick drum beats, and pops and slides would seem thrown in at random to accentuate this or that, but they kept coming back with some sick and twisted--yet consistent--pattern. It was as if he had a looping device, but his "looping" was all happening in his head. All the little textural nuances building up, some even fading away into the distance as more came in. And though Bozzio had developed his ostinato into something a little more, well, Bozzio, and Torn was now playing flames with his guitar and creating loopage and sonic havoc everywhere, Karn's "loop" was right there with it all, and it worked beautifully. A true testament to Karn's incredible ear and his ability to use it to his advantage in the most precarious of musical situations. He can hear and listen very, very well, and this allows him to take chances with his playing. These risks lead to some of the most unique, innovative musicianship i have ever seen or heard. Pete Koniuto ----------------- Music Library Boston University 617-353-3705 pkoniuto@bu.edu -----------------