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Looper's Delight
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it certainly is interesting to read all of this . . .
log-winded ramble here, please delete if this whole thing bores you . . .
no, i don't mind the criticism. no we're not trying to be "outer than you." (some of my favorite reviews have been the "negative" ones, often they describe not only the music [if you're lucky] but the reviewer - - they set up a context for understanding.)
gary, sorry you didn't like the gig.
even though it might've helped you out, i wouldn't actually ever use the term "cutting-edge" as it seems to be too self-congratulatory. let someone who's not in the band make that call.
factoids: yes i did some looping - - it's just not all that i do; i feel that if i do it too much it becomes more about the machine than about me. it's an artistic choice. i had three loopers there: 2 akai headrushs, 1 electroharmonix 16-second delay. often i'll have three loops going at once. i didn't last night because the music didn't take me there. at one point i had two loops going, but my eh 16 was giving me problems (s***), so i had some trouble cross-fading the independent loops. i also didn't use my flanger, which i set up - - the music didn't take me there either.
anna was supposed to bring her looper, but was feeling overwhlemed by the logistics of the evening and didn't bring it.
re the rest of the night, here are my impressions.
joseph hammer: he was ALL looping, it was only an analog tape loop (surprised me actually). used cds (and maybe some other stuff) and fed 'em into a analog tape loop and manipulated manually. interesting at first and quickly became tiring for me. it made me want to hear something else with what he was doing. (he normally is part of a trio [solid eye] and i don't know how that works, maybe it works better in that situation.) i was intrigued by how one could use or interact with what he did. how i would play with him or structure music so what he did would "work" for me. in that sense i liked it - - even though it didn't work for me at that moment. it made me think.
annie perish (?): to be honest i didn't really care for her thing at all - - well that's not quite true, i liked her opening bit, but after that i found what she did hard for me to take. not my cup o' tea. by the way, she did "play" the guitar - - in other words it was her hitting the strings. i enjoyed meeting her . . .
anna homler and me:
one bass player i know liked the fact that i wove some groove playing in there (time); albeit it was short-lived. with anna, i think that playing a *lot* of groove stuff could be a problem. we have done some of that stuff in rehearsal, but last night didn't feel like the time.
melody - - perhaps *even* more subjective, i guess you didn't hear that we actually improvised a song structure for the second or third piece. at least i thought it was a song - - it had form (A-B-A-B-C [?]-A - - or something like that), words (anna sings in her own made-up language) and what i considered a melody.
i'd say that if i played like ornette or cecil in that context, i would be totally missing the point of what anna is about - - and then it becomes more about that than it does a real collaboration. i think that anna's strength is in creating little atmospheres of nuance, color, texture and feeling. little worlds that live on their own. whether that appeals to you is a whole other story. the fun thing about playing with anna is the challenge of trying to go there and create that with her - - but i think that's the fun thing about most improv, trying to create with other people and having a mutual striving for a new created space. sort of like a relationship, i suppose. on the other hand, one does have to want to be there to hear it, and if you don't . . . well that's cool too.
(if you wanna hear the closer to ornette/coltrane thing, i'd suggest the trio i do with vinny golia and billy mintz, either the first cd or the next cd which even has some *minimal* loopage on it; if you wanna structured composition/improvisation i'd suggest my quartetto cds or my cd coming out in 2001, with mark dresser, nels cline, vinny golia, tom varner and a 7-piece backing band; or if you wanna hear rootsy, blues-in influenced tunes with solos, the hoped-for cd with my band that sounds like a combination of ornette and little walter ;-) the point of this little thing is to say that what anna and are trying to create is only part of what i do. since you went to the getty, perhaps this analogy might do: it's like the difference between water color, oil painting, lithography, collage and drawing with charcoal - - or impressionism, expressionism, pre-raphaelites, pop art, chairusco, cubism etc.; they all have very different moods and INTENTS. and you either like 'em or you don't.)
the funny thing about this gig was that there were other people who seemed to really like it - - i mean REALLY LIKED IT. amazing really. i guess that it shows everyone has their own taste.
for what it's worth i've done my share of more commercial music (playing with the coasters next weekend), listen to lots of pop music and late romantic symphonic music . . . not a stranger to those sorts of things.
this whole thing reminds me that i've gone to lots of gigs of people where i had friends who hated what the performer was doing - - it didn't fit THIER idea of music, what they WANTED to hear, not what the person was offering. i have a slightly different take on this: sometimes the gigs that i hated the most were the most beneficial to me as a played/composer/musician - - they made me confront my own aesthetic, taught me what i would and wouldn't do, and taught me what was useful to me and what wasn't (i.e., what i liked about joseph hammer's performance and what i didn't). in this light maybe it WAS a succesful gig for you! ;-)
lastly, here is where the problem may be. your "agenda" was not fulfilled. you said:
"But I want this technology, and let me be specific--I want the use
of delays creating accumulated sound "painting"--to be better understood and
more accepted. It is important to me."
now, that's cool, and i may or may not have done the accumulated "sound-painting" in the 16 or so years that i've been using delays to loop, but it ain't exactly where my aesthetic is now. ya know? to each his own, i suppose.
gary, thanks for coming.
to others, thanks for words of support.
steuart