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Looper's Delight
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I just wanted to let everyone who couldn't make it what an outstanding success the 1st Woman's Looping Festival was this past weekend. We had a really big crowd (I'm guessing 200 or so) and they were rapt in attention listening to all of the artists. Audio Goddess (aka Jesse Rose) started off the festivities with the first performance she had ever done as a looper. She is an incredibly talented artist in several mediums and I lent her my old Jamperson and asked her to come up with something creative and she took the challenge and did a very nice set of spoken word, singing and manipulated tracks (including a beautiful track by L.D.er Tom Heasley that he 'lent her'). I was extremely proud of her and glad that she took such a risk to be creative. I can't wait to hear what she comes up with next. Next up, and one of my favorite performances of the evening was Unity Nguyen who performed a fascinating set that went from a beautiful Vietnamese zither piece (that she played masterfully and with great emotion) and voice to an acapella almost hip-hoppy kind of piece and then finished off with a stunning piece for the 21 stringed West African harp called the Kora. Unity has an incredibly compelling stage presence IMHO. She is just a natural and very warm performer and really communicates her love for the material she is presenting with humor and intelligence. I was very impressed. She told us a little bit about how the griots of west africa tell the story of their people when they play and sing with the Kora and then she really embarrased and tickled me by improvising a verse about my planning the woman's looping festival. It's the first time I've ever had my name in a song and it was really cool (and, boy, did I blush). Unity used a Boss Jamstation as her looper. Next Dark Muse (aka Phyll Smith) treated us to a set of dark ambient music featuring her lovely and ethereal voice(s). I feel most akin to her, personally, amongst all the artists because of her love for found sounds. In her long pieces she bowed cymbals, played overtone pipes and several other unusual found objects. She used two Line 6 DL-4 pedals as her main looping device. Next up was CQ, who most of us know as GODDESS from the list. I was extremely excited to hear her set as she and I have been corresponding friends on the list for over a year and she flew out from Colorado to stay here in Santa Cruz. CQ is an accomplished guitarist with a very cool and sophisticated harmonic palette. She plays a steinberger guitar which has just incredible sustain (not an e-bow in sight, Kim). She had planned for a set of vocalizations and some spoken word but her set was unfortunately marred by some technical difficulties (due to the extremely limited time for sound checks that festival shows) and due to the fact that I lent her my Electrix Repeater which glitched in the middle of her performance (god, I love and hate my Repeater........it does incredible things and so far, is not very reliable live). I felt bad for her but she reacted with extreme professionalism and put on a compelling show. One of the innovative approaches she uses is to program arpegiations into her MC-505 and then she controls the Repeater loop with the D-beam controller on the MC-505. For those of your unfamiliar with it, the D-beam is a light controlled midi continuous controller that you can assign to anything. In this case, CQ 'played' solos by waving her hands in the air. This was particularly cool to me because CQ is blind and I didn't expect a strongly visual presentation from her. Also, just a little aside, but I wish you all could have heard the cool jam we had in her hotel room, using objects we found in the room. What an intuitive and original musician. It was an honor to host her. Lastly we had a truly riveting and thought provoking set from AMY X NEUBURG. This woman is such a complete artist. Her material is well written, well programmed, well performed, visuall captivating, funny and sarcastic as hell and extremely dynamic. She has a really incredible voice and is a true visual performer. I have found that visual presentation is sometimes lacking in looping concerts and AMY just about makes up for all of it. She used a combination of drum/triggering of preset samples on a Drum Kat and then used an EDP as her main looper. One thing she did that I had not experienced before and has me running to dust off my old set of OCTAPADS is that she controlled the record/truncate loop/overdub and on/off functions of the EDP from her pads. This allowed her to have very dramatic changes of section in her songs. This allowed her to trascend another trend that I have noticed in looping festivals: most people just use an 'A' section for their 'songs' onstage. Amy X would use two and even three different sections to very dramatic effect in her songs. She tore down the house and got a rousing standing ovation and encore for the crowd (that had not diminished as we ended the festival). The whole thing was really inspiring.........the vibe was really great (yeah, yeah, yeah.............we're northern californians.......LOL) and a good time was had by all. It felt really great to be part of history and I am hoping that this festival will inspire many more women to enter the looping field, musically. I'd really like to express my gratitude to Herb who saved my ass by doing most of the sound and is also the highly accomplished engineer for AMY X's set (he has a very cool avante-pop CD out in his own right that I've been listening to the last couple of days). I'd also like to thank ARIEL who MCed the show very professionally and engagingly and who will be debuting her first looping peformance in Santa Cruz this coming November. I'd also like to thank the San Jose Museum of Art who sponsored us and underwrote the costs of bringing in these compelling artists. The Museum personal really treated us nicely. I'd also like to thank Marian Liu of the San Jose Mercury for the great interview piece she did with AMY X. It really helped us to get a very good and supportive crowd to the Museum. Well, that's it for now. I have Sunao Inami and Michael Klobuchar coming in this week for the EAST MEETS WEST LOOPING FESTIVAL this Sunday, 8 p.m. at the CAYUGA VAULT in Santa Cruz. I'll be performing a 30 minute piece using only DAYGLO GREEN TRANSLUCENT PLASTIC for anyone who has not experienced that madness. Hope to see you there. Loop On and stay creative everyone. yours, Rick Walker (aka, Loop.pooL)