RE: a perfect looping concert

["Hartung, Kris" <kris.hartung@hp.com>]

Wow. I wish I could have seen the show, Rick and Ted. Sounds like my cup
of avant-garde tea!  A trumpet through a ring modulator....I have to
hear that. I love the ring modulator, ever since I heard John McLaughlin
use it on his fusion song "Jazz Jungle".   It's a savage effect.  And
videos in the background to boot....wonderful. 

I'm in the wrong damn state!  Cripes...

Per chance, did anyone record the performance with Ted and Jeff?  

Kris
 

-----Original Message-----
From: loop.pool [mailto:looppool@cruzio.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2005 6:46 PM
To: LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)
Subject: a perfect looping concert

Last night I was privy with many other people to one of the most
enjoyable live looping shows I've witnessed.

List member, guitarist and composer of one of my favorite loop records
ever (Flux Aeterna), Ted Killian came all the way from Medford, Oregon
to do a sublime duet with Jeff Kaiser, the amazing new music
trumpet/electronics artist who has a lot of notoriety in the Los Angeles
new music scene with his excellent record labels pfMENTUM and Angry
Vegan Records.

To top this amazing performance off,  David Tristram drove across the
hill and just showed up with his video projector and projected beautiful
visuals that were amazingly synchronous with the performance.

With Ted creating really beautiful, restrained and ultimately tastey
ambient pads and long legato, searing guitar tones, Jeff got freaky with
his trumpet playing through a couple of Line 6 DL-4s, an Alesis Bitr-man
(man oh man, what a cool pedal), a Moogerfooger ring modulator and a few
other things that I didn't get the names of.

Jeff is an avante garde player with extreme taste and musicality.   He
has 
amazing acoustic technique as a trumpet player (and Ted tells me he is
also is trained in complex choral arranging) and he rides a beautiful
taught line between lyricism and very angular and even abrasive sound
manipulation. Always abstract, yet always hinting at beautiful worlds,
I was just floored by the interaction between these two wonderful and
sensitive players.  I told Dan Soltzberg (with whom I played earlier in
the evening in Orange with his talented singer/percussionist wife,
Theresa) that I had one of those peak moments about 15 minutes into
their set where I thought to myself,  "This is why we work so hard to
put these free concerts on for the public".

Joe Rut and Lucio Menegon  (aka Lumper/Splitter) were in the middle slot
and also played a really sublime set of double guitar looping.
Again, they run the gamut of more inside styles and more avante garde 
arhythmic styles.   Their set was filled with a lot of energy and they
had great chemistry going to a lot of different musical spaces.   Joe
also 
played a cool invented instrument that had contact mics and various
pieces of metal welded on a resonating board.    I really resonated with
his 
playing on that piece and feel really glad that I now have three new
friends in my musical world (Joe, Lucio and Jeff).

It was really enjoyable playing the opening set with Dan and Theresa on
trapset.  I rarely just play kit these days and it was really fun to use
minimalistic looping techniques (I only had a lonely Line 6 without any
processing for my kick and snare mic) and I tried out a bunch of new
techniques of playing kit and using mouth percussion simultaneously .  I
really got into a minimalist groove zone and the whole set was very
trancey for me.

I'll leave it to someone else to speak of that set though because as
enjoyable as it was,  I have no idea how it sounded to the audience (one
of the saddest things about being a performing artist...............you
just 
can't tell how things are percieved until after the fact).   I do know
that 
I really dug the bass and looping and processing work that Dan was doing
and Theresa did some really nice spoken word pieces as well as singing
beautifully.

It was hotter than hades in the venue but for the first time,  the Blues
Jam downstairs didn't occur simultaneously so we were able to use the
big stage and the big sound system and the sound was excellent.

Add to that how sweet the staff of the ATTIC's restaurant were and it
was just a reallly successful show, artistically.

Thanks to all the artists who made it possible.

Rick Walker