Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
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