Prompted by a recent article in the New York Times Magazine, I’ve returned to the Looper’s Delight fold so that I can offer a comment and an opportunity.
Let me say up front that I am a student of music but no musician. I am however a producer of musical programming at WHUS Radio. My current production is “Moebius Trips,’ a show exploring solo live looping as a musical genre. Inevitably my resources are restricted to recordings or to live on-air performances. In his New York Times essay (May 18, 2008) John Wray discusses ‘The Return of The One-Man-Band.’ To me the singular mark of the one-man-band always has been that of a solo performer creating all sounds in real time. That said I will concede that the magic of live looping by a solo artist in performance is an acceptable approximation.
I have not witnessed a live performance by any of the artists interviewed for Wray’s Magazine article. I have relied instead on online recordings and on You Tube videos (many of them unacceptable visually and sometimes aurally) of the artists in performance. From the information available to me I have to say that the musicians chosen by Wray do not fully merit the tag ‘one man band.’
Among Wray’s examples, Owen Pallett comes closest to my perception of a live-looping one-man-band. Certainly his stage performances do qualify - but his recordings do not. The latest CD, “He Poos Clouds,” from Pallett’s so-called Final Fantasy solo project, features Pallett and no fewer than seventeen other musicians and vocalists! It is worth noting that Pallett is a multi-instrumentalist, as well as a vocalist, but the violin appears to be his preferred solo performance instrument.
The artist Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is a puzzle. In performance she appears as often as not with a backing band. When she does appear solo it is hard to detect the presence of looping.
As for Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear), Wray’s third exemplar of the modern one-man-band, his live shows are mere Karaoke. His only innovation seems to be that he pre-records his own music and takes that material on the road for his sing-along.
As noted, my resources for broadcasting rely heavily on CDs from live looping artists. I have been dismayed that so many of these recordings do not represent live stage performances. In a finished studio recording the cumulated sounds of a solo performance might be heard but the creation of those sounds is often masked by being pre-recorded as a bed for the instrumental or vocal. To my mind that makes the CD unrepresentative of the solo stage performance.
My own excitement about live looping comes from the progressive building and layering of sound in which the on-stage soloist engages. I view that process of creation, be it the incorporation of varied sounds from many instruments or from just a single instrument, as an integral part of the performance. Not being able to detect that building process in a studio recording is nothing short of bait and switch. It surely works the other way too. Someone who purchased a Final Fantasy CD might feel duped on witnessing a live performance by Owen Pallett; no huge orchestra nor massive chorus but just a guy with a fiddle, a weak voice, and some looping gear. I suspect that many WHUS listeners would be unhappy if I played a recording which misrepresents what they could expect to hear at a concert.
I would appreciate comments on my observations. I would also appreciate receiving finished recordings which truly reflect live looping solo performances.
Send any promotional materials to me at:
Joe Cavanagh
Producer
WHUS Radio
University of Connecticut
2110 Hillside Rd., Room 412
Storrs, CT 06269-3008R
USA
Thanks and best wishes to all.
