Tag: looperlative

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back from Italy

Back from a fantastic trip to Italy – a hugely enjoyable and creative time with Luca Formentini – a fabulous guitarist, and a great friend.

The trip started with a gig in Brescia, playing a soundtrack to a silent film, ‘The Unknown’ by Todd Browning. I’m not much of a silent/old film buff (I’ve seen Dodgeball more times that I care to remember but had never heard of Todd Browning before, and have never even seen Citizen Kane), but I really enjoyed this film. For the soundtrack I was joined by an Italian guitarist, who did a good job (though the circumstances surrounding him playing in the first place were a little more murky – I’ll save that blog-story ’til an email or two have been sent), and the whole thing was well received.

the plan for the weekend was to record a load of duo stuff with Luca – we’d recorded together before, and one of the tracks has ended up on a compilation of Italian electronica artists (Stefano Lawsoni? perhaps…) – the last time we recorded was certainly interesting enough to warrant a repeat session. With both of us being loopers, it always takes a few sessions to settle into roles and what to do with all the shared sonic space.

However, before that, we had a total nightmare with getting soundcards sorted out – Luca had ordered a new RME card, which wasn’t available in time, so his local music shop (the remarkable Musical Box in Verona) were lending us a card. First up, we took a MOTU 828, which just wouldn’t work at all. No good. Not happy running with Audition on a PC.

Back to Musical Box, and swap it for a PreSonus FirePod. Once again, not happy with the PC set up. Which eventually led to Luca swapping over his looping laptop with the Pc, so he did all his loopage on the desktop and we recorded onto the laptop, finally using Cubase LE.

Much stress and lack of sleep was the result for Luca, so it took us another half a day to settle into playing, but from there on, we got a lot of great music recorded. Whereas the first session was predominantly dark ambient, this time we were more melodically driven with more groove oriented stuff. I’m really looking forward to mixing these tracks…

So lots of recording lovely music was punctuated by regular swims in the pool, great food, much inspiring conversation, cuddling the cats, and generally having a totally wonderful time in Italy…

those of you of a sports-fan persuasion will already have worked out that I was there for the football final on Sunday night, when we decamped to a local restaurant to eat great food and watch the game. Penalties are officially a really shit way to end a football match. I reckon widening the goals by a foot every 10 minutes, and tying one of the goalies hands behind his back to speed up the chance of a goal would be better… I was really glad Italy won, though Zidane’s headbutt aside, the French played MUCH better football in the second half and in extra time…

Tuesday morning I got the train back to Musical Box to talk with the owner about playing at EuroBassDay in October, which is booked now, and to show him and the rest of the guys who work in the shop the looperlative, which naturally they all thought was amazing (because it is).

Then Tuesday afternoon I was special guest at a week-long intensive english language camp for teenagers, playing some tunes and having them interview me about what I do, about live in england and generally allowing them to try their english and stretch them in trying to understand me. A hugely enjoyable way to spend an afternoon, which I hope to get to do again.

And Tuesday night, as if all this wasn’t enough, Luca, Gio and I had dinner with Roberto Zorzi – a fantastic improv guitarist and fascinating bloke all round. Another magical Italy evening.

Got back Wednesday night, and poor TSP drove to Gatwick to pick me up in an overheating car. Need to get that fixed ASAP.

All in a marvellous week in Italy. It’s such a great country, the people are generous and positive to a fault, and the climate is just amazing. Love it.

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Remembering tunes

Been rehearsing with Julie McKee today, for our gig at the National Theatre on May 31st. It’s the first gig I’ve done in ages where I’ve actually had to remember anything more than about 16 bars of music!

It’s great, in that it’s going to stretch me, and I’m having to think creatively about how to do certain arrangements with the Looperlative, and it’s also good not having to worry about the tunes for most of the song. The results are really cool, and songs we’ve got on the list are pretty broad in scope (no NWA tunes though…)

So I’ve now got a list of tunes that I need to finish off, work out the chords for, and REMEMBER! Whoever heard of actually having to remember anything? Pah!

…and yes, I did go and vote when the rehearsal was over…

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Learning the songs…

This is the fun bit – learning the stuff that came out all improv-y and naturally on the recording so that I can play it live!

A couple of the tunes should be fairly easy, given that I’ve had them written for a while – ‘Deeper Still’ (that’s the tune for Eric Roche, it now has a name, write it down so you know what I’m talking about in future) is easy enough to remember, just a bitch to try and play in tune! Scott Peck is fine, cos I know it, though it’ll be odd going back to playing it solo now that I’ve been listening to it for a few days with BJ Cole‘s pedal steel part on it. HappyHappy I can remember, fairly well, as it’s very easy and fairly short.

I’ve just learnt ‘Nobody Wins Unless Everybody Wins’ – a fun little tune with lots of multiply of sync’d loops to get thing to come back a long time in the future. I can play that.

Now I’m just checking out the title track on the album, trying to remember how it goes! Am listening to it at the moment. And have just remembered what happens in the middle. G2 no. 1 routed through G2 no. 2, both of them recorded into the looperlative… the hardest thing to remember is how to set it all up before the tune begins, which aux sends to route to where, which buttons to push to make sure the right things are being recorded into the Looperlative.

In other news, loads of people have been checking out the tunes on my MySpace page – major amounts of plays! MySpace is, indeed, as Imogen Heap’s manager mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago ‘the new radio’.

Right, back to learning these songs!

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Album deadlines – it's all suddenly very real!

The recording part of the album is just about finished (still might do another version of the tune for Eric… watch this space), and I’m onto mixing now. Not only that, but it’s booked in to be mastered on May 10th. The mastering will be handled by the genius that is Denis Blackham – Denis mastered Grace And Gratitude, and he got that gig because he’d mastered Theo‘s albums, as well as Talk Talk’s Spirit Of Eden. He’s good. Very good. So he gets the repeat gig.

The album now has a name – it’s called Behind Every Word. The title is taken from an interview I heard on Front Row with Guillermo Arriaga. At the moment I’m mixing the title track (which got an airing at the Recycle Collective on Wednesday, but thanks to my having pulled one channel of the Looperlative out, it wasn’t sounding its best…)

It’s amazing to think now that Not Dancing For Chicken was all recorded to stereo! that explains why some of it is rather noisy (so noisy in the case of Jimmy James that I’ve rerecorded it for this album). With being able to separate out the loops from the direct signal from the extra weirdness process is a real treat, and means that I can get better separation between the tracks, less noise, and clearer stereo imaging. I can’t wait to get a production model Looperlative and start doing this stuff with the loops going to 6 separate outs!!! that’s going to be amazing…

Anyway, From today onwards, for the next couple of weeks, there’s going to be a lot of mixing happening. next week I’ll be mixing each morning, and gigging each evening (with a little bit of teaching on Tuesday). All very exciting.

Gimme a day or two, and I’ll get a couple of tracks up on MySpace for you to hear.

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Recycle Collective gig 5

Another fine ‘n’ fun Recycle gig last night. The run up to it wasn’t good at all – thanks to Arsenal playing at home, we got there 45 minutes later than we needed to, and even then I’d left my laptop at home which I’d planned to set up and record it.

Eventually got set up, but didn’t do a proper soundcheck, so it wasn’t til I started playing that I realised something was wrong somewhere in the system – the problem being that when I’m recording, I use all 6 of the Mic channels on my desk ‘cos those are the ones with insert/sends. When I’m doing a gig like this, I need to free up the mic channels for other things (like mics), and somewhere in the process, I’d managed to unplug one channel of the Looperlative from the back of the machine.

Much sonic struggling ensued through my first couple of tunes – the combination of trying out new tunes and malfunctioning gear was a tricky one – but the improvs with Cleveland and then the trio section went really well, so no worries there.

Leo Abrahams was up next, and play three amazing solo tunes (one called Slippery Jack was particularly amazing). we then did ‘My Song Is Love Unknown’ together, which was fine, but would’ve been better if I’d worked out what that weird minor chord was in the middle (!), and then onto the trio, which was really interesting. Leo introduced it as one of his own tunes, and played the progression from the tune (with a beautiful delay and filter guitar sound that I want to steal!), Cleveland and I responded to it in the way we would any improv, and it soon morphed away from whatever Leo had initially intended, as his first loop faded out, and we transitioned into some amazing space. Cleveland is quite possible the most intuitive musician I’ve ever performed with – his instinct for reacting so clearly to whatever is going on, and taking it to new heights is remarkable.

Third set was Cleveland solo to start – he’s got some new Echoplex tricks up his sleeve, and really knows his Lexicon processor now and put on a really great show. Followed by an equally marvellous duo set with Leo, that went to some very strange places in a beautiful and beguiling way.

The last of the trio sets comprised two beatbox-related tracks, with similar grooves but very different textures, the second of which ended up with some crazy double-time swing section that really ended the gig on a high.

All-in, much fun. ‘Twas nice to try out a couple of the new tunes in front of a friendly audience – need to get them down a lot tighter before next week.

For those of you asking for recordings, i’ve got some of it on the laptop, but it crashed three times (my guess is that trying to run a firewire powered soundcard and the laptop itself off the same battery is a bit much for the machine) – so I’ve got a few bits, and I’ll fire it up later to find out what. But the distraction of faffing with it reminded me that if we are going to record these things, I really need to a) get there a lot earlier (like we’d planned to without the Arsenal traffice) and b) DELEGATE.

Next RC gig is May 18th – see you there!

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Looperlative news

A few of you loopsters are on the Looperlative forum anyway, but for those of you with a loopacious predilection who aren’t on there, Bob’s now taking orders for the second run of Looperlatives. $1499 + shipping. For UK peoples that works out to about a grand inc. shipping and import duty. Pretty damn good, if you ask me.

Meanwhile, I’m recording tracks here with mine for the new album – mine’s only a prototype (should be getting a production model soon enough), and even that is streets ahead of anything else I’ve ever used.

Yay for Bob!

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Imogen Heap gig

This is one I’ve been looking forward to for quite a while. I first saw Imogen Heap play at the Kashmir Klub about 6 years ago, at a ModernWood Management showcase gig, along with Nik Kershaw (who also had Leo Abrahams on guitar, to be featured at the next Recycle Collective gig) and the Dum Dums. I then bought her debut album in the US for some tiny amount of money, and it very quickly became one of the favourite CDs in this house. It’s great.

Last night she was playing Shepherd’s Bush Empire – a pretty huge venue for someone who this time last year was just finishing up recording a self-produced CD. However, between then and now, the track Hide And Seek from that CD, ended up being featured at some critical moment on The OC (I’ve never watched The O.C. – I’ve been to Orange County, and if the TV show is accurate, I can’t imagine in being very interesting, and if it isn’t, I’d just get annoyed with it). It was a huge radio hit all over the place, Radio 1 played it a lot here, and Imogen was right there in the spotlight where she belongs. The album’s lovely, BTW.

So, anyway, the gig – Shepherd’s Bush Empire – a v. large and pretty prestigious gig, though not the friendliest for the musicians or the audience. I’ve ranted here before about venues owned by Carling, and SBE is one of them with the corresponding focus on beer, leading to people talking. At times it was impossible to hear what Imogen was saying between songs, and during the two supports there was a bit of chatter coming from the main floor.

Ah yes, the support – first support was Zoe Keating – someone I’ve had a fair bit of email contact with as she’s a looping cellist, and was, I think the third owner in the world of a Looperlative, after me and Rick Walker. Her solo set was lovely, featuring unprocessed looped Cello (and the best live amplified Cello sound I’ve ever heard – apparently it’s an AKG contact mic, will get the details for any geeks wanting to know). Very lovely stuff.

Second support I didn’t get to hear much of… We arrived just before 8 so we could see Zoe play, and thanks to the craziness of guest-list goings-on, I had a ticket, but TSP’s hadn’t arrived yet ( we were meant to be going with TAFKASB, but she had to go to some punk gig instead…) so I went in to see Zoe’s set (not fair on TSP at all, but as my ticket was on Zoe’s guestlist, it would have been pretty dreadful to miss her solo set), then came out again to find TSP and sort out tickets. Which was all during second support.

Sadly, while my first ticket was seated upstairs, second tickets were standing downstairs only. We’re too old for that, but we did anyway, found a place by the stairs where TSP could see the stage and settled in for an evening of chronic backache.

Imogen came on and did her first number just solo, looping her voice with a Repeater (she so needs a looperlative!) – it was one of the most musical, clever, groovy and entertaining loop performances I’ve ever seen. It’s interesting that often the best loop-based performers are those that don’t make a big deal out of it, but that’s by the by. The rest of the night was a gorgeous mix of solo loopy stuff, solo piano stuff and was the first time she’d showcased the full band, with Zoe being marvellous on cello, plus drums, tuned percussion and a second keyboard player (the second support bloke), augmented by a few things on laptop.

Imogen’s stage presence was somewhat akin to an amiable old-school TV chef, like a glammed up Fanny Craddock cooking up the perfect gig; ‘now we’re going to add some Cello – would that be lovely?’ – sadly the constant chatter of audience members lubed up on nasty overpriced lager from the venue owners meant that a lot of the between song asides were lost, but the whole vibe of just chatting to the audience instead of trying to whoop them into some frenzy was right up my street.

All in all, musically and performance-wise one of the finest gigs I’ve seen in a long time, some of the most sophisticated looping and a whole slew of stunning songs (including one of the duets she did with Urban Species years ago, just her, the rapper from the band and piano – lovely stuff!). I just can’t wait to see her play the Barbican or Festival Hall, or the Albert Hall – somewhere with seats and an audience encourages to STFU during the whole gig.

The After-show party was a bit of a long wait – I really wanted to meet Zoe, so we stuck around for about 45 minutes til she showed up. Well worth the wait, as it’s always lovely to meet online-chums face to face. Also got to say hi to Imogen, who I’ve met on a few occasions before, but she couldn’t remember where. :o)

If she plays near you, DON’T MISS IT.

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finally – new tunes!

…no MP3s for you, just yet though!

Been recording these last couple of days, the usual bought of improvs aimed at definining a vibe for the album. I don’t think, on the face of it, this one will be a huge departure from what’s gone before. Though, I am thinking about possibly getting some people in to do overdubs on some of the tracks when I’ve recorded my usual solo bass nonsense. And I am allowing myself some editing for brevity’s sake.

The vibe on the tunes so far is pretty downbeat (apologies to the peoples who’ve emailed saying ‘I really like Shizzle/Channel Surfing/MMFSOG*, which don’t you do a whole album of funky stuff?’ (* – delete as applicable) – sorry peoples, it’s not going to happen.) – I have got ideas for a couple of up-tempo things, but as usual they’ll be the exception rather than the rule. For now, I just have to deal with large scale melodic ambient melancholy tinged with a hopeful, redemptive edge being what I’m best at. And that’s no bad thing, methinks. Will get something up onto my MySpace Page as soon as I can. Suffice to say, the Looperlative is making itself very very useful is ways that won’t be immediately apparent – the three biggies are that all the looping is in stereo, there’s virtually no noise generated by the unit at all (less than most soundcards) and I can have multiple asychronous loops that I can mess with in any order… For the listener, it just means everything sounds a little less linear, and even the linear stuff ends in more interesting ways!

Watch this space…

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talk yourself better

Had a lovely afternoon with Cleveland Watkiss. Cleveland came round to check out the Looperlative, but as I couldn’t find my microphone, after a demo of what it can do, we spent a couple of hours talking about the process of making music, approaches to looping, performance ideas, influences, collaborations, all kinds of marvellous conceptual stuff about the process of creating music, of soundtracking the inside of your head, telling your story, absorbing influence and utilising technology.

It was one of the most useful and enjoyable conversations I’ve had about music for a long time, and left me very inspired to both play, and develop the Recycle Collective further. Cleveland is an outstanding musician, with a great pedigree in jazz music and beyond, but is a tireless experimenter, always looking for new ways to channel his creative muse. We’re going to record some more stuff next week.

And now I’m listening to last night’s gig with Theo Travis, having dumped the wav files onto my PC, normalised them, and chopped them up into tracks. It’s sounding great – there are a few blips and glitches here and there on the audio, but nothing that can’t be either sorted out or lived with. Methinks this gig will make up a large part of the live album.

Now, off you go and find someone interesting and open-minded to talk to about whatever it is that drives you creatively – report back here on what you learn!

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Small but perfectly formed.

Cambridge gig with Theo last night, at CB2. It’s a lovely venue – very rustic in that it’s just the cellar of the restaurant with a load of chairs and some lights in it, but it’s free, quiet and the food upstairs is marvellous (recommended for dinner even when there’s no gig on!).

I had a feeling before the gig that it was going to be really full – not sure why, but in any event it turned out to be bollocks. It was a pretty small crowd, but a lovely group of people – like a handpicked audience of really nice listening lovelies.

Because Theo and I recording the gigs on this tour for a possible live album, we panicked a bit when we realised we’d left the minidisk at home. No problem though, as a quick call to Dweez meant that the able and equipped Tony arrived with tiny laptop (like the Rev. G’s Psion, only a proper computer), soundcard and cables to record it straight off the desk.

The gig itself went really well – doing the improv stuff with Theo is up there with playing with Michael Manring in the ‘best fun two people can have on stage’ stakes. The range of sounds and ideas that he conjures up is remarkable. And the recording seems to have come out beautifully, on first listen. Will transfer it to computer, boost the level and see how clean it is later on, but it sounds like it could form a major chunk of the live CD!

And today, Cleveland is coming round to make lovely noises and play Looperlative games.

And finally, congrats to the Rev. G on his new job in computer-geek world rather than bible-geek world – much deserved, but certainly the church’s loss.

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