Tag: looping

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it's all about the lovely peoples

This being a musician thing, it’s really all about lovely people. I love playing music, I love being a musician, I love recording and releasing music and I love doing gigs. And the thing I love about all of those the most is that I get to do it in the company of lovely people.

I’ve mentioned before on here that I’m continually delighted to find that the people who come to see me play are by and large the kind of people I’d like to go for a curry with – and fairly regularly do end up friends with them, on more than just an ego-massaging ‘hey how great, you like my tunes’ kind of way. I’ve somehow managed to write music that attracts nice people. This is a good thing.

Likewise the musicians that I spend my life playing with are lovely. Jez and Theo, they of the duo albums on Pillow Mountain Records, are two of my most favouritest people to spend time with. Delightful, friendly, funny, generous people, who also happen to be fabulous musicians.

The amassed hordes of the Recycle Collective are just great – Cleveland, BJ, Orphy, Leo, Andrea, Julie, Seb, Andy, Patrick etc. etc… great people one and all. I’m a lucky man.

Today I spent the day with Evelyn Glennie – genius percussionist, and of course, an utterly delightful person. Evelyn’s always been a very progressive force within classical music, experimenting with improvised music, processed sound and MIDI instruments for years, and I was up showing her more about looping, exploring the possibilities for her percussive set up. With a musician that good, and that open minded, she’s bound to discover all manner of gorgeous music in the midst of the technology, and hopefully we’ll get to do some things together as it progresses. But more than the music, I’m just delighted that once again being a musician has put me in contact with more lovely people. I is feelin’ blessed.

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More magical recycling…

It’s becoming a bit predictable – Recycle Collective rolls around towards the back half of each month, and an evening of fabulous creative exciting music ensues.

Audience sizes are less easy to predict, but August is a tough month for playing anything other than festivals in the UK, so I was actually quite happy with our modest gathering of lovely Recyclettes.

We went with the three set/three curators model of Recycling – starting with me playing a couple of solo tunes (Behind Every Word and MMFSOG for those taking notes) and then inviting Andy Hamill up for some bass duets, he on upright, me on fretless, that came out beautifully. Andy’s been playing with Natasha Atlas, and he fed a gorgeous middle eastern melody into one of the improvs.

We then got Seb up to join us on drums, and I looped his drums, and anything else that happened to end up being picked up by the mic over his kit! Much fun indeed, some great noises and great moments.

Second set was Andy’s to curate, and he started it off with a lovely solo piece for looped bass and harmonica, followed by a duet with violinist Julian Ferraretto, who also sang beautifully on Nature Boy – yup, proper jazz at the Recycle Collective! They did another standard after that, My Romance, with Seb on drums, and played it really well – Andy’s chordal comping on the upright was just amazing. Fab stuff.

I then joined them for a quartet improv piece, which started off with a violin and bass loop and spiralled out from there. Such a treat to play with such marvellous musicians.

Seb’s set – the final one of the evening – started with him playing his first ever solo drum piece. Always nice to have firsts at the RC, especially when they’re as good as this. I then went up and we started what was to be about a 20 minute abstract piece that began with me looping his drums, replacing bits of the loop, flipping it back to front and adding some scary elephant noises and spookiness, then moving to a filtered faux-tabla rhythmic thing before andy joined us, and finally Julian and another violinist, Mandy Drummond piled in for a very dark atmospheric finish, with andy playing a sparse groove, seb scattering percussive sounds all over the place and the two violins adding violin loveliness to it all.

All in all, a fab night’s music. Some truly amazing moments and a fascinating journey through a new musical landscape, as well as the first ting-ting te-ting jazz at the RC.

Here’s hope the Bass/Bass/Drums trio happens again very soon!

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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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Recycle Collective 8 – Fret Phobia 2

no, not a football match, it was in fact the 8th RC gig and the 2nd Fret Phobia gig.

And much fun it was too – BJ had brought along Emily Burridge on cello, and they opened the show with a gorgeous duo set. The logistics of getting musicians with lots of looping toys and gadgets onto the tiny stage at Darbucka is always an interesting one, and tonight was as tight a squeeze as we’ve had since the gig with Orphy, Roger and Patrick, but we made it work eventually.

After BJ and Emily, I played a 25 minute solo set, with BJ coming up and doing his special cameo on ‘Scott Peck’ – as much as I still love the solo version of the tune, it’s just not the same without him. I also did Amo Amatis Amare, which isn’t the same without Theo after having recorded it with him… such are the perils of having fabulous collaborators.

from me, we went straight into Ned Evett’s solo set, which was fab. Lots of fretless resonator guitar, and some crazy loopage, especially on ‘Are You Experienced?’ – good noises, very much appreciated by the audience.

And then the RC Royal Rumble, all in at the end – two improv pieces, the first of which started as a disparate ambient mush (in a good way) coalesced around the ‘Windham Hill Blues’ (Am7-FMaj7), and then shifted somewhere else entirely. Good stuff. The second one started with a bubbly filtered slap percussion thing by me, I think looped a pizz. cello line which I doubled in speed and pitch that became the hook for the tune, and gave us something to hang the rest of it on, and it finished with me processing Ned’s voice with the Kaoss Pad… Most enjoyable.

Thanks to all who came along, another fine evening.

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Fret Phobia gig pt 1

So while a nation of armchair critics parked their carcasses in front of the TV to watch some football, a lovely select group of more discerning music lovers came out to see Ned and I in Cambridge on the first night of the Fret Phobia tour. And much fun it was too – I played solo (even did ‘The Inner Game’ which I haven’t played live for about three years!), then Ned played solo, and then we did some most enjoyable improv stuff together, with me looping and layering bass, guitar and voice into a lovely mush…

So, if you’re near, don’t miss the rest of the Fret Phobia gigs – tonight we’re at Darbucka, Recycling.

see you there!

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Tim Bowness/Steven Wilson live in Norwich

Norwich is an awful long way to go to watch a gig. Norwich is an awful long way from anywhere. Which would be fine if it was a stinking hole, but it’s a lovely city, and someone should pick it up, drag it 50 miles west and join it up with Cambridge – Camwich would be a really really lovely city.

But I digress. It’s a long way, but I went anyway. on the main bill were Tim Bowness with his band, and Steven Wilson. Tim was the singer I gigged with last Friday. This time he had a whole band with him, featuring the truly marvellous Andrew Booker on drums (the last time I saw Andrew play drums with Tim, Brian Eno was at the gig, and wanted his phone number… did he ever get it? I don’t think so… a miss opportunity methinks).

The show was opened by Andy Butler – a looping guitarist, using multiple echoplexes. Sadly, because the gig started earlier than advertised, we (by ‘we’ I mean me, Dweez and Mrs Dweez, who all went for food, planning to be back in time for advertised start) missed all but the last few minutes of Andy’s set.

Steven Wilson set was really enjoyable – I didn’t know any of the songs (for some reason, despite liking all the stuff I’ve heard of theirs, I don’t own a single Porcupine Tree album… must rectify that), no, I lie, he covered ‘Thankyou’ by Alanis Morrisette, and that I knew. Anyway, most of it was just electric guitar and voice – something that I’m always amazed more people don’t do. Billy Bragg is the absolute master of that format, but i’ve heard others do it well (Iain Archer is another that plays brilliantly with just a elec. guitar and no band). I had a brief chat with Steven afterwards (we’ve got a fair few mutual friends, not least of all Theo who has played on Porcupine Tree things and opened for them at Shepherd’s Bush).

So all in a great night, and what’s more I got to meet up with Myspace chums Jeffrey and Samantha, here from New York. Much fun.

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Should've blogged this a week ago…

It’s normally the first thing I do when Time Out arrives around the time of a Recycle Collective gig – check the entry. But I only got round to looking today, and it’s been in for a week. This is what it says –

*Cleveland Watkiss/Leo
Abrahams/Steve Lawson Recycle
Collective at Darbucka, EC1: 7pm; £7 concs
£5. Superb monthly concert series that
explores the relationship between live
improv and live looping (ie recycling the
song as it unfolds and using the created loop
as part of the unfolding piece). Tonight with
superb singer Watkiss, Brian Eno sidekick
Abrahams and bassist Lawson.

that’s rather nice isn’t it? No reason for you not to come along now. :o)

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Easter Improv

just had a great fun gig at St Luke’s. Every Easter, the church is turned into an art gallery, housing various ‘stations’ – works of art based on bits of the easter story in varying levels of abstraction, dotted around the church, and used as a focal point for meditation/prayer. There’s a launch on Good Friday lunchtime and then the art is left up for the next week or so.

This year, Julie McKee and I were approached by a woman in the church to provide a soundtraack to her piece. She’d originally wanted something that ‘sounded like Handel’ i think was the request… clearly not going to happen, but mellow ambient loopy improv goo we can do. And we did.

So we set up in an inconspicuous place in the corner of the church, and improv’d to our hearts content. The words were taken partly from some stuff that Judy the artist has sent as being her inspiration, and partly from a prayer/poem written by the ever-wonderful Martin Wroe, taken from his book, When You Haven’t Got A Prayer – here’s the prayer in question;

God
within
and
without

God
underground and overground
everywhere and nowhere
always and never
sometimes and all times

God
inside
and
outside

God
here
with
us
now.

That’s it – very simple, and easy to sing. Strangely enough, it’s the second time I’ve played on a musical setting of these words, the last time being on a demo by Steve McEwan… but anyway.

So I was looping and layering my own ambient loveliness and Julie’s voice, so the words were tumbling over one another in and out of layers of bass goo. Sounds pretty damned fine listening back to it.

Oh yes, I finally got round to recording an improv gig – yay for me! I recorded it direct into ProTools M-Powered, and am now bouncing it down so I can export it to my PC and edit it in Adobe Audition. Much as ProTools is proving useful for this kind of recording, it is a total pain in the arse to use. For one, it saves the stereo audio as two mono files rather than one stereo one, so I can’t just drag the raw data across. Secondly, in order for the program to even start up, I have to have both my M-Audio soundcard and the iKey plugged in! I had hoped that I’d be able to export multitrack sessions to my laptop from the PC and mix things in ProTools, but that’s clearly not going to happen… I definitely prefer Adobe Audition.. and when I eventually get an Intel-Powered MacBook Pro, I’ll be running Audition on that for sure…

For now, I’m currently bouncing down the audio from the two mono files to a stereo file (which happens in real time so is taking a full half an hour!!! what a pain!! grrr), and will then do all the loveliness that needs doing in Audition on the PC.

Anyway, depending on how good it gets when I’ve tweaked it, it may end up being available for download via the shop. It is rather lovely…

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One more summer on the Royal Mile

So, after having said that I wasn’t going to do the Edinburgh Festival this year, it looks like I will be after all. Only this time, instead of doing it solo, it’ll be a duet with Julie McKee, one of my favourite singers around. Julie and I have been working on duo versions of pop tunes for a while now, everything from Earth Wind And Fire to John Martyn, The Police to Soundgarden, Kylie to Tom Waits, so we’re gonna do that stuff late night on the fringe, with a few loopy ambient things and a solo tune or two thrown in for good measure.

I’m really looking forward to it – we’re only doing 5 or 6 dates, so it’s fairly low pressure, and the upfront cost isn’t going to be as high as it was for me last year.

here’s the blurb for the festival fringe programme –

Julie McKee/Steve Lawson – The New Standard.
“A musical match made in heaven, divine jazz-influenced vocalist McKee and acclaimed solo bassist Lawson give a fresh spin to the pop canon, from Sondheim to Soundgarden. Unmissable.
www.thenewstandard.co.uk

(don’t bother going to the address at the moment, it currently just points back to my website, but will have all the info about the gig).

So expect a gig or two before then as we get out and try out our looping ‘n’ pop songs duo! It’s going to be lots of fun. If you’re in or around Edinburgh in the second week of August, come and see it – we’ll be at The Lot.

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