Since Saturday’s upload, I’ve put 2 more videos on Vimeo for your delectation and delight, which contrast the different ways that the Looperlative can be used to either simply provide a loop for a piece of music, or be integral to the way it’s created, and the sound that emerges.
I’m fascinated by the relationship between technology and end result, and by the methods that we as musicians can use to keep our own technical thoughts and experiments subservient to the greater artistic and communicative aims… [Read more →]
Here are the latest couple of videos I’ve put up. The first is another of the experimental ideas I’m working on for the new album – this time I wanted to try something a little more solidly rhythmic, just to see how the replace functions interact with a percussive track. (the part is played by muting all the strings, and then using a ‘double thumb’ technique, more readily associated with slap bass, to get the percussive pattern).
I spent a lovely few hours today with David Stevens, a wonderful musician working mainly with abstract drones and soundscapes, often using bowed strips of metal to create the most amazing textures.
We met through Tuttle, and have been talking for a while about recording together, and today it finally happened, though not without an hour or so of technical faffing thanks to some problematic gear… [Read more →]
Steve Lawson – new-age, post-rock, ambient-jazz, solo-bass… thus reads the strapline on his website. It’s a little tricky to pin down what he does, given that, as those hyphenated descriptions begin to tell us,
he’s a solo bassist who spends a lot of his time making very unbasslike noises.
He’s an ambient experimenter who likes pop tunes too much to go strictly soundscape, but is way too atmospheric to sit comfortably in the ‘instrumental rock’ category.
His electronica leanings produce some amazing hi-tech sounds, but he resolutely avoids programmed beats,
making the eventual hybrid of jazz, electronica, ambient, new age and ‘new acoustic’ influences infuriatingly hard to pigeonhole.
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It may be a deeply uncommercial move to be so diffuse, but Steve’s entire career has been an ongoing experiment at making the music that means something to him, and then using the internet to make that available to like-minded listeners. 10 albums into his career, there’s a definite ‘Steve Lawson’ sound to just about everything he plays on. Playful yet melancholic, possessed of a naive melodic quality whilst flirting extensively with dissonance and darker timbres to create this soundtrack to the inside of his head.
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This ‘music first, marketing later’ approach has lead to him being greatly in demand as a writer, thinker and consultant on the present and possible future of the music industries, splitting his teaching time between University and College lectures on looping, improvising and bass techniques and further lecture tours on the sustainability of making the music you love. He also occasionally writes biographies about himself in the third person.
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With the decade-long success of his own on-going project to keep making the music that matters to him, the future looks just fine – 2010 has already featured a new live album, a host of house concerts on either side of the atlantic, and a continued flurry of online activity aimed at inviting more people into the music. Enjoy the ride.
Quotes
I’m happy for this page to be a collaborative effort, so if you wish to add some biographical detail that seems relevant, or a quote of your own to supplement the ones in the box, you can do so in the comments below:
Since Saturday’s upload, I’ve put 2 more videos on Vimeo for your delectation and delight, which contrast the different ways that the Looperlative can be used to either simply provide a loop for a piece of music, or be integral to the way it’s created, and the sound that emerges.
Here are the latest couple of videos I’ve put up. The first is another of the experimental ideas I’m working on for the new album – this time I wanted to try something a little more solidly rhythmic, just to see how the replace functions interact with a percussive track. (the part is played by muting all the strings, and then using a ‘double thumb’ technique, more readily associated with slap bass, to get the percussive pattern).
I spent a lovely few hours today with 
Steve Lawson – new-age, post-rock, ambient-jazz, solo-bass… thus reads the strapline on his website. It’s a little tricky to pin down what he does, given that, as those hyphenated descriptions begin to tell us,
