Tag: Geek

Posted on

Making loops interesting…

There’s been a long thread over on Looper’s Delight about making loops interesting. A lot of the discussion has been around things to do to your loops, or ways of playing that will make them interesting. All good stuff, but missing something… Here’s my reply to the list of about 5 minutes ago –

“Some interesting stuff coming through on this topic (that which I’ve had the time to read, anyway).

My own way of dealing with this, philosophically is to not think about the looping aspect of it unless I have to, but instead to try and conceive the ‘music’ first in an of itself. Having spent a lot of years playing loop-based music, I already quite naturally hear form in a loop-influenced way, so don’t tend to need to force things. Occasionally I’ll be looking for a different kind of arrangement, and then I go to my tools at hand to see if it’s going to be possible… the ever-growing feature-list of the Looperlative certainly helps in this area.

But I have, for the most part, avoided self-consciously labeled ‘loop music’. There are some people who do much more ‘loop-essential’ music than I that do it incredibly well – Bill Walker, it seems to me, exploits his looping boxes in a more obviously loop based way (especially his ultra-rhythmic synced stuff), but his boundless musicality comes through in a way that makes it sound like the technology was made for him. Likewise Claude Voit – quite obviously loop designed music in the rhythmic/repetitive mode, but not even remotely ‘dull’ or ‘tedious’ – just great music making use of the arrangement possibilities of his chosen hardware.

What’s most notable is that great music is unhindered by tech or lack of. The great musicians are the ones who enslave the technology to their musical ends, but also allow it to liberate their musical sensibilities into otherwise impossible arrangement options, but still hear it and present it as music, where the fundamentals of music, be they melodic, rhythmic, textural, cultural or onomatopoeic, carry through to the audience, and the geekability of the loopage is an added bonus not a necessary diversion from the unsatisfactory listening experience.

just a thought or two… “

It’s all about the music, peoples. Experimenting with looping possibilities makes for a fun (and personally rewarding) science project, but those techniques then need to be forgotten and committed to the subconscious so that the music can flow unimpeded. It’s a constant struggle, especially when one gets new toys, but one that must be resisted.

Posted on

Spamspamspamspam

So, I switched comments back on yesterday, and have had over 300 bits of spam since then!

For fuck’s sake, is there no way of blocking this stuff from even getting here? it all gets filtered into a junk-mail folder, but then so do all the normal comments, so I have to go through them all looking for non-spam. And before any geeks ask, no they aren’t from the same IP address, so I can’t just block it, sadly.

…and I thought pizza leaflets were a pain in the arse.

Posted on

Paul Simon – Surprise

Just got this through today, and am on my second listen. Paul Simon is in that very tiny group of people who’ve never done a bad album (caveat, I’ve never heard ‘Capeman’, the soundtrack to his ill-fated musical) – most people of his era (Joni Mitchell, Jackson Brown, Neil Young etc.) mad some fairly duff albums in the 80s, but Paul, like Tom Waits and Bruce Cockburn, has remained pretty consistent all along. Which is why it always amazes me when this album is described as a return to form – his last album, ‘You’re The One’ is outstanding! It’s a really great record, with a couple of tracks that would be in my all time Paul Simon top 10, and not a duff track on it.

It was the same when James Taylor brought out ‘Hourglass’ – ‘return to form’ says the press. Huh? His previous two albums before that were ‘Live’ (possibly the greatest live album ever recorded) and ‘New Moon Shine’, a truly beautiful album.

The problem is that critics always want a hook to hang a story on. ‘It’s brilliant, like all his other albums’ isn’t as dramatic as stories about emerging from a creative wilderness or doing your best album for 15 years… maybe I should just pretend that everything else I’ve done has been completely eclipsed by my new album… :o) I mean, I do genuinely think it’s the best thing I’ve done (I wouldn’t release it if I didn’t…), but it doesn’t make Grace And Gratitude look like an amateurish work…

So, my review – the new Paul Simon album is magic. Full of great songs, great playing, and some fantastic sonic treatments from Brian Eno. For the bass geeks amongst you, Pino’s on it, Abe Laboriel Snr’s on it, Alex Al is on it and Leo Abrahams (from the RC gig before last) is on fretless bass on one tune! That’s the kind of calibre of player we get at the RC.

But every Paul Simon album is magic. You really ought to have the set. He’s got a way with phrasing a line that make it feel like a conversation. The melody never gets in the way of the words. Like Joni Mitchell and a handful of other singers, it’s as much story-telling as it is singing.

Posted on

Another preview for all Last.fm users…

I’ve just uploaded Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines to Last.fm, so you’re a subscriber, you can head over and listen to three full tracks, and 30 seconds of all the others, just to get a flavour of what marvellousness is available if you order to new album ahead of time. :o)

If you’re not up to speed with last.fm if an online streaming radio site that’s free to sign up to and use. The way it works is you download a plug in for your media player of choice (iTunes, winamp, WMP or whatever) and it then keeps a log of all the music you listen to, and generates custom radio stations based on the taste of other people who listen to the same stuff as you! It’s fantastic, and the stats are kinda interesting too. Well worth joining and geeking out on.

So, if you’re already there have a listen, and if you’re not sign up THEN have a listen. :o)

and after that, you can hope over to my online shop, order ‘Behind Every Word’, and download the whole of ‘Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines’ straight away. And get MP3s of two tracks from Behind Every Word to preview before the album gets sent to you at the end of June. How exciting!

Posted on

cats and websites

Sorry for big absence from blog-world – two big things have been going on. Firstly, and most tragically, the ginger fairly aged feline has been very unwell. You know about the cancer, which at the moment isn’t showing up the way it was, but he’s now got very serious kidney failure, (creatin level of over 800, which is off the chart), and there’s pretty much nothing they can do. We’ve been trying to get his blood levels settled, but he’s not enjoying the renal food and isn’t really improving anyway, so we’re now pretty much resigned to giving him whatever he wants to eat so he can enjoy his last week or two on earth. It’s a horrible horrible moment to reach – it feels like condemning someone to death, even though there’s no way he’s going to suddenly get better. The will is there to keep fighting for him, but he’s got nothing left to fight with. It’s a dark time in Stevie-Towers.

The second hugely time consuming thing of late is moving my website over to a new server. Copying the stuff over was no problem at all – the Captain took care of that in his usual uber-geek cleverness way – but once there, it became clear that OSCommerce wasn’t going to run on a server running the latest versions of PHP and MySQL (like I know what I’m talking about). So, ’twas time to find a new shopping cart – this time I’ve gone with Zen Cart – it looks quite similar to OSC, but I’m assured by geeks who know that it’s more secure, and much tidier code-wise. I’m almost there, almost completely up to date with the shop – it’ll hopefully go live over the weekend, with advanced order on ‘Behind Every Word’ available, which will include the free download album ‘Lessons Learned From The Fairly Aged Felines (Lessons Learned Pt III)’ – I just need to finish mixing that, zip it up into a zip file with some artwork, and maybe a couple of tracks from ‘Behind Every Word’, and it’ll all be on sale then. I’ll then over the next week or so get Lessons Learned Pt I, Conversations, Open Spaces and It’s Not Gonna Happen up for sale, and hopefully replenish the Street Team Stash with all manner of goodies. Busy time for a bassist cum web designer. :o)

Also, just in, I’ve been booked for an open-air gig in Portsmouth (at least, I’m assuming it’s open air, as it’s for a boat race of some kind, and they generally don’t happen in doors) – I’ll posted the deets as soon as I can.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Laptop update

Phone call just now from me to them (they still haven’t called me once). The repair is apparently ‘finished’ but my laptop is in testing… so I might not get it back today. Huh? It’s 10.30am, how long does it take to test to see if it’s working? One of you geeks might be able to fill me in on this, but running some kind of diagnostic test on a laptop to make sure the Logic board is working can’t take 24 hours can it?

Miserable git on the phone – I asked roughly how long after the test was finished would I be called, given that I’ve been promised three phone-calls so far and had none of them. No help at all. A request for a note to be put on it that the repair is already overdue and it’s urgent. No can do.

Useless losers.

Posted on

Antiwar march on Saturday

Saturday’s anti-war march was a fab event – met up with Jyoti, which was a delight, always nice to put a face to a blog. The march itself seemed rather upbeat, pretty huge (biggest one I’ve been on since the BIG ONE three years ago – organisers estimated 100,000, the police laughably suggested 10-15,000. Using the patented ma lawson method of doubling the police figure, halving the organisers and splitting the difference brings it to 40,000, but I’d say that was on the low side.)

The issues were a bit simpler than for the last few – people get very tetchy about protesting about military situations where there are British soldiers committed, as though it’s somehow treason to complain once they are there. Not much thought given to how little they want to be there, and the legality of them being there in the first place… This one was easier because of the dual themes – troops out of Iraq, and don’t attack Iran. The threat of a military strike on Iran is just nuts. Sure, the Iranian president is a crack-pot, but if anything is likely to bring together the myriad disparate factions in Iranian politics, it’s an attack by the US/UK Team America-stylee crack commando team. A damn fool thing to do, for sure.

So, I got to protest the lunacy of our jumped up nobhead of a prime minister, and hang out with lovely peoples all day.

And now I’m breaking my own rule and am using TSP’s laptop to access the net, as my desktop has bizarrely decided not to connect to the web. It’ll access email, chat, ftp, just nothing with an http in front of it. There are no proxies set up, and I can’t find any changes to the firewall settings (and switching it off doesn’t seem to change anything either) – any suggestions, lovely blogling geeks?

Here’s me on the march, from Jyoti’s photos –

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Dancing for Chicken… but in a good way!

Had a fab gig last night, at the National Portrait Gallery. It was a corporate party, for a huge computer company in the City, playing solo ambient loveliness while business deals and schmoozing unfolded in the delightful surroundings of the Contemporary Gallery of the NPG.

A gig like this throws up all kinds of challenges that you don’t tend to face on a ‘listening’ gig, or even a normal function gig (not least of all playing continuously for 3 hours!).

Firstly, you’re there as part of the scenery – while quite a few people were milling around where I was playing (a good sign), there weren’t any chairs set out for people to sit and listen, no encouragement to be quiet, and certainly no dance floor (though the idea of all those city boys in their matching suits and sensible ties doing interpretive dance to my noodlings is marvellous – might have to make that into a video at some point…!). What’s more, because of the size and echoey nature of the space, coupled with the ambient talking volume, and not having the speakers pointing at me, I was basically playing blind – like doing a gig where all you’re hearing are the reverb returns (this is not unlike the last gig I did for the same company, with Theo). It’s rather un-nerving at first, but makes for a very different music making experience, like photographing shadows or painting with just water on paper… everything is done in gentle relief, and then you step out and have a listen whilst wandering round the room confusing people who thought you were the musician (‘hang on, the music’s still going on! is it all just a CD?’ etc.)

The response from the audience was great, ranging from ‘where can I hear more music like this – you and Brian Eno are the only people I’ve heard like that’ to an overheard comment of ‘my, what perfect music for an event like this’ which sounded like I’d paid them to say it, it sounded so much like ad copy!)

The great thing about doing a show like this is it brings every bedroom music geek out of the woodwork, ‘oh, I experiment a little with recording at home’ ‘yes, I play guitar a bit, and mess around with effects and stuff’ etc. much fun.

So, more of those please – any of you lovely bloglings who want to hire me for this kind of thing, my rates are exorbitant, but that’s the corporate world… ;o) Drop me a line and we’ll work something out.

Soundtrack – The Cure, ‘Disintegration’.

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top