This is one of the new pieces I have this fall for San Francisco Open Studios!
If you link up, please leave a comment as well.
Y2K12 Live Looping Festival in San Francisco
For the past few years, the annual Live Looping Festival, which primarily takes place in Santa Cruz, California, co-hosts an opening-night performance in San Francisco with Outsound Presents at the Luggage Store Gallery. This year was no exception, with visiting artists coming from afar and braving the large flying piñatas on display in the gallery that evening.
The show opened with a solo performance by Philipp Zurcher, who was attending the festival from Switzerland. His set opened with dark and subtle tones on guitar and effects, and very little overt looping. The music remained sparse for a while, but eventually started to build up into a thicker texture as the loops came to the forefront.
[Philipp Zurcher.]
While Zurcher’s performance was subtle and sparse, the next set by Krispen Hartung and Aaron Davis from Boise, Idaho went in the opposite direction. Davis played fast runs and driving chords and rhythms on keyboard while the pair layered electronics and loops in a loud and intense rhythmic texture that they sustained for the duration of the set. There were moments where things grew a bit software which allowed Davis’ keyboard performance to come to the forefront, but overall it was a full-on barrage of electronic beats and semi-rhythmic long tones that enveloped the space and the audience.
[Krispen Hartung and Aaron Davis]
The final set featured Italian ” sound-sculptor” Luca Formentini. At first glance, he appeared to be another looper-guitarist, but that label sells his highly virtuosic and narrative music short. His guitar sounded other-wordly, aided by the fact that his performance was largely without any light. The dark, tense and melancholy tones were augmented by electronics and more complex loops layered with a mixture of effects. There were sounds that mimicked natural elements, such as water, fire and even sound evocative of cats. Rather than simply building up layers of sound, he adeptly added and removed the layers to forward an abstract narrative – one had the sense of a movie with something beautiful but tragic was about to happen. Overall, it was an impressive performance.
Overall, it was a good show, with a small but appreciative audience. The festival moved back to Santa Cruz after this opening performance. I was not able to attend any of the subsequent events, but glad I saw these artists on this night in San Francisco.
CatSynth pic: ::: The Korg Has Landed :::
via XBS and matrixsynth.
“This track consists of the Roland TR 909 from here and the Korg from here… Also, the Korg bloops in the breaks are triggering from a master clock. the same clock is driving the TR 909 via R-sync and Simmons SDSV Via 96 Sequencer clock ( With MFB sequencer ) here… it’s awesome when everyone talks synth!” Including cats in freakin’ outer space!
CatSynth pic: Mimi and Electro Harmonix
From our friends at polynominal.com, we have another picture of Mimi:
“A cool box from the seventies generating a square waveform sequenced by a simple 8- steps pattern for each note.”
Weekend Cat Blogging: The Return of the Fog
After a week or extraordinarily blue skies and warm days and nights in San Francisco, our regular scheduled fog has returned this morning, bathing everything in bright grey-white glow:
Luna is enjoying looking out the window onto the patio, contemplating something.
We actually quite like the fog here, as long as it doesn’t get to cold. But this morning does have a melancholy quality to it is well. Like the fog, it might dissipate during the day, or it might not.
Weekend Cat Blogging #384 is hosted by Jules at Judi’s Mind Over Matter.
The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat from their new home in Texas.
And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.
Reconnaissance Fly at the Starry Plough in August
Here is a video from our Reconnaissance Fly show at the Starry Plough in Berkeley this past August. (It was the same show the generated this Weekend Cat Blogging post.) It features one of our more challenging but also fun pieces, the medley of “Electric Rock Like a Cat” and “sanse is crede nza”, with music by Polly Moller and Amar Chaudhary, respectively.
It was our best performance of this set to date, and a lot of energy from both the band and the audience. So much so that we nearly had a disaster on our hands when our drummer Larry-the-O knocked over his hi-hat dangerously close to bassist Tim Walters’ foot. Fortunately, no one was hurt and a good time was had by all.
CatSynth video: RubberBand Synth Ableton Pack #65
From AfroDjMac on YouTube, via matrixsynth.
“Here’s a free Ableton Live Instrument rack made from the sound of a rubber band plucked and recorded with a contact microphone. Special thanks to Theo, my cat, for helping out.
Full Post and Download: http://bit.ly/freesynth65
Homemade Contact Mic: http://getlofi.com/shop
Visit my site for more stuff like this, including Live Instrument downloads, tutorials and music! http://www.afrodjmac.com
AfroDJMac
http://www.facebook.com/afrodjmac
http://www.twitter.com/afrodjmac
http://www.afrodjmac.tumblr.com”
Improv Hootenanny Revival, Berkeley Arts
The Improv Hootenanny series from the Ivy Room may be gone, but we recently had a “Hootennany Revival” at Berkeley Arts. Lucio Menagon, who started the Ivy Room series, was back in the Bay Area and joined by Suki O’kane and other familiar faces along with new participants. The musical (and visual) artistry is of course the center of the Hootenanny experience, but drinks and lively conversation are also a key part, and there was plenty of these before the formal part of the program began.
The performance opened with a solo set by Henry Plotnik, perhaps the youngest participant I have seen in any of these Bay Area improv events. He made use of the venue’s acoustic grand piano in addition to his electronic keyboard, and effortlessly weaved a set that moved between tonal and inharmonic elements.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
Plotnik was followed by a duo featuring veteran improvisers Philip Greenlief and Ross Hammond, on saxophone and guitar, respectively.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
Their performance had a sparse but intricate texture, frequency bouncing odd melodic lines or noisy extended techniques between them.
The evening also featured a version of Lucio Menagon’s Strangelet project, with familiar members Suki O’kane on percussion and John Hanes on electronics as well as a relative newcomer to the Bay Area scene Stephanie Lak.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
Lak’s contribution contrasted physically and sonically with the other members of the group, who provided the steadily evolving cloud of improvised sounds I remember from previous Strangelet performances. She was completely mobile with a pair of toy megaphones and tiny amplifiers and moved around the stage area freely with bursts of vocal and electronic sounds that floated on top of existing soundscape.
All the sets were accompanied by visuals from the cinePimps (Alfonso Alvarez and Keith Arnold). Using film projectors, they layered abstract film clips along with old B movies on two walls of the space. There were also musical interludes featuring Raub Roy and the TreeJay OctoPlayer. Raub Roy had a collection of hand drums that he excited with balloons expelling air and electric toothbrushes. The effect was something that sounded drum-like but without the usual articulation. You can see part of his performance in this video:
The TreeJay OctoPlayer, a project of Thad Povey and Mark Taylor, featured eight independently controllable platters and styli for vinyl records. During their mini-sets, the performers switched among different records and changed speeds to create a rich and somewhat eerie musical collage. It was also fun to watch the process of working with this towering instrument.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
The final set featured Stanosaur with guitar and a wall of large amplifiers. Basically, he played long heavily distorted drones that drove all of the amps to create different beating and phasing effects at rather high volumes. And by “high volumes” I mean ear-splittingly loud! Fortunately, I had my ear protection, and earplugs were made available to the audience. But it was still an intense experience to hear and to feel the effect of this sound, and a fog machine and lasers added a visual element.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
In all, it was a fun night of friends and good music, which is something to be valued. I hope we can start another regular improvisation series in the Bay Area with the same degree of casual fellowship and quality musicianship.
