Schlagwort: michael frank

Livelooping in California

In late October 2023, my The Absurd band colleague Michael Frank and I travelled to California, for fun and especially to perform on the 20th anniversary of Rick Walker’s Y2KLoopfest, an international gathering of musicians who use livelooping as a central element of their music.

San Francisco! We spent three fab days here. They say that the city is not what it used to be but … this short time was enough to make us feel sad when we had to leave.

After this: a week in Santa Cruz, hanging out with the crazy livelooping tribe. Rick Walker was the organizing hero again. The private accommodation he found for us was amazing (big thanks to Philippe and Ruth for having us !!!).

Intense three festival days – very diverse half hour sets of almost 40 musicians from the US, Europe, and Japan. What an incredible collection of talent, and all just for the love of it – not for money! This is a nonprofit thing and nobody got paid.

Liveloopers Tim Thompson and David Tristram created the psychedelic video backdrops during the festival, and several of us worked hard to create a good sound and to keep the festival running.

On the evening of the first day, Rick Walker (drums + percussion) jammed with Michael Frank and me under the name of „Third Wave“. I wasn’t quite convinced of my own contributions, but it was fun anyway, and the audience seemed to like it. (The second video contains a shorter remix by Michael Frank focussing on the psychedelic animation backdrop.)

I started the evening of the final festival day with my solo set. (Sorry for the video quality – the main view was taken from the live stream which was great to have – thx to Bob Amstadt – but for some reason the images stuttered and didn’t run as smoothly as the sound, the other view is from a little camera in front of my feet.)

The music is mostly sonically demanding (with harmonious interludes) and experimental. Listen loud if you love experimental music!
I used my old Hohner GT2 guitar with a midi pickup, just an iPad as guitar processor, running virtual instruments, sound processors, and loopers (such as Loopy Pro with four unsynced loops this time, and Hainbach’s Gauss).

Michael Frank performed after me. He played a combination of his compositions for The Absurd, rearranged as solo pieces, plus loop sound improvisations. I loved his set and many other people did as well.

It rained on the Monday after the festival, and it was sad to say farewell to everyone, old and new friends. The livelooping community feels so much like family, and who knows when we can meet again !

After Santa Cruz, I went north to Santa Rosa to meet John Tarrant, my favorite Zen master, then south to La Jolla (near San Diego) where I stayed with my old friend Doris, her husband David, and their cat Buster for a few days. A hike up a mountain with spectacular views. Beach walks. The Pacific Ocean. Pelicans. It was warm and sunny, in mid-November.

I still felt California sun in me when I came home to cold Germany.

An Absurd Weekend

25 years ago, a guitarist from Cologne called Michael Frank started a band called The Absurd. Their mixture of rock (often including odd meters and political lyrics), jazz, and free improvisation was always open-minded and full of crazy ideas, experiments, and fun. Many musicians (including myself) were members of The Absurd for a while.


 
After 25 years, today’s incarnation of this band is still alive and kicking. We met for a hot July weekend in Berlin to record in the Andere Baustelle studio that belongs to a member of Berlin’s most famous experimental band, Einstürzende Neubauten.

We were 16 musicians this time, some from Berlin, some from Cologne – a real big band, with several guitarists, several drummers (one at a time) and percussionists, several bass players (two at once at times), lots of singers and brass players, plus keyboards and vibraphone. When all these people were all in full flight, the sound was mindblowing. I was reminded of jazz orchestras like Centipede at times.


 
Travelling to Berlin by train was already fun 🙂


 
We were very happy with the studio personnel and gear (although it was so hot in there at times that the air conditioners had a hard time to cope).

 
My workstation was an ancient Marshall tower. I played the Turkish Cümbüs during the piece „Zukkaattakk“ and my little Höfner Shorty guitar (with an inbuilt speaker!) into my modified Ibanez UE400 multieffect – so I was mostly using real vintage gear this time.


 
Studio work is exhausting …

 
A wonderful weekend, big fun with good friends. I haven’t heard the studio recordings yet, and I don’t know how much of it will end up on the silver jubilee vinyl that is planned. I think there was lots of incredible energy, I hope it got caught on tape.

On Sunday night, we did a „video concert“ in the studio. We played all pieces while being filmed by several cameras. For some reason the realtime video podcast didn’t work but we have the video material. Here’s Sercan Özökten’s video cut of „ZukkaAttakk“ (play it VERY LOUD to get an idea of the energy that was in the room) and „More Miles per Hour“.


 

Experimental Guitar Evening

I first met guitarist Craig Green last May when he played on the Livelooping Festival in Cologne that I had organized. Because he is currently in Europe for two gigs in Portugal, he had asked me if we could play together again, so he stopped in Cologne first before going to southern Europe and we did an Experimental Guitar Evening, again at the LOFT, again joined by my Cologne based friend Michael Frank. Each of us did a solo set and at the end, we played two improvisations together. Judging from what I heard from the audience afterwards, it was quite a successful and enjoyable evening.


 
Michael Frank played a noise improvisation and two of his older compositions: a Gong influenced psychedelic piece, and a wonderful rather intricate piece full of odd meters that although it has no Guitar Craft roots, it would fit in there quite well.

Craig, who came with his amazing new hi-tech Teuffel guitar, played two jazzy, very virtuoso, almost romantic compositions, and one of his trademark noise explorations. I was amazed at his sound, his precise technique, and his style in general. Very inspiring.

My set was not planned out, I was underprepared as usual but also willing to go for the risk. Actually I had vague plans for the beginning of the set that involved walking around in the room, theatrically whirling around my trusty old Höfner Shorty guitar – it has an integrated speaker that screams with string feedback in an amazing way when cranked up, and whirling it around creates a nice man-made leslie effect. Well this part worked as imagined but when I plugged it into my setup, there was nothing. No sound. I did some small talk and actually rebooted my Vista notebook, hoping the sound would reappear – but it didn’t! The audience was very relaxed and humorous, they even seemed to like that something went wrong, and their support made me relax too. Eventually I discovered that I simply had forgotten to pull up my main fader in my new Bidule setup. Argh !!! (sigh)


 
Anyway, sound was back, and I dropped my vague plans about continuing my explorations of radical noise. Instead I strongly felt like creating harmony, and so I started by setting up a simple but cinematic soundscape, and only later on went through more experiments, noise, samples, and cut-up rhythms.

Here is my 21 minute solo improvisation:


For those who don’t know but wonder – yes, all sounds were played live on the guitar. It can control samplers via midi, so I can play the guitar but you will hear strings, voices, or strange noises. There is even a part where I play a sample of a bee swarm which I had recorded myself last summer.
For those who know this but still wonder: The Fernandez guitar is equipped with a GK-2A and a sustainer. I played through a GT-5, a DL-4, a BitRMan and a Korg Slicer into the Bidule script on the notebook. Faders and switches in Bidule were controlled using a NanoKontrol. Bidule contained a number of VST instrument plugins (the awesome GForce MTron mellotron, a Kontakt sampler, a Humbox voice player), and VST effects such as the KT granular synthesis, the Quikquak Fusion Field reverb, and the beta version of the LoopV plugin for loops and cut-up stuff. Huge thanks to Matthias Grob and Andy Butler for the LoopV – I only used some of its many features but I can say it was stable and I had big fun using it.


 
Nobody left during the intermission – a good sign I think! The second half consisted of two extended collective improvisations that went very well. A wonderful evening, thanks to the support by the muse, an interested audience, some friends who helped in a generous way, and the folks from LOFT.