„Paris Spring Loops“ was the title of this year’s international livelooping festival, organized by Nelly Meunier and Emmanuel Reveneau. The festival lasted for a week and contained several loop workshops and concerts in several venues (and the logistics were complex).
Nelly and Manu had scheduled me for a workshop or two (I showed the students some of what can be done with the 25 year old Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro) and for four concerts – three solo shows and one duo with my „The Absurd“ band colleague Michael Frank (who also did a wonderful solo set).
I was very happy during this week, although there was little sleep and lots of standing in traffic jams, and not much time for tourism, except for one little trip to Pigalle and Montmartre. The Paris spring sun was warming my body, and meeting my old friends again (and getting to know a few new ones), and spending lots of time with them, was heartwarming. The concerts were all interesting, some of them mouth-open breathtaking, and my own (completely improvised) concerts all came out nicely – people liked them and I was quite happy with them – so happy that I put the three solo loops on this Bandcamp album without any edits:
Cover photograph: Olivier Malhomme
The first show was based on my digital setup: Plogue Bidule with various plugins, this time controlled by a Novation Launchcontrol which felt much more stable than the pair of Nanokontrols I had been using for years. You can see me controlling loops and effects on this video of the show:
I also videotaped the second and third solo shows but hadn’t chosen a good camera position (my head is cut off on the videos) 🙂 but you can listen to them on the Bandcamp album. Both featured the „Frippertronics“ tape delay instead of the computer, plus various stomp box delays.
photograph: Joel Gilardini
The 50+ year old tape technique (more about it here) produces some amount of hiss but several people told me that they actually liked that hiss – something about it being analogue and warm. Not sure about this, but it is a package deal I guess, and people loved this thing.
It sure looks awesome, especially during the final concert where I put it into the center stage and it looked like an altar – a loop altar. Which made my colleague John Connell fall on his knees and pray to it 🙂
The international livelooping scene, organized around the festivals that were started 17 years ago by Rick Walker (purple-haired this time) in California and have since spread to many cities, consists of a very friendly bunch of people. There is no competitiveness at all, and everyone is totally respected with their individual way of expressing themselves with loop music, regardless of the level of professionality (which varies wildly of course). The „newbies“ who learned about livelooping during our workshops and did a few sets themselves probably felt safe on stage because of this friendliness.
I’m getting used to improvise on stage more and more but while I learn to trust the unknown, and show my not-knowing without safety net, I still quite enjoyed the friendly feedback and encouragement that I got during this week. Sometimes I’m still surprised at how much some people love what I do 🙂
Some people even liked this relentlessly adventurous guitar duo with Michael Frank:
A week that made me happy … while I write this, I think of 8 of my looper friends who got themselves squeezed into a van, with all their suitcases and gear, and continue a little tour of Europe – today, they are in Florence, then later in other places in Italy, then in Prague, Dresden and finally Berlin where I will meet them again. After that, the van will travel through Cologne back to Paris. What an adventure! I’m glad though that I can sleep in my own bed again, life on the road is too hard for me 🙂
Photos by Laure Sornique, Olivier In-Mobile Malhomme, Joel Gilardini and me:
