playing live

[a listener <a_listener23@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

hello all sensitive micro sounders!

Well speaking of playing live; last night I saw apestaartje, noto, and
fennesz at tonic in NY (I had to leave before i-sound as it was a 2 1/2 hour
ride home).
    apestaartje did a really nice set with no more than 2 of the 4 players
playing at a time. . . it flowed very well, nice human tones with sparse
rhythmic glitching occasionally and lots of pure tones and modulations. . .
All four of them had Macs (three G3's and one of the new G4 titanium) all
controlled by mouse and keyboard. There was also some mixer tweaking by two
of the players. . and one odd part near the end when one performer was using
two computers. . . (didn't sound like a sound that really needed two
computers (maybe it was the two mouse thing)) (after the show I found out
that they all used Max MSP and were very nice guys. . .
    next was noto. (The crowd got ruder as the night went on and talked
through the entire set). He used a Mac G3 (just using the trackpad) also and
a mixer. His set started with sin-wave pulses that turned into heavy inner
ear glitch-hop. . . with a lot of bass. . . (At the start of his set his
computer was picking up the radio (this actually happened to me the first
time I played live), but then he started to hold his audio out in place and
it went away))
    Fennesz (as always) played a G3 (no mouse) and mixer. His set was
divided in half by an unexplained silence half way through it (software
problems I'm guessing as he recovered quite quickly). I think that he only
used samples from Martin Arnold's film 'alone, life wastes andy hardy.' The
first half started with a low looped sound kluncking around. . . then loop
point bouncing until it became a spectacle of clicks. . . then some mixer
feedback into very loud pulsing tones in a minor scale. All of this accented
by an occasional high sinwave that made many in the audience cover there
ears. . .  These tones were slowly overcome my mixer feed back and static
until. . .cut it was gone. . . he returned with a very musical passage of
strings and pulses that got louder and faster and more distorted for the
next 15 min.  (he also used Max / MSP ).

A very good show with a friendly (but too talkative) crowd. . .

hope I didn't just waste your time. .

v(ance)stevenson.


PS I don't troll. . . in response to a comment I got about "getting the MC
to whip up the crowd" -- come on don't be a fool. .  I was obviously talking
about micro-sound. You go out and play to have the people enjoy it
(otherwise why do it out side of your house). .  and I don't go to shows to
see people play shit off there CDs If I went to there show I probably have
there CD (or MP3's) and don't need to stand in a smoky bar to hear it (I
have headphones and bear at home). . .