a perfect looping concert

["loop.pool" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Last night I was privy with many other people to one of the most enjoyable
live looping shows I've witnessed.

List member, guitarist and composer of one of my favorite loop records 
ever 
(Flux Aeterna), Ted Killian
came all the way from Medford, Oregon to do a sublime duet with Jeff 
Kaiser, 
the amazing new music
trumpet/electronics artist who has a lot of notoriety in the Los Angeles 
new 
music scene with his excellent
record labels pfMENTUM and Angry Vegan Records.

To top this amazing performance off,  David Tristram drove across the hill 
and just showed up with his
video projector and projected beautiful visuals that were amazingly 
synchronous with the performance.

With Ted creating really beautiful, restrained and ultimately tastey 
ambient 
pads and long legato, searing guitar tones,
Jeff got freaky with his trumpet playing through a couple of Line 6 DL-4s, 
an Alesis Bitr-man (man oh man, what a cool pedal),
a Moogerfooger ring modulator and a few other things that I didn't get the 
names of.

Jeff is an avante garde player with extreme taste and musicality.   He has 
amazing acoustic technique as a trumpet player (and Ted tells me
he is also is trained in complex choral arranging) and he rides a 
beautiful 
taught line between lyricism and very angular and even abrasive sound 
manipulation. Always abstract, yet always hinting at beautiful worlds,  I 
was just floored by the interaction between these two wonderful and 
sensitive players.  I told Dan Soltzberg (with whom I played earlier in 
the 
evening in Orange with his talented singer/percussionist wife, Theresa) 
that 
I had one of those peak moments about 15 minutes into their set where I 
thought to myself,  "This is why we work so hard to put these free 
concerts 
on for the public".

Joe Rut and Lucio Menegon  (aka Lumper/Splitter) were in the middle slot 
and 
also played a really sublime set of double guitar looping.
Again, they run the gamut of more inside styles and more avante garde 
arhythmic styles.   Their set was filled with a lot of energy and they
had great chemistry going to a lot of different musical spaces.   Joe also 
played a cool invented instrument that had contact mics and various
pieces of metal welded on a resonating board.    I really resonated with 
his 
playing on that piece and feel really glad that I now have three new 
friends 
in my musical world (Joe, Lucio and Jeff).

It was really enjoyable playing the opening set with Dan and Theresa on 
trapset.  I rarely just play kit these days and it was really fun to use 
minimalistic looping techniques (I only had a lonely Line 6 without any 
processing for my kick and snare mic) and I tried out a bunch of new 
techniques of playing kit and using mouth percussion simultaneously .  I 
really got into a minimalist groove zone and the whole set was very 
trancey 
for me.

I'll leave it to someone else to speak of that set though because as 
enjoyable as it was,  I have no idea how it sounded to the audience (one 
of 
the saddest things about being a performing artist...............you just 
can't tell how things are percieved until after the fact).   I do know 
that 
I really dug the bass and looping and processing work that Dan was doing 
and 
Theresa did some really nice spoken word pieces as well as singing 
beautifully.

It was hotter than hades in the venue but for the first time,  the Blues 
Jam 
downstairs didn't occur simultaneously so we were able to use the big 
stage 
and the big sound system and the sound was excellent.

Add to that how sweet the staff of the ATTIC's restaurant were and it was 
just a reallly successful show, artistically.

Thanks to all the artists who made it possible.

Rick Walker