y2k4: 1st night SF

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

Y2K4  mini diary first installment:

Well, it feels funny writing a review of the
first night of the Y2K4 festival at the Luggage Store in San Francisco
as I was one of the members of the live looping improv trio
with Sunao Inami and Bernhard Wagner but I had such a good time
and the response was so nice by the good crowd that attended
that I wanted to let everyone know that we're off to a good start.
At one point I just stopped playing and marvelled at the fact that here
I was sharing the stage with someone from Kobe, Japan and Zurich, 
Switzerland.
  Maybe not a big deal to some, but it filled me with wonder and I felt
really happy for the first time in several days of neurotic last minute 
detailing of the
rest of the festival;   this and the fact that Michael Klobuchar, Stan 
Card, 
Matt Davignon,
Dina Emerson, Tim Thompson and Rent Romus were all in the audience 
listening 
appreciatively.

Sunao, Bernhard and I all have such disparate styles musically that I 
thought it
might not be a cohesive performance but I was really pleasantly surprised
by how cohesive the long 45 minute improv was.   We went to a lot of places
and had a lot of synchronous playing despite the fact that only Bernhard 
and
I were brother synced with our EDP.  It was abstract at times:  ambient 
and 
dark
at others and we occasionally coalesced into some funk rhythmic material.
It was a nice contrast to the fascinating glitch/noise group form Berlin 
that opened up
the night.

Sunao has such a beautiful sense of timbre and deftly manipulated his 
sound 
creations
in Native Instruments Reaktor and Ableton's Live with two laptops running 
in 
concert.
Bernhard also is a beautiful player who I only met and became friends with 
at this year's
Loopstock. He is really doing very interseting things with the EDP and 
effects.

At one point the two of us had a really interesting and vibrating couple 
of 
loops synced that used
substitute insert techniques with falsetto voice (mine) and Bernhard's 
guitar.  It was really
unsual sounding and really changed a lot as we played.  I was really 
thankful for Matthias
Grob's invention of brother sync on this one.  I was also thankful that 
Bernhard taped the whole
thing and that Scoots took photographs.   Perhaps if we get enough time 
(and 
that will be a big IF)
we may post some of this material to the website:   nosuch.biz/Y2K4.

I was tired from how hard I've been working getting the festival together 
but playing with
these fine and truly gifted/unique musicians felt like take a refreshing 
bath and I feel
really energized and excited about the weekend gig ahead of us.

Tomorrow,  we see if we can get the simulcast up and running for the 
Weekend 
shows
and Sunao, Bernhard and the Scoots man himself,  Michael Klobuchar play 
the 
opening
Santa Cruz concert.    We got excellent press coverage ( we are on the 
front 
page of the
Sentinel today with a large article inside) and excellent radio coverage 
so 
I"m hoping
that we'll have a good draw for the weekend.   We had a nice draw in S.F. 
tonight, the best
response to the Thursday night luggage store series that they've had, 
according to promoter/fellow looper
Matt Davignon, who's own set of manipulated drum machines is eagearly 
awaited on Saturday at
4:30 p.m.   Matt's putting the finishing touches on his new CD featuring 
some of the material from this phase
he is in, creatively...........I've heard it live and it is fascinating 
and 
beautiful and really unique. Check it out.

More to come.    Rick