I thought it would be cool to have everyone write in with their
favorite live looping performance that they've seen in the past year,
perhaps with a bit of a description of the performance so that we can
turn each other onto some artists that we might not have had a
chance to
see, hear or even hear of.
I can't think of a single year in the past 15 years of digital live looping
where I've been turned on to so many fantastically talented and really original
loopers. It's been a fantastic year so far in our world.
My own favorite performance was Juana Molina up at Yoshi's in Oakland.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_3ooACrLQ4 (profile)
A former television comedienne and start, Juana gave up that career to
concentrate on her singer/songwriter material.
She has really beautiful and rhythmic and simple almost naive and childlike songs that she sings on acoustic guitar but
she also obviously has a strong background in synthesis, modern music, found sound so
she has a beautiful palette of custom synthesizer sounds
combined with found sound and
unusual percussion.
She just picks really unusual, 'out of the box' and really emotionally evocative sounds and
plays them with exquisite rhythmic precision and arrangement sensibility.
She also speaks broken English and is very charming and very funny in her repartee with the crowd.
I've seen her now three different times and even been privileged to open for her and hang out with her
afterwards since I first discovered her.
She's been mentioned several times on this list before but if you haven't checked her out, do yourself a
favor and go see her or buy her CDs.
Definitely my favorite live looping show of the year.
