Re: What would loopers do without power?

["Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I guess I would go back to the music that drew me to live looping in the 
first place:

repetitive ostinato oriented music of the african and african diaspora 
paradigm,
either on drums, string instruments, flutes, reeds, brass instruments, 
found 
sounds or voice.

My first love of repeating interlocking parts came from listening to
African music and Steve Reich (in particular, "Music for Strings, 
Percussion 
and Celeste"
/Terry Riley/Philip Glass and also to a lot of the trancey-er kinds of 
repetive music from the
"In A Silent Way/Bitches Brew"  era that Miles Davis and all of his 
innovative
bandmates innovated in the early 70's and the early ECM recordings (I 
think 
particularly of
'Sand Glass'  by Eberhard Weber  and 'Corinthian Melodies'  by Art Lande 
and 
the
Rubisa Patrol (with a young Mark Isham on trumpet).

Seeing Jaco loop a bass harmonics part in the early 80's just turned me on 
fiercely
as did the innovation of angalogue sequencers and drum machines in the 
60's 
and 70's because they
meant that I could make repetitive kinds of music without having to try
and harangue other musicians into playing parts in a disciplined and 
minimalistic
manner.

I've always been a rhythmatist first (though I think of myself as almost 
more of a timbralist now)
and I've always felt that the most interesting rhythms were the ones that 
were powerful enough
and classic enough to bear repeting over and over.................their 
minimalism gave the most
freedom, compositionally, to what was played over the top of them imho.

It's why I love to loop but also why I don't feel like I have to loop.