"It was an amazing night, as a packed house of 250 plus applauded Alessandro Cortini, Richard Devine, Thighpaulsandra, Gary Chang, Chas Smith,Paul Tzanetopoulos and Peter Grenader as they twisted sound and sight alike at the Redcat Theater in Los Angeles. Click here for the first flickr images taken from the final rehearsal and the performance itself and check back in the next few days as more are added." Previous posts on Analog Live!Update: be sure to check out the comments in this post for some details on the show.
Update: More images via Anateur Chemist here.
It was amazing. I will have my review and pictures up soon.
ReplyDeleteSorry if it has already been discussed somewhere, but I really doubt Richard Devine's laptops are analog. :) I couldn't find any specific info, so could someone please explain what was the deal with that? Did he play (which seems really inappropriate in such an event) or just managed mixing and routing (I'd forgive that)?
ReplyDeletei freaking loved it so much fun sadly when i went to talk to alot of the performers i froze up mostly cause alot of them were idols of mine
ReplyDeletewell c60 he doesnt like messing around with real gear but i agree it would have been nice to see his 15 new plan b osc's there ooooohhhh i sooo wish
ReplyDeleteRichard did a 100% laptop performance, which I was as far as I could tell mostly VST effect processing, mixing and mangling loops, and a lovely Max/MSP x-y pad synth. Sounded great, but definitely was a little odd for "Analog Live!". Maybe "Virtual Analog Live!?"
ReplyDeleteI think I was more disappointed that Chang didn't do much knob tweaking, he just stuck with the keyboard... Having that Wiard system sitting behind him, I kept hoping he'd turn around and go nuts. That said, his drones were beautiful, soundtrackish material.
I was tempted to pester Peter, but since I don't own / can't really afford to own any Plan B right now, I wasn't sure what to say. I was a little more "star-struck" when I realized I was standing in line behind Cevin Key, and also bumped into Ogre (I think...) during the intermission. Glad to see them there supporting something so near and dear to them.
-gerald
an incredible night. you could really tell that all of the performers were really into what the others were doing. the fact that everyone (onstage and off) was laughing when richard ended his performance by yanking the audio cable out of his macbook was really telling of the whole experience. unbelievable stuff. and yes...i think ogre was there too.
ReplyDeleteI hope they do something cool like circulate the sound board recording through bt.etree.org or something like that. (Though I can see them selling a CD/Digital Download)
ReplyDeleteGreat show Friday night!
ReplyDeleteA professional job done by by everyone in a perfect venue.
I was sitting with fellow synthesist Ben Covington in the center in about the fourth row from the front and could see and hear everything quite well.
There were lots of people we knew in the audience.
Earlier that day my allergies started acting-up and I was beginning to panic that I'd be sneezing my head off through the whole show - so I took several antihistamine pills and after a an hour our two they didn't seem to be working, so then I took some Nyquil which works great but can make you really drowsy...
Of course I had to try Redcat's house drink called a Catatonic but they would not let them in to the theater so I only had a couple of gulps, tasty, yes!
That said, I was in a rather perfect frame of mind to surrender myself to the music and enjoy the show :) no sneezing either.
Each performer had an arsenal of equipment that was easily seen by the audience, and rather than having just a typical large projection screen, there was also live video of the performers beamed onto large strips of hanging scrim material so as to render the video somewhat more ghostly than usual. This was my first trip to Redcat and apparently from looking at the lighting diagrams,
a great depth of the stage was used for rear projection so the theater is even bigger than experienced. My recollection of the videos were that they were competent but rather simple
so as to be integrate into an calming overall ambiance created by Paul Tzanetopoulos.
Sanctuaries: Faith (2007)
I had been reading of Gary Chang's recent tour of Europe where he had been performing live electronic music in surround sound in a variety of interesting acoustic spaces with Neil Leonard and although only in stereo this time, it was a real pleasure to listen to some of these same beautiful
and slowly changing ambient chord structures from his tour. His Wiard system was of course stunning to behold with long dual horizontal rows full of blinking LEDs.
The Ghosts on the Windows (2007)
It was interesting to see which of his many sculptural instruments Chas Smith would bring to the show. We we not disappointed by his piece for welded titanium Towers where long vertical tubes welded to thin horizontal plates were hammered in quick succession to form lasting resonances.
By moving from tower to tower chords were formed and I found myself nodding in and out of a pleasant sort of sonic trance at this point of the show. This reminds me to go buy some of his CDs!
The Secret Life of Semiconductors (2003)
Peter Grenader was sitting in a glowing chrome cockpit of his wonderful Euro format modules and had one of those nifty new hexagonal keyboards that debuted recently at NAMM.
Peter performed part of his Secret Life of Semiconductors in what was apparently a mixture of previously recorded material with live electronics on top? It was wonderful but a little hard to tell at times who was playing what. His piece ended in a
wild accelerando of sequencing with a surprise layer of even wilder vicious cobra like sequencing on top,
Bravo!
Paris 1 (2007)
After a brief intermission the show resumed with Alessandro Cortini playing a combination of Plan B and Buchla modules doing a really faithful re-creation of the legendary Buchla type of banjo plucked sequencing... sort of Low Pass Gates
meets Nine Inch Nails although Alexander was clearly enjoying a break from rock n roll and acting more as composer this time. I found his piece more musical sounding than Subotnick type Buchla, while paying homage to it. Reading in the program we learned that the piece was actually written in a hotel room in Paris during the NIN european rock n' roll tour. That must have been a fun evening!
The aborted Ascension of Angel Assassins (2007)
Thighpaulsandra had more vinatge equipment than anyone including an EMS Synthi AKS, some Serge panels, and even an Aries Modular, (so cool to see these still gigging). He had other gear too including a trusty Moog Voyager. I felt connected to this piece more than the others perhaps because it was more evolving and organic, or because it was most similar to the type of music that I hear in my own head? In any event Thighpaulsandra's extensive experience in live collaborations was clearly evident
as his compositional skills and communication with other players was excellent. Traveling to the USA for this show with so much equipment must have been a real challenge and I felt that he had succeeded in making it well worth the trip.
Captract (2004)
Richard Devine was the one Laptop soloist at the show and frankly his output seemed every bit as fluid and responsive as the others, in fact he created some pretty diabolically evil and overwhelmingly powerful sounds. I'd call his, "IDM
meets heavy metal laptop". I think his was an important musical compliment both in style and in timber to rounding out the whole show which ended when he dramatically yanked the output cable out of its socket leaving us with sudden silence.
Was it a great evening? Hell Yes!
Was it all over way too soon? Double Hell Yes!
A great thanks to all of the participants and both Peter Grenader and Barry Schrader for organizing the event. Loren Nerell and JaNelle Weatherford provided excellent sound engineering too. This was a rare gathering of the tribes and we as a community should do this sort of thing much,
much more often, (perhaps this group will consider taking this show out on the road for a few more performances in the future?)
In the evening's introduction by Barry Schrader he
stated that he has been producing local electronic music concerts since his shows at Theater Vanguard starting in 1973...
Then I realized that I attended a lot of those shows back then and was reminded that this evening's performance has come a long way from the days when a new electronic music premier involved sitting politely in the audience while watching
nothing more than a reel to reel tape deck turning on stageunder a lone spotlight.
Cynthia Webster
Thank you, Cynthia for this review. It was great seeing you there Friday evening.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'll leave it to the others to leave commentary on their own works if they care to, let me take a second and embellish on what Cynthia wrote on The Secret Life of Semiconductors.
As easy as it may seem on paper, In rehearsals it became apparent that the four players taking different degrees of a single E major chord was becoming extraordinarily difficult to replicate in the hall. Doing it wasn't the problem - over-doing it was.
The nature of the short transcient-driven events which make up the bulk of the sound material on that piece made them difficult to manage due us not being inside the field of the speakers - they were in front of us in a large hall so what we heard, even with stage monitoring, was a mixer of the first generation material through the stage monitors and the transients slapping against the rear of the auditorium. In short, no matter how delicately we put the information out there, it was coming back mud. And it was nearly impossible to control the mixture.
So while originally the piece was driven by a single M28 with pacing triggers being sent to the other players via an on-stage network, after much thought (and some worry), I realized that the only way to control things correctly was to put it out there in a manner we wouldn't have to worry about: MIDI. And while there was some pre-recorded materials (mainly then the piece changed tempo at the end and becomes rhythmically patterned), the bulk of the sound was live and driven by midi files which (on my system which constituted the main voice of the piece) controlled not only the tempo of the events but their velocities...that was the key.
The problem was I didn't come to this final solution until the night before the event and spent most of the that evening hunting down the original midi files used for the tape realization from 2003. This meant dusting off my old powerPC Mac and searching through my back-up CD's, then hunting through them using the only synthesizer left at home - an Yamaha TX802 - to assure I was pulling the correct files. Quite an arduous task considering I didn't start until about 11 Thursday evening. Thank God I hadn't sold my old Digi001 audio interface or I would have never been able to determine which of the many generations I had originally recorded I needed to tear into. As it was, my headphones and all of my long cables were at the theater so in order to hear the files from the Digi001 i had to use a microphone as a (very) low quality speaker. it was a real mess. Once I found the correct DP session and the correct midi files on Digital Performer (old Mac), I then created a format 1 multitrack midi file and reconstructed the entire mess on Logic on my Intel mac which I brought to the auditorium the following day.
With the Mac I also fitted my synth with three additional VCOs, two additional midi to CV converters (for a total of five voices controlled by midi) and another M13 in order to replicate all of the parts of the main texture in real time. Over that there were three other voices coming from my synthesizer which faded in as the piece went along that used midi only as a pacing device )gates only). That pacing string was also sent to Gary, Alessandro and Thighpaulsandra who generated other voices using their Wiards, Buchla 200e's, EAR Performance System's and Serge's respectively.
In total, the main texture consisted of nine live voices - five from me and four from the other members of the ensemble. On top of that was Richard doing his laptop thing in the second half with the only instruction given being 'go crazy'.
This post is long enough as is - but let me add that there was some sampled sounds as well via an AKAI MPC1000 which I triggered manually from my Roland keyboard. Pursts among you may feel secure that while they were sampled - they were all analog and came from the original events from the muti-tracked master. Most notable of these sampled events were the three main chords at the beginning of the piece and the bell-tree type phrases which would have required about six additional VCO/Envelope Generator pairs to get the polyphony correct. Being a manufacturer, obtaining them wasn't the problem - but keeping 13 VCOs in perfect tune was not worth the stress I would have experienced sitting there over the first half of the first act waiting for my slot to come up. there's a point where art becomes show business and thanks to 21 century technology I was able to replicate the work in a manner which resembled the original as opposed to...mud!
btw...I've added scads of new images to the flickr stream. Goto:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/21030884@N04/
Nice, detailed post Peter. It does a great job giving a feel for the difficulty surrounding performing live with modular gear, and also for the immense effort that went into the evening. It certainly paid off!
ReplyDeleteKeep us posted as to when/where the video and audio recordings from the evening will end up.
why do they spell analogue incorrectly?
ReplyDeleteSame reason Color is not Colour.
ReplyDeleteGreat show BTW! A real gamut from Ambient to Industrial. I wonder if Cevin and Ogre got any inspiration. Maybe a Syhthi out there on next SP tour rather than a VSynth.
So do we sad synth nuts on the other side of this planet get to see a video performance?
ReplyDeleteMan I wish I had been there
yeah id like to hear the recordings cause we really messed up picking our seats lower right hand corner we only heard the right channel most the time
ReplyDeletehehe... "Whoops!"
ReplyDeleteWhat a rockin show. Unlike any previous SCREAM I've been to. Hope they do it again!
> ross said...
ReplyDelete> So do we sad synth nuts on the other side of this planet get to see a video performance?
Unfortunately I don't think it will have the same impact on a record. They physical impact of Chas's towers can't be replicated. And watching the communication between the performers was fascinating. Not to mention the blinking lights of 7 modulars.
Regarding Thighpaulsanda's equipment:
ReplyDeleteHe brought a lot of equipment with him, as much as he could given the 50 LB weight limit from the airlines, and this included his Synthi and the rack synths and the Nord, but some of the others were loaned to us by some gracious benefactors, including Analogue haven (the Doepfer and Fatar keyboard controllers), Big City Music (the Aries and Moog Voyager), the Serge (Chris Pitman of GNR) and Dan Levey (the keys stand).
It should be noted that we fitted Chris Pitman's Serge with a single TImbral Gate which now takes one slot on that instrument which was previously empty. I needed the ring thing for SLOS and Chris wasn't opposed to the idea by any means.
Regarding the video;
ReplyDeleteMario Salinas, the guy who filmed the show said that even with his camera and lens (it's a $20k plus rig), due to the low lighting used in the event much of it is unusable... A real drag to me of course, but who knows - I haven't seen the footage yet maybe it's (sort of) OK.
Regarding the audio recordings:
ReplyDeleteOutside of Chas' Towers, which were mic'd just for recording purposes in that they ring at about 110 dB at double forte, we recorded two stereo feeds: one straight from the board and another from a pair of desk mics up at the sound booth in order to get the audience reaction and a bit of the room.
I'll be mixing those together over the next couple of days and once the other members of the ensemble have a chance to hear it all we will decide how to present them. I've heard the recordings, the quality is terrific (thanks to Loren Nerell), but it's a bit sterile without the applause.
- P
A bit more show trivia you might enjoy:
ReplyDeleteIt became evident to us a bit late in the game that despite their best intentions the Redcat Theater didn't quite know what to make of us. In truth, Analoglive wasn't within the normal fair presented at the venue. The week before the show a few of us became concerned about attendance - our greatest fear being Thighpualsandra and Richard coming such a long distance to pariticpate and doing so to empty seats.
For the three weeks before the event we were getting box office reports that sales were strong and then, the week before, information came more in the flavor of 'it looks pretty good'..not what I epxected to hear, especially due to the fact tht it was too late to run ads in any of the local papers which would draw the people who needed to know about the show to it (LA Weekly, City Beat, etc).
The normal seating capacity at Redcat is 200. If it looks like a sellout they add an additional five rows for a total of 250 or so seats. Well, much to our relief we received word that the 200 had sold out late Wednesday evening. They then made the additional seats available and those were gone before noon the following day.
Early afternoon on Friday the theater management approached us about the possibility of a second show to run immediately after the first and well past midnight, as they were still receiving calls about tickets even after the sellout was posted on the Redcat site. We were game, but later they determined (probably wisely) that is wasn't going to work out because we wouldn't have been done striking until about 5 AM and they had another event the following day to set up for starting at about 7AM.
We knew it would be an event that people would be interested in, but honestly, I didn't ever think it would spark the level of interest it did.
The orignal running order was Gary, Chas, Richard in the first half and Ally, Thighp and I in the second. I did it this way not for reasons of vanity, but more to break the show into two equal parts as far as running time. It became evident though in the first day of rehearsal when Richard ran through his piece that THAT was the finale, not mine. So we switched the two around which made for a somewhat lop-sided program, but it was the only way to go. He absolutely knocked the audience out and ended the show on a high note.
His performance was really amazing.
Peter,
ReplyDeletethanks for filling in all of these details. it really was a great event. i hadn't heard about it until seeing it come through the matrixsynth feed, so you can probably thank matrix for a bunch of sold seats.
>...the Redcat Theater didn't quite know what to make of us. In truth, Analoglive wasn't within the normal fair presented at the venue.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Redcat has any notion of "normal". lol