I’ve been asked to play in support of Cikada Collective, which consists of my friends Pavel and Šimon. I’ve attended shows of theirs before - playing in an ‘open jam’ at one, and introducing them to the stage at another. Their work has remained deeply impressive to me: a mixture of thoughtful ethos and intent behind the art, self-generating laptop modular synthesis, photography and film of monochrome nature… all blended together in an emulsion for the senses.
For their latest release, they have booked Punctum in Prague, and I am playing in support under my ‘solo’ monicker unimbued.
Here are my thoughts on the process so far, recorded here for the public record.
- I have never, ever done this before. Everything I have done live has been in collaboration. This will be me, alone on stage for 30 minutes.
- Music is meant to be a joyful, flexible thing. Sensuous and yielding and full of strength under the surface. Instead I find myself rigid with fear, aghast and just how naive I have been stumbling into the prospect of playing something myself.
- This is a shame, considering this invitation may be the only of its kind, not to mention that it has provided the necessary deadline for things to happen - however inadequately.
- I’ve plugged in everything I own here in Prague. It looks like this:
- It became clear early on that I couldn’t understand how to use the looper (pictured far left). I still don’t. It’s deeply unintuitive. I suspect it’s designed for YouTube DJs who like to blithely tap things out in 4/4 for their latest upload. I too would like to tap out stuff in 4/4, but the buttons and submenus are currently beyond me.
Everything else is equipment I’ve been using since the My Attorney days, which feels somewhat of a retrograde step.
- I have had to eat my many, many words about electronic acts using backing tracks. Without some kind of sonic back drop, I would have nothing. Instead I have used the setup to create layers, which I’ve recorded and saved. I have arbitrarily bounced these layers down and sequenced them into a 30 minute set. On top of this I will embellish with looped vocals, delayed Casio keys, and - proficiency permitting - loops using the RC-505 MkII.
- Thinking about the experience as a fairly low-stakes opportunity to road test equipment and signal paths is a more palatable way in to the whole thing.
- A less palatable way in to things would be to panic about humiliating myself in front of peers and colleagues.
- I spent several sessions making layers. There was no overarching vision, no songwriting drive, no artistic premise. I literally just cobbled together odds and ends saved in my laptop and dumped them into the DAW arrange page. Bits of CCQs drum takes in isolation. Field recordings made on my phone in a Lisbon art gallery. The sound of a camp fire in the East Strand sand dunes upon midsummer, multitracked with the fistling of my jacket edited out. Some bits of improvised piano played upon my last visit home, with Barbara audible in the background. Some Behringer Edge synth sounds made while randomly plugging wires in and out of its many sockets. An isolated keyboard line from Hallowe’en’s Future Loss jam. All just scooped up and whacked into Logic.
- These sounds will output into my desk, and from there I will be able to send the signal to the looper and return the looped sounds back into the desk.
- I’ll also be able to overlay vocals going through the RC-05, and the Casio CA-1 through the Kaoss Pad 2.
- The hope is that all of this will distract from the fact I don’t know what I’m doing.
- Tonight’s run through was sobering. I struggled with my routing. I fell back on the old tricks I’ve been using for 25 years: falsetto loops of vocals, two note progressions on the keys, a tendency to max things out into a mush of noise… blurry and slurry-like.
- Perhaps this is just how it needs to be. It’s a start, at least.
- I need to strip things back and let them breathe. My anxiety regarding the whole thing means I am over-doing the layers: the backing is almost enough in itself… a little reverb here, a little single tone there, some short loops. Keep it simple, stupid.
- I also need to identify when and where certain approaches should be deployed. The falsetto vocal shtick is fine if used sparingly. Maybe open with that and fade up the backing? Reset the desk and bring in some reed-synth tone? Don’t forget that you own a tambourine. Don’t forget that sometimes 32 bars of double-tracked drums going in and out of time with one another is enough.
- I’m going to colour code the set, and at certain points deploy certain approaches, based on notes highlighted in the relevant colours. The looper needs to be curtailed - I just don’t know how to work it properly. I need to ditch the delay FX setting on it. It’s too messy. Something that could slow things down would be nice. Or bitcrush.
Anything to stop things sounding too square: my greatest fear.
