Ambient, experimental, live improvisation, soundscapes, drones
Program 2009
Akim Triebsch and Ufo Walter
AkimUfo is a looping collaboration between Ufo Walter (Germany) and Akim Triebsch (Canada). Akim plays Acoustic Guitar, Harmonica, Ukulele and Kaoscillator through all kinds of pedals, and sings. Ufo plays bass, i-phone, through all kinds of sounds and sings as well. Ingredients: random lyrics, text and improvised sound design. Their aim is to present an entertaining and cyber-organic live looping experience with all it’s possibilities.
Ufo Walter – www.crazybass.de
Ufo is a veteran loop artist. He has been described in the press as one of the most innovative bassists in Europe. He has received “Best German Bassist” awards for his sound design of the German music channels MTV, Viva and Viva2, and has found big audiences in his countless music workshops and clinics around the world. He has toured with famous live acts, Randy Hansen, Buddy Miles, German rock legend Alex Oriental Experience, Mel Gaynor (Simple Minds), Marla Glen, Anne Haigis and many others. As a worldwide demo artist for Lexicon, he had the chance to work with Bob Sellon, the inventor of the legendary amman.
Akim Triebsch – www.myspace.com/akimsampler
Akim is a multi media artist and adventurist who works in both film and music. He has numerous recording projects currently in production. Although classically trained (guitar), Akim approaches music primarily as a songwriter, which has expanded into other forays since becoming a live looping artist about 6 years ago. Either with a band or solo, Akim has left a strong impression at shows all over the world as a live looping artist and songwriter.
Darkroom
SparseNeedsChoirDarkroom is Michael Bearpark (Guitar), Andrew Ostler (Os – Laptop, Keyboards) and recently Andrew Booker (Drums). Darkroom was formed in 1996 to provide a live soundtrack at the Nevers Film Festival, France. Their debut album ‘Daylight’ was released in 1998 on the 3rd Stone label; since then they have released six further albums and made numerous live appearances including at the Glastonbury festival, Omsk, Sprawl, the Digital-Analogue Cambridge festival and the 1st International Loopfestival Zürich. Darkroom represent a crossing point between avant-free jazz improvisation and Fripp/Eno-style ambient looping. Often by turns beautiful and beautifully ugly, this is a very human music despite the inevitable technology that produces it.
Recently Darkroom have eschewed traditional releases in favour of releasing music in an ad hoc fashion via their podcast, which now contains a good deal of music – both recordings of live appearances or rehearsals and studio tracks. Os and Mike are currently mainstays of Improvizone, a regular London-based night of improvised instrumental music. Darkroom have (or have had) membership overlap with these other projects:
Fabio Anile
WeightlessFabio Anile is a classical trained pianist and a keyboardist, fascinated by digital technology and by the cinematic dimension of music, subjects that clearly appear in his works as well in his musical collaborations. In the last 20 years worked with many ensemble and artists (Sebastiano Gibilisco, Domino, Raffaele Gulisano, Suite Verlaine, enoLogica, Mannapò, Krispen Hartung) and realized various audio-video performances (Fucktory – 1995, with architect-singer-songwriter Franco Ferrara; First call from the Moon – 2001, with spanish visual artist Xavier Plagaro Mussard; Il Sesto Continente, 2007-2008, with Carlo Micheli ensemble).
As a member of the CT-Collective collaborated in various musical projects, leaded the CT-Great Speeches (2006) and the CT-Generative (2009), a generative-music project that also involves an online music installation. As a live looper, exhibited as featured performer/headliner in many international festivals playing between Europe (Zurich, Köln, Berlin) and USA (Santa Cruz, San Diego, Oakland).
Fabio’s music can be defined as minimal, ambient, experimental and ranges from atmospheric film style soundtracks to a dark-glitchy ambient music and sometimes involves fields recordings. It’s not a pure “wallpaper”, neither a “focused listening” type ambient, rather Fabio’s music bridges this gap neatly, allowing the listener the choice to be either transported or remain grounded depending on the mood of the day.
Rick Walker
Rick Walker is an unusual and creative Audio/Visual artist who utilizes live looping techniques along with a dizzying array of multiple instruments: drums, percussion, bass, keyboards, flute, reed instruments, brass instruments, string instruments, extended vocal techniques and a profusion of found and invented instruments to create exotic audio and visual landscapes. In the past two years, Rick has also created several works utilizing low fidelity, toy video cameras to create ‘animations’ that he projects, interactively while he performs.
Rick has toured in 15 countries in Europe, North America and Asia as a headlining artist and also produces the largest live looping festival on earth for the past eight years in Santa Cruz, California where he lives.
Additionally, Rick has performed with master musicians from all over the planet as a drummer, percussionist, live looper and is considered one of the founders of the World Beat movement in the early 1980′s. He has performed/toured or recorded with Yunghcen Lhamo (Tibet), Babatunde Olatunji (Nigeria), Martin Simpson (UK), Bob Brozman (US), David Lyndley (US), David Hidalgo (US), Amel Tafsout (Algeria), Abdoulaye Djakite, Hiraysu Takashi (Okinawa), Masahiro Nitta (Japan), Debhashish Battycharya (India), Renet Lacaille (Reunion), Familia Valera (Cuba) and dozens of other world musicians.
He has founded and produces the largest annual International Live Looping Festival on the planet that has drawn over 200 artists from 15 countries. He is currently designing a new low fi interactive audio/visual program with Bill Putnam of Universal audio, adding design ideas to the Looperlative hardware digital looping device and owns a digital audio design effects company called Out of the Box FX with Chris Roberts. He lives with his wife, singer/songwriter Christine Wedertz in Santa Cruz, California.
Michael Peters
Loft scoundscape 2008For more than 30 years, Michael Peters has explored the world looking for new sounds. Most of his musical output veers from the mainstream and has been difficult to categorize. The renowned WIRE magazine has reviewed two of his albums in their “Outer Limits” section, which says it all. Michael’s main instrument is the guitar – he studied with renowned guitarist, Robert Fripp and also is influenced by guitarists David Torn, Eivind Aarset, and Fred Frith. He extends the guitar using electronic effects, midi, and livelooping techniques. He has played in avant rock and open improvisational groups.
He also has experimented with sampling and cutting up random FM radio broadcasts to use as elements in live improvisation. By the same token, he has become more and more fascinated by using more structured compositions, using the computer as a musical instrument. For anyone with open ears, the world of sound outside of regular music is also full of wonder. Michael loves to record interesting environmental sounds (field recording) and then re-contextualize and sculpt them using digital tools such as granular synthesis, incorporating the results into musical compositions and soundscapes.
Michael is a member of Looper’s Delight, a very active international community of people who use looping technology for their music making. He also is a seminal and pivotal member of the Chain Tape Collective, a group of dozens of electronic and electro-acoustic composers whose musicians create collaborative music projects together. From time to time, Michael Peters has also been active as a programmer and visual artist in the field of abstract computer graphics. He is an avid photographer and has designed his own websites as well as the one for the Chain Tape Collective.
In the year 2000, he started an ambitious project called My2K where he created an all original 10 second piece of music for every single day of the year. In 2008, he hosted the 1st International Livelooping Festival in Cologne, featuring ten livelooping soloists from Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria, and USA.
Michael Peters lives in a small village east of Cologne, Germany. He loves to sit on a bench outside, listening …
Sjaak Overgaauw
Flowing WindsDutch keyboardist and sound designer Sjaak Overgaauw has been experimenting with synthesizers and samplers since the late 80′s. In the 90′s, Sjaak has worked with several musicians as arranger and mixer. The last 5 years Sjaak played keyboards for local pop/rock bands in Belgium and experimented with Live Looping tools and techniques to create Ambient textures and soundscapes.
Inspired by Ambient artists from the international Live Looping community, Sjaak is currently preparing for a series of solo performances. The kick-off will be the European Live Looping Festival in Antwerp, Firenze and Rome, followed by the Y2K9 International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz. Sjaak is currently working on his 1st CD which is scheduled to be released in Februari 2010 and will organize the 2nd edition of the Antwerp Live Looping festival scheduled for March 6, 2010.
