The last few months

It has been quiet on this blog - I have been busy performing, collaborating, practicing, taking drum lessons, and working on other projects.

































Sequential Circus 6 on January 23, 2010 was fantastic,
amazing, and fun! It was amazing to experience and play along such awesome local and international artists such as noCore, LongWalkShortDock, Daega Sound System, xFive, and to witness Resonance's debut set. Sweet!

(Deaga Sound System, LongWalkShortDock)





















I played my heart out with Amrit Basi performing live drum loops on acoustic drums, me on my loop based system, and vocals, and Theda Phoenix came by for some vocals as well.

(Haagen with Amrit Basi)






































Here is the recording from the Odyssey set I played at Sequential Circus 6 (performed later in the studio live with Alcvin Ramos):

Haagen, Odyssey(2010) by dasz

This was the 1st time I performed my own vocals live. It was also the 1st time I used a looper (recorder/mixer) live, to capture my performance (electronics and vocals) and re-use in the set. All, live recorded right there, and unique.

I really enjoyed my set, and spent enough time practicing my chops on the looper and on the live sequence editing/re-composing, in the week leading up to the gig, and I think it paid off.

The interesting thing, was I was the only performer that night without a laptop!

Go figure. Very old skool, very much a tactile approach. When one takes the laptop out of the performance, it does take on a different life performance wise, than if the performer is staring and focusing at a laptop for a big part of the show (even when the display is laying horizontally, the interaction with a laptop LCD screen during an artistic endeavor is something that can become cliche at least from a visual point of view). Even the new Ableton matrix-style controllers (akai or novation) are adding this dimension to performance with Ableton Live, but I chose to use what I have to perform similar tasks, and in turn, doing so, my unique performance (and supporting system) can be enhanced and enchanted, and the results of this add to the overall experience of mystique, unpredictability, and more hands-on performance that a laptop could not deliver, speaking for myself, of course only.

I could totally deliver as I had enough of an arsenal to do a 45 minute set. But it got me thinking about putting the laptop into my performance (especially if I intend to do longer sets, like 1or 2 hour ones), without it affecting my live work (meaning I would not need to look at a laptop screen or touch its keyboard or mouse, except to load new songs).

And then 4 days later I composed and prepared a new set and performed it with an awesome ensemble (DARK Risms) at the Haiti Benefit at the Wise hall on January 28, 2010:














I performed all electronics, grooves, and live looping, including live performance and live loops from Alcvin Ramos on shakuhachi flute , with Amrit Basi on drums, Kurai Mubaiwa Kurai on finger piano and vocals, and Lisa Walker on electronic percussion, meant this was an impactful event. The crowd was hooked.

Haagen-Ryuzen, Deep Dark Risms for Haiti (Live) by dasz

I truly enjoy looping on the fly tremendously, both electronically, and using my voice and collaborators and guest musicians, and custom performance systems....

I'm now doing a new down-tempo set with Alcvin and Sparrow on vocals.











Technically, the same live performance design is now expanding.




















I am now adding Ableton Live (and some VSTi's) into my setup in such a way that I will NOT need to look at a computer screen but, with all control being performed with with my Dual Expanded Nord Modular G2 performance system (with a peavey pc1600 fader box for additional mixing controls and routing and tweaking), the 2880 Looper with individual track routing, synth-wise, the full sound of Waldorf Blofeld, and x0xb0x for that 303 sound, and with a newly acquired sm57 mic (thanks to LongWalkShortDock for that recommendation) for vocals and instruments.

Till next time.