live electronic music these days

  On 5/10/2010 at 12:59 PM, chax said:

I saw The Glitch Mob last week and was amazed at how good of a live show it was. They had drums, live guitars, keyboards, some vocal stuff, really cool visuals, and about 5 or 6 jazzmutant lemur's that were pointed downwards towards the audience so you could see everything that they were doing. It seemed like every minute or so they would switch to a different instrument or pick up and put down a guitar. Really cool stuff, I took a bunch of crappy videos and photos with my phone but check out this video from another show:

 

 

 

(edIT in the middle)

 

I can't wait until the album's out on May 25th. Deru was opening for them as well and he was great, but he basically was what everyone in this thread hates, just played an ableton live set directly from his latest album and tweaked a bunch of stuff on the fly with i think an APC40. Overall I'm really glad I went to the show, had a great time

Thanks for posting this, I was thinking of going to see them June 5th because Deru is opening for them (Free the Robots too, though I haven't heard much). I've never heard The Glitch Mob's music either but it seems like it would be a fun live show.

I'm sorry if this was said earlier, but, regardless of the electronic musician, if the nature of his/her music is going to reduce his/her live act to pressing buttons that just come out sounding like the album or pre-recorded tracks, I would much rather see him/her spin records.

The spontaneity of a DJ set, whether all the selections were chosen before the performance or not, is exhilirating for me. In addition, if the artist dropped sound effects and beats of his own on top of the records, creating on-the-spot, improvised new music, that would be a beautiful thing.

I've come to seek and enjoy live acts much more when there is some form of improvisation or jamming. The best music event I ever went to was Acid Mothers Temple in New Haven, CT in a place called Bar...it was a relatively small space, but very nice...I hadn't even heard their music before, just read a good review so I decided to go...they had two drummers, one Japanese and one white guy, and this absolutely sick bass player...as far as I could tell it was a lot of improvisation and jamming, but it was so powerful, it got my white ass moving...(a few months or so after I went to see them again but the second drummer was gone and the initial bass player was also not there...I guess their line-up changes often but, anyway, I wasn't feeling it and didn't stay for the show).

But yeah, spinning records, improvisation...I was a huge Beastie Boys fan right when Hello Nasty came out...this was the same time they picked up Mix Master Mike, and their live shows, in my opinion, rocketed skyward in terms of being interesting and unique, because Mix Master Mike would constantly be dropping new, unexpected records and beats during songs, so it was like creating a new song every time...so much so that Mike D, MCA, and Adrock would express their surprise mid-song, laughing, hurrying to keep up with the beat...

  On 8/21/2009 at 2:42 AM, my usernames always really suck said:

Does anyone ever hire a group of temporary musicians to play the keyboards and electronic drums like the good old days?

 

It seems these days it's always just some faggot with a Mac laptop standing behind a table playing .MP3 files of audio taken directly from the albums/singles/demos that said artist released.

 

What's the point of live music if it's just some lazy asshole playing audio files from his laptop?

ever heard of top 40 clubs? it could be worse

do you know how much it costs to hire a musician worth a damn? sure you can hire skater biff who has just mastered the power cord for a 6pack but real musicians don't fuck around.

Sometimes I don't mind seeing a musician I like play a non-showy set with just a controller and a laptop. In a way the lack of showmanship is more "real" to how electronic music is made in bedrooms, anyway. I'm not saying that seeing a nice glitchmob style set isn't cool, but when I saw Nathan Fake open for four tet it was pretty sweet seeing him play what was a pretty simple set and imagining myself in his position, basically making sweet tunes in hermitude in my room, and not really giving a fuck how I look. Of course, for people who don't make electronic music it must be alienating.

I don't know how I feel about incorporating all kinds of live acoustic instruments in glitch mob's set though. It seems kind of forced, as if the only way to draw a crowd in is to use instruments they're familiar with in a live setting. But I didn't see the show so maybe it was more fun than I think.

Here's a thought. Projectors are popular at laptop sets. But everyone just projects pretty visuals. How come no one ever tries projecting what's on the screen instead? Half the crowd is probably into making music themselves and would love to see what software is being used, what a sequence of midi notes looks like, or even just watching traktor. The other half that doesn't know what's going on would get an introduction to electronic music. This can be presented in any form... you can have one projector showing raw software footage and other projectors playing your typical psychedelic visuals. Seriously, if it's acceptable to watch someone play a guitar in a raw state, it could be OK to watch someone play with some VSTs like they really would when making music, instead of trying to make everything about lightup LED hardware.

It would be nice to fast forward 20 years and see the state of electronic live performance then, so we dont have to debate it so much :P

  On 5/10/2010 at 7:02 PM, sidewinder said:

Thanks for posting this, I was thinking of going to see them June 5th because Deru is opening for them (Free the Robots too, though I haven't heard much). I've never heard The Glitch Mob's music either but it seems like it would be a fun live show.

If you really want to see Deru make sure you go early as he's the first opener and I missed part of his set because I get there 30 minutes after the club opened. I hadn't really heard anything by The Glitch Mob either other than some random youtube videos because even though they have been performing as a group for two years, they still haven't released a proper album. I did enjoy it though, you can tell how much of an influence edIT is on the group.

  On 5/10/2010 at 10:12 PM, iamabe said:

I don't know how I feel about incorporating all kinds of live acoustic instruments in glitch mob's set though. It seems kind of forced, as if the only way to draw a crowd in is to use instruments they're familiar with in a live setting. But I didn't see the show so maybe it was more fun than I think.

 

Here's a thought. Projectors are popular at laptop sets. But everyone just projects pretty visuals. How come no one ever tries projecting what's on the screen instead? Half the crowd is probably into making music themselves and would love to see what software is being used, what a sequence of midi notes looks like, or even just watching traktor. The other half that doesn't know what's going on would get an introduction to electronic music. This can be presented in any form... you can have one projector showing raw software footage and other projectors playing your typical psychedelic visuals. Seriously, if it's acceptable to watch someone play a guitar in a raw state, it could be OK to watch someone play with some VSTs like they really would when making music, instead of trying to make everything about lightup LED hardware.

 

It would be nice to fast forward 20 years and see the state of electronic live performance then, so we dont have to debate it so much :P

Here's the thing, 90% of the people going to shows really don't care how it's made or anything technical. People want to go to a show, get drunk and have fun with friends and either dance or just relax while listening to great live music. Nobody cares about what people are doing on their laptops at 1:30AM as long as it sounds good. The visuals actually add a lot more atmosphere and makes it feel more of a show. It would be cool if some artists were to do a video of what they are doing and upload it to youtube or whatever, but from a performance standpoint it'll never happen as everyone would be confused and it would lose a lot of the 'magic'.

if I did I live show I would put in a lot of random shit that wasn't released even if it was a little rough/not as refined as the album stuff. IDM people don't strike me as the kind of people who need to hear all their favorite tracks or they'll be pissed, but maybe I'm wrong? Maybe certain stuff that would work better in a large venue too and wouldn't have the same effect on headphones/etc

I'm not the biggest fan of Autechre but that QUADRANGE album interested me, that's how their live shows are right? I would at least want to do that, alternate/extended/combined versions of existing tracks

also mic up the concert venue in some way and remix the crowd acoustics in real time or some shit lol

Infected Mushroom does this

When I saw Bogdan 11 years ago, he literally opened his laptop, pushed play and walked away.

  On 5/12/2010 at 4:03 PM, jefferoo said:

When I saw Bogdan 11 years ago, he literally opened his laptop, pushed play and walked away.

Interesting. I've done that with his music several times myself.

  On 5/12/2010 at 6:21 PM, scones to die for said:

  On 5/12/2010 at 4:03 PM, jefferoo said:

When I saw Bogdan 11 years ago, he literally opened his laptop, pushed play and walked away.

Interesting. I've done that with his music several times myself.

lolz

When I saw him in L.A., he opened his laptop, pressed play, and hid behind the table the whole set. Nothing sounded different from his recordings so not sure if he did any live tweaking.

Everyone still jumped and jerked about the whole time anyway. I suppose he got to experience a live Los Angeles audience enjoying his music being played loudly in a popular venue.

I saw Jean Michel Jarre live and it was a great moment I spent ! 3 others musicians are supporting him and they play every single synth note, and they programm every shitty drum pattern.

But the audience wasn't dancing at all. Normal, they were OLD. Like JMJ.

(I forgot the laser harp !)

Boom Bip was very cool, had a laptop, guitar and many pedals. Spent half the show on laptop and half the show making ambient guitar clouds. Fucking great gig.

Underworld are pretty masterful when it comes to live performance. When I saw them it was different to the DVD in that Rick and Darren had their backs to the audience so you could see them working the mixing desk. They have stems of all parts of a track playing at the same time so they can effectively reconstruct them in whatever order they like by muting and unmuting channels. And Karl's busy with all sorts of shit: guitar, keyboards, laptop, percussion.