Archive #13: Smile / Obsolete [slight return]. Incept date: 27/01/08.

This song is a lot of fun to do live… the delayed filtered vocal loop thingy goes for days. It’s also mainly constructed using MIDI/loops from the previous three songs, which doesn’t half save memory on the laptop*.

And that brings us to the end of the first Looptron EP. If you like it’s available for free/pay what you want on Bandcamp and there’s some physical CDs available at CD Baby still (probably).

*What, not rock and roll enough?

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron

Archive #12: Play My Guitar. Incept date: 27/01/08.

Did I mention this batch of songs was composed for a gig at the Marquee? I was invited to support a band called Cassette Electrik and this song is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek jab… they once roped me in as a guitar player and then let me go for guitar-ing up their electro too much. :-)

(PS: check out what Oli from CE is up to now - https://soundcloud.com/fightapilot)

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron

Archive #10: Obsolete Before You Start. Incept date: 27/01/08.

The rest of the debut Looptron EP was composed as a single lump for a live set at The Marquee… as such there are loops in this song that reappear later on. I still like the way the vocal happens and delayed vocoder sings the line back a bar later… it made for interesting conversations during rehearsal.

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron

Archive #8: A Way Home. Incept Date: 05/08/07.

This is probably the first song to feature something approximating the ancient folk practice of “singing”, but is mainly notable for the guitar meets Augustus Loop madness ending.

True fact: It works best when you just leave it running and walk off stage. It saves people the trouble of knowing whether they should clap.

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron

Archive #7: Why Aren’t You Dancing? Incept Date: 22/08/07.

It’s amazing what slips through when having to come up with a live set in a matter of weeks. This follows what was to become a fairly standard live practice; gently construct a piece out of carefully positioned vocoder phrases over a drum loop…

…and then just rock the fuck out over the last half.

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron

Archive #6: Hello, My Name Is Looptron (Original Version). Incept Date: 05/08/07.

At some point in August 2007 Looptron went very swiftly from a theoretical construct to something that had to be giggable in 6 weeks time. And this is pretty much the first thing that fell out of the live rig I’d set up using various soft synths and nice sampled Fender Rhodes I found.

This one’s for all you lovers out there…

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron

Archive #4: Pharaohs. Incept Date: 13/06/07.

A genuine experiment in live performance this one… the main melody is the only pitched input. That MIDI is fed into 3 different synths (with different patch / arp settings) and the audio output of synths 2 and 3 is then delayed (using Expert Sleepers Augustus Loop) by two and four bars respectively.

Play melody. Wibble pitch bend. Add drum loop. Simmer for 4 mins and serve. 

Source: SoundCloud / Looptron