It's not easy to invent a new sound world on a guitar, and when you do, people are either pretty impressed or laughter ensues. No matter what, the easiest way to come up with new sounds is buy new toys. They did provide a certain comfort as I was finding fewer and fewer collaborators willing to indulge me, and soon the time had to come to strike out with a solo project:
DJ DATA DADA. The digital looper layering wall-o-sound is kind of widespread these days, so instead I decided to program some gurgling organ patches, rhythmic delays, and twiddle with the battery-powered sampler velcroed to the front of my guitar synth.
One night at the local coffee house, I fired up everything I had and did my best to remember a stream of lyrics that represent either rampant existentialism or the online dating experience.
As you can tell from the tepid applause, tongue-in-cheek retro tech doesn't exactly have a wide audience. Sometimes it takes the twisted mind of a natural-born musical comedian to to express it like a real virtuoso.
Sweden's Mattias IA Eklundh has taken that avant-comedic torch Frank Zappa pioneered and bottled it in a combustible compound that spurts of his hands like Silly String; his signature sound is tactile, fluid, and can be shaped in way too many ways. It would still be easy to dismiss him as just another heavy metal wanker, I suppose... or at least until you check out his rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's
Triple Concerto on YouTube. In
Chopstick Boogie, though, he demonstrates that the chops he developed when he was originally a young drum student can be mashed-up, throwing in the (bathroom) sink of his imagination. Along with pretty much anything else he can get his hands on.
One night at the local coffee house, I fired up everything I had and did my best to remember a stream of lyrics that represent either rampant existentialism or the online dating experience.
