The Chosen

Didn't make it to much yesterday. Just the 'The Chosen' in the lovely St Ann's Church in St Ann's Square. Described as "Arabic rhythms merge with jazz fusion to create a very intimate, sublime and contemplative sound". I guess that more or less sums it up. There was some very nice stuff in there for sure. It was their first gig and I think there was some nervousness which held them back a little. On the whole it was quite moving but some nervy playing and possibly some amplification issues detracted a little. The cello was mic'd up and occasionally sounded a bit muffled and plunky but generally sounded sweet.

There was much use of looping which really has become popular with jazz musicians (in Manchester at least). Stuart McCallum uses looping extensively as does Neil Yates and I noticed Graeme Stephens using it a fair bit. The Line 6 DL4 seems to be the device to use. I used to really be into looping, being a big fan of Fripp and Eno and the whole frippertronics thing. I had to make do with very short echo times from my old Boss ME10 effects unit but you could get some great sounds by fading in chord or layering notes using a volume pedal. The fading in means you can't really here the start and end of the loop so you get a long sustained drone that you can play over. The long delay times you get now means you can easily sample and loop long sequences of chords and improvise over the loop. Tons more on this stuff at the long standing website 'Looper's Delight'. Reckon I should get back into this.