Arced
The second Arc event was in many ways a success, and only a failure in terms of the small turn out. As I hop to point out, the good aspects eclipse that minor dissapointment.
It took many car trips to get all the gear to the Armidale Club. The most akward items were the hired 15inch subs which didn’t enhance the sound quite as desired (too mushy and not punchy). We had Iain and Becky to help with the decorations out while L and I slowly plugged in the spaghetti of audio cables. Such is the way with computer oriented gigs. Iain rigged some good visual goodies including a laptop connected to a projector going onto the roof, providing visualiser morphing reacting off our sound. There were also the usual glow in the dark wall hanging with UV light, plus a new ‘mr_mark_dollin’ wall hanging that Mum made.
I was very happy with my set. Both Unconsciousness and Futurology got played in their entirity as the main background arc pieces. As main tracks I also got to feature the songs: West, Find and Moor Der Eht.
I aslo got to spin some James DXU tracks including Transmissions, Spliffs In Paradise, and Fluid Filled Lungs (Vocal). I did a little lead guitar improvisation during some songs, which is fun and easy for me to do. I aslo attempted some singing which turned out better than expected (and certainly better than last time), which was confidence building.
I kept most of the set in middle paced groove territory, with a lot of ambience. This happened because of some unexpected guest vocalists! At one point I saw local MCs Brendan and BJ enjoying the set – so I said it was cool if they wanted to come up and freestyle. This happened, and I was very impressed by their ability, both smooth and thoughtful. Iain also got on the mic and did some of his characteristic rap and melody. One highlight was a rap ‘battle’ between Iain and Brendan, the modern day version of Jazz’s call and response.
L, under his Bas[sic] personality, was nervous before his laptop-plus-two-keyboards set. He produced an excellent progression of synced grooves, with some very interesting combinations of songs mashed together. Despite the lack of a crowd a few of us danced and kept the energy up. Sure enough Brendan, BJ and Iain found the microphones again and kept it very organic with their warmed up improvisations. The grooves toasted along nicely and the vibe was all smiles till late. Right at the end L invited everyone on stage for an all out loop jam. I played a lot of ambient guitar much in the same vein as Unity Gain. Another young fellow named Ash was playing the Korg quite well and was telling us how he’s making tunes in Reason. Great, the more of these kids the better.
The consensus was that this was a success positive experiement, perhaps only needing more networked promotion for it to really juice up. Doing the event monthly will help too, which is something we’ve got to look into. For now, we have a party at Wood Park to look forward to that will be of the same style but outdoors.
Needless to say, I shall post images and video once it all has been collated.
On an unrelated note, my friend Jamie has got himself into a rather interesting situation.
Spring Party at Woodpark | mmd says:
October 16th, 2008 at 12:03 am
[...] 28th was intense in every regard. With a very similar “hi-quality” setup to the last Arc gig, the loose and sometimes wobbly jam went right past midnight. Some of the highlights included [...]