18/09/2009

One weekend - 3 performances


This weekend I was in Tallinn and I had three performances. The first one was at a new place in an old industrial complex. It used to be a room for band rehersals, but now it's being turned into a club thing. At least that was the plan.

We arrived in Tallinn at friday noon, we had slept 3 hours during the night and had partied hard before that. We cleaned up the place and connected the speakers Tõnis had recently bought. Everything was okay in the soundcheck. But the night climaxed with burned out speakers. Luckily it was Tõnis who blew them. I had tried to play before, but my laptop was really slow and everything gave me the "not responding" sign. It got better on saturday when I uninstalled AVG free.

The party on saturday was the biggest one, playing in polymer. I was somewhat hastily just thrown the line for my computer and so I got off to a rough start. Also some genius had disconnected the mic I had previously set up, so that I had to connect stuff during my performance. But 15 minutes into the gig the people were really starting to feel it. I popped a bottle of champagne and kept rocking my new keytar (it's on the photos aswell). It triggers samples and effects in Ableton live. Also I'll buy a Korg NanoKontrol midi controller soon.

Photos by Timo Toots

On sunday I was performing at a friends birthday. It took place at a site next to the airstrip. It's a little shed with a roof terrace and a big rock(bigger than the shed). There were several musicians present, including Algorytmid with who we did a back to back improvised live thing. The atmosphere was really nice and laidback. The airplanes were taking off just next to the party.

05/09/2009

Live performance + and -

Wednesday I had a live performance. It was in the annual Eclectica festival.
Before me there were Djs and a dubstep live.

The live was 15 minutes late because, I didn't have the microphone, which I had included in my technical rider previously, but it wasn't there. Also it took a lot of time to reconnect my laptop charger which had been disconnected and all the cables I needed. Luckily no problems with my laptop, which is faster with the new smaller harddrive inside and doesn't glitch while playing.

The live lasted 50 minutes and was rudely interupted by the following Dj, who just used the mixer to crossfade from my breakcorish song into his techno. Also throughout the perfmances there was a really drunk(high) guy trying to mc into a drum mic. Luckily you couldn't really hear him. During the first two songs the strap of my external keyboard broke twice and I had to lay it on the table instead. I used it to trigger samples and to add effects, filter and to change the tempo(Thank you ableton live). While playing, the Mc managed to kick my beer of the stage and I had to climb down to get it back(during the live :).

But the crowd was pleased, there were a lot of people that I had wanted to have as a crowd for a long time. It was a pleasure to have them there and to get the feedback afterwards. Including some musicians and dance students. Also some people who I didn't take as hardcore fans were grooving to it just infront of the stage.
The next day I had some messages asking me about the music and saying they enjoyed the night before.

I am working on improving my live and possibly I will drop the N0NStars and create a new one. I am covering my battle keyboard with glossy black vinyl, it will be quite a sight once finished.