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Music Picks

Listen to This!

Final Fantasy and Ezee Tiger break new live looping ground.

Thomas Rasmussen 22 Feb 2007TheTyee.ca

Thomas Boie Rasmussen is a Vancouver writer and broadcaster who writes the Across the Woods blog.
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Final Fantasy records violin on stage.

Artists from the likes of Beyonce to The Music’s Robert Harvey use musical magic tricks called backing tracks on stage -- pre recordings of the parts of a song that are impossible or impractical to perform live.

But in contrast to the trend of ever-more backing tracks, some musicians are breaking new ground by performing and recording all of the elements of a song live, then blending and growing a song on stage. Feist first exposed me to live looping a few years ago at Richards on Richards; she sang and recorded a vocal harmony by using foot pedals, looped it, then sang and played her guitar over it.

Similarly, Final Fantasy, aka Owen Pallett records, multiple loops off of his violin then sings over what he has created.

Other musicians take it to greater lengths, fulfilling the roles of an entire rock band by moving across the stage, playing and looping multiple instruments and then manipulating them all. Ezee Tiger, aka Anthony Petrovic, plays the guitar, bass and keyboard then proceeds to sing and play drums over the lo-fi sound he’s progressively built. Somehow, he manages to keep track of the range of instruments he’s played and recorded. And that’s as compelling as the music itself.

Live loopers are worth checking out because of what most artists are doing (or not doing) on stage. Duos such as Ratatat and Chromeo use backing tracks for drums and keyboards, and bands such as The Go! Team and Kasabian use pre recorded string and brass instrumentals. Hip-hop and electronic artists tend to use the most backing tracks, but of course there are the exceptions. Kanye West uses a full string section in performance. And on the other extreme, Tiga’s live performance is essentially a dj set where he doesn’t sing a single note even though he sings throughout his most recent record.

Listen to This!

“Fantasy” by Final Fantasy

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