Here’s a performance of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin I did the other week in San Jose at the premiere of The Human Face of Big data – a film I scored for Sandy & Rick Smolan.
It’s using a cello (leant by the amazing Eric Cheng) and a Boss Loop Pedal.
I worked with Jimmy Page back in 2008 – but that’s a whole lotta other story. We were both younger back then…
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/154592059″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]So.. here’s the next extract from the set I played as support for UNKLE at the Royal Festival Hall – opening for James Lavelle’s Meltdown Festival. This is my live cello-looped version of my orchestral piece ‘Final Day’.
Here’s the bizarre gear that goes into my gig bag along with the cello.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/154364936″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]I played as support last night for UNKLE at the Royal Festival Hall opening for James Lavelle’s Meltdown Festival. Here’s my live cello-looped version of ‘Glow’ by UNKLE, a track I first worked on way back when we were recording Never, Never Land…
Here’s another track from the set.
I’ve been a long-term collaborator with James Lavelle since being invited in to the Never Never Land sessions with UNKLE to play acoustic and electric cello. Since then, I’ve performed on numerous tracks as a string player, and have been a co-writer on many album tracks.
My first impression of James and his working method has remained intact, save for the fact that over time he’s become a dear & trusted friend.
James is an alchemist.
He instinctively knows how to throw disparate personalities & elements together, resulting in beautiful dissonance and restless confluence.
At the time of the first sessions I was working as a classical cello professor at the Royal Academy of Music and James blew the doors off my recording life, giving voice to my wilder sonic personalities, encouraging me to stretch the potential of my musicianship.
I remember one day working on Beethoven sonatas at the Royal Academy, then getting in a cab up the road to a North London studio with James, Keith Flint, dry ice, strobes and a license to let rip in an all-night recording session. That’s living the dream…
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This is a live version of ‘Amazing Grace’ from my recent gig at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. It’s recorded using an 18th Century cello and a loop pedal. Hope you like it.
These are my favourite verses from the hymn.
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)
That sav’d a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/150891804″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /]This is my closing piece from my set at the NNFest on 22nd may 2014 playing support for Toumani Diabaté. It’s recorded using an 18th Century cello and a Boss RC300 loop pedal with a DPA cello mic. Hope you like it…
Very very excited to announce that I’ve been invited to perform a solo set to kick off James Lavelle’s Meltdown 2014.
It’ll be a solo cello looping set in the Royal Festival Hall before I join the UNKLE line-up (my long-time conspirators) in the second half.
Nice article re the other artists here.
Hope you can come. It’s going to be different. In the meantime let me share a previous Meltdown experience with Jeff Buckley that changed my life entirely…
My solo performing setup generally includes loop pedals, pitch shifters and reverb units.
I’m doing a lot of experimentation at the moment with my live setup, using acoustic & electric cellos, new custom built units as well as some exciting new effects pedals from Boss, Boomerang & Line 6. Before I plan a programme I always draw a new circuit/ wiring plan and however much I try to simplify things around my feet, they always end up verging on the complex..!
The sketch above is the setup I have in my studio at the moment… Looking a little tangled for my liking…
Here’s a short improvisation from a set I performed in Mexico a couple of months ago. The guest speakers prior to me had mentioned whale songs, volcanos and one of my favourite pieces, La Folia. Needless to say, all of them found their way in.
It’s been great to see Andrew Bird storming Sundance with a live set where he built songs up from live loops on violin using a parallel setup of Line 6 delay modellers, one tightly locked, the other more for floating ambient lines. You can watch it here.
The great thing is that the gadgetry he’s using is rendered unimportant by the emotional punch of the songs. It’s easy to get hung up on gear for its own sake, but if you’re not making someone laugh, cry or get the chills, it ain’t worth it…
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I’ve just found something on youtube that I’ve been searching for for years – literally…
I’ve been so lucky to have been able to play the cello with some of the most amazing musicians, but by far the greatest was Jeff Buckley. Of course he’s shot up the charts recently through his beautiful cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – surely the antithesis of X-Factor..?
This is Henry Purcell’s Dido’s Lament from Dido and Æneas. But listen to this – Just. listen. to. it…
[youtube=http://youtu.be/xSVCL262gmU]
I mean, no-one can sing like that. No-one should be physically able to sing like that.
Jeff Buckley singing, withpianist Catherine Edwards, violinist Ian Belton and me on cello, in Elvis Costello’s Meltdown Festival, July 1st 1995.
I remember, this singer arrived really late, just before the show, dishevelled, all cheekbones, cool hair, black jeans and the biggest boots you’ve ever seen supporting a rake thin body.
He apologised – got out his music – a kid’s exercise book with the lyrics of the songs written out in a crazy biro scrawl. – If a word was written high up the page, well then it meant it was a high note.
At one point he asked me what country he was in… he was confused between Germany and the UK that day as I think he’d flown in with little sleep.
And then he sang.
As Elvis Costello remembers;
When he started singing Dido’s Lament at the rehearsal, there were all these classical musicians who could not believe it. Here’s a guy shuffling up on-stage and singing a piece of music normally thought to be the property of certain types of specifically developed voice, and he’s just singing, not doing it like a party piece, but doing something with it.
That’s an understatement… I remember the lights being pretty bright and the silhouette of his frame as he bent almost double to wrench every ounce of meaning from a song written 300 hundred years ago. Better than any classical musician I’ve ever heard.
As he was singing, a photographer shuffled along past the feet of the audience in the front row at the Queen Elizabeth Hall to get a shot, unaware that they were for that second the most hated person in London, and got a good clout round the head for their troubles from someone who should remain nameless.
I can’t remember anything straight after that, but Elvis Costello wrote in Mojo:
My last memory of him was at the little party in the green room afterwards. There were all these people sitting round Jeff who’d never met before – Fretwork, the viol group, a classical pianist and some jazz player – all talking and laughing about music. He’d charmed everybody. I’d much rather remember that than anything.
I just wish i could find a photo…
Here’s an extract from a Radio 4 Documentary when I talked about it:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVCL262gmU]
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