Jack Hertz and I had decided on giving our duo the Dead City Shaman a few weeks back. Jack grew up in Maryland, I spent time in Virginia, and we both had formative musical experiences in Washington D.C. Hence the name.
We both arrived to KFJC a bit early, and were able to have our gear set up quickly for Grower and the engineering staff. A bit after 10 PM, we started to play. Our set unfolded with a nice slow pace, me on waterphone, Jack on synths and processing. After a good wait, I switched to electric m'bira, in much the same manner as our Luggage Store gig in January. Things started to loosen and roll, but remained spacious. Jack started to throw in vocal samples, sliced and diced on what turned out to be a simple iPhone app. At this point in the set, I started to feel trance-ed out. The blue light in the Pit surely helped here, when paired with the sounds we were generating.
Things got wild, and we played and played. All told, our set lasted almost two continuous hours! Balafon paired with shakers, flutes paired with synths, any and all manner of electronics processing occurred as the sounds fed into Jack's loop machine. There were times when I stayed silent, simply letting Jack's synth sounds drift over my consciousness. Thankfully, I was always able to drift back in and play some more.
After a brief interview with Naysayer, we drifted out into the parking lot to the sound of frog calls in the still warm night air. Other than their sounds, it was quiet. Beautiful.
Below: Jack and gear; Jack and me in the interview room
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