Sunday, September 16, 2018

Mika Pontecorvo/Mark Pino Duo-Bird & Beckett Books, San Francisco CA; 9/15/18

After a sleepy morning BART ride from Richmond to SF, I found myself at the great independent Bird & Beckett Books, Mika already there and set up. A few to get my small rig out and playable, and we were off.
This show was essentially a reprise of a gig last year at Adobe Books. That one was pretty tragic on account of a bum cable. Not so this time: we got clear signals from my mic'd waterphone (first set) and electric m'bira (second set). These sound sources were fed into Mika's "Slicer-Dicer" program, an algorithm that he's been developing for some time, and them pumped through the store's high quality speaker system. This being a set of Ambient music, we focused on slow, quieter, and very definitely well-spaced moves. I really enjoyed the challenge of playing with tons of space and getting it from just a few items. At one point, I was scraping a long screw across the head of the mic. It sounded really neat when shot back out from Mika's Mac! People drifted into the store, wandered around, looked at books; no one seemed that bothered by our sounds, so I figured it was a win.
A fine late morning/early afternoon of focused listening and interaction with my valued comrade Mika!
Many thanks to Andre Custodio and Bird & Beckett Books.

Below: Mika slicing and dicing; my small rig
Above: mic scrape!; saucers and books


No comments:

Post a Comment