Author: Debashis Sinha

just back from a hectic 20 hours in montreal, where the lippok | sinha duo performed as part of the canadian tenori on launch, presented by yamaha and mutek.

it was a really tremendous evening, with the amazing montreal crowd living up to all expectations of being some of the best audiences anywhere. montreal’s pheek opened the evening with an abstract set, very different from the techno he is known for. i am robot and proud gave a tremendous performance, with his particular brand of warm/cool whimsical music. the whimsical tip continued with nathan michel, who played a lot of his set in 15/16 time.

robert lippok and i then hit the stage. an added bonus was the live visuals provided by toshio iwai, the inventor of the tenori on, who asked (if you please) if it was ok to generate visuals connected to my percussion instruments when robert and i did a soundcheck earlier in the day. those of you familiar with our first concert would have been quite surprised at the energy and intensity of this set, ending with a huge “krautrock” (in robert’s words) free for all. we were surprised ourselves—the soundcheck was completely different than the actual performance. the visuals were another incredible and inspiring factor in the performance. robert and i are actively looking for more opportunities for this duo project. keep your eyes peeled.

toshio iwai gave a presentation on the development of the tenori, starting his talk with an homage to canadian experiemental filmmaker norman mclaren, who did a lot of work with sound and visuals in the 70’s. he was happy to mention him in canada, and gave props to our great national film board. he took us through his own work and explorations with sound and light, starting off with his favourite little music box and treating us to some really jawdropping clips of his earlier installations, as well as photos and clips of the tenori on in development and on the production line. yu nishibori, the engineer working with toshio, also joined him onstage, taking us through the design process and demonstrating the rather sophisticated interface—similar to much great music, the interaction of discrete simple elements results in the possibility of very complex music.

the night was closed off by sutekh, in a very intense noise based set, and the very friendly and genial pole, who rocked the house with his dub based sound.

props to the mutek crew for organizing such an amazing event. they made everything so smooth that it was easy to just show up and play. hooray for mutek! last but certainly not least, thanks to yamaha, yu nishibori and toshio iwai for agreeing with robert to bring me in the first place.

more photos soon @ my myspace page but for now here’s a teaser. (update: there are pix on flickr here)

photo by jutta brendemuehl

following photos by yu nishibori

it’s good to get back to drumming again. march 6 will see me in prince albert, saskatchewan, with dene singer/songwriter leela gilday….i hope we’re not playing outside. playing music with leela is great—not only is she a great singer and super person, the rest of her band is about the best bunch of people anywhere. and laying down grooves with my strange hand percussion/drum kit elements hybrid percussion setup is always fun. after all the blips, beeps, clicks and cuts of the new media work i have been doing its good to connect with the groove.

i also just talked to marc nadjiwan, who is working on a new CD. i played on his last one, also doing the hybrid kit thing, and this one is really a step forward in his sound.

you can’t step away from the groove…..