I am a musician. I’ve been a solo act for a few years. In the studio, I’m in a playground of overdubs and harmonies and whatever the hell else I want to add. But live, I’m restricted to only what I can play at one time; one guitar, one voice, occasionally a harmonica or a stomped tambourine, but that’s it. It’s always uncomfortable to go back and forth between the studio mindset and the live mindset in terms of what I can and can’t do in each environment. Some musicians find a backing band to play with live, some record with a band but perform solo. But then there are the few who skirt the line between both. Howie Day (before he became another John Mayer clone) would play around with loops, echoing voices, guitar licks, and percussive banging, swirling around to make a one-man symphony.
And then there’s Busdriver (aka Regan Farquhar), a rapper making noise unlike anything I’ve heard before. It’s not just that he’s able to bring a full sound to a solo performance, but also that he’s BLISTERING live. Find some videos of him online, or even better, go to one of his shows – he writhes around the stage, while he not just raps with one of the fastest, smoothest flows I’ve ever encountered, but also fiddles with dials and drum machines and it’s just amazing how one man running around pressing buttons can be so fascinating live. Plus his music’s pretty awesome, too – he moves through different time signatures as if they were water, and though his instrumentation sounds a bit like Dizzee Rascal (self-described “ghettotech”), some of his songs sound more like The Knife in that my mind is always half a beat behind the music. A very fun and busy listening experience – check him out if you ever have a chance.
