Skyman live in Auckland - 3 track podcast
Skyman was the first band project to come out of the Bluevibe studio and this gig was recorded back in 2004 if my memory is correct. We had a core of 4 members but expanded out to 8 members depending on who wanted to come and join in when we played live. We played quite a few gigs but only ever recorded one of them so I thought I’d get it online so you could check it out.
Skyman was based around core song elements played live from a sampler and a lot of instrumental improvisation. Each gig was completely individual and the songs never got played the same twice.
The skyman idea was based around writing a core set of elements for a song and then giving all the members of the band copies of the rough songs to have a listen to and come up with some more elements. We then had a practice to run through the songs, have a jam on the ideas, see how everybody was doing, more social than musical usually. We would then turn up to the gig, decide on a set list and play.
Here’s a run down of how it all worked at the podcast gig from the St James in Auckland:
- all the beats and samples run from the Yamaha rs7000 sampler and consist of loops which can be remixed live.
- I ran the sampler and played guitar.
- Kerry Adams also ran the sampler as well as jumping on the decks for the cuts.
- Ryan Marshall on bass, core member of the team and always smooth and solid.
- Deb Toko on vocals, great voice and ability to improvise every time.
- Johnny Flurry on the chapman stick which is basically used to either play bass or gat and trigger samples from Johnny’s rack. Stunning skills and one of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with.
- Graham on percussion, exciting percussionist (mean cricketer too!!)
- finally we had Shanti join us on stage for this gig, amazing mc with some of the deepest lyrics around, mad skills for a young un.
As you can probably tell from the tracks this was recorded as a two track straight out of the desk so the mix is all over the place but still gets across the “impro” nature of what we tried to achieve on the night. Let me know what you think, if you’ve got any questions on the gear or players then hit me up. enjoy.
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