A Hyperborean wrote:Linda Spa adds something beautiful with her saxophone and the rest (listen to La Joie on Jeanne D'Arc, it's simply wonderful). If she doesn't always play live keyboards then fair enough, she can't just sit there with her arms folded. All the band members look as though they're not playing live sometimes, but with such complex, multi-layered music, complete note-for-note live playing can't be possible. I forgive them and I think that what we often see is on-stage mixing, sound control and segment activation. I get the impression that Edgar often plays the orchestral, violin-like foundation layers. Who knows? Even if only certain melodic parts are played, then that's enough for me, it's enough to see them present the music to an appreciative audience. There are always performance gems, especially when Edgar gets up with his guitar and hits the sweet spot. His use of the 'Talking Guitar-Synth' effect was astounding when I saw it live in London (at Shepherd's Bush I think) and Hyper Sphinx at the Astoria concert last year was fantastic, I was nearly in tears
Nice post. IMHO (at this stage in the development of electronic music) it counts for nothing the percentage of music 'hand-played' if the results don't move or excite you. I've been to 3 gigs this year where 99% of everything was controlled live and they've been some of the dullest gigs I've ever been to, not the fault of the musicians, just that the music didn't make a connection with me. I don't go to gigs to make notes about Moog serial numbers or see if the musican turns a knob up to 11 or not. The 'process' is interesting, but the 'results' matter far more
The thing is, and some fans totally miss the point, is that Edgar and TD have been using high tech stuff for decades and during this every possible thing has gone wrong (Damaged equipment, sequencers out of tune, sounds didn't trigger, power cuts, floods, hanging notes, software crashes and freezes). Can you imagine putting all your faith in it, only for it let you down again and again?. Many of the gigs we think are classics are in fact a record of a gig just saved from disaster. It's my opinion that is why Edgar currently uses technology the way
he wants, and therefore the band performs in the same way (he is the boss....please correct me if i've got this wrong). Plenty of people have complained about it in the past, so the only thing you can add is, if it bothers you that much then don't go and see them. Find something that you enjoy better. I totally respect people who do, provided they don't commit themselves to a lifetime of moaning about TD. I sometimes think that people tend to ignore that TD have performed (more of less) in the same way for 20 years, so why wait until now to be annoyed. However I do understand that now we have live DVDs and a few people are (as Jacob points out) frustrated by this.
One of thing about TD is that nobody (and that includes your average fan right up to a self-titled musical experts) knows exactly how TD use technology. Nobody!
As for Linda, she's a talented musician, I've seen some comments about her over the years that have been totally OTT and idiotic, however I've never seen her give a poor performance or play a bum note. If people think she is there as eye candie then I'm affraid it says more about them as people than it does about Linda's musical merit. All in my opinion and nothing more.
sadly for some they'll totally miss the point I was trying to make.
And I have always had a soft spot for her since.
