27 June 2011

Abadroza & Koneyn - Live at Porub #6 (Rex, Belgrade)



Earlier this year I have been invited to perform live by Borjan Grujić, a young designer behind Porub. Porub is an event that serves as a platform for local experimental/alternative artists involved in audio and visual media and it's commonly organized several times during one year. I've been there in the audience several times myself and that's how we got in contact in the first place. We've discussed getting together for one of the Porub evenings long time ago, yet I wasn't prepared in terms of technical issues and more important available material that could be done live. Luckily my dear friend Abadroza from our Asino Elettronico label stepped in without hesitation so we could make something together especially for this night.



Edited version of video showing the second half of the performance



The idea for us was also to finally break the ice and go out public, since none of us have had any experience in playing music live up until that moment. Abadroza threw aside his PC long time ago before I did even consider such a thing, so him being the beat master on his Korg EMX-1 was a no fail situation. I, on the other hand, challenged myself by acting out as a keyboardist with my new pet machine - old Korg X3R synth module controlled by a compact Behringer 25-key MIDI keyboard. I also filled up my Kaoss Pad 3 with a few vocal samples just to spice up what would have been an overly instrumental set.



Some were curious about "that VCR look-a-like black box" (Korg X3R)


You can catch a glimpse of the atmosphere from the video posted here - it was really a great evening altogether, both for us and I'd daringly say for the audience as well. The giveaway CDs we've prepared and left in front of us were gone in matter of seconds right after we had finished, which leads me to think we did a good job on promoting the label as well. I may have made a few ugly sounding mistakes while playing keys and we've lost focus a bit here and there, but in the end it was really a live performance that is rarely seen (at least here) in electronic music and it got praise by virtually everyone who talked to us afterwards. What was the most important aspect of it for me personally is the fact the whole experience gave me a lot of motivation and confidence to push this "live performance" thing further with my own project. Surely I will miss head-nodding and knob-twiddling shoulder to shoulder with Abadroza, but there are some serious plans for all of us on the label to tour locally together so the fun sharing moments will always be there.


Special thanks to Ves for being there to support us and taking care to record the video.

August update:

Complete and unedited recording of the performance by Ves, as well as a report in Serbian and extracted mp3 file, here on her blog entry.

9 comments:

  1. Is there any chance of an audio only download of this? I would happily pay for it if there was. I have no objections to it being free, of course.

    I have been listening to your stuff for a year or so now and I am really enjoying it. This concert sounds great.

    Cheers,
    Sebastian.

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  2. Hello Sebastian, thank you very much for the comment and of course your genuine interest!

    I honestly wish I had a proper audio recording, too - yet we didn't have the necessary recording equipment there with us and the organizer had said in advance he couldn't help us either - so we're stuck with sound captured by the very camera that shot the video. I haven't extracted it to a separate audio file since it doesn't do much justice to the performance, thinking that only coupled with video it seems more plausible.

    We are planning some live dates this Autumn (this time each of us playing separately, though) and if I can get a decent recording out of those, I plan to collect the "best of" pieces and release those under Asino Elettronico. For free download, as usual ;)

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  3. Thanks for the response.

    I absolutely respect your feelings about the audio quality, although I would happily listen to it if it were extracted; like many who listen to concert recordings, I do not expect the sound quality to be perfect. T

    I am genuinely looking forward to all of your future releases; you are absolutely a talent to be admired.

    Thanks,
    Sebastian

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  4. Now that's what I call encouragement, thank you again so much Sebastian!

    If you don't mind the quality, here's what you can do even by yourself: there is a small application called JDownloader, it's completely free and it enables you (among other things) to grab video OR audio from streaming sources. If you copy and paste url link to that video, it will give you all the options available for file conversion and download (.flv, .mp4 and also audio only - .mp3).

    Maybe it's not perfectly legal if you try to do the same with latest Lady Gaga video, but obviously I have no objection when my material is in question, so go for it ;)

    (of course I'd gladly just export the sound from the original video here on my hdd, I did try once and yet had my video editor crash repeatedly. so even if I needed the sound, i'd retreive it from youtube since it's so easy and convenient)

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  5. That's very helpful indeed - I am downloading JDownloader right now.

    Thank you very much,
    Sebastian

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  6. Sebastian, I've got good news if you're still following this - my friend Ves uploaded the whole video on YouTube and she also managed to extract mp3 of the whole performance: http://withthepilots.blogspot.com/2011/08/happy-decks.html

    It's in Serbian, but you will notice the link that mentions mp3, it's right under the second embedded video.

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  7. Well, when I downloaded the mp3 the 'properties' say that it is 13minutes and 28 seconds long, but in fact it plays for 1 hour 38 minutes and 43 seconds!

    Sebastian

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  8. Sorry, the comment above was referring to the youtube extraction, not the 'withthepilots' mp3, which is perfect. Thanks very much.

    Sebastian.

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  9. You're welcome, I'm glad you also got the proper version as well. Yes, that YT decoder knows to mess up the track length readings but once you play it it does sound normally and lasts as long as it is supposed to ;)

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