DENIS:
There are so many different ways of handling a "liveset". Some do a
straight DAT "live", some people add elements live to a DAT / CD backing, some do most things live with a sequencer backing etc. etc..
- What are your thoughts about doing a liveact ?
- How do you prepare a liveset ?
- When / where can people experience Chi A.D. live ?
- What are your best and worst party experiences to date ?
Chi A.D. live gig. (picture from Medium Records)
DAVE & ANDY
To answer each bit in turn, Firstly we were actually one of the first psychedelic trance Acts to ever play LIVE. By that I mean we actually played at parties with a stripped down studio setup using the Roland MC 505 as the main sequencer controlling the various synths and samplers. (There is actually a live recording, Digital Quality which exists of this set from Astral Phoenix - Tyssen St UK in 1998). What we found however, was that this proved to be quite a stressful experience cos
a) the sound is very lo-fi compared to studio quality recordings which puts you at a disadvantage for getting the right sound across b) most psytrance venues are not equiped for full "live" acts and you end up being hidden away on a couple of raised boxes which is no good if you want to put on a show and c)
you couldn't take the think to any other countries cos the costs were too great. Also half the time people didn't even realise you were actually playing live and would come up and ask you stupid questions in the middle of a set - unbelievable.
Now we use a DAT and play synths and textures over the top along with mixing in various prepared loops and samples etc. Basically now we can keep the train on the rails whereas before it had a life of its own. We try to incorporate new bits every time so no two sets are the same.
Again to be honest, we don't get asked to play much which is a shame cos we
really put on a show as anyone who has seen us live will testify (after we have paid them of course). We are hoping to start playing some dates towards the end of 2001 when both new albums are up and running. Watch this space and if there are any promotors out there who are interested, get in touch.
Both Dave and I are originally from more conventional Rock backgrounds but take different things from playing live but I think if I were to say our best and worst gigs for different reasons: The best was probably our first ever gig at Deltawave in Portsmouth UK when we both realised that we could actually make this amazing sound totally LIVE and get the whole place really rocking - everything really came together that night after all the
pre-gig doubts cos a lot of people told us it couldn't be done. The Worst I think was a few months later where we were playing live in London and couldn't hear any of the beats to drop the various instruments into cos some guys were playing the bongoes really loud and totally out of time although there have been some bad experiences playing in different countries...............that's Rock n' Roll for you!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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