The Designer's Drugs

Media: Performance
Stimulus: Ari Herstand – Live At the Pause
Anno: 2010

There’s a bit of unintentional humor amidst the filming of Ari Herstand’s concert video. While he played through the audience participation number “Float on by,” the many cameras on his payroll filmed the crowd singing along and rapt in attention. In a perfect moment of wrong angle and wrong timing, the camera over Herstand’s shoulder peered out into the crowd and filmed a woman strolling up the auditorium’s ramp and out of the room. Whether she was going out for a bathroom break, a cigarette, or to run screaming into the night is anyone’s guess, but to leave in a shot of an audience member leaving is sort of a goof. Yet for the rest of this concert, the eyes – electronic and human – face the right direction.

Live at the Pause was released as a CD/DVD package, but as the show features Herstand playing solo and often heavily looped, it’s meant to be watched as well as listened to. Aside from a few low-fi shots from the crowd, the video really conveys all the intricacies of Herstand’s one-man songs in a way that gives a greater respect to his process and talent.

What comes through most in watching the show is how that process never gets in the way of the music. While the majority of the songs on the setlist are constructed of beatboxing, acoustic guitar, trumpet, piano, and the occasional tambourine, Herstand never allows a song to feel like a mere series of loops. Instead, the samples cut in and out as he brings lyrics and additional unlooped instrumentation into the mix, creating progression in defiance of prejudice.

The only time where looping might not have worked out to plan occurs on Herstand’s cover of “Wonderwall.” It runs largely to Herstand spec and is as interesting a cover of the Oasis song as one is likely to find, but there’s one chorus where the timing of his beatboxing sounds as though it ran slightly off the rails.

In contrast to this minor glitch, “Wrinkled Skin” is Herstand in full power, leaping from instrument to instrument and creating a work of bouncing blues. This is the concert’s most full-bodied and triumphant performance, its greatest display of both process and musicianship.

What becomes obvious through watching all this is how much control Ari Herstand has over his performance. Sampling and looping may get flak for being simplistic, but creating the samples live creates a new level of risk. Normally, if one blows a chord, it’s done with, but if one blows a loop, it comes back to haunt. That never happens during this concert. Ari Herstand has come to the level where his music is both exact art and science.

If you’re curious about what all this sounds like, see him yourself. He’ll be playing at the Warehouse on Saturday, March 6th, and his whole band will be there.