“Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” — George Orwell. 1984
The LepLoop
I’ve used a lot of synths over the years but this one is something different… it’s a strange instrument. It’s small, much smaller than it appears in photos: it is part synth, part drum machine, part multi-track sequencer. I’m still figuring it all out but initial impressions are that it’s very unpredictable and slightly unstable… but in a good way. I had a few issues with it sometimes refusing to work and also it has a tendency to pick up stray signals from my iPhone and iPad if they are anywhere near it. But when it works it is quite rewarding to use and is capable of some amazing sounds – if mildly frustrating trying get it to do what I think it ‘should’ be able to do – but I will persevere. If you like wonderful experimental noises – accompanied by a simple rhythm (although I’m sure it’s very capable of a lot more) then this little unit could be for you.
The LepLoop will definitely become part of my CCCL experimental arsenal and will most likely get seconded into the upcoming Throbbing Gristle experimental sets in October/November 2010.
The short sound example here was performed without a keyboard, just using the internal sequencer and some real-time tweakery. The outputs were processed with a couple of Eventide pedals for some ‘tape delay’ & reverb.
Photo on my Flikr pages: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_carter_/4933901603/
UPDATE:
Apparently my LepLoop is a prototype, which accounts some of the ‘issues’ I had with it – the production version should run fine.
