Juana Molina
, Juana Molina, Juana Molina, and Juana Molina (along with Gregor Hilbe on drums and Martin Iannaccone on bass for most of the night) played the Trouadour Tuesday night. Molina spins out a magical web of sounds based on something called looping. Think of a loop as a section of a song that one plays, say on guitar, and then replays after it is recorded, with the option of recording more over the top of what has already been played. Molina uses four of these loopers plus what she plays and sings over them after recording them: building some up while taking others out, now a vocal loop with another voice dubbed over it, a synthesizer might come in while layers of guitar shift and swirl in everchanging textures. Molina’s playing requires an insane amount of multitasking and juggling. Hilbe managed to sound like Molina’s idiosyncratic percussion through a combination of wonderful playing and technological wizardry, thickening his beats by running them through pitch-shifting delays on a MacBook. Iannaccone also did a fantastic job on bass and occasional backing vocals.
At one point, the band left her to her own devices for a few minutes then came back with some low-tech wizardry for a change. A table with 3 overturned plastic bar glasses was set up on stage, and the three musicians played a percussion game consisting of pounding the the cups in a rhythm interspersed with claps and everyone exchanging cups to the beat. It was great fun and sounded quite cool…I think there was a contact mike on the table. It reminded me of the bottle-and-ashtray-with-handclaps percussion of the Dixie Cups classic “Iko Iko.”
All the machinery could be a recipe for mechanical sounding music, but she never sounds canned. In fact, mixing all the loops together almost always results in some unique, irreproducable sounds. The danger is that mistakes get replicated too and one little glitch can wreck the most carefully planned loop. The trick here is to turn glitches into musical moments on their own terms, which I think happened once or twice during the night.
The music is stunning, and at the risk of sounding new agey, it has an opening up effect on me, something that I might have called spiritual a few years ago, but for now I’ll just enjoy it it without having to label it. This goes along with Molina’s lyrical intent. Most of the songs are in Spanish, but while I would like to understand the words better, much of the singing is just notes with no particular words. I think this helps her cross-cultural appeal, because she sings in a more or less universal language all her own.
I managed to get right up front without knocking anyone over or barging forward in spite of the nearly full house. On the right at the top is the best of the lousy iPhone pix I was able to get, and below are my attempts to make them a bit more interesting.
Finally, as always, give a listen to rreplay and the rest of my music on way.net.