PVDLoop Circles Back to Town

PVDLoop, the third annual Y2K18 International Live Looping Festival, is returning to PVD! This two-night, one-day, all-ages music festival will feature more than 25 local, national and international live looping musicians who will demonstrate, celebrate, educate and share their musical talents.

“You’ve probably heard looping; you’ve just never heard it and all its diversity in one place,” says Laurie Amat, artist, artistic director and producer of PVDLoop. “Last year, PVDLoop attracted a new and larger audience to AS220 – people interested in live looping, looping technology and experimental music as listeners, as amateur / hobbyist musicians and other musicians in the local scene.”

Headliners include Osaka, Japan-based mandolin player/luthier MANDOMAN-Hideki Nakanishi and New York native Ian C. Bouras. Returning acts include Sweet Pea Pumpkin (Providence-based writer, performer and vocalist who loops her voice to creates dreamy, violent, R&B-tinged soundscapes), Manami Braxton and Ky Why. New groups from the RI scene include Snowbeasts, Glenna Van Nostrand and Jon Buser. “We’re thrilled that our local festival presence is almost half of our festival,” says Amat. International loopers Lucid Brain Integrative Project and ecnegrU (from France), Pakistan’s Faisal Mahmood Kahn and Swedish multi-instrumentalist Per Boysen round off the live looping artists who help make PVDLoop an unparalleled international festival.

On October 13, three artists and music engineers will host “Loop Talk” and “Touch the Gear” at AS220’s Media Lab. Each will demonstrate and explain their take on looping, and some of the weekend’s loopers will set up their gear for informal demos and for attendees to try. Another highlight is guitarist/producer Ian C. Bouras, who has ataxia, a neurological condition that inspired him to get into looping. His lunchtime talk and performance demo for students and faculty at the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University takes place October 12.

PVDLoop takes place Oct 12 – 13 at AS220. For more: pvdloop.org