THE LOOP ORCHESTRA

Alias: JOHN BLADES

avant jazz / musique concrete / performative art / abstractism / ambient music / minimalism / avant-garde / experimental

Founded in 1982 by Richard Fielding and John Blades. Other members: Manny Gasparinatos, Patrick Gibson, Hamish MacKenzie, Sheriff Lindo. The genesis of The Loop Orchestra occured in the ashes of a simple two-tape-machine-no-man-band, The Nobodies, which died in a fire in 1980. From those ashes, and with a pastiche taken from the likes of Terse Tapes, home of Severed Heads, an ashen poultice was formed to take up further and more involved household heretical experimention, this time with reel-to-reel tape machines. This idea was subsequently expanded upon in the studio of Sydney radio station 2MBS-fm amid a group of experimental radio programmers. Two, John Blades and Richard Fielding, were using the studio equipment as an instrument, experimenting with tape machines through processes involving cutting, dissecting, rearranging and rejoining prerecorded tape, creating tape loops and playing them back. They felt a need to formalise their studio experimentation and so conceived the idea of creating a full blown machine orchestra whose contrived destiny it was to perform in the Sydney Opera House's hallowed Concert Hall. The intention of the Orchestra was for groups of instruments of an orthodox orchestra to be represented by reel-to-reel tape machines playing loops of the instruments' sounds. Upon the realization that this egoistical ambition was doomed a smaller ensemble comprising 4 reel-to-reel machines playing slowly evolving tape-loop constructions, made its live debut playing a live-to-air performance in the rather less graceful, but no less culturally appropriate studio of Sydney radio station 2MBS-fm in 1983, as The Loop Orchestra. A variety of eminent luminaries can lay claim to having been members of the Orchestra, including Patrick Gibson, Peter Doyle, Anthony Maher and Ashley Blower. The current lineup consists of John Blades, Richard Fielding, Emmanuel Gasparinatos, Hamish MacKenzie and Juke Wyat. Members of the Orchestra have been, or are, involved in a diverse variety of groups and projects including but not limited to: Severed Heads; Scattered Order; The Systematics; No Nights Sweat; Splendid Mess; War, Meat & The Dictator; East End Butchers; Z.glutz; Ya Ya Coral; Moral Fibro; Famous; Kinderschmerzen; Esqué; Clean Air Campaign; Hiroshima Chair; Sherrif Lindo & The Hammer; Nutcase & Papa Chubba; Men Like Licorice; Violence In Spring; Vorkapich; Kyoko-Mary & The Cogs of Death; Strict vs State; and Cannibal Loops. THE LOOP ORCHESTRA Against seamless method Against the state of the art and the art of the state Against the tension/release nexus Against the validation of effort Against the composer as genius for a transparency of sound for the anticlimax as metaphor for alienation, detachment and disembodiment for the occlusion aesthetic for the detritus of phonography THE LOOP ORCHESTRA