"Then again." It's the act of revisiting something from a different point of view. It's also an apt description of live looping: old audio ("then") is repeated ("again"), while newer layers examine previous ideas from an endlessly evolving perspective.
All of these interpretations apply to the newest release on 7D Media by guitarist and looper Andre LaFosse, which wears that phrase as both title and mission statement.
The autumn 2025 release of Then Again marks three decades since LaFosse began exploring live looping. During those 30 years, the concept of a musician sampling and looping their own playing has gradually infiltrated popular culture. What began as a tool of fringe experimentation is now a fixture of contemporary music creation.
Throughout that time, LaFosse has followed an utterly singular path, drawing on hip-hop, avant-garde, funk, noise, prog, contemporary classical, and many other influences. Rather than sampling his guitar playing and repeating it verbatim, Andre uses looping to deliberately mangle and reshape the sound of his instrument. Deeply inspired by post-DJ culture and turntablism, he's often described his style as "turntablist guitar." It's a live performance craft that's both highly abstract and viscerally focused, developed over decades of gigs in venues ranging from art galleries and concert halls to dive bars and dance floors.
"Terry Riley, Public Enemy, and Aphex Twin walk into a bar" might be a dubious joke, but it's also a shorthand for the sounds and styles happening on Then Again. Webs of rhythmic layers create pulsating, percolating textures that morph and evolve throughout, evoking the hypnotic landscapes of early minimalism and tape loop experiments. But the use of modern tech to fragment, fracture, and reconstruct LaFosse's playing gives the music an angular, digitized flavor, far removed from the aesthetics of 20th century analog.
All of this belies the fact that Then Again is essentially a live album. Recorded in-studio and polished after the fact with a minimum of editing, it's a collection of solo performances, reconciling electronic sound design with instrumental musicianship.
And that combination, in turn, suggests a broader sort of balancing act. As LaFosse puts it,
"'Digitally multiplying ourselves across a virtual landscape' works as a summary of live looping... but it also sounds a lot like the state of communication and connection in modern society. As our lives navigate an increasingly complex relationship between community and solitude, looping feels like both a literal and figurative reflection of that state. It's a singular way of making music that feels - and sounds - like nothing else."
Each track here is a live performance with an electric guitar and a Hologram Microcosm. Half of them (tracks 1, 3, 4, and 8) also use the Glou-Glou Loupé; the other half are Microcosm by itself.
Says Andre, “My baseline goal with looping is to present a live performance that holds up strictly on its own musical merits, exactly as played, from the very first note. But, sometimes a bit of post-performance tweaking can elevate the material - especially when a live performance becomes a recorded document.
“So, some of the performances have been edited, usually at the very start and/or end. There's a tiny bit of more substantial tweaking here and there: a few redundant repetitions removed, an intro spliced onto the end to bookend a performance, two parts of a single performance cross-faded together, and some volume adjustments during mixing and mastering, to flatter and enhance the arc of the material.
“As always: thank you very much for listening.”
Track list:
1. Entry Level
2. Most Microbial of Forms
3. Bugs in the System
4. Species of Glory Trees
5. Then Again
6. Why Does It Sudden
7. Imaginary Friends
8. Mean Means Tried
All songs written/performed by Andre LaFosse, ASCAP
Produced by Andre with Trey Gunn
Mixed + Mastered by Andre
Cover art: photograph of an original paint pouring by Rebecca Lee
For more information:
https://andrelafosse.com
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/andre-lafosse/167810709
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1zlJkfi1FBld3WyDM6w7ZJ
https://www.youtube.com/andrelafosse
TikTok: /andre.lafosse.gtr
Instagram: /andrelafosse
Facebook: /andrelafosse
X: /andrelafosse
Threads: /andrelafosse
Press inquiries: Keith James, Glass Onyon PR, PH: 828-350-8158 (USA), glassonyonpr@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment