the future of satan live

When lockdown hit, it took the one gig I'd had booked in, 2 festival slots I had lined up, and an entire tour I was planning for October. I was, understandably, fairly gutted, but also I was kinda nervous about how this one man satan would operate onstage anyway, so I felt a slight bit of relief and a new found enthusiasm to try something else.

I'd been working on a live set for ages, btw. I'd had it more or less nailed as early as last autumn, and after a few trips to practice rooms to try it out, I felt a lot better about the whole thing than I had previously. It was to be about 6/7 songs long, using loops I'd made and put into my iPad's Garageband looper, over which I'd play my guitar and loop that via various pedals, and out through a small practice amp. Anyone who'd seen us play as a duo will know that I used to channel my guitar through an iPad anyway, so it didn't really present much of a change of pace.

But then, lockdown hit and I lost all my gigs, and then I thought this set might not be very good after all that. I thought that, after a decade of gigs with the two of us going for it onstage, this new look live show with me sat down next to a lava lamp, playing songs mainly on guitar and trying my best to loop hastily thrown together wav files via a fucking iPad suddenly didn't look too hot.

I sort of panicked about it, but meanwhile I'd started these ambient guitar livestream things on Instagram. Just me and a guitar, looping stuff and having fun trying things out. I couldn't get the electronic elements together with the guitar stuff to go into the iPad that was recording me, so I (as I usually do in these situations) decided to roll with the punch and limit myself to just guitar. It sounded nice though, and I liked just noodling. Not done stuff like that in a while, so it was nice.

But then I started thinking, 'well what am I going to do then?' I toyed with the idea of just sacking off gigs altogether, and just doing these livestreams, but I do enjoy touring, and playing for people, so I don't want to lose that. I'm currently working on a new live set, somewhere between the beat driven satan of old, and the more ambient, dreamy satan of now. I'm hoping it'll be ok, and you lot won't mind me sat down next to a lava lamp as opposed to throwing myself around onstage.

Anyway, I usually do about an hour on these livestreams, so I decided to split it into two chunks when it came to recording them for youtube. Part 1 has been up for a while, and is here:

 

And over the weekend, I finally managed to get a decent recording of the second half of it, which is now up for you to listen to here:

 

I'm aiming to get the tour back on track for 2021, but will let you know how I get on.