h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, I had a wonderful weekend at the Big Chill. They were certainly very lucky with the weather. Ten days before the festival was due to begin, the site was flooded. Now, I love festivals, but I'm very much a fair weather camper and certainly no fan of the biblical floods that have visited Glastonbury on the last couple of occasions. But the sun came out and we danced about and listened to lots of great music including Issac Hayes, Howie B and Joe Driscoll. I had never heard of Joe Driscoll before (indeed, that is one of the joys of the Chill - walking about and discovering new music in a beautiful setting) - but he gave a whole new meaning to the phrase 'one man band'. However, he didn't strap a drum to his back and a harmonica to his mouth. He sampled himself making all kinds of musical noises (percussion, notes, singing, etc) in a variety of styles (reggae, hip hop, funk etc) He played one bit, sampled it and then looped the results, played another bit, sampled it and looped it etc, layering up rich sounds, an orchestra and choir consisting solely of himself.

Driscoll was recorded, then? I don't quite follow.

How long was this Big Chill? You left eons ago...

Welcome back!

Hello Leo,
The Big Chill was from last Friday to Monday, but it's been taking us a while to unpack everything!
I probably didn't explain Joe Driscoll very well - to make up one of his songs, he'd make some drum noises (for example) into a mircophone he would then save what he'd done, loop the sample and play it as a background. He'd then perhaps sing into a microphone for a few bars, save it, loop the sample and play that in the background - there would then be two different samples of himself playing in the background as he made a third nosie and a fourth one and so on - he'd gradually keep buidling this up sample by sample until he had a really great funky song going - just featuring him!
It probably still doesn't make a huge amount of sense, but have a look at his myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/joedriscoll.
Will have another look at 'this is england' in a bit...

No - it does. I get the idea. It's quite clever. I suppose he did it as you watched, so you could see the song build up.