Get to know some of Brisbane's best looping artists at The Royal in Nundah with their weekly In The Loop live series, which features folk musician Andy Ellem in December.
Though he's now one of Brisbane's up-and-coming singer-songwriters, Andy had something of a delayed start to his music career. “I've had a little bit of a different start to the other guys on the circuit doing the same thing in that I came out of school and studied to be a psychologist,” Andy says.“After finishing that I thought 'who wants a 21-year-old psychologist who doesn't know anything about the world?'. So I took a two-year trip travelling through the Americas.”
On his travels, Andy picked up the guitar and found he had a knack for writing as well as performing. As a strictly solo musician, Andy says looping allows him the sonic variety of performing with a band without compromising on his creativity.
“More than anything, the beauty of looping for me has been in songwriting so far that working as a solo artist I've never had the desire to join a band or do things as a collective,” he says.
“I have a style I like to write in and I have, not necessarily a message I want to communicate but ideas I want to explore and things I want to look into. In the way I live my life, I'm very easygoing; in the music that I make I'm happy to take things onboard but I really want it to be my artistic expression.”
Looping allows an artist to record phrases of music then play them back on a loop in real-time. In the live space, audiences actually watch the artist build a song before them, with each performance different to the one before.
“You catch a tasty chord progression or arpeggiated lick and from that you stack something on top. I'm all about authenticity and organic growth, and for me that's what looping feels like.”
The Royal at Nundah presents their In The Loop series every Friday night, with Andy having already performed to an audience that he says seemed to really appreciate the art of what he does. “It was really nice, the sound system was great and the feeling of the room was really good,” he says.
“At The Royal there was real engagement, people sitting down and getting locked into it. It's also a beautiful thing that I've realised the more looping you do, the better looping you do. Playing at The Royal I could work people through what I was doing. It's a one-way discussion but it's a discussion about what you're doing.”
Andy next performs as part if In The Loop in December. “I don't have anything planned for the next gig at The Royal, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.”
