SEQUENTIAL CIRCUS

BEHIND THE SCENES WITH MIKE SCHMIDT

Sequential Circus is a Vancouver legend. Known and loved by the electronic music community, this unique event bends the boundaries of performance art and music, testing the limitations of musicians as they make live PA magic on the spot.

“The focus is always on live performance, we never have any DJs playing other people’s music,” organizer Mike Schmidt tells me over coffee. “Every act is all original music performed live using hardware. Anyone who’s been doing live PA for a period of time has had a least one occurrence where someone will come up to them during a set and say, can you play this track by this person? And you’re like um, no, I’m busy right now. Focusing primarily on live PA, it’s a good way to promote it because it’s an art form in itself.”

Sequential Circus is driven by a team so dedicated that Schmidt describes them as a “bit of a juggernaut,” now presenting their 13th event in six years on July 20th at Open Studios in Vancouver, B.C. Drew Smith is the original force behind the project, with Jody Marshall as sound guru, Jimmy Deane on visuals, and Kim Lett balancing out volunteer coordination and event management. This year artists Adam Barlev and Peter Booth will debut their latest project, a dodecahedron video mapping meld, setting the stage for a musical line-up that includes, in alphabetical order: Daega Sound, Devin Dirt, Hitori Tori, Neighbour, Schmidt’s musical alter-ego noCore and newcomer ThisIsSami. “With every Sequential [Circus], the opening act is given to someone who has never actually performed before,” Schmidt says. “We’re giving them an opportunity to get onto a big sound system and have an audience, for the very first time.”

So what is live PA, anyway? “You can do a performance where there are drum machines and synthesizers, and that’s it. But many people, myself included, use a laptop with Ableton live to send information to my hardware, taking care of the sequencing so I can tweak knobs to trigger different parts and different times. Ableton Live is definitely the most common software that people use. For my rig, I’ll have Ableton running with various midi sequences and samples, and then I’ve got midi controllers so I can control how and when the clips play, and have other effects running which I can control live on the fly, so I can pretty much perform the whole set without having to have my laptop open, making it a bit more hands on, rather than futzing about with a mouse and squinting at the screen the whole time. I’ll just use the midi controllers and then external synthesizers for all the base lines and synth lines. Typically, for the most part, the computer is just spitting out midi information and a lot if it is me sending midi information back to the computer, and that spits it out again into the gear,” is how Schmidt casually explains this mind-machine meld. Jules Lavern, the mastermind behind Hitori Tori adds, “To me, live PA involves diffusing sequences of music that I’ve made, while using as many improvised elements as possible during the performance. For example, during a live set, I’ll mix between sequences on the fly and play drum break samples with my fingers on the 64-button grid of my controller.”

“We like live music, and we love live PA.” Schmidt’s smile says it all. “There’s definitely some really good passion and drive with everyone involved. And now that we’ve done it this long, we’ve got a family collective vibe, which is really nice.”

Check out Sequential Circus 13 on Saturday, July 20 at Open Studios in Vancouver. Tickets are $20 at the door, no presale. Bring your dancing shoes! All circus freaks welcome. Listen in and find out more at www.sequentialcircus.ca

By Liz Goode