Lindsey performed “Mathematics UK Lite Live”, a composition she had been working on for awhile, using a Digitech Jam Man, Boss Loop Station, Alesis NanoVerb, Micro flanger, and MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay.

It was sort of droney, which usually puts me to sleep, but I was captivated by the her sounds. The sounds were looped and layered and changed enough to keep me interested. Also, they were easily recognized as vocal sounds. Sometimes the vocals are so modified they sound like electronic computer music. I kept thinking of my high school days singing Gregorian chant in the church choir where we all sang the same score with no parts. Lindsey was much more interesting with her multiple layers, but had a similar appeal.

Link to Lindsey’s unedited full performance (scroll through the intro by Rent Romus)

Link to Lindsey and Doug Lynner’s (the performer for the second set who played a 1975 vintage synth) duo. (Scroll through the intro) FYI, the title “Hippy Jam LSG” is what Matt Davignon, one of the curators,  likes to call jams with both performers from both sets.

I see Lindsey sometimes as she is one of the few regular attendees at the Luggage Store Gallery and other music events. I knew she was a vocalist. But, I had never heard her perform. I figured she was doing “songs” similar to popular music. I was really wrong!

Although I don’t use looping now, I did learn quite a bit about it performed as a “newbie” at the 2011 Y2K International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz California. I had never even used a looping pedal.

Both Lindsey and I performed, in different years, as newbies at the Looping Festival and attended Jazz Camp West, where we both took vocal classes,. Wow, what a coincidence!!

How did Lindsey get started doing these strange vocals?

She was working (and attending) Jazz Camp West in 2007, a camp for adults held at a Boy Scout camp in the Santa Cruz CA mountains. Kid Beyond was there, teaching beat box and live looping. Lindsey had always thought you needed a band to perform and realized she could perform solo.

Later, she met Rick Walker, the Ultimate Looping Guru who is very willing to help newbies. Rick loaned her a looper if she would agree to perform at one of his Looping Festivals in Santa Cruz.

That was it. She never looked back.

Like many of us, when she was young she played clarinet in the school band and studied piano. Previously she was in a folk singing group, “Dogs in Dublin” for awhile.

Here’s her bio from the performance on Outsound Present’s Facebook event page

Lindsey Walker has a background in textiles, photography, styling, painting, classical piano, clarinet, mandolin, folk singing, digital and analog sound synthesis as well as stompbox live looping.

Regardless of her engagement in the arts, she considers herself a machine operator of sorts using transparent layers of breath and voice as input to build sonic textures. Her B.A. in Psychology from University of California, Davis informs her exploration of perception and communication where the human senses and technology meet.

Lindsey was the first artist from the United States to contribute audio to Nat Grant’s international blogging project “Momentum,” in 2012.

In 2008 at the Y2K International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz California she was nominated for “Newbie of the Year.”
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Lindsey’s soundcloud link:

Some interesting vocal sounds there – very different from her Luggage Store performance!!