David Toop, Scanner, Lawrence English - Entomologists (2020)

A recollection from David Toop...
What I remember of gigs like this one - the mid-post-ambient period you might say, which was after chill out rooms but preceding the pre-pandemic live situation in which people listen with great respect and closeness - is that audiences came not specifically to be audiences but to socialise, to drink and smoke (this was before the indoor smoking ban), to talk and to be in proximity to music that was experimental within the ambient, electronica and beats field. In certain respects that was exciting but it could make life hard for performers. Basically you were fighting for attention with a high noise floor of chatter, which obviously predetermined certain aspects of the music. Faint or fantastically detailed were both impossible. When we played this gig I had been working on my Black Chamber LP and so I can hear many of those sounds. At the time I was trying to work out the technical and conceptual problems of how to change my performance approach, all of which bring back a particular moment in time. This trio was very compatible, socially and musically, and it gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to hear that togetherness through the music.