I’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of things with a lot of musical instruments over the years, but I don’t think I’d ever seen an improvising, live-looping percussionist before Mitchell Beck and I shared a Bushwick Book Club bill a while back. (I think it was on the works of Margaret Wise Brown.) What he does with a vibraphone and various other percussive elements, along with looping and other effects pedals, is truly a wonder to behold.
Though I recommend seeing it in person whenever you can, “Cryosphere” is a fantastic recorded example of Mitchell’s work in this vein. Here, the “other percussive element” in question is a ceramic flower pot (bonus points if you can identify which of these sounds is the flower pot), but the vibraphone takes center stage, blasting out of the gate with a propulsive 5/8 phrase, which is developed, layered, fleshed out, and then completely dissected and distorted over the course of five minutes. Even by the end, as everything freezes up and slow down, you can still perceive traces of the original starting point through the layers of icy distortion, calling out to you – either for rescue, or to join them in the blissful oblivion of the cryosphere.