More than four months have passed since we checked in with Ted Laderas, whose Oo-Ray takes an improvisatory, extended-technique, technologically enabled approach to the cello. Uploaded at the tail end of 2008 to his website, 15people.net, is a half hour live performance recorded just a few days prior (MP3). It’s necessary listening. This isn’t just a matter of looping, so that he can play against himself, deeply bowed moments plotted atop tremulous backing textures, but that’s there aplenty. Nor is it just about convincing audiences that the cello is no less a feedback-friendly instrument than a Stratocaster, which he proves to be the case. Laderas digs deeply into the cello’s vocabulary, and plays up its rougher features, making a clear parallel between the resonant strings and the corrugated noise he prods from them, thanks to various laptop-powered processes.
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