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Oh Takeshi Kitano, you never change!

So I can't be there for this (or any 8static considering my location and transportation conundrum).  Would any kind soul be willing to record Animal Style's workshop?  It would make me a very happy man.

Move over Sherlock Holmes, I've got facebook as my Watson.

... that analogy was terrible.  I also second the BRKBRKBRKBRK idea.

I had the pleasure of seeing some of his work while in Paris, totally great.

I wanted to respond to this particular bit Rushcoil posted myself but couldn't quite find the proper words.  I'd say you pretty much hit the nail on the head though.  -  I personally am really into more ambient and experimental types of music but the people I play for are (to be somewhat general) usually into more upbeat dance music and the like.  The best solution here is to begin by playing what I think they're interested in, some sort of high tempo and high energy dance track powered by some obnoxious drums.  Then after doing that for a bit I begin to transition into my more abstract and soundscape-y pieces, some more calming and quieter music that I find more artistic pleasure in as opposed to the beginning bits (don't get me wrong, I still enjoy making them, but I prefer this sort of stuff).    Finally I transition back out into another high tempo climactic finish before leaving the stage for the next band.

Doing this also requires that I keep stage banter to a minimum if even existent at all.  This doesn't bother me, why would anyone want to hear me make stupid remarks while the next song is loading?  What I've found really works nice is to keep a bank of short loops stored in my Roland sampler and play them with a little effects thrown on overtop of it to keep things varied enough to ensure music is still going while I switch up the songs/sounds on whatever it is I'm using be it LSDJ, Nanoloop, DS-10, a toy keyboard or attempting somewhat wildly to get my circuitbent goodies to act properly.  This mixed with the whole transition into and out of various styles as I mentioned above seems to work well for me and tends to hold the audience's attention more than if I was to jump around different song formats and spend forever talking about "oh so I wrote this song while..." (no offence if you do that, some people are legitimately funny banter-ers).  But then again, it's all about reading the audience and watching how they react.  If everyone was to begin losing interest I suppose I'd probably switch back to what they're more interested in and save what I would have played for a different audience.

I feel like the whole "fuck the audience" thing has a profoundly negative connotation to it.  As a musician you can say "fuck the audience" and write whatever you like, that just means that you're writing for your own pleasure and not for what an audience is after - I totally support that, that is what I feel keeps your work an art; what it does not (and should not, though sometimes does) mean is a close attention paid to what an audience might be into and then intentionally doing the exact opposite which sometimes I feel is what musicians do just for the hell of "indie" cred or whatever you'd like to call it.

Now you've got me rambling so here's tl;dr - when I'm writing the song I am the artist and it is my duty to live independent of an audience and write what I feel like writing, when I'm live in front of an audience I feel like they went out of their way to come see me (among other artists) and perhaps even had to pay something to see me so I feel they ought to be entertained and enjoy what I do.  If that means I go home wishing I could have played my solid noise/kazoo extravaganza but instead played yet another fast LSDJ dance track, so be it, at least I made everyone happy.  In my mind it's all about judging what the audience responds well to and trying to get as much variation as possible while still keeping them happy.  I've just been fortunate to find that I can play both ambient soundscapes and fast LSDJ stuff to the same audience and keep everyone entertained as long as the transition is smooth.

I love this thread, you all are awesome.

I've PM'ed you some pieces that I feel are somewhat relevant to this project, be sure to respond with your thoughts.  I'm still doing that crazy Lazerscale2010 project where I have to write something new every day, so let me know if there's something you like that's not quite there yet - I've got a little over 200 more songs to do before the year is through.  o_o

Excellent link, Lazerbeat, for the longest time I was trying to find stuff like this and will now probably end up building off of a couple of his schematics.  I wish he had the schematics for Refomp 1.0, though, I really want to know how he got it all audio reactive with variable reactivity on that pot.