Man, unfortunately Mandoman has a terrible website with little-to-no information, with only a few really crappy MP3s, along with two poorly recorded Youtube videos. He has no albums, and no professional recordings. I don't know what the deal is. I tried to speak with him a bit last light, but he knows as much English as I do Japanese - about 5 words. He's a total enigma to me, and these connected times, that's pretty amazing. If you want to hear him, you've got to see him live. He does all of the big Looping shows around the world, and will be in Santa Cruz next week for the biggest looping fest in the world, Y2K.Quoting Russ (view post)
Here's a video, but it doesn't do justice to anything.
This recording was made about 5 years ago, and his sound is completely different now.
He also makes all of his own instruments, including this new thing he had that had pieces of bamboo attached to some kind of electronic pick-up. He's play the bamboo rods with a bow, and hit the pick-up with sticks to create percussive elements. His pedal board is also now about 4 times as big as it is in that video, and he's constantly tweaking stuff with his toes. I think he has his mandolin sent to about 4-5 different modules of effects, and he's constantly building stuff while other stuff is going on. You'll be listening to one thing, watching him, and then like 5 minutes later some new part comes out of nowhere completely takes the listener by surprise. I feel like I could study his new performances for years before being able to truly understand what he does.