Sheeran Looper +
Ed Sheeran launches his own line of looper pedals. These stomps feature hold functionality designed to undo/redo and clear your loops with ease.
Ed Sheeran launches the āLooper +ā and āLooper Xā. Both models share the same DNA as Edās signature stadium-stage looper. Crafted by Ed and his production team in collaboration with in Music Brands Inc, Sheeran Loopers showcase state-of-the-art audio technology powered by HeadRush FX.
The Sheeran Looper + is a compact, and featured-packed looper, tailor-made for street and stage performances. Looper + features the same die-cast aluminum pedals from Edās stadium-stage looper alongside a full-color LCD display, LED performance feedback, and unique looper modes to spark creativity. Looper + offers professional 32-bit audio quality, mains, and battery power options with microphone, instrument, and USB connectivity. Priced at just $299, āLooper +ā unleashes class-leading technology, catering to performers at every level ā from newcomers embarking on their looping journey to seasoned pros seeking an electrifying upgrade.
Sheeran Looper X
Looper X is a evolution of Edās stadium looping tech with pro audio, tour-grade hardware, and world-class looping software. Featuring Edās iconic Sheeran Looper workflow, precision-engineered die-cast aluminum pedals, a 7ā multi-touch display, and an RGB LED performance feedback system. Other key features include versatile looper modes, loop remix functions, real-time waveform rendering and metering, a built-in chromatic tuner, a professional Multi FX engine, and 32-bit audio powered by the mighty Headrush FX. The Sheeran Looper X includes an impressive array of professional I/O with USB audio and expandable SD card storage. Priced at just $1199, Looper X offers Ed Sheeranāssignature looper tech in a completely stand-alone package for musicians to elevate their own songwriting and craft inspiring live performances.
The Sheeran Loopers Story - (Full Version)
āWe wanted to give people all my looping tools,ā says Ed. āThe technology we developed over the past decade has helped me share my craft with people all over the world and we canāt wait to see what you can do with it.ā
āWe have worked with in Music and the team at HeadRush FX for years now, it felt like the right step to join forces and bring together all our tech to make this happen.ā
MAP: $299.
For more information, please visit sheeranloopers.com.
After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musicianās adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. āI just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,ā he says. āIt just feels kind of like youāre walking around a movie set all the time.ā
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwinās concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Bookerās self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. āI was just trying to find the things that I liked,ā he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,ā says Booker. āI just wasnāt interested in it anymore. I hadnāt heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.ā
āFor a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasnāt interested in it anymore.ā
LOWER is Bookerās most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoiseās Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Bookerās own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitarāmore atmosphere, less ānoodly stuffā: āThis album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.ā
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Bookerās creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener āBlack Oppsā is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. āLWA in the Trailer Parkā is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of āPompeii Statuesā sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of āHeavy on the Mindā are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ā60s pop of āShow and Tell.ā But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. āSlow Dance in a Gay Barā and āHope for the Night Timeā intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didnāt use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. āItās just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,ā says Booker. For him, working digitally and āin the boxā is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow peopleās minds. āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,ā he adds.
āWhen I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.ā
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didnāt use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.ā
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, āthree-dimensional worldā they were seeking. āBecause I was listening to more electronic music where thereās more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,ā says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. āI like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,ā says Booker. āEven if they donāt know what it is, theyāre catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.ā
On āSlow Dance in a Gay Bar,ā there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer āHope for the Night Timeā features sounds from Los Angelesā Grand Central Market. āSame Kind of Lonelyā features audio of Bookerās baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. āI guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,ā says Booker. āI wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.ā
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. āYou hear people talking about, āI donāt want to have kids because the world is falling apart,āā he says. āBut I mean, I feel like itās always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.ā
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with āa troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.ā That vision is present in the video for lead single āLWA in the Trailer Park.ā
