Looped in

A couple of years ago, on my way home from work one evening, I let several trains go by as I stood listening in the subway to a guitarist playing Hendrix. He had a tape machine on which he’d looped the rhythm line from “All Along the Watchtower,” over which he was fiercely playing the melody. The effect was hauntingly good.

But even he couldn’t touch Reggie Watts, whose performance at the PopTech conference is a delirious and surreal blend of Bobby McFerrin, Laurie Anderson, and Steven Wright.

If you like sonic oddities, you might also give Sxip Shirey a listen. (In fact, Watts appears with Shirey in the clip from Joe’s Pub.) And for an overview of sound manipulation for musical ends, check out the massively entertaining “Raiding the 20th Century” by the DJ Food collective.