About John Derek Bishop // Tortusa
John Derek Bishop (alias Tortusa) is a Norwegian-American electronic musician and producer from Stavanger, Norway. He has released three albums on Jazzland Recordings and was nominated for the Spellemann Prize (Norwegian Grammy) for «I Know This Place - The Eivind Aarset Collages». The albums have received good critics from Germany, Norway, Canada and England. He has collaborated and released music with Eivind Aarset, Arve Henriksen, Erland Dahlen, Jan Bang, and more. Bishop frequently performs live in Germany, Poland, England and Norway.
A cornerstone in Tortusa´s production is the texture and timbre of sound. He searches for sounds that are out of the ordinary and places the listener in different emotional states. For compositional processes, Tortusa utilizes both hardware equipment and software including retro tape recorders, modular synthesizers, samplers and a diverse array of other tools. On stage Tortusa live samples the musicians he plays with creating an intense and spontaneous experience. Aside from making music he works with photography and has made the cover art for his albums.
A cornerstone in Tortusa´s production is the texture and timbre of sound. He searches for sounds that are out of the ordinary and places the listener in different emotional states. For compositional processes, Tortusa utilizes both hardware equipment and software including retro tape recorders, modular synthesizers, samplers and a diverse array of other tools. On stage Tortusa live samples the musicians he plays with creating an intense and spontaneous experience. Aside from making music he works with photography and has made the cover art for his albums.
Bishop´s main instrument when performing is live-sampling. Below is a live-sampling studio performance with saxophonist Inge Weatherhead Breistein, all recorded live with no overdubs.
