George Demarest

Artist, Festival Headliner, Y2K18 Artist, Y2k22 Artist

George Demarest earned degrees in trumpet performance and computer science from the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, studying trumpet with Raymond Mase of the American Brass Quintet. He has performed with the Cincinnati Ballet, Carmen McRea, the Santa Cruz Symphony, Ensemble Monterey, New Music Works and many others.

He regularly records and performs in the San Francisco Bay Area as a freelance trumpeter, vocalist, wind synth player, keyboardist, live looper and electronic musician. He featured in the inaugural Y2K festival as well as Y2k festivals in 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

https://www.facebook.com/gfdemarest/

John Connell

Artist, Y2K18 Artist, Y2k22 Artist

Festival Headliner. John Connell AKA Future Cassette is an electronic/experimental/live looping musician from Santa Cruz, CA. John infuses his modular synth & iOS sound design with many influences, including the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, early industrial music, and UK Bass. John has performed at the Y2K International Live Looping Festival in Santa Cruz since 2008, and has has been fortunate to have toured Mexico, France, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, & Germany w/ many great friends, sharing his music.

MANDOMAN

Artist, Y2K17 Featured, Y2K18 Artist, Y2k22 Artist

Hideki Nakanishi (aka MANDOMAN) is a live looping electric mandolin player/luthier from Osaka, Japan. Hideki uses most of him time in his Sol Anemo workshop building special order handcrafted stringed instruments for superior musicians with fine touch, and when that touch comes to music he creates with many looping pedals and one electric mandolin to spend the rest of his time on, you will hear the Nature,Life and Mountains in Nara where he grew up.

R Duck

Artist, Y2K18 Artist, Y2k22 Artist

The R Duck show is a cooperation between man and machine in order to sculpt organic, improvised electronic music. The show nods its head toward old time variety shows and modern radio -life in the day- spoken dry as the coastal sands at low tide. Tune in for live improvised electronic music drama, performed by the host and a rotating chamber of special guests, using a variety of multi-effect sound processors, a studio microphone, a pickens of conventional and unconventional acoustic instruments and mass market software run on a handsome custom built portable computer designed by Happy Guy studio.

Rejyna

Artist, Y2K18 Artist, Y2k22 Artist

Festival Headliner. A multidisciplinary sound, visual and word artist, enticing inspiration from fortuity and improvisation and assembling them onto paper, photo, video and sound recordings. Rejyna’s lyrics, drawings, songs and stories are the foundation of a dozen releases by prog folk/symphonic metal band, Citadel. She’s an endorsed DigiTech artist, referred to as a JamMan guru due to her advanced utilization of sonic gadgetry, and a hyper-tutorial ethos. “I’m not a magician guarding illusionary secrets, I’m a muse-cartographer – aiding seekers with willowy maps into forests of creativity.”

Rejyna has been performing at loopfests since 2013, including Seattle, Portland, Santa Cruz and Long Beach. She is building a looplab in Burbank to showcase group looping using 360 video. She teaches, produces and collaborates, doing shows when time allows. She currently works at the largest localization studio in the world, adapting movies and television shows into every language and access service, where she recently coordinated adding sign-language into cinema using tablets and AR glasses.

Rick Walker (Y2K Loopfest Founder)

Artist, Y2K18 Artist, Y2k22 Artist

Live looping artist Rick Walker is an electronic music composer, percussionist, trapset drummer, multi-instrumentalist and found sound musician.

“I am a found sound/live looping/abstract electronica/world percussionist/drummer/lo fi toy digital video filmaker/multi media inventor living in Northern California with my wife, the talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, Chris Wedertz.

I’m a found sound/live looping/abstract electronica/multi-instrumentalist who specializes in drum set and world percussion instruments. I also am very interested in making lo fi toy video ‘animations’ for the abstract electronica compositions I make.

I also founded the Annual Y2K Series of International Live Looping Festivals held every third week of October in Santa Cruz California. We’ve hosted 200 artists from 15 different countries in the festivals 8 years of existence.
I live with my talented singersongwriter/multi-instrumentalist/produce wife in Santa Cruz, CA.”