Hi

I have been working on a side project for a short while, style of - ambient, atmospheric, alternative, repetitive tape loop kind of vibe.
My set-up includes electric guitars, acoustic guitar, G5, Reason, Ableton Live, Absynth, EWS Orchestra Gold, Marshall JCM 900 hi gain amp head and 4x12 cab, Fender Deluxe combo amp, big muff pedal, MXR Distortion II pedal, ebow, Rode NT2A mic, Tascam FW-1082 mixer, CME UF6 midi keyboard, Korg padKontrol. KRK Rockit 6 monitors.

I am now interested in playing a couple of gigs, but I'm struggling for ideas of how to reproduce my sound in a live environment. It would need to be as 'live' as possible, so the guitar parts I would play myself, I have a bass player and violinists to join me, the main thing that worries me is the amount of drones and atmospheres that I use. I understand I could set up a laptop running Ableton Live / Absynth and either trigger loops or have someone play through a midi keyboard. The problem I have with that is I have always been a bit bored at gigs when I see someone with a laptop just 'twiddling a few knobs' lol. I want to keep it as 'real' as possible. One idea I had was to get a bunch of people to join me feeding back on guitar and bass to create some nice drone textures, I'm not too bothered if the drones don't sound exactly as the recorded version.

Has anyone one got any suggestions/comments?

Thanks for your time!

PS - I guess it would help if you have a listen to my music