A redesign of the Fridgesound website.

Earlier this year I submitted a SKIF++ piece to the NYCEMF music festival. The track was accepted, but it turned out impossible for the whole SKIF++ group to go to New York (not that I didn't want to go, mind you!). Jeff was the only one able to be there at that time.

The SKIF++ performances are improvised, but guided by pre-conceived structures, and with interaction between the 'soundguys' Jeff and myself, and the 'videoguy' Bas. We decided to present the people at NYCEMF with an experiment: Bas made an interactive standalone patch in Jitter, that responds to incoming audio (much like the way he works when playing with SKIF++, except that when he's actually participating in the performance, he'll tweak the way the patch responds to our audio) and Jeff and myself choose a track from our forthcoming album and extracted only my part from it. At the concert, Jeff performed solo along this track whilst interacting with the Jitter patch. From what I heard, the audience was thrilled by the result.

The audio-visual composition Solitude played probably for the last time at the Frascati Theater in March 2009. It was a succes, with a full house 4 times in a row. I was very glad to see a number of people that hadn't experienced it yet: Jaap ter Linden (my father-in-law and famous early music specialist), Louis Andriessen, Jacqueline Oskamp (currently writing a book on the history of Dutch electronic music), the STEIM crew (Nico, Kees, Erika).

In March I visited the Borealis festival in Bergen Norway to give a lecture on STEIM and perform with John Ferguson from Culturelab (Newcastle UK) as Whistle Pig Saloon. Before the concert, we spend a day in the BEK studio, recording possibly the next Whistle Pig Saloon album. BEK is a place very similar to STEIM, although smaller. Many thanks to Trond Lossius, BEK's artistic director, for arranging all that.

The studio was on the 9th floor, with windows on two sides looking out over the bay and the mountains - a very inspiring view! Recording went well, first we were searching a bit, but things became more tight later. I haven't gone through all the takes yet, but I think there's some nice new material.

We also took some time to think about a structure for the concert, something we didn't do for the DNK concert the week before. My notes:

• start free, John standing
  
• after a while, go to a big buildup
  
• after the climax, repetitive small sounds are leftover, very quiet
  
• John goes into granular stuff, balancing the guitar/Wii
  
• John sitting down, ebow & more plain guitar
  
• back to textural, repetitive, Robert introduces the final forcefully
  
• in general: stay a while at certain places, give space to eachother
  

Borealis 2009 was the first installment curated by Alwynne Pritchard, winner of the Ton Bruynèl price 2005 in the Gaudeamus Music Week in collaboration with STEIM. The program was varied under the theme 'George and the lion'. There were a number of works by Michael Finnissy performed by the Asamisimasa ensemble, works for a huge stack of organs, installations in a church, the Dutch POW Ensemble performing on the local race track and a couple of films being shown in an intimate setting.

The highlights:

• MEM1 (Laura & Mark Cetilia) created a beautiful soundworld of subtly processed cello and an analog synth, building up from barely audible via high pitched screetching to waves of noise, moving between the 4 speakers with grand gestures. At the end, after 40 minutes, I wasn't sure if the chill on my back was from the music or someone opening the outside door to let the Bergen air come in.


• Pascal Baltazar presented a number of improvisations, using crispy sounds and heavy bass, performed using a custom tabletop controller. The broad and active gestures of the performer and the well-balanced structures made for an impressive concert.

(photos by Thor Brødreskift)

More photos at Flickr.

On March 12 ABATTOIR played a concert at STEIM again - where it all started in May 2008. After that initial period of studio recordings and concerts, Audrey and myself did a short tour (6 concerts in a week) in November 2008. After the Cologne gig on March 5 this was our second this year. And it was good! Amazing how comfortable it feels, never that feeling of having to play to avoid silences, or having to stop playing because the other cannot be heard. The audience was also captured, judging by the big applause and the nice comments after the concert. The whole thing was recorded, and a part will actually end up on the CD, to be released probably in June on Evil Rabbit Records. An excerpt can be heard on the ABATTOIR page.