The last couple of months I've started a fruitful collaboration with visual artist Susan Happersett from Jersey City, resulting in two stop-motion video's with a soundtrack: fibonacci scroll and Fashion Week.

Both video's were constructed by photographing every frame by hand by Susan and her partner Gertjan, then collected into a video. The soundtrack was added afterwards. On fibonacci scroll I wanted to double the rhythm created by the marching scribblings on the screen in the beginning, then flipping the atmosphere around in the second part. For Fashion Week I created a kit on my MachineDrum (made by Elektron) and punched in/out various sounds while watching the video. Creating a number of variations I choose the one that fitted best in the end.

The full video's will probably be put online some time in the future, but since they will be submitted to various festivals and museums I can't give more than a glimpse right now.

Below a review of ABATTOIR's concert in the STEIM showcase program at Japan Society in New York City on May 8 2010.

An evening of performances associated with the Amsterdam-based Studio of Electro-Instrumental Music isn't the usual fare for the Japan Society, but if the performers were mostly European, the center's director, Takuro Mizuta Lippit aka dj sniff, fit the usual demographic for the May 8th showcase. And whatever excuse it takes to get a taste of the famed Dutch center in New York was welcome. The evening opened with Yutaka Makino layering loud and dense plateaus of electronic sound in complete darkness; he calls his work three dimensional, but in this instance at least the dimensions could only be sensed. The duo ABATTOIR, with Robert van Heumen processing Audrey Chen's vocals and cello live, proved to be the highlight of the evening, accentuated by the theater's excellent sound system. Every click, scrape and exhalation was plainly audibly through their arc of sparse to loud to delicate beauty. dj sniff collided heavy sax records with Otomo Yoshihide and Yamatanka Eye before resolving with Coltrane, creating a turntablist free jazz tumbler. The final set featured electronicist Yannis Kyriakides taking a feed from Andy Moor's electric guitar that rocked and only got better when Kyriakides mixed in white noise and disembodied crowd sounds, creating an expansive stereo field. With workshops and exhibitions on electronic music-making, including labs designed for children, the weekend was both exciting and pleasantly demystifying.

Kurt Gottschalk for All About Jazz

So what's this all about? See for yourself: