Also some new reviews of my work appeared: on Stranger, Whistle Pig Saloon, Fury and OfficeR's latest album Recording the Grain.

Out for now, changing dipers.

The CD is for sale at Creative Sources and Fridgesound.

Track listing:

1 Stranger

No Man's Land soundtrack
2 Boise City, No Man's Land
3 A hard place to love
4 The first black duster
5 The skies that brought no rain, only dirt
6 Killing animals
7 Ruth Nell
8 Black sunday
9 Hope

10 Stranger (ambient)

No Man's Land deals with the Dust Bowl period in the USA, particularly with the people who lived and stayed in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The film portrays the story of Hazel Lucas, who migrated to Boise City in Cimarron County as a child and lived through the worst hard times during this ecological and economical disaster. The story is adapted from the book 'The worst hard time' by Timothy Egan. Most of the sounds on the soundtrack are produced in the CEM studio at WORM Rotterdam with the ARP 2500 and Korg MS-20 synthesizers and a Synton stereo EQ.

Stranger is inspired by Albert Camus' L’Étranger, Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep, the film Bladerunner and as always by L.E.J. Brouwer. Utilizing a formalized process, the sounds were taken from one single source, processed at EMS Stockholm and put together at STEIM Amsterdam and Culture Lab Newcastle.

Reading 'A wild sheep chase' by Murakami again, now in English (which feels like its original language, which it is not of course). Noticing different things from last time (which must have been more than 5 years ago): the girl with the beautiful ears is the reincarnation of the girl the story starts with. And: the main character tells the story and tries to make you believe it's about other people (the deceased girl, the girl with the beautiful ears, The Rat) but it is actually about himself. Might it be one big metafor? About his incapability to make decisions, to have an opinion about anything? Reminds me of the main character in Camus' L'Étranger.

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 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.

(photos by Joker Nies)

STEIM was invited as special guest to the Spark festival in Minneapolis, USA. Takuro Mizuta Lippit, Joel Ryan and Robert van Heumen performed concerts, and held keynote lectures.

The festival took place around the University of Minesota campus, so all venues and lecture spaces were walking distance. A new aquisition this year was the Bedlam Theater, where most of the evening and late night concerts took place - a very intimate space, but still big enough to fit quite a crowd. Speaking of crowds, it was amazing how the organizers managed to get such large audiences interested in experimental music. Although Pole’s dance music probably helped…

The festival was a nice mix between academic lectures and presentations, installations, social events (Ali Momeni showing groups of visitors around the Fine Arts building), performances and meals ;) Some of the highlights:

• Jeff Lubow from CNMAT: improv with Monomachine & Machinedrum, skipping beats, beautiful sounds


• David Bithell (UNT Texas) & Ali Momeni (UMN Minneapolis) performed their piece Liminal surface: moving around wooden blocks on contact mic’d surface, totally choreographed and fast, very musical and theatrical


• Alison Ogden (Louisville KY)’s piece Attabi: clarinet & electronics in balance, nice and dissonant, very much sound-based as opposed to a lot of pieces at the festival that were more traditional


• Krzysztof Wolek (Louisville KY) & Alison Ogden: improv ambient with nice soundfields;  too bad they were hiding behind their laptops


• Ted Coffey’s piece Blue Cycle Noise; guided by a text about noise which was projected in a nice way, with good vocal processing and ‘noise’ sounds


• Lorenzo Bianchi (sound) and Michele di Stefano (choreography) Comfort: interesting to see a modern dance piece at a festival like this - great piece, very good dancers, music and movement went well together

Some photographs.

I'm very happy that my work Solitude is showing in Amsterdam, finally! It will play on March 18 - 21 at the Frascati Theater. A preview:

Also there's a video of the Whistle Pig Saloon concert at STEIM last November.

For a complete listing of events see the events section.

On another note: I've finally sold my Lincoln Continental. Happy to finally give it a better home, but sad to miss it. It's a beautiful car....

(by Frank Baldé)

No Man's Land

This radiophonic work deals with the Dust Bowl period in the USA, specifically with the people that lived in the Oklahoma Panhandle, the extreme western region of the state Oklahoma. We will hear the story of Hazel Lucas, who migrated to Boise City, Cimmaron County with her parents and who lived through the worst hard times during this ecological and economical disaster. The story is taked from the book 'The worst hard time' by Timothy Egan. Most of the sounds are produced in the CEM studio at WORM Rotterdam with the ARP2500 and the Korg MS-20 synthesizers and a Synton stereo EQ. The voice is by Marilyn Ivy and the production is done by Robert van Heumen.

Recording the Grain is doordrongen van vrije jazz. Koen Nutters, Dirk Bruinsman, Morten J Olsen, Sakir Oguz Buyukberber, Jeff Carey en Robert Van Heumen treden in muzikale dialoog en dit leidt tot spannende experimenten. Actie en reactie vinden elkaar. Spanning en eenvoud gaan hand en hand. Melodieën ontwikkelen zich en gaan over in andere structuren. Recording the Grain vormt zo een goed bewijs dat binnen de wereld van vrije jazz en improvisatie nog interessante experimenten mogelijk zijn.

And a review by Frans de Waard for Vitalweekly:

Office-R(6) is a sort of big band, in which North meets South and West meets East. Morten Olsen on percussion, Koen Nutters on bass and structure, Robert van Heumen on laptop (running LiSa), Jeff Carey on laptop (with Super Collider), Sakir Oguz on Buyukberber and bass clarinet and Dirk Bruinsma on soprano and baritone sax. These people work together in various combinations under the big banner of N-Collective. From what I gather from the information they operate in strict improvisation mood. It seems without any post editing. Acoustic and electronic meet up in a great way. A great way that needs a lot of concentration to fully grasp what they are doing, as this is certainly not easy listening music. Hectic, nervous, intense. Sometimes its hard to tell what is what around and that is something that is a great quality of this. Highly demanding and highly rewarding music. (FdW)