Shackle is releasing their music and video as the Shackle Stick: a USB stick designed by artist Isabelle Vigier. The Shackle Stick is funded using Kickstarter crowdfunding. Thanks to all our backers! We expect to be sending out Shackle Sticks early August.

Special thanks to our $50+ backers: Ned McGowan, Juraj Kojs, Jaap ter Linden, Jorrit Dijkstra, Ulrike, David LaBerge, Reid Robins, Martin Parker, Marnix, Tijn & Francien and Mirjam ter Linden. Very special thanks to Isabelle Vigier for making the beautiful design and Maarten van Rossem for making the Shackle videoclip.

Seems Firefox has killed Soundcloud. If you see only white boxes below, go to http://soundcloud.com/vanhuman to listen. Sorry 'bout that.

(individual photos by Ken Vos)

Whistle Pig Saloon are Robert van Heumen on laptop and controllers and John Ferguson on guitar and effects. Their music deals with drastically misshapen textures, instigated at first by Ferguson’s axe; at times they sound processed in advance and already unrecognisable per se, or else the cure applied by Van Heumen alters – make that “devastates” – whatever original trait is left of the six-stringed apparatus. It goes without saying that the large part of this record is frantically running from an inner space to the other, its whimsicality dictated by systematic changes in timbre and dynamics. There were occasions, during a headphone sitting, in which your correspondent was continually decreasing the volume to evade membrane stabbing. Essentially, a sense of explosive fluency underlines the skilled building of a 43-minute textural citadel, presenting the project as an interactive 2-head unit that knows what to do at any given moment. Scrambling across a multitude of dangers, the couple manages to remain unscathed by the redundant garbles that frequently classify several brands of feather-brained computer-fuelled gobbledygook. Starting from semi-agnosticism in terms of related genres, these gentlemen ended up creating a form of their own.

Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes

More info: hardhatarea.com/stranger.

With the funding system in NL going into stone age mode, I count myself lucky to have received a grant from the Performing Arts Fund to continue our (Anne LaBerge and myself) work on the Shackle Affair project. We've already started preliminary tests, and it is exciting to expand our system into new territory. We're also preparing a tour to Australia and New Zealand for Sept 2012.

Another (rather daunting) task I've set myself, is to rebuild my LiSa setup in SuperCollider. LiSa is the STEIM software that I grew up with as an improvising musician, but the chances are slim that it will be supported into the next (and actually current) Mac OS X release. This is not an easy task, as LiSa is very good at what it does, and although SuperCollider is infinitely more flexible, it will be hard to exactly duplicate the functionality of LiSa. But I guess it is also healthy to every now and then reconsider your working methods.

Aside from these research-type things, there are also quite some improv concerts coming up. I will be happy to play again. For a complete listing see the events page. These concerts include three performances of a derived version of the soundwalk Like Harry. With Simone de Jong I will present a version of this soundwalk in a cozy lounge atmosphere.

In composing mode, I will start to work on a big electronic composition for the Call and Response collective in London. It will be a multichannel composition of about 40 minutes based upon the theme 'Interpretations of Sacred Music'. This theme was proposed by myself, and together with C&R we're looking for other sound artists to invite to make a work around this theme. The details about when and where are as yet unclear, but this will happen sometime in 2012.

Now, how the f*** do I implement LiSa's patterns in SuperCollider?!?! Over and out.

O, and if from the title of this post you were expecting a solution, you'll have to get back to me in a couple of years ;)