Thinking about that I dug up some old music I worked on when living in Jersey City, using a hardware sampler, the trumpet, and a 4-track minidisc recorder. The two tracks that I can still listen to I've put online, including some great artwork, from a collection of comics I picked up at an auction upstate New York.

As for the evening concerts, I must say that not all sessions were musically great. Quite a lot were amusing, because of the awkwardness of the musicians, or because of the theatricality of it. Some performances that stood out:

Dan Blacksberg: trombone
Carson Garhart: inventions, electronics
Michael Muniak: electronics
This was my first introduction to Mike, who performed feedback with various pedals in a very instrumental way, capable of making split second decisions.

Robert van Heumen: electronics
Bill Nace: guitar
Ric Royer: voice, tapes
I don't think this one stood out musically, but the combination made for some weird action. Ric did not make any sound, but held up signs for the audience to make sound. I would sample that, and throw that back at them. Funny, but not very musical. Then there were some moments of heavy distorted interaction between me and Bill, that I enjoyed a lot.

Arrington de Dionyso: voice, bass clarinet
This was an amazing solo. The best musician of the festival. Working with resonance, throatsinging, great bassclarinet playing. Check this guy out. Also a sweet human being.

Tetuzi Akiyama: acoustic guitar
Susan Alcorn: pedal steel guitar
Tony Buck: drums
Paul Neidhardt: percussion, friction
A very quite, beautiful open quartet. Tony Buck was the star, but also Paul is a great and sensitive musician.

Arrington de Dionyso: voice, bass clarinet
Carson Garhart: inventions, electronics
Janel Leppin: cello, electronics, autoharp
Arrington again. With Carson, who makes very melancholic, melodic music with various guitar-like instruments, and Janel Leppin, who was struggeling in other sets with all her electronics, but here played some beautiful cello.

Aside from the music, we were fed every night, there was a dance party on Saturday night (very funny to see all these 'non pulsed' musicians dance their ass off) and a barbeque with crap (uh, crab) on Sunday afternoon. Great festival, great people. Recommended!

I also performed with ABATTOIR (my duo with Audrey Chen) at the H&H building, and held a lecture at Peabody conservatory. O, and then there was a recording session on Friday afternoon with Liz Albee, Arrington de Dionyso, Mike Muniak and myself. That was great, finally some duo work, and I was very glad for this opportunity to play with these great players.

ICMC08 report

The International Computer Music Conference took place in Belfast this year, at Queens University, also using SARC's diffusion system.
The conference was integrated with the Sonorities festival, which resulted in an enormous amount of concerts, concurrently with paper presentations, demo's and panels. This made it sometimes difficult to choose, and to my opinion some parts of the conference/festival suffered from that.

Every day there were paper presentations in the morning, in two spaces at the same time, and in the afternoon demo's were given, and posters presented. Due to the nature of the conference these papers were generally quite theoretical and specific. An interesting one that comes to mind was a presentation by Trond Lossius from BEK (Norway) about Jamoma (http://jamoma.org/). According to the website: Jamoma provides a clear structure and common features for building max patches. Reducing the amount of time needed to create new performance systems, and enhancing the interchange of patches amongst max users. Basically a way to control groups of parameters simultaniously.

The lunchbreak was dedicated to two sessions of concerts with electronic compositions taking place in SARC - one at 12:15 and one at 13:45. Because of the relatively small number of seats in SARC participants could only attend one of the two concerts per day. These concerts were generally quite interesting - although most pieces didn't really use the elaborate diffusion system in an effective way. Some memorable pieces:
* Butch Rovan / Correspondences: audio-visual work after Beaudelaire's Correspondances - very instrumental and lots of movement
* Carmen Caruso / Mayday: cinema-for-the-ear - beautiful sound collage
* Rikhardur H. Fridriksson / Postcards from North and South: good use of the diffusion system, beautiful sounds
* Benjamin Broening / Lamentation Alphabet: Aleph

Almost every day at night there were two concerts: an early one with mainly compositions for ensemble of soloists with electronics, and a late night concert with a bit more focus on longer sessions with more improvisation. These concerts were less interesting in general than the lunch concerts - most pieces were quite conceptual and sometimes more about technology than music. Some interesting ones:
* Scott McLaughlin / Whitewater for sax & computer: good blend of acoustic and electronic sound - good balance, neither one was dominant or leading
* Juhani Raisanen / Cringle: one of the few real electronic instruments, performed with mastery

Then there were the continous presentations in the Grand Hall: a total of three hours of tape works, repeated 3 times. Every day a block of new works. This part of the program suffered a lot from a lack of attention, as it wasn't announced very clearly, and obviously a lot of things were happening at the same time. Some memorable works:
* Martin Bedard / Check-point: interesting sounds, although the piece was too long
* Gilles Gobeil / Ombres, espaces, silences: interesting combinations of sounds, movement, drama - too long though
* Robert van Heumen / Fury: of course I can't not mention my own participation - it was good hearing it a couple of times, and I can already hear some improvements...

All in all a good conference. Lots of opportunities to meet people, and lots of music. Next year in Canada, McGill University.

Trying to get some perspective. Camping on primitive campgrounds, living life at its most basic. And seeing real starry skies and hearing your blood in your ears from silence.

Pictures later, as well as stories.

I will always remember Michel as playful, friendly, and determined. Being happy as a little kid playing with electronic instruments, tiny little gadgets and virtual toys, keeping the weird bunch of people at STEIM motivated and feeling good, and being determined about what direction to go with STEIM.

Coming days will be strange, stressfull, and soothing at the same time with all positive messages from all over the world coming in.

My thoughts are with Kristina and Rosa.

You can leave your condolances at www.steim.org/michel/.

David Stubbs - The Wire magazine

Currently I'm still thrown off balance quite a bit with all the events from the last couple of weeks. STEIM threatened to be shut down and other personal stuff around the workplace. Thinking of STEIM, it's not so much that I fear losing my job. I'm just very angry that people would risk losing such a valuable place. It's injustice. But well, lots of people said that much better and in prettier words than I can... all the letters that came in.

In these times I can find solace with music. Not only my own, but just beautiful music. Like Martha Wainwright's 'I know you're married but I've got feelings too' (great title!), Portishead's Third, or just straightforward Linkin park's Hybrid Theory.

[...] Robert van Heumen and Audrey Chen followed. They have performed together in various combinations before in Amsterdam and Chen’s home city of Baltimore, but this was their first duo. Chen played ‘cello with more finesse than I have seen her do before. When I have seen her in the past she has employed the ‘cello and electronics mainly as drone instruments, with her often primal vocalizations leading the performance. Tonight her voice fed hungrily and playfully off her capricious ‘cello playing. Devoted to not holding back when she performs, it was a pleasure to see her working so hard to match van Heumen’s often brutal digital transformations of her sound. There were several moments of pure psychedelia as van Heumen allowed untransposed, ungranulated repetitions of Chen’s voice to come through—often considered dangerous territory in some circles but used here in good taste. Van Heumen tends to play forcefully and loudly, and tonight was no exception. However, I noted positively that his choices seemed to be more calculated and considered than usual, with less attention given to his joystick controller and more focus on subtle actions and longer-term transformations. I loved it when, halfway through the second of two extended pieces, he took Chen’s keening voice and filtered it in such a way that, for a moment, it seemed that George Martin, the revered Beatles producer, had entered the room.

Available on iTunes: link

Also, a little more to the point, my fresh (hehe) label fridgesound released the new SKIF++ enhanced CD. It's for sale on the labels website.

O, and give Barry Adamson a listen - Stranger of a Sofa is a very nice, a little dark, but overall very happy album. And usually I hate happy music - so that says something. You can listen now (don't know how long they will keep it there) at VPRO's 3voor12 luisterpaal.

Finally, talking about media, listen to the first recording ever made.