Brian Olewnick is writing a biography of Keith Rowe, & has a very nice blog: http://olewnick.blogspot.com/.

I hardly ever buy CDs. I would have to buy too many… would want to buy too many to satisfy my need ‘to know everything’. That’s why long ago I decided not to create a nice collection of favorite music. (Meanwhile I have 600 cassette-tapes and about 200 GB of mp3s).

Saturday a package from Italy arrived: the 2 CD / 1 DVD box of Gruppo Improvvisazione Nuovo Consonanza. I guess I’ve surfed to the site of Die Schachtel ten times at least to look at the box: http://www.die-schachtel.com/. Last week I finally ordered one.

Well what to say… Being used to listening to mp3s I’m first of all amazed of the sound — or is that because of the music and not only because of the sound quality?

Secondly I become agitated and even angry: this music is so good! How is it possible that this is the very first time in my life that I (consciously) hear Gruppo Improvvisazione Nuovo Consonanza? Of course, I’ve known of their existence since years (this after all is the collective of composers that Ennio Morricone was part of), and true, I never dug deep enough into libraries to get my hands on one of their LPs. Their music was never played in any radio programme, hardly was mentioned at any time (except in some books). Of course it’s nice to that you can discover something new that is so close to your heart when you’ve been on this globe for more than 41 years. But also imagine what this says about the quality of our life, or our media, what ‘they’ play back to us.

This is also a lesson for myself: don’t compromise. Please don’t compromise. Life’s too precious for that.

… as a record of my enthusiasm.

http://www.die-schachtel.com/html/ds13.htm
http://www.nuovaconsonanza.it/

Back in 1983 / 1984 the poet bp Nichols wrote a dozen programmed kinetic poems for the Apple II. They are revived, by Jim Andrews and others, in different formats: http://vispo.com/bp.

It’s also a good example of the problematics concerning the conservation of digital art…

It’s an incentive to take blogging seriously: the Dutch Filosofieblog — http://www.filosofieblog.nl/ — an initiative of Boom Publishers, puts my blog in the linkslist (and has given me a login).

Filosofieblog hopes to become the Dutch equivalent of Long Sunday — http://www.long-sunday.net/ (a blog that I follow & read occasionaly) — and Ephilosopher — http://www.ephilosopher.com/ — (a site I did not know before).

Well, it’s a bit unfortunate that I haven’t read a lot lately, and no philosophy at all, and am mostly occupied by ‘moving house’… ah well, I did read a bit about/by Vilem Flusser (biography). But I wish I had the time for a little reappraisal of Baudrillard, now that he died. A little piece about what reading him at the end of the eighties meant (way before “the world wide web” happened) — when his text opened up an adventurous side of philosophy, and a fascinating, and stimulating way of theorizing the (postmodern) world. Or so it seemed at that time for a student of literary theory.

Friday March 9th, big party — well, multiple parties — at Mediamatic: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-14430-nl.html, the DIY Goodbye Party: goodbye to Radio Rietveld@SMCS, goodbye to Martin Butler’s Girlfriend Experience, plus the second Open DI-night, curated by DNK in the Mediamatic Garagebox, plus plus: Bong-Ra (!), and more.

A-and I’ll be doing a short solo-piece for laptop + cd-player (uh… well, actually I’ll simply be mixing & manipulating soundfiles) in the Open DI-programme. A-and, oops, my name is in this list: Juan Parra Cancino, James Beckett, Barbara Luenenburg & Nick Fells, Matthijs Kouw, Seamus Cater, Viljam Nybacka, POLYPHAKE, ciao! bird, Andre Avelas, Dirk Bruinsma, Mike Otten, Koen Nutters, Arie Altena, Sylvi Kretzschmar, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec.

Well, it’ll be a crazy night.

Suppose y’all know Openstreetmap: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Main_Page; and maybe you’ve seen the works of Christian Nold? http://www.biomapping.net/index.htm and Daniel Belasco Rogers? http://www.planbperformance.net/dan/index.htm.

Negrophonic generously provides us with a short text of Gregory Whitehead here: http://www.negrophonic.com/2007/mother-radio-cautionary/. There’s a Radio-salon at Mediamatic on the 15th: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-14055-en.html, and also a radio-to-go-workshop: http://www.mediamatic.net/artefact-13443-en.html.

But I’m on my way to the McLuhan-conference in Bayreuth: http://mcluhan.uni-bayreuth.de. Hopefully there will be internet-access in the conference-room, if so I’ll do some live-blogging.

Oh well, and thursday you’ll be able to catch a duo-performance of crazy-man Eugene Chadbourne with Kevin Blechdom at OT301: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/?dept=AGENDA&article=28.

Oorbeek-tribute to Karel Appel, movie made by Maarten Hepp – in 2005 –, now on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=sZQ6AWBlmKoM.

It was a stunning DNK-concert (co-production with PSWAR), last monday at OT301. We’d hoped for a big crowd, we got more than the maximum audience of about 160 to 180 persons. There was no way to fit in more. People were sitting right up to the tables of the musicians and behind them even. About 20 people were standing outside, able to listen, but not see. And they were totally silent. Otomo, Doerner, Sachiko M and Brandlmayr played their music at the lowest possible volume. It was quite an experience.

And then after the break, ‘mayhem’ broke lose when Phô started to play, as if a short-circuit occurred: fireworks. Morten Olsen (by far my favorite drummer, maybe even of all time…), Nicholas Fields (who broke his bass-peddle halfway through) & Bjornar Habbestad on flute + electronics start at the highest possible intensity of playing & stayed there for more than half an hour continuously, without ever, not even for a second, bringing it down.

Yesterday (euh, friday) another great concert at OT301 – this one organized by Colin McLean. The well-known duo of Terrie Ex & Andy Moor kicked off, playing more subtle and more varied than I’d heard ever before. Then the floor was to a freejazz blow-out of Ken Vandermark (http://www.kenvandermark.com/) and Paal Nillson-Love – another stunning drummer from Norway. And a quartet of both duo’s to end. Very nice to hear some “good old-fashioned” freejazz…

And well, monday there’s another interesting night at DNK: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/. A double bill of Kapotte Muziek (‘Broken Music”) followed by the Libanese free improv trio of Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui and Raed Yassin. Mazen Kerbaj is the new director of STEIM and was world famous in ‘the blogoshpere’ last summer during the Israel-Libanon war because of his drawings: http://www.kerbaj.com/ & http://mazenkerblog.blogspot.com/.

Not to be missed if you’re living in or around Amsterdam — well worth the travel if you come from a bit further away — next monday, 29th of january a DNK – PSWAR co-production at OT301 a concert with the incredible line-up of:

1
Yoshihide Otomo – turntables
Sachiko M – electronics
Martin Brandlmayr – drums
Axel D̦rner Рtrumpet

(They’re touring Europe & this is their only peformance in the Netherlands).

2.
Phô
(Bjornar Habbestadt, Morten Olsen, Nicholas Fields)

I’m looking forward to a packed OT301. 4 euro’s, 21.30, Overtoom 301.
Check http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com/?dept=AGENDA&article=20.

Blogging at a very low pace – too many things on my head (Dutch: “te veel andere dingen aan mn kop”).

For instance, another Oorbeek-appearance at the Stedelijk – saturday 27th, 16.00 – 18.00 at Radio Rietveld. This is our third Stedelijk-gig: 1. “illegal” roof concert organized by Mediamatic. 2. Mark van Tongeren concert in the (now defunct???) series of modern music. 3. Radio Rietveld. Funny.

http://www.rrsmcs.nl/new.html
http://www.radiorietveld.nl/
http://www.oorbeek.net