I missed a few DNK-concerts in the past weeks. I had either a job to finish on a monday night, or I was ill, or both. But yesterday I was there to witness a performance of The Pitch. As I know Koen Nutters personally, I was well aware of the existence of this group. They’ve been rehearsing for a while now, whenever all of them could be in Berlin. These weeks they’re on a tour through Europe, and arrived at what to me feels as ‘homebase’. In The Pitch Morten Olsen plays vibraphone, Koen Nutters double bass, Michael Thieke clarinet and finally there’s Boris Baltschun who plays a small 1950s pump organ. (Is it a pump organ? They list it as such).

On a French site I read the term ‘deep acoustic’ to describe their music, and I find that quite fitting. The Pitch play structured improvisations that lead to music which is simply beautiful. The music only changes slowly, it is a layering of pitches. A note from the organ, a bowed note from the bass, a bowed note and a soft repeated single note from the vibraphone (or maybe one motif), and a note from the clarinet: it weaves a ‘tapestry’ which indeed is sometimes remininiscent of Feldman (the one influence they mention). I liked it, especially the one real drone piece, in which the sounds really seemed to take off. (Well, that’s what happens during a good drone). In that piece it almost became impossible to distinghuish exactly from which instruments which sounds were coming, and the spatial aspect of the sound (sound creating the space) was foregrounded even more. There is not a lot of tension in this music – or no tension at all even (though it never is boring). It is simple, and simply beautiful. The intention seems to be to create a soundspace in which one (player and listener) can simple ‘be’ for a certain amount of time. Also as a listener I am quite into exploring such an area.

After the applause for the last piece, the musicians retired backstage. Half a minute of silence followed and almost nobody got up to get drinks. Three people began to applaud again, the rest of the audience followed. In the concentrated and restrained atmosphere of DNK, The Pitch played an encore.

A few days ago the American composer Maryanne Amacher died. At Sonic Acts we had hoped to invite her to the 2010 Poetics of Space edition.

http://www.maryanneamacher.org/Amacher_Archive_Project/Amacher_Archive_Project.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryanne_Amacher

Last friday I was in Gent, at the Baltan Laboratories Night of the Almost Cinema festival at the Vooruit. (Oops, ugly sentence in – at – of – at, anyway). I was nervous, having to moderate a talk with Edwin van der Heide, Lucas van der Velden, Bas van Koolwijk, Gert-Jan Prins and Tez, previous to 3 performances. Of course it went fine (as others said), and afterwards I could enjoy the 3 performances, having done my job.

First act: the Synchronator played by its creators Gert-Jan Prins and Bas van Koolwijk. This night was actually a kind of ‘premiere’, as the product, a neat box that adds video sync pulses and color coding to an audio input, was for the first time available, and for sale. (The very first one was bought that night by Edwin van der Heide): http://www.synchronator.com. I have seen both playing with previous set-ups before, but I do not remember that I’d ever seen them as duo. Seeing them as a duo adds a lot to the performance, as it is not only a discovery, a dialogue and a struggle between performer and instrument, resulting in sound and images. It doubles it, no squares it, by the dialogue and struggle that goes on between Bas van Koolwijk and Gert-Jan Prins. The audience follows that – and also sees how Bas van Koolwijk is more prone to ‘hook’ onto visual developments, whereas Get-jan Prins more often concentrates on what he finds in the sounds. Top.

The immersive audiovisual composition PV686 of Tez I’d seen and heard in a previous form at Sonic Acts. Here the circumstances were much better, with the four speakers in a square, and our ears on the height of the speakers. In that way the auditory illusion of the binaural beats could be enjoyed to its max, and I was happy to be able to quietly sit through the whole piece, also discovering that I found the use of flicker rather mild. (Normally I’m quick to leave when there’s a heavy use of flicker, I can’t stand strobscopes for a long time, but in PV686, it’s just the screen with slowly changing colors that flickers.) It is a rather meditative piece. I did not find the sound loud, yet some in the audience found it loud. It seemed to me that they interpreted the binaural beats as being ‘loud sounds’.

Edwin van de Heide played his LSP in the large nineteenth-century ‘balzaal’. I’ve seen it at least twice before, but never in a circumstance where I could fully concentrate on his performance. I was enthralled and fascinated this time with how he sculpts spaces with the laser and the colors. It’s SF-like, sure, and it’s the 3D-illusion, it’s like travelling into outer space, seeing the dimensions open up – all of that. But it is subtle, it is not at any moment corny, not at any moment a ‘big laser show’ on a techno party, it’s compositionally precise using all of the previous aspects to create an audiovisual experience that is interesting in itself.

Just a shame that the audience was so small. (On the other hand, that presented for those present an opportunity to enjoy it all without any distraction.)

The second of hopefully a series of rambling reviews of DNK-events, in which I will not try hard to stick to rules of good journalism, so there might be run-on sentences and you might stumble upon completely unrelated or irrelevant observations. Not to mention the spelling mistakes. Served here FYI.

[Oh, all the things you promise yourself to do. You really need perseverance, a bit of time, some stubborness, and a bit of being blind and deaf to other obligations, to keep those promises. Even quickly writing a few lines takes me more time than I’m willing to admit.]

I missed the second monday-concert of the 2009/2010 DNK-season which featured a solo performance by Kouhei Matsunaga and a reprise of the Avelãs-octet. Alas I also missed the DNK Local Noise! Night at the OCCII, with no less than seven acts, a.o. Brian McKenna, Johann Kauth and of course Andre Avelãs. Luckily I did make it to the jam-packed Australian night with a high profile program of 4 acts. I’ll give you my impressions here, and some reflections.

It started off with some straight-in-your-face hyperactive structured noise made by Australian composer/pianist Anthony Pateras on analogue stuff, and long-bearded Robin Fox on digital stuff. Though it was mostly impossible to discern which sounds exactly were made by whom, there was an element of dialogue, or maybe struggle, that made the flow of shrieks and noises interesting to listen to, apart from the element of constant discovery.

As if this was not enough (in volume and intensity), the Swiss saxophonist Antoine Chessex, started with presenting a true wall of noise, a hurricane blowing at the audience, generated by a massive distortion and heavy amplification of breathing into his tenorsax and sampled loops of it. I’ve hear Chessex before at DNK, and at the previous concert he started playing acoustically, and made a very captivating use of space and the contrast between amplified and non-amplified sounds. His approach starts where Brötzmann (and others) ended, he gives a new meaning to the tenor as an enormous “fog horn” sounding in from the sea. Chessex takes the most extreme elements of the “Machine Gun-tenor-approach”, and works wth them in a compositional way. (Also working with the space of sound). Standing waves (?) almost made the whole room vibrate and he sometimes blew almost inaudible on top of that. Reminiscent of Merzbow at its best. He ended with suddenly turning off all amplification and effects, and playing acoustically in the curtains. Then end. Again very impressive.

(Coming to think of it, it came close to what the grindcore band God was doing. I’ve heard them at Paradiso early nineties, the complete audience left, apart about 10 people, and at some point M., a friend of mine, held his ear in front of Tim Hodginkson’s sax and could not hear the sax-sound, although Hodginkson was blowing at the top of his lungs. But with God it was as if it was a case of badly balanced sound, here it was clear that it all sounded as intended).

The third set was a solo by Robin Fox, using laser. For me it was the second laser-performance in 4 days, and though there is always an initial sense of wonder on seeing the 3D-illusion, this set disappointed a bit. Or I should say that seeing Robin Fox, made clear how subtle, and complex LSP of Edwin van der Heide is, how much larger his repertoire and idiom is. Fox ony used one laser beam and no color. His mapping of sound to laser was rather dull in comparasion to Edwin van der Heide. It would have been fine for ten or fifteen minutes max, but the longer he played, the more it became apparant that the translation to laser of his improvised noise also took away the interestingness of the sound. On the other hand: the audience seemed to love it. Oh, and of course the fire alarm went off during the performance.

The night ended with the duo that I was most curious to hear: Pateras on piano with Max Kohane on drums. PIVIXKI is an ultra high energy piano-drums duo, spitting out ADHD metal-licks and condensed freejazz motives. Naked City in its hardcore-phase, only possibly more intense. There’s not one second rest, and after ten minutes of playing both are sweating ‘like hell’. The only negative thing I could say about it was that it was programmed as the last act: I was already too tired to enjoy it fully, intensely.

Ah, and on saturday I’ll have to leave Gent early enough to be back in Amsterdam, because I’ll be performing with Oorbeek at the Cyclic!-event: bikes & art. I will be playing QuicktimePro and banjo (no I’m not joking), and wear my 1975/1976 Gitane-Campagnolo shirt: http://www.cyclicamsterdam.blogspot.com/.

Tomorrow I’ll be in Gent. I will moderate a talk with Edwin van der Heide, TeZ, Lucas van der Velden (telcosystems), Bas van Koolwijk and Gert-Jan Prins as part of the Almost Cinema-program: http://vooruit.be/nl/event/2023.

Nauwelijks een ritje eigenlijk, begin van de avond even snel de racefiets op, bij storm en sporadische buien: herfst. Om geluidsopnames te maken voor een Oorbeek-performance op het Cyclic-event volgende week zaterdag: http://www.cyclicamsterdam.blogspot.com/. (Ik vrees dat de opnames meer gaan over laag overvliegende vliegtuigen dan over fietsen bij storm — ze volgden elkaar binnen de minuut op). Wel lekker om bij dat weer te rijden: er is verder niemand onderweg.

Marcusstraat – Amstel – dijkje naar snelweg – langs snelweg – Amstel – Marcusstraat

A Japanese no-wave gem. Haven’t heard it in at least 15 years (I should have a tape somewhere that M. made for me, maybe with only a part of the LP). I might not be in the mood often to listen to this kind of stuff from more than 10 minutes at a stretch, but this beats most other no wave. It’s energetic, there a real drive and excellent saxophone work… Thanks to Mutant Sounds: http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2009/09/daisuck-prostitute-lp-1981-japan.html.

The first of hopefully a series of rambling reviews of DNK-events, in which I will not try hard to stick to rules of good journalism, so there might be run-on sentences and you might stumble upon completely unrelated or irrelevant observations. Not to mention the spelling mistakes. Served here FYI.

The first time I heard Seamus Cater’s songs from his Anecdotal Music project he played solo, singing and playing the Fender Rhodes. That was earlier this year at OT301. I liked it a lot, which came as a mild surprise as I am not a big fan of singer songwriter stuff. I do like songs as a literary genre though (it’s more the whole pop-thing and the oh-hear-me-and-my-small-world-personal-troubles that turns me off). Seamus takes the song as a literary genre, and objectivates the form for instance by using the first person which is not ‘Seamus Cater’ but a third person (another artist, for instance Bas Jan Ader). Also he’s rather reaching back to ballads and folk music than to pop. (On the other hand: the singer behind the piano is immediately ‘pop’. Probably I can only take that from Seamus Cater.)

For the opening concert of DNK Seamus Cater focussed on songs about whaling and performed in trio with Viljam Nybacka on drums (yes, not on bass guitar) and Fritz Welch from the New York outfit Peeeeseye on percussion. Actually one could say it was a quartet as twice over a record player was turned on to play a whaling song from an old record.

I forget now which record it was, but it had Peggy (?) Seeger playing the banjo, and also that made my heart beat faster as it was very nice banjo playing, and I like banjo playing even more since I’ve started to play a four string tenor banjo in Irish tuning.

Seamus Cater has been researching whaling songs and other whaling material – including Moby Dick of course – and that lead to new songs. It is again a way of working with material from elsewhere. ‘Anecdotal music’ is as much a program about songs, reflecting on them, as a concert at which songs are played. I like that tension.

At DNK it was a concentrated concert, with an audience (of about 80) listening attentively to the songs. There was some fine ukulele playing by Viljam, ongoing percussive additions by Fritz Welch, and quite a bit harmonica playing by Seamus. I assume that in form and format it refers just as much to all the younger and weirder singer songwriter that I something read about (but hardly ever listen to – I’m sticking to the ‘real hardcore banjo-players’ from the 1930s now). It ended with a song from the record player about whaling in the waters of Greenland.

Together with the lecture-performance of artist Yolande Harris – she presented, a bit nervous, her current research into bio-acoustics and under-water-hearing, showing some bits from her work in progress, referring of course to Alvin Lucier.

It was a non-ordinary and pleasant way to start the DNK-season. Who starts the season of a concert series with a lecture-performance? But what would you have expected? In two weeks it’ll be MOHA!

See: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com

“Whatever the answer, experimental music doesn’t translate on paper but makes sense with a beer in hand and equally inquisitive music fans eager to talk shop. Best to experience it yourself.”

My favorite musical ‘hang-out’ is reviewed by Colin Delany in Time Out Amsterdam. The text is here: http://stopdroprocknroll.blogspot.com/2009/01/sounds-of-science.html.

DNK: http://www.dnk-amsterdam.com. Concerts start again next monday, January 12th.