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.

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/.

http://throat-singing.blogspot.com/index.html is the (very nice) blog of Robert Beahrs – he writes about his travels around the world, researching throat singing. He visited the Jew’s Harp Festival, last summer & saw Koichi Makigami performing with Oorbeek. He calls is a “life changing performance of honest musical dialogue”.

Wow.

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

My ears aren’t used to a ‘bass’ anymore. A whole long year long I’ve been listening to music & barely been able to hear a good low bass sound. I’ve been listening to loads of mp3s through either little headphones or the tiny speakers of my powerbook. There’s no bass there.

I just connected my powerbook to ‘real’ speakers – Tannoy MX1’s – that have quite a heavy bass-sound. I do not believe my ears. I do not understand anymore what I am hearing. My ears have to adapt. The sound is so much richer, and it is so ‘low’…

It makes you wonder – again – what the iPod-craze is doing to our perception of sound and our perception of music.

(Not that I am a stereo-freak. Far from it. I think one’s ears do adapt, fill in, filter, imagine what is missing. Maybe when listening one always imagines what the music should sound like?)

I bought an ipod-nano — for all the train travelling I’ll have to do next year. I must say, it’s such a stylish & fashionable thing that I feel very tempted to cover it in ugly stickers.

I bought my brother the dvd We Jam Econo as present; the story of the American punk-band The Minutemen – d. boon, mike watt & george hurley – plus three complete live sets: http://www.theminutemen.com/. I just came back from his house where we watched 2 of the live sets – I admit I already watched the documentary yesterday (and afterwards ran off to an Oorbeek-rehearsal – where the idea was to spend time with F.). Well, what shall I say… It’s fucking awesome? It is. And I get into such a good mood from watching & listening to the Minutemen.

Discussing it with my brother – how we both like this band, and why. I know them through him. He says he doesn’t really remember how he got into it then, around 1985, 1986 – how friends of his who were into punk and the Dead Kennedy’s didn’t ‘get’ the Minutemen. That he probably would not have liked it himself had he not gotten into listening to jazz (Coltrane, Ayler, Cecil Taylor) through me.

The Minutemen are ‘real’ punk – in the sense that punk is about doing it yourself, making your own thing, creating something which is real and you, not copying anything – so also not copying other punk bands. Discovering. And not wanting to be like somebody else. And it always sounds that such is the way the music of the Minutemen was made: this is us and we play bass, drums and guitar – and each of us plays in their own style and it magically comes together. This is how you play together.

& I love their songs – they are so bare-bones and ‘simple’. You hear what the building blocks are and how they click. It is simple, but well, complex in the interlocking and succession of simple elements – mike watt’s baselines, geoff hurley’s crazy drumming (not at all how a punk drummer ‘should’ drum), boon’s piercing & funky guitarbits.

& it is such a joy to see them perform live on a dvd & see d. boon jumping on stage. (Needless to say, I have never seen them live – yes, later on I say mike watt a few times with george hurley and I guess Eliott Sharpe, and also with dos – but never the Minutemen).

In the States the Minutemen seem to be sort of legendary by now, it seems. I have the feeling they’re not so big in Europe. Allright even 2 other Oorbeek-members knew the Minutemen (Maarten because he knows them all, Serge because of the Raymond Pettibon-connection), but generally you see people staring at you with a face like “who’re you talking about? – the Minutemen?”

mike watt btw is here: http://www.hootpage.com/.

Tetuzi Akiyama — my favorite guitar player of the moment — is playing with Jozef van Wissem at DNK/OT301 on monday. I’ve known this since months. I even scheduled my agenda around it, so I’d be able to go. And now I can’t….