I am in Leeds with Luis Lara Malvacias….making the music for his piece for the Verve company (which is made up out of post-graduate students of the Northern College of Contemporary Dance). Although Leeds may not be the most exciting town in the world, I cannot remember having eaten such great fresh mackerel anywhere (from the wonderful Leeds City Market). Will try the rabbit tonight.
Radeberger (not good visible, in neon) was the beer of East Germany, from what I understood from a Berlin friend. Good enough now to be the trendy beer in the East Village.
I always talk about how busy New Yorkers are, no time for friends or social stuff. I am feeling more and more like that myself when I come here. It is hard to go against the dynamic of the city. Funny how if you are away from home you have time and space in your head to focus on something else, a very refreshing experience. If you come somewhere often enough that again becomes a place where you are too wrapped up in too many things, not enough time. “Not enough time” is a silly concept of course, there is just time and it is up to you how to spend it. Or really time is an illusion to put it more in a Buddhist way. Also talking about huge China projects here. Would me befriending the Dalai Lama work against me (FB is of course off limits in China)? The Chinese see them pretty much as their Bin Laden.
Below Jeremy and Luis working on their video material.
The other day I was playing with Raquel Dutra from Sao Paula, Brasil on the piano and voice…she has a great band called Balacabala.
Last summer when I was here my motherboard crapped out on me and was replaced, after which it was fine. This time my computer stopped working after being dropped in Utrecht 2 weeks ago, since that evening it gave me a lot of problems…had to get a rental… Super Duper I love you
I am experiencing reoccurring Kernel Panics with my macbook pro. I am getting nervous about my next gig and becoming a regular patient at Tekserve. Today spring has hit New York and I would rather be spending time focussing on that or on the project I am working on (which is coming along great I think) than spending time debugging.
There is great music everywhere in NYC.
After a day working with the Casio Queen on a soundtrack for a dream-scene of a child’s book/game I was about to fall asleep. Luckily Miss Casio convinced me to join her to go to Death by Audio, a label but also a club, very cool DIY venue, cheap, great music. That is what I love about New York, there are always new places where the underground scene is spreading.
Back in Williamsburgh…back with the cool and tattooed beards in Brooklyn…I am here to work with dancers / choreographers Jeremy Nelson and Luis Lara Malvacias, after which I will go to the Detroit Institute of Arts to perform with the Amstel Quartet. Hope my macbook hangs in there after someone (not me) dropped it at the gig with Mark Morse in Utrecht, having lots of problems with it. The recession has hit New York, there is a different, a little gloomy atmosphere here. I was looking forward to visiting for the first time in the Obama era, but it has turned out less hopeful than expected. I am staying with my friend Monika Heideman who is performing Feb 18th at the Bowery Ballroom with Xylos and at Rockwood Music Hall Feb 25th with her own band.
This Tuesday I was invited by Ties Mellema to a gathering of
musicians, theatre-makers and designers that research new ways of performing classical music. It took place at the magnificent site of Radio Kootwijk. Radio Kootwijk is a facility build in the early 20th century to transmit radiosignals to the Dutch colonies, the main building is an awesome art-deco building which could easily be mistaken for the horror-gothic like headquarters of some secret service. Ties and his friends from the “Cooperative Creative Musicians” (rivals of the “Un-cooperative Non-creative Musicians”) were looking for ways to combine Bach with improvisation. It was great to play there, especially in this kind of building in the middle of the Veluwe forest area.
More on the workshop:
http://www.radiokootwijklive.nl/
or this very nice blog:
Or have a listen: Radio Kootwijk Impro
VITAL WEEKLY REVIEW
MORSANEK/VINKEPEEZER (LP by Kazemat)
After the second world war brought a lot of English words into the Dutch language, and it may hardly be no surprise that German words didn’t make it. There is one exception, which is the now fully accepted German word bunker. Before World War Two they were called ‘Kazemat’, which is a beautiful word, I think. Praise to Rob Vugs and Ivo Bol who just started a label with the same name, and more praise to him for this daring move: a bit of heavy vinyl, gatefold, full color sleeve, in an edition of 500 copies. Let’s hope this may last longer than just one release.
Ivo Bol was once a member of Wrikken, who released a 7″ on Mixer (see Vital Weekly 334), but since time works solo as Vinkepeezer, creating music by using game controllers and acoustic instruments. Much of his work is created for film, theatre and dance. In the first two pieces it seems that Bol loves his Oval, through a jumpy myriad of bouncing sounds. Closely out of phase they make a densely shaped total. Its however not a glitch based as Oval, or many of their followers. Bol creates his own strong world, plus he knows how to cut back in sound and make a quieter moment. Nothing earth shaking new, but executed with great care. Morsanek is an Amsterdam based guitarist, DJ and sound editor, who for his own piece, which spans one side of this record, he uses his guitar, effects and sound editing. Its a bit hard to say how much of this was guitar or ‘live’, as I hear many different layers, which seems to be hard for one person to deal with and there are some sounds which seem like ‘real’ percussion. Whereas Vinkepeezer stays on the safe side of things, Morsanek goes for the adventure of sound, offering a wider range of sounds and moods, and makes a more surprising piece of music. But both sides are quite nice, so this is a most promising start for this new label. (FdW)
http://www.vitalweekly.net/665.html
KAZ 001: split Album Morsanek / Vinkepeezer
Feb 1st Album-presentation in Petersburgprojectspace
Frans de Wollantstraat 84, Amsterdam, 15:30 hrs, free entrance
http://www.petersburgprojectspace.org/
raquel.mp3