STEIM`s Concert Blog

Last thursday there was another evening with three experimental DJs at Steim. DJ Lenar from Poland opened the evening. To my opinion his focus right now is more on the experiments, the pieces were not matured yet, but the experiments sounded very promising. Somebody to watch closely. Next performer was dj sniff, now living in Amsterdam and one of Steim’s artistic co-directors, whom I have seen and heard a couple of times before. His performance was outstanding! I think he is a true master in this genre and I am already looking forward to a next concert. The last performer was eRikm from France, who has been quite succesful for a while already. His performance was eclectic and energetic, some might say a bit over the top. To be honest, I really like his visual performance but musically I was very dissapointed. In the end I only heard scratches and ticks, hardly any music any more, which is not surprising when you see how he treats his records…

Anyway, it was another very interesting and inspiring evening at Steim, I am looking forward to another Turntable Music Night.

DJ Lenar

dj sniff

eRikm

One of the things I really like about STEIM concerts is its intimacy and focused audience members. As an audience you can see every movement of the performer and catch subtle details in their execution of sound. As a performer, you almost feel the gaze that falls upon you but still have enough space to develop your set. This concert had this great concentrated atmosphere. Cooper/Thomas/Gross trio was well balanced with each player very attentive to the overall structure. It was nice that the array of arsenals that each player used on their instruments never overshadowed the actual sound being produced. Schorno premiered his new instrument Crackle Scorpio, a light and wire triggered crackle board with computer. The light sensors and elastic lamp combination worked very well, adding another dimension of interaction to the familiar Crackle box sounds. TOOT also delivered a very strong performance with magical moments where the three very different instruments (voice, trumpet, analog synth) blended perfectly creating an amazingly textural soundscape. My only complaint was that it seemed like the communication between the performers fell apart toward the end, stretching the performance for too long. Overall, it was a delightful evening of delicate electro-acoustic music.

photos taken by Vivian Wenli Lin

text from our mailing list:
We are very thrilled to have an exciting line up that represent the lineage and development of todays improvised electro-acoustic music. With three generations of important performers from the scene, we expect to witness extended techniques in voice, trumpet, harp and bass paired with distinct textures of both analog and digital electronics. Please join us for this ear-opening evening at STEIM.

flyer design by Clare Cooper

Joseph Bowie, Paul Hubweber and Hilary Jeffery, all trombone players had been working in the STEIM studio for the entire day, experimenting with sensors and sound processing. Basically each was given a Nintendo WiiRemote controller (as used for the gameconsole) with prepared functionality (set up by some of the programmers of Steim) to record their own trombone sound, to play it back and to process it. This meant they had to master new playing techniques in just one day!

This concert showed me that brilliant musicians indeed are able to master their ‘new’ enhanced instrument in just one day. It was amazing how they played with it, sometimes just two of them, sometimes in combo with Luc Houtkamp, the initiator of this evening. This was indeed live electronics in optima forma, a formula that I would definitely like to see and hear again!

Paul Keene and other members of the MusIC Group (Music, Informatics and Cognition) invited STEIM to conduct workshops, lecture, exhibition and a concert at the University of Edinburgh. Daniel Schorno and Frank Balde gave lectures and demos for students from different departments. Also STEIM’s Mobile Touch exhibition was set up for several days with much success and dj sniff performed with local musicians Kresch and Sileni. It was a very inspiring visit and we hope to see more future collaborations between the two organizations.

mobile touch exhibition

dj sniff (both pictures taken by Frank Balde)

Judy is one of the few dedicated balloon musicians in the world. We wanted her to talk about her work as well as performing because we thought the motivation and context that drives someone to continue working with balloons would be quite interesting. And it was. She talked about the history of balloons used in contemporary music, the anti-authoritarian implications and social connotations of the balloon and her personal attraction and use of the balloon as a sounding medium. She performed two duo improvisations with Tom with her solo composition and Tom’s solo in between. Some of her playing sounded very balloonish, meaning it sounded like a balloon. It reminded me of Kapotte Musiek’s performance where you really couldn’t escape the feeling that you are listening to that object. I kept wondering if I would of got the same impression if I didn’t see or know that she was playing a balloon. For every instrument, whether its the saxophone, turntable or Max/MSP, I feel that the transformation or transmigration between different references like its physical sound characteristics, personal expression, composition and clichés/social connotations are more essential to the audiences musical experience than just presenting one. So for me, when Judy started to excite a large balloon’s surface with vibrators to create beautiful oscillating drones was much more of a musical experience than when I was fixated on the fact that I was listening to a balloon. Tom’s solo of Giacinto Scelsi’s L’Ame Ailee (1973) also had a similar effect of transformation of the instrument where you gradually start to hear the overtones of the violin come in and out. It created an illusion that there was more then one player in the room. The piece he played was amazing.

photos taken by Vivian Wenli Lin

text from our mailing list:
One of the significances of experimental artistic practice is its motivation to challenge conventions and social norms. New movements and shifts in standards are often conceived in these practices. For example, the recent release of Radiohead and Saul Williams’ album available for free download comes with no surprise if one has been sensitive to the climate that has built up over the years by artists like Negativland and Bob Ostertag. The reason to why an artist decides to deal with a specific theme or choose a certain tool often represents a shared consciousness (or unconsciousness) that is brewing within a specific time period. I believe that experimental art give us the earliest glimpse of what our contemporary life is dealing with.
Judy Dunaway is a composer and improvisor who works mainly with balloons. She is also the founder of S.W.I.R.L. - Sex Worker Internet Radio Lounge which is an organization and platform for sex workers around the world to express themselves. Although her duo with Tom Chiu (founder of the critically acclaimed FLUX Quartet) is not electronic, we felt that their music was compelling and that it would be a great opportunity to listen to the artists talk about the context of their work.

Marion and Marciej are very active in Cologne as both organizers and performers. I met them at the ZAM Festival that they organized earlier this year, which had a very interesting program. Miya also has been an active organizer, forming the SF Gagaku Society and once an executive producer for a label. I like to think that there is an significance to the community and the artists themselves when they take the initiative to organize and create platforms for others.
PIRX played a great set with Marion on laptop/LiSa and Marciej playing guitar with effects. Their music drifted between textures, melodies, and drones with both player balanced and always very delicate even when the sound was loud and dense. They didn’t seem too satisfied with their own performance but I thought it was well executed.
Miya was originally going to play her Laser Koto and Koto with laptop, but she was having some technical problems with her Laster Koto, so in the end she only played with the later setup. I think she was a bit thrown off by her unexpected trouble that literally happened 10 minutes before the show, but it was impressive to see her switch her mind and focus on what she had to work with. I must say that I enjoyed her performance better this time than when I saw her play her Laser Koto last summer in New York. Her virtuosity and expressiveness really came out, and even though the electronics where present in terms of volume or composition, what really drove the performance was her playing.

text from our mailing list:

We are very happy to have renowned koto innovator Miya Masaoka and an active fresh duo from Cologne, PIRX. For many years, Miya has explored ways to expand her expression through improvisational techniques on her instrument and incorporating new technological tools with alternative media (like lasers, insects and plants). Marion and Maciej of PIRX are on the same pursuit to find a new voice in each of their instruments, but also see curating and organizing as an equally important practice in the process. We hope that the evening will highlight both the maturity and possible new directions of todays live electronic music.
video samples of Miya Masaoka: http://www.miyamasaoka.com/media_files/video/index.html
audio samples of PIRX: http://www.satelita.de/musik/tonband0.html

BMB con. returns to STEIM!
They are legendary at STEIM for dwelling in the basement experimenting with retro gear and turning the studio spaces inside out during their performances with water, fire, sparks and of course sound. This time was no exception. They locked themselves in the studio for 4 days to prepare for this performance and the result was a fantastic sound theater. The performance consisted of different sound events taking place in different parts of the room. The audience were welcomed with the beautiful sound of water dripping on to a heated metal plate. Wireless microphones mounted on each performers head created a howling sound scape as they moved about controlling the feedback between the speakers. Car horns in buckets of water occasionally squirted at the audience while it produced its muted sound that was processed by a computer. My favorite was the two laptops placed sideways on the floor facing each other. They interacted through the built-in mic, speakers and camera creating a fascinating dialog of sound and light in a dark room. The final piece was like a thunder storm in hell, with light bulbs blowing up while connected to a piezo mic and Joel Ryan creating a dense sound wall reacting to bowling balls smashed on to metal plates. My ears are still ringing from this.
This was definitely in the top 3 best concerts at STEIM this year, and we hope to see them around again!

Text from our mailing list:
BMB con.
BMB con. was founded by Justin Bennett, Roelf Toxopeus and Wikke ‘t Hooft in 1989.
They were residents at STEIM (in the cellar) during the early 1990’s and have performed here
on several occasions.
Since 2006 BMB con. consists of a core duo working together with a changing group of invited artists / performers.

BMB con. incorporate electronic and acoustic music, film, video and physical theatre in their performances and installations.
As well as these fleeting, sometimes unique actions, BMB con. make and publish audio CD’s, videos and photography.

For more information and namedropping see http://this.is/bmbcon

At STEIM.
BMB con. is even thuis voor onderzoek in het lab.
Het trio (Joel Ryan is dit keer nr. 3) presenteert wat zij hier ondergingen.
We zijn overigens onze notities kwijt!

BMB con. is home again – messing about in the lab.
If the trio (Joel Ryan is #1 this time) survive the 4 days of grueling experiments, they will present the results.

You are advised to bring an umbrella.

Bas van Koolwijk is obsessed by the analog tv signal – yet he realizes his work in the digital domain. This clash results in beautiful, sensitive audio-visual material. A similar clash is sought for by 3A&E: three acoustic players and a fourth routing their analog sounds through the digital domain. Layering both worlds and trying to bring them together.

For this Local Stop I was looking for the combination of / juxtaposition between analog and digital.

3A&E
Seamus Cater, Nate Wooley, Audrey Chen and Robert van Heumen will present initial results on their STEIM residency project. Working with 3 acoustic instruments (cello, trumpet & harmonica) and one electronic instrument (laptop + controllers) they travel through sound.
http://hardhatarea.com
http://seacater.com
http://www.natewooley.com
http://audreychen.com

Red Flag
Bas van Koolwijk will perform the audio-visual live improvisation Red Flag. Red Flag is produced with software applications that were developed for the live performance FDBCK/AV. The `flagging` seen in this work is of a digital nature entirely, but its logic is based on analogue video processing. The same logic applies to the computations by which FDBCK/AV creates a feedback control circuit between audio and video signals.
http://www.basvankoolwijk.com

In September & October 2007 SKIF++ toured NL, UK and the US Eastcoast. The schedule:

• Sept 18: concert @ STEIM / SuperCollider Symposium in Amsterdam NL
• Sept 23: lecture & concert @ Modulate / Sonic culture salon in Birmingham UK
• Oct 3: lecture @ Princeton University / concert @ ffmup (free form mash up) in Princeton, NJ, US
• Oct 4: concert @ Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY, US
• Oct 5: concert @ Pixilerations festival in Providence, RI, US
• Oct 7: concert @ Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, US

SKIF++ is Jeff Carey on laptop (audio: SuperCollider), Robert van Heumen on laptop (audio: LiSa) and Bas van Koolwijk (visuals: MAX/Msp/Jitter). More info on SKIF++ on hardhatarea.com.

The visit to the Modulate collective (5 people) in Birmingham was special: the collective is very tight, but also very isolated from other media culture in Birmingham. Their Sonic culture salon took place in an old warehouse, with a huge wall for projections and a great soundsystem. Modulate is also the home of Higher Intelligence Agency, a 90’s IDM group making ambient in the Pete Namlook / Biosphere tradition.

Princeton was very different: naturally a very academic environment, the SKIF++ instrumental electronics seemed far removed from the usual gigs at ffmup. We were received with open arms though - staying at the beautiful campus that was originally build in the 1700’s.

The concert in Issue Project Room was a challenge: failing equipment and a tiny audience - probably due to the fact that the current IPR space is quite remote. You have to give it up to the people at IPR though: with the current politics in New York it is not easy to run an experimental music venue in the city that never sleeps…

In Providence it was like coming home. It was my third time there this year, and this time we were playing at the Pixilerations festival. The venue was a beautiful white gallery, the equipment was great, and there was a good audience. Staying there during the one day off was no punishment either - sleeping in, going for a heavy brunch with the friendly people we stayed with, and strolling along the shore.

Finally Dartmouth College. Playing a matinee in the recital hall was a little surreal - when we were done at 5pm it was almost as if it never happened.

All in all a great tour. During the rehearsals for it we revisited an older piece, and defined a new structure - more timide than the usual crackly thunderstorms, and especially the new piece was received very well.

Soon I’ll add soundclips and more text to hardhatarea.com.

I remember when I first saw the designs for the wiimote controller thinking how stupid it was to make something that looks like a TV remote, one of the worst designed interfaces that we know of. I also just thought of it as nothing more than an accelerometer device, something that people make around here all the time. I admit that I was quite wrong and had underestimated a company that had defined my generation’s childhood with their games and ideas.

STEIM has always been a place about practicality for musicians, so when we realized how cheap and accessible these controllers were it didn’t take much time for the software team to implement a wiimote extension into our JunXion software. We also noticed that residence who come to STEIM and people in our community have also been experimenting with this controller. So we decided to host a Wii meeting. We invited composer/performer Tom Tlalim, the Netherlands one and only WiiJ Tim Groeneboom aka DJ Timski, a collaborative working group of Australian artists Ross Bencina, Somaya Langley, Danielle Wilde and our software R&D Frank Balde and Saskia Dedenbach.

To much of our surprise the evening was packed with an enthusiastic group of people. Frank and Saskia opened the evening by demonstrating the new wii extension patch in JunXion and also talked about development issues concerning bluetooth stacks and ppc vs intel mac issues. Tom talked about his wii-suit using 8 wiimotes to read positions of each limb and mapping that to different parameters in his SuperCollider granular synthesis patch. DJ Timski showed his wiimote + Ableton Live + Max/MSP DJ setup and demonstrated how he can use the controller to apply different effects while he dances among the crowd. Ross/Somaya/Danielle talked about how they used the wiimotes as prototype sensor interfaces to explore new gesture-sound mapping techniques. It was a very energetic evening, and I wonder if as many people would have showed up if we announced the night as “applications and discussions on wireless 3 axis accelerometers.”

Saskia and Frank from STEIM

DJ Timski (both pictures taken by Somaya Langley)

text from our mailing list:

wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

wii is a small revolution.
wiiiiii is a movement about movement.
wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii is leaving the desktop and moving into sonic space.
wiiiii is made for gaming but hacked into a music instrument.
wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii is this rare moment where a mass produced object is recycled into a tool for both experimental and mainstream practice.
wiiiiiiiiiiiiii is supported by STEIM’s junXion and pd, maxmsp, supercollider etc.
STEIM’s wii evening is not sponsored by nintento, but we hope they get it and continue making brothers and sisters of the wii.
wiiiiiiiiii(h)ero’s from all over the globe will present their wiiiiiiiing and perform at STEIM on September 24, Monday.

One of this year’s Artistic Advisers Atau Tanaka curated his first concert program with an interesting line up. As Atau wrote in his text for the mailing list it was all analog music with no laptops, samplers nor effects. However, the musical approach and musical result was extremely different between the two groups.
Kapotte Muziek made their music mainly through amplified objects and some electrical noise. It was really a “you see what you get” type of performance where the sounding object is always present with the sound event. A rare experience these days in electronic music. They seemed serious about this approach to music until one of the performers started playing a water sample from his ipod. This was quite puzzling.
Jerome and Lionel’s performance was rather the opposite, “you see what you don’t get.” They each used an open-reel tape console and manipulated numerous sounds that they recorded live during the performance. What I found fascinating was that every sound that you heard was a electro-magnetically mediated version of a sound that was produced a second before and really existed in its own sonic reality. They were extremely physical in there live manipulation of the reels and even did some turntable like scratching.

Kapotte Muziek

Jerome Noetinger & Lionel Marchetti

Jerome & Lionel’s instruments

text from our mailing list:

When we think of live electronic music of the sort done at STEIM, we often think of digital systems with sensors, shaping sounds coming out of computers. Looking a bit further, we quickly find that this approach existed well before sensors and all that is digital, in direct contact with electrical circuits as represented by the well known CrackleBox. Some less known facts that I only myself learned recently was that Michel Waisvisz imagined a kind of pre-cursor to the LiSA software by controlling and “scratching” on open reel Revox recorders with foot pedals. This evening`s program shows that the spirit of direct manipulation - with sound producing objects and analogue tape - is alive and well.

STEIM hosted a workshop and concert for the SuperCollider Symposium that took place in the Hague and in Leiden. Robert van Heumen’s SKIF++ represented STEIM in the lineup along with primitiveFailed and KuzB. The Netherlands has an incredibly strong SC user group and it was nice to see those people bring together an international meeting like this. This concert sort of represented the physical performance aspect of SC with each performer using different types of interfaces to control the software. I must say that the physicality of the performances were not as crucial to the actual music, especially compared to regular STEIM concerts, but nevertheless it was interesting to see how people take different approaches to the same tool. It was also the first time that I saw two people in audience open their laptops during a performance!

SKIFF++

KuzB

(Photos taken by Gregorio García Karman)

A music festival with STEIM, Paradiso and Gaudeamus collaborating with Maarten Altena Ensemble art directer Roland Spekle and DNK-Amsterdam curator Koen Nutter is destined to be all over the place. Well, that is sort of the concept anyways. This year it seemed to have worked out pretty well. The evening was busy, and Rafael Toral, Peter Brötzmann and Dälek delivered great performances. However, the program was a bit too packed causing inconveniences for both the artists and the audience, and the noise of people chatting in the small hall was annoying for some of the performances. Festivals are difficult because you have to meet so many requirements and expectations and its rare to get everything perfect. Nevertheless, it was a nice evening overall.

AK47 Sound System

Dalek

Text from our mailing list:
The Night of the Unexpected 2007

With Dälek, Pole and Band, Peter Brötzmann & Paal Nilssen-Love & Michiyo Yagi, Nederlands Kamerkoor ‘Lux Aeterna’ of György Ligeti, Jazkamer full metal line-up, Toshimaru Nakamura, ‘Le Poème électronique’ of Edgard Varèse, MoHa!, Errorsmith, DJ Sniff & Keir Neuringer, Rafael Toral, Martijn Tellinga, AK47 Soundsystem, and experimental films.

The Night of the Unexpected is a one night festival focussing on new developments in contemporary music. The Night travels through styles and genres: from experimental techno to composed repertoire. The Night of the Unexpected takes place in Paradiso, Amsterdam, on Thursday September 6.

More people than we expected showed up to our first OpenStudio series. There wasn’t much time for discussion and questions because we had 6 presentation this time, but there seemed to be some nice interaction between the artist and the audience during the break and afterwards at the bar. This series is really meant for the artists to get some valuable feedback through public presentations, so hopefully we will be able to encourage more questions and critiques next time. For the residences projects check out our project blog.

Laura Steenberge

Marc Nimoy

text from our mailing list:
STEIM OpenStudio is a new attempt to create a public platform for STEIM residency artists to present their work. It will be an early evening (starting at 18:00) event with short presentations by artists that are currently in residence at STEIM. We hope that this platform will grow into an inspiring crossing for ideas and people.

from our mailing list:

STEIM presents:

MAWJA
Michael Bullock (USA) | contrabass & feedback
Mazen Kerbaj (LB) | trumpet
Vic Rawlings (USA) | cello & surface electronics

Liner notes from the MAWJA CD “Studio One” (Al Maslakh Recordings – 2007)

This album struck me like a big wave, a wave that makes you lose your consciousness and equilibrium for several minutes, leaving you wondering what just happened to you during this elusive lapse of time. Probably this is exactly the purpose of this trio, where as their music draws rust from your very skin, suburban rust, from those big suburbs where the individual melts, and all individuality is melted by the heavy burden that eats all. The sound ate the self, ate the collective, ate time, and invaded space.
I wasn’t expecting such a radical treatment of sound. The music here goes out of time, depriving it of its value despite the usual ties that link time and music as an art form. What we hear is rather a strong binding with space, using it as a compositional tool. This music does not move, but it wanders like blocks of colours or shapes in the empty.
The reunion of Bullock, Rawlings and Kerbaj for this recording leaves no possibilities for any future; it is a meeting of the here and now, like the musical result that is released with this recording. The Present time is simultaneously constructed and deconstructed, making the “now quality” predominant on the atmosphere of this record. The unified sound of the trio fills the air like a short-wave radio signal, carrying its usual load of small marginal details; a sound that resembles music or walks by it without remorse, not stopping at any station along the way.
Three musicians, both friends and enemies, yet above all partners of this same game, where there are no rules for improvising; one erases the other, without regret, for the sake of unity in sound.
Raed Yassin - Beirut, March 2007

Liner notes from the MAWJA CD “Live One” (Chloë Recordings – 2007)

Mary Staubitz emailed me asking, “do you and Vic want to play with this guy from Lebanon?” Mary was booking a series of noise shows at the Midway Café in Jamaica Plain, MA, and had been contacted, apparently out of the blue, by “this trumpet player from Beirut.” She wanted to help him out but wasn’t sure what to do, since none of us in Boston really knew anything about him. Vic and I have had a duo established since 2000, so I knew at least I wouldn’t be totally out to sea with this new guy. I agreed and so did Vic: we would meet Mazen for the first time at the gig.
We did just that. I walked into the Midway the night of the gig and saw a tall Middle Eastern man standing in the middle. The Midway is a very rowdy, noisy joint even when the music is not playing, so conversation was limited to pleasantries, and 30 minutes later the three of us were on “stage” (actually the middle of the floor in front of the tiny stage, the only place we could fit two large string instruments, two amps, and Mazen’s table crowded with trumpet preparations). Then something happened - music came tumbling out. Immediately, and for the entire set, we were in that state of mind that most groups work for months or years to achieve; the music played itself. Harsh, mild, tense, limber, awkward in the best ways, and above all, effortless. After it was over we knew we had to play again, soon, and often.
We set about booking a tour for the next time Mazen could come to the US. This disc, along with “Studio One” on Al Maslakh, is the products of that intensely creative week.
Michael Bullock - Troy, June 2007

RUE 24
Jean Pallandre (Fr) | phonography
Christine Sehnaoui (LB) | alto sax
Sharif Sehnaoui (LB) | guitar

Jean Pallandre spent two weeks in Lebanon in July 2004 touring and capturing phonographies from the various soundscapes of the country (phonography is the sound equivalent of photography, as the capturing of sound elements through microphones put in relation with a specific sound environment). For Christine and Sharif Sehnaoui, who have been with Pallandre throughout these two weeks, improvising with these soundscapes is a very singular experience since they have both witnessed their genesis and enjoy a strong emotional bond to them.

The trio’s music thus finds its originality in this raw material collected in another time and place, brought back to our ears at every concert in a collective free improvised gesture. No ethnological, touristic or documental intention here: rather a poetical interlude, a fleeting trip, an association of distance and proximity, mixture of presence and absence, ambiguity of relation to time and space. Divergent sensible and intimate experiences, shared in a space of common creation and common listening, at the crossroads between instrumental sound materials and field recordings.

Mazen Kerbaj, one of STEIM’s artistic advisers for 2007, held his first curatorial project which involved several days of recording sessions and concert.
Kelvin Zero opened the concert night with their dense and textural soundscape created with an array of amplified objects and analog sounding devices. Jassem’s metal spring board sounded beautiful with its resonance feeding back through the his mixer.
Oriental Space started and ended each piece very gently with the act of the two trumpet players emptying the spit out of their instrument as a signifier for an end of each musical movement. It was my first time to see Sharif play on an electrical guitar which added more body to both his sounds and presence in the group. I was also very impressed with Helge’s use of three Kaos pads. He played them like he was touching the surface of water, but the sounds were crackly and dry. Overall the performance was quite “wet” or droney for a Mazen group, but the textures were still very detailed with a nice balance between the four players. It will be interesting to hear what they have recorded in the previous week.
The night was well attended for a usually quite July in Amsterdam whick goes to prove Mazen’s credibility in both the music and art scene. He will be curating another show at STEIM in early August.

Text from our mailing list:

ORIENTAL SPACE
Franz Hautzinger (Austria) | trumpet
Helge Hinteregger (Austria) | sampler
Mazen Kerbaj (Lebanon) | trumpet
Sharif Sehnaoui (Lebanon) | electric guitar

KELVIN ZERO
Basile Ferriot (France) | amplified percussion
Jassem Hindi (Lebanon) | lo-fi electro acoustic materials

“Oriental Space” was formed in late 2003 by Austrian trumpet player Franz Hautzinger following his two visits to Lebanon, the first to play traditional quartertone trumpet with Palestinian folk singer Marwan Abado, and the second to work and perform with Mazen Kerbaj in the frame of the “Irtijal” festival for experimental and improvised music. The quartet came as an enhancement of his ongoing duo work with Mazen Kerbaj, both bringing in their most regular partners: Helge Hinteregger and Sharif Sehnaoui. Hautzinger and Hinteregger have both been central figures of the prolific Viennese contemporary and improvised music scene, taking part in the extreme minimalist tendency of the 90s as well as electronic music. Recently their style has diversified and they may take part in various projects ranging a wide variety of styles both with their own groups: Regenorchester, Zeitkratzer, Conforts of Madness… or in collaboration with artists such as Radu Malfatti, Otomo Yoshihide, Phil Niblock, John Tilbury, Lou Reed, Luc Ex or Roger Turner to name but a few.
Kerbaj and Sehnaoui have been two of the main boosts for the burgeonin Lebanese improvised music scene that they contributed to launch in the year 2000, both by creating the “Irtijal” festival and “Al Maslakh” label. Their style has primarily focused on dense textural improvisation based on an extreme hijacking of their respective instrument by means of extended and prepared techniques. They have widely performed around the globe both in duo and with their main groups: “A” Trio, Moukhtabar Ensemble, Rouba3i… or in collaboration with musicians such as Michael Zerang, Stéphane Rives, Lê Quan Ninh, Axel Dörner or David Stackenäs among many others.
Franz Hautzinger’s “Oriental Space” is the opening of an undetermined subjective space that does not correspond or refer to any specific style of music but rather to Hautzinger’s unique inner experience of the orient that he tries to share with both his partners and the audience.

Atau Tanaka, one of STEIM’s artistic advisers for 2007, performed with his trio S.S.S at the 5days Off festival’s audio-visual subprogram held at Netherlands Media Art Institute a.k.a. Montevideo. Numerous sound installations where on exhibit from their Invisible Sound, and Sergi Jorda’s Reactable was also featured in the program. (although the instrument didn’t arrive from Barcelona so he just gave a presentation) S.S.S gave a nice and concentrated performance. Atau definitely has the most presence with his BioMuse controller and musical gestures, but seeing their performance for the second time, I came to realize that Laurent’s digital Theremin is more likely the musical backbone of the group. Or at least in this performance he really had more control of the total performance space, and even though the Theremin is not my favorite instrument it was quite interesting to see him play with different kind of sound sources.
I also went the other programs of the 5 Days Off festival, mainly to see my friend Kanta Horio, (not my friend, yet) Dizzee Rascal and Lethal Bizzle. Kanta’s magnet object performance was great as usual. Dizzee was fantastic, I highly recommend his new album “Maths and English.” Lethal was quite disappointing.

Atau Tanaka photo taken by Somaya Langley

Text from our mailing list:

S.S.S. (Sensors_Sonics_Sights)
S.S.S. is a trio consisting of Atau Tanaka (one of STEIM’s artistic directors), Cecile Babiole and Laurent Dailleau, creating a dynamic sound / image performance. S.S.S (Sensors Sonics Sights) performs visual music with sensors and gestures. They create a work of sound and sight, a laptop performance that goes beyond the intensity of bodies in movement. Going beyond media: music that is more than a soundtrack, images going further than video wallpaper. A three-way conversation modulating sonic and luminous pulse and flow.
Sensors capture gesture and corporeal movement, translating them into digital data. Ultrasound sensors measure the distance between the performer’s hands and her machine, allowing her to articulate 3D imagery, navigating in color, scale, texture. The Theremin, historical electronic instrument invented in 1919, an oscillator responds to perturbations of electrostatic fields based on the distance of the hands and body to the instrument. The BioMuse places gel electrodes on the performer’s forearms, analyzing EMG biosignals. Muscle tension through concentrated movement allows the musician to sculpt sound synthesis.

From our mailing list:

Please join us for a special concert featuring a rare set of improvisations with Jon Rose, Frances-Marie Uitti and Joel Ryan.
Jon first mixed improvised violin with live digital technology in Australia back in the early 1980s through the use of the world’s first sampler - the pre-MIDI Fairlight CMI. Since 1985 he has been a regular visitor to Steim where his unique bow powered Hyperstring project has undergone many transformations.
Frances Marie is known world wide for her pioneering use of two bows on the cello. She has had more solo pieces written for her than there are canals in Amsterdam - possibly premiering more new music than any other string player. She is a virtuoso for all seasons.
Joel is our third pioneer for the evening, a key innovator in the application of digital signal processing to acoustic instruments. He has been active at STEIM since 1984 and has influenced, advised, and inspired two generations of musicians through his job at the Sonology department at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.
For this concert of stringology, Jon and Frances will limit themselves to the acoustic instrument, leaving all the digital transformation to Joel.
We are also very happy to have up and coming composer Wouter Snoei performing his quadraphonic live electronics piece. Wouter is among the emerging new generation of musicians educated in the Hague, for whom low level programming tools like Supercollider and custom controllers are not only the norm, but also essential to the realization of their work. His recent work includes compositions specifically for Wave Field Synthesis systems.

Michel and Tarek’s new duo was featured at the season ending concert of TOUCH, a concert series that is organized by Keir Neuringer at the TAG gallery in The Hague. STEIM’s other favorite musician TOKTEK also performed.
It was a festive night in the Hague with both the conservatory and art academy finishing their year ending exams. This resulted in a bunch of drunk art dudes showing up and talking during the whole performance. It turned into a gallery opening performance (which I have sworn myself never to do exactly for this reason) and was quite unpleasant for both the performers and the people who came to listen. Its too bad because the TOUCH series has always had an intimate crowd and environment that allowed the musicians to explore many directions. However, what saved this night was the time we spent after the show with the performers and friends getting high and watching stupid youtube videos. Keep the good work up, Keir/TAG!

photos by Eelco Borremans

I was very nervous before this show for several reasons. All the acts played music that was relevant to STEIM but also more accessible to the non-experimental music crowd, so I wanted to reach out to a wider audience. Especially Ito and Doravideo are one of the hottest acts from Japan now, and I was quite proud to get them to Amsterdam before other festivals did. Also it was my first time to properly talk to Onda and Doravideo, and since they are older and well respected musicians, my Japanese upbringings make me nervous when talk with them. And to top everything off, during sound check Ito was EXTREMELY loud, literally shaking the whole building and I was told that we can’t have noise complaints from the neighbors. We solved this problem by having him perform in our sound proof studios. (though you could still hear him from outside)
So the show started with me biting my nails hoping everything will go alright. And, everything did. Many people showed up to the concert, and all the acts absolutely rocked the show. Doravideo was probably everyone’s favorite with his amazing drum + video performance. There was a lot of Japanese humor there that I don’t think people got, but still audience was thrilled. I hope to post some short videos of the performance soon.

Atsuhiro Ito with his Optron (take be Seamus Cater)
Text from our mailing list:

The fascination with Japan and its music is often puzzling to the Japanese artists themselves, and common characterizations such as “extreme, subtle, poetic, minimal, loud, Zen, eclectic, pop, cute” are rarely intended. Despite what it may seem from the outside - most Japanese musicians will tell you that Japan is not an underground music utopia, if anything, it is the complete opposite. Consumerism is the nation’s driving force, pushing non-commercially minded artists to the fringes of society. These artists often need international recognition before receiving domestic acceptance, making the utopian perception even more ironic. What is fascinating, however, is that a country with so little governmental and social support for the arts has managed to produce a steady stream of interesting artists over the years.
For the next STEIM concert we are very happy to present some of the best and most respected musicians from the Japanese music scene. A Japanese musician playing cassette tapes with an anarchist French trumpeter and a free jazz British violinist, a Japanese musician who plays a very loud, flickering, florescent light, and a Japanese musician who controls videos of a samurai dancing to samba with his drums - this may not be your usual musical experience, but the intentions are quite simple: to perform good music.

Here are some links to videos of their performances.
Jac Berrocal/Aki Onda/Dan Warburton trio
Atsuhiro Ito
Doravideo 1 and 2