Funky shit !

october 20, 2006.

[ podcast :: rpc 29 ... ]

Early in the morning of sunday october 8th, driving from Amsterdam to Maastricht for the RAudioscoop placard (organized by Raudio in cooperation with Kim Laugs and the Stichting Intro), Peter and I passed by Ate M. Hes's farm just outside of Utrecht. There we picked up a Philicorda organ and Rhythm Ace drum machine that Ate was kind enough to donate for divers ookoi and Raudio usages ... [ For a sonic and visual impression of Ate's idiosyncratic use of his former Philicorda, do have a look at his "Philicorda2" installation (video at YouTube's) ... ]
A good thing that we did ... First because of the as ever heartily welcome and fine coffee in Ate and Susanne's spacy farm kitchen, but also because it was but upon arrival in the Klankwerkplaats in Maastricht that I noticed that I had completely forgotten to bring the small suitcase that contains most of the sound equipment I usual put at work at these and similar occasions (dictaphones, casio, crackle-box, mixer, cables, screws, metal sponges ...).

Sort of remarkable, indeed, that over these past few years, from 0 ok, 0:1 to ookoi, our live improvisactions developed in such a way that it hardly matters any longer what precisely we will be using at a given occasion ... That placard sunday, october 8th, in Maastricht there was but the Philicorda ; so the Philicorda it would be ...

The Maastricht placard was scheduled to take place from 15h until 23h, and roughly divided into two parts: we started the afternoon with a series of contributions from outside the Klankwerkplaats( * ). The event started with a stream by Paul Devens, from his home just a few blocks away. From Maastricht we switched to Ate M. Hes in Utrecht, for "Jubel, Trubel, Keiterheit", and then on to the bend_it_band_its of ana-R, streaming from FlexRex's place in Montreuil, just outside of Paris.

As a fourth and final 'outside contribution', Björn Eriksson (miulew) streamed his Calvino frequency from Sweden, apparently while simultaneously attending to a friend fixing a buggy ... chainsaw ... "Just 5 minutes into my set it was knocking on my front door," Björn wrote, "and my long time friend Mats was giving a surprise visit - wanting to see how things were with the chainsaw I have loaned from him to chop up some trees. It was not working so well last weekend. So I was a bit on two places from 5 minutes to 15 minutes - him tweaking on the chainsaw fixing it - and I running back and forth getting tools and then down to laptop with oily fingers ..." ( ** )

In our own - I'd almost say 'usual' - devious manner, that sunday in Maastricht we presented the very 1st copies of the very 1st twenty four page gathering of our 'Raudio Paperpub'. Also in a corner there played continuously, without beginning, without end, almost as if left on by accident and no-one around bothering to stop it, the very 1st copy of a β-version of our freshly finished '1024' dvd, for the curious few passing by without headphones to look at and listen to ... Another version of '1024' (the one currently streaming as the ninth edition of Raudio's mainstream) provided sort of a bridge to the 'live at the Klankwerkplaats', the inside, evening program. It started at 18h sharp with ookoi doing yet another - but radically different - version of '1024', this time consisting in the reading of a randomly picked permutation of the first 1024 numbers( *** ), accompanied by the sound of the wonderful Philicorda transistor organ and its squeaky built-in reverberation spring ...

FPCM did an absolutely marvelous job reciting the numbers, an act obviously reminiscent of our participating last year in the 5 hour long public year data reading at De Appel as part of On Kawara's 'One Million Years (past and future)' ... A quick calculation learns you that, when you say a number every one and a half second, it will take about 26 minutes to say one thousand and twenty four of them ... An estimation that turned out to be pretty accurate ... [ You can watch and listen to a nine minutes video extract from ookoi's '1024' performance in de Klankwerkplaats in Maastricht on charly167's YouTube page ... ]

The RAudioscoop placard continued with the Feebacksociety's Behringer Boys Band (Kim Laugs and ...) who - literally - took the floor for a well filled full hour. They were followed by a cut-up radio set by Michael Peters, who drove over from his home near Cologne, a german town that actually is not so very far from Maastricht.

Element-Aire (Jean-Jacques Duerinckx and Fabrizio Rota) came to Maastricht from Brussels. (We met again the next day in Amsterdam, where on monday october 9th we performed together at the DNK on the Overtoom in a 45 minutes duo-solo-trio set. But in Maastricht Element-Aire played as a duo.)

The setting of a placard, with musicians performing wearing headphones, and the audience listening wearing headphones, inspires something of a 'natural calm', a reverence, also in those of the public that are not actively listening, and who more often than not will whisper while conversing. It's almost funny to observe. I myself often find it intriguing to listen to the acts without headphones, especially, but not only, to those that, fully or partially, use acoustic instruments (like for example Jean-Jacques sopranino saxophone) and which therefore may be listened to in two different ways : through the headphones one hears the 'intended mix', headphones off brings you an 'acoustic projection'. It is a reflection that I already made several times, but actually I still did not get around to making that 'double recording' of a headphone performance ... But then maybe that is because we are making so many recordings already ?

Now whereas Element-Aire asked the audience to be even more quiet than they already were ("Please try not to move!") so as to avoid environmental sounds slipping into the sensitive stereo mikes used by Jean-Jacques, and into their act, Rinus van Alebeek, on the contrary, gave precisely these sounds a central part in his performance ("Please make some noise!") ... Rinus had come over to Holland from Berlin for a couple of gigs, in Deventer, in Maastricht and in Amsterdam, where I saw him on friday evening october 6th at the Consortium as part of a rather disappointing evening centered around what were announced to be 'live-radioplays', organized there by Extrapool from Nijmegen.
In Maastricht he opted for a minimal set-up : three (I think I remember) dictaphones and microphone(s). No mixing, no nothing. Just some cassettes. A voice to speak and sing with, feet to walk up to the Klankwerkplaats' piano, hands to play that piano with, and a thingy to record its sounds with. Meanwhile the audience listened and watched Rinus move about the place. Or they talked and watched. Or they did both.
I liked it. Very un-concert like.
Afterwards I told him that at some point it had crossed my mind that the whole of his actions, the all-of-it-together, that somehow here this seemed very zen ...
Rinus replied that he did not know what that means.
But then, of course, neither did I ...

From Lille in the north of France came the electronic/electro-acoustic free - multiform - improvising duo kuz.b (Gilles Anquez and Eddy Depoorter), using diverse electronic and other instruments alongside their 'palette', software that uses supercollider, with an interesting graphical interface.
Kuz.b completed what quite unintentionally had become - appropriate of course in view of Maastricht's 'role' in recent european history - a pan-european bill, with live contributions in the Klankwerkplaats from artists from Holland, Belgium, France and Germany, and additionally streamed outside live contributions from Holland, France and Sweden ...

After kuz.b we had the pleasure to welcome two acts originating from Maastricht même. First there was the third volume of the "Hör und Gehirnspiel" by Wilhelm von Trippenhofen (1972-1999), who - as I learned from a review in the excellent belgian (mangenerated) 'Noiseblog' - in his too short life, ending with a tragic demise shortly before the dawn of the new milennium, has built an extensive corpus of "wichtige partiturliteratur for very important people avec Kopfschmerzen". I must confess having not the slightest reminiscence of Wilhelm's ghost-appearance at the RAudioscoop placard. But I do have a copy of the CD, that was found and picked up from the street just outside the Klankwerkplaats and given to me by two of the charming girls from among the placard's audience; it must have been during or shortly before kuz.b's performance ... So you see... that is how these things go ... :)

I do remember John's Funky Shit, though I was under the impression that it actually was Gustav - but maybe John will correct me on this? - that was sitting there - leaning back, stuffing and smoking a lascivious hookah while nodding along to the Funky Shit playing from a CD (again, I do have a copy !) through everyone's headphones, and keeping an eye on the Maastricht placard audience from behind a pair of sunglasses ... ?

We ended the RAudioscoop placard with a session that I had baptised 'Diktaat', as I originally had something in mind along the lines of the Diktat concert with Rinus, Rébus and Jean Bordé, at Project 101 in Paris earlier this year, confronting a number of dictaphonists with one or more instrumentalists. As myself I had left my dictaphones in Amsterdam, what actually was being sculpted during this grande finale, involved Rinus van Alebeek as the sole dictaphonist weaving voices emanating from his cassette recordings rolling along and bumping against waves of pure digital, acoustic and vintage electronic 'zZz0undZzz', as they were being brought forth by kuz.b, Michael Peters, Element-Aire and the Behringer Boys Band - apart, or all together - while ookoi kept hitting their newly acquired Philicorda, hitting and hitting it, hitting it, hitting it hard ( **** ) ...

It was one of the day's highlights, and its recording foms the core of the first Raudioscoop Placard Podcast which besides starts and ends with short extracts from Element-Aire's and Michael Peter's sets. (There'll be excerpts from the other sets, and from the outside streams in two more forthcoming Raudioscoop Placard Podcasts ( ***** ) ... )

...
So here's many thanks to all.
...
You were amazing :-) ... !
...

[ Next related SB-entry : cellarlar heroes :: Earlier related SB-entry : placard : la générale ]

notes __ ::
(*) As on similar occasions (like earlier this year when we streamed from the Ameland lighthouse), this meant that we had to guide and instruct the distant contributors in how to get a stream going. Each of them was given this year's "open, click, go" placard #9 max streaming patch, and - even though the patch did work just fine for us - none that tried seemed to be able to get the thing to work ... all for different reasons. Fortunately we took care to always have an alternative solution ... which in two out of four cases was the far from optimal (but workable as well as sort of cute) solution of using skype to get the sounds to us in the Klankwerkplaats, from where we relayed it on to the streaming server .... [ ^ ]

(**) Excerpts from the from-outside streams in time will pop up in the forthcoming raudio podcasts documenting the RAudioscoop placard ... Meanwhile, you may already listen to and download from their respective websites: Miulew's full Calvino Frequency contribution, a selection from ana-R's contribution, and all of Ate M. Hes' Jubel, Truble, Keiterheit ... [ ^ ]

(***) like, but not necessarily identical to: "953 390 147 802 52 707 189 665 901 432 375 815 1009 512 800 513 135 45 993 391 16 964 688 481 651 897 811 849 495 771 574 538 306 254 387 847 348 191 729 537 119 194 885 829 917 617 338 265 345 748 806 467 788 843 56 293 407 316 869 95 808 123 1004 1017 671 703 618 940 910 82 893 25 765 320 382 821 580 691 984 569 259 879 594 565 626 326 561 12 27 689 848 764 68 772 652 209 540 767 426 730 399 450 947 229 78 142 243 716 386 74 666 132 929 962 605 1011 80 186 42 980 497 270 1010 281 657 356 861 475 961 822 992 368 493 874 541 66 692 376 53 820 416 13 708 573 378 156 34 155 783 384 57 392 428 700 773 256 706 77 609 430 314 103 48 478 460 294 465 598 738 576 60 564 203 585 408 79 263 855 766 925 118 171 658 769 274 158 90 462 880 377 819 809 920 251 178 595 842 223 958 559 814 4 165 759 383 365 195 761 248 44 92 230 401 162 109 107 245 192 329 359 116 7 447 304 1018 445 190 324 1019 943 523 614 40 180 29 909 315 916 70 240 491 91 603 100 601 434 1016 942 11 39 911 894 583 448 482 212 247 804 67 737 396 366 758 411 672 443 624 830 139 734 744 913 435 760 75 486 871 896 38 613 926 410 882 587 335 704 650 931 742 713 333 557 415 674 810 239 535 423 159 140 946 505 71 114 722 246 258 380 47 648 46 714 567 522 979 860 831 919 412 431 341 968 502 385 238 327 311 219 222 903 762 353 548 179 367 593 253 739 138 76 59 492 584 907 343 459 807 577 19 461 5 686 342 101 664 490 775 110 875 393 226 501 476 276 205 237 83 862 224 824 206 372 389 41 302 941 534 261 596 418 444 1023 719 264 756 277 781 607 164 102 542 362 468 890 999 50 394 637 864 298 777 89 976 677 951 790 197 797 370 93 422 145 299 549 989 170 791 55 400 440 437 181 575 532 204 955 487 628 571 332 151 606 533 673 554 883 754 2 305 201 471 150 974 977 816 918 280 566 616 526 424 297 568 702 785 709 818 663 112 98 973 334 200 543 202 823 286 427 485 433 531 669 519 61 354 1015 157 347 289 420 496 562 886 659 832 421 35 1003 952 945 6 930 1020 319 620 506 216 970 685 1014 296 117 494 323 798 932 137 292 905 470 72 731 252 131 990 718 463 85 215 456 331 371 360 1012 888 878 778 678 841 161 527 168 498 592 413 175 480 711 221 827 660 735 122 656 154 934 724 887 54 87 285 500 15 124 720 344 458 388 244 439 1001 452 111 629 1005 438 779 14 996 381 768 833 826 998 812 983 647 867 357 987 717 578 28 846 84 218 640 899 225 141 262 623 20 873 361 751 288 235 960 884 927 863 217 721 850 403 271 619 169 991 442 552 615 464 287 687 763 8 33 282 18 520 639 570 174 373 889 694 290 972 553 106 906 528 782 183 177 121 187 602 127 417 196 419 65 746 994 536 425 525 207 956 517 870 645 795 966 10 817 971 395 546 876 805 94 646 340 690 146 402 17 23 935 881 985 745 627 233 611 457 796 649 86 1022 622 834 530 684 328 813 515 753 339 591 794 325 858 539 902 64 969 267 581 32 661 638 610 780 257 242 31 950 632 572 662 604 600 635 511 241 284 273 269 167 726 599 877 130 105 504 321 255 1007 786 588 295 915 978 740 851 621 73 227 307 176 318 838 544 441 653 374 743 750 309 503 9 705 313 836 126 429 630 125 793 555 558 454 954 732 949 260 939 275 521 774 234 278 133 736 1002 697 220 667 928 547 787 900 337 51 509 81 236 776 868 198 283 453 995 859 696 36 152 379 529 865 210 446 963 404 597 923 510 634 310 149 449 473 312 405 208 469 37 801 715 166 680 770 839 699 803 937 3 406 352 712 479 579 144 683 959 741 134 997 350 1021 1013 710 30 556 757 113 291 586 22 120 828 550 397 369 163 904 655 472 514 693 455 670 895 43 97 698 96 409 279 232 518 322 988 921 936 193 211 484 228 330 128 516 184 477 153 982 355 728 336 914 143 668 108 701 63 723 1000 835 268 825 249 837 266 654 857 679 182 524 560 115 582 214 675 747 845 633 853 589 676 358 489 792 681 508 892 789 199 898 136 466 642 272 872 308 1008 129 300 682 1 58 436 856 363 625 891 24 854 551 69 725 733 590 612 727 866 351 967 752 349 844 749 231 188 938 213 414 21 922 26 924 799 474 499 643 1024 301 695 908 986 148 173 755 104 641 545 172 303 99 250 644 784 933 948 636 840 957 507 1006 488 62 317 88 451 975 981 631 944 49 965 185 852 346 160 483 364 563 912 608 398" ... ( generated at random.org ) [ ^ ]

(****) It withstood most of the brutality of our assaults and attacks throughout the day, though at the end its little orange 'on' light blackened out, and the 'on/off' button stopped functioning. Just a matter of plugging/unplugging it now, for it's still going strong ... [ ^ ]

(*****) To subscribe to the Raudio Podcasts, get the feed's URI by clicking the green podcast button in the sidebar (added August 11th 2019 - you probably will be aware that Raudio meanwhile has ceased to be active ...) [ ^ ]