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Awesome Foursomes (vii - No. 138)

March 31, 2022

« Milling wormholes to our not-so-'the-Jetsons'-like future, from there then up to here now and after. »

No. 138

1. A Hundred Eager Questions [Hollandse Meesters​]

Apart from being Young Lions, Ronald Heiloo and Harold Schellinx, the-later-to-become-but-then-not-yet Hollandse Meesters, throughout 1980 diligently worked on a never quite really finished series of songs and tunes that ever since they have been referring to as the Dokterromannetjes ("three penny novels") or the Bouquetreeks. That is the Dutch title of a still existing series of romantic 'pulp fictions', specifically aimed at female readers.
Many a mother and housewife were huge fans. Like Har$' late mother, just to name one.
Each episode is a 'throw away story' in which a man and woman (plots may have changed with the times, but forty years ago in most cases the man would be a medical doctor and the woman a nurse) fell in love with each other, but then needed to overcome a number of obstacles before, in the end, they'd find one another to live happily ever after.

On the outset, R & H bought a handful of these floppy booklets at an Amsterdam drugstore, quickly went through them, and selected a couple of text-fragments cheesy enought to translate into English. These were their lyrics.

The original versions of the songs, composed in weekly sessions, were recorded sound-on-sound, on the AKAI reel-to-reel recorder that in those days served as their home-studio, most of them in but two or three takes. A few of the pieces they somewhat later re-recorded on the TEAC four track machine and mixing console that in the course of 1980 ad been installed by Pressepapier's Wijnand de Groot in the basement on the Amsterdam Marnixstraat, a tiny rehearsal space shared by Pressepapier, The Young Lions and the Minny Pops.

This "A Hundred Eager Questions" is one of these multitrack recordings, probably done early 1981. Ronald sings the lead vocals and plays the electric piano, Har$ strung the guitar and sung the final verse, on and on and on: "Lately she had changed like a leaf on a tree"...

2. Heerlen [ookoi]

Heerlen is one of 4 ookoi tracks that together make up HIER, originally released in 2014 as an iPhone application.
'HIER' was the first ever release of an album of strictly localised pop ( * ).
Of strictly localised Future Popp !
"Jij bent altijd daar. En ik ben altijd HIER."
("You are always there. And I am always here.")
...
It could have made headlines!
It should have made headlines!
(But it did not 🤔 ...)
...
In these times of data clouds and information overload, it has become almost unimaginable that physical effort might be required of a listener in order to access recorded music. Indeed, as the late David Bowie said some twenty years ago ( ** ) (already back then one did not need a crystal ball to see thát future): "music will become like running water...".
Running! Yes!
Haha, but not so, though, if that music is the Future Popp as so forcefully revealed to and by the ookoi—auch_oi, also_oi, aussi_oi...—who in those same two past decades counted among the world’s most adventurous as well as most unpopular explorers of the sonic arts. Yes! Counted! The ookoi counts!

Loca(c)tivity always has been of paramount importance to the ookoi: from the very beginning the duo has conceived of their works as transcending given notions of there, of then. Of where, of when. Of space and time. In 'HIER', this aspiration led them to use the geopositioning of the playback device to make listening to each of the four instrumental pieces possible only within very limited geographical confines: playback of a track on the iPhone was enabled only within a circular region drawn on the map of the city whose name it bore.

The four cities featured on 'HIER' are Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Paris (France), Kortrijk (Belgium) and Heerlen (the Netherlands): we have moved from A to H, we have moved from A to K, we have moved from A to P ... "We have moved from A to X" ( *** )...

Amsterdam and Paris, for there is where the ookoi are based.

The Belgian city of Kortrijk (Courtrai) became one of the four 'HIER' locations because the space time-warping twins were invited to lecture there on their locative work during an international symposium on locative media and sound art, organised by the Flanders Festival Kortrijk, on May 10th 2014.
It was where they announced there 'HIER'.

And, finally, the Dutch city of Heerlen was chosen, because it is in Heerlen that the material that was used in composing the four 'HIER' tracks was recorded, in kunstencentrum Signe (KuS): "No Hear, No See"... Indeed, for when the ookoi performed, at the very early beginning of the event in KuS, curated by Mike Kramer, on Saturday April 6th 2013, FPCM was not hier...

Ephemeral as is almost all new media art, the iPhone app is no longer compatible with current versions of Apple's iOS, hence no longer available in the app store. The non-locative version of the album is available for streaming and download on Bandcamp.

notes __ ::
(*) As far as we know, that is. We are not aware of anything truly comparable being published before; nor after, indeed. There are, though, many fascinatingly interesting variations and developments thinkable to exploit this 'theme' further. Stduio ookoi would (have) love(d) to pursue and take this further; and, given the much needed financial support, they most certainly will ... 🤓 ... [ ^ ]
(**) David Bowie in an interview with John Pareles in The New York Times, June 9th 2002 ("David Bowie, 21st Century Entrepreneur") [ ^ ]
(***) This Heat - A New Kind of Water (on their album 'Deceit') [ ^ ]

3. Page 25 [Har$]

In 1983 Har$ enrolled as a student at the Institute for Sonology, which back then still was part of the Utrecht University, housed in the center of town, along the Plompetorengracht. Page 25 is the third in a trilogy of short pieces that he made there, using the serial composition model PR1—short for 'Projekt 1'—conceived and programmed (in FORTRAN, running on one of the institute's memory-less PDP-15 computing 'monsters') by the recently deceased pioneer Gottfried Michael Koenig (1926-2021), who was the director of the Sonology Institute, until it was divested by the university, and became part of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague.

The three parts of the 'trilogy' each interpret the output generated by a run (a 'page') of the PR1 program in a different manner:
☞ Page 23b is 'electronics only': all of the output was played by the VOSIM sound synthesis system proper to the Institute, developed and built by Werner Kaegi and Stan Tempelaars.
☞ Page 21 is 'instrumental'. Har$ transcribed the computer's number and symbol output as a traditional score, for two piano's. The piece was premiered by Martijn Padding and Agnès Benoist on one of the institute's concert evenings, on December 4th 1984.

☞ The piece that is available as part of this seventh awesome foursome, Page 25, has a hybrid format. It is a montage of parts of the PR1 output that were played back by the VOSIM system, and parts that Har$ transcribed, played on the piano, and recorded onto tape. The electronic and instrumental tape-parts then were pasted together in the order prescribed by the program's output, to make Page 25 complete.

Read more about Gottfried Michael Koenig and the time that Har$ spent at the Utrecht Institute for Sonology, in the 24th 'Harolds Hoofd Stuk' in Gonzo Circus (Magazine); in Dutch: Dáár zit de muziek! Het Bachiaanse werk van Gottfried Michael Koenig, GC #168, maart-april 2022.

4. Rare Vogels [ookoi​​]

It was over 2007's weekend of Pentecost that the vision and dare of Maastricht Kunsttour's curator Bert Lemmens gave rise to an early ookoi retrospective, in the form of a three days event during which a green coated Har$ and FPCM occupied the big hall of the Art Garage, a former fire station in the Capucijnenstraat.

The track Rare Vogels ('Rare Birds') and the related lo-res videoclip Vogelvlucht ('Birdseye') were made there, then during that 2007 Kunssttour event.

The material used for the composition of Rare Vogels was recorded as part of the ookoi's performances during the many, many hours long webcast in which Har$ and FPCM connected the Maastricht Art Garage to the Archipel Media Lab in Hollum on the waddenisland Ameland, and to Xiamen in the People's Republic of China, from where Yariv Alter Fin contributed with chatter, thoughts, music and sounds. Among these sounds: the birdies' twitter that opens and also further on prominently figures in the track. (Yariv chose to end his life a mere three months later. The ookoi dedicates 'Rare Birds' to his memory.)

In those days a big part of the duo's interest was directed at some of the initial scanning, investigations and exploitations of a metaverse, as, for example, in virtual worlds like that of Second Life. This is why as part of their performances and retrospective at the Art Garage the ookoi could be seen accompanying a local cyber shaman, Don Renaro, into parts of that virtual world where cyber culture meets psychedelic movements' quests into realms of extended consciousness, where magics, myths and many a mystery are said to be unveiled.

Lucid dream time!

Watch the ookoi flap their tails in the feedback of a webcam watching a PC-screen, mise en abyme, stretching after slumber, tentatively searching their way back into the real world from out of the virtual depths where they left Don Renaro behind, who, out there, maybe to this very day continues to strive for oneness with his avatar, to ensemble live on in eternal psychedecybercosmic consciousness.

Rare vogels ... 🕺

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To receive updates on the ookoi's b.ookoi's progress and all related events and activities, follow Stduio on Bandcamp!

Bandcamp is our preferred platform, but you can also listen to Stduio ookoi's No. 138 on streaming music platforms, like YouTube Music or Spotify ... :

The b.ookoi are coming!

—wordt vervolgd—

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tags: ookoi, sonology, metaverse

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