Hi,
Since my last post was about the past, I thought I should add something
about future.
Recently I witnessed a performance by Edwin vd Heide (Sensorband, the Hague
Royal Conservatory), Florentijn Boddendijk (Royal Conservatory) and Anne
Welmer (also RC)
In this performance vd Heide plays a set of instruments known as the MIDI
conductor:
Two handgrips with a set of buttons and ultrasonic distance sensors. With
this he controls a.o. a Real Time time stretcher (I know, there's a paradox
in there somewhere) and a very HiFi Harmonizer written by himself (for the
techfreaks, he runs it on a PC with a Motorola DSP 96000 card)
Boddendijk plays a "Laserbass": an laserbeam which he can interrupt at
certain points. Depending on where, he gets note data, which is translated
into musical stuff by a small computer. Sound output comes from a regular
sampler. he also uses drumpads.
Anne Welmer sings/narrates and plays radio, cracklebox and ARP 2600/VCS 3
analogue monsters
All instruments are played live, no sequencers involved.
Their set conisted of a "story". They have some unidentified German lyrics,
can't tell you a lot about that. What I can tell you is the way they blend
hiphop and jungle with "academic" avant garde music. No influences
whatsoever are shunned. Somewhere in the piece HipHop beats are blasting
away, triggered by vd Heide and Boddendijk. at the same time there is
singing reminiscent of early Schönberg.
Then Boddendijk starts to play Jungle. *LIVE*. Triggers the cut up rythm
loop samples wiht his octapad and laserbass. Adds tuned 808 bassdrums with
pedals. Incredible, but it works. He *almost* gets the timing right. Quite
impressive.
They end with an awesome ambient bit, with choir parts stretched into
oblivion and lots of 2600 drone.
It's not really a piece you'd throw into yr regular DJ set but I think it
was worth telling you about it. I'm not very good at writing so you might
miss some of my points but I feel it was worth the post.
Oh yeah, all you StarWars fans out there, somewhere in the piece, at a
totally unexpected moment vd Heide blasts in the Opening Titles of SW. then
starts stretching the hell out of it.
Allert
--
"No corporation will ever pay a creator enough to sue them succesfully"
-Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus
Allert Aalders - Big Time Concepts - allert@knoware.nl - KoX