Entries categorized as ‘projects 2003’
july 11th and 12th will be packed with open houses at over 120 artist spaces all over the schwabing area organized as kunst im karree.
of, course, I’m part of it. I thought this is the right moment to finally exhibit the infamous showdown in three acts called “breakdown on paradise blvd.”, a project I’ve done about 5 years ago and which has still not found it’s way through the main channel to you, my loyal tribe!
so there will be a video installation at Frau Viola, the most kickass coffeeshop and fleamarket paraphernalia store on the planet! the space will be designed by munich subulture artists and I will provide the music-visual video crazyness!
plus, on the 12th at 6pm I’ll perform live at my little studio, which is attached to the before mentioned most kickass coffeeshop and fleamarket paraphernalia store on the planet!
the video installation is in killing 5.1. surround sound. my sponsor for the project H-E-W (Home-Entertainment-World) will set up a world class sound system and blue ray player! thank you stefan bock from msm for hooking me up!
address of the exhibition:
Frau Viola, Occamstr.17, 80802 Munich, (U münchner freiheit)
Exhibition: 11/12 july 10am-8pm
Studio concert: 12 July, 6pm
see you all there!
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: breakdown on paradise blvd., cut-up, cut-ups, hester boverhuis, hunter thompson, kunst im karree, music, schwabing, william burroughs
breakdown on paradise blvd.
we did the show in early 2003. recorded the material in 2003 in amsterdam at studio le roy.
I mixed everything at realistic sound and it sounded too good to be true. but after that I was off to other projects so quickly that the material ended up sitting in my studio for all these years collecting dust.
in 2008 I packed the project on my bike and headed to msm studios in munich to let them see and hear the material. the music was finished. only the visual material we used at the show was as raw as it was 5 years ago.
they listened only for a little bit and said it would be a shame to release it in just stereo sound. if it was to become a DVD, as I had suggested, it should be surround mega double triple fat sounding! ok, I gave them the thumbs up and a couple of weeks later they let me listen to what they’ve done. I was blown away! to have all the little sound effects created on two computers combined with acoustic bass and a voice (hester boverhuis) from heaven in surround sound is like being the main character invented by william burroughs himself.
the video material ended up being a 40 minute video installation that’ll flip all your senses!
the DVD it now out on filmbaby.com
Categories: projects 2003 · projects 2008
Tagged: bass, breakdown, computer music, dvd, hester boverhuis, msm, music, paradise, release, studio le roy, william burroughs
the debut album „wintermaerchen“ of my group ORkAaN FAbLeS hit stores in november 2003. it’s a collection of fairytales and songs catching the mysticism of the world of everlasting ice and it‘s many surreal creatures.
wintermaerchen ORkAaN FAbLeS
the sounds on this album are so cold, you will have to break them off your speakers and melt them in the fire to be able to listen to them!
we recorded the album in munich at realistic sound in a couple of days. because we’ve been playing live quite a bit the recording process was pretty smooth and quick. we got the recording of the instruments out of the way quickly so we could focus on the voice. since german ist not hester’s native language (dutch is), the most important part was to coach her along to get her german pronounciation right. she is incredibly versatile with her voice which helped a lot getting her through the sometimes heavy lyrics. of course you can still hear that german is not her native language but I think her accent adds even more of a mysterious touch to the music and the stories.
after the album was done we did a two night release gig in munich at a place called “tube”
to spice things up a bit and because hester wanted to fully concentrate on her laptop performance we asked anna clarin ( daughter of german actor hans clarin) to be the voice of the tales. she did an incredible job and the performances were received very well.
the audiobook “wintermärchen” is available at itunes, amazon, and other stores…
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: anna clarin, die wolfsfrau, friedrich hebbel, gottfried keller, hans clarin, nietzsche, ORkAaN FAbLeS, realistic sound, wintermärchen
in july 2003 I put together a group of musicians to play the
international festival of poetry and literature, which takes place annually in all literaturhaus-cities in germany.
band literaturhaus
it was a cool event and we had a blast playing there. I asked hester boverhuis again to join in on vocals and laptop. there was kai wolff of berlin on laptop and guitar, sjan of berlin on keys and harald kuempfel on drums.
the music we played was partly written during rehearsals and partly improvised on stage. the idea was to play a set without stopping the music. we would play the “composed” songs and fill up the usual pauses between songs with improvisations that lead from one song into the next.
it was crazy, because the improvisations naturally featured parts of the song we just ended and parts of the song we were about to start. the transition from one song to another was extremely interesting musically because you couldn’t tell beforehand what would happen and what the “transition music” would sound like. some of the transition pieces I actually liked more than the songs. they had a distinct feel of creativity and were in no way polished like most composed pieces of music.
I always compare this kind of music making to visual artists drawing up sketches of their ideas. many times I find myself more intrigued by the sketches than by the composed artwork.
this technique of improvising from one song to the next is also very healthy for the musician’s performance. you have to stay alert all the time. there’s no way to tell beforehand how the band is going to go from one piece to the next. what’s going to happen rythmically, harmonically?
I always was very excited about how the new song was going to start. or the feeling you get when you realize that now, in this moment the whole band just crossed the line and is now with this beat starting to play the next song. it’s like a group consciousness that is sparking a light in all the musicians at the same time. that’s when you look at each other on stage in astonishment and smile cause the universe just came together in this one split of a second. hard to describe.
it’s almost like the music dictates what the musicians do. the musician just pushes the music into a certain direction. he tells the music where it has to go, but the music decides on how to get there.
it was an incredible experience and the musicians were wonderful because they all had the nescessary sensitiveness to perform on such a high level of creativity.
unfortunately we did not get a decent recording out of the performance so the music has not been conserved. maybe even better. we created it on the spot and it vanished on the spot. I like that.
harald kuempfel
sjan
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: harald kuempfel, hester boverhuis, improvisation, instant composing, kai wolff, literaturhaus muenchen
shortly after the rouge&noir performances I presented yet another performance with hester boverhuis on vocals/laptop. „the hare and the dog“ tells fairytales from various cultures.
we performed this on easter 2003. it was originally thought to be a fairy tale afternoon for children. but we soon discovered that making music for children is extremely difficult and that we, at that point, were not able to accopmlish the task. so we stuck to who we were and wrote music that fits adults and makes the fairy tales we wanted to present sound as crazy as possible. reading fairy tales from all over the world was extreme fun and I learned more about myself and the world than ever before. I got cought up in the world of funny creatures and weird stories that my whole life began to be cut like all the stories combined. more of that in another post…
so, “the hare and the dog” was a success and our audiences were more than swept away.
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: easter, fairy tale, hester boverhuis, performance
„the world’s eerie sound“ (german: der welt schauriger klang) is a follow up performance I did with the same lineup at the performance series „bewegungsfreiheit“ (freedom of movement) at literaturhaus in munich, making the audience drift with all senses into a magical world of fairytales both dreary and cheerful.
bewegungsfreiheit
hester at bewegungsfreiheit
Literaturhaus is an organisation that promotes the written word of both german and international writers. their mission is to create a space for dialogue, from current themes and authors to the fundamental questions of literature.
In their own words:
“A meeting place for book-sippers and page-nibblers, movie-talkers and flaneure, penny-a-liners and foehn detectives, frugal feasters and starving artists, radar thinkers and daydreamers, portly poets and docile fools, in short:
A retreat in the thicket of the city for all who keep an ear out for jingles or simply wish to wait a little longer for Godot.”
But the waiting here is no torture. it’s a lot of fun since their events are amazing and always a great chance to meet cool and interesting people.
world's eerie sound
we had a several chances to play there in 2003. one was this performance of yet another set of eerie fairy tales. they gave us carte blanche to present ourselves, so we put together not only music and a performance that included me cooking and eating scrambled eggs (we miked the mini stove and used the sound of cooking eggs as soundeffect)!
yeah, we saw the bookworms make funny faces at that, haha…
we also put some crazy visuals to the music. they were gracefully executed by munich based visual designer birgit nagengast.
dinner on stage
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: fairy tale, hester boverhuis, literaturhaus, soundeffect
a bunch of wild crazy ladies from amsterdam. they’re not only fun to hang out with but they play an incredible reperoir of 1920’s berlin chansons.
poster rouge&noir performance
I invited them to munich in 2003 and we played a couple of intense shows. the first set was all about kurt weill and we had sjan on piano, esther apituley on violin, fabulous mirjam van dam did the vocals and I played bass.
the second set was the higlight of the evening, when the full orchestra of extravagant ladies took center stage and whisked the audience off their feet. with mirjam van dam as the leading voioce of the orchestra it was the one true highlight of that year in munich!
rougr&noir
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: chanson, kurt weill, mirjam van dam, rouge&noir
I called this the “showdown in three acts”. together with hester boverhuis of amsterdam I wrote this show in 2003. we performed it at a munich gallery called “laden13″.
breakdown DVD cover
the show is a trip to subcontious parts of the brain. based on the experimental gonzo lifestyle and writings of hunter thompson and william burroughs.
the show contains cut-ups by william burroughs, hunter s. thompson and the grimm brothers, plus fragments taken from a conversation of david bowie and william burroughs.
it stages exceptional surreal circumstances of life in sound, word and picture.
we recorded the show in amsterdam the same year and after a hard time of funding the postproduction I was able to finally finish it in 2008, five years after the performance.
it is now a supercool dvd with 5.1. surround sound, the original stereotrack and stunning visuals. a real trip, I’m proud to say!
you can get it at filmbaby.com
there you can also take a short peek!
Categories: projects 2003
Tagged: david bowie, hunter thompson, music, video installation, william burroughs
dead on arrival
il conto per favore
in viaggio
lets get it on tonight
lo sconto
no trespassing
the change up
wintermaerchen