This weekend I'll be playing another "No [more] Pussyfooting" set, this time at the wonderful Meakusma festival in Eupen! Only at its second edition, this festival received a lot of international acclaim, not in the least from the Guardian naming it one of the 10 best festivals in Europe. It's an honour to be part of this year's fantastic program!
Our Ears Felt Like Canyons - Ruhtriennale Premiere
Zwerm's latest project "Our Ears Felt Like Canyons" will have its premiere monday 21st of august at the Machinehaus concert-series of the Ruhrtriennale!
'And we played until our awareness became embedded in the canyon and summoned a ghostly, floating train, an apparition of metal meeting metal, reflected doubly, triply, endlessly from the canyon, from the mind, from the flickering passenger windows, the rumbling ties, our ears felt like canyons. We didn't speak until morning.' Pauline Oliveros.
“Acousmatic listening”, as described by Pierre Schaefer, refers to hearing a sound without seeing what it causes - in it's original sense “acousmatique” refers to the disciples of Pythagoras who listened to their master from behind a curtain, without seeing him, in complete silence.
Pauline Oliveros' “Deep listening” is an album recorded in a large cistern under the ground with a 45 second natural reverb. It also refers to a very intuitive and encompassing attitude of listening.
With Our Ears Felt Like Canyons Zwerm proposes an immersive concert setting where the four musicians are in the center, obscured – using adapted lightning - facing each other, with the audience surrounding them. The electric guitar, allowing to create complex sounds with little movement, acts as a sort of “pythagorian curtain”, stripping the performers from most of the visual theatrics that go with a live performance and shifting the action more towards the ear and the act of listening.
Zwerm asked composers Joanna Bailie, Christopher Trapani and Alexander Schubert to write new pieces with this idea in mind, creating a musical triptych which explores the refined spectral-microtonal roots of New Orleanian Christopher Trapani, in between the pure and minimalist soundscapes of Joanna Bailie and the psychedelic noise of Alexander Schubert. Three sonic tableaux that will, each in their own way, fit this specific soundscape environment and acousmatic context very well, creating a unique concert experience.
Performance dates:
21 08 17: Ruhrtriennale (DE) (Premiere)
22 10 17: Transit, Leuven (BE)
21 11 17: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (GB)
3-6 05 18: Spor Festival (DK)
Oh Mensch in Brazil!
Guitar dus Oh Mensch (with Matthias Koole and yours truly) is currently preparing for concerts and a recording in Brazil! We're currently rehearsing two pieces, Turgut Ercetin's "Catalysis (a)" (world premiere) and Michael Maierhof's "Specific Objects", at Matthias Koole's homebase Belo Horizonte. We'll do a showcase/open rehearsal at the local conservatory and then it's off to São Paulo for a concert at Ibrasotope.
Ercetin's score and Maierhof's specific objects
Then on friday we're off to Rio de Janeiro to record Turgut Ercetin's piece "Catalysis (a)" for an upcoming album release, more about this soon!
The Long Now 2017
Last weekend I premiered my new project No [more] Pussyfooting at The Long Now, the grand closing event of MaerzMusik Festival. The event took place in the amazing location of Kraftwerk, Berlin and lasted 30 hours for which I performed the opening set.
I stuck around till the very end and it turned out to be an amazing and powerful musical experience that defies all sense of time, listening to the music of Alvin Lucier, Graindelavoix, Tim hacker and many more.
Now onto the next event, Rewire 2017 in The Hague!
Here are some impressions of my set by photographer Camille Blake:
No [More] Pussyfooting
I'm in the final stages of presenting my new solo-project "No [More] Pussyfooting", a reconstruction of music from the experimental studio albums "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star" by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp.
In these albums from the early '70s Brian Eno blends his tape-loop experiments with Robert Fripp's rock guitar, creating unique layered soundscapes. Using contemporary technology in combination with the original “frippertronics” set-up of two reel-to-reel tape-recorders, "No [More] Pussyfooting" aims at restoring these gems of experimental repertoire, originally created in the studio, and bringing them back to the stage.
Playlist:
- The Heavenly Music Corporation (A-side of No Pussyfooting)
- An Index of Metals (B-side of Evening Star)
I'm very excited and humbled to do the first performance at MaerzMusik's big closing event "The Long Now" in Berlin on march 25th, with a fantastic line-up including Alvin Lucier and Graindelavoix, among many others) followed by a second performance one week later on april 1st at The Hagues Rewire festival (also here among an incredible line up with artists such as Daniel Lanois, Swans, Slowdive, and many more).
More performances are planned at Ear To The Ground festival in deBijloke in Ghent, at AlbaNova in Alden Biesen, Meakusma festival in Eupen and Sonic City in Kortrijk.
More dates will be announced soon! Here's a full list of upcoming performances, hope to see you at one of them!
25/03/2017 MaerzMusik - The Long Now, Kraftwerk, Berlin
01/04/2017 Rewire Festival, The Hague
13/05/2017 Ear To The Ground, deBijloke, Gent
25/06/2017 AlbaNova, Landcommanderij Alden Biesen, Bilzen
09/09/2017 Meakusma Festival, Eupen
11/11/2017 Sonic City, Kortrijk
With the support of ChampdAction, the Flemish Government and AP Hogeschool Antwerpen