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Fury / Robert van Heumen
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The composition Fury finds its origin in texts from the Dust Bowl period in the USA. In current times we find similar economical and ecological conditions to re-appear as the ones that created that disaster in the High Plains in the USA in the 1940's. Fury is also about the primitive in man. The hidden part of us that we try very hard to suppress or control, that boils within us and breaks through the surface only under extreme circumstances. In the current state of the world, our minds are constantly overloaded with information, all the time trying to deal with others around us and our relationships with these people. We try to communicate with them, to convey our inner world, but we fail to really make contact. Frustration and anger can surface unexpectedly and uncontrollably, with devastating effects. Sometimes the fog can clear up and we experience beauty, a hint of something good.
The texts researched are about Dust Bowl migrants living in Farm Security Administration camps in central California (1940-1941). Many Americans fled the Great Plains (Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri) looking for work and a better economical and ecological environment. These texts were chosen because they breathe a different era, before the world became seemingly 'civilized'. The musical voice of the woman who talks about clashes of colonists with indians in an earlier time, is not only beautiful and soothing but sends shivers down my spine. | ||||||
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Reviews: Fury is an unnerving account of the emergence of our suppressed rage. Voices and sounds appear and disappear in varying fragmentations and intensities, implying an ever shifting state of psychosis and paranoia. Van Heumen`s extensive practice in live electronics enables him to dynamically and fluidly move carefully prepared sounds within a compositional structure. Takuro Mizuta Lippit - STEIM`s artistic director 2007/2008 'Fury' is the first real CD by Robert van Heumen, a name that may not ring an immediate bell (perhaps, who knows), but who is an active driving force in the Dutch improvised electronic music. He's active with such bands/collectives/projects as OfficeR, Skif++, RKS, Shackle and founding member of N Collective, if not organizing events for Steim in Amsterdam. His primary instrument is the laptop running software like LiSa (live sampling) and SuperCollider, sampling everyday sounds and making them sound like anything but everyday sounds. On his debut CD he has two pieces. The four part work 'Fury (After Anger)' and 'They Would Get Angry Sometimes'. The first uses texts about 'Dust Bowl migrants living in Farm Security Administration camps in central California (1940-1941). Many Americans fled the Great Plains looking for work and a better economical and ecological environment". The texts however do not play a big part in the composition. There is a bit of guitar like sound to be spotted (self-played? taken from the original recordings), and a bit of text, but throughout the title piece is a racket of noise tumbling through the bits and bytes of the computer - but beware it's not noise in the traditional sense of the word. It's dynamic, ever changing, crackling, loud and soft, buzzing and hissing. Even without being able to understand the text, which doesn't seem to be absolutely necessary, this is a very nice piece, shifting back and forth between abstract sound and more melodic passages. The second piece uses some similar sounds but is altogether a strict abstract piece of music of an even harsher quality type of noise. Vibrant music this is, great music - moving away from the delicate structures of microsound into the land of noise based textures. More Mego than micro. Great start! Frans de Waard (Vital) Vital Weekly is an e-mail magazine, which appears 48 times a year and has the latest cd-reviews and news on concerts and festivals. It was hosted by Staalplaat for ten years, but is now moved. "Fury (after Anger)" is a new project by Robert von Heumen made up of two recordings: the title track, split in four different tracks, and "They Would Get Angry Sometimes". The former has been commissioned by the Sonic Circuit Festival in Washington and the latter has been composed from a performance at Rhode Island's Brown University. Both the works show their "in progress" structure and a strong conceptual approach, in part because of the sound forms riskiness, really suggestive, impalpable, ultimate, but somehow subject to the textual dynamics: recordings dating back to 1940-41 concerning the immigrants' life in the California's Farm Security Administration camps. Van Heumen's thesis is that "Fury" is functional to a specific investigation on the human beings primitive dynamics, our inner part that we feel very hard to eradicate or control. The author perfectly succeeded in emanating a sense of disquietude, even avoiding to decipher all the included texts. The texts are then suspended among drones, hums and buzz'n'crackles: muffled rustlings and dissonant glitches, wonderfully acted in a vibrant music crescendo but also still ambiguous, harsh and unstable. Aurelio Cianciotta for neural.it Dutch electronic improviser, member of an electro-acoustic project (OfficeR) and of a trio active in audio-visual arts (SKIF++), mathematician, trumpet player, software programmer and so on... Robert van Heumen's compositions are created using primarily the laptop and, specifically, running the software LiSa for a live sampling and SuperCollider for a real-time audio-synthesis. This is his first CD, containing two titles: "Fury (after anger)", a composition in four movements built on distorted, crackled, buzzed sounds with episodic fragments of spoken words, repetitive at times but often consisting of entire pieces of text taken from historical documents about "Dust Bowl migrants living in Farm Security Administration camps in central California (1940-1941)". Subtle melodies generated by a guitar occasionally interfere. "They Would Get Angry Sometimes", the second piece, has nearly the same structure, but with more incidence of computer treatments and, perhaps, of noise. Original work of sampling and programming, great combination of different sound sources, thus an excellent debut. Spiritual Archives Review in The Wire. | ||||||
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'Fury (after anger)' is originally an electronic 5.1 surround composition commissioned by the Sonic Circuits festival 2006 in Washington DC. 'They would get angry sometimes' is a derived version, performed live in 2007 at Brown University, Rhode Island (USA) and at the <>TAG Gallery, The Hague (NL). It shares its sounds with Fury, but has a different structure and different movements. Images & interviews: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, Library of Congress, American Folklife Center. Fury contains samples of Anne LaBerge, Jodi Gilbert and OfficeR. Special thanks to Mirjam for unlimited support. © 2008 http://hardhatarea.com | ||||||
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