Back from yet another road trip in the USA. This on extended into Canada. Roughly: From Seattle going east through Washington, Idaho and Montana to Glacier National Park, then back through the same states, going north into British Columbia Canada to Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Here's the full trip on Google Maps.

Totally uninteresting to anyone but my obsessive mind, I was happy to be able to add Idaho and Montana to my list of visited states. Idaho I was always curious about, as a part of the US that was colonized very late. I was a bit disappointed though, although now I think of it, Idaho's forrests, deserted country roads and rivers are very nice. And the fact that it rained didn't help either. It's just that I much more like America's desert and prairie lands, and in that respect the eastern part of Washington state totally blew my mind, unexpectedly. In all tourist guides this part of Washington is barely mentioned, but there's great landscape there. In Montana we only drove through the western part, and I guess the beautiful dramatic mountain landscape there is very different from the rest. I keep being obsessed (a bit) by Montana though, probably because of it's presence in the first very strong section of the book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, and of course because of it's dental floss tycoons ;).

This was the first time I was in Canada, and I liked it. But again, what I liked most was the desert landscape around Osoyoos (yes, they have desert in Canada!), the mountains and beach on Vancouver Island, and Vancouver the city. Driving becomes a bit less interesting after so many treeeeeees. Nothing beats driving for hours through bare landscapes and straight roads ;)

Vancouver Island was great though. The beaches in the west, directly connected with the temperate rainforest, totally has this Lost, or The Beach atmosphere. Great strolls through the forrest, ending on endless beaches with (again) lots of trees on small islands in the sea. Strathcona National Part in the center of Vancouver Island is something totally different. Snowy mountain tops, smooth lakes, very quiet and very isolated. Beautiful.

Washington:

Idaho:

Glacier NP:

Washington again:

Vancouver Island, Pacific Rim NP:

Vancouver Island, Strathcona Provincial Park:

Back to work.

Susan Happersett will premiere her new movie “Fashion Week” during Fashion Week NYC. "Fashion Week" is an animation collage short with music by Robert van Heumen.

On September 10, from 6 PM to 10PM, Susan and her collage creations will be participating in the Shop Addicts “Fashion Night Out” event. This is a free event, but VIP tickets with additional benefits are available at the door. Fashion Night Out will be held at TOUCH LOUNGE 240 West 52ndSt, NYC. This will be a fun event with shopping, new designers and refreshments. Susan's video will be playing at her booth. Look for the model wearing Susan's Collage Dress.

On Monday September 13, the “Fashion Week” video will be featured during a fashion presentation from 8 PM to 9PM at “The last days of Summer” party at BAR NINE, 807 9th Ave, NYC. This is an RSVP only event sponsored by Ouch Magazine. There will be a party and music after the presentations. Send an email to rsvp@ouchmagazine.com to RSVP.
Disclaimer: This could be a really wild event

The last couple of months I've started a fruitful collaboration with visual artist Susan Happersett from Jersey City, resulting in two stop-motion video's with a soundtrack: fibonacci scroll and Fashion Week.

Both video's were constructed by photographing every frame by hand by Susan and her partner Gertjan, then collected into a video. The soundtrack was added afterwards. On fibonacci scroll I wanted to double the rhythm created by the marching scribblings on the screen in the beginning, then flipping the atmosphere around in the second part. For Fashion Week I created a kit on my MachineDrum (made by Elektron) and punched in/out various sounds while watching the video. Creating a number of variations I choose the one that fitted best in the end.

The full video's will probably be put online some time in the future, but since they will be submitted to various festivals and museums I can't give more than a glimpse right now.

Below a review of ABATTOIR's concert in the STEIM showcase program at Japan Society in New York City on May 8 2010.

An evening of performances associated with the Amsterdam-based Studio of Electro-Instrumental Music isn't the usual fare for the Japan Society, but if the performers were mostly European, the center's director, Takuro Mizuta Lippit aka dj sniff, fit the usual demographic for the May 8th showcase. And whatever excuse it takes to get a taste of the famed Dutch center in New York was welcome. The evening opened with Yutaka Makino layering loud and dense plateaus of electronic sound in complete darkness; he calls his work three dimensional, but in this instance at least the dimensions could only be sensed. The duo ABATTOIR, with Robert van Heumen processing Audrey Chen's vocals and cello live, proved to be the highlight of the evening, accentuated by the theater's excellent sound system. Every click, scrape and exhalation was plainly audibly through their arc of sparse to loud to delicate beauty. dj sniff collided heavy sax records with Otomo Yoshihide and Yamatanka Eye before resolving with Coltrane, creating a turntablist free jazz tumbler. The final set featured electronicist Yannis Kyriakides taking a feed from Andy Moor's electric guitar that rocked and only got better when Kyriakides mixed in white noise and disembodied crowd sounds, creating an expansive stereo field. With workshops and exhibitions on electronic music-making, including labs designed for children, the weekend was both exciting and pleasantly demystifying.

Kurt Gottschalk for All About Jazz

So what's this all about? See for yourself:

Below are some pictures from ABATTOIR's concert at Japan Society on May 8, 2010.

Photo's by Peter Gannushkin

I don't get to write as much as I'd want to, but at least I've added some new sounds. Very fresh SKIF++ recordings from concerts at Diapason Gallery and Brown University during our recent tour on the US eastcoast, an older recording from ABATTOIR at Nachtjournal in Cologne (March 2009) and an excerpt from Whistle Pig Saloon's concert at Borealis 2009. This last track will (hopefully) accompany our paper in Leonardo Music Journal on Improvisation.

Check out the sounds here.

So what's keeping me from writing? Well... how about this:

Totally nerdy, totally unnecessary (since it's a thought experiment) but I love it!

STEIM will be presenting a two-day program at Japan Society in NYC. Here's a video announcing it.

Everybody seems to be doing it, so I'll give it a shot.

The ultimate highlight of 2009 is Fever Ray. Great debut album and fabulous show in Paradiso.

Best cds I've heard in 2009:

1. Fever Ray - Fever Ray
2. King Midas Sound - Waiting for you...
3. Mastodon - Crack the Skye
4. The Black Dog - Further Vexations
5. Redshape - The Dance Paradox

Best concerts I've witnessed in 2009:

1. Fever Ray, Paradiso Amsterdam
2. Chimaira / Throwdown / Unearth, Watt Rotterdam
3. PJ Harvey, Paradiso Amsterdam

• A semi-improvised live interpretation of the Stranger composition (as download) performed at the SPARK festival in Minneapolis in February 2009
• Game/Jan, a coldcase: a theaterpiece for which I created the soundtrack
• Two remixes for the rockband Absence