Fashion Week

is a stop-motion video collage by visual artist Susan Happersett with a soundtrack by composer Robert van Heumen.

(soundtrack excerpt)

SKIF++

is back with a vengeance. After a break of more than 2,5 years their music is even better than before. The difference? No predefined structures, all free improv. But still making sense.

There is the new cd .next and they're touring the US and Europe.

The electronic audio-visual trio SKIF++ is a collaboration of Jeff Carey (laptop SuperCollider), Robert van Heumen (laptop LiSa) and Bas van Koolwijk (laptop Max/MSP/Jitter). Sound gets processed into video and back, ranging from sonic bursts to melodic melancholy, using joysticks and selfmade controllers to keep it all in line (most of the time). Every SKIF++ performance is improvised, but based on structures that give each set its distinct character.

	Live at Diapason Gallery May 10 2010 (excerpt)
	Live at Brown University May 12 2010 (excerpt)
	Track 1.00 (from the album .next)

fibonacci scroll

The fibonacci scroll is a stop-motion video by visual artist Susan Happersett with a soundtrack by composer Robert van Heumen.

(soundtrack excerpt)

Davis/VanHeumen

is drones with bassclarinet and electronics. Expect big reverbs, long gestures, slow moving soundworlds, subtle details. Gareth Davis (clarinet and bass clarinet) and Robert van Heumen (laptop & controllers) have recentely recorded material at STEIM for an upcoming release. This is just the beginning.

Track 1 recorded in January 2010 at STEIM

Shackle

is Anne LaBerge on flute and samples and Robert van Heumen on laptop. Their aim is to explicity and subtly exploit shackling in both concept and material.

"Shackle was a perfect, `nordic` musical contrast. The duo mixed Anne LaBerge`s delicately chosen, beautifully restraint articulations and timbres from across the flute family gamut, with Robert van Heumen`s live processing and interspersing of his trademark, hard edge, and quite unique brand of sample scratching. While i find the latter technique at times somewhat angular, it contrasted here extremely well with the mysterious shimmering quality of much of the music the duo knew to invent. Anne`s striking pose and Robert`s introvert concentration didn`t disguise the fact that they were constantly listening and finely tuned to one another."
Daniel Schorno - review of the concert at STEIM`s Micro Jamboree Dec 14 2006

[ more ]

	Shackle - video of the first concert at STEIM`s Micro Jamboree - Dec 14 2006
	Live at Zaal 100 Amsterdam (2010), part 1
	Live at Zaal 100 Amsterdam (2010), part n

Stranger: composition and live interpretation

Stranger is an electronic work that starts with the basic questions of life: How do we control our lives? Can we control our lives? What does it mean to die? Does it matter if we know when we`re going to die? Does anything matter? What really is empathy? What does it mean to be human? What can it mean to know another person, to understand another life? Is it possible to break free from the bonds of the familiar, from existing concepts and beliefs?

Stranger is inspired by Albert Camus` L’Étranger and Philip K. Dick`s Do androids dream of electric sheep. And as always by L.E.J. Brouwer.

Similar questions to the ones stated above will arise in the choise of sounds and the structure of the processes and the composition itself: How do we choose sounds and processes out of many? Can that process be arbitrary, even random, or should every sound and every process be weighted again and again until we know it’s right? What does that mean, ‘it is right’? What is it to create a piece of music? Should the judgement of others be considered in making a composition? Is it even possible to create a unique piece of music? Does it matter whether is it unique or not?
The obvious metaphor: a composition as a life.

Download a semi-improvised live interpretation of the Stranger composition performed at the SPARK festival in Minneapolis in February 2009. The performance is semi-improvised, based upon a pre-conceived structure, exploring the no man`s land between a traditional tape piece and free improvisation.

[ more ]

	Stranger excerpt: RepExp
	Stranger excerpt: Time enough JF

Game/Jan, een coldcase

Game/Jan is na Stills en Meisje Loos het derde deel van de spannende Trilogie van het Verleden van theatermaker Carla Mulder.

Het is 12 november 1938 als Jan George Mulder jr. onder verdachte omstandigheden door zijn beste vriend dood wordt aangetroffen in zijn appartement in de mondaine badplaats Menton, Zuid Frankrijk. De dag ervoor verkeerde deze twintigjarige jongeman nog in blakende gezondheid. Wat gebeurde er op de avond voor zijn dood? Verschillende verhalen doen de ronde. Vergiftiging, een drugszaak? Iets met een oudere Engelse dame.

Game/Jan is een reconstructie van een ‘coldcase’ uit 1938 met gebruikmaking van de technieken van nu zoals speciaal ontwikkelde 2D & 3D animaties. Crime Scene Investigation in het theater met als doel het ontrafelen van een familiegeheim.

Premiere in december 2009.

	Fassett theme
	End titles

Absence - HardRock tracks

For the powertrio Absence I 'remixed' two tracks. 'Addict remix' is a 'realtime remix' of the guitar solo in their song Addict (from the 104.5 album) - I basically played along and treated the guitar solo as I would treat an acoustic musician I'd play with - keeping the timing of the track intact. 'Frankly speaking' is a Zappaesk compilation of a couple of different guitar solos (featuring Morton Feldman and John Cage in the intermissions).

These tracks were supposed to be released on a new album called HardRock. But the album was unfortunately rejected in its final stage.

	Addict remix
	Frankly speaking

ABATTOIR: Audrey Chen (cello/voice) and Robert van Heumen (electronics)

"The acoustic strings and singing voice give a very human feeling to the CD, only to be undermined by Van Heuman`s live processing. In his hands, Chen`s voice might start to develop an artificial sustain and within seconds be swirling like water down a drain. Fragments of her cello playing seem to be preserved and regurgitated as blipping percussion. "
Kurt Gottschalk for All about Jazz

"Digital brutalism in free form, vehement expressions, heightened efforts, wailings and atonal lamentations are all performed with uninterrupted breathing techniques - the electronic manipulation is relentless, full of powerful distortions, melancholic melodies and experimental combinations. Authentic, intricate compositions [...]."
Aurelio Cianciotta for Neural.it

"Wow. What a mighty blast this is. [...] Heavy duty improvised music [...]. From the very first to the very last second things erupt like volcano. Sometimes we are on top of that volcano, watching the eruption, then we see hot lava running down, slow but hot and powerful."
Frans de Waard for Vital Weekly

"Devoted to not holding back when Chen performs, it was a pleasure to see her working so hard to match van Heumen’s often brutal digital transformations of her sound. There were several moments of pure psychedelia as van Heumen allowed untransposed, ungranulated repetitions of Chen’s voice to come through. I loved it when, halfway through the second of two extended pieces, he took Chen’s keening voice and filtered it in such a way that, for a moment, it seemed that George Martin, the revered Beatles producer, had entered the room."
Review by Keir Neuringer from a live concert at STEIM May 22, 2008

Download PDF info sheet

[ more ]

	Blood (live at STEIM May 22 2008 (excerpt)
	Feasting (recorded live at STEIM March 12 2009) (excerpt)
	Live at Nachtjournal Cologne March 5 2009 (excerpt)

[top]