 Please use headphones to listen.These sounds are licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
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 StrangerStranger 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. [ more ]
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 Whistle Pig Saloon is the live audio collaboration of Robert van Heumen (Computer/controllers) and John Ferguson (Guitar/effects)."Wide and disjointed, blending a fractured pulse with dynamic texture, this is an immersive and disorientating music, sometimes subtle, often invasive, always close. In capturing a moment and inscribing agency, the motionblur of the cover art offers a suitable metaphor for this duo’s musical interactions. Live sampled source sounds are gesturally manipulated and reworked within open ended narratives, sounding like an air whistle blasting out from an old steam locomotive as it emerges at speed from a tunnel. Whilst the whistle pig/groundhog (day) reference explores cycles of repetition beyond episodic improvisation, emphasising the value of revisiting and re-appropriating a previous moment. John configures the electric guitar as a site for multiple simultaneous points of interaction and queries the iconic cultural status of his instrument via feet, fingers and feedback. Robert crunches, growls and smashes both John`s live sampled sound as well as his private stack of industrial bits and organic beats." Download PDF info sheet See also http://fergalstrandy.co.uk [ more ]
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 ABATTOIR: Audrey Chen (cello/voice) and Robert van Heumen (electronics)"They have performed together in various combinations before in Amsterdam and Chen’s home city of Baltimore, but this was their first duo. Chen played cello with more finesse than I have seen her do before. When I have seen her in the past she has employed the cello and electronics mainly as drone instruments, with her often primal vocalizations leading the performance. Tonight her voice fed hungrily and playfully off her capricious cello playing. Devoted to not holding back when she 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—often considered dangerous territory in some circles but used here in good taste. Van Heumen tends to play forcefully and loudly, and tonight was no exception. However, I noted positively that his choices seemed to be more calculated and considered than usual, with less attention given to his joystick controller and more focus on subtle actions and longer-term transformations. 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 ]
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 ShackleShackle 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 ]
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 No Man`s LandThis radiophonic work deals with the Dust Bowl period in the USA, specifically with the people that lived in the Oklahoma Panhandle, the extreme western region of the state Oklahoma. We will hear the story of Hazel Lucas, who migrated to Boise City, Cimmaron County with her parents and who lived through the worst hard times during this ecological and economical disaster. The story is taked from the book `The worst hard time` by Timothy Egan. Most of the sounds are produced in the CEM studio at WORM Rotterdam with the ARP2500 and the Korg MS-20 synthesizers and a Synton stereo EQ. The voice is by Marilyn Ivy and the production is done by Robert van Heumen. No Man`s Land is commissioned by WORM/CEM and VPRO`s Cafe Sonore. The radioplay aired on Saturday Dec 6 2008. You can read more about it here: http://www.vpro.nl/programma/cafesonore/aflevering...
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 They Would Get Angry Sometimes.Two live versions of the Fury composition. Some of this is released on the Fury CD. [ more ]
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 FuryThe CD Fury, released on Creative Sources Recordings (Jan 2008) contains two works: "Fury (after anger)" and "They would get angry sometimes". "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. [ more ]
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 SKIF++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. [ more ]
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