NEWS
03.05.2013
The piece "How to be/loved" by Antoinette Helbing which I made the music for will perform
10/11/12 may in Korzo, Den Haag
14/15 may in Melkweg, Amsterdam
16/17 may in Grand Theatre Groningen
02.02.2013
-I just finished producing music for the production "NutCrasher" by dance company De KISS Moves from Amsterdam. The piece will start a national tour in the second week of february.
-I'm also half way done with producing music for a piece by choreographer Antoinette Helbing which is commissioned by Random Collision. The piece will premiere in Grand Theatre Groningen.
-In march I'll be at Theater Tuchlaube in Aarau, Switzerland to participate in a research for an upcoming theater piece by Cornelia Hanselmann.
-Finally there are first preparations for a new dance piece by Simon Tanguy which will include a live band on stage.
13.07.2012
Stefan Schäfer (voc) and me (git) developed "Twittercore - Live Bluetality" a fun project best described as 140 character Twitter controlled grindcore-improv. I made a Max patch (with the help of Errico De Lisi, thanks again!!) that can check Twitter for tweeds with a certain hashtag. If there is a new tweed it automatically starts a random, blastbeat in the drumcomputer. The tweet is used as lyrics. If there is no new tweed we just jam along at a rather slow tempo until a new tweed is send. Because Twitter has a limit of 140 characters per tweet our system automatically shuts down after 140 bars of music. Two beamers project the new feeds and "bars left to play" counter plus the animated Twittercore logo made by Stefan.
Twittercore completely relies on the audience's participation, if nobody tweets us, the music stays rather static. "Tweet us to feed us".
Visit Stefan's blog for fotos / audio / video.
22.06.2012
Two dance / mime performances that I made the music for are going to be performed at the ITs Festival 2012 in Amsterdam.
"japan.fever.more" by Simon Tanguy (Frascati 1) and "Still not Raining" by Cornelia Hanselmann (Brakke Grond)
Click the links for more info.
23.05.2012
Audiovisual improv duo olgar now has its own website: http://olgaraudiovisual.tumblr.com
23.04.2012
The last time I have been busy making music for:
-"Not Raining", a mime performance by Cornelia Hanselmann
-"The Things We Think We Forgot", a performance movie by Sarah Bijlsma as part of her exhibition at Museum Henriette Polak in Zutphen, NL. I made a 4-channel sound-installation for this one.
-"Teaser367" by Alejandro Ramirez as part of his exhibition for GRID International Photography Biennial Amsterdam.
16.12.2011
Some fragments of a dance / music / live-visuals improv gig we did at the OT301 in Amsterdam
28.11.2011
I just finished a 2,5 hour composition for the durational performance "Dazwischen liegt nur der Ozean" by Zeitraumexit. The performance was shown during the re-opening of the BASF-Feierabendhaus.
Below is a trailer with 10 short fragments of the music.
09.11.2011
I was curating the last Monday Match at the Bimhuis together with Stina Nilsson from Copenhagen-based music/dance improv group Superhands. We played in a huge group with 14 people; music, dance and live-visuals. I will upload a video soon!
05.11.2011
Two of my compositions have been selected for the 6th edition of the audiovisual Streaming Festival in The Hague. The pieces will be streamed non-stop during the festival from 1-18th dec alongside films and other forms of art.
Click to view my artist page on the festival website.
Click to read my interview.
07.10.2011
I recently did a recording session with Tim Coehoorn (also on guitar and electronics). The piece below is freely improvised with no editing added later.
We are going to do a performance at AMP in Arnhem 21st of october.
free improv w/tim coehoorn by Bob_Subgenius
12.09.2011
"Japan" (Simon Tanguy) is performing at Theatre de la Ville, Paris 14-20 sept. Music by me.
05.09.2011
Olgar just finished some gigs in Berlin, this time as a trio with Daniela Petry on doublebass. We also invited some cool groups to share some of the evenings with us.
More info on the events page.
Some impressions from one of the concerts:
28.06.2011
The last two month I have been busy composing / producing / performing music for some contemporary dance and mime pieces:
"Der Elefant verschwindet" by Cornelia Hanselmann
"Mir schwant, es wandelt sich" by Antoinette Helbing
"Japan" by Simon Tanguy
"Der Die Das" by Simon Tanguy
I put some videos here, more to follow.
28.04.2011
Two new tracks I made for a dance performance. Should make you feel very relaxed.
24.02.2011
"Future of the Lab is an experiment in collaborative improv composition. A mashup amoeba of stylistic intent with the vertebrous center of a single compositional/conducting mind. A number of musicians from different cultural and stylistic backgrounds assemble for periodic residencies to explore the idea of composition through playing."
The first session took place at STEIM and was really fun to do. A bunch of people with noise making devices in a not so big studio with way to many cables and power adaptors just has to be good.
Jonathan Reus has taken the job of mixing the at least 10.000 hours of recorded music into a 45 min album (thanks again...). I wonder how they did this when they still had tape recorders only. Maybe they just didn't.
We have a blog just in case you want to read the full story www.futureofthelab.com
Here is a page where you can listen to the rough mixes and see some pictures: futureofthelab
18.12.2010
I am currently working on a multi-channel version of my live setup in Ableton / Max4Live. In my music I am more concerned with placing sounds in space rather than in time and using surround as part of my instrument seems like the next necessary step to me.
The people at STEIM have been so nice to let me lock myself in at one of there studios for some days. STEIM is such a friendly, supportive and inspiring place, if you haven't been there for a visit you should definitely do so! Link to STEIM
22.11.2010
I made a new device in Max4Live that I call the Automator (creative name isn't it?). It can be assigned to two parameters of another device in the same Live set and control them automatically (using Live's API).
You can choose "random" or "control" (or both). "Control" cycles through 8 steps, the value of each step is set using a fader on my MIDI controller. Instead of having a fixed automation I can change each step at any time.
The time between each step in the cycle can be set between 10ms and 10 sec.
Transitions between steps can be abrupt or smooth (or anything in between).
Depending on the setup this device can imply step-sequencer like rhythm or do very slow and subtle changes.
Link for download can be found in the download section.
04.10.2010
Robert Henke is one of the inventors and programmers of the music software Ableton Live. In february I did an interview with him in Berlin which you can read here (in german).
24.09.2010
In August I participated in a residency at the ADA-Studio in Berlin. Composing nonstop for two weeks at this nice studio was a lot of fun.
There will be three performances of the piece now in Berlin (24.-26.9.).
"...The Performance Residency Series offers international performance artists a unique forum for creating and presenting work in Berlin.
For each residency, ada invites once a year (usually in July/August) 2 artists, or groups of artists, into their studio home on Schönhauser Allee to create a short performance piece and deal with a subject set by ada..."
21.09.2010
I'm setting up my website here...no experience so let's see how long it is going to take...
Meanwhile you can visit me on Myspace