Wednesday 4 April 2018 – Vrooom & Camera Japan presents:
VROOOM #59 goes JAPAN
–– LA VEUVE MOUSTACHE / KISHINO YUICHI
–– JON THE DOG
–– KAISU SHIMAI
location: Pink Pank – Delftsestraat 9, Rotterdam
doors: 20:30 end: 23:30 / entrance: 8 euro (cash only)
https://www.facebook.com/events/2031096087207510/
Vrooom and co-hosts Camera Japan present an evening with playful live music & performance from a Tokyo-based group of artists. The moustached widow Kishino Yuichi has been a welcome guest in Rotterdam, performing at Camera Japan Festival in 2010 and 2014 and at selected shows at the old Worm. It's the first time we're rolling out the red carpet for the outlandish Jon The Dog and Kaisou Shima.
LA VEUVE MOUSTACHE / KISHINO YUICHI
Kishino Yuichi / La Veuve Moustache is an intriguing figure. On stage he transforms in the singing moustached widow, enjoying her holidays in a kind of theatrical kingdom of cabaret chansons and choreographic elements. In the company of pianist Gary Ashiya and video artist ALi, the widow lands in an interactive stage set of movies, opening up a dialogue with them. The self-effacing movie-sampling transforms into a tragic-comic story, often moving audiences from laughter to tears. Kishino Yuichi is also a network catalyst in Tokyo, runs the Out One Disc label (Oorutaichi, Sparks, Gangpol Und Mit), DJ's and works as a university professor at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, specialised in sound design of cinema.
https://youtu.be/hgmJmQCZLOk
JON THE DOG
Jon The Dog is Shoko Uehara, who dresses up in a wolf (or dog, if you will) costume, and sings and plays the harmonium. Her work has an endearing, childlike quality. She released her debut cassette tape "GAAAAAA-JON sings" in 1994. Her 2nd album "Smoke" was as released in 1996 on John Zorn's Tzadik Records. The following year, she made a contribution to the "Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg" complilation. In 1998 she released a collaborative album with Yasushi Utsunomia (ex- After Dinner). Aside from her music performance, she is also known to be active as a Tarot fortune-teller and Zenith Healer.
http://jonthedog.com
KAISOU SHIMAI
Wakame, Kombu and Mekabu are Kaisou Shimai aka the "Seaweed Sisters". This classically trained trio plays music for sax and piano, and is influenced by the original bands of the retro-music show era. Their sound emulates modern (film) music and Matsuribayashi (Japanese tradition festival music), somewhere between the work of Nino Rota and award-winning Japanese composer Kōji Ueno.
http://kaisou-shimai.blogspot.nl/
Friday 16 March 2018
VROOOM #58
–– ZO-ON SLOWS (cn)
–– JOKER NIES (de)
–– NIEK HILKMANN (nl)
–– MATSUMOTO MITSUAKI (jp)
location: Pink Pank – Delftsestraat 9, Rotterdam
doors: 20:30 end: 00:00 / entrance: 7 euro (cash only)
https://www.facebook.com/events/2059276010997256/
Vrooom #58: daring music and improvisation with Zo-on Slows, "electro-sapiens" Joker Nies, audio-visualist Matsumoto Mitsuaki, and Roffa's Niek Hilkman. Last-mentioned will present his 'Waterworks ii'; an exploration of the principles of sonic fluidity, based on the strict concepts of extratonal composition.
ZO-ON SLOWS (cn)
Zo-on Slows aka Echo Ho, is a Beijing-born, Cologne-based artist, producer, composer and audio-visual performer. Ho spend years exploring the field of electronic improv and live composition. She reinvented the traditional Chinese string instrument Gu Qin as the "Slow Qin" by extending its function to a wireless interface, enabling real-time improvisation using customised music software. Her textured music is inspired by both historically informed performance and nightclub sounds. She releases on the Cologne-based label Baumusik.
https://goechospace.com/
JOKER NIES (de)
Joker Nies is a Cologne-based musician, sound-designer and recording-engineer. He is also a photographer and technical editor for the German Sound&Recording and Keyboards magazines. Since the 80s Nies experiments with all kinds of hardware and software-based sound sources. During the early 90s, modifying the Omnichord instrument became his initiation to what is now commonly known as circuit-bending. Nies taylors his instruments to his needs and creates electronic devices with a broad range of sounds, that he plays with great expression and musical gesture. His latest development is a modulation-matrix and a body-contact „keyboard“ for the Buchla Music Easel.
http://www.klangbureau.de/klangbureau/Joker.html
NIEK HILKMANN (nl) - Waterworks ii
Niek Hilkmann is a twenty-first century polymath with a background in art history, media design, musicology and natural history. Within his work he focuses on the grey areas between (uncontrollable, or unexplainable) human behavior and the dry, often pseudo-scientific methods that try to justify, or explain them. He conducted an amateur avant-garde orchestra (playing pieces of Xenakis and Steve Reich), created a one hundred meter long moving panorama (the "Panorama Ineptum"), constructed the Universal Notation Ideal (UNI) system and curated events such as "Will VHS Save The Universe?" and "Floppy Totaal”.
https://www.facebook.com/niekhilkmann
MATSUMOTO MITSUAKI (jp)
Matsumoto Mitsuaki is a "audio-visualist", composer and scenographer. He tries to create something of "a sensory space" with different means, and in different contexts, using a bandoneon, a prepared sitar or a prepared japanese pipa – from acoustic to electric, from analog to digital. Matsumoto is a sound performer in different contexts, including choreagraphy. He collaborated with Jaap Blonk, Mihael Thieke, Pierre Bastien, Hans Koch, Gaudenz Badrutt, Yasumune Morishige, and others. In Kagoshima he organizes "Croisements Kagoshima", a series of concerts for new music.
https://soundcloud.com/mitsuaki-matsumoto/sets/falia/s-uO1TQ
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This event is made possible with kind support of Popunie Rotterdam.
VROOOM #57
– LAURA AGNUSDEI (it)
– KAREL VAN DER EIJK (nl)
– INFERNAL MOSQUITOS (it)
– FASCIA LATA (fr) – dj
location: Pink Pank – Delftsestraat 9, Rotterdam
doors: 20:30 end: 00:00 / entrance: 6 euro (cash only)
FB event
As you've come to expect from us, there will be three intriguing live acts performing at Vrooom #57; all 3x #solo. Soulful electroacoustic music from Laura Agnusdei. A mind-boggling performance from Karel van der Eijk. Dirar Kalash revisits Vrooom too, this time trading his oud for saxophone and live electronics.
LAURA AGNUSDEI (it)
Laura Agnusdei is a classically trained saxophone player from Bologna. She is currently based in The Hague, where she is studying at the Institute of Sonology. Her compositions feature the saxophone as the main voice within sonic landscapes that shift between melodies and textures, the song form and improvisation. Fusing acoustic, digital and analog sound sources, she creates emotional states that change from track to track. “Night/Lights” is her solo debut cassette released last September via The Tapeworm.
http://lauragnusdei.com/
KAREL VAN DER EIJK (nl)
Karel van der Eijk is a visual artist who makes installations in which sound and mechanics have a key role. Some of his installations move with a push of the button, others are played like an instrument by the audience or by the artist himself.
This night he will perform with his hilarious inflatable trumpet(ish) machine: objects are being blown up by fans mounted on a backpack, breathing is only possible by means of whistling.
http://karelvandereijk.blogspot.nl/
INFERNAL MOSQUITOS – Riccardo Marogna (it)
Infernal Mosquitoes is Riccardo Marogna's solo project where he plays tenor saxophone and live electronics to challenge the boundaries between acoustic and digitally generated sounds. His saxophone is modified and hacked with the aid of contact microphones, actuators, pickups and strings attached to its body, resulting in a sort of hybrid device in between a reed instrument, an electric guitar, a percussion and a controller. The result is a concrete, dense sonic matter, where all the nuances of the human-instrument system (breath, metal, skin, water) are amplified and gain a new kind of presence in a pulsating and ever-changing scenario.
http://riccardomarogna.com/infernalmosquitoes
FASCIA LATA (fr)
Composer/performer/DJ in the making from Paris who is currently based in Den Haag, studying at the Institute Of Sonology. She'll be our DJ for the evening.
https://soundcloud.com/fascialata
VROOOM #56
– JASNA VELIČKOVIĆ (cs)
– RÄS (Nina Hitz, George Dimitriu, Maya Felixbrodt)
– ORPHAX (nl)
location: Pink Pank – Delftsestraat 9, Rotterdam
doors: 20:30 end: 00:00 / entrance: 6 euro (cash only)
FB event
Vrooom's 2018 kick-off is a triple serving that includes the transformative acoustic possibilities of electromagnetic fields, deep ambient drones and three proponents of the violin family.
JASNA VELIČKOVIĆ (cs)
Jasna Veličković is a composer and performer based in Amsterdam. Her recent works such as "Last Song", "Ombre…moi non plus" and "Shadow Studies" focus on sound extension of traditional instruments. Her music often derives from existing musical pieces shadowing or looking awry to the original. Most recently she is building a new performance setup made out of permanent magnets and coils. This project is a new installment of her ongoing artistic research whose aim is the creation of tools that facilitate playing on instruments or objects using the transformative acoustic possibilities of electromagnetic field.
http://jasnavelickovic.com
RÄS (Nina Hitz, George Dimitriu, Maya Felixbrodt)
String trio Räs is an improvisation unit that consists of three different players; George Dimitriu (violin), Maya Felixbrodt (viola) and Nina Hitz (Cello).
Räs music does not follow the more obvious interaction that happens when improv musicians meet, it's more like a body of sound that exists in it’s own world, rattling, mumbling and creating an atmosphere. The area of tension in which ras moves ranges from "Wandelweiser" music (an international group of composers/performers founded in 1992 by Dutch-born flautist Antoine Beuger and German violinist Burkhard Schlothauer) to the conceptualism of Cage (pieces like "landscape nr 4 for 12 radio’s"), adding a very personal taste to this approach. All instruments are like radios that are turned on random frequencies, interacting with each other because they are playing in the same space at the same time, but without a conscious knowledge of eachothers' presences.
https://soundcloud.com/z6records/kitchen-song-1
ORPHAX (nl)
Orphax aka Sietse van Erve is a minimal ambient and drone music project. In van Erve's music there is a development towards microtonal sounds, where time and spatiality are important factors. A possible result can be a static form of sound where development in the music becomes subordinate to the listener losing any sense of time.
http://www.orphax.com
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This event is made possible with kind support of Popunie Rotterdam.
Wednesday 20 December
VROOOM #55
– MACHINEFABRIEK with MARCO DOUMA
– E-KARE (AY OI U)
– DIFFICULT
– POSTPEOPLE
– DJ MANHANDLE
location: Pink Pank – Delftsestraat 9, Rotterdam
doors: 20:30 end: 00:00 / entrance: 6 euro (cash only)
facebook event
Last one of this year. Stuff that cavity, have a bag of crisps and a fizzy drink. The sixth coming is near already.
MACHINEFABRIEK & MARCO DOUMA (nl)
Rotterdam's perhaps most industrious knob twiddler Machinefabriek combines ambient, modern classical, minimalism, drone and field recordings. His pieces unfold as ‘films without image’, with a sharp ear for detail. At Vrooom Machinefabriek will collaborate with multidisciplinary artist Marco Douma. The duo will present a 30 minute audiovisual improvisation.
http://www.machinefabriek.nu
http://marcodouma.com
E-KARE
E-kare (ay oi u) is a two-person chaos collective whose hobbies include "chao babies, gameboys, caring for the hamster and watching the international". Expect something and nothing and everything all at the same time or whatever.
https://e-kare.bandcamp.com
POSTPEOPLE
The Postpeople is one thing. It might seem like it's more than one thing but it's not. It wears a strange outfit of furniture, machinery and musical equipment. Its voice comes from cooperation between several organs. It stands out in the rain. It eats potatoes. It is surrounded by white paper. It is alive. It wishes you well. Happy Christmas.
postpeople youtube channel
DIFFICULT
We are Difficult. Tracy Hanna, Eothen Stearn and Kari Le Riche Robertson. Mixing synth feminism with vocal sarcasm. A Difficult playing of unfamiliar instruments and improvisation. It's going to be Difficult for all!
https://soundcloud.com/user-54232665-497101826
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This event is made possible with kind support of Popunie Rotterdam.
Saturday 25 November
VROOOM #54
– ASIQ NARGILE (ge)
– EL OTRO (Manuela Tessi & Arvind Ganga)
– CHRIS BAAS (nl)
location: Pink Pank – Delftsestraat 9, Rotterdam
doors: 20:30 end: 00:00 / entrance: 7 euro (cash only)
FB event
Vrooom rolls out the red carpet for Asiq Nargile and her virtuoso solo perfomance of saz and voice. Asiq has been owning stages at esteemed venues and festivals during the course of 2016 and toured with Richard Dawson (Vrooom #25, 2015). Special guests: El Otro. DJ: Chris Baas.
ASIQ NARGILE (ge)
Born in Tbilisi and now based in the Borcali region of Southern Georgia, Nargile Mehtiyeva aka Asiq Nargile has been playing saz (a long-neck lute) and singing since the age of 15. Fluent in Azerbaijani, Georgian, and Russian, Nargile represents the cosmopolitan heritage of old Tbilisi, a city once known as a meeting point for multilingual aşıq bards who would travel through the region serving as conduits for news, ideas, music and culture. A powerful solo performer, her vocal recital of epic folk poetry is by turns ecstatic and deeply expressive, and is interspersed with bursts of virtuosic, highly ornamented saz. Equally comfortable performing moving laments or upbeat folk dances, Nargile is currently the only female aşıq living and performing in the ethnic Azeri region of Georgia, and has been teaching the art to new generations. Thanks to the efforts of The Sayat Nova Project, a non-profit group aiming to help preserve and promote the diverse musical dialects of the Caucasus, European audiences can now experience the elusive, hypnotic beauty of Nargile’s music for themselves.
Aşıq Nargile - Yurd Yeri
EL OTRO (Manuela Tessi & Arvind Ganga)
El Otro is the duo of Manuela Tessi (dance) and Arvind Ganga (guitar, objects). The pair engages with the venue's space and audience presence through a set of improvised music and dance. Or, as they like to describe it: "a journey to their inner souths, where the sun is blistering and the loins call the shots, transforming a dusty sleepy town into a desperado inferno in a matter of seconds."
www.arvindganga.net
CHRIS BAAS (nl)
Rotterdam-based DJ with a fine, eclectic taste who will set the mood. He is mostly known for his sets under the banner of Pantropical (Mdou Moctar, Gaye Su Akyol, Altin Gün, etc.).
VROOOM recommends:
Pantropical x Indonesia
– KARINDING ATTACK (id)– UWALMASSA (id)– dj's DIVISI62 (id)– dj MADROTTER (nl/id)– dj LE ROMPH (nl)
location: WORM Rotterdam – Boomgaardsstraat 71
21:00 – 03:00 | presale: 8,- / doors: 10,-
FB event • tickets (Worm)
Pantropical and WORM are proud to present an all-Indonesian music event that fuses both traditional and modern Indonesian music explorations, featuring exclusive live shows by Karinding Attack from Bandung and Uwalmassa from Jakarta. This pantropical event is co-organised in close collaboration with EUROPALIA INDONESIA (Europalia Arts Festival Indonesia).
KARINDING ATTACK (bandung)
The karinding is a kind of Jew's harp made outo of bamboo. Under the spell of this particular instrument nine musicians from the underground collectives Bandoong Sindekeit and Ujungberung Rebels got together in 2009 to learn and play it as well as many other sorts of music instruments made from bamboo; flutes, xylophones, and unconventional percussion. Adding a hefty portion of metal and punk-inspired elements to the brew, things quickly developed under the name Karinding Attack. The group achieved success throughout Indonesia and abroad, and performed with the likes of traditional Japanese music ensembles, Blues, Beatbox and Hip Hop bands and DJs.
http://karinding-attack.com/
UWALMASSA (jakarta | DIVISI62)
Uwalmassa can be seen as a fusion of international arts (both traditional and modern) translated through an Indonesian lens. By incorporating elements from a broad musical spectrum and using elaborate production techniques and non-conventional composition methods, Uwalmassa takes on the initiative in bringing Indonesian arts and culture into a more explorative and imaginative field of work. Uwalmassa is an integral part of DIVISI62, a sound and visual arts label concerned with the on-going construction of the Indonesian identity. Next to performing live as Uwalmassa, Divisi62 will also DJ at this event.
https://divisi62.bandcamp.com/album/bumi-uthiri
http://www.divisi62.com/
MADROTTER (r'dam, bandung)
Originally from Rotterdam, Madrotter aka Henk den Toom is a devoted crate digger who has been living in a village just outside Bandung in Indonesia for the last twenty years. He is widely known as the curator of the amazing Madrotter music blog which is chock-full of great music from across Indonesia. Madrotter will spin many of his found treasures, including Jaipong (popular Indonesian dance music), pergosi odong odong, tayuban, and other styles.
http://madrotter-treasure-hunt.blogspot.nl/
LE ROMPH (r'dam)
DJ who has fallen victim to contemporary cultural and musical omnivorism, which is reflected in his mixes. Proto-techno? Check. Oriental synth experiments? Included. Industrial balearics? There. At this event Le Romph will take yet another turn as Pantropical's resident DJ.
https://soundcloud.com/leromph
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About EUROPALIA:
Since 1969, EUROPALIA has been organising arts biennales, each focusing on a different guest country. Its four-month multidisciplinary programme comprises hundreds of events throughout Belgium and in other European countries. EUROPALIA enthralls a broad European audience not only with exhibitions, but also with performing arts, music, literature, conferences and film. Heritage plays a significant part, but the contemporary scene is also generously covered; new creations and interaction between artists from the guest country and from Europe receive particular attention. EUROPALIA provides insights that avoid Eurocentrism. It stimulates open dialogue between cultures in an atmosphere of trust.
https://europalia.eu
