Ambient, experimental, soundscapes, drones
Posts tagged Andrew Ostler
Giant atoms and dark sets
Jun 4th
By Andrew Booker, June 5 2009
Source: Improvizone
Os, Mike and I took a trip across the Channel last weekend, to play on the Saturday night (30 May 2009) at the Arenbergschouwburg in Antwerp for Sjaak Overgaauw’s first European Live Looping Festival there. It was a really nice gig, and turned out to be a productive couple of days for me, yet still with plenty of time, in the words of Mr Bearpark, for some quality hanging about.
Since I was going to be spending half the weekend in the car, I made sure I got some time-lapse road movie material in. Having recently removed a load of fluff from the CPU heatsink and vacuumed its cooling fan, my laptop was back to working pretty flawlessly in the heat of the car, and I managed to get one frame every 0.9 seconds of pretty much all of my journey in Europe, and the return journey in England.

I left the UK early on Saturday morning and took the calculated risk of driving to Brussels before Antwerp. I wanted to take some video of the Atomium to use in Improvizone projections. From Calais, you get to Antwerp by taking the E40 and then turning east on the E17 (as I liked to think of it, the Walthamstow exit) at Gent. Or you can get to Brussels just by staying on the E40. The Atomium is conveniently located in the NW just inside the Brussels ring road, from which you can exit onto the A12 or the E19 and be 30 minutes from Antwerp. I figured if I got to the Walthamstow exit before 11:00, I would have enough time for a half hour stop at the Atomium and still make it to Antwerp by the expected 1pm. I got to the E17 at 10:54, and made it to the Atomium at about 11:35.
It was 50 years old last year, when I guess it was given the damn good clean it has clearly enjoyed since the last time I saw it about eight years ago. Now it looks literally brilliant, and to those with the taste, very beautiful. Sadly the ground level has been wrecked by a load of poxy exhibition tents and there is barely an aspect to it without visual clutter that is not obscured by trees. Anyway I dashed around and shot pictures for half an hour.
I then totally bolloxed up leaving the city. My one researched route was blocked by roadworks, I made it back to the ring road but missed the A12 to Antwerp, the only route I had researched to get me into the city and to the Arenbergschouwburg. I still had the E19, but did not reach it until 12:35 and had no idea where it was going to drop me in Antwerp. That took a few potentially lethal lightning examinations of my maps, and I made it to the Arenbergschouwburg at 13:00 on the nose. The final time-lapse frames prove it. I got there before Os and Mike, who had left England the day before and stayed in a friend’s house in Antwerp. I tried not to gloat.
Fast forward past setting up and waffle scoffage by the Darkroomies and Fabio Anile, to the gig itself. Each act took to the dimly lit stage and presented an individual application of looping for 25 minutes or so. Sjaak opened the gig with a really beautiful piano construction over asymmetric loops. I’m not sure if the loops weren’t really meant to be regular and metrical, but I thought they were intended, cleverly original, and worked really well. In fact at this point I was very glad I was not Sjaak. I could sit back and totally enjoy this music, without the responsibility of having to make it happen.
Sjaak was followed by Ufo Walter and Akim Triebsch. The duo played acoustic loop-rock by turns chaotic and groovy, always in perfect synchrony. Fabio Anile then took over the piano and peaked with a thundering minimalist piano piece where he played perfectly out of phase with his own complex loop for several minutes. Next at his little table of equipment was Michael Peters, whose set was part avant-garde noises and partly the harmonically elusive experimental fusion that I think he does best, especially this time in the shape of a rhythmic bass pulse where he’d massively reduced the sample resolution to a really dirty crunch, over which he layered some terrifically odd sustained chords. It was gripping, and I hummed with delight. By technical contrast, Luis Angulo made up the first, and better, half of his set entirely of vocal looping. It was pretty stunning to begin with, and took an unexpected turn for the even better when he started pitch shifting the loops. Brilliant. After Luis it was us, on which more in a moment.
Guitarist Dirk Serries followed us with his Microphonics. We knew Dirk from his Fear Falls Burning appearances in Norwich and with No-man in Europe in October 2008. I much prefer his current set, the less intense Microphonics, gentler and clearer, and celebrating the timbre of the guitar rather than the force of distortion. Finally Rick Walker closed the gig with his wacky percussive looping of irregular fluorescent orange materials, only occasionally resorting to anything resembling conventional drum-like paraphernalia. As he grappled with technical problems it was possibly not the best night to witness the sheer depth of his inventive performance repertoire, but one lesson I immediately picked up flew directly in the face of my own approach to drumming. That has been to use electronics to create unusual and unnatural percussion sounds. Rick effortlessly achieves this using real objects in clever ways. Should I be trying an acoustic Improvizone evening…?
In terms of the Darkroom set, it’s possible that taking the prepared improvisation approach to a 25 minute slot like this was not the best strategy, especially breaking it up into three pieces. I reckon a Improvizone gig enjoys about 50% of the evening in a state of sustained exploration, which is when the really good stuff starts to happen in the music. Here, we only really entered the zone for a few fleeting moments a couple of times during the set. The rest of the time felt to me like I was just bashing stuff out. I am reminded yet again that, as I drummer, I really am a non-musician when it comes to playing satisfying regular organised music that resolves itself. What happens when I assign notes to the pads is that I keeping hitting them at the wrong time, wrecking the melody or the harmonic order, sounding exactly like someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Os recorded and videoed us as usual, and we were able to listen back later to what we’d done. After suspicious that we’d overstepped into the heavy dark side, in fact we were very pleased with how it sounded. I couldn’t hear Mike much during the set, but listening back to Os’s clean mix, he’s tearing along. Mean, sinister and fierce towards the end, yes, but all in a good way. You can watch and listen to the whole thing here. Os also has loads of stills on flickr here.
Darkroom go to Antwerp
May 25th
By Andrew Booker, May 29, 2009
Source: Improvizone
I’ve been getting ready for a trip to Antwerp this weekend for the European Live Looping Festival on Satuday 30 May 2009 (tomorrow) organised by Sjaak Overgaauw. Darkroom are playing, and Mike and Os left this morning. In order to join them on electronic drums, I’ll be getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and taking an early tunnel crossing to drive over, find the venue in a city I’ve never been to before, and remember to stay on the correct side of the road. It’s OK though, I checked the tyres last week.

Possibly on the way there, but probably on the way back, I hope to stop off on the outskirts of Brussels and do a bit of Improvizone backdrop filming of the Atomium. I know it’s a stationary object, and I’ve always wondered why people go on holiday with their video cameras and take moving pictures of things which are completely still. Movement is relative, of course, and now that I’ve been doing Improvizone visuals for about a year now, video is the way. So these days if I go anywhere, I always video as well. I like stills to look back through later on, and I like video to have my back to during a gig. By the way, that globe thing is in Seville, not Brussels. There are pictures of the Atomium everywhere, it’s 50 years old after all, or if you’ve not seen it, you could save the surprise until the next Improvizone gig, assuming I make the trip there this weekend.
Anyway, about the gig tomorrow, it’s a long lineup of loopers from all over the world. Suitably, the three of us are more prepared than ever. We spent about 10 minutes emailing each other about timings, tempos and keys, and I’ve worked out a few things to do, otherwise it’s improvisational business as usual for 25 minutes. I’ve done absolutely no work on my drum software since last week’s gig but I’ll be taking it anyway, plus the SPD-S pad by itself again, and playing a little bit of synth bass on it occasionally. Mike will be playing without a guitar amp, as he did at Improvizone last week, and Os will be using just the EWI and his laptop.
I’m pretty excited about doing this, and delighted Os and Mike have invited me. They have been known to fly to this kind of event with their gear in small cases. As a frequent attendee of scientific conferences, Mike informs us these international looping festivals are a very similar breed of event, which is why having two of us using our own software for sounds is a good thing. Were it not for that I would probably be leaving my backward and impotent drum software at home, seeing as it constitutes about one percent of my audio output. This is in complete contrast to Os, who has beautifully styled the last 18 months of Improvizone gigs using his own commercially available products. I figure if I don’t gig my bits and stuff, I’ll never have reason to develop it any further.
Now, where the hell is my passport.





