the sound featured is a super ruff cut of what’s coming
i am fascinated by the folklore that troubadours and bards sang about and am working on a series of story-songs which are becoming something of a futuristic epic ballad. its tells about characters over the ages and devices they used to keep track of the time: a wristwatch, a deguerreograph print, a palm reading, and an slab of wood that was once used as a call to prayer in ancient christian traditions.
on november 9, 2022, about 2 hours behind schedule at ‘de sering’, whatever i had written so far made it out of my room for the first time with the help of experimental musician gabriel d oliveira and drummer niels luteijn. we presented the first live interpretation of those stories. i learned a lot from it. a reminder of the chaotic-good found in the stripped-back, raw, improvised and rough.
3 months before calling up niels and gabriel, i was stuck in the other extreme: hyperfocused, perfectionistic; back in amsterdam after a residency in the turkish mountains, so excited by the ideas that were germinated there that i barely noticed that i was back in amsterdam on the 5th floor of apartment block, for all i knew it was a cube-shaped excavation in some mountain tucked in where the a10 ringroad meets the a4; i was hanging with bats and unshapely silhouettes of things gleaned from the street, (instruments-to-be), awake at 04:30, not to listen to the call to prayer like i would have done in turkey but to write these songs in my room.
the endless fight against perfectionism is real, but when it takes over it seems to snuff any portals to an inner world, like a grubby halogen lightbulb which explodes from being over-handled. And whether it is word, or music that you use to get there, you often need to rip the words out of your neck and amplify them immediately to understand the mechanics of that portal. thanks gabriel and niels (they have a group called q bae) and to everyone who helped with the sound for this first try out. this is becoming a really interesting music project and you helped it to hatch.
thanks to sajjra for joining the line-up to perform his own work, also written in demre, turkey. (sajjra is also the host of the melismas residency in turkey. which i write about here). its such a shame that we we never got to hear his soundpiece due to some technical problems. this work was composed from recordings in demre, turkey which can be heard here.
gabriel de oliveira
ig: @9nijntjes
🥁Niels Luteijn
ig: @nielsluteijntje
📸 Simon Pillaud
ig: @simon_wawawayipiyo
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