Unnoted Sessions

Unnoted Session will be performing at the Stedelijk Museum CS Amsterdam during the opening of the RadioRietveld Stedelijk Museum CS project.

The third and final chapter of the Beetsterzwaag sessions was going to take place during the opening of the concluding exhibition of the DOGtime four.ten.five.eleven new.art.education project. It was a bit uneasy to perform for the last time between the various art works created by the group. Even they seemed to belong more to the space they were in then to themselves, archeological remains of past times, undermining our search for the here and now.

It was out of this state that jam 054 arose, moody landscapes of delay guitar and thick keys over heavy bass grooves; progressive rock depicting our ambiguous presence and that of the visitors. During the jam weird timing errors were noticeable, causing for frustrating resyncing problems while performing and in the recordings afterwards; something which later appeared to happen in almost all jams of that day.

After a short break in a Chinese restaurant instruments were exchanged, forgotten knowledge put back into practice and we went off for some over-the-top love song with a morbid side note. It seemed almost like a self-seductive prayer, with the same lyrics repeated endlessly and amplified by Lucky’s basic delay guitar and IC’s contrasting evolving bass grooves. Then at four fifth of the jam we broke out the love trance and arrived at the Japanese broadcast organization all in the blink of an eye; it can be that simple.

Having tasted this new kind of energy Hans continued his grooves on bass and Lucky on guitar with further exploration on the Asian community and its culinary heritage. It turned into an exciting experiment with Santhesizer pushing it even further into the unknown, as he had never played keys before; talented indeed.

The last jam that can’t remain unnoted is jam 060, a schizophrenic multilingual ballad with strong guitar parts that takes of in English on beauty and fragility and crashes in German with broken relationship. Along what lines does inspiration flow, Lucky? The schizophrenity is further enhanced by Lucky’s recurring out of scale bass note in the first quarter of the jam. The overall sound quality is a bit doggy unfortunately as the guitar track had to be recovered via the vocal mics.

Beetsterzwaag was a unique experience and showed many new directions for the project to investigate. To be continued.

Being back in the small village of Beetsterzwaag felt already like coming home again. It also meant that it had lost some of it’s uniqueness towards the sessions, though new morphing spectators/participants would surely be found.

After several jams with interesting moments it was not until we were on our own again that it became more than just mere notes played after another. In this with a reggae beat inspired jam 046, the search for the creative moment can clearly be heard as it continuously evolves towards its definition. Which mechanism drove it above noise level and why then and not earlier?

A similar process occurred in the following fusion between rock ballad and bossa. Searching solos are alternated with fresh rhythm guitar on the swinging grooves of the bass, simple yet effective, reminding of postcards with palm trees on sandy beaches and driving along the Riviera in open cars. It sure is ‘no Godard’, but what defines it?

Four jams further down the line we hit rock bottom and top at the same time while trying to aspire new vocal heights. Under the cerebral cords of grEen keys Lucky ventures into unstable lands, walked on with far more ambition than skills. Though barely able to stand in this reinvention of the rock ballad, he manages to bring the private close and up front via disarming openness, raw ‘With you’ directness and cleverly on the spot created lyrics. How much further should you go as an artist?

In the cover of the night, surrounded by the faded remains of the musical dialogs and watched by many artworks, Lucky did one more private jam. As it was made in the same spirit and under the same conditions we decided to include this endless dark new wave self-therapy within the project.

The next day at Beetsterzwaag was as inspiring as the day before. With just a few hours of sleep and the equipment ready to be used we couldn’t resist and did an early morning jam, jam 034. The simple electronically enhanced keys played by Lucky created an emotional mood to which IC started playing the bass over and Lucky questioning himself whether ‘it was he or somebody else’. Well…

The evening was filled with a party atmosphere, waiting to be ignited. Though trying to fight this initially, we quickly went all the way with the second jam, mixing up-tempo straight funk with avantgarde vocals and samples. Another spontaneous guest in the form of Magic keys joined in on the synthesizer. Though problematic during this jam, it felt very promising. Or in the words of A voice ‘Give me more’.

Too much party can kill the beast, or at least guitar strings, and with jam 038 we turned inwards, letting the walls mirror harsh decisions of the past, inventing strong evolving dialogs that reminded of the melodramas during the eighties.

With the follow-up jam a combination of both the extrovert and introvert was sought after, with IC (on bass for most part) and Magic keys creating complex alternating layers of pure funk. As a reaction to this and inspired by the participation of lovely E Sister, Lucky came up with the infamous one-liner: ‘Play with your magic fingers and take me now’. The jam reinvents itself after three quarters towards the introvert, asif we took what needed to be taken.

Just one more, a mental phrase often silently uttered, faking the illusion of control. Were we beyond it, losing ourselves in the process of creation, the work becoming the master over its inventor? The final jam in which everybody participated, became a united statement in oldest gospel traditions. There was no more ‘Self’ for that moment, just a ’singing away’, untll the ‘clock and the beat’ stopped.

We have tested flesh and we want more.

Yesterday we had our first performance outside of the now familiar walls of the studio. As part of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie DOGtime four.ten.five.eleven new.art.education project at Kunsthuis Syb we are going to do several performances of which yesterday’s was the first.

‘Kunsthuis Syb is an artists run initiative offering promising young artists a locale for the development, exhibition and discussion of their work. In Kunsthuis Syb’s historic building located in Beetsterzwaag Friesland alcoves and peeling walls create a turbulent environment in which the work on exhibit must stand.’ With such an expectancy we were eager to see how the change of environment would reflect on the musical dialogs.

In order to extend the scale of musical possibilities IC brought along his hard-drive recorder full of samples used in various Inspector Casino’s Detective Shows broadcasted via Radio Rietveld. This turned out to be an interesting addition and used in all three performances of that evening, filling the ‘alcoves and peeling walls’ with layers of noise and randomness, fueling the present historic energy.

During the first jam in which we were still looking to combine all these new elements, the place filled up with more and more people, including the local police force oddly enough. From out of this new atmosphere A voice spontaneously stepped forward during jam 032. As if he had done this a hundred times before with us, he started creating all kinds of interesting vocal experiments into ‘The thing’, joining in on musical dialogs and following private thoughts. This was his first, but whatever ‘The Thing’ is, he sure needs to follow it. Also not unnoted should be the participation of string Meal in this jam, creating complex rhythmic layers of percussion with his cookery equipment.

These spontaneous participants crossing the boundary between creator, spectator and participant, are something to be investigated more.

‘Finally and fortunately’ were the right words to describe the fact that we had multi-talented artist Which keys today as our guest performer. Matching agendas and mastering the Dutch traffic can be almost as hard as creating a work of art. On top of the latter midi problems were the cause of even more delays and frustration. Was it better to call it a day, with the expectancy of too many monologues? During the session it sometimes seemed like it, chaotic at best, wave after wave of translocated air power, which purpose seemed hidden to us.

Listening back now to all 4 jams the contrary seems true. From the funky and complex first jam, the spontaneous tribute to one of Miles Davids classics during jam 028, the groovy and more easy going jam 029 to the concluding dramatic notes in the last jam, there is structure, monologues come and go followed by recurring streams of dialog. Subconsciously a work was fused together that was larger than our minds could take hold of, running from one frame to the next one, always being out of sync from a singular reality.

Part of the duality was caused by W, who seemed to modulate in and out of tone as if it were his second favourite hobby next to smoking and Godard. Often it was better to just pray and do than to try and guess, catering for an exhilarating environment with a possibilities and pitfalls around every bend. Something definitely worth of investigating further.

After merely a week we were back for more ‘X’ marks the spot emotions. Due to some miscommunication it was just the two of us again. Plus the always receptive walls of the studio, mocking the very essence of our performance. ‘Throw at me whatever you want, I’ll accept willingly but will neither bend nor brake. I’ll be there long after any wave has expired, being one in my existence.’

How long can you keep evolving without forgetting what you are is a question one could ask after listening to jam 24. It was the first jam of that session. From the first funky bass groove it sucked us inside, setting a stateless deus ex machina in motion that just went on and on, mixing sadness and happiness in one wash and go emotion. It was only after ‘Theo’, our digital rhythm section, got confused that we awoke again from our self-induced trance. Who is the bigger machine here?

As a reaction towards the first jam the second one, jam 25 turned into an avantgarde scream against itself. Fueled by Francis Ford Coppola’s classic movie we created with one hand and killed with the other, fighting the power that made us gods. But as with any beast that rears it ugly head, you have to touch it, over and over again until one. ‘The horror, the horror.’

Exhausted and with only 15 more minutes of afterplay left, we decided to do one more quickie. Strangely enough from out of nowhere jam 26 turned into a nicely structured song, contemplating our wanderings through life; as if structure can only be digested bit by bit.

Was our previous session the start of our downfall? Does the act of creativity materialize only for so long until it falls back to the subconscious level of existence, being around to be seen or only being there when created?

We brought in some ‘heavy equipment’ to face these challenges. Professional singer C the voice agreed, quite happily actually, to be part of another improvisational performance after the previous one with her turned out so successful. Expectations were high in the narrow confinements of our studio, with inner shadows ready to be projected.

For our first jam we started with an up-tempo jazz improvisation. Maybe it was lack of sleep, overcomplicated drums or pure misfire, but it turned out to be too challenging for starters, leaving C a bit lost here and there. We decided to take a step back, slow down the tempo, go for more straightforward rock in Jam 022. All of a sudden there was space, dialog, a framework through which both C and IC started screaming the dawn of a new order together. Any remanence of fatigue was blown away by C’s fortissimo’s vocals, we were back, there and then.

Having created enough room to exist in, we slowed down even more. In our last jam, Jam 023, we just let go, following the dark electro waves through time, mixing private and public space into one. In the words of C: ‘I give you my lonely heart, and with that I give you everything I’ve got’.