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Kasper van Hoek
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EUROPE € 7,- incl. p&p |
WORLD € 8,- incl. p&p |
Things have been quiet from Kasper van Hoek for a while, both his own music and his
Heilskabaal Records label. It turns out he is now doing his masters degree at the
Frank Mohr Institute for interactive media and environments in Groningen, The
Netherlands. On five separate CDR we will know what he's doing there.
'Frank 1' has four pieces, and three of them uses also source material from one
Micheal Dotolo and two with Hideki Kanno. One piece is a pure solo piece. The first
two pieces are based on live recordings, the other two on field recordings. I think
these are the more interesting ones of the two. The opening piece (live) starts out
nice, but then stays a bit too much in the field of improvisation, without too much
tension. The second does have that tension, mainly a noisy character. The pieces
based on field recordings have some extensive manipulation on the computer and can
meet with the best he did in this field, which is his 'Den Haag/Groningen/Froombosch'
(see Vital Weekly 615) release.
On 'Frank 2' we find two solo live recordings, both of them made with a self-built
instrument: a suitcase with guitar strings, connected with screw terminals on one
side and on the other side some potentiometers and switches, which control a sampler
in Max/msp. The Groningen variation opens up and is shorter than the Maastricht
version. Both of these pieces are of course improvised. In the first piece Van
Hoek keeps things well under control and offers a strong interplay with the sounds
at hand. In Maastricht (some twenty-five minutes) things went a bit out of hand and
the piece glides off in a pool of rough sound treatments and a somewhat muddy sound.
When Van Hoek has released all five 'Frank' releases, there will be a best off
release. From these two, I'd say three and four of the first release, and the first
one from the second (that almost sounds like poetry). For the time being available
in an edition of 20 copies with silkscreened covers.
Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 719