Last thursday there was another evening with three experimental DJs at Steim. DJ Lenar from Poland opened the evening. To my opinion his focus right now is more on the experiments, the pieces were not matured yet, but the experiments sounded very promising. Somebody to watch closely. Next performer was dj sniff, now living in Amsterdam and one of Steim’s artistic co-directors, whom I have seen and heard a couple of times before. His performance was outstanding! I think he is a true master in this genre and I am already looking forward to a next concert. The last performer was eRikm from France, who has been quite succesful for a while already. His performance was eclectic and energetic, some might say a bit over the top. To be honest, I really like his visual performance but musically I was very dissapointed. In the end I only heard scratches and ticks, hardly any music any more, which is not surprising when you see how he treats his records…

Anyway, it was another very interesting and inspiring evening at Steim, I am looking forward to another Turntable Music Night.

DJ Lenar

dj sniff

eRikm

One of the things I really like about STEIM concerts is its intimacy and focused audience members. As an audience you can see every movement of the performer and catch subtle details in their execution of sound. As a performer, you almost feel the gaze that falls upon you but still have enough space to develop your set. This concert had this great concentrated atmosphere. Cooper/Thomas/Gross trio was well balanced with each player very attentive to the overall structure. It was nice that the array of arsenals that each player used on their instruments never overshadowed the actual sound being produced. Schorno premiered his new instrument Crackle Scorpio, a light and wire triggered crackle board with computer. The light sensors and elastic lamp combination worked very well, adding another dimension of interaction to the familiar Crackle box sounds. TOOT also delivered a very strong performance with magical moments where the three very different instruments (voice, trumpet, analog synth) blended perfectly creating an amazingly textural soundscape. My only complaint was that it seemed like the communication between the performers fell apart toward the end, stretching the performance for too long. Overall, it was a delightful evening of delicate electro-acoustic music.

photos taken by Vivian Wenli Lin

text from our mailing list:
We are very thrilled to have an exciting line up that represent the lineage and development of todays improvised electro-acoustic music. With three generations of important performers from the scene, we expect to witness extended techniques in voice, trumpet, harp and bass paired with distinct textures of both analog and digital electronics. Please join us for this ear-opening evening at STEIM.

flyer design by Clare Cooper