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FT 1 (Damnila)
It begins with an artificial reconstruction of a man and
a girl talking in Italian. As if both are taking part in
a language course for mannequins or marionettes. Then come
elegant tone rows, strings of lights. (…) Futurist
performances reveled in the instantaneous, the dynamic.
Isolated lines of dialogue emerge from the music. (…)
"The Futurists are, in a way, the industrial form of
the same theatrical things which I find connected to Sun
Ra, Armstrong and Stockhausen," Peter comments.
FA 5.1
´I swear I blew my top! I swear…´ (…)
The text, a simple line of five words caught somewhere between
laughter and rage, is taken from an old Louis Armstrong
record. Why Armstrong?
"Because he is a colourful person and he has all kinds
of different sides to him, so what he does is very expressive.
(…) For me he has a very strong connection with people
I feel closest to. People like Sun Ra, Stockhausen, Anthony
Braxton."
FE 3 (Life/Death)
Words are also sounds. They reverberate in the silence.
(…) What we are listening to now is the sound of Sun
Ra reading aloud from one of his own texts.
"Forget the word ´life´." (…)
F 001.6
A kind of solo piece for Huib Emmer, (…) a composer
in his own right who has worked closely with both Gerard
Bouwhuis and Peter van Bergen since their time playing together
in the ´Hoketus´ ensemble during the 1980´s.
F T 1
´What is it you got that my wife thinks you so hot?`
(Louis Armstrong).
"This is not a kind of historical CD. I don´t
want it to be seen as a rediscovery of Louis Armstrong.
It´s about how much you can get from a few single
elements. (…)
FA 3
"This is a blues number. A beautiful song (…).
The Armstrong text pushes (it) more to hysteria. I made
an arrangement with Denis Rudge that he has to break certain
lines and that the happiness should be turned into a kind
of madness," Peter comments.
FL 1
The mood is one of pure abstraction; wordless and serene.
It offers a subtle distillation of what occurs between the
musicians in LOOS as they work towards the concentrated
silence and sense of stillness which this ensemble is capable
of attaining both live and in the studio. (…) "What
they must do is use this material to perform, within this
technique, a beautiful musical melody. It´s a game
between individuality and a group feeling. It´s a
battle too, but when the process is working, individual
expression is able to come out clearly along with the group
feeling. For me, that´s the ideal situation."
Energy and directness. From the beginning of the century
to the end of this millennium.
Ken Hollings
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