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music of the week: lately I've spent some time watching and listening to San Francisco Bay Area YouTube channel PressureDrop.tv - enjoying pretty good guitar-based live music... Didn't listen to everything yet but so far I particularly enjoyed Purling Hiss and Summer Cannibals. 

concert pictures

Here are a few pictures of previous concerts:

This was shot a few weeks ago at the Small Forms sessions in Nadalokal in Vienna. Together with writer / performer Ines Birkhan, we recorded in the afternoon our mix of spoken words, half improvised hypnotic electronic music and noise guitar that will be released by Small Forms.

Then we performed it again in the evening - plus some more guitar + iPad free improv - for a small but enthusiastic audience...

More pictures here.

This one was in Debrecen in Hungary with Edward Reardon, performing at the Zajkert V festival last September. The concert was a little bit chaotic because after all the musicians spent the afternoon installing their instruments on the stage in the Modem (Debrecen's modern art museum)'s garden, and as the sound check was almost finished , a storm came and in a moment of panic we had to remove everything and stuff it in the museum's hallway!

We decided then to go on with the festival and reinstalled here and there - with the help of the supportive staffs of Modem and Zajkert... At the end was still good music and crazy atmosphere, Hungarian style, with an attentive audience. There are some reviews and pictures here and here - for those who speak Hungarian...

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Music of the week: Continuum, the 2014 gamelan-based concept album by Singaporean art rock band The Observatory. I need asian percussions for my next project!

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Music of the month: lately I bought some Miles Davis albums from his late 60s / early 70s electric era and I never have enough go his music... I was more familiar with his earlier and later work (I saw him on his Tutu tour some time back in the 20th century), but this phase is just fantastic - and you can find some full concert videos of the 1973 european tour on YouTube. And I really enjoy the music of Canadian band Suuns that combines beautifully synths and guitars, as much as pop and minimalism.

Dhellemmes + Birkhan at the Small Forms Sessions

Getting ready for coming Friday's Small Forms Sessions - we will be recording in the afternoon and performing in the evening. I will play (unless the project evolves some more) a first part with my iPad and two guitars, then writer / performer Ines Birkhan will join with spoken words, synth and drum machines... 

I started to use the iPad for concerts last month and I'm thrilled by the result - some sophisticated apps I use combine perfectly with the raw guitar sound I came up with recently - thanks to my new North Effects Ampeg Scrambler clone (I need to post something about my current pedal line...)

Dhellemmes / Reardon in Zajkert #5

Next week I will play my first concert ever in Hungary, together with pianist Edward Reardon -  we started this fruitful guitar / piano / electronics duo one year ago and it's a real pleasure to play to a new audience. 

Zajkert is an experimental music festival hosted by the Modem (centre for modern and contemporary arts) in Debrecen. The evening will end with a massive improvisation with all the musicians of the programme - I expect it to be grand!

Zajkert V, Modem
Baltazár Dezső tér 1.
4026 Debrecen, Hungary
17 September 2016 18:00

Musima Eterna ready for next concert

Last week I cleaned up my Musima Eterna, as I decided to finally use it for a music project - not just collecting... 

In October, I will be part of a recording/concert sessions going on in Vienna - I will tell more about it in due time - for which I want to equally use guitar, electronics and voice, and I was looking for a way to break my patterns - that's when the Eterna hanging on the wall blinked at me. With its extra fat neck and overwound pickups, it will be nothing like the super easily playable Jaguar or Epsilon I usually use.

Shortly after I bought it, the tremolo arm broke and there is no way I can replace it - and the substitute I tried didn't work - it's not a standard model. The electronics look strange to me - but I'm not a specialist -, still they work fine and need no change. The bridge and tremolo were heavily greased - super dirty but preserved from rust. So at the end it was mostly just cleaning and polishing, tightening screws, putting new strings and it's ready to rock again! I didn't bring it to the studio yet to play loud but I think that it will fit well to my current pedal combination - and that's a topic for a next post. 

(BTW, only after I bought this guitar, I found out that Kim Gordon used one when she recorded with Free Kitten, and I couldn't imagine a better predecessor...)

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Music of the month: started to work on a new project with guitar/baritone guitar, piano/synth and drums... Still trying to combine incompatible influences such as jazz fusion and batcave, minimal repetitive music and free improv! As we exchanged music to try to understand what we three have in common, we discovered than we all like The Dead Weather a lot, and decided to make a free instrumental cover of 'Treat Me Like Your Mother'... Otherwise my favorite guitar sound lately is  made by Reignwolf.

BTW, this is the 500th post on this blog...

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Still struggling with time to keep this blog active - I do manage to get projects done though - music, instruments, etc... - but posting here comes after the rest at the moment. It will get better.

Music of the now: Parallelograms by Linda Perhacs - my only folk album since Neil Young's Harvest 30 years ago... I can indulge in sweet melodies and harmonies sometimes...

Reaching for the cosmos

(picture used without permission, sorry)

2016 is definitely the worst year, and my blog will soon be more about dead musicians than about guitars... Alto saxophonist Marco Eneidi was not David Bowie or Prince, and his death will not make more headlines than his life or music... But those who knew him will remember him with fondness and gratitude. 

Marco passed away yesterday after a lifetime dedicated to uncompromising  art. Though he performed with the greatest free jazz musicians in the US and Europe, and released or played on numerous records since the mid-80s, his reluctance to please had him struggle for survival all his life, and keep on at the age when artists are either successful or gave up - until the very end. 

I met him when I moved to Vienna where he has been living since 2004 and where he organised the The Neu New York/Vienna Institute of Improvised Music - a weekly improv session where touring musicians would meet Viennese improvisers for a common practice of free music. After years of playing solo when I was in Berlin, that's where I learned again sharing and improving myself at he contact of fellow improvisers.

I never saw Marco on stage, I only heard him in the Celeste Jazzkeller club, never further than 3 meters from me. His saxophone sounded like thunder, it was like concentrating the energy and anger of 10 men into one column of air. All his music was about how mastering a technic could free your creativity, and it was a precious inspiration for any musician who would listen to him. Playing with him was truly uplifting, challenging but not intimidating for he was a generous man and artist. Sometimes at the end of a session he would go to the piano and hammer it with the same energy - and you found it also in the spontaneous poetry he was posting on Facebook...

Marco was living in Mexico since last year, as he was expelled from Austria for not regularising his administrative situation. It's not as bad as what Austria currently does with Syrian refugees, but it shows how stupid ideology and bureaucracy can be - and loose valuable people to a country. A few weeks ago he was touring Europe and came to play at the improv session in Celeste but I failed to go - too tired, busy with the baby... Huge mistake, I will never play with him or hear him live ever again.

Thank you for everything,  Marco.

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You might have noticed that my posting has been scarce in the last months, but I have a very good reason for that (I always have a good reason, have I not?): since last December I am the proud father of a baby girl (sleeping in my arms as I write these words) and my priorities have shifted. But I'm coming back slowly to my guitar-based activities - concerts, projects, design... More instrument-based projects actually, since my synth collection increased and I've been practicing with them more than with guitars - it's easier to play keyboards/MIDI interface with a baby on your lap (I'm an adept of attachment parenting, but it's another story...) 

Dancing on Ashes (Circle) in Pinacoteca

Tomorrow I will perform again a projected text + music show I created 5 years ago in Berlin - one of my few theremin based projects. It will also be the first Angel Meat performance in the last years...

This heap of pedals allows me to create a quadrophonic soundscape - just from the sound of the theremin (I couldn't use so many effects with a guitar, I had to make a performance for too many pedals!) The place is called Pinacoteca and is a small but very nice independent gallery in Vienna, with cheerful and supportive people.

One Love Machine Band

A couple of weeks ago I saw the One Love Machine Band - the love child of Berliner artist Kolya Kugler - perform in Vienna, and as you can see its robotic bass player Afreakin plays a real bass with fingers... Music playing robots belongs often more to field of puppetry than to music, but I do enjoy them - the teenage cyberpunk in me I guess... 

Though it sticks a little bit too much to the rules of the genre - trash aesthetics, humanoid form, decorative details -, One Love Machine Band has something I've never seen before: it's playing neither metal music or techno, but as its name indicate, music rooted in reggae. And because of its simplicity and rawness, it sounds quite like early Public Image Ltd - a mix or post-punk and dub I particularly enjoy (Kolya and his metal friends actually opened for PIL in Switzerland last year and composed and played a tribute song, but he told me that he was totally snubbed by an unimpressed John Lydon). 

Seriously, I totally see myself fronting such a robot combo - lately I try myself at playing with drum machines and bass sequencer but it can't beat musicians, even when you love electronic music. The One Love Machine Band has it all - it can play repetitive and minimal lines but the approximation of pneumatic movement generates a lively groove.   

Afreakin's feet are BMW labeled engine parts - Kolya claims that it stands for Bob Marley & the Wailers... 

Sometimes it Snows in April

Back in the 20th century, Prince made me who I am by teaching me that all that matters is the music - there are no styles, no genre, no chapels, just the music. This is true for everything. Saw him in Paris on the Lovesexy tour - I suppose it was in 1988 -, and I remember everything of this epic concert 30 years later...  Tough year.

Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna in Musikraumgarage

Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna will play at Musikraumgarage on March 22 2016 at 21:00 and the concert will be visible on livestream.

Dhellemmes + Reardon in Celeste Jazzkeller, Vienna

Next week I will play the Epsilon on stage for the first time! 

Leo Lospennato's new book: Electric Guitar & Bass Making & Marketing

A few years ago I had the privilege to meet  luthier Leo Lospennato in Berlin and to read his first book - Electric Guitar & Electric Bass Design, a book full of teachings and information about instruments design and conception that seem to never have been gathered before in such a pleasant way.

Leo - who in the meantime created and directed  luthiers'  magazine Sustain - is back with a new book as necessary as the first one - Electric Guitar & Bass Making & Marketing - and a must have for every guitar maker - either newbie or pro, because there is always something you can learn or improve!

It starts with very basic things such as how to screw - not as easy as one might think - or open a Facebook account to promote your work, up to very esoteric things such as 3-layer binding, everything very concrete with detailed explanations, schemes and pictures, based on Leo's experience as a luthier, with the input of occasional collaborators. You will also learn how to make a half pencil - very useful for some marking -, get some good advices about how to organise your workshop or what not to do yourself (like pickups winding or advanced finishes) so you can stay focused on the guitar making...

Not only this book meticulously describes every step needed to build a guitar (though you'll need the first book for the conception phase and have some guitar knowledge to know what it's all about - it doesn't start from zero) but it's also an interesting journey into a technician's brain, and I actually recommended it to people out of the field as a good insight into the world of making stuff... With my academic and artistic background, I had to re-learn everything about pragmatic process and I really needed something like this (now I have to go and fix some mistakes I made in finishes polishing and reorganise my tools).  And because Leo is passionate and witty, the book is just a good read!

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