Subensemble in Club-U, Vienna | 18 November 2017

Kybernetik 2. Ordnung
P. Hartwig + Overdub Hi / Subensemble / Maracatu / Hydroman 
Club-U, Karlsplatz Künstlerhauspassage 1010 Vienne
18 November 2017, 21:00

Subensemble in Rhiz, Konzert Klandestin #2 | 13 August 2017

https://konzertklandestin.wordpress.com

My music project with drummer Moritz Nolden turns into a real band - Subensemble - and we'll have our first concert under that name in famed music café Rhiz in Vienna on August 13th, in a double bill with noise band Royal Hungarian Noisemakers.

Dhellemmes/Reardon in Einstagsfestival, Zwettl | 17 June 2017

Einstagfestival
Blaugelbezwettl 
Propstei 1, 3910 Zwettl
17 June 2017, 20:30

Dhellemmes / Reardon at V. Zajkert, September 2016.

This is a short excerpt from our concert at V. Zajkert, a radical music festival held in the Modem museum in Debrecen, Hungary, last September.

Dhellemmes / Reardon in Sound Pharmacy, Vienna

Free improvisation duo Dhellemmes / Reardon will perform for the Sound Pharmacy performance series on January 25th. 

The Sound Pharmacy is an interactive art-object-installation. Visually combining antique pharmacy interiors with sound-sculptures that interpret alchemist healing instruments and rituals. During the opening hours of the Sound Pharmacy the psycho-physical-pharmacists perform and create transcendent sound-potions to enhance frequency-noise-aromatic trans-states. 

For this 3 hours set, expect more electronics and soundscapes than in our usual sets, and inevitably new material, on top of intense piano/guitar creative duelling.

Sound Pharmacy

Schönbrunner Straße 6
1040 Wien
Wednesday 25 January, 19:00-22:00

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...

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

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... 

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! 

Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna + BOM in das Werk | 27 October 2015

The Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna will perform next Monday in das Werk in Vienna. 

Single man experimental bass project from Hungary BOM /Bass-O-Matic/ will open the evening. 

pedal board and canned peaches

This is another version of the pedal board I use for one of my current projects - with just guitar and voice. I'm quite happy with the strange synth sounds I get by combining the auto-wah and the reverse delay (as you can hear in the video down there), or the Blue Box and the Carbon Copy... I still have to get my Sovtek Big Muff fixed, or acquire a new fuzz - hopefully a Devi Ever FX Soda Meiser, until then I'm good with the Boss... 

In that case I don't use the looper for music but I always include it to make the sound check - when I play in a café or a small theatre I can just loop a few notes and go into the room to listen then adjust my amp - it makes my life much easier... 

Bertram and Edward's garden party

concert/reading in Vienna

My current music projects include a new collaboration with writer Ines Birkhan for a series of concerts/readings - and we premiere a new one, called Dosenpfirsich (Canned Peach - it's in German but we plan to make an english version at some point), tomorrow. 

It's more than a reading over a music background, as text and music were conceived together, and I'm very happy with the result - it's not singing, it's not theatre, it's not exactly spoken words, it's a new attempt at creating a strongly evocative art work with minimalist means. The result is promising, we will keep developing this in the coming times for stage and video...

For this quiet solo project I need a more subtle sound than with my very noisy bands - so no accumulation of dirt pedals! My favorite pedal of the moment is the Boss OC-3 octaver, I never practice without it for weeks, and it makes me play some unusual funk lines - both bass and guitar! 

And since I'm playing at low level I start using the overdriven channel of my Fender Champion 100 - something I never thought I'd do (I bought it in emergency last year as I needed a new concert amp and couldn't afford a tube one - and used only the clean channel since), and it has very nice warm sounds that I can't get out of any of my pedals, and I couldn't have at this level with a tube amp I guess…

Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna will play in Fluc, Vienna

I'm playing in two days in Fluc with the Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna - that's where our band made its first concert one year ago… We've been playing several shows since, in Vienna and around, and recorded an album (mixing starts next March)… It's not easy to find concerts for a 10 + members guitar-based very noisy improvisation orchestra, it's expensive to transport so many people and so many amps, but we are looking for more shows, in Austria and abroad, and hope we will play some festivals this summer - if you're interested to program us please contact me... 

This short trailer was actually shot last december in Einbaumöbel, a small underground club in Vienna ; the stage was too small for us but we found a strange disposition on 3 levels, like in a 1960s British TV show - we should do that each time!

concert pictures

with Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna in Interpenetration Festival, Stadtpark Forum, Graz.

Solo in das Werk, Vienna.

with Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna in Einmöbelbau, Vienna.

gearing up for coming concerts

I will have a few concerts in the coming weeks - solo and with the Soft Power Ensemble of Vienna. Here is my pedal line for my improvised solo act next week - as you can see I added an EHX Holy Stain multi-effect to the line, that might surprise some people if you've read some bad reviews this pedal has online. I got it first to add reverb and distortion to my Volca Bass, then it was very convenient to put it in my bag when I go jamming at the Neu New York/Vienna Institute of Improvised Music - it replaces 3 of my basic pedals: fuzz, tremolo and reverb… Then for the same reason I started to use it for rehearsals until I mastered it enough to put it in my pedal line.

People often dislike the harshness of its fuzz and overdrive, that is true that they are not for the fainthearted, but they suit me, also the deep reverb and harsh tremolo. I even get along well with the pitch shifter, that I use either as a detuner or set on max where its bad tracking gives painfully artificial squeaky sounds. I like this a lot! I've even learned lately that you can upgrade the pedal by tweaking its chip and get a chorus and a flanger - and split the control for reverb and effect… There again my lack of knowledge in electronics prevents me from doing it myself, so I will be looking for someone to do it for me here in Vienna (would be even better if it could have a gain control…)

Actually I do need some more electronic help for I ruined my Sovtek Big Muff - I pulled off a wire of the battery connection then tried to replace it with a power jack and now it doesn't work at all… I almost dumped it to buy a EHX one but I like it - and if I have it fixed I will also ask for some mods and changing the input/output jacks positions - I favor efficiency over authenticity… 

So for now I went back to use my Boss FZ-5 - and here again the very bad reviews that pedal has feel like pure snobbery: compared to other fuzzes I have it sounds very powerful and rich. Maybe it doesn't sound how it's supposed to and all authentic and shit but I don't really care about that. 

  

more sketches and stuff

Last week I was invited to perform with new improvisation band Trio Klaustroratio at Zuckerlfabrik, the atelier of Viennese visual artist Barbara Anna Husar. We played some unusual music - at least for me -, a kind of improvised ambient with slowly developing atonal repetitive patterns, with tints of folk and support of electronics. Put on top of that an enthusiast hostess and a cool and attentive audience and it was a pretty nice evening!