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5 min read 🤓

Awesome Foursomes (vi - No. 419)

february 20, 2022


« Because the sounds evoke words, and the words do the sounds, round and round and round and rounds. »

No. 419

1. Know what to do [Signs & Symptoms​]


Know what to do is a re-mastered version of the second track of Signs & Symptoms' classic electric guitar + Korg MS20 live-looping extravaganza, recorded in original 'Frippertronic' style, with two Akai reel-to-reel machines, in the summer of 1980 in the Amsterdam Pijp, then cut & mixed at Studio Oktopus on the Keizersgracht. Read more in one of the previous editions of our Awesome Foursomes catalogue (019_3)!

live loop

2. ParisOK [Har$, feat. FPCM]


Towards the end of the tenth month of what-once-was-a-'the-Jetsons'-like-future year—MM, 2000—fpcm and daughter Maya hopped over to Paris on a fast train from Amsterdam for a short stay in Paris. geluidsman Peter had brought a small digital video camera, and as always back in those days, when going out I had my Sony dictaphone in the inside pocket of my jacket, with a tiny little microphone clipped to its left-side lapel. October 27th 2000 was a Friday. We strolled through Paris, like tourists, together with the kids. In a little café somewhere between the Arc de Triomphe and the Trocadéro we had a sandwich and drank coffee. Alec, who was seven at the time, just a few months younger than Peter's daughter, had been suffering for some time from a baby tooth that started to come loose. At a table in the bar, under the watchful eye of Peter's film machine, he courageously opened his mouth, wide, and began to pull and pick at the tooth with two little fingers until he finally succeeded in pulling it out.

On the cassette tape that I recorded that day you hear the kids playing with an ashtray, and the loud hissing of steam that's escaping from an espresso machine.

eiffeltoren

Somewhat later that same day we took an elevator straight to the very top of Eiffel’s tower (not yet a security zone back then), where we made a lot of noise, shouting, stamping, singing and hitting the tower’s heavy metal frame with our keys.
And with a tiny metal souvenir tower, that we then let fallin' bump-stump down the steps of Eiffel stairs.
... Eiffeltoren! ...
Tingg on dingg.
Metal on metal.
Milling wormholes to our not-so-'the-Jetsons'-like future, from there then up to here now and after.

eiffeltoren


“Pom, pam, pom, pam, ie-ei-e … rrrrrratelen.”

Snippets of the recordings made that day survived as part of ParisOK, composed about a month later, between 21 and 25 November 2000 and released as the first track of Har$' Sound Chronicles album, in 2003.

3. Orgel & Gitaar, Stuk 3 [Hollandse Meesters]


"Hollandse meesters", Dutch masters... That is how friend & colleague ex-Young Lion Ronald Heiloo and myself, with just a little and variable amount of tongue-in-cheek-ness (exactly how much depending on time and the weather), presented and thought of ourselves in the months, then years, then decades that kept leaking and creeping, inexorably, away from the times we'd been busy musicking together in public.

The fiercest words remain unsaid, the greatest of music's never played, the best of art remains unmade...

[[ ... in the final paragraph of the short text that Ronald wrote for the booklet that accompanied the cassette release of Iörmungandur (the minimalistic piece that Ronald, me and Tim Benjamin, yet another friend and former ex-Young Lion toured with in 1984 and 1985) one reads (more or less): "You turn around to check where you came from. And you realise you came full circle. You sit down. Better wait than to walk beaten tracks. You pull a hair out of your head. Again and again it is blonde on blonde on blonde... Time heals all wounds." ]]

...

Dutch Masters

...

I vividly recall Ronald's Philicorda organ, covered in blue flamed plastic, our old tube amplifiers and my guitar amidst the eternal mess of cables in my Amsterdam apartment, during the days and days in 1985 in which we made up and recorded nineteen basic organ and guitar tracks, onto two tracks of my four-track TEAC tape machine. Ronald's organ sounded to the left, my guitar to the right ... Vulnerable, touching, and extremely bare. With two of the four tracks left empty for more to be added. Later. For we strongly agreed to continue and build on those tracks...

...soon. Very soon.

4. Mary & Jane Forever [ookoi, feat. The Young Lions​​]


'Mary and Jane' is, arguably, the one Young Lions' tune that might have made it to Top of the Pops. Or still might make it, say, to a today's equivalent. Given a decent makeover, that is. (Or so we think.) En tout cas, it is a track with great earworm potential, a tune that will play on and on and on, also long after its actual playback stopped...

Had that deal actually come about, 'Mary and Jane' would surely have been on top of Kim Fowley's to-do list. ( * )

The track is built on the ongoing repetition of an ascending perfect fifth (fa-do) and fourth (do-fa), followed by a descending perfect fourth (fa-do) and fifth (do-fa) interval, played in relentless robo-military úp tempo on the electric piano, backed in relaxed more or less half that time by deep single bass notes doing nothing but moving down and up a major second to and fro the piano's fasool, sol-faaa, fa-sool, sol-faaa, fa-sool, et cetera—punctured and crossed by fpcm's occasionally hitting the body of his electric guitar with his tuning fork at concert pitch, moving the vibrating metal points near and over the guitar's pick-ups to make its 440 Hz—láááá—frequency undulate in and out of auditory focus.

These three minimal key-ingredients are pretty much all that there is to Mary and Jane's poppy magic.

young lions

Ronald Heiloo did the lead vocals on the track, with all of the compact text's syllables bursting out, monotonically and staccato, in—with the exception of the comparison 'with that of Jane' and the end-of-phrases single semitone rise with immediate fall back to —the tuning fork's A: "If we compare two things in order," Ronald speak-sings, "to see the difference between them, we separate Mary and Jane from others. If we contrast Mary's behaviour with that of Jane, we see that Mary is much kinder. We got to draw the line somewhere."

The version recorded and released on No News, Strange Rumours, the Young Lions' 1980 Plurex vinyl album, though, clocks at just about one minute and nineteen seconds. The one that is now available as part of Stduio's No. 419—an intentionally crude and rough cut-up and paste of the song by the ookoi (realised on an iPad using 'Sector', but originally inspired by one of the amazing web-audio-apps that until about a decade ago were available online at the now defunct labs.echonest.com)—quadruples that duration. Not quite unending yet, but closing in on it: ...'Mary and Jane Forever'...!

mary and jane

To receive updates on the ookoi's b.ookoi's progress and all related events and activities, follow Stduio on Bandcamp!

Bandcamp is our preferred platform, but you can also listen to Stduio ookoi's No. 419 on streaming music platforms, like YouTube Music or Spotify ... :


stduioo

The b.ookoi are coming!

Bookoi

wordt achtervolgd



Read about the ookoi elsewhere:
ANNUAL, 1, december 2023 (Korm Plastics) - Green-tainted hyperbole, quailish quirks and summer-flies. The inscrutable genius of the ookoi.
eContact! 21.2, july 2023 - Towards an Unhearable Music. Conceptualism in the ookoi's art.
Gonzo #88, september/october 2008 - Zelfcomponerende Klankstukken

Read about the ookoi and Raudio and Stduio on the SoundBlog:
(2023, december 31) - d.ookoi writes b.ookoi (ii) - A Year in the Rear (2023)
(2023, december 16+) - Awesome Foursomes (xi) - No. 178
(2023, december 16+) - Awesome Foursomes (x) - No. 789
(2023, december 16+) - Awesome Foursomes (ix) - No. 329
(2023, august 20) - Three days of residency at Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels
(2022, april 25) - Awesome Foursomes (viii) - No. 664
(2022, march 31) - Awesome Foursomes (vii) - No. 138
(2022, february 20) - Awesome Foursomes (vi) - No. 419
(2021, november 01) - Awesome Foursomes (v) - No. 954
(2021, august 20) - Awesome Foursomes (iv) - No. 793
(2021, july 18) - Awesome Foursomes (iii) - No. 562
(2021, july 09) - Awesome Foursomes (ii)- No. 284
(2021, june 21) - Awesome Foursomes (i) - No. 019
(2021, may 31) - d.ookoi writes b.ookoi (i)
(2020, january 26) - STDUIO Arti: aLife @Hal-fIve
(2020, january 25) - STDUIO Arti: The LⒶst Weekend
(2019, march 03) - ookoi 2.0: the remake of a spect[r]al b[r]and
(2017, april 12) - 1024
(2015, march 07) - The men once in green are now writing a book!
(2014, may 09) - You are NOT Hier!
(2013, july 03) - How to keep devils away
(2013, may 06) - Next Numbr!
(2012, june 24) - Ninja Fruit Plus Instruments
(2012, may 06) - Y.3 = Yltra !
(2012, may 06) - Our final gig / Ons laatste optreden
(2010, may 23) - 'Raise the trumpet, sound the drum'
(2010, april 02) - [Second Life and WudyWudy]
(2010, january 05) - ookoi: onderood
(2009, november 17) - Soli Deo Gloria !
(2009, october 10) - Project Icarus OST
(2009, august 24) - ookoi ShakeNRoll
(2009, july 18) - Pure . Reactive . Music . Hack Day
(2009, april 07) - "Blood and Bottom" (Raudi0GaGa)
(2009, february 21) - Insular arithmetic (ookoi toont)
(2009, january 31) - A glimpse of Heesbeen
(2009, january 15) - Rien à voir
(2008, october 02) - The right to be slow
(2008, june 06) - Raudio Graffiti: almost live !
(2008, february 24) - The Great Washing
(2007, december 04) - I'm an island
(2007, november 20) - Live Beyond the Paradiso, Amsterdam
(2007, september 04) - leve ookoi! (3)
(2007, august 22) - leve ookoi! (2)
(2007, august 12) - leve ookoi! (1)
(2007, april 12) - Back to Berlin [Raudio 11/15]
(2007, march 24) - Vicky, Killers and Avatars
(2007, february 15) - Every presentation is a premiere
(2007, january 25) - 1024 Waarden, by ookoi
(2007, january 19) - Preparations for a Second Life
(2006, november 05) - Cellarlar Heroes
(2006, october 20) - Funky shit
(2006, august 14) - placard : la générale
(2006, july 07) - de-'tails of lite house keeping'
(2006, may 06) - jam karet?
(2006, april 04) - 100+ new (r)audio philes ... [3] [Raudio 07]
(2006, march 20) - raudio @cosman's
(2006, march 12) - 100+ new (r)audio philes ... [2] [Raudio 07]
(2006, march 03) - 100+ new (r)audio philes ... [1] [Raudio 07]
(2005, october 12) - Raudio #06 [Raudio 06]
(2005, september 25) - 0 OK, 0:1, life on ze road
(2005, july 31) - Outside - Inside Paradiso
(2005, june 18) - Sand-Y da-Y #5-7 [Raudio 05]
(2005, june 05) - Sand-Y :: da-Y #04 - da birds
(2005, may 26-24) - Sand-Y :: da-Y #03, #02, #01 - Crew cut ; "The truth is out here" ; ::
(2005, may 14) - 9 Beet Stretch [Raudio Special]
(2005, march 31) - Raudio #04 :: "GespRek 1982-2005" [Raudio 04]
(2005, february 10) - raudio #3 (drie/three) [Raudio 03]
(2004, december 08) - pure sound [Raudio 02]
(2004, november 24) - other, and good news! [Raudio 01]
(2004, october 10) - raudio launched
(2004, september 24) - made in ameland
(2004, june 09) - boyzz buzz # listen!global corpus
(2004, may 20-31) - >∞-îl_o_tré

Read some of the ookoi's papers in pdf:
(2014) - Localized Sounds, Sounding Locations.
Presented at the International Symposium "Locative Media and Sound Art", Kortrijk (be)
(2007) - ookoi - Uptime Publishing Demonstration. (With Jay Needham.)

ookoi - The works:
(2015—now) :: writing b.ookoi: pick a number!
(2017) Weekly, 10'24" :: ookoi dooki podcast
(2014) HIER - iPhone app, 4 track album of localized Future Popp
(2013) Y ¬ Y.1024 (HTML5 web app)
(2013) Wandelzand - iPhone app, soundwalk for the Dutch isle of Ameland
(2012) Palm Top Theatre V2
(2010) WudyWudy, machina movie, filmed in Second Life by Evo Szuyuan (trailer)
(2009) ookoi_@_E@rport, Amsterdam - channel 19 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2009) ShakeNRoll, Project Icarus OST - scenes for the RJDJ reactive music iPhone platform
(2009) iRingg®, iPhone ringtones
(2009) 2525 (video)
(2008) L'Ecoute - public space screen video
(2008) Jam Karet I & Jam Karet IV - pocket movies
(2007) Live beyond the Paradiso (USB-stick data-dump)
(2007) Leve ookoi! - channel 16 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2007) 1024 (DVD)
(2007) 1024 Waarden - flash animation
(2006) "Roam Stroam" - channel 12 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2006) Tijdrekken - flash animation
(2005) Sand-Y (Zandoog) - channel 7 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2004) Muziektafel-Tafelmuziek (CD)
...
(1980) Signs and Symptoms


notes __ ::
(*) Read more on the Young Lions' "deal" with hip American producer Kim Fowley in Harold Schellinx - ULTRA. Opkomst en ondergang van een unieke Nederlandse muziekstroming (1978-1983) (Lebowski Publishers. Amsterdam, 2012), page 181. [ ^ ]

tags: ookoi, b.ookoi, young lions, hollandse meesters

# .518.


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