21.08.2008 Madrid!

First time in Madrid! We played at the new Caixa-Forum, a museum on the Paseo de Prado, right in the middle of town. This time again with David Apfel, doing speech on "Impossible", dancing on "Muy chungo/Jabon Jabon" and giving a presentation on perspectives for a longer life by biotechnology and drugs. The audience was astonished. We made lots of fans apparently, more than sixty people signed up for our newsletter after the show!
We stayed in Madrid for the weekend, and have seen futuristic lifeforms by Theo Janssen and more incredible stuff at a digital arts exhibition at the Reina Sophia-museum, ate some broken eggs, had some tinto de verano, got to know the city etc.
Hope we will come back soon!

6.8.2008 Caixaforum Barcelona

A huge stage in front of the museum Caixaforum, a beautiful summer night. We had one of our biggest and probably best concerts this year. This time again with Marti Sanchez who did some great visuals. This was the first time we played with a setlist and knew which songs we will play in which order. And it worked out fine. The audience was very nice, very mixed, as some originally came for a Flamenco concert in the Auditorium, but then stayed for our show as well.

(Fotos: Jean Benoit Kauffmann. Merci!!)

18.07. Can Xalant, Mataró

09.05.2008 Music and science en el CCCB

On the 9th of may we played the CCCB - the same place were I have seen the most earshaking concerts of my live: Pan Sonic on Sonar a couple of years ago, and Sunn O)))) last year. We got invited to play together with Oval. Oval is Markus Popp who then again is a firend of firends of my youth in Darmstadt. And the other act on this night, part of the mp7 concert series, was Martin Kaltenbrunner with his reactable. An all german-speaking line up, hehe.
Martin started the night with a presentation of his buzzingsqueekingfeeping table-instrument. After this rather serious, academic part of the night Oval played. Markus Popp had brought two laptops and dropped abstract noises and beats. A camera would film from behind, and to our surprise there wasn't much magic going on - no custom software, no unseen tools, just him dropping samples and audiofiles, like a DJ. I for sure had expected something more sophisticated, as Oval is considered as inventors of the Glitch-genre. Maybe his art doesn't translate so well into live concerts.
After this the audience had the chance to play with the reactable while we would set up our eqipment on stage. We had Frank Rudow as a guest with his nord-lead-synthesizer, and David Apfel as guest who would present his latest discoveries about neuroscience and virtual worlds and show accompying slides. We played a couple of songs in between. The audience liked it (I believe), and to our own satisfaction we heard that Alexander Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten was there and seemed to enjoy it as well.
Here a link to another blog with a review of the event.
Fotos and some videofootage might follow.

08/03/2008: Neuroscience and spaceships

This saturday we will play another concert at the NIU - but this time we invited David Apfel, the famous fantastic founder of El club de los Astronautas. He will give a presentation about how he will achieve space-travelling by the means of neuroscience. Heavy stuff, but definetely something everyone should know of. With David we already did lots of events and colaborations. He is the author of the lyrics of "Imposible" and "Muy Chungo" (listen to both songs on our myspace-page) and together with Paul he performed on various stages in spain with El Club de los Astronauts. This saturday he will start his presentation at 8:30 pm in our favourite gallery NIU, afterwards we will play new versions of all our songs related to Sci-Fi, Hi-fi and Low-fi, Brei-Fi and No-Fi.

Suma & Fatima - In a garden

Today we played a improvisation set with our long time friend Frank Rudow - who recently moved to Barcelona and is working here with his new project Suma. He had been invited to make music on a event organized by friends, and he invited us to play together with him. The event took place in a kind of greenhouse and we played ambient music for the invited guests between plants and a surreal exposition. Frank used stones, leaves, flowerpods and found objects for percussion, we played on two laptops, sampling his noises. On our drop-page you can listen to the last 11 minutes of the one and a half hour long improvised ambient set we played.

Videos from the performance at transmediale

On sunday, 3rd of february 08, we made three performances at the transmediale-festival in Berlin. Now the first videos have been posted on youtube:




you can see more videos here, and here and a very special one here .

03.02.2007: Berlin Transmediale

Hurrah! We will play at the festival transmediale in Berlin. The event will take place at the Haus der Kulturen, sunday 3rd of february, 3pm. We will do 3 or 4 interventions with reactivision and big symbols in the hands of the audience. Here our page on the festival's web.

21.10.2007 Improtronica session Nr. 6 - Festival Tardor Poble Nou

We play the next Improtronica Session, this time without invited musicians. Lots of people at the NIU, as the event is part of a bigger festival (Escena Poble Nou).
Bad luck, as we start the concert one of the computers doesn't boot anymore. No battery left. Also the reacTIVision part of the set up doesn't really work so fine. But then again people just find it funny and entertaining to see us struggle with the machines. And we have very nice visuals by Margot van Ham, including live cam and some material we had prepared at home some night before the concert. Video and audio-recordings of the event exist (and might be posted here soon)

20.09.2007 Cabaret Hoffmann, Gracia BCN

Beautiful small venue. We got invited because another band had to cancel and proposed us to play. Nice!! Actually the concert is part of the LEM-festival somehow - and we always wanted to play on the LEM, so now we have made it!
We let someone from the audience sing a song. Some bizarre descontrolled accidents happen. In the middle of "Mamasita" we have suddenly a very strange singing/effect-part that came out of nothing because of badly prepared set up. All beats stop and only some strange echoes continue to sound while we sing the chorus. Surprise. We smile and all people laugh about it. We feel lucky!

??.09.2007 Poble Nou

Event in an abandoned factory in the neighbourhood. N'Sista playing after us. Very nice location, a spity that the place will be closed and torn down soon. We play mainly the "Chimeneas 22@"-set, but this time with quite different dynamics, different ending, more technoish.

29.07.2007 Improtronica Session

Improtronica session number 5 (yes, there were two secret ones ...). This time we had Hermes form the audiovisual collective Telenoika and Cristóbal Saavedra aka Equipo with us. We also had some VJs from Telenoika invited, but they didn't show up. So we plugged in a camera, and gave it into the hands of the audience. They did a great job!!

Here the recording of it.

28.07.2007 Chiringuito Montalt

Concert in a Chiringuito on the beach. Beautiful setting, a recording of some parts of the concert exists. Beautiful flyer and posters made by the promoter - who was happy because it was the last event he had organized and according to him it was the most successful one for him.

27.07.2007 Funambul

What a pity that we don't have a recording of this concert. The Funambul is a little bar in Hospitalet with a tiny stage. Although there were only very few people at the concert we played a very nice set, sang in tune, made some beautiful improvisations and the machines worked fine. We also had some bizarre visuals by Raff, a friend from belgium.

25.07.2007 Campus Party Valencia

The Campus Party is a big gathering of people with computers, held yearly in Valencia. We played at the stand of EP3, a magazine published each friday in spanish's biggest diary El Pais. Here a video with a part of our performance. It was the first time that we used big symbols and gave them to the audience during the concert.

06.07.2007 Reactive Party by Cambio de Formato

Again a cooking concert with Frank Rudow. We had been invited from the people that do the "Cambia de formato"-blog to play on their party in the "Oven". Here you can hear a recording of the concert.

28.06.2007 Nit del Cosmocaixa

Invited by radio Scanner FM we did a show at Barcelona's science museum Cosmocaixa. See Carsten play the invisible piano:

20.05.2007 Fiesta Poble Nou

On the fiesta of Carsten's Neighbourhood we put up again a little installation and let people play with it. Surprising results, little kids were making very good ambient music. Here on the street we built some of the reactivision-instruments that we use up until today.

06.05.2007 BCN Improtronica Sessions 2

Collectively improvised electronic music with chicken curry. Our first concert with Frank Rudow (Manta Ray, La Jr., Suma) as drummer and cook. He prepared a superb chicken curry while playing with us. The cooking has been recorded and sampled live, some onion-cutting-percussion from this day is part of our main sample library now. Also on stage with us: DJ Shakira Benavides aka Lucius works here, Jordi Saludes aka D-fried and Miguel Marin aka Arbol. A recording of the show can be heard on the Radio PIU website.

17.03.2007 "Chimeneas 22@" at Miscelänea

As part of the "Puto Encuentro"-festival we got invited to play at the club miscelanëa. we played the "chimeneas 22@"-show , again together with Agustin and Li. On this event Carsten used the reacTIVision for the first time live. He was triggering the complete intro-part of the show with papercards and and his webcam.

There is a little website about the event on the miscelänea-web. An audio-recording of the event exists.