VANILLA RIOT – 21.00 – 1. Stock

Vanilla Riot is a contemporary intermedia group of improvisers (Stephan Meidell, Onno Govaert, Bostjan Simon)

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Description:

Vanilla Riot is a contemporary intermedia
group of improvisers (Stephan Meidell, Onno Govaert, Bostjan Simon) that have
been active in numerous kinds of settings touring throughout Europe and the
U.S.A.The music moves from particle improv to electronic eruptions, and
consist of organized pieces that derive from improvisations.

As of Spring 2010, we use interactive
projections of prepared video material on to walls and curtains, as well as
filtered interactive live video input. Improvised sounds of our performance
occur simultaneously with an images, creating synesthetic experiences. For the
occasion, we invited a visuals expert Roel van Roorn (www.roelvandoorn.com)
to join us. All our videos and music at:

http://vimeo.com/user3625686/videos

http://soundcloud.com/vanilla-riot

http://vanillariot.tumblr.com/

Keywords:Experimental, mixed media, improvised
music, live electronics, real time video and sound processing, noise,
challenging the screen culture, saturation of sensory input, sound and light
pollution.

Our first album „Stitch“ has been
released in november 2009 on the renown Norwegian label AIMSoundCity.

We received great feedback on our concerts in
Norway Holland and Slovenia, during the cd release. A piece from the cd was
also broadcast on national radioNr KP2.

Reviews:

A review in the Norwegian paper Bergens Tidende:

„…the musicians Bostjan Simon, Stephan Meidell and Onno
Govaert show a genuine search for the connection between organic and electronic
sound. Known conceptions are thrown overboard, and the sound image is peeled
down to a fascinating play with basic elements. I liked the composition
„Wirl“ the most because it sounds as catchy cross-over music that
points across the electronica genre.“

Norwegian magazine Tarkus

„Vanilla Riot navigates between
different pressure-levels; Stitch has fragments and parts of small entity and
movement(«S2c3»), but here are also critically intense passages where the
three musicians gets tested and challenged, also at the same time(«h-
mobb»). Parallel-wise it seems unthinkable that these counter-movements could
work without each other, which makes them both necessary. An unusually
successful span between quiet testing built up against hectic-dynamic
instantdecisions, creates scopes that often lack in similar improvisation-music.
Whether the rawness occurs because or in spite of the band-members schooling,
is at best a secondary question when the sound works as well as this.

RADIO STUDENT, Ljubljana 89,3 FM (www.radiostudent.si)

A few years ago at this frequency and a few concerts, we have
been inspired by the alleged „discovery of the scene“, which was said
to be unexpectedly growing on the limits of ““musical practices““ in Norway. Some
journalists wrote enthusiastically, and the alleged ““Scene““ has developed
further, to the point where also the phrases ““border practices““ and ““genre
exceedances““ clearly showed the excess of journalistic categorization. ““Scene““
can now be summarized as a product of certain cultural policy, the
possibilities of new media and platforms that do not deal more with the
boundaries between high and low culture, nor do the differentiation between
““music““ and its ““other““. The effect of identifiable bands may now also
reflected in the setting such as Vanilla Riot, an international group, which
has arisen as a result of meeting of allied interests in the academic context,
at the Amsterdam Music Conservatory.

Vanilla Riot is a trio: Bostjan Simon plays tenor saxophone and
clarinet, Stephan Meidell plays baritone guitar, both take care of electronics,
and there is also the drummer Onno Govaert. As the local member of the group
explained for this radio““s broadcast „100 db“ and before their
concert in „Rog factory“, the trio is clearly deriving from the
previously unmentioned sources (probably he means mentioned, i.e. Norwegian
scene), which we can not take as a reason for their further ranking.

Based on the last year““s conversation, we““re talking about a
group that confidently excludes itself from musical guidelines of their mostly
jazz-oriented teachers. It is therefore better to start from the product before
us.

You may wish to describe the album „Stitch“ with it““s
cover artwork, which is a geometrically unregulated foreign body positioned
into an idyllic natural landscape. This might promote the impression of
blending classical, the natural world and computer-generated sound. In reality,
however, both is put together into a single creation, not born out of sets of
antagonisms like analogue-digital or natural-artificial. Somehow, in the style
of a more sophisticated version of what Hexenbrutal is doing here: introducing
musical skills in the underground-like and not quite friendly thunder-oriented
expressive power. In this manner Vanilla Riot place clarinetist““s phrasing on
top of a strongly present context of tripping intermittent rhythm and
low-roaring guitar, or involve quiet and slowly coloring electronic sounds into
an apparently chaotic mixture of drummers nervous strokes. Noise is caught in
the epic drone of musical structure, from which the most memorable parts are
the introductory minimal recital entitled ““Ruin““ and song ““S2C3““. Then again,
this doesn““t give out a prescription for the whole recording ““Stitch““; in fact,
in other places it becomes a quieter game, that does not bet much on it““s first
sounds.

The persisting dilemma of why would one pack a non-catchy
practice of improvisation into a market-friendly form of an audio clip, is here
redundant, since the 9 pieces clip Stich is consistently built on a unitary
sound impression. In this way, each piece comes as a single monolith, escaping
the mere successive time listening. With this, Vanilla Riot successfully
combine two things: there are 9 pieces packed in a recording, that do not
require excessive questioning on their compositional nature, but also do not
digest on the first pitch. Having said that, we could call the recording
user-friendly, but the experimental nature of Vanilla Riot, however informs the
listener, that their creation is of a variable nature and hard to grasp, which
makes it always best to verify/check at concerts. We do not know if the
concerts are just as explosive, sharp and concise as the package, but it still
remains open to this type of curiosity.