SOUNDSEEING – the Münsterland-wide sound art festival stands for top-class sound art at extraordinary locations. Voilá: Experimental, varied and very lively, we show here excerpts from the live recording of the improvisation concert with the trio Jaap Blonk, voice and electronics | Steffen Roth, drums | Stephan Froleyks, percussion, tuba, new instruments | from the former spinning mill in the LWL Museum Textilwerk Bocholt.

Jaap Blonk is a true vocal wonder. He sounds outrageous and cheeky, sometimes like one instrument, sometimes like many instruments. But most of the time he sounds like neither, is as noisy as the traffic or as shrill as a siren or the squeak of a door. And because all that is not enough for him, he sends his voice into the nirvana of electronics, where he modifies and multiplies it, boils it down or screws it up. An impressive presence and intensity, which is once again whipped up by the two studied drummers Stephan Froleyks and Steffen Roth with the energies of extremely free rhythms and countered with magical sounds of exquisite and partly self-made instruments. Is that jazz? If so, then of the very free variety. Is it avant-garde? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. The trio Blonk / Froleyks / Roth loves to surprise themselves and as a listener you should never be too sure.

Sounds: © Trio Blonk / Froleyks / Roth
Camera: Sabine Herke
Composing: herkewerke