Even though Krzyzosiak Verhaverbeke (Antoine Verhaverbeke, b. 1972) nowadays plays improvised noise music, his reflections on free improvisation could be applied to all the music he has made through the years: “In music I like the word ‘play’, as when kids play. I don’t know how to put it... It’s fun, ha ha! Even though it’s painful, it’s fun. A musician doing free improvisation is like an extension of what kids do when they play with something, like kids who can play with anything, like a cardboard box. It’s a very low-key thing, just being together and playing with something. It’s very honest and modest at the same time.”
In his native France Verhaverbeke played guitar in a rock band until his twenties, when his visual art studies took him elsewhere. Later on he studied web design, finally moving to work in Helsinki in 1997. When he started to make music again, after nearly ten years, a computer-aided guitar was a natural choice of instrument. The first recording that came out of this process was the EP Ikkuna (“Window”), influenced by minimal techno, ambient music and shoegazer bands, but lately Verhaverbeke has been more interested in feedback music. “What has stayed with me from art school is the idea of the context as the reason to do things. I really tried to react to the context when I did my student works, like making works about what it is to be an art student, then turning it around, asking questions, and so on. It’s the idea of context as a playground. Feedback music is definitively also contextual. It’s always different depending on the space in which you play, how big it is, how far the speakers are etcetera. But my music is not conceptual art, it’s physical and emotional. It’s close to the rock thing, liberating energies and all that.”
The Norwegian video artist H.C.Gilje (b. 1969) is going to visualise the concert by Krzyzosiak Verhaverbeke in Avanto. In addition to his own video works, Gilje is known for his co-operation with a host of noise and electronic musicians such as Maja Ratkje – who performed in Avanto 2002 as a part of Fe-mail – Jazzkammer, Tim Hecker and Kelly Davis.
> http://www.nervousvision.com/
Krzyzosiak Verhaverbeke featuring H.C. Gilje at the Avanto Nightclub in Gloria on Saturday, November 20th.
