Album Notes

Beautiful ethereal, wild, soft, heart-rending, melodic and spacy soundscapes SHINE out
of the duo Bram Stadhouders & Onno Govaert.

A unique combination of guitar
and guitarsynthesizer, laptop, drums, and sparkling percussion.

They already have an interesting jazz-past, but now they’re using FREE IMPROVISATION,
combining electronics and acoustical instruments to create a new and very emotional
world of sound.

The two have collaborated intensively since a very early age, this is why they’re
capable of communicating very INTUITIVELY, to make very interesting and always
changing structures while improvising, which actually sometimes sound like
COMPOSITIONS.

Brams guitar is connected to a guitarsynthesizer, which translates what is being played into
MIDI. This way he can play many synthesizers on his guitar, with the use of his laptop.

Together with effects he can make big and beautiful
SYNTH-CLOUDS, next to playing the normal guitar.

Together with unconventional effect processed drums this can result
in a GRAND spacy sound, but also silent and intimate moments.

They want to be aware of keeping a structure while improvising, so it would sound
like a composition, but at the same time they feel the need to Express Their Emotions
directly and unconsciously, so the true improvisation properties are still present.

Small loops and repetitions that are made while playing keep a grip on the unity of
the music, which allows other interesting things to happen in the harmonic area.

You’ll never really hear a chord progression, but more natural developping
movements.

Melodies are neither litteraly repeated, which could be a little confusing
sometimes, but when you keep close attention to the directions and the overall
sound, you can be sure to have a DELIGHTING experience :)

Don\'t wait any longer to make this music yours.



What\'s the manifesto?

Most of improvised music made today is SELF-CENTERED.
Musicians, and especially improvisers, either want to express their
own feelings, or express the feeling of already existing styles.

I believe that this is not where music should go.
Considering the times we live in, with growing hate between
groups, global warming and nature disasters, increasing poverty,
we need music that MOVES people. Makes people better.

There is no use for music if it does not CHANGE anything.

For this to happen, we have to not express what we feel privately,
or how an already existing style sounds, we have to express what
we SEE and FEEL outside of us, and a belief of change and awareness.

Most contemporary composed and improvised music is too obviously
rooted in music from the 20th century. They sadly think that they are
modern, but they are anything but.

People think that music and art cannot be innovated anymore because
everything has been done, or everything is considered as art. I do not
think this is true, because this time is DIFFERENT than all the other times
in history.

Therefore, if we focus on expressing the external feeling and awareness
of these times, and change it, we can make a new art which is about healing
the wounds.