Schallwelle Awards 2017 pre-nominations

It's the time of the year again to vote for the annual Schallwelle Awards.

Voting already started December 15th and can be done until January 6th, 2018.

My musical projects are pre-nomintated three times:

The recently released "The Return of Planet X" can be found in the Album list, and REMY as well as Mäläskä are listed in the Artists section.

To bring out your votes, visit http://www.schallwen.de/swvoting/en/

The ceremony of the tenth edition of the Schallwelle Awards take place on February 17th, 2018.
Featuring performances by Stefan Erbe, Sasa Tosic, UNI Sphere, VoLt, and Johannes Schmoelling.
Details can be found on http://schallwelle-preis.de/

Thanks in advance for voting!

"The Return of Planet X" album release, Tangerine Dream, and more @ E-Live 2017

A bit belated, but here is my impression from recent E-Live festival, held at Theater De Enck in Oirschot, October 21st and 22nd.

Ron Boots talking to a full house. Photo © Rob Enzlin.

This year's edition was a special one in the festival's history, because the event was spread over two days instead of Saturday only.
When the regular festival day was already sold out rather quick after the announcement of the headlining Tangerine Dream, E-Day's organiser Ron Boots decided to add a second concert date, which was set to the day after.
This second concert didn't sell out, but in the end an approximate 500 people visited the weekend.

I decided to only visit the Saturday.

In the first place because I was about to present my new album release, "The Return of Planet X".
Secondly because I didn't have the urge to book an overnight or travel quite the distance another time the next day.
And third, Tangerine Dream.

Let me explain this third reason:
Since early 00s I stopped following Tangerine Dream's activities, until I saw Edgar Froese performing at the T/U Eindhoven (E-Live's previous location) and Tangerine Dream's concert at the Loreley, both in 2008. In my opinion both concerts contained nice moments. Nothing more, nothing less.
When tickets went on sale for Tangerine Dream's first concert in Oirschot, I decided to give it another chance. My friend Wouter Bessels convinced me to do so. And on the other side I was curious what Tangerine Dream was about without front man Edgar Froese.

Slightly with mixed feelings, because of the fact that the band Loom (consisting of Froese's son Jerome and fellow ex-TD member Johannes Schmoelling, as well as Rob Waters) sounds more Tangerine Dream to me than the original band's line-up since the passing of Edgar Froese.
It might not be a surprise that this situation generated some discussion between both bands, as well as amongst fans from the first hour.

Edgar Froese's wife Bianca fully supports the continuation of her (in 2016 passed) husband's heritage in its current form, with band members Torsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss and Hoshiko Yamane.
Coinciding on this day she presented her husband's autobiography "Force Majeure", which was long awaited by the fans.

As usual, during the day there were a couple of concerts. This year's time table contained concerts by Beyond Berlin, David Wright & Carys, Sonic Rider, and so Tangerine Dream (presenting "The Quantum Years - in honour of Edgar Froese").
Mainly because of the fact I was presenting my freshly released "The Return of Planet X", I 'missed' all concerts, with exception of the main act.
However, I already saw David and Carys during last summer's Schwingungen Garten Party. Same goes for Beyond Berlin, which I witnessed performing at De Enck a while ago.

In between the concerts a nice amount of people visited the stall to buy my new release "The Return of Planet X". People who already pre-ordered the album, also picked up their bonus disc.

Tribute to Edgar Froese.

Then came the moment that Tangerine Dream entered the stage. It took me 10-15 minutes before I could let go the fact I was listening to Tangerine Dream with expectations. From that point I enjoyed every bit of it. First the brilliant first two hours, containing new tracks, as well as some classic TD tracks, like "White Eagle", "Rubycon", "Logos" and "Song of the Whale", of which the latter memorated Edgar Froese, sentimentally coincided with projected portrait photos.
Followed by a 50-minute fully improvised jamsession after the break. Craftmanship and simply amazing!

The global sound mix was hypnotizing. In my opinion a brilliant decision. Without doubt containing clear Tangerine Dream elements and links to Edgar Froese's trademarks, this time carried over by the new generation of musicians.
It was good to see and hear the effective collaboration between the musicians on stage. Only point of criticism could be the fact that the violin player seemed to have not much to do a large part of the time, and just stood there silently. While she was set up in the middle of the stage, there was no opportunity for her to leave the spot. But who cares, especially when you had closed your eyes to enjoy the concert?

Thorsten, Hoshiko and Ulrich. Photo © André Stooker.

Concluding this concert, I was more than surprised about the brilliant output. It definitely has an reason that these musicians are still performing together as Tangerine Dream, despite the fact it will never be Tangerine Dream anymore after the passing of Edgar Froese.
But attending their concerts without any expectations, it was one of the best electronic music acts I have seen and heard in a while.

Nice detail: both evenings featured completely different music. Which must have made it an absolute treat for everyone who visited both concerts.

Hat off for organiser Ron Boots, who once again did a lot of efforts to organise a valuable event proving electronic music is still alive.

As always it was a great pleasure to talk to and have fun with a lot of people during the day.

Also thanks a lot to my lovely wife Paulien, who took care of my album sales.

Finally I got back home around 2:30 a.m.

Coming time I will continue activities around "The Return of Planet X" and some upcoming projects.

Recently there has already been quite some airplay of "The Return of Planet X", the first reviews start to come in, and besides the physical release the album will soon also be availble as digital download from Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, and many more sites.

New release: The Return of Planet X

I am delighted to announce an upcoming new release, scheduled for October 21st:

After last year's very well received "Fears" - REMY's only solo album from the last five years - Dutch synthesist Remy Stroomer comes up with the release of the project which partially inspired the 2016 album.

2012 marked many prophecies and theories about 'the end of the world'. Also Hollywood heavily anticipated on the doom scenarios mainly based on predictions by the Mayans, more than 5000 years ago.

Strangely, the scenario of the return of the so called 'Planet X' - as predicted by the Sumerian people from approximately 5000 b.C. - wasn't highlighted.
When browsing the internet, and digging into available sources, the story of Nibiru (a huge planet from another 'nearby' solar system which enters ours every 3600 years and passing earth closely during its ellyptic orbit) and the Anunnaki (the planet's inhabitants) could also be a good reason to cause more panic when it concerns earth's destruction and the demise of its inhabitants.

Remy got intrigued by the subject of Planet X after a conversation with a friend about a 'second sun' - which was spotted by many people lately all over the world.
When doing research Remy found many sources and facts suggesting the story - or at least parts of it - could easily be real.
On the other side, there are also enough sources that reject all theories or prove opposite.
In any case the story of Planet X remains highly fascinating and mysterious, and therefore became the inspiration for a musical interpretation.

May 19th, 2012 - in the estimated year of the arrival of another planet into our solar system - a musical tribute to Planet X was performed live at an one-off event organised by Remy
Stroomer and Ron Boots. The wonderful location of the Grote of St.Bavokerk in the centre in Haarlem became the scenery for this project to be staged.

"The Return of Planet X" was divided into three concert-parts:
- Part 1: Composed by Remy Stroomer, and performed by Remy Stroomer (synthesizers and grand piano), Wouter de Ruyter (violin), Dick Bijlsma (violin) and Martine de Ket (cello);
- Part 2: Composed by Ron Boots, and performed by Ron Boots (synthesizers), Eric van der Heijden (synthesizers), Harold van der Heijden (drums and percussion), and a 10-piece choir.
- Part 3: Improvised by Remy Stroomer (synthesizers, grand piano and C. Müller Organ), Ron Boots (synthesizers, grand piano), Eric van der Heijden (synthesizers, C. Müller Organ), and Harold van der Heijden (drums and percussion).

Remy Stroomer's new release, "The Return of Planet X", contains the entire first part, as well as the third part's improvised piano prelude by Remy and Ron and the 'grand final',
where Remy and Eric play the historic and impressive C. Müller Organ.
Part 2 was already released back in 2012 (Ron Boots - "Signs in the Sand"), and is available from www.groove.nl.

"The Return of Planet X" will be released on CD and as digital download and is going to be presented by Deserted Island Music at the annual E-Live Festival in Oirschot, on October 21th.

Order your copy from www.desertedislandmusic.nl.

Awakenings

Last Saturday it was time for the September edition of Awakenings. The electronic music event, where I performed twice before (a solo performance in 2012, and with Free Arts Lab in 2014) at the previous location in Burton-on-Trent, is now being held at Lea Hall Social Club, in Rugeley.
A smaller and more intimate venue than Paget High School.

Petter Janse and I were invited to perform here with Mäläskä last weekend.
We departed from The Netherlands on Friday morning, September 15th, took the ferry from Duinkerken, and overnighted in Folkestone, just south from Dover.

The next day we drove to Rugeley, while having a lot of heavy traffic on our way. Anyway, we were in time to get our equipment installed.

Sinewaves Light.
(Photo by Phil Booth)

The first concert, by Sinewaves Light started at 18:10, and ended at 19:00.
Mike Parrott exposed a wide variety of different touches of electronic music.
Despite the fact that the performance was technically sloppy from time to time, it contained some really good parts and themes. Very enjoyable.
The different tracks were clearly inspired by (or at least they contained clear comparisons with) the music of John Carpenter, James Horner, Vangelis, Jarre, and also featured some serious Berlin School sequences.

Infinity Curve.
(Photo by Phil Booth)

After the first break of half an hour, routiniers and frequent Awakening performers Jez Creek and Peter Challoner debuted as Infinity Curve.
Some dark and sinister ambient sound sculptures kicked off their one-hour set.
Subtle evolving and constantly emerging layers made this a very delightful and exciting listen.
After ten minutes a sequence appeared and evolved into some nice uptempo ambient.
From time to time some very subtle solo leads in the background, and also more than enough happening constantly, by means of sound effects, structures and samples.
After every following sequence part, another ambient passage made the bridge to the next sequencer sections.
Excellently balanced, great sounds, interesting layering, and brilliant sequencing. Really awesome!

Mäläskä.
(Photo by Phil Booth)

Then another 30 minutes break (in which we checked the final technical things) before Petter and I made our appearance.

We set off with some soundscapes, after which the first sequencing was done. Alternated with atmospheric passages.

A short impression from the first part of our gig can be seen here.

After a little longer than one hour we finished our set. At that point Petter suggested that I should do an encore on my own. So I started an improvised piano piece. Ending up with some more sequencing.
No idea what our output sounded like, but I will listen to the recordings within the coming days.

Unfortunately it was not the best visited edition of Awakenings ever. On the other side, many people did buy a virtual ticket, and supported the event this way. Which is much appreciated.
In any way we have had a great weekend; it was really good to be back!

Thanks to all who visited the concerts, and bought virtual tickets.
And many thanks to Phil Booth, Dave Buxton and everyone involved.

Galactic Travels special focus

Galactic Travels, hosted by Bill Fox, will have a month-long focus on my music. Every Thursday in September there is aired one of my albums:

7-9: Sessions 2012 (with My Breath My Music)
14-9: i-Dentity
21-9: The Great Church Trilogy
28-9 EoD

The special focus page:
http://galactictravels.info/playlists/2017/focus.html#sep

Galactic Travels is an electronic, ambient, and space music show that airs each Thursday at 11 p.m. EDT (which is 5 a.m. CEST, Amsterdam time) on WDIY 88.1 FM , Allentown and Bethlehem, 93.9 FM in Easton and Phillipsburg, 93.7 FM in Fogelsville and Trexlertown, and on the internet at http://wdiy.org.

Afterwards the shows are archived on Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/galactictravels/

Mäläskä live at Awakenings

Mäläskä - the improvisation project together with guitar player Petter Janse - are invited to play at the Awakenings concert series in Rugeley, U.K., September 16th.

Free Arts Lab live at the Awakenings All-Dayer, 11-10-2014.
Photo by Phil Booth

Petter and I already performed here (although on the previous location of Burton-on-Trent) with Free Arts Lab in 2014, and I debuted with a solo concert back in 2012.

This edition's complete line-up also includes Infinity Curve and Sinewaves Light.

In the meanwhile I am preparing visuals. The hard part of this is that we never know the output of our gigs in advance, so hopefully I can manage to create something that fits within the development of the things we are going to create live.

Last week Petter and I already made adjustments in our setup, and later this week we will have a final rehearsal.

For tickets and information, visit www.awakenings-em.co.uk
 

or the Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1413084412106266/?ti=as

Note that every ticket includes virtual ticket. Which means you will get the recordings of all performances in your mailbox afterwards. So if you buy a ticket, even if you are not able to attend the event, you directly support all performing artists. And you get something exclusive in return.

E-Day Festival 2017

Last Saturday, April 29th, E-Day 2017 took place at the usual location of Theater De Enck in Oirschot. With approximately 225 visitors it was an nicely average attended festival.

I have been on stage on various editions on both E-Day and E-Live throughout the years, but Saturday evening was most likely the one I was most excited - and perhaps also most nervous -
about.

Dominique Perrier.

As you could have read on previous blogs, I was invited by Dominique Perrier to join his legendary formation Space Art for E-Day 2017's headlining concert.
It was an absolute honour and privilege to be part of this!

Last Wednesday I already had to get my stuff together for the weekend, because I was about to have a small holiday.
Thursday and Friday I luckily had some time to have final rehearsals before the actual showcase.

All of you who are familiar with my music may perhaps know that I am really into improvisation most of the time.
For my solo music (sometimes as part of my arranged compositions, sometimes entirely improvised) as well as with for example Mäläskä (where we don't know at all in advance what we are going to do).
There have been various projects which I composed and arranged, but performing structured songs - like those from Space Art - live on stage, is something I hadn't been used to for a long time.
That was the reason it cost me some more efforts than usual to get the parts and especially song structures into my head.

Space Art (from left to  right: Lilli Lacombe, Marc Hazon, Dominique Perrier, and me).

According to the many reactions I got afterwards, people really seem to have liked the concert.
At least I really enjoyed every second of this gig.

Because I was focussed on the Space Art concert, I unfortunately didn't catch anything of the other concerts during the day and evening.
Throughout the day I had various nice conversations, including some which might result into some exciting new projects in near future!

Thanks a lot to Ron Boots for organising another flawless edition of the festival, and for having Space Art as headlining act.

Also many thanks to Erwin, Carina, Michiel and Petter for their assistance with the sales.

Featured photos taken by André Stooker.

Archives 5

The fifth release of my archives recordings is available. This edition might be the most experimental Archives so far, containing five improvisations.

Here are the details:
Since the early 90s, Remy registered an uncountable amount of compositions, improvisations, try-outs, sketches, studies and performances.
Remy always felt the need to release a lot of this material, but with such a huge variety of recordings, it was never possible to release everthing.
During the selection process for the released REMY-albums, a lot of music was rejected. Simply because these tracks didn't fit into the concept or feeling of the specific release.
A large amount of unfinished tracks, sketches, etc. will definitely never be released. And there also is enough stuff that is absolutely not good enough by means of technique and recording.
But through “Archives” there is this possibility to publish and share a lot of these recordings. Recordings that otherwise would never have seen the light.
Besides the fact that “Archives” offers music that could never be heard before, it gives the perfect insight into Remy's musical and artistic world, as well as it might also help to understand the direction Remy's music evolved into.
“Archives 5” contains material from 2002.


Tracklist:
1. Say What You Want (improvisation, 4-11-2002)
2. Ruled By Thoughts (improvisation, 4-11-2002)
3. From A Crazy Mind (improvisation, 5-11-2002)
4. Getting Those Thoughts Out (improvisation, 5-11-2002)
5. Nice Looking (improvisation, 5-11-2002)

Here you can hear excerpts from each song:



"Archives 5" consists of mastered archives recordings and is available as 320 kbps MP3 and 16 bit / 44,1 kHz FLAC. The accompanied artwork contains the necessary background information on each of the tracks, as well as some photos from the period of the specific music pieces.

The digital download only release "Archives 5" is exclusively available from www.desertedislandmusic.nl.

Space Art

Marc, Dominique and Lilli checking the JD800.

It's only two weeks to go until the E-Day Festival in Oirschot!
There will be a great line-up containing a wide variety of electronic music acts, including Moonbooter, Arcane, Pyramaxx and Space Art.

After five years, legendary French synthesizer formation Space Art returns to Theater De Enck in Oirschot.
Where the band first entered this stage in 2012 as part of their promotional tour, it's now time for a full headlining concert.
This year, Space Art celebrates the 40th anniversary of their first record from 1977. While we speak, there is being worked on a new album, and the band prepares for a world tour.

Lilli, Dominique (in mirror) and Marc
rehearsing.

Since the last series of concerts the band's line-up has been slightly changed. This time co-founder Dominique Perrier (synthesizers) invited Lilli Lacombe (keys, violin, vocals) and  Marco Hazon (drums) on stage.

And I am extremely honoured since Dominique also asked me to be part of Space Art too.

End December 2016, I visited Dominique, and we talked about Space Art concerts for 2017. Of which the first is going to take place during the E-Day Festival on April 29th. Last week we have been rehearsing for this upcoming electronic music event.

Dominique and Patrick having
a technical discussion.

It's a real pleasure to make music together with such a talented group of musicians. Looking forward so much to perform this project on stage!

If you haven't obtained your ticket yet for the E-Day Festival, don't wait too long buying your ticket, and support the festival and performing artists.

Tickets and details: www.e-live.nl

2016 Overview

I would like to wish you a wonderful, prosperous and musical 2017.

2016 has been a very active musical year for me.
It all started with my new album, called "Fears", which was already scheduled back in 2015. For this first solo studio album in 5 years there was done a lot of studio work.
Details:  https://desertedislandmusic.nl/shop/cd/remy-fears-3-detail

While working towards the new album's release date of October 27th, there were published re-releases of my existing albums so far. All remastered by Wouter Bessels, and including revisited artwork.
In between May and October, each three weeks another title became available as digital download.
Details: http://exhibitionofdreams.blogspot.nl/2016/09/all-remy-remastered-albums-available.html

Then also episodes 3 and 4 in the "Archives" series were released in respectively April and October.
"Archives 3" contains tracks from 2007. "Archives 4" covers earlier musical years (1999-2000).
Details: http://exhibitionofdreams.blogspot.nl/2016/10/archives-4.html

Completely unexpected was the fully improvised output, established together with Petter Janse. With Mäläskä we released our debut album, "Uncle Jim's Cidney Factory", as well as we did a couple of concerts in the Netherlands and Germany.
Details: http://exhibitionofdreams.blogspot.nl/2016/06/malaska-album-release-and-concerts.html

Another special moment was the My Breath My Music in Concert event in Zoetermeer, on October 9th. For this ocassion I wrote a new piece which I performed together with members of My Breath My Music. On this day I also received a special award.
Details: http://exhibitionofdreams.blogspot.nl/2016/10/concerts-with-malaska-and-my-breath-my.html

The November edition of LivePodium Magazine featured an interview about my music and new album: https://www.joomag.com/magazine/livepodium-magazine-uitgave-19-november-2016/0928803001479832643?short

In December I submitted an unreleased song for the 100th edition of Sequences podcast.
Details: http://exhibitionofdreams.blogspot.nl/2016/12/sequences-podcast-100.html

And, during the last days of 2016, I visited my friend and legendary musician of electronic music, Dominique Perrier. This year is the 40th anniversary of his formation Space Art, which is going to be widely celebrated. I am very excited and honoured to be part of this! Within the coming weeks there should become available details about this celebration, including the announcement of worldwide concerts. 

Visit www.desertedislandmusic.nl for all releases by REMY, Mäläskä and Space Art. 

Now the new year has started, it also is time to vote for the Schallwelle Awards again!
REMY and Mäläskä both have been included in the list of pre-nominees, in the categories "Artist International" and "Album International".
During January you can vote here: http://schallwelle-preis.de/voting/en/

I am looking forward a lot to the musical year 2017. I have a lot of plans for new releases, concerts, and organizing another event myself again. Hopefully there will be enough time to establish everything (or at least as much as) I want to do. Probably not, but we will see...

To close this overview, here are some announcements of broadcasts: 

1-1-2017
E-Cloud - Electronic Music Radio Online, hosted by Marc van Oers.
My new album "Fears" is album of the month. A track from this latest released is aired.
Stream: http://178.21.116.54:9090/live
22:00 - 23:00 CET 

January 2017
Dreamscape Radio, hosted by Ron Boots.
Featuring the first 36 minutes of the New Years Party concert in Theater de Enck, back in 2015.
Participating musicians:

Harold & Eric v.d. Heijden, FD Project, Remy Stroomer, Jeffrey Haster (Synthex), Bas Broekhuis, Rene Splinter, Rene de Bakker, Martin Peters.
Stream: http://www.dreamscaperadio.nl/