January brings sounds from across the Atlantic Ocean to the Maine Seacoast.

  Hey, listen up friends:  Coming up are a few rare chances to catch Wouter Jaspers, Bram Stadhouders, and Bas Verbeek all on tour from Tilburg in Noord Brabant, The Netherlands. For a few exclusive dates around the Eastern Seaboard, including three events this week here in Maine.  Each performing a unique solo improvised sound set, you might hear collages of motors and vocal sounds, infinite reverb drone, classical guitar, words, swoops, and sighs among other things.  Upcomming dates are below.   
  Sunday night January 3rd in 2010, Marc and Dei opened their house to friends to hear sounds and music from these three distant travelers.  They had food and refreshing beverages to share in a pot luck setting.  The food was great tasting, healthy, and satisfying, just right for getting ready for some noise.  People drove in from an hour away on snow covered roads to be in that basement that night.
   Offset Needle Radius combined sounds with Marc Bisson and Dei Xrist of birdorgan.  We ripped and crunched and scraped and wiggled guitar strings, looped SK-1,s droaned dropped vocals and other tongue sounds.  Then Bas Varbeek sat down on the red cloth, lit the candle, and emitted a deep drone from a black Les Paul, beginning softly and rising to fill our minds.  Vocal layers of drone eventually overtook the Les Paul, dominating the thick reverb heavy sound.
   Next was Wouter Jaspers who had performed in 2008 at Ello Gallery in Portsmouth,with Staplerfahrer .  Sitting at the card table strewn with stomp boxes, mixer, laptop, cables, and piles of other things, Jaspers slowly began to interweave tones and textures; a drifting piece incorporating speech, small electric motor radio frequencies, microcassette sounds. 
   Closing the evening was Bram Stadhouders.  He brought out a beautiful classical nylon stringed guitar.  With an internal mic running into an IBook, Verbeek improvised three pieces.  Beginning with subtle foley sounds and then incororating classical runs up and down  the neck.  His playing embraced more of the classical style that has won Verbeek awards at competetions as his set progressed.
   These three artists have traveled far to share their sound visions with us here.  Please get out and see them at one of the upcomming events around the Eastern Seaboard.

17-12 Zebulon – New York, NY
19-12 Pyramid Atlantic - Washington DC
20-12 Robin's Bookstore - Philadelphia, PA
22-12 Ghost Print Gallery - Richmond, VA
23-12 Bobo Gallery - Asheville, NC
26-12 Ed's - Hickory, NC
27-12 TBA - Charlotte, NC
28-12 Badgerhouse - Raleigh, NC
29-12 Nightlight - Chapel Hill, NC
30-12 Garfield Artworks, Pittsburgh, PA
03-01 The House of Goings - Manchester, NH
05-01 Daileyville - Lowell, MA
06-01 South Side Grill - Lewiston, ME
07-01 Memorial Library, Main Street - Livermore Falls, ME
08-01 Strange Maine - Portland, ME
09-01 Buoy Gallery, 2 Government St. - Kittery, ME
10-01 Sunday coma series - New York, NY
11-11 Douglas Street Music Collective, New York, NY.

Jan. 3rd:::Underground Sound Series #2 at House of Goings On, ManChestHair, NH

The House of International Goings-On : Underground Sound Series #2

January 3, Sunday, 7PM, $5 donation mightily suggested.
301 Laurel St (intersection of Wilson), Manchester NH
603-377-9300

Potluck @ 5: spirits and victuals please feel to bring kindly.

For this evening's event we have for you straight from the Netherlands:

BRAM STADHOUDERS: freak/free ambient jazz! Guitar! Composer! Wrestling with the yoke of a youth damned by classical guitar (blue ribbon stuff), manipulating that acclaim to his deft advantage by surprising all and sundry with some jazzed out air formality.

  WOUTER JASPERS: experimental! metalbaby! drone psyche! More fertile than a crescent! Noise + xperimental folk. Active tour and release cycles - 2009 release with a.o. Emil Nikolaisen (Woven Hand), + Euro-USA-Asia tour earlier this year. To his vision, music has to spread to everybody who wants to hear it, so he plays from hi-brow artfestivals to garages in Russia, sometimes soft and laidback and sometimes killing for the ears, but always with a great passion for his only love: good music.

BAS VERBEEK: Whether he  sits down in a corner producing minimal introvert dark soundscapes or he’s raging around out loud intimidating his audience, Bas Verbeek (b. 1983) finds deep intensity in every extreme of experimental music and performance. Beauty, absurdism, dirt, minimalism, over the top, pitch black nihilist darkness; whatever he feels like he will use to go all the way to tingle your senses.

Opening will be assorted birdorgans plus Kittery, ME's Offset Needle Radius and Lowell, MA's Walter Wright (www.119gallery.org).

(This post originally sent by Marc Bisson)

Nov. 10 "Strings N' Things" Recap, Manchester, NH

The 'theme' of this event sounds like a craft night to take place in a church basement, which in an abstract way, I suppose it was. I was having a difficult time getting out of town and ended up at Marc and Dei's house around 6:45pm, only an hour and 45 minutes later than I'd planned. Their basement was cleared out and strewn with strings of little lights. They had made black beans, brown rice, cornbread and provided beer, which was nice. I was starving and stressed out by the time I'd made it there.
The show started with birdorgan, Mike on bass, Mike on guitar, Marc on guitar, and Dei with her vocalizations. It sounded pretty wild, a great alternate invocation of birdorgan.
I think Offset Needle Radius performed next? Vertical guitar into two split signals into two amplifiers. Lots of the usual bowed strings with steel rod finishing up with microcassette mutterings. It didn't come off as I'd hoped. Something wasn't happening.
Next Walter Wright with a friend on toy piano and Marc Bisson on guitar was next. I didnt' get his friends name who played the toy piano. The sounds were nice, three vary different textural sounds blending, contrasting, and conforming together.
Last was Layne Garrett, who began his set on a steel guitar, improvised latin strumming style sort of a classical gypsy sound. The tunings changed as did the mood of the improvisations. Layne concluded his set with light sensitive sound generation synth and effects, more noise to contrast with the melodic nature of his guitar work.
Layne was touring via Greyhound Ameripass which is daring and brave. He had two CD's for sale, one of which he had sewed covers for on the bus between stops.
It was a great show to be at let along perform at.