staalplaat soundsystem is releasing a series of artist vinyl release used in our own yokomono sound installations.
This new record is a second attempt to create random vinyl .
Our first attempt was the release of Yokomono 03 where we hoped to cut two tracks, one spiraling from outside in and the others from inside out. So that the needle would move in different directions. This attempt failed (for reasons that we will not go in to at this moment).
This new record has three parallel soundtracks where the cutting needle was lifted twice with short intervals, in order to make the needle used during “wiedergabe” to jump tracks randomly. To play this record you must not see your turntable as a reproduction machine that reproduces
the music on the record. You can not put it on and sit down to listen.
See the record and turntable much more as a music instrument that with each turntable model and with each setting if your machine you will create a different sound and mix of this record. As with any instrument you have to learn how to play your turntable and find
what setting you like best. Of vital influence are the skate settings en the wait on the tone arm, these and others you must very to experience the options of the record. For Yokomono 03.5 we cut on each side of the record 3 tracks of 7-5 min each.
side A
- pure brown noise
- Untuned7min by Cynthia Zaven
- Lostbariken by Merzbow

side B
- pure white noise
- Mika Vainio -Telakka
- Gramm by Jaap Blonk

Press review:
This whole Yokomono thing dealt with vinyl, vinyl killers and such like. To which end Staalplaat goes as far as to pressing records for these installations and invite composers to deliver sound material. I am not sure how this will end up in the installation pieces, but if its still the same thing as with the vinyl killers, then this ’3.5′ is worthy one. To explain what it is, I have to copy the original text by Staalplaat: “Our first attempt was the release of Yokomono 03 where we hoped to cut two tracks, one spiraling from outside in and the others from inside out. So that the needle would move in different directions. This attempt failed (for reasons that we will not go in to at this moment). This new record has three parallel soundtracks where the cutting needle was lifted twice with short intervals, in order to make the needle used during “wiedergabe” to jump tracks randomly.
To play this record you must not see your turntable as a reproduction machine that reproduces the music on the record. You can not put it on and sit down to listen. See the record and turntable much more as a music instrument that with each turntable model and with each setting if your machine you will create a different sound and mix of this record. As with any instrument you have to learn how to play your turntable and find what setting you like best. Of vital influence are the skate settings en the wait [sic] on the tone arm, these and others you must very to experience the options of the record.” There is a brown noise (inserts quote again: “In science, Brownian noise, also known as Brown noise or red noise, is the kind of signal noise produced by Brownian motion, hence its alternative name of random walk noise. The term “Brown noise” comes not from the color, but after Robert Brown, the discoverer of Brownian motion.” with sound pieces by Cynthia Zaven and Merzbow, and a white noise
side with Mika Vainio and Jaap Blonk. Now this is certainly a most strange record. I stood by my turntable, changing the weight of the tone arm hearing say Blonk, but then moving into Vainio and back, or the piano tones which I assume are Zaven’s going into Merzbowian noise, sometimes with white/brown noise blocks coming in, quickly and disappearing equally fast. Stuff you can do on vinyl only and which have a highly added value to what you get. Hardly plain music, but also not just a DJ tool. Very nice, even without the art installation itself. (FdW) (VITAL)

This yokomono was done by one person, the only solo ever, and its  was “unplugged” so the radio’s are the soundsystem.
There was no documentation so it was not mentioned on our website.
But now that we found this video that situation is changed and so now it is mentioned.

photo © bonie

We played a very nice concert at “La Terraza Suena” at the the roof top of the culture center La Casa Encendida
A photo documentation of the sold out show can be found here.

For the 2008 edition of the SPOR festival in Aarhus we were invited to play a 24 hour yokomono set (may 9 – 10, 2008).

Music takes place in time. This fact has been investigated and challenged over the years where composers have worked with repetition and ‘endless’ processes, with very long sequences or extremely short ones. But music does not only unfold itself in time. Music also creates time. When musical sounds follow one another they provoke a particular sensation of time. Our experience of musical time depends both on that which sounds, the nature of the sounds and their connection with one another, while at the same time the experience is subjective and influenced by the circumstances in which it is experienced.

SPOR 2008 will explore and place emphasis on precisely these experiences with and over time – both musical time and the time that elapses during the course of a day. The framework for SPOR 2008 is at the same time a social action. The festival concerns itself not only with the relationship between work and listener but also between the listeners themselves. Instead of announced concert-times it will be personal choices as well as the public’s exchanges with one another that generate their flow through the festival. The public is challenged to lay out their own festival route, to go on an expedition of exploration in Musikhuset Aarhus (The Music House) and challenge the natural rhythm of the day – don’t forget your sleeping bag!

SPOR 2008 presents a wealth of orchestral music, performance, sound-installations, video-art and electronic music. Experience, amongst others,  Vienna Vegetable Orchestra (Au),Staalplaat Soundsystem (NL), asamisimasa (N), Rebecca Saunders (UK), Hanna Hartmann (S), Curious Chambers Players (S), Brandon Labelle (US/DK), Carl Emil Carlsen (DK), DYGONG (DK), SCENATET (DK) and Aarhus Symfoniorkester (DK).

We performed yokomono on april 25th 2008 at the beautiful goethe institute garden in cairo.
The 100LIVE festival was organised by mahmoud refat the founder of the 100copy label
MUSICIANS: adham hafez, bikya, croce massimo, hassan khan, magdi mostafa, mahmoud refat, ramsi lehner, staalplaat soundsystem, tarek atoui

Yokomono at alt.gallery from 28 february – 5 April, as part of the AV Festival in Newcastle 2008.

This is the first UK presentation of the award winning sound art installation Yokomono by Staalplaat Soundsystem. The installation is inspired by the experience of driving in a car close to the Funkturm (Radio and TV Tower) in Berlin, passing quickly in and out of different radio signals.

Yokomono consists of four toy car record players and a corresponding set of FM radios. The cars, known as vinyl killers, have been customized with wireless FM transmitters. As they spin around the vinyl, they transmit their signal to the radios which are tuned to a special Yokomono frequency.

By arranging the radios in groups it is possible to explore the architectural dimensions of the gallery space. Some radios are also mounted on a miniature train, literally driving through the interfering frequencies. An unstable sonic space is created as the vinyl killers run on batteries that will slow down during the installation, but not necessarily at the same rate.

Described as an ‘eclectic mix of techno culture and sound art installation’, Staalplaat Soundsystem use radio technology in a playful way to create a unique and adventurous installation.

Russian documentation on AV08 with staalplaat soundsystem in it for all that speak Russian

[...] City space, mobility, changing and attributing new definitions to situations and places form a set of ideas the organizers of Passengers Festival in Warsaw on 6-13th October focus on. Warsaw will be given a new train line, but also there will arrive a group of international artists, passengers of the city who will transform its scenery for a short period of time.
For the organizers of the festival a tram is both a source of inspiration, symbol of this enterprise, as well as a mobile platform to present art. [...]

The performances of the passengers festival took place at a very nice old tram repair hall wich is still in use for that purpose.
YOKOMONO was fitting very well in this surrounding.

“Made In Taiwan” invites people to play with a complex mechanical sound orchestra, installed in the museum by using their mobile phones. The students have made a mechanical orchestra consists of modified, hacked, changed and customised, electronic household devices like vacuum cleaners playing flute, organ and brass, rattling kitchen mixers, buzzing ventilators, and humming refrigerators. In order to wake up the installation and start the orchestra, passers-by dial a telephone number. The call opens the door of the fridge, revealing a “mobile-phone robot person”. When they start pressing the buttons, the various modified household appliances come to live and begin to make a noise: the funny electrical music of recycled everyday objects. The main interest of the Staalplaat workshop is to involve passers-by in such a process of interaction and communication. Their method for achieving this is turning normal simple things around and upside down, by changing their function, by radical recontextualization and reconfiguration. Always with a lot of humour, in order to make ensure enjoyment for the audience.

The Yokomono-installation is built from around two hundred radios. As each killer will play its own record – each one is locked groove record made by Staalplaat for the installation – it opens up a separate audio stream. It thereby generates and controls a multi-channel sound system. By arranging the radios in groups it becomes possible to explore the architectural dimensions of the space. Some radios are tuned to the same frequency, and here Staalplaat uses small battery operated radios on sets of the train models to map the transmission in the space, for it will drive through the interfering frequencies.
The Yokomono set-up in the MOCA is a combinationof the live concert version and the installation version, it will be played live by members of Staalplaat Soundsystem.

The idea for ‘Yokomono White’ was made for the Avanto festival in Helsinki but never realized nor tested.
“Yokomono white” is just old turntables with paper tubes (for children when they go the first time to school) and a pin
this is a experimental version live tested on stage in conjunction with Hassan Khan.

The piano sections included in this performance were composed and recorded a couple of months ago in podgorica by Hassan Khan. These simple compositions were interested in structure and architecture- the way a proposition is stated and developed. The recording was done behind the firewall of the national theater whose wooden floor and extremely high ceilings provided excellent natural reverb. Segments from these recordings are rearranged to provide a structure for a live improvisation session using live feedbacking mixers, a battery of filters in conjunction with staalplaat soundsystems’s vinyl loops library and turntables.

Hassan Khan works with image, sound, text, music and concept. His album tabla dubb has just been released on the 100COPIES label. Khan lives and works in Cairo, Egypt.

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We played a YOKOMONO in Maribor/Slovenia on the 10th of may at 13th International Festival of Computer Arts http://www.mfru.org .