The project was performed July 2 & 3, 2004 at the State X/New Forms Festival in The Hague, Holland. A sound art installation, household articles combined with techno culture, a collection of past performances and installations? Let’s do it! Preparations get started, ambassies are consulted, power units, cables and money arranged. Trucks and containers hired to be filled up with stacks of vacuumcleaners, taperecorders, ventilators, washing machines, turntables and kitchen utensils. Loads of it…. The Vrije Academie, everything positioned neatly, clusters of horns, bells, tubes, rotating and pumping mechanical parts. Moaning engines, spastic mixers and grinders bathing in colored lights, a kinetic wonderworld of musical weirdness. An event of almost mythical proportions and a great start for the 2004 edition of State X/New Forms!
Jan Borchers
Our warehouse and basement is full of machines waiting for a new challenge, we are ready and would like to merge it all in to one big monster show named Happy Metal.
For the “stateX-new forms” festival The Staalplaat Soundsystem monster show hase created in “de vrije academie” what we called “musique korrekt” using all our self-built and customised everyday tools, translating them into the new contexts of a monster orchestra. Instruments such as 120 flute-playing vacuum cleaners 6 pogo dancing tumble dryers, 100 table ventilators, 4 drumming jig saws, 200 radios plus a frenetic choir of 24 prepared kitchen mixers and more are connected so that they can be controlled by sound sources, using customised light organs and relay systems. The 4-arm-turntable together with some other soundfeeds (cd-players, additional turntables, etc.), will be the heart of the installation. We, and other invited guest turntablists, will play it all day.
Geert-Jan Hobijn (NL), Carlo Crovato (UK) Wessel Westerveld (NL) Radboud Mens (NL) Jorg Monker (NL) and Martijn Grunwald (NL)
