René Baptist Huysmans

Set performed at the Cumunion party of 3 November 2024 in Club Church, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Intro track: Semaname by Mercan Dede Tracks by Maenad Veyl, The Sarcasm Ensemble, Benabou, 9BEATS, Nino Arbol, Oscar Mulero, Abstract Division, Abdulla Rashim, Grindvik, Aleja Sanchez, Zadig, Reeko, Conrad Van Orton, Linear System, Fixon, Drhamer, Marcal, NØRBAK, Gotshell, Temudo, Vertical Spectrum and many more.

See the performance by Denis Sanglard here! https://vimeo.com/355963504 It was on the initiative of René Baptist Huysmans, after he saw one of Denis Sanglard's solos in which the performance included a long walk, that Bipédie 2.0 was born. A reflection on the act of walking. The first image that occurred to Denis after René's proposal was L'Homme qui marche I, a sculpture by Giacometti. It is around this singular figure, existentialist in the Sartrean sense, that the dance emerged slowly, nourished by the music of René through which they exchanged at length on the meaning of the act of walking in general. For the music of Bipédie René chose as basic material sounds that have a dual structure: heartbeats, sea waves, breathing, steps, etc. The composition explores the various meanings of these dual sounds. For example, there are sounds that stand, like pylons, proud and sure of themselves, witnesses of the evolution of the human being from a quadruped to the undisputed master of the world, but above all that of iron and technique. On the other hand, there are the sounds that signal the fragility of the human being such as breathing and heartbeats. And then there are the waves of the sea, a sublime phenomenon of a nature completely indifferent to the well-being of man, but also the waves that are enjoyed at the beach, and finally there is the tsunami that devours everything it meets on its way. What is expressed in Bipédie is the whole metaphor of the destiny of man in his fundamental freedom that condemns him, that this act of walking, at the same time determined and fragile, shows. Immobile. We don't know where he comes from, we don't know where he's going, but he goes through time and space. It is a life crossed by a forced march. The feet anchored to the ground of which he seems to emerge and draw his energy but with an impulse that leads him to the future, which he seems to be fixated upon with force. What does it mean to stand up? What does it stand for? What does walking mean? What does walking imply, this permanent imbalance? And what are the consequences for the individual? "Every man who walks can go astray" (Goethe). Heart beat sample by RSilveira_88 (freesound.org)

Michael Bonaventure, organ - Yung-Tuan Ku, percussion - concept, texts, voice & electronics by René Baptist Huysmans - mix by Reinder (Put into Sound)- Live performance at Orgelpark, Amsterdam, 7-10-17 as part of the concert ‘Line Management’ with Robert van Heumen, Yung-Tuan Ku, Luiz Henrique Yudo, Michael Bonaventure & Felipe Ignacio Noriega ‘Antiretroviral Dreams’ is a piece for organ, percussion, voice and electronics. The organ and percussion parts were devised in a collaborative and synergetic process with Yung-Tuan and Michael. The electronic soundtrack has as its basic material a recording of my voice narrating various dreams, of a particularly vivid and psychedelic kind. Such dreams are often cited as a side-effect of antiretroviral drug therapy as used in the suppression of HIV. Bizarrely enough, a street drug called ‘whoonga’ or ‘nyaope’ which is used in South Africa is said to contain HIV medication—but this is in all probability an urban legend. Cover art courtesy of EMBL-EBI http://www.ebi.ac.uk/

A short piece composed for the 2017 Electroacoustic Composition Masterclasses organized by Kyiv Contemporary Music Days. Photo by Kevin Walsh https://www.flickr.com/photos/86624586@N00/513424023

VI. by René Baptist Huysmans

V. by René Baptist Huysmans

IV. by René Baptist Huysmans

III. by René Baptist Huysmans

II. by René Baptist Huysmans

I. by René Baptist Huysmans

Embryon (2016) was premiered 8 October 2016 at Le Cube, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Paris, at the second edition of the En Chair et en Son Festival, a festival that aims to bring together acousmatic music and Butoh dance. The music was brought to live by the dance performance of Môh Aroussi. You can see an excerpt of the dance on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33QFAc38_CU Embryon (2016) has a very simple external structure: a wall of sound, slowly gaining in intensity, with a repetitive, rhythmic structure developing into an erratic and idiosyncratic structure of meandering and colliding sonic lines. Internally, there is a lot of complexity and the listener can follow various rhythmic figures until they dissolve and are replaced by other repetitive shapes. It is as if the later erratic phase of the piece is build through various complex processes and slowly acquires its ultimate identity. Just like the incredibly complex and clockwork-like processes involved in the formation of an embryo, be it human, mammalian, reptilian, etc. When such processes are so intricate, we are inclined to look with a benevolent eye on the entity that comes forth from these processes. Yet, the eventual organism has its own character, independent and rather oblivious of the foregoing complexities.