Robert van Heumen Composer Improvisor Laptop-Instrumentalist Sound-Designer
Software Developer
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Review of the Whistle Pig Saloon album on Touching Extremes

The CD came out in 2009 on Creative Sources Recordings. Better late than never. And he seems to like it ;) More info on the band here.

Whistle Pig Saloon are Robert van Heumen on laptop and controllers and John Ferguson on guitar and effects. Their music deals with drastically misshapen textures, instigated at first by Ferguson’s axe; at times they sound processed in advance and already unrecognisable per se, or else the cure applied by Van Heumen alters – make that “devastates” – whatever original trait is left of the six-stringed apparatus. It goes without saying that the large part of this record is frantically running from an inner space to the other, its whimsicality dictated by systematic changes in timbre and dynamics. There were occasions, during a headphone sitting, in which your correspondent was continually decreasing the volume to evade membrane stabbing. Essentially, a sense of explosive fluency underlines the skilled building of a 43-minute textural citadel, presenting the project as an interactive 2-head unit that knows what to do at any given moment. Scrambling across a multitude of dangers, the couple manages to remain unscathed by the redundant garbles that frequently classify several brands of feather-brained computer-fuelled gobbledygook. Starting from semi-agnosticism in terms of related genres, these gentlemen ended up creating a form of their own.

Massimo Ricci - Touching Extremes