VHVR #10 met Mulder, Willems & zn, Farbenfroh & Tribolumina

I know, we’re not very good in explaining our weird stuff for all ye brave new haddocks. But come & have a look and listen for yourself. Mulder, Willems & zn Not a plumbing firm, but a sonic excavation team. Meet Mulder, Willems & Zn — a new trio that doesn’t perform music so much as dig through it, overturning expectations and reconfiguring sound from the ground up. With Nora Mulder (keys, strings, things), Karen Willems (drums/percussion/voice), and Lukas Simonis(strings/noise/electronics), this trio is built on improvisation — not as a genre, but as an attitude. They combine strands of experimental jazz, sound art, contemporary classical, post-rock, noise, and beyond, crafting music that feels as intuitive as it is unexpected. What to expect? A performance by Mulder, Willems & Zn is a journey through textures and tensions — from near-silence to sonic mayhem. You’ll hear scraping springs, breathing rhythms, piano like you’ve never heard it, spontaneous rituals, derailed grooves, and feedback loops that feel almost organic. This is music in conversation: instruments listening, interrupting, transforming one another. There are no setlists, only settings. No solos, only shared disruptions. Sometimes it’s playful. Sometimes disturbing. Often both. And yes — they bring their own instruments, but they might also use a fan, a tin toy, or a discarded piece of metal to unlock new sonic possibilities. Tribolumina Tribolumina is an ongoing audiovisual project by SpOp & Bruinsma in collaboration with percussionist Christian Smith. The metariality of played upon objects is a central topic for our audiovisual performance. While playing and projecting we are following the phenomenon of Triboluminiscence, in which light may appear while hitting, shaking, rubbing or scratching solidmaterial. The composition evolves as a live improvisation: a combination of percussion and a set of recorded samples in correlation with projected video. The duo percussionists achieve a unique in between meditative and extatic sound, with rhythms emerging out of found metal objects and fabricated instruments. Machinery pieces, chains, bells, plates, dishes and more. These are arranged as a sprawling landscape on surfaces as well as hanging mid-air. Added to that are drums, flexible plastic tubes and electronics manipulated by controllers and pedals.