X Static Tics

 

The X-static Tics/Dr Klangendum

A Short History

Lukas Simonis and Henk Bakker also known as the X-static Tics and more recently as Dr Klangendum live and work in Rotterdam.

The Static Tics started (around 2000) as an excuse to improvise with laptops & electronics. & maybe have an excuse to edit the stuff that was played/developed in the studio. At the same time Bakker & Simonis started RADIO WORM. So through the years, The Static Tics were making radio works, documentaries and producing Radio Worm, the radio magazine. From the start the duo was a radio & studio project centered around the similarity of people having the Syndrome of Giles De La Tourette and people that do experimental or improvised music on one side, on the other side with the concept that editing and being unspontaneous can be just as interesting as a live-concert; just the dynamics differ…. In 2007 The Tics decided to go ÜBERGROUND (meaning; doing live improv gigs, doing radio presentations, etc.) , trashed their laptops (not!) & went back to the old ‘machines’; guitar and bass clarinet but still using a lot of electronics. New element now; (non) fiction.

Except for curating the Radioplays series for WORM, (originally broadcasted on national radio 6, VPRO, Cafe Sonore) the Tics were quite active producing their own radioworks and sometimes making and performing live-radioplays. In 2013 Bakker & Simonis started their own radio show about radio art on the concertzender(.nl) called ‘Dr Klangendum’.

In 2010 the Tics started a cooperation with the Rotterdam Poetry International Festival who matched with some of their performing poets to make a ‘radioplay together; Usula Andkjaer Olsen (DEN) in 2010, Yan Jun (CHINA) in 2011, Saskia De Jong (NL) in 2012 and Michèle Metail in 2013. This resulted in live performances on the festival and recorded versions of the work for dutch national radio as well. Worm was/is co-producer.

As Dr klangendum Bakker & Simonis are producers and performers of radioplays and other kinds of radiophonia like their ‘Perverse Animals” series, a mixture of fiction, fieldrecordings, soundscapes and documentary. As the X-Static Tics they are more of a live happening, sometimes in collaboration with other musicians (like Steve Beresford, Rogier Smal, Mike Majkovski ao.), sometimes in collaboration with poets (Yan Jun, Saskia De Jong, Michèle Métail ao.). In Rotterdam, they manage an electronic soundstudio (together with WORM) where they organise workshops, projects and residencies. Not to mention their live radio event called ‘Sniffing Ether’. Klangendum/Worm is also part of the Radia network.

 

New Project The Gazers (autumn 2016)

The Gazers is a musical and vocal composition rooted in radioplay tradition- although denounced by radiophonic puritsts- may they burn in hell-, with soundscapes, live improv and fieldrecordings as backdrop. In a string of songs and spoken word compositions the words and practises of some contemporary and proclaimed prophets, healers, spooks and their followers get all mixed up in a realtime drama of deceit and forgery. Beware of the poet. The end of civilisation doesn’t come unannounced. Madness precedes its final stages of transition. Underpayment of artists too, although that is rumoured to be of all times.

in short;

The Gazers

A free form radioplay and free jazz chamber opera, performed by Lukas “See through” Simonis and Henk “Smal Change” Bakker. Staging the lies and lives of gazers, spies, undercover healers and end time groupies.

 

URL’S

X Static Tics Albums on bandcamp;

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