Dan Armstrong - music and sound projects

Produced in Rotterdam and Amsterdam during 2009-2010. In this recording, Armstrong uses both Gibson and Fender guitars, and outboard hardware routing via Akai, Lexicon, Symetrix, TC Electronic, Drawmer and Boss. Mens uses Ableton Live with 3rd party audio effects.

Fitness Landscape is a new collaboration concept between Dan Armstrong and Radboud Mens that is based on real-time guitar processing and the organic growth of split signals in a live or performance studio environment. The growth and manipulation of sound inputs and outputs roughly models the biological concept of environmental "fitness", wherein the traits of the channels are allowed to develop based on the performance space. In evolutionary biology, fitness landscapes are used to visualise the relationship between genotypes and their relative reproductive success.

Armstrong (US) is a collage guitar artist living in Amsterdam, a worker of loops, delay and feedback since 1985. He began releasing music and performing in Europe since 1997. Work includes solo concerts, CDs and performances in collaboration with 20+ international artists, including the improvised quartet The Vacuum Boys.

Mens (NL) is a sound-artist and composer who living and working in Rotterdam. He started experimenting with sound at a very young age and makes music since 1982. In 1988 he began creating audio-installations and noise-machines. Since 1994 he releases his music on many different labels like Staalplaat, ERS, Korm Plastics, Noise Museum, Audio.nl, Mutek and Touch, and has given over 150 noise-performances, standing-wave performances and concerts. His work is rooted in, and continues to develop within the broadest definition of contemporary music and varies from electronic to conceptual. While his interest in the physical effects of sound on the body gave him a preference for noise in his early work, his later music has contributed more to the development of minimal electronic music, glitch and minimal-dub-techno. Mens uses electronic technology to render audible microscopic sound processes.