Dutch, New York-based drummer turned pianist turned sound artist and producer Flin van Hemmen says that when he looked at his hometown, Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the phrase «You Can Know Where the Bombs Fell» had some ring to it. «Poetic suggestion can give direction to what is to come, and helped me solidify that what is/was fleeting», he says. This poetic incentive pushed him further into the world of post-production and processing of recorded sounds as a found object or as malleable clay with which he assembles and molds abstract sonic shapes.

The enigmatic yet intimate «You Can Know Where the Bombs Fell» expresses best the unique sonic vision of van Hemmen.  Since 2015 he has delved into processing recorded material in the digital realm and found himself creating with abandon, from his home studio and with a whole set of new tools at his disposal. In 2020 van Hemmen began also to seek the outdoors of Central Park as a setting for «Forest Music» in which music could be made and played throughout all seasons.

On «You Can Know Where the Bombs Fell» he focuses on weaving a delicate puzzle of sparse elements of processed human voices and sampled and environmental sounds. He juggles with harmony,  melody, improvisation, field recordings and textures as sonic building blocks, as all inform one another, or inspire directly or indirectly. There is a strong sense of minimalist and often abstract lyricism to this work, sometimes even reverent one and on other times quite austere. Van Hemmen follows the random sounds and lets these sounds fascinate and guide him before he edits and sculpts them into a coherent, haunting and highly cinematic texture.

Eyal Hareuveni

Flin van Hemmen (prod, samp, various instruments, field rec), Todd Neufeld (acoustic g), Eivind Opsvik (b), Ben Gerstein (tb)