Frans de Waard wrote: "The music from Steven Vinkenoog from Arnhem, The Netherlands, always appeals to me. He's the guitarist of Donné & Desiree, and that wild free rock duo is miles away from his solo work. He then has guitar strings moved with ventilators; ebows and such like, and create some wonderful, quiet overtone music. On this cassette he has six pieces 'for semi-acoustic guitar with ebow, humming, whistling and three cassette recorders for live recording and playback' and the listener is urged to get two copies of this (on cassette, as a download, you choose) and actively mix these six pieces together in some way. Each side was recorded in one take. I am biased, you know that already, but I think this is a great release. Very delicate and quiet music, with overtones working excellently; I am not sure how to work the titles, 'Solo', 'Trio', 'Sextet' and 'Duo', 'Quintet' and 'Septet', which I gathered to be some sort of doubling of the sounds, but which I may not hear in the music itself. It's not something I worry about: the music itself is excellent as it is. This is peaceful, quiet music, intended and best enjoyed for a nocturnal playing. Excellent release, nice Xeroxed booklet."

Frans de Waard wrote: "If ever you saw him in action when he plays guitar and sings with drummer Donne in their free improv duo Donne & Desiree, it's hard to imagine he would create such contemplative drone music under his own belt: Steven Vinkenoog from close by (for our vantage point that is) city Arnhem. But that's what he does when it comes to his solo work, which is more often than not created as part of art installations. For both of these new releases goes that they started life as 'text scores' and could have been played by six guitarists at the same time, but for the sake of recording Vinkenoog played all parts himself and multi-tracked his own guitar playing. You could wonder why he would release two titles at the same time, but once you heard them you know why, as there are important differences. On 'Progressions & Indeterminate Harmonies' he continues to explore what he set out on 'The Feedback Etudes' (see Vital Weekly 837): long sustaining sounds, which come across like sine waves, along the lines of Alvin Lucier or Phill Niblock, and it's hard to hear a guitar in this, but perhaps created with e-bows or magnetic fields through guitar strings. Music designed to be played at a soft(er) volume, because when you play this 'loud' it's simply not enjoyable anymore. But soft this will expand in your own space in it's own way. Move slowly through your space and you'll notice. It's great music, but I'm a sucker for this kind of radical minimalism. The other release is also with six (layers of) guitars but here we recognize them as such also, which some may find a nice thing. There is (perhaps) some kind of mechanical device playing the guitars here, but for all I know it's something that Vinkenoog plays himself. Here too we have a highly minimal approach, less the sine waves but more of strumming kind. There is no additional processing of sounds, either by stomp boxes or computers and everything sounds nice and clean. It's good; not just because it's something different than his other works, but also because it's something that is alike that other work, yet it sounds quite different. Two excellent releases! "

Harold Schellinx wrote: "It has been more than three months ago (but therefore certainly not less noteworthy now) that the good people of the Nijmegen Extrapool descended upon the Amsterdam OCCII for a weekend of sonic Extra-vaganza. It was on an evening and night that the floodgates of heaven opened up real good above the Dutch capital (- "[Am] Let it rain, [F] Let it rain, [C/E Gsus G] Open the flood gates of heaven ..." -), on the friday of september 3rd, and the - somewhat dryer, luckily - saturday of september the 4th. The second of these two days saw an edition of Extrapool's Tape-Treff series, which are sort of 'tape-only events': in Occii we were offered an evening of performances in which magnetic tape, played back in its guise as compact cassette or - less fluttery and thin - reel-to-reel tape, played a leading role. Like in the installation that was contributed by Dutch artist Steven Vinkenoog : a circle of five vintage guitars and five vintage tape machines, with five tape loops each of which was 'scratching' around one of the guitar's metal strings. The friction of the tape moving against the metal of the strings (and their - weak - magnetization induced by the guitar's pick-ups) will cause some sort of signal to be written/accumulated onto each of the tape loops, which of course simultaneously also will wear because of their rubbing around the string. Steven himself was not present that evening, and Extrapool's Quinten Dierick only had the installation run a couple of times; but that was in demonstration mode so to say, and never longer than a few minutes. Thus it was not really possible to get an idea of how Steven's installation would sonically develop over time - and eventually 'self-destruct', which obviously would make for a dramatic high point of sorts. But looking good it did. In hindsight I have been wondering about the condition of the strings. I actually hope these were old, worn and rusty. First because I like the image of 'rust upon rust' (|) which corresponds to the rubbing of the tape loops around the strings; and second, because with old and worn strings it might just happen that some of the strings break before the tape loops ... (And then, shouldn't the guitars be amplified as well? I don't seem to remember that they were. Do hope there'll be a later opportunity to witness it run for a prolonged period of time ...)"

Frans de Waard wrote: "In another setting we find Steven Vinkenoog as one half of the fast rising stars of noise/improv duo Donne Et Desiree, where he sings and plays guitar, but outside that he has work of his own. Not 'more' seriously, but just 'also' as serious. In that particular body of work the guitar also plays a role, but he doesn't touch it, or, as it says on the cover, 'during the recordings I didn't touch a string; in fact, I tried to be as quiet as possible'. He lets his strings vibrate with a fan, and the resulting feedback is what is being picked up. Four etudes of this feedback to be played at a low volume. This is all very 'easy' music, but I am a true sucker for this kind of music. It reminds me of Alvin Lucier, of Phill Niblock and of others in the field of minimal music. Music that is present in your space, but not full force on. By moving around in your space, you notice the sound moving along with you. In 'Detuner' and 'Tonality' the music is still present, but in the other two pieces,'Straphanger' and 'Chromatically' it seems as if the music moved beyond audibility, but still one should not turn up the volume too much and leave it nicely low humming in the background. If you play this too loud, this can easily be annoying but played softly this works really great. Excellent ambient music, in the purest sense of the word."

This piece was honoured with the second prize in Glenn Branca's "Lost Chords" contest.

Frans de Waard wrote: "Over the past few years I ran into a guy called Steven Vinkenoog, a musician from a near by city called Arnhem. Every time I saw he produced some wonderful sound installation. One was with toy racing cars and others with guitars and ventilators, not hitting the strings but the waves made the strings to play. In the right setting a beautiful mellow piece. It's great to see some of his work on CDR, although there is no website or e-mail address. I am sure it will be in the next week correction section. On this piece, lasting forty-two minutes, he uses 'a guitar, an ebow and three loop stations' - whatever those might be. Curious enough the cover says: 'it is called Plain but it could also be called Station #1'. It's a thoughtful ambient piece of overtone like sounds, shifting slowly back and forth. The e-bow produces such wonderful sounds (any self confessed drone musician should have one), but it also needs capable hands and Vinkenoog surely has those. Slow changes, softly humming. If you like the works of Alvin Lucier (especially 'Music On A Long Thin Wire') or Paul Panhuysen (his 'Magic Square Of 5'), but Vinkenoog presents it in a more musical setting. If you like them, then should really be your thing too. A bit of shame about the non-presentation though."

This piece was made during a three months stay in Seoul as an artist in residence for the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea. Before I went to Seoul, without any of my usual equipment, I'd been thinking of buying some cheap old piano. A week after my arrival I found this very old trashed piano just around the corner of my studio. As chance is an important aspect of my music, this occurrence was pretty intriguing to say the least. Especially because something similar happened to me in 2000 when an idea for an installation with turntables and guitars was encouraged by 15 record players almost blocking my front door. Another anecdote worth mentioning is the piano playing the first five notes of Erik Satie's 'Vexations'. While experimenting with the ping-pong player piano, I'd made it play along with "Vexations". It worked wonderfully, but as I wanted to make my own piece of music, I didn't use it, and eventually I came up with the CD's playing long notes at random. But then, when I was recording the piece, the ping-pong ball was playing the first five notes of the theme of "Vexations", as you can hear on 3'44" of the recording. Ooh... scary.

Mauricio Kagel has seen this one, he congratulated me with it, and asked for my catalogue. I told him I didn't have a catalogue.

This happened to be my first sound installation. The idea of using turntables as mechanical devices occurred to me when exploring turntablism. I was trying to speed up a record to 800 RPM with a drill. The needle didn't like that. After braking the needle (out of poverty you could say) I invented the so-called mechanical loop, which basically meant that some iron wire was attached to a turntable to hit the string of a guitar. Because they don't have the same tempo the tones start to twirl around each other. There's no relationship between the durations of the tones being played, which makes it an interesting combination of regularity but still unpredictability. Within a week after I came up with this idea, I found about 15 record players almost blocking my front door. I just had to drag them inside, which I did. I don't know if it had anything to do with chance or destiny or whatever, but stimulating it was.

The piece I consider my opus one. It was written in Cubase and recorded later with guitars and ebow. The recording got lost when my hard disks crashed, but luckily I recorded it on a cassette, which I totally forgot about. A few years later it popped up by coincidence. Hooray for analog recordings!