Frank Crijns, Review
by Andrea Aguzzi

Music as a formative process: “Altered Circuit (s)” by Frank Crijns on #neuguitars #blog #FrankCrijns

Music as a formative process: “Altered Circuit (s)” by Frank Crijns on #neuguitars #blog #FrankCrijns

Music | Frank Crijns (bandcamp.com)

Slightly dystopian, at times disturbing. A complex work, based on the alterations of the mental and stylistic circuits this “Altered Circuit (s)” by guitarist Frank Crijns. Self-taught guitarist Crijns, however, studied composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory with P.J. Wagemans and K. de Vries.

This double cultural formation clearly emerges from the music recorded in this short CD, just over twenty-six minutes, characterized precisely by the alternation between improvised structures, organized together in an organic and conceptual way. What fascinates me, in Crijns’s music, however, is not so much this hybridization between improvisation and composition, something now almost taken for granted in the field of experimental music, in particular for guitar, as for a sort of incremental / formative factor that seems to me to grasp in his music. Crijns seems to have the interesting quality, far from obvious, of condensing a considerable amount of information in his music, which seems to revolve all around a single idea, which I still cannot decipher with precision. A sort of productive aesthetic, of a formative nature, linked more to experience and an open structure than to something strictly intentional. I would not like to go into aesthetic and hermeneutical questions, but I believe that Frank Crijns’ guitars express something more than a simple musical process, a form more linked to the need to do than to contemplate, where a coincidence between style and content: where the style is the direct and tangible expression of Crijns’ personality and the content is potentially the same style, which becomes actual. Crijns’ music seems to be the fruit of a dynamic process. A formative act where playing means producing and at the same time inventing the best way to do it, where it is not a question of following a predefined project and already established rules, but of proceeding by trial and error, by continuous approximations. An indissoluble link between production and invention. “Altered Circuit (s)” is an interesting work, keep an eye on Frank Crijns.