De Afvalbanden - Same -1981- (Cassette), Netherlands

From the liner notes:

After owning an Akai 4000 for over a year, I have several reel tapes full of used, unusable and unused pieces of sound and music. The choice between buying new reel tapes or to erase them leads to a compromise: publishing them. With that 1 hour of experiment. Instrumental, vocal, neuropop and real cover versions, pieces of audiotape of a VHS and a slide-show, in short: the household waste of the home industry. May 1981.

Apparently Peter Mertens was behind De Afvalbanden, which means The Trash Tapes. He used to be a member of early Minny Pops and also of The Young Lions, which means he was part of the core of the so called Ultra movement in Holland. This cassette is another lost piece of the vast Dutch home-taping underground. De afvalbanden is a solo effort and DIY collage of buzzing primitive synthesizers, strange vocals, guitar plucking, tape manipulation, silly songs and unidentified sounds. All taking place in a netherworld inside of a garbage can (so it sounds).

The cover of the cassette is made up of a transparent piece of plastic with trash drawn on it. It is combined with a cut-out piece of trash bag highlighting the drawing in grey. The ultimate cover for The Garbage Tapes I'd say. It is very much a product of the early eighties home-taping culture due to its essence being rooted in the medium of the cassette. Listen to the mysterious trash tapes yourself!

Get it HERE

D.O.C. (Das Organisierte Chaos) - Same -1983- (LP, Einhorn Music), Germany

So here is the next post within the realm of the kraut-synth duo of Dierk Leitert and Mike Bohrmann. This time it's the first album of their Circles side-project called Das Organisierte Chaos, also released on their own Einhorn Music label. The first two Circles albums have actually just been reissued through Mental Experience records (Guerssen). According to the liner notes of the reissues, Dierk used to live in Amsterdam in the late seventies whilst Mike in Frankfurt. However Circles is a Frankfurt based band which is still active to this day. Musically they existed in-between psychedelic krautrock and the new wave, NDW, industrial stuff from the late seventies and early eighties.

Das Organisierte Chaos has always been described as the more rock or new-wave oriented counterpart of Circles. But basically the musical approach and sounds are the same. D.O.C. had more people involved in the rhythm section, but created a similar amazing mixture of synth experimentation, krautsounds, ambient atmospheres and wave-y guitar textures. I might even think that I like this D.O.C. debut more than the Circles debut from the same year.

It's a nicely balanced album going from rocking extremes to kosmische soundscapes. A real treat serving us the favourite combination of analog synthesizer jams, NDW wonkiness and tripped out krautgrooves.

Get it HERE

Donated by SonicA