Thursday 21 February 2019

Gefärhliche Klons - Reise Durch A Sunday Afternoon -1981- (Cassette, Pop-O-Records), Germany


*Archaic Inventions 6 Years Anniversary Post!*

Gefährliche Klons (Dangerous Clones) were a duo from Marburg, Hessen that consisted of Iggi Unpop (Exo Neutrino) and Uwe Linke. They started their musical project after a visit to legendary German Neue Deutsche Welle band Der Plan. Obviously they also took their name from the band's song Gefährliche Clowns (Dangerous Clowns).

Both members of Gefährliche Klons were very much inspired by The Residents, just like Der Plan was. Der Plan even named their first album after the The Residents concept Geri Reig. The principle that you can get best results with doing the least you can. Gefährliche Klons later also morphed into new incarnations like Little Clones, FunTastiKlons or Different Clones (VOD released some of their music as part of the German Punk Wave Box Set), but this cassette was their first output ever.

Reise Durch A Sunday Afternoon was self-released in an edition of 20 copies in 1981 and was recorded with the minimal tools of a tape-deck, toys, a mouth-harp, a xylophone, guitar and maybe some kitchenware during the course of a Sunday afternoon. It displays how the Gefährliche Klons were even more primitive than Der Plan, lacking even the implementation of synthesizers and other electronically generated sounds. It's a great example of the NDW scene of the early eighties that sometimes even used a non-music attitude in doing music anyway. More punk than punk, since you don't play punk! It reminds me of other German acts like Die Parkhaushänker or Der Ewige Musikant.

On the amazing Tape Attack blog I found a fanzine from 1981 called C.T.Z. Mainz and it includes a little review of Reise Durch A Sunday Afternoon. It's great how you can actually piece together all these different bits of obscure information. On the cover of the cassette you can clearly read that there are 24 different tracks and I started to dissect the tape into those different tracks until I found out it was impossible. So I left the tape unindexed in its two different sides (the dangerous clones got me...)

This is an amazing absurdistic Der Plan-related NDW relic from the early 80's DIY cassette culture. It contains nice primitive music, humor and maybe the best DIY cover of The House Of The Rising Sun ever. An edition of 20 hand-made copies! Don't ask me how I find this stuff, it probably finds me.

Get it HERE

Friday 8 February 2019

Dojoji ‎- Meets The Fungle -1984- (Tape, D.J.J. 101), Netherlands


After accidentally providing something that was already available the last post I return to the essence of this blog: sharing something we have been waiting for to surface, not to be found before.

Dojoji were an excellent New Wave and Funk group from Rotterdam, The Netherlands that consisted of Pien Selleger and Ted Langenbach (Bass), Ron Louers (Bongos), Ferdinand Rolle (Drums), Leo Anemaet (Guitar), Trubus (Percussion), Hans Rath (Saxophone), Rudy Zinc (Synthesizer) and Fee Arnold (Vocals).

On this Cassette EP, Dojoji meets the funky jungle (Fungle) and plays lengthy pieces of energetic funk music with a new wave attitude. Dojoji released a very nice 12 Inch EP on Plexus records in 1984 and also a cassette with live recordings a year before that one. Both of their releases were uploaded a long time ago here and here. They remind me of other Dutch funk wave groups with electronic touches on the Fetisj tape label like Richenel or Necronomicon, but it even has hints of the band Sukursaal I posted not long ago.

Dojoji furthermore resembles some bands on the Cherry Red label like Rip, Rig and Panic or Medium Medium, but it's mainly fueled by the 80's New York styles in-between like James Chance's funky no-wave sounds and many of the boogie and 'break' records from old-school hip-hop. Actually Dojoji were quite unique in Holland and I like this cassette a lot due to the use of the synthesizer additions and the percussion elements. Nice stretched out tracks full of life one just has to dance to! It once again shows how Rotterdam was always the most New York oriented city of The Netherlands.

A good remedy for your winter depression!

Get it HERE

Monday 4 February 2019

Various Artists - The Value Of Quality - A Concise History Of West-European Folk-Art -1982- (Tape, Aerosol P&P), Belgium


The Value Of Quality is a nice early 80's DIY compilation with mostly Belgian acts that was released on the Aerosol P&P label that was run by Guy de Bièvre who was also the person behind the home-taping act One Hundred Poems From The Japanese.

Like with most Belgian tape compilations this one too has many contributions by Insane Music For Insane People protagonist Alain Neffe. On the cassette we find different minimal synth tracks by his projects Bene Gesserit, Pseudo Code, Cortex and Human Flesh. His projects have seen many reissues on a variety of labels these last years. In the past his musical output on cassettes were probably Belgium's most wide-spread home-taping sounds. I am not sure whether the tracks on here also appeared on own releases, because there is simply too much material for me to verify.

Then present on this compilation is Flemish singer and artist Claude Perwez aka Kloot Per W. Also there is an industrial noise track contributed by Angst which was a project by Flemish writer, poet and musician Erik Vloeberghs. He also had projects such as The Firing-Squad, Kwajongens In Bloei and The Parts. He was closely related to the Antwerp based industrial and interdisciplinary art group Club Moral.

Furthermore present here are British home-taper Jack Marlow (possibly based in Germany back then) and the legendary French minimal-synth and artist collective La Fondation from Paris that consisted of many amazing music acts like Nini Raviolette, Hugo Weris and Lefdup & Lefdup.

Speaking about A Concise History Of West-European Folk-Art the only non-European contribution on here (I think) is the Canadian punk band Zyklon B, although it might be a Belgian punk band with the same name. The rest of the contributions are undoubtedly Belgian and unknown and perhaps own projects of Guy de Bièvre.

In any case this is another nicely varied cassette relic of the Belgian industrial, minimal synth and home-taping scene! The Value of Quality of the cassette recording is fluctuating from white noise backgrounds to cleaner production, but hey it's quality stuff in the end that has a value.

Get it HERE


Update: I see that this was uploaded a long time ago to the No Longer Forgotten Music Blog. Escaped my attention. Anyway worth it to give this some more attention and it was fun digitizing this. More stuff to come soon!