Tuesday 27 April 2021

Various Artists - A Clicking Sound -198X- (Cassette, Epitapes), US/International

 

The Epitapes were a series of international home-taping compilations created by Mike Tetrault from Belchertown, Massachusetts. Each compilation was given a poetic title, sometimes even in the form of an entire sentence. Some tracks were taken from existing releases while others were sent specially for these tapes.

A Clicking Sound begins with a track by the Dutch improvisation band Gorgonzola Legs which is introduced by Dutch Home-Taper and sound composer Hessel Veldman (aka Y Create). Gorgonzola Legs was a group that consisted of Hessel Veldman, Gert-Jan Prins, Herman te Loo and Jos van Duijne with occassional other musicians like Masaki Oishi. The band played hours and hours of material that was mainly recorded (or not recorded) at an industrial fish warehouse in the Dutch seatown of IJmuiden. Aside from that a lot of concerts took place at various locations throughout the 80's. From appearances at street festivals to concerts at contemporary art museums. By the start of the 90's the project was laid to rest and the members went on in their individual music directions.

Gorgonzola Legs

The compilation continues with the noise-rock band Blowhole that was founded in 1987 in Colorado Springs by percussionist Jeph Jerman and the Barber brothers, with Scott Hiller, Fil Rodriguez and Dr. Soule. Then a couple of anti-musical funny-not-so-funny tracks follow by Norwegian home-tapers Åreknuteknyterne. Later on there are some live registrations in America and Italy by free-impro saxophonist Jack Wright from Pittsburgh. The tape finishes with some great electronic pieces by Regicide Bureau, a home-taping project by Thomas Sutter from Overland, Saint Louis, Missouri. 

Ofcourse there are some other improvised and noisy pieces by other bands and people in-between, but I know nothing about them. All in all a nice selection of totally different tracks. More Epitapes compilations will slowly come to the blog but I have to figure out what is already available and what isn't and see which tapes I should prioritize. Or maybe you people out there have some requests?

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

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Wednesday 7 April 2021

Angst - De Kreet -1982- (Cassette, Geef Appel Neem Chocolade/Kubus Kassettes), Belgium

 

Last year I wrote about Angst and Erik Vloeberghs in a way I can't perfect so I will let the blog-history repeat itself:

Angst was a project by Flemish writer, poet and musician Erik Vloeberghs. He also did projects such as The Firing-Squad, Kwajongens In Bloei and The Parts. Vloeberghs was closely related to the Antwerp based industrial and interdisciplinary art group Club Moral. Frequently he contributed to their art-zine/fanzine called Force Mental. His musical subjects mostly dealt with excess in all kind of forms adapted into musical concepts. The whole Club Moral sphere is known to have explored the extremes of human nature and deviant human behaviour within society, both in cathartic experience and conceptualization, a bit in a similar way to what industrial and power electronics groups like Whitehouse, Ramleh or Consumer Electronics did in England. Just somewhat less uniformic in sound (noise) with more influences from literary poetry and visual arts including performative aspects and multimedia elements. 

De Kreet (The Cry) is a cassette that was named after the famous Edvard Munch painting, also depicted on the cassette cover and was published both in Belgium and Holland in 1982. The recordings are a combination of dialogues, field-recordings, eerie noises and manipulated electronics. Vloeberghs manages to create sounds with certain tensions that invoke a feeling of possession. Gradually the music progresses and passes by the listener as if one was eavesdropping or perhaps only intercepting the sound. A feeling of discomfort, but at the same time causing high-demanding attention as if one needs to listen to catch something of importance. He realized these haunted worlds through music, but it rather feels like some sort of narrative or written text (a story) that comes alive through sound. A soundscape in its truest form.

Vloeberghs remains an obscure figure from the Flemish industrial home-taping era who deserves more attention for his works.

From the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE