Seemen - Woozy! -1991- (Cassette, Self-Released), US

 

Originally from Austin, Texas, Seemen is the collaborative effort of Kal Spelletich and some forty odd art drop outs and extreme technology inventors who enjoy building extreme machines and robots that they allow their audience to operate. 

Since the late 80's and 90's Spelletich has been doing performances with Seemen and the notorious Survival Research Laboratories. Through the extremes of technology, the building of giant metal robots, pyrotechnics and other inventive dangerous constructions many incredible installations have graced both festivals and urban wastelands. Simultaneously the musical output connected to that has been an important element. Inevitably the clinging of metal, fire and flames and other robotic mechanisms create sounds, Seemen also made some really special cassettes that were circulating in the home-taping culture.

Within that late 80's and early 90's realm quite some urban area's were not as gentrified as they are today thus able to provide some space for these greater machine endeavours. The art and its surroundings played an important role on each other. Not only because of the artistic nature, but also because the artists would sometimes work on these giant living sculptures and robots for months. Therefore many of the artists started to become part of the surrounding communities and meet people who, in their turn, would help on some of the projects and vice versa. For example during their time in Amsterdam a collective like Survival Research Laboratories helped barricading some squats showing support during their eviction. A performance art group like the Mutoid Waste Company in England started to engage with the free party rave scene. Eventually they even established their own village called Mutonia in Italy. These are just some examples, but there are many more stories. In the new millenium this type of art has moved to festivals because the neo-liberal globalized urban environment leaves less and less space to be engaged with.

Woozy! was a self-released cassette by Seemen from 1991. From the cover:

The Seemen don't want to be your traditional Rock-n-Roll band which follows traditional formats. The idea being to produce something creative and innovative. Traditions are made to be broken and broken they are. There is no reason to repeat history! To repeat yourself when you have mastered something means it's time to move on to something more challenging. The future of music isn't guitar solos and drum machines but the sound of a vacuum cleaner or a child laughing. If music is to progress it needs to go beyond The Format (percussion/rhythm/solo/vocal). The forbearers of THE NEW WILL not be the Euro-X-Dance Beat Generation but the intelligensia who are willing and ABLE to grow beyond what Chuck Berry accomplished 30 years ago.

Kindly donated by The Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Arthur Berkhoff - I Know Fiction At Space 13 -1983- (Cassette, APB5), Netherlands

Here is another cassette by Dutch home-taper, neoist and multimedia mail-artist Arthur Berkhoff. Neoism is an art movement that was based on playing with collective identities, the reproduction of artworks as well as the usage of fake art, plagiarism and mockery. Most of the neoist artists created and published under the commonly used moniker of Monty Cantsin. Neoism became strong within mail-art and cassette culture circuits throughout the 80's because of the relatively easy way of combining various media and the possibilty to create and publish artistic expressions anonymously.

Arthur Berkhoff created many cassettes during the 80's based on his self-envisioned futuristic "Pregroperativism" movement. It was a strange one-man mythology that consisted (from what I can tell) of a mix of space, technology, cybernetics and neoist and multimedia art concepts. All the music connected to it was recorded in his Orguna Laboratory in Amsterdam.

I Know Fiction At Space 13 is another lost piece of Berkhoff's alienating music. It consists of different longer pieces of analog experimental electronics containing processed casio keyboards in combination with dark and eerie synthesizer sounds. I tried to index the cassette but gave up eventually.

Korm Plastics D has recently released a nice reissue of the industrial cassette Katacombe Vol.3 (1984) which also features Arthur Berkhoff and many other Dutch cassette culture protagonists.

From the Collection Allard Pierson/NPI

Get it HERE

Various Artists - Spagna - Messico - Italia -1988- (LP, 3ViTrePAIR), Italy

Here we have another sound-poetry compilation that was assembled by the Italian sound-poet and artist Enzo Minarelli. He created a series of these compilations that were each dedicated to the exchange of sound-poetry between Italy and other countries and their languages. Spagna - Messico - Italia was the second record in this series and focused on neo-latin roots in modern sounds combining elements and intersections of the Italian and Spanish language through sound-poetry and music.

Although the compilation was published in 1988, the pieces come from different periods. The oldest piece, composed by Mexican poet and actor Guillermo Villegas, is from 1974 while other pieces are from around 1988. It's remarkable that some pieces have a more theatrical aspect and that others have a more musical approach resembling home-taping sounds from the 80's. An artist like Luca Miti on this compilation can be seen as a bridge between those worlds as he also made cassettes.

One of the highlights on this compilation is a piece by Mexican artist Laura Elenes who composed a computerized poem that translates itself into repetitive Casio patterns based on color schemes. Not only can it be seen as an example of sound-poetry, but also as an important piece of Mexican electronic music. The last piece on this compilation is done by Minarelli himself where he creates an intense poem based on different patterns with the words of the four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter) and other associative words.

"The method of sound poetry, apart from the single, specific characters, can associate acts of research, I dare say international, towards the exploitation of voice and oral word, which are the true protagonists in the poetical progress at the end of this century. The geographical distances are put at zero, as each author, feeling the weariness and strain of the written poetry, composes his own phonic style by similar co-ordinates (orality, musical involvement, signifying rumour, electronics), with different outputs due to different levels of probing and sensitiveness, but belonging to the same effort of getting over the written page for a pure sonority." - Enzo Minarelli, 4th of April 1988, Cento, Italy

Get it HERE
 
 

Arthur Berkhoff - Spectrum Analysis At The Computer -1983- (APB5, Cassette), Netherlands

Arthur Berkhoff was a Dutch representative of the international Neoist movement who was heavily involved in mail-art and the home-taping culture. Neoism is a specific art movement that was based on playing with collective identities, the reproduction of artworks as well as the usage of fake art and plagiarism. Most of the neoist artists create and publish under the name of Monty Cantsin, a name that was created in the late 70's and mostly adopted by the Hungarian artist István Kantor as the identity for an "open" popstar to be used by others. Actually neoism has a great concept that could be applied even today to topics like the dissolvement of identity, open source platforms, collective art projects, copyright etc.

Neoism and its Mail-art output ofcourse also flourished within the home-taping circles and many protagonist home-taping artists have used neoist concepts and contributed to the movement. From Graf Haufen to Monte Cazzaza and from GX Jupitter-Larsen to Vittore Baroni just to name a few. Dutch artist Arthur Berkhoff was making art and cassettes in Amsterdam during the 80's through which he established his own futuristic "Pregroperativism" movement. It was a strange one-man mythology that consisted (from what I can tell) of a mix of space, technology, cybernetics and neoist art concepts. All the music was recorded in his Orguna Laboratory and most of the tracks are long improvised experimental electronic pieces with voices and noises.

Spectrum Analysis At The Computer is another great cassette from the Dutch home-taping culture of the 80's and a real alien piece of music. The music also reflects Berkhoff's strong dedication to his Pregroperativist universe. Some of his other works can be found over at No Longer Forgotten Music and check out a collection of his conceptual films over here.

This is some cyberpunk avant la lettre (or at least an early example). 

From the collection Allard Pierson/NPI

Get it HERE

Roy G. Biv - Yellow -1980- (Tape, Self-Released), Netherlands

Roy G. Biv (Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet) was the home-taping project and sound & color improvisation band of Dutch musician and visual artist Robin Deirkauf who sadly passed away last year. I think the first tapes were solo-projects and later the project was joined by Edward Vunderink (guitars, voice) and Frans Evers (keyboards). Yellow is one of the first three tapes by Roy G. Biv from 1980 and just like some of Conrad Schnitzler's work it was dedicated to a specific color. The band also did a red and a blue cassette (I have never seen or heard the blue one). Here's a brief and interesting biography I found on Deirkauf's personal website:

"In his early childhood Deirkauf grew up in the Caribbean, where his father was an antiques dealer, mainly specialized in African and Asiatic art. The exotic colorful underwater world at that time and the antiques has had a profound influence on his later drawings and paintings.

Sign, symbol and script are recurring elements in his sometimes eclectic work, it is characterized by ancient, primordial pictoral power, mixed with modern constructivist elements and bright colors. After this period he turned to a more formal and conceptual way of analizing the image, resulting in the development of a matrix used to create a pictographic alphabet consisting of primary colors and forms.

During the late 70's and early 80's Deirkauf founded the experimental sound and color improvisation group  Roy G. Biv for the realization of the multimedia art project phase III with Edward Vunderink and Frans Evers, what resulted in 10 music albums."

Roy G. Biv's Yellow tape is a great improvised jam-session like endeavour of cosmic electronic soundscapes reminding me of Krautrock groups from the 70's like Agitation Free, Ash Ra Tempel and other Manuel Göttsching works. It's also highly influenced by minimal music and because of the color themes, the Conrad Schnitzler analogy remains a given ofcourse. Not too often do the early home-taping cassettes from The Netherlands lean more towards the psychedelic and cosmic electronic side of the musical spectrum instead of the more commonly found industrial or minimal synth tapes from those times.

It's nice to find out about the existence of different and more cosmic music from Amsterdam from a time when half of the city was filled with squats with punks and new wave had already arrived both in fashion and music. I suppose Roy G. Biv shows the musical transition from the 70's with its psychedelic sounds to the DIY sound approach of the 80's and carries both decades in its spirit. Maybe that approach is also interwoven into the story of the Dutch wave and ultra band Mekanik Kommando that later turned into the psychedelic group The Use of Ashes.

Most of the Roy G. Biv albums were uploaded on No Longer Forgotten Music some time ago. Wonderful stuff. And ofcourse rest in peace Robin Deirkauf. Maybe some reissues have to be done in his memory.

The red tape will also be uploaded to the blog one day.

Get it HERE

Arf Arf - Clanguage -1996- (CD, Self-Released), Australia

Arf Arf was an important Australia based sound-poetry group that consisted of Marisa Stirpe, Frank Lovece, Michael Buckley and Marcus Bergner. Since the mid-80's they did over a hundred international shows. The members have been active in the Australian experimental music underground since the late 70's. Frank Lovece was an Italian born musician that moved to Australia as a child and played in the cult-group The Primitive Calculators. Michael Buckley and Marcus Bergner played in an obscure band called Too Fat To Fit Through The Door. Marisa Stirpe in groups like Thrush and The Cunts, The Take and The Egg. Most of these bands that were related to the Primitive Calculators were compiled on a CD in 2006. Marcus Bergner also made the cover art for The Boys Next Door's Hee-Haw EP (Nick Cave's first band before The Birthday Party and later The Bad Seeds).

Arf Arf's Clanguage brings together a variety of lo-fi sound-poetry tracks that are quite musical in their nature. We can hear gripping sound poems layering different narratives on top of each other. The artists are reciting poems as well as displaying the suggestiveness of poetic meaning within a sound-flow of cadence, the occasional use of musical instruments and different voice exclamations. It often leans to absurdism because of the peculiar communication between the voices and the non-languages they are using. It's really amazing stuff, absorbing the listener into the intimate world of the poets who were immersed in their practice. This immersion is also reflected in the way in which the notations of the poems were done, being actual little visual pieces of art in themselves. Take a look at them here.

Arf Arf is a nice example of Australian (sound-) poetry that played an important role in its underground music history, whether coming from a beat icon like Daevid Allen or the sound poems by Amanda Stewart.

Get it HERE

Niala Effen - Kolory Też Potrafią Śpiewać -1993- (Tape, OBUH Records), Belgium/Poland

Niala Effen is an anagram of Alain Neffe (to make it sound more Polish) who is the founder of legendary Belgian home-taping label Insane Music and the musical brain behind minimal synth acts like Bene Gesserit, Human Flesh, Pseudo Code, Cortex, Subject and many more projects. Those acts have probably also been Belgium's most widespread home-taping sounds, being featured on countless compilations of the DIY cassette culture across the globe.

Kolory Też Potrafią Śpiewać is the Polish translation of "Les Couleurs Aussi Peuvent Chanter" (The Colours Can Also Sing) which was the title of a drawing exhibition by artist Nadine Bal (Alain Neffe's wife and collaborative member of Bene Gesserit and Human Flesh a.o.) that took place in Brussels from 11.11-30.11.1989. Neffe created the background music that was to be heard during this exhibition. The material got released on the Polish underground label OBUH Records, which is one of the important labels that was dedicated to Polish underground music already since the socialist times. They published great Polish bands like Za Siódmą Górą.

The tracks on Kolory Też Potrafią Śpiewać are all titled by different girl names and are tainted by a mantric musical nature. The electronic music consists of swirling timbres and loops of repetition creating different sound-colours that I can imagine are perfectly fitting the drawings of Nadine Bal, probably just like the one on the cover of this cassette. Deep, colourful and hypnotizing.

Highly recommended stuff!

Get it HERE

 

Various Artists - The Meridian Crossings -1995- (CD, Hermit Foundation), Czech Republic

This is a CD only compilation around the music and arts symposium The Meridian Crossings that took place in Plzeň, Czech Republic in 1995. It is a varied release containing Czech folk musician Pavel Fajt, a.o. known of the amazing Czech group Dunaj, Cellist Vojtěch Havel who also did many ethereal folk and avant-garde world music soundscapes with his wife Irena Havlová and also many more improvisation musicians from the country I know less about.

Then present on here is English Rock In Opposition hero Tim Hodgkinson, known ofcourse as member of the pioneering RIO band Henry Cow. Also Dutch and Scandinavian artists are compiled (like Ad van Buuren) with art-installation sounds and improvisation pieces. Drummer Jim Meneses is also featured on the compilation, who played in the Berlin based band Stan Red Fox which I posted before on the blog. Lastly present here is Australian sound-art poetess Amanda Stewart.

The Meridian Crossings is a nice historical sound document of a manifestation of experimental music. A moment in which people from different countries exchanged musical talent in a post-socialist country that always had a very strong experimental underground scene in which music played a pivotal role. Within Eastern Europe, Czech Republic was always musically ahead with legendary groups like The Plastic People of The Universe, DG307 or Extempore. Their sounds concealed critical politics, poetry, art and philosophy in a context of the darker realms of folk and progressive rock experimentation to fight repression and to share state-forbidden information in order to uplift generations of people who were fighting to change the system. On The Meridian Crossings we can hear a new time that is still rooted in this past, but already merging with a global contemporary art-world representing a new transnational unity through the serious but also light-hearted musical avant-garde.

Get it HERE

Dionys Breukers - Koer Locale -1992- (LP, W139), Netherlands

This is a record with compositions by Dutch keyboardist Dionys Breukers. It was released through W139 which is a gallery and art space that is located in the center of Amsterdam. It was established in 1979 mainly to offer space to artists outside of the established art world in The Netherlands. W139 still functions today somewhat in the same way and places a large emphasis on art installations inside of its building. You can still find surprising exhibitions there if you want to escape the tourist inferno of the red light district.

From the liner notes of the record:

Koer Locale is the third project of the series called De Centrale, that is being realised by the W139 foundation in Amsterdam. Three artistic leaders are connected to it: Bas van Tol, Madje Vollaers and Pascal Zwart. In the spring of 1992 they created a hull from different elements a.o. a rotating wall, a cascade and a bar. Based on this composition various participants of different disciplines were asked to create a weekly new order by adding different "building blocks". One of these building blocks was provided by Dionys Breukers. In his contribution, to be heard on this LP, he led himself by the notion of background music: muzak. Basically this is opposite to the intention of the interior-project: to fill in a background was out of the question. But don't worry: the muzak of Dionys Breukers is not real muzak, but an original composition. During Koer Locale his musical building block was constantly to be heard from the bar (one of the art components of the space). - Jozef van Rossum, Amsterdam May 1992

The A-side of this album mostly contains compositions that are being played by Breukers himself while on the B-side there are also own compositions but often being played by others. A curious fact is that on the track Mais Non there is a guest contribution by canterbury legend Hugh Hopper, the great bass player of Soft Machine. Still I credited all tracks to Breukers to keep it simple.

The album indeed contains elements of experimental collage, cocktail music, Dutch jazz, a few maybe dated keyboard sounds and even funky notes. Sometimes it kind of hints to what would become known as Nu-Jazz during the nineties, but it also definitely has a lot of cheesy elements. Normally they would bother me a bit too much, but since the whole concept of the album revolves around the theme of muzak, maybe that was the whole point... I'd say: decide for yourself what to make of it! The record is a bit crackly but it was probably published in very limited quantities, I've never seen another copy.

Get it HERE

Zorah Mari Bauer & Tilman Küntzel - "Stipendiaten 1991" -1992- (Split-Tape), Germany

Since there is some catching up to do with regard to the frequency of uploads on the blog here is an obscure tape that I picked up by chance recently in Berlin:

Zorah Mari Bauer and Tilman Küntzel are both artists that are still active today in the realms of new media, cross media, art theory and sound. Apparently this cassette was released to accompany a catalogue for an exhibition they did at K3, part of the art center Kampnagel in Hamburg in 1992. It was released in an edition of 100 copies.

Zorah Mari Bauer takes one side of the cassette and plays two abstract pieces where musique concrète and voice experiments are the main components. It actually reminds me somewhat of the music of Laurie Anderson or the voice experiments of Dutch artist Moniek Toebosch.

Tilman Küntzel's side is called "Pinguin In Wonderland" and contains some interpretations of music by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. It's midi and computer controlled music that he recorded at the Centre for Art and Media ZKM in Karlsruhe. It's quite an unusual collage of animal sounds, voices and instruments.

Strange art tape, nice music.

Get it HERE

Various Artists - In Keller -1997- (CD, Gold Coast), Netherlands

This is quite a very nice compilation around artists that performed at the Galerie Keller in The Hague during the nineties. Also it's the first CD that I ever post on the blog. Lately I did some searches and found some CD rarities in my house that I will start to post at times.

In Keller compiles some important Dutch experimental acts. One of them is Kapotte Muziek, founded in 1984 by Frans de Waard who is still active today today with this project as well as many more. Kapotte Muziek is one of the pinnacle electro-acoustic, found and recycled sounds, noise, industrial and everything in-between music acts of the past decades in The Netherlands.

Then there is also living legend techno act Unit Moebius that emerged as the great anti-hero force of the DIY and squatting scene of The Hague's underground and punk minded rave culture of the early nineties. The unit is also responsible for the whole Bunker Records legacy. One of the Unit Moebius' founders Jan Duivenvoorden (a.o. Leuk & Ko, Shitcluster, Salò Mentale) is also included once more on this compilation under his moniker Nimoy.

Furthermore on In Keller there are installation sounds by Icelandic artist Haraldur Karlsson and experimental guitar drone by Ultrasound (Robert Ovetz and Kirk Laktas). Lastly present on here is sound artist Anne Wellmer and a few unknown hero's like Marcel Kaars with Didi Fire and Stephane Brys.

In Keller was released in a limited edition of 50 self-made copies. It was put together with a lot of care which subsequently resulted in an incredible album of experimental music. 

Get it HERE

Robert Barry - Otherwise -1981- (LP, Van Abbemuseum), US/Netherlands

This record came out for the occassion of an exhibition in the Dutch Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Van Abbemuseum is a museum for modern and contemporary art with quite a special modern art collection for Dutch standards. Robert Barry's conceptual LP came with a booklet written by two former directors of the museum: Rudi Fuchs and Jan Debbaut. From the liner notes:

Robert Barry (1936, New York) belongs to the first generation of 'conceptual' artists, together with a.o. Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth and Douglas Huebler; starting from a fundamental new art-concept, they changed with their activities around gallery-onwer Seth Siegelaub the international art-world at the end of the sixties drastically. [...] Amongst the conceptual artists who worked more in particular with language, Robert Barry occupies an important position on the borderline of visual art, poetry and philosophy. Conceptual art is - more than formal revolutions in modern art - a fundamental re-thinking of the function of art and the artist in a changing cultural context; it is in the defining of this new attitude towards art that the ideas and works of Barry make an essential contribution. 

Otherwise is a minimalist conceptual art project in which associative words are being recited. The record was also included in the famous book Broken Music (after the Milan Knížák record) gathering artist records in a catalogue overview. I suppose that you can also just use this record if you have trouble falling asleep. Just put it on, listen and drift away. Scans of the booklet are included (Dutch and English).

Get it HERE

Frits Maats & Nico van der Sman - Beweging -1982- (Tape), Netherlands

Quite some noise this post: Dutch artists Frits Maats & Nico van der Sman made this cassette called Movement (Beweging) which was actually an art project created in the Dutch village of Roden. The sounds you hear were recorded in a milk factory which was later dismantled. Then the sounds were played again in the empty factory and recorded which resulted in this tape. You can hear quite obviously that something conceptual is going on.

Frits Maats is an artist that explores the relation between fine arts and media, but also sculpture and music. He made a lot of video art during the eighties and also collaborated with Brian Eno. He is co-founder of the Amsterdam based interdisciplinary art and research centre Mediamatic. Mediamatic is a cultural institution dedicated to new developments in the arts since 1983. They organize lectures, workshops and art projects, focusing on nature, biotechnology and BioArt in a strong international network.

Get it HERE
 

Ton Bruynèl / Dick Raaijmakers / Peter Struycken - Geluid <=> Kijken -1971- (3x Flexi and Book, Stedelijk Museum), Netherlands

*Archaic Inventions 3 Years Anniversary Post*

This book was published in 1971 by the Stedelijk Museum (Museum of Modern Art) in Amsterdam for the exhibition Geluid < = > Kijken, or Sound < = > Sight. It contained three flexi-discs of artists that were involved. Ton Bruynèl, Dick Raaijmakers and Peter Struycken were notable Dutch artists experimenting with electronic sounds balancing on the fringes of science, art and music.

For this exhibition they created installations trying to transcend the auditory realm into the visual. The music is for example derived from speakers used as an instrument generating sounds through their scientific components and abilities. The loudspeaker as an instrument has also been used by John Cage in certain compositions. Here is a short overview of the works of the three artists. 

Ton Bruynel’s subject is an object: visually it is a square in which the visitor finds himself among objects which are, in a sense, scale models of the room itself. The sound is derived from the size, the shape (cubic) and the material (steel) of the objects; it is subsequently stored on tapes which return it to the cubes. The succession of sound structures knows neither beginning nor end. Due to its reverberation against the hard (steel) walls, the sound identifies with the surrounding space to a high degree, just as it identifies with the material.

Dick Raaijmakers elecits a dialogue between sound and visual motion in a series of loudspeakers combined with steel balls, spheres or small metal rectangles. The subject of the dialogue is the unmasking of the loudspeaker. ‘The loudspeaker communicates in a very elementary fashion – it speaks and it listens.’ writes Dick Raaijmakers elsewhere in this catalogue. 

Peter Struycken is concerned with the problem of how to obtain variations in large numbers of structures built up of similar component parts. Under certain conditions a relatively slight variation in a structural rule can bring about a high degree of variation in the visual and auditory effect. Hi Image and Sound programm I, is a model in which he investigates those conditions. The methods are similarly applied to image – changing in time – and sound.

Geluid  <=> Kijken is a great Dutch avant-garde document containing some harsh noise, electronic and weirdly generated sounds and it must have been one of the more interesting multidisciplinary exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in the early seventies. The book came with a fold out panel of all of Peter Struycken’s generated patterns. Scans of the whole book with information in Dutch and English are included in the file.

Get it HERE

Donated by Kim