Merry Christmas to all friends and followers of the blog!
Is that an image of the Brooklyn Bridge with the Twin Towers in New York? Can't really figure out the angle of the photo though. Ofcourse those towers were already there decades before they got used to scam us into the new millennium. But whether this image is a correct depiction of the skyline is quite unclear. Actually it doesn't really matter. All we care for is that those UFO's high up there in the sky were real! The rest is basically constructed around them. Skyscrapers, UFO's, modern metropoles: some key signs of the future in one depiction. Needless to say that within such a vision Thomas Girke from West-Berlin created a wonderful and futuristic soundtrack.
Elektronik Musik is a piece of Berlin School analog electronics on the synth-pop and minimal synth side of the spectrum. Analog arpeggiators, keyboard melodies, electronic syncopations and drum computer rhythms take us on a neon-light disco journey across the elektronik sky by way of China Town into synthetic dreams in time and space.
Quick get on board of the UFO! I heard those aliens have a space dancefloor and they are spinning some Italo disco records. Might have heard some Patrick Cowley and Stratis up there in the sky. Is that Magic Fly by Space now?! Abandon earth!
Vermooste Vløten were a Berlin based female duo that consisted of Hannie Bluum and
Libójah Shnukki that was active during the 90's. During the first decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall a new spirit reconnected the divided German capital giving birth to dozens of open spaces, buildings and (temporary) venues. Squats were still around as true city institutes, rent was relatively cheap, techno started blowing up, bars with GDR retro furniture in living-room atmospheres were created and gradually a whole new generation decided to start a living in the new alternative culture capital of Europe.
Within this new scenery lots of interesting local acts started to emerge out of Berliners and newly attracted Berliners. A living-room music movement unfolded fostering both the creation of music as well as concerts that were taking place in small circles. From lo-fi indie rock to punk to cut and paste DIY songwriting to simple und Schick toy organ electronics to surf, to bedroom pop or folk, anything was possible. This was a type of music that was in synergy with daily life, city vibrations, friendships, nightly leisure and so on, not so much with an aim to play big stages or to gain a larger audience.
Vermooste Vløten was one of those amazing bands from the time. Channeling a bit of the earlier underground sounds from Berlin in the 70's and 80's and backed up by Nikki Sudden of Swell Maps as the producer they made their first album Crankle in 1996. A really nice home-made indie album full of sweet melancholic songs, a rebellious attitude, Velvet Underground and Nico infused moods and delicate experimentation. Even John Peel picked up on them at the time.
As a female duo they stand in a great tradition of other female underground acts from Berlin, from Nina Hagen to bands like Malaria!, Carambolage or 3 Tot in the 80's to Barbara Morgenstern or Cobra Killer in the 90's. All those sounds surely even created the subconscious fertile soil for a band like 2Raumwohnung later on. In past years it has continued in the Berlin underground with acts like Die Schiefe Bahn or As Longitude. But ofcourse there are countless other female acts to mention. Let's hope it will all carry on as it should. I'm sure it will though.
Vermooste Vløten made a second album in the 90's that is equally great and has more electronic influences. Reissues? Compilations of the Berlin living-room scene?
Something more light-hearted during these tough times....
About a year ago a couple of hundred of tapes from an old collection came into my hands. Most of them were self-recorded copies of existing albums, mostly vinyl, that someone had been copying throughout the 80's. The majority of the music on these cassettes did consist of weird new wave, experimental and industrial music. I started to devide the tapes into different sections, the exact recorded copies of albums I put away in one box and the unknown cassettes without any written information on them I stored away in another box to examine. I also threw away dozens of tapes that were poor in quality and had nothing to do with underground music in general. Even now I still have some bags left with the unknown cassettes. I still have to listen to them and figure out what is on there.
In-between all of this stuff there was a self-made series that consisted of overdubs of rare NDW cassettes all with typewriter style titles and tracklisting. Because of that information I could luckily connect this one here to its original: a release I had been looking for over at least a decade. Thus, the digitization of this is somewhat less sharp sounding because I had to use a copy as source. Nevertheless we should be very happy that someone copied this rarity in 1981 for us to hear today! It doesn't seem likely this will surface any time soon in any sound quality (also with regard to the collectors who do seem to have this).
The Westhafen Plassette (Platte und Kassette) is a true relic and highly important item of the West-Berlin underground music scene of the early 80's. Released in a scarse edition of only 200 copies this three-way split release, that consisted of a 7 inch vinyl and a cassette, compiled three underground groups hailing from Berlin: Bodenpersonal, Tumorbeus (Read: Tumorboys), and Siedlerheim. It came out on the obscure cult label Kompakt Produkte from Berlin. The music consists of some of the purest experimental minimal synth and DIY new-wave music in the tradition of the grey and wall-divided Berlin music underground of the time:
Bodenpersonal with their Zufallsprodukt Eines Langweiligen Wochenendes (Chance product of a boring weekend) was recorded in a factory in Berlin in 1980 and consists of great minimal synth and DIY-music improvisation.
Tumorbeus create such abstract synthesizer driven atmospheres that the
music almost becomes techno-like, mindblowingly ahead of its time to say
the least. I really wonder whether they did more music in those days.
They also remind me a bit of the Studio 12 bands from Haarlem, The Netherlands from the early 80's with bands like Nexda and Cargo Cultus.
Siedlerheim seems to be the more traditional NDW group, but also ventures into electronic experimentation. They have more structured tracks with vocals and even incorporate the occassional saxophone burst. Maybe their sound is actually the most representative West-Berliner sound of the time. An energy that was also captured strongly in the Berlin Super 80 film, that gathered underground music and performance video's recorded on Super 8 Film by different artists from Berlin during the 80's (I will add that video below. Update: the video has been removed). Both Bodenpersonal and Siedlerheim have been re-released more than a
decade ago by the great WSDP label specialized in rare NDW cassettes.
Some of the tracks that are on the Westhafen Plassette were also compiled by WSDP, just not
everything. The Westhafen Plassette is partially a musical time-document but it also displayed its avant-garde vision of futuristic musical possibilities beyond the political barriers of the bleak urban landscape and society of Berlin at that time. It stands closely next to many other important underground bands from Berlin of the time like Kompakt Produkte peerband Thorax Wach, Notorische Reflexe, Die Tödliche Doris, Sentimentale Jugend, Malaria!, Einstürzende Neubauten, An Die Schwarze Kunst, Sprung Aus Den Wolken and many more. Both in instrumentation and energy very strong. Those analog machines in combination with this urgency to experiment really resulted in some of the greatest music in general it seems.
It's nice to post this on the blog since 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you would like to dig deeper into the theme of the underground music history of Berlin I really recommend the book Berlin Calling, A story of Anarchy, Music, the Wall and the Birth of the New Berlin by Paul Hockenos (2017).
A long story this time, anyway... could have saved this one for Christmas, but I have so much more to share on the blog... Enjoy! Sturm und Turm!
Survival Instink was a project by German musician Bernd Jestram, perhaps recorded together with others, perhaps not. There is a little child singing on one of the tracks on the B-Side. Jestram is one of the important underground musicians from East-Berlin who played in many iconic punk and experimental bands from the other side of the wall surviving the German socialist regime. Among others he played in Rosa Extra (aka Der Schwarze Kanal) which was probably East-Berlin's most important punk band that had formed already in 1979. He founded his own band Aufruhr Zur Liebe in 1984 and later joined another important experimental band called Ornament & Verbrechen. Aside from this he played in numerous other bands and did many solo works. You can find a lot of those bands and related material over at Tape Attack. Obviously none of these bands in the DDR had proper chances of releasing anything so their music circulated on tapes in the underground. They spreaded their common experience of bleakness due to the repressive totalitarian regime as well as the daily derooted alienating feeling of misplacement in a city that was torn apart by warfare and corruptive political powers.
Survival Instink was another nice project by Bernd Jestram, although a somewhat later project from 1988. I couldn't find any information about it whatsoever. It's also not listed on Discogs. It's a very loud (!) lo-fi cassette that contains some heavily distorted cyber garage-punk dedicated to urban dystopia. Lots of raw guitar sounds, manic drum machine clattering, and dark distorted vocals. The music probably appeals to fans of Chrome, Strafe Für Rebellion or Second Layer and even reminds me of equally obscure stuff like the rock era of Salò Mentale or Spalanzanis Töchter.
This is a rare artists' 7 Inch that accompanied an art book edited by Fritz Balthaus, published by Ed. Vogelsang in Berlin in 1982. Unfortunately I don't have the book, but according to information online it was an anthology assembling contributions by numerous artists: texts,
photos, collages, drawings, an object (a pencil), and the six audio
pieces on the 7", which was housed in a generic inner sleeve attached to
the inside of the back cover of the book.
It's another nice example of the music experiments that were going on in the West-Berlin art scene and the galleries of the time in which there was dialogue, overlap (or colission as you wish) between the art academies and more established art world with the DIY underground of the time. Neue Deutsche Welle music and its performance aspects balanced on these two fringes, because of the often conceptual nature in the artistic approach. You can find certain examples of this in Berliner bands like Die Tödliche Doris, the whole Geniale Dilletanten happening in Berlin's Tempodrom in 1981 or the Berlin Super 8 DIY art-films that were being made by local experimental musicians and artists. On a sidenote, these type of happenings and musical output also took place in East-Berlin and other GDR cities like Dresden and Leipzig. There is a nice documentary in German about that here. These expressions were much more marginal and obviously not tolerated by the regime so at times quite dangerous for the artists in their practices.
On this little record there are various artists compiled from Berlin as well as foreign places: the first piece is made by Florence born Italian visual artist Maurizio Nanucci, who started to work with neon typography in the late 60's. His work deals with the relation between his research on linguistics and the visual experience of colours.
Then there is Berlin artist and writer Thomas Kapielski who also worked a lot with the important experimental musician Frieder Butzmann in the 80's. Kapielski is still active to this day. Also Fritz Balthaus is present, an artist that in his work dealt a lot with the mediation between architecture and design in (public) spaces. American composer Beth Anderson is compiled with a nice track that is also the most poppy on the record.
Lastly there is a piece by conceptual visual artist Rolf Julius based on a reel-to-reel voice cut-up of American female voice experimentalist Joan La Barbara and a piece by Fred Szymanski of the great New York band Ike Yard, which was the only band from the US to be featured on the Factory Records roster during the 80's.
Merry Christmas and an Archaic New Year to all followers and friends of the blog!
Once again we are rounding up another year in an increasingly chaotic world! After almost 6 years of running this blog on my own, in my own time as some kind of personal music mission paying hommage to the blogosphere, years of record digging and sharing my musical insights, I can proudly announce the first ever Archaic Inventions mix. This is the first volume in a series of conceptual mixes that combines both written narrative and music as a way to uncover meaning. The mixes belong to an external realm of the blog. Although the music mixes will have a relation to the Archaic Inventions platform.
The first volume is created by my friend, Sucked Orange Gallery creator, co-founder of the Braille Satellite festival, long-time experimental music selector, one half of subterrenean surrealist and idea flowing music selecting duo Octatanz (with Matas Labasauskas): Oscar Olías, better known as Oscar Der Winzige.
Oscar is an underground figure based in Berlin already for a long time, who originally comes from Madrid, Spain. He was kind enough to dig into the entire Archaic Inventions catalogue to create one of the most outer-worldly mixes, surprising any follower of this blog, including myself! Not only can this be viewed as an insight, profile and introduction to what is to be found on Archaic Inventions, it is, as always with Oscar's selections, a trip transporting the listener to another musical planet within an own universe of exploration. To me this mix represents the combining of forces. The finding of music. The sharing of music. Knowing how to select. Knowing music. Cultivated on the path of being a student of music. Bypassing the platforms. Telling an important story. Starting from the ground, hasta el espacio!
Let's tell a story! Here we go!
- Oscar Der Winzige grew up in the suburb of Hortaleza in the North-East of the Spanish capital Madrid. At a young age his father suddenly left this earth leaving behind an important record collection of a.o. progressive rock, cosmic electronics and krautrock. Already as a young child the likes of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze would bring Oscar to other worlds. Within the raw society life of the Madrilenian suburbs and adolescent dreams, Oscar started to obtain a different mindset than his peers. Most of the suburban friends were listening to completely different musical styles while he was developing something reaching beyond daily life routines.
When adolescence hit Oscar, he started to go out to a club with a forged ID. Encountering the concept of the "DJ" he immediately knew he wanted to do something similar yet very different. Instead of the egocentrism surrounding the "DJ" he saw the potential in the idea of the music selector, he became aware of the art form and the transference of messages that were concealed in this practice. At first Oscar started to buy techno, play for his friends at home and soon started to become known in local circles and social centers where there were possibilities to play music (inluding the use of stolen traffic lights used as disco lights). The precarious introduction to some of Madrid's clubs started to give hints of alternative fashion, showed the effect of music on people and were the beginning of a deeper exploration of musical styles for Oscar.
The eclectic music explosion came to its full potential when Oscar met another much older music selector and experimental musician from Madrid during a period when he was working in a flamenco bar: David Krapoola. David was playing some vinyl in the attic of a random house and had piles of records. He was a one-man radio. An eclectic explosive force of musical madness. Soon they became friends and started to share music, buy records and formed a music selector duo travelling through every depth of the Madrid nightlife. David adopted Oscar and they also started to do experimental music together as well as subversive art projects. The older Spanish guys baptized Oscar with the nickname "El Pequeño", "The small one", which later resulted in the name Oscar Der Winzige. Gradually the perception of music became more than eclectic during this time. Like an eclectic eclecticism. In the same period Oscar became resident at the "Oui Club" and also started to play records at most of the experimental and sub-cultural concerts that were taking place in Madrid. Oscar became an autodidact anthropologist of music, channeling an everlasting drive to gather and find music while fostering a deep personal relation with it. A once-in-a-lifetime-drive that would never return in such pureness and with such hunger. But then... the crisis arrived to Spain.
Clubs lost their ability to explore and became more and more commercial. Fertile grounds for happenings and experimentation in music were slowly drying up. People didn't risk anything anymore. The predominant feeling was that soon a new destination had to be reached, a place where this music trip could become a life mission, a place where many different talented and creative people gathered to find new premisses for this lifestyle. That place became Berlin.
In Berlin there were already friends in the same field, namely the talented DJ and eternal friend Laura ODL (As Longitude), whom Oscar had known for some time already. Also new people appeared to the scenery like José Luis Gomez (a film-maker from Barcelona) with whom Oscar founded the Sucked Orange Gallery in Neukölln (named after the collaged 1989 Nurse With Wound album "A Sucked Orange"), where through a girl we mutually knew I (the author of this piece) also entered this story. At the gallery that we ran many beautiful experimental concerts were organized and a few exhibitions as well for a longer period, often in collaboration with Rinus van Alebeek of Staaltape and also in collaboration with the legendary record store Staalplaat. A lot of communal nights took place, dancing 'till the morning, every kind of drugs, every form of love, people from all over the globe gathered, rules were destroyed and defended, Berlin police raids were part of our weekly divertissement, people were built up and broken down and many tears were shed both by joy and by sorrow. My own meeting with Oscar was another truly important moment for our mutual development, for the discovery of music and by times had overpowering implications, yet what we lived was a unique chance of self-exploration not many people get a chance to in a lifetime.
In any case it was a time that would become the first landmark of action, materializing a certain musical philosophy in life, based on a journey that was given solely by the inexhaustible wealth and endless realms of each one's history in and connection to Music. This was either coming from seeing many concerts of legendary acts and many parties that all of us had experienced in the underground of our respective countries as well as our history of making music ourselves. Another musical force was coming from the birth of underground music blogs and the time that was spend in music research. Maybe they were not the most important component, but helped in offering material and knowledge.
After this vibrant period the Sucked Orange Gallery ceased its activities and became a non-public hangout for friends. Slowly a new dawn arose in Berlin and Oscar and many friends were simultaneously playing different venues and festivals in Berlin (and beyond) and new musical alliances were effectuated crossing different aspects of the Berlin music upper- and underground. Due to the meeting of various international minds, slowly also a new way was paved towards the far East of Europe. A path to the Baltics. A few Lithuanian tourists had heard strange music in Berlin by chance and felt a common understanding. They invited Oscar together with Laura ODL to Vilnius, Lithuania. One of these people from Lithuania that Oscar met was Matas Labasauskas. A like-minded soul interested in working creatively in service of a community, based on free-spirited inclusivity and inner-growth. Oscar and Matas started the project Octatanz: a musical duo in which "together they offer a selection of ideas floating around in the deepest recesses of musical subculture". An important new musical entity touring around Europe injecting magical sounds into small communities of explorative and receptive listeners to find new states of being.
Eventually the Berlin-Vilnius connection resulted in the creation of the STRCamp Festival, that later morphed into Braille Satellite Festival: an annual DIY music and arts festival that takes place in the park of Mushroom Manor, Lithuania. In the pseudo-hidden Lithuanian countryside the festival facilitates a communal gathering based on the deepest DIY realms of music in contemporary times characterized amongst others by: "relax shock, dance laugh in the night, the best selection is boring, only a dream line-up doesn't work, nothing too serious, social transmutation, inclusivity and love". With the time Oscar and Matas brought together key groups of music-people from a.o. Lithuania, Spain, England, Italy, France, Netherlands, Portugal and Germany, which is an unimaginable achievement in itself. As for those would like to be part of this: in the summer of 2019 a new edition of Braille Satellite will take place. -
This article is another little piece of a music puzzle that one day I will put together more thoroughly with all its different dimensions and probably more will become visible. That story is extensive and might be more suitable for a book or something, haha! For now we listen to the beautiful and amazing "Archaic Inventions mix" made by Oscar Der Winzige.
Lastly
This blog will continue in full force in 2019. Once again I am happy that I can promise that the music I am able to provide will be even more insane than before. We keep on working on all the different aspects of this strange music world in order to maintain and cherish a little bit of its essence and to give it a future. Also I am currently working on releasing the first Archaic Inventions record which will also mean the birth of a new music label. More details very soon!
Much love to you all and don't hesitate to love. Think and feel for yourself. Don't believe the hype. Help to build. See you soon.
Stan Red Fox were a band from Berlin formed by Stephan Hachtmann (who came from the GDR), Lars Rudolph of anarcho-jazz combo Kixx and Franklin D. Newmeier (later in Caspar Brötzmann's Massaker). They had multiple releases by the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties. Their first self-released EP cassette is to be found here.
The music resembles the cross-over sound of new wave by the end of the eighties, but is also clearly inspired by the 80's No Wave art-rock and jazz-pop styles from New York. Apart from more conventional songs they also play weird Butthole Surfers-like outburst, sing German lullabies and create experimental absurd jazz sounds in almost Zeuhl-like manners. German bands like Reifenstahl or AG Geige also come to mind, as well as more obvious UK groups like Rip Rig & Panic or even Pigbag.
I was quite surprised that this wasn't available yet. I guess it's also a reminder of that there is so much good stuff out there that won't cost you a fortune. Don't believe the hype of today's internet music market and listen to what you like.
