The Lost Attic WegWerpTapes (aka TLAWWT) - Self-Titled -1985- (LP, Self-Released), Netherlands

The Lost Attic was a Dutch experimental music and home-taping project by Berry Rikkerink (who sadly passed away around 2008) and in this case someone named Lupie from Groningen. Rikkerink also had the project Technological Aquiver and released different weird cassettes on his Wegwerptapes (throw-away tapes) label like Interprovinsjale Sweinen. He also had close ties to the Dutch home-taping group De Fabriek as well as some collaborations with Kapotte Muziek. 

The Groningen home-tapers were specially deranged in their approach when you hear their material and were also strongly embedded in the squatting scene of Groningen at the time. During the 80's the Dutch squatting scene played a hugely important role for the youth that lacked future perspectives in an ideologically divided grey and dark Europe. The Netherlands is a small country with too many people, meaning there is not enough space. It has a messed up social housing system and non-affordable rents, specially for young people. The squatting scene was built from the necessity to live. Ofcourse, as a result, it was always very politically engaged and even militant at times, and by doing so also succeeded in providing space for creative experimentation, art and lots of madness between the margins. For some people squatting saved their life, some people just sympathized with squatting while others only profited from it. Something that comes with any form of free space and inclusive and open projects in general. Many important modern cultural institutions and concert halls in The Netherlands once started as squats or have some ties with squatting starting already since the 60's, but this narrative has largely been wasted with time.

The Lost Attic WegWerpTapes is another important album of the Dutch home-taping network of the 80's. It was mastered by Nico Seelen aka O.R.D.U.C. and shows that tape music can also be pressed on vinyl, why not? It's a great example of experimental anti-music with electronic noises, casio keyboards, rastaman vibrations(!), improvised jam sessions, humor as well as a punk attitude not too happy about the Dutch monarchy (Trix Ga Naar Huis). A little bit of everything. Just some recordings on tapes, thrown away somewhere in a lost attic... A great record! It was re-released by De Fabriek during the 90's.

More info on Wegwerptapes and such is to be found in the vast archive of No Longer Forgotten Music.

Get it HERE

Seafood - Bait -1998- (CD, Link Beat), Netherlands

What we have here is a great obscure 90's release from Holland. Seafood was a short-lived group that consisted of four jazz and improvisation musicians based in The Netherlands: Canadian musician Alan Laurillard (saxophone, voice and sampler) and Dutch musicians JB Bollen (violin, voice, sampler, synthesizer), Michiel Scheen (voice, synthesizer) and Chander Sardjoe (percussion). All of them were heavily involved in the Dutch jazz and improvisation scene and have been releasing numerous albums throughout the years. Chander Sardjoe also collaborated with the Belgian ethno-avant-jazz trio Aka Moon around the same time when Seafood was active.

Seafood's Bait came out in 1998 in limited quantities on CD with a fishhook with coloured feathers attached to its cover and a small plastic fish in the jewel case. The group described their music in the booklet: 

Seafood is a new music group that creates a synthesis between culture and subculture, between improvisation and academism, between small brains and underbelly. Result: House-Techno-Hardcore-New Music-Jazz-Impro-Drum and Bass-Fusion.

Definitely an accurate description. This is a musical adventure that blends in so much musical talent and styles from worlds far beyond that I slowly realize that this could be one of the greatest albums from The Netherlands from the 90's in general.

Each track on the album is composed by one of the four musicians of the group. Seafood inventively tie together humoristic improvisation, future jazz, sample-mania and different electronic dance music styles into something of mind-boggling alien creation of almost Boredoms proportions. It's also reminiscent of Uwe Schmidt's (Atom TM) Lisa Carbon project of the 90's where latin jazz and rhythms were blended with electronic instruments and dance music. Obviously there are more examples of that 90's musical realm that often got labelled Future Jazz or Nu-Jazz back in those days, but this came to mind.

Moreover, Seafood is what I imagine to be the future sound of what great Dutch bands like Niew Hip Stilen or Kiem had been playing a decade earlier. This is some far out stuff! Another very little known album from Holland that deserves more attention!

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The Schismatics - Vazen Vol (Vases Full) -1994- (CD, AMF Music), Netherlands

The Schismatics were a Dutch Rock In Opposition and improvisation band that started in the 80's connected to the domain of the legendary artists squats of the Quarantaineweg in Rotterdam, although always based in Amsterdam. The Schismatics is more or less led by Dutch singer, poet and musician Han Buhrs. He was involved in many musical projects like Nine Tobs, Encore + Plus Grande with members of the French RIO band Etron Fou Leloublan, Palinckx and many more. His latest project is the Amsterdam based group Rubatong and Ensemble Extra Ordinaire.

At the time of this album, that was recorded at various locations in Holland in the early 90's, The Schismatics consisted of Han Buhrs (vocals, percussion), Jodi Gilbert (vocals), Beatrice van der Poel (vocals), Maartje ten Hoorn (violin) and Frank van Berkel (bass). The music on Vazen Vol is an interesting mixture of improvisation and avant-garde poetry with an emphasis on the role of the voice as instrument. The often absurd lyrics are a constant combination of both English and Dutch with the occasional use of other languages. The music reminds me of the Italian group Arigret, the American band Care of The Cow, the music of Maggie Nicols and Lindsay Cooper and many more acts of the rock in opposition world of Recommended Records.

This is another essential CD only release from the Dutch impro scene and probably one of the only Dutch groups that may carry the real label of the genre of Rock In Opposition. The cover of the album consists of a painting by Dutch artist Marjan Verkerk.

Get it HERE

Yeti - Haw Hawaaaw -1994- (CD, Obi Music), Netherlands

Yeti was a one-off improvisation and free-jazz outfit from The Netherlands founded in 1994. It consisted of Jan Hans Berg on bass and vocals, Martin van Duynhoven on drums (ex-Group 1850, Theo Loevendie Consort etc.), Wolter Wierbos on trombone and American cellist Tristan Honsinger (who has played a lot with Derek Bailey). Basically Yeti brings together again some important figures of the Dutch impro scene and beyond.

The quite lengthy album showcases nice cinematic jazz and improvisation moments that are at times absurdistic as well as loosely inspired by the Nepalese Yeti-myth. It is quite a unique effort that somehow became rather obscure because of the medium through which is was released in its particular time period. The booklet actually shows a nice piece of hand-made DIY-art from the impro scene. Haw Hawaaaw sounds a bit like other things I've posted on the blog before like Ernst Reijseger, because of Honsingers cello-work or even Palinckx & Palinckx.

Another nice slab from the Dutch impro scene of the last decade of the previous century!

Get it HERE



Message:
This is the last post I prepared before I left home some time ago. Expect some new uploads on the blog somewhere later this summer since I am currently travelling around in Europe. The stuff that's coming to the blog later will be truly insane! Also in new directions with an emphasis on the Eastern-European underground from the 80's and 90's.

Hein Pijnenburg, Ineke van Doorn & Paul van Utrecht - Barbaarse Dans -1994- (CD, GR 9409), Netherlands

This very obscure compact disc named Barbaarse Dans -in English- Barbaric Dance (not even on Discogs) contains great musical interpretations of poems by the Flemish surrealist and dadaist poet Paul van Ostaijen (22 February 1896 – 18 March 1928) and was recorded in 1994.

The music was made with voice, bass clarinet, guitar, saxophone, hammers and saws by saxophonist Hein Pijnenburg, Jazz-singer Ineke van Doorn and guitarist Paul van Utrecht. It was created to accompany Paul van Ostaijen's avant-garde sound poetry that was written in the early twentieth century in Dutch. The musical interpretation comes close to the Dutch performance artist and protagonist interpreter of abstract sound-poetry Jaap Blonk.

Even though Dutch is quite a non-important and often quite disliked language, Van Ostaijen was one of the most important people in the Dutch language territory who was inspired by the dada movement alongside the artist Theo van Doesburg. His sometimes onomatopoeiatic sound-poetry broke many barriers in the Dutch literary field and introduced sound-poetry as a performative and even visually experimental dimension in Dutch poetry in the early twentieth century. This album is quite special in the sense that it interprets his poetry. It's a unique musical example of the Dutch language literary avant-garde. It was released in a self-made fragile paper cover.

From the liner notes:

Barbaric Dance is a theatrical composition in which Hein Pijnenburg puts forward the poetry by the Flemish avant-garde poet Paul van Ostaijen. The musical work is shifting throughout the piece: at first the starting point is text and the music is composed with the text. Later in the composition this is reversed. The text: fragments of poems, words and seperate letters are fitted in the music. Hammers and saws are prescribed in the score to create two effects: to create a transition of rhythm and sound of daily life towards the silence of the theater and to increase the feelings of the listener and actor by physical powers. Furthermore the hammers and saws function as percussion.

Paul van Ostaijen was a Flemish poet who lived from 1896 to 1928. His work mirrors the changing and stirring zeitgeist of the first twenty-five years of this century: a hyper-sensitive Van Ostaijen found his inspiration amongst others in the First World War and the atmosphere of the Music-Hall (a precursor of the discotheque). He looked for possibilities to combine words, sounds and images in his poems. 

Barbaarse Dans is based on the poems: Barbaarse Dans, Angst, Fatalisties Lied, Asta Nielsen, Vers 2 en Vers 3 and Alpejagerslied.

Recommended!

Get it HERE

Amsterdam Stringtrio ‎- Dodekakania -1986- (LP, DATA Records), Netherlands

The Amsterdam Stringtrio was a one-off project formed by Cellist Ernst Reijseger, Violinist Maurice Horsthuis and double bass player Ernst Glerum. Three Dutch string instrument musicians that recorded this album in Amsterdam for the occasion. All of them have been members of the ICP Orchestra and have played with many other respected improvisation and jazz musicians, from Lol Coxhill to Derek Bailey.

To me this album is a bit too much substantiated with classical music influences, instead of the anarchic improvisation I usually like. But nevertheless it's still very atmospheric and gets into more adventurous parts throughout its progression. In any case it's another piece of the Dutch avant-garde music puzzle that I try to give attention to on the blog every now and then. It reminds me a bit of Louis Andriessen's soundtrack Golven, Harry Sparnaay's Bass Clarinet Identity II or the Brazilian MEC 70 compilation: all posted here on the blog a long time ago!

Another highlight to me is the incredible artwork of this album which was designed by the artist Maryke de Vries and specially printed by artist Zeger Reyers. Dodekakania was limited to 500 hand-numbered vinyl copies.

 Get it HERE

 

Message:
There's a chance the blog will run out of material in the near future, although there are still posts to come. It is getting increasingly harder to find material and I have been doing this for quite some years now. I'm not saying that this blog will shut down, but I need to see how the future will develop regarding Arhcaic Inventions based on new material and the future developments in my personal life. It might also somehow elevate or expand into something new, yet similar. Let's see!

Leo Cuypers - Same -1972- (LP, BASF/BIM), Netherlands

Leo Cuypers (Maastricht, 1947) is one of Holland's most inventive and important pianists in the improvisation and Jazz world. He started out as a drummer but soon moved to the piano. As a pianist he developed a unique jazzy playing style by which he improvised many songs just by feeling, mostly in a rhythmic way based on moods and imagined titles. He was frequently playing with Dutch impro Saxophonist Willem Breuker (founder of the Instant Composers Pool and Willem Breuker Kollektief).

Leo Cuypers is probably most famous for his Zeeland Suite from 1977 also with Willem Breuker and others. Throughout the decades of the last century he did many scores and other soundtracks with Willem Breuker. Cuypers was the only person Breuker would trust with his opinion when showing new scores. Their work together keeps a unique place in the Dutch jazz and impro history. On the verge of the nineties Cuypers stopped collaborating with Willem Breuker. By then he had built a decades-long reputation as an impro pianist in a 'jazz world' of women, booze and other nightly endeavours. You can see a short documentary in Dutch with Leo Cuypers here. I love when he basically concludes that he didn't learn shit(!) during his time at the conservatory. This first album he made came out on BASF in The Netherlands, just like the Theo Loevendie Consort (of which Leo Cuypers was a member) as well as the Indonesia inspired experimental Jazz prog band Banten. Also he played on the most psychedelic album by Dutch cult singer Ramses Shaffy from Amsterdam, called Sunset Sunkiss.

From the original 1972 liner notes:

"Maastricht was a beautiful city to live in. People from the Conservatory, the Academy of Arts, painters, sculptors - they all made it a nice scene. But then the hippies from the western part of Holland moved in and things changed so much that many of the artists left." This is pianist Leo Cuypers Talking. Born in Heemstede (near Haarlem) on December 1, 1947 (his parents originally came from Amsterdam) he moved to Maastricht with his family when he was about nine. And he always wanted to study at the Maatricht Conservatory. But after three years he quit; in fact he was chased away after four months of absence. "I was frightened, you know. What was going on there at the time (1962-1965) had nothing to do with making music. One was trained to play one's part in a symphony orchestra - not to play too much out of tune - not to play too well - just to do the job. And nobody was really interested in that kind of music. After lessons the kids ran to their favourite drinking place to listen to pop music, that's what they loved. And besides that, I played jazz, I wanted to become an arranger. I played drums, piano was at first only an obligatory second instrument. I started on drums when I was six. We had a piano at home, but I liked the drums better. It was only when I had learned to play enough piano that I discarded the drums. One day my set was stolen. Or rather, I hoped someone would steal it. Which they did. So I just had to go on with piano. Anyway, at the Maastricht Conservatory the scene finally changed too. Two years after I was chased away I made a guest appearance there."

As for many musicians in this country, the competition that's been held every year since 1958 at the lakeside resort of Loosdrecht meant a big change for Leo Cuypers as well. He entered the 1969 competition, playing solo. It was the percussion element, an echo from his playing the drums. As Maastricht is way down south in holland and the music scene - or anyway the jazz scene - is in the west, by being at Loosdrecht and winning this competition he was heard. Drummer Pierre Courbois liked his playing and when working at the festival of contemporary jazz in Baden-Baden, Germany, he advised Joachim Ernst Berendt to let Leo Cuypers replace Joachim Kühn, who had had a car accident. It was there that Leo Cuypers met composer and reedman Willem Breuker, founder member of the Instant Composers Pool, and it was through Breuker that Leo got his first gig in Amsterdam. Where a little later Theo Loevendie heard him and asked him to play with his consort. So, today, with Misha Mengelberg and Kees Hazevoet, Leo Cuypers is one of the three most foremost pianists in the contemporary music scene. He lives in Amsterdam. - 1972

Get it HERE

Bewth (Bewegingstheater) - Over De Dauw Van Dit Land -1972- (LP, Space Records), Netherlands

Bewegingstheater (Movement Theatre) was a Dutch theatre group and Amsterdam based theatre school that was active from 1964 to 2005. In their existence they created 126 theatre productions. They worked with architecture, dance, music and poetry. In the late sixties and early seventies Bewth created numerous plays in which their happening-like plays were combined with psychedelic music and poetry.

The musical development started with voice experiments by the actors and were later replaced by compositions and music of the time like Pink Floyd and Arthur Brown. As the architectural element was introduced in the plays, more and more own music started to be created by some of the members, most importantly by: Peter Klencke, Walter Jaffé, Victoria Varekamp and Flip van de Pol. You can get an impression of a Bewth play in the late sixties by clicking here and here. This was a play called Bosche Bollen (1968), it starts with a still of The Garden Of Earthly Delights by Dutch medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch. Bosche Bollen are the famous patisserie chocolate balls connected to the city of 's-Hertogenbosch in the south of The Netherlands, also the birth city of Hieronymus Bosch.

In 1972 the record Over De Dauw Van Dit Land  (On The Dew Of This Land) was realized. The greater part of the music was created by Peter Klencke. From 1968 to 1974 he used country and blues slide guitar and a saxophone to create improvised sound imagery that corresponded with the movement of the actors. Also he composed music to the poetry of Bewth-member Ben Zwaal that was recited during plays. The music from this period was compiled on Over De Dauw Van Dit Land. The record was only sold during performances.

The music and poetry on this record have a distinct feeling of the Dutch countryside, in as much as that exists within the mostly urban landscape of Holland. The fragile cardboard cover shows a person in what I think is a boerenkool field. A vegetable that is eaten in Holland in the winter and which traditionally needs a night of frost over it to be eaten (frost and dew, important in alchemy, paganism.. it's all somewhere in that realm isn't it?). Most of the poetry and the song titles deal with nature in its purest form, very much in a pagan fairytale sense. Also one of the songs has a Frisian title, embedding this marginalized language and culture of the Netherlands in the record.

The record is a pearl of Dutch avant-garde acid folk and jam improvisation reminding me a bit of the Dutch obscurity Surprieze - Zeer Oude Klanken En Heel Nieuwe Geluiden from 1973. It is a beautiful example of free-form theatre mixed with spaced out music from that era, comparable to the French Théâtre du Chêne Noir d'Avignon, the Japanese Tokyo Kid Brothers, Tenjo Sajiki, the Belgian happening films of Ludo Mich or even the 1960's Living Theatre in New York.

The Bewegingstheater later went on doing many other performances including in the streets of Dutch cities (like in Middelburg on the picture above). Eventually, the company evolved out of its hippie character while focussing more and more on the relation between theatre and architecture until seazing its activities in 2005. This is one of the most amazing hidden seventies records from Holland and we can only hope there is much more musical material still in archives. This could have easily been on the NWW-List. All images I used are courtesy of Peter Klencke and Bewth.

De Kikker (The Frog)

een zonnebloem / a sunflower
beloofde / promised
de sloot / the creek
haar kromming te vergeven / to forgive its curve

en de sloot / and the creek
huilde zo / cried so

de groene kikker / the green frog
was de kasteelman / was the castle owner
de hoogste van de sloot / the highest of the creek
altijd slapende / always asleep
op luchtige schalen / on breezy scales
vol wijdblad / on wide leaves
en zonder het minste / and without the least
ooievaargevaar / stork danger

de zonnebloem / the sunflower
kende ze allemaal / knew them all
en lachte soms / and sometimes laughed
als het zomer was / when it was summer

Highly Recommended!

Get it HERE

Palinckx & Palinckx - Maartse Buien -1984- (LP, Traction Avant), Netherlands

Jacques Palinckx (1959, Tilburg) is a Dutch Jazz and Impro guitarist and composer. He played a.o. with Guus Janssen septet, Maarten Altena Ensemble, Beukorkest, Big Bamboozle and improvised with Free-Jazz and improvisation musicians like Fred van de Hove, Evan Parker, Lol Coxhill, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Daan Vandewalle, Peter van Bergen, Keith Rowe, Joseph Bowie, Gerry Hemmingway, Eugene Chadbourne.

During the early eighties the impro outfit Palinckx & Palinckx was established with brother Bert Palinckx (Bass), Frank van Oosterhout (Drums) and Hans Sparla (Trombone). This first album came out on the Dutch Traction Avant label, which was a sublabel of Eksakt Records. It was established to showcase the more serious Modern Composed and Jazz side of the label.

Maartse Buien is a Jazz album indeed, even more so Jazz in a very Dutch manner. Maartse Buien is the Dutch name for the typical Dutch rainfall during the month of March (and April). Because of the bad rainy climate of The Netherlands the rainfall during this period is often accompanied by hail and snow, creating different states of water pouring from the sky unexpectedly. The title track on the album reflects the mood during this period quite well, reminding me a lot of Louis Andriessens's Golven (Waves) soundtrack which is about the Dutch North Sea. It also hints a bit towards music on the Belgian Igloo label. Palinckx was included on this compilation I posted before.

The entire album consists of jazz that transcends into more experimental improvisational stuff, almost creating cinematographic pieces. Some of the pieces are quite beautiful. The improvisation scene of The Netherlands always merges trained classical and jazz music, with distinct Dutch melodies and anarchic improvisation (examples could be: Instant Composers Pool, The Ex, Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, Nine Tobs, Willem Breuker etc etc).

Although March is not here yet... it will come in a blink of an eye. We are bracing ourselves here in Holland!

Get it HERE

Simon Vinkenoog - Liefhebben, Zien en Proeven (Poezie en Muziek) -1966- (LP, Sigma Relax), Netherlands

             Merry Christmas and an Archaic New Year to all followers and friends of the blog! 

This record (which is rare as hen's teeth) is one of the most important documents of the Dutch countercultural psychedelic movement of the sixties. 

Simon Vinkenoog (18 July 1928 – 12 July 2009) was a Dutch author, poet, elocutionist and pioneer of the psychedelic revolution of the last century. He published his first poems around 1950 and kept working his way into the Dutch literary world from the fifties on. In 1959 he willingly tried LSD under medical supervision and later became a protagonist in the world of mind-altering substances, Dutch literature, happenings, free music and advocated for a world in which people lived in astonishment of the universe we belong to and the richness of culture and nature on planet earth. Because his early involvement in the counter culture combined with his literary career, Simon Vinkenoog can be seen as a European example of the Beat Generation. In 1966 he hosted an iconic poetry manifestation in the Royal theatre Carré showcasing a new generation of fresh poets in the Netherlands. If you understand German, check Simon Vinkenoog out in this panel on LSD and Gegenkultur in Europe in the sixties.

William S. Burroughs with Simon Vinkenoog

In 1968 Vinkenoog took part in the making of the mythical album Woorden (words) together with two other Dutch poets where free form music was combined with poetry. The album was only distributed through literary book stores and the first ´coffeeshops´ of Amsterdam, back when those places where not yet polluted with mass tourism and irresponsible behaviour. In that time Amsterdam was an important international centre of free-thinkers, alternative gatherers and hippies comparable to San Francisco in the US. It's ironic that Amsterdam is often perceived as a freedom city because of the endeavours of sixties and seventies and that now almost nothing relates to those values anymore. The Woorden record is seen by many as one of the most striking examples of the Dutch hippie-movement and spaced out sixties. Also it's one of the most rare albums on the legendary NWW-List. 

Anyway, this even rarer record here dates from before Woorden. Liefhebben, zien en proeven (meaining: To love, see and taste) is from 1966 and in record collecting circles often regarded as a literary album. But as the back of the record reveals, this is not just spoken word. The album was recorded on the 30th of December 1966 (literally 50 years ago!) in the in Dutch Royal Tropical Insitute and contains sitars, tabla's, gamelan gongs, indonesian flutes, indian bells etc. It's interesting how the interest in cultures and ethnic instruments of these crazy dope smoking youngsters was still regarded within an anthropological frame. The Tropical Institute was probably delighted that young people wanted to explore their colonial possessions and dig into exotic cultures. 

I know most of you will not understand a word from this album, but hopefully you can appreciate it with the given context. The poems are about life, death, rebirth, love, human potential and much much more. One of the poems is about DMT (in 1966 already.. man). I think I saw him one time in my life during a demonstration at the Dam square of Amsterdam on a stage speaking against the ban of magic mushrooms in Netherlands. Vinkenoog did millions of things in his lifetime: he wrote numerous poems, many novels and also frequently wrote on so called 'pseudo-scientific' topics in various magazines. It's important to note that Vinkenoog is not just some hippie-poet, he is ranked amongst all the important writers of the Dutch literature too. 

He made two albums with Spinvis (the Dutch Beck?) in the 00's which were his last musical recordings. In the video below I included scans from a little sixties underground book that Vinkenoog compiled. It was called Moksha, a timebook for the alteration of consciousness and drugs. Simon Vinkenoog, a very inspiring person and icon of the Dutch counter-culture. From the liner notes:

I wish that the human heart would beat faster. I wish that I could tell everyone everything I know at once: how the battle between light and dark is won by the light. I wish that people carried the sun with them. I wish that cheerful light would shine from all houses. I wish so many things, I still want so much: peace, peace, peace. I can't say it differently than with words: I don't want to persuade, convince or entice - I Just want you to listen, so you can find your own answers. Listen. And also stop the record, so you can listen to yourself! Have a good trip!

Get it HERE

Guus Janssen - Tast Toe -1981- (LP, Claxon), Netherlands

A year ago I posted an album by Dutch improvisation pianist Guus Janssen on the blog and here is a second one: Janssen is a frequent member of the Instant Composers Pool and the key figure in Dutch piano improvisation. He always breaks down different genres into an unclassifiable mixture. He plays jazz, classical music, circus-melodies, pop, but never really ends up in either one of these genres.

Tast Toe, meaning something like help yourself (it also refers to hitting the keys of a piano in a weird linguistic way) is another album in which Janssen rapidly creates his accessible impro tunes while dissecting free-jazz into carnival melodies while entering chamber music realms while simultaneously staying on all borders. I guess it's only to be noticed when giving this a more proper listen, because at first glance it's a bit of conventional piano play. Nevertheless this is another interesting piece of the Amsterdam based Claxon records puzzle. Claxon was one of the best Dutch labels for improvisation music active at the end of the seventies and the eighties. All these pieces were recorded live in Amsterdam in 1981.

Get it HERE

Jacques van Erven - Tunes & Scenery (Hard To Whistle) -1984- (Cassette, Eksakt 010), Netherlands

Jacques van Erven is a Dutch Artist and multi-intrumentalist from the city Eindhoven. He had some releases on the great impro-jazz and new wave fusion label Eksakt from the city Tilburg of which there are some compilations on the blog. Van Erven was also featured on this Christmas compilation and was a member of this obscure project.

Tunes & Scenery (Hard To Whistle) was his earliest solo effort and shows a geat combination of different moods and styles. It brings together synth sounds, cheap casio's, Jew's Harp, guitars, all types of drum sounds, improvisation and wave influences spread over fifteen songs. It reminds me of music somewhere in-between acts like Ptôse, Achwghâ Ney Wodei and Woo mixed with some new wave reminiscent of André de Saint-Obin. Very weird, very good and unclassifiable due to its variety of styles. Nice home-made Rock in Opposition with analogue synthesizers recorded on a four-track. A perfect release for Eksakt and pretty unique stuff from Holland I'd say.

It's not always May!

Update May 2020: Link removed due to reissue on Futura Resistenza Label

Theo Loevendie Consort - Chess! -1972- (LP, BASF), Netherlands

This record is most likely the first real jazz album I've put on the blog so far, but it's a real classic in its genre. Theo Loevendie is a Dutch jazz clarinetist and composer and has been one of the key figures in Dutch jazz and improvisation since the sixties. In the early seventies Loevendie created two albums under the name Theo Loevendie Consort: Chess and Mandela (both have been reissued on a CD which is also out of print).

The Theo Loevendie Consort is basically a Dutch supergroup of jazz and impro musicians. The group consisted of trombonist Willem van Manen, icon of Dutch jazz: saxophonist Hans Dulfer, bass clarinet wizard Harry Sparnaay (to be found on this blog), pianist Leo Cuypers, bass player Arjen Gorter, saxophonist Leo van Oostrom and drummer Martin van Duynhoven (who was also in Group 1850, one of the best psychedelic Dutch bands from the sixties and seventies). You can find all these musicians on countless albums over at Inconstant Sol, as well as more Loevendie stuff.

Chess! is an important album in the Dutch (free)jazz realm, but to my personal taste not the best effort you'd expect from a supergroup like this. I suppose it was hard for them to find the right balance between their melody foundations and free jazz outburst and the space everyone had within that division. But then again maybe that's exactly what they tried to do according to the liner notes, namely:  "Anthitheses, depicting a fight between worn-out traditions and the modern improvisation approach". For example the first piece chess is a nice combination of a simple happy melody and free jazz. The piece brasilia combines a Brazilian-like melody with chaotic saxophone bursts. All in all the whole is a cool example of Dutch free jazz and does grasp the groovy spirit of that particular time in Holland. Maybe it's just that one has too high expectations being confronted with a supergroup of this degree.

Get it HERE

Guus Janssen - On The Line -1980- (LP, Claxon), Netherlands

Guus Janssen (Heiloo, 1951) is a Dutch composer and pianist. He is a somewhat lesser known figure coming from the Dutch free improvisation and jazz scene. Janssen is known to approach music in a very open way and to blur the borders of  musical genres like classical, jazz, impro or popular music. He is a frequent member of the famous Dutch impro-jazz ICP Orchestra. Since the early seventies he has been collaborating with most of the renowned Dutch improvisation musicians like Harry Sparnaay, Theo Loevendie, Han Bennink, Ab Baars and others. Nowadays Janssen is still involved in many musical projects.

On this album Janssen displays his solo piano improvisation efforts. There are lots of unexpected piano movements and manoeuvres present combined with pieces written by himself. On The Line came out on the great Dutch record label of improvised music Claxon which featured a.o. records by Michel Waisvisz, Maarten Altena and Moniek Toebosch. All of that stuff is really worth it to check out and a must for fans of Dutch impro music.

Get it HERE

Misha Mengelberg - Pech Onderweg -1978- (LP, BVHaast 016), Netherlands

Misha Mengelberg is a Ukranian born renowned Dutch pianist, composer and Fluxus artist. He is one of the key figures in  Dutch improvisation music and free-jazz. He founded the ICP (Instant Composers Pool) Orchestra together with Dutch jazz musicians Willem Breuker and Han Bennink. Mengelberg has played with all of the important impro musicians of the world like Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton and many more. He has been featured on hundreds of recordings.

Pech Onderweg, Trouble on The Road (actually trouble on the way) is a solo album of Mengelberg which came out on Willem Breuker's BVHaast label. This label became one of the key labels for Dutch jazz and impro music during the seventies and eighties. This is a very nice solo endeavour showing his improvisational skills and absurd humor in the titles of the songs.The ICP and BVHaast legacy might uncover the very essense of the good side to being Dutch. You can watch the ICP video below to get an idea. And Misha Mengelberg is starring in it.

Get Pech Onderweg HERE