Gnot - Encyclopedia Galactica -1994- (Cassette, Self-Released), Netherlands

 

OCCII Amsterdam 30th Anniversary celebration post!

OCCII (Onafhankelijk Cultureel Centrum In It) is one of Amsterdam's last standing autonomous cultural venues that revolves around the elements of inclusivity, DIY action and a wide variety of live music as well as political and social activities. Besides local indie bands, jazz or world music it's also a home for free improvisation, psychedelic electronics, noise, punk and much more. OCCII emerged from the Amsterdam squatting scene of the 80's and later gained a legal status. It slowly but surely established itself as one of the true free spaces for music heads in town built on community principles.

Thanks to its many volunteers, it has a consistent weekly program of music, children's activities, workshops and talks. Throughout the last 30 years OCCII as a venue has gained a cult status among many international underground musicians that came to play. Simultaneously it has built a broad audience that reaches far beyond Amsterdam. To celebrate the 30th anniversary today, the 14th of September 2022, it's time to share a live recording from the early days of the venue. Moreover, there are not many recordings from that early period, so if someone happens to have any other material from that time feel free to get in touch.

Gnot was an Amsterdam based ever-changing free improvisation and noise rock collective founded by Arjan van Sorge that was active throughout the 90's. During their live performances they also added a few theatrical and dance elements. Encyclopedia Galactica is a live recording of Gnot at OCCII Amsterdam that took place on September the 30th, 1994. On this occassion the band consisted of Arjan van Sorge (Drums), Bram Hessels (Guitar), Peter Verzijl (Guitar), Joe Williamson (Bass) and Pisti Benecz (synthesizer).

The concert was improvised and later divided into individual tracks with different titles and released privately on cassette in limited quantities. It's a little relic from the 90's underground scene of Amsterdam when free improvisation had its connection with the local squatting scene and different artist communes as well as autonomous (pirate) radio stations while the soil was being laid down for local underground venues like OCCII. Some other impro-noise acts from around those days were the Amsterdam based ex-Yugo acts of a.o. Gone Bald and De Reizende Verkoper and ofcourse the many ofshoot acts of the late great The Ex.

Long live the OCCII! 

This post is dedicated to everyone that has played a part at OCCII over the last 30 years.

Check out OCCII Amsterdam today.

From the collection Allard Pierson/NPI

Get it HERE

Clock DVA - 1610 83 - Live At De Gigant Apeldoorn, 16-10-83 (Tape, Unofficial Release), Netherlands/UK

 

 

On the treshold of the end of this 16th of October I thought it's nice to share this Clock DVA live rarity that was recorded in Holland on the 16th of October of 1983. 

Clock DVA is ofcourse the brainchild of Adi Newton, a subversive band from Sheffield named after the Russian gang-slang influences in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. A band that was very impactful and influential in the shaping of the English (industrial?) sound of the 80's. They started off by releasing home experiments on cassettes in 1978 and gradually evolved into a proper band with members that had played with Cabaret Voltaire, members that later joined Heaven 17 as well as The Box to name a few bands. Throughout various periods in the 80's Clock DVA played dance powered new wave and post-punk music guided by feedback, dark vocals, tapeloops, a complex rhythm section as well as treated trumpet sounds and other experimenation. From 1983 Newton founded a new band called The Anti-Group (T.A.G.C.) that was even more about sonic experiments, audiovisual elements, clustering self created industrial jazz sounds, electronic extremes, technological research, psychology, human nature and different unusual cosmologies with each other. By the late 80's and even the last decades of this century Clock DVA returned with mostly EBM and electro sounds accompanied by various hypnotic audiovisual live experiences.

During the so called "band-phase" Clock DVA played many concerts throughout Europe. In The Netherlands they found quite some following and played many gigs including the first edition of the legendary Pandora's Music Box Festival in Rotterdam. Apparently the same year they played a concert at the venue De Gigant in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn, which was nicely recorded and unofficially, yet beautifully, released on a self-designed and hand-painted limited cassette that came with different unique photographs of the gig.

On this occassion the band consisted of Adi Newton (Voice and Trumpet), John Valentine Carruthers (Guitar), Paul Browse, (Saxophone, Keys), Dean Dennis (Bass) and Nick Sanderson (Drums). The recording vividly captures the pre-show ambience of the night, the live concert and a vibrant audience. A nice relic and another rarity that might be of interest to Clock DVA fans of all sorts. 

Get it HERE

Amalgam - 1978-1981 -1991- (Cassette, Black Point), Czech Republic

Amalgam 1978-1981 features the recordings of a series of concerts of this project led by the Czech drummer and percussionist Vlastimil Marek, along with a variety of guests that range from renowned Czech progressive rock musicians and ethnomusicologists active in the country’s underground scene to a rare participation at that time of an international guest like Mohan Lal.

The recording on the A-side of the tape stems from Amalgam’s participation at the Prague Jazz Days festival held at the Lucerna concert hall on the 19th may 1978. The occasion brought together Marek’s orientally inclined percussive music with the members of the progressive rock band Švehlík, which included Pavel Richter, Luboš Fidler and Alexandr Hajdovský along with the participation of the Indian tabla player Mohan Lal, one of the first foreign guests to play the festival. This first part depicts the inclination towards non-western musical traditions, in this case by Marek and its fusion with avant-garde rock bands like Švehlík, a style at that time already popularized in "the West" by musicians like John McLaughlin or bands like Tri Atma and Embryo for example. In a sense, such music is representative of a legacy of occidental musicians prone to experiment with oriental modes and percussion in order to escape from the constraining aspects of western music towards free and varied forms of music incorporating a clear tendency towards improvisation.

The first half of the B-side was recorded at the sports hall Na Folimance in Prague a year later featuring Czech music-ethnologist and multi-instrumentalist Jiří Mazánekon on acoustic guitar and voice, and Milan Valenta on the violin. The second half was recorded at Baráčnická Rychta also in Prague and the liner notes only name Vlastimil Marek’s use of tapes and percussion along the participation of a series of unknown guests.

While working on his solo percussion projects, Marek has also played with well known rock in opposition bands like MCH Band, Švehlík and Extempore, all of which have included Pavel Richter as a member. In this sense we may appreciate the diverse network of musicians of different genres which participated in the country’s underground scene, resulting in the creation of a fertile terrain for the development of non-conventional approaches towards a free music conception despite the ungoing political repression of the country at that time.

The first side of this tape was released as the second half of the CD Švehlík & Amalgam – Lucerna 19. Května 1978 in 2017 by Galén, a book publisher and record label from Prague.

 By Juan Vacas - RNR 

Get it HERE

13 - 11 - Temporization -1988- (Cassette, TN/N 001), Poland

13 - 11 were a one-off improvisational outfit from Warsaw that consisted of Monika Szczecińska (Percussion), Bolek Błaszczyk (Cello and Keyboards), Michał Rollinger (Saxophone), Sernik (Tape, Guitar) and Jarek Siwiński (Keyboards). The group was named after the date on which they played this live-opus in Warsaw on the 11th of November 1988 at the Riviera-Remont Klub. Simultaneously, the 11th of November is the Polish National Independence Day on which Poland gained autonomy from the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires in 1918. Whether that plays a role on this cassette is unclear.

When looking at the members of this group the name of Bolek Błaszczyk provides the most context for me. Błaszczyk is a cellist that played in several important Polish underground groups like Legendarne Ząbki. He also played together with the magical Rock In Opposition outfit Cukor, Bila Smert' (Цукор Бiла Смерть) from the Kiev underground scene (Ukraine). You can hear their collaboration on their beautiful album called Selo from 1993.

13 - 11 is a project that can be placed in the light of the Polish experimental underground of the 80's, the extensive Polish jazz and improvisation history and in the larger context of the Eastern European Rock In Opposition tradition. Even though the sound fidelity of this obscure tape is not very high the band displays a wonderful interplay of improvisational jazz, ambient electronics and cinematographic sound collage all subtly based on the city of Warsaw and the temporality of different places and their atmospheres. It's almost a soundtrack to a non-existing film at times. The music was recorded live as a continuous opus of which the compositions flow into each other. Because of that it was not easy to index this tape, so I left some tracks to transition into the following track. The music reminds me of their peer-band Kirkut-Koncept that also played in a similar style. Somehow the 90's project Kaddish by Towering Inferno also comes to mind, maybe because of its thematic approach.

A lo-fi sound quality cassette from behind the iron curtain again, but this truly is another masterpiece of the Polish underground of the 80's.

This tape was limited to 40 copies.

Highly recommended!

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

Get it HERE

Korai Öröm - Live -199X- (Cassette, Self-Released), Hungary

Korai Öröm are a psychedelic and tribal band from Hungary that started out in the early 90's in the wake of the fall of the iron curtain and the end of the socialist system. At that time the gates of Eastern Europe were flooded with new sounds that came into the newly liberated countries and the neo-psychedelic 90's hit harder than anyone would have imagined. Tribal gatherings, free festivals and dance music styles changed the musical landscape and pirate radio stations (in the case of Hungary Tilos Radio meaning Forbidden Radio) started to transmit the music of the new underground and the neo-psychedelic revolution.

Korai Öröm was a band with many members that played free-flow jams that were a mix of psychedelic rock, tribal rhythms, electronics, downtempo and experimental sounds. The tradition of Hungarian jam music and the channeling of a free form stream of music can be traced back to the Shamanic rock group Vágtázó Halottkémek that can be seen as the originator of the genre within the Hungarian underground.

During the 90's Korai Öröm became increasingly more known playing many festivals as well as concerts outside of Hungary. They created some iconic albums during their first decade capturing the 90's underground mentality in a re-opened democratic Hungary that was searching to realize its new potential. It was the moment in which music was here. Music was now. Music was liberating. This rare tape is a collection of obscure unknown live recordings by the band from the mid 90's capturing the communal aspect of the Hungarian underground at the time through some lo-fi psychedelic jams. It reminds me somewhat of the Serbian psychedelic band Igra Staklenih Perli from Belgrade.

Get it HERE

Vágtázó Halottkémek (Galloping Coroners) - Live and Practice -1986- (Tape), Hungary

Vágtázó Halottkémek (VHK), in English Galloping Coroners, in German Rasende Leichenbeschauer is a Hungarian shamanistic noise-rock band. They are artistically rooted in Hungarian mythological stories, ancient Hungarian imagery and cosmic theories. They started out in the end of the seventies, but only released their first proper albums by the end of the eighties when those possibilities came to existence for these kind of bands from behind the iron curtain. During the early eighties they did manage to put a song on the legendary international sampler "Fix Planet" (1981) compiled by NDW legends Der Plan. They were featured alongside bands as Esplendor Geometrico from Spain and Fra Lippo Lippi from Norway. Der Plan describes the song on the back of Fix Planet as:

"The name of the band means "whizzing dead spys" and we don't dare telling who they are. Two of us met two of them once, we were all drunk and it was in Budapest, Hungary's strange capital."

As for the Music: It's the recording of two concerts in 1985 and 1986 in Budapest and two rehearsal songs. The songs are recognizable from their official albums which I suggest you should check out (not sure where) before you listen to these live versions drenched in white noise. I consider these albums to be at least among the top ten best albums from Eastern Europe from the eighties. The music can be defined as instinctive primeval music eliberating the elementary powers of nature creating ourselves and revolting to its high completion in a free spontaneity and overwhelming energy.

To me this is really one of Hungary's finest bands. I've seen them play live last summer in Budapest which was one of the best concerts I had seen in a while. They had reformed and had recorded their latest album called Veled Haraptat Csillagot! / Bite The Stars! It's still in print so get that while you can!

Get this historical tape HERE