Let's start the new year with another special cassette by the Dutch anarchist, free-form home-taping group Dust And The Minds. The band hailed from the surroundings of the small village of Egmond-Binnen and was created by the brothers Fred and John
Valkering who were accompanied by a lot of different other musicians.
The Valkering brothers established their cassette label Egmondse Klank Opsessie (Egmond sound obsession/on session) to release their different musical disguises like Dust And The Minds, Comrades Creating,
Hafre as well as solo works. During the 80's they released dozens of
cassettes of which many were beautifully created and released with DIY
booklets, drawings, posters, unusual packages etc.
Prosperó Año Nuevo (PAN) is an extensive release with over two hours of pure DIY no-wave, post-punk and anarcho-punk sounds that was released for the new year of 1986. Apparently it's a mix between Dust and The Minds and a band with a slightly different line-up called Brenray. The cassettes were housed in a larger book-like case with information on the recording dates and line-up etc.
The output on the Egmondse Klank Opsessie has been vast and mind-blowingly authentic and home-made. The entire surroundings of Egmond and the smaller towns and villages in the province of North-Holland were always a very important fertile soil for (anarcho)punk in The Netherlands. Places like Wormerveer, Koog aan de Zaan, Heiloo, Castricum and their surroundings are some of the birthplaces of the typical Dutch punk sound that incorporates detuned improvisation and noise elements. This in contrast to the usually more structured sound of HC punk or the classic three-chord punk songs.
Some wonderful DIY sounds from 80's Holland. There is a lot more to say about all of this, but it's better to just give this a listen.
The Katharos Foundation was a collective of audio-visual artists and musicians from Tilburg, The Netherlands, established in February 1986. They used performative, conceptual and multi-media aspects in their work which incorporated transgressive elements. There were different musical guises of which a notable one was the industrial Sluagh Ghairm. That band would later turn into the tribal techno act Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia which would gain both domestic and international fame. Some band members were apparently part of Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.
During the phase of the Katharos Foundation exhibitions and concerts took place a.o. alongside bands like Étant Donnés, Coup de Grace and Zombies Under Stress. The Katharos Foundation also functioned as an imprint releasing a number of cassette compilations during their short existence. All in all they can be viewed as another group of industrial culture representatives in The Netherlands.
Καθαρος - Emanation: Treasure The Fertile Soil In This Barren Land, And Receive is a compilation that brings together the different acts under the Katharos umbrella. It displays industrial electronics, home recordings, live recordings and performance sounds. It came with a large booklet with artwork which unfortunately is not included here.
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.
Here's an odd but great one. It took me some time to decipher this cassette since the cover kind of confused me at first. In any case it seems to be a split tape between Scottish home-taper Dion Trevarthen (also known as Square Sun) and Royal Flush, a home-taping act that was released by the Black Death tape label from the small town of Zoetermeer, The Netherlands. Black Death was created by Marcel Tuijenburg. A label which a.o. published compilations of the international home-taping community. The music on this cassette by Royal Flush seems to have been a solo effort by B. du Perron who creates a long dark ambient soundscape.
The other side of the tape consists of some dazzling hypnotic acid drenched electronic music by Dion Trevarthen. Hailing from the village of Aberlady, East Lothian, Trevarthen was part of a psychedelic space-rock group called Sponge along with his two brothers. He also released his own electronic music under the name Square Sun on various international tape labels. One of the most notable releases was the Tierversuche, Das Perfekte Konzept Der Selbstvernichtung tape on the German cassette label IRRE.
Fluorescent Tube Shadows is a mind-bending psychedelic piece of electronic home-taping music. There are many electronic textures, radio waves, rhythms and strange transitions going on. I recommend hearing this loud on some serious speakers and not just some screenspeakers. It has a very immersive deep sound that almost absorbs you. Within home-recordings it illustrates the transition of the 80's minimal synth sound into some of the new electronic music of the 90's, but somehow remains ungraspable. Some other acts that might be alike are Ras.Al.Ghul from Portugal or Delta-Sleep-Inducing Peptide from Germany. Or or or.
It would be great if some label would reissue some Square Sun music, but I guess it's wishful thinking.
Bicycle Repair Man was a one-man home-taping project from the Southern Dutch city of Venray. I think it was a self-released project that was eventually distributed by the Red Rat Recordings cassette label from Utrecht that was created by Otto Grunbauer. The label had quite an extensive catalogue during its run, releasing many compilations as well as music by Merzbow, F/i and many others. However I'm not entirely sure how this cassette ended up on the label.
I assume the name Bicycle Repair Man was taken from a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, but who knows. The music consists of primitive analog electronics, Casio VL-Tone sounds, field recordings, cut-ups, radio fragments and other lost and found sounds in the the true home-taping spirit of the time. The opening piece Life In Berlin starts with John F. Kennedy's iconic speech from 1963 over some paranoid synth-patterns. Eventually the track alters into a cover of the Minny Pops' song R.U. 21?Minny Pops were a Dutch, Amsterdam based post-punk group and cornerstone act of the so called Ultra-scene. They were the only band in Dutch history that was signed to Factory Records during the 80's. The fact that songs by them were covered by home-tapers is another testimony to their influential music.
On the last track of this cassette by Bicycle Repair Man we learn that he also sent music to the Radiola Improvisatie Salon radio program
which played a hugely important role for the home-taping scene in The
Netherlands at the time. It was created by Dutch media wizard, fluxus artist and underground cult-figure Willem de Ridder. The idea of Radiola was that every tape that was sent to the radio
show would be played without being heard in advance. A very unorthodox
and adventurous approach that sometimes led to the discovery of unknown
musicians and which simultaneously gave people who were playing music in their bedroom the
feeling that their music was of importance because they were being played on national radio.
Bicycle Repair Man is another highly obscure project from the Dutch cassette culture of the 80's. It reminds me a bit of the electronic experiments by Arthur Berkhoff.
Since this is the third time that I write about Liza N. Eliaz on this blog I will re-use some of the older texts:
Liza Néliaz (1958 - 2001) was an electronic dance music producer and hardcore techno (terror) DJ originally from Oostende, Belgium. During the late 70's Néliaz started out as musician part of different Belgian avant-garde and new-wave bands. Inthe
80's Neliaz become more involved with the international home-taping
network and contributed her tracks to cornerstone compilations on
pivotal cassette labels like Insane Music (Belgium) and Exart (Netherlands).
By the late 80's, Neliaz started to play a self-invented style of proto-dance music
that somehow connected the DIY spirit of 80's home-taping with new beat
and the upcoming rave culture that would later evolve into established
genres like techno, hardcore and acid house. She was a pioneer (one out
of many ofcourse) in exploring these new musical styles in which perhaps
the most important element was musical continuity. From the 90's onward Liza 'N' Eliaz established herself as an
important hardcore techno DJ in the free party spheres which granted her the underground title of Queen of Terror. The name Liza
was adopted because in those days it used to be a nickname given to
Trans people in Flanders. She used her abilities as a musician for her DJ-sets that were uncompromising, lethal and full of energy. Neliaz lived a nomadic lifestyle dedicated to music until the end of her life. She sadly passed away in 2001.
The cassette that has surfaced here is an odd one. It was dubbed on a blank tape and specially given to Hessel Veldman and his family by Liza during the late 80's when she resided in Holland. First of all it contains the instrumental versions of the first Sensecruise release (not sure if there are any non-instrumental versions since I don't own the "official" Sensecruise part 1 cassette, so can't verify - let me know!). The interesting part is that the cassette continues with some loose tracks that I can partially recognize by checking out other releases, but there are also some tracks that are unknown to me.
Still the fact remains that this is a remarkable set of songs from that late 80's Neliaz sound palette. Quite a treasure, because we repeatedly have no idea whether more music by Liza might be out there. You never know what survived on cassettes of her friends or whether some music was given to befriended DJ's from the time. Her later DJ mixes are still alive on many platforms on the web and seem to inspire many people today and beyond.
Merry Christmas and an Archaic New Year to all Friends and Followers of the blog!
So here it goes, the last post of this year:
Boxghosts is a project I don't know much about. It seems to have been a one person home-taping project that was created in the Dutch town of Venlo in the southern province of Limburg. During the 80's Venlo was home to a small but lively squatting scene around the recording studio and music venue Bauplatz which was also connected to the town's most important punk and home-taping cassette label called Limbabwe. During those years many different national and international underground bands played the Bauplatz venue like Einstürzende Neubauten, De Brassers and The Ex.
The Boxghosts project however, doesn't seem to have had a notable relation with Bauplatz or Limbabwe Records other than that it was just a home-taping project from the same town. The only trace I could find about Boxghosts is a track that was included on the Seventh Dimension Quasette compilation series that were issued by Zimbo Tapes, a Dutch home-taping label that was about home-made electronic music and (casio) keyboard experiments.
Boxghosts' Innovations Legères (Light Innovations) was packaged in a nice grey carton box with a religious touch to its visual presentation (the south of the Netherlands is known for its catholic history). It has some dark and minimalistic music that consists of short atmospheric electronic pieces played on synthesizers and keyboards. It might hint a bit towards the otherworldly electronic music of Enno Velthuys, just less polished. Boxghosts should definitely be another little highlight of the Dutch cassette culture of the 80's.
Gijs Hendriks (Utrecht, 26 februari 1938 - Utrecht, 21 mei 2017) was a Dutch saxophonist and clarinetist who played an important role in the Dutch jazz scene from the 50's until his passing in 2017. During his vast career he played in dozens of different jazz outfits and also contributed to Dutch national radio broadcasts and theatre productions. In 1974 he recorded a groovy album with a supergroup of jazz musicians under the name Gijs Hendriks Band.
The Gijs Hendriks Band consisted of Gijs Hendriks (soprano-, alto-, tenorsax), Leo Goudriaan (trumpet and bass), Lex Cohen (drums), Willem Kühne (electric piano), Daoud Amin (percussionist from New York who also played with Burton Greene), Nippy Noya (percussionist from Indonesian-Japanese descent who also toured with psychedelic band Group 1850) and Nico Langenhuijsen (bass). Many of these musicians played their part in the Dutch jazz scene of the 70's. A scene that wasn't immune for the Dutch hippie revolution (which was kickstarted by the Provo movement during the sixties), the orange free state "anti-monarchy" mentality and the rise of psychedelic substances.
During this period - also in Holland - (like throughout the global "happening" music scenes) - psychedelic jazz and psychedelic rock were combined in free-form music styles, sometimes leaning more to the jazz world and sometimes leaning more to the rock side of the spectrum. Free-form jams could consist of groovy jazz music, fuzzed out guitar tripping, electronic experimentation or any type of combination of these elements. As I write this, the idea here is not to dive into a global encyclopedic overview of the entire world moving and spacing out at the same time, but to open a tiny window to look at these specific musical dynamics in The Netherlands at the time.
Examples of great bands from those days in Holland were a.o. Association P.C. (Dutch-German supergroup led by Pierre Courbois), Ahora Mazda (house band of the Amsterdam hippie venue Fantasio), Hans Dulfer And Ritmo Natural (famous Dutch Jazz saxophonist with a Surinamese rhythm section) and Banten (another Dutch supergroup including notable musicians from Indonesian descent, also on the NWW List). And ofcourse - there is so much more to mention...
The Gijs Hendriks Band is another one of those groups that spontaneously created a recording in the 70's which captured those special times. Nevertheless the album has stayed somewhat under the radar since then. Maybe because of its tendency towards more conventional jazz or maybe the self-released vinyl wasn't overly distributed at all. Whatever the case may be it's quite a nice recording of mostly own compositions where not only Dutch musicians play a role but where musicians like Nippy Noya and Daoud Amin also add musical influences from their cultural background giving this a nice and groovy edge.
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.
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 OrgunaLaboratory 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.
Last year I wrote about Angst and Erik Vloeberghs in a way I can't perfect so I will let the blog-history repeat itself:
Angst was a project by Flemish writer, poet and musician Erik
Vloeberghs. He also did projects such as The Firing-Squad, Kwajongens In Bloei and
The Parts. Vloeberghs was closely related to the Antwerp based industrial and
interdisciplinary art group Club Moral. Frequently he contributed to
their art-zine/fanzine called Force Mental.
His musical subjects mostly
dealt with excess in all kind of forms adapted into musical concepts.
The whole Club Moral sphere is known to have explored the extremes of
human nature and deviant human behaviour within society, both in
cathartic experience and conceptualization, a bit in a similar way to
what industrial and power electronics groups like Whitehouse, Ramleh or Consumer Electronics
did in England. Just somewhat less uniformic in sound (noise) with more
influences from literary poetry and visual arts including performative
aspects and multimedia elements.
De Kreet (The Cry) is a cassette that was named after the famous Edvard Munch painting, also depicted on the cassette cover and was published both in Belgium and Holland in 1982. The recordings are a combination of dialogues, field-recordings, eerie noises and manipulated electronics. Vloeberghs manages to create sounds with certain tensions that invoke a feeling of possession. Gradually the music progresses and passes by the listener as if one was eavesdropping or perhaps only intercepting the sound. A feeling of discomfort, but at the same time causing high-demanding attention as if one needs to listen to catch something of importance. He realized these haunted worlds through music, but it rather feels like some sort of narrative or written text (a story) that comes alive through sound. A soundscape in its truest form.
Vloeberghs remains an obscure figure from the Flemish industrial home-taping era who deserves more attention for his works.
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.
Here is another mysterious project from the Dutch home-taping culture. Hi-Fi was from Amsterdam and apparently related to a small circle of other obscure musicians from the city. Despite its hi-fidelity name, the Zauberklang (magic sound) of the band consists mostly of lo-fi damaged rock and roll and electrified experiments. A Velvet Underground starting point is deconstructed into dark and almost mechanical soundscapes fusing the lines between post-punk and psychedelia. As if The Index, 39 Clocks and the early incarnation of Skullflower would play together in some small basement. Distorted home-taping music with a strong druggy beatnik culture influence for people wearing their sunglasses in the dark. Hold your horse...
Within the Dutch home-taping culture of the 80's there's not a whole lot that sounds like this. A band I can think of is Roy G. Biv that was also Amsterdam based and looked for similar synergies of psychedelic rock with analog drums, synthesizer sounds and trancelike repetitions in their music. Then there was the band Vovokai from the city of Eindhoven that had a similar approach. Last but not least the mysterious Alien project qualifies for the sound as well. It remains surprising that these type of bands existed in the Dutch underground, probably even seperate from each others' influences.
Here's another cassette from the Dutch home-taping circuit of the 80's of which I don't know anything. So far it's a mystery who was behind the Gri Gri project. The only information provided on the cassette is that it came from the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven. During the 80's, the city of Eindhoven and its surrounding areas were home to different post-punk, industrial and home-taping acts like Nasmak, De 6de Kolonne or Jacques van Erven, but the Gri Gri cassette seems to have been an isolated effort.
I'm Not A Performing Monkey displays some nice Casio sounds, NDW influenced madness, weird pop-songs, acoustic improvisation and repetitive minimalist soundscapes. It has a primitive approach that at times almost feels ritualistic, yet also maintaining playfulness. Quite unclassifiable music: some sort of combination of absurd home-taping experimentation and the furthest deconstructed fringes of Rock In Opposition somewhere lost between Achwghâ Ney Wodei, Hora Est, Gefährliche Klons and the previously mentioned Dutch multi-instrumentalist Jacques van Erven.
Here we have another obscurity from the vast Dutch home-taping realm of the 80's. It Is Not A... is a totally unknown project that doesn't give any information other than that it was played by AF + Adulaar. The dark cover artwork that is hidden inside the uniformic beige cassette case only adds to the mysterious nature of this release. There is no year of publication given, nor any indication given about the place where this was made and there's no tracklist.
The minimalist nature of the artwork is also reflected in the music of It Is Not A... Basically the tracks revolve around the drum sounds of the Roland TR-606 in combination with simple basslines that are accompanied by analog synthesizers, voice and tape collage. Another example of a minimal synth bedroom production that stresses simplicity as a protagonist artistic means. It also reflects the cold signature sound approach of the 80's. A total mystery from the Drumatix shadow world...
We advice to play this cassette with loudness, it will give an uncomfortable but paradisiac nerve-shaking ambience to the sound.
