Al Mati - Some Shit -1981- (LP, Private Pressing), Netherlands/Portugal

Al Mati was the mysterious pseudonym project by Portuguese musician Alberto Mesquita who recorded this album in 1981 with guest appearances by Victor Enes on Guitar and Yolanda Mesquita (the voice on 'Love You Baby'). The album was privately issued here in Holland. There is nearly no information to be found about this album whatsoever but apparently the musicians were immigrants from Portugal that had settled in The Netherlands during the early 80's.

Since this record is fetching some astronomical prices online and happened to cross my path I thought it was only right to digitize it to demystify this a bit. Unlike the title "Some Shit" suggests in combination with the crazy artwork, the music on here is not too adventurous and quite average. The music consists of pretty much conventional pop music and classic 70's folk with some rock 'n roll slows by way of electronic adaptations. Musically not that special, aside from the couple of enjoyable tracks that are more intricately composed or the ones which are sang in Portuguese.

However I still think that Al Mati has its place in the world of obscure private releases and the home-recording history, specially in the Portuguese context and ofcourse even more as a Portuguese music relic issued in The Netherlands. Nevertheless it's not as interesting as the great One and Poli album on which Portuguese musician Zé Salvador participated which was issued by the Gerrit Rietveld Art Academy in Amsterdam in 1985.

Anyway, the record was a bit crackly, but I guess no other copy will surface in the near future. The music reminds me a bit of the Peter Roos album I posted before or the Venezuelan private pressing by Vinicio Adames from ages ago, although a little less weird though...

So instead of spending a fortune on a copy, just put this on during a lazy morning. And make up your own mind about its value.

(Who can direct me to some interesting Portuguese stuff from the 80's? Tape culture for example. There must be more than what I could find so far! I would appreciate it!)

Get it HERE

Loek Dikker - Love Cry And Super Nimbus -1970- (LP, Private Release), Netherlands

Finally I tracked down one of the last mythical lost records from the Dutch free-jazz and avant-garde 70's realm that I tried to find for many years. I have never seen a copy of this record before, probably also not many copies of this private release were pressed. It's also not listed on Discogs. I only knew that it existed somehow, but had no idea how it sounded nor what the cover looked like. I apologize in advance for the somewhat vague pictures I took, since the record comes in a very fragile and quite large foldout poster that was hard to scan (the cover reminds me of Soft Machine's first album cover). It's a hyper rarity that could have easily been included on the NWW-List (which is receiving some increased attention at the moment, with yet unknown consequences).

Love Cry and Super Nimbus was one of the first efforts by Amsterdam born jazz pianist Loek Dikker who was supported by a group of great Dutch musicians (posing like some sort of football team on the record cover). Loek Dikker would become more famous later in the 70's with his Waterland Ensemble that played very intricately composed jazz suites. He would also start composing for cinema in a later stage of his career.

For this particular recording, still hailing from the cosmic provo and hippie high-times in Holland, the line-up is Loek Dikker (piano, percussion) Erik-Jan Kromhout (violin), Aimée Versloot (alt-violin), Indonesian-Dutch musician Wim Essed (bass), Ralph de Jong (drums) and Pierre Courbois (drums). Courbois is also known from his amazing experimental progressive rock and free-jazz group Association (P.C.).

The record starts with a recording of an old gramophone recording of Gloomy Sunday (Hungarian: Szomorú vasárnap), also known as the Hungarian suicide song, a piece composed by Hungarian pianist Rezső Seress in 1933. The urban myth was that many people that commited suicide had been listening to the song and it also became an exemplification of the widespread reputation of the Hungarian people having a melancholic nature. The piece was popularized due to the interpretation by Billie Holiday.

When the actual music starts we hear a varied effort mostly leaning on heavy improvisation and  deranged classical music meeting the modern composed "avant-garde". Not only are instruments used unconventionally, the record also uses collage, found and existing sounds, backwards played Indian singing and has a piece where the listener is encouraged to be in control of panneling the music from left to right on his or hers stereo listening equipment. We have entered a world of musical deviance and playful provocation where cosmological tuning and cucumber drums are reigning. What the music actually means we read from the liner notes:

"Side 1

Trauriger Sonntag (Gloomy Sunday) is the attempt of a semi-authentic reconstruction of a much loved 78-rpm record.

Cosmoligical Tuning 1: a summary of more than an hour. Collage. Ralph de Jong handles the drums.

Cucumbers is a work by bass player Wim Essed that was written for the Calvé quartet. Ralph de Jong on drums.

Smooth Triangular is a graphic piece by Loek Dikker, mostly written in triangular shaped notes. Pierre Courbois: percussion. Followed by a commercial and non-fitting accompaniment.

Side 2 

Cadmium Primrose is a little musical work by pianist Dikker. Pierre plays drums.

Emptiness is a full Concert Hall is a strong example of desk work by composer Loek Dikker. The writing time of the piece has costed only slightly more time than the execution. Aimée Versloot is playing alt-violin here.

Vioolkonsert in A van J.S. Bach is being played in the ever popular "choose your music"-version. With the help of the balance knob on your stereo amplifier you can make what you want. Have fun with Ralph and Johann. 

Cosmological Tuning 2 a version with Pierre Courbois

Souer Grapes by W. Essed is based on problems with starting and archetypes"

So much can still be said about this album! Another missing link of the Dutch cosmic free-jazz and improvisation history. ps I just realized almost 50 years are between the birth of this release and that I'm posting this here today.

Get it HERE

Ceddo + Derschau ‎- Grüne Rose Live -1981- (LP, Saguitarius), Germany

In the early eighties punk, post-punk and new wave paved the way for new generations and created quite a musical break with the previous generations and their more (psych) rock fueled sixties and seventies. Some artists from the psychedelic era had quite some difficulties reinventing themselves in the new punk times. Daevid Allen, front man of the legendary Gong for example, made a dark album called The Death of Rock and Other Entrances in 1982. A different approach than he had before. Somewhere in the nineties when a neo-psych revival changed everything, the legends of the sixties returned fully to their spaced out selves of their prime.

But some musicians and bands were never influenced by external factors and kept making music during the eighties like it was 1972. Some real psychedelic pearls were actually made in the eighties, especially in what we could call late-krautrock. In germany there was quite a continuation of the krautrock scene and legendary pioneers as well as unknown musicians kept playing in their new or old bands. This resulted in many privately released albums, some of which are nearly impossible to find today.

Ceddo was a jazz fusion trio from Dortmund fronted by guitarist Jochen Strumpf. In 1981 they released this Live album with psychedelic jams and poetry which was recorded in Dortmund on 08.05.1981 and 9 + 10 5. 1981 im Gasthof zur Mühle, Ascheberg. They worked together with the countercultural poet Christoph Derschau. He was influenced o.a. by Bukowski and other US underground literature. The lyrics of Grüne Rose (Green rose) on this album are dealing o.a. with a corrupted state, environment, psychedelic rock music, existence and more. It's quite a good freak out album actually. If you understand German you might hear some echo's of political krautrock bands like Floh de Cologne, Von Brühwarm Theater or Ton Steine Scherben.

Grüne Rose. Das Ziel des Todestriebs ist nicht die Zerstörung an sich, sondern die Aufhebung des Bedürfnisses nach Zerstörung - Herbert Marcuse

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

Peter Roos - Klimax -1983- (LP, Private Pressing), Sweden

This is a very obscure self-made minimal synth wave record from one Peter Roos from Sweden. He published this record of which the cover is hand-made out of cardboard in very small quantities. Some information written by Peter Roos I found on Discogs:

Hi, the thing is that I ordered 500 vinyls. only around 150 copies came out to market. Every single sleeve is handmade..most by me, but also my girlfriend and another friend at the time. Think we managed around 200. So I still have some left. In the late 90´s I threw away many(just the record)´cause no interest at all in many years and needed some space. Lately there has been some interest and have also given away to charity. Kind regards. Peter Roos. 

This record has a very distinct "home-made" solo-project feeling to it. Some of the songs are quite experimental whilst others are a bit poppy. It does have something contemporary to it as well. Most songs have vocals in Swedish. It reminds me a bit of the Venezuelan private wave record by Vinicio Adames that I posted some time ago. I think that the drumcomputer used on Klimax has to be a Soundmaster SR-88, one of the greatest and most primitive drum machines from the early eighties (also used by The Actor for example).

Peter Roos made one other self-released album in 1984. His primitive electronic music can be placed within the Swedish DIY scene of the eighties next to Njurmännen, 18:e Oktober, Porno Pop Moon Family, Konduktör Records bands etc. It's just not as dark as many of those acts. Nevertheless a great album!

Get it HERE

Circles - The Third Cycle -1987- (LP, Einhorn Music), Germany

This is the third and last privately released Circles album that came out during the eighties. Circles is a Frankfurt based late-cosmic- krautrock and NDW band that consists of the duo of Mike Bohrmann and Dierk Leitert. Also they had a side-project called Das Organisierte Chaos. I posted their first album some time ago, but I recommend you to get your own vinyl copy since it has been beautifully reissued lately.

The Third Cycle is the most ambient and cosmic album of Circles. It moves away from the sometimes wonky chaoticness of the first albums and travels to much subtler electronic spaces to drift into. Still the distinctive Circles ingredients are present: Ash Ra Tempel like guitars, kosmische electronics and dark eighties sounds expected from the DIY tape-culture. Actually I think this album is a real classic and we can only hope it gets reissued too. Recently German label Bureau B has also issued a semi-unreleased album by Circles called Structures. I think it stayed somewhat under the radar so I recommend you to check it out.

Highly Recommended!

Get it HERE

Donated by SonicA

D.O.C. (Das Organisierte Chaos) - Same -1983- (LP, Einhorn Music), Germany

So here is the next post within the realm of the kraut-synth duo of Dierk Leitert and Mike Bohrmann. This time it's the first album of their Circles side-project called Das Organisierte Chaos, also released on their own Einhorn Music label. The first two Circles albums have actually just been reissued through Mental Experience records (Guerssen). According to the liner notes of the reissues, Dierk used to live in Amsterdam in the late seventies whilst Mike in Frankfurt. However Circles is a Frankfurt based band which is still active to this day. Musically they existed in-between psychedelic krautrock and the new wave, NDW, industrial stuff from the late seventies and early eighties.

Das Organisierte Chaos has always been described as the more rock or new-wave oriented counterpart of Circles. But basically the musical approach and sounds are the same. D.O.C. had more people involved in the rhythm section, but created a similar amazing mixture of synth experimentation, krautsounds, ambient atmospheres and wave-y guitar textures. I might even think that I like this D.O.C. debut more than the Circles debut from the same year.

It's a nicely balanced album going from rocking extremes to kosmische soundscapes. A real treat serving us the favourite combination of analog synthesizer jams, NDW wonkiness and tripped out krautgrooves.

Get it HERE

Donated by SonicA

Waste of Time - Muziek Uit Zwischenfall -1982- (SP, Private Pressing), Netherlands

Waste of Time was an Amsterdam based Theatre collective of mime artists. They originated in 1974 and created about fifteen productions until 1985. Already in 1974 they used multimedia like music, visual arts and film to accompany the mime playing. Usually plays involved no speech, no story and no moral. Not coincidentally their work seemed to reflect on the powerlessness of communication and human loneliness. Waste of Time used to perform a lot in Belgian cities and small places because they prefered the light-spiritedness of the audience in contrast with the more elitist Amsterdam in-crowd theatre audience. The mime group can be viewed as an early example of innovative Dutch performance art.

The music on this private seven inch single is made by Mike Floothuis and Jaap Lindijer. Much to my surprise I came to the conclusion that these musicians were also part of one of the Netherlands' most obscure and mysterious bands called Danger. Danger released an album in 1973 which was comprised of two side-long tracks of improvisation music (a record very high on my wantlist). It was recorded in the studio of The Hague's music venue Paard van Troje. The music is a strange combination of organ, synths, saxophone and no drums at all. It has a Soft Machine-ish feel, but also brings to mind the impossible to find release by the Dutch band Ellufant, many experimental Krautrockgroups and almost anything on the NWW-List. But all without drums. Very mysterious stuff, I don't own the Danger album but I might upload it to Youtube.

Back to the music on here: Floothuis and Lindijer created this music for Waste of Time's 1982 play called Zwischenfall. It's repetitive Casio-fueled minimalist synth music that tends to get weirder every second. I can imagine this music in combination with the mime-acting in the play. Very cool stuff, reminds me of some of the DIY Dutch eighties Zimbo cassettes and certain parts of Venezuelan electronic musician Angel Rada (the analogy makes no sense context-wise ofcourse).

Get it HERE

Circles - Same -1983- (LP, Einhorn Music), Germany

So we're some days into the new year and I don't have a clue what to post, I've got so much amazing stuff at the moment, don't have much time and I'm trying to only post two releases every month to give this blog some time to exist into this future. Anyway, here is one of many posts around German cult-group Circles which was donated to me by a friend of the blog (Thank you!). This is something I'd never tought I would hear and happy to share.

Circles were a band from Germany that started out in the early eighties and consisted of the duo of Dierk Leitert and Mike Bohrmann. They created a mixture between old psychedelic krautrock grooves, wave-y guitar textures, electronic kosmische sounds, NDW and rock 'n roll. They are a perfect example of the particular period of Germany's early eighties when the influential Krautrock period started to merge with the fresh Neue Deutsche Welle music. Circles released three albums on their own label Einhorn Music and also had side projects like D.O.C. (Das Organisierte Chaos) which was more electronic oriented.

This first album is quite daring and rough in its approach, just like what you'd expect from a debut record. It's an energetic and dense trip full of electronic sounds, weird vocals, psychedelic guitar stuff and much more. Similar things that come to mind are german bands like 39 Clocks, Harmonia, Teflon Fonfara's album Inge In Venedig and American Milwaukee based band F/i. Actually this type of music is also what influences myself the most I guess, a mixture between the hippie-ish psychedelic krautrock music and eighties synth, noise, ambient, industrial type of stuff.

I have red that allegedly there is a reissue of this record coming out on Ultima Thule Records soon. If this happens I will kindly take this link down and link to the website (I hope so, this stuff is incredible!). More Circles and related projects to follow soon on the blog.

Highly Recommended!

UPDATE! Links removed due to the reissue on Mental Experience, a sub-division of Guerssen records.The first and second album of Circles have been reissued on CD and LP. Get them HERE!

Donated by SonicA