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

Various Artists - Opus '72 -1972- (LP, Radio Nederland), Netherlands

After Opus '70 and Opus '71 that I posted on the blog, here is Opus '72 introducing modern composers and compositions from the Netherlands in 1972. The Opus series were distributed to foreign radio stations to promote Dutch contemporary composed music. The series are essential for exploring Dutch avant-garde and contemporary composed classical music of the previous century.

The first programme consists of a long piece by Rob du Bois inspired by Romanian composer Alexander Hrisanide . The piece requires a pianist not only to play the piano but also an electronic organ, a toy-piano and a large tom-tom. It's an interesting musical piece in which strange piano sounds are the centre.

The second programme consists of pieces by Ton de Leeuw (which I posted before) and Tristan Keuris. De Leeuw's piece is inspired by Indian music and thought in which a flute, played by Abbie de Quant, plays the main role. De Leeuw who studied ethnomusicology was the teacher of Tristan Keuris. Keuris' piece is created for alto-saxophone and an intuitively responding orchestra.

Get it HERE
 

Various Artists - Une Autre Façon d'écouter la Musique -1986- (Tape, Igloo), Belgium

This is a promotional compilation tape of the Belgian label Igloo. Igloo was founded in 1978 by
Daniel Sotiaux and initially focused on contemporary composed, strange electronic and avant-garde music until the mid-eighties when it changed its profile to contemporary jazz music.

This cassette from 1986 is also pretty much jazz oriented and showcases a variety of bands and releases on the Igloo label. I'm quite sure almost all of these albums are to be found already, but let's say we can still use this compilation as a guide through the releases on Igloo of the mid-eighties. I wasn't too familiar with the label to be honest. Although some tracks on this compilation are pretty corny, it still shows the impro and jazz scene that was active in Belgium and Brussels in the Eighties. Igloo as a label is comparable to other Belgian labels like Disques du Crépuscule or Crammed Discs that always moved in-between impro, jazz, classical and RIO stuff.

This compilation shows the more safe side of a Belgian scene that had more adventurous bands like Aksak Maboul or Univers Zero operating in the same period. But there are some highlights on this compilation like Julverne and Real Live Orchestra. The coolest part of the compilation is that there are impro-jazz interludes with a girl telling us in English with a French accent which song we've just heard. It gives it a nice Bruxelles eighties chicness which is cool.

Get it HERE

De Afvalbanden - Same -1981- (Cassette), Netherlands

From the liner notes:

After owning an Akai 4000 for over a year, I have several reel tapes full of used, unusable and unused pieces of sound and music. The choice between buying new reel tapes or to erase them leads to a compromise: publishing them. With that 1 hour of experiment. Instrumental, vocal, neuropop and real cover versions, pieces of audiotape of a VHS and a slide-show, in short: the household waste of the home industry. May 1981.

Apparently Peter Mertens was behind De Afvalbanden, which means The Trash Tapes. He used to be a member of early Minny Pops and also of The Young Lions, which means he was part of the core of the so called Ultra movement in Holland. This cassette is another lost piece of the vast Dutch home-taping underground. De afvalbanden is a solo effort and DIY collage of buzzing primitive synthesizers, strange vocals, guitar plucking, tape manipulation, silly songs and unidentified sounds. All taking place in a netherworld inside of a garbage can (so it sounds).

The cover of the cassette is made up of a transparent piece of plastic with trash drawn on it. It is combined with a cut-out piece of trash bag highlighting the drawing in grey. The ultimate cover for The Garbage Tapes I'd say. It is very much a product of the early eighties home-taping culture due to its essence being rooted in the medium of the cassette. Listen to the mysterious trash tapes yourself!

Get it HERE

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

Ton Bruynèl / Dick Raaijmakers / Peter Struycken - Geluid <=> Kijken -1971- (3x Flexi and Book, Stedelijk Museum), Netherlands

*Archaic Inventions 3 Years Anniversary Post*

This book was published in 1971 by the Stedelijk Museum (Museum of Modern Art) in Amsterdam for the exhibition Geluid < = > Kijken, or Sound < = > Sight. It contained three flexi-discs of artists that were involved. Ton Bruynèl, Dick Raaijmakers and Peter Struycken were notable Dutch artists experimenting with electronic sounds balancing on the fringes of science, art and music.

For this exhibition they created installations trying to transcend the auditory realm into the visual. The music is for example derived from speakers used as an instrument generating sounds through their scientific components and abilities. The loudspeaker as an instrument has also been used by John Cage in certain compositions. Here is a short overview of the works of the three artists. 

Ton Bruynel’s subject is an object: visually it is a square in which the visitor finds himself among objects which are, in a sense, scale models of the room itself. The sound is derived from the size, the shape (cubic) and the material (steel) of the objects; it is subsequently stored on tapes which return it to the cubes. The succession of sound structures knows neither beginning nor end. Due to its reverberation against the hard (steel) walls, the sound identifies with the surrounding space to a high degree, just as it identifies with the material.

Dick Raaijmakers elecits a dialogue between sound and visual motion in a series of loudspeakers combined with steel balls, spheres or small metal rectangles. The subject of the dialogue is the unmasking of the loudspeaker. ‘The loudspeaker communicates in a very elementary fashion – it speaks and it listens.’ writes Dick Raaijmakers elsewhere in this catalogue. 

Peter Struycken is concerned with the problem of how to obtain variations in large numbers of structures built up of similar component parts. Under certain conditions a relatively slight variation in a structural rule can bring about a high degree of variation in the visual and auditory effect. Hi Image and Sound programm I, is a model in which he investigates those conditions. The methods are similarly applied to image – changing in time – and sound.

Geluid  <=> Kijken is a great Dutch avant-garde document containing some harsh noise, electronic and weirdly generated sounds and it must have been one of the more interesting multidisciplinary exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum in the early seventies. The book came with a fold out panel of all of Peter Struycken’s generated patterns. Scans of the whole book with information in Dutch and English are included in the file.

Get it HERE

Donated by Kim

Pierre Courbois - Myria' Poda -1975- (LP, Universe Productions), Netherlands

Pierre Courbois (Nijmegen, 1940) is a Dutch drummer known from the great Dutch/German prog-fusion band Association and Association P.C. He played with many different figures from the European impro-jazz and jazz rock scene from the seventies onwards.

Despite the hidious cover this record is a true experimental masterpiece. Probably because of the cover it hasn't been properly rediscovered yet. Myria'Poda was recorded after a jamsession of Association P.C. in the German city of Bonn in 1975. It's a solo drum album that comes close to the unorthodox approach of drummers like Chris Cutler (Henry Cow). For this album Pierre Courbois had built his own drumkit out of fiberglass and combined it with echo-units, modulators, phasers, contact microphones, gongs, built-in pitch control and toms. As a metaphorical human centipede, milipede etc. (Family name for them is Myriapoda) Courbois takes on his drumkit and creates amazing atmospheres that transcend the traditional drum sounds.

The album has a sound much closer to some of the improvisational tripped out Krautrock bands like Faust, Amon Düül II or Limbus than to jazz or fusion. It really manages that you are not just listening to some drum experiments, but to a genuine trip of its own.

Recommended!

Get it HERE