The Good & The Bad News

I recently learned that Maria of Atak passed away in June, at the age of 30. This is very very sad news. When I was in Japan in 2007 at the invitation of Atak, Maria took care of everything, and I mean everything to make us (me, Evala, Pan Sonic and Keiichiro Shibuya) happy at concerts and in between concerts. Maria was certainly the best host one could have for such a tour. I think back with fond affection to her, and wish Keiichiro, her husband, all the strength he needs. I intend to make some music in her memory. More here

Last week I spend time to create a new blog with all known live recordings by Beequeen for free download. It shows our development, failures and success. I can't imagine anyone downloading them all, but there is some fine stuff, like our concert with Girlfriends, dream machine music, the AVE festival, Metamorphasen and if you want one good Beequeen concert from the USA (which are essentially all the same), I'd say download the one from Rochester.

On September 20th, I'll be part of a jury for the Eurovision Noise Contest."European countries compete against each other for the title of "The Best European Noise Act Of 2008." Every act gets 11 minutes to show their skills to the audience.
A professional jury constisting of Dr Bibber (performance), Frans de Waard (music) and A3 (costumes and outfits) will give a professional reply to what the act showed them. Your host for the whole evening will be Wouter Jaspers, who personally booked all the great acts. The winner will get a release on ZXZW Records and of course the honor of being "The Best European Noise Act Of 2008."
The Eurovision Noise Contest will be organised in collaboration with Vatican Analog."
More at the website of ZXZW

The Black & White Album

It is with extreme pleasure that I can say that the first Zebra CD 'The Black & White Album' is now released by Symbolic Interaction in Japan. The general theme is 'music', running through the various songs, inspired by the great wonders of popmusic. Great design by mister Meeuw, great cover text by Roel. More or less released on my birthday last friday.
This weekend is spend on painting the covers of the first LP by Pick-up which Important Records will be releasing shortly. 350 individual covers are painted in 2 colors by Elise and me. It looks like this:



And this friday Beequeen will play at Zomeravonden festival in Maastricht.