The 2009 Shareholders report

Of all the things from 2009 the photo above shows the best thing. Scott and me in Germany with Till Kniola. A photo taken by Asmus Tietchens. The Tobacconists on tour in Europe. Smoking and drinking. Scott and I made what we think is a great Lp, and hopefully will be released somewhere in 2010. That was absolutely the highlight of the year. Other great things were the recent Zebra gig in Brussels (and also seeing A Certain Ratio a day later), Kapotte Muziek gigs in Leuven and St. Petersburg. Some fine releases on :Zang and Korm Plastics. I wish sales would have been better for some releases, but then its the economy, stupid. Next year there will be a concert in Enschede with Roel on January 13th, Rote Salon (Berlin) on February 13th (i hope that's not an unlucky coincidence), some shows with Franz Fjodor in May in Austria, and maybe Lithuania in April. We'll see. 'Dialogues' should be out on CD by Entr'acte, hopefully that Tobacconists LP, new work by them in the pipeline with Asmus Tietchens, Freek and I should conclude the next Beequeen CD, the Kapotte Muziek 25th anniversary event at Extrapool on February 26 (inc Howard Stelzer, Radboud Mens and more), repeated on the 28th at Occii in Amsterdam. And Korm Plastics will exist for 25 years also, so there will be a nice compilation cassette, which is now more or less half way being finished. I'm sure there is more, but I'll think of that another time.

ACR Last week

The Old & The New

Zebra headed to Brussels for two missions. The first was on friday night at The Public School. Kosten Koper organised a class about Martin Hannett. He compiled a film displaying various interesting angles about the late great producer. Then it was time for some live music. First I played 'One [Live] Aspect', using the 'In the Studio with Joy Division' as the source material, which went well, I think. Complete darkness made it not easy to see what I was doing, but perhaps that's part of the fun. After the break and more red wine, Zebra played their piece. We added a third part to what we already planned earlier and Roel and me think its a damn fine piece. Kosten Koper provided some light-show. First mission was succesful. The next day we walked all the way to the former Expo 58 site and looked at the Atomium. Nice building indeed. In the evening we walked to Plan K, a legendary place. Here Joy Division played the first time outside the UK, former home of Factory Benelux and Les Disques Du Crepuscule and god knows what else. On the programm was a Factory Night. Although we arrived quite late, we were still in time to catch the opening act, The Names (with a strings). The strings didn't add much, I think and it was more or less alright. The Wake followed. They were alright too, I guess, until some female keyboard player was added, and they looked and sounded like early New Order, but not as good. Back in the day I never heard Biting Tongues, who arrived too late in the 80s to catch my attention, but who were actually great. No wave funk music. Section 25 sounded more together than a year ago, but still the lyrics had to read off paper, which looked silly. Quite loud, heavy on the guitar. The main attraction, at least for Roel and me, was A Certain Ratio, who, despite some technical troubles, delivered an excellent set, highlighting their best songs: 'Do The Du', 'Shack Up', 'Flight', 'Knife Slits Water', 'Mind Made Up' and ending with an excellent 'Sir Fermir O Grido'. Our third companion Rincke has a small video of that which, once I have it, I'll put on youtube and here too.

Radio Beirut

While browsing around looking for something I came across the BeirutFM radio sessions, an Italian programm, which broadcasts some nice music, including, lo & behold, all MOLL releases. Check out this:

live streaming, monday h. 20:35


blog

MOLL page

Klankschap 1999-2005

Of course I knew yesterday that I would write again today, because I knew Sindre Bjerga and Jan-M Iversen, who played quite a nice set at Extrapool, were bringing a box of copies of my second (!) CD under my own name, 'Klankschap 1999-2005'. They hail from Stavanger and so is the label, :Zang who released this. Ok, I'll admit straight I fucked up. First of all 1999 is wrong, it should have been 2001 actually. I e-mailed back and forth with the :Zang guys about possible tracks, but I am pretty sure somewhere in the later mails I mentioned 2001. That's one. The second mistake is my own, it spells 'Werplaats #1' but in the finer print below, so you see it called 'Werkplaats #1', as should be. Otherwise, otherwise, I am very pleased with this. The six pieces are from that period in which I more and more started to work with field recordings (let's safely say from 1999, some of the sounds used) and had this idea for pieces with them. If a piece is called something like 'Wind' or 'Regen', it means nothing was done with it, but if it has the title 'Klankschap' its actually a collage of various bits. Later on I extended it with other titles. So on this CD, the opening and closing pieces are 'Werkplaats 1 and 2', based on sounds from various workshops Kapotte Muziek did over the years (since 1997), a bit similar to Roel's 'Workshop' piece on the split LP with me for Stichting Mixer. 'Klankschap #9' is a long, mostly soft piece of wind and sea sounds recorded in the small village of Veere, where my daughter Elise lives. Then there is the short piece 'Epitaph', which has sounds from John Watermann, for our unfinished collaboration, and that were later used for 'Epitaph For John'. Klankschap is a somewhat shorter studio version of a concert I did at JNR Record store in Tokyo, in 2001 for a very small audience. I always like that piece, but the recording I made over there wasn't great and perhaps a bit long. The first four pieces can very well be enjoyed as four pieces, but also as one I think. The fifth piece is 'Ramp', the Dutch word for 'Disaster', but of course a road thingy in English. In 2002 Kapotte Muziek toured the USA a bit with Jason Talbot and Howard Stelzer, in a small car and played a few times with the five of us, which we could 'Ramp' among ourselves. My piece here is an edit of various recordings we made that tour and originally everyone was going to do one, but I think in the end just Roel and me finished one. A more electronic piece at times, but also contact microphone stuff and field recordings, it fits well into this collection. It ends with 'Werkplaats #2', which puts you back to earth. Get a copy today! From me or from zang (www.zang.no). Thanks to Helge Olav, Pal Asle, Jan M and Sindre for this!

Martin

On December 12th at Plan K in Brussels there is a Factory night with A Certain Ratio, Section 25 and whole bunch more. See here The night before Kosten Koper organises a small event about Martin Hannett, my favourite producer. Since I released 'Martin - Seven [New] Aspects' in 2004 on Tib Prod he asked me to come and do something. Its unclear as yet wether I have to play the CD or do something new (which I hope for), but later that evening Zebra will perform their own take on the work of Hannett. Roel and me prepared a thing already a few weeks ago, which I think is pretty great. It'll be the first Zebra concert in two years. Since the 3"CDR on Tib Prod is sold out, I decided to re-issue it on My Own Little Label, ready today, just in time to give one to Jan-M Iversen of Tib Prod, who will play at Extrapool tonight. More information on the Brussels' class here

Around The Corner

Today I receive some copies of the latest issue of Gonzo Circus, with the 'luistertest' they did with me. A kind a like the invisible jukebox of The Wire, where people have to guess what is what and expand on that. The free CD comes with an exclusive eleven piece piece by Pick-up. The writer of the article Alex van der Hulst just send me the picture above, taken from Google view just around the corner where I live. Fucking hell! That's me and Elise. Big brother all around.

You Can't Put A Price (Prize?) On Beauty

New releases then, for every wallet on. First, the normal prized item of today is the great first 7" by The Tobacconists. One track Scott and me recorded while the first was still in Nijmegen, using samples of that great DRS. P, a personal favorite of mine. Meeuw did a great cover, re-doing our favorite smokes from Russia (see above). Press voice for this:

THE TOBACCONISTS - THE DARK SECRETS OF DOCTOR PERATI / PROMETHEUS (7" by Plinkity Plonk)
The Tobacconists are no other than Frans de Waard (some of you may have heard of him) and Scott Foust (some of you may have heard of him as well), both of them notorious smokers and versatile musicians. The first quality is aptly expressed in the design based on Russia's cheapest pack of smokes, Belamor Kanal: very nice indeed. The last quality is expressed aptly as well on this 7". The side called 'The dark secrets of doctor Perati' is a kind of drony piece with long stretched synth sounds, but layered in that are all kinds of acoustic elements, varying from squeaking doors (?) to rhythmic pulses and with a great ending! The other side, 'Prometheus', sounds more open and dynamic, almost like a radioplay. The combination of both sides works well and offers a good impression of what
these two smokers can achieve. Certainly just as good as their 3"! (MG)

Available from info@kormplastics.nl

A bit more expensive and a bit more limited is the LP by Wander on Beam End of which this is the official press release:

WANDER – WANDER
Beam Ends records is proud to announce the release of the latest release by Wander (Frans de Waard and Freek Kinkelaar of Beequeen). Like all previous albums, and, indeed, all tracks by Wander this is entitled WANDER.
We have done our best to make this new Wander album a special one. WANDER consists of the following: a clear vinyl (so NOT a Peter King/Lathe cut) hand-pressed album, which plays from the label to the rim (instead of the other way around), presented in back paper insert with Wander "band" shirt in a hand-made blue boxset (made by the same company that produced the boxes for Raymond Dijkstra and the recent Flawed Existence box by Nurse With Wound). Of this set only 10 (ten) copies were produced, signed and numbered by the makers.
The album features two tracks of beautiful drone ambience.
The price of this set is 100 Euros, excluding shipping to your location. Even though we realize this is a lot of money, we do feel this is worth the package. With 2 copies in our archives, this leaves 8 copies for sale. This is surely the most luxurious and most limited release by Beam Ends records so far.
You can order your copy via info@beequeen.nl

3 copies are sold already.



But if you have no money, then point your browser here
and get a free download from the Freiband concert from last thursday.

A Peter Zincken has just released a 3CDR set which is no doubt the best anthology of current Dutch noise, called Nedernoise. Kapotte Muziek has a track on there too...

Forthcoming Gigs

Two gigs are forthcoming. First one is this week at Amsterdam's Occi, where I'll play a short concert at an evening which also includes Z'EV/KK Null, who are now recording at my Extrapool studio for a Brombon CD, Starving Weirdos and Nudge. It opens at 20:00 and I'm on at say 22:00. On wednesday KK Null and Z'EV play at Extrapool, on an evening with Stephan Mathieu.
The flyer you see if for a two day event in Den Haag. Kapotte Muziek will play on the fifth of November. Details on the the flyer, I guess.

Radio Activity

My upstair neighbour is on holiday, so I am allowed to read his evening newspaper and his radio/tv guide (now there is a true nothing going on type of blogging), and what i do see, this saturday on VPRO radio 6? Cafe Sonore (which I remember as a real Cafe thing, where we played with Goem, Kapotte Muziek and Freiband) presents an hour of material recorded at Worm, recorded April of this year. The guide says: "The Tobacconists are Scott Foust (from a.o. The Idea Fire Company) and Frans de Waard (from a.o. Kapotte Muziek). After 20 years these two icons of the alternative electro scene play together again". H-ho-ho. You can tune in later if you want, it will be online after the 11th. I thought I had some nice pictures from this concert which Radboud made, but alas no more...

He's A Model...

Media attention for me! At last. Above you see the cover of the October number of a Russian magazine, which is called Electronic Music. Its not an independent magazine anymore, but a magazine in a magazine. It has a seven page article, basically based on the talk Roel and I did last at the Theremin Center of
Electroacoustic Music at Moscow State P.I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Vlad recorded it all, all three hours!, and worked into an article. Maybe if there is a translation I'll share it.
Last week Alex van der Hulst was here to do a 'luistertest' with me for the next issue of Gonzo Circus. Its something similar to 'The Invisible Jukebox' the Wire does. I didn't recognize my own remix of Andrew Liles, shame on me. I won't spoil the rest. There is going to be an exclusive Pick-up track on the Mind The Gap CD that will come alone with that magazine.
And since yesterday I have a new blog! check it out

More Handwork...

This picture shows a bit of my floor where I laid out the 7" of The Tobacconists that arrived today. I am handstamping both sides with the title, plus on the b-side the catalogue number: 100 have 'plink 24' and 100 have 'swill 031', since its a co-release with Scott Foust's Swill Radio label. And so, I pressed 200. Covers should be here this week. Officially its out when I also release a LP by Edward Ka-spel and Mirko Uhlig, somewhere next month, but if you can't wait order a copy straight away. Its one piece Scott and I recorded when he was here, and one 'through mail'. Great pieces but that might be my own clouded opinion.

Fold/Unfold

Its tedious, I know, but I keep forgetten to post something here. Things have been busy with three new CDs: two in the Brombron series, by Andrea Belfi/Machinefabriek and Francisco Lopez/Richard Francis and 3"CD (not a CDR) by Freiband/Bass Communion. I am, as we speak (?) still folding the covers for the Brombron CDs, a small nightmare work. Also Beequeen's 'Ownliness' has been pressed by Infraction, with a better cover, no bonus tracks. All can be yours at Korm Plastics, the number one for shopping excellent music.
I completed, today in fact, a small tribute for a Phill Niblock for an Austrian compilation and still working on a split LP with Howard Stelzer and that gamelan LP.
A forthcoming concert is on October 22nd at OCCII in Amsterdam. I'll be taking KK Null/Z'EV there who will have completed a Brombron CD then. I hope. I have no ideas yet, but perhaps its going to be a Freiband concert.
On October 1st I will start an archival blog for Kapotte Muziek, which exists then for 25 years and post on relevant dates music and images. Perhaps I am better at that when there is some pressure?

Wander

I know, I know. Late, late. But I always seem to forget to type a few lines here and there. Anyway, two great new Wander releases. We broke with our rule of one release per format, as Divine Frequency just released the 2nd full length release by Wander. Freek and I recorded this work last year, more or less in one go, using lots of tracks filled with warm analogue sounds. In the months after that I mixed it at home and John Deek of Divine Frequency, who asked us to do a CD for his label already some years ago, wanted to release this. Jake Blanchard made some nice drawing of the cover and Jos Smolders' mastering brought out tones I didn't hear before.


In that process of mastering Jos sent me some audio file which me, a total nitwit when it comes to all things computer wise, couldn't get rightly burned, but somehow this odd piece comes up in Itunes and a total noise mayhem of the CD is played. Of course I recorded all of this and Freek and I did wander into noise land for a nice 3"CDR for RONF Records, in an edition of 50. The cover shows a naked lady, like before, but wrongly downloaded too. Probably an one-off execursion in the field of noise for us.
Right now Freek and I are recording two new Wander pieces, to be released on Beam End as LP (8 minutes per side), spinning from within outwards, and to be released in an edition of 10. Possibly with the official Wander T-shirt. Most likely to be 100 euros a piece. And then we should get cracking at the next Beequeen CD for which some ideas have been recorded already.
I should be working on a LP for Ini.itu with gamelan music as the starting point and looking at the archive recordings I think I may want to do a Freiband noise work of some kind.
ZXZW from Tilburg are now called Incubate and this change also saw the change of their programm. The 25th anniversary of Kapotte Muziek is not happening there. They rather disconnected themselves from underground/counter culture in favor of being just another 'alternative' rock festival. So fuck them. I hate anything alternative and rock. We now will do the festival in whatever form at Extrapool and perhaps a few other places.
Soon, I'll be releasing a Brombron CD by Francisco Lopez/Richard Francis, and one by Machinefabriek/Andrea Belfi, a 3" CD (not CDR) by Freiband/Bass Communion and a great 7" by The Tobacconists.
I put a new floor in my house and a high bed for Elise. And its my birthday today. August 8, which is 2x4, which means I'm now 44. Oh dear. Time for a drink.

Back Up

So we had a great and tiring time in St. Petersburg and it happened that Roel asked me again if I had the master CDR of his second 7" for Korm Plastics. He is compiling a CD of various vinyl releases for Korm Plastics, and I already searched for it. So when coming back, I looked and looked again. No luck there, but what annoyed me is that I have some sound carriers (DATs, CDRs, Mini Discs, Cassettes) with my own music, and since a big external hard drive doesn't cost that much it seems logical to put all on one drive. That's been a my main activity for 3 weeks now, copying and transferring all recordings known to mankind of Frans de Waard. Cassettes are the last, working on that now. Its now almost 300 gigabyte, but the good thing is that I found some interesting unreleased works, so perhaps I will release some historical material somehow somewhere. This lead to making one text file with my entire discography. When that is ready for the public eye, I'll post it. All of this work means postponing the work that needs to start on a Frans de Waard CD for :zang (which is a collection of old work), a gamelan LP for ini.itu and some Haters tribute John Wiese just asked me for. By sheer coincidence I found a tape I did with his old flexi, so I'll rework that in a short piece for him. The first thing to be done on the list. Any aspiring CDR labels looking for some old unreleased Quest music, harsh noise by Kapotte Muziek and such like, feel free to contact me: frans@beequeen.nl

All Sorts Of New & Old Things

A bunch of new things happen or about to happen. First of all, Important Records released 'Mouthless', the long awaited LP by Pick-up, and effectively the first one Martin and me recorded. 100 copies are on orange vinyl and 200 on black vinyl, the latter may sound better. I don't know. Last week Martin and I played our second concert, in Theater Kikker in Utrecht and it fared much better than the first one. People enjoyed it very much and we are invited to play another 15 minute concert on June 6th.
At the end of this week I, together with Peter and Roel, will be off for one concert as Kapotte Muziek in St. Petersburg. The Experimental Sound Gallery exists for ten years and we are invited again, simply because they liked us so much last year.

Today I received a copy of 'Microbionic - Radical Electronic Music and Sound Art In The 21st Century', a hardcover book, 216 pages, written by Thomas Bey William Bailey. I haven't read it all of course, obviously (as I'm busy scanning stuff for a book on The Haters to be put out by John Wiese). There is no index and I guess there is not a lot of me in it, but the first 300 copies come with a free CD, which includes 'zes' from 'Stud Stim' by Goem, finally regarded as a classic I guess. The content of the book is about bigger names (like Carsten Nicolai, Leif Elggren, Merzbow, Pita and such like), but judging by its content it is quite interesting - a sure thing to read on the airplane? Thomas' next book will be about independent music releases and will have some more on my work. Get it here



And speaking about re-issues, I bought a CD of Das Wesen 'Embracing All, Vansihing All'. Das Wesen was from Nijmegen and releases three 12" records, which are all on this CD, but their split 7" with Bazooka is missing, unfortunally. Quite a nice imitation of Joy Division this band. Apparently the label will may be also be releasing Bazooka, a fellow Nijmegen band, so hopefully a complete job there.

Re-issues

Normally I don't buy many CDs, but I do. Sometimes. Here I share some of my enthusiasm for some, plus some remarks. Recently I heard about 'World Of Rubber' by Second Layer being re-issued, by the original label Cherry Red. Great news. I tried to release it myself, as I think its a classic album of rhythm machines, furious guitars and great vocals - Adrian Borland's pet project as you may recall. I got the CD and it has the album, great, an unreleased piece, fine, but not the two earlier 7inches, which in my opinion could have easily fitted on there. The band did nothing else, so why this omission?
Also on Cherry Red is 'Acting On Impulse', 'the best of Five Or Six'. Now I think their entire recorded career could have easily fitted on a 2CD set, and it would be make an utter brilliant collection. I spoke with various members about it, and they would love that, but Cherry Red is against it, mainly because 'Another Reason' was used in some TV ad. O.k. so the best of has songs we have on CD already, like 'Portrait' and 'Theme' and some that weren't. This collection of merely ten songs show their brilliance, but it makes you curious about the rest. None of 'A Happy & Thriving Land' LP on here. A missed oppurtunity.
The best re-issue I recently bought is also something I wanted to put out myself, being a 2CD by Rotterdams The Rondos. One CD with all their releases on vinyl (well, except The Rotterdam Collection) and one CD with a rough live recording. The box comes with an extensive photo book, a comic, lyric book and a historical book. 'Mao? How could we know he was wrong?'. No, I don't agree with some of the lyrical content of The Rondos, but their music is all its simplicity still brilliant, especially the LP 'A Black & White Statement'. Cardboard sound, but with great energy. The lyrics... well, you should take those for granted. Merely 30 euros for a great box. get it here

Yesterday

Yesterday I played a ten minute piece at the opening of the new print place of Knust/Extrapool here in Nijmegen. Totally empty space, but to give an idea how the space would sound with print machines in it, I created a piece with recordings I made (years ago) of various machines and two synths. Sounds bounced in all sides and the recording I made is a bit distorted, but hopefully I will get a better one from Jan van den Dobbelsteen and I may release it as a 3", along with a studio mix of the material. By far the loudest thing I did in years, making some small boy cry - sorry about that. The picture here was taken by Danielle Lemaire.

A small nice piece on our Tobacconists London show can be found here with a link also to the Entr'acte site for some hidious picture of me.

Smokers Age Faster

Lots of action going on the last month, which I may easily call my busiest month ever. Of course there was Scott Foust, with whom I played as The Tobacconists nine shows in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and the UK. Thanks to everyone involved in organising that. We had a great time. Also Scott & I recorded the same material for a LP release, some day somewhere. The 3"CDR which we sold on the road will be sold until I have no more covers. The above photo is by Ini.itu (for whom I will record a LP actually soon), made at the Bozar in Brussels.



On the release front there has been a fantastisc 2LP/10" by Bass Communion. The 10" contains 'Haze Shrapnel', and the Freiband remix thereof. Limited to 500 copies.



Sietse van Erve's Moving Furniture label released a Freiband CDR, called 'True Type', containing all four MP3 releases Freiband ever did, and I always wanted them to be released on a real CD(R).

Jake Blanchard designed the cover for the next Wander CD (out next month) and he also compiled a CD with a live cut by Beequeen ('Honeythief' from our show at Worm), and has pieces by bands I never heard of, such as Cam Deas, Hush Arbors, Winter Drones, Rivultes, The Skygreen Leopards, MV & EE With The Golden Road, Spoono, Jerusalem And The Starbaskets and Ben Nash.

The next gigs are:

May 2nd a short gig at the opening of 'De Broek' in Nijmegen at Knust printplace
May 7th Kapotte Muziek at 't Stuk in Leuven, Belgium
May 19th Pick-up at Theater Kikker in Utrecht
May 30th Kapotte Muziek at GAS in St-Petersburg, Russia

This speaks for itself

More tour info

As far as I can see this will be the tour with Scott, not all places are known yet, but who knows: maybe you know if you live in one of these cities.

march
28 Extrapool, Nijmegen (Here's To Love)
april
03 013, Tilburg (The Tobacconists concert and more)
04 De Player, Rotterdam (Here's To Love)
05 Worm, Rotterdam (The Tobacconists concert and more)
07 bremen
08 Rote Flora, Hamburg
09 Tilburg (The Four Accomplishments performance, Here's To Love)
10 Vrijhaven, Den Haag (Here's To Love, The Tobacconists concert)
14 Leverkussen (The Tobacconists concert) ?
15 Ludwig Museum, Cologne (Here's To Love, Frans as DJ, Asmus Tietchens concert)
17 Antwerpen (The Four Accomplishments performance, Here's To Love)
18 Extrapool, Nijmegen (The Tobacconists concert)
24 CinémaBozar, Brussels (The Tobacconists)
25 London Divus Gallery (The Tobacconists)
26 London Divus Gallery (HTL! & TFA)

The Four Accomplishments is a solo performance by Scott, Here's To Love is a screening of Scott's feature film and The Tobacconists is, well, Scott and me playing new music.

Smoking Kills

Above is the first flyer I seen about the forthcoming tour with Scott Foust. He's over in April, and we have some gigs together as The Tobacconists. When he's here, we'll writing some songs to play live during a four day marathon song writing session and then the first gig will in Tilburg, of which is the flyer above. Other dates look like this:

28 March Extrapool, Nijmegen (film)
3 013, Tilburg (Tobacconists)
4 de player film
5 Worm, Rotterdam (Tobacconists)
13 Bremen (Tobacconists) ?
14 Leverkussen (Tobacconists) ?
15 Cologne? (Tobacconists)
16 Cologne?(Tobacconists)
17 antwerp
18 Extrapool, Nijmegen (Tobacconists)
24 CinémaBozar (Bxl)
25 London Divus Gallery (Tobacconists)
26 London Divus Gallery (HTL! & TFA)

plus perhaps dates in Den Haag, Vlissingen, Groningen and perhaps others

This Tape Is Supposed To Be About Love

The diehard Beequeen fans of course recognize this as the opening quote by Edie Sedgwick on 'The Edie Three Step' from Sandancing. Important Records imprec 200 is a sampler which people get free with a purchase, or if you want to buy it for 2 dollars or so, and like with imprec 100, Beequeen is on it. Totally unaware of this of course, but fine enough. The quote is actually on the disc face, which is something we are quite proud of. And, more good news, the second Pick-up LP should be out in a matter of days. Also on Important Records.

The OId, The New & The Digital

I released three new small, lovely (obviously) 3"CDRs on My Own Little Label. The first is a re-issue of 'Atem', the longest piece Beequeen ever submitted to a compilation,'Guru Means Slayer Of Darkness', back in 1996 on Manifold. Its been out of print for quite some time, but both me and Freek think this is a great old, and lost Beequeen piece, so we decided to re-issue it. It was made back when I lived in Den Haag, and uses multiple layers of a ventilator and a heating system. A fine lively drone piece.

The second release is also a re-issue of 2003 Freiband piece. It was back then released by Poland's Mik Musik, and part of a series of five (if I am not mistaken) remixes of source material I totally forgot about. Its a seventeen minute piece of laptop music processing.

My concert from last week in Heerlen. In 2008 I composed three pieces for compilations which all deal with the sound of hiss from old cassettes, and some 'field recordings' from faulty cassette mechanisms. Two of those pieces have been released already, on 'Lasting' and 'Tabl For Six', and the third will come later this year on a new UK label. All of the elements of those elements are reconfigured in 'Heerlen Hiss' and the recording is a mixture of a line recording I made myself and a live recording giving to me by Edward Ka-spel.

And if that isn't enough, I decided to put up some pieces as digital only releases.

This is also from last week's concert, where I played 'Spaarzaam' for a second time, so its a bit useless to release that on 3"CD. I don't like MP3s, so I put them up as a FLAC, but then I realized I may have some interesting pieces, so also the live recording from 'O Tannebaum' and 'Tonspur' are there.

All of this can be found here and here

I'm Sure Its On The DVD

A bit of surprise recentely when I found out that 12K/Line were producing a DVD with a video piece by Sue Costabile, with music by Beequeen. That was created in 2005 for Tri-mix, and already released by Innova, but apparently Sue gave this to Richard Chartier who curated an exhibition called 'Colorfield Variations'. Actually no big deal for us at all, since we are proud to be part of a line up with: Steve Roden, Alan Callander, Frank Bretschneider, Stephan Mathieu, TeZ, Tina Frank + General Magic, Bas Van Koolwijk, Chris Carter + Cosey Fanni Tutti, Ryoichi Kurokawa, Sawako, Evelina Domnitch + Dmitry Gelfand, Ernest Edmonds + Mark Fell. Its a great DVD with many interesting films and music. I have some copies for sale in case anyone wants one. More info here

Hiss

In about exactly 28 minutes from now I'm going by train to Heerlen to play a concert. I prepared for the Freiband set the usual Tonspur 2 piece and to make a difference with the Frans de Waard set I decided to play 'Spaarzaam' once again as Freiband. As Frans de Waard I prepared a new piece, called for now 'Heerlen Hiss' and its based on three pieces I recorded last year, all dealing with hiss taped from old cassettes. One of those pieces is already released on the EE Tapes compilation, and then one will be on a CD compilation from the UK, somewhere this year. The third piece 'Nijmegen Hiss' is released this week on a cassette compilation called 'Lasting', the final cassette release by Swill Radio, featuring those fine young man and women as Foust, Karla Borecky, Graham Lambkin, Emeralds, BRRR, Dead Girl's Party, Tim Gross, Asmus Tietchens, Ian Middleton, Vikki Jackman, Weyes Bluhd, Matt Krefting, The Collection Of The Late Howell Bend, Andrew Chalk and Idea Fire Company. A fine piece of work, and Scott thinks that cassettes will soon be no longer manufactured.
Oh and speaking of Scott Foust, he's going to be in Europe in April to screen 'Here's To Love' and we'll be playing together as The Tobacconists. I am very excited about this (although A Certain Ratio are playing in Tilburg on the 3rd of April, which I shouldn't miss). If anyone out there has more ideas where we can play, please contact me!
Lunhare from Italy already re-issued 'E.A.R.' by Kapotte Muziek, which was succesfull enough for them to ask me for another re-issue. 'EGG' contains three old tapes: Electrocute (which was already re-issued on 'Five Tapes' 2CDR by Korm Plastics, but no doubt no longer available. Latest news is that Staalplaat lost all printwork for their CDR labels, can you believe it?), Gematria and Gilles De Rais, which makes up a nice collection of my early work with the sadly missed Christian Nijs, who sings on one track - the even more sad 'Death Is No Life To Come'. I have some copies to sell of course, but you can always contact the label.

IJzig Vuur On You Tube

Moll! & Forthcoming Gig

After six months of silence I finally released two new works on My Own Little Label. The first is a business card with "Profieldeel Zeven", the soundtrack to a film by Jan Kees Helms, which now runs in Amersfoort as part of an exhibition. Once I have the You Tube for the film, I'll post that. The sounds were all recorded as part of 'Vijf Profielen' back in 2005, but a new configuration was made, hence number seven. Then I also released on a 3"CDR 'Verval', a slightly edited version of the live recording from Extrapool on January 10th. If you search for Tape Treff on You Tube there are various films about this event. I recommend the one by Florian Cramer, which is very 80s in editing approach.

Here is the also the flyer for a concert next month in Heerlen. I'll be playing two sets, one as Frans de Waard and one as Freiband. Robert Curgenven will also play. Come and see!

Tape Treff Again

and more films on Tape Treff also on You Tube

A Concentration Of Work

Very much like concentrated light, a lot of things came together. First there was the release of our long awaited split CDR Kapotte Muziek/Richard Ramirez. We use some of his sound material at our concert in Strahlsund 2004, which Peter later edited, and Ramirez used, if I am not mistaken a live recording from Dallas 1993. I might be wrong. Nice semi professional digipack release by Licht-ung
Then, on saturday I received 'f' in the Zelphabet series. I am on there, along with Francisco Lopez, Fin and Failing Objects. Quite proud of that. On sunday I travelled to Tilburg for my first studio recording with THU20. This is for the Zelphabet volume 't', which leaves us some to work on it more. In 8 hours we finished more or less 6 minutes, with ten more to go. Pictures etc here
In between I played a concert at Extrapool, at Tape Treff, an evening about cassettes. Though these days hi-jacked by not always stable noise makers who think its still shocking to run around naked and throwing up on microphones *yawn*. I played a new thing called 'Verval': it starts out with a regular sound from my laptop, which is picked up by three microphones on three individual cassette players. Then one is stopped and that sound is then played, then a second, then the third, but by then the first is recording again. The room becomes the resonating box and the cassette the processor of the sound. The recordings are ok, so yeah I may release them on My Own Little Label.