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.