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.