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.