Korm Plastics 25!

A busy week this is. Two concerts/events by Kapotte Muziek, celebrating 25 years of great music with visits from Howard Stelzer, Radboud Mens, DJ DMDN, Jos Smolders and Asmus Tietchens (only in Nijmegen) and Asra (in Amsterdam). In Extrapool there will be a small exhibition of CD/LP/Cassette covers and posters, and the first 25 paying customers get a free CD. That night is also the official launch of the another celebration, 25 years of Korm Plastics. The only thing I'm doing for that is to release a casstte, just like I started the label in 1984: a compilation. Its already out, so have peep here. It looks absolutely great! Also there are three new releases on My Own Little Label, including a collaboration 3"CDR with Machinefabriek, from our joint set from last week in Berlin. Have a look and listen here.

Koken Met Sneeuw

Just back from my studio where I am busy preparing a so-called piece for 2010. I have serious intentions of playing live more than I did, solo or otherwise and therefore I am preparing one piece which is kinda open ended, leaving room for various interpretations. It will be not an exclusive laptop thing - we've seen that, right? - but also involves cassettes, contact microphones, an organ and a crackle box. The 'premiere' (ho-hum) will be on the 13th in Berlin as part of a Staalplaat showcase together with Machinefabriek. Rutger and I intend to play together as well, 'OHUA' live. Following concerts are planned in Vilnius (april 30th), Kallingrad (perhaps April 28th) and in may with Franz Fjodor on a small tour (please let me know if you want to book this tour!). And hopefully many more. So I got back home and found a CD 'Oude Koeien' by Roel Meelkop in the mail, which basically has the four records I released from Roel on Korm Plastics, plus his 7" of Beequeen reworking and a new piece. I wrote the liner notes for this, called 'Koken Met Sneeuw' - its been a harsh winter! Buy a copy of it today!

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!