djM – Page 40 – Enfant Terrible

Vrystaete @ Kapitaal

Yesterday during the Radio Resistencia session at Kapitaal Utrecht I started with printing the artwork for the Brunnen and Diamantener Oberhof releases coming soon on Vrystaete… well actually only the Brunnen as this is was so much work… but very nice to do…

The Brunnen art print which comes with the record is a linocut made by Dutch visual artist (and musician) Hans de Wolf (he helped out printing as well). I had never printed a linocut before… first all was measured and set up so the printed piece is always on the same part of the paper… then you need to set the pressure on the printing press depending on how you want the print to come out… darker (more pressure) or lighter (less pressure)…

Then the ink needs to be warmed up to make it fluid… then for every print you need to put ink on the linocut and put it in the right spot of the printing press… then lay a piece of paper on it gently so it does not get messy… then a sort of small carpet / rubber mat goes on top of this and then you gently turn the wheel of the printing press so the linocut and paper are going underneath the press… if all goes well and you are able to get the mat and paper of the linocut what out messing up you have a super nice print… a print which needs to dry for about three days… and this 150 times in this case…

But… it is super nice to do this… it is meditative in a way… you only focus on the printing and all the rest fades into the background… and of course it is so much nicer to print the artwork for the records you release yourself instead of getting a sleeve from the pressing plant…

So… next are the Diamantener Oberhof prints… a three colour silkscreen print…

(Action photos by Hans D.)

Radio Resistencia live with Former Descent @ Kapitaal Utrecht

This sunday 18th of January there will be a Radio Resistencia session at Kapitaal Utrecht. The line up is dj M., Former Descent (live) and dj Alacidus.

Former Descent will be presenting his recent release on Gooiland Elektro… so expect tough beats and a melodic touch… all done on the Tenori-on…

We start at 15.00 hour and end around 18.00 hour… entrance is free… there are drinks for sale like locally brewed beers..

If you are in the area we like to see you there… and here is a track by Former Descent to get in the mood…

Skeppet

Today a package from the Not Not Fun label arrived with some excellent new stuff (as mostly is the case with this label)… both for my own pleasure and hopefully yours… as some copies will be up in the webshop soon…

Next to a 12″ by the ever amazing Umberto there was the latest LP by tropical wave / weird pop / psych pop musician Maria Minerva… but the best record in the box was by Skeppet…

Skeppet is a Swedish psychedelic outfit which first came to my attention with the split album they did with Street Drinkers on the now defunct label Release The Bats… this split album is all kinds of awesome… both sides but especially the Skeppet side…

I was really looking forward to more music from this duo and the new album entitled “Phase 3” is simply superb… so the waiting was worth it for sure… Skeppet play a soft, sweet, light sounding, soothing kind of psychedelic music… it is playful and trippy… it sounds a lot like classic 60’s acid rock stuff in many ways… possibly like Country Joe And The Fish in their most psychedelic mood… the music is sunny and would have fitted perfectly in the 60’s hippie scene in the USA… think Haight Ashbury on a nice sunny afternoon… a bit of dozing off in the sun or shade with some drinks or anything else… simply perfect… I am getting in the mood for the first days of spring for sure with Skeppet spinning on the turntable here…

Below is the 8 minute edit of the over 20 minutes piece on the A side of the record… enjoy!

Rockumentaries

From time to time I like to watch documentaries about pop and rock music… in the past I saw a really good one on Nico and more recently there was a very nice one on gabber / hardcore…

This weekend I saw two… one on Dutch band Doe Maar… an 80’s band which played reggae inspired pop music… in a very short period of time they became the biggest thing in Holland… the best thing about this documentary were the very open conversations with the band members reflecting on the past… they pictured the two driving musicians and they themselves told about their difference views on music and the band… it was nice to see how they still got along very well after all these years… without being frustrated or being in a fight as you often hear in such cases…

The other thing was something I never realised… they became very popular with a very young audience… teens and even younger… this frustrated them as they made serious music and were no boy band as we know boy bands today, created especially for such a specific young audience and to make some cash…

The band told this was also the reason they split up… that they did not find that their music reached the people it was meant for and did not come across as intended… funny detail is that I used to listen to this band a lot… when I was very young… when I was about 7 years old…

Another documentary I saw was on Jimi Hendrix… a musician I never liked before… I have never bought any of his music… even though I am a big fan of 60’s music… it never triggered me or made sense to me… the documentary was great with lots of old footage and some friends of him still alive telling about him…

The footage from Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 is legendary and I knew some of the images but never saw it this way before… his performance was amazing… how he played the guitar and how the whole performance was turned into a ritual with as climax setting the guitar on fire and summoning the fire to rise…

And… surprisingly I liked quite a lot of the music of Jimi Hendrix which was featured on the documentary and I will get into this soon to see if I like his work better now as in the past…

Vrystaete

Last year I created the Vrystaete label for sounds I am interested in and that did not fit in the existing series of Enfant Terrible. For a part these sounds it goes back to my long love for traditional music… what one few people know for example is that I dj’ed folk music for quite some time and that I released a compilation cd with contemporary folk music back in 2004 in collaboration with Folkwoods Festival.

For a part I neglected folk music due to the focus on Enfant Terrible… but I have always listened to some folk sounds… especially to the weirder stuff from Fonal, but also to classics as Pentangle and Steeleye Span and to some more modern stuff like Hedningarna, Garmarna and more recently to the darker side of folk by Wardruna…

Vrystaete is not meant to be a “folk label” but I am releasing some folk related sounds on it… like the Niedowierzanie already was and the upcoming Diamantener Oberhof and Brunnen also have some links to folk music in their own ways…

Some people asked me about the name Vrystaete where it comes from and what it means… if you translate it into English it would be “Freestate”… when it concerns my label it means that the label is a freestate (for me) to release adventurous music on… so to speak “free spirited” music… no cliche sounds and not music which is genre and style bound… it is also music for people with an open mind and taste and who like to hear new sounds and are not bound by any subcultural dogma’s… thus simply people who have a true interest in music…

The spelling of Vrystaete relates to the part of Holland where I live and the Vrystaete label is established… in my village are many old estates which were built at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. These estates were from people who lived and worked in Amsterdam and came here in the countryside to stay for the weekend and for hunting for example…

These estates have names spelled in old Dutch which reflected either the family name of the owner or what the estate was used for… so often names related to hunting and leisure time… so when I created the Vrystaete label I took a name which is related to the estates here and which reflects the free state of mind with which the label is done…

Anyway… here is one Diamantener Oberhof song…

And here is one song by Brunnen…

Both tracks are from the upcoming albums… more information and sound previews can be found here…

Gonzo (circus)

Out this week is a new issue of Gonzo (circus)… a quality paper magazine in the Dutch language on music and art… maybe a bit like what The Wire is for English speaking people, Gonzo is for the Dutch speaking people…

The magazine is partly Dutch and partly Belgium and covers a wide range of music and art styles often neglected by other media channels… and from time to time they also publish articles about media culture, the state of the arts and so on… discussing our cultural state of being in general so to speak…

With every issue there is also a free cd called “Mind The Gap” with music featured in the magazine and/or music recently released… and all of this is done by people who do this on a voluntary basis… since 1991… do I need to say more?!

The new issue features among other a very interesting article on Suzanne Ciani and her modular synth music… really worth checking out if you can read Dutch… and the “Mind The Gap” cd features this time an Embers and an Kit n C.l.a.w.s. track from the recently released vinyls on Enfant Terrible and Gooiland Elektro…

But there is much more to discover in the 100 pages of the magazine the 11 tracks on the cd…

Oh… and I hope I do not need to explain where the name of the magazine comes from… but if you do not know please do a little search on the internet and there is even more to discover for you…