brunnen – Enfant Terrible

Blood, sweat and tears…

It looks like a true artists workspace here at Enfant Terrible HQ as we are finalising the Brunnen and Diamantener Oberhof records for shipping… this means the inserts need to be stamped, the labels on the records need to stamped and the art prints need to be numbered…

This is a lot of work on itself as the ink needs to dry… so it takes time between stamping the A side label and the B side is possible… and even more as only a few record at once can be done due to the limited space on the table/at the ET HQ…

Same goes for the inserts… even though they take less room and can more easily be piled up to dry without things getting messy…

So… shipping starts soon but first the ink on the different parts on my fingers need to dry a bit…

Test pressings

Lunch time so a few words on what has kept me busy at Enfant Terrible HQ these last days… I have been silent as I am sending new records to the pressing plant for production and planning and imagining some future releases…

One of the things I like best about running a label are the moments only I and the musician have the music… nobody else has the music yet… this is an absolute great idea to me… of course at some points in the process more people have the music… like Rude66 who is doing my mastering for vinyl… and the people at the pressing plant to make the records…

Before you get the actual records you always get test pressings (also known as white labels) to check if it all sounds like it was meant to be… on the one hand this is a great moment as only I have the music on vinyl right then… the exclusivity is what I like about this… and also what made me do the super limited give away edition of the last Europ Europ album…

On the other hand it is always a bit stressful… is the record good? Does all sound as it should sound? I am always nervous about faults made in the process… Once you say to the pressing plant the record is okay there is no turning back… but the point is test pressings never really sound 100% the same as the final product… there are some reasons for this… like the machine it is made on (often different from the one used for the final product), the vinyl used for test is not always the same as for final product and due to the small numbers pressed for test pressings the machine might not be on the ideal temperature (yet)… it all depends on how a pressing plant deals with it basically… and you never really know…

Anyway… these days I am enjoying the test pressings of the Diamantener Oberhof and Brunnen albums coming next month… and right now during my normal job I am enjoying yet unreleased tracks by Neugeborene Nachtmusik… just to make you jealous!

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.)

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…