Demo tape

Artifecal_demoMost demo’s today are send as mp3 files or are links to a private Soundcloud page… and when I started with ET I received demo’s on cd-r… but in the old days demo’s were submitted on tape… and guess what… I received a real demo tape recently…

I do not accept demo’s in general but this demo is from a musician I already work with… maybe you remember the 7″ by Artifecal released in 2011 on the now defunct Hex sublabel… so the musician behind this project sent me this tape (60 minutes long I believe) filled with demo recordings from various of his projects… and a lot of the stuff is really great… non-typical minimal synth, post-punk and new wave sounds which will appeal to all who really like the obscure side of these styles…

These are real demo’s meaning not final recordings… often without vocals still… so I am curious to get the final versions… as I am quite sure a nice record could be moulded out of these demo tracks!

Dj M. – Lesson#1

I uploaded a new dj set on my mixcloud… but it is not a new mix… a rather old one to be honest… what I uploaded now is the very first dj set I did for the Radio Resistencia show… so recorded in 2010…

This mix is quite special to me… for one as it contains many 1980’s new wave, post punk and related classics… or at least what I consider as classics… but it is also a mix which is very much like a dj set I could have done (or maybe even did?) at the GRUIS parties… a party I was involved with from I think 2000 tot 2004… if I remember well… long time ago…

Anyway… you can imagine some personal favourites are in this mix for sure… enjoy!

Xerox

IMG_2162When it comes to old fashioned printing techniques your easily think of silk screen printing and risograph printing for example… but doing some old school copying on an Xerox machine fits nowadays in the same category… at least for me…

While the artwork for the upcoming Europ Europ 7 inch is done by silk screen printing (see below) and the Staatseinde is done with a Risograph machine the Sololust artwork is coming out of a Xerox machine…

Well… you just have to love the grainy quality of it all… so the design of the sleeve was done in away to make this even more evident… and for an extra touch the inside of the sleeve is also xeroxed… the end result is a trashy black and greyish sleeve not only referring to the (post-) punk era and DIY aesthetics but being all of that… and maybe more…

Now only the Staatseinde sleeve has to be done… and then you can enjoy these 7″s with fitting artwork (design and printing technique!) at home…

Goo morning

SonicYouth_GooEvery morning before going to my job I have about time for one side of a record… often resulting that I play side A from a certain record one morning and the the next morning I continue with the B side… anyway last year the most played record in the morning was Sonic Youth’s “Goo”… an album from 1990 I totally rediscovered last year…

In the past I listened to a lot of Sonic Youth… then for some years a lot less and since two years or so I play their music again quite often… in the past I liked “Confusion Is Sex”, “Sister” and “Dirty” the best… “Goo” never really was among my favorites… maybe as it is a sort of in-between record… in a way it combines the sound of “Daydream Nation”… dreamlike sequences bordering melancholy melodies and noise eruptions… and on the other hand the song based tracks like on “Dirty”… or maybe this is all nonsense as the band has on many album (including “Dirty”) played around with noise, song structures and melodic movements…

“Goo” anyway made a lot of sense to me last year and I played it so many mornings… sometimes the A side and sometimes the B side… but mostly the A side…  And… you need to love the cover… also if you do not like Pop art… Also this record is a good starting point of picking up my renewed interest in Sonic Youth… I stopped following them after “Experimental Jet-Set, Trash And No Star “… so let’s see what is there to explore…