vrystaete

Lend Me Your Underbelly

Since some years a part of my focus for Enfant Terrible is on contemporary Dutch music… the true starting point of this was of course the “Kamp Holland” 2LP compilation… and ever since then I am on the look out for more interesting new stuff from my own country which also fits my musical taste and styles for ET…

Recently I came across Lend Me Your Underbelly… a project from Utrecht… the city I started Enfant Terrible and I lived for a long time… Lend Me Your Underbelly is a true DIY project… releasing his own music on his own label Epigenetic Records… a second album is on its way but for now there is a 7″ and a 2LP… both dating from 2013…

The 2LP “Giant Tadpoles Among Us” is a must have for fans of lo-fi psychedelic pop music… if you like stuff from Fonal, Morc and Vrystaete this is for you… the music is mostly based on guitar tunes added with electronics… in a way the recordings sound like rehearsal recordings… but I mean this in a positive way… the intimate sound and feeling of these recordings make up for a super nice listening experience…

And for the locals… Lend Me Your Underbelly will perform live at Radio Resistencia on the 17th of May… for now you can order the album here… and here is my absolute favourite piece form the album…

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…

Diamantener Oberhof

This weekend I printed the art prints for the Diamantener Oberhof release coming soon on Vrystaete. I could not have done this without the help of printing chief Ramon from Kapitaal as it turned out to be quite a difficult job…

The print coming with Diamantener Oberhof is a three color silk screen print… meaning it has three layers to print on top of each other… we printed first the red tongue, after that the yellow mask and then the black background which also gives shape to the face and the symbols beside the mask (see the photo)… it is nice to see the image taking shape with every step you take…

So the prints are finished now and I am more then satisfied with the end result… now it is time to wait for the vinyls to arrive so I can finish these with putting stamp prints on the labels… and then they are ready to leave the ET/Vrystaete HQ… I guess in about two to three weeks from now…

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.)

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…