March 24, 2019 Leave a comment
So far 2019 delivered some new releases and a few concerts. There were two new Modelbau cassettes, ‘The Lateness Of The Hour‘ and ‘The Invaders‘, as well as a new Quest CD, ‘Yesternights‘.
As Modelbau I played two concerts, of which is available online plus a new free online track
In two weeks I will play a concert in Berlin as Modelbau and a day later with Wouter Jaspers as Ezdanitoff, also in Berlin
December 31, 2015 Leave a comment
Last year I wrote that 2014 wasn’t easy and I said that would continue into 2015. It did and no crystal ball was involved in that prediction. My mother passed away in September after being ill for close to a year. It is sad to see her go, but I’m happy all of the suffering is over, especially for my mother who hated losing her independence. This has made this a most strange year also, in which I seemed to have not as enjoyed many films, books or music. I found it hard to think of a few, but there is a list below. Also I did a lot less music it seems than other years, although since September I have been working on various new projects, such as a new flexi with source material by Michael Esposito, which is reworked by Bass Communion and Freiband. Also as Freiband I did a new piece, ‘Hot August Night’ to be released by White Paddy Mountain. Also I am returning to projects that have been laying around for some time, such as mixing my collaboration with Richard Francis, Z’EV and hopefully also more work with Howard Stelzer, which has been recorded some two years ago.
This year I talked with Mark Poysden a lot about my book on Staalplaat. His suggestions for a better grammar and wording, as well as editing made this a great book. Timeless Edition in France will be releasing this in the first quarter of 2016, along with a cover by Erik Kriek, who did the Staalplaat bags. I am very excited about this, as I consider this book as one of the best things I ever did. I never spend as much time as I did on this book as anything else in my life. Writing books is more complex than making music. Odd.
I started a new project with Jos Smolders, which, through the help of Facebook, we christened WaSm (thanks Holger for that). In December we did our first gig and Silken Tofu might be releasing a CD from us next year.
In March I will be touring with Sindre Bjerga again and we’ll also be playing together and we choose upon the name Tech Riders. Two new bands! I also left a band behind in 2015: in May I decided to leave Beequeen due to what is usually called ‘musical differences’. Our last 7″ should be in March 2016.
In 2015 I created a whole bunch of new QST pieces, which are getting better, if I may say so. I am seriously considering the possibility to play live as QST in 2016.
An unfortunate encounter I had with a Russian guy with whom I released a collaborative release, ‘Zondag’. It uses his sounds, but I did the bulk the work on it. I didn’t like that he put his name first on the released CDR. However that wasn’t what caused a rift between us, but his anti-gay stances were. His worldview seemed very limited in many aspects and while I believe everybody is free to believe whatever they want to, I have the freedom to be without them. It’s a pity, as it’s a fine release. I am happy to send everyone a free copy.
On August 8th 2014 I started to keep a diary for a year, something I wished to do for a long time, and I managed to keep this up until August 7, 2015, the day before the picture above was taken. Himmelhoch jauchzend indeed; the best party of the year!
Like I said it seemed I enjoyed not as much stuff as in other years, but I surely enjoyed this:
– I got various boxes and records from Vinyl On Demand, such as Sema, O Yuki Conjugate, Conrad Schnitzler, Portion Control and Rob Van, which were all highly appreciated.
– Second Layer – World Of Rubber 2LP with bonus material
– Various releases by Matt Krefting
– IDEA FIRE COMPANY – LOST AT SEA (LP by Recital)
– PSEUDO CODE – REMAINS TO BE HEARD VOL. 1 & 2 (2CD by EE Tapes)
– 300 BASSES – TRIA ATOMA (CD by Moving Furniture Records)
– Jim O’Rourke’s Bandcamp
– VA AA LR releases
– Asmus Tietchens
– ICE YACHT – POLE OF COLD (cassette by Fragment Factory)
– Amalgamated – various releases
– JON SHEFFIELD – SPRINGBOARDS (cassette by Obsidian Cuts)
– AKIRA RABELAIS – THE LITTLE GLASS (2CD, private)
– DENEUVE – UGLY (CD by Blowpipe)
– ANTOINE PANACHE – J’AI UN AME SOLITAIRE (cassette by Barreuh Records)
And it was great to see finally a new album by New Order, which I enjoyed a lot, however it is also a bit long. What’s wrong with your best stuff in 40 minutes? Where do they teach that albums have to be sixty or more minutes and filled with lesser pieces? Oh, well, maybe I am a grumpy old man.
I saw a bunch of concerts this year and I very much liked Sweat Tongue in Rotterdam, Steven Wilson in Utrecht and Rummelsnuff in Extrapool. Three entirely different musical events.
Although I saw lots of movies, I can’t remember of any standout, though the second season of ‘Fargo’ I really enjoyed; likewise it was with books I read. I enjoyed Chrissie Hynde’s and Kim Gordon’s autobiographies for instance, but it wasn’t that great. John Lydon’s new one comes close being great, but that’s because he talks about PIL a bit, but he could have used someone to edit the book down a bit. Their 2015 record was a dramatically bad one, though.
2015 saw the following music become available:
[Doc Wor Mirran] SYMPHONY IN A(NNOY) (CDR, Attenuation Circuit ACR 1018)
[QST] ‘B3. marilli remxd’ Marilli Remixed (download, http://banabila.bandcamp.com)
[Wieman] CRYPTONESIA (LP, ini.itu 1501)
[Shifts] FADE IN (cassette, Maneki Neko Tapes NMT 007)
[Frans de Waard] ‘Drone #2 (Extraction #1)’ on Drone Cinema 2015 (Raspberry Pi by Timemachines)
[Modelbau] KEYNOTES (businesscard CDR, Korm Digitaal 219)
[Frans de Waard] I’M FREEZING (7″ flexi disc with Michael Esposito & Frans de Waard, “Dreams of the Incorruptibles”, Korm Plastics/Phanton Plastics kp 3060)
[Frans de Waard] COURRIERE (CD, Mystery Sea MS78)
[Freiband & Bass Communion] COURAGE/COWARDICE (12″, Important Records imprec 423)
[Freiband] ‘Noise’ on ‘Listen To The Drums’ (download, Oggy Records)
[Modelbau] HYPHEN (cassette, Powdered Hearts Records ph 10)
[Frans de Waard & Howard Stelzer] FAULT (download, Korm Digitaal 214)
[Frans de Waard & Howard Stelzer] HOWEVER (cassette, Banned Production,
[Freiband] ZONDAG (CDR; material by Vitaly Maklakov) Ostroga otr 040
[Freiband] ‘Monoplain’ (3″CDR split with Kromeshna) Ostroga otr 035
[Frans de Waard] DRONE # 2 (download, Korm Digitaal 221)
[Modelbau] GETAWAY (3″CDR, Korm Digitaal 211)
[Wieman] PLAYS GOEM (CD, Kvitnu 36)
[Modelbau] DO WITHOUT (cassette, Maneki Neko Tapes MN002T)
[Frans de Waard] AFTER ALL (cassette, Copy For Your Records cfyrt 11) Collaboration with Howard Stelzer. Edition of 50 copies
[Modelbau] EXTRUSION (cassette, Bookend Recordings, BE 019) Edition of 26 copies
[Freiband] PENNY ARCADE (cassette by Vulnavia Editions, no catalogue number) split release with Tanner Garza, based on a collaboration
I played these concerts:
Kapotte Muziek
14-11-2015 Les Ateliers Claus, Brussel, Belgium FdW+RM
Wieman
14-11-2015 Les Ateliers Claus, Brussel, Belgium
Modelbau
01-04-2015 Occii, Amsterdam
02-04-2015 Koffie & Ambacht, Rotterdam
03-04-2015 Etalage Derde Wal, Nijmegen
05-12-2015 KuS, Heerlen
WaSm
05-12-2015 KuS, Heerlen
Beequeen
10-01-2015 Kroese, Nijmegen
07-02-2015 Vrooom, Rotterdam
Frans de Waard
27-03-2015 Vrijplaats, Leiden
Onwards!
August 29, 2013 Leave a comment
Actually I do play a lot of ambient house from the mid 90s on my ipod come to think of it. I guess I like it? Today I uploaded all the works I ever did as Quest/QST to a special bandcamp site and it has all the music that was released, inc an album of material from compilations, including remixes of Conrad Schnitzler, Muslimgauze and Kim Cascone and an entirely unreleased album of three long pieces and one very short. It’s called ‘Quarters’ and two commissioned pieces are ‘C.O.M.A.’ which I recorded for Sahko’s ‘Ambient Cities’ project in 1994 (and which I didn’t hear again until today when the EXCELLENT Tommi Gronlund mailed it to me) and a piece for Irmgard Trimbos, which was played in a theatre as the audience was entering. Maybe from 1995. I am pleased with this. It sounds like slightly more raw version of some of the other Quest/QST material, but still fine ambient music. Maybe I wish I had better tools in those days!
May 10, 2013 Leave a comment
The past few posts have been about digital music, and while I like to serve everybody what they want, I do like physical releases perhaps a little more. This week, by curious twist of fate I guess, I got three new releases which involve my music, small and large. First there is a 3″ CDR by Bastet, in which five people remix Unter Den Linden. I am pretty sure I did my piece already in 2001 and it was one of the first pieces of laptop music I ever did. Stephan Mathieu liked this one. It was also released on the Freiband cassette on Beam End, in 2011, because frankly I thought this would not never appear. The others on this 3″ CDR compilation are Nouvelles Lectures Cosmopolites, Monolith, Column One and P.A.L. Heavy stuff!
Then I got copies of ‘Pink Pearl’, a CD which I recorded with Howard Stelzer in 2011 and 2012. As source material we used everything that we done since we started to work together, which must have been 1996, when we first traded rough musical sounds to be melted into new music. But unlike some others in this particular branch, I have met Howie a couple of times – I would like to say on 5 occasions but I am afraid I will use the wrong number – when he was in Europe or I in the USA and we have played together on a number of live and studio collaborations. I know, its what musicians always say, but this might be our best work together. The source material is old stuff from cassettes, previous collaborations, live recordings and lots of digital processing on my part. We will not disclose who did which track
And then there is Freiband’s ‘Mutatis Mobilis’. When I did a Freiband piece on the Korm 25th Anniversary cassette it had some stuff on side A, and some on side B, so that you could use the tape as a 4 track tape and further treat this stuff. Z’EV send me a piece, which I think I may have lost (but I don’t dare to tell him) and Mirko Uhlig did a long one, which Attenuation Circuit released as a cassette and CDR. I used that cassette in my four track recorder to play it back and use that for some new music, which is again something people could use as a four track. Either by using the cassette version as a four track or using free software to play both pieces at the same time. A never ending thing I guess.
Yesterday Wieman rehearsed for their concert ‘Play Goem’ at the end of this month and it sounds great. The Tobacconists have 2 LPs ready (mixed and mastered) for release, and the new Beequeen is 99% ready – all of which should make excellent releases. Beequeen is easily the most commercial music I was ever involved in. Fucking hell, this should break big time!
April 26, 2013 Leave a comment
Two albums with collections of historical pieces! One is Klankschap #1, #3, #6 and #8, with four long pieces of field recordings music, and the other is Klankschap & Other Pieces. Full tracklist is Capuciro, Requiem Pour Un Homme Seul, Waving Back, Stilte, A Soundguide To Knust, Klankschap #4, Klankschap #7, Klankschap #5, Klankschap #10, Profieldeel Zeven, For Phil, Whistling, Material and Broken Balloon, spanning pieces from 1994 to 2013. Both on bandcamp!
March 28, 2013 Leave a comment
It’s been a year since I last released a few items on My Own Little Label, and more and more I believe that was it. Maybe it’s time to move on? I don’t know. But what I do know is that they can all be heard on bandcamp and all can also be purchased there in a physical format. My first real bandcamp shop?
March 11, 2013 Leave a comment
This is a text to which I will refer to when asked… and it’s
about my role as the yellow pages of the underground. I do write a lot of reviews, hence I do ‘know’ lots of musicians and labels, and as I sometimes play out music live I might know a few places to perform music. All duly noted in Vital Weekly. Yet, on an almost daily basis I receive requests from musicians for labels, contact persons at labels (even those with whom I am no longer connected for about 10 years), or that super handy list of venues to perform. I love you all, I wish you to do well, but the answer to your question is simply ‘no, I can’t help you’. A) because I simply not well organized, so I don’t have a fine word document with the requested information and b) because this is made to measure work, like which label would suit you best, which venue, what money would be involved. This also extends to requests such as ‘write me a support letter for my grant’, or ‘hey why does Extrapool not respond to my e-mail (or anyone else)’, ‘will you be my support act if I play in Extrapool’ etc. To put it bluntly: I am not interested in doing free work for anyone, other then myself and the ones I seek out myself. I don’t have the time to listen your demo and think of a list of a least 10 willing labels to release it. Or to book your tour. Or to release it myself. I think, through my work for Vital Weekly, my own music, my own label (when you hand in a request for advise, think about this: when was the last time you bought a release of my label?) and some work which I do, but don’t take public credit for (if you know what that is, fine. If not, just ignore), I think I serve the underground with all my heart already. Save those Vital Weeklies, make an effort of reading it (as far as is possible), seek out those labels and venues yourself and build your own word document with relevant info. And to those I do help, which I actually also do, I usually offer it, not asked. Or simply find me hanging at a bar and buy me beer. I’ll talk your socks off, and you make the notes.
This extends everyone, no matter if we never met, or met a lot of times, or even if I released your work. It’s nothing personal, but please understand my position. I don’t want a daily business running errants for everyone who asks.
(this already appeared on facebook in March 2013, but slightly changed here)
Frans de Waard 