Cake
August 6, 2011 Leave a comment
Its been a while since someone baked me a birthday cake, but Surya did: last night at a somewhat premature birthday party. 45 candles, since apparently its bad luck to put the right amount on it. A great evening.
Losta news
August 3, 2011 Leave a comment
It seems like I was on holiday, but actually I wasn’t, or not really. But lots of things to report. First of all, the cassette, split, with Richard Ramirez was released, in an edition of 31 copies. I have 3 to sell. The Kapotte Muziek is a slightly edited version of our concert in Heerlen earlier this year.
A great review appeared of my Freiband LP here
Thanks with the great help of Francisco Lopez I sold old stock from my ‘mailorder’ to an archive in Murcia, Spain. That was a great clean-up, so finally I could do what I always wanted: put them in order, with a number on them, and generally clean up my dirty database. It took three days, but I am now happy to say that 99% of what supposed to be in stock is actually in stock. And now for some discipline to maintain this. Thanks to great help of her
I just approved the release of ‘The Many Names Of’ compilation cassette – more on that later.
The Tobbaconists LP will be released by a new label called Economy of Language, and lo and behold, it might be a 2LP set, inc our radioplay. That is the best news in ages!
The correct pressing of the Idea Fire Company 7″ just arrived, so more work looming – you see never a dull moment.
Transition
June 21, 2011 Leave a comment
A 3″ CDR released by Kaon from Freiband, with treatments of Cedric Peyorennet’s catalogue of river sounds is out now. More info here. And as usual I have some copies to sell…
Contest
June 17, 2011 1 Comment
Ini.itu happily announces the release of the first Freiband LP, of which I am quite proud. Its gamelan music treated in a strictly computer way on one side and analogue on the other. For a while I thought about doing it as a Freiband/Goem split LP, but for whatever reason I forgot, we decided against it. Maybe because Goem is dead & buried (until someone dangles big cash for our reunion concert – any takers?). I will copies of this album to sell soon.
Ini.itu also has a contest:
Because the release of our latest LP on ini.itu by Freiband ( Frans de Waard ) puts us in a good mood, we decided to launch a little contest.
The rules are simple :
1. check our website ( www.iniitu.net ) and find out our email adress there
2. send us a picture of a rusty metal surface that you shot yourself
3. share this on your profile
The best photographer will receive an LP 🙂
and the winning photo will be posted here too…
More talking heads
June 12, 2011 Leave a comment
Rather late but I have been asked to talk about ‘working independently’ as a musician in a twenty minute lecture/performance/film thing next thursday. As of yet I have no idea what I will do. Maybe I’ll play a concert, show a short film, or do a powerpoint presentation on Korm Plastics, under the all unsurprising title of ‘State Of Independents’. Its organised by the Nijmeegs Ontwerp Platform, of whom I never heard. If you follow this link then you’ll read that the ‘fourth speaker will sign his own tune’: that must be me, added rather late to the programm. A more formal announcement here
No longer a drama
June 7, 2011 Leave a comment
Today I got copies of the ‘Ocean Drama’ CDR on Songs From The Floorboards. It was repressed, but apparently had another error, so this is the third time around. Nobody is making any money here. I have very few copies for sale of this great disc.
Hanson Records will no longer release our LP, so its up in the air again. The good news is that the radioplay Scott and I recorded, ‘Smoking Is Green’ (in fact, very green), is to be broadcasted on June 26th at 0:00. It will online for a year or so. Check out their website and Worm, with whom this was arranged, will release it on CDR in the near future. Its surely a great work: I have it on my ipod and play it regularly…
Rockumentary
June 5, 2011 Leave a comment
Yesterday’s concert by Zebra, now called Wieman, was mildly chaotic due to circumstances: quick built up, no proper soundcheck, sun clouding our laptops, but we winged it. Maybe I’ll put this recording online. Today’s Freiband gig at Extrapool’s showcase at the same festival was cancelled, like the entire Extrapool program which is a pity since I wanted to play that ini.itu piece. Maybe there will be an option to present it somewhere else later on.
Best news is that Florian Cramer, who attended our Ezdanitoff workshop in Rotterdam made a small film about it. Talking is in Dutch but it surely gives a great impression of what a workshop looks like, so book us in your town to explain the curious nature of composition and improviation through ‘do-it-yourself’ methods.
Doubts!
May 29, 2011 Leave a comment
A post in two parts:
Sunday afternoon, about 16:30.
In about one hour or so I’ll be going to Eindhoven to see Peter Hook & The Light. This band will play the entire Unknown Pleasures LP, plus a bunch of encores according to the website. For years its a trend of old and tired musicians to take their magic moment from years back and play it back to back. Never cared for any of those, although perhaps I’d loved to have seen the Sparks playing their 22 albums night after night a few years back. But then, maybe I would love to see the Sparks anyway. Being more a New Order than a Joy Division fan, I am a bit wary of all this. Is Hook out there to fish out big money from old fans? They bought the LP, then Substance, then the Heart and Soul CD set, saw Control and then what do you do next? Kids are out of the house for the old fans and maybe they want a night out, so for 27,50 euro a ticket to play with a bunch of hired guns, one LP (‘Closer’ will be performed later this also). That sounds like a dumb idea and I fell for it. Well, no, I tried to get the support act, with Zebra playing either our ‘Live In Leugen’ set or a totally new piece based on ‘Unknown Pleasures’, since it seemed unlikely that the original 1980 support act Minny Pops would play. I talked with Wally of the Pops about us joining them, doing our Zebra styled versions of his old songs, and even recorded a bit of that, which Wally deemed not punchy enough. In the end he didn’t want to do the support, and Hook didn’t want a support anyway (and there will be short film now), so I’ll be in the crowd thinking: bloody hell, what was I thinking going anyway.
to be continued in a few hours.
Sunday night, 0:26
I cycled back and did i see an announcement for ‘The Queen Experience’? I think I did. I saw The Light. Joy Division were once described as ‘three manchester united fans and genius singer’, The Light might be four manchester fans and a hooligan singer. Hook is actually a fine singer but then: I loved Monaco. It was a good, solid show and especially the Warsaw songs were great. The rock n roll aspect of the concert with regard to Unknown Pleasures I thought were less convincing. That doesn’t justify the original songs. But the crowd loved it, singing along – another aspect that somehow doesn’t seem to fit the originals. I was thinking ‘have you ever had the feeling being cheated’ – and at sixty minutes of live music and a totally redundant film (don’t people have youtube at home to watch these rockumentary bits?) and 27,50 euro a ticket: I am not sure if you see me at Closer in december. Get a decent support act, Wieman with Minny Pops for instance, and I’ll be there. I have six months to ponder about this. Spoke with Wally for a while, so who knows?
picture above by Lisette Sutherland
Frans de Waard 