At Home At Last

Image My Beequeen partner Freek runs a very private label called Beam Ends and he asked me for a cassette. The one I recorded for him, ‘Kubus’ wasn’t what he wanted, so I gave him access to all the unreleased Freiband pieces, from which he choose six and its now available. The first edition is 30 copies and it looks great! But alas no extensive liner notes – see them below. Order a copy from <info@beequeen.nl> or get one from me – same price.

Freiband – At Home At Last Official liner notes

As there was no space left on the cover and I  really wanted to say something about this new  release on Beam End – here are the liner notes,  so you know what you are hearing. As the title  suggests, these are old pieces, which for whatever reason never found a home. The first is ‘Kapotte Muziek By’ which is the first sketch of a various pieces Freiband did, using sound  material by Kapotte Muziek. It was, somewhere in  2007-2008, also presented live in some form and another version was released by My Own Little Label. This piece was for a compilation cassette with one minute songs, but they didn’t take mine, but Wander is there (with a rare noise piece actually). One of the first Freiband ‘goes computer’ pieces is ‘Well’, which of course is the German translation of Brunnen, Freek Kinkelaar’s project. I have no idea why I did this remix, perhaps as a bonus for some re-issue of his work, or some such. It was in the hands of various people for a compilation, but that also never happened. ‘BCN’ stands for ‘Bacon’, which I recorded for Spekk’s ‘Small Melodies’ compilation, and ‘spek’ is ‘bacon’ in Dutch and it uses sounds from bakings well, you get  my drift. I always liked this piece and sadly was not included on that compilation ‘Unter Den Linden’ is also a very early piece by Freiband, for a remix project by Bastet, of a band with the same name. That never happened. I am not sure about the date though. I do remember Stephan Mathieu really liked this one. If you are still with us, and turn the tape over, you’ll find ‘Tilos’. Kapotte Muziek was late 2001 in Budapest for a workshop and concerts and we were invited to come down to a radio station called ‘Tilos’ to present our work, and we all did a solo live piece. This particular piece includes some Joy Division/New Order samples, if I remember correctly, as I was busy working on ‘Homeward’. In 2002 I did a slightly different studio version, which is the one of this tape. Tilos Radio still exists and was recently under attack from the new laws on media in Hungary. Tongue in cheek is the last one, as I was not invited to a compilation that was to be released with remixes of Ptose, an old French band, but I bumped into someone who had source material. I did this piece, which I recently titled, which I never thought was completely done, but apparently Mr. Beam End likes it, so there you go. And aspiring young labels: there is plenty more where this came from, the freivaults are not empty. Frans de Waard – 30-III-2011

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Bad Sector

Sometimes, through the pages of Vital Weekly I complain about remix CDs, but privately I’d like to take part in them, simply because I like doing music and doing a remix is a fine enough reason. Bad Sector I remember from my staaldays and although I was never blown away, I like certain aspects of their music. They toured Germany last month and Vuz Records asked a few people to do a remix. Its now available as a 3″CDR and has besides Freiband also If, Bwana, Hypnoskull as 33mhz and dEmutE. Nice one! I have some copies.

Interaction

I am very happy to report the re-issue of ‘Interaction’. For many years I lost both masters and despite asking various people whom have a copy of this, I had to wait for Al Conroy of Not Half to step forward and sending me both tapes as digital file. Interaction was a two tape release, on two different labels, which one could play solo or together, with the option to freely mix both tapes together. Very much a Kapotte Muziek idea of that time – 1990. It comes, like two previous re-issues on Lunhare with a Freiband remix – two actually, one on each CDR. Lunhare has now re-released four CDRs of old Kapotte Muziek stuff and I am very grateful to them. Who knows, maybe more in the future!

The Many Names Of Frans

If all goes well, I should be getting today or tomorrow a box of copies of my latest release, ‘The Many Names Of Frans’, a cassette released by Vuz Records. I known Holger since the mid 80s when he had a label called Dill, and I participated on a compilation. This new cassette is his second release on a new cassette label called Maneki Neko Tapes and its basically a fifteen track compilation of various names I have used for my various musical projects. Below I copied all the liner notes. Actually today I should have been working with Martin Luiten on finalizing the mix of our third and final Pick-up LP, but the heavy rain all day prevents me from going out. I am sure Martin will do a good job. After sending out all free copies to fellow conspirators, I will have a few left for sale, contact me.

01 Zebra – Ouverture
After five years of talking about starting Zebra, Roel Meelkop and I finally started in 2005, albeit with a 7″ that had a solo track by each. We see Zebra as the logical extension of Goem, but then with more ‘fun’ and perhaps even more ‘concept’. We choose [or you could say “settle upon”] a theme, say the word ‘music’ and then look for popsongs that deal with ‘music’. ‘Ouverture’ is from our as of yet unreleased album that deals with songs with ‘Ouvertures, Rhapsodies, Fanfares and Symphonies’. This edit was created for a compilation that rejected our track on the grounds of copyright. Oh, and we used the wrong drum machines!

02 Kapotte Muziek – Rotterdam 1995
In 1995 Roel Meelkop joined Peter Duimelinks and me for the live line-up of Kapotte Muziek and after our first concert as a trio, we did some rehearsing. It was the only time we rehearsed. This particular recording is from one of these. Previously unreleased.

03 Frans de Waard – Klankschap 5
From the original notes written on September 9th 2002: “All sounds contained in this piece were recorded on my rather noisy bike – some screws et al aren’t attached right, so it makes noise while riding the bicycle. As my bicycle is always in Nijmegen, I opted for a personal note on Nijmegen, rather then a social picture of the city. Being born here in 1965, I returned in 1998, after having spent some years in Den Haag. We bought a house at Fagelstraat 40 address. In 2000 the relationship ended and I moved out and now at the Acaciastraat 11 address. But in the next two years, I went back and forth to the old address to take care of my daughter. This ended in August 2002, when my daughter moved out of Nijmegen and my active role as a father ended. The house was sold and upon the final day being there, I went back on my bicycle and recorded the source material while going to my own house. A small ride of maybe 7 minutes. On the soundpiece I transformed the sounds, keeping in mind the various curves and roads to follow. Two days later I had my bicycle fixed and it’s now all silent again.” Klankschap #5 was recorded for the project ‘Invisible Cities’ in Ireland and was before only available as a download.

04 Quest – Schnitzler mix
When I heard that Plate Lunch was to do a Conrad Schnitzler remix project I invited myself. Plate Lunch thought the track was good, but asked if the piano intro could be removed. I agreed, but shortly after that, the owner of Plate Lunch passed away and with him, this project, so here is the original version including piano. Quest was my solo project in ambient music in the 90s, and it differs from QST, which was me and Maurice van Dongen. Previously unreleased.

05 Captain Black – Scorn Mix
Captain Black, an US brand of pipe tobacco, was my remix alter ego. I remixed various bands and never asked permission. I released several of them on limited pieces of vinyl (Unitone HiFi, PWOG and Tortoise), CDR (Power Steppers) and much remains in the archive (WordSound label for instance). This remix of Scorn is previously unreleased.

06 The Whi – Untitled
Probably a one-off project of Ben Schot, Roel Meelkop, Puck Schot and me, using WII-Rock band hero set-up, computers and amplifiers. Recorded live in Extrapool on November 6th 2010. Previously unreleased.

07 Ezdanitoff – Bandwidth (Live In O Tannebaum 13-11-2010)
Ezdanitoff is Wouter, Jaspers and me. Started out in May 2010 with a concert and recording time in Budapest. This particular excerpt is from the first concert of our ‘Bandwidth’ project, mainly about radio waves and a rather free adaptation of ‘Imaginary Landscape #4’ by John Cage. Previously unreleased

08 Beequeen – Breathe
Since 1989 Beequeen is Freek Kinkelaar and me, with the addition of Olga for the last couple of years on vocals. We moved from ambient/industrial to, well, popmusic. This is a live recording from August 15th 2008 and was previously released on the double CDR, part of the ‘Encyclopedia Of Industrial Music Part 1’

09 Goem – Untitled
Goem started in 1996 by Roel Meelkop and me, with Peter Duimelinks joining in 1997. It ended somewhere in 2003 and existed as a solo project for me until 2008. One of the last pieces recorded (by Roel and me) was this commissioned remix of Esplendor Geometrico for a Japanese label but it was never released. Previously unreleased

10 Shifts – Rehearsal
Mainly Shifts was a studio project, exploring the depths of ‘guitars’ and ‘ambient’ music. But in 1998 I was asked to present it in live concert (in Stockholm, where Shifts also played with Zoviet*France, sadly never released). I did some rehearsals at home to see how it would work. This is an excerpt. Previously unreleased

11 Freiband – One Love, One Egg
Since 2000 Freiband is my solo name for anything to do with “music and computers”, to put it loosely. Various pieces were remixes, and this is to be understood as a remix of Zion Train. I do think they asked me for this, but in the end it was never used. Previously unreleased

12 The Tobacconists – Twilight
In April 2009 Scott Foust and I toured Europe as The Tobacconists, and recorded a LP for Hanson Records/Swill Radio (to be released in 2011). This piece was recorded through mail in 2011 and is previously unreleased.

13 Surge – 1
I tried to keep this as anonymous as possible, but I didn’t succeed. Surge can be seen as a ‘solo Goem’ and released two CDRs (on Bake Records and Microwave Recordings). This particular track was submitted to Audio.NL, but they didn’t release it. Previously unreleased

14 Pick Up – Untitled
In 2008 I started to work with a local guitarist Martin Luiten. He plays guitar, I process it live. We did a lot of recordings in 2008 and 2009 and released two LPs, with a third still in the making. This short edit comes from a finished piece from that third LP. Previously unreleased

15 Wander – Wander
After deciding on doing popmusic, Freek Kinkelaar and I thought it would be nice to have a drone project, which became Wander. All our pieces are called ‘Wander’ and we wanted to present our music in all formats only once. We didn’t succeed, as we’ve done two CDs already, besides a 7″, 12″, LP, cassette and various compilations – including this one. Previously unreleased,

Losta news

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

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…

new releases on Korm, Plink and Moll

simply follow this link

Contest

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…

Rockumentary

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.

Oddstream

Oddstream is the name of big local event here in Nijmegen where I’ll be playing two, hopefully, special concerts. On Saturday June 4th the very last concert as Zèbra. An American band named Zebra doesn’t like other bands to use that name, and hunt them down and smoke ‘m out of their caves. They own the trademark to that name for entertainment purposes since 1974. As obviously you know Zèbra contracts Wibra and Zeeman. From the letters we didn’t use from those names to make up Zèbra we created a new name, Wieman. Meeuw supplied us with a fine logo. Expect some highlights from the excellent Zèbra career. We play from 17:00-18:00.
The next day I play solo as Freiband. I realize I am not using that name a lot for concerts, since they are strictly laptop based, and that’s not something I do since about one and half year. The current concerts also involve radio, walkman, contact microphones and laptop, and go by my own name. But for this occasion I will present a laptop concert and most likely will play something from my Freiband LP which is due out on ini.itu anytime soon. Perhaps I have copies of them on the 5th. For a while I thought to no longer use that name, but I still do strict computer based compositions as Freiband, so I stick to it. Apart from the ini.itu LP there will be a 3″CDR by Freiband on Kaon soon. There you go.