Tuesday 19 January 2016

Waste of Time - Muziek Uit Zwischenfall -1982- (SP, Private Pressing), Netherlands


Waste of Time was an Amsterdam based Theatre collective of mime artists. They originated in 1974 and created about fifteen productions until 1985. Already in 1974 they used multimedia like music, visual arts and film to accompany the mime playing. Usually plays involved no speech, no story and no moral. Not coincidentally their work seemed to reflect on the powerlessness of communication and human loneliness. Waste of Time used to perform a lot in Belgian cities and small places because they prefered the light-spiritedness of the audience in contrast with the more elitist Amsterdam in-crowd theatre audience. The mime group can be viewed as an early example of innovative Dutch performance art.

The music on this private seven inch single is made by Mike Floothuis and Jaap Lindijer. Much to my surprise I came to the conclusion that these musicians were also part of one of the Netherlands' most obscure and mysterious bands called Danger. Danger released an album in 1973 which was comprised of two side-long tracks of improvisation music (a record very high on my wantlist). It was recorded in the studio of The Hague's music venue Paard van Troje. The music is a strange combination of organ, synths, saxophone and no drums at all. It has a Soft Machine-ish feel, but also brings to mind the impossible to find release by the Dutch band Ellufant, many experimental Krautrockgroups and almost anything on the NWW-List. But all without drums. Very mysterious stuff, I don't own the Danger album but I might upload it to Youtube.

Back to the music on here: Floothuis and Lindijer created this music for Waste of Time's 1982 play called Zwischenfall. It's repetitive Casio-fueled minimalist synth music that tends to get weirder every second. I can imagine this music in combination with the mime-acting in the play. Very cool stuff, reminds me of some of the DIY Dutch eighties Zimbo cassettes and certain parts of Venezuelan electronic musician Angel Rada (the analogy makes no sense context-wise ofcourse).

Get it HERE

Sunday 3 January 2016

Circles - Same -1983- (LP, Einhorn Music), Germany


So we're some days into the new year and I don't have a clue what to post, I've got so much amazing stuff at the moment, don't have much time and I'm trying to only post two releases every month to give this blog some time to exist into this future. Anyway, here is one of many posts around German cult-group Circles which was donated to me by a friend of the blog (Thank you!). This is something I'd never tought I would hear and happy to share.

Circles were a band from Germany that started out in the early eighties and consisted of the duo of Dierk Leitert and Mike Bohrmann. They created a mixture between old psychedelic krautrock grooves, wave-y guitar textures, electronic kosmische sounds, NDW and rock 'n roll. They are a perfect example of the particular period of Germany's early eighties when the influential Krautrock period started to merge with the fresh Neue Deutsche Welle music. Circles released three albums on their own label Einhorn Music and also had side projects like D.O.C. (Das Organisierte Chaos) which was more electronic oriented.

This first album is quite daring and rough in its approach, just like what you'd expect from a debut record. It's an energetic and dense trip full of electronic sounds, weird vocals, psychedelic guitar stuff and much more. Similar things that come to mind are german bands like 39 Clocks, Harmonia, Teflon Fonfara's album Inge In Venedig and American Milwaukee based band F/i. Actually this type of music is also what influences myself the most I guess, a mixture between the hippie-ish psychedelic krautrock music and eighties synth, noise, ambient, industrial type of stuff.

I have red that allegedly there is a reissue of this record coming out on Ultima Thule Records soon. If this happens I will kindly take this link down and link to the website (I hope so, this stuff is incredible!). More Circles and related projects to follow soon on the blog.

Highly Recommended!

UPDATE! Links removed due to the reissue on Mental Experience, a sub-division of Guerssen records.The first and second album of Circles have been reissued on CD and LP. Get them HERE!

Donated by SonicA