Tuesday 29 March 2016

De Afvalbanden - Same -1981- (Cassette), Netherlands


From the liner notes:

After owning an Akai 4000 for over a year, I have several reel tapes full of used, unusable and unused pieces of sound and music. The choice between buying new reel tapes or to erase them leads to a compromise: publishing them. With that 1 hour of experiment. Instrumental, vocal, neuropop and real cover versions, pieces of audiotape of a VHS and a slide-show, in short: the household waste of the home industry. May 1981.

Apparently Peter Mertens was behind De Afvalbanden, which means The Trash Tapes. He used to be a member of early Minny Pops and also of The Young Lions, which means he was part of the core of the so called Ultra movement in Holland. This cassette is another lost piece of the vast Dutch home-taping underground. De afvalbanden is a solo effort and DIY collage of buzzing primitive synthesizers, strange vocals, guitar plucking, tape manipulation, silly songs and unidentified sounds. All taking place in a netherworld inside of a garbage can (so it sounds).

The cover of the cassette is made up of a transparent piece of plastic with trash drawn on it. It is combined with a cut-out piece of trash bag highlighting the drawing in grey. The ultimate cover for The Garbage Tapes I'd say. It is very much a product of the early eighties home-taping culture due to its essence being rooted in the medium of the cassette. Listen to the mysterious trash tapes yourself!

Get it HERE

4 comments:

  1. thanks for this tape

    info here https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/de_afvalbanden

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    1. Thanks! Strange to see that the picture is my own scan etc. Someone did this fast!

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  3. So interesting to see this fine K7 tape rise to the surface, ha, ha ... (Thank you, Frans de Waard for sending me over :-) ... "De Afvalbanden" by Peter Mertens indeed was released in 1981, at the same time as "Small World" by the Young Lions (the full recording of the band's last 5 piece live performance, during the ULTRA events in the Oktopus club on the Amsterdam Keizersgracht, autumn 1980).
    Both K7-releases were on my maxi-lo-profile 'Link Tapes' label.
    I guess there were no more than 10 copies made of 'De Afvalbanden'. Most of these must have gone to friends; A very few will have been for sale at the Boudisque record store in the Haringpakkerssteeg.
    They were not distributed in any other way.

    Dus, wie er nog eentje heeft, die is wel 't heertje!

    Thanks for making this little gem available. I do have a hard copy, but the tape broke. Never got round to splicing it together again ;-)

    cheers,
    Harold Schellinx
    http://www.harsmedia.com

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