Seven years already... I believe this is the first time I have really written something about my father dying. I never seemed to be able to so before. It's still difficult though, and I keep feeling like eloquence is slipping through my fingers. Then again, that doesn't really seem to matter. Anyway, here's a little reminiscing and musing.
(…) Through the larger than life windows, behind the stage from which the eulogies were delivered, I could make out the large pond that lay behind the cremation center. The water was perfectly still, mirroring the green and blue of the trees and the skies in accurate fashion. As above, so below... A flock of swans suddenly drifted into my vision, floating silently on the surface, in the interstice between reality and its reflection. I listened to the music being played, which my family and I had chosen. My father didn’t really want to pick any music himself. Or couldn’t. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he found it too hard to think about stuff like that in advance, preferring instead to be oblivious of the inevitable. He had eventually chosen one song though, which would be played last, at the end of the ceremony. Now it was first my time to step up and take to the stage. To utter words I couldn’t write myself, even though I’ve always considered myself a writer. That time I really was at a loss for words though, being unable to put emotion (any emotion, those emotions) into writing. Even listening to music accompanied by words felt wrong at the time, or rather it was just impossible for me to listen to. All I could listen to was the instrumental music of 65daysofstatic, for weeks on end. I was glad my sister stepped up that time and had written something about our father for the ceremony. She couldn’t get herself to read it out aloud in front of everyone though, in front of the whole family. So I was happy to do that, feeling like I could at least add something to the ceremony that way, to give something to my father that way. At first it wasn’t that hard, reading aloud those lines, because they told about loving, caring and funny moments we had all shared with my dad. I felt a calm serenity take hold of me, carrying me through this, although I had to focus on the piece of paper carrying my sister's words, and had to avoid too much eye contact with my mom, brother and sister. At the end of the speech things suddenly started to get slippery, and I felt myself drifting away for a moment. I then had to collect all my strength to keep myself together, not only to keep my composure, but to prevent myself from collapsing within myself. Those last lines were so hard to read, but I felt such a strong urge to say them. I had to say them. It took me a full minute to say the last few words. “Vaders, we zullen je missen.”
I don't remember walking off the stage, taking my seat. All I remember from those moments after, was staring through the windows again, those larger than life windows. Seeing the by then empty pond, with the swans having moved out of sight, while listening to the one song my dad really wanted to be played at his memorial ceremony. And while Mathilde Santing’s version of ‘Wonderful Life’ was playing, suddenly the flock of swans came into my vision again. At first quietly floating by, but then suddenly the whole flock of swans took off into the air, flying in a spectacular circle over the pond and then disappearing into the sky. It was a moment of pure yet sad beauty. And at that moment I felt something shift and click within me, and I realised something had changed, that I would never be the same person again. A profound sadness had settled into my soul, one that would never leave me.
It took me almost two years to come to terms with that sadness, and take the metamorphosis to its ultimate conclusion. Only then I realised that it was a sadness birthed in love, allowing me to open up my being like never before. One that gave my heart the ability to weave the fabric of life into my soul.
I can now say, with full understanding, that all these encounters with Life Herself, in all their intricate ways, are what makes this all so worthwhile. And now the silly cheesiness of that song ‘Wonderful Life’ suddenly somehow rings true, I can only smilingly admit while quietly shaking my head.
I feel like I have found a friend in that profound sadness. One that does not feel heavy like a cornerstone, but one that functions as a starting point from which I can embark on empathetic journeys. I have found a friend in the memory of my dad. I have found a friend within myself. I have found a friend in my outlook on life. And of course, I have a friend in all of you, my friends, my dear friends.
And now, when I look into the mirror, I pound my fist against my heart, and with the ferocity of Norma Jean’s delivery, I feel this simple but most wonderful realisation: yes, I choose to embrace Life. And I am intend on living it. That’s the legacy my father left within me, and for that I will always be so grateful to that wonderful man.
Thank you, vaders.
“I miss you already
I miss you always”
But in a good way, because yes, you do make me smile.
Just a quick shout out to this blog I am following, called The Funambulist, written and edited by Léopold Lambert. It's filled with very interesting and critical articles on a number of related disciplines from an architectural point of view. In Lambert's own words:
"The Funambulist is a research platform written and edited by Léopold Lambert.
Its name is inspired by a wondering/wandering on the line as architects' medium. A line on the white page splits in reality two milieus from one another and organizes politically the bodies in space. The act of walking on the line (funambulist means tight-rope walker) is an act of subversion of the traditional role of the line/wall. This name also refers to Philippe Petit crossing illegally the space between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 and the funambulist in Nietzsche's Zarathustra who is said to die peacefully as he succumbs from the danger to which he dedicated his life."
It's highly recommended reading. A good starting point is this piece on the Mediterranean Sea as functioning as a wall, or an abyss, between the North and the South. This is such a poignant and emotional article.
The abyss, the 'Gouffre', so salient a symbol while also having its
literal meaning. Fortress North, whether north from a desert (Arizona)
or a sea (the Mediterranean), always managing to deflect any attempts
from Southern Bodies to connect. A self sustaining assemblage allowing
only those connections it wishes to embrace
I recommend taking a stroll through this blog, since you will no doubt be intrigued by the different linkages that Lambert creates.
It is only four more weeks until the Elysian Fields of stoner, psychedelic, doom and other related genres will be upon us once more. That's right, I am talking about the Roadburn Festival 2014, taking place of course again in lovely ol' Tilburg in the south of Holland. Those who don't know what this festival is about are either on the wrong side of the musical spectrum or have been smoking so much they cannot see further than their front door. Those who know about the festival either long have a ticket or are bummed out about not having one since the festival is once more sold out. The next few weeks I will be paying attention to the festival and everything it stands for. Mostly as a nice warm up for myself to increase the anticipatory feelings, but also as a small and humble hommage to the festival and the music it advocates.
Yama to play Roadburn
I want to to start off this series by focusing on a Dutch band that will be playing this year's festival. Hailing from Tilburg and making ferociously intense Roadburn music it was only a matter of time before they would appear on the festival's poster. Needless to say I was very stoked to find out a couple of weeks ago that YAMA were to play at Roadburn 2014, I believe on the Saturday at newly added location Cul de Sac. That feels like more than justice, because not only does Yama do a great job promoting both the festival and the city with their smashing music, but also by being great and hospitable guys. Last year I had the honour of doing an interview with the entire band at Roadburn 2013, where they were present simply as attendees and music lovers. I tried to combine that interview with some new insights into the article here below.
Yama - Seaquake EP
Homeland
Yama has been playing together in the current formation for about two and a half years. In that period there has been a slight evolution in their music. "We used to play a bit more stoner than we do now actually, when it was just Alex and Sjoerd playing together. Later Peter joined and when Joep was added as our drummer we felt complete. From then on Yama as it is now really took shape. We also got more serious about our music when we had become a four piece. It helped that people immediately responded to our music as well." Coming not only from Roadburn-city Tilburg, but also having the south(east) of Holland as home country, meant there was a huge potential of both fans of the stoner, metal and heavy rock genre as well as a lot of bands who played music along similar veins. "We've always had good support from Tilburg and basically the whole of Brabant. There are likeminded bands as Sungrazer and The Machine, although their music does definitely differ from ours. We have more of a focus on grunge elements, reminiscent of the nineties. Other good Dutch bands in the genre include Herder (although they are from a bit farther away), Orange Sunshine, Sons of the Patriots... It is all perhaps a bit of a niche market, but there is definitely a great scene for this kind of music. Plus here in Tilburg you have great venues such as 013 and Little Devil."
Yama - Ananta
Vedic mythology
In 2012 Yama released their first EP, called Seaquake. Although admittedly the production value could be a bit better, the enormous quality of the songs definitely makes up for that. The EP has been met with very favourable reviews and it is no surprise that the physical copies have long been sold out. Luckily, now there's new material. "We recorded our new album last year in Utrecht at Independent Recordings. It's a full length this time, and it will be released soon. It's around 40 minutes long and the sound quality is great, so we are really stoked about it!" For the title of the record Yama stayed close to their origins. Just as their band name (Yama meaning 'God of death and illusion, servant of Vishnu') the name of the record comes from Vedic mythology (related to Hindu mythology). "We've decided to call the record 'Ananta'. It basically can mean different things, but for us it stands for the thousand-headed serpent, representing the Infinity of Life." This intriguing meaning calls out for fitting artwork. Yama have found the perfect artist to help them out there. "We're good friends with Maarten Donders, who also does a lot of great artwork for Roadburn. He is also responsible for our band logo and he has made a great piece of work for our album. In the Bhagavad Gita there is a passage in which Vishnu, the supreme deity, sails across the world on the serpent. Maarten has done a wonderful job capturing that image."
Future
With an album full of quality music and majestic artwork, Yama is ready to take on the world, and to do so in a professional way. "We're kind of past the point that we will play just for a few beers and a laugh. It always depends of course who asks you to play and where the show is at, but we've definitely matured in that regard. The show needs to have some sort of relevance, whether it is for setting up a network or just because the setting of the show is great. We've done a few shows in Belgium and Germany now as well, and the people responded very enthusiastically. In Holland we've mostly played the southeast, but little by little we are conquering the rest as well! We have a great booking agency with Bidi Bookings so we will definitely have some great shows coming up. We are all committed to the band and our music and we will work hard to get our music out there."
Acid and spliffs
The hard work seems to be paying off, because the mighty Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats have asked Yama to open up for them at their shows in Amsterdam, Nijmegen and even Bochum in Germany. The future is looking bright indeed, and it is comforting to know that the lads of Yama know to combine the hard work with a little pleasure, considering their mantra: "No spliff, no riff!" Amen to that.
Go check them out at one of their upcoming shows with Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats to get in the right high moods for Roadburn 2014!
Yama
--- Yama is:
Alex Schenkels - Vocals
Peter Taverne - Bass
Joep Schmitz - Drums
Sjoerd Albers - Guitar
Upcoming shows:
- March 14 - w/ Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats @ Doornroosje, Nijmegen
- March 15 - w/ Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats @ Melkweg, Amsterdam
- March 16 - w/ Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats @ Matrix, Bochum (DE)
- April 12 - Roadburn festival, Tilburg
"We wanted to convey the idea that the future is opening up"
The four lads of Sheffield’s own 65daysofstatic released their latest record Wild Light last month to a lot of critical acclaim. I spoke with Joe Shrewsbury (guitarist, although all members seem to play so many instruments these days that it seems unfair to define them by just referring to their main piece of equipment) a couple of hours before their amazing show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam on October 2nd, 2013. We talked about many a thing leading up to the recording of Wild Light and it became clear, once again, that 65daysofstatic is not a band burdened by narrow-mindedness, but one that is open to embrace whatever the world still has to offer.
Björn & Benny
Upon arriving at the Melkweg around 3pm I get slightly confused, as there are already tons of adolescent girls lining up in front of the door when the show does not start until 8pm or so. Has something spectacular happened the past few months that I do not know off? Are the lads of 65daysofstatic all of sudden the longing wet dream of young girls? Has their music become so sexy that it is poisoning puberty? Alas! The maenads are not there to indulge in the intricacies of some of the best live music around, but to see British X-Factor competitor Olly Murs perform later that night in the other Melkweg hall (the big one, no less –oh the never-ending unfairness bestowed upon quality music!). I heard through the grapevine by the way that Murs secretly likes to masturbate to Abba songs (from their early period), but let’s not get into that right here. I speak with Joe just outside the dressing room in a lovely small garden adjacent to the Melkweg and soon all images of a panting Olly Murs surrounded by posters of Björn & Benny & Agnetha & Anni-Frid disappear from my mind.
Humbling Experience
I talk to Joe about the inception of Wild Light, their latest studio album, which sounds both new and familiar 65daysofstatic. The making of this record took quite some time. “We had a really hard time to write Wild Light. It's not easy for 65days to write music. It took us the best part of two years”, Joe confesses. “The making of Wild Light was a humbling experience. It taught me there is still so much to learn and that you have to dedicate yourself to that notion if you want to keep growing as a musician.” Joe sees a certain growth in the way they approach their music now as compared to where they were say in 2007, when they just recorded The Destruction of Small Ideas. There’s a distinct difference both in the writing process and the actual recording between then and now. “During the Fall of Math we recorded to achieve the chaos that we are when we are playing live. I think we were just building that bigger and bigger, up until The Destruction of Small Ideas. That record in a way was the end of what we could achieve in that sense. After that, working on We Were Exploding Anyway turned out to be a real learning curve.”
Underworld
Talking about We Were Exploding Anyway reminds me of that standout closing track on that record: ‘Tiger Girl’. I tell Joe that if Danny Boyle would have made Trainspotting roughly fifteen years later, he would have used ‘Tiger Girl’ instead of ‘Born Slippy’ by Underworld. Joe laughs apologetically, claiming that it’s far from being as good. “We are actually big fans of Underworld, especially Paul [Wolinski, NT]. We even tried to cover ‘Born Slippy’ once when were 19 years old, and it sucked! But they are certainly an influence and especially on We Were Exploding Anyway. We met them once and they actually really liked our music, which blew our minds! We’re not playing ‘Tiger Girl’ this tour though, because it just stands out too much from the new work. That song is basically a one off in our entire catalog.” Working on that song though and the rest of that album opened up new opportunities for 65daysofstatic, since it enabled them to look at their own music from a different perspective. “On our first three albums we used to focus more on specific sounds. Our guitar sounds had to sometimes resemble Deftones for example, a band that we really love. Those huge open sounds go really well together with synths. Now we focus more on pulling a sound through an amp, then through a distortion and so on, and make it almost unrecognizable. We are now more focused on textures and layers. That makes it more difficult sometimes to pull it off live, but also more interesting, because every night the sound changes, depending on our own way of playing, the equipment, the venue and the amount of people. It definitely keeps it interesting and dynamic this way.”
Silent Running After the change in focus on We Were Exploding Anyway, 65daysofstatic turned to film for a completely different project: Silent Running. Joe elaborates on working on a soundtrack for this seventies film. “Working on Silent Running was very relaxed and liberating, because there was no label pressure. We made it for the Glasgow Film Festival, and at first we would only perform it just once there at the festival. Eventually we did a short tour –playing the music as live accompaniment to a screening of the film. After that tour people kept asking us to record the music, so eventually we did. The fans made that record actually, by funding the entire process. You could fit the fundraisers all into one room probably. That was very exciting.” With no label involved and funding being taken care of by a number of enthusiastic fans, the band could really focus on the music. In contrast to their previous records, the music now had to fit existing images of a film. “Responding to the aesthetics of a seventies sci-fi flick was very great, actually. The film is both serious and playful and we wanted to incorporate that into our music. We didn’t want to sound too heavy, it needed to lift the mood as well. The biggest difference with recording this time was that we needed to pay special attention to the arrangements and timing. It was quite a different discipline than how 65days normally works! We would love to work on an actual new film some day as well, to really be part of the creation of that. We’ll see if that happens!”
Transcending mediocrity
Back to Wild Light, the album that according to Joe really reflects (parts) of the lives that make up 65daysofstatic. “We wrote about the world that we know about, in that sense it reflects our lives. And we wanted it to be grown up. It has to mean something in the world of music today, we wanted to make it count. A lot of instrumental bands nowadays don't seem to make albums anymore that transcend mediocrity. Bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai opened up this direction of music back in the day and great bands followed, but there's also a lot of music around now that's just… not that interesting. We wanted to make something unique to us, something that’s based on what 65days has learned in the past and that reflects on us being in this band. So that the outcome could not be anything else but 65daysofstatic.” Something that they have learned from making music for quite some time now is not to get lost in details. “There is still attention to detail on this record, but we made sure not to drown in them. We used less to achieve more, which sounds like a simple thing but in reality it is quite difficult. It felt like a new start of approaching our own music. Like I said earlier, we were more focused on working with layers this time, and it really felt as if we were constructing a house of cards that could tumble down at any moment. We also took a long time between the recording at the studio and the actual mixing, done by Tony Doogan. He is a good friend of ours and he didn't hear the songs beforehand. While he was mixing the songs in the studio he was constantly telling stories and in the meantime he fixed the songs. He’s great at taking your mind of the details and it worked out really well. Now we just have to see if we can translate this process to a live setting…”
Wild Light as a Whole
In the era of single driven mp3 sales as opposed to the full length album format, Wild Light sounds surprisingly as a unity, an organism of which each and every part is necessary for the survival of the overall atmosphere. Joe admits that that was something the band was aiming at. “We wrote Wild Light as an album. We knew for example that ‘Heat Death’ should open it already two years ago. We knew that ‘Safe Passages’ would have to close it. The songs were written in a different way than in previous 65days times. We didn’t start with just guitar parts or drum parts. We wrote the songs around melodies and ideas we had of what the songs would have to sound like. It was scary in a sense, because you're going into the studio and someone is paying for that and you work on the material for two years. If you screw up, you can’t just make a new record, because there’s no money for that anymore. But that fear is also good to thrive on. And in the end the ideas worked out really well and the final recording ended up being one for the album listeners. I think that ‘Prisms’ could work as a standout track, but the rest is definitely more part of a whole.” We talk some more about the decline of the Album and the way that so many people seem to prefer to listen to their iPod in shuffle mode. Joe worries about the amount of concentration people can muster up these days. “All we do all day long is click through. Hyperlinks? Worst things in the world! You look something up at Wikipedia and end up finding completely different things! It used to be you would go to the pub and someone says something and then you’d talk about that. Now we look it up on our smartphones –discussion closed, end of conversation, next topic! That’s why I like vinyl. It’s more of a ritual that requires attentiveness.” And as Simone Weil already wrote: ‘Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity’.
The Evolving Meaning of Art
We move on to a broader perspective on society and human life. I ask Joe about his ideas on the evolving meaning of art, of evolving understanding and emotions. “Over the course of your life you experience a lot of things, obviously. That’s part of growing as a human being. Your life takes on new meaning over the course of it. With instrumental music for example a lot of people feed their own emotions and feelings into what they hear. That’s why we don't want to have overt meanings coming from us. Our songs even mean different things for us all in the band. David Yow from The Jesus Lizard, when they broke up, said something along the lines of: ‘our band wasn't big to a lot of people, but the people who it was important to it was very important’. I feel and hope that Wild Light will be important for people in that same regard. We realise that 65days means a lot to certain people, which is a big responsibility. I don 't want to make an awful record! But we dragged some people through some difficult times and that feels amazing and very humbling.”
Tension Between Thinking and Feeling
To me, the music of 65daysofstatic always has incorporated two distinct yet overlapping elements: thinking and feeling. Like a cerebral and affective dance. I ask Joe if he feels a tension between these two sides of the human spectrum. “There is always a huge tension for us between those aspects, and especially on stage. Wild Light for example takes a lot of focus to play live, and lot of attention is needed to pull the songs off. We want to get better and better at that and are consciously trying to improve this. The problem is that the music is also very emotional, and you sometimes tend to be overwhelmed on stage as well. It’s a little bit like taking drugs, when the drugs start to work and you realise that there is a bad place you could go to, but you try to steer away from that. Sometimes it’s difficult for us to see how it affects people, because we hear the music different from them -because we wrote these songs.”
Music as Forum
Apart from the emotion in the music, 65daysofstatic also look out outwards to the world we are all living in. “We are a conscious band and posses a healthy amount of social awareness. Climate change, people being shot at, totalitarian regimes -all those things people are afraid of happening in the future are already happening. Right now. Right here. We are not a band of people that wake up in the morning and are only concerned with what is happening in their backyard. We're aware that we have a responsibility to society as a whole. I feel that all the things that people were telling me about in the 1990’s, how liberal democracy and capitalism had vanquished fascism and communism -these two great evils, was actually bullshit. We’re now in one of the biggest economic crises ever. Why did people tell me back then that all was going well? Did they have such short memory? In the 1960’s en 1970’s we had good education, we had good welfare and all of that has all been given away for more money.” Despite his slumbering anger at these issues, Joe realizes that a healthy balance between being socially responsible and having fun is a great good. “I don't think people have to sit around with so much guilt that they can not enjoy themselves. Music is a good outlet, but it can also be a forum for people to think and meet. And we want to be a band that is both -dancing, drinking and fun, but also feeding some thought. But I used to think about these things a lot more. We’ve been playing for thirteen years now and we definitely mean it. And people want to do whatever, be it think or dance. The world is chaos, and we're all just balls of chaos bouncing around...”
Contemporary Dystopia We are on a roll here, and delve some more into a description that a lot of people seem to give when describing Wild Light: that it sounds as the soundtrack to a dystopian future world. I mention to Joe that the music can sometimes definitely give that sense, but that to me the dystopian world that Wild Light seems to be describing is not in the future, but right now. “When do you realise you are living in a utopia or dystopia?”, Joe responds. “That's the whole idea behind 1984, right? The proles don't know that they live in that society Orwell describes. They're happy. And that’s happening now as well. Everything nowadays is so focused on safety. Giving up our freedom. ‘We read your e-mails. We tapped your phones: you’re safe’.” I tell Joe how the attitude of ‘If you got nothing to hide, why worry?’ always irks me enormously. That it is already indicative of giving in to power structures way beyond personal freedom. Joe agrees to that. “That's awful when people say that, then they’re already too far gone. And that scares me. Everything needs to be prevented, and that is just not always possible. Global control of humanity seems to be the ultimate goal. But there are people more qualified than me to talk about this. Maybe a band shouldn't be concerning themselves with talking to people about this. But I just cannot believe that there are people who don't think about this! Sometimes it feels like I have to justify myself for actually giving a damn.”
The Future is Opening Up
Then again, I think it is always good to realise that there are still people who actually give a damn. And still, there is hope. Something that is also present in Wild Light. It might portray a lonely and desolate world, but at the same time there are sounds there that are opening up worlds of possibilities. Closing track ‘Safe Passages’ is a great example of this, with its fun twist in dynamic change. “We meant this track to be huge, bigger even than ‘Tiger Girl’”, Joe says. “We wanted to convey the idea that the future is opening up. It’s the last song we finished at the studio. The last three months of working on this record we started to realise that now is the most exciting time to be around and that there is constantly more to come. ‘Safe Passages’ is perhaps a flawed attempt to grasp that feeling, while at the same time you can already hear us knowing that we might even become better and better with everything new we will write.” So far, I will testify to that. And the future is very promising indeed
Ok it's been a long, long time since I wrote Mixtape Review #001. It was my intention to write two or so of these reviews a month, but sometimes it just so happens that life catches up with you while you are making all these plans. Anyway, now it's finally time for review #002 and this time I focus on one of my favourite dj/producers around: the infamous Morphosis. The setting of this particular set I am focusing on isn't all that spectular, since everybody and their grandma seems to be doing sets for Boiler Room these days, but the quality of the set itself is simply mindblowing and leaves us gasping for air, not sure whether or not we want more because the preceding hour just has been so fucking intense.
The Artist Let me quickly introduce Morphosis to those who are unfamiliar with him and his work. Morphosis, real name Rabih Beaini, is a Lebanese electronic music artist and already active in the scene since the early 1990's. First in Lebanon, later in Italy, where he moved to to learn more about producing. In 2005 he started his own label, called Morphine Records. Mostly to release his own material, but also work by other artists like the amazing Hieroglyphic Being or Metasplice. One of the latest records released on the label is one by Morphosis himself: What Have We Learned (2011), which received heaps of praise by almost all reviewers and includes the track 'Too Far', that some of you might know in the form of one of the two Marcel Dettmann edits.
Back to Morphosis himself. What really draws me to both his own productions and his style of dj-ing is his love for deep and weird tunes in combination with a sense of freedom. His own tracks are heavily influenced by African music and jazz and he himself often cites Sun-Ra as one of his core influences. In my book, a dj citing Sun-Ra as an influence has my attention and I believe that Morphosis does a wonderful job in referencing to this legend and at the same time adding beautiful details originating in other musical genres. The result is something unmistakably Morphosis. The same goes for his dj-sets, in which he sometimes totally disrespects the rules of synchronizing or sequencing, in favour of the atmosphere and the quality of the songs. He can do a 5 hour live set that starts off with African freejazz and ends in smashing techno (Dekmantel party) or do a 3 hour liveset at Panorama Bar which includes the like of Sunn O))), as published by mnml ssgs. That set on mnml sggs by the way is how I got to know about Morphosis about a year ago. I can only hope that a blog post like the one I am writing here can do the same for some readers.
The Mix Back to the mix at hand here. Let's open with a minor statement: this is one of the best mixes I have ever heard. Ever. I must have listened to this recording about seventeen times by now and I keep coming back to it. Although I must say it is not a mix that you put on play on just any occasion. It's certainly no happy-go-lucky cheerful background mix. It's intense. As fuck. When I listen to this mix, I am just not here anymore. I enter a true head trip that takes me through the history of music, of mankind and also through the multiverse of Being.
There's a perfect amount and combination of vocals, kicks, beats and claps, snares and noises, highs and lows. Morphosis puts together a selection that encompasses the totality of Life Herself and at the same time manages to get Her to dance. Both physically and philosophically. Morphosis swings between jazz, new wave, techno, ambient, middle eastern, no wave, post punk, noise, chansons... it's equal parts Throbbing Gristle, the soundtrack to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Checkpoint 303. Morphosis offers us a vocal madness, a neuro-tribalism, a melting into an almost psychedelic experience.
More than just a regular dj, Morphosis is a sculptor of sounds. He erects a statue during his set, yet not one that is solid and stable, but rather one that is fluid, with ever changing appearances, always relocating the boundaries between the Real and the Imagined. Around the statue, but still within the music, there's a madness of people getting lost in hypnotic dances, becoming one with the dance itself, completely unaware of their surroundings. Fuck, they even become their surroundings.
It's hard to say what my favourite part of this set is. Perhaps even impossible, because there are so many elements that make me lose my mind. Let me point out one of them though: the finale. From 55 minutes onwards in the set, I as listener don't know what the fuck is going on anymore. The build up until that moment followed by those glorious final minutes? Those birdlike cackles, the loud overwhelming noise parts and eventually the Arabic chanting and tunes... it makes me collapse inside myself, turning my insides into a mist of vapour and my consciousness into a state of effervescence that alters the conditions of my psychic reality...
If you'd like to go on an adventure with some friends, just put on this mix, lie down on the floor, stare at the ceiling and within no time you are everywhere but here... And you don't even need any substance for that, the music itself will do the work.
Stumbled upon this in the wonderful Portuguese book Silencio a Silencio about the installation art of Moirika Reker Gilberto Reis (published by the Lisbon art/book publisher Assirio & Alvim). I really love the photo reproductions of stills of the work in the book, but also the (rather elaborate) text accompanying the images. This part about angels intrigued me especially (the book, luckily for me, is both in Portuguese and English).
Angels in Rainer MariaRilke (first and fourth elegy of 'Duineser Elegien'):
Herrek is de Papoeaanse verbastering van de voornaam van Gerrit van der Scheer, die zijn jeugd mede doorbracht in Indonesië. De afgelopen jaren maakte hij furore in de Nederlandse muziekwereld met Bonne Aparte en Adept, waarbij vooral de laatste band indruk maakte met stevige muziek. Nu gaat Van der Scheer ook solo onder de naam Herrek en Waktu Dulu (wat zoveel betekent als ‘vroeger’) is zijn debuutplaat, die redelijk ver van zijn werk met Adept af lijkt te staan.
Tekstueel richt Herrek zich op zijn jeugdherinneringen aan zijn tijd in Indonesië en hoewel er aardig wat geluidsindicaties naar die locaties te horen zijn (vooral geluiden van de natuur), doet de muziek ons toch eerder afdwalen naar het Westen. Openingstrack ‘Rain’ is een klein liedje, met rustige gitaarslagen en dito percussie. Er zit een zekere kalmte in die doet denken aan shoegazing in de stijl van Catherine Wheel. Op ‘Down’ horen we de fijne harmonieuze samenzang die het afgelopen decennium zo populair is gemaakt door acts uit Brooklyn. Van der Scheer excelleert met zijn zang in dit nummer, vooral tegen het einde aan als de toon scheller wordt en zijn stem opeens naar voren knalt: “I heard the birds sing!” Mooie track!
De Brooklyn referentie komt nog een aantal keer naar boven bij het beluisteren van Waktu Dulu, bijvoorbeeld in ‘Tiger Eyes’, dat een vervreemdende kwaliteit heeft en neigt naar acts als Animal Collective of Yeasayer. De Rivella slogan borrelt in ons op: vreemd, maar wel lekker! Net als het zeer intrigerende ‘My People’, dat veel vragen oproept, zoals de regel ‘here comes the death’ die intens binnen komt. Duidt Van der Scheer hier op de komst van Nederland in Indonesië? Is de Westerse beschaving ‘the death’ waarover hij zingt? De teksten over het hele album zijn sowieso de moeite waard om goed te luisteren en zorgen ervoor dat Waktu Dulu naast muzikaal ook tekstueel interessant genoeg is om vaak naar terug te keren.
Eigenzinningheid bestaat gelukkig nog steeds en Herrek is daar een mooi voorbeeld van. Deze debuutplaat staat vol verrassende muziek en we mogen stiekem best een beetje trots zijn op het feit dat dit uit Nederland komt. Dit is voor de mensen die net wat meer moeite willen doen om bijzondere muziek te ontdekken.
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