Surprieze : zeer oude klanken en heel nieuwe geluiden (NL,1971-1972)****
I first read the reviews of the Surprieze LP's and did not expect to hear what I heard when I finally had the chance to listen. The descriptions I read were possibly not written by reviewers who liked or knew albums like Kalacakra, Dom, Siloah, etc., German acoustic improvisational Krautrock albums with a raga-like effect. This band who started with their career with R&B in 1966 evolved to something completely different, something more psychedelic through avantgardistic and more pure mood improvisation styles. "Suprieze" means "surprise" and the music is surprising indeed, because there is not much music like this being made in Holland. The first track is like Kalacakra, improvisational raga like. The second track start like an experimental sounds creation like very early Kraftwerk. This kind of creativity with music being born from within the mood and sound creation was very ahead of it's time, and even now it's still not always understood by music writers. Thanks to the newer more accessible works of Kraftwerk some people did take time to get into the earlier works of Kraftwerk for instance, but other groups were often still denied, although such "sound creations" on its own have abilities to look for and dig into the 'essence' of musical creation. Such transformational potential, within a psychedelic / bluesy raga like mood continuation, creating its own structures, becomes an accessible and enjoyable, mind expanding experience. After the first two long tracks in the described style two less appealing underground blues tracks come after that. The first track on side B, "Zero" is experimental acid blues, with a psychedelic repetitive rhythm, and with, let's call it "Native screams" and blues mouth harmonica. The very short track "In Galop" to be followed are completely experimental free sounds. "Lazarus" is a long acid psychedelic improvisation, completely tripped out, with distorted electric guitars, bagpipes, echoed effects, psychedelic voice sounds / singing, flutes. "Lazarus" is a Dutch word for being completely farout which you can be by being drunk or stoned, but can become also when you would listen to this music. The title of the album itself means something like "old sounds for a new sound". Except for the two blues tracks this is a very interesting psychedelic record, maybe even the most psychedelic record from Holland.
According to Forced exposure :
"Reissue of highly osbcure and utterly rare private pressing of ´one-man project´ Surprieze. Noisy, disjointed Psychedelia with lots of fuzz and effects. Pure acid-psychedelia! Imagine a Dutch freak attempting to overdo Velvet Underground´s ´Sister Ray´. Eddy vermeer plays a 3-string guitar with a sound somewhere between Ravu Shankar and Dick Dale, but then totally demented. Originals fetch summs of $600, as they not around anymore. Eddy was so disappointed in the sales when he releaed it in 1973, that he took then to the coast and threw them in the sea!"
Some extra remarks on "Lazarus" at my next playlist (see last item on the list)
Another fine reissue :
Red Fox Rec. Ton Vlasman (NL,1970, re 2002)***°
Recently reissued this Dutch psych folk item. Two songs sound like a Bob Dylan a like. I would not have bought this gem for such tracks. But there are also two wonderful long raga like / finger picking instrumental tracks. The first one is accompanied by organ and sounds like an acoustic Pink Floyd, but reminds at the German 'Dom' LP too from that same year.The other instrumental is accompanied by flute in stead. The left over song is again psych folk with flute. An early Velvet Underground song we have here listed too. The reissue is a welcome surprise.
The music of Salmon is partly very song orientated, with a accompaniment of a calm late 70's progressive pop rock style, with some symphonic influences starting from there. This makes an enjoyable style with tempo changes for instrumental passages. Only "Dancing Bird" is a bit different, as a romantic ? catchy soulful duo vocals song (male & female). There are longer instrumental passages, where the keyboards often lead to more melodic / symphonic approaches, the guitars are often more in rock / sympho pop styles, the vocals are often more romantic (especialy on "Houses on the Voorde banks", with harmonic vocal arrangements). An enjoyable release.
Purple Plazma Rec.Purple Void : Thru' the wormhole (NL,2001)**
With a very psychedelic cover we expected psychedelic music in the real sense, but this is not exactly true. The album has a tendency towards psychedelic explorations, but basically it remains closer to a solo work of a singer-songwriter and (electric) guitarist with wider musical interests, including psychedelica, without always being worked out enough towards this direction to fit into the psych description. Defining it "psychedelica" can be misleading, because the potential in ideas still is in a pre-psychedelica state. I really like the electric psych guitar improvisation solo play from Mark. Two tracks are such (live ?) improvisations. These two tracks on the cdr-copy I received, sadly have some "hollow echo" distortion as if recorded from a less good quality MP3. When Mark (or "Dr. Ungefehr") has contributive elements his style is even more interesting. Especially the title track that has a nice 'Bitges Brew' like trumpet (by "Bal" ?). First track, "Time.. acoustic mix" could be a perfect starting point for a symphonic rock arrangement, but it works fine as an acoustic version as well. The one singer-songwriter track, voice (& second female voice), acoustic guitars, drums, "Rain" I find successful as well.
Purple Plazma Rec.Purple Void : Within the nebula of time (NL,2003)**
This second CD is with much more psychedelic improvisations, often in multilayered form. Unfortunately technically it's from a bad recording and has a flawed mixing quality. Also, I would prefer that Mark uses his talent to create a music group that wants to build on a similar sound (with a REAL drummer, a bass player,..), and record in a professional studio with them. Mark has enough talent with his guitar. But a solo release that lacks production and various musical sound reconsiderations that lack personal expression is not enough to work for me.
About the few other attempts on mini-cd's to create something in other genres (hiphop etc.)* I don't even want to talk about. * the hiphop thing actually was a joke, like hiphop might be "a joke" for us.
PrivatePurple Void : Aardvark (B,2004)**'
I said before I liked the guitar playing of the Purple Void’s leader Dr.Ungefehr. Even a guitar dominated album by the group still is my preference. And this is one like that (with electric guitars, drum, and electric bass accompaniment mostly). Although it still is not recorded in a perfect way, it’s very enjoyable. It's only on the third track that the voice doesn’t come over well. All tracks were recorded live without overdubs. This time Purple Void is a 5 piece band who accompany the improvisations well, never the less without contributing many other ideas than where the leading guitar-part brings them in. The extra handpercussion on the last track sounds very nice ! And the evolution still is as promising as before. I hope Purple Void will one day make perhaps a conceptual music piece like with other composers ? I will already invite Dr. Ungefehr to come and record some tracks in radio Centraal's studio’s(,-Antwerp-).
A very moody recording with a folkjazz flavour of Mark Versteegen, acoustic guitar, voice, Niels Van Heumen, trumpet, flügelhorn, Martijn Buser, drums & percussion, Daniel Antonis, double bass. Song based, but with much attention to the musical aspects, with fingerpicking guitar, with Danny Thompson like double bass, perfect trumpet / flugelhorn, and a very warm sound, with a singing in a matured Bonnie Prince Billy way. Both tracks sound like one perfect track of 15 minutes. Highly recommended !
The group was invited to the radioshow for a live recording the 2004, the 28th of July.
This group evolved from out of the Dutch Trance scene, but was also clearly influenced –beside from a couiple other influences- by improvisations from groups as Ash Ra Temple & Hawkwind, this is another psychedelic spacetrip music group, who know how to create “the” effect. Still, a little bit a shame about some tracks the “live recording” ? quality could have been better, although it still is good enough to enjoy, in a more stoned way. 5th track “Fred Goldman’s Moustache” starts a bit differently, as a trance psychbeat song oriented with a German wave background repetition, evolving towards psychspacerock. Also “The Thunderbirds” is a mixture between Hawkwind bass repetition guitars and a stoned kind of psychwave song, with synthetic recorded drumming which still fits. “Unnamed psychedelic jam” continues in Hawkwindish droning spacepsych style, while last track has some good (mid period Psychic TV or something) semi 80’s mystic vocal narration. This track is more keyboard dominated trance psych droning. An enjoyable release !
PS. There also exists a renowed German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk but I don't see any reference to him. I still wonder where the name comes from.
PrivateThe Colour of Time : Let the machine talk (UK/NL,2001)*
PrivateJ.H.C.O'Callaghan : demo (UK/NL,2004 ?)*
"Amber's Sky" is a quietly evolving electronic music piece by Jamie O'Callaghan (UK) on keyboards mostly & Hans Schepens (NL) on electric guitar. The music is cowritten with Jamie. First part is a bit like Tangerine Dream, then some programmed echoed rhythms give a different evolution in tension. While a rhythm box never sounds too progressive to me the composition surely is, then the electric guitar starts to improvise a very nice solo. When the highlight is over the improvisation with synths and rhythm box is still stretched out and for me then loses the “progression” a bit, like in showing too much the for me primitive rhythm box, but then it still ends with a somehow Tangerine Dream like glory.
For the project of "Let the machine talk" project Jamie plays electric sitar, synths, time machines, electric violin and acoustic violin, and Hans plays the electric guitar. Composition-wise and technically, this is nice progressive music. Again, the use of electronic rhythms makes it much more a private home-recording than it should be. If this had been replaced by electric bass and real drums the “band” sound would have convinced more throughout the whole score. Although the release started pretty strongly, at the time of the 4th track, “the cruelty of time” the woody / plastic drum sounds takes everything down again. Rhythmically also the following tracks have this poor plastic expression aspect as well, but otherwise there are other good ideas.
Jamie also sent me 2-track demo. The first 24 minutes and a bit composition "Moon in Summer" is music for electronics, orchestra vox and sitar. It's a much more semi-classical composition, a bit New Age Prog in its definite form, in some way filmic as well, with a more acoustic feel in various passages (led by electrified ? sitar with keyboard arrangements). The composition starts like always nicely, becomes a bit long in its execution of ideas. The second composition is a theremin concerto called "Night Clouds", -a forgettable theremin performance, with orchestra.
Live, The Colour Of Time last concert consisted of 4 persons : Sylvia Baladron : flute and voice ; James O'Callaghan : theremin, ondes marttenot (both self build), electric vionlin and voice ; Melanie Nijs : vocoder ; Hans Wijnen : electronic instruments. Picture taken from "Concert for Beslan", Eindhoven 10-12-2004. Besides own composition the ensemble played also Claude Debussy, Eric Satie and John Foxx.
Colour Of Time had a radioshow live performance 9th of February. They much more had an 80's sound as expected. Much more song orientated with 80's synths, but also with flute, sitar, theremin, korg,.. Was ok but not really progressive or expanding.
Hans Wijnen lately died from unknown cause just when he was 27 1/2.
Cyclops RecordsFlamborough Head : one for the crow (NL,2002)**°
This is the fourth release from this Dutch band, with two new members, and from what I've read, and from what I experienced in the refreshing elements I heard in their style, this could possibly mean an opening up of the perspective & the sound of the group. Actually, this is the first release I've heard by them. No matter what neo-progressive / symphonic lovers would say, I think the approach on this album is solid and honest. Margriet Boomsma's vocals are melodically an approach like the singer on Sandrose, slightly more progpop in a positive sense, with a slightly dreamy emotionality. The orchestrations combined with the (melodic or accompanying) progressive rock arrangements on the title track, "One for the crow" and the following track work very well for me. Better than an average neo-symphonic group, Flamborough Head succeeds here in creating a spontaneous fresh sound, seemingly created out of the continuation of what late 70's symphonic projects were expressing and developing. Some part with piano / oboe, orchestrations combined with progressive rock & folk elements on "Old Shoes" I even find best, in an Italian symphonic way. Another different contribution was by the guitarist, Eddie Mulder, with some brilliant warm acoustic guitar intro's, like on "Separate", a track which continues calmly with flute, guitars, keyboards (piano, synthesizer and mellotron), drums and electrified guitar. We hear him also with a small introduction part only on "Daydreams", a nice following track. "Nightlife" has here and there a few less appealing or less interesting parts, in a more melodic neo-prog style, with some more straight forward rhythms and composition, still this is enjoyable in its completeness. Further on we have "Limestonerock" with a Gilmourish guitar based part. The last track is another fine acoustic guitar piece, but it's a bit lost being at the end of the CD, not leading to any other idea it could have introduced.
In general I like pretty much the combination of talents in this group, which are optimal on almost every track. Near the end the solidness of the CD concept falls a bit apart ; still this is a strong and fine enjoyable album.
News : Eddie Mulder & Edo Spanninga from Flamborough Head and Menno Boomsma from Odysice also have a side project called Trion. They have a CD out now.
PS. I recently heard 2 other works of this group. I liked them less for they were more neo-styled than this one. So I guess this album will be amongst the better ones of them.
