IDM Mailing Archive

i suppose i'm pretty late tuning in to the musical/curatorial/journalistic work of Frans de Waard, but so it goes. in the last few months i've found myself interested in Goem, audio.nl, the Vital Weekly newsletter and various elusively credited projects that he may or may not be involved with. i even picked up a Beequeen album last week, which, as with so many of the items on the latter list, I'm not exactly sure what to make of, but there's something intriguing about it. anyway, at the end of the Staalplaat new releases list this morning, this note from Mr. de Waard:

quoted 8 lines After almost 11 years of working for Staalplaat, I have decided to

>After almost 11 years of working for Staalplaat, I have decided to >leave Staalplaat on March 1st, 2003. Mainly due to problems in my >private life, I'm forced to leave the heart of musicland and move to >it's pheriphery. I will most likely look for job outside music. I >will continue to make music myself, and I will continue to publish >Vital Weekly. Maybe I will release the odd CD or piece of vinyl, but >it will be on an entire different basis. I wish to thank you all, it >was a great pleasure working with you.

jeez...hope he's alright... a review: ----------------------------------------------- Beequeen "A Touch of Brimstone" (Korn Plastics) Beequeen is Frans and Freek Kinkelaar, who have been collaborating since the late 80's. "A Touch of Brimstone" is a compilation of tracks from 1989 through 1995. The material is pretty much beatless and drone-based, or if not droning, at least relatively static and atmospheric, marked by a few clanks and analog synth blorps. The album is kind of a droll object. Rather than heeding the electronica tradition of information-less packaging, "A Touch of Brimstone" comes with an incredible pile of explication. A 32-page booklet delivers lots of photographs of the band in performance, and a number of essays from friends of the band and from Frans and Freek, telling their story fairly earnestly from a variety of perspectives. The track listing on the back cover gives a thorough explanation of the genesis and provenance of each track. one of the things we learn about Frans in the essays is that he's a compulsive compiler of lists and facts about the music he's interested in, and so it seems that "A Touch of Brimstone" is a music fetishist's ideal object, filled with facts, rarities and so on. presumably it will itself become deleted and rare someday, and therefore perfect. The music sounds dated, in some ways, a slice of culture from a pre-laptop era, imperfect, industrial, sometimes bordering on the corny in its dedication to the dark and solemn. yet the fact of its relative obsolescence also makes it sound fresh to my ears. I haven't listened to other Beequeen products from later in their career, sounds from descriptions I've read that they become more like pleasant electronica later on. Maybe someone has some comments or recommendations to share? ----- kurt --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: idm-unsubscribe@hyperreal.org For additional commands, e-mail: idm-help@hyperreal.org