Wednesday evening, October 31: Two more shows of theater/dance performance Binnensuis in Het Vliegende Paard in Zwolle. Go make your reservations now!

Binnensuis is still available through esc.rec. for only 8 euro. Read the review in OOR below (for all you Dutch readers).

Te laat ontdekt! Binnensuis is de soundtrack van een dansvoorstelling van Bram van den Oever (Gluid), Janneke Lenzen en Jehudi van Dijk die in juni te zien was bij De Kofferbak in Kampen. Wat had ik die voorstelling graag gezien. Binnensuis voor de oren is briljant. Ja, briljant ja. De door Van Dijk geschreven teksten gaan over een vereenzaamde en wereldvreemde vrouw die met de stem van Lenzen en de geluidsexperimenten van Van den Oever tot leven wordt gewerkt.

Vanaf de eerste seconde trekt Binnensuis je onder haar huid, laat je haar smetvrees, angsten en neuroses beleven en maakt zich een klein half uur later weer van je los. Een intrigerende en confronterende ervaring rijker. Met dank aan Van den Oever die zijn muziek – soms knisperend en rustig, dan weer hectisch en verontrustend – volledig in dienst stelt van het verhaal dat Lenzen op haast alledaagse wijze vertelt. Doen ze zo goed dat ik in bijvoorbeeld ‘Ik Meng Me Er Gewoon Tussen’ of ‘Niet Omkijken’ de neiging moet onderdrukken de cd uit te zetten. Té confronterend. Kijk, dat is kunst geschreven in hoofdletters.

De dansvoorstelling heb ik gemist, maar dankzij het kleine platenlabel voor elektronische experimenten ESC.REC. uit Deventer kan ik toch nog van Binnensuis genieten. En dat zou iedereen moeten doen. Wees er wel snel bij, er zijn maar vijftig exemplaren beschikbaar.
(Theo Ploeg)

Binnensuis by Gluid, esc.rec.’s 15th release!!

Check all the info overhere. If you order real quick, you just might be one of the lucky few who gets a copy with the very, very limited handcrafted artwork by Vormversterker. But don’t get your hopes up, because most of them have already been sold at the Binnensuis performances in De Kofferbak or reserved for esc.rec. subscribers (always the first on the scene). So all you esc.rec. subscribers are in luck today, your copy is already in the mail!

Oh, and by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed working together with Vormversterker on this release. I recommend his work to anyone with the slightest sense of adventure and a feel for raw aesthetics. Check some photo’s of the production process on his Flickr page.

Also I have been informed today, that because most of the shows in De Kofferbak were way past sold out, there will be at least one bonus performance scheduled on Sunday July 1st, 16:00 hrs. I’m not sure if this show is going on the road (which I think it should!), but I wouldn’t risk it and just go there. Visit the website of De Kofferbak for reservation details.

I was invited by VPRO 3voor12 to dig deep in their extensive online audio/video archive and come up with 5 favorites for their ‘Goud graven’ (gold digging) series. Needless to say that it wasn’t very easy… However, I managed to dig up some really entertaining pieces… or at least, that’s what I think. I motivated my selection in an interview by Paul Diersen today and now here it is…

It has been sitting on a shelf for quite some time, but here it finally is!

The 14th esc.rec. release is ’ssri’, Robert Witt’s debut album. His delicate, delay driven, repetitive dubscapes are to drown in. Combined with heavily manipulated but subtle sounds, listening to this album with eyes closed can become a very visual experience. Something like submerging yourself in a relaxing warm bath, dreaming, unwilling to surface again into cold harsh reality.

Graphic design by me.

Ssri is available on cd-r for only 8 euro (as usual). You can listen to the first track overhere.

Thanks to EMI’s decision to stop using copyright protection on their cd’s, I was interviewed (as co-founder of esc.rec.) for an item about making money with music, which was broadcasted on Radio 1.

I think it’s a pretty funny idea to ask esc.rec. for this interview, since we’re currently not making any money out of our record label, we’re only just breaking even. I guess it must have something to do with moneymaking not being the main purpose of having a record label for us… However, we do manage to pay our artists some!

It gets even funnier as I found out that the other people who were interviewed for this item were a former director of EMI and saxophone players Hans Dulfer and Candy Dulfer.