A compilation with Art Cohen, Bill Forcier, Peter Gulch, Mike Metlay, Andrew Ratha and Chuck Van Zyl

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discogs

Lightwave - Ici & Maintenant (cassette, Auricle Music, 1990)

This is the first of various cassettes I will post by French group Lightwave, among which members we find Paul Haslinger who joined Tangerine Dream in 1986, although he doesn't play on this tape. That may reveal something about the nature of this music.

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discogs

Rüdiger Lorenz ‎– Wonderflower (cassette, Syntape, 1982)

The first of various Rugiger Lorenz cassettes. "Electronic musician from Ingelheim (near Mainz), Germany.  As a pharmacist and collector of synthesizers (modular systems) he made experimental music in his Lorenz-Park studio. He died in 2000."

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discogs

Fondation ‎– Sans Etiquette (cassette, Eurock, 1980)

Here's what's Discogs says about French band Fondation: "

Husband and wife duo: Ivan Coaquette, formerly of Musica Elettronica Viva, Delired Cameleon Family and Spacecraft, and Anannka Raghel (aka Patricia Coaquette), active during the early 1980s with 3 cassette releases of experimental ambient and avant synth-rock." I posted a tape from them before here

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discogs

River Of Dreams - Sundown (cassette, 1991)

River Of Dreams was a duo of Dave Palmer and Steve Morrell and they did 3 releases. I will post them all. Quite new age if you ask me. You don't.

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discogs

Can - Onlyou (cassette, Pure Freude, 1982)

Of course you know Can. This is a pretty rare release, unofficial of course. On discogs it said that this was from 1976 at the Innerspace and has music and talking. Probably a good way to remember the recently deceased Can drummer Jaki Liebeszeit.

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discogs

Marc Barreca - Raw Fish And Green Tea (cassette, private, 1978)

Parts of this cassette were re-released by Vinyl On Demand on a retrospective LP from Barreca's earliest work, but this cassette is quite a rarity to be heard in it's complete form.
Barreca is American synth/multi-instrumental musician, initially active in the early 1980's, and of the Brian Eno inspired ambient school.

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discogs

Steve Roach ‎– Quiet Music 1 (cassette, Fortuna Records, 1986)

"A longstanding leader in contemporary electronic music, composer and multi-instrumentalist Steve Roach (born 1955 in La Mesa, California) drew on the beauty and power of the earth's landscapes to create lush, meditative soundscapes influential on the emergence of ambient and trance."

This cassette is all about 'Collection of pieces created in respect for silence between 1983 and 1986'

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discogs

Achim Roedelius - Auf Leisen Sohlen (cassette, Transmitter Cassetten, 1980)

Of course you know Achim Roedelius equals Hans-Joachim Roedelius, founding member of Cluster and responsible for lots of solo music. Here a very rare cassette, which has not been re-issued in any format later on.

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discogs

Rüdiger Gleisberg - InZeit Outzeit (cassette, Sphinx Audio, 1988)

This was the first release by Rüdiger Gleisberg, and apparently never re-issued.

Rüdiger Gleisberg (b. 1963) studied Music and Literature at the University of Paderborn. Having studied Classical guitar, he began playing in various Rock bands at school, and then switched to Keyboards, fascinated by the instrument's range of expression and sounds. This attraction to working with Keyboards and Synthesizers led to his building a small recording studio, which has meanwhile expanded into a modern digitally-equipped studio. 

His first compositions were commissioned for Theatre productions, and signalled the beginning of the development of his now clearly recognisable style, to be found in his music for Films, numerous releases of his own material, together with joint projects. 
Rüdiger Gleisberg works as a Music teacher. He writes commissioned pieces, and has worked under the name SOLITAIRE (together with Elmar Schulte). A joint project with Mathias Grassow and Carsten Agthe resulted in the NOSTALGIA album.

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discogs

Paul Nagle - The Deserted Tower (cassette, Electronical Dreams, 1989)

So, here's where our trip starts, with the music of Paul Nagle. It's this kind of synthesizer music I will posting for some time. Nagle plays synthesizers and has a whole bunch of cassette releases and his own compilation LP on Vinyl On Demand. We'll be seeing that with some others also in the next weeks. There is no scheme behind posting this; just whatever is done as a MP3 I guess. And depending on time etc, there will be a few words, or not. And unlike the old days I may miss a few days; it won't be an obsessive 'everyday has a post' type of thing.

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discogs

Komovari64 (complete works)

Recently I was handed a box of cassette releases from someone who thought it was time to pass it on, and before it arrived at someone who may or may not sell it (which is not me), I got to pick a few tapes which I transferred, as it had some interesting items. So while reluctant to re-open this blog, I will do so for the time being. I am not looking for trades, demos, reviews, spam, or anything. Just to post these few tapes for the time being and then go dark again. All of them are in the realm of cosmic, synth based ambient music. If that is not of your interest, then you have bad luck. There is nothing else to be posted. Except for the one thing I am posting today.

In the middle of 2016 I got an e-mail from one Paul Werkman saying he did the Komovari64 7" that I posted 9 or so years ago. We were in some contact, I transferred his 2 cassettes and some other unreleased pieces, spend an evening together. I gave him some pointers for blogs to give his music to and it ended up on dieordiy2.blogspot.com who posted this some time ago, along with the story I helped writing of Werkman. I haven't been in contact with him since, but as I do like his stuff a lot, I'd start with posting his two cassettes and 7" as a single post today. Find it here

None of this is for sale with me.

The life story of Komovari64:

"When I was 19 I was very much inspired by electronic music, which I read about in music papers, such as Muziekkrant Oor, things like Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Human League. I wasn't a very social person, so I never knew many people who are also interested in doing that kind of music, and I didn't like punk music very much. It seemed to me that this electronic music was something one could do on it's own. I got a pretty large inheritance from my grandfather who died, and it seemed to me great if I could have some equipment and see how it would be like an electronic musician. So I bought all of this stuff new, the Moog, Korg, a microphone, a small mixer, some sort of echo device and a reel-to-reel machine. The vari64 rhythm machine was second hand I think. I no longer know why I didn't buy something new for rhythm machine. I also had a guitar and a crackle box. I even paid something extra to have it all delivered by car to my home. I was living with my parents still, as I was at the university (studying political sciences) and that was close by. I remember unpacking all this stuff and putting it on a table, thinking it looked like a proper studio. I wish I had a picture of it, but sadly I don't. The first time I switched it all on, I was thrilled, but it was very hard to get a sound out of it. Maybe naively I thought machines like this would play by themselves? I think I listened to the rhythm machine for a long time, just by itself, going through the echo, which I thought sounded great. After a while I started to get sounds out of the other machines, but I soon realized I had no idea about making songs, or melodies, so mainly my 'songs' were rhythm and sounds, also because I played everything live, using 2 hands, which I though this was supposed to be. They did it like that on TV.

Of course I knew about the whole world of independent record labels, and even cassette labels, so I thought it would be good to do a 'label' myself. I ordered from Plurex the manual for independent labels, but the release of vinyl was a bit scary when I read all of this, so I took the two best songs I had, 'Pana Pagan' and 'Stop' and released a very short cassette, which was copied on sixty minute tapes, but cut them by hand. I did a really bad cover, not by accident, but I had no idea. I called the project Komovari64, after the three instruments I liked best; it sounds a bit like Minny Pops of course (also named after a drum machine), which I quite liked. I copied some, some of which I gave away to some fellow students. Some liked it, but most didn't understand this at all. I also put some in the local record store, 'Melody'. The cover is orange, as is the colour of the Dutch royal family, and I hoped that everyone thought that was really shocking, but nobody ever said something about it. I wrote them all by hand, since this seemed very arty at the time to do.

I struggled on and everytime I looked at that Plurex booklet, the whole idea of a real record seemed appealling and I did the 7". I recorded 5 songs, which were very smooth and I mailed my tape to a pressing plant. It was the wrong (slow) speed, but they made a test pressing anyway, correcting the speed for free, which I thought was very nice. I got about 10 copies of the testpressing or so, but then I got scared of actually a lot of people hearing this music, so I made this orange cover on xerox machine and put these 10 in the same record store for sale. I went in every week to see if they were sold, and after six months 4 were, and I found it embarrasing to ask all the time, so I didn't anymore. When the store disappeared I didn't go back to ask for the unsold copies.

By then I no longer lived at home, but in a squat, but also was diagnozed with schizoprenia. I heard voices and therefore I couldn't listen to my voice on tape. Slowly I had to sell the equipment, as I was not working and due to my state I also forgot to collect welfare money. First I sold the guitar as I had used this on only one song. I had a bunch of songs, no vocals, but in the same style, which all seemed to me the same at one point. I made a second cassette, but beyond making the master and the cover nothing happened; I think I made some copies (10 I think, mostly for friends), but not a lot, maybe with different covers, I am not sure now. This cassette is called 'Komonovari', since much of the music was in mono. I found too late to change the music, since I recorded only live and couldn't re-do the music.

In the end I even had to sell the rhythm machine, so I taped 5 minutes of different rhythms on a cassette with the microphone and did 3 small, 1 minute pieces, with a cut up of that 5 minute rhythm tape, and a manic 'text piece'. I remember I threw the microphone out of the window. I believe I sent these three pieces to a compilation label project in France, but I don't know if it was ever released. It is very likely but I didn't put a return address on it.

After that I lived on the streets for a while, dabbled in drugs, which wasn't a very good combination, but someone 'found' me, and helped me to work on all of this. I never told him I did music, as it was all behind me. A few years ago my mother died and I must have given her a box of cassettes and tapes with all that music on it, but I haven't heard any of it as i no longer have anything to play it with. It's not a lot of stuff in terms of 'finished' compositions (I always called them 'little pieces') or even 'unfinished' ones. These days I work for the city government (department of parking meters!), play tennis and sometimes listen to Coldplay and Muse."

Reissues

The last message was from 2014, and it was about a re-issue. Today it is also about a re-issue, even 2 of them, and both of them became recently available. I am sure Vinyl On Demand didn't discover Laibach through this blog, but perhaps they found out about the V2 cassette that was posted here. It was already part of the Laibach box they released before, but is now also available as a standalone LP, which is good news.
Better news, simply because it's more daring, is the LP re-issue of Ahoe Ahoea, a band from Nijmegen, which I would assume no-one would ever know or care about since it is such an unknown band, but the good people of Bunkerpop Records re-released this, even with some extra tracks on the Bandcamp site. This label also released Coitus Int's first 7", which we also posted before. It's great to see after all these years that there are still re-issues of the music we posted a long ago, for the first time. It revived the career of Das Ding, and saw re-issues of Odal, Hands To, XX Committee, Effenaar 7" (coming soon, I'm told) and many more. Over the years we have given advice on how to reach some of these old musicians, and it's good to see it leads to results. It's true love that never dies.



update 1/3/2017: Effenaar 7" is now available here