All Chemix Radio ‘Bob in Europe/The Sacred Hole’

01 Bob in Europe (43:50)
with
J.R. Bob Dobbs Sr., voice
Willem De Ridder, voice
Chuck Wirstrom, library music and sound effects
Recorded ca. 1990

• In this rare interview appearance, Bob Dobbs, creator of the Church of the SubGenius (see official website and Wiki page), tells us more about the Foot Gland, the Liquid Slack [+], the discovery of pyro-flatulation, and other important matters. This short ACR episode (31:00) deals with post-WWII and Cold War topics, transformed by De Ridder and Dobbs into absurd and surrealist events. It is followed by a conversation between Veronica Vera and Cora Emens regarding the Spiral Cassettes series, an audio magazine published by De Ridder and Andrew McKenzie, including spoken words, audio snapshots, archive or ethnic recordings, etc. The first issue apparently appeared in January 1990.

02 The Sacred Hole (Good Catholic Girl) (42:30)
with
Veronica Vera, voice
Andrew McKenzie, electronics

• In The Sacred Hole, ex porn star, pro-whore activist and cross-dressing champion Veronica Vera, narrates her discovery and exploration of sexuality from childhood to adulthood in a charming, sensual voice, with metaphysical electronic accompaniment courtesy of Andrew McKenzie (aka The Hafler Trio). Vera’s narration is full of vivid images and she has the ability to retell her discoveries and surprises in a captivating way. What might pass for a lewd, self-indulgent confession turns out to be the sincere self-portrait of a woman. Intriguing pairing with McKenzie’s electronic drones.

Music+scan provided by Olivier Prieur. Thanks!

Download

Willem De Ridder ‘De Grote Oto Derby’

De Grote Oto Derby
01 Part I (61:48)
02 Part II (61:50)
03 Part III (63:11)

Total time 3hrs 6mns
Recorded 1978. Retrieved from VPRO.

TERROR THERAPY

In 1977 and early 1978, Willem De Ridder organized ‘Doodsangst Therapie’ (Terror Therapy) radio shows on VPRO Dutch national radio, using provocative and questionable tricks (including torturing a mouse, according to Paul Kuiper). With these shows, De Ridder was taking part in a typical Dutch trend, known in The Netherlands as thrillerhoorspelen, or thriller radio plays. The last episode was titled ‘Death Fear Escapade’ and was aired January 10th, 1978, asking car drivers to put a skull on their windshield and honk several times when coming across other participants on their way to a then unknown destination, eventually Loevestein. The drawing above, from a Peter Pontiac comic book titled Retrospective Comics, illustrates the episode. A dedicated website archives the Doodsangst Escapade episode – including a complete list of previous episodes here.

GROTE OTO DERBY

De Ridder conceived an even more spectacular event during the night of Monday 18 to Tuesday 19 September, 1978, the instantly legendary Great Auto Rally. To the volunteers who wished to take part in the experience, De Ridder had devised a trip from Amsterdam to Harderwijk, in the centre of the country, through the polders of the Flevoland province, notoriously below sea level – in a way, the very essence of the country: ‘In Nederland, het land van de Neders’, says De Ridder (The Netherlands, the Low Country). The circuit included going through Utrecht, Hilversum, Muiderberg, Almere, Hollandse Hout or Holland Forest, Lelystad and Lelystad-Haven, and finally the Knardijk dike or Knardijk dam in Harderwijk, separating Flevoland from Gelderland (see Google Map). 7,500 cars alleguedly took part and 30,000 listeners were hooked on their radio (3,000 cars and 20,000 listeners according to other sources). Participants were asked to put sacred objects on their dashboard, stickers on their windshields and to use their lights to signal each other. During the first episode, De Ridder also requires participants to carry a house plant with them upon arriving in Lelystadt. Later during the night, hundreds of people were asked to get out of their cars at a meeting point and make use of the flashlamps from their photo cameras in a kind of Fluxus event. The purpose of the event for De Ridder is not to reach the last stop, the trip itself is the experience, hence the motto used to advertise the event: Zoekt niet en gij zult vinden, or Seek not and thou shall find – more or less inspired by Deuteronomy 6.4.

LET’S PARTY!

The whole show is no doubt one of the greatest experiments in radio art of all times and its large scale and ambition only comparable to the Mercury Theater’s War of the Worlds (1938). During the first hour, De Ridder apparently sets the mood for the events to come, with a mix of energetic rock numbers and electronic sounds (think Spooky Tooth with Pierre Henry). Vangelis’ Spiral (1977) reappears several times as a dotted line, possibly as a warning that the trip will not be rectilinear.  The second hour is 95% instrumental and is presumably meant to be listened to during the trip to Lelystad through the desolate Pelvo polders. The DJ plays a mix of kosmische musik like Vangelis and Klaus Schulze, including the whole B-side of the latter’s Blackdance, 1974. In Part III, De Ridder leads listeners to Lelystad Haven, the port of Lelystad and then Knardijk dam, the actual endpoint, with yet another great pop-rock and electronic mix.

Download (256Mb): option 1 / option 2

Philip Perkins ‘Drive Time’

01 Rainy Third Street (:42)
02 At Home And Away (3:35)
03 Noise Organ / Xmas Party / Ella (3:32)
04 Mechanical Piano Parade (3:06)
05 On The Park (2:51)
06 At The Machine / Eastchester Parade / The Onion (5:19)
07 Radio Dream (London) (4:02)
08 Street Conversation / Hardanger (2:56)
09 Squeak Opening / Grieg Park (3:02)
10 Shanty (3:25)
11 Bearing / Guitar Hero (4:45)
12 Hotel TV (LA) (1:28)
13 Jig (2:27)
14 Lions (:53)
15 Fire (3:45)

Total time 45:40
LP released by Fun Music, San Francisco, 1985

Philip Perkins was born in 1951 in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. During the first half of the 1970s he made numerous experimental films in Eugene, Oregon before relocating to San Francisco in 1977. Starting 1979, he focused on sound engineering and music, yet still making videos for local bands The Residents, Tuxedomoon or MX-80, for instance. Like two other Perkins audio works of the time (The Rosetta Stone and Hall of Flowers), ‘Drive Time’ was conceived as an alternative radio program, an interest Perkins further developed in later radio projects featuring live musicians and electronics, like ‘South Florida Remote’, ‘San Francisco Remote’ (both 1988), and ‘Berkeley Remote’ (1989). For more information on these, read Philip Perkins 1989 interview with H23 magazine No 1, Spring 1989 here. ‘Drive Time’ is a collection of audio vignettes encompassing recordings of various human leisure and outdoor activities (conversations, Christmas party, funfair,  mechanical piano, outdoor orchestral music, muzak, geese, gulls, rain, etc), interweaved with keyboard and guitar music, in addition to what Perkins calls ’simple musique concrete tricks’. The final mix, an elaborate audio survey of contemporary human activities, shows Perkins’ mastering of studio techniques, clever arrangements and melodic skills. ‘Eastchester Parade’ recalls Tony Schwartz’s own fondness for street parades, while on ‘Mechanical Piano Parade’ the piano conjures up a frolicking Buster Keaton surrounded by joyous geese. Imagine The Residents toying with field recordings for one of their concept albums (minus the buffoonery), except Philip Perkins’ melodies are far more refined and his arrangements more complex. The brilliant sound crafting recalls fellow San Franciscans Rhythm And Noise (Naut Humon, Nik Fault, Rex Probe) and the peerless technique of ‘Chasms Accord’ (1985). But Perkins doesn’t focus on electronic, and keyboards are just an element in a well balanced mix of acoustic instruments, synth loops and location recordings. Quite an achievement, actually.

Download

See also:
Philip Perkins ‘Virgo Ramayana’ >
Philip Perkins ‘Neighborhood With A Sky’ >
FUN music official website

Hessel Veldman ‘Radio Times’

01 Radio Times I (31:00)
02 Radio Times II (30:55)

Total time 62:00
Cassette released on Exart Cassettes, EA037, The Netherlands, 1990?

With ‘Radio Times’, released ca. 1990, Hessel Veldman possibly wanted to compose a paean to radio and celebrate the decade he spent working with Willem De Ridder on numerous All Chemix Radio plays during innumerable recording sessions, either in his own Ijmuiden, The Netherlands studio, or De Ridder’s own Amsterdam home studio, or even the Radio Rabotnik studios. The ‘Radio Arts guild’ logo from the cover is a possible reference to De Ridder’s Radio Art Foundation. ‘Radio Times’ fits perfectly with other projects from around 1990, namely: Michael Snow’s ‘2 Radio Solos’ and Chris Meloche’s ‘Document 90′, posted earlier on this blog. The 2 sides of this cassette are build on layer upon layer of uninterrupted, processed radio transmissions from around the globe along various percussion, tapes, didjeridoo and female vocals. Veldman is not interested in radio tourism or exoticism, though, and the unrecognizable broadcasts are a mere source material for thick layers of static and electronic interferences where only hints of the original voices and music surfaces intermittently. Whether this was recorded live or painstakingly processed is not known to me, though the FNTC/All Chemix Radio ethos prescribed live recording only. Anyway ‘Radio Times’ can be heard as an impressive farewell to easy listening.

Download

All Chemix Radio ‘Encoded Message / Radio Rabotnik’

01 Encoded Message (44:49)
Willem De Ridder: narration, field recordings
Recorded 1979

• Willem De Ridder was born in ’s-Hertogenbosch, October 14, 1939 – though other sources mention Amsterdam as a birth place. So, yes, 2009 is his 70th birthday. Encoded Message was recorded in 1979, when De Ridder was living in Italy with Annie Sprinkle. De Ridder was fleeing the United States after receiving death threats from Charles Manson, offended by a sex magazine De Ridder published there. De Ridder and Sprinkle lived at their friend’s Prince Maximilian Lobckowicz di Filiangieri villa, whose partner was US sexologist Susan Block. During the late-1970s, De Ridder was creating scary radio shows based on narration and real people re-telling scary situations, like in his ‘Deathly Fear Therapy’ program (see paper clip above and PS below). Encoded Message is in somewhat similar vein. It’s an atmospheric, spoken episode with minimal background sounds. Very striking use of speaking-in-tongues around the 18mns mark, in a dialogue with a children – I could not help compare this with Tony Schwartz’s own children recordings. I guess the purpose of this episode is to keep the listener captivated by the mere use of dramatized narration and mysterious anecdotes, though the story-telling itself doesn’t seem to go anywhere actually.

02 Radio Rabotnik (43:41)
Cora Emens: voice
Nicole Veldman: voice
Hessel Veldman: synthesizer and cello
Willem De Ridder: electronics and voice
Recorded ca 1983-1986

• Radio Rabotnik (from the Russian for Workers Radio) started as a pirate TV on Amsterdam local cable network in 1982, taking advantage of Netherlands’ policy of more or less free access to the media. One of the founding members of Rabotnik TV was Menno Grootveld. When it was closed down by local authorities in 1983, they switched to pirate radio. Radio Rabotnik was active until 1986, when they merged with Radio WHS. The radio programs favoured experimental, messy and freeform mixes including everything from movies/TV cut-ups, excerpts from other radios (incl. BBC), live improvisations, tapes, etc. Their live sessions created environmental soundscapes mirroring the bleak Cold War atmosphere of the times. The present Radio Rabotnik session is no exception, what with its typical Cold War phone tonalities, intercepted Russian officials conversations, obsessive string pizzicatos, menacing electronics, tribal percussion or excerpts from movies of the times. Note gorgeous bass loop starting at 6:20, possibly by Hessel Veldman. Impressive cohesion from all participants – well, as far as I know they more or less lived together at the times, constantly recording together. The episode, avoiding many traps found in some previous ACR efforts, is a gripping listening exprience from start to finish, with fresh ideas popping up more often than not.

Total time 88:29 [music+pictures provided by Olivier Prieur. Thanks!]
Download

. . . . . . . . . .

• Below is a video produced at Radio Rabotnik TV, 1990:

. . . . . . . . . .

Additionally, a 1977 episode from an early De Ridder radio program called ‘Doodsangst Therapie’ (Deathly Fear Therapy) can be found on VPRO Radio archives (link to mp3). The 41mn episode is delivered in Dutch and features George Crumb’s ‘Vox Balenae‘ as background music.

All Chemix Radio ‘Another Day Another Depression / Kali’

01 Another Day Another Depression (44:05)
Ingrid Willemse: voice
Willem De Ridder: voice
Andrew McKenzie: narrator, library music LPs, synths, sound effects, live mix
Recorded ca 1985-90

• These All Chemix Radio episodes came in a box-set containing two C90 cassettes with 2 more episodes (Encoded Message and Radio Rabotnik) that will be posted later. The story of ‘Another Day Another Depression’ starts with birds merrily chirping around while the voice of McKenzie is introducing the war situation amid menacing sounds of air raids and falling bombs over the city. Later enter the 2 survivor protagonists Ingrid and Willem, shut in their bunker, arguing about their future, until they finally decide to go out for a walk. Though De Ridder claims there was never any preconceived plan for a Radio session, it seems McKenzie’s text was written beforehand and a general plot was decided on. The rest is obviously improvised, though, and would have benefited from some post-production. During the 1980s, Andrew McKenzie (aka The Halfler Trio) collaborated with Willem De Ridder on different projects, including The Spiral Information Service, NYX and SNUFF. They possibly met during the heydays of Radio Rabotnik freeform radio mixes in 1982. On ‘Another Day…’, he’s probably responsible for most of the library music LPs used as background, with some pops from the vinyls noticeable here and there. Ingrid Willemse, a Dutch top-model and actress, took part to some of De Ridder’s Radio Art Foundation radioplays, as well as De Ridder’s theater play ‘In De Wachtkamer – A Continuous Story’ (=In The Waiting Room). She was also featured on The Halfler Trio’s ‘One Dozen Ecomomical Stories By Peter Greenaway’ (1989-93) and ‘Fuck’ (1992). Known for her role in the film ‘Let The Music Dance’ (1990), Willemse is now a TV producer.

02 Kali (44:07)
Nicole Veldman: voice
Hessel Veldman: synth
Cora Emens: voice
Willem de Ridder: electronics & voice
Andrew McKenzie: objects, noises and synth
Ben Uijtjens: recording & live mix
Recorded 1989

• According to the New American Radio presentation, the 1989 Kali radioplay was “an unusual sonic meditation. Kali invokes the Hindu goddess associated with death, destruction, and disease. Though often represented as a terrifying monster, garlanded with skulls and bearing a bloody sword in one of her many arms, Kali is also worshipped by many as Mata, the Divine Mother.” This live radio session is credited to FNT-CORA on the cover, also known as FNTC (see previous post with same line-up except McKenzie replaced by… Jon Rose!). Kali is an obscure mystical ceremony recorded from a remote dark cave – well, you know, the reverb effect actually. Priests and worshippers are uttering undecipherable chantings and interjections. Sonic events creep in your mind like worms in a rotten fruit in a part Lovecraftian nightmare, part psychoanalysis gone wrong. People involved were obviously having fun here – and you’re necessarily having fun when using a whistling hose (near the 10mns mark). Other sounds include unidentified percussion and noises, metal objects, male falsetto voice chanting an hymn around 22:50. The last 15mns is an industrial-ambient soundscape without vocals build from beautiful musique concrète sounds, synth and sound effects. I guess the gorgeous synth is played by Hessel Veldman while the great noise-scape is the work of Andrew McKenzie, both masters in their respective field. It’s an impressive conclusion to a remarkable All Chemix Radio episode.

Total time 88:12 [music+pictures provided by Olivier Prieur. Thanks!]
Download (117Mo)

Tony Schwartz ‘The Sound Of Children’

01 Introduction (2:00)
02 Recording Techniques (6:00)
03 The Death of a Turtle (7:46)
04 Stories About Your Child (3:17)
06 Children And God (8:55)
07 Nancy Grows Up (2:16)
08 Sound Snapshots (5:17)

Total time 38:30
LP released on Columbia, 1967

Tony Schwartz’s focus on children’s voices pre-dates the ubiquitous use of children in advertising from the 1970s until today and Schwartz is possibly the creator of a genre which is a heavy trend nowadays. Schwartz pushed things rather far in his famous political ad known as the 1964 ‘Daisy ad’ (see below), an advertising milestone. There’s no denying there is a bit of cynicism in the use of children in advertising, let alone in a political TV spot, and Schwartz is no stranger to this. But his children recordings have an indubitable freshness, as he was basically inventing the genre from scratch. In a way, Tony Schwartz’s children recordings are as pioneering as David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet interviews with elders in the 1980s. Both break new ground in the art of interviews, focusing on marginalized populations not normally offered the opportunity to express themselves in the media. Schwartz started recording kids and teenagers in the early 1950s. He collected and later re-arranged interviews to create stories or atmosphere. Noticeable is the fact children’s voices sound the same today as 40 years ago. The grain of these untaught, un-trendy kids is the same. Or perhaps Tony Schwartz’s way of recording children influenced today’s technique – close miking, enhancing cute syllables, etc. The children here make marvellous sounds.

Download.

. . . . . . . . . .

Comprehensive history of the 1964 Daisy ad here.

Chris Meloche ‘Document 90′

LINK: A Radio Music Performance Without Borders
01 LINK: Part 2 & 3 (19:32)
02 LINK: Part 6& 7 (20:34)

Total time 40:06
LP released by Korm Plastics (KP6196), The Netherlands,  1996

Canadian composer born 1957, specialising in long duration ambient environmental electro-acoustic music, especially designed for radio broadcasts, Chris Meloche started making music in the early 1980s as a member of M104 duo with Werner Albert. During the 1990s, he collaborated with Philip Perkins and UK’s Martin Archer, and now with Herb Bayley in the Outward Sound Ensemble which they co-founded in 2002. The work on this limited LP was premiered and recorded at the London’s Aeolian Hall (pictured above) in 1990 and simultaneously broadcasted on local radio. Shortwave radio is itself the source of all the sounds heard in these tracks, whether used to trigger synthesizers or as occasional, random speech or music excerpts. The music offers a deep immersion into sound textures and floating tonalities, part-ambient, part-collage work. Detailed recording quality rewards high volume listening with elaborate mix and sonic substrata. Interesting comparison with Michael Snow’s 2 Radio Solos, showing infinite possibilities offered by radio waves as source material for musicians.

Download.