kapotte muziek

Kapotte Muziek is an electro-acoustic trio of Frans de Waard, Peter Duimelinks and Roel Meelkop. They play live concerts and never make studio recordings.
During live performances Kapotte Muziek explore the minimum input of acoustic sound to a maximum extent. All sounds originate from obsolete materials that we have found in the course of our activities. Every performance is preceded by a 'junk search' to obtain new sound material. In the past we have used metal (from very small to very big), wood, paper, plastic, glass, stones etc. Every object is thoroughly explored for its sound qualities, amplified either by microphone or by contact-microphone. This is combined live with pre-recorded sounds of acoustic, environmental and electronic origin. In this line-up Kapotte Muziek exists since 1995. From 1993 to 1995 Kapotte Muziek were just Peter Duimelinks and Frans de Waard. Duimelinks and Meelkop are also a member of THU20 aswell as actively involved as solo musicians. De Waard also plays with Beequeen, and solo as Freiband and Shifts.

Since 1993 Kapotte Muziek have played nearly 100 concerts around the world, including the USA, Canada, Japan and most European countries. They have played art-galleries, museums, squats, radio stations and rock clubs. Some of these concerts were part of a workshop, given by the members of Kapotte Muziek to untrained players, showing them how to produce sounds by amplifying and playing objects and making field recordings. They also played spontaneous concerts with people like Illusion Of Safety, Edwin van der Heide, Rumpeln, Co Caspar, the R.I.P. and others.

Since 1997 they commision reworks of their concerts, which were first released as a 7" and these days on CD. People included are Thurston Moore, Asmus Tietchens, Troum, Illusion Of Safety, Lasse Marhaug, Leif Elggren, Stavostrand/Wiklund, Radboud Mens, Boca Raton, Toshiya Tsunoda, Richard Chartier and Stephan Mathieu.

From 1984 up to 2003 Kapotte Muziek was also a solo studio project by Frans de Waard, who as such released a whole bunch of cassettes, LPs, CDs and CDRs. A complete discography can be found here:
http://www.beequeen.nl/de_Waard/disc/kapotte_muziek_disc.htm
In 2003 the last release was 'Curing Without Killing', after which De Waard stopped playing solo as Kapotte Muziek.

A selective discography by Kapotte Muziek (as a trio):
1. Add (Staalplaat, 3"CD)
2. Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplaat, CD)
3. Columbus, Ohio (Gameboy Records, CDR)
4. Praag/Rotterdam (Pac Rec, CD)
5. Tsurumai (Intransitive Recordings, CD, a collaboration with Lethe)

A 2005 live recording can be downloaded for free here:

http://www.earlabs.org/label/lm/lm030.asp?titleid=1395

A review of 'Praag/Rotterdam":
Kapotte Muziek has been around in some form or another since 1984, when the name was coined for a project founded by Frans de Waard. Early on he teamed up with Christian Nijs, although they would not actually play together. Christian would record sounds on cassettes that he would give Frans to use as source material and manipulate, as he so desired. In 1987, Christian left Kapotte Muziek to focus on other musical endeavors and Frans continued on his own inviting other musicians to submit material for his manipulation. This approach resulted in Kapotte Muziek collaborations with well know acts like Merzbow, Odal and Yeast Culture. The mid-nineties saw Frans team up with Peter Duimelinks and Roel Meelkop for live performances. While working as a trio live, Frans still approached Kapotte Muziek's studio recordings as a solo endeavor.

Kapotte Muziek's studio approach to using "found sounds" that have been created and by an outside party for their compositions is not mimicked live, though the groups approach is philosophically similar. In the Fluxist spirit, the group will find various debris before the show. Pieces of metal, wood, paper, plastic of all shapes and sizes are explored for their aural properties using microphones and contact microphones. These sounds are then combined and mixed live with some pre-recorded sounds of acoustic, environmental or electronic origin, to create a composition unique to that specific time and space. Thus a live performance becomes more of a happening that what we traditionally think of as a concert. Kapotte Muziek succeeds in blurring every possible line between art, performance, and music.

Presented on this disc, a split label release from PACrec and Chrondritic Sound, are two live performances by Kapotte Muziek, clocking in at an hour and ten minutes total. Track one, entitled "Alternativa 95" was captured in Prague, Czech Republic on 14.12.1995. An incredibly slow moving drone creeping for close to forty-five minutes, Alternativa 95 is the sound of white noise carried in the wind, building slowly to a soft apex. The sound is not so much mountains and valleys as it is gently undulating hills. Moments near total silence are supported only by a faint rumble of bass that is felt more than heard.

The second track "I Rip You, You Rip Me" is from a performance in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on 12.06.1998. Its beginning is much more pronounced than its predecessor. Opening with a staccato rhythm built out of crunches of static then joined by piercing feedback that is reminiscent of a tea kettle that has reached a boil "I Rip You , You Rip Me" makes clear from the opening minutes that it is exploring slightly different territory. Though the low bass rumble is still present, this track investigates tones in the higher registers, tones that at times are so sharp and piercing they may make the listener wince.

Together the two live documents featured on this album showcase the work of a band actively engaged with their surroundings. Creating sound works from objects gathered from the site of performance the featured compositions read as aural interpretations of the space in which these actions occur. One function of an artists is to present individuals with an alternate view of the familiar or that which is taken for granted. Kapotte Muziek does just this by creating sound which functions both as "music" and "conceptual art." Noise-Heads, and Conceptual Art Aficionados alike will become enveloped by the atmospheric drones offered on this album.

- Ryan Brown | 2005-09-13
http://indieworkshop.com/music/1974/

this text as pdf here

complete list of concerts here