Daguerreotypes is my new release on Zeromoon

Released by Zeromoon, the three-track Album

Daguerreotypes

is now available on bandcamp.

It will cost you $1.99 for the whole album

or $0.99 per track.

Track list

The Great Whale

The Opium Merchants

Winterspaziergang im Schnee

Notes

All source material was recorded by or given to Rinus van Alebeek.

All source material was directly recorded onto cassette or mini-cassette

with the use of a professional walkman or a voice recorder.

All tracks were composed with the use of a four track recorder.

Notes to The Great Whale

Captain Ahab by Gregory Peck

Piano music by Claude Debussy

Ocean by Salem

Notes to The Opium Merchants

source material recorded in

Washington DC, Berchtesgadener Land and Pistoia

No I Ching oracle was consulted during the composing process

Notes to Winterspaziergang im Schnee

Adolf Hitler by Tobias Moretti

Kammermusik by Berchtesgadener Alp

Toilet music by Blenno

Cover picture by Barbara Gessner

First Autumn Leaves

Tweets from my tour, that took me from Montreal to Troy (NY), Hudson (NY), Allentown  (PA). Washinton DC to New York.

-No tweets, but very fond memories of Allentown and a visit to the woods of Pennsylvania and Bethlehem, though-

Montreal: A first day of battling with time and enduring daylight & a day of rain. Now ready to bike out and zigzag the check board streets.

Houses in Montreal look all strikingly the same in their diversity. Thought of a collection of post stamps: same image in different colours.

Sunlight, trees & shadowplay in the street, new store fronts, fragment of french language, bicycle ride, riverside, metabolist architecture

Long bridge,turn to the park, mysterious rumble in my headphones, riverside & city view, then this 1967`s naiv optimism http://v.gd/smW4Hd

Habitat 67, a rubik`s cube in a b-movie, expanded, without the colours: I get of my bike and walk, stare, enter “residents only,” hi guard!

On a 9km/hour bike (20cm below my size): enter the fairy tale railway station with the phantom hall, where no-one leaves and no-one arrives.

Old canals, 1970`s concrete bridge walking the waste land, polished bicycle lanes and refurnished factory buildings, green mountain, clouds.

Which all means that I start to get a feel for Montreal,growing curiosity for Canada and its enormous distances,thanks to a greatlittlehost!

6$ to get into the USA made customs routines look like a theatre piece with audience participation. I wonder, who got the door money though.

BUT: The train ride, a continuous monumentum to travelling by foot, horse or carriage, and at that speed we moved along the lake, its birds.

Mohawk river, third and fourth branch, Peebles Island (formerly known as Hoppe and Haver island) view on Cohoes (formerly known as Kahoos).

Walk around that island & record leaves moved by the wind, far industrial & traffic rumble: following fourhundred year old Dutch foot steps.

Suddenly, while admiring the view and getting ready for recording, I heard “HO.”Half a second later a golf ball landed at 70cm from my head.

Yesterday evening. Performed in bookstore that had a bar and a selection of local beer: wood, covers, stools, chairs. Wonderful combination!

But pumpkin beer? I had a sip of it, ’twas like Christmas speculatious cookies. I left it to that one.Two pints would have changed my life.

A wonderful living in slow motion two hours moment while the train moved along the river Hudson, its green hills, the reflection of the sun

Waiting to leave the web and go into town, to find our way to the island just in front of The Watergate Hotel.. to add yet another sediment.

Washington DC, walk around H & 13th just to see the houses people live in; notice that all the houses escaped from a near death experience.

Notable, only one idiot had his USA flag erected, which gave me a short punk retro flash, imagining to hold the flame of a lighter under it.

With Emmanuel Rebus on H Street a short moment before he got to eat the worst taco in the world, with half frozen meat. pic.twitter.com/7s8GvXyy

Driving into New York on something95 from south is eh…well:buildings famous buildings, high low towering blocking, Hudson Brooklyn Bridge!

My obligatory day of rain in New York. A marathon walk with @diktat_us around Williamsburg started with a dry performance in Askhenazyville.

Coffee around the corner, in a few square meters store, with milk; but not as creamy as the new york accent of the elderly man who sold it,

Coney Island yesterday: ocean without horizon, fog horns, boardwalk talks, identical Jewish families with their offspring, beach, recording

A bloody tourist today I walked around Chinatown (never go into Chinatown when hungry) rermembered Penguin pocket Breakfast at Tiffany in fr

ont of Tiffany’s. Wondered why the hell this country is so air-conditioned, because the sound of it is louder then traffic, caught a glimpse

of Brooklyn Bridge at the end of the streets and thought of Woody Allen’s ‘Manhattan,’ continued to ex WTC area for some real hard core tour

ism. Noticed there is nothing special about it – just a construction site, where the highest building points at the clouds- walked Broadway

, entered Chinatown again and bought a favourite cassette for one dollar, postcards, stamps, continued for Little Italy, loads of restaurant

and tourist shops next to each other, then forgot to buy a kosher cookie in a corner store near the Bowery, then picked up my suitcase and h

eaded for Brooklyn, pushing new suitcase along. Then coffee, freshly brewed in the little shop around the corner. Here? Banjo, Snare, Songs.

Eyes heavy with 6 time zones, shuttering, as if light is too sharp; close and see New York skyline from Wiliamsburg Bridge again, clear sky.

my twitter-account: @rinusnews

Working with Tapes – Reading about Tapes

It is two years now that I take care of staaltape, staalplaat’s cassette label. In doing so I have noticed that releasing cassettes follows its own law, but also a bit my own law. I thought of themes to which I could invite an artist, but I also had to think of the packaging. With every new release the challenge became bigger, simply because I had to think of a new design for every new tape. This was an appeasing process during which the idea took shape and form. Then when the first results were ready to be photographed, fulfillment defined my day.

For the sonic content, its structure, I also followed my taste: I like diversity. I also like to hear that someone took care of the composition of a piece, rather then taking care of having an occasional jam or try-out published.

I found it hard to find reviewers. (But maybe you can find me? Drop a line if you are interested in writing about staaltape releases).

But luckily I found Ed Pinsent of The Sound Projector. His review came unexpected. (It had been six months since I sent him this packet.)

In his review I could read what a great person I am ( and I thought: “O boy, couldn’t you have waited until my funeral?”). But to my heart warming pleasure I also encountered someone who recognized the work put into this releases by the sound artists, how they picked up the general idea, and – yes- my work doing all this packaging.

Here is some excerpts of the review:

“Guaranteed 40 minutes of odd cranial stimulation with this white mouse of mayhem, where the banalities of life on the street are gradually and subtly remade into grainy patterns of truthful radio interference.”

“Read all the contextual information you like about these performance-art like events, but nothing really serves as a map for navigating the low-key, nondescript experiences. Again, banality is another keynote and a general refusal of any form of conventional aesthetic grooming in favour of a directness and simplicity.”

“Wrapped up it be in tissue paper like a mummy. It was glued up at seam so I thought I would snap a photo before I broke the seal. Now the wrappings have fallen from the bones of Paris Tape Run 2″

“A real pleasure to receive these genuine, hand-made and vital pieces of radical avant-garde art.”

Read ‘The European Canon is here’ , the complete review

Then, in Paris

The next issue of the magazine Gonzo Circus will include an interview with me by Theo Ploeg. Such an article comes with pictures. I was asked to send some. Digital memories lead an orphaned existence in my life. That’s why I came across this set just a day too late. Here is the story that comes with it.

The hand in the picture is mine. You can see blood. You can also see a small part of a walkman that I bought from former topmodel Magnus Schaefer, just before his move to New York. The first appearance of the walkman as My Walkman was in the 4 minute road movie about the Berlin Tape Run which was shown on German, Austrian and Swiss TV.

I looked at the walkman again. It is a different one. The walkman that served as a red thread in the road movie is not in the picture. What to do? Now you know that both my -MY!- walkman and I were on TV I can take advantage of this fact and promote Berlin Tape Run2. I sold two copies of it thanks to its appearance on German, Austrian and Swiss TV. Grab your copy before they sell out. Get it here: staaltape.

Sometimes after a concert I find myself a salesman. Visitors are mostly more driven by curiosity then by a strong desire to buy a tape. They pick up the cassette. I start my promotional talk, but encounter a look that tries to find a polite balance between contempt and ‘man, I have one hundred thousand free downloads on my hard drive.’ Then the visitor walks up to the bar and buys a beer, or rather exchanges a few coins for a bottle of beer. Those coins must have lost every connection to monetary or existential value… Existential!

Paris is clearly divided by its surface. There is life going on under it, and on top of it. Zillions of people use or have used the metro. I like it. I like the smell, the sounds, the sudden change of pace. The metro system follows its own logic. Travelling to a destination is not a simple matter of going from A to B. There is detours in the dark, mysterious squeeks and threatening rumbles, there is eroticism, thought, misery, work hidden under the looks and appearances of the travellers, there is seemingly endless and labyrintic movements whenever you have to change trains, there is determination. There is epiphany whenever you get to see the sky and the apartments once you walk the stairs. I am sure Parisian philosophers were inspired by their metro system.

I am on my way to Anton Mobin for my fourth appearance at his A Maïzing Session. He lives on walking distance from Père-Lachaise. In my agenda is written the metroline, where to get of (Alexandre Dumas), the address, and the secret codes of the front and second door. I have just a backpack with gear, no suitcase (weight 20 kilo), because he lives on the 6th floor and there is no elevator. I always enjoy the short walk up to his apartment. The street I follow is a bit run down, houses and shops lean against each other, seek comfort, some of them moan softly, a bit sentimental, remembering better times. I look inside bars and imagine to have a beer and watch how everything slows down.

Anton’s series of home produced (web-) radio now run in their fifth season. To me it is an essential part of what netculture is about (it is, actually meet and play together with the person you met through a website or an email). The A Maïzing Sessions offer a welcome and welcoming appointment with homebrewn- and visiting artists. Moreover, when you are back on the streets again after the radio show, you’ll notice that the neighborhood looks just that bit more familiar. It makes you feel, well.. just good:

The 11th of September was a pleasant late Summer day, a day that makes domestic silence enjoyable, Anton had just come back from a holiday in Barcelona and enthused about the San Miguel beer he had found in his street. He showed the new tap of the bottle, which made opening it far more easy. So we opened our bottles at the same time and cut our fingers at the same point.

Watergate

Watergate, Richard Nixon, a burglary at night, tapes, The Washington Post, Deep Throat and then the movie All the Presidents Men with Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford which resulted in a breakthrough for those two actors, but also for investigative journalism.

Normally Diktat doesn’t choose on forehand where to set up for the outdoor guerilla recordings. The Watergate Hotel however was a must do location. We were lucky to arrive on a sun splattered day and find the hotel closed for reconstruction. Undisturbed, observed by surveillance camera’s we performed under the dragonfly wing at the entrance of the hotel.

Read See Hear

An Inside Job

A moment from Diktat’s performance at Sonic Circuits Festival, Atlas Performing Arts Center on H street in Washington DC. Picture, courtesy of Chester Hawkins (aka Blue Sausage Infant).

For Sale! Diktat – In Berlin

Last year Diktat performed inside and outside in Berlin. The digital album Diktat – In Berlin documents the audio part of these performances.

Throw in your Dollars or Deutschmarks and make it yours:

DIKTAT in Berlin

Read Diktat outside/inside the Manufactured Normalcy Field

Follow DIKTAT @diktat_us

Epsilonia – Radio Libertaire – Paris – Bande sans Fin

Thursday 20 September, well in the very first hours of 21.September- until deep night, Epsilonia will transmit a four hour long composition which I have given the title

La radio mise à nue par ses auditeurs, même

The regular show starts at 22.00 (cet+1) and has a 27 minutes live set, and some words in French, by me.

The picture is by Anton Mobin, who also has transferred the tape sounds to a  series of zero`s and one`s.

SLEEP

In the last two months I worked on a four hour sound piece. These four hours will be transmitted on FM radio in Paris by Radio Libertaire.

When putting all the sounds together I thought of a small radio transmitter in a semi dark room in Paris. Maybe someone couldnot sleep and heard all these unusual sounds, sounds that yet were strangely familiar.

I imagined the radio as an animated object, a de-materialized guide that would bring the listener safely to the other side of the night.

But maybe in my subconsciousness I had the title of Céline’s great novel in mind.

Sleep has sounds from the last part of the second hour (orange side) and the first part of the third hour (green side) on it. I made twelve copies, simply because I didn’t have time to make some more.

You can get a copy at my concerts for seven euro ( or eight dollar) or in exchange for a review or a nice cassette.

And Oh! There is 40 minutes of sound on a chrome quality tape.

SENSUAL FASCINATING INTELLIGENT MYSTERIOUS

“scrummy kosmischeplundernoisemuzak where discrepant pop culture, field recordings, playful noise and speechless poetry collide,” is how Yannick Franck describes my cassette release on his label Idiosyncratics Records.
.

For the composition I used a great variety of my own recordings and adopted tapes with awkward music on it. Cuts and repetition, collage and excerpts plus the possibilities that working with two fourtracks and a Marantz offer come together on this 23 minutes opus.

You can (pre-)order it here
or buy it at my concerts.

The tape will be presented on 9. September in Brussels.