Audiozine #2 DIKTAT IN AMERICA + reviews

Ed Pinsent writes in The Sound Projector

“This fascinating document may not persuade you to follow the music of Diktat, but it will pass on a vivid picture of travel, city life, meetings, people, and the richness of all these things rubbing shoulders in the same melting pot. Without explicitly setting out to capture the “truth” about Washington DC or NYC, this fragmentary-collaged approach (sourced from the tape recorders of all three dictaphone performers) in fact reveals more about direct experiences of places than would be possible with a more considered or formal field-recording / phonography approach.”

You can find the complete review here.

****

Diktat is a Dutch-French alliance whose members come from different, but not all too different directions in the strange world of speculative music. The members are Harold Schellinx, who as a youngster was deeply involved in the ULTRA movement in the Netherlands, Emmanuel Rébus, master of fermentations and found recordings, Rinus Van Alebeek, who as an older youngster was a promising writer, now uses several dictaphones as his tools and Jean Bordé, a prominent member of the Parisian improvisational scene, also regarded as the Jimi Hendrix of improvised music.

Three members play various dictaphones for which they use their own collection of tapes. Jean plays the double bass.

Previous to their American tour, Diktat performed in Paris, various places in the Netherlands and in Berlin. They don’t stick to indoor performances. At every town they arrive they go out to find typical, or less typical places and play, with a camera and a recorder and passers-by as their sole witnesses.

Between the 26th of September and the 3rd of Oktober in the year 2012, Diktat visited the US of A. They played at the renown Sonic Circuits festival in Washington DC. They also played in front of the Watergate Hotel, on the notorious Watergate precinct.

They lectured, travelled, drank coffee and talked with strangers and friends. They also walked around a lot, three men with dictaphones, one, the youngest and the strongest, carrying a double bass on his back. All the time dictaphones and walkman were ready to record.

They met Glenn Branca who asked all the right questions, and they explained to David Thomas (ex-Pere Ubu) the deeper meanings behind the use of tofu.

The Audiozine#2 DIKTAT IN AMERICA is a very vivid account of that visit; it offers a perfect introduction to the seductive music of Diktat. The tape also documents life behind the facades of the social networks. And it brings images of a very speculative America.

Audiozine#2 DIKTAT IN AMERICA is a C60 tape, compiled, copied and packed at home by Rinus Van Alebeek. The tape is spray-painted. The confection, a cardboard holder, is spray-painted as well. The tape itself is packed in brown paper, so that the buyer is the first one to listen to the tape. Two business cards are inserted with elementary information. The tape will cost €8.00 if you get it from me (staaltape at staalplaat com), or €8.50 if you order it at the staalplaat shop in Berlin.

“Just simply enjoy this trip. It’s a radio play turned into a music piece.” FdW in Vital Weekly

Read/See/Hear Diktat by Harold Schellinx
Diktat outside/inside the Manufactured Normalcy Field
Audio-monitoring the Watergate Hotel
Speculative Dancing