Groetjes uit Brussel + Review

Title: Groetjes uit Brussel

Artists: Jean Jacques Duerinckx, Patate, Flavien Gillié, Margarida Guia

Concept, Track order, Art Work, Production – Rinus van Alebeek

Spray Painted Dazzle Motive Cassette ( black-yellow, yellow-white or black-white) b/w A3-sheet with liner notes.

All wrapped in 40 years old Sandwich Paper.

Chrome, 40 Minutes.

Costs 6 Euro. Order it via staaltape at staalplaat dot com

Track List

Side A

1.   Qui Dit Mieux Adjugé ! – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

2.   BugOnSkype – Patate

3.   VlamsGhost – Patate

4.   Sopraniathome – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

5.   Demonstration in Brussels – Flavien Gillié

6.   Burp – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

7.   ShyShyPatate – Patate

8.   KissInTheCloudySun – Patate

9.   Eglise Saint-Pierre Lecture des Intentions- Flavien Gillié

10. Vive l’ORVAL – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

11. Pourquoi dit-on qu’il pleut des cordes?- Margarida Guia

12. Toupie Windy – Patate

13. Folle du Midi – Flavien Gillié

14. Culbute – Patate

15. Morning improvisation music and furnitures – Flavien Gillié

Side B

1.   Fine Arts Escalator OK – Flavien Gillié

2.   RambiBambo – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

3.   MessageToYou – Patate

4.   MoulinSanzaduMatin –  Patate

5.   DistantMusicLovers – Patate

6.   Claratable – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

7.   27 secondes gare escalator – Flavien Gillié

8.   Station – Patate

9.   MiniRPourM – Patate

10. Decollage – Patate

11. Interludique – Patate

12. Chée de tubize – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

13. BXL/un jour de fanfare(s) – Margarida Guia

14. Wolteche – Jean Jacques Duerinckx

15. So cold sometimes – Patate

Short Description:

Slightly treated and untreated recordings made in Brussels, short improvisations on soprano saxophone, naïve musique with lo-fi (toy) instruments and sonic poems from four artists based in Bruxelles portray a city that finds itself in times of changes and transgressions.

Viewpoint:

 In the two years that I am responsible for the Staaltape releases, most of the cassettes I published evolved around a theme. With Brussels Tape Run, and the selection of artists that appeared on Tales for Tapes#7, I realised that “Groetjes uit Brussel” was the final part in a Trilogy. These three cassettes offer a good impression of quotidian moments, with all the dreams or anxieties, hopes and confessions. Choosing Bruxelles as a theme in the growing collection of Staaltape releases comes also from a personal fascination with this city. I can only be grateful to the artists involved to have accepted my invitation to send in short sound pieces.

For long I have pondered about the idea to publish an AudioZine. The content would emphasize the narrative character of sonic works. Reportages, impressions, audio diary’s, interviews were amongst the possible features. My idea was to get away from music.

When I heard the result of Groetjes uit Brussel, I sensed that it was very close to the concept of an AudioZine. What you hear on this tape is an ever-changing tale not only of four people who live in the same city, but also a collective work of art that documents a part of their lives . All four of them have managed to visualize a Brussels through their miniatures. If you follow the storyline, you will encounter a narrator, who is not always aware of the dreams and visions that surround him. Maybe he or she can hear them, intuit them, just as much as the listener to this tape can perceive what it is to live in Brussels at the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Ed Pinsent writes in The Sound Projector:

” Groetjes Uit Brussel features contributions from four Belgian sound artists – Flavien Gillié, Jean Jacques Duerinckx, Margarida Guia and the strangely-named Patate. The artistic brief handed down to them was to “depict one moment or fragment of the town they live in”. They came up with these lovely miniaturist statements which glisten like a jewel for precious seconds, then vanish in a drifty manner. I don’t know a great deal about these Belgians although Duerinckx appears to be a jazz saxophonist and Margarida Guia is a performance artist / comedienne who has appeared in films and has composed radiophonic works. Of the three tapes, this one might not be as outright strange or shocking as the two items noted above, but it is extremely beguiling; the individual contributions are listed, but not divided up or signposted in the programme, and the accumulated listening experience reveals a misty and slightly warped view of the city of Brussels. Moving from shopping mall to church, we are in a highly fluid zone where even the most fleeting and banal sound has the potential to be a sign of some import. Signs are taken for wonders. We don’t know where we are or where we might be going next, and the effect is like floating through an evanescent dream-world on winged shoes, passing overheard and drifting through walls like a wispy ghost.

If the aim of Van Alebeek and these artists is to create unusual maps of the world, they are succeeding. The tapes themselves are the maps, finding aids to allow us to locate our own zones of importance, and in the final analysis enabling us to perform our own personal dérives of the city. These tapes do more than just present interesting glimpses of overlooked corners of the world, they perform certain artistic operations on the mind and help us to rewire our brains.”