Release information
Limited edition cassette + download
Released on Invisible City Records (ICR70) on July 17, 2020
Two interpretations of the same source but with delicately different approach from each artist. Composed during March/April 2020 based on source material created by Frans de Waard and Matthijs Kouw.
Reviews
“Both artists began with the same source sounds but composed separate music with it. Modelbau’s side, “Paper Clip”, is a prime example of impossibly languorous music Frans has been producing under this banner recently and is among the best music he’s made in his career (so far). This track is a half-hour of a deep-bass cassette-tape crawl, impossibly patient and careful. He waits until the final five minutes of the piece to lift the clouds and allow a hint of sunlight in, a proper coda to the previous pulse-decelerating purr. This sort of stasis gets me excited for some headphones-on deep listening, but that craving action won’t find much here. I don’t need action, though… in fact, I wish “Paper Clip” was even slower and longer… which is fortunate, because Frans recorded an even slower and longer piece using the same material, which is not part of the cassette, but it’s available as a free download from the Invisible City Bandcamp page. MVK, aka Matthijs Kouw, breaks his half of the tape into three sections. The component sounds are recognizable from the previous side, but he takes them in a different direction. Kouw’s tracks emphasize the rawness of surface crackle, sixty-cycle-hum, feedback, other elements that imply instability. Where Modelbau’s side is an extended slide down a dark corridor, MVK’s drone seems poised to explode, the feedback likely to overtake the other sounds or the crackling to subsume the entire enterprise. That delicate balance adds a nervous edge of imminent collapse.” Vital Weekly 1248.
Credits
All music by Frans de Waard and Matthijs Kouw
Artwork by Craig Stewart Johnson