1003 Roel Meelkop:::: Oude Koeien

1. ERSTES STÜCK IM ALTEN STIL, 10", (Korg Platsics),1998
2. ECHT DOOD, track on CD (Herbal ), 2010 (excerpt, vbr mp3)
3. 2 (JOS SMOLDERS), 5" lathe cut, 2002
4. 1 (RIKTIGT DÖD), 7", 1999
5. 1 (VERAMENTE MORTO), 7",1998
6. ZWEITES STÜCK IM ALTEN STIL, 10", (Korg Platsics), 1998
7. 2 (BEEQUEENS), 7" (limited edition with Beequeens LP Ownliness on MOLOKO+), 2002
8. DRITTES STÜCK IM ALTEN STIL, 10", (Korg Platsics), 1998
Almost all tracks on this disc have been released on vinyl by Korm Plastics, except where noted in brackets. My gratitude goes out to Frans de Waard for his continuing support for my work and his unwavering commitment to the music that we all love so much.
Roel Meelkop, 2010.

Audio CD, 6 panels digipak
50 minutes+
Release date: February 2010
12 Euros + shipping order

Line note:
Koken Met Sneeuw
No doubt it is sheer coincidence that the release of this CD coincides with the 25th year of Korm Plastics existence. When I started the label, I had no clear idea of what its aim should be. No doubt if you would have asked me back then, I would have said: to release good music. Maybe if you would ask me today I would give the same answer. What motivation should one need to run a record label? Change the world, save the environment, fight for your rights? I never comprehensively studied the various social and political backgrounds of everybody whose music I released and I never will either, but no doubt the vast majority of them does not have a strong political idea or social motivation behind whatever they do in music. Sit back and listen. Roel Meelkop's installation at the first sound art exhibition he organised in 1998, 'just about now', summed this up perfectly: two speakers, a couch, a vase with flowers and an ashtray. Sit back and listen. And maybe most of all: enjoy!
I think I first met Roel in 1986, when we were preparing a concert of his band THU20, my band Kapotte Muziek and the odd loner Odal. Bumping into each other after that, at concerts usually, grew steadily into a friendship. When Mailcop became Meelkop, following a hiatus of some years of non-recording (mainly out of lack of good equipment), Roel returned with a great CD for Trente Oiseaux, to be followed by more great works. I invited him to do a 10" in the Korg Plastics series of music solely made with Korg machines. It was the third and final episode in the series, and the most 'composed' one. Later on he asked me wether he could release a series of 7"s, in which each new 7" was a rework (recycle remix) of the previous one, but for whatever reason now forgotten, it became only a series of two. The final record on Korm Plastics displayed his interest in concepts: taking Jos Smolders' 'Music For CD Player' as the starting point, he recorded two pieces of 99 seconds each (analog to the 99 tracks on the CD) which was pressed on a 5" lathe cut (the size of a CD) with silver foil in the middle (again like a CD, but made as a picture disc). A small work of art. Four great records and because of the fragile character of the music, it deserves to be released on CD. Another fine mark of quality and a great 25th anniversary item.
Frans de Waard
17-XI-2009

Related resources:
Also by Roel Meelkop 
Roel Meelkop: HARAMU/Drempel

Geographically connected
Beequeen: Time Waits For No One

Review(s):
Paris Transatlantic 
When taken to task by snobbish French students of mine poking fun at British cuisine (I invariably have to point out that there's a difference between "cuisine" and "cooking"), I usually counter with "ever try typical local food in the Netherlands?", but, putting aside unpleasant relents of patatje oorlog in a stiff breeze on the seafront in Scheveningen, the grilled side of beef adorning the cover of Oude Koueien does look rather appetising. Maybe though, as Robert Fripp would say, it's just a big hoax hahaha, and Roel Meelkop, like many practitioners of leftfield electronica of my acquaintance, is a card-carrying vegan – but, whatever, there's still plenty to get your teeth into in this fine release. Or rather re-release, as all but one of its eight tracks (the exception being last year's "Echt Dood") originally appeared on vinyl, either on Frans de Waard's Korm Plastics imprint or in association with FdW's Beequeen project.
Listening to this fastidiously crafted and predominantly very quiet music today (for the first time, as, alas, I never caught these releases when they came out), I'm surprised it wasn't released on CD at the time. It's hard to imagine how these delicate puffs and pinpricks of sound could cohabit with vinyl surface noise. But they did. The three "Pieces in the Old Style" were originally released on a ten-incher in 1998 as part of the Korg Plastics series, in which, as the name suggests, all the music had to be made using Korg instruments (though apart from a few telltale squarewave patches and jangles, you'd probably never guess that unless someone told you). Back then, clicks'n'cuts were still the order of the day in minimal techno, and there are numerous subtle hints of backbeat scattered through these tracks, but they're veiled and furtive, as if eavesdropping through a bedroom wall on several neighbours playing their Megos and Mille Plateaux late at night. Indeed, with its fondness for relatively abrupt changes of texture and dynamic, not to mention a penchant for extreme registers ("1(Riktigt Dod") and stacked clusters ("1 (Veramente Morto"), Meelkop's music has more in common with Ligeti (György, not Lukas) than you might think. There's a compositional intricacy to pieces like "2(Jos Smolders)", originally a lathe-cut five-incher containing two tracks of exactly 99 seconds' duration (by way of homage to the 99 tracks on Smolders' Music for CD Player), that sets Meelkop apart from many of his EAI / alt.electronica peers. Ralf Wehowsky's work often comes to mind (is there a cow connection here between the title of this album and P16.D4's Kuhe in ½ Trauer?) - this is music to savour in small mouthfuls, and digest thoroughly. Bon appetit.
- Dan Warburton -

Blow Up 
Album retrospettivo per il membro dei THU20 Roel Meelkop, che da metà anni ottanta in poi ha sviluppato una personale ricerca in ambito sperimentale/elettronico. Tre composizioni sono relative alla serie Korg Plastics curata da Frans de Waard e dedicata a musica composta esclusivamente con il Korg, caratterizzati da un flusso irregolare di suoni sintetici e onde quadre. Altri brani si distinguono per una forte componente concettuale, come Riktigt Död e Veramente Morto, estratti da una serie di sette pollici in cui ciascun singolo era frutto del riciclaggio e della trasformazione del precedente, oppure il cd 5” in cui riassembla le novantanove tracce presenti nel lavoro di Jos Smolders “Music for Cd Player”. Autore poco noto ma dalle idee interessanti. (7)
- Massimiliano Busti -

Improv Sphere
Collection de huit pièces enregistrées et pour la plupart déjà éditées entre 1998 et 2010, Oude Koeien compile une drôle de série de pièces plutôt courtes interprétées par l'un des noyaux durs de la musique électroacoustique hollandaise. Une grande partie de ces pièces est faite pour synthétiseur analogique et ondes sinusoïdales apparemment, mais le vocabulaire et la forme esthétique de ces pièces se rapprochent plus de la musique électroacoustique avec ses manipulations de bandes magnétiques ou vinyles. Musique électroacoustique à forte tendance glitch, avec ses courtes imperfections, ses sauts de tension (électrique aussi bien que musicale), ses disques rayés qui sautent et qui craquent, ses étranges enregistrements sonores un peu crades et méconnaissables.
Des pièces souvent assez courtes, calmes, avec de nombreux silences. En fait, une musique assez étrange, imprévue, qui oscille entre le bruit, le silence, le minimalisme, le réductionnisme, entre les répétitions, les ruptures de ton et les fractures. Roel Meelkop joue sur les textures avec de nombreuses nappes analogiques, mais aussi sur différentes intensités et atmosphères, univers composés parfois de bruits, parfois d'accords, de rythmes, ou de nappes. Une musique complexe, variée, tour à tour sérieuse et sans prétention, qui peut aussi bien ennuyer qu'absorber l'auditeur selon son état et sa disponibilité. En tout cas, la compilation en tant que telle forme une belle présentation des travaux de Roel Meelkop, artiste que l'on peut ainsi découvrir dans toute sa diversité, mais aussi dans sa radicalité.
- Julien Héraud -

Further Noise
Roel Meelkop was one of the founding members of the Dutch electroacoustic group THU20 in the mid-1980s, and he continues to work with Frans de Waard in the latter's long-term projects Kapotte Muziek, Goem, and Zèbra. Meelkop's first solo release, 9 (Holes in the Head), was released on Bernhard Günter's Trente Oiseaux label in 1996, and since then his albums have appeared on an A-list of boutique electronic labels, including Intransitive, Line, Staalplaat, and Non Visual Objects. His most recent album is Oude Koeien, a beautifully remastered collection of eight rarities, all but one vinyl issues originally released on de Waard's label Korm Plastics in the late 1990s.
The set is framed by Three Pieces "im Alten Stil" (in the Old Style), three tracks originally released on a 10-inch and constructed with a sonic vocabulary reminiscent of the earliest tape experimental works from Cologne. Music composed from sine waves and impulse generators isn't rare these days, but Meelkop's sudden transitions and dry events knitted together with static sound fields, and a complete absence of a dance-floor beat in favor of a sparse set of events, show a different aesthetic altogether. The second and third pieces must have been infuriating on vinyl, populated with sharp pointed gestures that would send me looking for big gouges in the disc, but these are mere interludes amidst drawn-out electronic fields. The third pieces has a greater variety of successive textures, from the noisy vinyl runoff to Basic Channel rhythms.
Four of the remaining pieces were originally released on small vinyls, and here they are reissued as single tracks, not divided into A and B sides and not always obvious where such a division might have occurred. According to the Frans de Waard's liner notes, "(Riktigt Död)" is a "recycle remix" of "Veramente Morte", where the sharp and intense noise bursts in the original are softened, and everything overlaid with a vinyl patina of decay. A remix from Jos Smolders plunders an original 99 tracks onto a five-inch lathe cut, and a Beequeen remix thunders another subterranean single-minded bass before starting over, reworking electronics and field recordings into burst of mournful energy. The remaining piece, "Echt Dood", is a slowly evolving series of textures crackling with energy and intensity.
Meelkop's Oude Koeien may be "old cows" from his back catalog, but his compositional vision is well suited to their sonic austerity. Equally interesting is the commentary on the remix and reissue culture, playing with the analog/digital boundary as well. The cover art by Rutger Zuydervelt of Machinefabriek, uncharacteristically representational with lovingly photographed grilled steak and garnish, is another commentary on the abstract, even spartan, music inside. Herbal International deserve kudos for making this collection available.
- Caleb Deupree -

Monsieur Delire
Électronicien expériental par excellence, Roel Meelkop se fait discret ces temps-ci. Voici que l’étiquette Herbal International propose, sur CD, une compilation des pièces que Meelkop a publié sur vinyle chez Korm Plastics entre 1998 et 2002. On y trouve un peu de tout: du rythme et de la facétie dans “Drittes Stück im Alten Stil”, du remixage expérimental dans “(Beequeens)”, de l’art sonore conceptuel assez poussé dans “(Jos Smolders)”, et j’en passe. L’univers de Meelkop n’est pas facile d’accès, mais sa démarche artistique embrasse une certaine variété et ne se cantonne pas dans des parti-pris rigides. Notons la présence d’une solide inédite, “Echt Dood”.

Experimental electronician par excellence, Roel Meelkop is keeping to himself these days. And now Herbal International releases a CD culling the tracks Meelkop released on Korm Plastics vinyl between 1998 and 2002. There’s a little of everything: beats and playfulness in “Drittes Stück im Alten Stil”, experimental remixing in “(Beequeens)”, advanced conceptual sound art in “(Jos Smolders)”, and so forth. Meelkop’s universe is not easily accessible, but his artistic process
includes a certain degree of variety and it eschews rigid stances. Let’s note the inclusion of one previously unavailable track: “Echt Dood.”
- François Couture -

Just Outside
More Meerkop! Old cow, indeed. A compilation of sorts of largely previously issued pieces, culled from Korm Plastics (called "Korg" on the disc, for some reason) and other sources. Wide ranging, from "serious" to slightly goofy, it's never un-fun, never a chore to listen. I prefer the former, like the dark, throbbing and scratchy "Echt Dood", a recent (2009) piece, the equally mysterious "1 (Riktigt Dod)" from 1999 and the low, liquid hums of "1 (Veramente Morto")" Very nice stuff. It can get a little goofy--I admit that the first time I played it, the thumpy seventh track began skipping mid-thump and, after several minutes of not-full attention I said to myself, "Damn! This is pretty annoying!" Enjoyable work, overall.
- Brian Olewnick -

The Watchful Ear
The first thing that strikes you about this CD obviously occurs before you even put the disc in the player. That sleeve image of course. As a piece of eye catching, interesting design its fantastic, but I can’t help wonder that, given how many musicians, and therefore I imagine also listeners in this area of music are vegetarians, it probably puts a few people off of buying it. Particularly when the back cover features a picture of a cow, with each track title apparently relating to a highlighted cut of meat. Interesting anyway, how this all relates to the music is anyone’s guess.
The CD in question is a collection of pieces recorded between 1998 and 2009, but mostly at the early end of that window, by Dutch electronicist / sound arranger / call him what you will, Roel Meelkop. Now Meelkop is one of those names that appears all the time, but for some reason I have managed to unintentionally avoid listening to much of his music down the years, maybe the odd compilation track here and there, but nothing more. As it happens another new release (a two 3″ CD set on 1000Füssler) arrived here today as well. There will probably be ten more now over the next month! Perhaps then a compilation of his music from the past decade or so could be a good starting point.
The eight tracks then on Oude Koeien, which is the name of this CD released on the Herbal label are all bar one taken from vinyl releases, may of them limited editions, and mostly on the Korm label, with whom Meelkop is closely linked. The one exception is the second piece, Echt Dood which seems to have been specially recorded for this compilation. I will admit to having assumed Meelkop belonged in the vaguely post industrial area of European electronic composition that doesn’t interest me so much, so I came to this set with little expectation but open ears. It is then something of a mixed bag, but there are some nice tracks in here. The opening Erstes stück im alten stil is one of them, a ten minute long excursion through a series of electronically produced segments spaced apart by silences of a few seconds at a time. Plunging bassy synth scribble give way to a nice brittle crackle then deep, almost nausea inducing swells that are ended by strange, sudden crashes of synthetic sound of the kind you find by accident when messing about with your nephew’s toy synthesiser. Any one of these sounds on their own may not have been so interesting, but the way they are structured here with plenty of space and without any tendency to shift towards drones, as these things often do it all works curiously well.
The second piece, the recently recorded track grows into an odd, warped blurry sound that could be a contact miked bumble bee but probably isn’t. Here the sound is constant, but still the drone form is absent, rather the sound builds from a series of strange shuttling sounds a bit like you might hear if you dragged a large stone tablet a short distance across a concrete floor. These then build and slowly blend with little pops and clicks into a surging mass that when listened to on headphones becomes really oppressive and unsettling, as if the sounds are pressing in from either side of the head. Stirring music for sure and unlike much else I have heard before. There follows 2 (Jos Smolders) which dates from a 2002 lathe cut disc that I think is formed using a release by Jos Smolders as raw material. This little three minute miniature is made up (I think) from a multitude of little fragments of sound, some field recordings, what sounds like bits of
old music and maybe television, plus a lot of bleeps and digital scribbles. It all has a feel of early musique concrete to it, and while quite nice I found myself focussing more on the origin of each
sound rather than the overall structure of the work, which is less interesting than in the first two pieces. 1 Riktigt Düd comes next, and is different again, this time a layering of sounds, murky
crackles, maybe some processed field recordings, what sounds like burning sparklers fizzing away, all building into a dense mass of sounds that cuts away into further whining, crackling and hissing sections. This piece is constructed in a more familiar manner, two or three sounds layered, allowed to build to extremes then cut dead into the next set of sounds. It all works well though and is a pleasing listen with a sharpness to it that jolts you upright in your seat from
time to time if you’re not paying attention.
As does Zweiten stück im alten stil, the fifth piece here and originally from the ten inch vinyl release from 1998 that the opening track of this album also seems to be part of. For much of the track we just hear relatively quiet, wintry electronic whispers that alone are not that interesting, but every so often sudden, very loud shrieks of something harsh appear that initially caused me to rip the headphones off and reach for the volume dial. After a while the shrieks build into a deafening sheet of digital screaming which lasts a little while before dropping away again. Not as structurally interesting as its sister piece that began the album, but still quite different and certainly jarring. 2 (Bequeens) follows, originally a 7″ disc given away free with a Beequeens album, though I’m not sure what the connection is. For much of the time this piece is much less
interesting, with long sections of buzzing and rhythmic drumming not really doing that much for me, but there is one great, completely isolated and obscure moment when the pounding tribal beat cuts out and a brief grab of a vociferous baby is heard before the music goes off in a different rhythmic direction. Its as if all of the rest of the sounds exist just to make this little moment in the middle of the piece work, a little conceit that amused me somewhat.
The final track of the eight also seems to come from that same 1998 10″. (How much music can you get on one of those things?) It begins well, with some bright, in your face crunching sounds collapsing into more in your face aggressive switches of sound but the piece later degenerates into a vaguely technoish pulsing section that completely sent my interests packing. Overall though I enjoyed listening to this album closely. One of the joys of having people send music to you to review is that you get to spend time listening carefully to things that perhaps you would not have looked twice at otherwise. My favourite piece on this album is probably the most recently recorded track, which bodes well for the 1000Füssler release. That one just has
a plain grey cover though…
- Richard Pinnell -

Vital Weekly
The problem with being a 'reviewer' and having more than one hat 'in the business' arrives when things like this land on my desk. Should I really be the one to review it? I wrote the liner notes for this release, because Roel Meelkop is not only a dear friend of mine (reviewers are sometimes asked to write liner notes, we all know that), but also someone whom I occasionally create music with (in Kapotte Muziek, Goem, Zebra and THU20 for instance). That's two reasons for not wanting to review this. The third is that 'Oude Koeien' contains re-releases Meelkop did for my small Korm Plastics label in ancient days when it was releasing highly limited vinyl - all gone of course and rightly so to deserve a re-issue. Oh and a fourth reason is that one track is a remix that I didn't release but rework an original I did. So, thinking this all over, its hard - neh, impossible - to write something objective about this release. Should I elaborate on the genius that Meelkop usually is? Marvel about the great microsound composer he is? Do you really need MY opinion then to get this? Hardly, I'd say. But one, objective, advise: Meelkop's music should never be released on vinyl. Its too delicate. But that's something you know already, I assume. You can now shelf your precious vinyl and hear a wonderfully remastered re-release.
- Frans De Waard -