Description:	CD inc super fancy hard back packaging inc booklet and wierd white thingy edition of 28!
	Format:	CD
	Genre(s):	Experimental / Abstract
	Label:	Self-Released
	Price:	£9.99
	Availability:	In stock. Dispatched in 1 working day.

4
...according to our Phil on 24 September 2009.

Maarten van der Vleuten is a name I'm not familiar with but looking through his resume he seems like someone I should have heard of by now after numerous releases on R & S, Apollo, Klang, Signum etc. Here's an uber limited edition of just 28 copies by him and ECT For Piano is his 9th album of treated piano and noise/drone like soundscapes. The packaging is nuts. It comes in a DVD sized package with a colour booklet and a white thingy stuck to the front. No idea what it is but it's like a bit of a wiry lead stuck on with a plaster. I like the way it looks! The press release for this is fascinating as he goes on about a hospital in Canada where various folks were treated with ECT therapy and he's tried to reproduce the events in music form. As far as drone music goes this is quite chilling at times, dark isolationist sounding stuff which ebbs and flows from being eerie to being really quite beautiful. It's well worth checking out if you fancy summat special as it's really quite amazing sounding and looking!

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Sound clips for ECT For Piano by Maarten Van Der Vleuten: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, Self-Released, n/a, £9.99.

What their label says...

Since 1991, Maarten van der Vleuten has been releasing techno/ambient/house on numerous labels like R&S, Apollo, SeeSaw, DJAX, Klang, Signum, Outrage, TZ etc using over 2 dozens of aliases. Since last year he announced only to use his real name for future releases.  

“ECT for Piano” is Maarten’s 9th  full length album on his own label Signum Recordings. It is the follow up of his LP on Tonefloat Records (High Intolerance Towards Low Energies, 2008) and Een Onvermoede Bocht (Signum Recordings, 2009). “ECT for Piano” is a highly experimental conceptual release and evolves around recordings of a “treated piano” and noise/drone-like soundscapes.

It’s concept is based upon the questionable medical experiments carried out by Dr. Ewen Cameron (between 1957 and 1964) using several kinds of drugs and electroshock or “ElectroConvulsive Therapy”.

This first edition of the album comes with a 16 page full colour booklet in a large size DVD digipack with an original ECT electrode attached to the front. Enclosed are 6 cards. Booklet and cards are handstamped with the Signum label logo.



ECT for Piano
 

When recording new material, I tend to lose myself completely. Musically and subject-wise.  
Becoming one with your project is essential. So it is not strange that the way this album was  
conceived was as radical as the theme it describes; Electroconvulsive Therapy, or ECT.  
I cannot remember exactly when I first stumbled upon ECT, the method, the history, the persons, the experiments...my memory fails. But what I do remember is that it happened very  
fast and in a very short time. The subject took control of me. The more I learned about it, the  
more I became involved. But why would someone get inspired by a medical treatment? I guess a little bit of background history is suitable here.
 
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From the late 1940's 'till early 1960's a doctor named Ewen Cameron experimented with ECT at the Allen Memorial Psychiatric Institute (aka Ravenscrag) in Canada. During 1957-1964  
his experiments on humans were financed by the CIA with knowledge of the Canadian government. He would treat patients with electroshock therapy in combination with several kind of drugs. Normally ECT would be given 2 or 3 times a week but Cameron used it several times a day, using a doses 30 or 40 times stronger. In combination with that he would also give his patients cocktails of drugs like Thorazine, LSD, Mescaline and several kinds of barbiturates, most of the time mixed together. After the intense shock treatment he would then  
put them in an induced coma or sleep. Sometimes lasting up for months. While put in a coma the patients had a tape recorder in their room, the sleep room, playing non-stop messages to them.
 
His idea was to completely wipe out a persons memory (he called this method depatterning)  
and then later on program new thoughts and ideas in their mind. The CIA funded his research because they believed it could serve them in their mindcontrol or brainwashing program.
The name of the CIA/Cameron research program was MKULTRA.  
It resulted in the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual from 1963.

The techniques described in KUBARK include prolonged constraint, prolonged exertion,  
extremes of heat, cold, or moisture, deprivation of food or sleep, disrupting routines, solitary  
confinement, threats of pain, deprivation of sensory stimuli, hypnosis, and use of drugs or  
placebos. The basis of this manual was derived from researches conducted by Cameron  
(the manual states that the techniques described are well-researched in the Allen Memorial Psychiatric Institute) and it can be seen as the source of all CIA interrogation manuals.  
The techniques and methods based on Cameron's research results are still used up to this day...
 
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With ECT For Piano I tried to capture and reconstruct what happened at Ravenscrag  
during those years. By connecting a piano to ECT machines and thus "treating" the piano like

if it was one of Cameron's patients, I tried to recreate this situation and translate it into music.
 
 
Maarten van der vleuten, 2009.