Freiband - Stainless Steel

•  Freiband is one of the long lasting projects of Frans de Waard, who is making music since more than 25 years under
many aliases and in different line-ups, the most well-known being Kapotte Muziek ( with Roel Meelkop and Peter
Duimelinks ), Goem ( same team, different tools ), THU20 ( same, augmented by Jac van Bussel and Jos Smolders ),
Beequeen ( w/ Freek Kinkelaar ), and more recently Wieman ( formerly known as Zèbra ) ( w/ Roel Meelkop ),
Ezdanitoff ( w/ Wouter Jaspers ) and Tobacconists ( w/ Scott Foust from Idea Fire Company ). Solo he has been
active under his own name, Shifts and of course Freiband. His other activities include : editor and writer for Vital
Weekly, programmer at Geluidswerkplaats in Nijmegen, organizer of the residencies Brombrom and director of the
labels Korm Plastics, Moll and Plinkety Plonk.

•  the name Freiband itself is picked from Asmus Tietchens' album Daseinsverfehlung, on which he explored sounds
created by rubbing tape freely on magnetic heads. Frans de Waard transferred the concept to the digital field and
now mostly uses that name for his computer-based pieces.
What Freiband proposes here is 2 sides of radically reworked gamelan :

• Side A seems to progress through an acid bath and take the magnifying glass to enhance the digital decays, evoking
various stages of textural corrosions. Through these aggressive and irreverent treatments, the naturally metallic
harmonics are by twist and turns abruptly dismantled and fractured into crunchy, dense and fuzzy fireworks. Despite
the stop & go transitions this hard-edged and raw piece still holds a nice unity across the digital errs and disturbances.

• on side B, through some arcane wirings, some machines end up spitting out shifting binary patterns with a somewhat
alienating feeling. Proof that electronic music can be minimal and eschew the 4/4 dance floor pattern, in favour of
some dry and uncompromising “Unerforschtes Gebiet” between minimal beats and Steve Reich’ early tape
compositions.
this LP further expands the horizon of ini.itu, successfully interrogating the link between south-east asian instruments and
electronic contemporary music. Maybe something to file along Hecker, Pita, Mika Vaino, Fennesz or Alva Noto's Xerrox
LPs.
p.s. Frans de Waard will also simultaneously release a companion 3” on his Moll imprint, with a totally different track from the
same sessions that couldn’t be included on the LP. That track is a spectral exploration of the higher frequencies, followed by a
pile-up of gamelan sounds.

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