Menu
ELECTRONIC COTTAGE
  • HOME
  • ARTICLES
  • COMMENTS
  • FORUM
  • HOME
  • ARTICLES
  • COMMENTS
  • FORUM

Enno Velthuys, the man in different places

2/7/2019

5 Comments

 
Picture
Cover Ontmoeting
The first time I heard the music of Enno was during a VPRO live-broadcast of the Radiola Improvisatie Salon at Queekhoven. Willem de Ridder unpacked a mail delivery. Meanwhile the radio-show already started. From Enno Velthuys, The Hague, was written on the package. Willem introduced the tape. And played it. A serene silence filled the saloon. 
Several home-tapers were present. But also close friends of Willem had gathered in the saloon. Rob Smit, who just started KUBUS cassettes (1980), was one of them. A few weeks later, when I contacted Rob, he told me he visited Enno and his mother. Enno liked the idea releasing a tape.
It became ‘Ontmoeting’.
Picture
Enno Eigen werk 80/81
ontmoeting_[the_meeting]_2.mp3
File Size: 21124 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

Between Rob and me there was regular contact in the period of 1980 till 1987. At first there was the interest in the cassette culture. Second the interest in these first movements in recording yourself, at home. The equipment that was used. And the developments in new ‘electronic’ instruments, we could afford.
Rob’s focus was getting in contact with local musicians and composers and produce tape-releases. A straight label focus! Produce and sell. Not try to become part of the cassette network, the mail-art scene, the fanatic home-made tape culture, with loads of unfinished and uncomfortable sound-experiments.
Picture
Enno private cassette cover 82/83
25-09-1985.mp3
File Size: 10883 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

The fast developments in new media, like the production of the compact disc and DAT, pushed away the interest in tapes. Already halfway through the eighties music-cassette labels saw their sales reduce. For Rob Smit the reason to finish his label activities in 1985. Despite he just produced the second tape of Enno Velthuys, ‘Landscapes In Thin Air’. 
He knew I also was a Velthuys fan. The only thing was the difference between the soul of both labels. EXART and KUBUS. 
Anyway, putting these differences aside and in benefit of Enno, after a first visit in The Hague, I decided to move forward with Enno’s music.
Picture
Enno private cassette cover #13
a_glimpse_of_light_track.mp3
File Size: 9269 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

For years we stayed in close contact with Enno. Enno wasn’t easy to deal with. His world was tiny. He lived in his bedroom, watched over by his mother in her apartment. His communication was narrow. But we managed to do two more releases. ‘A Glimpse Of Light’ and ‘Different Places’.
While in the meantime I also moved into new musical directions, more and more experimental. The gap between Enno and me grew. And in the nineties I also decided to finish the label.
Willem de Ridder and Enno stayed in close contact. Enno composed background music for Willem’s storytelling, radioprograms and earplays.
different_places_track.mp3
File Size: 3775 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

After I noticed Enno had died (2009, 61 years old), I started a search, for any kind of information concerning his musical backgrounds. There’s not much written about Enno. I heard he was a well respected guitar player in rock- and popbands during the sixties in the The Hague music scene (Golden Earring, Shocking Blue). He had a close relationship with the members of Q65, with Jay Baar, Joop Roelofs and Frank Nuyens. 

Here some short quotes I found on the internet:
‘Some were stabbed users. Enno Velthuys, who was part of the Rainman Project.’ (That was the solo project of Frank Nuyens. Frank who made an album with various guest musicians: listen to ‘Get You To Come Through’.
Picture
Back cover Rain Man
‘With Enno I experienced LSD-trips. I could escape from the trips, but Enno continued staying in those moods. For him it turned out very bad.’

‘He did suicide attempts and he became dialysis machine dependent, because his kidneys were ruined by the pills.’
"I have two souls in my chest ," he once said to me. He has become totally schizophrenic and he lives in an apartment, with his mother 65+. He lives there to make a little music, but does not leave the house.’

‘Enno was a gifted musician and could play any instrument.’
a_glimpse_of_light_track_2.mp3
File Size: 4850 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

Picture
Enno private cassette cover ‘groet MAX’
Enno Velthuys is the son of the well-known children's book author Max Velthuys.
5 Comments
    Picture

    Hessel
    ​'sanYo CreatE' Veldman

    Hessel Veldman (1956), musician, composer and radio-producer, started his search for uncomfortable music during his teens.
    An early fascination for electronic noise and dissonance, from the beginning of the 1970s,
    in combination with a preference for writing and performing extremely idiosyncratic music, has created a wide range of experimental compositions and radio productions.

    For the Dutch broadcasting company VPRO, Hessel produced his first experimental solo work 'I Can Hear Trumpets?' (1980). During the Holland Festival of 1983 in Amsterdam, 'Portable Vaudeville' with Willem de Ridder was created. Four nights in a row this sound-poetry show was presented in the Schouwburg in Amsterdam. Under the name FNTC many experimental radio plays were made during the 80s and 90s and broadcasted worldwide.

    Via his private cassette label Exart (1982-1995), music albums and video productions were released under all kinds of artists-names (including Y Create [electro-psych-pop], Forbidden Photographs [noise], Gorgonzola Legs [impro industrial-jazz;
    a live on stage experience], Austin & Kelly [plunderphonics]).
    And since the last few years, after the release of the CD 'Madadayo' in 2004 on EE Tapes, Hessel regularly performs solo or together with other like-minded artists on special request.

    In 2004 Hessel Veldman started producing for Concertzender public-radio in The Netherlands.
    Also he’s director and coordinator of live-productions and from 2010 chief-editor for the Contemporary Music department: Crosslinks.

    ​email

    Archives

    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018

    RSS Feed

ELECTRONIC COTTAGE is an international magazine where independent artists, musicians, writers and freethinkers share in-depth articles, essays, interviews, tech and gear reviews and tutorials,
and much more.

EC draws inspiration from the Cassette Culture Revolution of the 1980s, 90s and beyond; Mail Art, Small Press and Zines, Dada, Fluxus, Punk Rock, Hacking, Circuit Bending, Anarchy, and Noise.
EC values inclusion, democracy, experimentation, independence and freedom of thought and expression, open-minded exchange, and Community.

​
The Electronic Cottage website is primarily an online magazine for the publication of lengthy and in-depth articles, essays, and interviews.
For those of you who use Facebook I have created an Electronic Cottage Group, which is a casual social gathering place of the EC Community, where EC people can meet, share artwork and news of current projects and releases.
The website and this EC Facebook Group are two separate but connected entities of the greater EC Community.