De Fabriek – Blecheintopf (Music for Modern Art Exhibitions, Volume II)

Second edition of a record first time round barely lasted half a day in the shop. And there's a clear reason for that... De Fabriek were Richard Van Dellen and Andries Eker, a Dutch duo inspired by both Krautrock and industrial music who occupied a prominent and unique space in the DIY cassette culture underground of the 80s. They've an extensive catalogue of mostly tapes and some LPs that stretches across several decades and multiple labels, traversing the outer-edges of early experimental electronic music. Blecheintopf (trans: scrap metal hotpot, fittingly) is one of their earliest collections, released in two tape editions in 1982 as part of an imaginary series of art exhibitions. Its beauty lies in the contrast between its high-minded conceptualism and its primitive execution. Broadly speaking, there's some kinship with Alain Neffe's Insane Music imprint, though De Fabriek feel more tied to a post-krautrock lineage than perhaps a burgeoning minimal wave aesthetic, something like EMAK reimagined in the eyes of Chris Carter. Like with much of this music of the time, there's a thread of nuclear winter/cold war paranoia running throughout (one song directly references the Harrisburg disaster), though i don't find these songs to be quite as claustrophobic and imposing as other early industrial acts like TG, Negative Reaction et al. As a whole, it's impressively cohesive and immersive, though there's two tracks in particular that bear many repeated plays - the slow-building, intensely hypnotic opener, Kleeblat, and the disarmingly pretty Волнистый. A totemic piece, in many ways, and a buy-on-sight item if we've ever seen one in 2022. Edition of blink-and-you'll-miss-it.