Enno Velthuys - Different Places

Hessel Veldman's EXART label issued two cassettes by Enno Velthuys in the mid 80s, the first of which, A Glimpse of Light was reissued by Dutch (naturally) imprint Dead Mind last year. Different Places is the second of those twp tapes, and again, Dead Mind are bringing the music to vinyl for the first time. The European underground cassette network of the 1980s has experienced no little re-examination the past 5-10 years and there's countless gems to discover, though it's rare to find a body of work in that orbit as complete as Different Places. Not insignificantly, it was the last music Velthuys was to release before disappearing into obscurity, prompted by creative disillusionment and mental health issues, and there's certainly a weight to these arrangements that steers it away from the conventional tropes and formula of ambient/new age/DIY electronics of its age. For want of a better description, this is SAD sounding music, lonely and heavy-sounding, and touched with a personal DIY sensibility that steers it away from Berlin School dramatics. Satie meets Schulze in a Rotterdam bedroom? It's not a million miles away... Additional side point: the front cover is actually a drawing made by Velthuys back in 1967, found framed in a second hand store by a fan who had connected the dots. A perfect final piece of an emotional puzzle.