EARTHBOUND PARADISE (Paulus Wieland)/STARCASE (Ton Willekes).
To be the star in your own fairy tale, that’s what you always liked to be.
Here I am you’re lucky chance; concede your very special demands.
Sad frustrations I transform in an overwhelming delight.
You will go to a higher hemisphere through this urban area light.
Earthbound paradise presents enlightenment by machines.
Do you’ve got a dime to spend for this relaxing experience?
The pleasures of your wedding night are not half of what they will be here.
Yes this is the only pleasant place in your mental escaping world.
Everybody sings and laughs what a great a sight ha-ha.
We don’t look if you’re gay or male, for everyone there’s a place to be.
Night after night the time is right to let yourself go.
Don’t bother for confrontations it’s time for amusement show.
Earthbound paradise presents enlightenment by machines.
Do you’ve got a dime to spend for this relaxing experience?
The pleasures of your wedding night are not half of what they will be here.
Yes this is the only pleasant place in your mental escaping world.
Richard Neumöller - Voice, Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming, Pearl SY1 syncussion, tapes.
Paulus Wieland - Roland Jupiter 4 synthesizer, Siel Orchestra stringensemble, tapes.
Ton Willekes - Yamaha CS30 synthesizer, Korg MS-20 synthesizer, Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming, tapes.
LOVESONG (Paulus Wieland).
Who says: “I do like something Ells”.
Who says: “I do like something else.”
Who tells these stories of honor ship and worry?
What Ells? What else!
What else does it bring, what else does she sing.
I don’t like thanksgiving, give me a living.
Cheap, this is cheap.
Cheap, this is cheap.
Who tells these stories of honor ship and worry?
Who says: “I don’t like something else.”
Who says: “Well I don’t like something Ells”.
I don’t like thanksgiving, give me a living.
Cheap, is this cheap?
Cheap, is this cheap?
Who tells these stories of honor ship and worry?
Richard Neumöller – Voice, Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming.
Paulus Wieland - Roland Jupiter 4 synthesizer, Siel Orchestra stringensemble, Pearl SY1 syncussion, second phrase voice.
Ton Willekes – Yamaha CS30 synthesizer, Korg MS-20 synthesizer.
Marge – First phrase voice.
*EDELWEISS (Paulus Wieland).
Richard Neumöller – Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming.
Paulus Wieland - Roland Jupiter 4 synthesizer, Siel Orchestra stringensemble, Yamaha CS30 synthesizer.
ARTIFICIALS (Paulus Wieland).
Ill comedians always act in desorientative ways.
Play down your values and your flavors; demolish the sequence of creative days.
Their slogans are dipped in cynical phrases they always reinforce the trends.
Eccentric is their misbehavior but it sells better to their rich, rich friends.
A narrow-minded teacher in shabby clothes forces his religions in my throat.
O my god I can nearly breathe, all these religions just are not for me.
Now he gets mad: "You don’t want to learn, the passion for art doesn’t turn you on.
There’s only one thing a real artist does: to live a life where art will suck him up".
Junkies of the city noise deal guitar sounds for human voice.
But junkies of art or artistic fame sell only arrogance as a kind of game.
Concessions in ethics and aesthetics the need for money just never sleeps.
Antics, fanatics and dementia, I saw the artificial art school freaks.
A narrow-minded teacher in shabby clothes forces his religions in my throat.
O my god I can nearly breathe, all these religions are just not for me.
Now he gets mad: "You don’t want to learn, the passion for art doesn’t turn you on.
There’s only one thing a real artist does: to live a life where art will suck him up".
Richard Neumöller – Voice, Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming.
Paulus Wieland - Roland Jupiter 4 synthesizer, Siel Orchestra stringensemble.
Ton Willekes - Yamaha CS30 synthesizer, Korg MS-20 synthesizer.
**AFTER I BOUGHT MY SIEL (Richard Neumöller & Paulus Wieland)/A RELIEVING SHOUT (Paulus Wieland)/ AFTER I…. (Reprise)/ BOSS A. NOVA (Paulus Wieland).
I’m still searching for the keyboard name that might acknowledge this synthetisized brain, how often did I fizzle out, I wish to heave a relieving shout.
This staring investigation put in a foreign coat, could tell me where to choose the flavors for making this message heard.
In doubt I am, in stress I feel, did I strayed in irrelevant fields, could any altering possibly stand for fame?
I never played real rock and roll, for that my lack of success.
O what are my mental needs, passion is meaning less.
Distant sounds they drive so far, I want to rock on my brother’s guitar, but still I’m searching for the keyboard name that might acknowledge this synthetisized brain.
Richard Neumöller – Voice, Bozo electric guitar (rhythm part), Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming, Pearl SY1 syncussion.
Paulus Wieland - Siel Orchestra stringensemble, Kasuga electric guitar (lead part).
Ton Willekes - Yamaha CS30 synthesizer, Korg MS-20 synthesizer, Roland TR 606 drumcomputer programming.
DISTANT DANCE (Paulus Wieland).
This this disco kid, this this this this disco kid,
this kids dance, what a dance.
This this disco dance, disco fever, a super chance.
Come, get in trance.
Night after night it’s a dancing flight,
I flashed through neon signs and laser lights.
Bouncing boy’s and glamor chicks,
American cars and terrific licks.
The cool kid image and the elegant knight, they both look a little ladylike.
Escaping in these disco nights only mirrors the tough day urban life.
This this disco trance, funny feelings, a new romance.
Chance, through this dance.
This this disco chance, the kids blitz and a blessing dance.
Dance, oh what a chance.
This this disco strain kills his disco fame, it’s a shame.
Disengage the tricks of this trickery trade.
Fuck, it’s getting late!
Night after night it’s a dancing flight,
I flashed through neon signs and laser lights.
Bouncing boy’s and glamor chicks,
American cars and terrific licks.
The cool kid image and the elegant knight, they both look a little ladylike.
Escaping in these disco nights only mirrors the tough day urban life.
Richard Neumöller – Voice.
Paulus Wieland - Roland Jupiter 4 synthesizer, Siel Orchestra stringensemble.
Ton Willekes - Yamaha CS30 synthesizer, Korg MS-20 synthesizer, Roland CR-78 drumcomputer programming.
JUST SHINE ON ME (Paulus Wieland).
Richard Neumöller – Bozo electric guitar, Pearl SY1 syncussion.
Paulus Wieland - Siel Orchestra stringensemble, Yamaha CS30 synthesizer.
Ton Willekes – Boss Dr. Rhythm, Fender Musicmaster bass guitar.
ASH GREY AS SUNDAY (Richard Neumöller & Paulus Wieland).
The happy few, their faith ain’t true.
New luxury, poor fantasy.
Predictable, the way of del.
The organization sells:
My time this town
Highway numb sounds
Crowds clouds so many
Tunes and replays
Ideal displays
High above the streets
Conducts and treats
This mellow sugar and meat
Ice cream, narrow scenes, bacon beans
Who screams?
Richard Neumöller – Voice, Bozo electric guitar.
Paulus Wieland - Roland Jupiter 4 synthesizer, Siel Orchestra stringensemble, tapes.
Ton Willekes - Yamaha CS30 synthesizer, Korg MS-20 synthesizer, Roland CR-78 & TR 606 drumcomputer programming, tapes.
-----------------------------
Engineered and produced by Ton Willekes.
Recorded during three different recording sessions, starting in the summer of 1981 and ending early 1982. “Just shine on me” was recorded at Paulus Wieland’s home and all other songs at the home of Richard Neumöller/Ton Willekes.
It is falsely claimed that the original (master)tape was used for this record, simply because I accidentally erased that tape myself not very long after it was made. The recordings were mastered on my Revox A77, the best recorder for this purpose we had at that time. This mastertape was the source for three cassette copies (one for each one of us) that were made on an Akai cassette deck. At its best one of these cassettes is used for this record.
*This song title was changed on the album into “Wieland's Wonderorgel” which is in my view a typical Willekes joke and I was not very amused by it. If they really didn’t knew its title they could have called me, as easy as that.
**The term “medley” was wrongly used on the album and has probably to do with an incorrect understanding of what this word means in musical terms.
Just as with the re-release of “For this is past” Willekes/Neumöller didn’t check the lyrics with me, and so all of the published lyrics I wrote (alone) contain faults ranging from one to a lot. The lyric of Distant Dance even misses a whole couplet. I think that shows little respect towards you as a buyer and me as a writer.
This past year I’ve been reading different story’s about how record companies and especially Polydor reacted on these recordings. What really happened is that we send a cassette to EMI and Polydor containing Distant Dance, Earthbound Paradise, Artificials and a fourth song, which was either Love Song or Ash Grey as Sunday. We knew that with a song like for instance “After I bought my Siel” we would not score, so we send what we thought were our most commercial sounding songs in the above mentioned hierarchy. EMI was not interested, but Polydor didn’t reject anything. This is what they wrote: “Dear Sirs. With interest we listened in our A&R meeting to the tape of your group that you have sent us. We thought the repertoire was really quite nice and want to ask you if you have an idea for a single”. I remember still clearly how Ton and Richard looked at me open minded about how to react (which was quite normal because I wrote the majority of the songs). I thought the Polydor reaction was a bit stupid because in my opinion it was obvious that we would send them our most commercial sounding songs first. Beside that I was afraid that if we would have said that Distant Dance was our first single candidate, they would force us to make a lot of alterations (which was, and maybe still is, very common these days). So I decided not to react at all on their proposition, which was, looking back, not the right decision because they gave room for further correspondence and I shouldn’t have closed that down.
There is on one side of the inner sleeve a picture of a church (I think it is) with a text heading: “ENSEMBLE PITTORESQUE THE EARLY YEARS”. It says that Ensemble Pittoresque was formed in 1979, which is incorrect because I introduced that name not earlier then in 1981 because it reflected the way and the sort of music we were making at that time (although I have to say that more then one song on this album was written before 1981). It is also mentioning a forced split up I really don’t know anything about and furthermore its says that “The beautiful Wassenaar area and their relentless spirit inspired the sound in these songs…”. That is peculiar because I wrote six of these songs at home in Wolphaartsdijk, which lies on a roughly 100 kilometers distance from Wassenaar. On the lyric side of that inner sleeve a photo is printed which has nothing to do with this album. It is a photo taken from the control room of the studio the “Frequenz” album is recorded in. There are no composer credits on this album. Could it be that mentioning the composer became an inconvenient truth for Mr. Willekes and Mr. Neumöller? Maybe not all the differences, which I’m mentioning here, between what was written on the album and what happened in reality are that important, but If you add them all up and combine them with the mainly incorrect, untrue and misleading info on their www.ensemblepittoresque.net/story site, you do get a quite different image of what really happened inside and with this band. I will go further into this when I write my version of the Ensemble Pittoresque story, which I will largely substantiate.
On my first contribution of this blog (the august one) I wrote already several things about how Mr. Willekes lied to Minimal wave and provided them with all the above mentioned incorrect information and the cassette copy without asking my permission nor consulting me in any way, so I won’t repeat that here. But there are some additional remarks to make about the way Mr. Willekes as self pronounced representative was (neglecting in) handling things. In my correspondence with him that followed on the re-release of the “For this is Past” album, he made it clear that he wasn’t very happy with various actions of Minimal Wave and idea’s they incorporated in the publishing of the “The Art of Being” album. Contrary to what he tried to achieve, blaming Minimal Wave, it became clear that he didn’t had an album cover ready (he just gave a couple of photographs), he didn’t had an album title ready and there was no mastertape of which it was made clear that it had to be used in an unaltered form. Now this is asking for trouble and his e-mail makes it very clear that trouble came, which didn’t quite improve their mutual relationship. I will not quote anything out of the e-mail I received from Mr. Willekes concerning this issue because it is already embarrassing enough for those involved that I talk about it here, but one of the things Minimal Wave wrote to me (in our correspondence that followed after I found out of the albums existence through the internet) was: “There's been some major confusion here, and if I had known what I know now, this record would never have been released. It's causing more problems than I ever imagined.” After the aforementioned e-mail I received from Ton Willekes I started to understand how much problems it must have been given.
Now although this may be superfluous, I want to state firmly that I am convinced that Minimal Wave acted in good faith and were truly shocked when it became clear that they were misled by Mr. Willekes, Mr. Neumöller and my brother Ronald (the little swindler). There is nothing that came to my attention that would proof otherwise, on the contrary. They offered me to do my side of the story and supply it with the album on an extra inlay combined with the correct lyrics and credits, which is a completely different approach compared with the way the Clogsontronics label and their distributors treated me in connection with the re-release of the “For this is Past” album. Minimal Wave, I myself and you as a buyer are all victims of the way Mr. Willekes and Mr. Neumöller have operated, because with a different approach on their side, a much better product could easily have come to light and a lot less ill feelings would have been produced!
How does the album sound? (added: 2009-05-29).
This album can’t be considered as a representation of how the original recordings sounded and were offered to Polydor and EMI, this is a fact and not a matter of opinion.
This is what the description of the album on the Minimal Wave site says: “The songs have been restored and mastered from the original tape”. I wrote Minimal Wave already in November 2007 and on this November the 14th 2008 blog that the mastertape was erased shortly after it was made and that for the album, at its best, a cassette tape copy of that mastertape had been used. This fact has now been confirmed by Ton Willekes in the interview he did with Chain D.L.K. on December 15th 2008. Maybe even more important is the fact that the recordings haven’t been restored but edited considerably by Ton Willekes and very badly as Minimal Wave made clear in their answer to me after I informed them about this and the way it was done (see further on under: What is changed compared with the cassette tape?). Minimal Wave: “This is an interesting story and it makes sense at to why the record pressing plant was having such issues with the frequencies in the master (the edited wav’s that Ton Willekes gave them-PW). Ultimately, the quality of the release was compromised and there's nothing we can do now about that. However, it is important for people to know that the audio source isn't an accurate representation of the songs which appear on the record. I honestly don't know what should be done at this point”.
Richard and Ton made lying and deceiving their art of being and so if you bought the album what you get are inaccurate and incomplete lyrics, a nonsense story on the inner sleeve etc. etc. and worst of all a record that isn’t what it promises to be, but something that might be called a monstrosity.
Why didn’t I publish these facts earlier?
Some time before I received the copy of the “The Art of Being” album in November 2007 from my brother Ronald, my record player had broken down and since there is no one I know that still owns one, I never played or heard the record. Because the Minimal Wave site mentioned that the songs had been restored, there was no reason for me to presume that it sounded different than the cassette copy it was taken from.
In the e-mail correspondence that followed the re-release of the “For This is Past” album, this is, amongst other things, what Ton Willekes wrote me concerning the sound of The Art of Being record: “I had been substantially editing the audio. The cassette doesn’t sound that good” and “There were some problems cutting but after two tests she (=Minimal Wave-PW) said that everything was and sounded OK. I didn’t get the result to hear myself but well…you have to trust the judgement of someone else and give space. Anyway. I got the record home and played it. What I heard was a completely flat limited sound-scape. Even worse than Radio 3 (=a Dutch radio station-PW)”.
I interpreted the “substantially editing” as an effort to reduce the noise level of the tape but couldn’t give the subject much thought because there were so many things I had to discuss with him on that moment. After I finished “The correct lyrics and credits of The Art of Being album” contribution, I started to become curious how the original recordings Ton gave Minimal Wave sounded and asked them to send me a copy which I received on February the 4th 2009. I was really puzzled when I played the Cd and wondered if it was a copy of the wav’s Ton gave them or a copy of the (vinyl) album. The sound differed completely compared to my cassette tape copy of the original mastertape. The main reason that I doubted if they were the ones Ton gave them was mainly Ton’s remark of a “completely flat limited sound-scape” combined with the way “Just shine on me” sounded. There is, maybe best described as, a slow pumping effect in that song which in my view indicates the use of either a very low quality compressor/limiter or a terrible faulty use of one. I didn’t want to bother Minimal Wave again and being in the middle of writing my Ensemble Pittoresque story, I forgot about it until I coincidently bumped into an interview Ton did with Chain D.L.K. It was when reading this part that an alarm bell started to ring:
“Chain D.L.K.: I didn't have the chance to listen to those recordings. Have you produced them as well as the album "For this is past"? What do they sound like?
Clogsontronics (=Ton Willekes-PW): I recorded them, yes. It was recorded on a 4 track AKAI and mixed down to a Revox A77. The mastertape was accidently erased and all that was left were cassette copies which did not sound too well. By digital means they were restored somehow. The demo is a prelude to the "For This Is Past" album. The sound is overwhelmingly in one frequency area, due to the fact that the main instrument used is the Sielorchestra string ensemble which to my taste is too dominantly present. Thank God that was corrected on the "For This Is Past" album”.
Although he uses it in another context, it was the word “corrected” that made me wonder if he “corrected” the cassette tape too, so I wrote Minimal Wave again and asked them if the Cd really comprised the wav’s Ton Willekes gave them, which they confirmed.
What is changed compared with the cassette tape?
To describe it as understandable as possible; the way Ton edited most songs was by raising a certain frequency area considerably (my guess is that by doing so he made a forced attempt to compensate the to his taste "too dominantly present" sound of the Sielorchestra string ensemble). Apart from that there’s the aforementioned “pumping” effect on “Just shine on me” and I really don’t know what he did with “Distant Dance” but that song sounds totally weird.
I still haven’t heard the vinyl version because repairing my record player has a low priority, so I can’t say anything about how the record sounds.
How does the cassette tape in reality sounds?
First of all you have to realize that these songs were recorded with substantial lower quality recording equipment than the “For This is Past” album was recorded with. Compared to the mastertape, the cassette tape copy of course suffered somewhat in the field of dynamics, frequency range and signal to noise ratio. Aside from that I do have to say that these recordings have a certain smoothness I really like and they are again a fine example too of what Ton was capable to do with old and/or limited recording equipment. It is the only Ensemble Pittoresque music alongside the songs The Art of Being, O.B.W.T. and Maître Satori of the “For This is Past” album, I still play once in a while.
I have e-mailed Minimal Wave asking them to put a link to my blog also in their catalog and description page so that potential new buyers could consider if they really want to have the album.
After I finished the Ensemble Pittoresque story I thought I was finished with the subject. Now there is this issue again and I‘m starting to get fed up with having to bring unpleasant Ensemble Pittoresque news. Maybe one issue is left to write down and that is how Richard and Ton arranged the financial side of things. Of all that they have published, on record or for download (free or paid for) on various site’s, no royalties (=a percentage of the revenues composers/songwriters get) were paid to me, although I wrote/co-wrote almost all these songs. It is good to keep that in mind for anyone engaging in some sort of business with them as they are the same persons (together with Eugenius Otte) behind the Clogsontronics label, the label which dares to present itself as “The musician’s label”. What a joke.
I wonder if, within a few years, this band will still be remembered for its albums or for all the idiocy surrounding it. Time will tell.
