‘ik besta’ is a cassette supplement to the ‘Emigré’ CD, released November 1st 2024, by Ausland x De Fabriek.
The tracks on ‘ik besta’ were all composed, mixed and edited by Harold Schellinx over the years 2022 and 2023 using basic music tracks composed and recorded by Derk Reneman (Ausland). All except ‘Blauwe vinnen’ and ‘De kloeke atoomraket’ eventually, sometimes in a more or less different mix, became part of the story that is told on ‘Emigré’.
On ‘ik besta‘ the texts written by Har$ weave a somewhat different, a complementary, story, that can be read along in several languages —on the set of 26 cards packed in a cassette-case that accompanies the limited collectors edition, online by clicking the ‘lyrics’ links. All texts are based on Schellinx‘ (unpublished Dutch) novel ‘ik besta’. The voices reciting and at times singing the texts are that of (Japanese) Yoko Miura, (Mandarin) Yungwei Chen, (Dutch/English) Gersande Schellinx & Har$, and (French) an African-French man in the Parisian metro.

7 min read 🤓

Emigré: ik besta

December 1st - 4th, 2024

More than two years ago Richard van Dellen, one of the founders and creative forces running ‘De Fabiek’, among the earliest diy labels and artist collectives born in the Netherlands (for near to half a century Richard, Louise and others continued to steer through the muddy waters, swamps and forests of Dutch diy experimentalism from their base in the Dutch city of Zwolle) messaged me about a series of music tracks that, he wrote, might be the base for a next in their long series of projects. “Kabouter muziek,” he said it was, “music by angry gnomes”. I could add texts to the tracks, Richard suggested. Maybe speaking French?

And from somewhere out there I received a CDr with music that, I then some time later came to know, where composed / made by Derk Reneman, a Dutch artist working also under the monikers Roberto Auser and (Planet) Ausland.

It was an atmospheric, dreamy electronic music, built from fields of sounds over which short melodies were floating; fluctuating, ephemeral, elusive like a state of mind, drenched in what I feel is best described as all-encompassing melancholy.

So I told Richard, ‘yes‘. It would be interesting to complement (some of) the tracks with text, with voice, maybe additional sounds. And at times maybe pierce through them, mirror them. Extracts from the evolving series of draft texts that maybe one day may become my Greater Achievements (ga!) promised a perfect fit.

It then became a slow (in the most positive thinkable sense of the word) work, done with no pressure nor hurry. Every few months or so I choose a track from Derk's set, one that seemed to fit a fragment of text that I had written or come across. For one of them I asked Yungwei to translate my Dutch original into Mandarin, and I recorded her saying the Mandarin words and phrases.⁽¹⁾ For two others, I translated my Dutch originals into English, and then sent the English translations to Yoko Miura in Fukuoka, Japan. I asked Yoko to translate the English translations into Japanese, then send me the recordings of her reciting the Japanese texts.⁽²⁾

‘Politics of a dream’ emerged as a soundtrackcompanion to a phone-fieldrecording that I made in Parisian metro line 14, in October 2022, of a African French man's long rant, around the often repeated phrase (in French) that ‘seven people together living in one single bedroom, it's not normal’. Here we clearly hit upon the heart of both what became the ‘Émigré’ theme, and that of its supplement, ’j'existe’⁽³⁾ (‘I do exist’) and 'ik besta'.

The (what turned out to be the) final two tracks in the set of ‘gnomal musics’ for and with de Fabriek x Ausland then were made at the end of 2023, using material that I recorded during my stay at the sound studio of Worm in Rotterdam. I wanted to complete the Babelian mosaic of languages, already comprising two tracks in Japanese, one in Mandarin and one in French, by adding a Dutch one (‘De kloeke atoomraket, in het Westen‘), and accentuate my involvement in this making, by not reciting, but singing it. Myself :-) That track then was recorded at Worm, with Gersande as a backing singer. (My vocal tracks, and part of Gersande's actually were recorded without headphones monitoring the music, with merely a tempo indication; it accounts for the voices being slightly out of time, off-beat :-). (Ah, and if you listen closely to, especially, the first twenty, thirty seconds of the track, you will hear the ‘why’ of the ‘in het Westen’ (in the West) addition to the title).

Right next to Worm in the Eendrachtstraat in Rotterdam there is V2, the Lab for Unstable Media, where during my working time at Worm in September last year I passed every evening, and stepped inside on the evening of Friday September 8th, when the doors stood wide open for the presentation / exhibition of works that a number young artists had been developing during the 2023 Summer Sessions. There the ‘Talking Motors‘, by Jesus Canuto Iglesias, became a serendipitous source for what now is the title track of the ‘ik besta‘ release: ‘J'existe‘.

The installation “explores the process of discerning speech within noise [and] sculpturally creates the physical embodiment of a machine whose purpose is to communicate through mechanical means. [...] By being able to replicate spoken tones, the attributes of an identity are given to a polished mass of coils, steel, and wire,“ the artist wrote. I was, obviously, attracted by the metallic, mechanical, sounds that the ‘Talking Motors’ were making, and that I gradually began to recognize as being not just random motor noise, but renderings of the short phrases that were projected and could be read along on the machine's front.

Standing in front of the machine, I began saying the phrases out aloud, together with the machine. I recorded that impromptu man-machine duet on my smartphone. Parts of that recording you will hear back on the track.

‘J'existe’ for me closed the circle made up of the six tracks built on Derk Reneman's original music, and which to me felt as one thing. Five of them (all but the Dutch song) then found their way onto the wonderfully crafted and designed ‘Émigré' CD, interwoven⁽⁴⁾ with other tracks built on the same ‘gnomal’ series, that was released on Novembre 1st of this year.

The same sounds, music, texts can tell many different stories. Finding the story told by Émigré, built as it is from a wide spectrum of different languages and different voices, all kept together and made into one by the unifying colours and feel of Derk Reneman's, is largely left to the listener, with as only possible clues the images that are part of the wonderful design by Martijn Hohmann.

I am totally happy that Derk, Richard and Martijn agreed to lift out and complement (with ‘De kloeke atoomraket') the tracks that together form ‘ik besta’, and make that available separately, as an addendum to the Émigré project; as a supplement, including all the lyrics and texts, and credits due to the translators, the speakers, the singers, and the sources of the found sounds that here and there play a main rôle.

notes __ ::
(1) On ‘Émigré’ the Mandarin track is track no. 15, titled ‘Chulpas voix Yungwei ; on ‘ik besta’ it is track 2, and called ‘Jamais‘ [ ^ ]
(2) On ‘Émigré’ the Japanese tracks are track no. 9, titled ‘Azabar’, and title track no. 12, ‘Émigré’ ; on ‘ik besta’ that one is track 5n called ‘Game of enigma (5 haiku's)’, and the other one is the first track, ‘Puree’.[ ^ ]
(3) The ‘j'existe’ street art and lettering that can be seen in the cover pics of ‘ik besta‘ (photos made in Brussels and Paris) are by French visual artist Thierry Jaspart. [ ^ ]
(4) ‘My’ tracks on ‘Émigré‘ are all those that have a track number that is 0 mod 3, i.e. is a multiple of three: 3, 6, 9, 12 and 15 :-) [ ^ ]

tags: ik besta, De Fabriek, cassette

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