By Geert Lovink
Since the early eighties, Amsterdam has boasted an extensive
collection of free radio stations. These pirates work non-commercially out of
squatted buildings and are grudgingly
tolerated by the authorities. They operate in the margins of the
squatters' movement. Now and then stations are raided, but they
return to the air as quickly as they left. Involved in squatting
and other radical movements in the beginning, in the mid-80s the
stations went their own way and began to experiment with the
medium itself. After the squat movement vanished from the scene,
the radio culture continued to develop. The result was the
evolution of a tradition with a sound all its own, which adds up
to more than the sum of its ethnic and experimental musical
ingredients.
After countless mergers, closings, name changes, and secessions
in the direction of legal local radio, three stations were
finally left. The smallest is activist radio De Vrije Keijzer
(The Free Keyser), which delivers exclusively political
information. It's the one with the most staying power. The Free
Keyser started broadcasting at the end of 1979 out of the
endangered squat De Grote Keijzer, and along with the squatted
complex of canal houses it became a symbol of the people's
determination. The Keyser served for years as an assembly point
for highly diverse (neighborhood) radio groups, until a schism
developed in 1983 and it began specializing in activist news. Ten
years on, it broadcasts just once a week and is run by four or
five people with a soft spot for squatting and the "autonome"
movement.
Radio 100 broadcasts seven days a week, from five p.m. till deep
in the night, and encompasses the whole spectrum from African and
industrial music to doo-wop, house and reggae. It is Amsterdam's
largest pirate. Although the police did a massive raid in 1991,
confiscating all the LPs and equipment and arresting 15 people,
many consider the still illegal Radio 100 an established
institution, not open to new ideas and with its back turned on
experimentation. The punk and hardcore station Radio Dood (Radio
Death) was the forerunner of Radio Patapoe (Radio Patapoe), Radio
100's younger and wilder sister, which with its hundred different
programs has grown into a genuine multicultural institution.
After years of being virtually unknown, in the 90s Patapoe has
grown steadily, managing to attract more and more of the
out-of-the-ordinary underground.
These three stations are associations of programmers who have
their own shows. There are no central editorial or directorial
boards. The dedicated have all the say. The aversion to meetings
is strong and chronic; the majority of the colleagues know each
other slightly or not at all. The free radio stations run on
financial contributions by the programmers themselves, benefit
concerts and profits from their own bars. Most participants get
their income from Social Security, so there's no pressure to
provide wages. Those desiring to work for money can go to an
commercial station.
The information content here is notably low; very little paper is
involved. The reporting/documentary genre is conspicuously
absence. The strength lies in the "live" aspect, the capricious
character traits of the radio makers and their passion for music,
not in professional equipment or journalistic technique. Along
with homemade FM transmitters they use run-of-the-mill consumer
electronics. In contrast to TV or video, radio need cost
virtually nothing. It's all done according to the maxim, "They
have all the money, but no time. We have all the time in the
world, but no money." This makes carefree experimentation with
sound possible. Along with indie labels and world music, radio
plays and shows with drop-in guests, the mix shows provide the
most distinctive sound of the Amsterdam stations. They represent
nothing and no one. Mixers create their own sound universes,
infinite in length and breadth. They bob about in an ocean of
free time. Duration is the essence of their concoctions. If the
mix is subjected to a time constraint, then it turns into a live
scratch or rap, making do without the glamour of a performing
artist. These live performances bear traces of genius. A fleeting
masterwork is born on the spot only to evaporate into the ether
afterwards. A careless attitude to copyright is a not
unimportant precondition. Rummaging in the world media archive is
not on good terms with the constitutional state. But the latter
excludes free radio.
As opposed to the spirit of the times, which zooms in in order to
distill a trend out of the musical arsenal, the mix chooses the
maximum aperture. Any sound, any music can serve as material. The
mixture is not a specialized genre dished up for a small group of
fans. It is an expedition to the innermost recesses of radio. The
penchant for mixing represents the transition from alternative
media, which still try to fill a lacuna in the existing supply,
to sovereign media, which have detached themselves from the
potential listening audience. They do not see themselves as part
of bourgeois (anti-)openness or the smorgasbord of media choices,
which at most they observe from outside. Things broadcast by
others are merely potential ingredients. News is one archive
among many. Sovereign media are fallout from the "emancipation of
the media", and abandon the communication model. Vendex from
Radio Patapoe: "I believe in chance listeners; I'm one too.
Patapoe doesn't have an audience that has to be supplied with the
truth. We never act like we're the only ones providing the
listener with information. Patapoe is not a forum or an
alternative; it's a goal in itself." Amsterdam's sound blenders
don't see themselves as part of a techno-avant-garde. Playing
around with expensive toys for the sake of form is seen as
elitist. The point is not a rejuvenation cure for art, but
airwave pollution that makes use of the normal media's
overproduction. Unlike a dandy wanting to suck up to the ruling
class or the underworld whose eccentric decadence is a question
of identity, the sovereigns dedicate their tribute to all things
happening, to the wallpaper which determines the decor in our
media space. They don't warm up samba, soul or schmaltz as the
latest cult item or golden oldie for playing on the collective
memory, which so likes to be refreshed. They don't practice audio
history, trotting out near-extinct musical styles to get themn
interred in pop history. They collect and examine material for
its alienation potential. Trash is taken along on the trip and
treated with a certain respect, like a foreigner one passes the
time with during travel. Processing is not an act of violence.
The point is not ritually driving out some demon thought to
reside in the media. The mix shows us that we must travel through
an immense empty space before we arrive at a new meaning.
Sovereign media, in hard- as well as software, are hybrid through
and through. Old and new, popular and obscure, trivial and heavy,
all is forged together into a stunning total mix. The mixmasters
connect discarded tape recorders to high-tech samplers and lace a
cut-up Bush speech with a language course, barking and a dance
orchestra.
This ironic use of media knows no subcultural equivalent
spreading through the streets or the clubs. Sovereign media build
on a parallel universe that no longer intersects with the
classic space of the polis. The junk collectors move
unobtrusively through the unofficial reality of shopping centers,
flea markets and garbage boats. These European otakus are no
longer wandering through the readable city; they're moving in a
new space, where the imaginary mixed cargo of the 20th century is
piled up. Culture carriers once tossed into the trash for their
oddity are nimbly assessed at a glance for singularity; you
assemble your own program in movie theaters, video shops, used
record stores and antiquariats. Mixers are the vultures and
parasites of audio-visual society. Their recycling has nothing to
do with economic considerations, but comes from an obsession with
recordings that have escaped real-time mode. They lose themselves
in the galaxy of everything that has ever been recorded. Hammond
organs, animal noises, fairy tales, non-stop hits a-go-go,
speeches by John F. Kennedy, Dutch cowboy music. Arjan: "I almost
never buy new records. I find them on the street or in little
out-of-the-way shops and get them from people that would
otherwise throw them away. I never pay more than 3 for a record.
I also make music myself and get demo tapes. It's like being an
archeologist or an archivist. You find tape recorders on the
street, and answering machines with the tapes still in them, and
before long you'll find CD players too."
At free radio stations the equipment is not a tool, but a toy for
passionate play. Although the official media are reporting more
and more frequently on "the media", their own equipment is not
allowed to be seen or heard. In those circles engineering is
still a hindrance which needs to be surmounted. The promise
implied by high-tech is that one day static and noise will be
banished. Vendex: "If you put a signal through 40 km of copper
wire, I think you should be able to hear that. That expensive
equipment that normal stations use just produces more silence.
The VU meters on real equipment work down to -50 db while a
regular deck only goes to -20 db. They're quieter than quiet. The
loud and soft sounds are pulled farther apart. Why should you
have a right to so much silence?" Media don't become any more
credible by showing more of how they work. "I think it's very
healthy to doubt the images being administered. Showing the
cameraman really doesn't make it any more convincing."
Vendex is glad Patapoe doesn't get any attention in the media.
"If we want to say something, we have our transmitter for that.n
We don't hand out compliments to other media and we're not dying
to." Patapoe's slogan is "Stand up Better to a Young World".
Unlike Radio 100, Patapoe likes to veil itself in mystery about
its existence and its intents. The 1990 manifesto says only that
Patapoe came forth out of "the increasing demand for social
deficiencies." Readable elsewhere: "Patapoe draws boundaries
where othere don't suspect them. Thanks to our professional
monopoly, what no one wants has been proven possible." Patapoe
calls itself "multirational". It desires to be more than
multicultural and multiracial. "Those words don't indicate any
solution; they don't go any further than toleration of others.
But that still doesn't work, because everyone thinks they know
best, and blame others for their narrowmindedness. Like, they
have some kind of flaw so they don't have the same enlightened
insights as I do. Multirationality goes against this attitude and
aims for the acceptance of various rational conclusions, which
can all exist at once."
The emancipation of the listener has been the clearest
articulation so far from the defunct punk station Radio Death,
with its credo, "Listen or Die". Vendex: "At Death they used to
scream into the microphone, 'Turn your radio off nowww! I wish my
voice could kill.' The average listener with his bourgeois norms
was told to jump out the window. 'Throw all your records away!'
But the television slaves in their one-family residences with
their living room ensembles didn't listen anyway, because punk
seems to be unlistenable for the non-initiated. It was just a
little joke, because the punks that listened didn't feel it was
directed at them. If someone bellowed 'Turn your radio off now'
that made it extra cool. You only turned the radio off if they
shut up. 'Are you a listener? Get lost!' Some people thought it
was sick. You're not supposed to abuse the luxury of being able
to do radio. But it attests to a realistic view of the medium to
say that if you don't like it, you should just turn it off. We're
playing our music here and I could care less what you think of
it. And doing the greatest shows meanwhile; that was the art."
At Death the mess had a system. The programmers as well as the
many guests hanging around the studio were usually stoned and
drunk. Punk's characteristic indifference was unleashed on the
medium itself. There was none of the respect for engineering or
fear of spreading out over the airwaves which still characterizes
alternative radio. Vendex: "People liked to do a sloppy job.
You'd hear them messing up all the time. I have a tape of the
'Overplayed Top 20,' the most overplayed punk and hardcore
records of 1986, presented by Tuft. By number five people were
already leaving the studio. By number three Tuft got so sick that
he left the studio and a chance bystander had to take over the
Top 20. Other stations would go crazy if people blew things off
like that. We could never become real radio, that bunch of
wayward punks."
Death consistently took place in the red. Overmodulation and
feedback were part of the show. Crackling faders, broken-down
microphones, decks that ate cassettes and awful cuing capability
weren't a flaw that needed covering up, they were a property of
the final signal.
For Bart Radio Death was "a vague period in my life I don't
remember too much of - hash use rose to unprecedented heights."n
Bart played new hardcore. He does still remember how the studio
looked: "The first one was in an old john, a two-by-three meter
closet. There was a wood stove that leaked. You had a choice:
either starting up the heater and getting poisoned by the carbon
monoxide or opening the window across from the door and freezing
from the cold. You couldn't turn your ass without kicking the
table and making the record skip. Later we moved to a place where
you could at least walk around, with chairs you could sit on and
take a look outside. The most important studio was on the ground
floor, above the cellar which was permanently filled with water.
There were doors on the floor to insulate it, with some rugs over
them. Everything was filthy and covered with graffiti. We had a
mixing board without enough channels, but it did have a switching
capability and people who wanted to play a tape after a record
constantly forgot to hit the switch, and then couldn't hear
anything and didn't know what was wrong. There was no heating and
this was in the hard winter of '86-'87. People were doing shows
at -15 C. There was a hole in the floor where you could see the
block of ice. You couldn't roll a joint or your fingers would
freeze."
Doing a hardcore show is hard work since the songs are so short.
Vendex: "If you work by the book, song-talk-song, to keep it
interesting, you'll go crazy. So it's better to make a
compilation and come back in after five songs with 'Now that was
punk!,' 'That was a great pogo,' 'Now throw your chairs out the
window.' The late Bronco Shamblebutt found a great format for
his hardcore show. As soon as the microphone opened there was a
huge feedback and he screamed over it what the next record was
and then put the record in loud as hell, totally in the red. That
whole show was in the red. He was always really stoned. According
to an anecdote he once fell asleep. For a half hour you could
hear the runout groove, till someone ran into the studio and woke
him up."
Radio Death's achievement was that it went deeper into a musical
genre than anyone else. At Patapoe, Death's successor, diverse
musical styles are on offer. But preference is still given to
"bad" music. Vendex: "We've always had the luxury of having an
alternative radio station that plays the newest independent
releases. As far as I'm concerned that alternative structure can
bleed to death. The most important for us are Frank Valdor's Non-Stop Hits
a-Go-Go records, he's a German like James Last who did
medleys in super-commercial arrangements. They recorded a party
crowd with it. The songs begin and end with cheering. That music
isn't nearly as bad as it seems. They're vilified, but of course
no one listens to them. They could be the house of 1996." As with
the feedbacking hardcore, the point here is scaring people away:
if you're listening to this, turn it off.
Radio Death introduced a unique media connection: radio
broadcasts of complete feature films. Vendex: "To keep the
transmitter stable, we kept it on 24 hours a day, but we were
only broadcasting four days a week. To while away the night it's
fun to play a horror film, because they're grisly and they have
such good sound. I find the pictures superfluous. The special
effects are laid on so thick that they're fake. Most of the
pictures are ugly and fake and don't convince me. It's such a
waste to depict something as so-called realistic; it'll nevern
work anyway. You believe your ears, but you distrust the
picture."
The strength of listening to film and watching radio is in the
suggestion. "As far as sound goes, Evil Dead is one of the best,
and of course Texas Chainsaw. Or one of those bad sci-fis where a
woman is screaming all through the film - really disgusting. Or
Inframan from Japan, a cross between science fiction and a
martial arts film. Every monster in that makes a different
sound. Every movement Inframan makes has its own special quality.
German cop shows like Derrick and Tatort are good too. Film and
TV sound more natural on the radio; they're less artificial than
a radio play. You can fantasize what pictures go with them, just
like when you read a book. That's strengthened more by all the
details you hear, a cup, shuffling, rustling. Films can capture
that in a very refined way."
Impressive radio also uses the power of suggestion. Vendex:
"Every three minutes you should get the idea, I've gotta keep
listening to this. I like to start making promises right during
the intro tune, ones that probably won't come true. Things you've
always wanted to hear: 'What do naked women think about?' The
phone rings 'Hello?' They've hung up. Did someone call or was
that a fragment from a broadcast from three weeks ago? I want it
to be subtle, with ticking clocks and creaking doors, sound
that's barely there but determines the atmosphere."
The group STORT (Dump), who besides radio also do performances,
video and music, had a program called Vox Christiana (the Pope's
record label) on Radio Dood. They were in favor of "uncoordinated
radio terror". "We said things we didn't believe. We posed as
converted Christians. Everything we got hold of we smashed,
pulverized, dessicated. An orgy of sounds, wonderful to bathe in.
It can be served raw or be pre-treated. Our cut-ups are a ton of
work, 20 minutes for two minutes of sound. Our shows have no
feedback capability, but when we play our music in public, all
hell breaks loose. There's a riot. It's very easy to translate
universal feelings into laughter. But just radio is less crude
and shocking; the audience isn't present and can't react
directly. People don't know where the station is, so attacks
aren't a consideration."
STORT get most of their material from TV. "We isolate the text
from the picture. On the TV news the ideology is often in the
text. The idea about what the pictures mean comes out more. When
you hear the TV, that instantly evokes images. TV is a better
source than radio, because it often presents things very simply.
A familiar fragment carries a whole context with it. Some
broadcasts are so bad, they're just screaming to be misused."
STORT now do a late-night show on Radio 100. One of their sources
is their own music, made on synthesizers, samplers and computers.
Dark, apocalyptic tones are alternated with Doris Day and Frankie
Lane. "We're interested in the contrast between one word and
another. When you make a cut-up you make a new story. But it
stays linear, because we don't keep rewinding and
fast-forwarding. When you just turn two decks on and off with the
pause button, it's all up to chance. The backgrounds we use are
mostly heavy and dark. The end product of the mix is
unpredictable. Quality is not guaranteed. We don't reuse previous
programs. Our noise doesn't have to change the world, but it is an
commentary on the media. Someone like Bush appears a lot in the
media, we come across him a lot and what he says isn't
insignificant. We have no respect for the media; maybe you can
call that political."
STORT does not like to be lumped in with industrial music. "That
would be opposed to the ideas behind it. Soundscaping offers
space, and it refuses to be reduced to a genre that easily." The
history of mixing is quickly written: the detournement techniques
of the situationists, musique concrete, Burroughs' cut-up, John
Cage...
STORT: "Of course we're futurists, dadaists and surrealists.
Even the futurists were already conducting similar experiments.
As soon as there were tape recorders, people started cutting
sound into pieces. The first montage record is from '48, by
Pierre Henri, who you could easily put next to an industrial band
like Etant Donns. We use the same grotesque exaggeration as the
surrealists, and even more the carnivalesque, which we evoke in
our orgies. The avant-gardes have become an integral part of
culture, and you can freely draw on them. So you don't have to
explicitly acknowledge you belong to any of these movements, or
even know anything about them."
Indeed, the Amsterdam school of mixing unconsciously places
itself outside of the art/historic discourse, which will wearily
remark that everything has already been done. STORT: "We try to
avoid the classic model of postmodernism. We do a lot of quoting,
but disagree with the context postmodernism puts the quote into.
We don't have any fin de siecle feeling; on the contrary we're
very optimistic, without getting prophetic. Everything that comes
our way, we want to control it by using it. We want to keep the
power for ourselves. You won't be a victim of the media as long
as you use them. That's why we revel in the media, in a
Rabelaisian way. To us the signals aren't immaterial, they're
tactile. We wallow with great pleasure in the media mire." Their
own history also remains unknown, so there is no baggage to
carry. The grandfather of Amsterdam mixing, Radio Rabotnik, which
designed audio landscapes with the help of tape loops, has
disappeared behind the horizon of the twilight of the gods.
For Arjan from The OK Show, the mix is not an attack on the
listener, as declaimed by punk. To him, it's about creating an
atmosphere: "I have no musical preference whatsoever. My only
criterion is that it does something for me. Making a program is
such a strange experience; maybe a thousand people are listening
to you and maybe not even a dog. The listener becomes an abstract
concept. You're a listener yourself too. So you hear if
something's well put together. If it's going good for me, it will
be received well by the listener too." In the philosophy of The
OK Show, the art of mixing is noiselessly breaking up an
atmosphere which has been constructed. Arjan: "My mixing consists
of music, spoken word and background noises. I always walk down
the street with my walkman and tape things. Or you use the sound
from the person before you, and maybe you play it backwards. The
last groove of an LP can be really nice if you let it play for
five minutes. I'm not asking you to understand how I jump from
one thing to another. Radio should give your ears a massage.
However kitschy a record might be, there has to be feeling in it.
I'd rather rape accessible music; over muzak I play a guitarn
solo or a trashy story. You can't take a course to learn how
records flow together nicely. You do it often and have an ear for
creating a good atmosphere. With Public Enemy, you can hear that
they have a way with that, while it doesn't work with other rap
bands." The OK Show uses techniques like playing with the speed
control on the cassette deck, finger-spinning an LP, or playing
two identical records on two turntables with a slight delay
between them. Arjan: "In the beginning we cut up commercials, the
weather and the news. A recurring item was 'Uncle Bob's Stories,'
where the entire history of the world was mixed together - Jimi
Hendrix in Holland during World War II is something that's
totally impossible, but we tried to make it as plausible as we
could." For a while Arjan worked with Miss Akira and Dr.
Videodisk. "He records voices and always has his walkman with
him and makes tapes in the grocery store. When he likes a
sentence he writes it down on a piece of paper and notes the
time. His whole room is full of them. When he wants to make a
story he sets them all in order, which is a very labor-intensive
way of working. He puts the background music on a tape loop and
then sticks the voice fragments together. With Miss Akira I did
spontaneous plays. You just put your brain in neutral and
everything flaps out by itself."
Arjan now does a late-night show on Patapoe. "It starts at
midnight and can last three or four hours, and then I'm usually
busy winding down till 5:00, gradually telling the people
goodnight, in musical terms. I play long pieces of mind-broadening music from
the sixties, mixed with psychedelic records
from the the thirties, like Cab Calloway. Those might have been
hits then, but they're really weird."
Arjan picked up a lot of techniques from DFM Radio-Television,
who did live mixes at Radio 100 for years and now do performances
under the name ARTburo. "DFM was critical towards established
radio, and created disorder inside Radio 100 as well. They'd
crash the studio, hijack a program or go to the transmitter and
directly interfere with the signal coming from the studio. DFM
went all Saturday night starting at midnight and then presented a
breakfast show out of Radio 100's cafe. For other DJs it was
unreal." DFM combined the mix with a show element. The group
members were continually assuming different identities. When it
got boring, they invented a new name and a different formula.
That immediately created the impression that a whole media mafia
was at work. Chris from DFM: "We had to have a network orchestra.
It consisted of a handful of tapes. A lack of guests? No problem,
there are always several alter egos around. Radio is the most
intimate of all media and this is especially true in the
nocturnal hours. With a couple of friends and a nice atmosphere
in the studio you can easily fill a couple of hours. If there's a
telephone response from listeners, you get to hear their
interpretation of what you've made. Those reactions were taped
and broadcast again, but first cut or mixed to preserve the
deformative aspect."
Deformation doesn't just mean reusing fragments made by yourself
or others. It also indicates the degree to which the listener is
swept up in the new product you've made. Only when this happens
has that person been deformed. At DFM deformation is not a
reformation of the current information. The two are equal. Chris:n
"In the remix parts of what was previously made are used as raw
materials for deformation. These are extracted from all media. An
old program can be the basis tape for a new program. Read half an
article from last week's paper, add a dash of advertising, stir
well and hey presto!"
Vendex from Patapoe is for the subtle approach. "At DFM quite a
bit of patience is expected of listeners. These days I think
short suggestive radio plays are better than a web of sound where
you mix four different sources together at once. But the mixers
can't do anything in under three hours." He and his colleague Dan
Kerwell hit on the idea of mixing sounds without rhythm. "There's
no percussion in classical music, in contrast to most other mix
material." So Cafe Bartok was born. "It's inspired by the cafes
you find nearby the opera hall, that radiate a yuppie twit aura
and play classical music in the background. We didn't and still
don't know a thing about classical music. We made beautiful
discoveries like Mahler's Sixth, which goes well with Mussorgski.
We couldn't tell which record was which anymore; they completely
slid together. Or Erik Satie on 45 crossed with Chopin on 45,
which sounds brilliant. Then the radio plays about composers came
naturally. We bring them together, especially the less well-known
ones. Handel, Grieg and Brahms sitting at a pub table in 1882 in
the town of Grand Qualle near Arles. They're always drinking,
always broke and selling their opuses to each other. We use heavy
words to give the story weight, like mother, bread, stone, death.
And Albert Schweitzer always keeps popping up. He brought the
brothers Telemann from Indonesia to Vienna to study music. He's a
merchant and has a monopoly on composers' paper." Hearing a
symphony at the wrong speed sends chills down your spine. But
Cafe Bartok is a parody of classical stations which have declared
the music holy. Vendex: "It would be punk to start with a
fragment of classical music, and then scare the listener to death
with noise from hell. But then they'd turn off the radio. It's
more fun to irritate them for longer."
Radio De Vrije Keyser, P.O. Box 14521, 1001 LA Amsterdam, phone 00 31 20 6881914 (only on tuesday) e-mail: keyser@xs4all.nl
Radio 100 (100 FM), P.O. Box 10096, 1001 EB Amsterdam, phone 020
6163421.
Radio Patapoe, P.O. Box 3369, 1001 AD Amsterdam. e-mail: patapoe@desk.nl