available

Tapes

Alek Novak - Pod Vodom
Gintas K - Resonances
Mike Hovancsek - Texture Studies
Joseph of Kirezi - Session and Live in Tokyo
Seirios Savvaidis - Mesourania/Wendy's Wedding
Hibushibire - Official Live Bootleg No. 7
Vibration of Words: Jazz Poetry from Hungary
Keiko Higuchi x Manuel Knapp: Summoning Ancient Spirits
Kris Vanderstraeten & Frederik Leroux: Live at The Audioplant
My Cat Is An Alien & Nad Spiro - La Casa Encendida

CD



Miminokoto ‎– Koenji 07/02/2016 (Plunk's Plan, reissue of out of print sloow tape)




Majutsu No Niwa ‎– Ecstatic Crystallization (Musik Atlach, reissue of out of print sloow tape)

Lp

Wendingen 1918 - Recherche Dans Le Rêve
Louise Landes Levi/Timo van Luijk/Bart De Paepe: Kami



Ilta Hämärä - Velloa 7" (Meeuw Muzak)

"Timo Van Luijk and Bart De Paepe in troubled water" says the label press: Ilta Hämärä, the duo of Bart De Paepe (Sylvester Anfang II, Bokrijk, Charles Vögele) and Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie, La Poupee Vivante). An imaginary source that combines Bart’s hazy psychedelic antics and Timo’s subtle and abstract sound manipulations in otherworldly spheres of cosmic dimensions




BART DE PAEPE ~ MELKADER LP Original Artwork by Bart de Paepe Numbered edition of 25 ex. d’or044

WENDINGEN 1918 ~ MUZIKË MUUSIKA (Des Astres d'Or)

**numbered edition of 40 copies** "Little by little, the mass turned like a slimy and forceful nausea, a kind of immense influx of vegetable and thundering blood. And the small fibers trembling at the edge of my mental eye, broke off with a vertiginous speed of the tense mass of the wind. And all the space trembled like a sex organ which the globe of the burning sky was battering." Wendingen 1918 is dedicated to the Dutch Architectural Magazine ‘Wendingen’ from 1918 and the Work and Life of Antonin Artaud.

Raymond Dijkstra is an autodidact Artist from Indonesian / Dutch / English / Belgian / Portuguese descent. He has developed a highly personal acoustic-experimental and expressionist style, using his body as a tool for ‘automatic writing’. His explorations in this area are carefully documented by his own imprint Le Souffleur, especially in the series “Catalogue du Bruit”. Since about 2009 he also started working on a different, more ‘musical’ type of music, hereby incorporating electronic sources and a more eleborate use of effects. Since 2003 he’s been combining most of his limited publications with original exclusive handmade artworks of himself. Bart de Paepe is a Belgian Musician and Artist who has worked in many diverse directions, leading to an eclectic array of experimental and underground escavations of his innerworld. His solo music is portrayed by a compact electronic, yet psychedelic style. He’s the Art Direcor for the labels Sloow Tapes and Sloowax and has collaborated with Louise Landes Levi, Timo van Luijk and members of Embryo. Frédérique Bruyas is a Native French Reciter of (mainly) French Literature. Approaching the texts almost as an actor, she’s showcasing her superb sensitivity for atmosphere and her excellent ability to translate written word in spoken word with great respect to the original texts. The texts used on Tremblaient à la lisière de mon œil mental are part of L’Ombilic des Limbes by Antonin Artaud, a text written in 1918 during his stay in a mental asylum and published only a decade later.

Artwork Description: Cover tied with rope; Innercover with wooden Dowel designed by Raymond Dijkstra. Original Artwork by Bart de Paepe, Raymond Dijkstra. Each copy is different.



Wendingen 1918 ‎– La Décorporisation De La Réalité (Des astres d'or)






Various: Au-delà (Meakusma)

Au-delà is a collaborative record by La Scie Dorée and Meakusma. It features eight pieces of music by La Scie Dorée affiliates. For the 2018 Meakusma Festival, La Scie Dorée and Meakusma set up a collaboration that brought performances by Timo Van Luijk, Steven Stapleton, Christophe Heemann, Daniel Denis, Bart De Paepe, Kris Vanderstraeten & daniel duchamP to the festival in Eupen, Belgium. This was followed up with a night organized in the province of Limburg in Belgium featuring performances by Frederik Croene and Timo Van Luijk, Tom James Scott, Ecka Mordecai and Andrew Chalk.
Timo Van Luijk founded La Scie Dorée in 2000 to release his solo work as Af Ursin and the various collaborative projects he is involved in. Af Ursin opens Au-delà with a piece escaping straightforward definition, setting the tone for the album. The general focus of Au-delà is on musical space and the at times gentle yet always focused upset of musical and emotional signifiers. Tracks by legendary artists such as Michael Ranta, Steven Stapleton and Christophe Heemann together with work by relatively young or obscure performers and new projects such as Circaea, Raymond Dijkstra, Bart de Paepe and Vincent Epplay all delve into the niche that is free improvisation, frankly defining inward and outward space and movement and thus questioning the purpose of the niche itself.
Au-delà features a music that borders and transcends the genres of free improv, ambient, industrial and avant-garde composition. Its intention lays firmly in surpassing the general idea that experimental and improvised music is intended for the initiated only. Its subtle stance on musical beauty only adds to that intention. The collaboration between La Scie Dorée and Meakusma benefited greatly from the support of the Flemish Community and Ostbelgien.

Tracklist:
1. Af Ursin - Voyance
2. Michael Ranta - Save Alchi (excerpt)
3. Circaea - Anemones
4. Raymond Dijkstra - L'enveloppement Cotonneux du Bruit...
5. Christoph Heeman - Die Züge
6. Nurse With Wound & James Worse - The Creptile Lickbug
7. Bart De Paepe - De Vaag
8. Jac Berrocal & Vincent Epplay - Svavius



Books

Bart De Paepe - mellow my mind: a sloow tapes discography
Malcolm Ritchie - Encounter with the Great Mother. Ayahuasca in the Andes



orders & contact: sloowtapes at g mail dot com

Alek Novak

Alek Novak
Pod Vodom
Sloow Tapes - CS 54

Serbian dystopian bedroom psychedelia from the one man band Alek Novak that fits these gnarly times very well. Poetic lyrics (so i've been told, I don't speak Serbian) over a psychedelic rock/noise sauce makes perfect listening while walking through shady corners of Belgrade, tasting the last drops of your bottle rakia. 70 copies.

sloowtapes · Alek Novak

Gintas K

Gintas K
Resonances
Sloow Tapes - CS 44

Gintas K, once part of the first Lithuanian industrial band Modus but since over two decades he dedicates himself to electronic music, more specific granular synths and live electronics where he takes fractions of notes and moulds the sounds through speeding/slowing down and other obscure alchemical processes into new abstract configurations of space debris with remnants of drones, hums and bleeps. 70 copies.

sloowtapes · Gintas K

Mike Hovancsek

Mike Hovancsek
Texture Studies
Sloow Tapes - CS 90

Late night atmospheric soundtracks for two short movies. 'Aea' is an acoustic improvisation with tons of illustrious instruments and contributions on shamisen and shakuhachi by Lydia Schneider and slide guitar by Mohonbeena Soumalaya Mukherjee. 'Antroposcene' is a meditation of floating electronics on our disastrous pollution of the world. Mike Hovancsek is a former member of Pointless Orchestra and collaborated with Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh (who composed some of the earliest tape music in 1944). 70 copies.

sloowtapes · Mike Hovancsek

Joseph of Kirezi

Joseph of Kirezi
Session and Live in Tokyo
Sloow Tapes - CS 70

Formed in Ikebukuro (Tokyo) in 2012 Joseph of Kirezi has been roaming the outermost corners of the black clad psychedelic underground ever since. Amorphous visions of insanely loud guitars smeared all over a distorted obsidian night sky. Edition of 70 copies.

sloowtapes · Joseph of Kirezi

Seirios Savvaidis

Seirios Savvaidis
Mesourania/Wendy's Wedding
Sloow Tapes CS 40

Compiling two EP's (Mesourania (2019) and Wendy's Wedding (2016) by Seirios Savvaidis (who also plays in The Dead Ends), one of Greece's best kept secrets. Some mind expanding songs that reflect deep knowledge of traditional Greek music by way of sixties and seventies pychedelia and cosmic folk troubadours. Savvaidis's relaxed Greek vocals make you float all the way up Mount Paggaio. Edition of 70 copies.


Seirios Savvaidis is a Greek musician whose work borrows liberally from psych rock of the 60s and 70s, complemented by the more cosmically written folk artists of the time. Compiling 2019's in 2016's Γάμος της Γουέντυ, Sloow Tapes gives a radiant look to his music with this double EP cassette. There are overt nods to traditional Greek music here. Gently surging acoustic ruminate comfortably alongside more muscular bits of personal introspection. Through the complex mechanism of these two EPs, we hear how multiple genres occupy the same space within songs. He even brings in some Laurel Canyon vibes to soften the transitions from sound to sound - he contains these living, breathing worlds, which seem to always exist. It's a definitive ride as we are carried on the backs of his inspirations and watch him interpolate their various lineages. (Beats Per Minute)

sloowtapes · Seirios Savvaidis

Hibushibire

Hibushibire
Official Live Bootleg No. 7
Sloow Tapes - CS 60

Japanese heavy psych blow-out that rubs the third eye and instantly flings you in an overdose of speed fuzz soaring in/out of focus between hallucinatory visions of spiked Mainliner, High Rise, Les Rallizes Denudes et al. Lysergic hard rock riffs, dirty punk vocals and ferocious guitar shredding. Break through the aether with this one. Edition of 70 copies.

sloowtapes · Hibushibire

Wendingen 1918

Wendingen 1918
Recherche Dans Le Rêve
Sloowax 008

After a couple of limited art releases on Des Astres D’Or (now Astres d’Or) this is the first more widely available release of Wendingen 1918. Aural analogue surreal investigations by the trio of Raymond Dijkstra (Asra, bhaavitaaH bhuutasthaH, Santasede), Bart De Paepe (Ilta Hämärä, Innercity, Bombay Lunatic Asylum) and Frédérique Bruyas (Emmanuel Dilhac, La Poupée Vivante, Nivritti Marga). A hybrid mix of dynamic electronics, spatial sounds and poetry expressing a dazzling physical whole. Wendingen 1918 is dedicated to the early 20th century Dutch architectural magazine Wendingen that was associated with expressionistic architecture: it attempted to distort reality to express subjective, emotional experience. Edition of 300.

Best of 2021 (Soundohm)

This LP is the third LP by Wendingen 1918. Band member Raymond Dijkstra released the two previous LPs were released on his Des Astres d'Or. As with many of the releases on that particular enterprise, these are highly limited (25-40 copies) and usually don't make it to these pages. Of this new LP, 300 were made, so my first introduction to their music; may also be the case for more people. The other two members are Bart de Paepe and Frederique Bruyas. The latter is a regular collaborator of Dijkstra, and I must admit I don't know too much about De Paepe, other than he worked with Timo van Luijk as Ilta Hämärä (see Vital Weekly 1137). Wendingen 1918 refers to a Dutch magazine for architects and designers, and the first issue is from 1918. [wiki:] "Wendingen initially was an important platform for Dutch expressionism, also known as the Amsterdam School, and later endorsed the New Objectivity." As with much of the music I heard from Dijkstra (solo and others), this is another improvisation work. The four pieces are quite different. 'Je M'abandonne à la Fièvre Des Rêves' opens up here and a play of strings and percussion, rambling and rattling, and it comes with a bunch of delay and reverb, so it has a bit of a distant sound. 'Recherche Dans Le Rêve' (at seventeen minutes the most extended piece; this side of the record is over twenty-four minutes) reminded me of Nurse With Wound, with similar studio improvisations. Lots of drums rolling about, lots of cymbals, Bruyas' voice and the studio used as an additional instrument. It cuts random bits of sound in and out of the mix. The shortest piece is 'My Days Have Been a Dream' is also the quietest piece here, with slow violin moves, doubling and drifting away. This piece could have been a solo piece. Following the quietest is the loudest piece, 'Façons D'éveillé', which is a Korg Monotron synthesizer manifestation. The first few minutes are subtle, with some piano notes, but it's there alright when it starts. The piano and, later, string instruments stay there as well, but the biting sine waves of the synthesizer leave a strong imprint. Do not expect the sort of noise that Jliat would review, but it is louder than the three previous pieces. I must say it is also not the sort of improvisation that I thought was that great. Everything that happened in the background sounded of more interest to me but was too distant to reach. Despite that, I thought this was a very good record, full of exciting improvisations. (Vital Weekly)

sloowtapes · Wendingen 1918

Keiko Higuchi x Manuel Knapp

Keiko Higuchi x Manuel Knapp
Summoning Ancient Spirits
Sloow Tapes – CS 72

Sprawling sublime archaic noise electronics from visual artist Manuel Knapp (C.C.C.C, Tim Blechmann, Government Alpha) and vocal acrobatics by Keiko Highuchi (Albedo Fantastica (with Sachiko)and lots of others). Floating somewhere beyond harsh and hazy psychedelic dreams into the blackness of a Japanese night. Edition of 70 copies.

sloowtapes · Keiko Higuchi x Manuel Knapp

Vibration of Words

Vibration of Words
Jazz Poetry from Hungary
Sloow Tapes – CS 50

Classic recording of Hungarian-American poet/translator Gabor G. Gyukics together with Hungarian improvisers Béla Ágoston, Viktor Bori and Csaba Pengő, exhaling words and sounds in surreal late night jazz clouds of instant composition. Gabor G. Gyukics is a minimalist nature poet with a philosophical beat outlook. He translated Attila József, Endre Kukorelly and Attila Balogh in English, and Ira Cohen in Hungarian. Edition of 70.

sloowtapes · Vibration of Words

Piero Heliczer

 

PIERO HELICZER – I MUST BE MORE LIKE AN ANT THAN A CIGALE BECAUSE I LIKE TO SING IN WINTER

Counter Culture Chronicles and Casioli Press from The Hague have joined forces with Bart De Paepe’s Sloow Tapes from Stekene, Belgium to publish a lovely edition dedicated to Piero Heliczer. The book, designed by Lula Valletta and risographed by Stencilwerck, is “a tribute to Heliczer’s creative mind and to the man himself by friends, admirers and people Heliczer worked with”, according to CCC’s René van der Voort. Memories of Heliczer, eyewitness reports, investigations into lost works and actions and writings from obscure Dutch magazines by Heliczer himself have been compiled in this edition, which also contains photographs by Harry Hoogstraten, a letter to the Dutch queen by Heliczer and a couple of other extras. Other contributors than René van der Voort and Harry Hoogstraten to this Heliczer tribute are Eddie Woods, Harry Ruhé, Hans Plomp and Alain Diaz. This book is a valuable addition to the existing works and biographies dedicated to Piero Heliczer as well as a collectible book in itself.

Poet, publisher, actor and filmmaker Piero Heliczer was born to a German mother and a Polish father in Rome in 1937. After his father, who was active in the resistance, had been murdered by the Gestapo, Piero and his mother emigrated to the US in the 1940s, where he enrolled at Harvard in 1955 only to drop out two years later. Heliczer moved to Europe, where he co-founded the seminal Dead Language Press with his high school friend, poet and composer Angus MacLise. After having relocated to London in 1960, Heliczer returned to the US in 1962. There he worked with Jack Smith, Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground and produced some 25 experimental 8mm films. After having lived hand to mouth in Amsterdam and New York in the 1970s and 1980s, Heliczer moved to Normandy in 1984, where worked in a secondhand bookstore until his death in a road accident in 1993.

Louise Landes Levi/Timo van Luijk/Bart De Paepe

Louise Landes Levi/Timo van Luijk/Bart De Paepe
Kami
Sloowax 007


Like the ever changing shapeshifting nature of Kami in Japanese Shinto faith, the music on this new collaborative lp is a mirror reflecting, obscuring or modifying the ever changing rivers of sounds.
Louise Landes Levi has a long history in music from studying sarangi with Annapurna Devi and La Monte Young to performing with like minded poets as Ira Cohen and Simon Vinkenoog. As on the previous Ikiru lp she collaborates with Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie, Asra, In camera etc) and Bart De Paepe (Ilta Hämärä, Bombay Lunatic Ensemble etc). The trio weaves several delicate threads together into a surrealist, organic but overall poetic language. Includes a postcard. Limited to 500 copies.

Since launching in middle 2000s, the dual imprint Sloowtapes / Sloowax, founded and run by visual artist and musician, Bart De Paepe, has been proved to be among the more ambitious platforms for the wild and wonderful sounds emerging from the contemporary scenes of avant-garde and experimental music. Whether viewing individual releases, or the catalog as a total context, theirs is a world which pointedly defies easy definition and being nailed down. Sloowax’s latest, Kami, a stunning collaboration between Louise Landes Levi, Timo van Luijk, and Bart De Paepe, is among their most stunning LPs to date, riding high among our favourite records of the year.

With a practice dating back to the 1960s, over the last decade the poet, musician, and performer, Louise Landes Levi has slowly emerged as one of the most fascinating and engaging figures in the contemporary landscape of experimental music. A founding member of Daniel Moore’s Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, performing alongside the likes of Terry Riley and Angus Maclise, a student of a number of the most important figures in 20th century Indian Classical music - Sri Annapurna Devi, Ustad Abdul Majid Khan, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, and Pandit Ram Narayan, as well as a close associate of La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Ira Cohen, and Catherine Christer Hennix, she stands among the great links between high psychedelia, the countercultural explorations of Artaud and Michaux, Eastern mysticism, Hindustani music, and the sonic avant-garde. Despite her exceptional place in history, recordings of Levi’s remarkably singular music have only begun to emerge over the last decade. Last year’s Ikiru or The Wanderer and Colloidal Love were two of our favourite albums of 2018. Her latest, Kami, a collaboration with Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie, Lumine, etc.) and Bart De Paepe, takes the already high bar up a notch.

Laden with abstraction - one foot in the ethereal, mysterious, and ancient past, the other arching into unknown futures yet to be seen - Kami is a total world, imagistically rising through sound. Vocals, tanpura, sarangi, synths, bells, flute, and numerous other acoustic sound sources, intertwine in a droning, delicately percussive tapestry, amounting to brilliant musical hybrid, the depths of which few have realised since the days of Third Ear Band and Aktuala - an avant-gardism grown from mystical roots - fragments of ancient traditions which take the ear beyond the boundaries of time, pushing forward toward utopian dreams.

Brilliant, immersive, and challenging at every turn, Levi, Luijk, and Paepe’s Kami presents a beacon of creativity and hope for the end of the year. The album comes complete with a postcard containing artwork and poem by Louise Landes Levi. For those who missed it the first time around, we’ve also just received copies of the brand new repress of her brilliant LP for 2018, Ikiru or The Wanderer, both are absolutely essential and not to be missed. (Soundohm)


Aching, poetic and psychedelic elegies for the destruction of the planet, inspired by Japanese Shinto faith and played by some of Belgium’s most attuned for Bart De Paepe’s Sloowax

Working in each other’s orbits for years, but meeting as a trio on record for the first time, the result of Louise Landes Levi (Bombay Lunatic Asylum), Timo Van Lujik (Af Ursin, Elodie), and Bart De Paepe’s (Silvester Anfang II) debut speak to a rustic, pastoral conception of psychedelia and folk music inspired by the Shinto faith’s belief in Kami - spirits or holy powers manifest as forces of nature ranging from the elements to landscapes.

In communal voice the trio limn four beautifully organic, shapeshifting scenes that perhaps suggest a world running low on electricity and reconnecting with its analog essence and capacity for telepathic communication - of which improvised music such as ‘Kami’ is surely a form of. Yet while democratic in its structure and division of duties, the vital spirit of Louise Landes Levi really helms the album with her classical Indian vocal stylings and incredibly lush, roving sarangi lines.

Drawing on her studies under Annapurna Devi and La Monte Young, recordings with CC Hennix, and performance with poets Ira Cohen and Simon Vinkenoog; Louise’s presence is crucial to the album’s heavy-lidded, Atavistic feel and appeal, especially in the opening and closing sections, while the mid-section is given to some really trippy business in the vein of Smegma, and a sublime drift recalling the tremulous filigree of Van Lujik’s Elodie and Af Ursin recordings. (boomkat)

Released on Bart De Paepe's long-running label exploring the intersections of psychedelic drone mantra rock and free improvisation. Louise Landes Leviis a poet extolling the deep heart poetics of mystic Eastern rumination, particularly the traditions of bliss music and art from India. She dedicates this session to the Japanese poet Kazuko Shiraishi "herself a kami". Hearing the Belgium lads, both of whom have, for years, presented mantra mind psyche-conscious recordings, improvise with Louise's gentle sarangi communications is to hear the focus of contemporary intrigue with the timelessness of Louise's experience - from her participation in Daniel Moore’s Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, her studies with sarangi-master Pandit Ram Narayan, Annapurna Devi, Ali Akbar Khan & La Monte Young to the now and forever. (Thurston Moore)

Kris Vanderstraeten & Frederik Leroux

Kris Vanderstraeten & Frederik Leroux
Live at The Audioplant
Sloow Tapes – CS 70

Abstract duo of two grand masters: Kris Vanderstaeten (percussion, objects) and Frederik Leroux (guitar). Both explore the endless possibilities of their instruments in terms of dynamics, texture and space. A surreal mix of instant composing, free improvisation and minimalism. Edition of 70 copies.

Percussionist Kris Vanderstraeten, bringing his long experience in free improvisation, and relatively young guitarist Frederik Leroux teamed up in November 2016 for a concert at De Audioplant, Antwerpen, where they were recorded by Simon Beeckaert. During the recorded session each musician skillfully explores his instrument and together they get involved in a shuffle of gentlemen-pugilists. Sloow Tapes did well to publish this disruptive continuum of small amplified movements and sounds. (Sea Urchin)