一つ一つの言葉と音を大切にしているからこその胸があつくなるミニマル感、ZEAの音楽は毎回心揺さぶられます、むちゃかっこいい！！ ゲスト参加 Mats Gustafsson, Xavier Charles, Harald Austbø, Francis Ayamga (Ghana) and OLOLOP + Arakawa Atsushi (Japan) OLOLOLOP + Arakawa Atsushiが2022年に録音したセッションのサンプリングも1曲収録されてます。 [試聴・データ購入] https://zeamusic.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-still-each-others-only-hope

ガーナよりアップアップファンリズム＆メロディー最高！のキングアイソバのLP入荷しました！ 針を落として踊りだしてそのままフラフラどこへ出かけたくなる陽気な気分味わいましょう！ た、たのしい～！ ZEA(The Ex,Makkum Records)も参加してます！

Arnold de Boer(ZEA,TheEx)主宰のMakkum Recordsよりガーナ、アッパーイースト州のコンピレーションが届きました！ ガーナのアッパーイースト周辺の伝統的な楽器やメロディをFrancis Ayamgaによる狂気的なビートがミックスされてとんでもないダンスチューンパッションが発生しています！ これはぶちあがり必須、最高！ [試聴・データ購入] https://makkumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-zologo-beat 以下インフォメーション This is the music being played on the cell phones, car speakers and sound systems in and around Bongo and Bolgatanga, the main city and capital of Ghana’s Upper East. This is the mix of local rhythms and melodies played on traditional instruments mixed with Ayamga’s Fruity Loops sample madness and Cubase programmed electro beats with on top of it all the words, rhymes, vocals and stories of the young people hanging around the Top Link studio waiting for an opportunity to throw down their voice on a fresh made track. The main language on this album is Fare Fare, the regional language in Ghana’s Upper East region. ‘Zologo’ means ‘crazy’ in Fare Fare (also known as Frafra). All beats, synths and bleeps by Francis Ayamga. Track 4 - kologo by Prince Buju, track 10 - sinyaka by Dondada. Mastering by Zea, Amsterdam, NL. Pictures by Francis Ayamga, artwork by Zea.

※2023/3/3発売 【ASC051&MR36】 Olololop, Arakawa Atsushi and Zea/Soyokaze(cassette/1,800円) [SIDE A] 1.The First Time We Meet 14:58 [SIDE B] 2.Cheese 03:58 3.Bicyle and Bread 03:26 4.Machine Poem 03:39 5.Furiran 03:49 [MUSICIANS] olololop -Masaru-PC,midi durum -Takuro-percussion -Ren-Sax Arakawa Atsushi-sampler Zea-guiter [Recording] 2022/9/28 at katzwijmstudio [Rec&Mix&Mastering] Floyd Atema [infomation] olololop,ArakawaAtsushi,ZEAの三組によるセッション録音がASCとアーノルド氏(ZEA,TheEx)が主宰するMakkum Recordsとの共同リリース！ 音の温度の寒暖さをより感じられる事ができるのが即興演奏の楽しみの一つだと思っていて、憧れや日々感じている事が瞬間パックされ、それぞれの日々考えている事が交錯しているような楽曲たちです。 ミニマルフリーポップな優しいおもちゃ箱エクスペリメンタル、楽しんでください！ 本作は2022年秋にolololopとArakawaAtsushiがアムステルダムにあるOCCIIの30周年のイベントに参加してきた際のライブの前日に行われました。 ライブや録音の経緯など是非こちらご参照下さい。 (Ams Tripper / 荒川 淳 アムステルダム日誌) https://inthemiddle.jp/archives/4771 [Makkum Records infomation] In the last week of September 2022 two Japanese acts OLOLOLOP and Arakawa Atsushi flew into Amsterdam to take part of the OCCII 30YEARS Festival, a three-day festival to celebrate the 30th birthday of Amsterdam's most adventurous underground venue OCCII. For all four Japanese musicians this was the first time to visit and play in The Netherlands and they took a few extra days to explore the country and it's capital. This gave me the idea to take them to the Dutch flower fields where, in an old bulb barn, the Katzwijm Studio is located. We decided to bring all instruments, set up and play and have it recorded, without any arrangements or preparation. It was the first time we met, we hardly knew each other’s music, strengths nor weaknesses, but curiosity led the way. After a quick soundcheck we just started to play, to improvise, to listen and respond. After a short break we discussed the idea of using vocals. A couple of days earlier I had run across the poetry of 20th century Dutch poet Sybren Polet. The minimal approach and playful way of Olololop's Masaru controlling the 'drum robot' and the sample wizardry of Arakawa Atsushi made me think of Polet's Machine Poems. I looked them up and found a wonderful translation into English by André Lefevere. I took one of the poems, we started playing and all of a sudden, we were creating a song. It was a hot sunny day and all what happened musically felt like a fresh wind, a breeze; Soyokaze in Japanese. Listening back to the recordings a week later, after the big OCCII celebration, we decided to release this completely new music on both our labels in Europe and Japan and put it out on cassette. Enjoy! Arnold de Boer / Zea Amsterdam, Jan. 2023 [試聴・デジタル購入] https://tissueboxasc.bandcamp.com/album/soyokaze

The ExフロントマンでもあるArnold de Boerのソロプロジェクト"ZEA"2022年最新作はフランスのクラリネット奏者Xavier Charlesとの曲作！ 静寂から解き放たれる静と動、とても素晴らしい世界が待ってます、むちゃかっこいいです！ 以下レーベルインフォ Nine songs recorded in one go while on tour in France earlier this year. Arnold de Boer and Xavier Charles have been playing together before and even released a 7” together in 2012 but did a tour for the first time together last March. They made a set out of Zea songs and other tunes they liked. The Ethiopian song Sethed Seketelat is the song that somehow brings everything together; Xavier Charles was part of the band The Ex & Getatchew Mekuria and toured around the world playing their Ethiopian repertoire. Arnold de Boer joined The Ex in 2009 and became singer, guitarist and played the trumpet in the project with Mekuria. For his solo project (Zea) De Boer asked Charles to join in on various occasions and they recorded and released a well acclaimed 7” in December 2012 (MR5). Almost a decade later there’s a follow up. There are songs from Zea’s Frisian albums (West Frisian is De Boers first language), a cover version of Norma Tanega’s You’re Dead, some new songs (The queen’s feet, What should we do with our bodies), the Ethiopian song Sethed Seketelat with lyrics from ex-The Ex singer G W Sok and there’s a new version of It’s Quiet. That song appears on the 7” too and it’s the first song that De Boer and Charles more or less wrote together. While on tour with Getatchew Mekuria they stayed at a cottage on the French country side (a sleeping place after a festival). Drinking a glass of wine and looking at the stars, Charles muttered “You know, it can be very quiet on the French country side, but there will always be a dog barking nearby and a motor-cycle in the distance.” And he was right, a minute later they heard a dog barking followed by a speeding motorbike in the distance. Zea went inside, grabbed a pen and a piece of paper and wrote it down. They started naming more things from daily life that disturb silence and that’s how the song came together. Xavier Charles’ work ranges from noise to electroacoustic to sound poetry. His way of improvising is very dynamic; long multiphonics followed by soaring screams and Zen-like-near-silence textures. It fits beautifully with Zea’s minimal and sober songstructures. Together they create awonderful world full of spell, space, sound, song and silence.

The ExフロントマンでもあるArnold de Boerのソロプロジェクト"ZEA"によるフジリア語アルバム第2弾！ 言葉の扱い方がとても魅力的であり有機的なアコースティックミニマルの素晴らしさがあります！ フリジア語の歌がオランダ語、英語、そして歌に合った第4の言語に翻訳された本が付属しています！ 以下レーベルインフォ On November 19, Witst noch dat d’r neat wie, the second Frisian-language album by Zea and the successor to the much acclaimed Moarn gean ik dea from 2017, will be released. Intimate and poetic lyrics always form the basis of this album. Language and linguistics are recurring themes on the album and in Zea’s life. The music is acoustic, heart-felt, personal and minimal. The album comes with a book in which the Frisian songs have been translated into Dutch and English and a fourth language that fits the song. For its new album, ZEA uses, in addition to its own lyrics, works by Bert Schierbeek, Hans Faverey, Anne Wadman and Benjamin Mays. A three-day tour will follow in the release weekend, starting at Explore the North in Leeuwarden on 19/11. This is followed by performances at the Willem de Zwijgerkerk, Amsterdam and at WORM, Rotterdam. Some of the translations in the songbook of Witst noch dat d’r neat wie were made by musician friends. During the release tour some of them will perform, in which they will also play together with Zea in addition to their own music. For example, songs from the album in Vietnamese, Scottish and Sranantongo will also be heard during the tour.

On the first Monday after the summer holidays of 2020, I decided to not start the morning with a pile of emails about cancelled, rescheduled or possible future concerts but instead walk around Amsterdam. Following the ring road A10, both from the inside and the outside, I walked without a map and tried to stay as close to the highway as possible. Which didn’t always work, I got lost several times. The entire trip took me at least forty hours, spread over eleven days. When home, I picked up my guitar, played what came to mind and recorded it. It is instrumental, acoustic and free playing, improvised. I’ve put eight of those recordings on a disc. It is simple, minimal; it is music with limited resources, direct and fat-free. I keep the release simple and limited as well; simple in title and name and limited in edition. I have 100 CDs and 200 LPs to sell and after 300 downloads and 300 streams I will take the tracks offline.

Oscar Jan Hoogland (Amsterdam, 1983) is the sound of Amsterdam incarnated. He plays the concert hall, the jazz venues, the rock ’n’ roll bars, the theatres, the art lofts and the underground basements. He is an instant composer, pianist and inventor of his own instrument by putting a clavichord on 220 Volt electricity. As the last student of pianist, composer and improvisor Misha Mengelberg he tears like a tornado through the Amsterdam jazz and impro scene, plays with legends like Han Bennink, organises concerts, festivals, ad hoc theatre and performances and teaches at the drama school. Oscar Jan grew up in the Jordaan, an old neighbourhood in Amsterdam’s city centre, between the forte pianos owned by his father, classical pianist Stanley Hoogland. As a teenager at the beginning of this century he jumped over the classical music line and dived straight into the local impro and indie rock scenes, and that’s how he ended up, at age sixteen, at a festival in Paradiso where he saw Zea play. He could not believe his eyes when he saw Arnold de Boer, singer and guitarist of Zea, the next morning in school as his new teacher “Maatschappijleer” (sociology). Arnold de Boer (Makkum, 1974) moved from the Frisian village called Makkum to Amsterdam in the early nineties to study and to be able to attend a concert every night. At the local drumband and harmony orchestra Hallelujah Makkum he learned to play drums and trumpet, but once in Amsterdam he switched to guitar and started his own band Zea. The headstrong mix of jumpy indie rock, beat punk, sample pop, noise and lo-fi dub got picked up far outside the lowlands and since the release of Zea’s debut album Kowtow To An Idiot (Transformed Dreams, 2000) Zea toured all over the world. Arnold got involved in organising concert nights and festivals in Amsterdam including a monthly night at Paradiso. He set up many nights at local DIY venue OCCII. In 2009 he joined the long and strong going post-punk band The Ex, that took him straight into a whole new scene of Ethiopian jazz and improvised music. For the monthly Paradiso night Arnold invited Oscar Jan to come and play with his new band. It was the beginning of a series of invitations back and forth, between off kilter songwriting and improvisation, that still continues and that resulted in recording the album called Summing. A hypnotic groove under a playful song next to an arabic melody on top of an improvised sound collage; the music made up of independent parts, all recorded in one take. The songs are percussive and move on the poly rhythms of two parallel switched turbines. On the cover of the album you see a drawing by Amsterdam cartoonist René Windig. On the back cover you see Zea and Oscar Jan Hoogland live in the north of Ghana; it’s the image of a duo that dug itself up from the future and dives headfirst into the world.

AGENCY Agency is the capacity of an actor to act in a given environment. Human agency entails the claim that humans make decisions and enact them on the world. But in the time of the Anthropocene, Earth seems to have taken all the characters of a full-fledged actor. It is not humanity opposite the rest but humans in direct interaction with earth, elements, objects, animals and plants. So we better rebuild our democratic institutions and let the “things” have a say in future plans or the future might one day explode in our face. MY FIRST FRIENDS WERE ANIMALS Humans seem to be the only animals that don’t want to be called animal. The lyrics of this song are taken from John Lennon’s hit single “Give Peace A Chance”, but only the first three verses. Agency was recorded in Katzwijm Studio, Voorhout and will appear as a collaborative release on Makkum Records and Subroutine Records (MR26/SR096). Distribution by Xango Music. Also available via Bandcamp.

In the summer of 2017 Francis Ayamga, drummer in King Ayisoba’s band, gave me a pen-drive filled with music he recorded over the last couple of years in his studio in Bongo, in the North of Ghana. I got curious, listened through all the tracks and discovered a lot of fantastic music from local artists hardly anyone knows. Most of the songs are sung in Frafra, the language of the region. We decided to make a compilation. I made a selection from more than two hundred tracks and in January 2018 I travelled to Bongo to meet the musicians, interview them, make videos and take pictures. We recorded the whole Zenabu women group outside the small studio with one microphone since they did not fit inside. It became a wonderful overview of the local music scene in Bongo, the village King Ayisoba is originally from. In January 2019 I go back to Bongo and we will have a big release party of this album. King Ayisoba is already very busy preparing everything! — Arnold de Boer, Amsterdam, December 2018.

Unfit For These Times Forever is officially Kanipchen-Fit’s second album, after 2010’s Multibenefit but for the band in its present incarnation, it is a new departure. The addition of real drums, expertly played by Frank Sloos, complements the sound they have been searching for. At the end of 2011, Kanipchen-Fit permanently relocated from New York to Amsterdam-East. On Unfit For These Times Forever their escape from New York plays a central role in the first song “Fight”. One of the reasons for leaving was an unfortunate encounter with the famously incompetent, violent New York police, which is supported at all times by a corrupt and racist court system. Other subjects include: the human inclination to return to the Middle Ages (“Middle Ages”), or different forms of identity and problems of perception in the eyes of others (“Residue”, “Today I Go As Myself”). In “Opening Ceremony” the first line of the Internationale: “Wake up, wretched of the earth!” pops up. These wretched are Unfit For These Times Forever, the “huddled masses” the Statue of Liberty (“How To Display The Flag”) claims to welcome. But they will not be beaten down, if only by singing out loud, their own song, an international anthem for those who might not make it, but have to keep going, against the odds (“Unfit”). For the cover-art of both the double 7-inch and the CD Kanipchen-Fit uses one of Gloria’s pieces called “Life Saver”. It is part of a series of artworks made from playing cards, that recreate objects which could decide life or death, but are rendered useless by the nature of its main component. Since 2015 Kanipchen-Fit is Gloria (vocals), Empee Holwerda (guitar + vocals) and Frank Sloos (drums). Gloria has a history in the legendary, all-female group of performance-based New York poets called the Pussy Poets. Empee arrives from the noisy punk-wave of Lul, through new-wavy post-postrock of Solbakken, to his current bluesy rock-grooves. Frank is probably best known for his fancy surf-rhythms in the Treble Spankers, and straight forward punk-tightness in Big Paulus. Inescapably Kanipchen-Fit generates energy, the beat takes over and the adrenalin kicks in, moving and shaking seems inevitable. Probably because they mix the grooving drums with bass heavy rock-guitar and two powerful vocals, it becomes an energy they themselves find difficult to control.

The Swimming City is Zea’s fifth album, and the first one featuring guest artists. Immediately in the first song “Sub Specie Ludens” Mats Gustafsson appears on baritone sax and “People Shrink, People Grow” features Oscar Jan Hoogland on piano, who returns in “All Words Have Been Here First”, the song that also features the characteristic and recognisable clarinet playing of Xavier Charles who De Boer made a 7″ single with in 2012 called Bourgeois Blues. Zea has toured all over the world and played in thirty five different countries including Ethiopia and Ghana. In Ghana Zea set up a studio with local musicians where two of the songs on The Swimming City were recorded: “Dark Minded Me” and “Ik Kin Der Net By”. This last song is sung in Frysian, De Boer’s first language, who grew up in a small town called Makkum, in Fryslan in the northern part of The Netherlands. CD (in carbon box) and LP (180 gram vinyl) come with poster, lyrics and pictures.