Full circle with Bence Meijer, more closely connected to Rubber than we all expected. Bence is a musician and founder of the blog Archaic Inventions, dedicated to discovering and contextualizing experimental tape culture from the recent past.
”This mix is the result of a couple of years of gathering material, making selections and remembering the past. After a less rosy period of my life I reconnected with my old music friends in Berlin a few years ago. They helped putting me back on track for the most part. It happened after As Longitude came to play in Amsterdam and gave me a sense of spirit again…. I reconnected to Berlin later on. I slowly remembered a previous phase of being in Berlin during the early 00’s digging for records as a young teenager. Going to Staalplaat, buying Mouse On Mars and The Octagon Man records through town, seeing Miss Kitten set-up for a gig in an industrial warehouse club (but went home before it started because I was too young to stay up too late), going to the old Tacheles (say 2004) where a guy on acid was holding a Death In June picture disc vinyl and a wooden cat statue while spacing out, also I remember well seeing an early interview with Berlin electro-pop unit 2Raumwohnung on the “Lola de Musica” TV program on Dutch television. I was visiting the Russendisko bar-night where I was looked upon weirdly being 14 years old entering the place after midnight (was it at Sonnenallee…? Not sure anymore, so much layered histories intertwining). In short: reconnected to Berlin I remembered many things about a music feeling I had forgotten but that had been part of me. It all came back into me with the energy and velocity of some type of karmic 90’s boomerang within a framework of a seemingly renewed sense of love and appreciation.
I’m born in The Hague and grew up closely to the Bunker Records scene. Jan Duivenvoorden (the musical brain behind Unit Moebius and one half of Leuk & Ko) was always a good friend of my father. We used to go on Holidays to Hungary together in the 90’s (I’m half Hungarian): me, my parents and Jan and his back-then girlfriend. An intimate video documentation exists of one of our trips that Jan made. I remember those days vividly.-
Since my return to Berlin in recent times I had to rethink my life, my personal losses and I had to reconstruct and relive differentiated realities to understand where I am now. Luckily back home in Holland I gave it my best shot. I reconnected with Jan after many years, we played some tunes and spoke about life and today’s music world. I also managed to play a live set at the Braille Satellite Festival in Lithuania. A festival organized by my special friends from Berlin and Vilnius.
Since a young kid I knew there was not going to be much else than this strange music world. Some people discover parties or something. I never did. It was like this all along because of the older people around me. My music blog Archaic Inventions hopefully testifies to this upbringing.
Through the years Rubber has oddly brought together different recognizable musical energies including some of the people I happen to have been connected to. Synchronicities. I am grateful for the Rubber vision and the releases you guys put out!
The newest track in this mix is from 2002. This is an ode to Berlin (Germany in general), The Hague and Budapest. Also hidden are some Latin American oddities. Different countries and their musical feeling, manifesting themselves in my memory. A flash of personal remembrance, my impressions of the 90s and 00s, yet now more adjusted to home-listening. This set was recorded at OCCII Amsterdam on May 1st. OCCII is my dearest home-base music venue in Amsterdam that we opened specially to record this mix during the corona pandemic. No CDJ hi-fidelity, but it-is-what-it-is quality, let it - happen, squat-style. Maybe not as great as I thought I would be in selecting tunes but….Rubber Time!!“
Bence Meijer / Archaic Inventions
@archaic-inventions
