An Album A Day #8. Week 2, Day 3. Another selection from the limited-edition Dutch CD series known as Mort Aux Vaches, which has already been described for you on Monday and Tuesday:
…Similar in scope to Temporary Residence, LTD’s venerable Travels In Constants series. It was created as sub-label of Staalplaat (home of Muslimgauze, Rapoon, Halfer Trio, Zoviet France and many others) in order to release recordings commissioned by the Dutch broadcasting company VPRO. Of course, most of the artists who recorded sessions for the label were experimental artists whose sonic tendencies were similar in scope. Everyone from Aube to Zoviet France have recorded for Mort Aux Vaches. Each of the sixty-plus titles are produced in limited quantities. None exceed 1,000 copies. All the ones I’ve ever seen come in tri-fold sleeves that hold the CD in place with a split nail. Various materials were used on the sleeves. Some are on tracing paper, some are lenticular, some are weird plastics. Yellow Swans is cardboard relief. Machinefabriek is rubber-stamped card stock. Illusion of Safety used sandpaper. Ignatz‘s pretty much looks like it was collected from a trash bin.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years it is likely you haven’t seen any of my other posts sharing recordings by Troum. The duo of Martin Gitschel and Stefan Knappe (formerly of Maeror Tri) named their project after the old German word for “dream” to signify “the dream seen as a central manifestation of the unconscious symbolizes the aim of Troum to lead the listener into a hypnotizing dream-state of mind, a pre-verbal and primal consciousness sphere.”
I discovered Troum first because of their 2005 release for the Belgian Mystery Sea label, whose limited edition CD-Rs I collect. That title, Objectlessness, immediately won me over. From there I found titles like AIWS and Ajin offered for download on different ambient/experimental blogs. But it wasn’t until the guy I mentioned on Monday (see paragraph #4) stopped by my place of work one Saturday with a large box of CDs that I was really able to dig into the Troum catalog. The Tjukurrpa discs were in there, the collaborations with Aidan Baker and Yen Pox was there, all told there were probably between a half dozen and a dozen albums to explore, including Mort Aux Vaches.
Limited to just 600 copies, Troum’s Mort Aux Vaches comes in a “multi-fold out thick crumbly cover” that is held together by the traditional fastener. The disc contains about 62 minutes of soothing, gauzy, druggy ambient drone that is perfect for 4am comedowns or scoring silent drives down long stretches of open road. It was recorded live at the VPRO studios in Amsterdam on December 12th, 1999 (which also happens to be my mom’s birthday). The title of the piece performed is “Sen” and it was perfected in a live setting between the months of August and December of that year, when Troum toured through Poland, Germany and the Netherlands. The CD was officially released in September of the following year. If you haven’t heard any of the duo’s other albums this would be a pretty good place to start. From there the possibilities are quite numerous, and if you are anything like me I’m sure your thirst will not be sated until your hard drive (or CD/LP collection) is filled with multiple titles. Someday in the future I’ll share the Mystery Sea CDr during a week dedicated to that label. It’s pretty amazing.
Troum
Mort Aux Vaches
(Mort Aux Vaches, 2000)
MediaFire DL Link
01. Sen [MP3 – clip]
