Top 10 Blast songs from the 1990s - aka "Don't you all answer at the same time!"

[Scrotum Scissor]

I saw them play in a synagogue in Holland in 2000!

Wow, that must have been something! I'd love to see a live performance of small-ensemble "rock" music as profoundly intricate as this.

[spacefreak]

Blast is the only post-70's Dutch band I like.... are there anymore in the RIO/Avant genre?

Niew Hip Stilen and Nine Tobs from the 80s. Not forgetting The EX (from their Joggers... album onwards)...

[Trane]

Holland has of course given birth to such good-to-great acts as The Ex, Mam and Dull Schicksal, but you're generally right - the contrast to Belgium and its armies of wildly interesting names is quite striking. If you dig Blast I'd still urge you to check out Brown vs. Brown and Palinckx.

Wow, thanks... I'll look into this.

Niew Hip Stilen and Nine Tobs from the 80s. Not forgetting The EX (from their Joggers... album onwards)...

Thanks too.

In a very different (and radical) style called Indietronica, Spinvis is rather interesting (collage of tapes), but to fully appreciate it, one needs to understand Dutch rather well.

[Scrotum Scissor]

^There's also Use of Ashes, an at times rather marvellous space-rock/psych-folk group who were actually on the verge of making a name for themselves during the early 2000s. They took their name from the Pearls Before Swine record.

But generally when scrolling through Dutch artists within some proximity to progressive rock, all I can find are dozens of MarillIQupines.

[chalkpie]

https://youtu.be/T1NihMd0H-I

Check this tune out. Some very interesting harmonic changes here if you focus on it.

[Trane]

But generally when scrolling through Dutch artists within some proximity to progressive rock, all I can find are dozens of MarillIQupines.

Well if you were looking in the prog section of Dutch B&M record stores (whatever few are left anyways), all you found was bands of that genre and Camel....

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ Yes, some of the links we posted here are deactivated. Have to admit that being someone who've actually paid dough to get the actual records had me forget about the duds who publicize the music for free yet illicit listening.

Just to have that cleared; this stuff is such an elaborate work of commitment and hardship that it should be bought. All artworks should, but especially stuff as altogether challenging and demanding as this.

[Levgan]

Palinckx

Thanks for bringing them up. One of the most intriguing bands around IMO, with vast gaps in style (and quality if I'm allowed to say this) from one record to another, but when they hit goldmine, like on the Psychedelic Years album, it's simply sublime stuff. You never know what you'll hear on a Palinckx CD, it may be just lots of grating free jazz skronk, but it may also be a lot of highly intricate through-composed stuff rivalling any avant-prog album from your latest Wayside order. Psychedelic Years was a post-modern masterpiece, a melange of quotations from Zappa, Floyd, Beach Boys et al, arranged into a concept record of sorts with all kinds of surprising twists and turns. Later years saw Palinckx turn to a more direct, sorta pronk-ish sound with vocals to the fore – my fave from those few CDs is probably Momentum & Wag.

[Udi Koomran]

Het Pandorra Ensemble
Dull Schicksal

[Scrotum Scissor]

Het Pandorra Ensemble

Weren't they a late 70s act? Damn fine album all the same. And the Dulls are great, of course.

[Steve F.]

^ Yes, some of the links we posted here are deactivated. Have to admit that being someone who've actually paid dough to get the actual records had me forget about the duds who publicize the music for free yet illicit listening.

Just to have that cleared; this stuff is such an elaborate work of commitment and hardship that it should be bought. All artworks should, but especially stuff as altogether challenging and demanding as this.

"Post our bandcamp links", he suggested helpfully.

[Socrates]

^ Yes, some of the links we posted here are deactivated. Have to admit that being someone who've actually paid dough to get the actual records had me forget about the duds who publicize the music for free yet illicit listening.

Just to have that cleared; this stuff is such an elaborate work of commitment and hardship that it should be bought. All artworks should, but especially stuff as altogether challenging and demanding as this.

Just ordered a couple of Blast CDs from Rec Rec. Thanks to this thread. This is why I go to PE - learn about new stuff and to get pointers to stuff from the past that I missed. So thanks, SS, for the pointers and the reminders that this is/was a great outfit.

[Scrotum Scissor]

^ GOOD FOR YOU, man!

Takes some intense listening duties, but they're levelled with profound rewards.

I had Stringy Rugs in my very first Wayside order back in '97; the order itself consisted squarely of Cunei releases - 19 of them in a binge. I remember using an "agent", Rune S. of Prognetik here in Oslo, whom I'd met at a record fair in my then-hometown (Bergen) and who told me it'd take "about two weeks for them to arrive". Turned out it took some two months, as he postponed the order. He wasn't into "avangard", as he put it.

Damn, that's long ago. But then again, once you've engulfed yourself in Kombinat M and Cartoon and the Muffins and Chainsaw Jazz and Blast and Doctor Nerve and Curlew and that Miriodor with the miniatyre cardboard modelshoots of the members, there's no turning back. They become parts of your twisted soul, don't they.