Mort Aux Vaches

Gabriel: There is a strange illogic to where and why we played somewhere or didn’t. This recording is the only time we ever played in Amsterdam. We played in Rotterdam once, at W.O.R.M. where Gert kept us entertained with stories about the Ex and complaints about Dutch racism, and where an improviser who we shared the bill with told us “You make one sound.” By comparison we played in Den Hague many times, and hung out there with the amazing freak scene at Helbaard, with Zeloot, Miguel and all the weirdos from Antwerp who would come up. But in Amsterdam we played one time and it was for 2, maybe 3 people. We played a VPRO radio session under the invite of Staalplaat who included this disc in their amazing Mort Aux Vaches series. The police in France are sometimes called “Cows” apparently. My family is from Holland, at least those who survived in the underground in Amsterdam or lived through the camps in Sobibor and Auschwitz. I have gone back to Holland many times, to visit Amsterdam in particular, and have danced in squats, gone on disastrous dates, and played the opera house. When I’m there the city makes sense to me in small ways that come from a childhood of eating drop and hagelslag, hearing dutch gossip and keeping house in a particular way. But it has never felt like a place that I could imagine living. Other places in our tours - like Antwerp, Barcelona, Cork - I could have just stayed, put down roots, and lived a happy life. Amsterdam always made me feel like a welcome guest, but not one who should stay too long. The recording session was great, the hosts incredibly courteous and generous, and the feeling of being respected as artists combined with the relief from having to perform for the immediate satisfaction of an audience was liberating. These recordings capture a kind of freedom to play for no other purpose than the playing itself that we rarely ever were afforded outside of our own practice space. We drove in from Antwerp that morning, played a session I’m still incredibly proud of, and then drove back to Antwerp that evening to stay with our friends Koen and Christel, our home away from home.