Stekkerdoos — Kalendar

Stekkerdoos is an experimental sound art project from Dutch conceptual artist Jessie Hoefnagel, which she describes as “Dreamy noise with a touch of darkness"- utilizing Field recordings, cassette tape sampling, live vocals, drones, and beats. Her visual art is line based drawings that mainly include female figures. She began this sound project in 2017 and has released a few short run (sold out) cassettes that were available at live shows. Stekkerdoos appears to be primarily a live performance project with video projection accompaniment featuring his artwork, so listening to these tracks I am sure I do not getting the full impact of what the artist conceived- but it’s still very nice.

Kalendar has been being performed live since January 2019 as “a hand illustrated movie with live music “ and is described as “A meditation on the concept of time and what exists between the measurements that we use to mark it. Sometimes surreal, sometimes familiar". Calling it a meditation is most apt, as this release is very meditative, you can find yourself drifting away easily into a dreamy state while listening- so in that regards it works very well. The album starts with a simple electronic drum beat-monotonous and repetitive- but then quickly the tone shifts to a darker space with swirling backwards tape loops and looped metal scrapings- setting the stage for something interesting and enchanting. The next track starts with electronically generated tones, then more overlapping textures creating a hypnotic rhythmic beat, and then adds metal percussion to create some fantastic interplay of melody with beats- this track sort of reminded me of some stuff by Nurse With Wound, which really excited me to continue on. The third cut was not so organic and did not grab me with as much eagerness as the previous ones. This cut was more of hard beat with distortion and quick cut samples leaning more towards early 80’s electronic industrial music, complete with backwards screaming voices in the tape loops...it was okay. This album continues on for nearly an hour- fluctuating between dreamy/ interesting tracks, and more beat-driven moments- but never with partically hard dance beats- the rytmic textures are created using interesting tones and sounds...not drums. Soft flowy dreamy moments with lush female vocals deeply soaked in echoes, as well as amazing use of tape loops and simple electronics...minimal and well done. All of the tracks are relatively short ranging from one to four minutes, with only a few of them going past that to the six to nine-minute range. Some of them you wish they were longer- as just as you begin to be lulled into their trance, they fade away and end, but overall its a really good release- it certainly takes you to really interesting places while you listen. I would be interested to perhaps see a DVD release of this including the visual presentation as well.

This is Stekkerdoos debut release is put out by the always amazing No Rent Records, a true to the scene fantastic independent label out of Philadelphia. This release is limited to 100 copies on cassette and available for streaming and downloads via the No Rent Records Bandcamp page. If you are a fan of weird cassettes-things like Nurse With Wound, Coil, etc…(but the older stuff) then you will like this- its good., get it.