TRESPASSERS W
SEX AND THE END OF IT (CD)
Line-up:
Cor Gout: vocals, tapes, rap
Hayo den Boef: bass
Ronnie Krepel: guitar, bass, keyboards, harmonium, recorder, percussion
Cor Hoogerdijk: drums, percussion, Roland 303, samples
Jeffrey Bruinsma : violin
Al Bol : contrabass
Witte van der Veen : solo guitar, samples
Renee Acda: saxophone
Robert Kroos: collage, mix, basic tracks
Eveline Ketterings: voice
Saskia Leenes: vocals
Frans Friederich: basic tracks, human beatbox, trumpet
Bas den Boer: percussion
Bartr Vos: percussion
Maisie: inspiration
André Goormachtigh: udu
Recorded and mixed by Camille Dings.
Some tracks by Frans Friederich, Robert Kroos, Jacques de Haard, Cor Hoogerdijk.
Mastering: Camille Dings. Remastering: Wim Oudijk and Guus van Leewen
Correction lyrics: Attila the Stockbroker
Cover Drawing, ‘Staatsspoor sur l’herbe’, 1974: Piet Deunhouwer
Photo trucated tower (2001): Ronnie Krepel
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Reviews in English: 5___________________________________________________________________________
DE MORGEN (Belgian Newspaper)
by DIRK STEENHAUT:
(Translated from Dutch to English)
Small-scale and in all respects breaking new ground. That is, in a nutshell, the story of Trespassers W. This half-fastened collective around singer, poet and cultural philosopher Cor Gout, has been attracting attention for almost two decades, has stayed militantly independent and managed to collect a small but ardent following. The new Trespassers W CD appears on an American label and is the first part of a trilogy on sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. The title, ‘Sex and the end of it’, however, has been kept consciously ambiguous: ‘end’ meaning both ‘termination’ and ‘goal’. In the last few years, TW has been examining the points of contact between music, poetry and theatre and the latest CD can be considered as some sort of radio play in which each track forms a separate sound table. Gout’s contemplations on sex, lust, pornography, erotism, power, art and religion have been wrapped up in a playful-ironic way (from the original sin to Bert and Ernie is only a small step for TW) but they do raise questions about the way in which sex is being trivialized so that it becomes a consumption good or a contact sport, in which the usual toys will have to strengthen the illusion of the kick.
The musical clothing refers to jazz, classical music, ambient-elektro and impetuous guitar-pop, but sometimes the music is too much a vehicle for the lyrics. Also Gout’s toneless Sprechgesang and hacking-sort-of phrasing will not be spent well on everyone. Nevertheless: a rich and stimulating record which immediately will make the listener reflect.
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MY WAY #54, Germany, 2003
Hör-Kult von ULRICH GERNAND:
Trespassers W
Sex and the end of it (Somnimage Som0007)
Textuur (EE-Tapes, EE75)
Cover Collection (10″, Pink Lemon Records, Pink 15)
(Translated from Dutch to English)
The ‘Sex’-album, Cor Gout’s first release in the USA (unfortunately by an eggheaded label) is, as we’ve been informed, the upbeat towards a trilogy about the foundations of pop: ‘sex’ will be followed by ‘drugs’ and ‘rock ‘n’ roll’. On the theme of ‘sex’ the Dutch come up with sentences like: « The subculture / Of Halifax / Got oversexed / Sex turned into a / Contact sport with new / Rules and rituals / Monogamy / the new taboo / But outside this terrain there’s still so / Much that you can do! »
Musically Prokovjev assists him (unvoluntarily) and (voluntarily) the Dull-Schicksal-man Ronnie Krepel and a dozen of other experts. Gout knows how to handle subjects like ‘Cyberporn Revolution’, chinese lustfingers, ‘Tubular Belles’, bananas, bananalities and banana republics (‘Bananalities’), Josephine Baker (‘La Revue Nègre’) and Egyptian coal-porters (‘We Are The Champions’). [Then a section on ‘Textuur’ (solo-CDr) in which the following section]. The enigmatic poet pervades any context with his sophistication and his crosswise humour. In our country the only one who is slightly comparable to him might be Harald Sack Ziegler. Nearer is Gout to the English humour of for instance Officer!, Bing Selfish or The Orchestre Murphy. Let’s leave it to that: he is one of a kind. Who else could have an eye for « A nude by Tamara de Lempicka / An odalisque / Reclining in narcissistic rapture / One arm casually flying / Behind her head / The pose is trad / But the arm is a polished tube: one has to be silent listening to such striking words. [Then a part on ‘Cover Collection’]. Hardly countable are the releases of Dutch band Trespassers W. And while they have occupied themselves more with their home country in ‘Vlucht Over Den Haag’, now, with their new album, they turn to a subject of general interest: sex and its end or conquest (a nice double meaning0. And this will only be the first part of a trilogy, of which the continuation can only mean drugs and rock’n’roll. Any respectable record collection will include lots of songs which fit in with this concept, of course, but Trespassers W have their very own poetical way to cover new grounds within this field. Whatever style they use, every piece of musioc sounds unmistakably like Trespassers W. Film-music, avant-garde-rock, jazz, elektronnics, enz.-they all find their purpose, provided they serve the story in the lyrics. And truly, stories are being told here, for instance about ‘green widows’, who adore an ice-cream man. ‘Cybersex Revolution’evokes the end of the power of male pornography-sex on internet! And then of course the whole stock of sex-utilities, all of them available! Bananas/Bananalities find their application too, not just since Josephine Baker. And that sex doesn’t know any class distinctions is a fact with which not only dockworkers are familiar, but they rather show their genitalia to the fine ladies on the decks of the the luxury liners: ‘We are the champions ».
Sex is a wide field, it seldom has to do with love, often with business: sex sells! Of course this TW-album doesn’t need this. Nevertheless: it has two naked women on its cover…
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Benjamin Staufer-the tears of things (Somnimage, Som0006):
After a crashcourse in ‘classical’ someone here is posing as a Gothic Liberace, flattering superficial late-romantic piano-tinkling with orchestral synthesizer-bombast in Beehive-sublimity. The result is just petty, pseudo-dark filmmusic. My dachshund likes it, but then he is only a kitch-loving sentimental dog.
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GONZO CIRCUS #55, febr./march 2003 (ddp):
Trespassers W, Sex and the end of it (Somnimage)
(Translated from Dutch to English)
Who feels like an adventure, without coming into conflict with his/her steady partner, must urgently listen to the latest release of Trespassers W. At the first notes, the listener imagines himself in a plastic bell. It gets shaken and white flakes start whirling. Poetically and variedly the band around the Hague philosopher-author-singer Cor Gout tells about sex.
Far from vulgarity and spectacle this subject matter is approached in a loving way. In an atmosphere which bathes in the grandeur of classic films, a story is told about an ice-cream man who evokes hot dreams with hundreds of house-wives. « Will the barmaid get laid ce soir? The playful sigh goes subsequently.
Then the naughty boys start wiping the floor with the hypocritical morality of people who on the one hand place the matrimonial institution on a pedestal, but on the other -purely to fight boredom- with as much passion surrender to the noble sport of fucking as many others as possible. The dreamy ‘Sweet Pea’ sounds as if some vamp from a near universe wants telephone-sex with us. For ‘Newly in stock’ The Residents read out their shopping list and thereby make a fool of the porn industry in an intelligent manner. ‘Tubular Belles’ or ‘We Are The Champions’ are no regular covers: they dummy-pass the listener constantly. ‘Moi Non Plus’ is a deconstruction.: the backbone being the raspy sample of Frans Friederich, which indicates the pain of sex. The pleasure is in the melody line, transposed from the string arrangement of the Gainsbourg-Bardot-version. Because of this the panting becomes ambivalent.
When we put all the pieces of the puzzle together, the picture gets clear. The sexual obstacle is always present. In our days it is there in the false promiscuity of sexclubs for couples, the security of the dark room, in cyberspace or in the porn industry. The restriction is not only in the repressive sexual climate of the period just before the sexual revolution: on this album the looking back goes even further. In ‘La Revue Nègre’ one returns to the frivolity of Josephine Baker. In ‘Tubular Belles’ one discusses the decadent bourgeois atmosphere of the art-deco, like in the extremely sensual pictures of Tamara de Lempicka. The final song is appropriately called ‘Grande Finale’: a voice, crooning like Brian Ferry at his best. Co-author is Khelifati, also known as Cheb Mami, the Algerian rai-singer. The cause was a scene from ‘Les Voleurs’, in which Cathérine Deneuve was picked up in a car. Possibly this called up associations with Tamara de Lempicka’s ‘Self Portrait in the Green Bugatti’ (1921). After all, in Trespassers W’s universe everyone is co-author for the thinking and feeling of the other.
The essence of the album is the thought that one has to get through the paralysis time after time again in order to feel the pleasure or the procreation (the end in the other meaning). The result is plainly astonishing and extremely moving. Never before the textual material sounded so melodious. Does this have to do with the subject matter or with the incredible quality which has been gathered on this disc? But I’m inclined to shout at the top of my voice: ‘We want more!’
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TESTCARD #12, summer 2003:
TRESPASSERS W
Sex and the End of it (CD)
Cover Collection (10″)
(Translated from Dutch to English)
Trespassers W, the band around songwriter Cor Gout, works tirelessly on its own history of the music in the 20th century, which more and more extends to a funny critical cultural history. With this here ‘concept’ album on the subject of sex we are at the start of a trilogy, which consequently will be followed up by ‘Drugs’ and ‘Rock’n’Roll’. Musically recorded in a large line-up amongst others with the help of Ronnie Krepel (Dull Schicksal), Sex and the End of it musically pulls out so many stops that even for such an eclectic band as Trespassers W it is unusual. The already well known references to The Residents, Kurt Weil and Hans Eisler are joined up by many sample-pieces coming from swing, rock’n’roll, industrial (in the Nurse-With-Wound-vein) and progrock from the Canterbury tradition. Even lyrically everything works in a collage style, going from Josephine-Baker-cult to deconstruction of Latin clichés and developed into a theme within a field of tension of pop and porno, stating that sex, despite its enormous cultural industrial eruption in the century which only just ended, is still secretly being made a taboo and in the end, as the title of the CD indicates, is in danger to get lost in reality because of its full-scale omnipresence in the media. It’s part of the quality of this musical-like album that sex is not illustrated by the usual samples, for instance reproducing the groaning of voices, but in a pleasant gentleman-tone with that encyclopedic urge, related to the lyrical cosmos of Alan Jenkins.
That Sex and the End of it appeared on a smal US-label that, for the rest humourlessly dark, is fishing in apocalyptic folk-waters, places the album in ill fitted and misleading areas. [Then, part about The Cover Collection].