Portable Vaudeville - Holland Festival

Portable Vaudeville
Holland Festival
Infinite Expanse
Australia/UK, 1983/2025
LP

Music created by the duo of Hessel Veldman and Kees van Ede for a 1983 Fluxus—vaudeville?—performance that I frankly find it impossible to picture, which only makes this a more intriguing artifact. The A-side is a slow build-up of fluttering rhythms and light-show synth leads that sets the stage for a quietly jaw-dropping B-side that folds in minimalist beats like a proleptic Civilistjävel! demo coming to them in a fever dream. The B-side is so striking, in fact, that it turned up on a compilation on the shadowy Light Sounds Dark label, trusted experts in the realm of “Where on Earth did this come from?”