why we love this

The German term “blecheintopf” roughly translates into “scrap metal hotpot”, setting up a deceptively brash premise. Sounds that would, on their own, be perceived as brutal fall into place according to a sun-bleached blueprint. A concrete tower steadily ascends from a foundation shrouded in acousmatic hiss.

about the record

De Fabriek (‘The Factory’) began in the late 1970s as a do-it-yourself music collective around Richard Van Dellen and Andries Eker in Zwolle, the Netherlands. First, they were inspired by Krautrock and related experimental music, later by industrial (noise) music. De Fabriek became a vital and highly productive part of the industrial music DIY cassette label culture of the 1980s and 1990s.

Blecheintopf is one of De Fabriek's earliest releases. Initially self-published in an edition of 10 in 1982, it immediately reappeared in a larger edition on Nico Selen's cassette label New Bulwark Records. Nico, who originally lived in the eastern Dutch town Enschede, had joined De Fabriek for this album under the pseudonym Wolff P. Rillings. He brought in the idea of making this album the second instalment of the series ‘Music for Modern Art Exhibitions’ on New Bulwark Records.

Blecheintopf roughly translates as ‘Scrap Metal Hotpot’, and it seems to perfectly capture its sound and its spirit: (post-)industrial, self-made, eclectic, mixed up.