Minimal Wave Records

We’re proud to an­noun­ce a li­mited edi­tion hand-silkscreened 10” re­lease of Schedelvret­er, original­ly re­cor­ded and re­leased in 1985 on Tear Apart Tapes (NL). Schedelvret­er was the side pro­ject of Danny Bost­en of Das Ding. Danny tells the story of how he re­cor­ded these tracks:

“I had been mak­ing these re­petitive, pattern-based Das Ding songs and felt the need to do some­th­ing a lit­tle dif­ferent. Some­th­ing more or­ganic, with a nar­rative struc­ture to it. Rea­d­ing Shel­ley’s Fran­kenstein at the time, and look­ing at old ac­counts of Spanish ex­plor­ers in the Americas, in­spired me to make what I im­agined as the soundtrack to an im­agina­ry movie: bleak and de­solate. I had a Crumar synth that was fall­ing apart, and if you held down a chord and switched it off and then back on, the vol­tage would drop so the tones be­came in­dividu­al blips that soun­ded like human voices. I made some mas­sive drum sounds by layer­ing noise, used lef­tov­er four-track ad­di­tions in re­ver­se, and in­cluded some drums I found on a tape my broth­er had given me. I just layered it all on the four-track and played along. It made a nice lit­tle pac­kage of about seven pieces, so I made up a name for it, “Schedelvret­er,” which trans­lates as some­th­ing like “Skull Gobbl­er.” The tape was re­leased in 1985, but only a few were made at the time.”