NOISE IN THE ATTIC

I've been thinking about posting Indirekt's Nacht und Nebel EP for a while; 1000 Aspirines mentioned it recently and I think this one's been overlooked in favour of their earlier work (which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact I played drums on it, by the way!). But there's one small problem: the revered Grand Theft Audio are about to release a 2CD(!) Indirekt retrospective, featuring all their records and then some. Now Brian GTA is a cool guy, but he's also very protective of the stuff he (re-)releases. So I'm not going to post the EP. Instead, I'll post some practice tapes we made 5 months before entering the studio, which I recently digitized from an old reel-to-reel tape lying in the attic. The recording quality is a bit rougher than the EP, the vocals especially sound a bit tinny, so... for research purposes only!
In the beginning of '86 I was sitting at home, bored, without a band, fed up with punk and listening to the Smiths, when old chums Indirekt called me up to ask if I could play drums for 3 weeks. Stijn, their second drummer, had quit; something with his girlfriend not allowing him to play in 2 bands anymore (he was also with World War Rockers). Well, those 3 weeks turned into 8 months, lots of gigs and lots of nice memories. Like the time we played with Disorder in Belgium and it turned out they didn't bring anything with them: with guitars, drumsticks, drums and distortion pedals borrowed from us they ripped through their classic More Than Fights and tore up the place (but not our stuff, fortunately). Or the gig in Antwerpen where a toothless Sid Vicious clone wearing a leather jacket inscribed with the words "BORN TO LUL" fell head first into the bass drum while pogoing. Well, you get the picture, grandpaw will get on with the music now...
May '86 we recorded early versions of 3 songs that would appear on Nacht und Nebel; the title track was already pretty much finished, although the EP version also has some sound effects and a great moody guitar solo by Martin Cramer (ex-(late line-up) Panic, also engineer at the great De Domme Lul studio). Prose in C, a very angry song inspired by the girlfriend mentioned before (that's "personal politics" for you!), sounds finished as well. The thing that amazes me is how fast and busy my drumming was back then; fortunately with the EP we had Martin Cramer around to tell me to play slower and more to the point...
Third track Niemandsland, still called Bermtoerisme(?) at that point, has different vocals/lyrics from the released version. Ik Wilde Leven, the EP's closing track, actually was a song I'd written for Gepopel that we never got to play because we broke up; I taught it to Indirekt some time after we did these recordings, so I have no choice but to post the EP version. Go ahead, break my arm, I fuckin' wrote the damn thing. The "funny stuff" at the end is our idea of playing disco; Rick Blom does a pretty good slappin' bass, while Indirekt's "fifth member" Ko plays keyboards (I remember doing the cheesy synth-drum break on the keyboard simultaneously!).
Comparing these "live" practice tapes with the EP tracks, you can hear Indirekt put a lot of work into their records, doing lots and lots of takes until it sounded flawless. But I still like that rough stuff too, in a way...

Nacht und Nebel
Prose in C
Bermtoerisme (early version of Niemandsland)
(Practice, May '86)

Ik Wilde Leven
(EP version, Oct. '86)