Jaap Vink

Genre: ELECTRONIC

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Boomkat Product Review:

Vital collection of previously unreleased, visionary electronic scapes by a member of the pioneering Institute of Sonology in Utrecht. Unfathomably deep, wide and abstract sounds strongly recommended to fans of Roland Kayn or quieter Kevin Drumm works

The fantastic Recollection GRM series reveals a stunning suite of mostly unheard recordings by pioneering Dutch electronic composer, Jaap Vink; an important member of the Institute For Sonology, Utrecht, where he worked as a teacher and composer from 1967 until retiring in 1993. At the well-stocked and advanced institute (which made early, critical use of innovations from the Phillips laboratories), Vink’s work can be considered as following in the algorithmic and digital sound synthesis wormholes opened up by Gottfried Michael Koenig and Barry Truax et al, and also contributed to some of Roland Kayn’s incredible cybernetic recordings. This first ever retrospective of his work, however places Vink as a true visionary in his own right, unfurling some seven mid-to-longform works of a deeply absorbing sci-fi quality and unfathomably widescreen stereo scope.

Spanning selected Vink output 1968-1985, the collection reveals a composer in focussed pursuit of an electronic purity, on a quest to chart the microcosmos of micro-tonalities inherent within stochastic electronic tones and, through networks of recursive feedback processing, render them tangible as a body of almost orchestral textures. But we stress the almost, as Vink is patently in thrall to the abstract, transportive values of electronic music - rather than attempting to imitate instruments - and he remains a discreet but connective human presence who subtly coaxes the studio to reveal its secrets, constantly ‘rehearsing’ and extending his patches in an ongoing process. And in that sense he can be heard as a forerunner to reams of modern no-input mixer and modular synthesists on the hunt for the rarest electronic spice. Based on the evidence of this set, he’s something of a prescient Muad’Dib character when it comes to locating and controlling that spice.

Between the time-travel sickness-inducing keen of Screen [1968] and the head-engulfing scale of Tide 85, which was completed just prior to the Institute’s incorporation with the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in 1986, you’ll encounter a music for vast astral travel; a diaphanous sound suggestive of unimaginable dimensions and states of being, sublimating pathos to a zen-like suspension of the senses, encouraging swirling mental geometries beyond the simple colouring book lines that tend to be prompted by works of a lesser stature.