review: O.R.D.U.C - 107

O.R.D.U.C. (short for One-O-Seventh Royal Dutch Underground Company) from The Netherlands became almost world famous in the worldwide cassette culture of the early 1980's. Their song "Crazy Computer" was released on a Plurex compilation back then. Later the song appeared on the self released album 'Pink & Purple' from 1981. After some cassette releases there was some silence.
In 2007 O.R.D.U.C. and their own record company Motok came back to life after a sort of hibernation. Since then the left overs of the original LP are sold mostly through my webshop. Also a release with some old material is being planned for some time now on Enfant Terrible.
Next to that there has been a lot of activity lately around Motok both for O.R.D.U.C. as other related projects as NoNotes and E.M.M. This summer a very nice and ultra limited 7 inch appeared by O.R.D.U.C. with one reworked song from 1980 and a new track. Now there is this full lenght album with different versions of these 7 inch tracks and some more reworks of old 1980's songs and some new material.
A nice thing is that the new songs do not sound out of place at all and the best thing is that I do not feel that the music is outdated. For me this means that the music of O.R.D.U.C. is quite timeless... it has passed the test of time and is as nice to listen to right now as it was 25 years ago.
The reason for this is that this music is beyond genre or style definitions. It is crazy and weird and uncommon in every sense. And just this makes it strong and enjoyable.
What you hear are minimalistic and at times simple song structures done with lo-fi and cheap electronics and production methods. Fans of obscure 1980's cassette releases will know what I am talking about... for others... well think something in between minimal synth pieces sounding a bit poppy but too strange for dancefloors and at the same time experimental but not harsh and loud enough for going into the industrial side of things.
This LP '107' is in a way quite close to 'Pink & Purple'. The mix of tracks is great with poppy songs and stranger pieces and even a Kosmische Scene influenced track. The musician calls this "minimal wave" but this is so much beyond that. Also I think this style defintion was not really used 25 years ago... so why use it now for music by one of the original musicians?! O.R.D.U.C. is so much above that.
The record comes in an edition of 250 copies and will be available soon from my webshop.