Bert Scholten - Hond Geworden
hetgeneriek
2025/09/26
- 1De verguldenavond
- 2Les
- 3Stap je terug
- 4Hond
- 5Lieve vuile stadhouder
- 6Ik ben een hond geworden
- 7Geen kleren meer
- 8Handschoentjes
- 9Eenhoorn
- 10Klote wolf
HG013
•
Open edition
On his third album ‘Hond Geworden’, Bert Scholten continues where he left off with ‘Dat Speelt Hier Niet’ (2023), creating songs about the speculaas woodcut set to erratic electronic compositions. Exploring these local Dutch traditions through exhibitions, videos, and songs, he transforms the archaic from quietly ours to something peculiarly present.
The talk-singing of ‘Dat Speelt Hier Niet’ has shifted into singing. ‘Hond geworden’ (‘Became Dog’) marks a more personal and intimate approach. Synths are combined with explorative drumming and vibraphone, injecting the electronic sounds with physical energy.
Scholten has a background in garage punk bands, DIY experimental music and performance art, but is often called a modern-day troubadour. Here’s what he wrote on the record sleeve:
“The woodcuts that hung in my parents’ staircase were something I always took for granted. The carvings in these speculaasplanken depict humans or animals. Dough is pressed into the board, knocked out, then baked into large biscuits. As I started looking into them I found out these biscuits had ambiguous meanings in Dutch social rituals. A man-shaped biscuit, a koekvrijer, could be gifted in public as a proposal. In contrast, an animal-shaped biscuit, such as the dog, wolf, and unicorn, was a gift with hidden moral lessons. These gestures subtly reveal social structures within our families and friendships, inhabiting a space where language becomes obsolete.
Last year, I released an album inspired by these speculaas customs. I sought to uncover the implicit aspects of this tradition that lie just beyond language. This follow-up album is a more personal take towards a tradition that is in a static state. Looking back, maybe I was trying to experience its spirit – or renewing a spirit of squandering, love, loss, and intimacy. A continuous attempt to reshape folklore.
The electronic songs dance around the moralizing energy, the exchange of aggression, and the release of underlying tensions embedded in these customs. By repeating single words, I found myself in a space where words began to lose their meaning. In the last song I recorded, this actually happened. I feel this is the right moment to let go of the tradition.”
The album is released as an LP+book and as a book folded into the LP jacket. The book contains photographs and drawings from exhibitions and performances in Haus der Kunst Munich, the Fries Museum, Tent Rotterdam and de Lakenhal.
The talk-singing of ‘Dat Speelt Hier Niet’ has shifted into singing. ‘Hond geworden’ (‘Became Dog’) marks a more personal and intimate approach. Synths are combined with explorative drumming and vibraphone, injecting the electronic sounds with physical energy.
Scholten has a background in garage punk bands, DIY experimental music and performance art, but is often called a modern-day troubadour. Here’s what he wrote on the record sleeve:
“The woodcuts that hung in my parents’ staircase were something I always took for granted. The carvings in these speculaasplanken depict humans or animals. Dough is pressed into the board, knocked out, then baked into large biscuits. As I started looking into them I found out these biscuits had ambiguous meanings in Dutch social rituals. A man-shaped biscuit, a koekvrijer, could be gifted in public as a proposal. In contrast, an animal-shaped biscuit, such as the dog, wolf, and unicorn, was a gift with hidden moral lessons. These gestures subtly reveal social structures within our families and friendships, inhabiting a space where language becomes obsolete.
Last year, I released an album inspired by these speculaas customs. I sought to uncover the implicit aspects of this tradition that lie just beyond language. This follow-up album is a more personal take towards a tradition that is in a static state. Looking back, maybe I was trying to experience its spirit – or renewing a spirit of squandering, love, loss, and intimacy. A continuous attempt to reshape folklore.
The electronic songs dance around the moralizing energy, the exchange of aggression, and the release of underlying tensions embedded in these customs. By repeating single words, I found myself in a space where words began to lose their meaning. In the last song I recorded, this actually happened. I feel this is the right moment to let go of the tradition.”
The album is released as an LP+book and as a book folded into the LP jacket. The book contains photographs and drawings from exhibitions and performances in Haus der Kunst Munich, the Fries Museum, Tent Rotterdam and de Lakenhal.
