Goem

Goem started mid 1996 when Roel Meelkop gave Frans de Waard a smallelectronic device, which he found in a thriftshop in Rotterdam. Thedevice was called the Student Stimulator. Until today it is unknownwhat it was used for, but most likely it was part of a researchprogram exploring the mysteries of human sleep. The machine justgenerates pulses, of which speed and intensity can be changed. Fransdabbled around with the machine using Steve Reich’s Phase Shiftingtechniques and presented a demo back to Roel, who thought it was’interesting’, but not as an end-result. Upon his suggestion, the twore-worked the original demo, by adding sound effects, analoguesynthesizers and filtering. Most of those sessions ended up on the first CD ‘Stud Stim’, which was released mid 1997 by Raster Music.

By this time, Goem were invited at very short notice to play in Barcelona, during a side festival of Sonar. Roel and Frans invited Peter Duimelinks to join forces and since then Goem are a trio. The debut concert was an open air event in the old centre near the Barcelona Museum of Modern Art.

Since then Goem have played many concerts in normal concert halls, but also at the Moderne Musseet in Stockholm, art galleries, a boat, a camping, Transmediale (Berlin), Galerie Fuer Zeitgenossische Kunst and the Earational festival in The Netherlands. One live recording made at the VPRO radio studios has been released on CD by Staalplaat as part of the Mort Aux Vaches series.

Goem have released works on Raster Music, Noise Museum, Staalplaat and in the near future on Ash International, Ethernity, Fourth Dimension and 12K. Goem have been part of compilations by Mille Plateaux, 12K, Bip Hop and have remixed tracks of David Kristian, Ultra Milkmaids, Super Furry Animals and Auch.

Goem’s music is better described as minimal pulse (techno) than as ‘glitch’ or ‘clicks & cuts’. In best Dutch tradition, Goem shows techno in its purest form.

“Goem managed to make instruments out of the audience’s bodies, routing deep rumblings straight through the listener’s limbs. Goem’s rock-tumbler swirl proved one of the festival’s more useful inclusions in the way that it tied the rhythmic emphasis of techno to the latticed patterns of 1960s minimalists like Steve Reich and Philip Glass in one direction, and to the arch austerity of noise brutalists like Pan Sonic in another. And indeed, the sonic density and richness explored by most of the artists on the bill refuted the myth of minimalism which has often been attributed to the current school. Their structures may be simple on the surface, but the effects are voluminous, creating a cavern of tiny collisions like a cross section of atomic fusion” (The Wire, July 2001 on the Mutek festival)

Releases