Soup of the Evening

Puin + Hoop
Er Zit Een Gat In De Soep
NETHERLANDS NARROMINDED NM065 CD (2014)

Since 2003, this is a three man (Remco, Erik and Roald) Dutch drone-based outfit born out of an unspecified post-rock outfit on their rest-break. Puin + Hoop could mean something like “Debris + Hope” in English, which is encouraging for us all. Er Zit Een Gat In De Soep means There Is A Hole In The Soup. Okaaay…

The three tracks cover 35 minutes, there is no information on the sleeve whatsoever apart from the name and title. These words appear as part of the cover image; a strangely pleasing freehand scrawl of wet on wet lettering over a background of wide-brushed acrylic cobalt blue and dark brown paint, mixing together in the centre of the picture plane into a dirty grey-green to create a brooding yet almost psychedelic three horizontal bands of colour. It has the initial look of being dashed off in a couple of minutes, but like all great abstract painting, you suspect there was a lot of preliminary activity to come to such an excruciatingly careless-looking result. And this is no bad thing. It appears that the track titles are made up from the cd’s title.

Track one, ‘Er zit’ (There Is) is vaguely like Fuck Buttons in approach but without the shouting or implied violence. More restful, but not without an abrasive edge, although the mastering softens it into a kind of medium-hard putty, poked with a careless thumb around the windows of your perception. Nice speeded up tape effect right at the end.

With the second track, ‘Een gat’ (A Hole), there is some vocal back in the mix – a soft groaning at the start of the track. Tap-delayed trebly guitar is paired with pulses from what sounds like a Stylophone for a couple of minutes until a nice Fender Rhodes keyboard part comes in, followed by church organ and distorted vocal radio samples. It’s relatively brief for this kind of ambient murk at around six and a half minutes.

Completing the hat-trick, ‘In de soep’ (In The Soup) reminisce fondly – if they are old enough to remember, that is – about 1990s ambient techno ever so slightly? About halfway through, P+H get stuck into mining a Cluster-like seam for all its mineral wealth. This kind of thing seems to me the product of a million youthful minds slumped semi-comatose on their knees in the current milieu of bedroom electronics jam sessions all over the world, but is all the better for that. We’ve all been there, but thanks to crisp production and decent mastering, this is a good example of the form.

You’ve gotta admire their enthusiasm. There seems to be around eight or nine previous Puin + Hoop releases, mostly on another Dutch label Tbfkagnk Records (possibly their own), plus a collaboration with Herman Wilken and Coen Oscar Polack, this also on Narrominded. Discogs says this is “limited to 100. Comes in hand-painted metal sleeve with paper attached”, which sounds interesting but the review copy I have here in my hands is a budget version with single square of paper printed on one side and a cd-r in a see-through plastic sleeve. Perhaps there’s an additional wealth of textual and visual information with the version you can order from Narrominded in its posh hand-painted metal sleeve, that’ll keep you entertained on a cold winter’s evening in front of the fire, or perhaps not – considering the dearth of information here and on the internet, P+H are keeping all their cards firmly up their sleeves it seems.