Drone Records

QUEST - (an) Exterior

Format: MC

Label & Cat.Number: Infraction INFX 075

Release Year: 2021

Note: rare cassette (C-60) by FRANS DE WAARD's channel for "vintage analogue" ambience, think of early 80's dark synth music (COLIN POTTER, etc.) - "Deep synths passages, small shimmering melodies, vast drones, mildly processed field recordings, it is all one long, spacious journey of one of the unique voices in experimental music..." - lim. 50 copies with full colour fold out cover; CD version on request !

Price (incl. 19% VAT): €9.50

More Info

Frans De Waard. When he is not writing reviews for the long-running Vital Weekly column he helms, records an incredible amount of music under many different monikers. Each one has a personality. The name Quest (not to be confused with QST) is De Waard's ambient outlet. Vintage synths, wet ware, hiss, harmonics.

The history of Quest goes back to the mid-90 when 'ambient house' was looming large when Frans de Waard got tired of playing the same noise show as Kapotte Muziek and Beequeen and was still deep into the world of everything dark and drone-like. It was time for something lighter, ambient and, why not, perhaps a bit rhythmical.

A drum machine was bought but never understood and only used for a couple of pieces on the 'Questionmark' LP, released as QST in 1994. That was the premature end of QST, but as Quest, the project became more ambient and less rhythm and a bunch of releases on Noise Museum and Lunar in the mid to late 90s. Somewhere in the late 90s new possibilities and techniques came along and it was time to move away from analogue synthesizers, field recordings and four-track machines. It had been a good run.

Fast forward to 2014 and another development in technology. Apps developed for the iPad made it possible to create the rhythm music dreamed off in the mid-90s but that was never realized back then; QST all of a sudden got a restart, with lots of pieces being composed resulting in a 12" released by Inta (2017), a CD for Static Caravan (2017) and Carpe Sonum Novum (2019).

In 2015 Infraction Records raised the question "is this technology also useful for some good old ambient music as Quest?", and never tired of trying new things out, Frans de Waard set to work. In a born again Quest, he decided to combine his newfound love for iPad technology in combination with some of his rusty and trusted synthesizers and with his old four-track machines, walkmans and field recordings. A high meet low sort-of technological approach, if you will. So far that has resulted in an album per year in the last five years. Of these, '(An) Exterior' was the first to get started but the second to finish. In fifty-three minutes, seven pieces of music are played, flowing like a breeze, like a storm and at times without any visible movement. Deep synths passages, small shimmering melodies, vast drones, mildly processed field recordings, it is all one long, spacious journey of one of the unique voices in experimental music.

When looking for a cover that surpasses the prescriptive photography from a landscape, Frans asked his close friend, musician and visual artist Bertin van Vliet if he could use some of his geometric drawings he posted online. Van Vliet invited Frans over and showed the entire collection of these drawings, a whole book full of them, which were all scanned for further inspection, which then resulted in the idea to do a limited edition facsimile reprint of the original Van Vliet drawing book, with a bonus CDR.

All of this resulted in a beautiful release, across various formats;

1. A CD in a digipack, edition of 300
2. A cassette with J-Card in a plastic case, edition of 50
3. A CD and bonus CDR (41 minutes of additional music) in a book bound reprint of the original Bertin van Vliet drawing book, edition of 25 copies
4. All of 1, 2, and 3 with an additional bonus CDR (40'20), with the original Bertin van Vliet book in a signed edition of 1 copy

Mastering by Peter John Nijland
Design by Timothy O'Donnell

https://infraction.bandcamp.com/album/an-exterior