CD-album (42:40), 2008-02-29
Motok, MTK 010
EAN: 9991401093849

1. MODE (Ouverture) 2:50
2. MW 12:10
3. MODE 7:26
4. O2 (Oxygene) 2:51
5. DOM 4:44
6. E4 6:05
7. MODE (Finale) 1:24
8. POST-MODE 5:10
Total Time 42:40

All tracks written, arranged, produced, engineered and mixed by Nico J.J. Selen.

All tracks are recorded alive at the Motok, Enschede, the Netherlands, January 2003.

This album is dedicated to our (grand)father, he would have reached the age of 90 years on January 27th of 2003

Martin Selen: Synthesizer

Nico Selen: Synthesizers, Guitar, Effects

Photography: Lars Smook
www.larsfotografie.nl

Thanks to
Michael Selen,
Gosia Bezeg,
Barry Rikkerink,
Harm Dragt,
Louis Schreur,
Lars Smook,
Edwin Selen,
Fredryke Selen,
Martin Selen.

_{NoNotes is a project to create music without the use of notes
Some 40 years ago my father - who was a great cabinetmaker - took me to the factory where he worked. There I heared the finest industrial concert one can imagine. Various wood-workingmachines made as many different noises. But together the sounds grew to a symphony. As they were operated through power-electricity, they could not start at once. Through mostly three gears these machines had to reach their working-speed. From the moment of the initial start, of a machine, to it’s final working-gear, every machine made different sounds. Thus my love for minimal-industrial music orginated.
10 years later, as I for the first time expierenced playing a synthesizer, I realised that this instrument’s power does not lie in the keyboard. Some years later I bought my first synthesizer. It gave me the posibility to survey the country of soundscapes. A lot of this kind of music came out of my hands.
As I discoverd minimal music at the end of the 1970’s, I started playing that kind of music. It graduality evolved into minimal pop music. Although I made more pop-orientated music since 1984, I also kept playing minimal soundscapes. In 1986 I released the album “Lines” under the name Ilo Istatov.
At the end of 2002 a friend challenged me to make music completely different from my previous music.
All these elements come together, 40 years after my initial industrial music concert expierence, in this first NoNotes album.}

2003 January,
Nico Selen.

NONOTES - MODE (CD by Motok)
In the second Vital Weekly of this year we reviewed an online sampler, released by Motok. All works on the sampler had involved, one way or the other, Nico Selen, who started as O.R.D.U.C. in 1980 with a track for a Plurex Records, then a LP on his own New Bulwark label and consequently used various names and for each name he had a distinctive sound. His LP from 1980 is still available and thanks to the current revival of synthesizer/electro music, it's still bought and has brought Selen enough money to release a CD as No Notes together with Martin Selen, I believe his son, as the CD 'Mode' is 'dedicated to our (grand) father'. The (grand) father worked as a cabinetmaker and Nico Selen loved the industrial hammering of the machines in the workshop. It's the inspiration for this CD. Nonotes is the band and as such they don't play any notes.
Despite the inspiration from machinery it's not an industrial work in say the Throbbing Gristle or Vivenza sense. Nonotes switch on their analogue synthesizers and start switching knobs to create a dark, sometimes unsettling, form of ambient music. At times loud and angular with, in a few pieces, some rusty blocks of rhythm, this is what Conrad Schnitzler would describe as 'non-keyboard electronics'. Put together in various layers, this is more mood music than the factual representation of life in the factory. It's quite nice, certainly when played at a somewhat louder volume. It has no relationship to the previous more pop encounters of Selen as O.R.D.U.C. or The Bearcage and I must say this side of Selen is much more to my personal liking. A great come back album.

Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly 617, March 04, 2008

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Last updated: 2008-10-15