More Dutch love for these close-to-summer days. The final album by Nasmak, Silhouette, truth be told, was a sell-out. And truth be told, was absolutely their best work. I imagine it was a hard sell to quantify back then, take a spellbinding blend of Japanese-indebted electronic pop, mix in the sinewy, fretless-bass sound of Japan-”the band”-indebted synth rock, and gargantuan electro-percussion-driven dance music…and hope it sells? Well it seemed that great feats of poking the bear didn’t do much to make Nasmak a star band, outside of the Netherlands, and inside the Netherlands scratched whatever ties they had to their, then fans. Well, with time, I think we can honestly say it’s everyone’s loss.
For this Eindhoven group, Nasmak, at the time of Silhouette, found themselves whittled-down from a five-piece post-punk group to what amounted to be some weird trio finding their halfway point between the lane of YMO and obscure New Romantic music. This version with Theo van Eenbergen (fretless bass), Henk Janssen (keys), and Toon Bressers (drums and e-percussion) had grown tired of their past.
In the past, they had been known as a group of the lineage of groups like A Certain Ratio or other mechanical-sounding Factory Records-like post-punk band. Though they had a certain measure of success releasing LPs on small, Dutch indie label Plurex Records they were caught between two spheres. On one sphere, was there propulsive also ran post-punk albums that cycled through all sorts of off-brand versions of Talking Heads-like, Pere Ubu-styled notty, angular punk music which hugely influential listeners like John Peel would love. Then the other sphere, was their noisy, self-released C60-cassette albums that they worked in conjunction with pioneering female electronic musician Truus de Groot (as Nasmak Plus Instruments) full of industrial noise and experimental drone music. Somehow, they were able to join those best bits on what would be their influential release 4our Clicks bringing them comparisons to The Residents and Gang of Four. What was becoming their death-rattle was their lack of focus, even if critics crowned that album their best work yet.
Things finally came to ahead for Nasmak’s fourth, “proper” album. Cutting loose of the members who wanted to still go down the overtly experimental end of the musical spectrum, the remaining trio tried to explore concise Pop music. For a crew that always prided itself on sounding entirely different on each album, this new and (what would in turn be) final change was unique.
On Silhouette, very overt influences heard in the tonality of Japanese synth instruments and in the scales of Eastern music had started to infiltrate their creative space. Deliberately more airy and open, less dense and claustrophobic, all of the songs created by this smaller crew appeared to actually tread a wonderful new kind of minimal wave.
At times when you hear songs like “Crystal Clear” one can’t not but try to make fanciful connections. What would Japan had sounded if they tried to introduce some of that wayward Italian minimalism? Even they wouldn’t have sought to take attention away from David Sylvian’s voice with female backup vocals — but should they have tried it? That song makes its statement that there were other, alternate angles yet to be explored. The opener “Visions” somehow meets New Order at their own game, in the same year of our Lord, to comprehend the higher fun quotient in upping the “dance” of dance-punk. “Air” likewise inches gorgeous Eastern ambient pop into a harder edge that only a wayward group like Nasmak could introduce. “Believe In Woman” treads a glorious Balearic line, in a wonderfully cutting way. Imagine “Electric Avenue” laced with Interior’s heady New Age Pop, intercut with some ingenious lyricism.
For me, it’s such a shame to hear so many tracks that sound far more forward-thinking than Nasmak was given credit for only because they had that “harder” cross to bear. After the evolutionary dance-punk of “Believe In Woman”, who knew they would end the album on such a sublime ambient ballad like “Womb”. Post-punkers might hate them for slowing down their grind, finding crystalline FM synths, and sliding around fretless bass lines but to Nasmak’s credit that was their best stitch.
Part Cluster, part Inoyama Land, and part Human League, if you didn’t know the group was Dutch, you’d assume you’d stumble upon a lost bit of new spirit New Age simply by hearing the warm ambiance of “Womb”. Much more subtle than any of their prior work, the album ends on a note signaling that they found their way, to a bit of greatness.
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just wanted to say thanks