Binnensuis by Gluid

Binnensuis is a short theater play/dance performance, made by dancer Janneke Lenzen, musician Bram van den Oever (Gluid) and writer Jehudi van Dijk.

Binnensuis is an experiment. The monologues Jehudi van Dijk wrote for this performance, were recorded by Bram van den Oever with the voice of Janneke Lenzen. He then modified and remixed these recordings into a stunning piece of music. Dancer Janneke Lenzen worked with this material to come up with a fitting choreography. For a long time the three individual creators of Binnensuis worked seperately on this project. Only in the final stage of the process all the parts were fused together to form Binnensuis.

Binnensuis wants to show the disturbing world inside the head of an alienated, lonely woman, who rarely leaves her house and is plagued by a multitude of different phobia and severe neurotic behaviour.

Esc.rec. felt that Gluid’s soundtrack (if you can still call it that) for this performance is so strong and autonomous that it was decided to make a release out of it. The unique, handcrafted artwork for the limited release (50 copies) is cooked up by Vormversterker. The artwork for this (unlimited) version is also made by Vormversterker.

--

Review by Theo Ploeg in OOR:
Te laat ontdekt! Binnensuis is de soundtrack van een dansvoorstelling van Bram van den Oever (Gluid), Janneke Lenzen en Jehudi van Dijk die in juni te zien was bij De Kofferbak in Kampen. Wat had ik die voorstelling graag gezien. Binnensuis voor de oren is briljant. Ja, briljant ja. De door Van Dijk geschreven teksten gaan over een vereenzaamde en wereldvreemde vrouw die met de stem van Lenzen en de geluidsexperimenten van Van den Oever tot leven wordt gewerkt.

Vanaf de eerste seconde trekt Binnensuis je onder haar huid, laat je haar smetvrees, angsten en neuroses beleven en maakt zich een klein half uur later weer van je los. Een intrigerende en confronterende ervaring rijker. Met dank aan Van den Oever die zijn muziek – soms knisperend en rustig, dan weer hectisch en verontrustend – volledig in dienst stelt van het verhaal dat Lenzen op haast alledaagse wijze vertelt. Doen ze zo goed dat ik in bijvoorbeeld ‘Ik Meng Me Er Gewoon Tussen’ of ‘Niet Omkijken’ de neiging moet onderdrukken de cd uit te zetten. Té confronterend. Kijk, dat is kunst geschreven in hoofdletters.

De dansvoorstelling heb ik gemist, maar dankzij het kleine platenlabel voor elektronische experimenten ESC.REC. uit Deventer kan ik toch nog van Binnensuis genieten. En dat zou iedereen moeten doen. Wees er wel snel bij, er zijn maar vijftig exemplaren beschikbaar.

--

Review by FdW in Vital Weekly:
In Dutch ‘geluid’ means sound, ‘gluid’ could be a shortened version thereof, and ‘Binnensuis’, could be short for ‘Binnenshuis’, home interior. To explain this proofs the difficulty about this release, well at least for those who don’t speak Dutch. The Dutch texts, written by Jehudi van Dijk, deal with anxiety, phobia of all kind and neurosis. They are read by a dancer, Janneke Lenzen, who reads with a great voice, and set to music by Bram van den Oever.

They all came together, after each finished their own part of it, and made a short dance of this. I could ramble that seeing is believing, but I agree with Esc.Rec here: the music stands well by itself and it’s good to see this released as a CDR. The voices are not cut, but they loop through echo units and set to a warm bed of electronics. A bit like Expanding/Highpoint Lowlife, but the addition of voices make it to something wholly unique.

The anxiety and neurosis really come alive in the spoken word/text of “stepping on dust (don’t do it, stop), turning up the heat (or did I do that already), who are my friends, do I think, it’s not scary, it is…”.

It’s not scary music, or even scary lyrics, but it makes a truly wonderful combination. One is sucked into this fascinating world, and I really regret that so many of my non dutch speaking listeners will not be able to understand this. Almost a radio play like piece this one, I could hope for a translation one day. While dance is not my art discipline, I wish I saw this one.

Esc.rec. is a small, critically acclaimed record label for adventurous music, founded in 2004 by Harco Rutgers in Deventer, NL.

escrec.com