12″ vinyl (single-sided), ini.itu, 2008
www.myspace.com/blindhaed2
As far as poetic titles go, Blindhaed wins. This single-sided LP, with almost twenty minutes playing time, carries the illustrious title “Whether That Will Make People Want To Become Archaeologists, We’ll Have To See”. As strange as it may sound, that title very well captures the music.
Blindhaed creates an experimental form of musique concrète, meaning they get sounds from all over the place and create their art with that. The sounds are used either in a straightforward or heavily manipulated manner, and this is where the title hits the proverbial nail on the head.
While the promo-sheet talks about the time it took to interpret the original sound, you can also see the archaeology reference in the title for the recognition aspects within the music. Like in archaeology, where a stone can be a flint axe, a spear point, or more practical as a grindstone for wheat, in the same way the clicking sound can be a manipulated bamboo straw, bells to alert the beginning of prayer, or more earthly: teaspoons in an empty stone mug previously filled with coffee.
The result is twenty minutes of highly artistically responsible sounds, which is for some people more interesting than for others. The guts it takes to release a single-sided LP in the era of CDs and MP3s is extremely praiseworthy and a larger future is ahead of this Belgian/Indonesian collaborative effort. Though in all honesty, I must admit that this particular release will not be my personal favorite.
[7/10]
— Bauke van der Wal