SPASMODIQUE
JUST ANNOUNCED NEW SHOWS
2024
The seventh studio album Hold On To A Scream by the Rotterdam based underground band Spasmodique will be released on April 15, 2023 (Record Store Day), followed by a number of performances in the Netherlands.
Hold On To A Scream will be released on LP and CD by the label Sounds Haarlem Likes Vinyl. Eight new songs were written and rehearsed during the period of lockdowns (20/21) and largely recorded live in early 22, in the Rotterdam based Far Out Sounds studio by Niek Driesschen. The album was completed, mixed and mastered in Studio 2X2 by Spasmodique’s drummer Reinier Rietveld.
Internationally acclaimed cult band Spasmodique existed for 40 years in 2021. Originated in 1981, in the corridors of a psychogeriatric nursing home in Capelle a/d IJssel, the quartet developed into a relentless live band that played throughout Europe during the 1980s and early 1990s and released four studio albums.
The group officially disbanded in 1992, but singer/guitarist Mark Ritsema, guitarist Arjo Hijmans, bassist Martin Docters van Leeuwen and drummer Reinier Rietveld continued to meet each other, with the album Villa Delirium (2002) as their first achievement. The last studio album Six was released in 2016, together with the career-spanning box set All And More of 11 CDs and 3 DVDs. Both products were received with success and Spasmodique can also still count on a loyal audience in the clubs.
On the new album Hold On To A Scream, Spasmodique once again excels in conjuring underground rock and post-punk, intuitively created and dominated by guitars and hypnotically tight rhythms. At the same time, the band broadens with pure, but no less dark songs like Orphaned Serenade and Meander. The 'scream' in the title does not express despair or fear, but rather refers to the urgent and inspiring primal scream that has been driving Spasmodique for more than 40 years.
Foto: van Jeroen Dessauvagie
The illustrious City Park Murders is Spasmodique's first recording since their album SIX (2016). A dark murder mystery in traditions of earlier Spasmodique songs such as The Small World and Harbourtown, where the band also show their darkest side musically. The accompanying video is a collaboration between Mark Ritsema and the makers of the well-known Adrian Borland-documentary Walking In The Opposite Direction (2016), Marc Waltman and Jean-Paul van Mierlo. An equally mysterious tribute to the grubby cult video nasties full of cheap horror and visual obscurity, which you could rent for home entertainment at the video store in the 1980s.
City Park Murders – Spasmodique
(Written by Spasmodique)
Filmed and directed by Marc Waltman / Boegbeeld Videoproducties
Produced by Jean-Paul van Mierlo / Stichting Opposite Direction
Many thanks to Amy & Esther Abdala
Copyright: Spasmodique / Stichting Opposite Direction 2021