presentation at Pugh Pugh gallery, Berlin

When a musician or a DJ wants a ‘test-recording’ of his or her music on vinyl then he or she can ask for a ‘lacquer’.

Instead of making an edition through use of a mother-disc and reproduction plants (a costly process), one single disc is produced by means of a special process. For this an aluminum disc is used that is covered with vinyl. With a so-called ‘lathe’-machine the grooves are cut straight and manually into the vinyl. The result is a beautiful object.

My lacquer (from an edition of 6) was produced in California. The A-side contains the soundtrack of my video-performance “the Stairway at St.Paul’s”. The B-Side contains the same soundtrack but then played backwards or; the way the performance was done originally.

What’s special about this disc is that the grooves on the B-side are cut ‘inside-out’. To hear the version that’s sung backward one has to place the needle of the record player at the centre of the disc, instead of at the edge. The arm of the record player then slowly moves to the edge of the record.

I see this little piece of work as a sculpture in itself.

The record had to be made in California because there are (hardly) any producers in Europe that can cut records ‘inside-out’.

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