The Dirt by Monday W.

The Dirt is an audio archive in the form of 5 digital albums composed of 13 tracks each. These 65 tracks contain only electric guitar. The Dirt is the documentation of a series of spontaneous experiments with texture and composition. The compositions are simple and fairly consistent. These albums with all the different tracks are not unlike a catalog of color swatches. By splitting the signal from the electric guitar and sending it through various effect loops, compositions are created in which the sound color is the starting point for exploring the final fixed form. The tracks were recorded on tape at home and then digitized.

The physical edition consists of 50 unique(!) cassettes with improvisations recorded directly on tape, an edition of 6 small photos, a poster with accompanying text and a download code for the 5 albums.

Monday W. is a moniker of painter and musician Hidde van Schie. Van Schie has released music in different genres under different names, like The 21st Century, Wild Wild Ambient Boys and Friday Wilkinson.

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Review by SSK in Vital Weekly:
"Ah, some percussive guitar playing. Do I hear some Frippertronics there? A demo for an Explosions in the Sky intro, maybe? Wait a second, there are 65 of their ditties, snapshots, and musical guitar Polaroids, one might say. 65! It shouldn't really be a surprise Esc.rec from Deventer not only delivers musical goods on a very frequent basis and with stellar results, but the label also excels in physical niceness, often with neat packaging, original hand-printed designs, et cetera. And with clever artistic concepts, too.

Hidde van Schie = Monday W or vice versa, whatever you like. He has made the 65 short-form pieces collected under the title The Dirt. Basically, five albums of 13 tracks featuring only electric guitar: a "documentation of a series of spontaneous experiments with texture and composition." Pure, simple, pretty fragile and remember the catalogue charts of colours Gerhard Richter made? Well, in all variations, there's undoubtedly coherence in an unbalanced equilibrium between colour and texture, effect loop and clean signal, and analogue recording and digital processing. There's a searching, unsteady quality to these tunes - an uncertainness, in a way - trying hard not to be fixed or fixated. Yet the digital versions, the five albums, are indeed manifested, set in stones of ones and zeros. Maybe that's why Van Schie also made a physical edition consisting of 50 unique(!) cassettes with improvisations recorded directly on tape, an edition of 6 small photos, a poster with accompanying text and a download code for the five albums. And the tape is an altogether different proposition, for this a one-on-one encounter per se. Here, the connection between the recording artist and listener is as immediate and short-circuited as one basically gets, short of a private live concert.

Van Schie shares two poignant memories on the spectacular riso-printed poster. Both inform a potential context for the music. Or you can instantly try and forget about these. Let the mind wander in magical wonder. Of sounds heard and music unheard. Or good news and bad. Thoughts floating on their own wavelengths or concentrated layerings of the drone. Of expansion and contraction. Tales of a garbage heap of colour, low vibrating frequencies, and shrill echoes. Complex, frail, intense and movingly up-close and personal, The Dirt monumentalises something like a literary form that might be called 'an empty plot' in the most poetic of ways."

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Review by Ben Taffijn in Nieuwe Noten:
"Vandaag sta ik stil bij Monday W, het alias van Hidde van Schie, die het uit vijfenzestig (!) stukken bestaande ‘The Dirt’ afleverde, waarvan er vrijwel niet één de drie minuten overschrijdt. Allen zijn gespeeld met een elektrische gitaar, duidelijk voorzien van een batterij aan effect pedalen. En ieder stukje kent een eigen patroon, een eigen geluidsexperiment. Binnen de delen zit dan ook opvallend weinig variatie, Monday W. bekijkt de klank binnen zo’n deel van alle kanten en haalt alles eruit wat erin zit. Tussen de delen onderling zit echter wel de nodige variatie, een bijna eindeloze serie boeiende klankuitingen. Een constante daarbij is wel het vrij dynamische en ritmische karakter van de stukken. Maar het meest wonderlijke blijft dat dit allemaal door louter een gitaar wordt voortgebracht, weliswaar met behulp van die effectpedalen, maar dan nog. Een bijzonder rijk klankuniversum wat we hier horen."

Tracklist

1.	The Dirt 01-01	1:08

2.	The Dirt 01-02	2:00

3.	The Dirt 01-03	3:18

4.	The Dirt 01-04	2:34

5.	The Dirt 01-05	1:58

6.	The Dirt 01-06	2:16

7.	The Dirt 01-07	1:48

8.	The Dirt 01-08	2:42

9.	The Dirt 01-09	2:48

10.	The Dirt 01-10	1:14

11.	The Dirt 01-11	2:24

12.	The Dirt 01-12	2:24

13.	The Dirt 01-13	1:24

14.	The Dirt 02-01	1:26

15.	The Dirt 02-02	2:04

16.	The Dirt 02-03	5:20

17.	The Dirt 02-04	2:04

18.	The Dirt 02-05	1:53

19.	The Dirt 02-06	3:18

20.	The Dirt 02-07	0:50

21.	The Dirt 02-08	3:20

22.	The Dirt 02-09	2:22

23.	The Dirt 02-10	3:54

24.	The Dirt 02-11	2:16

25.	The Dirt 02-12	2:20

26.	The Dirt 02-13	3:04

27.	The Dirt 03-01	2:24

28.	The Dirt 03-02	1:36

29.	The Dirt 03-03	3:16

30.	The Dirt 03-04	1:44

31.	The Dirt 03-05	3:00

32.	The Dirt 03-06	2:01

33.	The Dirt 03-07	2:38

34.	The Dirt 03-08	3:44

35.	The Dirt 03-09	3:22

36.	The Dirt 03-10	2:09

37.	The Dirt 03-11	1:20

38.	The Dirt 03-12	1:36

39.	The Dirt 03-13	2:08

40.	The Dirt 04-01	2:02

41.	The Dirt 04-02	2:38

42.	The Dirt 04-03	3:00

43.	The Dirt 04-04	3:12

44.	The Dirt 04-05	4:00

45.	The Dirt 04-06	3:12

46.	The Dirt 04-07	2:24

47.	The Dirt 04-08	3:16

48.	The Dirt 04-09	2:05

49.	The Dirt 04-10	3:18

50.	The Dirt 04-11	1:36

51.	The Dirt 04-12	1:08

52.	The Dirt 04-13	1:48

53.	The Dirt 05-01	2:47

54.	The Dirt 05-02	3:12

55.	The Dirt 05-03	2:42

56.	The Dirt 05-04	5:24

57.	The Dirt 05-05	3:20

58.	The Dirt 05-06	5:36

59.	The Dirt 05-07	4:16

60.	The Dirt 05-08	1:52

61.	The Dirt 05-09	3:36

62.	The Dirt 05-10	3:44

63.	The Dirt 05-11	2:46

64.	The Dirt 05-12	3:16

65.	The Dirt 05-13	1:14

Credits

released September 22, 2023

All music & images – Hidde van Schie
Graphic Design – Two To Tango
Riso print – Hippolyte

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