For Gore Lovers

It's the happiest time of the year, and I'm watching horrormovies as if my life were depending on it. For fellow genre-lovers; here are some of the highlights of this month. For people that are not into guts, weirdo's, unneccesary nudity and wild chases with or without chainsaws; scroll baby scroll.... all the way down!

I: Haute Tension (2003)
A french horrormovie by Alexandre Aja. This one had it all; gay love, a guy that looks like a ranger, but does nasty things with chopped off heads... lots of suspence, great acting and an unexpected brilliant twist in the plot. A definite keeper, and it ended up in the top 25 scariest movies of all time!


II: Body Bags (1993)
Nice 'vintage' horror triptych of genius John Carpenter (Halloween, The Fog, The Thing) and Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist). This one came to me in a package with a note enclosed: "this is the movie we talked about last week, hope you enjoy it". That was the nicest thing ever, especially because I really enjoyed it. These three short films (The Gass Station, Hair, Eye) were all very different, one was really funny and another gave me sweaty palms, but I saw things in all three of them that I saw in movies that are much younger than these. Really worthwhile if you like orang-y blood.


III: Devil (2010)
I was told that this one was superscary and I must say that the concept seemed kind of appealing to me. A bunch of people getting stuck in an elevator is nasty to begin with (I know this from personal experience) but when people start dying every time the light turns off (electricity malfunction?) it gets even nastier. I thought of Cube immediately and hoped for a nice psychological game with some nice gore added to it. Nevertheless, I should have remembered that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. He likes religion and stories that are full circle. I'm not into that, it's not what I look for in a horrormovie. I like bad endings and even more.. the unexpected. Not a keeper, but at least there was no Haley Joel Osment to overact this movie to death.


IV: The Human Centipede (2010)
Last but REALLY NOT least: a dutch horrormovie that kept me nauseous for quite some time. Director Tom Six and his wife apparently wrote the movie and also came up with the rather sick idea of having a MAD german doctor (Dieter Laser, awesome name huh) sew together three people and give them only one digestive system. After some experiments on dogs, he does it for real. Just try to picture what this human centipede looks like and one can only imagine what happens with the second and the last person, when the first one eats. Not for weak stomachs, but really original and well made. And oooh, the mad doctor... love his looks!


Here's some of the sound that goes with all that terror:

Goblin - Sleepwalking get it here (YSI)



Goblin - Suspiria get it here (YSI)

Puha Party

Join us tomorrow December 17th for some rollatordisco at PUHA's Greedy X-mas party in Utrecht! Puha is a funky little shop in the Hardebollenstraat, that sells great stuff by young independent designers (they've got the very last pairs of our Hand in Glove mittens for example). So get your pressies while drinking and dancing; Christmas shopping doesn't get any better than this!!

Now let's hope and pray we survive this trip with Blanche through the snow and icy streets (definitely not the right weather conditions for a soundsystem!)...

Quick fix

Sorry guys, I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment. I just handed in an illustration and now I've got to pack my stuff and go to Rotterdam to pick up the other Dutch Doll and Blanche, and take the train to Utrecht to play at a party tonight. So no personal disclosures, no background info and no uploads this time. Luckily embedding a video is done in a flash and I've been dying to blog about these two anyway!

Some my favorite female UK MCs (Envy, Mz Bratt, BabyBlue, Ruff Diamondz) are doing it for themselves on this remix of Tinchy Stryders' Game Over. For a while I was afraid grime was sliding down a steep slick slippery slope, but this track gives me hope.




While I was slaving over this impossible deadline, with the rain (and later snow - lots of it!) gushing down outside, all I had to do is look at this video and everything was alright again. A grinding cookie monster, what more do you want?!?

Kinda newsworthy

For some reason I lately enjoy listening to the Dutch radio's news channel while working. I think it's the voices of the people chattering away that make me feel like I have company (uhm this sounds pretty pathetic..). They play only one song per hour or so, and usually it's pretty middle of the road. With a startle I realized that now that I'm completely up to date with what's going on in the real world, I might be losing touch with what's happening in the world of music! So I hurried myself online and put up a search for new musical input. I hereby present you some of my findings. Not all tunes are "fresh from the press", but in my opinion they're still newsworthy.



Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar (Ft. Wu-Tang Clan)(Chrome Remix) . Get it here (YSI).
Love love love this song and love it even more now.




Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie xx - NY is Killing Me. Get it here (YSI).
An album is on its way!



Bon Iver and St. Vincent - Roslyn. Get it here (YSI).
Definitely not a current affair (2009), but what the heck, this song is beautiful.

Textile in the Mix

Wearing two pairs of socks, jeans, a singlet, a t-shirt, a blouse and the most hideous (and huge) wollen cardigan you've ever seen, the summer seems so far away now. But it was the summer when we started this project... and this december we will reveal it, at CBK Rotterdam!
Haadjar Fris, an artist/teacher from Rotterdam asked six (fairly) young designers from Rotterdam to collaborate with six women that weren't born in Holland, but who are experts at a 'forgotten' technique such as knitting, crocheting or embroidery. We were supposed to give this somewhat oldfashioned craft a fresh look by mixing it with modern techniques, views or material.

I remember thinking: 'oh, this can be fun but I hate crochet so I really hope she's not going to match me with a crochet-person'. What did I get? I know, I jinxed it. As it turns out, I hate it so much that I almost gave up on the project, because I just don't have the patience or the love for it.

In the end, I decided to just ignore the wool and the needle and turn the whole thing around and now the exhibition will finally happen. On saturday december 18th from 14.30h - 16.30. Expect original (affordable) pieces by Kwannie Tang, Yvonne Gaemers, Daisy Kroon, Zelda Beauchampet, Diana van Golden and yours truly.

Join us for a drink and a happy dance!

Saturday december 18th, Nieuwe Binnenweg 75, Rotterdam

Yeahyeah, I'm a fan.

Okay, it's been all over the blogs... but it's just so great, I can't stop talking about it: Warpaint has a new album called The Fool and it covers my musical needs.

This psychedelic rock quartet from Los Angeles have been together since 2004 (as a trio at first), and have only released two records till this day. The first one was called Exquisite Corpse and was also really great and gloomy and awesome. The song Krimson from that one has been stuck on repeat. This new album is equally special, if not more. It is a nice ride from 'uptempo' grungy songs to intimate ballads and it never loses the raw, dark, yet really feminine sound.

Yeahyeah, I'm a fan.

And because good things need to be shared, I give you the most wonderful song on the record that was made downloadable by Rough Trade as a bonus with the vinyl. Baby, soon you will be humming it everywhere you go..

Warpaint - Baby get it here (YSI)

Variété De Luxe #3

This Friday our friend Peter 'Teps' de Koning is hosting a third edition of Variété De Luxe: a highly entertaining evening filled with music, poetry, comedy, ukuleles and Blanche's "rollator disco"! Entrance is €0, which includes a glass of bubbles!!

Friday November 26, 19.30. 1st floor of the Public Library Rotterdam, Hoogstraat 110.

Heaven is a place in Wales

As it happens I live near one of the best places on the planet. It’s called Hay-on-Wye and it’s a beautiful little town on the border of Wales and England (population: 1469). It surrounded by glorious hills and it has 30 (!) secondhand bookshops.

So when we had friends visiting last week we took them to this quaint village. Unlike my Canadian friends I didn’t have to worry about excess baggage, so I came back home carrying kilo's of books (and extra body fat - a full English breakfast at the B&B and a delicious meal at the Old Black Lion were to thank). These are a couple of the books I got...

From the Honesty Bookshop (unattended outdoor bookcases, you just put the money in a box) I picked up some great cheap old books with lots of pictures of flowers and (extinct) animals for making collages.

I got a book by pop culture whiz Chuck Klosterman Killing Yourself to Live. I thoroughly enjoyed his other books, and so far I’m really enjoying the tales of his road trip visiting places where rock stars died. Though it’s not so much about the dead artists or their deaths; Chuck gets easily sidetracked by memories of his childhood, of songs, scenes from movies, ex-girlfriends and drugs. Chuck is funny.

As some of you will know I got more and more obsessed with patterns since I moved to this country, an obsession which has been particularly fueled by carpets in pubs and other unlikely places. So I bought myself English Printed Textiles 1720-1836, published by one of my favorite museums in the world: the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It contains some great patterns with birds!

My biggest gem must be The Royal Family Pop-Up Book, published in 1984. Oh it’s so great, the royal family portrayed as cardboard puppets! I wanted to make a video while flipping through the book, but when I googled the book I found out some Chinese person already did that. With dramatic orchestral music!



And for a tenner I picked up a dented (hence the price) copy of Dancehall – The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture by Beth Lesser. I already own the 2 cd-box set that goes with it, so I was overjoyed to find this beautiful book. The book focuses on Jamaican music in the 1980s, the "golden age of dancehall". It has loads of pictures and interviews and stories about the biggest artists, producers and sound systems of that decade. And Lesser provides us with some historical context. I’m always quite fascinated to read about how the political, economical and geographical situation of a certain place influences its music. For example one of the reasons that there is so much emphasis on the bass in Jamaican music can be traced back to the fact that Jamaica was a poor country and not a lot of people could afford a record player or a radio, or go out in clubs. So they would gather outside (as it's always good weather in the Caribbean) where some people had set up a turntable and a speaker. These soundsystem parties were extremely popular, sometimes thousands of people would turn up. So the music had to be really loud, and had to have a lots of bass! And then Dub was, as King Tubby stated, his attempt to recreate the natural effect of the delay you would be experiencing when you're in a large open space surrounded by multiple speakers.

There’s also a section about what was hot and what was not, fashion-wise. Well the clothes that were hot were literally hot. Apparently preppy clothes from the UK were all the rage. Pretty bizarre to see all those men in woolen sweaters and hats in what must have been a blazing heat!





Well, I leave you with two of tracks from this excellent Soul Jazz Records compilation...


Tenor Saw - Pumpkin Belly. Get it here (YSI).


Barrington Levy - Here I come. Get it here (YSI).

So I made drawings for VICE...

Vice mag asked me to make five portraits of dutch comedians for an article about what made 3 women of 3 different generations laugh. To learn more about this, the writer of the piece asked her grandma, her mom and herself about funny people and looked at what was different and what was similar.

I picked out some favorite ones and drew them. Check the whole interview out on viceland, and look at some highlights below.

Still under the covers

The heating is blazing, the warm water bottle is in daily use and "I am sitting in front of my computer with a blanket like an old person" as well: it got chilly here in Wales! And wet and grey and windy. But these covers are keeping me warm these days...


Erma Franklin - Hold On I'm Comin' (Sam and Dave cover). Get it here (YSI).


Frente - Bizarre Love Triangle (New Order cover). Get it here (YSI).


Body Language - Sandwiches (Alaska In Winter Remix) (Detroit Grand Pubahs cover). Get it here (YSI).

F.A.R.T. in the bathroom!

This must be one of the weirdest places we’re ever going to DJ (though our party in the elevator, that got stuck by us jumping, is one for the books too)… Tomorrow we’re going to play in the bathroom of a hotel room. Somewhere between the bathtub, the sink and the toilet Dutch Dolls are going to whoop it up! How appropriate for a festival called F.A.R.T.. All kinds of artists have been asked to fill the rooms of the hotel and hostel with installations, mini-exhibitions and performances. At 23.00 the warehouses open up for DJs and live performances.

So on invitation of Johan Kleinjan we’re playing at his SUPERRRMINIFEEST in Room 31 of Boutique Hotel Quartier du Port from 20.00 till +/- 22.30. We already got some great suggestions what to play, from Piss Up A Rope and Don’t Shit Where You Eat by Ween, Ring Of Fire, Drop It Like It’s Hot, Push It, Earth Wind and Fire and Golden Brown by the Strangles, to anything by George Michael. Alas, since it’s vinyl only this rather limits our selection of bathroom-themed songs. But don’t worry we’ll be bringing some other great stuff to make sure it gets hot and steamy in there! Better leave your kids at home...

At 22.30 we’re crossing the street to the Westelijk Handelsterrein where we’ll play a set over a proper PA in warehouse no.15. Come and shake your booty between 23.00 and 24.00, and stick around for more great performances by the likes of zZz, Doktor Schnitt, J.C. Thomaz & The Missing Slippers, DJ Shitmeister T!!

Three cheers for midweek drinking

Can I hear three cheers for midweek drinking?! One of the few good things about being self-employed is that I can go out on school nights (when I plan it properly of course..). And the most exciting artists always happen to been in town during the week, probably to cater for the enormous student population here in Cardiff. So in order to see some of my favorite bands and DJs in the flesh I have to endure hours of feeling old! It almost puts me off going, but I really want to go see the following men, who are in my opinion some of the more innovating men in the genre of subtle electronic music today...

Tomorrow (that's a Wednesday) i'm going to see a duo called Mount Kimbie at the Cardiff Arts Institute. Luckily my friend was wise enough to buy us tickets, because it sold out pretty quickly. I really like their hypnotic, organic sound and I'm curious how things will come across live. Hopefully the beanbags are still around at CAI..


Mount Kimbie - Tunnelvision. Get it here (YSI).

I'm happy to see a fellow Dutchie coming to Cardiff this Thursday when Martyn plays Buffalo Bar. He's a genre bending composer and producer, and he has done remixes for some big names on the scene. He describes his music as "music for a warm but rainy day", which is a perfect description. Apparently he used to live very close to me in Rotterdam, as he named his label after the zip code: 3024. And apparently he's buddies with my former art teacher Erosie, who designed the cover for his album.


Kode 9 - You Don't Wash (Martyn's Scrub Vocal). Get it here (YSI).

Third cheer is for James Blake who will grace us Cardiffians with his presence on Thursday November 25th. I'm severly addicted to his track CMYK but his latest single Limit To Your Love (a Feist cover) is 'not bad' either. As is the video.

Get Under The Covers!

Today was the first day I actually turned on the heat in my house. My toes were a whitish pink and I sat in front of my computer with a blanket like an old person. Rotterdam was even more grey than it usually is, and also more wet. Yes, fall is definately here. And to adjust properly to the upcoming moodswings: some beautiful noisy tearjerkers with a shoegaze flavor for you, because the summer has really left us. Booehooooe!

Grizzly Bear - He Hit Me (Crystals Cover) get it here (YSI)



Ted Leo - With Every Heartbeat (Robyn Cover) get it here (YSI)



Little Girls - 10 Mile Stereo (Beach House Cover) get it here (YSI)

Tot zines!

I must admit it felt a bit strange to be walking around in leopard print at at car tuning convention one day and to be standing in front of a group of art school students the next. Welcome to the world of Dutch Dolls...

After a very enjoyable 'project week' about zines at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in April we had the opportunity of doing it all again last week (read the blog post about the first one here). In small groups, or individually, 25 students from various departments worked on little booklets WITHOUT TOUCHING A COMPUTER. They were free in their choice of subject matter, because that's what zines are all about: a medium to express yourself, your opinions, your obsessions, your artwork, your comics, your poetry and whatnot.

So we ended up with a wide variety of zines: about superstitions, everyday annoyances, skateboarding and zine-making itself, the differences between the left and right side of brain and traditional German hunting imagery and terms, just to name a few. We were delighted that in times like these there was at least one zine that was political and critical. It was called "Wilder dan ooit" ("Wilder than ever") and it included fragments of an inspiring speech by Johan Fretz on the planned cuts in the government's arts budget, plus a plan how to fortify the art school should things get really bad and of course lots of very wild appropriated images of Geert Wilders.


There was a zine "Meisjes poepen niet" ("Girls Don't Poo"), filled with cut out images from glossy magazines of women in difficult poses. Just by combining them in a certain way, or altering them with little scribbles these perfect women, who supposedly are unable to poo or fart or to have hairy armpits, were put into perspective. Neat detail was the silkscreened poo-colored cover with a toilet paper banderole:


We were happy to see the return of the guys who made "A Sick Zine" during our workshop in April. They had continued working together since on an animal-themed second edition and decided to finish it the during our class (very clever). The lovely lads even included an 'ode' to Dutch Dolls, of which you can see a blow up in the upper right corner of the picture above. We are still debating who is who.. Meanwhile here's a selection of their original collages:


They made so many pages the zine turned out too thick to staple, so they had to glue it...


... 55 times...

More pictures of the making of A Sick Zine #2 can be seen on their Facebook page (yes they have a FB page, and a website, and they're on Twitter!). It was sold out in no time, so we suggest you become a fan or start following them to make sure you don't miss out on issue #3!

More 'filth' was produced by an exchange student from Switserland, Luca. Be honest, when someone tells you he "wants to do something with porn and vegetables and machines" you don't expect him to come up with something as tasteful as this:


He used a duplicator or ditto machine so he could print two colors in separate layers. We must say, big up for Wilco at the graphic studio at the Willem de Kooning Academy! Silk screen printing, letter press, typewriters, folding machines.. it's all there for the students to use.

Part of the assignment was to organize a 'zine jam' on Friday afternoon to sell and swap their zines. They failed miserably on this part of the assignment, but we'll forgive them because they worked so hard to have their zines ready on time. They camped out in the foyer of the school, we wheeled in Blanche for some background music and we had a ball anyway.


Still it's a shame they didn't promote this little event, because I know you, dear reader, would have loved to come and I know you wouldn't have left empty handed!!

70% awesome, 30% weird

Last Sunday was another one for the 'plain weird' tag.

Photo by www.mathildekarrer.com.

Slightly hungover, our alarm started ringing at 09.00h... We dressed up with lots of fake fur, leopard print, gold chains, pearls and more things that are cute, but wrong. We put Blanche together and wheeled her over to AHOY, Rotterdam to deejay at the 100% tuning event. Which was as cool as we hoped it would be. Actually, it was cooler. Words do not describe what the event was like, but once we hooked up the battery, and DJ Assault was blasting through the speakers.. jaws dropped. Ooow, how awesome it felt to walk through all the extreme cars, with smoke effects, major sound systems, video screens, pearl paint jobs, airbrush, Svarovsky, rims from outer space... and lots of girls in skimpy outfits lying on top of them and twirling around them. The rollator fit right in. As did we... ahum.

After playing every nasty tune that we had, we went home. We took the subway and the elevator. We decided to party a little in the elevator and cranked up the volume as we went up. Eh... as we should have went up. The elevator broke down and we were stuck!! Even the guy of the helpdesk that answered our distress call thought it was funny. Two policemen and a mechanic had to come to set us free. What a Sunday..... really weird, but a 100% awesome!

Bless Mixtapes

The mixtape, need I say more.. We've been giving and recieving them for years. And we need them. Alot.

When I meet a person who I suspect has the potential of putting together a brilliant mixtape, there will be no hesitation. I'll just make one myself and wait for the other person return the favor. So I recieved an awesome one this week, that has been stuck on repeat. The theme was dirty powersound and I hope mine was as good, but you be the judge of that. Here's a small selection (personal highlights) of the one I got and the one that was given.

From the one I got

Crookers - Tee-Pee theme feat. Drop The Lime get it here (YSI)


Flinke Namen - Hak Um (Partysquad rmx) get it here (YSI)


Siriusmo - Die Rockwurst get it here (YSI)


Ratatat - Beans (freestyle) get it here (YSI)


From the one I gave

Skream vs Elephant Man - Wobble That War (Elected mashup) get it here (YSI)


Radiohead vs Ghostface Killah - Daytona 500 (Panza Zandahz My Iron Lung Remix)get it here (YSI)


KraK Attack - Big Girl Skinny Girl get it here (YSI)


Larry Tee - Licky feat. Princess Superstar (Herve Goes Low Remix)get it here (YSI)

Wie schön das ist

It's 19.00 and I'm ready for bed. My eyes are droopy and the skin below them is a dark shade of purplish blue... I am recovering from a fantastic weekend. Friends of mine got married on Saturday, but the celebrations lasted the whole weekend! It was a special day for a number of reasons. Of course it was special to see my friends getting married, but there were a lot of details that made this wedding an extraordinary one: the fantastic setting of Cardiff Castle, the cake and the stunning wedding dress (both made by the bride herself!), the Dusty Springfieldesque hairdo’s of the bridesmaids, the beer (smuggled across the German border by two of their friends) and last but not least the ORIGAMI FLOWER ARRANGMENTS (also made by the bride herself!!).


For the party they’d booked the EXCELLENT Klezmer Kollective, an 8-piece outfit from Cardiff. Their music led to wild and ecstatic dancing by all guests (as you can vaguely see on the picture above)! As there weren’t any DJ-facilities the couple had asked me to put together some compilation cd’s for the evening and night. Because the now-husband is German and the now-wife is Welsh I dug up songs by German and Welsh artists and some odd covers in either German or Welsh, some of which I’ll share with you here. I especially love Motown ‘auf Deutsch’, they sing with the cutest accent. Sehr süß!

Marvin Gaye - Wie Schön Das Ist. Get it here (YSI).

The Beatles – Sie Liebt Dich. Get it here (YSI).

Marty Roos - Blauer Montag. Get it here (YSI.

Tom Jones – Ring Of Fire. Get it here (YSI).

Alex Warren and Terema Wainwright - Newport Ymerodraeth State Of Mind. Get it here (YSI).

Throw that Curve Ball in my direction!

December last year, I got a phone call of a certain drummer of a certain band. I had no clue who they were, but I thought the bandname was pretty cool. Which is like meeting someone with nice shoes.. a good first impression. And so I agreed to meet with them to talk about art for an album cover. A few Mb (make that Gb) later here it is: The cover for Baby, It's A face by Bombay Show Pig. All shiny and nicely printed by the polish people. Oh how good it feels to hold this in my hands!
I'm not going to post a song from the EP on here, but I will give you this one: a club-worthy remix with a funky wobble. Done by FretHinge who obviously, know how to party. More distortion!

Bombay Show Pig - Curve Ball (FretHinge rmx) get it here (YSI)

Hear the sub go boom

I must confess I wasn't too impressed with Katy B when I saw her singing along with DJ Zinc, last year at the Warehouse Project in Manchester. Maybe it was too R&B, too garage-y (?) for my taste. But her debut solo single, produced by Lord of Dubstep Benga... Oof, what a banger. And what a thrill it was to play this track and hear the sub at Rotown go BOOM last Friday!


Katy B - Katy on a Mission. Get it here (YSI).

Blanche is on a roll!

So after a successful test ride through the parks and streets of Berlin we found out that Blanche’s tweeters were a little antique... 1991 wasn’t a good year for speakers and therefor we blew ‘em up! But revamped with two Excalibur cone speakers with a maximum power capability of 540 watt she's now ready to roll down the streets of Rotterdam!

This Friday, September 17th, you can find us with Blanche at Rotown, Rotterdam. We will be warming up for the band Bombay Show Pig and we will even be joining them during their performance. JAIKS!! Entrance is free!


The next day, September 18th, we will be DJ'ing with Blanche during the opening of minishop Bazar Bizar at de Meent, Rotterdam. The party won’t be so very mini, because we’re also celebrating the fact that Bazar Bizar won the Gouden Grasspriet award!

There is also a rumour going around that on October 9th and 10th Dutch Dolls are wheeling Blanche over to AHOY, Rotterdam to play some bassful tracks at the 100% Tuning fair while taking in a lovely blend of hairgel, Hugo Boss and exhaustion fumes. And we’ll be doing some promo for our main dude Remco and his Shop 4 Cars. This rumour is yet to be confirmed so keep checking back here for the latest news!