Long term VT followers will know the esteem in which we hold Ultra Eczema’s on-going series of archival LPs documenting the more off-the-radar European Wildman/avant garde sides, presenting definitive documents by previously little know artists such as Cassis Cornuta, Kommisaar Hjuler & Mama Baer, Edmond De Deyster, Jos Steen, Leo Coomans, Ludo Mich, Wout Vercammen et al... this stunning one-sided LP with a silkscreen on the flip is a recording taken from sound sculptor, artist, instrument inventor and experimental radiophonist George Toet Smits’ first exhibition in Antwerp in 1981. Smits was involved in the underground film and comics scene in the late Sixties and soon graduated to presenting an experimental radio show on Radio Centraal where he would mix music with environmental recordings and his own inventions. He was inspired to create long string instruments after the discovery of an old surfboard on the beach and soon his visual and sonic interests came together in a series of constructions that had a spare Industrial beauty to them and combined long strings with Styrofoam, metal, bamboo, glass rods and steel springs. His music is stunning, occupying that lonesome luminal zone that Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures came out of or even Alan Lamb’s recordings of the Faraway Wires (still my favourite contemporary  ‘environmental’ recordings) but there are also aspects of Chris Corsano and – particularly – Eric Thielemans’ work with drum skins, with tracks that sound like fleets of heavenly dulcimers wobbling in and out of corporeal reality while leaving strange clouds of fuzzy overtone in their wake. Some of the playing is more drone centred, with Smits threading a thin pulse between your ears with all of the evocative sleight-of-hand of Maryanne Amacher. Elsewhere there’s more of a Fluxus action aspect to the sonics w/the sound of Joe Jones’ toy orchestra playing deep space wow ala Ranta/Kosugi/Ichiyanagi or even an Alastair Galbraith/Ellen Fullman/Eli Keszler power summit. The set also comes with some cool snaps of his constructions plus an interview from just before his untimely death in 1997 by Patrick Vandenberghe. Another peerlessly outside archival presentation from Ultra Eczema, which has turned out to be the Nonesuch Explorer of Middle Europe’s Hidden Reverse. Highly recommended!