A little quick entry here, mainly as the daily schedule is pretty intense and packed to the brim lately.
Next month is the 2025 edition of the annual Waveteef festival held in Antwerp, Belgium over the Easter weekend in a rather massive military fortification called Fort 2 Wommelgem on the eastern edge of the city, built in the 19th century and then used as defences during World War II I believe. Starting in the early 2010s and by most standards a relatively small event — making it close knit and unique — as far as festivals go, Waveteef is now around ten years into it and with a growing crowd of music fans each year from around Europe into underground synth, minimal wave, post-punk and all the other obscurities old and new between the cracks.
I’m finding myself involved in the festival already, doing the background visuals for the stage for this year’s edition much like I did last year, and with that work in progress I’ve been checking out some of the bands at this year’s edition, including what will be a live performance by Sweden’s classic minimal synth group Tres whom haven’t play lived since the 1980s I believe.
I can’t really say how and when I came to know about Tres, but likely sometime in the last 15 years or so likely by either recommendations from friends or shared by friends through social media platforms. Around this time I was mapping out a mental picture of all of these rediscovered underground classics and where they all came from, including other Swedish artists like Svart Klovn, Twice A Man and Lars Falk — the latter who’s already got a little coverage here.
The track I was introduced to of theirs was “Operator” — released as the B-side on the 1985 single Smile On My Face — that like many artists from the time riffs from Kraftwerk somewhat but with a bit more of a lush pop feel that shines through the suitably lo-fi production that to many ears like mine would enhance the underground vibe of the track. And like most underground artists working in this style at the time, most of them were working independently within their own relatively local scenes and the term minimal wave wouldn’t be coined until a couple of decades later.
Overall it’s a fun track to listen to, let alone have a little dance on the floor. It generally works in a verse-chorus structure that both work of the same chord progression, with an ending that sees the chord progression drop into another key after a break nearer to the end of the track, which adds a nice extra dimension and colour to close it out.
The A-side of this release, called “Smile On My Face” (see below), works in a similar vein but working around a more glassier sounding synth patch. I think I picked up this release through the Crispy Nuggets blog, run by American musician/DJ Nick Mariano who himself also did a DJ set at the 2017 edition of Waveteef that I attended.
Waveteef festival programmer Mat Zwart seems to have an uncanny ability to get musical groups who have been inactive for decades and give them some sort incentive to get back into the rehearsal space and perform their music for present day audiences of minimal/synth fans that may have not been familiar with their music before. This has happened at past editions of the festival, with acts like Turquoise Days and minimal wave legends Linear Movement — both groups having music re-released on the renowned Minimal Wave label — picking up their instruments and tuning up their songs for the stage in past years.
Overall it’ll be nice to see Tres next month on the stage and see how their music from all of those decades ago translates in this current, weird age we live in!