You would think that a small country like the Netherlands has very few isolated places, but buried in the south-west corner you will find the region of Zeeuwsch Vlaanderen. Just before the Westerscheldetunnel was built in 2003, the area was only reachable by ferry or over land through Belgium. By the late 1970s, in the region’s small city of Terneuzen, a group of like-minded music lovers were inspired by punk music and formed a series of bands together. A number of the musicians first met in high school, and it is here where we find Danny Bosten (Das Ding) and his label Tear Apart Tapes. If you played music you had to have a label to release it and because you had a label you needed to make music. It was a logical and circular process, and despite being isolated, nothing stopped them from bringing new music to Terneuzen. Up till today the label releases cassettes just like in the olden days as well as a string of 7-inches with new music by Das Ding, Les Yeux Interdits and Ian Martin. Each of these releases carries a similar visual aesthetic to the label’s early 1980s output. All of them sold out quickly, but luckily they are now collected here on this LP.

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