Psychotone
/ Psychotone Too
Psychotone (1981) (unissued demo
tape)
After having been a member of
Zak & Boebbel and Oezem
, Belgian multi-instrumentalist Boebbel succesfully toured a couple
of years as a solo performer, while at the same time he was a guest
musician or temporary member of various Belgian groups, such as Bullshit Blues Band , Kobold , Royal Erotic
Space Orchestra , The Plastic Bags ,
and Le Lis. Together with Paul Van Laere he founded
the jazzrock band Psychotone around 1980. The original line up included Rick
Boebbel (guitar, percussion), Paul Van Laere (saxes, flute), Erwin Van
Handenhoven (piano, synthesizer), Marc Van Puyenbroeck (bass), and Frans De
Jongh (drums).
After the recording of a demo tape with arrangements of instrumental
jazzrock standards, Rick Boebbel and Paul Van Laere decided to go their own
way. Van Laere and some of the
former band members founded a new band, while Boebbel called in Gerry
Liebens (sax), Mack Riské (bass) and Pat Riské (drums) to form Psychotone
Too .
All the compositions of the second line up were written by Rick
Boebbel, who played a large assortment of instruments himself, such as
guitar, bouzouki, altsax, trumpet, noseflute (!), percussion, and selfmade
instruments like the 'boebbelophone' or the 'klopmöbel'
. His music could be described as
ethno-jazzrock, peppered with humorous interventions, such as puppetry
intermezzos, noseflute quartets, boebbelophone solos and so on…, but the
amazing complexity of the music made it almost impossible to play it
live. The suite Cosmos-perma-cussion e.g. featured no less than 120 different musical instruments! Since the music was uncompromisingly
uncommercial, no record company was interested in recording it either,
while a private album release would have cost far too much. After a few years, Rick Boebbel therefore
decided to disband Psychotone Too , thus withholding the
world some of the finest jazzrock ever written, such as Salmonella
, Lintje , Genetic Blues, Hungarian Sonata , or the musical fairy tale Jessica
and the Guitar Player … He withdrew from musical activities and
started making humorous assemblage-sculptures under the pseudonym of Ribley!
[ see also Zak & Boebbel , Boebbel , Ribley! ]
