Europe In Flames

The word Fanatic comes from the Latin fanum, temple. A fanatic is someone possessed, by God or the Devil. From 1985 until 1989 Willem de Ridder, Hessel Veldman, Cora Emens and Nick Nicole were the members of post-art ensemble FANATIC (or later FNTC). Willem and Hessel already worked together in the late 70s and early 80s on various radio shows and performed with musicians like Alvin Curran, Francis Marie Uitti and Jon Rose. Together with Cora and Nick they started FANATIC to focus on field recordings, intimate happenings and theatrical storytelling.

As a multi-media project FANATIC was not just obsessed by sound but dedicated to live rituals, producing videos, cassettes and radio plays like Europe in Flames, the pinnacle of this album. It’s a multi-layered piece for which the foundation was recorded by Willem on a boat trip to England. One of his spontaneous field recordings that sounded more like an intricate studio production. In a house near the North Sea on a windswept Autumn evening in 1985 percussion, voices, synthesizer and sound effects were added and when their friend and collaborator William Levy arrived, he listened to the freshly recorded wall of sound, took a short poem from 1978 out of his pocket and started reciting. This final layer of sound complemented the audio perfectly and the result was published on the Neuropa cassette in 1986 and is still chillingly relevant in 2025.

Their haunting, meditative and immersive audio pieces and challenging performances evoke comparisons with groups like COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle. Bleak and raw, but also sensual and poetic. FANATIC released 3 cassettes in the 80s with more material to be discovered in the EXART archives. In addition to the classic Europe in Flames, we dug up 2 unreleased pieces from 87 for a long overdue conspectus.