Moods 15: Corine Vermeulen
Corine grew up in Waddinxveen, a tiny village close to the West Coast of The Netherlands. "There wasn’t much to do other than going to school and playing sports. I was bored out of my brain there, but the best thing about that time was that electronic music had come on the Dutch radio waves and I was so enthralled by it that I started seeking it out as a young teenager in clubs and parties in nearby cities like Rotterdam and The Hague.
"I had one other girlfriend who was super into the music as well, and we’d dress up in crazy outfits with way too much make up on so we could get into certain venues. The RoXY in Amsterdam had ‘High Tech Soul Movement’ on Thursday evenings and that was one spot to hear all the new records coming out of Detroit and Chicago. We’d dance all night until closing hour, then go to an afterparty at some weird location and dance some more and then take the first train back to the village, sitting all blissed out amongst the morning commuter crowd. Those nights were so special. Sometimes I think I’m forever chasing that kind of magic because it was a communal thing. It was everybody together in one space, being united by this new music."
When Corine turned 18, she headed to Eindhoven to study graphic design. Photography became a second focal point for her, "always running around somewhere else with a camera." A master's scholarship led her to the heart, of course, just north of Detroit. "I thought to myself, this is going to be so great: I get to study photography during the week and then during the weekend I get to see all my favorite electronic musicians. I really had this fantasy in my head they’d all be playing in clubs there all the time and I could just go listen to them at any given moment."
But like many people new to Michigan, moving meant running into a few harsh realizations. "I was deep in the suburbs, there was hardly any public transportation, and I didn’t drive, so most of the time I was stuck on campus. There was one bus—the Woodward bus—that didn’t actually stop at the academy, so I had to ride my bicycle for 20 min to get to the nearest bus stop, then ride the slow bus to Detroit for an hour and a half and then the DJs I was so eager to hear were hardly ever playing. They were already playing mostly overseas. Even after living here for 15 years now, I think I may have seen those guys play more times in The Netherlands than I have here." This, of course, was set in the backdrop of Detroit's downward spiral and bankruptcy in the 2000s. It's something that resonates with many people interviewed so far on Moods—the feeling of being "too late," of arriving right when "everything changed," which channels itself into a restlessness, and hunt, for its history—and its hope to help bring it back to its black roots.
With this in mind, Corine's cautiously optimistic with the music coming from Detroit's "revival." "Two weeks ago, I saw DJ Stingray at Marble Bar with Erika and BMG, which was a truly awesome line up. I think I even spotted Shake Shakir sitting in the back behind the DJs, nodding his head in agreement—but I might have just imagined that. Folks are definitely out and about again. I laid low on the club scene for many years because I was concentrating on teaching and working on photo projects like Your Town Tomorrow. And I also don’t always like night life, but now I’m poking my head out again and just last weekend I saw some of my favorite younger DJs of the moment, Black Noi$e and Khlonez [editor's note... her moods mix is hereeeeeeee], play in an abandoned building on Gratiot Ave that totally reminded me of being a teenager going to weird locations and raving all night long.
"I was so happy to see it happening, the space being super raw, where there's no heating in the dead of winter, but people were going so hard. It’s an exciting time because I feel like a whole new generation is getting to experience what that’s like all over again."
TRACXS
Ash Ra - Deep Distance -1976
Haruomi Hosono & Tadanori Yokoo - Hotel Malabar Upper Floor ...Moving Triangle... - 1978
Chris & Cosey - This Is Me - 1981
Aphex Twin - Window Sill -1994
Jean-Michel Jarre - Oxygène (Part V) - 1976
The Orb - First, Consider The Lilies - 2016
Plastikman - Pakard - 1998
Gosub - Waking Up -2005
The Detroit Escalator Company - Soundtrack (313) - ∆
VC-118A - Glut - 2018
Dopplereffekt - Non Vanishing Harmonic Spinor -2007
Biosphere - The Things I Tell You -1997
Aux 88 - Free Fall -2009
ART
Corine's set is the first time we've paired the mix with a record sticker instead of an artwork: a detail of Haruomi Hosono and Tadanori Yokoo's soundtrack from the 1978 film Cochin Moon. Corine used this song as a place of departure for her mix, and as a visual artist herself, it's only fair we flip the script this time 'round and pair her mix with, well, a song. :)
To listen to the whole LP, head here.
For more on Corine's visual art, head here; and for her mixes, head here.