All dead. All immortal.

Remko Scha

The Machines (1980) Twice Strings On Overstrung Guitar Constant Speed (High)
MC, published by Michael Gibbs's Artzien ('The fearless, idiosyncratic review of art in The Netherlands, focussing particularly on the marginal and the new, written mostly by artists, and featuring interviews with such luminaries as General Idea, Vito Acconci, Reindeer Werk, Al Hansen, Milan Knizak, and Lawrence Weiner. 28 issues published, Amsterdam 1978-83.') Artzien Cassette at Discogs

'The Machines are: Machine #1, Machine #2, Machine #3, Machine #4, Machine #5, Machine #6. They play several kinds of amplified guitars and percussion. The Machines first performed in 1966 and 1967, when they took part in the 'concerts without neglected parameters' by The New Electric Chamber Music Ensemble, together with artists and musicians such as Remko Scha, Toon Prüst, Piet Verdonk, Rik Seur, Moniek Toebosch and Willem Breuker. New Electric played most of the main Dutch art museums, rock clubs and jazz venues during that period. After many years underground, The Machines formed their own band in the late seventies, stimulated by the development of the punk and no wave scenes in London and New York. In this new line-up, they played an emerging avant-garde circuit which has ramifications from New York (TR3, A's) to Eindhoven (Poort van Kleef, Baarsstraat Fabriek).

Remko Scha: Automatic Music
'In early 1980 I built an experimental installation with motors and guitars which can be employed for automatic concerts, where the structure of the music is not determined by a composer or musician, but by the laws of mechanics. Installations of this sort were successfully demonstrated in live concerts in the Netherlands and abroad, and documented by audio-tape recordings. The installations may involve various combinations of motors and attachments. One of the most typical set-ups can be described as follows: A piece of cord is attached to an electrically driven uniformly rotating axis. The cord is swirled around and periodically hits one or more strings of an electric guitar. The exchange of impulse and energy which occurs at the moments of impact creates complex patterns of standing waves in the rotating cord and in the guitar strings. The oscillatory motion in the rotating cord creates a syncopated rhythmical pattern in the guitar tones. Melodies emerge within the series of harmonic overtones of the fundamental tone of each guitar string.
Depending on the details of the installation, the resulting music may belong to very different genres, ranging from mystical trance drones to aggressive no wave rock.'
Artzien 2, 9 (September 1980), p. 24.

Video: 'The Machines' at the Palais des Congrès, Liège, November 1980. (Video by Paul Paquay, RTB)

Sound: Twice Strings On Overstrung Guitar Constant Speed (High), 1980