There are 5 versions of the story (until now, 2009, that is)

1.

PERFECT VACUUM is a cooperation between singer Dave Marsh and Lukas Simonis. The two chancers originally met sometime in the 80’s on Rotterdam's mainstreet the Coolsingel where they both played at a street festival. It was actually Lukas’ first ever gig and the main thing he had going for him was throwing rotting chickenbones at the audience while trying to dodge the rotten onions (a Dutch delicacy) the audience threw back. Dave, in those days, was shacked up with a female mud wrestler who also played the bass very loud. He looked very humble back then and mumbled a lot. Lukas and Dave got chatting and became firm friends. The same evening they found themselves jamming with a bunch of psychotic squatters – the music explosive and ecstatic until Dave’s girlfriend arrived, kicked down the door, grabbed Dave by the scruff of the neck and dragged him off back to the UK and obscurity.

Let's skip the 20 something years in between and arrive once again at a bar on the Coolsingel. It’s England vs France - football that is - 2004 European Championship. Lukas glances out the door and who happens to be shambling past but his old buddy-bud Dave Marsh.

After a game that ended with admirable sufficiency for England, and after sharing a huge meal of that Dutch delicacy – rotten onions - Marsh and Simonis determined to make a Science Fiction record together, a disc in the style of Nostradamus or Old Moore’s Almanac but predicting what would happen to popular music in the 21th century. Not surprisingly, Lukas and Dave had the idea to call their record ‘A guide to the music of the 21st Century’.

Embarrassingly, the project seemed to take forever. After two years of studiowork, 169 songs with a total length of 123 hours, they decided it was time to make up their minds. And they did. Sort of. The full recordings will be released in the year 2012 but this CD is the perfect appetizer.

Track records:

Upon their return to the UK back in the 80’s, Dave’s wrestler girlfriend moved to New York where she took up bodybuilding while Dave got a job in a garage. He was only too happy to leave the music business behind.

Meanwhile, Lukas did the opposite. His bands and projects are as numerous as the toes on a multi-toed statue. To name but a few - Dull Schicksal, Trespassers W, Morzelpronk, Coolhaven, Liana Flu Winks, VRIL, Pierre Bastien, Static Tics, Apricot My Lady, Faces/Tijdlus, AA Kismet, Kodi & Pausa.

2. A vacuum of perfect memories. Dimly, a phone call in the night. Lukas: ‘We met years ago. Jammed till dawn in that abandoned cheese factory. Come over to Holland, hang with the band, we have a place. Let’s record an album’. Me: ‘I haven’t sang or touched a guitar in fifteen years – are you completely crazy?’ Lukas: ‘Just come. We’ll do it, man’.

Stepping off the ferry to be met by a VW camper straight out of Austin Powers. The painted doors swing open with a blinding wall of smoke. I’m greeted and kissed by ten or more beautifully strange people and dragged into the van for a hashish sauna.

The place -  incredible – a commune on an island jutting out into the Maas – smack bang in the container district of Rotterdam. Titi explains: ‘The island’s artificial, man. Built but never used to quarantine sailors. Penicillin changed all that’.

I didn’t know communes still existed -  everything a kaleidoscope of impossible contradictions, a dialectic of the creative soul. Animals, vegetables, peace, poets, earth mothers, laughing barefoot children, a state of the art recording studio in a ramshackle barn, a talking owl named Lodewijk, virtuoso musicians, an ice water outdoor shower.

Morning - I’m blown awake by a ship’s claxon, louder than a passenger jet exploding. A huge ship is creeping past my window – what the f%@#!!??. Unreal.

I look around. My clothes, laptop, mobile – all gone. Nazmiya: ‘You won’t need that shit while you’re here’. I’m furious - I can’t live without my devices. She hands me a starry plum jalabaya to wear. I storm off to sulk alone by the river. A seven year old girl approaches and whispers: ‘You’re just like Achilles’. She takes my hand and we go feed the horses. Tears of sadness/joy stream down my cheeks, cut loose by the razor sharp beauty of her kindness.

Later, Nina takes me on a guided tour. She’s seven months with child, still practices her cello six hours a day. Nina: ‘Just let it all go, Dave. You’ll be fine’. I point towards the city centre, hazed by distance and petroleum: ‘Don’t you miss it? Don’t you miss all that?’ Nina: ‘Yes, but this is better’. Nina shows me where the spiders nest, instructs me on how to knead dough for bread, introduces me to Ingeborg, the intellectual synthesist (her head permanently inside of an old Hammond organ). Nina sits me by the piano. As she plays to me it’s as though I’m hearing, really hearing, for the very first time – Beethoven, Bach, Ives. ‘Quasi una fantasia’?

Effortlessly, I fall into the life. I cook, sing, meditate, plant seeds, laugh, bash at a guitar, trade some of Noortje’s pots for fresh fruit at the market, dream, help Colin mend his euphonium, let go.

Somehow, songs happen. I sing, the band plays, Lukas positions a few microphones, an album gets recorded.  Snapshots etched onto my mind’s eye – Colin’s cheeks expanding like galaxies as he puffs the tuba, Trend jokingly spinning his banjo in imitation of a rock star, Nina pressing the cello up tight against her unborn babe, Lukas bending down and kissing his combo in the middle of a solo to stop it crackling, Nazmiya pounding the drums – hair flailing, her dark Syrian eyes wild with passion, Titi laughing so much he falls over into a huge pot plant, Noortje radiating spiritual calm – I catch a glimpse of her spiralling blue aura, Ingeborg quoting Spengler while recklessly shaking a red hot soldering iron above her cropped and fiercely dyed head - all happens so naturally.

3. PERFECT VACUUM (before; Moofa, Grandige Bink, Fat Suit -but we'll stick to this name) is a new group that consists of Xentos 'Fray' Bentos (or 'Shitface Ermintrude' for friends and enemies) and Lukas Simonis. (old/other stuff we are related to/with; L.Voag, Die Trip Computer Die, the Work, Milk from Cheltenham, Atom of Doubt, The Decomposers, Sara and Amos, Pertwee's Bananas , Vic Serf & the Villains, Juggernath, The Victor Lounge Trio, Trespassers w, Morzelpronk, Dull Schicksal, AA Kismet,Vril, Coolhaven, Liana Flu Winks)

We just worked for two years on an album that's gonna be titled; ''A guide to the music of the early twenty first century'. When we started out we didn't know what to expect from the forthcoming music. The first few sessions sounded like horrible noise -which was cool. But then it turned into this deconstructed popthing. And after a while we found ourselves making songs - which wasn't our intention at all. Anyway, we tried, but failed miserably to make something abstract, though here and there it shines through the disgusting POPhybrid it became, something you have probably never ever heard before in your life eventhough bits and parts may sound familiar. Wow, that sentence really deserves italics.

4 .Perfect Vacuum is a cooperation between Xentos ‘Fray’ Bentos (but under his ‘real’ name; Dave Marsh) and Lukas Simonis. The two gentlemen met, somewhere in the eighties on Rotterdam’s mainstreet the Coolsingel where they both played on a big festival. It was actually Simonis’ first gig ever as a musician and the main thing he had going for him was throwing rotting chickenbones at the audience. Xentos, in those days, was living with a female wrestler who played the bass very loud. He looked very humble then.

Let’s skip the 20something years in between and arrive at the England game against France, football that is, 2004, European Championsship. After the game that ended tragically for England, Xentos and Simonis decided to make a Science Fiction records together, predicting what would happen with popular music in the 21th century.

So after two years of studiowork and recording 167 songs with a total lenght of 23 hours, they decided it was time to make up their minds . And they did.  The full recordings are supposed to be released in the year 2012 but this CD  could serve as an appetizer.

Stuff that Marsh doesn’t mind to be associated with (aka. ‘the past’);   Atom of Doubt, The Decomposers, Sara and Amos, Pertwee’s Bananas. Milk from Cheltenham, Vic Serf & the Villains, The Work, Juggernath, The Victor Lounge Trio, L.Voag,  Die Trip Computer Die.

Same for Simonis; Dull Schicksal, Trespassers W, Morzelpronk, Coolhaven, Liana Flu Winks, VRIL, Pierre Bastien, Static Tics, Apricot My Lady, Faces/Tijdlus, AA Kismet, Kodi & Pausa.

5. Check out www.acidsoxx.com for the fifth version.

Just listen to the songs 'Glamour Addict','Satanic Man/Average Man and Good Neighbour and we can assure you the other songs on the album sound TOTALLY different.

SATANIC MAN/AVERAGE MAN

GOOD NEIGHBOUR

GLAMOUR ADDICT

or listen to the same songs again but on our myspace page

and even more; (this is the acid soxx version)

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