Bene Gesserit

For our new tape reissue, we are very honored to present a limited remastered edition of 'Postcards From Arrakis' by legendary Belgian duo Bene Gesserit, first released by Ding Dong Records and Tapes in 1983. This reissue contains an unreleased version of "Funny Toys (Dedicated To Friends)" with Daniel Malempré on bass guitar.

Bene Gesserit is a husband and wife band founded by Trazegniet's natives Alain Neffe and Nadine Bal. Since the early 80's to this day, they have been both involved in several projects, as solo or in bands, like Human Flesh, Pseudo Code, I Scream, Japanese Genius, Subject or Cortex for Alain and Ornament and Crime Arkhestra for Nadine. Bene Gesserit's material was mostly self-released but had been also featured on various compilations and hosted by several labels like EE Tapes, Stroom, Minimal Wave, Calypso Now, etc.

Alain is also the founder of the cult DIY label Insane Music on which he released his own music, other bands and these inventive packaging compilations quite logically named "Insane Music For People", followed by the "Home-made Music For Home-Made People" ones. They featured amongst others Algebra Suicide, Tara Cross, Colin Potter, Portion Control, Cortex, The Legendary Pink Dots, Diseno Corbusier, X-Ray Pop and many others...

Singing indifferently in english or in fantasy langages, Bene Gesserit is not restrained by any style or trend, prefering instead to make spontaneous and free-from-any-tag music. Hard to make any comparison and to find such a radical alchemy between music and words. Alain explained himself how creative process turned into carthasis in an 2012 interview with Red Bull Music Academy : " We re-discover our childish behaviour, we play a little bit like that. (...) And that's why we never had to define anything, because we just wanted to take some bad vibrations out of our brains. (...) I have no censorship over style or over other matters. (...) Like psychotherapy, to let the pressure go away... Concerning the lyrics, I never know what she will do. She puts her headphones on, I press record, and I discover the new lyrics. Most of the time it's just words like that, expressing some sort of emotions. Sometimes it's not altogether, but it's OK like that - rather surrealistic. She rarely comes with a written text, usually she does it like that. Sometimes, she uses texts we improvised together, you know, the "exquisite corpses", we write them on vacation, or when we are waiting for the food in a restaurant. Rarely, she might read or sing an old text of mine."

We warmly thank Alain for providing and remastering the master tapes, Nadine for the awesome photograph and both of them for allowing us to reissue their outstanding work !