NDIO - Zenith CD
SKU
BBDCD 0221
Frank van der Kooij - tenor & soprano saxophone / bass clarinet
Hugh Hopper - bass
Robert Jarvis - trombone
Paul Maassen - synths & piano
Kim Weemhoff - drums
Niels Brouwer - guitar
Henk de Laat - double bass (on 'The City')
This is quite a treat to see come out 15 years after the band originally ended! This is a professional sounding live recording of what both Frank and Hugh remembered as being one of the band’s best gigs! Plus Ravel, which is quietly impressive (just like Hugh was!)
And here we are!
“NDIO was the manifestation of a long-lasting relationship between Frank van der Kooij and the English bass player Hugh Hopper and latterly trombonist Robert Jarvis which had started in the mid-1980s and taken various deviations en route.
Back in 1985, Hugh Hopper had been emerging from something of a self-imposed exile from music, initially drawing on established relationships with Richard Sinclair, and then with Pip Pyle and Elton Dean in both In Cahoots and L’Equipe Out. But, in a move that became typically Hopperesque in the second half of his career, he was also keen to dip his toe into something entirely riskier. In the spring of 85, Hugh had befriended Kees Schep and tasked him with assembling a Dutch outfit that would eventually become Hugh Hopper Goes Dutch. Frank van der Kooij remembers being approached:
“I was practicing with a big band in Breda. There was always an audience during open rehearsals. During the break, a man came up to me and said ‘I'm organizing some concerts with the ex bass player from the Soft Machine. Would you like to join it because I need a saxophone player for the project’ He said, ‘next Sunday there is a rehearsal for a few Dutch musicians who are involved.’ I remember on that Sunday morning it was a beautiful sunny day and I was walking to this rehearsal place, at 9.45 in the morning and thinking, ‘somebody's making a fool out of me’. But I went in, sat down, got the pieces – there was a count to four, and we had to play!.” Later on, Frank went across to the UK to deliver music to Hugh and collect some more to take back to Holland and thus a lengthy relationship was born, as evidenced on albums such as ‘Alive’, ‘Carousel’, ‘Meccano Pelorus and ‘Hooligan Romantics’.”