Demystifying Goodiepal

In the tiresome task of discovering left-field rarities, there is often the risk of a misinterpretation here, an ignorant assumption there, but I hereby promise to correct those as they come to my attention. This brings me back to a previous post, where I credited a mysterious work to Sprinintgut, to which the oddly packaged sleeve was labeled. Upon another recent visit to Other Music's "experimental" vinyl section, I discovered a similarly packaged gem, and from the view of the packaging, I could already tell that the vinyl was also cut in a puzzle-shaped fashion, as the one I had found before. This time the jacket's label credited The Drift, from Temporary Residence. Baffled, I took the piece over to the counter and asked the gentleman what was up. If you recall last time, they weren't so helpful, but this particular member of staff knew a thing or two. I explained to him that I had purchased a similarly packaged item, of which I thought was performed by Springintgut, and asked if this was some sort of special series of various artists, blah, blah, blah. I was informed that most of the packaging was just recycled promo jackets from other music (which were later doodled on), and that these were all the same Dutch artist. I obviously felt like a fool. While Springintgut is great, he was not responsible for the lecture on the previous disc, and I have thus misinformed you. So as we open up the new bag of goodies, we will figure this out once and for all.


Simply inspecting the outside plastic's barcode can tell you the actual artist: Goodiepal, a.k.a. Parl Kristian Bjørn Vester, who according to Wikipedia is M.I.A. and wanted by the Danish police for "an unsolved theft from the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus." He had taught at the academy until 2008, when he quit his position and declared "intellectual war against the stupidity in modern computer music and media art." Such sentiment is expressed in his lecture on the tiny, odd-shaped vinyl discs that I've gathered, a part of what Vester refers to as the "five steps in a Gentleman's War on the stupidity of modern computer music and media based art."  This expensive venture over the past 3 years has led Goodiepal to bankruptcy, but all the details of the man can be found on his seemingly autobiographical Wikipedia page.  

Also to note, this particular package included on additional 7-inch of very European-esque electronic music sans lecture and a small, hand-decorated, hardbound book of images and blank pages (perhaps a journal, but I can't read any of the content and have no idea of its purpose).