As a Belgian I have this dubious relationship with the Dutch. Somehow we dislike them for being so loud and over the top sometimes. But at the same time, as quiet and controlled Belgians, we envy that about them. I personally love the Dutch!
Those crazy neighbors of ours always come up with funnest stuff. And the guy I want to talk about now is from Zwolle, which is home to many Dutch hip hop artists (Opgezwolle, Fakkelbrigade, Typhoon, etc.) I really like! I wonder what they put in the water over there in Zwolle cause it sure makes for interesting people.
Yuri Landman (Zwolle, The Netherlands, 1973) was trained as a chemist but started a carreer as a comic book artist by publishing two autobiographical comics. The second one, "Het Verdiende Loon" (means something like: Payback), earned him The Netherlands' biggest comic book award in 1998.
I guess he got tired of being a succesful illustrator and started playing music with bands like Zoppo and Avec-A. During that time he starting taking shopclass and learned the carpenter trade. He started making wooden string instruments for himself.
They got so popular he started making them for other people and other bands like The Veils, dEUS, Sonic Youth, The Dodos, etc. He gives his instruments really cool names as well. For example: Moodswinger, Moonlander, Burner Harp Guitar, etc.
Now Landman is a musicologist and he's still making experimental instruments. He gives workshops about his work as well. Be sure to check out his website or his Myspace page and read up on his stuff.
Here Landman explains how to make an instrument.
