"For the Zorro-LP (there's also a CD featuring two additional tracks) Plan Kruutntoone joins forces with one of today's best pianists in the avant-garde realm: Reinier van Houdt. He recently released a delightful solo 12" on Matiere Memoire and who we all know Van Houdt from his splendid renditions of contemporary (often physically quite demanding) composed piano works (check out the stellar double cd on Moving Furniture Records featuring works by Alvin Curran; Vital Weekly 1182) and of course his work with Current 93.

Plan Kruutntoone and Van Houdt present a conceptual narrative here, based around Zorro and Rosa, geography (and Spielberg) and Brodski, or, to put it in slightly more practical or technical terms: composed and deranged music and lyrics (and other words) on guitars, basses, drums and a piano. The oddball quality of the work starts with the hand-drawn and -painted artwork, a hard to read tracklisting, some other diagrams and slogans or loosely inserts - Twombly-like even - sentences or parts thereof. "A squeaky spring - No not like that - Plays the red flower". First impression: Tom Waits would not be ashamed to put out a record looking like this, to send the listener into a hazy world of fictional characters of lore and wonder and tall tales told with an air of absolute truthfulness.

Picture this: "A deserted Romney shed, somewhere in the north. Only the chosen ones will gather to perform their religious duty, a service to you, heroes, the worst, since Pearl Harbour. A Karcher high-pressure water cleaner will be solemnly melted. Into nothingness. ...and Zorro cares for us."

Roaming the rough edges of holes in plaster as Plan and Van Houdt say themselves, they feel at home in a dangerous world. Theirs is a world in which the band brim with confidence to wave the flag of Slaapkamers met Slagroom-vibe Sonic Youth and defy expectations with a tip of the hat to equal measures of the aforementioned Tom Waits and the aesthetic of De Kift mixed with The Ex.

Founded on a sturdy conceptual framework Plan Kruutntoone once again fosters an explosive yet poetically pensive mix of unexpected forms and Dada-ish gestures with bizarre and intense observations of the exceptional and the commonplace. The resulting LP is jagged and rugged. Dots and lines somehow seem to connect. Or at least these are presented together, in some sort of formation or togetherness: appearing as natural myths read from a Cy Twombly painting, from a maelstrom of considered actions and deeply energetic rushes of frenetic attacks on the poetic and musical canvas.

A roughness too which makes it utterly logical screws here, in this palace of wonders, are hammered (not turned) into the wall. Oh, if only these walls could speak, one might hear someone say, now or then. On the 'Zorro' LP these walls do indeed speak up without shyness, in multitudes of voices and languages. Like our poet Bernlef: jazz and poetry melt into one; into snow white and technicoloured island-wash of melancholy and yearning - a unity demanding full attention: not the plaster, not the tapestry; not even the whole room or house, but the view and the world, all around. Surely one of the best records of 2020."-Sven Schlijper-Karssenberg, Vital Weekly