Made up of four lengthy hallucinogenic incantations, Het Zweet's first self-titled tape was originally released in 1983 and shouldn't be confused with the later 1987-released album of the same name. The project was conceived by Dutchman Marien Van Oers, who sadly passed away in 2013, leaving behind a breadcrumb trail of mysterious, ritualistic deployments pieced together using an arsenal of home-made instruments. And 'Het Zweet' finds Van Oers at his most mystifying and most primal, forming rudimentary sounds into surging, percussive atmospheres that peer back towards ancestral rhythmic geometries and caking his repetitions in ferric, industrial-era dirt. The name itself means "sweat" in Dutch, and there's an identifiably herculean quality to Van Oers' mantas - these aren't simply loops, by any means, but contemplative feats of endurance that reward patient, deep listeners.
Opening track 'Vocus' is the album's most haunted stretch, almost 12 minutes of spectral decelerated gloop that infuses a sequence of chants with the dilatory, caliginous energy of doom metal. There's an almost monastic quality to the pitch-skewed synths that introduce the composition, but that's quickly interrupted by molasses slow vocal cycles that rumble enigmatically next to Van Oers' barely audible vocalizations. The artist's kinetic drumming is thrust into the foreground on 'Tribus', but the ritual quality never disappears, his cyclic intonations adding color to the pebbly pots 'n pans cracks and cavernous oscillations. It's music that lodges itself between Muslimgauze and Z'EV, crafted for patient listeners who can perceive the elemental grooves lying just beneath Van Oers' trance-like patterns and discombobulating effects.
On 'Tribus', Van Oers intensifies the magick, playing a languid, lop-sided beat that twangs as it pierces the red, creating its own eerie distortion. Unmistakably psychedelic gear, it breaks down into wisps of guttural, groaning white noise and temple chimes that Van Oers uses to catch his breath before bellowing into a foghorn-like home-made pipe and rebooting the rhythm. And the closer 'Indus' is the album's most focused, starkest stretch, almost 15 minutes of gymnastic drumwork that's accompanied by a vocal mantra that simmers softly in the background. Over four decades later, 'Het Zweet' is still startlingly unique material; not quite industrial, not quite dark ambient and definitely not new age, it's music that's plugged into cultural history, re-imagining long-forgotten ceremonies as a feat of physical and spiritual endurance for both the performer and the listener.
