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Takeaway Loops

by Gavin Vanaelst

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  • Cassette + Digital Album

    Limited edition cassette, risograph artwork by Jeroen Wille

    Includes unlimited streaming of Takeaway Loops via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.
    ships out within 1 day
    edition of 120  9 remaining
    Purchasable with gift card

      €11 EUR or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card
    Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

      €8 EUR  or more

     

  • Limited edition cassette
    Cassette + Digital Album

    Risograph artwork

    Includes unlimited streaming of Takeaway Loops via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Download available in 16-bit/44.1kHz.

    Sold Out

1.
Falafel King 02:40
2.
Mc Donalds 00:50
3.
Quick 03:04
4.
5.
Wok & Walk 02:28
6.
7.

about

Gavin Vanaelst runs the space Aboli Bibelot in Antwerp where exhibitions and musical performances can happen side to side with dealings in centuries-old furniture and unique pieces of folk art or volkskunst. Gavin makes music under the aliases DJ Charme, Kassett and So Sorry. This is the first album under his birth name. Takeaway Loops cycles back to the days when Gavin was working as a courier for Takeaway.

Takeaway is a food delivery company. Their couriers - ehm, brand ambassadors, as the company prefers to call them - dressed in bright orange, they race their bikes around the city. They deliver meals and groceries for all sorts. Thanks to them, the privileged can stay tucked in their private spaces. Interaction between the two groups - the privileged and the brand ambassadors - is mostly kept to the bare minimum. And sparse communications are often driven by annoyances - “my Coke is warm because you kept it too close to the French Fries.” And on the streets the general public dis-approaches the brand ambassadors with pity. We tell our peers: “That’s not a good job,” and “stay away from the Sharing Economy.” Because, you know, in our capitalistic dollhouse we all stand our grounds and play our parts wholeheartedly.

During his shifts for Takeaway, Gavin recorded location sounds on his phone at fast food restaurants while waiting on the orders he had to pick up and deliver. Later in his home studio Gavin added piano and electronics to this source material. The result: a gloomy soundtrack for a shadow world. Seven songs in evening blue with a bright orange glare.

A few years ago, our favorite Belgian publishing house Het Balanseer released Seizoenarbeid by Heike Geissler (available in English trough Semiotext(e)). Geissler writes about her job at Amazon in Leipzig. Because her writing and freelance work did not pay the bills any longer, she was forced towards this underprivileged shadow-world of unwanted jobs. Seizoenarbeid shed a light on freedom in an unfree world. A monument of 'we are all in this, but not together'. Takeaway Loops gives us a similar peak in a world that is at the same time so visible, but then also very veiled for many. A world that we prefer to use, yet that most of us prefer not to see - a world that we don’t like to enter.

Last year at Harbourland subway station in Kobe, I was mesmerized by the sound design created by Hiroshi Yoshimura. For each part of the subway station he composed a short phrase. While walking trough the station, a full composition grows in your head. The looping melodies guide you trough a microworld. Trough a blue world of commuters, of the homeless, of the lonely, of the fast paced, of the tourist. Gavin creates a similar effect with Takeaway Loops. The tonality somehow corresponds to Yoshimura’s work. Yet instead of being guided trough a building, we are now taken to the after dark. You feel the concrete evening heat of the city. You hear the rain. Stiff fingers during cold winters’ nights. You are alone on the bike, cruising. Your maps app telling you where to go. You just left the fake leather bench of the well-lit pastiche interior of a fast food restaurant.

Next order, number ECN44! Please wait outside, sir?

credits

released May 27, 2025

All music: Gavin Vanaelst
Mastered by: Yves De Mey

license

all rights reserved

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about

DJ Charme Antwerp, Belgium

Gavin Vanaelst

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