I've been meaning to blog about Dutch new wave band Secret Sounds for a while, and recently I found out that Wilmer Wolf, lead singer and songwriter, passed away almost a year ago in May 2024. I first discovered the band in a very roundabout way which is par for the course if you are passionate about music that is outside the mainstream.
I was in Jersey, Channel Islands, for a weekend in 2022 and got to spend about an hour in a record shop in St Helier. At that time I was very interested in collecting local music so I picked a few albums, and also found they had a decent selection of more unusual 80's singles so I also bought a handful of those.
One of the singles was called "Love And I" by the curiously named Jeanny's Wild Obsession. Without looking too closely it looked like a stereotypical single from maybe 1987 or 1988. However, when I researched the single back at home and got ready to make a digital archive recording, I found that it was actually from 1993 and had Dutch origins. Not a big deal maybe but when you collect singles from certain countries and years little things can matter, more than they should. Moreover I didn't really like the song on first hearing so I left it alone and did not think about it too much.
But then, because I did not label my recording, it kept popping up on my thumb drive and I would have to play it to remember what it was. After the second or third time I found more to like and got interested. I found out that the singer was Angeline Bonette and when I googled her I found a YouTube video from 2014. After a bit of confusion I understood that this was a one-off reunion gig by a Dutch band called Secret Sounds, and the song in the video was the curiously named "Johnny and The Rites of Sin". Angeline did not sing on their early records but both her and drummer Jean Monsou had been in a later incarnation around 1987 or 1988. So now we were back in my musical wheelhouse, and boy, did I like that song. I played it a lot.
I then found the band on Bandcamp. The aforementioned song is a key cut on their 1984 album Wasteland and was also a B-Side on a single with the shorter title of "Johnny". I noticed immediately that, considering the band only released a few singles and one album (on their own independent label), they recorded a lot of material between 1981 and 1988 and that their lead contributor Wilmer Wolf was a very gifted songwriter and producer. In 2014 he remastered all their material and released it as a limited edition box set of 11 CD's. The quality was very high throughout. I began by buying the albums digitally on Bandcamp one at a time, and then eventually, after I was back in the USA in 2023, found a copy of the box set and had it sent from the Netherlands.
There is so much to dig into with this band, I can only recommend that you take a listen and explore. I knew that Wilmer by his own admission had some health issues and some personal demons. In interviews he is candid and thoughtful. He released a solo album a few years ago before his health declined. I had hoped that by buying the albums on Bandcamp he would know that someone was interested in his music, but it's a shame I did not have the chance to tell him more personally how much I enjoyed his work. That's life I guess.
