Mort Aux Vaches is a sub-imprint of Staalplaat, the Amsterdam-based independent experimental imprint founded in 1982 by Geert-Jan Hobijn. The Mort Aux Vaches series consists of about 100 numbered live-radio-session documents recorded at the studios of the Dutch public broadcaster VPRO (Vrijzinnig Protestantse Radio Omroep, "Liberal Protestant Radio Broadcaster") and released through the Staalplaat sub-imprint structure across the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and continuing into the 2020s. The sessions were commissioned mainly for the VPRO Radio 5 evening programme De Avonden ("The Evenings"), produced by Berry Kamer and Jan Hiddink; later also for the related programme Zeldzaam.Dwars. Each release is limited to at most 1000 hand-numbered copies in distinctive trifold packaging that became a series signature.
The name "Mort aux Vaches" is French for "Death to Cows." In French slang, vaches denotes police officers; the slogan originated as a Franco-Prussian War-era anti-German-police expression and is equivalent in mode to English "Death to Pigs." The choice of name is consistent with the Staalplaat position adjacent to the Dutch radical-and-experimental cultural networks of the 1980s onward; Hobijn's Staalplaat had emerged from the Dutch independent / squatter / underground-cultural infrastructure of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the Mort Aux Vaches series naming reflects this inheritance. The Bureau notes the persistence of the name across decades of partnership with a major Dutch public broadcaster is itself a small editorial fact: VPRO is configured to accommodate the cultural-radical heritage the series' name carries.
The series' founding structure is the partnership between Staalplaat (release infrastructure, packaging design, distribution) and VPRO (recording infrastructure, commissioning budget, broadcasting platform). The VPRO sessions are recorded at the broadcaster's Amsterdam studios; sessions are first aired on De Avonden (and later Zeldzaam.Dwars) before physical release through the Staalplaat sub-imprint. Producers Berry Kamer and Jan Hiddink are co-credited across the entire series catalogue; the production framework sustains the series' consistency across multiple decades and dozens of artists. The Bureau holds the Kamer-Hiddink production team as one of the most significant pairs in the European experimental-radio infrastructure.
The packaging convention establishes the series as a Bureau-significant artefact in its own right. The recurring structure is a trifold textured-card cover with the CD held in place by a copper split-nail or brass fastener. Across the course of the catalogue, recurring special materials have included foam, plastic, vinyl, copper-foil, tracing paper, embossed sheet copper, and sandpaper. The Vernon & Burns 2007 entry (recorded for the "Dwars" radio show, 21 June 2007 broadcast) appeared in embossed sheet-copper packaging in an edition of 500. The Goem entry uses a tri-fold cover with a metal fastener. The packaging is itself the documentary form: each entry is a physical artefact whose material specification is part of the record.
The roster spans the canonical experimental / industrial / ambient tradition. The earliest documented entries include In Slaughter Natives / Deutsch Nepal (1994 split). 1997 saw an exceptionally dense set of canonical sessions: Beequeen, Etant Donnés (28 September), and Merzbow (3 July 1995 session later released as the 1998 CD Locomotive Breath); the Muslimgauze session of June 1997 (Bryn Jones with guest musicians Ryan Moore and Werner Durand, released 1998) constitutes one of the most significant late-period Muslimgauze documents prior to Jones' death on 14 January 1999. 1998 added Aube (Akifumi Nakajima). The 2000s extended the roster considerably: Pan Sonic / Charlemagne Palestine (2000 split), Troum (2000), Tarentel (2002), Pimmon (2003), Greg Davis (2003), Flying Saucer Attack / Main / White Winged Moth (2003 three-way), Tim Hecker (3 May 2004 session released 2005), Tape (2005), Colleen (2006), Vernon & Burns (2007), Yellow Swans (2009).
The 2010s onward catalogue continues the series through Mark Templeton (2011), the Peter Broderick / Machinefabriek split (2011), Maeror Tri (MAV-55), Goem (the Roel Meelkop / Peter Duimelinks / Frans de Waard project, deeply rooted in the Staalplaat structure), the Origami and Origami Replika constellation, Rapoon (Robin Storey, post-:zoviet*france:), and O Yuki Conjugate. The genre vein across the catalogue is predominantly experimental and ambient electronica, with presence of industrial, noise, dark-ambient, drone-and-glitch, electroacoustic, and modular-synth working modes; occasional metal and avant-rock entries extend the catalogue's genre-breadth in ways that distinguish the series from imprint-specific documentation streams that would have focused on a single tradition.
Within the Staalplaat structure, Mort Aux Vaches operates as one of several specialised sub-imprints. The sibling sub-imprint is Black Light District, the Coil-dedicated stream founded 1995 for Coil's post-Love's Secret Domain conceptual catalogue (the founding A Thousand Lights in a Darkened Room 1995 release is the opening of Black Light District). The parent Staalplaat catalogue and the earlier Staaltape NL-Documentatieserie (with ST 00X catalogue numbers) sit upstream. The US sister company Soleilmoon Recordings (a Portland, Oregon-based independent imprint) distributed Staalplaat material in the American market; the trans-Atlantic partnership sustained the catalogue's American availability across the 1990s-2010s.
From the mid-2010s onward the series has operated a parallel Bandcamp infrastructure at mortauxvaches.bandcamp.com, with new entries appearing simultaneously on the digital and limited-edition physical formats. The Bureau's editorial position: Mort Aux Vaches is filed at Tier II as one of the radio-session-documentation imprints of the experimental / industrial / ambient tradition. The precedent the series established for later radio-session-and-limited-edition pairings across the European experimental-imprint network is considerable. The limited-edition art-object packaging tradition the series has sustained across about 100 numbered entries is itself a Bureau-significant characteristic, parallel to and constitutive of the Staalplaat-Hobijn aesthetic programme. The series remains active in 2026 with continuing VPRO partnership and parallel-release infrastructure.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Carolingian era · last revised c. the Dark Ages