The Chi Factory The Bamboo Recordings

Jacobus Derwort started exploring sonic soundscapes listening to his short-wave world receiver at the age of 12. There he would hear music from Africa, China, Japan, Indonesia, South America and beyond. He started playing guitar, piano, percussion and saxophone.

He met Hanyo van Oosterom in 1978 and they started the legendary cult rock band, 'The Jones'. Derwort was playing the sax, van Oosterom the drums. They started conducting sound experiments in Hanyo’s small cellar in the Dutch village of Krimpen aan den IJssel.

In the early eighties they made their first cassette, 'The Kallikatsou'. Hanyo started the ambient collective CHI in 1983. Jacobus was the first musician to join CHI. Together, they went to the magic rock “The Kallikatsou” on the island of Patmos, Greece. Here, Hanyo had stayed for months in a cave for some deep soul-searching. He heard the sound of CHI in the silence of the night like a message from out of space. Being together at the Kallikatsou they shaped the foundation of CHI, making handmade flutes from local bamboo and conducting field recordings of water, crickets, owls, goats, wind, etc...

Back home they asked Willem Cramer to join CHI, and later Michel Banabila. They released a legendary ambient cassette, 'The Original Recordings', in 1983 which soon became a collectors item. CHI stopped in 1987 (and still now nobody knows exactly why). Willem Cramer and Michel Banabila started the world music collective 'East Meets West' in 1989. Hanyo and Jacobus kept recording ambient soundscapes.

Jacobus was working on his 'Bamboo' recordings. Hanyo recorded the first tracks for 'The Kallikatsou Experience'. Neither album was ever released. They returned a few times together to The Kallikatsou, but there the history seems to end...